Challenge, Vol. 36 No. 4, October 20, 1999

• The term "crack baby" became a racial slur from the first time it appeared in the mass media. The term implies that irresponsible women of color victimize their innocent babies. But is there really any such thing as a "crack baby"?

• Truly positive scientific results can generally be replicated again and again by different research teams. But whenever different teams of doctors and researchers have looked at babies born to crack-using women, they have found different things, with almost no two teams coming up with the same results. Specifically, there is no pattern of birth defects and there is no characteristic brain abnormality found consistently in these infants.

• These studies have had lots of flaws, but that doesn’t seem to keep them from being published. In fact, one researcher investigated the studies. He took a systematic look at research on babies whose mothers used cocaine and found that twice as many positive studies were chosen for publication as negative ones (those with no consistent pattern). The studies with negative results—even though the number of scientific and technical flaws were much lower—were twice as difficult to get accepted for presentation.

• No long-term studies have confirmed that "crack babies" have later school problems.

• The real villains are the bosses, their cops and the CIA. They brought crack into the cities in the first place and they foment the drug epidemic through super-exploitation, through pushing drugs and then blaming drug users for real or imagined damage to their children.

Rank-And-File Workers Confront Sweeney And Fascist-Loving Politicians

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 — "We all have one common enemy. He is the capitalist class. He is the vampire that sucks our blood. He owns the political parties. We hate Sweeney and his AFL-CIO leadership because he serves the capitalists. Let’s not take our eye off the main enemy."

So concluded a hotel worker speaking at the Rank-and-File Labor Conference and Protest organized in large part by the Multi-Racial Alliance. While other groups (Trotskyites) were putting forward restoring democracy to the unions, and building neighborhood coalitions to run candidates for political office in the bosses’ government, this worker was talking about the fight to get rid of the bosses.

On October 8, "labor" politician Antonio Villaragosa, Speaker of the California Assembly, addressed UCLA students, along with John Sweeney. This "poster boy for equal opportunity," as he called himself, urged students to ally with the Democratic Party. Villaragosa is doing his job among the students by building a core of latin misleaders to help direct workers towards fascism and war, necessary to capitalism in crisis. He’s like the Jewish Councils (Judenrat) that guided working-class Jews into the waiting arms of the Nazi war machine of German capital.

Unlike the well-dressed Villaragosa, Gilbert Cedillo and Dolores Huerta, the sincere and enthusiastic workers of the Multi-Racial Alliance put their own time and money into the protest conference at a local church. They want no part of Sweeney and his friends. It is capitalism that dictates Sweeney’s fascist actions, and it’s capitalism that must go! The only way this can happen is by fighting to build PLP and making CHALLENGE a mass paper among workers. This is beginning to happen in this group.

At the Conference, workers debated whether we should be fighting for union reforms for more "democratic" unions or revolution. One said our fight must be to destroy capitalism. Unions are reform organizations, directed by the bosses. They’re not set up to defeat capitalism. PLP, which is organized on the principles of communist democratic centralism, has the goal of fighting for revolution to build a communist society. Only by building PLP can the workers take power and end the bosses’ exploitation with workers’ rule. Communist revolution, not "democratic" unions, will free the workers from capitalist exploitation and war.

Acting on a last-minute tip, the Conference, led by the Alianza janitors (who had won a union election but were ousted and put into receivership by Sweeney) sped in an auto caravan to a small church in South Central LA where rat Sweeney was speaking, along with his sidekick Villaragosa. Already inside the church, Villaragosa peeked out when he heard the chants but was afraid to leave. Finally he emerged, red-faced, with his bodyguards and was confronted by the janitors with picket signs. As he slithered into his Lincoln Continental, his windshield was covered with leaflets from the Alianza, denouncing his corruption.

At the opening of the Convention on Monday, Alianza members unfurled a banner inside attacking Sweeney. They were kicked out and then they rallied to protest their union being put into trusteeship and its division between higher-paid Kaiser workers and lower-paid janitors. Dozens of rank-and-file delegates stopped to watch. Workers chanted and leafleted about Sweeney’s attacks on them.

This group of workers is planning a fund-raiser to help pay the expenses of the conference, and to make plans for the future. Sweeney and the vampire capitalists he serves are going to lose these workers and many more. The PLP urges all these workers to join us!

Plp Actions Spurs Choice:

Liberal Bosses And AFL-CIO Pals…Vs. Fighting For Revolution

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 — The AFL-CIO held its convention here this week. It included four days of pre-convention political outreach with a teach-in at UCLA, and convocation with over 9,000 workers. Many were immigrants who are not in any union. The workers came in buses with their organizations. It also included a conference for religious leaders, and church services throughout LA featuring labor leaders at the pulpit. All this activity is geared to build a movement which ropes workers into following the top U.S. imperialists as they deepen their plans for fascism and war.

Workers Respond To Plp

PLP had a bold presence. We sold over 600 Challenges and distributed about 3,000 flyers, and a series of "questions for Sweeney." At the UCLA teach-in, a group of steel workers from Washington State, who have been locked out for a year, liked the Challenge article about their struggle so much that they asked for a subscription and ten papers to take back to their local. Workers involved in class struggle are the most winnable to our ideas.

