A look at the map explains what Russian bosses want in Chechnya. Chechnya is in the south of Russia. It is in the mountainous Caucasus region bordering on Turkey and Iran. On one side of the mountains is the Caspian Sea. This area is rich in natural resources, especially oil in Azerbaijan. On the other side are the Russian Black Sea ports. These provide access to the Mediterranean and the world's oceans.
The struggle in Chechnya is about oil and access to markets. Oil from the Azerbaijani center of Baku travels through the Caucasus to get to the Russian industrial heartland. Russian bosses must have that oil to fuel their industries. They don't want to cede control of the oil flow to the Chechen upstarts. They will kill thousands more to keep control of the oil and its profits.
The capitalist masters in Moscow are taking a page from the book of their capitalist competitors in Washington. Five years ago, Iraq threatened US imperialism's control over the world's biggest oil reserves in the Persian Gulf. The US imperialists, with the help of French and British imperialists, killed hundreds of thousands to hold onto that oil and its profits. Since the Gulf War, half a million more workers have died as Bush, then Clinton, schemed to dump the Saddam Hussein regime in favor of Iraqi bosses friendlier to them.
Oil is that important to capitalism. It is the prize over which the bosses have launched many of the wars of this century. Millions of workers have died in those oil wars.
In the early 20th century, the Russian communist Bolshevik Party organized in the oil centers of Tblisi in Georgia and Baku in Azerbaijan. They built strongholds in the working class districts. The first strikes in the world by oil workers took place in Baku under Bolshevik leadership. One of the key organizers was future party leader Josef Stalin, a Georgian working among Azerbaijanis.
After the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917-22, the Bolsheviks strengthened their base among Caucasian workers. They won many to communism. The name of the city leveled by Yeltsin's troops, Pervomayskoye, means "May 1st"--the international communist holiday May Day.
Soviet communists made great strides in overcoming racism and building internationalism. But they also promoted nationalism as long as it was "national in form but socialist in content." Mainly this meant opposing "Great Russian chauvinism" (racism in the name of Russian nationalism) by building other nationalisms.
Their line then was similar to the multi-culturalism of today. However, most of the multi-culturalists don't say anything about socialism.
Nationalism is a fundamentally capitalist ideology. Under capitalism, all productive resources are owned privately. The owners organize themselves as nation-states in order to fend off rivals and force workers to submit to exploitation.
Socialism abolished private ownership of production. However, it maintained wages. Without realizing it, socialism retained the core of capitalism. No wonder, then, that the Soviets never recognized the pro-capitalist essence of nationalism.
Nationalism is not the cause of the bloody war in the Caucasus. Imperialist competition over oil and oil.profits is the cause. But the bosses would have a hard time getting workers to fight and die in the name of oil. Nationalist ideology serves them better.
Will there ever be an end to these bloody wars over oil? Yes, when we get rid of the bosses with communsit revolution.
These chieftains' ideological grip was weak among urban workers but strong in remote villages. The Nazis had some success, especially among the leaders of the Moslem nationalities. Moslem SS units fought for Hitler against the Soviets.
The Soviet response to this development was entirely wrong. They should have scrapped their Russian-nationalist slogans. They should have intensified efforts to win workers in the Caucasus, and elsewhere, to communism.
Instead, Soviet authorities deported six nationality groups to central Asia. They included the Chechens. Everybody in these ethnic groups was deported, including the communists among them. Many died en route.
Khrushchev let them return after 1956, when the Soviet Union was firmly committed to the road of capitalism. He did so not to build communist internationalism but, on the contrary, to rebuild nationalist rivalries.
Russian racism against Caucasians, with a long history under the Tsars, returned with renewed force. The results--the destruction of Grozny and Pervomayskoye--are death and misery for Russian and Chechen workers alike.
But, the 30,000 striking building and maintenance workers, members of Local 32B, are discovering how the bosses and their City Hall servants also use their troops at home. Part of the largest local police force in the world, New York's 35,000-member police department, is harassing, intimidating, attacking and arresting pickets at many of the 1,000 struck buildings.
These cops, carrying out various court injunctions and "local ordinances" limit the number and location of pickets. When the strikers attempt to stop scabs from stealing their jobs, the cops intervene on the side of the bosses and arrest the strikers. When the scabs arrive, the cops escort them into the buildings.
In the aftermath of the recent blizzard, a truck carrying a load of scabs with shovels was escorted and guarded every step of the way, as they from building to building, to perform the snow-cleaning job normally done by the striking workers. Meanwhile, Mayor Giuliani warned the strikers, under threat of arrest, "not to interfere" with the scabs stealing their jobs. Of course, he never told the bosses not to cut the workers' wages.
The role of these local troops, and of the whole state (government) apparatus, is to protect the bosses' profits. And it's all carried out in the name of "democracy," of being "neutral" (the cops "don't take sides"). The workers have the "right to picket;" the bosses have the "right to use scabs to break the strike."
This is typical of the role of the state under capitalism: to protect the profits of a tiny number of bosses and their drive to exploit tens of millions of workers, whether in Bosnia or Brooklyn. (Did you ever see cops invading the bosses' office and beating them over the head until they granted the workers' demands?) The 32B strike is the "war at home." The cops are the troops used to carry out the bosses' dirty work, and it's true in every city in this capitalist world.
