Editorial
The cops blocked roads two miles from the Porter County government center, where the Klan was to rally. They set up two separate entrances and parking lots to keep anti-Klan forces from attacking racist Klan supporters. Police, accompanied by dogs, brandished shotguns and batons at us in the anti-Klan parking lot.
More cops, wearing fatigues, black helmets and masks, in full riot gear, set up checkpoints a mile away from the rally. They demanded that protesters remove all jewelry, watches, hats, and sunglasses. You could bring in nothing but two keys, a wallet (with no change), and one poster. No leaflets. No cameras. Once you entered the rally, the cops threatened, you couldn't leave until the rally was over. "Are we under arrest?" one comrade asked.
More cops used hand-held metal detectors to frisk people as they entered a holding pen surrounded by an eight-foot high chain-link fence. Three hundred police stood between this pen and another, 100 feet away, for the KKK supporters. Three helicopters were ready to shuttle police as needed. Cops atop the government building aimed machine guns and video cameras at the protesters.
The Super K-mart across the street was shut down on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the day before Mother's Day! All this to protect 30 KKK members.
The PLP contingent refused to walk into this ready-made jail. We wouldn't allow ourselves to be surrounded by Klansmen. What's the difference between fascists in robes and hoods and fascists in police fatigues? Communists don't see fighting the KKK in terms of taking a moral stand against racism. We see it as a battle in the class war. When we fight, we fight to win.
We marched out chanting "The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan--All a part of the bosses' plan," and "Death to the fascists, power to the workers!" We defied the cops and rallied in the parking lot. Other anti-Klan protesters listened and took Party literature. Some left when we did.
Mass hatred of the Klan runs deep, and the bosses know it. Recently, 400 protesters tried to stop a Klan rally in Angola, Indiana. Unable to get at the Klan, they went after the police.
That's why church groups, the Gary, Ind. NAACP, the Indiana University-Northwest teachers' union, and various Northwest United Steel Workers of America locals organized a "diversity rally" way across town. These liberal reformers, like the cops, tried to keep anti-racists from attacking the KKK. The liberals mistakenly see the Klan as an exception, a sideshow in capitalism's wretched circus.
The capitalists need racism to maintain their weakening profit system, and use their state power to promote and bring fascism into its center ring. Fascist groups such as the Klan, Nazis, militias, and the Christian right are all part of the growing trend to blame black and immigrant workers for capitalism's failures. The rulers are increasingly relying on the fascist "option" and are gathering their stormtroopers.
The fenced-in pen the cops offered the protesters is a sign of things to come: concentration camps in the heartland. A system that does not work for tens of millions must resort to the ultimate in repression--fascism--to intimidate the working class from organizing to overthrow it. Fascism is here in the USA. The question is not, "How did it get here?" The question is, "How are we going to overthrow the fascist ruling class?"
Think how different things might have been in Portage if we could have brought the 250 workers from the liberals' rally to fight the Klan under our leadership, along with the 400 anti-racists from Angola, and hundreds more workers and youth from high schools, colleges and workplaces around Chicago and Indiana. We would have seen how even the armed force of the state can be challenged and ultimately overthrown.
The working class is at war with its capitalist rulers. Last week, thousands answered the cop's question, "Which side are you on?" They marched with PLP on May Day, for communism. Building the Progressive Labor Party and communism is the only way to challenge and defeat the ruling class and their uniformed goons.
Another group grabbed the site planned for the PLP rally, and used it for an election campaign rally. India was then in the midst of a nationwide election circus. Thirty PLP workers quickly set up a sound system and speakers' stand in a courtyard between two rows of workers' homes.
A Party member with over 40 years seniority at the mill explained to the villagers that this was not an election rally. The communist red PLP flag was raised as 40 to 50 workers came over to listen. The crowd grew to 400 workers during the speech.
A young Party member read a Hindi translation of a solidarity message sent by PLP in the U.S. By this time 500 workers gathered around the platform ignoring the election rallies.
The next speaker, a long time communist, said that only PLP calls for a direct fight for communism and the abolition of wage slavery once and for all. He explained the Party's stand against all forms of racism, nationalism, and ethnic and caste discrimination. He told the crowd that the PLP refuses to ally with any section of the bourgeoisie in any country. He explained why PLP has scrapped the socialist, two-stage theory of revolution that led to workers' defeat in the Soviet Union and China. Workers were asked to join the Party and make it their own.
A friend of PLP, representing a Bangladeshi student organization, had taken a 20-hour bus and train ride to join the rally. He said that Indian and Bangladeshi workers had to work together. Capitalists created national boundaries to divide workers to try to prevent them from fighting effectively.
He also warned that Japanese, U.S., and European imperialists' demands for "free markets" would mean sharper attacks on the workers. Workers everywhere face the same enemies--revisionists, and opportunists. Elections will never help us meet our needs. This is an age of fascism and imperialist wars, he said, and workers everywhere will have to turn imperialist wars into revolutionary wars.
No one in the crowd left as speeches by rank-and-file leaders followed. The rally closed with a revolutionary chant. Dozens of workers crowded around the speakers to introduce themselves. A red PLP flag was raised over the entrance to the hut where the rank-and-file fighters hold regular meetings.
