1. What Bosses' Debate on Gun Control Hide:
   Capitalist Violence Kills Million
2. Arizona Vigilantes Ape Racist Anti-Immigrant of Shoot To Kill of President Clinton
3. Big Bosses Tell Racist Giuliani to Zip It
   1. Rockefeller Wants Tighter Control
   2. An International Fight
   3. ROCKY'S `SONS' RETURN TO FOLD
4. IPO Another Capitalist Swindle
5. Postal Workers Fight Firings
6. Albright You Can't Hide (in Your Limousine). We Charge Youth With Genocide
7. Black Workers Denounce Police Terror in Pa.
8. Parents and Teachers Defend PLP Teacher
9. Demonstrate May 22nd at the Board of Education 125 South Clark (Clark and Adams) 5:00 PM--the last day of the hearings.
   CHICAGO COPS ON A SHOOTING SPREE
10. DETROIT COPS: ARMED AND DANGEROUS
    (Do Not Attempt to Apprehend Alone!)
11. Janitors' Experience: Rulers' Democracy: Another Weapon Against Workers' Struggles
12. A Ford in Your Future Means More Bosses' Profits, Less Jobs for Workers
    1. Nationalism: Deadly for Autoworkers
13. Social Democrats: Frontment for the Fourth Reich
14. LETTERS
    1. A Father-Son Conversation: Why March on May Day?
    2. Weaker Sex Myth Means Big Bucks for Growers
    3. What Needs to Be Done?
    4. Learning a Lot
    5. `Amen!' to May Day

What Bosses' Debate on Gun Control Hide:
Capitalist Violence Kills Million

On May 13, nearly a million women gathered in 65 cities throughout the country, the bulk of them in Washington D.C., to demand more gun control from the government in what was labeled as the Million Mom March. Many workers and youth have been outraged by the ruthless killings by fascists in Columbine, Colorado, where two teenagers killed 13, and other shootings that have left many children dead and injured.

On the surface, this movement seems to be organized by caring mothers who really do want to end gun violence. But in essence this "mom" movement is being pushed and endorsed by the Establishment. Donna Dees-Thomases, who refers to herself as a housewife and mother of two young children, was inspired to organize the march by watching the horrific television footage of a neo-Nazi attacking young children in a Jewish-run daycare center in Granada Hills, California.

Dee-Thomases is not the ordinary mom she proclaims. According to the May 15th WALLSTREET JOURNAL, she was a former publicist for Dan Rather and now works for David Letterman. She is also the sister-in-law of Susan Thomases, who just happens to be one of Hillary Clinton's "closest friends, long-time political strategist, heavy-handed enforcer and frequently attorney of record."

The Million Mom March is an apparent attempt to continue the attack on the capitalist rivals of the Rockefeller camp by co-opting the anger and despair that many workers have about the increasing violent killing of youth by guns.

While the Clinton Administration is crying crocodile tears for the victims of gun violence, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has rebuilt itself from the ashes of its own political mess created by the Oklahoma City bombing and its ties to the fascist, racist militia movement. Now led by the fascist actor, Charleton Heston, the NRA is claiming over three million members, even in the wake of the Columbine massacre.

These rival forces are attempting to win millions to their fascist movements, especially during this election year.

Workers and youth should understand that guns are not the enemy as the liberals say. It is who is shooting who that determines the enemy. U.S. rulers, among all capitalists, are responsible for more untold millions of deaths by guns than any other group or individuals. Their cops increasingly murder black and Latin youth across the country. None of these gun control movements are fighting to reign in these racist cops.

The bosses use guns and bombs to destroy and kill millions during wars and have no problem using them. In Kosovo and continuing in Iraq, U.S. bombs killed hundreds of thousands of workers, including mothers and children and left millions homeless. On May 14, U.S. and British planes bombed civilian targets in southern Iraq, injuring nine people, including one child.

The bosses portray violence as something divorced from class interests--that it's "evil" and "mean" people who do it, rather than being inherent in capitalism. When a worker gets laid off and lives day to day, it's violence. According to a Congressional report, every 1.4% increase in U.S. unemployment leads directly over the subsequent five years to 30,000 worker deaths from stress-related diseases and suicides When workers in maquilladoras are forced to work 13 to 18 hours a day, that's violence. When young girls even younger than 10 are forced into slavery for labor or sex all over the world, it's violence. All such forms of violence are committed against the working class every day.

Communists don't oppose guns. The bosses will never surrender their riches or their system to the working class that produces that wealth without an armed struggle. We will have to use guns and other weapons against the bosses in a violent revolution. That's why we say, "Turn the Guns Around, Shoot the Bosses Down." But that can only be achieved by a movement of tens of millions of workers and youth fighting for a communist world, the only thing that can free us from capitalist class violence. Join PLP today!

Arizona Vigilantes Ape Racist Anti-Immigrant of Shoot To Kill of President Clinton

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 20--A group of racist ranchers in Cochise and Douglas, Arizona called "concerned citizens" have unleashed a "witch hunt for immigrants." The group is led by Don and Roger Barnett, together with members of the Ku Klux Klan and Glen Spence, head of Voice of Citizens Together (VCT) from Los Angeles. In a recent interview with the daily "USA Today," the Barnett brothers said they are "prepared to kill Mexicans."

These racists are using the Internet, the press and TV to recruit fascist volunteers to hunt immigrants who try to cross the border in search of a job to survive. Last May 3^rd the Barnetts and two women, all on horseback, with bloodhounds and armed with rifles and pistols, invited ABC TV to see how they enjoy themselves terrorizing immigrant workers. That day nine workers were followed and captured. After threatening to kill them, and raining insults on them, they were turned over to the fascist INS. In this same area the body of another immigrant was found with rope marks on his neck and signs of having been tortured.

"The Mexican Government will not allow U.S. citizens to hunt Mexicans," said Rosario Green, Secretary of Foreign Relations. These hypocritical bosses don't say they themselves are also part of the same problem, caused by the poverty to which they have subjected the workers. How many people has the Mexican government killed in Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, etc? We shouldn't expect any help from these exploiters and their killer cops!

In the U.S., nationalist groups and politicians are calling for the defense of the Mexicans and demanding the fascist federal government stop the Barnett brothers. But Clinton is responsible for "Operation Gatekeeper" which has led to the deaths of more than 1,500 immigrants in the last five years. Barnett and his fascist gang are babies compared to the terrorist history of the Migra [immigration service] in Texas. Barnett and Clinton are birds of a feather!

The AFL-CIO, along with immigrants' rights groups, is calling for general amnesty for undocumented workers. They are organizing a massive campaign to support the Democratic Party and asking that they support a general amnesty. But what do the Democrats and the U.S. ruling class want in return? Our sons and daughters in the army to kill and die for the interests and profits of the bosses led by Rockefeller. In addition, they want us workers to passively accept the bosses' exploitation and racist police terror.

Our alternative? First, we must organize class struggle at work, in school, in the unions and mass organizations; organize work stoppages, demonstrations, resolutions and strikes against these racist acts. We need to show our fellow workers who are our friends and who are our enemies. CHALLENGE is crucial to showing all workers that such actions are in their interests. They are one step forward in building a revolutionary communist movement which will destroy borders, exploitation and imperialist wars.

A few years ago in LA, the fascist VCT received a little of what they deserve--the fists and sticks of black, white and Latino workers and youth, led by PLP. Let's fight to prepare our class massively to destroy all these Barnetts, Migra, police terror, exploitation and all the capitalists, with communist revolution.

Big Bosses Tell Racist Giuliani to Zip It

Workers are very happy to see New York City's racist mayor, Rudy Giuliani, sink like the Titanic. But, before we sing victory let's see the real iceberg that is sinking Rudy. Some of his strongest backers, including the NEW YORK TIMES and WALL STREET JOURNAL, have told him to drop his Senate campaign. The media are making a big deal about his prostate cancer and an even bigger one about his private life. But the fall in Giuliani's fortunes isn't due mainly to illness or a sordid little drama of marital infidelity. Behind it lies a shift in ruling class attitudes toward the economy.

The big bosses have a major stake in New York City. It's still the nation's biggest city and the world's most important financial center.

When Giuliani became mayor in January 1994, he had three key assignments. The first was to complete the task, started under his liberal Democrat predecessors, of attacking workers' living standards. He did this through fascist Workfare, layoffs and a variety of racist, union-busting, service-cutting tactics, to forestall resistance to these attacks.

Second, in the name of "reducing crime," he was ordered to continue and intensify a reign of police terror on large sections of NYC workers, particularly in the most oppressed black and Latin neighborhoods. He has certainly done this, even though liberals are now hypocritically complaining that he has been much too openly racist in defending police murders of black and Latin workers. However, they are certainly not opposed to this police terror, and in fact have advanced the Rockefeller-backed policy of "community policing," hardly a "kinder, gentler" form of bosses' dictatorship than Giuliani's "zero tolerance" terror. "Community policing" will mean even more arrests, more long jail sentences and more violence against workers and particularly working-class youth.

Thirdly was to make sure the major banks and financial houses reaped windfall profits from the longest bull market in the stock exchange's history. Until recently, he succeeded here too.

Rockefeller Wants Tighter Control

But the worm is turning. The Rockefeller wing of the bosses wants to bring the markets under tighter control. Recent CHALLENGE articles have described the motives behind the rulers' disciplining of maverick giants like Microsoft's Gates and the new "dot.com" billionaires. Giuliani's decline is related to this process.

Part of the stock market's rise is due to the so-called IPO (Initial Public Offering) craze. IPOs are a gimmick to raise billions for financial houses that float the capital for stocks entering the market for the first time. This is a highly speculative business. IPOs create huge profits for investors without making the companies themselves profitable. (See box.) Amazon.com is a prime example. This is a recipe for a crash, and the Rockefeller banks don't want such a crash.

Giuliani's main loyalty isn't to the Rockefeller banks but rather to the bosses that back the Manhattan Institute (MI), his key "think tank." This bunch includes Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Crédit Suisse, and Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney. They are the top underwriters for IPOs for 1999. Rockefeller's Chase and J.P. Morgan are not to be found on the MI's trustee list. In comparison, Crédit Suisse has more than 250 IPOs completed or pending. Chase has 11, J.P. Morgan seven and Rockefeller Securities none. As long as the markets were fairly steady and rising, the Rockefellers went along with Giuliani's masters, but everything has limits. The MI bosses can't see beyond speculative greed. The Rockefellers have a world to and need internal stability. In political and economic strategy, the Giuliani and Rockefeller camps diverge.

An International Fight

A second point is the question of government interference in international markets. The MI crowd, driving for immediate profits, wants to be able to invest anywhere, including Russia and China, without U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund oversight. Rockefeller rival and IMF foe Walter Wriston (former head of Citibank) leads the pack. Goldman Sachs serves as chief financial advisor to BP Amoco, Rockefeller-Exxon Mobil's main rival. BP Amoco is Russia's largest foreign investor. Other MI trustees have big bucks riding in Russia. And MI board member Maurice Greenberg, AIG's boss, has grand plans to peddle insurance to workers in Russia and China. This wheeling and dealing doesn't necessarily jibe with the liberal Rockefeller position of treating Russia and China as strategic enemies.

The liberal salvos at Giuliani are just the first line of assault in this latest bosses' dogfight. New York's Republican governor Pataki, who until now has had a foot in both camps, just crossed over to the Rockefeller side. On May 3, the $91 billion New York State Teachers' Retirement System fired two of its money managers, Manhattan Institute trustees Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. and Citibank Global Asset Management, prominent Manhattan Institute backers, for "poor performance" (BLOOMBERG NEWS). Both the WALL STREET JOURNAL and the NEW YORK TIMES have called for Pataki to replace Giuliani in the Senate campaign. The Manhattan Institute, once chummy with Pataki, now despises him for toeing the Rockefeller line (CITY JOURNAL).

ROCKY'S `SONS' RETURN TO FOLD

There's more. A recent TIMES editorial was highly critical of IPO-factory Bear Stearns for its plan to "restructure" NYC's Metropolitan Transit Authority debt. It just so happens that Bear Stearns's chief agrees with Rockefeller arch-rival Wriston about abolishing the International Monetary Fund. And Rockefeller "prodigal sons" are coming back to the fold. Morgan Stanley, bitten by the IPO high-tech bug a couple of years ago, now warns about high technology stocks and recommends investing in "old economy" companies (REUTERS, April 27). Finally, longtime Rockefeller gunslinger Paul Volcker--who presided over the indictment of the Rocky arch-rival Hunt Brothers' illegal stab at cornering the silver market in the late 1970s--has also taken up his master's arms. Volcker heads a commission looking into the role of Swiss banks in hiding loot the Nazis stole from Jewish victims of Hitler's genocide. Two of the commission's biggest targets, Crédit Suisse and UBS, are represented at the Manhattan Institute.

So the attacks on Giuliani's are clearly tied to Rockefeller efforts to discipline the markets and swat down upstart rivals. There's no "lesser evil" here. Giuliani's a vicious, anti-worker racist. However, his liberal opponents are just as bad, if not worse. In fact, the Rockefeller Chase Bank gave initial funding for the Manhattan Institute when it was founded in 1978 by future Reagan CIA chief William Casey. And the Rockefeller strategy of preparing for oil wars and major imperialist bloodbaths down the road will lead to the death of more workers than Giuliani's cops and his BP Amoco and MI allies have in store for workers. The shifting sands of alliances among the rulers--for war and exploitation to see who gets the most profits--should serve only to increase our commitment to the working class and to the victorous fight for communism.

IPO Another Capitalist Swindle

In an Initial Public Offering (IPO) a big investment bank, like Goldman Sachs, underwrites--that is, buys up shares in a new company--and then sells them to the public for the first time. The start-ups, today mainly Internet schemes, usually have few assets and show no profit. But to make their own profit from selling the shares, the underwriters promise that the new firm will revolutionize business and become the next Microsoft. The "public" part of IPO is a lie. The underwriter gives first crack at the new stock to banks, insurance companies, pension funds and other ruling-class-controlled high rollers. Then, by generating hype, the underwriter lures in the small investor with the promise of a quick buck. The stock's price skyrockets. But the bubble eventually deflates or explodes.

Everybody would be happy and getting richer were it not for two sobering realities. First: the shares are worthless. Their market price may be dozens or even hundreds of times the company's real value. In fact, some companies, like Amazon.com, may actually lose money even though their soaring stock prices make billions for a few of the shareholders. The current high tech market downslide was triggered in part by bankers and insider technology executives dumping their own shares early and letting the small investor take the hit. Second: the main wing of the ruling class sees this mania as a gross waste of capital heading for a crash that will severely harm the long-term profit rate of Establishment firms. That's why Greenspan raised interest rates again this week in order to cool off the market and avoid a general crash. And that's why the Rockefeller wing is forcing a return of capital to the so-called "old economy" companies.

Postal Workers Fight Firings

CHICAGO, IL, May 11 -- Over 50 letter carriers met last Saturday to fight the firings of four carriers at the Hyde Park Station. After receiving an "anonymous tip," postal bosses fired 12 carriers for throwing mail in the dumpster behind the station. Charges were dropped against eight, leaving four out on the street.

Management dumped the mail. They do it all the time. When they get caught, they blame the workers. Carrier after carrier told how they had been harassed, written up, fired and spied on by postal bosses. Several said they had to go out on stress-related leave and were now on medication. The horror stories were endless.

Management's drive to become more competitive with UPS and FedEx has led to intense speed-up, harassment, intimidation and cutbacks. They've made billions in profits over the last five years from the blood, sweat and tears of the workers.

The workers at the meeting were nearly all black and they were not falling for the bosses' nationalist trick of using black bosses to harass them. A non-postal worker in the audience asked, "What percentage of these supervisors and union representatives are African-American?" The meeting's leader answered, "99.9!" Another worker half-jokingly added, "It's black on black crime!"

The union meeting tonight was a packed house of angry workers. A motion was made to have a demonstration at the Postmaster's Office, and it passed unanimously. The local President tried to derail the will of the workers with some mumbo-jumbo about "the process...to select a committee...blah, blah, blah." But workers want to do it with or without official union backing. We got about ten names and phone numbers after the meeting. WE will be the committee.

These struggles give us an opportunity to build ties among workers who want to fight back. Our politics of "Revolution, not Reform" can be like a breath of fresh air. Workers know how bad we're being treated, but it's not so clear why, or what we can do about it. We must view every fight against the boss as a way to increase the circulation of CHALLENGE and win workers to become leaders of the Party.

Albright You Can't Hide (in Your Limousine). We Charge Youth With Genocide

BERKELEY, CA, May 10 --No one knows how Secretary of State Madeleine Albright got invited to speak at the Univ. of California commencement here. It was announced suddenly, with only a week's notice. But everyone knows how she left--lying in the back seat of a limo, hiding from the demonstrators!

Hardly a moment in her speech was not interrupted. Despite Federal security agents checking all who entered the open-air theater, four anti-Albright banners were smuggled in and unfurled. Fifty-nine protesters were ejected.

Outside, pickets had leafleted and agitated among the graduates and their families as they had lined up to enter the stadium. A couple of PLP'ers exposed Albright's role as a servant of Exxon-Mobil and the Rockefeller ruling class, while pointing out that only communist revolution can liberate workers. Several people gave us their names and some deep discussions ensued.

However, the demonstration was organized by forces that only demanded lifting the UN sanctions against Iraq. Yes, the sanctions should be lifted. They spell death for the Iraqi working class, killing almost two million, mainly workers' kids. But to imply, as the organizers did, that lifting the sanctions would free the Iraqi working class spreads dangerous illusions.

Sanctions or no sanctions, all workers in the Mid-East are under a death sentence because the imperialist rivalry to control the region's oil is getting sharper and more desperate by the day. Death by sanctions; death by depleted uranium bombs; death by an Iran/Iraq war; death at the hands of the Taliban (fighting to secure oil pipelines through Afghanistan). Inter-imperialist rivalry kills the working class in many ways.

Even some imperialists want to end the sanctions because they block deals made with Saddam Hussein. And they will cut their deal in the United (against-the-workers-of-the-world) Nations. Yet workers in the Mid-East and elsewhere will not escape this death sentence until we build a revolutionary communist movement--the PLP--capable of putting power in the hands of the working class. That's the message we brought to the demonstration and are carrying today to the new friends we met there.

Black Workers Denounce Police Terror in Pa.

Johnstown, Pa., once a thriving steel town, is now based upon a Wal-Mart economy, with some sweatshop-like factories and fast food restaurants, all low-paying and lacking job security. Recently there has been a layoff epidemic in the city, located in the coalfields of Western Pennsylvania. Johnstown is remembered for the 1889 flood that killed 2,000 people, caused by a dam breaking at the Hunting and Fishing Club owned by robber baron steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie and other capitalist exploiters. (See "The Johnstown Flood," by David McCulloch).

Also, recently the city's black citizens have been waging a battle against police harassment and terror. Last year, the cops arrested a mentally ill black man and placed him in a holding cell. When he was found dead, the cops claimed he hanged himself with his own socks. They would not release the report to the local press.

On May 11, 100 black citizens of Johnstown met with city officials, presented overwhelming evidence of racial profiling, brutality, excessive force and false arrests and demanded the resignation of the Chief of Police. Jack Daniel, a black man and former Johnstown resident, now a vice-provost at the University of Pittsburgh, stated it was more than just racial profiling but "pure racism, racism, racism. The evidence included:

& A black man, a church deacon, charged that two cops unjustly stopped two young black males on their way home from a church revival in Pittsburgh;

& Toni Smith, a 66-year-old black woman, described how one night police crashed through her door without warrant searching for her grandson, rushed upstairs, battered down the young man's door and dragged him down the steps by his shirt.

& John Walker, Jr., a black man, told the story of his two college educated daughters and a friend being arrested by cops for driving a van with New York plates. The young women were jailed but were later released by a magistrate since there were no real charges against them. The young women were traumatized by this blatant cop terror.

& Another black man said he overheard police one night stating they were headed for Kernville, a black section, "to round up some n----rs."

