NEW YORK CITY, March 4 — Over 3,000 transit workers and nearly a thousand students protested in front of an MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) hearing to oppose a wave of MTA’s proposed racist cuts. The agency claims an $800 million budget deficit and is demanding student payments for metrocards, layoffs and a possible fare hike in 2011. It also appealed a legally-binding arbitration award for city bus and subway workers, denying raises for six months.

The MTA runs commuter rails through the mainly white suburbs but these cuts are concentrated in the city where transit workers, students and riders are overwhelmingly black, Latino and immigrant.

Capitalism is the source of these racist attacks against the working class, not greed or mismanagement. The MTA budget woes stem from billions paid to the bankers in “debt service,” nearly one-fourth of the MTA’s budget. The bosses’ dictatorship guarantees that all these payments are legal requirements under New York State law. Legally, bondholders are paid before all other expenses and MTA agreements require that fares be sufficient “to cover all debt service” (mta.info).

But TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100 leaders blamed mainly Mayor Bloomberg for the cuts and promoted “good politicians” who want to use federal stimulus dollars to avoid them. One union speaker led a chant “Bail us out,” using the bank and General Motors bailouts to show what the MTA needs. He completely ignored that bailouts led to tens of thousands of autoworkers and homeowners — disproportionably black, Latino and immigrant — losing jobs, wages and property.

PLP organized many students and teachers to march from a protest against education cuts to the rally against transit cuts. From inside and outside the hearing we maintained the need for workers to rely on, and ally with, students and other workers, not on
politicians or pro-boss union leaders, the class enemy.

Local 100’s message focused on station agents, one of two main titles facing layoffs, as being “first responders to terrorism,” hoping to appeal to politicians’ “anti-terrorist” platforms. In signs, speeches and flyers, PLP members pointed out that the “war on terror” and transit cuts are different parts of the same war on the international working class and that politicians are leading these attacks.

At one point thousands of workers chanted “Let them in!” when cops blocked students from entering the Local 100 rally.

Police prevented chanting groups from entering the hearings, which moved forward as scheduled with little organized action inside. But more is needed to oppose the bosses.

Self-critically, PLP could have done more to give the bosses a taste of the disruption the latter plan to give transit riders and workers. We know MTA, state and city bosses have already made their decision and want to use hearings and demonstrations to give the illusion of “democracy.” But the movement against budget cuts present opportunities.

PLP can unite workers and students in actions that confront the bosses and expose the state as the class dictatorship it really is. Victory means building PLP to raise militancy in the class struggle and organize against capitalism. That’s the only way to ensure such demonstrations don’t just blow off steam, but serve as a small example of the tremendous class struggle needed to fight and win communist revolution 

SAN FRANCISCO, March 29 — Capitalism thrives when the workers think of themselves just as individuals. But when workers view themselves as a class, that the struggles of one person or group are more similar than different from others, and that an attack against one worker is an attack against our class — then the capitalists see this as a potential danger for their class.

Last month transit workers at this city’s MUNI Railway joined riders at meetings and a march against fare increases for youth and seniors. Oakland’s AC Transit and MUNI drivers also joined forces in March 4 walkouts and rallies with students and teachers fighting education cuts.

Amid one of the biggest service cutbacks in AC Transit history, and with increasing threats of wage and benefit cuts facing workers in the upcoming contract, five drivers in a union caucus joined a campaign for free bus passes for Oakland youth. While AC Transit workers in Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 are oppressed by killer schedules that stress out and injure many workers, we are not as oppressed as Oakland’s public school children and their parents:

• Ninety percent of these youth qualify for the federal free lunch program because their parents’ incomes are so low;

• Twenty-six hundred of the city’s 38,000 students don’t make it to school every day;

• Fifty percent don’t graduate from high school; the vast majority are black, Latino and Asian children, making them victims of racist attacks.

PLP views this as a campaign in which workers can sharpen their class consciousness. Transit workers uniting with students and teachers will give us many opportunities. In one meeting’s workshop with parents, teachers and transit workers, black, Latino and Asian youth said they had to spend lunch money on bus fare and vice versa.

