While the bosses still claim that unemployment is at its "lowest ever" and things are rosy for everyone in this "never-ending" economic boom, the fact is that the economic gap between the richest 1 million and the poorest 100 million has doubled since 1977 (New York Times, Sept. 5). The cop terror curve parallels this increase. The cops protect property and wealth. They have orders to preserve the status quo by all available means. Sometimes this includes winking at racist mob terror, like the vicious Sept. 2 attack by thugs in Long Island against a black man who had committed the "crime" of entering a bar with two white friends. Above all, the job of the police is to keep state power firmly in the hands of the ruling class.
So when New York City cops murder five workers in the last four weeks, we shouldn't be surprised. When the latest of these killings involves the shooting of an unarmed man, we should understand that this is "standard operating procedure." And New York is no exception. Similar atrocities occur regularly in Chicago, L.A., Detroit, Boston and every other U.S. city. Our Party has taken the lead in organizing against these murders. We consistently point out the class role of the police and warn against the illusion that the bosses' uniformed thugs can be reformed under capitalism.
One of the recent NYC police murders has a significant political twist. This time the Brooklyn cops shot a white man, a Hasidic Jew named Gidone Busch. Busch apparently had a history of mental problems. In a fit of depression, he allegedly came at the cops with a claw hammer. Mayor Giuliani and his side-kick in crime, NY police commissioner Safir, defended the preposterous idea that only a hail of bullets could separate Busch from his claw hammer. So far, this is all just a variation of the regular sickening script we hear recited every time the cops mow down a black or Latin worker.
The wrinkle here is the NYC Hasidic community's history of racism against black workers and of support for racist politicians. The Hasidic vote helped elect Giuliani twice, when he courted racist votes in his mayoral campaigns. During the 1970s and '80s, mayor Ed KKKoch frequently shuttled between City Hall and Hasidic neighborhoods to push the vilest racist lies. This was part of the bosses' divide-and-conquer strategy. The Hasidic leaders figured that the bosses would reward them for falling in line with this racism and that the Hasidic community would therefore have nothing to fear from the cops.
The murder by police of Gidone Busch should expose the absurdity of this particular illusion. Hasidic racism didn't persuade the cops to cut Busch one inch of slack. There's a general truth here as well. In every situation, on every front, in every way, unity with the bosses leads only to death and mayhem for our class. Black workers who follow the phony Al Sharpton (an admitted FBI informer) will learn the same bitter lesson. Every time the cops shoot a black worker, Sharpton arrives with a protest microphone. But Sharpton is squarely on the side of the big bosses. He works hand-in-glove with Rockefeller agent Jesse Jackson. He enthusiastically defended Clinton's genocidal bombing of Iraq last December for the sake of Exxon's profits. He makes it absolutely clear that he understands and supports the class role of the cops. In radio interviews, he has frequently defended "aggressive policing."
Our Party will continue to oppose and organize against the growing incidents of racist cop terror against workers and to expose the basic role of the police. While this murderous hail of police bullets is an attack on the working class, in the long run even more dangerous is the mirage that the police can be reformed to serve any interests other than the rulers'.
The LA Times called for the Sheriff's Department to take over the El Monte police. This is the same Sheriffs Department that murdered Ricardo Close a few months ago, one among its long list of racist murders. There have been calls for an independent prosecutor to monitor police murders in LA and Riverside (where the cops murdered Tyisha Miller), and for the FBI to investigate the brutal killing of Mario Paz. Janet Reno spoke at a memorial service for Joseph Santos Ileto, the postal worker killed by fascist Buford Furrow. As Janet Reno spoke against hate crimes, PLP pointed out that it's the biggest bosses and their armed thugs, the cops, who are responsible for racist murder--from Riverside and Compton to Iraq.
One worker called a radio talk show to ask CEO Phil Condit and IAM District 751 President Bill Johnson why they claimed the new contract would raise pensions 25%, when in fact, most workers would get no increase. After waiting for an hour, he was told that neither the company or the union would answer that question on the air.
PLP distributed thousands of "Vote No!" flyers, and joined others in organizing against the contract. The bosses threatened many of our comrades and friends, and blamed us for the return of "Rolling Thunder" (hammers banging on metal, every hour on the hour). They threatened to fire anybody caught distributing our leaflet, or selling "Strike" buttons! All the rhetoric about "free and fair" elections goes out the window when profits are at stake.