Many others told similar stories of while city officials listened silently. But there are a number of problems with this fight-back. Firstly, white workers should be involved as they also have been victimized by the cops during past strikes; unity is necessary here. Secondly, it should be realized that under capitalism and developing fascism the cops exist to terrorize the oppressed and workers. So even if the Police Chief is fired, it won't solve anything since the problem is not one chief but the system of racist capitalism.

As a CHALLENGE has pointed out, the only way to halt racist police terror is through workers' revolution. Still, it's positive that Johnstown's black residents are standing up to the cops, as many did--along with white workers--against the KKK rally there last August and drove the scum out of town.

Parents and Teachers Defend PLP Teacher

CHICAGO, IL May 11 -- "The defendant will have you believe that this hearing is about his communist politics, but it's not. What it is about is the proper role of a teacher to involve students in a personal crusade, take them to political rallies for his own ideas. Mr. Bernal has a long history, and we will prove this dating back to taking students to protest the Gulf War. Also, that Chicago Vocational Career Academy [CVCA] was fertile ground for Mr. Bernal because it is 99.9% low-income black youth that attend the school." That's how Board of Education lawyer David Hemmingway opened the hearing to fire PLP member Moises Bernal.

The day before the hearings started, students, teachers and parents demonstrated in front of the Board, exposing this kangaroo court and Mayor Daley's racist "school reform." Moises was pulled out of school in January 1999. PLP member Carol Caref was pulled out of the same school in January 2000. The Board claims this is not about our politics, but after three days of testimony that's all it's about. The Board is out to get us for being anti-racists and revolutionary communists, for taking students to demonstrations against racist police brutality and the KKK.

Ringmaster Russell-Williams, a rabid anti-communist teacher and sponsor of the school Bible Study group, led their circus of witnesses. She echoed the Board's lawyer, describing CVCA as 99.9% low-income black students, some not even having bus fare to get to school. She testified that students feared Moises because he became "highly animated when discussing his beliefs." But even she admitted he was a competent teacher.

Then came four CVCA students. Russell-Williams had given their names to Board investigators, who interrogated, coerced and promised them rewards to testify. Russell-Williams was present during at least one of the interrogations. She was the key to getting everyone under the Board's big top. But even they testified he was a good teacher who cared about his students.

Their last witness was a known liar who said Moises spent five and six days a week with her son, but that she had never met him or talked to him. She had written a letter requested by the principal, which was used to investigate Moises and remove him from class.

Over the next two days we presented our case. The political struggle with our friends to defend the Party was very important and rewarding. Parents and students testified that Moises was a caring and committed teacher. One mother attacked the principal for ignoring her repeated concerns about lack of teachers and books.

A student described organizing a walkout because she had no biology books or teacher for a whole semester. When a sophomore, she complained to the principal that a security guard had sexually propositioned her. She even gave his name. The principal said she would investigate. Now the student's a senior and still hasn't heard a word. A young man testified how much he appreciated the various political discussions in the classroom, and how Party club meetings were challenging. The parents and students who testified were inspiring examples of the support we enjoy in the school and community.

We are reaching out to teachers, parents and students in the Chicago Teachers' Union, Board of Education public meetings, youth groups, PTA's, Local School Councils, classrooms and more. Reverend Paul Jakes, a liberal leader of the anti-police brutality movement testified about the role of young people in the civil rights movement. A dissident union group whose newspaper has a circulation of 5,000 readers is covering the case. We are broadening out the struggle and learning how to be communist leaders in the mass movement. Victory is not in the hands of the hearing officer. It's in ours. Building a stronger fighting PLP is the real victory.

Demonstrate May 22nd at the Board of Education 125 South Clark (Clark and Adams) 5:00 PM--the last day of the hearings.
CHICAGO COPS ON A SHOOTING SPREE

CHICAGO, IL, May 15 - Chicago police have shot four people in 10 days. Michael Taylor died Saturday. Police shot the 20-year-old on Friday, when "they saw what they thought" was a drug deal near West Harrison Street. Taylor ran when police tried to handcuff him. The cops claim they killed him after he pulled a gun on them. But Taylor's family said he did not have a gun and no drugs were involved. Witnesses say police shot him while he was trying to get up after falling. They say he ran out of fear because in 1998 police beat him after pulling him over.

On May 3, the cops killed 39-year old Joseph Zagar on his porch. They claim they "mistook" the battery pack he was holding for a gun. On May 9, 23-year old Antonio Blandin was shot in the arm after a traffic stop. A day later, police shot a man in the legs after being stopped on the South Side.

For some mothers, Mother's Day was spent holding photos of their imprisoned sons outside the Cook County Criminal Court building. Justice Is Blind/Mothers Against Injustices called for a federal probe of the city's criminal justice system. Congressman Danny Davis, Rev. Paul Jakes, Jr. and 25 friends and family of Michael Taylor also called for a federal investigation, and the creation of a civilian review board to investigate police shootings.

Investigations and review boards will not stop racist police terror. Never has, never will. Under the last seven years of the Clinton gang, the prison population has doubled. Nearly one in four young black men is either in jail, on probation or awaiting trial. Many, if not most, black and Latin workers and youth understand the futility of asking the fox to guard the hen house.

More to the point, the police are the armed thugs of the ruling class. Their job is to terrorize workers and youth into accepting a future of mass poverty, racist cutbacks and imperialist war, especially as the bosses boast of unprecedented wealth. The system of capitalist wage slavery created these cops. Only communist revolution will end racist police terror.

DETROIT COPS: ARMED AND DANGEROUS
(Do Not Attempt to Apprehend Alone!)

DETROIT, MI, May 15 -- Detroit's cops are the deadliest in the U.S. One is 20 times more likely to be killed by cops in Detroit than in NYC, and 10 times more likely than in Los Angeles. "These are Vietnam kind of numbers," said Detroit lawyer Juan Mateo. "Cops are shooting people and getting away with it."

Many of these racist atrocities will sound familiar. In August 1998, Cora Bell Jones was shot dead in her home. Arthritis, deafness, poor vision and senility hobbled the 79-year-old great-grandmother. She was trying to defend her great-grandson who was being chased by the police, and her daughter who had been knocked out of her wheelchair.

In November 1997, 40-year-old autoworker Hong Leong, with a history of mental problems, was murdered. The cops claim they "fired in self-defense." But 12 of the 16 shots hit Hong IN THE BACK and palm of his hand.

Detroit is home to one million workers, about 80% black. Over the past 20 years the downsizing of the auto industry has devastated Detroit. The old downtown is a graveyard of empty office buildings. Only two factories remain within the city limits, GM's Hamtramck Assembly and DaimlerChrysler's Jefferson Assembly plant. These two factories opened while dozens closed. The new Jefferson factory has half as many workers as the old one, and is out-producing it.

The average income in Detroit has probably been cut in half in this period. Factory jobs have been replaced by janitorial and food service work in the new gambling casinos and the new luxury-box-filled Tiger Stadium, playgrounds for the rich.

These attacks have been carried out at a terrible cost of broken homes and families, closed hospitals, collapsing schools, homelessness, prisons bursting at the seams and almost one police killing a month for the past 10 years.

In the 1960's Detroit's workers were left out of an "economic boom." Unemployment, poverty and racist police terror combined to spark the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. In July '67, Detroit exploded into flames as an armed working class, many of them recently returned Vietnam veterans, turned their guns on the rulers.

In 48 hours the Detroit police force was pinned down in their precincts and out of action. The National Guard was called in, and in another 48 hours, they too were defeated. It finally took units of the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions being diverted from Vietnam to retake control of the city. Thousands of workers were arrested and dozens were killed, but many cops never lived to see the rebellion crushed. In it's wake, the shaken auto bosses hired 100,000 black workers.

But things have changed. The Vietnamese no longer inspire the masses to fight U.S. imperialism. The old communist movement has been defeated. Rather than high expectations, there is mass cynicism. And the auto bosses don't have 100,000 jobs to deliver. But the hatred of the workers for the racist rulers and their cops is constant. Even a small communist movement, dedicated and immersed among the people, can lead many. Building a mass PLP must be our answer to this current wave of police terror. Dark night shall have its dawn.

Janitors' Experience: Rulers' Democracy: Another Weapon Against Workers' Struggles

LOS ANGELES, CA. May 17 -- The following interview is a compilation of talks with different groups of janitors after their recent three-week strike.

Q: Do you know about the convention of your international union, SEIU [Service Employees International Union]?

A: No. They never tell us anything about such things. They only talk about them to the few workers they trust. They'll probably say our struggle was a great victory for unionism and for the janitors. But the truth is the opposite. The workers here are very angry with the leadership and with the results of the strike. That's why they haven't told us anything about the convention.

Q: How was the strike?

A: There was a good side. There was a lot of unity among the workers. A lot of women with their children marching and picketing in the rain, or until the middle of the night. These things gave the feel of workers in struggle. Many people used the little money they had to buy food for their fellow strikers. In these struggles, there's an opportunity for rank-and-file leaders to emerge and for them to become real revolutionary leaders, fighting for workers' power.

Q: What did you think of the marches and the militancy?

A: There was a lot of militancy by the rank and file but it was limited by the union leadership. They concentrated more on bringing Democratic Party politicians rather than relying on the rank-and-file workers. They had us march all over the city instead of concentrating on keeping scabs out of our buildings. There were workers and their children whose feet were bleeding, and they came back the next day to keep marching, because they felt they were fighting for something important for themselves and their families.

Q: How is the morale of the workers now?

A: Some are more or less OK. But we feel betrayed. When we decided to strike we said we were fighting for a $1/hr increase for all of us. The somewhat higher-paid workers got only 60cents/hr as of May 1st. The rest of us were sacrificed even more. They gave us only a 30cents increase and we don't get that until October, so overall it's only 15cents/hr averaged out over the first year.

Q; What's happening with the scabs?

A: That's a big problem, because we don't want them in our work locations. But in several buildings, the owners are giving them preference, and the union says it will "take time" to get them out. We think they made a deal, between the companies and the union leaders not to touch these traitors. But we're going to keep fighting against what we think is bad in the union. We also intend to find out what happened to the more than $2 million that some churches and others donated for the strike that was never used.

Q: What do you think of CHALLENGE newspaper?

A; We like it because it tells the truth and teaches things that the union never even mentions, things that are important to our lives.

Conclusion:

The history of the leadership of LA SEIU Local 1877 (janitors) is full of corruption and support for the capitalist system. Mike Garcia is the current president. He wasn't elected by the members, but imposed by then SEIU President John Sweeney in 1995. That year, a group of Latino, black and white workers challenged the sellout leadership of Jim Zellers, President of SEIU Local 399. The reform slate was elected to 21 of the 25 positions in the union leadership. They immediately called a meeting and tried to clean house. But Zellers was unwilling to remove his henchmen and he refused to accept the changes and the will of the membership.

The meeting turned into a fist fight between the old and new leadership. Zellers called the cops to kick the newly-elected leaders out of the union hall, saying they "threatened" him. Then he called Sweeney and asked him to prevent the keep the rank and file from taking control of the union. At the time Sweeney was running for president of the AFL-CIO under the slogan "union democracy." He put Local 399 under the "friendly leadership of the International," completely ignoring the new leaders elected by the members. He installed Mike Garcia from northern California as union chief. Days later, Garcia and Sweeney split the union into two Locals, 399 and 1877, dividing the workers by wage level and splitting the unity of the more militant workers.

This experience showed some workers what PLP had pointed out, that there can be no democracy for workers under capitalism. That's why the fight for workers' power must be the long-term fight for communist revolution. The AFL-CIO's role of is to win the workers to support the mperialist war policies of the liberal Rockefeller wing of the U.S. rulers, and get them to accept racist exploitation as the only way. PLP's goal is to win workers to fight to take power to end racist exploitation and imperialist war with communist revolution.

A Ford in Your Future Means More Bosses' Profits, Less Jobs for Workers

LONDON--Tens of thousands of autoworkers are being laid off, sped up or "transferred" as the European auto industry struggles to reduce its productive capacity. Ford is at the center of this "restructuring."

Current over-all European productive capacity is 21 million cars per year. But production is 14.4 million. One-third of the productive capacity is unused. Ford in Europe has the capacity to produce 2.2 million cars, but last year sold only 1.65 million. It netted a profit of $28 million on sales of $30 billion. "Totally unacceptable," says Ford's European CEO. Its "future growth depends on capturing market share from its rivals." (London FINANCIAL TIMES, May 13)

But Ford is losing market share. "The European Automobile Manufacturers Association said that new car sales in Western Europe fell by 7% in April. Ford was hardest hit with sales dropping 17.7 percent. And while European new car sales reached a record 15.1 million vehicles last year, Ford's share of the market slipped to 9.09 percent from 9.87 percent in 1998." (NEW YORK TIMES, 5/13)

To cut costs by $1 billion, and productive capacity by half a million cars, Ford is wiping out nearly 15,000 jobs and closing plants in Britain, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and Belarus. British workers will take the brunt of these cutbacks. Ford's Dagenham plant, will close sacking 2,750 workers. Last year the union agreed to the closing of Ford's Halewood plant "to save the Dagenham plant." This year they agreed to boost annual productivity to 62 cars per worker.

To further complicate matters, the auto industry is consolidating. The big fish are eating the little ones. Daimler bought Chrysler. Ford now owns Jaguar and Aston Martin of Britain, Volvo of Sweden and will pay $2.9 billion for BMW's Land Rover sport utility vehicle. As production is merged into fewer, more productive factories, more plants will close and more workers will be thrown out like garbage.

Capitalism can make your head spin. While factories are being closed across Europe, Ford will spend billions to upgrade their existing plants, and build new ones, that produce more with fewer workers. Ford said it would invest $500 million to expand its Dagenham diesel engine center, and $3 billion in its British plants over the next five years. This is to destroy jobs, not create them. The capitalist dream is to have one worker sitting at a computer running an entirely automated assembly plant. And even then they would try to cut her wages.

The toothless pro-capitalist union leaders are worse than useless. They cling desperately to the bosses' promises and look on workers at the "other" company as their enemy. In Britain they also view workers in Germany, Poland and Portugal as their competitors and blame them for their loss of jobs.

Production for profit is what causes the chaos and anarchy that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. Workers across Europe know all too well that this leads to World Wars and unthinkable destruction. As long as we labor under the system of wage slavery and production for profit, this is how it must be. The only solution is communist revolution, and production to meet the needs of the international working class. Autoworkers across Europe and around the world can answer this crisis by smashing all borders and waging international strikes and strike support. We can build a mass international PLP to organize the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist beast.

Nationalism: Deadly for Autoworkers

Time was if you got a job in auto you were made in the shade, relatively speaking.

Today, if you get hired, your job hangs on international currency rates, how cheaply you will work and nationalist slogans pushed by the unions.

"Save British jobs," the unions cried at a big march on April 1st in Birmingham, "Save British manufacturing industry!"

The march came as Honda had just cut 50% of its workforce at Swindon. Rumors were circulating about Nissan threatening 2,000 jobs at its plant in Sunderland (affecting some 10,000 supply jobs) and, of course, Ford Dagenham was about to close. The strong [[sterling]] (pound), it was claimed, had priced British-made goods out of its biggest market, Europe.

Worse still, it appeared all 24,000 jobs at Rover would be lost, affecting some 50,000 supply jobs. A buyer has come through at the last moment and will save most of the Rover jobs but the April 29th GUARDIAN reported that the West Midlands area has lost 30,000 manufacturing jobs in manufacturing since September 1998.

Get a job in auto today and one is on the front lines of inter-imperialist rivalry. You cannot be indifferent. Trade union hacks and their nationalism lead us into one side or another of the bosses. There is another choice: workers' internationalism and communist politics. That is the road PLP offer, join us!

Social Democrats: Frontment for the Fourth Reich

May 9 marks the 55^th anniversary of ending Hitler's Third Reich and the raising of the red flag over Berlin's Reichstag by the communist Soviet Army. The Soviet Union lost up to 30 million people doing most of the fighting against Hitler's war machine. The Red Army fought 507 German divisions plus 100 divisions of their fascist allies, almost 3.5 times more than the Western Allies combined!

Last week the German army renamed an important military base after a Wermacht (German Army) sergeant who risked his life saving a couple of hundred Jews. Previously the base had been named after a general who began his career during World War I and then served Hitler during World War II. This was reported as a "change in the mind" of German capitalism from the old militarist mentality.

Meanwhile, a commission restructuring the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) proposed reorganizing all troops into a rapid deployment force capable of intervening overseas. After WWII, the German military, so discredited by the atrocities committed by Hitler, was supposedly reorganized mainly as a defensive force, forbidden from fighting overseas. But during last year's NATO/U.S. air war against Yugoslavia, the Bundeswehr fought as part of NATO.

Under the new proposal the military draft will end. Instead a professional force of 210,000 troops will be set up; 140,000 will be part of a "crisis reaction force for foreign actions," with Kosovo the testing ground for this new force. It reflects the growing influence of German imperialism in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

But interestingly, support for this change comes not so much from the old-fashioned reactionaries, but from the Greens, the "peace" party. They, in coalition with the Social Democrats, run the government. The Greens were known as a pacifist, environmental, anti-nuke organization, and claim this "restructuring" will abolish the draft. What they don't say is if the German bosses need more soldiers, they'll reinstate the draft. As a matter of fact, the new plan calls for a token conscript force of 30,000.

The Social-Democrats since before World War I have always been imperialism's best friend. In Germany they have served their masters well. During WWI, the Social-Democrats (SPD), calling themselves "a workers' party," voted for war credits for the bosses' military. The Bolsheviks, the revolutionary movement led by Lenin in Russia, was the only force in Europe to oppose the war and strongly attacked the Social-Democrats. The SPD played the same role in Germany as the Democratic Party do in the U.S., to lead the workers to support the ruling class. The Bolsheviks called for turning the imperialist war into a revolutionary war to destroy capitalism (which is exactly what they did in Russia). After WWI, the Social-Democrats were vital to the German bosses crushing the workers' uprising led by German communists.

During the 1920s and early 1930s, the KPD (the German Communist Party) had to fight the SPD, which ran the labor movement. The KPD never broke the SPD's hold on key sections of the proletariat. The KPD mistakenly encouraged reliance on parliamentary elections to take power, totally underestimating the rise fascism and the German ruling class. Their slogan was, "After Hitler, Thaelmann" (head of the KPD).

While today there is no communist Soviet Union, workers are not starting from scratch. We have the experiences of past communists, their great achievements as well as mistakes. As all the imperialists prepare for their constant wars, workers must also organize for these bloody battles ahead.

LETTERS

A Father-Son Conversation: Why March on May Day?

As I was preparing to go to Washington, D.C. for PLP's annual May Day march, my thirteen-year-old son asked me why I was marching. He said I had gone to numerous May Days with seemingly no results (i.e., revolution). On top of that, I had no reason to march since I have a "good" job and a house. His question made me think of my first May Day march in Boston 1975.

My sixteen-year-old sister and I had just gotten off a May Day bus from Washington, D.C. The D.C. marchers were the first to arrive at the staging point, a vacant shopping center. I recall seeing dozens of police cars and motorcycles filling over half the parking lot, waiting for the march to begin. Our attention was drawn to a ridge a few hundred yards away to our right. I was 21 and very naive. We could see people approaching with what appeared to be hockey sticks. I thought to myself, this is summer, why would anyone be carrying hockey sticks. My innocence was quickly shattered when I realized these people also had baseball bats and were about to attack us.

My sister grabbed my shirt and clung to it like there was no tomorrow. She said, "I want to go home!" I told her the buses had left and we couldn't go back. We then heard a thundering voice from the sound truck directing the security volunteers to "Go! Go!" and stop these attackers from getting too close to the marchers. The security force sprang into action. They ran up to the attackers and engaged them in battle. It became obvious in only a few minutes our security force would be victorious.

The whole time the police were just sitting and waiting to see the result of this confrontation. When the racists were being bloodied and scattering, the police decided to intercede. They started up their cars and motorcycles, raced to the battle scene, and proceeded to attack mostly our forces. At the same time, a police car cruised by my sister and me. The cops were grinning and one of them was giving us the "finger" as they went by. I realized then how much the cops hated our cause and us. There were cops in combat fatigues who approached us too, but quickly withdrew as the buses from NY and other cities started arriving.

