On October 12th, Clinton ordered the aircraft carrier Nimitz into the Persian Gulf ahead of schedule. His excuse was a bombing skirmish that had taken place between the Iranian Air Force and some anti-Iran guerrillas holed up in Iraq. The truth is that U.S. bosses are desperate to prevent Iraqi oil from returning to the international market in significant quantities, and that they need a reason to continue enforcing economic sanctions against the Iraqi rulers.
The return of Iraqi oil will harm Rockefeller's interests in two ways. First, every billion barrels of Iraqi oil will drive down the price of Saudi crude by $1 per barrel, and the Saudis are the oil supplier which Exxon and others rely on most heavily in the Middle East. Second, the Iraqis are making deals with all of U.S. imperialism's main competitors: the French, the Japanese, the Russians and the Chinese. The ink has already dried on some of these agreements, which will further weaken Rockefeller, Inc.'s ability to dictate the conditions under which these rivals obtain oil and the prices they pay for it. This would be a crucial, unacceptable defeat for U.S. imperialism. It's a defeat that U.S. rulers are preparing at all costs to avoid. They have already suffered a stinging setback with the failure of their "dual containment" policy against Iran and Iraq.
However, it may not be so easy to pull off. In 1991, when Bush launched his Desert Slaughter for Oil, U.S. imperialism was able to twist arms to put together a fake military coalition and browbeat votes in the UN. Not this time. When the Clinton Gang thundered about Saddam Hussein's refusal to co-operate with the UN chemical weapons inspection team, Russia, China, France, and the U.S. supposed Middle Eastern pal, Egypt, all abstained from the vote. Saddam Hussein recognized U.S. imperialism's isolation and started to play a game of chicken with Clinton, virtually daring him to attack by barring U.S. personnel from the UN weapons inspection teams.
The immediate choice for U.S. rulers is to back down or launch a unilateral attack on Iraq that will surely isolate them even more than they are already and unite a broader coalition against them. Eventually, the U.S. will have to launch another major ground war, because the relationship of forces leaves them no other choice.
The Times expert columnist, Thomas Friedman, has finally figured what Challenge has been writing for two years. The interest taken by U.S. Asian rivals in Middle Eastern oil "...means that someday soon the Nimitz may have company. The S.S. DengXiaoping out of Shanghai, perhaps, or maybe the S.S. Mahatma Ghandi out of Calcutta...America's interest in the Persian Gulf will remain considerable, but its ability to freely maneuver in this region will become considerably less" (Oct. 30).
The day before, the Indian English-language newspaper, The Hindu, reported: "Indian and German warships will hold joint maneuvers early [in November] as part of the growing military ties between New Delhi and Bonn."
So U.S. imperialism is taking it on the chin from all sides. However, we would make a serious mistake to think that its weakness and isolation will prevent it from launching a significant military probe against Iraq now and Desert Storm II in the near future. Clinton/Rockefeller are "damned if they do and damned if they don't."
The march was organized by Kevin Robinson's family and by the PLP. Many people from the neighborhood joined us. The march was made up mostly of black youth and their parents, but some of their Latin neighbors also came. Youth from PLP helped lead the protest. The demonstrators were very angry, determined, and bold. As we marched toward the police station, more people joined. At the Newton Division station, we picketed as speakers denounced the cops and the racist capitalist system.
Kevin's father said, "You murdered my son and you'll pay for this. We'll never forget. We won't let you off the hook-ever. You shot my son in the back and then let him bleed to death in the street. This could have been anybody's son. If you think you won't have to pay, you're wrong. I'm with these people here all the way!"
Another marcher said, "A cop was killed in Southgate this week by somebody-that's what happens when you play with fire."
A demonstrator who came on his bicycle spoke on the microphone to say, "They're building more and more penitentiaries for us-this has got to end-and we're going to end it! They murdered Kevin Robinson just like they have so many of us. These cops from Newton Division stop me all the time. They know I'm not a criminal-we're not criminals, but they treat us like criminals and fill up their prisons with us. We're going to end this!"
A woman who had called PLP after getting a Party leaflet spoke. "Newton cops are racists. They framed my son and he's in jail now, and we're going to fight this and not let them keep getting away with it. I want all of you to come to his trial. And you should see the way they treat the young Latin kids-stopping them every single day-for nothing. We're going to get together. This has to stop!"
A woman in PLP, who lives nearby said, "This flag [at the police station] is at half-mast. That's probably for the cop who was killed this week. Yeah, they put the flag at half-mast when one of their own gets killed. Some would say its good that he was killed. But what does this flag stand for? This isn't our flag-it's their flag! This flag stands for racism. It stands for terror. This flag stands for murder, genocide, and slavery. This is the flag of the almighty dollar and capitalism. We should not fight for this flag. We should fight for the red flag of revolution. They want to send us to fight for their oil in Iraq! We have much more in common with Iraqi workers than with these killer cops or the racist rich bosses who give them orders to terrorize us. We need to build the PLP, organize a revolution to destroy this flag and the racist bosses and their cops forever. You can't reform the cops. We have to get rid of all the racist killer cops. The only way to do it is to take power, with a revolution-a communist revolution."
