- Rulers' War on Terror Hits Unemployed
- Control of Iraqi Oil Crucial to
U.S. Bosses' Plan to Rule World - SADDAM IS NO `LESSER EVIL!'
- Opposition Building vs. Fascist Round-Up of Immigrants
- Never Again? It's Starting Here!
- Multi-racial Unity FIghts Deportations
- Racist Cuts Kill Babies from Harlem to Argentina
- Union Leaders: Capitalist Tool
- CEO's? No, Just Their Lieutenants
- `Roger the Dodger' Taking Transit Workers for A Ride
- MLA Academics Open to Left Leadership
- Cops Kill Two Workers Protesting Against Rightwing `Strikers'
- Untitled Response to War
- WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
LETTERS - RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Rulers' War on Terror Hits Unemployed
The U.S. bosses' "war on terror" is taking a toll on the unemployed. On Dec. 28, 800,000 laid-off workers had their jobless benefits cut off. Additionally Congress did absolutely nothing for another million who had already exhausted their extended emergency benefits. In effect, the racist rulers are paying hundreds of billions to wage imperialist war worldwide, in part, on the backs of the unemployed.
Still worse, 11 million of the 18 million unemployed are completely INeligible for any benefits at all, ever. This 38% eligibility rate is the lowest in the Western industrial world.
Racist unemployment means that black workers suffer twice the unemployment rate of white workers, and working for lower wages collect even smaller unemployment checks. "Last hired, first fired" continues to produce super-profits for the bosses. It leads to double rates of poverty, slum housing, infant mortality and more. Racist unemployment depresses conditions for ALL workers, as many "layoff-proof" white workers at Verizon are discovering.
Unemployment is built into capitalism. In its 500-year history, the profit system has NEVER produced full employment. All bosses are driven to beat their competitors and cut costs by laying off workers, especially in an economic crisis.
The U.S. Congress is saturated with millionaire representatives of the U.S. ruling class who couldn't care less about the suffering of jobless workers and their families.
Republicans and Democrats went home at the end of 2002 without passing even any stopgap measure to help unemployed workers who had exhausted their benefits. Blaming each other, both want to gain political advantage in next year's elections. One proposal would bar any extension of benefits in 24 states where the "official" (artificially low) unemployment rate is below 6% -- as if a laid-off worker in one state doesn't need benefits as much as one in another.
The Senate bill co-authored by NY Democrat Hillary Clinton and Oklahoma Republican Don Nickles would cost $5 billion and would only extend payments for 13 weeks for those who exhausted previous benefits, and would do nothing for the 11 million who are "ineligible."
The "war on terror" in Afghanistan is costing a billion dollars a month and has already cost $15 billion. The war plans for Iraq will cost between $200 billion and over $1.4 trillion if U.S. rulers occupy the oil fields for 10 years. The cost of maintaining the U.S. naval armada in the oil-rich Persian Gulf for one year - $50 billion - could take care of ALL 18 million unemployed in the U.S. at $300 a week for six months. But that's not the way capitalism works.
As Marx pointed out, capitalism requires a "reserve army of the unemployed" to drive down the wages of those still working. The only reason any unemployment insurance exists at all is because communists led millions of workers in the streets during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and forced U.S. rulers to fork over a tiny portion of the billions they steal from the working class. Communist revolution will eliminate unemployment. There will be a shortage of workers, not jobs, as we all work to produce as much as possible for the needs of the international working class.
Control of Iraqi Oil Crucial to
U.S. Bosses' Plan to Rule World
U.S. rulers have assembled the greatest, most destructive arsenal in world history. Since the middle of the Twentieth Century, from Hiroshima to Korea to Vietnam to Latin America, Africa and Kosovo, their bullets, bombs -- including nuclear devices -- and economic terrorism have far eclipsed Hitler in the murder of workers and children.
Now they are ready to unleash military havoc against the working class of Iraq in a gamble to dominate the world for the foreseeable future. This is the nature of capitalism-- the profit system.
The butchery of imperialist war reveals the nature of capitalism to masses of workers, students and soldiers. During the Vietnam war, when the U.S. military slaughtered over three million people, rebellions were a daily occurrence -- from Paris to Detroit to Mexico City to the GIs who "fragged" (killed) their own officers in Vietnam. Imperialist war opens the door to win many to PLP's communist politics of turning the war into a mass revolutionary struggle to sweep away the warmakers -- from the battlefronts to the factories, from schools to neighborhoods, from Washington to Baghdad.
The coming war isn't about "weapons of mass destruction (WMD)." Saddam has fewer WMD's now than he did when the 1991 Gulf War began. The U.S. supplied him with much of the chemical and biological weapons he does possess, for use during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when U.S. policymakers considered Iran their greatest threat in the Persian Gulf.
The "weapons inspections" are a hypocritical ploy designed to give Bush an excuse to launch a war that U.S. bosses consider a strategic necessity. At the heart of the matter lies the vast treasure of Iraqi oil -- proven reserves of 112 billion barrels, second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. In addition, "as many as 220 billion barrels of resources are deemed probable." ("Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict Policy in Iraq," Council on Foreign Relations/Baker Institute for Public Policy, p. 18)
For modern capitalism, oil is not just another commodity. It is the lifeline to economic and political power, fueling the factories, the transportation systems and the engines of war. It remains crucial to the production of everything from pharmaceuticals to computer chips. Whoever controls the cheapest, most abundant supplies, can wield extraordinary power over its rivals.
For the U.S. ruling class, world domination is a matter of necessity, flowing from the character of the profit system. As Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific communism, understood 150 years ago, the capitalists require maximum profit.
Imperialism generates bloody capitalist rivalries while it impoverishes and slaughters the workers of the world. As Lenin wrote 100 years ago, this leads to an insatiable drive to invest abroad, to find larger pools of cheap labor, new markets and access to raw materials. U.S. bosses' competitors also clamor for maximum profits. This inter-imperialist rivalry inevitably leads to war. War in Iraq will drag us further into the bloodiest stage of imperialism in world history.
The international working class has a long, hard fight ahead. Over the next decade or so, U.S. bosses are likely to occupy the entire Persian Gulf. Their Chinese, European and Russian rivals will not sit still forever and hand them a free pass, as they are forced to do today. Over the long haul, another world war is in the cards, most likely between an isolated U.S. and a coalition of its foes.
This is merely the harsh truth of imperialism and the laws that govern it. But we don't have to accept this monstrous future. Communist revolution offers the one alternative to imperialist war. Despite the reversals of the first communist revolutions, history shows that communist parties can lead masses of workers and soldiers in opposing armies to turn imperialist war into its opposite. World War I produced the Russian Revolution. The Chinese Revolution was born out of World War II.
By building a mass communist movement, across all borders, out of each imperialist adventure, our revolutionary forces can grow stronger and ultimately make the next world war their last!
SADDAM IS NO `LESSER EVIL!'
Many in the liberal and phony "leftist" leadership of the anti-war movement spread the dangerous illusion that nationalists like Saddam Hussein "are not as bad as Bush." Make no mistake, Saddam is cut from the same cloth. We do the Iraqi workers no favors by supporting him. "The enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend."
U.S. sanctions have cut Iraq's oil income by two-thirds. But Saddam & Co. have made sure that the available money goes to the rich. In Baghdad's wealthy districts, you can find a brand new $42,000 Landcruiser, a top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz for $72,000, $2,500 U.S.-made refrigerators, Armani suits and Sony digital TVs.
While two million poor in the "Saddam City" part of Baghdad are "serviced" by one hospital that is falling apart. Saddam and his elite have an underused hospital better equipped than most in the U.S. While Iraqi government workers average less than $50 a month, soldiers make $15 a month and army pensioners live on $4 a month, Saddam's eldest son drives a new $200,000 Rolls-Royce Corniche. The Iraqi capitalists share the responsibility with U.S. imperialism for the deaths of 500,000 children from starvation and disease.
The U.S. helped install Saddam in power in the early 1960s when the CIA collaborated with Hussein's Ba'athist Party in a coup that overthrew Abdel Karim Kassem. The latter was seen as "too friendly with the Soviets and the Iraqi Communist Party." Then the Ba'athists murdered thousands of leftists, using lists provided by the CIA. Said Arburish's book, A Brutal Friendship, describes Saddam's rule:
"There were many ordinary people who were eliminated because they continued to resist...but there were also senior army officers, lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors and others....Pregnant women and old men...were tortured to death in the presence of their children. Saddam Hussein, who had rushed back from exile in Cairo to join the victors, was personally involved in the torture of leftists....The eliminations were done mainly on...house-to-house visits by hit squads who knew where their victims were and carried out on-the-spot executions. This explains the killing of seven of the 13-man Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party -- most after they were hideously tortured."
Iraqi newspapers regularly report people's tongues being cut out for criticizing Saddam. Army deserters are branded on the forehead and receive long prison terms. Saddam gassed thousands of innocent Kurdish civilians to death with the support of, and materials supplied by, U.S. rulers. Workers have every reason to hate both Saddam and Bush!
Saddam's crimes cannot be overlooked because he is at odds with U.S. imperialism. He is no "lesser evil." We should have no illusions about various nationalist bosses around the world who want to use the masses' hatred for U.S. imperialism to strengthen their own hand. The most dangerous enemies of the working class are those who mislead and divert us from communist revolution.
Some say war in Iraq may cause further instability throughout the Middle East. There is nothing good about the stability of capitalist rule. Capitalism is in a permanent state of war worldwide. The only way out of this hell on earth is to organize Iraqi, U.S., British and all workers, soldiers and students to destroy the cause of modern war; capitalism.
Opposition Building vs. Fascist Round-Up of Immigrants
Three thousand angry demonstrators protested the arrests of possibly 700 nationals from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries in Southern California last month. The men, some as young as 16, had voluntarily appeared at Immigration Service (INS) offices under a new law requiring nationals from those countries -- visitors and those with visas -- to register and be finger-printed. They were jailed for days, packed 30 to 40 in a cell, left without food sleeping on the floor, denied access to family or lawyers, and moved out of state because of overwhelming overcrowding. In Denver six students were imprisoned for failing to take enough classes as required by their student visas. Like the California detainees, they're not suspected of any crimes or links to terrorist groups.
Outrage is spreading among Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities in New York and New Jersey where registration is set to begin. Pakistanis -- now added to the list of those required to report -- form the largest group: 223,500 nationally, 16,000 in N.J. and 51,000 in N.Y.
In Pakistani areas of Brooklyn and Queens, protesters from the local communities turned out in significant numbers. Cab drivers, construction, office and restaurant workers have been living in fear there since 9/11. Hundreds have been arrested, jailed for months and deported. But fear is giving way to anger. Although the numbers are small, the fact that they appeared in public at all was an advance.
Weekly demonstrations have begun at the Manhattan INS office. A mass mobilization is planned for Jan. 10.
Campaigns challenging the laws are being organized. Some detainees have been released, some laws voided. Primarily the movement against the round-ups and the registrations aims at stopping the injustices. But a single-issue struggle without an anti-capitalist class perspective will not build a mass movement that can challenge the system. Leaders and masses alike have illusions they can reform the system with pressure on politicians and through the courts.
There have been attempts to unite with black, Latin and Asian groups, based on the common thread of racism, but without seeing the key role racism plays in capitalism. More positively, Jewish people and Japanese-Americans have become involved. At demonstrations, slogans like, "What's next? Concentration camps?" recognize that a fascist state is developing, although the word fascism is not used. Nor does the movement link fascism to war.
Blanket obligatory registering and finger-printing of workers and students because of their national origin is a qualitative step in the steady rise of fascism. It parallels events in Nazi Germany when Hitler started with the Jews, seized in their homes and arrested. Then came the trade unionists, communists and anyone opposing fascist terror. Nazi scapegoating of Jews for all Germany's problems resembles what is happening to Arabs, Muslims and South Asians today. Workers in Nazi Germany lost any rights; living standards fell as money went to war preparations; and then world war ensued, killing tens of millions.
The U.S. today mirrors that era: arrests without warrants of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians; their imprisonment without access to lawyers and family; secret courts; lawyers stopped from boarding planes; workers threatened with jail for striking (the West Coast dockworkers); and now the enforced registration of hundreds of thousands.
When the Nazis rounded up Jews, too few Germans opposed it. We must learn from that. The struggle to stop the arrests and deportations of our South Asian, Arab and Muslim brothers is the front line of the fight against fascism today -- and since the rulers need this police state apparatus to prevent opposition to war, this struggle must be linked to the fight against imperialist war with Iraq and other wars to follow.
Never Again? It's Starting Here!
When the Department of Justice ordered all male non-citizen immigrants above 16 from certain Muslim Middle Eastern and African countries to register and be interrogated by the Immigration Service (INS), our club first heard about it from a friend. He had seen a flyer put out by the International Student Affairs Office on his campus. Students there met and held a rally to denounce the "special registration" as racist and fascist.
We quickly distributed a leaflet on several campuses and it helped build anti-fascist ideas among our friends. It compared the INS move to the Nazis requiring Jews to wear stars on their clothing. It linked the anti-immigrant attacks to the impending war to control Iraq's oil as well as to layoffs and the current cuts in health care. We urged students, workers and soldiers to refuse to let the bosses murder and imprison our class brothers and sisters in order to solve their own crisis and said the working class needs communist revolution.
One comrade took the fight to a class on War and Diplomacy. The teacher was discussing the lessons of World War II, saying the holocaust was a test of our "humanity." He said unfortunately we failed that test because not enough was done to prevent the racist mass murder of Jews, communists and others. Our comrade raised his hand to say we were facing that very same test today with the INS forcing Arabs to register. He paralleled the development of U.S. fascism to its rise in Nazi Germany.
One student responded angrily that it was "insulting" to compare the U.S. to Nazi Germany. He claimed it was O.K. to force non-citizens to register. Another student countered that whether or not people are citizens, this special registration was racist. When the class ended, the comrade distributed many of the leaflets.
Another comrade was invited to a demonstration some local college friends had called against the war on Iraq. When passing out the leaflet, he was asked to take the mike to describe the racist INS detentions. He linked them to the war on Iraq. These same friends later invited us to a demonstration they called on both the detentions and the war. It was small but very spirited. We gave political leadership. We've attended many other demonstrations with CHALLENGES and leaflets. In many of them, the leadership has refused to discuss the relationship of the oil war to the war on immigrants.
Ultimately the communist PLP told the truth: that war and fascism are the ruling class's only alternative in a capitalist crisis, and that, in the long run, the capitalist beast has to be destroyed with communist revolution.
Multi-racial Unity FIghts Deportations
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 6 -- The day after the arrest of up to 700 Middle Eastern immigrants here several thousand people held an angry protest. Last Saturday, hundreds demonstrated at INS headquarters. Reflecting its multi-national, international character, the group chanted, "Arab, Asian, black, Latin, white -- against deportations we must unite." A lawyer said he couldn't tell his clients to register, knowing it was a "set-up." Others called for "fair registrations" to "protect immigrants," but this will only insure passivity in the face of fascism. Another speaker denounced the coming war in Iraq. A PLP leaflet was well received.
The INS threatens to register all immigrants, including those from Latin America and Asia, who form a much larger group than the 400,000 Iranians. Immigrant workers are a key part of the California economy. The rulers will use selective deportations to intimidate these historically militant workers while keeping the rest to super-exploit.
They want citizens to remain passive as Middle Eastern immigrants are harassed and deported, sending a message to all workers: don't fight back or strike against imperialist war, racist cutbacks or fascism.
Racist Cuts Kill Babies from Harlem to Argentina
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 3 -- "Central Harlem's infant mortality rate rose to 13.1 deaths per 1000 births last year -- more than double the city-wide level....Advocates and health care experts blamed the Harlem rate...on delays in getting funds and a large influx of immigrants who don't have ready access to health care." (New York Post, 12/30/02).
Racism is the real culprit. This city's capitalist-created budget crisis feeds Wall Street banks and bondholders over $3 billions in debt payments annually while social programs are slashed. "The city Health Department's Sandra Mullin acknowledged the delay in funds, saying, "We are in the midst of a budget crisis....The scopes and budget had to be worked out..." (NYP)
Anti-immigrant racism is another cause. "In Central Harlem, there are a lot of immigrants from Africa," explained Adam Aponte, chief of pediatrics at North General Hospital. Lack of health insurance and fear of immigration authorities distance these workers from health care.
Meanwhile, in Argentina in the Southern Cone of the Hemisphere, children are dying of malnutrition for the first time in modern history. On Dec. 29, Juan Manuel became the 18th child in the northern province of Tucuman to die of malnutrition in the last 60 days. Dr. Luis Albaca, who cared for Juan, said, "He was an innocent victim of poverty and the horrible policies of the national government....In Simoca [site of the death]....the rate of malnutrition and infant mortality is similar to that...in Africa and areas of India. The sad part is that nothing is done to counter this." (Pagina12, 12/30/02).
By year's end, two more Argentine children died of malnutrition in Chaco province. Thousands of children are suffering hunger throughout this country, one of the world's leading producers of meat and wheat.
Capitalism has been a failure for billions worldwide, particularly for workers' children. For their sake, let's organize to fight for a society where the wealth workers produce will be shared according to need. Children will be the first priority, eliminating the profit system and its bankers and agro-industry bosses.
Union Leaders: Capitalist Tool
At a recent union meeting, some UAW members were discussing Trent Lott's public support of segregation that cost him his leadership role in the Republican Party. One black woman said, "I'm not afraid of Trent Lott. I know where he stands. It's the enemy I can't see that worries me."
That, in a nutshell, describes the liberal and "socialist" union leaders and politicians, who out of patriotism and loyalty to the profit system inevitably lead the workers to fascism and war. Prior to World War II, with fascism on the rise around the world, the revolutionary communist movement (the 3rd International) referred to these "social democratic" union leaders as "social fascists." This is still true. Today, U.S. rulers are using the union leaders to get workers to support and pay hundreds of billions of dollars for the imperialist "War on Terror," war in Iraq and fascist "Homeland Defense."
Operating within the (bosses') laws of capitalism, fighting to defend "your" boss against the "foreign" competition and trying to bail the bosses out of their unending crises leads workers into the arms of the ruling class. "Union representatives on the board [of Directors] help the companies run. They are like management." So says the head of the U. of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business's Center for Human Resources (New York Times, 12/26/02), commenting on the workers' "ownership" of United Airlines.
At United Airlines, union leaders negotiated a powerless "employee stock ownership plan [that "gave"] workers a 55% stake in the company," in exchange for huge concessions. Now the stock is virtually worthless and the company has filed for bankruptcy. United is demanding $2.4 billion in immediate wage cuts, laying off thousands and threatening to void their union contracts.
Bankrupt USAIR gave the union three seats on the board of directors to secure $840 million in concessions. An airline spokesman said, "They will have representation...but certainly not control." (NYT) Those labor seats on the Board "helped USAirways secure the concessions."
Northwest Airlines has had three union representatives on its Board since 1993. Northwest's president says, "Our labor directors...are fully aware of the...obligations they have." Translation: they know which side their bread is buttered on.
Verizon is laying off thousands of workers, and the best the Communications Workers of America leadership can do is to spend millions on patriotic media ads citing the workers' role in repairing phone damage caused by 9/11. Mobilizing workers for an all-out strike was never a thought.
At the conclusion of contract talks between the TWU and the "poverty"-pleading MTA, the new "militant" Local 100 President Toussaint sealed the biggest sellout of NYC transit workers in recent history by hugging the MTA boss. Toussaint relied on Hillary Clinton, Basil Paterson and other Democratic Party hacks, as well as union sellouts like the teachers union's Randi Weingarten and even the heads of the racist Police Benevolent Association to push the MTA to make a deal and avoid a strike. The union agreed to a wage freeze in the first year and surrendered a no-layoff clause. (See article below)
TWU's Toussaint promised the workers militant, class struggle. Once in the saddle, he served the bosses better than the Old Guard he defeated. In a union with an overwhelming majority of black and Latino workers, he was just as guilty of enforcing the MTA's racism, which keeps these workers' conditions below those of the white workers on other MTA suburban lines. If white workers fail to unite with their black and Latin brothers and sisters, they too will fall victim to the bosses' racist attacks. That's what thousands of white Verizon workers are discovering. Racism oppresses ALL workers and paves the way for fascism.
The bosses need the union leaders more than ever in an era of intensifying fascism and war. These traitors have turned what is supposed to be a defensive weapon of workers into a tool of the capitalists. Nazi Germany had its Labor Front, which used its lieutenants to betray the workers. Mussolini had his fascist Corporate State, which "united" workers with bosses to serve the big capitalists. And Roosevelt was temporarily stopped from moving in that direction by the communist-led resistance of millions of workers during the crisis of the 1930s. Despite organizing millions of industrial workers into unions, winning the 8-hour day, unemployment insurance and Social Security, the communist movement succumbed to nationalism, abandoned revolution and was purged from the unions by the Cold War anti-communist onslaught. For at least 60 years the U.S. labor movement has been led by those most loyal to U.S. imperialism, whose hands are drenched in workers' blood.
PLP struggles against the bosses' attacks in order to provide workers with a school for communism. Capitalism can survive any economic crisis, any imperialist war. But it can't survive communist revolution. Only such a revolution can seize state power from the ruling class and the social fascist union leaders who defend their drive to fascism and war.
CEO's? No, Just Their Lieutenants
The following are the salaries paid to various union presidents in 2001:
Jay Mazur (garment workers)........................$498,554
Duane Worth (airline pilots)...........................439,296
John Bowers (East coast longshoremen)........358,554
Sandra Feldman (teachers).............................354,105
Doug McCarron (carpenters)...........................336,745
Doug Dority (Food & Commercial)..................305,032
Gerald McEntee (AFSCME)...............................281,634
John Wilhelm (hotel workers)........................273,120
Michael Monroe (painters)..............................258,500
[Source: Wall Street Journal, 12/24/02]
`Roger the Dodger' Taking Transit Workers for A Ride
The new transit contract is a big victory for Wall Street and the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). The precedent-setting first-year wage freeze perpetuates the myth that these billionaires are "broke" and that workers must sacrifice.
Much of the $1,000 lump-sum payment will be lost to taxes, and is excluded from a worker's base pay, negatively affecting vacation, sick time and future increases. The 3% raises for the second and third years barely match inflation. The MTA can now consolidate various transit lines into a Regional Bus Company, meaning layoffs and attacks on seniority and civil service status. Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 leaders agreed to increase productivity and "relax" work rules that workers fought and died to establish. This means more speed-up, less safety precautions, working out of title and more accidents, like the two workers killed last November because the MTA routinely disregards work-rules. The TWU dropped its demand to end Workfare, allowing unemployed workers on welfare to continue doing union work at slave labor pay.
When TWU president `Roger the Dodger' campaigned for office, he opposed most of these concessions that he is now urging workers to vote "Yes" on.
But the effects of this rotten contract will ripple far beyond transit workers. About 200,000 city workers are facing contract talks and now a wage freeze. Over 7.2 million daily riders will pay more because the TWU leadership dropped its demand for no-fare-increase. Hundreds of thousands more will be hit with a commuter tax.
The union "leadership" could have exposed the City bosses' "poverty" lies by publicizing the billions paid in interest to the banks, in bonuses to CEOs and in corporate stealing. Instead, they accepted the MTA's "hard times" BS, despite last year's $300 million surplus and their refusal to open the books.
The "leadership" never mobilized for a strike, which Toussaint described as a "catastrophe." Now transit workers are voting on the contract, but the militant rank and file, which overwhelmingly supported a strike at the Javits Center mass rally, is now unprepared to organize much resistance.
However, somewhat of a fight is occurring during the ratification period. Toussaint is touring locker-rooms urging a "yes" vote on the basis of safeguarding health benefits and the MTA's "promise" to overhaul the hated disciplinary system, which still leaves 10,000 cases. The mail ballots will be counted on Jan 21.
PLP's goal is to use this struggle as a school for transit workers to learn and organize for communist revolution. Capitalism feeds on wage slavery, war, racism and mass misery. The TWU's own history shows that only by breaking the bosses' laws have workers ever won anything of consequence, including the right to unionize. We fight for a communist society, where the working class rules and the wealth we create is distributed according to need.
A retired transit worker
MLA Academics Open to Left Leadership
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 31 -- At the 2002 Convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) here, many literary academics showed real openness to a leftist analysis of the current drive toward war and fascism, as well as of the brutal treatment of the non-tenure track faculty who teach about 60% of literature, language, and composition classes. Leaflets from both PLP (on communism as the solution to imperialist war) and the Radical Caucus (on inequalities in universities reflecting larger social inequalities) were warmly received.
