NEW YORK CITY, October 12 — Members of the End Cholera in Haiti Organization (ECHO) came out today to rally at the UN in ECHO’s first public action in NYC, building on a petition campaign. This will be a long struggle with many such actions. We joined a protest with other Haitian groups and international activists against the continued stationing of UN Minustah troops in Haiti.
We highlighted the demands of our campaign to end cholera in Haiti: universal vaccination, beginning with schoolchildren; a country-wide network of treatment centers; and most fundamentally, a modern infrastructure for clean water and sanitation.
Comrades from Progressive Labor Party were there distributing CHALLENGE and explaining how capitalism continually causes these preventable water-borne diseases. It is an example of the gross racism of the imperialist system towards workers in places like Haiti or West Africa where these epidemics are allowed to spread.
It was Minustah who brought cholera to Haiti via their troops from Nepal who carried the disease. In October 2010, human waste from their base near the Artibonite River was dumped into the river. The first case of cholera in Haiti since the 1700s occurred just downstream of that Minustah base. The strain of bacteria in the resulting epidemic was found to be the same Asian strain that the Nepalese troops carried.
The disease spread like wildfire after that, infecting 600,000 and killing over 7,400, and crossing into the Dominican Republic where hundreds also died. Because of the continuing lack of access to clean water and decent sanitation in Haiti, the epidemic is far from over.
Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted that at least 100,000 more Haitians would become infected in 2012. Despite the consensus in the international health community that Minustah was guilty of introducing the epidemic to Haiti, the UN has yet to take responsibility and move decisively to stop the spread of this deadly disease.
In many parts of the world cholera is endemic or entrenched in the population. In such areas people carry the disease and continually spread it, making it very difficult to eradicate. Some health experts fear that this is already happening in Haiti. Cholera outbreaks continue to be on the rise globally, currently affecting 3-5 million people and accounting for 100,000-120,000 deaths yearly, according to the WHO.
These statistics will only worsen with the increasing trend toward the privatization of water. In fact, access to clean water and proper sanitation is the only real way to control this disease. That is why ECHO’s most critical demand is to force the rulers to come up with the billion dollars required to build a clean water infrastructure for the people of Haiti.
Although the area outside the UN where the rally was held was not as busy as hoped, it was most inspiring to see the enthusiasm of young ECHO members who chanted and picketed with posters and banners. One high school student of Haitian background, an ECHO leader, came forward and addressed the rally. He sharply made the point that the U.S. imperialists and the UN/Minustah troop occupation have brought only misery and death to people in Haiti. Another college student, who learned of the campaign only a week before, collected pages of signatures and expressed interest in joining the campaign steering committee.
Nearly everyone at the protest who was asked signed the ECHO petition. Several demonstrators noted that ECHO was not merely there to protest, but was attempting to build an international struggle and gave us their contact info to learn more. We work in concert with the campaign in Haiti itself, where another in a series of demonstrations is planned for October 19.
Judging by the response to our message thus far, we are encouraged. ECHO members have already begun speaking to student, union, church, health and community groups and have plans to reach out to more. Next time we return to the UN it will be in substantially greater numbers to put forward our demands more forcefully. PLP members working in the campaign argue that this vital effort should also be linked to building a revolutionary communist movement internationally. Joshua Horn’s book Away with All Pests tells the story of how communists in China eradicated diseases that capitalism has never been able to, such as syphilis.
For PLP fighting cholera is part of a struggle for a world which banishes the ultimate “pest,” capital itself, a world in which workers will never again be allowed to die of racist neglect.
On October 3, a strike by more than two million factory workers in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta brought the city to a halt. They’ve taken to the streets across the country to protest the government’s slave-labor wage policy. The minimum wage for a 6-day week is below $80 a month (see CHALLENGE 10/17).
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DC Transit Rank and File Sharpen Anti-Racist Contract Fight
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- 17 October 2012 754 hits
WASHINGTON, DC, October 16 — The bosses and their union misleader allies continue to attack Metro Access workers here. These drivers handle special trips for the disabled and elderly. In most major cities, such para-transit systems are generally treated as stepchildren of the mass transit systems, with wages and benefits far below regular bus and train operators. The bosses rely on private contractors to provide these poverty-level jobs and on racism to super-exploit these mainly black workers.
