Challenge Newspaper - Progressive Labor Party

The newly-won Democratic control of Congress is being hailed by many as a win for everyone. While workers and soldiers are distraught over the war, the Democrats have slithered into public consciousness as the "anti-war" party. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and not one worker should believe any of these snakes as they make grand plans for the future of U.S. imperialism.

The main wing of the ruling class, the Rockefeller/Eastern Establishment, is angered by the Bush administration’s bungling of the war which has lost the hearts and minds of the working class. They understand that after 9/11 the Bushites had a perfect opportunity to win millions of U.S. workers to goosestep to their imperial whims — first with Afghanistan, then with Iraq. But in the last five years, the recruits have not flocked to fight for the U.S. Instead, the body bags have piled up, and lives of workers here have increasingly worsened as the bosses move jobs to cheaper markets and steal from healthcare and pensions.

In the build-up to the Iraq war, some Democrats fought for a multilateral solution that would involve bosses from U.S. "allies" in the occupation. Instead, Bush and his neocons thought they could bully their way into controlling the entire Mid-East, first Iraq, then Syria and Iran. This unrealistic goal dismissed any possible opposition from their rivals in Europe, Russia and China, not to mention within the U.S. With its "Shock and Awe" war, this administration thought it could scare the world to its knees.

U.S. bosses are now trying to figure out how to chart a course in Iraq without losing its oil and military bases, and regroup for more effective imperialist wars for control of the region’s resources. They have called in Rockefeller old-schoolers James Baker and Lee Hamilton to help them with their fumbled war and control rising imperialists like China and Russia.

Historically, Democrats have never been any more "anti-war" than Republicans. During World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Presidents were Democrats. During the 1990’s, Democrat Bill Clinton enforced sanctions and continuous bombing of Iraq that claimed the lives of more than half-a-million children and bombed the hell out of Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, he dismantled welfare and created fascist slave-labor Workfare. Under this "first black president," the prison population exploded, jailing millions of mostly black and Latino men, while putting 100,000 more cops on the streets.

The bosses need the Democrats now to get U.S. workers and soldiers to wave the U.S. flag. Rahm Emanuel, a Congressman from Illinois and former Clinton policy advisor (pictured above with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer), has declared that "we need a new sense of patriotism and responsibility that unites us in a common purpose again." In "The Plan," Emanuel proposes that the Patriot Act be used to promote "universal civilian service" to guarantee that "all Americans . . . serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation, and community service." Although he claims this would not be a draft, its intention is to win workers to becoming a Gestapo-like force for the ruling class, "citizens who can meet the needs of the nation at home."

During the Cold War years, the bosses could win many workers to the illusion that the U.S. was the greatest country in the world. The challenge for them now, as they fight to stay on top, is to have an army of millions who support U.S. imperialism and fascism at home, especially because they know they must spill workers’ blood to guarantee their profits in the short and long term.

Workers and soldiers must not be won to these misleaders. At every opportunity, communists should expose the lies and actions of the liberal rulers and their tools. They pose a greater danger to our class than open fascists because they pose as "friends of the workers," aided by their lieutenants running the labor movement. These liberal Democrats cast a line baited with false promises of universal healthcare, education and jobs for all; hoping that workers will swallow their poisonous ideology when we bite at those few reform crumbs they offer. The liberals can only guarantee that capitalism will continue and pave a new road to fascism for years to come.

The Progressive Labor Party advances what communism means: fighting for one flag, one class, one party. No concession should be given by workers to the capitalists. Only the working class, organized with communist politics, can turn the war plans of the bosses into a revolution for a society answering workers’ needs.

Rumsfeld Out, But Workers No Better Off

Drenched with the blood of hundreds of thousands of working-class Iraqis and Afghans, Donald Rumsfeld deserves our hatred. But his recent ouster, like the Democrats’ electoral triumph, should bring no cheers. In no way does it change the objective conditions underlying U.S. military action. The global rivalry for profit that requires U.S. rulers to wage oil wars while preparing for World War III is only sharpening. Rumsfeld’s replacement, Robert Gates, could, in fact, prove a more lethal warrior. He more directly serves those U.S. capitalists who have the greatest need to defend their empire by armed force. With Gates in charge, the liberal imperialist Establishment wing of U.S. capitalism tightens its grip on war policy.

On Iraq Policy, Gates Swings With Rulers’ Whim

Hand-picked by former secretary of state James Baker, a JP Morgan and Exxon Mobil heir, Gates is part of the Iraq Study Group (ISG). Anticipating November’s anti-Bush vote, the ISG cooked up bi-partisan Iraq "solutions" that actually entail stepping up the killing. The liberal New York Times endorsed an ISG option in its November 12th editorial, "one last push to stabilize Baghdad.... [t]hat would require at least a temporary increase in American and Iraqi troops on Baghdad streets." The U.S. butchered thousands when it tried to "stabilize" Fallujah a year ago. The carnage in Baghdad, twenty times more populous, would be all the more horrifying.

Many call Gates a hypocrite because he, as a CIA agent during the 1980’s Iraq-Iran war, supplied information to Saddam Hussein. But this episode only proves his loyalty to the Establishment. At the time, its cynical strategy for controlling the Mid-East and its oil was to weaken both Iraq and Iran by encouraging each side to slaughter as many of the other’s citizens as it could.

Gates: Die-Hard Establishment Warmaker

Gates is an important cog in the Establishment’s policy-making machine. In 2004, with Zbigniew Brzezinski, he co-chaired the Council on Foreign Relations’ Iran Task Force. Bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and overseen by Exxon Mobil’s Mid-East advisor, Suzanne Maloney, it concluded that the U.S. must treat Iran as a perpetual rival. Iran, it said, competes head to head with the U.S. for energy supplies and politico-military influence in the region and is forging worrisome ties to China, Russia and Western Europe. But, recognizing U.S. military powerlessness due to troop shortages, the Gates panel urged a course of "selective engagement," a combination of talks and threats, for now. Gates’ unwritten but obvious conclusion was that the U.S. must marshal larger forces.

Liberals’ Unfinished Job #1: Mobilizing 300 Million

Failure to even attempt to reach that goal doomed Rumsfeld. He represented a large sector of U.S. capitalists unwilling to subordinate their bottom line to war needs. They included small businesses, domestically oriented firms, and executives at huge companies who did not fully grasp the long-term game plan. [See Spitzer article, page 2] After the election, the imperialists seem to have the upper hand. We cannot predict just how they will try to organize their sorely-needed mobilization. But the Democratic Leadership Council, led by re-elected Hillary Clinton, is already pushing for compulsory national service and an immediate addition of 100,000 soldiers.

Under such circumstances, real political victory for workers lies outside the polling booth — in building a working-class communist party that can eventually put a revolutionary end to the profit system and the endless wars it causes.

Beware Liberals Like Spitzer Bearing Pro-War ‘Reforms’

Eliot Spitzer, New York State’s governor-elect, is one of the top cops in a rapidly hardening financial police state. Facing a near- and long-term future of ever costlier combat, U.S. rulers need to impose wartime discipline on their fellow capitalists. Under the liberal pretext of "corporate reform," Spitzer, as the State attorney general, forced hundreds of companies, large and small, to comply with U.S. imperialism’s agenda. His efforts in the country’s capital of finance have had nationwide impact. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley, the federal law that requires a strict auditing of corporations, resulted largely from Spitzer’s dogged application of New York laws in the service of U.S. imperialism.

Spitzer Targets Bosses Who Block War Agenda

Spitzer’s prosecution last year of insurance giant AIG’s boss Maurice Greenberg, for example, has major foreign policy implications. Spitzer drove Greenberg out of his chairman’s suite by charging him with improprieties in managing a family foundation. But, in the rulers’ view, Greenberg’s real crime was his ties to China’s bosses, with whom AIG has a sweetheart deal. It alone can operate wholly-owned subsidiaries in China. Greenberg is a director and big funder of the Council on Foreign Relations. With tensions between the two nations mounting, Spitzer discredited "soft-on-China" forces at U.S imperialism’s most influential policy think-tank. His investigation into bid-rigging had already booted Greenberg's son Jeffrey from his post as chief executive of insurance broker Marsh & McLennan, which also has extensive operations in China.

A full-scale U.S. war effort will require centralized government control of finance and industry. Knowing that, Spitzer doesn’t shy from swatting down the most prestigious firms and families when they clash with broader ruling-class interests. He slapped a $2-billion fine on JP Morgan Chase for its involvement in the Enron scandal and a $2.6-billion one on Citigroup for aiding WorldCom. Enron had imperiled U.S. capitalism by cornering the West Coast gas market and temporarily withholding energy from entire towns and factories, including war plants. In WorldCom’s case, Spitzer helped the rulers wrest a big chunk of the U.S.’s strategic communications infrastructure from Bernie Ebbers, a politically unreliable upstart with few ties to the Establishment.

Liberals’ Police State Hits Workers Hard, Too

Spitzer’s shaping up of wayward corporations goes hand in hand with a wartime crackdown on workers. In purging China hand Greenberg from Marsh & McLennan, Spitzer greased the way for Michael Cherkasky, his old boss at the Manhattan DA’s office, to become Marsh’s CEO. Cherkasky heads Kroll, a firm that specializes in homeland security fascism and became a part of Marsh in 2004, while Spitzer was prosecuting Marsh. Kroll advises the government on border control. It sifts bank data for terrorist activity.

The Supreme Court chose Kroll to oversee the Los Angeles Police Department, which has a habit of provoking rebellions inconvenient for war-bent rulers. Kroll took on William Bratton (now LAPD Police Chief) as a partner during his brief private sector stint. Among Kroll’s many police department clients, he spread Bratton’s "community policing" gospel, which calls for a network of pro-cop stool-pigeons based in churches and other local organizations. Spitzer himself has helped institute Bratton-blessed, cop-led Neighborhood Watch programs across New York State.

Spitzer now promises to rid the State Capitol of lobbyists who sell policy to the highest bidder while ignoring the capitalist class’s greater needs. The New York Times, endorsing Spitzer’s "clean-house" campaign, invoked Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller, Establishment imperialists all, as models for him to follow. Spitzer heeds his masters’ voice. His transition team includes Peter Goldmark, longtime head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Pro-war "reformer" Spitzer is no better than the rest of the wolves in sheeps’ clothing let loose by the election.

PL History: 1963: PL Busts Travel Ban to Cuba

In the summer of 1963, the year-old Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) — forerunner of the PLP — defied the U.S. government and broke its ban on travel to Cuba. Fearful that the Cuban revolutionary experience had great appeal to U.S. youth, especially black and Latino workers, and might spark revolutions throughout Latin America, the Kennedy administration wanted to isolate Cuba with an economic boycott (still in force) and this travel ban. Anticipating the U.S. rulers’ invasion plans, the PLM had distributed tens of thousands of leaflets, held street rallies and unfurled the first "Hands Off Cuba" banner in UN galleries. (See CHALLENGE, 11/1)

After the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion failed miserably, PLM boldly announced it would break the travel ban. Of 500 students who applied, 75 were chosen and planned to fly to Cuba via Canada. But the latter government, in collusion with the U.S., refused a landing permit for the plane.

Then, figuring the FBI, CIA and State Department would send agents into our ranks, we publicly announced a plan to go via Mexico, even telling that to the student applicants. But actually, we flew thousands of miles to Europe and back to Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida coast, duping the U.S. spy agencies.

Upon returning, the students refused immigration officials’ demands to hand over their passports. More than 50 PLM members and friends were hauled before a Grand Jury and either cited for contempt or indicted on "conspiracy" charges, facing up to 20 years in jail. A national campaign was launched to defend the student travelers.

The best answer to the attack was organization of still another trip, with 84 of 1,000 applicants going. After a fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court, all charges were dropped. Many students joined the PLM during this struggle and PLM emerged as a new vigorous force in the emerging Left movement in the U.S., which later helped propel PLP into the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War struggle.

All this occurred at a time when the newly-organized PLM viewed the Castro leadership as socialist revolutionaries. However, eventually Castro became a supporter of the state-capitalist Soviet Union, impelling PLP to understand that Castro could not be viewed as a revolutionary communist.

Nevertheless, breaking the travel ban in that era did carry out the maxim, "Be bold; dare to struggle, dare to win!"

PL’ers Building Base for Communism in D.C. Transit

WASHINGTON, D.C. Nov. 13 — The election campaign for a PLP-led slate of officers is heating up here in Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689. The transit industry is of strategic importance to U.S. working-class struggle — transit jobs can’t be outsourced, like steel and auto. When transit stops, as in the NYC 2005 strike, the economy and profit-making are severly affected. Therefore, building PLP at Metro and in other basic industries is of critical importance.

While there’s growing militancy in transit nation-wide, there’s still too little communist leadership to channel this militancy in a communist, class-conscious direction. Nevertheless, transit unions in Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have all fought militantly to resist cuts and maintain living standards despite the bosses’ determination to drive them down.

Here in D.C., the bosses are especially vulnerable to transit strike action. It would disrupt the economy, especially if led by communists. It could be seen as a rebellion and harshly attacked by the bosses’ state power — cops, National Guard, even the Army, the courts and jail threats and subject to media lies.

A strike would shut down the U.S. government and military headquarters at the Pentagon, and lead to escalating repression by the bosses. Communist leadership in the union can prepare workers for such a development, and fight now to build industry-wide and city-wide solidarity to up the ante in the class struggle. Such sharpening struggle would be welcome, since it would provide fertile ground for masses of workers to see the need to smash the entire capitalist system and replace it with workers’ power and communism.

The key step towards this goal is the choice, by more and more workers, to join PLP and help build the long-term struggle for revolution, using their strategic position at Metro. The San Francisco transit workers’ union elected a PLP’er Recording Secretary. The Metro union here elected a PLP’er President. Hundreds of delegates at the international ATU convention cheered the floor speeches of revolutionary workers. Thousands of New York City transit workers braved fines and jailings in a bold strike last year, and continue to thirst for militant and possibly even revolutionary leadership.

Transit workers have demonstrated recently that they’re beginning to understand the power in their hands and the need to use that power for their class. But only with the leadership of PLP will such potential be translated into a revolutionary force.

(For up-to-date developments in Local 689, check out the website — http://www.atulocal689.org/)

Chile: Miners’ Solidarity With GM Strikers Paying Off

ARICA, Chile, Nov. 7 — Over 150 GM strikers marched through this northern city last week, after 97% of the members of the Union of General Motors Workers rejected the company’s miserable "final offer" and walked out. The workers are demanding an immediate 8% raise; a back-to-work bonus of 1 million pesos (US$1,900); and abolition of a work-rule change affecting current seniority and work assignments that would force workers to perform more than one job. Flexible work-rule changes and the use of subcontractors attack the job security and lower the wages of all workers, part of the bosses’ plan worldwide to make workers pay for the effects of their fierce war-like competition.

A union leader told La Estrella de Arica, a local daily: "They are lowering our wages every day. A few weeks ago GM brought in 90 workers at a monthly wage of 170,000 pesos (US$323), well below the norm of 220,000 pesos (US$ 418)." For the first time since it opened in 1970, GM hired women but at the lower wage-rates.

In contrast to its slump in the U.S. and Canada, GM has doubled last year’s production of pick-up trucks in this plant to 30 units per day. Since September, the company began producing the new 2007 Chevrolet D-Max pick-up truck, very much in demand by the country’s growing copper-mining industry here — because of China’s heavy need for copper — as well as for export to Venezuela. So workers are demanding a bigger share.

In solidarity, the La Escondida miners’ union helped the autoworkers in their negotiations with GM. The GM workers had supported the miners’ recent 25-day strike. Mostly owned by the UK-Australian BH Billiton company, La Escondida’s profits have risen 153% to $1.1 billion.

Workers from Detroit to Arica need more of this kind of solidarity to counter GM’s and all bosses’ "divide-and-rule" tactic which weakens workers’ struggles. Even more, workers must learn the need to build an international revolutionary movement to end capitalism’s wage slavery. That’s PLP’s aim. Join us!

Pakistan: PL’ers Expose All Bosses, Aid Quake Victims

(The following is a report sent to CHALLENGE from comrades in Pakistan.)

Fundamentalism:

Pakistan is a paradise for terrorists now that the government has signed an agreement with the fundamentalist clerics to keep them in their federally administered tribal area, Waziristan. However, U.S. forces are doing whatever they think will aid their survival in Afghanistan. The fundamentalist leadership claimed that U.S./NATO forces attacked that religious school (madrassa), killing 84 and injuring many more in Bajure.

It is very clear to workers that these terrorists are strengthening the capitalists, enabling them to remain in this territory. These terrorists, who the CIA, Saudi Arabia and local bosses organized, trained and financed to fight the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, now have another task — to protect capitalism in this region by spreading divisive prejudices and producing chaos in this society, using suicide bombers to kill innocent people.

Nationalism:

The murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti devastated Balochistan. Nationalist forces actively destabilized the government, attacking public places, killing security personnel, organizing demonstrations and detonating bombs, grenades and missiles. Insurgency in Balochistan is not new. Nationalism is its driving force — there are more than 12 parties/groups fighting for their "turf." One is the Baloch National Liberation Army, engaging in military operations.

Feudalists are very strong in Balochistan also. The government claims they’re opposed to development in this region and therefore are spreading terrorism to discourage investment there. The feudalists and the government are battling for control of Balochistan’s huge resources. In this military fight between feudalism and capitalism, the capitalist bosses seek an empire with their own conditions but feudalists want a piece of the pie.

Privatization:

The government’s Privatization Commission is taking huge kickbacks by actively selling all the factories under state control to various capitalists.

Recently it virtually gave the Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM) to these private exploiters, strengthening their control over huge industries, to counter any working-class revolutionary struggle.

The PSM, completed under the former USSR in 1978, cost 25 billion rupees but was sold for 30 billion, although the currency exchange rate is now six times higher! Just before privatization the management spent 500 million rupees for new vehicles and 200 million on its roads — a nice gift for the new bosses. In three years, PSM reaped 20 billion rupees profit but is being sold for 21 billion while owing the workers 23 billion. No wonder the workers fear being fired. (Current exchange rate is 60.7 rupees to one U.S. dollar.)

Politicians Serve the Capitalists:

Pakistan’s political parties are fighting for control. If barred from the government, fundamentalists threaten other bosses with terrorism that would harm U.S. interests in this region. The Muslim Leagues oppose anyone who rules on behalf of U.S. imperialists. The Pakistan People’s Party is trying to convince the U.S. bosses that it can easily fulfill their agenda because they have the masses’ support. The revisionists (fake leftists) are indirectly doing the bosses’ dirty work while advocating "socialism."

Trade Unions’ Role:

The government has banned teachers’ unions in Sindh and fired their leaders. We must fight to win many workers to the need to join the fight for communism, because without a Party truly working for communist revolution they cannot eliminate these capitalist rulers.

The bosses are using the union leadership fakers to protect their profits. The union leaders are being bought off with homes, cars and money. Many workers who seek better wages and conditions fear being fired if they oppose this leadership.

2005 Earthquake:

It’s been more than one year since the devastating earthquake that killed 80,000, injured over 135,000 and left more than 3.2 million homeless across Pakistani-administrated Kashmir and the northwest province. Yet, because of the lack of planning, nepotism, dictatorial dealing with humanitarian organizations and corruption, the government has still not provided shelter for all the homeless. More than 80% are still in tents, facing problems like protection and security.

Although the government is supposedly compensating the homeless, this process is so complicated it leaves survey teams open for bribery. The poverty-stricken with no money for bribery have received nothing.

PLP has collected money, food and other needed items from our friends and delivered them to these deserving people. PLP has exposed the bosses who want to keep everything they can collect from the donors in the name of the affected people. Communism is the only system which can assist people in any emergency, free of discrimination.

Our Struggle:

We are determined to expose the crisis of capitalism in Pakistan, analyzing the world situation and aiming to win millions into our ranks, to lead an international communist revolution. All the evils of capitalism that exist here — high prices, no health facilities, education or clean water, fundamentalism, political chaos, exploitation in factories, harassment, inequality, injustice, nationalism, sexism and racism — give us the opportunity to build PLP. We are the real fighters against capitalist oppression worldwide, having the capability of uniting the working class into a single international communist party — PLP.

In Pakistan the geo-political and socio-economic conditions provide fertile soil for our struggle against the exploiting ruling class, helping us to recruit new workers into our Party.

Salvador Hospital Strikers Block Streets, Confront Cops

SAN SALVADOR, Oct. 27 — The 125,000 workers of the Social Security Institute Union (STISS), striking for a $100 monthly raise, have paralyzed operations of clinics and hospitals. When the Order Maintenance Unit police (UMO) took over the hospitals, the strikers responded by taking control of the surrounding streets, blocking the capital’s main thoroughfares and paralyzing traffic. This led to a confrontation between the police and the workers. By today, even more hospitals and clinics had joined the general strike.

The government has offered $20 a month. Nolasco Perla, director of the Social Security Institute (ISS), said these workers "are some of the best-paid workers in the country." While he may be one of the best-paid, earning $5,250 a month, most workers receive only $300.

"We hope that, when president Tony Saca returns to the country, he will reason with the director of Social Security," said the union leader. One doctor then declared, "These reforms will not solve the lack of medicine and instruments in the hospitals, even less so with our leaders sold out to the right-wing."

The strike is 15 days old and jurisdiction is now in the hands of the Ministry of Labor, an institution controlled by the ARENA Party fascists. They, as always, declared the strike illegal, provoking even more ruthless attacks, including salary cuts, jailings and police repression.

The workers are displaying courage and determination, inside and outside the hospitals, confronting the police and the sellout leaders. They deserve a better future and better strategies for struggle. Therefore, we are redoubling our efforts to build CHALLENGE networks to become the basis for new struggles, not only for $100 raises but for revolutionary struggles for a communist society where all the power and everything we produce will be for the working class.

Oaxaca: ‘Reform’ Capitalism No Solution for Workers

OAXACA, MEXICO Nov. 15 — "Even though we’re returning to teach, the struggle continues, mainly our revolutionary struggle," said a teacher here. She says that most of the State’s teachers (in small towns and rural areas) are returning to schools to begin classes and talk with their students and parents about the five-month struggle.

Hundreds of thousands marched on Nov. 2 and a week ago hundreds fought the federal troops and repelled their attack on Radio University. But this week the troops have reopened the UABJ (Benito Juárez Autonomous University).

In this city there is still uncertainty because of the repressive conditions. Thousands of local and federal police and paramilitaries occupy the city. It’s not known exactly when teachers will return here.

Meanwhile, APPO (People of Oaxaca Popular Assembly), with many internal divisions (more next issue) continues demonstrating and threatens to erect more barricades and organize mobile brigades if Governor Ruiz doesn’t step down. It has formed a state council with over 260 leaders of organizations, including the teachers union (SNTE Section 22) to draft a new Oaxaca constitution as a way to pressure the state and federal government.

PLP continues to struggle for our politics to shatter the illusion that there can be a pro-worker "reformed democratic capitalism" (as "the people’s President" López Obrador and his PRD party proposes as an alternative to PAN, the ruling party, and its allies in the PRI, the Party of the hated Oaxaca governor). López Obrador and his PRD, which has met with the APPO leaders, wants a capitalism that invests in programs for social control (as pushed by the World Bank), including investing in education and oil infrastructure. They say it’s "more efficient" and better at winning workers to sacrifice for the "national interests" — in effect, for the entire capitalist class. The PRD represents a sector of Mexican rulers who seek deals (including over profits from the government-owned oil company Pemex) with China and other imperialists rather than exclusively with U.S. bosses. Workers have nothing to gain by taking sides in this bosses’ dogfight.

The federal troops are in Oaxaca to guarantee the dictatorship of capital. Our aim is to show how the massive fight-back can become a school to build a mass PLP and fight for the dictatorship of the working class: a communist society without any local and foreign bosses and where workers’ needs are the only priority.

Back Oaxaca Struggle

NEW YORK CITY

Nov. 13 — 100 teachers and students organized by the Professional Staff Congress union at CUNY (City University of New York) held a spirited rally today here in support of the striking Oaxaca teachers. Many leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed.

El SALVADOR

"Fraternal and revolutionary greeting to the teachers of Oaxaca whose organization and courage in confronting capitalism we admire," declared a teacher here in El Salvador. "Capitalism impoverishes and exploits teachers worldwide."

We’ve discussed the struggle of the Oaxaca teachers in meetings with hundreds of teachers, based on the ideas of class struggle, internationalism, exploitation under capitalism, and the need for communist revolution. In some meetings we proposed to support the teachers in demonstrations and in articles in the teachers’ union newspaper ANDES. PLP, using CHALLENGE, has linked this struggle to the fight among the imperialists.

"We won’t forget that the teacher who is fighting back is also teaching," said another teacher here. We’ve been in the streets marching with these same slogans and now it’s our class brothers and sisters in Mexico who are in struggle. Teachers play a key role in the fight against capitalism. They’re trained to teach the ideas of the system to keep exploitation and oppression alive. But when they decide to teach the ideas of struggling for a communist society, they become a powerful force.

They can help sow the seeds of revolutionary ideas to millions of future workers and soldiers, those who will be in the forefront of organizing a communist revolution.

From El Salvador to Oaxaca, the working class has no borders!

Comrades in El Salvador

Cops Save Minutemen From Anti-Racists’ Wrath

MAYWOOD, CA., Nov. 11 — Hundreds of angry anti-racists confronted the racist Minutemen today when they demonstrated here to protest the city’s status as a "sanctuary" for undocumented workers. A huge police presence protected the Minutemen from anti-racist anger meting out severe punishment. Many said angrily that if it were not for the cops, they would give the Minutemen what they deserve.

A group of youth hung one of several effigies of KKK-Minutemen from a lamppost as the crowd cheered. Although the cops eventually took it down, the crowd beat the other effigies.

Many joined lively chants against the Minutemen and the cops, including, "Este puno si se ve — los obreros al poder!" ("See this fist — workers to power!") as they shook their fists at the Minutemen and the cops.

At one point a supposed "demonstrator" began handing out Mexican flags (there was only one such flag before that). He was quickly identified as a Minuteman trying to divide the crowd, creating an image of anti-racists being loyal to the flag of the Mexican bosses. People yelled "Saquenlo" ("get him out of here"), chased him and threw his flags on the ground. One anti-racist demonstrator was arrested. The crowd became angrier and taunted the cops.

A PL comrade passed the hat for the arrested anti-racist fighter. Spectators and demonstrators contributed $300 on the spot. The arrested man’s friends thanked us as we chanted "Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world, unite!" Over 200 CHALLENGES were distributed (all we had). The red PLP flag of the international working class waved proudly throughout demonstration.

Red Ideas Make Headway at Public Health Convention

BOSTON, Nov. 13 — While last year's annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Philadelphia produced a noisy demonstration, PLP’s "quieter" one-on-one activity this year can prove more valuable in the long run.

There was some action this year — like when the Boston cops (complete with police wagon) shut down the activists’ breakfast and Katrina slide show. Or when we dodged Convention Center Security to keep distributing flyers after being chased from several locations. But such moments were not the most important ones for building PLP.

A more passive atmosphere this year possibly resulted from delegates hoping a Democratic Party Congressional majority would end the Iraq war and boost funding for public health. (The elections occurred right in the middle of our meeting.) But PLP’ers from five cities sought conversations with friends ready to move somewhat beyond electoral politics. We made some real progress with some.

One friend — who had e-mailed a comrade a reminder to file his absentee ballot before leaving for Boston — ended up subscribing to CHALLENGE and to The COMMUNIST magazine. She had only seen the paper once but because of joint efforts in anti-war activity with this comrade for the past two years she was confident enough to seriously consider the Party's ideas and literature. Our relationship will continue after the Convention.

Advocating communist ideas in a mass way made possible other conversations. A Party flyer that laid out the Democrats’ war plans (using their own website) was passed out before the opening plenary, attended by thousands. Party speakers raised various aspects of the Party’s line at the podium in various sessions or from the audience. These included the need for soldier rebellions against imperialist war and the need to build a multi-racial movement to fight racism.

Other Party ideas — such as the need to violently combat the bosses’ attacks to bring about fundamental social change — were raised individually. One such sharp exchange with a good friend ended with the comrade asking, "So, do you want me to stop sending you the paper?" "No," the friend replied, "I don't agree with everything but keep sending it." Then the comrade was given a $40 donation for the sub and postage. The struggle continues.

Racist French Rulers Use ‘Terrorist’ Lies to Fire Airport Workers

PARIS, FRANCE, Nov. 10 — Last week the Roissy deputy prefect announced security clearances had been withdrawn from 72 Muslim airport workers over the past year. As a result, most of the workers lost their jobs. This racist attack was underscored by an Oct. 21 statement by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Referring to the loss of security clearances by an initial group of 43 workers, he said, "There’s no question of it being a case of us just not liking their faces. There are precise grounds which led us to forbid their presence at the airport." But it seems the workers’ "crime" is very precisely their faces — or their religion.

The context of this attack goes back four years ago when Jacques Chirac was re-elected French president in a campaign in which all candidates beat the law-and-order drum. Now next year’s presidential election has probable candidates Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and right-wing "socialist" Ségolène Royale again spotlighting "crime" and "terrorism." In the background, as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens, the French bosses are looking to discipline workers with new repressive measures. This racist attack on these 72 workers, mostly baggage handlers, can eventually be used against many of the 80,000 workers at the Roissy-Charles De Gaulle airport — Paris’s largest single employer.

Most of these workers are accused of "being connected" to Salafism, a branch of Islam. ("Le Figaro", 11/10) The deputy prefect, Jacques Lebrot, claimed the workers had "fundamentalist tendencies that are potentially terrorist" and were linked to "the Islamic scene."

Right-wing deputy Alain Marsaud swiftly called for a law to speed up revocation of security clearances. Before becoming a deputy, he was a board member of the scandal-ridden Compagnie Générale des Eaux, whose chairman was fined one million euros for lying.

When eight workers sued to force the prefect to disclose the evidence against them, it revealed the weakness of the government’s charges. On Nov. 8, the government restored security clearances to two workers, and today the court conveniently declared it had no jurisdiction in the case. The dossiers compiled by the central unit for "fighting terrorism" (which Marsaud headed in the 1980s) will remain secret.

No wonder. The police interviews, which French law requires before a security clearance can be revoked, don’t seem to have been very professional. The newspaper "Le Canard enchaîné" (11/8) revealed part of the procedure. Karim K., holding a security clearance for ten years, was asked: "Do you feel comfortable living in France?" He ought to — he was born here to a French mother and an Algerian father! When a cop suggested that his Saudi Arabia trip wasn’t for sight-seeing, Karim replied that he had gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca — and asked if the police were going to question all Christian workers who had gone on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Security company employee Hervé B. is a French convert to Islam. In March 2005 his company congratulated him for having intercepted firearms. Last April, he was part of the security team protecting Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy but still lost his security clearance.

The French bosses’ past laxity regarding corruption and air security exposes their hypocrisy. After the 9/11 attacks, Air France contracted with the Pretory guard company for in-flight security. Of 648 guards employed on France-U.S. flights, 173 had a police record and 20 had done hard prison time. ("Le Canard enchaîné," 11/18) Not so surprising, considering Pretory’s personnel recruiter had been sentenced to a 17-year prison term for armed robbery! And last July Air France boss Jean-Cyril Spinetta persuaded the judges not to charge him with money laundering and misuse of company property because it would hinder Air France’s merger with KLM!

Unfortunately, Roissy airport workers’ unions are pretty spineless. A Nov. 7 inter-trade union meeting agreed only to publish a joint leaflet; have their respective lawyers "work together"; and have a delegation meet the do-nothing minister for equal opportunity, Azouz Begag. They couldn’t agree on strike action and tabled the matter until the next meeting, Nov. 17.

The airport workers need to follow the Modeluxe laundry workers’ example (CHALLENGE, 11/1 and 11/15). Their one-week sit-down strike — which united all workers, French-born and foreign-born, documented and undocumented — forced the Essone department prefect to grant residence and work permits to ALL 20 of the undocumented workers.

Comparing the experiences of the Roissy and Modeluxe workers, it’s clear that winning workers’ demands doesn’t go through the bosses’ courts, but rather through workers’ unity at the point of production. Ultimately, eliminating the bosses’ courts, prefects and ministers will abolish capitalist exploitation once and for all.

Oil Resources Behind Darfur Deaths, Wars in Africa

Wars are spreading throughout Africa

• Somali Islamist movement fighters clashed with the interim government on Nov. 11 for the second time lately. "Militant groups and 11 countries are funneling the military aid needed for a full-scale war into Somalia, widening the threat of conflict into the Horn of Africa and beyond…" (Reuters, 11/10)

• In Kinshasha, Congo, armed clashes erupted between supporters of President Kabila and his opponent in the recent presidential election, Vice-President Jean Pierre Bemba. Kabila is ahead in the election’s second round. Over four million people have died since war erupted in the Congo in the late 1990’s, involving many nearby countries.

• In Darfur, the violence continues between government-supported militias and their opponents in the South of Sudan.

Said the Observer (London, 11/12): "This epidemic of war is as destructive as those of AIDS and malaria. But the chief fuel to this flame is not an innate aggression by Africans, as many commentators suggest. Tragically, in most cases, it is the blessings bestowed by nature on the continent and the strong desire of economically powerful outsiders to get them. Ethnic and religious rivalries are real, but too often serve as a smokescreen." (The Observer, Nov. 12).

For example, in Sudan the fighting is said to be among "Arabs and Africans" (both groups are African and black). But it’s oil that’s really behind it. U.S. bosses, black politicians and many liberals like actor George Clooney are focusing on the deaths in Darfur, but the reality underlying this "concern" is the China National Petroleum Corporation’s purchase of the rights to Block 6, the largest oil and gas field still controlled by the central Sudanese government, which lies mostly in Darfur.

"Production costs are believed to be a bargain, 22 cents…a barrel, and with Rolls-Royce Marine reportedly supplying tens of millions of dollars worth of pumping equipment this summer Block 6 production is alleged to have risen from 10,000 to 40,000 barrels a day," says the Observer. "Earlier this month China’s President Hu Jintao spoke forcefully in support of Sudan’s right to sort out Darfur as it saw fit, while his oil-thirsty country is now Sudan’s main military supplier. The signals from China’s recent summit with African leaders are that the Chinese will only push harder in future to gain their share of the spoils."

The conflict in Somalia is also labeled a religious struggle between Muslims and Christians (Ethiopia supports the interim government, opposed by a Muslim coalition). But what’s unpublicized is that the Ogaden region bordering Somalia sits on an unexploited gas field. The Malaysian oil giant Petronas has bought three concession blocks there. Ethiopa’s rulers fear a resurgent Somalia will seek to annex Ogaden. The area’s likely coming war is, in part, gas-powered.

The racists, who blame it all on African "savagery," point to the slaughter in Rwanda. "But there, too," reports the Observer, "one of the most under-reported tensions behind the conflict was the shortage of valuable grasslands." French and U.S. imperialists’ fight over resources also had their hands in this massacre.

The wars in the Congo were fought over diamonds, cobalt, gold and other precious minerals (with many imperialist companies financing the fighting). The wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia were again for diamonds, financed by foreign companies.

(A future article will review how many U.S. companies and investors — from George W. Bush to liberals like Clinton’s former U.S. ambassador Andrew Young — had their hands soaked with the blood of the millions who’ve died here, and how the only way out of this slaughter is to build an internationalist communist movement to break with all forms of tribalism, warlords and imperialists.)

LETTERS

Liberals’ Petition Misleads Anti-War GI’s

A subcommittee of my peace group builds support for anti-war resisters inside the military, along with groups like Iraq Vets Against the War and Military Families Speak Out. We were excited about the "Appeal for Redress" for military personnel to tell Congress to end the war, but there was much in it we disliked. The petition says nothing about getting out of Afghanistan or anywhere in the Middle East. Some of us wouldn't want to ask anti-war military personnel to self-identify as "patriotic Americans proud to serve the nation in uniform." Such language sets soldiers up for the next war - maybe, someone said, for World War III.

We created a "pledge" calling for ending the war and occupation of Iraq and everywhere else. It asks soldiers to follow their conscience and refuse to commit war crimes or fight for the corporate empire. Some were nervous about such strong language. Others are very enthusiastic and plan to take a mass approach with the pledge. Some members of the peace group dislike that; one leader is pushing the Appeal. The group has adopted our Pledge but this struggle will continue.

Working on the Pledge has provoked some sharp and useful political discussions in the committee, in the whole group and in private conversations. Taking it to friends in other groups, and directly to those most affected will spark even more discussion.

It will help this struggle if CHALLENGE is more consistent about the danger posed by liberals within the military anti-war movement.

The letter "GI's Begin to Opt Out" (CHALLENGE, 11/15) correctly states that "the ruling class is preparing a trap.…The Democrats…have a more sophisticated plan for waging imperialist war." Exactly for that reason, the same article is wrong to describe the "Appeal for redress" as a "blow to the solar plexus" of the military brass. Top brass were among the first to say that "staying in Iraq [with the Bush administration strategy] will not work" (in the words of the Appeal.) The group "West Point Graduates Against the War" declares, "the deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war catastrophic to our nation's interests." The Appeal's patriotism and reliance on "our leaders" in Congress push the identical lie that working-class soldiers have the same "national interest" as the imperialist rulers. We must sharply counter this lie or we, too, run the risk of leading troops into the Democrats' pro-imperialist trap.

Wherever there are people angry about the war, we can fight for aspects of revolutionary ideas, like international working-class consciousness and refusing to obey orders that are against our class interest.

A Comrade

Need Alternative to Liberals' GI 'Appeal'

The article "GI's begin to Opt Out" (CHALLENGE, 11/15) is very true and a good sign that many soldiers are against the war and want it to end. That shows there's lots of potential in directly working with soldiers. But I was disturbed by the article's claim that the "appeal for redress" signed by 1,000 soldiers was "hitting the military brass like a blow to the solar plexus." I'm confident we can explain the errors of patriotism in the appeal to soldiers. However, the article gives too much credit to the appeal, sponsored by liberals with strong ties to the ruling class.

The liberal politicians' agenda is to manipulate the anti-war anger of soldiers, using patriotism to set them up for the next war. One thing must be clarified: capitalism needs war. Politicians scream "let's get out of Iraq" because things are utterly ugly and they see no way to win with the current plan. There is definitely a need to end unjust, imperialist war; however, there are other places these same politicians would gladly send troops.

