Challenge, July 8, 1998

Capitalism is completely failing the workers—from Flint, Michigan to Matamoros, Mexico. While GM cuts jobs in the parts plants in Flint, dumping workers who make $22 an hour, it has built over 50 parts plants in Mexico where workers make $1.36 to $1.90 an hour, living in dirt-floor shacks.

An auto industry analyst for Merrill Lynch says, "GM had no choice but to seek lower-cost labor for parts production in order to compete in the global economy." The bosses’ need to produce for less than the competition is directly opposed to the workers’ need on both sides of the border for a decent living. This strike is an opportunity to show that those needs can be met only with workers’ power and communist revolution—where workers run society. If we spread this idea in the industrial working class, we will advance. If we think of the strike, in the same way as the union hacks, as a "labor dispute," we will lose.

The GM strike affects workers and students worldwide. The Party must respond with picket lines and demonstrations of solidarity at auto plants and wherever we are. "GM—Strikebreaker, Warmaker! Shut it down, shut it tight!" These slogans should be on the lips of all workers and students.

The issues in this strike spring directly from the reactions of industrialists and bankers to the mounting crisis of capitalism—the crisis of overproduction. Last week’s Wall St. Journal reported that younger workers think the union can’t win this strike. Sure, because the union’s role is to work within—and defend—capitalism, and therefore to defend the bosses’ "solution" to its crisis: ax the workers. Winning this struggle means spreading the solution of communist revolution to smash capitalism. That’s the job of a communist party—the PLP.

The-rank-and-file workers must seize the leadership of this strike, sharpen the struggle, and call on their brothers in Mexico to join the strike against GM, as well as spread it to Ford and Chrysler-Daimler. The unions are incapable and completely unwilling to give leadership for an international general strike of auto workers. Building for this general strike would show the power and central role of industrial workers and can lead to bringing a revolutionary line into the reform struggle. Under union leadership, the current strike will only spread defeatism and demoralization among auto workers. Seizing the leadership of this strike and spreading it can show rank-and-file leaders and all workers the possibility of seizing state power and building a communist society based on production for the needs of our class—not for the profits of GM, Ford, Chrysler or Toyota.

If we think of ourselves as American, Mexican, Germans and so on, we are dead. Capitalists, like the owners of GM, will play us off one against the other. Daimler’s recent buy-out of Chrysler, for example, threatens the jobs of German auto workers as it enables Daimler to exploit the cheaper labor of US workers. Likewise GM bosses use Mexico’s workers for still greater exploitation.

Are Mexican workers, then, the enemy of U.S. workers and U.S. workers the enemy of Germans? Or are workers in Germany, Mexico and the U.S. members of one class—the international working class—with one enemy: the capitalist class? This political question is posed sharply by the strike in Flint.

"Workers of the World, Unite" is a powerful slogan. Communism, which poses the need for workers’ revolution, is a powerful idea. The GM strike raises questions that go beyond an ordinary "labor dispute." It raises revolutionary political questions to which PLP has answers. Is the working class an international working class? Yes! Are capitalists like Daimler, GM, Toyota our enemies? Yes! What sort of organization do we need? Better unions or a bigger, more effective revolutionary communist Party, the PLP? We need a mass PLP!

PLP can create the political atmosphere that encourages bold, rank-and-file initiative. We must raise the importance of this strike in every union and mass movement, city, campus, Army unit and factory in which we have influence.

We urge all Party areas to begin a campaign to show how the GM strike affects all workers and youth. Entering this battle can change the relationship of forces in favor of the international working class and bring more auto workers to lead our entire class to fight for communist revolution.

Rank-and-File Leaders: Seize Power from the Union Leaders

GM is playing hard ball against the striking workers in Flint. The company is trying to deny them unemployment benefits, claiming they are striking over "non strikable issues." The workers are fighting GM’s closing of higher-wage plants in the U.S. to open lower-wage plants in Mexico. The UAW leadership claims that they are striking over specific health and safety issues at each plant, but the workers say it’s much more.

GM wants its buddies in the UAW leadership to see that GM is losing market share and understand why it has to move jobs to Mexico. But the workers say otherwise and so does reality. "I want to be able to sleep at night knowing that GM can downsize without having a strike," says the Merrill Lynch auto analyst. That’s the hidden issue here. The bosses aren’t talking about a car in every garage, a chicken in every pot. This is an age of growing fascism and preparations for war, GM is talking about how efficiently they can downsize. Should the capitalist class that thinks like this have power over our lives, or should we make a revolution and replace capitalism with communism, workers’- power? We think the world will be a better place when the analyst at Merrill Lynch and the whole capitalist class he represents "sleep" night and day—six feet under!

