September 27, 1995
Both the House and Senate versions of "welfare reform" agree to end federal guarantees of aid to the poor. Benefits would stop after two years with a lifetime limit of five years. The senate passed its version by a vote of 87-12, with support for both Democrats and Republicans.
This action is a typical example of how racism hurts all workers.Both racist parties spread the lie that "welfare"is a "black and latin thing, so why worry." While 37% of welfare payments go to black working class families, 38% go to white families. So the racism directed against non-white workers will torpedo white workers as well.
Welfare benefits, along with unemployent insurance and Social Security, were won during the mass unemployment of the 1930s, by a communist-led movement that put millions of workers into the streets and onto the picket lines. The reforms were won, but the capitalist class was still in power. They used their power to methodically destroy the reforms, along with ousting the communists from leadership of the mass movement during the rabid anti-communism of the Cold War. Band-Aids don't work; capitalism can't be reformed. PLP has learned from the old Communist Party's mistake of not fighting for working class state power.
Clinton and Gingrich are basically two sides of the same capitalist coin. They represent a profit system which breeds unemployment and then proposes to starve working class families who can't find non-existent jobs, or slave labor jobs at or below the already poverty-level minimum wage.
The $70 to $102 billion that this Clinton/Gingrich gang-up will save the bosses will come directly out of the mouths of millions of children. That's par for the course for a capitalist system that is based on squeezing the maximum profit out of as many workers as possible. Real welfare "reform" can only come under a system not based on profit -- communism -- which will eliminate unemployment and therefore the need for welfare.
Depending on Clinton and the Democrats to "save" us is like throwing a rock to a drowning person. Workers must answer this fascist assault with a mass movement for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay in which communists will spread the understanding that only revolution will free the working class from the endless impossible "band-aids"of capitalism.
"Facing an unprecedented budget deficit, county officials plan to shut 28 of their 45 neighborhood health clinics, and 5 comprehensive care clinics on Oct. 1. On Sept. 15, 5,200 health workers got notices of layoff or demotion." ( LA Times 9/18)
On the same day, police helicopters flew over County facilities, as a warning to angry workers.
For now, the County will eliminate 75% of the outpatient services at its 6 hospitals. However, given the deepening debt, the bosses will soon close some hospitals altogether.
Hundreds of thousands of poor workers are treated every year at these clinics. Two-thirds of all LA County patients are uninsured. Most are black or latin. They will have no other place to turn. These cutbacks will mean drastic rises in tuberculosis, high-risk births, AIDS, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases. These cutbacks will kill.
As Workers Die, Banks Cash In
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. ruling class has faced an unrelenting decline in the rate of profits. There are many reasons for this happening, the stiffening competition from their capitalist rivals, the growing cost of technology for improving production, and so on. One way to prop up the bosses' profits has been to reduce corporate taxes. Tax laws changed across the board to improve profits. The portion of state taxes paid by California corporations dropped by about 30%. Similar cutbacks on bosses' taxes occurred all over the U.S.
To keep going, the government sells bonds, offering interest, or profit, on money loaned on these bonds. Who buys these bonds? Mainly the less than 1% of the population who have the money to speculate -- the very same capitalist class who lowered their own taxes in the first place.
The law is that banks get paid first -- before hospitals or welfare. More and more workers' tax money goes to pay interest on debts. These bankers are profiting off the misery and death of thousands of workers. A working class response to this crisis requires unity to fight and strike for a moratorium on the debt. The hell with debts to bankers. Nurses, custodians, aides and others should be paid instead of bondholders. Bosses like the Marciano brothers of Guess should be made to pay for health care for the workers they exploit.
There have been many demonstrations and some work actions against these cutbacks. Because workers are angry, there will be more. At these demonstrations, there are always those who try to "educate" the politicians, saying "anyone can get TB," and "germs can cross into Beverly Hills." Behind these speeches is the illusion that politicians and the bosses behind them are reasonable. The reality is, the bosses have all the power and don't care. Their system is in crisis and they'll protect their profits by slashing their taxes, closing hospitals, and killing workers.