The march was militant and determined. Over 250 Challenges were distributed and 600 leaflets handed out. After the march, many people vowed to keep up the fight. Phone numbers were exchanged. There were discussions about communism. The family of Kevin Robinson is pursuing its case against the cops. Others are fighting to defend their relatives. We made a plan to continue to fight together against these attacks, and to go to some of the community organizations together. We are urging all these angry workers who denounced the cops and called for an end to their terror join PLP in order guarantee that cop terror is ended with revolution.
In the week before the march, family members spoke at two schools. The response was very good. We received many calls from people who had gotten leaflets and wanted to march or support this fight. Many of them copied these leaflets and passed them out on their own.
Some comrades raised with their co-workers and in community organizations the need to make the fight against racist police terror a mass fight. Some took the opportunity to show how fascist police terror is increasing as part of the bosses' preparation for war in the Middle East. They explained that the answer to these attacks is a communist revolution. When we raise these truths, they make more and more sense to more workers and youth! As more of us raise them, PLP will grow and the working class will become stronger and bolder.
The union said the main issue was job protection. No jobs will be lost for three years, but subcontracting will continue. Meanwhile, the union will lose 300 jobs through attrition before the job "security" clause kicks in. We're lucky we didn't get more of this job "protection"!
From the outset the MTA bosses laid down contract terms. Labor relations chief Raman Raj declared last June, "We need to save $20 million on union contracts to enhance MTA's flexibility."
Moreover, the federal government has cut public transit funding. In 1981 transit received $8 billion, in 1997 the figure is now $4 billion. Transit, schools and public health are being sacrificed to the growing crisis of overproduction. This capitalist crisis, symbolized by the stock market's instability (and about which the union refuses to talk), is building towards war. Everything is suffering to serve this need.
In its role to save the company millions, ATU officials offered the membership a wage "increase" that barely keeps up with inflation (56cents per hour each year for three years). This "treat," tricked workers into accepting a $3.2 million cut in the company's contribution to the medical plan, while also cutting 250-300 jobs by attrition. And most dangerous, they agreed to expand prison labor and force union members to supervise the prisoners!
The company and the union are "solving" the crisis of capitalism on the MTA by making us pay and winning us to support Nazi-like labor policies. A year after Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi's began turning jails into work camps in order to help German bankers and industrialists accumulate capital for their war plans.
Today, slave labor in workfare and in the prisons is growing in major U.S. cities. The rulers are nose-to-nose with Iraq and Iran in the Persian Gulf in a soon-to-be-launched war for oil profits and domination over foreign competitors. This crisis of capitalism will not leave us alone. It appears on our doorsteps with the cuts in public transit and the introduction of 21st century slavery-unpaid prison labor.
Only 30% of the membership voted for this contract. MTA workers cannot afford to be complacent or passive about this capitalist crisis of overproduction. It is forcing U.S. bosses to move from global trade wars to global shooting wars as their only "solution;" everything's bent to serve the needs of capital. That's why workers need to join PLP, to fight for revolution to end the rule of capital.
During the last contract and strike there was a Committee of Concerned MTA Workers. Because of a wider Challenge readership and the sharpening of the crisis, there are more possibilities to organize a PLP committee of struggle to win more workers to take on the bosses' attacks.
Such a committee can show how the crisis stalks us at the MTA. A Party-led committee and an expanding Challenge network can be the vehicles that organize workers here to respond in a revolutionary communist way to U.S. capitalism's attempt to save itself at our expense. A system that sacrifices workers' health and safety for profit wars should be destroyed!
There has been a dramatic change in the financing of the AFL-CIO. The bosses' media has paid scant attention to this consolidation of a fascist labor bureaucracy.
Since the entire AFL-CIO operating budget totals $100 million a year, the political implication of such a direct financial subsidy from corporate America to the new AFL-CIO leadership has enormous significance. Sweeny's much ballyhooed increase in the organizing budget to $30 million was more than paid for over by the Household International's $75 million "contribution."
Nor is Sweeny & Co. particularly secretive about this corporate payoff. "The renegotiated royalties to the AFL-CIO provide funds for new organizing...." admitted Sweeny (American Banker, 6/19/96). But every worker has to ask: "Organizing for whom?!"
Sweeny answers: "One of our paramount goals is to help the companies we work for succeed," he told a conference of New York businessmen. Sweeny wants "to work with our employers to continuously increase productivity and quality and to help American companies compete effectively in the new world economy."
