October 11th

Cops, Bosses: Guilty of Racism
Long History of Racist Injustice Continues
Caption to front page picture:
EDITORIAL
Brazil: Auto workers strike for jobs
Thunderous rebellion at Boeing against layoffs.
`Managed care' = healthy profits, dead workers
Union hacks divertWorkers anger
Black technician fired after 38 years on the job
PL garment organizer deals with internal doubts
1. What are the main obstacles to becoming a communist organizer?
2. Dialectics explains how to change struggle into revolution
PLP protests health care cutbacks at CCH
Fuhrman's also in Philadelphia
Mexico City: Cops Also Mug Here
Speedup kills bus driver, union hackssabotage fightback
Letters

Cops, Bosses: Guilty of Racism

Why was the O.J. Simpson case the most widely publicized trial in U.S. history? Did the jury's verdict have a big effect on our lives? Will it solve mass unemployment, crumbling and roach-infested housing, racist police terror, gangs or drugs? Hardly.

The bosses have used the O.J. trial to drive a deep wedge between workers, and divert us from the real issues. "Blacks and whites hopelessly divided on O.J.'s guilt," scream the bosses' polls. But these are the wrong questions! They are designed to build more racism and sexism. In the disgustingly racist climate of the U.S. today, a black man accused of killing his white wife is grist for the bosses' media mill.

Ask how many black, white, latin, and asian workers think everyone should have a job. Ask how many workers -- union and non-union -- think the police are guilty of helping bosses use scabs against strikers. Ask how many workers, employed and unemployed, like the idea of a 6-hour work day for 8 hours pay, to curb racist unemployment and increase job security.

The bosses' media will not ask workers these questions, which would lead us to see that all workers have the same interests. We have more in common than differences, and it wouldn't be hard for a "workers' jury" to find the bosses' racist system guilty of murdering our chances for a decent life. We demand the death sentence for capitalism! We will carry out that sentence with communist revolution.

LAPD and state exposed as rotten and racist

O.J. lawyer Johnnie Cochran was right to call cop Fuhrman another Hitler. Many saw in Fuhrman the racism and corruption of all cops and the state. After all, Fuhrman bragged (on tape, no less) about beating, torturing, and killing black and latin workers in Los Angeles, and Vietnamese workers during the Vietnam war. He is a racist murderer trained by the U.S. imperialists. And he's not alone. The bosses need trained killers like Fuhrman to protect their profit system.

But Cochran calls this racist system "a great country." He says he just wants to throw out the "rotten apples." But all cops and the entire system are rotten apples.

Many in LA will remember that in 1978 the cops killed Eula Love, a black grandmother, when she tried to stop the gas company from cutting her off for non-payment. As Assistant D.A., Cochran refused to prosecute, or even speak out against, the racist cops who murdered her. This was the same year that Mark Fuhrman faced a formal complaint for the beatings in an East LA apartment that he bragged about on tape. Cochran signed off on the decision not to prosecute Fuhrman. Capitalism has treated Cochran well. He'll never have to worry about paying his gas bill.

Bosses' crisis makes workers angry

The bosses' press is trying to get anti-racists to express their anger by supporting O.J. Simpson. But the O.J. trial is not the source of the tremendous anger welling up among workers and students. We are angry because it is now 25 years since the courageous mass struggles of the civil rights movement, and things are much worse than ever. Unemployment is higher. More black men and women are in prison. The racist police are killing more black and latin youth. Politicians cut schools, hospitals, and welfare while building more prisons. Cutbacks in government jobs hit black workers the hardest. College tuition is skyrocketing and there are fewer jobs for graduates.

Real wages for all workers are falling as pay differentials among black, latin and white workers rise. Courts are issuing decisions that preserve racist hiring practices. Union gains won by past militant struggles are disappearing.

U.S. capitalists built their system on the backs of slaves. They invented "race" to divide African, European, and Native American laborers. The wage-slavery of today is no less racist. It could not exist without inequality: paying some workers less than others and using a reserve pool of unemployed as a threat against those with jobs.

Today this system is in crisis. International competition among capitalists impels bosses to use fascism to intensify poverty, unemployment and racism. So workers must step up the struggle against unemployment, racism and capitalism. There is no justice for workers under capitalism, the O.J. verdict doesn't change that, and there will be no peace.

Communist revolutionwill smash racism

Johnnie Cochran and O.J. Simpson are not Harriet Tubman and Toussaint L'Ouverture. These anti-racist heroes of the past helped to lead violent rebellions against slavery. Today, masses of workers, black, latin, asian and white, must come forward to give communist leadership to a violent revolution against wage slavery.

The civil rights movement lacked this revolutionary perspective. That's why it couldn't make lasting changes. The old communist movement played a key role in building this struggle but it did not attack capitalism as the root of racism. It promoted the illusion that workers could improve their lives by voting. Now, hundreds of millions of votes later, we are going downhill fast, with black and latin politicians telling us to "cool it" whenever we rise up angry.

Black, latin, asian and white -- women and men -- workers of all countries: we must unite around the red banners of revolutionary communism. Communism will be a classless, raceless, society without borders. No one will face a barrier to realizing their full potential. All will contribute to the progress of a world without bosses, to building a society of equality. That's the only way to destroy racism forever.

