Contract pushers out themselves as anti-worker
When all the union chapters under one high school campus united to discuss the new proposed contract (see page 3), my naive self didn’t expect the union leaders to attack rank-and-file workers for merely raising concerns. I also didn’t expect so much dissent, which goes to show how we should never underestimate the working class.
Every rank-and-file member who spoke raised a reasonable concern: no livable wages for paraprofessionals, inflation, cuts to healthcare, privatization, and more.
One of the union heads who is also part of the NYC Central Labor Council showed up to defend the contract and later apologized “if I sound defensive.” The district leader kept interrupting and began shaming workers who are vocal for “not being active.” I told him to stop blaming the victim. The contract pushers and their bed-partner politicans are not our friends!
When given room, people reveal themselves. The union leadership’s contract was correctly critcized for, in the words of many education workers, “throwing us crumbs,” being “threatened, pressured, and rushed” to sign “without knowing our healthcare details’ “and being a “business union” instead of a “social justice union.” The misleadership had to listen when I finally got the chance to speak uninterrupted:
Many of us have said the union should be representing us workers but they sound more like another managerial boss who just wants to keep us in line…I agree with my co-worker here who said, ‘we don’t need another boss.’ If the richest city in the richest country can’t meet the needs of the U.S.’s largest education system, this just further exposes how absolutely hollow the union leadership is and how none of these capitalist institutions can meet our basic basic needs.
Listen, we are not dumb…when a pay cut is being sold as a wage increase, that’s an insult to our labor. But more importantly, what about students and parents? That’s who we are here for. Where are the ‘social justice’ and ‘common good’ demands? The remote option [that you are lauding] is an assembly line model to funnel kids out of the system as fast as possible.
What we really need is more support for the influx of refugee students, resources to meet special needs of all students, fighting the push-out of Black and Latin students, the de facto segregation of schools, smaller class sizes and bigger mental support services, and a living wage for paraprofessionals. Otherwise, this is a racist contract. I’m not even saying anything radical yet. This is the bare minimum.
You keep saying ‘that’s the way it is,’ and expect us to just take it. What we are all saying is ‘the way it is isn’t working for us.”In the heat of the moment, I didn’t think to end with, “a racist system that can’t meet students’ and workers’ needs does not deserve to exist.
Many education workers—some from the other schools—approached me later to thank me for “speaking up.” When we are isolated, it’s easy to think “maybe it’s just me.”
But when we unite, the truth is undeniable. And that’s why the union misleaders kept interrupting and getting defensive—they are threatened by just the potential of a united working class that realizes their power.
If the UFT misleaders are threatened by just a few questions, imagine their shock when we organize for real. Imagine the might of family-worker-student unity.
The next day, I distributed the Progressive Labor Party flyer against the contract and invited some to a communist fundraiser. The brouhaha of the meeting became a conversation starter with many other co-workers.
When we speak up, it invites the passive antiracists to also speak up and build working-class unity. There is usually more support for pro-communist ideas than we give our class credit for. Having confidence in our people—parents, students, workers—to act in the interest of our class is key.Whether or not the contract passes, this fledgling group of education workers are learning what it means to serve the working class. It means to unite our class, fight back, expose the phonies and enemies, and build a better world.
*****
For Oscar, prove power of our class
This latest Juneteenth, workers are still fighting the fascist bosses over the racist capture and deportation of our class brothers and sisters across state borders. Monday June 19th, I went to a rally hosted by the Cosecha Movement encouraging workers and youth to challenge the deportation of Oscar. He was snatched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after he was accidentally driven across the Canadian border while on the road for work. As I stood in the crowd, one of the organizers struggled with me to speak. I empathize with the pain of Oscar’s family and shared the following:
For those of us who have attained a legal status, many can understand, though it is difficult to fight for, that papers will not protect us from the growing wars and fascism of the bosses. Deportations are symptoms of it…Organizing for a longtime, many have developed a cynicism of why call on the liberal politicians to tell them…, “If you are good Democrats show us.” That prevents some of us from building the type of fightback that Oscar and his family need…though we understand that the only thing that will stop the bosses’ growing war and fascism is to take the bosses’ power over their states. But that is something that takes millions of workers.