Wave the Red Flag Not the Fascist Red, White and Blue Bosses’ Flag. Construction Workers Battle Cops Protecting Non-Union Bosses

NEW YORK CITY, June 30 — It was the biggest and most militant workers’ demonstration in recent history here. Some 40,000 workers who are members of the unionized construction trades took over the streets of midtown Manhattan. Workers were angry at losing their jobs to non-union contractors. They destroyed non-union construction sites and when the cops attacked, they fought back. But like any action led by pro-capitalist union leaders, the protest had a negative side: many demonstrators were carrying the red white and blue flag of the bosses given out by the union. This shows the contradiction between the revolutionary and reactionary potential of the workers.

One building trades worker reported, "As I got to work today, a shop steward said, ‘We’re not working today. We’re going to the demonstration in Midtown against the MTA for hiring non-union workers. All right!" So I went."

Instead of the 10,000 workers the cops had expected, 40,000 angry workers showed up. Many workers want to put a stop to the trend of replacing higher-paid unionized workers with lower paid non-union workers. Some of these unionized carpenters tell stories of only having work for 10 or 15 days out of the year. The focus of the demonstration today was the MTA. The Transit Authority had awarded a contract to a non union contractor for its biggest construction contract this year. A series of smaller demonstrations had not stopped this contract and the union leaders were upping the ante.

As one worker said, "When we got to the demonstration everybody was excited." My buddy said, "The cops won’t do anything to us, they’re union too.’ I said ‘Union my ass!’ " The cops didn’t attack at first, but I think it was because they didn’t have the numbers. Half an hour later, they came with reinforcements, riot gear, horses, and everything else. Then they attacked, union or not, and 38 workers were arrested, three were hurt, one critically (he was trampled by a horse). "Soon we were marching from TA headquarters to the actual construction site. Fights were breaking out all over midtown between the cops and the workers." Sending many cops to the hospital.

While the anger and the militancy of the workers in this demonstration was a good thing, there were several expressions of ideas that could turn this seemingly good militancy into a bad thing. For example when it was announced that U.S, missiles had been fired at an Iraqi target a loud cheer went up from the crowd, showing support for U.S. imperialism. Also, many people were singing, "Born in the USA" which is an anti-immigrant statement. The union leadership has recently been pushing the workers to be more involved in polities—specifically the Democratic Party. What are the political ideas that the union leadership is pushing? They are ideas that can lead workers to a nationalist, patriotic, and fascist path.

Communist workers participated in this demonstration bringing our ideas of the need for international solidarity and communist revolution, to our fellow workers in time of struggle. Our goal is to win workers to wave the red flag instead of the fascist anti-worker flag of the bosses.

Puerto Rico: Turn General Strike into School for Communism

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, July 1 — The two-week-long strike by 6, 500 phone workers is about to turn into a massive general strike that could shut down this island. On Sunday, June 28th, several thousand members of CAOS (a coalition of some 60 unions) met and decided to organize a general strike against the privatization of the Puerto Rico Telephone Company, which is being sold for $1.9 billion to a consortium formed by GTE and Banco Popular Inc. CAOS expects 800,000 workers to join the general strike, called for Tuesday July 7th.

"We are going to shut down this country to repudiate the privatization policy of Governor Roselló…On Tuesday we are going to show the governor the power of the working people," said a CAOS spokesperson.

Already, electrical utility workers and San Juan metropolitan area bus drivers have organized solidarity strikes with the phone workers. As reported in last week’s Challenge, it has been a militant strike. There have been violent clashes with the anti-riot cops under direct orders of police chief Pedro "Billy Club" Toledo to protect scabs and attack strikers. Telephone equipment has been sabotaged and small bombs have been placed in ATM machines of Banco Popular.

As in many mass militant workers’ struggles, there are several contradictions. On the one hand, there are angry rank-and-file workers who understand that the sale of the phone company will mean downsizing (the euphemism used by bosses to mean mass job cuts). These workers are using all the power they have to fight downsizing. This is something all workers should support.

On the other hand, the fight has become a political fight among different capitalist forces: Those, like Governor Roselló, who support Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state of the U.S, opposed to those (like some of CAOS leaders) who support independence or want Puerto Rico to remain a Commonwealth.

But in this period of worldwide capitalist crisis of overproduction no form of capitalism can solve the problems suffered by workers. Communists cannot remain neutral in these struggles and leave workers without the key ingredient to fulfill their historical need to run society: communist leadership. It is in the midst of militant class struggle that workers see the role of the cops and the bosses’ state as their enemy, and at the same time see that without workers bosses are nothing. The building of a revolutionary red leadership is the best way to turn this militant struggle into a school for communism. Join the PLP!

Construction Workers and the Reality of Capitalism, 1970 to 1998

During the Vietnam war, the leadership of the construction trade unions supported Richard Nixon and the genocidal war the U.S. rulers were waging in Vietnam. These same union hacks organized vicious physical attacks against anti-war demonstrators in Wall Street, NY. The unions were extremely racist, keeping black and latin workers out of the unions.

