War On Terror Hits Dockwokers

• ILWU 3-Tier Weakens Struggle

Liberal Democrats are Also Warmakers

The Profit System Makes War Inevitable

Garment Workers Talk About War

Working Under Capitalism Is Dangerous To Your Health

And Now Another 1.6 Million Die from War, Murder and Suicide

a href="#Brazil Elections: Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing">"razil Elections: Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

Part-time teachers struggle at Chicago City Colleges

a href="#USAS Conference – Boston, MA, August 2002">"SAS Conference – Boston, MA, August 2002

Real Unemployment Figures Explode Myth of Prosperous 90s

Red Eye On The News

LETTERS

Bavaria Brewery Enforces Plan Colombia

PLP at Anti-Globalization DC Protests

Jailbreak from Greens Jail

Dockworkers Need Militant Solidarity

Anti-Muslim Racism on the Rise as War Looms

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War On Terror Hits Dockwokers

The latest targets in Bush’s "War on Terror" are not some small suspected terrorist cell, but the 10,500 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers. Bush invoked the strike breaking Taft-Hartley law, ordering workers back to work for an 80-day cooling off period. They had been locked out since September 27. The last President to use Taft-Hartley was Nixon to break a dock strike in 1971.

There will be no outcry from the liberal Democrat "pro- labor" politicians. On the contrary, the liberal New York Times editorialized that "Mr. Bush was fully justified," and that "most Presidents would have taken similar action under the circumstances." Labor Solicitor Eugene Scalia said this is the first time a president has taken such action during a lockout. He previously represented the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) employer group as a private-sector lawyer.

Before negotiations broke down on Oct. 6, the union agreed to work under their expired contract and end the lockout for shipments to Hawaii and Alaska and for military cargo. They had reached a tentative agreement on how new technology would be implemented on the docks. Then the PMA backed off, giving Bush the green light.

The lockout shut down 29 major West Coast ports from Seattle to San Diego and cost the bosses around $2 billion a day. (West Coast shipping accounts for about 3% of the Gross Domestic Product). Key sectors of the economy that use just-in-time inventory, like auto and computer manufacturing, scaled back production and closed plants.

The PMA wants to cripple the union and speed up the number of containers loaded and unloaded per hour. They want workers to compete with dockworkers in Hong Kong, who move three times more cargo per acre at a fraction of the wages. The union wants the new jobs created by new technology to be in their bargaining unit. Union workers moved a record amount of cargo in the last three months, and five workers died in the last seven months due to the incredibly high volume of cargo moved at the West Coast ports.

ILWU President James Spinosa offered to concede hundreds of union jobs to technology and outsourcing while the PMA imposed speedups and firings. In Portland and Oakland, workers protested and refused overtime. When locals passed resolutions to enforce the safety code, the PMA locked out the workers indefinitely.

The ILWU was founded by the old communist movement and opposed the war in Vietnam and apartheid. More recently they staged one-day strikes to stop the execution of Mumia and played a prominent role in the anti-WTO demonstrations. They hoped concessions would satisfy the bosses and that Democratic Party politicians would keep the White House from getting involved. U.S. bosses are in no mood for this type of challenge and will do everything necessary to whip the workers into line.

Instead of calling a strike, Spinosa is trying to outdo Ashcroft and Ridge as the defender of "national security." Before the contract expired on July 1, Homeland Security furher Ridge told the union that any job action would hurt "national security." Spinosa countered, "…anything our country needs in the interests of national defense, this union will provide." (Pacific Business News, 10/1) Oil imports and military cargo vessels were getting through.

Longshore workers are key to U.S. Homeland Security plans for a police state. At dozens of U.S. seaports and border crossings, special trucks are the "newest high-tech weapon for U.S. customs inspectors in the war on terrorism" (San Francisco Chronicle, 9/21). One contract issue is whether the use of gamma rays by security scanning devices could pose a serious long-term health hazard, similar to asbestos.

Bush and Co. want to make the new Homeland Security Agency a non-union shop. They feel that even the slightest organization of the workers is a threat to national security. The liberals and union leaders are out to prove they are more red, white and blue than the "right-wingers." Both sides are leading the working class to fascism and war.

When millions of workers fought under communist leadership, sailors mutinied to defend a general strike in pre-revolutionary Russia. Longshore workers in Seattle threw military weapons into the Pacific Ocean that were being loaded for the invasion of the infant Soviet Union. As conditions sharpen over the coming years, a mass PLP will have the opportunity to transform these struggles into a force for revolutionary communism.

ILWU 3 Tier Weakens Struggle

The media claims that union dockworkers make $85,000 a year. The average pay is actually $68,000, unless a worker works double shifts, seven days a week, or is a foreman. But that’s not half the story.

The ILWU has three classes: "Steady men," "A men" and "B men." "Steady men" work every day, even if no ships are in the harbor. The "A men" work every day a ship is in port, and are guaranteed six days pay a month. That’s about half the 10,500 union membership. The other half is "B men," who only work when a ship’s in the harbor and all the "Steady men" and "A men" are working. "B men" get no work guarantees, and pay the same union dues as the other two groups.

Then there are 11,500 non-union "casuals." These workers are allowed into the union after accumulating 3,000 hours. They only work if the other 10,500 union members are all working. Many must juggle multiple temporary jobs along with dock work to support their families. For most it takes seven years to get into the union, and then they’re "B men."

How did this all happen to a communist-led union that was founded in the cauldron of the 1934 General Strike that shut down the Bay Area? The signing of the 1962 "mechanization" agreement that brought in containerization guaranteed "jobs for life" for all union members. But the bosses cut the workforce by not replacing all those who retired, quit, were fired or disabled. In effect, the union stopped fighting for the future of all working class young people who would be seeking jobs on the docks and the number of jobs dropped precipitously. The U.S. Labor Department used this contract as a model of how to usher in job-cutting mechanization and automation without a strike.

Slowly but surely, such pro-boss contracts spread the racist atmosphere that would shut out future black and Latin job seekers. The current union leadership boasts of its patriotism and support for the war. This ties the workers into defending the very system that exploits them and kills millions of our class brothers and sisters in imperialist wars. Once union officials become pro-capitalist, these developments are inevitable.

Liberal Democrats are Also Warmakers

The stakes are enormous as the bosses debate the details of invading Iraq. They all agree that U.S. imperialism must expand its chokehold on the energy treasures of the Persian Gulf and that this means war. They run the risk of needing to have the U.S. military occupying the entire region, slaughtering and terrorizing tens of millions of Arab Muslim workers and provoking mass anti-U.S. uprisings that could dwarf the Vietnam war.

The continuing status of U.S. imperialism as the top dog of the international profit system is at stake. This is why many liberal bosses, politicians, and their media mouthpieces have begun to rein in the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz faction of the Bush White House that wants to "go it alone" in Iraq. They forced Bush to address the UN in September. On October 5, the New York Times applauded Bush’s October 1 statement that "the military option is not the first choice" in Iraq.

The liberals want to cut deals with their most important junior partners in international crime to get them on board. The Russians are at the top of the list. U.S. and Russian oil bosses want Moscow to become an important U.S. energy supplier in the future. The Russians need money, and the U.S. energy barons would like to diversify their own sources of supply. This will take years to achieve. In any event, the U.S. will always need to control cheap Persian Gulf crude. So "a quick victory over Iraq seems to be a faster and easier way to maintain U.S. energy security…" (Stratfor.com, 10/2).

The Russians have considerable interests in Iraq. The Iraqi government owes them billions in arms debt, a holdover from the Cold War. More significantly, Russian energy companies, as well as the French and Germans, have multi-billion dollar energy contracts pending to develop Iraqi oil and gas fields. They want assurances before the invasion, that the U.S. will honor these contracts after Saddam is gone. New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Keller sums up the situation: "…Saddam Hussein represents an insufferable menace, and…a convincing preparation for war is a prerequisite for any serious reckoning with him…[but] it would not kill us to offer some public assurances that Russia’s genuine economic stake in Iraq will be protected if Saddam is overthrown" (Oct. 5). This is what the liberals mean when they call for "the broadest possible international unity,": make sure all the jackals get a bite.

While the liberals joust with the Bush White House, preparations for war are well under way. The Pentagon is preparing for a "rapid massing of U.S. forces around Iraq in the weeks ahead" (Washington Post, Oct. 5). This mobilization allows for an attack as early as January and for a faster deployment once U.S. diplomacy manages to bribe Russian, French, and other imperialists into OK’ing the massacre. Liberal Democratic House Minority leader Gephardt waved a peace flag at a Sept. 29 fundraiser, then returned to Washington to broker a deal authorizing Bush to launch war in Iraq as he sees fit. Other important Democratic senators greasing the war machine’s skids include presidential hopefuls Joe Lieberman and John Edwards. Most House and Senate Democrats, writes the pacifist Nation, "are expected to vote in favor of authorizing Bush to mount a war—even a unilateral one—against Saddam Hussein" (Oct. 3).

War is coming, possibly within the next few months. While the New York Times calls for "farsighted" Congressional debate before the bloodletting begins (Editorial Oct. 5), we shouldn’t be fooled into believing that one gang of U.S. bosses wants peace while another wants war. The liberals’ caution is based on some of the possible far-reaching consequences: widespread urban fighting, use of Iraqi chemical-biological weapons against Israeli cities and Saudi oil fields, pre-emptive attacks against U.S. forces, unilateral Israeli pre-emption or retaliation, instability without end in post-Saddam Iraq, and an outbreak of anti-U.S. violence throughout the region by millions of impoverished, angry Arab workers with nothing to lose.

Imperialist war is not the end of history. Previous experiences in World Wars I and II proves that it can lead to the growth of revolutionary communist movements and the armed seizure of power by revolutionary communist parties. The class struggle has entered the early stages of a new period in the bloody rivalry for super-power status among the world’s bosses. Our job, in the years and decades ahead, is to create the conditions for a new period of international communist revolutions. Our Party’s modest growth in the short run, can help set the stage for this momentous transformation.

The Profit System Makes War Inevitable

NEW YORK CITY—On Oct. 6, tens of thousands of people took part in mass anti-war rallies in several cities, called by Not In Our Name (NION). The biggest one was in Central Park with about 20,000 demonstrators. PLP participated in several of these protests, distributing thousands of leaflets and hundreds of CHALLENGES.

Contrary to a year ago after 9-11, anti-war sentiment among the population is growing. A NY Times/CBS opinion poll reflects a widespread concern over Bush’s plans to attack Iraq. The poll, devised by the liberal media to reflect their own position, shows that 44% of those polled don’t want a "pre-emptive attack" against Iraq, and want the UN inspectors to be given a chance. While 54% said they would back military action even if it involved substantial U.S. losses, that figure dropped to 49% if the attack involved huge Iraqi civilian casualties. In addition, only 49% would support the war even if it became a prolonged one.

This poll reflects that the liberal Establishment section of the ruling class fears that "going it alone" in Iraq could be a domestic and international disaster for U.S. imperialism á la Vietnam (the Vietnam Syndrome still haunts the U.S. bosses). It also reflects that more people are concerned about being unemployed, paying the rent, putting food on the table and being able to retire with a pension and getting health care than about Hussein.

The morning after Bush’s latest televised speech on the need to invade Iraq (based on a "slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence," London’s Guardian, 10/9), the New York Times editorial warned, "Not quite four decades ago, Lyndon Johnson learned to his and the nation’s sorrow that taking a reluctant country to war can severely damage the body politic. President Bush must be mindful of that danger as he draws the US ever closer to military conflict with Iraq."(10/8)

These protests, as well as those to be held on Oct. 26 in Washington, DC and on the West Coast, reflect the liberal point of view pushed by the NY Times. The fake leftists and celebrity organizers of NION do the work of the liberal bosses. The speeches at the rallies ignored the fact that imperialism and war go hand in hand. They called for everything from alternative energy sources to letting the UN inspectors do their work. But they didn’t have any analysis about why the U.S. needs war now to protect the bosses’ oil in the Middle East.

The only difference between the Bushites and the liberals is how and when U.S. imperialism should wage war to control the flow and profits of oil (see front page). Peace doesn’t have a chance under capitalism. As communists we don’t welcome war, but we do understand that it will happen as long as imperialism exists. Our task is to organize a mass communist movement that will prepare workers, soldiers and students to destroy the war makers and strike breakers once and for all. Join PLP

Garment Workers Talk About War

Angel: I don’t know much about history. I didn’t have much schooling. But I think this war is bad. It’s a question of those in power — and those who always suffer and die are the poor. But what can we do? We can’t do anything. We have to put up with it.

Alex: I don’t know anything about these things. At my job, no one talks about this. I’m new at the factory, and I haven’t made friends yet. The older ones talk among themselves, but not about these things. But I say they should stop this war because many innocent people are dying, especially children.

Jorge: The policy of the U.S. government is to obtain oil profits and spill the blood of innocent people. The fight is for oil in Iraq, to have more control, and make more millions. The war isn’t necessary. It will mean the deaths of innocent people: old people, women and children, who don’t know why or for what. But the millionaires in their competition don’t care about the lives of human beings, of the workers.

Sonia: Lately the news media is bombarding us with stupid patriotism. They ask that we pray for all the heroes who died in the Twin Towers. I don’t think they’re heroes. Yes, a lot of innocent people died without knowing they were going to be sacrificed for oil profits, the bosses’ thirst for profits. If they had known they were going to be sacrificed, they wouldn’t have been in this job.

Susana: I think about what will happen to my children. I don’t care if I die for my cause or my convictions. But workers who die to make capitalism more powerful, and think they’ll be heroes, are only leaving their children more years of exploitation, more years without providing solutions or changes in the way of life of the whole working class. I think the best inheritance we can leave our children and the youth is communist ideology so that maybe they can see our red flags over the White House or the Capitol, like the day the workers waved the red flag over Stalingrad after defeating the Nazi’s.

Lupe: I am filled with anger every time they talk about war, to think that so many people can be won to support the destruction of other human beings. Just to listen to the lies the bosses bombard us with everyday on the radio and television. They repeatedly tell you in a hypnotic manner that the devil of terrorism, Saddam Hussein, has to be smashed and that we must kill thousands of Iraqi’s to prevent this devil from attacking again. This doesn’t fool me. But if I didn’t know about politics, I would also be swallowing this fishhook. Fortunately I know a little bit about dialectics, thanks to PLP. And I can analyze the cause and effects of this bosses’ war. War means two important things: power for the bosses and destruction for workers. I don’t think it should be too hard to help a fellow worker to think the same way, to see the truth behind the news.

Working Under Capitalism Is Dangerous To Your Health

More than three workers die every minute worldwide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from occupational injuries and illnesses. These 5,000 daily deaths — "much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices" — add up to two million a year, says an April 24th report by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO). The study revealed that:

• Accidents cause 350,000 deaths a year;

• For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty;

• Work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together;

• Hazardous substances kill 340,000 per year, asbestos accounting for 100,000;

• Exposure to daily occupational hazards such as dust, chemicals, noise and radiation cause untold suffering and illness, including cancer, heart diseases and strokes;

• Farm labor, construction and mining are the three most hazardous occupations.

The ILO says at least half the deaths from accidents could be prevented by safe working practices and that ALL accidents are avoidable and preventable. But workers know that unsafe conditions are directly traceable to the bosses’ drive to reap maximum profits by cutting corners on safety and by deliberately ignoring the danger of diseases at the workplace.

Capitalism makes war on the working class on the job every day. Truly, capitalism is a killer.

And Now Another 1.6 Million Die from War, Murder and Suicide

A new report by the UN’s World Health Organization says violence kills 1.6 million people per year worldwide. (They don’t include the two million the bosses kill at the workplace as "violence.")

This latest total includes war, suicide and murder. The report says, "Violence…is tied to income; the vast majority of violence-related deaths occurred in low-income countries." Interestingly, "violence, particularly war, seems to beget more violence…After wars, the levels of assault and violence remain higher than before," because more guns are available and more people have been trained to fight.

The report also says the solution is to treat violence as a "public health problem." But wars and low incomes are caused by capitalism, the same as workplace deaths and injuries. And the solution is the same — get rid of the profit system.

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Socialist Lula da Silva got 47% of the votes in the Oct. 6 Presidential election in Brazil. Since he didn’t win a majority there will be a second round in a few weeks. Some time ago, Lula, former head of the Metal Workers Union and head of the Labor Party (PT), changed his tune of favoring class struggle to one of "love and peace" with the bosses. He finalized it by choosing a millionaire textile boss as his running partner. This made him the favorite candidate of a large section of the São Paulo (the New York of Brazil) bourgeoisie and other bosses, religious leaders and even of many generals. They see Lula as the best way to control the angry masses of Brazil and avoid an Argentinean-type of mass rebellion. The PT already runs 7 cities in Brazil, including São Paulo. The PT politicians have been able to make workers sacrifice for the well-being of capitalism. It is clear that Lula will most likely win the election.

Lula promises to tax the rich more and fight the deep inequality in the country by doubling the buying power of workers, but these are just words in air. The reality is that the economy of Brazil is on the verge of collapsing because of the worldwide recession, the crisis of overproduction and the war among the imperialists for control of the world’s markets and labor. Eventually the working class will realize that Lula is nothing but a capitalist wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.

Some U.S. imperialists don’t see Lula as their ally. Lula’s PT has sponsored mass anti-free market activities in Brazil (the most recent one in Porto Alegre, a city run by the PT). These activities are mainly against the U.S. imperialists, and are supported by many who see the European Union as a "kinder imperialist." But many among the U.S. bosses also see that Lula can be good for U.S. interests in Brazil. After all, Lula has promised to keep on paying Brazil’s debt to the world’s bankers, keep public spending down, and open the Brazilian economy to more foreign investment. All of this is part of an IMF and World Bank $37 billion rescue plan for Brazil.

These promises to the world’s imperialists show that all the pro-working class promises made by Lula in his campaign are empty ones. Lula and the PT, just like the PRD in the cities it controls in Mexico, will just keep a lid on public spending, making workers accept more austerity measures.

The Brazilian bosses dream of joining the club of the imperialist masters of the world. That is why they don’t want just to be lap dogs of U.S. imperialism. This means that they need to control the MERCOSUR (the Common Market with Argentina and other smaller regional economies) and not become part of the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. To do that they must diversify, e.g. use the European imperialists to counter the U.S., and oppose U.S. plans (like Plan Colombia) that keep it in total control of South America. All these lead to a sharpening rivalry among the world’s imperialists and capitalists.

We in PLP must again warn workers that it is very dangerous to believe that some former union hack turned capitalist politician can save us from the hell of capitalism and imperialism. The only road to our liberation is the long, and hard struggle for a successful communist revolution.

Part-time teachers struggle at Chicago City Colleges

CHICAGO, IL October 8 — Today picketers greeted Truman College Board of Trustee member, Wayne Watson. In the midst of massive budget cuts, and negotiations for a new contract, part time teachers will take a strike authorization vote in two weeks. The old one expired on June 30. Teachers are demanding full-time jobs, one sick day per month, paid vacation and health care benefits with classroom hourly pay equal to Chicago Public School teachers. We also demand one hour’s preparation pay for every four hours of classroom instruction.

The City Colleges of Chicago serve 160,000 students, mainly immigrant workers who do not speak English, adults working long hours, young workers who didn’t finish high school, young single parents, etc. Severe city and state budget shortfalls, caused in part by cuts in federal funds, might close down this slice of public education for good.

Over the summer, the Illinois Community Colleges Board (ICCB) reported that state budget cuts of $500 million would have a big impact on the City Colleges. Grants and special budgets were eliminated or reduced. The $11.3 million Special Populations grant to help disabled students was wiped out. The $160,000 Special Initiatives grant and the $150,000 Leadership and Core Values grant were eliminated. Adult education was cut by $3.7 million, the base operations money by $1.9 million. At Daley College, the positions of coordinators, tutors and counselors have all been cut. At Truman, 43 employees were laid off. Student financial aid was slashed and more cuts are coming.

The Board has offered 750 Adult Education teachers and coordinators no raise for this year and 20 cents an hour for each of the following three years. They refused to give any paid sick days, health insurance, vacation days or increase in prep time. While the Board claims poverty, they voted to give administrators a 4% raise. Administrators with seven years seniority get free, lifetime health insurance. Adult educators and coordinators get none. Administrators get $500/month transportation allowances while their offer to us won’t pay for a bus ride.

At several campuses, PLP teachers and students are pointing out that the bosses’ priorities are war and a police state not educating immigrants and workers. We have participated in pickets, marches and teach-ins against the cuts. The best education workers and students can get out of this struggle is to learn how to fight for a society that serve their needs and not those of the warmakers and their stooges. Join the communist PLP.

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BOSTON, MA — Six PLP members were asked to leave the affiliate’s conference of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) last August. USAS works closely with SEIU and UNITE and is a training ground for union activists and future misleaders. The ruling class needs groups like this to win workers and students to support the Democratic Party, the fascist Homeland Security and the invasion of Iraq.

We were expelled on the first day of the conference, solely on the grounds of our communist politics. A comrade from the Worker/Student Alliance at SUNY/Binghamton submitted a proposal that put forward anti-racist politics. But the USAS leadership destroyed this, the only proposal dealing with racism and proposed nothing in its place. Furthermore, any attempt to discuss, question or change USAS policies were put down.

When we asked why we were being expelled, some of the leadership whimpered, "I’m sorry, it just has to be this way." Others said, "There will be no discussion!" When we refused to leave, these liberal fascists called the police and we were thrown out.

Removing us did not keep us from fighting. We distributed a leaflet describing our expulsion to students attending the conference. We participated in USAS rallies to support striking Boston janitors and GAP workers, showing up with our own signs calling for international working class unity.

