parts to assembly plants, the strike by 3,200 General Motors workers at two Dayton, Ohio, brake plants has shut 51 GM assembly and parts plants all across North America. It has idled some 83,000 workers (and tens of thousands more employed by outside parts suppliers) while shutting some of GM's biggest money-makers.
The two struck plants supply almost all of GM's 29 car and truck assembly plants, plus Chrysler and American Izusu. The strike was sparked by GM's attempts to move work out of the two plants, reneging on a 1994 agreement. The international and interlocking nature of the auto industry was underscored by the fact that parts factories from Guadalupe, Mexico, to Windsor, Ontario are now closed, overstocked with parts and with no place to ship them.
All the baloney about the decline and "disappearance" of industrial workers is belied by the ever-widening effects of this strike by just 3,200 autoworkers. It dramatizes the potential power of these industrial workers and their central role in the functioning of capitalism. Having been brought together in social production by capitalism, they produced $14 billion in private profit (before taxes) for GM bosses last year! Right now the control of these workers by the bosses' lieutenants, the UAW, misdirects the workers away from rebellion and revolution and into the bosses' hip pockets. With a communist outlook, these workers would play a central role in the smashing of capitalism, establishing an egalitarian communist society in which that $14 billion would be used for the social good of all workers.
This is about the 9th local strike against GM in the past 18 months. While every strike has temporarily stopped the movement of work and "saved jobs," all of them combined, including the Flint Buick City strike which won the promise of 1,200 new hires, have not put a dent in GM's overall plans to wipe out another 200,000 jobs. At best they have only slightly altered GM's timetable.
As for the issue of keeping the lines running to supply Chrysler and Izusu, this has been a long-standing UAW practice. While there hasn't been a national strike against GM, Ford, or Chrysler in 20 years, whenever one of the "Big 3" were struck, the UAW always kept plants running that were supplying other automakers.
The fight over tactics in the UAW is being billed as "Hard Line Unionism vs. Business Unionism." But neither is any match for what the working class is up against. The UAW, like all unions, are hopelessly wedded to the ruling class, because they function within the rules of the profit system.
The auto industry, maybe more than any other, typifies the international struggle among the major imperialists in their drive for cheap labor and new markets. The U.S. auto bosses, while driving down the wages of U.S. workers, are impoverishing millions of Mexican workers as productivity soars. The Japanese auto bosses are doing the same, in Asia as well as in North America. These "car wars" reflect the cutthroat nature of capitalist competition. Each set of bosses tries to capture as much of the market as possible. This unplanned production leads to overproduction and eventually mass layoffs as one set of bosses leaps ahead of the others and the losers must cut costs.
But capitalists never give up peacefully. To recapture markets, imperialist bosses must resort to military struggle. The "car wars" of today are leading to world war sooner rather than later. As sure as the sun comes up, all the union leaders will support their billionaire masters.
We don't need "hard line unionists." We need communist leadership that builds international solidarity among all workers and has as its goal turning the coming world war into world-wide communist revolution.
Editorials
The Parisian masses, though sympathetic to communism, were still swayed by nationalism. They demanded arms to defend the city from the besieging German army. The bourgeois government organized most adult males into its National Guard. However, these Guard units, made up of the working class, organized their own leadership committees in each district and a workers' Central Committee to unite them.
On March 17, 1871, the government gave in to the German army and fled to suburban Versailles. When troops returned the next day to fetch arms they had left behind, angry workers confronted them. The troops refused orders to shoot into the crowd. They handed their weapons to the workers.
The Central Committee of the National Guard took over City Hall and ran up the Red Flag of workers' revolution. For the first time in the history of class society, the working class had taken power.
The Commune kept the bourgeois form of elections, but the victorious workers did not simply take over the bourgeois state machine. They smashed it and began to build something brand new: the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
The masses were the real masters of the Commune. Twenty thousand activists attended small club meetings daily to offer criticisms and make suggestions. Elected officials considered all proposals and usually acted on them. Officials who disregarded the masses were subject to immediate recall.