Fundamentally the only way to change this situation would be to overthrow these bosses with communist revolution. This would wipe out the bosses, their state apparatus and their profit system, once and for all. The working class would establish a society in which the military would be on the workers' side because the troops would be the working class itself. Then workers' armed power would be used to prevent the bosses from making a comeback to re-establish capitalism to exploit workers.
Start organizing to get rid of all the Bevonas and bosses by joining the Progressive Labor Party and building for communist revolution.
Why he's Gus Bevona. The man who rules with an iron hand the 70,000-member Local 32B-J, building and maintenance workers, nearly half of whom are on strike against the city's commercial buildings. According to the Times, he "speaks the language of class warfare."
But this "class warrior" has left the 30,000 strikers completely unprepared for what looks like a long walkout. He has organized no concentration of forces; handfuls of pickets, mostly two or three, huddled in front of tall office buildings while the real estate bosses maintain them with scabs. While rank-and-file pickets at some of the larger buildings have attempted to stop these scabs, and been arrested for their efforts, Bevona allows the security guards who are in his very own local to work in these struck buildings.
Bevona has probably not shut down even one building of the 1,300 on strike. His idea of "labor solidarity" is Teamster drivers parking at curbside and calling the customers inside the building to come down to pick up their packages (instead of the driver delivering them to the customer's door). This is called "respecting a picket line" by that great union reformer, Ron Carey.
These losing tactics follow Bevona's "opposition" to big outfits like Citibank that fired Local 32B workers and contracted out their jobs at half the pay. He told workers to give out leaflets, while the union runs advertisements in the press and at bus stops. Meanwhile, those jobs keep going down the drain.
But then what could workers expect from a businessman who runs the union like a business. Even the head of the city's Central Labor Council referred to Bevona (approvingly) as a "C.E.O." Takes one to know one.
Bevona may very well have a "class warfare" style. The trouble is he's conducting warfare for the bosses, against the working class. He's a perfect example of how unions work within the capitalist system and inevitably end up serving that system and those who control it.
The rank-and-file's only immediate course is to take the initiative, organize mass picket lines in front of the largest buildings to fight to stop the scabs and shut down the likes of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. Even this would be a defensive battle to try to prevent the bosses from paying newly-hired workers less than half the rate of experienced workers. The real way to get rid of the Bevonas and the bosses with whom he works is to shut down and destroy capitalism, the system that spawns them, and replace it with communist revolution. That's the real language of "class warfare."
We are a group of students from various high schools throughout NYC. To show our support for the 30,000 striking maintenance workers, members of the 32B-32J union, we distributed Challenge-Desafío and leaflets.
We spoke to the workers about our newspaper and the ideas of communism. The majority of the strikers were happy to receive our support and were very open to our ideas. We offered communist solutions for resolving their problems, and those of all workers. We told them that communism was the only solution. Some disagreed with our ideas about communism, but most agreed that the bosses were the cause of their problems.
We realize the severity of their situation. Many of the workers are under the illusion that the union is their savior. Their faith in the union is a major drawback.
After speaking to them we gained a better understanding of how the capitalist media controls the minds of the people. We wanted them to realize that there is no real way for them to win this reform struggle. The only way to win this wage war forever is for all the workers to unite in the fight for communism.
Why would we as youth go out and support the strike? This fight affects all working class people, including youth. Although we were out there because we had sympathy for them, this was a struggle for our own needs also.
We plan to continue visiting the picket lines and to get out as many Challenge-Desafíos as possible. We hope this will make an impact on the morale of the strikers. Our main goal is to gain more Party members to abolish the system and join us in the fight for communism.
Showing support
You could see the score the moment you walked into the room. A railing divided it in half. One half had ten big desks with comfortable chairs and water pitchers. That was the Board's half. Two hundred of us crowded into the other half. Even so, we couldn't all get inside.
The hearing was all about inequality.
A few bankers, businessmen, and contractors (headed by a representative of the Coca Cola company) would make the decisions. Thousands of workers' kids would end up attending dangerously run-down and overcrowded schools. These schools would prepare them for their roles as exploited workers and cannon-fodder for the bosses' army. Unequal schools for an unequal society.
The Board's own experts say they need "as much as $1.9 billion just to bring current schools to minimal standards." This doesn't include replacing obsolete schools, building new classrooms, or improving accessibility for the handicapped. But their plan calls for spending less than half that amount. They issued a fat book detailing their plan just before this final hearing.
Most of those wanting to speak were principals or heads of local school councils. You could tell they were truly concerned about the needs of the children who attend their schools. These were not particularly selfish people. But the form and content of the hearing--school reform in practice--brought out the worst in them.
The Board's secretary orchestrated things. First she called on people from schools that had gotten most of what they requested. That got old real fast. "Thank you, gentlemen of the Board. You have the wisdom of Solomon." Nothing about the schools that were left out.
Then she called on people from schools that had gotten only part of what they needed. "Would Solomon please reconsider our request?" said one. "I don't like to look a gift horse in the mouth," said another, "but...."