But as capitalism got into a deeper crisis, the bosses did not need these hacks as much and began to hire cheaper non-union labor in construction jobs. Basically, these unions lost tens of thousands of members and their clout. On June 30th, these unions tried to recover some of their clout. But their politics have remained racist and reactionary. As workers follow these leaders, they will be doomed to a path of defeat in a period of war and fascism.

Worker-Student Alliance Supported 1970 GM Strikers

Dear Challenge:

I remember the 1970 strike against GM and the important role our Party played in that struggle. The movement against the war in Vietnam had passed its peak by this time, but many college students still wanted to engage in militant anti-imperialist activity. The GM strike had directly affected military production, and we were able, with some success, to raise the slogan "Warmaker/Strikebreaker, Smash GM!" on the campuses.

The Party leadership decided to call for a solidarity demonstration at GM’s world headquarters in Detroit. I don’t remember the exact number, but between the Middle West and the East Coast, we must have mobilized a couple of hundred students to take buses to Detroit. Once there, we spent several days leafleting at plant gates and also at Wayne State University, which had a large enrollment of working-class students—including children, relatives, and friends of the strikers. I don’t recall a more favorable response to a call for worker-student solidarity than the reaction by these students. For two days, the atmosphere on the Wayne State campus was electric! We carried out this work under the gun: the Detroit cops harassed and threatened us constantly, but to no avail.

The demonstration was scheduled for the third day. More than a thousand Wayne State students, professors, and campus workers showed up to join the march. Many auto workers participated as well. When we arrived at GM headquarters, we held a spirited picket line for over an hour and managed to get into a healthy shouting match with a few slimeball GM executives. It was one of the best demonstrations I can remember attending during that period.

I’m sure that we made many reformist errors in organizing this activity. Nonetheless, the Party had a front-and-center presence in the form of Challenge, and the rank-and-file demonstrators welcomed it vigorously. Despite our many shortcomings, this demonstration showed that the concept of revolutionary solidarity with workers in struggle can become a mass idea. This experience belongs to our Party’s history. It should encourage us as we try to bring revolutionary communist politics and practice into the current strike against GM’s fascist warmakers.

PLP Veteran of the SDS Years

PLP Delegate Wins Passing Motion in Support of GM Strikers and Family of James Byrd Jr.

NEW YORK CITY, June 17 — As the delegates of Local 371 AfSCME (municipal workers’ union) gathered for their June meeting, a delegate from a child welfare office approached me and bought a copy of Challenge. Nick wanted to put forward a motion in support of the striking GM auto workers. That sounded pretty good to me. Solidarity of the working class is something we should be in favor of. I suggested to Nick that he might also call for the Local to send a message of support to the family of James Byrd, Jr., who had been murdered by racist swine in Jasper, Texas, Nick agreed and went to the front of the room to let the leadership know he wanted to present such a motion of solidarity.

Later, after the union leadership had made their reports on the problems facing the Local, it became clear that Nick wasn’t ready to get up and present the motion we had discussed. Perhaps he was waiting for the "new business" part of the agenda. I thought that by then most of the delegates will have left the meeting. I struggled with Nick to get on line to speak, and when it became clear that he was not prepared to get up, I asked if it was all right for me to make the motion.

The union President had been speaking about the need for building unity in the Local around the need to fight against threats to jobs in the division of homeless services. His remarks were hollow since they were not accompanied with a call for action against the city bosses, Nevertheless, I addressed my comments to his call. The strike of auto workers, I said, shows the potential strength of the working class if united in struggle against the effects of the crisis of capitalist overproduction. I asked that the Local send a message of support to these workers who were fighting back. I contrasted the unity of the striking auto workers to its opposite, with the vile murder of James Byrd, Jr., pointing out that racist and fascist ideas spell defeat for all workers. In closing, I asked that the Local also send our condolences and support to the Byrd family. This motion passed unanimously with a pledge from the Local’s leadership to send a cash donation in addition to the statements of support.

Tonight’s vote gives testimony to the fact that aspects of our Party’s line can be brought to the mass movement. It also shows that if we strengthen our ties with our political base, we will be able to give political leadership to masses of workers.

PLP Youth Arm Themselves With Communist Philosophy

BROOKLYN, NY June 28—July 1—Over 60 youth, college students and teachers met here to discuss, study and put into practice dialectical materialism—the scientific philosophy of communism. Members and friends of PLP came from Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, NJ and New York. The goal of the school was to learn more about dialectics so that we could arm ourselves with an understanding that will defeat the racist bosses.

The four day cadre school applied the laws of dialectical materialism—the law of contradiction; the law of quantity and quality; the law of the negation of the negation—to the real world as well as focusing on our Party work. We put it into practice selling over 1,000 Challenges in street rallies and in protests by workers. We need to view our political work and our everyday experiences more scientifically so we can evaluate and change it when necessary. Next week we’ll have articles from comrades who participated in the cadre school.