Sweeney’s speech at the teach-in received a standing ovation from a fawning group of politicians, hacks, CP’ers and some students from the UCLA labor school. Nevertheless, we interrupted his speech four times to expose him. When he praised students planning to go to Seattle to demonstrate against the World Trade Organization (WTO), a PLP’er yelled, "But you support Gore, who’s for the WTO." Sweeney whined, "You don’t know who I support." (Bullshit. The Convention endorsed Gore on its final day.) Then a PLP’er said, "And you supported the bombing of workers in Kosovo!" When Sweeney started praising the UNITE union, the PLP’er shot back, "You haven’t fought slave labor in one garment shop in LA." Then another comrade charged, "You support workfare, a program first started by Hitler in 1934."

Inside a vocal group in the crowd opposed us. But outside a young man congratulated us. He explained he had attended an AFL-CIO training institute. When he said he thought the workers should run the union, the leadership told him he was wrong and to shut up. He concluded from his experiences that the leaders running the AFL-CIO are basically fascists who want trained organizers having contempt for the workers. He gave us his number. Other students talked to their friends about Challenge.

On Sat., October 9, at the convocation where thousands heard Governor Gray Davis, Tipper Gore and others, PLP held a rally. In English and Spanish, we denounced mass layoffs, slave labor, the capitalist system and its growing exploitation and wars. We urged workers to join our Party to fight for revolution. The AFL-CIO security team had a fit and tried—but failed—to snatch our bullhorn. We didn’t stop until most of the workers had gone inside.

Several workers gave us their names. One activist said that in Tennessee prisoners are making parts for F-16 planes and uniforms for the Detroit police! He was glad we’re organizing workers against prison labor and the growth of fascism. Another asked for five copies of PLP’s "Political Economy" pamphlet to share with other workers in his labor studies class. Many workers bought Challenge in response to our signs attacking layoffs, war and slave labor.

A peace group was convinced by a Party member to carry a sign outside the convention asking, "Why Does John Sweeney Support the Bombing of workers in Yugoslavia and Iraq in the name of US workers?" A group of Yugoslav workers had their pictures taken surrounding this banner.

Others pointed out to their friends and co-workers that the convocation’s purpose was to win workers, including non union workers, to vote for the Democrats and to support their coming wars for oil profit. These workers hear the hype about organizing workers in LA and are open to those who really do act to fight slave labor, with the goal of ending it with communist revolution.

Fight For Communist Politics–Build The Party

Our Party made gains at this convention. But we have a long way to go in learning how to fight these wolves in sheep’s clothing from within the unions, churches, student groups, on the shop floor, in school and in the neighborhoods. There are many ways that we must take them on ideologically. They are full of contradictions that we can exploit. Passivity and "going with the flow" are fatal errors. So is underestimating the seriousness and potential of their movement to capture the hearts and minds of many.

Some of our party leaders made this mistake. Not having had enough discussion ahead of time, some friends and comrades thought nothing of importance happened in the convocation. Multi-millionaire politician Sen. Diane Feinstein presented herself unopposed to 9,000 rank-and-file workers as their champion She called on workers to fight for a $1 increase in the minimum wage over two years "so that workers can partake of the American dream." When one realizes that, (1) an increasing number of workers are forced into minimum-wage jobs, and (2) even his paltry "increase" would still leave tens of millions of workers below the poverty line, then Feinstein’s "dream" becomes a nightmare. Feinstein is courting the latino vote while calling for beefed-up border patrol.

The other side of this error is to underestimate the workers’ openness to our ideas—when we put them forward! Our experiences showed that there is a lot of opportunity to fight for PLP’s ideas among the workers and their supporters!

In hindsight, we could have fought in union locals to sponsor workshops at the convention on prison labor and workfare, fought for resolutions condemning Sweeney’s support of the bombing of Yugoslavia. We could have demanded and built for a workshop on the fight against racist police terror and racism on the job. We could have mobilized friends to attack the growing racist wage differentials of capitalism in crisis. If we had begun these battles soon enough, we could have won many workers we know closer to—and some into—the Party.

Union leaders are not there to help workers realize their own strength and potential as a class. Their mission is to divide workers from each other—especially higher-paid from lower-paid. Their message to workers is: you have no power except to vote for Democrats.

The bosses have their plans. But it is the action of the working class that will determine the character of the coming period. Workers must choose between being victims of fascism and imperialist war, or fighting for revolution. These actions, in turn, will be determined by what our Party does or doesn’t do! We must fight their poison in many ways. We must spread this convention’s lessons to all those we know and use these lessons to engage the enemy now. Our main weapon is the mass distribution of Challenge. We must not fail to build PLP in the face of growing fascism. The success of the long-term fight for workers to destroy the beast of capitalism must be guaranteed by building the Party today.

AFL-CIO Leadership—Rockefeller And Exxon’s Best Friends

The message of the AFL-CIO is: "We are living at a time of great wealth and great poverty. Only unions can guarantee democracy." While there has been a 6.5% job growth in LA County since 1994 (according to the LA County Federation. of Labor), poverty has increased by 64.5%, an additional 844,000 in poverty in LA County. Fifty individuals in LA County hold more wealth than two million households! Wages in LA were 7.4% lower in 1998 than in 1989. So what’s their great victory? Over 90,000 more workers have joined the AFL-CIO in LA County in 1999. Many of these "victories" were negotiated from the top.

