Capitalism is in shambles. The homeless line the streets of every major city, and prisons are a booming industry. Basic services like health care, education and mass transit are becoming a privilege.
Striking workers are reduced to watching scabs cross their picket lines, and take their jobs, while union leaders tell them to obey the laws and court injunctions.
The millionaires who step out of their air conditioned Rolls Royces long enough to cut our pay and increase our work expect us to accept this fascist onslaught. As they whine about competition, how far do they expect us to go? Will we each do the work of two, three or four? Should we save capitalism the expense of feeding us and simply call Dr. Kevorkian?
While workers are taking it on the chin, there has been a flurry of activity by the union leaders to try to stay in business and maintain their own corporate lifestyle. The capitalists' labor lieutenants have championed global competitiveness nearly to the point of self extinction. Shrinking unions, unable or unwilling to stop the loss of members through cutbacks and layoffs, are merging like it's going out of style. More money, and lip service, is being put into organizing the unorganized, and just about every union leader has taken their turn declaring war on Newt Gingrich and the Republican "Contract on America." In other words, just re-elect Clinton.
The fact is, the AFL-CIO leadership, no matter what the outcome of their convention in October in New York, is fiercely loyal to the profit system. They have already sacrificed millions of jobs, and billions of dollars in our wages and benefits, to keep the bosses profitable. It's all they know. It's the nature of the beast.
But for workers, there is another choice: resolute class struggle against fascism. During the 1920's and `30's, the capitalist world was gripped by Depression, fascism was on the rise, and the stage was being set for World War II. Communists took the bull by the horns, and from the GM plants in Flint, Michigan, to the oil fields of Soviet Georgia organized hundreds of millions of industrial workers into an international anti-fascist movement. This movement built unions and fought for higher wages, shorter hours and against racism. They did it by breaking laws, fighting cops, attacking scabs, and seizing factories and mills. In the process, they won the 8 hour day, unemployment compensation, and smashed the Nazi war machine.
Looming large in the battle between bosses and workers stood the Soviet Union. The first workers' revolution stood as a beacon to the workers of the world. Workers looked to the Soviet Union and saw what was possible. Communist organizers in their unions were the direct representatives of that movement.
That first stab at building a new society, run by the working class and led by their communist party, accomplished great things. But ultimately, it failed. Soviet socialism kept the wage system and from this capitalist seed, the poison weeds of the capitalist system grew again.
We have paid a great price. The bosses gloat over the defeat of communism, to mask the failures of their rotten profit system. Without a revolutionary center for the international working class, we have seen every aspect of our lives deteriorate as capitalism lurches from crisis to crisis. Fascism is again on the rise, and war is on the horizon.
Revolutionary communists will not cry over spilt milk. Like it or not, we are involved in a battle. Fascist wage cuts, layoffs, jailings and killings are here today. And so is PLP. Thousands of LA garment workers have supported our fight to organize a massive garment union. Boeing workers in Seattle are joining us in the struggle against layoffs and gearing up for the October contract fight. Transit workers in Washington, DC and Oakland, California know us as leaders in the fight against job and service cuts. All these workers, and many more, know that in each of these struggles PLP points the way forward to communist revolution.
New York City welfare workers have called for a mass rally at the October AFL-CIO convention. Their demands are for jobs, for breaking the bosses' laws, and for organizing the unorganized. Many more workers should come to New York for this demonstration! Let's line up our troops for the battles to come.
Capitalist ideology describes the thinking of virtually every cop. Unclear to most people and even to many police is the explicit purpose of cops. The role of the police in capitalist society is to preserve the political power of the ruling class, to protect the ruler's properties, to intimidate and suppress immediate and potential political enemies among the working class. Let us be very clear. The role of the police is to protect capitalism from the working class, and especially from communists.
When the international communist movement was powerful the primary job of the police, led by the F.B.I., was to intimidate, harass and jail communists. This situation has momentarily changed. The current job of the police is to harass, intimidate, beat, dope-up, and jail workers, especially black and latin workers. This is in order to keep the workers politically weak and to prevent a revolutionary communist movement from reappearing.
You may ask, "Well, what has this got to do with the Simpson trial? " Fuhrman was one of the prosecution's main witnesses against Simpson. Fuhrman "found" the bloody glove. Because Simpson has a lot of money, he was able to secure a high paid legal team. Simpson was also able to hire private investigators. Because of the length of the trial and Simpson's money an investigator tracked down the Fuhrman tapes.