Two of the three resolutions presented to the Delegate Assembly by the Radical Caucus were passed. One charged the University of California-Davis with abusing its non-tenure-track lecturers. The other ("guns versus butter") called for funding education, not war. A third appealed to academics to analyze and condemn the use of language to rationalize war. It just missed receiving the _ vote needed to come to the floor.
The Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee (DAOC) tried to block resolutions with demands for "documentation." This hypocrisy was exposed when they rejected the data presented to support the guns-versus-butter resolution. But the delegates followed the Radical Caucus's lead, twice overruling the DAOC.
For Left politics, the Radical Caucus was the only show in town. Its meeting overflowed the small hotel room. While the Graduate Student Caucus previously had led struggles against the super-exploitation of adjunct and graduate student labor, it was virtually invisible here. The Radical Caucus is continuing this fight, connecting with the part-time and non-tenure-track teachers who are the most class-conscious MLA members.
PLP members played a critical role at the convention, advancing Marxist class analyses of literary/cultural issues and the coming war. But we did not speak up boldly enough against red-baiting or defend the positive historical contributions of the world communist movement. Moreover, we presented fewer papers than in past, when we have emphasized topics like the centrality of communism to African-American literature, the bankruptcy of postmodernism and identity politics, the need to reject bourgeois notions of "literacy," and the importance of teaching proletarian literature. At the 2003 convention we will rectify these errors. Furthermore, we need to be more consistent in unmasking the capitalist nature of universities as "ideology factories." Many left-leaning academics persist in viewing them as "centers of enlightenment" even as they engage in brutal employment practices.
PLP has contributed significantly to making Marxist perspectives respectable in the MLA. But we need to go beyond merely anti-capitalist politics -- the basis of Radical Caucus unity -- and win many left-leaning MLA members to support, and join, the PLP and the movement for communism.
MARCHING WITH
BLINDERS ON
SEATTLE, WA -- On Jan. 14, thousands of angry education workers will descend upon the state capital in Olympia to rally and march against the devastating cutbacks already in place, and those about to come. We'll let the governor and legislature know we're furious at their refusal to give us a raise, despite voters having overwhelmingly approved one in the last election! We'll tell them again that many of our students will be unable to pass the WASL (state mandated assessment test) because many teachers have left the state, or the profession altogether, due to low pay, large class size and tremendous mounds of paperwork.
All these issues are very important; it's good that so many will participate. However, this demonstration is not addressing the most urgent matter workers, and especially students, are facing - the prospect of war in Iraq, which those cutbacks help pay for.
The very same students we teach and serve daily in our classrooms are confronted by a future of war, fascism, unemployment and racist violence. As educators and parents, we must unite with the youth who are increasingly taking to the streets to demonstrate against this imperialist war. For those students who are unaware, we must bring the issue to our classrooms. Our unions and associations are supporting Bush's war for oil by remaining silent. If we go along with this we surely will be marching with blinders on!
At Olympia, we must raise the war amongst our fellow workers, students and parents and distribute literature on the buses and at the rally itself. We should win people to join us at anti-war rallies on Jan. 18. We have to raise it in our unions, associations, classrooms, churches, etc. With people we already know, we must take it even further and talk about the need to get rid of a system that sacrifices workers and working-class students so that a few crooks can control oil profits. We must overcome our own fears and step forward to lead these workers, students, soldiers and sailors to communist revolution!
Anti-War Students Expose
U.S. Rulers' Hypocrisy
About 700 students on a Northeastern campus of 6,000 participated in a two-day teach-in on the U.S. war in Iraq. The activity inspired formation of a student anti-war group which called for an anti-war action on December 10, as part of a National Day of Action. The students heading the new group also helped lead a student roundtable discussion and small discussion groups at the teach-in.
One young woman speaker challenged the audience by asking, "Why is the U.S. government suddenly so worried about the lives of these Iraqi people, when it has been slaughtering them at will?" She explained that the U.S. didn't start a war when Hussein gassed his own people but now that the U.S. wants to control Iraqi oil, politicians are talking about being "concerned" for the very people the U.S. has been starving and bombing for ten years. She said that as far back as 1987, the U.S. funded Hussein with weapons to fight Iran because the U.S. didn't like Iran's policies.
Saying she attended the Oct. 26 march in Washington, D.C., against a war in Iraq because she wanted answers to her questions and was appalled to learn that U.S. military intervention is motivated by economic interests not humanitarian concerns and has caused millions of deaths of innocent people.
The student leadership here is important because until now, the faculty has been the main group leading activism against U.S. war plans abroad and repressive Homeland Security measures. More student-led events are needed to change students, just as the young woman above was transformed by the Oct. 26 march. Overcoming this pacifism will be even more important as the U.S. moves closer and closer towards war.
Cops Kill Two Workers Protesting Against Rightwing `Strikers'
CARACAS, Jan. 8--Two workers protesting against the rightwing "strikers"were killed by the Metropolitan police, controlled by the pro-coup mayor of Caracas. Workers from the poor neighborhoods all over Venezuela hate the pro "oil coup" forces, who are mostly racist and fascistic. But unfortunately, these anti-coup workers believe that President Chavez, representing nationalist bosses, is the answer. Workers must break with all capitalist factions and build a revolutionary communist movement.
Untitled Response to War
by Red MC
Lost life, a bit too hard to view,
especially through a focus too askewed,
who knew? Not me, not we, in fact not anyone,
well maybe some but only if their finger's on the gun
trigger, bigger, bigger you feel as you start to kill,
but damn you opinions and right to free will,
"our lives, our fourtunes, and our sacred honor
for the sake of freedom" defend the dollar.
The most common cause for war I've ever seen,
is to help the rich keep on getting their green.
Currently oil is the imperialist prize,
or at least the focus in Exxon-Mobile's eyes,
but will you, and I, and we, have to die,
to continue the constant Texas-T supply?
Well, yes. Because ain't you heard they need recruits,
if their gonna have a war then they have to have troops,
to kill and be perishable as cannon-fodder,
so let's raise our fists and not be head nodders,
to war without end, tear down the system from within,
we'll turn the guns around and be found to win!
How can we, you us and me, fight back?
WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
LETTERS
Colombian Union Hacks Dig Workers' Graves
Capitalism survives because workers are disorganized and weak. Today Marx's call, "Workers of the world, unite!" has more validity than ever. Trade unions have never really carried this out -- nor was that ever their purpose -- and have dug our graves with their pro-boss collaborationism. As 2003 begins, workers worldwide urgently need an international revolutionary Party as PLP envisions one.
But capitalists well understand the need to neutralize organizations workers use to fight for their interests. Here in Colombia, under the misleadership of sellout union hacks, the percentage of unionized workers is a lowly 3%, A clear example is Sinaltrabavaria, which represents workers in the Bavaria brewery.
Several years ago, workers there waged a militant 72-day strike, despite attacks by the bosses, cops and death squads. This action put the bosses on the defensive for a while, but the union leadership did everything possible to help the bosses reverse that. They've signed an agreement giving up many of the gains won in decades of workers' battles. Now workers are demoralized and weakened.
Today, 2,000 Bavaria workers are out of work because they refused to accept this sellout. The 1,800 who accepted are at the mercy of the company and their union lieutenants. Now there are only 500 unionized workers at Bavaria, trying to hold onto what is left of 70 years of struggle.
But besides the bosses' drive for maximum profits and the sellout union executive committee, workers' lack of class consciousness is also a culprit. This deadly evil has made workers at Bavaria and worldwide easy targets of the bosses and their agents.
We in PLP have tried to counter this trend among Bavaria workers, to bring our communist politics to the struggle. But the union leaders were in a better position to make workers bow to the bosses' pressures. However, all this -- including our job losses -- has made us see the need to double our efforts to bring our politics to the workers.
The circulation of DESAFIO-CHALLENGE inside the plants is crucial to this process. Our goal is still, workers of the world, unite to fight for a society without bosses and without union hacks: communism.
Red Worker
Heaven and Hell Are Right Here
For almost two years I've attended my friend's Presbyterian Church. I bring him CHALLENGE and other articles almost every Sunday, and try to bring him closer to a communist outlook. He, in turn, tries to bring me to Christianity.
The people in church are warm and friendly. They greet you with "The peace of the Lord be with you!" To those I know best, I reply "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"
Many of our discussions come down to their idealist ideas versus our materialist ideas. They say, "You have to accept Jesus as your Savior if you want to go to heaven. Otherwise, you are going to hell!" But with mass starvation, and lack of decent health care, housing and jobs, for millions of workers worldwide, capitalism is truly hell.
Worker revolutions in Russia and China led to Socialism and reforms which were a step forward. Unfortunately, all that's been reversed, but providing lessons to be learned. A system based on communist principles will be an even greater step forward for the working class.
Church Red
`Worth Every Nickel'
Please find enclosed $10 donation to be used for the advancement of the Cause. CHALLENGE is worth every nickel. Keep up the good work.
West Virginia prisoner
When Soldiers
Fraternize, Bosses Lose
I appreciated the article in the last issue from the Chicago teachers. The debate in the union meeting and the struggle within the "Teachers Against the War" group, show we have a big opportunity to struggle with honest folks who don't agree with us on many things. The idea that we must trust the working class to see the big picture and not just put forward ideas most already agree with is a key point. Sometimes I censor myself instead of advancing ideas that will move a struggle to a higher level.
Activity among teachers has taken on greater importance because many working-class students will go into crucial industries or join the army, some immediately upon graduation and more after several years of racist unemployment and/or dead-end jobs. What youth understand about the big picture can be crucial during a period of imperialist war. Youth who understand they are part of the international working class can fight for their class and not for the bosses, whether in a factory or on a battlefield.
Last month a documentary shown on the History Channel about the World War I Christmas Truce in 1914 revealed some possibilities. British and German soldiers stopped fighting and exchanged gifts, took photographs together and even played soccer. While the History Channel tried to portray this as "the Christmas Spirit" or "19th Century fair play," they had to admit that the soldiers in the trenches understood they had more in common with each other than they did with their own officers. But the History Channel won't admit that during World War I, communists especially in Russia - struggled with workers and soldiers to reject patriotism and nationalism and see themselves as one international working class, whose interests lie in fighting for power for our class. It was that perspective that inspired the Christmas Truce and led Russian soldiers in 1917 to leave the front and join with workers and peasants to make a revolution.
As both a U.S. and World History teacher, it's gratifying to see students draw useful lessons. The students in my U.S. History class had read about the pro-war government propaganda during World War I, as well as the jailing of anti-war activists and speakers. I asked the class why, in their opinion, people weren't told the truth about the war. In a class 70% Latino and 30% black, a young black woman answered, "Because there are more of us than there are of them."
A Teacher
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, WG=Weekly Guardian
Mid-East oil gets more vital
Washington, Dec. 25 -- As President Bush seeks to reduce American reliance on oil imported from the Persian Gulf, new government studies predict that in two decades the West will be even more dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern producers. [NYT, 12/26/02]
No Iraq answer can suit U.S.
Some scholars would say the task the world has assigned Iraq -- to prove it has no weapons of mass destruction -- is logically impossible....
The thing we're asking them to prove, whether you put it positively or negatively, is so extremely hard to prove that we're almost rigging the outcome by the way we put the question," said Laurence H. Tribe, the Harvard professor of constitutional law. [NYT, 12/15/02]
African women invade Chevron
ChevronTexaco...in the years ahead...will pump more of its oil in places where people live on "less than $1 a day...."
The Nigerian....women's occupation of the Escravos Terminal set off three other women-led protests against ChevronTexaco and one against Royal Dutch/Shell -- the first time women spearheaded demonstrations against the Western oil giants....
"The Americans who claim to be freedom fighters, the Americans who claim to want to better mankind -- for us they are the devil. They are worse than Lucifer. Can you tell me they are not worse than Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden? To me they are worse. I want to be clear. Americans are like terrorists to us. They come, take and leave without putting back.
"The only security is for them to improve the lot of the people. If they don't, Chevron is sitting on a powder keg." [NYT, 12/22/02]
Mass civilian deaths not news?
What are the likely human consequences of the impending war on Iraq? News media should be asking that question. But the American public remains in the dark....
The London-based Medact organization and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War...warned:
"....Credible estimates of the total possible deaths on all sides during the conflict and the following three months range from 48,000 to over 260,000. Civil war within Iraq could add another 20,000 deaths. Additional later deaths from post-war adverse health effects could reach 200,000."
And here's another conclusion from the report that major U.S. news outlets keep ignoring: "In all scenarios, the majority of casualties will be civilians." [Liberal Opinion Week, 12/16/02]
Dumas, descended from a slave, believed in armed struggle
The Dumas, those thoroughly French "giants..." were the son, grandson and great-grandson of an anonymous slave....A veil was long drawn over the fact that Alexander Dumas was descended from a black slave....The writer fired the imagination of generation after generation of readers with his tales of [The Three] musketeers, battles, fortresses and secret passages....Dumas suffered at the hands of racists....On November 30...the French republic was not just paying tribute to him, but repairing an injustice by admitting him to the Pantheon to rest side by side with Victor Hugo and Emile Zola....
But they were...different. Dumas was more physical. He was prepared to pick up a gun and attack a gunpowder factory in 1830, or join Garibaldi's forces in 1860. [Le Monde, 12/1-2/02]
U.S. history overseas shows `democracy' is just rhetoric
Whenever it has exerted power overseas, America...values stability -- which means not only political stability but also the steady, profitable flow of goods and raw materials -- more than it values its own rhetoric about democracy. Where the two sides have collided, American power has come down heavily on the side of stability, for example, toppling democratically elected leaders from Mossadegh in Iran to Allende in Chile. Iraq is yet another test of this choice. Next door in Iran, from the 1950s to the 1970s, America backed stability over democracy, propping up the autocratic rule of the shah, only to reap the whirlwind of an Islamic fundamentalist revolution in 1979 that delivered neither stability nor real democracy. Does the same fate await an American operation in Iraq?....
If America takes on Iraq, it takes on the reordering of the whole region. It will have to stick at it through many successive administrations. The burden of empire is of long duration. [NYT, 1/5/03]
This edition of CHALLENGE/DESAFIO is a three week issue. We will return in January. Have a great, fighting New Year in 2003!
- Imperialist Oil War Heats Up
While Freezing Workers' Wages - `War on Terror' Hits NYC Transit Rank & File
- Liberals Tighten Control As Heads Roll
- Attacks on Airline Workers Reveal Face of War and Fascism
- Auto Bosses Drive Police State Attacks on Workers
- Nationalism Undercuts Fight vs. Mexico's Anti-Labor Onslaught
- Oil Behind Coup Attempts in Venezuela
- Chicago Teachers Getting Education on Oil War
- 400 At Antiwar Conference
Need to Confront Pacifism and Patriotism - Immigrants Poverty Wages Basis For Clinton's `Boom' Decade
- MLA Members: Fight Capitalist Ideas Engulfing Academia
- Profits Choke Off Fresh Water For Billions
- Now These Students Have Become Teachers
- Bratton's LAPD -- MURDER INC.
- Racist Murder `Well Within Chicago Police Guidelines'
- WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
- COMMUNIST LITERATURE
Imperialist Oil War Heats Up
While Freezing Workers' Wages
A U.S. oil war in Iraq will launch a new period of ruthless struggle for world domination. Oil remains the life-blood of a modern economy. Whoever controls its cheapest supplies will dictate international economics and politics for years to come. Iraq holds the second greatest known reserve of oil and occupies a strategic location in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
U.S. imperialists intend to remain top dogs for the foreseeable future. European, Russian and Chinese rivals cannot directly challenge them at the moment. However, even a relatively easy U.S. victory in Iraq, which is by no means certain, will set in motion a chain of events leading to wider imperialist wars. Iraq is not an isolated case. The international working class must prepare for a protracted future of armed struggle.
Capitalism always leads to war. Imperialist war has two aspects. On the one hand, it produces unprecedented death, horror and suffering, as imperialist technology develops new methods of mass murder. On the other hand, it offers our class a great opportunity to build its revolutionary strength in the storm of battle. As communists, we must do everything necessary to build a mass PLP in the midst of imperialist slaughter.
Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. imperialist strategy has been based on preventing the rise of a rival superpower. Recent CHALLENGE editorials have discussed how important Iraq is to U.S. bosses in maintaining the upper hand over Russia and the European Union. However, China might offer the most serious long-range threat to U.S. ambitions for world domination. Chinese rulers are not ready to assume this role now, but they are carefully planning for the day when they can.
The best scenario for the Beijing bosses would be for the U.S. to have a relatively long war and a difficult occupation with mounting U.S. casualties. This might lead to further U.S. military involvement in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, and could give them advantages similar to those enjoyed by Japanese and European imperialists during the Vietnam period. In the 1960s and 1970s, while the U.S. was squandering its economic treasure in non-productive military investment, the Japanese and Europeans were developing industries like steel and auto and overtaking the U.S. Similarly, as the U.S. deepens its involvement in new oil wars, China "will try to take advantage of the investment boom it is experiencing" to "make it the prime investment and trade partner for goods otherwise bound for Europe." This would also allow Chinese rulers to "build up a powerful military." (Stratfor, 12/13)
Under these circumstances, China's new economic and military might could vie directly with the U.S. for mastery of Persian Gulf oil. A rising China could engage in armed struggle to unseat an overextended, weakening U.S.
If the U.S. succeeds in overrunning and occupying Iraq with minimal internal resistance and little initial opposition throughout the Gulf's oil-producing nations, China would find it difficult to quickly free itself of U.S. dominance. If Exxon Mobil, Texaco Chevron, et al. gain a stranglehold over cheap oil supplies, China will be unable to muscle in on the Persian Gulf-Middle East oil racket and will still need U.S. investment and technology.
But these disadvantages can turn into their opposite. The present gang of capitalist bosses in Beijing has a long-range outlook. A series of U.S. oil wars will remove China as a target of U.S aggression while they remain an important market for U.S. companies. A global U.S war against Arab and Muslim countries will allow China to portray itself as a "friend of the oppressed." Over the very long haul, even the scenario of initial U.S. victory will intensify the conflict between the U.S. and China.
In contemplating the complex scenarios that may unfold, we shouldn't make predictions. As the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism teaches us, we should anticipate many potential contingencies. Our primary focus should be on what dialectics calls "necessity," which means that imperialism always needs war because one imperialist power must try to dominate and others must seek to overthrow and replace it.
This vicious cycle will continue as long as the inter-imperialist rivalry remains the main contradiction in the world. As this period of widening war unfolds, the growth of PLP can accelerate. The sweep of human history will eventually lead to the protracted struggle for power between the profit system and communism. Despite present appearances, we will win.
`War on Terror' Hits NYC Transit Rank & File
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 17 -- The rulers' "war on terror" just slammed into 34,000 New York transit workers. The Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 leadership caved in on their demands for a 24% wage increase over three years and an end to the 16,000 harassing disciplinary citations. Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) bosses won a first-year wage freeze and agreed to a measly 3% "increase" in each of the next two years, paid for by workers' increased productivity. The MTA "promised" to reduce the 16,000 disciplinary citations by one-third, leaving over 10,000 in effect.
The ruling class is going all out to force the workers to pay for the capitalist war economy and budget crisis. Strikes that threaten the bosses' "national" or "public interest" and their ability to wage war will be ruled illegal and crushed. Homeland Security fascism will be used to stop strikes in key industries on the "grounds" that they threaten "public safety" or "homeland defense."
NYC Mayor Bloomberg told workers to follow his "lead" and ride to work on a $660 bike in the event of a strike. He served his fellow billionaires well, using the state apparatus and the Taylor Law to get an injunction barring a strike. He threatened to fine every worker $25,000 for the first day of a strike, and double it every day thereafter. He threatened to fine the union a million dollars, also doubling it every day. He "mobilized" the city to use scab buses and blamed transit workers for any potential deaths from emergency vehicles being stuck in traffic.
The MTA hid behind the "billion-dollar deficit." Less than a year ago they were touting a huge surplus. Of course, the MTA pays billions to the big banks for past and present debts, before anything is spent for maintenance, new equipment and safety, much less workers' wages and health benefits. This lack of safety protection is what killed two subway workers last month while repairing tracks.
Racist Trent Lott has nothing on the MTA, the Mayor and Wall Street banks they represent. The 34,000 subway and bus workers are overwhelmingly black and Latin. The predominantly white workforces of the MTA's Long Island R.R. and Metro North R.R. make considerably more for similar work. The bosses managed to "find" the money to pay the other mostly white uniformed services but can only find pennies for the mostly black and Latin transit workers who move seven million riders every day.
The "militant" Toussaint betrayed the workers by joining with the bosses to prevent a strike which would have given tremendous leadership to millions of workers facing similar attacks. He sabotaged any struggle in the most far-reaching collaboration with the transit bosses in recent history, knuckling under to a lousy wage freeze. This sets a pattern for all city workers. They "threatened" to strike, but did nothing to prepare for one. A week before the contract expired, thousands of workers chanted "Strike! Strike! Strike!" at a mass meeting of 10,000. Toussaint didn't.
The White House/City Hall/Wall Street "war-on-terror" gang, in their drive for maximum profits, is making the working class pay for their oil war in Iraq. A wage freeze for workers and $1.2 trillion for the military over three years. Communist leadership will eventually win thousands of angry transit workers, and millions of others, to smash capitalism with communist revolution.
Liberals Tighten Control As Heads Roll
Heads are rolling as the main, "liberal" wing of U.S. rulers gains tighter control over key positions in and outside government. The Exxon Mobil-Rockefeller wing needs to wrest power from forces that don't share its outlook, as it intensifies its Mideast oil war and homeland fascism.
FROM THE
WHITE HOUSE....
The first blow hit the White House itself. Bush booted his top economic aides, replacing them with John Snow as Treasury Secretary, Stephen Friedman, as head of the National Economic Council and William Donaldson as Securities and Exchange Commission boss.
Snow, chairman of the CSX railroad, wants to stamp out corporate practices like speculation and embezzlement that harm the interests of the bigger bosses. This summer, Snow co-chaired a blue-ribbon commission of the Conference Board on corporate ethics. His partner was Pete Peterson, head of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations. The panel helped spur criminal actions against Enron, WorldCom and others.
Friedman belongs to David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and the liberal Brookings Institute, which is fine-tuning Washington's plans for invading Iraq. In the early '90s, Friedman co-chaired Goldman Sachs with Robert Rubin, who became Clinton's Treasury Secretary. Conservative critics call Friedman a "Rubin clone" because, like Rubin, he favors deficit reduction over tax cuts. Clinton and Rubin reduced the deficit through wholesale racist cuts in social programs including welfare and education.
Donaldson, an aristocratic family friend of the Bushes, advised Nelson Rockefeller when he became vice-president. Stephen Moore of the conservative Club for Growth complains that Bush's new team "comes from this Rockefeller wing of the party" (U.S. News, 12/23).
...TO THE SENATE...
In another major shake-up, conservative Republican Trent Lott had his influence severely diminished, although for the time being he hasn't lost his post as Senate majority leader. The liberal media pounced on Lott's recent praise of Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential candidacy as a segregationist. The New York Times and Washington Post printed multiple pages hypocritically attacking Lott's opposition to civil rights. Lott then begged forgiveness on hands and knees from Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, liberal favorites who are hell-bent on committing genocide for oil once more in Iraq.
...TO THE ALTAR
Pressure from liberals, led by the New York Times-owned Boston Globe, also forced Cardinal Bernard Law to resign as archbishop of Boston. Law protected many priests who had sexually abused children. But his more grievous sin, in the eyes of the main rulers, lies in his speaking out against U.S. war aims. Law, along with New York's Cardinal Egan, follows the Vatican, and preaches a pro-European line on the Mideast. The liberals want the Catholic Church in the U.S. to break with the Vatican and to answer mainly to U.S. main wing leaders. Gloating over Law's ouster, a New York Times editorial (12/14) praised Oklahoma governor Frank Keating for leading "church reform." Since well before 9/11, Keating has played a big role in shaping the rulers' fascist Homeland Defense schemes.
