If they're so anti-government, why did the government knowingly allow them months to fortify their settlement? Why did the police move so slowly as they cashed $1.8 million in counterfeit money orders? The federal cops surrounded the Freemen compound only when local officials (whom the Freemen had threatened) were about to move in on them. The so-called siege is actually protecting the Freemen.
The Freemen have bought into the anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant ideology spread by the Identity Christianity and Posse Comitatus movements. Their ideology mixes racist, sexist, patriotic, and religious myths in the classic fascist formula. Identity Christianity defines the white European conquerors of North America as chosen people, the "true Israelites." It defines Jews as offspring of Satan and blacks as "mud people." The Posse Comitatus movement asserts that the county is the only legitimate level of government. They refuse to pay taxes to a Federal Government they claim is controlled by an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers.
The same reactionary ideas can be found in the ideology of the militia movements, the Neo-Nazis, skinheads, and the KKK, the Christian Coalition, and the Nation of Islam. Fascist ideology leads workers to blame the deepening crisis of capitalism on other workers.
Many such fascists were trained by the ruling class in elite military units and police departments. All these fascists find elements of their ideology spread through the mass media and by Republican and Democratic politicians. They are tied to capitalism in countless ways.
The fascist Freemen are like the K-9 attack dogs that the capitalists hold on a leash. The bosses can't fully trust them, so they keep them muzzled. The dogs don't like being muzzled, so they growl.
The U.S. ruling class promoted the KKK between 1910 and World War I. U.S. imperialism has backed paramilitary fascist groups in Haiti, Nicaragua, and countless other countries in recent years. They will rely increasingly on fascist violence in the future. This is a symptom of the bosses' weakness and decay. The economies of all the imperialist countries are decaying, the smell of war is in the air and fascism is the dung that nurtures the rulers' war preparations. They have little to offer the working class except fascism, racist terror and war.
If the Freemen or a similar group ever takes charge, it won't be through revolution against the government. It will be that the capitalists have unmuzzled their dogs and unleashed them against the working class.
During the 1980s U.S. farmers saw the value of their land drop by tens of billions of dollars. The U.S. farm population dropped from nine million in 1975 to five million in 1987, as absentee investors took over more and more farms. During this same period downsizing corporations have fired millions of white collar workers, and new Wal-Marts have closed down thousands of small businesses.
Many of the victims are angry with the bosses' government. Those who are swayed by racism, and who retain their capitalist dreams, are potential recruits to fascist groups like the Freemen. Other middle class elements will fight for their future, not for their past, by allying with the working class to overthrow capitalism.
Just imagine a group of revolutionary communists setting up an armed compound on the south side of Chicago or in south-central LA. The federal government wouldn't sit around watching for months, then park itself politely on the doorstep and wait. There would be civil war.
That day will come, and the working class will win that war. The communist PLP will build a Red Army drawn from all parts of the working class--an army whose power comes from the commitment to create an egalitarian communist society. Mass working class violence will destroy the bosses, their government, and whatever fascist killers have been brainwashed into dying for capitalism.
There can be no "middle-class revolution." Only two classes are capable of holding power in the world today: the capitalist class and the working class. Fascism or communism: that is the choice.
The most recent out break of war has created 400,000 civilian refugees, driven from the battlefield area. Clearly the so-called peace process is not producing much peace for workers in either northern Israel or southern Lebanon.
The intense fighting between the Israeli government and the Hezbollah Islamic military group in Southern Lebanon can best be understood as a fight between two criminal gangs, a modern military equivalent of a Hollywood fight between the Chicago mob and the Cleveland mob.
There are not any real ideological differences here, just disputes over profits, control of resources, and the territory necessary to sustain those profits. Israel and Lebanon are strategic to the US, Iran and Syria in the fight to control middle east oil.
All sides have many more things in common than they have different. Despite their unremitting hostility for each other, they are all strident believers in nationalism and capitalism.
Lest the similarities be lost on us, they also are all more than willing to rein terror on civilians in order to bring political and military pressure on each other. These gangsters see the working class, whether in their own country or elsewhere, as no more than a source of cheap labor and cannon fodder.
Israel is waging this mini war against the Lebanese because they want the so called peace process to succeed. Israel is now going through an election campaign and Shimon Peres, the new leader of the Israeli Labor Party after Yitzak Rabin's assassination has a narrow 4% lead over the Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu.
Labor's large lead over Likud evaporated after a series of four recent terrorist bombings in Israeli cities perpetuated by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist group, supported by Iran.
In unprecedented destruction, over 60 civilians, including some Palestinians, tourists, and foreign workers, were killed by these bombs. The Israeli public felt more vulnerable to terrorism than before, and many people concluded that the peace process along with the process architect, Shimon Peres, is now making their lives less, not more, secure.
In response Peres needed to assert Israeli control over the area and hit back at Iran. But, since there was no way to make war against Hamas without making war against all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and thus undercutting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Peres had to go for other Islamic fundamentalists. Viola! The Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, supported by Iran with informal backing and tacit approval from the neighboring Syrians, were the perfect candidate.