We defied the leadership and returned to the conference the next day. Three PLP members awaited the start of the "Solidarity Training" workshop, which was supposed to improve USAS anti-racist work. When the leadership told us we had to leave, we stood and explained to others that they were going to call the police to throw us out to prevent discussion on putting fighting racism on the USAS agenda. Sure enough, the police were called again and we were forced to leave. From the speech we gave at the workshop, to the suppression of our anti-racist proposal, to the presence of the police, everyone got a crystal-clear picture of the agenda of the USAS leadership.

We sold Challenge and made contacts with over 10% of the students at the conference. We found that some students were supportive of us, bothered that we were thrown out, but felt intimidated by the leadership. We explained our anti-racist and anti-imperialist ideas, and how only communist revolution can end sweatshops, racism, and fascist-style leadership. The most important battle for the student movement is exposing the role of the universities in building racism and support for imperialist war.

Real Unemployment Figures Explode Myth of Prosperous 90s

For decades CHALLENGE has been exposing the "official" unemployment and poverty rates as phony. Now the bosses’ media is finding it increasingly difficult to hide this fact.

While we’ve always known that one trick the rulers use is to omit from the jobless figures workers who’ve given up looking for work, it turns out that the numbers of such workers are far larger than customarily reported. Millions of male workers have dropped out of the labor force over the past "prosperity" decade, unable to find work paying nearly what their old blue-collar jobs paid. The bosses, in true capitalist/imperialist style, have moved many of these jobs to low-wage areas of the world. Over five million workers are forced to accept disability checks — averaging $800 a month, far less than unemployment insurance benefits — and are not counted in the unemployment rates. And even for those who keep looking and are counted, there has been a "long-term rise in the duration of unemployment."

The New York Times reported (9/29) that, "Today the real level of unemployment for men approaches the level of the recession-mired early ’80s." This increase occurred under Clinton’s so-called prosperity decade. In addition, as CHALLENGE has consistently reiterated, the prison population has skyrocketed to over two million (doubling under Clinton’s watch). This not only takes these workers out of the "official" labor force but causes millions more in their families to "suffer many of the consequences of joblessness," such as evictions and lack of health care. No wonder the French say the "U.S. has jailed its unemployment problem."

The Times admits this "Rise in the number of ‘missing workers’ calls into question the ‘great achievement’ of the 1990s economy." Of course, this mouthpiece for the ruling class does not admit it "calls into question" the ability of capitalism to provide a decent life for the working class. The Times even printed an op-ed article in the same issue entitled "Poverty Is More Than a Matter of Income."

While recent Census Bureau figures stated that 33 million people in the U.S. live below an all-too-narrowly defined poverty level (see CHALLENGE, 10/9), when measuring the assets of the poor, 25% of the U.S. population are "asset-poor." That is, if they lost their jobs and "had to live on only net worth — savings, home equity and other assets — they could survive at poverty levels for only three months."

Astoundingly, if they only had liquid assets to ride out unemployment (that is, not giving up their home), "the poverty rate jumps to nearly 40%"!

But this is not surprising when one considers that the top 20% of households own 83% of U.S. wealth (assets). and the bottom 60%, the majority, own less than 5%. Still worse, the bottom 40% own LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of total U.S. wealth.

All this, of course, hits black and Latino workers doubly hard because the bosses’ racism forces them to suffer double the jobless and poverty rates of white workers, and fills the jails with 70% black and Latino prisoners.

Given this sorry picture of U.S. capitalism sitting on the backs of its working class, now the rulers want to enhance their ability to intensify this hell by embarking on a series of imperialist wars to further control the world’s oil supply and increase their pool of exploited workers worldwide.

Yes, Karl Marx was right in analyzing the profit system as one that rests on the robbery of the value workers produce and control of the state apparatus to enforce that robbery. Need any more reason to join with the revolutionary communist PLP to wipe out that system and build a communist society that eliminates bosses, profits and their endless wars?

Red Eye On The News

RED EYE reprints clippings from the New York Times, British Manchester Guardian Weekly, and many other well-known capitalist publications. From their own papers we collect material which communists find useful in exposing capitalist maneuvers and weaknesses. Especially useful for students and others who want an "official source for important facts. Abbreviations: MG= Manchester Guardian; NYT= New York Times; MM=Multinational Monitor; LOW=Liberal Opinion Weekly; FT=Financial Times

Arabs distrust US plan for Iraq

A senior Arab official said Washington had not shared any of its ideas on who might rule Iraq if Mr. Hussein is ousted by force. "Everyone is asking, ‘Where is the Karzai for Iraq?’" he said, referring to Hamid Karzai, the American-backed leader of Afghanistan.

"But what is Karzai?" the official said, "He’s a U.S. stooge. No one wants a U.S. stooge in the region." (NYT 10/8)

US oil firms $upport war

A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition.

(MG 9/25)

People don’t want this war

Representative Lynn Woolsey, Northern California Democrat, said mail and calls from district residents were running 200 to 1 against a war with Iraq.

(NYT 9/21)

Capitalism-as-usual (no security) comes to Japan, and schoolkids turn violent

YOKOHAMA, Japan — By sixth grade, a growing generation of preteenage rebels has begun walking in and out of classrooms at will, mocking the authority of adults and even attacking teachers who try to restrain them.

Similar problems show up in higher grades too, with nearly half of all high schools reporting violence, higher dropout rates and problems like student prostitution.

"Up until now, Japan was a society in which children obeyed adults, but this relationship between children and adults is no longer workable, because the system was built around the idea that by doing well in school you should enter a good company, and having lifetime security," said Naoki Ogi, an education expert. "Over the last 10 years, however, Japan hasn’t found a way out of its economic depression, and from the children’s viewpoint, the academic record-oriented system has collapsed. Moral values are collapsing, too.

"So children feel they have no one they can trust, no adult society they can look up to."

(NYT 9/23)

Darwin said humans gain by cooperation, NOT by dog-eat-dog

So why is it that most of us don’t know what a great guy Darwin was?

In his case, bias has been compounded between his theory of evolution by natural selection and the perversion by philosopher Herbert Spencer of one aspect of this idea, so-called "social Darwinism." This is the view, explicitly rejected by Darwin, that all human existence is a cutthroat competition in which only the fittest are meant to survive.

This idea isn’t science at all. Our capacity to cooperate has given our species a powerful selective advantage. What a hideous irony that the tiny amount of science that many of us think we know is merely a perversion of a profound spiritual insight — that all life is kinship.

(MG 9/25)

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

Bavaria Brewery Enforces Plan Colombia

"You are with the company or against it!" Repeating fascist Bush’s warning to the entire world, the Bavaria brewery bosses are telling workers to accept the company’s new contract offer. The company is using its flunkeys in the plant to force workers to quit the union (Sinaltrabavaria). The bosses even offered workers $300 as an incentive to quit the union.

Unfortunately some workers, lacking any class-consciousness, accepted the bribe and gave up the years of struggle it took to get the few benefits from the company. This is a betrayal of those workers who are still fighting for the union and our rights.

This is the kind of democracy the bosses want. In Colombia, only 3% of the labor force is unionized. Now that the friend of the Death Squad, Uribe, is President, the attacks against unionists will increase. Already, the death squads have killed thousands of unionists in the last few years (CHALLENGE has had numerous articles on the murders of several Coca Cola union activists). Unfortunately, many union leaders still have illusions in the bosses’ democracy. The Sinaltrabavaria leaders are still hoping to defeat the company’s latest attacks through legal means.

PLP supports the struggle of Bavaria workers for their union. At the same time, we must point out the limitations of struggling just for trade unionism in this time of growing war and fascism. The best way to fight the bosses and their terrorist death squads is to build a massive struggle for a society where workers produce according to their needs, a communist society without any bosses.

Red Worker

PLP at Anti-Globalization DC Protests

The last weekend of September in DC saw PLP’ers engaged in a wide variety of agitation and base building during the protests and demonstrations. On Friday during the "People’s Strike" comrades handed out leaflets about the Oil War, about PLP, as well as some Challenge/Desafíos. Several Latino workers were very responsive to the Desafío distribution.

On Saturday comrades did the same at the Anti-Globalization Rally at the Washington Monument. Many ISO folks were out there, but people seemed to be much more responsive to us. People were finding out who the REAL revolutionaries are!

On Sunday comrades distributed Challenge and leaflets to over 900 demonstrators at the Anti-War Rally in Dupont Circle. Throughout the whole weekend, we handed out over 1,500 leaflets and distributed over 250 Challenges.

Forward to REVOLUTION! Forward PLP!

Komrade

Jailbreak from Greens Jail

Recently, the Green Party candidate for governor of California, Peter Miguel Camejo, spoke on a Los Angeles university campus. He said that the African American and Latino communities are prisoners of the Democratic Party, and the Greens represent the "jailbreak." While he presented many interesting facts about the world situation, his analysis reveals that the Green Party is really a prisoner of doomed reformism.

We wrote a statement/question to expose the failure of electoral politics and move the discussion to the left. The participation and comments of others helped sharpen the question.

After the speech the floor was opened for questions. A comrade said, "After studying the Patriot Act, secret evidence, secret trials, the arrest and deportation of thousands of our Muslim and Latin brothers and sisters, the FBI requesting student records even on our own campus without probable cause, the TIPS program asking workers to spy on other workers, the Homeland Security department threatening to break the dock worker’s strike, many people including myself think we are in a time of growing fascism…" She said that historically electoral, reformist parties like the Greens spread deadly illusions about the nature of fascism and misled workers and students towards elections instead of organizing to fight capitalism, the cause of war and fascism. "How would you differentiate the Green Party from these failed and ultimately dangerous reformist parties?" she asked.

Camejo revealed there is absolutely no difference. He said "the U.S. is not in a period of growing fascism" because "most citizens and the Republican and Democratic Parties still believe in democracy." He said we could reform the system by voting for Green Party candidates. This is exactly what the German and Italian Social-Democratic Parties said even as Mussolini and Hitler took power.

Capitalist elections never lead to workers taking power. The Greens won’t fight for workers’ power or to end capitalism: the source of racist inequality and wars for profit. They want the capitalist pie divided more equally, which will not happen, especially in this period of crisis. The Greens are appealing because they give many facts that Democrats and Republicans cover up. But unless they are connected to a larger political-economic analysis of imperialism, they mean nothing. While the Greens feel they are a jailbreak from the Democratic Party, the only jailbreak for the working class is studying dialectical materialism and fighting for communist revolution.

After the event we distributed CHALLENGE and made plans to meet several people for coffee to discuss these ideas further. Since then, Governor Davis again betrayed immigrant workers by refusing to sign a bill granting drivers’ licenses to those in the process of becoming permanent residents. Some immigrants’ rights leaders are supporting Camejo for Governor in response to this slap in the face by Davis. Many people are attracted to the Greens because Davis was involved with the energy companies in robbing the California treasury of billions of dollars. But no politician can change the nature of capitalism. Fighting the illusion that capitalism can be worker-friendly and peaceful is an important step toward building a mass PL to destroy capitalism.

Red not Green

Dockworkers Need Militant Solidarity

The Bush gang invoked the Taft Hartley Act to reopen the 29 West Coast ports shut by the lockout of 10,500 Longshoremen. The bosses are playing hardball. In Oakland alone some 30 carriers move 20% of West Coast exports, including electronic parts and foodstuffs from the Central Valley.

These negotiations hit at the heart of a simmering division in the US ruling class that has resurfaced over how to conduct a war on Iraq. US bosses with heavy investments in domestic oil and domestic industries have cultivated mass movements in groups like the Christian Fundamentalists. The liberal Rockefeller, Exxon Mobil, imperialists have replied by turning, among other things, to the unions. The ILWU has been a poster boy for the liberals, and has not won any favors with the White House. But it is the strategic role the West Coast ports play in the Bush scheme of things that has brought Tom Ridge and the matter for Homeland Security into the picture.

It is a sorry state of affairs for dockworkers, made even sorrier by a union leadership that is not prepared to tap into the potential strength and unity of the whole working class to answer these attacks.

Over 4,700 autoworkers at the joint GM-Toyota NUMMI plant were laid off when the engines and transmissions shipped via the port to this just-in-time assembly plant could not be unloaded. Yet no march of autoworkers and longshoremen protesting the lockout was called.

The port of Oakland lies next to some of the poorest neighborhoods in California. Yet, the union doesn't demand that the benefits of automation be passed on to the working class through a shorter workweek with no loss in pay. (The union won the 6-hour day over 30 years ago. Longshoremen work 8-hour shifts with 2 hours of overtime.)

Longshoremen are vital links in a chain of West Coast workers who create billions of dollars every just-in-time day. Their enormous potential is wasted by pro-capitalist, pro-Rockefeller union leaders. The job of communists in the unions is to demand and organize action against lockouts, against layoffs and outsourcing of jobs, and against the war plans of all the US bosses!

A Reader

Anti-Muslim Racism on the Rise as War Looms

On September 13, a racist woman in a roadside restaurant claimed she overheard three Muslim medical students making "suspicious comments." The students had stopped to eat in Georgia on their drive south to Larkin Community Hospital in Miami where they were assigned to work. The racist called the cops who sent out bulletins all over Florida for three young men, including one with a long beard wearing a skullcap. The students were pulled over on a Florida highway, their car was ransacked and they were held and questioned in a hot police van for 17 hours. Despite news reports that some of their belongings had been "detonated," they were finally released and the police called it "a mistake."

The only "terror" involved was experienced by the Muslim students. The hospital withdrew its offer for their medical training, even though this harassment was based on racist profiling. Ayman Gheith, who is from Illinois, finished his pre-med courses at the university where I teach and is well thought of here. Family members and classmates were shocked and angry. An article appeared in the campus paper. Meanwhile, cops and pro-war patriots hailed the racist as a good citizen who did the right thing!

This is what the rulers have in mind when they speak of Homeland Security, a nation of snitches reporting to the police, who can detain or kill a "suspect" on the whim of an ignorant racist. Thousands of immigrants have been rounded up, questioned, held without charges and deported in the name of the "War on Terror." This racist is a good Nazi soldier, goose-stepping in line. And we can expect to see more.

Homeland Security Fuhrer Tom Ridge is the scheduled keynote speaker at the APHA (American Public Health Association) Convention in Philadelphia next month. While over 45 million live with no health insurance and public hospitals like Cook County are reduced from 900 to 400 beds, the entire emphasis of public health is being turned toward "fighting terrorism" (bio-chemical attacks, anthrax, etc). For the Muslim students held in Florida, for the thousands being detained and deported, for the millions with no insurance, and the millions more with no hospital beds, we should give fascist Tom Ridge the welcome he deserves.

By the way …

Quote of the Year

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trial, 1946

Barefoot Doc

Imperialism = War, War and More War

Exxon Uses Indonesian Butchers to Pump Gas

• Exxon Enters Indonesia After 1965 Holocaust

With PLP Leadership, Hundreds of Workers and Youth Repel Nazi Vermin

Nazi Hale Preaches Racist Terror

a href="http://www.plp.org/cd02pdf/cd1009.pdf#Defending Boston Police Chief Won’t Stop Racist Killer Cops">"efending Boston Police Chief Won’t Stop Racist Killer Cops

a href="#Union ‘Partnership’ With Bosses Sinks Boeing Workers">Un"on ‘Partnership’ With Bosses Sinks Boeing Workers

a href="http://www.plp.org/cd02pdf/cd1009.pdf#Union Hacks Dicker Over Dues While Bosses, Gov’t Attack Dockers">"nion Hacks Dicker Over Dues While Bosses, Gov’t Attack Dockers

a href="#Standing Shoulder to Shoulder Against Bosses’ War on Workers">"tanding Shoulder to Shoulder Against Bosses’ War on Workers

Overproduction Shows Capitalism Must Be Destroyed

a href="#‘War on Terror’ Impoverishes Millions">‘W"r on Terror’ Impoverishes Millions

Calif. Student Marchers Oppose Imperialist War

a href="#Warping Children’s Brains With Psychiatric Drugs">"arping Children’s Brains With Psychiatric Drugs

Secret Court Legalizes Fascism

a href="#My Family Saw the Building of the First Workers’ State">"y Family Saw the Building of the First Workers’ State

LETTERS

PLP, Workers Jolt Nazis

Signs Fire Up Candlelight Vigil

Organizing With CHALLENGE

Film Exposes U.S. Terrorists

Profits Carry Ball In Pro Football

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Imperialism = War, War and More War

As Bush and the liberals continue to haggle over going to war in Iraq, all sides agree on doing whatever it takes to continue U.S. dominance of Persian Gulf oil. This isn’t an argument between a peace camp and a war camp within the ruling class. Both gangs want the U.S. to rule the world. War is coming, either now or in the not-too-distant future. War is inevitable under the profit system. We must not fall into the trap of backing one side against the other.

The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz crew wants to invade Iraq very soon, even if they must go it alone. Since 9/11, the U.S. has erected military bases housing 60,000 troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey and Bulgaria. The latest addition is in Djibouti, strategically located along the oil route of the Horn of Africa and which "boasts a modern deep water port…ideally situated for monitoring sea traffic in the southern end of the Red Sea, the Bab al Mandeb strait, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean." (CNN.com, 9/19). Bush is sending troops, aircraft carriers, bombers and commandos into the Persian Gulf as a build-up for war in Iraq.

Powell and liberal Republicans and Democrats worry that if U.S. imperialism launches a war on its own, it could boomerang. Russian, French, German, and Chinese bosses won’t go along unless they get major oil concessions, which the U.S. has yet to grant. For the moment, Powell and the liberals appear to be dragging Bush over to their side.

The liberals fear being sucked into al Qaeda’s plan for an ever-widening war. Bin Laden, alive or dead, represents a faction of Arab bosses who want to end the U.S. stranglehold on Persian Gulf oil. They have significant support within Saudi Arabia and from forces inside the Arab ruling classes, who want a cut of oil profits. They have support throughout the Muslim world and from economically threatened elements of the middle classes. Most important, they hope to turn growing numbers of brutally oppressed workers into an army based on religion, nationalism and hatred of U.S. imperialism to achieve their goals.

Al Qaeda is counting on U.S. imperialism to supply the kindling for the firestorm. They want their terrorist acts to provoke U.S. rulers into military retaliation, creating tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim casualties. Al Qaeda is hoping that the resulting outrage will create the conditions for massive uprisings throughout the Arab and Muslim world that drive Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco from the oil fields.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. policymakers appear to be doing exactly what al Qaeda hopes. They continue to butcher Afghan civilians while their fascist Israeli pals are murdering Palestinian workers and children every day. Each death further fans the flames of anti-U.S. hatred. The U.S. now has "status of forces" agreements authorizing the presence of U.S. troops in 93 countries. (L.A. Times, 9/6/02)

Invading Iraq and possibly overthrowing Saddam Hussein is one thing. Installing a stable pro-U.S. regime that can pump oil for Exxon Mobil is quite another. Saudi oil bosses have a very shaky hold on power, due to their own corrupt brutality and history as the U.S. energy puppet. War in Iraq could fan the flames of rebellion in Saudi Arabia and force the U.S. to invade and occupy that country as well. Egypt, with the largest population in the Arab world, remains highly unstable. Oil-rich Iran could pose an even bigger problem than it does now. Pakistan too could erupt. Strategically crucial Indonesia isn’t in Washington’s bag. U.S. imperialism needs all these countries firmly in its orbit.

So the liberals are telling Bush to slow down before he drives over a cliff, taking them with him. Before going to war, they want to soothe the other imperialists and bribe into existence a pro-U.S. middle class in the important oil-producing nations. This is what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman means when he calls for "democratization" and "modernization" in these states.

But the liberals have spilled oceans of working-class blood: Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam — leading to three million deaths — and Clinton/Gore in their air war over Yugoslavia and maintaining genocidal sanctions against Iraq, leading to a million deaths. These liberals expanded overseas military bases, paving the way for the current Bush deployments.

We can’t predict what the immediate future holds. Bush may invade Iraq very soon, or the liberals may slow down the process for a while. Over the long term, however, U.S. imperialism will make war not only in Iraq, but also throughout the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. It will field armies of occupation. These oil wars will lead to sharpened conflict between the U.S. and other imperialists.

Workers, students and youth in the Middle East and the U.S. won’t sit still forever while U.S. imperialism kills and exploits them. Despite the dominance of purely reactionary, nationalist and religious ideology, eventually revolutionary communists will emerge to offer the only true alternative to imperialist war, building the revolutionary communist PLP across all borders. The bosses will dig their grave, but they won’t jump in. That’s up to us.

Exxon Uses Indonesian Butchers to Pump Gas

It’s now clear U.S. rulers’ plans to attack Iraq have very little to do with "weapons of mass destruction," or "regime change" to bring democracy to Iraq. As CHALLENGE has reported, it’s about oil. U.S. bosses need to control Middle East oil (Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia) to maintain its world status as imperialist top dog.

That U.S. imperialism — particularly its oil companies — is not interested in democracy or toppling brutal dictators in Iraq or anywhere else is evident from a lawsuit filed recently in a Washington, D.C. federal court. Eleven residents of Aceh, Indonesia’s westernmost province and site of a vicious war between separatist guerrillas and the Indonesia military, charge they were raped, tortured, kidnapped and their relatives murdered, "by Indonesian soldiers paid to protect a big Exxon-Mobil natural gas plant in the province." (International Herald Tribune, 8/14). The suit accuses Exxon of providing the Indonesian military "with equipment to dig mass graves, as well as building interrogation and torture centres." (BBC News, 6/22/01).

At Exxon’s suggestion, the judge sought the opinion of the U.S. State Dept. William Taft 4^th, the latter’s legal adviser, responded that the suit would adversely affect U.S. bosses’ interests and recommended it be dropped.

