The serious fight going on about Clinton's future is essentially a battle among oppressors. None of the ruling class forces involved in this ongoing conflict is fighting to help us. There are only two sides: the bosses and the workers. The various bosses are fighting only to help themselves.
Certain ironies in the rulers' current fight have useful lessons for us. The initial effort to topple Clinton seemed to come from the more openly right-wing forces. Now, it has broadened out. The initial "Whitewater" investigation launched about five years ago has been a relentless campaign by the Christian Right. Their financial backers are found among the New Money forces, generally known as the "Oil Patch." They are located mostly in the West, the Southwest, and parts of the South.
Still smarting from their defeat during the Nixon impeachment/resignation period, these forces are launching yet another serious and deadly attempt to secure political power for their faction. Their Whitewater investigation, led by Richard Mellon Scaife and pointman Kenneth Starr, turned up little. But then a funny thing happened on the way to their coup d'état.
U.S. imperialism's already deep problems have worsened. Hussein's Iraq thumbed its nose at U.S. inspections and sanctions. The Balkans began to unravel from Bosnia to Kosovo, threatening U.S. control. "Globalization," really U.S. domination of international markets, was proving wobbly. The world economy, from Russia to Brazil to Japan, was floundering. This collapse threatens the supposedly sound U.S. economy. Differences arose within the Clinton gang over whether, or how, the U.S. bosses should use the International Monetary Fund to bail out these economies. Clinton's domestic reform plans for health care, welfare, and education all essentially flopped. More people (as Challenge has often pointed out) lost health insurance. Welfare reform, which Clinton copied from the Republicans, doesn't work. Millions have no protection, and a new class of slave labor, including prison inmates, has appeared. This development may have a short term benefit for some bosses, but in the long run, it undermines the alliance between the union leaders and big bosses and threatens the rulers' political control of the working class. Many of the Eastern Establishment, centered in the Eastern banks, consider this alliance vital. They are intent on winning workers to their long term plans, which include wars, large and small. They know they need workers both to fight and to produce.
A myriad of other issues reveal the big bosses' dissatisfaction with the Clinton presidency. A growing number of ruling class forces, who had previously backed him, have now deserted the Clinton gang. George Bush spoke of the "New World Order" after the demise of the Berlin Wall. During the Clinton tenure the New World Order has turned into World Disorder, if not chaos.
So a combination of events in and out of the country has led temporarily to an uneasy, informal alliance among different sections of the ruling class. Their reasons for this unstable coalition vary. However, for their own reasons, all these forces, from the New York Times to Pat Robertson are, at the very least, unhappy with Clinton.
Clinton has managed to do the unthinkable. His misbehavior has for this brief moment brought together a host of political enemies. One of the best ironies of the Clinton-Lewinsky investigation is the indignation at Clinton's dishonesty as expressed by the squadrons of rulers' politicos and their mouthpieces in the media. These perverters of the truth sanctimoniously stand back and say: "He lied." Their hypocritical tag line is he didn't "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me god."
Well, Clinton is a sexist idiot. He gave the inquisitors and his critics the ammo they needed. But can you really believe that the world is tottering because of Clinton's sex life? Much is made of Clinton's "morality" by these jackals, who thrive on profits and blood. Clinton was one of the boys, but mistakes and events did him in.
The rulers are at one another's throats. It's a great time for workers to take advantage of their disarray. The best way to do this is to build the Party.
Most of the polls show that millions partially see through the political smokescreen concerning Clinton. But those same millions make the deadly error of viewing Clinton favorably. The fight between bosses over which gang will control the government is very serious for them. We can never identify their interests with ours. It's possible that in the long run they will go to war against one another for political power. Their partisan bickering and their wars are never in our interests. Capitalism is a lethal game. Our game is communist revolution.
EDITORIAL #2
According to government reckoning a family of three for example must have a cash income of less $12,802 per year to be considered in poverty. Using definitions like this the poverty rate dropped from 13.7% to 13.3% last year. The poverty rate for non-Latin whites remained at 8.6% while the rate for blacks declined to 26.5% and Latin 27.1%.
A somewhat contrary analysis was presented by NYT columnist Bob Herbert on September 22nd. Herbert cites a study by the Economic Policy Institute which states that the inflation-adjusted income of the median worker was 3.1% less in 1996 than in 1989 and that the "typical married-couple" family worked 247 hours more per year in 1996 than in 1989 despite an 8% growth in the economy's productive capacity.
However, cash in hand and median family income tell only part of the story as to the conditions of the working class. On September 26th the NYT reports "Americans Lacking Health Insurance Put at 16%--Highest Level in Decade--Increase Is Attributed to Shift of People from Welfare and to Cuts by Companies." After an increase of 1.7 million people last year there are now 43.7 million Americans without health care coverage! Living in America without health insurance is like being forced to play Russian roulette. During a life-time it is likely that at least one member of an uninsured family will have a medical crisis and whatever saving's a family has will be wiped out. Many uninsured workers simply don't go to doctors and/or hospitals when they know that they need to.