Over five million workers, many black, are involved with the criminal justice system. Tens of thousands are in prison because of frame-ups from nazi-cops. None of them have Simpson's financial ability to conduct a serious court case. Only militant mass action for revolution against the rulers and their police can ever seriously cope with the bosses' police terror. Workers can't rely on the bosses' judicial system!
*Fuhrman, boasting that at least on one occasion he and other policemen had a kill party to celebrate a police shooting, declares "that there is nothing better than a good beating....that's when everyone wants to get a beer...it's like the end of a football game. You have just won the championship and you're on a real high. You're dominant. You're powerful. You're unbeatable."
*In a general description of the police Fuhrman notes that, "Most real good policemen understand that they would love to take certain people to the alley and just blow their brains out...."
*Fuhrman describes how a policeman must cover his face when shooting someone in the temple to keep bone fragments out of his eyes.
*Fuhrman sums up his hatred of women and blacks when he admits his membership in a police gang called "Men Against Women." And then Fuhrman declares that he would, "line up every elected black official in L.A. and shoot them."
We don't know if Simpson killed his wife and her friend. But his main "crime" in the eyes of the police and the bosses is that he is black and was married to a white woman. If they can hang the killing on him the ruler's will have deepened racism in the U.S. And no matter how many times some bosses took Simpson out to play golf at their country clubs, he was never really in the big time.
Just Doing their Jobs
The main point is not whether or not Simpson killed his wife but what is the true political nature of the police. Fuhrman let the cat out of the bag. "Shocked," you say. Fuhrman is just a fluke. Or maybe it's just the notoriously racist L.A.P.D. Not so. It's every police department in the world. The police reflect the ideology of their masters in the ruling class.
For decades there have been scandals and exposés of crooked police. Three recent cases: In New Orleans a cop was just indicted for murdering a woman who had filed a police brutality charge against him. In Philadelphia, for many years a group of cops have been planting crack on hundreds of innocent people, including a church-going grandmother who had to spend 3 years in jail, and then stealing their money. A dozen or more drug pushing cops were indicted in a Harlem, New York precinct. No reforms are ever going to change the outlook of the police. When the cops do these "crimes," they are doing their jobs. More black, latin and women police hasn't altered the class orientation of the cops.
The working class led by communists are the mortal enemies of the bosses. The bosses train their police to understand this major fact of life. The police can never be reformed or curbed under capitalism. Only when capitalism is smashed and replaced by revolutionary communism will the working class establish its own rules of justice. Justice is in the hands of the class that controls society. Workers' justice can only be achieved by winning communism.
Then declining profits for capitalists in the healthcare industry sharpened competition among the bosses. Hahnemann and many other institutions "restructured" the work force to cut labor costs. Union workers were re-trained so one worker had to do the jobs of three to six.
Betty was one of these workers. In spite of her age and her high blood pressure, she now had to do heavy manual labor every day. She was forced to scrub bathroom floors on her hands and knees. She was forced to use a large buffer to scrub halls. She had to do the heavy physical work of caring for ten patients. She did transport work and dietary work.
Betty knew the work was too much for her. She told her friends, "They're killing me." She requested light duty and was refused. She wrote letters to administration and was ignored.
On August 12, after being in restructuring only three weeks, Betty died of a stroke.
Capitalism is deadly to the working class. Now, as declining profits and intensified competition force the capitalists to adopt increasingly fascist policies, it is more deadly than ever.
We have a choice. That choice is communism, a system without money, wages, or profits. Communist production will be organized to meet workers' needs. In communist society, someone with Betty's health problems would, like everyone else, contribute her labor based on her abilities and her commitment. She would not be given a job that clearly threatened her life.
The bosses' flunkies say that Betty should have retired before she died, as if this were a suicide rather than a murder. Betty, like many workers, felt that she had to stay on the job until she was 65 to get full retirement benefits.
This is the choice capitalism offers older workers: work until you drop, or retire and starve. Under communism all workers old and young will live as equals, regardless of our different abilities to work.