Exxon Enters Indonesia After 1965 Holocaust

In 1965, a CIA-backed fascist coup by General Suharto murdered a million people and crushed the massive Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The PKI was the largest Communist Party outside China and the former USSR. (Mel Gibson’s film, The Year of Living Dangerously, had some great shots of the huge protests organized by the PKI.) Just like in Iraq, Iran, etc., The PKI was able to win masses of workers and others to communist politics in a predominantly Muslim country, just as communists did at one time in Iraq and Iran. But instead of fighting for workers’ power, the PKI made a deadly mistake. It tried to ally with "lesser evil progressive nationalist" capitalists.

Exxon began operating in Aceh three years after the 1965 fascist coup. In those days, U.S. imperialism built Islamic fundamentalism to wage holy war against communism. Suharto and his family maintained a bloody dictatorship and became super-rich by opening Indonesia to Exxon and other imperialists.

Suharto is gone now, but the Indonesian military continues to massacre its population. In Aceh, the guerrilla movement is now labeled "Islamic terrorism." Human rights groups estimate that at least 2,000 civilians, including children and the elderly, were killed between 1989 and 1993. And the killings continue.

As U.S. bosses prepare to wage more imperialist wars, millions of lives will be sacrificed on the altar of oil profits. The essence of the bosses’ "war on terror" is mass murder of workers and others worldwide. The only way out of this holocaust is to wage war on bosses and build a communist society without Exxon, all the imperialists and their fascist death squads.

With PLP Leadership, Hundreds of Workers and Youth Repel Nazi Vermin

WAKEFIELD, MASS., Sept. 15 — Boston PLP and the working class here successfully attacked a Nazi meeting and disrupted their attempt to spread their racist, fascist filth. Several of the Nazis barely escaped, bleeding and shaking, one crumpled on the sidewalk, whimpering and yelling for the cops.

Nazi Matt Hale, leader of the so-called World Church of the Creator (see box) got the Wakefield town government to give him a library meeting room to bring his message of racial holy war to the state. During a year-long search, two other Massachusetts towns had flatly refused him. Wakefield is a working-class town, 97% white.

When PLP heard the fascists were coming, we began by issuing a leaflet literature in Wakefield and some surrounding towns calling for a demonstration to drive Hale and his Nazi scum out of Wakefield. Responses ranged from enthusiastic support, especially among young people at the Wakefield high school to the usual free speech concerns ("I-hate-them-too-but-this-is-America"). The students proved to be a significant force at yesterday’s protest.

Meanwhile, the free-speech forces were organizing an alternative protest at a church several miles away — "Love Lives Here." We countered with a leaflet explaining the need for working people to unite to drive the Nazis out of Massachusetts.

When September 14^th rolled around, about 40 Boston PLP members and friends arrived in Wakefield an hour before the 1:00 PM starting time and established our picket line in front of the library. The first hour about 100 people listened, but as we picketed, the crowd gradually grew in size and support. By 1:15 it had swollen to about 600 (Boston Globe, 9/15), many clearly anti-Nazi, and included quite a few youth from the high school. Some joined the line; a few agreed to speak on the bullhorn.

Meanwhile Hale and 10 supporters had been standing on the street corner across from our picket line, surrounded by the press. Two Nazi supporters showed up and approached the picket line. One jostled a picket and was immediately hit with a flying object. Bleeding from a scalp wound, the two retreated, chased by a dozen anti-Nazis, soon joined by dozens more, until about 100 angry workers and youth were shouting slogans, throwing rocks, spitting on the fascists and tearing up their signs. The leadership we had provided in our picket line and our militancy confronting the two Nazis had won the crowd to our line.

At this point we closed the picket line and joined the crowd attacking the Nazis, continuing to grab and tear up the Nazis’ signs. Others quickly raised $300 in bail money from the protesters for two young people who’d been arrested.

The 200 cops in their Darth Vader uniforms — plus state police and federal marshals — failed to regain control. Finally they led Hale and his nine Nazis, all drenched in spit, away from their corner and into the library. Thirty more of his vermin snuck in through the back door. Outside, PLP led the crowd in chants of, "Let us in." After 20 minutes, the cops let in ten anti-Nazis, five from our picket line. Once inside, the five PL’ers began to chant anti-Nazi slogans, confronting 40 Nazis screaming "Sieg Heil" and giving the Hitler salute. Some anti-Nazis are expelled. Those remaining shouted down Hale’s speech. Outside, the crowd waits patiently for the Nazis to make their exit.

Around 3:00 PM, the cops quietly escorted the Nazis into vans to slip out of town, but six left through the front door and then walked down Main Street chased by the crowd. Two protesters whacked two of the Nazis repeatedly with poles. The Boston Herald reported that one "burly neo-Nazi crumpled to the sidewalk with a whimper, yelling ‘Help! Police!’" Soon he fled with his companions down a side street, pursued by protesters. When the cops hand-cuffed two anti-Nazis to take them in for "questioning," about 150 protesters chased after the cops, yelling, "Let ’em go! Let ’em go!" The two were later released. Some of us then went to the police station to check on an arrested comrade.

The Wakefield demonstration has taught us that, (1) when we act boldly and honestly, the working class will respond to our ideas and tactics; and (2) in this period youth are very receptive to what we have to say and more than willing to follow our leadership.

Nazi Hale Preaches Racist Terror

Nazi Hale and his World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) are part of a new slicked-up and extremely well-financed coalition of Nazi groups called the National Alliance. Their late leader William Pierce wrote the Turner Diaries, the book that inspired Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The WCOTC, following the Nazi movement’s new "peaceable" style, renounces hate and violence, except in "racial self-defense," which includes any act of racist violence. They aim to mobilize a racial holy war ("RAHOWA") that will "shrink" [exterminate] the non-white populations, enabling the "White Race" to dominate the Earth.

While preaching non-violence, WCOTC is believed to have been behind a number of racist murders, most notably in Peoria, IL where in 1999 Hale’s leading protégé, Benjamin Smith, went on a rampage killing two people and wounding nine — all black, Latin or Asian — and then committed suicide. Hale’s comment was, "only one white man died that day."

These Nazis, protected by the rulers’ cops, help spread the racism the bosses need to institute full-blown fascism, the better to help the ruling class launch its imperialist oil wars. None of them will be defeated by pacifist love-ins.

a name="Defending Boston Police Chief Won’t Stop Racist Killer Cops">">"efending Boston Police Chief Won’t Stop Racist Killer Cops

BOSTON, September 20 — On Sept. 7, Eveline Barros-Cepeda, a 25-year-old mother from Cape Verde, was murdered when a racist cop pumped a fusillade of bullets into the back seat of a fleeing car. She was the eighth victim of racist police terror here in the past 22 months.  A few hours later, a black man, a carjacking suspect, was shot and severely injured in his moving vehicle. Within minutes, a small rebellion against the police broke out at the scene.

The day after the Cepeda murder, police commissioner Paul Evans called for rule changes to restrict police from shooting at moving vehicles. The police union responded with a vote of "no confidence" in Evans, the first in the history of the Boston police. The detective’s union backed them up. The cops claim that terrorism and rising street violence require them to have "a free hand."

Today, a group of black religious misleaders led by Reverend Rivers called on the black community "to close ranks behind" the embattled police chief. These black clergy and businessmen have never rushed to the defense of black and Latin workers and youth, even after the eight unnecessary deaths at the hands of the police. And they never criticized Evans as these killer cops were exonerated, one after another.

Reverend Rivers has worked closely with the Boston ruling class for the last several years, hosting the police department’s weekly "community policing" meetings at his church (one of the liberals’ main strategies to win workers to collaborate with the fascist police). He cozied up to Bush in an effort to get his share of the faith-based money the White House was planning to dole out to charity organizations.

These junior partners of the ruling class are desperately trying to prevent class-conscious militancy from growing among black and Latin workers and youth. They are rewarded with a little bit of money and power. As they bend over backwards to save Paul Evans’ skin, workers and youth should ignore their traitorous pleas.

a name="Union ‘Partnership’ With Bosses Sinks Boeing Workers"></">Un"on ‘Partnership’ With Bosses Sinks Boeing Workers

September 13 — Members of the International Association of Machinist (IAM) failed to muster the two-third’s majority needed to authorize a strike against Boeing. Sixty-two percent rejected the takeaway contract, while 61% reaffirmed the strike sanction vote taken last July. This was the second strike vote. International President Thomas Buffenbarger sealed the first one on August 29 to accommodate the federal mediator.

The mediation yielded nothing, as could be expected. Demoralization and confusion set in during the two-week delay as the company and the local press attempted to spread fear through our ranks. Buffenbarger branded members who thought federal mediation was a mistake as "those that think they know it all." There must have been a lot of "know-it-alls" — the general feeling on the shop floor was, "It’s all over but the crying."

Seattle area District 751 President Mark Blondin sent a letter to every union member concluding, "the company decided it is against us." Apparently this was news to the union leadership! But we workers have known this all along, ever since there’s been a working class!

The union’s reformist politics — especially in this post 9/11 period of fascist attacks against the working class — all but guaranteed the failure to get the necessary 2/3 majority in the final strike vote. The union issued three or four leaflets a day that last week, all focused on the contract’s economics. We all knew the contract was a job-eating, benefits-busting disaster. What we wanted to know was how to win in these tough times. The union’s years of pushing "partnership," patriotic unity with the bosses and reliance on friends in the government left us unprepared for the fight.

Two days after the final strike vote, Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and CEO Alan Mulally told the Seattle Times, "Nobody can guarantee jobs and security in market-based economies," implying even more layoffs. Therefore, our number one job over the life of this contract must be to prepare to smash Mulally’s market-based economy.

The Party and our base organized for building revolutionary class-consciousness as the only realistic strategy for winning, now and in the future. We made modest progress rebuilding our Challenge networks, which had been devastated by 30,000 layoffs. We will devote even more energy to consolidate these hard-won advances. Out of the chaos of the last weeks, we must learn to politically and organizationally prepare for the long, hard road to communist revolution.

a name="Union Hacks Dicker Over Dues While Bosses, Gov’t Attack Dockers">">"nion Hacks Dicker Over Dues While Bosses, Gov’t Attack Dockers

In mid-September, Machinists union (IAM) president Tom Buffenbarger threatened to cross dockworkers’ picket lines if the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) struck. The ILWU is demanding that shipping bosses agree to make all new technology positions union jobs. But since some maintenance and repair workers on the docks are IAM members, IAM bosses are very ready to sacrifice unity with striking dockworkers to get their cut of these jobs. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka called a secret meeting to try to keep the lid on this jurisdictional squabble over members and dues money.

The ILWU has been working without a contract since July 1. Bush, in consultation with the Homeland Security Department, plans to send in federal troops to bust any longshore strike. Groups of rank-and-file workers have taken on the task of building working-class solidarity in response to this post 9/11 offensive against our brothers and sisters. Petitions of solidarity, signed by hundreds of IAM members, have been presented to dockworkers as a down payment on workers’ solidarity and power.

a name="Standing Shoulder to Shoulder Against Bosses’ War on Workers">">"tanding Shoulder to Shoulder Against Bosses’ War on Workers

An IAM rank-and-filer brought greetings of solidarity to a recent ILWU meeting. Referring to the latest fiasco with the federal mediator, she noted that Boeing workers had learned, "We can’t rely on the federal government. We can’t rely on the bosses’ politicians. We can only rely on the power of a united working class." She asked the packed union hall whether she could return to the IAM membership with the promise that we would stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for decent-paying jobs everywhere in the world. Would we stand with the working class against this bosses’ war on workers? The answer was a resounding yes, followed by vows to stand on the picket lines with IAM members and more!

Outside the meeting, workers from both unions discussed the "war on terrorism." "Don’t get me started on that," warned one ILWU member. "I get furious when I think how they’ve used that so-called ‘war on terrorism’ to attack us." The workers vowed to keep in contact — strike or no strike.

So here’s the picture. The pro-capitalist union leadership squabbles over dues money while "Rome burns." On the other hand, our Party supports rank-and-file attempts to build a united-front-from-below to answer the bosses’ offensive and the hacks’ self-serving treachery. The difference between the hacks’ outlook and ours? We’re communists, and communists understand the need to build revolutionary class-consciousness.

Overproduction Shows Capitalism Must Be Destroyed

"To understand why the U.S. economy can’t seem to muster a stronger recovery," comments the Washington Post (8/29), "it helps to look for clues in Victorville, Calif., where 500 unused and unwanted passenger jets — some of them brand new — sit wingtip to wingtip in the desert. Or in Detroit, where the Big Three continue to churn out large numbers of passenger cars that they sell at little or no profit, just to keep their factories busy. Or in nearly every major metropolitan area, where office vacancy rates are still rising after 18 months, and have reached 25 percent in Dallas, 24 percent in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and 18 percent in San Francisco…. Falling prices shoppers find for clothing, televisions, hotel rooms and cellular phone service…are being paid in the form of continued corporate layoffs, lackluster stock prices and a sky-high trade deficit — in short, an economy that’s having trouble building up a head of steam. Economists refer to this phenomenon as overcapacity, which is really nothing more than too much supply chasing too little demand. And it can be found these days across a wide swath: agriculture, autos, advertising, chemicals, computer hardware and software, consulting, financial services, forest products, furniture, mining, retail, steel, textiles, telecommunications, trucking, and electric generation, just to mention a few. In most every case, it is accompanied by prices that are flat or falling."

The bosses call it "overcapacity"; communists call it overproduction. In a world where millions go hungry and lack basic necessities, the capitalists produce more than they can profitably sell. But they never give it to those who need it.

This leads to even more layoffs and misery. It’s built into capitalism, where ownership of the means of production and the vast wealth created by the working class lies in fewer and fewer hands while the masses of workers who actually produce the value are exploited even harder. Workers’ resistance is met by armed attacks and new laws restricting them even more, adding up to fascism.

As competition for maximum profits sharpens, the bosses automate, lay off workers and produce more with fewer workers. Rates of profits and actual profits decline because the bosses invest still more in machinery to try to out-produce their rivals with fewer workers — but fewer workers are able to buy the greater quantities of products.

The bosses "solve" these problems by lowering labor costs even more: moving factories to low-wage areas and eventually either destroying the productive capacity of their rivals in wars or seizing their factories and resources (oil wells, etc.). But without a mass communist party leading workers to take state power, these crises have never and will never, by themselves, topple capitalism.

Says the Washington Post, "The big culprit in the supply-demand mismatch was the investment boom of the late 1990s, arguably the longest and most exuberant since the 1920s. Flush with cheap money made available by Wall Street, businesses of all sorts rushed out and expanded their capacity — not simply to satisfy the increased demand of the moment, but in anticipation of continued high economic growth rates well into the future. When the growth failed to materialize, they suddenly found themselves with more capacity than they could profitably employ. ‘In hindsight, it’s now clear that we invested too much in plant and equipment during the last boom — maybe 20 to 25 percent too much,’ said Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. ‘We were looking at things in an analytically flawed way.’"

The very nature of a profit system creates problems that it can only solve by creating mass misery, fascism and war. These inherent contradictions of capitalism are not "mistakes" and cannot be done away with. Inevitably they come to the fore as competition between the bosses, especially imperialist rivals, sharpens.

The Progressive Labor Party is committed to building a mass communist party among workers, soldiers and students to insure a successful communist revolution. This and only this can destroy a system based on exploitation and war for profit.

a name="‘War on Terror’ Impoverishes Millions"></">‘W"r on Terror’ Impoverishes Millions

As U.S. rulers head for war against Iraq, they’re not neglecting the war at home — the one against the poor. According to the Census Bureau’s latest report on income and poverty, "Americans living in poverty rose significantly last year," to 33 million. [All quotes and figures from New York Times, 9/25.] Interestingly, percentage-wise, more white people fell below poverty levels last year than black and Latin people, although the annual household incomes for the latter was far below that of whites. The racism that produces 40% lower income for black and Latin workers thus helps the bosses drag down income for white workers as well.

But of course, the government’s definition of "poverty" is ridiculously understated. They say a family of four whose income is above $18,104 is NOT in poverty; similarly $14,128 for a family of three, $11,569 for a married couple and $9,039 for an individual. That would mean, for instance, that an individual who earns $10,000 annually and pays $500 a month rent would be using $6,000 a year for housing, 60% of his or her yearly income! And such a person is not included in the 33 million considered below the poverty level.

Worse still is the family of four: say they were "above" the poverty level, at $20,000 a year, and paid $800 a month rent. That’s $9,600 annually, or nearly half their income, leaving little more than $10,000 a year for food, clothing, health care, transportation, etc., for father, mother and two children! And that’s not poverty?

No wonder the disparity between rich and poor is skyrocketing. The richest fifth of the population accounts for HALF of all household income. The poorest fifth receives 3.5% of total household income. And this is supposedly the richest country in the world.

Now U.S. imperialism is preparing to spend $100 billion to $200 billion (Bush’s Budget Director’s figures) to enable Exxon Mobil to grab Iraq’s oil, killing millions of Middle Eastern workers, while possibly half of U.S. workers can’t keep their heads above water. For tens of millions the "American Dream" is really a nightmare.

Calif. Student Marchers Oppose Imperialist War

On September 11, over 300 progressive students, faculty and community members from a State University in California marched against war. At the same time a speech by the University president attracted only 100 people. The marchers strode through the entire campus holding signs and banners that said, "Workers of the world unite against imperialist war"; "No Blood for Oil Profit"; "Peace, not War"; and, "Wanted: Bush, Reward: Peace." Many people joined us. We finished by forming a circle in the center of campus and held a speak-out.

The entire event was powerful because of the high level of student organization and the multi-racial unity of black, white, Chicano, Latino, Asian, Muslim and Filipino students. Students collectively organized every aspect of the march independently of faculty or administration, from public outreach, to planning the route, to security, to leadership. We spent countless late nights making flyers, banners and signs. Part of our elation came from seeing the power of organized working-class student unity.

While this action represents a great potential for building a campus anti-imperialist movement, during the speak-out many students expressed anger only against Bush. The rulers would want to control any emerging anti-war movement, so the liberals use their media and their leaders to channel student and worker outrage into simply trying to remove Bush. This shows the need for sharper political struggle. Capitalism creates monsters like Bush. But if he’s ousted, the ruling class will only replace him with another monster.

Conservatives and liberals both need war. Workers and students should not fight for a "lesser evil" warmonger. Only by destroying capitalism through communist revolution will we collectively free ourselves from imperialism.

Struggling for a common goal brought many of us closer together. This bodes well for the coming period. PLP’s long-term commitment to class struggle in mass organizations and distributing CHALLENGE will win students and workers to anti-imperialist, revolutionary action. Many of these students already hate imperialism because of their families’ experiences in Latin American and Muslim countries. Participating in campus groups and circulating this newspaper built the confidence to struggle inside the coalition for agreement to change the march’s call from "We oppose all forms of war" to "We oppose all forms of imperialist war which profits the ruling class." During the event, a comrade gave a speech condemning capitalism while other comrades distributed leaflets about fighting imperialism.

Our next step is to become closer to our new friends and build a teach-in to sharpen the political struggle against imperialism and for the long-term fight to destroy it. The majority of students at this rally want peace now. PLP brings to this fight the understanding that to achieve peace, we must get rid of the cause of wars: capitalist production for profit, and its inevitable creation, imperialism. Building a mass PLP will put us on the road to doing just that.

a name="Warping Children’s Brains With Psychiatric Drugs">">"arping Children’s Brains With Psychiatric Drugs

The diagnosis of mental illness in children is booming. The most popular is ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), but bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety are close behind. Recently, shyness (social phobia disorder) and separation anxiety have also been labeled "mental illnesses." In 1999, Surgeon General Satcher’s Report on Mental Illness stated that 20% of children (and adults) have a significant mental health problem in any given year. The diagnosis of ADHD has increased about 20 fold in 20 years. There is now a national study evaluating the use of Ritalin in 3-5 year olds.

Psychiatry in general now declares that mental illness is caused by abnormal brain chemistry, although there is little exact knowledge of the abnormalities, even in severe diseases like schizophrenia. Moreover, psychiatry has lost sight of the divide between psychosis, in which patients have lost touch with reality, and deviations from maximal happiness or functioning brought on by the stresses and losses of life experienced by everyone. Now any depressed mood, anxiety or social ineptness is said to represent a "disease" and a "disordered brain." The consequences of this biologically determined view of life is that the treatment of all "disorders" is said to be pharmacological, and psychiatric drugs have become some of the most often prescribed, from Prozac to Ritalin. About 5% of school age children are now taking psychotropic medications, including 1.5% of toddlers. Many are on multiple drugs.

Of course, the drug companies promote this trend and finance the research supporting it. Most academic psychiatrists are paid almost exclusively by drug companies to study the very drugs they manufacture. However, the main reason drugging children is so popular stems from teachers finding them "difficult" to manage in class — restless, disobedient or aggressive. The parent is then notified the child has a problem, likely to be a "chemical imbalance" of the brain, and recommended to get a prescription from a doctor. If the parents refuse, their children are sometimes threatened with expulsion or even removal from the home (see a recent New York Post series). Rarely is there an in-depth investigation of what, if anything, is bothering the child, which may range from lack of sleep to learning disabilities to boredom to stresses in the home.

This medication craze is spawned by capitalist society’s need to control its citizens and blame social problems on the poorest and weakest. In overcrowded and poorly staffed schools, increasingly emphasizing standardized curriculum and tests, more and more children will not "fit in" easily. Instead of dealing with these problems and analyzing what individual children need in terms of their personality and skills, the school system declares such children to be "damaged" and drugs them until they’re easy to control.

