John worked for a supervisor who didn't like him. He was constantly on John's back -- you know the kind. The supervisor checked out John's previous work experience and it took him no time to find out that he had spent some time in jail. John was fired immediately. His life became more complicated again by drug use. He started stealing from stores. Today John is back in jail.
One and a half million people are in prison in the U.S.; and the number is increasing fast. In California, there are more people in jail than there are in colleges. Another three and a half million are on probation or parole from jail. Since 1980, the prison population in the U.S. has tripled and 1600 more people a week are being put into jail. Congress is preparing for the prison population to exceed the population of New York City within ten years. A society unable to provide jobs, decent housing, health care, or even food for millions of people is spending billions of dollars to build jails.
Crime has become an industry. Building jails, security firms, and self defense lessons, are all growing industries. People spend millions on steel bars, alarms, and watch dogs. If you can't get a job at U.S. Steel, try becoming a prison guard, or a thief. The ruling class has been good at scaring the working class into acting as jailers of other workers .
We live in a perverse society. Rural communities with high unemployment are competing to be the place where new jails are built. Just as in Nazi Germany, where towns lived off the concentration camps. While capitalism can't create decent jobs anymore it's great at creating prisoners.
How sick is capitalism? Nike, who pays workers at its Malaysian factory less than $2 a day, is considering having prisoners in Oregon make its shoes. Wages are dropping at nearly 3% a year in the U.S., but not fast enough for companies like Nike, who need slave labor in order to stay in business. If you're 18 and unemployed, Nike isn't interested in you., But go to jail and you'll get a job. Now that's a real crime.
It's only going to get worse. It doesn't take a genius to see that as wages fall, workers get laid-off, and decent jobs are replaced by lousy ones, petty crime will increase and the jail cells will fill up. Within a few years the majority of black men between 18 and 35 will be in jail. Soon, they will skip the expensive formalities of paying for schools when jobs don't exist, and just send poor kids directly to prison. But what will they do when they can't afford to keep the prisons anymore?
Building jails is a desperate solution to the problems of a dying system. Capitalism has failed. Communist revolution will eliminate wage slavery which is the basis of the bosses' exploitation, greed and crime.
The fight for jobs and communism will give young people a way out of the capitalist road of crime.
President Menem's free market policies have caused mass poverty and unemployment among workers. In the last few months, mass rebellions have taken place in several cities, including Cordoba.
The militancy of rank-and-file workers has caused a severe split in the labor movement. On August 8, in the capital city of Buenos Aires, rank-and-file workers, led by truck drivers, marched to the CGT (Labor Federation) national executive board meeting. The workers demanded they call a general strike. Most workers accuse the executive board of "complicity with the government's attacks against workers." When the dissident workers reached the CGT building chanting "general strike," they were met by a wall of goons. A major battle began, with many injuries on both sides. Angry workers stoned the CGT building.
To try to calm the workers, the CGT is calling for a mass rally on Sept. 6, with partial walkouts, to demand that the government do something about unemployment. But for angry workers this is not enough. The general strike in Cordoba on August 9 was called by dissident workers. More militant actions are expected.
The militancy of these workers is a good response to mass unemployment and poverty. But this is not enough. General strikes and rebellions must serve as schools to learn that capitalism doesn't work for workers and that the building of a revolutionary communist movement is the only way out of the living hell of capitalism.
This very militant strike shut down several of Panama's most important cities. Oil refinery workers joined the strike in the last few days. Four workers died and hundreds were injured during clashes with the cops.
In the face of these attacks Gilbert Cedillo, General Manager of SEIU Local 660 invited Burt Margolin to a union meeting. Margolin, a former Democratic State Assemblyman, was appointed "Health Czar" by the LA County Board of Supervisors to oversee the cutbacks in the Department of Health Services. Cedillo invited the big boss to the meeting to "explain the need for the cuts."
Some workers were furious. A nurse from one of the proposed clinic closure sites got up and attacked Margolin's plan to privatize a large rehabilitation hospital, Rancho Los Amigos. She told Margolin that he should not be at the union meeting, and she called for a county-wide walkout. This nurse got a lot of applause.