Any appeal that begins with "As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform," betrays the justified anti-war anger of soldiers. We should expose the goals of the liberal rulers. As soon as we can win over our base, we should propose an alternative statement for soldiers that's not patriotic. Sending petitions to Congress is fruitless and we should not confuse soldiers by encouraging them to send polite complaints to government officials.

The writer calls the appeal a "blow" and at the same time calls for communist revolution. The latter is an enormous blow. The article does acknowledge the sophisticated plan of the liberal ruling class accurately. We might not be able to get 1,000 troops to sign on to revolution now, but by criticizing the appeal and encouraging an alternative, we will make significant advances.

Red Iraq Vet

Danger, Opportunity in GI Movement

It's good to see the considerable activity and discussion about PLP's work with soldiers and their families. The recent article (CHALLENGE, 11/15) on the "Appeal for Redress" reflects the ongoing fight to build the Party within movements and struggles led by the ruling class. For us they contain both dangers and opportunities.

The "Redress," like virtually all organized class struggle in this period, is simultaneously a "blow" to the bosses and a temporary victory for them. The Oaxaca strike and rebellion, the supportive demonstrations by U.S. AFT chapters, the activities by Military Families Speak Out and IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) — two organizations formed by AFL-CIO and Democratic Party operatives — all provide opportunities to build a base for communist ideas in them while we're involved in whatever struggle is being organized. At the same time they're all led by the ruling class for the purpose of mis-leading workers. This is true regardless of whoever these groups' nominal local leaders are.

The Redress reflects rank-and-file soldiers' discontent with an imperialist war. Currently that discontent is being organized into a petition campaign led by the liberal rulers.

Given that the Redress is happening and over 1,000 soldiers have signed on to it, the main question is how we can take advantage of this development. Naturally, to the extent soldiers are following the liberal bosses, the Redress represents continuing victory for the capitalists. It's only when soldiers and workers can break away from following these enemies and follow communist leadership that the nature of the struggle can change.

This is true in one way or another — short of communist revolution — about every strike and struggle, no matter how militant or anti-imperialist the slogans, although the latter can raise class consciousness.

It would be an error not to participate because it is patriotic, any more than we would say don't participate in a strike or pro-immigrant demonstration just because the union or community group leads a march with an American (or Mexican) flag or recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Appealing to Congress builds as many illusions and creates as much opportunity as demanding a raise or amnesty or a new governor. What matters is what we do to build the Party in any of these struggles.

We should support the soldiers signing the petition, out of class solidarity. At the same time, as an organization, we should do what the writer says in criticizing the patriotism and raise more militant and politically sharper points, win people to communism and recruit to the Party from many angles, from within and without, loudly and one on one.

If people get soldiers to sign other statements, that's great too. To do all these things we must get deeply involved in this struggle and stay involved in every way possible.

red vet

Wider Wars Behind School ‘Reform’

As teachers in a PLP-led study group, we take teaching seriously. We want the best learning environment to teach the truth about class struggle and to prepare our students to fight for communism. They need to be able to read, write and think critically using historical knowledge, analysis and dialectical materialism.

But the schools are designed to serve the needs of the ruling class. This contradicts the ILLUSION that schools are an agency of upward mobility, that reforming capitalist schools would give working-class kids a better life. We want students to have a better life, not to drop out or do drugs, but we know that school reform is not designed to improve life for working-class kids.

Twenty years ago Party teachers helped fight for books, clean classrooms, pencil sharpeners. In those days, as long as we had our class under control, nobody knew or cared what we taught. Things have changed. It would be a mistake to mainly concentrate on the same old fight for better conditions; we must recognize the changing needs of the ruling class in the current crisis. There are now millions of dollars in additional funding, standards, standardized tests, small learning communities, and many more books. Obviously, the oldest school buildings in black and Latino communities still have moldy classrooms and falling-down ceiling tiles. In the growing imperialist crisis, the rulers need to pay closer attention to the inner-city public schools.

The ruling class wants to standardize instruction so that students receive a basic educational level of competence in reading, math, science, and social studies. They are particularly concerned with "the very poor, who drop out of high school and are therefore ineligible for the military." ("Was Kerry Right?" LA Times Op-Ed 11/3). It is precisely to prepare for wider war that the bosses are reforming education. Their rivalry with emerging imperialist powers is accelerating, and the ruling class needs to organize every aspect of society, including the schools, to lay the preparations for inevitable conflict.

Every major liberal think tank and foundation has united in this endeavor. A 2005 New York University report titled "With All Deliberate Speed", quotes retired Army Generals worrying about the high dropout rate harming military enrollment and predicts that the U.S. will need 14 million more college-trained workers by 2020, mostly to work in the war industry. A capitalist class that has spent decades pushing a racist program of drugs, social neglect and mass incarceration now faces the absolute need to change its educational plans to recruit, win and train a significantly larger sector of its inner-city youth.

One education reform has been the move to small schools which are often "school to work" programs (which serve the needs of industry), service-based programs (which train kids to be cops or otherwise serve the system) or "social justice" schools. The latter involve some of the most committed activists, but are an important part of the liberal rulers' plan to win the working class to patriotism and loyalty to the system. In these schools we spend a lot of time in meetings with our colleagues. There, and with our students, we try to expose the illusions fostered by community projects to register voters, the liberal patriotism that misdefines the fight against racism as "expanding who is an American" and the environmentalism that asks students to blame themselves for global warming. But most importantly, we fight to expose the bosses' need for war.

This month's Rethinking Schools magazine article by liberal apologist Alfie Kohn bemoans the bosses' plan to win global competition by "sending children home with packets of worksheets." He asks why we can't be allowed to educate kids to be enthusiastic and proficient learners, instead. Unlike the idealistic Kohn, we communists see that war is on the capitalist agenda and school reform is part of that. We need to expose this and win students, parents and teachers to fighting, not to reform public education for WWIII, but to build a movement to turn the bosses' war into a revolutionary war for workers' power. Only in a communist society can Kohn's dream of enthusiastic, proficient learners become a reality. Working-class students will be motivated to learn by fighting to organize society to meet our class' needs rather than to kill and die for the bosses' profits.

Reddish Teachers

Medical Murder: From Hitler to Israel to U.S.

The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., has been presenting an exhibit entitled "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race." It finally agreed, after much opposition, to bring this exhibition to the country that created the Nazis, and show it in Dresden. It was the rise of pro-Nazi groups in Germany today that convinced the Museum to do so. The exhibition displays some 400 documents, objects and photos of how Hitler’s fascist regime tried to create a "master race." Doctors and scientists played a key role, murdering thousands of children and adults considered "unfit to live" once they were catalogued as mentally ill or physically disabled.

Prior to the "Master Race" plan becoming a deadly killing machine, a joke pervaded Germany on how the "Nazi Pure Aryan" was "blonde like Hitler, tall like Goebbels and slim like Göring," Nazi leaders who were dark-haired, short and fat. But it was no joke. From 1939 to 1945 euthanasia killed 5,000 German children and 200,000 adults. It was part of the Holocaust slaughter of millions of "subhumans."

"It did not happen overnight," said Antje Uhlig, the exhibition’s director. She told the Mexican daily La Jornada (10/25): "Using the social prejudices already in place and based on the Eugenics movement, the Third Reich used research in human genetics to decide which human being was ‘valuable’ and which one was not…"

The Nazis popularized the eugenics theory British scientist Francis Galton wrote in 1883. His ideas spread internationally, including to the U.S., using horse-breeding principles to "improve" the human race through artificial selection of "the fittest." In 1930, the Dresden Hygiene Museum (site of today’s exhibition) opened on the subject of human sexuality. After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, it became the cornerstone of Nazi medical propaganda.

Upon the Nazis’ seizure of power, they enacted a law "guarding" against genetically inherited diseases, the judicial basis for euthanasia and the Holocaust.

While the law forbid abortions for Aryan mothers, whom the State idolized, still some 400,000 men and women with any one of nine Nazi-defined "hereditary illnesses" were sterilized, all according to "law."

Many doctors and scientists used this and other laws to execute horrendous human experiments. Joseph Mengele, the "Angel of Death," was the best-known of these doctors for his experiments at the Auschwitz death camp. But there were many others. Even before the war, Paul Nietzche, a Dresden psychiatrist, advocated death for the "incurably ill." He started the euthanasia program "Aktion T-4" after the 1939 invasion of Poland. It began with new-borns and then expanded to include adults. Doctors and nurses were ordered to register disabled children with genetic defects. A prestigious Berlin pediatrician, Ernst Wentzler, was one who had the final decision on who was to be killed. One picture in the exhibition shows a health crew smiling to the camera in a crematorium.

This exhibition of the past is very much related to the present. Copying the Nazis, four senior Israeli doctors were just arrested for illegally experimenting on thousands of elderly and mentally disturbed patients — including some survivors of Nazi concentration camps! — without their consent. Thirteen patients died during or shortly after one experiment.

Today, in the U.S. cutbacks in social and health services, racist medical practices and the drive for maximum profits by hospitals and HMO’s has caused the deaths of untold numbers of people who cannot afford medical care here. The bosses bribe many medical professionals to participate in these attacks, giving them relatively higher living standards than other hospital workers and most workers. Communist medical professionals have a long history of fighting the rulers’ racist attacks and strive to unite with other healthcare workers.

Nazi medical science was no aberration, but a product of a racist war-making profit system, which easily can be repeated here.

An online version of the exhibition can be seen at: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine

An irate patient

Campus’ Action Exposes ‘Justice’ Roberts

Recently chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts visited my college campus. His lecture was considered by many faculty and students to be a high point of the fall semester. What these people seemed to forget was that Roberts is not above politics; he was picked by Bush and confirmed by both parties in Congress to advance the interests of U.S. imperialism abroad and fascism at home. He is presiding over a court, which has signed off on the torture of innocent people in Guantanamo, and all over the world; which may soon seek to limit a woman’s right to abortion; and which seems determined to usher in the re-segregation of public schools.

At first I wasn’t sure whether people on my campus would be open to a demonstration attacking such a respected political figure. At our first meeting, only six other students came. It was a good opportunity for us to discuss how the Supreme Court functions to legalize fascism, racism and sexism. On the day of the demonstration, we came prepared with anti-fascist chants, soon 35 students and towns-people joined the demonstration. It was a good turnout for a school that is often considered apathetic. We distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets, and we learned that even small private colleges have people who want to ally with workers if they are given the chance.

Red Student

The Deaf Must Unite With Their Class

Since a comrade reported on the situation at Gallaudet University, the protesting students have won their battle to force the university trustees to dump their choice to succeed the retiring president.

This was a real victory for the students, but their movement contains serious contradictions. As the comrade reported, they want American Sign Language (ASL), to be primary at Gallaudet. ASL is a very different language from English and does not have a written form (the comrade did not realize this). Some of these students reject other forms of communication used by deaf people, including simultaneously signing and speaking, as incompatible with their notion of deaf culture. As the comrade rightly notes, this is a kind of identity politics, like feminism or nationalism, that separates its proponents from workers in general by emphasizing the "difference" of being deaf instead of concentrating on building class unity against the capitalist culture which does oppress the deaf in special ways. The many other deaf people, who need or prefer to use speech or English-based signing as well as ASL, are attacked as less pure and the capitalists who profit from all divisions within the working class are let off the hook.

I am myself a deaf person who lives in the mainstream (where I must use speech and lip reading to communicate). I admire the fierce energy of the Gallaudet protesters, which could go a long way toward overcoming the real, physical barriers that separate those without hearing from those with, and intensifying the common struggle against capitalism and its evils. I am saddened that far too much of that energy is being diverted into dead-end, even more isolating identity politics.

A Supporter

REDEYE

Nigeria’s workers rely on armed force

Last week militants seized more oil workers, one British and one American. More that 50 have been kidnapped this year….

The conflict has degenerated into a crisis threatening to halt oil production in the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter. Production this year is down by about 600,000 barrels a day….

"If we don’t use violence, we can find it difficult for the government and the companies to attend to our needs," said Earnest Tonye, a young militant in Port Harcourt. "It works. When you are quiet, nobody cares about you if you are dying."

At the heart of anger is what they see as decades of exploitation. Last year the Nigerian government earned about $45bn in oil revenue while more than 70% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. (GW, 11/16)

Capitalist-run world swims in sewage

Every year, more than two million children die of diarrhea and other sicknesses caused by dirty water and a lack of "access to sanitation."

…More than a third of the world’s people — 2.6 billion — have no decent place to go to the bathroom, while more than a billion get water for drinking, washing and cooking from sources polluted by human and animal feces.

At any time, almost half the people in developing countries have one or more of the main illnesses associated with inadequate water and sanitation….They are plagued by diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, trachoma and parasitic worms….

"Life-saving investments in water and sanitation are dwarfed by military spending,"… (NYT, 11/10)

Who are the worst terror-killers?

The overwhelming majority of people killed or maimed by cluster bombs are civilians and a significant number of those are children, according to an unprecedented study….The full extent of the damage caused by unexploded "bomblets" will probably never be known, it says….

Cluster bombs have been used in most major conflicts since Vietnam. Nato aircraft dropped them over civilian areas during the Kosovo conflict, British forces fired Israeli-made cluster weapons around Basra in 2003, and the Israelis fired them at Lebanon this summer….

In some areas of Iraq casualties from cluster weapons account for between 75% and 80% of all casualties. (GW, 11/16)

Voters know they’re just flipping a coin

Many voters, however, were willing to take a chance on unknown quantities.

In St. Louis, Floyd Butcher said he was not aligned with either party but would vote for Claire C. McCaskill, the Democratic challenger to senator Jim Talent.

"I’m sick of hearing Talent lie about McCaskill and sick of hearing McCaskill lie about Talent," Mr. Butcher said. "But we’ve had Talent for years now and we know that he did not do a lot for us. McCaskill may be just as bad, but at least we don’t know that for a fact." (NYT, 11/8)

‘Demand for profit’ = world hunger

Figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organiastion (FAO) show not a reduction but an increase of…undernourished people since 1996. The figure, now at more than 850 million, is testament to how current global policies are consigning the hungry to stay hungry….

The report says that neoliberal economic policy has encouraged the elimination of small-scale food producers. Farmers and indigenous peoples are seen as "residues" of history — whose disappearance is inevitable….

The message of the report is that small-scale farmers — the majority of growers in the world — want radically different policies from those being promoted by their governments. The call is for policies to start from the perspectives of food producers and consumers rather than the demand for profit. (GW, 11/9)

They work to save legs — if you’re rich

Economically and socially marginalized groups…get the shortest shrift in the amputation lottery. Among diabetics in North America, Hispanics and African Americans are 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely than whites to undergo lower limb amputations. (NYT, 11/7)

Unemployment low? This crowd says no

A new candy store that would be opening in Times Square needed workers. Starting pay was $10.75 an hour.

But by midmorning yesterday, a huge, swelling discontented crowd of job seekers was…filling the air with curses.

The crowd put a human face on jobless statistics at a time when the city’s unemployment rate, 4.5 percent in September, was the lowest since 1988.

Several thousand people — mostly young, black and Hispanic — had shown up to apply for fewer than 200 positions, only 65 of them full-time jobs. They came, they said, because of a phrase that had leapt out of the advertisements for the jobs: "on-the-spot hiring." But there were too many people clogging the sidewalk outside the building on Eighth Avenue between 35th and 36th streets where the company was conducting interviews, and everyone was abruptly told to go home and mail in the job applications….

Many had arranged for baby sitters, traveled from other boroughs and New Jersey, and lined up as early as 1 a.m.,…. (NYT, 11/4)

Short-Circuiting Soldiers’ Political Potential

Book Review: "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance during the Vietnam War," By David Cortright, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2005

The new edition of "Soldiers in Revolt," David Cortright’s 1975 survey of the Vietnam era GI movement fits well into U.S. rulers’ plans for a larger Army with Nazi-like commitment to prepare for bigger and bloodier wars ahead. As more and more workers, students and soldiers oppose the war in Iraq, Cortright’s ideas will be used to mislead the anti-war movement.

"Soldiers in Revolt" chronicles an impressive sequence of GI revolts, but then distorts these insurgencies with identity politics, faith in democratic reform and patriotism.

Soldiers Fight Back

Hundreds of thousands of troops rebelled during the Vietnam War with 250 anti-war, anti-racist committees and "underground" newspapers distributed illegally on bases and ships, in stockades and on the front lines.

The "less sophisticated, often violent means" [Cortright’s words] soldiers employed were even better. Outraged by the beating of a black soldier, the Ft. Bragg stockade erupted on July 23, 1968. Black and white GIs held out for over 48 hours before surrendering to armed troops from the 82nd Airborne. In early November 1972, the U.S.S. Constellation witnessed "the first mass mutiny in the history of the U.S. Navy." We should all be so "unsophisticated"!

As Cortright reveals, the Pentagon admitted 47% of active-duty soldiers participated in organized resistance or rebellion during the height of the GI movement in 1970-71. The imperialists’ worse nightmare would be soldiers won to revolutionary communist class-consciousness leading widespread Armed Forces rebellion.

Two Traps: Identity Politics and Democracy

But even the descriptions of rebellions must be read with care. The Progressive Labor Party’s single mention vastly downplays our military work. Knowing better, U.S. counter-intelligence officer Taylor testified (House Internal Securities Committee, Vol. II, 1972) that "other organizations were being overshadowed by . . . PLP in the 6th Army."

Cortright distorted the Party’s work in the mass anti-racist fight-back at Ft. Lewis led by three comrades, black, Latin and white. His nationalist and identity politics led him to describe the struggle as mostly whites supporting blacks, while maintaining "blacks normally stood alone in resisting racial abuses."

In fact, we built a multi-racial group (a slight majority were black) that fought racism and genocidal war on a class basis. Fifty CHALLENGE readers, writers and sellers, with the aid of thousands of leaflets and pamphlets, spread the word: racist attacks hurt all GIs! The brass did "their best to scare white GI’s away from fighting racism," according to an internal PLP report. "We succeeded in gathering some of the most militant, serious fighters, black, Latin and white around the Party by concentrating on the fight against racism." A number eventually joined.

Cortright pushes "democracy," devoting 85 pages to his plan to secure a volunteer army based largely on democratic reforms. "Voluntary recruitment…can only work in a…democratically structured armed force…."

Within those 85 pages, only one paragraph criticizes imperialism. The anti-racist struggle is reduced to "proud young blacks…fight[ing] for their rightful share of democratic freedoms." PLP, on the other hand, exposed capitalist democracy as a bosses’ dictatorship founded upon racism and imperialism. Soldiers’ experiences made them sympathetic to this analysis.

Another Trap: Bosses’ Patriotism

Cortright’s analysis has developed into a sophisticated defense of a "benign" U.S. imperialism. His August 2002 article "Stop the War Before it Starts" (The Progressive Magazine), favors building a movement that "ride[s] the patriotic wave and offer[s] forward-looking solutions that uphold the best traditions of American democracy." He raised more than $300,000 for Win Without War, promoting it as "mainstream and patriotic." He bragged that ads and press releases featured an American flag. Its mission statement began with "We are patriotic Americans…" ("A Peaceful Superpower: the Movement against War in Iraq")

The biggest imperialists finance Cortright. He heads the Fourth Freedom Forum funded by the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The new edition of his book contains a postscript in which he advocates a legalistic approach, explaining how he tried to sue the army. He further describes the new liberal coalition he wants to build to reform the army.

Cortright knows how the "Vietnam Syndrome" can affect soldiers. He’s already pushing GI "anti-war" petitions (for redress) to Congress starting — once again — with "As a patriotic American…" His patriotism sets up soldiers for the next war, preempting class consciousness.

PLP will continue military organizing to win soldiers to wage revolutionary class war against the imperialist warmakers, recruiting soldiers to the workers’ side. A revolution to smash this racist, capitalist system requires the active support of vast numbers of troops. Political friendships made in the military will help pave the long road to communism. "Soldiers in Revolt" may be worth reading for the stories of GI unrest, but Cortright’s politics, then and now, make a mockery of these brave soldiers’ struggles.

God Save The Queen Because The Working Class Definitely Shouldn’t!

I watched the movie "The Queen" with a friend from work and her reaction was "you know, Mrs. Blair in the movie was right, the Queen definitely does freeload off of the people with thirty million dollars in taxes coming in to support her." As if all capitalists don’t! The toilets in the Hilton hotels are scrubbed by underpaid workers not Paris Hilton. Whether absolute monarchy or bourgeois democracy, workers maintain the rulers’ thrones and mansions!

"The Queen" covered the time period shortly after Princess Diana died in 1997 and Tony Blair assumed the position of Prime Minister of England. Like another movie out right now, "Marie Antoinette," these movies are just trying to humanize workers’ oppressors, while ignoring their daily crimes against the working class. Even though around the world racist police terrorize, beat and kill workers regularly, the bosses want us to shed tears when one of them dies.

During her lifetime Princess Diana called for many reforms such as reducing the spread of AIDS, uncovering buried land mines in war-torn countries, and providing aid for starving children. While she was practically elevated to sainthood by the capitalist press, Diana was nothing more than a liberal apologist who thought charity and photo-ops would cure the working class of those above-mentioned ills. Her supposed heart of gold captivated many workers, but all the actual gold she wore had been extracted by suffering mine workers around the world. When she died workers lost little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In Europe, many monarchies consolidated their wealth with the capitalists as they came to power and now are collaborators with the ruling class. In Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth advised Tony Blair. Far from a figurehead, she uses Blair as a messenger and enforcer for the agenda of the entire ruling class. You see this in the movie when Elizabeth questions Blair on his plans. The scene ends with the conversation trailing off as he mentions education reform, not getting into how Blair has pushed the imperialist war in Iraq and racist attacks on Muslim workers.

Tony Blair listens as Elizabeth concludes that the people needed their Queen to be there for them and that she is well known for keeping her feelings private. The message of the movie is that heads of state (be they queen, prime minister or president) cry just like we cry and that they are really people too. However rulers don’t cry because handcuffs dig into their wrists, nightsticks sting their cheeks, or their relatives die from poverty!

For the most part power and privilege have taken on a new appearance; the people who wield them don’t have crowns on their heads, just suits and flags. Yet no matter which master sits on top, workers will get screwed. Capitalism, feudalism, and slave societies all have concentration of power in the hands of the few at the expense of the masses. Tony Blair may have been part of the "Labor" party, but the working class only finds itself laboring endlessly for the profits of the ruling class. It is up to the working class to seize power through communist revolution and establish a system based on everyone’s needs.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, November 15, 2006

Information: 15 November 2006 701 hits

OAXACA REBELS BATTLE FASCIST TROOPS
1. Support Spreading
RULERS TRY TO FOOL WORKERS WITH PHONY IRAQ `EXIT' SCHEMES
1. Oil-thirsty Liberals Seek More Mid-East Killing, Not Less
2. Baker-Hamilton Brain-Trust Imperialist to the Core
3. DEMS PUSH MILITARISM
Imperialist Rivalries Dictate Latin American Elections
1. Latin American Elections Reflect Splits in the Ruling Classes
2. BRAZIL
3. ECUADOR
BUILDING COMMUNIST CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG D.C. TRANSIT WORKERS
Students Oppose Military `Career Fair,' Challenge University Intimidation
FIGHTING HIV and AIDS, FIGHTING FOR REVOLUTION!
PL'ers Fight for Real Communist Politics at Conference
Bronx Postal Workers Battle Layoffs, Closings
Auto Bosses' Rivalry Puts Brakes on Ford, GM
1. Here is evidence that the Big Three is no more:
Corruption Inc.: NYC Central Faker Council Robs Workers Blind
Sit-down Striker Fights Anti-Immigrant French Bosses
RED YOUTH BUILD PLP IN MEXICO
LA Workers Back Oaxaca Rebels
LETTERS
1. Is PLP Against `Better Schools'?
  1. CHALLENGE Comment:
2. Racism Won't Fly With Airport Workers
3. Workers Back Anti-Klan Protesters
Nicaraguan Election Exposes Opportunists' Betrayal
PLP HISTORY:
Miners' Rebellion Launched PL's 44 Years in Class Struggle
REDEYE
1. First nukes in Korea came from U.S.
2. Climate issue is handy for ruling class
3. Elections aren't fooling many people
4. New Love for sugar daddies: Democrats
5. China and India see wars over energy
6. TV ad speeds up child's development
7. North's rulers also got rich on slavery
Book Review:
U.S. Britain Betrayed Death Camp Inmates
In Memory of Sam Chestnut
Nov 26, 1943 - Sept. 26, 2006
Book Review:
Murder Mystery With Working-Class Hero

OAXACA REBELS BATTLE FASCIST TROOPS

OAXACA, MEXICO, Oct. 29 -- Today, thousands of fascist federal police with tanks and bullets invaded this city of rebellion. Protestors reinforced their barricades with burning busses, some with full gas tanks. Thousands of workers with bags of rocks, with poles and Molotov cocktails waited for the police. Then the cops were met with a barrage of rocks. Fighting was hand to hand.

Other police used 80 buses to open the roads but youth ran alongside cutting their tires and burning some -- busses and police. Two older people with rock-filled bags on their shoulders ran from a barricade to an opening, bringing the rocks to the youth.

At one barricade led by women, demonstrations captured 12 unarmed young soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, detained them and later turned them over to the military.

Others wrongly waved the Mexican flag to try to slow the attack. But this flag -- which President Fox holds to his chest -- represents the bosses, not the workers.

By day's end, smoke and tear gas filled the city. Four workers were killed, with hundreds injured and arrested. The working class in general joined the struggle: teachers, workers, students and farm workers. It was a lesson for future struggles.

The city fell into the fascists' hands, but the spirit of struggle is freer than ever. This was one more battle in the long war against capitalism. Thousands of these now experienced fighters are open to a broader vision of the revolutionary struggle, not just for crumbs or capitalist reforms but also for control of all state power through a real communist revolution.

Oaxaca is one of Mexico's poorest states, with a large indigenous population and a reputation for rebelliousness. Control over Oaxaca is crucial for the bosses to prevent opposition to their project linking the Pacific Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico -- part of Plan Puebla Panama, (see box page 5) with great potential for tourism as well as an important transportation hub. Oaxaca is a source of cheap labor forced to migrate to the U.S., Mexico City and northern Mexico. The bosses fear that the racism, poverty and rebelliousness provide fertile ground for the revolt to spread.

The competing rulers have both political and economic motives for smashing the movement. Ex-governors Carrasco and Murat want to preserve control of state power and guarantee their profits. Elba Gordillo, the top hack of the SNTE (National Teachers' Union) -- and right hand of Mexico's newly-elected president Calderón -- wants to control the militant Oaxaca SNTE Section 22. Governor Ulises represents another ruling-class faction and uses violence to maintain his position.

While these murderers vie for power, the workers are repressed and killed. Ulises has held on because the other groups can't agree. He has the support of most of the PRI party which fears losing control of Oaxaca State to other electoral parties.

The fascist repression reveals the true face of Fox, Calderón, Abascal (Interior Minister) and the PAN, Fox's party. Although having tactical disagreements with PAN, López Obrador and his opposition PRD party showed their pro-boss class interest by their tepid response to the government's criminal actions. All of them are sworn enemies of the working class. We should never trust any of them or the capitalist system that they defend by murdering workers.

The PLP has played a modest but important role in the movement in Oaxaca, including distribution of CHALLENGE, the spreading of communist ideas and mass actions of support nationally and internationally. New friends are closer because of the Party's boldness in the struggle and its communist analysis of events.

We workers will only succeed when we organize in a party to take state power for the working class, not just to remove a gangster like Ruiz so the bosses can replace him with another puppet. We need communist consciousness over the long run to destroy the bosses' state power and establish a communist society where the decisions are made by the organized working class.

For the comrades who have fallen in the struggle and the thousands who have fought valiantly, the PLP commits itself to redouble our efforts to bring the fight for communism to every corner of Oaxaca and the world. We call on you to march under the Red Flag of the international working class.

Support Spreading

Four hundred thousand teachers from the CNTE (a national dissident group inside the Teachers Union) called for a work stoppage against the fascist police assault on the five-month struggle in Oaxaca. Protests have spread throughout Mexico and in Los Angeles, New York City, London, Madrid and many other cities. Political conditions for bringing communist ideas to the masses are maturing. PLP is helping to organize support actions in the U.S. and Latin America while presenting the goal of communist revolution.

RULERS TRY TO FOOL WORKERS WITH PHONY IRAQ `EXIT' SCHEMES

More than 100 GI's lost their lives to U.S. imperialism in Iraq during October. The puppet Iraqi government has given up trying to count its own dead citizens. Meanwhile, Establishment liberals are cynically trying to parlay disgust at the mounting carnage into a Democratic Congressional electoral victory and tighter control of U.S. foreign policy for the Bush regime's remaining two years. The dominant liberal wing of U.S. capitalism forced Bush to make a public admission of mistakes over Iraq at his October 25 press conference. Bush, dropping the "Stay-the-Course" slogan, welcomed the forthcoming recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), headed by Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton. Behind its misleading "phased withdrawal" rhetoric, the panel's report reflects the rulers' need for intensified warfare in the oil-rich Middle East.

Oil-thirsty Liberals Seek More Mid-East Killing, Not Less

The ISG report, slated for post-Election Day publication but leaked to the press in mid-October, presents two main options, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain." The former would focus U.S. troops on wiping out insurgents in Baghdad (population 5,000,000), an operation that would make November 2005 U.S.-led massacre in Fallujah (population 400,000) look like a tea party. The latter meshes with calls by Rep. John Murtha and a host of Democratic Congressional candidates for a tactical retreat of U.S. forces from Iraq followed by an all-out re-invasion of the entire region. The re-deployers don't want all the troops out, however. The U.S. has built 14 permanent military bases near Iraq's oil fields, pipelines, and major cities.

The ISG also recommends negotiating with Iran and Syria. Such talks would be classic gunboat diplomacy. The U.S. Navy has recently dispatched two strike groups, including the aircraft carrier Enterprise, to the Persian Gulf. And, under the guise of monitoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.S.-led NATO is conducting a massive naval build-up in the eastern Mediterranean.

Baker-Hamilton Brain-Trust Imperialist to the Core

Though hailing from Texas, ISG co-chairman Baker serves the imperialist Eastern Establishment. His law firm, Baker Botts, has represented Exxon Mobil and its predecessors for over a century. The Texas Commerce Bank, started by Baker's grandfather, is now part of JP MorganChase. As papa Bush's Secretary of State, Baker rounded up allies for the first Iraq war. Even before the second one began, the Baker Institute he founded teamed up with the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations to produce "Guiding Principles," a 32-page document on how to conduct the occupation. Bush & Co. failed to heed it. Hamilton, the ISG's other leader, sports equally impressive imperialist credentials. A Hart-Rudman commissioner, he helped draft U.S. rulers' plans for maintaining their supremacy well into the 21st Century by implementing a police state to mobilize the nation for ever larger wars.

DEMS PUSH MILITARISM

Whatever success liberals may have in exerting influence over the White House and getting Democrats elected won't benefit the working class one bit. Rumsfeld is indeed a war criminal. But firing him, as the liberal New York Times demanded (10/24/06), would only advance the imperialists' deadly agenda. The militaristic mobilization that liberals really want comes through loud and clear in the latest issue of "Blueprint," published by the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by none other than Hillary Clinton. Its lead article, "The Plan: Big Ideas for America," says, "All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service. This is not a draft -- nor is it military. Young people will be trained not as soldiers, but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the event of natural disaster, epidemic, or terrorist attack." The phony "anti-militarism" soon yields to imperialist warmongering when the article later says, "We need to fortify the military's `thin green line' around the world by adding to the Special Forces and the Marines, and expanding the Army by 100,000 more troops."

The state of affairs that necessitates the rulers' Baker-Hamilton intervention presents the working class both with the danger of more lethal wars and the opportunity to organize against them. Simply put, Bush faces the task of mobilizing, people who don't want to be mobilized. The Clinton-appointed bi-partisan Hart-Rudman Commission report demands a sacrifice of "blood and treasure" for U.S. imperialism -- the "treasure" meaning higher taxes, not tax cuts. But capitalists with less imperialist aspirations -- who comprise part of Bush's voting base -- do not want war taxes eating into their profits. More importantly, the vast majority of workers are unwilling to give their lives for Exxon and JP MorganChase in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. In such times, our Party can and must build a working-class anti-imperialist war movement with the outlook of eliminating the profit system through communist revolution.

(Disciplining both capitalists and workers is crucial to the rulers' war plans. Next issue will analyze future New York governor Eliot Spitzer, the so-called "Sheriff of Wall Street," and the growth of the U.S. police state.)

Imperialist Rivalries Dictate Latin American Elections

It's election season across Latin America, and capitalist elections can mean both nothing and something. Capitalists spend billions on them to try to settle disagreements within their class and to win the allegiance of workers, who are led to bank their hopes of a better world on electoral change.

Elections provide a dialectics lesson in appearance and essence. Capitalism trains us to think superficially. The bosses celebrate elections, saying our voices matter. Politicians make big promises, but after the fuss of expensive elections, the working class always loses out. Using dialectics, however, we can learn to see beyond the appearances the media present and analyze the essential nature of the elections: no matter which politicians win they serve the bosses, not the workers.

Latin American Elections Reflect Splits in the Ruling Classes

Venezuela is a key oil producer which the U.S. once considered its backyard. Many workers see Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez as a courageous anti-imperialist leader; he survived a U.S.-backed 2002 coup and called Bush the "devil" in a recent UN speech as part of his now troubled bid for a Security Council seat. But he is only anti-U.S. (or merely anti-Bush), not a real anti-imperialist. Challengers to U.S. imperialism like China, India, Russia and Iran are investing heavily in Venezuela's oil. Venezuela is now shifting oil exports from the U.S. to China and India (in the first seven months of 2006, U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil declined 13% compared to the same period in 2005). Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil are now investing heavily in Venezuela oil and gas. Russia also just signed a billion-dollar deal to sell modern weapons to the Venezuelan Armed Forces. Also, a section of the local ruling class is making huge profits because of the oil price boom, while workers have gotten just a few crumbs. The support for Chavez by U.S. imperialist rivals symbolizes the relative decline of U.S. influence in Latin America, even though U.S. Big Oil and banks are still making big bucks in Venezuela. Chávez looks like he'll win the December presidential election. His slogan is "Ten Million Votes Down Their Throats." Chavez's discredited opposition, pro-U.S. factions of local rulers, has united around Manuel Rosales who supported the 2002 U.S.-backed coup against Chavez, later calling it a "mistake" in a "moment of confusion."

BRAZIL

In Brazil, the nation with the world's sharpest social inequality, the current "Workers'' Party president "Lula" da Silva won re-election with 60% of the votes in the second round, defeating the more pro-U.S. candidate Gerardo Alckmin. Workers supported Lula, an ex-metalworker and unionist, because of his reputation as a "working-class fighter." In 2002, when Lula was first elected, this appearance of being "pro-worker" worked, and did again today despite the corruption surrounding his Party.

But Lula basically represents the Sao Paulo bourgeoisie (the most powerful in Latin America) and Petrobras (the oil monopoly owned jointly by the state and private local and foreign investors). Since 2002, Lula has not changed the sharp social inequality or racism in this mostly non-white country. He didn't even withdraw Brazilian troops from Haiti after the U.S.-led invasion ousted Pres. Aristide. But Lula has bolstered Brazil's economic ties with China, selling it soy, iron ore and meat worth billions, while Brazilian workers suffer deep social spending cuts. By 2003, the total value of trade between the two countries was $36 billion; it's projected to reach $100 billion by 2010.

ECUADOR

A November run-off election in Ecuador features billionaire Alvaro Noboa, who favors close ties with the U.S. and Rafael Correa, a young professor. Noboa is the strike-breaking owner of many banana plantations utilizing child labor. Univ. of Illinois-trained economist Correa again is seen as the "lesser of two evils" by many, but he is just another capitalist tool. Correa's "leftist," campaign is based on diverting oil, Ecuador's main export, from the U.S. and into Asia. A section of the local rulers wants Correa to cash in on the opportunities with U.S. rivals. This doesn't mean Correa will end the poverty and racism suffered by urban and rural workers (many indigenous). He doesn't even plan to end the dollarization of the currency which plunged workers into more poverty a few years ago when it was adopted. According to one of his colleagues: "Correa is against the status quo, but that doesn't make him a Marxist or a messianic leader like Chavez" (NY Times, 10/16). The Times admits, "That may be why some prominent financiers and businessmen have backed him." Correa is in essence representing the bosses seeking to change the "status quo" of U.S. domination to some other imperialist bloc. And to the working class of Ecuador, he's a mortal enemy.

The shifting of Latin American ruling-class alliances away from U.S. influence and towards major rivals represents an area of concern for U.S. imperialism. The capitalists' constant rivalry for natural resources, markets, and labor is leading to imperialist wars world-wide. Our job as communists is not to build illusions about "lesser evil" bosses but to seize the opportunity to turn their wars into revolutionary struggles. That is why we aim to build a mass communist international PLP. A first step is to expand the CHALLENGE networks, to win workers to communist politics. Imperialism may seem invincible now, but in the long run it is vulnerable. There are two classes in this world: workers and bosses. What matters is which class wins, not which capitalist.

BUILDING COMMUNIST CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG D.C. TRANSIT WORKERS

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 21 -- PLP study groups and growing youth leadership are helping consolidate the Party among Metro transit workers. Broader political education events train this emerging leadership and bring more revolutionary ideas to a wider circle of workers.

In this spirit, Local 689 held the third annual Committee on Political Education (COPE) Conference. Both younger and senior workers engaged in intense discussions about the Iraq war, the challenge of rising healthcare and pension costs and the need for militant actions, including strikes, to advance our class's interests. Significantly, not a single politician was invited.

Before Metro workers elected a communist president, there were no COPE conferences. Instead, the union would host a dinner/dance party and invite politicians as keynote speakers. The effect of those events was deadening. It deepened the reliance of union members on politicians and solidified the alignment of the union leadership with the bosses' politicians. The recent COPE conferences have broken with the politicians, struggled for higher levels of class consciousness and analysis on the part of rank-and-file workers, and brought an environment that helps create more revolutionaries. That's a worthwhile goal for the future of our class!

