The former Wye slave plantation was a fitting site for a conference promoting a plantation mentality. One hundred fifty years ago, slaveowners invented a so-called disease, "drapetomania," for slaves who ran away. Today the racist bosses claim that so-called "anti-social behavior" among black and latin youth is a "disease." They pay big bucks for fake "genetic research" to build the idea that crime and poverty are caused by defects in the workers themselves.
The truth is that capitalism itself is the cause of every single problem workers face. The capitalists themselves are the biggest and most violent criminals.
Many listened to speaker after speaker attack the conference as an exercise in racism, fascism, and pseudo-science. A black worker from Washington, DC said, "We don't have to look very far in our community for the causes of crime. There are no jobs, no opportunity." Another comrade explained patiently, "We don't have conferences about things known to be false -- such as whether or not the earth is flat."
A Columbia University PLP'er dared "genetics and crime" researchers to come into the cities with their drugs and studies, "The red flag will be in your face every time you step up," he declared. "We are about revolution."
After finishing our speeches, we marched out to support a press conference at which some invited participants said publicly that the "genetics and crime" conference shouldn't be happening. Then, chanting "Jobs Yes, Racism No, Genetics Conference Has to Go," we picketed the conference luncheon. As state police helicopters and squad cars converged we left, having won a small but significant victory for the working class. The conference had been brought to a standstill and then pushed to the left.
Too often, workers and youth fall for some version of this boss-inspired BS. Some wrongly believe that other "racial" groups are just born "different." Others believe that it's "natural" for some to be rich and others poor, or that "if you can't make it, it's because you just can't cut it." Or that selfishness and prejudice are part of "human nature." No matter how much it's dressed up in scientific language, this genetic determinism is no more scientific and just as false as astrology.
The world we live in is not a fact of nature. It is a reflection of the level of class struggle between workers and our bosses. Workers' actions aren't determined by our genes; what we do depends on our consciousness, on our view of the world.
When we workers unite as a class and for our class, we will have the power to change the world. In the communist world that we will create, there will be no "race" and no racism. There will be no academic policymakers to devise theories to justify oppression. The fight against the boss-inspired consciousness of racism and genetic determinism is, at the same time, a fight to develop communist consciousness among the masses of workers, students, and even professors.
The PLP-led disruption of the Maryland conference made a difference. A graduate student who liked the demonstration worried that it might make it harder to raise anti-racist ideas inside. In fact, the opposite was true. Later, panelists spoke out much more sharply than before the disruption. Several said openly that they shared many concerns voiced by "our earlier panel." The racist impact of the conference was blunted.
From the "Violence Initiative" to The Bell Curve to Dinesh D'Souza's latest racist tract, fascist ideologues are again on the march. Teach-ins, forums, and informational picket lines on dozens, if not hundreds, of campuses have begun to expose their racist lies. But that's not enough. Poking holes in phony science is not enough. Making polite speeches in cozy conference rooms won't stop fascism. Fascists must be stopped -- violently, when necessary -- whether they are KKK'ers in bedsheets or professors in suits.
Come to the Howard University conference on "Race and Inequity" on October 6-7 with a group from your student organization, community group, or union. Help make plans to escalate the anti-racist fight, on and off the campuses. Bring out the ideas of multi-racial unity, class struggle, and workers' power in opposition to the segregationist, electoral politics, and the cheerleading for capitalism of the Farrakhanites and liberals. The red flags of communism that led the charge against the Maryland conference must fly at the head of a mass movement to smash racism.
Whatever the insignificant differences in skin color, language or gender, these workers and youth have much in common. One thing they all share is that Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam, never supported any of them.
Now, with the full weight of the racist rulers' media behind him, Farrakhan is leading a "Million Man March" on Washington, DC. It won't be a million, but it will be big. One reason for this is that Farrakhan is filling a void left by the collapse of the old communist led anti-racist movement. This is no replacement.
Everyone who marches behind Farrakhan is making a big mistake. Workers who go to this march seeking anti-racist unity will instead get anti-white racism and anti-semitism. Workers who want to fight back will be spoon-fed religious spirituality. Workers who want to blame the capitalist system will instead be told to blame themselves and register to vote.