Some leaders said openly that the unions are needed to keep workers from adopting more radical solutions to growing inequality. As Amy Dean, head of Silicon Valley’s South Bay Labor Council put it, "When people go to work and are still poor we all suffer…We pay when a growing percentage of our population becomes disconnected from the life of the community. Political extremism inevitably crops up in such situations."

The AFL-CIO says its goal is 2,000 union members on the ballot in 2000. Sweeney made it clear at the UCLA teach-in that the college graduates, especially from Labor Studies departments, are to be the cadre of the "new labor movement." He introduced two California politicians, both UCLA graduates and former AFL-CIO organizers, as "successes" of the labor movement. A minister at an AFL-CIO rally at the University of Southern California (USC) called members of the newly-won union there the "little people" who USC students must help.

This is an alliance of the Democratic Party, liberal clergy, the Universities (including the most elite universities) and the AFL-CIO leadership. They aim to build a social movement to win the youth and workers to the ruling class’s dominant Rockefeller wing’s plan for fascism and war, while advocating tiny reforms. Business unionism has been joined by liberal unionism. Sweeney and other top union leaders actively supported the bombing of Yugoslavia. The Rockefeller forces need them to build a movement that goes all out to bring the next mass murderer into office as the "lesser evil" who "cares" about the workers.

A few temporary crumbs cannot reverse the trend toward greater income gaps between rich and poor, towards prison labor, greater racism and fascism and more and bigger wars for profit. When Assemblyman Cedillo says, "Gee, there’s great wealth and great poverty at the same time," it’s up to communists to show that it’s precisely by stealing the value produced by the many that the few become wealthy! Capitalism requires them to fight massive wars to defend their wealth. Only communist revolution can end that!

Holocaust Of Coal Miners:

Red Power Will Wipe Out Black Lung!

CHICAGO, Oct. 9 — In the last ten years, 100,000 coal miners have died from Black Lung (pneumoconiosis). This is double the number of U.S. troops killed in Vietnam, in less time. Out of every 100 claims filed for federal disability due to Black Lung, 96 are turned down. Another 3 are won on appeal, in cases that drag on for as long as 18 years. This was the backdrop for the Black Lung Conference held here, co-sponsored by the United Mine Workers union, the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics, and The Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health.

Black Lung is the capitalist curse on coal miners. Caused by breathing in coal dust, it attacks the lungs and blocks the body’s ability to take in oxygen. It is a slow, painful death. Like the tobacco industry, records show that coal operators and the federal government knew about Black Lung 50 years before formally acknowledging it, causing untold deaths and misery in the coalfields, while lining the pockets of the bosses.

The 150 participants included doctors, lawyers, clinic workers and benefits counselors, coal miners and UMW officials. The workshops all focused on how to prepare, present, and win Black Lung disability cases. While every case is important, dealing with Black Lung one case at a time is like trying to sweep away the ocean with a broom. Even if you win 100% more cases, 92 out of 100 will still be turned down.

There was a certain cynicism, mainly among the UMW members who have seen their ranks decimated by the disease, loss of membership, and the shrinking role of the coal industry. One District Director said that his district used to have over 18,000 miners. Now they have 2,200. He said, "Who cares about us now? They’re just waiting for us to die off." He and his second-in-command were especially bitter at the Democrats.

Number 2 said he hated the Democrats, and that "Gore’s Daddy was probably in the Klan. I’d rather vote for Hitler than Gore." "You’ll get your chance," someone said. "Buchanan’s running." Everyone laughed, but this guy wasn’t joking. He said, "You know, I read [Buchanan’s] book and he’s really getting a bum rap…blah, blah, blah." This little exchange indicated that unless we build a mass base for PLP and lead millions of workers to seize power, the capitalist crisis can move people to the right. At this point the president of the Black Lung Association rolled up in his wheel chair, oxygen tank on his lap, and said, "What we need is a mass march on Washington."

We can only estimate the number of miners killed by capitalist production for profit. Black Lung, cave-ins and explosions, floods and much more have created a long-term holocaust for coal miners. Thousands more workers in other occupations die each year from trauma, exposure to sand dust, asbestos, and other chemicals. They are consumed in the bosses’ profit machine like oil and raw materials. We can never get even. We can only make sure the bosses never do it again. Communist revolution, and a society based on production for the needs of the working class, will wipe out Black Lung and the parasites that profit from it.

The Wall Of Shame: Czech Bosses Segregate Gypsies

During the height of the anti-communist Cold War waged by U.S. imperialism against the former Soviet Union, the rulers of the old DDR (East Germany) built the Berlin Wall to separate East from West Berlin. The bosses of the world used this to spread anti-communism worldwide.

Well, the anti-communists now in power all over Eastern Europe are building their own wall, a racist one which is more like the one the Nazis built to surround the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto.

A wall 62 meters long and 1.8 meters wide is being planned for the city of Usti-nad-Labem, north of Bohemia to keep Gypsies (the Roma people) "in their place." It is a symbol of the racism suffered by the 280,000 Roma people (Gypsies) in the Czech Republic (formerly part of Czechoslovakia).

