A Colombian guerrilla group attacked a Venezuelan border post and killed several soldiers. The Venezuelan government saw in this the opportunity to use war and nationalism to turn people's attention away from recent price increases. There have been massive protests by workers and youth, and hundreds have been arrested in an attempt to stop the fightback.
In Venezuela, President Caldera began an orgy of attacks against Colombians, ordering the Army to brutally deport thousands of farmworkers and their families. These workers are super-exploited by the agribusiness industry in the border region.
The Colombian government, also facing mass national strikes by teachers, doctors and other workers, took advantage of the situation to build warmongering patriotism to divert workers' anger.
We in PLP in Colombia need to be more bold in building our revolutionary communist movement here and among Venezuelan workers to win workers, soldiers and students to our line of smash the warmakers with communist revolution!
In Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic, residents of La Cienaga, a poor working class neighborhood, fought the cops after a demonstration demanding decent housing and an end to the unhealthy waste treatment plant in their neighborhood. While this struggle went on, thousands of nurses went on strike for 48-hours demanding decent wages.
contents
Two women drivers spoke about the president's unwillingness to address the lay offs-the main reason so many people had come to the meeting. Another driver introduced a resolution that the union set up a fund to help laid off union members. The president ruled the motion "out of order," but after a large outcry from the membership, he changed his tune. After some discussion, workers pointed out the large salaries the officers were making, and the new Cadillac the union had just bought for the president. The resolution passed by a large margin.
On March 17, the local Executive Board met, and with only the PLP shop steward dissenting, voted to reverse the will of the workers and not set up the fund.
How can the membership and the leadership be so far apart on such a basic issue as helping laid off union members? The leadership looks at the union as a business. The union has assets of nearly $7 million, including cash reserves of $1.5 million. They view that giving money to laid off members in need, who they have no intention of fighting for, is "bad business." There is no profit in it.
Communists and most workers view the union as a vehicle for waging class struggle. First we fight to prevent the layoffs. If we fail, we use the resources of the union to help the laid off workers. We are all victims of the bosses' atttacks. We look out for each other. An injury to one is an injury to all. This strengthens the union.
This fight with the union leadership, combined with their unwillingness to fight the bosses, has many workers understanding the need to build a rank-and-file caucus that can take power in the union. A struggle is now underway to win several of the more active workers to join with PLP to build such a caucus. A contingent of Metro workers on the May Day March will go a long way in solidifying this effort.
More white workers have lost jobs in the last five years than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the capitalists' frenzy to maximize profits, they have concentrated their wealth through gigantic mergers. Each merger costs thousands of jobs. In California especially, white male workers lost many high-paying jobs in the defense and computer industries. White women lost lower-paying jobs in the banking and insurance sector.
The bosses know these unemployed white workers are angry. But so are black and latin workers who lost their jobs through layoffs years ago-or who never had a decent job to begin with. The racist bosses are pushing the Big Lie of Affirmative Action to get angry white and minority workers to fight each other instead of fighting them. The so-called "California Civil Rights Initiative" (a plan to eliminate affirmative action) is now the cutting edge of the bosses' racist mass movement-just as the anti-worker Prop. 187 was last year.
Government-sponsored "Affirmative Action" never even scratched the surface of racist inequality in the United States. The bosses never meant it to. They deliberately use women and minority men as a flexible source of cheap labor. This cheaper labor pool drives down the wages of white male workers, too. A successful fight for equality would mean higher wages and higher levels of employment for the whole working class-and lower profits for the bosses. But we can't win such a fight with a movement limited to defending an "Affirmative Action" program that never really existed.
Inequality is the cornerstone of capitalism. Equality is the cornerstone of communism. Throw out wages and profits, and you create the basis for ending racism once and for all.
Next issue: "Affirmative Action" in the colleges and universities.The bitter irony of the defeat of fascism is that today fascism is developing rapidly around the globe, including in formally "socialist" countries. However, the world headquarters for fascism is in the White House. Make no mistake about it; Bill Clinton is the leader of U.S. fascism. Behind his liberalness, his smiling face and his general sleaziness is his total commitment to the interests of the U.S. ruling class and their need to step up the war against the international working class.
