- Anti-Communist Is Deadly to All Workers and Youth
Capitalism: The Root of World Poverty - Send the Boy Home:
Little Elián: Pawn in in Imperialist Chess Game - CSU STUDENTS STAND UP TO `PUSH' POLICE
- Youth Up Struggle at Bogan High
- Strike: One Battle in Long War to Smash Capitalism
- Harvard PLP Says: Can't Poverty Abroad Without Opposing Cop Terror Here
- Striking Janitors Must Flush Out Bosses' Agents
- Can't Fight World Poverty Without Fighting Imperialism
- Youth at PLP May Day Dinner"
`To Get Rid of Division You Need Multiplication' - PLPer Spreads Red Ideas in Postal Union Election
- Resolutions at SF Teachers' Union Against Cop Terror, for May Day
- Staten Island: African Workers Join Fight Against Racist Cop Terror
- PLP School Discusses the Political Economy of Making a Basketball Ball
- Upper Manhattan May Day Dinner
- Marking the 25th Anniversary of PLP of Racist Anti-Busing Movement in Boston
- LETTERS
Editorial:
Anti-Communist Is Deadly to All Workers and Youth
Capitalism: The Root of World Poverty
Thousands of workers and students will be marching in Washington, D.C. this weekend to protest against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. They want to create a better world and fight against the exploitation of workers. But the leadership of the protest, the AFL-CIO and groups like Global Exchange (see below), will never end exploitation and oppression. They will only mislead us into a patriotic movement that serves the interests of U.S. imperialism.
The AFL-CIO is bringing thousands of steel workers, teamsters and others to lobby and rally against China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). As in the NAFTA battle, they are temporarily parting company with their ruling class masters, and their politicians like Clinton and Gore.
The AFL-CIO has accused the Clinton administration of "prostrating itself for a deal with China that treats human rights as a disposable nuisance." And Teamster president James Hoffa praises Hitler-apologist Pat Buchanan as "the only candidate that is speaking about the issue of world trade, of China..." The back page of last month's Teamster magazine showed a picture from Tienanmen Square, with a pro-U.S. demonstrator standing in the way of three tanks. The message reads, "If he can stand up to `Communist' China, so can you."
They claim to be outraged at China's record on "human rights" and the use of prison labor. In reality, they are afraid of seeing auto assembly and other jobs transferred to lower-wage capitalist China as the price for opening up new markets for U.S. bosses. While these labor bosses want to appear to be militantly protecting U.S. workers, in fact, "The AFL-CIO backs the idea of [U.S.] inmates working but wants it done `carefully." (The Wall Street Journal, 6/29/99)
Currently there are two million prisoners in the U.S., double the figure of ten years ago. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, about two-thirds black and Latin, are working for private corporations like Dell Computers, Boeing, Microsoft, and the Federal Prison Industries, for as little as 20cents an hour, some as low as 75cents a day! They make everything from clothing to aircraft parts, from computer circuit boards to Army helmets and ammunition cases. The garment industry lost 8,000 jobs to the federal prison system alone (Wall Street Journal, 7/22/99).
Global Exchange is on the board of the Fair Trade Federation. It hopes to make production in U.S. sweatshops and prisons more competitive by slightly raising labor costs in Asia and Latin America. By focusing on China they promote protectionism and patriotism. Global Exchange receives grants from foundations tied to manufacturers who benefit from Fair Trade's campaigns against their competitors. Would these foundations keep contributing if Global Exchange targeted exploitation of workers in the U.S.?
Take the garment industry. Hundreds of thousands of mainly immigrant workers have no unions, sub-minimum wages, no benefits, no overtime pay, work in death-trap conditions and are subject to physical abuse by their bosses. Nationwide only about 12% of U.S. workers are covered by union contracts, one of the lowest percentages of any country in the world. In New York City, there are an estimated 4,500 garment sweatshops. In Los Angeles, with 150,000 garment workers, thousands of undocumented workers labor for less than minimum wage under terrible working conditions. The murderous LAPD terrorizes black and Latin neighborhoods to enforce these low wages.
There are also tens of thousands of Workfare participants who labor under slave-like conditions, well below the minimum wage. In New York City more than 60,000 Workfare participants clean parks, streets, subway stations and hospitals, replacing city employees who earned union wages.
When Global Exchange joins with the leadership of the garment union UNITE in opposing sweatshops, with the leadership of the Teamsters who oppose Mexican truck drivers entering the U.S., with the leadership of the steelworkers union in opposing steel imported from Brazil and Russia, they are not building international solidarity. They are uniting with U.S. imperialism in its trade war against its European and Asian competitors. Trade wars eventually lead to shooting wars.
Police terror, sweatshops and prison labor are symptoms of growing fascism. An anti-racist worker-student alliance must be at the core of any movement to defeat imperialism. We must fight racist exploitation, police terror and wage slavery right here in the U.S. We can build a mass communist movement, from the factories and fields to the campuses and barracks, to smash U.S. imperialism with communist revolution. This movement and these goals will be on display in PLP May Day marches in the U.S. and Central America.
U.S. Bosses on Horns of China Dilemma
The lovers' quarrel over China between Clinton and the AFL-CIO bosses reflects a number of important contradictions created by U.S. imperialism. CHALLENGE readers may remember that Clinton first campaigned in 1992 against "human rights" abuses in China. He quickly changed his tune, for two reasons.
First, many U.S. companies have fat contracts with China. Boeing alone has deals worth $19 billion. So there's a large lobby of U.S. rulers who, for their own selfish profit motives, want to normalize business relations with the fascists in Beijing.
There's a broader strategic question as well. The current U.S. foreign policy doctrine calls for preventing an anti-U.S. alliance between the Chinese and Russians. Granting China entry into the World Trade Organization could be viewed as a tactic within this strategy. Obviously, it generates contradictions between the U.S. ruling class and the capitalists who lead the AFL-CIO (see editorial). But the strategy itself will never work for other reasons as well, because it's based on the drive to maintain U.S. imperialist dominance in Asia.
The Chinese rulers have a different idea. They want to rule the roost. All their business and political arrangements with U.S. imperialism are merely tactics on behalf of their own strategy to become top dog. The Chinese have already taken steps to develop a strategic alliance with the Russians. All this wheeling and dealing can lead only to war.
Editorial 2
Send the Boy Home:
Little Elián: Pawn in in Imperialist Chess Game
The Elián Gonzalez case proves yet again that capitalism perverts and corrupts the most basic human values. A small boy loses his mother under tragic circumstances. His father, divorced from the mother, has been a good parent. The boy is now in a different country from the father. Solution: return the boy to his surviving parent. You don't need a fancy psychiatrist to figure out this one.
However, as CHALLENGE briefly pointed out last week, imperialist rivalries have turned little Elián into a political football. With the exception of his father, who seems to want the same as any dad under the circumstances, all the actors in this sordid drama shout about the boy's welfare in order to cover up their true class motives. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
First come Elián's Miami "family" and their supporters. This is a motley little army of out-and-out fascists. Their parents and grandparents were members or allies of Cuba's pre-Castro ruling class, in the days when the island was a low-wage paradise for U.S. sugar companies and a playground for the degenerate rich and famous. Many of the Miami-based "Cuban exile leadership" are using the Elián crusade as a big lie to disguise their true dream of recovering the property Castro & Co. confiscated from them. They don't want U.S. imperialism to make any deals that would keep Castro in power. They're allied with the powerful U.S. sugar industry, which hopes to prevent cheap Cuban sugar from penetrating the U.S. market and lowering prices. So this gang has decided that Elián belongs in the U.S.
Then there's the Clinton White House. Clinton is so passionately "devoted" to the welfare of children that his economic sanctions have murdered hundreds of thousands of them in Iraq since he began his first term in 1993. He loves them so deeply that he bombed them in Yugoslavia for nine weeks last year. In fact, the liberal bosses who run U.S. imperialism are so "child-centered" that they have been murdering, terrorizing, and starving youngsters around the world for decades. Now they want to make Elián the beneficiary of such "humanitarianism."
The bosses' real motive is to prevent Cuba from once again becoming a strategic pawn for their biggest rivals. In the heyday of the old Soviet Union, Cuba was a major thorn in the U.S. rulers' side. When the USSR broke up ten years ago, Cuba's threat to U.S. world domination diminished. But now Russian rulers are making a comeback. It will take time to mature, but the logic is clear: "As relations with the U.S. deteriorate, Russia's interest in Cuba will be identical to the Soviets' interest" (Stratfor Global Intelligence Update, "Russia Revives Relationship with Cuba," 12/22/99). The Russians still have a military arrangement with Castro and an intelligence-gathering site in Havana. They're also trying to arrange a three-way oil-for-sugar deal among themselves, the Cubans and Venezuela, which happens to supply 17% percent of U.S. oil imports.
The European Union (EU) bosses have become an ingredient in this scramble. These imperialists have launched a big trade offensive throughout Latin America. They're building a beachhead in Mexico, from which they intend to penetrate the multi-trillion dollar U.S. and Canadian markets. U.S. imperialism is in for a long-term battle to control foreign investment in a region it once considered its private plantation.
Cuba is thus re-emerging as a strategic key. Despite U.S. rulers' cynical red-baiting of him, Castro is no communist. He's a state capitalist looking to get the best possible deal for the class he leads. He's promoting trade relations with Africa, China and the European Union, in addition to his renewed romance with the Russians.
The U.S. liberal imperialists want to prevent Cuba from allying with their enemies. Clinton's insistence on returning Elián to his father must be viewed as part of a plan to bring Cuba back under U.S. economic and political influence. We can't predict whether the U.S. or the Russian and E.U. rulers will succeed here. Either way, the sharpening imperialist rivalries that lie beneath the Elián case must lead to more war. As they have in the past, new imperialist armed conflicts will slaughter millions of youngsters like Elián Gonzalez. Only the successful fight for communism can lead to a society in which profit wars become unnecessary. Then children can be brought up to lead fulfilling, productive lives.
CSU STUDENTS STAND UP TO `PUSH' POLICE
CHICAGO, IL, April 8 -- Twenty students from Chicago State University (CSU) joined HS students to give militant leadership to the April 4 Operation PUSH march against police brutality. They led chants in English and Spanish. But when PUSH security tried to stifle the chants by seizing their bullhorn, the student resisted, saying, "I've been brutalized by the police. That's why I am marching. No one's going to shut me up."
CSU students repeatedly beat back threats from PUSH security. When a "PUSH Police" grabbed a high school student by the arm and shoved him into the line of the march, a CSU student (herself the mother of a teenager) got in his face and made it clear that this will not happen again.
This action grew out of the March 1 forum against racism initiated by PLP, followed by two May Day dinners. Students decided it was time to stop talking about racism and do something about it. They collected several hundred signatures on a petition, and were given an excused day from class to attend the march. An ad was placed in the student newspaper and PUSH provided a bus to take students to the march.
On the ride to the march, a PLP leader led students in militant anti-racist chants. This built our unity and drew a line between PLP and PUSH, which never mentioned police killings and beatings. Instead they focused on school funding and less money for prisons. Students were ticked off because they had to wait in the freezing cold while Jackson was inside a school mouthing off to the media.
Students were sharp in attacking the "PUSH police." PUSH security were laughing and joking with the cops. The way security threatened and assaulted marchers was typical of the cops. A PLP member pointed out that Jesse Jackson had hired one of the cops fired for the murder of Latanya Haggerty as a security guard. Only protest within PUSH led to his dismissal.
In class we looked at the PLP May Day video. Four students said they are going to the march, and others are very interested. Fighting for the political leadership of the mass movement against police terror has given us more confidence in the Party and ourselves.
Youth Up Struggle at Bogan High
CHICAGO, IL, April 8 -- " I received your literature at the march and I would like to know when your next meeting is. I would also like to help pass out literature if you need me." This Bogan High School student called the Party office after marching with PLP on Jesse Jackson's "Dignity Day" April 4. The youth contingent of 60 sharpened the march ideologically and made it more militant, distributing more than 200 CHALLENGES and dozens of Prison Labor pamphlets.
Our banner read "Smash Racist Police Terror with Communist Revolution!" As we marched, one comrade explained the meaning of the red flags to the 1,000 marchers. It was inspiring. The confidence and support displayed by the college and high school students for the Party was a big improvement over the Jackson/Operation PUSH demonstration last November over the expulsion of six black students in Decatur, Il.
The main difference was our struggle to mobilize for the march. At Bogan H.S. we spent three weeks trying to organize a walkout. A group of students tried to talk to the principal about providing buses for the march, but she refused to meet with them. This only made them more committed. Many students circulated literature throughout the school. There was much discussion about whether to walk out. Should students risk suspension? What about the police? Even teachers were involved in the debate. It appeared large numbers would be walking out.
However, "for every action there is an opposite reaction." The administration sent out letters to all parents saying that police brutality, funding for public education and stopping the incarceration of youth of color were important issues, but high school students should not be "used" as warriors, and high schools should not be battlefields. It said that a walkout would "disrupt the educational process," and anyone who participated would face a 3-day suspension. Our counter-attack was to struggle with parents to march with the PTA. We were unsuccessful but it was important to wage the struggle.
The week before, a lunchroom full of students watched as a cop put a student in a choke-hold. The student was suspended for three days. What hypocrisy! Bogan High suspends black and Latin students daily for the least infraction. What does that say for the administration's commitment to not "disrupt the educational process?"
The day of the march, the school looked like a fort. But despite the fascist intimidation of squad cars and police wagons, five students walked out and four marched in the PLP contingent. At Lincoln Park and Whitney Young, more "liberal" schools, more students walked out. The students gained a lot from their experience with the Party. We now have the big job of winning them to be organizers for May Day.
Strike: One Battle in Long War to Smash Capitalism
SAN SALVADOR, April 11--Eleven Social Security (government health system) workers are continuing a hunger strike begun on April 3rd to win their jobs back. The Supreme Court refused to order the re-hiring of 221 fired workers following their 4-month strike. Prior to the recent elections, the politicians promised that the workers would get their jobs back.
"The strike should not have been ended until the workers were reinstated!" declared a Social Security doctor.
The FMLN party (former guerilla movement) said the strike was a complete victory for the workers--that they had halted privatization, been reinstated and forced the government to negotiate improvements in workers' health care. But in reality privatization has brought guards, laboratories, washing services and clinics run by private companies. In addition, the hospitals do not have adequate medicines--one must go to private pharmacies to fill prescriptions.
Leaders of the Working Class or of Capitalism?
In a truly disgusting display, FMLN representatives donated a paltry $340 dollars to the fired workers. Each FMLN legislator's monthly salary is ten times that amount and thee are 27 of them. So from their total $91,000 a month, they "gave" $340. What a joke!
Union representatives will be visiting the U.S. to meet with union leaders and workers. They should not be fooled by "victory" statements. The Social Security workers are being left to twist in the wind.
Although we respect the workers on the hunger strike, we don't think that tactic will win. The bosses are already killing us from hunger on a daily basis. They couldn't care less if one or two more workers die of hunger. During the civil war these same bosses massacred over 100,000 workers. They're only affected if their profits suffer.
We need to re-start the strike and organize more workers to support it, until all strikers are re-hired. However, the most important lesson learned from this strike is that capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed and replaced by a new society based on the needs of the workers, not the profits of the bosses, be they nationalist, U.S.- or European-dominated.
We must prepare ourselves for total war against the bosses. Today it is Social Security. Tomorrow it could be your factory, maquiladora, high school or university carrying forth the battle against the capitalist system. March on May 1st behind the Communist Red Flag of the Working Class.
Harvard PLP Says: Can't Poverty Abroad Without Opposing Cop Terror Here
CAMBRIDGE, MA, April 6 -- Today PLP members attended a teach-in against globalization, preparing for this week's demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington, D.C. Many students are disgusted by the super-exploitation of workers around the world. The AFL-CIO bosses and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), however, are leading this movement to build fascism and war.
During the teach-in, one of the leaders from United for a Fair Economy (UFE, a Boston-area AFL-CIO-backed group) asked people where their clothes were made. They were pointing out that most of our clothes are made in countries in Latin America or Asia. Another student discussed the horrors that workers face in Nicaragua.
These rulers' group want us to believe the horrors of capitalism only happen elsewhere. But you don't have to go overseas to find exploitation. One comrade pointed out that clothes made by Lee were made by U.S. prison labor.
The meeting's high point came when the UFE speaker called on everyone to oppose granting normal trade relations (NTR) to China and it's entrance into the World Trade Organization. A comrade responded by pointing out that while the AFL-CIO hypocrites denounce prison labor in China, they don't lift a finger against slave labor programs like Workfare and prison labor in the U.S. He noted that the AFL-CIO march set for April 12 against granting NTR status to China, builds the lie that U.S. bosses are "better" than Chinese capitalists. This helps the rulers win workers and students to fascism and war!
Earlier in the day hundreds of workers and students attended a rally called by the Harvard "Living Wage" campaign. This group fights for a $10.25/hr minimum wage for all Harvard workers. At the rally we circulated our petition against George "Killer" Kelling, a Rutgers professor who was a fellow at Harvard's JFK School of Government where he developed many of the murderous policing policies used to terrorize black and Latin youth in recent years. We connected Kelling to the anti-globalization movement, as well as exposing that wage slavery can never be "fair."
We made several contacts during this action. We will continue working with rank-and-file students to expose the horrors of this system, and why it must be destroyed with communist revolution!
Striking Janitors Must Flush Out Bosses' Agents
LOS ANGELES, CA, April 10 -- The janitors' strike of SEIU Local 1877 is in its second week. The union is demanding a wage increase of $1/hour per year for three years. Most janitors make $6.80/hour. Many political struggles, experiences and contacts have come out of this strike. The following is an interview with a rank-and-file leader.
Q: How's the strike going?
A: I think it's going well. Of the 3,500 janitors on strike, 98% are actively supporting the struggle. We are 8,500 janitors in the union, but some haven't been called out on strike yet, like the airport janitors. The morale of the strikers is very high. Relations between rank-and-file leaders and the rest of the workers have gotten stronger. There's more trust between us.
Q: What do you think about the official union leadership?
A: They put their faith and confidence in the politicians and the Catholic Church to win this strike. They've brought experts in "putting out fires" to the marches: Jesse Jackson, Speaker of the California House of Reps, Antonio Villaraigosa, Cardinal Mahony, Mayor Riordan and others. It's an election year and they're looking for votes and to get workers to support the Democratic Party. The sellout leaders have confidence in the politicians, not in the masses of workers. I think the real leadership in this struggle comes from the rank and file, from the masses.
Q: What have you won from this struggle?
A: More unity and confidence in the workers. On the picket lines, we've stopped some scabs. But the best is that we've discussed with some workers that it's the bosses and the capitalist system that are the problem. These discussions have given me the opportunity to distribute CHALLENGE to more workers and to talk to them about communism and coming to the May Day march.
Q: How can other workers and students support this struggle, locally, nationally and internationally?
A: The most effective support locally is to participate in the marches to politicize them. Nationally and internationally people can send letters of support and organize activities to publicize this struggle, which can inspire other workers around the world. It shows that workers will fight for our interests.
Q: What motivates you to march on May Day?
A: It's International Workers' Day. PLP celebrates it as a communist day, and we workers are communists.
Q: Do you think you'll bring a busload of janitors to the march?
A: We're going to try. What I do know is that many brothers and sisters want to come, and if they help give leadership, a bigger group will come to the march and come closer to the Party.
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This strike has produced three important aspects: the militancy of the workers, the social-fascist leadership of the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party, and the opportunities to build the revolutionary communist PLP.
Hundreds of CHALLENGES have been sold to the strikers. In a recent march a group of strikers asked for CHALLENGE and one striker took 20 to distribute among his brothers and sisters. Many are open to discussions about the need to fight for workers' power and some to participate in PLP study-action groups.
The bosses have launched a mass media campaign to support the strike. This is the same media that supported the bombing of Yugoslavia, which murdered thousands. Cardinal Mahony is negotiating between the strikers and the millionaire cleaning companies. This is the same Mahony who in 1985 smashed the union of Catholic cemetery workers. The strike is "supported" by the LA City Council, the Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Riordan. They have all looked the other way at racist police terror, or at more than 140,000 garment workers earning less than minimum wage in LA sweatshops.
Why are all these bosses' agents supporting the strike? To win Latin and other workers to see the unions and the Democrat Party as the way out of poverty and racist police terror. They want to win our allegiance so we'll send our children to the army to defend U.S. rulers' interests around the world. They offer us a few pennies more in exchange for this, but we won't accept it.
Two opposing forces are fighting for the hearts and minds of the working class. On one side are the liberal social fascists with their plans for police terror, mass jailings, exploitation, racism and wars. On the other side is the PLP with our goal of revolution and workers' power. We're small but the potential of the workers is great. March on May Day against racist exploitation. March under the red banners of communist revolution.
Can't Fight World Poverty Without Fighting Imperialism
WASHINGTON, DC, April 9 -- "The Banks Say, `Pay Back,' We Say, `Fight Back!'" chanted 3,000 workers, students and professionals rallying to demand cancellation of "Third World" debt. PLP gave out hundreds of leaflets calling on everyone to march on May Day for communist revolution. Over 60 CHALLENGES, 15 prison labor pamphlets and several PL Magazines were also distributed, linking the struggle against racism in the U.S. to the international fight against imperialist oppression. The activity was organized by Jubilee 2000, which urged marchers to lobby Congress. This Mobilization for Global Justice focuses on "Third World" debt and lets U.S. capitalists off the hook for their racist super-exploitation of workers in this country through prison labor, Workfare, domestic sweatshops and severe intimidation of undocumented workers.
A speaker from South Africa said the apartheid regime had made huge international loans for military equipment to oppress and kill revolutionaries. International financial organizations are requiring debt repayment. Mandela and the new post-apartheid capitalist government have refused to repudiate that debt. Black South Africans are paying twice for these armaments-first with their blood, and then with higher taxes.
We met some American University (AU) students who have organized protests against AU's connection to the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison labor corporation in the U.S. This is important if we are to avoid the trap of only opposing super-exploitation abroad.
PLP Exposes Sweeney Anti-Communism
Last week, the Southern California Fair Trade Network held a debate about whether the group should support the campaign against admitting China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and grant China Permanent Favored Nation Status. A Party member and two union activists spoke explaining that the campaign is reactionary and builds nationalism rather than internationalism.
Some PLP'ers have been active in this group and a related group since before "the battle in Seattle." After Seattle we began raising the issues of China and prison labor and sweatshops here in the U.S. in these groups. The debate on China emerged from a long struggle. It occurred because several members of the group fought hard for it.
We explained that since the end of World War II, the AFL-CIO spent more money outside the U.S. than inside, organizing workers to help U.S. imperialism. They helped overthrow the governments of Guatemala, Chile, and Indonesia and destabilized many movements in Africa and Europe that opposed U.S. imperialism.
The other side said they were concerned for Chinese workers and lowering standards for all workers. While some may be concerned about the workers, the AFL-CIO leadership is concerned with building anti-communism and support for U.S. imperialism. We displayed the back page of the Teamsters newspaper that says, "If He [a man in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square] Can Stand Up to Communist China, So Can You!" A goodly section of the ruling class see China as a long-term strategic enemy. China's expanding capitalist economy needs a source of oil that's independent of the U.S. They have signed oil deals with U.S. rivals like Iraq and are building a deepwater navy to defend their interests.
In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of prisoners make products for sale for "wages" of 23cents to $1.15 an hour. Racist police terror keeps wages down and is an attack on all workers. Wages for most workers in the U.S. have been declining for 20 years. Instead of mobilizing workers against these attacks, the AFL-CIO leadership is mobilizing them against China. Another panelist pointed out that the anti-China campaign leads us into the camp of Hitler-apologist Pat Buchanan who blames "Communist" Chinese workers for lower wages here.
A PLP member pointed out that as long as the profit system exists, corporations will cross borders for lower paid labor. Some countered that the imperialists, led by Clinton, were the ones pushing free trade with China. That's true. But Sweeney and the AFL-CIO leadership push protectionism and blame Chinese workers, rather than U.S. bosses, for low wages here. In a speech at the National Press Club last November, Sweeney attacked China 23 times! Pushing nationalism among workers here also helps the rulers win us to their wars for profit.
A Teamster found the debate very interesting. Another woman asked the "against" panel whether the bosses were after cheap labor or markets in China. "Both," answered another panelist. "It's the classic dilemma of capitalism." They're competing with the Japanese and Europeans for market share. The Party member panelist also explained that some people thought a long-term plan for war between the U.S. and China was impossible because that could mean World War III. She said that's exactly what it means and it's not unthinkable because Exxon & Co. won't give up their empire without an all-out fight.
A panelist for the other side said that the way to stop imperialism was to keep China out of the WTO. In the following discussion, a student PLP comrade explained that the only way to stop imperialism is to build a movement of workers and youth across all borders that eliminates the profit system with communist revolution. He said that siding with the agents of imperialism means building a fascist movement.
We made an impact. Afterwards many were trying to figure out how to oppose China's entry into the WTO but at the same time oppose the anti-communist stance blaming Chinese workers for low wages here. Most people took copies of the PLP prison labor pamphlet. After the debate, an AFL-CIO organizer said the AFL-CIO had just endorsed the A16 demonstration in Washington, D.C. A worker in the back of the room yelled out, "What are your demands?" She was now less willing to take whatever this organizer said at face value.
A Comrade
Youth at PLP May Day Dinner"
`To Get Rid of Division You Need Multiplication'
BROOKLYN, NY, April 9 -- "The world is like an equation. In order to get rid of division you need multiplication. And in order to get rid of capitalism, you need communism." That was the "lesson plan" offered by an Erasmus High School student to over 130 members and friends of PLP at one of a number of New York May Day dinners. The workers and youth applauded the phrase, "Let's go, Revolution!" when six young people finished reading the pro-communist poem by Langston Hughes, "Good Morning Revolution."
The dinner was a real sampling of what the PLP has to offer to workers and youth. The evening began with a great meal from a Flatbush restaurant. While we ate, two high school comrades spoke on world and U.S. politics and on communist responses to attacks by fascism and imperialism. Other youth read their own communist poetry, including a performance of the reggae song, "Anytime" by an energetic group, "The Suspects," from Wingate High School. The evening was rounded out with a talk by a worker from Guinea (for background on this worker, see page 1) on the state of the African working class, by a teacher on the challenges of teaching in the bosses' schools, and a screening of the May Day video.
As always the Party brought together a wonderful mix of workers and youth, all united in a struggle to smash capitalism. We should not underestimate the tremendous significance it has for us, for our friends and our movement each time we organize a multi-racial event. On top of this, high school youth led the way in reports, poems, music and speeches, showing that communist consciousness is sinking deep roots in various areas. Due to the determined efforts of comrades to respond to an anti-police brutality demonstration in Staten Island, a contingent of new friends from hat area also attended.
The strengths in the program at this year's dinner can be traced to relationships and political struggle developed over months and years. In leading walkouts, confrontations with bosses on the job, with tutoring and organizing social events, our relationships have become increasingly political. May Day is our time to call on all friends and allies to march against fascism and imperialist war and for communist revolution. That is our task. "Let's go, Revolution!"
PLPer Spreads Red Ideas in Postal Union Election
NEW YORK CITY, April 11 -- The entire slate of 32 "Candidates For Change" (CFC) won a decisive victory in the New York Metro Area Postal Union (NY-MAPU) election. This completed the job, begun a year ago, of sweeping out the old union leaders. The newly elected officers and trustees, who ran on the slogan "Members First," averaged 57-58% of the vote. The 2nd place slate averaged about 22% of the vote. For example, William Smith received 2,511 votes for President and the runner-up had just 920 votes.