1199C officials were accomplices to the murder. They railroaded members into ratifying the restructuring contract. They didn't allow any time for discussion about what it would mean. Union President Henry Nicholas told the members that they would lose their jobs unless they approved the restructuring. Why? Because the union accepts the limits of the capitalist system.
The union leadership says that the workers cannot be organized to stop restructuring, so the union should participate in it in order to have a say. Would these union officials have volunteered as overseers on a slave plantation in order to "have a say?" Or as camp guards for the Nazis?
The union leaders are wrong. Workers can, must, and will organize against the bosses' fascist "restructuring." But to put an end to modern-day wage-slavery we need to break down the walls of capitalism with communist revolution.
Most everything was taken out of the contract by Illinois House Bill 206, a racist law passed last May which applies only to Chicago. Ever since Chicago schools became mostly black and latin, the Illinois legislature has been giving them less money, and the new law continues that tradition. It outlaws strikes and other work actions by the CTU as well as the right to bargain over class size, school schedules, seniority rights, and due process. The new law pushes schools to privatize school services such as lunchrooms, custodian work, and clerical work. The law even leaves the door open for schools to "privatize" teaching. Already, 2700 Board employees have been laid off as a result of this privatization.
Money-saving cutbacks such as larger class size are bound to occur now that these items are under the direct control of the board, the school principals or the Mayor's office. Chicago Public Schools, known to be among the worst in the nation, will only get worse as a result of this law.
The union has refused to respond to these racist attacks on Chicago students and teachers from the beginning. The leadership, led by President Reece, is more interested in filing lawsuits and getting Democrats elected than fighting back. He is, after all, a close friend of Mayor Daley's. Two years ago, Reece and company did nothing while the Board shut down the schools, terminated 2000 high school positions, and increased class size throughout the city. What's the difference, really, between the Republican legislators who passed this fascist law, the Democratic Mayor Daley and his appointees who will carry it out, and union leaders who refuse to fight it?
Some teachers have organized to fight back. In several high schools, petitions were circulated against this bill. Signs were placed on union bulletin boards demanding that Reece be willing to go to jail against this bill. ("I'm not Ghandi," he said.) At one mainly latin high school, six teachers, two hundred students and parents took a "field trip" to the mayor's office, where they sat in for over an hour. Teachers must continue to mobilize themselves, their students and parents. We must do so in union meetings, inside our schools and classrooms and in our communities. Union hacks, lawyers and Democratic Party leaders have little interest in providing for the working class Our struggle lies in convincing more and more teachers to unite with their students in this fight.
The working class will decide what kind of schools we need, or whether we need schools at all. The working class will decide on the best way for us to learn what we need to know, to investigate new ideas and unanswered questions, to develop the skills our society needs.
Imagine this. A group of workers, teachers, students, and parents sit down and discuss the best way for kids to learn math. Should there be separate math classes or should they be integrated with reading or science? What role should computers play in math education? Is the best way to learn in a classroom, or in conjunction with a job or a project? Etc. Then they make a plan and carry it out. It doesn't depend on some banker or politician to approve it, only on the needs of communist society. It's time to take education away from the banks and put it in the hands on the workers--fight for communism.
That's what workers should expect from barking along with a fascist dog. He'll soon turn around and bite the hands that feed him.
Mr. Lee has a bone to pick with the ILGWU and with the big clothing manufacturer GUESS. Workers are on strike at his Good Times shop, which makes clothes for GUESS. After the ILGWU threatened a boycott of GUESS products, the big company agreed not to send work to Mr. Lee's other shop, Song of California.
So Mr. Lee sees GUESS and the ILGWU as his enemies.
There's a bigger bone here, too. The big garment manufacturers and their banker allies want tighter control over this highly profitable industry. They want a stable work force and they don't want small contractors like Mr. Lee getting such a large share of the profits. They are willing to shell out a measly minimum wage of $4.25 per hour and a few scanty benefits in return for ILGWU officials' help with keeping the workers in line.
This program will squeeze many small contractors out of their industry. No wonder that Mr. Lee is driven to organize Song of California workers into a fascist anti-union movement. He is panic-stricken at the prospect of losing his two-bit piece of the "American (capitalist) Dream."
GUESS and the ILGWU really are Mr. Lee's enemies.
GUESS and the ILGWU officials are the workers' enemies, too.