The Muslim-Hindu unity shown on this memorable May Day, and the intensity with which workers listened to communist speeches, are indications that hundreds are wide open to PLP's line. The revolutionary process will inevitably have its ups and downs; and a struggle lies ahead to build on this momentum and recruit to the Party.
This vigilante patrol, based on racism, is organized to provoke the anger of the black workers in Crown Heights. This racist provocation succeeds, when days later, a Catholic Polish immigrant is beaten by a group of black youth who shout, "get the Jew." What's going on?
The ruling class wants the workers' anger against mass unemployment, rotten housing, and service cutbacks, caused by capitalism , to be deflected into fighting amongst workers--in this Crown Heights neighborhood, it's between Hasids and blacks.
Several years ago, a car in a caravan including the Grand Hasidic Rebbe struck and killed a young black child. Several days of rebellion followed. Black workers' anger against preferential treatment of the Hasidic sect turned to anger at the cops, racist unemployment, and to then Mayor Dinkins. Dinkins was a black mayor who cut city services in communities like Crown Heights.
The idea of race and racism is the main weapon the rich capitalists use to make super-profits from the labor of black, latin, and immigrant workers. This capitalist idea has kept the world's working class divided for centuries. We in the PLP know that the concept of race is a big lie. There's only one race-the human race!
We condemn the racist Crown Heights police, who target black youth and encourage the vigilante patrols. Shomrim has refused to organize integrated patrols, as exist in other orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. This racist gang- up between the cops and Shomrim against black youth must not be tolerated.
Anti-semitic retaliation is also a loser. This reaction to racism leads to division and destruction. It is not a solution to the racism that black workers face. In fact, it is exactly what the rulers want to see, since it will keep workers at each others' throats.
Conditions in Crown Heights, like everywhere else, are steadily worsening. Housing is deteriorating, unemployment is up, homelessness is up. The crisis the capitalist bosses face cannot be solved. The bosses hope to drag us down even more, so they can hold on to their system.
We need to get off this treadmill of divisions based on religion or skin color and join the movement for a society based on the concept "from each according to commitment, to each according to need."
Hundreds of youth from Crown Heights marched with us to celebrate the communist holiday, May Day.
Thousands more will join with us. Why don't you?
ValuJet's planes average 26.4 years old. Why are these crates still in service? In a word, profits. According to Newsday, (5/14)
* Its planes are old. Its staff is low-paid. And its fares are cheap.
* ValuJet's highly profitable formula...includes contracting out maintenance and trainingThe airline made a 25 percent pre-tax profit for 1993, its initial year.
This particular plane was known as a source of danger as well as profits. The New York Times (5/14) reported:
* The ValuJet DC-9 that crashed had been forced to return to airports seven times in the last two years for a variety of safety problems, including an emergency landing in Memphis a year ago when the plane lost cabin pressure.
What kind of pilot would fly this hunk of junk? Only one who shares the capitalist belief that profits are more precious than life itself. The capitalist press has been running romantic claptrap about how the pilot, Candalyn Kubeck, "loved to fly." The truth is that Kubeck was anti-working-class scum, which she proved by scabbing on the Eastern Airlines strike.
Pena is a mouthpiece for the airlines, and is also covering his own ass. The crash happened while ValuJet was under special review by the Department of Transportation. Pena said his daughter flew on ValuJet the day before the crash, and he'd be comfortable if she flew ValuJet in the future. Hooray for profits, down with life. No doubt Pena also told his fellow cabinet member Ron Brown not to worry about flying around Bosnia in military aircraft. Up, up, and away!
Capitalism is in a profit squeeze. To compete, corporations must cut back, lay off, speed up, contract out, and endanger workers' health and safety. The government must push these fascist measures, and attack workers who oppose them. There will be more fatal plane crashes.
Under communism our Party will run society, not a gang of capitalist murderers for hire. Workers will make and maintain airplanes--as we do now. But we will make them for use, not for profit. When the planes get too old, we'll scrap them and make some more. There will be plenty of people to do it: nobody will be wasting his or her time selling tickets, counting money, writing contracts, or making up stupid ads to compete with other airlines.
We workers will be the passengers, the pilots, the other crew members. We would be smart enough not to kill ourselves. To get to this point, we have to be smart enough to join and build PLP so that we can make a communist revolution that will put all the bosses where they belong, in the swamps with the alligators.
This week's Mark Fuhrman Fascist Cop Award goes to the Special Investigation Services (SIS), a crack unit of the LAPD. Four years ago this group of lowlife thugs killed three unarmed robbers of a McDonald's restaurant. After paying damage to relatives for murder, the goons went back on duty.
Recently, they shot Daniel Soly 26 times. Incredibly, he was still alive. They killed him, firing a .44 into his head at point-blank range. Robert Cunningham was wounded and paralyzed in the same apparent attempted robbery. Cunningham is in jail, awaiting trial for robbery and murder charges under California's fascist law that holds a "criminal" responsible if his acts "provoke deadly force" (by the cops).
The LA police describe the SIS as "highly-trained, highly-competent individuals who specialize in saving lives." Who are they fooling?