The Hezbollah has had a long term, low intensity war with Israel since Israel's 1982-83 invasion and partial occupation of Lebanon. In the aftermath of that war Israel withdrew from major Lebanese population centers, such as Beirut, but retained its own military presence, along with the South Lebanese Army, an Israeli military surrogate, along a ten mile deep strip on the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanese border.
Since then the Israeli army has met continuous resistance from the Hezbollah in this area, usually in the form of land mines, ambushes, and small arms fire, along with occasional shelling of towns on either side of the border. It was this record which was seized upon by the Israeli government to precipitate this current outbreak of fighting. Once started, the Hezbollah played a role perfectly scripted by Israel. In response to Israeli escalation they began to shell several cities in northern Israel. This in turn became rationale for further attacks by Israeli forces on Southern Lebanon, as well as some Hezbollah and Syrian supported facilities in the Beirut area.
It also appears that Israel's action has been a catalyst for more, not less, opposition to the peace process among the Lebanese and Syrians. It also seems curious logic indeed that a major round of serious military escalation, with dozens of workers killed and hundreds of thousands made homeless, in the name of fighting the Hezbollah, will somehow usher in cordial relations between the Israeli and Lebanese governments.
MONROVIA, Liberia -- Several dozens wars of all sizes are murdering workers and their families in every corner of the world. Just last week, the Israeli army turned 400,000 residents of southern Lebanon into refugees, blasting the shaky "peace" in the area.
At the same time Liberia became a living hell for all its inhabitants. The U.S. has sent a couple of thousand troops to try to protect its embassy and its interests, while rescuing a few hundred people and taking them to Freetown, in neighboring Sierra Leone (where another civil war has been raging for years).
The local bosses that lead the different factions in Liberia copy the big imperialists and capitalist bosses. They use young men as cannon fodder to defend their interests.
Liberia was founded in 1847 as a U.S. colony for freed slaves. It was relatively calm until 1980, when Army sergeant Sam Doe overthrew President William Tolbert, who had ruled for 10 years. This coup ended 100 years of rule by the elite descendants of freed U.S. slaves.
Most people who supported Doe thought he was going to change things. But he became a brutal dictator, with the support of U.S. imperialism (and some American black nationalists like Brooklyn's Sonny Carson, who ran the PX for Doe's army)
Doe was so corrupt and brutal, that in 1989, when a group of 150 men led by Charles Taylor, a former cabinet member, organized an uprising, Doe's army was defeated in nine months. Doe was cut into pieces by his enemies, while the Liberian people cheered.
But things just got worse for the masses. Three months later, Taylor was overthrown by a "peace force" put together by different African armies and led by Nigeria. Since 1989, the country has been divided among different factions and over 150,000 have died in the civil war, and one million have become refugees. The atrocities against the people committed by these forces were enormous: whole villages were burned, people were mutilated.
Last August, the different factions signed a "peace deal" in Nigeria. It was broken two weeks ago when Charles Taylor, Alhaji Kromah and George Boley, the most powerful members of the "provisional government," expelled Roosevelt Johnson (representing the descendants of U.S. slaves) from the government Hundreds have died in the last few days of fighting.
Why are these rulers fighting? Liberia is rich in natural resources. The black market sale of rubber, gold, diamonds and other precious metals is controlled by these factions, which sell them at bargain prices or for guns to rich bosses in the area, particularly in Nigeria. These bosses have no interest in ending this black market. Control of the country's markets, resources and profits is the goal of the capitalist factions. They will have peace talks, stalemates and cease-fires on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while planning to initiate war again on the weekend.
Stalin was right in 1952. Getting rid of these competing factions means getting rid of the system (capitalism) that is based no profit and a competing elite. Workers who see through the endless wars of the imperialist system must turn the guns around. They must use their guns to fight for a new system--a system without Charles Taylor, Roosevelt Johnson and all the bosses and their imperialist masters--a communist society.
The young woman, took the bullhorn "Why are they doing this to us," she shouted . "It's not right. We only came here to work and support our families." She works fifty-five-hour weeks sewing for $4.25 an hour and shares a crowded apartment with co-workers
"As workers we must come together, organize, and march on May Day with the members of the PLP. We need to do something against the raids that are taking place everyday. Just today they raided our factory and we must put a stop to this" said another worker.
Every Thursday we have been going to the garment center to leaflet, sell Challenge-Desafíos, recruit workers to communist study groups and the Party. Today, 30 PL members and friends met at the corner of 38 St. and 8 Ave. to hold a rally against the exploitative bosses, the police beating of workers in California and to build for May Day.
Workers were angry, and rightly so, as the police had just raided several factories in the area in an attempt to intimidate the workers in the shops. People were receptive to everything we were saying, many asked questions and we sold 200 Challenge-Desafios, distributed more than 1,000 leaflets, and 12 garment workers gave us their names and phone numbers. They were interested in coming to May Day and to our weekly study groups. Who says workers are afraid of communism?