Long History of Racist Injustice Continues

The media has used the not guilty verdict of OJ to build more racism. It is building the myth that the justice system goes easy on black people! NOT TRUE! he history of lynching of black men continues today. There are some 1.5 million people in jail in the U.S., a larg proportion of them black men. In Calif., there are more black men in jail that in colleges. Blacks get prison sentences about 10% higher than whites for similar crimes, according to a study of 80,000 federal cases.

Caption to front page picture:

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2 --PLP protest outside courthouse day of the verdict of the OJ case. PLP denounced all cops, from LAPD chief Willie Williams to Mark Fuhrman, as racist-fascist goons of the bosses.

EDITORIAL

As bosses wage "car war"Autoworkers will be key force for revolution

In the time it takes to read this sentence, five new motor vehicles will have been produced and sold somewhere in the world. Every minute 95 new cars are manufactured and sold -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Auto is the world's largest single manufacturing activity. The Big 5 (GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota and Nissan) dominate the world's industry and will be in a major competition against the European automakers. In 1990 the industry produced 50 million vehicles and at the end of 1993 there were 470 million cars in use in the world. The value of the new vehicle industry alone is $1,000 billion. Add the after-market, parts and accessories sector and you double that figure.

On average the industry accounts for 13% of the GNP of the developed countries. It accounts for one in seven jobs either directly or indirectly while its ties to the oil industry are enormous. In 1990, 60% of oil used in the U.S. was consumed in auto fuel. In addition, oil is used in plastics both for interiors and exteriors, in bitumen and tar for road construction and energy in the auto plant itself.

In short, the auto industry is central to capitalism. And that means that auto workers -- the very workers who have been laid off, overworked and whip-sawed one against the other for the last 20 years -- these workers are potentially the most powerful group of workers.

Global economy -- another myth

The idea of a global economy is more myth than reality. The myth is that free-trading capitalism brings products and development to even the most remote village. The reality is that world trade goes where the profits are highest, the three mega markets -- Europe, North America and Japan, while the remote village starves. One look at the auto industry confirms that. Of those 470 million cars in use in 1993, 75% were in Europe and the U.S. Add in the components and 80% of the world market is absorbed by Europe, the U.S. and Japan.

In the more than 150 years since the Industrial Revolution most countries in the world are nowhere near being able to sustain a mass auto market. As a rule of thumb the GDP needs to reach $5,000 per head before the country can support such a market.

Autoworkers, then, create a vital chunk of the wealth that lines the pockets of the biggest capitalists in the world -- the ones we call imperialists.

Inter-imperialist rivalry

At first look the powerful international auto industry appears unassailable. But capitalism is full of contradictions. "One capitalist," Marx said, "kills many." By this he meant that driven by competition, capitalists must destroy or dominate the wealth of their rivals. In fact, the auto industry is in crisis.

Why? Because the markets are essentially saturated and projected to grow only at a miserable 2.4% for the next 10 years. On top of that there are way too many auto plants in the world. And so the competition among the capitalists themselves must sharpen; not that this is new, although it has just entered a new phase.

The first phase began in the 60's when Europe invaded the U.S. market. While they cut into the U.S. share, they had little detrimental effect because the market itself grew 44% from 1960-69.

The next phase -- the "Japanese invasion" -- was much more drastic. Not only were Japanese production techniques more advanced but the U.S. market growth slowed dramatically: only 7% during the 70's and less than that in the 80's. In 1965, G.M.'s share of the U.S. market had been 50% but by the end of the 80's it was down to 35%.

This growing, persistent crisis of overproduction has lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth. The Big 5 now dominate the world industry: GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota and Nissan. They account for 81% of the sales in the U.S. and 66% of the sales in Japan. But they only account for 30% of the sales in Europe, the world's largest market.

The battle for the European market has begun. It will be intense. 13% of the GNP represents a huge chunk of the capital concentrated in Europe. It is threatened with destruction. This is the way inter-imperialist rivalry unfolds.

This sharpening in turn will intensify the contradiction between workers and capitalists. To compete with the Japanese, the European component market will have to lay off as much as half their workforce.

On top of that the market is weak. That means the enormous costs of modern plant equipment won't be re-couped from expanding sales. So the auto barons will have to increase the exploitation of their workforce. What a wonderful future: more and more get unemployed while the employed get worked harder and harder!

Such a crisis could breed war, rebellion, and more crisis. And so the auto barons can be expected to invest in fascist movements and even revisionist fake left ones. The fight for revolutionary communism, then, becomes more and more compelling.

As we have seen, the auto industry is central to capitalist power. The European imperialists cannot afford to lose theirs. Yet the Big Five (Japanese and U.S.) cannot afford not to expand into Europe -- the biggest market in the world.

This will mean a momentous trade war. Vast accumulations of capital are at stake. We need to guarantee that the revolutionary communist movement grows no matter what course the battle takes.

Brazil: Auto workers strike for jobs

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Oct. 3 -- Mercedes Benz workers went on strike last week against the company's plans to eliminate 10% (1,600 jobs) of its work force here. In August, GM reduced its labor force in two plants by 4.4% (1,050 workers), replacing some of them with robots. Ford wants to eliminate 15% of its labor force here. These cutbacks are not only caused by the crisis of overproduction but also by the auto companies need to keep "competitive."