Anatomy Of The Pied Piper
The history and connections of Household International reveal even more. Household, based in Prospect Heights, Ill., is a giant in customer finance services. It is the second largest finance company in the U.S., managing over $48 billion in assets. It is the largest provider of home equity lines and the sixth largest issuer of credit cards. It maintains its huge profit margin by "charging top rates" to a "lunch-pail clientele." Consumer advocates charge its subsidiary Household Finance Corp. (HFC) with "sucker pricing," (Wall Street Journal, 12/11/96). Household is no friend of the working class.
Household is closely linked to Rockefeller Old Money. "Household International rose to credit card prominence through a co-branding alliance with General Motors," reported the American Banker (11/22/95). General Motor's Director Louis Sullivan sits on Household's Board-solidifying the alliance.
Household Director Mary Evans sits on the Board of Wall Street's Morgan Stanley, Household International's agent in Europe. Long-time friend of Morgan Stanley, Dudley Fishburn, the Executive Editor of The Economist and Conservative Member of the British Parliament, provides the personal touch in Europe. Household rewarded him with a Directorship in 1995.
Other Household Directors come from Rockefeller Old Money outfits like Inland Steel, United Airlines, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a host of mostly Mid-West manufacturing, transportation and financial companies. CEO William Aldinger completes the circle, having served Rockefeller Old Money forces at Citibank and Wells Fargo before taking over at Household.
But even more important, the crisis of overproduction has thrust Old Money into a life-and-death struggle with its competitors abroad and with New Money upstarts at home. These struggles require the building of an army of supporters. Old Money is recruiting the unions into its army. The new AFL-CIO leaders are paid mercenaries of Old Money's imperialist war machine.
We must build a different army-a Red Army. Such a working-class army fights for communist revolution, not for one or another group of bosses. We can build this Red Army with communist organizing among the ranks within the unions, just as we can build a Red Army by organizing among soldiers in the bosses' armed force. The AFL-CIO leadership dances to the tune of war and fascism. We march to a different song-The Internationale!
CHICAGO, October 28 - When students in a chemistry class at CVS high school lost their third teacher this year, three days before final grades were to come out, they marched to the principal's office. The principal was "out," and the students were told to make an appointment. Security threatened to arrest one of the students.
The next day, as students were circulating a petition to the head of the school board, calling for Principal Betty Green's removal, she was "in" and called them to her office. She made excuses and blamed teachers and students for the sorry state of affairs at the school. She told students she was just kidding when she accused them of driving their former chemistry teacher "to drink." She said she didn't know Physical Ed classes had over 100 students. She gave lame excuses for the lack of books. She blamed the person who made up student programs for the repeated changes that were made in the first ten weeks of school.
Students are angry because they are treated like dirt. One student involved in organizing against the racist treatment toward them (CVS is an all-black school) put it this way: "Security harasses us and tries to keep everything hushed up about their violence against us. The school pays more attention to whether we wear our uniforms than whether we have books and teachers."
Students are constantly told that if they work hard, get good grades, and go to college, they will have a good life. But the capitalists are in a fight for their very existence and as they go down, they are tightening their grip on the working class. Students are being made to jump through more and more hoops and told to blame themselves if they fail. Black students are bearing the brunt of this fascist system, from police terror to the crackdown in the schools. Some students may think getting a chemistry teacher or getting rid of the principal will improve their lives, but most want to fight back against the abuses the rulers are heaping on them. Many others are starting to see that what's needed is a communist revolution.
Last march, CVS was cited by President Clinton as one of five model schools-examples of "urban educational excellence." CVS is called a "model school" because Betty Green is politically connected. She's connected to the ruling class that needs students who learn to do what they are told. Unlike communists, who want and need students to think about and analyze the world as well as how to change it, the capitalists want students to be robots. They want them to blindly "pledge allegiance to the flag," obey their bosses at work, and be good soldiers when they're sent to fight for the bosses' profits in the upcoming war. That's what capitalist education is mainly about. Secondarily, they need some students to learn chemistry, math, etc. so the profit system can keep going.
Students are taught to believe the schools are run for their benefit. But they also see the reality of life under capitalism. They see that the very same black "role models" of success like Betty Green are the ones who oppress them. Many know that the "American Dream" is a lie. Their parents, who got an education and worked hard, are still being laid off from jobs, are victims of racist police terror and racist health care, and in all ways suffering because of capitalism.
Students and parents are planning to continue this fight for a teacher. They will use the grade pick-up night to circulate the petition, pass out flyers, and urge more parents to confront Green. They are also going to the Parent-Teacher-Student-Association and the Local School Council and planning a walkout.