Clinton supporters might argue that Bill and Hillary "fought" for universal health care coverage several years ago. Their ill-advised plan would have provided for one section of the working class to be taxed to pay for minimal coverage for workers who were not covered. They fought half-heartedly and when they ran into some opposition, dropped the issue.
In fact the Clintonites are responsible for the increased number of workers without health care insurance. In 1992. realizing that he might not be re-elected Bill joined hand-in-hand with the Republicans to call for "welfare reform". This "reform" was a vicious attack which forced millions of workers deeper into poverty and left them without health care coverage.
PLP is absolutely correct in its position that the "liberals" and the "conservatives" are essentially the same--both push fascist policies. The liberals are indeed more dangerous because, while pretending to care about the plight of the workers, they stab us in the back. In concluding any discussion about the state of the U.S. working class it is important to remember that the working class worldwide is being crushed under the heel of capitalism.
On September 24th, Bronx PLP members were invited to speak at fundraising dinner organized by the Anthony Baez Foundation (Anthony Baez was an earlier murder victim of the cops). This was a result of attending demonstrations organized by the Foundation and speaking with the mother of Anthony Baez on several occasions. She wanted us to announce our October 3rd demonstration against police terror. We organized eight members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party to attend the dinner as we continued to bring our fight for communism and for the family of José Luis to this mass organization.. Two Zarate brothers attended the dinner with us and helped distribute PLP leaflets and Challenge.
The Baez Foundation was first organized four years ago by the Baez family and has become a respected group in their fight against police terror. This organization supports many families that have lost their loved ones to the fascist NYPD (New York Police Department). Approximately 20 of these families were at the dinner and most of them had an opportunity to tell their stories.
One woman talked about how her son was tortured in jail by the prison guards and then killed. "How could they do that to my son?" she screamed and then broke down in tears. Another woman from Brooklyn and a leader of Parents Against Police Brutality explained how her son was killed and how the cops were doing their best to cover it up. She denounced the NYPD as killers and called on us to unite and organize against cops in the schools. An older man talked about his 41 year old son who didn't take his medication and wandered the streets naked and was shot six times. Wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and cousins all told their stories. Each incident filled you with more hatred towards the cops and the capitalist system they protect.
The Zarate brothers explained what happened to José Luis and announced our October 3rd demonstration. They did a great job and it was the first time they spoke in public. A comrade translated this into English and called on everyone to join our communist-led march. We distributed leaflets and Challenges to everyone at the dinner. Some people took handfuls of leaflets and said that they would help organize for our demonstration. Another member of Parents Against Police Brutality said he would spread the word and bring their group's banner to the protest. He lost his son to the fascist police as well.
The efforts of all those fighting against police brutality are noble, but some people still believe that there are only a "few bad cops." From NYC to South America, fighting police brutality will never get rid of the fascist cops. Cops protect and serve the capitalist ruling class. Their job is to keep the working class disciplined and intimidated as this capitalist system falls apart. KKKops will continue to viciously kill and kill (they even murder their own, as the 34th Precinct cop did last week, killing his wife, his daughters and then himself), until we get rid of capitalism once and for all. At the end of the dinner, two of the Zarate brothers and a student from Kennedy High School joined the Anthony Baez Foundation. Some comrades also signed up to join as open communists. We are looking forward to our first meeting.
Many participants are angry at the system. They realize the working class is dishonestly portrayed, whether they are in prison, on workfare, or working at "Mc Taco-Hut." In this, we had many points of unity. People mentioned global economy and global capitalism, but failed to address the crisis of capitalism. When we pointed out that capitalism cannot be reformed, the panelists quickly cut us off saying, "This `pessimism' will not help our cause," showing the true nature of the Conference.
In the "Racism and the War on Drugs" workshop the proposed solution was to mobilize the workers to vote. Some participants had other ideas. A student from Colorado said the government (the CIA) smuggled drugs into South Central LA in the first place to help fund another illegal, immoral operation in Nicaragua. She asked the panel how they could advocate having faith in a government that would do this. Another woman announced that we have more people incarcerated (per capita) here in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world and that we are living in a fascist state. The audience clapped after this comment. The panelists did not have much to say on these questions.
"The Prison Industrial Complex and Unemployment" showed that capitalism cannot handle too many unemployed workers, so it locks them up. Workfare was discussed. One of the panelists thought that if the workfare workers could only get city jobs (with a sustainable wage, unions, and benefits), then the cycle of poverty would go away. We don't agree. Workfare is in place to drive down all wages. One man gave the example of how there used to be 300 San Francisco street cleaners employed by the city with benefits, unions and a decent salary. Now there are 60--mostly management jobs. The rest are workfare workers, labeled as "training" for the real world. But when they finish, there are no jobs because the jobs that they were training for have become workfare training posts. This is an attack on all workers!