The discussions stemmed from two communist study groups held in two 11th grade history classes, led by a young PLP member. There were about 30 students in each class. Everything from the USSR and classless society to freedom of speech was discussed.
It was surprising to see everyone awake and attentive. Usually people are either asleep or paying just enough attention to get the answers they need for the test. This was not the case with the study group. Students were interested in what we had to say. In fact, one student left one of his classes to join in on the group.
The Party has been selling Challenge at Franklin for about half a year. Selling 20 minutes every Thursday morning has created a communist presence at the school. We sell 30 to 35 papers a week. Our activity forced a history teacher to talk about communism in class. His attempt to control the discussion was futile. The class read the Communist Manifesto and many of the teacher's interpretations were wrong. A comrade had to correct him so much that a student said, "Why don't you just let Joel teach the class?" The class overwhelmingly agreed, and the teacher was forced to say yes.
At the study group students asked questions such as, "If the USSR failed, then why do you think communism will work?" "Is there freedom of speech under communism?" and "How do you make a fair decision if the whole working class rules?"
A student said, "It's not so much a technical problem. You see, under communism there is a whole new way of thinking. People have totally different ideas than we do now. It's what people think up here [pointing to his head] that matters."
Many students think communism is capitalism with a few changes. "Communism is just another economic system," one student said. This is what is taught in the classroom today.
We have been able to explain that right now there are two classes, the exploiters (the bosses) and the exploited (the workers), under communism we would have one class and everybody would work for the benefit of all. Many students now understand that capitalism is based on exploitation and communism is based on sharing and collectivity.
We cannot allow these capitalist ideas to be taught in school without confrontation. The only way to put communism in the forefront is by combating the capitalist ideas and putting forth the Party's ideas. The majority of capitalist propaganda is pushed in school. Therefore, we must talk about communism in our classes.
When we do this, we get amazing results. In the weeks following the study groups our comrade was bombarded with questions. The discussion refused to stop. He spent lunchtime talking politics with students. Almost all the students liked the study group and asked if they can do it again. Some students even asked if our comrade could talk in their class.
It seems people are always saying, "Hey, you're that communist guy." This familiar greeting is usually followed by a "why" or "what" question. Just the other day a student asked, "When are you selling that paper because I want to get one?" Later, a couple of students came to a PLP youth study group. We are now organizing students to come to the May Day dinner. Several students have said they will come as a result of the communist struggle in class.
On April 10, while President Zedillo was speaking in Morelos, Mexico, during events commemorating the 77 anniversary of the murder of Emiliano Zapata, some 800 Tezpotec farmworkers were brutally attacked by anti-riot cops.
The Tezpotec Indians were in a motorcade to the place were Zedillo was speaking. They wanted to present their demands opposing the building of a golf course that would destroy arable land for the benefit of tourists.
When the marchers reached San Rafael de Zaragoza, five huge trucks and 300 well armed riot cops blocked their way. The cops started taking men, women and children out of their vans, kicking them and pulling them by the hair. They outdid the Riverside cops in their insults. "Damn Indians, get out!" "We are going to rape all your women," etc.
When the demonstrators defended themselves, the cops retreated and then came back. Their chief, Juan Manuel Ariño, pulled his gun and ordered the cops to shoot. Marcos Olmedo, one of the demonstrators, was shot in the neck and died. Many more were injured. Many of the injured were thrown by the cops into a pick-up truck, one on top of another. The dead body of Marcos was put in a bag and "thrown like a dog" into one of the trucks, according to a woman demonstrator.
The cops did not let any ambulances or doctors attend the injured. "If you cross the line, we have orders from the governor of the state to shoot."
As soon as the incident happened, the authorities denied that the cops were armed. They blamed the demonstrators for the violence. But, again, someone had videotaped the whole incident. And the authorities had to change their tune. Now they claim they are investigating the incident. Don't hold your breath.
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 Fuhrman award, send it to us.
Outsourcing and privatization have become two of the many ways the bosses are attacking workers, cutting wages. eliminating jobs and worsening working conditions.
Despite the heavy automation of phone services, the strike has affected many operations--information, repair work, collect calls, activation of cellular phones, clerical work, etc. Company chief Agustin Garcia accused the workers of carrying out an "illegal strike which violates the no-strike clause of the contract." The company has hired 1,200 scabs and is using cops to protect its installations.
Phone workers here have a long history of militancy. In 1972 they carried out one of the most militant strikes ever waged in Puerto Rico, shooting at scabs and the helicopters flying them in and out of work sites, confronting vicious anti-riot cops, and sabotaging equipment. A rank-and-file group led by a communist worker affiliated with PLP played a key role in that walkout. The sellers and writers of Challenge-Desafío were the only publication the strikers talked to during that strike.
Today, the strikers must again turn to those tactics. But even more, they must learn the lessons of past struggles, 24 years later and workers are still getting screwed. Today, phone workers face even more attacks from the bosses. They need to go beyond strikes, to organize themselves into a communist movement and use their struggle to destroy capitalism and its union-busting privatization once and for all.