Union leaders are leading daily demonstrations calling on politicians to find some money. They try and make a deal for something less than the full cuts. The liberals' role in these crises is to negotiate the terms of our oppression. In this crisis, their old words fall on deaf ears. Democratic and Republican politicians alike are slavish supporters of the bankers and bosses.
Workers have an opportunity to unite the thousands who need to fight these attacks. Our greatest need is to destroy this murderous system before it destroys us. We need a communist society, without racist profit-hungry bosses, where health care and everything else is organized by the working class for the benefit of all. Profits are the worst possible incentive to provide health care or anything else that workers need. Profits for the few stand in sharp contradiction to meeting the needs of the many.
We need to forge a powerful workers' army to fight for communism. Communism will do away with money and banks. We will all work and equally share what we produce. Capitalism careens from crisis to crisis, destroying workers' lives through unemployment, cutbacks, racism and wars for profits. It has long since outlived its usefulness. Out of this deepening crisis can come mass understanding, through struggle, of the need for communism. Let's build PLP and fight for communism.
On Sept. 13, the Board ignored the 250 riders and drivers at a "public" hearing and mandated destruction of vital bus service for the workers of Alameda County. It cut all service between midnight and 5 A.M., 50% of service between 7 P.M. and midnight and 60% of week-end service, laying off up to 200 workers in the process.
The Transit Board is merely a front for the Downtown CEO's (Bank of America, Bechtol, Citibank, PG&E, etc.) profits. They use the Transit Board, the politicians and the Metropolitan Transit Committee (which channels state and federal funds) to dictate mass transit policy. They created the "deficit" with Proposition 13 and lower property assessments while defeating tax reforms which might have forced these bosses to pay more for mass transit. Then they turn around and lay off and convert much of the transit work-force to part-timers.
With transit under-funded and service slashed, they have organized a media attack blaming "over-paid" drivers for the system's failures. Privatization of public services is on the ballot in San Francisco (Proposition K), as well as the planned elimination of non-rush hour service.
However, a coalition of workers and riders -- United Riders and Transit Workers (URAT) -- organized a petition campaign, had two demonstrations and a march to this latest Board hearing. At the hearing, some speakers thought they could change the Board's mind or threaten legal and election action; others felt direct, mass action was needed. SF Muni workers joined the action, developing transit unity. A call for a general strike drew the evening's biggest applause. There were picket signs for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay and demands for a fare boycott.
Jorge Valdez, leader of Mexico City's bus drivers ( here on a fund-raising tour) came to the URAT action and told the Board that 12,000 transit workers have been fired, and the attacks on Mexico City's transit system have been part of a privatization plan dictated by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and local Mexican capitalists.
But helping the bosses has been the leadership of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the Alameda Central Labor Council who refuse to call even one action of protest, while their own members and many riders are organizing against the cuts. ATU President Zook begged the Board and "threatened" an injunction (from the bosses' courts!). The Transport Workers Union leaders' "solution" to the cuts and to privatization is the election of Willie Brown as Mayor. These leaders oppose all rank-and-file unity of the transit unions or unity with the riders. They defend the capitalist system that is destroying workers' jobs and lives and thereby support the bosses' control through the courts and elections. The union leadership's answer is the same as the bosses' answer, which is no answer for the workers.
PLP says this struggle is part of the war between classes: on the one side are thousands of transit workers, along with tens of thousands of working class riders, who have the potential to shut down the Bay Area transit. On the other side are the bosses who dictate transit policy. We workers don't vote on the destruction of mass transit. We can only unite all our forces to conduct mass, militant actions and strikes against it.
But we are still a confused and divided force. To develop this necessary unity, and spread communist understanding of the nature of this class dictatorship under which we live, we aim to expand the readership of Challenge-Desafio to at least 10% of the transit work-force, through subscriptions and sales.
Expanding the class war between the bosses who dictate transit policy and the workers and riders who use it, means winning thousands of workers to the understanding that we live under a bosses' dictatorship; that the only way we workers can make mass transit work for us is to destroy the bosses' dictatorial power and assert workers' state power.
