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Editorial: Bo$$es$ ‘ Culture Breeds Vile Sexist Acts

Cops Are the Worst Racist and Sexist Scum

Wars for Oil, Diamonds: That Is Imperialism!

LA Cops Provoke Youth

Factory Workers Must Become Mass Leaders for Communism

Scabs Must Be Stopped

‘We Need, One, Two, Three, Many Carmens’

Stomp Racist Anti-Immigrant VCT!

Make MUNI Contract Fight School For Communism

Workers Vs. Bosses: The Way It Should Be

Black and White Unite Against Racism

‘There Are No Good Bosses’

Using Philosophy To Understand the World

European, Russian and Chinese Rulers Challenge U.S. ‘Superpower’ Role

Racism Murders Immigrants Worldwide

LETTERS

CHALLENGE Is Key

Nationalism Divides Workers

Reform and Revolution

Workers Organize Against Super-Exploiters

Hostile Take Over of LA Articles Was Mechanical

• California Editor’s Comment

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Editorial

Bo$$es$ ‘ Culture Breeds Vile Sexist Acts

On June 11, over 50 women were sexually attacked in New York City’s Central Park. Throngs of young men sprayed them with water and pushed, groped and molested them for almost an hour. All this was captured on videotape. The cops did absolutely nothing to stop these sexist assaults.

Then the media and politicians, from Mayor Giuliani to Al Sharpton created a racist lynch mob atmosphere. The TV and newspapers have continuously displayed the faces of suspected attackers who are primarily black and Latin. What these young men did is inexcusable, but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Sexism, like racism, is part and parcel of the capitalist system.

Why did these men act in such a vicious way towards these women? On a daily basis, the working class is fed hourly dosages of sexist culture. The hypocritical, liberal media that calls for the arrest of these youth are the same ones that treat women as sexual objects and commodities on television and in the press, in billboard ads and in movies.

The bosses net billions from this sexploitation, which degrades, divides and therefore weakens the ENTIRE working class. It enables them to treat women as "inferior" to men and then pay women a lot less than men for the same work, netting them super-profits.

Jim O’Dwyer, a NY DAILY NEWS columnist, wrote that the actions of these men aren’t much different from those of mostly white youths who participate in Spring Break or New Orleans Mardi Gras events where women are openly encouraged to display and expose themselves like cattle. MTV has made millions promoting these drunken orgies and videos that display half-naked women (Currently one of the biggest hits is "THONG Song" by Sisco!).

Last year, scores of women were attacked and raped at the Woodstock Music Festival with the cops involved. In fact, a few years ago, some of these same, mostly white NYC cops went on a similar sexist rampage. Similarly there was the Tailhook Convention where an elite group of white Navy fighter pilots did exactly the same thing. None of these attacks received anywhere near the kind of exposure as Central Park.

Given all this, one can see how the bosses are using last week’s attacks in a blatantly racist way. In the Tailhook incident, no one ever suggested the pilots’ activities reflected on their "race." No one called them animals. The papers even debated whether or not this was a case of sexual harassment or just a party with a playful bunch of fellows that "got a little out of hand." The idea of it being a criminal attack on women was not even part of the discussion. Nobody was turned into the cops, locked up, had to post bail or ever went to jail.

The sexual assault that happened in Central Park is wrong. PLP has always opposed and fought against such boss-inspired violence. Our outlook is to struggle to win youth to fight sexism and racism. This we do in the process of building the working-class movement and political struggle.

It is impossible to separate what those young men did from the sexist culture of the profit system. The sexist and racist acts committed by these weakened and corrupted youth and their rotten ideas are an extension of the politics promoted by capitalism. It doesn’t excuse them. But primarily the ideas that promoted them to do it and their source must be indicted and eventually ovethrown. It isn’t because of some inherent "maleness." Hundreds of thousands of men who were at the parade that day had nothing to do with the attacks and many helped the victims.

Vile sexist acts under capitalism are a political question. If one takes high school students to a May Day march that fights racism and sexism and demands that workers receive their share of society’s wealth and you might get fired or thrown in jail. But Spring Break and sexism get corporate sponsorship and hours of TV coverage that kids can watch any time and become increasingly impelled to participate. The capitalists need to divert young people from asking too many questions or fighting to change society or building communist relations that will strengthen the working-class movement. Those who perpetrate and profit from this kind of society are the biggest criminals.

This summer PLP youth will hold summer projects in NYC, LA and Chicago, training them to become communist organizers. Young men and women, black, Latin, Asian and white, will join together to agitate, organize and socialize. CHALLENGE will be our ideological weapon. We will be fighting the coming fascist neo-Nazis rally in Morristown, NJ, and the anti-immigrant fascist Voices of Citizens Together rally in LA on the July 4th weekend. We will also be organizing against police terror. Through this, we will train youth to fight for a communist society, where men and women workers and youth will share according to need what they produce.

Cops Are the Worst Racist and Sexist Scum

There have been a lot of complaints about cops ignoring many young women who asked them to do something about the sexist attacks in Central Park on July 11. Some say that cops "have their hands tied," that after the rash of mass protests against police brutality in New York City, cops are being told to "hold back." Some in the media, and even some honest workers, are now saying cops need to be given free reign to stop the "wilding" in Central Park from occurring again.

To ask cops to protect victims of sexist violence is like using Clinton as a counselor at girl scout camp. Even female cops complain constantly about sexual abuses from male cops. Cases of domestic violence in a family where a cop is the father exceed those in civilian society.

The cops are part and parcel of the bosses’ state apparatus, used to enforce the profit system for the bosses. It’s an illusion to ask these very enforcers of capitalism to protect workers from the system’s worst abuses.

Wars for Oil, Diamonds: That Is Imperialism!

Last week, the World Bank reported what CHALLENGE readers already know, that the real cause of many of the wars in Africa is the fight to control the very lucrative diamond mines. In Sierra Leone and in the Eastern Congo the fight for diamonds is behind the civil wars. But naturally the World Bank does not report that the competition for this wealth reflects the highest stage of capitalism, imperialism.

In Angola, not only diamonds but, more important, oil is the big prize. During the Cold War, after Portuguese colonialism was ousted from Angola in 1975, the pro-Soviet group MPLA took power. But a right-wing guerrilla group, UNITA, financed by the CIA and South Africa’s Apartheid regime continued a bloody civil war, costing over a million casualties.

The UNITA group controlled the diamond mines while the MPLA government, aided by Cuban troops, protected Gulf Oil’s holdings in Cabinda province. When the Cold War ended, as well as the Apartheid regime, the MPLA became "born-again free market capitalists," now supported by the U.S., France and South Africa. UNITA found itself alone, but diamonds kept it afloat, selling to French and Ukrainian diamond traders.

Angola is not the only country where "oil (and diamonds) are a curse," as many are now saying. According to the WALL STREET JOURNAL (6/19), proven oil reserves in Sub-Sahara Africa (everything south of the Sahara desert) jumped 50% between 1978 and 1998, to 32.9 billion barrels. Total African oil reserves jumped 30% during the same period. This oil trade has netted huge profits for local bosses, politicians and the imperialist oil companies. For example, former Nigerian dictator Abacha stole some $2 billion while in power. Meanwhile, the new "democratic" government of Nigeria raised fuel prices, sparking a general strike. Many bosses in Nigeria make big bucks supplying the Nigerian-controlled military force occupying Sierra Leone.

But while the World Bank "denounces" wars for diamonds and oil, that didn’t stop it from granting a $193 million loan to the capo di tuti capo of the oil business, Exxon-Mobil. This loan, backed by the Clinton administration, is to help finance a pipeline through Chad and Cameroon. The loan is to supposedly help the poor people of those two countries. Chad is so poor that, according to the WSJ, the World Bank’s Washington headquarters uses as much electricity as Chad’s seven million people!

The bank knows that the loan is a roll of the dice, but still Exxon-Mobil wants its pipeline (to be the one to "help the poor"?). Otherwise ElfAquitaine (the French oil mogul), or even worse, BP Amoco, Exxon’s current big competitor, might build it. Some might call that imperialism.

LA Cops Provoke Youth

LOS ANGELES, CA., June 19 —Hundreds of youth danced around a burning police patrol car. "Don’t you love LA?" asked a reporter. "Yes, I love it, but I hate the police," came the reply.

Thousands of youth celebrated the Lakers’ victory over the Indiana Pacers in the basketball championship and took advantage of the moment to show their hatred of the LAPD.

The police provoked the incident when motorcycle cops tried to force thousands of fans to walk jammed together on narrow sidewalks. People responded by throwing bottles, sticks, and rocks, dishing out minor injuries to 40 cops. The police responded with rubber bullets and nightsticks. The crowd’s anger grew. That’s when two police cars and two TV camera vans were burned and destroyed. People threw rocks at the limousines and even at Shaquille O’Neal’s luxurious car. Shaq donated money to buy the cops two new patrol cars.

The bosses and LA politicians were worried that the rebellion would escalate, so they tried to avoid an even more violent confrontation. The Fire Chief said, "I have orders from the police that only in case a human life is in danger should we enter the action." Two months before the Democratic National Convention, where appealing to Latinos is on the agenda, the bosses don’t want to show that LA is a battleground, especially between Latinos and the cops.

The bosses want to put military weapons in the hands of these same youth, who’ve been exploited and oppressed by the racist police. Add revolutionary ideas to this already dangerous mixture and it could explode in the rulers’ faces. CHALLENGE must become the spark for this anti-racist, anti-capitalist mixture. Only a mass PLP can turn these spontaneous fightbacks into a actions with deeper political meaning.

Factory Workers Must Become Mass Leaders for Communism

NEW JERSEY—Three dozen PLP members and friends participated in a cadre school here, discussing how to improve our political work in factories and mass organizations, particular given the growing fascist-like attacks workers suffer. Some workers complained of the bosses’ constant cheating on their vacation pay and taking money from their checks for medical insurance without ever getting any benefits. These workers also denounced the union, which only takes their dues and does absolutely nothing to fight for the membership.

One worker said they’re not being fooled by the union leaders, that workers at his factory have seen with their own eyes how these hacks are in cahoots with the bosses. He added that even though he just met PLP. he wants to dedicate his life to it because the Party has shown him in a short time it is fighting for the best interests of workers and against the bloodsucking bosses.

Another worker from the same shop reported he has received many calls from other shops where workers are suffering the same problems with their bosses and union leaders. He declared that a united fight-back of the 3,000 workers in their northern N.J. shops would show the way to thousands of other workers in the area to confront their tormentors.

Still another worker from that same shop explained how the bosses replace documented workers with undocumented immigrants, paying the latter still less than the already low wages paid to the "legal" immigrants. He also said that the same company owns the buses bringing workers from Upper Manhattan to the New Jersey shop, charging them $5 a day for transportation. The shop lays off workers every two or three months, usually cheating them of a week’s pay which they must give to the contractors used by the bosses to get hired and rehired.

The school made an ambitious plan to develop hundreds of workers, who in turn could win thousands more from all over the NY-NJ metropolitan area. We will fight every boss’s attack, on and off the job. This way our Party can win masses of workers to become communist organizers, turning their struggles into what we call schools for communism: learning how to fight the capitalist class as a united working class with communist politics as our guide.

In the process we will expose the union leaders’ role as bosses’ agents inside our ranks. We will show that without workers bosses cannot produce anything, and that the bosses’ "democracy" is just a dictatorship of the capitalists over workers. Building a mass PLP of workers will enable us to wage a real fight for workers’ power, a society without bosses and where workers produce for their needs—communism.

All rose at the end with fists high to sing the Internationale, the working-class anthem.

Scabs Must Be Stopped

GARY, IN., June 21- The strike by 650 workers against Methodist Hospital is entering a critical stage. SEIU leaders are putting on the best show the bosses will allow. The overwhelming support of workers in the area has not been tapped. Instead of calling out thousands of workers to shut down the hospital, various union leaders are called on to pledge their support and deliver a few checks. When one worker was asked about the threat of a court injunction he said, "We ain’t done nothing yet."

The hospital is open and garbage and medical waste are being picked up. Strike rallies take place at visitor entrances while nurses, supervisors, and scabs are allowed to cross the lines. A few strikers have reportedly returned to work.

Morale is generally high, but workers are starting to feel the heat. At a rally at the Southlake campus last Thursday, a black worker said that after 17 years he makes $10.35 an hour. A white woman standing next to him said after 20 years she’s making $9.50. These two spoke for many when they said, "We have nothing to lose."

PLP is organizing strike support among postal, steel, and Cook County Hospital workers. But strikers need to take leadership away from the sellouts. This is the best way to learn how to fight for political power. The hospital must be shut tight and the patients moved. Let someone else collect the insurance money. The $1,000/week strikebreakers must be sent packing. Roving groups of strikers going to the mills and Cook County Hospital could draw on thousands of workers to strengthen the picket lines. The enthusiastic response of the strikers to CHALLENGE and PLP is a good sign for the future of the revolutionary communist movement.

‘We Need, One, Two, Three, Many Carmens’

San Salvador — Carmen works in a maquiladora called AMITEX. For five years she has put up with enormous exploitation from her bosses. She was a member of the Federation of National Unions of Salvadorian Workers (FENASTRAS) and attended meetings with other workers from the factory. She was a very active union member, helping other workers and leading strikes. She has seen the bosses’ insatiable greed and always wanted to fight for the interests of the working class.

The bosses decided to give the workers a "holiday gift." It was a watch with a message saying, "Now you have no excuse to oversleep." One angry worker responded, "These sons of dogs think we are dumb and don’t know how they exploit us."

Carmen began to see more closely that the union was selling out the workers. It became so apparent that she could not continue this game and decided to leave the union.

Carmen was greatly criticized because she did not take part in workers’ struggles. The sellout union leaders try to make her life in the factory impossible by controlling when she can go to the bathroom and when she can arrive at work. In this factory, they charge you 60 cents for every minute you are late. If you are late twice they send you home without pay and you lose your seventh day pay.

The union leaders see Carmen as an enemy because she won’t sell out. They have tried to drive her crazy so she’ll quit and not expose their dirty work. We have struggled with her for years not to waste her energy with the garbage union leaders throw at her. Instead she should join PLP and organize factory workers for communist revolution. For now she is a CHALLENGE reader.

There are millions of Carmens with similar stories. They need PLP, and we need them to direct the anger of workers into revolutionary struggle against capitalism. This is how we will inspire workers around the world to fight for communism and win the life we desire, without bosses and profits.

Stomp Racist Anti-Immigrant VCT!

LOS ANGELES, June 19 — On his weekly radio program, Glen Spencer, head of VCT (Voice of Citizens Together) spews racist filth against immigrants to divide the working class. On a recent show he attacked PLP for stopping their rally several years ago. He also attacked us for making calls at the amnesty rally here to smash all borders.

VCT is planning a rally on July Fourth at the Federal Building in Westwood. They brag that featured speakers include Roger Barnett, the Arizona rancher who has shot immigrant workers trying to cross the border. These workers have been forced to areas like Barnett’s ranch because Clinton’s "Operation Gatekeeper" has nearly doubled the number of border patrol agents at major border crossings like San Ysidro (San Diego) and El Paso.

Several immigrants’ rights groups plan to bring members to the rally to oppose VCT. PLP is encouraging workers and students to come to the Federal Building in Westwood at 9:30 am (the racist rally is scheduled for 10 A.M.). We’re calling on our friends and co-workers to help stop the racists, and to show that Barnett, Spencer, Clinton and Gore are all racist killers. Capitalism produces big and small racists to keep the profit system in power. The unity and militancy we need to stop VCT will help us organize the long-term fight to end racism and capitalist-created borders with communist revolution.

Make MUNI Contract Fight School For Communism

SAN FRANCISCO, June 21 — MUNI contract negotiations have stalled. "The biggest obstacle we have is motivating the workforce," said MUNI boss Michael Burns (SF CHRONICLE, 6/13).

They were motivated all right last Monday night when Burns and his sidekicks showed up at MUNI’s Metro (trains) Green Division. Workers gave them hell. They’re furious over 16 drivers being removed from the second car of two-car trains come September. Concern for safety and human life is being ignored to serve the needs of the Downtown Corridor.

Last week a teenager fell between two MUNI trains. Only the presence of the driver in the second car applying the ER brake saved this youth from certain death. Burns characterized one driver’s concern for the life of this teenager as "ridiculous!" Drivers left the meeting clearly understanding Burns would ignore their concerns. What’s worse, at the MTA (transit authority) meeting the next day, the union leadership ignored the issue. Their silence was deafening.

Many drivers ask, "Why can't we negotiate until we get what we want." Others have proposals for action. "I think we should strike!" "How about stopping the busses for an hour during rush hour?" Resolutions passed at union meetings declared, "We have nothing to give up," and some things are "non-negotiable."

Many drivers are sick of giving up something to get something. They want to fight and reject wage progression. They hope the PLP member on the union bargaining team will keep things honest. We appreciate their confidence, but we must arm the workers politically to activate many more.

Pro-boss think-tanks like SPUR and the Committee On Jobs (the 36 biggest CEO's in town), are using the MTA to press their demands for on-time, rush hour service, "efficient and cost-conscious work rules," control of absenteeism and more service to commercial areas. This is happening because big business faces global competition from capitalists in Europe and Asia. To keep the economy "booming," they must reverse any modest gains won in earlier battles.

Through the contract fight, PLP wants to help workers understand the political and economic world we live in. Reading and distributing CHALLENGE is central to this process. As long as the bosses hold power, they will resolve their problems on workers’ backs. As fights against the bosses intensify, millions can be won to understand this system will never work for us. It must be destroyed. Society must be reorganized so that we replace working for an individual wage with a system where we produce for the needs of our fellow workers—communism.

Workers Vs. Bosses: The Way It Should Be

Workers and bosses have irreconcilable differences. Yet the AFL-CIO accepts capitalism and the exploitation of workers as the necessary motor of society. Workers are forced to sell our labor power, and owners profit from paying us a fraction of the value we produce. In contract negotiations workers try to take back part of the value the bosses steal from us (Marx called this "surplus value").

When communists led the early Transport Workers Union (TWU), workers rejected the idea we must suffer so the rich can profit. They knew that the rich own the government and dictate laws to keep themselves in control. If you followed the bosses’ laws, you would never win anything.

In 1937, communist-led workers in NYC seized and occupied the Kent Ave. power plant, the source of all power for Brooklyn trolleys, to protest the firing of three TWU organizers. Communists from other jobs mobilized hundreds of workers to surround the plant and defend it from the police. After three days, the bosses rehired the fired workers and recognized the union.

In 1966, 33,000 NYC transit workers struck in defiance of the law outlawing strikes by city workers. The union demanded amnesty for all strikers and refused to negotiate until the City agreed not to fire anyone. This boldness was possible because masses of black and white workers united to break the laws to fight for their demands.

But with all these apparent victories, the bosses still hold state power. They still have the power to erode whatever we have gained. And so they have, with two-tier pensions, part-time labor, wage progression, use of slave-labor Workfare programs, layoffs and more.

Black and White Unite Against Racism

On Sunday May 28, I received an urgent call from a friend, asking me to meet him at the Beverly Woods Condominiums. A majority of the condominium owners are black.

Across the entrance someone had printed, "Ghetto Ass Woods." Although no one saw who did it, a neighborhood resident saw three cars of white youths speeding through the alley the night before.

My friend introduced me to some of the residents as a member of Unity in Diversity (UD), a local anti-racist group. They were angry over the graffiti and a tire-slashing incident in the parking lot two weeks earlier. Some expressed fear for themselves and their children. This is not what they anticipated when they moved here.

Beverly and Morgan Park make up one of the few racially mixed areas of heavily segregated Chicago. Along with mainly white Mt. Greenwood, they make up the 19th Ward. This area is economically stable, with low unemployment and a low high school dropout rate. It gives the appearance of an integrated community, but racial tensions are increasing. Groups like the skinheads operate freely while liberal Democratic Party politicians try to protect property values by covering up the problem. Many city workers and cops live here, and the Democratic Party machine doles out a generous share of city services. Yet it has one of the highest rates of reported hate crimes in the city.

UD was organized here in l996, following a similar incident of racist graffiti. I joined two years ago and currently chair the group. With only a dozen or so active members, we have responded to other racist attacks by supporting victimized families, canvassing their neighbors and publicly raising the issue in community meetings. As a result our monthly meetings have attracted many new people and are much more integrated.

The police and State’s Attorney appear to be investigating these crimes, but they make very few arrests and resist designating them as hate crimes. Many white cops live in Mt. Greenwood, specifically because there are hardly any black residents.

While it may appear that people are passive about fighting racism, they enthusiastically respond to anti-racist leadership. We sponsored an integrated contingent of 40 adults and 20 children in the local Memorial Day parade. We prepared a flyer describing the racist graffiti incident, and three members canvassed the surrounding neighborhood. One resident volunteered to distribute the flyer to all the others, and an anti-racist white teenager told us that neighborhood kids had slashed the tires. "I stay as far away from them as I can," he said. Neighbors were encouraged to raise this issue at an upcoming community-policing meeting, and to attend the next UD monthly meeting.

My Party club discussed a plan to help me build the PLP. It includes introducing more of my friends in UD to CHALLENGE and developing a distribution route. It also includes starting a readers’ group from among the CHALLENGE regulars.

When workers call on us for help, we should be prepared to make the most of these opportunities to build PLP. It may appear that organizing the community to pressure police and politicians to prosecute racists can solve these problems. In reality it is their job to protect the racists and maintain racist divisions, making it easier for them to control and exploit us. We can only be free of racism by eliminating the capitalist class with communist revolution.

