PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, Feb. 25 — When Karl Marx said “Workers of the World, Unite!” he was declaring that the borders between countries were bosses’ tools to divide workers. Communists call for the abolition of all borders as part of unifying the working class worldwide. Nowhere was this goal more needed than at today’s racist town hall meeting, (organized by “People for Change” and “Help Save Maryland”). It was designed to launch a grassroots movement of black and white people to attack immigrants, especially undocumented workers, blaming them for the effects of the economic crisis of capitalism that all workers are facing. PLP’ers and friends declared, “No way!”

We came early and passed out flyers entitled “Stop Racist Attacks on Workers with Militancy and Multiracial Unity,” freaking out the organizers who expected no opposition and wildly threatened to have us arrested by “the police ringing this area.” This assumption that the police would protect them shows how the capitalist system supports these kinds of disgusting racists. As U.S. rulers face increasing competition they are paying for their wars on the backs of the workers – and dividing workers by winning blacks and whites to attack immigrants helps keep all workers from seeing who their real enemy is.

We also distributed a flyer called “10 Myths about Immigrants” that refutes the lies that undocumented workers don’t pay taxes, “bring disease,” “are criminals” and are a drain on educational and health resources. The truth is that undocumented workers pay more taxes than others and are horribly underpaid and exploited. They are closer to the condition of exploited slaves in the 19th century.

The panel consisted of black and white speakers whose program is already enacting racist policies in the public policy arena (see Box). Roy Beck from Numbers USA is a lawyer who specializes in helping businesses get rid of undocumented workers. In his campaign D.C. mayoral candidate Leo Alexander scapegoats undocumented workers for the lack of jobs for low-income black workers. A former social worker on the line-up spoke of having been fired from her job for refusing to help immigrant women with babies get food stamps.

We interrupted her speech, demanding to know “Did she want those babies to starve?” A lawyer explained the “rights” citizens have to turn in undocumented workers to the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and encouraged the audience to do so. The last speaker was from Help Save Maryland, whose sole purpose is to sow hatred for undocumented workers and lobby for racist laws against them. They are even proud of being on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremist groups! 

The 50 people in the meeting hall included six journalists and 12 politicians. Our members peppered the panel with sharp questioning, led off by a PLP’er who boldly condemned the panel, declaring, “I have worked my whole life to bring black and white people together, but this meeting feels like a Ku Klux Klan meeting.” The racists heckled her, but we demanded that she be allowed to speak. A panelist told her that she should take her “illegal immigrant” friends and go to Central America and make a revolution, to which she hotly responded that she’d be pleased to make revolution anywhere!

Our questions and comments exposed the lies that problems of taxes, criminality, bad schools and poor health care were because of undocumented workers, and demonstrated that the capitalist system and Wall Street were to blame, not the Latino workers the racists wanted to blame and deport.

A black friend declared that what the anti-immigrant speakers were saying about Latinos was exactly the type of racist statements made about her during the Civil Rights era. She was particularly shocked at the depth of anti-immigrant hatred espoused by the black people in the room. The organizers, she said, were trying to scare people with undocumented workers as the bogeyman.

To fight back against this fascist organizing we cannot rely on the leaders of liberal mass organizations like CASA de Maryland that limit their struggle to reforms and working within the system. Our friends in CASA tell us not to confront these racists but to work with “friendly” politicians, even though this strategy is already failing badly. These liberal politicians, from Obama down to local leaders, push anti-immigrant legislation to help the bosses divide and rule. They can be even more dangerous than the open racists because they can deceive workers about their good intentions as they sign the laws that further attacks on our class brothers and sisters.

We can win through communist organizing and relying on workers to understand that their interests lie in fighting for a communist future of equality that can be won only by a united, anti-racist, working class. We can advance by fighting racist cutbacks in health, education, and jobs, through door-to-door campaigns, and by educating our base and the broader masses that such struggles can make gains only by identifying the capitalist class and state as the enemy, not our brother and sister workers regardless of their status, ethnicity, “race,” or place of origin. J

Bosses’ Anti-Immigrant Attacks in the Washington, D.C. area

• Banned Maryland driver’s licenses for undocumented workers.

• Stopping special educational services for undocumented (read Latino) children — Prince George’s County just laid off 120 parent/community liaison/translation workers!

• Using “E-verify” to stop undocumented workers from getting jobs or setting up bank accounts in Maryland and the District of Columbia —
major lobbying and campaigning underway!