Entering an era of prolonged war and economic depression, the rulers fear a citizenry that is alert and rebellious. They fear that soldiers, students, workers and others will object to shedding their blood for oil bosses, that anger over unemployment, falling wages and disappearing social services will spark class struggle. So they rely on building patriotic fervor, fear of terrorism, jingoism, racism, police terror and fascist laws like the Patriot Act. But if unhappy people are led to think there’s something wrong with them rather than with their society, they may accept mind-altering drugs which prevent them from thinking clearly and/or fighting back against such fascist measures. When the process starts in childhood, imagine how debilitating it is and becomes.

There is some nation-wide fight back against this trend. Public pressure has forced several states to ban schools from diagnosing children or forcing drug use. In New York City a group of parents and community activists is leafleting parents about their rights, has demonstrated in the streets, been on the radio and has spoken to PTAs, school boards and at professional meetings. PLP members stimulate discussion here and relate the issue to the growth of war and fascism.

Comrades are also raising it with CHALLENGE readers, parents and teachers in our local school district. We aim to expand this work in NYC.

Secret Court Legalizes Fascism

[Part of a series of communist analyses of law and legal issues.]

Recently, the New York Times and others publicized a secret U.S. court ruling criticizing the Bush administration. The Times article implied that the court was protecting civil liberties from fascist Attorney General Ashcroft’s wiretap excesses. But a closer look paints us a quite different picture.

First it should be noted that capitalism is always a class dictatorship, even under liberal democracy. Fascism is only the more open form of this dictatorship. It’s not enough to destroy fascism. We must get at the roots behind its growth of fascism, and why the rulers need it.

The secret court itself is long-standing. During the Johnson and first Nixon administration (1968-1972), at the height of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the government was wiretapping many revolutionaries, anti-war radicals and liberals, much of it without a warrant. The Constitution’s 4th Amendment and earlier Supreme Court decisions required warrants for wiretaps, mandating the government to show "probable cause" a crime had been, or was being committed.

In the early 1970s, anti-war radicals being prosecuted for "conspiring to blow up a CIA office and other buildings" in Michigan suspected their phones had been tapped. Their lawyers demanded the government turn over the transcripts. The government refused. In the U.S. Supreme Court, then Attorney-General Mitchell argued that "national security" was enough of a legal basis to permit phone wiretaps without a warrant. Although rejecting that argument, the Court — in a footnote — allowed the possibility of wiretapping without warrants in "foreign intelligence" cases.

In 1978, Democrat President Jimmy Carter signed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This law created the secret FISA court to hear government applications to wiretap "foreign intelligence" sources without the "probable cause" required for regular warrants. Amid the Cold War. U.S. rulers said their spies needed to listen in on their Soviet counterparts.

The FISA Court is located inside a windowless, vault-like room, locked and guarded by security 24 hours a day, on the top floor of the U.S. "Justice" Department, the agency applying for the wiretap authority. In nearly 25 years of its existence, of about 10,000 wiretap warrant requests, not one has been rejected. So much for the bosses’ "checks and balances" theory.

The post-Cold War era has seen a drastic increase in wiretap applications. During the Clinton administration, this huge increase was based on investigations of "terrorism" suspects. The original FISA law barred the government from using intelligence wiretaps as evidence in domestic prosecutions or sharing intelligence information with prosecutors. But Clinton’s FBI routinely lied to the Court. Such information was being given to, and used by, prosecutors in their investigations. Even after the government admitted its lies — in September 2000 — the FISA Court continued granting warrants on every single application submitted. (Next article: the USA Patriot Act.)

a name="My Family Saw the Building of the First Workers’ State">">"y Family Saw the Building of the First Workers’ State

We print this memoir in commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Great October Bolshevik Revolution. Given that it was the first attempt to build a communist society, it recorded some monumental achievements. Its goal of a classless system, free of bosses, profits, racism and war, so frightened

world capitalism that the latter tried — in the words of one of imperialism’s masters, Winston Churchill — to "strangle the baby in the cradle."

From the Soviet Union’s very inception, the capitalists vowed to destroy it. This first successful workers’ state fought them off for 40 years, only to succumb to its own internal weaknesses. Meanwhile in less than one generation it transformed a backward, feudal order into an advanced industrial society that was able to save the world from fascism by becoming the first force to destroy the Nazi invaders. It suffered the deaths of 20 to 30 million Soviet citizens, far more than the entire Western capitalist world combined.

PLP is committed to taking the best the Soviets gave to the world’s working class while learning from their errors, to build a mass international party that will spread communism across the planet.

Both my parents had personal contact with the Russian Revolution. My mother’s family left Russia before World War I, but couldn’t afford to take everyone, leaving my mother — 12-year-old Sarra — behind to stay with an uncle who was a quasi-foreman for a landowner-farmer. Five years later the "Reds" arrived. She and other high school friends were already reading about the revolution and forming study groups supporting it. Naturally the big landowners opposed it and influenced the village government and schools.

In came the Reds — not exactly an army, not exactly a new government, but rough-and-ready types with whom the villagers could identify and who quickly kicked the landowners off the land and out of their huge houses. This went over big with the laborers and the poor farmers, who were given the land.

Of course, later armed intervention by 17 countries (including the U.S.) spread counter-revolutionary chaos but the Reds eventually triumphed. Having joined her parents abroad, my mother had no first-hand experience with those events but her life among the villagers who greeted the Bolsheviks’ arrival stayed with her forever.

She became a communist here, and in 1928 joined a broad-based delegation to the USSR to see the revolution’s achievements first-hand. In fact, the day this group spent many hours in Stalin’s office, she became the closest to the main man! When Stalin realized the visitors still had many questions, he agreed to stay well into the night. However, he didn’t want to force his interpreter to work a double shift, so he asked if anyone in the group could take over. My mother was amazingly fluent in both languages, so for that one day she became Stalin’s interpreter!

My father, also on this trip, though "progressive," wasn’t a communist. He worked for his brother, a rising owner of a small textile company here. My father had started as a mill hand but later designed plants for the company. He knew plenty about mills and working conditions.

He told many times about a visit on this trip to a cold, desolate area where the Bolsheviks were erecting a steel mill, part of the industrialization drive which later included the famous "Five-Year Plans." My father, Harry, asked one worker, "How can you stand working a full day in such miserable, hostile conditions? Don’t you feel you’re being asked to do too much for such low wages?"

The worker replied, "Yes, it’s hard here. But [making a huge gesture taking in the whole area] look at this mill we’re building!" It was apparent the workers felt the mill was THEIRS. They were proud of it. It meant so much to them that the hardships just weren’t worth worrying about.

No doubt this isn’t "scientific evidence" complete with polls and percentages. But my parents saw, in 1928, that there were many workers who could have done without the wage system, and their enthusiasm could have been harnessed for a more persistent drive to real communism.

In the 1930s my Aunt Rachel — my father’s sister — left the U.S. to become an English teacher in Moscow. She had been a charter member of the U.S. Communist Party. Her husband, Al Stone, was a rank-and-file red who fascinated me as a youngster because he seemed to have worked in almost every conceivable job in his knockabout life — short-order cook, construction worker, semi-cowboy — his stories covered the waterfront.

In the USSR he did construction work throughout the 1930s. Capitalism’s history books describe this period as mainly one of famine and massacres of Stalin’s political opponents. But my uncle’s letters to us in the U.S., and later his personal reminiscences back here, presented quite a different picture. (They returned because my aunt needed medical treatment unobtainable in Russian hospitals then.)

He remembered how full and rich the days were there. It wasn’t just "Thank god it’s Friday." After work the workers got together to rehearse a play, or for chorus practice or for discussions of conditions at work, in the city and in the nation and what they could do to improve things or jostle the higher-ups. Al boasted that he was the only member of the Moscow chorus who couldn’t sing. (He claimed he hid in a back row.)

One reminiscence which stuck with me: around 1938, although there was no official declaration, in effect the USSR had achieved the era of free bread. (Remember, the hearty Russian bread was THE staple food.) One could enter a cafeteria, order little or nothing, sit at a table and fill up on bread. Nobody gave you dirty looks or told you to leave. You needed, you received — at least to that extent.

This occurred when the whole country was urgently building up heavy industry and the army, knowing that world capitalism was only temporarily quieted by the great depression but would go on the warpath again. Even during this heavy-industry drive, living standards rose measurably during the 1930s when the rest of the world was in wretched shape.

It’s easy to talk about how "communism failed." While this "diary" isn’t an analysis of what happened, we should recognize that when the Soviets forged a system where things were produced for use instead of for profit, they wiped out hunger and created a decent life for workers in an incredibly short time. AND built the weaponry and the type of men and women who smashed Hitler.

White Teeth Bites Away Hope for Future Against Racism and Capitalism

At first, White Teeth by Zadie Smith seems to be a welcome relief from the onslaught of bourgeois literature, which hails the divisions between "races" and sexes. The story describes three generations of immigrants living and working in a multi-ethnic London suburb where over 100 languages are spoken at the local high school. The main characters are Bengali, Jamaican and English. One of the featured marriages is between an English man and a Jamaican woman (her parents are an English man and an African woman). Issues of racism are addressed, the language is witty and the story moves along quickly.

However, in this comedy the actors are fools, losers, religious fanatics, political extremists and mad scientists. It’s unkind buffoonery and no one redeems him- or herself. No one emerges as the voice of reason or hope for the future. Any multi-racialism or anti-sexism is countered by the total alienation among spouses, siblings, parents and children.

The two main characters are Sadam and Archie, two fathers leading frustrating, aimless, disappointing lives, which characterize the author’s cynical worldview. Sadam (from Bengladesh) and Archie (an Englishman) were assigned to the same tank during World War II. They were sent into action during the last two months of the war, had no idea why they were there, got lost, and continued to think they were combatants after it was all over. They joined some Russians who were assigned to capture a French scientist who had aided the Nazi sterilization program. Sadam wins the scientist in a card game, and sets out to shoot him to prove to himself that he is carrying out his family tradition as a war hero. But he gives the task to Archie, who fails to carry it out.

The interpersonal relationships offer no relief to the main characters’ exploited/pathetic lives. These two think they know what the world is all about. After all, they were heroes in WWII. They marry women over 20 years younger, ignore and neglect their wives and children, have dead-end jobs, and spend all their time in a greasy bar that excludes women. Their whole lives are consumed in debating whether Sadam’s great grandfather had actually spearheaded the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Sadam parades as an intellectual, but knows very little. He engages in hypocritical nods to the Muslim religion while constantly violating it. His only real role in life becomes one of controlling Archie.

At the point where the reader feels lost in this alienated capitalist hell, a political polarization of the characters shatters any hope of things improving. The solutions to our characters’ boring, disappointing, lonely lives are fanatical, foolish and selfish.

The pro-Nazi French scientist re-emerges as the mentor of a mad scientist who is altering the genes of mice to determine their life-span. Sadam and Archie’s family and friends obsessively oppose or support the mad scientist. The opposing groups are fanatical and foolish (Jehovah’s Witnesses, animal rights advocates and Islamic fundamentalists). The scientist’s son joins an animal rights group because he’s fascinated with the body of one of its leaders. She’s involved in animal rights because she can’t tolerate the in-fighting among leftist groups. One of Sadam’s sons joins the Islamic fundamentalists because he’s a violent juvenile delinquent looking for an outlet. Sadam’s other son becomes the mad scientist’s protégé. On the way to the public gathering sponsored by the mad scientist, many of the characters are on the same bus, but are so angry at each other, they sit in separate seats.

At the gathering the bar owner supports the scientist because he believes he’ll find a cure for his genetically-induced skin disorder. Archie supports the scientist because his daughter works for him, and is senselessly killed in the process. His mother-in-law intends to stop the scientist from interfering with the Lord’s will. No one can get along with anyone, men and women are hopelessly divided, life is meaningless and intelligent people go with the flow.

The book is beautifully written. Some would say cynicism is funny and does no harm. But the author’s dark worldview builds images that erode the trust between people. Without trust, and the belief that most people are intelligent and well motivated, there is no hope for building a movement to fight against oppression. There’s no way to create a better society if most workers are fools, hypocrites, bigots and misogynists. These cynical images are everywhere in the culture, and they erode our trust in other workers.

LETTERS

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, WRITE!

PLP, Workers Jolt Nazis

[For details of this protest, see front page — Ed.]

Although I joined the protest against the neo-nazi "World Church of the Creator" in Wakefield Mass., I was somewhat skeptical about its possible effectiveness. Wakefield is a small blue-collar town, 97% white. Although leafleting the local high school the day before drew a generally good response, the same was not true in the downtown area. Local cops grabbed our leaflet there. Both the high school principal and local religious and community "activists" had been planning a counter-rally across town. I cynically figured: (1) not enough local residents would attend our militant protest, given the lack of leafleting and the well-publicized pacifists’ weeks-long organizing their event across town; and (2) hundreds of cops would completely block any confrontation with the racists. This has been the cops’ strategy in recent anti-racist protests, including metal pens or cages to contain and separate anti-racist groups like PLP from the fascists.

I was completely surprised, thanks to PLP’s initiative and to the leadership of the local working class! PLP established a militant picket line right in front of the library witnessed by 600 local, mostly white workers who listened to our militant speeches, stressing historical reasons why we should fight racism and fascism. People read our signs saying "Death to the Nazis" and similar slogans. A few joined our line. The turning point came when a couple of racists walked past the picket line and were surrounded by dozens of onlookers, including many youth. One nazi was soon bleeding. The anti-racists pursued them as they scrambled back to the racists on the corner.

About 100 people confronted them, shouting, spitting, tearing up their signs (thanks to one PLP’er). We joined the angry crowd and led it with bullhorn chants of "let us in." About 10 anti-racists were allowed in the hall and began to try to shout the Nazis down. Outside, hundreds of protesters again followed our lead in confronting the few racists who were foolish enough to leave the meeting without police escorts.

In sum, the protest was a great success because the Party influenced hundreds to fight back. Most of the crowd confronting the fascists was local, white and many were young "punk rock" types. PLP was the only identifiable political group there, but despite anti-communism from a few in the crowd, hundreds followed our leadership, and in some cases led us, in fighting back. Several have expressed interest in working with PLP to fight racism in the future. Things are looking up for the working class in Massachusetts.

A PLP member

Signs Fire Up Candlelight Vigil

We drew a very positive anti-imperialist, anti-war response to a small but significant political statement we made on September 11, 2002, participating in a Brooklyn Candlelight vigil on the Promenade overlooking the East River. This is a popular location for viewing the New York skyline and especially the World Trade Center which used to tower over all.

We made our sign at the Promenade and carried our candle for the victims and so the sign could be read. With just the first sentence, "Imperialism is the main terror," people walking by began making helpful suggestions. The next sentence was, "Oil is now their main goal," and lastly, "Fight ALL terror with international, multi-racial unity."

Then we added examples of imperialist terror such as Vietnam = 2 million Vietnamese killed; Indonesia = 200,000 East Timorese killed; Belgium, King Leopold = 10 million Congolese killed, U.S. bombing of Panama City killing 7,000 (a midnight attack 10 years ago). There were so many other examples that we put Etc, Etc, Etc. Hundreds walked by and encouraged us. Several stopped to talk — black, Muslim, white, foreign visitors, mothers, daughters. A cameraman said this was the best sign he’d seen all day. A Latin-American man talked with us for a long time and wondered how we had so much courage. We said we had to stand up but experience in struggles gave us confidence.

Workers need to see someone raise these ideas. We made contacts for future events. For two hours we enjoyed the positive remarks and this was even before the vigil walked by. Only one remark was negative. This taught us that with just a little leadership from militant rank and filers working in a mass organization like a union, the response is terrific and could be effective in fighting the war moves.

A comrade

Organizing With CHALLENGE

Regular readers know that CHALLENGE tells the truth. Sometimes we forget it’s also an organizer.

We’ve been teaching at a high school for many years and are active in the union. Our union leadership just negotiated a contract with a 3% wage increase, which saves our health benefits. Meanwhile, the district has increased class size by two students, raising some class averages to 40.5 students. Every student’s education will suffer and teachers will work harder, while new teachers have been laid off.

When the union leadership solicited pro and con statements on the contract offer, we circulated our ideas among fellow teachers. Thirty-six teachers read CHALLENGE regularly, although in the year-round school system a dozen are on vacation at any given time.

Before the school union meeting, we asked our friends for suggestions to improve our statement. The final version termed the district’s proposal a bad-faith offer. We said we weren’t impressed by talk of "hard times" or a "budget crisis"; that there was money for prisons and military adventures, but health clinics were being closed and class size increased. We asserted our opposition to this attack on our students and the community we serve.

When we raised our statement at the lunchtime union meeting, it started a good debate. No one proposed support for the contract. The controversy was about including the sentence on prisons and war. Several people said this was an irrelevant point because the school district didn’t make war or build prisons, and we should stick to the contract questions. Many friends who read CHALLENGE supported raising the larger question of a war budget. They argued that it was obvious social services are being sacrificed to fund war and we should say so. We said that the working class produces all value and that we’re fighting for a bigger chunk of the surplus value we create to improve the life of our class.

The following week we read the statement at the faculty meeting, and later at the city-wide union meeting, as part of the debate over recommending contract approval. While the city-wide vote narrowly endorsed the contract, many teachers asked us for copies of the statement from our school. In another union meeting covering our area of the city, teachers asked for copies and urged a "NO" vote on the contract.

This activity has reminded us how important CHALLENGE is as an organizer, and encouraged us to offer it to more teachers and youth. We haven’t always been consistent enough in our CHALLENGE distribution, but we’re encouraged to broaden our base of regular readers.

The war budget leaves every working-class child behind. We should use CHALLENGE to help our friends see the nature of the crisis and the need to fight for revolution, to build a society where all the value created by the workers is used to meet the workers’ needs, instead of the warmongers’!

Red teachers

Film Exposes U.S. Terrorists

I recently ordered a video to use in school during the 9/11 memorials. It’s called "The New Patriots" and was made for SOA Watch, a mostly pacifist group that’s been organizing and demonstrating against the School of Americas (SOA; renamed WHISC)), the Ft. Benning, GA training school for Latin American officers. These "graduates" are responsible for an unparalleled record of terror against workers and peasants in their countries. The video lasts 18 minutes and was made after the 9/11 attacks. The documentary’s theme is that the U.S. government’s call for an "end to terrorism" and the dismantling of terrorist bases worldwide is pure hypocrisy as long as such terrorist training operations as the SOA exist and as long as the U.S. supports regimes that practice terror against their civilian populations on such a worldwide scale. They make 9/11 seem like street mugging.

There are interviews with military veterans who, at an early age, were uncritical patriots, but who now realize that the U.S. military has been used to try to crush the aspirations of ordinary people — in Vietnam, El Salvador, Colombia and elsewhere. Two veterans state that the U.S. military’s real goal is to protect the profits of U.S. multi-nationals. These interviews alone make the video worthwhile showing.

The film’s downside is it’s preaching of non-violence. Pacifism is an attractive ideology for many students and many of the groups leading the anti-war movement — SOA Watch, the War Resisters League, Voices in the Wilderness — are pacifist. We should try to gradually win people attracted to pacifism away from an ideology that actually perpetuates the very violent system they sincerely oppose. Christopher Caudwell’s 1930’s essay, Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics, is a wonderful examination of the contradictions of pacifism.

"The New Patriots" costs $15 (including shipping and handling). Order from SOA Watch, P.O. Box 4566, Washington, D.C. 20017 (202-234-3440). More information can be found at http://www.soaw.org

Red Teacher

Profits Carry Ball In Pro Football

On Sept. 11, Johnny Unitas died, having been twice voted the greatest quarterback in U.S. professional football, most recently in the year 2000.

During the football season the games are watched by tens of millions every week. Players’ annual salaries range from $350,000 for rookies up to $10 million for leading stars. Spectators pay tens of millions over a season to attend the games. Television networks fork over billions more to broadcast them. And uncounted billions are gambled on the games, much of it illegally.

The average player career is about three years due to the brutal physical nature of the sport. Unitas was 69 when he died. The injuries he suffered during his 20-year career was reported in a New York Times obituary (9/12):

"Like most players, Unitas took a physical beating from football, and he had both knees replaced. His right arm was so injured…that…he could not pick up a fork and feed himself with that hand.

"He played golf by strapping his gloved hand to the club shaft with a Velcro strip. The middle three fingers on his right hand did not work….In 1997, he underwent five hours of surgery on the arm. The condition did not improve. He hoped to receive league-financed disability payments but learned that because he was receiving a monthly pension, he could not also collect disability because he had not filed by age 55, as the pension-fund rules required."

Not one multi-million dollar football team owner, media conglomerate or player offered Unitas a lousy nickel or denounced such cruelty and callousness. That’s the American sport and sportsmanship of the wealthy.

A Comrade

a href="#Oil War Not In Workers’ Interest">"il War Not In Workers’ Interest

a href="#Bosses’ Agenda: Imperialist Slaughter Abroad, Fascism at Home">"osses’ Agenda: Imperialist Slaughter Abroad, Fascism at Home

Blowback: Afghan Holy Warriors Turn Against CIA Paymaster

• Former CIA Operatives Turned Against the U.S.

Build Fight-Back Vs. Warmaking Strike Breakers

a href="#‘Homeland Security’ Provides None For Workers">‘H"meland Security’ Provides None For Workers

No Partner With Boeing: Strike Against Mass Layoffs

a href="#‘No More Class Struggle On The Cheap’">‘N" More Class Struggle On The Cheap’

a href="#Don’t Be Led Down A Primrose Path">"on’t Be Led Down A Primrose Path

"The Big Picture"

a href="#PLP’ers Lead Confrontation With Nazi Vermin">"LP’ers Lead Confrontation With Nazi Vermin

Boston Janitors Threaten Strike; Union Cozies with Mayor

a href="#NYPD Cops Do Real Racist ‘Wilding’">NY"D Cops Do Real Racist ‘Wilding’

a href="#Protest Racist Boston Cops’ Murder of 2 Black Workers">"rotest Racist Boston Cops’ Murder of 2 Black Workers

Voting A Dead-End For LA Workers Battling Health Cuts

a href="#‘Who Knew?’">‘W"o Knew?’