The workers' government disbanded the bourgeois Guard units. It suspended all decrees of the old government. Workers pulled down the Victory Column, symbol of French imperialism. They elected a HungarianGerman communist to their governing body, declaring that the Commune represented workers everywhere.
The workers' government wiped out state support of religion and took over church property. It capped officials' salaries so that none made more than a worker's wage. It took away bosses' rights to fine workers. It took over workshops that had been closed because of the economic depression and turned them over to workers' cooperatives.
This working-class dictatorship was the necessary prerequisite to abolishing the wage-slavery of capitalism. The Commune held power for ten short weeks. It proved for all time that the working class can, must, and will rule society.
* Workers need to smash the bosses' state. But the Commune did not go far enough. It was lenient with counter-revolutionaries and renegades. It allowed the French bourgeoisie to regroup, instead of organizing a Red Army to hunt it down. The bourgeoisie was not lenient at all after it crushed the Commune, murdering 100,000 workers (including children). The Commune was not able to link up with Communes in Lyons, Marseilles, and other cities. The working class dictatorship needs to arm and organize the masses, but it also needs a Red Army.
* The Commune organized workers into political clubs, but not into a Communist party. There was plenty of democracy (discussion of policy) but not much centralism (united action). The political form of bourgeois democracy undermined the working-class goals of the Commune.
* The Commune did not move quickly enough to abolish capitalism. Had it expropriated the Bank of France, the French bourgeoisie would have had a much harder time raising a counter-revolutionary army.
The Commune recognized the need for equality among workers and revolutionary cadre. But we can see now that equalizing wages was no substitute for abolishing the wage system altogether.
As we march for Communism this May Day, the Progressive Labor Party will carry forward the spirit of the Paris Commune.
For more on the Paris Commune and the lessons communists drew from it, read Karl Marx's book, The Civil War In France; Frederick Engels, The Great Lessons of the Paris Commune.
Editorial 2
These workers are right. Capitalism is a dying system. 400 years of capitalism has led to misery. Millions die in dozens of wars that rage worldwide. Fifty million children starve to death each year.
The bosses' think tanks run dry of solutions to the problems their system has caused. It is beyond the ability of the profit system to put everybody to work or to feed our children.
"It would take a million years," you might say. But capitalism has
been on the run ever since 1848, when workers first stepped forward as a working class fighting for its own collective interest.
In the thick of that struggle, Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto. They boldly and correctly proclaimed communism as the only way for workers to achieve equality for the entire human race.
Since then, workers have taken power through armed revolution three times: Paris, France, in 1871; Russia in 1917; and China in 1949. Each time a major war raged among the imperialist powers of the day. Each time, communists organized to turn imperialist war for profit into civil war for workers' power and equality.
Each of these great revolutions taught the working class valuable lessons, farther ahead than the last, although all three were eventually defeated. This week marks the 125th anniversary of the Paris Commune, the first time in history that the working class held power. We describe some of its lessons in the accompanying box on this page.
Once more the prospect of imperialist war looms. Workers cannot live in the old way, bosses cannot rule in the old way. But capitalism will not fall of its own dead weight. We have to take it down.
Twenty-five years ago, on the centennial of the Paris Commune, the Progressive Labor Party raised the red flags of communist revolution in our first May Day marches.
In that same year we published Road to Revolution 3. In RR 3, we broke with all forms of nationalism and rejected all alliances with the bourgeoisie. We denounced the Communist Party of China, saying it was on the road to capitalism. Many doubted us, many attacked us. Real life soon proved us correct.
We are building for May Day this year in the midst of a sharp struggle to carry out the line of Road to Revolution 4 by putting forward communism, and only communism, as the solution to the workers' problems. Many of our readers still doubt this. But real life is again proving us correct as hospital workers in Chicago and Philadelphia, garment workers in Los Angeles, maintenance workers in New York, and workers and youth from Mexico City to Bogota, Colombia eagerly embrace our paper and our Party.
In the spirit of the Paris Commune, the Progressive Labor Party will march this May Day for the Dictatorship of the Working Class. We will march for Equality. We will join the long march of the working class that began in 1848 and will continue until victory is ours. Long Live Communism!