In the U.S., you can sell anything. Farrakhan is selling a mixture of religious mysticism, blame-the-victim racism, sexism, anti-semitism, nationalism, and patriotism. Don't be surprised to see Rosa Parks standing alongside FBI informant Al Sharpton, mafia buddy Don King, and rapist Mike Tyson, a veritable "who's who" of the absurd; a mirror image of the fundamentalist Christian movement, designed to derail and entrap black workers and youth into blaming each other and not the system.
The march appeals to the worst in people, while making no demands on the racist ruling class. "We have been bad." "We must atone for our sins." "We are to blame for the conditions we live under." These are the very same arguments being used by racist politicians to slash welfare, medical care, and education, while building more prisons. This holds a particular appeal to Farrakhan, who does most of his recruiting in the prisons, not in the factories, mines, mills, or schools. Religious fundamentalism and extreme nationalism are fascist maggots, feeding off the rotting corpse of capitalism.
No, what we need is an army of tens of millions of workers and youth, women and men, of all colors and from every corner of the globe, united in battle to overthrow this system. What we need is armed struggle for communist revolution. What we need is a system that abolishes wage slavery, money, profits, and private property, based on equality, where the masses of people work collectively for the good of our class, and get what they need because they need it, not because they can afford it.
IAM District 751 has postponed the picket captains' meetings until after the final contract offer. Linda Lanham, Defense Committee Coordinator, has said those meetings will be canceled if the leadership recommends acceptance -- even before we get to vote. The union canceled a rally scheduled for Sept. 23 at the Red Lion Inn, site of the negotiations. Similarly, they tried to sabotage rank-and-file led rallies in support of laid off workers -- this time unsuccessfully -- as far back as April. "There will be no strike," vowed District president Bill Johnson, at union meetings in the last month. "I guarantee you I will bring you a good contract." Their intention is clear; the question is why.
The answer lies in the capitalist crisis. The role of the union misleaders has changed as the bosses have become more desperate. These hacks are fighting for a "place at the table." They are trying to win it by controlling us workers. This contract will include such givebacks as offsets, worker flexibility, subcontracting, "worker-driven cost reductions" and all manner of schemes to reduce jobs and labor costs. The hacks are deathly afraid they won't be able to control us in the face of these attacks. They are taking no chances.
They will call this the "contract of the century," but we must ask, "will we have a job?" Connie Kelliher, spokeswomen for the union, commented that most of the laid off Boeing workers will never get their jobs back. The hacks have written off our brothers and sisters. We never will!
The union leadership has been reduced to mere bureaucrats of fascism. We don't need a leadership "at the table," we need a mass movement for jobs. A strike for jobs and 6-hours work for 8-hours pay, would go a long way toward starting such a movement. Already we have seen thousands of Boeing workers receptive to this idea.
As this crisis deepens, it has become painfully clear there are only two roads for workers. The first is the road to a fascist "corporate state," complete with a union-company partnership. The second is the road to communist revolution, preceded by a new, mass fighting labor movement built around the demand for shorter hours and more jobs. Whether or not the company and their junior partners in the union leadership succeed in avoiding a strike this contract, we have already laid the foundation for this second road. Let's build the PLP and finish the job!
Take fish for example. Most of us like to eat fish now and again. I know I do. The story of capitalism and fish is an interesting one. People have been fishing commercially off the coast of North America for about five hundred years. Today, huge ships with packaging factories on board spend months in the ocean dragging nets a mile long which catch everything in their path. Today's fishing is like today's warfare. All these baby fish, and fish they don't even want, and turtles, and whales -- all the "noncombatants" get killed along the way.
But fishing villages still exist all along the coasts, where the fishermen still try to make a living catching fish themselves. Look at what's happening in them.
A hundred years ago, they used to catch codfish that weighed more than a hundred pounds each. Today, a good one weighs ten pounds. A few years ago, fishermen were paid thirty cents a pound for codfish (which the fish companies sold to us for four dollars a pound -- that's a plan). They went out and caught as many fish as they possibly could, in order to pay the mortgages on their boats and their fishing licenses, and put food on their tables. Today, the fishermen in Newfoundland and Massachusetts are not allowed to fish at all. In Nova Scotia, it is illegal to catch and sell codfish. People whose families have been catching fish for generations are lining up for welfare and going to "retraining" classes for jobs that don't exist.