Margolin countered by saying it would be a mistake for workers to shut the County down because the Board of Supervisors would just close many facilities for good.
The bosses don't cut services because workers fight back. LA County bosses are closing clinics and laying off workers to protect the profits of the capitalists and their system. As major corporations get bigger and bigger tax breaks, the County gets less money. Now most of the millions of dollars in the County budget goes directly to the banks in the form of interest payments on loans. They use the rest to build more prisons, pay more cops, and provide public services like health care. With less money coming in we can see what gets cut first!
Cedillo invited hatchet man Margolin to the union meeting to convince workers that these cuts and layoffs are unavoidable. His idea of "winning" is to allow the workers and the union to help manage the cuts. Cedillo seems to agree with Margolin that a general strike will only make the situation worse. Some leader he turned out to be! Demonstrations and lunch time rallies that allow angry workers to blow off steam are fine with Cedillo. But he refuses to encourage workers' anger and militancy to build solidarity among all the union locals and among non-unionized workers. Instead of marching angry workers to the garment district he marches them in circles and then tells them that there is nothing we can do.
A nurse who is a member of PLP spoke, turning to the audience and calling Margolin an enemy of the workers. She argued that in the face of these attacks, LA workers should organize a general strike. This strike should include all AFL-CIO unions and non-unionized garment workers who rely most on County health services.
The RN bargaining committee, rather than accept the County's position that "there's no money" has put forward the demand for 30 hours work for 40 hours' pay. This demand would create a fourth shift at the hospitals creating jobs for thousands. A petition is being circulated for a general strike against closing the 29 clinics. It demands that the County use the millions of dollars in the budget to provide vital services to workers, not to pay interest to the banks.
Since the closures were announced, there have been many demonstrations at clinics against this attack. Workers need more anger, more militancy and more fight back. Sharks, wild dogs and capitalist bosses are emboldened by the blood and weakness of their prey. An aggressive, organized working class can learn through struggle that we don't need to accept or work within the plans that the bosses make for us. A growing number of workers see the need for a general strike, a different leadership and direction. They do not believe that Burt Margolin will save us. Neither will his buddy, Cedillo.
We have to be bold, to show workers the alternative to passivity in the face of attacks and capitalist crises. PLP and our friends plan to get workers and patients throughout the county to sign the petitions and take them to the leaders of the unions and to the County Federation of Labor. Cedillo is planning a demonstration on September 30, the day before the clinic closings. We plan to be there with signed petitions and angry workers.
Over 100 MUNI drivers and their supporters attended the TWU250A rally. These workers are looking for leadership to fight these attacks.
The present official leadership of the TWU250A is weak and indecisive. They want us to depend on politicians, Board of Supervisor members, some other union misleaders, a local preacher and the Bay Area's own version of `Lame' Kirkland, Walter Johnson of the S.F. Labor Council were all invited to address the MUNI drivers and their supporters.
The politicians promised more jobs, the preacher prayed for more jobs, and the union unveiled its magical plan to get jobs. This secret plan that the union has kept hidden from the membership because it did not want to "tip its hand to management" is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It doesn't address the problem of part-time jobs. It calls for "a good management team that works with...workers...and business to promote the spirit of cooperation and solve problems." What does that mean? Work with the bosses and together we will solve our problems -- they must believe in Santa Claus! That type of "team work" costs jobs! And how do we implement this plan? Make phone calls or write to the Mayor?
Progressive Labor Party members and friends made signs to hold up at the rally that attacked the COJ. The signs called for an end to part-time jobs. Several workers took signs to hold up with us.
One driver who came to the rally brought a trophy he had won at a "bus rodeo" (a company-run driving competition). He was holding it up for all to see. Another driver. with 27 years service, and who recently suffered a stroke, held his a carpal tunnel syndrome brace up and declared that this would be his trophy, if he worked long enough. This veteran driver was told by the union goons to be quiet when the politicians and members of the Board of Supervisors spoke. "Why?" he replied loudly. "I'm not going to be quiet while these guys speak. It's the same old shit warmed over. The only thing they have given us is part-time jobs and wage freezes." Some drivers at the rally bought Challenge-Desafío. Our programs offer workers an alternative to the union leadership and the bosses.