Bus after beautiful bus, filled with May Day marchers, seemed to form an endless line, as we cheered with joy. The security force that had just won the battle of Columbia Point was welcomed back with open arms. As the marchers disembarked, the story of the battle was recounted from the sound truck for all to hear. The marchers were electrified upon hearing how the battle was fought and won.

The Party had organized a very successful march that led to the recruitment and consolidation of many new comrades (including myself). I am not the first to say that achieving communist revolution consists of many small and large battles, including the process of struggling with our friends over many issues, like their participation in May Day. May Day is step on the long, arduous road to revolution.

While it is true many workers in the USA own a house (as long as the mortgage is paid), and a number have relatively good-paying jobs, the majority live "paycheck to paycheck." If I lost my job, I could lose my house; a trauma experienced by many workers, especially in the auto and steel industries.

Under capitalism, workers have no assurances for a fulfilling and happy life (all too often, quite the opposite) because our destiny is in the hands of a few billionaires. Their system demands constant profits, which means exploitation of our labor. They have the power to decide when to go to war, whether to use nuclear weapons, and whether our young people are drafted or go to prison. They guarantee the worship of the dollar bill. The capitalist future includes imperialist wars, fascist terror and continued oppression for the profit god.

I choose a different scenario. I choose a future based on sharing everything our labor produces. I choose to have confidence in the leadership and cadre of the communist PLP. I hope some day that you join me.

Midwest Red

Weaker Sex Myth Means Big Bucks for Growers

The bosses push the line that women are the weaker sex, not to give them better treatment but to exploit them more. This idea of the weaker sex has been publicized so widely that many workers, women and men, have accepted it.

On the fields of Delano, CA, in the winter of 1965, the growers hired women to pick grapes to try to break the farm workers strike. The growers formed "Mothers Against the Strike," led by the wives of contractors and growers. They promised better treatment and higher wages to the women they hired. Of course this was a big lie.

Today women working in the fields are as super-exploited as ever. Many women in Delano work in the packing plants and produce profits for their owners. But they are actually hired by contractors, who also grab part of their wages.

These doubly-exploited women are also forced to sign a paper allowing the company to fire them without cause. The bosses have also installed cameras in the plant to spy on the women, to insure they're working fast enough. This weaker sex myth means super-profits for the bosses.

Men and women workers must unite to fight this oppression. The same bosses who super-exploit women workers to lay off and/or lower wages for men workers. Join the PLP the only organization that unites men and women workers to eliminate the system requiring this exploitation: capitalism.

Veteran of the 1965 Farm Workers Strike

What Needs to Be Done?

I just read in CHALLENGE about the May Day marches. It was encouraging to know that 60 people joined PLP and 70 expressed interest in Party study groups on the May 6th Washington march. It was good to know a new Party club has begun in Texas. The development of the Party's relationship with janitors in Los Angeles is significant, as well as PLP's May Day mobilizing in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. The letters from various May Day marchers were inspiring.

However, I think it would be incorrect to be overly positive. The "modest turnout of 1300" people in the Washington march, which represents a decline over the last two years, should concern us. A "modest" turnout on May Day demands that we change and improve our efforts.

I think each Party club and section should make a sober analysis about the "turnout." I think each comrade should ask himself or herself, "What are your goals and expectations for the Party in general and for yourself in particular?" The Party must grow and everyone must help!

I think each club should make plans to at least double its membership, to consolidate new members and to develop new organizers and leaders among workers, youth and professionals. Whatever criticism and self-criticism and adjustments are required to do this, we must do it.

While it is uplifting to meet people at May Day who agree with communism, we can not allow ourselves to underestimate the effort it takes to win these and many others who are confused or unsure about communism and whether it will work.

The magic of the May Day moment doesn't by itself produce the type of plans and build the courage and commitment necessary to build the Party all year round. I recognize and appreciate the positive lessons from this May Day. I fight to have full confidence in the working class. But I don't think that communism and the Party's future is automatically secured. I don't think the Party leadership or CHALLENGE should contribute to anyone's illusion that this is true.

NYC Comrade

Learning a Lot

As a PLP member, I learn many things each time I march on May Day. It helps me understand that my job is to organize for international communist revolution. Capitalism appears to be good for everyone, but this is an illusion. It kills people or causes them to live in misery and poverty all their lives for the "good" of the bosses. It can never be reformed, or remade into a good society. Capitalism can't provide for everyone because it produces for profits, not people's needs.

Our work to build revolution can start with something as simple as asking your friends to look over a copy of CHALLENGE. Perhaps they will come with you to a forum, study group or rally in your community. Every person's collective work in the Party is unique, but equally important to the working class and our future. It all starts with your choice to accept the job or not. We cannot be neutral in this struggle. Either we remain part of the problem, or become part of the solution.

Members of PLP stand up for communism and rock the capitalist boat. It may scare those around us when we do. But the bosses are killing us in the streets and storming into our houses like Nazi troopers whenever they please. Our work for communist revolution and the daily effects of capitalism will show people we are telling the truth, so push on. There is plenty of "on-the-job training" available from comrades who know your true value and potential as a member of the working class. Choose your side, the communist side. On May Day 2000, I want to say welcome to the PLP. You won't regret your choice. Let's get to work.

Hammond, Indiana Red

`Amen!' to May Day

Whoopee! In 26 years of Party membership this is the first May Day I've underestimated the turnout from my immediate group. We thought that, at most, 12 would come from our church and soup kitchen, but 18 came. Everyone participated in the march and rallies and a lot handled the multiple bus break-downs in mature working-class fashion, by directing anger at the capitalist system.

Most important, two adults and one student indicated they wanted to join PLP, and three more people agreed to distribute CHALLENGE. We must decide which collectives will be most appropriate for our new comrades, and where to help them concentrate their efforts in sharpening class struggle, in Workfare, police terror and/or youth-schools work.

These developments have come through five years of increasing participation in many aspects of the church's life, but concentrating on the soup kitchen, base-building, trying to politicize relationships and, in the last year, guaranteeing the distribution of 16-20 CHALLENGES. As a result of this exciting activity, three professionals and one auto worker who couldn't go to May Day may now become regular readers. None of them is a church-goer but they respect the fact that we try to lead class struggle there.

I also met five more people (two artists, two teachers and a nurse) at a regional denominational social justice meeting. They liked aspects of our ideas they've seen in our church newsletter. These are modest but encouraging developments. We are beginning to learn how to work within, and the raise, the limits that now hold back the working class and us.

In struggle, Amen!

Red Churchmouse

1. Turn Strike Struggles Into Schools for Communism
   1. GENERAL STRIKES ARE NOT ENOUGH
2. General Strikes Erupt from Africa to South America
3. IS THE MILITARY TRYING TO ABOLISH SEXISM?
4. Methodist Hospital Strike...
   OUR UNITY WILL SOON BE TESTED!
5. Workers Wary of AFL-CIO `Shampaign' for Amnesty
   1. "LEADERS BUILD PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM
   2. `HUMANITARIAN' WORDS, FASCIST DEEDS
6. For a Brief Period The Statue Stood for Liberty--from Slavery
7. Rockefeller Forces Plot
   Hostile Takeover of LA Bosses
8. Capitalism: Murder Inc. in Africa
   1. Africa's First Mini World War
9. Can the Army Be All It Can Without Sexism?
10. School Election Opens Doors for Left
11. Peer Review a Cover for Attacks Against Students, Teachers
12. LETTERS
    1. Writers Wanted
    2. Capitalism Strikes Out
    3. Communists Must Lead Struggles of Immigrant and Citizen Workers United
    4. They Don't Eat Meat, They Eat Children!
    5. Dayton Transit Workers Reject Contract Twice

Editorial

Turn Strike Struggles Into Schools for Communism

Workers in several countries are fighting back militantly against increased bosses' attacks. Massive general strikes occurred in Uruguay (June 8) and Argentina (June 9). A two-day general strike is slated for Ecuador June 15-16. In Africa, Nigeria was hit by a general strike protesting the government increase of fuel prices. (For details, see below).

GENERAL STRIKES ARE NOT ENOUGH

As communists we in PLP support these workers' struggles while rejecting the union leaders and opportunists behind them who mislead them and who generally serve different groups of bosses. For example, in Argentina, the union federations are led by members of the Peronista Party (founded by General Perón, a Hitler admirer).. For almost a decade, Argentina was ruled by Peronista President Menem, who relentlessly attacked the working class.Until this system that thrives on the misery of the working class is smashed, workers will continue on the treadmill of constantly fighting the bosses' attacks, while winning very few, if any, of these battles. And the bosses, holding state power, eventually take away even these small victories. Even should these strikes become a mass uprising throwing the current rulers out of office, exchanging one president for another--as has happened twice in Ecuador in the last two years and hundreds of times under capitalism--the essence of the system, a bosses' dictatorship over workers, remains.Revolutionary-minded workers must turn these struggles into schools for communism. This means, among other things:

* Building Class Solidarity. In the U.S., unity in struggle against the bosses has gone mostly downhill ever since Reagan busted the 1981 air controllers strike. All boss-fostered divisions that emerge in strike actions--white against black, Latin and Asian; men against women; citizen against immigrant; young against old; one nationality against another--must be fought. Working-class unity is an essential ingredient without which revolution is impossible.

* Battling scabs and cops. In the course of militant class struggle, workers can learn the class nature of the government (state apparatus). It's not neutral. It's a class weapon of the bosses against the working class. From this can come the understanding--with communist leadership--that the bosses' state dictatorship cannot be changed by "electing the good guys" but must be smashed and replaced by a workers' state: the dictatorship of the proletariat.

* Relating strike demands to the political needs of the working class. Immediate economic struggles often open the door to explain how racism and imperialist war are behind the bosses attacks on the working class. Overcoming boss-inspired racism unites the working class, again an essential ingredient in preparation for revolution. Organizing against the bosses' war plans, especially in the war industries and the military, could rock the rulers back on their heels and reveal just how weak they are without working class support or passivity.

* Building a mass PLP. Finally, and most important, PLP members and friends in every strike and general strike must fight to win strikers to the need to join the Party and build a mass revolutionary workers' communist party . That is the only road to a society where production is based on the needs of the working class. For workers, this is the true victory of any strike or general strike.

These are some of the ways such struggles can become schools for communism.

General Strikes Erupt from Africa to South America

* On June 8 in Uruguay, the PIT-CNT (the union federation) organized a 24-hour general strike coinciding with the 100th day of President Jorge Battle's government, protesting his economic policies. Uruguay's unemployment rate is 12%. The strike opposed huge budget cutbacks, aimed mainly at the workers, and a privatization law which will sell off even "efficient state-owned agencies." The strike was partially successful. Several workers were arrested for stoning 21 scab buses.

* On June 9, the three different trade union federations in Argentina united to call a 24-hour general strike against mass firings of government workers. The strike was 85% effective. Over 100 scab buses were burned. President de la Rúa is in a bind. He's about to visit Wall Street seeking more investments in Argentina, but the imperialist bankers (through the International Monetary Fund) are demanding even greater government cutbacks to force it to pay for its already huge foreign debt.

* "A general strike in Nigeria against increased fuel prices has left banks, schools and hospitals across the country closed," reported BBC news (June 8). The strike began on June 7 after rebellions erupted in several cities protesting the increase. Although Nigeria is a big oil producer, and the world price of oil is at its highest in many years, only Shell Oil, Chevron and local bosses and politicians benefit from this bonanza.

* In Ecuador, "The national teachers' union and public health workers began the week with new protests....The trade union federations have called for a general strike for the end of the week. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) is meeting on June 13 to decide whether to join the call for a people's uprising." (INSIGNIA newspaper, June 12).

A few months ago, similar uprisings led by CONAIE stormed the parliament when the soldiers protecting it opened the doors to the protestors. The politicians inside ran for their lives. CONAIE and dissident military officers briefly established a government. Army generals, guided by the U.S. embassy, dissolved it a few hours later, forced President Mahuad to resign and installed Vice-President Noboa as president. Noboa has continued Mahuad's anti-working class economic policies (including replacing the Sucre with the dollar as the local currency) and now is facing a similar threat. As in Nigeria, oil profits end up in the imperialist/local bosses'/politicians' pockets.

IS THE MILITARY TRYING TO ABOLISH SEXISM?

Charges of sexual harassment brought by the highest-ranking woman in the military, Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, against her former commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Larry G. Smith, have been upheld. Kennedy has stated that in 1996 Smith tried to fondle her after a meeting at her Pentagon office. At the time she did not report it, but when Smith was assigned to handle all complaints of sexual harassment in the military, she said she felt compelled to bring these charges.

Why did Kennedy, who is retiring in June, decide to come forward now? Was it a combination of a guilty conscience for not having said something earlier plus Smith's promotion? Or did she feel that with her retirement she wouldn't have to worry about the effect on her career? Or did others encourage her to come forward to make a political statement? It's still unclear, but some things are very clear.

Kennedy received a lot of support after making the charges. Counter-charges brought against her by a friend of Smith's were dismissed within a few days. This kind of speed is rarely seen in the Pentagon. Secondly, shortly afterwards Kennedy spoke at a public banquet sponsored by several groups closely associated with the military. She urged military women to come forward with complaints of sexual harassment. This event received front-page coverage in the NEW YORK TIMES.

Integrating women into the armed forces has been huge problem for the military which they are desperately trying to solve. Since the Gulf War the military could not function without the women who comprise 30% or so of its forces. Without women volunteers they would probably need a draft, which would create more political problems for them.

The military is also committed to integrating women because it affects the U.S. rulers' strategy of maintaining their position as the dominant capitalist power. This requires preparation for large-scale war and constant deployment of troops worldwide. The ruling class needs liberal politicians to win the population to support war, large and small. Therefore, they must have a military that is large and integrated.

The military can't fully fight the sexism within its ranks without exposing the sexist nature of the society these soldiers are being asked to die to protect. Can they afford to reveal that capitalist culture is saturated with sex and destructive relationships from which the ruling class makes billions while taking young people's minds off rebelling? As young workers become more disillusioned and alienated by capitalism, more sex and decadence are offered to distract them.

Can they expose the fact that capitalism needs the billions of dollars netted by U.S. bosses from paying low wages to woman workers around the world? Yet their own need to protect more of their empire is forcing U.S. bosses to use more women in the military. Promoting more woman to generals, even supporting more women who complain about sexual harassment, won't solve the problem of sexism.

Among enlisted soldiers sexism in the military cuts both ways. On the one hand, sexism is a huge problem for working-class soldiers. Relationships between men and women in the military are strained. All the problems of a sexist society are magnified by the young age of the soldiers, the uneven ratio of men to women and the lack of good role models for healthy relationships. But the main problem is political and inherent in a profit system.

Although sexism is not inherent in our communist movement, it does exist and we are held back by the sexism of capitalism. But the communist movement is not bound by sexism. Not only do we not need it but it also acts as a brake on the unity needed to destroy capitalism. Through political struggle and practice we can overcome sexism to unite soldiers to fight for communism.

While there have been many ups and downs, the communist movement has a positive history of fighting sexism. Women played huge roles, as soldiers and organizers, in both the Soviet and Chinese revolutions. The Cultural Revolution in China explicitly sought to fight sexism in the movement and bring more women into leadership. PLP has made strides in developing women leaders. But this, like the entire struggle for revolution, is a long hard fight--500 years of capitalist ideology won't change easily in any of us.

PLP members in the military are trying to develop healthy communist relations between soldiers, relationships based more on class-consciousness, helping each other and uniting against the brass and the bosses. Over the last few months we've had some positive developments. In one mostly black National Guard unit, a young white woman soldier has earned the respect of her fellow soldiers by taking on the female First Sergeant who was giving favors to soldiers who slept with her. Our comrade fought over many little things, such as which barracks were given to soldiers on drill weekends and favoritism in duty assignments to cronies of the First Sergeant. She has also raised bigger political issues, about the war in Kosovo and racist police killings.

By doing such things and being a principled person, over the last few years she has developed a few soldiers who read CHALLENGE and has built a small base for communist ideas. This is an example of fighting sexism in the military, one that gives us hope for the future.

Methodist Hospital Strike...
OUR UNITY WILL SOON BE TESTED!

GARY, IN, June 14 -- The strike against Northlake and Southlake Methodist hospitals is in its third week. Morale is high for the 650 mostly black women housekeepers, nurses' assistants, food service and maintenance workers in SEIU Local 73.

On June 8, almost 1,000 workers and youth turned out in the blistering heat to march arm in arm with the strikers. Workers were outraged when Gary mayor compared giving a city permit for the six-block march to granting a permit to the Ku Klux Klan!

The large number of marchers and the constant blast of truck and car horns showed the overwhelming support of workers in this area. The usual gaggle of union hacks and politicians addressed the rally, declaring to the heavens, "We're with you all the way!" Some came with checks in hand for the emergency fund, used to prevent the utilities from turning off the strikers' gas and electricity.

A strike leader and 20-year veteran gave a chilling account of what life is like for her and her son on a Methodist paycheck. A letter from a nurse was read to the rally. Nurses are not in the union and are working 12-hour days. She described the unsafe and unsanitary conditions inside, and told how the security guards were trying to intimidate nurses from talking to strikers. She concluded by saying, "We are all with you." Now would be the time to add "union recognition" for the nurses to the list of demands, and pull them out as well. A black woman doctor declared her support for the strike at a rally right in front of the main entrance.

The unity and morale of the strikers is about to be tested. The bosses have brought in professional strikebreakers and a court injunction is not far off. When it comes, the big-shot union leaders and politicians will tell us to obey it. We must be prepared to defy any injunction with even greater mass picketing. This will up the ante. Strikers will face arrests, but that can be turned against the bosses with even more support from steelworkers and other hospital workers in the area.

This strike is an opportunity to learn how to take power. The bosses rule through a class dictatorship: their property, their cops, their courts, and their laws. Racist and sexist super-exploitation, driving wages down and productivity up, are what's fueling the "economic boom" in every industry. Capitalism is a system of wage slavery. Everything is produced for profit.

As long as the bosses hold power we will have endless wars, racism and poverty. Communist revolution will build a world where everything is produced for the needs of the working class. We invite every Methodist striker to join the revolutionary communist PLP and build a movement that can lead our class to power.

Workers Wary of AFL-CIO `Shampaign' for Amnesty

LOS ANGELES, CA, June 10--More than 20,000 immigrant and citizen workers attended a rally sponsored by the AFL-CIO leadership to demand unconditional amnesty for undocumented workers.

The AFL-CIO and Democratic Party, both controlled by the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class, have a long history of racism against immigrant workers. While many workers hope this campaign will bring them relief from the racist Migra (the U.S. immigration department), the Rockefellers have something else in mind. They're pushing amnesty to get workers beholden to them and more likely to fight their imperialist wars. They also want workers tied to the electoral process and to the AFL-CIO traitors.

A limited amnesty may well win over large sectors of the immigrant community. More than 70% are between 18 and 35--army age. One of every five children born in the U.S. are from immigrant families.

At the rally, workers chanted, "Workers' struggles have no borders"; "Up with workers, down with Clinton." A few chanted, "Migra Cochina racista y asesina." [Immigration cops: filthy racists and murderers."] When some leaders chanted, "People, united...," one worker led those around her to chant, Workers, united..." Several workers agreed we must sharpen the struggle against the bosses in the factories and gave her their names and addresses.

Outside, PLP members sold and distributed over 600 CHALLENGES and more than 3,500 communist leaflets. As workers streamed inside, PLP rallied, denouncing Clinton, Gore and the capitalist system, the source of racist exploitation, and "Operation Gatekeeper," which has murdered 1,500 immigrants at the border. We called for revolution to destroy wage slavery and borders so the workers who produce all the wealth will use it for their own needs.

A couple of union leaders tried to turn the crowd against us, saying we were "against the workers" because our leaflet attacked the AFL-CIO leadership. But then a worker took the bullhorn to say many "legal" workers are paid starvation wages; "amnesty will not end exploitation." He asked why the AFL-CIO didn't organize the power of garment and farm workers and all workers in California to strike for unconditional amnesty and decent wages and conditions. He called on workers to organize on the job against racist exploitation. The union leaders slunk away.