As the world's auto bosses' "car war" intensifies, workers must refuse to become their cannon fodder. Workers must not only strike to fight for their jobs, but organize an international movement to unite all our struggles. Our motto should be "we won't pay for the bosses' crisis; a system that uses robots to eliminate our jobs must be destroyed."

Thunderous rebellion at Boeing against layoffs.

SEATTLE, WA., Oct. 3 -- There has been widespread rebellion at Boeing. In one plant workers are taking hammers and banging it on steel every hour on the hour. This causes a deafening roar of thunder that begins in one part of the plant and sends workers scurrying for earplugs and hammers as the roar rolls towards them until it takes over the whole plant.

Last Friday night a foreman tried to stop it. On Monday morning there was tremendous tension when the thunder roll started. Instead of lasting for only five minutes, the hammering went on for 10 until all the managers left the floor and went upstairs. They gave up. Very little work was done that hour and at 8:00, on the hour, the thunder began again.

There are reports of demonstrations on the shop floors at other plants Workers are carrying signs saying, "Practicing to Strike" and parading inside the plant. On other occasions groups of workers punched out at midday. The International Association of Machinists Union leadership has no friends either among management or the workforce. (More details next week)

`Managed care' = healthy profits, dead workers

LOS ANGELES, CA., Oct. 2 -- Earlier this year 61 newborn babies died in 4 1/2 months at a government hospital in Durango, Mexico. Grieving mothers gathered outside the local health department screaming "Punish the killers!"

People speculated that doctors were deliberately killing the infants to sell their organs for profit. An investigation revealed that there was "no foul play," that many of the babies were born premature and malnourished and the poorly-equipped and understaffed hospital was unable to provide the care and medicine the babies needed to survive.

The capitalists sacrifice the lives of workers to put more money in their own pockets, with no pretense of "democracy" or "rights." Under capitalism medical care must be profitable or at least "cost effective," as workers and their children die. The example cited above is not an isolated case in Mexico. The conditions exist for the same scenario to be repeated in the U.S.

In Los Angeles "managed care" is taking over all aspects of health care. Managed care is health rationing -- deciding who gets care based on it's cost effectiveness. Because of the economic crisis of capitalism, the bosses are not willing to pay to keep unemployed workers healthy, nor are they willing to pay much to keep the employed healthy. It is more cost effective to just replace older, sicker workers with younger, healthier ones.

Kaiser Permanente just announced plans to cut expenses in southern California by closing hospitals, reducing the number of beds and hospital stays, making more surgeries outpatient procedures, saving more than $800 million over five years. As this trend increases, some patients will become sicker and even die when family members cannot properly care for them at home. Doctors have been offered increased bonuses for reducing hospitalization days for patients, prescribing less expensive or fewer prescription drugs and ordering fewer diagnostic tests. (LA Times, 9/23).

Even before this new plan was announced, mothers and newborn babies were being sent home after 12 hours. Overworked and understaffed nurses in Labor and Delivery rooms are often unable to adequately monitor women in labor, causing life-threatening conditions for both mother and baby to go unnoticed. Earlier this year a Kaiser Sunset employee who went to the Emergency Room with a severe headache, was given Tylenol and sent home without scans or lab tests, so ill that one of her co-workers had to drive her. Two days later she died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

This fascist restructuring of the Kaiser health care system makes the work environment, as well as the medical care, dangerous. Recently all full-time janitorial employees had the areas they were assigned to clean doubled, with jobs cut to part-time or to "on-call," and were given three months to produce or be fired! Some are only a few years away from retirement. If a worker drops dead on the job from overwork, Kaiser kills two birds with one stone -- saving money by not having to pay pensions or medical benefits. As these older employees are weeded out, Kaiser already plans to contract out their work and cut wages in half, with no benefits.

The only immediate antidote for this is class struggle. The unions claim there is little they can do. They can't fight these cuts because they are committed to staying within the legal limits of capitalism. No contracts, no grievances and no laws can prevent the bosses from cutting our jobs or killing us or our loved ones. Only the organized force of the working class in mass, militant, and violent class struggle can stop them -- breaking the bosses' laws and breaking with the sellout union leaders that only serve to control us and hold us back.

We must stop believing that these cuts are "necessary" because the bosses have a right to their profits. Kaiser's 1994 net profits were $816 million, even while they cried about losing patients and money! They work us to death while Kaiser gets rich.

As long as we fight only for crumbs, they will continue to attack us. We must unite with workers in other industries to fight for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay, and make the bosses take the losses, while preparing to smash their fascist profit system with workers' power -- communism, where medical care will truly be a right.

Union hacks divertWorkers anger

STERLING HEIGHTS, MI. -- During the 13 weeks of The Detroit News/Free Press strike, workers fought scabs and the police, been arrested, and forced the newspaper bosses to use helicopters to get newspapers out of the plant. But where the scabs, police, and helicopters couldn't defeat the strikers, a piece of paper from a judge, along with the connivance of the Teamster union hacks, has managed to replace workers' militancy with cynicism.