• Eliminating in-state college tuition for undocumented families — done in Virginia, under consideration in Maryland.

• Eliminating health care for undocumented workers except for the emergency room.

• Eliminating food stamps and welfare payments for families with an undocumented parent — even when the children are citizens.

MIDWEST AIRPORT, March 8 — After all the lies, intimidation, and harassment, the metro-area and airport cleaners won their battle! SEIU members made signs on February 27 as the strike was to begin on March 1. The cleaning bosses saw this was really going to happen so they sent their lead negotiator to meet with the union rank-and-file Bargaining Committee. After 18 hours of nonstop negotiations they came to an agreement late Sunday night: better health insurance plus three raises separately over three years and equal pay for black cleaners.

The cleaning bosses’ last BS proposal, before they saw the workers were serious, was sent in a letter passed out by supervisors and managers to airport cleaners. The union steward read it and ripped it up in front of his supervisor and coworkers. He told the supervisor to his face, “this is baloney!” His coworkers agreed!

There were sharp political discussions with airport workers around CHALLENGE and the need to strike for a short-term reform, but with the goal for long-term class struggle for communist revolution, and to create an anti-racist, anti-sexist society. Our CHALLENGE readers at the airport also struggled sharply with coworkers who were going to cross picket lines out of fear of the bosses. Many minds were changed.

After threatening to take action, with multi-racial union members’ support, metro-area black workers, who were paid $2.50 less than Latino and white cleaners, won back pay and the same wages as the other cleaners. However, because workers live under capitalism their small victory still does not eliminate our problems.

An increase in wages does not change that the workers are exploited to create profit for the bosses. In the end, the unions work for the bosses, and won’t fight for what workers truly need — a world run by workers for workers. Maintaining capitalism means small gains inevitably get taken away.

We have a few Latino union members who are in danger of losing their homes after taking out subprime loans before the U.S. economic crisis hit. Now the banks want to foreclose on their homes. Capitalism does not work. The airport struggle made the political ideas of PLP a little clearer for a few airport workers. Also, we built a CHALLENGE study group out of our political struggle.

We received political support from as far away as workers at Kennedy Airport in New York, who showed their support with offers of union support and money. This anti-racist and political solidarity is greatly appreciated.

One thing about the metro-area and airport fight-back that many people have commented on was the multiracial unity which cut across racial, national, and language lines. Women took the lead in organizing resistance to the racist anti-working-class attacks.

The international working class has a long way to go in our battles ahead for a new and better society and world , but PLP will be there to lead our class onto victory! March on May Day for communism! 

NEW YORK, NY, March 4 — “No Cuts, No War, The Cuts are for the War” was shouted with all the rage that Asian, Latin, black, and white workers, students, and teachers could channel into their voices against the bosses’ racist attacks. The ruling class is waging war on the working class in order to pay for their imperialist wars.

They are further segregating schools by cutting the budgets and shutting down schools, opening charter schools in their place. This will make it difficult for working-class youth to go to a school in their own neighborhood. New York City bosses are threatening to cut free student Metrocards (bus and train fare cards), which would prohibit the vast majority of working-class students from going to schools outside their home neighborhood. However, they are in fact unlikely to cut the Metrocards. By “giving in” on that issue, the bosses can argue that we must accept a different cut instead. They will try to win our class to not just accept other cuts, but even to support and be grateful for them.

We must build working-class unity to fight the bosses. Understanding that any attack from the ruling class hurts our whole class means never accepting a single budget cut on the backs of a different group of workers. Even though it is small, today’s fight-back is just the beginning as communists know that a quantity of actions transforms into a qualitative change.

Even if the protests now are largely liberal-led, that too will change as PL continues to grow in the schools, community centers, unions, churches, transportation, and industry. Today we were able to bring and lead many to carry our banners, accept our leadership, and join in our chants, but tomorrow it will be hundreds of thousands.

PL professors, teachers and students brought their co-workers, students, and fellow students to the protest outside of Governor Paterson’s office. This ruing class puppet, just like Obama, is carrying out the open assault on our class that the ruling class demands. In order for a ruling class to attack the rulers of another country, they must attack and control their own working class even more viciously. These assaults on our class are directly related to the needs of capitalism to create profit. The same banks that got almost a trillion dollars in bailouts, are now making even more money off of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) assault on the students, while workers suffer.

Several of PLP’s chants called for communist revolution, but the one that
championed class war was carried on for several blocks as we marched from Patterson’s office to the MTA public hearing.