One man asked why his school wasn't getting basic repairs, while other schools were getting playlots and campus parks. Here was grist for the Board's mill. "Maybe we should cut out all the parks and playlots," a committee member said. You can imagine the uproar then. It seemed that none of the reformers was thinking about the best interests of all workers' children. By accepting the Board's reform agenda, they were becoming more selfish by the minute.
Many requests had a hidden racist agenda of nationalism. "We need more schools in our neighborhood." Translation: "We don't want latino children to go to underutilized schools in nearby black neighborhoods." Nationalism is a form of selfishness.
A few people--maybe influenced by the PLP leaflets they had received--tried to get beyond selfishness. One man asked for all the schools to get more. But he added, especially the schools in his area, and most especially his own school. If you took reformism seriously in this situation, you had to be selfish.
Around 9:00 p.m. we began to hear from the angry people. Their schools had gotten only a few crumbs. Still believing in reformism, they choked back their anger.
One group of very angry black women made an impassioned plea for their elementary school Its 90-year old building has the original windows, patched with masking tape and cardboard. It has no gym, no lunchroom, no play area. And it is only slated for a $20,000 grant.
"You made a very good case," responded a black man representing the Board. "Which school do you think we should take money away from so we can give you more?"
The women looked stunned. That wasn't their game. They were thinking of their own school, to be sure, like everyone else. But this was really too much.
I stood up in the audience and called out that this was a disgusting attempt to divide and conquer us. If the Board couldn't come up with $1.9 billion, they should admit that their system can't meet even the minimal needs of our children. Their plan is an insult to the working people of Chicago, I said. It is a racist plan. If this is the "chance of a lifetime for reform," then we clearly need a revolution.
The students who came to the hearing with me really liked what I'd said. Several took extra PLP leaflets to give out at school the next day. Some other people clapped, too. Most people don't really enjoy being selfish. The women who'd been put on the spot thanked me. I gave them extra leaflets, too.
They should really thank communism. Communism means working for the interest of the working class as a whole. Reformism builds selfishness and nationalism, but communism builds collectivity and class consciousness.
You can't have it both ways.
On Jan. 11, at 3:00 a.m. the 5th floor of the ten story Lake Grove apartment building located in a black working class neighborhood on Chicago's south side was a blazing inferno. Four people were killed in the fire, 61 were hospitalized and hundreds have been set up in temporary housing -- homeless, not knowing when or if they can return to their homes.
The fire is believed to have been started by a careless smoker, but it was the innate greed of capitalism that murdered the four black working class residents, ranging in age from 10-40 years old. It is always the profit motive that determines what the bosses will provide or, not provide for the working class.
East Lake Management Co. (owned by black Realtor Elzie Higgenbottom) which manages the Lake Grove apartments is a partner of capitalism. What other explanation could you have for not installing a sprinkler system, or not having a working fire alarm system for a building that size. money!
It would take dipping into the profits that they have stolen from the tenants for years. However, Higgenbottom like all capitalists doesn't mind dipping into their profits if it's going to yield them a return.
Higgenbottom is a big campaign contributor to Mayor Daley and other South Side politicians. A year ago East Lake was cited with 12 building code violations that ranged from non-functioning smoke detectors, to roach and rodent infestation (since the fire, there have been 31 new citations). Bruce Rozet, one of the buildings owners is a notorious slumlord, cited by Henry Cisneros secretary of HUD (the mother of all slumlords).
PLP is holding our May Day march on the South Side of Chicago to build our forces there to fight for communist revolution. Black workers are key in the fight for revolution. Join PLP.
On Jan. 4 and 5, municipal bosses sent cops to attack public transport strikers. The cops, usually busy harassing and murdering immigrant workers and youth, became scabs, ousting striking workers from four of the five bus depots they had been occupying.
The transit workers had been on strike since Dec. 7 when mass strikes erupted against the Juppe government cutbacks. The transit workers had their particular demand, opposing a two-tier wage system, which would mean lower wages for new-hires. When the mass strikes ended, the transit workers continued their strike.
After the cops' attack, 300 transit workers marched to City Hall to protest the cops' scabbing and Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin, who is also minister of urban affairs in Juppe's national government. The strikers threw rocks at cops who were escorting the few buses in service, only about 5% of all city buses. They also punctured bus tires. Many scab drivers got scared and refused to drive. Only with police protection were the subways able to run.
Given that the cops' attack failed, the bosses had to reach a deal with the workers, granting one of the workers' major demands -- an end to the two-tier wage system The strikers celebrated their victory, waving red flags.
PLP salutes this fight for equality. But it is not enough. The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first communist revolution. A new communist revolution is needed to abolish capitalist wage slavery.
The rulers were unprepared for the anger of the bus drivers. While the settlement has temporarily halted wage reductions, the French bosses still have to make huge cuts in order to unify the Franc with the D-mark. It won't be long before Juppe and the capitalist class re-group to try again to slice wages and social services.
The last several elections have seen the fascist Le Pen get over 10% of the vote. The need for wage and service cuts will drive the French bosses to look to thugs like Le Pen's National Front to build a fascist mass movement to attack the working class.