Instead of round-the-clock picketing to shut down the company's two printing facilities, the union leaders caved in to a court injunction against mass picketing at the Sterling Heights facility.

Only ten pickets are allowed at one time, and scab papers are being printed and trucks roll out the gates. The plant's continued operation enables the company to distribute to most of the customers who still buy the paper.

Instead of stopping production at Sterling Heights, the union leadership sends most of the pickets to the Jefferson Ave. printing facility in Downtown Detroit. The Jefferson Ave. plant prints very few papers and is not essential to production. This mass picketing only occurs on Saturday night in an effort to block the Sunday edition and represents no more venting anger.

There are still sparks of anger from the workers; this past Saturday night flying squadrons were deployed from the Jefferson Ave. picket line and sent to various warehouse/distribution centers around the city. At these sites workers attacked scabs and attempted to block trucks making deliveries. But overall, the cowardly Teamster leadership has taken much of the fight out of strikers and paved the way for the victory of the newspaper bosses.

Black technician fired after 38 years on the job

OAKLAND, CA., Oct. 2 -- When Summit Medical Center Human Resources Director, Richard Robinson, told the lab's union Shop Steward, Bob Dawson, a black technologist with 38 years seniority, to report to his office, it was to fire him in two minutes.

Workers, no matter how dedicated and skilled are, in the eyes of capitalists, nothing more than commodities. We are to be used, controlled and then discarded, if we are no longer needed to, make a profit.

When Bob Dawson started working at Providence Hospital he was the first black medical technologist on "Pill Hill." After the merger of three hospitals, and the layoffs of hundreds of workers, Summit has fired its only remaining black medical technologist.

Bob was fired on the frame-up charge of using profanity in an argument with a co-worker. The two minute argument was settled between them, and neither worker complained to management. However, the racist bosses conducted a Nazi-style "investigation," judged Bob to be the "aggressor" and fired him, while the other worker, who is white, was suspended for five days. Such is "democracy," capitalist style.

The overwhelming majority of fired workers in the lab have been black, even though the percentage of black workers there is quite small. Many of them have been outspoken against management, while some, like Bob, have been Shop Stewards. Bob has helped hundreds of workers fight the bosses, and 25 years ago led the struggle for unionization. The racist firing of Bob has hurt white workers as well, depriving us all -- black and white --of a fighting steward.

After our 1992 strike, 200 workers were laid off; and since then 300 more have gone. The health industry mega-mergers and buyouts are controlled by the big banks, which are playing a major role in restructuring health care. This means the loss of tens of thousands of jobs nationally, while skilled jobs are "de-skilled," and pay scales are undermined. Our skills are not needed for the lowered level of patient care the industry is planning for the working class -- less care, more closed hospitals, less jobs, more industry profits.

Many people say management "made a mistake" in firing Bob -- he knows all the laws; he knows his "rights;" he knows the union; he'll sue and "practically own the hospital."

Although these thoughts reflect Bob's strengths, they are misleading. The same bosses that run the health care industry, also run the courts. The courts are their turf, not ours. They own the lawmakers and write the laws. The union grievance procedure is severely limited. It may result in compromise at best. (Bob is of retirement age, and the process can take up to three years.)

Capitalism, in its drive for maximum profits, is destroying our livelihoods and devastating the standard of health care. The only force that can stand up to capitalism is the organized strength of the revolutionary working class. The bosses can't run their system or make their profits without our labor power. Workers can use our collective strength, knowledge and power to run a system without bosses or profits, communism.

When management fires our rank-and-file leaders, we all must become organizers and join the Joint Stewards Council picket lines on Oct. 5 and 6. It is the collective support of his co-workers, not the paper work of lawyers, that will kick management's butts for firing Bob Dawson.

PL garment organizer deals with internal doubts

LOS ANGELES, CA., Sept. 26 -- "I feel hollow and I feel that I can't win others to something if I'm not sure it works....Give me time to think this through, and if I decide to stay in the Party, it will be to win a lot of people."

This was what a garment worker said during a study group about Dialectical Materialism when we were discussing the law of contradiction. This worker has led work stoppages against wage cuts. He hates the bosses. He has been active with the Party for the last year.

What are the main obstacles to becoming a communist organizer?

To find the obstacles that are blocking this comrade from becoming a communist organizer, we had to investigate what events made major impressions on him. He told us that before coming to the U.S., he was a worker and a family man.

Because of a drinking problem, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and quit drinking. The AA therapy pushes the idea that everyone has his/her own destiny and that if s/he wants to change, it's an individual decision; that the problem is within the person and has nothing to do with the capitalist system. He learned to be strong and disciplined, but he also learned that you solve your own problems alone -- or with the help of god.

He wanted to improve his standard of living and he looked to the North. He came to LA. He led well-organized struggles involving many workers in the Daysi garment factory, and the boss closed the factory. Our comrade's conclusion was, "We can fight, but in the end the bosses always win."

When he met the Party and started learning about communism, our comrade started distributing Challenge-Desafío to his friends. Some attacked him with anti-communism saying, "Why bother getting into problems and losing your job. Just work hard and that will solve your problems. You can't change the world."

But every day life gets harder. Clinics and hospitals close. The bosses lower the piece-rates. Racism gets worse. Deportations increase. You have to decide whether to follow the bosses or follow PLP. Our Party unites workers to fight against the bosses' attacks and uses these fights to show that the only permanent victory is communist equality.