Imperialist Rivalry Sharpens Over Kosovo, Iraqi Oil

As we go to press, the clouds of imperialist war are thickening on two important fronts: the Balkans and Iraq. Now more than ever, workers, students and soldiers need to organize under the red flag of PLP to smash the warmakers with communist revolution.

Sharpening armed struggle between Serbian bosses and Albanian nationalists threatens to erupt into a full-scale war that could exceed the bloodletting in Bosnia several years ago. This struggle has widened the split between U.S. rulers and their German and French rivals. One ironic aspect of the situation is the argument between U.S. politicians, who want "the early use of military force in Kosovo," and the U.S. military brass, "which wants to minimize the risk to its troops" (Newsday, 7/1). Whether or not the U.S. intervenes in the immediate future, contradictions are obviously intensifying. Potentially the biggest one is the deepening conflict between U.S. and Russian rulers. The Russians view the U.S.-backed Eastward expansion of NATO as a direct threat to their interests. This is hardly a scenario for a breakout of peace.

On June 30th, a U.S. warplane fired a missile at an Iraqi installation, using the excuse that Iraqi radar had targeted British planes. U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen immediately made a hawkish speech, promising to use massive force against Iraq to "protect U.S. military personnel." The whole thing smells like the kind of provocation U.S. imperialism has concocted many times in its history to justify its wars for profit. Clinton & Co. took a big defeat when they couldn’t bomb Iraq last winter, a defeat U.S. bosses must eventually try to reverse. The collapse of Asian economies has driven down the price of oil. The bosses of Exxon et al. want more than ever to keep Iraqi oil off the world market and to prevent it from falling under the influence of U.S. imperialism’s European, Russian, and Asian rivals. So, although we can’t say for sure that U.S. imperialism is on the threshold of its next Middle Eastern war, it’s obvious that peace isn’t at hand here either.

Racism Is Rampant in the U.S. Army

A group of soldiers in the National Guard were celebrating the Bulls’ victory outside the barracks during our two weeks annual training. All of a sudden, a bucket of water was dumped on us by the soldiers from another unit that were staying upstairs. This obviously made us angry, but what made us even angrier was that a captain from our unit came down and attacked us for being loud and rowdy without even asking what had happened. It was pretty clear that we were being attacked because most of us were black or latin.

An incident like this isn’t that unusual. As one soldier who recently came back from the regular Army put it "This kind of thing happens every weekend." Soldiers from one unit attack soldiers from another unit with racial tension often a backdrop.

When the captain came yelling at us and calling us motherf______, the soldiers got all up in his face and told him he was full of it and to get out of there. "Do you know who I am and where we are?" But the soldiers didn’t care. The captain ended up by calling the military police on us, putting us in formation and trying to scare us into shutting up. Then we got called out into formation again at 4 in the morning and yelled at again. Soldiers in our unit decided to go on the offensive and try to get the captain and the soldiers who dumped the water on us in trouble by collecting statements from witnesses.

There are two lessons to learn from this incident. First, no matter how much they say it’s not true, the military is full of racism. That captain who was yelling at us has known some of us for years, but his racism—the racism of the whole system "showed through."

Secondly, soldiers will stand up for themselves and fight if it’s clear they are being done an injustice. And the mind games that the military puts you through to try to get you to be subservient and just follow orders don’t always work.

Behind the Gis’ Morale Problem: The Job of the Pentagon in the Persian Gulf Is to Protect Big Oil Profits

A recent letter to the Army Times further exposes how an army based on lies, like the U.S. military is, is having trouble winning the loyalty of many of the soldiers.

"I am writing in response to the article about morale in Persian Gulf. I have a feeling that these higher-ranking soldiers need to take their horse blinders off. They need to reread the definition of morale.

"Morale is knowing that you are not being lied to and kept in the dark. If they expect to keep these brave soldiers who are in Kuwait in the Army, they need to get information to the soldiers and get them home as soon as possible.

"I am a wife of a soldier and I am the one who gets the letters with thoughts of suicide, depression and thoughts of bodily injury, just to get home."

To the woman who wrote this letter and the many others who feel the same way: the big lie is that the U.S, military will help workers anywhere in the world. The truth is that U.S. soldiers are in the Gulf to protect the oil profits of Exxon, Mobil, etc. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, workers and children were murdered for that reason during the 1991 Gulf War. Today, your husband, like all of us, is facing the choice of becoming cannon fodder for Big Oil or joining the PLP to organize in the military to turn their capitalist wars into communist revolution.