Meanwhile, there's no grown-up codfish in the Atlantic Ocean. That looks like a giant lack of planning. How hard is it to figure out that if everyone fishes out as many fish as they possible can, eventually there won't be many fish left? Okay, maybe five hundred years ago they could laugh at that idea, because there were so few fishermen and so many fish -- and they threw the baby fish back in to grow. But don't you think that Mrs. Paul and Chicken of the Sea could have figured it out? You know they did. The thing is, they weren't about to do anything about it. What were they going to do, voluntarily stop catching so many fish? Go under to the competition from the next company, which was also fishing like there was no tomorrow?
These guys aren't stupid. They plan all right. It's just that what they plan for -- is their own profit. They have to stay ahead of the next company -- today: let the future take care of itself. So we end up with profitability for the corporations, but anarchy for the economy. It's not the needs of the working class they're planning for: it's their own cutthroat selfishness.
You see how much more sense communism makes? We won't be worrying about making profits. We'll plan for putting food on the table. And not just for today: for the future generations, too. That's what any sensible person would try to do. And that is basically what communism is all about -- the working class planning and running and living life together.
Meanwhile, the workers on those factory ships and the fishermen in the coastal villages and the rest of us have a big fight on our hands. Because even if the ruling class can't unite to plan how not to kill off all the codfish, you know they will unite to try to keep us from taking over. Too bad for them we're not a school of fish.
(Challenge-Desafío invites readers to contribute articles to the Red's Point of View column. Articles can be about topics discussed among workers or anything else that reflects thinking about and fighting for a communist way of life.)
When the bosses talk about "productivity" and work flexibility, they mean doing away with the few benefits workers still have. PAN is becoming more and more the darling of the local and foreign bosses. Many expect it to be the ruling party in the near future. The Wall Street Journal (9/21) puts it this way: "Mexico's `Other' Party Flexes Its Muscle -- As Ruling PRI Loses Favor, Pro-Business PAN Gains Clout." So workers must see these PAN proposals as serious attacks on all workers.
PAN wants to exchange the Arbitration Boards for "Social Judges." They will decide when and how workers can strike, and impose heavy penalties and jail sentences to strikers who don't follow their decisions. This proposal by PAN is basically a plan to declare strikes illegal, to take away the main weapon workers have to fight for reforms. The PAN proposition is even more dangerous because it also proposes a 40-hour work-week (now non-existent in Mexico), to try to sucker workers into supporting it.
Workers must not fall into the trap of defending the current labor law, which doesn't do anything for workers, in order to fight the new legal fascist attacks. This means that we must not limit our struggle to supporting one bourgeois political party over another. Workers must devise their own fighting plan, based on organizing at the point of production. We have the weapon of strikes to fight these attacks, to shut down the factories with a mass general strike. We must fight for a real shorter work-week, without loss in pay, as a way of demanding more jobs for the millions unemployed.
PLP members must participate actively in these struggles, showing workers that capitalism and all their laws are anti-worker; explaining how all the political parties, from the ruling PRI to the right-wing PAN and the liberal PRD, are on the side of the bosses. Only our Party, the revolutionary communist working class Party, can end the wage slavery system that is capitalism.
Here's the way LA County Supervisor Burke explained how Clinton's "solution" to the crisis would work: "We're going to have to face reality," said LA County Supervisor Burke. "There is no way for us to carry on this system with the tremendous number of indigents. There is just not enough money." (LA Times, 9/22/95)
In other words, there are too many poor people in LA County. They have to go -- one way or another. This was part of Burke's explanation of the conditions on the deal Clinton made with the County Supervisors. The capitalists see poor and unemployed workers as the problem because they are not needed to work in productive jobs at this time of capitalist crisis. They are seen as surplus labor. But it's the capitalist system that creates the poverty and unemployment in the first place. It's the capitalist system that is not needed. Lots of angry workers, rather than being the problem, can be the solution -- to fight to destroy the racist profit system with communist equality.