These hearings enable the ruling class to maintain their illusion of “democracy” so crucial to their holding state power in the U.S. The myth of democracy is grounded in the belief that we are all given a voice in the power structure’s decision-making. Of course, when the march arrived at the hearing, they tried to keep us all out!

When the protest of several thousand students and teachers arrived at the hearing, they met another protest of several thousand transit workers already rallying there. Some of the workers had leafleted a PL’ers’ high school with flyers that expressed solidarity with students. These workers have shut NYC down before and are a crucial force for revolution. The kkkops put the mainly student-teacher protest in one pen, and did everything that they could to keep them divided. Instead of joining the Transit Workers Union protest, many of the liberals went home when they found out that they couldn’t get into the MTA hearing! Instead of organizing to join the workers themselves, their narrow politics of using the hearing to voice dissent was primary.

The bosses’ crisis will deepen, as they continue to try to make more and more profits off of the working class’s misery. More hospitals, schools, and jobs will be lost in the oncoming months as the depression deepens. The oil wars will continue. The recent conquest of Haiti and the seizing of Marja in Afghanistan are just hints of what’s to come next. PL’ers must take advantage of each opportunity to rebuild the international communist movement. The protests in NYC, though largely ignored by the bosses’ media, are a good sign, but only communist revolution will provide the education and transportation that the working class needs. 

Queens College: ‘Where the hell did our funding go?!’

QUEENS, NY, March 4 — Chanting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Where the Hell Did Our Funding Go!?” and “Fight, Fight, Fight, Education is a Right!,” 75 students at this City University of New York college rallied and marched across campus to protest the proposed $104 million in budget cuts. At the rally, students spoke eloquently about how difficult it was for those from working-class families to afford the current tuition, especially during a recession, when parents have lost jobs or seen the value of their homes diminish. Increasing tuition would only make it harder and force some students to drop out. The percentage of black and Latino students at Queens College has dramatically decreased due to the budget cuts.

The national leadership of the March 4 protests — not wanting to upset the leadership of the Democratic Party — refused to link the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with cuts in education. However, students at our rally were outspoken in denouncing the spending of a trillion dollars a year on wars of occupation.

Three days before the rally, we had a teach-in (see next page) in which student and faculty panelists tied budget cuts and tuition hikes to three phenomena: (1) the very rich control both major parties and are thus able to keep their taxes at historically low levels; (2) in order to maintain its global dominance, U.S. capitalists are committed to controlling the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions and will spend trillions on wars of occupation there; and (3) capitalism is in crisis and is lowering the already low standard of living of working people.

These are their plans. The plan of Progressive Labor Party is to build a revolutionary organization that not only actively participates in today’s defensive battles against cutbacks but at the same time builds an offensive force capable of smashing capitalism and establishing a communist society. We work in mass organizations with the understanding that many of their dedicated members of today will one day be the committed revolutionaries of tomorrow.J

PLP’s Politics Center of Teach-in

QUEENS, NY, March 1 — Today, students, faculty and staff at Queens College CUNY hosted a teach-in entitled “War and Public Education.” While slated to build support for the March 4 “Day of Action,” its strong point was linking the budget cuts and tuition hikes to the capitalist crisis and imperialist war, issues ignored by the reformist coalitions that organized the NYC protest. PLP’ers who’ve been active in antiwar activities here organized this focus and put PLP politics at the center of the discussion.

In the first panel, a long-time Sociology professor defined war and crisis, stimulating much discussion. An English student and regular CHALLENGE reader followed, tying the U.S. imperialist invasion of Afghanistan to the budget cuts at CUNY with a Marxist critique of capitalism, emphasizing the need for revolutionary politics.

A Vietnam veteran concluded the analysis, exposing the parasitical tactics of recruiters who are increasingly appearing on our campuses to convince especially black and Latino students to die for U.S. imperialism. They’re forced to leave school because of rising tuition. The vet emphasized resistance to recruiters’ dubious tactics, urging soldiers to organize among their ranks and join the growing antiwar movement.

The second panel featured two PLP members who focused on the international aspects of war, crisis, and public education. The first speaker, a PL’er, gave concrete examples of the neoliberal global capitalist crisis and the growing privatization of public education and emphasized how inter-imperialist rivalry fueled the crisis of public education, stressing the need to fight the racist budget cuts and U.S. imperialist interests.