On Jan. 16, a woman was murdered and several other people were injured in Cité Soleil, the most populated and poorest slum of this city.
According to witnesses, cops shot at demonstrators in Boston, a neighborhood in Cité Soleil, killing 24-year old Martha Jean-Charles. A few minutes before the killing, a worker was shot in the leg during a protest by workers in Varreux, an industrial area 1.5 miles away.
Workers in Haiti are learning with their lives that it was a myth that Aristide and his friends in the U.S. occupation army were going to end the misery, fascist terror and mass unemployment brought about by decades of TonTon Macoute rule.
Workers have no friends among any group of capitalists. The only solution is to smash capitalism and fight for a communist society without any bosses. The PLP is beginning to build this kind of movement, uniting workers in Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic. Join us!
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 23 -- This week's Mark Fuhrman award for racist killer cops goes to the NYPD, whose cops are on a racist murderous rampage. They have declared open warfare on the working class, especially black and latin, neighborhoods.
On Saturday night, Jan. 21, cop Francisco Vargas murdered Leonard Lawton at the Polo Grounds Houses at Eighth Avenue and 157 Street in Upper Manhattan. The cop gave the usual lie, that he thought Mr. Lawton had a gun and was coming towards him. No gun was found. According to neighbors, Mr. Lawton had his hands in the air and was kneeling in front of the cop when he was shot in the face.
The next day, the cops shot another worker a few blocks away. Juan Paulino, was shot by the police at a pool hall at 158 St. and Amsterdam Ave. When the cops came, Mr. Paulino had a knife and did not drop it when he was told to. But Mr. Paulino, who recently emigrated from the Dominican Republic, did not speak English and did not understand what the cops ordered.
On Monday, Jan. 22, on the first anniversary of her son's death, Mirta Calderón's relatives, friends and supporters marched on the streets of Coney Island, Brooklyn, where 21-year old Anibal Carrasquillo, was shot by the cops. Here again, the cops lied, claiming that Anibal looked like he was going to shoot them. But Anibal was shot twice in the back.
Do you know a racist cop who deserves a Mark Fuhrman Award? Send his or her name and description to this newspaper. If there have been protests against this racist cop, let us know about that, too.
The PLP organizes for communist revolution to put the working class in charge. Under communism, Red-led workers' militias and the communist Red army will terrorize and suppress the racists and wanna-be exploiters. There will be no racist cops under communism.
Don't let the cops get away with racist murder. Organize, organize, organize!
"How many people will there be for the meeting?" the Director's secretary asked.
"¿Cuántas personas vienen?"
"¡Mil!"
"She says a thousand."
"A thousand?!? Ms. Rothstein won't meet with a thousand people!" The secretary was starting to get a little frantic.
CHICAGO, Jan. 17: The meeting was on. Then off. Then on again.
This was the scene as a dozen patients and hospital workers crowded into the outer office of Ruth Rothstein, the director of Cook County Hospital, demanding a meeting to get answers to their questions. They wanted to know why two devoted pediatricians had been fired. The hospital claimed "budget cuts" had eliminated the jobs, but the workers wanted to know why they had to eliminate those doctors' positions when there were eight unfilled attending physician positions in the budget that weren't touched. Why not cut the empty positions? They wanted to know why new staff pediatricians had been hired and these two doctors with many years service at the hospital were given the ax.
Now, with patients joining with staff, the struggle over this latest attack has entered a new phase. When the attending physicians tried to use their "influence" to reverse this firing they got nowhere. Even though two-thirds of the senior staff pediatricians signed letters of protest, their chairman gave them no straight answers and the hospital director wouldn't even give them an appointment. So the mixed group of patients plus hospital employees (including only a handful of pediatricians) has gotten farther than the "influential" doctors' group so far -- at least getting an appointment. What happens next depends on us.
Tens of thousands of Chicago's working class people depend on Cook County Hospital for their health care or their paycheck. Now the fight-back over these firings may be causing many people to wonder for the first time, "Can this system ever deliver what we need?" Communists, members of PLP giving leadership to this fight, answered that question: with a resounding "No!" The group of 26 who attended a meeting before marching over to the director's office was told, "Once the profit system is in charge, the idea of `serve the people' goes out the window. What we are seeing is a dictatorship of the dollar, power in the hands of a tiny group of capitalists. We need a society run by and for the working people."
Later in the discussion a doctor put forward the idea that we needed to use the "Hispanic connection" to build this fight, since the patients who came to this meeting were Spanish-speaking. One of the patients disagreed, pointing to one of the fired doctors who was not Hispanic and saying (in Spanish), "Look at him. He's not Latino and he lost his job. They're attacking all of us."
Clearly the firing of these doctors is racist, but not just because one of the fired doctors was latin. This attack is one more step in the cutting of health care at Cook County Hospital. Which workers will be hurt first? Black, latin, immigrant and poor white workers. That's who uses County hospital.