Clinton & Co. cover-up their leading role in oppressing workers. With their liberal bleating, Clinton and his gang want us to believe that the Gingrich-Dole axis bears the sole responsibility for cuts with their "Contract With America." This "Contract" is just a symbol for bigger budget cuts that affect workers, especially blacks, latins, the young, the old and women.
This current round of attacks on the working class actually have their beginnings the last time the Democrats had the White House with Jimmy Carter. The Clinton bunch have simply raised the stakes. One of Clinton's main campaign themes was reforming the welfare system. When the politicians talk of reform they mean cutting. So the Republicans are merely carrying out Clinton's promise. Clinton and Gore use the phrase of "reinventing" government. Both have bragged how the federal government has dumped over 50,000 workers. They have hollered proudly about how they have eliminated scores of departments and cut over 500 federal agencies. The Republicans are simply carrying out the Clinton plan. Clinton has reduced the deficit off our backs.
One of the crowning "achievements" of the Clinton administration is the "Crime Bill." The cornerstone of this crime bill isn't to put the robbing bosses in jail. But it is to increase the police terror against the working class in order to try and keep us in line. Clinton's plan calls for hiring over 100,000 more cops. The plan also calls for more jails. This is just what workers need. Faced with massive exploitation, we are given cops and jails. The Republicans only complaint is that they can accomplish the same thing more efficiently and quicker. At every step of the way the Republicans are only carrying forward-continuing the policies put forward by the Democrats.
New York City, March 16- More than 10,000 college students from the City University of New York demonstrate in front of City Hall in opposition to the budget cuts proposed by Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani, both Republicans. Students must understand that all politicians, Republicans and Democrats, follow the bosses' orders to cut, cut and cut!
In the same period, all public (federal state, and local) spending for education fell from $9.9 billion to $8.7 billion, an11% decrease...
Still, in the same period, all government (federal, state, local) interest payments on debt rose from $33.8 billion to $51.3 billion, a 52% increase...
The dramatic increase in military spending under Carter is particularly revealing in view of his rebirth as the "Wizard of Peace."
In New York City and elsewhere, some workers, students and others are calling on the ousted liberal-Democrats to spearhead their movement against budget cuts. This is like calling on the fox to guard the chicken coops. Former Mayor Dinkins was called on to speak at a City Hall rally against proposed budget cuts. However, it was Dinkins who was hailed by the ruling class for hiring more cops. As Dinkins cut the budget, he still hired more police. Under New York's super liberal former governor Cuomo, over 35,000 state workers were fired.
The Democrat Abe Beame was mayor when the New York City's first "fiscal crisis" struck in the `70s. What did the Demo-Libs do? They laid-off over 40,000 city workers. They cut the budget. The slavish union leaders turned over the workers' pension monies to subsidize the bosses economic plight. And talk about cuts in education, 15,000 teachers were cut back at that time.
NYC has always prided itself on its free higher education. However, it was during the Democratic Beame administration that the first tuition charges were slapped on the backs of the working class. Since the '70s, tuition has steadily risen. During the Cuomo administration, super liberal Cuomo raised tuition at CUNY and SUNY. This provoked campus strikes and mass demonstrations throughout NYC.
The liberals and Democrats are "wolves in sheep's clothing." They usually spearhead the bosses' interests, especially when the bosses are in trouble. The rulers need the liberals to give the appearance of differences and to keep the workers within their system.
As the rulers economic woes mount in the face of increased international competition from other bosses, notably Germany and Japan, their attacks against the workers will grow even more sharply. The near future will see even more cuts, decreased wages, and more taxes on workers. (Real wages have fallen 20% in the past 15 years. Since Clinton has been in office, wages have fallen 2% and continue the downward slide.) Increased competition and shrinking markets will lead to wars small and larger as the bosses fight over the fruits of the worker's labor.
Only communism can eventually develop a system that is only in the interests of the working class. This May Day our Party is carrying forward the tradition of workers uniting and fighting for communism. We are bringing the red banners of revolution in front of the fascist White House and to many other corners of the world. May Day is your holiday! Join us!
I was told by one of the teachers that, "I hope you're not with that guy [the Party member]. I like you, but him I don't. All he talks about is racism." The member invited me to his home and I began learning more from him.