Attacks on Airline Workers Reveal Face of War and Fascism
United Airlines (UAL) was forced into bankruptcy after the Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB), set up under emergency 9/11 legislation, rejected the company's petition for $1.8 billion in loan guarantees. This week United insisted on even deeper cuts in labor costs than the $5 billon they demanded before the December 9 bankruptcy filing. United managers have been handing out "United We'll Stand" bumper stickers for months. What a joke!
The Federal Government and the courts have declared open season on airline workers, creating a fascist corporate state that would have made Mussolini proud! The airline industry is prepared to use bankruptcy laws to tear up existing contracts.
American, Delta and Continental soon issued their own threats. Continental chief Gordon Bethune said that bleeding the workers dry is "healthy for the industry." US Air demanded increased outsourcing, doubling of employees contributions to medical benefits and job-killing, work-rule concessions. (AviationNow.com 12/02) They threatened to liquidate the company if they don't get an additional $200 million in wage and benefits concessions.
"What's their alternative [now]?" asked David G. Bronner, head of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, US Air's largest shareholder.
Despite this tremendous pressure and the recommendation of the Union leadership, International Association of Machinist (IAM) members have rejected additional givebacks at US Air and United. But votes won't stop these fascist attacks.
Fascist Bureaucrats or
Revolutionary Consciousness
One United IAM local president complained on national TV about the government spending billions to prepare for a possible war in Iraq and not a penny to save thousands of jobs. Where were these guys when IAM International president Buffenbarger issued his infamous jingoistic appeal to support the U.S. government after 9/11 screaming, "We don't want justice, we want revenge!" They all lined up to support this "partnership" with the government and U.S. imperialism. From that moment on the die was cast. Embracing nationalism and abandoning whatever pretext was left of a class outlook left the union impotent in the face of these inevitable fascist attacks.
Union leaders like Buffenbarger, see becoming junior bureaucrats of fascism as the only way to preserve their organizations and relevance. Just before he canceled yet another contract vote, a disheartened Buffenbarger whined, "We [the union misleaders] were ready to partner with United, the union coalition and the government. Unfortunately, the U.S. government walked out on that partnership."
So there you have it: a fascist corporate state attacking workers in preparation for imperialist war, aided and abetted by a social-fascist union leadership that leaves workers unable to resist. The only way out of this death spiral is to build a mass, revolutionary communist movement to overthrow a system that would destroy the lives of millions of airlines workers to "save the airline industry."
The (Economic) Fog of War
From the "lofty heights" of the Foreign Affairs to your local newspaper, the bosses are blowing smoke in our faces, spreading the illusion that the U.S. can maintain its imperialist empire with minimum sacrifice by us workers. While historian Paul Kennedy is quoted about how cheaply the U.S. is able to maintain its status as the world's only superpower, the recent attacks on airline workers paint a starkly different picture.
US Air is demanding "all labor groups agree to an [additional] 18-month, 5% `wage deferral' in the event of a U.S.-Iraq war." Those workers fortunate enough to keep their jobs will find their compensation reduced by a third from pre-9/11 levels.
We should maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to figures issued by ruling class pundits. United Airlines CFO Frederic F. Brace II admitted, "Any financial person with any degree of competence can make numbers say whatever they want them to say," during the recent battle over federal loan guarantees. (New York Times, 12/03)
The European Union, an economic entity comparable in size to the U. S., is struggling to modestly increase military spending, but fear they could "bust the bank." But these increases pale before the huge amount U.S. bosses spend to defend their imperialist empire.
Recently, Robert Hormats, the vice chairman of Goldman, Sachs and a member of the National Security Council under Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan, advanced a more realistic appraisal of the cost of maintaining the empire. He fears we are drifting into a "Vietnam [War]-like model, with neither economic sacrifice nor war-focused prioritizing," that could lead to economic and political stagnation. "Tough wartime economic choices [are needed]," he warns. "Patriotism, candor and sound economics demand no less." (Wall Street Journal, 12/06)
Make no mistake about it. Maintaining the U.S. imperialist empire takes a significant bite out of workers' hides. In short order, it will really hurt.
Auto Bosses Drive Police State Attacks on Workers
The U.S. Patriot Act, the super-Gestapo Homeland Security Agency, and the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness plan for a supercomputer to keep an eye on millions, are turning the U.S. into a police state. All of these are supported by almost all Republicans and Democrats in Congress Many companies and colleges are providing federal agents with private information on their employees and students. This police state is a massive step, but elements of it have existed for many years. (See recent CHALLENGE series on legal fascism.)
Union hacks and bosses have often united to attack and fire militant workers, particularly left-wingers. Twenty-five years ago, a PLP airline worker fought and beat an IAM anti-communist clause banning communists from becoming union officials. This clause was born during the height of Cold War McCarthyism, designed to oust the communists who led and helped build many industrial unions.
In 1973, PLP led hundreds of autoworkers in taking over Chrysler's Mack Ave. Stamping plant in Detroit, protesting safety hazards, speed-up and the firing of a PL member. The UAW leadership organized 1000 paid goons, with baseball bats, to smash the sit-down strike and retake the plant where the cops had failed. The union and the auto bosses then blacklisted the leaders.
In Argentina, Ford and DaimlerBenz (formerly Mercedes-Benz) both favorites of Hitler, are accused of helping the death squads of the military rulers in the mid-1970s.
An external commission is investigating the role of DaimlerBenz executives in the disappearance of 14 union members from 1975 to 1978 in its González Catán plant. The company claims it "has already held its own internal inquiries, which found no evidence of wrongdoing." (BBC World News, 10/28) It hopes the new commission, formed by a German law professor, will clear its name, the same way it was "cleared" of its complicity with Hitler's war machine.
Meanwhile, Prosecutor Felix Crous is investigating Ford's role in the illegal detention and murder of workers during the same military regime. Former Ford worker Pedro Norberto Troiani testified that a secret military detention center existed inside the Ford factory near Buenos Aires.
Troiani said he was held prisoner for 50 days, and was one of 25 workers "detained" at the plant in the 1970s. (BBC, 11/6) On March 24, 1976, the day of the military coup, army troops entered the plant and workers began to disappear immediately. Right wing SMATA union leaders helped the company and the military finger militant and left wing workers.
Ford has repeated this elsewhere. In Britain, the Danghemam Ford plant bosses worked with Special Branch (a police spy agency) and right-wing union leaders to fire and blacklist militant and left wing workers. In January 1992, Ford used armed goons to attack strikers in its Cuautitlan, Mexico plant, killing one.
Ford and DaimlerBenz represent the world's big bosses and it's doubtful much will come of these investigations. As worldwide capitalism turns increasingly fascist, and the auto companies' struggle for markets and cheap labor, antiworker attacks will grow. From Buenos Aires to London to Cuautitlán to Detroit, workers can confront fascism by building an international communist PLP while fighting the bosses and their union lieutenants and the local Gestapo.
Nationalism Undercuts Fight vs. Mexico's Anti-Labor Onslaught
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 14 -- On Dec. 12, for the second time in a week, rebellious teachers united with peasant organizations surrounding and storming Parliament demanding more government money for education and protection from NAFTA for small farmers. Earlier, the protestors had been able to enter the chambers to confront the politicians but were ousted by anti-riot cops. This time the cops barred their entrance.
These actions are part of mass mobilizations by the CNTE (a dissident group in the National Teachers' Union) demanding more money for education, opposing anti-worker changes in the labor law, and privatization of public schools, as well as more funds for education. They also wanted Elba Esther Gordillo, former union leader and PRI hack (the former ruling Party), tried for the murder of dissident teachers when she led the union.
After the Dec. 12 protest, legislators from the opposition liberal Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) met with the dissident teachers and agreed to support a law providing more money for education. The CNTE leadership then agreed to withdraw "demands to further raise education funding to equal 12% of [Mexico's] gross domestic product." (TheNewsMexico.Com, 12/13).
President Fox is trying to make workers pay even more for the crisis of capitalism, cutting social services and privatizing others. Eventually the government wants to privatize Pemex, the state-owned oil company.
Changes in the labor law are crucial to these privatizations. The government wants to impose 10-hour work-days, hourly pay instead of regular wages, and an end to seniority rights.
But while these militant teachers led the fight against such attacks, CNTE's proposed "new nation project" is no real answer. Such nationalist plans only help one group of bosses against another. No wonder Mexico's richest boss, Carlos Slim, is demanding Fox revive the country's internal market to favor local bosses. This billionaire may wind up running for president as the PRD candidate.
PLP teachers join the fight of the militant teachers and all workers opposing privatization, which intensifies unemployment and misery for our class, but we also show that capitalism in all its forms (state, private, mixed) is based on the exploitation of workers. During these days of imperialist oil wars and worldwide capitalist crisis, attacks against workers will grow no matter who's President and what form capitalism takes or which imperialist bloc (U.S. or European) he/she favors.
The only way out for all teachers and workers is to break with nationalism and fight for a society without bosses, where production and education serve the interests of the entire working class. That's communism, the goal of PLP. Join us!
Oil Behind Coup Attempts in Venezuela
CARACAS, VENEZUELA, Dec. 18 -- The "general strike" against the government of Hugo Chavez is really a lockout by a section of the old ruling class seeking the profits from -- and control of -- the huge state-owned oil company PDVSA, one of the world's largest. It owns CITGO, the biggest gasoline station owner in the U.S.
The anti-Chavez forces are a united front of union hacks, Fedecamaras (the bosses' chamber of commerce), PDVSA executives and bureaucrats, and other military and civilian right-wingers. They're backed by elements in the Bush administration, who use this gang as a brake on Chavez's allying with anti-U.S. forces and to insure continued oil exports to the U.S. (PDVSA now provides 14% of all oil used in the U.S.) This is particularly important for U.S. imperialism as it gears up for war against Iraq.
But, the anti-Chavez forces want it all.The lockout that began on Dec. 2 -- although having failed to provoke a military coup against Chavez -- has disrupted PDVSA oil production, increasing the world market price of oil.
Most workers, particularly in the working class urban areas, oppose the putschists. Even middle-class support has declined since the one-day coup in April. That's when Pedro Carmona, head of one of the biggest private conglomerates, became President and tried to impose a Pinochet-like repression, scaring even many of his own supporters. Then in October, the putschists tried again, but masses of workers and youth stopped them. Now they're trying again.
With each attempted coup, the Chavez government compromises more and more with U.S. imperialism's demands (guaranteeing oil supplies and opening new rich gas deposits to U.S. companies). The masses of workers and youth (part of the Bolivarian Circles), fighting the right-wingers in the streets, don't want to return to the corrupt era of the old rulers, who stole tens of billions from the oil bonanza while impoverishing millions. But these workers and youth err in thinking Chavez is the answer. They should direct their militancy towards organizing a mass communist movement to fight for the only solution for workers: a communist society where the wealth they produce is shared according to need.
Chicago Teachers Getting Education on Oil War
CHICAGO. IL, Dec. 16 -- Early this month, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) delegates held a lively debate over a resolution titled, "Say No to War in Iraq." Teachers listened thoughtfully as a delegate in PLP explained that although the U.S. only gets 25% of its oil from the Middle East, it's control of oil profits that's at stake. This will be an imperialist war to seize resources and labor. Another delegate noted the death and destruction the Iraqi people will face, on top of what they've already suffered as a result of Dessert Storm, sanctions and continued bombing. Several delegates said the billions spent for war would mean even less money for education. The "No Child Left Behind Act" requires that schools give the military information about our students. These young people are the ones who will have to fight and die to protect oil company profits.
Delegates opposed to the resolution introduced a substitute motion calling on Bush to exhaust peaceful means and work with the UN. This resolution ultimately won, 202-136. However, many delegates were moved by the discussion during and before the meeting. Originally, some of those opposed to the anti-war resolution argued Bush's position in favor of war. Others argued this was not the union's business. However, by the time the resolution came up in the meeting, those against it presented the substitute rather than directly oppose it.
A number of teachers have begun to meet as "Teachers Against War." They organized discussions about the anti-war resolution, passed out fliers at the CTU meetings, and gathered 70 signatures on petitions calling for the CTU to take a position against war in Iraq. Now the group is organizing a busload for the January 18 protests in Washington.
Within this group, there's been a struggle over the best way to build an anti-war movement, including the content of the resolution to present to the union. Some felt passing an anti-war resolution was vital and therefore wanted to emphasize the money that wars take from education. Others, including a PLP member, argued we must counter the rulers' lies about the war on terrorism and explain that the rulers need to control the Middle East because oil is the life-blood of capitalism.
After the union meeting, several delegates approached the PLP speaker and complemented her presentation. One said, "Even I was almost convinced by what you said." This shows that we must win the working class to see the big picture and not just put forward ideas most already agree with. The struggle continues.
400 At Antiwar Conference
Need to Confront Pacifism and Patriotism
Eight months of organizing and mobilizing - in which PLP members participated -- led to an anti-war call-to-action conference of almost 400 people from different communities, about double the amount expected. This is mainly an advance in potential since there are many more in our region who work in their groups against racist Homeland Security and the coming war on Iraq.
The work of one comrade took some important steps forward. All but two of our regular CHALLENGE readers attended. The week before we met to prepare brief statements for the workshops, describing personal experiences about survival in a brutally racist society, geared to perpetual war. Each soup kitchen volunteer gave his or her talk for a very supportive audience at our church to evaluate. It was one of the most moving experiences I've had in over 30 years of activism. When one volunteer spoke in my conference workshop about her daughter who'd joined the army on Sept. 10, 2001 because she couldn't afford college tuition, there were many seconds of silence afterward with understanding and appreciation.
However, our most advanced new comrade didn't attend; she was depressed about receiving a 10-day back-rent-due notice. We must struggle with her to develop an offensive political response to oppression rather than an individualist, defeatist one.
As one would expect, the main speakers -- while presenting much information -- didn't explain the essence of imperialism and generally re-enforced the participants' illusions about the effectiveness of pacifist organizing and the basic "goodness" of the U.S. political system, as expressed through patriotism. These ideas were debated in various workshops. Comrades and others offered their ideas. The ideological contradictions present at the conference exist in all of society.
As comrades talk to our friends in the post-conference period we are following up on the many opportunities for ideological struggle. One comrade has written an article exposing patriotism for debate in his local group's newsletter. Even if they don't print it, he will still show it to 10 potential CHALLENGE readers to introduce the paper to them. Another comrade has invited four new friends, who helped organize the conference, to join a Party-led study group. Ideological contradictions more sharply etched since the conference, will be discussed in the study group, linked to imperialism, fascism and capitalist political economy.
The conference's ideological weaknesses, widely evident in the current anti-war movement -- pacifism, patriotism and opportunism -- would leave many honest people prey to the next McGovern-type misleader the rulers throw our way. The patriotism of some conference participants stems from the unspoken resignation that "communism has failed." Since "this is the only system we've got," it must be fixed.
This presents us in PLP with both danger and opportunity. We must sharpen the level of struggle with our friends and greatly widen distribution of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. As we deepen our involvement and leadership in the mass movement, this ideological struggle will be intense, long-range and multi-faceted. Ultimately the most important aspect will be the struggle to learn from the history of the communist movement, its strengths and weaknesses, and recover confidence in the principles of communism, based on an understanding of dialectical materialism. The Party's participation in this conference has opened the door a little more to this struggle.
PLP members measure the success of our work in mass organizations in various ways, including: whether we have speakers who can present our ideas to a large audience and in written material we distribute. We were only partially effective in this area at the conference and we have much to learn. The other yardstick measures the political and personal nature of our friendships: how we work with our friends in the course of organizing and fighting back, how these friends are developing politically and the nature of their role in the mass organization.
Expanded CHALLENGE circulation and the continued recruitment of these new friends into the Party is the ultimate measure of whether we're really doing our job. To build the Party under any circumstances and in the mass way necessary to eventually turn the imperialist war and fascist onslaught into an anti-capitalist revolutionary war, the work that the second yardstick measures is crucial, as the anti-war movement grows. We in the Party are learning a lot and are having some modest success in this area.
Immigrants Poverty Wages Basis For Clinton's `Boom' Decade
A new study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University concludes that recent immigrants accounted for half of the new workers who joined the labor force in the past decade, and were critical to U.S. economic growth. According to the report, 8 of 10 new male workers were immigrants who arrived during that time, and that immigration is transforming entire industries.
About 13.5 million immigrants came to the U.S. between 1990 and 2001, including 368,000 people born in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other U.S. island territories. During this time there were 16 million new workers. About 8 million were immigrants, who were used by the bosses to drive down the wages of the lowest-paid U.S.-born workers. About half of the new immigrants are without legal papers, meaning that Clinton's economic boom was based in large part on the racist super-exploitation of undocumented workers.
Andrew Sum, director of the center, said that the U.S. economy would have stumbled without the new immigrants, who contributed more in taxes than they used in services. He said, "Our economy has become more dependent on immigrant labor than at any time in the last 100 years."
According to the Census Bureau, two million immigrants have arrived in the U.S. since the 2000 Census. In the 1970s, immigrants accounted for 10% of new workers. It increased to 25% in the '80s and 50% in the '90s. Still, immigrants make up only 14% of the total workforce.
The director of the workforce education initiative at the Business Roundtable (a group of corporate executives) said, "We would not have been able to have this economic growth without the growth in the workforce that was supplied by immigrants." And their impact was felt throughout the economy, from manufacturing and service industries to engineering, computer science and physical science. Nine in 10 new immigrants went to work for private industry. More than one-third were blue-collar workers, while one in four held technical, managerial or professional jobs.
Without new immigrants, the labor force would have experienced no growth in New England and the New York region. Immigrants accounted for all the growth among workers under 35 and one-third of the growth in the labor force among the ages 35 to 44.
The effect was particularly noticeable among male workers, in part because of a decline in the percentage of U.S.-born men in the workforce. One factor is early retirements; another is mass racist unemployment among black and Latin males who were failed by the rotten school system and dropped out of high school. Among women, three in 10 new workers were recent immigrants while U.S.-born women continue to enter the workforce in larger numbers.
Immigrants will keep coming. The bosses need them to create super-profits while they intensify fascist attacks against them and the rest of the working class. We must wage a tremendous struggle against the racist anti-immigrant ideology on the job, in the unions and the schools. We welcome the workers of the world onto our jobs and into our revolutionary communist party. In their thirst for profits, the bosses will help us to break down nationalist barriers. They will create their own gravediggers. Workers of the World, Unite!
MLA Members: Fight Capitalist Ideas Engulfing Academia
As the Modern Language Association (MLA) meets this year, we face crises in academia, in the U.S. and the world: cutbacks, war, fascist-like repression, increasing racism.
In a capitalist-imperialist system, academia performs a "skills" function, training a few experts and a literate workforce. But its ideological function is primary: teaching that exploitation, capitalism and imperialism are justified; teaching anti-communism and racism (usually in a nationalist form); promoting ideologies that rationalize injustice.
Academia is also a site of super-exploitation of part-time, graduate- and teaching-assistant labor: a decline in full-time jobs; cutbacks; tuition increases. Jobs and services are "privatized," so some boss profits. Research is given away to profit-making companies.
IMPERIALIST WAR
The so-called "war on terrorism" is the cover for U.S. rulers' drive to control Middle-East oil and gain a choke-hold on their imperialist rivals -- Western Europe, Russia, China and Japan. It will kill U.S. soldiers and millions more worldwide.
It's also a war on workers and many of us here. The NYC transit workers' contract fight reminds us that the USA is the only industrial country in which public employees have no right to strike. So much for workers' "civil liberties."
CAPITALISM THE ENEMY;
COMMUNISM THE ONLY SOLUTION
Many of us in academia understand that capitalism is the root of all these problems. What's preventing its replacement with a communist society?
* The demonizing of the old communist movement by anti-communist lies, from Trotsky to Khrushchev to the Cold War academics, making communism seem "worse than capitalism."
* Promoting racism at home -- cutbacks, double unemployment rates, shorter lives, poorer conditions and police terror for black and Latin workers -- leads to the acceptance of imperialist racism against workers in Iraq, Palestine, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.
* The "liberal arts" teach capitalist ideology, making capitalism seem "less bad," dividing intellectuals from working people, and employing apologists for inequality, exploitation and racism, often with a "liberal" veneer.
WHAT TO DO
We in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) applaud those within the MLA -- including initiatives of the Radical Caucus and Graduate Student Caucus -- who expose and oppose racism, exploitation and capitalism. But the primary purpose of the "humanities" is to prettify, rationalize or apologize for capitalist relations of exploitation. With the advent of fascism and imperialist war, these trends will also grow much stronger in the MLA.
The old communist movement made many errors but also had striking successes. We're learning from both, to build a revolutionary movement for a communist society in which the profit system that spawns racism, sexism and exploitation will be abolished. The free, full development of every individual can be realized only in such a society.
We urge you to join PLP in this task, the most important on earth, of creating this new world.
As teachers, we can fight racist, elitist, sexist and deterministic ideologies in our classes and research. We can join workers' struggles. Fighting racism at every step is essential.
In the MLA, we can support anti-racist initiatives. We can, and must, work to condemn imperialist wars and encroaching fascist repression, winning ourselves and others to do this more effectively. Contact PLP at
Profits Choke Off Fresh Water For Billions
A New York Times series (8/25-28) described the worldwide crisis surrounding the supply of fresh water for human use in the Middle East, Argentina, China and the U.S.
The overall shortage of fresh water for the world's drinking and agricultural needs will worsen, due to global warming and to growing populations. The U.N. and the U.S. government estimate that by 2015 at least 40% of the world's people (3 billion) will suffer from insufficient water. The writers did a nice job of depicting the crisis but left the solution up to faith, hope and charity.
However, it's not difficult to see from their account of this crisis the impossibility of its solution in a world in which profit determines the actions of the world's biggest organizations -- large corporations and capitalist governments. One can also see that the only possibility of solving the crisis lies in a world in which human needs determine the actions of the largest organizations -- the working class and its future state power. Such a solution will, of course, require working-class revolution.
In the Middle East, the Euphrates River flows from Turkey through Syria and Iraq into the Persian Gulf. The yearly needs of water in these three countries total 50% more than the volume of water flowing in the river. These countries cannot agree on how to share this water since the upstream country, Turkey, controls how much water arrives in Syria and Iraq simply by building dams. Given a competitive system, the Turkish government logically fears there is no security for the future if it agrees to deliver more of the water downstream. Eventually this could provoke a war as the only way Syria and Iraq could obtain enough water. This competitive situation among nation states applies to almost 300 rivers in the world.
In Argentina the government has allowed two giant French companies, Vivendi Environment and Suez, to control the water for several provinces. The government funds the building of pipes, purification plants and other equipment, while the companies reap the profit through high prices that make it impossible for many workers to get clean water. When anyone objects, the companies threaten to leave those areas. Some regions are more profitable than others; some actually cost the companies more than they take in so they simply close up shop in those unprofitable spots.
Whether profit-making companies or capitalist-run governments control the water supply, the working class loses -- either through lack of access to water, or lack of money to pay for it. In a world in which the needs of the working class determined what was produced and where resources were distributed, there would be no need for nation states and their resulting competition. Plans for dams, distribution systems and purification plants would be made based on need. Clean water would be free to everyone so price would be irrelevant. If some areas were more difficult to supply -- the kind that would be losing propositions for profit-makers, the places easier to supply would subsidize them. There would be no need to "close up shop." Such a world would have to be run by the working class.
Profit is the cause of the water shortage, and water shortages cause disease, starvation and millions of deaths. Capitalism is the scourge of the world's working class. And you can read the basis for this conclusion in the New York Times -- minus the conclusion, of course.
Now These Students Have Become Teachers
PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD. Dec. 13 - As buses rolled up to Northwestern High School this morning, students were greeted by classmates with posters and homemade T-shirts protesting military recruiters and Bush's plans for war against Iraq. Within minutes, 60 students were chanting and picketing, "Bush and Saddam are the Same, The only difference is in the Name!" and "1-2-3-4, We don't want your racist war." As they marched into the school they echoed the 1960's chant, "Hell No, We Won't Go" with a new century beat: "Ain't no power like the power of people, 'cause the power of people don't stop! SAY WHAT?!"
Junior ROTC members and their uniformed troop leaders watched while one military leader had a sharp confrontation with a student before the rally started. The student argued that the war was for oil, not against terrorism, saying the army promises opportunity but doesn't deliver and now war can mean that young soldiers die. She said money should go for schools, not war.
After joining anti war protests this fall, the students organized this protest in 24 hours. It included black, Latino and white students at this public high school. After the protest the principal and multiple administrators, including a visiting Board of Education member, met with 12 students in a conference room and then allowed them to go to class.