Why would they go to war? Asia has the fastest growing, most profitable economies in the world. The nature of imperialism is to grow or decline. U.S. imperialism is determined not to lose out to a new superpower-- China.
The Chinese ruling class is carrying out a strategy intended to become the dominant power in Asia and, after that, the world. Taiwan is a big thorn in China's side. With a $250 billion annual economy, it is also a major prize. Taiwan's President Lee and the forces around him don't want the big boys in Beijing to gobble them up. With U.S. help, they think they can remain independent.
By lobbing missiles within 20 miles of Taiwanese soil and conducting large-scale troop maneuvers, the Chinese imperialists want to send the message that they intend to take over Taiwan no matter what. The Chinese rulers made it clear that Taiwan is part of China and they will fight a war over this issue. Their immediate goal is to influence the March 23 Taiwan presidential elections. For example, they want Lee to end his campaign to win international recognition and admission to the UN and World Trade Organization.
The Chinese rulers are assuming a calculated risk. They are taking what used to be called "brinkmanship" during the Cold War to a new level. They're gambling that their show of force will frighten the Taiwanese ruling class into making a deal. They're also gambling that U.S. and Japanese bosses can't do very much to stop them.
They may be right--in the very short run. They may succeed in influencing the Taiwanese elections without war this week. But war is in the cards. Taiwanese investments in China--$25 billion--won't stop it. Capitalist Asia has too many irresistible forces colliding with immovable objects: Japan, the U.S., Taiwan, Korea, Maylasia, Singapore, Indonesia, etc. All these bosses have their own irreconcilable interests. Competition among them has led to the fastest growing arms race in the world. Southeast Asia alone overtook the Mideast last year as the third-largest weapons market, after the U.S. and Europe.
U.S. bosses, who only a couple of years ago were bragging about their "new world order," look pretty powerless in the current situation. In 1972, Nixon went to Beijing to recognize the reversal of the Chinese leaders from communists who had threatened U.S. imperialism into weak capitalists that the U.S. could do business with. Turning his back on tiny Taiwan, Nixon agreed to the "one China" policy. Things change.
Now it is China that is becoming the dominant capitalist power and the U.S. is revealed as a weakening superpower. Clinton, desperate to counter the growth and influence of the Chinese has reversed from one China to "one-and-a half" (Taiwan) Chinas.
Clinton has countered the current Chinese military maneuvers with his own. Two U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle groups--the most in Asia since the end of the Vietnam war--have moved off the east coast of Taiwan. According to an Asian diplomat, "No one expects a war, but everyone is worried that given the political, domestic dynamics in America, Taiwan and China, it could somehow get out of hand."
Geography and numbers will probably force the Taiwanese ruling class to make a deal with Chinese imperialism. Taiwan has 22 million people, and China has over a billion. But the absolute trend is toward war. This is the main lesson workers everywhere should draw from Chinese imperialism's present scare tactics. The profit system leads to war, needs war, and will make war as long as it exists.
They were looking for members of the so-called Red Army gang, who a few days earlier, had badly beaten a cop. The cops raided homes in Cite Soleil, shooting indiscriminately.
"The police came looking for young men. They broke into the house of one youth, saying they were looking for members of the misnamed Red Army gang. They just killed them," according to Mireille Jean, a 40-year old woman who lives in one of the neighborhoods of Cite Soleil attacked by the cops.
Mireille Jean added that now she is more afraid of the cops than of the gangs, who mug people during the day and rob their houses at night. Again, we can see that it is deadly for any working people to rely on imperialist or capitalist "saviors" to get them out of their misery and oppression. Workers in Haiti trusted Clinton and Aristide when they organized the imperialist invasion to get rid of Raoul Cedras and his TonTons Macoute goons and "bring back democracy."
Under Cedras they were terrorized and murdered by the FRAPH paramilitary group, formed by agents of the U.S. CIA. Now they are still terrorized by former FRAPH goons, who have organized the misnamed Red Army gang. And on top of that, the "new" police force, trained by Raymond Kelly, the former chief of NYPD working for the CIA, also murders and terrorizes workers.