At the school Newsletter meetings my comrade-to-be introduced communist and revolutionary ideas. He started me thinking. I knew that he had something more to tell me, and not just about the PTA newsletter.
He introduced me to Challenge-Desafío and asked me to read it and say what I thought. I looked at the paper but didn't give it much notice. The Party member gave me the next issue and spoke to me almost every day.
I was invited to a Challenge readers' group. At first I hesitated and made excuses but the Party member didn't give up. I finally went. During my time in the group, I got deeper into the Party, and brought in two new friends.
It came as a big surprise when I was confronted at one of the group meetings and asked to join the Party. I didn't know what to say, but a comrade asked, "What would keep you from joining?" Being disabled (I have Lou Gehrig's Disease, in recession), I only asked that consideration be given towards my limitations. There was nothing that would keep me from joining. So I became a member.
Courage, Commitment, Communism, and Challenge are the Four C's I've adopted as my basic traits since I've joined the Party. I will give myself to the life of the Party while I still can. Being disabled should not stop me from being a good communist.
I will continue to grow and emulate the great leadership shown to me by my comrades and encourage friends to join and become communists. On to May Day 1995 and the road to communist revolution.
-A New Member
She then stood outside the door until I knocked. By this time I was relieved, because I wasn't sure she was going to leave.
After I finished, I knocked, she took the cup, and I washed. While I was refilling my pockets, I told her that this was the most supervised drug test I had ever seen. She told me about another place where they actually stand in the room with you.
This was more like an arrest than a job physical. It's a sign of the fascist times. Everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent. And this was for the right for them to exploit me. I made up my mind that if I ever get tested with another person watching me in the same room, I'm pissing on their shoes. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to building the Party on my new job, making new friends, and making the bosses piss on themselves.
-Pissed Off New Hire
The sale went well and I sold all 35 Challenges I had in an hour, but this wasn't the most interesting part. What was interesting was that I met two students from Sweden who consider themselves communists. These students went on to tell me about communist struggles in Sweden and about how May Day is the most important holiday over there.
After reviewing Challenge, the students were so impressed with the Party's line that they wanted to send it back to their family and friends. These students assured me they would join our cause at the school and work towards organizing in the neighborhoods. These students wanted to meet other comrades. I told them, "Ah, there are lots of us." This goes to prove that selling Challenge is and always will be an interesting experience for those who sell and those who buy.
-Student/Comrade
The discussion also turned to the racist, pro-eugenics book, The Bell Curve. (Definition: Human Eugenics-a "science" that deals with improving human qualities through controlled mating.) Many of the scientists and students present wanted to do something to fight the pseudo-science garbage which was published in time for the "Contract With Racist AmeriKKKa" to work its way to the top of the national agenda and media spotlight. Nearly half of the participants took Challenges, and many also took petitions back to their universities which sharply attack the racist and unscientific basis for both the NIH's Violence Initiative and The Bell Curve. A sign-up sheet for those wanting to get more involved in fighting the "new racists in Nazi clothing" had more than 40 names.
The session was significant because it showed that many people are upset at the ruling class's racist program and are willing to take active steps to combat it. This represents a unique period when communists in PLP and their friends can play a leading role in building a movement to convert workers' desire to smash bad, racist ideas into understanding the class nature of capitalist ideology and oppression, in the arenas of science, social and economic policy.
-A Brooklyn Comrade
These workers are not alone, privatization has meant mass unemployment and more misery for millions of workers from San Salvador to Moscow. Privatization has become part and parcel of international capitalism's plan to make workers pay for their crisis. Last week, Haitian President Arisitide who just a few years ago fiercely opposed privatization and neo-liberalism (free market capitalism), said that nine state enterprises will be privatized as part of the Structural Adjustment Program, under the orders of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Aristide did not even overtly say this, fearing an open debate and mass workers' fightback. Rather, the story was leaked to the foreign press.
The sale of state-run enterprises has also become the theft of the century as major capitalists worldwide, make huge fast profits buying public companies at bargain prices. In 1991, half the US$11 billion direct investment in Latin America went to buy state-owned enterprises.