UD Red

‘There Are No Good Bosses’

LOS ANGELES, June 18 — The Democratic National Convention of 2000, or D2K as it’s been tagged, is coming here this summer and the struggle has started.

Recently PLP members attended a UCLA teach-in on the convention. After a speech about the farmworkers movement under Chavez, a PLP member declared that capitalism can't be reformed, that we need a society based on production for need, not for profit—communism. This contradicts the slogan of Cesar Chavez, late pacifist leader of the farm workers, "Si se puede," meaning, "Yes, we can" (reform capitalism).

By attacking militant farm workers, pushing pacifism and excluding "illegals" from the union, Chavez showed he was on the bosses’ side. That's why liberal politicians here are calling for a state holiday in his honor. The newly-named Cesar Chavez Ave. runs through East LA, the same neighborhood where LA County Sheriffs murdered Ricardo Close a year ago and Richard Garcia three weeks ago, both in cold blood.

The next speaker at the teach-in described the organization Direct Action Network (DAN), saying it was "non hierarchical" and "non authoritarian" and "has no leaders."(!) A movement with no leaders is like a car without a steering wheel, a family without a parent, a classroom without a teacher. Leaders are important. Progressive Labor Party believes workers and youth must lead our movement. One of the most important tasks of a leader is helping others learn to lead.

There could be no more hierarchical system than capitalism. We want to bring revolutionary ideas to the members of DAN, about a society organized based on communist centralism.

Some are calling for a march during the convention that will start downtown and conclude at a "corporate target" like the GAP since they advance the idea that there are "good" companies and "bad" ones like the GAP. But we know that all capitalists exploit workers and support wars for profit and all pay workers as little as possible. That’s what capitalism is based on.

If we march on the GAP, we will point this out. But we think we should be seen by the workers who sweat every day to make the clothes for ALL garment companies. We should march through the downtown garment district where over 150,000 immigrant workers earn poverty wages. We should march there to support these workers and win them to fight for workers’ power. This will also show students the power of workers, that it is workers who make everything of value and should run society. It will reveal more about the nature of capitalism.

Our work in DAN and other mass organizations is crucial. Most of the membership honestly wants to fight racism and oppression and are open to PLP’s ideas. Instead of staged arrests against "corporate targets," designed to show some bosses are "better" than others and capitalism can be reformed, we must build strikes, walkouts and marches that forge working-class solidarity.

When the working class is united, the contradiction between workers and bosses will become the primary one. Instead of the rivalry between stronger and weaker bosses, the class struggle will determine which way the wind blows.

Every gain in building for revolution is a blow to the other side, and is important. As night gives way to day when the side of light is strong enough, so a communist day will dawn when the side of the working class is strong enough.

Strengthen the side of the working class!

Using Philosophy To Understand the World

Everything in the world is composed of contradictions in the dialectical sense: a pair of opposites that are in constant struggle against each other.

The main contradictions that determine how society moves and changes are:

• Working class vs. ruling class;

• Rival sections of bosses within the U.S. ruling class;

• Inter-imperialist rivalry, between the bosses of different nations fighting over control of resources, markets and labor.

These are the main contradictions. The liberals would have us believe that black vs. white, citizen vs. immigrant or undocumented, U.S. bosses and workers vs. Chinese bosses and workers and Democrat vs. Republican are the main contradictions. While there are conflicts among these groups, they are not the main ones but rather antagonisms under capitalism both created and intensified by the ruling class.

Racism and immigrant-bashing exist because, in the contradiction between workers and bosses, the bosses are dominant. The electoral struggle between different politicians to win office or determine foreign policy with China exist because of the contradiction between U.S. bosses, and also between the imperialist powers. Today, the strongest section of the ruling class—in the conflict between rival bosses—determines whose policy dominates in the U.S. and in relation to workers here and around the world.

European, Russian and Chinese Rulers Challenge U.S. ‘Superpower’ Role

In mid June Clinton tried to sell U.S. plans for a limited missile shield to Russia’s President Putin. After Clinton left, Putin flew to Germany to sell his own proposal for a Trans-European missile defense built with Russian technology and German money. At his meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Putin proclaimed, "Germany is Russia’s leading partner in Europe and the world." (Josef Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly DIE ZEIT, in a NEW YORK TIMES op-ed piece, 6/20) To which the Chancellor cooed back, "Germany is interested in developing a strategic partnership with Russia." (WASHINGTON POST, 6/16) The TIMES reported, "Germany appeared closer to Russia than the United States on the question of missile defense." (6/17)

How could this have happened in a world with "only one remaining superpower?" An examination of the world’s aerospace industry provides some clues.

Based largely on aerospace sales to India and China, Russia has come roaring back to become the second largest exporter of military hardware behind the U.S., with plans to increase exports another 20-30% this year. (REUTERS, 3/7) China is also advancing in missile and aerospace expertise. Clinton’s national security advisor Samuel R. Burger fears that if the U.S. goes ahead with its limited missile defense plan, China will quickly expand and modernize its offensive missile arsenal. (NEW YORK TIMES, 5/28)

U.S. rulers view Russia and China as long-term strategic enemies. The rivalry is particularly sharp around Caspian and Iraqi/Iranian oil reserves. Control of Mid-East oil is central to Exxon Mobil and Rockefeller’s oil empire.

U.S. rulers want to prevent an alliance between Russia and China. This was the main impetus for granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PTNR) to China. At the same time, they are tightening restrictions on exports to China even remotely related to military production.

Profits from foreign military, civilian aircraft and space sales, which helps finance the U.S. war machine, have taken a beating at the hands of the Europeans. Since 1985, the US share of global aerospace sales fell from 72 to 56 percent, mainly due to competition from Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer. (FINANCIAL TIMES, 5/22) Exports of U.S. satellites have dropped 40%. Airbus has out-sold Boeing in civilian aircraft for the last year and a half. Orders are piling up for the new Airbus Jumbo Jet, challenging Boeing’s 30-year monopoly in large aircraft and the company’s cash cow. (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/24)

On the other end of the product line, the Iranian government has offered Russia financial support for a small twinjet that would sell for half the price of the Boeing 717 (AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY, 1/10). Brazil’s aircraft manufacturer Embrear just received an infusion of French cash. (AEROSPACE DAILY. 10/27/99)

The U.S. responded to this challenge by merging manufacturers under the leadership of Rockefeller Eastern Money. Boeing was the chief beneficiary of this consolidation. They set out to set back Airbus, as well as European military aerospace manufacturing. It failed spectacularly.

The European Union responded by merging German, French, Spanish and Italian civilian and military producers into the European Aeronautics, Defense and Space Corporation (EADS). About the size of Lockheed Martin (America’s second largest aerospace company), EADS is designing and producing new missiles for the Eurofighter and a new large military transport. EADS beat out Raytheon despite heavy lobbying by Clinton. In response to the U.S. lead in air power during the Kosovo war, these same governments decided to form a purely European rapid-reaction force. (DOW JONES, 4/20)

The success of EADS and the new European Security and Defense Initiative (ESDI) changed the U.S. direction in midstream. Boeing accepted a minor part in the European missile initiative. Lockheed Martin chairman Vance Coffman pleaded with Washington to remove export restrictions on the vital technology transfers to "boost transatlantic collaboration on defense programs" (FINANCIAL TIMES, 5/5) and thereby enhance U.S. corporations’ competitive position.

In the past, the State Department supported these restrictions, to keep U.S. bosses technically superior. But the emergence of Russia and China, and the development of "rival fortresses on both sides of the Atlantic," has forced a drastic change (INTERNATIONAL DEFENSE REVIEW, 5/26).

Unable to crush the competition, the U.S. is hoping to bribe some European players. The Pentagon has led the way, hoping companies will "build the political constituencies required" to maintain the transatlantic alliance (DEFENSE DAILY INTERNATIONAL, 5/23). Britain and Australia will become the first countries granted limited exemptions from export licenses for sensitive technologies. A key goal of this new initiative is to split Britain’s BAe, the company with the most extensive ties to Boeing, from the continent. Yet, even here, the response has been less than wholehearted.

Europe is plotting a more independent course as the strategic rivalry between the U.S. and Russia (and possibly China) develops. Europe’s own economic interests often put it and the U.S. on opposite sides of the imperialist battle.

Workers have no interest in taking sides in this bosses’ battle. The sharpening imperialist rivalry means both economic and political attacks on our class. The 20^th Century showed that the bosses need to be top dogs and eliminate or control the competition, Their needs for maximum profits force them to do this. And just like mobsters need to eliminate the enemy before it whacks them, capitalists need to bury or control their competition. This is what makes imperialist wars inevitable. Ultimately the bosses will use their weapons, go to war and kill workers to secure their profits. Workers must organize themselves NOW to fight their way out of this death spiral of imperialism. The long, hard struggle to build a mass communist PLP is the only way out of this hellhole.

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FLASH — As we go to press, Boeing has announced it’s negotiating sale of the St. Louis fabrication division involving 1,700 workers. The company will be studying options to sell its bigger fabrication divisions in Auburn and Spokane in Washington State. Boeing is following a Pentagon task force recommendation to maintain the "health and competitiveness of the U.S. defense industry." (AEROSPACE DAILY, 2/3) In addition the company allowed Auburn workers time off with pay to attend on-site union meetings to discuss this issue.

Auburn workers have already resisted this company-government-union gang-up, turning the union meetings into sharp confrontations. Many have argued that Boeing is using the threat of the sale to break all the work rules, making the Auburn division an even more inviting target for sale. The full story of our fight-back in the union meetings and on the shop floor, confronting business agents and bosses, will appear in the next issue.

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Racism Murders Immigrants Worldwide

LA PLP is planning to protest against the racist anti-immigrant VCT (Voices of Citizens Together) on July 4. Racism against immigrants is growing internationally. On June 19, 58 Chinese workers being smuggled into Britain died of suffocation in a container attached to a truck. The day before a military patrol murdered six Haitian immigrants and a Dominican driver returning from Haiti to their construction and domestic service jobs in Gurabo, Dominican Republic. The super-exploitation and smuggling of undocumented immigrants is a billion-dollar business worldwide. In Europe, it nets more profit than drug trading and other illicit activities. Gangs of Russian and Albanian smugglers work in cahoots with custom officials and bosses who super-exploit these workers.

LETTERS

CHALLENGE Is Key

No sooner did "Another Veteran Comrade" (AVC) write CHALLENGE, June 21) that he was glad to see the editorial calling for doubling the paper’s distribution, he then proceeded to say that, "The issue is more than distribution." AVC claims the editorial puts "a straw man up and knocks him down," and doesn’t present "the whole argument" of someone who "has a different take on the situation." I think this reflects disagreements with the need for a campaign to mobilize the Party and the workers to double the circulation of CHALLENGE.

Distribution may not be the only issue, but it is THE issue. There is no revolution without the Party, and there is no Party without CHALLENGE. Every time we let up on distribution, circulation slips. As we continue to make modest advances marching into the enemy’s camp, the distribution of CHALLENGE becomes a more urgent task.

A Party-wide campaign and commitment is required, involving dozens and hundreds of workers, soldiers and youth in creating a mass base for CHALLENGE. This is possible but far from automatic. It requires leadership. It requires political struggle and motivation. It also requires organization. In the small pamphlet, "On Organization," communist leader Josef Stalin wrote, "After the correct political line has been laid down, organization is everything, including the fate of the political line itself…"

While AVC correctly points to the need for more writers, we don’t need more people writing for a paper with a shrinking circulation. More writers and more time spent with co-workers, neighbors and friends won’t lead to much if it doesn’t lead to more CHALLENGE readers and distributors. At a recent cadre school attended by 30 workers here, six workers signed up for a CHALLENGE writer’s class. A big part of this class will be to see how the participants use, or don’t use the paper, on the job and in the class struggle. SPREADING CHALLENGE IS A CRUCIAL PART OF BUILDING A COMMUNIST BASE.

We are a small communist party in a capitalist chamber of horrors. We have many tasks. Of all these tasks, we must decide which is the most important, and mobilize the Party around it. Every club, section and city committee should map out plans for this battle and set optimistic goals.

Midwest Reader

Nationalism Divides Workers

A worker told him his nationalism was bad and dangerous. The nationalist got upset, stood up and started arguing with another worker who told him that the working class is one class and that it doesn’t matter what color the bosses are because their class interest impels them to exploit the working class. This experience showed that when Party members struggle for our communist political line it makes an impact among workers.

Some Party members have been active in this group for about a year—and before that other comrades were active—and we can see the results. Once workers understand the dangers of capitalist ideas, they are ready to confront these nationalists and racists. Although at times it seems workers don’t understand PLP’s political ideas, everything we say or do counts and sticks in their minds. It prepares them to challenge dangerous nationalists and racists as they did to this man who, objectively, is a representative of the bosses. Some workers decided to go to the amnesty rally next week and invite other workers to confront the VCT (Voices of Citizens Together) racists on July 4^th. Surely some will agree that Clinton and Gore are just as racist!

A comrade

Reform and Revolution

Recent CHALLENGES have dealt with the issue of reform versus revolution. Articles pointed out that the recent move to grant amnesty to immigrants is an attempt to sweep them into the arms of the Democratic Party and patriotism.

During the Great Depression of the 1930's, the segment of the ruling class led by Roosevelt realized it was necessary to grant concessions to the working class to pacify it and save the capitalist system. Although a weaker wing of the ruling class was adamantly opposed to the New Deal, it was clear to the main bosses that the class war of this period and the move to the left led by the Communist Party necessitated gaining the workers’ allegiance through reforms in capitalism for which workers would be asked to die in the coming World War.

Today there are many moves by the most powerful segment of the ruling class to clean up capitalism's act by putting on a new, less intimidating mask to win the hearts and minds of the masses to the system and prevent protest movements from moving toward an anti-capitalist outlook. One such reform movement is the attempt to abolish the death penalty. Even a pro-death penalty governor, Illinois’ George Ryan, placed a moratorium on executions. Capitalist papers like the NEW YORK TIMES and the CHICAGO TRIBUNE have featured front-page articles and editorials about the racist nature of capital punishment, as if that was some great discovery.

Executions are becoming an embarrassment to U.S. bosses. Other industrialized nations without it use this issue as a weapon in their competition with U.S. capitalism. For the U.S. to improve its "humanitarian" image, it must portray itself as willing to listen to numerous protest movements fighting against things like the death penalty and anti-immigrant policies. Its goal, as CHALLENGE has shown, is to channel all protest and the working-class movement into the arms of the Democratic Party and into a patriotic mindset.

So it is necessary to work in reform movements, but primarily to rip that mask from capitalism and show its true face: imperialist war, racism, sexism, exploitation, filthy rich parasites, alienation, prison labor, sweatshops, etc. Their magicians are at work here and hope to create illusions for the masses. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Those attempting to protest these issues can become easy targets for the magician if they lack a communist outlook. Many do, and fall for the bosses’ anti-communist China bashing campaign, which blasts its cheap labor capitalism while using prison slave labor right here in the USA. Liberalism is the puppet master here, and the strings are attached to people who claim to be anti-capitalist.

The International Socialists have called on their members to flood George W. Bush with phone calls to stop executing people. What will be next? Phoning all capitalists and telling them to stop exploiting workers? Or phoning the military and telling them to stop meting out capital punishment to the Iraqi people?

This endless tactic plays the bosses’ game on their stage with their rules. Winning people to prevent a few "legal" executions while allowing ever-more millions to be slaughtered and led to early deaths through wars and poverty is no victory for the working class. The role of communists has nothing in common with this pointless method. We must win people away from the impossible goal of reforming capitalism and must develop tactics to build communist consciousness.

In the final analysis, the task facing communists is recognizing and exposing these capitalist-directed reforms to drag out the killer behind the mask.

Red Rocker

Workers Organize Against Super-Exploiters

A group of 25 workers from Upper Manhattan, NYC, but mainly working in New Jersey, met to plan a workers’ committee. The plan includes ESL classes to help immigrant workers learn English. We will also study political questions, like dialectical materialism, to help us fight to transform society.

We began by thanking the family who provided their apartment for the meeting. Then workers reported abuses they’ve suffered at their workplaces. Many workers, particularly immigrants, are usually surprised to find that this type of super-exploitation is so rampant in what the bosses’ propaganda describes as "this wonderful country."

Some said they are usually harassed and humiliated like animals if they cannot keep up with the assembly line speed-up. Many workers felt helpless to fight this situation and "solved" it by quitting their jobs. But once we discussed organizing to fight back against these attacks, many felt that as united workers they have the strength to do something about it.

Everyone felt satisfied with this opportunity to be heard and to be able to organize a movement to fight these capitalist oppressors.

A Worker, Always in Struggle

'Hostile Take Over of LA' Article Was Mechanical

I could be wrong, but last week’s article on the "Hostile Takeover of LA" raised as many questions as it answered. I’d like to focus on a couple. It says that one of LA’s elite used his home for the transfer of Chinese money to the Democratic Party. So did Clinton and Gore. Are they anti-Rockefeller forces?

The article also mentions Boeing’s takeover of McDonnell-Douglas. M-D was a major imperialist "defense" contractor for the U.S. ruling class. Simply being taken over doesn’t make you "anti-Rockefeller." Consolidations and mergers are part of the general period as the bosses sharpen their swords for intensifying global competition. Big fish are eating little ones in all factions of the ruling class.

The third point is dividing ruling class factions based on their outlooks towards the unions. While there is some truth in this, we should not be mechanical. The coal and steel industries are now less than 50% unionized. The auto industry is less than two-thirds unionized. These are some of the most significant drops in union membership, and it’s not the Hunt brothers who are responsible. In fact, union membership is at an all-time low nationally.

Even in NYC, the seat of Eastern Money, union membership has been under attack. The garment industry has shrunk to less than 40,000 workers while the financial district has exploded to over 400,000, all of it non-union. Workfare and slave-labor sweatshops are more abundant here than anywhere. All ruling class factions seem to agree, to one extent or another, on the advantages of dealing with unorganized workers.

I agree 100 percent that the main wing of the ruling class is consolidating its grip and disciplining its enemies in LA and everywhere. The article makes some convincing points. But that is not the same as saying that forces hostile to the main wing of the ruling class control the second biggest city in the U.S. We should guard against being mechanical.

A Reader

CALIFORNIA EDITOR’S COMMENT

It’s true we should guard against being mechanical. The domestic "Oil Patch" bosses and Rockefeller are not the only two divisions within the U.S. ruling class. BP Amoco-Arco has both united with and divided from the Rockefeller Exxon forces. They agreed to bomb Yugoslavia to defend oil pipelines. But BP and the LA TIMES wanted ground troops while Exxon and the NEW YORK TIMES didn’t. These oil barons also differ on policy in Colombia and the Middle East.

It’s also true that McDonnell Douglas (MD), along with other "defense" manufacturers which World War II generated in southern California are not mere upstarts. On the other hand, they didn’t have the same policy goals as Rockefeller—especially in the Middle East and China. MD had developed the best plans for the joint strike fighter. Boeing tried to take over MD before Clinton’s election. It failed. After Clinton took office, the defense department rejected MD’s joint strike fighter plans. Then Boeing was able to take over a weakened MD. The NEW YORK TIMES cited MD’s willingness to transfer technology to the Chinese as part of the reason for this take-over. Big fish are eating smaller fish, but the U.S. defense department policy helped guarantee MD becoming a smaller fish. When MD tried to borrow money from Taiwan to prevent the Boeing take-over, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, head of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, said it would weaken Boeing. MD never saw that money.

As part of the concentration and centralization of capital, the Rockefeller forces are guaranteeing the fight for their empire. In the past, the LA TIMES was the only newspaper besides the NY TIMES and WASHINGTON POST to have its own foreign bureau, giving it a certain measure of independence. It often printed stories differing with Eastern Establishment papers. But now the LA TIMES is being taken over by the CHICAGO TRIBUNE.

The main wing of the ruling class is urgently concerned with controlling workers in the heavy war industries—aerospace, auto, steel and coal. That’s why they need the unions in these industries, even though outsourcing may mean a drop in membership. Jay Rockefeller harps on the need for unions in the war industries.

These bosses need the AFL-CIO to win workers to active loyalty to their rotten system. That’s why the janitors’ strike received such favorable nightly publicity on LA TV. The AFL-CIO is sponsoring big rallies for amnesty and union contracts in LA, although it hasn’t made a move to organize LA’s 150,000 garment workers.

The bosses know this is a two-edged sword. They do need to pay lower wages. But if they can allow some unions to organize and still pay low wages, fine. This would give the AFL-CIO a little standing, the better to be able to control the workers and maintain loyalty to U.S. capitalism. Our Party can grow in fights for unions, if we put forward our ideas. But we should recognize that the unions play a key political role for the Rockefeller rulers.

The letter makes a good point that both Eli Broad and Clinton/Gore took money from the Chinese government. Clinton and Gore caught hell in the Rockefeller-controlled press for dealing with Chinese fund-raisers.

Southern California has its think-tanks and universities supporting the interests of some of the LA rulers, including Occidental Petroleum. Ken Starr was offered a post at LA’s Pepperdine University as a reward for his attack on Clinton. We need to know much more about the LA think-tanks to expose them to CHALLENGE readers. We’re working on it.

