Katrina, Racism and the Need for Communist Revolution

Anti-Racists Hold Line vs. Fascist Minuteman

a href="#New Liberal Think-Tank Pushes Rulers’ War Aims">"ew Liberal Think-Tank Pushes Rulers’ War Aims

• Want More Lethal Boots On The Ground
• Liberal Pols Need Draft But Afraid To Say So
• a href="#‘Humanitarianism’ Masks War Agenda">‘H"manitarianism’ Masks War Agenda

a href="#Court’s Schools Decision: Racism Rules">"ourt’s Schools Decision: Racism Rules

Fight Over Pensions, Union Rules Becomes School for Communism

Communist Ideas Inspire the Working Class At Oaxaca Mega March

NJ Human/Legal Services Workers Fight Attacks on Immigrants

Boeing and Subcontractor Workers, Unite! The Nuts and Bolts of Industrial Fascism

Mexico: Fired Delphi Workers Fight for Severance Pay

a href="#As Fascist Auto Contracts Loom . . .Two-tier Chickens Come Home to Roost…">"s Fascist Auto Contracts Loom . . .Two-tier Chickens Come Home to Roost…

a href="#Iraq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War">"raq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War

a href="#Colombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks">"olombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks

a href="#Chile: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors">Ch"le: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors

LETTERS

Nixonite Feared SDS/PLP in 1970 Postal Strike

a href="#Film Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children">Fi"m Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children

Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Felt on Factory Floor

REDEYE

• US Iraq plan: Leave without leaving
• Loan-shark profits now go to big biz
• Soldier to vet — a disaster journey
• CIA bad old days? US today is worse
• Roosevelt task: rescue US capitalism
• ‘Nothing to live for,’ so Russians drink
• Fine art of government hypocrisy
• Child labor ‘deep-rooted’ in China now

a href="#PL History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp">"L History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp

a href="#Racist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges">"acist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges

PLP Promotes Communist Politics at Social Forum

a href="#Why Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?">Wh" Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?

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Katrina, Racism and the Need for Communist Revolution

Nearly two years have passed since August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina exposed the vicious racism of U.S. capitalism to the world. Today, New Orleans’ population is barely more than half what it was, and 213,000 black workers and their families have been unable to return. Thousands of New Orleanians live in gutted-out houses with no electricity and must rely on volunteers for food. Death rates have risen 47%, due to the closing of hospitals and the ciy’s unhealthy conditions. There are no plans to rebuild the lower Ninth Ward, previously home to 20,000 working-class black people, among those the ruling class and their government left to die. Those residents had weak, low, non-maintained, non-functioning levees which easily flooded, while rich neighborhoods, the French Quarter, commercial shipping and the business district were protected with high, strong levees that worked.

The New Orleans Housing Authority and HUD have spent tens of millions of dollars tearing down 5,100 structurally sound public-housing apartments. Fewer than 700 of the 109,000 families who applied for federal housing assistance have received it, even though Louisiana received $10 billion in federal money.

In Biloxi, Mississippi, the government quickly aided the casinos, but the working class is still waiting.

These horror stories and others show that capitalism is about profits, not about serving the people. Local businessmen recruited tens of thousands of migrant workers to the Gulf Coast, promising good wages and working conditions. Instead, these mostly Latino workers are living out of cars or in tent cities. As usual, the rulers have attempted to pit black and Latino workers ("old slaves and new slaves") against each other.

The ruling class has used Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath to build racism in other ways as well. Most people remember the pictures of white families "finding food" and black families "looting" after the storm hit, the exaggerated stories of crime, and the utter disregard for basic human needs of mostly black families in the Superdome and Convention Center. There were also the shocking stories of black flood victims, denied access at gunpoint, to bridges out of the city. Recently, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes have taken that racism a step further, passing ordinances to keep black people from building houses there. (Much of this information is from Bill Quigley, in Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley02262007.html)

The capitalist leaders, from the mayor to the governor to the president, who refused to lift a finger to evacuate the more than 100,000 trapped black workers from the city, are still doing nothing. Working-class students, church and union members and others, however, have poured into New Orleans to offer what assistance they can. While Hurricane Katrina revealed the vicious racist core of the capitalist system and exposed U.S. bosses and politicians as merciless killers, it also showed the heart and soul of the working class and its potential for unity. This summer, PLP will again go to New Orleans — to volunteer, yes, but also to introduce the idea of communist revolution. Those affected by the ravages of capitalism in New Orleans have much to gain from joining PLP and helping to destroy the capitalist system. In its place, the working class will build an egalitarian communist society, in which all contribute what they can and receive what they need.

Glimmers of a communist future have shown themselves in the aftermath of Katrina. A multi-racial group of shipbuilders, led by black workers, struck last March in Pascagoula, Mississippi, against the warmaker Northrop-Grumman with some demands based on compensation for post-Katrina government neglect. Many workers in New Orleans selflessly risked their lives to rescue relatives, neighbors and strangers. They shared the meager provisions they had. Armed black youth organized society based on need. They provided protection and resisted threats and attacks from cops. Workers outside the New Orleans area raised money, collected needed items and organized relief. Many traveled to the devastated area to work in shelters, tend to the sick and evacuate people to hospitals. In a consciously anti-racist way, many sought out the most neglected populations and provided whatever help they could. This summer in New Orleans CHALLENGE readers and friends have an opportunity to be part of this positive movement. Join Us!

Anti-Racists Hold Line vs. Fascist Minuteman

LOS ANGELES, CA, June 23 — Coming on the heels of the police attack on pro-immigrant protestors at MacArthur Park, over 500 people — black, Latino and white — confronted the Minutemen and one of their leaders, Ted Hayes, in South Central LA (historically a black neighborhood, with more Latinos moving in).

Hayes, who is black, has drawn much publicity telling black workers that immigrants are to blame for high black unemployment, trying to split the two groups. But the large turnout of black workers and youth at today’s demonstration shows that many workers are rejecting these fascist lies. PL’ers came with CHALLENGES, leaflets, red flags and posters. As one youth who sold CHALLENGE said, "The bosses are trying to divide us, but today the multi-racial unity of the working class was stronger."

The Minutemen led a procession of about 50-75 anti-immigrant demonstrators along half of Crenshaw Blvd, headed for Leimert Park. The 500 anti-racists took the other half. Our communist leaflets and CHALLENGES were eagerly grabbed. We denounced the police for protecting the racist Minuteklan, blamed capitalism as the source of the racist attacks on the working class and expanding war, and called for communist revolution by a united working class to end these evils.

Residents were angered when they saw a cordon of cops protecting the Minuteklan, Hayes and a handful of black supporters. Many area residents, especially black workers and youth, joined the protest. Some yelled, "Ted Hayes, you’re an Uncle Tom." When we chanted, "Leimert, MacArthur Park, New Orleans, Smash the racist War Machine!" many joined the chant.

The cops said if we didn’t stop using the bullhorn, they would arrest us. Then a group of black youth, with their fists in the air, took the bullhorn and yelled "F#@+ the Police." Many joined in chants of "Racism is the bosses’ tool. We won’t be divided and we won’t be fooled!" Residents cheered when someone said, "If the police weren’t here, the Minutemen wouldn’t last two minutes."

When the racist filth arrived at the park entrance with a permit to rally, black, white and Latino workers blocked them. Many locked arms and yelled, "Hold the line" to make it clear to the Minutemen and the cops alike that they would fight against the racists entering the park. The cops put on their riot gear. More people joined the line. Their anger was clear, so the cops decided not to clash with the multi-racial crowd, especially in the wake of the May 1 police attack on people in MacArthur Park.

The Minutmen were at a corner of the street surrounded by their cop protectors for two hours while workers and youth chanted and jeered them and the cops. Hayes used his sound system to attack the black workers demonstrating against him, calling them racist names — proving that racism against immigrants and against black workers are all part of the Minuteklan — angering the crowd even more.

At this march, PL’ers re-connected with some former co-workers and friends. This opens up many opportunities for the Party and reflects long-term work in fighting racist capitalism.

U.S. imperialism finds its empire not only in decline but being challenged by rising rival imperialists. But the agenda of the Minutemen and Hayes is secondary to the liberals’ agenda of winning black and Latino working-class youth to nationalism, patriotism (loyalty to the rulers) and support for imperialist war. The liberal bosses, fronted by the likes of Clinton, Obama and Villaraigosa, have a life-and-death need to rely on these very same working-class youth and workers in the war industry and in the military that the Minutemen are attacking. They need a lot more cannon fodder for their wider wars. Therefore, the big imperialists want to pass the Dream Act (funneling immigrant youth into the military, promising citizenship) as a first step to instituting the "national service" draft for all youth.

Only revolution for communism, not reform, will defeat the fascists, big and little, and put the united working class in power. J

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Hillary Joins Killers Perry, Albright at Opening

Liberal imperialists have just launched a new think-tank that makes the main issue in the 2008 presidential election rebuilding the U.S. military for deadlier conflicts. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), headed by war criminals William Perry and Madeleine Albright, seeks "to develop strong, pragmatic, and principled national security and defense policies that promote and protect American interests and values."

In Washington on June 27, White House hopeful Hillary Clinton, praising hosts Perry and Albright, who had helped her husband bomb Bosnian, Serbian, and Iraqi civilians, delivered the center’s inaugural address. Some view the CNAS as a shadow policy apparatus for Hillary. But it supports no single candidate, compelling them all to address the primary task of U.S. rulers, preparing for wars beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

Want More Lethal Boots On The Ground

In her speech, Clinton lauded the authors of a 56-page CNAS study, "Shaping U.S. Ground Forces for the Future: Getting Expansion Right." Calling for an immediate addition of 100,000 foot soldiers to the Army and Marines, it says, "the U.S. military must become a truly ‘full-spectrum force,’ as proficient in irregular operations as it is in conventional war fighting." The Pentagon needs to get much better at combating underground Islamist insurgents throughout the Middle East, says the CNAS.

Meanwhile, the U.S. brass must plan for an eventual great-power clash with China, Russia, India or Europe — or some combination thereof. One crucial mission the report identifies is invading the U.S. empire’s crumbling cornerstone, Saudi Arabia, remarking, "deploying U.S. forces to operate in regions where it has vital interests." As noted in the liberals’ 1979 Carter Doctrine, "vital interests" means U.S. oil companies’ access to Mid-East crude.

Liberal Pols Need Draft But Afraid To Say So

But U.S. rulers face a quandary at home as stark as the challenges from foreign rivals: where to get the troops? The CNAS understands that candidates have to simultaneously demand and soft-sell militarization. "While the U.S. military has been mobilized since September 11, 2001, the nation has not. Perhaps the most consequential step the next president could take would be a Kennedy-esque call for all Americans to contribute in some way to the nation’s security, including by serving in the military."

After Vietnam, it has been hard to attract recruits to U.S. imperialism’s war machine, other than committed racists and the desperate poor. Mere mention of a draft (to which the rulers will ultimately resort) would torpedo any candidate. John Kerry’s "national service" plank helped doom his 2004 bid. The CNAS hopes a second 9/11 will answer its prayers. Yet another paper from this fledging, but prolific, policy factory, "After an Attack: Preparing Citizens for Bioterrorism," hopes terrorists will provide another chance to put the nation on a war footing.

At the CNAS kick-off, Clinton reiterated the liberal imperialists’ calls for "strategic redeployment" from Iraq, that is, a regrouping for a massive Mid-East assault to counter "looming challenges in the region." Decrying the failed Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld "go-it-alone" approach, she hailed "strong alliances that can apply military force." To build popular, international support for U.S. "moral authority" to lead invading coalitions, Clinton suggested humanitarian fig leaves. Disaster relief efforts, and action against genocide, human rights abuses, and even global warming, she said, could justify to the world, and thus ensure the success of, future U.S. overseas military adventures. Hillary welcomed the Pentagon’s recently-created Africa Command, which uses the plight of Darfurians and others to legitimize U.S. military presence in the Horn of Africa, a strategic world oil-shipping choke point.

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Clinton echoed the sentiments of another new think-tank piece, "America and the Use of Force: Sources of Legitimacy" from the liberal Brookings Institution. Written by Brookings fellow Michael O’Hanlon, who is also a CNAS adviser, and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment, it laments that, "In the wake of the Iraq war, the United States is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. [F]or it is questionable whether the United States can operate effectively over the long term without the moral support and approval of the democratic world."

Acknowledging that the United States may resort to military action more, not less, often in the future, it describes the "paralysis" of the United Nations Security Council, in which U.S. adversaries China, Russia and France brandish vetoes. The paper sees charity work as U.S. imperialism’s saving smokescreen. "Violence and chaos in Cuba following the death of Castro could prompt a US-led international intervention both to avert a humanitarian disaster and to ensure a desirable transition from the US point of view."

For global war, it envisions "creating a Concert of Democracies" that includes NATO and other possible allies, of varying might and loyalty, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. O’Hanlon and Kagan conclude, "There is an effective and viable alternative to multi-lateral paralysis and unilateral action — working with our democratic partners in NATO and around the world to meet and defeat the global challenges of our age."

Clinton is not alone in embracing the rulers’ ever-expanding war agenda. CHALLENGE has written of Obama’s true-blue imperialism. Future articles will deal with pro-war liberals like Edwards, Richardson and Al Gore. As they try to justify coming bloodshed, we should bear one point in mind. The profit system that the liberals represent and defend has no moral legitimacy. Capitalism is based, and thrives, on theft, brutality and mass murder. Capitalists steal workers’ labor in the form of profits. They rely on police, courts and prison terror to enforce their will at home. They slaughter millions in wars carving the world into spheres of influence. Electing a Democrat won’t end the carnage. Building a party that organizes for wiping out this deadly system through communist revolution is a far better choice.

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On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling banning public schools from using "race" as a factor in integrating schools. Seattle and Louisville used the "race" of potential students to maintain a balance of diverse students within their districts’ schools. White parents sued both cities, claiming their children were discriminated against.

The Court used the very arguments from the famous 1954 case which ended legal segregation in schools, Brown v. Board of Education, to now ban using "race" to maintain integrated schools. In the Brown decision, "race" was the only basis on which children were assigned to schools in the segregated South. Therefore, the lawyers opposing segregation stated that, "No state has any authority…to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens." (NY Times, 6/29) That 1954 statement was quoted by the Court majority in this current decision as "proof" that efforts to use "race" now to keep schools integrated violated the intentions of the people who fought to win the Brown case! (Of course, the rulers at many government levels virtually ignored this ruling and actually re-segregated the schools, their status today. See next CHALLENGE on this history.)

This ruling has angered and disappointed many honest people who believe the myth that Supreme Court decisions are based on the law and not on political opinions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The original Brown decision was decided by a Court very aware of how bad Southern legal segregation looked worldwide while the U.S. was engaged in an ideological battle against communism — which promised true equality. The decision was a message to the world that capitalism could offer the same promises as communism.

That was a lie then and remains so today. Capitalism absolutely relies on racism for super-profits and as a means to divide the working class. The fact that these two lawsuits were brought by white parents is significant. Rather than uniting as a multi-racial force demanding better schools for all students, workers are tricked into believing that some other "race" is getting a better deal. Meanwhile, the bosses are sucking money away from schools to finance their war budget.

The most dangerous lie is that voting will solve this disgusting Court decision. The Democrats will use this case to campaign for the workers’ vote in the 2008 election. Much will be made of the particularly racist character of Bush’s three Supreme Court appointments: Scalia, Roberts and Alito. Those three, plus the vile Justice Thomas, represent the views of "neocon" conservatives. CHALLENGE has exposed how this group is making a mess of the main liberal ruling-class wing’s broad imperialist plans.

While this is certainly a problem for these liberals, we should have no illusions. Racist, overcrowded, under-funded public schools will not improve through voting for any candidate or changing the Supreme Court. They will improve only when the system has the best interests of all workers as its goal. That system is communism, not capitalism. J

Fight Over Pensions, Union Rules Becomes School for Communism

PHILADELPHIA, PA.— "Our pension is the best! I’d give up 1% of my raise to protect it!"

"But why are we workers always the ones giving stuff up? The bosses on the Board of Trustees are some of the richest people in the region. How come they never give anything up?"

"Well, the revolution isn’t here yet! We need to give up something to help the pension fund get past this crisis."

"But we already gave up stuff to help the pension fund get past the last crisis! And we keep paying more to help our Medical Benefit Fund with its never-ending crises. And we keep losing jobs with the hospital’s continuing budget crises! It’s always a crisis for workers under capitalism!"

This battle of ideas (with a group of workers who are among the union activists and militants at our hospital) will continue over the next few weeks as the hospital workers union calls for union members to approve diverting one percent of our raise to "protect" our pension fund.

Compared to other workers’ pensions (or lack of pension) our pension is truly one of the best. When combined with Social Security, it has allowed the largely black custodians, dietary workers, nursing assistants and others to have the same income or better as when they were working. The union training fund offers opportunities to workers of all ages to become a nurse or x-ray tech, for example, instead of remaining a custodian or dietary worker. Racist unemployment has left a huge number of black workers in horrible poverty in this city. As critical as many union members are of the union leaders, they nonetheless deeply value the reform accomplishments of the union over the last several decades. The mainly black union leadership has also fairly skillfully used the ideas of black nationalism to keep the union members’ loyalty.

So winning these workers to communist revolution requires persistence, sensitivity, true friendship, an effort to understand the struggles of workers’ everyday lives and a good sense of humor — even as all these "accomplishments" are being taken away from us, particularly in this era of endless imperialist wars and unending capitalist financial crisis.

Two months ago workers organized a benefit for a union member disabled because he needed a transplant. Three hundred people came to a catered dinner and show that included 50 entertainers. The audience and the entertainers were multi-racial, black, Latin, Asian and white; the Vietnamese hip-hop group was one of the favorites of the night! The event was a tremendous success despite a propaganda campaign by the right-wing union delegates and the sexist ideas of some of the male union members that such an ambitious affair couldn’t be organized by a committee of almost all women, and particularly women from housekeeping and nursing. The point that such a benefit would be unnecessary under communism was also made to many workers.

A month later a larger group of union delegates and union members marched on the union hall to protest the efforts of a right-wing union delegate and the hospital bosses to slip a non-union member into a job over a union member. In the ensuing screaming match, a union official was forced to admit her "friend" made a mistake. In the end, the union member got the job.

Actions like these build morale and confidence and strengthen our ties with the workers participating. But it can be a double-edged sword that keeps workers thinking that reform fights are all we need — just with more workers and more militance. That’s why we pointed to the recent CHALLENGE article from Mexico that reported on hundreds of thousands of workers marching and protesting.

Those are numbers we in this hospital dream about right now. The article made the point that without a revolutionary communist outlook, even large numbers of workers, no matter how militant, can still be trapped in capitalism and under the heel of one "lesser-evil" boss or union leader or another. Small groups or large, whether the reform fight wins or fails, the primary victory is when more workers become communists.

Union activists at this hospital are discussing what we should propose to the union members regarding our raise and the pension fund: Do we support the union leaders’ proposal? Do we strike? Are we organized to strike? How do we use this to better organize the workers to strike? How do we build better ties with the non-union workers, doctors and nurses? And most important: how can all this build for communist revolution?

Communist Ideas Inspire the Working Class At Oaxaca Mega March

OAXACA, MEXICO — On June 14, a year after the major battle in Oaxaca between the striking teachers and the army, more than 600,000 people participated in a Mega March in the streets here. The workers of Section 22 of the teachers’ union and the members of APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Qaxaca) are continuing the struggle.

PLP prepared for this event in discussions and meetings and participated in the march, leading chants and distributing thousands of leaflets exposing this rotten capitalist system. The comrades added a revolutionary character to the march, while calling on teachers, youth, students and workers to join PLP.

The following weekend was filled with Party activities. Young students and friends of the Party participated in a communist school. It included a deep discussion on the Party document "Road to Revolution IV," inter-imperialist rivalry, and an analysis of the movement in Oaxaca that inspired many workers around Mexico and the world.

One youth participant asked to join the Party, committing herself to strengthen the political work among women workers. Others agreed to continue participating in more PLP meetings.

Knowing that students and workers accept our ideas and literature motivates us to continue organizing, writing and discussing the Party’s ideas in order to recruit other workers to PLP.

Given that the road to revolution is a long one, we must redouble our efforts, with building confidence and deepening relations among the workers as our main task. Understanding that the working class is the only class capable of generating value, and that the bosses only suck the blood of the workers without producing even what they eat, we can organize to build a world without bosses and exploitation! LONG LIVE COMMUNISM!

NJ Human/Legal Services Workers Fight Attacks on Immigrants

NEWARK, NJ, June 20 — Human services and legal services workers today discussed attacks on undocumented immigrants and what to do about them; the fight against racism; the war in Iraq; and the DREAM Act (see below). These workers were delegates to the National Joint Council (NJC) of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers, UAW Local 2320, held in Las Vegas.

This action was the culmination of a six-month-long campaign within a local union branch. A resolution was circulated in the branch pledging resistance to any law which required workers to turn in undocumented immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security, placing this call for action squarely in the context of growing racism, fascism and guest-worker slavery. It condemned both the openly fascist HR 4437 passed last year, which criminalized undocumented immigrants and those who support them; and the DREAM Act, a proposed law which promises residency to young immigrants in return for service in the bosses’ military, meaning fighting and dying in imperialist wars to control oil.

There was a lively debate within the local branch. Some of our clients are undocumented, with citizen or permanent resident children, so this was not an academic question. Many legal workers were not aware of the racist history of immigration law, of the use of guest workers in low-wage industries, of the need for fascist laws in order to mobilize the U.S. population for war, and of the history behind the struggle of the abolitionist movement to wipe out slavery. All these issues and others were debated during the campaign.

A weakness was insufficient discussion about the role of borders under capitalism. However, the need to destroy the profit system with a communist revolution has been discussed with many union members. During the debate over the resolution, more people saw CHALLENGE and other communist literature for the first time. More people in the local branch moved into action against racism. Several attended three different rallies — one to protest racist talk radio, one against racist police murder and the third to oppose attacks on immigrants.

Quite a few branch members supported open "resistance" against any law requiring them to collaborate with the bosses’ Homeland Security by turning in immigrants. The final version of the local resolution removed that language, instead pledging to continue the fight against racism by protecting immigrants "to the fullest extent of the law." However, the debate caused many members to deeply examine what principles they were willing to uphold.

After the local branch asked the NJC to consider the resolution, one of the union’s national leaders asked the local to remove the language opposing the DREAM Act before the NJC, saying we shouldn’t upset our "friends" in the immigrant rights movement who support it. The local branch voted to keep this opposition. Ultimately, the NJC voted to remove only the language opposing the DREAM Act. But that vote was preceded by a sharp and extended debate. Afterwards, many delegates came forward to congratulate the delegate who introduced the resolution and stood up for its content.

A key lesson in this battle was that the final language of any pledge or resolution is less important than the political struggle and debate involved in it. The working class is one class internationally. An increased understanding among workers, soldiers and others of the need to build a movement to smash racism and unite workers worldwide, and the role of communists in that fight, is a step forward on the road to communist revolution.

Boeing and Subcontractor Workers, Unite! The Nuts and Bolts of Industrial Fascism

SEATTLE, WA.—"It’s amazing what it comes down to," said Mike Bair, the Boeing vice president in charge of the multibillion-dollar Dreamliner program. "We’re getting to the point that every bolt is important." (Wall Street Journal, 6/19) The company can’t get enough fasteners, which connect airplane sections, from its primary subcontractor, Alcoa. This saga of the lowly fastener reveals the development of industrial fascism. The bosses have no other viable alternative.

The Boeing manager of a large subassembly plant admitted the company can’t get fasteners on time because subcontractors can’t hire enough machine operators "at the rates they are willing to pay." (See article Page 7 on similar subcontracting factory) When Boeing workers complained about forced overtime because of the last- minute arrival of fasteners, our CHALLENGE readers started discussions about what to do on the shop floor.

The company knew about this problem for a long time. They’ve been sending managers down to these subcontractors nearly every week.

Boeing is just greedy and has lots of money, some said. If we apply some serious pressure, Boeing will "do the right thing" and grant concessions to these underpaid workers.

Our comrades argued for a different approach. The logic of capitalism is that if you can’t even get desperate workers to work under these horrible conditions, then you just make workers more desperate.

This is doubly true now. U.S. imperialism’s weaknesses have become apparent in the last few years, highlighted by the Iraq debacle. The ruling class knows it must re-industrialize for the bigger wars ahead if they hope to remain top-dog. They must re-tool on the backs of lower-paid, mostly non-union subcontractor labor. These new industrial sweatshops employ huge numbers of black and Latin workers.

Today, the majority of industrial workers are non-union, centered in these subcontractors. These subcontractors drive down everybody’s working conditions. In Seattle, new hires start at an average of $12.72/hour — less that half the wages of veteran employees. The time it takes to make maximum pay has increased from 5 years to 15.

Unfortunately, the main contradiction in the world today is between U.S. imperialism and fast-charging imperialist competitors. As long as this contradiction holds sway, we can expect this racist exploitation to intensify. If you want to know what fascism looks like, just ask these super-exploited subcontractor workers.

We can only change this dynamic by changing this contradiction. The working class must take on the bosses’ system with communist revolution. Every new CHALLENGE reader, every new party member helps us wage the long battle to break out of this imperialist nightmare.

Boeing And Subcontractor Workers Unite!

To intensify class struggle, we are building a campaign around two demands for our contract next year. Inside the factory, fasteners are called standards because they are built to predetermined standards. The company must not be allowed to accept any standards from plants that don’t meet minimum labor standards. A related demand is that starting wages be raised and the time to maximum pay be shortened.

The capitalist wage system inexorably increases wage inequality. Throughout this campaign, we must win those with whom we fight this inequality to the need to smash capitalism.

As one friend said, "I’m an older guy. I’d like to retire with a decent pension, but what really matters to me is what happens to the next generation of workers — our kids." Such class-consciousness will help us build our revolutionary movement.J

Mexico: Fired Delphi Workers Fight for Severance Pay

REYNOSA, MEXICO, June 30 — Last year, Delphi fired 250 workers here, many of them single mothers. Their excuse? "Failure to buy expensive safety shoes." But the real reason was Delphi’s aim to slash production and the workforce. Delphi, one of Mexico’s largest private employer, has refused to pay these fired workers severance pay mandated by law. To top it off, on April 27 the local labor board said it "lost" the paperwork for the severance pay demand.

On May 1, a militant group of workers picketed the board before joining many other workers marching on May Day against the bosses and their union hacks who sign contracts favoring employers. This action made the paperwork "miraculously" appear.

These workers need the kind of international solidarity and support the world’s working class so much lacks in order to make a reality of the communist slogan "Workers of the World, Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." E-mail messages to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..J

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DETROIT, MI June 28 – "We’re selling out our children and that’s what bothers me the most." That’s how a Delphi worker in Saginaw, Michigan summed up the new four-year deal between Delphi, GM and the UAW that will accelerate the fascist restructuring of the entire auto industry. The new deal cuts Delphi wages by nearly 50%, closes factories and increases workers’ healthcare costs. It will also spread the two-tier system to GM by reassigning about 1,750 Delphi workers to GM at the lower wages and benefits paid to Delphi workers.

Of the 17,000 UAW members at Delphi, only 4,000 earn GM wages. Most of them voted for a two-tier wage system in 2003 that created a workforce of permanent workers with lower wages and temporary workers. Now the chickens have come home to roost. For the first time, second-tier workers will vote to cut the wages of more senior workers. Those making GM wages will see pay cuts from $28 an hour to $14 or $18.50 an hour. They will also have their health benefits slashed to match those of workers hired under the two-tier wage system. This is the legacy of the pro-capitalist union leaders.

GM will pay more than $8 billion for buyouts and "buy-down" payments to soften the blow of the huge pay and health cuts. Workers who take a buyout must leave by September 15. GM will cover those costs with nearly $2 billion in annual savings once Delphi’s costs are "competitive."

Delphi will keep only four UAW plants, and negotiate new "competitive work rule" local contracts within 60 days. It will sell four plants, transfer ownership of three to GM or a third-party designated by GM, and close at least 10 more plants. GM and the UAW agreed to cut retiree health care, eliminate 30,000 jobs and close 12 U.S. plants in 2005.

Casting a growing shadow over the "competitive costs and work rules" is the Chinese auto industry. "China’s auto parts exports have increased more than six-fold in the last five years, nearly topping $1 billion in April…More than half of these auto parts go to the United States…" (New York Times, 6/7)

CHALLENGE has reported the stories of Delphi workers fighting back in Cadiz, Spain and Tangier, Morocco, plus the strikes of GM, VW, and Renault workers in France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Romania and more. Recently there have been auto strikes in India and South Korea. In May, PLP participated in an international auto workers conference in Germany with workers from 17 countries. All of these struggles reflect the need, and potential for auto workers to unite our struggles globally.

A fighting communist movement can turn international class struggle into a school for communist revolution. We can build personal ties across all borders, support each others’ struggles, and use those struggles to launch our own. The best the pro-capitalist union leaders can do is pay lip service to internationalism because when push comes to shove, the UAW serves GM and Ford, IG Mettal serves Daimler and VW, and the Japanese Auto Workers union serves Toyota, Nissan and Honda. This nationalism/patriotism has led us to where we are today, and will ultimately lead us to war as our bosses fight for markets, resources and cheap labor.

We need to build PLP-led groups around CHALLENGE in every factory we can. These groups should be active in the reactionary unions (if they exist), organize workers to fight back, and oppose the nationalism and racism of the union leadership. These groups must take the fascist conditions being imposed by the rulers into full account. Auto workers have the ability to reach around the world, build international solidarity and spread the revolutionary communist politics of PLP. This is the answer to the future of wage cuts, fascism and war that the bosses have in store for us.

a name="Iraq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War">">"raq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War

GREENBELT, MD., June 23 — Over 50 Iraq war vets, GIs, and supporters held a cookout to kick off the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) summer bus tour. The tour will visit at least six military bases over a two-week period to recruit GIs to the anti-war movement. GIs from two military bases near Washington, D.C. were invited by word of mouth and through leafleting to attend the gathering.

A barbecue was also held in Norfolk, Va., at a park in a working-class black neighborhood which helped to diversify the audience. Although starting out mostly white, the barbecue became multi-racial as guys from the basketball court came over to have some food and chat about politics and struggle.