The panel on "INS Detention and the Prison Industrial Complex" was informative about the horrible conditions for immigrants here and at the border. We learned that after serving long jail sentences, immigrants are subjected to indefinite terms in the prisons at the detention centers on the U.S./Mexico border.
A teacher shared his experience talking to a mother of one of his 4th grade students who explained to him why her child was acting out in class. One night they heard screaming outside. The husband rushed out to see what was going on. A white man was beating up one of his neighbors. The husband rushed to help the neighbor. When the police arrived, they arrested this husband instead of the other man, and sent him to jail. Never mind the fact that there was no evidence--this man spent 23 months in prison, and was then sent to a deportation jail indefinitely awaiting deportation to El Salvador. The little boy just cannot understand why his Dad doesn't come home. One of the panelists shared her frustration in trying to work to better the system. A young comrade invited everyone to the PLP demonstration at San Ysidro on October 24th, and we distributed leaflets for this event.
Later, the youth talked about the weekend's events. We evaluated our strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths were: we finally participated in a mass movement (something we have been dragging our feet on). Within the left-liberal crowd, we pushed for a revolutionary communist line by talking to individuals, raising questions and pointing out contradictions to the panelists, and sharing the positive experiences we've had organizing against workfare and other fascist attacks. We sold over 100 Challenges.
Our weaknesses included not being part of a mass movement that came to participate in this Conference. We didn't prepare enough to combat our own pacifism. We'll work to resolve our weaknesses.
Even though this Conference limited time to talk with our brothers and sisters in the working class, we know that these are the types of organizations that we need to join. These are the people who are angry at capitalism. We can channel their frustrations in trying to reform the system and win them to a mass PLP.
Why? On their way to pocketing billions, they were said to be "brilliant," and no doubt their "expertise" turned them a penny or two. Yet as speculators, their mathematical know-how would be of no use if they did not have a vicious anti-social greed at the core of their being. In the end, Meriwether & Co. made billions of dollars out of the impoverishment and misery of the world's working class. You don't have to be a "rocket scientist" to understand that.
In this, they are no different from any other capitalist, whether industrialist, banker, or Wall St. manipulator. But the growing importance of speculators in the economy is different. It points to the deepening instability of capitalism and its completely irrational nature.
Since the capitalist production process begins as money and ends as (more) money, it looks as if its very aim is making money. Even the production itself (actually making something) begins to look merely like a "necessary, evil." And when the falling rate of profit and the crisis of overproduction crowd out the possibilities of turning a profit in manufacturing, capitalists turn to the Meriwethers of this world. They try to make money without "the intervention of the process of production." They speculate.
A whim? A fantasy? Hardly. The two Nobel prize-winning economists at Long Term Capital came up with a formula to predict the success of their "Hedge" fund: C=SN (1n (S/K) = (r + and...). It goes on and on but there is not a single muscle or bead of sweat in it.
But this idealism is not unique to Meriwether. It is rampant in the thinking of the capitalist class, and flourishes at their Universities. Ultimately this idealism is a sign of their decline, while in the short run it will create one catastrophe after another. As long ago as 1994, for example, the World Bank pointed out with alarm that the volume of oil "hedged on the New York Mercantile Exchange was four times the amount of oil actually being produced in the world."
It tells us that not only do we need the most utter contempt for the capitalists' abilities in the long run but also we need an even greater confidence in our analysis. In the end capitalism is not defined by the amount of money or its movements, but as a relationship between the capitalist class who own and control the means of production and the working class who are forced to work for the capitalist for wages. The aim of communism is to smash that relationship once and for all.
As outrageous as these shootings are, they represent only a small part of the loss of life by immigrants trying to cross near San Diego. During the last few years the Border Patrol has tried to move all immigrant traffic to the sparsely populated East County. Over 100 people have died from the heat or the cold while to trying to cross the border through mountainous terrain. During the last decade more than 300 have died from Border Patrol shootings, drownings, heat, cold, or from running across the freeway.
This murder of some and terror for many is the real content of the bosses' immigration policy. They intend to make high profitds from undocumented immigrant workers, blame them for the failures of U.S. capitalism, and build up nationalist fervor about how great the U.S. is. For citizen and immigrant workers, however, capitalism really has no future to offer, whether you get shot by the Border Patrol, die in a war for oil, or from its lousy health care.
As the crisis and malnutrition in Mexico deepens, Mexican rulers like Zedillo have stolen billions from the workers. Then he cynically tells Mexican workers to go North to the U.S. for work, knowing that the U.S. bosses have increased their racist attacks on immigrants.
The bosses use their borders to attack workers on both sides and try to pit worker against worker. PLP is building a movement to smash racist capitalism and its borders with communist revolution. We invite workers and students to join us in a demonstration on Saturday, October 24th, at the U.S.-Mexican border, against growing fascist terror by Clinton's border patrol.