The struggle at CVS is good because many students and parents are thinking more seriously about the need to join the PLP to fight for communism and see what it will take to change the world. We deserve way more than what the system offers us now. We deserve communism. One of the main purposes of school is to keep students from learning the truth about the solution to their problems. Under communism, education will serve the needs of the working class, not the profit system. Schools will be totally different.
A worker who is a new member of PLP likes Challenge very much. She is now distributing 15 papers hand-to-hand to neighbors, classmates and teachers. She is actively trying to interest her friends and family in the Party.
Last week as she was walking home from a Party club dinner with two of her children, a woman saw Challenges in her hand. She stopped her, excitedly saying, "I saw that paper in Philadelphia at the Million Women March! Can I have one and an extra one for my friend?" In the drizzling rain the women talked about workfare, racism and revolution. As they parted the woman gave our comrade a big hug.
New York Comrade
PLP members who are also delegates to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Delegate Assembly (DA) in NYC have begun a campaign against Learnfare. Learnfare is a pilot program that began in Wisconsin. It reduces welfare benefits to families if their children are absent from school. We distributed a leaflet at the last DA meeting, on October 8th, which called on the union to demand that the Learnfare program be dismantled.
Learnfare is currently in three elementary schools here, although it involves several other upstate districts. If deemed "successful," the program would be expanded. By what criteria would the program be regarded as successful? It's hard to say, since a study in Wisconsin in 1996 showed no improvement in school attendance through Learnfare. So, if the program is already a failure, why is it spreading?
Good question. We know that the ruling class doesn't care about our students. If they did the schools wouldn't be falling apart, teachers and students would have adequate materials. But the ruling class wants to continue to push the myth that education brings workers out of poverty, that education is the key to success. The ruling class continues to drive wedges between employed and unemployed workers and workers on welfare, as well between the mostly black and Latin workers' families targeted through this program and white workers.
This program is just another part of the ruling class' move towards war and fascism, due to its need to compete with other imperialists. The bosses take food from families for missing school; while attacking the students in school for supposedly belonging to gangs. This system attempts to portray workers and students as criminals-but as we made clear in our leaflet, we know who the real criminals are-the ruling class and its henchmen, the cops, the courts, the politicians. And this attack by Learnfare attack divides us and diverts us from fighting our real enemies, those warmongering, profit-hungry bosses!
At the DA our leaflet put forward these demands:
* We need, as education workers and Delegates, to demand that Learnfare be dismantled.
* We need to refuse to cooperate with this or any other attack on our students.
* We need to look outside our schools and our homes. Our country is moving towards war and fascism so that the bosses can compete for profit.
* We need to organize to replace this system with a workers' state: communism!
We were unable to get the floor to place a resolution about workfare on the agenda. We will continue to try to bring this issue to a vote of all of the Delegates. And, most importantly, we will bring this issue to the members in our chapters in order to raise communist ideas.
NYC Teachers
The air crackled with excitement as hundreds of women streamed up the side-streets to join the thousands already gathered for the million women march in Philadelphia today. PLP comrades from Philly joined the throng at 10:00 am. Two of us were about the only white women marching and were greeted with warm smiles, nods and hellos by many working class women and students. Within a half-hour all our Challenges and flyers were taken. It was too bad we didn't bring lots and lots more papers, leaflets and people!
But, we were thrilled to be able to bring some communist consciousness to the crowd, which was actively being misled by pro-capitalist speeches over the loudspeakers. The other disturbing (but in a way humorous) thing was to see how the city of Philadelphia brought out every possible black woman cop for traffic and crowd control. It was the first time we ever saw ten women cops for every one male on duty!
Philly Comrade
The editorial on the Million Women March (MWM) centers on an important idea: that only communist revolution can destroy the triple-exploitation and oppression of black women workers. In the process, though, the piece inadvertently misrepresents our Party's line on sexism and how to fight it.
Because black mothers have seen racism damage and destroy their own children, the piece argues, they "can identify with the Iraqi mother whose children die because Rockefeller & Co. want to protect their oil profits." When ground war begins, "the children of black women-and white and Latin and Asian-will be coming home in body bags!"
This line of argument reinforces a particularly reactionary form of feminism (shared by some extreme sexists) that sees war as a "male thing" versus child raising as a "female thing." The Iraqi children killed by U.S. imperialism have fathers as well as mothers. So do the young U.S. workers who will come home in body bags. Economic sanctions against Iraq have killed male workers as well as "thousands of women and children."
During the Vietnam War, pacifist groups like the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom put forward slogans like "war is unhealthy for children and other living things." Our Party, in contrast, is not against war. We know that imperialist war is an inescapable result of capitalism, which at the same time opens the door for revolutionary war to destroy capitalism. Many black women will fight on the front lines of this struggle for communism.