Annual DC/Baltimore Camping Trip a Success in Teaching Youth Communist Concepts

BALTIMORE, June 21 — On the last day of Spring, over thirty people traveled to a camping resort in the "boonies" of Western Maryland. We went hiking, we swam each day, and had a set of campfire performances that ranged from hilarious to inspiring. We saw the dark and spacious tunnel of the C&O canal that goes right through a mountain. Half of the group chose to travel straight through the tunnel and the other half decided to travel the long, hot hike over the mountain itself, which was tiring but interesting. During that hike, we saw the mountainous regions of Western Maryland. On another hike—at night by starlight without using flashlights—we visited the Mason-Dixon line where, if slaves crossed without being caught, they would be considered free.

Even though we had our spurts of fun, there was enough time for serious matters. We discussed a different topic each day,. The purpose was to deepen everyone’s understanding about the important concepts of communism. We also talked about how the bosses use manipulation, imperialism, sexism, and racism to exploit the workers.

There were three main goals for the trip. The first was to win more young people to attend the weekly PLP summer club meetings where we will learn about the great accomplishments—and also the mistakes—of the struggle for communism in the former Soviet Union and China. The second goal was to encourage participation in the New York PLP Cadre school and Summer Project. The third and final goal was to send a letter and money to the family of the late James Byrd who was dragged for two miles and dismembered by violent racists in Jasper, Texas. We want to show that we care and are willing to fight for equality!

In terms of our goals, we seem to have been weakest in organizing for participation at the Cadre School. On the other hand, if everyone fulfills the intentions they expressed during three days of camping and political discussion, our weekly club meetings should now include a number of wonderful new participants. Furthermore, it seems that we will have a good group to go for several days during the fourth week in July to support the Summer Project in New York. And the letter to James Byrd’s family already has many signatures. We plan to add to them as we distribute the letter and a communist flyer that goes along with it, explaining how racism is caused by capitalism and how racism can only be defeated by communist revolution.

Overall, the camping trip was "bout it, bout it" and for equality we should all get rowdy, rowdy!

Letters From Campers

Dear Challenge:

The evaluation of the trip came to me as a learning experience. To sit and see eye-to-eye on a subject such as communism means making an effort to change. You never see a group of people, young adults to be specific, get together and talk about society, racism, violence, etc. The trips we go on every year concerning the PLP enable the members to share what they have learned with others. We the PLP believe in equality—one world, one working class. In conclusion, everyone needs to work together to succeed.

Dear Challenge:

My experience during this camping trip was great. I learned a lot and met new friends. Thank you so much.E.

Dear Challenge:

This trip was very exciting. I would love to come back next year. There were a lot of fun people here and also I met a lot of new friends. I learned a lot about communism and the Progressive Labor Party. The most exciting thing was the night hike. The food was excellent, and I hope it will be even better next year.

S._

LETTERS

Soldiers Talk Among Each About Imperialism

Dear Challenge:

I am a communist who joined the Army to win soldiers to turn the guns around. Today I explained to another soldier the real reason I joined the army and it felt great. Now I see that I am not alone but among workers.

I have known her for about two weeks. She is a natural resource major and very interested in the environment. At first I was just cynical about her concern with recycling. Instead of seeing it as naïve to think recycling makes a difference I explained to her about the environmental movement being an example of splits in the ruling class. The only to use nature wisely is to get rid of the profit system. She agreed with that. If there was no money, humans’ only job would be to use nature wisely.

I talked to her about imperialism. I said if we go to Iraq we are going to be killing people just like us. We won’t be killing Saddam Hussein. I said I joined the army to convince soldiers not to do that. She agreed that it was wrong to go and kill them. She said it was good to believe so strongly in something.

I told her that I wanted her to keep it a secret because it is illegal to be a communist in the army. I want to stay in the army as long as I could. She was happy that I told her and she understood that it was serious that she shouldn’t tell everyone. She wants to change her job to be the same as mine so she can be with me.

I was nervous about telling her but this proves to me once again that we can do this work in the military. She is not ready to join the Party but she understood wanting to change the world. She said she wants to change the world, too—just not illegally.

The more people you tell the less alone you feel. As you share communist ideas with others the Party is right here with you.

Red Soldier

Struggle Continues and Foreman HS, Chicago

Dear Challenge:

At Foreman HS graduations in Chicago, each senior division teacher gets to address the graduates and their families. When it was my turn, I congratulated my division on their success. I spoke about the world and their opportunity to change it, and that to do this we had to understand and confront the world today, including things like unemployment, prison labor, attacks on bilingual education and the lynching in Jasper TX. I warned them that it isn’t always easy to stand up, speak out and fight back. Many people will tell us it’s not our problem, that our boss will threaten to fire us and the newspapers may print nasty stories about us. I thanked them for all that they had taught me and I sat down.

Although during my speech, the audience both booed and cheered, when I finished there was cheering and applause. Several students and their families came up to me to say how much they liked what I said. The next day several faculty members circulated a petition demanding that the three communist teachers be fired. When I asked a friend how my remarks had gone over he shook his head and said, "Not well." Teachers and administrators were angry. When I asked him what he thought he told me how I could have done a better job. Then we talked about Jasper TX for close to an hour.