Editorial: Doubling CHALLENGE Distribution Is Trouble for Bosses

Editorial 2: Fight to Give Gore the Welcome He Deserves

Immigrant Workers Slam Bosses and Union Sellouts

The Tale of Two Racist Chicago Boards

AFL-CIO Dangles Amnesty To Get Immigrant Workers To Pull Gore’s Wagon

AFL-CIO Flunkeys Want to Win Workers to Gore/War

Democrats: No Friends of Workers

Rulers’Dogfight Over LAPD Won’t Help Workers

40,000 Teachers Protest: Helluva of a Lesson Plan

Anti-Racist Strike of Hospital Workers

Bosses’ Racism in the South Pacific =Troubles in ‘Paradise’ Islands

Horn of Africa Blows Up

LETTERS

Israeli Army’s "Vietnam Syndrome"

What Is Behind NY Times' Sudden Discovery of Racism Among Cuban Exiles in Miami

Protestors Go AFTA Expansion of NAFTA

Better Off with Unions or Without?

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Editorial:

Doubling CHALLENGE Distribution Is Trouble for Bosses

Recently, a very committed and active veteran member of PLP said about a union struggle, "CHALLENGE is important. But I’m not sure that increasing the readership of CHALLENGE is the most important." We would like to respond.

The struggle over the importance of our communist press is not new to our Party or our movement. It dates back at least to 1901 when Lenin and his comrades were organizing the Bolshevik Party. Then as now, there were many who opposed the building of a Party like ours, which aims to lead the seizure of power from the bosses. Then as now, there was no Soviet Union or Red China to draw strength from, and the forces of communist revolution were small. Lenin and his comrades understood that building a militant, centralized Party that spoke with one voice was the key to leading the working class to power. The Party newspaper is that one voice.

In the Marxist classic "What Is To Be Done?" the Party newspaper was described as "the scaffolding erected around a building in construction; it marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, permitting them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organized labor." In other words, CHALLENGE is a mass organizer through which millions of workers can be trained politically to participate in the building of a communist world.

The ruling class and its agents are building mass movements "against" globalization and police brutality. Over the past few years, our Party has marched modestly into the enemy’s camp, to challenge them for leadership of the working class inside their mass organizations. For instance, in NYC our Party gave leadership to many workers and students against the racist acquittal of the four cops who murdered Amadou Diallo. This included small job actions and mass student walkouts.

We participated in the AFL-CIO anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle and Washington, DC. While the union leaders shouted, "Stand Up for Steel," and hypocritically attacked capitalist China’s "human rights violations," we exposed prison and slave labor in the U.S. and put forward communism to a very receptive audience.

In the past year, transit workers, postal workers and health care workers have elected veteran PLP members to their union executive boards in NYC, Detroit and San Francisco. There are many other examples. This is a very dicey situation. On the one hand, workers feel increasingly threatened by the bosses’ economic boom and are ready to try communist leadership. On the other hand, they’re counting on us to be militant, honest fighters for "better contracts."

Therefore, the more we get involved in the mass movement, the greater the need to expand CHALLENGE distribution. The Reform River always flows to the right. The more active we are in reform struggles, the greater the pull away from revolution. Concentrating on CHALLENGE distribution is the anchor that keeps our work from drifting downstream. Winning many new readers, writers and distributors will be the engine that pushes us to the left, and allows us to sail against the capitalist tide. It is absolutely vital for our readers to know how to win that struggle between reform and revolution.

CHALLENGE helps workers understand developments in the class struggle worldwide—what’s behind the Kosovo war, the Clinton impeachment, the Giuliani withdrawal, the Gulf War, etc. Only a communist paper can give workers the ideological weapons they need to understand and therefore change the world.

Let’s make this a CHALLENGE Summer and increase the base for our paper on the job, in the schools, in the barracks and on the streets. This will require the active participation of many more workers, soldiers and youth. As Lenin said, "…there is no other way of training strong political organizations except through the medium of [the communist party] newspaper."

By next May Day, we can double the distribution of CHALLENGE. This is a pre-requisite for more mass recruitment to the Party, and larger May Day marches. The Party can’t grow without CHALLENGE growing. Readers and distributors of CHALLENGE today will be members and leaders of our Party tomorrow.

Editorial 2

Fight to Give Gore the Welcome He Deserves

LOS ANGELES, June 6— The Democratic National Convention (DNC) will be held here August 14-17. Anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) student groups, unions and immigrant rights groups are planning protests at the Convention and throughout the city.

On the convention’s opening day there will be a march for "Human Need, Not Corporate Greed." The LA teachers union is planning a march to support public education. Protest leaders say the Democratic Party should be open to all and responsive to the workers’ needs. That’s exactly the image Gore & Co. want to portray! They want workers and youth to feel the system works, that the rulers listen to us.

Some of the Clinton/Democrats’ "achievements" include putting 100,000 more racist cops on the streets to kill and jail black and Latin workers and youth; Desert Storm and the sanctions against Iraq, killing one million; bombing Yugoslavia; nearly doubling the border patrol and deporting one million immigrants; forcing women and children off welfare and into Workfare or the streets.

Students in PLP are becoming active in the groups planning these protests. Last Thursday, there was a teach-in at UCLA, led in part by students in the Direct Action Network (DAN). They said you could protest the sanctions against Iraq and still support Gore. They’re planning civil disobedience during the convention and also want to demonstrate against racist attacks on black and Latin workers.

A student in PLP questioned the tactics of sitting in the streets and letting the cops beat and arrest you. He called for demonstrations against the LAPD and prison labor, and to attack the sweatshops in the garment center, near the convention site. He described Gore and the Democrats as the party of rich capitalists, saying the system can’t be reformed to meet workers’ needs. He called for a movement to replace production for profit with production for need—communism. A professor familiar with the farm workers’ struggle also called on students to build a mass revolutionary movement.

Many angry students in DAN and other groups are open to a different point of view. A movement with no leaders, as DAN claims to be, is like a car with no steering wheel. The rulers want to win these youth to support their plan for more war and fascism under the guise of fighting for "democracy" in China and worldwide. PLP says that millions of workers and youth can learn to lead a mass revolutionary communist movement to challenge the racist dictatorship of the capitalist billionaires. As we become more involved in the planning of the protests against the DNC and get to know the students better, we’ll take the opportunity to make friends and build the long-term fight for communist revolution.

Immigrant Workers Slam Bosses and Union Sellouts

NEWARK, N.J., June 1 – A group of laid-off immigrant workers from a large industrial factory led a spirited protest here today against everything from sexual harassment of the women workers to dangerous health and safety conditions to threats and arbitrary firings.

The cry of "Este puño sí se ve, los obreros al poder" ("this fist can be seen, workers to power") rang out as the workers and a few supporters organized a picket line and distributed flyers written by themselves and the NY-NJ Factory Workers Project.

Immediately the president and treasurer of the union Local appeared, asking to speak to the "person in charge." Workers surrounded them. While the union leaders lied, saying they "knew nothing about the case" and that the workers were being "used and manipulated by those people," many more workers and students joined the picket line. "We’re the laid-off workers ‘in charge.’ But obviously you don’t know us," said one worker to the shocked president. "YOU’RE using US. You take our dues, but don’t fight. We’ve never seen you talking to us in the factory, not before, when or since we were laid off. Not until today!"

Men and women workers grabbed the bullhorn. "We’re not stupid and incapable. We are leading our fight and we welcome all support." "We are determined and united. We’ll fight to the finish whatever happens. Our fight is more for the workers who remain in the factory." "Luchar, vencer, Los obreros al poder," (Fight to win; workers to power!) chanted people joining the picket until we were 60 strong. The union president, unable to understand Spanish, slinked across the street shaking his head.

Weeks before the protest, laid-off workers met with the NY-NJ Factory Workers Project to discuss the struggle, strategy and tactics. They distributed the two leaflets the Project produced to co-workers boarding vans to the factory. The leaflets appeared throughout the plant. One worker made 150 additional copies inside. "Support the laid off workers by walking out" was on everyone’s tongue. Although the walkout didn’t happen, the boss and supervisors became alarmed.

The following day the irate union president threatened a Project organizer. "You’re going to have 200 workers walk out. You’re going to ruin the lives of over 2,000 workers! We’re not a company union," he bellowed as he read from the leaflet. "The factory isn’t a sweatshop and this globalization is of no concern."

The he called back. "This other leaflet is worse than the first. All lies. The workers could never have written a letter like this, talking about concentration camps and Nazi tactics."

"You presume a lot," responded the organizer calmly.

"I’m not saying the workers are stupid." He snapped. "You should stop and desist. Talk to me first, not some group of disgruntled workers. I’m going to have the FBI investigate you; I’m going to take you to court."

Minutes later the factory chief of personnel called. "We have a beautiful factory here. We have a clean cafeteria. The workers are always asking me for favors…"

"Excuse me," said the organizer. "I’m sure you know the union president has already called me."

"Yeah, I sent him the leaflets," he said. "So they’re upset, I knew they would be."

The workers were laid off in April for refusing to work overtime on Good Friday, a violation of the union contract. The bosses’ strategy was to get rid of documented, militant workers each holiday while replacing them with undocumented workers. Now they’re scrambling, together with the union leadership, to get a federal mediator to "resolve" the issue quickly. At the meeting with the mediator they will me met by determined, united workers who will continue to take the offensive with the five categories of demands listed above. Workers inside the factory have pledged to "take the day off" to bring vanloads to join the struggle.

PLP members are deeply involved in this movement. We met these workers through our ties with other factory workers. Because of these ties, we have been able to distribute leaflets about this fight inside other factories. We’re beginning a workers’ school with English as a second language and with political education classes. Sixty workers have already signed up. Over half are factory workers. In informal gatherings, the English school, home visits, social events, PLP meetings and workshops, there is constant interchange between workers in the Party and the workers we are asking to join about subjects like the World Trade Organization and the unions, imperialism and sweatshops, war and internationalism, communism, democracy and elections.

PLP doesn’t use or manipulate the working class. We learn from the workers. We rely on the working class to lead the class struggle, to join the Party, to learn about communism. As one laid-off woman worker said, "I’ve always been quiet, but this struggle is teaching me a lot. I won’t be quiet anymore!"

The Tale of Two Racist Chicago Boards

CHICAGO, June 7—Two recent mass militant actions in Chicago exposed the racist nature of the educational system and the rol of cops as protectors of the racist profit system.

SCHOOL BOARD

Two hundred parents, students and teachers confronted CEO Paul Vallas and Board President Gery Chico at last month’s School Board meeting. Vallas gave a half-hour talk about the Board’s fascist commitment to high stakes testing, ending social promotion, and raising reading, math, and science standards.

One parent yelled, "You have one standard for poor kids and one for rich kids." With total disdain to the workers, Vallas walked out of the auditorium. That left Chico and his supporting cast to answer why thousands of eighth graders are not graduating due to low IOWA test results (The Board insists on basing promotions solely on these test scores). All hell broke loose.

A Special Education teacher at Curtis Elementary asked the Board to do something about the "worn, outdated books my children are using." Chico’s answer? We’ll take another look at it."

This teacher is scheduled for a termination hearing June 10. PLP members Moises Bernal and Carol Caref are being fired, along with 200 other teachers who have been fired under the "School Reform" that Clinton called, "the model for the rest of the country." Over 700 mainly black and Latin students have been expelled and double that number have been suspended under their racist Zero Tolerance policies. There may be a janitor’s strike against the Board’s plan to privatize the janitorial staff to cut out family health benefits.

POLICE BOARD

Meanwhile at last month’s Police Board hearing, 80 people demanded answers about the four police shootings in the first few days of the month. Everyone who spoke was mad as hell at the cops.

One woman demanded to know why her dead son’s clothes were not returned to her. Top cop Terry Hillard told some lie and directed her to some flunky. The woman said she had already seen the flunky, who had done nothing. The place went up for grabs.

One woman had been arrested for bringing birthday cupcakes and ice cream to her daughter’s elementary school. The principal doesn’t like the outspoken mom, and told her not to bring the desserts to the classroom. When the mom defied these insane instructions, the principal had her arrested!

Others spoke about the four shootings, pointing out that all the cops who killed people last summer were either on the job, suspended or fired. None are in jail. Speakers from an anti-police brutality group were enraged over an incident where a cop was disciplined for NOT joining in on a beating of a suspect!

Throughout the hearing workers jeered, heckled, laughed and chanted. One black worker called the whole thing a racist fraud. The Party led chants and waved signs. Our presence emboldened the anti-racist forces. Speakers were cheered. Each was more damning than the last. Every cop comment was met with disbelief. The crowed jeered and booed almost everything they said.

Finally a friend of Arthur Hutchinson came to denounce the cops’ murder of this homeless man last April for holding a fork. The friend was cut off, the meeting was adjourned and people rose from their seats chanting, crying and yelling, angrier than when this fraud began. The cops had to call in reinforcements to escort the top brass out. One young Party member grabbed a sign that compared the cops to Nazis and slammed it on the desk saying, "This is what you are!"

This summer we’ll have a big opportunity to become more deeply involved in the mass movements in the schools and against racist police terror, where we can learn and grow.

AFL-CIO Dangles Amnesty To Get Immigrant Workers To Pull Gore’s Wagon

CHICAGO, IL, June 3 — Today about 600 people attended the AFL-CIO conference on Immigrant Workers’ Rights and Amnesty for Undocumented Workers. Most who attended were workers from factories, restaurants, hotels and health care workers. But the conference was completely dominated by union hacks that earn six-figure salaries, and by Democratic Party/nationalist Latin politicians.

At the main table sat AFL-CIO Executive VP Lynda Chavez-Thompson, flanked by the Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME (government workers), the heads of the Chicago Federation of Labor, the State AFL-CIO, HERE (hotel and restaurant workers) and the UFCW (meatpacking and poultry workers).

Two panels of workers "testified" to this motley crew about the racist attacks they’ve suffered at the hands of the bosses. The workers ranged from fired union organizers from Minnesota to Chicago day laborers and laundry workers. The janitors and their union leaders were noticeably absent—the conference organizers didn’t want any hint of strikes and class struggle. This phony "hearing" was aimed at winning immigrant workers to think their salvation lies in citizenship, and the way to get that is to vote Democratic in November. Most workers were not impressed.

The opportunist union hacks could not hide the contradictions of their position. They started out saying, "Whether you came here on a slave ship, to Ellis Island, or across the Rio Grande, every group has had to deal with racism, poverty and exploitation." Then they welcomed these undocumented workers "to this great country of ours"!

A local Carpenters Union official from Cincinnati said, "This country exports poverty around the world and then we wonder why people come here looking for work." Then he let the cat out of the bag. He described a program to get immigrant workers into the construction trades and said, "This is a chance for us to work with business. They need labor, and we want these new workers well represented. This program was developed by the Chamber of Commerce, is backed by General Electric and Proctor & Gamble, and is being financed by five large banks."

As the PLP flier explained, these are the same union leaders who 15 years ago attacked bosses who hired immigrants. Now due to the "booming" economy and the need for more workers, they are doing the bosses’ bidding. At the first sign of economic trouble, they will turn on these workers, just as they sacrificed hundreds of thousands of black and white industrial workers in the 1980s, granting billions in concessions, give-backs and wage-cuts. A leopard doesn’t change its spots.

PLP brought about 65 workers from school, church and community organizing. We distributed about 75 CHALLENGES, several hundred leaflets and made contact with a group of angry workers who walked out of the conference. The vast majority of the people we brought are not in PLP, so this gave them a chance to get involved with us around an issue that’s very important to them. It also gave us an opportunity to show the difference between the union hacks lining up workers for the Democrats, and PLP fighting to smash all borders and lead the working class to power.

AFL-CIO Flunkeys Want to Win Workers to Gore/War

LOS ANGELES, CA —"What do you think of amnesty?" asked Maria, a garment worker, at lunchtime. "I don’t have many illusions, but it would be good." answered Juana, organizer of many struggles in the garment shops. "I think that it will be very limited and I don’t have any confidence in the union leaders," she said.

"The bosses plan to use amnesty to build loyalty among us workers to the USA," continued Maria, "so we’ll trust the Democratic Party and also send our children to the army and to the next war."

"I don’t think there’ll be a war," answered José. "And if there is a war, I’m sending my kids to Mexico," he said, laughing.

Maria explained that during the wars in Central America in the 1980’s, many families sent their kids to the U.S. Here they met the racist terror of the cops, drugs and gangs. A ground war in the Middle East or elsewhere will be worse. We can’t hide. Maybe even the youth of Mexico and Central America will be sent to the U.S. army. She invited them to form a factory committee to participate in the campaign for amnesty and to link that fight to organizing 150,000 garment workers against exploitation. Some said they would help.

"Amnesty? But I haven’t committed any crime," said a worker from another factory. The criminals are the bosses who created the borders and who own everything. The demand for unconditional amnesty for undocumented workers has been raised for many years by many organizations, including PLP. But the AFL-CIO is spearheading the current campaign to be seen as the workers’ saviors. Actually, in the 1980’s the AFL-CIO led the fight to penalize employers who hired undocumented workers. But now in many areas of the U.S., there is a labor shortage so "legalizing" more workers is the top bosses’ plan.

The AFL-CIO’s main role is to support the plans of the Democratic Party and the bosses behind it. They’re fighting to win the loyalty of the workers to defend the direct interests of the big bosses, mainly the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class. Undocumented immigrants feel no loyalty to the U.S. bosses, or to the Democratic Party. Rockefeller & Co. want to change this. As a reward, the bosses let the unions collect millions in dues and allow them to be their junior partners in defending U.S. imperialism.

The bosses never give anything for free. In this case, they’re organizing a movement to give amnesty to some. These workers will be in the factories, fields, construction sites, restaurants, working for the pitiful minimum wage or slightly higher, and the youth will get rifles to go off to war. This plan doesn’t just apply to immigrant workers. The top US bosses are also building movements to win the sympathy of citizen workers—white, black and Latino.

We should all participate in this campaign, immigrants and citizens. Thousands will welcome the call for amnesty. But we should, on different levels, expose the AFL-CIO role and its "humanitarian aid." We plan to build factory committees, and work within the unions and community organizations to fight for amnesty, and against racism, exploitation and war. This is part of the ideological battle for the hearts and minds of the working class. PLP members and friends will participate in this struggle to fight, learn, make friends and build PLP.

The basis of this fight will be CHALLENGE. To answer the bosses’ patriotism and nationalism with workers’ internationalism, we must use CHALLENGE. To build a movement to destroy fascism and wage slavery, we need to spread CHALLENGE and the fight for communist revolution to thousands and then millions of workers. This campaign can put thousands of workers in motion.

Let the bosses bring the workers into the political arena to win them to liberal imperialism. PLP plans to win them to the long-term fight for communism!

Democrats: No Friends of Workers

The AFL-CIO is aiming to turn out an army of campaign workers for the Democrats in November. Clinton/Gore’s main contribution to immigration has been "Operation Gatekeeper." From 1996 to 1998 the fascist Border Patrol rose 42% and is growing by 1,000 annually. This has led to the deaths of more than 1,500 immigrants trying to cross the border in the desert or mountains, and one million arrests! The fascist vigilantes in Arizona who are attacking immigrants can’t hold a candle to the U.S. rulers.

Rulers’ Dogfight Over LAPD Won’t Help Workers

Los Angeles is important for the ruling class. It’s the second largest city in the U.S., with the busiest port, largest concentration of manufacturing, biggest point of immigration and the center of capitalist culture. Its movies, TV shows, music and Internet "content" are not only massive industries, but buttress capitalism on a global scale. It has growing numbers of working-class youth who can go into the army.

That’s why the U.S. ruling class is now engaged in an internal struggle over the notorious Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). It’s a fight over how to exercise state power, since the cops are the most immediate weapon of the bosses against the workers. The LAPD is and has always been racist, brutal and murderous—especially in those Divisions in black and Latino neighborhoods! But why the calls for the Justice Department to take over the LAPD right away?

Los Angeles’ importance was brought to a head in 1992, when the city’s multi-ethnic working class rebelled in one of the largest uprisings since the Civil War. Unlike LA’s 1965 Watts rebellion, this one included blacks, Latinos, whites and Asians. The 1965 rebellion prompted many social programs, such as Model Cities. The response to 1992 was much simpler. Phase I was mass arrests, the mobilization of the National Guard and three days of curfew. Phase II still goes on: major expansion of the LAPD and police attacks on minority communities. It also features sporadic "community policing" to develop a network of police collaborators throughout Los Angeles, especially in minority communities.

The fight over control and policy of the LAPD has escalated, with a slow-moving legal investigation and major press exposés of massive police abuse at the Rampart Division and others, like the equally notorious 77^th St. police station. Over 50 cops have been implicated for shooting people, planting or faking evidence, selling drugs, lying on the witness stand and giving unofficial "awards" for police shootings.

The LAPD gang "crash" units have been singled out for attack for their brutality and their gang-style tactics. So far nearly 100 convictions have been dismissed, with LA’s legal settlement bills already estimated at $200 million and still rising because similar crimes are being exposed at other LAPD stations.

Years ago, the LAPD’s gang crash units were made a national model of policing. Then Police Chief Darryl Gates led massive arrests of black and Latino youth who "violated curfew" for things like taking out the trash at night. These tactics have led especially many black residents of LA to view the police as the enemy in a war against them.

Today’s LA Mayor Riordan and Police Chief Parks have been stalling the investigation in order to save their reputations and their control over the city. But they are losing. The U.S. Justice Department, representing the Eastern ruling class, is asserting its power over the LAPD. These imperialist butchers have a new strategy. LA is too important to leave to the crude, open suppression policing of Riorden Parks.

In the past, LA cops were praised and copied for many years for their brutality (called "professionalism"). However, the Eastern Establishment needs a base of support among black and Latino workers to defend their empire and accept low wages. The LAPD’s naked fascism needs to be no less brutal but prettied up with "community policing," accompanied by a campaign to win community leaders’ support and defense of the police.