On Wednesday October 6, 50 gypsies blocked the construction of the wall. The wall is supposed to be built along Maticni Street, "to separate the Gypsies from the whites, as non-Roma people are known…Ondrej Gina, leader of this unprecedented action of protest by the Gypsies, said that it was ‘an act of self-defense against a segregation wall arbitrarily planned by the municipal authorities." (El Pa�s, Madrid, 10/10).

The conflict has been going on for over a year. It began when some Roma eople moved into new housing. "Their neighbors complained of the ‘dirt and noise.’ So city hall of this town of 100,000 people decided, with a majority vote of 25 to 2, to hide the Gypsies from view by building a ceramic brick wall…"(El Pa�s).

The national government of Vaclac Havel, a friend of the anti-communist liberals in the U.S. and Europe and the leader of the so-called Velvet revolution that took power from the former socialist government of Czechoslovakia, opposes the wall. But this opposition is not based on anti-racism, but rather that it too blatantly exposes the racist treatment of Gypsies.

Since 1990, when Havel took over, 20 Roma people have been killed by racists in the Czech Republic. In the last 18 months, some 2,500 Roma people asked for asylum in Britain.

The return of open capitalism to Eastern Europe has been devastating for all workers: wars, racist terror, ethnic fighting, mass unemployment are the norms. We in the PLP are fighting to build an international communist movement learning from the mistakes of the past (not fighting racism hard enough was one of those mistakes of the old communist movement).The unity of all workers is key to fight racism and its creator, capitalism.

Militant Workers Tell Doll Bosses: ‘Don’t Toy With Us’

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 8 — The bosses at the Alexander Doll factory, together with their buddies in the Toy and Novelty Workers Union, are experts at promises, threats, lies and deception. But bit by bit the mostly immigrant workers are organizing, developing leadership and gaining courage as their understanding of the nature of capitalism deepens.

"Which of you went to complain to the Dept. of Labor?" a boss railed, demanding names from a woman worker. "Injustice, exploitation and racism went," she shot back. After a six month absence, union officials sniffing the smoke of growing workers’ resistance to standing eight hours on one foot while operating machines with the other, showed up at the factory.

The bosses hastily called a meeting to promise new chairs and they agreed to workers’ demands to sit down to work. They promised air conditioning—next year. "We don’t trust any of you," a worker confronted them. "And we should be prepared to strike," she continued, as workers yelled and applauded.

Then, the bosses took the workers to see all the dolls lining the walls of the factory that they said they couldn’t sell. A rumor began to dart through the factory like a mouse, eating away at some of the workers’ resolve. "The bosses are going to move, close the factory." "It’s quiet now. At least we’re sitting down," a worker said. "It’s true, the bosses are over-producing while fewer workers are working harder," a PLP member responded. "But we can’t become pacified."

In fact, the workforce has been cut in half in the last few years. And in recent weeks those dolls lining the walls have been moved out to be sold. "What we need is for more workers to join PLP, to become tough and skilled in the class struggle and to dedicate themselves to the long fight for workers’ power and communism," the PLP’er insisted.

Reality is a relentless teacher. The glue and solvents used in making the dolls continue to threaten workers’ lives, now and long-term. A warning on a tube of vinyl cement currently used in the factory says, "Avoid prolonged use, use only in well-ventilated places"—a warning ignored by the bosses and their supervisors. The glue is even transferred to plastic containers having no labels. The union doctors, in cursory ten-minute exams, and in direct contradiction to other doctors, have declared the workers "fit" and the chemicals "safe." Still another fight is brewing. A head of the supervisors, Faizad, like a hired tormenter, threatens to punish workers who don’t increase production by throwing them out of the factory for two or three weeks..

Seven workers, each with more than 20 years on the job were laid off last week. Meanwhile thirty workers, laid off in June and promised their jobs back "soon" are planning their fight-back strategy. All is not so quiet.

During the summer, the Progressive Labor Party has distributed hundreds of leaflets and CHALLENGES, denouncing Nazi conditions in the factory and calling for work actions. At the PLP factory committee meetings, workers exchanged experiences, planned struggle and discussed how the bosses increase profits from workers’ labor by mass layoffs and greater "productivity." Some workers’ children found themselves in Kosovo, fighting on behalf of U.S. capitalists, in fierce competition with their capitalist rivals for control of oil routes. We’re told the U.S. is a "humanitarian democracy" and that it is our "right and duty" to defend it and vote for one politician or another. So the rulers would have us believe. Reality teaches us otherwise.

Flash:

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 — The jobs, salaries, and benefits of 500 union workers at MTA in LA are in jeopardy. Democratic Governor Gray Davis vetoed a bill to protect transit mechanics, operators and clerks from privatization. This will turn over LA transit bus lines to a private transit company paying half the wages of MTA. This shows once again the bankruptcy of capitalist politics and the impossibility of workers using the vote to protect themselves from any boss,

Recently elected with the help of a huge union turnout, Davis was praised at the AFL-CIO convention as an example of Labor’s new political clout. Speaking Saturday afternoon to workers and their families (including MTA workers), this "friend of labor" kept his veto secret until the last possible moment Monday night. Workers must rely on our own class—not our oppressors! A series of meetings will plan to fight this attack.

Full story next week.

Autoworkers Says: Challenge Is Best Weapon To Fight GM Attacks

PT is a 29-year veteran GM worker at the Detroit/Hamtramck assembly plant.