We are fighting for the unity and leadership of all Bay Area transit workers (including AC BART, SamTrans, and Golden Gate Transit) with our program of fighting for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay to create jobs! We must build rider-driver unity and demand that there be no cuts in service. Already over 40 drivers donated money for our mailing list. More than 200 Bay Area transit workers have bought Challenge-Desafío subscriptions. We have organized two Marxist economics study groups to learn the nature of the profit system and about class struggle.
In addition, a strong and militant group of drivers are putting out a newsletter "From Behind the Wheel." There will also be a group of young students on a "Mini Transit Project" riding with bus drivers and talking with them about the importance of fighting for 6-hours work for 8-hours pay to create more jobs for the unemployed youth!
We want to build this working class unity with students who need jobs, and passengers who need service and drivers. This solidarity and the communist ideas found in this newspaper contain the power to bring the "Committee on Jobs" to its knees and send their profit system to its grave.
Mayor Giuliani "gave in" to the anger of the protesters by paying the city's share of the student transit passes. However, the city is using the reinstatement of student passes as a smokescreen for a fare increase. Fares will go up from $1.25 now to $1.50 on November 1st, an increase of 20%. Bridge and tunnel tolls will be increased by 17%, as unemployment in the city rises and real wages fall. It now costs a worker, earning the minumum wage 3 hours pay per week to get to and from work, under the new fare, it will cost nearly 4 hours work. This does not include fares to get to stores, health services, etc.
Along with the sales tax, fare increases are among the most unfair of all. Everyone, whether they are bosses, earning millions, managers earning hundreds of thousands, or garment or restaurant and hotel workers earning the minimum or less, all pay the same amount to get to work.
Mass transit in large cities was introduced as industrialization expanded and workers lived further and further away from the factories. Bosses needed an inexpensive and efficient way to get their workers into the plants.
As capitalism declines and unemployment rises, the bosses want those still employed to pay more and more just to commute to their jobs. Meanwhile transit services worsen with longer waits between trains and buses. City Hall's first priority is to funnel enormous interest payments to the banks, while claiming it "cannot afford" to put money into transit or health care services.
Without mass transit, the big department stores and other large businesses would die on the vine; few consumer-workers would be able to get to them to buy anything and the bosses' millions in profits would go down the drain.
Mass transit is just as vital a service as fire protection or sanitation. We don't pay a dollar for every bag of garbage picked up. We don't deposit $100 into some machine to get a fire truck to a burning house (although it may yet come to that if the bosses become desperate enough!). Workers need elimination of all transit fares, just as we don't pay extra for sanitation or fire protection. It should not cost workers money to get to work to be exploited by the bosses.
And then of course, according to the bosses' papers and the TV stations and radio, all the white workers in the whole country think affirmative action is discrimination against them. Have you noticed how the media makes it look like all white workers are racists?
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is making decisions against affirmative action. The University of California just decided against affirmative action when they choose employees and students. So it's a big hullaballoo.
Now my friend is right about the Supreme Court. Their affirmative action decision wasn't about workers. It was about contractors. They decided it wasn't fair to give a minority contractor a contract when a white contractor underbid him. And you know what I say about that? "Who cares?" I could care less which contractor gets which bid. It's not going to do workers any good either way. I don't care if a boss is black or white or green -- the main thing is, (s)he's a boss. Which means (s)he's our enemy.
But on the other hand, I think what the University of California did was bad. I'm glad people protested it. If I lived around there, I'd protest it, too. In fact, all workers ought to look out when decisions like that start coming down. It means there are sharks in the water. They'll attack the ones they can get easiest first, but if they don't get you at first, watch your back -- they're coming after you!
That's the way racism works, you see. It's a divide and conquer thing. Take a look at football, for example. What's all the planning for, all the strategy? Basically, it's to divide the opposite team so you can conquer them. Confuse them, get them running all over the field where the ball carrier isn't. Then push through their weak spot and score. Okay, so the capitalists aren't stupid. They know we outnumber them by like fifty to one. They sure don't want to see us all coming down the field at them together. They'd get trampled. So they divide and conquer. White against black. Men against women. Citizen against immigrant. They think of everything.