The information superhighway is one of the fastest growing industries and modem companies like USRobotics are merging into the fast lane by grinding the workers into the ground.
Every day the workers produce tens of thousands of modems which cost on the minimum $150 each. One modem easily pays the daily wage of two workers. There are only two shifts, running from 6am to 6pm. Many workers work overtime, usually averaging 48-60 hours a week because the pay for a week of straightime is not enough to pay the bills.
The work is monotonous and stressful. The profits that the workers make for this company are tremendous. In fact the two top bosses at USRobotics made over $36 million last year in personal income. CEO C.G. Cowell reported $18.6 million and Executive V.P. J. McCartney took in another $17.8 million. These guys are living high on our labor, labor that the company steals from us, labor that will break our backs. As the guys on top rake in the millions, we will see more workers, like Mafatlal, feel the effects.
Like many of us, Mafatlal Patel worked hard for USRobotics. He worked in final assembly, loading skids. He was known as a "six-day man". What drives us to work so much overtime? Or more importantly, why does USRobotics want us to work overtime? We make money for USRobotics, and the harder we work, the more money they make. The drive for profits killed Mafatlal. We work overtime, sacrificing our families, our health, in order to scrounge a living. We work overtime to make USRobotics a billion dollar company. At Mafatlal's pay it would take about 1,500 years to earn what Crowell and McCartney made last year alone.
"In 1978 I came to this country and I thought I'd be somebody. Look at me now, I'm a nobody, here at USRobotics making money for the rich man," so says one of our co-workers. We are chasing a dream. Some of us go from one country to another hoping to fufill this dream, but we can't escape capitalism. At USRobotics we work 12-hour days because the company wants to discourage workers from taking days off. The long hours makes a day of rest very costly.
The capitalist class takes and takes, downsizing, dealing, wheeling, making more and more. The workers of the world continue to suffer. The only way to make life better for workers is to build a communist society. Communism puts the need of the whole as primary. We would not work as individuals, worrying about "me for mine so I can survive," but us for ours as a collective. A communist society would be one where we could enjoy the full value of what we produce, instead of working ourselves to death.
The fault lies with the capitalist system. Workers are tested to decide what crumbs they will get from the system. Capitalist thinking limits the creativity of the education process. The system fails to teach workers how to learn to read and write and then penalizes them.
Communist education and communist society develop the talents of all people. Education under communism means learning how to operate as a member of the Party. It means developing your abilities so that the entire society improves. Inequality and exploitation are unacceptable to us. PLP works for our class' benefit, not for some boss's profit margin. PLP encourages all students and workers to learn. Workers in the Party are organizing to bring about a society in which everyone gets what they need to have a decent life--a communist society.
Universities are designed to develop the talents of only a few. Then those talents are used to develop capitalism, a system that deprives most of us of meaningful and secure lives. The capitalists teach working class students that there should be rich and poor. Under capitalism inequalities like racism and sexism are just fine. They are more than fine. Inequalities are necessary because capitalists exploit workers to make profits.
Capitalism and capitalist education can never develop every individual because they are based on inequality. A system based on inequality will not devote resources so that each person gets what he/she needs. Do starving children just get food? Do the sick just get medical care? Do all who need tutoring just get it? No. The reason is that the bosses don't distribute things based on society's needs. They make things that will earn profits for them. Under capitalist education, grades and tests are used to track people into successes and failures. Diplomas are just lottery tickets bought to give people a chance. This system of judging people is used to justify who will get further education, a higher paying job...a "better life".
Communist education means learning how to guarantee a better life for all. We won't use testing to eliminate workers from a chance at the best society has to offer. That isn't the way PLP works now and it won't work that way when we rule society. PLP is not limited by the profit motive. We develop workers talents because we know that the working class is the only force that can transform society.
We want CSU students to join us in the fight for communism. In PLP we encourage everyone to become a practical scientist. We learn to think, originally and creatively, about how to change the world. Building a political movement that is transforming society takes a great deal of talent and commitment. Planning a revolution is challenging and exciting. Join the fight for communist equality. The CSU chapter of PLP is planning on organizing our idea of what a PLP exit exam would be like. Join the PLP protest Wed. April 24, 12:00 Noon in the student center cafeteria. A passing grade? No sweat. Students and campus workers join the CSU contingent to march on May Day.
The administration agreed to hire five new professors in ethnic studies, without agreeing to set up an ethnic studies department. PLP members supported the struggle against Columbia and the students desire to fight racism, but we cannot support the students demand. Ethnic studies cannot stop racism.
At a rally of over 300 people, a PLP member, a student at Columbia, said that his desire to win the fighters to communism stems from his respect for the students. At that rally, 200 copies of Road to Revolution 4 pamphlets were passed out.