This contract is a shaky victory for the company and the union hacks. Last week, while "Rolling Thunder" roared and workers marched through the plants, Bill Johnson said it would take a miracle to reach an agreement. After the deal was struck he said, "I never believed in miracles, but a miracle stepped in front of us and his name was Phil Condit." This collaboration will further expose the union hacks as capitalist agents within our ranks. Condit is already floating the idea of non-traditional workweeks (production 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), in "experimental pilot projects."
"Condit and the union think they bought our allegiance with this contract," answered a second comrade.
"Well, they didn't! Nobody is singing the company song!"
"The contact says that `both parties [recognize that] job security [comes from] increased productivity, continuous improvement and competitiveness.' The union now has $14 million to `develop and deliver...the training necessary to implement high performance work organization.' That means a big attack on us. Convincing us to produce more while they layoff 53,000 workers is what they call `job security.'"
" I don't go for brainwashing."
"I know you don't, but we better be prepared for the fight of our lives. The union will send hundreds of these ideological cadre on the shop floor. Also, the company is going to move against those that opposed their deal. They could very well try to fire someone."
After some thought our friend admitted, "I'm afraid you might be right!"
We showed that we are up against the whole capitalist system, from the Wall St. bankers to the imperialist war machine. As the Seattle Times wrote, "From the standpoint of the Pentagon, which has contracted with Boeing to build fighter jets and missiles, a financially strong company is important to meet the goal of producing the weapons on time and within the government's budget."
We mobilized workers to fight against racist police terror, in particular, the recent cop assassination of Demetrius Dubose. Racist police terror is the continuation of the fascist economic attacks, embodied in this new contract, by other means. Most important, we offer the only answer to Phil and Harry's world of capitalist economic and political crisis. As long as the bosses hold power, they will carry out worldwide mass terror to "beat the competition."
When a mass PLP leads the working class to power, we will organize production, and distribute all that we produce, based on the needs of our class. Profits, bosses, and money will be eliminated. We will turn the wars waged by imperialists to protect their profits into revolutionary wars to end exploitation. We can turn any attack on the Party around, by recruiting more revolutionaries, steeled in the heat of battle. The choice is clear. It's the world according to Phil and Harry, or the world where workers rule for the interests of our class: communism.
Next a PLP parent rises to speak. Again the principal shouts, "This meeting is over." Not so. The staff also wants to hear what the parent has to say. The parent represents a group called Concerned Parents of Flatbush, which was formed in response to the takeover of school security by the NYPD. At one point, the principal says that 83% of the school's students fail one or more classes each marking period. The parent challenges the principal, saying that in that case, it is intolerable to lose committed teachers such as our comrade.
PLP students were also at the meeting. The principal managed to end the meeting before the students could speak. Teachers who wonder why their classes don't go well are the same ones who walk out of the room when a student has something to say. The students followed up by approaching the principal, who blew them off, saying she would do all that she could. They delivered a letter demanding all teachers who were "transferred" return to their positions at the school--a letter they had tried to deliver in person four days in a row last week.
The last announcement is for a lunchtime union meeting to discuss the transfers that occurred over the summer. Out of a staff of 50 or so, 35 teachers show up. The meeting splits between the staunch defenders of the administration (2), the vacillators (10), and those who know that something is wrong.
Despite the focus on legalities, the central issue becomes clear. During the past three years, this is the first time that teachers with temporary licenses have been "bumped" by teachers with permanent licenses. The principal allowed this "bumping," and all three cases occurred in the social studies department, where the PL member taught. Only the staunch defenders of the administration disagreed when the communist teacher said he was "bumped" because of his politics, especially his opposition to the racist NYPD's takeover of school security. This was the biggest union meeting in recent memory, with many teachers angry at this political attack. Anti-communism took a big hit today.
Overall, the sense in the building is that this principal has been doing this for a while, and people are glad to see someone fight back. Not one single negative remark or attack was directed at the PLP member. His pro-student, pro-working class work ethic makes such attacks very difficult to mount. While in many schools the union rep is allied with the principal, in this case the chapter leader is energetically fighting the "bumping."
Today was a victory. Teachers ignored orders from the principal and came to a union meeting to fight the principal's efforts to clear out the social studies department. Illusions about the nature of capitalist education are beginning to crumble. Now we have to broaden out and deepen our base among the teachers, and set up a teachers' study group. Once school starts and the youth get involved in this fight, even the cynics on the staff will find that when PLP fights with all our might, there are indeed new things to be seen under the sun.