"LEADERS BUILD PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM

Union honchos began the event with a group playing popular Mexican music. Thousands started chanting, "Mexico, Mexico." But Christina Vasquez, garment union International Vice-President led a group of youth who recently became U.S. citizens in the Pledge of Allegiance to U.S. bosses. Behind them was a sea of U.S. flags. Then union leaders and politicians spewed their love of the U.S. and their "support" of immigrant workers.

Farmworkers' union leader Arturo Rodriguez said workers who are legal residents "are free to improve their lives." AFL-CIO Executive Vice-President Linda Chavez Thompson said that the "clause that punishes employers who employ undocumented workers, made into law in 1986, was a failure. The employers manipulated the system. That's why they're changing their strategy." A video about the Statue of Liberty said it stood for protecting immigrants in the past which should be the case again.

`HUMANITARIAN' WORDS, FASCIST DEEDS

"This is a circus," said a garment worker who brought his family and other workers. Another declared, "I'm going to fight for amnesty, but I'm not going to support a war! They're going to have a serious problem if they want to send us." Although many understood the union leaders are "humanitarian" in word and fascist in deed, the bosses are still fighting to win many thousands to support their plans for war and fascism.

Garment workers, farm workers and janitors came in groups while 4,000 workers were organized by different churches under the Metro Alliance. The field is open for us to work more deeply with them and win many to our revolutionary outlook.

Party members plan to discuss the event with their co-workers, explain the bosses' plans and organize committees in the shops and factories as well as in the churches to oppose the bosses' daily attacks. We'll fight to bring more workers and students to the next mass rally. This work and CHALLENGE are vital in giving workers the alternative to the Democrats and AFL-CIO "leaders." Only CHALLENGE exposes the hypocrisy of these "humanitarians" who need workers as cannon fodder to fight for their empire. Either we win workers to the long-term fight for workers' power or the bosses will win them to fight and kill other workers for the bosses' bloody oil profits.

For a Brief Period The Statue Stood for Liberty--from Slavery

It's called the Statue of Liberty for a reason. It was not presented to the U.S. to celebrate mass immigration. The "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses..." part was added years later.

The statue was given to the U.S. by a Republican club in France when Republicans were left-wing parties advocating the overthrow of monarchies. It honored the defeat of slavery. In fact the first statue had a broken chain in her hand and was a black woman!

This apparently was too radical for the U.S. government which asked for the modifications we see today. And no black people were allowed on the island for the opening ceremony. The Statue is a clear example how the rulers rewrite history.

Later the same French Republican club struck a medallion honoring John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and presented it to his widow.

Rockefeller Forces Plot
Hostile Takeover of LA Bosses

The Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class, which owns Exxon-Mobil, the Chase Bank, many media outlets--led by the NEW YORK TIMES--and controls the Democratic Party, is organizing a many-sided offensive to attack its rivals. For this, these imperialists must win as many workers as possible to their side. Their plan is to drape themselves with a "humanitarian, anti-racist, pro-immigrant, pro-labor" flag.This is why the Rockefeller-directed U.S. Justice Department is punishing Bill Gates' Microsoft, to bring it under the control of the Rockefeller Eastern Establishment. This offensive is also behind the drive for community policing and the fight to take over the schools as well as the launching of mass movements led by the AFL-CIO.

An important part of this offensive is the fight to control Los Angeles, the country's second largest city. The top Eastern bosses are disciplining the LA ruling class and fighting to win over black and Latino workers to support Rockefeller/Exxon war plans for control of Middle East oil. This is the cheapest, most plentiful and accessible oil in the world. Corporations that dominated policy in LA include: McDonnell Douglas, absorbed by Boeing; ARCO, taken over by Exxon rival BP Amoco, (limited somewhat by the Justice Department), and UNOCAL, being attacked by the AFL-CIO for its ties to the Rockefeller enemies ruling in Myanmar (Burma) and Afghanistan.Eli Broad, owner of Sun America, has been a member of LA's ruling elite. He is a friend of Mayor Riordan. It was at his home that a donor connected to the Chinese government arranged to make a large contribution to the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to influence U.S. policy toward China. Both Broad and McDonnell Douglas were willing to do business with China without any limit on technology transfers. This position was strongly opposed by the Eastern rulers, who see China as a long-range strategic enemy and competitor for control of Middle East oil. The Rockefeller Empire depends on control of Middle East oil to limit their competitors' supply of this key resource. The biggest LA-based oil firm, the Hunt brothers' Occidental--a Rockefeller/Exxon enemy--gets much of its crude from Libya, labeled a "rogue" nation by the U.S.. Rockefeller's plan for a likely ground war in Iraq, and need to win the workers to support this bloodbath, do not fit into the LA oil barons' plan. The AFL-CIO is pushing hard in LA to build a cadre of liberals loyal to Rockefeller's plan.

In other arenas, the traditional LA rulers are under attack. Their companies have been taken over or limited. The LAPD has served the LA rulers by enforcing racist terror to guarantee low wages and immediate profits. Now the Eastern Establishment is pushing for community policing which, while continuing to terrorize workers would also try to win workers to support the cops and see the Federal Government as "humanitarian."

The LA rulers have been anti-union, unwilling to use unions to win the workers to support U.S. imperialism. They sought only to terrorize workers and pay the lowest possible wages. They have preferred to hire undocumented immigrants and use the threat of deportation over the heads of thousands of garment and other manufacturing workers rather than legalize them. The Rockefeller plan is to make more workers legal residents and citizens and bring them into organizations controlled by the Democratic Party.

Roy Romer, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is being appointed LA schools Superintendent, despite the LA Times' editorializing against this Rockefeller loyalist. The Justice Department push to take control of the LAPD and the AFL-CIO's Amnesty campaign are part of a fight to win workers to see the Rockefeller liberals, the Democratic Party and the unions as their saviors from racist exploitation. Nothing could be further from the truth!

While all bosses are murderous exploiters, the Rockefeller liberals are the most dangerous. They control state power in the U.S. They've killed more workers than Hitler. They are the ones planning ground war in the Middle East soon for oil profits and stand ready to wage World War to save their empire. We can't trust or support any capitalist rulers. Our strength lies in uniting the workers in both the short run and the long run to fight for workers' power through communist revolution.

Capitalism: Murder Inc. in Africa

Some people think that Challenge exaggerates the cruelty of capitalism. In fact, the reality of capitalism is much worse than words in a newpaper can express.

Recently we have reported on wars in Africa (5/31, 6/14 issues). We've shown how deadly imperialism, capitalism and nationalism have been for the exploited African masses of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, etc. But we underestimated how many lives the profit system has destroyed. According to surveys reported in the NEW YORK TIMES, 200,000 deaths were attributable to acts of violence, while the vast majority were due to the war-related collapse of the region's health infrastructure and delivery of its health and nutrition services. In total, 1.7 million have died in the Eastern Congo because of the war.

An example of how the competing nationalist rulers have turned the Eastern Congo into a cemetery is the latest fighting between the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. A week of heavy artillery fire totally destroyed Kisangani, a city of 500,000 in the northeast Congo. Its victims were mainly civilians.

Until recently these two armies were allies in a war against Congo's President Kabila. Uganda trained and armed a Tutsi-led Rwandan force to fight against Rwanda's former government, led by the Hutu ethnic group elite, which had killed hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis supporters of the Uganda-based exiles. The U.S. army was behind the Uganda-Rwandan Tutsi forces. Uganda's president was trained at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and basically was considered an officer in the U.S. Army.

Meanwhile, the French military had also armed racist Hutu militias of the former Rwandan government which were murdering hundreds of thousands of Tutsis.

After the old pro-French Hutu rulers of Rwanda were defeated, the new rulers and their Ugandan backers invaded the Congo to oust the aging dictator Mobutu, who already had become useless for U.S. imperialism. (The CIA had installed Mobutu in power in the 1960s to side with the U.S. during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.) Mobutu's ouster opened the door for the current President Kabila to take power, aided by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda.

Africa's First Mini World War

But soon after Kabila took over, the rulers of Uganda and Rwanda decided to retain control of the Eastern Congo. Kabila reacted by supporting guerrillas opposed to both armies. Troops from the armies of Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe are in the Congo defending Kabila against the armies of Uganda and Rwanda, a mini-world war centered in Africa. Meanwhile, these "allies"--Rwanda and Uganda--are waging their own war within a war for the control of the destroyed Kinsagani, center of the diamond-rich northeastern Congo.

These constantly shifting alliances between different nationalist and ethnic forces all turn on control of the Congo's rich mineral wealth. The eastern Congo has some of the world's biggest diamond mines. Billions are at stake for those who control these minerals. That is the name of the game for all capitalists--profits, no matter how many must be murdered to amass them.

Can the Army Be All It Can Without Sexism?

Charges of sexual harassment brought by the highest-ranking woman in the military, Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, against her former commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Larry G. Smith, have been upheld. Kennedy has stated that in 1996 Smith tried to fondle her after a meeting at her Pentagon office. At the time she did not report it, but when Smith was assigned to handle all complaints of sexual harassment in the military, she said she felt compelled to bring these charges.

Why did Kennedy, who is retiring in June, decide to come forward now? Was it a combination of a guilty conscience for not having said something earlier plus Smith's promotion? Or did she feel that with her retirement she wouldn't have to worry about the effect on her career? Or did others encourage her to come forward to make a political statement? It's still unclear, but some things are very clear.

Kennedy received a lot of support after making the charges. Counter-charges brought against her by a friend of Smith's were dismissed within a few days. This kind of speed is rarely seen in the Pentagon. Secondly, shortly afterwards Kennedy spoke at a public banquet sponsored by several groups closely associated with the military. She urged military women to come forward with complaints of sexual harassment. This event received front-page coverage in the NEW YORK TIMES.

Integrating women into the armed forces has been huge problem for the military which they are desperately trying to solve. Since the Gulf War the military could not function without the women who comprise 30% or so of its forces. Without women volunteers they would probably need a draft, which would create more political problems for them.

The military is also committed to integrating women because it affects the U.S. rulers' strategy of maintaining their position as the dominant capitalist power. This requires preparation for large-scale war and constant deployment of troops worldwide. The ruling class needs liberal politicians to win the population to support war, large and small. Therefore, they must have a military that is large and integrated.

The military can't fully fight the sexism within its ranks without exposing the sexist nature of the society these soldiers are being asked to die to protect. Can they afford to reveal that capitalist culture is saturated with sex and destructive relationships from which the ruling class makes billions while taking young people's minds off rebelling? As young workers become more disillusioned and alienated by capitalism, more sex and decadence are offered to distract them.

Can they expose the fact that capitalism needs the billions of dollars netted by U.S. bosses from paying low wages to woman workers around the world? Yet their own need to protect more of their empire is forcing U.S. bosses to use more women in the military. Promoting more woman to generals, even supporting more women who complain about sexual harassment, won't solve the problem of sexism.

Among enlisted soldiers sexism in the military cuts both ways. On the one hand, sexism is a huge problem for working-class soldiers. Relationships between men and women in the military are strained. All the problems of a sexist society are magnified by the young age of the soldiers, the uneven ratio of men to women and the lack of good role models for healthy relationships. But the main problem is political and inherent in a profit system.

Although sexism is not inherent in our communist movement, it does exist and we are held back by the sexism of capitalism. But the communist movement is not bound by sexism. Not only do we not need it but it also acts as a brake on the unity needed to destroy capitalism. Through political struggle and practice we can overcome sexism to unite soldiers to fight for communism.

While there have been many ups and downs, the communist movement has a positive history of fighting sexism. Women played huge roles, as soldiers and organizers, in both the Soviet and Chinese revolutions. The Cultural Revolution in China explicitly sought to fight sexism in the movement and bring more women into leadership. PLP has made strides in developing women leaders. But this, like the entire struggle for revolution, is a long hard fight--500 years of capitalist ideology won't change easily in any of us.

PLP members in the military are trying to develop healthy communist relations between soldiers, relationships based more on class-consciousness, helping each other and uniting against the brass and the bosses. Over the last few months we've had some positive developments. In one mostly black National Guard unit, a young white woman soldier has earned the respect of her fellow soldiers by taking on the female First Sergeant who was giving favors to soldiers who slept with her. Our comrade fought over many little things, such as which barracks were given to soldiers on drill weekends and favoritism in duty assignments to cronies of the First Sergeant. She has also raised bigger political issues, about the war in Kosovo and racist police killings.

By doing such things and being a principled person, over the last few years she has developed a few soldiers who read CHALLENGE and has built a small base for communist ideas. This is an example of fighting sexism in the military, one that gives us hope for the future.

School Election Opens Doors for Left

BROOKLYN, NY -- "You mean you think it's a good thing to be attacked?" asked a co-worker in discussing the union election at a Party member's school. Our member has a history of union activity, having been a delegate for three years and run for overall union rep (chapter leader) twice, as an open communist. In this latest election it really became clear there were two sides: the class collaborationist slate--work with the boss, "we're all in this together"--and the class struggle side.

Although she was reluctant to run for chapter leader because it might take away too much time spent with students, she did agree to run for a delegate position, in alliance with two other teachers who'd been vocal and active in union struggles throughout the school year. One ran for chapter leader, the other for another delegate spot. They made it clear in our campaign literature that they'd each been involved in leading struggles in the school--for students as well as for staff--something the bosses' slate could never claim.Shortly before the election tremendous struggle emerged about our comrade's communist politics. Some teachers waged a real fight against anti-communism--"What does it matter she's a communist, look at all she's done for us"--showing some understanding that anti-communism was being used to stop class struggle in the school. (The next step is to win people to understand how being a communist relates to what we do.)

Meanwhile, the administration, in violation of Federal labor law (what else is new?), was warning people not to vote for her.

The administration's slate stood for working with the bosses. After all, they said, our school is the "beacon of hope" for its community. The incumbent chapter leader says his role is to be the liaison with the principal, instead of leading struggle to force the principal to supply copying and other materials we've needed all year, or to force the principal to meet with the union committee.

Our member received 83 votes out of 156 voters, over 50%. That wasn't enough to be elected since the three candidates on the bosses' slate received over 100 votes.

Many staff members were really upset our member wasn't elected. However, communists don't measure victory in electoral votes. This attack, and the clear alliance of forces create excellent opportunities. While our member hasn't consistently won people to attend Party events, or even to stand up to the bosses with her, this election campaign creates new openings. She's now in a better position to win people to form a caucus to organize in the school. And she's made it clear that the chapter needs to fight to support students in their struggles to pass the exams necessary to graduate.There is real interest in the caucus, but now to make this a real victory, she needs to win people to join the PLP Summer Project. Our Party section here has already planned a teacher study group and a fund-raising party for our fired teacher PLP'ers in Chicago. If our comrade can bring her friends, that's really winning!

Peer Review a Cover for Attacks Against Students, Teachers

"I'm against peer review," an older teacher in Los Angeles told a comrade who was giving her the CHALLENGE with an article on educational reform. "I don't think I'm a very good teacher--I sure don't have the energy I used to--and I don't want them to be able to get rid of me."

"Well, I know I'm a good teacher," replied the comrade, "and I've been written up for fighting for the students and for teaching the truth about the class struggle--but the pretext has been leaving my keys on the desk and being across the hall getting chalk when the tardy bell rang. And when we had a teacher here who was openly sexist and racist and refused to teach, he always got good evaluations. It took the unity of parents, teachers and students to get rid of him. The administration has never gone after teachers like that."

This is a small part of many discussions we've had this week about educational reform and peer review. The PLP teachers' club made a good effort and distributed 75 CHALLENGES to teachers this week, including seven by a friend of the Party who in the past had only gotten out one. All of us have learned a lot in this process.

At an after-school union meeting to discuss the vote on peer review, several activist teachers and CHALLENGE readers told of being pressured for standing up for students and for teaching about the fight against racism. They understood peer review could be an administration weapon against them as well. Another activist said the union should act as a defense attorney, defending all teachers no matter how they teach. A Party teacher disagreed, recounting the fight to fire the teacher who both refused to teach the students and who sexually harassed women students. In discussions following the meeting, most agreed we shouldn't defend teachers don't teach and who have openly racist and sexist behavior.

The older teacher quoted above is actually a dedicated teacher who has good rapport with the students and has defended their right to read CHALLENGE. With few exceptions, teachers in inner city schools care very much about their students and work hard to do a good job. But the problem is deeper and much less obvious. Many unintentionally sell the students short. Many students sell themselves short. Racist underestimation of students is part and parcel of the capitalist system in which we live. To fight with the certainty and commitment that everyone can learn requires a sharp understanding of the racist nature of capitalism.

For example, several of us tutor students to pass the tests required for graduation. It's an important part of showing students we care about them. We sit with a few students at a time and really try to listen to their problems--for example, with specific math operations. It's very important to know exactly the obstacles students face in understanding the operation and to develop enough rapport with the student to overcome feelings of sham. One student told us, for example, he was embarrassed to ask for help with math class because he'd have to admit he didn't understand. Establishing trust, paying very close attention to the specific problem and tutoring a few students at a time are keys in helping students pass these tests.

It's too easy and wrong to place the failure of the educational system at the feet of a few bad teachers. The problem runs throughout the whole profit system. Capitalism has always sold the working class short. The system systematically denies necessary resources to working-class students--especially black and Latino--while it also spreads racist lies, saying, "they can't learn." Parents are justifiably angry. Today, the ruling class needs to win students defend the bosses' profit system. While increasing the skill levels of a few students, it must also tighten controls over the schools and gear them up for industry and war. They use peer review to direct their fire against the teachers, and to control them.

Parents, students and teachers can see through this sham, especially as we raise these issues with them. CHALLENGE and PLP are vital in showing the real problem: schools organized to perpetuate a racist capitalist system--and the solution: organizing parents, teachers and students to fight to learn as we learn to fight for communist revolution. We have a long way to go and a lot to learn and to teach as well. Our discussions in the Party are very helpful.

LETTERS

Writers Wanted

I want to commend CHALLENGE for raising the importance of a communist paper and its distribution. The discussion of the role and the need for a communist newspaper is vital and long overdue. With that I'd like to encourage the discussion to go forward and advance the paper and its use by making some criticisms.

The issue is more than distribution, as important as that is. The issue is making CHALLENGE a mass newspaper in line with the idea of a mass party. To quote the editorial, "CHALLENGE is a mass organizer through which millions of workers can be trained politically to participate in the building of a communist world." But in its last paragraph something very important is left out, "Readers and distributors of CHALLENGE today will be members and leaders of our Party tomorrow." What about writers? How can workers and others politically participate as active, creative and wise leaders if they don't shape those ideas and communicate them in writing? And if they don't, who will? Our class needs all the leaders it can develop and workers, once they have the confidence, want to lead. Not being able to put your thoughts in writing, not being able to fully contribute to the fight for communism, erodes confidence. It makes us "employees", even in a good cause. In the fight for communism it means defeat.

Next, by putting a straw man up and knocking him down the editorial does not advance the discussion. The "very committed and active veteran member of PLP" is quoted as being unsure that increasing the readership of CHALLENGE is most important. Well what is their opinion as to what is? If someone as committed and experienced and active has a different take on the situation, shouldn't we hear the whole argument, or at least its main points? Or does doing communist work over time mean you just get more doubts? It's not my experience. Is this the message we want younger comrades to get?

Finally, the argument that distribution is most important has been made many times in the past, (the distant past), yet the circulation of the paper is at one of its lowest points. Maybe there is more to the problem. I believe that base-building and the integration of CHALLENGE in that process is the direction that growth, in all its aspects, lies. So while I commend the editors for starting the discussion, we've got to get deeper. Let's uncover the problem and its answers. We've got a world to win.

Another Veteran Comrade

Capitalism Strikes Out

With the Mudville Nine (Stockton, CA. team) vs. the San Jose Giants, minor league baseball comes to Lodi twice this year. The game started at 10:30 A.M and I thought it would be a good way to spend the morning.

Why do I like baseball? I remember playing it in the parks or in the streets until it got too dark to see the ball. You appreciate the skill it takes to hit a curve ball, or the surprise of the quickness of your own reflexes, when that bullet line drive actually ended up in your glove. You can remember the camaraderie of the players. If you played sports, the memories make going to see a game enjoyable. But capitalism corrupts and ruins everything it touches.