Every process involves the unity and conflict of opposites -- contradiction. All change, all movement, comes from the internal struggle of these opposites -- whether it's a tree growing, or class society, or the struggle inside an individual between capitalist and communist ideas and practices. This internal conflict is the motor for all movement. All contradictions are resolved by intensifying them. We learn how to win from our practice and the struggle to improve.

Dialectics explains how to change struggle into revolution

So, our comrade's problem is a lack of confidence in the working class. The capitalist aspect of the contradiction comes out by saying the bosses are strong and the workers are weak; that we can't win communism, nor can we organize a mass struggle for unionization. Another garment worker explained that the garment industry looks like a calm sea, while underneath undercurrents are there that can transform the surface into a raging sea of struggle. He explained the Party can grow from these struggles.

We concluded that our comrade won't strengthen the communist side of his contradiction only by thinking things over by himself. Collectively we will learn more about the need and certainty of communism from past struggles for communism, especially in the Soviet Union and China. These workers had courage and commitment. They lacked the experience to see that the capitalist wage system had to be completely smashed and replaced with communist equality immediately. We are following a winning tradition, and we'll do even better based on their experience.

It is a mistake to evaluate the struggle at Daysi only from the point of view that the workers lost the reform and the boss closed the factory. Many workers learned from the collective struggle and shared much camaraderie in the factory. Three workers joined PLP, and two others are working with PLP. As the struggle in garment grows, many of these Daysi workers will remember us and will join with us again. We are not failures if we don't win all the reforms. This would not be a realistic goal in a period of capitalist decline. We certainly will continue to fight hard against the bosses. Our goal in the class struggle is to win workers to see that they have the power to destroy capitalism and build communism.

We will develop more class struggle in the work places to prove that our class can unite and destroy wage slavery and build communist equality. Together we can learn how to use the science of dialectical materialism to change ourselves and the world.

PLP protests health care cutbacks at CCH

CHICAGO, IL., Sept. 30 -- Thirty four members and friends of the PLP rallied to protest a fascist 8% cut in health care passed for the coming year at Cook County Hospital in Chicago.

The rally began at the new United Center, a stadium built for Chicago pro basketball games and hockey games, fights, and the 1996 Democratic Convention. (Millions of government dollars were poured into building this playground for the rich.)

Leaflets were distributed and papers sold to passersby on foot and in cars. Speeches were made about the contradictions of capitalism and its priority of profits over jobs and health care and that only communist revolution could resolve these contradictions.

The group then marched down Damen Ave. and headed across the bridge to Cook County Hospital (less than a mile away), chanting to demand jobs and health care. The marchers rallied in front of the hospital just at the change of shift and several workers and patients joined the rally. Speeches were made attacking the bosses for their contempt for the health and lives of the working class. Hundreds of leaflets were distributed and 71 Challenge-Desafíos were sold.

Fuhrman's also in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA, PA., Oct. 3 -- From Los Angeles to New Orleans to New York, the newspapers are full of stories about cops who are racist and corrupt, dope dealers and murderers. Philadelphia is no exception.

Remember that this is the city that brought us the fascist Frank Rizzo. His successor Wilson Goode -- the city's first black mayor, directed the bombing and murder of men, women, and children of the MOVE cult and set an intentional fire that destroyed the nearby black working class neighborhood.

For months, the Philadelphia cops have been making headlines. First came the news that six cops pleaded guilty to framing innocent people, shaking down drug dealers, and faking evidence. More arrests are expected and the city has been forced to transfer 23 police supervisors from the involved districts because it was clear that they also were involved.

Stories appeared in newspapers here from grandmothers and college students who were framed by the cops. From these six cops alone, the city is forced to review as many as 1,400 arrests. All those framed are black workers. Many people spent years in jail. So many people are now suing the city for wrongful arrest that one financial commentator worried that the financial settlements alone could bankrupt the city.

The next public embarrassment came in August at a demonstration to free black nationalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Many protesters carried signs declaring that Abu-Jamal could not get a fair trial because Philly's cops and courts are racist. While surrounded by the protesters, a white police captain was overheard telling a black cop, "You're sweating like a n----. I should take you home to my wife and tell her you're my daughter's boyfriend."

Even more embarrassing to the cops is that this captain is in charge of the city's Conflict Prevention and Resolution Unit, which handles sensitive racial issues and hate crimes!

Then, at the end of August, a decorated 21-year veteran of the city's elite Highway Patrol was fired after he attacked a couple who came upon him having sex with a boy in a van. The cop is charged with slapping the woman who discovered him, pulling a gun on her and her husband, and driving his van into the couple's truck. The city's District Attorney complained that after the exposures of the spring and summer, this cop's arrest totally flattened morale among the city's 6,100 cops.

The erosion of morale among the cops is not the rulers' only concern. The ruling class is also alarmed by this publicity because it can make workers question the role of the cops and the bosses' government. Consequently, the bosses' media portrays these cops as "rogues" and "bad apples" among a mainly "good" police force.

But there can be no police force that is "good" for the working class under capitalism. The cops are an armed force to help the capitalists hold power. The cops and the government that directs them are never "neutral".