The launching of an active-duty IVAW chapter at Ft. Meade was announced at the cookout. Several active-duty airmen, sailors and soldiers detailed the incompetence of the chain of command and the need to end the war in Iraq.

Adam Kokesh and Liam Madden, two Marine veterans under attack by the brass for wearing their uniform and making "disloyal" statements (see CHALLENGE, 6/20 both urged the active-duty GIs there to join IVAW. During the cookout it was revealed that the brass had just filed similar charges against Reverend Yearwood, leader of the anti-war "Hip Hop Caucus" and an honorably discharged army chaplain. He must report to Georgia for a July 12 hearing at which he could be given a less-than-honorable discharge from the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve, essentially a civilian status in which a GI discharged from active duty has no chain of command and no drills but has a negative effect on future job applications).

Yearwood is a prominent speaker on the anti-war circuit, but his liberal political electoral strategy is misleading and dangerous. For example, at a recent address given to the Washington Peace Center, he called for people to become "solutionaries, not revolutionaries," belittling the efforts of those seeking to build a revolutionary mass movement against capitalism.

The bus tour’s stops in Washington and Norfolk demonstrate the effectiveness of base-building among the active-duty GIs. The GIs from both cities came from the Appeal For Redress, an initiative in which we’ve been active. We must continue to build among these active-duty soldiers, demonstrating the weakness of the liberal IVAW strategy, thereby giving our friends the only solution to this capitalist nightmare, a communist society!

Despite the bus tour’s success, we struggled with the organizers on two fronts, firstly to see themselves as organizers, not "media-stars." Their vision is for local folks to do all the work for them so that when they come to town, they can talk to media, take photos and give speeches. This is a top-down approach, which mirrors the imperialist/capitalist military and society we’re struggling to transform.

The goal must be for the bus participants to enter towns and help empower the already existing organizing occurring among the active-duty GIs, industrial workers, students and our class as a whole. Instead of talking to media, we should be outreaching in the community against the repression of the brass and the bosses!

Secondly, the bus participants need to diversify and represent the GI Movement as a whole, which spans the so-called "races" and encompasses women.

A successful struggle against imperialist war will require mass resistance by GIs against the brass, in alliance with industrial workers fighting their corporate bosses, all led by revolutionary communists. The mass movement against the war, including IVAW, is quite far from implementing this strategy. Individual resistance is still the norm. While bold, such actions do little to concretely challenge the power of the brass and the bosses they serve. However, among IVAW members, active-duty GIs, and many supporters, there is growing discussion about how to move beyond such individual actions to concerted resistance, and about the need to link the fight against the brass and the war to the broader struggle against racism and the capitalist system.

PLP members engaged in these debates are working hard to bring more GIs from their military units into the mass struggle and into PLP’s ranks to better advance revolutionary strategy. PLP believes that the only solution means becoming a revolutionary communist, for only when the capitalist system is destroyed along with its inherent drive for maximum profit and control over the world’s resources as part of that drive, can we have a solution in the interests of the world’s workers.

a name="Colombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks">">"olombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, June 25 — Chanting, "The people are right when they say education health should be first"; "Let’s take to the street to dump Uribe’s paramilitary government," thousands of students and others have been protesting here against social services cutbacks by the right-wing government of President Uribe, the darling of the paramilitary narco mafias and President Bush. His new National Development Plan forces public universities to pay a high percentage of their employees’ pensions. This will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a major blow to public higher education.

Mass meetings at the National University here discussed the repercussions of such government plans. Since May 2 a permanent strike has been under way. Public universities in other regions have joined the struggle.

In Bogotá, six mass marches united campus workers, students, parents and some professors. The marches not only attacked the social services cutbacks, labeling it a privatization plan, but also attacked the firings of workers and the crimes of the paramilitary gangs who enter the universities. The marches were attacked by ESMAD (anti-riot cops) with their armored vehicles, tear gas, pepper gas and water cannons. Many students were arrested and injured, while also fighting back with sticks, rocks and their fists.

Because of the mass protests, Uribe and his Education Minister lied to the press, claiming their budget plan aimed to actually raise the university budget and the quality of education. But tuition will jump 300% to cover the colleges’ pension plan payments, and many working-class students won’t be able to go to college. Already many students have become street vendors to pay for their education. With the new tuition hike, 80% of working-class students will have to drop out.

As the protests grew, Uribe called a so-called Town Meeting, where he was asked many questions and offered no answers. He just said students were "using" the protests to carry out "terrorist" actions. He then ordered the re-starting of classes and the tearing down of the protesting student camps. But students were not intimidated by the threats and decided to continue the struggle.

Wasserman, the National University president, and faithful servant of the IMF-World Bank policies, officially shut the school a month after the struggle began, restricting the students’ entry to the campus, aiming to weaken the struggle and divide students. PLP members and CHALLENGE-DESAFIO readers in these colleges are working very hard to continue the fight. Giving up now will doom public education.

Our Party is fighting to win students to understand that these sharpening bosses’ attacks stem from the current state of world capitalism, with its endless imperialist wars, fascist repression and massive economic attacks against workers and youth. We’re fighting to recruit more workers and youth to our Party, and build the kind of red leadership needed to destroy this system which values paramilitary death squads above the needs of the sons and daughters of the working class.J

a name="Chile: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors"></">Ch"le: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors

CHILE, June 30 — On June 25, some 28,000 miners, members of a newly-formed union, struck the subcontractors of the state-owned copper corporation here, Codelco. The death of a miner working in El Teniente sparked the walkout. The strikers blocked highways leading to the many divisions of Codelco, the world’s biggest copper producer. Instead of responding to the strikers’ demands, the bosses treated them like criminals and attacked them with riot cops. The strikers fought back, burning eight company buses. Codelco lost $10 million on the strike’s first day.

This is an important strike, not only for these miners but for millions of workers worldwide because they’re demanding that subcontracted workers become permanent and receive the same benefits as the main corporation’s workers.

They’re also demanding medical benefits, housing and bonuses, to share some of the bonanza the company is enjoying because of the high price and worldwide demand of copper. The miners refuse to be treated as second-class workers, and want permanent status.

There are now 80,000 contract workers in Chile’s copper mines, three for every permanent worker. The copper industry was nationalized during the Allende government, but beginning with the fascist Pinochet regime through the current "Socialist" Concertation government, the industry has been privatized bit by bit. International corporations now also make big bucks off these miners’ labor.

There are subcontracted workers in all industries throughout Chile and the world. Many are not in unions. Those in unions are divided among different unions, like the "regular" miners and the subcontracted ones. So the demands of these strikers must be supported by the international working class. As capitalist globalization (imperialism) creates more division of labor, lowering wages worldwide, workers need a revolutionary anti-capitalist internationalist strategy. That’s the kind of leadership PLP offers. Join us! J

LETTERS

Nixonite Feared SDS/PLP in 1970 Postal Strike

The bosses, our class enemies, sometimes see the stakes more sharply than we do. The article "PLP History: Lessons for Today: SDS Failed to Support 1970 Postal Strike" (CHALLENGE, 7/4) faults the PLP student leadership’s "weakness on the crucial issue of class consciousness." On the other hand, H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s chief of staff, truly understood the significance of a worker-student alliance.

The Nixon administration was depending on "the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class" to sabotage the strike. On March 20, 1970, Haldeman’s diary reads: "Postal problem settled in late afternoon when union leaders agreed to get workers back in, then negotiate."

But the following day Haldeman had to write: "The settlement didn’t work, because rank and file won’t go back, have rejected leaders..." He added: "Threat now is of radicalization, a national strike, other walkouts, i.e. Teamsters, Air Traffic Controllers, etc., to cripple whole country at once." An effective worker-student alliance could have been a ruby spark in that explosive situation, and Haldeman moaned to his diary: "... and now SDS types involved, at least in New York."

But there was no explosion. On April 2, a satisfied Haldeman gloated: "Settlement day. Postal agreement. Knew we had it at noon when [Assistant Secretary of Labor] Usery made deal with [AFL-CIO president George] Meany, but had to go through motions of negotiating session."

In addition to the lesson in CHALLENGE — that criticism and self-criticism are essential in developing class consciousness — there are two other lessons: The treachery of the union misleaders knows no bounds, and even our smallest actions are full of potential.

Old enough to remember Nixon

a name="Film Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children"></">Fi"m Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children

Globalization has sharpened the contradictions of capitalism; people are seeking explanations for, and solutions to, the problems they’re facing. The capitalist market has responded to this demand with a new generation of documentary films. In them, thanks to the financial viability offered by the TV and DVD markets, filmmakers enjoy greater freedom to present their personal take on the catastrophe that is capitalism.

But these films only offer reformist solutions, ones that never attack the cause of the problem — capitalism. Recent examples include Darwin’s Nightmare and Supersize Me (both 2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and, of course, all the Michael Moore films.

"We Feed the World," made by Austrian director Erwin Wagenhofer in 2005, is another such film, now showing in most European countries but still seeking a U.S. distributor. It was financed on a shoestring budget by the six-employee production company Allegrofilm and shot by a one-woman camera team. Consequently, Wagenhofer had complete editorial control, but never gets past reformism.

There are still many good reasons to see this film with your friends. There are entrancing (if romanticized) images of Rumanian farm hands and French fishermen and fish merchants working and taking pride in their work — images resembling old Soviet movies, except for the lush color.

More importantly, the film provides a wide-ranging criticism of the food industry. It does a very good job of revealing the market forces that are eliminating small-scale fishers and farmers and replacing tasty wholesome food with bland processed food. ("Our children will never know the true taste of a tomato.") It furnishes plenty of useful statistics, like: "52% of the world gross domestic product is controlled by 50 multi-nationals."

The film also links the feast in the developed countries and the famine everywhere else. Gigantic corporations are chopping down the Amazon rain forest to plant soy beans, used to fatten European livestock, while Brazilian farmers starve. European-subsidized foodstuffs cost one-third the price of African produce, driving African farmers to become super-exploited undocumented farm workers in Europe. All this is documented with sometimes stunning images.

The film features grandfatherly Jean Ziegler (a communist 50 years ago but now a Social Democrat). This UN special reporter on the right to food thunders that "every five seconds a child under ten dies of starvation. A child that dies of starvation is in effect murdered." But the only answer the film can muster to the question, "Why are they starving?" is a cowardly, "We can’t or won’t feed them." Who or what is the film concealing behind that "we?" It is the capitalist class and the capitalist system!

In short, see this film together with your friends, but take some revolutionary communist politics along with you.

A Film Buff

Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Felt on Factory Floor

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — "That’s it. We aren’t doing any more set-up work if they don’t give us set-up pay. If we stop, production stops coming from those machines. They can stop running for all we care, let ‘em sit," Graciela told me as she marched back from talking to Emilio at his machines and confirming they would stand together through this struggle. "What do you think they’ll do to us?" she continued.

"I think you should fight these bastards!" I replied. They need us more than we need them. Besides who will do the work if you don’t? Not me."

The machines sat silent on the factory floor, producing nothing nor any profit for over a week.

As inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies factory workers are increasingly facing off against the bosses’ attempts to produce more for less and remain competitive (profitable), especially in weapons production. By 2015, China aims to compete with Airbus and Boeing, the world’s two aerospace giants. They launched their most advanced fighter jet ever, and showed they can defend against U.S. spy satellites by downing one of their own with a single missile. Russia is cutting defense industry deals with EADS (Europe’s largest defense contractor), Italy’s Finnameccanica and has consolidated practically its entire aerospace industry into a single state-owned corporation, attempting to strengthen its war production capacity. The imperialist bosses are preparing for major wars against one another.

For industrial workers inter-imperialist rivalry means increased production goals, fewer benefits, longer hours, lower wages and anything else the bosses can do to increase efficiency and profitability since the survival of the every imperialist’s arms industry in the global market is directly linked to its ability to produce at low costs for their wars.

Workers aren’t taking this lying down nor standing alone. In the above factory struggle no one touched the machines on any shift. It forced the bosses to meet with them about their demands.

The production leader in charge of their area commented, "These people aren’t here working their lives away because they want to, they’re here because they have to be. They [the bosses] should just give them what they want. They deserve it. If they’ve decided they won’t do the work I’m not going to make them." He didn’t touch the machines either!

As always the bosses tried to divide the workers, agreeing only to meet with them separately. They were told they "weren’t qualified enough" to be paid for work they were already doing. This enabled us to point out that the profit system’s inter-imperialist rivalry and wars caused this attack, and how we are vital to stopping it.

But most importantly we talked about the Party and CHALLENGE. "Why won’t they just pay us what we deserve if they lose money when the machines aren’t running," Graciela asked later. "The system isn’t set up for that," I explained. "It’s not about what you deserve or need, it’s about their profits. That communist newspaper I was reading showed the way we’re exploited at this plant is the future for all factory workers because the bosses need to produce cheaply for their profits and wars."

Since this struggle Graciela and I have become much closer friends through barbecues and family gatherings, and have had many more discussions about the ruling class, their plans for immigrant workers, racism, sexism, communism, you name it. Graciela and another factory worker we met through her are now regular CHALLENGE readers, have joined a PL study group and are considering joining the Party. There will be more struggles.

Industrial workers and their families are at the heart of capitalism’s contradiction: the need to increasingly exploit those that fight in, and produce for, their wars. The bosses understand that increased exploitation of these workers is not a choice but a necessity for their imperialist ambitions, producing sharper struggle. But struggle for what?

A crucial way forward for our Party is in the factories, bringing communism to these workers, and to building CHALLENGE networks and PLP, eventually turning these schools for communism into struggles for communism.

REDEYE

US Iraq plan: Leave without leaving

Meanwhile in Iraq, the American plan to withdraw U.S. troops beginning this year now exists in a version that disregards whether the surge works or not. A big part of the U.S. force would be pulled back into the big, fortified U.S. bases already prepared. The rest would be shipped home….

This reduced, "permanent" American force in Iraq would supposedly intervene from its bases to support the Iraqi government (assuming that it survives) and Iraq’s (by then privatized?) oil industry installations, and to operate against al-Qaida. (William Pfaff, Tribune Media, 6/14)

Loan-shark profits now go to big biz

Corporate America has decided there’s gold in draining the low-income masses of what little they have. Loan sharks and con artists once dominated this territory, but big businesses have moved in and are proving to be far smoother than the mugs who break legs. Their legal fine print can trap the uneducated in outrageous debt contracts without rousing the authorities….

As Business Week notes, the thing being sold doesn’t matter. It’s just the "bait" to saddle someone with punishing loan terms….

Payday lenders offer workers cash advances on their next paycheck. Wells Fargo and US Bancorp have entered this booming business, charging annual interest rates of 120 percent….

Milking America’s poor is now a global opportunity. (Creators Syndicate)

Soldier to vet — a disaster journey

More than one million men and women…have been cycling home all too anonymously from two war fronts, wounded and otherwise damaged and not making much noise yet.

Their troubles range from the mushrooming brain traumas from roadside explosions to outdated benefits to the costs and cares of World War II….

The government’s backlog of benefits claims to the hundreds of thousands, with the data transition from soldier to veteran status a computer disaster….

At home there’s homelessness on the rise for veterans who also discover that the GI Bill can’t cover the cost of public college. Their unemployment rate is three times the national average. (NYT, 6/18)

CIA bad old days? US today is worse

Comparisons between different historical eras are always tricky. With an incomplete account of C.I.A. misdeeds in its first quarter century from the so-called family jewels….Such a comparison is inevitably flawed….

"These documents are supposed to show the worst of the worst back then….But what’s going on today makes the family jewels pale by comparison." (6/27)

Roosevelt task: rescue US capitalism

Part biography, part policy study, this highly readable book recounts how Franklin D. Roosevelt reinvented the presidency….Roosevelt [Jonathan] Alter writes, resuscitated American capitalism…. (NYT, 7/1)

‘Nothing to live for,’ so Russians drink

Almost half of deaths among working-age men in Russia are caused by drinking illicit alcohol….Increased alcohol consumption has been linked to rising mortality in the early 1990s during the transition from communism….

"I started drinking heavily when I left the Russian army at the age of 25….

Ultimately it’s a disease of the soul. Men and women drink in Russia because they don’t have any spiritual goals. They have nothing to live for." (GW, 6/22)

Fine art of government hypocrisy

The BBC’s Yes Minister…episode titled "The Moral Dimension" [showed] a major sale of British electronics was won by bribing the purchasing country’s finance minister….

"You’re telling me," said a shocked [minister] "that winking at corruption is government policy?"

"Oh, no, Minister," Sir Humphrey assured him, "That would be unthinkable. It could never be government policy — only government practice." (GW, 6/22)

Child labor ‘deep-rooted’ in China now

Chinese newspapers are constantly peppered with accounts of the death and injury of child laborers, and of disputes that arise because of unusually low wages, or the withholding of pay….

"In order to achieve modernization, people will go to any ends to earn money, to advance their interests, leaving behind morality, humanity and even a little bit of compassion, let alone the law or regulations, which are poorly implemented," said Hu Jindou, a professor of economics at the University of Technology in Beijing. "Everything is about the economy now, just like everything was about politics in the Mao era, and forced labor or child labor is far from an isolated phenomenon. It is rooted deeply in today’s reality…." (NYT, 6/21)

a name="PL History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp">">"L History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp

In the spring of 1970, the anti-war movement seemed to be gaining in vigor, numbers and militancy. Campus demonstrations continued, many of them sharp. Less publicized but even more significant, rebellion within the military, including desertion, "fragging" (GI killings of officers) and outright defection to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong, gave the bosses and brass fits.

However, this appearance of strength belied a fundamental political weakness, which was to prove decisive in the movement’s unraveling. The class consciousness that would have supplied the only antidote to the treacherous negotiations between U.S. imperialism and North Vietnamese nationalists never gained the force necessary to turn the movement in a revolutionary direction. This was due to the strength and influence of revisionism (the presence of ruler’s ideology within the ranks fof the working class) in the former Soviet Union, China and Vietnam, and also to our Party’s numerical and political weakness. This weakness manifested itself in a number of ways, none sharper than our failure to mobilize significant support for the national strike of U.S. postal workers in March (see CHALLENGE, 7/4).

By the 1968 U.S. presidential election, every candidate, even the openly racist George Wallace, had promised to stop the war. Nixon won narrowly against the Democrat Humphrey, promising that he had a "secret plan" to do so. To press for tactical advantage at the negotiating table, he announced on April 30 that the U.S. had invaded Cambodia, thereby widening a conflict he had sworn to end. Mass outrage was swift and widespread. Millions demonstrated on campuses throughout the U.S, many violently.

Kent State University was one. By May 3, 1,000 National Guardsmen occupied the campus. On May 4, the Guardsmen attempted to break up a large anti-war demonstration. The protesters refused to leave. The Guardsmen opened fire, killing four students — two participants and two bystanders — and wounding nine others.

Five days later, between 100,000 and 150,000 demonstrators marched on Washington to protest Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State murders, a fraction of the half million who had marched on the U.S. capital less than a half-year earlier. PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance remnants of SDS organized another "Warmaker-Strikebreaker" demonstration at the Department of Labor, to break away from liberal politicians and attempt to turn the movement toward the working class. Fifteen thousand people participated in this illegal action, twice as many as those who attended the break-away action in support of General Electric strikers at the same site the previous November.

A nationwide student strike ensued, involving over four million students at more than 900 U.S. colleges and universities.

But this was the anti-war movement’s last great gasp. The negotiations and revisionism had disarmed the movement politically. Outrage and anger at the bosses’ limitless talent for atrocity, while necessary, were not sufficient to maintain the offensive. Only PLP stood in the way of a fatal marriage between the movement and the liberal wing of the ruling class, and PLP was not strong enough to reverse the process. By 1968, for all intents and purposes, this marriage had already been consummated. The war and the movement would continue until 1974, but, thanks to the class treachery of the Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese leadership, the U.S. ruling class had managed to maneuver its way out of the most colossal military defeat in its history. J

(Next and final installment: Lessons of PLP’s experience in the movement against the war in Vietnam.)

a name="Racist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges">">"acist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges

The massacre at Kent State quickly gained international notoriety, with photographs of the dead and wounded sparking worldwide indignation. All the victims were white. This was not, however, the first time that the bosses’ state apparatus had murdered young people on a college campus.

On February 8, 1968, cops opened fire on an anti-segregation demonstration at the historically black South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, killing three young men and wounding 27 others, all African-American. None of the cops was convicted of anything. This was the first incident of its type on a U.S. campus, and because of racism, it received little media coverage. The PLP organized protests and solidarity actions on campuses where it had a presence throughout the U.S.

In the wake of Kent State, another murderously racist police action occurred at an historically black campus, this time Jackson State, when on May14-15 cops fired 460 rounds at student protestors in less than a minute, killing two and injuring 12. Again, there was significantly less publicity than at Kent State 10 days earlier, and again, despite "hearings," inquests and "commissions," there were no arrests, mush less convictions.

One of the anti-war movement’s main shortcomings was its weakness in fighting racism. The PLP-led Worker-Student Alliance’s "Less Talk - More Action" proposal at the 1969 SDS convention was proving prophetic. The time had long since come for the PLP and its allies to address this vital strategic question. J

PLP Promotes Communist Politics at Social Forum

ATLANTA, July 2 — Some 10,000 people gathered this past weekend in the U.S. version of the World Social Forum. It was a dangerous exercise in disguising capitalist reform politics as "progress" by misusing powerful working-class ideas (like anti-racism) while spouting "revolutionary" phrase-mongering).

Workers, vets and youth attended hundreds of workshops and lectures over the three-day gathering. Many positive trends were revealed among class-conscious participants, including a broad, but under-developed hatred of capitalism. Many recognized the significance and importance of organizing migrant and immigrant workers, workers in New Orleans, fighting the brutality of racism and sexism, and linking issues.

"The government tried to kill us. They wanted to get rid of the poor so that they could build casinos and homes for the rich," said two New Orleans residents speaking at the forum. "You can’t count on these politicians to come and solve the problems we have!" They agreed with, and took, CHALLENGE from a PLP member who pointed out that while rebuilding is important, as long as capitalism exists workers and their homes are in danger.

Other PLP’ers also had some success, distributing 900 CHALLENGES and lots of buttons worded in Spanish, "Workers Have No Borders." We set up a PL table and talked with many interested people. Unfortunately, most of the convention followed a more misleading program.

The primary goal of most workshops was teaching new ways to compromise principled and honest feelings to generate "success" — "changing the system from within." In one workshop about youth and environmental activism, participants were discouraged from thinking about what to do if the military defended capitalist investments since such topics would "just depress people" and were not part of the planned role-playing activity. Such mis-leadership derails revolutionary class consciousness and encourages compromising with the murderous bosses.

Coalition-building with the bosses was the order of the day, encouraging us to "frame the issues" within the confines of capitalism so that "we can really achieve something." This usually doesn’t even lead to short-sighted success in this era of major social cutbacks to pay for the bosses’ endless wars and police state. It means only disaster for any real social changes and for the need to fight all the bosses (Republicans or Democrats, liberals or Neo-cons). PLP brought the only real long-term solution: organize for communist revolution.

Many workshops were based on identity politics, stressing the differences between workers and youth and teaching organizers to encourage these racist divisions. The practice of "caucusing" — separating workers into "race" or gender groups — reinforces racism and sexism, and does nothing to promote the kind of unity needed to fight the racist rulers. "White-skin privilege," not capitalist ideology, was blamed for racism.

Black and Latino youth were often encouraged to struggle for "success" (making it in the system) and to beg for recognition of workers’ rights. These sorts of goals will fail and leave our youth defeated, or will just train future misleaders.

Workers can’t beg for their rights from a government that protects the profits of racist war-maker corporations first and foremost. Our message to Forum attendees: reformed capitalism is a dead-end, not progress. The only advance is to vanquish capitalism. That can only be done with communist revolution. Join PLP! J

a name="Why Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?"></" />"hy Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?

A recent Miami Herald series on black people in Latin America featured several countries: Nicaragua, Brazil, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The articles pointed out the obvious, that racism exists against black people in those countries and throughout Latin America. No disagreement there. Of course, the Herald fails to identify the cause of racism.

Before the rise of capitalism, people were not divided or even enslaved because of their skin color. Racism was born with capitalism. The emerging capitalist class developed it for five centuries to justify the economics of slavery of Africans, the massacre of black and Indigenous people in the "New World" and as a political weapon to divide whites from the direct victims of racism. So as long as there is the capitalist profit system there will be racism, even if it takes different forms in different regions of the world.

Statistics show that blacks in the region — as Indigenous people — are more likely to be born into poverty, to die young, to read poorly and to live in substandard housing. Authorities are only now starting to count the black population, but the World Bank estimates it’s anywhere from 80 million to 150 million, compared with 40.2 million in the U.S.

The most interesting part of the Herald’s series concerns black people in Cuba. Again, coming from the Herald, which — along with its Spanish version, El Nuevo Herald — is a mouthpiece for anti-Castro right-wing politics, one has to take what it says with a grain of salt. But there is racism in Cuba, not as much as pre-1959 when the U.S. controlled the island, or even as strong as in Miami itself, but there is racism. The Herald admits this: "Many black people still support Castro, saying that without him they would still be peons in the sugar cane fields. One black Cuban diplomat said he had no hope of an education, and his grandmother no medical care for her glaucoma, until the revolution came along."

But the article adds: "‘Everyone is not equal here,’ said Ernesto, 37, as he dodged traffic on a Havana street. Tall and athletically built, he once hoped to be a star soccer player. He now gets by selling used clothing, and said he’s continually hassled by police just because he’s black."

In last year’s book, "100 Hours With Fidel" by French-Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, Castro admitted that while the revolution had brought progress for women and black people, discrimination endures: "Black people do not live in the best homes; they’re still . . . performing hard jobs, sometimes less-remunerated jobs, and fewer blacks receive family remittances in foreign currency than their white compatriots," he said.

The Herald says that the new push for change concerning racism in Latin America is fueled by support from African-American politicians and civil-rights groups via globalization — the technological ability to share common human experiences. Indeed, once-isolated Latin American countries now have access to pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which broadcast social messages worldwide.

Of course, that’s not the "solution" to racism in Latin America or the U.S. The same black politicians and MTV-BET culture pushed by the Herald haven’t dented racism very much in the U.S., where 70% of the 2.2 million prisoners (the world’s biggest jail population) are black and Latino; where the infant mortality rate among black children in some Southern states is worse than in some of the world’s poorest countries; where racist police brutality is a constant; where racist unemployment is an epidemic in cities like Detroit and Oakland.

U.S. bosses, through the Herald and their politicians and mass media, seem to be trying to use racism in Latin America as a weapon against their rivals in the region. One reason, anti-U.S. politicians like Venezuela’s Chavez, Bolivia’s Hugo Morales and Ecuador’s Correa have made inroads among the masses is because of the hatred dark-skinned workers, peasants and youth have for Latin America’s old racist ruling classes. So the U.S. media and politicians are pushing the BIG LIE that if dark-skinned workers and youth in Latin America follow the U.S. model (which they claim is constant ‘improvment’), not the Chávez model, racism can be alleviated.

The reason racism persists in Cuba despite many advances since 1959 is because state capitalism dominates Cuba. The fight against racism is a long one. But to destroy it the first premise is to eliminate its cause: capitalism in all its forms. Then, in a communist-led revolutionary society without the economic or political basis for racism, a sharp ideological struggle will be waged against any form of racism and all types of discrimination.J

1. A Working-Class World Is Possible...Only by Fighting for Communism
   1. Racism's Different Forms: Always Used Against Workers
   2. Fighting Nationalism andSmashing Borders Crucial
   3. Don't Vote! Organize forCommunist Revolution!
2. Liberal Warmakers Ousting Inept Neo-Cons
   1. MULLEN BUILDS SHIPS FOR FAR-FLUNG U.S. INVASIONS
   2. LIBERALS BAKER AND HAMILTON BACK IRAQ CARNAGE, SEEK WORLD WAR PROVOCATION
3. NUCLEAR HIT ON U.S. JUST WHAT RULERS NEED
4. Venezuela: Workers' Power and Bankers' Profits Don't Mix
5. South Africa General Strike Shows Racism Cannot Be Ended Under Capitalism
6. Racist Police Terror in NYC Schools
7. Marches Protest Genocide Killing Oakland's Black Youth
8. Mass Unemployment Behind Black Youth Genocide
9. A system that murders its youth so casually deserves to be destroyed with communist revolution.
10. International Autoworkers' Unity Must Link Layoffs to Bosses' Wars
11. Youth Meet to Strengthen Communist Ideas and Practice
12. Warmakers' DREAM ACT is Nightmare For Immigrant Youth
13. Imperialists' Fight for Oil Behind Hamas-Fatah Civil War
14. LETTERS
    1. PLP at May Day in Manizales, Colombia
    2. Mass Arrests of Youth by NYPD at Puerto Rican Day Parade
    3. `Reform' Would Tax Immigrants, Send Youth to War
    4. Work in Unions, Bring Workers Red Politics
    5. Pentagon Dumps Toxic Waste into World's Oceans
    6. Italian Immigrants Then, Latino Immigrants Now
    7. `Sanctuary' Groups Need Action, not `Legality'
15. New Campus Group Spreads Pro-Worker Politics
16. REDEYE
    1. Looking behind the `war on terror'!
    2. Primary's `pro-labor' Dem is a fake
    3. Capitalism's joblessness ruins teens
    4. If college brings you $ -- banks get it
    5. Scratch a war, find a profit motive
    6. People find democracy a false hope
    7. US rulers can junk the `rule of law'
17. PLP History: Lessons for Today: SDS Failed to Support 1970 Postal Strike
18. THE HAZZARDS OF DUKE
19. This system has got to go.
    Factory Worker's Experiences Carry Over Shop to Shop

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A Working-Class World Is Possible...Only by Fighting for Communism

The U.S. Social forum is meeting in Atlanta, Georgia with the theme Another World is Possible. We in the Progressive Labor Party believe that indeed another world is possible only through smashing capitalism and its racist warmaking profit motive.

Since the fall of the old international communist movement capitalists have launched an unprecedented political, economic and ideological offensive against the world's working class. The working class has fought back with great ferocity but always through channels poisoned by cronies of the bosses or with rotten capitalist ideas. Workers have been taught they can only "work within the system." Capitalist "reformers" aimed to discredit the idea of violent revolution to smash their state and replace it with a workers' state -- communism.