Another teacher, with whom I am friendly but seldom discuss politics, put a letter in our mailboxes expressing his disagreements. When we sat down to talk he told me how angry he was after graduation. So angry that when someone suggested he sign the petition, he stopped, "Something didn’t feel right. I spent the whole weekend thinking about what you said. Why’d you have to ruin graduation? What made you say those things? And then I realized I didn’t need to be thinking about what you said and think, but what do I think? What do I believe in? What would make me do what you did? And the more I thought about it the more I realized that we’re much more alike than I thought." When another friend sat down with us he went on telling stories about other graduation speeches about nuclear war and apartheid. He told us about his high school friends who came back from Vietnam with stories about fragging. We struggled over what we tell our students about the world. They suggested we keep talking over lunch and we headed out of the building. As we passed the principal and vice principal, my friend put his arm around me and said, "Let’s go, buddy."

The rest of the week was full of similar exchanges with our friends. As the struggle among the faculty sharpened everyone had to choose a side. Though over the years we have had many discussions with teachers and staff and many have read Challenge, this week was different. This week we could see, hear and feel the struggle going on inside our friends. We’ve all learned a lot about each other. The support and words of encouragement from friends are invaluable when we are under attack. The only thing better is the camaraderie and unity that comes out of struggling and changing together.

Foreman Comrade

Postal Worker on Fight For Communism

Dear Challenge:

Ever since I’ve opened my eyes to the struggles of the Party, I seem to be a lot more interested in details which were not of importance before. While talking with fellow postal workers at the USPS, I’ve found that world issues don’t matter to most. But what isn’t realized is that these "outside, far away" issues come together to explain the catastrophe of capitalism.

I work for the Postal Service. This place is like many other businesses, it is run solely by fascists. I believe that to be a part of management, you have to be, or will become, a fascist. Many say that "he/she is all right as a person, but they do these horrible things because it is his/her job." I know there is no separating the two personalities. Many bosses adopt management’s way of thinking either because they want the money, or they’re scared, or they believe in management’s racism. One thing is for sure: when you adopt this way of thinking, it is permanent with no way to return to logical thinking.

We are also trying to win our co-workers to fight management’s fascism. Here is a quote from one of the more senior carriers, defending his non-confrontational tactics: "You’re going to get your ass kicked on the job every once in a while, which is better than every day. Wisdom is in picking what day is your day." Does this sound as absurd to you as it sounds to me? Things don’t stay the same. If you just try to get along, then before you know it your ideology and management’s are the same. Preparations for World War III are being made, and fascism is becoming the way that the bosses control us—the workers. We either fight fascism or join the fascists. We’re supposed to accept the way things are forever? Wrong! Revolution For Change. Communism Forever.

Postal Worker

Africa Shows "National Liberation" a Looser - Only Communism Will Serve Workers

Dear Challenge:

According the New York Times (6/23) there are plantations in Ivory Coast where the owners keep 45 children locked in a single room from dusk till dawn, with the only toilet is a hole in the wall. That’s the kind of slavery that "national independence" has brought to this and many other countries in Africa.

Back in the 1960’s national liberation movements were sweeping the continent. PLP pointed out that because these were not class movements with the goal of destroying capitalism, exploitation would continue under a new set of "home-grown" bosses, still tied to the old imperialists and united in sucking profits out of the working class. We were criticized mercilessly by all sorts of pseudo-left groups for opposing self-determination and "betraying liberation" of oppressed peoples. But today black rulers following in the footsteps of European colonialists are repeating this scenario of continued capitalist exploitation in "liberated" country after country.

Thousands of unemployed workers and youth from Mali are being imported into Ivory Coast to work on farms as slaves. Their own countrymen promise them a "fortune" in wages and room and board on a plantation. They are transported across the border at night, only to find themselves sold to an Ivory Coast boss for $30 each. When they reach the plantation, they are locked up and placed under guard.

One such worker, Ibrahim Diarra, described his bondage: "[I] was sent out at daybreak each morning, seven days a week, to work fields [of] corn and cotton." Guarded by overseers, "he and other workers had to weed row after row of crops...and carry countless sacks of harvested crops the three miles back to the farmhouse....

"In the evening [they had their] only meal of the day—a thin corn porridge—and then were locked inside their mud-walled pillbox shelter where they were kept under guard until sunrise."

When Diarra escaped, he said "they quickly caught me, stripped me naked, tied my hands and made me sit in the open under the sun all day. Some of the others who tried to escape were whipped in front of the rest of us until they bled badly."

One 12-year-old laborer, Souleymane Konate, from Mali said that his parents couldn’t afford to feed and clothe him and there was nowhere to go to school in our village. He said he had no choice but to look for work. This is the "choice" the national liberation brand of capitalism has to offer—no job, clothing or school in Mali or slavery in the Ivory Coast.