Anti-working class terror and racism go with the badge, but some cops stand out because of their exceptional hatred. If you have a candidate for the Furhman award, send it to us.
The capitalists say that communism is a system that enslaves people, forcing them to work through terror. Movies, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. portray communism as a huge concentration camp. Those who bad mouth communism are either bosses or their allies or don't know what they are talking about..
The bosses had never found significant errors or technical problems with Ivy's work as a pharmacist. Her work was fast and accurate. In County's need to downsize the staff, the bosses are looking for excuses to fire workers and Ivy was fired for talking back to a supervisor. They accompanied her to her locker which she had to empty on the spot.
On March 9 and 10, groups of pharmacy and other workers met to discuss the firing and what it means. The attack on Ivy is meant to make an example of her. More and more, the administration of the hospital, with the backing of the County government and the capitalist rulers of Chicago, are focusing on labor discipline. They really don't care whether the medications are prepared accurately. It doesn't bother the bankers or big businessmen if poor black and latin workers are waiting 6 or 8 hours to get a prescription filled. Members of the wealthy elite would never use the County for medical care for their own families. But they have other uses for it.
"Billions of Dollars and Millions of Enrollees Are Now Up for Grabs in Managed Medicare and Medicaid," states the headline on a recent advertisement mailed to doctors. This is not news to Rush-Presbyterian, the wealthy hospital across the street from CCH. They are gradually taking over key positions at CCH so that the hospital can be turned into a high profit Medicaid mill in the near future. This will require a huge reduction in hospital staff, maybe by as much as 50%. And it will require labor discipline as intense as anything the Nazis ever accomplished.
Workers have been battling Pharmacy Director, Dennis Hays, over the years, about harassment, racism and unfair firings. However, clumsy and inefficient this hatchetman is, the big bosses seem to be egging him on to more aggressive attacks. Workers trained in important and vitally needed medical skills end up spending their lives fighting for a chance to work. The employees are driven to work to get the paycheck in order to survive under capitalism. Management is driven by the need of all bosses to seek the highest rate of profit. In the current situation this means ending all resistance to workplace dictatorship.
Black and white workers from the U.S. along with workers from five other countries participated in the meetings in the two days following the firing. All workers share common needs and goals. We need decent, useful work. We need respect as workers. We need a reasonable life and a good future for our children. Capitalism cannot provide these necessities. PLP members participating at these meetings raised this and pointed to the only solution, communist revolution. We spent half of one meeting discussing whether people could live and work together without wages and money. Workers tentatively agreed to participate in a Party study group around the Jailbreak pamphlet, and all took Challenge-Desafio. How can we move from sadness, anger and frustration to resolute commitment and to the satisfaction of bringing about real, lasting change? There is only one way. Only a collective of dedicated people working together over time can bring about the world of communist equality that will satisfy our needs. That's why we need the Party and why you should join it.
Anti-immigrant racism is not a spontaneous or natural development. The bosses' politicians have invented, nurtured, and pushed it. This goes for Clinton as well as Buchanan and Dole.
Capitalism must build more and more racism and nationalism. As it weakens, capitalism is less and less capable of providing jobs or anything else workers need. The bosses exploit immigrant labor, paying the lowest wages possible. This drives down wages for all workers. Then the bosses blame immigrants for the crisis.
The result is more workers that are angrier. Many can see that unemployment, cutbacks, and racism against black workers and immigrants are all direct consequences of the capitalist crisis. They are open to the fight to destroy capitalist borders and nationalism with communist revolution.
These conditions create the possibility of greater unity between angry immigrant workers and angry citizen workers who share growing hatred of the profit system and the cops and the Migra, shock troops of the capitalist state.
Most workers agreed that the march was important, but some said, "fighting against the Migra would bring more problems than solutions." Another garment worker responded, "I think that we need to fight against the Migra. "If they arrest me, hit me, or kill me, I don't care--if this helps other people."
Some workers wanted to know if legal residents will support those who are undocumented. "Only the goal of communism can organize the workers," said a worker who was participating in his first political meeting. Learning about communism, he continued, would give us more confidence in our ability to fight the bosses. He urged everyone to take home the PLP pamphlet Jailbreak, to read it, and to come back to discuss it.