The editorial rightly criticizes the pro-capitalist ideology that encourages black women to identify only with other black women. But it does so only in a limited way, putting forward that black women should see connections between their experiences and those of Latin, white, Asian, Indian, and Thai women workers. The logic of this paragraph does not lead to the "class solidarity" raised in the editorial, but to the multi-cultural feminism currently being pushed hard by academic liberals and their corporate backers.
A more effective way to link the issue of imperialist war to the MWM would have been to show how the Old Money bosses are trying to make the army "female-friendly." They are exposing sexual harassment and rape scandals, and building the idea of the U.S. Army as the model of an "equal opportunity employer." They push multi-culturalism to encourage workers, including black women, to feel that "we're all Americans" in order to build up pro-war patriotism.
This multi-culturalism can make use of the identity politics ("speaking as a black woman, I....") that underlie the MWM. However, New Money bosses are also experimenting with ways to use cultural nationalism and cultural feminism to build movements opposing Old Money's oil wars, which contradict their own drive for maximum profits and political power.
Under these circumstances, it's important that we explain our Party's line as clearly as possible, sharply differentiating ourselves from feminists, nationalists, and multi-culturalists of all stripes.
Chicago Comrade
Last week's editorial on the fall in the stock market helped me to more clearly understand such a complicated issue. The many pundits on TV and the daily press writing about the stock market's ups and downs just create more confusion with their open defense of the system without offering any real answers. But in the last few days I have noticed something very interesting. Business Week (BW), The Wall Street Journal and other capitalist mouthpieces have actually mentioned the crisis of overproduction ("deflation" is the euphemism used by BW to explain it).
The oversupply of capital (capital not reinvested in production, but used for speculation) and the overproduction of commodities is worldwide. The world market has become smaller because there are too many capitalists producing cars, etc. for it. On any given day, 90% of strock transactions are not related to actual production. This has forced many bosses to enter fully into financial speculation, which in reality doesn't produce any real wealth except more parasitical brokers, lawyers, etc.
So the crisis will only sharpen, since the big imperialists, like the U.S., want bosses in other countries to open their markets even more for GM, Ford, IBM, etc. But, the French, German and Japanese bosses have the same problem, and compete with the U.S. for the same markets. The NY Times (11/5) reported that even though "demand has sagged in Southeast Asia, and there have been concerns about worldwide overproduction of vehicles. Still, GM and Ford are building huge assembly plants in Thailand, while Toyota and Honda are planning only temporary cutbacks." And it is not only the auto moguls. "There is not one single multinational which is not depending on Asia for more growth. Nike was trying to sell more sport shoes, Gillette more razors...now they will see a slower growth," according to Fred Taylor, who is in charge of U.S. Trust $58 billion active investment funds.
This situation makes the recovery of the stock markets from Black Monday temporary. The trend towards a general collapse is already in process because the crisis of overproduction will only get worse.
Indeed as PLP has been saying for some time now: the political process can only take a sharper turn towards war and fascism. It is up to us to put a brake on this process with revolution. Understanding this is key to prepare ourselves and the working class for the only solution: communist revolution.
A Comrade
It all began in 1992, when the rulers used a military coup to stop the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) from taking power after it won the national elections. Since then, over 100,000 workers and their children have been murdered in a civil war between the different capitalist factions fighting to control the government. Many of these workers have been viciously murdered by death squads.
Last week, The Independent, a British daily newspaper, interviewed former Algerian police inspector Abdelssalam who is seeking political asylum in Britain. He reported how the cops are responsible for thousands of these murders. They usually go to villages that are reportedly friendly to the Islamic forces that oppose the government and murder the inhabitants. He reported that "his colleagues killed prisoners in cold blood, strangling prisoners with rags wet with acid. Before murdering the prisoners, they would take out their fingernails and rape them with bottles. (The Independent).
A soldier, who is also seeking political asylum, reported that he saw officers torture prisoners using electric drills and drilling holes in their legs and stomachs. Paramilitary death squads also go into villages and kill whole families, including children, cutting their throats, throwing babies in the air and grabbing them with bayonets, etc.
What is sad about this situation is that the Algerian working class took part in a massive revolution in the late 1950s and early 60's that defeated French colonialism. Unfortunately, it was a revolution led by the National Liberation Front, a nationalist movement whose aim was not to destroy capitalism but to establish a capitalist regime led by the local bosses. Even though French imperialism was defeated, Algeria became economically more dependent on France, which used its oil. Lately, the French and the U.S. have been competing in Algeria, supporting different factions in the civil war. Inspector Abdelssalam reported that the cops bought their weapons of mass murder from France, Germany, the U.S. and other imperialist countries.
The only way out of this living hell is for the Algerian workers to build their own revolutionary movement and break with all the bourgeois factions. This requires a revolutionary leadership that fights for a society without bosses or imperialists-communism.
While the bosses prepare for the opening of the new Ronald Reagan Office Building complete with art galleries and a new shopping mall, the DC jail is overflowing with black youth and the homeless shelters remain full.