We found our way to Central Park where 35 hooded Klansmen were gathered on a gazebo and a line of police around it to protect the racists. A number of people, black and white, were beginning to gather in the park near the gazebo. We met two members of the anti-Klan coal country coalition who were handing out leaflets titled, "KKK: Stooges for the Rich." Solid people!
The Grand Dragon of the KKK began to talk to the crowd, as if he thought they were there to hear what he had to say. But the KKK received a tough lesson. Eventually 150 people, local workers, black and white, men and women, began to chant anti-Klan slogans and shouted the Klan down.
As the shouting continued, the anti-Klan protestors moved to within five feet of the gazebo and surrounded it. We passed out some Challenges to some of the protestors who were thankful for our support.
One white worker was so enraged with the Klan scum that he attempted to break through the police line and was arrested. The Klan, shaking in their ridiculous outfits, decided to cut the rally short. The police had to escort them to their cars, as the militant protestors followed shouting that the Klan was damn lucky for the police protection.
One man shouted, "You ever show your faces here again and we'll kick your asses to hell."
As in Steubenville, where the Party led workers and youth to smash the Klan, white workers proved that they are not buying the Klan's' bullshit, and will unite with people of color to battle the fascist terrorists.
It was truly a major victory for the working class and a major defeat for the hooded thugs. As were leaving, we stopped at a convenience store, where white workers at the store and black customers were discussing how angry they were about the Klan being there. We told them we had protested the Klan, and a young woman working there gave us two free fountain drinks.
We gave them all free copies of Challenge.
For nearly an hour, our club of health care comrades, new and veteran, had a lively discussion about the Balkans war. Bob gave a fascinating report with maps and posters. But this wasn't some boring, capitalist classroom lecture. And these workers weren't passive students. From the beginning, when Bob opened his world map, the workers bombarded him with questions. "Where's Iraq?" "Where's Poland?" "I didn't know Russia was that big!"
Don't tell us that workers aren't interested in the world! All of our new comrades are what the bosses would call "uneducated." They might not pronounce different country's names exactly right. But damn if their education as workers, black workers, didn't give them an edge in knowing that capitalism benefits only capitalists, not workers.
This club meeting marked the beginning of our campaign to bring communist ideas into the July 2000 contract fight for thousands of Philadelphia health care workers. Our plans include participation on the negotiations committee (if possible), meeting with workers on the job, regular job newsletters, increasing Challenge distribution, recruiting and building for May Day.
Our deeper involvement in our union shows that they truly can be schools for communism, as a veteran communist has pointed out. War and fascism are tied to every question the workers ask about layoffs, workload and even the decreasing number of workers "allowed" to use their vacation time because the bosses won't pay for workers to fill in for them.
At all social activities--on the job and in the union--we can contrast communist politics with capitalist politics. For example, in preparing the on-the-job Christmas party we fought for an integrated organizing committee, posing the idea of international working class unity. Some workers are doing more to organize the party than others. This allows us to raise the idea of different levels of commitment and "from each according to commitment."
These ideas are also hot questions among the union delegates. Some of the newer delegates have thrown themselves into the job. So of course the bosses have threatened and attacked them. These delegates then get angry when they see the other union delegates doing less or nothing to help the workers. To prevent these honest rank-and-file organizers from becoming cynical requires constant discussions about differences, contradictions and principled struggle.
As our contract struggle heats up, more and more workers ask us, "What kind of contract do you think we'll get." Frankly, it's a struggle not to give reformist, nickel-and-dime answers about wages and benefits. But, with practice, we're becoming more skilled at answering these questions by starting with the big picture: This is a war contract; the bosses are preparing for more wars, probably Iraq again (see page 5). They are funding their war machine in part with the healthcare cuts from Medicare, Medicaid and the federal budget. These cuts are driving the layoffs and cutbacks we face daily on the job. We think that bringing these big questions into the contract struggle will win one certain contract victory for the working class: more PLP communists.
One comrade responded, "The reality is that good times for capitalist America mean bad times for workers. To survive in a global economy and maintain profits means making the working class pay. Our contract did just that."
When MUNI drivers voted on a re-opener for our contract, many drivers were angry at the take-aways. The City Charter authorized up to a 7% raise, but the union leadership gave up 31 cents an hour when Willie Brown asked for it. We ended up with a 5.5% raise. There were concessions in work-rules. For example, in the new contract part-time driver shifts can be eight hours on Saturday and Sunday. According to General Manager Burns, this will "expand weekend service at a lower cost..." A "Proof Of Payment" system, and three-car trains with one driver, will eliminate jobs and create danger for passengers and drivers.