Racism's Different Forms: Always Used Against Workers

From its birth, capitalism has used the idea of racism to divide and weaken the international working class and hold the system of wage slavery together. The idea of "race" was invented by bosses to divide black slaves and white indentured servants who were beginning to rebel against their masters in the Southern colonies. Now while black, Latino and immigrant workers are shouldering the main burden of U.S. imperialism in decline, all workers' jobs, wages, pensions and healthcare are being devastated. Racist ideas that are pushed in school and media are used to convince workers to blame other workers for their problems instead of the bosses.

Many workers saw through and fought to smash these racist ideas, from the times of the slave rebellions through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. As a response to anti-racist anger, bosses began to push the theory of "white skin privilege" which blames white workers for hundreds of years of capitalist oppression, asks them to feel guilty about their relatively better treatment from the system, creating the illusion that white, black and Latin workers are not part of the same class. It is sim-_ply the mirror image of the traditional racist ideology, and it is just as dangerous for the workers who believe it.

Fighting Nationalism andSmashing Borders Crucial

Another ideological weapon the bosses use against workers is nationalism, loyalty to the ruling capitalists. Nationalism asks workers to see members of our own class as enemies because they live across a border. This idea seeks to conceal from workers our one exploiting class enemy, capitalists, no matter their skin color or language.

Historically, all countries were born from the slaughter and coercion of workers by ruling classes fighting to gain new territory for exploitation and profit. The workers' role was to fight and die and kill other workers for "their" bosses.

Capitalist-created borders have had disastrous effects. For 60 years, Israeli and Palestinian workers have been marching behind their rulers to their deaths. "Undocumented workers" in the U.S. and Europe face massive repression because they're from different countries. These bosses' borders divide workers and induce them to pledge allegiance to their local ruling class, maintaining the latter's class rule.

Don't Vote! Organize forCommunist Revolution!

The bosses tell us, and many workers believe, that we can fix the system by voting. First only rich white male land-owners voted; then through political struggle most white men, then women, and finally black workers gained the right to vote. After 220 years most workers, except immigrants, have the "right" to vote in the bosses' elections. The result of all this voting? We live in a society where racist cops terrorize our cities, where one in three young black men is in the criminal justice system,  where women suffer degrading sexism and bosses' wars for profit threaten the lives of workers worldwide. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain or Giuliani is President (they all are for wider imperialist wars), or if the Governor or Mayor is black, Latin, or white. We still have capitalism.

Under capitalism, the government and elections are controlled by the capitalist class, the rich rulers who control the factories, mines, mills and offices. They use all electoral parties to maintain their profit system. Their interests are directly opposed to the well-being of the working class. Our labor produces all goods and services, all value, and creates the profit the bosses steal. No matter who we vote for, they still own everything and control what we produce.

The rulers use elections to fight over which capitalist faction they represent will control the government to fight for their particular interests. They also use elections to distract workers from the depth of the rot that is the capitalist system, using them as they use racism and nationalism to control our loyalties. They hope that we will sign on to their ideological program: blame workers of other colors (or ourselves), commit ourselves to "our" ruling class and believe that we are changing things by participating in elections or reform movements controlled by various capitalists.

The problem with all of these "solutions" is that they all maintain a system where the ruling class survives by exploiting the working class. However "democratic" they look, the bosses are living off our labor power. The only way to truly and permanently end this is to destroy the entire class system. We need a world with only one class, the workers. Under a communist system, the workers would control their own labor power instead of serving as wage slaves to the bosses. We call this a dictatorship of the proletariat: instead of the racist warmaking bosses' dictatorship we all suffer today, under which they use the farce of voting to mislead us, the workers would make all the decisions collectively. This is not an easy idea, and it is not one any boss or politician will buy into, but it is necessary. We workers, students and soldiers must be prepared to fight for the future we deserve.

Liberal Warmakers Ousting Inept Neo-Cons

Liberals pursuing a strategy of wider wars are exercising increasing control of U.S. military policy. Defense Secretary Gates, who took over neo-con Rumsfeld's post, recently chose Admiral Michael Mullen to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The liberal NY Times' June 13 editorial, "Good Choice for the Chiefs," praised Mullen for his long-range planning: "He has tried to reshape maritime strategies for a new era of unconventional threats and challenges. He has particularly pressed the idea of multiplying America's strategic reach by cooperating with other navies against common threats...."

MULLEN BUILDS SHIPS FOR FAR-FLUNG U.S. INVASIONS

Mullen's imperialist outlook makes him the darling of liberal U.S. rulers. As Chief of Naval Operations, he spearheaded the development of new types of ships geared specifically for ground invasions, unlike carriers and submarines. Mullen boasted to the Senate last month of the DDG 1000 destroyer now under design, "This multi-mission surface combatant, tailored for land attack and littoral [coastal] dominance, will provide independent forward presence and deterrence and operate as an integral part of joint and combined expeditionary forces."

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), another Mullen pet project, actually in production, has a similar mission. This shallow-draft vessel can support troops close to the shores they invade and even go up rivers. The Armed Forces Journal (12/21/06) foresees the LCS's usefulness in the looming U.S. conflict with China, "It may well be the ship best-suited to defeating the threats that face U.S. security partners along the Asia littoral.... China is engaged in territorial disputes with almost all of its maritime neighbors....The countries of Southeast Asia know that persistent instability along their coasts ultimately invites foreign intervention." The ships, however, might sooner see action in Saudi Arabian, Iranian or Pakistani waters. Mullen made the DDG 1000 and the LCS the Navy's top spending priorities.

Along with providing the hardware liberal war-makers need, Mullen grasps their international and domestic ideological requirements. Bush's decision to invade Iraq with few allies sank the U.S. in world opinion. As keynote speaker at the liberal Brookings Institution's forum on "The U.S. Navy Beyond Iraq -- Sea Power for New Era" (3/3/07), Mullen said, "The United States can't do this alone in the future." He spoke, perhaps with too much optimism, of a "thousand-ship" U.S.-led international fleet and played up the Navy's "humanitarian" efforts, like tsunami relief. Aware of an acute shortage of liberals in uniform, Mullen, a Harvard Business School alumnus, promised to boost ROTC on Ivy League campuses. "Having a service which only comes from the red states is a very bad formula," he said.

LIBERALS BAKER AND HAMILTON BACK IRAQ CARNAGE, SEEK WORLD WAR PROVOCATION

Another sign of the liberals' growing influence is Bush's ultimate acceptance of the December 2006 recommendations of James Baker's and Lee Hamilton's Iraq Study Group. "Speaking at a White House news conference, Bush for the first time fully adopted the blueprint outlined in December by the Iraq Study Group." (Los Angeles Times, 5/25/07) The "surge" it called for is now escalating the death toll among both Iraqis and GIs. Ever compliant with Pentagon budget demands, Democrats, too, are mimicking Baker and Hamilton, who said on June 11, "They would not cut off funding for the war." (ABC News, 6/12/07)

While they seek to subdue Iraqi insurgents and get the oil flowing again, Baker and Hamilton know that it will take more 9/11, Pearl Harbor-style attacks to mobilize the nation for the broader wars the rulers must wage. [See box.] The Army continues to miss its recruiting quotas. Hamilton thus welcomed a second 9/11 in eerily positive words. "He also warned that whether it's good policies or sheer luck, future attacks on U.S. soil were imminent." (ABC) Baker, openly favoring U.S. aggression, "said the United States needed to strengthen its defenses and `be prepared to go on the offense.'"

Hamilton helped formulate the Hart-Rudman reports that, beginning in 1999, spelled out 50 recommendations for transforming the U.S. into a war-waging police state that could survive the next few decades in the face of growing threats from would-be imperialist rivals. Hart-Rudman is similar to but more explicit than Baker and Hamilton. Both warned of and hoped for a "hostile attack upon our homeland" after which "the American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so, if they believe that fundamental interests are imperiled." Bush blew the first 9/11 opportunity. Skilled liberal architects of world war are replacing inept neo-con bunglers who can't manage a regional conflict, let alone militarize a nation, intensifying the move to wider wars.

The working class must be on guard against these liberal war-makers. We in PLP must win workers, soldiers, students and youth to join and build PLP, to see that the only way to free our class from this imperialist bloodbath is to organize for communist revolution.

NUCLEAR HIT ON U.S. JUST WHAT RULERS NEED

On June 12, the NY Times published an op-ed article called "After the Bomb," outlining the steps the U.S. government would have to take if terrorists attacked a U.S. city with a nuclear weapon. But this was hardly a speculative piece. Its authors, William Perry, Ashton Carter and Michael May, have played key roles in U.S. war planning. Perry and Carter were secretary and assistant secretary in Clinton's Pentagon. May helped build the U.S. nuclear arsenal as director of the Lawrence Livermore labs.

In essence, they call for fascism: direct federal control over all police and fire departments, enforced imprisonment or evacuation of urban populations, and a centralized, bunker-protected presidential power structure. A reader's letter responded (6/17/07) with what the writers failed to say: "None of us can imagine the depth of rage and desire for vengeance that would sweep this country if the United States were attacked with a nuclear bomb. I have to believe that even the most liberal president would retaliate against someone with nuclear weapons." These liberals hope a terrorist ten-kiloton blast can win the U.S. public to full-scale war.

"After the Bomb" emanates from an April "The Day After" workshop convened by Harvard and Stanford. Its members included serving and retired generals and admirals, homeland security officials, think-tank bigwigs, professors and journalists. The Rockefeller-allied Carnegie and MacArthur foundations funded the project. Perry and Carter, its directors, have been seeking a "galvanizing" incident at least since 1997, when they served on Harvard's Catastrophic Terrorism study group. It envisioned that "an act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and/or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America's history." The 1997 group helped pave the way for Hart-Rudman. With the rulers' overriding mobilizing task still unfinished, the same liberal foundations are bankrolling "The Day After." Having no shortage of enemies, the rulers needn't orchestrate such an assault themselves.

Venezuela: Workers' Power and Bankers' Profits Don't Mix

(In our previous issue, 6/20, we discussed "freedom of the press" in Venezuela after the RCTV's open broadcast license was not renewed because of its open support for a right-wing anti-Chávez coup in April 2002. We explained how there's no such thing as "free press" under capitalism, how the mass media is increasingly run by a few conglomerates worldwide which dictate the news and entertainment we receive.)

The rightwing opposition, and its supporters in the media internationally, accuse the Chávez government of "going communist." Many honest workers and others believe Chávez's "Bolivarian Socialism of the 21st Century" will lead them to liberation from capitalist oppression. We in PLP don't believe it. Sure, Chávez has used the oil bonanza to help give workers and students some reforms. Sure, the old ruling class and the imperialists would prefer governments that in the past stole the oil bonanza and drove workers into deep misery. But in essence, capitalism is still alive and kicking in Venezuela, and big time.

Two recent articles make that quite clear. The NY Times (6/15) reports "Boom Times for Bankers in Venezuela," showing how increased public spending and the oil boom generating a rising economy have been very good for bankers: "In marathon speeches peppered with quotes from Marx and accolades to Che Guevara, President Hugo Chavez repeatedly vows to do away with capitalism in Venezuela. But it turns out that Mr. Chávez's economic policies have been generating a boom for those most capitalist of institutions -- Venezuela's banks."

Business Week magazine (6/25) repeats this theme: "You might call it business' love-hate relationship with Chávez. Local and foreign companies alike are raking in more money than ever in Venezuela. Two-way trade between the U.S. and Venezuela has never been higher. Venezuela exported more than $42 billion to the U.S. last year, including 1 million barrels of oil daily, and imported $9 billion worth of American goods, up 41% from 2005. But since Chávez declared President George W. Bush Public Enemy No. 1, Americans prefer to keep a low profile, even though the 1,100 member companies of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Venezuela employ 650,000 workers. `Consumption has been going through the roof, and commercial relations between the U.S. and Venezuela are still workable, but on the political front there is confrontation,' says Saade [Chamber of Commerce president]. `American business is caught in the middle.'"

Can a "reformed" capitalism liberate workers? Capitalism, whether it's free market or "Bolivarian" and nationalist á la Chávez, is still based on exploiting workers' labor. Maybe Chávez can provide some reforms to workers, and make alliances with U.S. rivals (Russia, China, Iran), but in essence it is still capitalism. And since it is capitalism, the reforms -- which have not really made a major indent in Venezuela's poverty rate -- could be taken away for many reasons (the oil bonanza weakens, the worldwide economic crisis hits harder, and so on).

Meanwhile, the Chavista project to build the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela is basically a capitalist-nationalist outfit that will unite workers, "nationalist business-people," union hacks and high government officials, but workers will not rule. It mimics Argentina's old Peronist Party: a bureaucratic top-down organization led by pro-Chávez careerists and bosses. This is the opposite of a real revolutionary workers' party, based on never uniting with any bosses or union sellouts, on fighting for real workers' power (communism) and the destruction of all forms of capitalism.

We in PLP fight for this kind of real revolutionary party wherever we have forces. We must try to bring our communist politics to workers and youth in Venezuela who have illusions about Chávez. This means working in the mass organizations where these workers are involved, but fighting hard to shatter their deadly illusions in Chavismo and his fake "Socialism of the 21st Century."

South Africa General Strike Shows Racism Cannot Be Ended Under Capitalism

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, June 15 -- Two days ago, a massive strike of over 500,000 workers rocked this country. Unions are demanding a 10% pay rise. The government has agreed to a mediators' proposal of 7.25%.

Thousands of workers in red and yellow T-shirts danced and sang liberation songs through the streets of this city, the country's economic capital. BBC reported that marches occurred in 43 major cities and towns. In Pretoria, an estimated 10,000 people marched to the union buildings, the president's official home. In Cape Town workers picketed parliament. In the port city of Durban, protesters were also out in big numbers and those businesses that had opened shut down, fearing violence. The nearby city of Pietermaritzburg was as empty as a Sunday. Most taxi, bus and train services countrywide supported the strike, making it difficult for many private sector workers to get to work.

The African National Congress (ANC) government has sent dismissal notices to 600 strikers, including many nurses. It has also instructed banks to recall a full month's salary payments of striking public servants -- many of whom were due to be paid today (Business Day, 6/15). The paper added that this is expected to fuel protesters' anger because they will be denied wages for all that time worked. The government has also sent soldiers to striking hospitals and schools. Military medics are now scabbing on hospital workers.

The COSATU union federation, whose leaders are part of the government, just like the SACP (South African "Communist" Party), are using the strikers as part of a power struggle inside the ANC government. Both groups support the candidacy of Jacob Zuma to lead the ANC in the group leadership's December election. Whoever leads the ANC will become its presidential candidate in the 2008 elections to succeed current President Mbeki, the present ANC leader. Zuma is just another opportunist who was Mbeki's second in command until 2006 and has not opposed any of the government's anti-working class, free-market privatization measures.

The SACP ministers in the government are actually responsible for some of the attacks against the strikers. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, for example, a SACP leader and its deputy chair until 2002, is the public service and administration minister. She was the one who issued the injunction preventing nurses and other health workers from striking.

Charles Nqakula, SACP chair, is the government's minister of safety and security. He heads the state's armed bodies and was responsible for the police assault on strikers a week before the general strike. Another SACP leader Ronnie Kasrils, heads the government's intelligence services. No doubt he will be very busy mobilizing the secret state agencies to combat "subversive" workers.

How did these forces who fought Apartheid become the best guardians of capitalism? Millions of workers and youth in South Africa and worldwide opposed and fought the super-racist Apartheid regime and its capitalist and imperialist backers, who made huge profits off the racist super-exploitation of the black workers here. Many of these anti-racist fighters wanted a communist-led revolution to smash capitalism, the source of racism. But the ANC and SACP leadership were not organizing real revolution. (Remember how David Rockefeller and the U.S. bosses welcomed Nelson Mandela as a hero some two decades ago?) So the big bosses, realizing they needed some small cosmetic changes to keep their racist system basically intact, made a deal with the ANC -- knowing the latter would maintain the profit system -- and dumped the old Apartheid rulers.

The ANC leaders have proven to be great managers of capitalism. A few black politicians and aspiring bosses have done very well, but life for most black workers is still very harsh. Poverty rates have risen. The key lesson of this struggle is that racism cannot be ended as long as capitalism rules, no matter the color or label of the rulers.

Racist Police Terror in NYC Schools

NEW YORK CITY, June 16 -- CHALLENGE readers have long known of the police reign of terror inflicted on black and Latin working-class youth in their neighborhoods. Now the NYPD -- which took over school security in 1998 -- has stepped up the abuse of students, and of staff who defend the students. With arrests in and around city schools growing, the stories are horrible: a 13-year-old arrested for writing graffiti on a desk earlier this year, and 30 Bushwick, Brooklyn students arrested on the street walking to a wake for a friend.

In March, the NY Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) published a report entitled "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-policing of New York City Schools." Based on that report, Bob Herbert has written two columns in the NY Times: "Poisonous Police Behavior" (6/2), and "School to Prison Pipeline" (6/9). Herbert also reports on arrests of students nationwide for childlike behavior -- a 6-year-old arrested in Florida when she had a tantrum in kindergarten, a 7-year-old arrested in Baltimore for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk.

Both Herbert and the NYCLU detail the use of metal detectors and abusive, nasty security agents. They note that predominantly white schools don't have metal detectors or the same degree of NYPD abuse. They report on the "good kids" being harassed and arrested, kids who've never been in trouble.

The bottom line, as both Herbert and the NYCLU point out, is racism. For a long time, PLP'ers have fought the terror in NYC schools, terror caused not by students but by School "Safety" Agents and the NYPD. We've led struggles against the first metal detectors at Bushwick High School and fought in other schools against the installation of cameras in hallways. We've pointed out how black and Latin students have been criminalized but not white, middle-class students. All this is part of growing U.S. fascism. Students are being taught to obey the authorities, and that the metal detectors and NYPD will "protect" them from other students who might hurt them.

Liberals like the NYCLU and Herbert are getting a big play in the rulers' biggest media mouthpiece. The rulers are worried that if police continue to harass students nationwide -- criminalizing behavior that is not criminal -- students will become angry at government authority in general, just at the time that the bosses need more working-class youth for their expanding imperialist wars.

The NYCLU calls for turning control of school security back to the Department of Education. This is the agency which has designated numbers of schools as so-called Impact Schools, turning them into armed camps. These liberals are calling for better policing and hands off the "good kids." They want at least some youth won to the system, not turned off and angry.

We in PLP, of course, want to win all students to fight the rulers' racism, reflected in the metal detectors and NYPD in the schools. This summer we will involve youth in many activities so they can learn, in struggle, how racist police terror is part and parcel of the bosses' system. We train youth to be political organizers since we see black, Latino, white and immigrant youth as a treasure that will guarantee the future of our Party and of the struggle for a system that eliminates racism: communism.

Marches Protest Genocide Killing Oakland's Black Youth

OAKLAND, CA -- It was three days after the massacre at Virginia Tech. A girl's scream of anguish swept down a corridor here. Her 16-year-old friend D., a fellow student, had just died in the hospital from gunshot wounds he had received the night before.

Earlier CHALLENGE had reported on a front-page story in Oakland's daily, The Tribune. "Youth's number 1 killer -- Murder," the headline had read. In Oakland black males, like D., are murdered at a rate of 186 per 100,000.

In classes this day, though, we were not so much dealing in statistics as in raw pain, unending loss. "Except," one teacher observed in the after-school emergency staff meeting, "among those students who were not in D.'s social circle. They seemed emotionally removed, almost empty."

The teachers pondered this a while. Then they realized what in reality we already knew. Black life in official USA has little or no value.

Virginia Tech has about 25,000 students.  Assuming no more killings, 32 out of 25,000 will have been murdered this year. That gives us a rate of 128 per 100,000 for one year. Compare that to Oakland's rate of 186 per 100,000.

Compare the media coverage of Virginia Tech's tragedy to Oakland's bigger and more continuous tragedy. The students who seemed emotionally removed were expressing what the larger society had already modeled for them -- the death of young black males is of no particular importance.

The teachers at the school were self-critical. While they called themselves Social Justice Teachers, they questioned what they had done. The teachers decided as a staff not to mimic the larger society's indifference. That Sunday they organized a walk against violence. They took a route that weaved through the heart of the inner-city neighborhood our school serves. Some two hundred parents, students and teachers participated. The high point came when they arrived at D.'s home and his mother came out to join us. What a powerful statement. Here were fellow students, teachers, community members taking time out to note that D.'s short life was important, had value. It was a tiny gesture, of course, but they stood as a David against the Goliath of racist indifference fostered by the rulers in official USA.

Inspired by the moment, there was a call for a march on City Hall. The following Wednesday, after school, students and teachers marched on City Hall. We demanded, and eventually got, a meeting with the mayor.

Of course, two small marches will not change the world. In fact, as far as government action goes, nothing seems to have changed. The cynics are quick to point this out. But there has been a change. This tiny group of teachers, students and community members now see themselves as actors (rather than observers) opposed to this gigantic, genocidal crime that is being played out in Oakland and similar cities nationwide.

Mass Unemployment Behind Black Youth Genocide

Officially it is called homicide, but fratricide or genocide would be more accurate. The accompanying article notes that Oakland, California's black male youth (15 - 24) have a murder rate of 186 per 100,000. Other major cities probably have similar statistics. It's such a huge problem it seems to paralyze reaction.

We're told it's black-on-black crime. Such a description simply leads to hand-wringing. But a report by the Alameda Public Health Department, "Violence in Oakland," says 86% of the suspects and 75% of the victims were unemployed. So it's actually black-unemployed-on-black unemployed crime. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to devise ways of lowering the murder rate.

But doing nothing except adapting to this genocidal murder rate cheapens the lives of all workers and youth. Like it or not, we're a class, a potentially revolutionary working class. If, through passivity, we endorse the cheapening of life "over there," we get the cheapening of life over here. This partially explains why, in the richest of rich industrial countries, millions die prematurely from lack of health insurance, why deaths from U.S. industrial accidents are far higher than any of its rival industrial powers, why the U.S. can lead the industrial nations in its heartless cuts in social programs just to pay for imperialist war. In the USA, working-class life is cheap.

PLP wants to organize to protest these homicide-genocides. At the very least, unions in the city could down tools as each youth murder is reported. Schools could organize demonstrations to protest their students being gunned down. Agitating and organizing around such actions can help the working class see our own strength while helping PLP'ers introduce CHALLENGE with its revolutionary communist ideas in a positive, active setting.

A system that murders its youth so casually deserves to be destroyed with communist revolution.

NEA Delegates Must Defend Students Against Racist Attacks and War

Teachers are meeting the first week in July in Philadelphia for the Representative Assembly (RA) of the National Education Association. This is the convention of the biggest union in the country, 10,000 schools workers, in a crucial position in society. It occurs when the war in Iraq is tanking. Democrats, even as they attack Bush, are planning for a broader war to counter rival imperialists over control of Middle East oil profits. Reorganizing schools to better win teachers and students to support imperialism is crucial to the ruling class's plan of preparing the society for this broader war.

In the schools this war plan includes having military recruiters in the schools; a junior ROTC to track students into the military; surrounding students with a prison-like atmosphere with metal detectors and cameras to spy on them during school hours; advocating the "Tough Choices, Tough Times" proposal which, at 16, will push especially black and Latino students into trade school or the military if they don't pass certain tests; teaching the rulers' false view of history which pushes anti-working class, nationalist and racist patriotism, loyalty to the bosses' flag.

Teachers have a choice. We can support the Democrats, the patriotic path of least resistance, leading us to collaborate in their imperialist plans. Or we can join with students and their families, to build a movement to turn the bosses' wars into a revolution to get rid of imperialist wars and racist exploitation for good.

Why do we call the Democrats a party of war when they criticize Bush based on the war in Iraq? The Democrats attack Bush because of poor planning and too few troops in Iraq, not because they disagree with the need for wars to control the oil resources of the Middle East. After all, it was Democratic President Jimmy Carter who declared Middle Eastern oil crucial to U.S. national interests and worth going to war for. Democratic presidential front-runners, Edwards, Obama, and Clinton all say that "all options are on the table" in regard to a military attack on Iran.

This is because the United States ruling class faces fierce competition from other imperialist rivals, E.U., Russia, and China. All conflicts, from Venezuela to Darfur to Gaza, and especially in the Persian Gulf, relate to that sharpening rivalry, which will inevitably lead to World War III. Democratic and Republican politicians both support the long term goal of maintaining U.S. power in the world by any means necessary. This requires reorganizing society to prepare for the imperialist war made inevitable by the inherent competition of the capitalist system. Teachers must reject both the parties of imperialist war.

To prepare for war bosses need to reindustrialize the U.S. to solve the crisis they face in shipbuilding, tank production and steel supplies. More war requires American students to be trained as everything from engineers to welders and machinists so weapons can be produced domestically. No Child Left Behind is part of this plan. Standardized tests and curricular "reform" which de-emphasize creativity and critical thinking about the current situation and instead concentrate on basic skills, technical education, and patriotism are preparing students to be part of the war machine. Punitive, racist measures in low-achieving schools disempower teachers and aim for the rulers' agenda to be carried out without opposition. Increasingly repressive security measures are part of the fascist control that war will require.

Here at the RA and in schools and locals around the country, teachers must organize to fight against the conversion of the schools into adjuncts of the imperialist war machine. Organizing together with students and their families is necessary to build a broad opposition to this fascist war agenda. But make no mistake about it -- building a "peace movement" will not stop the march to wider war because capitalist competition inevitably leads to inter-imperialist war.

Our students will be called upon to be cannon fodder, and exploited workers for the war machine. But workers, teachers and soldiers can become revolutionary fighters against dog-eat-dog racist capitalism. teachers must join with our students and their families, especially industrial workers and soldiers, to build the Progressive Labor Party. Our party pledges to unite workers of all ethnicities who will lead the working class to counter the racist wars of capitalism with a revolution to build a communist society. While the bosses plan to use our labor for their profits and deadly wars, communists plan a future where the labor of teachers and all workers will be for the benefit of the workers of the world. Only such a movement can tap into the vast power and creativity of the working class to fight for our own interests rather than those of Exxon Mobile. Join us!

International Autoworkers' Unity Must Link Layoffs to Bosses' Wars

STUTTGART, GERMANY May 20 - "The fight against racism is at the heart of building international solidarity." That's how a black woman UAW member from Detroit addressed the almost 400 auto workers who today wrapped up a three-day conference on building international solidarity. Besides the large contingent of German workers who hosted the event, auto workers were represented from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the U.S. and more.

They came from Daimler, VW, Bosch, GM-Opel, Ford, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Most were permanent, union workers. Many were either non-union and/or temporary (contract) workers. It showed the enormous potential of industrial workers to reach around the world and not be bound by the bosses' borders. The backdrop for the conference was growing strike actions across Europe as GM plans to slash thousands of jobs. One of the high points of the conference was a GM Solidarity Charter that will be used to build solidarity among rank-and-file GM workers around the world. Reports from striking Opel workers in Belgium and fired mass leaders at VW in South Africa and Toyota in the Philippines helped set the tone.

But just as the numbers and international character, the participation of youth and women and the general enthusiasm showed the potential, there were also serious limits. This was mainly in the "trade union" politics of the conference. The main line was that around the globe autoworkers are divided by nation and by job status; permanent vs. contract. The conference call was to overcome these divisions and unite to take on the bosses and reformist union leaders by going on the offense and fighting for a 30-hour work-week to create more permanent full-time jobs.

PLP members argued that nowhere are the challenges to U.S. imperialism more apparent than in the auto industry and the Iraq war. We were the only ones to introduce the war and inter-imperialist rivalry into the conference. We said that the social contracts that have existed in the U.S. and Europe since the end of World War II are over and that global auto production has created a global race to the bottom for autoworkers. Workers must be armed politically and prepared for a future of sharper attacks and increasing poverty and productivity, and wider wars for markets, resources and cheap labor.

We also raised the need for workers to fight racism. We talked about how black workers have borne the brunt of the setbacks for U.S. auto bosses in Detroit, Flint, Toledo and other cities, while 15,000 non-union suppliers have sprung up across the South, paying half the auto wages to black, white and immigrant workers. Delegations from Spain and France also spoke about the need to fight racism, and many people talked to us about the issue, but it was never a key part of the outlook of the conference.

We distributed about 50 CHALLENGES, renewed some old friendships and made new ones. We look forward to working with the auto workers' council while struggling over the political outlook that will prepare the international working class for the seizure of power and communist revolution.

Youth Meet to Strengthen Communist Ideas and Practice

MEXICO -- With the goal of analyzing and understanding PLP's ideas, an enthusiastic group of youth organized a two-day communist school. Students, homemakers, workers and teachers, members and friends of the Party, participated. The theme was PLP's document "Road to Revolution 4." Questions arose provoking discussion on racism, world wars, the history of the communist movement, and others. The presence of Party friends involved debate that clarified our position on other political organizations.

The main ideological struggle arose on: (a) the error of fighting for socialism as the road to communism viewed through the Russian and Chinese experiences; (b) the necessity to abolish the wage system under communism; (c) discussion of the sectarian, nationalist struggle of indigenous movements that exclude a great part of the working class; (d) the need to analyze writers with revolutionary ideas, instead of learning by rote; (e) the importance of not just studying communist ideas but actually building the Party in practice with the working class.

We discussed the principal of from each according to his/her capacity and to each according to his/her needs, agreeing that the word "commitment" could be substituted for "capacity" because it more clearly represents communist principles.

A teacher from another country at the School lauded the participation of these youth as showing "solid work and with much potential." On the slogan "from each according to his/her commitment, to each according to his/her needs": it's based on political commitment, more important than "capacity." Those most politically committed will contribute more than those less committed, even if they have the same "capacity." We struggle to motivate more and more workers and students to achieve greater political commitment.

The school's camaraderie helped those participating with the self-criticism of the activities carried out in the clubs. During the self-criticism, the need was stressed to read and learn from history and social movements to better carry out the ideological struggle and the building of the Party, including a vision of the communist system for which we fight.

We learned how to analyze the current situation and to explain PLP's ideas to friends of the Party. They have shouldered more responsibility as their understanding has grown, clarifying many doubts and beginning to read the Party's literature.

These activities helped show the comrades that there are people around the world who are fighting to destroy capitalism and build a communist system. Join PLP.