The government and the cops are needed because of the unavoidable class conflict between workers and bosses under capitalism. The role of the government and the cops is to protect the class interests of the bosses. For the working class this means that the problem of "bad" cops can't be solved by FBI investigations, review boards, or "community" control.

As a whole, the cops -- black, latin and white, men and women -- are racist, corrupt, decadent murderers because they are an armed force to protect a ruling class that uses racism, decadence, and murder to protect the profits they steal from the labor of the working class. As long as capitalism exists, all cops will be bad for the working class.

For our class, the answer to the problem of "bad" cops can only be communist revolution.

Mexico City: Cops Also Mug Here

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 2 -- The cops are a reflection of the dopedealing and crooked ruling class of Mexico. Last week, workers travelling on the Metro (subway) became the latest victims of the cops. Several people were murdered and many other werer injured when a cop opened fire with his 9 mm gun on the crowded Metro.At the first, the authorities claimed the cop suffered from depression, but later it was found out that he was trying to mug his victims.

Caption to picture: Mexico City, Oct. 2 -- The anger of the masses erupted today during a march honoring those murdered by the Army in 1968. Hundreds of young demonstrators went on a rampage protesting the misery and unemployment caused by today's capitalist crisis.

Speedup kills bus driver, union hackssabotage fightback

LOS ANGELES, CA. -- What happens when workers find themselves following a union leadership that relies on the courts to save them? They can lose their lives.

An overworked Metropolitan Transit Authortiy (MTA) attendant was trying to park a bus in a lot that's too narrow and has improper lighting. A bus driver, Patricia Trujillo, was horribly crushed to death. Of course, the bosses tried to blame the workers, but "inattention" didn't kill Sister Trujillo; their "budget-balancing" layoffs murdered her.

The experience of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1277 members, working for the MTA here, shows which side the courts are on, and therefore which class holds state power.

Last year the MTA laid off 64 maintenance workers and the ATU leadership got us to swallow a give-back contract. Then this past Spring, the MTA bosses followed with still more layoffs, "to help balance the budget." The union went to court "to save the jobs."

Meanwhile, the workers struck back, especially those at the Central Maintenance Facility (CMF), boycotting overtime to try to force the MTA to re-hire some laid-off workers. Local 1277 leaders sabotaged the boycott, saying it would "hurt the court `battle' to save jobs." They coughed up nearly half a million bucks of our dues money in court bonds for this "battle."

The ATU executive board made a big deal about "fighting" the bosses in court. They bad-mouthed the bosses while carefully obeying the bosses' laws and doing nothing. This is all occurring amid a severe "budget-balancing" attack on the working class of Los Angeles and Orange Counties in which the bosses are breaking financial and public health laws like matchsticks. So much for "the law."

The upshot? The court decided in favor of the bosses who own them and these ATU "fighters" are now presiding over the "correct" way to lay off 101 of the remaining 1,800 union members! The jobs were lost; the overtime continues.

One immediate cost of this reliance on the bosses' courts and their sanction of "budget-balancing" led to what can only be labeled as the murder of a bus driver. Since July there have been 71 fewer service attendants to do the same amount of work throughout the entire MTA. During the evening rush hour, these workers must check the buses, fuel them, blow them out with air hoses, run them through the washer and wipe them as more buses pile in.

The bosses are facing a growing economic crisis. They create the "budget deficit" and then turn around to balance it on the workers' backs. They own the courts which help them do it. That's the nature of state power under capitalism: the bosses (the ruling class) control it and use it to suppress those who produce all value (the working class) from whose labor they derive all their profits.

However, the workers are planning to fight back. Even before the news of this driver's murder circulated throughout the MTA, a mechanic, who is a Challenge-Desafío reader and May Day marcher, organized a meeting of mechanics and service attendants at one of the operator divisions to fight the overtime and short-staffing.

In the face of the cynicism and demoralization of some ATU members who say, "We can't prevent these cuts, so why try?" the effects of PLP's ideas and efforts are gathering together the only force capable of burying the system that brings death and destruction to our lives. The bosses' growing crisis is costing the working class dearly. Building PLP is the best way to make the bosses pay for it.

Letters

TWU `red carpet' based on workers' support of PLP

Dear Challenge:

The article in Challenge-Desafío (10/4) from MUNI, San Francisco's transit system, raised some sharp points. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it deliberately ignored the main one.

Last month the Union leadership did an about face and rolled out the red carpet for PLP members and friends. For decades anyone who has come close to us has been subjected to a concentrated attack along nationalist and anti-communist lines. Suddenly we are invited onto the Education Committee and asked to play key roles.

Why? That's a burning question the article should have addressed. I think the answer is twofold. For the past several months several workers have defended communists and communism. In fact, the last elections showed that the Union leaders were counter attacked many times when they tried their usual anti-communist tactics. And we know they are worried about the support the communists have earned.

It's a shame we have failed to examine this advance by workers in any detail in our Challenge-Desafío stories. While it certainly has its limits, it is an advance, and to disregard it will hurt us in the coming months.

In fact, the backwardness of the working class ("we're dumb, short-sighted, racist or nationalist Joe Six-packs") is the main theme of capitalist ideology. Shouldn't the advances of the working class toward communism be the main theme of the pages of a revolutionary paper like Challenge-Desafío?