A PLP member with CFC received 2,352 votes, the second highest of 20 candidates for five Trustee positions. This reflected the positive reputation earned by the PLP member's activism as a shop steward and as an open communist for most of his 29 years on the job.
The results reveal the widespread sentiment among rank-and-file union members that the former union leaders were too passive, complacent and/or corrupt. NYC postal workers hope the CFC slate will improve working conditions, wages, etc.
The fundamental goal of communists in PLP is to actively struggle on behalf of the class interests of all workers and through that build the Party. The PLP member supported and campaigned with the new union leaders, most of whom seem to have an honest desire to lead the union on behalf of postal workers. But the class interests of workers also includes fighting against racism and racist murders by police, supporting striking workers, opposing sexism, protesting U.S. imperialism and organizing for communism.
The new Executive Vice-President wants to register more postal workers to vote for Democratic Party candidates this year. This will not protect us against the loss of jobs from privatization. All politicians are puppets of one or another group of bosses. They want our votes and our subservience. Clinton and the Democrats led Congress to pay for 100,000 more cops nation-wide. This produced more harassment and intimidation of workers and youth by cops, as well as the racist murder of Amadou Diallo and other victims of "law and order."
Severe limits on what can be accomplished within the system are imposed by USPS management and by bosses in general. Our labor may produce all postal revenues, but the bosses control those revenues. They use the system to enhance their profits and power at our expense. The grievance procedure, the courts, politicians, the government, cops, the military, the mass media are the tools through which the rich exercise power and control. Their state power and their ownership of the means of production--from which they amass great wealth--puts them in the driver's seat. If we restrict ourselves to using the grievance procedure, the courts, etc., we may win some small battles, but we will lose the war.
To best serve the interests of postal (and all) workers, we must build the movement to seize power from the rich and impose workers' power through a communist revolution.
During the election campaign our PLP member worked long and hard to win votes for the CFC slate, and at the same time to build support for our communist movement through the expanded sale of CHALLENGE and in discussions with other CFC candidates and rank-and-file workers.
Resolutions at SF Teachers' Union Against Cop Terror, for May Day
SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 -- In two separate resolutions, the San Francisco teacher's union (UESF) condemned the killing of Amadou Diallo and urged its members to participate in May Day activities.
The first resolution directed the UESF leadership to notify our state and national affiliates that we condemn all racist acts including the killing of Amadou Diallo and sent a copy of the resolution as well as a check for $100 to his family as a sign of support.
The second resolution called for the union to urge members to participate in May Day activities. It was signed by approximately 30 members from various schools. At a meeting of the Teachers for Change caucus, several copies of a petition calling on the UESF to support May Day were distributed. Fifteen of the 30 teachers signed it. They received a photocopy of that petition to get more signatures at their schools. Some did that. Now it's time to win them to march on May Day here.
The second resolution reads as follows:
Whereas May Day has been the international holiday of the working class for over 100 years; and,
Whereas May Day demonstrates the unity of the world's working class; and,
Whereas issues such as the criminalization of youth, police brutality, racism, the use of prison labor and Workfare to replace union jobs, and the preparations for war all affect our students and ourselves and must be opposed; and,
Whereas the struggle to build an international movement that opposes these attacks on the working class will be aided by participating in May Day events; therefore,
Be it resolved that UESF urges its members to participate in May Day events.
Staten Island: African Workers Join Fight Against Racist Cop Terror
STATEN ISLAND, NY, April 10 -- A Progressive Labor Party member addressed an April 8th rally here of about 100 people against police brutality and invited all the demonstrators to join PLP's May Day march in Washington, D.C. on May 6. Community leaders and students from the College of Staten Island organized the rally.
Many speakers expressed anger towards the brutality of the cops as evidenced by their killing innocent unarmed black men. However, their solutions called for reforming the capitalist injustice system--"sensitivity training," more black and Latin cops, "community policing," voting and participating in the Census 2000.
The PLP speaker explained that the cops' role is to protect the bosses' profit system. Therefore these reforms would merely help continue their role behind a different mask. Only the overthrow of capitalism by a communist-led working class will bring justice for working people.
His remarks were greeted warmly. Many participants came up to him afterwards and said his speech was one of the best things about the demonstration. Many more took CHALLENGES.
PLP's invitation to, and presence at, this demonstration grew out of a year of developing ties with a worker from the African country of Guinea. He is a leader of The People Rally of Guinea (RPG). It fights against the exploitation of workers in Africa as well as police brutality here in New York City.
We met this worker a year ago at the second Bronx demonstration protesting the cops' murder of Amadou Diallo. It was organized by liberal Democrat Al Sharpton. PLP moved through that march chanting on the bullhorn, but was never invited to speak. However, the crowd around us pushed us forward to the spot where Diallo had been shot where we did speak. It was then that we met the Guinean worker. He asked us to join forces with him.
Two months later he invited PLP to speak about May Day at a dinner in Harlem organized by workers from Senegal. A month later our Guinean friend was a featured speaker at last year's May Day march. He said his friends in Guinea saluted the Progressive Labor Party for having a May Day march in the U.S.
Last week he was invited to a Staten Island meeting that planned the April 8th demonstration. At that meeting, he distributed all his CHALLENGES and invitations to our annual May Day dinner. He asked if PLP could have a speaker and literature table at the rally and his request was granted. A phony leftist attacked PLP and told him PLP doesn't really fight for communism. He shot back, "Don't go there! Don't go that route! Wait until you meet my friends and then you will see." And so they did, as PLP'ers attended the rally and march.
We talked to demonstrators and distributed 150 CHALLENGES and other literature. They were extremely friendly to our ideas. A fourth of the people at the rally had already received papers and invitations to the dinner from our friend. He introduced us to many at the rally and encouraged us to exchange phone numbers and addresses with many workers and students from Staten Island.
As a result of our friend's work, four people from Staten Island attended our May Day dinner in Brooklyn the following day. He spoke at our dinner and linked conditions in Africa to capitalism. He closed his talk with a call for revolution. Both he and another member from his group have May Day tickets and are now organizing for our May Day March.
To build a mass Party we must have confidence in the working class. Every person we meet is a potential organizer for PLP. We invite all workers and students from Staten Island, friends and members of The People Rally of Guinea and every worker who reads this paper to our May Day march. Join us!
PLP School Discusses the Political Economy of Making a Basketball Ball
BERKELEY, CA -- Twenty-two PLP members and friends in West Coast colleges held a political economy study session on the UC Berkeley campus on the weekend of March 19th.
We were evenly divided between seasoned Party members and friends completely new to communism. People came from LA, Seattle, the Bay Area and the Central Valley. We started with an explanation of commodity production, discussing what "value" meant. Using a basketball as an example, we discussed the difference between its use value and its exchange value. Some said humans need more and more "things" and this leads to greed and social problems. But it was explained that social problems under capitalism occur because those "things" were produced for exchange, not use. Having a basketball didn't cause problems, but having Spalding and Nike compete to make them did.
From there we discussed super-exploitation and racism. It was said that the concept of race was completely manufactured by capitalism. In the U.S. in the 1700's they had to legally define a "black man" just to make that distinction. Many people shared stories of how racism affected their lives. One Party member exposed the liberal line of "celebrating diversity" as a support of racism. It was pointed out that in some LA garment factories the managers are specifically hired if they are a "different nationality" from the workers, making racism a useful tool for the boss.
After lunch, we talked about imperialism, war and fascism. We pointed out that world conflicts are based on imperialist rivalries. These rivalries are worsened by capitalist crisis, like overproduction and the falling rate of profit. To suppress workers' resistance to these crises capitalism builds towards fascism and war. During these sections Party members described their recent work. The discussion of worldwide problems needed to be balanced with a sense of hope about what can be done locally to build the Party. The light at the end of capitalism's tunnel doesn't need to be an oncoming train--it can be PLP! We touched on how imperialism will lead inevitably to World War III and highlighted events in the Balkans as an omen.
We ended the day with plans for building May Day 2000. Although we made mistakes, the mood was open and friendly without a sense of heavy-handed lecturing. It was a reaffirmation that revolutionary communist politics inspires people--it doesn't scare them. We will chalk this up as a victory and continue the struggle forward.
Upper Manhattan May Day Dinner
This past Friday night (April 7) one of the Upper Manhattan clubs had a wonderfully congenial pre-May Day dinner and discussion. Six of my friends from church came (a good example of the old "ask-26-to-get-6" rule). Three are activists in our soup kitchen, one a retired teacher-musician, and a choir member and her seven-year old son. A perfect-sized group for easy give-and-take talking.
I began with a very brief overview of May Day's history and what the Party hopes to accomplish by mobilizing its base. I also noted that there is always a personal reason or two to detest capitalism. I had just learned that a mutual friend of mine and the teacher had been diagnosed the day before with colon cancer. He had gone for months ignoring some symptoms because, as a free-lance musician, he has no health benefits!
One of my friends from the soup kitchen had marched two years before and gave a vivid description of the day's events, including her efforts to help supervise my sometimes "challenging" son. I gave her credit for helping to develop him into the march-marshal organizer he has become.
Then a long-time friend of one Upper Manhattan organizer remembered having gone to May Day years before as a little girl. She described the horrible situation on her job now. Her supervisor and some co-workers are making life hard for her because she became a "whistle blower" about theft and corruption in her workplace. All of us tried to help her figure out how to keep fighting. We plan to connect this particular struggle to a likely union-busting campaign. Thus we can prepare for a struggle that will help all the workers there and involve some outside forces in support.
This created an excellent atmosphere for relating the May Day march to the class struggle in specific ways. Everyone took ticket books, CHALLENGES and May Day stickers and promised to ask friends to march.
The following Sunday one of my friends announced the march in church. Three visitors were sitting next to me, one from the Congo, his niece and her friend from Paris. After the service we discussed "Le jour du travail" [Workers' Day]. He promised to come to May Day and the two Parisians promised to write us letters of support.
The results of our efforts in this stage of class struggle are modest. But if we can make May Day-building a regular part of our lives it will help to deepen and transform relationships and yield an ever-renewing group of workers who will be active with us, learning from us and teaching us how to be better communists.
From the belfry, Red Churchmouse
Marking the 25th Anniversary of PLP of Racist Anti-Busing Movement in Boston
This summer marks the 25th anniversary of the Boston Summer Project, the first such project held by the Progressive Labor Party and its ally, the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR). We would like to commemorate this occasion by holding a reunion in Boston on July 14-16.
Twenty-five years ago, Boston was one of the most segregated and racist cities in the country. The ruling class of Boston profited greatly from dividing workers along racial lines and many white workers bought into the racist ideas pushed by the politicians. It was dangerous for black people to enter all-white neighborhoods like Charlestown and South Boston. Black families who moved into white neighborhoods were attacked. Schools in black neighborhoods were woefully underfunded and overcrowded and schools in working class white neighborhoods were not much better.
For years, black parents and community organizations had fought for better schooling for their children. It was found that the city of Boston had engaged in a deliberate, systematic pattern of segregation of its public schools. Therefore, in 1974, Boston was ordered by a federal judge to desegregate its schools by busing black children to schools in white neighborhoods and vice versa. Immediately, racist city council members Louise Day Hicks and Albert O'Neil organized a group called ROAR-Restore Our Alienated Rights, (which was more accurately nicknamed Racists on a Rampage) to protest the busing order. During the 1974-75 school year, ROAR organized mob violence against black children bused into South Boston.
PLP decided to organize a project in the summer of 1975 to combat this fascist violence. It began with our May Day march in Boston where we were physically attacked by a group of racists and soundly defeated them. Then the Party and INCAR sent more than 125 people from all over the U.S., mostly students, to Boston for the summer. Our activities varied. Some organized an anti-racist summer school for black children who had lost considerable schooling due to a year of racist attacks. Others enrolled in courses in community colleges to spread ideas of multi-racial unity. We held daily rallies against ROAR's racist ideas and collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for multi-racial unity, an end to mob violence and quality, integrated education for all. We went on the offensive against the local racists by fighting them physically again and again. There was a constant tension that permeated the city. By the summer's end, we so weakened the power of the racist anti-busing movement that ROAR was defeated.
For many, Boston'75 was a defining moment in our lives. For some it marked an increased commitment to fight for a communist revolution. Even for others who are no longer members of Progressive Labor Party, it was a time of political commitment and activism that is looked back on with pride.
We invite all the participants in this heroic struggle to join us in Boston on July 14 to celebrate those accomplishments. We also invite other members and friends of Progressive Labor Party to join us in workshops to learn more about the history of that summer of struggle. It is especially important now to learn about that movement since the ruling class rewrote history, and expunged the blatant racism of the anti-busing movement from the record.
We are planning a weekend of social and political activities. If you would like to attend, or want more information, please contact PLP at: 1-800-330-9953; E-Mail:
Comradely,
A Boston '75 Participant
LETTERS
Spreading E-Communism in Cyberspace
As a college student, the World Trade Organization (WTO) protest in Seattle was very difficult for me to deal with. I am part of an internet community for fans of a particular music group. We discuss everything from the music group, music in general, health, environmental issues and politics. Several friends of mine from this community supported the protest and some were even there.
When Seattle turned ugly and got media attention, most of the discussion within the community turned to the protests. It was really disheartening to see so many people with the right intention being swayed to believe that only the WTO is responsible for destroying the environment and exposing people to slave labor conditions. I was afraid to speak up in a group of over a thousand people who all believed this lie. I was afraid that in trying to tell people what's really going on, they would feel insulted, so I let it go.
Last month people started discussing labor conditions in other countries since there is going to be another protest against the WTO in D.C. However, there seemed to be a slight change in the tone of the discussion this time around. People seemed more interested in the labor conditions than the environment. I felt more comfortable joining in the discussion.
One person had written about the awful labor conditions in countries in Asia and Latin America. So I replied saying that although labor conditions are unbearable in other countries, those in this country were not much better. I mentioned garment sweatshops and then prison labor. I informed the thousand plus internet community that when they buy a garment that says ``Made in the U.S.A.,'' it's probably made in a prison. I ended my e-mail with an invitation to receive a pamphlet on prison labor, the one put out by PLP. Within a couple of hours two people had asked me for pamphlets. I wrote them back to let them know that the pamphlet was communist literature and I asked if they still wanted the information. I realized that I had unintentionally omitted that and wanted to let them know ahead of time what they would receive. They both wrote back and said they still wanted the pamphlet. In fact, one of them asked for seven pamphlets to pass around to co-workers and friends. I mailed off the pamphlets feeling reassured that I had done the right thing getting into the conversation ; there was really no need for me to be so reluctant.
When people get as upset as they were in Seattle, they are open to new ideas, to real solutions. The protest this week in D.C. is the perfect opportunity to talk to the youth and other people who have the right intentions but are being swayed by the ruling class to concentrate on the wrong issues.
Student Reader
Play About Marx Plays with Marx
A couple of my classmates and I attended a play about the life and times of Karl Marx, produced by students and faculty from a neighboring university. The one-man play was written by Howard Zinn, author of The People's History of the United States.
We discussed the production afterwards. We agreed the acting was very good and the whole production brought about some struggle and more class awareness among the people attending. But we felt there was not much emphasis on the conditions of society that led Marx and Engels to write The Communist Manifesto urging the working class to build a revolutionary movement.
My classmate had expected to learn more about the class struggle for communism that Karl Marx wrote about instead of the speculation on Karl Marx's daily life. This kind of "this-is-your-life-Karl-Marx" information was really unimportant.
When the question arose about a consistent, reasonable plan for the working class to get from point A, (our current condition in capitalist society) to point B (revolution for international communism) the general answer was really no answer. No one said the working class needed such a revolution to really improve conditions permanently. We both felt this was Marx's main message to the working class.
I told my classmate that only the Progressive Labor Party is actually organizing a revolutionary movement for communism, not one for socialism, as in the past. The ruling class will not voluntarily give up state power; the working class must take it by force. We struggle to bring communist leadership in the many current battles against growing fascism--police brutality, prison labor, Workfare, and bosses' attacks on working class youth. These fights build for revolution because, for one, they unite us as a class. We learn from class struggle against the bosses.
We decided to plan our own student/community forum on Marx's writings and connect them to present-day class struggle, followed by open discussion.
My two classmates are seriously considering marching on May Day with PLP. Marx did not stand for a gradual reform of capitalism. Both Marx and Lenin told us revolution, ASAP, is necessary to free our sisters, brothers and our children from capitalism.
Mid-West College Student
CIA's Mitchener Lies About Kent State U.
The April 5th issue of CHALLENGE had a Red Eye item about the CIA using liberal intellectuals to influence culture and promote anti-communism by actually rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" and other things.
May 4th will mark the 30th anniversary of the murder of four students at Kent State University in Ohio who were protesting against the National Guard's presence on their campus. James Michener, named CIA article and a popular writer here, wrote a book on the Kent State killings which promoted the "outside agitator" theory and depicted the murders as an accident.
Later, a made-for-TV movie was based on Michener's book. As pointed out in a book by I.F. Stone, "Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished," and in another very good book by Peter Davies and The United Methodist Church, in reality the National Guard actions were murder pure and simple.
The Guardsmen were acquitted in a sham trial. The dead students were labeled communists and were the ones on trial. The Guard claimed they were defending themselves, but there were many photographs taken that day and Davies uses them in his book. A Guardsman shot Jeffrey Miller directly in the mouth, blowing out the back of his head. He was standing at the top of the hill, 100 yards away from the Guard. The other murdered students were even further away. Allison Krause was shot in the side as she attempted to hide behind a car in the parking lot. Another dead student was well over 200 yards away and was lying on the ground to protect himself. It was a turkey shoot.
Nine students were wounded, one remains paralyzed to this day and many of those wounded were hit in the backside as they were running from the Guard. Michener conveniently ignores the reality of the situation and tries to make it all seem like just a bad accident. In Davies' book, one man testified that after the shootings he overheard a Guardsman state: "I put one right down the alley." Of course, not long after Kent State, black student protesters were shot to death at Jackson University in Florida by the cops. This incident was conveniently swept under the rug. Racism, no doubt, played a big part here as it does in the recent cop killings. So it comes as no surprise that Michener would help the CIA attempt to re-write history, as he did at Kent State.
This May Day thousands will march under the red flag for workers' power all over the world. The murder of those at Kent State, Jackson State and countless others can only be avenged with a workers' revolution against capitalism, which is the real villain here.
Red Rocker
Racist Daytona Beach Cops Maul Black Youth
I am a student at a mainly black university and recently attended the Black College Reunion in Daytona Beach, Florida. From my focal point the event proved to be a successful, peaceful event for young blacks across the nation. However, because of the instilled racism that exists within police departments across the U.S., over 300 young black students were arrested.
Personally, I did not witness anything that called for any arrests. Additionally, even if there was any wrongdoing, I'm sure over 300 people were not involved. The overabundance of police at the event was disgusting and unnecessary. It was almost like a military war zone with the excessive number of police. Police were posted on every corner, driving up and down the street in squad cars, in police wagons, and overhead in helicopters. Who knows exactly how many undercover police I could add to the list?
It does not matter where the event takes place or what the event is, if it involves young blacks the police will react on their racism and make it a priority to be around and capitalize on it. I am sure that off of the Black College Reunion alone, the Daytona Beach Police Department made millions of dollars off from arrests and citations. The system sucks and furthermore it is sickening.
A Black College Student
(Editor's Note: A few weeks ago, when--as reported in Long Island Newsday--a bikers' union resulted in over a dozen bikers getting killed racing head to head, getting drunk, etc., the Daytona Beach rulers did essentially nothing. The same city that virtually coddles white college student spring rituals treats black college reunions as a gathering of "criminals.")
A Student
Editorial: Building for May Day
Dialectics: Communist Philosophy That Can Remove Mountains
a href="#THE Fable of the Foolish Old Man That Could Remove…">"he Fable of the Foolish Old Man That Could Remove…
Wanted for Racist Murder: LAPD
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Miners Rebel Against Capitalism in China
a href="#Teachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers">"eachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers
USWA Hacks March by 5,000 in Support of AKSteel Strikers
LTV Drive for Profits Is Deadly for Workers
a href="#The Battle In Seattle Continues…">"he Battle In Seattle Continues…
a href="#Elián Soap Opera""Elián Soap Opera
Boy, Did They Lie to Start Kosovo War!
a href="#Building for May Day: Details, Planning, Hard Work…">"uilding for May Day: Details, Planning, Hard Work…
a href="#A Red May Day Versus a Hacks’ May Day">" Red May Day Versus a Hacks’ May Day
LETTERS
Bring PLP Ideas to Fighting Students in Mexico
The X-Generation Is Not Safe from the Men in Blue
Careful with Symbols in Our Literature
Editorial: Building for May Day
Dialectics: Communist Philosophy That Can Remove Mountains
As the May Day organizing heads into its final month, we should take a moment to think about the future. On April 30 in San Francisco and May 6 in Washington, D.C., several thousand workers, students and soldiers will march for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.
In order to win these goals, our Party must grow until its members number in the millions. To win a communist world, we must become billions. Is this possible, or as some believe, are we merely a bunch of well-motivated people who are spitting into a hurricane?
On the face of it, the bosses would appear all-powerful. The old communist movement, which had once led great revolutions and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world, died from its own political weaknesses. Capitalists hold power everywhere. U.S. imperialism, which years ago could claim more victims among the world’s workers than even Nazi Germany, still rules the roost. So today, communist revolution would seem to be a noble but unattainable dream.
However, communists have a "secret weapon," which teaches us how to look deeper than appearances and see the possibilities that lie beyond the actual. It’s called dialectical materialism. It’s our philosophical tool for understanding everything in the natural world, in society, even in our own minds. Dialectics enables us to see that everything changes, that things turn into their opposite, and that a small Party can grow until it eventually becomes capable of seizing power. Many people believe social classes have always existed and that the few have always oppressed the many. But the truth is that social classes came into existence only about 15,000 years ago, after human beings had been a biological species for hundreds of thousands of years.
What’s this got to do with May Day? Plenty! Fifteen thousand years may seem like an eternity when compared to an individual life span, but relative to human history, it’s a very short time. The bosses would love us to believe that the present rotten order of things will last forever. They talk endlessly about the "end of history." But we see that history’s pages are filled with tales of class struggle, revolution and change. We see the hundreds of years the capitalist class needed in order to make their own revolution, which overthrew feudalism. Feudalism itself had needed centuries of struggle to dump slavery as the dominant form of class society. And almost at the very moment when the capitalists were taking hold of state power barely 200 years ago, working-class revolutionaries were rising up to Challenge them.
Eighty-two years after the first capitalist revolution, in France, the Paris Commune of 1871 tried to overthrow it. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most profound event of the last millennium. The Chinese Revolution and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1949 and the 1960s again shook the world. These great movements defeated themselves. Our Party is still trying to absorb the lessons of these defeats. But we should learn from the victories as well.
Each of the parties that led these revolutions began as a small, weak organization facing apparently overwhelming odds. Despite their many errors, the great leaders of these movements learned through dialectics how to build the possible from the actual. This lesson is crucial for PLP’s leaders and members to absorb now, as we enter the last few weeks before May Day.
This year’s May Day organizing is characterized by a spurt of Party activity against racist police terror. This is good! It means that we are acting and fighting as well as talking. It gives us an opportunity to expose the liberal rulers’ deadly "community policing" scheme as well as to struggle against the more obvious Giuliani brand of fascism. It creates the possibility of bringing more May Day marchers. But each new May Day marcher is also something more than a May Day marcher. Each new May Day marcher is also a potential Party member. And each new Party member is a potential mass leader. Everything we do to ensure a larger, more militant May Day creates the opportunity to build a bigger, more militant Party. A bigger, more militant Party can take bolder, sharper action in the mass movements and win still more members and leaders.
So far, we’ve mentioned dialectics only to show our Party’s potential for growth despite its present apparent weakness. That coin has another side. The rulers appear strong, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the enormous advantages they hold over us. But they have many weaknesses as well. They can’t hold power without oppressing us. They can’t rule the world without driving their rivals to unite against them. Capitalism is an unstable system. It will always lead to war. History shows that communist revolutions can seize power in the turmoil of imperialist war.
Our Party is on the right side of history. Our class is bound to win. As we approach May Day, we should think about the ancient Chinese fable about "The Foolish Old Man Who Moved the Mountains" (see box). The Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong liked to quote it to show the importance of revolutionary optimism and of digging in to accomplish the seemingly "impossible."
At the end of the fable, the "foolish old man" is helped by a god. But the working class doesn’t need god to get the mountain of capitalist misery off our backs. We need to build the Party, day by day, May Day marcher by May Day marcher, Challenge sub by Challenge sub, recruit by recruit, struggle by struggle. Mastering the science of dialectical materialism will enable our class to achieve eventual victory, however long and hard the road ahead may be. Whatever we do now and for the rest of our lives to build the Party can help change the face of the world.
a name="THE Fable of the Foolish Old Man That Could Remove…">">"HE Fable of the Foolish Old Man That Could Remove…
There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains." An old man who lived in northern China long, long ago was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. He called his sons and, hoe in hand, they began to dig up these mountains with great determination. Another graybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up those two huge mountains." The Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?" Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs.
(This is quoted directly from Mao’s concluding speech at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, June 11, 1945.)
Wanted for Racist Murder: LAPD
LOS ANGELES, April 1 — Today over 100 workers and youth demonstrated outside the Ramparts police station, protesting the racist, murderous brutality of the LAPD. But the real story of this demonstration is how it got organized, the combination of forces that produced it. It is a testimony to the close political and personal ties being developed with workers we meet on our jobs, youth in schools and in mass organizations and in the struggles we and they are involved in together.
Recently a co-worker on one of our comrade’s jobs told him about a relative of his, Jason Rodriguez, who had been murdered by the Montebello cops. This co-worker and friend had been reading Challenge for a while, especially its coverage of many such cases around the country. This led to some PLP’ers going to Jason’s funeral and to a demonstration his family and friends organized in their community.
Through these activities, we met some friends of Jason’s who became friends of ours. Two of these friends came to a rally with us against Proposition 21 (which will try teenagers as adults and send them to adult prisons). Another friend of Jason’s spoke in a class of one of our comrades and decided to help build for today’s demonstration.
He and his friends put out their own leaflet about it and distributed our leaflet in the neighborhood surrounding the Ramparts station. A bus driver who has known the Party for several years came to the May Day Dinner with his wife, who had been beaten by the Rampart cops seven years ago. He took some leaflets from the dinner to distribute in the neighborhood. Then he called for more early in the morning before the march. He spent the entire morning passing out the leaflets in the Ramparts neighborhood.
We invited Jason’s best friend to speak at our May Day dinner, which he did. He also went with some of our comrades to a police-organized community meeting where he rose to denounce the cops. Another friend of Jason’s came to a forum on police terror we organized at Santa Monica College.
Meanwhile, Party members in shops and schools had been discussing the issue, the Rampart scandal and today’s demonstration with co-workers and classmates. Garment workers and bus mechanics responded. Students from Manual Arts and Washington high schools, who had been involved with us in walkouts against Proposition 21 and police terror, also were convinced to come, along with students from Huntington Park HS. Party members brought classmates from their college campuses. Several rank-and-file Central American workers, whom we know from a community organization, came. People from the neighborhood who had received the leaflets showed up. Jason’s family and friends also attended. Many of these participants have been regular Challenge readers.