Warmakers' DREAM ACT is Nightmare For Immigrant Youth

PLP holds that the anti-immigrant reform bill the U.S. bosses are trying to pass is all about war and fascism. The latest twist that this proposed legislation has taken in the Senate proves the validity of this analysis.

Stalled by the rulers' bickering, Bush made a special visit to the Senate to get them to resurrect the bill. But anyone acquainted with it, and its many last-minute amendments introduced by both parties, would conclude that the chances of the bill passing in this session of the Senate are very slim, if not impossible. Then why resurrect it?

The reason is war. The Pentagon and the liberal imperialists hope that the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, one of the bill's provisions, could pass. They are counting on it to help boost badly-needed military recruitment for wider war. Even as Bush was on his way to Washington to help revive the bill, Bill Carr, Pentagon acting deputy Undersecretary of Defense, said, "Talk is already taking place to see if at least the DREAM provision of the stalled bill can proceed." (American Forces Press Service, 6/11/07) "He said the measure should become law because it would be `good for readiness' -- especially at a time when the military...is struggling to attract high-quality recruits." (Boston Globe, 6/16)

This provision from its very inception was hailed by the rulers, their politicians like Obama, Clinton, and McCain, spokesmen like Michael O'Hanlon and Max Boot from the Council on Foreign Relations, and leaders in the pro-immigrant organizations like MAPA, Lulac and the National Council of La Raza as a "humanitarian" bill enabling "non-privileged" undocumented students to go to college, who otherwise, (because of their immigration status) would be unable to. They all ignore or downplay the bill's military aspect.

There are some 350,000 undocumented minor immigrants who according to Carr, would serve in the short run, with "the bill applicable for an estimated 750,000." (Boston Globe, 6/16) "If you have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist. And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen" (which may very well require residency first).

To earn citizenship these youth would have to serve two years in the military or complete at least two years of college. However, "amendments to the bill would render such students ineligible for some federal aid, including Pell Grants, and require colleges to enter undocumented immigrants into the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System." (Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/30/04) To entice legal residents and (if DREAM passes) undocumented youth to join the military, Bush has issued an executive order allowing non-citizens to apply for citizenship after only one day of active duty military service. But getting it takes a lot longer. Some soldiers, forced to do more than two tours in Iraq, are still waiting for their citizenship.

The bosses may very well eventually pass this bill and their immigration reform. The passage of DREAM is important to them because they will use it as an excuse to pass legislation to force all U.S.-born and legal resident youth to serve in the military. Eventually, their need to hold on to their blood-soaked oil empire in the Middle East will spawn bigger and more lethal wars. The rulers will have no alternative but to institute the draft. The now apparent passivity of the working class will eventually turn into unrest and rebellions. Danger and opportunity awaits us. We must live up to the challenge and continue to organize the youth, workers and soldiers for communist revolution.

Imperialists' Fight for Oil Behind Hamas-Fatah Civil War

The civil war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority security forces in the Gaza strip has brought even more instability to the Middle East. There are now two separate Palestinian "states." Hamas now runs the overcrowded Gaza strip while the Fatah-Palestinian Authority runs the West Bank. The U.S., Europe and Israel have decided to back Fatah with money and weapons (the Israeli army controls a good chunk of the West Bank already). Meanwhile, the Palestinian masses are suffering starvation, mass unemployment and more misery and terror from the Israeli army.

The Western imperialists and Israel are to blame for much of the situation. The London Financial Times (6/19) editorialized: "The West's attitude has been hypocritical. First, the U.S. and Europe encouraged elections, but when Hamas won, they cut off direct aid. Now the European Union is likely to resume direct aid to an emergency government [Fatah-Palestinian Authority] set up by decree."

The FT then adds: "...the movement [Hamas] won the last Palestinian elections because Fatah was seen as incompetent and corrupt....The harsh reality is that the Middle East will never be stable until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved."

The inter-imperialist rivalry over the oil-rich Middle East and beyond is behind this instability. The imperialists' only solution is war: currently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza, and Iran is in the cards. Even though the Israeli rulers like to see the Palestinians kill each other, in the long run this instability also affects its interests and those of its U.S. backers.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has proven to be as inept in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as it is in Iraq. As Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group has correctly noted, "Almost every decision the US has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged." It is strengthening Iranian-armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, making them more popular among the masses. Condoleezza Rice's many trips to Tel Aviv failed to get the Israeli rulers to make a deal with Fatah, basically because of Israeli intransigence.

Israel now has a real powder keg on its border: "Naturally, Israel won't tolerate the installation of a radical Islamic structure at its doors; even in the past the Jewish state favored Hamas to counter the then all-powerful Fatah." (http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-923742@51-909163,0.html). In the 1980's, Israel helped Hamas sabotage the first Intifada.

The sad reality is that there is no "two-state" solution to the Palestinian question or any solution to the Middle East powder keg as long as capitalism and imperialism create wars and fascist and religious terror to cover their battle for the region's oil profits. The only solution -- even if it now seems somewhat distant -- is organizing a revolutionary communist movement to unite all Palestinian and Israeli workers and youth to break with Zionism, fundamentalism, nationalism and all local and imperialist bosses.

LETTERS

PLP at May Day in Manizales, Colombia

On May 1 in Manizales, Colombia, as internationalist communists we exposed the nationalist electoral forces. About 1,000 workers, teachers and students participated in the May Day event. We sold DESAFIO and distributed over 1,000 leaflets, pointing out that the only solution to the capitalist hell is communist revolution.

A comrade from our militant PLP group described the meaning of the red flag symbol of international working-class power, recited a poem by Maria Cano, a rebel woman who fought here for the shorter work-week and is known as the flower of the working class. PLP also paid homage to the Martyrs of Chicago whose murder by the bosses gave birth to May Day, the international working-class holiday.

Our challenge to the bosses' ideas inside the mass movement occurs in the context of the class struggle. The working class must be led by real revolutionary communists, not by social-democrat reformist traitors to the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long live the international working class!

A Comrade in Manizales, Colombia

Mass Arrests of Youth by NYPD at Puerto Rican Day Parade

The NYPD always manages to worsen anything. The cops arrested over 200 people, mostly youth, along the route of the June 10 Puerto Rican Day parade, one of the city's largest annual ethnic celebrations. The cops' excuse was they were making a sweep of "suspected members" of the Latin Kings gang. But most of those arrested were young people with no gang affiliation.

Afterwards, parade organizers blasted the cops' tactics. One 16-year-old Catholic HS student, son of a fire department lieutenant, was arrested because he was with a group of youth with yellow t-shirts promoting the Def Jam record label. Apparently, the Latin Kings' colors include yellow.

In the past, the parade leaders had allowed the Latin Kings to march, but denied their request this time. "Technically, we told them their application was late," one parade official told Daily News columnist Juan González. But that official and several others connected to the parade leadership revealed yesterday that their committee has been under intense pressure for the past year from City Hall and the NYPD to exclude the Latin Kings and other street gangs from the parade.

However, the problem stemmed from the NYPD's and City Hall's racism, not from the suspected gang members. Since the 2000 parade, when dozens of women were sexually assaulted in Central Park after the parade had ended, the cops have taken a hard line against all youth at the parade. Although those attacks were not connected to any gang activity, one former parade official said, "The NYPD keeps using the excuse of terrorism and public safety to get us to remove the Latin Kings from the parade."

Gonzalez's column stated, "Previous parade committee leaders had sought to reach out to the alienated young Hispanics who gravitate to violence-prone gangs. They figure you can't reform gang members if you don't treat them as members of society.... But whether you think the Latin Kings should have a right to march in the parade or not, that still doesn't excuse indiscriminate police sweeps in a huge crowd of perhaps two million people. To those of us who have decades of experience going to the Puerto Rican Day Parade, this kind of heavy-handed treatment by police has become maddeningly routine."

Again, the racist cops always manage to worsen any situation. But they can't help it since it is in the nature of any police department to be racist and terrorize innocent people, particularly Latino and black youth.

A Former Parade Marcher

`Reform' Would Tax Immigrants, Send Youth to War

"Immigration reform" means an attempt to maintain absolute control over the immigrant community as well as citizens across the U.S. The CHALLENGE article (6/6) made several good points, such as noting that under this bill not all 12 million undocumented immigrants would qualify for documents. But even though the politicians failed to agree on a bill, Bush is trying to resurrect it and it may very well return with many of its original provisions. One of these states that those who do qualify may have to pay retroactive taxes. At this moment it is unclear whether that means payment from the time they started working in the U.S. to the present. Even if it was for, say, the last three years, it would mean for every year of non-payment of taxes, there would be a 15% penalty on the amount of income that was declared.

Considering that the bill provides for these workers having to leave the U.S. at some point, how will they raise the money if they must return to their country of origin where there will be few jobs (in Mexico due to NAFTA and in Central America due to CAFTA)? All this because of regulations imposed by U.S. rulers and reinforced by local capitalists which is what drove these workers to emigrate to the U.S. in the first place.

As if these retroactive tax payments were not enough, the "reform" demands that these workers learn English or be denied services here. One amendment to the bill says: "Unless specifically provided by statute, no person has a right...to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English. If an exception is made... [for] a language other than English, the exception does not create an entitlement to additional services in that language or any language other than English."

So, if a person is unable to learn the language because she/he was out of the country, or is aged, this appears to make them "unqualified." Will services be denied to senior citizens because of such an amendment? Are the rulers trying to eliminate more and more programs so these funds can be used in wars to kill other workers across the ocean?

U.S. rulers will expand their imperialist wars, probably to Iran or Venezuela. So they need to exploit workers even more to pay for these wars, and also to use undocumented immigrants as cannon fodder in the wars. The ruling class is having trouble controlling its oil empire, forcing it to make alliances with or concessions to other bosses.

The tax burden on immigrants in any possible bill is like holding out the possibility of some form of "legal" status and then taxing them for allowing them to find needed work (which some believe will lead to other benefits U.S. citizens have in health and education, many of which are shrinking anyway). Meanwhile, it will give the bosses the right to spill the blood of immigrant children in Iraq and elsewhere. The rulers want to enslave immigrants for the rest of their lives, paying for imperialist wars that benefit only the rich while workers are being screwed in a multitude of ways.

A Latino immigrant worker

Work in Unions, Bring Workers Red Politics

In the letter "Communist Strategy for Workers in Europe" (CHALLENGE, 6/20), "A reader in Germany" is right in saying that "today in Europe, unions have become instruments of capital, opposing a communist strategy for workers."

If you combine that sad fact with low union membership rates -- 55.6% of workers in Belgium, 25% in Germany, 12.8% in the U.S. and 9.7% in France, according to the report "OECD employment outlook 2004" -- you might conclude that communists shouldn't bother with trade unions at all.

But abandoning the unions would be a big mistake. I think Lenin's words in "Left-Wing Communism" (1920) still ring true today: "To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of the workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie ..." In Lenin`s opinion, communists must wage a ruthless struggle "until all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism have been completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions." (By "leaders of social-chauvinism," Lenin meant the sort of nationalist union leaders that "A reader in Germany" condemns.)

Of course, communists mustn't limit their work in unions to union struggles. Lenin added that "we wage the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to attract the working class to our side. To forget this most elementary and self-evident truth would be stupid."

Finally, Lenin pointed out why we've got to struggle to win union members to communism: "It is impossible to capture political power (and the attempt should not be made) until this struggle has reached a certain stage."

(I'm not quoting Lenin because I think he had all the answers, but because I think he's right on this particular point, and to encourage CHALLENGE readers to study his book.)

A reader in France

Pentagon Dumps Toxic Waste into World's Oceans

Dailypress.com (Virginia) details how the U.S. Army has "dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the ocean, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled ships." There are at least 26 dump zones off the coast of 11 states and countries ranging from Japan to Norway to New Zealand.

Why are the bosses' press and environmental movements taking hold of this subject now? "Federal lawmakers are demanding the Army reveal everything it knows about where it dumped chemical weapons into the world's oceans," because these dumps may hinder the expansion of oil exploration. The U.S. ruling class has spent trillions on wars to control the world's supply of oil. This lust for profits, not environmental concerns, is what drives the U.S. rulers' policies.

The capitalists ordered these dangerous weapons to be dumped into the ocean from the end of World War II up to 1970. Records of the locations "are sketchy, missing, or were destroyed. The Army hasn't reviewed the World War I-era records, when ocean dumping of chemical weapons was common."

Brankowitz says that "short of a major research effort that would cost a lot of money, we've done the best we can." The U.S. ruling class has spent trillions on wars to control the world's supply of oil. They "can't" find a safer alternative to dumping toxic waste from a nuclear weapons testing area into the ocean, but they have hundreds of billions for the war in Iraq and, eventually, Iran. The contradictions facing U.S. capitalism constantly expose just how genocidal the criminals of the U.S. ruling class really are.

The environmentalist movement is blaming the U.S. military, but it was the bosses' failure to defuse the weapons they used to kill millions of workers that caused this tragedy. Capitalism has poisoned our world for centuries. Only when communist cooperation has replaced the endless drive for profits will workers be able to protect the environment for our class and our children. Fight Back!

Red Environmentalist

Italian Immigrants Then, Latino Immigrants Now

Recently, CHALLENGE reported on a May 1 demonstration for immigrant rights in Morristown, NJ. Immigrant laborers there, like elsewhere across the country, are victims of racist discrimination and harassment. Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello complains about the town's laborers "problem." NYC's El Diario-La Prensa (June 16) reports on a book, "New Neighborhoods, Old Friends," by James Constanzo, which details the treatment and situation of Italian immigrants who came to Morristown a century ago and its similarities to today's immigrant laborers from Latin America. Mayor Cresitello's immigrant descendants lived under the same rotten conditions suffered by today's laborers. They also used to hang out on corners looking for jobs, just like today's laborers.

"It is interesting that those who persecute immigrants today are the descendants of those victims of the same type of discrimination. The difference is that today they want to kick us out of town, spreading fear," said Pedro Labrador, a Morristown resident.

The book notes that from the end of the 19th century the new Italian immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, were ferried to New York City, and those with relatives in Morristown took a ferry to Hoboken and then a train to Morristown. Many were hired for regular jobs, but about a dozen or so stood at the corner of Speedwell Ave. and Flagler St. looking for work in construction and gardening. Today's laborers do it on Morris Street and on Lafayette and Speedwell avenues.

The Italian immigrants were hired for the worst jobs with the lowest pay possible. They were also accused of "making noise on the streets, drinking in public, committing crime," etc. They suffered verbal abuse, were segregated because of their nationality and for not speaking English, just like the attacks on today's immigrants.

From 1880 till 1924, when immigration quotas were established, over five million Italians entered the U.S. In the early 20th century, some 60 rich industrialists moved to Morristown, returning the town to its glory days from when, in 1777, George Washington established his Continental Navy headquarters. But discrimination continued against the new Italian immigrants. The book quotes Rose Vigilante, who said that in 1910 she worked in a laundry, where Irish workers ironed rich people's clothes on the first floor, while Italians were relegated to the basement, ironing pillow covers and bed sheets.

It's quite clear that racism against immigrants is as American as slavery against blacks and mass murder of Native Americans. Politicians, racist thugs like the Minutemen and Goebbels-like media stars like Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly are parroting the same racist lies used over a century ago.

Congratulations to the PLP members and other anti-racist workers and youth who fight racism in all its forms. That's the only way to end this long-lasting monster and its creator, capitalism.

A Red Immigrant

`Sanctuary' Groups Need Action, not `Legality'

Recently I spoke at an immigration forum at my church, where I was asked to provide "the big picture." I spoke of our world of "expanding wars for imperialist dominance, increasingly racist and repressive policies in the name of national security and a society becoming fully and legally militarized." I exposed the current immigration bill and how much of it has already been put into practice.

I made suggestions to widen and sharpen the fight- back. I called for a sanctuary movement, inspired by the abolitionists who illegally saved runaway slaves. Education, health, social service and legal workers must pledge not to reveal the status of immigrants. We must "shut down" racist vigilante groups and stop attacks on day laborers. We can organize demonstrations at the U.S./Mexico border to advance working-class solidarity. I asked participants to consider a working-class, internationalist outlook based on these ideas: workers struggles have no borders; we are workers, not illegals; and tear down the wall.

Two speakers explained the "New Sanctuary Movement" in 25 U.S. cities. In the "Old Sanctuary Movement" of the 1980's, congregations "hid" Guatemalans and Salvadorans fleeing the death squads from U.S. immigration officials, but the "New Sanctuary Movement" is limited to supporting those facing deportation hearings. Faith communities can "sign on" to these levels of commitment: 1) to educate the congregation and adopt pledges of support, 2) to advocate changes in immigration law, 3) to help immigrants by finding "good" lawyers, writing letters, going to their hearings and possibly giving public sanctuary inside religious facilities for immigrants facing deportation. However, the movement opposes "hiding" immigrants, "underground" activity or "blocking" doors against immigration officials.

I was the only one to suggest that we should not trust the "legal process," facing today's high levels of racism and repression. We need to open discussion about "fear and risks," because a real commitment to "sanctuary" isn't a question of legality, but of "indignation, justice and working-class solidarity." We must be prepared to "take action, take steps to fight back, otherwise it will be too late."

The "New Sanctuary Movement" involves many honest people. But its leadership's narrow perspective greatly limits its usefulness and disarms its participants politically and tactically, tying them (often unknowingly) to the fascist maneuvering of capitalism's ruling class. Communists in this movement must build relationships, fight for communist ideas and lead class struggle based around those ideas. Let's do it!

Another red churchmouse

New Campus Group Spreads Pro-Worker Politics

(The following updates the June 20 CHALLENGE article entitled "Campus Political Struggle Backs Immigrant Workers, Fights Nationalist Atacks.")

The new student group established by the majority of students who left the nationalist organization because of its reactionary politics has formed multi-racial alliances across campus clubs, stressing anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics rather than cultural or religious identities. It has tried to expose the divisive "multi-cultural" ideas of the campus Cultural Center that predictably supports the right-wing position of the nationalist organization. The latter has tried from the beginning to stop our militant actions.

Study groups on topics such as imperialism, racism, sexism and reform vs. revolution were scheduled weekly, inviting new students and members to discuss the political aspects of campus organizing. This fight for anti-imperialist politics and multi-racial unity has sparked a number of rallies against the war and recruitment on campus by the military and other police agencies. There have also been documentary screenings of "soldiers-speak-out" films to involve vets on campus, and films about worldwide labor struggles.

The group also planned a modest but successful campus May Day rally and celebration that again stressed multi-racial unity and the need for all workers, students and soldiers to unite against imperialism and the fascist capitalist system.

Since the break from the nationalist organization, CHALLENGE readership has risen. The new group has produced an increased level of struggle on campus against imperialist wars and racist super-exploitation, one that promises to continue into our Summer Projects and the next school year.

REDEYE

Looking behind the `war on terror'!

...The war on terror is a two-sided coin. One side reads: "Global War on Terror." The other side reads: _"Anything goes." (Bill Press, 6/3)

Primary's `pro-labor' Dem is a fake

...Edwards's antipoverty ideas....themselves, far from being radical or populist, basically sound -- there's no other way to put it -- Clintonian.

In fact, the more you talk to Edwards, the more apparent it is that the populist label doesn't quite fit. While he talks incessantly about economic injustice, Edwards isn't proposing anything...that would strike a serious blow against multinational corporations or the top tier of American earners. Even in his rhetoric, Edwards seems to deliberately avoid stoking resentments or pitting one class against another....

... "He evinces a lot of concern for the middle class and middle-class anxieties. But he's not in any way attacking the rich or corporations....He's not explaining one fundamental fact of modern economic life, which is that the very rich have all the money."

When I asked Edwards if he blamed large corporations or the wealthiest Americans for inequality, he appeared briefly confused by the question.

"No -- no," Edwards repeated, shaking his head. "I just don't think blaming helps, to be honest with you. What's the point?" (NYT, 6/10)

Capitalism's joblessness ruins teens

From January through May, according to the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, "the national teen employment rate averaged only 33.1 percent, tying for the lowest employment rate in the past 60 years."

The youth labor market in the U.S. has all but collapsed....

"That's why people go on the hustle," said one young man. "Got to get the money somewhere." (NYT, 6/16)

If college brings you $ -- banks get it

As college tuition has soared past the stagnant limits on federal aid, private loans have become the fastest-growing sector....These loans carry variable rates that can reach 20 percent, like credit cards....Students are pilling up debts as high as $100,000....

"When a student signs the paper for these loans...we're indebting these kids for life." (NYT, 6/10)

Scratch a war, find a profit motive

A report by the anticorruption organization Global Witness found that profits from smuggled and mishandled cocoa had helped pay for the civil war that has split the country for the past five years. It said that at least $118 million from the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest producer, was used...to fuel the conflict and enrich its leaders. Valuable mineral resources like diamonds, oil and gold have spawned and fueled vast conflicts across Africa for decades. (NYT, 6/9)

People find democracy a false hope

This is election season in the Middle East. Syria just held presidential and parliamentary elections. Algeria held parliamentary elections. Egyptians will be asked to vote next week on a new upper house of Parliament. There will soon be elections in Jordan, Morocco and Oman, followed by elections in Qatar....

...Elections, it appears, have increasingly become a tool used by the authoritarian leaders to claim legitimacy.

"There is a state of depression and lack of trust, or faith, among the Arab masses in the regimes and little belief that these elections can lead to the change aspired to"....

"Yes," replied Hussein Jaffal, 31, "there is democracy, but there are no freedoms."

It is that view that seems to be spreading.... "Democracy itself has lost credibility as a way of government," said a Western diplomat based in Algiers....

"The system is rigged to bring to power people who are already in power,".... (NYT, 6/7)

US rulers can junk the `rule of law'

The case of Li Guirong, a graying 50-year-old who now hobbles on crutches, reflects China at its worst -- government by thuggery. But each time I start this column. I feel that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have pulled the rug from under me. Do I really have the right to complain about torture or extra-legal detentions in China when we Americans do the same in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba?

I keep remembering a heated conversation I had...in China years ago. I reproached an official for China's torture and arbitrary imprisonment... "If you Americans ever faced the threat of chaos, you would do just the same," he said.

"Impossible!" I replied.

Yet I owe him an apology, for he has been proven right. The moment we did feel a threat, after 9/11, we held people without trial, and beatings were widespread....(NYT, 6/7)

PLP History: Lessons for Today: SDS Failed to Support 1970 Postal Strike

(Part VII described the massive anti-war march on Washington and the PLP-led illegal breakaway demonstration on November 15, 1969, at the U.S. Labor Department backing 147,000 striking General Electric workers. PLP now directed its strategic focus toward building a campus worker-student alliance as a step toward unity between students and the industrial working class.)

SDS: Part VIII

During the 1969-70 academic year, the war in Vietnam raged on. Massive student protest, much of it militant, continued at campuses across the U.S. Desertion and outright defection rose to unprecedented heights within the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, beneath this surface of mounting class struggle, the betrayal of people's war in Vietnam was already under way. As early as 1968, Vietnamese leaders had begun negotiating a deal that would allow U.S. imperialism to re-gain at the bargaining table much of its battlefield losses. However, the deadly fruit of this class collaboration had yet to ripen.

After the split at the June 1969 convention, SDS chapters began building the campus worker-student alliance (CWSA) under PLP's leadership. Despite many political weaknesses, it launched important, useful political struggles over the next few years. In November 1969, when the Harvard administration was still reeling from the previous spring's student strike, SDS members there organized a sit-in protesting the university's racist hiring and pay policies.

The Columbia SDS chapter organized a significant struggle to demand funeral benefits for the family of a campus worker decapitated during a preventable elevator-shaft accident. After initially attempting to avoid all responsibility and after a disciplinary hearing intended to punish student protestors -- which the protestors turned into a trial of the university's racism -- the Columbia administration eventually caved in. Important struggles uniting students and campus workers erupted at Yale, UCLA and many other campuses.

Under PLP's leadership, SDS held a successful convention at Yale and, in the fall of 1970, organized more than 1,000 workers and students to march through Detroit and picket the General Motors headquarters to support striking GM workers. The Party continued to grow and to improve its political line, further distancing itself from revisionism -- the old communist movement's betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, allowing rulers' ideology within the ranks of the working class -- with the publication in 1971 of Road to Revolution III.

However, amid these generally positive developments, events exposed a glaring political weakness within the CWSA and the PLP student leadership. On March 17, 1970, a wildcat strike began in Branch 36 of the New York Post Office. Within days, it had become a national strike, involving more than 200,000 workers at nearly 700 locations.

The strike was essentially "illegal," but because other government workers threatened to join it if President Nixon prosecuted the strikers, he limited his attack to impotent efforts at scabbing, including use of the National Guards and Reserves of all the major military services. This proved completely ineffective. Many of the Guardsmen and Reservists were workers themselves, who carried out acts of sabotage in sympathy with the strikers. The U.S. mail system was absolutely crippled. Wall Street and the normal functioning of business were severely affected. (E-mail and the internet did not exist then.)

The postal strike provided the newly pro-working class SDS with an unmatched opportunity to organize solidarity demonstrations and actions, particularly on campuses where it had chapters. Yet, except for a few small, perfunctory actions of this type and a small demonstration in downtown Manhattan, we did little to support this historic strike.

With 37 years of hindsight, we can make a sober, balanced self-criticism of our inability to rise to this occasion. Part of the problem was objective. SDS was primarily a single-issue organization, whose dramatic rise was tied to protesting the Vietnam War. Vietnamese workers and peasants were being sold out, and the anti-war movement was dying at the time of the postal strike, although it had not yet become conscious of its demise. Leading massive solidarity actions commensurate with the postal strike's importance may therefore not have been in the cards.

But attributing our dismal performance to "objective conditions" would be foolish and irresponsible. The truth is that the PLP student leadership failed to grasp the postal strike's profound significance, took a business-as-usual approach to a situation that called for extraordinary aggressiveness, and in so doing, revealed its own significant weakness on the crucial question of class consciousness.

The Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong once said that a minimum of ten years' practice, struggle and criticism-self-criticism were necessary to turn an intellectual into a good communist. At the very least, our feeble response to the postal strike proved him right on this score. The main lesson here, as in so many other cases, is that we could have done more -- a lot more. However, reiterating this self-criticism after so many years can enable our young comrades and friends to absorb this lesson and to act accordingly when future opportunities of this type arise, as they inevitably will.

(Next: Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, the Kent State massacre and the May 9, 1970, March on Washington.)

THE HAZZARDS OF DUKE

Capitalist justice is racist to the core. On the one hand, a North Carolina prosecutor was disbarred for wrongly charging three white middle-class Duke lacrosse players with rape (although the case never went to trial). But a Chicago prosecutor could wrongly charge and convict more than a dozen black men, and have them serve about 100 years collectively, even though their "confessions" resulted from torture in a South Side police station. This prosecutor turns out to be none other than the current Mayor Daley who has since been elected over and over again!

This system has got to go.
Factory Worker's Experiences Carry Over Shop to Shop

"Hey dude, are you working at your grandparent's house this weekend?" asked Greg.

"Yeah, man," Chris replied," I'm going tomorrow and Saturday."

"Wow, what are you guys doing, remodeling or something?" Carlos asked.

"No we're cleaning out lots of stuff that my grandparents have collected over the years," Chris explains. "It's been almost thirty years so they have a lot of stuff to go through and throw out. Yeah, it's hard because we're getting them ready to sell their house and move them into one of those senior apartment places."

"Man," said Greg, "it sucks the way old people are treated in this country. Other cultures would have three or four generations in one house helping each other pay the bills and take care of the family's kids and elders."

"Yeah," Chris replied, "I'm glad we're able to do it with them before it's too late. "It's definitely brought the family closer together, I guess anytime we go through something tough collectively we get closer. Many people all over the world face these problems. This system isn't set up to meet workers' needs. As long as you can work for the boss, you're `useful.' But then they cast you aside and social security isn't enough."

This is even truer as the bosses cut benefits to pay for more wars.

After several months working in a new shop I had this conversation on our break with an inter-racial group of young industrial workers -- two white workers, one Mexican, one black and one Asian. We don't have great conversations every day. It's taken some time to just start having serious exchanges about more important stuff. Of course, we chat about the weather or about what we did over the weekend, all part of this puzzle called organizing, but we must always remember why we're in these shops.

We do want to make friends, without whom we can't recruit workers to the Party. On the way we should always be aware of the political limits and how we can struggle to expand them. Sometimes we want to push things along so quickly we forget most people don't necessarily have many serious conversations regularly with their co-workers. That takes some time and struggle. Sometimes it's also difficult to be self-critical and realize that maybe we're restricting the limits in the way we struggle.

This conversation really helped me think about how this group has taken shape and to compare it with other experiences in my old shop. I tend to be impatient, to rush things, which often short-changes my co-workers and the Party. I move on too quickly, forgetting that the limits are less than where I want them to be. We learn through our mistakes and can share our lessons through CHALLENGE to help others in their organizing. Reviewing these experiences can really help us better understand ourselves and our organizing.

From working in these factories I've learned much about what the working class is and who I am as a worker and a communist. The experiences have expanded my tactics as an organizer for the Party. They continually shape my theories and practice after careful analysis and discussion with my PLP club. Particularly, my experiences have taught me to apply a dialectical approach, to look at both sides of the contradiction and understand when to use different political tactics, to be effective in bringing workers closer to the Party.