I went early to see batting practice. What I saw was a battering ram of fascist culture. I noticed all the school buses at the entrance to Zupo field. The stands were filled with junior high kids and a few paying adults. It was a promotional game sponsored by Lodi's biggest employer, General Mills, under the name H.L.A.Y. (Here's Looking At You). There were demonstrations by the Lodi Police K-9 Corps, showing police dogs viciously attacking victims (drug dealers), explaining to the students the dogs are not trained to bite but to take a victim down and keep him there.

If the police dogs are not enough to terrorize you, then General Mills brings in the U.S. Army National Guard. In comes the green army helicopter, landing in the center of Zupo field. Out comes McGruff, the crime dog, waving at the kids from a distance. An Army captain makes a speech about "just saying no" and he and McGruff return to their helicopter.

When the helicopter takes off it does a ground-level sweep from right to left field, facing the unsuspecting fans.

Many students were organized to leave the game after the 4^th inning, once they had seen the "important part."

It is vital for our class to read and distribute CHALLENGE. This is where we learn that the highest levels of the U.S.Army (General McCaffery's henchmen) organize the drug shipments from Columbia and other countries to be distributed to our children on the streets. (CHALLENGE, May 31) CHALLENGE exposes the true nature of the police, to terrorize and control workers and especially black and Latin workers.

CHALLENGE allows us to see these subtle demonstrations of fascist terror for what they are. It also can show us a future with communist revolution--a healthy baseball game.

Lodi Red

Communists Must Lead Struggles of Immigrant and Citizen Workers United

I thought the two articles in the June 14 CHALLENGE about the AFL-CIO campaign for amnesty for undocumented workers were very important.

The capitalists are constantly looking for ways to raise profits by increasing the workers' productivity and lowering wages. In the U.S. there's an "economic boom," in part because of a fascist labor policy based on a combination of factors: contracting out, part-time or temporary work at lower wages with no benefits, super-exploitation of undocumented workers, forced labor of Workfare workers and prison slave labor. In many places workers exist in all these categories, side by side.

The resulting "competition" among workers lowers wages and constantly increases productivity, read speed-up. In this time of lower unemployment in the U.S. the bosses and the government fear workers will seek higher wages and the unions will lose control of them.

The unions are fully aware of this. The amnesty campaign, as the CHALLENGE articles pointed out, is aimed primarily at winning the allegiance of immigrant workers to the electoral process in general, and to the Democratic Party and its war plans in particular, especially as the rivalry between the capitalists of different countries intensifies.

The demand for limited amnesty is a bribe and a cover, a defensive measure so that the AFL-CIO leaders will be able to control the workers without having to unite them to really fight on the shop floor, nor to oppose all the elements of U.S. fascist labor policy.

That's where the revolutionary communist PLP comes in. Communists have always tried to lead workers onto the offensive in the class struggle, strategically and tactically. Communists organize and lead daily and long-term struggles in the factories and on the job, uniting all workers--citizen, documented and undocumented, unionized and non-unionized. Communists put teeth into international solidarity, both in word and action.

A communist-led working-class movement against imperialist war must grow directly out of these class struggles. Communists and our base functioning inside the unions and other mass organizations is the best way to expose the true role of the AFL-CIO. Communists can bring the lessons of communist history the workers and make them conscious of how capitalism works and why the international working class needs power.

NYC comrade

They Don't Eat Meat, They Eat Children!

I know this headline sounds cruel, but it really fits certain groups tending to attract people looking to escape the madness of this system and falls into something even worse. After all, Hitler not only called his movement "national socialist," but also preached "healthier living." He was a vegetarian and a supporter of healthy living, except for million of Jews, Gypsies and Soviet people. Anyway, this is about those annoying orange-robed followers of the Hare Krishna sect. Former students of this movement are suing it for $400 million for sexual and emotional abuses.

The suit claims that in the 1970s and '80s more than 1,000 children were affected, some as young as three years old. Their lawyer said it covers "the most unthinkable abuse and maltreatment of little children we have seen." Children were physically abused, scrubbed with steel wool until they bled, untreated for malaria, hepatitis, etc. Younger girls were given as brides to older men who donated to the sect.

Krishna was brought to the U.S. by a swami at the height of the Vietnam war and civil rights movement. For sure, he had the support of the U.S. government. Many turned away from militant anti-war and anti-racist actions to join the sect. Those who tried to escape the fight against capitalism and imperialism ended up providing flesh for this pedophiliac movement.

Krishna buster

Dayton Transit Workers Reject Contract Twice

I read the recent CHALLENGE article about the struggle of MUNI transit workers in San Francisco, and want to relate a struggle by transit workers in Dayton, Ohio.

For the second time in two months, ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1385 has rejected a contract recommended by union leaders. The contract not only provided for a miserable wage "hike" of 2.8%, it also called for a FOURTH wage tier. This would allow the bosses to pay "combination" drivers $11.02 an hour instead of the $19 an hour paid to regular drivers.

The union hacks were counting on the older drivers endorsing this sellout at the expense of the younger and newer drivers being paid $8 an hour less. But the senior drivers upset the hacks' applecart with an old-fashioned example of working-class unity, refusing to accept a contract on the backs of their younger brothers and sisters.

Union leaders act the same way from Sand Francisco to Dayton and beyond. They serve the bosses, and line their own pockets, at the expense of the working class.

Red Rider

a href="#‘When The Working Class Unfurls The Red Flag Of Communist Revolution’">Ma" Day Marches: ‘When The Working Class Unfurls The Red Flag Of Communist Revolution’

Janitors At SF May Day Product Of Long-Term Struggle

a href="#Workers In Dom. Rep. Bare Bosses’ Ballot Baloney">"orkers In Dom. Rep. Bare Bosses’ Ballot Baloney

a href="#G.I.s Join Workers’ Army">".I.s Join Workers’ Army

Mexico City: Sign Up For Communism

The Red Flag: Symbol Of Working Class Revolt

• Bibliography:

a href="#‘We’ll Eat The Fruit Our Labor Brings...’">‘We’"l Eat The Fruit Our Labor Brings...’

a href="#O’Connor Preyed For Capitalism">"’Connor Preyed For Capitalism

Truth About Kosovo Air Wars Stirs Pot For Ground Invasion

Imperialist Vultures Descent On Diamond-Rich Sierra Leone

Rules Of Engagement: Hitler Would Give It Four Stars

LETTERS

Journey Thru Hell

Workers From Ecuador Want Info On PLP

Birds Of A Feather

a href="#Don’t Hold Back On Red Ideas">"on’t Hold Back On Red Ideas

a href="#‘Rock The Capitalist Boat’">‘R"ck The Capitalist Boat’

Capitalism = La Vida Loca

a href="#‘My First May Day: One I’ll Never Forget">‘M" First May Day: One I’ll Never Forget

Watch Out Bush, Reds In Texas

May Day Marches

a name="‘When The Working Class Unfurls The Red Flag Of Communist Revolution’"></">‘W"en The Working Class Unfurls The Red Flag Of Communist Revolution’

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6 — "Today is a special day. It is the day in the year when we, the working class, march under one flag, the red flag of communist revolution. As you stand here, look around and you will see black, Latin, white and Asian workers, men and women....All here on May Day, standing together in unity. We are here today to build a movement to smash racism and exploitation of our class once and for all."

These were the welcoming words by a young teacher that inspired Progressive Labor Party’s May Day. Although there was a modest turnout of 1,300 workers and youth, 60 people joined the PLP, 70 signed up to be in study groups, and 100 bought subscriptions to CHALLENGE.

May Day was built this year through work in factories, unions, schools and churches. We held dinners and invited workers to our homes to discuss the importance of fighting for communism. In the last several weeks, we put up stickers in New York, Newark and Chicago. We brought workers, soldiers and youth who we met fighting against police terror, the KKK and sweatshop labor. This work in the mass organizations produced small breakthroughs. 20 workers and their families came from work in a church soup kitchen, 20 from an ESL class, 15 from the factory organizing project, and several busloads of high school students. As fascist conditions for workers intensify and the bosses prepare for another oil war, opportunities are created to win more workers.

Red flags flew high as all chanted and marched. "It was a great experience," one marcher said, "and it seems to me that the people were dedicated and knew what they were fighting for."

Youth from Boston and NYC gave electrifying raps about police terror and building for May Day, and the PLP chorus sang lively communist songs.

After the opening speeches, we marched through Washington chanting, "Fight For Communism, Power to the Workers!" People came to their windows to see the enthusiastic marchers. Many onlookers waved clenched fists in the air and bought CHALLENGE. Some people ran to our sellers to get a copy. As we roared, "Join the March!" Some did!

The stream of red flags lit up the streets as we arrived at the White House. When we reached the house of U.S. imperialism, anger and enthusiasm rose. One student from Brooklyn’s Clara Barton H.S. said, "This was my first May Day march and I think it turned out well but I thought we were going to take one step further by entering the White House. I would definitely attend another one next year."

By day’s end, May Day had given everyone a feeling of workers’ power. "I never went on May Day before," said one student. "I only read about it in history class. To actually be in a May Day March was a wonderful experience."

Another student from Brooklyn’s Murrow H. S. exclaimed, "People were disciplined and excited. We marched for freedom from the bosses’ chains, and we came one small but sure step closer to it. I am inspired." Another added, "This march made me feel powerful."

When the march was over, we had a picnic, with songs and raps.

The bus rides home provided time to consolidate the new friends met during the day. We signed up people for summer projects and made plans to participate in more class struggle. However, for PLP to become a mass Party of thousands and then millions, we must improve our work and spend far more time developing close ties with our co-workers and fellow students and become entrenched in their daily lives. Only if we do that can we win many more workers and youth to march next year, and more importantly, win them to join PLP and become May Day organizers themselves!

Janitors At SF May Day Product Of Long-Term Struggle

LOS ANGELES, May 9 — How did a group of 120 janitors come to march at our communist May Day in San Francisco? This has been a long-term process with many ups and downs.

We first met the janitors about ten years ago. The SEIU (Service Employees International Union was organizing the janitors into a hospital workers local. A comrade and some of his friends had been very active in that local, fighting racism against patients and unjust firings of workers. A group of his friends read CHALLENGE.

Some CHALLENGE sellers went to a janitors’ contract vote. Workers were outside cursing the leadership. They grabbed CHALLENGE and some gave their names glad to find communists in LA.

The hospital workers began meeting with a group of these janitors. Some wanted to run a multi-racial slate of hospital workers (higher-paid black, Latin and white, mainly non-immigrant) and janitors (almost all latino immigrants) for union office. They formed a caucus to fight for the rank and file.

Our comrade spent many hours and weekends at these meetings, raising the need for a militant, politicized rank and file, and for building the Party to fight for real workers’ power through communist revolution. He said winning positions in the union hierarchy by toning down the defense of rank-and-file workers would be a huge mistake. He always brought CHALLENGE to the meetings.

Over time, he became a friend of the workers, especially those most interested in CHALLENGE. Some met from time to time with a Party club. Some in the group were increasingly intent on winning the election, and less and less on politicizing the workers with revolutionary ideas.

He stuck with the group for several years. They won the election. But SEIU head John Sweeney nullified the election and put the union into receivership. He did this at the very moment he was preparing to run for president of the AFL-CIO based on his "great record" of organizing janitors! Sweeney put the janitors into a separate local from the hospital workers. Both groups fought this racist action. But the division was made.

The caucus kept meeting, now predominantly janitors. When PLP led an attack on the racist anti-immigrant group VCT (Voice of Citizens Together), caucus members invited PLP’ers to speak at a fund-raising dinner about it. Party members were introduced as heroes. They linked the growth of racism and fascism to the bosses’ crisis, showing Clinton as worse than VCT, and cited the need for revolution.

Some janitors became regular CHALLENGE readers and May Day marchers. In organizing last year’s May Day March in San Francisco, a janitor asked for 20 more tickets for union members. Plans were made. Twenty workers paid for their tickets and marched; many more knew about it. Several began attending study groups and club meetings. CHALLENGE was welcomed by many. During the AFL-CIO convention, some of these workers, who have a deep hatred for Sweeney & Co, demonstrated against him and his AFL-CIO cronies.

Building for a strike this year, it became clear there were many militant, angry janitors. At an International Woman’s Day march of 1,500 janitors, there were silly staged arrests. A PLP’er brought CHALLENGES and leaflets; the workers eagerly grabbed them.

However, some of the more angry workers abstained from some of these events. They saw the coming strike as a "show," knowing a settlement had already been agreed to. Some didn’t want to participate, but after discussion, they realized that not participating to expose the leaders wasn’t good for the working class! The leaders are mobilizing the workers for the needs of imperialism. We must be there to offer the alternative.

Several of these workers liked the idea of striking and simultaneously building for May Day as a way to win workers to the long-term fight for workers’ power and revolution.

They exposed the leadership-sponsored appearances of Jesse Jackson, Gore, Kennedy and LA Mayor Riordan as a show to win workers especially these immigrant workers) to be loyal to their system, building patriotism and nationalism to get workers to fight and die for the bosses. For that, they make promises to the workers but can’t deliver because the bosses need to maximize profits, compete with their rivals and prepare for war. These union leaders don’t act in the interests of any workers!

Before and during this year’s strike, in marches, picket lines and meetings, the Party had a presence with leaflets, CHALLENGES and by bringing workers to the picket lines. This also helped build for May Day.

In one of these marches, we re-met an old Party friend, a striker not seen for several years. He was leading a group of strikers and was known by many workers. We were both happy to become reacquainted. He introduced us to other workers and became another organizer for May Day.

Other experienced workers, angry with the union leadership, were looking for an alternative. We met with some of them to explain our politics. "But you don’t put limits on the militancy of the workers?" asked a rank-and-file leader, saying the union only focused on attacking a few buildings, not on paralyzing the whole industry.

"Well, the only limits are the workers’ strength and determination based on the circumstances," replied a comrade. "Our goal is to get rid of the bosses with armed revolution," he continued. "The May Day march won’t be an armed struggle, but a political march. We want to win millions to confront the bosses and to take power. For example, when we confronted the VCT racists we were prepared for them."

"I like that," said the worker, with a smile. "Here’s my list of 20 workers for the march."

The match was lit, and many began calling for information about the march to ask about bringing friends and family. Obviously this involved workers at different political levels, but in the final analysis 120 janitors marched. Now we have a big job, to get to know and win many.

It’s a grave error to only assume workers are won to support the bosses’ agents. When the bosses launch a war, they’ll boast that the workers support them, as they did during Desert Storm. But that’s only one side. The workers are open to alternatives, communism included! We can’t get frustrated. It’s a long-term struggle, with many ups and downs, learning from mistakes—all leading to winning.

A group of workers who came to May Day asked to be in study groups. Several called Party members to ask when the first meeting was.

Many workers are angry over the union leaders settling for different wages for janitors from different parts of the city. Scabs are getting preferred treatment.

There are hundreds of thousands of workers here in low-paying jobs. Like the group of janitors who marched on May Day, they have much class hatred. The rulers’ lackeys mobilize them to either accept their conditions under capitalism or suppress their resistance with fascism. Our job is to encourage and organize that resistance, pointing them towards joining PLP and the long-term fight for communism.

May Day’s Red Flag Flies Across Continent

a name="Workers In Dom. Rep. Bare Bosses’ Ballot Baloney">">"orkers In Dom. Rep. Bare Bosses’ Ballot Baloney

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, May 1 — The Progressive Labor Party here Challenged the bosses’ electoral politics at the gathering of workers on May Day. Revisionist (fake leftist) and union groups were at the march, but the largest political presence was that of the PLP. We brought workers from various factories in the maquiladora zone, school and university teachers, as well as youth and workers in general.

PLP distributed a Party leaflet with communist chants and 86 CHALLENGES, which were very well-received. The unions and left-wing groups have been fitting themselves into the bosses’ schemes, to culminate in the May 16th presidential election. They used this as a pretext to avoid participating in the May Day march and called on other groups to stay away as well.

During the day, four people joined PLP and contacts were made among workers who will be visited soon, to take them CHALLENGE and try to win them to the Party.

Having planned a PLP meeting after the march, we invited a number of marchers to join us, and some did. (See below.) We collectively vowed to better organize for next year’s May Day, to double the the number of workers the Party brings.

The PLP luncheon meeting after the March included members, friends and sympathizers working in different factories in the country’s northern region. Our goal was to discuss how to build a mass Party, how to overcome our weaknesses and how to make the organizing for May Day more collective.

Reports and discussions included criticism and self-criticism, commitments to strengthen the work in the zones where the Party is being built, and plans to distirbute the international CHALLENGE in the factories where Party members and friends work. We also planned a series of cadre schools.

We analyzed the weaknesses of the revisionist and economist movements and the opportunities this presents for building PLP. We also discussed the conflict between Old and New Money bosses in relation to the Dominican presidential elections and what may result from it. This conflict also creates a favorable framework to attract new workers to PLP.

a name="G.I.s Join Workers’ Army">">".I.s  Join Workers’ Army

There was a great feeling of collectivism among the growing soldiers group that went to May Day. We stuck together in the march and later went out to eat. Through all this we saw that workers and soldiers can come together as one Party to organize something big.

The study group the next day went well. The soldiers who participated in the march went through four lessons on political economy, inter-imperialist rivalry, the role of the military and what the Party is fighting for.

Seeing soldiers who traveled miles to listen to, and be involved in communist philosophy motivates me to push my small club of soldiers to do more back where I am stationed. There are plans for us to get together with some of the other soldiers again.

Red Private

I thought the May Day March was cool. It was my first one, it was different but cool. I liked being with everybody. A little too much like the military, with the marching and all. But it was good getting away and seeing something new.

A Soldier

The May Day March was really inspiring. It was very diverse, people of different races. The drums were good, the youth that rapped and the reggae was good

A Soldier

Mexico City: Sign Up For Communism

MEXICO CITY, May 9 — "The PLP has confidence that the masses will fight for communism,. Communist ideas can be understood by all those who are exploited," concluded a student in a speech during a meeting before the May Day March here. These ideas kept spirits high during the entire march. From Chapultepec to the Zócalo (the city square facing the Presidential Palace) you could hear, "Struggle…Struggle…Struggle, don’t stop struggling for a communist society."

During a year-long strike, hundreds of UNAM (National University of Mexico) students heard and read PLP’s communist ideas through Party members active in it. Twenty of these students marched, raising high the red flags of PLP. "Rebellious worker, sign the list of those who fight for the communist cause." Chanting, "Reformists, step to one side, forward, forward Marxists Leninists," a group of these students joined our contingent. Our lead banner proclaimed, "Scientific and Popular Education—Only Communism Can Give it."

Electrical workers from SME and GM workers marched near us. We asked them, "What do the electrical workers, GM workers and all the world’s workers need? Communist revolution!" we answered in a chorus. A GM worker waved our banner in the middle of his contingent throughout the whole march. Dozens of CHALLENGES were distributed to these workers and they gave us donations. "One class, one Party, Workers of the World, Unite!" was our slogan.

When we neared the Zócalo where tens of thousands of workers were concentrated, the emotion of our contingent grew. "End, End the electoral farce. Advance, Advance, Communism will triumph." We sang Bandiera Rossa and Bella Ciao repeatedly. In the center of the Zócalo we ended with the workers’ anthem, Internationale. It was a good day of communist struggle.

The Red Flag: Symbol Of Working Class Revolt

This May 2000 Progressive Labor Party proudly unfurled the red flag of workers’ revolution in several cities on this continent. Why do we carry high the red flag?

In 1890, just before history’s first May Day marches, Frederick Engels wrote, "The proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces. It is mobilizing for the first time as one army, one flag, one class..." The flag was the red flag.

The red flag had first appeared as a workers' symbol in Britain during the 1768 London seamen’s’ strike. The strikers used it because it was the navy's battle flag and they were going into battle against their bosses. Again in London in 1780, when 100,000 workers marched on Newgate Prison to burn it to the ground, the multi-racial leadership carried the red flag. Their cry was, "Away with all prisons," because the working class was being increasingly incarcerated in them.