Under a worker-run, profit-free system -- communism -- mass transit would be run solely for use by the working class, not for the bosses' profits. Recruiting transit workers and worker-riders to these ideas, and into PLP, is the biggest victory the working class can win out of this struggle.
On the other hand, it is legal for scabs to take strikers' jobs, and for the bosses to buy armed strike-breakers and cops. This is a typical example of how U.S. "democracy" is really a dictatorship of the bosses. What would happen if the strikers had hundreds of armed workers on the picket lines? Yes, fascism is happening here. From PATCO to Hormel, from Pittston to Greyhound, from Decatur to Detroit, strikes are now illegal!
"Why the hell are we letting these scab trucks go in and out? This strike's finished if we don't stop these papers?" Angry pickets at the scab printing plant challenged the picket captains, who worked through the night to smother the militancy of those who gathered for "Solidarity Saturday III." Before the night was over, 17 workers were arrested, dozens were ticketed, and the union mis-leaders succeeded in giving the bosses their biggest break yet.
The Sterling Heights printing plant was the site of fierce fighting between thousands of strikers and supporters, and scores of riot cops the previous two Saturdays, forcing the company to airlift papers out of the plant using helicopters -- at a cost of $10 per newspaper! But about 300,000 papers were also printed at the company's River Plant in downtown Detroit. This week, pro-strike demonstrators were split between the two plants.
Far fewer showed up this week, mainly because the cowardly union hacks announced they would not violate the injunction and risk fines, nor would they defend workers who did. A UAW flyer distributed to the demonstrators declared, "Only peaceful, law-abiding citizens are welcome"! Workers who objected were told, "This has been decided elsewhere. Do as you're told or stay home." Picket captains, mostly UAW members and staff, managed to confuse, disperse and demoralize workers, so that by 3 am, only 100 tired workers remained as scab papers went out by the truckload.
With 300,000 union members in the Detroit Metro AFL-CIO, including 100,000 UAW members, the official plan was to have strike supporters drive their cars in circles near the plant. Shouting matches broke out at the gate. The "law-abiding" supporters driving up and down got pulled over by the cops and ticketed when their speed fell below 20 mph. Traffic thinned visibly. Scab buses and trucks came in and out at will. People yelled and spit at the scabs, while a few defied the leadership and refused to clear the driveway, leading to nine arrests.
At the River Plant, several hundred strikers stood 10-deep across the gate. Ten security guards in helmets, face guards and plastic shields, were subjected to a constant stream of insults, tomatoes, and orange juice from the angry crowd. Around midnight, Detroit cops walked the security guards away and chained the gates. The guards disappeared as the big door rolled down under a hail of rocks, bottles and curses. Several helicopters took off from the other side of the River Plant. The crowd thinned out. Around 3 am, the police cleared the remaining strikers from the front of the gate, and the scab trucks rolled. Eight more workers were arrested here. The AFL-CIO and UAW managed to prevent the strike from getting "out of hand," thereby losing the strike. UAW president Steve Yokich is trying to either reach a quick settlement, or get the strikers back to work without a contract, as he is attempting to do at Caterpillar.
When workers strike, they face the full weight of the profit system, scabs, cops, courts, and thugs. U.S. rulers are facing a crisis of their system, forcing them to attack the working class with a vengeance. Fascism is the order of the day as U.S. rulers prepare for war. By using mass violence against the cops and scabs, we can expose the viciousness of this system, and develop the outlook and skills needed to destroy it with communist revolution. The bosses are vicious because they are weak. The union hacks grovel before the courts because they are only concerned with staying in business by obeying the bosses' laws and defending the bosses' system. Detroit's workers have struck fear in all their hearts. There's plenty more where that came from.
DELANO, CA., Sept. 8 -- The United Farm Workers Union (UFWA) publicly recognized the strikers who participated in the strike from 1965-1970; which forced the rich ranchers to recognize the farmworkers union. The objective of this event was pure publicity.