PT: Our Local (UAW Local 22) voted the national contract down. It was close, and I’m sure it will pass nationally, but we voted it down. I think the main reason was because of profit sharing. We wanted a higher signing bonus to make up for all the money we’ve lost in profit sharing over the years.

[Editor: Profit sharing was negotiated in 1984 to bribe workers into accepting wholesale changes in work rules and cuts in health and safety, to increase productivity.]

Last year we got $200 despite record profits by GM. They blamed it on the 56-day Flint strike, but that’s bull. The company shuts down for two weeks in July anyway. Since 1984, we’ve cleared less than $3,000 in profit sharing, while at Ford and DaimlerChrysler, they’ve cleared $30,000. In the 1980s there were 350,000 GM workers and we got $300 in profit sharing. Now, with 184,000 workers and record profits, we get $200. They’ve shafted us for 15 years.

We have an older workforce. I’ve got 29 years and I’m the low man in my department. We’ve got guys with 42 years, 36, and 35. They know we weren’t mainly thinking about job security. We already earned that.

But the union is fighting for its life. They need to hold onto jobs to keep the dues coming in. The way they see that happening is by giving the company whatever it asks for. They figure the older workers won’t object, because we’re leaving soon anyway. Twenty-two workers just retired on October 1. I don’t know how many more will retire next month. But this contract will see a big changeover in the workforce. Tens of thousands will retire, and at best only two-thirds will be replaced.

The new contract has no change in excessive overtime, and the company keeps all of its options to increase productivity. New hires come in at 70% of base pay, and it takes them at least three years to catch up. Temporary workers get even less than that. You think they’re making big profits now? Just wait until they have a third fewer workers, building the same amount of cars, at 70% of what we’re making now!

They can’t wait to get us out of here. Most departments are working 10-hours, 6-days. Some are working 12-hours, 7-days. The line is moving so fast, you don’t have time to blink. And here, every car is different. You might have the new Cadillac, followed by a Buick, and each one gets different parts you have to go get. They have to push a lot of them off the line because they just won’t start. The lot is full of thousands of cars needing repairs. We just can’t keep up the pace.

And it just keeps getting worse. They’re bringing in new managers to get more out of us. The new plant manager was hired from Ford. Another new boss is 37 years old and never worked on the line a day in his life. To show you how bad it is, one foreman got in an argument with a worker. One thing led to another and the foreman spit on the worker. Now you know, if a man spits on you, you’re going to fight. You don’t care who it is. So, the worker hit him. He got fired, and the foreman got moved to another department. What kind of shit is that?

I’m still getting my CHALLENGES out. I leave some on the break tables, but I still have my regulars, too. JB has been reading the paper since ’96. RC has been getting it since Clark St. (the closed assembly plant many of these workers came from). One guy had been transferred to a few GM plants before coming here, and he reads it every week, and really likes it. Two guys who were long-time readers just transferred out to other plants. I’ll see if I can find out how to stay in touch with them, and we can send it to them.

The KKK Will Not March In Manhattan

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 13 — As we go to press, the so-called NY Realm of the American Knights of the KKK has asked for a police permit for a rally in downtown Manhattan on October 23. They "want to make history," holding the first KKK rally ever in Manhattan. If they do show, workers and youth must make sure these racist terrorists "make history," by routing them like never before.

This past summer various KKK factions held more public activities than ever. In many places they encountered militant opposition. In Steubenville, Ohio in July, youth participating in the PLP Summer Project won hundreds of black and white workers to run them out of town. A few weeks later these racists drew more anti-racist anger when they appeared in Johnstown, Pa. Along with their public rallies, racist terrorists have been murdering workers and youth in Los Angeles, Chicago, Indiana and elsewhere.

This rise in racist terror is not limited to the KKK. The big liberal bosses and their cops have outdone the KKK. In just a few days in August, NYPD killers murdered a Jewish man in Brooklyn and a black man in West Harlem.

Workers and youth cannot ignore these acts of racist terror. We must organize to rout the KKK on October 23 and organize at our jobs, in mass organizations, schools and neighborhoods to fight racism and the bosses all the time. Joining the communist PLP is the best way to do it!

Mexico: Thousands Of Deaths And Tens Of Thousands Of Homeless, Thanks To Capitalism

Whole towns in the states of Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz, Tabasco and Oaxaca were buried by torrential rains lasting for days. This "natural disaster of the decade"(as Mexico’s president Zedillo called it) has nothing natural about it. It should have been, and could have been, avoided. Unusable drainage systems, cheaply built houses, zero urban planning, non-existent reinforcement of dams and rivers converted them all into death traps. Millions of working class families around the world are in danger of death from every heavy rainfall, earthquake or hurricane. Capitalism creates these victims of poverty every day. In Mexico there are 22 million people who suffer hunger while 100 capitalists own half the wealth of the country.

Budding famine and epidemics are the result. The rulers’ scorn for the lives of poor workers is mirrored in their utter inability and/or unwillingness to move tons of available aid to the affected communities. They react very efficiently to rescue banks and to attack indigenous people, students and workers. They squander millions on their political campaigns. Only under this criminal capitalist system based on private profit is it thinkable to double the price of water and food in the areas where the disaster hit, while people suffer dehydration and hunger.