The second speaker discussed the teachers’ resistance movement to the 2009 coup in Honduras in June 2009, which overthrew Manuel Zelaya, a corporate lackey. Nevertheless, his overthrow symbolized U.S intervention in Central America, leading many teachers, intellectuals, and students to join in the struggle against the coup, favoring Zelaya’s return. While the speaker emphasized the post-coup repression of teachers and activists, and their resistance to the military dictatorship, overlooked was Zelaya’s complicity with capitalist interests in Central America and the imperialist dogfight that oppressed Honduran workers, students, and teachers (see CHALLENGE, August 2009).

The panel ended with a moving discussion by a PLP member, linking U.S. imperialism to the recent “unnatural” disaster in Haiti  and the necessity to build a revolutionary party through continuous solidarity with workers and teachers, in Haiti, here and  worldwide.

A short film followed entitled, “Why Are We in Afghanistan.” It reviewed the history of U.S. imperialism’s worldwide aggression, especially in Central Asia. Her introduction exposed Obama’s expansion of the war machine in Afghanistan, aiming to contain U.S. rival capitalists, namely China and Russia. She also revealed how the U.S. military has built bases along the constructed TAPI pipeline, exposing U.S. rulers’ interests beyond the “war-on-terror” rhetoric.

The final panel emphasized strategies for fighting back. Three speakers, a Lehman College student, a Queens College English professor and the Vietnam veteran, characterized certain aspects of how to build a movement on our campuses: by creating stronger links between faculty and students, by emphasizing racism at CUNY from the 1970’s to the present, and by encouraging student-veterans to join antiwar organizations.

Many antiwar students and faculty engaged in discussing ways to use the theory and practice of revolutionary communist politics and build a strong movement on our campuses and beyond. PLP’s politics guided the wider discussions, enabling the growing solidarity among the members and organizers to unite more than in the past, deepening the potential of a communist future. J

Hunter College: Angry Students Walk Out, Smash Office Doors

New York, NY, March 4th — Joining with the national day of actions at Hunter College we had a walkout to protest the proposed budget cuts. Then we were greeted by about 500 cops. The cops were forceful and hit a couple of students as they were setting up the metal pen to restrict our protest. The rally spread over to the financial aid office as angry students smashed the doors. After the action on our campus we went to a larger demonstration and march from the governor’s office to the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) headquarters. At the protest we met up with other schools in the university as students and professors united in protesting the racist budget cuts, which would slash financial aid and hike tuition. Capitalism attacks students on every level and the only way to get a real education is to fight for a classless world based on putting workers’ needs first and eliminating bosses and their profits. 

PolySci Club Gets Real Education

Our school’s newly-formed Political Science Club exhibited lots of excitement for the March 4th “Defend Education” rally. Rightfully angry about the racist cuts, students, mainly black and Latino, are seeing tuition hikes, financial aid cuts and free student subway cards endangered, while the banks are getting billions in bailouts and the rich just keep getting richer.

The club produced a leaflet with a cartoon showing Wall Street executives making out like thieves while education funding  is being slashed. PLP members in the club are helping to develop a fundamental understanding of how capitalism works, of how the capitalist crisis is being heaped upon workers’ backs, and what it will take to defeat it: communist revolution.

Today, March 4, we met in front of the school President’s office and then marched to the subway station to join the rally with thousands of other angry students and teachers at Governor David Paterson’s office. New York’s first black governor is leading this racist attack. No matter what color their skin, the politicians’ job is to push racism in all its forms. (Likewise, our college president, a black woman, has let our campus — where students are mainly black and Latino and more than 60% female — fall into disgusting disrepair.)

We joined the march to the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) public meeting, chanting the entire way, “The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated!” and “Asian, Latin, Black and White; Students and Workers must Unite!”

Afterwards we discussed the activity over dinner. Many were unhappy about how the cops kept us penned in and contained. Part of our group had been cut off from the main rally by a line of cops; this sparked a good discussion at our first club meeting later.

When a student asked whether we should’ve tried to break past the cops to the main rally, a PL’er suggested we draw some lessons learned from the Stella D’Oro struggle about when and how to go against the cops. In that fight, plans were made beforehand and support for opposing the cops was solidified. When time came, we succeeded in getting past their barricades, right up to the factory gates. In the discussion, the PL’er suggested we recognize the cops’ role as protectors of Paterson and the MTA bosses and our role as a force to battle them.

We’re planning a teach-in on the Haiti earthquake. The Party will be there with a communist analysis, bringing revolutionary ideas into the mix.