Now we have our work cut out for us. Rothstein's secretary told us the boss was "real busy" and couldn't meet with us sooner than Feb. 9th. O.K. We will also be "real busy." We left the director's office with the plan to really try to bring a thousand people to our meeting in a few weeks. This means discussing our communist perspective and our strategy of uniting with all the patients and workers to bring direct pressure on the hospital bosses to reverse this firing. But, as one worker put it, even though we "won't make a communist revolution this afternoon," we must keep that goal up front. Decent health care for all requires a society based on distribution according to need. That society is called communism.
Now consider the scene where 26 patients and hospital workers met in a room in the County Hospital. There were patients, secretaries, nurses, doctors, equipment cleaners; there were all colors, men and women. There was a time when groups of patients and health workers met like this to set policy for hospitals. Not in a fancy board room, but in a raggedy room like the one at County. Patients criticized their doctors if they took an arrogant tone. A nursing student questioned the chairman of orthopedics about having a condescending attitude toward his intern. The working people, patients and workers, were in charge. It sounds like a fantasy, but it really happened. In Shanghai, China, in the mid-1960s. Then China was still trying to build communism, a society of complete equality. We need to pick up where they left off. We need to build a society of complete equality where everything, including health care, is distributed according to need, not according to how rich you are, who you are or who you know. We need communism.
Thirty states have instituted the contracting out of prison labor for private profit, at minimum wage rates or less. "We don't have to pay health and welfare...vacation or sick pay," says Tessler. As a bonus, DPAS gets a 10% tax credit on the first $2,000 of each inmate's wages.
In comparing his San Quentin operation with the old one in Tecate, Tessler says: "We don't have a language problem, we have better control of our work and, because it's local, we have a quicker turnaround time." What a capitalist bonanza!
The same hypocritical U.S. bosses and media who make such a "human rights" hoopla about prison labor in China are rapidly setting up concentration camps for the 1.5 million inmates in the U.S., the largest prisoner population of any country in the world.
How many of these imprisoned workers have been framed, either by Fuhrman-style cops or by a combination of capitalism's mass unemployment, poverty and drug-ridden culture? No wonder Clinton wants 100,000 more cops on the streets to "capture" still more working-class youth. No wonder they're so hot to pour $90 billion a year into jails. They're the most profitable "factories" of all!
In Colorado, AT&T employs 50 prisoners as telemarketers. This is the same AT&T that just laid off 40,000.
In Washington State, 30 woman prisoners sew 1,000 sweatshirts a week for prison-labor contractor Joan Lobdell, who then deals them to outfits like Eddie Bauer and Union Bay. So much for the "negotiations" between Clinton's Secretary of Labor, Reich and the big clothing companies and department stores to "force" them to stop buying from slave labor producers in Latin America. They're doing exactly the same thing -- and worse -- right here in their own back yard!
In California, Proposition 139 legalized the sale of prison-produced goods on the open market. (Previously they were restricted to making items for government consumption only -- the old "license plate" scam.). So now, under the Joint Venture Program, inmates in Aveala State Penitentioniary are paid minimum wage to raise hogs and slaughter ostriches for export to Europe at $40 a pound. In Ventura young inmates make telephone reservations for TWA at $5 an hour, formerly done by unionized labor at triple that hourly wage. Of that prisoner's wage, 80% is taken away for "room and board," family support, and taxes.
In other states, prisoners make custom limousines, underwear, military uniforms, license plates for El Salvador (now there's a switch on "foreign" workers "stealing" jobs!), test blood for medical firms and raise hogs for Johns Markets.
Of course, prisoners are a profitable labor force. They lack any rights, can hardly organize a union or go on strike and, in fact, can be used to break strikes (See box). Says Luis Talamantez, one of the San Quentin Six: "If you don't work [in prison], you can count on violent retaliation. I struck and was thrown in the hole."
This entire system of forced slave labor is based on the drive for maximum profits. Real wages have been declining for 23 years, and this will drive them down still further. That's capitalism. Surely such a system doesn't deserve to exist.
The Nazis used their prisoners as cheap, slave-labor in W.W.II in the same way that mostly black and latin youth are being used today. Fascism is creeping up on us.
We need a system based on the needs of the working class -- communism. Under such a workers' system, there will only be a small number of prisoners -- those ex-bosses who want to restore capitalism and refuse to be rehabilitated. Unless, of course, the workers decide that their crimes warrant them being put six feet under. [All information from The Nation, 1/29/96]
In the mid-1980's, TWA flight attendants struck against a wage-cut. TWA then set up a reservations operation in California's Ventura Youth Facility jail. This scheme enabled TWA to transfer ticket reservation agents to flight attendant positions, thereby "replacing" the strikers -- a scab operation. It was the state of California's forced labor prison system that subsidized this strike-breaking effort.
Most workers are very cautious. "They'll just make it harder on you if you make a stand," is a common theme. Everyone fears retribution.
But cautious doesn't mean passive. On Jan. 4, the Emeryville rank-and-file resoundingly (28-7) defeated union charges of "slander, creating dissension, and gross disloyalty" brought by members of the Labor-Management "Drivers' Committee" against communist shop steward Dave Lyons.
Dave had accused the high seniority Drivers' Committee of aiding AC Transit's efforts to cut service and raise fares while organizing runs (shifts) to benefit only the top 30% of drivers. And he had publicized his charges in a PLP leaflet.