Once more workers and youth begin to see that capitalism as a system must put wars for oil and bailouts of finance capital ahead of the basic needs of workers and youth, we’re on the road to developing more communists.

Besides many opportunities in this struggle, there are also risks. It’s being organized by Genesis, a church-based organization connected to the Gamaliel Foundation which backed Barack Obama.

On the one hand, Genesis recently organized a multi-racial campaign with BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and AC Transit workers and community groups to successfully stop a $550 million driverless rail connector from BART to the Oakland Airport; $70 million in stimulus money went back to Bay Area bus and rail operators. Genesis argued that the “Connector” discriminated against workers, especially black and Latino workers.

However, they’ve asked the liberal, ruling-class-funded San Francisco Foundation for $40,000 to financially support the Free Bus Pass campaign. 

The SF and Gamaliel foundations want us to think capitalism can be reformed by lobbying and community pressure. But, in essence, these same forces and their White House buddies are expanding war and fascist oppression worldwide every day.

PLP has a better idea. While growing class consciousness will give the capitalists more trouble carrying out their plans, only communist revolution can eliminate the profit system and its wage slavery that breeds racism, inequality and war. March On May Day! 

The capitalist crisis that hit Japan in the early 1990’s has sharply increased unemployment and homelessness, forcing many workers into “Capsule Hotels.” The deepening global financial crisis has worsened this situation, leading to a staggering 25% unemployment rate, but also to an emerging fight-back by workers, teachers and students. In a country once boasting to be the stronghold of economic equality, now over one-third of Japan’s workers are hired on “flexible” and temporary contracts. Over 200,000 have been laid off since October 2008.

Immigrant workers from Southeast Asia, China and Latin America are employed in super-exploitative factory jobs originally held by unionized Japanese workers making a “liveable” wage. The fascist right-wing uses this in their sharply increasing racist attack on immigrant workers.

“Contingent” (temporary) labor is a reality for young workers. High rents and short jobless periods throw workers on the streets. An unknown number now survive for varying periods by sleeping in internet cafe cubicles, costing a fraction of what even a cramped one-room apartment would run.

Those who are poorer still, both homeless and jobless, barely exist in “cardboard cities” of major towns and often are subjected to vicious police attacks during round-ups and evictions. The rising phenomenon “Karoshi,” or death from overwork, is common at capitalist giants like Hitachi. Many workers must work up to 80 hours a week to keep their jobs.

The newly-elected liberal Yukio Hatoyama government of the Democratic Party of Japan has vowed to “solve” the crisis by “fighting corruption” and reorganizing Japan’s geo-political position, namely its relationship with China and the U.S. Hatoyama has promised to end the decade-long recession, to focus on reformist policies that benefit public need over corporate interest, and to redefine Japan’s relationship to what Hatoyama calls “U.S.-led globalization.”

Yet it’s clear that Hatoyama, who comes from one of Japan’s wealthiest families (dubbed the “Japanese Kennedys”) is using the rhetoric of change to mask ruling-class interest in disciplining the rogue capitalists, to smooth out the rough spots so that profit accumulation won’t stagger. While not a military power, Japanese finance capital is central to the inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China, both in technological advancement and capital re-investment.

Recent articles in the NY Times and Asian Times Online reveal that Japan is closely aligning with China. Hatoyama’s government is also urging the U.S. to move its massive military base in Okinawa. Hatoyama’s hope of remaining neutral within inter-imperialist competition is unsustainable and will likely lead to Japan’s realignment with either the U.S. or China, both economically and militarily, squeezing unemployed young workers in the middle of the bosses’ battle for global economic control.

Workers and students have not stood idly by while corrupt Japanese rulers have run the country into the ground. In the early 2000s, militant unions like the National Railways Union, with over 200,000 workers, have led demonstrations against railway privatization. The rank and file, some with links to the reformist Japanese Revolutionary “Communist” League (formed in the 1960’s), have also led strikes against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They especially criticized Japan’s involvement in refuelling U.S. warships anchored in the Indian Ocean for deployment in the inter-imperialist confrontation in Afghanistan.