Last week's AWAC jet that crashed on a training mission cost $370 million The bosses don't think that's wasted money, but money well spent on preparing to defend their profits. The same is true for LA Mayor Riordan's plan to hire 3,000 more racist cops to the LAPD to terrorize angry workers, while all other city departments are cut..
The $364 million package that Clinton bragged about is not a one-year bailout, but a five year restructuring. He just changed the funding rules. The goal is to force the county to reduce its health care costs over time. It allows Medicaid money to be used for out-patient clinics rather than for only hospitals, it forces shorter hospital stays, and cuts hospital beds rather than all the clinics. "The county cannot afford to maintain the same sprawling network of major hospitals, health centers and...community clinics....Although the rescue plan welded together...affords the county some symptomatic relief, it does not cure the underlying ills that threatened to bankrupt the county and cripple its health system." (LA Times, 9/24).
Although all the details have not been worked out, some of the clinics are still being closed, and 1,600 layoffs will still stand. Some top officials propose that County Hospital be reduced from 1,100 beds to a little more than 400 beds. The Supervisors and others continue to argue over the best way to restructure, cut and privatize health care. It will be done over five years instead of all at once, in order to avoid the mass anger, fightback and chaos that has confronted County Supervisors.
For the bosses and their politicians, there are too many poor people in Los Angeles. One third of LA County residents have no health insurance. For the working class, there are too many rich parasites sucking the wealth that workers produce, lining their own pockets, at the expense of the lives of the rest of us. Capitalist restructuring, downsizing, and efficiency mean more cutbacks and racist attacks on workers and patients.
The insecurity of the system is there for all to see. No one should be lulled into thinking that the crisis is over. The next one will be deeper. Last week many County workers staged sick outs and other work actions. All county workers and patients need to act in a united manner to strike against any and all layoffs and cuts. Many more workers are open to seeing that the problem is capitalist greed and that the problem will get worse until workers take matters into our own hands and fight to destroy the profit system with communist revolution.
AC (Alameda County) transit workers face up to 200 layoffs. Riders face destruction of AC service and higher fares. (AC used to be considered the "model of a well-run transit agency.") While State bailout money has delayed some cuts until March, AC projects a deficit of $250 million in the next ten years. MUNI (SF Transit System) workers have been under a media attack for months, turning rider against driver. SF bosses have put Proposition K (Privatization) on the ballot in November as part of their on-going campaign to lower the standard of living of City workers and destroy jobs.
How capitalism deals with this crisis exposes the true nature of the system. Profits comes first, workers' lives last. According to the bosses' laws, the City and State must pay off the banker-bondholders before anything else. If that means layoffs, destruction of service and fare hikes, so be it. That's the law of capitalism, a dictatorship if we ever heard one.
Politicians are put into office to enforce such laws, or make new ones that enable bosses to achieve maximum profits in the face of stiff competition from bosses in Western Europe, Japan and now an emerging Chinese capitalism. If that means transit workers and riders must take a beating, "that's tough," say these bosses.
Over the past few years, the TWU leadership (SF Muni Drivers' Union) has tried to buy job security from the CEO's and politicians by accepting wage freezes in return for keeping anti- worker Propositions off the ballot. This didn't work. Now our lost wages are paying some of the cost of the transit system and Privatization is on the ballot in November. The dismantling of AC transit service and jobs is one step ahead of MUNI.
Proposition K is set up to mobilize one section of the working class -- voters in SF -- against another section, the City workers. Through Privatization, the corporations want the voters to sanction the destruction of transit jobs. Hidden from the voters is the dismantling of non-rush hour service, mass layoffs and higher fares. The bosses' media will greet passage of Prop K as "the will of the people, democracy at work".
But this is a stacked deck. One group of workers votes for Prop K as "the only way to save mass transit." If it passes, those who vote against it will be driven to blame still another group of workers, those who didn't vote at all, rather than singling out the big bosses who are the real cause of the problem.
Elections are not neutral and politics is a rich man's game. Elections hide the fact that the ruling class dictates economic policy based on their profit needs.