A lawyer representing a man who survived the Soly murder wants the SIS disbanded. Getting rid of this death squad, a few of the worst cops, won't do it. Workers need to rid the earth of all these scumbags. Communist revolution will eliminate fascist pigs and the system they protect.
Anti-working class terror and racism go with the badge. If you have a candidate for the Fuhrman award send it to us.
However, when Bob Grant said that "blacks are savages," and the only way to stop the Haitian workers from coming to the U.S. was "to let them drown at sea," the liberals did not rant and rave about those racist remarks.
Now Mayor Giuliani and Gov. Pataki, whose administrations have a history of police terror in black and latin communities, came out, in support of the racist Bob Grant, calling for his reinstatement. And now, in fact, Grant has been hired to continue to spew his racism on WOR radio.
History has shown that when racist ideas are put into practice, millions of workers, communists, Jews and non-Jews, are slaughtered by fascists.
Capitalism is worse today. Capitalism cannot ever eliminate racism. Destroying it forever means fighting for nothing less than communism. Only communism will abolish the concept of race and send the Bob Grants and all the racist scum from the face of the earth.
The CCRI is designed to eliminate Affirmative Action race and sex preferences for jobs and school admissions. At the rally, PLP members sold 60 Challenge-Desafío and distributed hundreds of leaflets encouraging people to join the Party.
Some people call the CCRI the "Son of Proposition 187." Prop. 187 is a 1995 California ballot initiative designed to deny basic public services to anyone who cannot prove U.S. citizenship or legal residency. Supporters of 187 claim they are trying to get rid of the overuse and unfair distribution of public resources.
Prop. 187 and the CCRI are the bosses' attempts to blame workers for the weaknesses in the profit system. The CCRI blames black and latin citizens and women workers. 187 blames immigrant workers. But the real reasons for these cutbacks are the U.S. economic problems. The U.S. capitalists are desperate to cut government cost and are taking away reforms for which workers have fought.
At the City Hall rally we learned that many government workers know funding to schools, hospitals and other services workers need are being cut to give tax breaks to the rich, pay off the banks that loan the government money, build jails and hire cops. These workers also know that Prop. 187 and CCRI are racist and meant to build divisions between workers.
What PLP'ers have yet to make clear to enough workers is the urgent need for them to join and build the Party. Party members explained that the problem is not just the racism of CCRI and Proposition 187 but the fraud of Affirmative Action, immigrants' rights and other liberal capitalist reforms.
We must explain that the capitalists invented Affirmative Action to pacify workers and buy off the liberal civil rights leadership after the ghetto rebellions of the 1960s. Many workers wanted real change in American society and the bosses couldn't have that.
Affirmative Action is a crumb based on anti-communist, anti-working class ideas. Affirmative Action reinforces the idea that workers really are of different races. In reality, there is only one race--human, but two classes--bosses and workers. With affirmative action under capitalism, the bosses' government guarantees their right to exploit workers. The distribution of wealth in society is still based on money through the wage system. Production is still for their profits not for our needs.
We explained to the workers at the rally that the only way to get the kind of society we need, a communist society, is by uniting working class men and women as members of PLP. We will defy the bosses' borders to destroy the distinction between citizens and immigrants. We will outlaw exploitation, the basis for racism and eliminate the idea of race. We must take definitive action and use our initiative to build the Party today.
Challenge-Desafío (C-D): This was your first May Day march. How did you like it?
Student: It was exciting. I got to see the way people come together and join the march, you know. I was very excited to be on security and to be a bus captain.
C-D: What's been happening at Prospect Heights H.S. (PHHS)?
Student: A lot of students went this year to Washington and they really liked it. The principal has been calling in students and questioning them, asking them to write statements. On Monday, the principal called in a teacher and threatened to suspend her for inviting students to the march.
C-D: Why do you think this is happening?
Student: I think the administration doesn't want students to know about communist ideas. They're afraid that students might really like these ideas and go along with them. I think they want to teach the students only about capitalist ideas and to accept things the way they are. They probably think we students will back down and just give in to them. It's not like that. We have support from other people,-from other students and teachers in the school and in our organization.
C-D: The students had a rally on Friday, May 10. Do you think it was a success?
Student: It was good because we got a lot of people to listen to us and hear what we had to say. Even the principal came out to see what was going on. Even though they wanted to stop our rally, they couldn't.
C-D: What message do you have for students, especially at PHHS?
Student: Don't be afraid to fight for what you believe in.
More than 30 security guards surrounded the rally hoping to intimidate the students. Despite the guards and the NYC cops, the rally continued. One student spoke about how great the May Day march had been and how the students made the class conscious decision to attend and organize others to march for communism in Washington, DC.
A big part of the administration's attack on the May Day organizers is to push the idea that PLP teachers "duped and lied" to students to get them to the march. One student was dragged into the principal's office and forced to say which teacher asked him to go to Washington. When he realized that the school bosses were trying to fire those teachers, he went into the principal's office during the hearing and told the principal that he would never be used as a fink against the movement.
The message that anyone can make it under capitalism isn't getting too far with young people these days. But the schools continue to tell students the lie that if they work hard they can succeed, a line that few people believe. Unable to win students to be loyal to capitalism, the school is now trying to intimidate and scare students away from communism.