An Industrial Worker

 

Save Darfur For Whom? For U.S. Rulers’ Oil Empire

• War Criminals Lead Liberal Darfur Movement

Cindy Sheehan: Quitting Struggle Won’t Stop War-Making Dems

U.S. Rulers Fund Both Parties

700,000 Strikers Hit South Africa’s New Economic Apartheid

Wanted For Murder: Racist NYPD KKKop

Liberals Use ‘Peace’ Movement as Cover for Imperialist War

Vets Support Anti-War GI Against Marine Brass

Campus Political Struggle Backs Immigrant Workers, Fights Nationalist Attacks

Arab-Jewish Unity Answer to U.S.-Zionist Racism

Venezuela: ‘Free Press’ Brawl Masks Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Profits

Rulers Use JFK ‘Plot’ To Terrorize Workers

Communism: Only Liberation of Women and All Workers

Imperialist Square Off at G8 Meeting

GM-Russia Workers Fight Heat, Also Need Revolution

Portugal General Strike Hits Anti-Worker ‘Reforms’

• Delphi Automotive Systems Attack Portugal’s Workers

LETTERS

U.S. Bosses Behind Colombia’s Death Squads

GI’s Say They’re ‘Spilling Blood for Oil’

PLP Foresaw Vietnam’s ‘Capitalist Road’

Communist Strategy for Workers in Europe

MTA-TWU Collusion Murders Transit Workers

Immigrant Students Reject Bosses’ Lies

Fewer Heroes, More Organizers

REDEYE on the News

• Iraq war detested on black website
• Sarge says troops want out
• Black America not fooled on Iraq
• No profit, so emergency rooms shut
• Oil-imperialism is bi-partisan
• Harvesters rob Mexico’s poorest
• Cuba health care ‘deserves credit’

PLP History: PL-led Action Linked Vietnam War to Strike-breaker GE

Chad: Another China-U.S. Bosses’ Oil Battleground

Capitalists’ ‘Inborn Superiority’ One More Ruling-Class Myth

---

Save Darfur For Whom? For U.S. Rulers’ Oil Empire

On campuses and in religious groups across the U.S., a movement is growing against horrendous atrocities inflicted on the people of Darfur. The Save Darfur Coalition unites a host of organizations opposing the Sudanese government and its henchmen, who have murdered, raped, starved and tortured hundreds of thousands and made millions homeless. Unfortunately, however, the earnest efforts of rank-and-file Darfur activists will ultimately be wasted.

The movement does not attack capitalism’s ceaseless competition for profits, which underlies the Sudan slaughter, as it does the Iraq war. Additionally, the dominant leaders of Save Darfur represent the main imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists, who cynically seek to transform mass indignation over Darfur into popular support for the wider wars they require. The strife in Darfur results from the intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China over Sudan’s oil, the Mid-East oil export routes Sudan commands and jockeying for geo-strategic and public-opinion advantage in the run-up to global conflict.

On one level, the U.S. is battling oil-thirsty China for Sudan’s reserves. U.S. giant Chevron first discovered relatively small oil deposits in Sudan in the 1970’s but soon pulled out because an ongoing civil war there made the venture not worth the risk. Since then, oil companies from France, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and China have moved in, made far bigger finds, and conspired with Sudan’s emerging al-Bashir dictatorship to shut the U.S. out. China now takes the lion’s share, 60%, of Sudan’s 500,000 barrels-a-day of oil. The U.S. started a comeback in the early ’80s by funding a rebellion against the Khartoum government. John Garang, a graduate of the U.S. Army’s special forces school at Ft. Benning, Georgia, led the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army and symbolized the pro-U.S. rebel movement until his death in 2005. In addition to funding Garang’s brutal proxy militia, since 1996 the U.S. has sent $20 million of military equipment to neighboring Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to put further pressure on the Sudanese government. But installing a pro-U.S. regime would merely turn the petroleum profit spigot westward and do nothing for Darfur’s destitute working class. Exxon Mobil’s pipeline operations in nearby Chad, for example, have evicted thousands of farmers, stealing dirt from the dirt-poor.

War Criminals Lead Liberal Darfur Movement

Liberal, war-making imperialists are asserting ever tighter control over the Save Darfur Coalition. The NY Times (6/2/07) reported that a split pitting advocates of military action against relief workers resulted in the ouster of coalition director David Rubenstein, a spokesman for the latter. The Times made it clear that John Prendergast, another Save Darfur director and senior advisor to the International Crisis Group (ICG), had blessed the firing, "Prendergast...said the changes that the board decided to make were part of an effort to reorganize and re-energize the movement."

Cindy Sheehan: Quitting Struggle Won’t Stop War-Making Dems

Cindy Sheehan’s decision to quit the anti-war movement has saddened many activists. Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, made a bold move when she started Camp Casey outside Bush’s ranch almost three years ago. Sheehan’s principled stance galvanized many people into action at that time. However, Sheehan’s approach, though honest, did not address the root cause of imperialist war and was doomed to failure.

Sheehan believed that if enough people rose up against the Iraq war, the Democrats would get elected, and then be forced to act to end the war. She thought that various "anti-war" organizations led by the Democratic Party really could have the class interests of U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi people at heart. And she thought a hard-hitting campaign, combining massive civil disobedience, media publicity and disrupting "business as usual" could succeed.

The Democratic Party is not just "part of the problem." Their operatives and allies are the main agents of the class enemy within the ranks of honest anti-war forces. The Democratic Party has generated far more wars in U.S. history than the Republicans. They completely supported Gulf War I. Clinton and Secy. of State Albright’s sanctions on food and medicine between the wars killed a half million Iraqi children (a "price worth paying" replied Albright to a reporter’s question). The Democrats voted overwhelmingly to support the resolution authorizing Bush to invade Iraq. They’ve voted to fund the war ever since, with no strings attached.

The Iraq war, like all other wars in the recent period, is a product of imperialism. Communists say that imperialism is a stage of capitalism where the whole world has already been divided up amongst the biggest powers. Under imperialism, bosses from one country try to control resources, markets and labor in order to dominate rival bosses from other countries.

In Iraq, that resource is oil. These fights between bosses begin in smaller countries, like Iraq and Lebanon. Usually, they result in the biggest thieves facing off against each other in major wars, which can kill tens or hundreds of millions of workers. So imperialist wars are inevitable under the capitalist system, and won’t end until the working class and its allies wipe out that system.

Nothing less than a communist revolution, which changes production for profit, to production and distribution for need, will change the root cause of imperialism and its wars. Media campaigns are a vain attempt to enlist the services of organizations which support the capitalist system to fight that same system. The rulers can handle civil disobedience and even mass, militant protest. Only breaking the "rules of the game" and organizing to smash the profit system will threaten their class rule.

Sheehan is right that the U.S. is becoming (actually has become) a "fascist corporate wasteland." She’s right that the so-called "left" that supports the Democrats is no left at all. We admire her courage, and understand her exhaustion from all the attacks and betrayals she’s experienced. But now is the time to deepen our ties within the anti-war movement, especially with those considering breaking the bounds capitalism has established. We need to show how the fight against imperialism and the fight against racism are inseparable.

Cynicism and passivity only serve the capitalists. We must prepare for a long and brutal fight to destroy the war-makers who use our — and our children’s — "blood and treasure" to achieve their greater profit goals.

U.S. Rulers Fund Both Parties

While Republicans get a majority of corporate campaign contributions, the main capitalists insure Democrats get their share.

Corporation Percentage to Total Democrats Contributions

Goldman Sachs 61% $3,348,816

JPMorgan Chase 56% $2.009,121

Microsoft 56% $1,995,492

NewsCorp (Murdoch) 55% $ 943,682

NY Life Insurance 52% $1,102,025

Citigroup 51% $2,368,516

UBS AG 50% $1,909,551

700,000 Strikers Hit South Africa’s New Economic Apartheid

JOHANNESBURG, JUNE 1 — Thousands of public sector workers in South Africa marched as part of a strike by some 700,000 workers demanding a 12% pay hike, rejecting the government’s 6% offer. Inflation alone is at 5.5% so the "raise" would have been ½%. A 40-year-old-teacher from Dr. B. W. Vilakazi High School in Soweto told the BBC, "As a teacher I’m earning peanuts."

Workers’ anger was stoked recently by an official body’s recommendation that President Thabo Mbeki receive a 57% salary increase. "They live in luxury, we still stay in poverty," hospital cleaner Flora Simakuhle said, referring to politicians. (South African Business Day newspaper, 6/1) "Fifty-seven percent for fat cats and 6% for poor hard workers. Shame on you," read one placard brandished by a picket at a Johannesburg hospital.

The strike closed schools, hospitals, public transport and other public services. The usually traffic-jammed streets here were almost empty.

Capitalist oppression and its racism can never be ended under any bosses’ government. The African National Congress (ANC) rulers have proven that. Many workers are seeing that the ANC serves capitalism, just as the old racist Apartheid regime did. The workers’ anger and pressure have forced the unions to organize the strike and mass protests, but the union leadership will jump at the first opportunity to sell out the militant workers.

Millions of South African workers and youth thought they were fighting for a revolutionary government when they fought the old Apartheid regime. Their heroic struggle against racism inspired workers and youth worldwide. But the ANC led by Nelson Mandela and its allies in the "Communist" Party of South Africa betrayed them. The task now is to build a revolutionary communist leadership and fight for the only true emancipation from racism and capitalism: communism, which will eliminate the profit system, the cause of racism and exploitation. We in PLP say that a revolutionary workers’ movement in South Africa, with its powerful working class, could lead the way to liberate workers and youth all across Africa from the living hell they suffer.

Wanted For Murder: Racist NYPD KKKop

BRONX, NY, June 4 — PLP members and friends have continued to denounce the fascist NYPD’s brutal terror inflicted here on Fermin Arzu (picture right), an unarmed 41-year-old immigrant worker from Honduras.
KKKop Raphael Lora shot him in cold blood, firing five shots into his car. Again it was shoot to kill as one bullet pierced Arzu’s heart and lung. As CHALLENGE reported (6/6), we quickly responded to this racist incident, visiting the family of brother Arzu, distributing CHALLENGES and leaflets and making several contacts.

We then found out about and went to a vigil the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend. It began with mostly politicians and journalists, but slowly grew to a throng of approximately 150 angry demonstrators. CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed to the entire crowd. The leaflet contained a picture of KKKop Lora with the slogan, "WANTED FOR MURDER!"

Workers in the neighborhood responded well to the leaflet and took extra copies to distribute to family, friends and co-workers. One worker couldn’t agree more, as he pointed to the "WANTED" picture, declaring, "This is what I’m talking about. People can’t be afraid of these bastards! We need to take them head on!" He then took a bunch of leaflets and distributed them to eight of his friends at the vigil, while exchanging phone numbers with a comrade.

Arzu’s memorial service occurred the next day. PLP held a bullhorn rally and CHALLENGE sale two blocks from the funeral home. Even though the cops shut down our bullhorn, over 200 papers and 300 leaflets were distributed to workers and students in the neighborhood. Some thanked us for being there because the bosses’ news media had been scaling down coverage of this recent slaying. "It’s good to see the truth for once!" commented one commuter as he read through CHALLENGE and a leaflet.

The brutality of this murderous attack recalls the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, shot 41 times by cops while reaching for his wallet. Arzu was reaching for the glove compartment, likely to retrieve his license and auto registration. As with Diallo, the police are now searching for "evidence" to justify their murder.

Meanwhile, KKKop Lora boasted, "I’m just doing my job." (NY Daily News, 5/20/07) This arrogance only fuels our class hatred toward the cops and the capitalist system they serve and protect.

Now that the family has returned from burying brother Arzu in Honduras, we will continue to rally and march with masses of workers in the streets. However, we must not allow liberal misleaders to diffuse our anger! Al Sharpton and other politicians will try to dazzle us with a call for "justice," "independent investigations" and "sensitivity training" for cops. But history has shown that essentially nothing will be done to punish this killer.

This fight will NOT be won in the capitalist courtrooms but only when all our forces are mobilized in the streets, on our jobs and within many mass organizations. With fists in the air, we will join with workers outraged over this brutal killing, and meanwhile note that none of this fascist terror will end until we organize a communist revolution to eliminate the profit system. J

Liberals Use ‘Peace’ Movement as Cover for Imperialist War

NEW YORK CITY, May 7 — While a modest step forward for our anti-war group, the rally today posed a big question to students, faculty and campus workers. Do we want peace or do we want communism? Behind the "peace movement" lurks an apology for capitalism. If we can "end the war" (whatever the current war is), all will be well; "we’ll take back the country, America will be America again."

This deeply-held idea, often not conscious, is profoundly mistaken. It takes capitalism for granted as the unending framework within which we fight for reforms, instead of highlighting capitalism itself as what needs to be fought. Capitalism will survive military defeats like Vietnam, only to go on to future wars like Iraq. It will survive economic depression as it did the 1930s, only to proceed to the bigger economic crashes looming today. It will survive everything except communist revolution. And if the Party’s ideas fail to drive the revolution forward, capitalism will survive even that, as in Russia and China.

The Party’s role at the rally suggested a different idea: forget "peace," fight for communism. The lesson of the war is that we must build a movement to end capitalism itself, not just one of its endless wars.

We had mixed success in this role. Proletarian internationalism was front and center in a huge banner a student made linking the deaths of student-soldiers from our campus to the deaths of 111 students at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and the 32 deaths at Virginia Tech. Poems read linked struggles from the Caribbean to Iraq to Palestine/Israel. We chanted, "Workers’ struggles have no borders!" "¡Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!"

One speech gave the Party’s analysis of imperialism. While the word is more common now, the analysis is still fuzzy and people think its details are not that important — "let’s just end the war." But that will still leave imperialism in control, preparing for more wars.

This rally helped build the Party and moved a modest step towards fighting for communism because there was a struggle within the group to have a militant rally rather than another educational event; because study groups are forming where the Party’s ideas can directly challenge the ideology of "peace movements." The battle of ideas proceeds.J

Vets Support Anti-War GI Against Marine Brass

On June 4, the Marine Corps demonstrated its commitment to intimidating anti-war actions by active-duty GI’s and veterans in recommending a general discharge instead of an honorable discharge for Adam Kokesh (pictured right). This means he may lose over $10,000 in educational benefits and suffer a stigma in the job market. Adam had already been honorably discharged from active service after spending two tours of duty in Iraq, and was part of the Individual Ready Reserve, a civilian status (no pay, no drills, no chain of command).

Adam has boldly denounced the Iraq War effort since his discharge, cursed the brass, and participated in a series of street theater actions organized by the Iraq Veterans Against the War. These actions, dubbed "Operation First Casualty" and described in CHALLENGE (April 11, 2007), were efforts to bring Baghdad to the streets of major U.S. cities by conducting patrols and interrogations similar to those conducted in Iraq.

Over 200 anti-war protestors from Kansas City joined a busload of veterans and others who left Washington, D.C. to attend this hearing and testify on Adam’s behalf. Many on the veterans’ bus read CHALLENGE with interest during the two-day trip. Building the revolutionary movement advocated by CHALLENGE, not only against the Marine brass but against the entire system of imperialism, is the only way to get the results the working class needs in this period.

Two more Marines are facing disciplinary proceedings for the same reason, and so building a stronger GI movement with civilian solidarity is increasingly important as the imperialist war in Iraq continues to murder thousands of our brothers and sisters, Iraqi and U.S. alike.

Red Vet

Campus Political Struggle Backs Immigrant Workers, Fights Nationalist Attacks

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — As we fought to organize about 200 immigrant workers responsible for all of the campus landscaping and food services, the school administration attempted to attack us by appealing to the cultural nationalism of our mass organization. The administrators argued that because these workers were predominantly Latino, this should only be "a Chicano issue."

The conflict with the organization’s reformist leadership stemmed from our exposure of their — and the organization’s — link to the school administration’s exploitative and imperialist agenda. As the attacks intensified, we decided to sharpen all the contradictions that surfaced from our political activities.

The conservative leadership at first tried to attack the most vocal individuals — those who called for an anti-imperialist and multi-racial struggle — condemning their politics as "divisive" and "outside the scope of the group’s objectives." But many students within the group had been won through struggle to aspects of communist politics and to support a revolutionary, anti-imperialist position. Building around these politics protected us from the leadership’s fascist attacks.

We began our counterattack against both the administration and their crony student leadership — many of whom received jobs at the school from their administrative masters in exchange for their political loyalty. We were accused of "infiltration" — bringing in "foreign" ideas — and excuses were made for abandoning the workers’ struggle on campus. We were viciously attacked as being too militant and therefore putting the administration’s funding of the organization at risk. This occurred once we linked the racist administrators and the self-interested reformism of the cultural nationalist groups to their use of tuition hikes and outsourced super-exploited immigrant labor to maximize profits, and funding of the U.S. imperialist war machine.

This racist attack aimed to stop our multi-racial organizing by explicitly excluding Muslim, Asian and other students who were won to support the super-exploited immigrant workers. The plan backfired, exposing the inherent racism of cultural nationalism. The students we had won politically realized the importance of understanding racism and exploitation as a product of capitalism, bringing them closer to revolutionary politics.

After the leadership’s several failed attempts to expel us from the organization, a majority including us decided to leave the group. Some argued that we should stay in order to further build the membership’s revolutionary potential. But too many objected to continued involvement with a student organization that preaches progressive action but practices racism, sexism, self-promotion and support of capitalist exploitation and imperialism.

The step to leave was a response to the successful communist work within the organization and caused almost half the membership to realize that revolution, not nationalism and diversity, is the road to end imperialism, racism, and capitalist exploitation. We then formed a multi-racial group with a pro-worker and anti-imperialist outlook. Many are CHALLENGE readers and we are planning to invite these students to go a step further, to join PLP.

Communist politics can only be developed and evaluated through struggle and practice, real-life experiences, whether personal or by learning from others’ experiences. That practice provides the working class with communist politics. To build a communist revolution to end capitalism, practice is primary.

Arab-Jewish Unity Answer to U.S.-Zionist Racism

A mass protest was to take place in Washington, D.C. on June 10 against the 40-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Not only are the Palestinian masses reduced to living on 22% of their former land, but they’ve been deprived of much of their water, farmland, employment and freedom of movement. Continuous warfare afflicts not only the region but fuels world conflict.

The thorny question facing the growing number of Jewish, Arab and other activists in this movement is what should we fight for? Is it enough to demand that the occupation end, the Israeli settlements be dismantled, or a "Palestinian state" be established? This issue requires considering the role of racism and nationalism in Israel’s history and the current struggle between Israel and Palestine, as well as the growing inter-imperialist rivalry as the main source of endless wars in the oil-rich Middle-East.

The original influx of European Jews into Palestine was a response to their racist persecution in Europe and the nationalism of the late 19th century. The massive increase in immigration after the Holocaust also largely reflected the refusal of Western nations to accept Jewish refugees. In addition, the U.S. and Britain were glad to have an enclave of people with "Western values" and ties in the Middle-East, which was rapidly gaining importance as the major source of the world’s oil.

Instead of going to "a land without people for a people without land," the Jews arrived in a densely populated area. In 1948, the UN gave 78% of the land to Israel, when Jews comprised only one-third of the population and owned only 6% of the land; 750, 000 Palestinians, half the population, were brutally expelled from their homes. In the 1967 war, the Israeli rulers seized the remaining 20% of Palestine and has occupied it ever since. Now the Israeli-built Wall isolating Palestinians, the checkpoints, the ban against Palestinians working in Israel and other indignities have reduced Palestinian workers and youth to a state of desperation.

All this would have been impossible without the Zionists’ racism. Instead of learning from centuries of anti-Semitism that racism breeds genocide and divides poor peoples against one another, the Zionists used the same ideology to suppress another people. Meanwhile — now as throughout history — the wealthy bosses and rulers use these ethnic divides for their own advantage. The U.S. rulers arm Israel to the teeth, not out of love for Judaism, but to maintain bully-power over the oil-rich nations and their potential allies in the area. So-called threats to Israel from Iraq and Iran are excuses for wars in the U.S. interest. Ordinary Israelis suffer the costs of occupation in lives lost, morality destroyed and social services cut to finance the military, all tolerated only because of anti-Arab racism.

Despite the fortitude displayed by Palestinian workers and youth in surviving the occupation, strife is now growing between the corrupt Fatah movement, and fundamentalist, nationalist Hamas, neither of which promises a just future for Palestinians, or lead an effective resistance. Palestine is also a class society, and needs a mass, revolutionary anti-racist communist-led movement of workers to create a society in their own interests.

Therefore, whose side are we on? Leftist Israeli historian Ilan Pappe says South Africa is the model. But, although Apartheid is gone, the condition of the majority poor black population is worse than before. The same corporations that supported Apartheid still control the economy (see page 3 on strikes in South Africa). Racism was born with capitalism and only its destruction can end racial and national oppression.

While we march against the evils of occupation, we should understand that only a world without bosses and their imperialist wars will end these evils of the profit system which pit workers against their class brothers and sisters and their interests. History provides many examples of struggles uniting Arabs, Jews and others in the region against their common exploiters.J

Venezuela: ‘Free Press’ Brawl Masks Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Profits

The bosses’ media, liberals and conservatives, from the NY Times, representing the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, to CNN, the Washington Post, Univision, Telemundo, Fox News, El País (Spain), and Televisa (México), have all cried crocodile tears over how the Chávez government has trampled "freedom of the press" in Venezuela by not renewing the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas TV (RCTV). Thousands of students and others, mobilized by the right-wing opposition to Chávez, have held many street protests denouncing this "attack" on the freedom of the press.

First of all, "freedom of the press" doesn’t exist. Increasingly, a few monopolies control the mass media worldwide. The NY Times itself owns several newspapers (like the Boston Globe), TV channels and radio stations. Viacom owns CBS; GE owns NBC and Telemundo; Disney owns ABC; the Rupert Murdoch worldwide media empire owns Fox, and so on. In Mexico, Televisa (which owns part of the U.S. Univisión TV network) and TV Azteca have a monopoly on most TV stations there and are fighting any attempts to break it. Venevisión is owned by Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, who also supported the 2002 anti-Chavez coup but later made a deal with Chávez (mediated by Jimmy Carter) and didn’t lose his license.

This is similar in all capitalist countries. These media giants only broadcast the news that best serve the interests of their owners and the capitalist class they represent. They don’t allow any real dissident views (pro-working class or revolutionary communist ideas).

RCTV — which didn’t lose its cable license — called for and supported the April 2002 coup that overthrew Chávez for less than two days. In less than 48 hours, the putchist government began banning all opposition (media, political groups, etc.) RCTV tacitly supported this. Since then, RCTV has urged another coup against Chávez. After the failed 2002 coup it helped organize the right-wing strike that tried to sabotage the Venezuelan oil industry.

RCTV — like El Mercurio newspaper and other media in Chile, aided by the CIA to overthrow the Allende government — basically wants a Pinochet-style regime to replace Chavez’s nationalist anti-U.S. government. The U.S. bosses’ problems in Iraq have made it easier for Chávez to ally himself with China, Russia, Iran and other U.S. imperialist rivals.

Millions of workers and youth support the Chávez government since they hate the old pro-U.S. bosses (most of the anti-Chávez protestors are middle class). They think Chávez really represents their desire for a society without the growing and racist inequality spread by the old bosses who stole the oil bonanza before Chávez took power.

Even though Chávez has given workers some crumbs, including medical care in poor neighborhoods courtesy of 20,000 doctors sent by Cuba, capitalism is still thriving in Venezuela, and Chávez has no intention of changing that. His idea of "Bolivarian 21st Century socialism" is basically capitalism with some reforms for workers but with plenty of imperialist investments (including Exxon, Gazprom, Chevron, Total, China’s oil company, Petrobras), but with the PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil company) controlling a majority share.

The workers’ and youths’ faith in Chávez is a dangerous illusion. It hampers not only the fight against fascist coup attempts by the old bourgeoisie (disarming workers politically into believing in some "good" bosses and military officers), but also fosters the belief that capitalism with some crumbs (á la Chavez) is the solution.

Again, the workers and youth must fight the old bosses and all imperialists and capitalists. Amid this struggle, they need to break with all illusions about Chávez and his populist nationalism, and fight to build a real revolutionary communist party, for a society where workers really rule.J

Rulers Use JFK ‘Plot’ To Terrorize Workers

BROOKLYN, NY, June 5 — From Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, from Iraq to Somalia, when U.S. rulers decide to apply the "terrorist" label to an individual or group it’s an indication that all bets are off; any and every form of violence and torture becomes legal, necessary and justifiable. Recent revelations about a "terror" plot to attack fuel lines leading to JFK airport in New York City mark what could become a new phase in the "War on Terror" as four men from Trinidad and Guyana have been accused. Guyana borders Venezuela and Trinidad is just offshore. U.S. imperialists would love a pretext to deploy military forces closer to their main supply of domestically consumed oil. (A refinery on Trinidad handles Venezuelan oil shipped to the U.S.)

Police agents monitor and entrap many individuals into violent plots. Even according to reports in the bosses’ media, if such a plot did occur, it appeared to have been directed every step of the way by an FBI informant. The FBI and foreign intelligence services closely monitored the individuals involved in the 9/11 attacks, but 9/11 happened anyway. The main goal of this police activity is not to guarantee the safety of workers who die in terror attacks but to sow fear and suspicion within the working class. They want to push even more anti-immigrant racism and also scare us into running to the capitalist state for protection. Fascism is built on fear.

Our PLP club’s response to the JFK plot centered around producing this article for CHALLENGE at our meeting and reviewing recent CHALLENGE distribution practices in order to struggle for greater circulation of this issue in our schools and among friends. Many members of our club and many of the teachers and students at the schools where we function come from the Caribbean. We must not be caught off-guard by stepped-up police harassment and terror in our neighborhoods.

We know that Democrats and Republicans united as one to launch and condone massive attacks against Arab workers after 9/11 and we are working to undermine any illusions among our close friends that the liberals will save us. CHALLENGE teaches us that Hillary Clinton and General Odom are planning even larger wars in the future.

The concept of "an attack on one is an attack on all" is a key element of class consciousness we aim to nurture in our schools as a response to this latest turn of events in our area. The bosses may be free to build a base for broadening the scope of their imperialist "war on terror" but they are powerless to prevent us from exposing their schemes to thousands and trying to organize against them.

Communism: Only Liberation of Women and All Workers

(PLP members and friends distributed 3,000 of the following leaflet during a massive march held in Oaxaca, México, on International Women’s Day — see reports in June 6 CHALLENGE. Significantly they used this occasion to draw key lessons from the massive, militant struggle of brave teachers and other workers in Oaxaca.)

International Woman’s Day

To the militant people of Oaxaca and the working class of the world:

The celebration of "International Woman’s Day" had its origin in the need to free working-class women from the triple capitalist exploitation that they suffer worldwide [as workers, women and their skin color]. These struggles were led by communists in Germany, Russia and the U.S. and women in other countries, who suffered attacks, jail and murder.

Today we recall with revolutionary fervor another annual anniversary of these events, and the fact that the present situation demands that women and men, members of the same working class, walk together shoulder to shoulder in common struggle for the liberation of the working class from capitalist slavery, since there’s no difference between the class interests of the sexes, and any divisions are only bourgeois liberal distortions and lies that do great harm to the unity of the working class.

The struggles constantly occurring under capitalism to improve the situation of the workers and their allies, independently of the reform results, teach us lessons of great courage, militancy, solidarity and unity in the battles against the government and the ruling class, our class enemies. They present examples of the tactics that gave us favorable and unfavorable results; they build anger against the bosses and often against the sellout leaders and opportunists; and, mainly, they clarify the real role that the state plays as the defender of the bosses’ interests and as their repressive arm against the working class, as happened in the recent struggle in Oaxaca.

We must learn from our successes and our mistakes. To involve ourselves exclusively in the struggle for immediate reforms and leave things there does not help the workers and students advance politically and ideologically. It limits us to the reform arena, helping the bosses’ system to function better. That’s why we must make it clear that:

1. The struggles or protests for reforms are imposed on us by a system that doesn’t serve our interests.

2. We need to fight against the whole system that exploits and oppresses us;

3. We need to build the general staff of the working class, its revolutionary Communist Party, the PLP.

4. We need to fight directly for COMMUNISM, the society of equality, without wage slavery or borders; where all will work to satisfy the needs of the community, not for money. To each according to their commitment, from each according to need. DEATH to the BOSSES! The workers’ struggles have no borders! JOIN PLP.

Imperialist Square Off at G8 Meeting

HEILIGENDAMM, GERMANY, June 6 — The G8 meeting of the world’s leading imperialist countries began today amid a growing dogfight among these bosses, while anti-globalization protestors were viciously attacked by the thousands of cops protecting the gathering.

A few days ago an angry Putin warned that Russia won’t stand idly by while the U.S. sets up a new "defense" shield missile program in the Czech Republic and Poland. Putin sees this as a direct threat to Russia’s survival. Meanwhile, Russia tested two new intercontinental ballistic missiles which can penetrate this shield.

Another major contradiction arose over climate protection. Prior to the meeting, Bush rejected German ruler Merkel’s plan to slash emissions. Additional conflicts appeared over Iraq, China, Iran and Africa. Workers and youth should expect nothing from the imperialists, the cause of all the workers’ major problems, endless wars, economic attacks, racism and fascism.

GM-Russia Workers Fight Heat, Also Need Revolution

TOGLIATTI, RUSSIA, May 31 — Today five workers at the GM-AvtoVAZ plant refused to work as temperatures in the paint shop climbed to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees centigrade)! Despite the company’s claim to have installed air conditioning in the paint shop, nothing was done to prepare for the hot summer.

Workers must work eight to ten hours in the shop’s steaming heat, not the most pleasant and healthy place to be, and it’s only May. Today workers’ patience reached its limit and they refused to return to work until something was done about the heat.

That caused a big stir among the plant’s management. Even though the bosses have not yet recognized the workers’ union, the stoppage prompted them to quickly negotiate with the striking crew. Fearing the job action might engulf the factory and spread further, they first tried to intimidate the workers but that failed. Finally after negotiating for two hours, management promised to launch the "mystery" air conditioning system as soon as possible and not discipline the workers who stopped the line.

The hot Russian summer is looming. It remains to be seen if management keeps its promise. If not, then next time it will involve many more than just five workers. They’re starting to rise up.

Auto workers worldwide, especially GM workers, should support the struggle of the Russian GM workers. While GM eliminates over 40,000 U.S. jobs and contract talks approach this summer, U.S. GM workers should add to their list of demands that GM recognize the Russian union.

But more to the point, industrial workers have the ability, more than any other workers, to reach around the world and build international solidarity across all borders. We can build worker-to-worker unity based on PLP’s revolutionary communist politics and make "Workers of the World, Unite," a reality.

Portugal General Strike Hits Anti-Worker ‘Reforms’

 

LISBON, PORTUGAL, May 30 — The Confederation of Portuguese Workers called a 24-hour general strike to protest the anti-working class reforms introduced by the "Socialist" Party government of Prime Minister José Socrates. The strike was very effective even though another major union federation refused to support it. It affected subway services and was joined by postal, sanitation and health workers and teachers. The government wants to cut public spending and make it easier to hire and fire workers, even though unemployment tops 8.4%, the highest in two decades.

Again the so-called "socialist" governments are as anti-working class as any other capitalist rulers. All governments under capitalism, no matter what they call themselves, must serve the bosses. This era of growing capitalist-imperialist crisis and rivalry means making workers pay for the bosses’ problems.