This conference's discussion about Iraq followed the viewing of a short video of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "Beyond Vietnam" in which King drew parallels between the war in Vietnam and racism in the U.S., and questioned pacifism after seeing workers struggling to survive in U.S. ghettos and on the front lines in Vietnam. This sparked a lively discussion about whether Democratic politicians actually want to end the war. We said no, they're lying as usual! U.S. imperialist interests are too great in Iraq for the bosses to give up in that area -- Democrats have the same goal as Republicans on this issue (with slightly different tactics).

Preparing to fight the looming cuts in health coverage and pensions requires mass, conscious mobilization, not reliance on the union president to be a "clever negotiator." Past union history has turned off many workers and led others to rely on favors from the union officers instead of militant struggle. The current communist president concluded the discussion of the bosses' attacks and past inadequate responses with a clear call to prepare for a mass strike when the contract expires in 2008.

Students Oppose Military `Career Fair,' Challenge University Intimidation

CALIFORNIA, Oct. 29 --Last week, over 70 students marched back and forth through a Southern California campus fair filled with military and police recruiters chanting, "La Migra, La Policia, La Misma Porqueria!" ("The Border Patrol, the Cops, the Same Crap!") and "Political Repression Means Fight Back!" They were protesting police infiltration, military recruitment and imperialist war. As part of a growing trend, the university administration is trying to suppress militant, anti-imperialist activism through intimidation, police surveillance, and by limiting "free speech zones." The university career fair was a "Who's Who" of local police, border patrol and all the armed forces, reflecting the rulers' efforts to build war and fascism.

People readily took over 75 CHALLENGES, many especially interested in articles about Oaxaca and the war in Iraq. PLP's paper brought a welcome note of communist internationalism to the event.

Several months ago, a policewoman had infiltrated an immigrants' rights campus organization. She attended meetings, claiming to be a student. She later openly bragged about her stoolpigeon activities when she and another cop were arresting a student in a campus protest opposing the invasion of Lebanon.

This revelation opened students' eyes, leading many to see the university's real function as an institution to win students to the ruling class's ideology and to build fascism. Many were outraged and spurred to protest in last week's march.

University administrators tried to quiet and coerce the students to end their march. Some even argued that the "nice people with badges" were here "to give the students jobs."

Even many non-demonstrators were surprised at the array of employers: the border patrol, 11 different police and sheriff departments and the military. The push to recruit to such jobs on this working-class campus reflects the ruling class's need to replenish its army for wider wars, to continue its racist attacks at the border and in the cities. At the rally, one student speaker condemned the school's erecting a new criminology lab in partnership with the LAPD, while at the same time the war rages, student tuition keeps rising and cutbacks shrink the number of classes. Another speaker called for unity of students, workers and soldiers to build a revolutionary movement.

One point of debate among the activists was whether the demonstration should emphasize "free speech" or the fight against imperialism and racism. The free speech issue has arisen on other campuses as the rulers move to suppress an anti-imperialist movement. However, many are seeing that the fight for "free speech" contradicts building a revolutionary movement.

For example, while students spoke attacking the administration, one organizer felt it important to present the "other side," to allow a pro-war Republican to speak. Capitalist "free speech" means allowing such rights for racists like the Minutemen or the KKK, who shouldn't be allowed to spew their racist, nationalist garbage anywhere! The bosses allow "free speech" for those who support the ruling-class agenda, while attacking and suppressing those who oppose it.

Neither the university administration nor the capitalist state is neutral. As their wars spread, they will use their state power to try to stop the revolutionary movement. Only our long-term fight to destroy this capitalist system with communist revolution can end imperialist war and racist police terror. Recent campus events have led to deeper discussions about the system and the need for communism and the PLP.

FIGHTING HIV and AIDS, FIGHTING FOR REVOLUTION!

Washington, DC, Oct. 21--Today, over 50 comrades and friends in the anti-racist struggle against HIV and AIDS assembled at the Washington Highlands Library in the heart of Washington, D.C.'s impoverished black community to fight for more resources and programs to battle the HIV and AIDS epidemic here.

Washington, D.C. has the worst incidence of AIDS in the U.S. D.C. health providers estimate that five percent of the population and ten percent of the city's black men are HIV positive, with the infection rate for women climbing quickly. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 47 percent of gay black men have HIV, an outrageous number. The epidemic is further fueled by substance use from heroin to cocaine, untreated mental illness and social stigma against AIDS patients.

PLP'ers bring a revolutionary communist perspective to this struggle. The capitalists and imperialists commit mass murder by creating conditions in which millions contract the disease worldwide. The root causes of the spread of AIDS include the capitalist creations of wars, poverty, housing segregation, sexism and disruptive jobs that displace and fracture families. Capitalists also profit from drug-pushing in the cities and save money by denying mental-health care and substance-use care to workers ravaged by capitalism. On top of this, capitalist culture produces stigma and religious ostracism about the disease, as well as individualistic consciousness that says that public health need not deal with this disease because it's a personal issue and the fault of the individual anyway!

PLP'ers have been working in the coalition of HIV and AIDS activists to carry out grassroots organizing for the past year from the Washington Highlands Public Library. Ward 8 Democrats also meet there monthly to advance their misleading reform rhetoric, so we are reaching many young people and politicians with our sharper advocacy and anti-capitalist analysis.

The Disparities Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) has led politically sharp outreach activities every third Saturday, not only distributing condoms and testing information, but also petitioning for jobs and services and involving those most affected.

Participating at today's speakout along with MWPHA were Metro Teen AIDS, the Condom Project, Unity Health Care, and Family and Medical Counseling Service, RAP, Inc., and the Whitman Walker Clinic. D.C. Fights Back is a new activist HIV group that led efforts to make local politicians defend their basically nonexistent response to AIDS during the recent mayoral and city council elections. This week MWPHA voted to make this their advocacy program for the next two years, which should deepen the mass character of the campaign against HIV and AIDS.

Reform demands such as condoms in the schools and on the buses, needle exchange with drug rehab, jobs and increased funding for Ryan White (AIDS treatment legislation) and AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, are sharp struggles that lead to intense political discussion and analysis with public health workers, community residents and politicians. These debates and struggles will not change the root cause of the problem, however. So it is crucial that these activists, many of whom already understand that capitalism is the culprit, join the PLP to fight to topple the entire capitalist structure. PLP'ers continue to meet one-on-one with students and young workers, as well as with the patients and community workers. A Party study group is in the works.

PL'ers Fight for Real Communist Politics at Conference

AMHERST, MASS., Oct. 28 -- Members and friends of PLP participated in this weekend's triennial conference of "Rethinking Marxism" at the University of Massachusetts here. The conference focus was "Rethinking Communism." Communism certainly invites lots of rethinking. The record of the 20th century communist movement urgently requires analysis and reassessment. This conference only partially met this requirement. PLP, more than any other force, pressed for urgent discussion and debate.

One session, on "red pedagogy," addressed being a communist teacher in a working-class college: how to break down barriers between theory and practice and how to inspire students to view action against inequality as integral to their growth as thinking beings. Other sessions debated current U.S. domestic and foreign policy. In one, prominent liberals and neo-Marxists stressed the necessity to "defend democracy" as the bulwark against emerging fascism and anguished over the votes stolen by the Republicans in 2000 and 2004. PLP members and friends emphasized the theft of wages intrinsic to capitalism, as well as the theft of jobs under Democrats because of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement, implemented under Clinton).

Other sessions reviewed the history of the communist movement. The record of the Stalin era -- as demonically caricatured in Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" of 1956 about was subjected to more positive, if critical, review. The return of capitalism in China was strongly criticized, and anti-communist rants about the supposed "disasters" of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were challenged.

Revolutionary communist politics were of great interest to some, but many others were pulled to the right by neo-Marxism. Some cited as gospel truth the ideas of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who say that "oppositional trans-class global `people'" have replaced the working class and that it's no longer necessary to organize a revolution to overthrow the capitalists' state. Others were influenced by the economic analyses of the group from the journal "Rethinking Marxism" (conference sponsors), who state revolution is "unnecessary" because elements of communist production "already exist under capitalism," and need only be brought to fruition.

The irrelevant academic nature of the "Marxism" advocated by the conference's sponsors emerged during the large plenary meetings, which completely evaded all questions on the theory and practice of communism. In the closing plenary, supposedly devoted to the topic "Rethinking Communism," this betrayal of the conference participants came out sharply. Speakers droned on about bourgeois philosophy, vaguely red-baited the 20th century communist legacy, and offered no analysis whatsoever about what to do.

PLP members and friends, and others in the audience, roundly attacked them. The former stressed the imminence of fascism, the growth of racism (domestic and international), and the need to rebuild the communist movement. A PLP member outlined our analysis of the historical failures of socialism -- seen in hindsight -- and the need to fight directly for communism by building a mass party around that line.

PLP members and friends who boldly challenged the inadequacies of neo-Marxism were warmly congratulated by various conference participants. PLP'ers distributed 350 Party flyers and many people bought PL material from our literature table, leading to many fruitful contacts. Without PLP's presence at the conference, it would have been a far tamer affair, constituting no threat at all to the bourgeois sources that fund it.

Bronx Postal Workers Battle Layoffs, Closings

BRONX, NY, Oct. 26 -- Postal workers picketed the Bronx GPO at 149th St. and the Grand Concourse protesting the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) plan to close 139 processing centers nationwide by Nov. 18. Similar actions occurred in Newark, NJ, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. Workers could lose their jobs and customers will suffer even more delays in services and deliveries.

Postal workers collected signatures among area residents to send to Senators Clinton and Schumer stating that the transferring of operations to Manhattan will cause delays at three important local mail centers; will delay mail deliveries to residential and commercial customers; and the job losses will have a devastating effect on local Bronx businesses.

Interestingly, Clinton and Schumer have done nothing to save these jobs and services but they continue to vote for more funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for even more troops to be sent there, to be paid for partly out of cutbacks like these. The cuts have a racist character, affecting mainly black and Latino residents of the Bronx.

The USPS has held no public hearing to inform the community of the cutbacks. The Bronx Coalition to Save Postal Offices is organizing its own community hearing for 12 noon on Sat., Nov. 18, in Lincoln Hospital's auditorium, 234 E. 149th St.

The Bronx GPO operation, employing 250 workers on three shifts, would be transferred to Manhattan's Morgan General Mail Facility, benefiting mainly corporations and big businesses.

Auto Bosses' Rivalry Puts Brakes on Ford, GM

DETROIT, MI -- "All the old rules of the game are gone," said James P. Womack, co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute. He was referring to the deepening crisis of the domestic U.S. auto industry.

The fact that autoworkers may very well be seeing through their union's surrender to the bosses' crisis is evident in some Ford workers' reactions to their leaders' "solution." At a recent PLP Communist Workers' School, a Ford worker reported that his local leadership circulated a survey to get an idea which buyout options workers were taking. Many of the surveys came back with "FUCK YOU" written on them.

Here is evidence that the Big Three is no more:

*Ford lost $7.2 billion through September and could lose $10.6-billion this year, matching GM's losses last year. Ford is closing 16 factories, eliminating 40,000 jobs and will not make a profit in North America until 2009. After having been "#2" to G.M. for 70 years, Ford will now fall behind Toyota in the U.S. market. After the current round of job cuts, there will be more Toyota workers in the U.S. than Ford workers.

*G.M. is cutting 30,000 jobs and closing a dozen plants. It is about to be passed by Toyota as the biggest auto producer in the world. G.M. just introduced the Chevrolet Aveo subcompact, built for it by its South Korean partner, Daewoo.

*The Chrysler Group reported a $1.5 billion loss for this summer, more than twice what it expected. DaimlerChrysler is pairing with the Chinese automaker Chery to build a subcompact car.

*Bankrupt Delphi, spun off by GM to become the world's largest parts supplier, will eliminate nearly 75% of its U.S. work- force through buyouts and early retirements by the end of this year. It intends to slash the wages of the few remaining workers in half.

*As GM, Ford and Chrysler continue to retreat, the foreign competition is investing billions of dollars in U.S. factories, hiring thousands of workers.

*The United Automobile Workers (UAW), as always, is a loyal servant and junior partner to the bosses in this bloody restructuring. It negotiated the job eliminations at GM, Ford and Delphi sending a signal to the workers to get out before 2007 contract talks, when things will get even worse. They granted health care concessions to G.M. and Ford, and are now in similar talks with Chrysler.

The carnage at GM, Ford and Delphi reflects the increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism. While they shed 100,000 jobs and close over 40 factories, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes and a host of parts suppliers from Europe and Asia are opening new plants. While the "old rules of the game" may be gone for the domestic U.S. auto industry, the rules of capitalism are firmly in place. Iraq is a window to the future of what the bosses have in store for us. That is how the bosses settle their fights for markets, resources and cheap labor.

Just as we cannot avoid fascism and war, we cannot stop these attacks. But we can fight the bosses, expose the union leaders and build a larger base for PLP. When the union leadership at Ford got back the workers' reaction to the afore-mentioned survey (see above), they concluded that the workers weren't taking Ford's crisis seriously. We think it's a sign of life. And by deepening our personal and political ties, we will try to make the most of it.

Corruption Inc.: NYC Central Faker Council Robs Workers Blind

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 24 -- Enron and Halliburton have come to this city's labor movement, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. Brian McLaughlin is president of the NYC Central Labor Council -- the country's largest such council -- comprising members in 400 local unions. And how did he lead them? By organizing solidarity and strikes among these one million trade unionists? By uniting black, Latino, white and Asian workers? Not quite.

Rather he has just been indicted on federal racketeering charges, embezzlement, receiving bribes, fraud and money laundering. He stole over $2 million from the Council, the State Assembly (he's a Democrat Assemblyman), from his own re-election campaign funds and as bribes from street lighting contractors.

His annual union income of $263,000 in salaries and expense accounts was not quite enough to finance his life style. So he took $95,000 from donations to union-sponsored Little League baseball teams to pay his rent. He used subordinates as personal servants to take his dog to the vet and trap rodents in his basement. He stole $330,000 from his campaign funds to pay for a rehearsal dinner for his son's wedding and for his country club membership. And the money from street lighting contractors bought an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz for his wife and paid his son's college tuition.

As one official put it, the extent of his theft was "stunning in its breadth and scope," lending "new meaning to the term `hand in the till.'"

While posing as a "friend of the workers," McLaughlin "provided pivotal early support for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election," (NY Times, 10/18) helping elect the very same billionaire who tried to break the NYC transit strike.

Why would the bosses' government indict such a friend? Apparently when the corruption gets so deep, they choose to use such sacrificial lambs to discredit honest trade unionists and stop the siphoning off of funds they need for their own exploitative purposes.

But then again, what should one expect from a trade union movement that's run like a business, aping the bosses with whom these labor fakers are negotiating one sellout contract after another? Yet McLaughlin's thievery is measured only in the low millions. It's small change compared to the tens of billions stolen from workers by the likes of the Rockefellers, Morgans, auto and steel barons, Halliburtons, Boeings and the rest of the really big bosses.

These labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, who support politicians who enforce anti-strike laws against city workers, are enemies of the working class.

Once workers begin using communist ideas to organize on behalf of their own class interests, they will dump these traitors into the garbage can of history.

Sit-down Striker Fights Anti-Immigrant French Bosses

CHILLY-MAZARIN, FRANCE, Oct. 27 -- "To my friends in the United States, I say that you must not let yourselves be exploited. If you do not struggle, you'll probably remain undocumented all your lives. I encourage you and everyone else in their struggles."

That's the message from one of the undocumented workers here at the Modeluxe industrial laundry. When the company moved to fire some of its 22 undocumented workers (in a workforce of 160), all of the laundry workers responded with a one-week sit-down strike (see CHALLENGE, 11/1).

"It's very important to struggle for your legalization," the worker (who wished to remain anonymous), said in an interview with CHALLENGE. "The bosses don't want their workers to be legalized so as to exploit them. You must not allow the boss to be the only one to act. If you depend on the boss to intervene for your legalization, it will never happen.

"The main thing for the boss is that the work gets done. You have to mobilize all the workers. In union there is strength. You have to go on strike. A factory that does not operate for one, two, three days is a very bad thing for the boss.

"It will work. You must never accept working in bad conditions. Struggle will bear fruit one day. You must not keep your heads down too much. You have to expose the problems. You have to tell people exactly what the conditions are. You'll find that there are many people who are opposed to the exploitation of undocumented workers."

This worker knows exactly what he's talking about. He and the other undocumented workers -- immigrants from Mali, Senegal, and Guinea -- were employed at the laundry for five years. When the police raided the factory in Dec. 2004, the CGT trade union intervened to demand the legalization of the workers. The prefect (the local representative of the French state) and the Modeluxe bosses schemed to dangle the promise of legalization before the workers' noses, asking them and their union to assemble dossiers [backgrounds].

Meanwhile, the exploitation continued. "They formed a special `third team' made up of the undocumented workers," said the worker we interviewed. "We were under pressure to do twice as much work as the others, even though we got paid 300 euros a month less. "They set us a special rate of 250 pieces, only to make us work harder. It was impossible to meet. When we couldn't meet the quota, they called us `sheep' to let us know they considered us to be savages or animals."

"We had to work from Monday to Saturday because we were undocumented. We could not refuse overtime. It was a new form of slavery. When you went to the toilet, the boss followed you. You could only stay in the toilet for five minutes. If you stayed longer, you got a warning letter."

The one-week sit-down strike ended on Oct. 7, with everyone winning pay for three of the strike days and with the legalization of four workers. The 18 remaining undocumented workers continued striking until the company fired them on Oct. 20.

To pressure the prefect, the undocumented workers attended a negotiating session with co-workers from the laundry and other supporters -- a crowd of 200. But the prefect stonewalled, saying only undocumented workers "with French relatives" could be legalized. Firstly, this is untrue; secondly, one of the undocumented workers is the brother of one of the legalized workers. They have the same French relative!

"We did not come to France to be bandits, we came to work," the undocumented worker told CHALLENGE. "But this government is encouraging the bosses to exploit the workers with its policy of labeling some workers `undocumented.'"

This battle proves the communist idea that workers' struggles have no borders. The fight against racism to unite all workers and for a revolutionary society without bosses is universal, from France to Los Angeles.

The 18 undocumented workers are planning more actions to pressure the prefect to legalize them. Solidarity messages can be addressed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

RED YOUTH BUILD PLP IN MEXICO

MEXICO, Sept 6 -- A group of young students met in a university in the north of Mexico--along with PL'ers from the center and south--to commemorate the 7th year anniversary of our student organization.

We have helped spread PLP's ideas through meetings and study groups with many students, using agitation, and propaganda through a student paper that denounces the injustices and exploitation of the capitalist system. We also distribute Challenge and invite students to join the fight for communism.

The first day of activities we painted a banner with the communist fist in the main library where all could see. We passed out the student paper in one of the walk ways where the majority of students pass, playing the music of Victor Hara and Jose de Molina (two famous Latin-American protest singers).

One of the students invited from the south took the microphone and spoke about the struggle in Oaxaca and denounced the role played by the media (TV, radio, bosses' press) in this capitalist system. The activity in the University was welcomed by many students interested in knowing more about the student organization and joining it. A student from this University, originally from Oaxaca, proposed that we be more active in informing the population in the north about the struggle in Oaxaca and the next day the group had a small forum in the town square to inform people about the struggle and to pass out more literature.

That night we met, including the new comrades, to analyze and criticize our activities. Organization and planning are vital to win more people to the fight for communism and we took steps to improve the security of all the comrades in the following day's activities.

During the second day of activities security guards wouldn't let us use the electricity for our sound system. We did not let that stop us. We used signs to call attention to the struggle in Oaxaca and distributed Challenge. We talked with many people during our demonstration and met a person interested in knowing more about the movement. We talked about the class struggle and the importance of building a working class party, the PLP. At the end of this discussion, he gave us his address to visit him and bring him information about the movement through Challenge.

At the end of the activity, we were self critical about the need to be more organized in the future. These errors hurt us, but our activities also strengthened the unity and commitment of the PLP members to continue the struggle. We need to invite more people to join our revolutionary communist movement and also give leadership to two comrades who joined the party the day before.

We invite our young student comrades to follow these examples because we learn both from our errors and from our successes. Students, workers, teachers and intellectuals can learn to organize and build the communist party that truly fights for the interests of the working class, the PLP. Join us!

LA Workers Back Oaxaca Rebels

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 28 -- A group of workers from Oaxaca held a fund-raising event here to support the striking teachers in Oaxaca. They invited other workers, including PLP members, one of whom brought copies of the last two editions of CHALLENGE. After one worker read the articles about the Oaxaca struggle and about the fight between rival imperialists and their Mexican capitalist allies over the state-owned oil company Pemex, he told the PL'er to put the papers on a table in the front of the room so everyone could get them. He said, "This tells us what's behind the struggle."

The workers watched the movie "Venceremos" which gave some history of the struggle in Oaxaca against the Mexican government. It showed farmworkers being kicked off their land (for a pittance) so that a high-speed railroad could be built across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This is part of the Plan Puebla Panama, to integrate the economies of the U.S., Mexico and Central America. Farm workers who resisted felt the brutal force of the Mexican government.

The movie showed the courageous teachers' struggle resisting the government attacks, and the mass support for them.

After the movie, a woman from Oaxaca said that when she was a child she had no shoes to go to school. She received her first pair from her teacher. A worker from Central America, moved by the film, was reminded of the struggle in that region. He called for internationalism, for all workers to support the struggle in Oaxaca. He said workers in El Salvador went through similar attacks and finally took up arms against the bosses, but unfortunately their leaders didn't have the unflinching goal of destroying capitalism and putting the workers in power. Today that FMLN leadership is part of the Salvadoran ruling class which oppresses the workers. He was warmly applauded when he pledged to organize friends and co-workers behind the struggle in Oaxaca. Another worker from Oaxaca linked the struggle there to the war in Iraq.

Everyone was invited to upcoming events and a hat was passed to help those in need in Oaxaca.

LETTERS

Is PLP Against `Better Schools'?

Four teachers in a PLP-led discussion group met about the CHALLENGE series on education reform. We found the articles informative and provocative. We agreed that billionaires who donate to schools are doing so for control. Apparently, schools run locally rather than centrally -- as in other countries -- are a problem for U.S. capitalists. Money and control from billionaires enables the capitalist class to standardize education.

But we don't agree with the sentence: "Much of this `reform' is aimed at winning and mobilizing working-class parents and students, especially black and Latino families in big cities, to support `better education' with the sinister underlying plan being to win them to support the racist, imperialist U.S. bosses, the source of the very racism that continues to viciously attack these same families."

We don't understand how this would happen. Families want better education for their students, but getting it doesn't make them automatically support the bosses. For one thing, the education is still not that great, even if it's somewhat better than before the large donations. Perhaps this point wasn't explained sufficiently. Is it that the money is used for better propaganda within the schools about how "great" is the U.S. government and "way of life"? We know the schools for the working class will always be substandard under capitalism. However, families want their children to learn to read and to be prepared for a relatively decent job. Many schools fail at this.

We also discussed a lot about small schools, where three of us teach. We see advantages in getting to know the students, building community and being able to handle problems quickly because of the school's close-knit nature. We see disadvantages also, but don't understand how attending a small school leads students to believe in "all-class unity," as the article states.

School reform is, and always has been, a complicated issue. The ruling class wants it for its own reasons, and the working class wants it because they believe it will give young people a better future. Many workers feel school reform should be even more widespread. Too many children languish in schools where education is an afterthought. Are we (PLP) against "better" schools? It's true that the rulers want more control over the schools and need a more educated population in order to help maintain the profit system. However, it's also true that they don't want to educate everyone.

Reddish Teachers

CHALLENGE Comment:

Thank you for your questions and comments. We welcome other readers to participate in this discussion, which will always improve our political ideas.

The ruling class hopes to use school reform in several ways to win workers to support them. One is, as you suggest, reforming the curriculum to better present the ideologies necessary to imperialism in the current crisis: nationalism and "community service." They also hope to win parents and students to participate in the electoral process, to care about the politicians' educational policies and therefore feel they are a part of the system rather than feel the need to fight back. They want to channel workers into fighting for more reformed schools instead of for a new world.

But just because the bosses are implementing this plan doesn't necessarily mean workers will be won to the extent the bosses need; and it is part of PLP'ers' job to win our friends to see how education reform serves the bosses' real needs.

The liberal reformers who started small schools are now warning that their "movement" has been co-opted by "less progressive" forces. The experiences of many comrades and our research into small schools nationwide show that the rulers are using small schools to build loyalty to individual schools -- in effect, trying to build loyalty towards the administration, which represents the bosses. The rulers hope this all-class unity on a small scale will be a first step towards a working class that more fully supports the entire imperialist program.

We do want better education for working-class youth, to have the best conditions and learn the skills they need. But we must never let fighting for the reforms that one section of the ruling class advocates interfere with our analysis of the bosses' goals and our determination to destroy their entire system. Any reform achieving something positive for some students can and will be taken back when it no longer suits the rulers' needs. Only revolution can solve the problems of the schools.

Racism Won't Fly With Airport Workers

Airport workers had a week of intense struggle against the racist bosses. The last time workers were this angry was when the bosses wanted us to scab on the Northwest mechanics' strike in 2005.

Most African workers are kept in part-time jobs and resent this racism. The only full-time positions for these workers are on 3rd shift, and that's only as a result of previous fights. The bosses target Ethiopian workers to avoid paying full-time benefits like vacation pay and medical insurance, but now these workers want to fight for jobs on all shifts.

Our PLP study group has been struggling over these issues. We discussed the need to fight for communist ideas and not just limit the struggle to trade union demands that leave the bosses in power to take back any concessions we may win and to pursue their agenda of war and fascism. Internationalism, anti-racism and revolution have to be put front and center.

When the local president was finally pressured to show up for a meeting, the bosses tried to keep the U.S.-born workers from attending so the African workers would feel politically isolated. Racist foremen and supervisors acted like fascist goons. The racist ploy failed when two U.S. workers entered the meeting, although other U.S. workers were prevented from attending to give support to their African brothers and sisters. The local steward explained to the African and Latino workers what the bosses had done and how they fear multi-racial and international unity. The African workers then angrily demanded justice, embarrassing the do-nothing local president.

After the meeting and for the rest of the shift, the racist bosses tried to intimidate workers. The next day they had an emergency meeting with the big bosses because their attempts to intimidate workers failed miserably.

Within this fight we are struggling against nationalism, especially among a few Latino workers. Also, more workers are reading CHALLENGE than ever before. Workers of the world ARE uniting!

Airport Red

Workers Back Anti-Klan Protesters

As reported in CHALLENGE (11/1), a militant anti-Klan/Nazi rally took place in Harper's Ferry on October 14. Some who confronted these racists wrote some brief notes about the event.

"While distributing CHALLENGE in the town, I met a woman and her mother from Panama who live in Virginia. They were very angry...[about] the Klan and were sorry to have missed the chance to rally with us. They loved the CHALLENGE headline showing how opposition to the Minutemen was the same fight since the racists have been active in Manassas and Herndon, Virginia. They took some papers and thanked us for being there."

"At Harper's Ferry, the KKK was allowed to use a sound system always denied to INCAR (International Committee Against Racism) rallies over a 15-year period of yearly events honoring the fight against racism at John Brown's Fort. The massive police presence and their attitude toward anti-racists made it clear to me and new friends who came that the federal government was happy to support the KKK to get out their message."

"HAVE A GREAT WHITE DAY!" That's how [the Klan rally] ended, although I'm not sure if the audience could oblige. Their appearance and speech pattern spoke of poor backgrounds, of hard times. But they cheered anyway. "White Power!" And I, a young black man dressed in baggy jeans and a tilted baseball cap, stood in the middle of the cheers -- tensely waiting for one to cross the line, surprisingly unafraid if one did, and bewildered at how familiar I found the sound of blind hatred and convicted jeers that blamed another 'race' for their problems."

"I was talking to a woman who lived in the area and came to the Park with her children ranging from 11 to high school age. She was unhappy to find out that the Klan was able to rally [here]. She took one of our anti-Klan flyers and thanked us for coming to protest the racists."

"This was my second demonstration against the Nazis and Klan. I didn't care for the chants so I talked to other people in the crowd instead. I approached one Klan supporter who had a confederate flag and asked her why she liked them. She said she supported "Southern Pride." Just then the Nazis started shouting "Heil Hitler." I asked her what, exactly, did Hitler have to do with "Southern Pride." No answer, of course."

Our answer will continue to be clear: mobilize the masses to crush the racists wherever they rear their ugly heads.

D.C. Comrade

Nicaraguan Election Exposes Opportunists' Betrayal

The Nov. 5 election in Nicaragua is a vivid example of the corruption and betrayal produced by armed struggle without a communist goal.

Whether capitalists fight in wars or in the political arena, their ultimate goal is control of the surplus value produced by workers. Participating in the bosses' electoral charade only perpetuates this robbery. But waging armed struggle to end capitalism's wage slavery, racism and wars without a revolutionary party fighting for communism, only leaves capitalism intact.

In Nicaragua, after 13 years of valiant armed struggle against the U.S.-backed Somoza regime, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation took state power in 1979. Tens of thousands of workers died in the process; 30,000 more died in a decade-long fight against the Contras, the counter-insurgency fascist army trained and financed by U.S. rulers to topple the Sandinistas.

Finally, "peace" came when the Sandinistas held national elections and Sandinista president Daniel Ortega lost to Violeta Chamorro, a leading oligarch. Both the Sandinista "revolutionary" rule and the following 16 years of conservative rule only benefited the old Nicaraguan ruling class, the Sandinista leaders and their capitalist backers.

The Sandinista leaders waged armed struggle to become the new capitalist rulers of Nicaragua. Thus, one of their first acts in power was to seize the mansions, Mercedes-Benz and other Somoza properties. In 1990, in their last weeks of power, they and their allies took personal possession of all the property expropriated by their government. Known as the "Piñata," it made them all multi-millionaires, including one that is now one of the richest men in Central America.

But the corruption gets worse. Ortega's running mate in the election is Jaime ("The Godfather") Morales Carazo, once the Contras' top political negotiator. Now, many of these butchers of thousands of workers are helping elect Ortega.

Ortega also made peace with Roman Catholic Cardinal Obando y Bravo, a strong supporter of Somoza, the Contras and a rabid anti-Sandinista. He also made a deal with ex-president Arnoldo Aleman, giving both of them a lifetime appointment to the National Assembly, meaning lifetime immunity from prosecution.

Amid this wealth and corruption, workers live in poverty and squalor, over 80% on less than $2.00 a day. More than 800,000 children can't attend school. Workers survive on the money sent back by hundreds of thousands who are forced to immigrate, mainly to the U.S., where they are super-exploited by the same bosses that helped create and perpetuate these horrendous conditions.

Yet, despite the rivers of blood U.S. imperialism has caused, it may be losing its grip on Nicaragua. Ambassador Paul Trivelli and the State Department tried unsuccessfully to organize the opposition to Ortega behind its candidate Montealegre. U.S. bosses oppose Ortega because he represents Nicaraguan capitalists looking for a better deal from other imperialists. As Salvador ("The Little Jackal") Talaveres -- an ex-contra butcher/president of the Nicaraguan Resistance Party and Ortega supporter -- puts it, "Seven thousand of our wounded war veterans are neglected. We have been working in these [conservative] alliances, but what's in it for us?" He said the U.S. "has not considered even a small budget to help the heroic fighters who served them." (LA Times, 10/29/06)

This group of bosses is hoping Chinese and Japanese imperialists will be more generous than U.S. bosses. There are plans to build two ports and a connecting high-speed transatlantic train financed by these other imperialists. The Ortega group also hopes to get them to invest in a canal with capacity for 250,000-ton ships, twice what the expanded Panama Canal can handle. These might be pipedreams or they might come alive because of the inter-imperialist rivalry. In either case, intensified exploitation, fascism and war is all that capitalism can offer the working class. But, as years of armed struggle in Nicaragua show, the workers are capable and willing to fight for their class interest. They only need the vision of communism and a party to lead them. That's PLP's task and in particular of our comrades in Central America.

PLP HISTORY:
Miners' Rebellion Launched PL's 44 Years in Class Struggle

During a rank-and-file miners' armed rebellion across three states in the winter of 1962-63, the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) -- forerunner of the Progressive Labor Party -- cut its eye teeth on what was to become their participation in a long line of working-class struggles. While the fledgling PLM, just six months old, had no base among the miners, it decided that organizing a national solidarity campaign among as many U.S. workers it could reach was the order of the day.

Black and white miners were united in a strike against inhuman working conditions and $25-a-week starvation wages. The mine owners launched terror attacks against the strikers, using cops and local governments to bring in scabs. The miners armed themselves to battle the bosses.

The struggle was centered in Hazard, Kentucky, where 500 "roving pickets" would go from mine to mine to oust the scabs at gunpoint. If they were unable to stop the operation, they would dynamite the mine. Black and white workers, armed, in wildcat rebellion terrified the coal bosses.

PLM organized a Trade Union Solidarity Committee (TUSC), headed by a PLM member (a railroad union local president), to ship food and clothing -- including toys for the miners' kids -- from several cities. It raised money for a mimeograph machine enabling the strikers to publish their own local paper. The TUSC persuaded a NYC Teamster local to donate a trailer and a driver to ship a load of relief supplies to Hazard. The strike of the armed miners had become a national issue. In zero degree weather, nearly 1,000 people attended a mass meeting at a Manhattan church to hear the miners' leader Berman Gibson. PL Magazine ran an interview with Gibson (CHALLENGE was not yet born).

When the bosses realized communists were organizing this solidarity effort, they went nuts. "Communism Comes to the Mountains!" screamed an 8-column front-page banner headline in the Hazard Herald. PLM had told Gibson we were a revolutionary communist organization early on and he was unfazed by this.

However, seeing that armed rank-and-file wildcatting miners were working with communists, Kennedy liberals and assorted social-democrats and "C"P'ers stepped in with big bucks and their own "Solidarity" committee. They red-baited the small PLM and the TUSC. Eventually Gibson couldn't stand up to the anti-communism and turned to the liberals. After many months, the strike petered out.

However, this militant working-class struggle set the tone for PLM and PLP, impressing upon us the crucial role of basic industrial workers in the fight for communist revolution, especially the unity of black and white within that. It gave us confidence in the Marxist understanding that the working class was the revolutionary class with the potential to overthrow capitalism in an armed struggle defending its class interests. It therefore pointed the way to the necessity for communists to build a base among this key section of workers.

REDEYE

First nukes in Korea came from U.S.

There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang's attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to use nuclear weapons to end the Korean War.

In 1957 the US placed nuclear tipped missiles in South Korea... (GW, 10/26)

Climate issue is handy for ruling class

To the Editor:

...The negative effects of climate change will build over a long period and are unlikely to produce a universal catastrophe. However, today, and for decades, the negative effects of poverty, hunger, disease and war have killed and may kill millions, but these phenomena...are effectively being forgotten as climate change dominates political debates. (FT, 10/10)

Elections aren't fooling many people

"Politics," she said, "are for silly people. Those ads come on television and I reach for the remote."

I asked if she was planning to vote on Nov. 7.

"No," she said. "That stuff really turns me off".

If you pay close attention to the news and then go out and talk to ordinary people, it's hard not to come away with feeling that the system of politics and government in the U.S. is broken....

Not even the most faithful voters were confident that their ballot would make any substantial difference. (NYT, 10/30)

New Love for sugar daddies: Democrats

Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress....

...A lot will hold their powder for now," said Brain Wolf, deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "But after the election, we will have a lot of new friends." (NYT, 10/28)

China and India see wars over energy

Chinese see their country catching up with the US in terms of global influence within 10 years....

Large majorities in India and China said they believed a conflict over energy resources was likely in Asia. Majorities also said countries had a right to go to war to ensure adequate energy supplies. (FT, 10/12)

TV ad speeds up child's development

...The pediatrician was about to conclude 6-year-old Michael's annual checkup and asked if his mother had any further questions. "No," she replied, and then felt a forceful tug on her arm as Michael blurted out, "Yes, we do, Mom. Ask the doctor if Viagra is right for me."

...He was merely following instructions given by a gray-haired person in a white coat in a TV ad. (Consumer Reports Health/NOV.)

North's rulers also got rich on slavery

...In the North, a number of universities have ties to slavery. Harvard Law School was endowed by money its founder earned selling slaves in Antigua's cane fields. And at Yale, three scholars reported in 2001 that the university relied on slave-trading money for its first scholarships, endowed professorships and library endowment.

...It's pretty widely agreed on that Brown [University] would not be where it is if it were not for slave money....

At least one of the Brown brothers, John, a treasurer of the college, was an active slave trader.... (NYT, 10/19)

Book Review:
U.S. Britain Betrayed Death Camp Inmates

Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938-1945, by Hermann Langbein, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1994 -- Part 2 of 2

In part 1, we saw how the communist-led underground resistance in the Nazi death camps was able to organize under the noses of the camp guards and save lives. In this part we discuss sabotage against the Nazi war effort and escapes, as well as what we can now see were major political errors of the communist movement.

After 1942, the majority of prisoners were assigned to arms factories. "[D]irect sabotage, such as the damaging of machines or weapons, was possible only in isolated instances. In general, methods had to be employed that were hard to detect. These methods could be found because the technical and organizational know-how of the German civilian foremen, masters and engineers was so scanty that they were often dependent on the specialists among the inmates [p. 311]." A few examples: "...grenades...failed to explode. Frequently machines broke down because of defects. Inmates...found a way of damaging the mechanism of guns...after they had already passed inspection [p. 306]." "During the final inspection there were greater opportunities for passing large numbers of improperly dimensioned parts or for putting the right parts on a junk pile to be scrapped [p. 309]."

As the Nazis were being overrun in 1945, mainly by the Soviet Red Army, the SS was ordered to murder all camp inmates before the Soviet or U.S. troops arrived. The high command wanted to leave no witnesses who could inform the outside world about their massive crimes against humanity. Knowing of this plan, the prisoners attempted escapes to ward off imminent mass extermination.

Contact with partisans (guerrilla forces organized against the Nazis) and sympathy of local people outside the camps both increased in the later years of the war. Fugitives from Auschwitz received support, and news from Polish resistance organizations was smuggled into the camps. But the resistance relied increasingly on other contacts, such as the Red Cross and "allied" news media for getting information out to the world, such as maps of the camps and details about mass murders.