All these workers and youth rallied in the Ramparts neighborhood and then marched to the stationhouse. Two dozen racist Rampart thugs were guarding the station, with black, Latino and women cops in front. They had cordoned off the streets for four blocks around the station to prevent people from seeing and joining us. Despite this, neighborhood people whistled, honked their horns and raised clenched fists in support. The angry demonstrators yelled "Murderers!" and "Liars!" at the cops. They chanted, "Hey, hey, what do you say, how many drugs have you sold today? How many kids have you jailed and killed today?"
One woman passionately denounced the cops who had arrested her son and are holding him on false pretenses. Several others said the Ramparts cops had beaten and unjustly imprisoned them. One man who came had recently been attacked and arrested by the Rampart cops. He and his wife loved the march. A pastor said the Ramparts cops had harassed his family for years. He wants us to come to his church to help organize a bigger march. Others declared that the entire LAPD, Police Chief Parks, D.A. Garcetti and Mayor Riorden, Clinton and the Feds are all guilty. The Feds want to impose community policing on us to win workers and youth to support the cops.
One young speaker said the system will not and cannot reform itself. The bosses need racist police terror to enforce low wages and lousy conditions. Only communist revolution will end that. We must build a mass revolutionary movement for workers power. Another called on the demonstrators to deepen this fight by marching on May Day in San Francisco. One high school student who marched told a comrade in school a few days later she was joining PLP. She asked to get the red May Day T-shirts soon so she and her friends could wear them to school to publicize the march.
This demonstration was a good start. Some of the work we have done in mass organizations, in unions and shops, in schools and on campuses and in the communities led to this turnout. But we must deepen these ties and class struggle to be able to move masses of workers and youth into action against these racist terrorists and the profit system they protect and serve. This will help dispel the illusion that the system which is somewhat revealing this Ramparts scandal will somehow "take care of the problem."
Through these efforts, PLP will grow. This is the long-term struggle we aim to win.
a name="Youth on the Move Against Police Brutality, But Watch Out for Liberal Schemes to ‘Reform’ NYPD"></">Yo"th on the Move Against Police Brutality, But Watch Out for Liberal Schemes to ‘Reform’ NYPD
BRONX, NY, April 4—As part of the wave of protests against cop terror, high school students demonstrated today against police brutality. They marched from Wheeler Ave., where the four NYPD cops murdered Amadou Diallo in February 1999, to the Bronx Supreme Courthouse.
In the last few weeks, after the four cops who killed Diallo were found not guilty, the NYPD has slain Malcolm Ferguson, Patrick Dorismond and two black Brooklyn youth who supposedly tried to rob two undercover cops with toy guns.
After PLP and other rank-and-file high school students organized large walkouts in March against cop terror, liberals like the ACLU have gotten into the act. They don’t want these youth to understand what PLP says: the role of cops is to oppress workers and youth.
The ACLU and other liberals are using the April 5th student march on City Hall to try to divert these increasingly militant youth into the "safe" politics of "reforming" the NYPD. This "reform" includes "community policing," a scheme where the cops can oppress us with our support. Workers and youth must fight their ruling class ideas.
a name="PLP Mobilize Among Workers and Youth to Expose Real Role of Cops As Frulers’ Goons">">"LP Mobilize Among Workers and Youth to Expose Real Role of Cops As Rulers’ Goons
CHICAGO, IL, April 4 — Today 1,000 people marched against the growing prison industrial complex and racial profiling by the police. The action was called in the wake of the acquittal of the four racist killer cops who shot Amadou Diallo in NYC, and many other incidents of racist police terror.
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and a host of other preachers led the march. But due to a lot of struggle to prepare for it, the working class and PLP led a good section of the crowd, 100 of whom came directly because of our efforts in mass organizations and elsewhere. Their presence, unified chants and militancy gave leadership to several hundred others.
In our club meetings and mass organizations, we had made ambitious plans to bring people to the march under our leadership. We saw this as an opportunity to organize in the schools and on the job, to bring revolutionary communist politics into the mass movement against racist police terror. To some degree, we accomplished this. A contingent of postal workers marched because of the discussions we had raised in union meetings and the resolution to march we had gotten passed (see Challenge, March 22). Similarly, 25 students came from Chicago State Univ., growing out of a teach-in we had organized there, inspiring people to organize for this march. We brought rank-and-file workers came from Cook County Hospital. Modest advances in the mass work enabled us to lead hundreds in this mass action.
The youth were very enthusiastic. Their energy and militancy set the tone. Many wore May Day stickers on their coats and book bags, and we distributed hundreds of ChallengeS, May Day leaflets and Prison Labor pamphlets. These youth and workers defended the Party from the harassment of Operation PUSH security. Workers all along the march received our literature enthusiastically.
This constant interaction between the Party and the masses in struggle will illuminate the road to revolution. Fighting for the political leadership of the mass movement has strengthened and excited us. Everyone is feeling stronger and more confident, in themselves and in the Party. The stage is set for a bigger May Day. On to Washington!
a name="Janitors’ Anger About to Explode">">"anitors’ Anger About to Explode
LOS ANGELES, CA, April 3 — "Strike! Strike!" "Give it to the Scabs!" yelled thousands of janitors during a meeting to vote on the final contract offer of the cleaning companies. Workers unanimously raised their red cards to say "no" to the contract offer and "yes" to strike.
This militancy contrasted with the union leaders’ "strategy": "Today you’re going back to work. We’ll go out in small groups, little by little, to show the companies we’re strong, and to take them by surprise." As we go to press, the leaders are striking only a few buildings at a time, and not telling the workers which building until the last minute. This makes it difficult for other workers to support the strike. It saps the strength and power of a united working class. The union leaders want us to rely on politicians, not our class.
But the bosses were prepared with their scabs and police thugs. The first workers to walk out were confronted by the cops, who shoved and beat strikers who tried to block scabs. The strikers fought back but some scabs got through.
The AFL-CIO has used the militancy of the janitors in their marches, protests and previous strikes, to build support for the Democratic Party. When they say, "Yes, We Can" ("Si Se Puede"), they mean, "Reform the System." But if we win strikers to join PLP to get rid of the bosses and their system of exploitation, this militancy and class hatred can build the revolutionary communist movement. Every strike and struggle can be a lesson in how to put the working class in power with communist revolution.
"A Penny to Get Them Out of Poverty" is the slogan of SEIU Local 1877 in its campaign for a new contract. The old contract between 8,500 workers and the cleaning bosses expired on March 30. Some of the main companies are One Source, ABM, Advance and Peerless. Most janitors make $15,000 a year. Even if they won the wage increase the union is demanding—a raise of $1 an hour every year for the next three years—in the first year they would make $17,000. That would not get them out of poverty! The companies are only offering $1.30 over three years, and only for some areas, with no increase in any benefits.
The Democratic Speaker of the State Assembly and LA mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa came to the strike meeting to "give his support." So did a Teamsters official, who said UPS and sanitation workers would honor the picket lines.
But the Teamsters have been organizing against truck drivers from Mexico, and the Democrats put an additional 100,000 racist killer cops on the streets. The essence of their "support" is to keep the anger of the janitors within the limits of this rotten system and maintain the illusion that it can be reformed. The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is counting on the union leaders to deliver the workers to fascism and imperialist war. They want us to accept poverty wages as a "victory," and then send our children to fight their oil wars.
PLP is organizing garment workers and others to join the picket lines to support the strikers. We are building class consciousness, exposing the role of the liberals, and inviting factory workers and striking janitors to march on May Day.
Miners Rebel Against Capitalism in China
The AFL-CIO lieutenants of the bosses claim that China is a communist country. They are using that fiction in their anti-China campaign to serve U.S. imperialism in its drive to compete with China’s bosses. This, in turn, also spreads anti-communism. But the fact is China is now a capitalist country and exploits workers the same as any other capitalist set of bosses. Chinese workers will rebel the same as any other group of exploited workers. In fact they are doing exactly what the AFL-CIO bosses try to prevent their own members from doing.
In recent months, workers’ rebellions have been erupting throughout China, reacting to the spread of capitalist exploitation. Last February, in the northeastern city of Yangjiazhangzi, 20,000 miners and their families took to the streets after their mine was closed, protesting the low level of unemployment benefits. The mine, which produced molybdenum for the electronics and aerospace industries, was the area’s only major employer.
Police were unable to prevent the workers from blocking traffic, smashing windows and vehicles. Several hundred army troops from nearby towns were called in to quell the uprising.
At least five million workers will lose their jobs this year as Chinese capitalism moves into high gear. BBC correspondent Duncan Hewitt reports the mining industry is particularly vulnerable to these "drastic economic reforms." More than 20,000 mines are due to close.
In the latest protest, on April 1st, 500 miners in Sichuan province blocked rail traffic for several hours on the Gulyang-Kunming railway. Several hundred cops were called in to clear the tracks. The miners from the Liuzhi mine were protesting the effects of the company declaring bankruptcy, threatening 40,000 workers’ jobs.
At least 10 similar protests have erupted on the railway line in recent months. The biggest occurred in December when 10,000 workers halted rail traffic for half a day.
The solution for workers in China is similar to the one for workers worldwide: destruction of capitalism and the building of communism. Chinese workers, having gone through the "half-way house" of socialism, need to learn from that experience and build a mass communist party that will abolish the capitalist wage system and fight directly for communism.
a name="Teachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers">">"eachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers
LOS ANGELES, April 2 — Thousands of teachers and other workers mobilized in downtown Los Angeles last week in a show of strength designed to kick off contract negotiations and build the unions. The largest group was the teachers. They were angered by the district's contract proposal which amounted to a measly 1% pay increase after deducting a proposed payment by teachers into the medical plan. They were also enraged over "merit pay" linking teacher salaries to scores on standardized tests. Teachers also face attacks on seniority and the rights of teachers to select their grade and class assignments. Rather than paying for medical benefits, teachers are demanding increased health benefits and calling for a strike. Many were happy to get Challenge and hear about the student walkouts at Manual Arts and Washington high schools against racist police terror and Proposition 21.
The demonstration was big due to the efforts of rank-and-file teacher activists, with little help from the union bureaucracy. This indicates teachers’ anger at being blamed for the failure of the educational system. The teachers' union leadership is deflecting this anger into a useless proposal for a legislative initiative to increase school funding.
The attacks on teachers reflect a move nationally toward a more fascist educational policy. The capitalist system is tightening its control, to better use the schools for social and ideological control of the working class. The curriculum is to be standardized, only one reading series will be used in schools with low test scores, lessons will be scripted and tests will measure adherence to the scripted curricula. Schools will be ranked on how well their students measure on standardized tests and teachers will be graded on how well they push the standardized curricula. Students who score low on high stakes tests will be flunked and then flunked out, instead of getting the tools they need to survive. Unions will collaborate with administrators and institute "peer review" to eliminate teachers who cannot or will not toe the line.
It's part of a move towards a more fascist U.S., with cops shooting down black and Latino youth in the streets, two million people in prison and a widening gap between rich and poor. Teachers are told to teach that this country is a democracy and that we have "freedom." In truth, this country’s rulers are launching racist terror at home and abroad. They are now trying to force teachers to teach a curriculum that unquestioningly guarantees that teachers and students defend this system to the hilt.
PLP stands 100% for teaching and learning the basic skills needed by youth not only to survive, but also to better fight against fascist attacks and for liberation. Neither the school board nor the union leadership wants this kind of education, a kind that’s in the interest of the vast majority of students, teachers and parents.
Social control or teacher-student-parent unity against fascism—that's at stake in the current contract and in the struggles to come. The union leadership has already folded on the question of peer review, instituting it a full year before it was mandated by the state. The union has tried to lessen the impact of the Stanford 9 and other high-stakes tests only because of organized rank-and-file pushing from below. In teachers' contract struggles around the country, union leaders have given in on all the questions that affect the rights of teachers and students in exchange for a small pay raise. The role of the teachers' union leadership is to try to guarantee that teachers toe the ideological line, and prepare our students to march off to war.
PLP teachers have been organizing together with other teachers, students and parents to resist these attacks. We are inviting our fellow teachers and students and their families to march with us on May Day for the unity of the working class against these attacks. Whether or not there's a strike, the main victory will be more teachers, students and parents marching on May Day and reading Challenge. That way, more will join the long-term fight to smash fascism and build a communist system where the development of the youth to lead in producing for need will be the top priority.
May Day Resolution at UTLA
The following resolution was passed by the Central Area of the UTLA (LA Teachers' Union). We plan to fight for it in the House of Reps and to show it to teachers throughout the district, along with literature about the revolutionary history of May Day and our PLP May Day March. Our goal is to unite workers, soldiers and students to fight racism and imperialism. The only way to end these capitalist evils is with communist revolution.
WHEREAS, our students and the working class in general are increasingly subjected to racism, overcrowded schools deprived of resources, police terror, skyrocketing levels of incarceration and increasing use of prison labor, and ongoing wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere; and,
WHEREAS, May Day is the international holiday of the working class, and demonstrates the fighting unity of our class; therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED that the United Teacher newspaper publish an article about the origins and history of May Day; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UTLA urge its members to participate in the celebration of May Day and the various May Day events planned for this year.
Teach-In at Santa Monica College on Police Brutality
LOS ANGELES, April 3 — About 50 students at Santa Monica College (SMC) attended a communist led teach-in on police brutality. Students—including a PLP member—organized the event. The speakers included a PLP member from UCLA, a community activist from Watts and an SMC staff member.
The speakers explained the role of police brutality in capitalist society. The student speaker described police terror’s relationship to the Three Strikes Law [giving 3rd felony offenders 25 years to life no matter what the actual sentence for that conviction] and to Proposition 21 [sentencing teenagers as adults and jailing them in adult prisons]. He said this was part of the ruling class’ attempt to oppress the working class. He also pointed out that victims of these fascist laws are used by capitalists to super-exploit prison laborers as part of the growing prison-industrial complex. He said James Q Wilson, who teaches in UCLA’s Business School, is one of the main proponents of tougher policing and targeting youth early on for prison.
The Watts community activist recounted his experience under the Three Strikes Law, explaining that he had unjustly been given a 25-year sentence because of it (but was one of the first to win release on appeal). He blamed capitalism for this injustice and encouraged the students to organize to prevent such cases.
Finally, the SMC staff member described the racism underlying these attacks on the working class and how it is instituted in the educational system. She encouraged students to ally with part-time teachers in their fight for paid office hours and a place to meet with students She said these conditions showed the Administration didn’t care about working-class students, many black and Latino, reflecting another racist attack. Others pointed out that to effectively attack police brutality, we must attack capitalism, the system that creates it.
Students enthusiastically joined the discussion, relating fascism to imperialism and proposed ways to fight back. One said, "In the schools, they teach you how to think, but not to think." Another student concluded, "Education is necessary in order to understand police brutality and organize a communist revolution to end it."
A communist student who helped organize the forum invited students to May Day, describing its significance in the workers’ fight against fascist police brutality. Many students belonging to different campus clubs agreed to help organize for May Day. Some have been reading Challenge. Three days later one group came to a demonstration at the Rampart Police Station, organized by PLP and friends, and by family members of Jason Rodriguez, murdered by the Montebello police (part of LA County).
USWA Hacks March by 5,000 in Support of AKSteel Strikers
MANSFIELD, OH, March 25 — "Hey, Hey, What Do You Say? Kick a Scab in the Ass Today!" That was the most popular chant as 5,000 workers marched in support of 620 members of the United SteelWorkers (USW) Local 169. AK Steel has locked them out since last September 1. It’s a familiar story.
AK Steel was originally ARMCO Steel, having made high quality stainless steel for 28 years with absolute labor peace. Then ARMCO merged with AK Steel and brought in 200 uniformed security guards during contract negotiations. The new company is demanding unlimited mandatory overtime, to slash jobs and increase profits at the expense of workers’ lives.
The wonderful potential of the mighty working class and the formidable obstacles to be overcome were both on display. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised from rank-and-file workers and delivered by the various union contingents. Food was prepared by the locked-out workers, delicious and hearty, and plenty for all. Donations accepted!
But we also were subjected to speeches by local politicians and union hacks. The union leaders had us honoring a court injunction against mass picketing so we did not march to the plant gate and confront the scabs. Following a sparsely populated route, many strikers complained there was "nobody to give hell to."
Finally, USW President George Becker said the workers, many of whose fathers and grandfathers worked at the plant, have more at stake than the new owners. While the strikers have been attacked by the scabs, cops and courts, Becker tried to cover up the class dictatorship of the bosses stating, "When we go back in the plant to claim our jobs, democracy will go back with us!" Becker’s job is to keep us tied to the bosses’ system of wage slavery. That’s why he’s led the fascist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign as a spokesman for Big Steel. He will have us going to war to save the bosses before he’d lay a glove on them.
By involving more of our co-workers in actions like this, we can build on the positive aspect of workers’ solidarity while exposing the role of union leaders like Becker. By being active in the class struggle, we learn who are our friends and enemies. We call on all steel workers to march on May Day as part of the fight to smash the bosses’ dictatorship and replace it with the dictatorship of the working class—communism. Then all production will be to meet workers’ needs, not some bloodsucker’s profits.
LTV Drive for Profits Is Deadly for Workers
EAST CHICAGO, IN., April 3 — In less than a month, one worker has been killed and another severely burned at LTV Steel. The company and the union lament these "unfortunate incidents," claiming they want to prevent them. But what's really going on?
In the first case, an electrician in his late 40’s, nearing retirement, tripped and was swept into a water discharge trough where the water was travelling over 40 miles per hour. A warning sign stated, "Do Not Enter While Casting," or while the water is running.
But the bosses want workers to go down there regardless. The pressure is always on to get the job done. And all too often, we go along with this. "Let's get the job done"; "We've done it a million times"; "It’s not really that unsafe." And then following the bosses’ dictates forces us to pay the price.
It's called an "accident," but it's really not. Capitalism and the drive for profits caused this death. The head of the union safety committee said this was a preventable accident--if we’d done things just a little different. In one sense he’s right. All that was needed was to shut off a valve. So why was the valve open? Because it was easier. Because that's how the job gets done quicker. Because that’s how we keep production going. The bosses will wear your ass out if you don’t wear your safety glasses. But if safety means shutting down, well that’s a different story. And that is why Eddie is dead. Because closing that valve would have shut everything down, and his life just wasn't worth it—to the boss.
Two weeks later a train crew member, trying to avoid an impending accident, jumped off an engine and fell into a slag cooling pit that was full of boiling water. This worker had over 25 years seniority, but less than six months on the engine. He was burned over 30 percent of his body. The next day the pumps used to drain the slag-cooling pit were back in service. Workers had complained about the inoperable pumps and all the steam. If those pumps had been working properly, this guy would be working today.
When PLP says capitalism kills, it sure ain't just rhetoric. Day in and day out the profit system kills and maims workers to make the bosses richer. It’s time to stop cleaning up after boss-caused catastrophes and start running the show for the workers—for ourselves.
a name="The Battle In Seattle Continues…">">"he Battle In Seattle Continues…
HAMMOND, IN, March 30 — Tonight anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) coalition forces in this area, including some USW (United SteelWorker) activists, showed a documentary called, "Showdown in Seattle." The video was directed at steelworkers in night school. It called last November’s anti-WTO demonstrations a "great people’s victory." AFL-CIO president Sweeney, USW president Becker and other demonstrators repeated this term in the video.
This movement has attracted thousands of honest forces opposed to child and prison labor and mass poverty caused by imperialism. But only Challenge and PLP have exposed the leadership, especially the AFL-CIO, using this anger to build support for U.S. imperialism against its rivals.
A USW member and Seattle protester said that if Sweeney and Becker called it "a people’s victory," everyone should be very suspicious. He said the same union leadership that attacked the anti-Vietnam War demonstrators and was now praising workers and students for "fighting the system" had ulterior motives.
These bosses’ junior partners are attempting to convince everyone that the "good" U.S. bosses really care about prison and child labor, and "bad" bosses, like China’s, don’t. This sets up a future scenario of U.S. bosses saying, "China has to be stopped," like Iraq or Yugoslavia, for "humanitarian" reasons.
Another USW member defended Becker, saying he had sent lots of people to maquiladora factories on the Mexican border, and that Becker truly cares about the workers. But all of the "cross-border organizing" by U.S. unions has been against Asian-owned factories in Mexico. They haven’t led one campaign against Ford or GM, even though there are 300,000 autoworkers in Mexico making less than one-fourth of U.S. wages.
A PLP member attacked the widespread use of prison labor, and women locked in garment factories in the U.S. When she Challenged the organizers about what their plan was to deal with this, their answer was to elect people "friendly" to labor, protest the IMF/WTO meetings in Washington, D.C. and fight to keep China from having normal trade relations with the U.S.
Some ChallengeS and Prison Labor pamphlets were distributed, and some contacts were made. The bosses are pushing nationalism inside the workers’ movement. We have to be there, fighting U.S. bosses and their labor lieutenants, and fighting for internationalism and communist revolution.
a name="Elián Soap Opera""Elián Soap Opera
Who needs "The Days of Our Lives" when the Elián story has stuff the best soap opera can only dream of? As the Elián saga approaches its finale (maybe), it’s had everything: lies, political intrigue, fancy lawyers, rabid anti-communism and last week even the image of the Virgin Mary "appeared" in the Little Havana house of little Elián’s kidnappers. Wow!
But the most interesting aspect of this real life soap opera, and the one never mentioned, is the inter-imperialist rivalry and the fight among different U.S. bosses behind it. A good section of the U.S. bosses have decided to break the inordinate power of the Cuban exile lobby (better known as the Mafia) over U.S. international politics. They have decided they just can't let the Europeans, and maybe even the Russians, grab Cuba. So the Cuban exiles, with their kidnapping of Elián, have given this section of the ruling class and Fidel Castro an opportunity to make a deal.
The fact that Al Gore opportunistically broke with the Clinton administration and the leadership of the Democratic Party over the Elián case (Florida has 25 electoral votes, and the Cuban exile vote is crucial) is just one more proof of the need for some U.S. bosses to break the Cuban exile lobby.
Boy, Did They Lie to Start Kosovo War!
It is now a little over a year since the NATO/U.S. war against Yugoslavia. Remember how the imperialists justified it, saying that Milosevic’s Serbian forces had killed "100,000 Albanians" (according to Secretary of Defense Cohen). The grotesque comparisons by NATO and the U.S. of the plight of the Albanians with the holocaust served to win people to support the imperialist war. Now the real truth comes out: "Figures released by war crimes investigators have been in the hundreds rather than thousands. "Financial Times, April 1). Many of these were probably killed by the bombing or the KLA nationalists.
Never believe the imperialists’ justifications for war!
a name="Building for May Day: Details, Planning, Hard Work…">">"uilding for May Day: Details, Planning, Hard Work…
(This is the conclusion to last issue’s article, "May Day 2000, What Everyone Does Counts," which discussed the political importance of May Day internationally, its relation to recent class struggles and the link between May Day and every individual involved—and not-so-involved—in those struggles. Part I ended by saying, "May Day doesn’t organize itself simply because we want it to. It requires detailed plans and hard work.")
A Plan
NEW YORK CITY — In Upper Manhattan our leadership collective and clubs have an overall plan. In mid-February, over dinner and discussion, a group of comrades prepared our first mailing to 800 households, which included a Party letter and a ticket book. Club meetings planned protests of the not-guilty verdict in the Diallo trial and for each member to mobilize for May Day. We identified key mass organizers and made pledges to help pay for the May Day buses.
On March 11 our section had a May Day dinner. A student spoke about fighting police terror. A factory worker reported on conditions on her job and on inviting co-workers to May Day. A spirited discussion followed. She later wrote a leaflet inviting her co-workers and other factory workers to the March. The workers’ club made a plan to distribute this leaflet inside and outside three factories where the Party has members or friends. We will distribute the flyers at an Upper Manhattan location where hundreds of factory workers board buses and vans to their jobs in New Jersey.
A group of us will soon do our second mass mailing, reminding people to contact us and soliciting ticket money. We will include two May Day stickers and distribute many moreto our members and close friends. Those stickers have a way of appearing in many apartment buildings and on street corners.
In mid-April we will hold our bus captain’s dinner and discussion, open to all members and numbers of Challenge readers and May Day organizers, whether or not they have a specific bus captain responsibility.
Our Goal
Our goal in Upper Manhattan is 600 marchers. We continue to focus on factory workers, on the job and inside mass organizations. The factory workers’ contingent should be 45 to 50. Probably 10 to 15 marchers will come from friends in our mass organizations. This work is important, but not sufficiently developed to produce more. The bulk of the may Day marchers, including many families, will come from an area where the Party has had a mass following for years.
A Six-Point People Plan
Specifically, each club member has a plan to invite friends. Additionally, we have four groupings: the first contains 42 Party members, active and not so active plus those in a study group and other close friends of the Party. The second grouping includes 77 people: more Challenge readers and distributors, annual May Day marchers and organizers and factory workers. We have varying degrees of personal and political ties with them. Twenty-four people in the grouping are previous May Day marchers with whom we have little or no contact. There are 45 names on a telephone tree.
An important part of the six-point plan is the effort to mobilize a two-person bilingual team with long term neighborhood ties. So there are a total of about 200 individuals and households. We have seen or contacted 115 so far and will finish by April 15. Of course, not all of these will march or help mobilize for it, but many will. Finally, as we cover all these groupings we can expand into the other names from our mass mailing list. How far to spread out depends on how much time we’ll need to gather in those people who express interest.
There are obstacles. Communists welcome struggle and solutions. Each member and friend, whatever his or her effort, needs to feel part of the team. We must delegate more responsibility, overcome language barriers and timidity; open ourselves more to the questions and needs of our friends and contacts; be patient, persistent and positive. We must continue to struggle against the outlook that all May Day marchers should be, or will be, fully informed about the Party’s ideas and goals. Our job is to work with masses of workers and youth and fight for their hearts and minds. In the real world, this process is not smooth and easy. But it is necessary and also invigorating, and out of this the Party can grow and lead.
a name="A Red May Day Versus a Hacks’ May Day">">" Red May Day Versus a Hacks’ May Day
SEATTLE -- Here in Seattle our kickoff for May Day was a successful dinner on March 25. It was especially heartening to see a good number of high school and college youth and young workers, all of them on low-paying jobs. Five additional young workers and students said they would be making the 1600-mile round-trip to May Day in San Francisco, among them the son of a recent Boeing striker. We will be visiting the rest to assure their presence.
All over the world, workers, students and soldiers are preparing to celebrate this working-class holiday, led by communists. This is our annual opportunity to join with other workers, students and GI's of all backgrounds to take stock of our forces and celebrate the world we aim to win.
But there are groups who would usurp this holiday and try to make it their own, even though they are subservient to the bosses. Some of the coalitions formed around the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests are having their own "May Day" rallies against the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc. At our May Day dinner, one Party friend said, "It's great there are all sorts of May Days, like those sponsored by the anti-WTO organizations." He was being fooled in the same way the capitalists hope to fool many left-leaning workers and students. Unless communists fighting for revolution lead the May Day marches, they are deceptive at best and more likely to be deadly to our class. They lead workers straight into the arms of the bosses by offering them the hope of reforming capitalism. The liberals or fake-leftists will not deceive us. We are clear that the only real May Day is the communist one. It is the property of the working class.
The wife of a Teamster from the Boeing local brought the back page of the most recent union magazine to the dinner. This ad showed the real aims of this "anti-WTO" coalition.
The back page features an individual in front of Chinese tanks with the caption: "If he can stand up to communist China, so can you" The thrust of this ad is to prevent the U.S. government from establishing normal trade relations with China. Under a humanitarian guise, they’re saying those awful "communists" are violators of human rights.