Delphi Automotive Systems Attack Portugal’s Workers

Delphi is an example of this. It’s planning to cut 524 jobs, half the work-force, in its Guarda plant. Workers here average 550 Euros ($720) a month. GM, Delphi’s original owner, bought the plant in 1989 from Renault. The jobs to be cut will be those producing electric cable for the Twingo, a Renault model. Delphi also has another plant in Castelo Branco. Last December, GM itself shut down its Azambuja assembly plant, leaving 1,200 workers jobless. These kinds of mass job cuts, along with the government cutbacks, led angry workers to the May 30 general strike.

Meanwhile, Delphi continues with its international rampage against workers. In Mexico, the company is demanding wage cuts. In Cádiz, Spain, the workers’ struggle continues against Delphi moving its operations to Poland, where labor costs are lower. Women workers have organized regular marches to the plant in Puerto Real, Cádiz, protesting the loss of 4,000 jobs and denouncing the local government for doing nothing about the plant closing. In the Port of Santa María, also in Cádiz, workers at Nimalsa, which supplies Delphi, are protesting the firing of nine workers.

Autoworkers worldwide face a major offensive that requires a different kind of leadership than that given by union sellouts like those of the UAW, CAW (Canada) and IGMetall (Germany). For example, a Peugeot internal document published in "l’Humanité" (5/29) foresees massive use of subcontracting to countries with the lowest labor costs. Auto parts manufactured by subcontractors represent 75% of the production cost of every Peugeot car. Its goal is to triple the subcontracting done in low-cost countries (which now provide only 10% of the subcontracting production).

Peugeot bosses have established a cost threshold: to get parts contracts for cars assembled at Sochaux, the "lucky countries" must have a per capita Gross Domestic Product of $14,000 dollars. Slovenia is out of luck; it has just exceeded that threshold. So Peugeot will move the contract to low-wage "paradises" in Asia and elsewhere. Thus, to stay in business, subcontractors in the Sochaux area must move to those other areas, cutting thousands of jobs in France.

GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, VW, and Honda are employing the same tactic. For workers, following the reformist and nationalist union sellouts — who usually blame workers from other countries for the job cuts — is suicidal. A new kind of international leadership must be forged based on the communist slogan of "Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world, unite!"

It’s not an easy task, but it must be done. Since it is the profit system that creates these problems, the fight must not be limited to economic demands, but must be directed against all aspects of capitalism: racism, imperialist war, nationalism, sexism and so on. Based on this kind of leadership, workers will learn how to fight for their own liberation from the hell of capitalism, joining and building a mass revolutionary communist party to fight for a world without bosses; join the PLP to make that possible!J

LETTERS

U.S. Bosses Behind Colombia’s Death Squads

For the poor workers and peasants of Colombia’s Choco region the African palm tree is a curse. Clodomiro, a 51-year-old resident of this area, tells how 10 years ago a death squad gang appeared at 10 AM and made everyone lie down, men on one side and women on the other. They shot up in the air for about an hour and cursed everyone. Then they raised the heads of some and cut them off with machetes. Some with their hands tied in the back were shot dead. They killed 12 people that day.

They left at 3 PM and said if anyone stayed in the village by 6 PM they will not be responsible for their lives. Everyone fled. Fifteen days later some returned and the death squad killed three more. They told an older man, Isaza Tuberquia, they wouldn’t touch him, but they killed him also. They also threatened all the children. They even cut off the heads of dogs because the dogs were barking too much.

Clodomiro owned some land and some cows and grew bananas and yucca. He lost everything and was warned not to return. Along with 25 other families, he moved to another village. They live as refugees in total misery, like tens of thousands others across Colombia.

The village was a dead town, but was surrounded by many activities. A ferry was established. Bulldozers demolished the villagers’ homes. After a while the African Palm tree changed the landscape. Clodomiro’s land and those of other former village residents are now full of the African palm tree. When Clodomiros came to see his former home, the cops asked for ID, arrested him and accused him of being part of the guerrillas. Those who accompanied him, including a priest, did a lot of pleading with the cops to release him. This is the nature of capitalism here in Colombia.

Recently it was discovered that Chiquita Brands, Dole, Coca Cola and other multi-national corporations paid the death squads to protect their properties. High-ranking officials in the Uribe government (who recently visited his buddy Bush in the White House) have been forced to quit because of links to these paramilitary death squads. The government has legalized paramilitary and drug lords’ ownership of millions of acres stolen from people like those killed in El Choco. Production is now geared for export and biofuel instead of the needs of the workers and peasants here. The country’s poverty rate is 83%.

As long as capitalism exists we will have such mass murders (Clinton gave the first approval to Plan Colombia which supplied billions to Colombia’s army for waging war against these rural workers and peasants.) We need to build our Party here in Colombia even more, to transform these massacres by the racist-fascist local bosses and their goons, and the imperialists behind them, into a revolutionary war for workers’ power.

A Comrade in Colombia

GI’s Say They’re ‘Spilling Blood for Oil’

Junior Cedeño, a 20-year-old GI from the Bronx, NY, was one of 127 U.S. soldiers killed in May (Associated Press), the third highest toll for any month since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Alex Jiménez, another New York GI (from Corona, Queens) is still missing, being one of three GIs insurgents kidnapped in mid-May. Both are sons of Dominican immigrants.

Cedeño’s parents are angry about their son’s murder. "We are crushed. This has destroyed my life," said Junior’s father, Ramón Cedeño, adding: "The only goal of President Bush is oil in exchange for innocent lives." (El Nacional, Santo Domingo, 5/30). He shows an understanding of the real nature of this imperialist war, one shared by more and more GIs and their families.

Mr. Cedeño said, "My son told me that in his military base soldiers were questioning the war among themselves, asking what were they fighting for. They were saying the war reflected the stupidity of President Bush, and that they were spilling blood for oil."

Cedeño’s parents are also angry because the two soldiers the Army sent to inform them of their son’s death only spoke English. Junior’s stepmother, Mary Caraballo, had to find a translator in the neighborhood, saying it was very insensitive to send people who couldn’t speak Spanish.

The pain the families of all these GIs feel for their dead loved ones is multiplied many times over by the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed (1,951 Iraqis were killed in May, a 30% increase from April according to Reuters), all sacrificed on the altar of profits for Exxon, Halliburton, BP, Shell Oil, etc. Smash the imperialist war-makers!

Juan Rojo

PLP Foresaw Vietnam’s ‘Capitalist Road’

Your recent articles on SDS and the book review on how GIs rebelled against the imperialists during the Vietnam War are very useful. They recall a history from which today’s anti-war workers, students and soldiers must learn. Unfortunately, another aspect of this history is how millions of workers and peasants in Vietnam and Southeast Asia must now struggle against returning imperialist companies. Vietnam is now attracting foreign investments and winning commerce away from countries like China and India.

The May 29 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that when the British recruitment agency Harvey Nash PLC began scouting for an offshore hub for its new software-development business six years ago, Vietnam wasn’t an obvious choice. While countries such as India, the Philippines and South Africa already were latching onto the outsourcing phenomenon, Vietnam still was in the business of trying to make shoes, bicycles and clothes cheaper than anybody else.

But when Nash’s inspection team returned from Hanoi to assess its options, Vietnam had become the top contender. Now, when outsourcing wages and job-hopping are rising in India, Vietnam offers lower wages. Today, Nash employs 1,500 people across Vietnam through its own business and its partnership with FPT. Since opening up its economy in the late 1980s, Vietnam’s economy has expanded mostly through agricultural exports and low-wage manufacturing. During a visit to Hanoi last year, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said there was no reason Vietnam couldn’t follow India into software development and other forms of outsourcing.

Last year’s decision by Intel Corp. to build a $1 billion semiconductor factory near Ho Chi Minh City was a turning point of sorts for such efforts. It was a sign that major high-tech companies were comfortable channeling large amounts of money into Vietnam.

Its industrial land is cheaper than China’s. Wages are about one-third lower than in China’s industrial coastal regions. Its population of almost 90 million, half under 30 years old, means Vietnam’s talent pool is deep and increasing.

The WSJ emphasizes that "the fact that Vietnam is controlled by the Communist Party isn’t a concern for most investors. Adam Sitkoff, executive chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi, said Vietnam’s leaders have closely watched China’s development and are following Beijing’s strategy of opening up the economy to investment while maintaining a tight hold on political power."

When PLP criticized the Vietnamese "communist" leadership while protesting the U.S. genocidal war against workers and peasants there (the Pentagon and local fascists murdered three million), many condemned us for "daring to criticize the leadership of a people fighting U.S. imperialism." However, these weren’t right-wing criticisms but rather based on a revolutionary communist understanding of what the Vietnamese leadership was doing with its nationalist and compromising politics. Reality has proven us correct. First came imperialist vultures like Nike, Ford, Toyota, etc. Now it’s the outsourcers looking for even cheaper labor. That’s why we say anything short of communism is no liberation for workers and their allies.

An Anti-war protestor, from Vietnam to Iraq

Communist Strategy for Workers in Europe

Concerning the article "VW Betrayal: The Other Shoe Drops" (2/20): Of course workers in Europe have the right to fight against exploitation and for improved working conditions. But I question their ways of doing so.

Volkswagen is experiencing its biggest restructuring since World War II. As always, the bosses say layoffs make the company more competitive. But as CHALLENGE points out, in reality VW just wants to steal bigger profits from our labor, and there are many places in and out of Europe where labor power is cheaper than in Germany, Belgium or Spain. But VW is not "betraying" workers; rather, this is the law of capitalist exploitation, always to pursue maximum profits. Capitalism doesn’t know and cannot act in any other way!

How should VW workers fight this strategy? CHALLENGE is right again, that "workers must organize this solidarity themselves, not rely on union misleaders," because we all know that today in Europe unions have become instruments of capital, opposing a communist strategy for workers.

We must change the way workers in Europe think today about strategy. Exploitation remains, whether we work 40, 38 or 35 hours, whatever our wages. Why should I work more hours for more pay to increase my own exploitation and the boss’s profits? That’s not communist strategy.

The unions’ strategy is to try to make workers think they should limit their fight to retaining the "benefits" European workers have enjoyed since the Cold War, the 35-hour week, health and unemployment benefits, etc., conditions which ruling-class strategy is bent on dismantling. But these have never existed for most workers around the world. Do we believe European salaries and benefits are paid because the bosses think we deserve it? No, the opulence of European society is based on centuries of exploitation over the rest of the world.

The European working class, misguided by the phony "left" leaders of the "communist" and socialist movements, has simply taken its part of the "pie" too. By looking only at Europe, unions cover this up.

Any class struggle in Europe should understand this global inequality among workers. The fight cannot only be for a better life and better working conditions in Europe, in one factory, in one place, in one land, forgetting what is happening to workers in other lands, forgetting workers’ international solidarity.

European unions idealize work under capitalist conditions as if improved working conditions were the ideal expression of a worker’s existence; they mystify the nature of work. Moreover, class struggle doesn’t stop at the factory gates; it permeates all of society.

Do we think we’ll produce the same VWs on the same assembly lines after the defeat of capitalism? That would repeat the same mistake the communist movement made in the past. Or will we create new forms of work without the wage system, without commodity production, without national borders and inequality, where new forms of workers’ solidarity on an international scale will be part of work itself?

Reject the way unions limit the struggle to "benefits" in Europe while workers starve in other lands; reject, destroy the capitalist system of production and its whole way of understanding work, life and value. That’s the goal of communist strategy.

A reader in Germany

CHALLENGE COMMENT: We didn’t mean to imply in our headline to the article that the VW company was selling out, but rather that the union hacks sold out the workers. As the reader correctly says, workers in Europe (and worldwide) need a communist strategy of internationalism and anti-capitalism, something alien to most union hacks. Communist workers must make red politics primary in all struggles. They also need to fight racism. There are millions of immigrant workers and their children in Europe who suffer racist super-exploitation (one reason behind the November 2005 rebellion of black and Arab youth in France). Also, the gains made by most European workers were not given by the bosses; they were won by class struggle and the leading role played by communists. The bosses, fearing the popularity of the Soviet Union after World War II, also granted workers some crumbs. Unfortunately, the communists of Western Europe back then were influenced by reformism. Instead of fighting to destroy capitalism, they tried to reform it.

MTA-TWU Collusion Murders Transit Workers

As CHALLENGE reported in its last two issues, most daily subway track work entails correcting numerous minor or major emergencies, and is performed with disregard for safety of maintenance personnel. They work alone or in groups of two or three without proper flagging. The latter requires the posting of sets of caution lights or flags 500 feet away from a flag person who is positioned 100 feet from, and in clear sight of, the work crew. The flag person is equipped with a red light and a portable train stopper which is attached to one of the rails on which the train’s wheels run. The train stopper can engage the train’s emergency air brakes and bring it to an abrupt stop. On express or curved tracks, even more sets of lights and additional flag persons are required to bring these 100-ton, enormously powerful and fast trains to a safe stop before running into a work crew.

This short-handed, unprotected emergency track work with flashlight flagging "protection" is a mockery of real safety, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) own rules and casualty figures, and eventually becomes a suicide job, resulting in the horror described in CHALLENGE (6/6) about the death of a transit worker. The MTA bosses’ racism towards the lives of the overwhelmingly black and Latino workforce and the Transit Workers Union’s collusion with the MTA by not organizing workers to refuse to work without proper flagging is what is murdering these workers.

Retired Track Worker

Immigrant Students Reject Bosses’ Lies

"I’m a citizen of the world," said an immigrant student in a discussion about immigration and the recent May Day events. The more than 30 students who participated were inspired and committed to learning more by reading and distributing CHALLENGE. The fight for communism requires a daily struggle and our day-in and day-out struggles ensure a bigger participation in the Party’s activities. We have been distributing 100 papers each issue.

Before the May Day march the bosses’ press presented a series of different articles, some denouncing, others defending the need for immigration reform. We reproduced many of these articles and used them in our classes. From these articles we developed lessons involving discussions about the real reasons for the bosses’ immigration reforms. We evaluated and criticized these plans as attempts to guarantee immigrant military service and servitude in the war industries.

After the police attack in MacArthur Park, "The Sentinel" (having a primarily black readership) had two articles arguing that California represented the new Birmingham. Instead of water tanks and attack dogs the police used rubber bullets to disperse the protestors. One article implied that the ruling class was after the "hearts and minds" of immigrants, just like they wanted to win the support of black workers in the 1960s during the Cold War.

The ruling class needed the loyalty of black workers and so pushed and led the movement for civil rights. Similarly they need the loyalty of immigrant workers and are now letting the media talk about a "new civil rights movement."

Immigrant students are faced with two paths: being part of the capitalist system or trying to destroy it. Join other workers in organizing in the war industries and the army to build a mass movement that will ultimately take power and establish a communist society.

Red Teacher

Fewer Heroes, More Organizers

The exciting, international May Day reports give us optimism about the possibility of humanity embracing and fighting for Communism. But how will this historic change be realized? How do we go from workers grabbing leaflets and chants to the recruitment of millions into a revolutionary movement?

Distributing 9,500 communist leaflets in Mexico City is great news, but there must also have been a huge amount of planning, conversation, coffee and education leading up to that event. A detailed report on the long-range plan for recruitment of two or three of the leafleters would be even bigger news!

Instead of so much attention to what ruling-class forces are up to, we need to focus on documenting comrades’ specific work of base-building and communist education, so that we can learn effective practices from each other.

It is great to read that PLP organized well-received contingents in Mexico City, Paraguay and Colombia. But how? What did the day-to-day work look like? What kinds of plans have been made since?

Exactly how are we going to ultimately organize the communist mass movement that will help us make a revolution? We need to know what plans were made and what happened, in greater detail, so that we can review our own work and offer feedback.

How do we make sure that revolutionary politics compete with the distractions of capitalist culture in our workplace discussions in a cynical period? Rather than keeping the difficulties of base-building to ourselves, we could use them as a priceless opportunity to educate other workers about the process of change We must be able to explain how recruiting one or two new communist leaders over a prolonged period can be of historic importance to our class. Our articles need to begin with these issues. Our paper should emphasize recruitment and communism rather than oil politics in Iraq in or cuts in social services

It’s not enough to expose capitalism in all its injustices and brutality. It’s not enough just to arouse the working class. We need to figure out exactly what is needed to win.

Red Rider

*****REDEYE REDEYE****

Iraq war detested on black website

"This is not a black people’s war. This is not a poor people’s war. This is an oilman’s war."

Gregory Black, a retired Navy diver who last year started the web site BlackMilitaryWorld.com, said that quote sums up what he too hears from African-American veterans of Iraq.

"African-Americans detest this war….Everybody kind of knows the truth behind this war…. It’s basically about oil, basically about money. It’s an economic war." (NYT, 5/10)

Sarge says troops want out

"In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war," said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described "conservative Texas Republican" and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. "Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me." (NYT, 5/28)

Black America not fooled on Iraq

…African-Americans by far lead the way in calling the war a mistake. According to Gallup, 85 percent of African Americans say it was a mistake, compared to 53 percent of white Americans….

"African-Americans are always more sensitive to anything that smacks of neocolonialism, which this war did smack of…" (NYT, 5/10)

No profit, so emergency rooms shut

…New Orleans may have it worst, but emergency rooms everywhere are drowning in patients. Mandated to care for the uninsured, they are increasingly unprofitable. So although the influx of patients has grown, 500 emergency rooms have closed in the last decade….Waiting rooms [are] filled more than six hours per day. (NYT, 5/26)

Oil-imperialism is bi-partisan

It is formal doctrine that the U.S. must be militarily dominant everywhere so as to fight "extremism."

It must also control areas of strategic significance, possessing energy resources. Whatever happens inside Iraq, to its government and society, American forces can be expected to fight to remain in the four huge strategic bases that have been constructed in that country….

The U.S. will also stay in the Middle East so long as its ally Israel maintains a policy of colonization of legally Palestinian territory….

This is bipartisan policy. You have only to listen to the debates of the declared Democratic candidates. Whatever happens in Iraq, the troops will not be going home. (William Ptaff, Tribune Media, 5/20)

Harvesters rob Mexico’s poorest

Before planting and harvest time in the United States it has been common for local recruiters fan out across Mexico’s parched countryside to sign up guest workers. The recruiters charge the Mexicans hundreds of dollars, sometimes more, for the job and the temporary visa that comes with it.

"That line of corruption touches both countries," said Baldemar Velásquez, the president of the union. "And the people at the bottom in Mexico end up paying the price." (NYT, 5/24)

Cuba health care ‘deserves credit’

"Sicko," the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week, savages the American health care system — and along the way extols Cuba’s system….

How could a poor developing country — where annual health care spending averages just $230 a person compared with $6,096 in the United States — come anywhere near matching the richest country in the world?....

Dr. Robert N. Butler, president of the International Longevity Center in New York and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on aging, has traveled to Cuba….He said…the Cuba system emphasizes early intervention. Clinic visits are free, and the focus is on preventing disease rather than treating it….

"I know Americans tend to be skeptical," he said, "but health and education are two achievements of the Cuban revolution…they deserve some credit…. (NYT, 5/27)

PLP History: PL-led Action Linked Vietnam War to Strike-breaker GE

(Part VI described the factional fighting of the various right-wingers who split from SDS after the June 1969 Convention, including the "Weather Underground," and then PLP’s leadership in SDS in building a "flesh and blood" campus worker-student alliance which became the basis for forging ties between industrial workers and the anti-war movement.)

SDS — Part VII

By 1968, every faction within the U.S. ruling class knew they had to find a way to leave Vietnam. The student anti-war protests were troublesome, but the real problem was the refusal of working-class GIs and sailors to fight this bosses’ war. This took many forms: desertion, defection, anti-war organizing — including publishing 144 underground papers — inside the military and outright mutiny, for which a special term, "fragging" (enlisted men killing their own officers), was coined.

But U.S. rulers had two important political trumps. First, the North Vietnamese leadership had agreed to sit down at the bargaining table with Kissinger, Nixon, & Co. even though it was winning the war. So anti-imperialism and revolutionary struggle had been reduced to a bloody caricature: all the fighting and the heroism of Vietnamese workers were being cynically manipulated as negotiating ploys. Second, the betrayal of communism by North Vietnamese nationalists gave a shot in the arm to U.S. liberal imperialists and their allies within the pacifist movement.

This was the context for the November 15, 1969, anti-war mobilization in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, 147,000 General Electric workers had just gone on strike. GE was and remains one of the rulers’ largest military contractors. The PLP leadership saw the strike as an opportunity to take a principled class position in the face of liberal imperialist politicians’ pacifism and North Vietnamese leaders’ criminal opportunism. The idea was to encourage the anti-war demonstrators to rally at the Department of Labor on November 15, to back the GE strikers.

To do so legally meant getting approval from the D.C. cops. The latter said their approval depended on getting a green light from the Student Mobilization Committee, the main march’s official organizer. The Committee was a sordid alliance of the anti-war movement’s worst elements: the U.S. "Communist" Party, the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party, the liberal politicians and media stars (Jane Fonda, et al.) for whom the "C"P and the Trots fronted. PLP had frequently exposed the rotten politics of this "troika," and the troika had no intention of authorizing a pro-working class action with revolutionary implications.

So PLP and its allies decided to organize the Labor Department rally as an illegal breakaway. The anti-war demonstration was the largest in U.S. history, probably involving 500,000 participants. Under PLP’s leadership, several hundred students and others circulated among the crowd to distribute leaflets and make bullhorn speeches calling for the Labor Department rally. The March leadership worked feverishly to prevent the rally, attempting to intimidate potential demonstrators with threats that the cops would attack it and otherwise baiting it.

But their tactics didn’t work. By mid-afternoon, 7,000 people had massed before the Labor Department. The rally took place as planned. The chant: "Warmaker, Strikebreaker, Smash GE!" thundered throughout parts of downtown Washington. Speeches called for unity with GE strikers, the deepening of the Campus Worker-Student alliance and, most importantly, for continuing to build on-campus struggles against the war with this perspective.

As the PLP leadership was ending the rally, a tall, bearded man in the crowd, obviously a police provocateur, threw a rock through a window in the Labor Department building. Hundreds of heavily armed and armored D.C. cops swarmed out, trying to push the demonstrators away. Simultaneously, a stream of Yippies, druggies and anarchists came running down Constitution Avenue, giving the cops an excuse to tear-gas the entire downtown area.

But the pro-working class demonstrators didn’t panic. Their politics gave them a sense of clarity and purpose, enabling them to make an orderly retreat, find their busses and return home to fight another day.

The March Committee’s political attack and the cops’ physical provocation had failed abysmally. PLP and its allies had managed to flout the U.S. ruling class, its liberal agents and its police by organizing a significant, illegal pro-working class action with minimal casualties. This spirit of defiance is more relevant than ever today, in the face of the rulers’ growing police state.

Chad: Another China-U.S. Bosses’ Oil Battleground

In 2006 China imported 6.5 million barrels of oil a day and its demand is increasing at an estimated 30% annually. At that rate China will surpass the U.S. in 4-5 years as the world’s biggest oil importer. Therefore, Africa is important to China and the central region between Sudan and Chad is crucial.

Currently China imports an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa and is using its $1.2 trillion reserves to buy Africa’s vast raw material wealth. It provides African governments multi-billion-dollar loans with no strings attached, and in some cases without interest or as simple grants, while building hospitals, schools and roads. China is the largest foreign investor in Sudan. It owns 50% of a refinery and has built a pipeline to Port Sudan where 8% of China’s oil is shipped. It also just bought a 45% stake in a large off-shore Nigerian field, where previously only Anglo-American oil majors operated.

But U.S. and Chinese interests are also clashing in neighboring Chad. Chevron just built a $3.7 billion pipeline from Doba in central Chad, near Darfur, to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast for oil shipments to U.S. refineries. U.S. imperialists are scheming to control all of Central Africa’s oil, and together with its newly-built base in Sao Tome/Principe, 124 miles off the Gulf of Guinea, control the oil fields from Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria. This is the same area where China is focusing its diplomatic and investment activities.

Crucial to the U.S. bosses’ plans is Chad’s president for life, Idriss Deby, a long-time U.S. lackey. Through him they armed and trained John Garang’s Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (see Darfur article, page 2). But, like all capitalists, profits are the name of their game. Unhappy with their small share of the U.S.-controlled oil profits, in early 2006 Deby and the Chad parliament decided to seize more of the oil revenues. When the U.S had Paul Wolfowitz cut off World Bank loans to the country, Deby responded by creating Chad’s own oil company and threatened to expel Chevron for not paying taxes. He demanded a 60% share in Chevron’s Chad pipeline.

They finally came to terms with Chevron but have decided to diversify their investors. China has now entered Chad with billions of dollars and has begun to import its oil. Chad’s oil minister claims that Chinese terms are "much more equal partnerships than we are used to having."

Thus, the U.S.-mounted genocide theme in Darfur, with backing from Hollywood big guns like George Clooney, is just their fig leaf to gain popular support for their real genocidal plans: control of African oil which is intensifying the potential for war with China.

Capitalists’ ‘Inborn Superiority’ One More Ruling-Class Myth

An article in the August 2006 issue of "Scientific American" magazine shows again that everyone is capable of learning and developing skill in any field that they are motivated to try (with a modified approach perhaps needed for brain damaged individuals, or those with physical disabilities). "The Expert Mind" by Philip E. Ross cites studies showing that developing complex skills depends on hard work, study, and early self-perpetuating motivation, rather than on any innate differences between experts and amateurs.

A Hungarian educator, Laszlo Polgar, trained his three daughters in chess for as much as six hours a day from early childhood. His encouragement of extreme amounts of concentrated effort and work enabled his now adult daughters to achieve international master and grandmaster status. He also proved that boys/men have no monopoly on chess, and that girls/women who are trained early can achieve the highest levels. But mainly he confirmed that it was a matter of training rather than "innate skill," since there was nothing in their family history that would have led anyone to predict the development of chess "genius".

The findings apply also to musicians, sports figures, etc. Ross gives the examples of Mozart (the child prodigy composer of the 1800s) and Tiger Woods (the most successful golf professional) whose parents got them interested and involved at extremely early ages. Their early successes led to increased motivation and increased hard work that in turn led to further successes. The development of extreme skill is a friendly "vicious circle" that has no relation to inherited characteristics.

These findings bear on the failure of capitalist schools to train children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Ross says that the important question is not "Why can’t Johnny read?" but rather "Why should there be anything in the world he [or she] can’t learn to do?"

The false claims that better chess genes produce better chess players (or better genes produce better anything) are criminal lies made to convince us we don’t have the "inborn" potential to develop the skills necessary to seize power.

Capitalist rulers want us to believe that workers are inferior at birth and that capitalists rule due to their inborn superiority. Thus the capitalists can hide behind the modern equivalent of the "divine right of kings"—the "birth" right of capitalists to rule and exploit the vast majority of us.

The international working class can — and, under the leadership of PLP, eventually will — develop the collective skill to checkmate these "kings" and in their place become the rulers of our world.

1. Immigration `Reform' Means: BOSSES WANT TO WIN WORKERS TO WAR AND FASCISM
2. Oaxaca, Mexico City THOUSANDS PROTEST SOCIAL SECURITY ROBBERY
3. Killer Wolfowitz Out, Deadlier Liberals Plan Wider Wars
4. IMPERIALISTS' DOGFIGHT
   OVER WAR TACTICS
5. `ANTI-WAR' DEMS ENLIST
   BLOODTHIRSTY GENERAL
6. Yes, the Rich Gets Richer and the Poor Much Poorer
7. PL'ers Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca May Day March
8. PLP Exposes Two-Faced LA Mayor over Cops' Fascist Attack
9. Picket College Lab for Its Fascist War on Youth
10. Racist KKKops Strike Again, Kill Immigrant Workers
11. May Day Dinners Dish Out Plenty of Food for Thought
12. May Day in Queens
13. Imperialism Source of Haitians' Drowning Deaths
14. May Day in Iran Caps Months of Mass Teachers' Struggles
15. Morocco's Delphi Workers Take to Streets Against Massive Job Cuts, Firings
16. LETTERS
    1. Austin Workers Greet May 1st Marchers
    2. Workers in Paraguay and New Orleans:
       Same Enemy, Same Fight!
    3. `More Repression, Means More Struggle'
    4. Need to Prepare for Cops' Attacks
    5. Obama War Talk Mimics Nazis at Nuremberg
    6. Bosses' Negligence Caused Subway Death
17. Competition, Not Cooperation, Marks U.S.-China Thirst for Oil
18. Chrysler's New Bosses, UAW Hacks Jointly Screw Workers
19. REDEYE
    1. Not Genocide if profit is the motive!
    2. Anti-worker deals get Dems' OK
    3. Pope can't take joke?
    4. US supplies guns for genocide
    5. No immigrants? Hire some prisoners!
    6. No sick leave for low-paid workers
20. PLP History: PL'ers in SDS Forged Campus
    Worker-Student Alliance
21. GI's and Vets Should: Turn Imperialist War Into Class War
    1. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
    2. Racism and Nationalism:
       Imperialism's Tools
    3. Active-Duty Soldiers:
       A Missed Opportunity
22. Imperialist Rivalry Behind Latest Lebanon War

---

Immigration `Reform' Means: BOSSES WANT TO WIN WORKERS TO WAR AND FASCISM

The U.S. ruling class is in sharp internal conflict on immigration reform. Years of bitter in-fighting and finally months of bi-partisan negotiations have finally produced what many in their ranks praise as a "breakthrough." Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the lead Democratic negotiator, first said, "This plan isn't perfect, but it's a strong bill and...a worthy solution." The Los Angeles Times (5/18/07) criticized it for some objectionable provisions but laments that "...the single most objectionable aspect of the plan is that it probably won't pass." The Washington Post (5/19/07) derides it as "Trigger Happy -- On immigration, the cost of wishful thinking may be high," but thinks it should be improved. President Bush hailed it as an "historic moment."

The New York Times May 20 editorial begs to differ: "Many advocates for immigrants have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the House Representatives. We both share those hopes and think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved. If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad status quo."

As usual, the U.S. liberal imperialists cover their real reasons with humanitarian-sounding phrases. They "bemoan" the fact that "The deal erodes..... [the principle] that citizens and legal permanent residents have the right to sponsor family members," and that, "The agreement fails most dismally in its temporary worker program......[creating] an underclass that could work for two years at a time, six at most, but never put down roots... that will encourage exploitation..."