But, in the struggle against privatization workers must have the clear political position that all bosses are bad, whether private or government. Some workers have the illusion that working for the state is better than working for a private boss. Progressive Labor Party members involved in strikes and other struggles against privatization must make it clear that a capitalist is a capitalist; that the differences between a private boss and the government are very minor. The only way workers can really have control over production is by making a revolution that destroys all capitalists.
-A Comrade
The climax was his Hitlerite speech on February 25 before 9000 people, on the subject: Who Will Save the Black Man? First, he linked himself to Jesus Christ. Then, he accused the FBI, the U.S. government, the IRS, and the Anti-Defamation League (a sort of NAACP for Jewish people) of trying to destroy his movement because they are agents of...now get this...the international Jewish bankers conspiracy. HMF blamed these bankers for all the problems of the world since the Middle Ages-Lincoln's assassination, wars, slavery, revolution, family collapse, you name it.
He even praised Hitler for starting off with a good plan to smash the big international Jewish bankers. The audience went wild. That was scary.
Then he said that these bankers were also trying to get white people, especially socialists, communists, and those trying to help poor people. A pitch to white liberals and revisionists.
Whew. What a KKKrock of Nazi-Klan KKKrap. So what's HMF's solution? To have a million black men march on Washington. To do what? Atone for their sins and ask the government to open the books on Malcolm's killing. That's it. Not to fight for jobs or against racist cutbacks. Racism never got into his three hour speech.
The real purpose of this march is to deceive thousands about the real enemy: a racist system called capitalism composed of capitalists of all races, colors, and creeds. Farrakhan hopes to show that he still has the power to dupe and mislead thousands of black men, winning them to Nazi ideas, so that they will gladly goose-step down Pennsylvania Avenue behind the red-black-and-green and the crescent-and-star flags of the New Fascism.
But let's not moan and groan about Herr Farrakhan. Instead, let's win hundreds of black people to march on May Day 1995 behind the Red Flag of Workers' Liberation when we celebrate the anniversary of our victory over fascism 50 years ago.
-DAJ
In a factory with 500 workers, a worker said, "in the department where I work, I have 25 workers ready to fight for the union." Others said, "We're going to get in touch with you. We're tired of the bosses' attacks." A group of workers from this factory organized a party over the weekend, to get to know each other better and prepare for the fights that lay ahead.
We have the opportunity to win these workers and their families to march on May Day, and fight for the long haul. They need to see May Day as a very important step in getting rid of the bosses' oppression. By marching together with other workers and students, they'll see the potential to build a mass union movement, and to smash the bosses. To help this happen, we plan to sell Challenge-Desafío, to distribute a series of leaflets about unionization and communism, and to socialize with many workers in their homes, and have some big picnics.
The three PLP garment clubs have discussed the importance of concentrating our work, and how May Day can build both the union and revolutionary communist movement. We have planned a bar-b-que, film showings, and discussions to bring the largest number of workers to the march.
But, the bosses have their plans too. The LA Times just ran a long article about the economic importance of the garment industry. In the last year, garment produced $63 billion in sales in LA County. Garment workers' labor is a source of great wealth for the bosses. With the decline of the aerospace industry here, garment and other light manufacturing have become important sources of profits. The LA Times told garment bosses to streamline the industry, make more use of computers, and make the industry more attractive for the international market. The article calls for more discipline, more stable factories, with more pressure and speed up.
A massive struggle is approaching. We need to build a workers' army, like the Red Army built by the Soviet Bolsheviks, to take the offensive against the bosses' fascism. This time, we need to not only destroy the fascists, but to destroy all the remains of the capitalist wage system that created fascism. The factory committees we are organizing, must see themselves as the leadership of a new workers' movement.
May Day will help this happen. In this march, we will see multi-racial unity, unity of citizens and immigrants, unity of communists and non-communists, and unity of workers and students. We will unite unionized workers and unorganized workers who are fighting to build unions.
The thousands of garment workers who watch the march, as well as those who participate in it, will see that PLP offers a clear alternative to the daily exploitation and robbery of capitalism. That will strengthen the fight for a militant union, and for a society of communist equality, where the bosses and their anti-worker Prop. 187's will be the only illegals.