The recognition consisted of giving each striker a certificate of merit. Nevertheless, not everyone who deserved recognition was there. I personally know all the strikers and most of the scabs, and I saw that many who received certificates as heroes of the strike were really scabs...but after all even that doesn't matter since the whole event was just a publicity stunt.
I talked to some of the people present and could see their motives. It so happens that many of these people resent the leadership of the union. After the second strike in 1973, that was sold out by Cesar Chavez, these workers were left without any protection by the leadership and they suffered greatly because they could not find work since all the bosses easily recognized them as militant strikers. Others had been in accidents during the first contract, before the second strike and lacked the protection of the union. None of them attended this event.
There were several speeches by visitors, but no farmworkers were on the stage. Dolores Huerta, vice President of the union, spoke for the "poor" farmworkers. Because the "poor things" don't know how to talk, the "poor things" can't express themselves, because the "poor things" are shy, because the "poor things", etc., etc., etc., yaaaa! Enough calling the workers "poor things." This is intolerable because they are not mentally ill nor are they useless. What happens is that the leaders don't teach them any of the politics of the struggle for their rights. They only know how to count them so they know how much they can collect in union dues.
The workers should not allow them to pity us or call us poor things, because we can talk, we can fight, we can not only defend ourselves, but we can attack the bosses politically and violently if necessary. Just tell these leaders to ask me as I was on the picket line for 5 years. The workers can understand what our rights are and defend them and fight for them. Workers should not let them monopolize our ideas.
Dolores Huerta said in her speech that the fight against the bosses should be peaceful, and she mentioned Chavez's fast in 1968 against the violence on the picket line. Then she mentioned the pledge that all the strikers made to refrain from violent acts against the boss and criticized those who refused to take the pledge saying, "only a few wouldn't do it and I know who they are and I'm watching them." In other words she didn't call them together just to honor them but to reproach them for their past consciousness as workers in struggle.
Our rights are whatever we consider them to be according to our working class consciousness and not what the leaders and the bosses decide to grant us.
Let's see: under exploitative capitalism, rights are a combination of norms and rules of a certain social class that are established and guaranteed by the State, the will of the exploiting class built right into law. Rights are inconceivable within the limits of the State. The State tells you what your rights are. The State tells you if you can talk, eat, what your salary is, if you can object, etc.
One example: in one collective bargaining agreement reached by the union, the workers did not have the right to strike, because the bosses (the State) don't like that and the union leaders then tell the workers, "it's not your right to strike," so that's what the contract says. Nonetheless, to strike is a right of all workers and we should struggle and fight for it.
Those who endlessly spend time defending and fighting for miniscule reforms and never move on to other forms of struggle at a higher level will always be laughed at by the exploiters. The bosses never worry about these useless methods because in one instance they allow them and in the next they take them away.
That's why all workers must be politicized. We must fight to dump these union leaders and bring in communist leadership that will fight the growers in the farmworkers' interest.
Scores of workers distributed 4,000 anti-hack, pro-strike newsletters, calling for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay, representing 17% of the Boeing blue collar work-force in this area -- at the strike sanction vote, at the plant gates and inside the plants. Many courageous workers defied the company and union rules as they smuggled thousands of flyers into the plants and the Kingdome. And 125 Challenge-Desafíos were sold. As a result, the shorter work-week with no loss in pay became a mass issue. At least for a time, the hold of the ruling class on this crucial section of the industrial working class was threatened.
IAM International President George Kourpias did his best to deliver us back into the arms of the bosses at the strike sanction meeting. His call to save "American " jobs will not only fail, but create the illusion that our enemy is foreign workers -- not our own bosses. The last thing these hacks want to see is international class unity. International unity shows the potential power of the working class.
When the hacks call for unity, they have in mind unity behind the negotiators' plan to make a deal. They want to avoid class struggle -- like a strike -- at all costs. "There won't be a strike," said District 751 President Bill Johnson at the last two union meetings. "I'll bring you a good contract." In this crisis of capitalism, deals without class struggle mean give-backs, longer hours and fewer jobs. The union has gone so far as to offer to trade "job security for worker-driven cost reductions and higher productivity."