In July 1944, two Jewish inmates, Arnost Rosin and Czeslaw Mordowica, escaped and handed documents to the press, the Pope, and the governments of the U.S. and Great Britain [p. 258]. Communist groups inside the camps, it would appear, too often relied in error on the "allied governments." During an uprising by Jewish inmates in Treblinka, August 2, 1943, Yankel Wiernik escaped and with the help of his Polish friends, wrote down his experiences. Copies of his report were sent to London and the U.S. However, instead of bombing the railroads to the camps, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) fire-bombed the German city of Dresden, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Another example of the tragic reliance on these so-called "Allies" came when the Nazis marched prisoners from the Neuengamme camp onto ships, in order to hide the evidence of the death camps. The RAF bombed and sank the ships on May 3, 1945, resulting in the deaths of 7,000 to 8,000 prisoners.

We can see with hindsight that communist prisoners and their leadership in the international communist movement made major political errors before and during World War II: a) they relied on capitalist governments to gain support and save lives, with tragic results, and b) by failing to oppose nationalism both within the camps and outside -- though many nationalities did resist in unity -- they failed to organize the resistance groups into one international working class party that made communism the primary goal.

The cost of this failure was the prolonged life of the bloody rule of capitalism and its inter-imperialist wars for cheap labor, markets and oil. Sixty-one years after the end of WW II hundreds of thousands of working-class civilians are being murdered by U.S. and British rockets in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by Israeli rockets in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon.

The illusions about cooperation with capitalism played a major role in the downfall of the old communist movement, and helped prevent a qualitative advance toward communism. Nevertheless, the heroic struggle of communist-led prisoners should inspire us to fight for the communist revolution that will defeat fascism permanently.

In Memory of Sam Chestnut
Nov 26, 1943 - Sept. 26, 2006

Sam was a comrade and friend in the Bay Area PLP transit collective. He worked 30 years at MUNI RR in San Francisco driving trolleys and trains until forced to retire due to a work\stress-related stroke.

Sam's life was symbolic of many black workers here. His parents migrated to SF in search of work and lived in the Bay View Hunter's Point projects. After his time at the Post Office, Sam found many childhood friends who were all looking for that good union job. Here being black meant working for MUNI.

The stress and grind of driving, killer schedules and long hours combined with institutional and politically-inspired racist stereotyping made high blood pressure, strokes, and heart attacks endemic among MUNI operators. A 30-year study of "Stress & Hypertension" clearly documented this connection but management and the union, TWU Local 250a, did nothing to change it. In fact, conditions are worse.

Sam loved his family, friends and co-workers. He was especially proud of his son Jeremy. He laughed, partied and embraced people from all different backgrounds. At his Memorial, co-workers and friends remarked over and over about his kindness, his support "for doing what's right." He helped organize family and social groups to go to Yosemite and Santa Cruz. Union dances were another opportunity to defy the African American union leadership who pushed black nationalism in order to maintain control over their "private domain," the MUNI workforce.

Sam came under special, vicious attack for his friendship and activity with "the white boy, communist." May Day was another big event in his life. While Sam loved many, he hated every aspect of the demeaning, racist system he faced every day.

After study groups on political economy and dialectics, Sam said, "I now read between the lines in the newspaper and see the real significance of what's going on." Below are excerpts from a report Sam gave at a PLP workers' conference on how he dealt with racism, sexism and individualism in a mass organization. They are a fitting memorial to his contribution to class struggle and the development of communism.

"For years I worked outside the organized labor movement, having very little use for reforms to solve the problems of a crumbling system. I had very little success in promoting communist ideas; the effort was frustrating and slow.

In June 1998 I had a chance to work with a group of working-class people...that formed...[qround] safety concerns in our community following the death of a 9-year-old child....At our first meeting, 23...neighbors attended. The mood quickly changed from safety issues to people venting their anger at both management and employees. A core group of six people with different levels of political understanding were picked to...organize the fight against unfair rent increases, unlawful evictions and bad maintenance. I was accepted as a member of the core group...because I was a known communist.

Most members...used racist terms when talking about maintenance workers, who are all Latino. I struggled with my core members to understand class; how capitalism uses racism to divide and exploit the working class.... [I asked] them, "who are you more alike, the maintenance workers or the politicians and bankers...trying to evict us?"

[As a] result, racist terms will never be used at core meetings and...will be challenged at all community meetings....

Being a communist, I felt like a counter-puncher trying to answer each question with a communist analysis...to show the contradictions not only in their question but also in their answers. This [continued]... inside and outside meetings, at my house, at the store...anywhere we ran into each other....

I've found it very rewarding being a communist working inside a reform group. People's goals are geared more to the short term. It's perfect for me in trying to develop peoples' understanding of the capitalist system, trying to teach them to be critical thinkers ...to see and understand contradiction."

Book Review:
Murder Mystery With Working-Class Hero

A Race Against Death, Timothy Sheard

Looking for a murder mystery whose hero is a worker instead of a cop? Try this one!

Lenny Moss is a maintenance worker and shop steward in a Philadelphia hospital taking on the bosses at every turn. Lenny works collectively with six other characters to solve the mystery. The book steers clear of stereotypes -- the workers have good hearts, burn with righteous anger over injustice, but have plenty of human faults and failings too. Sometimes Lenny wants to just give up and lead a quiet life, but his sense of duty to his co-workers keeps him going.

The story turns on the murder of a doctor who has been performing unsafe late-term abortions on poor black women. A white medical student joins black medical students, who in turn team up with the hospital workers, to find and interpret clues. The unfolding story brings out issues of black nationalism, multiracial unity, and love and concern for fellow workers. Lenny's firm principles, which include multiracial unity and service towards the workers he represents, as well as his refusal to be intimidated by management, earns his co-workers' trust. The police detective refers to this by saying, "You're the guy that hears everything in this place."

Management's knee-jerk cruelty, indifference and coldness is glaring, correctly reflecting some basic truths about the U.S. workplace. The book doesn't have a Hollywood ending, but justice gets served for this moment in time.

The author will be speaking at the annual "Thanks for Fighting Racism" Dinner in the Washington, D.C. area on November 18 at 6 pm. If you're in the area, give us a call at 301.779.7432 and join us.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, Nov. 1, 2006

Information: 01 November 2006 710 hits

Anti-Racists Confront Minutemen

France: Sit-Down Strikers Demand Rights for Undocumented Workers

Iraq Body Count Shows U.S. Imperialists Are Mass Murderers

Oaxaca Struggle Shows Workers’ Revolutionary Potential

Bosses Battle for Mexico’s Oil

Liberals Attack Pervert ‘Pol’ Foley to Advance War Agenda

‘Free Speech’ for Racist Minutemen Means Fascism for Working Class

‘Freedom’ for Nazis Led to Death for Millions

Anti-Racists Drown Out KKK At Harper’s Ferry

Whether Dems or G.O.P., All Roads Lead to Racist Cutbacks, War

Florida Teachers Mass on Highways, Rallying for Pay Raises

Workers Nix Union Hacks’ War Contract, Strike Goodyear

Chavez’s Anti-Bush Rhetoric Hides Nationalist Reformers’ Exploitation

Anti-War Teach-In Reveals U.S. Imperialist Atrocities

Plan to Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks, Expose Liberal ‘Reform’ Tool for War Recruiting

Lynne Stewart Sentence: Judge’s ‘Compassion’ Masks Stepped-up Fascism

Students Rally vs. Military Recruiters at Career Fair

LETTERS

Learning Communism in the School of Life

Working on Many Fronts Post-May Day

Under Capitalism, Workers Can’t Celebrate ‘Independence’

U.S. Killed Nearly 3 Million North Koreans

Students Occupy, Close College for the Deaf

FLASH! Cops Arrest 133 Students

REDEYE

Afghans’ life worse since US came in
Senior decides jail is better than $5/hr
Stunned by detainee innocence, GI quits
US big biz likes China workers as slaves
US teenagers not joining evangelicals
$20 million victory party skipped
Free market brings misery to poorest
Physical abuse often underlies sexism
Expert: FBI forced terror confession

The Great Anti-Fascist Battle In London’s East End, 1936

PLP History: Championing Internationlism

Anti-Racists Confront Minutemen

NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 7 —Today the Minutemen rallied to spread their racist, anti-immigrant filth in front of the Mexican consulate in Manhattan. Earlier in the week they had also spoken at Columbia University in the face of student outrage (see article page 3). This latest organizing effort shows their seriousness in building their racist movement within the U.S. The fact that they were allowed to rally at a major, liberal Ivy League university and in the streets of Manhattan within a week shows the support these gutter racists are receiving from the ruling class in their continued effort to develop U.S. fascism.

A multiracial group of about fifty anti-racists, including a contingent of PLP teachers and students, chanted down the racist Minutemen at the Mexican consulate. With chants like "Power to the Workers, Death to the Fascists" and "The Workers, United, Will Never be Defeated," the anti-racists took leadership from PLP. The anti-Minuteman rally had both strengths and weaknesses. We distributed CHALLENGE to the protesters and to passers-by who stopped to show support.

Many high school and college youth took leadership in leading militant chants and speaking on the bullhorn. When the police told the anti-racists to shut off the bullhorn, while allowing the Minutemen to use theirs, the youth became even angrier and led the crowd in chanting even louder. Any illusions these students may have had about the cops’ role were fractured when they saw how the cops allowed the racists to speak while arresting one of the anti-racists just for standing too close to the barricade. Despite the cops’ attempts to discourage the anti-racists, we were still going strong when the Minutemen left, accompanied by the cops who protected them.

To the disbelief of many of the protesters, the Minutemen had a few black and Latino people in their rally. These individuals, having been won to support the ruling class’s racism, are becoming traitors to the working class. They help spread the big lie that unemployment, low wages and cutbacks are caused by other workers and not by the bosses’ drive for maximum profits and their war budget. All workers must see that racism divides and weakens the entire working class. It produces super-profits for the bosses — paying one group of workers less and lowering the wage level of all workers. Their racism is as venomous and dangerous as that of any neo-Nazi or KKK’er. These traitors to their class are an invaluable help to the ruling class as it builds up fascist oppression of the workers.

Although the anti-racists nearly doubled the number of Minutemen, our forces were still too small. U.S. workers still have a long way to go in understanding the dangerous role that groups like the Minutemen play in galvanizing anti-immigrant attacks. This lack of class consciousness weakens workers’ ability to unite to smash these racist goons and their capitalist masters. The ruling class counts on this lack of class consciousness in hoping to win workers — who hate the Minutemen’s racism — into the liberal immigrant rights movement. This movement builds U.S. nationalism among the immigrant youth who the rulers need as cannon fodder in their endless imperialist wars.

Communists have always been in the forefront of the fight against all forms of racism. Today, we must redouble our efforts to win all workers to the only struggle that can end racism, from Baghdad to NYC, and build a society without borders based on the needs and desires of most of world’s workers: communism.

France: Sit-Down Strikers Demand Rights for Undocumented Workers

CHILLY-MAZARIN, FRANCE, Oct. 13 — Immigrant and French-born industrial laundry workers made French labor history when they staged a one-week sit-down strike here, demanding papers for their undocumented fellow workers.

Management triggered the strike of 160 when it sent pink slips to some of the 22 undocumented workers at the Modeluxe laundry, whose customers are Paris hotels. On Friday, Sept. 29, all the undocumented workers struck in solidarity. The following Monday, all the workers — most are immigrants from Mali and Senegal — occupied the laundry in a solidarity strike.

Management at U.K.-owned Modeluxe first tried sweet-talking the workers. On Monday they said the government agreed to legalize four of the undocumented workers. The sit-down continued. On Wednesday they promised to win legalization for all the undocumented workers because the company needed the workers it had tried to fire! The sit-down continued.

On Thursday morning, the bosses talked tough, producing a government document saying no more workers would be legalized, and telling the workers they couldn’t win and should return to work. But the workers held fast. That afternoon, the company had the cops violently break the picket line and brought in scabs. Despite cops and scabs inside the laundry, the sit-down continued.

On Friday morning, the bosses brought in rent-a-cops with dogs to intimidate the workers, and started loading laundry carts onto a semi-trailer truck brought over from the U.K. — a clear threat to shut down the laundry altogether. Still, the workers continued their sit-down.

Finally, the company got a court order for the police to expel all "outsiders" from the laundry. At midnight the workers decided they couldn’t protect their undocumented mates from arrest and deportation, and ended the strike. They won payment for three of the days of the sit-down.

The undocumented workers are continuing their struggle for legalization, protected from arrest by union activists. Unfortunately, they’re relying on union bureaucrats and fake leftist elected officials. This fight shows that the real power to win legalization lies in the workers’ ability to shut down production.

Anti-immigrant racism is growing, from Europe to the U.S. The only way to eliminate the bosses’ borders once and for all is to destroy capitalism and its racism by fighting for communism.

Iraq Body Count Shows U.S. Imperialists Are Mass Murderers

U.S. imperialism stands guilty of mass murder. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have just published a study "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq" in the British medical journal Lancet. They found that the U.S.-led oil war killed more than 650,000 Iraqis between March 2003 and June 2006.

"Coalition" forces’ bullets and bombs directly caused one-third of these deaths. Sectarian warfare resulting from the botched occupation is responsible for the rest. The pace and scale of the carnage are staggering. Violent deaths have doubled every year since fighting began. The war has wiped out 2.5% of Iraq’s population. By contrast, during World War II, Britain lost 0.94% of its population, France 1.35%, China 1.89% and the U.S. 0.32% (less than one-third of one percent). Iraq’s 2.5% loss would translate into 7.5 million deaths in the U.S. today.

Liberal Warmakers Backed Anti-Bush Study

Johns Hopkins and the Lancet are by no means trying to start an anti-war movement. They’re both liberal, ruling-class institutions. Hopkins houses the School for Advanced International Studies, an important imperialist think-tank. The Lancet belongs to Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed-Elsevier, which shares top officers with Shell Oil. Their publication of the death toll at this time has two purposes. First, it’s one of many pre-election "October Surprises" designed to punish Republicans for bungling the invasion and help elect more effective war-making Democrats. Second, the report builds support for the U.S.’s endless wars for profit by suggesting that they can somehow be sanitized. The researchers end by calling for "an independent international body to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other humanitarian standards" in order "to lessen the tragic human cost of future wars." They assume there will be "future wars."

Bosses’ Vietnam Lesson: Hide The Atrocities

While the rulers release the deadly numbers, as disturbing as they are, they keep a tight embargo on images and eyewitness accounts of the slaughter that might spark widespread anti-war outrage. The bosses learned a lesson from Vietnam. After losing that war, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that if they could do it over again they would change three things: use far more troops; officially declare war and thereby make anti-war activity treasonable; and shut down the media coverage that regularly broadcast graphic pictures of U.S. atrocities.

Fallujah Massacre: Standard U.S. Operating Procedure

Despite the photo ban, however, and the embedding of reporters handpicked by the Pentagon, news of U.S.-inflicted horrors has leaked out. On November 16, 2004, Radio4Houston aired a program (available online) called "Fallujah: A Sea of Rubble and Death." Consisting of interviews with U.S. soldiers who had been there, it proves that, for the U.S. war machine, atrocities are standard tactics, not aberrations. (Like systematic prison torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and recent brass-sanctioned rape murders and mosque shoot-ups, the bosses try to portray their policy as the work of "bad apples.")

First, the soldiers said, the Air Force "softened up" this city of 300,000, considered an insurgent stronghold, with a month of indiscriminant bombing. One veteran spoke of seeing a fetus that a U.S. bomb had torn from its mother’s womb. Next, the U.S. top brass ordered the city evacuated but then did a double cross. After a few, but not nearly all, women and young children got out, U.S. officers forced everybody back in, labeling males under fifteen years old "combatants." Then came the command to U.S. troops to eliminate the combatants. U.S. soldiers and Marines, the veterans said, went from house to house exterminating whomever they met. The head of Fallujah’s hospital said U.S. Marines killed 600 Iraqis, "most of them women, children and the elderly," in the first week after entering the city. (AP, 11/4/04) U.S. military hospitals, under orders, refused to treat those whom the invaders merely maimed.

‘Macbeth’ Hoax, Whether Farce Or Tragedy, Aids Warmakers

The rulers have taken extraordinary steps to discredit such exposés, however rare. Earlier this year, a young man calling himself "Jesse Macbeth" appeared in an alternative media video claiming to be an ex-Army Ranger who had killed over 200 non-combatants, including children, in Iraq. But "Macbeth" was a fake. He had never even been to Iraq. Pro-Bush media, led by Fox, jumped all over the hoax as "phony propaganda." It really doesn’t matter whether "Macbeth" was a well-meaning but misguided war opponent or Bush & Co.’s willing stooge. The media now treat all soldiers’ war crimes admissions with serious skepticism, even as the Lancet shows the "coalition’s" killing rate rising continually.

The Lancet report tallies the body count, which will explode into the millions in the coming, global conflict, most likely with China, but fails to charge the guilty-as-sin U.S. ruling class with genocide. It also neglects the more than 2,700 slain working-class U.S. GI’s and untold Afghan victims. Justice will come only when workers organized in a party such as ours indict, convict and punish the murderers in a communist revolution.

Oaxaca Struggle Shows Workers’ Revolutionary Potential

OAXACA, MEXICO, Oct. 17 — "What’s needed is a voice for communist revolution. The electoral political parties only defend the bosses’ interests and legitimize the injustice and inequality of the capitalist system that kills miners, teachers and students," said a striking teacher during a meeting with workers, students and teachers.

The teachers’ four-month battle in Oaxaca shows the potential of workers organized in struggle. Masses of people in Oaxaca showed their solidarity by erecting barricades in all the streets to repel police attacks. Workers armed with poles, machetes, rocks and Molotov cocktails take turns during the nights guarding the barricades.

Teachers have seized some radio stations while other workers warn the teachers about the presence of cops and call on the community to build solidarity with this movement.

Teachers and workers nationwide and internationally have supported the struggle in Oaxaca. On Oct.16, dissident teachers from 31 states and Mexico City threatened to form a new national union leader to protest fascist national union leader Elba Esther Gordillo’s plan to scab on the Oaxaca teachers.

Although the militant workers, teachers and students have made great sacrifices in this struggle, it may not achieve its stated goal, the ousting of the governor. Capitalism, the basic cause of our problems, will be affected but not destroyed. A new governor, controlled by the same system, would be just as bad or even worse than Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

But this struggle shows that we workers are capable, committed organizers who can achieve real communist workers’ power when the masses are won to that goal. It can serve as a school for building communism, exposing the system, and understanding our enemy, the ruling class and its State (all politicians, judges, laws, etc.) and the rulers’ servants in the church and the media.

Recently, young students from Oaxaca went to a northern city where the militancy and solidarity of the University students greatly inspired them. They’re asking that workers and students from across the country travel to Oaxaca to share experiences and ideas on class struggle and revolution.

That weekend in Oaxaca was a moving experience as young people openly asked to become active participants in the Party. International solidarity encouraged comrades from Oaxaca to expand their struggle to build a communist society. These movements are full of danger but also create great opportunities to bring our political ideas to the workers and build a mass PLP. Meeting new friends and bringing them these politics are the biggest victories communists and the working class can achieve in this struggle.

On Oct. 9, when the march of over 5,000 teachers and their supporters from Oaxaca reached Mexico City, PLP’ers distributed 300 CHALLENGES — spurring excellent political discussions — as well as 2,000 communist leaflets calling on teachers, students and workers to join the fight for communist revolution in order to end poverty wages and all the attacks on our class. It declared that an attack on the Oaxacan teachers is an attack on all workers and called for building PLP to unite workers internationally.

Bosses Battle for Mexico’s Oil

Billionaire Carlos Slim — Latin America's richest boss (see CHALLENGE, 10/18) — has a strategy to privatize Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex for himself and the Mexican capitalists in his group. His plan confronts two apparently contradictory tendencies among the nation's politicians and ruling class. One is a privatization scheme as envisioned by President-elect Felipe Calderon and his group, which would benefit mainly the U.S. and foreign investors. The other idea is the "no-privatization-at-all" slogan advocated by Lopez Obrador's populist movement and the capitalists supporting him.

During the July presidential election, the Mexican Employers' Association — of which Slim and many in his group are members — endorsed Felipe Calderon. Slim and his gang didn't oppose this endorsement. However, they refused to add to their Chapultepec Pact program, a provision demanded by Lopez Obrador stating that PEMEX and its oil reserves not be sold to national or international investors.

It seems the ideal situation for Slim & Co. would be to have Calderon's government seriously undertake the sale of PEMEX to U.S. and foreign investors and then have Lopez Obrador — after making a deal as the nationalist/capitalist and big buddy of Slim — mobilize the millions behind him to fight for the slogan, "If PEMEX must be sold, better to Mexicans than to foreigners!"

Lopez Obrador, who calls himself "the president of Mexico by the will of the majority," has staged numerous, enormous rallies protesting the results of the July election which was decided in favor of Felipe Calderon. Millions of poor workers and others strongly support Lopez Obrador, hoping that his "the-poor-people-first" program will solve their many problems. But he's nothing but a demagogue who supports capitalism. He wants to throw a few crumbs to the workers in order to guarantee the stability of Mexican capitalism and win the allegiance of the workers to one sector of the Mexican bourgeoisie fighting another over resources and the value produced by workers. Liberal nationalist politicians always end up allying with, and serving, the interest of one or another sector of the national bosses and one or another imperialist butcher. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, the worst enemies of the working class.

Liberals Attack Pervert ‘Pol’ Foley to Advance War Agenda

Uncovering a scandal on the eve of elections — the "October Surprise" — is a time-honored, tried-and-true tactic of the ruling class. The latest suspect, Mark Foley, a Republican representative from Florida, faces accusations of having sexual affairs with teen-age House pages. What the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. capitalists wants is not Foley’s atonement for his sins but a House majority of Democrats who they hope will be better able to mobilize the millions of mostly working-class troops they require for their ever-intensifying military conflicts.

In Foley’s follies, the liberals hope they’ve found a means to strip the Republican Party of much of its conservative religious voting base. Amid the GOP’s troubles, the liberal New York Times has been running a blockbuster series attacking religious groups’ abuse of their exemption from taxes and other regulations. Calls for Republican House speaker Dennis Hastert’s resignation accompany "shocked" liberals’ prosecution of Foley. Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney’s recent guilty pleas to ostensibly unrelated bribery charges help round out the picture.

Foley’s saga recalls the liberals’ recent revelation of rampant child molestation among Catholic priests. Like the page abuse, the rulers had known the dirty secret for ages. They blew the whistle at the start of the latest war in Iraq, when U.S. priests were preaching the Vatican’s pro-European, anti-U.S. line. Chastened, these clergymen have since changed their tune. Bishops now hand out U.S. flags to potential military recruits at immigrant rallies.

We shouldn’t be fooled. What shapes the liberals’ moral posturing over Foley is a need to employ massive armed force to combat rivals for control of the world’s sources of profit.

‘Free Speech’ for Racist Minutemen Means Fascism for Working Class

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 11 — One week ago, Columbia University’s Young Republican club invited Jim Gilchrist, founder of the racist Minutemen (MM) to speak at this Ivy League center of ruling-class education. This is another big step in developing U.S. fascism, part of the rulers’ attempts to build mass support for their ideology.

Hundreds of workers and community residents picketed outside of this student-only event, chanting anti-Minuteman slogans, including, "Hitler Rose, Hitler Fell; Minutemen Go to Hell!" and "Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras" "Workers Have No Borders"). Inside — after a previous MM speaker, a black politician, had spoken for almost an hour — Gilchrist was spewing his anti-immigrant garbage for a few minutes when students from the Columbia Chicano Caucus marched onto the stage and unfurled a banner reading, "No Human Being is Illegal." A scuffle erupted as the MM and their supporters grabbed and tore the banner while punching and kicking other anti-racist students who attempted to get on stage. Then 80% of those in the hall began chanting their support of the anti-racists’ action. This ended the program.

During the protest, PL’ers reached many with our ideas via chants, posters, buttons and the sale of CHALLENGE. We salute the courage of those who confronted the racists inside the hall. However, many students who were disgusted with the MM racism still support the notion of absolute free speech. One Chicano student leader defended her organization’s actions saying, they have not "...interfered with anyone’s free speech. We simply expressed our right to freedom of speech."

But when the KKK came to NYC several years ago, PL’ers clobbered them BEFORE they could get started. Imagine if the racist MM had been physically attacked by the students and run out of the hall! That would have given the fascists pause before they continued to spew their filthy message.

Now "liberal" Mayor Bloomberg and the bosses’ mass media are attacking the anti-racists’ protest as an "outrage." They’re the same ones who support imperialist wars worldwide and racist exploitation of workers everywhere. Columbia U. President Bollinger is threatening action against the student protesters.

Under capitalism there is no "free" speech, only speech with money and power behind it. The ruling class will use its might to promote its real agenda and attack those who oppose it. We should support the Columbia students against any charges against them and use this opportunity to raise with our friends and within our unions, campus clubs, churches and community organizations the need to unmask the MM and their fascist paymasters.

‘Freedom’ for Nazis Led to Death for Millions

I met with a dozen progressive high school students to discuss immigration. These students are sympathetic to immigrants and repulsed by Pat Buchanan and his anti-immigrant rants.

One student mentioned the Columbia protest; many had read the NY Times article and, predictably, put forth the civil liberties position. Then I asked them to consider the following:

Hitler wrote that in the 1920’s, when the Nazis were still relatively weak, their opponents could have crushed them in the streets. By the early 1930’s they were too powerful and it was the Nazis who would crush their opponents.

So what if the anti-Nazis had physically attacked and crushed the fascists in the streets in the 1920’s and thereby prevented their growth? There’s no question that would have violated the Nazis’ "free speech" and "right of assembly." But it might have saved the lives of millions who the Nazis later murdered.

In a situation with contending rights — i.e., the "rights" of fascists to speech and assembly vs. the rights of Jews, leftists, gays, gypsies and others to live — don’t we have an obligation to choose one over the other?

Anti-Racists Drown Out KKK At Harper’s Ferry

HARPER'S FERRY, WV, Oct. 14 — PLP mobilized half of 50 protestors, including students, workers and active-duty military personnel, in a militant, multi-racial demonstration against the World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. These fascists dared to defile the sacred anti-racist site where John Brown's multi-racial band of 21 carried out their bold raid against slavery in 1859 that effectively set the U.S. Civil War in motion.

Chanting, "Death to the Klan, Power to the Workers," the Party-led group confronted over 100 cops brought in from five jurisdictions to defend the fascists. The cops fronted a line of nose-to-tail police cars, which in turn was in front of an impassable railroad trestle, which in turn was in front of a temporary metal barrier surrounding the fascists. Obviously they were determined to protect the Klan scum from anti-racist justice.

Nevertheless, our chanting and militancy drowned out the fascist rally of four robed Klansmen flanked by 15 uniformed Nazis. Several local residents of this mountain community joined us, and many tourists were aghast to see the Klan in this National Park. Our spirited protest awakened the activism among some of our friends, and bodes well for the growth of PLP.

Cook County Hospital:

Whether Dems or G.O.P., All Roads Lead to Racist Cutbacks, War

CHICAGO, Oct. 15 — Cook County Health System workers are learning the hard way that the liberals are paving the road to fascism. On September 28, Cook County Board President Bobbie Steele (a black woman Democrat) called for 10% budget cuts ($100 million) from all department heads. This will mean layoffs, service cuts and clinic closings.

Just six days earlier, FBI agents raided the County's human resources bureau and four hospitals in a crackdown on corrupt political hiring. The racist rulers must squeeze out every dollar, including clamping down on their corrupt underlings, to maintain their empire and prepare for larger wars to come. Democrat and Republican roads all lead to racist cutbacks.

In July 2006, a Northwestern University report stated, "The Cook County health care system is facing an impending crisis," and warned of cuts in federal Medicaid money, the escalating costs in healthcare and the rise in uninsured and underinsured workers. The County "does not have a structure…to navigate the emerging health care crisis," and a "Blue Ribbon Commission" is needed to oversee the County President.

One meeting was organized where professional health care workers were limited to discussing what they thought should be cut, like certain prescription drugs to patients. There was no mention of the $6 billion-a- month war in Iraq that is draining federal funding.

On the other hand, chief medical officers, doctors and nurses unanimously oppose the cuts, recognizing the devastating effects they will have on the mostly black, Latin and immigrant patient population. They felt that doctors and nurses should stand with other healthcare workers and the community/patient population. This could set the stage for a struggle against the cutbacks and an opportunity to strengthen the base for PLP.

These budget cuts will worsen the health of an already ailing population burdened with poverty and illness. But it will be even more deadly if healthcare workers are won to fight under the leadership of the Democrats for a policed "health" system in line with a fascist war economy.

The goal of the Northwestern report and Democratic post-9/11 "yearnings" are to win workers and the community to fight for the bosses’ war budget health system, just as they have mobilized millions of immigrant workers and youth to march behind the Democrats’ war agenda. The ruling class wants more troops, a cheap labor war economy and a racist, patriotic population. Democrats only criticize Bush for failing to win the population to their fascist plans.

Only by persistently and patiently fighting for our revolutionary outlook in the mass movement and at work can we win workers to join PLP. Many of our co-workers see these racist cutbacks are directly related to the war in Iraq. But they don’t see fighting for communism as the solution, yet. Our job is to build a base for communist revolution with our co-workers as we fight these racist budget cuts, expose the farce of the upcoming elections, and fight the fascist restructuring of the County health system.

Florida Teachers Mass on Highways, Rallying for Pay Raises

MIAMI, Oct. 11 — "More than praise, we need a raise," chanted thousands of schoolteachers across Dade County as they rallied along major highways and at district headquarters demanding raises on a par with neighboring counties. "I’m a single mom," said Santa Melendez, "and I have to work a second job to help pay the bills. No matter how hard we work, it’s still not enough." Teachers said they can’t afford to live in the county where they teach. Nearly 2,000 didn’t go to school to attend the rallies.

Workers Nix Union Hacks’ War Contract, Strike Goodyear

DETROIT, MI., Oct. 5 — Today more than 12,000 workers struck 16 Goodyear Tire & Rubber plants in the U.S. and Canada. Whether they know it or not, striking workers are taking a stand against a war economy that is forcing down wages and benefits to finance billions for war and fascist Homeland Security. The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) union authorized the strike after 40% of the workers rejected a tentative agreement between the union and the company. As in auto, steel, aerospace and other industries, workers have suffered decades of mass layoffs and concessions. And the patriotic union leaders boast of their being partners in this process.

Goodyear is continuing production at its non-union facilities and using management as scabs to try to keep the struck plants operating. The walkout could affect U.S. auto plants, which depend on just-in-time delivery and maintain a very low inventory of tires.

Workers are striking against Goodyear’s demands for wage cuts for new hires and against increased attacks on pensions, medical coverage and working conditions. Goodyear also wants to close two factories in Alabama and Texas, wiping out 2,000 jobs.

This summer, the USWA accepted concession contracts with the other big three tire companies. The union agreed to cut starting pay for new hires to $13/hour. But Goodyear demanded even more, including cutting wages for new hires to $10/hour. Meanwhile, Goodyear CEO Robert Keegan made over $7 million in 2005.

Like the auto and steel bosses, Goodyear wants to drastically reduce labor costs and the amount it pays out to tens of thousands of retired workers and their dependents.

The USWA absorbed the United Rubber Workers union in 1995 after the sellout of a ten-month strike of 2,300 Bridgestone-Firestone workers and the destruction of tens of thousands of union jobs in the tire industry.

Millions of workers are being forced to pay for the bosses’ plans for racist, endless imperialist wars and fascism. This is the immediate and long- range future capitalism has for the world’s workers. PLP offers a different future: fighting for a communist society without any bosses and their wars for profits.

Chavez’s Anti-Bush Rhetoric Hides Nationalist Reformers’ Exploitation

One day after George Bush addressed the United Nations to defend the bloody policies of the U.S., Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez blasted the "imperialist policies" of the U.S. In a comically rich speech, he called Bush the devil, proclaiming that "he could still smell the sulfur" of the evil one. He later said, "Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world."

Republican and Democratic leaders (like New York’s Charles Rangel) came to the defense of Bush because they considered it an insult to the whole country. Many on the "pseudo" left as well as workers around the world have praised Chavez’s criticisms of U.S. imperialism, believing he gave a voice to the people.

But if Bush left the scent of the devil, Chavez left the scent of a rat. Chavez’s "revolution" represents only the interests of local capitalists and imperialists who compete with the U.S. to control and exploit the workers of South America. Venezuela is a member of the Chinese- and European Union-supported MERCOSUR that is just the other imperialists’ alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade of Americas. Later in the speech he proposed giving more power to the Secretary General, repressing the veto and expanding UN membership. These proposals reform the United Nations (take power away from the larger capitalists like the U.S.), not destroy it as a defender of class oppression.

Chavez proclaimed, "Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceana. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision." This vision of reformed capitalism may work better for nationalist capitalists as well as imperialists friendly to them, but workers will only see a new dawn’s light if we reject Chavez’s "reformed" capitalist siren call.

Anti-War Teach-In Reveals U.S. Imperialist Atrocities

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 10 — At a recent documentary screening on a campus here, students saw first-hand the brutality and murderous violence of U.S. imperialism’s current profit war in Iraq. The film revealed the aftermath of the U.S.’s April 2004 military offensive in Falluja. Viewing the graphic footage of civilian casualties and heartrending interviews, many of the 50 students attending turned their eyes away several times in disgust. Some couldn’t believe that the atrocities depicted in the film — including the killing of two young children by U.S. snipers — were true.

A teacher said that when she was in college during the Vietnam War, she couldn’t believe the stories of U.S. atrocities because "we were taught that Americans are the ‘good guys’ and the enemy is always evil." But in reality, she said, imperialism breeds brutality, torture and misery for ALL workers. Nationalism only blinds us from the truth, lying that we have more in common with our oppressors at home than with our working-class sisters and brothers worldwide.

One student declared that the film exposed the anti-Arab racism used by the bosses to justify their Mid-East oil wars. It gave a human face to the 600,000 Iraqis who have died since the U.S. invaded Iraq. While the ruling class speaks of "fighting terror" and "spreading democracy," the film showed that the main victims of imperialism’s genocidal violence are workers and students — especially the most vulnerable, like children and the elderly.

Another student pointed out that just as it’s poor U.S. workers who are sent to fight and die for imperialism’s profits, so it’s the workers, students and poor of Iraq and Afghanistan who also suffer, fight and die. Imperialism, regardless what flag it waves, is only interested in "spreading democracy" for multi-nationals like Exxon-Mobil and their rich capitalist shareholders. No bosses’ state has the interests of workers, soldiers and students in mind.

The teacher urged students to ask why these wars are being fought in the first place and who really benefits from them. There’s a connection between the killing in Iraq for the U.S. capitalist class’s domination of energy resources and the recent attacks on U.S. workers, like cuts in pensions, benefits and wages, and the closing or outsourcing of factories, from Ford and GM to Boeing. We need a multi-racial, international movement to fight imperialism’s root source, the racist profit system of capitalism. Communism, based on production to meet the needs of the international working class, is the answer to capitalist-caused slaughter.

The teach-in sparked great one-on-one discussions outside, and future plans for more campus teach-ins and actions. From these new contacts and discussions, we plan to extend our CHALLENGE networks and study groups, and win more students to PLP’s revolutionary communist politics.

Plan to Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks, Expose Liberal ‘Reform’ Tool for War Recruiting

NEW YORK, Oct. 2 — CHALLENGE always points out we are living in a period of expanding imperialist war and developing fascism as U.S. rulers aim to maintain their super-power status. To further this goal, they are using immigration reform to implement a police state to squeeze more profits from the working class and provide more cannon fodder for their imperialist wars.

They have already militarized the U.S./Mexico border. Several towns have changed their ordnances to deny undocumented immigrants housing leases. Some Border State sheriffs have erected tent jails to detain immigrants awaiting deportation hearings. Young immigrants are told they can become citizens by joining the U.S. military. Racist militia groups like the Minutemen are welcomed to patrol the border and immigrant communities.

PLP will participate in a conference on "embracing the immigrant," inviting members of mass organizations we participate in, students and all our friends to this event.

The conference wants to put U.S. immigration issues into the framework of "human rights" and to explain how to "access legal, health, social and work services and rights." Although not a stated goal of the conference, it assumes acceptance of ruling class-sponsored "immigration reform" as the way to realize the "American Dream."

In PLP study groups with our friends and using CHALLENGE, we’re preparing to introduce proposals for fighting back and bringing aspects of our revolutionary communist ideas to conference participants. We know many people will be open to our ideas while others will try to stifle us. One key point we’ll try to present clearly is our analysis of the historical period and why "immigration reform" is a tool in the liberal Democratic Party’s war chest.

Our fight-back plan includes proposing that educators and social, health and legal providers plan non-compliance with laws mandating we reveal the identities of undocumented immigrants. Churches should become sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, following the lessons of those who resisted the Fugitive Slave Act prior to the Civil War. We must establish networks like the Underground Railroad to support undocumented immigrants and fight racist groups like the Minutemen and practices like raids and deportations. We also should organize a U.S.-Mexico cross-border demonstration to build international working-class solidarity and unity.

On a deeper level — that exposes the nature of capitalism and imperialism — we must question the reasons for borders, and warn workers of the danger of racist and nationalist divisions, while explaining the historical necessity for revolutionary change to address the root causes of poverty, repression and war. For example, the NAFTA "free trade" agreement has given the multi-national corporations a green light to cut jobs and lower wages across the border, widening the gap between the super-rich and the poor in both Mexico and the U.S.

Finally, the Party’s goal is to raise communist consciousness, win many workers to the Party and expand the networks of CHALLENGE readers, as well as strengthen veteran communist leaders and develop new ones on the long road to communist revolution.

Lynne Stewart Sentence: Judge’s ‘Compassion’ Masks Stepped-up Fascism

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 16 — Today sentences were handed down to radical lawyer Lynne Stewart (28 months) and her co-defendants, paralegal Ahmed Sattar (24 years) and translator Mohamed Youssary (20 months). We applaud the thousands of people who wrote letters backing Stewart and participated in rallies, and in support meetings in unions, community and religious organizations. But we should not have the illusion that these were the reasons for Stewart’s and Youssary’s relatively short jail sentences. While sectors of the government disagree on how to apply their fascist rules, they all agreed on a sentence that would represent their class interests.