In spite of the administration's scare tactics, 70 students from Prospect Heights marched on May Day. The bulk of these students are immigrants from the Caribbean whose families have already tasted the lash of U.S. imperialism. Having marched with the Party, they and many others are now defending a PLP teacher who is coming under attack from the administration for teaching the truth about communism.
This rally, held in full view of the administration, was a small but significant step forward for our PLP club. It raised the ante in this struggle sending a clear message that youth will defend their communist party and its May Day march.
Many workers have the gut feeling that we live in a class society. They agree that the rich are getting richer and working people are getting the shaft. But these gut feelings aren't con-+scious and don't translate into decisive class war--like organizing a strike against wage or job cuts.
Instead they become blurred and hesitant. One or another version of liberalism--the idea that "we can all get along, both bosses and workers"--takes over. The union looks to the courts to save us. Others like the rank-and-file newsletter group, "Busology," look to sympathetic politicians.
One worker complained that "morale would plummet" if AC closed Richmond. She said it seemed like "the same old, same old." She's right. But she gets caught up in helping the bosses solve their unsolvable need for cutbacks. This worker's solution is to close the administrative offices instead of cutting drivers, dispatchers and mechanics.
The more conservative elements get pulled into open labor-management schemes like the Team Concept. Richmond shop steward Claudia Hudson fully embraced the ATU and Local 192 president Zook's plan to increase quality and efficiency (cut jobs). General Manager Banks praised Richmond for implementing the team and for having the "cleanest buses." But, when push comes to shove, the capitalists only look at the bottom line--profits. Sorry, Claudia!
But all these schemes--the courts, the politicians, the Team--are all designed to keep workers as wage slaves forever doing the bosses' bidding. The bosses and their union and other liberal flunkies have tunnel vision. They only want to see a capitalist world where a handful are in charge and the masses suffer the consequences.
We have the opposite view. Based on our confidence in workers, we conceive of working people making decisions for our own class. And this is where the battle for communist influence among the working class becomes vital. Every week Challenge offers proof that workers can rule the world. Too few of us accept the evidence as of yet. But when these ideas are grasped by enough of us, decisive class war will erupt.
The PLP club here is drawing up plans to fight these cuts. Turning the gut feeling that we live in an unfair, racist, class society into a decisive communist class consciousness is our number one aim. The cops, the courts, the legislature, even the news media are all weapons the capitalists use against us. They use them to divide us, keep us meek and increasingly poor. Challenge is our main weapon. Obviously its circulation needs to grow by leaps and bounds. Help us! On top of that we're calling a rally to attack job/wage cuts and fare increases, and for communist revolution on Saturday, June 8 in Oakland. March with us! This will be built in part by mass organizing at AC Transit by riders and drivers. Join us!
* At Chicago's Englewood High, the principal who once wanted to be a prison warden, is praised for bringing discipline to the school. A teacher complained, "We need this. The students want to be equal with us." A student asked, "Is this a prison?"
* It's prom time again. Get out your cummerbunds, corsages and security clearances. In the Chicago suburbs, high schools are running checks on students' prom dates. A student whose escort has a police or disciplinary record will not be allowed to attend the prom.
What a hideous joke. The same police who beat, chase and kill workers every day are deciding who our children should date.
* Yes, the schools are prisons. Capitalism itself is a prison for working class youth. The only real jailbreak, as explained in the PLP pamphlet JAILBREAK, is to join the revolutionary communist movement as many high school students did by attending the PLP May Day marches.
* Never mind the prom. These young Party members--and those not yet members--must become not only leaders among the youth, but leaders of the entire working class. We hope they pile up an honorable record of arrests and school discipline as they fight for the future of all of us.
Red: Pretty amazing, huh?
Ed: I'll tell you, they keep coming up with better and better stuff in medicine. Genetically engineered drugs, fancy x-rays, computer-driven surgery, all kinds of things. Technology's clearly the key to good health.
Red: I don't know about that.
Ed: What, are you against medical progress? You can't deny that all this high-tech stuff does people good.
Red: I'm not opposed to machines. High-tech's fine, but the real key to health is workers.
Ed: Workers?
Red: Look at the big picture. The most important ingredients in health are the social conditions people live under. When sanitation, housing, and nutrition are lousy, lots of babies don't make it and adults die young. Clean up the streets, build decent housing, make sure everybody gets enough to eat, and people live a whole lot longer.
Ed: So?
Red: Who do you think removes the garbage and produces the food? You could make a pretty good case that sanitation workers and farm workers save more lives than all the high-tech medical devices put together.
Ed: But what about treating disease and injury. Isn't that where technology is king?
Red: First of all, none of these medical miracles happens without a whole lot of hospital workers providing care directly or operating behind the scenes.
Ed: So what?
Red: Guess what happens when there aren't enough of those workers. When bosses cut back and leave one nurse covering a ward with 40 patients. Maybe things don't get cleaned up like they should. Or the wrong medicine gets given by mistake. And lo and behold, maybe Bo Jackson's hip replacement gets infected and doesn't work. So much for your medical miracle.
Ed: Yeah, but that didn't happen to Bo Jackson.