Black Workers Pay Higher Price for War Economy

a href="#Terrorism Won’t Free Workers Of Capitalist Oppression">"errorism Won’t Free Workers Of Capitalist Oppression

Why Communists Who Led Working Class in Middle East Failed

Who Sold Saddam Biowarfare Agents? The U.S. of Course

Cops Step Up Racist Terror in Minneapolis

Letters

a href="#Teachers Back PL’er, Rip Red-baiter">"eachers Back PL’er, Rip Red-baiter

Church Members Confront Politician on Iraq War

Steelworkers Attack Bush But Must Oppose Dems, Too

a href="#Don’t Fight Exxon’s War — Fight the Bosses">Don’" Fight Exxon’s War — Fight the Bosses

Nationalism is no way to fight oppression

Red Eye On The News

---

September 11, 2001:

In addition to those who died at the Twin Towers
On That Day and every day because of imperialism:
Children’s death toll from starvation worldwide: 35,615
Special TV programs on this holocaust: Zero
Messages of consolation from President and Pope: Zero

a name="Oil War Not In Workers’ Interest">">"il War Not In Workers’ Interest

In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush told the world, "You’re either with us, or against us." It’s now becoming clear that much of the U.S. ruling class, and the world, are against him. Before they can launch a war on Baghdad, they will have to fight the war in Washington.

The open fight within the ruling class is over how to rule the world, control oil, make war and terrorize workers. Workers must never back one gang of bosses and their political stooges over another. There is no "lesser evil." Capitalism makes war and fascism inevitable. Only communist revolution through a mass PLP and workers’ power can break this vicious circle.

The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice camp believes that as the world’s only superpower, the U.S. can act unilaterally to establish its empire for the 21st century. Their rush to invade may have more to do with opening Iraq to smaller domestic U.S. oil companies — who have their most influence in the Bush-Cheney camp — than to "weapons of mass destruction." This "go-it-alone" arrogance has isolated U.S. imperialism from its "allies," and has provoked increased resistance and the rage of millions worldwide.

The upcoming German elections will be decided by which party can most distance itself from U.S. foreign policy. French president Jacques Chirac told the New York Times (9/9), "It’s not Schroder and I on one side, and Bush and Blair on the other; it’s Bush and Blair on one side and all the others on the other side."

The Bush gang has come under tremendous pressure from the main wing of the ruling class, the "liberal" Rockefeller-led Eastern Establishment, especially Exxon Mobil. These "internationalists" believe the U.S. can rule the world while still maintaining alliances. They’re willing to cut a deal with France, Russia and China to share the spoils in Iraq. They want a serious campaign to win popular support for war, nationally and internationally. They’re dragging Bush, kicking and screaming, before the UN and the U.S. Congress. They’re joined by a host of war criminals and generals, from Scowcroft to Shwarzkopf to Zinni. They’re not so much concerned with Iraqi military might as with the willingness of workers and soldiers to back a long-term occupation of Iraq.

In past weeks, former President Jimmy Carter, Senate Majority leader and Democratic Presidential hopeful Tom Daschle, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) all publicly opposed any invasion of Iraq. Their view is that Saddam has been contained over the past decade, his army has been cut in half and poses no immediate threat, and removing him will cause more problems than it’s worth.

Workers, soldiers, students and youth should not be confused by this three-ring circus. The rulers are always on both sides of all questions. They want to lead the march to war while they stake out their position to lead any anti-war movement that arises. U.S. imperialism is extending its claws over a wide horizon. U.S. troops are now in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan. This is "part of a ring of new and expanded military bases established at 13 locations and in nine countries near Afghanistan since Sept. 11." (LA Times, 2/28). They are in the Philippines and "closely watching" Somalia, Yemen and Indonesia. All these locations reflect the presence of oil or a strategic location along the oil transport route.

U.S. bosses will do whatever it takes to control the world’s oil supply. The liberals will champion oil wars in Iraq and more police state terror at home. They will tell us the Big Lie that it’s all in "our" interest. A successful Communist revolution is the only strategy that can smash oil wars and fascist terror. The process will be long and hard, but eventually we will win. We must oppose all the bosses and build a mass, international PLP, our class’s only hope for the future.

a name="Bosses’ Agenda: Imperialist Slaughter Abroad, Fascism at Home">">"osses’ Agenda: Imperialist Slaughter Abroad, Fascism at Home

U.S. bosses have taken important steps to further their agenda for world domination and mass domestic terror In the year since 9/11. Imperialist oil wars abroad and a growing police state at home have set the policy for decades to come.

• A record number of adults — one in 32 — are now either behind bars, on probation or parole. Nearly half of the two million adults in prison are black workers, who account for only about 10% of the total population. More than 600 immigrants have been jailed and subjected to secret hearings.

• Many of the immigrants are Arab and have been deported, even though they have no connection to terrorism. Ultimately, the rulers will use the anti-Arab witch-hunt against anyone and everyone who disagrees with, or resists, the imperialists, especially revolutionary communists who fight to overthrow the system. We must prepare for this inevitability.

• Last October 7, the Bush gang invaded Afghanistan, promising to make quick work of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Last week’s assassination attempt against U.S. puppet Afghan "President" Karzai proved the job is far from finished (see article below). According to British journalist Robert Fisk, "The Americans are being attacked almost every night." (The Independent, 8/14)

•In the first three months of the Afghanistan invasion, U.S. forces murdered about 6,000 civilians, twice the number killed on 9/11. This doesn’t include people killed when air strikes cut off access to food, electricity or medical care. Nor does it account for bomb victims who later died of their wounds.

• Civilian slaughter is old hat for U.S. imperialism, which slaughtered over three million in the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands more were murdered in Desert Storm and in the 11 years since — especially Iraqi children — due to U.S.-imposed sactions. In the former Yugoslavia, a three-month Clinton-NATO reign of aerial terror poisoned the water supply of millions with bombs made of depleted uranium.

• At home recent corporate "scandals" have given the rulers an excuse to discipline capitalists who put individual profit ahead of the overall worldwide imperialist agenda. In the process, a massive consolidation of capital is taking place in favor of the Eastern Establishment, led by Exxon Mobil and the House of Rockefeller.

The answer to this capitalist hell is to organize the working class based on the revolutionary communist ideas in CHALLENGE.

Blowback 1: Afghan Holy Warriors Turn Against CIA Paymaster

Despite being the world’s only superpower, every imperialist invasion U.S. rulers launch sets off new unforeseen consequences. They claimed to have finished off the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but don’t look now; it’s far from over there. In fact, the murderous bombings and killing of civilians in that country (see above) has become the basis there for a new "jihad to boot out foreign troops." (Asian Times, 9/6)

A movement to resist U.S. forces and its puppet Karzai government in all Pashtun provinces (the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan) has been formed "by local leaders who have little or nothing to do with the Taliban or Al Qaeda….Widespread hatred of U.S. forces has reportedly been exacerbated by indiscriminately belligerent behavior of U.S. troops," such as the July 1 bombing of the wedding party in Oruzgan. (Stratfor.com, 8/29)

The "widespread hatred of U.S. forces" includes a reaction to the mass murder by Northern Alliance troops of Taliban prisoners of war late last year at Mazar-E Sharif. Having been assured decent treatment before surrendering, hundreds of prisoners — with the full knowledge of U.S. commanders — were packed into air-tight containers and shipped to a prison 200 miles away. Most of them had suffocated to death before reaching the prison and then dumped into a mass grave around Mazar-e-Sharif — a feat worthy of Hitler’s Nazis. Investigators from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights found hundreds of skulls and bones. (As reported by CNN and Newsweek.)

Now a re-grouped Taliban and Al Qaeda apparently have launched a series of assaults on U.S. and puppet forces, including the near-miss assassination of Karzai and a bomb explosion in the center of Kabul. They are allied with the forces of warlord G. Hekmatyar.

Stratfor.com has reported that "U.S. forces…are under constant attack,…taking more casualties than are officially admitted." This includes an Aug. 4 ambush of U.S. troops in Paktia province and an Aug. 28 rocket attack on a U.S. air base at Jalalabad airport. "Sources in Russia and Indian intelligence separately estimate the U.S. military has suffered between 300 and 400 killed in Afghanistan, with an unknown number wounded….The next phase is a protracted war of attrition, with U.S. troops venturing from garrisons to face ambushes on the highways, in villages and in the mountains." (Stratfor.com, 8/29).

Now, with the U.S. planning wide use of its Special Forces in Iraq, it would have to withdraw some of them from Afghanistan just when the guerrilla movement there is heating up.

Former CIA Operatives Turned Against the U.S.

These reactionary anti-U.S. guerrillas were the same cut-throats (Osama bin Laden, Hekmatyar, et al) trained by the CIA to fight the Russian army in the 1980s. Hekmatyar received the biggest share of the billions handed out by the CIA and Saudi-Pakistani intelligence services to wage "holy war" against the Russians. When the pro-Russian nationalists were overthrown, Hekmatyar and other holy warriors took power and began fighting each other, bombing Kabul and killing tens of thousands in the process. Later, he joined the anti-Taliban-bin Laden U.S. crusade. Now he has turned against his former CIA allies.

Every action taken by the imperialists is backfiring. That’s the essence of a profit system which makes war inevitable.

Build Fight-Back Vs. Warmaking Strike Breakers

The U.S. war juggernaut could have a big problem on its hands. In the wake of corporate scandals and increasing attacks on the workers, there is a growing restlessness and threat of strikes. The New York Times (9/8) editorialized, "The mood of sacrifice is fading, the window of opportunity for bottling the patriotism generated by Sept. 11 [is] slowly closing."

Over 10,500 West Coast dockworkers are working without a contract under Bush’s threatened use of troops as strikebreakers. A walkout shutting 29 Coast ports could halt half of U.S. trade.

About 25,000 Boeing workers were about to reject the company’s "final and best" offer when their ballots were sealed for 30 days and their union leaders ordered to federal mediation in Washington. With hundreds of unused aircraft parked in the desert, Boeing is prepared to sit out a short strike. A new vote is scheduled for Sept. 13.

The double whammy of recession and 9/11 unleashed a wave of mass layoffs. The airlines industry took advantage of the crisis to demand more give-backs. United Airlines is threatening bankruptcy unless its three unions grant major concessions. They claim this is necessary to qualify for a $1.8 billion federal bailout, available to airlines hurt by last September’s attacks. So far, the pilots’ union has rejected acceptance of a 10% pay-cut; Machinists say the company already owes them $500 million in back pay; and the flight attendants’ union says cuts from its lower-paid workers can’t possibly balance United’s books.

US Airways has filed for bankruptcy and American announced up to 7,000 layoffs. Delta, Continental, and Northwest have all announced cuts in their fall flights.

About 10,000 Boston janitors and 7,500 Chicago hotel workers also threatened strikes. The hotel workers were on their way to disrupting Labor Day tourism and a huge business convention, but were kept working until a settlement was reached a week after the old contract had expired.

Public sector and government workers face fierce budget cuts. State workers are being laid off in Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. In Illinois and Michigan, budget cuts will close several mental-health hospitals. Cook County workers in and around Chicago have held one-day strikes to fight county cuts. Part-time teachers at the City Colleges are threatening to strike.

If not for the pro-capitalist, pro-Democratic Party union leadership, over 35,000 longshoremen and aerospace workers could be striking simultaneously, many in the same cities.But, this is not the recipe for carrying out a new imperialist oil war. So the U.S. bosses’ call on their "labor lieutenants" who are loyal to the profit system. They wrap themselves and our struggles in the bosses’ flag. If strikes can’t be avoided, they must be kept "within the law," and under pro-capitalist leadership.

Such sharpening contradictions are the inevitable result of inter-imperialist rivalry and the drive towards war. Strikes and other rebellions are the spontaneous result of the struggle between bosses and workers, but they do not spontaneously lead workers to draw revolutionary conclusions. A revolutionary communist party must bring communist politics into these struggles. The mood of the workers is changing. PLP’s work is cut out for us.

a name="‘Homeland Security’ Provides None For Workers"></">‘H"meland Security’ Provides None For Workers

The bill to create the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allows the President to strip all collective bargaining rights and Title 5 civil service protections from 170,000 workers. On January 7, a Presidential executive order scrapped collective bargaining "rights" of almost 1,000 Justice Department workers. A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation think-tank stated, "Asserting managerial rights over unions, ensuring no race or gender hiring targets are allowed and preventing attempts to apply prevailing wage laws will be a large part of the debate." (Houston Chronicle, 6/20)

The Aviation and Transportation Security Act prohibits non-citizens from holding airport-screening jobs. Almost 6,000 immigrants could be fired by November, most with permanent legal status and many years of experience.

In August, the Washington State Labor Council Convention adopted a resolution calling for the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act, opposing FBI spying on political and union activists, INS harassment of Arab and other immigrants, and demanding the immediate release of the hundreds of immigrants still being detained. It urged other unions to oppose the government’s "war on terrorism."

The National Association of Letter Carriers and the Utility Workers of America announced they would not cooperate with the Justice Department’s Operation TIPS, a plan to force one million workers to "report suspicious activity." The California Federation of Labor compared the plan to Nazi Germany. The Justice Department backed off of using postal and utility workers in TIPS.

No Partner With Boeing: Strike Against Mass Layoffs

The week before the first strike vote (August 29) had a familiar ring to it. Rolling Thunder — banging every hour, hammer on steel — grew louder. Bosses scurried around trying to locate the homemade foghorns that mysteriously signaled the beginning of every hour. Only a fool would be caught without ear protection when "Big Ben" struck. "Strike! Strike! Strike!" reverberated from the rafters as workers marched from one building to the next. But the familiarity was superficial. It hid important differences from past contracts.

This became painfully clear when Machinists’ International President Buffenbarger sealed the strike vote, refusing to count it, to accommodate the federal mediator. Since the federal mediation yielded nothing — as could be expected— a new vote has been scheduled for September 13. "We used to be called the ‘fighting machinists,’" said one member. "How did we turn into the ‘call-the-federal-mediator,-I-want-to-work-without-a-contract machinists?’"

a name="‘No More Class Struggle On The Cheap’"></">‘N" More Class Struggle On The Cheap’

"No more class struggle on the cheap," was the way one machinist viewed it. "There wasn’t the bravado of ’95," concluded a shop steward, referring to that contract vote and strike. Rank and filers, with significant aid and leadership from the Party, started the pre-contract mobilizations that year, which soon became a tradition. Since then the union has organized these demonstrations, tightly controlling them to further its own goals.

But this year even the union had to admit that some marches would not have occurred were it not for the presence of the Party. We mobilized our political base to guarantee them in some areas. Although we marched through the factory with union sanction, we made it clear we were traveling a different road. This was marked by the absence of U.S. flags and the presence of CHALLENGE and 2,000 communist leaflets, which were distributed inside and outside the plants during the preceding weeks.

Only a network of CHALLENGE readers and sellers made this possible. It reflects a certain revolutionary political understanding that is needed to mount even the most modest class struggle. Rebuilding these networks, hurt by tens of thousands of layoffs, is one of our prime objectives.

We would abdicate our responsibility to the working class if we left the impression that there is any kind of alliance between the union leaders and us. The misleaders made that perfectly clear. At a rally outside negotiations, union officials picked our literature out from the many different leaflets being distributed. "You guys always flood our events with communist literature," complained the union goons. "We can’t allow this to continue." But workers took leaflets from the surrounded young comrades and boldly distributed them right in front of the thugs.

a name="Don’t Be Led Down A Primrose Path">">"on’t Be Led Down A Primrose Path

"The government is preparing to invade Iraq," said a Vietnam vet, trying to make sense out of the confusion on the day the strike vote was nullified. "I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I know they are not going to let us small people upset their plans."

Our union invited the Feds into the contract negotiations because it wasn’t prepared to lead the kind of fight these times require. The politics of "partnership," nationalism and reliance on the government have left us unprepared for the escalating attacks since 9/11. The labor movement has been based on the fantasy that we can reach an accommodation with our "own" bosses. The demoralizing confusion of the past two weeks is the price we pay.

But this chaotic period has shown that out of confusion can come greater wisdom, that we can learn to reject those who would blunt our ability to fight for our class. We can learn that the federal government is never a neutral mediator of class struggle, but rather the servant of the biggest corporations. We can learn to recognize suicidal appeals for accommodation and compromise with the bosses, especially when they are wrapped in the flag. Slowly, but inevitably, our class will learn to reject the primrose path laid out by treacherous trade union misleaders. We can then start the journey down the more difficult but ultimately only realistic path for our class: the road to revolution.

"The Big Picture"

Last week, every manager — from the lowly line supervisor to the divisional head — was on the shop floor trying to head off a strike. Since they couldn’t sell this take-away contract on its merits, they tried to instill fear and doubt. "Now’s not the time to strike," they warned. "Think of the big picture."

So just what is the big picture? Since 9/11, the bosses have launched a full-scale offensive against the working class, with the federal government usually leading the charge! The federal mediator’s call for a 30-day "cooling-off period" on the day of our strike vote spread demoralization and confusion.

The airline industry is using bankruptcy courts and the Air Transportation Stabilization Board (created after 9/11) to renounce their collective bargaining agreements and demand billion$ in concessions. They’re out to beat back wages and benefits, while gutting work-rules and laying off thousands. IAM members at United and US Airways face cuts of 20% or more.

The West Coast dockworkers’ contract expired in May. Negotiations have broken down. Bush, in consultation with the Homeland Security Department, has threatened to send federal troops to bust any possible longshore strike.

The bosses and their government are not limiting their attacks to U.S. workers. The government is using 9/11 to build for an invasion of Iraq. Their bombs and sanctions have already killed a million Iraqi workers. Millions more will be slaughtered so U.S. oil giants can maintain their stranglehold on the world’s oil supply. The bosses and their government have turned the "war on terrorism" into an international war for oil and a domestic war on workers’ jobs, wages and standard of living.

a name="PLP’ers Lead Confrontation With Nazi Vermin">">"LP’ers Lead Confrontation With Nazi Vermin

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 26 — Snipers on the rooftops! Helicopters hovering overhead! Mounted police, K-9 units, riot police in Darth Vader uniforms — 1,000 cops in all. What’s happening? A U.S. presidential visit to Latin America? No, just the U.S. ruling class, protecting hundreds of fascists in the bosses’ capital. Bush’s war on terrorism doesn’t apply to these racist terrorists.

But despite the Nazis-in-blue, PLP-led forces did deal some sharp blows to these scum. The crowd cheered when one man shouted, "Bush is nothing but a Nazi!"

The National Alliance and other fascist allies organized what was billed as the largest fascist rally here since World War II. And if you don’t count the racists in the U.S. Congress, Judiciary, and Executive branches, they were right.

The National Alliance is no joke. This was their fifth march in this area, each one bigger than the last. With a $4 million budget, 21 full-time organizers and chapters throughout the U.S., they may succeed in building a serious fascist movement where David Duke, Tom Metzger, Frank Collins and a host of other Nazis and KKK’ers failed. They have big money behind them (about $2.5 million comes from "donors"), and are making some inroads among youth. They inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and two fascist Marines to gun down a black couple in Georgia a few years ago. Despite the positive anti-fascist opposition, the Nazis still made a clear statement of their growing strength.

We had launched a summer project against fascism to win other workers and students throughout the region to seriously resist the rise of this fascist movement. Before the event, a dozen young comrades from New York, Boston, New Jersey, and Chicago joined local PLP’ers in distributing over 10,000 flyers and holding rallies in working class Anacostia, University of the District of Columbia, and Howard University. Two local unions — a government local and the Metro workers Local 689 endorsed the counter-demonstration. Amid struggles against police brutality, racial health disparities, the AIDS epidemic, imperialist war in Palestine, Afghanistan and soon in Iraq, we called on our brothers and sisters to crush these racist foot soldiers of capitalism.

In previous anti-Nazi activities, the symbolic protests of the liberals and revisionists held sway because of the low level of mass mobilization and our own internal weaknesses. But this time, our militant approach proved more in line with the needs and aspirations of millions more. The positive response from workers and youth to our week of intense political activity strengthened our confidence to play the leading role in the rally of over 400 counter-demonstrators.

Hundreds attempted to block the street where the Nazis were to march and pursued them to the Capitol, but were kept at a distance by a phalanx of cops. One Nazi staggered as a well-aimed rock opened his cheek. Three others were beaten to the ground by a group of anti-racist workers.

With the Capitol gleaming behind them, the fascists paraded behind a stone wall, two rows of temporary fences and several rows of riot-equipped cops. The crowd chanted, "Death, Death, Death to the Nazis, Power, Power, Power to the Workers," as well as, "Fascism Outside, Fascism Inside [the Capitol], Smash All Bosses!" A few protesters objected, calling for love for everyone. The angry response was, "To love the people, we must hate the Nazis! Death to the Nazis!"

The Nazis marched back to Union Station chased by hundreds of angry workers. Two more Nazis lost their police escort and their "invincibility" as workers clobbered them. A vanload of Nazis was surrounded and pummeled, but the police arrived to save them from more.

There were important improvements in the Party’s work. We won more of our friends in the unions and other mass organizations to join the protest. Some helped build it and the preceding activities. Consequently, PLP emerged as a leading force at the event itself. The majority were young workers and students. We distributed 200 CHALLENGES, introducing many to PLP’s overall ideas. This was a small but important advance in building a political base within the mass movement.