Along with black workers, Latinos led the 1992 rebellion. They number over 1.6 million in LA, soon to be the majority of the population. The ruling class needs to establish a cadre of liberal, pro-police leaders who fight for the loyalty of these workers in both labor strife and imperialist wars, and win them to believe the Democratic Party can make capitalism more livable. They need them to send their children to the U.S. army. It’s no coincidence that a new monument is being built in LA to commemorate the Latino war heroes who gave their lives in past wars so that the USA could be the number one imperialist power in the world.

This is also why many politicians supported the recent Justice for Janitors strike here. They hope that puny raises of as little as 30¢ an hour will build up a loyal Latino section of the LA working class, as well as a reliable Latino leadership group to control "their communities."

Another immediate issue facing the ruling class in Los Angeles is the August 2000 Democratic Party Convention. Many groups, including some anti-globalization forces, which opposed the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, and some unions and immigrants’ rights organizations, will hold rallies here. Their actions will be very limited because most, including the AFL-CIO, are pro-Gore. The AFL-CIO wants no repeat of the anti-WTO riots in Seattle or of the police riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. They want to ensure the demonstrations are "patriotic."

So the Justice Department wants an immediate consent decree to manage the LAPD and prevent Chief Parks from attacking the demonstrators. They know that Parks could cause a police riot and tarnish the image of the Clinton/Gore Democrats.

Communists in PLP are involved in these upcoming activities. We are encouraging protestors at the Democratic Convention to demonstrate against racist cops, prison labor and sweatshops HERE. But the police cannot be reformed to be "nice" to workers. The cops’ job is to terrorize workers, especially black and Latin workers, to work for low wages, leaving youth the "choice" of jail or the army.

We will raise before the protestors that such police terror and penal wages will end only with the end of capitalism—and that can happen only with a revolution for communism.

(More on bosses’dogfight over the LAPD in a future issue)

40,000 Teachers Protest: Helluva of a Lesson Plan

MEXICO CITY — Over 200,000 teachers from various states have mobilized with the CNTE, an opposition group inside the union, for a wage increase and for free public education.

Some 40,000 occupied the Zócalo, the government square and demonstrated against the centers of the city’s financial and political power. Although the government and the bosses’ press have tried to discredit the teachers, workers and others have backed them. So far the teachers have won some demands.

All politicians claim that education is the key to developing Mexico. They say teachers are crucial to this goal. However, they really want an elitist educational system to meet the needs of the market and train students in capitalist ideology. Meanwhile, they’ve cut the education budget.

The result is 41 million Mexicans have not finished elementary school, 54% of secondary school youth have no access to any education and 85% of all youth can’t go to college. An elementary school teacher starts at $300 a month. Teachers’ real salaries have fallen 70%. In the last few years, more than 100 teachers have been assassinated and many more have been jailed.

The Ministry of Education says there’s no more money in the budget for teachers. But there IS money to rescue banks, an amount six times the funds allocated for education this year. The $22 million used to rescue Serfin (one of the major banks) could pay for the education of 30 million students.

PLP Offers a Better Lesson Plan: Fight for Communism

"A system that defends the banks and cuts education doesn’t deserve to exist," declared a PLP flyer. Over 8,000, along with 300 CHALLENGES were distributed to the CNTE contingent by many striking teachers and friends of the Party.

The electoral parties have tried to use the teacher’s discontent to win votes. This city’s mayor, the liberal opposition party’s (PRD) Rosario Robles, publicly blamed the federal government for not solving the teachers’ crisis. Some PRD bosses have tried to curb teachers’ protests to save the local government’s image. In Chiapas, PRD teachers burned the ruling party’s (PRI) propaganda. Yet many teachers repudiate all the politicians. Although they don’t see the necessity of a communist party to organize the working class for revolution, this only means that PLP must intensify the ideological battle.

The teachers’ struggle demonstrates the power of the masses, shown when they took over the privatized tollbooths in the Mexico City/Cuernavaca area and allowed all vehicles go through for free. It also shows us the great need to double our efforts to recruit more teachers and build the Party with workers and students, to destroy capitalism and replace it with communism.

Anti-Racist Strike of Hospital Workers

GARY, IN, June 5 — "We have workers doing the same work, side-by-side, making $2.00-an-hour less than other workers doing the same job. Now they want to add more tiers. It's not fair for the younger workers and it's not fair for the older workers."

"Wait until the nurses have to scrub the floors in addition to taking care of the patients. Maybe our strike will finally help them to organize a union!"

So spoke two striking workers at Northlake Methodist Hospital. Methodist made a $3 million profit last year, and the administrators are paid ridiculously high salaries. They offered the workers $1.00 over three years, and want a three-tier wage system.

About 450 mostly black women housekeepers, nurses' assistants, dietary and maintenance workers in Service Employees International Union Local 73 have shut this hospital down, along with Southlake Methodist in Merrillville. Garbage and medical waste are piling up and patients are being transferred, demonstrating the power of the working class. The picket lines have been spirited, with 50-100 workers covering the four entrances. Workers from many unions are supporting this strike.

PLP members distributed 85 CHALLENGES to strikers and workers passing by. Some strikers gave us their names to be visited. We are bringing college and high school students to the picket lines, and mobilizing support among postal, steel and hospital workers.

This strike opens the door to working class unity in this region where 20% of all U.S. steel is produced. Morale is high but the workers will have to hang tough to keep the hospital shut. The racist Methodist bosses are using the local newspapers to attack the strike. Scabs, cops, court injunctions and professional strikebreakers are on the way.

This strike against racism can open the door to building the revolutionary movement in Northwest Indiana, especially in the steel mills. The next issue of CHALLENGE will have information on where local unions, community, youth and student groups can send donations and letters of support.

Bosses’ Racism in the South Pacific = Troubles in ‘Paradise’ Islands

"A single spark can start a prairie fire," said Mao Zedong, referring to how a single rebellion can spread. In the idyllic South Pacific Fiji islands, this single spark is turning into a reactionary racist fire. On May 19, armed anti-Indian racists who opposed the 1997 constitutional changes that supposedly gave equal political rights to all citizens for the first time, stormed the parliament. They took as hostages many members of the multi-ethnic government, including Mahendra Chaudhry, the first Prime Minister from the Indian minority. Nearly half of the 800,000 Fijians are Indian, descendants from indentured laborers brought by the British colonialists to work in the sugar fields.

On May 29, the Fijian army reacted to this crisis by seizing executive authority from the president and declaring martial law. Fijian nationalists dominate the army.

The military has made concessions to George Speight, leader of the hostage-takers, like scrapping the 1997 constitution—so much for "equal political rights"—and promising him amnesty. But Speight is now demanding that one of the Fiji tribal chiefs who supports him be appointed president with "all executive authority."

The current situation is very similar to the fascist take-over of 1987. Then Colonel Rabuka staged a CIA-backed coup against the liberal Labour government whose aim was to make Fiji "nuclear-free" and non-aligned (meaning not siding with the U.S. in the Cold War against the former Soviet Union). Rabuka launched fascist attacks against the Indian minority. Indo-Fijians were beaten and women were raped by racist street gangs who called for "throwing Indians in the oven." The Rabuka regime fiercely attacked workers in general. In 1991, miners who had been on strike for a year were threatened with 14-year jail sentences to force them to end their walkout. Rabuka had to end military rule. He ran and lost badly in the 1999 elections.

The imperialists, particularly Australia and New Zealand, are very worried that the political turmoil in the Fiji islands might spread and threaten their investments and political stability in the South Pacific. This is already happening. On June 6, a paramilitary group called the Malaitan Eagle Force captured the prime minister of the Solomon Islands, located 1.600 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia. The rebels put up roadblocks around the capital and overran key installations, including police stations. The rebels are demanding $14 million compensation for land they lost in Guadalcanal, seat of the capital of Malaita. The rebel leaders represent people who immigrated to Guadalcanal after World War II in search of jobs and land. Twenty months ago the so-called Guadalcanal Liberation Army (GLA) forced them to abandon their homes and threatened their jobs. Some 50 people have died in the fighting in the last 20 months and 20,000 have been forced to flee their homes.

These tiny islands are important sources of profits. In the mid 1990s, garment exports, which in the past had been very small, represented 40% of Fiji’s merchandising exports, employing 25% of the workforce. Tourism is also a source of huge profits for local bosses, like millionaire Ah Koy, who owns 80% of Air Fiji. He is a friend of Speight, leader of the hostage-takers.

Turmoil Reaches Australia, New Zealand

But the turmoil is not limited to these small islands. "In New Zealand...several leaders of the indigenous Maori minority have voiced support for Mr. Speight....One radical Maori leader, Kingi Taurua, said that a Maori-led coup in New Zealand could occur if the government did not act to recognize indigenous rights. In Australia, the largest and most powerful country in the South Pacific, some leaders of the indigenous Aboriginal minority are demanding that the government negotiate a treaty recognizing the right of Aborigines to self-determination and a separate homeland." (International Herald Tribune, June 5).

A combination of racism, different capitalist bosses fighting for a bigger piece of the pie for themselves and imperialist investors have turned this South Pacific "paradise" into a modern hell of capitalist and imperialist intrigues. Capitalism is Midas in reverse: everything it touches turn into fecal matter.

Horn of Africa Blows Up

As the May 31^st CHALLENGE explained, it is capitalist and imperialist rivalry which causes war throughout Africa. The war in the Horn of Africa between Ethiopia and Eritrea reveals this deadly truth.

The nationalist leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), in Ethiopia’s two northern provinces, united to oust Ethiopia’s brutal Mengistu regime that was supported and armed by the Soviets and Cubans. They then dismantled and stole most of the factories from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, shipping some to Tigray and some to Eritrea. This TPLF/ELF alliance also enabled the Eritreans to secede once the TPLF took power in the rest of Ethiopia. This occurred with full U.S. support.

When, in 1993, Eritrea became independent, the now land-locked Ethiopians lost access to Red Sea ports. Conflict arose. In 1997 Eritrea introduced its own currency, ending use of the Ethiopian "birr." Ethiopian rulers refused to recognize the new Eritrean money. At the same time, the bosses in landlocked Ethiopia complained about the cost of access to the port of Assab in southern Eritrea. When the Eritreans occupied Badme, some barren land in western Ethiopia, the Ethiopians used that as a pretext to launch a wide-ranging war.

The same Tigray nationalist rulers who oppressed Ethiopia’s masses divided the different ethnic groups to gain advantage for themselves. They also repressed the leftist opposition and cast thousands of workers onto the street, while pushing Ethiopian nationalism to get the masses to fight for "their country." The Tigray Liberation Front now ruling Ethiopia was formed by a formerly Marxist-Leninist group. Nationalism is used on both sides to set workers against each other and keep these murderous rulers and their imperialist backers in power. Now the Russian newspaper IZVESTIA spilled the beans, revealing that Russian generals and weaponry helped Ethiopia carry on the war.

Famine is now threatening about 15 million people in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The government did not prepare for it, except in the Tigray province. Some relief from abroad is being diverted to the war against Eritrea and to help mainly Tigray. All kinds of military technology worth billions of U.S. dollars are going to both sides, while millions starve.

The U.S. ruling class is very disappointed with both Ethiopian and Eritrean nationalist rulers. The Ethiopians may change masters and U.S. imperialism may arm some other nationalist group to fight against the current regime. There can be no relief for such endless pain and death without a communist movement to win rural and urban workers, soldiers and youth to turn the guns around and smash the nationalists and their imperialist backers. Real communists will then unite all groups in the Horn of Africa to build a society based on production according to our needs. Then away with all pests (famine, ethnic divisions, etc.) will become a reality.

As we go to press, the "peace" that had been declared exploded into all-out war again. Hundreds, if not thousands, have died in this latest round of fighting.

This conflict in the Horn of Africa has been called a "civilized war" because, unlike the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Russian bombing of Chechnya, and the civil wars in the Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, etc., civilians are not targeted. However, over 100,000 soldiers, sons of the working class, have been killed in two years of battle. Meanwhile, millions face famine while the nationalist rulers of Ethiopia and Eritrea fight for access to Red Sea ports.

LETTERS

Israeli Army’s "Vietnam Syndrome"

The recent CHALLENGE article (May 31) about the chaotic withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Southern Lebanon area they had occupied for many years was very good. I want to add one point.

Southern Lebanon has been called Israel’s Vietnam. It was the first defeat for the "invincible" Israeli army. It also produced anti-militarist feelings in Israel, previously almost unknown. The Four Mothers movement, created in 1996 by mothers who either have lost their sons in battle in Southern Lebanon or did not want them to die there, represents this sentiment.

The results in Lebanon, where many young Israeli soldiers died, have also encouraged young draftees to refuse service in "difficult areas." All Israeli men are drafted for three years, women for two.

Many new recruits are seeking to serve "near home" or connecting their service to civilian life. In 1998, 65% of all men of military age wanted to serve in "combat units," while only 23% of all enlisted soldiers wanted to stay near home. Today, 34% are demanding it. According to the newspaper HAARETZ, the percentage of those not wanting to serve at all in the military has jumped from 1% to 6.2%.

This also reflects Israeli racist and class divisions. Less than 30% of youth from working-class families request duty in combat units, compared to 60% from more well-to-do families who want to join these units. Those from Askhenazi (Eastern European Jews) background are more apt to serve in combat units, while Sephardic Jews and the newer Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union are not as interested in dying for "their country."

War, particularly if one is on the losing side, does tend to sharpen the contradictions in all societies, including those claiming all-class unity in the name of religion or other reactionary ideologies.

Red Moses

What Is Behind NY Times' Sudden Discovery of Racism Among Cuban Exiles in Miami

The June 7th CHALLENGE article "Kosovo Comes to Miami" described conditions in Miami quite well. The sharp divisions there between Cuban exiles and the rest of the population did not occur because of little Elián González, but were sharpened once his distant relatives kidnapped the Cuban boy.

Interestingly, the NEW YORK TIMES, the leading voice of the Eastern Establishment media, has suddenly "discovered" this division. On June 5, the second of a series entitled "Black and White—Race Relations in the U.S., described relations between two young Cuban men, recent arrivals in the U.S. One is white, the other black. They were best friends in Cuba, but once in Miami their friendship cooled. Why?

The article traces it to racism among Cuban exiles. It says that in any other major city with a large Latin population, these two young men would probably have remained friends. The article even points out that despite the poverty in Cuba, there is not much racism or inequality among blacks and whites compared to the U.S.

So why does the TIMES run such an important "Pulitzer Prize-type" article attacking Miami’s Cuban exiles?

Obviously, things are changing. Last week, at the same time an Atlanta court ruled in favor of Juan Miguel, Elián’s father, and against the distant relatives (the kidnappers) in Miami, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the head of the Black Congressional Caucus were in Havana as part of the drive by certain sections of the U.S. ruling class to end the embargo on Cuba.

The political leadership of Miami-Dade County is run by Cuban exiles linked to the National Cuban-American Foundation, a group financed by the Franjul family and other billionaire Cuban exiles who control sugar production in Florida and the Dominican Republic. An end to the Cuban embargo will hurt their businesses since Cuba is a leading sugar producer.

So the Cuban exile leadership has, for now, became an obstacle to U.S. capitalist interests who will benefit from an end to the embargo. That’s the story behind the Elián saga.

Red Che

Protestors Go AFTA Expansion of NAFTA

On June 4,, several hundred workers, students and others protested in Detroit the planned expansion of NAFTA throughout the Western Hemisphere at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS). This protest grew out of the anger of workers and their allies against their worsening working and living conditions, as well as the growing and ever-present threat of layoffs. The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would worsen this situation by making it easier for the bosses to shift production to wherever labor is cheaper. A member and a friend of PLP were there and explained that the only way to end the horrors of globalization is to smash the fascist capitalist system behind it.

The rally was preceded by a brutal crackdown by the Detroit cops in order to terrorize workers and youth into not fighting the bosses' attacks. Detroit bosses spent over $5 million on the cops and their riot gear. Forty-five bicyclists were arrested for wearing masks. The capitalist press had a field day in supporting this, saying the demonstrators were "terrorists," and that protesters would be arrested. This affected some people. Some friends and family told us not to go, fearing the cops would attack us.

However, at the rally our leaflets were received very positively. One person enthusiastically yelled out "smash capitalism!" when he saw it in the title. We also met with members of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, with whom we hope to work in the future. We made several contacts, including one autoworker who told us of the massive overtime and speed-up he and his fellow workers face. We also ran into two friends whom we had met at a student-labor conference last year. We pointed out the fascist nature of the cops' crackdown, their role being to protect the bosses and their property.

We’ll keep in touch with these contacts and build our work in organizations to continue fighting the bosses' attacks.

PLP College Student

Better Off with Unions or Without?

Concerning the recent letter to CHALLENGE (May 31) from "Grandmother Jones" on whether it’s better to have a union, despite rotten leadership, than no union at all’:

Historically, the quest by workers for a union was certainly part and parcel of the attempt to gain some degree of control over working conditions, etc. It was a manifestation of the class struggle.

Workers who won unions, especially with communist leadership during the Great Depression of the 1930s, demonstrated their ability to confront the bosses head-on and win. Workers died fighting for a union. But the bosses weeded out the militant, left-wing unionists during the anti-communist witchhunt of the 1950s, and installed Cold Warrior anti-communists in union leadership, such as the AFL-CIO's George Meany who bragged that he never walked a picket line. From then on most union leaders were in bed with the bosses and the unions declined.

Currently, only 14% of the workers have a union of any sort. Also, these rotten leaders did everything they could to suck the militancy out of rank-and-file workers. In the heroic miners’ strike in West Virginia against Pittston Coal in the 1980s, the United Mine Workers union leaders’ "selective strike" position defeated the strikers by forcing them to wage their courageous class war all alone.

A recent book, "Why Unions Matter," by Michael Yates, demonstrates that unionized workers receive higher wages and better benefits than non-union workers doing the same type of work. Also, the grievance procedure makes it harder to terminate a worker on a boss’s whim, as happened at the non-union place where Grandma Jones worked.

That’s why companies bust unions or simply close the plant and move to a non-union area, either the South or to Mexico, El Salvador, etc., where they are free to exploit.

It is essential for communists to support workers in their fight for a union, higher pay, benefits and safe working conditions. But they must point out that even small victories by workers do not ensure that the capitalists, in this period of growing fascism, will not turn them into a defeat down the road. Only by eliminating capitalism can workers truly gain justice and resolve the problems created by the profit system.

Lenin, the Soviet Bolshevik leader, advocated the need for a revolutionary communist party to elevate workers from trade union consciousness to communist consciousness and to provide leadership to the workers for a revolution against capitalism and the establishment of Workers Power.

Concerning Grandma Jones' other question about whether strikes would be legal under communism: it would seem that with the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and with workers power, that any problems workers faced would be resolved as quickly as possible and that strikes probably would not be necessary.

Red Rocker

1. Union Hacks Hide Capitalism as Cause of
   Prison Labor: Fascism, U.S. Style
   1. Social Democracy: A `Fairer Capitalism'?....
   2. ....OR SMASH PRISON LABOR WITH COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
2. PARDONS CAN'T CHANGE RACIST NATURE OF BOSSES MILITARY
   1. Officers: Paid Leave; Black Sailors: 15 Years Hard Labor
3. PICNIC JUMP STARTS SUMMER PROJECT
4. MAY DAY ORGANIZING HEIGHTENS CLASS STRUGGLE AT PHILADELPHIA HOSPITAL
5. MUNI CONTRACT WON'T BRAKES ON EXPLOITATION
6. CHICAGO YOUTH ORGANIZE AGAINST RACIST COPS
7. KOSOVO COMES TO MIAMI
8. RACIST YONKERS COPS: NYPD HAS NOTHING ON THEM
9. LIBERAL SCHOOL REFORMS DEFEND CAPITALISM, ATTACK STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
10. ANTI-KLAN PLP'ER ELECTED UFT DELEGATE
11. SRI LANKA: The Three Horseman of the Apocalypse--Racism, Nationalism, and Imperialism
12. CHINA BUCKS U.S. CONTROL OF WORLDS' OIL SHIPPING LANES
    1. NAVAL EXPANSION TIED TO OIL SHIPPING LANES
13. LETTERS
    1. Wage Slavery Southern Style
    2. Bogota May Day: Don't Vote,
       Join PLP
    3. Don't Need Strikes Under Communism
    4. Teachers Thrilled by Internationale
    5. Europe's Bosses Dip Oily Fingers into Colombia
    6. Red Eye Trapped in Sociobiology
    7. Red Eye Responds

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Union Hacks Hide Capitalism as Cause of
Prison Labor: Fascism, U.S. Style

SEATTLE, WA., May 26--"Have you seen this?" said a swing-shift machinist as he waved the latest copy of the IAM JOURNAL, organ of the International Association of Machinists. "What took 'em so long?"

He was referring to the lead article, PRISON LABOR: BUSTING OUT ALL OVER AMERICA, and the editorial, PRISON LABOR AND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE. For nearly two years we've been organizing against the company's use of prison slave labor. It seems the International has finally noticed the problem.

"It's great the Party has taken the lead on this issue," he continued. It's nice to be appreciated, but now what are we going to DO?

The prison labor article was one of the longest ever to appear in the JOURNAL. It documented how many hundreds of IAM members have lost jobs to prison labor, which pays as low as 11cents an-hour. Everything from maintenance and repair work in transit, to assembling John Deere products, to building landing gear components now uses prison labor. The article even shows how the prison population has exploded, particularly among black people and the poor. In particular, it attacks the private prison companies, like Prison Reality Corp. and Wackenhut.