Several workers from one garment factory, N.F. Inc., agreed to form a committee to unite residents and undocumented workers to make plans to deal with the Migra. When the Migra comes to a factory, people often run, hide, or just don't move. We need a plan so that when the Migra comes, all the workers will meet in one place and try to leave together. Once in the street, we should call on workers from other factories to stop work, confront the Migra, and join the fight for communism.
At the end of the meeting, everyone took Challenge-Desafios and Jailbreak pamphlets about dialectical materialism. Many said they would invite their friends to participate in the May Day March on May 4 and also to build committees in the factories and help expand communist ideas to thousands of garment workers.
A report released yesterday reveals that, statewide, almost every
teacher in California is earning less today (in real wages--after inflation) than they were 10 years ago. In addition, the School Board says it wants to tie any decrease in class sizes to higher test scores, and the ability to fire teachers if test scores don't improve.
The Alameda County School Superintendent attacked the teachers for their "unrealistic" pay demand, and a local group led by the Chamber of Commerce has demanded that the teachers return to work immediately and settle the issues by "negotiation"--in other words, surrender.
The School Board is still getting funds from the State of California, just as if the students were still in class. So far, it is estimated that the Board has pocketed about $6 million because it isn't paying the teachers or other schoolworkers. This is reported as a mere fact of life. No scandal here! Alameda County Transit is broke. Highland County Hospital is on the chopping block. But the School Board can gobble up $300,000 a day by simply avoiding the purpose for which it was established--operating the schools!
This strike clearly shows the power of money over our lives. While teachers have been cut off from the wages they need for survival, the School Board collects millions of dollars. While students and parents suffer, the Board is living on Easy Street. This show of power by the Board is meant to demoralize the teachers from fighting any cuts or attacks that the state may wish to implement. This demoralization is a necessary component of fascism.
But this attack has not quite succeeded yet. Few teachers have crossed the picket lines, and support from parents has been strong. This support is similar to that of the Grocery Clerk strike last year when the clerks received overwhelming support from their working class customers who stayed away from the struck stores in droves.
Each day this strike lasts should be turned into its opposite: instead of demoralization in the face of the power of capital, we should turn it into another day to build a revolutionary movement to destroy the power of the capitalists, their government, and their politicians over our lives. That's a victory no amount of bosses' capital can take away. Each day is another day, another argument, for communism. March on May Day with the Progressive Labor Party and fight for communism!
Red: So your idea of help and compassion is death?
Ed: Look, who wants to lie around in a hospital bed for months hooked up to some machine? Or sit in a wheelchair for years,
unable to see or move very well. No, it's better to die than suffer all that. And people should have the right to die when they're ready.
Red: I agree that a lot of old and sick people have it pretty bad in this society. But is death the only answer? What kind of a world is this where the only choice you have when you're old or sick is suicide?
Ed: You got a better choice?
Red: Yeah. Instead of death with dignity or life with misery, how about life with dignity? Under communism.
Ed: What's politics got to do with it?
Red: The problem is not old age or sickness. The problem is a capitalist system that cares only about how much profit you produce for some boss. You don't produce, you're just a "useless eater." That was the Nazi's word for it. All that stuff today about "death with dignity," "right to die," "euthanasia," it's just fancy words for killing "useless eaters." You're being sucked into fascism.
Ed: So, tell me, what's communism going to do about Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease or crippling arthritis"? How's your communism going to pull "dignity" out of that?
Red: Just because you get old or sick doesn't mean your life is over. It doesn't mean you can't love other people, be loved in return, and make useful contributions to family, friends, and fellow workers.
Ed: How?
Red: By making it possible for people to help people. Take my great uncle. This happened a while ago. He was a really active guy. Loved his family. And a big reader. He got tremendous pleasure out of reading everything, history, novels, mysteries, the newspapers. Then he got bad Parkinson's disease. Developed a terrible tremor and couldn't walk. Finally was confined to a wheelchair. But worst of all, he couldn't read. Ended up in some lousy nursing home, sitting around all day, depressed as hell. My mother said that after a while all he wanted to do was die. Pretty soon he did.