In 1831 the red flag was part of the struggle of the working class in Wales as well as in the revolution to topple the monarchy during the French revolution (1789-1794), especially during the struggle in July of 1791. But the general adoption of the red flag as the workers' own symbol occurred in 1848 when the flag appeared spontaneously on the barricades in Paris, and then everywhere throughout revolutionary Europe.

During the Paris Commune of 1871—when workers first took over a whole city and held it for two months—the red flag of the working class flew over the city of Paris. It had become the symbol of emancipation. By 1892 it flew above the May Day marches throughout Europe, Australia, South America, Cuba and Japan. In 1889, in order for the newly formed Labour Party of Great Britain to win the masses, a song was written about the red flag which became the anthem of the Party. One of the most stirring stanzas in that song goes, "The people's flag is deepest red. It shrouded oft our martyred dead. And e'er their limbs grew stiff and cold. Their heart's blood dyed its every fold." In Italy, too, the song "Bandiera Rosa" became a symbol of May Day. In it we hear the words, "Arise you workers. Your chains of slavery will vanish under the scarlet banner."

In the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the red flag became the symbol of the working class in power. And as revolutions spread around the world in the next 50 years—from China to Eastern Europe—the red flag of working-class emancipation was raised on high.

In 1971, the Progressive Labor Party picked up the red flag from where it had been dropped and has marched proudly with it in every gathering we hold throughout the world. The red flag is truly the flag of workers’ internationalism, as opposed to the hundreds of flags that the bosses-of the world fly to symbolize their respective capitalist states.

Bibliography:

"Big Red Songbook," compiled by Mal Collins, Dave Harker and Geoff White; Pluto Press, London, 1977.

"The Penguin Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century History," Edited by John Belchem and Richard Price; Penguin Books, London, 1994.

"The London Hanged—Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century," by Peter Linebaugh; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994.

"May Day—A Short History of the International Workers' Holiday 1886 to 1986," by Philip S. Foner; International Publishers, New York, 1986.

a name="Can’t Get Rid of Stalin So Easily…"></">Ca"’t Get Rid of Stalin So Easily…

Russia’s new central bank has issued a new coin with the face of communist leader Joseph Stalin, commemorating the 55^th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Hitler fascism in World War II. Giant posters carrying medals, photographs and slogans from the communist era have been put up all across Moscow. Is the newly-installed war-maker president Vladimir Putin bringing back communist leadership? Hell no! But he is attempting to win support from war veterans and workers who still treasure the achievements of the Stalin-led socialist state.

While the memory of Stalin and communism may be "dead" in the Western bosses’ media, it appears to be very much alive in the hearts and minds of workers in the former Soviet Union, which lost 20 to 30 million lives in their smashing of Hitler’s Third Reich.

a name="‘We’ll Eat The Fruit Our Labor Brings...’"></a>"We’ll Eat The Fruit Our Labor Brings...’

Rockefeller’s shiny dime
can't buy this rhyme
I don’t have the time
for the blind sublime
I wanna shut the main breaker off
burn, loot
flip the car of the man
in the business suit
toss a monkey wrench
into the machine
of industrial pollution
derail all trains
bound for debt distribution
Or will we decide to take over
seize the means of production
as use value liberates technology’s function
our hammers and our sickles swing for equality
they flatten and cut out economic brutality
the war makers’ guns will point the other way
the solders will march on May Day
as united fists smash badges with nightsticks
we bust straight through their crowd control tactics
‘cause they can't hold us back
this time we're on the attack
they can't hold us down
we'll rename this town
the day is near
when we will kick the thugs and the parasites
off the end of the pier
and if they decide to swim back to shore
they will know injustice and greed
does not fly here anymore
‘cause workers run things
and we will eat the fruit
that our labor brings

a name="O’Connor Preyed For Capitalism">">"’Connor Preyed For Capitalism

NEW YORK CITY, May 7 — John Cardinal O’Connor died here last week. He had served his god well. That god was capitalism. Excelling in hypocrisy, O’Connor aided the rulers’ most vicious attacks on the working class, all the while claiming to be the "workers’ friend." The crowds at St. Patrick’s Cathedral show that thousands have made the serious mistake of falling for O’Connor’s pious lies.

In one of his last public acts, O’Connor bestowed his blessing on the cops who savagely murdered Amadou Diallo. At a meeting designed to stifle working-class outrage at the cops’ acquittal, the Cardinal intoned, "Our prayerful thoughts are with all of our police who face difficult situations each and every day, some of which end in deep tragedy for themselves and for others'' (Catholic News Service, 3/1). O’Connor had supported Giuliani’s racist thugs all along.

Shortly after Diallo’s murder, members of NYPD’s Holy Name Society heard O’Connor speak at their annual banquet. And every March 17th, O’Connor would wave an approving sign of the cross over the decadent copfest known as the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. None of these racist acts prevented ruling class lieutenants like Al Sharpton from hailing O’Connor as a "man of principle," or Local 1199 union boss Dennis Rivera from calling him "a union man."

O’Connor enjoyed a reputation for being ecumenical, that is, for being a good Catholic who nevertheless befriended those of other faiths. Reality reverses the image. O’Connor strongly supported the Opus Dei (God’s Work), a secretive, virulently anti-Semitic, anti-communist sect within the church. Opus Dei backed John Paul II’s rise to the papacy. In 1998 O’Connor said a special anniversary mass for Opus Dei’s late founder Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, a Spanish fascist, before 1,000 sect members at the cathedral. Escriva idolized Hitler for his military aide in defeating the United Front government of Spain, the majority being communists and other left-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War. An ex-member of Opus Dei recalled Escriva’s words of praise, "Hitler against the Jews; Hitler against the Slavs; it was Hitler against communism" (Le Monde Diplomatique, 9/95). Known as "a friend of the Jews," O’Connor devoted his sermon to extolling this Nazi. Tear-jerking eulogies for O’Connor from New York’s leading rabbis appear especially disgusting, given their choice to ignore this man’s vile record.

O’Connor was surely no friend of the Vietnamese working class. He served as a Navy chaplain at the height of the Vietnam War, absolving U.S. sailors when they carried out the bosses’ genocide and giving them last rites when they failed. In a book he wrote about his tour in Vietnam, O’Connor repeatedly spoke of the need to "confront and destroy" communism. He was accomplice in the murder of the four million Vietnamese by the U.S. imperialist Vietnam war.

The Pope’s elevation of O’Connor to Cardinal made him boss of a vast empire of Catholic schools and hospitals. Like any boss, he followed the dictates of the profit system, somehow ignoring his "social conscience." New York’s Catholic schools cram rotten ideas down students’ throats in overcrowded classrooms (like the public schools), with many parents forced to work extra jobs to pay for the privilege. Teachers in Catholic schools make less than half what public school teachers can. When archdiocesan teachers went on strike in 1996, O’Connor, in his consummate compassion, threatened to fire them. In his hospitals, which largely serve the poor, O’Connor has left a legacy of under-staffed, poorly equipped hellholes.

For more than a millennium, the Catholic church has not missed a chance to help the ruling class of the day by stomping on the exploited masses in the name of "Christian charity." O’Connor joins the hallowed tradition of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Vatican’s support of Hitler.

Ending this pattern of murderous deceit means replacing capitalism and its religious lies with workers’ rule through communist revolution. The thousands of workers who marched with the Progressive Labor Party on May Day were, by implication, "celebrating" O’Connor’s funeral with far more love and concern for the world’s working class than O’Connor ever showed in his entire life.

Truth About Kosovo Air Wars Stirs Pot For Ground Invasion

The U.S. claim that last year’s aerial bombing decimated the Yugoslav army was grossly exaggerated according to a secret Air Force report revealed in Newsweek magazine. It found that the initial claim of 120 tanks, 220 armored personnel carriers and 450 artillery pieces being destroyed turned out to be 14 tanks, 18 carriers and 20 artillery pieces, or 93% less than first reported.

NY Daily News interviews with military experts in the area found "miles long lines of tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces being driven out of Kosovo after the bombing stopped." (Daily News, May 8)

Air Force inspectors also found that, "NATO’s high-tech aerial assault, which was carried out from an altitude of three miles to avoid casualties among pilots, was easily foiled by fake bridges, fake artillery and phony anti-missile batteries."

So much for the "overwhelming victory" of U.S./NATO forces.

Maybe the reason Newsweek magazine exploded this story is to help shatter the illusion that "invincible" air armadas win wars. It’s ground invasions, stupid....

Imperialist Vultures Descent On Diamond-Rich Sierra Leone

Since the start of the violent civil war in Sierra Leone in 1991, tens of thousands have died and half a million people have become refugees. The various warring factions mutilated many thousands. Finally, last year Britain and the U.S. got UN chief Koffin Annan to send "blue helmets" (UN "peace-keeping" soldiers) to enforce a cease-fire. They came mainly from African countries. The Nigerian army was the leading force, imposing a brutal "peace" among the various factions. Once the Nigerian army left, the 10-month old cease-fire between the government and the "Revolutionary" United Front (RUF) ended when the RUF kidnapped 500 soldiers from the remaining UN forces.

Like many other conflicts in Africa and the rest of the world, this civil war is not mainly about ethnic rivalry, as the racist Western capitalist media says. It’s about which of these warring factions will control the rich diamond mines, used to finance the armies and the power of faction leaders. The Libya-trained RUF, which began in the early 1990s as a "people’s movement" fighting the corrupt Sierra Leone ruling elite and its imperialist backers, degenerated into a brutal reactionary force. The RUF now controls the lucrative mines in eastern Sierra Leone. Over the last two years, the value of diamond exports has dropped from $60 million to $30 million. The RUF has grabbed this $30 million.

For the imperialists it is more than regaining control of the diamond mines for British and U.S. mineral companies and saving the government of their puppet, President Kabbah, from the RUF forces closing in on Freetown, the country’s capital. British and U.S. bosses fear the Sierra Leone conflict will endanger the cease-fire planned in the Congo. UN forces will be sent there shortly to end the civil/regional war involving armies from Angola, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa. Congo is the largest country in Central Africa, and rich in many key minerals, including those used for military weapons. France, fighting for its imperialist interests, is also involved in the Congo, many times conflicting with U.S. interests.

Also, oil-rich Nigeria is not exactly a land of stability for Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, with billions invested there. Recently Nigeria has been wracked by religious and tribal clashes. Also, many workers and youth are fed up with the corrupt ruling classes, who share the oil bonanza with the big imperialist oil companies while the masses get poorer and poorer.

Britain immediately sent 800 elite troops from the 1^st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, which led the NATO forces that occupied Kosovo when the war ended there last year. These paratroopers supposedly were sent to evacuate foreigners. In reality they’re trying to save the President of this former British colony. Royal marines will follow. Britain also sent a carrier off the coast of Sierra Leone, the sixth Royal Navy ship in the region.

Increasingly, oil, minerals and other huge deposits of wealth are being uncovered throughout Africa. Internally, different factions are fighting for control of this wealth. Civil wars are erupting with murderous violence, with no clear end in sight. So while UN chief Koffi Annan asked U.S. Secy. of State Madeleine Albright to send a U.S. rapid deployment force to Sierra Leone, Albright appears reluctant to committing any troops. U.S. bosses are still affected by the Vietnam and Somalia Syndrome. Both U.S. invasions ended in costly defeats, militarily, financially and, at the time, in rising opposition of an anti-imperialist character.

For African workers, already ravaged by civil wars, AIDS, mass poverty and hunger, imperialism and capitalism are a living hell. This situation cries for organizing a mass communist movement to unite workers and peasants against all their local and international tormentors.

Rules Of Engagement: Hitler Would Give It Four Stars

If there ever was a film made by U.S. bosses to promote fascism, this is it! It opens with scenes of Vietnam in which the Viet Cong kill U.S. marines with almost documentary-like realism. It focuses on the friendship of two colonels, one black, the other white. Billed as a "courtroom drama," its political implications are both subtle and glaring! The black officer (Samuel L. Jackson) is shown executing a Viet Cong soldier for refusing to call off (by radio) a group of Viet Cong soldiers about to kill his friend.

Later in the movie the black officer, ostensibly to save his own troops, orders a massacre of hundreds of men, women and children who are attacking the U.S. embassy in Yemen (The film is based on a true incident in which U.S. rangers massacred Somalians who attacked and killed several U.S. rangers and shot down a Black Hawk chopper.) Another black officer initially balks at this order, but then agrees. The scenes of gratuitous violence are impressive in their realism, right down to scenes of maimed children seen later in a decrepit hospital.

A civilian national security officer and the U.S. ambassador are portrayed as cowardly and corrupt, trying to blame the massacre on this one "rogue" soldier. The protesters, including children, are later seen in a videotape shooting at the embassy, supposedly justifying the massacre, in line with the so-called "rules of engagement."

The reason for this protest, U.S. imperialism’s role in the Middle East and its need to control oil at all costs are not addressed. For that matter the Vietnam scene implied that war is hell, but for an "honorable" cause. Near the end of the movie the Viet Cong officer, who was not summarily executed because he called off the attack, is forced to admit he would have killed a POW in an effort to save his own troops. He is seen shortly thereafter saluting the black officer.

The movie tries to imply this was a "true story" by reporting in the credits what "happened" to the characters." The theater drew an integrated audience. To their credit there was no revelry at the outcome. It was a subdued group as we filed out.

Interestingly, this movie opens right at the 25th anniversary of the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam and of John McCain's fascist pronouncements while visiting there recently. McCain, a former POW, won't "forgive" his former captors. As a bomber pilot he undoubtedly participated in the killing and maiming of untold numbers of men, women and children. He himself is a war criminal!

Jackson's character, like McCain, comes off as a hero (if a flawed one) because he followed the "rules of engagement." The message? Fight, die, kill and maim for the glory of U.S. imperialism). I'm sure the Nazi storm troopers felt the same way fighting for "Deutschland Über Alles!"

LETTERS

Journey Thru Hell

I made a long journey north from my country because I couldn’t find work there and have a family to support. The trip was miserable. The first border was crossed in a locked trailer holding 150 of us. We endured this for eight hours, but eventually couldn’t take it any more. The "coyote" (smuggler) in Guatemala had provided us with three hatchets to break open the walls just in case we ran out of air. We had to hack out a few holes from inside the trailer to keep from suffocating. Once we were unloaded from the truck, we were taken to a mountain where for eight days we were without food or water. After the fourth day, when we were starving to death, we spotted some monkeys and thought of catching one to eat, but couldn’t do it.

Following our ordeal in the mountain, all 150 of us were shoved into a bus with a maximum capacity of 70, one on top of the other. The ride was supposed to be 60 hours non-stop, but the tires could not sustain this extra weight. Frequent stops were made to fix many flat tires. After another 30 hours drive to Agua Prieta, we were dumped in the desert, but couldn’t walk because of exhaustion. We were left there that entire night amidst a huge snowstorm. Everyone began to freeze and shout or pray or demand that God explain why he had abandoned us in this endless nightmare. Everyone, particularly the children, could no longer walk because our feet had turned purple and lost all feeling. We still had no water or food. The "coyotes" told us the "solution" was "not to think about food or water."

To get us moving they showed us numerous crosses marking the graves of all those who died trying to cross the border. In the desert an older man became very sick and fainted. We helped him to his feet, but he became delirious. Another brother got very ill after losing a lot of weight. The "coyote" said, "I cannot take this guy as he is." Two coyotes grabbed him, one at his feet and the other at his wrists, and threw him to the ground. The man struggled back to his feet and begged not to be left there to die. We never found out what happened to him.

After a nightmare crossing from Mexico, we were imprisoned in a "jail" run by the Coyotes in Phoenix for another 28 days, unable to see any light this whole time. We were kept that way until our families came up with the money to get us out.

The saddest part of it all is that now I am here in the "land of opportunity" without work, without money and without family.

In El Salvador, I had met a member of PLP and now I understand what he told me about communism. I’m thinking about joining the PLP to fight for communism.

A Traveler

Workers From Ecuador Want Info On PLP

Greetings from Ecuador from a group of workers that were fired unceremoniously without any severance pay or explanation. This experience has made us form a bloc of workers willing to fight for social and labor changes. We want to know more about PLP and its politics.

Please e-mail me any comments or information about PLP.

Thanks,

A Fired Worker in the Middle of the World, Ecuador

CHALLENGE

responds: Thanks for your letter. We will gladly report about your struggle. Please send us more information about it.

Birds Of A Feather

I am writing to thank you for publishing the letter (CHALLENGE 5/10) concerning Harvard's pro-Nazi past in the context of its current Hillel controversy. I am shocked and appalled that a Jewish organization would use such a song with such obvious connections to the Nazis.

Many people consider Harvard the be-all, end-all of post-secondary education, but many don't realize it used to be, at least, a very exclusive organization that denied entry to minorities, including Jews. As a Jew, I don't think I could attend an organization that sponsored such anti-Semitism, no matter what the reputation.

Thanks again,

Avi

a name="Don’t Hold Back On Red Ideas">">"on’t Hold Back On Red Ideas

The most enduring impression I have from the May Day march in San Francisco is the many, many people who saw us in the street and began honking their horns and raising their fists in salute. Many times we ourselves hold communism back because we are afraid of what people will say. While many times people can be hostile, it is also true that lots of people have come to similar conclusions as we have, albeit independently, and are moved when they see us putting it forward on the streets.

A May Day marcher

a name="‘Rock The Capitalist Boat’"></">‘R"ck The Capitalist Boat’

As a PLP member, I learn many things each time (and over time) that I march on May Day. It helps me understand what my job is, so to speak, and what capitalism is. My job is to organize for international communist revolution. Capitalism is a system that produces profits for the few, not for the needs of the many.

Our work to build revolution can mean starting with something as simple as asking friends to look over a copy of CHALLENGE. Perhaps he/she may agree, or disagree, with PLP's active stand on an issue and be willing to come to a forum, study group or rally in your community for open minded discussion/action. Every person's collective work in the Party is unique, but equally important to the working class and our future. It all starts with our choice to accept the job or not. The working class cannot be neutral in this struggle. One can remain part of the problem (capitalism) or become a part of the solution (communist revolution).

PLP members stand up for communism and rock the capitalist boat, so to speak. It may temporarily scare those around us when we do this. While working, one may often hear, "sit down and shut up!" but just ignore that. We have no time for that because the bosses are killing us in the streets and storming into our houses like Nazi troopers whenever they please. The contrast between our work for communist revolution and its effects, and the daily effects of capitalism will show people we are telling the truth, so push on.

There is plenty of "on-the-job training" available from comrades who know your true value and potential as a member of the working class. We're just waiting for you to choose your side. Hope you joined our side, the communist side, this May Day 2000. If you did, I want to say hello and welcome to the Progressive Labor Party and communism; you won't regret your choice. Let's get to work, then.

Mid-West Comrade

Capitalism = La Vida Loca: Capitalism Makes You Nuts

A recent study of 30,000 people by the World Health Organization shows a rapid rise in mental illnesses in some of the world’s leading capitalist countries. It reports that 48% of the population in the U.S. and Germany, 40% in Holland, 37% in Canada, 20% in Mexico and 16% in Turkey suffer some kind of mental problems at least once in their lives. In those countries, half of those affected get no medical attention or are given insufficient therapy. As usual under capitalism, poor people are the most affected: "These illnesses tend to affect more unfavored social groups, especially persons with low incomes and little education as well as the unemployed and single people."

Some problems, like anxiety and behavior, become chronic and affect more women than men. More men suffer alcoholism and other addictions. The WHO blames these problems on the lack of proper health care, particularly preventive care. Gro Harlem Bruntland, WHO’s general director, said most psychiatric services are usually centralized in big cities and are inefficient and even counterproductive for those affected. She also blames the cost-efficient method prevalent the capitalist medical care systems. She warns that the rise of mental illnesses have become a modern crisis.

The WHO implies, without saying so outright, that capitalism and its many evils are the main cause of these problems. Work or jobless-related stress, war, racism, rotten medical care, drugs, alienation, sexism, etc., literally drive many workers and youth crazy. Even many forms of exploitation and mistreatment among workers themselves can be traced to a capitalist system that treats people as commodities. Indeed, only communism can free us from the ravages of capitalism.

Mad About Communism

a name="‘My First May Day: One I’ll Never Forget"></">‘M" First May Day: One I’ll Never Forget

On May 6, I was privileged to participate in the PLP May Day march in Washington, D.C., and have nothing but many positive things to say about this experience. It would take a book to give all my views.