Every time we launch fightbacks [such as those] against deportation it reveals tools to build that…By getting our loved ones together to challenge the politicians we can also struggle to win them to see that what is primarily protecting Oscar is not the power of the Democratic liberal politicians [or prayer]. It’s not that they’re doing us a favor, it’s not that if they stop the deportation it means we can support them, that we can have confidence in them, that they are not as bad as other Democrats or Republicans. Instead what we can prove is the power of our class. So that in the future we can better respond to [broader attacks needed in preparation for their wars]…On that basis we will rip state power from the hands of the bosses. That will take…time. We can begin today by leaving this demonstration…and mobilizing those around us. Much gratitude to Oscar’s family who dared to fight back and opened the struggle to the rest of us.
Workers are being won to recognize our power as a multiracial class. Seeing this as the only force able to stop both liberal and openly fascist bosses’ from using their state to enact the material racist differential treatment embodied in such attacks as the increasing quotas of deportation. So too, can workers be won to see that it is that same class conscious power and level of organization that will make common workers’ seizure of state power through communist revolution inevitable.
We must fight our cynicism and depression through this historical period of dark night to join these fights that will accelerate workers’ confidence over these communist ideas more sharply.
*****
Racist ideas are deadly
The inspiring report on fighting biologic racism reported in the last issue of CHALLENGE was an excellent example of how serious collective work over years can win an important reform while developing the understanding of the need for revolution among our co-workers. The article makes a point about how structural racism in the U.S., built over centuries from the time of slavery, also hurts white workers.
Come to think of it, it’s no coincidence that the one rich capitalist country without universal health care today is the U.S. Obviously this hurts white workers and Black workers alike. The economic foundation laid in England’s North American colonies in the 1600s and 1700s was wealth extracted from the unpaid labor of kidnapped Africans brought to these shores. In 1776 those colonies, with their extensive set of racist ideas, customs and laws, became the United States of America. Racial divisions seen in the U.S. today date from that special history. No wonder despite a desperate need for a system of universal medical care, the population in the U.S. can’t develop sufficient unity across “race” lines to demand it. Racism truly hurts all workers, even though the worst abuse is reserved for Black workers.
*****
Murder by imperialism: refugee boat sinks
Migrants fleeing wars, starvation and climate change disasters attempt life threatening journeys from crossing the Mediterranean Sea to walking thousands of miles to reach the Mexico/U.S. border. On Wednesday, June 14 up to 750 migrants (Reuters), including many women and as many as 100 children, were locked in a hold below deck, when the overloaded boat sank in deep waters 50 miles from the Greek shore. The boat had left Libya bound for Italy. On Tuesday and Wednesday they reported distress but no rescue operation was launched. 104 men were finally rescued, including from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Palestine. 78 men were reported dead and ALL the others missing, one of the worst drownings in the Mediterranean in recent years! Protests erupted across Greece on Wednesday and Thursday as thousands took to the streets against the horrific deaths and the failure of the Greek government to respond to the distress signals (Al Jazeera). We in the Progressive Labor Party are outraged. Workers of the world must unite to fight back. Protesters in Greece lead the way! Join the long term struggle for communist revolution to free our class from racist genocide.
French army prepares for coming war
Economist, 6/18–In 2021, a year before Russia invaded Ukraine, General Thierry Burkhard told The Economist that the French army had to “harden” itself and prepare for “high-intensity war”, possibly on the European continent. One hypothetical adversary was Russia. Today, the former head of the army is France’s top soldier, in charge of all its armed forces…For 17 days in April and May General Burkhard led a full-scale division-level exercise in eastern France, on land that the great powers fought over more than a century ago. In his office in Paris, where a print featuring Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s most senior general, hangs opposite a portrait of Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, General Burkhard reflects on the lessons emerging from the exercise and from the war in Ukraine. “A high-intensity war is fought on a completely different scale,” he says. “I probably underestimated that.” During two decades of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and the Sahel, the death of ten soldiers was a “national tragedy, and rightly so,” says the general. “That is what is happening in Ukraine every half hour—for weeks on end.”