Tokyo’s teachers have been resisting Japan’s re-militarization that began after 9/11, forcing many into a battle with the racist and openly sexist Mayor Ishihara Shintaro who controls the Education Ministry with an iron fist. These teachers have also joined demonstrations opposing Japanese involvement in Afghanistan and have played a key role in curbing the ultra-nationalism emerging in the post-9/11 period.

Students at Keio University have rebuilt some of the militant organizations of the 1960’s, which led massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968, and have protested discriminatory university policies.

Without communist leadership, however, many young workers have turned to the Japanese “Communist” Party which has gained 14,000 members since 2008; one-fourth of these new members are under 18. This generation grew up without having experienced the relative stability existing in Japan during the post-war “boom” and has suffered hard conditions, instilling second thoughts in young workers about their relationship to the profit-driven system of exploitation and wage-slavery.

The increasing presence of worker-led street rallies has galvanized the surge in communist sympathy, benefitting the JCP in its attempt to rebuild its base in mainstream political circles. The JCP claims well over 400,000 members in 25,000 local branches, making it one of the largest “communist” parties of the industrialized countries.

While this trend indicates a seemingly leftward shift amongst Japanese youth, the resurgent JCP doesn’t offer revolutionary change, favoring instead “pragmatic” solutions to the present crisis and the “peaceful transition to socialism” without destroying capitalism. Some attempts are being made to establish a base of workers and students in Japan who ignore the false hopes of Hatoyama and JCP reformism, to turn the recent fight-back into a school for communist revolution. 

The following is an interview of a friend of PLP about the protests in Baltimore on March 4.

Q. What is the school-to-prison pipeline?

A. School-to-prison pipeline is the need for our youth, especially minorities, to not be able to go to school because the system profits more if they end up in the juvenile justice system. 

Q. You took part in the March 4th events in Baltimore.  Can you tell us a little about what happened?

A. It was a really inspirational day. We started in downtown Baltimore at Camden Yards where we waited for students to arrive and listened to speeches about the importance of why we were marching. Next we started the march past the state school board building where we met up with more students and let the people inside know we were serious. In the following events, we marched to the juvenile justice center [and] we chanted different things such as “Jobs Not Jails.”

Q. What exactly is being demanded, and what did it feel like to be part of that major protest?

A. They are demanding that 100 out of the 300 million dollars that is being allocated for more youth jails be redirected towards education. They are demanding this from the governor because he owes the city money due to a state mandate that has yet to be paid to the youth of Baltimore. I felt like I was doing something important to help students.

Q. Why do you think the cops didn’t arrest the people who sat-in and picketed, right inside the Baby Bookings [juvenile jail] complex?

A. I think they didn’t arrest anyone who sat-in or picketed because it wouldn’t be in their best interest to arrest any of the students or adults. If they did that would cause more media coverage for our cause and it could have caused an uproar from the students.

Q. What is Progressive Labor Party’s analysis about why U.S. capitalism, year after year, incarcerates such tremendous numbers of working-class people?

A. The capitalists of America need prison labor to produce products cheap to make a huge profit. Private prison contractors make a lot more money using prisoners to labor for cheap. The capitalist state needs the school-to-prison pipeline. To end it we have to
destroy the capitalist state and establish working-class power, which means a dictatorship of the working class.

Q. There was a very good Town Hall meeting last month to help organize for March 4. Can you tell us about Progressive Labor Party’s contribution to that event?

A. During the open discussion period of the meeting a comrade took a firm position that the school-to-prison pipeline was wrong and that the only solution is a communist revolution. Then the people on the panel at the Town Hall meeting were asked what they thought of revolution. It caused the audience to begin to cheer for our comrade and showed that we aren’t the only ones here to believe in revolution.

Q. On March 4 itself, how many people helped distribute PLP’s communist newspaper, CHALLENGE, and about how many participants took copies of the paper?

A. On March 4 there were three people passing out CHALLENGE and we got out close to a hundred papers and made a couple of new friends of the Party.

Q. Last year, only 4,285 students graduated from public high schools in Baltimore City, but a larger number — about 6,000 young people — were arrested by the police.  How do you think we can solve this problem?

A. As I discussed above the only solution would be a communist revolution. We should start with a class-consciousness that would help these students learn that the bosses need these numbers to keep their families and minorities as a whole oppressed.