MUNI's rush hour train service carries 125,000 commuters a day. Recently it collapsed. This "MUNI Meltdown" resulted from the grafting of a new Automated Train Control System (ATCS), aimed at eliminating jobs and increasing riders per hour, onto tracks and trains in a state of collapse. The train operator stepped off an automated train to go to the bathroom, and it took off without him. There were no injuries or damage, but the incident made headlines. The bosses are trying to fire the operator to cover huge mistakes at every level of MUNI management, inadequate driver training and budget overruns. The global crisis of capitalism and increasing privatization demands that future transit workers be low-wage, efficient, productive, and under control. Fascist discipline is needed to increase the competitiveness of U.S. corporations in the world market.
MUNI transit workers are part of the international working class that is battling the tentacles of an octopus called "Globalization." We need an international PLP to direct our battles into a worldwide assault on capitalism. Globalization hits MUNI in two ways: 1) the proposal to reorganize MUNI into an Independent Transit Authority; and 2) the increasing discipline of MUNI workers.
Years of budget cuts and under-funding have brought mass transit here to a state of collapse. Driven by their need for reliable transit to compete in the global marketplace, international corporations such as Chevron, Bechtel, and Bank of America, are proposing a new Transit Authority. Their plan includes cuts in working conditions, higher fares, and cuts in "non-essential" service. Workers will provide stable funding for the new, efficient MUNI, in an unstable capitalist economy, with a new sales tax called "dedicated funding." They make these proposals through their shadow government: the Committee on Jobs, The Chamber of Commerce, and SPUR (SF Planning and Urban Research Association). They will use their control of the city government to implement it. Mayor Willie Brown is giving a popular face to what corporate SF needs.
Bosses and politicians are carrying out similar plans across the country. This past summer, TWU Local 234 fought a bitter 44-day strike in Philadelphia. But two months after the "settlement," the Transit Authority (SEPTA) refuses to vote on the oral agreement, and workers still have no contract.
The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century provides federal funding for the next six years. Its purpose is to advance "America's economic growth and competitiveness domestically and internationally through efficient and flexible transportation." Clearly, the Department of Transportation recognizes the role of urban transit in corporate profits. It increases funding to transport workers from the inner city to low wage jobs in the suburbs, making transit workers part of the necessary "infrastructure" for U.S. capitalists to compete in the chaotic, dog-eat-dog international market place. It won't be too long before we're transporting slave laborers to the concentration camps. The other side of this coin is the absolute necessity for the bosses to attack transit workers' wages and working conditions, because the MUNI bosses say is too labor intensive.
This fight is producing a sense of class-consciousness and solidarity which is overcoming some of the racial and ethnic divisions among drivers. There is tremendous anger at management and the city, which puts drivers in the hot-seat and then blames us for their failing system. These struggles allow us to show how the bosses use us to compete in the global economy, take action against them, and build a mass base for communist revolution and the seizure of power. "Globalization" is an octopus whose tentacles reach all over the world to crush workers. We plan to trace the tentacle that is strangling our co-worker back to its capitalist head. We are not just cutting off tentacles. We are organizing to kill the beast.
Georges was one of the most damaging hurricanes in recent history, causing havoc across the Caribbean to Alabama and Mississippi. But it was most devastating here in the Dominican Republic, thousands probably died (the official figures are just a couple of hundred) because the government did nothing to protect the population. Elpidio Baez, the head of the Civil Defense, refused to open the shelters even after the hurricane started because he thought people were going to become squatters and stay in them. The dam in San Juan de la Maguana was opened with little warning to the 10,000 people of Mesopotamia (named after the ancient city that was also built between two rivers) and other poor neighborhoods that were swept away by the water. Thousands probably died here, and hundreds more in neighboring Haiti, where the government admitted before Georges hit that it had very little money for shelters.
This hurricane, like all natural disasters, is made even worse because of capitalism, particularly for working people. The shacks where hundreds of thousands live were no match for the fury of Georges. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless.
President Leonel Fernández and his Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) came to power two years ago with the promise of turning the country into a "modern" capitalist country. This "modernization" led to the tragedy of thousands because of Georges.
Contrary to what workers are doing, small and big capitalists are taking advantage of the workers' misery to make more money. For example, in Dominican Republic businesses are charging double for basic necessities (food, bottled water, construction material, etc.).
Finally, past experience has shown that most of the aid sent to the victims of natural disasters do not end up helping those who need it. For example, when Hurricane David hit the Dominican Republic some 20 years ago, most of the aid sent to the victims ended up in the pockets of some politicians and generals or being sold by businessmen.
Under communism, workers in power will do everything possible to minimize the effects of such disasters. The lives of workers will be primary. Houses will be built to withstand the fury of nature, and technology will be used to take all precautions to save lives. And no one will be allowed to make a profit off the misery of any victims of a disaster, since the profit motive will not exist.