China bringing South China Sea to the Gulf of Mexico
Al Jazeera, 6/20–China has been negotiating the creation of a new joint training facility on the Caribbean island nation of Cuba, creating concerns it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops in the waters off the U.S…discussions between the two countries are in advanced stages, but had not concluded…officials from the administration of President Joe Biden have been trying to discourage their Cuban counterparts from finalising the deal. The latest report came days after the Biden administration confirmed that China has maintained surveillance operations in Cuba for years, which were upgraded in 2019.
Fair elections? Not so fast say New York Democrats
New York Times, 6/8–For generations, deep-pocketed donors have called the shots in New York State politics, leaving ordinary voters with less power and less of a voice in their government. Incumbent lawmakers are bankrolled by moneyed special interests and are routinely re-elected with little competition, and there has been no real alternative to the traditional system of big campaign contributions influencing candidates and politics. A law passed in 2019, one of the most promising New York campaign reforms in decades, was supposed to change that…But this week, in the final days of the legislative session, the Democratic lawmakers who dominate the capital are preparing to severely weaken those reforms. The changes proposed by lawmakers would protect incumbents and discourage challengers — the opposite of the program’s goal…“They don’t want to be primaried,’’ said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany…“They know the public match will mean they will get more primary opponents, and so they’re making it harder to run. It wrecks the core idea of the program, which is to make these races more competitive.”
Medical supplies in short supply
BBC, 6/7–Experts say the U.S. is currently suffering one of the most severe shortages of chemotherapy drugs it's seen for three decades. As of this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said over 130 drugs were in short supply, 14 of which are cancer treatments…Experts say a myriad of factors have contributed to the shortages, which this time have heavily affected two front-line therapies - carboplatin and cisplatin - used to treat a host of cancers, including head and neck, gynaecologic and gastrointestinal cancers…As a result, some providers have been forced to extend the time period between patients' chemotherapy sessions, while some patients have had to drive several hours to get treatment at different cancer centres…While the medications are cheap to manufacture, pharmaceutical companies are not incentivised to do so because they don't bring in large profits, said Dr Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. The drug shortage issue has also worsened as U.S. life expectancy has increased, meaning more people are becoming ill with cancer.
The vicious racketeering and collusion charges, carrying up to a 12-year sentence, leveled by the Joe Biden administration against abortion rights organizers illustrates how the liberal ruling class is the greater danger to the working class. The antisexists’ crime? Spray painting.
The profit system requires maximum profit at all times. Workers are the ultimate source of profit. Every commodity is produced by a producer. Women workers produce the producers of everything. So, the need to produce workers to be bullet sponges is the context wherein we should understand the rising attacks on our working-class siblings and reproductive rights.
Ruling class in crisis
The first context is the 2007 financial crisis where the subprime mortgage collapse was the final straw. The ruling class bailed themselves out. Like in the Great Depression, the lowest birth rates were hit when the crisis of capital was in full tilt in the mid 1930’s. The key difference being that there was an international communist movement that had taken state power in the Soviet Union facilitating a powerful CPUSA (Communist Party USA) who was organizing among the working class. The New Deal was a direct response to the Red ‘30’s. So, this brings up the question of leadership.
Pacifism is a dangerous ideology to the working class. When one is silent, it makes the bully perpetuating the violence feel that they can continue on with it. The liberal ruling class and their state continues to attack working-class women, as well as undocumented and Black workers. They want us to be passive as groups actively attack workers stocking shelves with Pride merchandise.
The ruling class would like for the working class to believe that these parallels to Berlin in 1933 should be handled by them, because history shows us exactly how a liberal government handles growing fascist movements, so we know we need our own Progressive Labor Party (PLP)-led Red Army to smash them once and for all.
Unfortunately, history also shows us that fascism can be decisively defeated by communists with great sacrifice and still not lead to an egalitarian society, so we need to fight for revolution and not reform.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund) postulates that “Policymakers in some advanced economies will need to tackle this trend [of a declining birthrate] and find ways to encourage women to have children. For example, increasing access to affordable and high-quality childcare, family-friendly labor laws, and tax policies” (IMF Blog, 11/13/18) and/or by actively rescinding abortion and reproductive healthcare.