The leaders of the rally rushed the communist through his speech. The friends we had made didn't know what to do when the anti-communists attacked. They were confused because we had spent most of our time during the sit-in talking to them about tactics of security at the building takeovers and the significance of police presence on campus. We did not make communism the primary aspect, or conclusion, of the discussions. Without our Challenges at the building takeovers we were ideologically weaponless. The lesson is, we must build a base for communism and nothing less.
So we have set about doing this by putting out a PL leaflet. First of all, it will be distributed by people already in our base and who are coming to May Day. Almost as important, the leaflet maintains a tone of respect for the student fighters and their anti-racist spirit, while ripping the demand for ethnic studies to shreds. Some points the leaflet makes:
* Ethnic studies are not anti-racist. Ethnic studies teach us to view "ethnicity" as the most important thing about a person. The slaughter in ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda was possible because the workers there thought this. Class is the most important thing about a person. Even if we learn about how the Egyptians, Aztecs and the Chinese used advanced mathematics to build two sets of pyramids and the Great Wall, will we learn that these monuments were built by slave labor? Or that the struggle of the slaves then to break the chains of slavery gives force to the struggle of wage slaves of today as we fight towards communism? No.
* That everybody knows what "ethnicity" they belong to but few know what class they belong to. That students by and large have a future of wage slavery--where they are forced to sell their labor, whether mental or manual to survive--ahead of them. That this wage slavery is more similar to, than different from, the slavery in the Americas.
* That people of every ethnicity today are wage slaves and that racism today means that black workers get paid 3/5 the wages of white workers, and that ethnic studies and more professors will never change this.
* That racism is too important to capitalism to be reformed away, for reasons economic--from superprofits from super-exploitation--and political--a divided working class will never win communism.
* That universities are too important to capitalism to adopt anything that will help stop racism, and that the universities are the sources of all the ideas that protect capitalism.
* That the PLP is where the ideas that can destroy capitalism are put into action. That we will destroy the system of wage slavery with a violent revolution for communism--to create a world where there is no race or racism.
* That all who read the leaflet, that will be distributed door-to-door in all Columbia's dorms, should get a copy of Challenge and march for communism on May Day.
Two cops walked up and told the PL'ers they couldn't use the bullhorn. They wanted to take it. We argued with them. They called their supervisor, and in the meantime took the bullhorn.
The comrade continued his speech without the bullhorn. Pointing to the two cops, he told the workers, "These cops are just like the cops who beat the workers in El Monte and the cops who beat Rodney King. They, and the bosses who sent them, here are the enemies of all workers. They want to stop our speeches because they're afraid of all of us--they're afraid that the workers, led by communists, will organize to destroy their rotten racist profit system."
Dozens of of workers gathered to listen. Hundreds more heard us from the corners. Many of them bought Challenge-Desafío. One comrade started chanting, "The workers united will never be defeated." The crowd took up the chant. The cops looked nervous. When their supervisor came, he looked at the crowd and agreed that we could use the bullhorn, if we turned down the volume.
Now the speeches were more defiant. We, who produce everything, can control society if we unite the working class behind a communist program, build PLP, and fight for power. "We cannot let the cops intimidate us," a comrade proclaimed. "They must have the opposite effect, strengthening our resolve to do away with the bosses."
"The bosses' system can no longer provide the basic necessities for the workers," said the last speaker. "It is failing. They can no longer win us through illusions that capitalism is the best possible system. So they bring out the stick--racist terror."
The evilness of cops comes from their job. Their job is to protect the bosses' private property by terrorizing the workers.
"The capitalists resort more and more openly to racist terror because their system is weak," the comrade emphasized. Police terror makes it seem stronger than it is. The working class is strong, even though disunity makes it seem weak. "This is the time for workers to build PLP to go on the offensive," she urged. "It's not enough to know what we're against. We have to know what we fighting for, a world of communist equality."
Communism will end private property, the root of inequality. Factories and mines, TV studios and hospitals, all will be run by the working class organized through its communist party. Gone will be the two classes of producers (workers) and exploiters (capitalists). No money, no wages. No racist inequality, no sexist inequality, no inequality based on where in the world you live.
The Party will help all workers develop the commitment and the discipline to contribute their best to production. The Party will guarantee that everyone's needs are met as best we can. Nobody will live better or worse than anyone else. That's communist equality.
The rally was ending, and the workers started to leave. Then the same two cops came back. They grabbed the bullhorn and said they were taking it. As we argued with them, a large group of workers came back. This time they confronted the cops directly. One young worker said, "We're not leaving until you give them their bullhorn." He and several others gave their names to be in contact with the Party.
The cop looked at the crowd and gave us the bullhorn back.
Workers will fight for this future of communist equality. That's what we glimpsed last Saturday at 8th and Broadway in the heart of the Los Angeles garment district.
Sal :Why did you join PLP?
Sam: I think the world needs change--sooner or later. I want to be part of it. Why did you join?
Sal: I joined because I got convinced that we needed a revolution, that this system couldn't be made better. And that communism was the future of humanity.
Sam: That's like me, too.
Sal: How long have you been going to Washington H.S.?
Sam: Almost a year.