Why do these extremes of luxury and poverty exist in the nation's capital? This is a question that Princess Diane and Mother Theresa never bothered to ask on their many trips to Washington. The answer is quite simple. In the dog-eat-dog world of capitalist competition, the maximization of profits is primary. Workers' lives only count to the extent that their labor can be turned into profits or they can be turned into cannon fodder in the bosses' wars.
In Washington the bosses have gone to great lengths to obscure these basic facts. For most of the last 20 years, Marion Barry, a black liberal Democrat, has led Washington. In return for letting several large real estate developers and construction companies make billions of dollars in the city, he was allowed to build a government bureaucracy and create thousand of professional jobs for his political supporters.
During these years of "prosperity," many working class neighborhoods were turned into killing fields as black youth were gunned down in drug wars. At the same time, DC prisons overflowed as the police terrorized the black community.
As these racist attacks continued, the Washington that was inhabited by the politicians and their corporate henchmen prospered, intensifying the contradictions between rich and poor. A new sports arena is almost complete, and plans are underway for a new convention center. A new stadium has just been completed for Washington's football team. Pennsylvania Avenue has been rebuilt with new government buildings, parks, and a new wing of the National Gallery of Art.
When the "Republican Revolution" occurred in 1994, Newt Gingrich decided that Congress should run the city. They were not concerned with the divisions between rich and poor, but rather with gaining political control of the nation's capital and destroying the political base of the liberal Democrats who had been running the city. They advocated setting up an appointed Control Board to take power out of the hands of the city's elected officials. Clinton objected, but a deal was struck. The Control Board was established, but Clinton got to appoint its members. Gingrich then set about forcing his Contract with America on the City of Washington.
Congress appropriated $3 million to fund a study on the privatization of the Metrobus system. Bills are working their way through Congress to establish a school voucher system that would essentially eliminate public education in the city. Plans to establish "enterprise zones" where minimum wage laws do not apply and taxes on profits do not exist are in the works. Hospitals and clinics are being turned over to private contractors as are many other city services.
Millions of extra dollars have been set aside for the DC police force so they will be able to protect the politicians, their property and their corporate cronies as well as terrorizing the working class. Although some bosses believe that the DC cops are so corrupt they can no longer do their job of protecting the rulers, the truth is that the money will be used to make the cops more brutal and fascist.
Washington, DC has become a battleground between contending capitalist forces each with their own pet project for pushing racism and exploiting workers. Workers have no interest in either side of this struggle. PLP's battle is to expose both the liberal Democrats and the conservative Republicans as front men for the capitalists. Only by building a communist movement with the outlook of destroying capitalism, and building a communist society where the needs of the workers are primary, and making money is not on the agenda, can we have a city fit for working people to live in.
The workers found out where the owner lived and picketed him. Some workers went to the shop in Long Island City to make sure the boss wouldn't move the machinery.
The small garment factories, like Coco, are usually contractors for big department stores or clothing companies. They take advantage of anti-immigrant laws and racism to get away with openly robbing the workers. That is the essence of capitalism. A society, which not only robs workers treat like this, but also steals the fruit of their labor, must be smashed. That is the goal of PLP.
They decided to stop their machines and wait until the forelady came. While they waited, they made a plan of action and decided what their demands would be. The discussion was like this: "For how long are we willing to maintain this work stoppage? We shouldn't leave our machines. If they fire one of the group, the rest shouldn't return to their machines. We all have to defend what we agree to here and not get into an argument among ourselves in front of the boss because this will weaken the group..."etc.
Finally the forelady came. "Don't tell me that you're waiting for me," she said sarcastically. "Yes," we responded. And another worker added, "We can't work for this price. The work isn't coming out fast enough to make enough money."
The forelady answered arrogantly, "I'll give you ten minutes to tell me if you want to work for that price or not. Right here there are workers who do this job for me for less money and they don't say anything." And, turning around, she left. We waited 20 minutes, then we marched to the office.
It was still fresh in our minds what had happened only two days before when some workers had tried to get an increase in the price paid for our operation. That's when she showed us a pile of job applications. The forelady said, "Look, if you don't want to do the work...look and see how many people are looking for jobs." Remembering this, we conquered our fear and left our machines.
But this situation was different. The instinct for survival and the ideological struggle that one comrade has been waging with the other workers helped move the workers to confront to forelady. What two days before had been fear now became anger. We put forward our demands. The forelady refused to accept them, saying openly "From the work that you all are producing, I'll earn some extra money. You want to take it away from me, but I'm not going to give it to you." Then she threatened, "If you don't want to do it, I'll send the work to Mexico where I pay one third of what I'm paying you here. Or if not, the other section can do it for less money, and without protesting."