For example, "a message of deterrence has already been sent loud and clear…no further deterrence is needed," said one of Stewart’s lawyers. She has already lost her right to earn a living as a lawyer, thus sending the chill of terror to any attorney who might defend an enemy of U.S. rulers. Now, through Judge Koeltl’s sentences, the same government that is implementing greater fascist measures can simultaneously appear "compassionate."

No terrorist act resulted from the actions of Stewart, Sattar and Youssary. However, terror in the form of imperialist war, attacks on immigrants, homelessness, etc. occurs every day under capitalist class rule.

We should hail and spread the fight of Oaxaca workers and Columbia University students who have fought back against capitalism’s systemic terror. PLP pledges to build on the efforts to support Lynne Stewart by building a base of workers, students and soldiers committed to destroying the capitalist system.

Students Rally vs. Military Recruiters at Career Fair

NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 12 — "Recruiters, you liars, we'll set your asses on fire" students shouted today as they rallied against military recruiters and the war in Iraq outside a City College of New York (CCNY) career fair; 300 leaflets with a reprint of a CHALLENGE article were given out and over 50 newspapers were distributed.

The CCNY police circled the protest, showing its force. Last year they had arrested and beat students at another career fair. CUNY students continue to oppose the war; several new students participated.

Perhaps the best feature was the collective decision-making, with students struggling over what tactics to use. PLP'ers advanced its outlook through chants and discussion.

LETTERS

Learning Communism in the School of Life

Several years ago, I lived in the mountains where unemployed poverty-stricken farm workers live. With PLP's help, I moved to the big city seeking a job as well and to engage in political work in the maquilas (factories). It was a new world for me, full of obstacles.

Now I'm a young worker with a lot of anger against the capitalist system. During my participation as an active member of PLP, it's been difficult learning to bring communist ideas to others. I've been in the Party for five years, but because I didn't know how to write, I've been unable to improve my political work enough, nor could I find work in the biggest factories — they require a high school diploma.

However, I'm resolving this. I work among a lot of young workers. Little by little I'm understanding more profoundly why we fight. This motivates me to keep recruiting more people to the Party. It led me to start school two years ago. I'm now in the third grade and learning to read and write, so I can read Party documents.

Sometimes it isn't just important to know how to read but also to get ideas from the other comrades because the Party is necessary for all the world's workers. That's why some of my fellow workers and friends read CHALLENGE. I invite them to mass activities where we participate as the Party.

Our meetings have helped me learn. They explain why we fight and why it's necessary for workers to awaken out of the darkness of capitalist ideas. I want more Party schools here to learn more communist ideas.

A young worker comrade

Working on Many Fronts Post-May Day

Since May Day, our PLP club has been involved in various struggles, but with the same focus of building for communism. We brought our base of friends to the defense of comrades who were on trial for supporting day laborers in Farmingville, Long Island. We struggled with those who attended the trial not to view the victorious verdict as a sign that "the system works" but to understand how, in any arena, communists fight the bosses with mass action and political struggle.

We’re also raising two ideas in mass organizations to which we belong to further our solidarity with immigrants: (1) drafting a resolution that attacks all proposed legislation as further intensification of super-exploitation, and of expanding war; and (2) organizing an international cross-border solidarity rally in Laredo Texas.

One goal this fall is having a conference on "Racial Justice and Ecological Survival." The main theme will be indicting world capitalism as the cause of ecological disaster and imperialist wars. The recent discussions about the PLP document "Road to Revolution 4.5" is helping in organizing this event by making communist politics primary in the workshops.

We’ve also met regularly with a coalition that’s fighting to reopen our neighborhood health clinic. It has exposed the City as a racist murderer, using their own figures on deaths from asthma, cardiac-pulmonary disease, cancer and AIDS. In the past four months, we’ve lost three African-American activists to heart attacks: two in their sixties, one in her thirties! We’re planning our own health fair on the steps of the clinic building and possibly to take it over.

Last April a cop murdered one of our friends’ son and we’re working in one mass organization to sharpen the courtroom struggle as well as to win the family to PLP’s politics.

One of our members has lost her family’s HRA housing subsidy and we’re trying to build support for her at the hearings and a possible fight with the landlord. We will pack the courtroom.

However, overall we must do better in following up our May Day participants, using CHALLENGE in ways that engage their particular concerns and to win them to distribute the paper and raise funds to support it.

Red Churchmouse

Under Capitalism, Workers Can’t Celebrate ‘Independence’

PLP wrote and distributed a leaflet during the Sept. 15 Independence celebrations, exposing the hypocrisy of "Independence Day," and calling for a struggle for true revolutionary liberation under communism. Today the rulers force teachers and students into parades to celebrate this date which has no real significance for the working class since we continue as wage slaves, whether under European or U.S. empires.

Historically in Central America, like elsewhere worldwide, workers have been subjected to all kinds of racism and exploitation. After the imperialist invasion by the European kingdoms starting in 1492, a great repression and massacre of the indigenous peoples began when they resisted the plunder of their lands and excessive, brutal working conditions. The empires aimed to accumulate great wealth.

After hundreds of years of Spanish oppression, a movement for liberation arose, which was used by phony leaders who represented a particular powerful economic sector. Their role was to pacify the angry masses.

In 1821 a false independence was established through commercial agreements in which Spain’s rulers gave power to these opportunist local leaders. Workers can achieve total liberation only through a communist system, building our Party and organizing the working class for the complete elimination of the capitalist system and its oppression and wars. Fight for one class, one flag and one Party, the PLP.

A Salvadoran Comrade

U.S. Killed Nearly 3 Million North Koreans

There’s nothing communist about North Korea. It explicitly abandoned Marxism-Leninism in its constitution of the early ’90s. Its official ideology is "Juche," based on nationalist self-reliance. The capitalists call North Korea "communist" to paint all communists with the same brush.

Chinese and South Korean capitalists are investing in North Korea’s "Free Economic Zones." That’s one of the reasons China — even though it condemned the recent nuclear test — is reluctant to endorse the U.S. and Japan’s full embargo.

The nuclear test is a direct reaction to the failed Bush administration policy of shunning negotiations and threatening North Korea with war and regime change. North Korea had abandoned its nuclear weapons program until the Bush administration started threatening it as being part of the "Axis of Evil," while invading another "Axis," Iraq. There’s no doubt: people in the U.S. and worldwide are far less safe than five years ago.

U.S. rulers, not North Korea, are primarily to blame for this situation. In 1994 North Korea signed an agreement with the U.S. to suspend its nuclear weapons program and allow international inspections and monitoring of its nuclear facilities. In return, the U.S. agreed to cease military threats against North Korea, to supply fuel oil to replace the lost nuclear power, and to help build two modern atomic power plants.

But beginning in 2002, the Bush administration slowly gutted the agreement. It branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," threatened war, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants, tightened a long-standing economic embargo, and obstinately refused direct bilateral talks. The White House even threatened the limited use of nuclear weapons in a regional conflict with North Korea.

The context of all this goes back more than 50 years. Republican and Democrat administrations have refused to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War and still maintain 37,000 troops in South Korea. They are the aftermath of the U.S. killing machine that during the Korean War (1950-1953), according to U.S. Air Force General Curtis Le May (quoted on PBS’s website), the U.S. "killed off…20% of the population….more than two million….civilians." The final total was actually nearly one-third of the nine million North Koreans. In all of World War II, the U.S. lost less than one-third of one percent of its population. Using bombs and napalm, Le May said the U.S. "eventually burned down every town in North Korea…and some in South Korea too."

With such a history, from 50 years ago and currently, no wonder when the Bush administration geared up for war on Iraq, North Korean officials were worried about the U.S. attacking them. Predictably, the North Korean government responded by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, and began to develop nuclear weapons.

For eight years (1994-2002), direct negotiations with the North Korean government reduced the threat of nuclear proliferation and war on the Korean peninsula. So why do Bush administration officials say it’s "impossible" to negotiate with North Korea? They, and their neoconservative allies, are calling for sanctions, isolation, and even military threats to impose "regime behavior change." This is the same recipe that brought on the disastrous Iraq war, and will only deepen North Korea’s resolve to develop nuclear weapons, potentially setting off a new nuclear arms race in the region.

Of course, the nuke non-proliferation treaty is a sham. In addition to the main imperialists, Israel, Pakistan and India are also nuclear powers. Even the Russians have halted destruction of their strategic nuclear weapons since the U.S. is about to achieve nuclear supremacy for the first time in 50 years, capable of destroying Russia’s and China’s nukes with a first strike. So North Korea’s minute nuclear arsenal is really no threat to the U.S.

With few exceptions, much of the mainstream bosses’ media is echoing the White House claims that "negotiations won’t work," the same role they played in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

A Comrade

Students Occupy, Close College for the Deaf

I recently visited the protest at Gallaudet University — the nation’s only federally-funded university for deaf people — where hundreds of students this week expanded their occupation of the main classroom building, now closing down the entire campus by blocking all entrances. The students are well-organized, with grills to cook food, tents at all entrances and substantial support from the faculty.

Students are condemning racism and discrimination in the selection of the new university president and are demanding that the president-elect, Jane Fernandez, step down before she even takes office! Many black students are involved in the protest and there is a lot of interaction between black and white students.

Several years ago, a similar campaign (called the Deaf President Now Movement) resulted in the appointment of Jordan King as president, who was very popular with the students. His provost has been appointed by the Board of Trustees to succeed him, with his support.

Students have now turned against him for what they view as a betrayal of the deaf community’s interests, throwing juice on him at an event held to honor him. Yesterday he turned the situation over to the cops and washed his hands of it all, proving that when push comes to shove, even the most progressive-seeming president will hide behind the rulers’ state power and the cops.

The students claim that the search committee did not consider a particular deaf African American candidate, and so was racist, and that the president-elect (who is also deaf) fails to fully appreciate "deaf culture." Some proponents of deaf culture claim that the deaf community, due to its particular social experience related to deafness, is more internally compassionate and caring than other communities.

The students want to maintain American Sign Language (ASL) as the primary visual and written communication mode. ASL is a different language with its own grammar rules. For example, ASL inverts the noun and verb in a sentence, such as "The store, I go." The new president, an English professor, wants students to write in Standard English instead of ASL. The students reject this view, and also object to the fact that she both signs and speaks.

The students have been attacked as "spoiled" and their faculty supporters have been called "manipulative." These are the standard baseless attacks made on those who seek to "fight the power." However, despite the students’ boldness, I fear their emphasis on deaf culture isolates them from the rest of the working class, and is another form of "identity politics" (such as feminism and nationalism) which divides the working class into separate groups aligned with their own rich, bourgeois members. Identity politics hinders working-class unity in the struggle against capitalism.

Such nationalistic responses develop because people face real discrimination and feel the need to fight back. Deaf people have often been stigmatized and considered mentally retarded. All workers need to fight the discrimination against any worker and help unite us all against capitalist oppression. We also condemn any police action, repression or punishment of these brave students, whom we want to win to a revolutionary communist outlook.

A Comrade

FLASH! Cops Arrest 133 Students

Oct. 16 — As we go to press, President King Jordan of Gallaudet University called the cops to arrest 133 deaf students in order to re-open the campus. But demonstrators, including those released on bail, have maintained their militancy and determination. Four have begun a hunger strike, and over 70 "deaf tent cities" have been erected worldwide as deaf advocacy organizations are supporting the students while the Gallaudet administration and Board of Trustees become increasingly isolated. Stay tuned!

REDEYE on the News

Afghans’ life worse since US came in

At best Afghans consider their government to be non-existent, at worst they see it as a corrupt, unscrupulous criminal organization. "Never in the history of Afghanistan has corruption been so bad, at every rung of the ladder,…."

….Half the population is suffering from malnutrition and just over a third of all children have been vaccinated. Every 30 minutes a woman dies from complications giving birth….

To judge by the account of villagers in the south, the Taliban are free to roam wherever they please. Yielding to Taliban propaganda, public opinion is increasingly in favor of the foreign forces’ departure….

"When the Americans arrived, the whole population supported them," recalls Noor Ali, a teacher in Kandahar. "But they lied to us and we are no longer interested in development and rehabilitation. We just want peace and security." (GW, 9/28)

Senior decides jail is better than $5/hr

A man who could not find steady work came up with a plan to make it through the next few years until he could collect Social Security: He robbed a bank, handed the money to a guard and waited for the police….

"At my age, the jobs available to me are minimum-wage jobs," Mr. Bowers, who will turn 63 in a few weeks, told the judge….

Prosecutors had considered arguing against putting Mr. Bowers in prison at taxpayer expense, but they worried he would do something more reckless to be put behind bars.

"It’s not the financial plan I would choose, but it’s a financial plan," the prosecutor, Dan Cable, said. (NYT, 10/13)

Stunned by detainee innocence, GI quits

In a court-martial here on Thursday, an Army judge sentenced Sergeant Clousing to 11 months in confinement for going AWOL….

Arriving in Iraq in November 2004, he said he was stunned at the number of Iraqis he was assigned to interrogate who were either innocent or disgruntled citizens resentful about the American occupation. He said he told his commander: "Your soldiers and the way they’re behaving are creating the insurgency you’re trying to fight. It’s a cycle. You don’t see it, but I’m talking to the people you’re bringing to me…."

…Sergeant Closuing took his misgivings to his superiors. They sent him to a chaplain, who showed him in the Bible where God sent his people to war….

Sergeant Clousing said he could not file for conscientious objector status because he could not honestly say he was opposed to all war. After several months of soul-searching, he went AWOL. (NYT, 10/13)

US big biz likes China workers as slaves

To the Editor:

Now our Chamber of Commerce and some major American Corporations are fighting against a new labor protection law in China ("China Drafts Law to Empower Unions and End Labor Abuse; Opposition Voiced by U.S. and Other Corporations," front page, Oct.13).

Makes you proud to be an American, no? (NYT, 10/15)

US teenagers not joining evangelicals

…Evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves….

"I’m looking at the data," said Ron Luce, who…founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, "and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work…but we’re losing." (NYT, 10/6)

$20 million victory party skipped

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent. (NYT, 10/4)

Free market brings misery to poorest

Globalization brings wealth and opportunity to many people around the world. But to poor slum dwellers in the failing state of Ivory Coast, it has brought horrible sickness and death after hazardous waste, shipped nearly halfway around the world, was stealthily dumped in backyards around Abidjan….

…The waste…could have been safely disposed of earlier in its journey. But Trafigura, the Swiss trading company that leased the tanker, balked at paying European prices. Instead, 85,000 people ended up seeking medical treatment, and at least eight have died….

Dangerous cargos will find the course of least resistance, least cost, and least regulation, scarring the lives of some of the world’s poorest, worst governed and most defenseless people. (NYT, 10/4)

Physical abuse often underlies sexism

Violence against women by their live-in spouses or partners is a widespread phenomenon, both in the developed and developing world, as well as in rural and urban areas, the most comprehensive and scientific international study on the topic has confirmed….in interviews with nearly 25,000 women at 15 sites in 10 countries….

Most partner abuse is hidden, and only a tiny fraction is reported to the authorities…..

In the United States…about 25 percent of women said that they had been physically or sexually assaulted by a spouse, partner or date.

In the World Health Organization survey, one-fifth to two-thirds of women interviewed said that it was the first time they have ever spoken of the abuse to anyone…. (NYT, 10/6)

Expert: FBI forced terror confession

The Hayats were United States citizens; Umer Hayat drove an ice cream truck in Lodi. His 19-year-old son, Hamid, was a sixth-grade dropout.

In 2003 the family traveled briefly to Pakistan for Hamid’s marriage….

In the summer of 2005, when Hamid returned to Lodi, the F.B.I was waiting for him. Interrogated along with his father for 15 hours in separate rooms without a lawyer, they were both later arrested. Hamid was charged with attending a jihadi training camp — something both he and his father confessed to after the nonstop interrogation….

James Wedick, a recently retired and much decorated F.B.I. agent agreed to review the interrogation tapes…. "I was shocked," he told Frontline…Hamid changed his story only after the constant badgering….

"They more or less answered the way the bureau wanted them to answer," Mr. Wedick said. "All they wanted to do was go home….The trial judge barred Mr.Wedick from taking the stand….

The younger Mr.Hayat, convicted of material support of terrorism and lying to the F.B.I., faces a possible 39-year sentence and has filed an appeal….

In the end there was no terror cell….The Lodi case, a showcase trail in the Bush administration’s war on domestic terrorism, was largely created out of whole cloth. The country was never in danger from the Hayats but may well be entering a dangerous period of unnecessary and abusive prosecutions… (NYT, 10/10)

The Great Anti-Fascist Battle In London’s East End, 1936

October 4 marked the 70th anniversary of a great battle against fascism — the "Battle of Cable Street" in London’s East End. Stories of that day are still talked about amongst the British working class.

For 300 years the East End of London had been a passageway of poor working-class immigrants into Britain. In 1936 the area’s population was largely Polish and Russian Jews, Irish Catholics and non-immigrant English working class. Most streets were a crooked tangle. Tiny houses were crammed together — 18th century industrial housing with flush toilets out the back. Many people worked on the nearby docks and in small factories, garment sweatshops and open air markets.

At that time, Sir Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts — the British Union of Fascists (BUF) — was by far the largest fascist grouping of many that were growing in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. They had close ties to Hitler. Moseley’s group sent committed fascists into the East End to beat up and terrorize Jews. They wanted to divide the Jews from all the other immigrant groups. They labeled Jews "tyrants of international banking." On the streets, fascists would scream "kill the kikes" and "get rid of the yids." Amid a severe depression, Moseley’s movement was growing among the unemployed, white collar workers and small businessmen.

A lot of Britain’s upper and ruling class funded the BUF. Some of Britain’s big newspapers — the Daily Mail, Evening News and Sunday Dispatch — promoted it. Even the recently crowned King (Edward VIII) had wealthy fascist friends in Britain, France and Germany. The police often turned a blind eye to the fascists’ beatings of Jews. Communists and trade unionists — many themselves Jews — led the attack on the fascists in the streets.

Moseley decided to show his strength by marching 10,000 uniformed Blackshirts and thousands of supporters directly through the Jewish/Irish neighborhood. Police Commissioner Sir Philip Game ordered his cops to "support the march."

October 4th dawned bright and sunny. Ten thousand police were assigned to protect Mosley’s fascists. The official Jewish leadership advised workers to stay indoors and not show aggressiveness to them. But up to 500,000 people from the East End and other parts of London came to stop the fascist march. Mass and individual acts of heroism flooded the streets of the East End. The names of Cable Street, Gardener’s Corner and Aldgate joined the list of great working-class battles.

At Mile End (an East End street), a woman marched shouting, "They shall not pass!" and headed towards Aldgate. By the time she reached it thousands were following her. At Cable Street, jeering and singing crowds tried to breach the wall of cops to get at the fascists. The police attacked using nightsticks while mounted police charged the crowd. The horses stumbled from children hurling marbles under their hoofs and bursting bags of pepper under their noses. Women threw the contents of chamber pots from windows. The Nazis screamed, "The yids, the yids. We gotta get rid of the yids." But the people chanted, "They will not pass!"

The masses erected barricades (see photo top right). A truck was turned on its side to block the street; old mattresses, bricks and pushcarts were thrown on top. An Irish anti-fascist bus driver drove his double-decker bus across the road, forming a barricade between the police and the anti-fascists. It was later pushed on its side. Red flags hung from windows. The army of fascists demanded the police escort them through the masses of people.

At Cable Street the massive wall of people held their ground and only retreated to pick up bricks or bottles to throw at the cops and fascists. Soon wounded police, fascists and protesters were carried off. The anti-fascist forces were so aggressive that a myth grew declaring that the police had surrendered to the crowd. One recently married young electrician who was hit in the face with a nightstick would talk about it proudly 30 years later.

The fascists were under a constant hail of bricks, bottles and stones. As the crowd continued to fight, over 100 anti-fascist fighters were arrested, but still the police could not move the masses who held the cops within a vise grip. One demonstrator was moved to tears seeing bearded Jews and Irish dockworkers standing together to stop Moseley, saying "I shall never forget that as long as I live!"

At 4:15 the Police Commissioner canceled the BUF’s right to march. But now the police had to save them from being killed by the crowd. They surrendered Cable Street and attempted to escape two blocks away to Gardener’s Corner where they could leave the East End. The BUF hastily turned at Gardener’s Corner, but the anti-fascists — waiting for them — shouted, "Get them!" and crashed through police lines. They then chased the fascists out of London’s East End.

Later that night an elderly woman asked a bandaged fighter if he had been at that day’s battle. Fearing her disapproval, he denied being there. To his surprise and joy she said, "A curse on you that you did not fight this day." To him it sounded like a Shakespearian quotation.

For days people celebrated throughout London. The fascists continued to try to organize, but now much of the ruling classes withdrew their open support (many began to view Hitler as a rival imperialist threat) and it was clear that workers wouldn’t be easily won to fascism. In early December, Edward VIII abdicated, having been king for only 10 months. The official story stated he left "to be with the woman he loved," but among the working class it was common knowledge that he was forced out because of his open fascist ties.

From this battle we can see the working class should never give in to nationalist leaders. Both Jewish and Irish community and religious leaders tried to convince the masses not to fight the fascists, fearful of "causing more problems." But if the fascists had not been fought at Cable Street, they would have been a much stronger ally of Hitler inside Britain during World War II.

The constant communist-led anti-fascist organizing over many years led to the understanding and empowerment of the working class. That’s why today PLP leads the fight against the racist Minutemen and warns about the danger of the liberals’ road to fascism (see front page).

Dare to struggle — dare to win!

References

Benewick, R.: "A Study of British Fascism, Political Violence and Public Order." The Penguin Press, London 1969.

Hutt, A.: "British Trade Unionism — A Short History." International Publishers, New York 1953.

Ratner, R.: "The 50th Anniversay of the Battle of Cable Street." Spotlight Magazine, October 1986.

Rudkin, W.A.: "The Growth of Fascism in Great Britain." George Allen and Unwin, London, 1935.

Shermer, D.: "Blackshirts: Fascism in Britain." Ballantine Press, New York, 1971.

Thomson, D.: "England in the 20th Century." Penguin, Baltimore, 1965.

Walvin, J.: "Passage to Britain." Penguin, Harmonsworth, Middlesex, 1984.

Forward to Communism:

Reds Led Resistance Inside Nazi Death Camps

Book Review: Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938-1945, by Hermann Langbein, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1994 — Part 1 of 2

After fighting fascism in Spain (1936-1939), the author was imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. He was a leader of the Auschwitz Combat Group resistance. His book dispels the lies that camp victims let themselves be passively slaughtered and showed that escape was not the main form of resistance.

The resistance mainly took the form of daily saving of lives, political study groups, sabotage and assassination of camp guards. Rather than individual heroism these were collective, painstaking efforts, led mainly by communists in highly secretive fashion and under the worst, murderous, dehumanizing conditions. They proved that even under the worst of conditions communists can still sustain their organization. Langbein says, "Communists...in contrast to men [sic] of liberal views...were used to absolute party discipline and were almost the only ones who were the enemy’s match as far as means and methods were concerned [p. 76]."

Initially criminal prisoners were responsible for enforcing discipline, keeping order and carrying out all commands. These so-called Greens (the color of their assigned badges) often received favors for killing and viciously whipping the "undesirable" political prisoners (so-called Reds) and Jews. As the Nazis invaded more countries and imprisoned more people, the SS (the Nazi organization that ran the camps) attempted to divide prisoners by nationality, but communists found many sympathizers and comrades from every country represented.

Slowly, Reds replaced Greens as senior block or barracks inmates by exposing their corruption, killing those who were demoted and seizing on the Nazis’ desperation to "manage" the hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Inmates kept roll call records, had responsibility for work assignments, and arranged hospital duty and transfers to other camps. (Incidentally, the Nazis used punch cards contributed by the U.S. company, IBM.)

Once positioned in a critical area, Red prisoners had some ability — although at high risk — to determine where people would go or who would appear or "disappear" from the rolls, often by assigning names of prisoners who had already died. Not all Reds or Jews were eager to engage in subterfuge or in deciding who might be saved at the expense of another. One Jewish woman, Vera Alexander, hesitated to become a block clerk, for then she would be subject to SS scrutiny. However, finally she did accept, and said, "Sometimes I was able to conceal in the block women who had been sentenced to death...At other times I was able to hide sick women so that they escaped the selection [for killing -- p. 49]."

From Ravensbrueck, a concentration camp mainly for women, three Jewish women were deported to Auschwitz for execution for their underground activities for the Communist Party. But the resistance organization in the women’s section of Auschwitz successfully protected them [p. 84].

(Part two will discuss the efforts of the underground camp resistance to hinder the Nazi war effort, the resistance’s mistaken reliance on the Allies for their rescue and finally the post-war failure of the international communist movement to organize for the overthrow of capitalism.)

PLP History: Championing Internationlism

Thirty-six years ago, on Oct. 24-25, 1970, NYC witnessed an historic internationalist event not seen in recent memory: over 2,500 workers and students from fraternal communist parties from Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. marched from Manhattan’s Lower East Side nearly four miles all the way to 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, chanting, "Workers Power!" and "Fight for Socialism!" — slogans not heard on the city’s streets for 40 years. (This was prior to PLP’s more advanced outlook adopted in 1982 of "Fight for Communism.") It was a forerunner of PLP’s eventual international declaration of "One flag, one Party, one class."

The marchers surrounded the blocks containing the Canadian Consulate, protesting the Trudeau government’s "War Measures" attack on Quebec’s workers. Thousands of onlookers stopped to listen as the marchers sang the workers’ anthem, The Internationale. Many joined the march.

The participants came from many Canadian cities, and from Buffalo, Rochester, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New England and from all five boroughs of NYC and were addressed by representatives of PLP, the Socialist League of Puerto Rico — the famous poet, Juan Antonio Corretjer — and the Canadian Party of Labor.

The weekend was capped off with a dinner attended by 2,200. Many declared it one of the most inspiring events of their entire lives.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, Oct. 18, 2006

Information: 18 October 2006 820 hits

WAR NEEDS DICTATE HARVARD ADMISSION CHANGE
Racist Rulers Target Working-Class Youth To Be Misleaders
DUMP ALL BOSSES!
Oaxaca Workers Defy Threats
1. GOVERNORS CHANGE BUT OPPRESSION REMAINS THE SAME
Capitalism and U.S. Imperialism Still the Biggest Terrorists
THIS MONTH IN PLP HISTORY
Pro-Cop Union Hacks' Pacifism Undercuts Hotel Workers
PLP'ers Spread Red Ideas In Transit Union Election Campaign
NYC Teachers Support Oaxaca Strikers
Mexico's Rulers Fight Over Oil; Workers Must Smash `em All
1. Banff or Chapultepec -- A Bosses' Dogfight
LA Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers
French Bosses' Mouthpiece Sees Fascism Growing in U.S., U.K.
Want to End Imperialist Wars?
Shed Illusions of `Peaceful' Capitalism
Lynne Stewart Case -- Legalizing Fascist Terror
`Brides' March Against Domestic Violence
LETTERS
Which side are liberals on?
REDEYE
NAACP Red-Baiters Betrayed Pro-Communists Du Bois, Robeson
1. Serving Imperialism
2. Rely On Bosses Or Workers?
Hungary: Free-Market `Socialists' Vs. Gutter Fascists
New Liberalism Paves the Way to Fascism:
Communist Politics Needed To Thwart Bosses' War Plan

WAR NEEDS DICTATE HARVARD ADMISSION CHANGE
Racist Rulers Target Working-Class Youth To Be Misleaders

Don't look for egalitarian or humanitarian motives behind Harvard's recent move to ease admissions for the "disadvantaged." This cradle of the A-bomb, napalm and racist eugenics remains the leading ideologic support for U.S. capitalism and its war machine. Harvard dropped its early admissions policy, which favors the wealthy, because U.S. rulers, facing intensifying imperialist competition, require a broader pool of talented, loyal cadre.

As global conflict approaches, they need leaders who can win the working class to the ideals of "service and sacrifice" that prevailed during World War II. Today's middle- and upper-class Ivy League products aren't doing the job. They tend to pursue narrow, selfish interests like getting rich or, if rich already, indulging in wasteful pastimes. So Harvard and its growing list of imitators seek to train a few misleaders from working-class backgrounds for influential positions in government, business, education, law, medicine, the clergy and (the bosses' fondest dream) the military.

DIE-HARD RACIST IMPERIALISTS SHAPED POLICY MOVE

Harvard's admissions change originated with its ex-president Larry Summers, who lost his job last Spring when, despite strenuous efforts, he failed to win faculty approval for restoring on-campus officer training. As Clinton's second Treasury Secretary, Summers had attacked millions of workers, largely black and Latin, by helping dismantle Welfare in order to shift precious capital to U.S. military adventures.

Final approval for ending early admissions came on Sept. 11 from the university's governing board, led by Robert Rubin and James Houghton. Rubin, who heads Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank, is vice-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Rockefeller-organized think-tank that drew up plans for invading and occupying Iraq with massive force and criticizes Bush for deploying too few troops. Rubin preceded Summers as Clinton's treasury boss. Houghton, a CFR director, sits on the boards of both Exxon Mobil and J.P. Morgan Chase, imperialist firms that benefit greatly from U.S. war efforts.

SCHOLARSHIPS BRIBE WORKERS INTO BETRAYING THEIR CLASS

In opening the door a crack wider to working-class students, Harvard and the others hope to generate in them life-long gratitude to the ruling class. The bosses already have such a program in place on the secondary level in New York City. Called Prep for Prep, it conducts a talent search of public schools, places promising black and Latino students in private schools at vastly reduced or no tuition, helps them enter elite colleges, and encourages them to "give back" by donating to their alma maters or working for the Wall Street firms that fund the scheme. Harvard and J.P. Morgan Chase are the top destinations for Prep for Prep protégés.

Summers understood this priceless payback for two-bit "generosity" in 2004 when he abolished tuition for students of parents making less than $40,000 (since raised to $60,000). In recent decades, Harvard had accepted some talented working-class students but saddled them with "work-study" (bright, poor students scrubbing the toilets of privileged, mediocre ones) and exorbitant loans. Summers knew that degradation and debt might not make working-class alumni particularly loyal to the ruling class.

FAKE IVY LEAGUE EGALITARIANISM MASKS GENOCIDE

Harvard has a long history of such phony democratization that serves U.S. imperialism. In the 1920's, shortly after vast cash infusions from the Rockefellers' General Education Board had ensured their control of Ivy League colleges (Ivies), Harvard started relying more on College Board "aptitude test" scores and less on prep school headmasters' recommendations. The tests, originally designed to identify "officer material" in World War I, qualified many Jewish applicants, whom dismayed old-liners soon limited by quotas. (The Harvard-led pseudo-scientific eugenics movement excluded almost all black candidates, however.)

Before, during, and after World War II, Harvard president James Conant insisted on the SAT test as key to a U.S. "meritocracy." "Merit-based" access to the Ivies catapulted working-class children into positions of authority in the rulers' apparatus, including military commissions. Conant boasted in 1933 that "any man with remarkable talents may obtain his education at Harvard whether he be rich or penniless...." But history lays bare "reformer" Conant's true class allegiance. He led the development of two of U.S. imperialism's most feared civilian-targeting terror weapons: the atomic bomb and napalm.

Make no mistake, the rulers don't mean to replace the well-to-do completely or even largely at the elite schools. Nor do they intend to open higher education to the bulk of the working class, but rather to only a tiny percentage. It won't work. President Franklin Roosevelt was able to win workers to his World War II agenda not by ennobling a few workers but because the communist movement, which then led millions, mistakenly joined a "united front" with the ruling class to fight fascism. (The communists didn't recognize that workers and bosses had different interests in fighting the Nazis.)

No such situation exists now. The vast majority of young workers lack leadership and can expect only a low-paying dead-end job, unemployment, jail, or a stint in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's our Party's task to organize workers in their own class interests. We need to keep on exposing lethal ruling-class traps, like Harvard's latest scam.

WHAT LIBERAL BOSSES REALLY WANT -- WARTIME MOBILIZATION

The following is a September 18th letter to the New York Times from Wall Street financier Jeffrey Paley, a Prep for Prep donor, Kerry campaign backer, generous Harvard alumnus and son of CBS founder William Paley.

"It is beyond me why Democrats haven't asked President Bush why -- if he really believes that the struggle against radical Islam is comparable to the war against Hitler and that "staying the course" in Iraq is essential to a victory in the war on terrorism -- he hasn't mobilized the country to maximize the American war effort.

"Instead of lowering taxes, why hasn't he raised them to pay for this "life-and-death struggle"?

"Why hasn't he reinstated the draft to increase our troop strength? Why hasn't he instituted draconian measures to free us from our dependence on Middle East oil?

"Why has he refused to change his policies or leadership to correct his administration's obvious mistakes so that it can fight the war more effectively?

"If President Bush really believes what he says, he is scaring us without really calling us to action."

DUMP ALL BOSSES!
Oaxaca Workers Defy Threats

OAXACA, MEXICO, Oct. 2 -- Hundreds of barricades are up, the fires are burning, radio stations and office buildings have been seized, the workers have taken over the city and are guarding the entrances and their encampment in the Zócalo (city center). A march of thousands is headed for Mexico City, 340 miles away to demand the ouster of the State's governor. But dumping one politician, no matter how rotten, won't change the racist capitalist exploitative system.

With Navy helicopters flying menacingly overhead and the Army threatening to attack with tanks and special forces, there is fear, but even more, there is anger and hatred against the politicians, police and the capitalist system.

A few weeks ago, on one of the many seized radio stations, a complete CHALLENGE article was read about the struggle in Oaxaca. Thousands heard about the need to build a base for communist revolution.

A PLP poster pasted on the walls in the center of Oaxaca proclaims, "We support the teachers' struggle...A system that can't provide education or decent jobs must be destroyed with a communist revolution." Posted at the beginning of the 4-month teachers' strike, it is still there.

The city continues to be occupied by the teachers, farm workers and workers in general, organized by the teachers' union (SNTE, Section 22) and APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca). The militancy and bravery of the workers are immense. Many people go to their homes after work to prepare food and coffee for those who are living in and guarding the encampments. Meetings and discussions at different levels occur at all hours among the 70,000 teachers and hundreds of thousands of supporters from the entire state of Oaxaca who've joined this struggle.

Harassment by State police and death squads has been constant. A fascist mobilization of 2,000 police and busloads of soldiers in surrounding towns are preparing to attack if the teachers and the APPO leaders refuse to agree to the government's deal by an Oct. 4 deadline. The government claims it is offering some concessions if the teachers and supporting workers end the occupation.

GOVERNORS CHANGE BUT OPPRESSION REMAINS THE SAME

This struggle's demands -- better conditions, changing some state election laws and ouster of the governor Ulises Ruiz -- are demands to reform the capitalist system. Even though the bosses and some reform leaders say we shouldn't talk about anything except the "demands" so as "not to endanger the struggle," in reality workers, teachers and students DO want to talk about alternatives, mainly the one that will guarantee a winning struggle against the capitalist system of oppression that puts our whole class in the gravest danger.

No matter how this struggle ends, capitalism will remain. The teachers have a great responsibility to develop the new waves of young students who will go to the factories, fields, classrooms and, importantly, to the army with the red ideas of taking power and running society in the interests of the workers. -- there's no "intermediary" road. Large sections of the army, along with city workers and farm workers, must be won to the fight for workers' power. A majority of the soldiers being mobilized are sons of these very workers and farm workers, sons who went to schools where they were taught by the very same teachers now on strike.

As the poet and revolutionary Flores Magon declared, "A heart and a gun aren't enough." Workers need to fight for revolutionary communism. Members and friends of PLP are organizing -- and must continue to organize -- actions in unions, schools and factories to support the struggle here. We are one international working class.

The PLP has the opportunity to grow out of this struggle, as long as we fight for the idea that the only solution to workers' problems is to get rid of all the bosses and their politicians. (See articles pages 3, 4.)

Capitalism and U.S. Imperialism Still the Biggest Terrorists

The fifth anniversary of 9/11 spawned a huge outcry in the U.S. While grief by family members of those killed was certainly legitimate, the programs flooding the airwaves were simply an attempt by the U.S. ruling class to drum up support for its imperialist wars. The bin Laden-type fundamentalist bosses have killed and are killing thousands of workers (including many Muslims), from 9/11 to Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Madrid, London and Mumbai, India. But all that is dwarfed by the millions U.S. imperialists and global capitalists have slaughtered. All these bosses are enemies of the working class.

The U.S. government's hypocrisy is further exposed by its stonewalling and often outright refusal to help tens of thousands made seriously ill from inhaling the deadly toxins in downtown NYC, after being told it was "safe" to return.

The U.S. ruling class used the heightened nationalism following 9/11 to launch long-standing plans for invading the Middle East, first Afghanistan and then Iraq. With racist disregard for the lives of Muslim workers, the U.S. massacred about four times as many Afghan workers and 85 times as many Iraqi workers in these wars and occupations than the 3,000 killed on 9/11. At least 200,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, plus nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and 2,700 U.S. GIs.(1) Millions of Iraqi workers who managed to survive lost family members, homes, health and access to food/water. All this so Big Oil could secure the Middle East's second largest oil producer and control the faucet of energy flowing to Europe and China.

The drive for maximum profits inherent in capitalism has always led the bosses to fight for power globally. U.S. conservative and liberal -- Democrat or Republican -- rulers only disagree on how best to organize the bigger wars the U.S. bosses need to maintain their dominance.

Through bombing and invasions, U.S. imperialists have targeted Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Kuwait, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Grenada and Lebanon, to name a few in recent years (see website for fuller list).(2) They recently added thousands to the death toll through support for Israel's attack on Lebanon (Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid). U.S. bosses are the only ones to have dropped nuclear bombs, killing over 300,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW II when Japan was ready to surrender.(3)

Each death wrought by U.S. imperialism deserves as much mourning as the lavish dedications given those who perished on 9/11. Each worker this system has killed had a name, a family and a life stolen from him or her. The rulers' racism that treats "foreigners and non-whites" as expendable defines capitalist warfare's mass murder as merely "collateral" damage.