Sal: What do you think of Washington?
Sam: It's very strict. I believe they have good intentions, but they're going about it in the wrong way. For example, they imposed this uniform policy to cut back on gang banging. Why try to enforcee a dress policy--blue and white--which are gang colors? Washington is primarily a Crips school and blue and white are Crips colors. And they teach us this is a democracy, that everybody has the right to their opinion, but then they tell us we can't have communist literature. But commuist literature gives us hope because it shows that we can have equality.
Sal: What do you think about Gil Garcetti coming to Washington?
Sam: If the students had known it was Gil Garcetti, he'd have got his ass whipped. Garcetti didn't prosecute Fuhrman, we won't forget that. Then he goes after us with 3 strikes, and the cops stop you for anything and nothing. How could the administration have done the students like that?
Sal: The job of the Administration is to get you to accept the capitalist system and play by its rules. They accept that the system is unequal. But we shouldn't.
Sam: We need equality--not dog-eat-dog stuff. The Administration should re-evaluate their priorities. It's bad enough out there without having to worry about the police. The cops harrassed me over having my belt being too long. He pulled his gun on me. He said, "I thought you had stolen a dog from Lynwood." Said I matched the discription of some one who stole a dog. But he was really saying, "Hell, we can blame almost anything on you." They're the power and you're not. But they're not all bad. I had two help me back in Atlanta when the man who worked in a store blamed me for steeling something, the cops saw that theye had forgotten to charge me for something.
Sal: So you're saying its just some bad, racist cops? Or is it that the cops are supposed to harass peoeple to keep us intimidated, to teach us that they're the power?
Sam: Well, its probably the way the system's set up. But to change that, you have to change the whole system. There's more unemployment, more crime and so there are more arrests. They're filling the jails. They keep them crowded. Have you heard about the new jail they built downtown? Its called the twin towers. Its empty because they don't yet have the money to run it. What's the purpose of building that jail and then not having the money to run it? I don't understand it myself.
Sal: They'll vote themselves some bonds and get the money to run it. They'll say the other jails are overcrowded and that its not "fair" to the prisoners, and they'll get the money to open the twin towers.
Sam: This system is rotten. I'm going to try to bring my friends to May Day. Lets go visit them Monday.
Sal: It's a deal.
During these five years we've (myself, my husband and my children) maintained a friendship with the Party, reading Challenge and participating in social activities from time to time. But by the end of the Summer Project in Los Angeles in 1995, I had participated in more political and social activities. I saw that PLP was something bigger and that its goal is to replace capitalism with communism. The youth in the Summer Project impressed me a lot for their commitment and this helped me decide to join the Party.
When the Party started to struggle with me to take more leadership in organizing workers and to participate more actively in struggles, I did it. But at the same time, my disagreements started coming out. I have doubts about whether or not the people will massively support the fight for communism and about how communism will work. But the experiences and understanding that I've gotten during this time give me confidence to continue together with PLP.
I don't like the injustice of the system. I'd like us all to be equal and that's why I joined the Party. When I saw the beating of the immigrants in Riverside on TV, I wanted to cry with anger. When we went to the march to protest against this bosses' violence, I helped pass out many leaflets carry out the Party's activity there.
I want to fight for a better future for my family, my children, and all workers. In Mexico I worked in the shoe industry and that's where I started hating exploitation, and the government. I hated the PRI, which was the government, and at that time I thought the solution was the PAN (National Action Party). I voted for them thinking that they were different from the PRI. But I felt very bad and stopped supporting them when I saw that they were using me and that they had no solution to the problems of the workers.
Thinking that the North (U.S.) was a paradise, I decided to come looking for a better job and a better future. But soon I discovered how wrong I was, and that instead of coming to heaven, I'd come to hell. I began to work in the garment industry and to feel the exploitation and harassment. But I also started to organize with my co-workers to stop harassment and lowering the piece rates.
In 1991 I met PLP during a strike and since that time, my ideas about capitalism have been changing and a new stage of my life began. I'm organizing to bring my family and friends to the May Day march. The struggle with myself and my friends continues, but I feel good because many of my doubts are being cleared up. But then new ones appear. This means that I'm in the process of learning and struggle, and this gives me enough strength to continue in the fight for communism.
LA Garment worker
I am writing to explain why I recently decided to join the Progressive Labor Party. I migrated to the United States five years ago and started working in a hospital for a living. I come from a working class family background. I was sympathetic to leftist movements in India and read some Indian Marxist literature.
But when I left India, I had serious difficulties understanding the line of many Indian communist parties that supported various Indian nationalist groups like the Punjab separatist movement. The explanation these parties gave was that nations have a right for self determination. They often quoted Lenin's document with the same name.
However I watched nationalists murdering workers of different geographic regions like Punjab and elsewhere and Indian communists never criticized this. During my early stay in the U.S. I read PLP literature which provided a clear understanding that nationalism is a variant of fascism and is not a path to communism. It also provided a straight forward explanation for the failure of the socialist strategy to achieve communism.