Any fight against the downtown corporations immediately brings up the question, "Why can't they pay? They're making billions!" To answer this, we have discussed how the COJ spent the last four years developing "citizens' concerns" on MUNI work-rules, on the amount of driver overtime, and racist scapegoating of drivers as the cause of MUNI's failures. The mass media and the phony "Rescue MUNI" riders group were their spokespersons. Their agenda is to make the drivers pay for the cost of transit with work-rule concessions, and make the riders pay with increased fares.
Corporations have to cut their operating costs to the bone to compete internationally. Chevron moved to cheaper offices outside San Francisco, laid off workers and opposed a transit assessment fee. But they had enough capital to attempt a merger with Texaco.
The long arm of the global crisis of capitalism means increased attacks on the working class. No amount of work-rule changes will satisfy the COJ. They will be after us even harder when our contract expires July 1, 2000. We are starting a class on political economy to develop a deeper understanding of capitalism among drivers. Armed with a clear scientific Marxist understanding, and the vision of a communist society, more drivers will vote "No" to capitalism, and "Yes" to building a mass PLP.
On August 19, the New York Times broke the story that Yeltsin administration officials had "laundered" billions of dollars in illegal profits and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans through the U.S. Bank of New York and Republic National Bank. The U.S. establishment media speculated about an attempt to embarrass Al Gore before the 2,000 U.S. presidential elections. Gore has played a key role in formulating the Clinton gang's Russia policy. While Gore may be a target, a lot of infighting over foreign policy is taking place among U.S. rulers. Challenge doesn't think this explains the heart of the matter. Far deeper class forces are at work here.
When the old Soviet Union agreed to break up at the beginning of the 1990s, U.S. rulers saw a golden opportunity. Their number one rival had thrown in the towel, and they expected to feast on the spoils. Or so they thought. Led by Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, the U.S. Eastern Establishment concocted a plan to keep Russia barefoot, poor and profitable for U.S. interests. The plan involved floating billions in IMF loans that the Russian economy could never repay. It was designed to work something like the New York City subway system's debt to the big municipal banks. The interest payments were to be made forever, and the principal would barely be dented. Sachs & Co. looked to Yeltsin to provide a bribable pro-U.S. cadre of Russian politicians to enforce the deal.
Well, you know the old saying: "Be careful of what you ask for; you may get it." The Sachs-IMF plan made multi-billionaires out of Yeltsin's pals, who shipped most of their new fortunes to safe-haven investment centers outside Russia. The vast majority of post-socialist Russian workers are barely surviving. Life expectancy has plummeted and infant mortality has risen to pre-Revolutionary rates. But the Yeltsin gang of self-serving crooks isn't the only force within the Russian ruling class. The appointment of Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister reflects the rise of class-conscious imperialist factions who want more than personal wealth. They aren't against getting rich, but they hope mainly to restore Russia's status as a great capitalist power capable of taking on the U.S.
Challenge doesn't have enough information to identify all the players involved. However, it seems fairly clear that a major struggle is taking place over the Russian State apparatus and Russia's future on the world scene. The logic of this struggle is war. The Clinton/NATO "humanitarian" aerial holocaust over Yugoslavia was just the opening salvo in a series of military confrontations that will eventually produce a head-to-head settling of accounts between U.S. imperialism and a Russian rival anxious to reconquer its lost empire. By this time, the Russian imperialists will probably have an open alliance with China. This ultimate conflict may lie far down the road, but we should have no illusions about its inevitability.
The next few issues of Challenge will publish a series of short articles about developments inside Russia and their significance to workers and the fight for communist revolution. Workers must learn to see beyond the appearance of bosses' "scandals." The power battle in Russia is a major political development. To prepare for the class struggles of the future, we must try to understand it.
Next issue: Clinton's Kosovo boomerang and the rise of Putin.
To retain his popular image, Cardenas had previously held off attacking the students. But he is fighting for unity between the PAN (National Action Party) and PRD in the upcoming election.
Throughout the rest of August, a series of mass demonstrations occurred, culminating in a march of several hundred thousand on August 28. This included tens of thousands of electrical workers opposed to privatization of electricity; thousands of UNAM students striking against privatization of the University; tens of thousands of high school students and their parents protesting privatization of education; and mobilizations of UNAM strikers supporting the indigenous rebellion in Chiapas.