The sad thing about it is how many of us get fooled by this nonsense. I mean, plenty of people have always fought racism and sexism all throughout history -- black and white, men and women. But it's kind of sorry how many people think about their skin color first and their class second. And then when they get squashed by some three hundred pound fridge type (like they lose their job), they don't know what hit them. I guess our coaching hasn't been too great. And that's what this paper is all about. That's why I write for it. Best coaching in the league.
What we all need for real is not just affirmative action laws. We ought to be going after every one of our bosses for them to hire and upgrade minority workers, immigrants and women. Because our class needs unity. As long as part of our class stands by while another part of our class gets stepped on, how can we have unity? And that's what's happening. You know the story: black workers are the last hired and first fired; immigrant workers get the lowest paying jobs; women get half the pay.
I say, who cares what the government decides about affirmative action or anything else. What will really make history is what we decide. We, the working class. United. Rushing down that field fifty to one against the capitalist class. Nice image, right?
Mr. Lee sells the garments that the workers produce to Guess for between $15 and $30. For Mr. Lee to take home a "decent" day's profit, he has to make his workers work lots of overtime at full speed to produce thousands of pieces a day! Recently the Guess bosses refused to contract work to his factories. Mr. Lee was so upset that he led his workers in these two demonstrations last week! First they marched to Guess to demand that Guess again send work to the factory. Then they marched to the ILGWU office to demand the union stop its strike at Good Times so Guess will send work to them.
To put an end to these pickets and any organizing by the union, the Guess bosses made a deal with ILGWU officials and agreed to stop contracting work to any of Mr. Lee's shops. Though Mr. Lee continues to sell clothing to other manufacturers, no boss can stand to see his profits fall even a penny. So Mr. Lee led his workers in a march first to demand more work from Guess and then to blame the union for orchestrating the deal.
Lee organized these marches to convince workers to rely on him -- not on the other workers or the union. The bosses' interests and workers interests are completely at odds with each other. What's good for Mr. Lee lines his pockets with cash but works the workers to death.
Why do the union leaders persist in this strategy? Because the union leaders are part of the liberal bosses plan to maintain workers in the legal limits of the capitalist system. Breaking the bosses' laws means defying the system and helps workers see that we can fight to destroy it.
The union is not waging a mass campaign to win this strike and to use it to help unionize the whole LA garment industry. The union officials are more interested in winning workers to the idea that workers rely on the bosses not other workers to improve our lives.
Rather than organize its 350,000 members to support the strikers, the union officials concentrate on negotiating deals with one boss to pressure another. They could use the millions of dollars in the union coffers to support and extend the strike. Instead they spend millions on high-priced lawyers. They could mobilize the workers to go to other garment factories to spread the strike except that the union officials do not believe that we can or should rely on other workers. In this respect they are just like Boss Lee.
Garment workers who are members and friends of PLP have organized two rallies to tell the workers from Song of California to join with the strikers to organize a real strike to shut down production at both Good Times and Song of California. We have told the workers that it is a fatal error to side with the bosses against the striking workers. The union has bent over backwards to build anti-communism. They tell the workers it is a mistake to work with communists who try to buld class unity.
More and more workers are gaining confidence in our leadership. Since the Summer Project, many interested garment workers have called to ask for help or to offer to organize in their shops. There have been strikes at two contractors in which workers have called for help in organizing. We are meeting with these workers. The bosses and their liberal lackeys have their plans. PLP, together with more and more angry garment workers, are making ours.
The workers labored for an average of 115 hours a week for 69cents an hour. They made clothes which ended up on the shelves of some of the biggest retail stores in the U.S.
The managers have been arrested and the owners are being held liable for about $5 million in back pay to the workers (the difference between what they were paid and the minimum wage). The workers were first "freed" to an immigration prison, and have now been released on bail. They'll be allowed to stay to prosecute the managers and owners of the factory and then they will be deported.
All the major newspapers have written articles detailing these slave-like conditions and calling for the garment bosses involved to be punished. Does this mean that the government has begun protecting workers all of a sudden?