El Salvador- Women garment workers strike against low wages and sexism.
Garment workers in LA demonstrate for solidarity across all borders.On October 13, 1943, near Naples, he ordered the shooting of 15 women and children (including a 3-year old) in reprisal for civilians having signaled U.S. troops who were near. After the war, this Nazi became an architect and for 20 years served as local Councilman as a member of the SPD (the Social Democratic Party of Germany).
On March 10th, this same BGH ordered that Erich Mielke,87, now ill with senility, continue to serve a 6-year sentence for having participated in the political assassination of two policemen in Berlin in 1931, when he was a member of the KPD (the German Communist Party).
After the assassination, Mielke fled to Moscow and later went to Spain to fight with the International Brigades against the fascists. After World War II, Mielke returned to East Germany and became a minister of Stasi (the security police).
The demonstration was a reaction to recent racist atrocities. For example, just a few weeks before the protest, a pregnant African woman was thrown out of a bus in Rome. And on March 14, on the highway connecting Pisa with Florence, a racist driver gave a 3-year old Romany (Gypsy) immigrant from the former Yugoslavia and her 13-year old sister a little doll containing an explosive. These children, who try to make some money wiping car windshields, were badly injured by the explosion. Early in January, another child from the former Yugoslavia was injured by a booby-trapped fairy tale book that a racist gave to him.These racists belong to a group called the "White Brotherhood."
In Austria, on Feb. 5th, four immigrants from the former Yugoslavia were murdered by a similar booby-trapped road sign.
The February 25 protest in Rome, sponsored by the major trade unions and immigrant organizations, also included anti-racist delegations from other European countries. It was a direct response to this growing racism in Europe and the increase in attacks on immigrants in Italy.
We live in a country where $52 trillion is traded in one year on Wall Street and where $170 million is spent to build one bomber. Yet the U.S. ruling class considers it a health care crisis that so much of its Gross National Product (GNP) goes to health care. (Both the Democrats and Republicans agree on this.) This is basically because health care for the working class is part of our wages.
Big companies want to slash what they pay toward health benefits. Governments must trim what they spend on the working class. Nurses, other hospital workers, and our patients are being chewed up and spit out as they cut Medicaid and Medicare and downsize. This is capitalism.
The bosses are closing hospitals and slashing health care. They are cutting back on inpatient care, the most expensive form of care, and the kind which requires many nurses. They want to do everything on an outpatient basis from heart attacks to sending women home the day after having a baby by C-section.
In addition to closing hospitals, they are laying off thousands of hospital workers in all job categories. When it comes to nursing, the bosses' plan is to cut out RNs and replace them with new lower wage categories of workers, for example registered care technicians. These mainly minority workers will do nursing work at half the RNs pay.
Nurses' union leaders are against this new category of workers saying that they are "unskilled." The reason that today's nursing assistants and practical nurses don't have the skills to do RNs work, or for that matter doctor's work is that they are not allowed to learn on the job. These new job categories are a racist tactic the bosses are using to divide nursing workers and prepare the way for more layoffs and wage cuts. Many RNs will lose their jobs, those few that are left will likely become the overseers of the care technicians, and nursing assistants.
RNs demonstrating on March 31 must fight for all nursing workers, not just registered nurses. They must demand no layoffs, no hospital closings, and wage parity for all levels of nursing work.
Living conditions for workers under capitalism is the cause of most of the illnesses we treat. Capitalist health care, where the bottom line is profit and money, whether in insurance company-run systems or nationalized systems, will never provide the care the working class needs, especially black, latin and immigrant workers.
We have to scrap the whole thing and start over. We have to smash the power of the capitalists and organize an egalitarian communist society. Society would be organized to meet the needs, including health care, of the entire working class.
We invite RNs to find out more about the Progressive Labor Party. Read Challenge-Desafío. Celebrate May Day, the international working class holiday, by marching with us in Washington DC, on Saturday, May 6. The working class creates all the wealth that the bosses steal in profits, taxes, interest, and rent. We are tired of fighting for a little more here and there. We are going to take it all with communist revolution.