The rally was the talk of the school. Many teachers and students congratulated the protesters and wanted to know when the next one would be and what the punishment had been. Not all were supportive. One teacher, an ex-marine, harangued his class about disrespecting the military. The Student Government Association sponsor was visibly pissed off. The administrators claimed they knew we were planning this for two weeks and tried to find out who had helped us organize it. They seemed confused when we said we did it ourselves overnight.
We learned that our fellow students are interested in more than clothes and video games. We were glad to have the support, but now we must follow up with the students who came and talk more about the rally's ideas and about politics generally. The administration will watch us more closely now and probably try to scare us. The school's chapter of Amnesty International is sponsoring a debate on the war next week which we'll attend and prepare for.
The political training some of us have had in Progressive Labor Party, Amnesty International and other groups enabled us to know it could be done and done quickly. May Day marches, anti-war protests in downtown D.C., and demonstrations against police brutality in Prince George's County prepared us with tactics and ideas. We now hope to lead our generation in political struggle against capitalism and imperialism. Teaching about the brighter future communist revolution can hold is our next big step. This event encourages us to push on.
Bratton's LAPD -- MURDER INC.
LOS ANGELES, CA, Dec. 17 -- Last week, the teachers union here passed the following resolution from its Human Rights Committee: "The UTLA [United Teachers of Los Angeles] House of Representatives authorize our President to draft a letter to Mayor Hahn and Police Chief Bratton in the interest of the future of our youth, urging them to discourage gang activity by addressing its root causes. We ask for a war on racism, a war on poverty, and a war on over-crowded and under-funded schools. Rationale: We should take a stand on the underlying issues of events like the recent deaths of two well-respected High School students at the hands of the LAPD."
In speaking for it, a teacher was applauded when declaring, "This morning [Dec. 4] the front page of the LA Times had a large headline stating that Hahn and Bratton are declaring `war on gangs.' In a tiny headline at the bottom of the page, Governor Davis plans to cut $1.9 billion to schools in California...I knew I had to ask this body to take a stand.
Bratton has declared"...a war on black and Latin youth, a violent version of racial profiling with a community policing twist to try to win leaders of churches and community groups to see our youth as the enemy....[We need] a real war on poverty and racism, not...on the youth....Instead of seeing our youth as the enemy,... teachers must be advocates for them."
Teachers at the House of Reps and at several schools have read the recent CHALLENGE article as well as local leaflets about this issue. Students expressed approval of our continuing fight against the "war on gangs" and our taking it to union meetings.
Bratton claims 100,000 LA youth are in gangs. But as Father Boyle pointed out (LA Times, 12/15), only a tiny percentage of those who even identify with gangs carry out gang violence. Over the years, these gang-bangers have gotten guns and encouragement from the police, doing the cops' dirty work of terrorizing workers and youth and spreading drugs.
Actually homicides and other violent crimes in LA by youth under 18 are "down sharply (LA Times, 12/15). Nationally, there were 60,000 fewer youth homicide, rape, robbery, and assault arrests in 2001 than in 1994....Youths last year account[ed] for just 5% of the nation's homicides and 12% of its violent crimes, the lowest percentage on record....The greatest arrest rates [are] persons in their 30's and 40's," having served long prison sentences with no job training or prospects for a job.
The rulers are squeezing California workers to make up a boss-created $25 billion budget deficit by cutting health, education and welfare while they plan to invade Iraq (costing $1 trillion, according to N.Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman). The Hahn-Bratton war on black and Latino youth is part of this bosses' war on all California workers. As always under capitalism, the bosses shift their crisis and declining profits onto the backs of workers and our children.
PLP is urging all workers and youth to organize against these attacks and the coming war economy cuts. As capitalism's anti-worker, racist, war-like nature intensifies, opportunities grow for a mass communist PLP capable of turning the bosses' crises and wars into a revolution to put the working class in power.
Racist Murder `Well Within Chicago Police Guidelines'
CHICAGO, IL- On December 7, three cops murdered 24-year-old Donnell Strickland at the Raymond M. Hilliard housing complex. The cops claim Donnell fired a gun at them, but several witnesses say he was shot as he was kneeling, with his hands up to surrender. Before the body was cold, the police brass ruled that the racist murder was "well within the guidelines of department directives." The shooting has sparked anger among the Hilliard residents.
The following is the cops' story. They claim they were conducting drug surveillance and approached a crowd of people around 10:15 p.m. They say Donnell ran to a nearby playground. When cop Thomas Forst tried to grab him, he broke free and supposedly fired twice, grazing Forst on the side of the head. When Forst's partner ordered him to drop his weapon, he allegedly fired two more shots and the cop fired back. Unbelievably, the cops claim Donnell then staggered several feet and fired twice at a third officer, who shot him, knocking him down. Police spokesman Pat Camden said the cops "fired their weapons while fearing for their lives." Strickland had no drugs in his possession.
Several residents at Hilliard Homes saw the shooting. "He had his hands up," said a family friend who watched in horror from her apartment. "He was kneeling. But they shot him anyway."
Strickland's sister-in-law said he spent the evening in her apartment, attending a birthday party for his 4-year-old niece, playing with his own 2-month-old baby girl. She said, "He didn't carry any gun. All he had was a cell phone. He didn't deal any drugs. He didn't mess with anybody. He was just kneeling with his arms up, nothing else." Witnesses said police kicked him after he was shot.
Strickland was a cashier in a fast food restaurant and was planning to get married. He also had a 4-year-old son.
Two days later, a march of 100 workers and youth stormed the offices of the Chicago Defender, an influential black newspaper. They were outraged that its story didn't mention the many witnesses who said Strickland was shot while attempting to surrender. They only carried the cops' version of the murder, ignoring the residents' side, even though they had to drive right by Hilliard Homes to get to the police station! Allegedly, one Defender employee was punched in the eye and protesters who didn't want their pictures taken damaged a photographer's flash.
More racist police terror is one of the many horrors the bosses have in store for black workers as they lurch towards war in Iraq and a fascist police state at home. The bosses are offering a future of racist unemployment, rotten schools and the destruction of public housing, while sending youth to kill and die in a U.S. bosses' oil war. But these workers reflect the growing anger felt by millions of workers and youth. Increased attacks will lead to sharper class struggle. The bosses can't have it both ways. PLP was involved in this action and will fight to win these anti-racist rebels to march the road to communist revolution.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
Who Are Our Allies In Fight Against Bosses' Wars?
Recently, a friend, a community organizer suggested an idea: "Since the U.S. government isn't paying any attention to us, let's try the French government. In the U.N. Security Council they've been opposing U.S. plans to invade Iraq. We can start a campaign for people to send them letters and e-mails urging them to keep it up!" Some U.S. peace activists have already sent flowers to the French ambassador to the U.N.
I replied, "But the French government is just as imperialist as the U.S. They want Elf-Total-Fina, not Exxon-Mobil, to control Iraqi oil. If the U.S. cuts them in on the oil profits, they'll support the war." My friend admitted I was probably right, but was disappointed. "So what can we do?" he asked. I gave him the short answer -- rely on the working class! Deeper discussion is coming.
My study group read a Canadian author's proposal in Monthly Review to use the electoral process to get other "democratic" countries to oppose the U.S. "war against terrorism." This is the same "lesser-evil" anti-fascist strategy that the Communist International mistakenly adopted in the 1930s and 1940s-- but with the roles of U.S. and Germany reversed.
The "united front from above" undercut revolutionary class-consciousness and built trust in "good" capitalists like Roosevelt and Churchill. When the dust settled, workers who fought to "defend socialism" or "save democracy" saw their U.S. imperialist "allies" launch the Cold War and institute brutal puppet regimes from Vietnam to Iran to Guatemala. Meanwhile, Soviet socialism was so undermined by concessions to nationalism and capitalism that it turned into its opposite.
Imperialist alliances against the U.S., as proposed by the Monthly Review author, will only lead to wider war in the future. Fascism and imperialism are inevitable under capitalism. Only communist revolution can end that. I'll take this discussion to my activist friend.
During a recent anti-war march, a woman told me, "We need to reach out to people with different core values than ours, like all those who support Pat Buchanan. Those isolationist right-wingers are coming out very strongly against an Iraq war." I responded, "If our core values relate to justice and opposing unjust wars, then a lot of people share them. We need to go to the working class, not to Buchanan." She wasn't convinced. "But we need all the support we can get," she said, "no matter where it comes from."
I told her, "I came here with some church people and have some deep philosophical disagreements with them. But there are limits. If you put a racist like Pat Buchanan up as an `anti-war leader,' how can you fight against attacks on immigrants and all workers, which are part of the war drive? We need to build an anti-war movement that fights racism, not caters to it." She still wasn't convinced.
Who are our friends and who are our enemies? The communist movement has made mistakes, but we learn from them. Within the anti-war movement an array of opportunists are working hard to lead angry and impassioned activists into the arms of one section or another of the capitalist class. We need to be there, presenting the revolutionary potential of the working class to destroy global capitalism and its bloody wars for profit.
A Reader
Navy Invades HS:
Leave No Child
Unexploited
At my high school we are fighting two attacks growing out of two provisions in the new "No Child Left Behind" law, both reflecting the U.S. ruling class's increasing embrace of fascism. The law aims to facilitate military recruiting and drastically slash public education.
Firstly the military can demand all student files, including home addresses and telephone numbers, all without the knowledge of parents or students, and the schools must comply. Some students from my school and from an "outreach" program attached to the school, had their personal information sent to the military. (Students in danger of failing high school can have an "outreach" option -- with its more flexible scheduling -- to work towards a diploma.)
Students and parents were outraged at this military invasion of their files and organized to protest the action, including contacting their churches and community organizations.
The rulers' reaction to this opposition appeared in the form of a local newspaper article citing a letter from a high-ranking Navy recruiter in the area. He said the students from these two schools "were unfit to serve their country," since some students had failed the Navy's written exam given to new recruits. Many youth see the military as a way out of racist unemployment, poverty and police terror. The letter basically dismissed the students as too stupid to join the armed forces.
When I read the article to my classes, many students were angered at this disrespect. One exclaimed, "We're not too stupid, we're too smart to fight and die in their wars. If Bush's kids don't have to go, why should I?" Many agreed with these remarks. The bottom line is the rulers know they will need a draft to build the military needed for their imperialist aims.
The other provision of the law mandates closure or "re-organization" of any school with a failing record on standardized tests. By law, the mayor can close any school, for any reason, whenever he chooses. My school's scores make it a "failing" one. It's slated to be phased out starting next September. Should the district administration not adhere to this law, it could lose its state funding.
This rule will disrupt many schools. It will allow corporations to enter school systems, moving them toward privatization. Many of the new "mini schools" have corporate "partners" such as the Carnegie Foundation and Bill Gates. The rulers hope these schemes will divert funds now allotted to public education into paying for wars for world domination.
I have joined with a few teachers to fight this disruptive re-organization and the military invasion of our school. While some feel the school just needs more money, I pointed out that no matter what changes the schools make or don't make, the rulers' only concern about the lives of working-class students is how much they can be exploited.
Our meetings and discussions motivated us to fight for the best interests of our students. But even more important, it led us to question whether the system is really interested in doing the same.
Our group is reaching out to the community to organize parents and students, along with teachers, to struggle over this issue and others that will surely arise.
This fascistic law will lead to further attacks on workers and their families. Rather than "leaving no child behind," the rulers' real intention is to leave no child unexploited.
H.S.Teacher
Thanks-For-FIghting-Racism Feast
Great food, friends, co-workers, comrades, communist political discussion--what a mix of 60 fighters! The Thanks-For-Fighting-Racism-Feast -- initiated 18 years ago by the international Committee Against Racism --celebrated once again as an alternative to the bosses' Thanksgiving (which marked the genocide of Native Americans). It was co-hosted by the Amnesty International chapter of Howard University and the People's Coalition for Police Accountability based in Prince George's County, Maryland. Workers students and neighbors joined together to review and continue the anti-racist actions of the past year.
The first speaker schooled us on thanksgiving history, the genocide of Indians first by the Pilgrims and later by the U.S. government.
A trio of Howard University students related their struggles against the death penalty; the curtailment of privacy rights and the detention of hundreds of foreign-born workers under the Patriot Act; and their focus on the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Another speaker recounted the August demonstration against the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group. He said 1000 cops included snipers above Union Station pointing their guns at us and defending the Nazis!
A trade unionist reported on resolutions against a war in Iraq that have passed in several area unions.
A member of the People's Coalition described being caught up in the election campaign for Prince Georges county executive. He realized afterwards that with all the energy expended there was no clear guarantee the person elected, Jack Johnson, will substantively change the brutal racist culture of the County Police force. Johnson definitely will not heed the Coalition's call to fire the "Dirty Dozen" cops, one of whom has just shot another young black man.
A member of the American Public Health Association (APHA) reported the struggle at its meetings that forced Tom Ridge, Homeland Security czar, to withdraw from his scheduled appearance at the opening session under the onslaught of red-led opposition. Mohamed Ackter, the opportunistic APHA leader, felt compelled to give an antiwar speech amid passage of a resolution opposing the war in Iraq.
The next speaker praised the workers and students attending for their participation in anti-racist struggle, noting that our collective power can bear fruit only when capitalism is destroyed and a communist society built. The young people were congratulated and recognized as representing the future. Joining the Progressive Labor Party was advanced as the most important thing anyone could do in the coming period of fascist repression and imperialist war.
A "50-50" raffle was held to support the Anti-Fascist Defense Fund that aids workers and students arrested in the fight against racism and fascism. Over $250 was collected. The winner returned her half of the money to the Fund. Now, on with the anti-racist struggle!
A D.C. comrade
COMMUNIST LITERATURE
Nuclear Spring A novella and short stories. Envisions a communist future growing out of WWIII.
Comrades In 1975 in Boston, the racist and anti-busing movement turned violent. The antiracist reaction to these events is part of the history of our class. The personal struggle to improve our lives now is drawn in these pages.
To Have in Common A novel about a hospital strike in which workers run the hospital; nine stories about people in ordinary circumstances developing communist values.
All books are 8.50 plus $1.50 shipping. Send check or money to Challenge Periodicals, GPO 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202
Imperialist Oil War: Good for Big Business
- a href="#For Bosses, Depleted Uranium Is an ‘Economic Stimulus’">Fo" Bosses, Depleted Uranium Is an ‘Economic Stimulus’
a href="#‘Secret’ of the Budget Crisis: Bankers Bank Billions">‘S"cret’ of the Budget Crisis: Bankers Bank Billions
- W href="#Workers Suffer During Bosses’ Boom and Bust">"rkers Suffer During Bosses’ Boom and Bust
Transit And Phone Workers: Same Enemy, Same Fight!
Transit And Phone Workers, Unite
a href="#Not Workers’ Job To Balance Bosses’ Budget">No" Workers’ Job To Balance Bosses’ Budget
a href="#IAM ‘Leaders’ United with Bosses">IA" ‘Leaders’ United with Bosses
a href="#Workers, Patients Face Terrorist Threat—From Bosses’ Gov’t">Work"rs, Patients Face Terrorist Threat—From Bosses’ Gov’t
Fight Fascist Attack on International Students
Racist Rulers Gang Up on Black, Latin Youth
Health Care Under Capitalism: Workers Are Expendable
a href="#Salvador Health Care Strikers Battle Cops, Rulers’ Schemes">"alvador Health Care Strikers Battle Cops, Rulers’ Schemes
a href="#Marchers Protest Women’s Murders">"archers Protest Women’s Murders
LETTERS
a href="#Purdue ‘Speak Out’ Opposes Iraq War">Pu"due ‘Speak Out’ Opposes Iraq War
Imperialist Oil War: Good for Big Business
Imperialist war is part of the capitalist business cycle. The only way to deal with this horror is to turn imperialist wars into revolutionary struggles of workers, soldiers and students for a society without bosses, the cause of war. The process begins now, joining and building the communist PLP.
U.S. rulers are masters of hypocrisy as well as mass murder. While the "weapons inspection" sham continues in Iraq, they’re calculating the economics of a war they’ve been planning for years.
The Pentagon’s current "war games" in Qatar, aimed at installing a Persian Gulf command post, indicate that the invasion to conquer Iraq’s oil fields is merely a matter of time. Iraq has the world’s second-largest known reserves. If Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco et al., add this prize to their Saudi oil empire, U.S. bosses believe they can rule the world. Any differences among them concern only how best to achieve this goal.
The U.S. economy is mired in a recession with no clear end in sight. The rulers need to estimate the potential short-term financial benefits and risks of a new oil war. The debate itself reveals the monstrous nature of the profit system.
On September 17th, The Institute for International Economics (IIE) reported that, "War with Iraq now seems probable…[It] will boost federal spending over the next 12 months — from $50 billion [Pentagon estimate] to $100-200 billion [Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey]. This could help recovery. A short successful war is unlikely to boost oil prices much beyond current levels." The IIE board includes David Rockefeller, Harvard President Larry Summers and long-time Rockefeller agents Paul Volcker and Pete Peterson.
a name="For Bosses, Depleted Uranium Is an ‘Economic Stimulus’"></">Fo" Bosses, Depleted Uranium Is an ‘Economic Stimulus’
Only capitalism can consider the use of horrific depleted uranium weapons as a means of "economic stimulus" (killing present and future generations with nuclear radiation — see CHALLENGE, 12/4). Only a system based on maximum profit can slaughter hundreds of thousands of workers and children to jump-start a sluggish economy.
This cold-blooded calculation is based on the bosses’ own best and worst-case war scenarios. A short war would cost them $50 billion, a longer conflict more than double that amount. "Even so," notes the British weekly The Economist (11/28), "America can afford all the scenarios."
The Russian rulers still hold lucrative contracts in Iraq, including a $20 billion deal for LUKoil to develop the giant West Qurna oil field. But the Bush administration is already working with pro-U.S. forces to create a post-Hussein oil industry where Exxon Mobil calls the shots. Reuters estimates that a post-Hussein government "would review existing oilfield developments with French and Russian companies and could favor U.S. firms instead."
According to Stratfor, "a sustained U.S. economic recovery" depends on "decreasing global oil prices." The Asia Times says that Washington wants crude prices eventually as low as $13 a barrel. Russia’s 2003 budget is based on getting nearly double that amount. The Russian economy can’t sustain prices below $18 a barrel. Such a scenario would drive down the market value of Russian energy firms and make them takeover targets for Exxon Mobil and European rivals.
U.S. rulers are the greatest philosophical idealists, as well as the greatest butchers in history. They cannot conceive of a world they no longer dominate. They can’t imagine setting in motion a chain of events that could eventually lead to their own downfall. Yet this is exactly what they’re doing. Even if they manage to seize Iraq’s oil fields, sustain a relatively low level of casualties and avoid a major anti-imperialist uprising at home, it will still cost them hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, including a prolonged military occupation. This could lead to large-scale anti-U.S. violence throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Short-term triumphs will only lead to more war.
Russia will eventually re-emerge as a formidable rival. China is already on its way. The long-range trend is that eventually the U.S. will stand alone against the rest of the world’s imperialists.
But workers, soldiers and youth have no interest in the realignment of the world’s bosses. Our task is building a mass, revolutionary communist movement that leads the international working class to turn the guns around and overthrow the rulers, from Washington to Moscow to Beijing to Baghdad. Nothing less can set the world straight and end the monstrosity of a system that holds the price of oil dearer than the lives of our children.
a name="‘Secret’ of the Budget Crisis: Bankers Bank Billions"></">‘S"cret’ of the Budget Crisis: Bankers Bank Billions
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 25 — With all the hype about how "we" have to "share the sacrifice" to close a two-year, $7.5 billion city budget deficit, not one word is being mentioned about New York’s "dirty little secret"— not by the Mayor, nor the City Council nor any other politician, nor the city’s union leaders, and certainly not by the bosses’ media. The "secret"? Wall Street banks are not "sharing the sacrifice." No, they will rake in $7.5 billion in principal and interest over those two years, a payment mandated by (the bosses’) law. In other words, if there were a two-year moratorium on debt payment to the banks, there would be no "deficit" at all!
City and state budgets are experiencing a major financial squeeze. The bosses say this crisis is beyond anyone’s control, and the only way out is for the working class to tighten our belts — pay higher taxes and suffer cuts in vital services.
But these periodic "fiscal crises" are built into capitalism. The bosses — especially the big banks — reap billons in profits in the form of interest on loans to the city to "balance the budget." New York is a prime example.
NYC owes the banker-bondholders $40 billion, or $5,000 for every one of the eight million New Yorkers. This doesn’t include debts owed by the Transit Authority or the Port Authority, whose financial structures are separate from the city as a whole.
The bosses’ law says that the banks have first crack at the city treasury, before one dime is spent on sanitation, firefighting, child welfare or any other vital public service. Similarly, the transit debt (which may hike subway and bus fares 33% to $2.00) must also be paid to the bankers before any money is spent on maintenance, improved service, or workers’ wages and benefits.
This huge debt to the banks comes from past and current loans, in the form of tax-free bonds, to cover previous budget "gaps," created by these very same banks — a vicious, capitalist cycle.
The capitalists control the state apparatus, which sets the government’s tax and spending policies. The bosses’ drive for maximum profits impels them to keep corporate taxes as low as possible. This makes it impossible most years for the city to cover its expenses for vital services and capital spending (new construction of schools, sewage treatment plants, highways, etc., or purchase of new equipment for all the vital services). It forces the city to borrow heavily to make up the "deficit" created by the bosses’ refusal to pay for these items in the form of higher taxes on their incomes and profits.
For instance, the city used to levy a 5¢-a-share tax on every stock transfer made on New York’s stock markets. This was repealed in 1981. Had that tax been in effect last year, it would have netted the city treasury $7.8 billion; there’d be no deficit for the next two years. In fact, just a ½-cent tax per share would have brought in $800 million, or triple the cuts Mayor Bloomberg has scheduled for the Board of Education and the City University.
If a moratorium were declared on this debt, stopping payments to bondholders for a year or two, Wall Street would lower the city’s credit rating, rendering it unable to sell bonds, thereby creating another "fiscal crisis." The city, unable to pay its debts, would be "broke." This occurred in the mid-1970s when the banks demanded that any future bonds floated by the city be guaranteed by workers’ pension funds. The union leaders, especially the teachers union (UFT) and the city workers’ union (AFSCME), bailed out the banks! That’s what comes from defending the capitalist system.
A fight to force the bosses and bankers to give up some of the profits they steal off our backs might lead to an even greater "fiscal crisis." But it would also raise the stakes of the class struggle. In a process led by communists, this could create the opportunity for the working class to grasp that the only solution is to destroy the profit system altogether. Then all the fruits of workers’ labors, that create all value, would be shared according to need by the entire working class.
a name="Workers Suffer During Bosses’ Boom and Bust">">"orkers Suffer During Bosses’ Boom and Bust
Boom or bust, it’s the working class that suffers. During the 1990s’ stock market boom, the bankers made billions while workers faced mass unemployment, huge layoffs, an increase in racist police terror, homelessness and "replacement" jobs created at poverty-level wages. For a couple of years, the NYC treasury had a surplus from taxes paid from this wild stock speculation, while Giuliani kept cutting vital public services. There was no fiscal crisis then and not much "trickle down" to the working class.
However, when the "new economy" "dot.com" bubble burst — which had produced no real value — Wall Street profits and bonuses declined from $35.3 billion in 2000 to $15.5 billion in 2002. Over 22,000 were laid off in the financial services industry. "The city will get about $1.3 billion less this year then it did during the market’s joy ride of 2000."(NY Daily News, 12/2) But the big banks will still get their $7.5 billion in loan payments from the city, Wall Streeters will "get by" on $7.5 billion in bonuses and workers will lose jobs, pensions, health insurance and vital services. Not much "sharing of sacrifice" there.
Transit And Phone Workers:
Same Enemy, Same Fight!
NEW YORK CITY— On November 24, Verizon workers protested the company’s plan to lay off 4,000 workers, the first time in recent history union phone workers face firings. Two years of layoffs in the telecommunications industry has slashed half a million jobs worldwide.
Killing Telecom Jobs
These layoffs are the result of overcapacity — essentially overproduction of the means of production, a hallmark of capitalism. Every telecom company sought to increase market share by expanding capacity. This was financed by huge loans from the big banks, resulting in gigantic debts. Verizon, largest phone company in the U.S., owes $51 billion and has already cut 14,000 jobs. Yet only 2% of all long distance capacity is actually in use.