One group of students ran to the front of a hotel and ripped down the U.S. flag, tore it up and burnt it. Many wiped their feet on it to demonstrate their hate and anger. Many of these students, however, see the U.S. bosses as the sole enemy and have been won to nationalist ideas. Hence, they burn the Mexican bosses'flag. We in PLP must struggle with many of these students never to side with any boss and their flag.
Many of the UNAM strikers look to the Zapatistas for their motivation, but PLP has been increasingly active in this strike, distributing thousands of leaflets and hundreds of Challenges. Contrary to the Zapatistas who just one to make capitalist democracy better, we in PLP through our literature and in many conversations, have pointed out that the only way for students and workers to fight to end fascism is by fighting for power for the working class, with communist revolution. PLP exposed the liberal Cardenas. Like all capitalist politicians, he is an enemy of the workers and students and is willing to use fascist violence to defend the bosses' interests. Workers don't need the PRI, PAN or PRD. They need the PLP and the mass fight for communism.
We indicated that to guarantee free education for all, which tells the truth about science and prepares students to serve the working class, students need to ally with workers and fight for communist revolution.
We have started to influence students with our communist politics. Strikers have helped reproduce, and distribute PLP leaflets in the mobilizations and discuss our politics in study groups. Several students have joined PLP.
The sharpened crisis of capitalism in Mexico has created great opportunities for our party. Tens of thousands of students and workers are being organized politically by one group or another. That's why we must be there to give political leadership. The working class is looking for a movement that will destroy this racist capitalist system. We cannot settle for the crumbs that the bosses offer. That's why we want thousands and millions of workers to join PLP--to fight for a communist society. We must organize not only in the schools, but also in the factories, spreading our communist ideas to workers. We must fight for an alliance of student and workers.
As the capitalist crisis deepens, the privatization of UNAM is just one attack of many the working class will face. The alliance between the PRD and PAN is supported by the US bosses. Clearly, sections of the Mexican ruling class are opposed to this alliance, to the IMF debt payments (especially over control of Mexico's oil), and to the educational reforms being imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. The Wall Street Journal has recently called the strikers "Mega Ultras" and attacked "Marxist" economic professors at UNAM. We suspect that a section of the Mexican bosses allied with European capitalists favor keeping UNAM open to some working class students.
Capitalism guarantees that the bosses' need for profit and market control will drive them to attack the working class even harder. However, the bosses will not stop at this. War is also a result of these crises. Workers and students need to see that no capitalist politician or imperialist will stop the advance of fascism. Only a mass PLP fighting for communism can do the job.
There is a growing movement in Puerto Rico to oppose turning the island into a huge military base that fits into the plans of U.S. imperialism of keeping the Caribbean and South America safe for Exxon-Rockefeller. The Southern Command of the Pentagon (formerly in the Panama Canal Zone) just moved to Puerto Rico. This is all key for the preparations for a growing U.S. military involvement in the Colombian civil war.
Evolution is the scientific theory that explains the natural processes by which plants and animals, including people, developed from other, older life forms over billions of years. A scientific theory is not merely an opinion or viewpoint; it is an explanation for, and a conclusion from, a large number of scientific facts. The theory of evolution is as well established as the theory that the earth revolves around the sun.
Creationism is being pushed by some Christian fundamentalists who insist that their bible is the absolute truth, and that god created heaven and earth and all living things during one week a few thousand years ago. Creationists have created a phony "creation science," which they say should be taught equally with evolution in schools.
This conflict between creationism and evolution, however, is not simply a struggle between religious dogmatism and scientific enlightenment. It persists because different factions of bosses are fighting over control of schools and what is taught in them. People tied to one faction of the Kansas Republican Party instigated the state School Board decision as a move against the other faction.
The teaching of evolution is defended by most of the U.S. ruling class. Like most things taught in schools, however, evolution is usually not really explained. Although evolution contradicts the central claim of all religions that god created life, the ruling class pushes the line that science and religion can coexist harmoniously. The bosses need both science and religion to maximize profits, fight wars and control workers' thoughts and actions.
Creationism is an oppressive myth. From the story of Adam and Eve comes the doctrine of "original sin." It justifies exploitation of workers who must earn a living "by the sweat of their brow," while capitalists live in a "Garden of Eden." But science under decaying global capitalism is also oppressive. We should not ally with bosses who defend it against bosses who promote creationism.
How does the working class actually experience capitalist science?
* Workers experience capitalist science that is devoted to imperialist wars. Capitalist science creates all forms of military armaments, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It creates aircraft carriers, submarines, missiles, stealth bombers, satellites and computers for high-tech wars. These weapons have killed several hundred million workers in the 20th century.