Ed: Sounds like a pretty bad scene.
Red: It didn't have to be. What would it have taken to restore his will to live? If someone had come to read to him every day for a few hours, that might have done the trick. Even better, suppose he'd been living someplace bright and open, with lots of people, old and young, and lots of mechanical devices to help people with physical disabilities get around and take care of themselves. And suppose that each day some young people came to talk with him about his experiences on the job, in the army, and about all he had read. He'd have gotten something out of life then, and given a lot back.
Ed: You're dreaming. Nothing like that exists for working people.
Red: You're right. But not because we can't think of it. It's only because the bosses won't pay for it. There's no profit in making the lives of old and sick people comfortable and productive.
Ed: And under communism...?
Red: In a communist society, this kind of living arrangement would be a high priority. We'd have the commitment, the resources, and the power to get it done. We simply would not permit our fellow workers--people with tremendous experience and wisdom--to be tossed on the scrap heap. For the old and sick, communists would create a life with dignity. That's a hell of a lot better choice than what the bosses give us.
The WEA bill says that we should turn to binding arbitration to settle our contracts. One teacher expressed the anger that many are feeling, "There is never a right time to give up the right to strike. The strike is the most important weapon employees have to defend their dignity." However, this should come as no surprise when you consider the union's present strategies. They tell us that we must spend all our energy begging the legislature for funds so we can keep our jobs. Thousands of union members volunteer countless hours phoning voters asking them to pass levies and bonds every election. They waste millions of dollars trying to get Democrats elected. Instead of uniting with parents and students, we are told that the local businessman is our ally!
How do we fight when our hands are tied by union leaders who gladly make deals with the boss about our jobs? We must look beyond capitalism. Even at their most militant best, unions are by nature still only reformist organizations and will continue to lead workers down the wrong path. In "good" times, they may win a few demands, but the bosses will only take them away later because they are still in power.
Because of global competition for profits, the bosses can no longer
afford to pay even certain sections of the working class good wages. In fact, they can't even provide living wage jobs for most workers. Therefore, education for the masses of children drops further down the list of priorities.
The WEA sees the crisis, but can't see beyond capitalism. So they are willing to officially give up strikes because the contracts are getting worse and worse. The union figures they can get just as bad a contract with arbitration as with a strike, and arbitration is cheaper.
Along with accepting arbitration, the WEA is accepting all the misery that capitalism is causing. The destruction of young people's lives; the mass layoffs that drive workers into poverty; and the inevitable wars that result from capitalism's drive for profit.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party are organizing students, parents, school workers and teachers to fight for communist revolution. We see capitalism as a dying system. A relic of history, waiting to be destroyed.
As the teacher said, without strikes workers have no dignity. Without strikes, we also have no possibility of a better future. Strikes against the bosses are how we will learn to bury capitalism once and for all. If strikes are made illegal then we must break the law! To give up striking means we would accept that this lousy system is the pinnacle of society. Communism will meet the needs of the masses of people. Only under such a system will we have true equality, because exploitation will be eliminated, outlawed. We would approach education in a different way. Teaching would become the responsibility of every person, not just an elite group of "experts." And it would never stop, not even when we grow old. Also, it would be more integrated into our everyday lives, and be based on needs of the society.
We call on all educators, parents and students to spread communist ideas in the schools and join us on May Day.
I think the Editor's reply to the letter critical of a recent Challenge-Desafio editorial about affirmative action was correct, but missed the main point of the comrade's criticism. The letter charged that our line exposing affirmative action "divides the Party" and "divides the working class."
This is the same criticism that is leveled against the Party by union
leaders and other liberals who fear the Party. No matter what the struggle, these cynics who are determined to hold back the workers, accuse communists of narrowing and weakening struggles by raising communist ideas.
In the case of affirmative action, the comrade says that the only way to "broaden" the anti-racist struggle is "to include the demand
for enough jobs for the entire working class..." This is dead wrong. We live in an era of sharply increasing oppression and exploitation. Look at the run-up of the stock market. Every increase in unemployment, longer hours, more productivity, etc. is greeted with a Wall St. cheer. Demanding jobs for everyone under capitalism is an impossible illusion that will limit class struggle to idealists.