This is from the same union leadership who vigorously pats itself on the back while losing 25% of the jobs it covers at Boeing. Last week they agreed to a contract with Boeing costing many more jobs. Adding insult to injury, the union pushed a plan for the "right of first refusal"—if the union drivers cannot do a job "competitively" the company can hire cheaper labor. Other Business Representatives in this local, allied with the national leadership, undercut rank-and-file efforts to answer the bosses’ attacks with a strike. It seems all this Teamster leadership can do is sabotage class struggle and spend our money building anti-communism.
In the face of these "traitors within our ranks," it is time to hold fast to our proud heritage. May Day, the working-class holiday led by the communist Progressive Labor Party, is a symbol of our strength, our potential, the world we have to win. Come to May Day with PLP. Show the bosses that we are not fooled by the rhetoric of the fake left.
LETTERS
Communist Principles Win Out
A recent experience illustrates how people who are not workers can be won to our politics. My immediate supervisor at work was very different from most supervisors. He showed some solidarity with people under him. For months I thought about showing him Challenge, but feared he would fire me for this.
One day two years ago I decided to do it, telling him, "Boss, read this and we can talk later." I was still afraid, but the next week he asked, "Do you have the new Challenge?" When I gave it to him I noted that Challenge says what others don’t dare to say.
That began his relationship with PLP. He participated in many of our activities, including some cadre schools, and joined the Party.
A few weeks ago, the big boss asked him to fire two workers because they "weren’t doing a good job." The comrade refused, saying "They are two exploited workers and have families to support." He told the big boss to do the dirty job himself, but he was too cowardly and sent another supervisor to do it.
Of course our comrade lost his job. At our last club meeting he told me, "I still have not found a new job, but I have a clear conscience. I did not betray those workers."
I now have a plan to recruit other co-workers who have told me, "If all communists are as rebellious and show as much solidarity" as the fired comrade, they "would like to work with our Party."
That’s the difference between communist and capitalist ideology. We don’t think of ourselves as the bosses want us to be, but serve the working class and win others to fight the bosses.
A Member of the PLP Grouping in Dominican Republic
Bring PLP Ideas to Fighting Students in Mexico
A small group of students in the Party went to Mexe, Hidalgo where workers and students had routed the police while demanding that students protesting the closing of the Rural normal school be released from jail. We wanted to meet these students.
It was very inspiring. We were surprised to find they have a disciplined organization with study groups where they read the Communist Manifesto and other books by Marx and Lenin. We agreed to return next weekend to discuss our Party’s ideas. We took them Challenge, copies of the Party’s Political Economy pamphlet, Road to Revolution IV and the pamphlet on Dialectical Materialism. We’ll tell you how it goes.
A PLP Student
The X-Generation Is Not Safe from the Men in Blue
When I was an adolescent many years ago, I was taught to respect police officers. They were called "Officer Friendly" when they came to my school. I viewed them as individuals who served and protected the community without regard to race, creed or color. Unfortunately this perception has changed in the African-American community as a result of several incidents.
First, police officers shot and killed Latonya Haggerty. They were eventually fired, but not prosecuted. Second, a police officer shot and killed Robert Russ, a black male college student. Finally, my 15-year-old son was almost arrested for a false allegation of shooting another black adolescent.
The neighbors observed one police officer pointing a gun at my son's body, throwing him against the police car and hitting him twice on the back. My son sustained a fractured wrist and torn ligaments. He also experienced elevated blood pressure, detected during his physical exam.
My son is a student in a very prestigious private school. He was wearing his school uniform when this ordeal occurred. The officers stated that he was under suspicion because the alleged shooter had the same color coat as my son, but in fact my son had on a sweater of a different color. Fortunately the neighbors who observed the incident said my son was visiting them and could not have shot anyone.
I am appalled at the tactics used by police officers to investigate the X generation (Lost Children). This is what they are called in the 21st century. I feel more working-class people, especially minorities, need to come together as the neighbors did to identify police brutality and defend our youth. We should hold law enforcement officials responsible for their officers' conduct.
As a concerned mother, an educated professional and a single parent, I felt compelled to let the community know this incident happened to my child. DON'T THINK THIS CAN'T HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW!
An Outraged Chicago Mother
Careful with Symbols in Our Literature
The recent PLP pamphlet, "Prison Labor: Fascism U.S. Style," is excellent. My thanks to the comrades who must have worked hard to research and write it.
For many years, without publicity, the U.S. Postal Service has used prison labor to repair torn mail sacks. With this in mind, I recently gave copies of the pamphlet to most other members of the "Candidates For Change" slate in the NY Metro-Area Postal Union election. One of those workers has read the last few issues of Challenge as well. He asked, "What is the meaning of the symbol of the hand with the swastika on Page 2?" He was clearly wondering what Nazism had to do with communism.
We looked at the symbol together and agreed the meaning was unclear. Perhaps the almost uniform red color, or the positions of the different parts of the total symbol, are what confused the meaning. I said the idea must have been of communist workers smashing Nazism.
In our writings, cartoons, etc., we must be very clear about what we say to our readers and friends. We should consider how things might appear to our friends.
A communist postal worker
American Beauty Is Real Ugly
It was disappointing to read Red Rex’s review of "American Beauty" in the March 29 Challenge. Rex liked the movie because it shows the misery of long hours at work and alienated personal relations at home that workers have to put up with. But he doesn’t mention the movie’s line on what can be done about this. Kevin Spacey’s character quits a white collar job to work in a fast food take-out place. I doubt that many fast food workers will believe this change would mean less frustration from powerlessness at work. Marx showed long ago that alienation at work and in personal relations is a product of capitalism and can’t be eliminated without getting rid of the system.
American Beauty has a different line, however. It gives no indication that rotten jobs or personal relations can be changed. Instead it argues that beauty compensates for misery in the rest of our lives. This line is a very common capitalist view of what art should do, that art should make it easier for people to tolerate an intolerable system. Finding beauty in everyday life is not a bad thing, of course. But American Beauty makes beauty a kind of drug that anesthetizes us to the realities of capitalism. The beauty that the movie offers as an escape is pretty pitiful in any case: rose-covered kiddy porn and a flying plastic bag.
The truth is that personal relations can improve through struggle, and workers’ struggles can resist and eventually destroy capitalism. Art that shows beauty in these processes is not escapist, but helps move humanity forward.
American Beauty is beauty that holds us back, and is therefore a reactionary movie, that should not be praised in Challenge.
San Diego Reader
- WORKERS' FURY EXPLODES AGAINST COP TERROR!
BEWARE OF COMMUNITY POLICING, LIBERALS ROAD TO FASCISM - DEMOCRATS' CURE A KILLER
- ERIN BROCKOVICH: THE BOSSES' MESSAGE IS LOUD AND CLEAR
- PAUL ROBESON: INSPIRING INT'L WORKING CLASS
- MAY DAY: `WHAT EVERYONE DOES COUNTS...'
- POSTAL WORKERS MUST STAMP OUT BOSSES' PROFIT DRIVE
- LA DINNER: TEN JOIN PLP...AND COUNTING
- `I've Seen'
- UNAM STRIKEBREAKERS CAN'T CLOSE SCHOOL FOR COMMUNISM
UNAM Strike Shows Need for a Mass PLP - PUTIN: HOT FOR A NEW COLD WAR
- HOW FAR RIGHT (AND WRONG) CAN FRENCH `C.' P.
- LETTERS
WORKERS' FURY EXPLODES AGAINST COP TERROR!
BEWARE OF COMMUNITY POLICING, LIBERALS ROAD TO FASCISM
BROOKLYN, N.Y., March 25 --The pent-up anger of workers and youth exploded today in a clash against the cops. After years of racist terror by the NYPD and Mayor Giuliani, today's tactics by the cops became the provocation for thousands of workers attending the demonstration at the funeral for Patrick Dorismond, the most recent unarmed black man murdered by the fascist NYPD. The protesters were especially enraged at the Mayor's racist attack on this latest victim of that terror.
Patrick Dorismond was approached on his way home from work by undercover cops who asked to buy drugs from him. The cops attacked and killed him with one shot through the chest. "A young man was killed for saying no to drugs," screamed one protester.
Workers gathered in front of the Holy Cross Church in Flatbush where the funeral was to be held, while others gathered at the funeral home to march with the hearse to the church. Today's events were organized and attended by Brooklyn's Haitian and Caribbean community.
PLP Role In the Struggle
Some PLP members marched with the funeral procession but the main group went straight to an area in front of the church. Our banner, "Destroy Police Terror with Communist Revolution," was passed through the crowd to be displayed at the barricades directly in front of the cops. We distributed thousands of leaflets, over 800 CHALLENGES, May Day stickers and red cards inviting people to march on May Day. We ran out of literature long before the funeral was over. We even had comrades searching their car trunks for back issues of the paper, all snatched up as quickly as we got them out.
By the time the groups converged at the church there were over 7,000 people present. The NYPD, with 1,000 cops assigned to the area, had barricades everywhere trying to contain these masses of workers onto the narrow sidewalks. We used our bullhorn, the only sound system around, throughout the morning, creating an open mike that became the voice of many protesters.
The Masses Are Heroes
As this sea of angry workers saw Patrick Dorismond's casket being passed into the church, a roar of rage filled the air. The masses surged forward and tore the barricades down. The cops retreated. The crowd was emboldened. Drums pounded, workers screamed with anger. Our banner remained at the front and people continued to speak on our bullhorn. This continued for nearly two hours as the funeral service went on in the church.
When the service ended, the casket and mourners were escorted out to a side street, which also led to the 67th precinct one block away. Again the workers surged forward, some to follow the casket and some responding to chants from our bullhorn to march to the 67th precinct. Then the fighting began. The cops had no intention of allowing such a mass of angry workers near their station.
A tug of war between the protesters and the cops went on for some time. Meanwhile, a string of liberals, like the ACLU's Norman Siegel, were negotiating with the cops to allow some kind of march but Giuliani and Safir (the police chief) were having none of it. Unknown to them, the protesters were getting fed up too. Finally one pocket of them broke through a barricade.
A genuine street battle ensued. Bottles and batteries started to rain down on the cops. The cops fought back swinging into the crowd with clubs and pepper spray. The youth didn't back down and led the way. They threw everything they could find at the cops, then retreated quickly for half a block. The cops would find only empty streets. Then the youth would launch another round and the events would be repeated.
Bringing in the cavalry, two lines of cops on horseback galloped down the street. This action enraged the workers. They leapt into the streets after the horses passed and dragged out every remaining barricade. They flipped them over and crisscrossed them so that one entire block became an obstacle course for the horses. Buying time this way, the workers raced to the next intersection and blended once again into the crowd.
After a few more such skirmishes the day ended, although tension was high all night. Flatbush remained under heavy police presence. On the other hand, any empty cop vehicle had its windows smashed and tires slashed. These workers are not finished, nor is their rage calmed.
Our task now, as we bring this issue to our jobs and schools, is to link it sharply with May Day. Every contact, every new member, every angry worker needs to become an organizer for May Day. The first step is bringing all these new and old friends to our May Day dinner, Sunday April 9.
LESSONS FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE
Our primary responsibility as communists is to recognize and seize opportunities to advance class struggle and build a mass revolutionary PLP. This can be very difficult. In this period, when the main aspect of fascism is the bosses winning workers to passivity and fear, it takes skill and practice to recognize opportunity.
As our recent experiences around the Diallo verdict and the school walk-outs reveal, and the battle of Flatbush confirms, there are enormous opportunities for our Party to lead and participate in working-class struggle, especially when fascism is advancing. What have we learned from these recent developments?
First of all, it takes a long- term outlook. Our Party, for example, has been building work in Flatbush for many years. Ten years ago we responded to the racist attack blaming Haitians for the AIDS epidemic when all the liberals turned their backs on the issue. Our work in many of the community organizations has been sporadic over the years. Our weakness was that we could not fully understand where this kind of work could lead because at that time we could not see big results. But we continued to build a modest base with many students and young workers.
The anger of the masses exploded on Saturday because of many reasons. While Sharpton appeared at the head of the procession from the funeral parlor to the church, and his call for "federal supervision" of the NYPD may have influenced many, there were other thousands who saw the only answer to racist attacks by the cops was to fight back. They reacted to Mayor Giuliani's racist remarks attacking Patrick Dorismond as a criminal.
The spontaneous voice of these workers and youth was especially angry when the cops, acting in their usual racist brutal way, began pushing people around. Barricades went down, bottles were thrown at the cops, and 27 cops were hurt.
Mass Work Crucial
Our Party's many years of work within the community, particularly among high school students in the area gave us a lot of opportunities at the rally. Many students and young workers who have known us over the years found our banner and participated with us throughout the day. It takes steady, consistent work to be in position to take advantage of these opportunities. Mass distribution of literature, printing stickers, attending meetings, selling CHALLENGES--all the day-to-day organizational work that will allow a small group to have a mass effect.
But all these things won't amount to too much if we don't work consistently in these mass organizations and develop and solidify closer and deep ties with as many workers and youth as possible, leading them to march on May Day and join PLP. Had we worked in these mass organizations more intensively for the past ten years, we would have been in a better position, with a larger mass base, to lead this action, politically and organizationally.
As we do this work, we not only can lead sharper mass struggle against police terror but also can expose the role of ALL cops as racist goons of the bosses. At the same time we can better expose the liberals like Sharpton-Siegel-Hillary Clinton. Their gimmicks of community policing and federal supervision of the NYPD are "cures" that are worse than the current disease. We need sharp internal struggle to guarantee these things. It reflects our overall aim to be leaders of our class.
When we do manage to pull these lessons together we develop politically. We become seasoned communists ready for the exciting yet difficult road to revolution.
The specter of mass working class rebellion against killer cops is haunting New York City's bosses. All the leading Democrats and other liberals are now blaming the rise of militant protest and anti-cop violence on Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his police commissioner, Howard Safir.
Giuliani and Safir are obvious racist thugs, who have given the cops a license to shoot first and lie later. But rehashing what we already know, or fighting only the Giuliani-Safir forces won't help workers build the struggle for communist revolution, the only way to end cop terror. Under the profit system, the police will always serve as the rulers' front line of defense against our class. But sometimes the plan isn't so clear. We have to look beyond the obvious and identify the enemies who parade as our friends so that we can fight harder and better.
COMMUNITY POLICING LIBERALS' ROAD TO FASCISM
Understanding the liberals and their strategy holds the key to this puzzle. They aren't mad at Giuliani because his NYPD shoots unarmed black workers. After all, as Giuliani himself loves to point out, his cops killed "only" 11 people last year, compared to 41 in 1990 under the liberal Democrat Dinkins. So Giuliani has no monopoly on terror.
But the issue goes beyond these statistics. At the heart of the argument among the big bosses is what strategy to use to turn U.S. society into an effective police state as the main, Rockefeller liberal wing of the ruling class prepares to develop fascism at home and to wage imperialist wars abroad. These liberals have a plan: "community policing." Their leading spokesman in New York is William Bratton, Giuliani's first police commissioner. Bratton & Co. understand that terror can't be effective unless the cops have a wide base of support among the very workers they're terrorizing. This is the role of "community policing." The liberals want to dump Giuliani because he and Safir haven't bought this program.
Community policing is a deadly, racist trap. Bratton first carried out this strategy in the late 1980s in Boston, where he had been police commissioner before coming to New York. He had cops infiltrate churches and schools in black, Asian, and working-class white neighborhoods. Working with police-friendly collaborators, they fingered "criminals." The Boston courts are now jailing workers in record numbers, mostly for non-violent offenses.
But Bratton was just a figurehead for his real employers, the liberal bankers and industrialists who run Massachusetts and have close ties to the Rockefeller Establishment. Helped by a hand-picked gang of academics and union leaders, they created a think-tank called the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC). This crew devised the criminal justice master plan that included Boston's "community policing." MassINC's sponsors include Fleet Bank, Bell Atlantic, Mellon Bank, Boston Edison, IBM, the AFL-CIO and the Massachusetts Teachers' Association. No fewer than six Harvard professors serve as advisers or directors. Other support for this scheme comes from the Boston Coalition, which is funded by Joe Kennedy and the State Street Bank, among others.
In 1996, MassINC published its first recommendations. They left little to the imagination. The report began with a call to "build more prison cells and fill them." To keep the prison pipeline flowing, the bosses urged, "maintain the momentum toward community policing." They underscored the need to hire more black cops and make "changes in recruitment, training, and promotion practices." The report praised police "collaboration with community groups" and encouraged more police work in "schools, welfare, housing and health care."
With help from their Harvard henchmen and the AFL-CIO, Boston's captains of finance are realizing their dream. MassINC boasts that the population doubled in state prisons and quadrupled in county jails between 1985 and 1999. Never mind that more than half are in for non-violent violations like drugs and petty theft. Many are doing time for first offenses.
First the Massachusetts bosses demonize and lock up one segment of the working class. They do this in the name of "protecting" everyone else. Meanwhile, this Big Lie is supposed to create a climate of opinion favorable to the rulers' grand strategy for war and the militarization of society. By promoting respect for government authority, "community policing" tries to advance patriotic class collaboration. One of MassINC's leaders is Ira Jackson, a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and a former Bank of Boston executive. He also helps direct Harvard's International Security Program (ISP). This ISP works closely with the Rockefeller-run Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations in formulating U.S. imperialism's increasingly hawkish foreign policy. As the bosses gird for war, the ISP worries about the growing alienation between civilians and the military in the U.S. MassINC's goal is to close a similar gap between civilians and the police.
Boston is one of the cities to which the liberals point with pride as a successful example of policing. They would love to clone it elsewhere. The Boston Coalition has a ten-point "Operation 2006" plan, which is intended as a model for other cities like Chester, PA, Gary, IN, Louisville, KY, Tampa, FL and, most importantly, Los Angeles. Bratton & Co. have already made clear that Giuliani's main sin is his refusal to consider the "community policing" model for New York. It is already being implemented across the river in Newark. Bratton's pal, Rutgers' professor George Kelling, a Harvard Kennedy Fellow at the influential School of Criminal Justice, is responsible for the ideological backbone for this program.
So it's only a matter of time before New York, LA and other major U.S. cities get on board with the liberal program for mass imprisonment that has so well served the bosses in laboratory cities like Boston, Newark and San Diego. There can be just one big hitch. Workers don't have to fall for it. The most militant section of the working class doesn't have to line up behind Al Sharpton and welcome racist terror under the guise of "community policing." If our Party continues to develop in influence and boldness, it will have a lot to say about the direction in which workers head as the rulers attempt to carry out this deadly plan. The PLP has done a bold, effective job of helping galvanize mass anger against Giuliani & Co. We must now redouble our determination and skill to bring our ideas into the struggles that will inevitably erupt against even deadlier liberal-sponsored terror.
DEMOCRATS' CURE A KILLER
BRONX, N.Y., March 28 -- Democratic Party politicians organized a town meeting last night in the Soundview section, responding to the recent racist murders by the NYPD. This meeting took place just blocks away from where Amadou Diallo and Matthew Ferguson were killed and two days after the clash between cops and angry demonstrators during the funeral of Patrick Dorismond.
These Democratic misleaders are using the anger of many workers and youth against racist police terror to call for a "cure"--community policing--that is even worse than the current Giuliani-Safir disease (see editorial). We must fight tooth and nail against this liberal "solution."
Community policing tries to recruit workers to become cops against other workers. In Boston, where community policing was implemented several years ago, black and Latin youth have been complaining of "routine mistreatment" by the police. These same youth co-operated with the police in setting up their neighborhood policing tactics. A recent survey of 300 youths reports that 210 had been stopped and questioned "without reasons." (Boston Globe, 3/28)
Workers and youth must not be won to build the bosses' community policing. The only way to destroy fascist police terror is to smash capitalism and build a communist society.
ERIN BROCKOVICH: THE BOSSES' MESSAGE IS LOUD AND CLEAR
Not surprisingly, the movie "Erin Brockovich" has been widely promoted in the bosses' media, unlike, for example, "Cradle Will Rock." It is entertaining in a perverse sense, but its underlying message is obvious and dangerous.
Based on a "true story," the movie, tells the story of Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), an apparently working-class woman "down on her luck" whose tireless research proves deliberate pollution by Pacfic Gas & Electric (PG&E) in California, causing poisonings and deaths. She is motivated by a desire to obtain compensation for workers and others who've been poisoned.
Brockovich achieves the respect and admiration she feels has escaped her. She relates to, and cares about the workers. She mouths off to anyone in her way, mostly lawyers and bosses' representatives.
The obvious sexism--flaunting her breasts and wearing short skirts--is portrayed as helping to attain her goal (of compensation for the workers), but apparently it did not entice workers to sign on to the case.
PG&E representatives, while bumbling and inept, are clearly violent against the workers in the toll of death and disease inflicted on them from the polluted water. The message is that PG&E, a major corporation, can be brought to its knees by the right combination of lawyers, legal assistants and people willing to sign their names. Crusading legal assistants can triumph!
It's a win-win situation for capitalism. The bosses admit some blatant excesses, workers can win in the courts and the do-gooder lawyers get their "just rewards" (millions in legal fees).
The workers are also portrayed as ignorant and naïve victims, largely focused on getting their individual piece of the pie. The message of this and many "fight-back-against-the-rich" movies: don't kill capitalism, just call your lawyer!
PAUL ROBESON: INSPIRING INT'L WORKING CLASS
(The following are excerpts from remarks made in a presentation at the University of Connecticut, Waterbury Campus, on Paul Robeson, the world famous actor, singer, first black All-American football player, and pro-communist champion of the international working class.)
Beginning in the early 1930's, Paul Robeson made a unique contribution through his artistry: he put his art in the service of the international working class, especially in the fight against racism. While never proclaiming himself a member of the Communist Party, Robeson was a communist in his every word and deed.
Why was it logical for him to become a communist? As he looked around at the world during the Great Depression, the only white people he saw with black friends were communists. The only group who made a central issue of racism against black people at that time were the communists. He saw communists fighting the evictions of workers, putting their furniture back into their homes when they couldn't pay the rent. He saw communists fighting for integration in housing and in the unions. He saw communists always being on the side of the working class. It was natural for him, a passionate integrationist, to gravitate to communism.
When he went to the Soviet Union to see for himself this great working class achievement, he discovered the only country in the world that actually declared racism to be against the law. As a black man growing up in the United States, the grandson of a slave, it was the first time in his life he felt he could walk around freely without experiencing racism. In fact, the named a mountain after him.
Despite the anti-communist and racist attacks by the government and by black "leaders," despite attacks by segments of the white working class, at Peekskill and elsewhere, he still maintained his principles defending unity of black and white, of communism and of the Soviet Union. He stood with others who were open communists, like Ben Davis, the first black communist councilman from New York City. He refused to back down in his support of communists when they were jailed by the government.
It was for all these reasons, and for his commitment to use his art to serve the working class, that during his lifetime Robeson was never promoted in black history month, why the ruling class buried his history. People who came to appreciate Paul Robeson came to appreciate communism as well.
This is why he was not only banned from traveling abroad (they feared his message) but from speaking in the U.S. as well. Interestingly enough, when I participated in an attack on the Ku Klux Klan recently in New York City, we were criticized for violating the Klan's right of "free speech." Yet while the police were mobilized to defend the Klan, they were also used to stop Robeson from speaking-which shows you how meaningless that concept is.
We should learn a very important principle from Robeson's life, one free of any ego thing, that fighting back against oppression is the best thing we can do with our lives. If we are not involved in fighting back, our lives are not worth that much. It is not enough to "get an education," and "get a better job." We must learn from Paul Robeson that we must become involved in the fight for the kind of world he was fighting for.
To all this, the audience of approximately 100 working-class students, mostly white college students and about 25 mostly black and Latin high school students were enthralled. They "lit up" and clapped when they heard about the action against the Klan in New York City. Afterwards many of them came up to talk and asked what they could read about Robeson. Three white professors confided that the fact that he was a communist was what they wanted to hear.
A black minister who grew up in Arkansas said he didn't know much about Robeson but given what he had just heard, Robeson had to have been a tremendous source of inspiration and pride and had to have been respected greatly by black people.
A letter received afterwards from the teacher who had invited us thanked us for "bringing this powerful message of commitment and courage through the example of Paul Robeson's remarkable life....I have heard nothing but praise from faculty and students for your presentation."
MAY DAY: `WHAT EVERYONE DOES COUNTS...'
NEW YORK, N.Y., March 27 -- May Day is the most important working class holiday of the year. It is the day when workers of the world unite and marshal our forces to express our aspirations and goals for the future. May Day is always the time when our Party has an influx of new members. May Day is born out of the class struggle and has always been led by communists. The Progressive Labor Party upholds that tradition.
In the past year there has been a noticeable upsurge in the class struggle in the U.S. A mass multi-racial protest against the flying of the Confederate flag over the South Carolina Statehouse. A militant, multi-racial strike against scabbing by dockworkers in that same state. A six-week strike by 19,000 SPEEA engineers against Boeing supported by large numbers of mechanics in the International Association of Machinists. Large, angry and combative protests against the KKK and racist police murders of four black men in the last 13 months in New York City. Multi-racial youth protests against fascist Proposition 21 in Los Angeles.
In some of these actions PLP has given political leadership based on the Party's past and on-going organizing among workers and students and inside mass organizations. It is significant that some number of workers and students, both members and friends of PLP, will come to May Day directly from thesre front lines of struggle. This development enables the Party to grow and deepen and spread communist political leadership in the mass movement.
THINK BIG--EVERYONE COUNTS
But our May Day mobilizing doesn't stop there. We have to look at the whole Party and its base. Everyone is important--every PLP member, less active members, former members. CHALLENGE readers and distributors. Regular May Day marchers and organizers. Families, close friends, not-so-close friends, families, contacts, acquaintances. Those who participated in recent strikes, walkouts and protests and those who sympathized. Those who can't or won't go to May Day but will contribute money so others can go.
Who can march on May Day? You can! Those who are PLP members or not. Those who agree with all of the Party's ideas and objectives and those who agree with some. Those who identify with particular fightbacks, against racist police terror, against exploitation in the factories, against Workfare and prison slave labor. Those in solidarity with the jailed UNAM strikers in Mexico, those for working class international solidarity, for workers power, to destroy racism, war and fascism. All march on May Day to feel the strength of the working class, to enjoy the comradeship of old and new friends on the buses, at the march and picnic that follows.
Who are May Day leaders? Anyone who wants to be! We lead the fight to mobilize May Day marchers, to explain the Party's ideas on the buses, to solicit new Party members and Challenge readers, to have a disciplined and secure march.
Sounds good! But May Day doesn't organize itself simply because we want it to. It requires detailed plans and hard work.
(In our next issue, we will outline the detailed, six-point plan to organize 600 May Day marchers from Upper Manhattan in NYC.)
POSTAL WORKERS MUST STAMP OUT BOSSES' PROFIT DRIVE
NEW YORK, NY March 28 -- The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has netted between hundreds of millions and over a billion dollars profit in each of the past five years. Where did this wealth come from? Why is "privatization" a more serious threat now than years ago?
During the past two weeks a PLP member, who is a candidate in the NY Metro Area Postal Union (NY-MAPU) election, focused on these questions while speaking to groups of workers in the swing (lunch) rooms of four large postal facilities in Manhattan.
Postal management wants postal workers to be grateful that we have a job, claiming we get "good" wages and benefits, etc. However, what little we get are not "gifts" from management. The simple truth--something not taught in school or in the media--is that every penny of postal revenue is earned by the labor of postal workers, not by management.