Between 20-30 militant youth with the anarchist group Anti-Racist Action were arrested when they successfully engaged a large group of Nazis in Baltimore, beating up several and preventing them from joining the D.C. march. We have a lot of political disagreements with anarchism, but we welcome the struggle with these young militants over our political strategy for communism.

It was the communist-led Soviet Red Army and partisan movement which basically defeated the Nazi 3rd Reich. Again today, a mass communist movement, based among workers, soldiers, and youth, with the highest levels of unity and discipline will defeat the fascists, their billionaire masters, the strike-breakers and warmakers.

Boston Janitors Threaten Strike; Union Cozies with Mayor

BOSTON, MA., September 10 — Ten thousand janitors in SEIU Local 615 are threatening to strike against big property owners for higher wages, full-time work and healthcare benefits. Seventy-five percent of the workers are Latino; most of the rest are black. They receive the most vicious racist treatment. Their struggle against poverty wages could inspire a mass struggle against racism. Thousands of workers ready to strike are a threat to the rulers’ need to keep workers in check through a fascist police state as they prepare to launch their wars for oil. The class struggle is beginning to sharpen.

These workers join 10,500 West Coast longshoremen, 25,000 Boeing workers, thousands of airline industry workers and others in a still small but growing wave of resistance. (See page 3.) The 4,200 Enron workers and 17,000 at WorldCom left high and dry have fueled their anger.

As usual, those at the head of the march are way behind the workers. The SEIU leadership’s idea of a political strike is to wrap it in the bosses’ flag, build patriotism and deliver workers to the Democratic Party and continued wage slavery. The union leaders are stalling on calling a strike, relying on the mayor rather than on the united strength of the workers. This has demoralized some of the workers but others have exposed the union leadership and trying to counter it with rank-and-file militancy.

"Standing Up for the American Dream" is SEIU’s battle cry. This builds the idea that janitors and bosses have common interests, and that these low-paid mainly immigrant workers have a place at the bosses’ table. This leads workers to support U.S. imperialism, especially the coming oil war in Iraq. This is particularly disgusting since immigrant workers have felt the brunt of the U.S. "War on Terror," and the fascist Homeland Defense. Hundreds are still behind bars, charged with nothing. Thousands have been deported.

Rather than stand with the racist warmakers and strike-breakers, we stand with the international working class. Yes, we demand a living wage. Yes, we demand health care for our families. But more than anything, we stand for a society where workers rule and produce for the needs of their class: communism. Joining and building a mass international PLP is the most important advance workers can gain from these struggles.

a name="NYPD Cops Do Real Racist ‘Wilding’"></">NY"D Cops Do Real Racist ‘Wilding’

BROOKLYN, NY — Once more the NYPD shows its true colors, as racist killer cops. In the space of one week, Aug. 26 to Sept. 1, they shot and killed four borough residents, at least three of them black: Marcellus Graham in Flatbush, Ernest Prather in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Paul Angel in Bensonhurst and Jamil Moore in Canarsie. Bush’s "war on terror" is running rampant on the streets of Brooklyn. With all the bosses’ patriotic garbage "celebrating" 9/11 and "hero" cops, the Klan in blue continue their racist rampage to enforce the bosses’ terror against the working class. But there have been no mass demonstrations against these murders, neither by Democratic Party "militants" like Al Sharpton nor by any irate workers and youth. We cannot allow this slaughter to proceed as "business as usual." We must make our unions, churches, schools,etc. protest these racist terror acts.

On top of these murders, DNA evidence has proven that the five black and Latin youth convicted a decade ago for the so-called "wilding" rape and assault of the Central Park jogger were actually innocent. Another man, in prison for several rapes, has confessed. So all the media racist screaming about the "wilding youths" turns out to be more racist lies. For that, these youths spent seven years in prison for a crime they never committed. Truly this is a CRIMINAL justice system.

a name="Protest Racist Boston Cops’ Murder of 2 Black Workers">">"rotest Racist Boston Cops’ Murder of 2 Black Workers

BOSTON, August 7 — PLP members and friends demonstrated at the Cambridge Police Dept. today, protesting the July murders of two mentally ill workers by Boston area cops. Shooting to kill, especially minority workers, has become unwritten police policy.

Three cops entered the basement of a Mattapan home and found a woman with a knife who had recently been released from a mental hospital and had stopped taking her medication. She had just cut the throats of her two young children and injured herself. They murdered her in cold blood, pumping several bullets into her.

The children never should have been in her care. This horrible tragedy was a direct result of racist police action combined with social service cutbacks. Over 200 Boston social workers were laid off last April, doubling the caseloads of those still working.

Several weeks later Cambridge cops burst into the basement of 59-year-old Daniel Furtado, who also had stopped taking his medication, and was wielding a child’s hatchet. The cops were responding to a neighbor’s call that he had cut their cable TV wires. He had lived in the neighborhood for 20 years and was known to the police as a harmless man. The cops forbade the family to intervene and negotiate and after a three-hour standoff, they murdered Furtado in a fusillade of bullets.

Both these deaths were deemed "justifiable" by police department investigations. The cops only had to say they felt threatened by their victims.

At the rally our chants and leaflet struck a nerve with other workers. Hundreds took our flyers and CHALLENGES and several joined the picket line. We warned about the dangers of passivity and individualism within the working class and called on the many onlookers to join us in fighting back.

Voting A Dead-End For LA Workers Battling Health Cuts

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9 — After the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to close 11 of the 18 neighborhood clinics here, there have been many meetings and rallies where angry workers protested the cuts and worse ones coming. At one recent mass meeting, a minister even blamed the government which spends billions to kill people abroad while killing people here with these cuts.

The bosses claim these cuts are necessary to cover a $668 million budget deficit, while enacting a $400 billion war budget to protect Exxon Mobil’s oil profits. But the union and community leaders organizing against the cuts are directing workers’ anger at voting certain Supervisors out of office. The County Board is sponsoring Proposition B, which would raise LA home-owners’ property taxes about $40 a year to pay for part of the healthcare deficit. This would force some workers to pay for the healthcare of poorer workers — and the bosses laugh all the way to the bank.

If California were an independent country, it’s $1.2 trillion economy would be the ninth biggest in the world. This enormous wealth is produced by the labor of some 15 million workers. It could guarantee that no one in the state go hungry, homeless or lack proper healthcare. But reality paints a different picture.

In LA County, one of the richest in the state — responsible for more than one third of the state’s economic output — one million working Angelinos do not earn enough money for basic needs, much less to pay for health insurance. The reason? Bosses of big industries like garment employing over 100,000 workers and producing almost 10% of the county’s wealth, do not guarantee the minimum wage, paid holidays or vacations, or any health coverage from the wealth they steal from workers’ labor.

No wonder 3,000,000 county residents have no healthcare and are forced to rely on the public health system for their health needs. For many this is a slaughter house. Now, with these huge cuts, an already dismal system will become genocidal. Why? Because under capitalism the bosses own the products and services produced by the working class and decide who gets how much based on profitability — all at the expense of human need.

Union and community leaders claim initiatives like Proposition B can solve the health crisis and reform capitalism. But a system based on profits for the few can’t be reformed to meet the needs of the many who produce these profits.

This is the main lesson workers must learn in this fight. The working class does not have to live under such a murderous system. We can fight for a communist revolution to smash the capitalists and their system. and build a society that will produce for workers’ need, not for bosses’ profit. Getting CHALLENGE into the hands of more county workers and those workers forced to depend on county hospitals is an important step forward in this current battle against these murderous healthcare cuts!

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SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA. — "Who knew the stock market would be in the tank? And who knew we’d be at war in Afghanistan?" That’s how the union president answered a San Luis Obispo Transit (SLO) bus driver who asked why we now have to pay $60 a month, after taxes, in pension contributions.

As the old contract expires, it’s more than just a rumor we’ll take a hit with the new one. The company’s medical contribution leaves us short by $170 per member per month. For 15 years it’s been low-paid black and Latino workers whose healthcare has been threatened by racist cutbacks. Now higher-paid workers’ health coverage is being hit, reflecting a sharpening of the bosses’ crisis. But there’s more.

For years the union has blurred our vision with the dangerous illusion that the Democrats and a rising stock market would make our families secure. Our pension plans have us chained to the stock market as a two-year slide turns into a nosedive. The union president now admits that war figures into the equation.

During World War II, families willingly donated aluminum pots and pans to the war effort to defeat the Nazis. But the developing Mid-East wars could see us being forced to collect aluminum soda cans to cover lost wages and pension benefits. Oil giants like ExxonMobil expect the working class to sacrifice to finance the Persian Gulf oil war that is crucial to maintaining their world dominance. The Democrats and Republicans agree we should pay barrels of blood for barrels of oil!

Here at S.L.O. Transit, the $165 billion federal budget deficit means fewer tax dollars for transit workers’ wages, medical benefits and pensions. Meanwhile, the Pentagon gets nearly $400 billion but schools, public health and transit get next to nothing.

The cynical LA County health director, Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, said he intended "to balance a budget, not meet all the health needs that exist in LA County. It’s not like we’re meeting those needs already."

The new transit boss substitutes "transit needs" for "health needs" when he said, "We’re going to do more with less." He means transit workers and riders will be doing more and getting less!

The working class has made its greatest gains when we attack the capitalist system and fight for the needs of our entire class. At S.L.O. Transit there is talk of slowdowns at some operating divisions, but little news of our contract negotiations. On several sides of this city, we are patiently organizing the coming fight for our future, the fight for workers’ power.

Black Workers Pay Higher Price for War Economy

As war and a fascist police state are the order of the day, racism and inequality are intensifying. Racist inequality is a principal foundation of the system, a part of its structure. In July, the National Urban League released its annual report, The State of Black America. It details some of the most racist aspects of the U.S. political and economic system.

The stock market’s recent collapse is another example of capitalism’s instability and its inability to provide the working class in general, and black and Latino workers in particular, stable jobs and a decent standard of living.

Workers are paying the billions of dollars needed to invade Iraq and losing billions more disappearing on the stock market gambling table and open thievery of U.S. corporations. Black workers have been hit the hardest. In June, the unemployment rate for whites was 5.2%, but was more than twice that for black workers, 10.7%. (As CHALLENGE has reported, these figure are about half the actual jobless totals.) In 1998, 26% of African-Americans were poor, compared with 8% of non-Hispanic whites. There has been no gain for black workers in home ownership since before the civil rights movement. In the workplace, blacks are twice as likely to hold lower-paying service jobs. The percentage of black men between 25 and 34 whose wages are below the poverty line jumped from about 20% in 1969 to over 50% in 1991.

If black workers were at the same level as whites, there would be three million more black homeowners, three million more blacks with high school diplomas and three million more with college degrees. The average black family would see a 56% jump in annual income.

Both political parties are responsible. Under Clinton the absolute incomes of the poorest blacks declined dramatically while one million more people, mainly young black men, were imprisoned. Clinton destroyed welfare and replaced it with $1.67/hour slave labor "Workfare" jobs. Since California passed Proposition 209 in 1995 banning the consideration of "race" in college admissions, government employment and contracting, black and Latino enrollment at University of California campuses has dropped by roughly 50%.

Meanwhile, black people win Oscars, break home-run records, lead in women’s tennis and men’s golf and dominate the music world. Racist Bush is quick to point to his National Security Advisor Condelezza Rice and Secy. of State Colin Powell as playing leading roles in his administration. The rulers are trying to convince tens of millions of the most oppressed and exploited to fight in their wars for Exxon’s oil profits.

Unfortunately, the Urban League, the other civil rights organizations and the unions are in the hands of the most dominant "liberal" wing of the ruling class, which is pushing the hardest for war and a fascist police state. The working class has no stake in supporting the rulers’ efforts to convince them they can "become anything they want to be" (even CEOs). This has never been true. We must smash racism in all its forms, unite the working class during class struggle, and build a mass PLP from inside the rulers’ own mass organizations.

a name="Terrorism Won’t Free Workers Of Capitalist Oppression">">"errorism Won’t Free Workers Of Capitalist Oppression

Millions of people worldwide think terrorism is a legitimate way to fight imperialism, the biggest terrorists of modern times. It seems to be "the weapon of the weak," a means for the very oppressed to fight back. A single terrorist with a group, a bomb and willingness to die basically cannot be stopped. But individual terrorism is reactionary and anti-working class.

Many in the Middle East see terrorism as the main tactic of anti-imperialism. The reactionary ideology behind this is nationalism and religious fanaticism. While uniting with the masses in fighting U.S. and Israeli imperialism and fascist mass terror, we must also fight terrorism and its reactionary ideology which never has and never will lead the working class to power.

Terrorist politics reflects the anti-working class idea that millions of workers and their allies can’t be organized for mass violence and revolutionary political action. This expresses contempt for the working class. What’s more, terrorism usually provokes even more violence and suffering at the hands of the imperialists, without preparing workers to defend themselves.

Palestinian terrorist groups, like Hamas and Al Aqsa (linked to Arafat’s PLO) want to replace Israeli bosses with Palestinian bosses in exploiting Palestinian workers. They plan and carry out attacks on civilians while opposing the organizing of workers across all borders along class lines. Their goal is a state run by a small elite of fascist Islamic fundamentalists or nationalist bosses.

Why should workers fight and die for another form of exploitation? We should never advocate any kind of capitalist solution. Nothing less than communist revolution will end exploitation of the working class, whether in Palestine or anywhere else.

Some bourgeois anti-imperialists advocate civil disobedience rather than terrorism, like Gandhi’s tactics in India during the 1920s, or the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. in the ’60s. But the "politics" of civil disobedience also means relying on some group of exploiters. Sometimes it means banking on "world opinion," which means counting on divisions among the imperialists, either within the Israeli ruling class or between European, Israeli and U.S. rulers.

In short, "civil disobedience" means hoping one group of rulers will support you because they find it useful to do so in their own struggle against another group of rulers.

Terrorism and "civil disobedience" are two sides of the politics of "national liberation." Neither will train the working class to take revolutionary leadership. A Palestinian state run by Palestinian bosses and cops — either secular like Arafat’s fascist Palestinian Authority, or religious, like the brutal fascist regime in Iran — holds only continued super-exploitation for the working class.

Why Communists Who Led Working Class in Middle East Failed

In workers’ hands, communist politics can be a mighty material force. We must bring communist ideas to the workers in every struggle. Just a few decades ago, the fundamentalists were relatively weak in the region and were built by U.S., Saudi and other Arab bosses to counter the communists, who led the working class, particularly the key sector of oil workers. The Iraq Communist Party, one of the largest in the region, had a multi-ethnic leadership (Arab, Kurd and Jewish). It organized a massive violent general strike which led to the toppling of the pro-British monarchy in the late 1950s. But the CP’s reformist and "lesser evil" politics (alliance with "progressive nationalist" bosses) helped prevent the working class from taking revolutionary power. The united front with "lesser evils" led to the nationalist Ba’ath Party, which murdered tens of thousands of their former allies (communists and workers in general). Saddam Hussein was a product of the Ba’ath Party’s anti-communist politics. The CIA then helped finger most of the targeted communists. Such united fronts caused the slaughter of millions more communists and other workers in Indonesia, Iran and Egypt, among others.

Fighting the ideology of terrorism, "lesser evil" bosses and three-stage revolution — national liberation, socialism (with many features of capitalism) and later communism — are essential to building a new communist movement.

Who Sold Saddam Biowarfare Agents? The U.S. of Course

The U.S. ruling class, in its drive towards war to seize Iraq’s oil fields, has painted Saddam Hussein as "worse than Hitler," especially for his attempt to develop so-called "weapons of mass destruction (WMD)." Of course, the U.S. is the world’s leading producer of WMD.

They charge Saddam with threatening to use chemical and biological weapons. And who supplied Iraq with the materials to create such a program? None other than the U.S.!

According to two reports (5/25/94 and 10/7/94) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration, a veritable witches brew of biological materials were exported to Iraq by private U.S. suppliers. This was pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Among the dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war were anthrax, clostridium Botulinum (a source of botulinum toxin), Histoplasma Capsulatam (which causes a disease attacking the lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart) and brucella Melitensis (a bacteria that can damage major organs), among others.

The Senate Report said, "These biological materials were not…weakened and were capable of reproduction.." Furthermore, "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the U.S. were identical to those United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraq biological warfare program."

Interestingly, a front-page article in the New York Times (8/19) that reported senior military officers revealing the Reagan administration had provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance during decisive battles in the Iran-Iraq war, neglected to mention the U.S. supplying Iraq with these biowarfare agents. Presumably that was "news not fit to print."

So U.S. rulers use Hussein’s possession of such WMD — which he may very well no longer have — as the "reason" for their invasion of Iraq Yet it was these very same rulers who put them in Saddam’s hands. If this makes Hussein "worse than Hitler," what does that make his U.S. imperialist suppliers who now declare themselves on a path of unending war and expanding fascism?

Cops Step Up Racist Terror in Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS, MN August 23 — Bap-Bap-Bap-Bap! Shots from the guns of police Sgt. Bob Gretton and cop Steve Blackwell filled the air. When the shooting stopped, 11-year-old Julius Powell, had a gunshot wound the size of a quarter in his left arm and his uncle’s pit bull was dead. Angry residents in the Jordan neighborhood exploded. People started cursing and throwing bottles at the police and news crews as they arrived on the scene. Several cars and news vans were hit and one news van was torched.

It all began when several police cars and a special SWAT van came to the home of Julius’ grandmother, Shirley Powell, with a "high risk" narcotics search warrant. They leaped from their cars, guns drawn. Julius’ uncle, Tavares Powell, was holding a leashed pit bull. The police claim he let go of the leash and the dog ran towards them. Gretton and Blackwell both fired MP-5 submachine guns at the dog and say a ricocheting bullet hit Julius.

But neighbors and family members aren’t buying it. "The dog just stood there barking and the cops came up shooting," said Tony Powell. Julius’ parents said they thought the injury was caused by a direct gunshot from at least one of the cops. Inspector Tim Dolan said, " It was an accidental shooting, regardless if it was a ricochet or we hit directly."

An angry crowd grew to about 100 and the police cut their search short. They found six bags of marijuana and a handgun. Shirley Powell was arrested and charged with endangerment of a child. Yet that was never a consideration when the cops, weapons drawn, raided the house with ten children under age 14 in it.

The next day black nationalist businessman Mike Moss met with city leaders, praising them for how they handled the situation. His City Incorporated all-black security force will be used to patrol the neighborhood.

This was the third act of racist police terror this month. On August 1, 60-year-old Martha Donald, with a history of mental illness and substance abuse, was killed in a shoot-out with police in a bathroom of her housing project. Her niece called 911 because her aunt had been drinking and threatening to use her gun. One cop was also killed.

From that point on, many black workers feel that the police have reacted like, "You shot one of ours, now we’ll shoot as many of yours as we can get away with." On August 13, 19-year-old Terrelle Oliver was shot at least three times by cops who said he threatened them as he fled!

This latest round of racist terror is just a taste of what the bosses have in store for us as they inch closer to war and build a fascist police state. We will increase our CHALLENGE readership here and discuss with our co-workers how best to respond.

Workers of the World, Write!

Letters

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As the chairperson of our school’s teachers union committee, I publish and distribute its newsletter to all staff members at school. The newsletter is three years old. It reports on city-wide union issues, organizes modest campaigns for improvements at our school and analyzes how major world developments significantly impact us.

I do this openly as a communist and proud member of PLP. Teachers have accepted and support this approach, electing and re-electing me as chairperson of the union committee. In fact, the majority of our teachers get CHALLENGE.

In February our local union president wrote me stating it’s "inappropriate" to "argue a private political cause" in the newsletter. The president was particularly critical of the newsletter’s comparison of George Bush and Osama bin Laden. The president’s anti-communist letter led to a good discussion in our elected union committee. They wrote a strong response signed by every member! The letter:

• Indicated "surprise and upset" with the president’s request for our chapter chairperson to "desist from putting forward his political views" in the newsletter;

• Cited our chapter chairperson being "elected twice by the staff with their full knowledge of his politics";

• Recalled that two years ago discussions were held regarding the appropriateness of the chapter chairperson and others expressing their political views in the newsletter and "while there was not unanimous agreement, there was a clear mandate from the vast majority of staff members" that the newsletter was "in fact, an excellent forum to present views on issues that concern us all, teachers and students";

• Approved the chapter chairperson’s attempt "to initiate a dialogue about the war, partly to counter the very dangerous sentiment that ‘you’re either for us or against us’ which the current Washington administration is proposing and which perhaps you [the union president] seems too ready to accept";

• Said the committee believes it’s wrong to criticize our chapter chairperson’s efforts to encourage wide debate among union members about war because "as educators it is our duty to engage in inquiry and debate on this and other serious issues"; and,

• Concluded that unions are political organizations and "it would be a very dangerous trend to attempt to limit the type of political views a member of the organization can hold and express within all union forums and publications." [It should be noted that PLP does not support unhindered free speech for racists or for others who organize in support of exploitation.]

Every faculty member received a copy of our letter as well as the president’s, and he backed off. In another letter, the president said our chapter chairperson is encouraged, along with "other politically committed members," to air their beliefs and "engage in debate." He said if I wished to create an "opinion section" for the newsletter, I was "free to do so."

This was an important victory. My co-workers deserve serious respect for taking a difficult but highly principled stand. The union committee accomplished something quite important. We won the right, at least for now, to have a revolutionary anti-capitalist point of view in our union’s political debate.

Midwestern Striving to be a Fish in the Sea of the People

Church Members Confront Politician on Iraq War

This summer our club — based in a church soup kitchen — has grown modestly through some political struggle and developing ties with friends, raising our commitment to the Party.