The TWU has endorsed Willie Brown for Mayor. But he cannot and will not change the corporate control over the Federal\State\City revenue and budget, the media, and the courts. He cannot reverse this economic crisis any more than Clinton can (who the labor leaders also asked us to support). Clinton got NAFTA passed, allowed the anti-scab bill to die in committee, junked even his own meager "job program," broke the rail strike, and will now put poor children in the streets with his "welfare reform." Election activity derails consciousness of the need for transit unity and for job actions to fight the corporations.
Fighting for jobs and organizing the unorganized are powerful ways to develop more unity in our class. The shorter work-week with no loss in pay would put the pressure on for more jobs for the unemployed. That's class solidarity. Six for eight would improvc service and save the lives of many drivers who are dying from the stress of 12- to 14-hour days.
Our needs will be met by developing working class solidarity. That's where the power comes from, not merely to force concessions that eventually get taken away because the bosses hold state power (laws, courts, police, etc.) but to prepare for the destruction of the profit system which causes all these problems.
"The indefinite stoppage began on 17 Aug. 95, shutting down the underground system in the capital, Minsk, and the trolley bus depots in Minsk and Gomel. The strikers were demanding the payment of wages owed as far back as June. In addition the workers were demanding the restoration of bonus payments cut recently by management, and the dismissal of the Metro's director.
Lukashenko, in a televised address blamed the strike on the Belarussian Popular Front and the American and Polish trade unions. Responding to a request from the Mayor of Minsk, the Moscow city administration sent eleven instructors to train additional scab drivers. In this report there was no reaction from the trade union movement in Moscow to this action.
On Aug. 21 the police ordered a rally by the striking Metro workers to disband. As the strikers moved along a side street, masked special forces troops seized union leaders of both the "official" Metro workers union and the rival "free" union. Fifteen more strikers were arrested and 60 Metro drivers fired. At a press conference on this same day, it was claimed that meetings were held in defense of the Metro strikers, and had been held in a number of Minsk enterprises. Participants in these meetings were said to have called for civil disobedience including blocking main thoroughfares. However, no such actions have been reported, and in the final days of August it was clear that Metro workers' strike had been defeated.
Capitalism is driven to maximize profits, not just to make a "decent profit," but to make more than its competition, in order to attract investment capital. Maximizing profits means getting the edge on your competitor, by automation, modernization, privatization, speed-up, and union-busting. All these methods are aimed at producing more profits with fewer workers, or giving the existing work force a lower standard of living.
However, this situation only produces another dilemma, for with fewer workers able to buy the things that are produced, maximizing profits becomes more difficult, and can only be done by more sharply attacking the working class. Also, the capitalists look to maximize their profits by paying less taxes, which means cutting the social services to the working class, such as health, education, and transit, etc.
It is important to fight back against all the attacks on the working class; a victory in any one area will affect all others. In the area of transit we have examples of these attacks from Mobile, Ala. to Mexico City, from Minsk to Esjberg, and from Oakland to San Francisco! We must build international unity among transit workers to fight for six hours work for eight hours pay to create millions of new jobs for the working class.
Fighting to build unity in the entire working class however will take a communist party like PLP. Communists realize that no matter what reforms we win, as long as there is one breath left in capitalism it will organize to maximize its profits off the backs of the working class!
In Chicago on September 22, about 100 people attended a PLP forum on fascism. The discussion included a report on a recent fight with the KKK. The audience was enthusiastic. However when the speakers presented an analysis of the growth of fascism in the U.S., the contradictions within the audience became apparent.
The forum's presenters criticized Farrakhan's Million Man March. They correctly called it a fascist march. Several workers defended the march as "a way to bring black people together." These workers are tired of racism and other capitalist inequalities. However, this march is building fascism and delivering all of us into the hands of the enemy. This march seeks to unite black bosses and black workers and divide black workers from all other workers.
This march is fascist because it promotes voting as a solution to the problems that face the working class. Voting is just playing the game of the system that legalizes the exploitation of millions of working class men, women, and children. Voting takes the rising working class anger and funnels it into the ballot box so that it will not spill over into the streets and/or the workplace. This anger is a key force for revolution.