In addition, although the Union leaders are turning toward us, they are merely changing their tactics, not their politics. They still think workers are too backward to be able to rule society. But since they are losing influence among the workers, these Union hacks are hoping to "tame" the communists' influence by offering us some official leadership roles. We should look at these new Committee positions not as gifts from the Union but as mandates from our base for communist leadership.

Oakland reader

PL study group in Ethiopia fights`ethnic' divisions

Dear Challenge:

To all comrades around the world. It is my great pleasure to inform you about the situation in our factory here in Wonji. This is the second year of our Challenge study group. We are proud to be associated with Progressive Labor Party.

After saying this, I want to inform you that right before we took our annual leave we discussed an article in Challenge about self-determination. The Party line is excellent in that self determination is the old Communist tactic and the new liberal fad. The group also closely examined the situation here in Ethiopia and around the world. Ethnic politics prepare the working class for another round of ethnic war. We, the working class, should prepare to transform this war into working class war against the capitalists.

We hope to see Challenge every week if possible in Amharic -- the Ethiopian language.

Comrade in Wonji Sugar Factory, Ethiopia

Detroit teachers refuse scab newspapers

Dear Challenge:

Detroit teachers have been regulars on the picket line in the Detroit News/Free Press strike. (See article page 3) Furthermore Detroit teachers, who are members of PLP, leafleted the September special meeting of the Detroit Federation of teachers and convinced the union to pass a resolution banning the presence of Detroit Free Press editions inside the schools.

Usually journalism teachers print their high school newspapers in the Free Press, but this practice has now been banned by the union -- thanks in part to PLP's agitation on this issue.

Meanwhile the struggle to ban the Free Press rages on inside some schools. At Detroit City High School, a confrontation took place between teachers supporting the strike and two teachers who took some scab papers from a bundle in the office.

The confrontation was so ugly and heated that the scab principal attempted to discipline the militant teacher involved. However there was little the principal could do to shut up this teacher. When counseled by the principal the teacher said, "It's my duty as a union member to speak up in support of the strike. If you don't like it, that's your problem." The disciplinary meeting with the principal ended on that high note. The struggle goes on and the teachers are learning from the News/Free Press strikers.

Detroit Teacher

Cadre School students get communist education

(The following two letters were written by students who attended the PL Cadre School.)

Dear Challenge:

I was a proud participant of the recent Cadre School held in Connecticut on Dialectical Materialism. Approximately 70 people, including many high school students, college students, and adults participated in the six workshops that were held.

I was given the serious responsibility of sharing the leadership in my workshop. Giving youth, like myself, leadership in an area as significant as preparing the masses to fight the capitalist ideology with our own ideology, showed me that youth are among the most important ingredients in class struggle. Several youth were also given major responsibilities in organizing the entire school.

Some aspects of the cadre school deserve criticism; however, there were more favorable aspects than negative ones. The organization of food and rooming for the entire cadre school deserves praise. Each workshop was assigned a specific responsibility such as cleaning and cooking; this was a perfect example of how everyone equally contributed to some aspect of the school. Also, workshops were arranged so that youth always outnumbered the adults. In most workshops, the youth directed the discussions. However, the discussion of Dialectical Materialism was a difficult task.

The aspects and laws of this topic could not have possibly been covered completely in one weekend. Since individuals that participated in the workshops did not understand the meaning of communism and why it was necessary to fight for it, it was even harder for them to understand dialectics, which is the ideology of communists. Although the political expectations of the cadre school were a little high, the workshop leaders did not let them impede the progress of the workshops.

Instead of discussing dialectics as a whole in my workshop, we broke down each of the three laws and related them to all aspects of our lives. We also focused on student work. This method helped the people in the workshop learn from each other, which should always be the top priority of any cadre school. A suggestion for future cadre schools is that we have one focusing on understanding communism as it relates to capitalism. Then schools afterwards would focus once again on dialectical materialism.

High school comrade

Dear Challenge:

Recently I attended a weekend communist cadre school which focused on applying dialectical materialism to school. After the initial welcome (and a bite to eat), we were split into 6 "workshops" with about five or six people in each workshop.

I was assigned to the sixth workshop, where we discussed (specifically) how the schools would change under a communist society and how this would effect the students (e.g. less competition between students, and better physical conditions for learning).

Dinner and a social followed the workshops, and then we slept. The next morning we had breakfast, followed by activities and then the morning's workshops. At that time we met someone who had just arrived, and who spoke about how the communist movements in other countries have failed. I proposed that when we make a revolution it should be worldwide; others argued that it would be easier to make the U.S. communist first and let other countries learn from our example such as we did from the Russians in the early 1920s. It was a heated discussion.

Subsequently we moved outside because the cooks were getting ready to prepare dinner. Once outside, we relaxed and didn't talk much about politics. Instead, we called on each other to give our opinions about the cadre school and the weekend. Most of us said, "It was good" and didn't want to say anything more -- but they came around. Eventually, the net opinion was: "I learned a lot about communism that I didn't know before, and I think that the schools could be much improved when the workers come to power." Amen to that!