Here Metro Access is operated by MV Transportation, a contractor that is barely represented by ATU Local 1764. One DC Metro Access worker contacted a PLP member known for his long-time activism in the Metro transit union and said the workers wanted to leave their local because it didn’t serve their needs. However, the PL’er said it would be better for workers to organize a their own fight around a new contract for January 2013, including preparing to strike.
A group of eight workers met to map out such a contract and prepare for a strike. They made a priority elimination of the two-tier wage system which is dividing the workers. Nobody receives a decent wage. Under the current contract senior drivers make $17/hr while new employees are capped at $12/hr.
The group also discussed the issue of anti-communism since PLP is involved in this effort, and copies of CHALLENGE were shared with the workers. The campaign has just begun. MV Transportation has over 800 workers at two locations. The workers have organized a strong committee, but need to approach the entire workforce. They launched a web site to help in this effort: http://www.roaddawgsonline.com/ and prepared a flyer for mass distribution
So far the union leadership has refused to meet with this rank-and-file committee. They’ve told the workers they should disband because the union president will “take care of the contract.” Exactly! Another sellout! That’s the problem! Let’s get organized to sharpen the anti-racist class struggle of these workers.
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Community Fights Boss-Gov’t Anti-Immigrant Gang-up
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- 17 October 2012 721 hits
OAKLAND, CA ,October 16 — The coalition that organized the May Day March in the Bay Area is now mobilizing to support workers at the Mi Pueblo supermarket. PLP members are participating and joining the community boycott and picketing here on October 20.
Mi Pueblo has 21 stores and 3,200 employees, the majority of whom speak Spanish or are bi-lingual. The owner, Juvenal Chavez, expanded and got rich by selling traditional products from Latin America at high prices in immigrant neighborhoods while paying workers substandard wages. Many, both women and men, fought these conditions and have been fired. Meanwhile, Local 5 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is trying to unionize this workforce as part of a state-wide campaign, the Mercado Workers Coalition, aimed at non-union, immigrant supermarket workers.
In August, Mi Pueblo announced the voluntary implementation of the Federal E-Verify program to check the immigration status of new employees. Recently Mi Pueblo revealed that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security is carrying out I-9 audits, called “silent raids.”
E-Verify, I-9 and ICE are all part of the fascist federal apparatus which is destroying the jobs, wages and living conditions of ALL workers in the U.S. It may appear to be aimed only at immigrants. Some politicians have argued that these “reforms” will open up more jobs for citizens. However, the experiences at Pacific Steel (over 200 fired; see CHALLENGE, 3/12), at Able Building Maintenance (450 fired) and at American Apparel (2,000 fired) show how “legal” citizen workers are hurt. Bosses like Juvenal Chavez can cooperate with ICE to fire long-time, “illegal” workers and then turn around and hire new “legal” citizen workers, currently unemployed and desperate for work, at an even lower wage.
If we accept divisions among workers based on ethnicity, gender, national origin or migration status, we lose. However, when we recognize ourselves as one international working class and develop multi-ethnic unity and internationalism among all workers, we gain! Workers’ struggles have no borders! An attack on one worker is an attack on the whole working class.
PLP believes that the boycott and pickets can mobilize and help organize this struggle. The boycott might force Juvenal Chavez to make concessions and a union contract might give some immediate relief to arbitrary firings.
However, both are not sufficient to get at the root of the problem, the capitalist system, of which Juveal is a willing, profitable part. Underlying this struggle is capitalism’s creation of massive racist unemployment, massive migration around the globe, repressive laws, discrimination of all kinds and institutional racism. In the long run, we must organize to destroy capitalism, even as we fight for relief from today’s oppression.
Join with us to build a new society, led by and for the international working class.
Communist revolution opens the door to abolishing racism, sexism and national borders if we make international working-class unity part of today’s battles. In a truly communist society there’s no money, no production for sale and profit and no wages to create differences among workers. This is a world that finally realizes the potential for all to participate according to their ability and receive according to their needs, sharing the value the working class collectively produces.
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Miners Wage Massive Strikes vs. Racist Neo-Apartheid Exploiters
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- 17 October 2012 845 hits
JOHANNESBERG, SOUTH AFRICA, October 11 — The wildcat strikes and rebellions of 80,000 miners have spread across seven of this country’s nine provinces to include 30,000 truckers and a pending walkout of 190,000 government workers for higher wages. Port workers may soon join in. It is a massive assault on the racist apartheid system that still permeates South Africa in the form of the war between the two opposing classes.