Facundo Guardado and Nidia Diaz, ex-commanders of the guerrilla forces and founders of the FMLN are now the FMLN's candidates for the presidency of El Salvador. They want to give a new face to the murderous monster of capitalism.
Diario de Hoy, the most radical right-wing newspaper in El Salvador, is pouring out its support for these politicians of the fake left. In the past, this newspaper rabidly called for killing everyone remotely related to the working class. It labeled as "terrorist" the entire population that disagreed with the genocidal plans of the army. In 1986, those behind this newspaper organized a goon squad, in the best style of the death squads, among the members of the elite in San Salvador.
Orlando de Sola and Enrique Altamirano, recognized as backers of the death squads, which savagely murdered thousands of workers, have joined with others to create a group they call "Friends of Liberty." They have openly shown that they will not be bothered if Facundo's group comes to power in El Salvador, since they consider ARENA (the party currently in power) and the FMLN to be birds of a feather.
Facundo has made a pact with U.S. imperialism. This deed was consummated years ago. He has also flirted with the international social democracies. These pseudo-revolutionaries are mercenaries who sell out to the highest bidder. In 1993, Facundo blew up a hidden cache of arms in Santa Rosa, Nicaragua, that belonged to Joaquín Villalobos. Facundo did this to get his main obstacle, Jaoquín Villalobos, out of the way, so he could show the imperialists how valuable he was.
But Facundo is not the only pro-imperialist in the leadership of the FMLN. Shafik Handal and his group are different only because they support European imperialism. None of these leaders of the Front is thinking about ending wage slavery, exploitation and poverty in which the working class of El Salvador lives. None of them sees that workers are capable, using or own minds and hands, of changing the world.
The international working class must put an end to these politicians who aren't at all interested in our suffering, and who only see their electoral aspirations as the way to gain superprofits for the local and foreign bosses.
We workers had better make the communist organizing of PLP the goal of our lives. We know that the road ahead does not lie in following these capitalist politicians. Instead we have to build a communist revolution as the only way to destroy this rotten system of capitalism, along with its servants.
The only way to plan for a better tomorrow is by building the Progressive Labor Party today and fighting to build a system that helps us meet our needs. That system is communism.
The CD has been getting good reviews accolades from every newspaper, magazine, and TV music station. Most critics have been praising Hill's strong, determined, unbitter lyrics that reach from the personal to the political. It stayed Number 1 on Billboard's Chart list for three weeks. And, Chuck D from Public Enemy has called Hill the "Bob Marley of the 21st century."
But, for all of her hooky groves and bouncing rhythms--mixing R&B Reggae, and Rap--Hill comes up short for solutions for the black working class youth she is singing to. The tough singing Hill's only answers to capitalist oppression become a whimper by insisting a belief in religion and faith. In "To Zion," her song dedicated to the differences she sees in the music industry between men and women, she laments about how she was forced to make a decision about whether to have a child or choose her career, ignoring the fact that most working class women cannot make that kind of decision because of the exploitation by the ruling class: "But everybody told me to be smart/Look at your career they said/`Lauryn, baby use your head'/But instead I chose to use my heart/Now the joy of my world is in Zion . . ." The same continues in "Superstar", "...Music is supposed to inspire/How come we ain't getting no higher?/Now tell me your philosophy/ On exactly what an artist should be/Should they be someone with prosperity /And no concept of reality?/Now who you know without any flaws/That lives above spiritual laws . . ."
Music should be used to inspire, but for which ideas? Hill's contention is, with other hip-hop stars, to start putting forth more positive music. Miseducation's ideas are not positive for the working class, they are dangerous. Sometimes, they are layered in soft, romantic music and hard hitting jams at other times. She uses familiar rhythms by Marley and R&B groups so that we feel a line of history from one generation of black singers to the present.
If this is the most "political" of rap music today, then we better start looking to build our own culture. We need a culture that has a materialist outlook of the world and not an idealist one. To paraphrase her from the chorus of the "Lost Ones"--she might win some but she just lost us.
Saving Private Ryan is an open call for land wars on foreign soil to protect the interests of America. By unnerving the audience by graphic violence it manipulates the viewer into believing it is anti-war. The main line of the movie, however, is the standard "war is hell but we have to do it."
A generation of youth during the 1940's and 1950's grew up on films about soldiers in World War II. Since they were based on the need to fight Nazis (the politics of fascism was rarely mentioned in SPR), these films portrayed the war as a good fight. Most of the plots involved a squad, usually with a tough but loving Sergeant, slogging through the war. You spent the film coming to love these guys and dread watching who would die and who would survive. But the accumulation of 20 years of movies, along with anti-communism, built up a level of patriotism, and conviction that dying for one's country was heroic, that led thousands of youth to go to Vietnam.