Only the working class can save the working class. Once again, the workers are showing solidarity with their suffering brothers and sisters. Tons of aid were gathered at collection centers but the rulers have sat on it. Angry people who had lost their homes were threatened by Zedillo when they confronted him. In Villahermosa, when the residents broke open a road to let the undrained water flow out, the authorities used the police to stop them! It’s high time workers ran society!

We need communism to get rid of the capitalists who have created enormous poverty. We need communism to use the immense resources created by the labor of the workers to serve the whole working class population, instead of generating profits for a select few. We need communism to use science and technology to prevent "natural disasters." PLP is building this alternative for the working class! Join us!

Religious Liberals Try To Mislead Workers To Help Bosses

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 — "Our father, hear our prayer. Let us not harden our hearts and look for radical change…" That’s the prayer of the "Committee to Forge Religious-Labor Unity for the New Millenium." The different religious groups, foundations and others, held a four-day conference to support the AFL-CIO’s organizing efforts, with workshops on "Justice for Workers," "Against Sweatshops," "Challenging Welfare Reform," and "Building Support for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers and Packing House Workers." But all that glitters is not gold.

These groups are the religious front-runners for the liberal Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class. They are organizing worker/student support for Democratic Party politicians and their fascist policies. They want to pacify workers, so they will send their children to kill and die for the bosses’ profits around the world.

They also want to discipline their own ranks. A lot of their propaganda was directed towards factory owners and church leaders, showing them the advantage of having a loyal working class, willing to defend capitalism.

Many of the most active representatives were from the East coast. The conference emphasized that poverty, racism and mistreatment of workers could put "democracy" in danger.

Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahoney’s speech supported the right of workers to organize. During lunch, a worker told a group of delegates that ten years ago, Mahoney refused to allow Church cemetery workers to organize a union. He fired them all. One listener said, "This is a big contradiction."

The same workshop reported that many hospital workers with an AFL-CIO union, like Kaiser, have no health insurance. If they get sick, they must go to County Hospital. One religious unionist’s reaction was, "That’s incredible!" Many who came to the Conference are honest people who believe they’re doing something good for workers. But we must win these honest people to understand that the source of inequality and injustice is the system itself.

In another workshop, when an organizer said moral persuasion can end injustices in sweatshops, a worker commented that conditions will change when the workers themselves, who create the wealth, act to change them. Another participant agreed that we should do all we can to make that happen.

Rabbi Leonard Beerman said Jews have a tradition of organizing unions, and fighting for the workers, going back to the early 1900’s. Of course he didn’t mention that many Jewish union leaders and militant workers were communists.

Workers and others need to participate in community organizations, unions and churches that are part of this campaign. We need to sharpen the class struggle against fascism and show workers we need a communist revolution to end fascist exploitation and imperialist wars.

Letters

Note: With this issue we will stop using Dear Challenge at the beginning of the letters sent by our readers.

Tough Times For Workers In The USA

What follows is a true story. In the schools and media of capitalist America, where "human rights is supposedly a "top priority," we are constantly fed stories about abuses in the People’s Republic of China and in Cuba. This is done to fan the flames of anti-communism, even though China is well on its way to full-blown capitalism while they still call it "Red" China in school.

J.A. was on welfare for a number of years. While supporting three children, she struggled to earn a degree in psychology. She worked two jobs, one to make car payments so she could get to work, and one in group homes for the mentally ill. She drove 52 miles round-trip to and from the job and never missed a day.

After nearly a year, the Agency that ran the group homes offered her a full-time position starting at $7/hour, with no sick leave at the beginning. Soon afterwards she contracted an upper respiratory virus which aggravated her asthma. Unable to breathe, she was in a hospital on oxygen for eight days. When she was discharged, her doctor said she could not work for several weeks. Without sick days, she had no income.

Eventually she returned to work, driving the long miles through the winter, sometimes having to stay overnight at the group home because of bad weather. She struggled to make car payments and catch up on her bills. She was forced to go to the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a religious group that helps the needy, three times to help pay her rent. Still she continued working, was well-liked by her clients and co-workers, as well as receiving good evaluations from her supervisor.

One morning before work she had to take her child to the high school to be fingerprinted (a security measure in the child’s rural school) but her car would not start. She called her boss who told her that if she could not come to work that day she would be terminated. As she had no car, she could not get to work and was fired.

She applied for unemployment benefits and provided the Job Center with papers proving her eligibility, including a copy of the Agency’s manual detailing the termination process: a worker had to receive a verbal warning, a written one, a suspension, and then termination. J.A. had received only the verbal warning and she had never been suspended for absenteeism. Shortly before the firing, her supervisor gave her a good recommendation for another part-time job.

Six weeks later the local Job Center’s "honest evaluation" said J.A. was ineligible for unemployment benefits because "she had a record of excessive absenteeism and had received numerous warnings about her absenteeism." This was completely false. Despite having the Agency Handbook detailing the termination process, the Job Center never asked the Agency for proof that J.A. had been given any warning or been suspended for absenteeism. J.A., who struggled to get off welfare, found herself sitting for four hours at the Welfare Office seeking assistance.

This is a grotesque injustice. Under a communist system, such a violation of the right to live would be inconceivable. Under the current capitalist system, where corporations rule with an iron heel and fascist elements make life worse, this type of hideous cruelty happens on a daily basis to many working people.