People pay 33cents to send a letter. Collectively, postal workers get the letter to its destination.
However, the money is "legally stolen" from us by postal management (they get the revenues). Postal workers get back only some of it in wages and benefits. The rest of the value our labor creates pays for operating expenses (gas for trucks, electricity, labels, etc.), bonuses for supervisors, new technology (machines which are used to eliminate jobs) and PROFITS. The same is true in all other companies. Most workers in the swing rooms nodded their heads in understanding this practical explanation of the "labor theory of value."
Although Congress has not yet privatized the USPS, partial privatization is already here in the form of "contracting out": ten Priority Mail centers, postage on the internet, small contract post offices, etc. With five straight years of huge profits, wealthy private corporations want a piece of the profit pie.
The new Postmaster General (PMG) William Henderson told mailing industry leaders at the National Postal Forum: "Cost cutting alone won't secure our future. We must create new business models...Call it deregulation, privatization or liberalization...." Can't be clearer than that.
Privatization puts profits into the bosses' hands. It doesn't help workers. The current mediocre salaries and benefits of postal workers will be dramatically reduced once private companies acquire more of the action using non-union labor, including many part-time workers. Fighting this threat is the responsibility of every worker.
Union Election Near
With the April 6 ballot deadline approaching, other election campaigning has focused on handing out "Candidates For Change" (CFC) leaflets. The PLP member has discussed many ideas contained in CHALLENGE with co-workers and with other members of the CFC slate who have been reading it.0
In the election campaign the PLP member has met several former co-workers with whom he has had little or no contact for over 20 years. After hugs & kisses, updates on grown children, sharing of memories, and talk of the union election, many of these old friends asked: "Are you still active with radical politics?" The answer was: "Yes. Would you like the latest copy of CHALLENGE?" Their answers? "Yes."
LA DINNER: TEN JOIN PLP...AND COUNTING
LOS ANGELES, March 25 -- Tonight over 80 enthusiastic youth and workers took part in a PLP May Day dinner to discuss and organize for the May Day march in San Francisco. "We aren't just fighting for ourselves. We are fighting for our parents and all working people who are suffering from fascist attacks," said a high school student who helped lead a walkout against Proposition 21 and police terror. Students from Washington and Manual Arts High Schools spoke proudly of their actions and leadership in these walkouts and their desire to build the May Day March.
A friend of Jason Rodriguez, who was murdered by the Montebello police, described how after the cop shot Jason, the whole Montebello police department conspired to keep this knowledge from his family for five days. Finally, relatives located Jason at a hospital 20 miles away. Jason's friend called on everyone to build the March on April 1st at the Rampart Police station and said we can't be passive in the face of these attacks.
Two communist poets read angry poems about the need to fight the bosses and to end racism and capitalism with communist revolution, building a society where we all share what we produce, without the cops' club and pistol in our faces.
Another speaker reported on the clash of cops and demonstrators in Brooklyn protesting the latest NYPD murder. The speaker said the bosses have a big problem: the very youth they're terrorizing are the ones they're relying on to defend their empire. These same youth and workers will be their gravediggers, especially when more youth go into the bosses' army and factories to fight to build PLP and lay the basis for the long-term fight for workers' power. Finally. a speaker asked all those who wanted to join PLP to raise their hands. Ten young organizers did just that!
There is still a lot of excitement about the school walkouts and the coming march on the Rampart police station. We're building a movement and what each one of us does counts--every CHALLENGE read and distributed, every discussion exposing capitalism, every walkout and protest against police terror that we're involved in--it all develops us as leaders of our class that will ultimately destroy this racist, capitalist system.
We need to more clearly lay bare the plans of the liberal rulers who are "exposing" the LAPD the better to control them for their own purposes. They want community policing, where the cops enjoy the support of community leaders in putting more youth in prison.
In order to combine theory with practice, we are having a series of classes on building the fight against liberal fascism, building May Day and the PLP--and then go out and do it!
`I've Seen'
I've seen the mighty blow of a united group of soldiers; the cops were surrounded and couldn't carry out their orders. The sign was ripped off. The pigs' head was cracked.
The ambulance took him away.
They took us downtown. The hat passed around We got bailed out the next day.
I've seen the idled gang of Local 433
bring the superintendent down to his knee.
I've seen angry youth fighting the state,
chanting in unison and burning the symbols of the culture they hate. I've seen campesinos for the first time read Marx, internal explosions ignited by strategic sparks. I've seen workers build a society, argue political economy, and feel truly free.
I've seen in struggle where people unite. I predict a sunrise.
In this darkness we must fight.
Capital will crumble as their skyscrapers fall.
Workers and peasants will control it all.
UNAM STRIKEBREAKERS CAN'T CLOSE SCHOOL FOR COMMUNISM
UNAM Strike Shows Need for a Mass PLP
Our Party was involved in the ten-month strike at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) from the beginning. We fought hard and made many deep friendships. We are learning from our strengths and weaknesses, drawing important lessons from this mass struggle.
A 1987 CHALLENGE article described another strike at UNAM. It exposed the strike leadership's reformism and pro-capitalist electoral line. It predicted these leaders would become a new electoral party to mislead masses of angry workers and students. That's exactly what happened. The PRD was born, the party that constantly attacked the militant strikers. Fighting for our ideas is a long-term proposition, which will win the respect and participation of the most serious class-conscious youth and workers.
Capitalist State Is The Enemy
The strikers challenged the capitalist state's control of the schools, demanding "scientific education for all." The occupied buildings were used to build this movement. The strikers ate in the cafeterias. The copy machines never stopped producing literature. Strikers used the classrooms and auditoriums for assemblies.
When the strikers refused to accept the rulers' proposals, the capitalists used their cops, courts and jails to re-establish control of the campuses. They arrested 1,000 students, our young comrades among them. Most have been released from jail. Some still face serious charges.
This exposed the whole fascist bureaucracy controlling UNAM, and unmasked the liberals and intellectuals who helped the authorities smash the strike. The Catholic Church and all the electoral parties were exposed as servants of capitalism. Thousands of students learned that capitalist education only meets the needs of the market. The needs of the working class will only be met when the workers' red army smashes the bosses' state power, abolishes private property, and seizes the factories, farms and schools, which rightfully belong to us.
Strikers Search For Alternative To Capitalism
"We're convinced that capitalism doesn't work. We don't know what to replace it with." That's how one student in a PLP study group summarized the feelings of thousands who see through the electoral parties, yet don't understand the need for a mass communist party to destroy capitalism.
We answered, "Destroy production for profit. Establish communist relations based on the needs of the working class." We tried to use the strike as a "school for communism." This means that the main measure of victory is winning strikers to "serve the working class" by joining PLP and the long-term fight for communism. We exposed "free market" capitalism (neo-liberalism) and nationalism as two sides of the same capitalist coin. We influenced many students and workers. Some joined the Party and study groups.
Many will become cynical, trapped in anarchism, or will join the guerillas and end up fighting for another set of bosses. Che Guevara was revived as a popular hero of the strike, while the fact was buried that the Communist Party had led the workers to power in Russia and China. We must continue to confront growing fascism with mass organizing.
Mexican Bosses Just As Much The Enemy As U.S. Bosses
The strike leadership and the majority of students think the fight was between two types of universities: one to serve the imperialists and the other the interests of Mexico. They believe this will be resolved with a Democratic Congress. They attack the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) as the only sources of the attacks on education, without showing that the capitalist system itself is responsible.
The rulers are dismantling UNAM because of the deepening crisis of overproduction and the sharpening rivalry between U.S. and European imperialists. Mexico is a major battlefield in this struggle for markets and cheap labor. The local capitalists as well as the imperialists are all responsible. Their competition is leading to fascism and war. Fascists like Burgoa and Carranca used Brigido Navarrete's goon squads to impose academic business-as-usual at the point of a gun.
The Working Class Is Crucial In The Fight For Communism
We need to build a mass communist-led worker-student alliance. The strikers tried to win the support of the electricians and other workers but mistakenly concentrated on the union leaders, not the rank and file. The pro-capitalist union leaders only pass resolutions. We need to spread communist politics directly to the workers.
PLP is rebuilding the international communist movement. This is not an easy task and requires a long-term outlook. CHALLENGE is crucial to this process, our main ideological weapon in the fight for the political leadership of the masses. We plan to write more for the paper and distribute thousands of copies in the coming weeks. Most important, we can have many more youth marching on May Day under the red flag of communist revolution.
PUTIN: HOT FOR A NEW COLD WAR
The military celebrated Putin's electoral victory "warning the world of Russian power by launching three nuclear missiles from submarines." (El País, March 28).
Putin's consolidation of power represents a victory for those Russian bosses out to revive the country as a superpower. Russia, with all its problems, still has the military power to challenge the U.S. The missile launching sent exactly that message.
Putin will establish a sort of "national-socialist" government (state capitalism/fascism). Guy Hermet, a French expert on Russia, was interviewed by Pagina12 (a Buenos Aires daily) and described what Putin will do: "Putin, in my opinion, will follow a `national-Bolshevik' line. This means that even though he is not a communist, even though the Zyuganov Party ["communist"] opposes him...there are certain similarities. Putin represents the desire to restore the power and dignity of Russia. You can clearly see this in the Chechenya war. Therefore, Putin will follow a different orientation than that of Yeltsin. Russia is entering a more nationalist stage....Putin doesn't have the image of a man who dismantled communism, like Yeltsin. He is a sort of symbol of reconciliation between the present and the past."
Stratfor, the Internet intelligence service associated with the Baker oil interests, more or less agrees with Hermet. Its March 27 bulletin says: "Western leaders appear befuddled over just who this man is, what he wants and what he is likely to do. Indeed, the curious notion that Putin is pro-Western has taken hold in some sectors. This is whistling past the graveyard. With the election now behind him, Russia's president is likely to grab hold of the economy by taking control of Russia's oligarchs. And he is equally likely to challenge the U.S. on its plans for a national missile defense. Such a Russian challenge will threaten to split America from its allies in Europe."
As we reported in last week's CHALLENGE, many Washington hawks, like Brzezinski (former President Carter's National Security Adviser) and current Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, are warning about a new Cold War, with Russia and China in mind as U.S. enemies (one reason for Clinton's India
visit was to use that country to counter China in Asia).
Even though bosses' mouthpieces like the Wall Street Journal report that "peace is breaking out" all over the world, the facts point otherwise. The Soviet communist leader Lenin wrote a century ago that capitalism and imperialism inevitably lead to war. It's still true.
There's no crystal ball to predict when "Cold war II" would become another world war, but that's the general direction. As Bertolt Brecht, the German communist poet-playwright, once said: "When the bosses talk peace, better get your helmet."
HOW FAR RIGHT (AND WRONG) CAN FRENCH `C.' P.
The "Communist" Party of France (PCF) just completed its 30th congress. In an effort to revive this once powerful organization, the PCF leadership turned more to the right than it already had been for several decades. Once one of the stronger parties in Western Europe, with 600,000 members in the 1980s, it has declined to about 200,000. Its electoral vote has fallen tremendously. This occurred not only because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also due to the PCF's past nationalist, anti-immigrant actions. Many of its voters have sided with the openly fascist and racist party led by J.M. LePen (a neo-Nazi) or have simply abandoned it altogether.
In the recent congress, the PCF "modernized" itself by embracing capitalism more openly, breaking totally with the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Meanwhile, outside the PCF congress near Marseilles, several dozens dissidents protested, carrying red flags and portraits of Lenin and chanting, "We are Communists and want to stay that way." But the PCF hasn't been communist for decades. It helped French President Charles DeGaulle crush the massive May 1968 general strike that threatened French capitalism in May 1968. Millions of workers and students paralyzed France. DeGaulle used the PCF, which was hated by the most militant workers and youth for years of betraying to their struggle, attacked the strikers. DeGaulle, fearing soldiers in the French army would join the strikers, also called on the West German army to help crush the strikers.
Real communists must forget about the PCF and begin the hard task of building a new revolutionary communist movement. It must be based on fighting all forms of capitalism and winning workers and youth to fight for a communist society, where production can then serve the needs of the working class and not that of a few bosses.
Ouvrier Rouge
LETTERS
PROTEST NYPD OCCUPATIION OF BRONX
LEAVE US ALONE
All around the Soundview area of the Bronx police are coming around in their patrol cars stopping anyone that looks "funny" to them. The cops in the 43rd precinct have been under a lot of fire lately. During the past year they have killed two unarmed people. One was an African immigrant named Amadou Diallo. He was known in his building as a peaceful man. One night he was gunned down in front of his building by plainclothes police. They fired 41 shots at him. When the people in Soundview heard about this shooting, we protested this police murder.
On February 18, the four cops who shot Amadou Diallo were found "not guilty" by a jury in Albany. That same week Malcolm Ferguson, a 23-year-old African-American, also unarmed, was gunned down on the second floor of his building by the police.
The cops were scared. When they killed this second unarmed man just three blocks away, there was another demonstration. The same night we took to the streets. This time we went all the way to the 43rd precinct. The police put up barricades and put on their riot gear.
I had the pleasure of being at this protest. It was very exhilarating. We made signs that said, "Shoot me, I have a wallet" and "come and get me, I'm a protester." The demonstration lasted about two hours. Now every time someone calls the police they come with two cars and a van full of cops.
Everyone is afraid to call the police because they're afraid they'll get beat up or killed! So the whole Soundview area continues to fight, wait and hope the police are made to pay for their crimes.
As the recent murder of Patrick Dorismond in midtown Manhattan demonstrates, this is not just the problem of a few "bad" policemen but a systemic problem with the entire racist criminal justice system. The policemen who killed Maynard Ferguson and Patrick Dorismond were Hispanic so simply recruiting more minority police officers is not the solution.
East Harlem HS student
BUILDING PLP AMID ELECTORAL CIRCUS
Building PLP in Midst of Electoral Circus
Elections are that part of capitalist democracy used to legitimize the power the bosses use to oppress the working class. The rulers use it as a tool to channel workers' anger into believing they change things choosing their next oppressor. Elections also serve to settle disputes among the different capitalist factions. When elections don't do the trick, the rulers of any country quickly turn to open dictatorship over workers and their enemies within the ruling class.
On May 16, elections will take place here in the Dominican Republic, among several bourgeois forces and revisionists (fake leftists). PLP members and friends met to discuss what to do in this electoral circus. We agreed it's not enough just to tell workers "don't vote" in the electoral farce. Hundreds of thousands of workers and youth are mobilized by the different electoral parties through mass rallies and other activities. We must use this opportunity to bring them our politics, using CHALLENGE, showing them the failure of the capitalist system and winning them to see PLP as the only alternative.
To accomplish that we must increase our efforts, particularly among young workers and teachers. Many of them are very disillusioned with elections, seeing that, once in power, the winning candidate always forgets his promises.
Our activities during this period will include a May Day march attacking the electoral circus as a fraud and calling on workers and youth to help us build a mass PLP. To organize for the march we will distribute several leaflets to workers in the free-trade zones and in several schools. We will also reproduce PLP's pamphlet on elections to discuss it at PLP dinners among comrades and friends in order to better understand the nature of the bosses' elections. Finally we will print 1,000 copies of a local CHALLENGE to bring our communist politics to workers.
PLP Leadership Collective, Dominican Republic,
LINK GIULIANI ATTACK ON CABBIES TO POLICE TERROR
Recently I participated in a dinner meeting of taxi drivers and families to organize for the year 2000. It was called by a taxi organization very well known in NYC. There were about 50 people present, including two I know from other PLP activities. We discussed the attack on taxi drivers by Mayor Giuliani and his police department; sexism and a health plan. As expected from a group led by phony "leftists," we were told we need to rely on liberal politicians and the in-justice system to solve our problems.
The participants were very angry at how cops treat taxi drivers and felt that something must be done to confront those attacks. Although the meeting's organizers said many things, they never made the connection between the police harassment of taxi drivers, the police killing workers and the racist nature of the system. I then brought up the issue of Amadou Diallo, the African worker killed by the NYPD only because he was black. I said we can't trust the justice system. As taxi drivers we have to show our anger at the system that allows these thing to happen. Then many people also came up with different ideas on what action we should take. One driver from Egypt said we should organize a taxi caravan protest to the site where Amadou was killed. Other drivers had other suggestions.
This forced the organizer to put it on the agenda for a meeting of the taxi coalition. However, I am meeting with some taxi drivers and we're planning an April caravan to protest police terror.
Red Driver
YOUTH SET FOR MAY DAY
On March 19, I attended a meeting about May Day with people from my high school in East Harlem, N.Y.
We found that the May Day march will be on May 6th in Washington D.C. and that the Progressive Labor Party, a revolutionary political party, sponsors the demonstration.
We watched a good video on last years' May Day march, discussed the issue of police brutality and thought about some ideas that we can use to raise money to get buses. We decided to do fundraisers such as bake sales, and have a dinner party. Some of us will ask friends to donate money.
May Day shows people all over the world that we all care about our rights and that we are all going to fight to get them. If you care about fighting for your rights, I think it is a good idea to hop on the bus to Washington on May 6th, 2000.
Ideal Student
LA YOUTH TALKS ABOUT MAY DAY MARCH IN SF, 1999
What motivated you to participate in last year's May Day March?
My friend was going and I was expecting to see public speakers that would catch my attention as regards to the ideas and actually learn more about communism.
What was your reaction as hundreds of marchers marched with red flags and communist banners?
I was surprised because of the type of government that we have. I did not know there where so many communists in this country. I was shocked because I saw a big group of communists.
What did you like most of the May Day March last year?
Some of the chants and some of the speeches.
How will you help make this year's May Day March a bigger march than ever?
Try to make more people come up to it and explain some of the ideas to them, teach people about what the march is for, and explain what we want to accomplish from this march. Organize people and give them an orientation before they leave to the march. Finally, what I want to tell people is to "think about it and if you're down for the struggle, then you should participate in the march because it's a good experience."
PRISON LABOR & CONFEDERATE FLAG
I was pleased to see the article on the struggle to remove the confederate flag in South Carolina, covering the January 8th racist pro-flag march and the 46,000-strong anti-racist demonstration in Charleston on January 17.
Four days later there was a pitched battle there between 600 cops and 600 black and white longshoremen. The cops were protecting 20 scabs trying to lower the living standards of the organized longshoremen. The stevedore companies are pushing the longshoremen toward slavery. The continuing battle between capital and labor is the real fight around this racist symbol of the confederate flag.
The 13th amendment did not abolish slavery; the slavemasters left themselves a grand loophole. Slavery is not "illegal" when it is used as a punishment for crime. In the South there were increased arrests of young black men around harvest time and they were contracted out to the growers to work in the fields and on the roads--thus the old "Chain Gangs."
The fight against racist slavery needs to continue right here in Stockton, Calif. The Northern California Women's Facility on East Arch Road plans to enslave 75 more women for the profit of Golden State Lumber Company of Petaluma, CA. According to the January 27th Stockton Record, this company proposes to spend up to $2 million to build a facility in that women's prison. The prison already has a joint venture contract with American Moulding and Millwork.
The prisons say they pay inmates the minimum wage. However after deducting federal and state taxes an inmate's paycheck is divided into five parts, of which she receives one-fifth. [For more information on this see article page????, and PLP's pamphlet on prison labor, Ed.]
The racist confederate flag must come down! Racist prison slavery must end!
A Stockton Comrade
ARE ALL COPS BAD?
Friends in Struggle:
Your pamphlet on Prison Labor is devastating and your documentation makes it irrefutable and unanswerable. And that latter fact induced me to subscribe to CHALLENGE. I hope that your newspaper also documents all its statements.
I read one statement that is most questionable. It said that ALL cops are bad-like the Ramparts rats here in L.A. Can you prove that?
Yours in struggle for a better world and yours for truth instead of exaggeration.
FG
CHALLENGE Comments: Thank you for your comments on the pamphlet. For proof that all cops serve and protect the racist rulers, see front page article and the editorial in this issue.
a href="#Electing Hillary Won’t Reform Racist NYPD">"ulers’ Racist Death Squads Strike Again: Electing Hillary Won’t Reform Racist NYPD
LA HS Youth Walk Out Against Racist LAPD, Prop 21
Editorial: Oil And Control Of Middle East Behind Rockefeller Aim To Split Iran From U.S. Rivals
Washington War Hawks Launch New Cold War
Auto Workers In A Fighting Mood
Growing Class Unity Makes Government End Boeing Strikel
Workers Lose, Rulers/FMLN Win in Electoral Farce
Fascism: a Monster with Many Faces
a href="#Liberals Won’t End LAPD Terror">"iberals Won’t End LAPD Terror
Movie Review: Life Is Not So Rosy Under Capitalism
Rulers Do Guarantee You a Job: In Jail!
LETTERS
Are NYPD Cops Civil Rights Workers?
What do we do about all this police brutality and killing of innocent workers?
Bradley Campaign Feared Grass Roots
a href="#‘Board the Revolution Bus’">‘B"ard the Revolution Bus’
The Struggle Continues At Lasalle Steel
a href="#‘Boom’: A Leaky Boat in Penn. Coalfields">‘B"om’: A Leaky Boat in Penn. Coalfields
Rulers’ Racist Death Squads Strike Again
a name="Electing Hillary Won’t Reform Racist NYPD">">"lecting Hillary Won’t Reform Racist NYPD
BROOKLYN, N.Y., March 20 — "We must shut this city down, block by block, union by union. We must attack all the politicians, including the Clinton hypocrites."
So spoke an angry member of the Haitian community at a neighborhood meeting this past weekend, called to organize protests against the latest NYPD murder of a black man. Patrick Dorismond, a young Haitian worker, was gunned down near his workplace in Manhattan last Thursday.
Patrick and a friend were hailing a cab when undercover cops approached him. One of them, not identifying himself as a cop, asked if he had any drugs to sell. Indignant, Patrick told him "No!" in no uncertain terms. The cop persisted anyway. Patrick was angered by the "dealer’s" insistence. When Patrick tried to wave him off, the cop punched him. Patrick defended himself, and the next thing his friend saw was Patrick, shot by one of the cops, lying on the street in pool of blood, gasping for air. He died soon after.
Patrick Dorismond may be the first person killed for saying "No" to drugs! Fascism in New York City in the year 2000 has become an innocent black man hailing a cab and being murdered for refusing a drug offer from a cop.
Immediately, Mayor Giuliani and his puppet police commissioner Safir—after warning the public "not to rush to judgement"—proceeded to do exactly that. They tried to paint Patrick as some "violent criminal" with a "record," as if that, even if true, justified murdering him in cold blood!
It turned out that Patrick had been issued summonses for "disorderly conduct." But it also turned out that the cop Ghouliani praised as a "hero"—Anthony Vasquez—had drawn his gun in a bar fight in 1997, had shot a neighbor’s dog and had domestic abuse complaints lodged against him. So much for "reforming" the NYPD by hiring more black and Latin cops.
This is the third innocent black man gunned down by the racist NYPD in the last 13 months, going back to the slaying of Amadou Diallo in February 1999, and the second in the last two weeks.
This weekend, a large and very militant demonstration was held in front of Patrick's workplace and was attended by many rank-and-file community groups. The protesters tore down barricades and the police were asked not to "escort" the marchers. While politicians and misleaders tried to run the show, calling for a federal investigation, the mood of the protesters was clearly different. People were very receptive to Progressive Labor Party literature and CHALLENGE and some speakers talked about the need to close down Wall Street and the city's business districts.
The political leadership of the anti-police brutality movement, however, is part of the problem. The demands put forward by Sharpton and others include voting for Hillary Clinton and defeating Giuliani for Senator, as well as calling for federal intervention against the NYPD. They are doing this because many workers see the system for what it is, a murderously racist one, especially after the verdict that cleared the killer cops of murdering Diallo. It is the Clinton ruling class that has blood on its hands—from paying for 100,000 additional cops on the streets to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq to tens of thousands in Kosovo. Calling on them to keep their storm troopers in check is ludicrous.
It is the capitalist system that trains the cops to shoot to kill, especially in black and Latin neighborhoods. It is an illusion to think that getting rid of Giuliani will solve the problem. In fact, the intensive growth of the police and "community policing" started under the administration of Dinkins, a black Mayor. Hillary Clinton and the liberal Democrats want to "reform" the NYPD when they know that the role of the cops under their profit system is to control working-class resistance to that system and to its murderous police.
Yesterday, PLP members and friends attended a community meeting and put forward the need to link high school student walkouts to other planned protests. High school teachers and students are planning a weekend of protest, including participating in the funeral demonstration on Saturday and a town hall meeting on Sunday. Within our schools, we are calling for teach-ins and speak-outs, wearing black armbands and organizing a larger citywide protest that would close all the schools for a day. PLP members in the teachers union are raising a resolution calling for job actions and work stoppages.
This year, with the courage and political commitment of so many new members, both teachers and students, to draw on, PLP’s May Day march in Washington, D.C., May 6, looks very bright indeed! It is only communist revolution, the clarion call of May Day, that can bury the profit system which spawns these racist police murderers.
LA HS Youth Walk Out Against Racist LAPD, Prop 21
LOS ANGELES, March 22--Over 500 angry black and Latin students rallied and walked out of Manual Arts High School today against Proposition 21 and racist police terror. Chanting "Governor Davis, tell the truth, Prop 21 is a war on Youth!; Schools, yes, Jails no, Prop 21 has got to go!; Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Police Terror has got to go!" they marched around the school and through this South Central LA neighborhood, drawing a great response from passersby. Students marched to a freeway overpass and held up their signs and banners. They made up many other chants like "You'all didn't need to kill Margaret Mitchell," and "Take our youth out of jail or you racist cops are gonna rot in hell!"
The students who organized the walkout wanted to march to the police station, but not everyone agreed. Instead they returned to school to have a brief open forum in the auditorium. Several students said this fight must continue. Another student invited everyone students to march on the Rampart Police Station on Saturday, April 1st and to come to the May Day dinner this Saturday and the May Day march in San Francisco. The Black Student Union sponsor, one of several who march participants said he believed in democracy and that the students who marched were exercising their democratic rights. He also said he had nothing against students reading CHALLENGE. He just wanted to make sure they saw both sides. He also encouraged students to demonstrate on April 1st.
A teacher in Progressive Labor Party said that students all over the world have been part of the revolutionary struggle, and to really end racism and police terror we need communist revolution. She invited everyone to March on May Day.
Editorial:
Oil And Control Of Middle East Behind Rockefeller Aim To Split Iran From U.S. Rivals
A year ago, Clinton was bombing Yugoslavia back to the Stone Age. Now he’s launching a "peace" initiative in Iran. Workers shouldn’t be fooled by it. Madeline Albright’s "caviar-and-pistachio" diplomacy overtures to Teheran’s holy rollers are just a tactic in a long-range strategy to prevent U.S. imperialism’s rivals from uniting as one bloc. More war is the only logical outcome of this wheeling and dealing.
For over 50 years Iran has played a key role in U.S. bosses’ plans. Iranian oil is a rich prize in itself. But Iran holds further strategic interest for every imperialist who wants to influence events in the Middle East. During the Cold War, it was crucial to the U.S. anti-communist strategy of containing the old Soviet Union. In 1953, the CIA engineered the overthrow of an insufficiently pro-U.S. Iranian government and replaced it with the fascist Shah, who served Washington well for nearly 30 years. During this period, Israel and Iran operated as U.S. client states, forming a pincer to safeguard Rockefeller interests in the western and eastern flanks of the Middle East.