Dozens of workers attended the union meeting to defend Dave and also defeat a dues increase. The main person bringing the charges was President Christine Zook's boyfriend, Dave Nelson. Almost a year ago Nelson was magically appointed as full-time "Team Coordinator" at Emeryville. "Hillary," as he is known, has been "excused with pay" since then and spends most of his time cavorting with management.
On Jan. 10, several of the activists found themselves together in the Division. No doubt emboldened by their success at the union meeting they started talking loudly about Nelson. So loudly in fact that Cota, the Division superintendent, was drawn into the melee. Big mistake. He was immediately peppered with questions and finally had to admit that "Nelson is a special project of General Manager Sharon Banks." He then squirmed away to the coffee room. Three drivers followed and the last one closed the door, crossing his arms like the Black Panther guard he once was. They asked more questions. Cota -- the boss -- was a prisoner in his own house, at least momentarily.
This spur of the moment action was part humor, part dead-serious. No one forgot for a moment the power of Cota, but sharp wit and collectivity turned the tables on the boss and made him answer directly to the workers. Many a true word, they say, is spoken in jest. And that humor gave us a glimpse, however fleeting, of the bigger more serious picture. In life you have to take sides. Either you are with the workers, or like Zook and Nelson, you are on the side of the bosses.
Deep down inside most of us know this. That's why we get so much satisfaction out of even fleeting victories -- like backing Cota into a corner.Yet, at the same time, most of us resist this because if there is no middle ground then there is no real future for our class short of revolution. And that, everyone knows, is a gigantic task.
PLP will continue to give leadership to workers at A/C transit by organizing rallies and actions that highlight the source of our problems -- capitalism -- while emphasizing our ultimate and only solution -- communist revolution.
What is the message of Nixon? The movie pushes the idea that Nixon was just a pitiable putz whose two brothers died young, who (admirably?) clawed his way out of poverty, and who we should somehow feel sorry for. Who cares? What possible lesson is to be learned from these sob stories? What's important is to consider the terrible things the man did every day of his life.
One of the film's most important speeches is when Nixon tells a White House portrait of John Kennedy: "When they look at you they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are." (The actual quote's from another card-carrying liberal: Tom Wicker of the New York Times.) As this is the main sentiment of the film, let's analyze it. Do we really want to be what Kennedy was? NO! He escalated the murder of Vietnamese, attacked Cuba, and pursued racist policies at home. What single good thing did Kennedy ever do? The most you could come up with might be his speeches. The point is, we should look at what a politician does, not listen to his patriotic hypocrisies. Similarly, are we really what Nixon was? NO! Did you create the war in Vietnam, destroy people and their careers, or help beat and murder protesters at home?
Stone uses the true, but absurd, incident of Nixon wandering among demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of the night and trying to discuss football with them to show that Nixon was a misunderstood hero! Stone invents a young female protester, who, to Nixon's claim that he wants to end the war, says "So why does it go on?" Nixon has no answer. She says, "You can't stop it, can you? Even if you wanted to. Because it's not you - it's the system. And the system won't let you stop it." Nixon mutters, "I'm not powerless because I understand the system. I believe I can control it." Defining what Stone calls the Beast, the woman says, "It sounds like you're talking about a wild animal." Later, Nixon tells a staff member, "She understood something it's taken me 25 fucking years in politics to understand. The CIA, the Mafia, the Wall Street bastards..."
The woman's argument has merit -- Nixon was carrying out ruling class policies. But to show Nixon as a victim of the beast of capitalism -- though he is one of its more grotesque creations -- is truly a pathetic laugh. We can't allow "leftists" like Stone to get away with falsifying history, to turn Beasts into oddly attractive beauties. We must fight the liars, along with the class they lie for.
After a successful and inspiring communist dinner in Chicago, two other people me and were headed to an afterset to discuss the dinner and communism.
We were driving through downtown, headed to Lake Shore Drive when two dicks stopped us and told us to get out. The reason they said they stopped us was because the trunk of the car had no lock. This made them assume that the car was stolen without even checking to see if we had the key to the ignition or not.
After looking through my pockets and finding a leaflet in Spanish, this tempted further racist research by the dicks. The male dick asked "Is your friend Hispanic?" Not understanding why he asked, I said, "No, I am Hispanic." This must have confused him more, making him ask more racist questions.
As the male dick went on to search the car, the female dick (while she was searching my two friends), told me to, "Get up against the car, you might grab my gun. How do I know you are not a rapist." After that, more exchanges went back and forth and they finally let us go.
This shows how this system cannot and will not provide for workers. The reason the police stop young black and latin people is because they need to keep control of us by keeping us scared. They need to harass us! In harassing us, they show the fear they have of young workers fighting back. They justify more cops by saying they are keeping the streets safe. Safe for who? Safe for the bosses and their rotten system.
What young people need is a system that does not have cops to terrorize them; where the whole problem of police stopping someone for racist reasons would not exist. This can only happen when young workers fight together to get rid of this system and to build a new one that will be controlled by the workers. The only solution is to work hard and fight for a communist revolution.