One group of the protesters from Fashion Industries had walked out of school at noon. Others arrived at 4pm. Students from 8 schools spoke at the rally. One young student blamed the capitalist system for the cuts, while others concentrated on blaming the Republicans like Giuliani and Pataki, implying that the Democrats would be better.
The Board of Education reacted swiftly to the protest. Students and teachers at various schools were warned not to protest. On the day of the protest the Superintendent of High Schools, John Ferrandino, issued a memo warning "employees on Board of Education time [not] to be involved unless the activity is officially sponsored by the Board of Education." The Superintendent then encouraged workers to report such activities "so that we will follow up on their source."
The Superintendent's memo clearly shows that the Board of Education is an arm of the capitalist state that will carry out and enforce attacks against students and teachers. The whole ruling class is our enemy, from the rich capitalists who control the Board of Education, to the Republicans and the Democrats.
While the large turnout surprised many, certain problems emerged. First, prior to the protest there were struggles at some schools over the question of whether the cuts should be called racist and about how and why racism hurts white workers and students. Secondly, the student speakers at the protest did not explain the Party's line on racism, revolution and May Day. We are still placing reform before revolution. We plan to correct this error by working harder to organize Challenge-Desaf_o Readers' Groups to deepen students' understanding of communist ideas.
High school students and teachers are organizing to unite with college students to strike and boycott classes on March 23rd and march on City Hall to demand an end to budget cuts. PLP members must make it clear that it is capitalism that is causing the cuts, not the Republicrats. How many students and teachers come to May Day this year will be a measure of how successful we are.
New York SUNY and CUNY students protest bidget cuts.
These protests are good but they have a very strong weakness. They only attack Republicans Pataki, Giuliani and Gingrich. For instance, one of the guest speakers at the March 15th student rally at CCNY was former Mayor Dinkins, a Democrat. He was responsible for the tuition hikes and cutbacks in the CUNY budget in the early 1990s. PLP says that all capitalists are enemies to working-class students. Alliances with even so called "liberals" will eventually mean suicide to a militant, revolutionary student movement.
The 760 Staley workers were locked out June 27, 1993, after refusing company orders for unlimited sub-contracting, cutting hundreds of union jobs, instituting 12-hour rotating shifts with no overtime pay, and doing away with seniority rights. The workers have been replaced by about 400 scabs.
A court injunction bans mass picketing, and the courts waited until the coldest part of winter to order the union to dismantle the picket shacks. Workers have been gassed, maced, beaten, and arrested at union rallies by local and state police. The mayor's son was a Staley-scab, before becoming a higher paid Caterpillar-scab. After two women pickets were threatened by a carload of ski-masked Caterpillar scabs, a scab had his window shot out while driving home.
Recently, UAW president "Blowin" Owen Bieber, and AFL-CIO president "Lame" Kirkland went to Decatur, and the UPIU International, which ignored the struggle for 20 months, has moved in to kill the strike. At a union meeting this week, the International and the local leadership packed the meeting with "white flag wavers," ready to surrender. A motion was passed allowing the bargaining committee to come back with a proposal that was "less than satisfactory," rescinding a motion that has stood for the entire 20 months. There is talk of the union negotiating severance pay, accepting Staley's final offer (which started the lock out), and the "promise" of only 240 workers being recalled, all at Staley's choosing.
PLP has supported the Staley workers by visiting Decatur, and inviting the Road Warriors (a traveling group of workers who go out to get support for the strikers) to our local unions to raise much needed money. But we have something money can't buy; the key to a communist world and worker's revolution. On May Day, Staley workers can take a test drive.
The workers packed Gingrich's office and spilled into the corridor for more than an hour. Gingrich, who is pushing $17 billion in cuts in spending for school lunches, housing assistance for the poor, and other low income benefit programs, called the workers "thugs," and has threatened a law suit.
A two-week strike in 1980 paralyzed the industry and shut down output. The oil workers earn an average monthly wage of $1400. Union officials say that some workers have not had pay raises for 18 years.
At the March meeting of the LSB, a parent who is a member of the Committee Against 187, supported the teachers and called on them to strike. The Committee has already distributed a leaflet in the community to help organize parents and students to support a teachers' strike.