But this couldn’t last. The Shah made a lot of internal enemies and found himself bounced by an equally fascist gang of Islamic fundamentalist bosses with profit interests of their own. Coupled with their defeat in Vietnam, the loss of Iran was one of U.S. rulers’ worst post-World War II fiascoes. They long to reverse it. Their cynical "dual containment" strategy of helping Iranian and Iraqi bosses fight wars with each other during the Reagan-Bush years helped kill over a million young workers in both countries but failed to unseat the anti-U.S. governments there.
Now the U.S. imperialists think they have a chance in Iran. With a weak economy and millions of youth entering the workforce, Iran’s bosses want to attract foreign investment. Washington’s policymakers also figure they can take advantage of splits within the Iranian ruling class.
But none of this maneuvering will lead to peace. Despite the reasons they may have to flirt temporarily with each other, Iranian and U.S. bosses have divergent interests. The Iranians want to become the Middle East’s dominant power. U.S. imperialists don’t want to share power with any of that region’s bosses. This isn’t a recipe for a long, happy marriage. Furthermore, current policy in Washington seems to be in the hands of "hawks," who view war preparations as the only way to maintain U.S. supremacy. They are led by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former Carter Administration National Security Advisor with a résumé that includes rivers of workers’ blood spilled in Vietnam.
Today, Brzezinski holds no official post but his strategic thinking, as spelled out in a 1997 book called The Grand Chessboard, is an almost word-for-word prescription for Clinton-Gore’s foreign policy. Brzezinski, who was Madeline Albright’s Ph.D thesis advisor at Columbia, also has close ties to other hawkish Clinton-Gore foreign policy gurus, like Richard Holbrooke and Strobe Talbot.
As CHALLENGE has pointed out frequently in the last several years, the goal of the U.S. bosses’ main wing, for whom Brzezinski speaks, is, in his own words, to "maintain global primacy." This implies a classic "divide-and-rule" strategy geared toward preventing "the emergence of a hostile coalition." Brzesinski’s primary fears are a "grand coalition of Russia, China and, perhaps, Iran," and "either German-Russian collusion or a Franco-Russian alliance."
Russian rulers want Iran on their side, as they prepare to restore their own fragmented empire. They and the Iranians have inked a ten-year "peace and friendship" treaty. In 1995, they cemented this love-making with a contract to have the Russians rebuild Iranian nuclear reactors. Russian and Iran rulers have common interests regarding the exploitation and transport of Caspian energy. Their plans conflict with U.S. bosses’ scenarios. French oil companies are also involved with the Russians in Iran. France’s Total, now merged with Elf, signed a 1997 deal with the Russian Gazprom and Malaysian Petras to develop Iran’s huge South Pars gas field.
Until now, the U.S. policy of boycotting Iran has only helped the Russians and French at Exxon-Mobil’s expense. So the Clinton-Gore diplomatic sweet-talk is aimed in part at reversing a profit drain. But the goal is also to nip the Russia-France-Iran alliance in the bud. A further goal is to neutralize the Iranians while U.S. imperialism gears for another war against Iraq. The Russians and French also have major contracts for cheap Iraqi oil. U.S. imperialism can’t tolerate this trend. The U.S. ruling class has defined unseating Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad as priorities for the next presidential administration, regardless of who wins the Gore-Bush beauty pageant.
When U.S. rulers go to war, as they did in 1991 against Iraq and again in 1999 against Yugoslavia, the result is only more war. When they pretend to make peace, as they are now doing in Iran, the result will also be calculated in workers’ blood. This is the nature of capitalism.
Brzezinski and the government hawks he advises plan for wars not because of some personal or mental flaw, but rather because the profit system inevitably produces war to protect and maximize their profits. "Caviar-and-pistachio" diplomacy will soon turn into gunboat diplomacy.
As we build for May Day 2000’s mass marches, our Party will continue to expose the rulers’ true intentions behind the lies about "peace." And we will continue trying to sharpen the class struggle with our ideas in the vanguard. This is the best way for workers, soldiers and students to learn that nothing short of communist revolution can get this deadly monkey off the collective back of our class.
Washington War Hawks Launch New Cold War
Clinton’s diplomatic maneuvering over Iran must be viewed as part of a much larger strategic gamble by U.S. imperialism. The Brzezinski hawks, who have the upper hand in the bosses’ foreign policy debates, consider "Eurasia" the main area the U.S. must continue to control in its drive to remain top dog. Iran is obviously an important piece of the puzzle.
But the bigger question concerns NATO. When the old Soviet Union collapsed, a split arose within the U.S. Establishment over the approach it should take toward Russia. The "doves" wanted to reduce tensions with Russia and bring it into the Western market economy. They advised against expanding NATO to include former Soviet client states. The "hawks," led from the sides by Brzezinski and directly by Albright, Holbrooke, Talbott and Anthony Lake, wanted to kick Russian bosses while they were down. They argued for the "fast track" expansion of NATO.
The hawks won out. NATO now includes Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. No less an authority than George Kennan, the main architect of U.S. Cold War foreign policy, called this decision "the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era" (New York Times, 2/5/97).
Communists don’t believe that imperialist wars begin because of "errors" by bosses’ policymakers. War is part of capitalism. But every consequence predicted by Kennan has come true so far. He warned of a rise in "nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion." The rise to power of Putin, the war in Chechnya, and the Russian Duma’s refusal to ratify the START II nuclear agreements confirm this estimate. All these developments are direct responses to the Clinton/NATO 1999 air war over Yugoslavia, which aimed directly at boxing in Russian imperialism. Putin & Co. are ruthlessly suppressing the Chechen nationalists to make the point that NATO expansion will not succeed in breaking up Russia.
In other words, less than ten years after the so-called "New World Order," the Brzezinski "doctrine" has launched a new Cold War. But imperialist wars don’t stay "cold" for long. Unlike the old Cold War, which allowed anti-communist unity to exist among the U.S. and its European capitalist rivals, this one is all about inter-imperialist rivalry. As the Kosovo war proved, NATO isn’t much of an alliance. The Europeans have indicated that they intend to go their own way, independently of the U.S. So the Brzezinski "hawk" position is likely to produce the very anti-U.S. coalitions it identifies as the main danger to prevent. Once again, capitalism produces nothing but instability and war.
A Look Inside A PLP Auto Club
(Despite all the hoopla about the "hi-tech" economy, the bosses understand that manufacturing workers, especially those in basic industries—auto, steel, electrical, etc.—are the foundation stones of capitalism. They add the real value in production, without which the bosses’ system could not exist. They also are the source of all armaments, without which imperialists could not wage war. No wonder the bosses’ fear of communists is greatest among basic industrial workers. As the following article shows, PLP is being built in the "belly of the beast.")
The Party members are mass leaders in this auto assembly plant of thousands. They are leaders on and off the job, and have learned from each other and from their collective experience. One has taught the other about how to lead the workers in class struggle. In turn, the "teacher" has learned the importance of starting every day reading the papers so he can talk to workers about current events and open up possibilities for raising the Party's ideas. He feels he's making progress with one worker.
The comrades have been a major obstacle to the bosses and union hacks. One worker says we need to be more aggressive in putting forward the Party and asks whether we should also be more aggressive in the union. Workers want us to lead. He's concerned that if we don't fight to lead the union, workers will think we're not serious. But he's also worried that leading the union will distract us from Party-building, our main task and the toughest of them all. He knows that the bosses are going to keep attacking, with job cuts and increased productivity, and that "the union can't deliver." He's worried that if we become union leaders and can't stop the attacks, the workers will look at us as "sellouts, just like the rest."
One comrade meets with 8-10 workers on and off the job. His brother and their friend, both new Party members, do the same. He had his wife's family over to the house for dinner, and told them all about PLP, May Day and the need for communist revolution. At work he thinks he's too confrontational with the bosses, and not political enough with the workers.
The club leader says we need to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE through hand-to-hand sales and networks that aren't visible to the company or the union. Another agrees, saying we must open up to more workers. We need to be less fearful and have more confidence in the workers. A third talks about a worker who came and asked him for CHALLENGE. He didn't have any with him at the time, so he carried one in his jacket for a week, looking for him. He distributes most of his CHALLENGES off the job. Inside the plant he finds it very difficult.
One way to make CHALLENGE more central to our organizing, is to write for it more. "That's right," says a comrade. "We have to write more, and learn to write. We have to become complete leaders."
We are taking the long-term view for building the Party and making revolution. We aren't looking for get-rich-quick schemes. Given the tremendous defeat of the old communist movement, the very presence of the Party inside this factory is a significant development. We have worked very hard to get to our current very modest level. We will need more hands, working harder, to advance. But the Party collective is internally stronger than ever, and we're ready to advance.
Auto Workers In A Fighting Mood
"We're living in a crisis," said the boss. "WE’RE not in crisis, YOU are!" answered a worker. This was the scene two weeks ago, at a series of special training sessions in our factory. The boss said, "People are our main concern. We're very concerned about your safety and security." Then he explained why we have to be responsible for production, repairs, cleaning our areas and keeping them safe.
He pointed to a world map, locating all the auto factories. He explained the crisis of overproduction in the auto industry, and how factories were being closed to reduce capacity. He said that over the past ten years, bigger auto companies have gobbled up smaller ones. In the future, only six will survive. "This is the world," he said. "If you want to survive, you have to be one of those six."
The boss complained about poor quality and low production in one department. Workers said, "You always talk about making improvements but it never happens. You're looking to blame us, not solve the problem." Many workers were laughing at the boss. He asked one worker, "You seem very happy. What's you're name?" He gave the name of his favorite baseball player.
The boss said, "Everyone has the responsibility to improve production and quality to survive." He never said the company was in danger, but he threatened our plant. "Another factory builds the same cars as you do. If you don't improve, you'll be on the streets."
A worker responded, "The main trouble with the dashboards is that you contracted out the work to pay low wages. That's the problem. Another fact: from their desks the Engineering Department is planning how to cut back on workers. They don't know what it’s like on the shop floor. You want one worker to do the work of three, in three minutes. Put more workers there." He gave other examples. Then he said, "You talk about safety, but you speed up the line. You talk about quality, but what you really mean is more production. You show us a tape of how Japanese workers produce high quality cars, but we don't have time to go to the bathroom. It's your responsibility, not ours."
At first there was silence. Then the workers let loose with a barrage of complaints, turning the meeting into an attack on the boss. The big boss called in various supervisors to take the heat. He then told the workers to "read up" on how to improve, and ended the meeting.
The next day there was a safety meeting. The boss went on and on about their "concern" for us. Five months ago, an electrician was killed and another lost both legs in an "accident." A worker said, "You're the expert. What happened?" He abruptly ended the meeting. The workers left grumbling, "They have no answers!"
In another department, the workforce has shrunk from 500 to 200 over the past two years.
The bosses are trying to institute the "team concept," to increase productivity. The supervisor tried to lure one worker into being the "team leader." He yelled, "I told you, I don't want to participate!" When he tried to quietly apply more pressure, the worker yelled even louder, "I told you, I don't want to participate!!" Another worker said, "You complain about this department. But you got rid of half the workers and increased the workload. We don't want any part of it!"
The boss is right. The increased competition between the bosses will lead to more plant closings and massive unemployment from Korea to Brazil to Detroit. Today they destroy the factories. Next they will destroy the workers. But the workers are also right. The bosses "have no answers," to increased exploitation and oppression, to fascism and war. We are leading more struggles, but we must increase the regular readership of CHALLENGE. We look forward to a successful May Day and have confidence that we can win the political leadership of the workers.
One Year After The Ford Blast
DEARBORN, MI, March 16 — On February 1, 1999, the No. 6 boiler at the Ford Rouge power plant exploded. Six Ford workers were killed and dozens of others injured in the deadliest explosion in the history of the U.S. auto industry. Last year Ford pocketed $7.2 billion, the highest profits ever recorded by an auto company. Three of the six men killed had filed health and safety grievances, including pipe fitter John Arseneau, who cited leaking valves on Boiler No. 6.
On the first anniversary of the explosion, workers at Ford and Rouge Steel held two minutes of silence for their murdered comrades. Hundreds of workers attended a memorial held at the union hall, only to hear UAW Local 600 President Jerry Sullivan join Ford CEO Jack Nasser to claim this was an "unavoidable accident." In reality, Ford bosses knew of the potential for disaster, but decided not to spend the money to improve safety. UAW officials ignored safety grievances filed by powerhouse workers complaining of dangerous equipment.
The Detroit News (1/28) reported that Ford and Rouge Steel rejected the advice of independent auditors over a 12-year period to install new safety equipment, including replacing the boiler controls at a cost of $10.2 million. A Ford memo warned: "Once the boilers are upgraded, the 'grandfather clause' will no longer be applicable and all present safety standards will have to be met." In other words, if it upgraded the boilers, Ford would have had to spend tens of millions of dollars improving safety equipment throughout the plant. Powerhouse workers also pointed to the inches-thick coal dust that coated beams, ledges and machinery, the result of years of cutbacks in the number of cleaners. This coal dust caused a large secondary explosion and fireball.
Ford agreed to pay a $7 million settlement. In exchange, they admit no fault and avoid a criminal investigation. The UAW got more than $1 million hush money to set up a Ford-UAW scholarship fund. Over the past 20 years, the UAW has helped Ford eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, shut scores of plants and increase productivity in their relentless drive for maximum profits. Uniting with "our" bosses to "beat the competition," is building increased fascism at work, and leading workers to war. PLP is uniting industrial workers of the world in the struggle for communist revolution.
Growing Class Unity Makes Government End Boeing Strikel
SEATTLE, WA, March 20 — Today, the union of Boeing engineers and technical workers (SPEEA) ended the largest ever white-collar strike against a U.S. corporation. The company sweetened the pie by eliminating medical cutbacks, offering a higher wage increase and giving some modest bonuses over the next year. Seventy percent of the workers voted to accept the deal, thus ending the 40-day walkout by 19,000 engineers and technicians.
Large numbers of strikers—even some disheartened souls who eventually voted to accept—thought the company was "on the ropes" and accused union misleaders of "selling them short."
"Joe Weber, a technical worker for 21 years, said SPEEA leaders rushed the balloting to prey on the financial hardships workers and their families were enduring," reported the Seattle Times (3/20).
IAM Leaders Tried To Isolate Strikers
In reality, Joe and his fellow strikers faced even more formidable enemies than the SPEEA leadership. Despite publicly supporting the strike, the leadership of the largest union at Boeing, the International Association of Machinists (IAM), did everything it its power to isolate the strikers. Hundreds of Machinists, either organized by our Party or on their own, joined the strikers on the picket line. Dozens of these activists got Local C to pass a resolution for a "Day of Solidarity." When it came time for the District Council—the governing body of the four Locals in the Puget Sound region—to pick a day, the hacks refused to even allow a vote. They adjourned the meeting before the resolution could be discussed.
IAM chief Thomas Buffenbarger brags that he called Boeing officials to stress that the company’s most powerful union "stood firmly behind the strikers." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3/18) More likely, he stood firmly gripping a knife behind the backs of the strikers. We Boeing workers will judge the union leadership by what they DID, not by what they said. In this case, public platitudes only hid secret agendas.
The Power Of The State Forced The Deal
The treachery of the IAM leadership stems from the threat this strike posed specifically to a new military aircraft, the Joint Strike Fighter, and to Boeing generally in its competition with the European Airbus. The strike—and, to some extent, our Party’s influence among sections of workers—raised the specter of a Boeing workforce that understood the meaning of class. "There was definitely a class division," Martin Banel, a 21-year Boeing veteran engineer, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "We are all workers now."
The ruling class could not tolerate these developments. "This thing was about to escalate," warned Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. Williams Dickens, a senior fellow at the Rockefeller-run Brookings Institution, was also raising alarms, saying this "new-found solidarity at Boeing and elsewhere could be a harbinger" of the future. These bosses’ top think-tanks are less than pleased with this increase in white-collar worker class consciousness.
The ruling class, the same set of Old Money financiers and industrialists that sit on the Boeing Board, used the power of their state to force a deal. Richard Barnes, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, convened a secret meeting in Washington, D.C., last week. Present were Boeing’s chief negotiator, himself the past director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, other company and union officials and—you guessed it—Trumka. He "played a key role in brokering the agreement in Washington, D.C." according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Just two weeks ago, Trumka gave a seemingly militant speech to SPEEA strikers concluding with praise for the virtues of partnership. The new contract creates a joint "Leadership Council" to "promote partnership." Boeing CEO Phil Condit and Paul Almeida, president of SPEEA’s parent, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, will co-chair the panel. "We need to mend the disconnect that has occurred between the workers and the leaders at Boeing," said Almeida. In other words, we’ve got to erase this new-found class consciousness and replace it with loyalty to the bosses.
Smash The Bosses’ State; Build The Party
The bosses’ schools and press love to go on about how the State—including the government, its laws and agencies—is neutral. In fact, the State is the key organ of the bosses’ control. The law, the Federal Mediation Service and even the AFL-CIO are all used to force the will of a small clique of capitalists on the vast majority of workers.
Make no mistake about it, our class cannot be victorious until we smash the bosses’ state. The AFL-CIO spreads the illusion we can elect a government that can serve the interests of workers, while its leaders sabotage class struggle. We must smash these secret meetings and secret agendas that thwart the will of the working class.
Instead of this impotent labor "movement," with its reliance on electing one or another of the bosses’ servants, we need a general staff to organize and lead the assault on the bosses’ state. We need a revolutionary communist Party. The real victory for Joe and his fellow strikers will be the growth of the Progressive Labor Party, the general staff of the working class.
Our Party aims to replace the bosses’ state, its laws and agencies, with the rule of the working class, communism. This is a long, hard road to travel, but it is the only road to victory for our class. Join us this May Day as we continue the long march to workers’ power.
Workers Lose, Rulers/FMLN Win in Electoral Farce
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, March 13 — "Elections? No, thanks!", said a 25-year-old worker, Margarita Guerrero. "I’m fed up with the same thing," said Luis Aguilar who preferred to go to the beach with his family. This was the principal message workers sent the political parties. The indifference and incredulity of the working class toward politicians competing in the March 12 elections was more than obvious.
Approximately 70% of the 3.2 million people who are eligible to vote did not go to the polls. Workers saw through this electoral show, sponsored by the imperialists of Europe and the U.S. Basically both imperialist groups sponsor their own set of politicians to vie for control of the country.
The winners in the elections were the "born-again" capitalists of the former guerrilla group FMLN. It is now claiming to be the only Latin American "left-wing" force with a "legislative majority." It now praises bourgeois democracy to the skies.
But bourgeois democracy is nothing but one face of the dictatorship of the ruling class. The FMLN will only be useful to the bosses and the imperialists (whether from Europe or the U.S.) as long as it keeps workers under control.
It is up to workers, and we in PLP, to make sure that the FMLN and the various competing bosses don’t get away with their plans to control us to serve their interests. Workers did well by not going to the polls, but that is not enough. We cannot go to the beach and think that this is of no interest to us. We must take action by organizing ourselves. Join us in the PLP this May Day and take a step towards spoiling the rulers’ plans by marching for communism, the only solution.
Fascism: a Monster with Many Faces
What do you think when you see the word fascism? Jack-booted thugs leading helpless victims to their deaths in concentration camps? Yes, but it’s also: (1) a method used by capitalism to maintain power when threatened by revolution, (2) an intensification of the capitalist dictatorship (and racist terror), (3) a limitation and repression of the working class struggle and an increase in class collaboration, (4) a decline of bourgeois democracy, (5) a massive merging of industry and finance, and (6) the concentration of each national ruling class into one group that dominates all internal rivals, enabling them to "solve" any problems by uniting their own class to go to war against competing ruling classes. ("Fascism and Social Revolution," by R. Palme Dutte.)
Fascism is also a process of development, an intensification of the exploitation workers face all the time under capitalism and an ideology justifying the attack on the working class, as well as radical changes in laws and practices institutionalizing these changes.
In the 1930s for example, as fascism grew in Germany, "real net wage rates…declined by 13% during a period of rapidly increasing business activity-a unique departure from conditions and trends as observed throughout the whole history of capitalism!" (From "Germany, Economic and Labor Conditions Under Fascism," by Jurgen Kuyczynski.)
Today, in the U.S., "One can argue about the exact percentages, but something on the order of 80% of the workforce is now experiencing falling real wages.…At the same time, real per capita gross domestic product has risen by a third.…Probably no country has ever had as large a shift in the distribution of earnings without having gone through a revolution or losing a major war." ("Reclaiming America," by Lester Thurow.) Between 1978-80 and 1996-98, the poorest 20% lost $900 in average yearly real dollar income…while the richest 20% gained $34,370 (NY Times 1/19).
In NYC alone, the racist Clinton/Gingrich welfare "reform" law forced 500,000 people off public assistance rolls while 40,000 others are forced to work for nothing more than their pitifully small welfare allotments replacing 20,000 unionized city workers. Throughout the U.S., hundreds of thousands of prison laborers produce everything from clothing, eyewear, furniture, aircraft parts, computer circuit boards to mattresses for as little as 20 cents a day.
Meanwhile tens of thousands of formerly union-wage manufacturing jobs, in aerospace, auto, etc., have been offloaded to subcontractors paying a fraction of union-wage rates. For the millions of workers affected by these policies, fascism is here.
The bosses want and need to build fascism. That doesn’t mean workers and PLP, must sit back and just watch. The Italian Communist Party, in its fight against fascism, had a saying: "they killed and killed and killed us until we grew to where there were two million of us."
PLP cut its teeth in the fight against fascism. In the 1960s, PLP founders were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as part of the latter’s anti-communist witchhunt. PLP boldly turned the hearings into an indictment of racist, warmongering U.S. imperialism, forcing HUAC to end the hearings and eventually disband. In the 1970s, PLP led tens of thousands of anti-racists in stomping the KKK wherever it showed up. Similarly, PLP and its anti-racist supporters crushed ROAR, the violent anti-busing movement in Boston. We also fought the ideologues of racism, from Harvard’s Herrnstein in the 1960s to Kelling in Rutgers today, the key to the rulers winning workers to support fascism.
As slave labor Workfare, prison labor and subcontracting developed, PLP organized the fight against them within unions, churches and other mass organizations. Fighting the bosses’ ideas within these groups enables us to lead workers against these fascist developments.
In fighting against "sanctioning" (removing otherwise eligible people from welfare rolls), against the dumping of the homeless out of shelters back to the streets, or helping welfare recipients who run afoul of some bureaucratic rule, we are combating the rise of fascist ideology.
When we bring issues like racist police murders into unions, churches and other organizations we are leading a struggle over how society as a whole is run and for whom.
Communism is the solution! If we dare to struggle, we will win!
a name="Liberals Won’t End LAPD Terror">">"iberals Won’t End LAPD Terror
LOS ANGELES, March 15 — Over 200 spirited protestors gathered downtown as part of an International Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. We assembled at the Civic Center’s Criminal Courts Building and marched one block to rally at LAPD Parker Center. People came from as far as Riverside and San Diego to demand an end to racist police murders. Chants of "No justice, no peace! No racist police" were greeted with honks of approval from passing cars. Absolutely no taunts or jeers were heard except from one professional LAPD agent-provocateur who went through the crowd trying to start arguments.
Police wore black Nazi-style helmets and used batons to knock back anyone who merely stepped onto the grass in front of the building, but we refused to be intimidated by any more police violence.
Many organizations were represented but few working-class people were there. The poorly-publicized rally happened at rush hour on a Wednesday. Clearly the people who led this event did not organize the poor. Working-class Californians who are the ones being harassed, arrested and murdered by the police. The reformers would rather appeal to the Mayor than to workers.
Their protests are not much different than the scandal-raking of the TV stations and big business newspapers. They call for a civilian review board and "community control of the police." Police violence won't be ended this way. The cops’ job is to control and terrorize workers, especially black and Latin workers and youth, in order to continue to exploit all workers, pay low wages and keep power in the hands of the bosses.
In addition, as in the case of the Rampart cops, the police push gangs and encourage gang violence because they know that youth rebel against this racist system and, from South Africa to Nicaragua, have been in the forefront of anti-racist mass struggles. They would rather have youth join gangs and fight each other for drug profits and turf than unite into a force for revolution. Then they have an excuse to pass laws like Proposition 21 and put more youth in prison.
The best part of this rally was that several of the demonstrators who are friends of PLP members and who came to protest cop terror helped PLP members distribute CHALLENGE and leaflets which invited people to May Day. They gladly carried a sign that blamed D.A. Garcetti, Police Chief Parks, Mayor Riordan, the cops, the judges and capitalism for police terror and racist jailings.
Police terror and corruption won't be ended without overthrowing the government and its police departments. To stop police violence forever, join the PLP and organize the long-term fight for workers' revolution!
MOVIE REVIEW
Life Is Not So Rosy Under Capitalism
American Beauty is one of the rare cases where I would recommend a movie nominated for several Oscars.
As a city dweller, I am partially biased against suburbia, but that’s not the reason I liked this movie. Although it’s supposed to be an exposé of life in the "burbs," mainly it lays bare the alienation, consumerism and dysfunctional families under modern capitalism.
It’s true that not all families in suburbia are "dysfunctional" like Lester (Kevin Spacey), his wife (Annette Benning) and their teenage daughter, but suburban conditions don’t make family life any easier. Most workers are forced to work long hours just to make ends meet. But others, like those portrayed in the movie, work long hours to afford all the goodies capitalism says they need to "succeed." This, plus the long commute to work and the general lack of any real meaning in their lives except to consume more, are the norms of life under capitalism for tens of millions. This film follows in the footsteps of recent films like Happiness and The Ice Storm in which the families depicted have achieved the "American Dream" and find it’s really a nightmare.
The scene I liked best showed Lester trying to make love to his wife, after years without any. She stops him, worried about spilling beer on an expensive Italian couch. He responds, "It’s just a couch."
Most of the characters in the movie are pretty repugnant. Even more screwed up are the new neighbors. The retired Marine colonel, trying to use military discipline to free his son from all the "filth," turns out to be a Nazi and a repressed homosexual. His son is a drug dealer and his wife resembles a zombie, abused by the colonel, something not uncommon among military families. Maybe the moviemaker is trying to attack the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy of the military towards gays. The only "normal couple" in the movie is a gay doctor and lawyer.
Lester, the movie’s "good character," redeems himself at the end when he refuses to commit statutory rape, just before he is shot.
Of course, watch this movie with a critical eye. Don’t expect real solutions to the problems of alienation, but among the crap coming from Hollywood, this one stinks less.
Rex Red
OOPS
The article on NY postal workers in our March 22 issue (page 4) should have read that the US Postal Service "netted" [not "needed"] hundreds of millions in profits....Also, the order of the second and third paragraphs should be reversed. Sorry about that....
Rulers Do Guarantee You a Job: In Jail!
When inmates in U.S. jails and prisons hit the two million mark last month, there was a spate of publicity about this gigantic figure, constituting one-fourth of all the prisoners in the world! Liberals were lamenting the fact that "maybe we’ve gone too far," especially when reports began revealing that hundreds of thousands (not 80,000 as a recent NY Times article reported) are engaged in slave labor jobs working for pennies an hour.
Actually, two-thirds of these two million are non-violent offenders and, under Western European capitalist standards, shouldn’t even be in jail in the first place. In fact, when the U.S. gloated over its "low" jobless figures as compared to Europe’s, the French shot back that the U.S. has "jailed its unemployment problem." (The U.S. does not count prisoners in its unemployment statistics.)
The proponents of prison labor claim: (1) putting prisoners to work will help "rehabilitate" them, "teach them a skill, responsibility and prepare them for a job upon release"; and, (2) the prisoners themselves "want to work" while in prison.