An appeal by J.A. will take many more weeks. Meanwhile, she is struggling to pay her bills and fears that her car will be repossessed. If she does lose her car, she may be incapable of holding another job, since mass transit is unreliable in rural areas. She struggled to live on that oxygen tank and to hold onto that job. Now she’s sought Mental Health attention and medication, but can hardly pay for it.

J.A.’s story is probably the story of many other working people in this "Great Free Market Economy" that is destroying workers’ lives worldwide. Capitalism kills. This system must be booted.

Red Rocker

Prison Labor Never Faces Layoffs

A CHALLENGE seller was pitching the paper outside the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles saying: "The Boeing contract has just been signed and now 53,000 workers are facing layoffs. Only wage workers are getting axed. Employment of prison labor remains at 100%. Don’t you think we need a revolution? We’ve certainly got a CHALLENGE!"

A retired black worker on his way to the AFL-CIO Saturday event stopped. "When I got a job at Rockwell [an aerospace firm]," he said, " they told me it was guaranteed for life. And when they laid me off I got a job at McDonald-Douglas. That, too, they told me, was guaranteed for life. Then Boeing bought out McDonald-Douglas and now Boeing is laying off!"

We concluded that under capitalism the only way to get a lifetime job was to commit enough "crimes." Prison labor was not getting laid off. He gave a dollar for his CHALLENGE and the revolution.

A CHALLENGE Seller.

Police Terror, Drug War And Capitalist Education = Destruction Of Youth

The following is a leaflet PLP in West Harlem/Upper Manhattan is using to fight the confusion many workers have after the cops killed a black man in August, supposedly for selling drugs. It is also part of a campaign to win youth away from drugs, a big roadblock for them to fight their oppressors and to fight for the long-range goal of communism.

The police are killing our children, the government is putting them in jail with its drug war policy and capitalist education is setting them up for imperialist oil war throughout the world.

Police terror is evident in our community. A few weeks ago they killed a young man in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. And a day earlier they killed a man in Brooklyn. In the past month they have killed 12 people in a very racist way. The government uses the cops to do their dirty work to keep their profit system alive and to set the stage for our children to fight in wars abroad. Recently, the U.S. trained a few hundred soldiers to supposedly "help the Colombian Army fight the drug cartels." However, they’re really preparing troops to defend U.S. rulers’ oil interests in Latin America against inroads by their European competitors.

They want us to believe they’re against drugs, but it’s quite clear they are the drug runners. The U.S. government is controlled by the banks. Aside from oil, drugs are a huge business in the world, so there is no doubt the banks are in control. They talk about drug-dealing in our community, but the big dealing is on Wall Street. Drugs may not be sold on the street, but they’re delivered directly to the offices of the big business tycoons and stock traders. And that’s not to mention the role of the big bankers in the laundering of billions in drug profits. Drugs are not "just any other product on the market." Drugs destroy bodies and minds, pacifying youth and making them cynical.

The schools are going from bad to worse. They’re overcrowded but failing officials blame the children and their families, not the system. The result is more terror against our children inside and outside the schools, more youth in jail or on street corners. And the schools teach that it is "good and necessary" to defend the U.S. rulers’ worldwide economic and political interests.

Using all these weapons, the bosses can destroy our youth and our community, but only if we let them. We must fight back. The long-term solution lies in organizing a movement to destroy capitalism and the profit system, the cause of the problem, creating a new society, without bosses, run by workers to meet the needs of our class. Let’s organize to create such a system—communism. Nothing less can save the working class from the destruction created by capitalism.

Join other workers in the fight for a new society. Join PLP.

Upper Manhattan Comrade

Let’s Not Pander To Racists

In the October 6th issue of CHALLENGE, I wrote a letter stating that communists should not pander to racists such as the NOI. I do not apologize for my statements and I am disappointed that other "communists" disagree.

If the NOI holds a rally or leads a fight on a progressive issue, it does not mean that the communists have to join in. Instead, true communists and socialists, who hopefully disagree with NOI racism, should hold their own rally on this progressive issue or fight for a cause on their own terms. They do not have to be guilt-tripped into joining a "progressive" fight if it is led by a completely anti-progressive, often-fascist organization.

Any anti-racism rally organized by the NOI is in itself completely hypocritical anyway, since the NOI is incredibly racist. So, I couldn’t imagine any self-respecting leftist (communist or socialist) joining in. This, of course, does not mean that communists and socialists should just sit back and oppose anything and everything that the NOI advocates. Of course we should oppose, violently if necessary, any kind of racism, institutional or otherwise! But, even supporting an NOI rally or organized event just makes the communists look like hypocrites. It makes the communists and the NOI look like strange bedfellows joined in an unholy alliance. I would never support anything the NOI did.

It’s high time we stop pandering to racists, who like to hide under the guise of "liberationism".

Philly Red

What’s In A Name?

The CHALLENGE editorial (10/13) correctly pointed out that Nazis claimed to be socialist: "The very name ‘Nazi’ means National Socialist Workers Party." But you left out one important word. The full name of the party was National Socialist German Workers Party, which makes a double emphasis on German nationalism. "Nazi" is the first two syllables of the German word for "national."