Chavis, Farrakhan and the other march organizers blame the victims of racism for its effects. They call for a day of atonement. Black male workers' degradation, poverty and unemployment are not caused by their "sins," but by the capitalists.
This march is a sexist march and its organizers make excuses for the theme of relegating black women to a subservient role. Working class black women and men have a history of fighting oppression together. This march makes a mockery of that tradition. Racism and sexism stand in the way of communist equality and cannot be overcome by a policy of exclusion and subordination.
One comrade gave the following example of the politics of the reactionary Farrakhan group. Several years ago the Nation of Islam (NOI) defended a racist black cop who had murdered a young black man. PLP was there to lead the struggle against this crime. The "Fruit of Islam," the NOI's goons, wanted to fight the anti-racist demonstrators. However, the workers from the neighborhood joined and defended PLP (and their own class interests) against the NOI's nationalism.
I think that the forum was a success. The struggle was good. However the discussion dwelled too long on what was wrong with Farrakhan and fascism. We need to become more skillful at presenting a communist vision of the end of capitalism, racism and sexism. This can only be achieved by deepening our involvement in the mass movement. We must build more and better political and personal friendships with workers and make serious attempts to lead mass struggles.
I am taking my own advice to heart. I introduced a resolution at a national organization to which I belong that it take back its endorsement of this march. This has spurred discussion on the nature of racism. I am having a group of people (including some National Guard soldiers) over to my house to talk about some of these issues. My own base is too narrow and I have to do more to reach out.
Chicago Member
Once again the bosses are using their media to instigate racial tensions between white workers and youth, and Mexican workers and youth. On Sept. 19, in LA County in a city called Cypress Park, a three year old white child was shot and killed, her brother was wounded in the foot and the mother's boyfriend was struck in the back. This was supposedly done by gang members from the Mexican Mafia. This incident was given national attention. Even Clinton spoke out against the incident. The media reported that the community is hispanic, infested with drug dealers and gang bangers.
It's tragic when any child dies, due to hunger, lack of health insurance, or by violence, as in this case. People are upset about the incident, but also shocked and enraged at the media for painting everybody living in the community as gang bangers. For the past 15 years, innocent black and latin children have been dying from these shootings. But other shootings weren't treated the same way by the media, where the President addresses the nation. That same night a black child was shot and killed in Compton in a similar incident, but the bosses couldn't use this to instigate tensions among different groups of workers.
We, as workers, cannot divide ourselves and be taken in by their racist propaganda. The working class is being attacked in the U.S. and throughout the world. We must focus our anger and frustration against the capitalist system, against the bosses, not against the black workers, the white workers, the asian workers, or latin workers. Divide and conquer is the method they've used for hundreds of years. We can't be stupid. History should teach us. No workers-white, black, asian or latin should use nationalism to identify with a "race." We are one class. It's workers versus bosses.
The problem is bigger than the picture the media reports about crime and drugs. The system is to blame because capitalism cannot provide jobs, opportunity, security, and a future for our youth. We in the Progressive Labor Party encourage youth to join the struggle for communism. We need to form an international youth brigade to work collectively in making decisions about the fight against the bosses throughout the world. We need a communist system that would provide necessities for the working women and men of the world.
A Red Youth
The NYC PLP school section cadre school on the philosophy of dialectical materialism (held on the week-end of Sept.23-25) taught me a lot. I am new in the public school system, and my young children have already confronted problems at their schools. But, what is important is that the cadre school helped me understand the problem.
My children, I still consider them little kids, come from a country where there are many political problems. But I have never spoken to them about what communism is all about.
Now is the moment to begin to bring them political consciousness.It is the moment to organize ourselves to fight for equal rights and opportunities. Long live communism!
A new comrade in Brooklyn
Every June 21, workers protest against fascist repression, honoring the 50 trade unionists arrested on June 21, 1980, when that fascist beast, Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcías, was in power. These workers have never been seen again.