There are thousands of subcontractors in Southern California, half of them illegal. Said Joseph Rodriguez, executive director of the Garment Contractors' Association of Southern California, "These illegal operations create an unfair source of competition for our members." Rodriguez wants to force contractors to pay minimum wage, keep operations legal, profits flowing smoothly, and prevent angry workers from organizing a mass movement against him and other garment bosses.
The California State Labor Commission and the INS are trying to look like good reformers. They were very slow to attack this blatant slavery, since they investigated the place 3 years ago and are just acting on it now. But even this exposé is designed to divert people's anger from the day-to-day grinding oppression of over 150,000 garment workers and over 500,000 other manufacturing workers in LA, as well as more hundreds of thousands around the U.S. and the world. While the average LA garment worker is not forced to sleep at a factory, she or he is forced to work at breakneck speed for piece rates equaling little better than minimum wage, which is not a living wage. Workers get lint in their lungs, have no medical insurance, no vacation pay and no time and a half for overtime or sick pay. Bosses and government agencies and the ILGWU leaders will not attack this massive wage slavery.
Because they fear workers organizing mass work stoppages against lower piece rates, and desperate foremen, and organizing a serious fight against oppression, the bosses' government is portraying themselves as the "savior" of these "helpless Asian women." The truth is that workers will decide their own fate as they have in the past by fighting against the bosses' oppression and building a revolutionary movement.
But, right now, the opposite is true. Water is becoming a rare commodity. According to Ismail Seralgedin, a World Bank (WB) official, an extensive study made by that imperialist institution shows that the chronic drought affecting 80 countries, and 40% of the world's population (2 billion people live without running water), means that "the wars of the next century will be over the control of water."
The World Bank report indicates that the demand for water has doubled every 20 years since the beginning of the 20th century. This means that 10 times more water is consumed now than in 1900, and consumption will be doubled by 2015. Since the main users of water are agricultural and industrial corporations, this will lead to a great decrease in agricultural production and increased political tensions, according to the WB.
The fact is that capitalism, private or state, doesn't work. The water problem is not a natural one, it is caused by capitalism itself. We are not talking just about the poorest capitalist countries of sub-Sahara Africa, where millions die as fertile land becomes desert-like because of droughts and land mis-use. We are talking about the richest capitalist countries of North America and Europe, where the big bosses and their industries use most of the water.
WB's "solution" to the water problem is to privatize the water supply. To treat water like any other commodity. This is like going from bad to worse. In England and Wales, where 10 private companies now run the water systems, the main drive is maximum profits. The average water bill has increased by 35% in the last five years, but the companies have spent very little to maintain the system, causing water shortages this exceptionally hot summer.
In Spain, where the water system are run by the state, a drought[1] has hit many regions for several years, affecting five million people. Huge agricultural areas of Alicante and Murcia are now wasted. According to an editorial in El Mundo (8/13): "A hydrologic policy must become a national priority. It is evident that the government of Felipe González hasn't done it and is not doing it...the President has approved some measures but they only serve as Band-Aids for problems that must have been foreseen years ago. Many things need to be done: plants to desalt sea water, reservoirs, new technologies...a program to repair and modernize the water distribution system, which now causes the loss of over 30% of the water we consume."
A similar situation can be seen worldwide. For example, in New York, where in spite of heavy rains, there is a now a water-watch and reservoirs are lower than expected. Why? Because the reservoirs are old, and need repairs and work to make them deeper. In addition, new reservoirs are needed, which cost money, which the capitalists don't want to use in this age of budget cuts.
The only solution to this problem is to put an end to the bosses' insatiable thirst for maximum profits. Let's drown their system in a wave of communist revolution.
In the face of these attacks Gilbert Cedillo, General Manager of SEIU Local 660 invited Burt Margolin to a union meeting. Margolin, a former Democratic State Assemblyman, was appointed "Health Czar" by the LA County Board of Supervisors to oversee the cutbacks in the Department of Health Services. Cedillo invited the big boss to the meeting to "explain the need for the cuts."
Some workers were furious. A nurse from one of the proposed clinic closure sites got up and attacked Margolin's plan to privatize a large rehabilitation hospital, Rancho Los Amigos. She told Margolin that he should not be at the union meeting, and she called for a county-wide walkout. This nurse got a lot of applause.