The sight of red flags flying under the hot sun was very uplifting. I no longer felt alone in my views. I experienced camaraderie with my fellow workers, something somewhat missing in the rural area of Pennsylvania where I live. I was also extremely impressed with the youth, who demonstrated such commitment and determination to really make the march a very disciplined and militant one for workers’ power and a communist future. No reformism was present at this march.

I watched as youth and others distributed CHALLENGE to onlookers, and noticed very little, if any, hostility. I saw many reading it with great interest.

I was extremely happy with the march’s multi-racial character. I met people from various places. On the bus, I sat next to a woman who had emigrated here from Mexico. Though she spoke mostly Spanish and I know little Spanish, we communicated quite easily with each other. She was a very fine person and very moved by the march. Sitting across from me was a younger woman from Ethiopia, also very friendly and I enjoyed talking with her as well.

The experience made me realize it is truly possible to win workers and the oppressed to the need for a workers’ revolution and that those groups who attempt to hide their so-called Marxism behind reformist politics to be "popular" are doing no one in the working class a favor.

I came home feeling more inspired to keep up the fight and to reach out to more workers. I want to thank all the great people I met and all the others for making May 6 a day that I will never forget. Long live communism!

Red Rocker

Watch Out Bush, Reds In Texas

As college students in Texas, we began reading CHALLENGE and PLP’s ideas four months ago. In studying fascism, we decided to initiate a local campaign reflecting our struggle against it. We discovered that Texas has a contract with Dell Computers, which uses prison labor to make their computer components. After discussing this with our friends and members of other student groups we belonged to, we started a petition campaign demanding the university stop purchasing prison-made goods. Although the spring semester is ending, support and signatures will be gathered throughout the summer and fall.

We also wanted to attend the San Francisco May Day march to demonstrate against capitalism and fascism. To raise money for plane tickets, a garage sale was organized, helped by comrades and supporters who donated goods. Faculty and students were invited to a May Day dinner, showing the May Day video. A student spoke about our campaign against prison labor and collected donations. These projects raised enough money to fly five people to San Francisco.

When we arrived at the march site, a sense of pride filled the air, the pride of communism. Soon large numbers of Los Angeles youth arrived as well as janitors who had just come off a militant strike. The overall organization of the march was great. People stayed close together and marched in solidarity, turning hundreds into a single unit, whose chants resonated through the streets. This led many bystanders to honk their horns and raise their fists in support.

By nightfall many friends had been reunited and many new ones made. The speeches opened our eyes and inspired us to more struggle. Each of us now has a new level of understanding and dedication toward the Party, enabling us to grow stronger, each one of us working to the best of our ability until the hammer falls on capitalism and smashes it forever.

Comrades in Texas

Militant Janitors, Youth Inspire Communist May Day March

Which Side Are You ON? Excerpts of a speech to the San Francisco May Day.

El Salvador: Communists Are "Alive and Fighting"

Workers March Against War, Bosses’ Caused Misery

Vieques: Rulers’ National Security Is Deadly for Workers

Fired PLP Teachers, Janitors Fight Common Enemy

Real Vietnam Syndrome: Mass Red-Inspired Heroism Can Defeat Worst Form of Imperialist Terror

Capitalism Creates Beasts Like Racist Killer of Pittsburgh

PLP Workers’ Committee Links Class Struggle to the Fight for Workers Power

PLP Leads Campaign vs. Harvard/Kelling Axis

Hell on Wheel: Bosses’ Racism Is Deadly for Livery Drivers

LETTERS:

Vietnam: Politics Trumped Hi Tech

Workers’ Flag: The Color Is Red

May Day Stickers: a Hit in DC

Who Will you Entrust the Future With?

Greetings from Iran

May Day Made Pessimist an Optimist

Nazi ‘Congress’a Flop in Chile

Militant Janitors, Youth Inspire Communist May Day March

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29-- "It was the most working class, communist May Day I've been to in years. Let me make a donation," said a supporter of the communist movement for half a century.

This was the reaction of one of over 600 workers and youth who marched here for the unity of workers world-wide to end racist exploitation and imperialism and for Communist Revolution.

A highlight of this West Coast May Day was a contingent of 120 janitors fresh from their three-week strike against the LA real estate bosses and cleaning contractors. "You fight openly for communism. I want to be in a PLP study group," said one woman janitor. "Call me right away for the next activity."

"This was a great march," declared another woman janitor who has spent years fighting to build unity among the janitors in LA and years before that fighting fascism in Latin America. "You talk about things we don’t hear in the union," she continued. "I want to be in a study group. Call me soon." Another janitor applauded "the multi racial unity of black, Latin, and white youth and workers."

The march began with speeches from two women comrades who’ve been building PLP for many years. (see box) They said this fight must be a life-long battle, whose rewards consist partly of seeing these young people giving leadership to the Party. A woman janitor who came to her first May Day March with PLP brought a message of unity and militancy from her brothers and sisters who just ended their strike.

Another janitor, listening carefully to these speeches and who helped bring a group of his co-workers, said, "I need to read more of the Party's literature. It's very important to learn as much as possible."

Over 700 CHALLENGES were sold and distributed by aggressive youth under the leadership of young workers on the security team. Unfortunately we made only 120 red T-shirts with the star and fist and "PLP" on them. Everyone wanted to buy and wear one.

The march ended with a dinner and rally in a local school cafeteria. A young factory worker recounted the fight of her co-workers against the mis-leadership of the IAM honchos and the fight to build PLP on her job. "Who are you going to trust?" she asked. The crowd shot back, "The workers!" (see box) So she asked everyone to join PLP to build workers' power, to rely on the working class and not the AFL-CIO leaders and the bosses.

A young garment worker riveted the audience to attention with a communist poem entitled, "There will be war again."

Black, Latin and white high school and college students told of fighting and walking out against racist terror, a campaign against prison labor, and the fight to build the Party in the boss-led mass organizations. At several LA schools, having a UNAM student striker speak helped build the Party’s work. A veteran Muni driver told of the on-going fight on his job. "This was a great march," said an aerospace worker. "I want to get more active in the Party."

Another worker saluted the janitors who marched, saying its very significant for our Party. She explained that their militancy and unity was in sharp contrast to the show put on by the union leaders who had Gore, Kennedy and LA Mayor Riordan address the strikers. She urged workers to choose the path of relying on the working class and fighting for communist workers' power and rejecting the bosses' politicians plans for more exploitation, war and fascism.

When the PLP singers sang the militant song "Venceremos," which says "The workers will win!" (adding that the future is communism), two enthusiastic marchers stood up and sang it in Turkish.

A group of LA workers made delicious tamales for all the marchers from that city.

There were friendly, lively discussions on many buses about the Party's ideas. On one, when protest/revolutionary songs were played, workers started cheering and dancing. On some buses there were debates about the janitors' strike between workers who supported the union leaders and those who were furious at them. There were also discussions about Elián, which included a discussion of the inter-imperialist rivalry, and much more.

"Please break down the history of May Day so my 13-year-old daughter can understand it," requested a black worker on one bus. "I want her to be part of this movement." On the return she said, "Thank you so much for inviting me to this march. I want to get CHALLENGE in the mail, and I want to help build this movement."

On one bus students saw and discussed the anti-fascist movie "The Seventh Cross." On another, they saw and discussed the movie, "Three Kings." Several people joined the party and many subscribed to CHALLENGE. Some asked to participate in study groups and cadre schools. A group of 23 workers came from one factory. They spoke on the bus about building the fight against the boss and building the Party. Larger groups of workers came from other industrial concentrations as well. A group of garment workers marched with their brothers and sisters janitors. A number of black and latin youth gave enthusiastic leadership to march security.

This May Day march, with groups from San Diego, LA, Delano, Seattle, San Francisco, Texas and Canada, was a modest improvement in numbers over last year. But it was a qualitative advance in terms of the response to the Party, the participation of the recently-striking janitors, who comprised 20% of the marchers, of other workers as well, and the expressions of a desire to join PLP study groups and the Party itself.

We have a long march ahead of us. Our first order of business is to solidify our ties with, and recruit, the many new forces who came to, and applauded, this May Day We need both patience and urgency in accomplishing this. The presence of the janitors testifies to our persistence over time in trying to deepen our work in the factories and unions, as well as the schools, to train new communist leaders of the working class and build a mass communist party. It seems that workers are starting to fight back more. As PLP gets more involved with workers in class struggle, they increasingly respond to our communist ideas. Significant sections are winnable to the Party if we fight hard to win them.

This march gave a strong push forward to that process.

Which Side Are You ON?

(Excerpts of a speech to the San Francisco May Day.)

This is my second May Day. I want to recount events at Boeing and in the Seattle area since I was here last year. Boeing union president Bill Johnson appeared on all the local talk shows with none other than Boeing CEO Phil Condit to sell the contract. A shop steward and friend of the Party called, asking why Bill and Phil were misleading the membership about the pension plan. He was the first caller and the host assured him he would get to ask that question. The steward waited for an hour until finally the host told him there wouldn't be enough time for his question. The steward was furious. "You told me I had a great question and I'd get to ask it" The host then admitted that neither CEO Condit nor the union president would answer that question on the air.

Now I ask you: should we put our future in the hands of a union president that collaborates with the boss to hide the facts about our exploitation from us or should we take the future in our own hands, trusting our class and our Party?

While tens of thousands filled the streets of Seattle in opposition to the bosses' imperialism and exploitation of the world’s workers, the leadership had other ideas. John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, signed a letter to President Clinton saying he "supported U.S. objectives": finding the cheapest labor possible, here or abroad, so U.S. capitalism can compete with other imperialists around the world.

So I ask you again, to whom do you trust your future, the Sweeneys of the world or the working class guided by the communist PLP?

Nearly 12,000 unorganized Boeing workers have petitioned the unions at Boeing to begin an organizing drive. We, in PLP, will be there with these workers every step of the way.

The choice is clear: trust your future, and your kid's future, to our class, the working class.

This year's May Day marches show there are thousands who share our vision of a communist future free of exploitation. Many more will join us as the class struggle heats up.

Power to the working class! Fight for communism! JOIN PLP!

One Class, One Party, One Flag:

El Salvador: Communists Are "Alive and Fighting"

SAN SALVADOR, May 1 — A sea of workers wanting communist literature, rushed toward our column of members and friends of PLP distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES literature and making contacts in the May Day March in the capital city.

Seven hundred CHALLENGES 1,500 stickers and 2,000 leaflets proved insufficient for the approximately 5,000 workers commemorating the Workers’ Day. The workers exposed the capitalists who are attacking workers’ rights, including firing workers and increasing the cost of basic necessities, especially food.

University students marched, showing their support for the UNAM students in Mexico and those in Guatemala, as well as their hatred of US imperialism which has established a military base of operation in the Compalapa airport here. At the end of the march they burned a figure of "Uncle Sam" along with the U.S. flag.

"It’s very inspiring to be distributing the paper," said a teacher who has recently joined the Party. "The workers practically grab it out of your hands," said another youth, a farm worker, who had never been to the capital before but who marched from one end to the other to pass out the only communist leaflets in the march.

Our leaflet read, in part:

THE COMMUNISTS ARE ALIVE AND FIGHTING

Revolutionary greetings from the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to the working class in all the corners of El Salvador. Around the world our Party fights for Communism. We support the revolutionary slogan, "Workers of the World, Unite!" Our Party is multi-racial; its members come from countries the world over. We are united in the struggle for revolution and the dictatorship of the working class. Our belief is: only one world, only one class, one Party.

Communists are internationalists. With their nationalism, the bosses want workers to respect the border created by the capitalists. These borders are artificial. They exist to divide the workers and maintain different groups of bosses in power.

The workers don’t need borders. The workers in one part of the world are no different or better than the workers in another part. Nationalism creates false loyalties. We workers must be loyal only to other workers, never to any capitalist or imperialist.

Our Party fights for a communist society under the dictatorship of the working class. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the capitalists, who maintain their power through their electoral parties, police, courts, army, and their control of the media. What the bosses fear most is the specter of communism, which will continue haunting them until the workers destroy them.

Workers March Against War, Bosses’ Caused Misery

SF BÓGOTA, Colombia, May 1 — Over 100,000 workers celebrated May Day amidst the growing threat of imperialist military intervention and economic attack. President Pastrana is negotiating a deal with the International Monetary Fund to get $1.6 billion in military aid.

While the reformist union hacks and fake leftists offered workers and youth no real solution to the capitalist attacks, the PLP contingent of workers and students was able to lead a good number of workers with our communist slogans against capitalism. We distributed 3,000 PLP leaflets and sold 250 CHALLENGES and 50 PLP pamphlets about the history of May Day. PLP youth took a leading role in these activities and in carrying the Party banner that led our contingent.

Instead of the reformists’ and pacifists’ calls for "peace" and pleas to the bosses and their goons to stop attacking and killing us, our politics show the nature of these attacks and the need to organize a mass communist movement to end them with communist revolution.

Vieques: Rulers’ National Security Is Deadly for Workers

Three U.S. warships carrying 1,000 marines, federal marshals and cops from the PRPD are ready to evict the demonstrators who have occupied the U.S. Navy’s prime Atlantic training ground for almost a year. It began after civilian security guard was killed by stray bombs from a fighter plane which "accidentally" hit the guard’s post.

The Pentagon insists the firing range is vital for "national security." In January, Clinton and Puerto Rico’s governor Rosello signed a deal allowing the Nazy to resume limited bombing until the 9,400 residents of Vieques decide in a referendum next year whether the Navy should leave the small island.

The main lesson to be learned from this struggle is that the "national interest" of the imperialists is deadly for workers and youth. Not only have the people of Vieques lost a good chunk of the island to the Navy, but the training weapons used here for half a century have raised the cancer rate higher than in the rest of Puerto Rico. U.S. Navy out of Vieques! Smash the imperialist warmakers!

Fired PLP Teachers, Janitors Fight Common Enemy

CHICAGO, May 2 — The same Board of Education that is trying to fire two communist teachers is putting the squeeze on 1,500 mostly black and Latin janitors, cutting their wages and benefits. In a speech to a janitors’ rally where School Board boss Paul Vallas was given the "Hypocrite of the Year" award for his attack on the workers, a PLP high school student told the workers:

"We came to support your struggle for better pay and health care for your children. We students are struggling too. We have teachers that don’t teach, we are attacked for not having the right shoes or uniforms. Every day we suffer from Paul Vallas’ wrath. I’m a member of Progressive Labor Party and we have two teachers from CVS High School who Vallas is trying to fire because they taught students to fight against racism, against police brutality. They are being fired because of their political beliefs, communism. Keep fighting and never give up."

Chicago’s public school janitors were Board of Education employees, entitling them to benefits and wage increases. However, Mayor Daley and his "city that doesn’t work" for workers and youth have privatized their jobs by hiring outside contractors. The Board has eliminated mandatory family health insurance from its bids, meaning contractors will only be required to cover the individual workers, not their families.

When the janitors worked for the Board, they averaged $8 an hour and were promised an increase to $11.40. But now the same workers, when employed by the contractors, average $7 an hour, a 30% cut from their former scheduled rate. Furthermore, seniority rules are out the window. No matter how long janitors have worked at a school, they will return to the starting rate once a new contractor is brought in.

PLP student comrades and friends joined the rally and distributed leaflets exposing Vallas and the Board in trying to fire communist PLP teachers Moises Bernal and Carol Caref from CVS H.S. Many workers at the rally who took the leaflets and CHALLENGE gave us their names for future contacting.

The workers were supportive when we explained the teachers were "charged" with teaching students to take a critical look at capitalism and why our class must change society. They were taken aback by the Board’s "charging" Carol and Moises with taking students to anti-Klan and anti-police brutality rallies. They should be rewarded, not fired, for these anti-racist actions.

Our young comrade is correct; we must never give up fighting and having confidence in our class to support us when we do fight. We have a defense committee to help with fundraising and will fight to pack the open hearings on May 9-11.

Real Vietnam Syndrome: Mass Red-Inspired Heroism Can Defeat Worst Form of Imperialist Terror

U.S. rulers’ war of aggression in Vietnam ended 25 years ago with the biggest defeat in U.S. military history. The media are spilling a lot of ink to mark this anniversary. The bosses hope to turn a war they lost on the battlefield into a series of lessons their class can use as it prepares for future imperialist wars. The working class can also use the occasion to draw our own lessons as we gear our Party for the long struggle that will lead to communist revolution.

• Lesson 1—In class struggle, political ideas and the commitment to fight for them are more important than weaponry and technology. In the 1960s and ’70s, U.S. imperialism had the most awesome military machine in the world. Vietnam was a poor agricultural country with little heavy industry. Yet, despite a death toll of nearly four million (more than ten percent of the entire Vietnamese population), Vietnamese farmers and workers, often armed with little more than rifles, bloodied and battered the cream of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The "secret" weapon: a concept known as "People’s War." Vietnamese communists in both the north and south mobilized the vast majority of the population to struggle against the U.S. invaders. Mass heroism, inspired at least in part by a communist outlook, defeated the best-equipped fascist terror.

• Lesson 2—Fighting for anything short of communism inevitably turns the most valiant struggle into its opposite. The Vietnamese leaders fought for a blend of socialism and nationalism, not for workers’ dictatorship, and unfortunately the workers and peasants followed them. Socialism preserves the wage system and, therefore, capitalist social relations. Nationalism is a deadly form of all-class unity, with bosses on top. The result, after all the blood and sacrifice, is the brutal capitalist dictatorship ruling Vietnam today, with every one of the profit system’s typical horrors, including mass poverty, drug addiction and prostitution. The Vietnamese working class battled valiantly for a decent society, free of imperialist exploitation. Instead it has seen its country once again invaded, this time "peacefully," by Asian, European and U.S. corporations scrambling to squeeze maximum profit from cheap Vietnamese labor power. The result proves overwhelmingly that nothing can substitute for communist politics, leadership and social relations at every stage of a struggle.

• Lesson 3—The specter of "Vietnam Syndrome" still haunts U.S. rulers. The main internal weakness that crippled the U.S. military machine was the unwillingness of working class GIs and sailors to fight for imperialism. This "syndrome" took many forms. Tens of thousands deserted. Many others engaged in "fragging," acts of violence against their racist officers. In 1971, for example, the Americal Division reported one "fragging" incident a week. A significant number of enlisted men defected to the other side and began fighting against the U.S. Gustav Hasford’s novel, "The Phantom Blooper," describes this phenomenon. As a leading military apologist for U.S. imperialism admitted in 1971: "The morale, discipline, and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are…lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States" (Col. Robert D. Heinle, Jr.; North American Newspaper Alliance; Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971).

But this morale problem isn’t ancient history. Despite George Bush’s claim that Exxon’s 1991 "Desert Storm" for oil had ended the "Vietnam Syndrome," the U.S. military is far from cured. The rulers are still worried sick that they can’t motivate their armed forces to make the massive sacrifices necessary for a sustained ground campaign. Most U.S. military adventures since 1991 have been conducted from the air. Last year’s "humanitarian" slaughter for oil pipelines in Yugoslavia is a case in point. Clinton made clear from the outset that he wasn’t about to send in ground troops. He had several reasons, among them a split within the U.S. ruling class about the importance of Caspian oil. But the main reason was the bosses’ continuing fear that their Army may not fight when the going gets tough. The PLP estimates that this fear is based on reality, and that for the foreseeable future U.S. imperialism will be unable to field a politically reliable military machine. This doesn’t mean that the bosses won’t go to war, or even that they won’t send in a large ground army to defend their Persian Gulf oil interests. However, the gap between the rulers’ needs and their ability to meet them will offer our Party and the working class a tremendous strategic opportunity as conditions continue to sharpen over the coming 10-20 years.