Last August, Communications Workers of America (CWA) president Morton Bahr ordered Verizon workers to cross picket lines of other striking workers, and accepted a settlement that he said, "helps sharpen Verizon’s competitive edge." Now that "competitive edge" is throwing 4,000 workers out on the street.
Killing Transit Workers
At the same time, two subway workers were killed in separate incidents while doing cleaning and maintenance of subway tracks in Manhattan tunnels. Joy Antony, 41, and Baby Kurien, 57, each had two children.
Transit union vice-president John Samuelson said, "In both cases, the Transit Authority [TA] violated its own rules by not ensuring that adequate cautionary lights and flagmen were in place to warn train operators that workers were ahead." (New York Daily News, 11/26) In other words, they were murdered by capitalist terror, in the form of refusing to spend money on adequate safety measures. MTA bosses are preparing to raise transit fares as much as 33% while workers are dying because of TA negligence.
Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 leaders were elected on a militant platform and are in the midst of a big contract fight. But they failed this test miserably. They admit that the MTA rebuffed them several times in the past few years over safety issues, but all they did now was meet with bosses to "discuss" safety procedures.
Thousands of transit workers have rallied in the last few months, protesting health care cuts (their Health Benefit Trust is on the verge of bankruptcy) and the "plantation justice" of the discipline-crazy bosses. But the TWU Local 100 leadership used those rallies basically to support the Democratic Party before the Nov. 2 elections.
A strike of the 30,000 mostly black and Latino transit workers to enforce safety measures could give leadership to all NYC workers during the bosses’ new "fiscal crisis." [See article page 2]
While many workers favor striking and others are on the fence, every member’s talking about a strike — except union president Touissaint. But with the bosses rejecting all union proposals, the contract expiring Dec. 15 and no strike preparations to date, chances for a sustained struggle against the MTA aren’t good.
Transit And Phone Workers, Unite
These twin attacks in transit and telecommunications occur at the same time U.S. rulers are spending hundreds of billions to launch an imperialist war for Middle East oil, and establish a fascist "Homeland" police state to prevent rebellion at home or abroad. But the pro-capitalist union leaders who put U.S. flags in the hands of protesting Verizon workers, will never link these attacks.
Bahr and all the other "labor lieutenants of capital" help the bosses’ "free market" enslave the workers. A united fight back against cutbacks, fare hikes, layoffs and murderous working conditions, disrupting the bosses’ war effort, is the furthest thing from the minds of these union "leaders." The revolutionary communist PLP will fight for the political leadership of the working class, up the ante of class struggle against the rulers, and build an international movement to overthrow all the bosses, from NYC to Baghdad.
a name="Not Workers’ Job To Balance Bosses’ Budget"></">No" Workers’ Job To Balance Bosses’ Budget
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 27—About 700 City workers rallied today at City Hall Plaza to protest the devastating layoffs billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning. No speaker mentioned the deeper crisis of capitalism, the drive towards war or increased racism, despite a predominance of black and Latin workers. However there was no shortage of patriotism, which is suicidal for any workers’ struggle.
The speakers hammered away at privatization, an issue consistently raised by city unions, especially since the design of the long-proposed Second Ave. subway was farmed out to private engineers. They complained that jobs would be farmed out to private agencies, at a higher cost to the City and with less efficiency. AFCSME’s District Council 37, the largest city union, whined that the city hasn’t even read its "white paper" on how the city could save money through non-privatization. Only one speaker even used the dreaded "strike" word. These union officials have signed "no-strike" contracts for almost the last 40 years.
The rally ended with the promise of more and larger demonstrations to pump people up with a show of union solidarity. But their main purpose is to divert anger and energy away from directly challenging the City bosses and uniting with other workers facing similar attacks (see above). The union mis-leaders are trying to avoid the axe by "showing the City" how to balance the budget, save jobs and increase services at the same time.
The City won’t stop "privatizing." There’s a $7.5 billion deficit over the next two years. The state deficit is double that. Former Mayor Giuliani left a huge deficit thanks to tax cuts, mismanagement and heavy borrowing, with billions going to Wall Street banks. (See above) The City has over $40 billion in outstanding debt. And it still hasn’t recovered from the draconian cuts of the mid-1970s. Sanitation workers, road crews, housing and bridge inspectors are still below former levels. Over one-third of the city’s bridges need immediate repair. There’s a perpetual housing crisis — the waiting list for public housing is 5 to 12 years; 32,000 people, including 13,000 children, sleep in a shelter (or on the floor of a welfare office) every night.
Meanwhile, corporate taxes as a proportion of city revenue have been declining for over 30 years. The top rate of personal income tax in New York City is 3.5%. Somehow there’s been over $1 billion in subsidies for giant corporations to keep their headquarters in the city over the last few years, and many of them either go bankrupt or leave anyway.
It’s not our job to balance the bosses’ budget. Capitalism won’t turn Donald Trump’s condos into public housing. The ruling class needs money to invade Iraq, not for hiring thousands of teachers. The rulers and their politicians don’t operate based on workers’ needs. And the last thing union officials want is for workers to see capitalism as the source of the problem.
We need to unite against layoffs and fight for jobs. But we can’t leave the struggle in the hands of people whose idea of "militance" is publishing a white paper. The bosses’ union lieutenants are one of the main obstacles in the fight against capitalism. The more workers recognize that, especially by reading CHALLENGE — many bought the paper at the rally — the more workers build and join PLP, the stronger we’ll become and the closer we’ll get to solving our problems with communist revolution.
a name="IAM ‘Leaders’ United with Bosses"></">IA" ‘Leaders’ United with Bosses
The International Association of Machinists (IAM) union leadership has sunk to the lowest depths of class collaboration in the United Airlines mechanics’ fight against huge wage and benefit give-backs. After 57% of the workers rejected the company/union sellout in a Nov. 27 vote, the union has forced another vote scheduled for Dec. 5 amid "immense pressure …from executives [and] union leaders…[on mechanics] to reverse their earlier decision." (New York Times, 12/4)
The Times reports that "many mechanics say the [rejection] vote…was as much an expression of dissatisfaction toward their union…as it was a slap at United’s management."
"I’m not a union hater," says San Francisco turbine mechanic Kenneth Epps, 43, "but…a lot of folks don’t trust the union. Voting no is a no vote to the union and…to the company." And with good reason. Consider:
• In 1994 workers agreed to a deep wage cut with no raises for six years — their first raise came last March, eight years later — in exchange for stock options, now worthless as United’s stock has dropped sharply. (So much for the "guarantees" of capitalism’s free market.)
• Mechanics are irate over starting times for swing shifts, outsourcing work to other companies and the ineptitude of floor supervisors and middle management about which the IAM has done nothing.
• Workers fear that management and union threats of United filing for bankruptcy if they don’t swallow these give-backs is a ploy to destroy them. "I…fear…they’ll file for Chapter 11 no matter what we do," says 17-year veteran mechanic Joe Schwirian who voted no the first time. "I think it’s in their game plan....They gain too much from filing for Chapter 11 — they can close bases or do other things to skirt the contract." (NYT)
The union leaders’ threats may very well produce a "majority" vote this time around, but, as the Times reports, workers’ "anger…burns as hot as the engines [they] maintain." Past company-union class collaboration will pale before what’s to come, especially given the deepening crisis of capitalism — especially affecting the airlines — with its war-inciting, union-busting Homeland Security police state.
a name="Workers, Patients Face Terrorist Threat—From Bosses’ Gov’t"></a>"orkers, Patients Face Terrorist Threat—From Bosses’ Gov’t
CHICAGO, IL Dec. 2 — On November 13, the FBI and the Justice Dept. issued terrorist alerts at hospitals in several U.S. cities. At the University of Chicago Hospitals (UCH), President and CEO Riordan issued a memo ordering workers to "wear their ID badges at all times," and to "report suspicious activity or people." While this threat appears to be fabricated, the fear and racism it caused are real.
One Cook County Hospital worker said, "I think I know which Middle-Eastern doctors would do [a terrorist act]." Fear and racism are causing some workers to ask for more security and police protection, leading to even more fascistic conditions.
Recently the FBI investigated a hospital worker after a racist co-worker called them about her pro-Palestinian views. Two weeks ago, Secret Service and FBI agents held a Palestinian family captive in their southwest side home for 12 hours, without a search warrant, seizing family computers and one document. The oldest son of the family told the police, "I’m an American citizen and I know my rights." The police told him, "At the moment, you have no rights." His family was terrorized because he drove past the Lincoln Library, where Bush was to speak, with an "I Love Islam" bumper sticker on his car.
Health care workers and patients should be concerned with a terrorist threat, but it is coming from Washington and various state capitols. The executive director of the National Governors Association said, "You will see huge cuts in Medicaid." (New York Times 11/26)
With a huge tax cut for the rich, rising unemployment and billions being shifted to war and Homeland Security, state budgets are in worse financial shape than even the national economy. The Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State Univ. of NY found that state tax revenues were down 6.3% for the fiscal year ending last June. The New York State budget director said budget cuts would be deeper than expected. The state deficit is estimated between $5 billion and $10 billion.
In California, a special session of the State Legislature will be called to cut $5 billion in spending; the deficit for 2003 could be $21 billion. In Illinois, the budget deficit could grow to $2.5 billion and more cuts are on the way.
In a very direct way, the Homeland Security is attacking public health care. The states are spending $3.5 billion to train and equip cops and rescue workers. The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that the cities are spending $2.6 billion on new security measures. On Oct. 1, states lost $1.2 billion in federal funding to provide health coverage for low-income children.
Imperialist war and fascism are not "outside" issues for public health workers; they are the main issue. We are taking modest steps in fighting for the political leadership of health care workers, from UCH to Cook County Hospital, from the 20,000-member Teamsters Local 743 to the 8,000-member SEIU Local 73. The main measure of this effort is increasing the distribution of CHALLENGE, especially by winning many new distributors. In SEIU Local 73, we’re raising the broad issues of war and fascism in the midst of chaotic local union elections. Whoever claims the leadership of health care workers must fight racist budget cuts, imperialist war and refuse to cooperate with the growing fascist police state. To serve the people we must fight for our class.
Fight Fascist Attack on International Students
Attorney-General Ashcroft has issued a special registration order to all male international students over 16 from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Bahrain, Eritrea, Morocco, North Korea, Afghanistan, Oman, Yemen and United Arab Emirates. He’s demanding they bring a certificate of enrollment from their university to an INS office to be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed under oath. If they don’t meet the January 10 deadline, they’ll be "considered out of status and deportable." A West Coast university system chancellor then ordered all department heads to compile a list of their international students, turning professors into spies.
One campus administration distributed a flyer describing Ashcroft’s order, causing anger, fear and disbelief among many students, faculty and staff. Recently they’ve seen steps toward a police state. Last semester, the FBI invaded this campus requesting unfettered access to student files (grades, classes attended, disciplinary files, library records). ROTC is threatening to cut federal aid if they are not allowed to develop an on-campus program. Now the Justice Department is asking professors to help round up international students.
On one campus, a student coalition plans to leaflet against Ashcroft’s witch-hunt and stand in solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters. An attack on international students is an attack on all students. As U.S. rulers gear up to invade Iraq, they will also attack those involved in anti-imperialist and anti-racist activities.
Some in this coalition receive CHALLENGE. As fascism intensifies, students who were not interested even six months ago now ask many questions. Several want to help distribute our paper. We are inviting more people to study groups, linking the growth of fascism with war and capitalism and the need for a mass PLP. We will wage a long-term fight to smash fascism and imperialist war and create a communist world without borders, profits, racism or sexism.
LAPD Murders Two Teenagers
Racist Rulers Gang Up on Black, Latin Youth
LOS ANGELES, CA Nov. 19 — On Friday night, Nov. 15, the LAPD murdered sixteen-year-olds Salvador Sibrian and Uriel Damian. Salvador’s older brother, Miguel Angel, is in a coma after being shot in the eye and the leg. Miguel is a marine who was home on leave before being sent to Iraq to defend Exxon Mobil’s oil profits. Two other youth were injured.
The five were leaving a party. Miguel was driving his father’s white Lexus. The cops’ racist assumption was that because they were Latinos leaving a party in South Central LA, the car was stolen. The cops fired 17 shots into the car, claiming Miguel "didn’t stop quickly enough."
The day Salvador and Uriel died LA’s new police chief William Bratton told the LA Times he is going to "crack down on gang-related violence in South LA." None of the youth was in a gang. The press lied about every aspect of the shooting. Bratton is targeting all black and Latino youth in South Central LA, but only a tiny minority are in gangs.
Friends of the five youth distributed leaflets condemning the racist killings. On the Wednesday after the shooting, over 150 people picketed the main LA police station. The victims’ parents condemned the police as racist killers and accused Bratton of terrorizing black and Latino neighborhoods. The families called for more demonstrations and marches against police terror. Some in the crowd chanted, "¡Policía, cochina, fascista y asesina!" (police: fascist killer pigs!) But some "community coalition leaders" worked hard to stop the many youth who wanted to march and chant, saying only grieving was appropriate, not anger. The struggle for more marches is continuing.
A coalition representative called for "community policing," saying they plan to meet with Bratton to "share our concerns." But Bratton wants groups who will calm down workers and youth while the police terrorize us! When Salvador and Uriel’s parents said that Bratton must "control your cops," racist Bratton answered that parents must "control their children." There can’t be any partnership with this fascist! His job is to protect and serve the profit system that’s hell bent on war and terrorizing the working class! But he comes with the new wrinkle of winning "community leaders" to work with the police.
This racist massacre was one of eight police shootings in five days. The following week, the LAPD arrested over 300 homeless people on skid row after businessmen complained about them. Bratton has declared homelessness a "quality-of-life" crime and said the arrests were a crackdown on "parole violators" who were "hiding out." (Part of "homeland security"?)
Capitalism causes homelessness and is the biggest crime. The main source of violence against the working class is the capitalist bosses and their thugs, the cops. In addition to police violence, homicides have risen among LA youth this year. The racist LAPD will only make matters worse! Now Bratton has called in the FBI to help terrorize South LA, using the gangs as a pretext. Thus the gangs help the rulers do their dirty work. Workers and youth need a revolutionary outlook — to fight against racist police terror, rotten schools and imperialist war.
The only way to end police terror is to destroy the racist profit system with communist revolution. The bosses plan to send U.S. soldiers, sailors and marines to kill our class brothers and sisters in Iraq. But many, especially black and Latin youth, have themselves been victims of racist violence, a factor that can become the Achilles heel of U. S. imperialism. This occurred in Vietnam where these youth — based on their experiences with the racist rulers at home — began to "frag" (shoot) their own officers, viewing them, not the workers of Vietnam, as their enemy. Our enemy is the U.S. ruling class and its racist thugs, not Iraqi workers!
Health Care Under Capitalism:
Workers Are Expendable
The ruling class is dismantling the U.S. health care system, while spending hundreds of billions of dollars of workers’ taxes to launch a war to maintain control of Middle Eastern oil. Expenditures to maintain world dominance mean the bosses can’t afford to provide decent health care to everyone who needs it.
Allowing workers to die needlessly would seem to be a bad thing for a society. But under capitalism, profits take precedence over workers’ lives. That’s why U.S. capitalists are cutting health care costs to the bone, especially now. The cost of medical care is escalating steadily. The percentage of the gross national product (GNP) spent on health care rose from 10% in 1960 to 14% in 2000, while corporate profit rates fell from 9.7% in 1960 to 6.9% in 1998. In 2000, corporate health care costs amounted to 60% of after-tax profits. Every dollar "saved" on health care is another dollar for the "bottom line." For capitalism, an increase in death rates due to lack of health care is necessary to protect the system.
The bosses are attacking all aspects of workers’ health care while the workers are fighting to hang on. Communist leadership in the unions helped force the bosses to provide some health care to workers.
The collapse of the communist movement in China and the Soviet Union enabled the bosses to radically reduce the health care available to workers worldwide. Simultaneously, a massive amount of unused productive capacity has reduced the rate of profit for all basic industries. Each capitalist must maximize profits or face extinction by their competitors.
Other capitalist countries have more efficient and less costly health care systems. Some have "socialized" (state run) medicine, a minimal level of care. U.S. bosses are justifiably worried about their own viability. Therefore, workers’ health benefits become a major target for resurrecting bosses’ profits, especially since it represents such a major cost to the society. While drug companies and large private hospitals make enormous profits, it is at the expense of the rest of the ruling class (not to mention workers’ health). Health care detracts from most bosses’ profits. Services like medicine may keep workers alive and functioning but there is no ongoing use for the medical product itself. Money spent on medicine can’t be re-invested. Medical care is not a productive industry, and in fact reduces productivity.
a name="Salvador Health Care Strikers Battle Cops, Rulers’ Schemes">">"alvador Health Care Strikers Battle Cops, Rulers’ Schemes
SAN SALVADOR, Nov. 27 — "Anti-riot" cops brutally attacked a march by striking health care workers, professionals and supporters with tear gas, even throwing it inside hospitals. The marchers defended themselves and a fierce battle ensued.
Twelve days ago, the Legislature Assembly approved a law forbidding privatization of the ISSS (social security system) and public hospitals. But the strike continues because President Flores refuses to accept the law and to reinstate 46 people fired for strike activities.
The government is not only trying to impose its privatization union-busting scheme, but also doesn’t want the class struggle to dampen the 19th Central American and Caribbean Sport Competition here.
San Salvador Mayor Hector Silva, an FMLN member, apparently had worked out a deal with the U.S. ambassador and the national government to end the strike. But now the latter is reneging by attacking striking workers.
PLP is active in the struggle, warning workers and their allies not to rely on any politician (especially the former guerrilla leaders of the FMLN, now part of the rulers’ electoral circus). We’re also explaining that capitalism, whether state-owned or free market, whether pro-U.S. or pro-European, will never be a prescription for the decent health of all workers and patients. The fight for communism, a society where workers’ and health will be top priority, must be our aim.
a name="Marchers Protest Women’s Murders">">"archers Protest Women’s Murders
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Nov. 27—Marches and other protest activities occurred throughout Mexico in a "day against violence against women and young girls." In the last four days alone, four dead women were found here. The marchers placed 286 crosses in the Dept. of Justice building gardens here representing all unsolved murders of women and young girls in the last few years.
The same week, Mexico’s military courts declared rape to be a strategy of war — soldiers can only be tried if they "break military discipline." At least, five cases of Indian women raped by soldiers are in court, including three sisters of the Tzetal ethnic group raped in a Chiapas military barracks. Capitalism is indeed the highest form of oppression of women!
Letters
Workers Of The World, Write!
Steel Workers Still Talking
Recently a co-worker wanted to talk about some stuff at work. He’s a regular CHALLENGE reader, takes extra papers and has done some things with us over the years, although he hasn’t joined the Party. Then out of the blue he says, "You know, if we don’t do something about Bush’s war in Iraq, we will be just like the Germans who backed Hitler, and we’ll have to answer. I don’t want to be in that position."
We spoke for a little while and I think we were both inspired. I know I was. It got us both talking with our fellow workers about the coming war and what it means for the working class. We’ve discussed with some folks about going to an anti-war rally in our city. I’ve been distributing more CHALLENGES. The two of us went to a speak-out about the war at a local college. These are small steps, but it’s a start.
As we fight against this imperialist war, will my friend be won to the Party? I don’t know. But, in effect, he’s saying we must give leadership to the struggle against imperialist war. His point was that workers have a responsibility, a moral duty to fight the bosses. And this holds even more for communists in PLP. So my friend has, so to speak, put the ball in my court. I need to live up to that challenge, part of which is struggling with him to join the Party.
On another point, I think it’s great that there’s been some stuff about the worker-student alliance in CHALLENGE. A few years ago, when there was another imperialist war, PLP set itself apart from all the phonies and revolutionary wannabees by calling on the student movement to ally with the working class. As a working-class college student, that idea brought me to the Party. Once again, our job is to show that whether bombing Iraq or cutting pensions, it’s the same bloodsuckers killing to save their profits.
Midwest Industrial Worker
a name="Purdue ‘Speak Out’ Opposes Iraq War"></">Pu"due ‘Speak Out’ Opposes Iraq War
On November 6, students organized a speak-out at Purdue University at Calumet, about U.S. plans to attack Iraq. PLP gave leadership and support to the students organizing the event, which drew students, faculty, staff and the community.
Middle Eastern students said they did not support terrorist acts, but would stand by "their leaders" against U.S. oppression. PLP pointed out that the coming attack was an imperialist war for oil profits. Most of the students opposed the war and did not believe Iraqi workers threatened their safety. Others said the media was a tool to build support for the war.
People argued over the most effective political action to take against the war. Some suggested voting for those who represent "our" interests. PLP fought for building a mass anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement. Some students and professors suggested that continuous wars were based on conflicting ideals among people that create ignorance, hatred, violence and terrorism. Others disagreed, exposing the political and economic roots of imperialism. In the end, many students were considering joining together to become active agents for social change.
In the real world, PLP’s model of communism is the firmest foundation for the solidarity of the working class. Now is the time to concentrate and act on this reality. The international working class can end imperialist wars. Join PLP and smash capitalism with communist revolution. One class, one Party of workers to produce and share the benefits and burdens of society equally!
Always Red
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Below Are Excerpts From Mainstream Newspapers That Contain Important Information:
Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, MG=Manchester Guardian
Child starvation amid mountains of food — capitalism is sick
Children are dying daily of malnutrition in Argentina….Meanwhile the vast, fertile country has increased exports of meat, wheat, corn and soya this year….
In an astonishing admission, the production minister, Anibal Fernandez, last week attributed the child deaths to "a sick society and a ruling class that are sons of bitches, all of them, myself included." (MG, 12/4)
Young people eager to discuss war issues
Not since the Vietnam War, it seems, have young people been so engaged in America’s foreign policy. On college campuses, students on both sides of the Iraq issue are organizing protests, debates and symposiums. Young professionals are convening online discussion groups to pick apart daily news developments. And discussions…are taking place in junior high and high schools around the country. (NYT, 12/1)
Church opposes Iraq war, But...
Washington, Nov. 13 — Roman Catholic bishops in the United States issued a statement today saying that they cannot now find a moral justification for a pre-emptive war against Iraq because there is no adequate evidence that Iraq is about to attack….
The final statement included a compromise in which the bishops said: "We support those who risk their lives in the service of their nation. We also support those who seek to exercise their right to conscientious objection."
(NYT, 11/14)
Workers’ kids are short-changed
Free tip offered on the Web: "The application process for some of the most selective public schools in New York City often begins a year before your child is scheduled to start school. Allow yourself this year’s time to do the research." How many working-class parents can spend a year pre-navigating the system? (NYT, 11/25)
Even half-way socialism showed some of communism’s good
Pre-1989 Hungary was indeed not so materialistic, there was a healthy underground scene, the extended family was very strong and the only queues were for bananas….So why, if socialism was so good, did the people reject it?
One of the chief factors was the material superiority of the neighbouring capitalist countries. This presented a patina of gold masking the underlying inequality. So much of what was good under communism — job security, social stability and a strong sense of solidarity — was taken for granted, but has now been lost in the scramble for wealth.
As friends…in east Germany have discovered, what has been lost was more valuable that we realized at the time. (MG, 11/20)
Big jump in hate crimes vs. Muslims and Middle Easterners
Washington, Nov. 25 (AP) — Hate crimes against Muslims and people who are or appear to be of Middle Eastern descent soared to record levels last year…the Federal Bureau of Investigation said today….
Incidents in which people, institutions and businesses identified with the Islamic faith were the targets increased 1,600 percent, to 481 in 2001 from 28 in 2000. (NYT, 11/26)
400,000 protest war and more
In Florence, Italy, about 400,000 protesters from across Europe marched…last weekend against war on Iraq and plenty of other things as well….
The march was heavy on shrill whistles, communist hymns, red flags and portraits of "Che" Guevara. (MG, 11/20)
Afghanistan rulers are war criminals
In Afghanistan….by using the heroin-financed gangsters of the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban regime and pursue al-Qaeda remnants, the US has handed over most of the country to the war criminals who devastated Afghanistan in the early 1990s….