We will all contribute our work, each according to our commitment. Work will be organized to serve the needs of the workers, and there will always be plenty to do. Under socialism in the Soviet Union during the worldwide capitalist depression in the 1930's, layoffs were illegal and unemployment didn't exist.
Some people say communism won't work because there will be people who won't want to work. Well, there will probably be some people like that. But close to a billion of our class brothers and sisters around the world aren't working now. They would much rather be working! They are unemployed because no boss needs to exploit them.
Most of us want to work and be productive. Most of us will work a lot harder when we're working for our own class instead of for the bosses. Under communism, most of us will learn more than one trade or skill. Communism will truly unleash the tremendous creative and productive potential of humanity.
Robeson won an academic scholarship to Rutger's University in 1915. He was only the third black person ever to have attended Rutgers, and one of only two blacks at Rutgers during his four years on campus. At college he was both an academic and athletic leader making Phi Beta Kappa, as well as being a football All-American, and starring in several other sports. Even though Robeson had a beautiful and powerful singing voice, he was barred from the Rutgers Glee Club, because of racism at the school's social functions.
Robeson developed a career as a concert singing artist. He had appeared in a singing role in the Broadway musical, "Show Boat" in 1928, and would repeat the role in a film version seven years later. But this role was racially stereotyped and Robeson hoped that through concerts he could side-step the racist pressures involved in dramatic productions and films.
Throughout this period his political consciousness was being developed by friendships with a number of politically active left-wingers. He developed close ties with the Communist Party leaders, Benjamin Davis, Jr. and William Patterson. The influence of people such as these began to give him the insight into the connection between the racism that he had experienced and the character of capitalist society as a whole-that racism was not an isolated phenomenon, but was an intrinsic and necessary part of capitalism, and would never be defeated until the capitalist system itself was destroyed.
Also, the two trips he made to the then socialist Soviet Union in 1934 and 1936 had an enormous effect on him. He was greatly impressed by the energy, selflessness and anti-racist struggle in Spain, appearing at rallies and concerts to raise money for the Spanish Republican cause, and visiting Spain to give concerts for the international troops.
During the late 1930's Robeson was also an active supporter of the militant National Negro Congress, which against lynchings and all forms of racial oppression, and was outside the control of the bourgeois leadership of the NAACP and the Urban League. For this he won the hatred of the black mis-leaders, such as Walter White of the NAACP.
During World War II Robeson criss-crossed the country appearing at rallies and concerts to aid Russian War Relief and other causes in support of the anti-fascist war effort. He drew enormous crowds, raised hundreds of thousand of dollars from working class audiences and aroused much enthusiasm.
In 1943, he appeared in another very successful production of "Othello" this time on Broadway co-starring with Uta Hagen. He was at the peak of his popularity as an anti-racist, an actor, a singer, a fighter against fascism. Now, the U.S. government became fearful of this popularity, and by 1943 J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I., already had him tagged for "preventive detention" in the event of some "crisis."
The end of WW II saw a great increase in lynchings throughout the South, as well as a rise in racist oppression in the rest of the country. Robeson gave unstinting support to the anti-racist efforts of the Civil Right Congress, the successor to the National Negro Congress.
He also denounced U.S. imperialism in the post-World War II "cold war" era. In April 1949, he attended a Paris meeting of the World Partisans of Peace, where he attacked imperialist plans for a new war against the Soviet Union and the emerging communist China. As anti-communism ran rampant, he was denounced by the entire black bourgeois mis-leadership-Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, et al.-the whole corrupt gang, as well as by the white corporate control of the entertainment industry and the AFL union leadership.
A whirlwind of attacks and racist hatred against Robeson was generated in the press during spring and summer of 1949. This culminated in an attack by a fascist gang which succeeded in breaking up a scheduled benefit concert for People's Artist, Inc. at which Robeson was to sing near Peekskill, NY on Saturday, August 27th. The concert was re-scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 4th. This time several thousand guards, black and white, organized by left unionists, the student section of the Communist Party, and other groups to protect Robeson and the 20,000 concert-goers. Robeson sang in the face of rifles that were aimed at him. "Helen Rosen noticed several men with guns on the ridge surrounding the hollow; Paul, an easy target in full view, was clearly taking his life in his hands." (Paul Robeson by Martin Duberman, Alfred Knopf, 1988, p. 369).