I studied literature from other groups like the RCP-Bob Avakian, Raya Dunayevskaya group, and others, which I thought harbored the views which have historically been proven to be wrong and did not provide answers to my questions. I was impressed with PLP's line and started obtaining Challenge from a local left wing book store. However I was still hesitant about participating in any party activity or contacting the party. My idea at that time was to "stay out of trouble," and be of help later.
But I found I was degenerating as an individual and constantly compromising with the system. In the meantime a couple of my co-workers, who were not communists, were "laid off." PLP, not the unions, was the only organization willing to protest and organize the workers against this unfair firing. I did not hesitate to join the protest march. I was more conscious of the worsening living conditions for me and my co-workers.
It was more apparent to me that the capitalists' worldwide drive for profits was leading to war. I learned that one does not have to be a communist to get into trouble. The capitalist system creates the myth that if you "stay out of trouble" by not questioning, protesting, and organizing against the system, you are safe. The dying capitalist system survives by laying-off workers and dividing and killing people through racism and war and has no right to survive.
There cannot be any better goal for a human being than to be a communist and overthrow capitalism through a communist revolution. I met a comrade in the march and have joined the Party, and paid my first Party dues.
Proud new member of PLP
CHICAGO, April 22 -- Last fiscal year, the Finance Office at the University of Chicago Hospital (UCH) collected more than $500 million in revenues. This meant big bonuses for the bosses and one lousy paid day off for the workers.
The bosses think nothing of spending thousands of dollars on office decorations, like brass note pad holders, or from $500 to $1,000 for an office chair.
The office workers are mostly black women. There are never any paper towels in the lunch room--they're stocked away in the executive conference room. Recently, workers complained about a lack of toilet seat covers in the ladies room. The office manager was "very concerned" about how fast the seat covers were "disappearing," so a study was done.
It turns out seat covers hadn't been ordered for three months. The last order was for 5,000. The "study" showed that based on 60 working days in three months, 83 toilet seat covers were used each day, fewer than one per day per woman worker. This didn't include overtime, Saturdays, or temporary workers.
As if this isn't insulting enough, the ladies room is always running short on toilet paper. Often one roll is shared by many, or there is none. In that case, women are forced to use seat covers instead of toilet paper.
This kind of racist and sexist inequality is typical of UCH and the whole capitalist system. The very workers who are collecting half-a-billion dollars for the bosses are treated like robbery suspects over toilet paper and paper towels. It also shows how the bosses' racism hurts all workers, since all workers are subjected to this degrading treatment.
We don't have to live this way. To eliminate waste, racism, and inequality, we should eliminate the bosses and wage slavery. Join PLP and March on May Day!
[DROPCAP]As the "gray period" of the 1990s drags on, and especially as winter of 1996 refuses to let go of the Northern Hemisphere, it was delightful to encounter the newly re-published Moscow Yankee. This 1935 novel by the American communist author Myra Page tells the story of Andy and his fellow laid off Ford workers from Detroit who take contracts to work in Moscow.
The Soviet Union was the one place in the world hiring during the Depression. There was no depression there, rather the opposite, an excitement and joyous building of factories, housing, subways--and a new consciousness. Andy and his friends enter this "new world in birth" with slightly different expectations, ranging from the self-satisfied utopian Hendricks to the boisterous jerk Morse, sort of a 1930s equivalent of the Party Animal (and that's House Party, not Communist Party).
When they meet Ned Folson, a black American mechanic who has made his new home in the first country to outlaw racism, the USSR, their reactions hint at how open they will be to this new social order. Ned's offers to help the newcomers ("was new once myself") with his fluent Russian are embraced by Andy and spurned by Morse.
That tells us something. Only one of the Amerikanski struggles to figure out the strange upside-down alphabet and society they encounter. We are in Andy's head as he struggles to understand. Why does the "straw boss" act so friendly? Why do these chumps work free overtime? We identify with him as he takes the plunge in the factory swimming pool after work and meets Natasha, an attractive young machinist who has all the clarity of purpose that characterizes this new order she is helping to build.
The vague yearning to understand and belong becomes much more focused after Andy meets "Nat." For the remainder of the novel two themes are intertwined: one, a developing romantic relationship between two young workers from different worlds; and two, the struggle by communists and others committed to building a new socialist society. Neither goes easily. Andy and Natasha, though attracted to each other, are held apart by their different expectations about life in general and their relationship in particular. And then there is Elsie back in Detroit. Meanwhile storms brew on the shop floor, as bureaucrats scheme and saboteurs plot the fiery destruction of the truck plant and its workers.
The glorious spring sun melts the ice on the Moscow river, just like it finally melts the snow that refuses to stop falling on New York and Chicago a half century later. Everyone who reads Challenge newspaper should read this book and share it with friends. It helps to make real the socialist phase of the Soviet Union. That decades-long period has been deleted from history with remarkable thoroughness by today's bosses, who tremble at the thought of workers seizing power again.