Chicago comrade
My weekend was incomplete. I was missing my Challenge. It had only been 6 to 8 weeks since I had been introduced to Challenge but I had already begun to depend on it.
I first met the Party through the tutoring program in my daughter's school. I worked with a Party member for a year, tutoring children who were reading below grade level. She showed me the paper and upon reading it, I immediately identified and agreed with almost everything I read. A few weeks later she asked me my opinion about it.
Although I wasn't ready to join the Party, I became a regular Challenge-Desafío reader and agreed to attend a PLP retreat on Dialectics. Two situations changed me from being just a reader to being a Party member.At the end of October, my godson was placed into foster care.While visiting him at the designated visitation site, I got to see how evil and abusive to children the system was. I knew something had to change.The second incident occurred in mid-November when a group of parents confronted the schools boss about the conduct of someone who worked in his office.
During that confrontation this Principal launched a racist, sexist attack against me, saying I wasn't the legal guardian (I had taken in my sister's kids after her death). It was too much; I had known that there was something wrong with this capitalist system. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it had to be changed. I then remembered the ideas put forth by Challenge: "Smash capitalism and replace it with communism." That was the answer.
When I remembered that, I made the conscious decision to fight for a communist revolution. As of that November day, I was and still am a Party member. I'm 27 years old, and for the first time I feel like my life has a purpose.
New member
Some workers at the Cook County Hospital pharmacy have filed anti discrimination suits with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC doesn't seem to be too sympathetic. We have a feeling that the EEOC is on the side of the hospital bosses, who are powerful members of the Democratic Party.
The EEOC is a shadow of its former self. Several decades ago it was stronger and we had very high hopes for it to end discrimination. The EEOC was strong not only because of the people that ran it, but because workers' pressure made the civil rights movement strong. Now that pressure has subsided and the bosses have the upper hand, the EEOC strength is being sapped.
Another reason for this are the attacks from Republicans such as Newt Gingrich. The Democrats for their part have let the Republicans weaken the EEOC. But neither of these bosses parties have any interest in seeing discrimination ended.
We got a partial victory in establishing the EEOC. The bosses backed off a little under pressure. However, they kept their power untouched. This time we must go for the whole thing. We shall control the EEOC, the labor boards, and the labor courts.
We need to end discrimination and harassment as soon as possible. We did win some cases. We put on enough pressure to remove a boss; then they put in another boss, a person of color. The discrimination and the harassment continues. They put in bosses with foreign accents. The discrimination and the harassment continues.
We must not wait for a distant future to end discrimination and harassment. We must struggle now, but we must link this to the struggle for workers' power. The courts, the commissions, and the boards should be under our control.
We must build a base or organization with truly ends nationalism and racism. We must change our tactics from time to time but never our goal. We must build for May Day 1996.
CCH worker
Every day I see the headlines in the newspapers about the war in Bosnia and its usually pretty confusing. One thing comes clear. The U.S. doesn't really know what they're doing. The press doesn't know what they're trying to convince us of.
One thing that they have been concentrating and wavering on is the issue of the Serbs as war criminals. Before they are sent to Bosnia all soldiers are shown a film of what atrocities the Serbs have committed. No doubt, the Serb army has acted as Nazis with their genocide and "ethnic cleansing." But since when has the U.S. cared about genocide. Was it not genocide that the U.S. committed in countless imperialist wars including Iraq and Vietnam.
The job of the press and the military has been to convince soldiers and the public that the U.S. is going over there to do a good thing. But it's very difficult in this situation to do that because the situation over there is very muddled. The Serbs, the Croats, the Muslims, have not decided who they're going to side with in terms of imperialist powers. That is a constant problem of capitalism because alliances are based on strictly money and economic power.
The U.S. role in Yugoslavia may seem a harmless one. They are supposedly over there for peace. But peace on what terms? On the terms that they receive a big chunk of the power in the Balkans. They're in competition with capitalists from Russia, Germany, France .
What's in Bosnia? Bosnia doesn't seem like it would have much to offer in terms of resources or cheap labor for the U.S. to exploit. But as the world's markets become tighter, more and more used up, even seemingly worthless countries like Bosnia are crumbs big enough to fight over in the eyes of the imperialists. And this is only the beginning. It is guaranteed that in the years to come, war will be the only quick-fix for the crisis of capitalism economy.
I am in the military, and if I get called up to Bosnia or any capitalist war, I'm not going. But what does one single person not going do. Actually, it could do alot, cause a big stir and so on. But its not nearly enough. Our resistance to war and capitalism has to be an organized, mass, active, struggle to smash the capitalist system that causes war and to build communism. Mass fightback against capitalist war does not appear out of nowhere. Communists must be in the military to build for communism and to be convincing fellow soldiers that the only war they should participate in is a communist revolution.
Here in Chicago, we are organizing a forum about Bosnia; to discuss the situation there and to discuss what actions soldiers and others should take to turn this imperialist war into a step towards communist revolution. All are invited. Red soldier
The Communist Youth Offensive conference in Connecticut centered around using the PLP pamphlet, Jailbreak, Road to Revolution IV as a tool to study leadership.