The only way the working class will get increased "opportunities" is with the growth of communism and the PLP. Putting forward anything less is actually divisive because we will be fighting for the opportunity of the few which will only come at the expense of the many. Borrowing from the Bolsheviks, our communist slogan should be, "not me for mine but us for ours."
Furthermore, we do want to be "divisive." We want to divide workers from their mis-leaders. We need to divide workers from reformist ideology. We need to divide the working class from their capitalist dictators to create a communist society that will guarantee work and growth for all workers.
Chicago comrade
Enclosed is a check for my subscription to Challenge-Desafio--still
the best newspaper in the world. Keep up the great work!
In all honesty, in 20 years of reading the paper, I can't remember it
ever being as well-written, edited, or presented as right now.
You folks deserve to be praised.
Challenge subscriber in Spain
Recently, two thousand protesters blocked Michigan Ave. in front of the Chicago Tribune building for several hours to protest a column by Mike Royko, a notorious racist.
Royko's column was insulting to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. He later said that he only meant to make fun of racist stereotypes, but in his so-called "apology," he seriously defended the racist comments he made earlier!
There were good and bad things about the demonstration. It was good that thousands of people, including black and white protesters, came together in unity and militancy against racism. Protesters confronted the police, and a young man was rescued from being arrested by members of the crowd. The best thing was that 75 Challenge-Desafios were sold, spreading communist ideas to many of the people there.
A bad thing about the demonstration was that it was largely diverted from fighting racism into a celebration of Mexican nationalism. There were Mexican flags and chants of "Mexico, Mexico." Sometimes when people are victimized by racism, they want to stand up and say: "Stop disrespecting us--we are somebody!" That is good, but sometimes the desire for unity against oppression leads to nationalism which excludes many working class allies from other ethnic groups.
Nationalism also includes bosses and politicians. This is a trap because those bosses and politicians steal leadership of the movement, and they lead it away from fighting the bosses and into pro-capitalist solutions. We like the good feelings of unity we get when we stand together, but unity with our enemies only leads us to a dead-end.
The energy and militancy of the protesters against racism can be a good
step towards building a movement against capitalism, but only if it builds working class unity and aims for communist equality. We had many talks with students from Indiana who came to the demonstration, and we are focusing on increased Challenge-Desafio sales and the biggest May Day contingent ever from Indiana!
Friend of PLP and a PLP member
One evening, I was having a conversation with my l3 year old brother, Abel. He was telling stories about his teachers and friends. He said, "The teacher is teaching us about Russia and communism. All he ever says are bad things about communism, and that communists do not practice any religion. Most of my friends were surprised to hear that people do not believe in God."
I asked him how he felt about what his teacher told him in class. He said that it doesn't bother him.
He gave this example: when he was in seventh grade his teacher passed out cards to the entire class and asked every student to write what they wanted to be when they grew up. After writing their plans, they had to walk to the front of the class and share it with the whole class.
When it was his turn, he walked up the aisle and from his card read: "When I grow up, I want to be a communist revolutionary." The teacher's mouth flew open and pointing, yelled, "Go back to your seat and don't you ever, ever mention those words in class again. Next time, you will be sent straight to the principal's office."
Her reaction sparked the students' interest and everyone began asking
"Teacher, what is a communist revolutionary " The teachers had something to talk about in the lounge that day.
Comrade in Shafter, California
I recently went to the funeral of my friends' one-month-old son. This child was born into a project apartment without heat or hot water in the middle of a Chicago winter. The project was without heat because the power plant had gone out. Instead of fixing the problem in a timely manner, the Chicago Housing Authority passed out small inadequate space heaters.
Can you imagine something like this happening in Trump Towers? This housing project of poor black working people sits on property next to the University of Illinois. Its land is coveted by developers looking to build profitable luxury townhomes. As far as the bosses are concerned, anything that encourages people to move out of these projects is good for business.