If that happened, our section wouldn't have enough work. The forelady said that she would have to lay off the last three workers that were hired. To this the workers answered, "In that case, none of us will go back to work". At the end of so much discussion, we didn't get our demands. Instead, to calm our anger, the forelady offered to give us an hour of the minimum wage, apart from what we make each day.
The struggle to maintain unity among the workers in the face of these attacks gives us the opportunity to explain to the workers the need to form a PLP committee that will struggle with the rest of the workers, explaining the need for workers in all the sections to support each others' struggles. When one group of workers win a victory, we all win, and when one group is attacked, all workers are attacked. We have to show how the workers' struggles can be more organized. These struggles give us the opportunity to explain to more workers that as long as the capitalist wage system exists, we workers will continue to have problems in any factory we work in. And they give us the opportunity to show the need to build our party to fight for the workers to take power and build a communist society where neither money nor exploitation will exist.
McFARLAND, CA, Nov. 3-Last October 9th, Antonio Avalos, current President of the Council of the residents of the Rosa Vista project here was physically attacked by another tenant named Santos. Santos attacked Antonio as he was passing out a leaflet explaining regulations that the tenants had to follow. But according to Maria Corpus, Project Manager, when Santos was asked why he attacked Antonio, he answered, "I don't like communist propaganda."
Antonio reported the first attack to Maria and asked for her help. Moments later, a police investigator arrived. While the police investigator was on his way, Santos attacked Antonio a second time, forcing Antonio to defend himself. But the cops let Santos go free and arrested Antonio, imposing $25,000 bail and accusing him of "assault with a deadly weapon." Antonio was in jail for five days until the tenants raised enough money for his reduced bail. He still faces a trial. How did this injustice happen?
This is an example of how racism and anti-communism were used as the poisons that led to this attack on Antonio and how they are part of the bosses' attacks on all workers.
In public housing the government develops its plans for fascism by building Resident Councils to fight for the government's line, just as the Nazi's did in the Jewish ghettos. After the Council members are elected, they are trained to ally with the police under the guise of "fighting crime, gangs, and drugs." But as one tenant said during a meeting, "All the police investigators end up harassing innocent tenants while the gangs are never touched."
The biggest lie told to the Council representatives is that one day the residents will be owners of their own housing. Supposedly this day will come when all the poor workers who live in government housing learn a skill or become small bosses of their own businesses, and won't need to live in low-income housing. While they put people off guard with these stories, they carry out a campaign of harassment against the tenants. They pass a mountain of rules whose only goal is to have an excuse to evict them; as one tenant said, "These rules are impossible to meet."
The Administration is more demanding every time workers apply for low-income housing. One woman who applied complained that "they want so much information before they'll let you in that it makes you dizzy." It's easy to get kicked out, but hard to get in. The government wants to spend less money for the workers' well-being and more for their war.
All of the government's policies have been exposed time after time in this community by members of PLP who form part of the Council and who are supported by the current president. That's why our Council is not looked kindly on by the high officials of public housing. For some time, these officials have been making friends with certain opportunists who live in these projects to train them as future leaders of the Council. We also know that a minister of an Evangelical church is a rabid anti-communist who lectures his congregants to attack communists. The political struggle to control the Council is behind the attack on Antonio. That's why the Public Housing Authority has done nothing to defend Antonio, leaving everything in the hands of the police and the courts. And we know who's side they're on!
PLP is the only group that has come to Antonio's defense. First we helped collect money for his bail. Second, we have looked for witnesses who will step forward and tell the truth-that Antonio was attacked and defended himself. We also organized a group of tenants to the police station to demand Antonio's release. Because of our campaign, the charge has been reduced to a misdemeanor, but the court and the cops still have the nerve to tell him to plead guilty.
The best thing that we're doing to support Antonio and the whole working class is to expose the politics of racism, war and fascism that are behind the bosses' anti-communist attack. As more workers agree with our communist position, more will join PLP. Let our enemies tremble at the specter of communism!
Imperialist war means mass death and destruction, but it also creates the possibility and the urgent need for communism.
Red correspondent Anna Louise Strong left Moscow for Poland in October, 1944. The Red Army had pushed the Nazis from eastern Poland and was preparing to march on Berlin. The Nazis still held Warsaw, except for Praga, a working-class suburb, which was controlled jointly by the Soviets and the new Polish Army they had organized. As shells flew, a new society was taking form.
Poland would not become communist, either in 1944 or during the half-century that followed. The weaknesses of the communist movement prevented that. But Strong's report suggests how the communist PLP might function when the next imperialist war gives us our chance.
Strong observed the new Polish National Committee of Liberation in Lublin and surrounding villages and military camps. She wondered how it financed its network of congresses, trade unions, propaganda schools, and government offices. When someone remarked that, "it was tough last August, but when the peasants began delivering food in September, we all began to eat," Strong commented:
"The complex organization of power in Poland was as simple as that. What enabled the Committee to expand so freely was not money, or foreign recognition, but control of housing facilities in Lublin and stores of food.