The big manufacturers like GUESS pay garment workers a wage only a little less miserable than the contractors. These same bosses drive down the prices paid to the contractors, so they are the ones truly responsible for the pitiful piece-work rates in the shops. They rob far more from the working class than small thieves like Mr. Lee.
ILGWU officials have done everything possible to sabotage the Good Times strike. They kept strikers from attacking scabs and from stopping trucks carrying scab work. When strikers asked for more support from other workers, union officials told them we didn't need it. They pushed anti-communism to try to keep strikers from accepting donations of food collected by the Progressive Labor Party and other garment-worker militants. They had long discussions with GUESS bosses but never tried to win Song of California workers to join the Good Times strikers.
So Mr. Lee is against GUESS and the ILGWU, and GUESS and the ILGWU are against the workers. But the enemy of your enemy isn't always your friend. Mr. Lee proved that when he laid off the Song of California workers.
When small bosses organize a small group of workers, you get small-scale fascism. When big bosses unite with big unions, you get large-scale fascism. Either way, the workers lose out. A fascist pro-boss worker at Song of California told PLP communists, "In El Salvador, we killed people like you." And what are conditions like for garment workers in El Salvador? Even worse than in LA!
Know Your Enemies...And Know Your Friends
Communist workers in PLP have distributed thousands of strike-support leaflets in the LA garment d istrict. We are organizing garment workers to push the ILGWU to fight for a decent salary, not the pitiful minimum wage, and for a shorter work week of SIX HOURS WORK FOR EIGHT HOURS PAY.
We work in the ILGWU to get the union to smash national borders and organize from Los Angeles to Mexico, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, and every garment center in the world. Most important, our leaflets and our newspaper Challenge-Desafio point the way for workers to put an end to the capitalist system, the true source of workers' misery.
In just five hours at a busy intersection, AC drivers and friends collected over 2000 signatures on a petition against service cutbacks. Drivers turned in another 1000 names collected on the buses at the end of their lines. The petition is sponsored by URAT (United Riders And Transit workers).
People are angry. Hundreds packed public hearings about the cutbacks. URAT is showing that just a little leadership and confidence in working people can have a big impact.
Many more AC workers are getting active. But most don't yet see the importance of being involved. Some think they won't be affected by the latest attacks. Others think that another good job is just around the corner. They're wrong. Still others are waiting on the Amalgamated Transit Union leaders (ATU 192) to call them to mass action. They will be waiting and waiting and waiting and...
The week before the hearings a PLP leaflet warned, "Without an all out effort to unite employed, unemployed and part-time workers in a fight for jobs, it is a pipe-dream that AC workers should expect $17.50 per hour with full benefits much longer." Come the morning of August 24th, we looked like prophets. The headline in the Oakland Tribune< read: "Stopping a Busload of Trouble - cash poor AC Transit pushing new contracts to save old jobs."
The District is asking all Unions to re-open their contracts. We must aim to build an alliance of all government workers, especially Bay Area Transit workers, against this attack on jobs at a living wage.
The Oakland capitalists have their large-circulation daily, the Tribune<. They use it to try to drive a wedge between riders and drivers. We should thank them for reminding us of us the vital role the press plays in class struggle. We will fight harder to build the circulation of the workers' newspaper, Challenge. Our paper raises the revolutionary question:
Should capitalism be allowed to exist when all it can offer the working class is a choice between cuts in jobs and services or cuts in a living wage?
What should the anti-racists do? Talk to them? Yell at them? Hit them?
When a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) group arrived on the scene, militant chants of "Death, Death, Death to the Klan" drowned out the KKK speeches. But the Klan supporters were undaunted. Words alone won't stop them. PLP quickly led a small group of protesters to attack these racist scum. Two ended up on the ground and hurt while five others ran off.
When is it right to physically attack the racists? Whenever you get the chance and the sooner the better. If these punks think white power is where it's at, let them find out now that those beliefs will get them hurt or killed. Let them think twice about whether they really believe in that crap. Make it harder for the US. ruling class to build up a mass fascist movement.
Because it's the rulers -- the big capitalists and their politicians -- who are behind the Klan. They try to use the Klan to get black, white, and immigrant workers to hate each other so the bosses can better exploit us all.