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg as thousands of coerced Malian migrant laborers, many of them children, are the backs on which rest the wealth of the Ivory Coast. "We have two million Malians living in Ivory Coast," says the Malian consul there. "If all these workers went home, they could no longer produce crops here."

National liberation in Africa means liberation for a tiny group of domestic black bosses—working with the French, British, Dutch and U.S. imperialists—to make profit off the sweat of black workers. Real liberation comes only from a class revolution—communism—that dumps ALL bosses.

A Brooklyn Reader

Colombian Comrade: 'Win Our Children for Communist Future'

Dear Challenge:

It has been two years since I, along with my comrade wife and children, have been participating in the celebration of May Day, the international day of workers. During these two years, we have marched with the red flag of PLP. Under this murderous and oppressive system, the only thing that we workers can do is to organize to make a communist revolution.

It is not an easy task to make a worker politically conscious, but the same way in which we prepare and organize workers is the same way that we should organize our children. We can’t leave them to be easy targets for the system that wants them to be drug addicts, alcoholics, smokers, and prostitutes. The system also uses television and religion to distract them. We must win our children to the Party. We must immerse our children in communist ideas and make them active participants in meetings, cadre schools, and social activities so we don’t leave them to be destroyed by the system. It must be the task of every communist to win our children, as well as workers around the world, in order to make a triumphant communist revolution.

A Comrade from Colombia

Learning from the experiences of communists in the Philippines

Dear Challenge:

"I’m scared, but I’m really angry!" This was the response of a Philippine Airlines’ worker, as the bosses threatened to layoff 5,000 out of a total of 13,000 airline workers, during the week of June 15th. 624 pilots have been on strike for three weeks, and the bosses have threatened to fire all of them! The Philippine Airlines’ bosses claim to have lost over 8 billion pesos (US $200 million) last year and more this year. A severe economic crisis is rocking capitalism all over Asia! Worldwide, the capitalist bosses’ go from crisis to crisis. The only answer for workers is a communist revolution! That revolution will only be realized by the application of the correct political line. What lessons can we learn from the experiences of Filipino Communist Party?

The Philippine Communist Party (Huks) led a "guerilla war" during World War II, and by 1945 the Japanese imperialists were defeated. Soon after, many of the Communists surrendered their arms to MacArthur’s U.S. forces and were slaughtered. To this day, the U.S. bosses cheer the "I shall return" hero MacArthur and have buried his murderous deeds executed in Bataan!

Twelve years ago, the brutal and corrupt Marcos’ regime was ready to fall. The U.S. bosses with several important military bases and billions in investments told Ferdinand and Imelda to pack their bags for a flight to Hawaii! In spite of having killed and tortured thousands of Communists and their allies, the Marcos regime was now useless for the local bosses and U.S. imperialism.

By 1986, the Philippine Communist Party had grown to more than 25,000 men and women fighting a "guerilla war," mostly in the countryside. The New People’s Army controlled large areas of the countryside and had the support nationally of several million people. The Communists had built a mass base among workers, peasants, students and intellectuals. The leaders of the Party, Sison and Buscayno put forward revolution by stages, based on the 1949 Chinese revolution in a mostly agrarian society. They said, first, the struggle is for people’s democracy (allowing "anti-imperialist" capitalists to produce and giving workers and peasants massive reforms), then socialism, and in the far distant future, communism.

When Marcos was forced to flee, the U.S. bosses and part of the Filipino ruling class installed Corazón Aquino, widow of Senator Benigno Aquino, murdered by Marcos, as president. A façade of democracy was established. This led to a large split in the Communist Party, when a large group bought into this charade! Many Communists decided to run in elections and participate openly in labor unions and other organizations. In contrast, after a million Communists and their allies were murdered in Suharto’s 1965 military bloodbath in Indonesia, Philippine Communists opposing Marcos had taken years to carefully build a largely underground, secret movement.

The lessons that we PLP have learned from the experiences of revolutionaries all over the world are: capitalism cannot be reformed in any way; communists must build a mass base for revolution and organize mostly underground and fight for workers’ power (communism).

A West Coast comrade

OOPS! SEPTA

The article in the June 24th Challenge contained an error about the SEPTA

Transportation strike. The article mistakenly stated that the TWU union

officials were scared when hundreds of strikers showed up at the TWU office to carry out an early morning strike action. This in fact happened during the previous strike.

BACKPAGE

Fighting Against Racist Killers in Jasper

JASPER, TEXAS, June 29 — Contrary to the media description of the Ku Klux Klan rally here, last Saturday a multi-racial group of over 100 workers demonstrated against the Klan and the racist lynching two weeks earlier of local black worker James Byrd, Jr., by three members of a white supremacist gang. Despite pleas by local politicians, preachers and the media for workers to passively ignore both recent racist incidents as well as racism in general, many local residents felt strongly about turning out. They joined many workers from out of town who also saw the need to confront increasing racism in the U.S.