PARIS, March 11 – Demonstrations and negotiations alternate as 6,000 striking undocumented workers battle for “legalization.” This struggle is a significant anti-racist one, given the fact that the strikers represent masses of predominantly African immigrants fighting their racist bosses’ super-exploitation. While the workers’ immediate goal is “legalization,” the key to real victory remains winning masses of workers to understand the long-term need to destroy capitalism — the source of all exploitation — and the bosses’ borders. Only communist revolution can achieve that goal by eliminating bosses and their profit system.

Yesterday, 1,000 undocumented strikers marched in Créteil, eight miles southwest of Paris, demanding “legalization.” A huge banner urged equal rights for immigrants.

Recently rallies were organized in the Paris suburbs of Nanterre, Evry and Bobigny. French urban geography is the opposite of the U.S. Here, the rich inhabit the core cities with the poor relegated to projects in the outlying suburbs.

For several months, strikers occupied the municipal tax office in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine.

On March 8, bosses of companies employing thousands of undocumented workers and five unions presented the text of a “common approach” to the Minister of Labor, ostensibly to “pressure” the government to “legalize” immigrant workers. This “strategy” contrasts sharply with the actions of rank-and-file workers: striking, demonstrating and occupying government buildings.

However, the rank-and-file strikers face a crucial problem. With their action now in its sixth month, and despite donations from other workers and unions, their financial situation is becoming more desperate. Due to a split between the smaller bosses (who can less afford to do without even small groups of immigrant workers) and the big bosses (who can more easily withstand the absence of a few workers), compromises are being sought between union negotiators and the struck companies.

Mass Strike Of ALL Workers Needed

The “common approach” may very well produce a “compromise” that, in exchange for partial “legalization” for some workers, would freeze out those workers on the “black market” who are paid cash in hand as well as the mostly women personal care providers. To battle such a concession, and buttress their situation, the strikers would need the mass mobilization by the citizen workers to walk out and shut production on behalf of the immigrant workers. This would unite — and benefit — the whole working class since it would reduce the ability of the bosses to use one group against the other.

The bosses will never agree to end the super-exploitation of immigrants, which contradicts their drive for maximum profits. The bosses and the politicians are on the same side. And the union leaders, in seeking “common ground” with the bosses, rather than organizing the mass of unionized citizen workers to join the immigrant workers on the picket lines, end up defending capitalism’s “negotiations” and the concessions it produces. They are saying the workers and the bosses have common interests, masking the fact that it’s the bosses’ government.

‘I’m here, I’m staying, I will not leave!’

On March 6, 6,000 people marched here from the Place de la République to the Immigration Ministry demanding “legalization.” Signs read, “No to exclusion, abolition of racist and xenophobic laws!”; and, “For the legalization of all the undocumented!” T-shirt slogans included, “I’m here, I’m staying, I will not leave!” They chanted, “Documents for all!” The same day 50 people rallied in Nîmes, in southern France.

On March 5, undocumented workers and their supporters rallied in Bordeaux, demanding extension of the “legalization” procedure to all undocumented workers. Under French law, those in France for a certain time, with employer “approval,” and who work where there is a chronic labor shortage, can be “legalized.”

In Bordeaux this means construction and restaurant workers can be “legalized” but not nurses’ aides, even though the employment bureau has vacant jobs for them. The workers’ collective condemned the exclusion of Algerians and Tunisians, who supposedly benefit from a specific law but whose treatment is even more arbitrary.

‘We Are All Immigrants’

On March 1, 3,000 people rallied at the Paris city hall, part of the “day without immigrants.” Organizers called on immigrants to cease working and consuming that day to show that companies, shops, government offices and schools cannot operate in France without first- and second-generation immigrants. Similar protests were held in Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Rouen, Strasburg and Toulouse, reflecting the fact that this movement is not restricted to Paris.

The Paris demonstrators had a banner reading “We are all immigrants!”

The demonstrations are building for a protest march to Nice on the French Riviera, at the France-Africa summit, May 31-June 1.

This five-month strike of undocumented workers highlights PLP’s call to “Smash All Borders!” Historically, all bosses use their militaries to establish borders. They then exploit workers in poorer countries, forcing the latter to immigrate to the richer ones where the bosses can extract super-profits, using racism and deportation threats, lowering standards for all workers.

Only with communist leadership — exposing the “nationality” fraud — can workers unite across all capitalist borders, internationally defying the bosses’ divide-and-conquer strategy. This prepares the ground for a communist revolution to destroy capitalism and free all workers from the system’s oppression in a worker-led society.