We Boeing workers, need shorter hours, no loss in pay and more jobs. But the battle for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay, to create tens of thousands of Boeing jobs and millions more worldwide, would require class unity and class struggle. Such a movement would threaten the hold of the bosses' labor lieutenants. Such a movement could put the idea in workers' minds that we have the power to rule.
The significance of thousands of Boeing workers talking about 6-for-8, is that it reveals the potential of our class. To realize this potential , the left forces that guaranteed these newsletters and Challenge-Desafío sales must grow -- in numbers and in confidence in our class. Our victory in this contract will be in building an active, fighting left with communist leadership in the labor movement, dedicated to workers' power.
Zedillo used the $50 billion in U.S. loan money to pay a handful of speculators of tesobonos (government bonds) and to save a few bankers from bankruptcy, while the Gross Domestic Product fell by 10%. In the last two years 20,000 small and medium sized businesses have gone bankrupt.
Even while the capitalists are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get out of this crisis, they're generating another one. The external debt is snowballing; it's currently more than $120 billion and the payments to the debt service are $23 billion annually.
Capitalism is showing once again that it is incapable of satisfying the minimum needs of the working class. The capitalist system veers from crisis to crisis, systematically attacking all workers, increasing exploitation enormously, and carrying out fascist genocide.
This year alone 1.2 million workers lost their jobs. By 1996, this figure will climb to at least 1.5 million. More than 1.2 million youth enter the labor market every year without finding work. According to official figures, unemployment is at 13.5 million, one third of the labor force, and wages have declined 58% in ten years. All public services have declined and there's been a major increase in crime as result of the social deterioration.
Recently in the congress, the PRD (the opposition party), in spite of the insoluble capitalist crisis and growing fascism, decided to continue with the strategy of "fighting for democracy."
The Zapatistas followed suit and launched a national campaign to become another of the many nationalist democratic electoral parties. All these electoral organizations have only served to mark the rapid advance towards fascism. Large sectors of the population are being moved to the right. A concrete example is the relatively large number of people voting for PAN (a more open fascist party), which the national and international bourgeoisie is grooming to win the presidential election in 2000.
PAN already governs important parts of the country. Mexico's Attorney General, a member of PAN, legalized repression and genocide implemented to contain discontent, including the militarization of Chiapas and other states, the Guerrero massacres, the jailing of union leaders, the destruction of unions, the repression of demonstrations.
The working class in Mexico desperately needs the growth of PLP and our revolutionary communist alternative. PLP members need to bring our ideas to the growing mass movement and show workers and students that the only way out of this capitalist hell is to fight for communism.
Unlike Farrakhan's fascist "million man march" a week later, the Howard conference will include women and men of all so-called "races." Farrakhan blames black men for their supposed "failure to take responsibility." In contrast, Howard conference organizers target racist ideology, cutbacks, and attacks on "affirmative action." The PLP urges all serious anti-racists to boycott and criticize Farrakhan's event. Come to the Howard conference instead.
But, many at the Howard Conference will share with the Farrakhanites some ideas that are dead wrong. For a successful conference it will not be enough to agree on a general program. There will have to be a lot of friendly but sharp political struggle. The core issue is: Can capitalism ever put an end to race and inequity? Or do anti-racist workers and students need to join PLP in the fight for communist revolution?
Campus PLP members will come to Howard with groups of friends involved in mass organizations and mass struggles from Massachusetts to California. We have already started to explain our politics to many of them:
* Class-conscious workers, not liberal politicians, must lead the anti-racist movement.
* The fight for jobs is the key to fighting racism. This is especially true of the fight against cutbacks and against racist hiring and admission practices.
* Nationalism can only strengthen racism, never destroy it.
It is not easy to build the movement for communism. There will be few quick victories in ideological struggles such as these. But it would be a big mistake to become despondent. True, the capitalists are using divide-and-conquer tactics more openly to make us pay for the crisis of their system.
However, the many enthusiastic responses to the Howard Conference Call show that anti-racism is also growing. Hundreds, then thousands, then millions can come to understand the need for communist revolution firsthand, from battles big and small. As communists we must entrench ourselves in this battlefield. The Howard conference will be a step in that direction.