Margolin countered by saying it would be a mistake for workers to shut the County down because the Board of Supervisors would just close many facilities for good.
The bosses don't cut services because workers fight back. LA County bosses are closing clinics and laying off workers to protect the profits of the capitalists and their system. As major corporations get bigger and bigger tax breaks, the County gets less money. Now most of the millions of dollars in the County budget goes directly to the banks in the form of interest payments on loans. They use the rest to build more prisons, pay more cops, and provide public services like health care. With less money coming in we can see what gets cut first!
Cedillo invited hatchet man Margolin to the union meeting to convince workers that these cuts and layoffs are unavoidable. His idea of "winning" is to allow the workers and the union to help manage the cuts. Cedillo seems to agree with Margolin that a general strike will only make the situation worse. Some leader he turned out to be! Demonstrations and lunch time rallies that allow angry workers to blow off steam are fine with Cedillo. But he refuses to encourage workers' anger and militancy to build solidarity among all the union locals and among non-unionized workers. Instead of marching angry workers to the garment district he marches them in circles and then tells them that there is nothing we can do.
A nurse who is a member of PLP spoke, turning to the audience and calling Margolin an enemy of the workers. She argued that in the face of these attacks, LA workers should organize a general strike. This strike should include all AFL-CIO unions and non-unionized garment workers who rely most on County health services.
The RN bargaining committee, rather than accept the County's position that "there's no money" has put forward the demand for 30 hours work for 40 hours' pay. This demand would create a fourth shift at the hospitals creating jobs for thousands. A petition is being circulated for a general strike against closing the 29 clinics. It demands that the County use the millions of dollars in the budget to provide vital services to workers, not to pay interest to the banks.
Since the closures were announced, there have been many demonstrations at clinics against this attack. Workers need more anger, more militancy and more fight back. Sharks, wild dogs and capitalist bosses are emboldened by the blood and weakness of their prey. An aggressive, organized working class can learn through struggle that we don't need to accept or work within the plans that the bosses make for us. A growing number of workers see the need for a general strike, a different leadership and direction. They do not believe that Burt Margolin will save us. Neither will his buddy, Cedillo.
We have to be bold, to show workers the alternative to passivity in the face of attacks and capitalist crises. PLP and our friends plan to get workers and patients throughout the county to sign the petitions and take them to the leaders of the unions and to the County Federation of Labor. Cedillo is planning a demonstration on September 30, the day before the clinic closings. We plan to be there with signed petitions and angry workers.
During the last dinner of the Los Angeles Summer Project, part of the discussion dealt with, "How can we as students help the organization in garment?" I had been thinking about this question a long time.
Several people gave their opinions. A student comrade said that we should organize students to support the movement. Now the problem became: how to get students to be interested in the struggle. Another comrade said that we had to make them see that since they buy and wear clothes, the struggle of the workers who make the clothes should concern them. I know that if I make this argument to a classmate, she'll probably answer, "What does that have to do with me? I don't see that they went on strike to lower the price of the clothes in the stores. I'd have to pay the same whether they win or lose."
I think the answer to her should be that garment workers are among the lowest paid workers. The bosses use this to attack all wages. Then the wages of all workers go down. When we students get out of school, if we're lucky enough to get a job, it will be at lower wages than before. If garment workers fight for higher wages, this helps all of us, including students who are future workers, if they're not unemployed.
To win students, we have to understand the role we play in the Party, in this capitalist system, and the role we will play in the revolution. We have to understand why the bosses send us to school, and why schools exist and what the future holds for youth:
*Schools are the best way the bosses have to teach us to defend and fight for this system.
*They make us think that the only way to learn to use our heads is to go to school and that workers don't go to school because they don't have a brain or because they're taken in by the system.
*There aren't jobs for all the youth so they use jails and schools to keep the youth out of the job market, or from rebelling against unemployment.
*They use schools so we can learn a skill, or at least get a piece of paper that says we learned a skill to try to get a job.
I'm not saying that all the youth should quit school to go work in factories, but they shouldn't see school as the center of learning, or the place to learn to be better communists. Instead they should see the schools as centers to recruit to the Party and places to fight against the ideology that the schools try to teach us.