Reproduction and childrearing, a collective responsibility
Under communism, Marx said that “sensuous human discourse” (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844) would be the primary aspect of reproduction. In other words, we would learn how to actively work together to produce what we all need, with children being the responsibility of the whole of society. Instead of any of the identities that are so important to the modern liberal movements, we would struggle to allow for human beings to be who they actually are and love who they choose since there would be plenty of nurturing to go around. The whole human race would be a whole human family.
When the working class takes hold of ideas, they can then turn them into reality. It is the power of the working class being held in the prison of capitalist ideology that allows for the profit system to continue. When the Florida Attorney General points out that she is attacking Antifa and Jane’s Revenge, what she is really worried about is exactly what the Biden big bosses are afraid of, too, and that’s a communist organization being able to actively coordinate and lead attacks on the fascists, and, ultimately, on the bourgeoisie themselves to take hold of the means of production.We need the working class to wake up to the need for communist revolution. This requires patient organizing in mass organizations with the intent of building a mass international Party whose breadth balances being a secret to the bosses while being seen as the bulwark to the working class.
Neither education bosses nor union misleaders care about students
There’s a reason why the club is the most important part of the Progressive Labor Party. It is the collective that we need in order to do the important work that we do. As soon as the teachers union in our city put out an email saying that they were having actions as a reaction to the Department of Education (DOE) putting out a calendar that stripped holidays away from kids and forced us into what almost amounts to a sixth class, we knew that the sellout was underway.
As soon as the email was sent, comrades in a club contacted each other. They discussed what was going on as far as the context of the DOE putting out a calendar with no regard for the negotiations with the union. This conversation then focused on answering the question of how this attack on the teachers was also an attack on students. Increasing the amount of time that students are in school, though it appears to be an improvement, is actually an attack on students by grinding them down with more work. Now, the fact that there would be a uniform starting time of 8 am would wreak havoc on bussing the neediest students. This is all a part of the need for the bosses to build fascism as they increase the workload their parents have.
The bargaining pattern that the teacher’s union is following is the union that represents the hardest hit of the working class: laborers who are primarily women, Black, and Latin. They are jumping the gun and grabbing the deal the liberal bourgeoisie demands.
Conversations the next day with coworkers were sharp as the comrades were fresh from the collective discussion that focused them on how it was an attack on students and why the bosses were attacking now. One comrade sat down in the teachers center and wrote a chapter update with several teachers, struggling with each one to see the current issue within the context of class struggle and the union misleaders as servants of the bourgeoisie.
The rumors were that the contract was a done deal and that the whole fight the union was putting up was a smoke screen to help the teachers take a terrible deal and call it a victory. The union bosses are creating this whole façade to help them sell us a contract that will likely attack our students by speeding them up and increasing their hours; attack our healthcare because keeping us alive is too expensive; and give us an inflation-affected, pennies on the dollar raise.
It is the collective working together and sharing of understanding that allows the Party to be able to struggle with our coworkers and against the bosses. The next step is to continue to discuss this attack with our students, their parents, and continue to do so with teachers through Chapter Updates and any means we have at our disposal. And let’s not forget the fight for communism where workers will really be educated about how capitalism works and how to get rid of it with communist revolution.
In Atlanta, more than 100 people from all over the U.S. gave over 15 hours of public comment to the local City Council against a huge cop training facility, better known as Cop City. The Black, Asian, Muslim and nonbinary council members still voted yes to expanding police terror and fascism through the 90 million dollar project. This is what the Party means by liberal fascism.
The case of organizers fighting through the system and being denied is what it looks like. Placing liberals and marketing them as friendly faces in the highest offices is not enough for the ever growing masses of workers that are turning to militant fightback over the ballot boxes. The U.S. and worldwide infrastructure from schools to roadways are crumbling. The bosses need police to keep workers repressed, terrorized and focused on the ploy to blame themselves and each other for the circumstances brought on by a profit driven system.