Lesson 4—Even a small number of determined communists can provide crucial leadership in the fight against imperialist war. The PLP was a fledgling organization when U.S. rulers began their Vietnam escalation. Yet, despite our many weaknesses and limitations, we were able to play a key role on a number of fronts. When various liberals initially supported the war, PLP organized the first demonstration to demand the U.S. get out of Vietnam. Then, when the U.S. appeared to be losing, the liberals and fake revolutionaries began calling for a negotiated settlement and to "stop the bombing." But PLP continued to fight for U.S. imperialism to get out of Vietnam and for GI’s to "turn their guns around." When ruling class-backed opportunists pushed the illusion of a "new working class" and openly expressed contempt for industrial workers, our Party fought to build a militant worker-student alliance. When these same opportunists tried to turn racist, war-making universities into "counter-institutions," the PLP organized strikes to shut down these same universities and drew the correct political lessons about the nature of state power in capitalist society. For many reasons, we were unable to retain leadership of the mass movement that erupted against the Vietnam War, but our accomplishments at the time and the lessons we learned from them should enable us to do much better the next time around.

Lesson 5—Never take aid from the class enemy and never negotiate when you’re winning. The Vietnamese leadership committed both of these crucial errors. They relied on the Soviet Union for military hardware and advice. The Soviets had long since abandoned the fight for communism to become imperialists in their own right. They viewed the Vietnamese workers’ struggle as a trump in the rivalry between the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. The Vietnamese leadership’s continued reliance on Soviet "aid" made the Vietnamese anti-imperialist struggle a hostage to Soviet rulers’ designs. The Soviet rulers wanted a negotiated settlement that would give them favorable terms for the redivision of world markets. And so they forced the Vietnamese leaders to the bargaining table, at the very moment when People’s War was routing U.S. imperialism. This seeming paradox was the inevitable result of a bad political line. Workers today are paying the price all over the world.

But we will not have to pay it forever. The ultimate defeat of the Vietnamese people’s heroic struggle and the collapse of the old international communist movement cannot obscure the titanic, inspiring achievements of both. More imperialist wars lie on the horizon. Communists today are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. We must learn from them, rebuild our forces, and do everything we can today, tomorrow and forever to wipe the profit system and its horrors from the face of the earth. Fighting to build the international PLP today is the best way to honor the millions of heroic Vietnamese workers and farmers who fought and died for aspects of this goal and whose leaders betrayed them.

Capitalism Creates Beasts Like Racist Killer of Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH, PA — On April 28, Richard Baumhammers, 34, white supremacist and fascist thug, went on a murderous, racist shooting spree over a 20-mile area throughout the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pa., killing five people.

His first victim was a man of Indian descent at an Indian grocery store. Then he shot two Asian employees of a Chinese restaurant, a black man at a martial arts school and finally a 63-year-old Jewish woman was found dead at her home.

Witnesses claimed Baumhammers carried out his killing orgy while appearing very calm, climbing into his Jeep and methodically driving from place to place. The police had been notified after the first murder. Yet it was nearly two hours and four murders later before the cops caught up with him. By then he also had shot at two synagogues and had enough time to spray-paint a swastika and the word "Jew" on one of them (attended by the slain Jewish woman). So where were these "defenders of law and order"?

This sharply contrasts with the quick action of racist cops when "suspecting" black or Latin workers, pumping 41 bullets into an innocent Amadou Diallo as one example.

In recent years, fascist groups such as the Klan, the Adolph Hitler Free Corps, National Alliance and Nazi skinheads have been very active in Western Pennsylvania. The KKK held a rally in downtown Pittsburgh a few years ago. According to reports, Pennsylvania ranks fourth in the nation for fascist groups. Western Pennsylvania was targeted when the steel mills and mines shut down in the late ’80's.

There is no doubt that this racist killer was emboldened by his friends in these fascist groups and also by the killing spree by KKKops across the country recently. A few years ago, Jonny Gammage, a young black man, was pulled over by the cops in an all-white neighborhood in Pittsburgh and a half-hour later was dead on the road. "Strangulation" was ruled as the cause of death; the cops had him on his stomach and were pressing their knees into his back. They got off scot free, and one of them was promoted.

The recent racist TV ad about China placed by the AFL-CIO social-fascist leadership does much to spur racist terrorists such as Baumhammers. Recently, Hitler-loving swine Pat Buchanan spewed nationalism at a Teamster rally, blaming exploited workers in other nations for the problems facing U.S. workers.

In recent years there have been numerous racist killing spree by some associated with a fascist group such as the Aryan Nation. The capitalist press loves to blame this sort of racist terror and murder on the "lone deranged individual," but it is clearly the capitalist system and its drive towards fascism that spawns such fascist activity.

In the final analysis, the only real solution to racist shooting sprees and growing fascism is to build a mass movement for a workers' revolution against capitalism. This movement must have communist leadership to fight for workers power and a communist society where there will be no room for such people as Baumhammers and others of his ilk. March on May Day with PLP for Workers Power and Communist Revolution and against police and fascist terror.

PLP Workers’ Committee Links Class Struggle to the Fight for Workers Power

NEW YORK CITY, April 28 — Organizing for May Day 2000 has energized PLP’s Factory Committee here. In early March a PLP factory worker spoke at a May Day dinner. A construction worker, a regular CHALLENGE reader, responded, "We’re fed up. This system has got to go." The comrade’s Party club produced her story as a May Day invitation to other factory workers. This leaflet reached workers in several factories. The bosses at our member’s factory saw "red" as they searched for the leaflet’s "writer."

Hundreds of leaflets were distributed outside a local factory and at two locations where factory workers board buses and vans to their jobs. "Miss, this is all true. Give me extra copies." "It’s even worse," said a worker waiting for his van. "Where I work there are large numbers of undocumented workers paid below minimum wage and even under-age children."

The Factory Committee launched a Project for Factory Workers in New York and New Jersey. It links the May Day march to plans to fight back inside the factories and to learn how the capitalists profit from workers’ labor all over the world. The Project will also begin Saturday classes in English as a second language (ESL) for factory workers. Hundreds of flyers about the Project were distributed.

Soon afterwards, a group of workers called us. They had been laid off from a large industrial factory. These documented immigrants had refused to work mandatory overtime on Good Friday. They were denied paychecks, called stupid and violent, and told to leave. Cops escorted them out. Three male cops and two male supervisors followed one of the women workers into the bathroom to take her out. They pushed another woman. Cops told the workers waiting for their van to get off company property.

The laid-off workers, members of a Teamster local, said they know the company is trying to get rid of documented workers, especially militant ones, while hiring many undocumented workers (including under-age children) from a local contractor. The Teamsters take $14.85 in dues from documented workers and $21.00 from undocumented ones! The laid-off workers told us they know the boss is the enemy and want to unite with the undocumented workers.

The PLP Factory Committee and workers made plans to fight for their jobs. This included a protest at the local office of the governor and inviting workers from immigrant and legal rights groups, from other union locals and university students, especially those involved in the anti-sweatshop movement. We will expose sweatshops in the state and the hypocrisy of the AFL-CIO, which calls for "labor standards" outside the U.S., but are bosses’ goons in factories here.

A contingent of these workers plans to march on May Day. Six have signed up for ESL classes and the project, joining up to 70 more factory workers. Three long-time friends of PLP "discovered" each other in a van they take to their job. "Rosa is winning a lot of our co-workers to come to May Day," Fresa informed us enthusiastically. About 30 workers are coming from several other factories. More factory workers have become May Day organizers. They all will help organize the Factory Workers Project and summer ESL classes on the May Day buses and after the march. This is possible because PLP’ers have solidified ties with these workers over many years, eating, struggling, crying and hanging out together. The road is bumpy but our hands always reach out.

We plan to connect with garment workers and janitors in California and with factory workers in "free enterprise zones’ in the Caribbean and Central America. "Workers of the World, Unite. Same Enemy, Same Fight." "Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras." These well-known May Day chants in English and Spanish come alive through the long-term, ups and downs of many struggles, persistent efforts and leadership of communists in PLP. Workers: join our Party on May Day. For us, "Si, se puede" means, yes, workers can take power!

PLP Leads Campaign vs. Harvard/Kelling Axis

CAMBRIDGE, MA, April 25 — "Hey Harvard, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!" chanted workers and students today at a PLP rally against Harvard’s association with Rutgers professor George Kelling. The rally occurred at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where Kelling is a fellow (a paid researcher). Kelling’s fascist zero tolerance idea on policing has strengthened the ruling class’ official policy of racist police terror. The rally was the culmination of this semester’s, campaign to force Harvard to stop funding Kelling's research and expose the University’s role in developing fascism in the U.S. We’ve collected over 300 signatures against Harvard’s association with Kelling.

Many people walking and driving by supported our rally with some honking their horns against racist police terror and racist professors. We sold CHALLENGES and distributed several hundred leaflets. A friend from Wellesley College came with two other students and spoke on the bullhorn.

This campaign has increased PLP’s presence at Harvard, in the classroom, in mass student group meetings and on the campus in general. Many students now know about Harvard’s support of fascist Kelling’s racist police. We must now develop the long-term struggle of deeper ties with students and organizing class struggle. Most importantly, we must win students to the Party and to fight for communism.

Hell on Wheel: Bosses’ Racism Is Deadly for Livery Drivers

NEW YORK CITY, May 2 — Manuel López became the 9^th livery taxi driver to be murdered in the last few months. He was found shot in his car at 3:50 A.M. on Elton St. in Brooklyn, with $8 in his pocket. He left a widow and three young orphans. Driving a livery cab has become one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S.

Livery drivers are demanding a fund for the relatives of those murdered and for partitions in their cars that could save their lives. All workers must support this demand. A meeting of yellow cab drivers in the Taxi Workers Alliance agreed to raise money to help the relatives of murdered livery drivers. In an English as a Second Language class in the Bronx, a group of home attendants, members of Local 1199, are writing to the union to help the livery drivers.

While workers are trying help these drivers, politicians and cops are trying to take political advantage of their misery. Mayor Giuliani and his police commissioner organized a special unit of 300 cops to "help" the drivers. Giuliani, who did nothing in the past when these drivers were murdered and robbed, suddenly saw a golden opportunity to clean his dirty image after the rash of recent police murders. With the support of the self-appointed "leader" of the livery drivers, businessman Fernando Mateo, Giuliani sent the Street Crime Unit, the same unit responsible for murdering Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, to "help" the drivers. It hasn’t helped. Since the cops were sent out, more drivers have been killed and robbed.

Bronx borough President Freddy Ferrer and Senator Charles Schumer, both Democrats and supporters of Hillary Clinton, couldn’t let Republican Giuliani get all the credit. They’re asking for federal aid to help livery drivers put partitions in their cars.

All these politicians are part of the problem. They all have supported the powerful Medallion Taxi (yellow cabs) owners, which pressured theTaxi Limousine Commission to ban livery drivers from picking up street fares. So when the already low-paid livery drivers have not made enough money after 12 hours or more of picking up passengers who call their taxi base, they risk driving late at night, particularly where, because of racism, yellow cabs won’t go. Eighty percent of all robberies and seven of the nine livery drivers murdered recently have occurred because of these conditions.

There are no easy solutions to livery drivers’ problems. Capitalism is dangerous to workers all the time, but some changes could be fought for. One would be ending the monopoly of the 12,000 medallion bosses (it cost some $200,000 to buy a medallion). One union of all taxi drivers, both livery and medallion, might also help. Today there is no union for any drivers. In 1970, when AFL-CIO Local 3036 representing 39,000 yellow cab drivers struck for 15 days, they forced taxi owners—after years of reneging—to provide partitions in cabs. The labor boss Van Aarsdale eventually dissolved the local.

In the final analysis, however, low wages, crime and rotten working conditions won’t disappear as long as capitalism exists. Fighting for a society without the profit system is the only real long-term solution. That’s what PLP fights for. Join us!

LETTERS:

Vietnam: Politics Trumped Hi Tech

Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War haunts the ruling class and shapes its military strategy. The main lesson of the war was that political commitment will defeat technological superiority. The Vietnamese were able to defeat the U.S. because they mobilized the entire population to fight U.S. imperialism. This was primarily a political victory for the Vietnamese. Based on defending Socialism and anti-imperialism, the Vietnam workers made tremendous sacrifices to defeat first the French and then the U.S.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this sacrifice, was the willingness of the Vietnamese to die in battle.

Participants in the war say it over and over again. In the first chapter of a very good book called "Flower of the Dragon," a war correspondent witnesses U.S. soldiers mutilating a North Vietnamese soldier alive, in an effort to make him talk. The writer commented on the stoic look in the young boy’s face as he died without talking, and the writer concluded the U.S. would never win the war.

The lack of political commitment of U.S. soldiers is still a fundamental weakness for the capitalists. Although able to field an army that will kill for imperialism, they have been unable to field one that will die for it. This weakness has shaped their military strategy for the last 25 years and is the core of what they keep calling the Vietnam Syndrome. It is partly why they pulled out of Somalia after 18 soldiers got killed, why they pulled out of Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks, why they have yet to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

The capitalists have been unable to solve the contradiction of having to rely on hundreds of thousands of black and Latin youth, who have been brutalized by a racist system, to field an army. Obviously this doesn’t mean that all these soldiers are ready to pick up guns to fight for communism today. The collapse of the old communist movement, combined with decadent culture, selfishness and the limits of our own movement are all things we must overcome. Still, the specter of the military falling apart as it did in Vietnam, and young soldiers with rifles not following the bosses’ orders, sends shivers up and down the spine of the ruling class.

Red Soldier

Workers’ Flag: The Color Is Red

A group of PLP’ers went to the "May Day" march in NYC organized by the garment workers union UNITE, by Tepeyac, a Mexican immigrant group, and others. The crowd of about 2,000 mostly Mexican immigrant workers gathered at Union Square and then marched to City Hall chanting, "We are here and we are not leaving"; and "Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants."

Helmeted cops were all over and even arrested a group of young anarchists for "wearing masks while loitering."

It was good to see so many workers marching in what they thought was May Day, but the history and significance of May Day was hardly mentioned, particularly its revolutionary content of workers fighting for a new society.

The few of us in PLP did bring that message. Many took our CHALLENGES and May Day stickers which they pasted on their jackets and signs.

May Day also means internationalism and the carrying of the red flag of workers’ revolution, not nationalism. It doesn’t mean waving the flags of different countries, like marchers did here.

We made some contacts and hope to bring some of these workers to the PLP May Day march in Washington, D.C. There they will see the difference between PLP’s communist politics and those of the UNITE union hacks who have a long history of helping the bosses keep workers in garment sweatshops in the U.S. (despite what they say about "fighting sweatshops" overseas). March on May Day for communism and internationalism on May 6!

NYC PLP’er

May Day Stickers: a Hit in DC

I wish to tell the high school students who designed the May Day stickers that they were a great success in Washington, D.C. We stickered on Sat., April 15th near several IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank conferences. When people saw PLP's table, they commented on the stickers. They were pleasantly surprised to see that a May Day march was planned.

On Sunday, PLP set up a table at the ellipse and members stickered the area. The young demonstrators eagerly grabbed extra stickers on the table. They were impressed with the eye-catching colors and the design. Having the website on the sticker was a real plus. Keep up the good work and keep making our Party vibrant with creative ways to get our revolutionary message across.

In Solidarity,

D.C. Red

Who Will you Entrust the Future With?

(The following was part of a speech given by a PLP teacher at San Francisco’s May Day.)

Progressive Labor Party offers workers and students the red flag of the international working class. It is red with the blood of workers all over the world who have fought the whip of the capitalist oppressors. It is red with the blood of 30 million Soviet workers who died beating back Hitler, and with the blood of the workers who sacrificed their lives for their class in fighting for the Paris Commune, the first communist workers state.

The red flag unites workers all over the world in the struggle for workers' power and a communist society where there will be no rich and no poor, where each will work and contribute to the society according to ability and commitment, and where scarcity or abundance will be shared.

The bosses lie when they offer young workers instant gratification. We tell the truth: most of life will be one of struggle. The first May Day Progressive Labor Party celebrated on the West Coast was in 1971, here in San Francisco. I marched in that May Day (pregnant with the young poet you will hear in a minute) when Richard Nixon was negotiating with a Chinese "Communist" Party that had betrayed communism. Progressive Labor Party picked up the red flag that the Chinese threw in the dirt, and has proudly carried it ever since.

This May Day we ask you, will you entrust your future to the bosses' liberal politicians or to the working class? Will you join Progressive Labor Party? You need to fight to put an end to this bloody capitalist system—you need communism, and for that you need Progressive Labor Party.

Living a life where you put your trust in the working class is the best life, a life-long struggle as a member of PLP to become a good communist, to understand capitalism and how to fight it, to develop the qualities of serving the people while we struggle against the weaknesses that capitalism has saddled us with, both personally and with our friends. It’s a good struggle, one which brings the deep happiness of knowing that your life has meaning, that you’re fighting not just for yourself but for the whole working class around the world.

Join PLP and help to put an end to a system based on racist murder, exploitation and war, to create a communist world where people can join together to work for human need, where workers are not divided by "race" or national boundaries, but where the international working class will be the human race. Long live Communism! Long live May Day!

LA Teacher

Greetings from Iran

(The following is drawn from a letter received from an Iranian revolutionary living in Europe.)

It is time for Revolution in Iran! Twelve pro-USA, liberal-fascist newspapers have been shut down by the Islamic "hardliners" who want to be more closely tied to Russia.

Students and workers are protesting all over the country. I have been working hard, but we need funds for our solidarity with Iranian workers! We read CHALLENGE regularly and thank you for sending the article about Stalin. I wish all my comrades strength and unity to fight together on this May Day!

Comradely,

Iranian Comrades

May Day Made Pessimist an Optimist

This was one of the best organized May Day marches I have attended. The group was disciplined, very serious, focused and most importantly very conscious. They had done their homework to organize and bring workers hit worst by the system.

It was the best mixture of people—mostly Latin working class blacks and most importantly the youth. The slogans were well selected. It was not your every day touchy-feely demonstrations with women strapping chain saws around their waists as "dicks" (environmental marches), or clowns on stilts. This was a POLITICAL march.

CHALLENGE was distributed to onlookers by young people and to my amazement people really took them with curiosity and support. I was watching this closely, since it reflects (to me anyway, this is my gauge) how the message of the rally goes to the people. Many more cars than usual supported with their horns, and shaking fists. People accepted the literature well.

Slogans I loved: "The Only Solution is Communist Revolution" and "Kick the bosses in the ass; Power to the working class." I for one, a pessimist, was surprised by this march that showed people still do care and that all youth are not hedonistic and apathetic. It is which youth you look at I guess.

I am very glad I went.

A Friend of PLP

Nazi ‘Congress’a Flop in Chile

A group of Nazis from several countries held an international meeting in Chile celebrating Hitler’s 111th birthday. The so-called "National-Socialist Convention 2000" was organized by a local Nazi group which got lots of free publicity from the commercial press here. Even though the Nazi group tried to "cleanse" its racist image by "uninviting" a Nazi group from Uruguay because of its too open racism, Nazis and racist terror go hand in hand.

So while the local Nazis denied they were "racist," the head of the Chilean Nazis which organized the group even tried to deny the Holocaust saying: "I don’t know if six million Jews were really murdered since there is a debate between the traditional historical view of this and a revisionist one." There is no debate. The Nazis murdered millions, most of whom were Jews, communists and other political opponents. Gypsies, homosexuals and other "inferiors" were included.

A group of fake leftists and some intellectuals led the opposition to the Nazi meeting. These people never present any alternative that will lead to smashing fascism. They are supporting newly-elected President Lagos, of the Socialist Party. But Lagos has continued the free market policies of the previous conservative President, so workers are still paid low wages, putting huge profits into the pockets of a few local and international bosses. Local Jewish groups also protested the Nazi event.

Eventually the Nazi "congress" turned out to be a flop. Alexis López, local Nazi head, was arrested for bouncing checks. He was jailed during the Nazi meeting.

Workers in Chile suffered a small imitation of a Nazi regime for many years under Pinochet, when former SS Nazis were used to train fascist torturers and murderers. Pinochet also came to power through the biggest Nazis ever, U.S. imperialism. Kissinger, the CIA, Nixon and AT&T were directly responsible for the fascist coup that put Pinochet in power. Although we are not yet a real alternative to fascism here, we must grow to achieve what the Red Army did to Hitler’s Third Reich in 1945, and then bury capitalism and its creation, fascism, once and for all fighting for a communist society without any bosses.

PLP Club, Santiago, Chile