Members of the Racial Justice Task Force of the Unitarian Church, the NAACP, the National Organization For Women, Students and Faculty from Old Dominion, Norfolk State, and Hampton Universities, and Tidewater Community College, the Communication Workers of America, and PLP rallied, chanted, and distributed leaflets against Murrray for over an hour.
A black student from Hampton said that she was impressed to see a lot of whites angrily accusing Murray of "racist lies." Organizers of the demonstration, who originally hoped for a turnout of 30 to 50 people, were excited by the much larger participation.
The "debate" between Murray and Poussaint disgusted most of the audience of more than 2,000 people. Murray arrogantly denied that his book is about race, insisting that the "underclass" is made up of low IQ people of all races. (This shows that Murray not only is racist but that he also has contempt for all workers!) Poussaint was rambling and unfocused and displayed no sense of urgency. He made no attempt to refute most of Murray's most disgusting racist lies and was content to explain how IQ tests are racially biased. Neither speaker discussed joblessness and economic crisis, racist scapegoating, eugenics, the Pioneer Fund, fascist para-military groups, the "Contract on America," and attacks on welfare and affirmative action.
Questions from the audience had to be written out and were thoroughly censored so that no sharp questions were posed. One participant in the demonstration managed to confront Murray briefly after the "debate" with a question about the Pioneer Fund, the notorious Nazi fund that has financed all of the academic fascists who proclaim the inferiority of blacks. Murray angrily defended his racist friends as "brilliant researchers" and accused the questioner of "McCarthyism" (guilt by association).
Black political scientist, Adolph Reed, in his review of The Bell Curve , accurately pointed out that spineless liberals (like Poussaint) give Murray legitimacy by appearing in "debates" with him and not denouncing him as the racist hack he really is. PLP'ers distributed leaflets during the demonstration calling The Bell Curve, a Mein Kampf with footnotes, and pointing out that "to debate with Murray whether or not it is a good idea to impose fascism and genocide is to legitimize them as options." PLP leadership in building this demonstration has made us many friends who we must win to join our Party and help us build a revolutionary movement that can get rid of Murray and his capitalist backers forever.
These workers don't realize that there is nothing they could have done to stop this plant closing. The boss had no plans to upgrade the printing presses or bindery machines. The competition has new equipment. Those that don't have it will also close.
The industry has undergone tremendous changes over the past ten years. These changes have affected the rate of profit:; it's falling. Workers need communism because the bosses' drive to maximize profits will destroy our lives. Under communism, advances in technology can be used to benefit the workers, not guarantee profits.
New advanced technologies are forcing the bosses to scramble to keep up with the competition. This is causing a lot of uncertainty as to the future of many small businesses, and fear among the workers of losing jobs. In the late 1960s, entire typesetting and paste-up departments were replaced by computer operators. Up until the 1980s, there was no limit to the jobs a worker could get on the shop floor. The number of workers needed to produce a job was still high. To produce the work efficiently, the boss needed many workers in the pressroom and hundreds of workers in the bindery department.
New machines greatly reduced the number of jobs. This new technology is very expensive. Many small bosses can't afford it. Some mid-size shops buy new equipment and still can't compete, because what they bought is already obsolete, and the print shop down the block has the latest machines. Some bosses spend millions on new equipment for a specific customer, and lose the contract anyway. Either they get new customers for that equipment, or they close the shop. This has caused much of the transformation, and falling rate of profit, in the industry. Such is the anarchy of capitalist production...
Up until the late 1970s, a boss could buy a small offset press, a camera and stripping table, and be in business, turning a good profit. To turn that same profit now the boss needs new equipment to compete. To make the money to buy new equipment, they speed up the workers, or extend the work-day with lots of overtime, eliminating second and third shifts. This is why workers must fight for 6 hours work for 8 hours pay, reducing the work-day and pressing for more jobs. This raises the ante and intensifies class war, helping to lead to a fight to destroy the system itself.