*****
Cop city = liberal fascism
Cop City is in response to what was the largest mass antiracist protest that spurred from George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s vicious murders by kkkops. The fight around #STOPCOPCITY is one of the most critical struggles that we must not only keep our eyes on but expand in every city. Because there is a training ground for cops and military that’s being built or expanded in every city. And building up the capabilities of the police and military is the liberal ruling class’ plan as the system of capitalism becomes more unstable. Liberal politicians in Atlanta, Newark, L.A., Chicago, Mexico, Colombia are the ones side by side with the corporations funding the war and the police waging it. As communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), use the case of organizers trying to stop Cop City as a reason for why revolution will never be on the ballot and must be enacted by communist fighters in one mass internationalist Party. Our class needs leadership, our friends are learning from us and our children are watching. Let’s fight for each other and fight together!
*****
poetry vs. alienation under capitalism
I wrote this poem with all the rage I had after being humiliated by the boss at my workplace for being gay. I was told that I had to censor myself to respond to the sensitivities of anti-gay sexism of people at the workplace. People in solidarity with me had to witness this.
Fatality
The leader who misunderstands his understanding
Of his own alliances
With the system that is making him a weapon against the ghost of his own better
ideals
Long ago sold to his masters
Exposed and corroding
Tragedy
Not the worker who was made to choke
On the pride & joy of sharing how they
exist
In response
To the attack, the shame, the guilt
Of others’ prejudice and bigotry
Pitiful
The liberal boss who says they seek justice
In equally protecting the right of people
With violent ideas
Of having double standards
Not thinking twice of the intent
Emanating from white bodies,
or heterosexual bodies
While being trained to fire the bullet of guilt without hesitation on bodies of darker skin, on feminine bodies
Fanning the flames of division and distrust
Within the working class to distract…
Better than any open fascist can
And retaining the power of their terror concealed
Misfortune
The educator who hides their own lack of confidence in the working class…behind
Respect for cultural populations whose bigoted ideas “unfortunately cannot be changed”
When in reality it is their own racist limitations that hold them hostage from fighting for what is better
Optimism
Those who surpassed a new limit
In the courage and action
They were willing to undertake
In standing side by side
With workers being attacked
For fighting to put all power
In the hands of the working class
Forward
The people whose solidarity with the working class has forever changed
When being pierced by being witness to the visceral pain of a fellow worker who has been attacked
While the bosses seek the justice that serves themselves
In the spiritual lynchings they unleash
On the spirit of the fighters ready to expose their masters
Victory
To the communists
Who are lodging confidence
Deeper and deeper
within the working class
By turning painful attacks
Into fights
And never losing sight
Of what is the win
Up against the terror the bosses use
To have us see everything but that
June 7—As we go to press, wildfires are burning across six Canadian provinces and a territory and they’re still spreading, pouring more smoke throughout the Atlantic Coast as Code Red for air quality spread. The equivalent of 5 million football fields are on fire!
New York City is declared to have the worst air quality in the world today. One calculator suggested breathing in the air here for 24 hours is the same as smoking 22 cigarettes (Daily Mail, 6/7).
For almost 50 years, scientists have warned us about how global warming—climate change—will destroy our lives. But the bosses have slow-walked any reduction in carbon emissions, and now we are choking to death in Canada and the U.S. while the fossil fuel industry merrily takes its profits to the bank.
There are at least three phenomena that are caused by climate change: rising sea levels, heat waves and forest fires. High temperatures, which are typically not seen until the summer months in Canada, are causing dry conditions and allowing forest fires to break out and spread.
Even Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said, “It is a simple fact that Canada is experiencing the impacts of climate change, including more frequent and more extreme wildfires, and the amount of forests burned by wildfire is projected to double by 2050 due to our changing climate, causing longer and more intense wildfire seasons, more extreme weather conditions and increased drought.”
A classic case of Nero (the bosses) fiddling while the working-class burns. It’s capitalism that deserves to go up in smoke, not the working class. Our very survival depends on fighting for communism and burning this vicious capitalist system down. The earth belongs to us, and with the working class in power, it will rise on new foundations.