In my workshop we discussed how the U.S. Army attempts to build leaders as opposed to how leadership is built in the Party. A comrade in an ROTC class in a New York City high school said that his colonel's job is to teach the students to be very disciplined, accepting the rank system (authoritarianism) and to obey rather than to question. ROTC also shows film clips exhibiting racist propaganda towards workers in other countries making them seem to be the enemies of the students rather than those who put the guns into their hands.
The student figured he should go along with the program if he wanted to pass and get the credits. I and others in our group struggled with him to be more confident in the kind of leadership he could have with the other students -- raise opposition by possibly passing out articles in Challenge about how the U.S. going to war in Bosnia for oil and for the interests of the rich, not to maintain peace, and not in the interests of the workers of either Bosnia or the U.S.
The Party does not produce leaders by brainwashing them and beating its ideology into them like the army does. Through struggle we all build each other by resolving our contradictions and those within ourselves and in the Party. After this weekend it is becoming clearer how we and the rest of the working class can become leaders of a new army -- our Red Army!
N.J. high school student
I am a teamster tractor-trailer driver who has just begun selling Challenge-Desafío to my friends. I would like to relate an incident that happened to me after the big snowstorm in New Jersey. Management gave me a load that would normally be a run lasting 3-4 hours. But they loaded it wrong. The third delivery had been loaded on the middle of the truck, and so I had to pass the second stop and go 45 minutes out of my way to the third store, and then drive back to the second stop.
Under normal weather conditions these mistakes would have added another 5-6 hours onto the run. But in all that snow, I was driving from 12:30am until 6:30pm --18 hours -- under extremely hazardous conditions.
Management consists of college graduates who give orders to the warehouse telling them how to load the truck. They only look at maps. They often read the maps wrong. They rarely plan the most efficient route. They take it upon themselves to decide how the load should go on without ever consulting the drivers. I would say that out of 90 loads going out daily, that 70 of them are wrong and cause great stress to the drivers.
Also, the managers give orders on how the skids (pallets on which the food is loaded) are stacked. Big heavy juice cans get placed on the very top and crush more fragile items underneath. Sometimes I open up the back of the truck, and wasted, crushed food just spills out onto the road.
When I got back that particular day, I said to the managers, "If the company wants to pay somebody with a shirt and tie on to make decisions, why don't you just move over and let the drivers plan the loading and stacking? It's better if you don't do a thing."
As I understand it, the system of communism would have no managers who are separate from us workers. The drivers, who would be communists, would make decisions so that the runs would be as safe, short and stress-free as possible.
Under capitalism, a driver has to psych himself up even before he leaves his home. He knows that the day will be horrible. Legally, we aren't supposed to drive, plus work, more than 15 hours. But most companies and the Interstate Commerce Commission pay no attention. These long hours are not only unsafe, they make family life impossible.
Even though under communism we would have no stores, there would still be food distribution centers and we drivers would plan the best possible schedules. We would drive only a few hours a day and make sure we have plenty of time for rest and time to develop good relations with our family and friends.
A trucker
As a teacher and a parent, I thought the issue of Challenge-Desafío with its emphasis on education through liberation was right on time. I have one additional thought about the role of grades in capitalist education. Grades are to education as wages are to work. Students are really pushed to work for a grade -- not to learn the truth.
Kids come to kindergarten eager to learn. They want to understand everything, learn to read, master the universe. They couldn't care less about grades! Grades are introduced in the schools to control and manipulate student behavior. I'm not talking about the openly manipulative "behavior modification" approach where students are given chips or candy or money for good performance. All of us give grades to mold behavior. Students want to know if they're getting a grade, points, or extra credit for anything they do -- because their teachers (myself included) have trained them in that way.
This is training for the work place, in which we work for wages. We aren't supposed to care, or to have any control over what we are producing. We work for a pay check. When we set up a communist society, and in fighting for communism now, we fight for political, rather than material incentives at work and in education as well. Jobs and schools as we know them will be antiquated concepts. We'll work because we are committed to building a better society for ourselves and our class brothers and sisters around the world. We'll study and experiment and learn for the same reason! That's what we need to do now.
LA teacher
I attended the PL youth camping trip in Connecticut. Going to these types of activities always gives me a glimpse into just how communism would change things.
On this trip I had a glimpse into how the sexist ideas that we are inundated with by capitalism will be fought against, not only in theory but in practice.
During the trip the group spent time playing recreational sports. On the surface this is not an unusual activity for a youth group. But the difference on this particular trip was that the sports were being played by boys and girls together. There was a concious effort to break down the normal barriers that sexism sets up in sports. The volleyball game and basketball game included everyone who wanted to play.
Specifically, I was asked if I wanted to play basketball, but I replied that I didn't know how. When I was in elementary school the girls were hardly ever included in the basketball games with the boys. And whenever the guys on my block went to play basketball the girls were never included.
When I went on to middle school and high school basketball was offered only as a team sport. So if you were not already a good player, you could not participate.
That weekend, when I said that I didn't know how to play, people said that I should play anyway and learn. I did and found out that I really enjoyed it. This gave me a small glimpse into how the communist idea of equality can and will infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
NYC comrade