Representing the church, some of us walked through several miles of neighborhoods north of our parish, preparing for a meeting with our congressperson’s aide. Workers eagerly took our bilingual flyers decrying the deaths of children in Baghdad, Bethlehem and our own city. We sang hymns and versions of "Bella Ciao" (an Italian anti-fascist song) and the Internationale with our priest’s hearty participation.

In meeting with the congressional aide, a multi-racial group raised the representatives’ silence on the coming Iraqi war, her support for Israeli imperialism and inaction on using federal homeless funds quickly and decently to house our sisters and brothers. The aide dutifully took notes and promised answers. We will intensify our pressure and confront him early this fall. By such actions many church members, who basically think our congressperson is pretty good, will learn much more about the role of liberal politicians.

We are also hosting a program about the racist murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis caused by U.S. and British sanctions and military attacks. From this meeting and a sermon I will give shortly we will struggle for an even larger group to meet with staff members of one or both of our senators. They are big supporters of Israeli fascism and racist "homeland security." After the senators are more exposed as racist imperialist operatives, we hope to join with student activists in our city to sharpen the anti-war, anti-fascist work in the metropolitan region.

Our best activity this summer was our "summer camp for activists and those who want to be more active." A group of us lived out a communist life-style for five days in a friend’s barn near the Canadian border. We brought many books and articles on racism and imperialist war from a church library. Each person chose a short selection to study and report on. Many had never done this before and did well in this context of warm, comradely leadership and support. We also fished, toured the lovely farm region and relaxed.

One terrifying experience brought home the reality of intensifying U.S. fascism. We entered Canada just to look around and stayed for less than an hour. When returning, we discovered the only friend who was not yet a citizen had forgotten her green card. We were detained for two hours. Fortunately her brother was able to locate her card in her apartment, and the number matched the computer’s data. Her name had been mis-recorded. Had her name been "Fatima" rather than Frances the INS might have jailed her for deportation. As she held her small son and sobbed, I knew something of what it must have been like for a U.S. slave to be on the block and fear being sold away from her family. Our friend and her husband have been giving much more leadership to our club, both before and after this experience. Just as in fascist Italy in the 1930’s and ’40’s, the Party can grow in the jaws of fascism!

With confidence in the Working Class,

Red Churchmouse

Steelworkers Attack Bush But Must Oppose Dems, Too

On September 5, about 300 steelworkers and others protested Bush’s appearance at a Republican fund-raiser. The protest was used to support a liberal Democrat for Congress. It was a pretty tame gathering, the sole proposal being getting out the vote. We rallied in a small park across the river from where Bush was speaking.

It was a much smaller, and more passive version of the anti-globalization rally in Seattle several years ago — union members, environmentalists and a few anarchists. In Seattle there was a lot of anger over sweatshops, prison labor and the terrible conditions workers face worldwide. Since 9/11, the bosses and their agents in the unions and mass organizations have turned this hatred of the system into a more typical trade union movement.

One speaker was cheered when he called for international solidarity. Workers are hungry to understand the world we are facing. Steelworkers are working without contracts, losing health care and pensions. As the bosses move to war to prop up their system of thievery, these attacks will intensify. The better we know the workers, and the better they know the Party, and the more battles we share, the greater our influence. Developing networks of CHALLENGE readers and distributors is especially important.

Sometimes it’s hard to gauge the quantitative and qualitative effect we have in the mass movement. It’s equally hard to gauge the effect the mass movement has on us. We successfully mobilized our PLP club and some friends to attend this rally. Generally it was a good thing. We had a chance to interact with our co-workers and union members, and have more serious discussions with those who came with us. It’s another small way I am getting more involved in my union’s political action committee. We must be in the mass movement in order to build a mass base for PLP and the great prize we are fighting for — a communist society run by and for the working class.

Big Red

a name="Don’t Fight Exxon’s War — Fight the Bosses"></a>"on’t Fight Exxon’s War — Fight the Bosses

A couple of days ago I heard an early 1960’s anti-war folksong that had a bitter line that went something like, "Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to flowers everyone." I started wondering where has all the money for public transit gone?

I’m no singer, but with the idea of starting a little struggle on the shop floor, I posted a short summary of the 2003 US defense (war) budget. Within a couple of hours, a forklift operator came to me and asked, "Did you put up those papers about the defense budget?"

Since I knew him a little, I said, "Yeah Carl, I put them up." He hesitated for a moment and I wasn’t sure where this was going. Then he said in a low voice, "You got any more copies?" I went straight to find a copy machine.

The next day someone had scrawled in big letters across the bottom "Bomb Iraq." At first I was going to write a sharp political comment underneath it. But I think I should get some feedback from Carl and a couple of others on what to do about it. It’s a chance to show Carl CHALLENGE newspaper.

This incident shows two sides of the struggle going on among the working class. Many workers buy into the imperialist "Whack Iraq" program but a ton of workers already know that the bosses plans mean that more "death and taxes" are the only "sure" things for workers under capitalism. Now the struggle begins. That’s what we’re after, a chance to put our communist ideas against the bosses’ line of exploitation and war.

Red Transit Worker

Nationalism is no way to fight oppression

There’s a large Palestinian "liberation" movement in the UK. The "Scottish Friends Of Palestine Campaign" had a march of 50,000 in London on April 13. We were invited but we declined. This is why.

They claim they’re for the defense of the Palestinians, but their speakers shout, "DIE ISRAEL DIE!" on the platform. The capitalist "left" calls for the victory of the Intifada because they feel that a victory for the Palestinian capitalist class would be beneficial to the Palestinian working class. This directly contradicts the theory of the class struggle, which states there cannot be unity between capitalist and worker, and that for workers, there’s no "national interest."

As Lenin said, a defeat for one group of imperialists will not weaken capitalism. The fall of the British Empire has not weakened capitalism one iota. The nationalism of the oppressed is no better than the nationalism of the oppressor. Nationalism is anti-working class poison and plays no progressive role in society! It’s an attempt to hide the class struggle, to unify social classes that have antagonistic interests.

Oswald Mosley (British Union Of Fascists) said everything must be subordinated to the "national interest"; strikes must be banned, and that if people want to end class struggle they should join the Fascists. It’s interesting that the British Nazi Party also calls for the victory of Palestine. So now groups openly on the bosses’ side are allied to the capitalist "left" who claim to represent our class interests. Anything the Nazis support must be very suspect indeed.

Uniting with our exploiters is a dead-end for workers. The working class should wage a war against them and their "left wing" capitalist lackeys. Workers have no stake in shedding blood in the Middle East. Smash the social-fascist lackeys of the bosses! Abolish the wage system!

"British" comrade

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

RED EYE reprints clippings from the New York Times, British Manchester Guardian Weekly, and many other well-known capitalist publications. From their own papers we collect material which communists find useful in exposing capitalist manuevers and weaknesses. Especially useful for students and others who want an "official source for important facts. Abbreviations: MG= Manchester Guardian; NYT= New York Times; MM=Multinational Monitor; LOW=Liberal Opinion Weekly; FT=Financial Times

Bush ready for big sacrifice?

When President Bush held his economic forum in Waco, Texas…Jay Leno remarked that Mr. Bush would do whatever it took to keep the economy strong — "even if he must stay on vacation for three months." (NYT, 8/22)

World is learning: votes no help

Mr. Haddadi, like many others…cares most about…the misery of cramped housing and a lack of water. Discontent is so high that nearly 70 percent of the voters in Algiers area did not cast ballots in the national elections on May 30. Asked if he voted, Mr. Haddadi shouted, "Never! It won’t change anything." (NYT, 8/11)

School $: Guess who gets most

In most states, school districts with the neediest students receive far less state and local tax money…than schools with the fewest poor children. (NYT, 8/9)

Productivity mystery solved

By cutting back the hours of workers without reducing the workload, employers pushed up the nation’s annual growth rate of productivity by 1.1 percent in the second quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday. (NYT, 8/10)

Capitalists are single-minded

The hierarchies of businesses continue to contain an above-average representation of hard-nosed, ambitious individuals who want to be number one. When Gianni Agnelli, patriarch of Fiat’s founding family, was asked what made a successful company, he said: "An odd number of directors in the boardroom." Before adding, "Three is too many." (FT, 8/9)

English-teacher shortage hits 5 million immigrant students

The number of students with limited English skills, most of them Hispanic, has doubled. to five million….If [they]…were to be taught in classes of the average national size — about 17 pupils per teacher — up to 290,000 teachers would be needed. (NYT, 9/5)

US disrupts already-inadequate programs to aid world’s women

Brutality…kills and maims girls and women across much of Africa and Asia….Last month Mr. Bush cut off all $34 million in funds for the United Nations Population Fund in all 142 countries in which it operates….

[The] program in Burundi has now been canceled — along with midwife training in Algeria, a center to fight AIDS in Haiti and a maternal mortality reduction program in India….

The central issue is that 500,000 women die each year in pregnancy or childbirth; that 100 million women and girls worldwide are "missing" because they are denied adequate food or medical care, or because they are aborted or killed at birth because they are female; that 60 percent of the children kept out of elementary school are girls; that 130 million girls have undergone genital mutilation; that between one and two million girls and women are trafficked into prostitution annually….(NYT, 8/16)

(This is a 3-weeks issue of Challenge)

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A Year After September 11: U.S. Rulers At War Over Iraq War Plans

Big Bosses Need A Long Bloody War To Remain Top Dog

Federal Mediator Won’t Be Neutral at Boeing Talks

‘Meet My Wife: A Terrorist Supporter’

Patriotism Helps Strikebreaking

‘Jobless Recovery’: Workers Always Lose in Capitalism’s Periodic Crises

Liberal Pols, Union Hacks Undermine Dockworkers’ Struggle

Open Letter In Solidarity With Dockworkers From Active, Laid-Off And Retired Boeing Workers

Blame Capitalism for Murder of Ciudad Juárez Women

Mob Violence Mirrors Racist Cops

Lesser Evil Chirac Building Police State

U.S. Victory In Afghanistan Unravelling

LETTERS

Win Soldiers To Fight Sexism

Church Groups Protest Nuclear Weapons, Iraq War

UMWA Did Nothing To Help Trapped Miners

• Editorial reply

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A Year After September 11

U.S. Rulers At War Over Iraq War Plans

A funny thing happened on the way to Baghdad. The main wing of the U.S. ruling class (led by the Rockefeller’s Exxon-Mobil oil gang) and the Pentagon have opened a very public assault on Bush’s plan for invading Iraq. In July, Pentagon sources leaked two scenarios under consideration. One involves attacking Iraq from the west, north, and south with 250,000 U.S. ground troops and then fighting on to Baghdad. In the other, a smaller U.S. airborne force assaults the capital first and radiates outwards. As the criticisms mount, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld plan to "go it alone" in Iraq may have them going it alone in Washington.

We should not be misled by this major tactical difference between Bush and the liberals. An invasion may be delayed, but it is far from scrapped. Both sides are committed to US world dominance and control of oil, regardless of the price in workers’ blood.

One of the main points of conflict appears to be that Bush & Co. have not "made the case" to win workers and soldiers to accept massive casualties in Iraq or in other oil wars that will follow. Liberal strategists see the Vietnam Syndrome as the biggest hurdle Bush has yet to overcome. A chorus of voices from the liberal Rockefeller-Exxon Mobil wing of the Republican Party is warning Bush that a half-baked invasion could cause U.S. imperialism more problems than it would solve.

Not surprisingly, two of the loudest voices are those of Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, two former generals who earned their stripes being defeated in Vietnam. Schwarzkopf, the butcher of Desert Storm in 1991, is preaching that the main lesson of Vietnam is never to go to war without the full support of the population. During Vietnam, workers, soldiers and youth were not politically committed to kill and die for U.S. imperialism and rebelled. The specter of Vietnam still haunts the rulers. "If the action involved ground troops and resulted in significant American casualties, a majority of 51 percent would oppose the action." (Washington Post, 8/18)

Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Naval War College, Veterans Administration psychiatrist Jonathan Shay has written a new book called Odysseus in America. Shay compares the ancient Greek hero’s adventures to the travails of a traumatized modern veteran returning home. The book’s main point is that trauma and rebellion among soldiers can be avoided by improving leadership, training and camaraderie. Make the troops more loyal and they become more lethal.

Big Bosses Need A Long Bloody War To Remain Top Dog

Exxon Mobil doesn’t want a hit-and-run operation. Maintaining a stranglehold on the world’s oil supplies and shipping routes is crucial to the rulers’ strategy of preventing the emergence of a rival superpower. The main wing of the U.S. ruling class—and their politicians inside both the Republican and Democratic Parties—see that achieving this goal will take a protracted, long-term effort. Rockefeller stooge Henry Kissinger said, "Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed." (New York Times, 8/16)

The Pentagon is gearing up for a much longer conflict than anything Bush has tried to sell the public. The Navy just awarded the Maersk shipping line a five-year contract to operate vessels that will ferry tanks and ammunition from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf. (Defense Department press release, 8/5) The Air Force has built a huge permanent base in Qatar, within striking range of Iraq.

Brent Scowcroft, Bush Sr.’s national security advisor warned Bush Jr., "[D]estroy[ing] Saddam’s regime...would not be a cakewalk. On the

contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive...and could as well be bloody…Finally, if we are to achieve our strategic objectives in Iraq, a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation." (Wall Street Journal, 8/15)

These critics and others represent the sector of U.S. capital that has the most to lose from a misfire in Iraq. Kissinger and Scowcroft work for Kissinger Associates, a "strategic consulting group" that counts Exxon Mobil as its top client. When Scowcroft calls "global terrorism" the main threat to U.S. interests, he means that Al Qaeda and "terrorists" in Indonesia and the Philippines could threaten Exxon Mobil and shut off vital sea-lanes to their tankers.

Don’t look for anti-war sentiment among liberal ruling-class spokesmen who urge caution in Iraq. Despite their words, they will sacrifice human lives by the millions for the sake of profit. Capitalism makes murderous oil wars inevitable. Begging for peace won’t stop these imperialist butchers. Only communist revolution can smash imperialist war. This is worth fighting and dying for. Building the PLP, now and in the long, hard years ahead, will eventually lead our class to overthrow the war makers.

U.S. Bosses’ Road to Baghdad Full of Potholes

While Exxon and BP want to recoup the oil fields they lost to Iraqi nationalization in the late 1950s, the road to Baghdad is proving to be a difficult one for the U.S/British imperialists. A force of local Iraqi-Kurd mercenaries to oust Saddam Hussein and form a pro-U.S. government is not so easy to assemble. In early August, the motley crew slated to form a "Northern Alliance"-Afghan-type invasion force was invited to Washington. The leading section was the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmad Chalabi, whose main claim to fame has been to grab and mis-use the millions they received from the U.S. government.

"Not far away in London, Saad Jabr, leader of one of the oldest opposition groups, the Free Iraq Council, says the INC ‘was created by the Americans…to dismantle the opposition.’ A London representative of the powerful Kurdistan Democratic Party thinks Mr. Chalabi has ‘never been a team player. He has alienated many people with his words and wild ideas.’ The tensions among Iraq’s opposition groups amount to a significant impediment as the Bush administration speaks more publicly about ousting Mr. Hussein." (Wall Street Journal, 8/13).

One key player missing from the Washington trip was Kurdish Democratic Party chief Massoud Barzani, the most powerful Kurdish warlord, whose father led the largest Kurdish rebellion of the last century. His absence "was a blow to the Bush administration officials who had orchestrated the meeting in part to demonstrate that Iraqi opposition forces were unified behind a new campaign to oust Saddam Hussein." (NY Times, 8/15)

Even offering Barzani a private plane and a personal visit with Bush failed to get him to Washington. Barzani is crucial because he leads tens of thousands of experienced Kurdish fighters.But Barzani has his own plans — forming a Kurdish mini-state controlling key oil resources around Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The Turkish government, a vital U.S. ally, fears this might incite its own Kurdish population to rebel. "Turkish officials have warned that they are prepared to go to war to prevent the Iraqi Kurds from declaring a kind of mini Kurdish state within Iraq." (Times).

In 1993, Barzani’s group started fighting the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) over the lucrative oil smuggling revenues. The PUK is led by Barzani’s rival Jalal Talabani (who came to the Washington meeting). At that time Barzani called for Saddam Hussein to help crush the PUK. The Iraqi army seized the opportunity to wipe out the INC from its CIA-established headquarters in the town of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

When U.S. bosses decide to invade Iraq, all hell might break loose. There are some 60 smaller anti-Saddam Hussein groups as well as hundreds of individuals operating independently, including a notable senior military defector from Iraq, Nizar al-Khazraji, who played a role in using poison gas against Iranian soldiers in 1988. Reagan and Bush, Sr. provided aid and logistical help to Iraq, and "wasn’t so horrified by Iraq’s use of gas," according to US military officers. (New York Times, 8/18) So even if U.S. troops seize the oil fields and eliminate Hussein, the resulting conflicts might make Afghanistan look like a tea party (see page 6).

(A future article will examine what the working class of Iraq, the Persian Gulf and the world can do against this war-war-war-and-more-war hell created by the world’s imperialists.)

Big Bosses Need A Long Bloody War To Remain Top Dog

It’s been one year since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC. In this time, the U.S. launched war in Afghanistan, war in the Middle-East has escalated, and millions of workers have lost their jobs in the U.S. and around the world. Capitalism around the world is failing and killing workers for the interest of profits. Now more than ever, the working class needs a revolution to get rid of this system of exploitation.

Don’t Trust the Same Government that Threatens to Bust Dockworkers’ Strike

Federal Mediator Won’t Be Neutral at Boeing Talks

SEATTLE-TACOMA, WA, August 15 — The Machinists’ union asked a federal mediator to intervene in contract talks today. The negotiators cited the wide gap in pension proposals and "job security" language. Just days before, the longshoreman held a rally at Pier 66 demanding the federal government get out of their negotiations. Is the role of the federal government sometimes positive and sometimes negative? Is it neutral, "above and beyond" the class struggle?

The government is, and always will be, the agent of class rule. Under capitalism, the government always serves the bosses. It is the power behind the bosses’ dictatorship.

The bosses and their agents in the labor movement spread the illusion that the government and its mediators can be honest brokers, even neutral. But dockworkers are seeing the real truth, that the government is an instrument of bosses’ terror.

A Fox In The Hen House

Why then would the union negotiators invite our enemy into the contract talks? The sad fact is that they believe the interests of the workers and bosses are reconcilable.

"The way we see it, there is nothing wrong with telling a corporation, ‘If your revenues are up, if your orders are up, you hire more workers, you don’t ship work overseas,’" chief negotiator Dick Schneider, told the New York Times. "But we understand that if your revenues are down then you lay people off." (Our emphasis, Ed.)

But the "State" — and all the organs of governmental oppression like the army, police, courts and laws — arose precisely because the interests of workers and bosses are irreconcilable. The bosses get out of their periodic crises of overproduction by attacking us. Their need to maximize profits is in direct contradiction with our need for a decent life. How much longer will we allow them to exploit our labor and then discard us like so much extra baggage when their profits are threatened?

‘Meet My Wife: A Terrorist Supporter’

At the Longshoremen’s demonstration, an older speaker observed, "Bush calls us terrorists. I’d like to introduce you to my wife, Edith. She’s a terrorist supporter….And my kids: more terrorist supporters!" The crowd roared with laughter. Everyone there knew that the real war was the war on workers.

Who is prosecuting this war? Who had secret meetings with Homeland Security to plan the mobilization of Army and National Guard troops to take over the docks? The same Federal Government, that’s who!

Even faced with these stark facts, the union leaders still push their faith in capitalism. "If we just spend more time and money electing ‘friends of labor,’ we can sway the government in our direction."

But the capitalists’ government has never been peacefully taken over by the working class! We can’t elect a workers’ state to serve our interests. We can’t turn the bosses’ state into an instrument of workers’ rule. We must smash it!

Mediators won’t get us jobs, let alone answer the bosses’ "Homeland-Security" attacks on our class. To get the job done, we must build a mass revolutionary communist movement to smash the bosses’ dictatorship and replace it with the dictatorship of the working class to serve our needs. Joining the Progressive Labor Party and circulating Challenge, are good first steps.

1919 Seattle Longshoremen Aided Bolshevik Revolution

(Seattle author Anna Louise Strong remembers a proud chapter in our labor history in her book, "I Change Worlds." The year was 1919. Longshoremen had discovered arms secretly being shipped to Russia to supply the 17 capitalist armies that had invaded the Soviet Union to destroy the new Bolshevik working-class revolution.) The following is an excerpt from Strong’s book:

"Seattle longshoremen led the strike against supplying arms to [the counter-revolutionary] Kolchak [forces], and it spread up and down the coast. They had just won by their wartime strength their first collective agreement with the shipping companies.…Hardly was the ink dry on the agreement when the workers discovered that arms were in the sealed cases [labeled ‘sewing machines’] that were being shipped to Kolchak. They knew what they risked when they voted to strike, thus breaking the collective agreement, which they were never again able to renew. But they knew also that British workers struck against sending arms to the intervention in Russia; that French soldiers mutinied; that workers struck in solidarity all around the world. Thus they did their part against Kolchak, their share in the world revolution."

(When 40 scabs were sent to load the arms, 400 longshoremen "met" them. Few of the scabs escaped unscathed. — PL Magazine, July 1973)

Patriotism Helps Strikebreaking

I went to the recent International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) rally in Seattle. There were 500 to 1,000 workers there, about half longshoremen. The rest were organized by various other unions and mass organizations.

I was impressed with the apparent militance and class-consciousness presented by the union. On the surface this seemed to be a very good rally. But soon the essence became clearer. One thing that stood out was all the war talk. Workers carried signs saying, "No War on Workers." The speakers seemed to understand that this Bush administration attack — threatening to use federal troops to break any strike — is part of a war effort and a disciplining of the working class, but they felt the workers’ interests and "U.S. interests" were essentially the same. But "U.S. interests" are those of the ruling class, not the workers.