But humanitarian rhetoric aside, the real reasons concern war and fascism. "The good," according to the NY Times, is that it "..... is strikingly appealing....a plan to give most of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally the chance to..... become citizens eventually." But the Times, and the U.S. liberal bosses it speaks for, are against the deal because they know that as it stands it has too many serious obstacles to be useful in winning millions of immigrants and their children, many U.S.-born or -raised here, to fervent patriotism: to slave for low wages in their war industries and to kill and die for the greater glory of U.S. imperialism.

The deal's path to citizenship is a hard, tortuous, onerous and extremely long one. Immigrants here since 1/1/07 have six months to a year to apply for probationary legal status or be deported. At this step they are fingerprinted and undergo a background check. If they pass and have "good" employment histories, they're granted "Z visas." After four years they can renew their "Z visas" for another four years, provided they pass an English proficiency test. At the end of that period, they pay a fine of $5,000 and a $2,000 processing fee to apply for a green card. At present there is a backlog of four million green card applicants that will hopefully be cleared in eight years. "Z visa" applicants go to the end of the line.

The whole process can take some 12 to 15 years. During all this time, these applicants can't leave the country to see their loved ones or bring them here! But the bosses did include the "Dream Act": undocumented children raised here will be granted residency and citizenship if they graduate from college or serve in the military.

This is not what immigrants have been led to believe. The liberal ruling class understands that the disillusionment of millions of super-exploited immigrants could turn their already simmering anger into a furnace of class hatred. They know these workers are crucial to many of their vital industries and they desperately need to recruit more of their youth into the military. This immigration "reform" is too flawed. The liberal section of the ruling class needs to discipline those conservative bosses who are focused on immediate profits and opposed to a more comprehensive immigration reform. This is, in part, why the U.S. bosses need fascism.

But more importantly they need fascism to control the whole working class in order to wage their imperialist wars for profits and control of oil without workers' opposition. One big step toward fascism is the "reform's" National ID card. But no bosses' plan can ever solve our problems and no fascist oppression can ever stop us from organizing to overthrow them. Class hatred and revolutionary communist ideas will lead the road to workers' power.

Oaxaca, Mexico City THOUSANDS PROTEST SOCIAL SECURITY ROBBERY

OAXACA, MEXICO, May 16 -- A march of over 300,000 on March 8, International Women's Day, reactivated the struggle begun last year when the mass movement of striking teachers and their supporters here was suppressed by the fascist governor Ulises Ruíz Ortiz (URO), in cahoots with the federal government. The largest contingent, organized by APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), belonged to Section 22 of the SNTE (National Teachers Union).This renewed struggle ran contrary to the local and national rulers' thinking that the movement was under control and dying.

The marchers were demanding the ouster of governor URO, immediate freedom for 30 jailed activists and a new convention for Section 22 to elect a new leadership. The sellout union leader Enrique Rueda Pacheco quit after betraying the struggle.

During the march, PLP members, including young comrades, distributed 3,000 flyers about International Women's Day, explaining PLP's pro-communist politics. We emphasized that workers and their allies need a general staff to fight directly for communism, the only real liberation from capitalism and all its politicians.

Then, on May 15 (Teachers' Day), tens of thousands of angry teachers, including those from Oaxaca, marched in Mexico City protesting the new Social Security for State Workers (ISSSTE) law. The cops repelled their attempt to demolish a fence built around Los Pinos (the Presidential Palace). They also burned a giant figure of Elba Esther Gordillo, the teachers' union national leader and government ally.

The new ISSSTE law is the bosses' attempt to hand over workers' savings for management by local and imperialist banks and financial institutions, supposedly to cover social security. This will enable the big bosses to make billions in profits. They justify the change by claiming workers' pensions now covered by social security are a burden for that fund.

The new law also attacks health care and other public services covered by social security and would raise the retirement age from 60 to 65. If one is forced to retire early (because of health or other problems), you have to wait until age 65. All this affects more than 60% of those now belonging to the ISSSTE. The government claims social security has a billion-dollar deficit, which is basically due to the mis-administration of the system and the corruption of ISSSTE's top honchos. So now workers will have to pay for this plundering.

Imperialist companies will also get away with complete privatization of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company) and the CFE (the Federal Electricity Commission) since a majority of the bought-and-paid-for Deputies and Senators will vote for these so-called "reforms."

Some reformists say workers and their allies must get court orders stopping these plans, and should vote in the next elections for the lesser-evil political party (the opposition PRD) to punish the PAN (the ruling party) and their allies in the PRI (the former ruling party). But the PRD, just like the union hacks, are all part of the capitalist machinery, even though they might favor one group of bosses against another.

We in PLP support the struggle against the ISSSTE "reform" and call on workers to continue to fight with strikes and mass protests. The best lessons we can learn from this fight-back is the need to build a mass revolutionary communist party to eliminate all the bosses once and for all. Join the PLP!

Killer Wolfowitz Out, Deadlier Liberals Plan Wider Wars

Paul Wolfowitz, a top planner of the Iraq fiasco, has the blood of a million Iraqis and thousands of GI's on his hands. But workers have no stake in the outcome of this war criminal's recent ouster from the World Bank. Like Rumsfeld's resignation, it simply shows the liberal faction of U.S. imperialists, bent on enlisting allies for wider wars, asserting its power. The "Revenge of the Multilateralists," as the liberal Boston Globe (5/19) called the sacking, brings a massive U.S.-led coalition's intervention in the Middle East ever closer.

Popular wisdom says Europeans at the World Bank forced Wolfowitz from his perch, and they probably did play a big role, given their immediate and continuing opposition to the neo-con's unilateral invasion of Iraq. But it was a U.S. liberal, Eli Whitney Debevoise II, whose family has provided legal counsel to generations of Rockefellers, who pulled the trigger. The New York Times (5/17) hints heavy-handedly at just how Wolfowitz's job-for-girlfriend scandal came to light, "Mr. Debevoise, a Washington lawyer, arrived at his job at the bank in early April, the precise moment when the furor over Mr. Wolfowitz erupted." A subsequent (5/19) Times editorial, acknowledging that it's still Bush's choice, names Republicans Robert Zoellick and Robert Kimmitt as acceptable successors. Both belong to the CFR.

Wolfowitz's disgrace reflects an ongoing tactical dispute among U.S. imperialists dating back to the first Iraq war and the collapse of the Soviet empire. Two camps drew different lessons from these U.S. "victories." One, led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others, reasoned that U.S. forces' now unrivaled technological superiority would ensure rapid victory in any future regional conflict. Regarding the Mid-East, they pushed for unilateral action with "off-the-shelf" troops that would not disrupt the economy at home or entail sharing the oil loot with allies. This group became known as the neo-conservatives.

Policy-shapers in liberal think-tanks, however, saw greater threats and needs and reached conflicting conclusions. In their eyes, the U.S. drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, precisely because U.S. troop strength at the time stood at high, costly Cold War levels and was bolstered by significant contributions from allies. Finishing the job by taking over Iraq, the liberals thought, would require a far greater mobilization, both of U.S. and allied troops, than the 750,000-strong 1991 force. That's why Colin Powell and James Baker opposed marching on Baghdad. As for sharing the spoils, liberals could do that if it meant stability and steady profits. Japan and even France got decidedly junior-partner -- but still significant -- oil deals in Kuwait for aiding the U.S. in Gulf War I.

IMPERIALISTS' DOGFIGHT
OVER WAR TACTICS

In February 1992, Wolfowitz, then undersecretary at the Pentagon, authored the Defense Planning Guidance report, dubbed the Wolfowitz Doctrine. It downplayed the value of enduring alliances. Its original draft said, "[W]e should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished."

The liberals came out swinging. The New York Times published excerpts to encourage "debate," which came later that year in the form of "Changing Our Ways," a manifesto produced jointly by the main liberal think-tanks, the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment. It stood Wolfowitz's go-it-alone stance on its head, calling for coalitions as a first, not last, resort. "[W]e must act cooperatively with others while retaining the option of unilateral action....Toward this end, the system of global collective security designed by the founders of the United Nations should be strengthened...."

"Changing Our Ways" insisted that fuel-thirsty allies chip in militarily for U.S. oil wars. "[O]ther countries also have a major stake in an assured flow of Gulf oil at stable, predictable prices. Although we will remain the principal guarantor of security in the Gulf, we should pursue collective policies that involve Europe and Japan." Prefiguring the Hart-Rudman reports' more dire demands for the sacrifice of "blood and treasure, " the liberals' 1992 Anti-Wolfowitz Doctrine, seeks both "increases in taxes" and a readiness for military mobilization, "[W]e must preserve...a healthy industrial base, enabling us to reconstitute much larger forces if a major hostile power were to begin to emerge in Europe or Asia."

`ANTI-WAR' DEMS ENLIST
BLOODTHIRSTY GENERAL

Clinton heeded the liberals by hiking taxes and balancing the budget (largely by slashing Welfare and stealing the Social Security surplus, as had his predecessors). But, while bombing the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, he failed to win the nation to militarize. Bush, Jr. chose not to even try and followed "cheap-hawk" Wolfowitz, whom he had made deputy defense secretary. Now Wolfowitz is out on his ear, and liberal wolves in sheep's' clothing are having their say. Anti-war faker and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked retired General William Odom to give the Democratic radio response to Bush on April 28 concerning Iraq. He uttered a version of his 2005 call for retreat, regrouping allies and reinvading the entire region.

"For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, reestablishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed."

Wolfowitz is a murderous war criminal, but it would be a mistake to take any comfort in his demise. The imperialist slaughter being engineered by the liberal war-makers will be even worse. We must continue to expose and attack them as our deadlier class enemy.

Yes, the Rich Gets Richer and the Poor Much Poorer

Still another "study" has just been issued about the extreme poverty in the U.S., with proposals to alleviate (not eliminate) it. The "Center for American Progress" (CAP) reports that one of eight people -- 37 million -- live below the poverty line. That "line" is $19,971 per year for a family of four. But that's hardly an accurate measure of poverty. And racist wage differentials make it even worse for black and Latino workers. Actually, one-third of the population -- 90 million people -- are "struggling to make ends meet." (NY Times, 5/12) And all this assumes that the workers making this pitiful wage are employed 52 weeks a year, which is hardly the case.

CAP says that the poverty-stricken have risen by five million in the last six years. Poverty wages are so low that even someone working full-time the year-round doesn't earn enough to raise a family of four. One of the CAP's "remedies" is to raise the minimum wage to $8.40/hr, for a yearly wage of $17,472 (assuming 52 weeks of work) -- still $2,300 below the poverty line. Some solution!

All the "studies" and proposals in the world ignore that poverty is built into capitalism. To stay in business, bosses are driven to make maximum profits, which impels them to cut labor costs as much as possible, e.g. drive wages down, not up.

The anarchy of capitalism produces unemployment. In its 400-year history there has never been full employment because the more successful companies drive the less successful ones out of business, leading to mass layoffs. Today sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry adds to this joblessness and increased poverty. In 1955, Japan hardly produced any cars. But now, for example, Toyota has passed GM as the world's leading automaker, so GM's "solution" is to shatter the "American Dream" of tens of thousands of workers with massive job-cuts.

Many of the U.S. presidential candidates will again jab about "creating jobs" and "ending poverty" and "health care for all." Meanwhile both the Republicans and the Democrats do absolutely nothing to reduce poverty or about the U.S. being at the bottom of the imperialist countries in health care. They won't do a thing about the fact that 60% of the working class is not even eligible to collect unemployment insurance. Some churches decry the conditions of the poor, but all they offer is soup kitchens. The fundamentalists and "pro-lifers" (really anti-lifers) tell us God will take care of us, but meanwhile the U.S. has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the imperialist world.

The union "leaders"-- whose decades of sellouts have helped create poverty and mass job cuts -- will again tell us "elect Democrats" to get "pro-labor" legislation passed to help the unorganized and reduce poverty. But during Clinton's 8-year reign, union membership declined, while Clinton massacred welfare, further increasing poverty. Yet when workers force strikes to demand better wages and benefits, these labor fakers don't lift a finger to organize solidarity strikes among masses of workers. They whine about companies "using the law" to stifle unionizing. But capitalist laws are set up to do just that, and these union "leaders" refuse to organize workers to break these bosses' laws.

"Black leaders" protest the racism of Imus but Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama completely ignore the mass layoff of predominantly black healthcare workers in Chicago, not to mention the declining health services to the city's black and Latino patients, all of which add to the poverty figures (which will show another increase in the next "study").

And liberals among the politicians and the media decry the double rates of unemployment among black and Latino workers and triple among the youth, but, of course, never trace the source of that racism to the super-profits reaped from it by U.S. corporations who they serve.

Finally, some of these capitalist spokespersons lament the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in both lives and money. Then they all vote to fund the war while "apologizing" for doing so but say "we have to be patriotic and support the troops" and "can't leave Iraq in chaos," while tens of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of GI's continue to march to their graves. They can't find the money to increase unemployment insurance and insure health care for millions of workers' children but they can spend a trillion dollars to protect Big Oil.

Racist super-exploitation has been part of capitalism since it started. Recently exhibits on slavery "discovered" that it laid the basis for the advances made by the U.S. economy over the past several centuries.

So what can workers do? We must fight the cause of poverty -- capitalism and its pro-war racism and patriotism. Workers must unite and attack all those trying to divide us -- racist demagogues and goons like the Minutemen, KKK, etc. "Communist revolution is the only solution" may sound like a cliché, but only a system that eliminates profits, wage slavery and the racism tied to both can enable the working class to reap the full benefits of the value we produce. This past May Day, PLP again showed the potential of building a mass revolutionary Party. Join us to turn that potential into a reality!

PL'ers Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca May Day March

OAXACA, MEXICO -- On May 1st, international workers' day, over 80,000 workers and students marched here to commemorate the historic struggle of Chicago's workers for the 8-hour day and of the miners of Rio Blanco and Cananea (Mexico). They protested the fascist reforms of the Labor Law (ISSSTE) and demanded the firing of murderer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Governor of Oaxaca. The marchers also demanded the freedom of the political prisoners and whereabouts of those considered "missing," as well as punishment of those responsible for the repression against teachers of Section 22 of the SNTE (Teachers' Union) and others who participated in last year's mass uprising.

Reformist and fake left groups populated the march, but PLP members and friends brought forward their communist politics. Along with a group who formed a barricade during the rebellion, our contingent of 50 marchers held a banner reading, "FOR A COMMUNIST MAY DAY, FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MURDEROUS IMPERIALISTS AND CAPITALISTS, THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT, WARS, AND TERROR." We also carried our revolutionary red flag and chanted "Fight, win; workers to power!" "The workers' struggles have no borders!" "Long live communism! Death to capitalism!" We distributed 2,000 leaflets and revolutionary communist chants.

Some marchers postered walls with the message "MAY DAY! ARISE YE PRISONERS OF STARVATION, FOR JUSTICE THUNDERS CONDEMNATION; IT'S THE END OF OPPRESSION.... COMMUNISM WILL BE THE FUTURE, TOGETHER WE'LL MAKE HISTORY."

Afterwards, PLP members and friends held a social-political event. We urged all to participate with us in coming activities, including June 14, the first anniversary of the cops' brutal attack repelled by the militant teachers, and which sparked the long mass Oaxaca rebellion. Our goal is to massively spread the need to build an international revolutionary communist Party (PLP) among the militant workers and youth involved in many reform struggles against capitalism, its cops and fascist politicians like Oaxaca's governor. The only way out of capitalism's hell, from Oaxaca to Baghdad to Los Angeles, is to win masses to build a party that fights directly for a communist society.

PLP Exposes Two-Faced LA Mayor over Cops' Fascist Attack

LOS ANGELES, May 17 -- This evening, several thousand workers demonstrated against the racist police attack on workers and their families who demonstrated in McArthur Park on May 1st. Workers came wanting to express their anger, but found instead a patriotic staged event controlled by State Assembly Speaker Nunez, with full press coverage, and religious and political leaders trying to calm the workers' anger. Mayor Villaraigosa spoke in English and Spanish, saying, "We all have the right to peacefully demonstrate -- it's the American way."

When PLP members distributed a leaflet titled "Fascist Cops and Villaraigosa Serve the Capitalists, Not Us," along with selling CHALLENGE, they got "high fives" and lots of agreement and encouragement from marchers. One worker said, "It's true --Villaraigosa is two faced." When radio announcer "Piolin" spoke, the crowd booed him because while last year he urged workers to march, this year he urged them not march but to write their Congressmen instead.

This orgy of patriotism in the face of the fascist police attack was due to the liberal leaders of the immigrants' rights groups like CHIRLA and MIWON, loyal agents of the liberal imperialists. PLP is building its forces in these movements and in the factories and schools to challenge them.

We plan to discuss with our friends in all the mass organizations and at our jobs and schools about how to respond to police attacks like the one launched at the end of the second march on May 1st in McArthur Park. Such discussions will lead to better, bolder plans the next time the police attack a march. As the worker's letter in CHALLENGE (5/23) correctly pointed out, the workers' response to such attacks can be schools in which the PLP can grow.

PLP and our friends must give leadership when these attacks occur. With more preparation and discussions beforehand, workers can give leadership to help each other confront and expose the cops, defend the march, fight back, and/or lead an organized, orderly retreat if necessary. Our Party has led such actions many times.

As the anger and understanding of workers deepen, more and more workers will see through the bosses' lying promises.With organization and planning more workers will stand up to the cops' attacks and to the lies of the liberals like Villaraigosa and Bratton who cover for the racist, imperialist system. In this process, more workers and youth will join the long-term fight for workers' power with communist revolution.

Picket College Lab for Its Fascist War on Youth

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 2007--Fifteen to twenty students, including several PLP members, protested against the grand opening ceremony of a criminology lab at a local university campus, linking it to imperialism and the police brutality at the May Day demonstration in MacArthur Park.

While local politicians including Gray Davis and Sheriff Lee Baca smiled at the ribbon cutting of this repression factory, students picketing outside chanted "L.A., MacArthur Park, New Orleans, stop the racist war machine!" and "L.A.P.D. you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!" As our signs noted, the racist violence of the police at MacArthur Park was not an aberration within the context of their role in maintaining the capitalist system. While figures like Cardinal Mahoney and Mayor Villaraigosa call for healing, we know that there can be no reconciliation between the working class and the ruling class or its lackeys, the cops.

Throughout the ceremony, protestors were relentless, loud and spirited in their chanting. When they were called a "bunch of thugs" for chanting during the national anthem, protestors pointed to the politicians and police saying "the real thugs are in there, ma'am."

Though the new criminology lab is being advertised to students as a beacon of pride, its pristine appearance and adjacent greenery mask its real implications. Situated in the heart of a campus with one of the lowest average incomes in the state, the criminology lab targets working-class youth, including many immigrants and black youth, to be the new troops for racist repression on the streets of L.A. and beyond.

This is part of a growing trend in the use of the universities to build up homeland security forces and prepare for wider wars. As inter-imperialist rivalry grows, the bosses must adjust their resources, finding new ways to gain from the exploitation of workers. On this campus, millions have been invested in the new lab, while many other sections of the schools fall apart and tuition is raised 10% for the fall. Several weeks before the grand opening, an enormous career fair brought a dazzling number of "opportunities" to the campus: police departments, the defense industry, the U.S. Army, Marine Corps and Homeland Security.

This situation has challenged students to fight back against these fascist attacks on their class. At the career fair a small but strong group marched back and forth, chanting and handing out flyers explaining that the university lines up with the interests of imperialism and its brutality against workers. Leaflets passed out leading up to the career fair and the grand opening called for a system that meets the needs of workers. During these on-going struggles, students held meetings and study groups which made these connections by discussing CHALLENGE.

In our classrooms and clubs, we will continue to expose the causal link between the needs of imperialism and the increasing tuition, criminology lab and military-packed job fairs. Through these struggles, however modest the results, PLP can build communist leadership among students, workers and soldiers, leading to a communist revolution and the end of the racist, brutal exploitation of capitalism.

Racist KKKops Strike Again, Kill Immigrant Workers

BRONX, NY, May 21 -- On May 18, an off-duty cop shot and killed an unarmed driver, a 41-year-old black Honduran immigrant maintenance worker and musician, Fermin Arzu. On a narrow street, Arzu's van had inadvertently hit a parked car which then bumped the cop's parked car. The cop, Raphael Lora, ran after Arzu's van and, without identifying himself as a cop, confronted him. Frightened, Arzu drove off at which point the killer cop shot him three times, even violating the police department's own rules of not shooting at a fleeing vehicle if a cop is not threatened.

Arzu's relatives said the cop could have fired at the van's tires, rather than shooting the driver. "He had a dream like everyone else here," said his brother-in-law Ignacio Zapata, 38. "They took his life too early." Relatives and friends held a vigil outside the murder scene demanding that cop Lora be punished for his crime.

This evening several PLP comrades went to the site of the murder to join with neighbors and friends of the Arzu family. We distributed CHALLENGE and a flyer about the need for all workers to unite to fight back against these fascist executions by the cops. Many people there took our literature and discussed police brutality and the cops' role in attacking workers, especially black and immigrant workers, to terrorize them from fighting back against the bosses' racist exploitation.

One of Arzu's friends described how Fermin, like most immigrants, had come to the U.S. seeking the "American dream,"of having a decent life for himself and his family and of how he worked hard trying to achieve that dream. But for all who loved and cared about him that dream became a nightmare as he was gunned down execution style by KKKop Lora.

Others spoke of the senselessness of this murder of an unarmed man and the necessity of acting to stop these killings. We said the only way to do this is to destroy a system run by rich people who care only for themselves, their profits and their possessions.

We then went to the home of Arzu's family to offer our condolences and support. His family is determined to fight for justice and the punishment of the Killer Kop. But there are those who want to convince them that this can be achieved only through lawyers and the courts. The fact is workers will never get justice through the bosses' legal system. We must bring this case to workers in shops, unions, churches and all mass organizations and build the movement to fight racism and its source, capitalism.

The corrupt and murderous nature of the cops has leaped forward in recent weeks, copying more and more the system they serve. Earlier in the month, an NYPD cop shot his younger girlfriend (both Guyana immigrants)in the face because she postponed their marriage. He first tried to blame the killing on a robbery. On May 19, two NYPD cops were arrested trying to rob a house in New Jersey. And when cops raided the wrong house in Brooklyn searching for drugs, they stole $2,000 from an Arab family.

These killings are occurring as the trial of the cops who shot Sean Bell last November is about to begin, after all the politicians, from Mayor Bloomberg to Al Sharpton, have yelled, "This won't be allowed again." As PLP always points out, cops, no matter the color of their skin, are paid and trained to be racist goons for the bosses.

May Day Dinners Dish Out Plenty of Food for Thought

SEATTLE, WA. May 5 -- A feeling of urgency to win workers to smash this racist capitalist system was very strong as dozens of Boeing and government workers; university, community college and H. S. teachers and staff; and families plus others gathered to celebrate May Day. After a delicious potluck, several spoke about the May Day marches in Los Angeles and Seattle that they had participated in earlier in the week. A L.A. march participant presented a slide show of pictures he had taken there. Both he and those that marched in Seattle spoke about the contradiction between waving the U.S. flag while, at the same time, suffering super-exploitation at the hands of the U.S. bosses. We tried to resolve this contradiction in the interests of our class by selling 300 CHALLENGEs and passing out 500 Party flyers at the local march of several thousand.

Next, two young students welcomed everyone and read a short composition they had written about what May Day means. They made us all laugh by ending with a warning about a grown-up who would next speak for "five hours."

Happily, the main speaker, a H.S. history teacher, did not go one for five hours. The comrade did, however, cover 500 years of capitalist development in scant minutes. Cleverly interweaving working-class struggle, the march of capitalism, racism and imperialism as well as the birth of our Party, he led to one inevitable conclusion. We workers had but one choice: to build for communist revolution.

He asked us all to struggle harder to sell our revolutionary paper. We must get our communist ideas out to workers, students and soldiers to counter the bosses' racism, nationalism and patriotism. He invited everyone to take off work or school to bring this multi-racial group (at the dinner) to next year's May Day march. Eventually we will destroy this sick system he described and work towards a truly international communist world.

Many lively conversations continued for hours. Some new Boeing workers took extra papers to sell for the first time. Everyone left with high spirits and plenty of CHALLENGES.

May Day in Queens

ASTORIA, NY, April 28-- Songs, speeches and dramatic readings celebrated May Day at a dinner in Astoria, Queens. The program was opened by greetings sent from soldiers who are involved in the mass movement against the war in Iraq. This greeting which celebrated the fight for communist revolution inside the ranks of the bosses' military held special relevance with two active National Guard soldiers, Iraq veterans themselves, and one recent vet, attending our dinner.

The entertainment highlights of the dinner were several songs including Rap and Regaton music with revolutionary lyrics, performed by a group of High School students and their teacher from Jackson Heights and a dramatic reading retelling the history of May Day.

Speeches by a high school parent about the world political situation, a Cuny Professor recounting the struggle to build the party in his union, and a young Party leader on being in this fight for the long haul, rounded out an inspiring evening.

Imperialism Source of Haitians' Drowning Deaths

CAP-HATIEN, HAITI, May 19 -- Dozens of Haitian immigrants whose boat sank near the Turks-Caicos islands were buried in a common grave here, angering their relatives who couldn't identify their remains. People cried as they showed pictures of their dead relatives when their body bags were unloaded in this port city two weeks after one of the worst sea disasters in recent years here. Their bodies were so decomposed they couldn't be identified. Some of the drowning victims were also bitten by sharks. Some say the boat sank while being tugged away from the Turks-Caicos islands.

Haitian workers are again victims of the racism of capitalism and imperialism. Conditions in Haiti are now even worse than before Bush sent the Marines to kidnap and topple President Jean Bertrand Aristide a few years ago, and help an uprising led by right-wing goons of the former military dictatorship. Haiti is now occupied by a UN military force headed by the Brazilian army which regularly battles drug gangs in the huge slums of Port-Au-Prince, shooting at random at houses, killing innocent children and adults.

The Haitian workers are also victims of the racist U.S. immigration laws, which pack them into concentration camps and deport them if they ever reach the U.S. If the new immigration "reform" bill passes, these laws will become even more racist.

May Day in Iran Caps Months of Mass Teachers' Struggles

TEHERAN, IRAN -- Angry workers confronted the rulers' agents and their goons on May Day. At one official event workers shouted down a government speaker, chanting, "Incompetent minister, resign, resign!" Security forces tried to stop independent marches by teachers, students, and Yahev bus workers (who waged a militant strike last year). Many militant leaders were arrested. The workers also denounced the imperialist plans to attack Iran, saying innocent civilians will be the ones to die, just like in Iraq.

The May Day actions were the culmination of mass protests and actions by teachers during March and April. The government responded with mass repression, arresting hundreds of teachers.

One protesting teacher who had been arrested and detained for a day asked, "How am I, my wife, and my two kids supposed to live on 220,000 Tomans [$240] per month when just our apartment rent is 180,000 Tomans [$200] per month? All over the world teachers are among the most respected members of society, but here we not only get paid much less than other employees of similar academic backgrounds but they [the government] also does not even tolerate our protests, and sends their agents to beat us -- we who still have chalk dust on our hands from educating their kids at school."

Plainclothes agents arrested the head of Iran's Teachers Union, Ali Akbar Baghani, for the second time here while he was teaching. Other teachers were also arrested in the same incident, according to the ILNA news agency. Baghani had been detained in March and released after two weeks in jail. On March 14, after two weeks of continuous protest in front of the Iranian parliament in Tehran, riot police and security forces using batons violently dispersed thousands of teachers, arresting many.

On April 7, security forces in Hamedan arrested 45 teachers who were active in the Hamedan Teachers Association, including its entire governing board. Some of the detainees remain in detention. On April 16, teachers in Sanandaj, Eslamshahr and Kerman avoided attending classes to protest the arrests of their colleagues and "unfulfilled financial promises."

"Half of the high school teachers in town have refused to go to classes," a protesting teacher in Eslamshahr told ILNA. "Why should the maximum monthly wage of a teacher with an academic background be only 375,000 Tomans [$400]? Wasn't the government supposed to equally distribute the money from the oil trade?"

During the nearly two years of Ahmadinejad's presidency, what experts call a "mishandling of the economic administration" has led to a 17% inflation rate during the past year, causing an unprecedented price rise nationwide.

The worsening of the financial condition for most Iranians, especially workers, ordinary employees and the retired, have triggered numerous protests against unpaid and low salaries in many cities. (Interestingly, while Iran is on the front pages of the Western media, none of the massive class struggle has been reported.)

According to a new Parliamentary study, the Ahmadinejad government's current economic policies will hike the inflation rate 23.4% in the coming year.

These teachers and other militant workers are showing the potential for building a mass anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist war and non-religious movement in the Middle East. Workers are learning through their struggles that the religious holy rollers are as much their class enemies as the imperialist warmakers. It is up to us communists to forge a revolutionary movement throughout the region out of such mass struggles.

Morocco's Delphi Workers Take to Streets Against Massive Job Cuts, Firings

TANGIERS, MOROCCO, May 16 -- Delphi, the formerly GM-owned auto parts company, is on a worldwide rampage, cutting labor costs and eliminating jobs from Detroit to Cádiz, Spain to Tangiers. An April massive general strike led by Delphi workers facing a plant closing shut down Cádiz (see CHALLENGE, 5/9). (Delphi wants to move to cheaper labor Poland.) Across the Mediterranean, Delphi workers here are also fighting back.

In 1999, Delphi began producing electric cables for cars here, with 600 workers. As production increased, working conditions worsened for the now 4,000 workers, many highly educated (having college degrees but the lack of jobs forcing them to become proletarians). The bosses arbitrarily worked them 10-12 hours a day plus holidays without overtime pay. Delphi broke every code in the already weak labor laws here.

Delphi worker Mokhtar Khouchna (interviewed by LaHaine.org) said the workers joined the National Moroccan Labor Union, linked to an Islamist political party (PJD). But they soon realized that it resembled all other unions here and worldwide, sold out to the bosses. Union reps are even paid higher wages (about 1,100 Euros monthly -- $1,400)) to keep social peace.