The official cause of death is unknown. But it is obvious that an infant needs warmth to thrive. Denied that basic human need, this baby was murdered. Whenever a child dies it is hard, but when a life is destroyed like this it eats at your gut.
As the mother wept at the funeral, no less than three clergymen got up to preach. The words of the men of the cloth were directed at the distraught mother. "Don't give up on god," they pleaded. "God did this for a reason."
The baby's uncle, unable to see anything good about the death of his nephew, also got up to preach and blamed the devil.
The first preacher responded. "Brother Jones is mistaken. God controls all things and only does good. If he took this child it is for the best." And in case the poor young woman didn't get the point, he declared, "Think about all this baby was saved from. The long sleepless nights of drug addiction and alcoholism. This baby will never be a gang banger, drop out of school, be hungry or have to live on the street."
At this point the father walked over to me, nodded towards the podium, and said in disgust "This is all a racket."
To finish off the eulogy the preacher pointed a damning finger at the mother and told her as if the baby's death was her fault, "You can have another baby, but first you must get right with god!"
The funeral reminded me of a song I know:
Preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and
what's right
But when asked about something to eat,
They will answer in
voices so sweet,
`You will eat in the sweet bye and bye.'
Get right by making revolution
My six year old daughter came home from school with a bright yellow
handbill from a group called PAPA--Parents Actions Provides Alternatives. A drawing on one side showed a playground full of kids crouched and hiding under the slide or behind the trees, parked cars, and mailbox. The bottom of the card read "PAPA's Safety Card.". The back of the card featured a question written in childish scrawl. "PAPA, if shots are fired, what should I do?" "Get Down!!!" the card responds and gives the same examples from the drawing on the front.
At first I was sickened by the idea of teaching first graders how to
dodge bullets on the playground. But then I was just plain mad. Parents Actions Provides Alternatives? What alternatives? Hide and pray you'll make it to second grade? Gang violence is a danger in our neighborhood-- just like racist cops, unemployment, fires caused by faulty and neglected wiring, poor or non-existent health care. The list is long but it can all be abbreviated, Capitalism!
As I stared at the drawing of cowering children I pictured millions of workers struggling to dodge the bullets of capitalism. This neighbor is unemployed so she's going back to school. That one feels depressed and alienated so she joined a church. Another lost her job and moved to a smaller apartment. One just gets drunk all the time. Some of their children joined the gangs. With all the crap the bosses dump on us, we all have our own "tree" or "parked car" we would like to hide behind.
Then my eye caught the word "alternative" and I was mad again. We can do a whole lot better than dodging and hiding. Communism! That's an alternative. I've resumed my neighborhood Challenge-Desafio route with more determination. Read the rest of the articles in this week's paper. There's our alternative. Take Challenge to your friends.
I'm saving the little yellow handbill. When I see it and picture it in
the hands of hundreds of schoolchildren I find it hard to leave the house without a stack of Challenge-Desafios in my hands.
Red parent
The article on terrorism in Israel (Challenge-Desafio 3/13) correctly relates the situation there as the fight among the imperialists and their lackeys over oil in the Middle East. I'd like to add a few things about Hamas which is being ignored by the mass media, at least here in the U.S.
Hamas was a creation of Mossad; "There is some evidence that Hamas was supported by Israel, at least in its early days, to undermine the authority of Yassir Arafat..."(El Pais, Madrid, 3/10). Hamas was a child of Mossad and the U.S. intelligence services, just as the fundamentalist movement was funded and armed in its early stages by the U.S. in order to fight against the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan.
This also gives some credence to the belief that the Hamas factions which are carrying out the terrorist attacks are doing so with the support of some section of the Israeli rulers who oppose the "peace process" with Arafat. After all, Hamas' bombs have the explicit aim of bringing Likud back to power and putting an end to the peace process. There is also the possibility that the bombings, now being blamed on Iran as a financial supporter of Hamas, serve the interests of those forces in the U.S. and Israel who see Iran as the main enemy in the region, and want to begin a war against it sooner than later.
Again, we can see that for workers in the Middle East there will no peace as long as capitalism, imperialism and religious fundamentalism run the show.
An observer
The Dominican Republic is in the middle of ano