Red: Jackson was a big-time athlete and had lots of money. So he gets top-notch care in a fancy hospital. But lots of workers end up in hospitals with piss-poor staffing levels. Or broken down equipment. Or not enough antibiotics to go around. And both you and I know people who can't get into any hospital, let alone a lousy one.
Ed: True.
Red: So while the media constantly hype the great things that medicine can do--like Bo Jackson's surgery--the simple truth is that millions of needy people never come close to receiving those medical miracles. High-tech means squat for most of us workers because the system won't let us use it. That's why we need communism.
Ed: Somehow I knew you'd say that.
Red: Only because it's true. When our Party's in power and workers run things, we'll share high-tech medicine like we share everything else. First we have to clean up the mess the bosses have made of the world, and make sure that everybody has enough food to eat and a roof to live under. That's the public health basics. Then we can focus on making high-tech medicine available to all.
Ed: So we'll keep all the high-tech medical stuff?
Red: Probably a lot of it. The workers will decide, through the Party. Maybe some of it we'll chuck. Like cosmetic surgery designed to make people look like movie stars. And I'll bet we come up with better high-tech devices than the bosses ever did. After all, there's lots of diseases and injuries that capitalist medical technology can't touch.
Ed: What makes you think communism will do any better?
Red: Because under communism, you won't have biotech companies hiding their discoveries so they can make big bucks. We'll have millions of workers around the world working on devices to treat disease and fix injuries. They will have learned natural science and studied dialectical materialism all their lives. They'll see the world as it really is: an ever-changing process, not just a lot of bits and pieces of some big machine. Then they'll understand the human body more deeply than ever before. When we've accomplished all this, then you'll see some real medical miracles.
In the face of 300 layoffs by the bosses, communism became a mass issue among a significant block of workers. With contract talks about to begin, the prospects for Party building and recruiting a PLP club are better than ever.
Although only a small number of UCH workers made it to the march, one worker joined the Party. More was needed to be done in terms of concentrating on a specific block of workers, anticipating last minute problems, and winning more workers to be organizers for the march. About 40 workers have been introduced to Challenge, but they all do not get it every week. Consolidating our gains requires winning a group of workers to become Challenge distributors, so that these 40 workers and more get the paper every week.
More than 300 May Day stickers were plastered inside the hospital, especially on the loading dock, the freight elevators, the kitchen, locker rooms, and tunnels that run through the basement and sub-basement. At first, the Teamster Business Agent (BA) had one of his followers tearing them down. Then, in conjunction with the bosses, this worker was given the job-assignment of tearing them down. As soon as he did, new ones appeared. That is certainly one guy who is glad May Day is over.
The BA and the bosses spread fear, saying that the Party organizer at the hospital was going to be fired, and that anyone attending the march would be in danger. After the march, the BA spread rumors that the union had checked out the march and no one was there! Their fear of communism, and masses of workers joining the Party is so strong, that even one PLP member is too much for them. Imagine what a mass Party will do. They fear the workers so they attack the Party. We gladly welcome this.
The hospital kitchen is becoming a focal point of the struggle. It's about to blow. The racist bosses, who work for an outside contractor, treat the workers like dogs. Five have been suspended recently, including a woman with more than 20 years who is known and respected throughout the hospital. Other high-seniority black women workers are talked to by these yuppies as if they are worthless. The bosses are about to wipe out five full-time jobs in the kitchen while the supervisors regularly do the work of union workers, serving food, working the tray line, and running the cash registers.
Today, a poor black woman whose daughter was admitted to the hospital, walked through the cashier's line eating a package of two crackers. The bosses stopped her and called security. They wanted her arrested. A group of kitchen workers came to her defense. One woman gave the boss the 15cents he demanded for the crackers, which used to be given away free.
The bosses complained to the security guard that they were going to refuse to serve her, and have her arrested if she returned. An angry group of workers surrounded them, talking about all the food that was being thrown away at that very moment because it couldn't be sold, while someone who was hungry but had no money was being attacked. The racist cowards retreated to their office. Also, a number of kitchen workers have been questioned by the bosses, about talking to the PLP organizer.
The bosses are right to be worried. The Party's ideas and the workers' anger is spreading all around them. They may soon feel the bite. As the old saying goes, if you can't stand the heat...get out of the kitchen!
But then some news is dropped on us like the planned shut down of AC Transit's Central Maintainance in Oakland and its Richmond Bus Barn. Suddenly everyone's talking and thinking. Anger, fear, and company rumors are on the rise .
Work is a social act. It helps give purpose to individuals while linking us to the whole of society. Working together to find food and shelter created the conditions for our ape-like ancestors to evolve into humans. Work created the need for humans to develop our first languages. Work is central to our humanity.
Under capitalism work is stripped of this social meaning. Work becomes "a job," which we perform only in exchange for money. The job is controlled by someone else--the capitalist that owns the business or a government that represents the capitalists. The purpose of the job is not social well being but private gain--the profits of the capitalists.
In this way, the capitalists own or control huge chunks of our humanity. And they do it in part through their domination of the job market. (No wonder mental health problems and social tensions show up everywhere).