But the workers continued fighting back, not only for economic demands but against being treated like slaves and to stop supervisors' sexual harassment of women workers. Last December, five months after the union was formed, Delphi fired 466 workers.

When Delphi refused to grant the workers' demands, they took to the streets. They also refused to work holidays and Sundays without extra pay, demanding two days notice for work on those days, and on a voluntary basis.

Delphi used court officers to make workers sign a document saying refusal to work holidays and Sundays broke the law, despite the Labor Code saying the opposite. Then Delphi began firing workers, initially the leadership. On December 8, workers inside the plant protested this union-busting attack but anti-riot and regular cops, plus military units, moved workers 500 meters away from the plant. Then Delphi met with the local Labor Department and listed 92 workers to be banned from working anywhere in Tangiers. Workers continued demonstrating daily, without any support from the local or national union leadership. These hacks fear losing their perks with Delphi, other companies and even the government.

Delphi then met with the Ministry of Labor in Rabat, the capital city, and added 374 more workers to the banned list. Meanwhile, the cops arrested 32 workers to force them to sign a document saying they'd stop protesting.

Then Delphi workers united with women garment workers from Dewherst, 400 of whom were fired for organizing a union. Both groups held joint demonstrations, and daily protests at the provincial governor's house, supported by other mass organizations and unions. A demonstration of some 1,200 at a Chamber of Commerce event forced the Economy Minister to enter through a back door. Cops constantly harassed the workers, but the entire city now knew about their struggle. "Our strength stemmed from being well organized," said one worker.

On February 28, at a protest outside Delphi, a well-armed cops' contingent arrested a workers' leader. Workers held firm, declaring they were fighting for their rights. The arrested leader was released but the cops threatened all workers if they persisted. Then armed cops brutally attacked, injuring 18 workers and arresting 250. One rank-and-file leader hid in a nearby plant and called his local union leadership when the cops surrounded the plant, but the hacks did nothing.

Now the union misleaders are trying to cut a deal in arbitration, allowing the company to fire the workers while granting severance pay. But the workers decided their best weapon was to continue protesting. In desperation some workers decided on a hunger strike (generally not a good tactic since bosses couldn't care less if workers starve to death).

Despite this lengthy struggle, the gang-up of Delphi, the government, the cops and the union hacks defeated the rank and file. But these militant workers proved that workers in a Muslim country will conduct class struggle and learned an important lesson about the anti-working class nature of the bosses and their state, a lesson Delphi workers in Cádiz and worldwide should learn.

In this era of endless wars and sharpening imperialist rivalry, the struggle against capitalism must be international. Industrial workers like Delphi play a crucial role, across all national and religious divides. Out of these struggles, communists can win workers to forge a revolutionary leadership to fight for a society without any bosses and their agents. That's PLP's goal. Join us!

LETTERS

Austin Workers Greet May 1st Marchers

Your worldwide May Day reports inspired me to tell you about the May Day immigrant rights march in Austin, Texas, where there were over 5,000 people (maybe 7,000). The city was under a tornado watch, but a speaker at the State Capitol said, "WE are the tornado!" The speeches were loud, the music was great, and the workers and families and university and high school students were filled with tremendous energy.

Workers from other countries know what May Day is! Speakers talked about "el día internacional de los trabajadores," and remembered "los mártires de Chicago."

As the march went through downtown, a thunderstorm drenched us, but it didn't dampen anyone's spirits. There was cheering, chanting and clenched fists throughout the march. The march kept getting bigger and bigger. Construction workers donned their hard hats. Restaurant workers came out on the sidewalk and applauded. When we got to City Hall for another rally, the crowd was much too big to fit in the Plaza. It spilled out into the surrounding streets and blocked Cesar Chavez Street (a major downtown thoroughfare) for a long time.

A downside for me is that there were very few Anglos and African Americans at this inspiring event. There were several of us from my union, but we do not begin to have the unity, internationalism, and working-class consciousness that we need. Thanks, PLP and CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, for working to change that!

An Old Friend in Austin, TX

Workers in Paraguay and New Orleans:
Same Enemy, Same Fight!

Following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina (read capitalism and racist neglect), the bosses' speculation and exploitation of workers has continued.  Over 900,000 hurricane-damaged vehicles were sold to used car dealers in the U.S. and abroad. Insurance companies were involved, but worse yet, selling used cars recovered from "natural" disasters is not a crime if the exact damage is listed. However, most "Autos Katrina" sent abroad do not come with this information. 

The Paraguayan newspaper "ABC Color" reports that 90% of the used cars entering this South American country are from Hurricane Katrina. These cars have damage histories marked "unknown," erased or covered up, to maximize profits.  This puts at risk the Paraguayan worker struggling to get by, who just wants a cheap yet safe vehicle to get to work every day. The drivers don't know about the vehicle's possible damage and therefore risk their lives.  Paraguay's capitalist rulers are well-known for their corruption, which is rampant throughout the government, so this type of scam is not unusual. 

Thus, the bosses take advantage of the workers' misery -- from New Orleans to Asunción (capital of Paraguay) -- to sacrifice their lives on the altar of the bosses' true god: the almighty buck. Racism is also evident in this scam since most Katrina victims subsequently ripped off were black and Latino. Again the slogan applies: "Same enemy, same fight; Workers of the world Unite!" 

Red Guaraní

`More Repression, Means More Struggle'

"Welcome to McArthur Park," said the cops over loud speakers -- the same cops who attacked the demonstration for immigration reform on May Day with rubber bullets, tear gas and batons. After the May 1 attacks, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief Bratton, Cardinal Mahoney and the "organizations to defend immigrants" planned a march for May 17 to "reconcile the community and the police."(!)

"This is a play, these hypocrites," said a youth in the march for "reconciliation." "I hate the police and I'm not afraid of them. I grew up amid the repression in El Salvador, when the police violently attacked marches and were answered with workers' violence as well. More repression means more struggle. The massacred will be revenged as the slogans say." These and other similar comments were part of the discussions during the march.

Participating in mass reform organizations gives us the opportunity to meet many honest workers who can be influenced by our communist ideas. At the same time, we can expose the essence of capitalism and the role of the police in terrorizing the working class. These will be the workers who will respond under our leadership, so that we won't be running away but put forward strong fists with the politics of the working class.

In my factory, I've had a lot of political discussions with my co-workers, especially with those who went with me to the May Day march where we witnessed part of the first incident that ended with the attack that dispersed the demonstration. At the time, we thought we were seeing only an isolated case when the march had already ended, not the beginning of a bigger attack that happened a whole hour later after we had marched to our homes.

Had we been present with the group during the attack, as we were on May 17, we would have tried to give political leadership as we have done in many other immigrant rights' marches and against the racist Minutemen and their earlier version, the VCT (Voices of Citizens Together).

A worker

Need to Prepare for Cops' Attacks

[Editor's Note: The May 23 CHALLENGE contained a mistake in the translation from Spanish to English of the letter entitled "Red Flag vs. Bosses' Flag." In the last paragraph, the response to the question of whether we will be ready to respond to a greater attack by police on all workers fighting back, should have read: "Only if we join and help PLP grow," not "Only if we join the only party capable of leading the workers in these struggles and eventually the seizure of power."]

The May 1 LAPD attack on immigrant workers and a letter in the May 23 CHALLENGE, "Red Flag vs. Bosses' Flag," provoked an important and broad discussion on how PLP should function at all marches and demonstrations we attend. The letter described a comrade's successful struggle to win fellow workers to participate in a May Day march carrying red flags and supporting revolutionary politics. It is possible, though, that the letter may also have inadvertently given the wrong impression of how we should respond to police (or KKK, Nazi, etc.) violence at such demonstrations.

It is difficult to know from the description given whether there were forces that could have been mobilized to counter the police attack on the youths, but certainly that would have been the preferred strategy. The quote from the next day that "it was a good decision to leave, but maybe we should have stayed and fought" puts the emphasis on the wrong option.

This attack by the police provides an important opportunity for all clubs to discuss the need to make plans for possible police attacks at all events we are a part of (which we have done in many such events in all areas where PLP has forces). Wherever we are part of working-class struggle, we should be prepared to defend workers under attack by the cops or their agents with whatever forces we have. In our own demonstrations we organize self-defense forces to protect those who have joined us in protest. When we join demonstrations organized by others who have illusions in the government and don't prepare any response to police violence, we should make our own plan in advance how to respond to the ruling-class violence that should never be a "surprise."

Working-class confidence in communist leadership will come from years of experiencing our ability and willingness to meet the bosses head-on in struggle after struggle. We must meet their violence with working-class violence whenever that is possible, while also showing that the bosses' violence can only be finally defeated by overthrowing the entire capitalist state. Let's learn this lesson because short of state power there are many struggles and fights we can lead to expose the capitalist system and show the need for a communist future. (And even then struggle against the restoration of capitalism will continue for a long time.)

NYC comrades

Obama War Talk Mimics Nazis at Nuremberg

In "Obama Update: More Imperialist Than Ever," CHALLENGE (5/23) notes that U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama swore loyalty to the war-making imperialists in his April 23 speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Obama's words indicate exactly how far he's willing to go.

When Obama said "no President should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary -- to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened" (my emphasis), he signed on to the June 1, 2002 Bush doctrine on pre-emptive or preventive war.

A pre-emptive war is a war of aggression, and the 1950 Nuremberg principles say that the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" is a crime against peace punishable under international law. The Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 1946 judgment of the International Military Tribunal says that "to initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

When Obama said amen to the Bush doctrine, he lined up alongside the Nazis and Japanese militarists who were sentenced to hang for carrying out such a doctrine: Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hideki Tojo, Koki Hirota, Seishiro Itagaki....

A friend

Bosses' Negligence Caused Subway Death

Additional details have come out about the death of NYC subway track worker Marvin Franklin (CHALLENGE, 5/23) which make it even more horrible and pins the blame where it belongs -- on the bosses. Three workers -- Franklin, Jeffrey Hill (who was injured) and Michael Williams -- all had signed up for overtime that Sunday (April 29) for extra money to help support their families. Their job was to clear debris and equipment from a completed construction project. Their supervisor told them to cross the tracks to retrieve a four-wheel dolly. The foreman stood nearby with a flashlight, saying he'd watch for approaching trains.

"We...always look both ways," before stepping onto a set of tracks, Hill told a NY Daily News reporter (5/20).

When Hill saw a light above Franklin's head piercing the darkness of the Brooklyn subway tunnel, he thought it was the foreman's flashlight. "Then I...realized it was a train.... I couldn't do anything, the train was there."

There was no warning from the foreman that a train was approaching. But when it roared around a curve at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, Hill knew there would be no escape. "I knew I was dead," "I knew...this is how I'm going to go. This is it."

The side of the train pounded him into the platform's concrete wall, crushing his ribs and battering his spine as he wedged himself into the 8-inch gap between train and concrete. But it pulled Franklin behind Hill and down the tracks. "I saw the look on his face when the train was dragging him," said Hill. "He was just twisting between the platform and the train," and finally fell under it as it screeched to a halt.

"I saw a boot sitting on the platform," said Williams. "I look down and see Marvin [Franklin]. He's lying there under the train....eyes closed....not saying a word."

Franklin, 55, a married father and artist who sketched images of the homeless in the subways, died on those tracks, the second track worker killed in five days.

His co-worker Hill, a father of two and graduate of Pratt Institute where he studied painting, was happy to see Franklin on the crew. Both painters, they had been talking earlier about their different mediums, said Hill. "He was in good spirits."

The transit bosses immediately announced "safety re-training" classes, intimating that somehow the workers were not following the rules and that caused the accident. Both surviving co-workers are outraged at these suggestions that they took a shortcut which led to their friend's death. "We were doing exactly what we were told," said Hill.

As CHALLENGE reported last issue, the bosses' use of short-handed work crews and stinting on funds for safety is what murders these workers. The bosses' racism towards the lives of the overwhelmingly black and Latino work-force is a killer.

A Brooklyn comrade

Competition, Not Cooperation, Marks U.S.-China Thirst for Oil

Daniel Yergin, a leading expert on oil and author of "The Prize -- the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power," a book on Big Oil, wrote in the London Financial Times (5/21) how the U.S. and China should cooperate instead of compete for the world's oil resources when both countries meet at a Strategic Economic Dialogue.

First Yergin acknowledges the sharpening rivalry among the U.S. and China for world resources: "For some, it is too late. In their view, the rivalry risk is already here. They see a mercantilist China single-mindedly moving to pre-empt world oil supplies. Some Chinese, for their part, fear their country being denied access to supplies and worry about the vulnerability of its lengthening supply lines.... China's demand for oil, while less than 10% of the world total, is increasing quickly because of rapid economic growth. Its oil market is now the second largest in the world -- 40% larger than Japan's -- and it has gone in less than 15 years from self-sufficiency to importing half its total supply."

Yergin says it's good for the U.S. and Europe that China is seeking, buying and developing oil production worldwide, since that will bring more barrels to the market. Even though China's total production outside its borders is just a fraction of that controlled by any one of the Big Oil companies, the real risks are not from competition in the global marketplace but rather arise when oil and gas development gets caught up in "larger foreign policy issues, of which those involving Iran and Sudan are currently the most obvious. What the Dialogue can do is emphasize the very large common interests the two countries share as the world's two largest petroleum consumers. The U.S. imports 60% of its oil; China, 50%. Between them, they account for almost 35% of [total] world consumption. Both benefit from stable markets, open to trade and investment."

This may be true, but Yergin fails to see that politics are (as Lenin used to say) concentrated economics. A case in point is Sudan. The China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) is Sudan's largest foreign investor, with some $5 billion in oilfield development. Since 1999 China has invested at least $15 billion in Sudan. It owns 50% of an oil refinery near Khartoum jointly with the Sudanese government. The oil fields are concentrated in the south, site of a long-simmering civil war, partly financed covertly by U.S. bosses, to break the south from the Islamic Khartoum-centered north.

CNPC built an oil pipeline from its concession blocs 1, 2 and 4 in southern Sudan, to a new terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea where oil is loaded on tankers for China. Eight percent of China's oil now comes from southern Sudan. China takes up to 65% to 80% of Sudan's 500,000 barrels/day of oil production. Sudan last year was China's fourth largest foreign oil source. In 2006 China passed Japan to become the world's second largest importer of oil after the U.S., importing 6.5 million barrels a day of the black gold. With its oil demand growing by an estimated 30% a year, China will pass the U.S. in oil import demand in a few years. That reality is the motor driving Beijing foreign policy in Africa. (Source: U.S. AID)

China has just signed an oil deal linking it with Africa's two largest nations -- Nigeria and South Africa. China's CNOC will extract oil in Nigeria via a consortium that includes the South African Petroleum Co., giving China access to what could be 175,000 barrels a day by 2008. It's a $2.27 billion deal that provides state-controlled CNOC with a 45% stake in a large off-shore Nigerian oil field. Previously, Washington considered Nigeria to be an asset of the Anglo-American oil majors, ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron.

Such a scenario doesn't lead to cooperation, but rather to more turmoil among the imperialists and their allies in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. (Next: an analysis of the "humanitarian imperialism" of the "Free Darfur" movement.)

Chrysler's New Bosses, UAW Hacks Jointly Screw Workers

Chrysler's buyout by the private equity firm Cerberus represents a wholesale slaughter of North American auto workers. It will destroy jobs for tens of thousands of Chrysler workers and benefits for retirees, with Ford and GM next. It's a classic case of how capitalism chews up the working class and then spits it out with nothing left but skin and bones.

With this deal, Cerberus will immediately cut 13,000 jobs and $300 million in retirees' health benefits. But CNNMoney.com reported (5/14) that Cerberus will close five plants and cut another 30,000 jobs. And the Indianapolis Star reported (5/17) that, "Cerberus [will] ask the United Auto Workers for a 30% cut in wages and benefits." The last of the jobs black workers won in the 1960s' rebellions will be wiped out by this racist assault. Trillions for imperialist war, death for workers' living standards.

If Chrysler workers don't agree, Cerberus would take the company into bankruptcy, allowing it to legally cancel the union contract and wipe out health and pension benefits, a maneuver that already has victimized the steelworkers. UAW president Ron Gettelfinger praises this sale to Cerberus as "in the best interests of the workers"!

Cerberus is a private equity fund, meaning its stock is not publicly traded and therefore not subject to regulations. It pools huge amounts of private capital seeking the largest returns in the shortest time. Such funds net returns of 22.5% on investments, compared to the 6.6% average of most leading companies. It doesn't create profit through developing new products but plunders the assets of existing companies and then dumps them, along with their workers.

Cerberus bought Albertson Supermarkets and the Mervyn Department Store chain, eliminating 5,800 jobs. Such firms undermine the long-term viability of the outfits they buy in the chase for immediate super-profits.

Cerberus's chairman is John Snow, Bush's former Treasury Secretary who oversaw the massive tax cuts for the rich. Bush, Sr.'s former Vice-President Dan Quayle works on its international operations. And one of its biggest investors is W's former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, as anti-working class and a warmongering crew as one could gather under one roof.

The real kicker here is the swindle being engineered by the UAW hacks. In exchange for UAW approval, the company will off-load its retiree health benefit liabilities to a fund controlled by the UAW, which would make the union responsible for cutting the benefits of retired auto workers. Now Chrysler -- Ford and GM next.

The Wall Street Journal reported (5/15) that the Big Three automakers have "about $95 billion in combined future and current healthcare liabilities," to which the companies would contribute but the union would make "solvent" by cutting benefits left and right. The Journal says this "would make the UAW one of the largest private-sector providers of health care in the U.S." And the salaries of these union hacks would rise accordingly. Talk about "business unionism"!

These are the monsters that capitalism creates to oppress workers. The only immediate answer for autoworkers would be organizing international unity across all national boundaries to join with militant workers across Europe who are fighting such massive job cuts. But only a communist understanding of how the profit system intrinsically must screw the working class can provide any long-term solution: workers' revolution to seize state power and put all production in workers' hands. This can only happen by building the party committed to such a goal, the PLP.

REDEYE

Not Genocide if profit is the motive!

...A Dutch businessman, Frans van Anraat...[was]selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein. The chemicals were used in poison gas weapons in the 1980s and against Kurdish villagers. Prosecutors had demanded a conviction for complicity in genocide, but the appeal judges rejected that, saying Mr. van Anraat was driven not by genocidal intent but by greed. [NYT, 5/10]

Anti-worker deals get Dems' OK

To the Editor

Paul Krugman is right that dealing with the negative impact of trade on American workers requires universal health care and a wide variety of pro-worker policies ("Divided Over Trade," column, May14). The reason we do not have such policies is of course the opposition of American business and its Republican allies.

Yet for 20 years Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton to Charles B. Rangel have continued to collaborate with Republicans in....such deals... [NYT, 5/18]

Pope can't take joke?

Italy now knows the answer to... "How many comedians does it take to infuriate the Vatican?" The answer is one, and his name is Andrea Rivera....

...On state television, he trained his wit on the Vatican's stance on evolution and euthanasia. "The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the church has never evolved," he said. He launched into a routine about the church's denial of a funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a muscular dystrophy sufferer who opted to have his respirator switched off in December. "I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Weldy but they didn't for Pinochet or Franco,"....the Vatican indicated it was deeply unamused in a strongly worded article...(GW, 5/11)

US supplies guns for genocide

...The U.S...is the world's largest supplier of small arms. Last year we provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, many to unstable regions already engaged in conflict.

These low-tech weapons are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths over the last decade, including the genocide in Rwanda. But when the U.N. member states met in November to curb the trade of guns and other light weapons, the United States was the only country to vote against the historic measure. (Minutemanmedia.org)

No immigrants? Hire some prisoners!

Ever since the Colorado Legislature declared war on illegal immigrants last year, farmers in this neck of the woods have been worried that undocumented workers who make up at least half of the area's farm labor will be too scared to make a return migration.

...A pilot program with the Colorado Corrections Department...could supply them with 10-member crews of low-security female prisoners....

...But the fact that a group of Colorado framers has turned to prisoners to meet labor needs says a whole lot about why so many U.S. employers prefer illegal immigrant labor in the first place -- it's cheap, dependable yet impermanent, and, well, they have no rights either. (LAT, 5/2)

No sick leave for low-paid workers

...In the lowest quarter of U.S. wage earners, nearly 80 percent...get no paid sick days at all....

Food service workers are among those least likely to get paid sick days. Eighty-six percent get no sick days at all. They show up in the restaurants coughing and sneezing and feverish, and they start preparing and serving meals. You won't see many of them wearing masks....

As overwhelming majority of Americans favor paid sick days for full-time workers... (NYT, 5/15)

PLP History: PL'ers in SDS Forged Campus
Worker-Student Alliance

(Part V of PLP's history in the 1960s and 1970s in building the Students For A Democratic Society -- SDS -- was published in our April 25 issue. This series has covered PLP's forging of a Worker-Student Alliance -- WSA -- and our battle against right-wing nationalist forces until the latter was defeated in its attempt to win a majority to an anti-WSA position at the 1969 convention.)

SDS: Part VI

The right-wingers who split from SDS after the June 1969 convention had only anti-communist opposition to PLP as a basis of unity. Their unholy alliance quickly degenerated into faction fighting.

One gang joined the "Weather Underground," preaching a bizarre ideological gospel that blended liberal politics, drugs, petty terrorism and infantile individualism. A few eventually managed to blow themselves up by playing with explosives in a Greenwich Village, NY, town house. Their major action was a ludicrous rampage in the fall of 1969 through a wealthy Chicago neighborhood. They broke windows in stores and parked cars, giving the FBI a good excuse to put a few of the "Weather" leaders on the "most wanted" list and to discredit the millions of young people still sincerely searching for effective militant leadership against U.S. imperialism's ongoing Vietnam slaughter.

The other crowd organized sects based on the idolatry of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong and their own chairmen, respectively Mike Klonsky and Bob Avakian. The Klonsky crowd distinguished itself through gross personal corruption and the opportunistic justification of every right-wing move made by the Chinese leadership. The Avakian faction was built around a similar recipe of leader worship and opportunism. They disguised it in a simple-minded pre-hiphop aping of the slang Avakian's followers condescendingly attributed to urban youth.

PLP and its pro-working class base within SDS set out to build a worker-student alliance in fact as well as in name. The campus movement had many militant actions to its credit, including battles with police, mass anti-war mobilizations, and campus strikes. But as history and the 1968 general strike in France had proved many times, students may serve as an important catalyst, but they cannot change history or seize power without leadership from the working class.

To launch the alliance in flesh and blood, PLP proposed a program of unity with campus workers. The Party fully understood that workers in heavy industry (particularly war-related industry), transportation and communications occupied a strategically more crucial position than campus workers. However, campus workers were the ones with whom anti-war students came into daily contact -- in the dormitories, on the grounds, in the lecture halls, laboratories and libraries, and in the cafeterias and dining halls. Without them, the universities couldn't function. Furthermore, campus workers were -- and remain -- brutally exploited by university bosses. A large number were black and Latin, and many of the worst-paid were women. The campus was therefore an obvious place for SDS chapters to make the "Less Talk-More Action-Fight Racism" proposal a concrete reality.

In the fall of 1969, the remaining pro-PLP SDS chapters set about launching the Campus-Worker-Student Alliance (CWSA) on several dozen campuses. The climate appeared favorable in some respects. Although the campuses were quieter in October 1969 than they had been a year earlier, the fighting in Vietnam and mass outrage about it continued, along with the militancy of U.S. industrial workers emerging in a significant strike wave. Building unity between the strikers and the anti-war movement became an urgent task. The massive "peace" demonstration scheduled for November 15 in Washington, D.C., quickly symbolized this challenge.

(Next: The half-million anti-war demonstration, the GE strike and the worker-student alliance.)

GI's and Vets Should: Turn Imperialist War Into Class War

The Turning: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

, Andrew E. Hunt, New York University Press, 1999

"I got a Purple Heart [in Vietnam], and I hope to get another fighting these motherf-----s [pointing to the Capitol steps].

- Vietnam Vet Peter Branagan

"The Turning" follows the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) from it's inception as a small speakers bureau in 1967 to its virtual demise in the mid `70s. At its height in 1971-72, VVAW had 25,000 on its rolls -- including two thousand stationed in Vietnam. The Turning is filled with interesting historical details about this period. Nonetheless, Hunt's illusions about the bosses' media, identity politics, and capitalist reform limit his book's usefulness.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Hunt equates success with media exposure. Publicity, rather than political content, is his measuring stick. Operation Rapid American Withdrawal (RAW), "a four-day, simulated search-and-destroy mission between Morristown, New Jersey and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania," was a success because "the media provided extensive coverage."

On the other hand, VVAW leaders "were disappointed with [the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI)], because of scant media coverage." The WSI panel of Vietnam veterans gave eyewitnesses accounts of U.S. imperialism's atrocities in Vietnam. On January 31, 1971, it convened in Detroit to reach blue collar workers like the vets themselves.

"Unlike the Winter Soldier Investigation, Dewey Canyon III (DC III) drew the attention of the American public [i.e. the press]." DC III began on April 18, 1971, with a march and lobbying Congressmen under the tutelage of (recent presidential candidate) John Kerry, but split with Kerry's Democratic Party politics (and their money) when thousands of militant veterans threw their Vietnam War medals on the Capitol steps. The Turning implies media coverage was the main way to recruit. Hunt uncritically reports on the "success" of Playboy ads.

Racism and Nationalism:
Imperialism's Tools

Hunt equates political progress in VVAW with nationalism and identity politics. Hunt concedes nationalist movements "absorbed the energy of countless young Chicanos [and young blacks], including many Vietnam veterans." Trying to have it both ways he then asserts, "Liberation [i.e. nationalist and feminist] struggles in the early seventies, particularly among Chicanos, African-Americans, and women, made VVAW a more diverse organization..." Nowhere does Hunt discuss how racism and sexism are used by bosses to amass greater profits off lower pay for black, Latin and women workers as well as to divide and drive down wages for all workers.  This class analysis could have led to a larger more multi-racial organization of men and women.

This omission is glaring as he does go to great lengths pointing out VVAW's working-class character. "Half of the veterans surveyed at Dewey Canyon III were raised in blue-collar households." Even as Kerry testified before Congress, working-class vets hung a sign in the national office saying "Free John Kerry's Maid."

Many of the black and Latin vets that did join gave invaluable leadership. The active-duty VVAW chapter our Party led in the Northwest was 50% black and Latin. It recruited some of the most militant leaders -- black, Latin and white. Class-based, anti-racist struggle helped the chapter grow and withstand ruling class attacks and prosecutions.

Active-Duty Soldiers:
A Missed Opportunity

VVAW came into its own at the same time as the active-duty GI movement. Nearly half of the Army's active-duty soldiers resisted or rebelled during VVAW's most successful years. These radicalized soldiers swelled VVAW's ranks as they were discharged.

Despite widespread sympathy for soldier rebellions within VVAW, the national office, with a few exceptions, did little to organize the troops. While a thousand troops in Vietnam signed a VVAW anti-war petition, VVAW could have done a lot more.

From its inception, there was a struggle within VVAW between "`bring our brothers home' and `prevent the next war.'" Even as many in VVAW began to use the word imperialism in an effort to understand the U.S. bosses' endless wars, the organization never developed a strategy that could attack its root cause: the capitalist system.

Communist revolution is the only way to smash imperialism. Masses of soldiers must be won to the workers' side if such a revolution is to succeed. Armed with this ideology, our Party led a significant active-duty VVAW chapter for nearly two years (see "Red-Led GIs Blast Racist Brass" in upcoming PL Magazine). Unfortunately, active-duty chapters were the exception.

Hunt never explores this weakness. He focuses on VVAW's moral and public relations contributions to the peace movement. Anti-imperialist rebellion among the troops is not high on his agenda.

The last hurrah for VVAW was aptly named The Last Patrol. Beset by government agents, prosecutions and political weaknesses, the organization decided to focus on the Republican convention in 1972. The Democratic Party liberals represented the main danger to the masses that were now lining up against U.S. imperialism. The Party led thousands at that convention to expose the hypocrisy of these liberal ruling-class servants. VVAW chose to concentrate on an easier target: Nixon. It was the last national effort they were able to mount. VVAW eventually drowned in a sea of phony leftist politics.

Today, Iraq veterans are examining this history. Iraq Veterans Against the War just staged a present-day version of Operation RAW in D.C. We have to weigh the weaknesses as well as the strengths of anti-war Vietnam veterans. The Turning's historical details will help us find those strengths and weaknesses, but we must be careful not to rely solely on the author's interpretations of those facts.

Imperialist Rivalry Behind Latest Lebanon War

The Lebanese army siege of Nahr el-Barred, one of many Palestinian camps in Lebanon, and home for 30,000 people, has turned into a bloody mini-war. The army, which didn't fire a shot to defend Lebanon when Israel warred on Hezbollah in 2006, is now using heavy artillery and tanks against a small Jihadist group inside the camp, supposedly allied with al Qaeda, while the people in the camp suffer the consequences. Thousands have already fled.

Life in the camps is miserable. The Christian Science Monitor (5/22) reports: "The camps were set up generally on the outskirts of towns and cities and initially consisted of little more than canvas tents. Over the years and as their population...swelled, the refugees built simple homes from cinder blocks and cement, turning the encampments into small villages that often lacked proper sanitation, electricity, and water. While more than 200,000 Palestinians are believed to live in the camps, the United Nations reports that 424,650 Palestinians live throughout the country."

The sharpening imperialist rivalry in the oil-rich Mid-East is behind the region's turmoil. The Lebanese government is blaming Syria for supporting the Jihadist group, saying Damascus is trying to reassert its control over Lebanon. But the Syrian government actually had arrested the Jihadist group's leader since it considers Political Islam-Jihadism an enemy. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia were actually courting several Sunni Jihadist groups in Lebanon as a counterweight to the pro-Iranian Shiite Hezbollah which defeated the 2006 Israeli invasion. (Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Feb. 2007) The Jihadists have flourished because of the traditional Al Fatah Palestinian leadership's sellouts in the camps, the West Bank and Gaza.

Lebanon's "Communist" Party "alternative" is to support one faction (Hezbollah) in this inter-capitalist-imperialist rivalry. The difficult task ahead for any revolutionary-minded workers and youth in the region is to build a new communist movement, breaking with Political Islam, Zionism, nationalism and all bosses and imperialists. That's the only way out of the Mid-East's misery and endless wars.