* Workers experience capitalist science in the form of drug companies that extort profits from people's medical needs. They push a pill for everything. The obscenity of corporate drug-pushing and the greed of HMOs drive many to reject science altogether. Many people fall prey to hucksters peddling phony cure-alls or to faith healers touting prayer.
* Workers experience capitalist science through technological changes that speed up or eliminate their jobs, expose them to new types of injuries and poisons and destroy their environment.
* Workers experience capitalist science with racist books like The Bell Curve and the fascist sociobiology of E.O. Wilson. Capitalist science perverts biology and genetics in order to label workers inferior and to claim that it is "human nature" to be racist.
* Even when capitalist science produces useful knowledge, the contradictions of capitalism prevent its application. Millions of children die every year from preventable or treatable infectious diseases. Tobacco and junk food kill people, but capitalists sell more cigarettes than ever and open new McDonalds every day. Engineers know how to make earthquake-resistant buildings, yet as many as 40,000 workers just died in Turkey because capitalists are devoted to building profits, not safe homes.
We must be involved in struggles over the content of education. Learning science is as important to the development of communists as learning to read and to write. The study of evolution offers a way for people to develop a scientific outlook--dialectical materialism--in place of religious idealism. Evolution demonstrates that change is universal and constant, everything is interconnected, there is likeness and difference between things, and quantitative change is transformed into qualitative change. This is how the natural world works. It is also how the social world works. Understanding the process of biological evolution is a step toward understanding the process of political revolution.
* Controlling the line of islands that runs through Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore allows the U.S. military to blockade Asian naval power in wartime;
* This line is also a vantage point for launching offensive naval and air actions against the Asian continent, as well as occasional amphibious operations on the Asian coast;
* Most importantly, whoever controls this line commands all the seagoing choke points for the transportation of oil to Asia. Included here are not the only the Straits of Malacca but also all sea lanes from Singapore to Japan.
"The (Indonesian) archipelago is therefore the foundation of U.S. power in the region" (Stratfor Report, "Why East Timor matters," 9/7).
To protect its oil profits, U.S. imperialism helped bring the fascist Suharto clique to power in 1965. Suharto & Co. murdered over a million communist workers in a few weeks, with CIA backing. His reign of terror was hunky-dory with Washington, as long as the Exxon-Mobil oil choke points remained accessible.
Now, however, there's a new ballgame. The 1996 Asian meltdown, due to the world economic crisis, is threatening to upset the political apple cart. Suharto had outlived his usefulness. The Indonesian army is no longer a reliable thug for Exxon. "The world is evolving from the post-Cold War world into a new epoch in which American power is being tested by China and will be further tested by a coalition of anti-American powers in the future" (Stratfor).
As Challenge has frequently warned, imperialism's oil wars are just getting started.
Since December 1998, the U.S. has carried out over 400 bombing raids in Iraq, murdering thousands. The nine-year-old U.S.-led embargo of Iraq has killed hundreds of thousands. But on August 30, Stratfor, a private bureau that does strategic forecasting for U.S. oil firms, reported that the U.S. campaign had "changed character." "On August 19, U.S. aircraft bombed a target outside of the no-fly zones, inside the central region where Iraq retains clear sovereignty. At about the same time, the U.S. openly shifted its targeting from responsive attacks against aggressive Iraqi moves, to an attack on a fuel and ammunition dump."
In the capitals of the Mideast, Washington is making its invasion plans known as it tries to shore up a shaky anti-Iraq alliance. "An Agence France-Presse report out of Amman claimed that an unnamed Western diplomat had stated that the U.S. and U.K. were preparing a `large-scale' operation against Iraq. Simultaneously, Arab leaders started to condemn Saddam Hussein ostentatiously. The Jordanians, after an opening to Saddam following the death of King Hussein, cooled their relations with Saddam. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was reported to have `washed his hands' of Iraq. Bashar al-Assad, son of the Syrian president, called Saddam a `human beast.' All told, it appears that the war is shifting from its sleepy phase" (Stratfor).
Stratfor's analysts make no bones about it: oil is the heart of the matter. "The U.S., like Britain before it, has had two interests in the Persian Gulf. The first has been to make certain that no global rival could take control of the region and deny the U.S. and its allies access to the oil. The second interest has been to make certain that no power native to the Persian Gulf could impose hegemony on the region, control all of the oil and be in a position to manipulate the supplies and prices of petroleum on a global basis."