After stonewalling on this issue for years, has the union leadership finally "got religion"? Have they been reading Progressive Labor Party's pamphlet, PRISON LABOR; FASCISM U.S. STYLE, or one of the thousands of other pieces of literature workers have passed through the plants?

The misleaders may have, but they're still playing their role of diverting our anger into dead-end streets. After that damning exposé, their only solution is to support two useless bills before Congress and to vote against "right-wing forces." One bill would require Federal Prison Industries (FPI), the government's prison slave labor program, to devote 20% of its budget to vocational training. The other bill would mandate that FPI no longer be the "sole source provider" for the U.S. government. Of course, at 11cents an-hour FPI would always be the lowest bidder so it would get the jobs anyway.

Social Democracy: A `Fairer Capitalism'?....

"The International is not against prison labor," declared our machinist friend. "They're just against unfair competition."

His complaint goes to the heart of the matter. No less than Thomas Friedman, the NEW YORK TIMES foreign affairs columnist and one of Rockefeller & Co./Eastern Money's chief mouthpieces, has called for social democracy: "You dare not be a globalizer in this world, an advocate of free trade and integration, without also being a social democrat," he warned. (NYT, 5/19)

By social democracy, he means joining labor, government and business together to put out the fires of class struggle--even if it means an exposé or two about capitalism's worst abuses. He's more than willing to give unions an opportunity to look like heroes and even grow in exchange for loyalty to Eastern Money's foreign policy objectives. This is exactly the role laid out for the social democrats (liberal Democrats) by the ruling class.

....OR SMASH PRISON LABOR WITH COMMUNIST REVOLUTION

On the other hand, nothing says the working class must stay within the limits set down by the Rockefeller & Co./Democratic bunch. Our machinist friend showed the way when he took a handful of the Party's prison labor pamphlets to distribute to every worker with whom he discussed the union article. The next weekend a group met to plan a campaign that would mobilize the rank and file to smash prison labor, not just reform it. Look to these pages for reports on the campaign's progress, and ways you can help.

Prison slave labor is the logical outgrowth of a system, capitalism, which requires greater and greater degrees of exploitation to survive. We're not out to make prison labor more palatable, we're out to smash it, and the system that lives off it, with communist revolution.

Editorial:

PARDONS CAN'T CHANGE RACIST NATURE OF BOSSES MILITARY

Not long ago, Clinton gave a Presidential pardon to Freddie Meeks, for the Port Chicago, Calif. mutiny 56 years ago. Meeks was one of 50 black sailors who refused to work after an explosion killed 320 sailors, 202 of them black, on July 17, 1944. Clinton was responding to a campaign to clear the names of the mutineers who "rose up for our rights," according to Meeks. Clinton also knows that black soldiers and sailors are need now to fight in U.S. imperialist oil wars to protect the profits of Exxon/Mobil.

The explosion was a typical example of the racism of the U.S. military. A book by Robert Allen on this mutiny revealed the rotten conditions under which these sailors loaded munitions. Before the explosion, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) had warned such an accident was waiting to happen because of those dangerous working conditions. The then left-led ILWU had demanded that loading munitions into a ship require at least five years experience. But the Navy ignored all of this.

Officers: Paid Leave; Black Sailors: 15 Years Hard Labor

Lt. Col. Keith Fergurson had admitted that the black sailors were not trained for this dangerous job. After the explosion, Admiral Carleton Wright threatened the black sailors with death sentences if they refused to carry out orders during World War II Fifty sailors refused to work and were given 15 years at hard labor. After the explosion, the white officers in charge of the black sailors were rewarded with 30 days leave, although none were injured.

Compare the racism of the U.S. military during that war to the nature of the Soviet Red Army while fighting and defeating the bulk of the Nazi war machine. Not only was it a very integrated army, but it did everything possible to protect the ones the Nazi SS death squads accompanying the Werchmacht (the Army) wanted to kill first. It was Stalin's standing "order of the day" to the Red Army that all Jews be removed to safety before any advancing German force could seize them.

Not all the survivors of the mutiny accepted Clinton's pardon. Jack Crittenden of Montgomery, Alabama, told the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE he was not interested: "If the pardon means freedom from being villified," he declared, "we have already being villified for a long time." He also added that Congress should approve aid to the relatives of the 320 sailors who died during the explosion. That didn't happen either.

PICNIC JUMP STARTS SUMMER PROJECT

BROOKLYN, MAY 28,2000--Over 80 high school students, parents and teachers joined us for our annual PLP Memorial Day picnic. With great food and fun sports we enjoyed a day in the park with our base. Males and females participated in sports together. Those who knew how to play the game better taught those who were just learning. We all took turns either setting up, cooking, or cleaning up as is always done at our events. As people listened attentively, two speeches were given by PLP youth. One college student explained how PLP organizes a Summer Project every year to train youth to become communist leaders. She talked about the increased attacks on working class, high school students and their connection to the growing prison system. She urged all students to participate in a summer full of political study, revolutionary action and some summer fun. Two high school students talked about their participation in past summer projects. One mentioned our trip to Flint, Michigan where we brought our communist ideas to striking autoworkers. The other student remembered our trip to Steubenville, Ohio, where we went to prevent the KKK from spreading their racist ideas. Everyone there took CHALLENGES and invitations to our Summer Project. Our activities this summer looks promising. We have many serious and dedicated students around, but we must continue and increase our efforts to consolidate these students and reach out to many more.

MAY DAY ORGANIZING HEIGHTENS CLASS STRUGGLE AT PHILADELPHIA HOSPITAL

PHILADELPHIA, May 29 -- Building PLP during a contract fight right after marching on May Day--could the timing be any better? The Local 1199C contract for 1,000 workers at Jefferson Hospital expires June 30. And PLP is in the best position yet to advance the movement for communist revolution.

This year we did our best May Day organizing. While the numbers on the May Day bus were not what we wanted, we made undeniable advances. Some members developed significantly to discuss May Day by themselves and selling many tickets. CHALLENGE distribution increased slightly. For the first time there was actually a small "buzz" at the hospital about May Day. Groups of workers were talking on their own about the March and planning to come.

But maybe most important was finally breaking down the wall in our minds that viewed May Day as somehow "separate" from the daily organizing on the job. We were busier than ever in the union and in the many job struggles. Yet we did a distinctly better job of connecting all these struggles to the need for workers to come to May Day. No longer did we see May Day as just for the smaller group of workers "close to us" who had some familiarity with PLP and communism.

With our many years of organizing and the extensive personal and political ties of some of our members, we were able to very concretely connect even with workers new to us and conduct serious struggles with them to march. For example, Luis is a part-timer interested in organizing a fight for full-time jobs. He has never discussed communism nor read CHALLENGE. From several discussions with him about the difficulties in organizing a jobs campaign, we were able to show him that participating with many other workers in the international working class solidarity of May Day would help prepare him for the ups and downs of this organizing.

Jane is a part-timer who just got a full-time job. But other part-timers are filing grievances claiming they should have received that job, making Jane feel negative. "Why aren't we more united and fighting together instead of with each other?" Jane asked a union delegate. Jane never heard of May Day. The union delegate won Jane to march by explaining that May Day was the best answer for Jane's cynicism. She would be marching with many other workers who, like her, believed in working-class solidarity.

Throughout our May Day organizing we tried to have a more mass approach while explaining to everyone the role of PLP and communism. We tried to avoid being sectarian and opportunist, with mixed results. Yet for the first time May Day became for us what it should have been, an integral part of our organizing in the union mass work. Over the next year we will deepen May Day's role in our daily work.

PLP is now involved the 1199C-contract struggle to carry May Day's red flag forward - and it's scaring the bosses and the union leaders who serve them. Before May Day, the 1199C Organizer (Business Agent) ordered all Jefferson union delegates (and any workers who might lend an ear), that they are NOT to listen to, attend any marches organized by, carry any signs made by, or do anything suggested by Fred, a long-time union delegate.

Despite these "orders," on May 22 Fred and some of the active union delegates organized almost 200 Jefferson workers, in an "underground" manner, through word of mouth, to attend a "show-of-force" solidarity lunch in the hospital cafeteria. It was so popular the union organizer was forced to "endorse" it to avoid totally exposing herself as a sellout. But the union refused to give out any 1199C hats or buttons and none of the union leaders attended. However, it was the first time such a large number of union members participated in such an action on hospital property. It was also the first time some of the action's organizers really saw the bosses' fear of large numbers of united workers.

The 1199C leaders also showed their fear of the workers. Before the solidarity lunch, 1199C had called a meeting about contract negotiations for June 3. A new union activist fought for this Saturday meeting. It would be the first time in a long while that all members would meet together instead of in staggered sessions during the week corresponding to all kinds of crazy shifts. More workers than ever planned to attend. Several declared this would be a "hot" meeting for the union leaders.

Then, a week before this Saturday meeting, some members received a mailing announcing that the starting time had been pushed back four hours! The mailing was dated May 22, the day of our solidarity lunch. Many workers suspect that the 1199C leaders heard about the success of that action and are now trying to sabotage a mass turnout for the Saturday meeting.

Through all these twists and turns PLP has had the opportunity to grow. We are tied to many workers through years of political and personal struggles. We are reaching out to newer and younger workers to fight for jobs. CHALLENGE distribution is increasing. This contract fight is heating up the class struggle a little. Our organizing in this fight can help develop a better May Day next year.

MUNI CONTRACT WON'T BRAKES ON EXPLOITATION

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, May 30 -- "The situation at work is like a tinder-box, ready to blow at any moment." "It's not just about money, it's about respect." At the last union meeting about upcoming negotiations, one member said: "What contract? Management does what they want."

These comments represent a tremendous and spontaneous anger among Muni drivers upon entering contract negotiations. As communist bus drivers, we must discuss capitalism's real political and economic forces attacking our quality of life and standard of living.

The ever-growing two-tier wage progression (new drivers start at 70% and wait 31 months to reach full pay) means that over that period management pays new drivers $22,000 less than drivers with more seniority for exactly the same work. Today 12% of the work force is part-time. A two-tier retirement program leaves only about 225 drivers with a livable pension while the vast majority's plan pays $1,800.00 a month maximum.

Management wants to expand efficient "rush-hour" service to the downtown business and commercial district. Think-tanks like SPUR, the Chamber of Commerce and the Committee on Jobs use the government and courts to legally enforce the increased exploitation of drivers. This means a full assault on work rules, including giving management a blank check on changing work-hours, a further weakening of rules that allow drivers time off from a stressful job and limitless use of part-time labor.

Drivers are already scrambling, at tremendous cost to personal health and family life. Many depend on the individual solution of overtime (on average 400 hours a year, or 10 extra 40-hour weeks!). One would need $27/hr to earn the same income in a 40-hour week.

Drivers are protesting the disciplining of drivers for damage to the trolley overhead lines. This is like blaming bus drivers when the vehicle's tires wear out. Many experienced drivers left the trolley division in protest. At the Metro trains' Green Division, drivers were ready to refuse a "sign-up" because of management's plan to disregard safety and re-deploy 16 drivers to a downtown line. Faced with this challenge, management temporarily backed down. At Cable Car, there is a petition about discipline and rumblings about refusal to work OT in the busy tourist period.

There is wide-spread support for another petition demanding an end to wage progression and involuntary part-time jobs.

Downtown businesses are booming. San Francisco is the gateway to trade and finance with Asia, and has "Multi-Media-Dot-Coms" galore. Our labor is vital to the profits of the big corporations whose work force we bring in and out every day. But our contract never addresses these profits, or the "free ride" big business gets from mass transit.

Any contract, no matter how good or bad, is a written agreement on how a group of capitalists will benefit from the labor of workers. Capitalism is based on this exploitation, and it's not up for discussion in contract negotiations. Labor and capital are in a constant conflict that no contract can resolve.

Of all the results we need from this contract fight, the most important is more CHALLENGE readers and distributors so that more workers can consider a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. We are ready to lead a strike to stop the bosses' attacks. But only communist revolution will end exploitation and serve the needs of the international working class.

CHICAGO YOUTH ORGANIZE AGAINST RACIST COPS

CHICAGO, IL. -- On May 24, Gonzalo Venegas and another Lincoln Park H.S. student were brutalized by the fascist Chicago police. The cops punched and spat at them for being at the school the day of a gang fight. Principal Todd had called in extra police that day because of the earlier fight. These cops kicked everyone off school grounds and out of a neighboring park. Gonzalo's "crime" was resisting this abuse.

He was taken to an isolated area and threatened by a cop who lives in his neighborhood. He told Gonzalo if he saw him again he would break his arm. Then they shoved him violently and punched him in the face. When another student who was witnessing this abuse sarcastically "cheered" them for beating on another Latino student, the cops spat at him and handed him a citation. They handcuffed Gonzalo, extra tight, and dropped him off at the park from which they had taken him. No charges were placed. The cops just wanted to brutalize and intimidate the few students who were resisting their harassment.

Lincoln Park students have been active against police brutality this year. They have several lawsuits pending against cops for a fascist search where several young female students were sexually harassed by male officers. The principal promised meetings on the situation but months have passed and nothing has happened.

Students immediately began organizing against this latest brutality. Over 50 students came to the first meeting. The principal tried to defuse the students' anger, but no one believed her empty promises since she did nothing about the previous brutality. After discussion and struggle, students decided to hold a rally at the school calling for a mass meeting with the principal to discuss these problems before the school year end.

Lincoln Park students need to understand that these cops serve the capitalist state. They bosses must force us to submit to their plans for war and fascism, to accept continuing attacks against working class youth. So far this summer the cops have already killed two young black people here and have shot at many others. This caused enough anger for PLP and the victims' families and supporters shut down last month's Police Board meeting.

It promises to be a long hot summer but we will we will never give up organizing to get rid of their murderous system.

KOSOVO COMES TO MIAMI

Miami has been "different" from any other U.S. city for many years. It is the only city in the world where one must be not only anti-communist but specifically anti-Castro as a requirement for almost everything in daily life. The Elián case (remember him?) has exposed all of this. Now one must be anti-Castro, anti-Janet Reno and anti-Juan Miguel (Elián's father).

All this has divided the city between the Cuban exiles and the rest of the population of Miami-Dade County (Anglos, African-Americans, Haitians and non-Cuban Latinos) to such an extent that many fear Miami will become another Kosovo. EL PAIS, a Madrid daily, wrote (May 28) that several people are devising a plan to halt this division. "I hope that the Balkanization of Miami won't be permanent," said Edward Foote, University of Miami president and one of the proponents of a plan to unite the residents.

However, in the city's streets, nationalism reigns supreme. "The symbols of ethnic pride are shown with pride and defiance. And frequently, with hatred....Friends, fellow workers and relatives have even stopped talking to each other," reports EL PAIS. "It has reached the point of the United Way forming four teams of professional counselor-therapists to help more than 200 companies solve ethnic problems on the job and to seal open wounds."

Miami-Dade's 2.4 million population includes 700,000 of Cuban origin, 670,000 non-Cuban Latinos, 370,000 Anglos, 145.000 Jews, 490,000 African-Americans and Haitians. The Cuban exiles, particularly the local politicians and their master behind the scene, the powerful National American Cuban Foundation, view the Elián case as part of their anti-Castro crusade. They claim it is a symbol of their "suffering" as "exiles from communism." But almost everyone else supported Elián's return to his father Juan Miguel. The INS (Immigration Service) raid to free Elián has sharpened this division even more.

There is an interesting lesson in all of this. Anti-communism and racism is a two-edge sword for those who use it. While the Cuban exiles say they "revived Miami" and turned it into what is now known as the "Capital of the Americas," most others resent the Cuban control and monopoly of almost the entire local government. (The police chief and the city administrator, both of whom supported the INS raid, either quit or were fired and replaced by Cubans). The Anglos resent the Cubans in a racist way, as just a bunch of "uppity Latinos." Meanwhile, the Cuban exiles treat the other Latinos, blacks, Haitians and even non-white Cubans just as they did in Batista's Cuba, as their servants.

For many decades, U.S. bosses used the Cuban exiles as mercenaries to wage imperialist war against communism in Central and South America and even in the Congo when leftist Patrice Lumumba was prime minister. Now many see the Miami Cubans' nationalism as "un-American" for burning the U.S. flag during the protests after the INS raid.

Meanwhile, Miami is not the "paradise" Cuban exiles paint. It has one of the highest poverty rates among major U.S. cities (particularly affecting children). Low wages are the norm. Life is generally hard for most workers (except for Elián's kidnappers who have now moved to a bigger house outside Little Havana, courtesy of some rich friends).

This "Balkanization" of Miami proves once again that you reap what you sow. Anti-communism and racism are the bosses' tools. Workers who use them are putting a noose around their necks.

RACIST YONKERS COPS: NYPD HAS NOTHING ON THEM

YONKERS, New York, May 31--The cops in this city north of New York City don't seem to be far behind their fellow NYPD goons. They've unleashed a reign of terror against the mostly Latin community around Colin Street.

Under their Zero Tolerance policy supposedly to "fight crime," cops are harassing people indiscriminately. Last night, a Spanish TV station reported that the cops beat up a couple of young men in a neighborhood Latin family. But this time, unknown to the cops, a neighbor taped their brutal attack. The TV reporter interviewed all kinds of people in the community. They all agreed that the cops indiscriminately harass and push people around. A neighborhood priest said the cops even harass little children playing in the streets.

Workers and youth in Yonkers are getting fed up with this racist terror. They need to do what workers and youth are doing in many other cities: organizing and fighting back! But it must be done without relying on liberal politicians who just tell us "vote for Hillary" and things will change. The only change these liberals are proposing is "community policing" (to get us to help the cops harass us). Yonkers cops are doing what they are paid to do: protect the racist system and attack workers. The PLP Summer Project will see youth organizing against racist terror and for communism. Join us!

LIBERAL SCHOOL REFORMS DEFEND CAPITALISM, ATTACK STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

LOS ANGELES, May 23--Over 6000 teachers marched here for clean classrooms, more books, against merit pay and for an across-the-board raise. Teachers are angry at the worsening conditions. The union leadership has mobilized this anger. Coming on the heels of the janitors' strike, this march reflects both the anger of union members and an aggressive strategy by the liberal ruling class, who need to win workers, and especially teachers, to fight for reforms and defend U.S. "democracy."

Teachers in and around PLP are involved in many levels of the union, fighting the Board of Education and the union leadership. For over a year we've opposed the union/management proposal of peer review in different union committees, allowing us to raise bigger issues about education under capitalism. We've won respect for the Party's ideas and a somewhat wider CHALLENGE readership.

The educational system's failure is well known. Racist ruling class pundits blame the working class for this failure--we either have "bad genes" or dysfunctional families--or blame a few bad teachers. As the rulers prepare for war, they are mobilizing teacher-student anger into a movement to reform education. There is a debate about this. One side says youth can't learn what's required and the standards will just punish kids, so there is also a mass movement against standardized testing, which we're also involved in. We insist that youth CAN and MUST learn, but that these tests are designed to win them to defend a racist system or flunk out. This will increase the drop-out rate and put more youth at risk of police attack.

Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, says "industrial-style, adversarial tactics" of his teachers' union must be replaced by unions that "assist in removing teachers...who are unqualified, incompetent, or burned out." So the old "F--k-the-kids, We want our money!" approach is out. Now they're fighting to "improve" the schools by firing the "bad" teachers.

Peer review puts teachers on boards alongside administrators recommending that tenured teachers be fired. Many good people are being misled, thinking this means more good teachers, committed to teaching our youth all the skills they need, and fighting for the materials with which to do it. But those very teachers, in fact, are the thorn in the principal's side. They are more likely to be victimized by such measures.

Peer review is part of a trend to tighten control over the content of education. Teachers are required to teach to national and state standards, students are tested on them, schools and teachers are ranked by the test scores, students are flunked, and teachers are given merit pay--or fired--based on students' test scores. This kind of educational system builds unquestioning patriotism, illusions, passivity, willingness to work for low wages and to send students, lock-step, off to war.

Does the ruling class really want to improve education for the vast majority of working-class youth? Look at the attacks on them by police and the judicial system! While the rulers may need to improve the skills of some students, in general the educational system educates a few people to run society. It trains the vast majority to be wage slaves and cannon fodder. Educational reform is not designed to question or change class society, just to meet its changing needs.

Do the tests on the standards guarantee that students can read, write, do math and think critically? Will the standards teach students that they will be called on to fight for profits of one of the most murderous groups of rulers the world has known? Teachers who ask students to think about U.S. imperialism, the history of racism and class struggle, will be deviating from the standards--and are likely to be recommended for "peer review" by principals who see them as "trouble-makers."

Students need to learn skills and the history of the fight against racism and oppression. We have confidence they can learn whatever they need, but it takes a fight because capitalist schools are not interested in teaching most of them. Teachers must be organizers committed to teaching needed skills to the students, as well as uniting teachers, students and parents to fight the attacks on the youth.

As the rulers move toward war and increasing fascism, they're trying to use our anger at the failures of capitalism to enlist us to demand that the government take more control. We have the opportunity to expose the racist system, fight the moves toward war and fascism, and pose what kind of educational and political system we really need. Capitalism is incapable of providing it. The solution is a communist world where production and education are organized to meet the needs of those who toil, not the profit needs of a few.

ANTI-KLAN PLP'ER ELECTED UFT DELEGATE

BROOKLYN, NY, May 29 -- Last week a PLP member at Van Arsdale H.S. here was elected to one of the union chapter's two delegate positions, after having been at the school for only seven months. How did this happen? Therein lies a communist political tale.

Last October 15, the administration at Westinghouse H.S., where this PLP'er had worked for 13 years, cut out his program and transferred him to Van Arsdale. They made this move because he had been organizing a broad rank-and-file-led union chapter that would fight for changes in the school, always with the students in mind.