This year, 45,000 workers and their allies participated in a march against repression, defying the death squads formed by army units (the Self-Defense Patrols) who still threaten and kill workers and youth fighting the system. The marchers also denounced born-again Christian fundamentalist Efrain Rios Mont, Reagan's buddy, who killed thousands of Indians and others in the mid-1980s when he was in power. Mont is again trying to become president, running with a neo-Nazi party called Guatemalan Republican Front. The Front's Senators want to pass a law banning protests near public offices or monuments, as well as prohibiting demonstrators who wear ski masks to avoid being identified by the police and fascists. The demonstrators chanted, "With hoods or without hoods, we are fighting back."
The marchers also attacked the neo-liberal (free market) policies of the "democratic" government of President Ramiro de León Carpio, as another form of attacking workers.
After I wrote the above letter, Erick Osberto Berganza Pacheco, a trade union leader in the city of Escuintla, was murdered by the death squads. This proves once again what many "democrats" and "liberals," and even some "leftists," are trying to deny: that as long as we live under capitalism, workers will continue to be murdered.
Berganza Pacheco was a trade unionist who wanted some reforms for workers, and he was killed. The bosses' democratic laws won't protect workers, mass communist organizing will. We need to build the PLP here to organize a mass violent struggle of workers and their allies to end their system.
A Comrade
Last week I got a letter in the mail containing my union's proposed bargaining demands. The next day I was told that I had been "elected" to the bargaining committee at the recommendation of my Local's leadership. As a member of PLP, what to do?
As a union delegate (shop steward) at my job site, I called a meeting the following day and posed that question to my co-workers. Their reply was that they elected me as a fighter against management and I should represent them on the bargaining committee and certainly remain on it.
As Marty Lubin, an executive assistant of AFSCME's 130,000 member DC 37, spoke about the "give and take" of collective bargaining, members of the bargaining committtee of the 15,000 member SSEU Local 371 hissed and groaned. They were clearly disgusted with the idea of any givebacks.
Many members of the bargaining committee are rank-and-file fighters at their work sites. This committee must be transformed into a strike organizing committee that reaches out to the other city workers and to the clients we serve. That is the way to not only beat back the bosses' attacks but also to take the offensive with demands like the shorter work week.
Two key trends in the world are at work in the city worker bargaining committees. One trend is the world wide crisis of capitalist overproduction which has caused the U.S. bosses to sharply attack and lower the living standards of the working class in order to better compete with their international capitalist rivals. The Clinton/Gingrich plans to end the welfare system as we have known it, and Mayor Giulianni's "downsizing" of New York City government are both part of this trend. The same is true of the accommodation to the needs of capitalism by the leadership of the union movement.
The second trend is the small but important development of PLP's communist organizing in the unions. We lead struggles in the interest of the entire working class. As we fight, we can reveal the nature of capitalism and the need to smash it with communist revolution.
NYC Comrade
We have received a copy of Challenge-Desafío, and we see how it offers workers the opportunity to expose and share problems. We ask that you publicize the issues affecting us here.
The Federation of Bank Employees (FEB) is an organization with 70 years of trade union activities...with a rich history of winning historical gains benefiting all workers here in Peru. Nevertheless, today the Ministry of Labor and Social Promotion is trying to deny us recognition as the representative of bank workers and rescinding the 1995 union contract, thereby doing what the bankers want.
If we allow this to happen, the bankers, represented by the Bank Association, and the government will be able to deal a harsh blow to all trade unions in Peru. This will set a negative precedent, fatal for the trade union movement in Latin America.
That is why we are forced to urgently demand the solidarity of all national and international trade union institutions to put pressure on the government, so that the FEB can be strengthened to benefit of all workers in Peru, since we are fighting for a life with dignity for workers.
We are sure we will get your prompt solidarity. Please write to the President of Peru, to the Congress, Ministers of State and international organizations. We hope to hear from you soon.
Ismael Vasquez Fanning, Rodolfo Davil Tovar, FEB, Maximo Abril 646, Jesus Maria, Lima Peru, fax 33 0988
The teenager who went berserk and killed 13 people, including his mother and brother, in a southern French village ``kept pictures of Hitler and neo-Nazi books in his bedroom.''(Int'l Herald Tribune, 9/26).
A Comrade