Workers have nothing to gain and everything to lose from a war for Exxon's billions. Our Party's task is to organize in the workplace, in schools, and on military bases against the looming oil bloodbath. Oil wars will end when the working class puts an end to the profit system.
The racist NYPD cops struck again. On Tuesday, August 31, a day after murdering a Hassidic man in Brooklyn, the cops murdered a black man in West Harlem because he did not pay a taxi fare. The cops have again proved themselves to be racist thugs whose main job is to protect the bosses.
The day of the murder in West Harlem, 200 black and Latin workers protested against the killer cops at 137th Street and Broadway.
On Saturday, September 4, there was another protest at the same corner. Members of PLP participated in it, with a leaflet exposing the role of cops as the racist thugs of the bosses. The mother of a victim of the killer cops spoke at the rally, demanding justice. A high school teacher spoke about the invasion of cops into the public schools, treating students as criminals. A taxi driver spoke about the racism suffered by immigrant workers like him. He also said that without the cops the drug trade won't be flourishing as it is now.
This protest was inspiring because many of the PLP participants were youth, and their desire to fight for a communist society is the hope of the working class.
An Upper Manhattan Worker
I proposed the following plan for working class organization to my fellow autoworkers in a leaflet which I gave them.
In the different factories, mass organizations, unions, and political parties, class conscious workers should concentrate where we gather, where we have political influence over masses of workers, where we can build class consciousness, and solidarity and where the PLP can take root.
These concentrations are indispensable for the day-to-day struggle between the capitalists and the workers, and they are important as places to organize the fight to abolish wage slavery. We must show that given their limits inside the capitalist system, unions, electoral political parties and popular organizations move within the narrow limits of reform and the dictates of finance capital. Workers must not limit ourselves to these narrow limits!
Our struggle within these organizations must be to lead the day-to-day class struggle and the ideological struggle to show workers that not only do we have to fight everyday, but that we also have to take on the general problems that affect the international working class. That way, they'll start seeing that the communist ideas of PLP are the vanguard and represent the interests of the world's workers.
In the face of the collective power of the rulers, the workers have to act as a class. We can only do this by constituting ourselves as a separate political party, opposed to all those electoral parties created by the ruling class to divide and sap the strength of the workers' organization.
The organization of the workers into a political party is indispensable to assure the triumph of the social revolution, and its final goal: the end of class society.
The principal goal in raising the consciousness of the working class will be, naturally, the winning of political power for our class. And that's why its necessary that in whatever movement, the leadership is taken by an organization of the working class that is relatively more developed and that has come out of the workers' struggles.
Among the things in our favor, we must recognize that the workers have one element for victory--our numbers. But our numbers only count when we are united by the organization and guided by knowledge from a scientific point of view about the real world. This conclusion of this knowledge is the need for communism.
The workers who are more conscious about exploitation can guarantee that we work in such a way that we show the need for class struggle and for political struggle as the only way to defeat the ruling class, since they always take control of the government, through their class dictatorship. We must understand that the winning of political power is the great task of the working class to achieve our main goal: OUR LIBERATION.
Red Autoworker
PLP members of the American Public Health Association have joined with dozens of others to support a resolution calling for more research on the socio-economic causes of violence. Politicians try to explain violence in the schools and communities as psychological or medical problems. They want to deny the role of their racist society, whose leaders use mass terror to maintain their economic position in the world. Wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the poisoning of the plutonium workers in Paducah, Kentucky, and police protection for Nazi and Klan demonstrations are just some of the ways capitalism breeds violence.
The killings at Columbine and other schools have riveted our attention on violence and generated much discussion in health education circles. When officials or researchers study violence, they don't include government-sponsored mass murder, such as the bombings of Yugoslavia and Iraq. Nor do they suggest that cops receive parenting training or drugs to control their racism and rage when they use profiling and violence against people of color. Violence is "legitimate" when it serves the interests of those in power.
Racism permeates the issue of violence in the ways people construct and solve the problem. Rather than treating violence as a social problem, many violence programs focus on the pathology of the child. The media portrays children of color as "predators" while they characterize violent whites as "alienated." Much of the violence by youth reflects the ideology of capitalism: protect your markets or drug turf from competition, acquire the latest consumer product, and adopt the Nazi ideology of racial superiority.
Biological explanations of social behaviors are not new. During slavery, "drapetomania" was a popular "mental illness" to explain why slaves ran away. During the early 20th century, thousands of mentally retarded patients were sterilized to prevent the transmission of their "disease." Psychosurgery was popularized during the 1960's to control violence among urban rebels. Only a few years ago, Murray and Herrnstein were selling their theories of intelligence and race while Philip Rushton argued that black intelligence correlates with head size.