Cold Mountain agrees that war is hell but argues that the only thing worth fighting for is here at home. No foreign shores for this section of U.S. capital. The novel is set in 1864 towards the end of the U.S. Civil War. It tells the story of a Confederate soldier, named Inman, badly wounded in battle in Virginia, who decides to desert and walk home to North Carolina. Meanwhile, Ada, the woman he loves is struggling to survive on her farm near Cold Mountain, North Carolina while all the men are away at war. The novel traces their two intertwined stories.
These characters speak to the New Money audience, many of whom are Southerners still resentful of the Federal victory over the Old South. The Federals, in fact, are presented as vicious brutes who commit horrible atrocities against white Southern women. Also, on a journey across the South in the last year of the Civil War, Inman does not have a single encounter with a black person. These incidents appeal to the New Money audience who make the federal government the source of all problems in America.
The differences in the film and the novel reflect the political and economic battle of various sections of the ruling class. Through culture they openly campaign to win the hearts and minds of the working class to their side. It's just the beginning. As communists, we must see the opportunities in this situation to advance our ideas and expose the danger of all capitalist culture to our class.
Mrs. Aaron tried to purchase a bottle of hair rinse in the Beauty Supply store at Dogwood Station, 2323 Rolling Road. The price on the bottle was $3.99, but the store manager charged Mrs. Aaron $5.99. She pointed this out, and the manager went to look at the price on other shelved bottles. Mrs. Aaron said, "I showed her that the prices on the other bottles were also marked $3.99. She kept saying I had to pay $5.99." The manager "got really upset and started ripping the prices off the bottles. I decided I didn't want to buy anything at all...I had my son with me, and I just wanted to leave." When Mrs. Aaron started to move towards the door, the manager "blocked my way and wouldn't let me pass." Some items on a stand got knocked over, and the manager yelled at Mrs. Aaron to pick them up. She refused.
"When I tried to move past her again, she hit me in my chest three times. I couldn't believe she had done that and I just wanted to leave because my son was upset and holding onto the back of my legs." The manager went to call the police. Mrs. Aaron told her, "Go ahead, I didn't do anything wrong. When she went to call, I went toward the door. She ran from behind the counter and locked the door so I couldn't get out. Every time I would try to reach behind her to unlock the door, she would hit me with the telephone." When the police arrived, Mrs. Aaron asked them to arrest the manager, but they refused. The next day, outraged community members began protesting at 12:30pm. By 2:00pm, the manager closed the store, but not before yelling out "n--" and "go back to your country!"
Today, there was a second protest rally. Nearly every shopper at the mall responded favorably. On several occasions, shoppers teasingly walked up to the beauty store and stopped just before opening the door, then turned around and walked away. Each time, we turned up the decibels yelling even louder that racism is unacceptable. During the hour, only two shoppers actually went into the store. Each caught hell from the protesters!
The PLP member who participated brought only ten copies of Challenge. He talked to the other 15 participants about communism, and how racism is a trick used by wealthy business owners to divide and conquer the working class. All ten papers were taken by friendly and eager hands.
The working class will not allow itself to be kicked around endlessly. The ceaseless abuses inevitably lead to struggles against racism and other forms of exploitation. Have confidence in the working class! In this political climate, PLP members must shoulder the responsibility to make communist ideas the property of the masses. Otherwise, no matter how hard we fight, the bosses will continue to hold power. We need communist revolution to smash racism. Let's organize and fight for the needs of our class.
Challenge readers have surely not forgotten the brutal murder of Mr. James Byrd, who was tied and dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas by several racists.
Shortly afterward, during the Baltimore/Washington PLP youth camping trip, and also on several other occasions during the remainder of the Summer, 82 people signed a letter addressed to the family of James Byrd.
In addition to offering support during the family's difficult times and expressing outrage at the racist violence that took Mr. Byrd's life, the letter said, "We want your family to know that there are many people of all races who are trying to end racism and create a society based on equality." The letter went on saying, "Workers must unite to change the situation. Black, Latin, Asian, and white workers have the power to end racist violence!"
When the letters and signatures were sent to the Byrd family, a note was included explaining that "enclosed is a tiny sum of money--$25--which we hope will be of help in some modest way. The money was raised from high school and college students during our camping trip this Summer. Unfortunately, young people don't have a great deal of money. We're sorry that we couldn't send a more significant sum."
The note also explained: "The main sponsoring organization is Progressive Labor Party, a communist party that believes in revolution and a world of full equality....Please don't lose heart. Racism has not always existed, nor will it continue to exist without end. There is no doubt that, one day, we will succeed in eradicating this scourge from the face of the earth!" In closing the note wished "your entire family the very best in all the years to come."
Today, a thank you card arrived from the Byrd family in Jasper. Readers will surely be moved by the words they have sent to us. Here is the text of their card: "Please let all of the signees know that their loving concern and generosity brought much comfort to our hearts. We will display the letters proudly in our memorial album. Thank you!! The Byrds."