I know this is a tiny detail, but the distinction between socialism and national socialism is crucial. Any appeal to nationalism is a tip-off that the group isn’t for the working class, and the ultimate logic is Hitler-style fascism, not workers’ power and equality. PLP has distinguished itself from others on the left since 1971 by our uncompromising rejection of all forms of nationalism. That’s one reason we have been able to recognize emerging fascist movements that others took to be progressive or revolutionary.

A Comrade

Communist Call Inspires Workers

On October 7, a comrade and I attended a forum of the Harvard campus chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) of which I am a member. USAS is fighting against the production of university apparel in sweatshops. The featured speaker was H., an Indonesian worker who had been fired for attempting to organize a union at Nike. (This worker had lost two fingers because of Nike’s sweatshop conditions.)

As the students entered, we distributed leaflets supporting their struggle, while calling on them not to fall for the schemes of Rockefeller & Co. In particular, we warned them not to allow the bosses to manipulate their good intentions into supporting Rocky’s war plans. The leaflet called on the students to join us in the fight for a communist world, without bosses or borders.

During the discussion, we described the bosses’ need to launch fascist attacks against workers because of the crisis of overproduction. We also bolstered H.’s call for unity between Indonesian and U.S. workers. We said only international working class unity could effectively fight the bosses. We called for workers (and students) of the world to unite!

Afterward, we spoke with H., concerned we had made him uncomfortable by not making it entirely clear he did not have to respond to what we said. (He communicated with us through a translator). But he said he was glad we had raised our points. Far from offending him, it would make him fight harder. He then took one of our leaflets. The knowledge that what we had said had inspired this working-class fighter was, without a doubt, the high point of the evening!

As we left, a student told us, "You sure are committed to communist revolution. You have a long way to go!" He’s correct. However, with successful events such as this one, amid our continuing work within mass organizations, it’s accurate to say, "The road is tortuous, but the future is bright!"

Red Student

How Bosses Finance Their Wars: Steal Billions From Money Workers Pay To Social Security

The excellent editorial in the October 13 issue makes reference to the source of the Federal government’s budget surplus as having been "created by Clinton’s vicious cuts." While it’s true that the massive cuts (including welfare repeal) helped create what the bosses want to appear as a "surplus," this entire surplus is a "mirage" (NY Times, 1/9/98) and a "hoax" (Senator Ernest Hollings, op-ed article, N.Y. Times). While Clinton and the G.O.P. harangue us about "using the surplus to save Social Security," the fact is this "surplus" results from TRILLIONS BEING STOLEN FROM SOCIAL SECURITY!

The bosses’ own laws mandate that payments into the Social Security Trust Fund only be used to pay for current and future retirees’ pensions. But since 1968 the government has been breaking that law (so, what else is new?) by "folding" the annual Social Security (SS) surplus into the overall Federal Budget. [There is an SS surplus because more is paid into SS from workers ‘ payroll deductions than is paid out to retirees.]

The Johnson Administration started this trickery during the Vietnam War to mask its true cost. By including the annual SS surplus into the revenues of the general budget, it "dramatically reduced the percentage of the budget devoted to ‘defense’ in 1968 and throughout the military build-up of the 1980s." (NY Times, 1/21/90) In other words, they found another way for workers to pay for the bosses’ imperialist wars by stealing trillions from the SS Trust Fund, supposedly reserved for workers’ pensions. When the Clinton gang and the Republican Congress claim that this year there was a "surplus" of $70 billion, they don’t mention that they stole the $100 billion surplus from SS and declared it to be "Federal revenue."

Actually, without that thievery, the true Federal Budget had a DEFICIT of $30 billion. What’s the true dimension of this robbery? In 1999, they will steal the $126 billion SS surplus and use it to pay for their Pentagon war expenses. By the year 2007, this stolen surplus will exceed $200 billion annually. According to Senator Hollings, by the year 2012 they will have spent a cumulative SS surplus of $3.2 TRILLION! If all those workers’ payments (and equal amount of employers’ payments) remained in the SS Trust Fund, (1) there would be little outcry of a "SS deficit" and inability to pay pension benefits to the "baby boomer" generation; and (2) the true federal budget would have a deficit of hundreds of billions. Meanwhile, the rich want to loot this SS surplus to cut their income taxes and pay for increased spending on wars.

In the 1980s they pushed through a series of increases in SS taxes-supposedly to pay for the generation of workers retiring in the early 2000s-which are being used "to pay for everything from jet fighters to thumb tacks." (NY Times, 1/21/90) In fact, when they told us they were "lowering" income taxes in the ’80s, they were actually RAISING taxes on workers by increasing the SS taxes and using the increased SS surplus to pay for their war needs. By shifting the burden of taxation from the income tax to the SS tax, nearly 75% of the U.S. population paid more in SS taxes than in income taxes. And that was in 1990. Imagine what that percentage is now!

All those crocodile tears about "saving SS" are just so much bullshit. They are stealing trillions in the surplus accumulated from money paid by the working class into SS and using to it finance every war from Vietnam, to Grenada to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Panama to the Persian Gulf to Somali to Iraq to Kosovo, and to hold up their crisis-ridden economy.

This is just one more swindle put over by the ruling class to prop up their capitalist system on the backs of the working class. The only way we can remove this burden and stop this highway robbery is to smash the profit system that perpetuates it.

Brooklyn Comrade