When the Committee got some apartment houses and offices, it had an organizing base. When it induced the peasants to turn in food quotas for feeding the cities, its base was stabilized. Shelter and food protected by a Polish army on the Vistula-these were its sources of power.
"After this peasants and workers could come to congresses and schools in Lublin. They could come penniless, hitchhiking over a ruined country, ragged, barefoot, without paper or pencils, but they would be housed and fed. Brilliant engineers and famous scientists could offer their services and the Committee could keep expanding to take them in. Always provided they were willing to work for their shelter and three meals in a government dining room.
"As long as the Committee could arouse and organize that type of loyalty and as long as the peasants would provide food, the Committee could carry on."
"By election?" Strong asked. Stephanie laughed. "How can you elect when shooting goes on and houses fall and people flee from block to block? You dodge across streets and you hunt up active citizens and the ones that are willing to work. You get them to clearing streets and pulling folks from under fallen houses and cleaning wells. You start with half a dozen members and then you get a chairman and a vice-chairman. Then more people join and you begin to divide into sections: sanitation, provisioning, water, schools, and relief. Then food comes from Lublin for you to distribute and so your citizens' committees have power!"
"The ward committees find that they can't keep track of everything, so they start house committees and block committees," Stephanie continued. "The biggest single job was getting in the winter potato supply. All these sections and committees grew up in a month. We have two thousand house committees now in Praga. When you are fighting over them you don't think you are getting anywhere, but when you sum it up like this, you see how much it is."
Nationalism, democracy lead to capitalism, racism
Communist practice enabled Poles to begin rebuilding, but there was no political fight for communism. The communist Polish Workers' Party and the Moscow-backed New Polish Army organized instead around "national liberation" and "democracy."
Polish land reform divided huge estates among the peasants. Small landholding became the main form of private property in the countryside. A market economy was established quickly. Some large industries (like the shipyards) were reconstructed under state ownership, but postwar Poland was clearly capitalist.
Nearly all of the 20,000 Polish communists had fought and died in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. The Nazis slaughtered countless more. So the communists' mistaken political line led quickly to outright capitalist domination and challenges to Polish state capitalism would come only from even more right-wing nationalists.
Today the world's imperialists are preparing for a showdown even deadlier than the previous two world wars. Inside and outside the bosses' armies, we will build our own Red Army. Amid the wreckage of cities and towns worldwide, we will organize political struggle for communism. Communist ways of thinking and doing will not be temporary measures but the core of the new society. The stronger our Party becomes now-in line and in numbers-the better we will be able to carry out this historic task.
Source: Anna Louise Strong, I Saw the New Poland (1946)
For example, while Clinton was blabbering about Tiananmen Square and Richard Gere was defending the Tibetan slave-master Dalai Lama, over 1.5 million people are in U.S. prisons. One in four black men are victims of the racist criminal "justice" system. U.S.-style racist genocide is taking place on a mass scale. Black infant mortality in the ghettoes of Detroit equals that of Honduras, highest in the Western Hemisphere. Washington, DC, is a leading city in the mass deaths of black babies. The average age of death is younger for blacks than whites.
The crimes of racism are endless. The U.S. exceeds the Hitlerite Nazis in racist oppression, using prison and slave labor to increase profits for private companies. One could go on and on about racism in unemployment, wages, medical care, etc. The U.S. rulers take the cake, especially their murderous racist cops who gun down black and Latin workers and youth like it was open hunting season.
But U.S. genocidal efforts are not limited to the home front. There were more than 5 million casualties in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. The U.S. is up to its eyeballs in Africa where millions die each year as a result of inter-imperialist rivalry for oil, from the Gold Coast to the Congo. Tens of thousands of Iraqis perish each year as a result of U.S. imperialism's sanctions, which starve Iraqi workers and their children. One might say mortality figures prove that children are the main enemies of U.S. rulers.
It wasn't too long ago (when Castro was a bit of an anti-imperialist) that his Second Declaration of Havana proved how U.S. imperialism kills at least two million workers every year in Latin America. Undoubtedly that figure has grown as the worldwide crisis of imperialism has forced the bosses to increase their terror and oppression of the world's workers.
The fact is that hunger, starvation, disease and violence stalk the imperialist world. The Chinese capitalists-rotten as they are-are pussycats compared to the oppression and killing by U.S. rulers. U.S. imperialism is a Teflon system because punks like this Chinese boss let them get away with mass terror against the world's working class.
The only "Human Rights" that exist in the U.S. are for the rich to exploit the poor. Human Rights, bah humbug! It's only a cheap ploy to paper over the crimes of capitalism.