We need to understand that the only way we can smash our enemy is by allying with the workers, and understanding that workers are the key to open the door to the bosses' graves. Workers' labor maintains the system, not students going to school.
That's why I think the best way to involve thousands of students in workers' struggles is having ties with students and their families, who are workers. We must talk to them about the power of worker-student unity. The last thing I want to say to the comrades, especially the students, is that the more we are involved in the fight for communism, the more we'll understand why workers are the vanguard.
PLP Student and
Summer Project Participant
Despite the present widespread cynicism, passivity, and nationalism, I've found that the more I'm involved with the working class, the more I see examples of change and the potential for communist society.
Yesterday (8/5) our street held its first block party. The party was organized by a block committee of 8 people, black and white, native and foreign-born.
Our street is made up of working class families, mainly black, with several from the Caribbean. Also, there are still about a dozen white families who have lived here for years. The workers on the block committee reached out to everyone because, in their words, "the goal was unity."
At the meeting just before the party, the one white racist family on the block came to the meeting with the goal of disrupting the party. The multi-racial solidarity of the block committee sent them packing quickly.
On the day of the block party, the racists marched out of their house and left a pan of dog turd on their porch. Obviously this was their feeling about our block party. At first their immediate neighbors were stunned, then they became infuriated. Interestingly, some of the women wanted to physically attack the racists, but their husbands "calmed" them down!
But the dog turd incident only served to increase my neighbors' desire for a "united" block party. And it was glorious!
All day and into the night, children and adults playing and working together filled the street. For me, our volley ball game and dance contest in particular offered a glimpse into the future of communist society. It was almost intoxicating to see the working class men, women, and children around me play and dance together in multi-racial unity.
There are plenty of political struggles ahead for our block committee, and my main party work is on my job. A few of us met and planned to put the problem of these racists on the agenda of our next meeting. This experience was a great battery charger at a time when the odds against communist revolution superficially seem overwhelming.
A Philly PL'er
Dear friend,
Thank you for the letter that you sent. I have been receiving Challenge regularly, and I am very pleased. My teaching job is not bad. My wife's health as well as my own are under control.
I would like to give you my point of view about Marxism in general and in the Middle-East in particular. I believe Marxism in theory is the best solution for the world and for the working class. As far as I understand it, people have had bad experiences with Marxism for many reasons. It is not about philosophy. It is about Marxism as practiced by many parties. (I hope when I see you we can talk about that.) As you wrote, we have to learn from the past.
In the Middle-East, in spite of the fact that the working class hates capitalism's policies, they have lost their interest in Marxism because in the past decades, the leaders of Marxist parties have made big mistakes. I have had many experiences like this, at least in Iran. It does not mean that Marxism is dead in the Middle-East. It means that activists should review their policies and learn about national traditions, culture, and change their old strategy.
Challenge is good, but as an international newspaper, I think it must have more articles in it from the rest of the world. There is a real weakness in the paper without that. My wife and I hope you and your family stay well.
Yours sincerely, A.
(Note from Challenge: We agree with the call for more international news, and we encourage readers from all over the world to send in articles and letters on all topics of interest to the working class struggle. Build Internationalism! Help build the international struggle for communism!)
The article about the possibility of a general strike in Puerto Rico (Challenge-Desafío 7/30) made the point that the island has become a hell for workers. The same can be said about Puerto Rican workers in the U.S. According to the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, the last census showed that Puerto Ricans constitute the poorest ethnic group in the U.S., below blacks and other latin groups.
There are 2.8 million people of Puerto Rican descent in the U.S., 10% of the total latin population; 39% of whom live below the government-declared "poverty line," compared with 33% of blacks and 32% of Mexicans. Nearly 1.1 million Puerto Ricans live in poverty in the U.S., or 13% of the total number of poor latins. The unemployment rate for Puerto Ricans is 14%, more than twice the official U.S. unemployment rate and the highest for all members of the labor force here.
There are many reasons for this poverty. One main reason is the capitalist economic crisis that has eliminated many of the manufacturing jobs with relatively decent pay for Puerto Ricans and other workers in the Northeast and Midwest. The fight for jobs is indeed a struggle against racism and poverty.
A Reader