Five PLP organizers led chants attacking the kops, the kourts, and the Klan. Workers approached asking for our leaflets and Challenge. (Had we brought a bullhorn we could have provided more leadership.) While reading Challenge, a worker who was fired from the school (see below) said she was "impressed that so many people cared" and she was glad that we had come all the way from Chicago to support the residents of Jasper against the Klan.

The media portrayed the protest as a bunch of outside black militants threatening violence against a bunch of outside white racists. They repeatedly showed a few black Muslims and members of the New Black Panther Party of Dallas marching. In reality, the black nationalists came an hour late and only stayed for a few minutes before walking away with the media in tow. The coverage of the black nationalists was little more than a media circus event. Some of the black and white workers who really came to attack the Klan were angered by the parading of the black militants and accused them of making the situation a joke.

An even bigger joke was when the KKK grand lizard "denounced" the lynching of James Byrd, Jr. as a tragedy. He’s as big a liar as racist Clinton and his "concern" for human rights in China.

The biggest story of the rally wasn’t on the news at all. After the Klan and the black nationalists had all left, a local black worker called out the black ringleader, Mayor Horn, and criticized him for allowing the Klan to use the courthouse to rally and then cowardly watch from the courthouse window. Another worker attacked the racist black and white cops protecting the Klan, saying that they wear blue uniforms in the daytime and white sheets at night! The black worker who began the attack on the local black politicians then criticized the media for "deciding" that the Klan, black nationalists and politicians represented the community, when they don’t. He criticized the ministers and preachers for doing nothing more than praying in the face of racist terror.

The black worker related the story of how his two sisters were fired from their local school jobs. They were given two-minute notices at the end of the school year. They were told that one position was being eliminated and the other was being filled by a younger white woman who they had trained.

However, this wasn’t just racism. This was downsizing! The school administration will probably hire some new employees at lower wages. Yet, while many of the local residents were talking about how they can’t find jobs, the city spent tens of thousands of dollars on police, FBI agents, helicopters and more to protect the Klan.

Many residents, especially black workers, wanted to see someone do something about racism and the Klan. Church groups praying for an end to racism did not appear to meet their needs. Workers everywhere are looking for leadership against increasing racism, unemployment, police terror and fascism.

We need to mobilize workers in our shops and unions, in our schools and neighborhoods —in all the mass organizations to which we belong—to take militant action against racism, wherever it rears its ugly head. What we do has an impact on the working class. We must relate the Klan’s racism to Klinton’s Kutbacks. Not "Black Power" or "White Power" but Workers’ Power. It is capitalism that needs and spawns racism, from the White House to the Klan—for super-profits and to divide and weaken the working class. Smashing capitalism is our answer to racism.

Racist Researchers Picketed

NEW YORK CITY, June 25 — On June 24, Drs. Wasserman and Pine were featured speakers at a course on adolescent psychiatry at a midtown hotel. They are the two lead psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) at Columbia University. Their research tries to prove that violence results from abnormal brain chemistry, adding racism to already distorted science, they study only minority boys under 10 years old. Recently, a coalition has been formed to oppose their "science," and to oppose similar studies. The coalition has published several pieces of literature and picketed the opening of the new NYSPI lab.

On this day, a spirited demonstration of about 40 people demonstrated in Times Square at rush hour, where hundreds saw the line and many took literature and stopped to talk. Meanwhile, four people went inside the hotel to talk to the course participants. Two held up two banners saying "Violence is not a Biological Problem" and "Stop Racist Research," while the doctors left the lecture hall. At the same time two other activists distributed literature to the participants and discussed the issue as they moved on to the reception. Since neither speaker had mentioned their own research (not surprisingly) during their talks, the members of the audience were surprised by the Coalition’s information, but quite a few expressed interest in reading our literature. It was clear that trouble was expected as hotel security guards also hovered outside the hall and kept asking who we were waiting for, and then said the hotel floor was private and we had to leave. However, the protesters stood their ground and carried out their plan.

The Coalition Against the Violence is growing, as people respond with outrage. PLP’ers and friends must point out the danger of relying on politicians, congressional hearings or ethics committees to end this racist research. The U.S. ruling class, as have those running many other fascist states in history, needs to blame its victims—poor and unemployed workers and their families—for their own problems. "Scientific" racism is one of their major tools. The job of communists is to win people to see how racism and oppression of the working class is inseparable from capitalism. Racist psychiatry at Columbia is not an aberration, but a part of fascism which is necessary to prepare for and justify war and worsening conditions for workers. As the struggle grows and sharpens, more and more workers and professionals can be introduced to communist ideas and join and support the communist PLP.