At Van Arsdale he was unknown except for a few people who had previously seen him at the city-wide union Delegate Assembly meetings where he had represented his previous school. But as chance would have it, five days after he entered Van Arsdale, he was one of three people organized by the Progressive Labor Party to attack Ku Klux Klan scum at a KKK police-protected "rally" in downtown Manhattan. The fight was the lead story on all TV networks that night and in the press the next day, with this teacher's role prominently displayed.

Suddenly everyone in the school knew him--students, teachers, administration. This was both a blessing and a problem. The blessing: everyone knew the kind of person he was. The "problem": he now had to organize quickly at a school which he had just entered one week before.

That task was complicated by the fact that, (1) he had to learn new skills, teaching three completely new subjects all in a somewhat unfamiliar environment--he had only taught jewelry-making for his entire time in the public schools-- and (2) at first most of his spare time was spent in helping with the movement he had helped organize at his original school (which is continuing).

The two schools were similar in several respects: the teachers are under tremendous pressure, the students are treated like prisoners and administrators--harassed by higher administrators--harassed everyone else. In this tortuous climate, he began by distributing CHALLENGE and becoming friends with teachers and students.

With the recent police murder cases of Patrick Dorismond and Amadou Diallo in the headlines, he would wear buttons and bring literature and organizing reports to school. Some teachers thanked him for politicizing the students. He wrote a couple of articles for a local newsletter published by one of the teachers and a poem for the school on the Dorismond killing. He was asked by another teacher, a preacher who liked his anti-racist stand, to sing Amazing Grace at his church on Easter Sunday. He did this, and added three extra anti-racist verses.

In his Humanities Department, most people know him as a communist. The rest of the school knows him as an anti-racist fighter. On May First he taught May Day lessons. In English, he posed the question, "Is May Day simply a holiday to dance around the Maypole?" In Economics, "What was the 8-hour day movement all about?" In American History, "Why is the international holiday May Day an American holiday?"

He met a number of union members who wanted to run a slate against the old union officers. They talked politically among each other and formed a loose slate. Given his anti-Klan notoriety and his raising of political issues at his new school, he figured it was logical to run for delegate--having already been one at his old school.

The election was held this past week. Five people ran for two delegate positions. This communist received the highest vote. (The out-going chapter chairman got the lowest.) Of his two close running mates, one won the other delegate position and the other lost for the vacated chapter chairman's position, although doing surprisingly well.

There is much work to do. (For instance, no one came to May Day from this new school.) He aims to raise the class-consciousness at the school and to align himself with the working-class students who attend this vocational high school hard by the Williamsburg Bridge.

SRI LANKA: The Three Horseman of the Apocalypse--Racism, Nationalism, and Imperialism

Thomas Pickering, U.S. Under Secretary of State, recently visited war-torn Sri Lanka after stopping in India, and firmly said there can be no independent Tamil in the northern part of that island country at the southern tip of India. The Tamil Tigers, the group fighting the Sri Lanka army, may be on the verge of seizing the important city of Jaffna, defeating the 30,000 government soldiers protecting it.

The war between the Tamil Tigers and the India-backed Sri Lanka army has been long and bloody, with tens of thousands of deaths in the last few decades. In fact, in 1991 a Tamil suicide bomber killed India Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi (son of Indira Ghandi) for sending Indian troops to support the Sri Lanka government. India opposes an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka because, (1) it already faces a Pakistani-supported separatist movement in Kashmir in the North; and (2) it fears the rise of a separatist movement among the Tamils in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India across a narrow strait from Sri Lanka.

Why do U.S. rulers opposing the Tamil Tigers? After all, they're not calling for an end to capitalism. The Tamil leaders, like many nationalists, are taking advantage of the blatant, violent anti-Tamil racism of the Sinhalese ruling class--Sri Lanka's main ethnic group--while fighting for the privilege of exploiting their own people.

However, Sri Lanka is strategically located in the Indian Ocean. It's a key stopover for U.S. ships supplying the tiny but important Diego Garcia islands a supply base for U.S. operations in the Persian Gulf.

In addition, U.S. relations with India have changed. In the past, when India was ruled by the Ghandi-controlled Congress Party, it was armed by the former Soviet Union and had very close commercial ties with the Soviet bloc. But when Russia invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. allied with India's arch-enemy Pakistan. This enabled the CIA to use the drug-smuggling Pakistani army and Intelligence Service to arm the religious zealot guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

However, with the emergence in India of a Hindu nationalist government, the BJP Party, positions have changed. Today the U.S. sees India and its navy as a counterweight to China's ambitions in Asia (see page 8).

So contradictions abound. Racism, regional and worldwide rivalries among different imperialists, and splits among local bosses are all behind the war in Sri Lanka. Tens of thousands of workers and soldiers have already died in this capitalist bloodbath. It's time for working-class soldiers to rebel and turn the guns around to smash capitalism and imperialism, the causes of modern war. Revolutionary communist leadership is the key ingredient to make this happen.

Thomas Pickering, U.S. Under Secretary of State, recently visited war-torn Sri Lanka after stopping in India, and firmly said there can be no independent Tamil in the northern part of that island country at the southern tip of India. The Tamil Tigers, the group fighting the Sri Lanka army, may be on the verge of seizing the important city of Jaffna, defeating the 30,000 government soldiers protecting it.

The war between the Tamil Tigers and the India-backed Sri Lanka army has been long and bloody, with tens of thousands of deaths in the last few decades. In fact, in 1991 a Tamil suicide bomber killed India Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi (son of Indira Ghandi) for sending Indian troops to support the Sri Lanka government. India opposes an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka because, (1) it already faces a Pakistani-supported separatist movement in Kashmir in the North; and (2) it fears the rise of a separatist movement among the Tamils in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India across a narrow strait from Sri Lanka.

Why do U.S. rulers opposing the Tamil Tigers? After all, they're not calling for an end to capitalism. The Tamil leaders, like many nationalists, are taking advantage of the blatant, violent anti-Tamil racism of the Sinhalese ruling class--Sri Lanka's main ethnic group--while fighting for the privilege of exploiting their own people.

However, Sri Lanka is strategically located in the Indian Ocean. It's a key stopover for U.S. ships supplying the tiny but important Diego Garcia islands a supply base for U.S. operations in the Persian Gulf.

In addition, U.S. relations with India have changed. In the past, when India was ruled by the Ghandi-controlled Congress Party, it was armed by the former Soviet Union and had very close commercial ties with the Soviet bloc. But when the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. allied with India's arch-enemy Pakistan. This enabled the CIA to use the drug-smuggling Pakistani army and Intelligence Service to arm the religious zealot guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

However, with the emergence in India of a Hindu nationalist government, the BJP Party, positions have changed. Today the U.S. sees India and its navy as a counterweight to China's ambitions in Asia (see page 8).

So contradictions abound. Racism, regional and worldwide rivalries among different imperialists, and splits among local bosses are all behind the war in Sri Lanka. Tens of thousands of workers and soldiers have already died in this capitalist bloodbath. It's time for working-class soldiers to rebel and turn the guns around to smash capitalism and imperialism, the causes of modern war. Revolutionary communist leadership is the key ingredient to make this happen.

CHINA BUCKS U.S. CONTROL OF WORLDS' OIL SHIPPING LANES

Clinton's all-out push to get China admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is based on U.S. imperialism's strategy for maintaining world supremacy. Clinton's masters have identified Russia and China as their key rivals. Preventing a strategic alliance between them has become a major goal of U.S. foreign policy.

By "normalizing" trade relations with China, Clinton & Co. hope to keep Chinese bosses dependent on U.S. technology and credits. A secondary goal is the huge profit pile to be made from dealing with Chinese businesses. Many U.S. companies have billions at stake in Chinese contracts. And there's a $50 billion trade deficit in Beijing's favor that U.S. rulers want to reverse, while still enjoying the inflow of cheap goods that helps keep costs, especially wages, down.

But wishes aren't necessarily realities. For one thing, U.S. corporations aren't the only ones interested in profiting from investment in China. For one example, if the Chinese don't like what Boeing is offering them, they can turn to Europe's Airbus to buy aircraft. For another, despite the U.S., China's rulers continue to show interest in developing strategic ties with Russia, particularly purchasing military hardware and technology. China has become post-Soviet Russia's main arms customer. The reason isn't hard to figure out. China's bosses themselves have imperial designs of eventual world supremacy, and view U.S. imperialism as the main obstacle to that. Viewed in this light, all trade maneuvering becomes understandable.

NAVAL EXPANSION TIED TO OIL SHIPPING LANES

China's evolving naval strategy reflects its growth as an imperialist power. Since January, Chinese rulers have taken several steps geared to a long-range challenge to U.S. imperialism on the high seas:

* In January, the Chinese People's Liberation Army/Navy (PLAN) conducted a combined naval exercise more than 250 miles from the Chinese coast. This maneuver is consistent with the development of a "green water capability," which would allow PLAN to operate in all areas running 3,500 miles from northern Japan south to the west coast of Borneo (northern Indonesia).

* On May 5, the Russian daily KOMMERSANT announced that Russia had sold China the aircraft carrier Kiev, a major step allowing Chinese rulers to "join the ranks of the world's power projection navies" (STRATFOR, May 5).

* On May 7, the Chinese government finalized a deal allowing the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO--the world's second-largest shipping company) to use port facilities along the key Suez Canal. COSCO has strong ties to the Chinese military and has a large interest in Singapore which stands at the southern entrance to the Strait of Malacca. Another Chinese shipping company has a deal near the Panama Canal.

The Strait of Malacca, the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal are all major world oil transit centers. The U.S. Energy Information Administration calls them "chokepoints" because "disruption of oil flows through any of these export routes could have a significant impact on world oil prices" ("World Oil Transit Chokepoints," U.S.E.I.A., August 1999).

Since the collapse of the old Soviet Union, the U.S. Navy has claimed a lock on all these and other ocean shipping routes. This domination isn't about to end immediately, but Chinese bosses clearly intend to defy it over the long run. The "green water" Chinese navy of today is slated to become a "blue water" (worldwide) navy within 20 years or so. Chinese imperialism is looking to project force in the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca, controlling the shipping lanes in Southeast Asia, and the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the vast oil resources of the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. This means a direct challenge to U.S. supremacy on the high seas.

U.S. rulers are taking note and making plans. The Establishment media's main military writer, Thomas Ricks, says the Pentagon now considers China "a potential future adversary...It is now a common assumption among national security thinkers that the area from Baghdad to Tokyo will be the main location of U.S. military competition for the next several decades" (WASHINGTON POST, May 26).

The choice of Baghdad is no accident. China is the world's second-largest energy consumer, after the U.S. The growing Chinese navy will sharpen the inter-imperialist dogfight for Persian Gulf oil. Under these conditions, the Rockefeller-controlled Exxon Mobil's drive to force Saddam Hussein from power and replace him with a pro-U.S. regime in Iraq can only intensify.

By greasing the way for China's entry into the WTO, Clinton is only setting the stage for a higher level of inter-imperialist rivalry. An eventual armed conflict directly pitting U.S. bosses against China and Russia may lie in a fairly distant future, but wars leading up to it, like a likely oil bloodbath in the Persian Gulf, aren't so remote. Imperialism always leads to war. Nothing short of the complete overthrow of capitalism by communist revolution can end this vicious cycle.

LETTERS

Wage Slavery Southern Style

Comrades, how are you all doing? After a few years and a long trip through half of Central America and Mexico, I have ended up in the south. I returned because conditions back home in Colombia are horrendous (war, death squads, drug lords, etc.)

I am now working under concentration camp conditions in a tomato packaging plant, earning the minimum for 14 to 16 hours a day. We are almost all from Mexico, Central and South America, without any papers. We basically go from a cheap hotel to work and back to sleep in the hotel. The only "advantage" of not being in a major urban center is that here one doesn't spend too much money, so at least you can save a little bit, but basically as a slave.

I will try to write more and will see how I can get DESAFIO.

Red migrant worker

Bogota May Day: Don't Vote,
Join PLP

This 1st of May was a day of struggle against capitalism. It was also the working class's international day to commemorate the Chicago working-class martyrs who were assassinated on orders from the killer bosses. Thousands of workers got ready in the early morning to march. They lined up with flags, slogans and banners to vent their repressed anger over unemployment, hunger, the increased cost of living, massacres and the uprooting of masses due to capitalism and its politicians and death squads.

In Bogota the PLP contingent, participating with a good number of militants, led enthusiastic workers and students to play an important role. They marched with PLP's banner, sold our literature and distributed 3,000 communist leaflets. While leading chants, our red flags gave the march a revolutionary tone. Our signs read, "Long Live Communism," "Let Capitalism Die," "Down with the Damn Racist, Killer Bosses" and "Don't Vote, Join PLP."

We confronted the reformist-nationalist politics of capitalism's sellout servants, the bosses of the central unions who used this march to try to channel workers' discontent and anger into the next fraudulent election.

These apologists of wage slavery want to steer workers away from a truly revolutionary party. We posed the real alternative to workers, communist revolution to destroy this crisis of overproduction imposed by capitalism.

It was a good day, a successful march, a step forward for us. Our political alternative was greatly accepted by workers to whom we spoke. We know the road to revolution is a long one. That's why we're re-doubling our efforts to create trust with workers, deepen our ties and prepare them with communist ideas to advance their understanding so they can give leadership to next year's march.

PLP'er in Colombia

Don't Need Strikes Under Communism

In answer to "Grandmother Jones's" questions in her letter (Challenge, May 31):

1) Yes, unions are better than no unions. Unions were started by communists as a first step on the road to revolution. The most important lesson workers learned by participating in building unions and fighting the bosses is the power of class unity. Even though the bosses seem to have won their fight to corrupt and control workers' unions, the bosses can't change the essence of a union, which is organized unity of workers against bosses. Union members should join PLP and organize for communist revolution within their unions. In fact, this is the best plan to follow for a better future for workers on any job, whether there is a union or not.

2) Strikes have been a tactical move against the bosses in the past and present to gain more power and material resources for workers as well as better working conditions. I would think that in a communist society where social production is for the workers' needs and not for profit, that strikes would not be necessary. In a communist society the workers collectively plan and produce for everyone's needs equally, which should include the best possible working conditions for any worker doing any particular job as her/his contribution to the needs of the whole.

This may sound impossibly utopian on paper, but communism is a different model of society from capitalism. The basic economy, or plan, of a society determines what the super-structure, or the many relationships of that society will be. In nature, the cells determine what kind of body an organism will grow, internally and externally. In a communist society how we think about the material world and our relationship to it and how we form relationships within society to each other will be different because the basic "cells" of a communist society are different.

Anyway, this is how I see it at the moment, but every time I participate in class struggle with PLP, I learn more. For more in depth discussion, why not join a PLP study group in your community?

A Mid-West Comrade

Teachers Thrilled by Internationale

I'd like to tell Challenge readers about a small experience that was inspiring to me. It was May 1 and we were at a meeting of a teachers' coalition discussing reforming education. May 1 was on Monday and I was still pumped up from the May Day March in San Francisco.

Towards the end of the meeting a coalition member said that since this is May Day, we should have a moment of silence for workers who've been victims of the bosses' terror. I said we should sing the Internationale. We had a moment of silence and then I started singing the Internationale along with another comrade. A few others joined in.

As I sang, people were looking at me in awe and surprise. At the end everyone clapped. Several came to me and asked me to write down the words because they always wanted to learn them. I promised I would. At the next meeting, I plan to pass out the words to all the members of the coalition.

A Red LA Teacher

Europe's Bosses Dip Oily Fingers into Colombia

The editorial in the last CHALLENGE exposing the truth behind the exposé of Clinton's Drug Czar McCaffery was very helpful and insightful. It's clear that the top U.S. rulers, those who own Exxon, have a much greater immediate need to fight for the control of oil in Iraq than for the future of BP Amoco-Arco's oil in Colombia. However, as the editorial points out, there are secondary contradictions.

The war in Colombia continues. Totalfina (a French oil company) was, as of last September, Colombia's main oil producer (Petroleum Economist, 9/99), although BP Amoco was a very close second. They now each produce around 19% of Colombia's oil. In addition the FARC and ELN (the two guerrilla movements) have strong ties with European social democracy groups. Colombia's President Pastrana and his negotiators traveled to Germany to negotiate with FARC leaders there and together have an audience with the Pope. This is the same Pope, generally representing the interests of European imperialism, who gave a speech on May Day (!) calling for "justice" in the world and relief of "third world" debt.

On the face of it, it seems that--while for the Rockefeller oil empire, the main fight is certainly in the Middle East--the European capitalists are making inroads and supporting movements in Colombia and the rest of Latin America as well as Africa (as the last Challenge documented so well). That's why the U.S. will continue to fund a murderous war in Colombia while preparing for a bigger war in the Middle East.

This problem will not go away, but will deepen. The workers in Colombia face a drawn out, murderous war, which has already displaced over one million people and killed at least 100,000 with no let-up in sight! The only way out for the workers is to build the PLP with the goal of getting rid of all the imperialists with communist revolution.

To say that Russia and China are the main long-term strategic enemies of U.S. imperialism does not mean that the European imperialists are necessarily U.S. allies. If one lives in Colombia, the contradiction affecting you most immediately and horribly is the secondary one--between the U.S. and European imperialists fighting over control of that country's oil, politicians, land and state power. Of course, you're affected if the U.S. won't now be sending masses of troops to Colombia because, for the Rockefellers, IRAQ is crucial. Years of war without an end in sight will be the grim result of the current imperialist rivalry. None of them care how many workers die in their struggle for dominance.

A comrade

Red Eye Trapped in Sociobiology

Challenge may want to draw the conclusion that the Finicacial Times inadvertently reveals that communist morals are part of our make-up, but the conclusion shows the editors do not have an understanding of evolutionary biology or of the dialectics of historical materialism ("Red Eye on the News," Challenge, 5/10).

The conclusion betrays that Challenge has fallen into the trap of sociobiology and bourgeois science's attribution of human behavior as genetically determined. Sociology believes that human psychology is derived from evolution (from our biological make-up), whether it be altruism or selfishness. Both behavioral traits can be found in James Q. Wilson. The Mating Mind belongs to sociobiology. The reason, according to that book, that mates seek kindness, etc., is that those traits are favored for reproduction in sexual competition, although they bear no conscious trace to sexual competition. To believe that and to teach that is only a way of training very poor communists, communists who do not understand the sources of human behavior and communist morals.

The source of human psychology and of communist morals or bourgeois morals for that matter is in the history of social, political, economic and cultural structures and within those the relationship of classes to each other. Communist morals have nothing to do with evolution and natural selection. And sexual competition, ever since the human species came down to ground and out of the caves, is also a matter of attitudes and preferences related to the historical structures cited above.

I know it's nice to suddenly come upon something in the bourgeois press that reveals the contradictions and hypocrisies of capitalism or the validity of communist ideas. This is not it, however. In our zealousness to find such things, we must be careful that we don't expose our own ignorance of bourgeois science and of Marxism. We want to train deep-thinking Marxists and communists, not flip ones. I imagine the failure to do that in the Soviet Union in the 73 years before its downfall is the reason there are bloody few people in Russia with communist morals.

S. Agonistes

Red Eye Responds

Challenge reader S. Agonistes has written the above to say that it was a mistake for Red Eye to print a Financial Times article showing that human evolution favored kindness and altruistic behavior rather than the dog-eat-dog traits usually attributed to Darwin's theories. This reader correctly states that Marxists do not believe that human behavior is significantly determined by genes. Therefore, this article bolsters a false view.

However, many people believe that "communism can't work because Darwinism proves that humans are naturally violently competitive."

Therefore, I think it is useful to print articles which show that this interpretation of Darwinism is full of holes, even if the articles are non-Marxist.

Red Eye provides ammunition which can be used in arguments. Naturally the user should attempt to steer the discussion to Marxist conclusions. But I think it is useful to provide all sorts of toe-holds for a difficult journey.

Of course, this approach to assembling useful stories means a lot of close decisions have to be made, and this one may have been wrong. But the main question is: should Red Eye continue to print pieces which might provide a useful basis for an important discussion, even if the article is not "pure"? And if the answer is "yes," are there too many cases where non-Marxist ideas have been strengthened?

What do other readers think?

Red Eye Editor

 

Capitalism Creates Many Wars: U.S. Big Bosses’ Dogfight Over Whether Colombia or Middle East Is Primary in their War Plans

• Profits At Stake In Colombia
• Wake-Up Call For McCaffrey
• General McCaffey’s Mass Murder in Iraq Was Part of Bosses’ War Methods

Imperialist, Local Bosses’ Endless Wars Murder Millions in Africa

Drive for Profits Ravage the Congo

Middle East ‘Peace Process’ Paves Way for Imperialist War

Venezuela: Oil Price Rise Exposes Phony Chavez ‘Revolution’

Gore. Union Hacks Fight over China Trade, But Both Sides Serve Big Bosses

Racist Giuliani Down, Many More to Go

Ohio State Workers Expose Liberal Bosses BS

El Salvador: PLP Growth: Answer to Bosses’ Bombs

From Border to Cities, Organize Against Racist Murderers!

LA Teachers Fight Back

Workers of the World Write LETTERS

SEIU Is as Bad with Other Workers As It Has Been with LA Janitors

• CHALLENGE Comments

May Day: More than a March

Don’t Send the Census Form

Promises and Promises

‘These people should be killed...’