Throughout what is once again the opium capital of the world the return of the warlords has meant harsh political repression, lawlessness, mass rape and widespread torture, the bombing or closure of schools, as well as Taliban-style policing of women’s dress and behaviour. The systematic use by Ismail Khan, who runs much of western Afghanistan with US support, of electric shock torture, arbitrary arrests and whippings to crush dissent is set out in a new Human Rights Watch report. Khan was nevertheless described by the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, recently as a "thoughtful" and "appealing" person. (MG, 12/4)
- ALL SCENARIOS LEAD TO IMPERIALIST OIL WAR
- Elections Show Capitalist Parties Partners Against Working Class
- U.S. RULERS WAGE NUCLEAR WAR
- PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS REJECT RIDGE AND WAR PLANS
- AFSCME Retirees Hear NYC Cuts Linked to Iraq Invasion
- DEMOCRATS JOIN BUSH IN
UNION-BUSTING ATTACK ON MILLION
FEDERAL WORKERS - Profits Prevent A Living Wage
- China's Capitalist Party Rides Roughshod Over Workers
- Anti-War Conference Shows
Students Want, Need, Defend Red Ideas - Outdoing the Nazis . . . Homeland Insecurity
- Rulers' Racism Runs Rampant
- LAPD War on Terror in
South Central LA - WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
- Upping the Ante Among Industrial Workers
- Does `Bowling' Score A Strike or A Spare?
- Scared by Election But Ready to Respond
- Millions in Italy Hit
Bosses' Barrage - ILWU Chiefs Misled Workers on War
- Backing Steel Bosses
Is No Solution - Listen to Your Nurse
- Wage System Rx For
Capitalist Robbery - CHALLENGE comment:
ALL SCENARIOS LEAD TO IMPERIALIST OIL WAR
Despite the Republican election victory, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class appears to be gaining control of U.S. foreign policy, especially in regards to Iraq.
Several months ago, the Cheney-Rumsfeld "go-it-alone" faction of the Bush White House was spoiling for an immediate fight. However, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon, led by Colin Powell, realized the stakes were far too high to invade half-cocked. They arm-twisted Bush into first getting Congressional approval for war powers and then new UN weapons inspections in Iraq.
The current UN farce is a cover for U.S. concessions to French, Russian and Chinese imperialists, and allows U.S. imperialism to get its ducks in a row before the shooting starts. While we can't predict the timetable, another war to control Iraqi oil is coming. It will lead to a spiral of ever wider and more lethal fighting.
U.S. imperialism's control of energy supplies remains crucial to global domination. The main Persian Gulf oil producers hold 63% of the world's proven oil reserves. Only Saudi Arabia has more than Iraq -- and Iraq may well have vast amounts of as yet undiscovered reserves. U.S. rulers will stop at nothing to control this prize. While their rivals still cannot challenge them directly, every bloody step the U.S. takes will sharpen contradictions within the Persian Gulf, and between the U.S. and its chief competitors.
The capitalist law of maximum profit is written in workers' blood. We must prepare for war by building a mass PLP and the movement for communist revolution.
Scenarios for War
The present situation is still highly fluid, and could develop in several directions over the next few years. Each will lead to the increasing isolation of U.S. imperialism.
In the rosiest scenario for U.S. rulers, Saddam and his Republican Guard are quickly defeated and a new, pro-U.S. puppet government turns Iraq into an investment paradise for Exxon Mobil. Iraqi oil production reaches 8 million barrels a day, and world oil prices go below $20 a barrel. OPEC would no longer have firm control over prices and supply. U.S.-imposed lower prices could wreck the profits and economies of OPEC producers. As a former Iraqi oil minister said, 8 million barrels of Iraqi oil a day would be "the greatest problem ever faced by OPEC." (Fortune, 11/25).
At the other end of the spectrum, the U.S. "coalition" gets bogged down in a tough fight and civilian casualties are high (The international health organization Medact predicts as many as 500,000.) The U.S. wins the military battle, but a prolonged occupation makes U.S. troops easy targets for al Qaeda terrorist attacks. Oil prices rise, and the world economy continues its present slump, or worse. In reaction to worsening conditions, strikes could erupt in the U.S. which would face intense repression from the U.S. bosses' heightened police-state apparatus.
Saddam could sabotage Iraq's oil fields as he did in Kuwait, and Israeli bosses could use the turmoil to further their own military agenda. The bin Laden forces will not give up trying to wrest oil wealth from U.S. hands and Iranian bosses won't allow themselves to be outstripped by a pro-U.S. Iraq. Every scenario runs the risk of fanning anti-U.S. hatred and sparking nationalist/religious rebellions throughout the Arab/Muslim world. Political and economic rivalries between the U.S. and the other major imperialists will intensify as relations begin to resemble pre-World War II Europe.
Imperialism Leads to War -- Smash It With Revolution
The stakes of another Iraq war are very high. The dangers are great. Some members of the U.S. national security establishment aren't ready to let Bush unleash the slaughter. But most signals point to war relatively soon. There is an ongoing build-up of U.S. military hardware and personnel in the Gulf. The Air Force has increased the number of targets and bombing raids against radar and command and control centers in Iraq's "no-fly zones." The U.S. is preparing an Iraqi puppet "exile army." The Horn of Africa, a choke-point along the oil route out of the Persian Gulf, is becoming a U.S. military base to develop "skills that could be applied in Washington's campaign against terrorist groups or on the battlefields of Iraq." (New York Times, 11/17).
Peace is the last scenario we should prepare for. Other contingencies may arise as the inter-imperialist rivalry unfolds, but all roads lead to imperialist war and fascist terror.
But war and fascism can provide opportunities for revolutionary growth. Some are emerging in the mass movement, the military and the class struggle, which will surely sharpen worldwide as the situation ripens over time. Modest gains today can lead to momentous triumphs in the years ahead, and eventually to the only way out of this hell of imperialist war and fascist terror: communist revolution.
Elections Show Capitalist Parties Partners Against Working Class
The Republican victory in the mid-term election is not necessarily a defeat for the Eastern Establishment. Bush and the liberal rulers have clashed over the "Homeland Security" police state and his handling of the economy. A Republican White House and Congress can serve as the liberals' whipping boys while the police state develops. A minimum of "three, four, or five years at best" will be necessary to reorganize the government for fascism, according to the liberals' new pal, John McCain. (New York Times, 11/17). This might be just enough time for a liberal strongman to emerge with a broader program than Bush's half-baked plan for militarizing society divided between government control and a privatization scheme favoring his cronies.
But the rulers need major economic cutbacks now to pay for the costly wars they're planning to launch. Conservative Republican Reagan's budget cuts and anti-worker attacks paved the way for the liberal Clinton's economic assault on workers from 1992 to 2000. A similar process may be occurring, with Republicans leading the charge and Democrats and liberal Republicans administering the coup de grâce.
New York City provides a potential example. Republican Mayor Bloomberg, a former Democrat, is promising devastating cuts in education and services as well as higher taxes. With NYC's unemployment rate steadily rising, these new body blows against the workers have the enthusiastic editorial support of the liberal New York Times. The latter preaches about the "unavoidable" need for "layoffs and other spending cuts, including the city's education and social programs." The Times (11/13) urges billionaire Bloomy to slash benefits for the city's work force, which it calls "out of line with the private sector."
New York will set the pattern for other U.S. cities. The liberal media and politicians may shed crocodile tears over Republican "heartlessness" while simultaneously encouraging it. Democrats and Republicans may squabble over tactics and partisan advantage, but in the final analysis they work as partners against our class, to serve the rulers' need for profit and world domination.
The only political party that serves workers' interests is the PLP. The only way to "vote" for it is to join and build it in the heat of class struggle.
NO `LESSER EVILS'
The Pentagon's recently revealed plan to eavesdrop on people who use the Internet comes not from KKK-lover Attorney General Ashcroft but from the Markle Foundation, headed by liberal Zoe Baird, Clinton's first nominee for Attorney-General. Baird also sits on the Council of Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, two of the Liberal Establishment's key think-tanks.
U.S. RULERS WAGE NUCLEAR WAR
As U.S. rulers prepare for war on Iraq, the civilian population of that country, not Saddam Hussein, will bear the brunt of the hostilities. And it will probably be even more nuclear than the last Gulf War which was, in effect, a nuclear war.
In 1991, the U.S. military deployed hundreds of tons of weapons, many of them anti-tank shells made of depleted uranium 238. This material is 1.7 times more dense than lead. When incorporated into an anti-tank shell and fired, it achieves great momentum, cutting through tank armor like a hot knife through butter.
When uranium 238 hits a tank at high speed it bursts into flames, producing tiny aerosolized particles less than 5 microns in diameter. It is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy alpha particle composed of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Once inside the body it can produce cancer in the lungs, bones, blood or kidneys. It can enter the body in the lung if inhaled, a wound if it penetrates flesh, or if ingested since it concentrates in the food chain and contaminates water. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, meaning the areas in which this ammunition was used in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War will remain effectively radioactive permanently.
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults. Pediatricians in the Iraqi town of Basra are reporting an increase of 6 to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Because of the U.S.- and UN-backed sanctions, they have no access to drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients. The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the areas where these weapons were used. Among them are babies born with only one eye or missing all or part of their brain.
One medical researcher reported that some U.S. veterans exposed to uranium 238 are excreting uranium in their urine a decade later. Other reports indicate it is being excreted in their semen. Almost one-third of the U.S. tanks employed in Desert Storm used anti-tank shells made of uranium 238, exposing their crews to whole-body gamma radiation. The Pentagon's own studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.
Butcher that he is, Saddam Hussein can only dream of having a fraction of the destructive power possessed by U.S. imperialism's weapons of mass destruction. The hypocrisy of the U.S. ruling class, Republicans and Democrats, is only surpassed by their cold-blooded pursuit of profit. From Baghdad to Washington, DC, workers need communist revolution. This is not some utopian dream, but a practical matter of survival.
PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS REJECT RIDGE AND WAR PLANS
PHILADELPHIA, PA, Nov. 13 -- "It feels like living in Berlin in 1938 [the year before the Nazi's launched World War II]..." That's how one of our friends described the moves toward war and fascism, in the country and in the American Public Health Association (APHA). We can all learn from her sense of urgency.
As 5,000 public health workers and professionals streamed into the giant auditorium for the opening session of the annual APHA meeting, colleagues distributing "WAR VS. PUBLIC HEALTH" leaflets greeted them. Last summer, the APHA leadership invited fascist Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge to be the keynote speaker because "that's where the funding is."
The leaflet and a resolution against collaborating with the oil war was the product of months of phone calls and discussions prior to the meeting.
PLP members in APHA provided leadership to these discussions. We helped organize for a floor demonstration against Ridge, but shortly before his scheduled appearance he became "unavailable." Fearing his replacement would get the same treatment, APHA leaders delayed Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona's speech over an hour.
The next day, at a 6:30 AM Section business meeting, people debated whether or not to support the more strongly-worded version of the resolution, "Opposing the Subordination of Public Health to National Defense and Anti-Terrorism." A young statistician said, "If we take an extreme position we'll be marginalized. Public health people need to be at the table when policy is developed." She seemed uncomfortable talking about politics, maybe because she works for a federal agency. In fact, most of the 60 people at the meeting looked uncomfortable.
Then a hospital research instructor said, "There are some tables we shouldn't be sitting at." That did it. A nurse administrator said, "If we don't take a stand, who will?" A soft-spoken professor added, "We've already been marginalized. Since when has the President or Congress cared what we think? We should just do what's right."
When the section chairman finally called for a show of support for the resolution, every hand in the room went up. Similar scenes unfolded in other Sections and Caucuses. When the resolution came before the Governing Council, 95% voted in favor!
Our political work here shows the potential for moving large numbers of people. A relatively small number of comrades with a few hundred supporters forced Ridge to cancel and had a big impact on this 30,000-member organization. But it also shows the potential danger of being swallowed up by the mass movement and not building the Party forces for communist revolution.
One comrade and a friend met during the debate on another resolution, "Opposing War in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf." After it passed with an 82% majority, they pursued an APHA big shot to request a press release be drafted. They were told that opposing war is "not one of the strategic priorities of the organization," and that their vote didn't reflect the "true opinions" of APHA. After the big shot left, the PLP member gave her friend a copy of CHALLENGE, saying, "That's why I'm a communist. People like that can't do what's right. They're wedded to the system."
With the vast majority of participants, we share the desire to see a healthy population living without the threat of war. But we must wage a tireless struggle to win our friends to see that this is not simply Bush's war; it grows from the nature of imperialism. Only communist revolution can defeat it. This is the difficult task we're committed to carrying out in APHA. Over the coming period, we can consolidate the good work accomplished here by winning more public health workers and professionals to read, write for and distribute CHALLENGE.
AFSCME Retirees Hear NYC Cuts Linked to Iraq Invasion
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 11 -- All our lives workers are told by the media, the school system and all sorts of boosters of capitalism that communism doesn't work and the exploitative free market profit system is the best thing since sliced bread. Once again reality has burst the wishful thinking of the bosses and their boosters. Here in NYC, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg has announced budget gaps of nearly $7.5 billion for the next two years, the biggest crisis since the mid-1970s. It comes at a time when such crises are " ...circulating like a virus through cities all across America." (New York Times, 11/18)
Bloomberg has proposed bridging the budget gaps through service cuts (with layoffs and a hiring freeze), new taxes, aid from the federal government, and give-backs from unionized city workers. But Bloomberg's tax plan has been labeled "dead on arrival" by some State legislators who must approve his plan. (Times, 11/15) Clearly some fairy tales are being passed off as reality here.
Similarly, at the November Executive Board meeting of the AFSCME's District Council 37, representing over 120,000 city workers, the president of one of its larger locals challenged Executive Director Lillian Roberts about the layoffs. She said they would be averted by a union-produced "white paper" calling for voiding of outside contracts. Such challenges in the upper ranks of union hierarchy usually reflect impatience with strategies that will not calm the anger of rank-and-file members.
Such anger appeared at the usually placid DC 37 retirees association, upon hearing of the possible effects of the budget crisis. They want to preserve their health benefits and city services. After hearing that their best hope was to elect "friends of labor," they were mainly quiet. When a recently retired worker argued that workers would have to organize to fight against these cuts, linking the city's budget crisis to the looming oil war on Iraq, he was warmly applauded.
He said the current budget crisis was like the storm in the movie, "The Perfect Storm," combining a fiscal crisis in city, county and state with the expenditures of tens of billions for war on Iraq. To fight it, we must break the State's fascist Taylor law banning government-worker strikes.
The bosses want workers to believe capitalism will rule forever, to fall for the lies of their lackey politicians and the deadened strategies of the stooge union leaders. PL'ers fight to bring clarity to workers, understanding of the problems we face and how to overcome them. We join with them in many types of organizations to build the struggles needed to survive life under capitalism and to illuminate the road to a communist future.
DEMOCRATS JOIN BUSH IN
UNION-BUSTING ATTACK ON MILLION
FEDERAL WORKERS
Those who think the liberal Democrats are more "pro-union" than the Republicans better think again. As soon as the polls closed on Election Day, the Democrats joined the Republicans in giving Bush the Homeland Security Agency he had originally proposed, including his request to by-pass all Civil Service and Collective Bargaining protections for more than 170,000 workers. Those opposing it, like Kennedy, were just maintaining their cover as "friends of labor," after the outcome had already been decided.
The new agency will combine 22 existing ones, like Customs, the Coast Guard, the INS, Border Patrol and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Bush will have the final say on work rules, job assignments, transfers, layoffs and more. Under the new plan, unions and the government can negotiate any issue with a "neutral" arbitrator. But Bush, or whoever follows him, will have the power to overrule any agreement and impose a settlement.
Smelling blood, Bush announced plans to privatize half the federal workforce, more than 850,000 jobs! After a 30-day "public review," he's free to offer these jobs to the lowest bidder, which means lowest wages, lowest health care benefits and no unions. What's more, it will set the tone for all state, county and city workers as well. With union membership at an all-time low and dropping, with the rulers going to war, and with a rapidly developing fascist police state, these union-busting attacks on more than one million federal workers will dwarf Reagan's firing of the striking air traffic controllers and breaking the PATCO union in 1982.
So what will the union leaders do? Probably not much. They've been leading the workers into the arms of U.S. imperialism and support for the profit system for over 60 years. Crippled and blinded by their own patriotism, they couldn't do much if they wanted to. They didn't stop the closing of the steel mills or protect retirees from losing their pensions and health benefits. They didn't stop Boeing from imposing a contract costing thousands of jobs. They didn't even appear interested in stopping Bush from using a Taft-Hartley injunction against 10,500 west coast dockworkers.
All that said, we could see the possibility of a wave of mass demonstrations as workers oppose these attacks. The union leaders, true to form, will try to channel the anger of the workers into support for the same Democratic Party that gave Bush his tax cut, war powers and Homeland Security Agency. PLP can seize the opportunity to lead more workers in struggle and build a mass base for communist revolution, by winning more workers to become CHALLENGE distributors.
Profits Prevent A Living Wage
TOWSON, MD, Nov. 15 -- About 75 Towson students, faculty, staff, and alumni, organized by the Student-Worker Alliance of Towson (SWAT), rallied at the Towson Univ. Administration building today to support the fight for campus workers' rights. Joined by dozens of others from unions, churches, community groups and an area high school, SWAT members marched to demand a living wage, health coverage and the right to organize for all Towson staff, outsourced or not. SWAT gave interim university president Dan Jones a week to respond.
It was eight months to the day since our protest outside now-resigned President Mark L. Perkins's inauguration ceremony. Then the movement was little more than members of the left-wing student coalition Towson Action Group with no broad-based support. Campus police easily harassed or dismissed us quite often.
Students are barred from talking with food service and housekeeping workers about a living wage in the presence of their employers (Aramark or Chartwells). One SWAT member told the crowd, "They said I wasn't allowed to talk to the workers and shouldn't be there."
But during these eight months we've won more than 80 faculty supporters, interviewed and befriended housekeepers, attended shift changes, amassed support from community organizations and produced the largest living-wage rally so far at Towson. In the next eight months we will support the demand that Towson's Chartwells contract -- expiring in June 2003 -- be renegotiated only with contract bids that include living-wage provisions.
We in PLP, while involved in and supporting workers' struggles, must also explain how profits are extracted from the labor of workers. There really can never be a "fair wage" for workers since they produce all value and therefore, as a class, deserve to reap all value, which is impossible under capitalism. While involved in the class struggle, PLP points out -- contrary to liberals and anarchists -- how capitalism lives off constant workers' exploitation and war. The only long-term solution is to fight for workers' power. In this Living Wage campaign, daily contact and interpersonal relations with both students and workers will open up opportunities to win them to fight for this outlook and join PLP.
China's Capitalist Party Rides Roughshod Over Workers
Many pundits claim the recently concluded 16th Congress of the Chinese "Communist" Party propelled that country towards capitalism. But China has been a developing capitalist power for over thirty years. A party of the working class, fighting for communism and waging class struggle, was put to rest a long time ago.
Outgoing President Jiang Zemin welcomed millionaires, landowners and factory owners into the "C"P (Capitalist Party). Advancing his "three represents" theory, he said that "all people's interests are basically identical: we must allow people to advance together to the common goal of prosperity [and] encourage them to create social wealth." (The Guardian, London, 11/13)
Jiang declared that the "three represents" are his legacy, supplanting the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But this "new theory" is basically Mussolini's old Corporate State (workers and bosses uniting to end the class struggle). He warned U.S. imperialists that China would use force against anyone who "separated Taiwan from China." As China becomes a more powerful capitalist country, it could face many military confrontations with the U.S. over control of Asia.
While Jiang paid lip service to China's unemployment and the gap between rich and poor, the restructuring of state-owned companies has left 48 million workers jobless. Millions of workers have not abandoned the class struggle and have participated in strikes and mass rebellions, reacting to the reversal of many gains made by workers and peasants. According to professor Wang Shaoquang of the Political Science Dept. of the Univ. of Hong Kong, "the disparity in the standard of living between rich and poor is one of the highest in the world." (El País, Madrid).
The seeds of this capitalist restoration were planted under Mao's concept of "New Democracy," and were fully realized with the defeat of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in the 1960's. When the communists seized power in 1949, they claimed they were building a "new democratic state" where workers, peasants, the petit-bourgeoisie and sections of the national bourgeoisie shared power. This is impossible, since only one class can hold state power.
By the 1960s, China was reverting to capitalism instead of going forward towards a communist society. Mao, who made a great contribution to the communist movement, initiated the Cultural Revolution to rout the "red bourgeoisie." But when more than 40 million revolutionary workers and youth tried to go all the way to communism (establishing the Shanghai Commune), Mao and the infamous Gang of Four smashed the Red Guards.
When Mao died in 1975, Deng Xiaoping (one of the leading "capitalist roaders" attacked during the Cultural Revolution), arrested the Gang of Four, dismantled the Commune system and started the huge transfer of wealth from workers and peasants to private capitalists, leading to the 16th Congress.
We have learned a lot from the defeat of the old communist movement. The main lesson is that you can't build communism by making concessions to capitalism. You can't share power with capitalist rulers. Long Live the Red Guard! Fight for Communism!
Anti-War Conference Shows
Students Want, Need, Defend Red Ideas
"I stayed up last night thinking about how the workers of the world could take power," said a participant in a college student conference discussing what was missing from the liberal-led anti-war movement and how to struggle within it.
There were three sessions: anti-racism, anti-imperialism, and the worker-student alliance. All three topics produced vigorous discussions and some plans. We related the importance of anti-racism to a class analysis of the world. Racism comes from the bosses' need to make super-profits and justify exploitation and war with racist lies, all growing out of the wage system. We reviewed the dangers of nationalism and the need for revolution. A Latino student organization leader said he saw how PLP differed from other groups because we put the fight against racism front and center in the fight against capitalism.
The anti-imperialist section focused on the causes of economic crisis and why the imperialists fight over oil. A student explained how Exxon-Mobil drives for control over Iraqi oil so it can sell to, and control the supply of, oil to its capitalist rivals.
The last session opened with a worker demonstrating how workers are open to revolutionary ideas. Lately mechanics on his job have told supervisors, "The problem with this war drive is that it's covered with oil." The conference emphasized the potential power of the dockworkers and urged people to fight in campus groups to demonstrate at the docks against the war.
Some students described their organizing of an alliance with campus workers. Another told of increased interest in the Party's ideas during and after a campus workers strike in which they denounced the bosses' war budget, blaming it for the cutbacks in education. We pointed out that the working class has the power to oppose imperialist war by stopping the bosses' war production and by viewing soldiers as members of the working class in the fight against these oil wars.
The day-long conference left everyone with plans and the motivation to carry out these ideas on their own campus. It was inspiring to hear our friends recount their own rich experiences organizing around and defending PLP's ideas and putting forward the need for revolution.
The best part came that night in a discussion of the fight for workers' power, communism, starting with a group reading of Road to Revolution IV. With the floor open to all, questions were asked about socialism, religion, motivation and the basis of ideology. PLP members discussed the best way to answer questions people raise about human nature and collectivity. Members and non-members answered the questions and introduced other ones.
One was how can we stop some people from wanting more than others. We talked about the power of the collective fighting to eliminate oppression and, in the process, changing ourselves to be motivated by what's needed to improve the collective, not just the individual. There are many examples from the Soviet Union and China of putting the collective first, like the fight to defeat the Nazis. It was obvious that people are very interested in analyzing how the working class can make a revolution.
Finally there is the importance of exposing the university itself as part and parcel of capitalism, its role in war research and promoting U.S. imperialism. Much of our work must be done right inside the classroom, challenging the bosses' ideas that are an integral part of the curriculum.
The conference organizers came into the day somewhat leery about how receptive people would be of PLP's ideas. Those at the conference were much closer to the Party than we expected. Many are ready for and want to hear and understand our line. It became clear we can be much bolder in raising the need for communist revolution and for the PLP.
Outdoing the Nazis . . . Homeland Insecurity
Racism and fascism usually initiate attacks on one group of workers and end up attacking most workers. Recently the Homeland Security Agency said it will spy on thousands of Iraqi immigrants living in the U.S. Now the latest Homeland Security bill should make everyone feel more INsecure than ever. Here is what New York Times (right-wing) columnist William Safire says (11/14) it will do:
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as `a virtual, centralized grand database.'
"To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a `Total Information Awareness' about every U.S. citizen."
Hitler's Nazi Gestapo would envy U.S. rulers!