Dinner was chili on top of spaghetti, and after we finished every one of us sang "The Internationale." The energy was so high in that room! I've never felt anything like it, and at my departure that afternoon, I knew I probably never would until the Revolution comes to be.

Manhattan high school student

Philly PLP along with Academic Collective attacks Bell Curve

Dear Challenge:

The Philadelphia area PL club has kicked off the new school year with several activities aimed at building the Party. Our left-center coalition, the Academic Collective held a forum at the Philadelphia Community College titled, "Debunking the Bell Curve." Two anti-racist friends of the Party gave presentations that showed the racist and fascist propagandistic nature of the Bell Curve. They also called for the need of mass mobilizations against the so-called "scientific" racists. A PL member gave short speeches, both at the beginning and end of the sessions and served as emcee.

Other activities have included Challenge-Desafío sales at Haverford College, where more than forty copies were sold in an hour and half.

Knowledge of the Party demonstration against the racists at the Maryland Conference (See Challenge-Desafío, 10/4), plus the presence of a Howard University organizer at Haverford, persuaded several students to sign up to attend the conference at Howard. These students are part of mass organizations at Haverford where there is Party activity. At first they were uneasy about going to Howard with the Party member, but our political practice proves our seriousness and commitment to people, persuading honest organizers to fight with us.

This development at Haverford seems to be a positive way of winning people to reformist conferences -- that is, winning them to the revolutionary possibility of the conference, rather than the opportunist possibility that reformist work contains.

A Haverford PLP'er

Stop racist D'Souza, alias `Distort D'newsa'

Dear Challenge:

Dinesh D'Souza's new book The End of Racism should be subtitled "Son of Bell Curve." It is a racist manifesto for conservatives who do not like genetic theories of black inferiority. D'Souza says that Charles Murray is wrong about genes. But in some ways he is even more blatantly racist than Murray. His book proves that arguments of black cultural inferiority (and, by extension, the "cultural inferiority" of all working class people) can promote fascism just as effectively as genetic theories.

D'Souza resurrects Moynihan's foul old argument that black people are still entrapped by "pathological" (sick) cultural traits they acquired as slaves. The obstacle they face in U.S. society, according to his warped logic, is not racism but anti-racism. He thinks black people should recognize their own shortcomings and "civilize" themselves. Then, he says, they will get ahead and there will be no racism to stop them.

According to D'Souza, liberals are the real enemy of black progress because they wrongly believe that all cultural values are equal. So, he says, when blacks sell drugs and get on welfare instead of working and studying, liberals say that it's okay. What he means is that black men should be locked up and black women thrown off welfare. But Congress has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that in the U.S. today, liberals and conservatives agree on this basic racist program.

Communists also oppose the liberal theory of "cultural relativism." But we say that what's pathological is the culture of capitalism that D'Souza (like the liberals) so admires.

D'Souza, like Murray, has made a career out of racist propaganda. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, he helped publish the disgusting Dartmouth Review. He was known there as "Distort Dnewsa," because he lied so brazenly. Then, still under William Buckley's wing, he wrote his first book, which championed European ethnocentrism. It condemned those trying to reform racist, sexist, and pro-capitalistic "Western Civilization" courses.

The NY Times Magazine heralded D'Souza's new book last February in a cover story on the "Opinion Elite." It described the fascist intellectual circles in which Murray and D'Souza move. One of those featured was Adam Bellow. He is the son of Saul and the editorial director of The Free Press, publisher of The Bell Curve and The End of Racism. The Times called the Free Press "the most important publishing house" for fascist U.S. intellectuals today.

Fascism is a capitalist society in decay. The sick ranting of D'Souza and Murray are typical of what passes for scholarly thought on the subject of racial inequality in the U.S. today. This is the most decadent, racist garbage that can be created by the most arrogant, bigoted, contemptuous hacks right-wing corporate foundations can buy.

Virginia reader

The Three Marias

Dear Challenge: The same weekend, Maria Monteiro Alves, a Brazilian immigrant, was murdered in New York City's Central Park as she was jogging, Maria Rivas, a nursing student, was murdered by cop Frank Speringo of the 33 Precinct in Upper Manhattan. Maria Rivas, a 25-year old Dominican immigrant, was caught in the crossfire when Speringo, who was off duty and drunk, got into a fight with some customers at the Tres Marias restaurant.

Looking at these cases together not only exposes the murderous nature of the cops, but also the hypocrisy of the bosses and the media. While the Central Park murder was the top story on the TV news for many nights, and the city paid for her mother's trip to New York from Brazil, as well as covering the cost of returning Maria's body back to Brazil, not much has been said about Maria Rivas, the mother of a six year old. Her family and friends had to raise money to bring her body back to her native Dominican Republic. Cop Speringo has yet to be indicted and if the experience of other killer cops (such as the murderer of Tony Baez in the Bronx) runs true, he won't spend a day in jail.

On Saturday, September 30, a comrade and I attended a gathering attended by almost 100 people. The meeting, held in an Upper Manhattan school, discussed police brutality in the neighborhood, specifically the case of Maria Rivas. Several people spoke, including the mothers of people killed by cops. A march is planned for Saturday, Nov. 18 to protest police brutality and other attacks against working people.

A NYC PL'er

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