Many small and mid-size shops are either merging or being bought out by larger companies, always reducing the workforce. The majority of print shops today are small, with no more than 10-15 workers. Some are joining regional blocks to try to secure their profits. On Long Island, the bosses have the LIGAA (Graphic Artists Association), to secure their profits, screw the workers, and be a more dominant force among the bosses.
What are workers from these small shops going to do? With the reduction of the work-force in the printing industry, and throughout capitalist society, any way you look at it, it means death for the workers. Printing workers need communism because the bosses' drive to maximize profits, along with new technology, reduces the number of workers. Printing under communism will produce printed matter to serve the working class. All printed matter produced under capitalism is made to sell something to workers, either goods or ideas -- all of which serves to reinforce the system. Under communism, printers will produce information workers need to run society, building a better life for all workers.
The big news in Norway is the revelation that high-ranking members of the Parliament, the Storting, and the Progress Party are working with several Nazi and Norwegian Nationalist groups.
Their common organizing agenda is racist and anti-immigration legislation and propaganda. They use racist-scare tactics, saying that in 100 years there will be 13 million immigrants, the population of Norway now is 4.3 million.
Several racists from the conservative and right-wing Progress Party, headed by Carl I. Hagen, have been attending organizational meetings and generating collective pronouncements opposing immigration. The Progress Party's immigration report was written by a white supremacist. It blames the victim by saying that education and health could be improved if it weren't for the immigrants.
The opposing party, the Liberal Party, called Hagen's report attacking immigrants racist, and called upon Hagen to tell racists not to vote for him. Of course Hagen declined. This revelation of Nazi organizing was expected to get them fewer votes. However, the Progress Party's percentage of the vote in the September election rose from 6.8% to 10.2%, as it received 20% of Oslo's vote.
Anti-racist demonstrators have been throwing eggs, and anything else they could find, at Hagen and his Nazi supporters whenever they appear in public.
Last April, the Progress Party submitted legislation barring asylum-seekers from 11 countries in Africa. Its popularity grew and continued until the party's Nazi connections were revealed. However, Denmark did implement the same visa restrictions.
The Norwegian economy is strong; it is operating at a surplus because of the North Sea oil reserves. This advantage comes from the money/labor from the rest of the world. The asylum-seekers in Africa are made homeless by capitalist economic policies. Workers in Somalia were starving because of war fueled by the world capitalists.
Worldwide, the fascists are behind nationalist and anti-immigration propaganda. Immigration has become the main topic of political debate, thus putting fascist leadership in policy making positions around the world. The opposition to this must come from communists. When leadership is given to oppose these racists, the workers will respond.
A Reader
The anti-KKK rally in Woodstock, Illinois was the first one I attended. I was unsure exactly what to expect, but the racist KKK had to know that some people would not let them talk their garbage without protest.
I saw with my own eyes the enormous amount of police protection for the KKK. There were metal detectors, cameras, police on horses, in groups and armed all around barricades set up to keep the crowd from smashing the heads of the KKK.
When things began to happen very quickly, I became somewhat frightened by comrades who got into a fight with pro-Klan people in the crowd and were arrested on very serious charges. After thinking about it, I am convinced that with fascism becoming more intense, doing nothing to stop all the racist attacks on workers would be a mistake.
Talking is one thing but doing nothing gets nothing done. A group at the rally felt that talking was the answer, but those Klan supporters will remember the fight. Knowing PL will be there to stop them each time will make them think twice about doing it.
That fight should carry over to our jobs, unions and friends. At the university where I work, I put out a letter for donations and collected a good sum of money. I thought these intellectuals wouldn't understand. Maybe some of them don't, but I am not going to let that stop me. I am trying to sell Challenge-Desafío to them, letting them know that PL led that fight against the Klan, and inviting them to the Sept. 22 PLP forum.
Living under this capitalist society makes me afraid for my family, friends and people all around me. Doing nothing to change that allows the bosses to continue to take advantage of workers, as we become more afraid and paralyzed. That doesn't seem to be the answer. We can't hide from it -- we must change it, under the leadership of PLP.