Internationally, capitalism is a system of deadly consequences that fails to meet working peoples' most basic needs, especially across Africa and much of the underdeveloped world -- 28 million working-class children die each year from easily curable diseases and another 17 million die from malnutrition.(4) Racism guarantees pharmaceutical and food bosses high prices and maximum profits over these millions of dead bodies. Still further, capitalism manufactures products that intrinsically have negative effects on workers and our health, such as cigarettes, drugs and munitions. Under capitalism, workers die so bosses can thrive.

Within the U.S., the world's wealthiest country, a half million people are homeless, and thousands more are threatened with homelessness due to rising rents and racist gentrification. Such gentrification in New Orleans is the aftermath of the murder and displacement of thousands of black workers to provide a more profitable financial order. Meanwhile, growing fascist repression, characterized by racist police terror against black, Latino, Arab and Muslim workers, endangers ever more lives. And now Congress has legalized torture as a method of interrogation.

We must remember the millions of revolutionaries in China and Russia who died fighting the Nazis and Japanese fascists to defend their own society, not the profits of capitalists. The current communist movement -- while learning from their weaknesses -- stands on the shoulders of these revolutionary workers.

Communists strive to share society's benefits and burdens, including those produced by war. During WW II, for instance, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's own son was captured and perished in a Nazi concentration camp. Compare that to the children of U.S. politicians who provide token military service at most.

Every day the working class takes casualties from capitalist wars for profits; perish from curable diseases; are drowned in the wake of broken levees; police and money-hungry gangs shoot us; we're poisoned by cigarettes or other drugs pumped into our communities. The Progressive Labor Party is organizing workers in many countries to build a communist movement. As the bosses start ever more wars at our expense, workers led by PLP must organize to destroy them and their murderous system. That's the only way to end once and for all the daily terrorist attacks on our class!

Footnotes:
(1)www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html
(2) www.neravt.com/left/invade.html
(3) Asahi Shimbin, "The Spirit of Hirshima," Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
(4) Abaana.org

THIS MONTH IN PLP HISTORY

In the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, threatening atomic war, only the 3-month-old Progressive Labor Movement (predecessor of PLP and not yet a revolutionary communist party) was indicting U.S. imperialism. When Kennedy and Khrushchev eventually settled the conflict, the U.S. "Communist Party" newspaper's headline was, "Thank God there's Peace!" But PLM's slogan was "Hands Off Cuba!"

When the UN General Assembly was meeting on the crisis in New York, eight PLM members managed to avoid security and sat in the audience. At the appropriate time, they rose from their seats and with two members on each end warding off UN cops, the six in the middle unfurled a big banner with the "Hands Off Cuba" slogan, creating a huge stir throughout the hall. Eventually they were kicked out. It set a good precedent for PLP's future militant anti-imperialist actions

Since it occurred on the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, it became known as the "Yom Kippur Rebellion."

(We invite readers to contribute to these historical articles.)

Pro-Cop Union Hacks' Pacifism Undercuts Hotel Workers

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 28 -- Hundreds of hotel workers and 2,000 supporters marched today in support of a drive to unionize the mostly immigrant workforce at 13 hotels near LAX airport. The LA Times front page built the demonstration as "A plan for very civil disobedience," praising the close cooperation between the union and the cops.

Three hundred people were peacefully arrested for sitting in the street blocking traffic. Union leaders of UNITE-HERE, the LA County Federation of Labor and the "Somos America" ("We are America") coalition worked with the police to "choreograph" it. Many workers agreed that the staged arrests were nothing more than a "show."

Personal information of volunteer arrestees was given to the police in advance. "The police are workers just like we are," said UNITE-HERE leader Maria Elena Durazo, head of the County Federation. "We should cheer for the police because they're here to protect us!"

But when workers strike, the cops' role is to beat and arrest them while protecting scabs and the bosses' profits, stolen from exploited workers. Government is not "neutral"; it's a tool of capitalist class rule. Registering workers to vote is "democracy's" scam; it hides the class dictatorship run by the bosses.

Our PL leaflet stated, "Arrests staged for the media will not stop racism, exploitation, or wars for profit. For that, we need the long-term fight for workers' power with communist revolution."

Workers were glad to support striking Oaxaca teachers, responding to our PL flyer inviting them to demonstrate on their behalf. PLP sold 200 CHALLENGES and distributed 900 communist leaflets. Students from Mecha and from a nearby Catholic University also gladly took our literature.

One union activist grabbed our sign reading, "No Deportations -- No Slave-Labor Bracero Program -- No Green Card Army for U.S. Imperialism." "I'm taking this," she said, "and bringing it home with me." Another worker borrowed a sign, "La Clase Obrera No Tiene Frontera" ("The Working Class Has No Borders") and walked backwards with it so other marchers could learn the new chant as his co-worker led it over a bullhorn.

When racist Minutemen showed up, Durazo declared that "the Minutemen aren't our enemy"! PLP'ers and others chanted against these fascists who were protected by cops on horses while Durazo's monitors told people to ignore the racists. But some workers joined PL-led chants against the police despite monitors telling them to stop.

Today's action marginalized the hotel workers themselves. Official posters said, "I am a human being" -- signs with specific grievances against the hotels were left back in the union office.

This demonstration exposed the liberals as paving the way for fascism. Durazo and other "new cold-war liberals" are playing a deadly role in the labor and immigrant movements, fighting for a cadre of loyalists to work for the bosses. These misleaders tell workers the organizing campaign is to win a little more money, health benefits and "respect." But their real goal is winning workers and students to passivity, to support the police and "comprehensive immigration reform." They want to build patriotism while keeping workers in poverty and taking their youth to fight widening imperialist oil wars for the bosses' profits.

"Experts" cited by the LA Times crow that "the close cooperation with law enforcement reflects a more powerful and mature labor movement." But it's actually designed to make the bosses more powerful, not the workers. They tell workers to rely on religious leaders, politicians and the media instead of on their potential strength as a class.

While workers involved in this campaign haven't openly broken with the rotten leadership, our patient and consistent work will build a base for revolution and win many to oppose their class-collaborationism with communist politics. PLP'ers and our friends are fighting to expand the distribution of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO and other PLP literature through networks we build within these boss-led organizations.

PLP'ers Spread Red Ideas In Transit Union Election Campaign

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 2 -- In December, Metro's Amalgamated Transportation Union (ATU) Local 689 will elect new officers. PLP member and local president Mike Golash is running for re-election and the campaign is building a broader base for PLP through the distribution of CHALLENGE and a better, more consistent PL study group. This is creating more leadership at Metro around the Party's ideas.

Other activities are also building a base for PLP. Mike led a group of 689 members at the ATU Canadian-American conference that challenged the idea of solving workers' problems through electing politicians.

Conference speakers were fixated on electoral politics as the strategy for the workers' movement. Members from different locals shared stories of supporting different candidates, who, once elected, attacked the unions, but they still stuck to the idea of changing society through elections (Just like the "anti-war" politicians who always wind up voting for the bosses' war budget).

Other speakers analyzed the decline in union membership and skyrocketing healthcare costs. A 689 woman declared, "They all have the right idea of the problem, but no solution!" She said that all politicians have the "same agenda" and that we should not support any of them.

The annual crab feast kicking off the PLP union campaign was a huge success with 70 people attending (our biggest turnout in 20 years) including 20 Metro workers.

A Howard University student inspired the listeners with a talk about New Orleans. She provided a clear class analysis, focusing on the need to change the entire system. She also compared the destruction in New Orleans to capitalism's devastation of parts of Chicago and D.C. One Metro worker said, "My wife is now determined for all of us to go down there."

Mike and other candidates spoke on the need to build the workers' movement by relying on the workers, not politicians. One young comrade declared, "We need more class consciousness!"

Other workers are already taking the lead. One young comrade has hosted two cookouts, drawing many Metro workers, some seriously committed to the campaign's ideas and others interested in communism. Twenty-five Metro workers (including many young ones) came to the first one and all took CHALLENGES. Some youth were uncertain about distributing the paper at a "social event," but the workers welcomed this exposure to communist politics. The paper sparked many great discussions, especially around New Orleans and the racism of capitalism. Metro comrades are now able to follow up with these new readers.

Primarily older workers, retirees and Metro workers attended the other cookout. One young worker who had attended conferences with Party members but had never discussed our ideas one on one, stayed afterwards to discuss communism and revolution.

The struggle around the union election will intensify as the self-serving opportunistic right-wingers sharpen their knives and their lies. Win or lose the election, the PLP is already winning at Metro because of our growing base and the growing class consciousness of the workers.

NYC Teachers Support Oaxaca Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, Sept. 21 -- Today over 150 workers from schools and colleges here rallied at the Mexican Consulate to support the Oaxaca teachers' rebellion. United Federation of Teachers (UFT) rank-and-filers and members of UFT'ers to Stop The War, including PL'ers, organized the demonstration after one teacher -- who'd been to Oaxaca recently -- petitioned the union leadership to sponsor it to build solidarity with the strikers. However, they and the City University faculty union leaders refused.

The rally was endorsed by PLP and some phony "leftist" groups. One positive result of the leadership's refusal was the absence of support for the Democratic Party. The pickets' chants expressed strong, pro-working-class sentiments at times. The speeches, however, ranged from one given by a PLP'er -- explaining the need for communist revolution to solve workers' problems -- to rambling talks by other groups. CHALLENGES and PLP leaflets were distributed and some contacts were made. The rally was broadcast live to a Oaxaca radio station so workers there could receive the support instantaneously.

The effort to get the union hacks involved did force UFT President Randi Weingarten to write a letter of support. Now members of UFT'ers to Stop The War will bring a resolution to this month's Delegate Assembly to demand substantial support -- money, a letter-writing campaign and an article in the union newspaper. PLP members will distribute a leaflet explaining the need for communist revolution and for international workers' solidarity.

More importantly, we'll bring this campaign into our schools. While leaflets were placed in teachers' mailboxes, and the issue was raised at one school's union meeting, we didn't fight to bring co-workers and students to the rally. One issue needing more struggle in this campaign is winning people to more open advocacy of anti-imperialism.

Mexico's Rulers Fight Over Oil; Workers Must Smash `em All

"The oil doesn't belong to the government, not even to the Mexican State, it belongs to the nation, to the motherland, and the motherland cannot be sold, it must be defended."

This was Andres Lopez Obrador's reaction to a September conference in Banff, Canada, of top political, military and corporate leaders from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. They discussed integrating the North American defense systems, national security, immigration, military production and control over the continent's energy reserves. This "Deep Integration" was first formulated in 2005 by "The Independent Task Force for North America," sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, the top think-tank for the main wing of the U.S. ruling class.

At a rally in Mexico's Pemex City in the oil zone of Tabasco, Lopez Obrador called the above-mentioned meeting a plot to "design a new Mexico," privatizing its energy sector. When he said that Pemex -- Mexico's state-run oil company -- was not for sale, thousands cheered. This increases his popularity among Mexico's masses and widens the divide among its rulers, reflected in their dogfight over the presidential election's results -- mainly a dispute over Pemex's privatization. This in turn is driven by sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, rising fascism and preparations for world war. The fight among Mexican rulers pits the sector wanting integration into "Fortress North America" versus those seeking better deals with other imperialists.

At stake is the fate of U.S. imperialism as the dominant world power -- based since 1945 upon its strategic control of oil, resting on the four pillars of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Venezuela. The 2001 U.S. invasion of Iraq accelerated the erosion of this strategy. It exposed U.S. military weakness, emboldening nationalist forces in energy-rich countries like Iran and Venezuela to thumb their noses at U.S. rulers and look for better deals with U.S. rivals. It further destabilized the Middle East, possibly jeopardizing future guarantees of safe delivery of gas and oil to themselves, much less to their allies. Thus, "energy security" is now the major concern of the world's bosses.

Add to this scrambling for oil China's ever-growing thirst for energy to maintain its economic growth and Russia's emergence as the world's main energy broker, it's a situation that eventually only war can resolve. No wonder U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave a key speech to this meeting on "military-to-military cooperation." Present were the U.S. commander for NorthCom (in charge of homeland defense), the Canadian Minister of Defense, and representatives from Lockheed Martin, Chevron, PEMEX and Suncor Energy (a Canadian oil and gas giant) and dozens of other high-ranking participants.

Further aggravating the U.S. dilemma, from 1970 to today its domestic oil production sank from 9.4 million barrels of oil daily (mbd) to 4.7 mbd, while consuming over 20 mbd. At this rate, the U.S. would run out of oil in ten years. Currently, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela are the four top exporters of oil to the U.S. But some Canadian bosses are making huge energy deals with China; Saudi Arabia is becoming increasingly unstable; Venezuela is drawing closer to China, Russia and Iran; and if Mexico doesn't invest in exploration to discover new fields, it will run out of oil in ten years. Therefore, the urgent need of U.S. bosses to privatize PEMEX, supported by Felipe Calderon, the newly-elected president, and his gang.

Banff or Chapultepec -- A Bosses' Dogfight

But Carlos Slim -- Mexico's and Latin America's richest capitalist, worth $30 billion -- says Mexican capitalists, not U.S. imperialists, should own Mexico's oil, like Telmex, a state-owned telephone company that was privatized; Slim now controls 94% of the fixed phone market and 76% of the mobile. Although Slim wants private Mexican owners and Obrador wants state Mexican ownership, they both agree the country needs a "new economic model," not the U.S.-backed neo-liberal model. Pushing his interests, Slim has organized 300 of the richest Mexican capitalists behind his economic "Chapultepec Pact" program. Obrador -- who represents a group of nationalist capitalists and wants to guarantee the stability of the profit system -- refused to endorse this program unless it barred selling PEMEX and its oil reserves to national or transnational investors. Slim and his gang refused to add this provision.

Yet, Slim and Obrador do agree on investing heavily in refineries and petrochemical plants to create jobs and to use the $15 billions saved annually to finance the exploration guaranteeing PEMEX's future revenues. Obrador, however, wants PEMEX to continue its more than 40% contribution to the federal budget and even use some of it for social control programs, a la Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. A Slim-Obrador agreement would constitute the most powerful and dangerous enemy of Mexico's working class.

Alongside this vultures' squabble is the rising militancy of Mexico's workers, in mass struggles in Atenco, the Sicartsa steel mill and Oaxaca, producing an explosive situation. There is danger that politicians like Obrador might channel workers' anger into a movement supporting Slim or another gang of Mexican bosses in their dogfight (or side with one or another imperialist butcher seeking world domination). But there is opportunity for PLP to take our message of communist revolution more consistently and boldly to the working class -- participating in class struggle, building a base, expanding our CHALLENGE networks and recruiting new members. Mexico's workers must not be trapped into choosing between U.S. bosses' or local bosses' ownership of oil. Oil and all resources and value produced by workers must be in our hands, benefiting our class. We must destroy the bosses' nationalism with workers' internationalism by joining and building PLP and fighting for communism.

LA Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers

LOS ANGELES, OCT. 3 -- International workers' solidarity shone as 150 LA teachers, workers, students and others from Oaxaca demonstrated at the Mexican consulate, supporting the struggle in Oaxaca and protesting the military build-up there. The action was endorsed by the LA teachers' union.

A woman from Oaxaca reported how teachers there had repelled a goon attack and that military academy students had joined the teachers' march.

The crowd applauded a statement from PLP in Oaxaca declaring that all capitalist politicians -- Mestizo, indigenous, democrat or right winger -- guarantee the exploitation of the working class and therefore workers need communist revolution. Many asked for CHALLENGE. The demonstrators sang "Venceremos" (We will win) and the "Internationale."

French Bosses' Mouthpiece Sees Fascism Growing in U.S., U.K.

A "systematic seizure of power" is progressively doing away with "liberal democracy" in the U.S. and the United Kingdom says Philip Golub's dispassionate analysis in the September "Le Monde diplomatique." Golub is a journalist and teaches at the University of Paris-VIII; "Le Monde diplomatique" is a key forum in which the French ruling class hammers out its ideology and communicates it to French elites.

In both the U.S. and the U.K., the executive branch has marginalized the legislative and judicial branches of government and acquired near-dictatorial power. Golub cites a series of British laws from 2003 to 2006 which allow the Home Secretary to use a star chamber to lock people up, undermining the right of habeus corpus. And Parliament almost passed a "law for the abolition of Parliament" this year.

In the U.S., "the executive branch...engages in preventive wars, [and] kidnaps, tortures and indefinitely imprisons, without trial, anyone who has been identified by presidential decree as an `illegal combatant.'" Moreover, the White House's military tribunals constitute "a parallel `judicial' system."

Golub derides President Bush's assertion that fragmented, stateless al-Qaeda is trying to "establish a radical Islamic empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia" as laughable, except that such warnings are made to justify establishing a dictatorship that was decided on before 9/11. He says Congress and the judiciary have slowed but not stopped the process.

But Golub has no clue as to why this is happening. He sees it as part of "a blind neo-free trade and neo-conservative advance" to impose "regressive social `reforms' and increasingly repressive disciplinary and security measures" on society. This move to "sovereign dictatorship" is supposedly the fault of Tony Blair and George Bush, who are both apparently inspired by an obscure early-20th-century reactionary German political theorist, Carl Schmitt. (Can anyone imagine Bush reading the works of Carl Schmitt?)

While Golub lays all this on Bush & Co., he fails to see that the liberal/Democrat wing of the U.S. ruling class also wants absolute control over the working class, but only differs on tactics. They've voted for virtually all of Bush's proposals, only "opposing" those parts that would eliminate their own cushy jobs or that are so blatant that they make it more difficult to win workers to support a police state and imperialist war.

As PLP has explained, the move to fascism (a word Golub politely refrains from using) is imposed by ruling classes around the world as the only way to discipline society while preparing for world war.

To Golub's credit, he includes France among the "countries [where] barely legitimate executive branches have been governing for years without -- and often against -- popular approval." However, his article's emphasis on developments in the U.K. and the U.S. may feed "patriotic" anti-Anglo-Saxon fears in France, which could help the French ruling class justify its own drift to fascism.

Communist revolution is the only way for the workers of the world to do away with capitalism and the fascism that it produces.

Want to End Imperialist Wars?
Shed Illusions of `Peaceful' Capitalism

This summer, hundreds gathered for the annual Veterans for Peace conference (VFP). There were powerful testimonials by veterans from the Spanish Civil War to the current Iraq invasion, along with workshop topics ranging from Hurricane Katrina to violence against women in the military. At many times participants blasted the racist, sexist and imperialist nature of capitalism. But these moments were steered towards pacifist, liberal and pro-U.S. programs, which only serve the capitalist class.

Lieutenant Ehren K. Watada of Fort Lewis, the first U.S. military officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, told a packed audience that if soldiers realized what the U.S. constitution meant they would throw down their weapons -- "no president could ever again initiate a war of choice." It was the one of the few calls for soldiers to organize against the war but was still wrapped in liberal "democratic" reformism -- the solution is in the constitution (the system).

A sizeable contingent from Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) attended the conference. They were multi-racial, had a growing female membership and have invaluable first-hand experience in Iraq. Many reported their disgust upon returning from Iraq and seeing U.S. youth preoccupied with the superficial trappings of "American Idol," MTV and pop culture. Other IVAW members criticized IVAW itself for confining its campaign to the war in Iraq, ignoring the war in the streets of working-class inner-city neighborhoods where some IVAW members were born and raised.

However, many in the IVAW leadership encourage voting for "anti-war" candidates, political lobbying, and bolstering their images in the capitalist media. Several IVAW members have formed a political action committee to back candidates that say they will bring the troops home. And one IVAW member said that organizing to stop the war from the top down (electing people to office) is just as important as organizing from the bottom up.

Most at the conference are honestly motivated by wanting to see a world free of sexism, racism, and imperialist war. To achieve such goals, Progressive Labor Party is uniting workers, students and soldiers worldwide to make revolutionary communist war on the bosses. Violence can be oppressive and destructive when used by the ruling class to protect its profits -- from the genocide killing three million in the Congo, to the murderous war in Afghanistan, to the war between Hezbollah and Israeli rulers (killing workers on both sides), to the murder of striking workers in Oaxaca -- but it can also be liberating and constructive in the hands of an organized working class to destroy the oppressive system of capitalism. Relying on the bosses' old tricks of electoral politics or fighting for reforms to make capitalism "work better" will never free workers from the chains of the bosses' system.

Lynne Stewart Case -- Legalizing Fascist Terror

NEW YORK CITY -- October 16, 2006, marks a key event in the development of U.S. fascism. On that day attorney Lynne Stewart will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Koeltl. Stewart was convicted of "material support for terrorism," "conspiracy" and breaking "special" prison rules. The U.S. government wants to imprison her essentially for life -- it's asking for a 30-year sentence for this 66-year old woman with breast cancer.

Communists in PLP see the handwriting on the wall. While we may not agree with Stewart's politics, we know her conviction and jailing will embolden the bosses' government. It will scare some opponents of this system, lawyers and others, away from vigorous advocacy and action. That's exactly what the ruling class wants as it prepares for more and wider wars to control oil and defeat its imperialist rivals.

The latest Kafkaesque twist in this case came in response to Stewart's motion to suppress evidence that may have been obtained under a wiretap by the National Security Agency (NSA). The prosecutors filed a "secret" response to the motion with the judge. They sent a hit man who specializes in "secrecy" issues to tell the judge that no information in the government's response should be divulged to the defense lawyers. The judge has reserved decision.

Stewart's conviction was payback for her many years of successfully representing unpopular anti-government clients. During the trial, she was cross-examined about her anti-capitalist views. In his closing remarks, the prosecutor equated Stewart's advocacy of the need for violence to overcome capitalist-inspired racism and sexism with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

At least 75% of the evidence at trial was offered against Ahmed Sattar, a paralegal who accompanied Stewart on prison visits to her client, Sheik Abdel Rahman. Sattar did have extensive ties to the right-wing fundamentalist Islamic Group (IG). The evidence included wiretaps of 85,000 separate faxes and conversations over a period of seven years, and a videotape of Osama bin Laden supporting the Sheik. Stewart knew nothing about Sattar's close ties to IG, but her motion to have a separate trial for herself and the interpreter -- who also went on the prison visits -- was denied. Stewart has repeatedly said that she rejects IG's politics. The interpreter was also convicted although all he did was translate.

Unfortunately many, including Stewart, have illusions about how fast fascism is growing in the U.S. and worldwide. In fighting to overthrow the capitalists, revolutionary communists discount this reality at our peril, and the peril of the working class.

These illusions are somewhat reflected in an appeal for leniency that Stewart wrote the judge on September 26. In it she says, that in representing a convicted terrorist, "a lawyer might need to tread lightly....My only motive was to serve my client as his lawyer. What might have been legitimately tolerated in 2000-2001, was after 9/11 interpreted differently and considered criminal. At the time I didn't see this. I...understand it now." She also wrote that, "Those who know me best, as a mother, a family member and a lawyer, know that I am not a terrorist." (NY Times, 9/29)

This case presents PLP and the working class with an opportunity. Despite mass protests against the invasion of Iraq, millions who still support it today have become convinced it was a war to control oil. Many more are seeing through the lies behind homeland security and "anti-terrorism" laws. The Stewart case shows why workers must go beyond reform to smash the bosses' class dictatorship.

PLP members have been working hard to activate anti-fascist workers within unions, churches and community groups. An important action would be a mass mobilization of many workers, students and soldiers on October 16 to support Stewart. A rally will be held at 8AM at Centre and Worth Streets in Manhattan, followed by a mass presence in the courtroom at 9AM for the sentencing.

`Brides' March Against Domestic Violence

NEW YORK CITY, Sept. 26 -- With signs reading "Daddy, please, don't kill my mom," and "Domestic violence is a worldwide problem," dozens of women dressed as brides marched from Upper Manhattan to the South Bronx to East Harlem. Others chanted, "She is not your property, she is your companion." The brides were joined by "bridegrooms" dressed in black.

It was the 6th annual march of Brides against Domestic Violence honoring Gladys Ricart, who was murdered by a jealous ex-boyfriend during her wedding ceremony with another man.

Although there has been a slight decrease in domestic violence in Upper Manhattan -- just one murder this year compared to two last year and 2,732 reported cases of violence, 18.8% less than last year -- there are still too many.

The politicians who joined the march are part of the problem. They usually support many of the cutbacks imposed by the bosses to pay for their endless wars, affecting working-class women and their children. In effect, domestic violence is caused mainly by the sexist nature of capitalism, where women are seen as sex objects, "inferior" to men, as well as a source of cheap labor.

LETTERS

DESAFIO `Big Hit' Under Open Fascism

Recently I visited my family in a Latin American nation. Fortunately I was able to meet with some comrades there. With death squads looming and military check-points nationwide, the oppression and danger is very real. They described the repression, especially in the biggest working-class neighborhood. The night before the President was inaugurated for a second term, 200 homes were "visited" by paramilitaries searching for revolutionaries. Luckily for our comrades, friends gave them fair warning.

With such open repression, some might think our comrades should have an "easier" time recruiting workers to PLP. While this open fascism exposes the brutal nature of capitalism to workers, providing opportunities to advance communist politics, it's also extremely dangerous. One wrong move could mean death, frightening many workers into passivity. Many are caught in a frantic struggle just to put food on the table. Some comrades must walk half a day to make a meeting; families share one issue of DESAFIO.

In our press and our meetings, we often remind ourselves that historically the communist movement has grown under any and all conditions. With all their limitations, our comrades in this country prove the truth of that slogan.

During one get-together I asked what they thought about DESAFIO, and if they had suggestions for improvement. They replied that DESAFIO was a big hit with their base because besides its great politics, it was written so clearly. They also loved the paper's internationalism. Their one criticism was not enough articles about Latin America, which was given as a self-criticism. They promised to write more about their struggles and lessons of how to build the Party under such fascist conditions.

With hard work, and our truly revolutionary solution for the problems inherent in this exploitative, racist system, we will surely destroy capitalism with communist revolution.

A Comrade

NY Times: `Pro-Democracy' Military Coup in Thailand

Usually, military coups are associated with overthrowing an elected government and imposing a police state. The "pro-democracy" U.S. ruling class supposedly is opposed to such coups. But history reveals this is not quite the case, as in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile on 9/11/73 by the bloody fascist coup of General Augusto Pinochet, with plenty of help from Henry Kissinger and the CIA. In April 2002, a CIA-backed coup briefly overthrew Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. The new "government" tried for 48 hours to impose a police state, but mass mobilizations and military supporters reinstated him. Now there's a similar example in Thailand's military coup.

According to U.S. propaganda, a democracy is a government elected by the people and for the people. Well, not exactly. The NY Times Bangkok correspondent reports in an article entitled "Thailand Reinterprets the Rules of Democracy Again" (9/21): "The generals billed it as a pro-democracy military coup, and although they had ousted one of the most popular prime ministers in Thailand's history, most commentators here tended to agree." The Times continues that the coup was "non-violent" because the deposed Prime Minister was out of the country.

Deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra was unpopular among certain sections of the Thai ruling class and lost the support of the King. Shinawatra was also corrupt and was recently the target of "pro-democracy" protests. But he was also hated by some bosses because he had tried to institute social reforms never seen before there -- a cheap health care system, some development programs in rural areas, etc. This made him very popular among the people. But, as usual, reforms under capitalism never last too long.

However, his bigger sin was apparently his lack of success against Islamist groups in the country, part of U.S. imperialism's "war on terror." Some 1,000 people have been killed since 2003.

An Internationalist Comrade

Warning: Capitalist Schools Can Make You Sick!

The first few weeks in my large urban high school in New Jersey have been a nightmare for students and teachers alike. A traditionally stable school with innovative programs, motivated students and dedicated teachers has deteriorated in a short period into something quite different. Overcrowding, under-funding and administrative mismanagement has led to a situation that must be seen to be believed -- all manifestations of growing fascism. Many teachers have concluded that the administration cares nothing about the education of our students, but only about controlling them and "keeping them in line."

This became fairly apparent recently. One department became particularly chaotic, with too few teachers to cover classes, including regents classes, most of which still have no textbooks and won't get any until next month -- maybe. Some teacher schedules were changed up to six times and room changes are still occurring. There are flagrant violations of the union contract, with all kinds of pressures on the teachers to produce lesson plans, decorate their rooms, etc., amidst this mess. Some students left their classes upon learning their teacher was being switched...again!

Suddenly, things got so bad that ten teachers in one department became physically sick and couldn't report to work. The administration must have thought it was organized since they plastered the names of the absent teachers in several offices and demanded they teach some fascistic discipline lessons that were slated to be taught the day before. We would like to think that at least they're concerned about students preparing for their regents, but that's not the case whatsoever.

We are learning valuable lessons every day about how fascism is growing in the schools and how we must do much more to oppose it. Filing grievances and organizing union meetings, while necessary for us to participate in, will not cure our problems. We must continue to build Progressive Labor Party amongst teachers, parents and students as the beacon of the working class for a future where some day there will be real education!

PL Teacher

New Orleans Summer Project Inspires More Struggle

In mid-August a small group of us from Massachusetts, mostly high school students, went to New Orleans to participate in PLP's Summer Project. It had a big impact! To see and feel the extent of the destruction on black workers' lives and how little had been done to help, unraveled the confidence many young people had in the government. They witnessed the gross inequities in the levee system -- the 14-inch wide wall in the working-class neighborhoods versus the big-as-a-football-field levees in the rich areas. When comparing this to the mass media's coverage of Katrina, they realized how world events get spun to keep us all ignorant, distracted and self-absorbed.

The young people realized that political awareness starts with experiences like this one in New Orleans. This motivated them to share their experiences with their friends, to help them develop politically and care about the tragedy for these workers.

Upon discussing what we accomplished, they realized that their own political development as leaders was the most important one. In these volatile times, this kind of response from young people should give us all hope for the future of our class fighting back.

Boston Red

Recently a comrade reported on his trip to New Orleans. A slide show depicting the destruction still existing there inspired all who sat and listened. Days of planning led to an event commemorating the one-year anniversary of Katrina. We aimed to unmask the racism still prevalent a year later, exposing the harassment and lack of aid for black workers trying to rebuild their homes. Workers, local students and teachers worked side-by-side preparing for the event.

We erected a booth with banners reading, "Stop the War on the Poor in New Orleans." We distributed leaflets and accepted donations for Katrina survivors, giving donors buttons saying, "Make Levees Not War" and "FEMA Kills."

We reached many students and had some good conversations. A National Guard soldier related his New Orleans experience and disagreed with the leaflet's statement about the Guard harassing the city's residents. He said he only wanted to help them.

We quickly explained we were not attacking individual soldiers such as himself, but rather the military institution. We said New Orleans residents told us these complaints directly. We also gave examples of individual soldiers who showed true compassion for workers and residents despite the constraints of the uniform, stealing bottled water from military barracks for volunteers helping to rebuild homes there.

We tried to explain the contradiction between the military's role in protecting rich people's property and the natural impulse of working-class soldiers to help their brothers and sisters rebuild their lives. He thanked us for clarifying our position and we shook hands in solidarity.

Another student, disturbed about the Blackwater mercenaries sent to and still present in New Orleans, wondered who they were. We replied that -- just like in Iraq -- New Orleans had become a testing ground for establishing a police state. He began to understand the similarity between the war on the workers in Iraq and the harassment of workers in New Orleans. Throughout the day, many more were made aware and won through such conversations.

Overall our efforts advanced both the politics of our group as well as the student body. Collectively we spread awareness of the harassment and neglect of residents of the lower 9th Ward, linking the struggles of New Orleans workers to workers everywhere.

We also exposed capitalism as the root of the racism and inequality in New Orleans, and won more women and black and Latino workers to the struggle for social justice. We plan on repeating such activities with the students, workers and soldiers we met.

Our job as PL'ers is to direct the general concern for social justice into an international struggle for communist revolution. The success of the button sale shows that most students, workers and soldiers want to help other people in any way possible. By participating in fundraisers and similar events, we're able to initiate dialogue about the roots of inequality with those around us, leading to the possibility for change.

A young comrade

Commemorating the first anniversary of Katrina, our group of comrades organized a slideshow presentation and discussion about our recent trip to New Orleans. Many attending were new friends we had met at a recent university fundraiser for Katrina survivors. Others were workers and students we know; many have received CHALLENGE.

Rather than lecturing, our goal was to create dialogue, keeping it loose to encourage commentary.

The presentation provoked wide discussion. We had a great exchange about how the fascism in New Orleans following the hurricane symbolizes fascism's growth nationwide (like the proposed 700-mile electrified border fence aimed at Mexican immigrants). Further, we directly connected capitalism's racist practices at home with imperialism abroad. Coincidentally, the 9/11 anniversary was the day after. We discussed nationalism and how New Orleans shows that bosses and workers don't share the same interests.

One new friend, a history teacher, linked racism in New Orleans to that seen in public education. He described the government's racism in breaking its promise to help black workers there to reclaim their homes as a mirror image of their false racist promises of increased aid for black students in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). With several teachers attending, this was a particularly important connection. PL teachers joined in and provoked a much broader discussion of how capitalism spawns policies like NCLB.

Although the group's politics were mixed, the discussion demonstrated that students and workers possess an intimate and basic understanding of inequality under capitalism. Comrades were enlightened by the comments and understanding of our student and worker friends, while our friends were able to further develop communist ideas.

Currently we're working with these friends on other political issues around the city. Since this event we've had promising follow-up conversations and plan to continue them, along with similar future events.

Southern Reds

Which side are liberals on?

An adjunct instructor teaching at Roosevelt University in Chicago found out, the hard way. In the fall of 2005, Douglas Giles was criticized by his department chairperson for allowing open questions and discussion in his World Religions class. She was particularly concerned about topics dealing with Zionism, Palestinians, Islamic beliefs about Jerusalem, or anything that could open up the Zionists to criticism. She also made racist comments about Palestinians and chastised Giles for letting Muslims speak in his class. Finally, she warned him not to tell anyone about their conversation.

Giles reported all of this to his union. The union filed an academic freedom grievance, and shortly afterward Giles was told by Roosevelt that he would receive no more assignments. This October 16, 2006, the day before his grievance goes to arbitration, members of his local and other locals of the Illinois Education Association (IEA) are organizing a forum/town hall meeting called "Academic Freedom Under Fire." This will be held at Roosevelt University, 18 S. Michigan Avenue. Union locals, professional organizations and student groups have been urged to attend.

This racist attack on Douglas Giles and his students is linked to the bosses' need to secure control over world energy resources. The liberal Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class uses Democratic and Republican politicians, labor misleaders, and academic "experts" to win us to support their wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran (coming soon). Douglas Giles refused to toe the pro-imperialist line and Roosevelt U., supposedly a bastion of liberalism and pro-labor sentiment, dealt with him swiftly. Instead of taking his department chair to task for her racist attacks on Palestinians and Muslims, they actually defended her comments as an "academic discussion" in which she was "defending her position passionately."

On October 16, it will be interesting to see how Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association (NEA), Giles' parent union, will address the forum. Reg is a former president of the IEA and an alumnus of Roosevelt U. Will he link the attack on Giles and his students to developing fascism in the U.S., and to the imperialist "war on terror" abroad? Or, will he simply bemoan the unfortunate actions of his alma mater and urge us all to vote Democratic on Nov. 7?

As a wild guess, we don't expect Reg Weaver will agree with PLP and call for revolution to end capitalism, the cause of fascism and imperialism. That's a job for us -- members and supporters of PLP. The attack on Giles and his students has provided us with an opportunity to open the eyes of our co-workers and our students to the real motives of their "friendly" liberal politicians, labor leaders, and school administrators. Let's guarantee the presence of Challenge and sharp political discussion at the October 16th forum.

REDEYE

Iraq `might be worse than under Saddam'

Nearly 7,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in the past two months, according to a UN report just released -- a record high far greater than initial estimates had suggested....

The UN's special investigator said torture was "totally out of hand" and might even be worse now than under Saddam Hussein. (GW, 10/5)

Imperialists never stop stealing

...Biopiracy [is]...a new form of "colonial pillaging" in which western corporations reap profits by taking out patents on indigenous materials from developing countries and turning them into lucrative products. In few cases are the benefits shared with the country of origin....

The US-based Edmonds Institute has published a report listing more than 30 examples of western medical, horticultural and cosmetic products that it said were "pirated" from Africa. (GW, 9/26)

Prostitution now a budget asset!

Greece will find it easier to bring its budget deficit below the European Union's 3 per cent of GDP ceiling.

Greece suddenly found itself 25 per cent richer yesterday after a surprise upward revision of its gross domestic product, the fruit of a change to national accounts designed to capture better a fast-growing service sector -- including...prostitution and money laundering. (FT, 9/29)

Suicides up in capitalist-democracy India

BHADUMAR, India -- Here in the center of India, on a gray Wednesday morning, a cotton farmer swallowed a bottle of pesticide and fell dead at the threshold of his small mud house....

His death was by no means an isolated one....

Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available....

...86.5 percent of farmers who took their own lives were indebted -- their average debt was about $835... (NYT, 9/19)

US free enterprise brings doom to Iraq

...At its heart Blood Money is the tale of how Washington left a country desperately in need of rebuilding to the whims of money-hungry private contractors....

"After three years Iraqis have less power in their homes than under Saddam. Hospital neonatal units lose electricity, and doctors watch children die... (NYT,10/5)

Millionaires, eat your heart out!

...For the first time since it was set up in 1982 Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans contains not a single [non-billionaire].

...cuts in taxes for the wealthy have accounted for a large part of the surge. Twenty-five years ago there were only 13 billionaires on the list... (GW, 10/5)

Liberty and justice for all -- who can pay!

In the fall of 2004, Terrence O' Donnell...was running hard to keep his seat on the Ohio Supreme Court. He was also considering two important class-action lawsuits....

...Justice O' Donnell's campaign accepted thousands of dollars from the political action committees of three companies that were defendants in the suits. Two of the cases dealt with defective cars, and one involved a toxic substance....

...Every justice in the 4 to 3 majority had taken money from affiliates of the companies. None of the dissenters had done so, but they had accepted contributions from lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Justice O' Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time....

The justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors' cases.

...30 states are holding elections for seats on their highest courts this year. Spending in these races is skyrocketing, with some judges raising $2 million or more for a single campaign...(NYT, 10/1)

NAACP Red-Baiters Betrayed Pro-Communists Du Bois, Robeson

Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955; By Carol Anderson; Cambridge University Press

"Eyes Off the Prize," Carol Anderson's fully-researched account of the post-World War II anti-racist movement tells a cautionary tale. It chronicles how the NAACP, the largest anti-racist organization of the time, was led astray to support U.S. imperialism at the expense of oppressed "minorities." Unfortunately, Anderson refuses to follow the logic of her own research: that capitalism needs racism to survive. Her anti-communism blinds her to the only viable solution: communist revolution.