It's the rulers who put Klan racism into practice. The Klan blames immigrants for the mass unemployment caused by capitalism -- the US. ruling class passes Prop. 187 to deny immigrants health care and education. The Klan claims "white superiority" -- the US. ruling class drops all pretense to affirmative action. And all the while white workers as well as black and latin workers are hit with cuts in jobs, cuts in wages, cuts in vital services.
The violent struggle against the white supremacists must grow into a violent struggle against the racist rulers and their capitalist system.
Workers Key to Anti-Racist Fight
The PLP did not have enough people at the rally in Woodstock to get all the racist punks. We certainly didn't have enough to take on the cops and bust up the Klan rally. We don't yet have enough forces to destroy capitalism with communist revolution and put an end to racism forever. But we will.
Many from all over the country contributed bail money for the six people arrested for bashing the Klan. We need more donations to pay legal fees to keep them out of jail, and to carry on the work of building this movement.
Even more, masses must be won to come out and join the struggle. For instance, a young white worker came to Woodstock to protest the KKK with his Filipino wife and children. "I was undecided up until the night before. But when I woke up this morning, the way I looked at it, the Klan hates my whole family.That's when I made up my mind that we had to come". Influenced by the leadership of PL, this worker too took action against the racist scum. We need many more such workers:from the unions, from community organizations, from school groups - that's how our anti-racist army will grow.
These guys were clearly distressed that their pal, Illinois congressman Mel Reynolds, was just convicted of having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl. They pulled together this large gathering -- church people, gangbangers, fraternity members, -- to promote "new, credible young leaders" like Jesse Jackson Jr., who is running for Reynolds' congressional seat.
Jesse Sr. gave lip service to "Jobs Over Jails" and the "Rainbow Coalition." But he never whispered a word about black workers and youth joining with latin, asian and white workers and youth to <D>fight<D><C255> for jobs. He called for an "urban policy" (whatever that is) but not for "6 Hours Work For 8 Hours Pay," or any strategy for winning the hundreds of thousands of jobs we need.
Another "credible young leader," Minister James T. Weeks, announced that "God created government, so government is good." He got it partly right that the government exists so the rulers can control the masses and protect private property. ("If there were no government, they would steal your shirt, your car, your house, and your wife," was the way this sexist clergyman put it.)
But capitalist government exists to protect the private property of the capitalists - the factories, the fields, the mines, and the banks. Capitalist government protects the bosses and their right to exploit the labor of the workers. We workers need a communist government, where the masses are the rulers and exploitation and racism are history. We won't get it by voting or praying. We will get it by organizing an armed revolution.
Saturday five comrades got arrested fighting the Klan in Woodstock, Illinois. On Sunday, I started taking up donations for bail money on my ward at Cook County Hospital. The results were terrific. Nurses, ward clerks, doctors and technicians, secretaries and housekeeping workers--dozens of workers dug into their pockets, often before I finished telling the story, to pull out $3 or $5 or $20 or even $50 to bail out the anti-racist fighters. All told we have collected $595 from County workers and several others promised to contribute after payday on Wednesday. Others had similar experiences around the city and the initial bail money--around $4,000--was raised from donations in a few days.
There is a positive and a negative aspect to this report. The positive side is obvious: our base of Asian, Latin black and white health workers can be counted on to back us up when we fight against the Klan and other racist and fascist organizations. The negative side is this: We didn't organize aggressively, thoroughly and creatively enough to do what really needed to be done in Woodstock on Saturday. We needed to show up there with busloads of workers from the unions we belong to at the hospital.
A few anti-racist fighters can inspire hundreds to donate thousands. But we will not stop the fascists from building their movement that way. We need to create an alternative to the mindless racist scapegoating the Klan offers unemployed white workers and youth. We also need to move groups of workers into militant action to smash the KKK and to fight for more and better jobs. Unchecked growth of fascist organizations is a deadly danger. The Klan or groups like it will be used to carry out mass, open violence against strikes and other workers' actions while they preach their divisive drivel.
Our job as a Party is to move the vast anti-racist majority into action for our class and against the enemy. That means fighting for jobs and smashing the Klan.
Red Hospital Worker
I work at the county hospital in San Francisco, and my daughter participated in the Summer Project. For years I have wanted to be involved in one of the youth summer projects, but it has never worked out. The plan focused on the AC Transit Cuts sounded good at the beginning, but to see it actually come off, and seeing the leadership the youth took is even more inspiring.