Last month there was a so-called crisis on the stock market. Read the business section of any bosses' newspaper and you discover the top capitalists were angry that the U.S. economy had created 140,000 jobs the month before. Millions of us are jobless, so that's just a drop in the bucket. But to the capitalists it was too much! It threatened their investments with inflation. Therefore they engineered the "crisis" to send a signal to Washington to slow down the economy and keep unemployment high! Capitalist control of the job market, we should never forget, is brutal.
Which brings us back to the proposed shut down of Central Maintainance and the Richmond Division. Certainly we have to fight against these cuts tooth and nail. But that's not enough.
For one thing the job you save today can be gone tomorrow. There's no security anymore. But more to the point, why should we let capitalists control our basic human need--work? The more you look at capitalism itself (and not just the problems it throws at us), the more you realise we must wage a revolutionary fight to change the whole system.
Communism will abolish "jobs" and re-instate work. Jobs exist only because a boss or banker wants to make profits. Work will exist because people need what is being produced. A job is drudgery. Work isn't. Recall the satisfaction you get from a hobby. Now imagine that hobby actually meeting the needs of society and you have a glimpse of the human fulfillment possible in a society that promotes work and abolishes "jobs," along with bosses, profits, and money. We have a communist world to win.
The chairperson of the Title I Advisory Council at the school where I teach asked me to come to their meeting to talk about school funding equity. I took the occasion to talk about inequality in society and to invite the parents to May Day. I couldn't believe the response I got!
First I talked a little about the particular case: a suit by a parent demanding equality of funding for all schools in the LA School District. The results of the suit are that some teachers with high seniority may be transferred to schools where most teachers have low seniority--but probably not even that will be done.
The meeting had just listened to representatives of private colleges talk about scholarships; the parents realized that even if we struggle so our kids can make it a little higher up the ladder this means that somebody else will get bumped down. There are only so few positions at the top.
Capitalism, is based on inequality--camouflaged as equal opportunity. We need another way of life--one based on collectivity, rather than competition and inequality. That way of life is communism. I urged parents to join with Progressive Labor Party to march on May Day for communism--the only way our children will have a decent future.
As I finished, a woman I didn't know waved her hand. "When and where is the march?" she asked. I passed out leaflets announcing the march. Everyone started reading the leaflets. An anti-communist "Community Representative" on the school payroll marched to the front. She grabbed the American flag which had been rolled up after the obligatory pledge and began to wave it as she proclaimed that the USA was the greatest country in the world and that I should never have been invited to speak.
After she sat down, the parent who had asked about the details of the march, a parent I didn't know, came forward to report about a meeting downtown about bilingual education. At the end of her report, she held up the May Day leaflet and urged all the parents to join with us in the march.
I wish I could say that this woman and her friends came to May Day--some organizational problems kept that from happening--but they and others will be working with us in the future and we'll make sure that they help us build for May Day next year. I found in this experience that if we put forward the line in a sharp way we'll be attacked--but more importantly we'll be defended and we'll build the Party.
Red teacher
At the May Day march in Washington, DC, I am struck that young people are everywhere--in the march itself, alongside it selling Challenge, acting as marshals and security teams, leading the chanting, speaking from the sound truck.
These youth see no future under capitalism--no future except low-paying jobs, layoffs, racism, and war. They are organizing to smash capitalist exploitation and replace it with communism, where everything will be produced for use, and not sold for profit.
The rulers' media are crying crocodile tears about the recent series of deaths of small children at the hands of their parents and caretakers. They blame the parents, family, neighbors, schools, and the child welfare system, never laying it where it really belongs--on the bloody hands of the capitalist bosses.
As a child welfare worker in New York City, I contrasted the attitudes of the PLP to youth with those of my bosses and the ruling class they serve. The PLP values young people as the embodiment of a communist future in which the very old and the very young will be taken care of.
Mayor Giuliani's response to the death of a particular child was to change the name of the Child Welfare Administration, hire a new commissioner, (providing him with a $180,000 temporary office) and authorize the hiring of 200 new caseworkers. However, when the deaths continued, the new commissioner suspended without pay the worker and supervisor of the child's case.
The suspended workers are members of SSEU-Local 371. The union has responded by blasting the new commissioner and pointing out that overwhelming caseloads and inadequate training have made it almost impossible to do a proper job of protecting the children. Money has been collected for the workers, and there will be a demonstration as the expected firings will be brought to arbitration.
When I was in PLP, I would have argued that more needs to be done, organizing work actions for lower caseloads and to win the workers' jobs back. I would have tried to recruit the more militant workers to PLP.
Now that I have rejoined PLP, which I did just before May Day, I will still push for such actions, but first I will point to the capitalist beast as the cause of children's deaths and the attacks on workers. We will explain that any gains workers make under this system are temporary, and that the only solution to the problems most people face is communist revolution.
On the bus home from DC a young, black woman said that she had been around the Party for some time, but had not joined because she was afraid she wouldn't be able to be as active as she felt she should. Happily, she finally realized that she should join and give to the limits of her abilities and commitment.
The lesson is plain. Follow the lead of this young woman and this older comrade. Commit yourself to joining the class struggle for communist revolution at whatever level you can, but join, or rejoin, PLP! Today!