Firstly, if the rulers are so concerned about "teaching the prisoners," why not pay them the going rate in their industry? Because that would eradicate one of the bosses’ main advantages for exploiting them: the tremendous super-profits extracted from 23¢-an-hour "wages" without any benefits or any right to strike Then they wouldn’t be so interested in "reforming" them. And could it be that prisoners who are being paid such slave wages might—when they get out—look at a $5.75-an-hour, minimum-wage poverty-level job as an "upgrade"?
Secondly, if they’re so concerned about "teaching skills" to help prisoners get jobs when released, why do corporations seek prisoners with long-term and life sentences to learn these skills? Because they don’t want to "waste" their investment in skilled workers on prison laborers getting out in a couple of years.
Thirdly, what jobs will workers get using these "skills" when they leave prison? A sweatshop job, if they’re lucky to get any job at all. Perhaps they wouldn’t be fodder for imprisonment if the system hadn’t presented them with such a dead-end life in the first place.
Fourth, if they’re so concerned about "rehabilitation," why are only 5% of all prisoners with drug problems getting any treatment at all? Most of the one and one-quarter million non-violent offenders are in prison because of a drug problem. But funds for drug treatment in prisons, such as it is under capitalism, keep getting cut and cut and cut. How much good is a "skill" if one still has a drug problem, which U.S. capitalism imprisoned you for originally.
Finally, if as they claim, there are now "only" 4% unemployed (a sizeable underestimate), that’s still about five million jobless in a workforce of 120 million. If the 1.25 million non-violent offenders were released tomorrow, they would surely join the jobless millions, adding to capitalism’s unemployment figures. No, the "rehabilitation" rationale is simply a transparent attempt to put a "humanitarian" mask on a brutal slave labor operation.
As for many inmates on "waiting lists for prison jobs," this is precisely what hundreds of thousands of these prisoners wanted all along, BEFORE capitalism jailed them—A JOB! If they had had decent-paying jobs, they might not be in jail in the first place. And if these prisoners were offered jobs at $12 or $15 an hour, watch those "waiting lists" swell. But at those rates no boss would offer any jobs.
While U.S. bosses attack prison labor in China, they’re throwing those stones from their own gigantic "glass house." The U.S. has 500,000 more prisoners than China, and with only one-fifth the population! Now U.S. competitors around the world are exposing this "human rights" hypocrisy. So the U.S. may seek "damage control," ways to reduce or slow down the increasing prison population.
One partial "solution" may be to offer youthful non-violent offenders a "chance" to join the military and "wipe their slate clean." Two-thirds of all prisoners in the U.S. are black and Latin, the most racist "criminal justice" system in the world As the Army and Navy find it increasingly difficult to fill their enlistment quotas, the predominantly black and Latin youth in prison could be a new source of cannon fodder to fight the bosses’ wars.
Capitalism creates and expands its prison system to exercise social control over a potentially rebellious section of the working class. Its criminal racist injustice system is a crucial element in the development of fascism. It can be abolished only by destroying the profit system itself, with communist revolution.
(For a fuller examination of this question, see PLP’s pamphlet, "Prison Labor, Fascism U.S. Style.")
LETTERS
Are NYPD Cops Civil Rights Workers?
In a recent address to a class of police academy recruits, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani drew an analogy between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and civil rights workers. He said everyone in the city has a right to feel safe, whether on the street or returning home at night. Since the right to safety is a civil right, the NYPD are "civil rights workers," according to Giuliani.
Let us examine two high profile cases. A Bronx family is having a friendly game of touch football. Did they have a right to safety? NYPD arrives. An illegal choke-hold is administered and one member of the family is dead. Were the NYPD protecting civil rights? No. On this night they were involved in murder. A young, innocent, African immigrant returns home from an errand at night. Did he have a right to safety? The NYPD (street crimes unit) arrives. A barrage of gunfire is released. Forty-one bullets are spent. Where were the "civil right rights" workers? They were involved in murder.
Most people involved in the civil rights struggle believed in equality. Capitalism is based on inequality. Those in the civil rights struggle are unpaid, receiving benefit from the desire to fight racism and poverty. The civil rights struggle mainly employed non-violence, passive resistance and peaceful protest. The police are paid to "protect and serve" those that have and control capital. They are issued guns, rifles, Billy-clubs and protective armor. Their struggle, if it is a struggle, is an armed one.
The long history of the civil rights struggle has been besmirched by this leap of illogical thought by an uncaring, uninformed Mayor. Civil rights workers, indeed! Murderers!
What can be done to combat this reality? Fight for communism. Throw off the shackles of capitalism. Let the chains of capitalism be broken by the power of the collective. Learn more about how a society based on equality can work. Attend May Day 2000!
A NYC Worker
"What do we do about all this police brutality and killing of innocent workers?"
"March on May Day" was the answer of night school physiology students at Chicago State University (CSU). Outraged by the freeing of the killer cops who murdered Amadou Diallo, students broke into a spontaneous classroom discussion about why these things occur and what to do about it.
The instructor invited the students to a May Day dinner at his home on March 4. There the students met with others who wanted to "do something." The discussion included comments like, "Why can’t everyone benefit from our society?" and "I was thoroughly impressed by the idea of coming together to create a better working class." Fifteen students left with books of bus tickets for the march.
At a second dinner, more of the CSU physiology students and others came, many ideas were discussed, but the tone was different. One of the main student organizers said she wanted to become a lawyer to fight the increased police terror. After a splendid dinner, out came the checkbooks and cash as deposits for May Day tickets. Six students paid for their bus tickets, four from the physiology class, and made plans to bring others.
Students organizing students is an exciting development on the CSU campus! We aim to build stronger relationships with these students and help their organizing efforts and political development. We must draw on their excitement, and develop them as revolutionary leaders.
All power to the working class!
Chicago Red
Bradley Campaign Feared Grass Roots
In his failed bid for the Democratic Party nomination, Bill Bradley posed as the anti-racist who aimed to inspire the masses with his calls for greater equity and heightened "social" (patriotic) consciousness. Although he and Gore differed little on any significant issue, scores of grass roots activists volunteered in his campaign, including youth never before involved in electoral politics. Others had been active decades ago in the McGovern campaign.
Gore emphasized his endorsements by a variety of social fascists, like the AFL-CIO, the pro-abortion group NARAL, and the Congressional Black Caucus. How, he asked, could workers, women, black people do anything but follow their lead and support him? His "sweep" signals the key role of these mass organizations tieing to capitalism, and underlines the importance for us to struggle sharply inside those organizations.
Maybe Bradley was doomed from the outset by McCain’s competition for disaffected voters and media attention. But some analysts and supporters, including Bradley’s wife, complained he wouldn’t "use his elbows"—attack Gore. There was no full-time volunteer coordinator. Staff members and volunteers pleaded to have materials available at the January pre-primary caucuses but this didn’t happen. Convention delegate candidates were never called together for a meeting. Instead of a "grass-roots campaign," this was a "media campaign." Bradley had plenty of money, and volunteer-coordinators would have come cheap. They could have done both. I think it was a political issue.
A grass-roots campaign would have brought out much sharper attacks on Gore and the Democratic Party establishment. Bradley understood just how vulnerable the Democratic Party is on issues like racism, education, health care and campaign finance reform. His goal was to strengthen the Democratic Party and widen its base of support, not expose its attacks on the working class.
But many of his volunteers, and even some of his paid field organizers, hated the Gore-Clinton policies. The broader the campaign, the harder it would have been to control. It was safe to put up a website, but not safe to put a lot of volunteers out in the community.
Informational materials about the criminal injustice system had been circulating around Bradley’s Los Angeles office for a few weeks before the California primary. At campaign meetings and public events, people spoke about the fascist Proposition 21 extending "three strikes" and attacking youth. Gore supporter Gray Davis endorsed it. Bradley was "on record" against "three strikes," but refused to address the issue in a mass way. At one district caucus meeting, nearly everyone signed a petition to put a rollback of "three strikes" on the November ballot. Just days before the primary, Bradley staffers and volunteers attended rallies against Proposition 21.
Bradley and his Wall Street/Silicon Valley financial backers must have known they had to be careful not to unleash the anti-racist anger of the masses, even as they pushed "anti-racism" to get votes. Bradley didn’t keep his elbows to himself in order to keep the campaign "clean," but trather from fear of opening up the Democrats to attacks from "below." I think this was a direct consequence of one of the more serious contradictions facing the ruling class: their need to super-exploit and oppress black and Latin workers and youth, and at the same time win them to serve in the next war.
West Coast Reader
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Two weeks ago my son and I were vacationing in Guatemala. Every day articles appeared in the local press reminding people about the nearly 200,000 mostly indigenous (Mayan speaking) peoples butchered by the fascist death squads. They operated under Christian evangelist and former president General Rios Mont. Presently, a more liberal president rules the country, but the General is still President of the Congress.
There are still soldiers and blocked streets. Unemployment is up at 70%, there is almost no drinkable water, everywhere people drink bottled water, the children of the indigenous people suffer from an appalling death rate and work either in the fields or selling souvenirs to tourists.
People travel via overcrowded buses packed in like sardines (I know because my son and I traveled on them). People hang onto handrails. I read of at least one death from someone who, like me, was hanging on the handrail with the bus door open. While on one of these buses returning from the mostly Mayan town of Quiche someone asked me where I was from. We began talking and he reminisced about his time living and working in New York City. When I asked him about the Guatemalan government and the terrible conditions so many people lived under, he asked me why I was so interested in these things. I explained I had spent many years fighting capitalism and imperialism. I told him about the Party and he asked me to mail him CHALLENGE.
Working people of all lands unite; get on board the revolution bus!
East Harlem Red
The Struggle Continues At Lasalle Steel
Lasalle has given the union a list of 28 workers they will not call back, even though they were not fired, reprimanded nor have given up their seniority rights. What's the problem with these 28 workers? Many were active during the 1998 strike. They led the union and their fellow workers in numerous other struggles. They fought to make the union strong, stood up to attacks, and organized support for the strike. Is boss Scharf & Co. afraid of these workers? Do they think they have everything going their way since the contract was rammed down our throats? Do they want to keep these union activists from upsetting their apple cart?
If the bosses are allowed to get away with this attack on the "28," they will be even more vicious and arrogant. The company was able to cut wages, benefits and jobs after the strike. But we've learned over the years, the Scharfs of this world are never satisfied. They want more and more cuts so they can keep up with other bosses in the race to wipe out jobs and raise profits. If the "28" are abandoned, Scharf will knock us over like ducks in a shooting gallery. Those of us who remain are facing increased harassment, murderous overtime and lower wages for many. Without a fight-back it will get worse. It is time to demand answers from the union. Bring back the "LaSalle 28!"
La Salle Striker
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In the coalfields of Pennsylvania, the so-called "Economic Boom" is like a ship on the water that has a You’re O.K. if you’re on the part of the ship that’s not leaking, but if you’re on the part that’s sinking, you’re in bad shape. And there are few life preservers left.
In the past week, the JA Corporation announced it will be laying off 900 workers at its steel mill in Johnstown, Pa. sometime in July. This is one of the last remaining mills in Johnstown, once a thriving steel town. Even the conservative local paper editorialized about the psychic damage this was causing for workers living in uncertainty for their future in an area with the highest jobless rate in the state.
Also, this past week it was announced that one of the last remaining union coal mines will close on May 14; 196 jobs will be lost. This is in the town of Marion Center, Indiana County, southeast of Pittsburgh. Most mines and mills in this region have already closed. The main employers remaining are the service sector, Wal-Mart, fast food, etc.
Finally, the shooting of some white people by a deranged black man in Pittsburgh, gave the media a field day. The man was charged with a Hate Crime. He targeted only white people. Also, anti-white, anti-Semitic, and anti-Asian writings were allegedly found in his apartment.
It began when three maintenance men, two white and one black, came to fix his door and he went berserk. He killed one white worker. The black worker carried his fellow worker from the building to get help. He told the other white worker to hide somewhere in the building, until the gunman fled outside. The press downplayed all this. Of course, the KKK jumped right on the bandwagon, passing out "White Power" leaflets throughout the area, including in front of one of the victim’s home.
The black man who did the shooting was mentally ill, living in poverty in Wilkensburg, a mostly black and very poor neighborhood. His neighbors claimed he talked very little, and was probably simmering for some time about his predicament in this life in racist capitalist America. Capitalism and racism, not hate, are the culprits that drove this guy over the edge. Certainly though, he took out his rage on the wrong people, as many do. This is the tragedy.
Red Rocker
Three Workers Killed
On March 5, an explosion at an auto parts plant killed three workers in Adford, VA. The blast at New River Castings (NRC) blew a hole the size of a football field in the center of the plant, and threw clouds of soot over a wide area. About 100 workers were in the plant at the time of the blast. Six were hospitalized, with two still in serious condition. Intermet Corp., of Troy, Michigan, owns NRC and a related parts plant, Radford Foundry. Like the dead and injured at the Ford explosion last year, workers are being killed in the bosses' drive for cheap labor and maximum profits. Communist revolution will have many scores to settle.
A Reader
- WORKERS MUST FIGHT RACIST RULERS
BUSH AND GORE: MORE TERROR AND WAR - TRUTH ABOUT BROOKLY WALKOUTS FOUND ONLY IN CHALLENGE
- STUDENTS FIND ALTERNATIVE TO FIGHT AGAINST COP TERROR
- Explanation of Profit System Wins the Day:
Philly Hospital Workers Defy `Leaders,' Demand Strike! - BOEING MACHINISTS ACT TO HONOR PICKET LINES
- CAMPUSES RALLY VS. RACIST DIALLO VERDICT
QUEENS: STUDENTS HURDLE ADMINISTRATION ROADBLOCK FIGHT RACIST POLICE TERROR - RUTGERS: PLP GETS BALL ROLLING TO RALLY AGAINST KOPS, KELLING AND KOURTS
- LAPD: NOT JUST A FEW BAD APPLES...
- FLINT SHOOTING: BLOOD ON THE BOSSES' HANDS!
- POSTAL WORKERS TO MARCH AGAINST POLICE TERROR
- NY Metro Area Postal Union Election
Shows Workers Open to PLP - CHURCH SAYS WE KILLED MILLIONS, SORRY ABOUT THAT
HOLOCAUST BEGAN 2,000 YEARS AGO - STUDENT DENOUNCES SYSTEM, CALLS FOR ACTION AT MASS PROTEST
- LETTERS
WORKERS MUST FIGHT RACIST RULERS
BUSH AND GORE: MORE TERROR AND WAR
The beauty contest passing itself off as a presidential campaign proves once again that workers have everything to lose by supporting capitalist politicians. In 1996, the bosses were divided, and the fight over control of the Republican Party reflected this split. Now, the dominant, Rockefeller wing firmly controls both parties.
Whether the rulers are divided amongst themselves or more or less together, we must not line up behind any of them. Our job remains the same, regardless of the clique the profit system puts in the White House. We must build our own forces and fight for communist revolution, no matter how long it takes. At the moment, this means organizing successful, mass May Day 2000 marches, sharpening the class struggle on as many fronts as possible, and winning fresh recruits into the Progressive Labor Party.
The bosses' media all recognize that no fundamental distinction separates Bush from Gore. One leading pundit, the New York Times's Frank Rich, says that they're about as "different...as J. Crew and Banana Republic" (March 11). He refers to both parties as bastions of "Rockefeller Republicanism" and takes a few shots at the non-issues raised in the primary campaigns. It's easy to laugh at Bush, who governs the country's most polluted state, when he tries to parade as an environmentalist. Or at Gore, who has pocketed all kinds of funny money, when he starts posing as a champion of campaign finance reform.
But for our class, these insults to our intelligence cover the bosses' real plans, and this reality is no laughing matter. Let's look at two key questions: the rulers' long-range preparations for war and the rise of fascist terror at home.
Neither Gore nor Bush is going to change U.S. foreign policy much. The Rockefeller interests are determined to keep U.S. imperialism on top. They need to continue dictating the flow and pricing of Middle Eastern oil. Every one of their rivals needs to break free of this yoke. The fight to control the cheapest energy sources, which lie in Iraq, can only sharpen. For several years, CHALLENGE has predicted another Persian Gulf oil war. We're sticking to that estimate. President Gore or Bush may well be the one to start it. Workers have absolutely no interest in killing and dying for Exxon Mobil.
But the Rockefellers' long-range interests go beyond the question of oil. Staying on top in a world driven by the violent scramble for maximum profit also means preventing the rise of a rival "super-power." The collapse of the old communist movement and the temporary break-up of the Soviet empire cut U.S. rulers some slack, but only temporarily. Their primary strategy is still geared against the re-emergence of Russia and the rise of Chinese imperialism. Trends in the U.S. military budget make this goal crystal-clear.
Right now, U.S. military expenses are greater than China's, Russia's, Great Britain's, and Germany's COMBINED. The 1997 budget represented 85 percent of the average military budgets at the height of the Cold War. "The supposedly `centrist' Clinton administration is therefore looking to stabilize military expenses at a full-fledged Cold War level into the first years of the 21st century" (Gilbert Achcar, The New Cold War, translation ours, ed.).
U.S. imperialism will probably invade the Middle Easter oil fields again. But this amount of firepower far outstrips the muscle necessary to take on the two-bit military machines of countries like Iraq or even North Korea. The ultimate targets of this buildup remain Russia and China. U.S. imperialism is orienting its entire foreign policy toward the eventuality of a third world war. We aren't crying: "Wolf!" here. This process may take years to unfold. But its general direction is clear, and both Bush and Gore will keep it going.
However, plans for world war require more than military hardware. The political mobilization of the home front is also key. As CHALLENGE has often written, the liberals, who parade as friends of the working class, tell more dangerous, less obvious lies than the more openly right wing Republicans. Gore's support from Sweeney and other labor union bosses is more deceptive than Bush's ridiculous "compassionate conservatism." However, once again, facts are stubborn things.
We still live in an economic boom. For the time being, many workers don't yet have it so bad. But look at the 40+ million who have no health insurance. Look at the millions thrown off welfare and forced into slave labor conditions on "Workfare." Look at the rise in police terror, since the liberal Clinton, with Gore as his vice-president, put 100,000 more racist killer cops on the streets. Look at the growth of the "prison-industrial complex," which combines police state social control tactics with windfall billion-dollar profits made off prison labor." Look at the drastic rise in racist oppression due to all of the above. Black people make up only 12 percent of the United States population, but nearly half of all inmates are black.
As Governor of Texas, Bush is a champion of capital punishment. Gore is a clone of cop-lover Clinton. As president, either one will help sharpen the trend toward all types of racist terror against our class, as well as the long-range drift toward world war.
This isn't a matter of personality or choice. The profit system makes war and fascism inevitable. As the process developing both intensifies, our Party will have a lot to say about the direction in which the working class decides to head. The bosses can't choose whether or not they want to fight each other or conduct reigns of terror against us. But we can choose communist revolution as the only way out of the capitalist nightmare. The last few weeks have seen a healthy upsurge in militant Party activity around racist police terror. We have seen thousands of workers respond positively to our direct leadership and our press. Continuing to sharpen the struggle, organizing large May Day actions, and recruiting to the PLP are the best answers to the murdering lies of Gore-Bush and their billionaire puppet-masters.
TRUTH ABOUT BROOKLY WALKOUTS FOUND ONLY IN CHALLENGE
BROOKLYN, NY -- On March 8, a couple of hundred students walked out of Clara Barton, Brooklyn Tech and Prospect Heights high schools, protesting the not guilty verdict in the Diallo case.
The youth were inspired by the March 3 walkouts and protest by 1,000 students from other high schools all across the city. PLP youth played a leading role in those walkouts and participated on March 8. Hundreds of CHALLENGES were sold at both protests.
At both walkouts, youth first marched and protested in downtown Brooklyn, then streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall. On March 8 an undercover cop used a bullhorn to try to persuade students to end their protest. Militant youth took the bullhorn away from her.
The March 3 protests received lots of publicity in the bosses' press, the NY Times tried to depict it as a civil libertarian action led by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). But only CHALLENGE covered the March 8.
To many youth activists this was an eye-opening experience. They saw first-hand how the bosses' press operates. They try their best to censure or distort any actions led by forces not in their hip pockets, especially where communists in the PLP are involved.
That's why CHALLENGE is a key weapon for workers and youth fighting the ruling racist bosses. CHALLENGE, the communist newspaper, reports events from the working-class point of view. Reading, studying and distributing CHALLENGE is the best antidote to the lies of the NY Times and all the bosses' media.
STUDENTS FIND ALTERNATIVE TO FIGHT AGAINST COP TERROR
NEW YORK, March 15 -- On Monday, March 6, students at the alternative high school I teach in returned to school disappointed. Hundreds of their peers marched Friday, March 3 against the Diallo verdict. At our school we only talked about police brutality.
I meet with about 15 students for an hour each day in an Advisory. On Monday, I placed a leaflet on the board and two articles about the Friday demonstrations. "What is to be done here," I asked. "What can we do?" was the reply. Many agreed that the problems of racism and police brutality are not easily mended. We discussed the role of police in a class society and the need to fight to change the kind of society we live in. "But what can we do?" they continued.
The idea came from some corner of the room that we should all wear black armbands on Wednesday. The next day, with a contribution of black cloth from my wife, eight students made 200 armbands in about 10 minutes. "Not enough!" students said. The next morning six students arrived early and finished the next 200. Hesitant at first, these students passed out the armbands to friends who also passed out armbands. By second period, with the exception of late students who made their way to my classroom to get more, nearly every student and staff member had them on.
Everyone was very excited. More importantly, during Wednesday's Advisory we discussed how people can change things, themselves and others by organizing--a lesson we all need to remind each other about throughout the rest of the term and our lives.
East Harlem Red
Explanation of Profit System Wins the Day:
Philly Hospital Workers Defy `Leaders,' Demand Strike!
PHILADELPHIA, PA, March 11 -- Today the Philadelphia local of the National Hospital Workers Union (1199C) held a "leadership summit" on the impact of rising healthcare costs on the June 2000 contract negotiations. Fortunately the leadership emerging from this summit was not totally what the union leadership wanted.
The 1199C leaders called the meeting of over 100 union delegates because the current capitalist crisis has squeezed Philadelphia's major hospitals, leaving the union's citywide health plan $10 million short. Hundreds have been laid off. Only one hospital has declared a profit. The bosses want 1199C members to pay into the health plan for the first time. The 1199C leaders claim Jefferson bosses won't even start negotiations until we agree to pay $10 weekly toward the health plan.
The 1199C leaders' plan was to bombard us with numbers that clearly showed we had no choice but to surrender $10 million worth of health benefits. The delegates would then tell the union leaders what benefits to cut. Then the delegates could be used as a buffer to protect the union leaders because it would look like the delegates were responsible for the cuts, not the leaders.
Obviously $10 million can only be saved by significantly cutting the benefits of the mainly black union members who have greater health problems due to the racism of capitalism. One of the union delegates later agreed that the 1199C leaders wanted us to play the same role as the "Judenrat" in Nazi Germany. Just as these "Jewish Rats" sold out their brothers and sisters by aiding the Nazis, so the 1199C leaders want the union delegates to serve the bosses by helping to cut the health benefits of the workers we're supposed to represent.
Surplus Value Explanation Strikes A Chord
Just before the delegate body broke up into smaller groups, a Jefferson hospital delegate took the floor and pointed out that actually the hospital bosses were NOT paying for our health benefits. Those benefits and our wages came from the value that all the hospital workers produced. Those benefits and wages are only part of the total value that we produce because the bosses steal the rest as profit. If we start paying toward our health benefits or agree to any cuts, the bosses are actually increasing the amount they steal from the value we produce. The delegate said these cuts would have a terrible racist impact on our membership and must be met with serious organizing for a strike.
A wave of agreement swept through the delegates on the floor. Union President Nicholas shot the Executive Vice-president an angry look and then launched into a 45-minute tirade. He said workers weren't ready to fight, almost all the hospitals are "losing" money, so we have no choice but to agree to give-backs. He then dismissed us into smaller groups to figure out what benefits we should give up.
But at the table where the Jefferson delegates sat, the talk was not of give-backs but rather of the need to organize a strike. The 1199C Organizer assigned to our table did her best to steer the conversation toward cutting benefits. Yet the majority of the Jefferson delegates always returned the discussion to the need to strike against givebacks.
Each table had posterboard on which to write our suggestions to show the rest of the delegates. The Organizer at our table finally gave in and wrote in large letters on our posterboard: "STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!" When each table showed the rest of the delegates their ideas, our call for a strike received loud applause and cheers.
But just as interesting was that over half the other tables of union delegates also called for a strike against the givebacks. The tables that actually proposed particular cutbacks were roundly booed. It got so fierce that delegates who had followed the President's call to find cuts became very defensive and would apologize or beg for us to give them a chance to finish before they were booed.
After each table finished their presentation, President Nicholas lamented that the union leaders actually had not received the kinds of suggestions they wanted from the union delegates. He finished by challenging us to take up the task of organizing the workers to strike, adding that this challenge might make one of the Jefferson delegates "stop wishing for the revolution." What he fears is that struggles like today, to intensify the class struggle, can become a school for communism, building PLP and changing the "wish for revolution" to reality.
BOEING MACHINISTS ACT TO HONOR PICKET LINES
SEATTLE, WA, March 9 -- At tonight's union meeting International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 751C passed a resolution, seconded by 25 Boeing workers, calling for a "Day of Solidarity" with striking Boeing Engineers and Technical workers. "I want to thank you for raising that resolution," said one shop steward from another building to the member who introduced it. "Call on me and we'll join your building on the picket lines."
This comment reflects the widespread distrust of the IAM leadership. They have organized next to nothing in support of the SPEEA (Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace) strike. Nevertheless, hundreds of Machinists have joined the picket lines and organized material support on their own. In fact, our Party and friends organized 35 workers on each shift in just one building to join the lines at lunch-time in answer to SPEEA's invitation the same day. These same workers wrote, introduced and seconded the "Day of Solidarity" resolution.
No sooner was the resolution passed then the leadership tried to "clarify" it. They began pushing to hold the "Day of Solidarity" on a weekend in order not to violate Article 18--the no-strike clause in our contract. Rules are rules, they say. As usual, as soon as the Local president mentioned Article 18, members shouted, "Get rid of it!"
The resolution will now be kicked upstairs to the District Council to be voted on March 14. Rank and filers are organizing to make sure our "Day of Solidarity" is held during the workweek. Our aim is to "get hundreds, if not more, of our members to the picket lines," as stated in the passed resolution.
Honoring Picket Lines Is Top Priority In Contract Negotiations
Negotiations began Tuesday between Boeing and Teamster Local 174, which represents hundreds of truck, bus and taxi drivers at the company. The contract expires March 31. Under organized pressure from the rank and file and shop stewards, the union president vowed a "top-priority bargaining item" would be the removal of a clause forbidding Teamsters from honoring the picket lines.
"Good luck," said an IAM spokesman, who asked the local papers not to identify him. He said he'd be surprised if the company would agree to such a change. So we must organize to force that agreement.
The union leadership has been hiding behind the "no-strike" clause for too long. Honoring picket lines is a key test of working-class solidarity. That's become all the more important now that the mergers have multiplied many fold the number of contracts and unions at Boeing. Are we going to allow the company to pick us off one at a time?
Revolutionary Outlook Requires Class Consciousness
Changing the history whereby each union "goes alone" at Boeing will not be easy. We will have to start thinking as a class. Our Party has proved indispensable in this effort.