For some reason a little crack has appeared in their media wall and we have access to a useful book in the mass market, not just some dusty library. (I found it on the shelves of both Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores.) This book is realistic, showing both the strengths of socialism and the weaknesses which were to prove fatal a generation later.
We should use it in study groups, book clubs and classes to show what they did right last time, to talk about what we'll change next time, and most of all, to burn through the "gray period" blahs. I plan to stock up on copies for pre-May Day study groups in years to come. Moscow Yankee shows why the biggest communist celebration of the year comes on the First of May: a brand new world's in birth!
The May Day Dinner on the south side of Chicago was a smashing success. Well over 225 working class comrades marked April 13 as the day they will begin to smash capitalism.
Three new members of PLP spoke on the mike so everyone would have no doubts on why they joined. The May Day dinner regulars said the reasons this year's was the best in recent memory was plain and simple. The food was good, hot, and plentiful. The entertainment kept you on the edge of your seat. The MC was humorous, made the crowd a little rowdy, and maintained program continuity.
The Red Rappers kicked it off with "Can You See It?" then it was on to Indiana college students performing a play, "Two Classes." H.S. students urged us to read Road to Revolution 4. The keynote speaker addressed the need for more May Day organizers as well as marchers. The Red Singers performed renditions of "We March on Mayday," "Bella Ciao," and "The Internationale."
The political message was this: workers are getting fed up with this capitalist society. Workers want and need a movement that will provide them with a better life. Workers want and need communism. All workers were invited to march on May Day and join PLP.
We must show a united front against the racists, individualists, and the nationalists, on the south side of Chicago. Thanks to all the comrades who made it happen and keep marchin' towards May Day.
Chicago comrades
We were working on a busy Friday at Cook County Hospital (CCH). A communist employee was taken to disciplinary hearing on trumped up charges (the supervisors think this dump pharmacy is the Carlton Ritz).
This employee was working in the special medications sections of the outpatient pharmacy. The supervisor's do not care for the patients. They did not send anybody to replace the employee. As a result the emergency room (ER) patients had to wait more hours to get medications. The supervisors were more interested about taking an employee to a hearing than to serve the patients.
Several of the employees read Challenge-Desafío. We like it and sometimes wish it had more articles about Cook County Hospital and our department.
An employee who cares about ER patients
In 1963 when Wallace got elected as the Governor of Alabama, he proclaimed in his inaugural speech, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation for ever!" As the U.S. capitalist bosses get desperate to save their bloody profit system based on wage slavery, racism and sexism, they have reinvented Wallace's racism.
The recent upsurge of demand for ethnic studies at elite universities like Columbia, Stanford, UCLA etc., is nothing but promoting Wallace's fascist ideas covered with liberal, progressive form. Our Party should vigorously attack the politics behind the ethnic study programs as the bosses' need to win a generation of minority students to be promoters of the genocidal U.S. imperialism.
The bosses-co-opted the civil rights movement of the 1960s created, and built sellouts like Jesse Jackson, Willie Brown, Clarence Thomas etc., to mislead black workers and youth. The bosses now need a new generation of minority leaders who will become the defenders of capitalism.
The political movement to establish ethnic studies is not progressive or anti-racist. It is no coincidence that the Columbia hunger strikers have received a nationwide publicity and such demands are multiplying. Our Party should take a serious note of this trend and boldly attack this reactionary trend.
Santa Cruz comrade
In the past there have been several letters in Challenge, debating the role of schools and the role communist teachers and students should play in them. Some disagree with the Party and believe that we should fight to make capitalist schools better.
Well, schools are ideological centers organized to control working class youth. In this period of growing fascism, schools cannot play any progressive role at all. They serve to control youth. This is something the Fraternal Order of Police and many bosses understand.
The New York Times (4/9) reported that this fascist racist group, and others, oppose provisions of the new anti-immigrant bill in Congress which will make it illegal for the children of undocumented immigrants to go to public schools, fearing the fact that there will be millions of kids out in the streets.
A former teacher
"The Red Point of View" article in the latest Challenge (4/17) "Whose crazier? The system or the cows," continues a run of liberal errors found regularly in recent issues.
Statements like: "The whole things sounds nuts to me," "Whose mad, the cows or the capitalists?" and "What could be more unbelievable than the crazy system that we live under now?" all let capitalists off the hook by equating their genocidal drive for profits with some kind of insanity. The only way capitalists can be considered crazy is when they are understood to be crazy like foxes.
The capitalists are doing exactly what is necessary to maintain their murderous system and are quite prepared to turn three billion workers worldwide into corpses. (See "Capitalist plan..." on Letters page of the same issue)
If communists want to lead a revolution for workers' power, we can be no less ruthless in our description of the capitalist class. We must--as the rest of the otherwise fine Red Point of View articles do--clearly identify to workers what capitalists really are: growers of diseased food for profit; scum who will allow 40,000 children to die daily of starvation while they hold back the growth and distribution of food for profit; and murderous bosses responsible for 750,000 U.S. deaths on the job, etc...
Comrade DeFargé