Back in PLP to stay
Just a quick note to tell you that Challenge-Desafío (5/8) is the best issue I've read since I started reading the paper in January. Several articles in the paper give good reasons why people should join the Party and what the Party's goals are.
The article, "Why I joined the PLP," was clear, concise and motivational. I intend to personally see to it that my co-workers read this article and try to get some of them to attend Party functions. Although I have not joined yet, I plan to do so soon. I will continue to be a friend of the Party.
Keep up the good work. You are doing a great job and making a huge difference in people's understanding of how the world really should be.
Cicero, Illinois, reader
On May 4, I experienced and witnessed one of the most important events of my life. On this date I became a member of a group of individuals wanting something better for others as well as for themselves.
I wanted to fight for a better future for all of us, instead of living in a cycle of historical downfalls such as exists now. I always told myself that I wanted to make a difference in the world. So I decided to join the Progressive Labor Party to help make a difference.
I'm in some school clubs and I've started showing Challenge to other students. My plan is to spread the paper to more students so that next year there's a group of Hollywood High students at May Day.
LA Hollywood HS student
My name is Eliana. I'm 15 and in the tenth grade at Washington High School. Recently me and my friends were invited to the May Day March.
Until this year, I didn't know about PLP. A few months ago I had a substitute teacher. When he started talking about communism I thought to myself, what the heck is he talking about? After a little while, everything he was saying started making sense to me.
I never got involved with this political stuff before. I decided I would go to the May Day March. I made this decision because I found that this political Party actually listens to everyone. It's not like the Democratic or Republican parties which are really dominated by the people at the top, the people who have a say in what is done in this system.
PLP actually listens to people who work hard and still live in poverty such as your mother, father, brother or sister. These are the ordinary hard-working people who really get the work done. People who, unless they unite will never be heard, which is what this march that I went to did.
Washington HS student
It's good that Challenge is coming out more clearly for communism. But I think that we should be equally clear that we fight for a workers' dictatorship--and this phrase should be just as much a key part of the articles in the paper.
Recently you ran a letter in which a teacher said she thought communism was a good idea, "but how do we get there?" Of course, the answer is to smash the bosses' dictatorship with a workers' dictatorship. We don't want to put forth communism only as an attractive or logical theory.
Also, pushing the idea of a workers' dictatorship will appeal to the rebellious workers who we need to join the Party if we are going to win. This is not a tea party, and militant workers know it.
Old comrade
Challenge-Desafío (5/15) gave an exciting report of the various May Day marches held by PLP. However I think it was a mistake to include reports on the May Day marches in those countries where our Party had no influence.
As a Party we are striving to break from the weaknesses of the old communist movement. The essence of the political struggle between the Party and the masses these days is over the liberalism of the old movement. Nationalism, trade unionism, liberation theology, democracy, etc. have to be defeated for the working class to move ahead.
May Day marches organized around the social democratic politics of the old movement are part of what gives those backward ideas staying power. At a time when we are striving to clarify the differences between us and the old movement, printing articles cheering the misleading of hundreds of thousands of workers only muddies the issue and does a disservice to the accomplishments of our Party on May Day.
May Day marcher
Public schools exist to teach capitalist ideas and Parent-Teacher-Associations (PTA) exist to make parents believe they have a voice. This was made clear when the Bd. of Ed. shut down a PTA that has fought against racism and attacks on immigrants.
PLP's participation in struggles during four years helped people understand the class contradictions in the school, particularly that the principal is a class enemy and that racism is used by the bosses to divide-and-conquer.
The Bd. of Ed. shut down an elected PTA, then rammed through new elections guaranteeing victory to a group of sellouts. In the schools, they teach that working people can get what they need through democracy and elections. The Board's action proved once again that this is a pack of lies.
The Party has grown in response to the Board's attack. More parents are reading and selling Challenge and discussing communist ideas than before. Ten parents marched on May Day. Thirty five Challenges were sold at a meeting attended by 70 parents and teachers called by the principal to shut the PTA. The more the bosses attack, the more the Party can grow. One woman who is considering joining the Party said "If fighting for your rights and the rights of our kids makes you a communist, I'm a communist."
As the bosses cut back on what little reading, writing, and math they do teach, and prepare to lay off thousands of teachers and otherwise cut the education budget, they want to eliminate their opponents, such as this PTA. A new rule will require high school students to pass the Regents Exams to get a diploma. Out of the million public school students in NYC, about 650,000 will not graduate from high school. That's roughly equivalent to the unemployment rate for youth here.
It's been more than talk that has attracted people to the Party. We've tutored children, taught ESL, been involved in many local struggles. We've shown multi-racial unity in practice--a mostly latin PTA led by a black woman, organized against attacks on immigrants, and shown how communist activism can defeat capitalist cynicism.
Growing fascism in the schools has found an ally in many teachers. Racism, fear of unemployment, and teaching capitalist ideas has many teachers on the side of the principal against students and parents. Over half the teachers came to support the principal at the meeting to shut the PTA. Teachers who disagree with the principal are too fearful to say anything. Many of teachers will soon lose their jobs, anyway. Teachers, as well as parents and students, need to join the PLP. Communist revolution is the best education.