Rulers' Racism Runs Rampant
During the Vietnam War, U.S. General Mark Clark told reporters that one American life was worth more than 50 Vietnamese lives. Well, it seems Bush's chief political strategist Carl Rove has raised even Clark's racist ratio to 66 to 1. When questioned after a recent speech by a woman who politely asked "if the administration was concerned over the possibility that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American-led invasion," Rove responded: "I'm more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11." (New York Times, 11/14)
LAPD War on Terror in
South Central LA
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 - New LAPD chief William Bratton is leading the LA cops on a rampage of racist murder in South Central LA, with five "officer-involved" shootings in three days. Four people are dead and two are seriously wounded, including one Latino marine. Bratton is unleashing "a sustained crackdown on gang-related violence in South LA," using "gang-related" as a pretext to terrorize black and Latin workers and youth. The papers have lied about these cases. Families and friends of the victims are angry despite priests and grief counselors trying to calm them. Liberal Bratton has ordered a 30% increase in the number of cops to attack the working class harder.
Bratton, previously police chief in NYC and Boston, is a leading proponent of "community policing" and the "broken windows" theory to intensify police repression by involving local residents under the guise of fighting "quality of life" crimes. (More next issue.)
WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
Upping the Ante Among Industrial Workers
I want to thank "Consolidated Red" for his letter (CHALLENGE, 11/20) about "Two Steel Workers in the Lunch Room." It rang true. Joe, like many workers, often raise issues in a way that reflects the limits of the agenda imposed by the bosses and their labor lieutenants. "Consolidated Red" showed how to break through those limits -- linking the particular grievance to developing war and fascism. He also asked for suggestions for a campaign to help "[develop] all our contacts with steel workers." We need more letters like this!
I work in aerospace, another industry plagued by massive layoffs. Here's my suggestions to start this discussion. First, we need a campaign to increase CHALLENGE circulation. More hand-to-hand sales will give us the confidence to advance our ideas in the unions and among industrial workers in general.
More readers and sellers allow us to up the ante, as well as directly present our revolutionary politics to a broader audience and sharpen the contradictions between the working class and the bosses. Necessarily, that means intensifying the contradictions between workers and the union misleaders, even as we become more involved in the day-to-day work of these unions.
CHALLENGE networks allow us to raise demands that reflect our class interests both inside the unions and to workers in the plants and connected communities. We want these demands to put the interests of the international working class above all. Campaigns against racist layoffs, for jobs or even a shorter work-week should never be presented as a cure-all for capitalism's evils. Nor can we allow these campaigns to be distorted along nationalist lines. We raise such demands in a particular situation not to reform capitalism but to sharpen the division between the bosses' agents and workers at large.
This clarification of class interests offers an opportunity to win workers to a revolutionary understanding. It instills some confidence that workers can be won to fight for their own interests. If combined with communist base-building and study that emphasizes the primacy of revolution over reform, such class struggle can win recruits to the Party.
Thanks "Consolidated Red" for opening this discussion. Much more needs to be said and done. We must hear more about campaigns among industrial workers in CHALLENGE.
Aerospace Red
Does `Bowling' Score A Strike or A Spare?
Michael Moore's new movie, "Bowling for Columbine" is being shown at local theaters and not just the one or two that typically run documentaries. Maybe it's because Moore has established a reputation (with his other films and TV shows), or maybe it's because of the topic, violence. I expected the film would be just another argument for gun control, but it's more sophisticated than that.
Moore argues that the easy availability of weapons can't be the sole or even main cause of the extremely high rate of homicides in the U.S.. Canada has a high level of gun ownership, but a far lower homicide rate. So Moore looks for other reasons -- including a foreign policy that regularly resorts to military solutions, and a culture that idolizes police and military violence. He concludes that corporate and political elites have a vested interest in keeping the population in a state of anxiety about crime, even when crime rates are falling, in order to stimulate consumption.
The film has some decent political aspects, though never taken far enough. There's one sequence where Moore shows the U.S. repeatedly overthrowing elected leaders and replacing them with tyrants who terrorize the population, or intervening militarily in countries, causing millions of deaths. It's a powerful few minutes, though Moore never explains the reasons for these foreign interventions.
There's also a very good segment where Moore examines why a six-year old boy brought a gun to school in Flint, Michigan and accidentally killed a classmate. He shows the mother being forced into a Workfare program, leaving early every morning to work two jobs in a suburban mall. Even with the two jobs, she's unable to pay her rent and so she and her son move into her brother's house, where the boy finds a hidden gun. With the mother at work, the son is unsupervised and tragedy results. Moore blames an uncaring governmental policy of forcing single mothers to leave their children and accept low-wage employment.
Moore indicts corporate greed and U.S. military violence as contributing to the high levels of violence in the U.S., but never links this to an anti-capitalist critique. So the documentary comes off as a populist satire of the American fixation with guns and violence, with no real recommendations for change.
Probably most viewers will conclude that gun control legislation and less mayhem on TV are needed. Democrats and some Republicans can support both these goals, so the documentary doesn't challenge the political and economic status quo, despite its occasional, heartfelt anti-imperialist and anti-racist senti
ments. Am I being too easy on the film or too hard?
A Reader
Scared by Election But Ready to Respond
Although I don't necessarily agree with all your positions, I'm an avid reader of CHALLENGE and await it's online installments daily.
I'm a registered Democrat living in Philadelphia and can honestly say I'm scared to death about the election outcome. We have an overt fascist in power (Baby Bush) and now the voting public has sent to power the party that will send us down the road to fascism the quickest.
The Republicans and many Democrats support a totally unsubstantiated war on Iraq. They have absolutely no proof Hussein has any weapons of mass destruction and even if they did, why should we demand he dismantle them? Who is the ONLY country in the entire world that's actually used nuclear weapons against another sovereign country during a time of peace or war? The UNITED STATES. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. Who the hell are we to demand that other countries either not attain or get rid of weapons of mass destruction? Maybe the world should demand that weapons inspectors come into our country and dismantle ALL nuclear weapons as well as the plenty of government-built chemical and biological weapons in our arsenal? Why is it okay for us to have weapons but others are not allowed?
We were the most reckless with these weapons. We actually used them against others and ended up killing hundreds of thousands.
As a gay man, a Jew and someone who is partnered with an African American man, I am scared. The Republican party, and the Bush family in particular, is heavily homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist. It was Bush, Sr. who took on to his 1988 election committee known former Nazis.
I think now is the time for action. I'm not even sure what I'll do right now. I have to sit down with my partner (who is equally upset and equally politically minded), and figure out how we can respond.
Please know that even though I do not agree with some of what you espouse, I'm thankful there are groups like yours who keep watch over the fascists out there -- including especially those right here at home.
A Concerned Philadelphian
Millions in Italy Hit
Bosses' Barrage
On Oct. 18, millions of workers here in Italy joined protests and rallies in 120 cities. White collars, blue collars, students and teachers united against the abolition of Article 18 of the Workers Statute of Rights, which protects against unfair firings. They also protested the new budget cuts, and the imminent dismissal of over 200,000 FIAT autoworkers.
In Florence and Rome, more than 200,000 workers marched. Support for the strike exceeded 50% of the workers in virtually every industry, with 80% in Public Transportation.
The protest was called by CGIL (the "left" union), without the support from the CISL and UIL ("moderates") for the first time since 1960. CISL and UIL and the moderate "left" parties betrayed the workers by selling out to Berlusconi's government.
These fake-left parties and the two "moderate" unions lose members daily. The day after the strike they were trying to belittle it and the number of workers in the streets. With this hateful attitude, they're showing they're the worst enemy of the workers!
The millions of workers who joined the strike demonstrated they will fight the bosses' and fake leftists' drive to destroy their future.
Bandera Rosa
ILWU Chiefs Misled Workers on War
At recent anti-war rallies in Seattle, there's been a smattering of organized labor participation, both from Organized Labor Against the War and the dockworkers union (ILWU). At the first rally an ILWU representative apologized for his union's lack of support. He said that after the dockworkers' "labor dispute" was settled he was sure they'd "do the right thing. We did the right thing in Vietnam, and we'll do the right thing this time," he promised.
But we ask, "What is the right thing?" From a working-class perspective it would be the dockworkers leading the way for the anti-war movement by refusing to load arms and supplies bound for the U.S. imperialist war machine moving into Iraq. Unfortunately the ILWU considers the "right thing" to be taking an official stance against the war but not backing it up with any real action -- just as they did in Vietnam and every other war with the exception of the Bolshevik revolution. Then dockworkers refused to load arms supplying the U.S.-backed counter-revolutionaries fighting to defeat the Bolsheviks. Without a communist analysis and leadership, the ILWU will continue to "support our troops" by allowing the bullets and supplies to be shipped. The potential power of this union, indeed of the entire working class, became crystal clear when Bush threatened to send federal troops onto the docks to break a strike, calling it a "threat to national security."
If the anti-war movement expects to stop the war, it must involve the working class. If our Party hopes to sharpen the struggle over this war, we must push the organizations we're active in to recognize the imperialist nature of this war and the power of the working class. We should up the ante in the anti-war movement by struggling to gain support in the various organizations for dockworkers' struggles, while raising the idea that dockworkers have the power to stop shipments of goods necessary for the war effort. As we sharpen the struggle in the unions and the mass organizations, the Party must focus on recruitment.
A Comrade
Backing Steel Bosses
Is No Solution
I saw the letter in CHALLENGE about two steelworkers discussing the union District Director's support for consolidation of the steel industry. One worker thought it might make the union stronger while the worker in PLP warned this is part of developing fascism.
The New York Times (11/14) reported the failed attempt of Corus, Europe's second largest steel maker, to take over CSN, a big Brazilian steel producer. The consolidation of British Steel and Hoogoven of the Netherlands created Corus. It hasn't made a profit since 1998, plans on eliminating 10,000 jobs and has shut down 20% of its steel-producing capacity in Britain. One analyst pointed out, "The collapse of the deal says more about the global steel market than it does about the climate of foreign investment in Brazil."
Steel producers around the world are in a classic case of what Marxists call a "crisis of overproduction." From the capitalists' viewpoint, too much steel can be produced that cannot be sold for profit. The capitalists' response to their predicament is to slash production and jobs.
The District director's plan to have the union help the bosses consolidate is no solution. There are millions of projects that need steel and millions of workers that want to work. But the driving force behind capitalism is to make maximum profits, not meet workers' needs.
A few months ago, some Bethlehem Steel workers felt that if LTV went under, it would make their own company stronger. Now ISG, the gang of financiers that took over LTV and reopened it with slashed benefits, is contemplating buying Bethlehem!
Workers can struggle and we can make a living for a while. But steelworkers around the world are hurting. The answer is not consolidation but continuous daily struggle to win workers to communist revolution. In that process we fight for every job and fight against anything that weakens our class, like racism, sexism and nationalism.
Red Reader
Listen to Your Nurse
Recently I had a minor surgical procedure. While the doctor was cutting and stitching the nurse asked me, "What do you think of Homeland Security?" I replied it was a cover for further attacks against workers.
The nurse, a middle-aged white woman with 25 years on the job, said, "It's just union-busting. Can you imagine consolidating 20 agencies and over 100,000 workers and taking away their civil service and union protections?" I said it was bigger than just the government workers and she cut me off saying, "That's right. Look at the dockworkers. They're going to use this against all of us!"
She gave up a supervisor's job in the OR to work in this clinic. She had nothing good to say about the various unions at the hospital because she sees the bosses getting away with murder while the union leaders sit on their hands. Finally she said, "I may have been a supervisor, but I come from a long line of railroad workers who were all fighters."
A Reader
Wage System Rx For
Capitalist Robbery
I'm a young worker from a rural area in Latin America where I worked on my family's farm. Once I went for a job in the capital city but the pay was too low. Then a friend in the army told me the army paid very well and that if I volunteered I could leave whenever I wanted. I joined but soon discovered that neither was true. Later I came to the US.
Here I went to a school to learn to sew and became a garment worker. I've been working here for three years.
I've been working in the same shop for the last seven months. The boss seems to trust the workers. He drinks beer with us, gives us candies and cookies, jokes with us and lets us use the office telephone for personal calls.
I told my brother and he warned, "Don't trust the bosses. They're all shameless thieves. Because you trust them, you probably don't write down the work you've done, leaving everything to the bosses' `honesty.' He's probably stealing you blind."
"That's impossible," I replied. "My bosses are good people. They're Koreans, from a far-off continent. They put up with a lot from me when I didn't know the work very well. The boss herself taught me the operations. And they joke with me and treat me well."
A month later, a co-worker came to me and said, "My check's only for $120, and I worked very hard for a whole week." I advised him, "Tell the boss, because I worked on a similar machine and I got more."
He talked to the boss who then agreed he'd made a "mistake" and had shorted him $70. When I heard this, I started to doubt the boss. "If he does it with another, maybe he does it with me," I thought. I began detailing all the work I did.
On the Saturday before pay day we turn in the tickets from which our pay is computed. On seeing the paper the boss wanted me to sign, he hadn't included work I'd done cutting 510 pieces. He told me he'd "forgotten" I'd done that job and credited me for the 510 pieces.
I told my brother all this and said he'd been right all along. Now I write down all the work I do. Last week I caught the boss trying to rob me of 100 pieces I'd made. My conclusion? "Don't trust any boss. All are thieves."
A worker who opened his eyes
CHALLENGE comment:
Thanks for sharing your experience. All workers need such understanding if the working class is to destroy capitalism and all the evils it produces. This won't happen if workers believe bosses can be our friends.
But the bosses rob much more from us every day. The worker's labor adds value to the natural resource, converting it into a useful product. The boss sells this product, deducts his expenses for materials, machines and workers' wages and the rest is his profit. The workers' wages represent just a fraction of the value they produced. This value added by - but not paid to - the worker is called surplus value, or profit, stolen from the worker's labor.
Under communism, without bosses, profits or money, workers as a class will reap the full value their labor produces and will distribute it based on their class's needs.
Hart-Rudman Report 2: A Blueprint for More War and a Fascist Police State
a href="#It IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap">It"IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap
a href="#‘Maverick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq">‘M"verick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq
a href="#War Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!">"ar Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!
- a href="#How Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers">Ho" Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers
a href="#PLP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show">"LP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show
Liberals Divert Huge Anti-War Marches Away From Anti-Imperialis
California Campus Workers Blast War, Police State
Profit System Grinds Down Home Health Care Workers
Anti-Cop Rebels Confront Bush On Iraq War
a href="#Laws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool">"aws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool
LETTERS
a href="#Rely on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’">Re"y on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’
Unions A Tool Of Rockefeller Forces
Two Steel Workers In The Lunch Room
Bring Anti-War Message to Mass Organizations
Hart-Rudman Report 2: A Blueprint for More War and a Fascist Police State
Another war with Iraq appears to be only a matter of time. U.S. bosses may haggle about the timing and details of this adventure, but they all share the strategic goal of world domination. This requires maintaining a chokehold on their rivals’ access to the world’s cheapest energy supplies, which are concentrated primarily in the Persian Gulf. A series of increasingly bloody wars will force them to militarize society to try to crush any organized, militant opposition to their agenda, at gunpoint if necessary. War and fascism go hand in hand.
The Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century laid out the broad outlines for a "Homeland Security" reign of terror months before 9/11. However, the rulers still don’t have their house in order. So former Senators Hart (Democrat) and Rudman (Republican) have just produced a sequel, entitled "America Still Unprepared — America Still in Danger." It is the brainchild of an "Independent" Task Force convened by the Council on Foreign Relations, a key Rockefeller-led think-tank.
Hart-Rudman II implies a scathing criticism of Bush for not moving far enough and fast enough toward fascism. The report’s recommendations include:
•Immediate, emergency action to shore up "homeland security," especially now that war with Iraq is likely.
•The government must intervene to ensure the security of U.S.-based refineries, pipelines and power grids. H-R II wants the feds to control ruling class upstarts like Enron while protecting the energy infrastructure from al Qaeda.
•The private sector must share its security expertise with the government. Companies that comply will get the carrots of government information and an exemption from anti-trust actions.
•The National Guard must "make homeland security a primary mission." This includes treating the victims of bio-terrorism and "maintaining civil order." Striking workers and anyone contemplating militant activity should expect to be arrested or shot by the National Guard.
•Local and state cops must have access to "terrorist watch lists" available to the State Department.
•Massive infusions of federal cash must be made available to implement these and other measures. Therefore, repeal the Bush-sponsored 2001 tax cut, which hinders the plans for a police state by enriching individual members of the ruling class while sacrificing the class-wide agenda favored by the liberals.
The report’s co-signers include two former Secretaries of State, three Nobel prizewinners, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former CIA and FBI director and a bunch of financial, legal and medical heavy hitters. The rulers are deadly serious about carrying out this agenda. If the Bush White House is not up to the task, the rulers will find a new cast of characters to do the dirty work.
The next war could eventually lead to far wider armed struggle throughout the Persian Gulf. Over the very long run, U.S. imperialism will probably have to go it alone against their Chinese, Russian, French and other competitors. We are entering a new period of inter-imperialist rivalry. U.S. rulers will stop at nothing, including world war and the use of nuclear weapons, to remain top-dog in the international profit system.
Capitalism makes war and fascism inevitable. Peace movements like the present one, backed by the same liberal rulers who are organizing wider, far more lethal wars, can’t stop the inter-imperialist rivalry. Voting and legal action cannot stop the advance of fascism.
The way to confront imperialist war is to win workers, soldiers and students to understand that as long as capitalism exists there can’t be peace. Making revolutionary war to get rid of all the warmakers is the only solution to endless imperialist bloodbaths. This requires bringing communist politics to the mass actions and organizations of workers and youth. At the moment, the rulers have the upper hand. But they are not invincible. As conditions sharpen, their weaknesses will magnify and multiply. Imperialist war and police terror will provide many opportunities for our Party to grow. Our efforts can eventually turn this period of homicidal rivalries among the world’s bosses into a movement for communism and workers’ power.
a name="It IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap"></">It"IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap
Many in the anti-war movement are beginning to link oil to the U.S. bosses’ plan to attack Iraq. Even the liberal media has been forced to mention the oil connection, albeit always emphasizing it is "not the main reason" to invade Iraq (Sunday New York Times News of the Week section, Nov. 4).
But it is the main reason. The U.S. ruling class spends tens of billions to maintain a permanent naval and military force in the region, fully aware that the control of Middle East oil supplies and profits is crucial to keeping their rival imperialists at bay. That’s why French, Russian, Chinese and other oil companies and their governments are not too happy with the U.S. plan to turn a post-Saddam Iraq into a U.S. protectorate. Even the chairman of BP (ousted from Iraq in the ’60s) said he’s worried that U.S. oil companies plan to carve up Iraq for themselves. For that reason a section of the British ruling class is bitterly opposed to Tony Blair being a lapdog of Bush.
The world’s biggest corporations are oil companies, headed by the biggest financial capitalists. The Rockefeller section of the U.S. ruling class controls Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest corporation. Without oil, capitalist armies and industries can’t operate. Today there’s no alternative energy to oil. And the cheapest and best quality is in the Middle East. Iraq has 11% of the world’s reserves (second only to Saudi Arabia). With 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and at least 220 billion barrels of probable reserves "Iraq is universally acknowledged to be the new promised land of oil…The war of positioning for a possible post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi environment is getting more ruthless by the minute. American oil conglomerates are openly courting representatives of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella opposition. The darling of Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco is Ahmed Chalabi….Dick Cheney’s pal and major contender for the title of Iraq’s number one opposition figure…" writes Pepe Escobar (ATimes.com).
Chalabi already favors creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraqi oil fields once Saddam is gone. This is the main reason France and Russia oppose the U.S. vision of a future Iraq.
Iraqi oil is plentiful and cheap. "Industry sources in the Gulf and Singapore confirm the production cost of a barrel of oil in Caspian Sea is around US$8. The same thing in Iraq costs only 70 cents. So the new oil frontier in Central Asia for the moment is little more than a mirage." (Atimes.com).
That is why the U.S. rulers must wage imperialist war to control Iraq.
a name="‘Maverick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq"></">‘M"verick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq
Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was known as a "maverick" in the Senate, who supposedly defended workers and opposed Bush’s war aims. Many of those who demonstrated for peace in Washington on October 26 viewed him as a friend and fighter for social justice. But in his last Senate speech before he died in a recent airplane "accident," he boasted of having voted for the use of military force in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Wellstone was loyal to the Liberal Establishment and its plans for imperialist war and home-front fascism. His "opposition" to the war on Iraq was unprincipled. He thought the US shouldn’t act alone, but with the blessings of the UN. He supported the USA Patriot Act and the fascist Israeli rulers.
The Institute for America’s Future (IAF), a small foundation that lists the Rockefeller Foundation as its main financial supporter, formulated his social and fiscal policies. He appeared regularly at IAF conferences and referred to its research almost exclusively in his campaign literature.
The IAF opposes tax cuts and the privatization of Social Security. This is consistent with the Hart-Rudman recommendations for massive funding of a reinvigorated "Homeland Security" police state. The IAF echoes the Brookings Institution, the Council of Foreign Relations and other liberal think-tanks, who support "nation building" and a massive U.S. occupation of Iraq. The IAF also demands a homeland security bill with more muscle than Bush and Ashcroft have shown.
Wellstone was no "lesser evil." That’s why his memorial service turned into a pep rally for the "un-maverick" former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale. Liberals like Wellstone remain the major political threat to our class. In the name of "peace" they will launch imperialist wars for world domination. In the name of "defending our democratic civil rights," they will move ruthlessly toward a fascist, "homeland security" police state.
We don’t need the mis-leadership of liberal sweet-talkers funded by the most murderous ruling class in history. We need to build our own revolutionary forces under the leadership of the communist PLP. Wellstone was a mouthpiece for the bosses. We shouldn’t mourn him. We should organize the movement to smash them all.
a name="War Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!">">"ar Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!
LYNN, MASS, Nov. 5 — About 2,500 GE aircraft engine workers in the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communication Workers of America (IUE-CWA) Local 201 went on a four-day strike at the General Electric River Works plant here. The strike involved just over half of the plant’s 4,400 workers, who build and test engines used in jets and helicopters. GE’s aircraft engine business employs about 26,000 worldwide.
GE is the world’s most profitable electronics company and a major war contractor, with 310,000 workers internationally. It netted $16 billion in profits last year, much of it from supplying the weapons to be used when young workers are sent to kill and die in a Middle East oil war.
Earlier this month, GE Aircraft Engines announced it would eliminate 1,000 jobs this year and as many as 1,800 jobs next year, adding to the growing list of aerospace workers being tossed overboard, including 30,000 at Boeing. GE boss Gorham said, "The aerospace industry is in crisis mode..."
The capitalist crisis of overproduction, too much productive capacity, is sending millions of better-paying manufacturing jobs to wherever labor is cheapest. GE has been farming out work to Romania, Russia, China, Mexico and other countries where wages are about $2 an hour.
The job action was sparked when GE failed to replace machine operators lost through attrition. When these operators are not replaced, maintenance problems arise and equipment is shut down. If the machines aren’t running, the work gets shipped out.
Despite their best intentions, the workers are trapped by the pro-capitalist, patriotic outlook of the union leadership. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka opposes sending defense contracts abroad because it "will teach production techniques" to U.S. imperialism’s rivals. (Boston Globe, 10/20) The IUE-CWA leaders have been unwilling and/or unable to fight the massive speed-up, outsourcing and mandatory overtime forced on GE workers in recent decades. They want to save the very same bosses who are attacking us and will support the bosses’ war drive.
Locals in Erie, Pa. (the largest) and Schenectady, N.Y. have also issued strike notices as things heat up for national contract talks next spring. The current contract expires in June, which could mean a strike in the midst of a Middle East oil war. Such a strike would defy the U.S. bosses’ "national interest" crap and meet the class interests of both U.S. and Iraqi workers.
In 1970, GE workers went on a nation-wide strike at the height of the Vietnam War. Nixon told the workers to return to work because they were hurting the war effort. On a picket line in Schenectady the workers chanted, "Screw the War Effort!" Now here we are decades later, facing another war and another GE strike. Building a mass PLP and fighting for communist revolution will stop this endless treadmill. "War-Maker, Strike-Breaker, Smash GE!"
a name="How Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers"></">Ho" Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers
The union bosses have been screwing GE workers for over 50 years, when they set up the IUE to bust the left-led UE that wouldn’t kowtow to the U.S. bosses’ Cold War. When the dust cleared, the IUE had stolen 350,000 workers from the UE, which was left with 50,000 of its original 650,000 membership. This anti-communist attack left 250,000 unionized workers out in the cold. Now GE workers are divided among six unions, and many are in none. These divisions have weakened workers’ resistance (and put zillions in the pocket of former GE CEO Jack Welch).
a name="PLP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show">">"LP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show
CHICAGO, IL Oct. 22 — "Don’t believe anything the government tells you about why they’re going to war. Nothing!" declared a black marine Gulf War veteran who condemned U.S. involvement in past wars at the Chicago City Colleges’ Town Hall Meeting entitled "Iraq: Where Are We Heading?" About 300 black and Latin students and faculty attended the meeting from the seven city colleges.