There was talk of fighting long and hard to protect the workers’ interests, of striking and taking to the streets. There were calls to unite dockworkers with other area workers. However, the union’s main demand is to preserve current jobs and pensions while sacrificing future jobs.(See CHALLENGE, AUG.21) This betrays a self-serving position and is not true class-consciousness. Bush was painted as the enemy along with the company. One speaker even called the CEO’s of WorldCom and Enron "the real terrorists." There is tremendous potential in these labor struggles for our Party to point to capitalism as the real enemy, one which will continue producing wars and sharpening attacks on the working class.

When Bush talks about sending federal troops to break a strike, it’s clear that workers are the enemy in the "war on terrorism," but then the union gets defensive and announces they’re "the real patriots." However, capitalism requires war and squeezing the most labor for the lowest cost from the entire working class in an unending drive to maximize profits. In wartime, which seems to be all the time nowadays, this drive intensifies When Bush said "You’re either with us or against us," he was talking to workers and he meant regardless of the costs involved.

Without revolutionary leadership the workers will lose in the long run, in any struggle. But the contradictions of capitalism become increasingly evident, as the need for greater profits impels more blatant attacks on workers requiring intensified fascism. By organizing resistance to these attacks, the Party can win by recruiting workers in the course of this struggle.

We must become more involved in the mass organizations and should attend such rallies with our co-workers. This enhances our opportunity to develop workers’ knowledge of these basic questions.

We’re planning to connect this struggle to the one at Boeing and to other work in the area.

Seattle Red

‘Jobless Recovery’: Workers Always Lose in Capitalism’s Periodic Crises

U.S. capitalism’s latest "jobless recovery" is fast degenerating into a "double dip recession," a second decline before emerging from the first one. "The beginnings of a normal recovery…seemed to grind to a halt in July." (New York Times, 8/12)

For the working class, this means more mass layoffs, speed-up and wage-cuts, enabling U.S. corporations to maintain and/or increase profits.

The bosses boast they’re increasing productivity (how much a worker produces in an hour), which is "good for the economy." Good" for whom? The Times explains that employers have become "skilled" at responding to fall-offs in demand by rapidly laying off workers and cutting overtime for those remaining so that, "Employees still on the job worked faster." The current "increased productivity" is based on speed-up, pure and simple.

Northwestern Univ. economist Robert Gordon says, "It is easy in the United States to get sharp and sudden declines in hours by laying off workers and eliminating overtime, and this contributes to healthy productivity growth in hard times." "Healthy for whom? Maybe economists keep collecting their paychecks from Wall Street investment houses and universities, but certainly not for the millions laid off nor for those remaining who are sped up unmercifully.

All this means, "Profit no longer shrinks…now that companies are quicker to cut labor costs by shedding workers and hours." (Times, 8/10) This reduces workers’ income, affecting consumer spending. Its decline leads to "another round of cost-cutting" and "widespread redundancies [layoffs]." (London Financial Times, 8/2) "Stagnant Wages Pose Added Risks to Weak Economy," headlines the Aug. 11 Times — which economists say has become the driving force for maintaining the economy.

One current drain on workers’ income is the rising cost of health insurance: "Profits are squeezed so employers have to shift more of the cost [of health insurance] to employees, and it is harder and harder to get a job, so companies don’t have to worry about employees going somewhere else." (Times, 8/11) This is an economic "recovery"?

All this confirms Karl Marx’s analysis about capitalism’s "Reserve Army of the Unemployed." The bosses’ system creates the army of unemployed that enables them to cut wages and speed up workers who fear joining that "army," enabling the bosses to slowly start increasing profits once again. Meanwhile, the working class suffers untold miseries, losing savings and homes, gong into debt and falling prey to illness and earlier deaths as well as increasing mental anguish.

"Officially" eight million are unemployed, but the real total is at least twice that. The 8,000,000 doesn’t include those who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs, the two million in prison and those driven onto welfare or to join the military because they can’t find jobs. Black and Latin workers suffer doubly in all categories because of capitalism’s racist discrimination in hiring and firing.

Finally, "the possibility of further corporate scandals or an oil disruption in the Middle East heightens the uncertainty." (Times, 8/12) "Disruption" is a polite word for imperialist war. A U.S. invasion of Iraq could shut off supplies from Iraq and other Gulf oil producers and send the price of oil and gasoline sky-high, not to mention killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers and U.S. youths.

Capitalism’s constant drive for maximum profits insuring a planless economy always leads to overproduction, mass unemployment, speed-up and war to "solve" these crises. How to permanently break this cycle? Destroy the profit system and replace it with communism which produces for workers’ needs, eliminating bosses and profits.

Liberal Pols, Union Hacks Undermine Dockworkers’ Struggle

Long Beach, CA August 12— The ILWU sponsored rallies up and down the west coast to kick off a new round of negotiations and protest the Bush Administration’s threat to use troops as strike breakers in the event of a strike.

The union leaders have already agreed to cut 30% of the clerk’s jobs. The remaining issues deal with the threat of calling out troops against the strike as well as cuts in health care and the union’s demand that new jobs created by new technology be under union jurisdiction. A PLP leaflet attacking the use of troops against the workers, layoffs and capitalism and calling for communist revolution was distributed at one rally. Resolutions are being circulated to support the dockworkers’ fight against the threat of troops, against job cuts, and cuts in health benefits.

The 10,500 workers (it used to be many thousands more) that move over $700 billion worth of commodities or 7% of the GDP (more than twice the $300 billion we mistakenly reported last issue), have the potential power to stop the bosses’ economy. That power is being undermined and misdirected by the union leaders into relying on liberal politicians loyal to the interests of the capitalists, who use their state to attack the workers!

At the Long Beach rally, Dominic Maretti, a Los Angeles Harbor liaison for the union said port workers would never endanger national security. "During a strike, we move all military goods, troops and passengers." (LA Times. 8/13) But in the past, in 1919, communist-led dockworkers refused to load weapons being used to invade the infant Soviet Union. In Seattle, they threw the rifles into the Pacific Ocean.

About 2000 workers marched in Long Beach, some carrying signs reading, "Fight Terrorism, Not American Workers." The war on terrorism IS a war on workers, both in the Middle East and right here at home!

At the Bay Area rally, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown attacked Bush’s threat to call in troops. Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle attacked Bush at the rally in Portland. None of these capitalist politicians attacked using automation to cut the jobs of union members. The LA City Council which never misses a chance to attack workers, voted to ask the Bush administration to "remain outside" the negotiations. (LA Times, 8/13)

There is a dispute within the ruling class over the best way to attack workers. Bush is playing hardball with the unions. The liberal politicians favor using the union leaders to try to win the workers to accept layoffs and other attacks while building patriotism and support for the bosses’ wars for oil.

Both sides are enemies of all workers. Just like Bush, the liberal Democrats won’t hesitate to use troops to bust any workers’ struggle that hurts the "national interest". Our fight, in the unions and elsewhere, is to unite the whole working class to fight for workers’ power, to smash the bosses’ state, represented by both Bush and Willy Brown!

Open Letter In Solidarity With Dockworkers From Active, Laid-Off And Retired Boeing Workers

We, the undersigned, want to express support for our Brother and Sister West Coast dockworkers in the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). We categorically condemn Federal Government’s plans to sabotage their negotiations. Secret meetings of the Homeland Security Department and others to plan the mobilization of federal troops to take over the docks will only serve to strengthen the resolve of all workers to fight back against this bosses’ offensive. Let the bosses and their servant politicians remember that Seattle was the scene of the first General Strike in U.S. history!

We, Boeing workers, are well aware of the need to fight for jobs, not only for ourselves, but also for our children and our class. Our labor has built the jets Boeing has sold and moved the goods through the docks. We made billion$ for the bosses. We categorically reject the assumption that we can be discarded, like so much extra baggage, on the altar of increased efficiency, automation and super-profits. Not one job lost! Indeed, we demand more jobs for future generations of workers.

The bosses whine that global competition forces them to eliminate our jobs. We reject any system that diverts the fruits of human progress solely into the coffers of huge corporations while throwing the very workers that build those enterprises on the streets. Who needs a system that eliminates jobs and pensions!

Blame Capitalism for Murder of Ciudad Juárez Women

Executions in Texas are nothing unusual. There are 453 inmates on the state’s death row. But the August 14 execution of Javier Suarez, a Mexican man accused of killing a Dallas cop in 1988, caused an international uproar, Mexico’s President Fox even canceling a visit to Bush’s Texas ranch. Mr. Suarez was not informed he could contact the Mexican consulate for help after his arrest, violating the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations, signed by the U.S.

But while the Mexican government turned the execution into an international incident — and although the death penalty doesn’t exist in Mexico — executions do occur there. The same day Suarez was executed, a vigil was held outside the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. by the group "Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa"(May Our Daughters Return Home). They represent more than 450 young women who have disappeared and another 284 found dead since 1993 in and around Ciudad Juarez across the border from Texas. Only 30 of the murders have been solved. The group hopes to draw international attention to the deaths, and to what they call the "incompetence and negligence" of Mexican authorities.

"Our authorities have paid no attention to us, "said Ramona Morales, whose daughter was slain in 1995. "It is important that people outside of Mexico pay attention." (TheNewsMexico.com, 8/15).

Most of the victims were young women, slim and with long dark hair. Many worked at one of Ciudad Juarez’s more than 340 maquiladoras (sweatshops which manufacture for export). In Juarez alone, 220,000 are employed in these sweatshops, 2/3 of them women. Some were raped and mutilated, others burned. "They work late at night and walk alone, and that makes them targets," said Coco Fusco, a Columbia University art professor who has studied life on the border and took part in the vigil. The crimes occur mostly in the dangerous areas outside the factories. "We want safe roads [and] lighting," said Fusco. "The companies don’t pay taxes and…make a lot of money from these women. They should contribute something."

According to some of the victims’ relatives, the Mexican authorities have ignored them and refused any thorough investigation. It’s rumored that some of the murderers might be cops or supervisors at some of the maquiladoras. In an interview conducted by filmmaker Lourdes Portillo in her documentary about the killings, "One woman, María Talamantez, points at police officers, saying that when she went to report the beating of her husband…, a group of officers at the station raped her and showed her graphic pictures of some of the murdered women as they were killed." (New York Times, 8/19)

While the relatives’ call for justice for these victims must be supported, understanding why this slaughter occurs and continues is vital to ending them. These crimes and the government and maquiladora corporations’ inaction stems from the anti-women and anti-working class nature of capitalism and its rulers. The maquiladoras super-exploit these women, treating them like simple commodities on and off the job, and then discards them, replacing them with other young women to be super-exploited. This also creates those perverts who feed on sexual depravity.

Capitalism thrives on this. Communism will organize production to satisfy workers’ needs, and advance a collective spirit of concern for others.

Mob Violence Mirrors Racist Cops

CHICAGO, IL— "Yeah, revolution! That’s exactly what we need!" That was the response of many at the annual Bud Billiken parade on Chicago’s South Side as over 1,000 leaflets and many CHALLENGES were distributed near the site where a few days earlier, two black workers were beaten to death by an angry mob. On July 30, 62-year-old Jack Moore and 49-year-old Anthony Stuckey were killed when the van they were driving jumped the curb and ran into three young women. Shani Lawrence, 26 years old, later died of her injuries. Both the victims and the mob were black.

The beating deaths were inexcusable. But the epidemic of violence in our communities is a reflection of the racism of the capitalist system we live in. And the most violent are the bosses who run it.

The entire North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood was blanketed with cops, accompanied by a racist media frenzy. Black Police Superintendent Terry Hilliard and racist Mayor Daley ordered arrests quickly. Seven black men, ranging in age from 16 to 43, were arrested and are being held without bond. Charges range from felony murder to felony mob action. Two are relatives of Shani Lawrence.

Al Sharpton, Rev. Meeks (Jesse Jackson’s #2 man at PUSH) and local ministers all converged on the neighborhood preaching, "Stop the Violence" and cooperate with the police. This neighborhood has seen many changes recently, mainly through gentrification. As in many other parts of the city, many poor black and Latin workers are being pushed out as affordable housing disappears. Developers can’t build townhouses and condos fast enough for black and white yuppies to move back into the city.

While the mob beating generated headlines for days, the racist mob violence of the police is just business as usual. Not two miles away from the deadly beatings, four young black workers, two of them PLP members, were beaten and arrested on August 6, while moving three bags of groceries, 1 air mattress and 2 suitcases into their mother’s apartment at the Lawless Garden Apts. The Bronzeville community is also being "gentrified."

The SDI security guard became verbally abusive and words were exchanged. Off-duty Chicago cop Murphy pulled his gun and said, "I can solve all this right now." When the young comrades stepped off of the elevator, they were attacked by more than a dozen cops and arrested. They were charged with resisting arrest and assault. By the time they were taken to jail, there were eleven squad cars and over thirty cops terrorizing the scores of witnesses that had come out of their apartments.

SDI Security has a list of more than 100 names of family members of residents who are not allowed on the grounds. There is daily harassment, especially of the youth. Security guards beat one youth with a pipe. When the family retaliated, they were given a 10-day notice to move.

We plan to distribute CHALLENGE in the building and on the block to meet other victims of racist attacks. We will organize tenants to go to the next building meeting. And we will take people, CHALLENGES and leaflets to a big rally planned by the ministers around the mob killings.

Lesser Evil Chirac Building Police State

A few months ago, millions in France took to the streets to "stop fascism." Jean Marie Le Pen’s fascist National Front was second in the first round of the Presidential elections. Chirac, the candidate of the official right-wing was first and Socialist Party candidate Leonel Jospin, a distant third. "Defeating Le Pen" became the battle cry of millions, mobilized by all the anti-Le Pen forces, included the phony "left," ranging from the "Communist" Party to various Trotskyite groups. Rightist Chirac was the "lesser of two evils" according to them.

Now Chirac is imposing what many see as a police state. His Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is putting into practice what the 19th century writer Victor Hugo (creator of Les Miserables) called "La police partout, la justice nulle part"("cops all over, justice nowhere"). Under the guise of "fighting crime," the new government has increased the police budget by $5.6 billion to hire 18,000 new cops and gendarmes in five years (4,500 more than previously planned). Meanwhile, the Justice system will get $3.65 billion more for new jails, including for 13-year-olds. Parents of children who don’t go to school will lose public assistance (affecting mainly working-class parents in the poorest neighborhoods, many from North Africa).

Nicolas Sarkozy, the new Interior Minister, will have increased powers over the cops and gendarmes, making him one of the most powerful forces in the new government. He can demand more money if he thinks it’s needed. He’s also ordering cameras to watch over "sensitive areas."

Meanwhile, the government has cut other public spending. Raffarin has refused to increase the minimum wage (although government ministers’ salaries were increased 70%). In the last year, unemployment rose from 8.1% to 9% and is still rising. So "fighting crime" looks increasingly like attacking workers and youth who might offer resistance.

There are no "lesser evil" capitalists or politicians. They’re ready to remove their "democratic" masks and become fascist monsters when their system requires it.

U.S. Victory In Afghanistan Unravelling

While U.S. rulers debate when and how to wage war on Iraq to seize its vast oil fields (second to Saudi Arabia’s), the invasion of Afghanistan is not proceeding according to plan for the U.S. military. "The upsurge in attacks on American and local forces…over the past few weeks suggests that the present U.S. strategy there — an unsatisfactory mixture of non-intervention in and manipulations of Afghan internal affairs — is crumbling," writes NY Post columnist Jonathan Foreman (8/12).

Robert Fisk, writing for the London Independent (8/14), says the backlash against U.S. forces has begun: "The Americans are being attacked almost every night. There have been three shootings in Kandahar, with an American officer wounded in the neck near the airport two weeks ago. American troops can no longer dine out in Kandahar cafés. Today, U.S. forces are under attack in Khost province.…Now guerrilla attacks are increasingly targeting Afghan forces loyal to the government or loyal to local drug dealers who are friendly with the Americans."

Even a close U.S. ally, Canada, decided to pull out many of its troops, especially after several Canadian soldiers were killed by "friendly fire" from U.S. pilots. (Many are drugged on speed — see Challenge, 8/21).

The U.S. military operation has apparently gone sour after what seemed to be an easy victory over the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. But actually most of those forces escaped. The U.S., following its Vietnam Syndrome fear of any real ground fighting, relied on the hated Northern Alliance and other warlord mercenaries to do the fighting. Some of those mercenaries had defected from the Taliban/AQ after getting big CIA payoffs. They then took payoffs from the Taliban to let the "enemy" slip away. But the mass murder of civilians by the air bombardments has really turned the Afghan population against U.S. forces, including the massacre of 55 people at a wedding in July, when U.S. aircraft machine-gunned them "by mistake."

The U.S. has few choices left in Afghanistan. Foreman says it can: (1) occupy the whole country, putting more U.S. troops at risk; (2) install a warlord with some real base into power (unlike the present Karzai government — Karzai was an agent of the Unocal oil company before the U.S. made him president); or (3) leave Afghanistan altogether.

That last choice would be a big defeat for the U.S., leaving the country to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But occupying Afghanistan would tie down tens of thousands or more U.S. troops needed to invade Iraq.

Whatever the choices, the U.S. imperialists are finding their military "victories" more illusory by the day. Every "solution" leads to new problems for these butchers, a contradiction inevitable under capitalism and imperialism.

LETTERS

Win Soldiers To Fight Sexism

I could not agree more with a recent letter in Challenge entitled "Sexism, Imperialist War led to Ft. Bragg Murders!" Capitalism breeds sexism, especially in the Army. The Armed Forces tries very hard to control the minds of soldiers. There is no doubt that drugs are used to prolong the strength and vitality of soldiers during strenuous missions. Imperialist war works to destroy the minds of soldiers who are given high doses of caffeine to keep them awake, and injected with drugs that affect their state of mind.

Sexism and nationalism are control methods used by the capitalists to suppress and divide the working class. Unfortunately this duo of death exists more in the Armed Forces. However, sexism and nationalism can be immediately fought against. I had a friend in the barracks that would always try to entertain me with racist and sexist jokes. Since we were roommates he would go online using his computer to surf the web for jokes. I confronted him, telling him that he would have to stop saying such trash around me. His behavior around women and treatment of his girlfriends was also sexist and disgusting. I confronted him about that too. We became good friends and within time I showed him Challenge and he eventually went to May Day. My friend stopped saying racist jokes and began to treat women with more respect. He is now married with a daughter.

As long as capitalism exists, imperialist wars will murder millions for profit. The bosses will also try to infest the Armed Forces and the whole working class with racism, sexism and nationalism. We on the other hand, must wage war against them and their capitalist ideas. We must fight to prevent the destruction of soldiers’ minds. We can look back at history to see that the Bolsheviks saw imperialist war as an opportunity to win soldiers to the side of workers’ revolution—and they eventually won. When they wage their imperialist wars, we must take advantage of the situation to fight to destroy their ideas and their system and not allow it to destroy us.

GI Joe

Church Groups Protest Nuclear Weapons, Iraq War

Fifty people, organized by a committee representing half a dozen churches commemorated Hiroshima Day with a peace march in the shopping district of our small city. Many carried posters opposing an Iraq oil war as well as the US nuclear weapons policy. A wide range of views were displayed, from religious pacifism to scientific socialism, and there was a strong sense of unity and common purpose.

The marchers were part of a larger event, involving ninety people that included poems, speeches, and letter writing to members of Congress. "Thank you so much for doing this," the organizers were told repeatedly. Even the more cynical amongst us could see the huge potential resistance to the bosses’ "war against terrorism" propaganda and intimidation.

The disagreements that emerged during the day were similar to those you would encounter anywhere. One speaker said that the U.S. rulers agreed in principle that a war with Iraq was necessary, although they disagreed on timing and tactics. He suggested that such a war was practically inevitable because control of Persian Gulf oil is crucial to U.S. imperialist strategic interests.

The next speaker countered saying that a mass popular protest movement might be enough to stop the drive toward war. But that same person pointed out that Clinton was as bad as Bush when it came to nuclear weapons. Some in the audience argued that the way to work for peace was to elect Democrats and to bombard elected officials with letters. Others were reluctant to write letters, because of the response (or lack of response) that they had gotten from politicians in the past.

Even though the peace issues were linked with racism and with the economic attacks on workers, none of the speakers identified capitalism as the root of war and injustice. Revolutionary politics seemed fairly remote from the order of the day.

Some of my friends agreed with me about the need to fight capitalism. "This is a really hard time to be trying to organize," said one. That’s true. It’s why we need to struggle collectively to figure out how to do it. But the flip side illustrated in this peace event, is that it’s a time when our efforts, however limited, can really make a difference.

A Comrade

UMWA Did Nothing To Help Trapped Miners

I was reading every article I could find about the nine trapped miners in Pennsylvania. There was one glaring absence, the UMWA. I did not see their name mentioned once in any article. I called them to ask why. They said because it was a non-union mine. It seems to me that would have been a great organizing tool (that is, if you actually wanted to take on the bosses). Maybe mention how the profit system does not see the need to keep accurate maps of the mines that would have shown how close they were to a flooded shaft.

I did hear one miner comment that he was still waiting for a phone call from the company to say how glad they were to see them alive. Maybe we will have to wait just as long for the Disney movie to reveal the hazards of the profit system.

A seasoned comrade

[Editor’s note: Thanks for your letter. An article in our last issue (8/21) headlined "Profit Drive Trapped Quecreek Miners" also exposed the UMWA’s collaboration with the mine owners in taking a payoff for agreeing to allow such non-union mines.]