After the concert, state troopers, who earlier had threatened Robeson and the people attending the concert, forced departing cars, some filled with families with small children and buses to pass through a gauntlet of rock-throwing fascists along the roads around Peekskill and some 150 concert-goers were injured. However, overall the day was a great victory for Robeson and his supporters, showing that determination, organization, and courage could one again defeat racism.
In the aftermath, however, Robeson's career was dealt a serious blow. Bookings in this country disappeared, and the government withdrew his passport in 1950, thus depriving him of the ability to tour abroad. An eight year legal and political struggle ensued before his passport was returned. Nevertheless during this period, he remained politically active, singing and marching to support the Rosenbergs, speaking at May Day Rallies, appearing at benefit concerts for the Labor Youth League and the World Youth Festivals, speaking out against racism and imperialism; while calling for multi-racial unity, and internationalism, he supported Pan-Africanism.
In 1956, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), where he was an unrelentingly hostile witness. Throughout this entire period the bourgeois black mis-leaders didn't lift a finger to support him.
With the restoration of his passport and the upsurge in the black movement in the late 1950's Robeson's career saw a mild resurgence. He was able to tour both in this country and abroad until illness overtook him in the mid-1960's. He died on Jan. 23, 1976.
Paul Robeson's strengths and weaknesses mirrored the strengths and weaknesses of the old Communist Party. He was profoundly internationalist, militantly anti-racist, pro-working class, and a consistent defender of the Soviet Union in its best days. However, when the line of the old movement was bad, he was capable of involving himself in such banal patriotic clap-trap as "Ballad for Americans;" and he was a consistent supporter of bourgeois African nationalism.
After his death, the bourgeoisie, both black and white, engaged in a hypocritical orgy of adulation, naming schools, college centers, and libraries after a man they hated, despised, and feared; all the time hiding and distorting what he really stood for, multi-racial unity and a world run by and for working people-a communist world.
A person's life is a process, so that while young Robeson could make racially stereotyped movies, as he met communists he began to understand the capitalist world, and would change words to his most famous songs, such as: "We must keep fighting until we're dying;" and later record songs of the International Brigades fighting fascism in Spain, while singing worker's songs to raise money for working class and communist causes.
There was only one Paul Robeson. He belonged to the international working class, and the international communist movement. He was a militant supporter of both.
A tale of two labor movements was written today. Sixty Boeing workers picketed at the gates of three production complexes in Auburn and Everett in Washington, and in Wichita, Kansas to support laid-off workers. We picked these locations because tens of thousands of Boeing workers are still employed at these three sites. The pickets braved the wind and rain to be greeted by the din of supporting honks, the sight of thumbs up and raised fists.
We called for employed and unemployed unite for jobs. We carried signs and banners, distributed thousands of leaflets and even wore a couple of costumes of "the ax-man and the grim reaper" to symbolize the bosses' attitude. The response was so positive that the even union hacks decided, after the fact, to jump on the bandwagon. "The members are getting fired up about it [the layoff], and getting people involved," begrudgingly admitted International Association of Machinists (IAM) spokesperson Connie Kelliher.
Of course, this belated acceptance didn't stop the IAM business representatives from spying and telling shop stewards not to come to picket because they would be arrested. In fact, while we were out in the cold, our district president Bill Johnson, international negotiator Gob Gregory and Sheet Metal Center (SMC) business representative John McGinnis, Jr. were in the cozy embrace of the company working out a deal for a new SMC work proposal.
This pilot proposal-which the hacks are keeping secret even from the shop stewards-is to be reviewed by a Job Evaluation Subcommittee over the next 30 days. Two (BR McGinnis, Jr. and Mark Husby) out of the three people on this subcommittee helped write this proposal. "Too bad Hitler didn't live through W.W.II," said one SMC shop steward. "Then, he could have run the Nuremberg Trials!"
Twice before, we've beat back the company/union hacks' attempts to combine and eliminate jobs in a "High Performance Work Organization" environment. It is particularly obnoxious that the hacks should choose the day we demonstrated against 51,000 job cuts at Boeing to make their third try.
Seattle- Boeing workers need unity of employed and unemployed workers.