Chicago Comrade
I recently attended a "debate between co-author of The Bell Curve, Charles Murray, and Harvard clinical psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. There was a multiracial demonstration preceding the debate opposing Charles Murray, his book, and all that he represents. For the most part, the response to the demonstration was positive.
But the response to the debate was negative. A friend in PLP had predicted that Murray would deny that his book discusses race as the determining factor of one's "destiny" or position in society. So it was no surprise to me when he stood before the entire audience and said that those who believed that his book was about race misunderstood the whole thing.
The real surprise was how his opponent, Alvin Poussaint, responded. He did not address the concrete issue and the implications of the book. Instead he focused on the issue of the IQ test. Where was the debate? Many people were not only disappointed with the presentation, but agitated by it.
People are ready to mobilize. They may not know exactly the source of the problem, but they know there's a problem. They may not know exactly what to do, but they are ready to do something.
One thing I do know is that all of those advocating change are not now ready to embrace communism as an alternative. That idea shakes the foundations of most people. We must continue to educate and demonstrate that there is no alternative. We must organize internationally as men and women to fight against the true oppressor, the capitalist system.
College Student
The news of the strike against the Detroit Free Press, owned by the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, reminded me of a story written by Louis Nizer, a famous trial lawyer, in his book, My Life In Court.
Victor and Hermann Ridder published the New York German-language newspaper, Staats-Zeitung und Herold, the Chicago Journal of Commerce, and other newspapers in the 1930s. When Hitler became German Chancellor in 1932, the Ridder brothers quickly hooked up with the Nazis, and the Staats Zeitung (SZ) became the Nazi voice in the U.S.
While Hitler was murdering union leaders, communists, the elderly and disabled, Jews, Romanies, and homosexuals throughout Germany, and planning world conquest, the Ridders went to Berlin to be wined and dined and awarded medals by Hitler and Goering. Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda thug, assigned one of his top henchmen to set up shop in Victor's personal office at the S-Z in New York. The paper carried the Nazi line until the U.S. entered WW II in 1941.
At Christmas, 1944, when German defeat was certain, Victor Ridder and some other German-Americans took out a full-page ad in the New York Times (NYT ) which called on Americans to have a forgiving attitude "in keeping with the Christmas spirit." The impression they wanted to give was that they were and had always been loyal Americans.
But a Columbia University professor, also German-American, wrote a letter to the NYT revealing Ridders' Nazi ties, and calling the letter what it was: a veiled appeal for a soft peace. When the Ridders sued the professor for libel, Nizer successfully defended him in court. Everything about the Ridder brothers came out in the testimony.
Strikers in Detroit, might be interested in this bit of slimy Knight-Ridder history.
New York Worker
The passage of Proposition 187 in California last November signaled an onslaught of Federal Government sponsored anti-immigrant scapegoating. As of June 19, HUD (Housing and Urban Development) has decided to enforce a 15-year old policy that had never been enforced -- undocumented immigrants cannot receive housing subsidies.
In public housing projects in Cambridge and Somerville, Mass., as well as all over the U.S., residents are receiving letters threatening eviction if the head of the household isn't "legal." This policy will worsen homelessness and desperation among immigrants, and increase racist divisions. However, the bosses will not get away with this slimy attack without a fight. UnFAIR (Unite to Fight Anti-Immigrant Racism), a newly-formed committee of LACASA (Latin American and Central American Solidarity Association) is waging a campaign against HUD's policy. Committee members are circulating a petition in the projects and on the street and planning a demonstration against HUD in October.
HUD is under assault for its extensive corruption, which has become Congress' excuse for planning a $6-7 billion cut in HUD's budget. This will drastically reduce the amount of subsidized housing available for the working class. And the bosses are trying to deflect the anger these cuts will cause, onto immigrants.
It's the "Big Lie" that Hitler told the German working class -- that the Jews were to blame for the economic crisis -- all over again. Anti-immigrant racism is one of the bosses' main tools for building fascism. Building working class internationalism is a communist tool for smashing fascism.
Boston Anti-Racist