Baltimore Comrade
First thing in the morning, we have to clean the whole area. We sweep, we mop, we scrub, and we straighten up. How the place got dirty from the cleaning of the night before is a mystery, but every morning we have to mop and sweep.
Every night we have fireguard duty and two soldiers stay awake every hour throughout the night to guard. On this particular night, it was my turn, along with another soldier whom I had met earlier in the cycle and seemed pretty cool. I had thought about talking to him earlier, but didn't have the opportunity. I just blurted out with, "Man, are you down to die for this country?" I've been kind of anxious to know what people think about this question. To my pleasure this guy responded with a "Hell NO!" So, I began to talk to him some more. I told him about inter-imperialist rivalry and how this causes wars. I told him about the crisis of overproduction. He seemed to agree to everything I was saying. But then I told him about the possibility of World War III and he disagreed with my prediction of another major war. He said that it'll never happen. I also told him about the role of the ruling class in a war. It was hard for him to believe that a group of people control the drive to war.
After a while, the Drill Sergeant came in to inspect, so our conversation stopped. (I had to do push ups that night because I left my locker unlocked before I started my shift.) When the drill sergeant left, we went back to our post. I thought the conversation was over, but the other soldier asked me to continue where I had left off. He made a comment that he was too young to know as much as I did and he wondered how I was so knowledgeable about so many topics. I told him that I "read stuff" and pretty soon our shift ended. We'll be talking more later. I've also had some serious talks with another soldier.
Red Soldier
While in the bosses' army I had the privilege of meeting lots of people and made some great friends. Many liked and supported PLP's ideas. A few of them know that I am a communist. Others think that I just have great ideas. I know that now that I am gone most will miss these ideas. Now that I am not there I still plan to keep in touch and keep up the struggle, and along with this I will use Challenge.
My friends have heard that some soldiers will be sent down to the border to help patrol and pull guard duty. They need to know how the bosses are using soldiers to help protect their border. They are using our class brothers and sisters to enforce their racist immigration laws. Soldiers should help our brothers and sisters that are being forced out of Mexico, instead of allowing more than 300 to die from heat exhaustion like happened this past Summer. We all know that that would take lots of struggle. This is just the beginning if we keep up this kind of work this and many other things will be possible.
Our goal is to build the Party. We want the bosses to be even more scared of their own army. We should discuss this with soldiers, so that they don't look at the two months as another rotation or just another boring guard duty. If we bring out these ideas often enough, we will win some of them to our ideas. We need to discuss with them what they would do if they were faced with this situation. Soldiers should be part of the movement to smash the bosses' nationalism, patriotism, and borders.
Red Ex-Soldier
In a recent issue of Challenge, there was a letter titled "We Need to Make Our Goals Clearer" by Md. Comrade. I am new to Challenge, and find its analysis of the current state of the world to be stimulating, but I agree with the Md. Comrade. I get a small bundle of Challenge which I distribute. Many working people out here in the hinterlands have never seen a revolutionary paper. I think that the "What we Stand For" column needs to be re-evaluated now that PLP is attempting to build a mass communist Party.
It seems to me that many working people already know about the burdens of life. Many of us live from paycheck to paycheck, while others must hold two and sometimes three part time jobs in order to survive. Countless others are trapped in a life of unemployment. Basically, it is all about the technological revolution. Automation is replacing people, and thus, the fascist-capitalist order does not need people. I believe that this is why they are building jails on every street corner it seems. Meanwhile, they can exploit the prisoners in these prisons. On the other hand, the technological revolution, instead of improving working conditions and shortening the workday, has not lead to this, due to the private ownership. There are books that discuss the over-worked American worker. What happened to the eight hour day? This is a very strange situation.
I think that Challenge should deal with how communism will improve life for working people. Technological advances can be used to eliminate dangerous and mind-numbing, repetitive work. Under communism, every effort will be made to work toward a society where workers can feel safe at work and do jobs that do not dehumanize them. Also, workers should have more time to develop other interests.
I was talking to a friend the other day who works in a factory and makes $7 an hour. He said that he was depressed. He has an interest in being involved in community theater, and he is depressed because the job that he is forced to do and which barely allows him to survive is draining him and making him feel like a machine due to its repetitive nature. Under communism, every effort should be made to get rid of these alienating jobs and give workers creative jobs.
Individualism is an ideology of capitalism, and it must be fought. But communism will not discourage individuality in people. Many people believe that communism wants everyone to be the same. This is not true. Christopher Cauldwell, a British Communist who died at a young age in the Spanish Civil War, wrote a great book called Illusion and Reality which points out that under communism people will have more opportunities to develop their individuality in accordance with the collective.
Also, longtime members of PLP may not be alarmed by mentioning One Party will run society, but some people I talk with are afraid of this. They believe that this means that everyone will be forced to think the same way and that nobody will be allowed to disagree and will be jailed. Personally, I am not sure of the concept myself. So I write this in a comradely fashion, because I want to see a solid mass communist Party be built here to fight the fascists. Thank You.