The California Nurses Association (CNA) held a two-day conference on exposing and fighting managed care. Hospitals are now given a fixed payment per patient per month, and there is a profit incentive to gut labor and gut patient care. At least half of California Medi-Cal patients on AFDC are being forced into private HMOs which will make millions by denying these patients needed care. Public hospitals and clinics, in turn, are forcing down their labor costs to win contracts from these private HMOs for the care of these Medi-Cal patients.
The Summer Project youth visited this CNA conference during a lunch break. They sold 61 papers and distributed hundreds of leaflets attacking public health care cutbacks and managed care. In spite of the professional atmosphere of the conference, we met a very sympathetic reception. We also sold papers and distributed the leaflet at my hospital, where we are trying to start a campaign against managed care. Many of the youth from Los Angeles had visited LA County Hospital, which the bosses were trying to close; they were especially aware of the deadly cutbacks in public health care. I wish to thank them for the help and inspiration they have given me.
Bay Area Red
In general, the campaign against reformism in Challenge has been moving forward. But the August 30 issue was a step backwards. The front page headline for the editorial was "WORKERS & YOUTH NEED JOBS INSTEAD OF JAILS". Above it in smaller type was "Capitalism is the Biggest Criminal." The headline is a loud call for economic reform and definitely implies that jobs are there for workers. So why is it in Challenge?
Ironically, within the editorial there's a sentence that, if slightly changed, would have set it apart from the apologists for the system - "CAPITALISM CAN'T CREATE JOBS - SO CAPITALISTS BUILD JAILS TO PUT THE UNEMPLOYED." It's political and class conscious and both blames and condemns the system. Instead what we got was a call for economic reform.
In another paragraph the concluding sentence was, "A society unable to provide jobs, food (etc.)...is spending a billion dollars to build jails". A rather superficial partial explanation of this was that there is much money to be made in building jails, security firms, alarms, etc. But these jails are not about profit or even just to jail the unemployed. It's true, as the article says, that capitalism can't create jobs. The capitalists know this. They also know that the working class response has always been resistance. To cope with this, the ruling class who cannot offer reform, openly announces suppression- that is, on-going fascism. This was powerfully emphasized (but publicly played down) by the 30 billion dollars the government voted to spend for a million strong multi-national police force.
Another paragraph starts, "How sick is capitalism?" that even with "wages dropping nearly 3% per year...companies like Nike need (more) slave labor in order to stay in business". This is not just a bad formulation. It is the wrong conclusion to a non-Marxist analysis. The fact is, Nike or any significant industry constantly tries to pay lower wages, even if making soaring profits. That's rampant all over the country. You don't have to be a communist to know this.
If the above criticisms were used one of the conclusions would be that capitalism must move toward fascism as an inescapable co-feature of rising unemployment. This type of estimate offers one a direction, a program for action for a revolutionary communist movement. We need to sensibly replace and immeasurably improve, in quality and readability, the usual unrelated, constantly repeated sloganizing that shows little if any thought, like..."communist revolution will eliminate wage slavery." Well, they haven't in the past. But unclear and mind-deadening endings like that are routinely printed in Challenge. We need to change this.
New York Reader
The courts last month awarded Carlos Guzman $100,000 compensation for being harassed by Gus Bevona, president of Local 32-BJ, and his hired goons.
Guzman had challenged Bevona in the last union election, winning 5% of the vote. He had accused the union of corruption and racism. Guzman charged the union with not protecting the rights of latin workers who make up about 17% of the union membership.
At that time Guzman's base of support was among the rank and file workers. He organized a group to pressure the union into protesting a round of layoffs at Citibank The union's token efforts were enough to squelch Guzman's base of support by creating the illusion that the union was doing something for latin workers.
It is not clear whether Guzman will continue his campaign after winning his lawsuit. And what will he do with the $100,000 of workers' dues money he is getting from the union?
It is clear that the workers are not loyal to the union leadership. They are both angry and fearful about losing their jobs. It is important for communists and anti-racists to work in rank and file caucuses like Guzman's in order to put forward a militant program including:
*Fight for jobs with "6 hours work for 8 hours pay"
*Defy the bosses laws
*Organize the unorganized to stop union busting
*Build workers solidarity, build multi-racial, international unity.