Striking miners have mobilized to stop scabs; truckers have torched scab trucks. The bosses are retaliating with mass firings. When Anglo-American Platinum, the world’s top producer, fired 12,000 strikers after workers refused to attend company “hearings,” and said it would hire scabs to replace them, one worker declared that could happen only “over our dead bodies.” (Associated Press, 10/11) Another warned that, “Those who are dismissed will make sure there will be no operations and that [hiring of scabs] will cause a massacre just like at Marikana” (BBC News, 10/9) where, on August 16, cops murdered 34 miners. (See CHALLENGE, 9/19)
The rebellious Youth League, which is opposing the re-election of African National Congress (ANC) leader, President Jacob Zuma, said of the firing that Anglo-American Platinum “has made astronomical profits on the blood, sweat and tears of the very same workers that today the company can just fire with impunity” which it said is “a representation of white monopoly capital…uncaring of the plight of the poor.”
While workers were on a hill near the company’s Rustenberg mine protesting the firings — and demanding the indictment for murder of the racist police who massacred the Marikana miners — cops fired rubber bullets and tear gas and murdered still another worker. The strikers have been out since September 12 and are demanding a monthly wage hike of up to 400 percent, from $500 to $2,000.
Bokoni Platinum fired another 2,160 strikers who wildcatted on October 1 and Gold Ore International fired 1,400 more at its Ezulwini operation.
Meanwhile, the original rock-drill operators at the Marikana mine rejected a company offer to return to negotiations which was accepted by the ANC-allied union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The wildcatters have held solid, with 96 percent staying out. (Reuters, 10/9) On October 3, 3,000 marched through the streets near the Lonmin mine, the largest protest since the racist massacre.
Under the current neo-Apartheid regime of the ANC, the country’s unemployment rate is 25 percent while President Zuma urges the miners to return to work, calling the strikes “illegal.” Zuma’s tiny black elite is allied with what the New York Times reported (10/14) is a “white-dominated capitalism [that has] remained in place.” The Times also said there are “reports that the government is paying for $27 million in renovations to Mr. Zuma’s private village home.”
A glaring example of this alliance occurred when miners, fired in June after a wildcat strike, joined those laid off two years ago to try to stop scabs entering the Gold One International mine, formerly managed by the Aurora company. It turns out that Aurora was bought two years ago by a group including Zuma’s nephew and a grandson of Zuma’s predecessor Nelson Mandela. The two allegedly never paid for the mine but stripped it of its assets, while failing to pay tens of thousands of dollars owed to miners thrown out of work. (AP, 10/11) Apartheid of the rich against the working class rolls on.
Meanwhile, capitalism’s exploitation rules. The Times says (10/14), “Schools in townships and rural areas are a shambles. Hunger and disease still gnaw at the poorest. Unemployment is rife. [25 percent] And the misery is not equally shared: South Africa also has one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality. A tiny wealthy black elite has emerged, while millions more remain in poverty.”
Any wonder that truck driver Morris Sello told the Times, “I am very disappointed in this government….They are stealing…and leaving us with nothing.”
The strikers who have launched this massive movement are threatening the profits of a huge industry netting billions off their exploitation. South
Africa has proven mineral reserves worth three trillion dollars. It holds the world’s largest reserves of manganese, chrome, and platinum and among the largest reserves of gold, diamonds, coal, aluminum, iron ore and vanadium. (The Examiner, 10/5)
South Africa produces 75 percent of the world’s platinum and is number four in chrome production. The struck Goldfields company is the world’s fourth largest gold producer.
It is our class that produces all this value reaped from our labor but most of which is stolen by the owners of the means of production as their profits. The militancy of these striking workers has shown the world a microcosm of the potential power of the working class to shut down that production and the flow of profits that come from those huge mineral resources. However, the bosses control state power, the government, and in this case have Zuma in their back pocket.
The working class needs to smash that state power and the profit system along with it. This can only happen if workers join and are led by their own revolutionary communist party whose goal is to do just that. We will establish a society run by and for the working class, without bosses, profits, racism, sexism and imperialist wars. That is the aim of the Progressive Labor Party which is establishing itself on five continents and must be brought to these miners and to all workers fighting the horrors of capitalism.