The Party and our friends can do more around the country. Expressions of solidarity from other unions and professional organizations will help highlight the class nature of the demands of the day. When we fight racism, fascist police terror and imperialist wars, we always emphasize it is the working class--conscious of itself and its historic mission--that will put an end to these capitalist evils with communist revolution. This strike gives us another avenue to fight for that revolutionary class perspective.
GOLDEN RULE: BOSSES' GOLD MAKES THE RULES
So this is their democracy where "majority rules"! Take a poll of Boeing Machinists. They'd vote in the thousands to walk the lines in solidarity with the engineers. It's in their class interests to support the strike. But the law says they can't!
The law rides roughshod over the wishes of the vast majority and defends the class interests of industrialists and bankers who sit on Boeing's Board of Directors. The majority doesn't rule; the majority is ruled! That's why communists call capitalism a class dictatorship.
And that's why thousands of Boeing Machinists feel frustrated. Seven thousand non-union engineers have joined the strike, but tens of thousands of union machinists have been held back.
Don't talk about democracy! The law is even-handed all right; it even hands the bosses everything they want! But when it comes to "hands," workers have thousands and thousands of them. And on any day they're quite capable of "taking the law into their own hands!"
CAMPUSES RALLY VS. RACIST DIALLO VERDICT
QUEENS: STUDENTS HURDLE ADMINISTRATION ROADBLOCK FIGHT RACIST POLICE TERROR
QUEENS, NY, March 12 -- Approximately 30 students participated in a rally protesting the murder of Amadou Diallo and the not-guilty verdict of four NYPD killers. It was a great turnout and many students passing by joined in. Others stood at a distance but listened to what we had to say.
It all started a few weeks ago right before the verdict. Although people were angry at the blatantly racist murder, they were not angry enough to begin organizing a rally the day of the murder. Many students had confidence in the courts and believed they would provide "justice" for Amadou and his family. Many good discussions took place about the nature of this racist system and its need for the cops to terrorize black and Latino youth.
After the verdict was announced, the Party once again tried to organize a rally and this time students were ready. With another Queens College student, we began the process: we wrote leaflets, talked to other campus student organizations and had heated discussions with other students about the importance of fighting back against attacks on the working class.
After looking back we realize we made one big mistake--going through the administration. Since other students thought it would be best to do things the "right way," we asked permission for our rally. The administration really jerked us around. Different administrators told us to do different things, and very conveniently "forgot" conversations they had with us about the rally.
Because we waited for their go-ahead, we did not distribute our leaflets until the last moment, two days before the rally. We, and many other students, learned a good lesson. They saw the way the administration protects its system.
Despite these few setbacks it was a good rally. Students angrily attacked this racist murder. After having read PLP's new pamphlet, one student tied it to the growing prison labor. CHALLENGES, leaflets and more prison labor pamphlets were distributed. But, most important, we were able to get to know many more students and struggle sharply over the inherent necessity for racism under capitalism and its only solution, communism! This won't be the last fight at Queens College. Many students are now excited about organizing another rally.
RUTGERS: PLP GETS BALL ROLLING TO RALLY AGAINST KOPS, KELLING AND KOURTS
NEWARK, NJ March 8 -- About 150 students at Rutgers-Newark University (RNU) rallied in opposition to the racist murder of Amadou Diallo and the acquittal of the killer cops. Students were serious, listening attentively to the speakers. The latter expressed outrage at the murder and the verdict and held serious doubts about, and criticisms of, the criminal injustice system.
PLP comrades played a key role in organizing the rally. Some groups probably would not have taken participated in such a mass event if PLP members had not raised it in mass organizations.
Once the ball got rolling, many students actively helped make the event happen. Initially, two organizations dropped out because they refused to take a position on the verdict. They only wanted an "open-ended" discussion. One student organizer responded, "If they won't be against this verdict we don't need them. Cross their name off the list!" By the week of the rally at least four other student clubs stood up to take their place.
The rally was sponsored by a multi-racial group of students and clubs. However, most of the clubs and rally participants were black. During the rally, a petition against the verdict and police brutality was circulated. In addition, about 30 students signed a contact sheet indicating their interests in helping to organize further mass demonstrations around this issue. One Party member, along with a close friend, distributed about 20 CHALLENGES toward the end of the rally.
One Party speaker described the general trend toward fascism shown by the rise of police murders of working-class youth. While presenting a general class analysis of racism and the police, the Party speaker also encouraged further class struggle by calling for more organizing. At the end the comrade strongly everyone to oppose all capitalist exploitation by marching on May Day in Washington D.C., May 6.
A RNU professor spoke more specifically about the fascist professor George Kelling. Students were shown the implications of having their university participate in the development of fascist ideology and policy designed to oppress and further exploit the working class. The method of police terror called "community policing" is largely the brainchild of this ivory tower fascist, Kelling. This professor held up Kelling's book Fixing Broken Windows and urged everyone to read and expose it, particularly where Kelling refers to black youths as "predators."
The racist murder of Amadou Diallo must be taken up by the Party to expose the true fascist nature of the capitalist system. We can turn it against the bosses. With the acquittal of the four murdering cops the bosses have thrown down the gauntlet and are daring the working class to strike back. Let's give them the shock of their new millennium and organize our class to take up their challenge with the red gauntlet of communism.
LAPD: NOT JUST A FEW BAD APPLES...
LOS ANGELES, CA.--The Rampart police division has again exposed the corrupt, racist and murderous U.S. justice system, as well as the role played by the capitalist politicians, in this case the Latino elected officials here.
"I don't want to attack the agents who protect my wife and my children, just because there are a few rotten apples in the LAPD," said U.S. Congressman Javier Becerra. "No one asked me anything until now," said Antonio Villaraigosa, State Assemblyman and Speaker of the California House. Other Latino politicians remaining silent are: Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, U.S. Senator Richard Polanco, and Board of Supervisors member Gloria Molina.
Even though most of these "leaders" are liberals, and call for FBI and Federal investigation of the LAPD, they live in LA where the LAPD has powerful friends who retaliate against any and all criticism. These politicians have no principles. They side with whoever pays them. The power struggle over policing strategy and how to hoodwink the masses is coming out into the open. At a City Hall press conference, Mayor Riorden presented the LAPD's report on "cleaning up its own house." He supported it. Councilwomen Rita Walters and Jackie Goldberg tried to attend the press conference to attack the report and call for civilian over-site of the LAPD, but Riorden ordered City Hall security guards to keep them locked in their offices.
Walters and Goldberg are reading from the script of the Rockefeller Eastern establishment which wants civilian review of the LAPD. They want politicians who denounce the supposedly few "rotten apples" and call for police reform. The LA ruling class has traditionally demanded that black and Latino politicians support the cops, but this adds to a huge cynicism and mistrust of all politicians. It was the absence of such a buffer of "trusted" polliticians which allowed the 1992 rebellion to erupt here after the acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King.
One reason these up-and-coming capitalist politicians haven't spoken out is that the community which the Rampart police terrorize isn't powerful and doesn't vote. Many are not citizens and many see no point in voting. These same politicians view the terrorist LA Police Association as a force capable of deciding the next LA mayorality. "When the theme is police brutality, the reaction of the City Hall is to hide," said LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
Rather than defending the workers, these Latino politicians are opportunist defenders of capitalism. They do the bosses' bidding. Who needs leaders like this?
The LAPD history has always been filled with racism, terror, murder, fomenting gang violence and corruption, directed mainly against black and Latin workers and youth. What's new is the publicity the bosses' media has given these cases. The biggest bosses, controlled by Rockefeller, are using these events to try to discipline and control the LA cops. They worry about controlling the workers and winning them to have confidence in a system that attacks workers every day. Their problem is how to terrorize workers but simultaneously win them to be loyal to their system and plans for war. The racism and corruption of the LAPD inspire the opposite. That's why they need politicians who call for getting rid of a "few bad apples." But it's not a few bad apples. The whole system is rotten.
Both the police and these politicians are enemies of the workers. PLP is supporting a mass demonstration against the Rampart police called by community organizations on Saturday, April 1st at noon. It's very important to show unity against these fascists.
The best way to answer the Rampart police scandal is organizing in the factories, schools, churches and neighborhoods to expose the role of the bosses, their cops and politicians. CHALLENGE newspaper is crucial. That's how thousands of youth and workers will see that the best way to "clean up" the police is by destroying the profit system--based on exploitation and terror--with communist revolution. The key answer to the Rampart scandal is to March on May Day and join the long-term fight to end the rule of the racist bosses.
Becerra and Villaraigosa remained silent on Proposition 21, which targets youth, especially Latino and black youth, for prison. On the other hand, Henry Cisneros, Director of Univision and Clinton's ex-Secretary of Housing, used his TV station to rabidly back Prop 21. Cisneros attacks youth as gang bangers, but fails to say that the cops foment gang violence and attack those who work for gang truces. These politicians help the bosses build fascism.
FLINT SHOOTING: BLOOD ON THE BOSSES' HANDS!
(Most of this letter is reprinted from Michael Moore's [`Roger and Me,' and `The Big One'] Web page)
Isn't it enough that tens of thousands of lives in Flint have been wrecked, destroyed by the greed of General Motors? Isn't it enough that tens of thousands of others had to leave Flint in the past 20 years to find work far from family and friends? Isn't it enough that Flint suffers the highest or near-highest per capita rates of murder, rape and theft in the nation?
What else must the people of Flint go through while the evening news proclaims, "This is the best economy ever!" Yesterday, a 6-year old boy brought a semi-automatic gun to Buell Elementary school and killed 6-year old Kayla Rolland in their first grade classroom. Six years old!
That's about the only thing the national media got right about the story. Twenty satellite trucks ring the school, but all that technology cannot find the truth. The local officials hide from the responsibility they share in Flint's destruction.
You have probably heard that this school shooting took place in "Mount Morris Township," a "suburb somewhere near Flint." There is no such place. Buell Elementary is in the Flint Beecher school district, the poorest in Genesee County, and perhaps the poorest in Michigan. According to the federal government, 82% of its children live below the "official" poverty level (meaning the number of kids in total poverty is even higher).
The family of the little boy who killed the girl had been evicted from their home just last week. Homeless and fatherless (his dad is in jail as 30% of all black men in the U.S. will be at some point in their lives), the boy was staying at his uncle's. In the house were guns, as there are in every home in this devastated and desperate area. The media shows the school sitting in the middle of a bombed-out neighborhood and says, "This is the youngest child to kill another child in a school shooting."
Beecher is 60% black, 40% white. No municipality in Genesee County wants to govern it, so it exists as a No Man's Land on Flint's northern city limits. It covers a small portion of two different townships. But when you hear the word "township" used in the case of Beecher, they mean it in the way the word was used in South Africa. Buell Elementary has a Flint address and a Flint phone number, but the black city officials in bed with General Motors claim, "This school really isn't in Flint!"
Let's do something about the poverty in which so many kids still dwell. What are we waiting for? This tragedy took place in a township that no town will claim and was followed by a gun nut near Pittsburgh entering a McDonald's or Burger King on the same day. Fried or flame-broiled, it's our unique American Hell.
A Reader
POSTAL WORKERS TO MARCH AGAINST POLICE TERROR
CHICAGO, IL, March 13 -- "We did all the right things. We worked hard. We moved to a good neighborhood in the suburbs. We put Bobby in a good school. We got him into one of the best colleges [Northwestern], so that he could live a good life. But all of that didn't matter. Two weeks before he was to graduate, the police bumped him off the road, got him out of his car, put him on his knees, and killed him. Why? Because he was a young black man." These were the opening comments of Vera Love, a retired postal worker and the mother of Robert Russ, who was murdered by the police last June.
There was silence as she spoke but enthusiastic applause when she finished her talk to the monthly meeting of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) Chicago Local. A fellow postal worker had invited her, to bring the fight against racist police terror to the union.
The Local vice-president chairing the meeting said, "We have to take this issue of police brutality seriously. I was picking up someone at the union hall a few weeks ago, waiting out front. A squad car pulled up and two cops jumped out with guns drawn, demanding to know what was I doing there. All I could think was that they could kill me right here."
The worker who invited Ms. Love spoke from the floor saying, "The bosses need cops like these because they have no future for young black and Latin workers. There are two Americas being built by the bosses. One consists of millionaires and billionaires getting rich off the stock market. The other consists of two million mainly minority workers locked up in prison. We need to take a stand. I move that our local union endorse the April 4 march against police brutality and the massive growth of the prison population, and that we organize workers to march behind our union banner." The motion was seconded several times and passed unanimously.
The growing hatred of the cops, fueled by the racist acquittal of the four NYC cops that killed Amadou Diallo, is a good opportunity to build the Party at work and in the union. The hard work begins now. Many postal workers know about PLP and have read CHALLENGE. We are building a committee to win workers to participate in the April 4 march, called by Jesse Jackson and PUSH.
We are deepening our involvement in the union, while at the same time showing how it is led by the bosses' ideology. This is true of every mass organization. Workers are fighting against unsafe conditions on the job. When management moved most of the manual flat cases to make room for the latest automated sorting machines, they put the cases directly under the overhead belts, which move the tubs and trays of mail around the building. There is a constant danger of being hit on the head by falling grease, debris and whole trays of mail.
After weeks of complaining, several workers wrote up a petition demanding that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) force the U.S. Postal Service to correct this situation. The petition explains how the bosses' need for increased profits through automation drives all of their decisions. They have no concern for our safety. They use prison labor to repair all postal mail sacks, and want to replace as many career employees as possible with low-paid, temporary workers. Two workers got almost 40 signatures in their area, and we will bring them, "Priority Mail," to OSHA.
To build the revolutionary movement, we must fight for the political leadership of millions of workers who are being mis-led by organizations like the APWU and PUSH. By winning workers to participate in the PUSH march under our leadership, we can change the political climate at work, in the union, and set the stage for our best May Day yet.
NY Metro Area Postal Union Election
Shows Workers Open to PLP
NEW YORK CITY, March 13 -- Supervisors often unjustly discipline postal workers. The experience of so many delayed and/or lost grievances proves that the grievance procedure gives little hope for justice. Referring to some problem or supervisor's direct order, postal workers often ask, "Can they really make me do that?" Frequently the answer is, "Yes, because the contract says..."
The contract and the Employee and Labor Relations Manual were not designed to be fair. They were written to control, and get the greatest productivity out of, postal workers. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has not received any government funding for decades. In fact, they neeted between hundreds of millions and over a billion dollars in profits in each of the past five years!
Isn't the same true of the so-called "justice system?" We need look no further than the acquittal of the four racist NYC cops who murdered Amadou Diallo. If a defendant is wealthy, or is a cop, they get away with murder. If a person is poor, especially black or Latin, forget it!
There are some capitalists (UPS, FedEx, etc.) who want to grab some of those profits for themselves. The threat to privatize the USPS is not idle talk. There are others who want to keep the booty out of their competitors' hands, and have so far successfully had their hand-picked politicians vote against privatization in Congress. The fact is, public or private, no workers will benefit from these bosses.
The only long-term solution is for workers to seize power from the bosses with communist revolution, and take control of all of society. We must establish workers' power through the dictatorship of the working class, led by a PLP of millions. By acting in our own best interest, including eliminating profits and money, postal workers and all workers can achieve a meaningful level of security.
There are several slates of candidates running in the NY Metro Area Postal Union election. The "Candidates For Change" (CFC) slogan is, "Members First." They have made union meetings more accessible to differing points of view, cut the salaries of full-time union officers, and refused to allow two increases in union dues as mandated by the national union (APWU). These new union leaders invited others to join their slate, including some experienced shop stewards (among them a PLP member).
The other slates are led by one or another former union leader who claim they are "experienced" at filing grievances. For years they helped run the union with unquestioned loyalty to Josie McMillian, the long-time President who was defeated last April. They want to regain control of the union.
While focusing on the corruption of the old leaders, the CFC slate has sounded the alarm about the threat of privatization. However, explaining the threat of capitalism, and the need to destroy it, is the responsibility of PLP. The hand-to-hand distribution of CHALLENGE has more than doubled over the past three issues, from an average of 25-30 copies during the past couple of years. Several of the 32 members of the CFC slate have begun to read and discuss CHALLENGE for the first time.
CHURCH SAYS WE KILLED MILLIONS, SORRY ABOUT THAT
HOLOCAUST BEGAN 2,000 YEARS AGO
The anti-Semitism for which the Pope is asking "repentance" began simultaneously with the birth of Christianity, when Jews were accused of "murdering Christ." The first known Church pogrom exploded in the year 388, when a bishop led hundreds of Christians in the main city of Byzantine, Mesopotamia to burn synagogues and kill Jews. Word of this pogrom spread and synagogues were burned in Italy and North Africa, and many more Jews were murdered. The Church then criticized Roman Emperor Theodosious for trying to keep the peace in the empire by rebuilding the synagogues. The Church won and by 438 a Roman imperial law branded Jews as an "evil sect."
From then on anti-Semitism reigned supreme. In the years 556 and 600 there were rebellions by Jews in Caesarea and Antioch, followed by mass reprisals. When the Persians invaded Jerusalem, Jews welcomed Islam, which was much more tolerant of Jews. In Arab-dominated Southern Spain, Jews were welcome. In the year 1096 the first Crusade was organized, supposedly to "liberate" Jerusalem. On the way to Jerusalem, the crusaders murdered and pillaged in the name of the Cross. The massacres that followed reached a level never seen before, mainly in France and Germany where one-fourth to one-third of all Jews were slaughtered in less than six months, many burned inside synagogues.
Four centuries later, the Spanish Catholic kings kicked out the Arabs and the Church launched the Inquisition, which murdered thousands of Jews and Arabs. The Inquisition spread to the "New World", as Columbus and the Conquerors murdered millions of indigenous people and African slaves with the Church's blessing. Britain, Portugal, France, and later the U.S. took part in this mass murder, probably the biggest holocaust ever.
When scientific advances made many of the old feudal anti-Semitic beliefs outdated (for example, bad crops had been blamed on the "evil magic" of the Talmud), a new form of anti-Semitism developed, based more on physical features than religion. The Nazis transformed the old religious anti-Semitism into its new, more deadly form, mixing it with anti-communism and blaming Jews for the Bolshevik revolution. This led to the holocaust during World War II. While the Vatican kept silent and even helped the Third Reich, the communist-led Soviet Red Army smashed the Nazis murderers and their fascist allies.
The Vatican is still a pillar of capitalism and fascism all over the world.
STUDENT DENOUNCES SYSTEM, CALLS FOR ACTION AT MASS PROTEST
LOS ANGELES, CA, March 9 -- More than 1,000 students from the Evans adult school marched to the Board of Education offices to protest its plan to move students to another school to make room for the Belmont students. These students have no school after the banks, construction companies and Board of Ed. spent $100 million to build one that can't be used because it was built over a toxic dump. During the protest, one speaker said, "The bosses spend billions of dollars on their wars to protect markets and oil. They spent billions to build Twin Towers Prison, the city will spend $2 billion for the Rampart scandal, yet they don't have a single dollar to spare to build schools."
Some teachers furiously criticized the student speaker for attacking the police, stating the police had "protected" the march and that if the bosses want to spend lots of money on their wars, it's no business of ours. Other teachers and students defended the student, shouting that what the speaker said was true: "She said what a lot of us wanted to say."
A black worker hugged the student, saying, "What you said about the police is true. I have family members who have been attacked by the police. I really feel badly that some of the teachers have attacked you. Thanks for helping."
The truth is, the police were not there to protect the students, but to protect the School Board FROM the students. They built the useless Belmont school. Now they are using the adult students as guinea pigs to avoid building a good school for them.
Many students and teachers applauded when the speaker stressed the need to join together to demand the construction of a new school. Unlike the other speeches, limited to begging on bended knee, the student who created the firestorm sparked heated discussions about the true nature of the problem. What we say and do counts. Now we are inviting our classmates to come to the April 1 march on the Rampart police station and to march on May Day. When we are attacked by the enemy, it is because we are advancing.
LETTERS
CAPITALISM SOURCE OF WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
March 8 was International Women's Day. Here in the Dominican Republic each year more and more women are victims of domestic violence, many time at the hands of their spouses our boy friends. But this is just one form of violence women suffer under capitalism. As many more women sell their labor power as wage slaves in the free-trade zones and other workplaces, rotten working conditions maim thousands and kill many, sometimes little by little, but kill them anyway.
For example, chemicals poison many women who work in cigarette factories and warehouses. Horrendous working conditions in the free trade zones' garment shops are another cause of death.
Over 60% of the workforce in this Caribbean country are female; 35% of them are heads of households. Working hours run to 60 hours a week. Wages, although low for both genders, are even still lower for women. On top of that, many bosses make women pass pregnancy and infertility tests before hiring them.
Prostitution is another major form of exploitation, particularly in the tourist zones. Poverty forces thousands of Dominican women to travel to Europe and other countries to sell their bodies. Just a few weeks ago, a Spanish newspaper exposed a ring led by Spanish mobsters and a Dominican Army intelligence officer, that charges thousands to bars in Spain to smuggle young Dominican women into that country. The tourist zone hotels hire many women as temporary workers to do cleaning work. They are fired after three months, making them ineligible for benefits due permanent workers.
Women organized in the PLP know that only capitalism is capable of creating so much death and division among the working class. PLP plans to increase CHALLENGE circulation in the free trade zones, cigarette factories and hotels, and win more women and men workers to fight together to end this living hell of capitalism.
PLP Comrades, Dominican Republic
LA DINNER SPURS MAY DAY BUILDING
"Who wants tickets for the march?" asked a PLP member and many hands shot up as people said, "Give me five"; "I'll take ten"; and, "I think you should take 15." This was part of a pre-May Day dinner of workers who had braved a driving rain to attend.
There was a warm atmosphere of struggle, helped along by the PLP video, "Red Flag." This was followed by speeches about the history and importance of May Day and the need for building a new communist movement.
New members spoke about the impact of growing fascism in the U.S. One of these young workers recited a dramatic poem called "Bitter Truths," with revolutionary changes to the original. Others reported on the struggle at UNAM in Mexico, a coming demonstration in front of the LA Ramparts police station on April 1st and the need to fight fascism every day and build the revolutionary movement to destroy it.
The inspiring speeches, the delicious food, and the personal discussions spurred the unity and struggle to build the May Day March on Saturday, April 29 in San Francisco.
LA Comrades
PROPOSITION 21 FOLLOWS NAZI MODEL
Last week I attended a forum on California's Proposition 21 here at the University of California's Davis campus and was inspired by the students' response to the call for action against this fascist attack on the working class. There were three speakers: an assistant to a California Assembly person, a former prison guard-turned-teacher, and a UC Davis student who had been in the custody of the California Youth Authority several times since age 14. As recently as three weeks ago, police in his hometown of Richmond had threatened him, apparently ready to plant stuff on him if he didn't cooperate with them.
The room was packed with black, Asian, white, Latino and Middle-Eastern students-every section of the working class. It was the most diverse crowd at any political event I've been to on this campus. The mood quickly moved towards expressions of anger as we listened to the speakers' experiences with the "injustice" system.
The best part was the dialogue created by the assemblyperson assistant. He gave a really well analyzed description of what this law meant for the working class. He made comparisons of this proposition to laws targeting Jews in Nazi Germany before things got really nasty. Some questioned his comments about fascism. Through those questions the speaker and the audience agreed that this was a move toward fascism. It really brought a feeling of solidarity to the forum.
Even people who favored the Proposition engaged in the kind of good debate that sharpened the distinction between the ruling class' desires and the well being of the working class. I distributed several copies of the new PLP pamphlet on fighting prison labor in the U.S. and made several contacts. A fellow student said, "I'm glad to see you guys are here and putting out these information packets!"
The most satisfying thing about this whole event was the unity of a diverse group of students, representing how the working class could be united against attacks on our fellow workers. There was a common goal, a common ideal and a common anger toward this attack on our class. This unity can be built, and from what I saw that night the task is not as hard to accomplish as it can seem to be.
In solidarity, A Comrade in Davis
WE NEED WORK GLOVES AND COMMUNISM!
A recent departmental meeting on my job had a couple of sharp exchanges between the workers and our head supervisor. He said, "I've been telling you guys for years that if you don't work hard, they're going to give our work away." An alert worker quickly responded, "Oh, so you're saying that if work real hard, you're going to hire more people?" "Well, of course not," he stammered in reply. "That's what we thought," the worker angrily pointed out.
Then this same supervisor passed an ugly ultimatum to us from the district head. If any one of us was seen wearing work gloves from the line department, they will be confiscated! Several people jumped on this. Only linemen are supposed to have them, but for a while we have also been able to get them out of the storeroom. We are wearing old ones that we found or saved, and a couple of beaten-up gloves were provided as evidence.
This glove issue really insulted us. You would think if the boss knew that we liked the gloves, and need them for our work, that he would make sure we all had them! But oh, no! We are thieves that had to be watched and threatened. This reminded me of an incident just before the Bolshevik Revolution where the workers in a factory demanded Ventilation and Socialism.
I have been getting more involved in the union over the past year, and I'm running for union office. I must distribute more CHALLENGES, and see more of my co-workers off the job. This will give me the opportunity to raise the Party's ideas. More to follow.
Red Gloves
Iranian Workers Reject Fascist Election Circus
Ten days after the election in Iran, the situation is still confused. Twelve million working class people did not even vote. Many groups, including the revolutionary communists, do not accept the "Islamic Republic of Iran." The Iranian working class must take power; this is the alternative to the election.
The liberal-fascist parties have split into two groups. One supports the religious-fascist mullahs (priests) and their leader Rafsanjdany, who is more nationalist and allied with Iranian capitalists. The other group is allied with the monopoly capitalists and wants closer ties with the imperialists from Europe and North America. They support more liberal cultural regulations but also support the fascist oppression of the working class.
This fascist circus must now come to an end! Iranian workers will destroy this system! We are not like the moderate pro-imperialist social-democrats and we are not like the "Euro-revisionists" who pretend to be Marxists! The only "election" we support is the revolutionary war to destroy the capitalist system and build a communist society! We are the only alternative to the liberals playing their games.
Long live communism! Power to the Workers! Fight alongside the PLP!
Iranian Comrade
DEFEAT KKK WITH MILITANT ACTION
A high school counselor in my town was recently arrested for assaulting a KKK member during a rally. This led to a lot of discussion in the high school and local newspaper. Both a newspaper editorial and an opinion piece by the head of the Board of Education attacked the counselor for "flying off at the handle" and setting a "bad example" for students. But many students supported this action, knowing the difference between uncontrolled rage and planned, militant, anti-racist action.
I wrote a letter to the newspaper, responding to their attacks on this anti-racist. I pointed out that sometimes violence is justifiable and necessary to combat racists. The history of anti-racist struggle is filled with effective, violent actions, including slave rebellions, the Civil War, World War II and more recent struggles.
Several people responded positively to this letter, including a teacher in my daughter's middle school and some of my fellow church members. However, my church minister said he never disagreed so strongly with one of his members. He offered to debate violent vs. non-violent methods in fighting racism. I agreed. This debate will open more people 's eyes to the nature of racism , the role of the government and newspapers in siding with the KKK against anti-racists; and the need for both violent and non-violent tactics in fighting racists.
Suburban Church Member
NOTE FROM A STEEL WORKER
Hello. How are you again? This is L., the one that works at Inland ISPAT Co. I want to thank you for sending me the revolutionary CHALLENGE newspaper. I read it, and share them with my co-workers. They look forward to getting them, and are involved in fighting for workers' rights. Please continue to send them. Send them more often. I thank you so much for being involved from your heart. Keep up the good work. I am very much involved! I look forward to much more.