There were three mandatory meetings to script the televised forum, and prepare us with the "dos" and "don’ts" of debating. In these meetings, many students supported the war.
One "don’t" emphasized was, "Don’t attempt to persuade someone." The forum was to encourage students to vote, not to debate or, more importantly, not to oppose U.S. imperialism.
Despite the moderator’s facade of "neutrality" and obvious support for war, there were stirring debates. After the first two scripted questions, two student panelists supported a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Then a PLP student panelist from Malcolm X College, a veteran who had been stationed in the Middle East, raised the question of oil. Many students in the audience spoke passionately against the war.
The moderator tried to center the debate on terrorism and other smokescreens like religion and morality. Nevertheless, the students’ anger and opposition intensified as we linked war, racist police terror and the massive education cutbacks at the City Colleges. One student we didn’t even know made copies of the CHALLENGE article on the cuts, approached a comrade and said, "Here, give these out."
In closing remarks, the PLP comrade declared that capitalism is the root of imperialist wars and that revolution, not voting, is the answer. Not surprisingly, this was cut from the broadcast version. We distributed about 100 CHALLENGES and even more PLP leaflets. Afterwards we discussed our communist politics with students. Many liked what they heard. Later a group of us confronted the Chancellor to demand the college pay for a bus to the anti-war march in Washington D.C. While we could have done better, this is an example of how the bosses’ drive to war can provide us with the "on-the-job" training we need to build a mass anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement and a mass base for PLP. The ruling class will give us many more opportunities, and we can’t afford to pass them by. µ
Liberals Divert Huge Anti-War Marches Away From Anti-Imperialis
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26 — Over 50,000 workers and students marched here, joining hundreds of thousands who demonstrated in Washington, D.C., in the biggest anti-war demonstrations since Vietnam.
The crowd marched down Market Street, passing bank after bank that fund the "war against terrorism" and department stores selling garments made by exploited workers targeted by the Patriot Act. The contradictions of capitalism were everywhere.
The demonstration itself was a confusing mix of revisionist (phony leftist) and liberal politics. The march Call, "Drop Bush, not bombs," did not criticize imperialism, the cause of war, nor the liberal democratic leadership. The latter favors more preparation than the Bush administration is offering, in order to ready people for a long-term war throughout the Middle East. The Congressional vote two weeks ago shows liberals support war.
PLP played an active role. The sharpened contradictions enabled us to discuss with our friends the differences between reform and revolution. Our anti-imperialist banners, speeches and chants stood out. Our leaflets and CHALLENGES brought the much-needed message of working-class revolution against capitalism as the only solution to end wars for profit.
A group of Southern California students drove to the march together. We collectively raised money on our campus so many more people could make the trip. We prepared meals, shared the clean-up, had long political discussions and made new friends. In short, a multi-racial group worked together without hostility and collectively struggled about how to fight against racism and imperialist war. Our success builds confidence in the collective fight of the working class to liberate itself from capitalism.
Our next step is to get CHALLENGE to workers and students who couldn’t join us, so we can organize more struggles against racism and imperialism on our campus and throughout the world. One class, one fight; workers of the world unite!
California Campus Workers Blast War, Police State
BEREKELEY, CA., Oct. 18 — Delegates at a Univ. of California (UC) campus union state-wide convention applauded a worker’s condemnation of the "War on Terrorism" as a War on Workers. The worker related UC’s attack on employees to the U.S. rulers’ current drive to invade Iraq for control of Mideast oil and the creation of a police state at home. The delegates then passed resolutions condemning both. This was especially significant given that the union represents workers at UC’s two nuclear labs.
These developments were no accident. On October 14-15, lecturers, clerical workers, staff researchers and technicians struck five of the nine UC campuses. University bosses assumed workers would accept pay cuts and increased health care costs. They thought workers wouldn’t strike because "we’re lucky to have University jobs." They were wrong!
The University, a powerful ruling-class tool, has sharpened its attacks on workers. Its chief negotiator said, "We’re not interested in employees that can’t pay their rent." That enraged many workers.
The strike was preceded by lively discussions about the need to strike and rally co-workers. UC is seen by some as a "worker-friendly" haven. Workers’ direct actions defied this view. They don’t want collections to lobby politicians.
On one campus, we organized rallies and invited student support. At one rally, a union member attacked capitalism and advanced the need for workers uniting to take power. Only education under workers’ control would serve our class’s needs.
On the strike’s second day, this organizing produced a rally and march through campus of over 450 workers and 150 students. Hundreds more wore red ribbons in support. We shut down several large construction sites. Our worker/student alliance message was well received. Our chants and energy reverberated throughout the campus. Workers gave and received leadership.
Amid these actions and excitement, real political advances occurred. For example, after a deeper discussion of the differences between socialism and communism, one student said she better understood the need for revolutionary communism. Others saw CHALLENGE for the first time and were open to it.
This sharper class struggle helps develop bonds of friendship and heighten class consciousness. We all grow. We learn that workers need communism. Only one organization, the PLP, can make that happen.
Profit System Grinds Down Home Health Care Workers
NEW YORK CITY — "The boss of Premier Home Health Care Services and 1199/SEIU leadership are good for nothing. We were sold out," declared a home health care (HHC) worker about the contract settlement that averted a Sept. 18 strike.
The HHC workers — mostly black and Latin women — provide compassionate care in the homes of people discharged from hospitals. The latter try to minimize patients’ hospital stays to increase their profits. Therefore, patients tend to have more ailments upon discharge and need extra assistance at home. HHC workers administer medication, monitor pulse and temperature, assist with physical therapy exercise, bathing and feeding, dress the patients, run errands and accompany them to doctor appointments.
This strenuous work is just as important as a health care worker’s in a hospital. However, wages are much lower. The new contract left the HHC workers the lowest paid in the state. It grants a 20% increase this year (above the present $6 to $7 an hour) and a similar increase in 2003; health insurance worth 79¢ an hour; participation in the union education program; and five paid vacation/sick days after working 1,400 hours.
This agreement will have little impact on the home care workers’ ability to feed, clothe and house their families.
The capitalist home health care system is built for profit. It works through agencies that make millions off these low-paid workers and the lack of patient care. It’s financed by Medicaid and Medicare. The money comes from workers’ taxes and bosses’ taxes extracted from the working class.
Medicaid and Medicare are channeled through Certified Home Health Agencies (CHHA) which keep a substantial amount for administrative costs and their own profits. They employ mostly nurses and therapists. CHHA subcontract to Licensed Home Care Service Agencies, who in turn are paid by the CHHAs to cover their administrative costs and profits. At the bottom of this profit pyramid is the little left for the home health care workers themselves, the only productive group in the entire system.
The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduced Medicare funding for home health care. The Clinton/Bush Congressional Budget Office has projected a $69 billion cut between 1998 and 2002. These cuts help pay for the U.S. bosses’ oil wars. They aim to reduce health care funding and drive down the wages of the entire working class. We must answer these attacks by building the PLP around the revolutionary communist ideas in CHALLENGE.
Anti-Cop Rebels Confront Bush On Iraq War
CINCINNATI, OHIO, Oct. 7 — "All indications are that this will be…a war about oil…we should address…the domestic terrorists like the KKK," declared a black worker to 5,000 people protesting a war on Iraq. They demonstrated as Bush spoke at the Cincinnati Museum Center. The crowd included many black workers and youth, from dozens of churches, several universities and high schools. Some carried signs reading, "No blood for oil."
This largest anti-war protest here in decades can in part be traced back to April 2001, when Cincinnati police murdered Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black youth. Black, Latin and white workers and youth fought back. Police used shotguns loaded with beanbags to shoot mourners at Thomas’s funeral, and met other protests with a massive number of cops in riot gear. On June 2, 2001, 2,500 demonstrators marched against racist police terror, the largest integrated demonstration in Cincinnati’s modern history. PLP participated in that rebellion and was warmly embraced by the workers. (One friend met at that time provided the information for this article.)
Miami University students carried a large banner while Earlham College students from southern Indiana chanted and snaked their way through the crowd. Others came from universities in Lexington, Kentucky. Earlier a group of 15-year-old students distributed 1,000 leaflets at Walnut Hills High School. Students from many other schools were also there. Black, Latin, Muslim, Middle Eastern and white youth could be seen everywhere.
A few hundred protesters blocked the exit from the Museum Center parking lot, keeping several hundred Bush supporters from leaving. Cops on horseback rode through the crowd and arrested six demonstrators.
While the size, youthful energy and integrated character of the protest was impressive, the politics were not. It was led by the Democratic Party, through the leadership of various mass organizations, as a way to bash Bush and get out the vote. The aspirations of the anti-war demonstrators will never be realized by marching behind these liberals who gave Bush the war powers he was seeking, and is planning an even deadlier conflict. Only communist revolution will end imperialist wars. Building the Party here is a step in that direction.
a name="Laws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool">">"aws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool
(This is another in a series of articles analyzing the "legal" development of fascism.)
The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, has given the rulers a green light to massively wiretap everyone who disagrees with the "war on terror." Under changes in FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), tracking "foreign intelligence" must be a significant aim of the wiretap, even if "domestic law enforcement" is the main purpose. The law makes it easier for the FBI to get wiretaps (including on multiple computers or phones), and encourages intelligence sharing between the FBI and CIA.
Ashcroft applied to the secret court for even more power. This court itself is long-standing. During the Johnson and first Nixon administration (1968-1972), at the height of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the government was wiretapping many revolutionaries, anti-war radicals and liberals, much of it without a warrant. Legal interpretations of the Constitution’s 4th Amendment and supsequent Supreme Court decisions required warrants for wiretaps, mandating the government to show "probable cause" a crime had been, or was being committed.
Supposing Ashcroft decides an anti-war activist who encourages civil disobedience on federal property is aiding foreign terrorists. And supposing some of these people meet with Iraqi, Palestinian or other organizations that the FBI considers "fronts for terrorism." The Patriot Act allows the FBI to tap the phones/computers of these people because "foreign intelligence" is a "significant" purpose of the wiretap. Now Ashcroft wants to give these wiretaps to criminal prosecutors to go after the activists. Before the Patriot Act, this was illegal.
The secret court was angry that under Clinton, and later Bush, the FBI was already sharing information from "foreign intelligence" wiretaps with criminal prosecutors, and denied Ashcroft these additional powers. But that ruling is only a slap on the wrist. Even if upheld on appeal, it only prevents the open sharing of evidence between intelligence investigators and criminal prosecutors. Nobody’s been punished for past violations. The government is appealing to the FISA appeals court. If it loses, it can appeal to a secret session of the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the Patriot Act, more warrant requests will be granted.
Many people are becoming more aware of the Gestapo tactics of Ashcroft and others. Both the New York Times and Washington Post have featured Op-Ed pieces calling for "reining in" the more openly fascist aspects of FISA and the Patriot Act. The internal struggle within the ruling class is reflected in the fact that the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee sat on the secret court opinion for three months. It was finally made public in late August, followed closely by major media attacks on Bush and Ashcroft (not Clinton) engineered by the liberal rulers.
The liberals are upset over the clumsiness and arrogance of Ashcroft and Bush. No one is questioning whether there should be a secret court. The liberals want to limit Ashcroft and have confirmation power over whoever is proposed to head Homeland Security.
Revolutionary communists must unmask ruling-class wolves who pose as friends. The liberals are no more "anti-fascist" than they are "anti-war." Liberal Democrats like Carter and Clinton are up to their ears in these fascist laws. The ACLU claims fascism can be stopped through vigorous public debate, and new laws to "fix" the old ones. The rulers use "democracy" when it helps them maintain power but scrap it when fascism better suits their needs.
LETTERS
Workers Of The World Write!
a name="Rely on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’"></">Re"y on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’
After a lecture on Iraq and U.S. foreign policy, a group I belong to met to plan an anti-war demonstration. People were steamed that "our" representative, a Democrat, voted for Bush’s war resolution.
Someone suggested we march by his office with a big poster of a voided check made out to him. "We should send our money to the ones who voted against Bush." "I voted for him already, by absentee ballot," another said. "Now I wish I hadn’t."
"But, objected a Green Party activist, "he’s still better than a Republican on education and welfare," to which another Green responded, "Someone can be a really great person, but if they kill someone, they’re a murderer."
I was cheered at the widespread disgust with Congress. People were particularly angered because "our" Senator admitted that phone calls, e-mails and letters were overwhelmingly against the war resolution, but she voted for it anyway. Our friends made a lot of those calls, but for what?
Then I realized they were mad at Congress because they still rely on politicians to stop war or improve society — a dangerous illusion.
Then someone raised the West Coast longshore situation. When Bush’s "homeland security" chief, fascist Tom Ridge, told the union a strike would interfere with the "war on terrorism," ILWU leader Stallone reassured Ridge he would never allow such a thing. But imagine if longshore workers did strike against the war! After all, in 1919 they refused to load ships with arms to attack the new Soviet revolution.
"It might take a long time to convince workers to oppose the war, but I’d bet on that before I’d take my chances with Congress," he added.
This group of mostly middle-aged, middle-class white folks seemed more skeptical about the working class than their congressman. Without a pro-working-class perspective, anti-war activists will cling to "lesser-evil" imperialist politicians, or throw their bodies "against the machine" in grand but ineffective pacifist gestures, or lapse into cynicism. But relying on workers to build an anti-war movement will open the door to more meaningful discussions about communist revolution.
Later I spoke with a woman who, with two friends, had raised anti-war signs on a main street in one of the port neighborhoods. She said responses were positive, especially from truck drivers. I wish I’d known that, to tell the group. But there will be lots more opportunities for conversation, because everyone wanted to stay in touch.
A Reader
Anti-Racists Block KKK Movie
Workers organized and stopped the scheduled October 5 showing of D.W. Graffiti’s film "Birth of a Nation," part of a "classic" film series co-sponsored by Maryland’s Prince Georges County Public Library System and the Greenbelt Theatre. The 1915 film glorifies the Ku Klux Klan who use it to recruit members.
Author Donald Bogle wrote, "Griffith presented all the [stereo] types with such force and power that his film touched off a wave of controversy and was denounced as the most slanderous anti-Negro movie ever released." (Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films).
This scheduled film showing followed several recent incidents of racist police brutality in the County and four Nazi demonstrations in the Washington, D.C. area. A letter to the theatre owner expressed outrage, asking the film be canceled. The owner had an employee reply, "I tried to contact the NAACP to get a speaker on the Negro point of view…I did not contact the KKK because I had some of the same concerns about the movie as you did." The Library Director claimed it would be an "academic discussion." Co-workers, friends and colleagues made opposing calls to the Director. By the second day the movie was pulled.
This campaign generated intense discussion. Initially, most people were appalled at the movie but felt discussing it would teach young people analytical and critical thinking. But the theatre employee’s letter changed peoples’ minds. They agreed it should not be shown at all. Racist speech should not be tolerated, period. The first chapter of Donald Bogle’s book was copied and widely distributed, marshalling wider support for this campaign. We’ll celebrate this victory and show Bill Cosby’s film "Black History, Lost and Stolen," which critically discusses "Birth of a Nation."
I’ve been in a book club for the past five years, formed to discuss issues of race and bridge cultural gaps. Several book club members were willing to talk to the theatre owners and demand that he cancel the showing. We’re making sure the movie does not pop up again unexpectedly.
The role of music, films, books, TV and radio programs all need to be analyzed more frequently in CHALLENGE and with our friends, children and co-workers. A neighbor thought young people would find the black-face characters in the movie ridiculous. I explained how my 20-year-old son, raised with anti-racist values, found it sickening and disgusting. But what about a 20-year-old with racist values? The neo-fascist National Alliance is growing rapidly among young white workers through its white supremacist music and attracted many young people to their August march.
Red
Unions A Tool Of Rockefeller Forces
I want to reply to the comment from "A reader" (CHALLENGE, 11/6) about the letter in the paper Oct. 23 about the West Coast dockworkers. First, I completely agree with the comrade that the job of communists is building a mass international PLP, not reformism (fighting for reforms as our goal). But I disagree over a political assessment of the role of U.S. unions today.
Unions play a vital role in supporting the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class in its struggles against other capitalist forces with heavy investments centered on domestic oil and other domestic industries. This is an ongoing dispute that sees periods of unity disrupted by periods of struggle within the ruling class. Both sides agree, of course, on keeping profits flowing at the expense of workers' lives.
The letter points out that the New York Times praised Bush for using Taft-Hartley to open the West Coast docks. In the view of the letter, this is evidence of the overall unity of the ruling class when dealing with workers.
But Taft-Hartley isn't ordering workers back to work after a strike (like it did in 1971). It is ordering the PMA - the bosses - to end their lockout of the workers. The ILWU leaders are glad to be back at work, although they don't like Taft-Hartley.
The Bush administration had originally spoken through Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Czar, who had warned the military would load ships in the event of a dockworkers' strike. I think the New York Times editorial was praising the Bush administration for using Taft-Hartley instead of its original Tom Ridge plan. The Bush administration backed down. Democrats, including Tom Daschle, attacked the Ridge plan.
Furthermore, a Times editorial (10/20) entitled "The Week of Living Dangerously" said:
"Congress has left town without approving the Homeland Security bill. Although this particular failure has many parents, the Bush administration's insistence on tying the plan to an ideological attack on job security for the new department's unionized employees is the biggest stumbling block."
Homeland security and the unions, with Bush and Rockefeller forces at loggerheads with each other!
The unions are very important to the Rockefeller forces as an ideological tool, as long as, (1) they don't organize militant working-class struggle, like a march with auto workers against the lockout-caused layoffs at Nummi Motors, or stop supplies to overseas military bases (in which case the Rockefeller forces would certainly use troops also), or (2) to the extent that they don't become schools for communism. The ILWU knows this and has carefully avoided mobilizing the working class.
A long marcher
Two Steel Workers In The Lunch Room
PL'er: Did you hear the District Director is calling for the steel mills to consolidate? He says Europe and Japan have already done it, and consolidation is coming here to the U.S.
Joe: Did he give any reasons?
PL'er: Yes. He said when he hired in during the 1970's there were 18,000 workers in the plant. Now there are less than 6,000, but the plant makes the same amount of steel. He said you would think the steel companies made lots of profits, but they didn't. The auto companies would tell the steel mills that since your making steel more cheaply, you should sell it for less. There was always one company ready to undercut the price.
Joe: So he thinks that fewer, larger mills could stand up to Detroit?
PL'er: That's right. He said the mills could tell the auto companies, "Our workers are efficient and productive, and they deserve good wages and benefits. The price will stay where it is."
Joe: Well, I guess fewer companies might make the union stronger. We used to have one steel contract for everybody. When the union started negotiating separately with individual companies, it really weakened us. So it would be like going back to the "good old" days. We would have the power to shut down the whole industry, like they do in Europe. That's what we need, but the union will never do it.
PL'er: The Director's call for consolidation reminds me of the so-called "corporate state" under Mussolini in Italy in the 1920's-30s. The fascists tried to convince the workers that what was good for the corporation was good for them! This is a dangerous illusion that the Director is planting among us. He may get away with it temporarily because workers don't see any alternative.
He said nothing about the approaching war with Iraq, but his call for a more efficient steel industry will help the bosses simplify war production. He's telling us to get down in a crouch and try to fend off the blows and hopefully we'll survive. But we must come out swinging, using our heads and communist politics to win workers to communist revolution—the only way we'll survive.
*********************
We're in the midst of developing all our contacts with steel workers. This struggle will continue. All suggestions for a campaign will be greatly appreciated.
Consolidated Red
Bring Anti-War Message to Mass Organizations
I went to the Washington, D.C. Oct. 26 anti-war march with a co-worker and her friend. Another friend who has been to many of the anti-nazi rallies also hooked up with us. My co-worker’s sign read, "Don’t send the snipers to Iraq" (the sniper and his accomplice had just been caught days before). She said a U.S. invasion of Iraq will terrorize workers there like the sniper was doing to workers in the Washington, D.C. area. My sign said, "Jobs for all, No racist war." I wore a T-shirt saying, "Fight racism with multi-racial unity."
We stood at Constitution Gardens listening to the speeches. My co-worker was heartened by the large numbers. We struck up conversations with folks in the crowd. My co-worker, an African American, was disappointed at the low turnout of black people. She vowed to return to her organizations and try to win people to build for and attend the next anti-war march (January 18).
We discussed how best to do that. She tends to fight battles by herself instead of gathering support from friends or co-workers. I reminded her that I usually have a base of support in the union meeting when I introduce an important resolution such as opposing a Nazi rally.
We were interviewed by an independent media reporter from a small radio station on Chicago’s Northside. I’m sure it was because of the anti-racist messages on my sign and T-shirt. We both talked about the racist nature of war. We reported our plans to introduce an anti-war resolution in our union. Other marchers overheard this comment. We talked with New York City teachers who told us of their unsuccessful struggle to get such a resolution passed at a union delegates meeting. They will try again.
We were angry at the march organizers for allowing the speakers to go on for over three hours. Many workers left the rally site, took to the streets and were starting to march! We made plans to bring up a resolution at the next union meeting.
D.C. Red
Red Eye On The News
Below Are Excerpts From Mainstream Newspapers That Contain Important Information:
Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, MG=Manchester Guardian
"Grande" Mexican muralist was lifelong revolutionary
Siqueiros, a towering figure in the history of Latin American Art, is remembered especially as one of Los Tres Grandes, along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, who pioneered the use of monumental public murals to tell epic stories of poverty, rebellion and the tortured history of their native Mexico….
Siqueiros was a militant communist….who fought in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War….
The same issues Siqueiros painted about in 1932 still exist today in Mexico, in places like Chiapas, as well as throughout Latin America and the rest of the world. (NYT, 10/29)
US sucked Saddam into Kuwait
In the week before invading Kuwait President Saddam asked for, and received, permission from the US government, which had supported him in the war against Iran. He asked the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, what Washington’s response to an invasion would be. She assured him of the US government’s continued support. After the invasion, James Baker, then US Secretary of State, tried to deny that she was acting on his instructions. But she had kept the cable he sent her, and made it public. (MG, 10/23)
Famous photographer stays Red
…94-year-old Henri Cartier-Bresson, the world’s most famous photographer….still regards communism as "the best idea."
"Above all, my parents were ashamed of money. It was suspect, immoral and dangerous." As a child, Cartier-Bresson pinned…in his bedroom the headline of an article he had cut out of L’Echo de Paris: "Where does the money come from?…Cartier-Bresson said, "it’s a question that still bothers me."(MG. 10/16)
‘No Child Left Behind’ just another political lie
Washington, Oct. 14 — Less than a year after passage of No Child Left Behind, the sweeping overhaul that promised a new era of accountability in public education, federal, state and local officials are taking steps…to weaken crucial elements of the law.
The law demands that schools put a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom by 2006….
States and school districts have begun maneuvering to soften the law’s effect, while the federal government has proposed regulations that would deem even teachers in training "highly qualified." (NYT, 10/15)
Iraqi chemicals home-grown?
We ought to know exactly how many chemical weapons are in Iraq. After all, they were made in the USA and we should have copies of the receipts. (Mark Russell, Tribune Media Service)
Majority will not rule if US runs Iraq
Listen to the American hawks ….After overthrowing Saddam Hussein we’re going to turn Iraq into a flourishing democracy.
But I’m afraid it’s a pipe dream, a marketing ploy to sell the war….
"There will not be a democracy in Iraq, not a real democracy," said Mohammed Al-Jassem, editor of the newspaper Al-Watan in Kuwait. "That would mean allowing a Shiite state. America and the gulf countries cannot afford that."
….Kuwait rulers seem to think, based on assurances from U.S. officials, that Shiite domination is potentially so destabilizing that democracy is not even an option for Iraq….The prattle about creating a democratic model on the Tigris is just a shrewd White House marketing attempt to bait and switch. (NYT), 10/18)