The NAACP's capitulation has hogtied anti-racist forces up to the present day. Lined up against this sellout stood the black left. W.E.B Du Bois and William Patterson, supported by the Soviet Union and the U.S. Communist Party, attempted to frame the fight for racial equality in terms of international human rights. "Human rights," according to Anderson "had the language and philosophical power to address not only the political and legal inequality that African Americans endured, but also the educational, health care, housing and employment needs that haunted the black community."

Du Bois led the mass campaign to bring the "elegant" and incontrovertible NAACP human rights petition "An Appeal to the World" before the newly-formed United Nations. Patterson followed up with the equally persuasive Civil Rights Congress petition We Charge Genocide. The U.S. State Department and their agent at the U.N., Eleanor Roosevelt, conspired to squash these petitions and persecute the authors.

The State Department enlisted the NAACP leadership in this crusade. Executive secretary Walter White, along with Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall, orchestrated Du Bois' expulsion from the very organization he helped found. Under their leadership, the NAACP refused to defend Du Bois and Patterson (and their friend Paul Robeson) against these attacks.

Serving Imperialism

White went even farther. After a secret meeting at the State Department, "White eagerly published a `Progress Report' on civil rights, which he encouraged Eleanor Roosevelt to use whenever the Soviets [attacked] American racism." White's fidelity to Eleanor Roosevelt, his one-time fellow member in the liberal anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action, would continue throughout his political career.

Even the president of the Indiana State Conference of NAACP Branches, Willard Ransom, criticized the `Progress Report" for hypocritically claiming that the standard of living for blacks approached that of whites in the face of horrific violence against blacks and for supporting imperialist exploitation.

Bowing to U.S. imperialism, the NAACP from now on would limit its fight to civil rights, abandoning more expansive human rights. "Civil rights, however," writes Anderson, "did not then and does not now have the language, the tools and the means to address the systemic issues that haunt black America." The civil rights focus on legal and voting rights, not social and economic rights, suited the propaganda needs of the U.S. Empire.

Rely On Bosses Or Workers?

This betrayal speaks to the limits of reform. White & Co. focused on what reforms were to be had under McCarthy-era capitalism. It led them into the arms of the powerful, who demanded allegiance to U.S. imperialism.

On the other hand, the human rights campaign exposed imperialism. Du Bois, Patterson and Robeson served the anti-racist cause well, facing expulsions and persecution with courage. The black left's revolutionary communist vision showed how to end racism, inspiring their political work. Their principled opposition to the prevailing politics of the biggest anti-racist reform organization of the time is worth emulating. This was symbolized by Du Bois officially joining the Communist Party in 1945, saying becoming a communist "was the logic of my life."

Dismissing revolution, Anderson puts too much faith in the pious pronouncements of international bodies. Ironically, her reformist ideology leads her back to the same red-baiting for which she condemned the NAACP leadership. To her, the black left's "courage and intellect could have made a lasting, significant contribution," if only they would have jettisoned their communist sympathies and allies.

Perhaps Anderson dismisses revolution because she never considers the power of the working class. In truth, the politics of our class will determine everything. If we are to end this racist scourge, we must struggle for tactics -- as did the black left -- that advance the revolutionary will of the working class.

Hungary: Free-Market `Socialists' Vs. Gutter Fascists

A confidential admission by Hungary's Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany to his Socialist Party members of Parliament that he had lied to the people about the sorry state of the economy was leaked on the internet, causing mass violent protests demanding his resignation.

Some 10,000 demonstrators rallied in front of Parliament calling for "a new 1956," the anti-communist rebellion against the then pro-Soviet government. Gyurcsany's party formed from members of the old pro-Soviet ruling class who have now become free-market capitalists. When the Soviet bloc collapsed 16 years ago, Hungary's government-owned industries were grabbed cheap by local bosses from the old state-capitalist system and by imperialist corporations.

On Monday night, Sept. 18, thousands of demonstrators went to a TV station demanding publication of an anti-government statement. Police tear gas and water cannons repelled the protestors, but after lengthy street battles they seized the station for several hours. Their anti-communism was evident in their damaging a monument in front of the station honoring the Soviet Red Army that liberated Hungary from the Nazis. The right-wing FIDESZ Party --which ruled from 1998-2002 -- and its fascist goons were trying to take advantage of the situation to build anti-communism.

But the fact is that the ruling Socialist Party and their buddies in the Alliance of Free Democrats, are as much free-marketeers as the right-wingers. Gyurcsany's coalition government continued the same capitalist policies of the previous right-wing government. The rulers' harsh austerity measures against workers are required by the Maastricht Treaty in order to introduce the Euro by the year 2010 and put Hungary in the Eurozone economic sphere. These attacks include price and tax increases, wage cuts, payments for medical services, higher charges for college students, and so on. A PLP'er asked a woman who returned to her native Hungary last year how she found it. Her first reaction: "I have never seen so many beggars." This is the essence of capitalist "democracy," where workers are made to pay for the bosses' economic plans no matter who runs the government.

Hungary is now basically dominated by German and Austrian capitalism. (Hungary was part of the old Austrian-Hungarian empire which, along with Germany and Turkey, fought France, Britain, Tsarist Russia and the U.S. during World War I.) But Russia still has much influence in its economy.

About 80% of Hungary's natural gas is imported from the Russian Federation. Moreover, Hungary is a decisive hub for Russian gas supplies to Balkan countries like Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. During last January's Russo-Ukrainian gas supply crisis, Hungary was, as expected, among those countries that suffered immediately from a gas shortage, ended only by a deal between Kiev and Moscow.

Russia's president Putin plans to expand its Gazprom company's European network by using Hungarian territory as a gateway to reach southwestern Europe. So if an openly anti-Russian government comes to power, Hungary's energy needs might suffer Moscow's wrath.

The anti-communist rebellion against Gyurcsany' s capitalist lies shows once again that when workers follow pro-boss leadership, they ultimately side with one group of rotten bosses against another equally rotten gang. Workers in Hungary and internationally need real communist leadership, one based on learning from the achievements and mistakes of the old communist movement. Without it, workers will always be used by different sets of bosses.

New Liberalism Paves the Way to Fascism:
Communist Politics Needed To Thwart Bosses' War Plan

Part III

(Part II, October 14 CHALLENGE, exposed the political battle emerging in the bosses' mass organizations that's trying to win the working class to a war agenda, specifically the Machinists union campaign to ensure that U.S. arms factories can produce the weapons the rulers need for possible future wars with Russia and/or China.)

The "new liberalism" discussed in previous articles does not rule out fascism. Quite the contrary, it paves the way for fascism with an ideological attack centered on racism, nationalism and support for imperialist war. New liberalism wants the reform movement to generate political acceptance of, and sacrifice for, bigger wars to defend the bosses' empire.

This presents a contradiction. Some worksites have unions. Many workers, students and soldiers still look to reformist organizations, despite mixed feelings. "New liberalism" will maintain mass organizations even as the bosses consolidate the fascism necessary for their imperialist war plans.

We resolve this contradiction by participation, not absenteeism. The central question is how we participate.

We'll be unable to stop the march down this road, or even impede its progress, unless we win rank-and-file political rejection of the reform leadership. To accomplish that, many more must be inspired by communist politics. As Lenin said, those communist politics must be brought from outside the reform struggle.

We could risk becoming unwitting stalking horses for the bosses' imperialist plans if we allow reform to dominate our struggle. We (temporarily) might make these organizations seem more legitimate to workers. But we'll never develop the necessary flexible tactics unless we truly realize that these reformist organizations represent the class enemy.

The current struggles against new liberalism illustrate a general truth: reform and revolution stand in dialectical contradiction to each other: reform will never spontaneously lead to its opposite, revolution.

CHALLENGE editorials must continue to expose the bosses' plans for bigger and bloodier wars and emphasize our class outlook opposing racism while combating nationalist poison. Articles reporting class struggles should echo these communist-inspired politics, not building reformist and capitalist illusions present in these class battles, but answering them with communist ideas. Writing and discussing these articles develops leadership among newer, younger comrades and friends and helps veteran members as well. But all this is meaningless without robust networks of CHALLENGE sellers and readers.

Communist Revolution: Only Answer to Imperialist War and Fascism

As the bosses consolidate this "new liberal" fascism necessary for their imperialist war plans, PLP and our class can do something new. Unlike the old socialist movement, we say communist revolution -- not a "united front against fascism" alongside non-existent "good" capitalists -- is the only viable answer. We're beginning to do this, consolidating some -- not enough -- new black and Latin communist industrial leaders:

* LA transit workers' increased CHALLENGE distribution makes the worksites "comfortable for communist discussion";
* The new Washington, D.C. Metro transit union leader spends "much of his time selling and mobilizing CHALLENGE readers and sellers" which supports our political work in the union (see page 3);
* New aerospace workers led our workers conference;
* Veteran non-union garment workers brought scores to the recent immigration marches under the banners of our anti-imperialist politics;
* Groups organized around CHALLENGE entered the last Boeing strike inspired by our anti-racist, internationalist communist vision;
* Chicago hospital workers confronted their union mis-leadership over anti-immigrant racism;
* An East Coast teacher used a CHALLENGE network of over 50 readers to recruit ten new members to PLP, which in turn increased the network to over 100.

These modest examples, and others, help forge a politically-motivated working class which can answer imperialist war and fascism with communist revolution. Winning political leadership is difficult with many twists and turns. The fight is long-term. Nonetheless, this vision is worth a lifetime of struggle.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, October 4, 2006

Information: 04 October 2006 734 hits

Ford Assault on Workers Triggers Mass Racist Job Cuts

Detroit Auto Workers Veterans of ‘67 Anti-Racist Rebellion

Expose Liberals’ ‘Anti-War’ Masquerade

Morgan Heir Lamont Lets Imperialist Cat Out Of The Bag

World War III And Webb’s Web Of Deceit

Vets Err In Backing Murderer Murtha

Racist Recruitment Killing Black, Latino, Immigrant Youth

Desperate Brass Sign Up Nazis, Ex-cons, 42-year-olds

School ‘Reform’: Rulers Train Students for Exploitation and War

L.A. Workers Kick Racists Out of Labor Day Rally

'From Oaxaca to LA, Workers Will Win!'

Indigenous Workers Protest Attacks In Oaxaca

Oaxaca Teachers Reject Sellout

AFL-CIO Hacks Betray Detroit Teachers Anti-Racist Strike

New Orleans Industrial Workers United vs. Racism

New Orleans Today: Not Just A Tourist Destination

Capitalist Weapons of Mass Destruction: Water Terrorism

War and More War on the Agenda Political Battle Emerging in Mass Organizations

Fight Bosses’ Ideology

Racist Reign of Terror At Chicago Hospitals

Liberals' Vote Ploy Masks Plan to Win Immigrants to War-Fascism Agenda

Ex-Boeing Hitman Targets Ford Workers

LETTERS

Honor Marx and 'Internationale'

Afghan Women Fight U.S. Bosses, Warlords

CHALLENGE comment

Harvard Terrorist Would Nuke Millions

No Racist Survivors

Young Industrial Workers Take Leadership of West Coast PL School

Remembering Comrade Floyd Crawford

REDEYE

Pols sabotage N.Orleans black workers
Job cut is too small, says Wall St.
Most workers get no layoff insurance
Goering showed the way on Iraq war
Hooking kids and African Americans on nicotine
All presidents talk nice, then make war
US putting ‘freedom’ on back burner

‘Fight Club’ Teaches Politics Of Defeat

Lumber Bosses and Their Government Destroy the Environment and Jobs

1,000 Navajos March Against Racist Crimes

Ford Assault on Workers Triggers Mass Racist Job Cuts

DETROIT,MI, September 17— Ford’s second "Way Forward" plan to eliminate about 45,000 jobs and 16 factories in the U.S., Mexico and Canada by 2010, is not just a restructuring of the auto industry. Rather it is a realignment of competing imperialists for markets, resources and cheap labor that will lead to new wars and make current imperialist slaughters look like a tea party.

Wall Street’s reaction was "Not good enough," and Ford’s stock dropped 12%. The plan was criticized for not moving fast enough to cut jobs, like GM’s buyout program that slashed 35,000 jobs more than two years ahead of schedule.

In the wake of the great Detroit anti-racist rebellion of 1967 (see box below), 100,000 black workers were hired by GM, Ford and Chrysler. Now we’re witnessing the reversal of that reform, and the undoing of 70 years of class struggle.

This is devastating communities across North America with job losses and tax-revenue cuts. For Michigan, already having the highest jobless rate of any state in the U.S. — and the center of Ford’s operations — it will be like a Katrina hitting the working class with overwhelming force.

Ford will also shut or sell 17 Visteon parts plants in the U.S. and Mexico that it took over in October 2005 in an effort to prevent the parts maker from going bankrupt. Visteon was spun off from Ford in 2000.

The United Auto Workers union is collaborating as if it was part of the company’s Board of Directors (at Chrysler it is!). After unprecedented give-backs last year in health benefits and pensions, it has negotiated local concessions that undermine whatever remains of work rules, job classifications, health and safety provisions and protection against speed-up and forced overtime.

Ford’s buyout offer to all 75,000 UAW hourly workers will wipe out union jobs and replace them with low-paid younger workers not entitled to the same health care, pensions and other benefits.

Capitalism Puts The Screws On

Ford’s worldwide automotive operations lost $3.9 billion last year, nearly 20 times worse than the $200-million loss in 2004. July 2007 will mark the beginning of national contract talks for Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler. The bosses and their loyal UAW junior partners will have plenty more cuts to make then.

David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research, said Ford must also cut health care costs and supported reopening local contracts. Those locals surrendering the most will supposedly keep working. This is known as "whip-sawing" one local against another. Cole said this gives Ford "more flexibility" and makes a "huge impact on the cost structure."

On September 9, UAW Local 600 at Ford’s Dearborn complex voted 2-to-1 in favor of a "competitive operating agreement" that will outsource non-production jobs, enforce a severe attendance policy, allow the use of temporary workers and replace the 8-hour day with four 10-hour days. Workers were told that if the contract was rejected the company would move production to other plants. Local 600 President Jerry Sullivan said, "We’re trying to be as cost-competitive as possible."

A similar contract was accepted by UAW Local 588 at the Ford Stamping plant in Chicago Heights. One worker said, "It’s really weird. Fights and complaints [against Ford] are way down. I’ve never seen it like this. People are worried whether they will have a job."

One worker at the Ford Assembly plant in Chicago, UAW Local 551, described three older white local union leaders "counseling" 25 young laid-off black workers. This underlines the inherent racism in these attacks, which hit black and Latin workers first and hardest.

This onslaught shows that capitalism can never meet the needs of the workers; whatever you win is fleeting as long as the bosses rule. We need to seize all the factories and mills and smash the bosses’ state with communist revolution and produce for the needs of our class. Over the next year we will build PLP in the auto industry as the main way to prepare for the coming struggle, and to honor the heroes of the 1967 Rebellion.

Detroit Auto Workers Veterans of ‘67 Anti-Racist Rebellion

Next July marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion against racism, perhaps the greatest anti-racist rebellion of that time and the greatest act of international solidarity with Vietnamese workers and peasants who were fighting U.S. imperialism.

Many autoworkers participated in the armed uprising against racist police terror and racist unemployment. Many were Vietnam vets who knew how to use their weapons. Within 48 hours the racist Detroit police were out of bullets and pinned down in their stations, as was the Michigan National Guard. It finally took President Lyndon Johnson diverting units of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions from Vietnam to crush the rebellion. Dozens were killed, hundreds were injured and thousands were arrested and held on Belle Isle Park because the jails were full.

This struggle terrified the racist rulers. The legacy of these integrated, mostly black working-class heroes will not be lost if we build a base for PLP among autoworkers that will lead to a revolutionary solution.

Expose Liberals’ ‘Anti-War’ Masquerade

Fifty-eight percent responding to the latest CNN poll oppose the war in Iraq. That translates into over a hundred million against the U.S.-led slaughter. This rising anti-war sentiment holds both hope and danger. Many millions share aspects of our Party’s condemnation of the profit system and the bloodshed and racism it ceaselessly generates. They perceive the gross immorality of killing, maiming and dying for the benefit of Exxon Mobil and Halliburton. Racist atrocities in the hellholes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo disgust them. As war’s horrors become evident, opportunities to win large numbers of people to a revolutionary, communist outlook increase.

Unfortunately, however, liberal politicians are trying to turn mass opposition to Bush’s Iraq war into support for even broader military action. Larger-than-usual primary turnouts and heightened public interest in the November elections reflect a trend harmful to the working class. Every elected official represents one group or another of capitalists. The liberal anti-Bush forces in — or running for — Congress speak for the Eastern Establishment. This is the Exxon Mobil-J.P. Morgan Chase-Rockefeller faction that has the greatest interest in protecting and projecting U.S. imperialism globally through armed force.

Morgan Heir Lamont Lets Imperialist Cat Out Of The Bag

Ned Lamont, heir to the J.P. Morgan fortune, provides a case in point. He beat Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic Senate primary by attacking his Bushite "stay-the-course-in-Iraq" stance. But in a recent speech at Yale Law School, Lamont reassured future Wall Streeters of his devotion to U.S. imperialism. While calling for a withdrawal timeline, Lamont "also said that some troops should remain in Iraq for humanitarian efforts and that others could be redeployed elsewhere in the Middle East." (NY Times, 9/14) Lamont echoes retired general William Odom, who proposes that the U.S. leave Iraq momentarily in order to regroup and gather allies for a massive invasion of the entire Middle East. The Times was careful to note that Lamont "did not rule out military action" against Iran. And alluding to U.S. rulers’ current recruiting shortfalls and their failure to mobilize the nation for war, Lamont stressed the need for more military "readiness."

World War III And Webb’s Web Of Deceit

Another Democrat sporting the phony "anti-war" label is James Webb, a Senate candidate from Virginia. An Annapolis grad and Marine Vietnam veteran, Webb has dedicated his life to the U.S. war machine. As Navy secretary under Reagan, he oversaw plans to build a 600-ship fleet (a project launched by Carter). Earlier as assistant "defense" secretary, Webb had "directed considerable research and analysis of the U.S. military's mobilization capabilities" (Webb’s campaign website). Webb is cynically garnering votes by saying U.S. forces should get out of Iraq. But the old warmonger hasn’t suddenly turned peacenik. He has far bigger fish to fry. Webb identifies Russia and China as "issues which demand our strategic focus." More specifically, Webb sees a grand anti-U.S. axis forming from the Middle East to the Far East. "I’ve been saying for 20 years that China was pursuing a strategy with the Muslim world designed to destabilize the United States and to improve its access to oil." Thus, says Webb, the U.S. "requires mobile forces...in other places around the world."

Vets Err In Backing Murderer Murtha

The leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War seem to have fallen hook, line and sinker for the liberals’ lies. They say they "stand behind" Pennsylvania representative John Murtha, the first in Congress to demand a troop withdrawal. They make a serious political error by ignoring Murtha’s class allegiance and his imperialist ulterior motives. Like Odom (and General Wesley Clark, Clinton’s bomber of Serbia), Murtha favors a tactical retreat from Iraq followed by a major counter-offensive in the Mid-East or elsewhere. "The policy of "staying the course"...in Iraq is hurting our national security" (Murtha’s website). Murtha’s says, "Redeploy to rebuild our military. Redeploy to meet future threats. Redeploy to strengthen America."

No matter what they say to get elected, politicians once in office cannot and will not forsake the needs of the capitalists they serve. (See Red Eye, page 7 on "Presidents Make War") The Senate’s unanimous 98-0 vote on Sept 6th to spend an additional $63 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan blows the cover off liberals’ pacifist posturing. The Iraq vets, and other working-class forces deceived by the fake anti-war rhetoric, should know that they, not their Congressmen, are crucial to the solution. History shows that rebellions by soldiers and strikes by workers can slow imperialist war’s deadly march for a time. More importantly, soldiers and workers, united in a communist party, can turn imperialist war into a revolution against the imperialists themselves and their profit system. This is the ultimate goal of PLP.

Racist Recruitment Killing Black, Latino, Immigrant Youth

NEW YORK CITY, Sept. 13 — While it’s become widely known that the military is concentrating its recruitment efforts in black and Latino neighborhoods, the most telling statistic reveals the results of this effort: of the 38 New Yorkers killed in Iraq, 33 — 87% — were Latino (21), black (8) or Asian (4).

These figures were reported in a 3-part series by Eva Sanchis in this city’s Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario-La Prensa, and summarized in an article in the NY Daily News (9/2). "A large number of the dead are immigrants." No wonder the liberal wing of the ruling class is so eager to pass legislation to entice immigrant youth into the army, possibly the biggest new source of cannon fodder for their imperialist oil wars.

These deaths grow out of the racism that puts most of the Armed Forces’ 26 recruitment centers in black or Latino neighborhoods: three of five in the Bronx are in the South Bronx, half of the six in Manhattan and six of eight in Brooklyn are in these neighborhoods, and all four in Queens are in immigrant communities. Yet not one center is located "in the upper East Side, the richest neighborhood in the city, which is 77% white and has a per capita income of $67,010" and where "only seven people enlisted in 2004," reports Ms. Sanchis.

Although 51% of city residents are Latino and black, 70.4% of the recruits in 2004 were from these two groups (37% Latino and 33.4% black), according to "Defense’" Dept. figures published by the American Friends Service Committee. "Poor young people need work, training, scholarships, but these are so scarce that they join the military," says a Friends Service representative, "not realizing that this is an institution created for war and not an employment program."

The rulers are going full speed ahead in trying to induce immigrant youth to die for the bosses’ system:

• A Bush "executive order allow[s] non-citizens to apply for citizenship after only one day of active-duty military service," to draw from an "estimated 50,000-65,000 undocumented…young adults." (July Senate testimony by Under Secretary of Defense David Chu) Chu extolled the DREAM Act which would give such youth the "opportunity" to join the military and obtain "conditional permanent-resident status."

• Recruiters are establishing booths in "cafeterias in high schools across the nation." (Boston Globe)

• Enlistment bonuses up to $40,000 are offered to immigrant youth who possess documents, an amount exceeding the 2005 per capita income of Latinos ($14,483) or black workers ($16,874), and even white workers ($28,946).

One El Diario reader, a Dominican father, wrote the paper: "My only son was seduced three months ago and joined, but by what I read in his letters he is tired of the Army. I don’t know where they are sending him. The sergeant who recruited him told me that it would be for only three months.

"From the day he left I have been in great pain; he is my only son…."

Such is the racism employed by the U.S. ruling class that sends these youth to kill tens of thousands of their working-class brothers and sisters in Iraq who are victims of the same racism, all in the name of the rulers’ desperate drive to dominate the world’s oil supplies. But based on these youths’ experience with racism and unemployment at home and a bosses’ war abroad, working with them and winning them to PLP’s ideas can turn them around to fight the brass, not their fellow workers. That’s the step towards winning them to a revolutionary outlook, and that’s our goal.

Desperate Brass Sign Up Nazis, Ex-cons, 42-year-olds

Given the failings of the U.S. military in meeting its recruiting goals, the rulers are becoming more desperate, leading to an army that will hardly resemble the "crack" cohesive force necessary for the endless wars to maintain their dominance over rival capitalists. As will be seen below, possibly only a draft will supply the cannon fodder needed. But that will only create more opposition among masses of people already disgusted with Iraq and Afghanistan. The rulers’ desperation is reflected in the following:

• The Army Reserves raised its maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 and the regular Army upped its active-duty enlistment eligibility to 42.

• Next, ex-convicts: An army recruiter hanging around a Dallas-area job fair told the Houston Chronicle he was "looking for high-school graduates with no more than one felony on their record."

• Recruiting Nazis: The Southern Poverty Law Center reported "large numbers of neo-Nazis" in the military, quoting a Defense Dept. investigator that, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don’t remove them…"

The neo-Nazi magazine "Resistance" is "urging skinheads to join the army and insist on being assigned to light-infantry units" in order to prepare for "The coming race war and ethnic cleansing" until "the alien races are driven into the countryside [to be] …hunted down…" (NY Times)

• The "back-door" draft: "Marine commanders have taken the extraordinary step of drafting back into uniform those who have left the ranks," the so-called Individual Ready Reserves (IRR). (Boston Globe) "Approximately 14,000 soldiers on IRR status have been called to active duty" by the Army. (CBS News)

• The Army’s desperate need for officers has reached the bottom of the barrel in promoting captains: a high-ranking army officer told the LA Times, "Basically, if you haven’t been court-martialed, you’re going to be promoted to major."

• Hungry for re-enlistments: "Maximum bonuses [have] been raised to $60,000 for marine" re-enlistees in critical specialties. (Stars and Stripes newspaper) Additionally, there are "life-changing" bribes of promised benefits between $23,292 and $71,424 for active-duty and reserve personnel "to help pay for college" (if still alive when college comes around).

School ‘Reform’: Rulers Train Students for Exploitation and War

Working-class parents send their children to school to learn skills needed for productive lives. But the ruling class has other plans — to use the schools so they can more effectively exploit the lives of all workers. Control of the schools aims at creating racist and sexist divisions among young people. The rulers depend on these youth to create their profits and fight their imperialist battles.

Federal and state legislation forces curricula on teachers that emphasizes the nationalist ideas rulers hope will win students to fight for the U.S.

The smaller or charter schools, pushed in many cities, are another way for the rulers to win young people. When the principal knows their name, students may be convinced that such a school deserves their loyalty and trust. This can build a sense of all-class unity, that workers have more in common with bosses of their "race" or nationality than they have with other workers. Such loyalty wins U.S. workers to fight Iraqi workers on behalf of U.S. bosses, rather than uniting them with all workers to fight all bosses.

Meanwhile, the overcrowding, boredom and poor treatment students get at most schools can be converted into the discipline of the military life the rulers have in store for them. Because of the racism inherent in capitalism — super-profits to be made by paying black and Latin workers less — such students suffer in the worst schools, having the most metal detectors and the fewest books. As fascist conditions increase, more students find school to be a prison-like box through which they must pass on their way to unemployment, prison, the military or, if lucky, a job creating profits for a boss. The schools’ testing and tracking systems enforce divisions among students and encourage them to believe they are to blame for their current and future roles in capitalist society.

Ruling-class representatives at every level claim to be "reforming" the school system. At state and national levels, this has meant legislating more testing for children, rebuilding districts on a "business" model and creating smaller, more easily-controlled schools. But despite the sunny rhetoric used by the proponents of these reforms, racist and fascist conditions still apply in most working-class schools. High school graduation rates are low enough for Education Week (6/22/06) to consider them a crisis. In this case "reform" doesn’t mean that schools are being fixed to do more for our working-class children. Rather, through mandatory testing and regimentation, schools are being reorganized for the ruling class to better "train" our children to become docile, willing to be exploited at work and sacrificed in ongoing oil wars.

We workers want our children to grow up with knowledge and skills. The ruling class fosters ideas that will lead them to use those skills for the profit and war-making needs of the capitalist class. As we fight for communism, our goal is for children to learn to think creatively and use their skills to build a worker-led society that’s in THEIR class interest.

L.A. Workers Kick Racists Out of Labor Day Rally

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 5 — Union members and other workers showed their militant anti-racism here yesterday when they kicked the anti-immigrant Save Our State group out of the Labor Day celebration at Banning Park in Wilmington, a working-class area near the port of Long Beach.

While workers assembled to show their readiness to fight for economic justice for all, regardless of immigration status, the small Save Our State group shouted their anti-immigrant racial hatred. These racists say that immigrants are "taking over" the U.S. and "stealing citizens’ jobs." But as one young black woman worker explained, "It’s the government and the rich elite who are draining the U.S. economy. Their lies have caused hundreds of thousands of innocent workers to die fighting for [the bosses’] oil profits!"

The bosses’ newspaper, the LA Times, ABC-TV Channel 7 and the Spanish TV misrepresented the Labor Day action when they proclaimed that "the police escorted the protesters…across the street…" Actually, when an ever-growing number of workers confronted the racists on a small hill near the edge of the park, the 10 or 12 Save Our State demonstrators needed police protection to keep from getting slaughtered.

Union leaders tried to divert the workers from attacking the racists, urging us to return to the nearby area where they and Democratic politicians were giving their Get-Out-the-Vote speeches. But young Latino men, organized for security by the Labor Day sponsors, refused and confronted the racists, blocked their advance and drowned out their shouting with pro-labor chants. When more and more workers discovered that Save Our State, an organization closely allied with the fascist anti-immigrant Minutemen, had dared to bring their racist message to the rally, the crowd grew into hundreds, and pushed the racists down the hill toward the street. No speeches by Democratic Party representatives and union officials could stop the workers from pushing these racists out of the park.

Progressive Labor Party members participated in expelling the anti-immigrant group, whose main interest was getting media attention. While the media wants immigrants to think that U.S. workers support nationalist groups like Save Our State and the Minutemen, CHALLENGE has reported the continuing militancy of U.S. workers who fight for the international working class. We join our brothers and sisters worldwide in the struggle against the growing fascism of capitalist rulers.

The workers saw through union leaders’ efforts to prevent them from attacking open racists. With PLP leadership, they escape from the union leaders’ dangerous trap of supporting the U.S. Senate’s "lesser-evil" immigration bill. The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act — with six Republican sponsors and one Democrat (Kennedy) and backed by Bush —"promises" citizenship to immigrants if they agree to be docile, never complain or strike and fight in the bosses wars for profits. We must hit hard at the wolves in sheep’s clothing (union and nationalist misleaders) who continue to support this legislation to win immigrant workers to die for the U.S. flag as "patriotic" citizens.

'From Oaxaca to LA, Workers Will Win!'

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 2 — Chanting "From Oaxaca to LA, the workers will win" ("Desde Oaxaca a LA, los obreros vencerán"), a group of workers and youth marched in the Labor Day Parade today carrying signs backing the teachers and their supporters in Oaxaca, Mexico. Several workers from Oaxaca excitedly joined us while others on the sidelines shouted our slogans.

We made speeches to the crowd about the mass struggle of the teachers and other workers in Oaxaca against the government and the capitalist system. We called for international solidarity against the Mexican government’s increasing attacks on the workers in which teachers and their supporters have been killed, arrested and kidnapped. This shows the true fascist nature of capitalism, whose goal is the exploitation of the working class. That’s why workers need communist revolution to end this bosses’ dictatorship.

We can combat these attacks by building PLP to put our class on the offensive. Many at this march bought CHALLENGE and eagerly took PLP leaflets which explained that revolution, not voting for "lesser-evil" politicians — as union hacks on both sides of the border ask workers to do — is the only answer to the bosses’ war and fascist attacks.

Several activities are planned to spread support for our sisters and brothers in Oaxaca, one being a march of teachers, including PLP’ers.

Indigenous Workers Protest Attacks In Oaxaca

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 16 — A coalition of indigenous workers, many from Oaxaca, marched to the Mexican Consulate here to demand an end to attacks on Oaxaca’s teachers and their supporters. Almost everyone was glad to get CHALLENGE from a group of PL’ers who joined them. While some chants supported the liberal presidential candidate Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, there were lively discussions pointing out that no electoral party can change the nature of capitalism. Many wanted to stay in touch with the PL’ers about coming marches backing the Oaxaca strike and mass protests.

Oaxaca Teachers Reject Sellout

OAXACA, MEXICO — Striking teachers rejected sellout attempts by some leaders of the teachers union and the APPO (the mass group which has taken over the city) to end the strike which has been the backbone of the struggle. While the deal included a sizeable wage increase for the teachers (the demand that initially sparked the movement), the struggle has gone beyond that, now including political demands. So when leaders of the APPO and teachers union tried to sell the deal to the rank and file and end the strike, the sellouts were expelled from the assemblies. The teachers showed they won't be bought by some economic crumbs and that the struggle will continue, despite government threats to send in the Federal Police and the Army to take back the city.

We in PLP support the teachers and their allies. We're trying to move the fight-back more to the left, into a school for communism, beyond demanding the ouster of Oaxaca's fascist governor or to support Lopez Obrador in the dogfight among Mexican bosses. We aim to build the PLP and fight for a system where workers and their allies rule, which can only be achieved through communist revolution.

AFL-CIO Hacks Betray Detroit Teachers Anti-Racist Strike

DETROIT, MI Sept. 15 - About 9,000 members of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) returned to work, ending their 16-day strike against the Detroit Public School Board (DPS). On September 13, thousands of strikers packed Cobo Hall to hear the terms of a three-year contract. They voted to return while holding ratification votes at their schools.

The UAW and AFL-CIO leadership never mobilized an ounce of support for the strike, and the DFT never called them or the International leadership on it. In the end, the strikers had nowhere to go but back to work, never having mobilized the parents and students which could have greatly expanded the struggle. One poll reported pro-teacher sentiment at 72%.

Teachers chanted, "Books, Supplies and Lower Class Size!" on mass pickets surrounding Board offices They defied a court order to return to work, enjoying the overwhelming support of parents and the 130,000 students. (More than 50,000 students have left the system in the last five years.) Over 80% of the students are black and more than half live below the poverty line. Like NYC transit workers before them, the strike had an anti-racist character and was a breath of fresh air.

At one high school a male mentoring club had just returned from taking students to do volunteer work in New Orleans. During the strike they carried home-made signs criticizing the bloody occupation of Iraq instead of concentrating on cities like New Orleans and Detroit.

While the hundred of billions are spent on imperialist war in Iraq, Detroit reflects a system with nothing to offer black youth but prison or the military. The children of Vietnam vets feel no loyalty to the bosses and even less like killing and dieing for them. The bosses withhold money for public education, especially for black youth, but have endless tax breaks and subsidies for casinos and sports stadiums.

School CEO Walter Coleman, who makes $220,000 a year, and the Board demanded teachers take an 11% pay-cut over two years to fill a $105 million deficit with $89 million in concessions and threatened 2,000 layoffs if they didn't get them. Instead, the strikers settled on a pay freeze this school year, with "raises" of 1% in 2007-08 and 2.5% in 2008-09. Next year's raises will be the first since 2003. Teachers hired before 1992 will pay 10% of their health insurance costs as newer hires already do. And they will lose three days' pay for preparation days canceled by the strike.

Detroit may be the country's most segregated city, similar to Soweto in apartheid South Africa. The population has shrunk from almost two million in the early 1950's to less than 800,000. Newly-released U.S. Census figures show Detroit as the country's second most impoverished city. Thousands of vacant and crumbling homes stand like monuments to the decline of the U.S. auto industry, the collaboration of the union leaders with the bosses and the effect of the collapse of the old communist movement which has hurt workers’class consciousness worldwide. Detroit is a Katrina in slow motion, a victim of inter-imperialist competition among auto companies over the past 30 years.

Schools are old and in disrepair. School libraries are few, broken windows are many. At Miller Middle School, their new principal "welcomed" students back to their first day of school with police pat-downs and metal detectors. Michigan graduates only 30% of its black male students, and almost 80% of white males. In Detroit the numbers are even worse. The mostly Latino southwest side graduates about 13% of all students, black, Latin and white. There are few supplies and teachers spend tens of thousands of dollars from their own pockets for books, copies, paper, even toilet paper for their students.

But this battle is just one round in a long fight, and it has opened new doors to building PLP.

New Orleans Industrial Workers United vs. Racism

Part II

(Part I reviewed the united struggles of black and white workers after the Civil War.)

Now a new element had emerged — the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) which had begun organizing in New Orleans on an anti-racist, internationalist basis. They provided ideological leadership as well as organizational and material support. The modest growth of the organized Left in the 1907 dock strike was even more significant than the reform victory.

One white union leader — using the racist language of that era — described the change in his consciousness: "I fought in every strike to keep black labor off the dock. I fought until in the white-supremacy strike your white-supremacy governor sent his white-supremacy militia and shot us white-supremacy strikers full of holes.... There was a time when I wouldn't even work beside a n-----... You made me work with n-----s, … and finally got me to the point where if one of them ... blubbers something about more pay, I say, ‘Come on, …let’s go after the white bastards.’"

The lumber bosses tried to use black workers to break a 1910 strike by the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Their racism backfired as the union integrated and then affiliated with the IWW, proclaiming that, "No longer will we allow the Southern oligarchy to divide and weaken us on lines of race, craft, religion, and nationality."

In Katrina’s aftermath the bosses are again pushing racism in a thousand ways. As 19th century bosses tried to use the super-exploitation of black workers to "divide and conquer," today’s rulers similarly pit immigrant against black workers. New Orleans remains a mainly working-class city (see box). Once again we need to organize as one united working class — this time, for communist revolution.

After the Russian Revolution, many IWW members rejected the anarcho-syndicalism of their early years and became communists. (The IWW thought that seizure of the factories and proclaiming the "workers republic" in itself would create the revolution, neglecting to advance the necessity for the working class to smash the rulers’ state power.)

In 1921, the Communist Party USA was launched. The Progressive Labor Party has learned much from the victories, and more from the weaknesses, of that communist movement. We fight for black and Latin workers to take the lead in organizing multi-racial class struggle, and also — most importantly — in winning workers, students and soldiers to our Party with the goal of smashing the bosses’ state. Millions of workers already know that capitalism can’t be reformed to meet our needs. When these workers take communism to heart, we can abolish the racist wage system and build a new society based on the principle, "from each according to commitment — to each according to need."

(See Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class and Politics, 1863-1923; (1991), though his analysis differs from PLP’s.)

New Orleans Today: Not Just A Tourist Destination

The Port of New Orleans remains central to the economy of the city and the nation. In 2003 it handled an annual average of 11.4 million tons of general cargo. Its 28 million square feet of facilities included a new state-of-the-art container terminal. Although containerization and automation have slashed the workforce, in 2003 the port still accounted for 107,000 jobs, $2 billion in earnings and $231 million in tax revenue. Meanwhile, one-fourth of all U.S. oil production is based in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana’s offshore oil and gas industries generate $5 billion in annual federal revenues.