"The specter of communism is here to stay"

PLP Grows in NJ After May Day March

Less Talk More Action

---

Capitalism Creates Many Wars

U.S. Big Bosses’ Dogfight Over Whether Colombia or Middle East Is Primary in their War Plans

The dominant Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class continues its ruthless drive to consolidate power and cripple or neutralize its opposition. In recent weeks, CHALLENGE has described aspects of this process. The "Justice" Department’s suit against Microsoft, the general disciplining of the NASDAQ high-tech market, the collapse of NYC mayor Giuliani’s Senate campaign and Washington’s attempt to take over the LAPD figure among the most important.

The decline of four-star general Barry McCaffrey is yet another sign of the Rockefeller house-cleaning. In 1996, this killer retired from the U.S. Army. Since then he has been Clinton’s Drug Czar. He’s the main spokesman for the lie that disguises U.S. imperialism’s attempt to control Colombia as a crusade against illegal narcotics. However, he has a bloody history that goes all the way back to Vietnam and, most recently, to Exxon’s 1991 bloodbath for Iraqi oil.

On March 2, 1991—TWO DAYS AFTER THE CEASE-FIRE—when U.S imperialism’s victory in Iraq was a foregone conclusion, McCaffrey launched a massacre of retreating Iraqi soldiers and civilians and then lied about its military necessity. A long article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the May 22 NEW YORKER magazine exposes McCaffrey’s butchery and his cover-up. In addition, it charges McCaffrey with shooting down unarmed prisoners just before the needless "battle." While the Establishment has put McCaffrey on the hot seat for his disloyalty to the Rockefeller line on Colombia, there’s a relationship between the two.

U.S. rulers don’t blink at slaughtering millions of workers anywhere in the world to protect their profits and their political power. Suddenly they’ve dredged up a nine-year-old massacre as though it was unusual for U.S. imperialism to murder unarmed civilians wholesale. Colombia is the starting point for understanding the decision to punish McCaffrey’s enthusiasm for his slaughter in Iraq.

Profits At Stake In Colombia

Colombia is important to many U.S. bosses. The 50-year-long civil war, pitting a pro-U.S. fascist government against nationalist guerrillas, has taken a toll on U.S. businesses there. Fat profits are at stake. Exxon Mobil operates the world’s biggest export coal mine, Cerrejón, in Colombia. BP Amoco, Exxon/Rockefeller’s main oil rival within the U.S. imperialist orbit, has even more at risk. BP Amoco, Colombia’s largest foreign investor, pumps half a million barrels of Colombian crude oil a day—one fourth of the company’s worldwide production. Occidental Petroleum, controlled by Exxon’s arch-competitors, the Hunt Brothers, has lost $100 million in Colombia since 1995 because of the guerrilla war. Alabama-based Drummond Coal, which imports million of tons of coal from Colombia, seems to be putting most of its eggs in the Colombian basket. So the issue among the bosses is not WHETHER to defend these interests but HOW extensively, given U.S. imperialism’s’ need to extinguish many other fires around the world.

The BP Amoco-Occidental-Drummond Coal clique has enough to lose to want Clinton to risk major ground action in Colombia. Also, the expansion into South America by French oil rivals, particularly in Colombia and neighboring Venezuela, has given BP Amoco further incentive to champion U.S. troops.

Last February, Alabama Sen. Sessions, an obvious Drummond agent, went ballistic about U.S. failure to invade. He yelled at McCaffrey, but more for failure to carry out the dirty work than for lack of will. According to the GUARDIAN, McCaffrey had already demanded "operations that go far beyond what even the Colombians are pressing for, taking the U.S. to the brink of bankrolling an all-out war" (Aug. 22, 1999).

McCaffrey’s zeal to put U.S. ground troops in Colombia didn’t sit too well with his Rockefeller masters, for whom Colombia means a lot, but not everything. The Rockefeller interests want to keep Colombia under U.S. control, and Clinton is pushing for a $1.8 billion "aid" package, 80 percent of it military. But the lords of Exxon are determined to stop short of ground war. They’ll go for helicopters, but not for GIs. They’re afraid of another Vietnam quagmire, of stuck and dying U.S. troops, and they figure the risk far outweighs the benefit. Right now the Navy has ships positioned in and just outside the Persian Gulf. Iraqi and Saudi oil means incomparably more than Colombian coal to Exxon.

Wake-Up Call For McCaffrey

While McCaffrey was calling for ground war, Rockefeller loyalist Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering blasted troop deployment as a "crazy idea" (GUARDIAN). The big bosses tried to give McCaffrey a wake-up call when the U.S. government immediately arrested the wife of McCaffrey’s chief anti-drug military commander in Colombia, Col. Hiett. The charge: cocaine smuggling. She pled guilty, and the anti-drug missionary Colonel himself is facing money-laundering charges. But even this scandal couldn’t make McCaffrey straighten up and fly right. Last February, he took Occidental Oil’s pro-invasion position before a House drug subcommittee hearing. Occidental already pays the Colombian government to maintain an army base next to its oil refinery. But the Occidental bosses and McCaffrey don’t seem to trust this protection racket. McCaffrey has lined up on the wrong side of this squabble over the prizes to be defended by U.S. troops.

So the NEW YORKER exposé of McCaffrey’s nine-year old massacre in Iraq suddenly becomes national news, and McCaffrey faces far greater disgrace than the embarrassment of seeing his underling charged with laundering drug money. The Rockefellers expect obedience and they know how to punish when they don’t get it. McCaffrey and Rudy Giuliani have a lot in common.

Aside from clarifying Establishment policy toward Colombia, throwing McCaffrey to the wolves has a secondary value for the main rulers. Preparation for major land war to secure Rockefeller control of Iraqi oil seems to head the bosses’ priorities for the next presidency. This bloody profit grab will need some sort of hypocritical "human rights" cover. That’s one of the main lessons workers can learn from Clinton’s aerial "humanitarian" genocide for oil pipelines in the Balkans last year. McCaffrey can be presented as the "bad apple" whose elimination will provide cover for the next genocide.

But by committing wanton murder for U.S. imperialism in Iraq, McCaffrey was only "doing his job." All imperialists rule at gunpoint. The more their profits are threatened, the more ruthless they become. That’s why the BP Amoco/Occidental/Drummond bosses want ground war in Colombia, and that’s why the Exxon Mobil/Rockefellers want it in the Persian Gulf. McCaffrey’s disgrace merely shows the fate awaiting a hired hand who double-crosses the most powerful gangster on the block. The deeper lesson here for workers is the basic nature of imperialism and of all imperialists. Only tactical differences divide them. In Colombia or Iraq, their goal is profit, and their methods are always bloody. None of them is a "lesser evil." All of them must be destroyed by a communist-led working class revolution, no matter how long it takes.

General McCaffey’s Mass Murder in Iraq Was Part of Bosses’ War Methods

The mass murder engineered by U.S. imperialism in Iraq makes McCaffrey’s butchery look like a tea party. Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was the architect of the strategy of Overwhelming Force that followed U.S. ruling class policy. This policy has caused the death of over one million Iraqi civilians, and still counting.

They began with a systematic 42-day aerial and missile bombardment against a basically defenseless foe. Most targets were civilian, destroying schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters and residential areas. Towns, villages and highways were strafed indiscriminately. The first five weeks of bombardment amounted to the summary execution of 113,000 civilians, 60% children, according to the Jordanian Red Crescent Society [Red Cross]. It systematically destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure.

Over 100,000 died in the first year after the war from dehydration, dysentery, diseases and malnutrition caused by impure water, lack of effective medical assistance and debilitation from hunger, cold, shock and distress. Tens of thousands of defenseless Iraqi soldiers, cut off from food and water, were systematically killed. War criminal Schwartzkopf said immediate Iraqi military casualties exceeded 100,000.

Perhaps the most abominable atrocity occurred on what came to be called the "Highway of Death." U.S. tanks and trucks with massive shovels attached scooped up thousands of fleeing, unarmed Iraqi soldiers and civilians and buried them alive. U.S. warplanes simultaneously strafed them from the air. "It was like a turkey shoot, like shooting fish in a barrel," said one pilot. A seven-mile stretch of the highway was littered with untold thousands of indiscriminately slaughtered soldiers and civilians of all ages—Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Palestinians and Jordanians.

U.S. planes dropped napalm and fuel-air explosives on Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil wells, starting fires which polluted the entire Persian Gulf.

Cluster bombs and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs were used in Basra and other cities and towns against civilian convoys of fleeing vehicles.

The U.S.-dictated sanctions imposed on Iraq for the last nine years have prevented shipments of needed medicines, water purifiers, infant milk formula and food, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and illness and permanent injury to many thousands more.

This is the U.S. version of Hitler’s Final Solution. These champions of "human rights" who are censuring McCaffrey!

Imperialist, Local Bosses’ Endless Wars Murder Millions in Africa

Wars are raging across Africa like unquenchable fires. And like fire, it is spreading even more. The British have sent elite troops to intervene in the civil war to control the diamond mines of Sierra Leone. The armies of Uganda and Rwanda (both considered key allies of the U.S.) are at war over some border areas. The "cease-fire" announced periodically in the Congo civil war involving local nationalists and the armies of several other African countries never holds. And now the former "close comrades" ruling Eritrea and Ethiopia are warring agasin.

What’s behind this killing of hundred of thousands in Africa? First, the old European imperialists—Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal—who ruled most of Africa until the 1950s (1975 in the case of Mozambique, Angola and other Portuguese colonies) totally ruined those countries. The British ruled under the old tactic of divide and conquer and intensified ethnic divisions. The Belgian and Portuguese colonialists prevented the emergence of an educated group of Africans.

Then came the Cold War. The U.S. supported the worst kind of brutal rulers, like Mobutu in the Congo and Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, because they were virulently anti-communist and opposed the former Soviet Union. After the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the Soviet Union began to seriously Challenge U.S. power in Africa. Pro-Soviet governments emerged in Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique, some as corrupt and brutal as the ones the U.S. supported. In Angola and Mozambique, the U.S. used South Africa’s apartheid army to support anti-Soviet groups. The Cuban army was sent to help crush the anti-Soviet groups. Cuban and Angolan troops badly defeated the South African army.

But as the Soviet Union imploded, its allies in Africa either ran (like Colonel Mengistu, now exiled in Zimbabwe) or changed sides and welcomed the former imperialists. In Angola, U.S. oil companies like Gulf Oil were operating and protected by the same Cuban troops that had fought the pro-U.S./South African forces.

Today, the contradictions have changed. Now the old anti-Soviet imperialists, France, Britain and the U.S. are fighting each other for the minerals and oil of Africa. Alliances keep shifting. Their local allies change sides. For example, the rulers of Ethiopia and Eritrea were allies fighting the pro-Soviet Mengistu regime that used to rule Ethiopia (and also ruled Eritrea). Both anti-Mengistu forces fought for "national liberation." They allied themselves with the U.S. against the Soviet forces. Now, a few years after being in power, they’re fighting each other. They’re not fighting, as some believe, for a "piece of the dessert in the middle of nowhere," but rather for control of the key Red Sea coastline, crucial to the oil tankers’ maritime route.

Says the on-line Stratfor website, "When Eritrea declared independence from Ethiopia in 1993, it took the entire coastline, including both Red Sea ports—leaving Ethiopia landlocked. Although Ethiopia’s government supported independence, conflicts soon arose between the two. They initially clashed over Ethiopia’s access to Eritrea’s two ports and inequitable trade. Though smaller, Eritrea held the upper hand over its larger neighbor. The government in Asmara (Eritrea) kept the country’s market effectively closed to Ethiopian goods, while Eritrean goods could freely enter neighboring Ethiopia. Border disputes erupted into war. Small unit skirmishes led to artillery duels, trench warfare, trench warfare and air strikes." (Www.Stratfor.com/ 5/17/).

Millions are dying in Africa because of these wars for profits and control of oil and oil routes and because of their consequences: hundred of thousands are constantly starving in Ethiopia/Eritrea. The local rulers and the imperialists are the modern Attila the Hun, the scourge of the earth. Unless the cause, capitalism and imperialism, is unearthed and buried, this unending graveyard will be filled only with workers and their families. The most important thing workers and their allies must do now is to build a communist movement.

Drive for Profits Ravage the Congo

"When the bosses talk about peace, better get a helmet" wrote Bertolt Brecht, the German communist playwright/poet. After the CIA murdered Patrice Lumumba, the leftist Prime Minister of the Congo soon after it became independent of Belgium in 1960, dictator Mobutu came to power and renamed the country Zaire. Mobutu was the CIA favorite until he outlived his usefulness after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since crooked Mobuir was sent packing, "peace" was supposed to come to the Congo. But things did not turn out that way. The allies of Laurent Kabila, who led the war that ousted Mobutu, turned against him, and a new civil war started. In August 1998, the armies of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda turned against Kabila. The armies of Rwanda and Uganda are now fighting each other. In the middle of all this, the armies of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent troops to the Congo to help Kabila. These confusing horrors, created by capitalist ghouls, are devouring millions of poor workers so a small wealthy group of rulers can sit on golden toilet seats.

The imperialists say they have no vital interests in Africa. In reality the opposite is true. France, the U.S. and Britain are involved in Africa. And they support different groups at different times to go to war for their needs. Congo is rich in many important minerals, diamonds, copper, cadmium (used for military purposes), etc.

During July and August 1999, the warring forces in the Congo signed peace agreements and have broken them constantly. The last cease-fire violation was the massacre of 300 innocent people on the evenings of May 14 and 15 by the BANYAMULENGUE, the main militia group fighting Kabila. According to ABC, Madrid (5/21): "The massacre took place in the village of Katogata…in the region of the Great Lakes. ‘It began in the late afternoon and lasted till 5 A.M. the next day,’ reported a survivor….Men, women, children and old people were massacred…with guns, knives, etc. Many bodies were thrown into a river."

When the bosses and their goons talk about peace, don’t just get a helmet but organize to fight to smash them all before they kill you.

Middle East ‘Peace Process’ Paves Way for Imperialist War

The U.S.-backed Middle East "peace process" is rapidly becoming a "war process." Israel-Palestine, Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon are all heading towards more conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Barak, with the full backing of the U.S. ruling class, got elected on a promise to end the 22-year occupation of Lebanon. But the Israeli retreat from Lebanon was disrupted with the collapse of the pro-Israeli Southern Lebanon Army (SLA). Syrian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas moved into the areas vacated by the SLA’s collapse. Seizing large amounts of Israeli weapons and ammunition, and occupying territory up to the Israeli border has "added a dangerous new element of instability to the Middle East." (New York Times, 5/23)

This is not what U.S. imperialism needs. The centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy, to the degree there is one, is to add Palestinian and Syrian peace treaties with Israel to those already signed by Egypt and Jordan. They want to "stabilize" the region in preparation for a major war against Iraq to secure Exxon’s oil profits.

For years, Syria has controlled the flow of arms to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas. Syrian president Hafez al-Assad has kept them on a tight leash, strong enough to harass the Israelis but too weak to win. Now that Israel has left Lebanon, Assad faces a dilemma. If he stops the arms flow, Israel stops bleeding and has less incentive to reach a deal with Syria. But if Hezbollah launches attacks into Israel, they will "hold the governments of Beirut and Damascus, Syria, responsible…and would not rule out retaliatory strikes." (New York Times, 5/24) The Clinton gang will press for a Syrian-Israeli peace pact, but it may be preceded by confrontation.

Meanwhile, Palestinian boss Yasir Arafat has figured out that his best bet is to let Palestinian workers rebel against Israeli occupation. Palestinian workers are getting fed up with Arafat's corruption and his vast army of 50,000 cops for three million people (four times as many cops-per-person as New York, eight times as many as in LA). Teachers in the West Bank have been striking for two months, demanding their first pay raise in four years. Arafat is using the rebellions to get workers to direct their anger against someone other than him, while he presses for more concessions from Israeli bosses.

Isreal is the dominant force in the region. Its economy is five times the size of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine combined. U.S. imperialism provides Israeli rulers with the latest fighter planes and the most sophisticated electronic gear. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and the most advanced anti-missile system in the world. They are still the dominant force in the region.

Clinton huddles with Israeli and Palestinian leaders practically every month, and the U.S. pours in $5 billion in aid every year. In February, Clinton went to Syria to meet Assad only to have his every request refused. U.S. capitalists are on the horns of a dilemma as one "peace initiative" after another goes up in smoke, from Sierra Leone to Ethiopia and Eritrea to Kosovo, Colombia, Congo and many more.

U.S. imperialism has had it good since 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory in the Gulf War ushered in a decade of economic prosperity for U.S. capitalists. But as wars spread across the world, the good times may be coming to an end. But capitalism won’t die a natural death, we have to kill it. Building a mass international PLP can help turn the next Middle East bloodbath into communist revolution.

Venezuela: Oil Price Rise Exposes Phony Chavez ‘Revolution’

When Colonel Chavez took power in Venezuela 16 months ago, he promised to end the corrupt two-party system which enforces mass inequality in this oil-rich country. Chavez promised a "revolution," ended the old constitution and its parliament and formed a new constituent assembly. For a while he got mass support from workers and their allies.

But illusions in capitalist politicians, no matter how "revolutionary" or "nationalist" they sound, are dangerous for workers. Now Chavez’s own movement is in disarray. His former "close comrade," Francisco Arias Cárdenas, an ex-military officer, is running against him, accusing Chavez of "turning the revolution into a fiasco."

What happened to this "revolution"? Although oil prices are the highest in a decade, unemployment has doubled. Fifty percent of the workforce is unemployed or underemployed. Almost 90% of the population are below the official poverty line.

All this is caused by the crisis of capitalism. The rise in oil prices is not due to an increased demand but to a cutback in production by the leading oil exporters in OPEC. OPEC member Venezuela supported this cutback. The Chavez government ordered a 20% slash in domestic production. Oil wells were closed and 8,000 oil workers were laid off. When they struck against these layoffs, the "workers’ friend" Chavez broke it. He justified this attack with the phony excuse that union leaders are corrupt (which is true). But it was the workers who were victimized.

According to Business Week (March 3), the oil production cutback is the main reason behind the fall of the Gross Domestic Product and Venezuela’s recession.

Since international privately-owned oil companies are not member s of OPEC and therefore not governed by its decisions, production was cut back only done by PDVSA, the state oil company. Production was cut by 625,000 barrels a day in 1999, but today it can be increased only by 150,000 barrels since many of the closed wells cannot be reopened. Meanwhile, international oil companies operating in Venezuela are making huge profits.

So the Chavez "revolution" has attacked workers while its oil price hike has increased profits for the imperialist oil companies (so much for Chavez so-called anti-imperialism). The lesson: only workers’ revolution, led by communists, can free workers from the yoke of capitalism.

Gore, Union Hacks Fight over China Trade, But Both Sides Serve Big Bosses

The fight between Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore and the AFL-CIO over the China trade agreement is immersed in a myriad of contradictions. The AFL-CIO has endorsed Gore for President but simultaneously opposes the Clinton Administration policy on giving China permanent normal trade relations. Gore backs the Clinton policy but looks to the AFL-CIO for major support.

In general, Sweeney & Co. backs the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class but they also must retain a certain level of a base among the rank and file. They’re using their opposition to the China trade pact as a"job-saving" ploy, agreed to concession after concession to the ruling class on the job issue for decades, watching auto plant after still mill close.

Gore spoke at a UFCWUnited union gathering and was given a standing ovation despite his support for Clinton’s China policy. The New York Times reported (May 23) that "the audience appeared to be…forgiving of his pro-China position." Said one union political worker from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, "We’re not naïve….On the vast majority of issues, we’ll stand with him and he’ll stand with us."

Just as there are divisions within the ruling class, so too are there divisions among the union bosses, depending on their onstituencies. The Teamsters, Steelworkers’ and Autoworkers’ unions are vocal in their opposition to the China Trade Pact, and to some extent Gore, while others –like the UFCW—still support Gore. The UAW is "hinting" they might switch from Gore to Ralph Nader, who is financed by racist textile billionaire Milliken. This billionaire also finances Reform Party Presidential candidate Pat "I-Love-Hitler" Buchanan. Hoffa’s Teamsters are flirting with supporting Buchanan.

However, one thing is certain: the Democratic Party and Sweeney & Co. are on the same side when it comes to serving capitalism and screwing the workers. Just as with NAFTA (supported by Clinton-Gore and opposed by the AFL-CIO), the labor honchos –for the most part--and the Rockefeller-dominated Democratic Party will continue to remain thick as thieves.

Temporarily, they have opposing positions on the China Trade issue. But in the final analysis, both their positions serve U.S. imperialism. Gore is fighting to open up China for US imperialism rather than allow the Japanese and Europeans to be the main investors there. By pushing anti-Chinese sentiment and anti-communism (even though China is not communist but capitalist), the unions are really building deadly nationalism, which serves to tie workers to U.S. imperialism.

Racist Giuliani Down, Many More to Go

"There is joy from Flatbush to Harlem to the South Bronx" a black worker said when he heard about Mayor Giuliani’s fall. But, as we reported in last week’s CHALLENGE, workers have to temper that joy with the reality that Giuliani’s foes not only include anti-racist workers and youth, but also sections of the ruling class that saw him serve the wrong masters. Let’s take a look at one of those masters Giuliani served.

All of Giuliani’s major policies as NYC mayor came from his masters at the Manhattan Institute (MI). The latter’s founding funders included both Rockefeller’s Chase Bank and it’s rival Citicorp. This tactical alliance lasted through Giuliani’s first term. Each group of bosses wanted drastic reductions in NYC social services and a corresponding increase in police terror. Meanwhile, they wanted to pump up real estate values, profit from tourism and attract corporate investment.