In order to build class struggle on the job and to gain political leadership of the workers, communists must explain how capitalism exploits the workers and how we can destroy it.
32 BJer
The "International Socialist Organization" (ISO) showed up in Woodstock, Illinois to protest the Klan. They brought a number of people out and led some good chants. One was "Black and White Unite and Fight, Smash the KKK." But actions speak louder than words. Though supposedly there to oppose the Klan, they actually pushed between the KKK and anti-racists who were beating on them. "Too many cops around," they whined. They stopped chanting against the Klan so they could scream at PL. Sometimes people wonder why all the groups on the "left" can't just get together.
Chicago PLer
Vera Helena Monezi has been an administrative worker at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) since 1981 and is active in her union. Two years ago she reported to the police that her boss, the head of the Biology Department, had been harassing her sexually. When she refused to have sex with him, he made her life in her workplace unbearable. Then he threatened to fire her.
Then in March, 1994 Vera was transferred to the Center of Marine Biology of the USP. Her new boss put Vera "in disposability" in June, 1994. This put Vera out of a job, though she remained on the university payroll.
This move was completely illegal. But union lawyers could not get this illegal move revoked. The police and the judges seem to be intimidated by the University, the most important one in the country and the home of the Brazilian president. Now, supported by powerful and renowned USP professors and other obscure political forces, the sexist boss has sued Vera! She could be jailed for eight years for "calumny and defamation." She has also received death threats. The only professor who stood by Vera has been also fired - and she is a very productive molecular biologist.
If Vera is jailed it will be a setback for the workers' movement as well as a personal disaster for her. Who would then have the courage to denounce this kind of violence anymore? We appeal to all to help us in any way within your reach. Statements of support for Vera, and requests for more information, can be faxed to 55-11-814 57 89 (SINTUSP - Workers Union of the University of Sao Paulo).
Friend from Brazil
At one time, the Colombian government claimed that "the problem" was drug king Pablo Escobar. But Escobar allied with government security forces to assassinate thousands of community and union leaders. Now the capitalists boast that they have the Cali cartel bosses in jail. But the dealers turned themselves in! The Colombian and US governments cut a deal with these bandits, too.
When Reagan was the U.S. president, he was caught using drug money to finance the contras in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador. A US Embassy official in Colombia was found with drugs last July. At one time the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) allied with the Cali cartel to destroy the Medellin cartel. Now the DEA is "after" the Cali cartel. Their real interest is to make sure that US bosses get the largest possible cut of the profits.
According to the UN, the "illegal" drug market is worth more than $500 billion dollars a year. Only 20% goes to the producers. The rest ends up in European, Japanese and US banks.
The international chemical industry has profited the most: Latin American sales of chemicals used to process the coca leaf have doubled recently. What do the CIA and the DEA say about this? Nothing - they themselves make the sales contacts.
But drugs are only part of the Colombian economy. There's oil, too, and a large manufacturing sector. The Colombian capitalists are in disarray, fighting among themselves over the profits wrung from the labor of the Colombian working class. The US imperialists want their piece of the action, and so do the German and Japanese bosses. The CIA has reported a plot to assassinate Samper, and there are rumors of a possible coup. In spite of Samper's strong-arm tactics against the working class, the Colombian ruling class is weak.
The public prosecutor's office was set up as a "reform" that supposedly would guarantee that the Colombian government would comply with its own laws. But the capitalist bosses have used this repressive apparatus to clean up their filthy image as torturers and assassins.
For example, the public prosecutor cleared the assassin General Velandia, who has been denounced by the bosses own "human rights" organization.
Meanwhile, US bosses are using the "war on drugs" to pave the way for mass deportations of immigrant workers. New York governor Pataki put 86 Colombian workers on a plane for having been convicted of minor offenses -- in most cases, simply drug possession. Now he will be able to lock up even more young black U.S. workers.
Samper is trying to maneuver his way out of a profound crisis by organizing a mass campaign "against violence." (Maybe he borrowed this trick from the U.S. bosses.) The Colombian fake left is helping this boss by urging union, peasant, student, and guild movements to support him. The Progressive Labor Party says there are no "lesser evil" bosses. Workers should take advantage of the bosses' crisis to advance the revolutionary communist movement that will smash them all.