The bosses need this oil industry and this port to carry out their plans for rebuilding their military and preparing for broader imperialist war. Repairing the damage done to these facilities by Katrina is much more important to them than fixing workers’ neighborhoods, or even gentrifying downtown. We must organize New Orleans’ industrial workers — black, Latino, Asian and white — to fight the bosses and their bloody war plans.

Capitalist Weapons of Mass Destruction: Water Terrorism

(Editor's note: With this issue we begin a feature that exposes the innumerable weapons of mass destruction generated by the profit system. We invite our readers to contribute material for this box. Please limit your submission to 150 words.)

Every year two and one-half million people die worldwide from polluted water or a lack of water. As pointed out on the radio program "To the Point" (WNYC-NY, 8/25), this is truly a weapon of mass destruction. Capitalists are not only rapidly privatizing water supplies and reaping millions in profits (especially in Latin America) but they're fighting over the supplies, from the Mid-East to the Western U.S. Some predict such conflicts could lead to war.

As the above program reported, one-third of the world's population — two billion people — live with too little water.

Combine capitalism's profit motive with its planlessness, and you have a prescription for a crisis which mostly affects the poorest workers on every continent. It will take communism — when profits, bosses and exploitation are eliminated — that will plan to distribute this most vital resource unpolluted, according to need.

War and More War on the Agenda Political Battle Emerging in Mass Organizations

(Part II of 3-part series. Part I reviewed the liberals’ call for strategic "redeployment" — a tactical retreat from Iraq to regroup for bigger and bloodier wars to protect the U.S. bosses’ increasingly challenged grip on Mid-East oil.)

Recently, a friend at work told me he was alarmed at reports that China had leapt 30 years ahead by "stealing" U.S. military secrets. Naturally, we discussed this propaganda about "stealing," but it started me thinking. Not too long ago every "expert" predicted the U.S. wouldn’t have to worry about China for at least 50 years. Let’s see: 50 minus 30 equal 20. That’s not too far away!

A bipartisan roundtable of industry leaders, the Pentagon and leading foreign policy strategists — hosted by the International Association of Machinists (IAM), a key industrial union — condenses the timeline. They worry that in seven years, 15 at most, the U.S. will not have the surge war manufacturing capacity to meet a challenge from a "near peer competitor." That’s Pentagon-speak for Russia and/or China, with tacit support from some European nations. They will issue a completed report as the next president takes office. Meanwhile, every IAM local and district is pushing this roundtable’s formula for class collaboration backing U.S. imperialism.

Nobody can predict the timeline with absolute certainty. Nonetheless, the bosses are sufficiently worried that they’ve decided to move this debate from the private think-tanks and government offices to the general public. We can expect the ruling class to use every tool at its disposal to galvanize political support for its broader imperialist plans: including the government, laws, media and culture. In this battle for the "hearts and minds" of the working class, the various mass organizations and unions are key battlegrounds.

Using organizational models like the anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action (discussed last issue), the bosses aim to enlist prominent reform organizations in their campaign for broader political acceptance of bigger bloodier wars — up to and including world war. Their new liberalism envisions a network of union, church, immigration, student and soldier groups and nationalist movements promising "positive" reform of capitalism, but delivering patriotism and imperialist war. They want this network to corral any opposition should the working class start to mount any serious anti-imperialist resistance — particularly if inspired by communist class-consciousness.

Fight Bosses’ Ideology

The IAM’s sponsorship of the "Surge Roundtable" is but one example. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) just announced support of Israeli butchery in Lebanon. The "pro-immigrant" organizations support the Senate immigration bill providing virtual slave labor for the arms factories and new recruits for the armed forces. Even anti-war groups among soldiers and their families offer Lt. Watada as an example to follow. He refused go to Iraq, but volunteered to serve U.S. imperialism anywhere else, including Afghanistan. The list of betrayals grows every day.

We avoid confronting the groundwork being laid in mass organizations for bigger imperialist war at our class’s peril. To date, we’ve been fairly good at linking the billion-dollar cost of the Iraq war to cutbacks for workers. But the preparation for war goes deeper. We must confront the political preparation of the working class and the ideological attack included in that preparation. Racism and nationalism are key weapons in the bosses’ arsenal, setting us up to attack other workers. There have been increased attempts to split black from Latin workers, two groups that can provide leadership to the whole working class. Building a base to challenge the "new liberal" leadership in the mass organizations on the questions of racism, nationalism and ideological support for U.S. imperialism is the order of the day.

Racist Reign of Terror At Chicago Hospitals

CHICAGO, IL, September 11 — Racist and fascist terror are on the rise for workers at Stroger Hospital, the CORE Center and throughout the Cook County Health Bureau. Today 75-year old Augustin Sotomayor, a recent stroke victim, was dragged from his car by Stroger cops. He was waiting to pick up his wife who works at the CORE Center, across the street from Stroger Hospital.

Augustin’s wife Manuela has worked for the County for eight years. Many other workers, patients and visitors witnessed her husband being beaten and thrown to the ground by two black hospital cops after they asked him if he "was Mexican" and if he was "legal." While hospitalized at Stroger, he was charged with "resisting arrest" and "battery"!

Cook County security, like the Chicago police, is off the leash. A few months ago, a black female ward clerk with 10 years on the job was dragged off an elevator and to the security office at the other end of the hospital. Her child was waiting in the car while she picked up her paycheck. The cop claimed he "couldn’t see her ID badge," which she was wearing.

In another incident, a black female nurse was attacked by security and dragged to their lock-up while she was getting her paycheck. Both black women were given suspensions by the racist Stroger bosses. If the unions had organized mass protests and job actions supporting these women, Augustin might not have been attacked.

Racist terror on and off the job is aimed at intimidating workers into accepting rotten jobs and a future of endless wars and growing poverty. In the past six months, a retired Chicago police commander was found guilty of torturing defendants into confessions. Yet he continues living comfortably, retired on his city pension because it happened "too long ago" to punish! A 14-year-old black youth was recently shot by the cops in the Cabrini Green housing project for "holding a B-B-gun." Last week, four cops in the Special Operations unit were indicted for breaking into homes, kidnapping and robbery. This week, a Latino family sued the city after the cops shot their son 16 times last year, killing him. There are countless other examples, large and small.

Meanwhile, the County and the SEIU are trying to secure a contract based on a racist war budget that will leave black and Latin workers further behind. Over 80,000 jobs and as many as 40 plants will be eliminated as GM, Ford and Delphi retreat in the face of increasing competition. And the Iraq war, already lost, continues to deteriorate and spread.

The only way out of this mess is building a base for PLP and communist revolution. As we fight every attack, our ties to the workers will deepen and the political struggle can sharpen.

Liberals' Vote Ploy Masks Plan to Win Immigrants to War-Fascism Agenda

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17 — The efforts of mass organizations to win workers' support for the liberal bosses' plans for war and fascism are becoming broader, more crucial and active. The main slogan of a five-day "National Latino Congress" here — Sept. 6-10 — was "March Today, Vote Tomorrow."

Speakers included Latino/a elected officials — LA's Mayor, corporation heads and union leaders like Linda Chavez Thompson, AFL-CIO V-P, Mary Elena Durazo, LA County Federation of Labor president and Nativo Lopez of the Mexican-American Political Association. This Congress's neo-liberal leaders are organizing an all-out campaign to win workers and youth to elect Democrats to Congress, and push the Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Bill (see Labor Day article, page 3), the message being that Democrats will pass laws putting more immigrants on the "path to legalization."

The Conference leadership said now is the time to show "We are America " by getting out the vote, not the time to march. Their "path to legalization" is designed to create a docile workforce and a patriotic military. It's part of the bosses' plans for building fascism.

They're also saying that workers should join unions to achieve "the American Dream." Tiny wage increases (being eaten up by inflation and rising health care costs) were touted as big victories, while union leaders bragged that these reform fights make them the best-equipped to turn out Latino voters.

This conference is part of a carefully thought-out strategy to win us to fascism using a liberal cover. This strategy, outlined by the liberal think-tank Brookings Institution in "United We Serve," stems from U.S. imperialism's need to mobilize immigrant workers and their children to believe in and fight for that "American Dream." It was advanced in a paper entitled "National Security and Immigration Policy," created by a task force on immigration that began meeting shortly after 9/11. It was initiated by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. They met with "counter-terrorism" experts to reform the U.S. Immigration System to further the nation's "security." They included current and former top officials of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Hart-Rudman Commission.

Their report examines the need to win immigrants to give information to the government; to greatly increase quotas for both skilled and unskilled workers; the importance of immigrants serving in the military; and the value of "Allowing the undocumented to secure drivers' licenses [which]…registers them in what is effectively the nation's largest law enforcement database" (p. 45) — an important screening tool.

The report asserts that if the government legalizes "those who are here and are coming here for valid purposes, we can concentrate law enforcement resources on the few bad actors." This document emphasizes the need for comprehensive immigration "reform," and reflects U.S. rulers' needs to both win over and control immigrant workers and their offspring.

These ruthless U.S. imperialists and their agents who are trying to win workers' support for wider imperialist war and exploitation in the production of weapons are wolves in sheep's clothing. They are the enemy of the working class. Voting for one or another "lesser-evil" capitalist politician who backs bosses' wars aims to lock us into these murderers' plans. They must be combated by workers united around a clear understanding of this enemy and the need for revolution.

PLP will participate in these movements to expose the bosses' plans and win masses of workers to oppose these neo-liberal imperialists with a mass movement of workers, students and soldiers fighting for power and a communist world.

Ex-Boeing Hitman Targets Ford Workers

"The United States has no divine right to our standard of living. That’s what we believe in. That’s capitalism." (Tacoma News-Tribune, 7/3/2002) Those are the words of Alan Mulally the new president and CEO of Ford. He was justifying firing 50,000 aerospace workers and selling factories to low-wage producers as Boeing’s chief of Commercial Airplanes. Apparently, the "standard of living" thing doesn’t apply to him. He gets $18.5 million up front, $2 million in salary, four million in stock options and 600,000 restricted stock units.

After Mulally’s first Ford board meeting, the company upped to 16 the number of plants on the chopping block. And you thought things couldn’t get any worse!

Richard Gephardt, formerly the UAW’s favorite Democratic Congressman, urged Mulally to take this job, "for the good of the country." In return, Mulally appointed Gephardt to the board of Spirit AeroSystems, the new owners of the former Boeing Wichita plant.

Spirit fired 1,300 Boeing workers when it bought the plant, reduced wages 10%, hired new workers at even lower rates and reduced pensions and medical benefits. Mulally threatened to "take the division apart" if the unions did not agree to these cutbacks.

He blackmailed Washington State into $3.2 billion in corporate tax breaks to retain the 787 jet assembly. Black workers were hit hardest when he slashed the blue-collar work force and then he pressured the state to cut (mostly Latin) farm workers’ unemployment benefits and gut workers’ compensation to finance this tax-break. He moved lower-paid subcontractors into the assembly plants and moved more work overseas or to new domestic subcontractors, often former Boeing plants.

Throughout this attack, Mullally said the International Association of Machinists (IAM) was "absolutely aligned and attuned" to the bosses’ plans. "We’re looking at being partners in creating value — or adversaries…fighting over an ever-shrinking pie," warned IAM strategic-resources director Steve Sleigh. (Business Week, 8/08/2002)

As Ford CEO, Mulally made his first call to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, who called him "a great choice." The UAW has some Boeing workers and the two have conspired against them in the past.

The racist rulers plan to cut auto workers’ wages and benefits to boost profits and to keep war production at home. Changing exploiters at the top only takes us from the frying pan into the fire. The change we need is a change in systems. We don’t need new bosses; we need communist revolution!

LETTERS

Honor Marx and 'Internationale'

Highgate is a village on the northern edge of London. Karl Marx was buried in Highgate Cemetery. This summer our family of seven stopped to visit Karl. Four of us stood by the grave with our fists raised and sang The Internationale in English, Spanish and poor French. People walking by heard us and made these comments:

"It’s wonderful to see real communists singing The Internationale," said a middle-aged German man. "It is sad that communism has died." We assured him that, just as history has not ended, neither has the struggle for communism. He seemed surprised at our answer and brightened.

Near Marx’s grave many revolutionaries, communists and others — some exiled from their homelands — are also buried. While we were singing, two elderly ladies who were looking at the moving inscriptions on the gravestones circled around and then returned the same way to continue to listen to our singing. They seemed very happy and walked off arm in arm.

A young Chinese couple carrying a bouquet of flowers stopped when they heard us singing The Internationale for the second or third time. They asked if they could take a picture with us — being photographed with a communist at Marx’s grave was what they wanted. They were very excited and said they would show the photos to everyone. They had promised their father they would place flowers on Marx’s grave while in London. They asked us to visit China.

Others didn’t come as close, but stood, listened and watched. Nowhere was there an angry face. From this experience it seemed the ideas of Marx and Lenin are very much alive.

The following day two of us visited an ex-miner and his wife in the county of Kent. During the 1984-85 coal strike they had come to the U.S. He’s now a construction worker. He said he always sings on the job. When he sings The Internationale, he’s always asked to repeat it and the other workers always join in. Most recently this happened with a Ukrainian worker, singing together right there on the construction site. He said to us that if things started popping again, he’d jump right into the battle.

In the past, The Internationale and communists made a difference in the world, and will make a difference in the future.

An ex-Londoner

Afghan Women Fight U.S. Bosses, Warlords

The Sept 9th assassination of Hakim Taniwal governor, of the southeastern province of Paktia, recalls Afghanistan's bitter past while exposing its shattered present. This is a country whose infrastructure has been destroyed by 30 years of war and is ruled by U.S. imperialists and their warlord allies, many of whom are government officials. Corruption is rife, fed by U.S. dollars and the drug trade (Afghanistan supplies 87% of the world's heroin). Private militias outnumber the national army; kidnappings and extortions are commonplace. Women suffer extreme subjugation at the hands of the fascist fundamentalists who control all aspects of life. The resurgence of the Taliban has only worsened the situation for the oppressed population.

Yet amid such horrific conditions, working people are fighting back. Hakim Taniwal, who was assassinated by a Taliban suicide bomber, was a progressive voice in the current Karzai government. He had been a sociology professor at the University of Kabul, with close ties to the leftist government that ruled from 1979 to 1992. He left Afghanistan in 1996 when the fundamentalists came to power. He found asylum in Australia, but retained some of the ideas from his past of working for a more equitable society. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he returned to help rebuild the country. He was a down-to-earth man known for his honesty who tried to better the lives of the people, challenging the corruption — reasons why he was singled out and murdered

Much of the fight-back today is led by militant women who risk their lives simply for opening schools for girls. Still they carry on, helping their sisters — 90% of whom are illiterate — learn to read and write, acquire skills and inspire them to rise up against the horrors inherent in the profit-driven system of capitalism that are so starkly visible in Afghanistan.

Workers everywhere should support the people opposing that system.

An Afghan Friend

CHALLENGE comment: We stand in solidarity with those militant women who are fighting against the U.S. imperialist and fascist fundamentalist oppressors of the workers and farmers of Afghanistan. Imperialism and fundamentalism are part of capitalism and cannot be reformed. The Karzai government represents that system. The government that ruled the country from '79 to '92 was allied with the Soviet regime, which decades before became state-capitalist.

Harvard Terrorist Would Nuke Millions

If anyone doubts that cleanly-groomed Harvard-type men and women would hesitate to murder millions of workers, think again. An opinion column appeared in my local newspaper written by Harvey Simon, "a former Harvard University national security analyst."

Simon says (no children’s game) that politicians and the military must decide whether to continue the old Cold War approach with countries like North Korea that won’t be deterred by threatened U.S. nuclear retaliation. It may not work, says Simon, because heads of those states "may refuse to believe the United States would kill millions in retaliation." Simon clearly thinks that killing millions of innocent civilians with nuclear war is just another day at the park.

He explains that, "The traditional theory of nuclear deterrence was grounded in the World War II era, when civilian populations were bombed without mercy." In an apparent oversight, Simon neglects to mention that only Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Britain bombed civilian populations without mercy; the Soviet Union never engaged in such genocide against workers.

Simon goes on: "The Second Cold War, however, arrives at a time when precision strikes that minimize ‘collateral damage’ are considered politically necessary. U.S. war planners must consider whether they can any longer plausibly threaten to kill millions, if not tens of millions, of innocent people. And if they can’t they’ll have to find new ways to keep the peace." It’s all the same to Simon — the politicians and generals should make up their minds.

The media uses the term "terrorist" only for those who kill tens, hundreds or thousands of innocent people. For those who would kill millions, the proper term is apparently "former Harvard University national security analyst." Or "president," or "senator," or "congressman/woman."

Saguaro Rojo

No Racist Survivors

On September 14, the CBS-TV "reality show" Survivor was beginning a season with segregated teams of Asians, Latinos, blacks and whites competing against each other. Many anti-racist people and organizations are protesting, hoping CBS will cancel this racist trash. PLP members are among them, organizing in churches and unions against this racism.

Past episodes of Survivor were anti-working class, sexist and just plain stupid, promoting individualism. But now the TV bosses are pushing something even more dangerous since their system is in trouble and their economy is facing challenges from their imperialist rivals. Because the bosses cannot give workers jobs and vital services, they want to use racism to divide and rule. They’re pushing racist shows and movies in pop culture so we don’t unite and fight back.

For example, there’s a racist — stereotyping the people of Kazhastan — and anti-Semitic "comedy" movie staring Sasha Cohen of Ali G. fame. Cable station VH-1 has a racist "reality" show starring William Drayton (formerly of Public Enemy).

At the airport where I work, U.S. and Ethiopian workers have circulated an anti-racist union resolution attacking Survivors’ executive producers and writers as racist. Our resolution was sent to the local CBS affiliate and CBS headquarters in NYC.

While Survivor presents nothing specifically related to our jobs, workers live in a bigger world, not in a cultural vacuum. We’re struggling politically with workers for multi-racial unity, pointing out how CBS is insulting the memory of fighters like John Brown, Harriet Tubman and Lucy Parsons. The only solution to the racist bosses’ TV and culture is uniting all workers to fight for a communist revolution. When we cancel the bosses, there’ll be no survivors.

Airport Red

Young Industrial Workers Take Leadership of West Coast PL School

"I've learned a lot about leadership in preparing for this school. Communist leadership is about building more such leaders by example and providing opportunities for others to step forward," declared one young industrial worker of his experience preparing for PL's recent West Coast two-day school. "I wanted to keep discussing dialectics all day," said another.

This school was very positive for everyone. It helped our young industrial workers better understand their responsibilities as Party leaders, deepened and reinforced everyone's understanding of dialectics, and demonstrated our Party's commitment to building for communist revolution among this vital group: the industrial working class.

A club of young industrial workers that had never been given such a big responsibility organized this effort. At times they felt overwhelmed, spending too much time on logistics and not enough concentrating on bringing co-workers to the conference. More could have been brought, causing these young leaders to analyze their relationships with their friends. Yet ultimately, collective struggle brought the club members closer together as they demonstrated their commitment to building the Party among the industrial working class.

A young comrade opened the school with an in-depth report on the world situation and also described his efforts inside and outside the factories. He stressed creativity in bringing communist politics to industrial workers, relating it to whatever interests them; building relationships on and off the job, saying these workers will eventually lead us to other workers. This has helped him expand his CHALLENGE network among his co-workers, their families and their friends.

A presentation on dialectics was a good introduction for some as well as a chance for others to sharpen its application. More time could have given everyone more of an opportunity to struggle over these ideas.

The next day a veteran PL'er gave a great report on immigration "reform" and its relation to imperialist war. He explained how the bosses need to mobilize millions of immigrants and their children to fill the military and war industries and that the ruling class's liberal wing is leading this effort through immigration "reform": building a "green-card army."

Another veteran PL'er described the bosses' and their union lackeys' push to prepare for more imperialist war by rebuilding the rulers' war-manufacturing capacity, forcing long hours and low wages on jobs in the needed skills and moving these workers into war plants.

The presence of Party and veteran industrial leaders reinforced the young comrades' belief that PLP recognizes the vital role industrial workers must play in the struggle for communist revolution. The article "Armed Insurrection" describes how Russian industrial workers produced the weapons for — and filled the ranks of — the army in the fight against Nazi Germany in World War II. In 1968 in France, while students initiated an extremely militant movement, it became much more powerful once the industrial working class shut down the country. No wonder the U.S. ruling class feels the need to snare millions of workers into producing and dying for U.S. imperialism.

The current situation presents great opportunities and places a great responsibility in our hands: to build a base for communism among those workers with the power to stop capitalism dead in it's tracks. In response to that, one young comrade concluded, "Well, we have about 40 to 50 years of organizing left in us so we should be able to get much better at this stuff." With more experience and struggle we will develop more young leaders with the same commitment to transform workers influenced by capitalist ideas into strong fighters for communism.

Remembering Comrade Floyd Crawford

(The following are excerpts from a eulogy by a PLP member delivered at the funeral service for Floyd Crawford, who died on September 3, 2006.)

I met Floyd about 24 years ago. Floyd was not what one would call a "big talker," but through the years we discovered that this appearance of a quiet person masked the essence of someone who had lived for three quarters of a century and from that experience knew a lot more than one gleaned from first glance. We both had lived through and shared some of the same historical events, the Great Depression, wars and the like. [Floyd was drafted near the end of the Korean War, into the Army Air Force.]

Floyd was never much of a dancer while my wife Esther was terrific on that score, but when we were at the same affair together, Floyd would nevertheless ask my wife to get out on the floor with him.

We knew Floyd best as a proofreader of DESAFIO. Somehow Floyd had managed to teach himself Spanish. So when we asked him to help out by proofreading DESAFIO, he was happy to volunteer.

For the better part of the last 20 years, Floyd would come from his home in Garfield, NJ, all the way to our NYC office on Tuesdays, the day before we went to press, by which time nearly all the Spanish translations would be ready. Floyd would be there right on time, like clockwork, spending all day examining every minute detail of the Spanish.

Floyd didn’t merely spot typos or mis-spellings. Often he would challenge the meaning of an article’s translation, if he felt it didn’t correspond to the English version. He understood many of the nuances of the language. This was all the more remarkable because the bulk of the translating was done by our editor whose native language was Spanish, as was true of our other translators around the country.

Floyd would often catch an historical — or even geographical — error involving events he had lived through. So because of Floyd’s efforts, our paper was much more readable in Spanish and somewhat more historically accurate in both languages.

Year after year Floyd attended our May Day marches as well, and made generous financial contributions to our Party. On Tuesdays, he would always treat the CHALLENGE staff to lunch. Floyd and I usually shared a meal (we didn’t eat as much as the young ones) and he would invariably first ask me to choose the part of the chicken I wanted, to go with the rice and beans.

Floyd always seemed conscious of his health and what he ate, so much so that one of our members, a nurse, said she was jealous of his discipline when it came to food. So it was somewhat ironic that when we began to notice something was wrong with him physically, he would slough it off, saying he was O.K. He resisted our efforts to convince him to seek medical help. I think it was finally his dentist — who witnessed this deterioration from visit to visit — who persuaded him to have his condition diagnosed.

Floyd’s contribution reminds me of a scene in the movie "The Seventh Cross." Spencer Tracy played an escapee from a Nazi concentration camp, and was hiding out with the help of others. An old waiter from a delicatessen comes to deliver his food. Hidden beneath a sandwich are some forged papers to help get him out of Germany. Tracy was overcome, that the old man would risk his life to help someone he had never met. So the old man told Tracy this story.

He was filling the sugar bowl at the tables in the restaurant when he accidentally spilled some. Along came hundreds of ants, each one seizing just one grain of sugar to move it to a safe haven. The old man watched in amazement when soon the entire pile of sugar had been moved, one grain and one ant at a time, to another spot.

The old man told Tracy that one ant could never have accomplished that feat by itself, but each one, playing its role together with all the rest, was able to complete the task. And that was how the old man viewed his small role in helping Tracy to escape and carry on the anti-Nazi resistance.

Floyd, like all of us, made a seemingly small but consistent contribution to producing our paper and reaching tens of thousands with our communist ideas. Without each one of us contributing to the "whole," we can never produce that "whole." Truly, what each one of us does, counts.

We must always remember Floyd in this light, as a dear comrade who never failed to do his part in making that "whole" greater than the sum of its parts.

REDEYE

Pols sabotage N.Orleans black workers

Douglas Brinkley, Tulane University historian who wrote the best selling account of "Katrina, The Great Deluge," is worried that even now the White House is escaping questioning about what it is up to (and not) in the Gulf. "I don’t think anybody’s getting the Bush strategy," he said when we talked last week. "The crucial point in that the inaction is deliberate—the inaction is the action." As he sees it, the administration, tacitly abetted by New Orleans’ opportunistic mayor, Ray Nagin, is encouraging selective inertia, whether in the rebuilding of the levees ("Only Band-Aids have been put on them"), the rebuilding of the lower 9th Ward or the restoration of the wetlands. The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. (NYT, 8/26)

Job cut is too small, says Wall St.

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker….will reduce its work force by 10 percent and cut $5 billion in costs….

But its shares declined in extended trading as Wall Street digested the news that the job reductions were not as large as many had expected. Intel said it would cut 10,500 jobs… (NYT, 9/6)

Most workers get no layoff insurance

Currently, because of tight state eligibility requirements and because a growing number of workers do not have long-term, full-time jobs, unemployment insurance is paid to just over a third of those who are laid off, government data show and coverage is less likely among the lower-income workers who most need it. (NYT, 9/14)

Goering showed the way on Iraq war

Reichmarshall Hermann Goering articulated the…strategy during his 1946 Nuremburg war crimes trial. "Naturally, the common people don’t want war," he said. "…(But) the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to a danger. It works the same way in any country." (Gene Lyons, Ark. Democrat-Gazette, 9/4)

Hooking kids and African Americans on nicotine

The amount of nicotine in most cigarettes rose an average of almost 10% from 1998 to 2004, with brands most popular with young people and minorities registering the biggest increases and highest nicotine content, according to a study.

Nicotine is highly addictive, and…the higher levels theoretically could make new smokers more easily addicted and make it harder for established smokers to quit….

Boxes of Doral Lights, a low-tar brand made by RJ Reynolds, had the biggest increase in yield, 36%....Kool lights increased 30%. Two-thirds of African American smokers use menthol brands. (GW, 9/14)

All presidents talk nice, then make war

George W. Bush is not the first president to lead us into war with less than the truth, if not outright lying….

President William McKinley in his war to seize the Philippines said he had heard "the voice of God" and "there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them." We need do little more than substitute "democratize" for "Christianize" all the world, regardless of the method used….

Woodrow Wilson, after campaigning on the slogan, "He kept us out of the war," lost little time in asking Congress for a declaration of war after his inauguration of a second term.

…Franklin D. Roosevelt…maneuver[ed] this country into…action, despite such re-election statements as, "I have said it before, but I shall say it again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."

…Lyndon Johnson…calling himself the peace candidate,…assured us, "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves?" Never mind, we lost 58,000 disproving that one. ( Gade Gusch, Liberal Opinion Week)

US putting ‘freedom’ on back burner

Officially, the…administration is undaunted. Unofficially, it is shelving the "freedom agenda". This month Mr. Bush is expected to extend a warm White House welcome to Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, who has banned opposition parties and muzzled the press – but who runs a strategically placed, oil-rich country. The Saudi and Egyptian governments are once again being treated as key allies…. (FT, 9/5)

‘Fight Club’ Teaches Politics Of Defeat

Our PLP club has some youth around it and has just restarted our "movie day," watching an important/popular Hollywood film and then analyzing it using communist politics. We selected the influential 1999 film "Fight Club."

We first reviewed the origin of the book on which the film was based and then discussed the film’s cultural importance. Author Chuck Palahniuk interviewed men in bars, asking them how they viewed the world and their place in it. The end result was "Fight Club."

We soon discovered that the film, which stays very true to the book, had a more profound impact on the men in the group than on the women. We discussed how the movie is essentially a boy’s fantasy simply acted out by adults. We noted how both we and people we knew had watched this film dozens of times over the years and how it had affected our lives.

Our most humorous reaction was the realization that after the movie was released, every high school in the country must have had its own fight club. Understanding the film’s importance and lasting impact led to a serious discussion about a film that otherwise might have been dismissed as a simple pop culture artifact of the ’90’s.

Taking a balanced approach, we first noted what the film got right. This sparked an analysis of worker alienation in society and its causes. This particular theme is well-portrayed. It inspired a review of the structure and nature of capitalism, how it alienates workers from their labor, leaving a hole to be filled with empty consumerism.

Then someone pointed out the irony of a major motion picture selling for twenty bucks (if you’re lucky) discussing the emptiness of consumer culture. Although seemingly a silly comment to break the seriousness of the moment, it later provided a basis to ask, "If this film is so revolutionary, why did capitalist culture-makers release it?"

Outlining what went right in the film prepared us for the much longer discussion about what went wrong. Re-capping the earlier themes of the book’s creation led to considering the movie’s sexism, and then sexism in society as a whole. One PL’er explained that no revolution will get very far when it excludes half the population.

The film’s sexist ideas are perfectly captured in the line, "We are a generation of men raised by women; I wonder if another woman is really what we need." This provoked an examination of how the film mirrors sexism in the real world.

The evening’s longest conversation centered on the film’s anarchist messages and its Great Man Theory — whether individuals led people to change through great spectacles or whether mass organizations created change through study, discussion and action. The debate on whether political meaning can be derived from single random acts, like smashing a coffee house, was a heated one. PLP’ers noted how actions devoid of context do not move people because the action has no inherent politics. We considered how mass movements win people over slowly through political struggle.

A PL member then analyzed the difference between communism and anarchism (the two main outlooks among the viewers). Anarchists believe political consciousness appears spontaneously whereas communists believe political consciousness and revolutionary ideas must be worked on and refined. While this debate might not have moved everybody to join PLP, it did move people further left as they realized the limitations of anarchism.

After spontaneity was refuted, everyone was ready to attack the film’s Great Man theory. The idea that individuals, rather than mass organizations, create social change was thoroughly discredited, leading to examining capitalist individualism, something we all must struggle with daily.

Finally we returned to asking, "If this film is so revolutionary, why did capitalist culture-makers release it?" The answer was that the movie is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It used people’s identification with the emptiness of capitalism and worker alienation to teach the politics of defeat. The film’s core lessons are that sexism and mindless violence are good, and that organizing, study, discussion and collective action are bad. If we take this film’s advice and refuse to develop our politics — hoping some great action will develop them for us — and rely on a "great leader" to rescue us rather than fight to develop the collective power of the working class, then we will truly be lost.

Lumber Bosses and Their Government Destroy the Environment and Jobs

BITTERROOT VALLEY, MONTANA — This Valley in western Montana is considered a "high desert" land, making wildfires inevitable during the summer months. These fires endanger rural workers and the environment surrounding them. This danger exists mostly due to the bosses’ quest for profit by manipulating previously-burned forest lands.

The late summer of 2000 was a tremendous wildfire season here, burning more than 300,000 acres throughout this Valley alone. The vast majority of burned areas were prone to fire because of high levels of road-building and logging during the previous 40 years, mostly because of timber-industry development. Much of the 300,000 acres was previously clear cut by Darby Lumber Co., the majority of it approximately ten miles from nearby communities.

To protect the company and cover its own faults, the U.S. Forest Service has introduced — and is using propaganda to promote — the "re-burn" theory, that has yet to be scientifically proven. This theory says trees burned by fires in the past would fall down and create conditions for "catastrophic" fires. It created an excuse for Darby and other companies to profit from removing fallen timber from the forest. All this while suggesting their logging is "saving" both the forests and the rural communities around them from these fires, making it appear that they and the Forest Service are protecting the people’s best interests.

However, according to scientists there’s no evidence that fallen or decaying trees pose a higher risk of burning than standing ones. In fact, evidence points to the opposite: logging burned areas increases the risk of fires, and the rate at which they spread, for as long as eight years. This is partly because trees and other forest life cut down and removed actually clears a path for fires to burn and spread.

Due to the "re-burn" theory and its hype by the lumber companies and Forest Service, fear has convinced workers and others that the logging should continue. Meanwhile, years after that fire season of 2000, $16.2 million of restoration funding for that season is missing — neither the Forest Service nor any other department can account for it. Very little watershed and road repairs have been completed. Jobs are down because of damage to fisheries in the valley and to water sources. And that damage can create great health risks because of the harm to the fish people consume and contamination of the water.

The U.S. Forest Service is not filled with your friendly "Ranger Rick" and "Smokey the Bear" types. They’re an extension of the government, and work to protect the bosses just like any other branch. The profit nature of capitalism destroys both the environment and the working class affected by that destruction.

1,000 Navajos March Against Racist Crimes

FARMINGTON, NM, Sept. 17 — One thousand Navajos marched here on September 2 to protest both the latest racist attacks on their tribe members as well as memorializing past violence going back to 1974. On June 4, three white racists brutalized a Navajo man, William Blackie, 46, shouting racist slurs at him. Six days later a white cop killed a 21-year-old Navajo youth, Clint John. His family is filing a wrongful death suit against the cop, the police department and the city.

These attacks reflect widespread racism directed against Native Americans here for decades. In 1974, three white teenagers bludgeoned and burned three Navajo men to death and were "sentenced" to reform school. Four years later, Duane Yazzue, president of the Shiprock chapter of the Navajo Nation, was shot by a white hitchhiker and lost an eye. In 2000, two white racists bludgeoned a 36-year-old Navajo woman to death. George Arthur, a Navajo Nation delegate, was beaten by racist white youths who tried to set him on fire. No one was charged in the attack.

Mr. Yazzie said many other crimes against Navajos went unreported. Mr. Arthur said, "We can tolerate certain aspects of life. But not when it comes to our dignity." (NY Times, 9/17)

While the Navajo Nation has sought federal government help in prosecuting these racists, the fact that the attacks continue unabated indicates that looking to a racist government that kills millions of black, brown, Latino and Asian people won’t end the racism against Native Americans. Only ending capitalism, the source of this racism, will do the job.

Page 786 of 824

CHALLENGE, Nov. 29, 2006

War And Fascism Still Order Of Day For Decades

Dems Aint No Doves

Rumsfeld Out, But Workers No Better Off

On Iraq Policy, Gates Swings With Rulers’ Whim

Gates: Die-Hard Establishment Warmaker

Liberals’ Unfinished Job #1: Mobilizing 300 Million

Beware Liberals Like Spitzer Bearing Pro-War ‘Reforms’

Spitzer Targets Bosses Who Block War Agenda

Liberals’ Police State Hits Workers Hard, Too

PL History: 1963: PL Busts Travel Ban to Cuba

PL’ers Building Base for Communism in D.C. Transit

Chile: Miners’ Solidarity With GM Strikers Paying Off

Pakistan: PL’ers Expose All Bosses, Aid Quake Victims

Fundamentalism:

Nationalism:

Privatization:

Politicians Serve the Capitalists:

Trade Unions’ Role:

2005 Earthquake:

Our Struggle:

Salvador Hospital Strikers Block Streets, Confront Cops

Oaxaca: ‘Reform’ Capitalism No Solution for Workers

Back Oaxaca Struggle

Cops Save Minutemen From Anti-Racists’ Wrath

Red Ideas Make Headway at Public Health Convention

Racist French Rulers Use ‘Terrorist’ Lies to Fire Airport Workers

Oil Resources Behind Darfur Deaths, Wars in Africa

LETTERS

Liberals’ Petition Misleads Anti-War GI’s

Need Alternative to Liberals' GI 'Appeal'

Danger, Opportunity in GI Movement

Wider Wars Behind School ‘Reform’

Medical Murder: From Hitler to Israel to U.S.

Campus’ Action Exposes ‘Justice’ Roberts

The Deaf Must Unite With Their Class

REDEYE

Short-Circuiting Soldiers’ Political Potential

Two Traps: Identity Politics and Democracy

Another Trap: Bosses’ Patriotism

God Save The Queen Because The Working Class Definitely Shouldn’t!

CHALLENGE, November 15, 2006

OAXACA REBELS BATTLE FASCIST TROOPS

Support Spreading

RULERS TRY TO FOOL WORKERS WITH PHONY IRAQ `EXIT' SCHEMES

Oil-thirsty Liberals Seek More Mid-East Killing, Not Less

Baker-Hamilton Brain-Trust Imperialist to the Core

DEMS PUSH MILITARISM

Imperialist Rivalries Dictate Latin American Elections

Latin American Elections Reflect Splits in the Ruling Classes

BRAZIL

ECUADOR

BUILDING COMMUNIST CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG D.C. TRANSIT WORKERS

Students Oppose Military `Career Fair,' Challenge University Intimidation

FIGHTING HIV and AIDS, FIGHTING FOR REVOLUTION!

PL'ers Fight for Real Communist Politics at Conference

Bronx Postal Workers Battle Layoffs, Closings

Auto Bosses' Rivalry Puts Brakes on Ford, GM

Here is evidence that the Big Three is no more:

Corruption Inc.: NYC Central Faker Council Robs Workers Blind

Sit-down Striker Fights Anti-Immigrant French Bosses

RED YOUTH BUILD PLP IN MEXICO

LA Workers Back Oaxaca Rebels

LETTERS

Is PLP Against `Better Schools'?

CHALLENGE Comment:

Racism Won't Fly With Airport Workers

Workers Back Anti-Klan Protesters

Nicaraguan Election Exposes Opportunists' Betrayal

PLP HISTORY:Miners' Rebellion Launched PL's 44 Years in Class Struggle

REDEYE

First nukes in Korea came from U.S.

Climate issue is handy for ruling class

Elections aren't fooling many people

New Love for sugar daddies: Democrats

China and India see wars over energy

TV ad speeds up child's development

North's rulers also got rich on slavery

Book Review:U.S. Britain Betrayed Death Camp Inmates

In Memory of Sam ChestnutNov 26, 1943 - Sept. 26, 2006

PLP HISTORY:
Miners' Rebellion Launched PL's 44 Years in Class Struggle

Book Review:
U.S. Britain Betrayed Death Camp Inmates

In Memory of Sam Chestnut
Nov 26, 1943 - Sept. 26, 2006

Book Review:
Murder Mystery With Working-Class Hero

WAR NEEDS DICTATE HARVARD ADMISSION CHANGE
Racist Rulers Target Working-Class Youth To Be Misleaders

DUMP ALL BOSSES!
Oaxaca Workers Defy Threats

Want to End Imperialist Wars?
Shed Illusions of `Peaceful' Capitalism