PLP PTA member
The articles in Challenge-Desafío (5/15) about the May Day march in Colombia and the May Day general strike in Paraguay shows that too many workers still have illusions about bourgeois democracy.
These illusions, pushed by the bosses and their union hacks friends, are deadly in holding back any real changes in the horrid conditions workers and youth are suffering. In Colombia and Paraguay, the hacks pushed the idea that "defending democracy" is the solution to their problems (either by forcing drug-linked President Samper to resign in Colombia and bringing in another boss, or by dumping President Wasmosy for a "lesser evil" politician in Paraguay).
But as Challenge has pointed out, conditions will worsen for workers no matter who the President is. This is an important lesson that workers and youth from the U.S. to the Dominican Republic will learn more and more.
In the Dominican Republic, during the last few weeks, millions of workers and youth have taken part in mass rallies supporting one or another of the three candidates running. Even in Washington Heghts, New York City, tens of thousands of Dominican immigrants have participated in marches supporting the different candidates.
But the essence of the election on May 16 is not a "change for the better" as the candidates promise, but more racism and violence.
KKK-type racism has been the main way two of the candidates, liberal Leonel Fernandez, and current vice-president Jacinto Peynado, have attacked social-democrat Peña Gómez, who is black and of Haitian origin. Haitians have even been deported as the government claims that they were planning to "vote illegally" (since they are not Dominican citizens) for Peña Gómez.
Meanwhile, Peña Gómez creates the illusion that he will bring about "real change" to the people. This is very unlikely, since the worldwide crisis of capitalism only allows one type of change, more exploitation of workers. And Peña Gómez, as the faithful servant of capitalism, is considered the favored candidate of the U.S. embassy. When his party was in power in the 1980s, Peña Gómez, as mayor of Santo Domingo, ordered the army to attack anti-International Monetary Fund demonstrators when prices were hiked under the orders of that imperialist agency. Dozens if not hundreds were murdered.
Real change can only come to workers by joining and building the Progressive Labor Party. We are the only organization that calls for unity of workers on both sides of this island; and not to vote for any of the politicians running to become the next boss, but to build the movement to smash all the capitalists with communist revolution.
NYC Comrade
Up to 5,000 nurses and other health care workers gathered in Washington DC on May 10 to fight against managed care.
Nurses held signs blasting "profit focused care" meaning denial of care, premature hospital discharges, and the displacement of thousands of RNs as bosses downsize and attempt to force health care to become a minimum wage industry.
Managed care is the ruling class' way of spending less money on the health of the working class. Major employers plan to pay less in health benefits and their government is shifting money out of health care. Insurance companies, which represent major finance capital, are taking firm control of how much they pay out, forcing hospitals to downsize and restructure to force wages down. Many hospitals are being forced to close. Patients are left out in the cold. 40 million workers are without any health insurance. Workers with insurance are in managed care plans where the economic incentive is to give minimum care. Under capitalism the dollar rules,
Managed care is costing thousands of health care jobs. Nurses are being hit hard. But all types of workers are losing jobs through downsizing, shutdowns and restructuring. In a communist society there will be no professions. Workers who know will teach others. Aides will learn to diagnose disease. Doctors will learn to empty bedpans. There will be no division between mental and manual labor. There will always be new problems to be solved collectively.
Speakers at the march proposed a variety of reforms. But none of them challenged the inequality inherent in the capitalist system. Only the ideas in Challenge-Desafíos and Road to Revolution 4s did that, as we distributed them on the buses to and at the rally.
NYC red nurse
The article in Challenge (5/1), entitled "Let's Kill All The Lawyers," takes its cue from a "famous play," the name of which is not mentioned. It calls for the "elimination" of certain "jobs" and not others.
This does injustice to the party of Lenin, himself a lawyer. After qualifying in the legal profession in Russia, despite many obstacles, Lenin subsequently devoted his life to the cause of communism.
Lenin's brother was caught up in a so-called populist, anti-semitic movement and was executed for planning an attempt on the Czar's life. While it is a pity he didn't succeed, the path of the mistaken brother, as well as that of anarchism and other misdirected movements, was explicitly avoided by Lenin.
Some years ago, as a young comrade, I was given classes by the Party. One of which was the study of the nobleman, the anarchist Bakunin. Discussion centered on avoidance of this type of error. The good ideas in the article, those about sharing mental and physical labor after the overthrow of capitalism, are overshadowed by statements casting aspersion on various intellectual professions which remind me of the ideas of Bakunin.
Part of the problem is that many professions were once much more pure and sincere. Some lawyers, the "ambulance chasers" and those who would rob old people's wills, have given others a bad reputation.
One of the most progressive aspects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the one most despised by capitalist-roaders, was sending cosmopolitan, effete professionals to remote fields to help the peasants for a time with their work. Some mistakes were made in this, which were heavily exploited by the Western bourgeois press.
It was yours truly who was the target of much struggle on the part of older, experienced comrades. I was once excessively anti-professional. But my protestations within the Party were contoured by a slogan: "Unity of the working class and its allies."
It is nothing new, then, that newcomers in the Party discuss feelings. Disparity between classes and between city and country workers does indeed present problems. However, airing our linen in the press could cause workers to be turned off to our ideas. This sort of thing should be avoided at all costs
NYC reader