The MI’s expertise in anti-working class savagery long pre-dates Giuliani’s arrival in City Hall. Rudolph/Adolf merely picked up the baton:

• In 1984, the MI funded the publication of Losing Ground, the racist tract by Harvard’s Charles Murray that "many people believe begat welfare reform" [i.e., fascist Workfare—Ed.] (New York Times, 5/12/97). CHALLENGE readers may remember Murray as the co-author of the viciously racist The Bell Curve. This modernized Nazi scribbling pushed the Big Lie about "genetic" causes to "explain" the difference in IQ scores between black and white children and called for dumping affirmative action policies. Shortly after the book’s 1994 publication, the MI-sponsored a luncheon in Murray’s honor (www.accuracy.org).

• By 1990, the MI was already promoting "theories" about crime and "quality of life," which Giuliani soon advanced in his first racist mayoral campaign in 1993. These ideas led to the infamous "zero tolerance" policy pursued by Giuliani’s first police commissioner, William Bratton.

• The MI provided the intellectual ammunition for Giuliani’s attacks against open admissions at New York’s City University and also laid out the justification for privatizing NYC hospitals. According to the New York Times, it is the "brains" behind Giuliani’s policies "…on such issues as the city’s tax structure, economic development, education policy, policing and quality of life." (5/12/97).

• Giuliani proudly proclaims his respect for his racist mentors at the MI. He told the New York Times that he had found [the MI publication—Ed.] City Journal "enormously helpful. I’ve read it for years. It produces…very good ideas" (5/12/97).

Now the Rockefellers have decided on a tactical approach different from the open racism of Giuliani and the MI. But workers shouldn’t make the deadly error of falling for the next "lesser evil" liberal substitute. As previous CHALLENGE articles have shown, for example, Rockefeller-backed "community policing" is hardly a "kinder, gentler" form of bosses’ dictatorship than Giuliani’s "zero tolerance" terror. "Community policing" will mean even more arrests, more long jail sentences and more violence directed against workers and working class youth in particular. In the last analysis, terror is always the name of the game the rulers must play to hold power over us.

Ohio State Workers Expose Liberal Bosses BS

COLUMBUS, OHIO, May 22, 2000 — Two thousand workers from CWA (Communications Workers of America) Local 4501 just tentatively concluded a three-week strike against the bosses that run the Ohio State University and OSU Hospitals here. OSU is one of the country’s largest universities, employing thousands workers. Thanks to the racist sexist capitalist system, a disproportionate number of black and women workers are funneled into the lowest-paying jobs. The strikers included janitors, maintenance workers, housekeepers, dietary workers, bus drivers and other categories and were led by liberal, Democratic Party sellouts. However, several lessons can be learned from this strike:

• The workers are beginning to see through the union’s phony leadership. It was militant workers who pushed for a $2 across-the-board raise for everyone rather than settle for a 4% increase.

• The workers saw the need for militant multiracial unity of workers, students and other allies to counter the bosses’ tools. Many students occupied Bricker Hall (the administration building) to show support for the strikers. Much of the student leadership came from minority student groups. The university bosses tried their best to encourage students to scab and were successful to a certain degree.

• Workers and students saw how the liberal university bosses, who blather about "diversity," really operate. They wanted the union to agree to less of a raise for the hospital workers. Surprise, surprise, these workers are mainly women and minority and are some of the lowest-paid on campus. Rank-and-file union militants (many of whom are women and minority) vocally opposed this move. To the liberal bosses "diversity" means inviting liberal speakers to hawk their books on campus while simultaneously trying to enforce a racist and sexist wage scale.

• All the contradictions of capitalism can be seen inside the university. Liberal President Kirwan makes $275,000 per year plus extras. The salary of is second in command, Provost Ed Ray, rose from $177,000 last year to $219,000 this year (a 24% hike). This pattern saturates Kirwan's administration. Like the big capitalist bosses in the larger society, they reward themselves handsomely while crying budget constraints when poorly-paid workers try to make ends meet.

The liberal university bosses threatened to punish professors who cancelled classes out of support for the strikers. They took out full-page ads in the student paper to get students to report any professor who did not "fulfill obligations". So much for academic freedom and freedom of speech. Shades of Hitler!

Area Party members and friends must be better organized, bolder and more ready to provide communist leadership to workers and students. We must ensure that the most advanced workers see the larger picture. Success cannot be measured in how much we win from the bosses economically. We will never win enough to have a decent life under capitalism. Winning is getting more workers to see the need to destroy capitalism with communist revolution if we are to create a society in which workers share all the fruits of their labors.

El Salvador: PLP Growth: Answer to Bosses’ Bombs

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—"When the bosses talk of peace, get ready for war." So began the discussion in a new Party club of university students.

Last May 10 this slogan described events here exactly. Thousands of bombs stored by the bosses’ army in the center of San Salvador exploded in the middle of the night. The military claimed a grenade went off accidentally, causing the explosion. It damaged and destroyed the homes of 800 workers who live in the neighborhoods near the barracks. Three people died and dozens were injured. Others remain exposed to the bad weather. Sonia Vilma Sanchez, 40, mother of three, was the first to die.

The Defense Minister said there are seven more arsenals located here, without mentioning those hidden in the rest of the country.

"In peacetime, why do they need to keep huge quantities of weapons?" asked a student. Because they are part of the war against the working class to enforce the bosses’ profit system of poverty and to put down workers’ rebellions, as well as potential staging grounds for U.S. imperialist adventures (Nicaragua). The armed forces torture and murder.

Workers shouldn’t forget this explosion. We shouldn’t believe fairy tales that the rulers’ army is for "democracy and peace" and will cease its attacks on workers and students.

Now more than ever we need to organize PLP clubs, build the understanding that capitalism won’t fall by itself, that millions of workers need to fight for a new communist society.

PLP is the working class’s only weapon to destroy the ruling class by armed revolution. This is the only guarantee of a successful communist revolution and the building of a society that produces for workers’ needs.

This group of students has read and studied CHALLENGE for some time. But the latest events in El Salvador, the possibility of imperialist war, and the economic crisis of world capitalism, spurred three of these youth to take the important step of joining PLP.

On this occasion, these youth declared:

"I’m willing to fight for the communist cause no matter what the consequences."

"As long as Marxist ideas continue to be the ideas of PLP, I will be in the Party and fight for them."

"We must continue fighting to organize many more of our class brothers and sisters. We have to build more party clubs. That’s our main job."

From Border to Cities, Organize Against Racist Murderers!

LOS ANGELES, CA—Last Sunday, May 20, another undocumented immigrant worker was shot to death in Brownsville, Texas by the racist Migra (Immigration Service). The 25-year-old Mexican youth committed the "crime" of wanting to find a job to survive and to help his family. Instead he found death at the hands of the fascist policy of both Clinton and the "shoot-to-kill" Barnett brothers of "shoot to kill."

This worker’s death can be added to others in Sasabe, Arizona. On May 18, four youth were ambushed and shot by two racists on horseback armed with high-powered rifles. According to Miguel A. Palofox, survivor of the shooting, the other four fell before him and when he regained consciousness , bleeding, the other four bodies were nowhere to be found. According to these fascist vigilantes, this is only the beginning since, according to the newspaper LA REFORMA of Mexico, "in a meeting of racists in the border town of Sierra Vista, where ranchers, the Ku Klux Klan and Glen Spence of Voice of Citizens Together participated, the next step will be to put anti-personnel mines in the area."

Twenty-five years ago in Douglas, Arizona, George Hannagan stopped a group of undocumented workers crossing the border at gunpoint. He tied them up and, before turning them over to the Migra, burned their feet.

In the last five years Operation Gatekeeper, under the Clinton Administration, has killed more than 1,500 workers. This has forced many desperate workers to try to cross through these ranches of racism and death. These racist executions of black and Latino workers, both at the border as well as by the police in the big U.S. cities like LA, Chicago and New York are part of the growth of fascist terror to super-exploit the working class. These racist vigilantes are part of a movement against the liberal bosses. But the liberal fascist rulers are #1 in racist murder!

While the fascist vigilantes in Arizona murdered undocumented immigrants, the fascist LA County Sheriffs murdered 34-year-old Richard Garcia in East LA on May 20, just a few blocks from where they murdered Ricardo Close a year ago. They shot and killed Richard in front of his sister, brother and mother who had just asked the police to help him because he was depressed. Richard had had a small fight with his brother and was running away. The cops never told Richard to stop running. They just shot him, both family members and other witnesses said. PLP members have visited the family to express our anger and offered to help organize a demonstration. Our offer was gratefully received and we were invited back.

PLP is urging workers in unions and students in campus organizations to plan demonstrations and take up the fight against these fascist attacks and to join the long-term fight against this fascist system that rules through terror, lies and exploitation!

LA Teachers Fight Back

LOS ANGELES, Ca, May 23—About 6,000 teachers demonstrated today at the school board for a wage increase and against the board’s divisive merit pay proposal, which would tie pay increases to students’ test scores. They also demanded the right to grieve dirty, ill-equipped classrooms. A group of teachers passed out PLP leaflets attacking the new school plans like peer review, showing that this will be used to guarantee the retention of teachers who are loyal to this racist system. This system is attacking the students every day while it prepares more oil wars. Our leaflet called on teachers to unite with parents and students to help students fight to learn and learn to fight this racist capitalist system.

(Full story next week.)

Workers of the World Write LETTERS

SEIU Is as Bad with Other Workers As It Has Been with LA Janitors

I read with interest the May 24 CHALLENGE interviews with some of the striking janitors in Los Angeles and their criticism of SEIU (Service Employees International Union).

I was a member of this union in Western Pennsylvania for a number of years. I was local President, shop steward and was one of the rank and file chosen to re-write the constitution after the Sweeney Trusteeship thing.

Firstly, I can honestly say I was used by that union’s head honcho, who was primarily interested in feathering her own nest and later went on to a higher-paying position. Most of the workers were so disgusted with this official and the union’s inaction in helping with their problems that often very few would show up at meetings. This led to cynicism. But the blame rests with the union leadership, who operate in a top-down dictatorial fashion.

When I would go to Harrisburg with other workers once a month to work on the new constitution, hot shots from the top would be there to monitor us and usually dictate what they wanted in that constitution. At night we would sit in our hotel rooms and talk about what a farce the whole thing was, how we were merely puppets. After the constitution was re-written, nothing changed.

So I have seen the same sort of corruption and sellout leadership as those janitors. Still, I have worked at non-union jobs and it is better to have some kind of union. At least, you have some protection from the bosses. At a non-union job, I witnessed people terminated for no reason and replaced with a friend of the bosses.

But I still wonder what workers' power will mean, how workers will have more control under communism at the workplace. Will they have the right to strike if they feel important issues are being ignored on their jobs?

Finally, I was at my first May Day march on May 6, and felt a sense of hope for turning this mess around and getting rid of this rotten killing machine called capitalism.

Grandmother Jones

CHALLENGE COMMENTS: Grandmother Jones raises some interesting points: (1) working in a union place is better than not having a union, even though the union hacks are so rotten; (2) would workers be able to strike under communism if their grievances on the job were not met. What do our readers think?

May Day: More than a March

For me the bus ride to Washington, D.C. is as exciting as the May Day march itself. It's wonderful to hear people speak about their lives, especially young people. This year I was moved when one fellow apologized for his sexist actions, and one woman, in turn, was self-critical about feeding into his behavior. The incident reminded me that the bus ride represents communism today in that people get closer through struggle, collectivity and good leadership. But what motivated me to write this letter was a deep appreciation of how the Progressive Labor Party learns from history, applies lessons to current struggles and provides a realistic vision for our future—like no other organization.

Many of us have sat on union-sponsored buses where no one is encouraged to speak. The implication is that the union leaders have all the answers. They are never self-critical or ask the masses to evaluate a demonstration. When do they talk about the need for unity with other unions or immigrant workers? And forget about making the link to working class history or rebuilding all society! Only our party takes the noble lessons of the Paris Commune, the story of the first May Day, the Russian and Chinese revolutions—all spoken of on the bus. We marchers are prepared with a tangible sense that the red flag we carry came from the hands of millions of other workers.

Other so-called "leaders" tell us, "look to a higher power; just live one day at a time." On the contrary, we know that our days are welded to the years where our brothers and sisters tried to build communism. The PL videos on welfare and education seen on the bus show how our power can only come from relying on workers alongside us. It is we who must lead, recruit and make plans for tomorrow based on today's lessons.

We asked ourselves on the bus, what is communism? No better time than in a group discussion to bring out our questions about the collectivity the bosses have taught us to fear. This year one young man who sold CHALLENGE on the march talked about how he was taunted, "Don't you know you could die for communism?" We talked about the Vietnam Syndrome that showed the world how fighting for the dollar bill was defeated by communist heroism.

All this is to say that we often take for granted the unbeatable methods of dialectics by which our Party learns from the past and gives to the present and our future. Confidence in the working class is renewed on the May Day buses but equally so is our commitment to PLP.

A New Jersey Comrade

Don’t Send the Census Form

"Did you receive your Census form?" I asked my friend as I filled my tank at the gas station. "I didn't send it in," I continued "Why should I designate race? We're all equal. We all need good services in Oakland."

"You're so right" he replied. I said, "Under capitalism the fascist institutions of the State serving the ruling class—like the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and the INS (Immigration Service)—and use the census information to tighten control on workers in the U.S. police state."

"It could be different," my friend said. "Yes, under communism we would use the census to provide equality for all workers," I said. "Check out our newspaper CHALLENGE. We just had our May Day march!" "It’s even in Spanish," my friend replied.

"It could even be in Chinese if you would write us a story" (my friend came to the U.S. from Taiwan). "I’ll check it out," he said.

"There’s more to come," I replied. "See you next time!"

Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE.

Oakland Comrade

Promises and Promises

The Presidential elections in the Dominican Republic replaced talk about baseball for a while among Dominican immigrants here in New York City. Opinions were divided but most people wanted a change in government and hoped that the social-democratic Dominican "Revolutionary" Party would win and "improve conditions" among poor people back home.

Hipólito Mejía, an agricultural businessman, won in the first election round, equaling the combined total of Danilo Medina, the candidate of the current ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) and of 94-year-old Joaquín Balaguer (president several times in the past).

The Hipólito Mejía victory was a rejection of the current government led by the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD). The PLD won four years ago, "promising" it would modernize the country and improve the lot of working people. The PLD considered itself a "national liberation" party and a cadre organization (you couldn’t just sign up but had to prove yourself first). But as soon as the PLD came to power, it adopted free market reforms (neo-liberalism), privatizing many state-owned enterprises. These policies enriched local and foreign investors and the top officials of the PLD While the Dominican economy grew by 8% a year, the highest in Latin America, nothing trickled down to the masses. So the rich got richer and poor got even poorer.

Now people have the illusion the new President will funnel some of this growth to the masses. But that’s not the way capitalism works, no matter who’s elected. In the past very little trickled down; now almost nothing does. The PRD, the new president’s Party, was in power twice between 1978 and 1986. Then corruption was rampant, including universal repression of workers and youth. In early 1981, a mass rebellion erupted against the PRD, opposing IMF austerity "reforms," making the poor even poorer. The PRD sent in the Army to crush the rebellions, murdering hundreds.

Workers and their allies do not understand that the state is the dictatorship of the capitalist class against workers and their allies. The phony left in the Dominican Republic, that used to be rather large, contributes to the illusion that something can be gained from lesser evil politicians. But the fact is no President will better conditions for the working class because all parties follow capitalism’s profit system. Elections in the Dominican Republic are mainly a fight between rival sections of the ruling class over which one will control the state, and nowadays which imperialist power to serve (the U.S. or the Europeans). Workers end up losing no matter who’s elected. Nothing less than a communist party, as PLP is, can win workers to this understanding.

Juan Pueblo

‘These people should be killed...’

....So says Professor Peter Singer talking about children with defects.

I found out a week before his visit that this Nazi-like professor from Princeton would be speaking at my university. In that week I took final exams (I'm still a student and also working full-time), wrote a flyer (with my oldest sister’s help), passed out about 550 flyers on campus (aided by a multi-racial group of 13 co-workers, family members and friends), and raised consciousness of the true issues at the event itself.

When I first heard about this event, with little time to prepare, a co-worker volunteered to get more information from the Internet for the flyer opposing Singer's views. He also enthusiastically helped distribute the flyer.

One of my co-workers brought three family members to the protest. She had been debating on whether to come, not seeing the difference one person would make. When I explained the dangers of pacifism, she agreed to participate. She later paid for more copies of the flyer after we ran out during the protest.

About 500 people came and everyone wanted to read our flyer. After Singer's speech, I attacked him, explaining that his ideas would lead to death for the poor, while wealthy families with disabled children can pay for help. Then many others attacked his ideas.

As a PLP member I was able to get input from other comrades. Sometimes I can see "a wrong" but have trouble expressing the "why." Our ability to ask questions openly within the Party without feeling one is dumb is crucial and very supportive.

The following are excerpts of the flyer distributed at Cal State University, Bakersfield:

"Who is Worthy of Life?

According to Peter Singer, some lives are not worth living. Children with Downs' Syndrome, mental retardation, disabilities, infants born with birth defects, etc., should be non-voluntarily killed since they, "are not rational and self-conscious and so not persons," as he explains in his book Practical Ethics. This is only a part of Singer's dangerous agenda, which Hitler named and practiced as eugenics.

Lies like these are used for rationing services for the poor. If a person is less worthy of life, why continue to provide tax dollars to help them live healthy lives? If services are cut, those affected the most will be minorities and poor whites. Some say, "If you don't like his ideas, don't go hear him speak." [But] if you don't show opposition whenever a Nazi racist like Singer comes to talk, then you are allowing others to listen and be won over to their ideas. You are allowing fascism to grow.

Human life is not valued by this system. There are millions of homeless in the U.S., millions more starving across the world, but in March 1989 The Wall Street Journal described overproduction in many U.S. industries. As a result, [tens of thousands] were laid off. Overproduction does not mean more was produced than was needed. It means more was produced than could be sold for profit. We have the capacity to feed and house the entire homeless and hungry population, but this would not bring profits to the capitalist system. Greed runs this system, not respect for human life.

If there were a God out there, He would want a better system for us. A system that does not live and survive off everything bad and evil in human beings. He would want us to rise up and create a society where we live in equality, where everyone gets according to need; a system where nobody is forced to work in order to eat, but instead is motivated by their commitment to their children, to their community, and to the betterment of their collective society. A system where human beings are valued not because of the worth of their production, but simply because of the worth as a HUMAN BEING.

Singer and his ideas are dangerous. They reflect the worst of a bloody profit system.

[Editor’s Note: "That better system" described in the above leaflet is called communism, which is what we in PLP fight for. But we agree with Prof. Singer that "...people should be killed," but not the ones he mentioned....]

"The specter of communism is here to stay"

The specter of communism is here to stay. We saw it and felt it in our May Day march in Washington D.C. Years ago Karl Marx said, "Communism is already acknowledged by the bosses’ power to be itself a power among the working class." An example of this was seeing Asian, Latin, black and white young people taking leadership on the march.

Our youth are sick and tired of this capitalist system which cannot provide a community without drugs, an educational system which can't teach solidarity and sharing and streets without police brutality. That's why many youngsters decide to pick up the red flag of communism and march on May Day with PLP.

When I was marching. I saw this young black man carrying the bullhorn during the whole march. It was a hot, sunny day, but it didn't stop the comrade who was teaching English to an Hispanic woman comrade who only spoke Spanish. This is communism taking power.

A New York City Worker

PLP Grows in NJ After May Day March

In the wake of a better May Day effort, two more people have joined our workers’ club. In addition, two friends of the Party attended our last club meeting. We discussed what it means to be a member of PLP, and its role in the current period.

A new member described the importance of an organization like PLP. He said there’s no other organization like our Party because we’re not afraid to speak the truth. Another comrade, a member for a few years, said for a long time he didn’t agree with communism. Now he sees the need for it, but because of family problems, he is limited in what he can do. But this comrade has taken steps to secure his family situation and, in the long run, to contribute more to the Party’s work. One of our friends, an ex-member, said the May Day march had helped bring him back around the Party.

Our club is beginning a dialectics class for new and newer members. We need to constantly return to the study of dialectical materialism. Dialectics can teach how to do work inside mass organizations. This work has posed lots of barriers for our Party, but is also the key to our advancement during this difficult and complex historical period.

All in all, our club members and friends have more confidence in the Party. We also see more clearly the growth of war and fascism. If we advance our line more strongly in the mass organizations, the working class will respond positively and our Party will grow.

Garden State Red

Less Talk More Action

In response to NYC comrade's letter in CHALLENGE (5/24), I agree—the decline in May Day numbers can't be ignored. The working class is a cautious bunch, with good reason. They’ve been told lies all their lives. Believing the lies has caused disastrous results for them. As the old song says, "You're telling me all the things your gonna do for me. Well, I ain't blind and I don't like what I think I see." If the Party's plan is to take our revolutionary message to the streets, we'd better be able to withstand the scrutiny of the working class.

What distinguishes us from other political organizations? You can be sure that the working class is asking this question about PLP. We'd better have something substantial to offer them rather than idle talk about "all the things we're gonna do for them."

The Party is not a social club. Building ties with people is important, but building people’s commitment to communist revolution is more effective in the long run. We can't be just a bunch of rocks heating up in the sun. We'd better be a Party of hatching communist revolutionaries. We have to be involved in class struggle daily whether it's within our collectives, on the job or while working in mass organizations. We must learn by practice and teach others by example how to build the Party for revolution. It isn't our job to help people climb social ladders as some reformist organizations do, but to help people climb out of the hold of the capitalist slave ships, which are sinking, and organize a mutiny.

California Comrade