Red Rocker
Western Pa. Hill Country
Last week I attended a disturbingly effective teach-in sponsored by a group called the Coalition Against the Violence Initiative concerning the new ways the government has found to cloak its racist "Violence Initiative" work since it claimed to have backed down in the face of outrage and struggle six years ago. A social worker, a journalist, a church activist, and a doctor each made presentations detailing aspects of psychiatric experimentation carried out on inner city youth whose parents had been coerced into allowing their participation.
The four speakers made convincing arguments on several key points: the "studies" themselves reek of invalid pseudo-science and are designed to "prove" that violence in black and Latin youth is biologically determined and can only be controlled by massive drug programs which are already underway in overcrowded, crumbling inner city schools. Not only does this experimentation stem directly from Nazi "science"--both ideologically and clinically, but the goose-stepping complicity of the NYC Board of Education and the Probation Department in referring "potentially dangerous" children follows the same pattern as did all agencies of German government in willing participation in Nazi rule.
The final speaker spoke of where violence comes from: from the police maiming of Michael Evans in Brooklyn to the raining of U.S. bombs on a medical factory in the Sudan to the forced labor of mothers on workfare whose children are child care arrangements that are inferior and dangerous to the sending of working class youth to the Persian Gulf awaiting the order to bomb Iraq.
Most important, the speakers stressed the need not only to expose the Dr. Mengeles in our midst and warn parents not to be bullied into their schemes but also to mobilize community-based forces in the growing struggle to shut down all racist "research" and to punish the criminal professionals, administrators, and politicians who carry it out. To build this struggle the forum organizers proposed a neighborhood rally and march to picket the Psychiatric Institute--the center for much of the Violence Initiative work--on Sunday afternoon October 4th.
The teach-in was multi-racial and involved a pretty good mix of professionals and workers from the neighborhood. The happy sound of several children involved in supervised child care in the adjacent gym reminded us of what real education and "mental health" care will be like under workers' rule.
NYC Comrade
During this past Labor Day Parade in Broad Channel, Queens, several NYC cops and firemen rode on a float in which they made fun of the racist slaying of James Byrd in Jasper, TX last June. NYC is supposedly trying to fire at least one of the cops (undoubtedly because he exposed the racist nature of the police). Even the PBA (the police "union") found this act too hot to handle and refused to defend this beast. But guess who jumped in to defend him--the ACLU!--on the grounds that his "free speech" would be violated if he were punished.
This is yet another example of how "free speech" is used to enable racists and fascists to spread their filth. Yet, when workers, and especially communists, attempt any type of protest, there are always "overriding reasons" to deny them the "right" to speak. Challenge has written in the past about the treacherous actions of the ACLU in expelling Communists and left-wingers from its ranks, all the while supposedly defending "free speech." I would appreciate it if Challenge could give some specific details related to these actions by the ACLU. For those of us who work with intellectuals, these facts would be very helpful.
College Teacher
I am a 15 year old youth in Argentina who has been reading Challenge-Desafío. I'd like to say a few things about Stalin which is an important question in the fight against revisionism in the communist movement.
Stalin was an active participant in the October Revolution, leading many workers in the fight against their bosses (for which he was punished by the bosses). But after the revolution, comrade Stalin became one of the important politicians in the new Soviet Union (USSR). When Lenin died he fought Trotsky and his gang over the control of state power, and he did it with very concise arguments based on dialectical materialism and practice. It would have been a disaster for humanity if Trotsky had won.
Stalin led the five year plans which built the Soviet Union into a powerful socialist economy. He also led the fight to collectivize the land and to fight the Kulaks. One thing right-wingers never mention about the Kulaks is that the land did not belong to them, that they were given as concessions to them and had to return them sometime. They were the last remnants of capitalism and therefore a problem for the Soviet economy.
The 1937-38 purge trials had never been presented truthfully by anti-communists. Stalin fought politically and with a lot of patience against Zinoviev, Bukharin and other opportunists. But when they joined with plotters in the leadership of the Red Army, the Communist Party was mobilized to fight them. We have been told that Stalin purged his friends, but the fact is that they purged themselves. Hitler was trying to organize a counterrevolution inside the USSR, and since his plans failed he invaded it under the banner of an "anti-Communist crusade."
Stalin in his historic speech called on the masses to prepare for the biggest war ever, and the masses followed his leadership in crushing the biggest war machinery ever assembled: the Nazis. Stalin became a hero of the world's workers and millions cried when he died in 1953. In my opinion he was the most important leader, as far as the working class is concerned, of the 20th Century.
What followed after Stalin has gone from bad to worse for workers in the Soviet Union: Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and now Yeltsin. That is why when workers protest against capitalism in today's Russia, they carry pictures of Stalin and Lenin.
The lessons of history is that the road to revert the drive towards communism in the former Soviet Union began with anti-Stalinism.
AM Argentina