In the early 1990s, the federal government tried to launch a "violence initiative" to investigate the "genetic factors" in violence, stating that "minority populations are disproportionately affected."
Biological research on violence stigmatizes young people for behavior that is actually consistent with the environment. The exposure to racist ideas and discrimination, and decreasing opportunities understandably increases anger. A bio-determinist approach avoids dealing with root causes of violence and social unrest. It obscures the key problems: racism, and the inequities in power and resources that affect our health and social relationships every day. We need to develop anti-racist strategies among our youth to build the unity and trust it takes to build a mass movement for communist revolution, where racist practices and attitudes are not tolerated.
APHA Red
I recently started medical school education at a fairly conservative medical school. The first two weeks of class have been largely what I expected--a tedious repetition of information more easily and fully acquired from reading textbooks, occasionally punctuated by moments of greater interest. There is one class we have to take, called Healthy Human, in which assumptions about health, disease, medicine, and medical economics are "examined," which has provided me some opportunity for thought.
On Monday, the professor was discussing "racial" differences in the probability of low-birth-weight. He claimed to have quoted studies (and I have no reason to doubt his veracity), which "corrected for socioeconomic status" still found that black women were more likely to give birth to smaller babies than white women. He said this was true of poor women and of a studied group of women with Ph.D's from Ivy League universities alike.
I pointed out that the economic class of the Ivy League women at the time they became pregnant did not necessarily reflect a life-long membership in that class, and that black women, even middle-class ones with Ph.D's, had a significantly higher chance than their white counterparts of having been exposed to environmental poison due to poor living conditions. Furthermore, I asked, "Do these studies which claim to `correct' for class [the liberal term is of course, `socioeconomic status'] also correct for the psychological stress intrinsic to the life of a black person in a society as racist as America?" He didn't have an answer to that, and his silence was met with a smattering of subdued applause from some of the other students, including all four (in a class of 95) black students. Several people came up to me after class to tell me how interesting they found my comments.
I feel like there may be some political potential here. I am just not sure how to tap into it. I wish I knew more about cadre-building. I have talked to a couple of other students who were into the idea of starting a discussion group about political issues in medicine. Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.
Red Med Student
While reading the news coverage about the earthquake in Turkey, I was struck by a reference in the LA Times to the Goodyear factory in Izmit, Turkey. The factory was unaffected by the earthquake. Many of the Goodyear workers, however, were killed when their homes collapsed. The workers, whose sweat produced the factory's profits, earned so little money that they were forced to live in unsafe homes. Their homes collapsed in the earthquake, while the factory built by their toil went unscathed. The blood of the workers of Turkey is on the hands of the Goodyear bosses, as well as on the hands of the entire capitalist class.
The working class in LA remembers Goodyear. Goodyear had a factory in the heart of South Central LA. Black workers, including a teacher friend of mine, who applied for jobs in the 1950's and early 1960's were turned away. Then during the 1965 Watts rebellion Goodyear, in the heart of what was then an all black community, started hiring black workers. Soldiers and sailors returning from Vietnam, including another friend of mine, got jobs there. In those days LA was a center of heavy industry. By the early 1980's those factories--Goodyear, Firestone, Uniroyal, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Bethlehem Steel, to name a few--had closed down and moved their production either to the American South, or to countries like Turkey. The LA Goodyear factory is now a post office. Industry in LA county is increasingly light manufacturing such as garment and furniture. Most jobs are service, temporary and non-union. Workers and youth in South Central LA are "surplus" labor and targets of racist police terror.
One hundred four U.S. corporations, from Abbot Laboratories to Westinghouse, have production in Turkey. Goodyear (whose corporate profits in 1998 were $682 million) has production in 23 countries. Much of it is centered in free-trade zones such as those in Turkey, where cheap labor is available and strikes are prohibited in these free trade zones for the first ten years of production. The companies get tax breaks, freedom from customs duties, well-built factories, and roads and rail-lines to transport their commodities. Workers, forced off the land by the falling price of agricultural commodities, stream into these free trade zones to find work. The bosses pay them low wages. Unscrupulous contractors pay off corrupt building inspectors and build unsafe housing, and the workers die in a big earthquake. Capitalism is surely a disaster for the working class--from South Central LA to Izmit, Turkey, and all over the world.
LA Teacher