a href="#Need Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans">"eed Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans

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Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco

Under Communism: What will prisons be like?

France: Youth Explode Against Racism

The rebellions against police brutality, racism and unemployment sweeping across many French cities have ripped the mask off the slogans of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, exposing a society in which millions of immigrant workers and their French-born children and grandchildren have been forced into high-rise ghettoes and into the country's worst jobs, education and living conditions.

The rebellion started on October 27, when cops began chasing two Muslim teenagers of African descent in Clichy-sous-Bois, an impoverished, ghettoized "suburb" northeast of Paris. The young men ran and climbed a fence, not noticing a warning about the presence of a high voltage electric generator. They were electrocuted. The cops told the usual victim-blaming lies when committing racist murder. And the rebellion was on.

Within days, it had spread across France to hundreds of oppressed "suburbs" where half the population is under 20. Many of these youth are the French-born sons and daughters of North African and sub-Sahara immigrant workers. Unemployment there is more than double the national average. For 18- to 24-year-olds it ranges between 30% and 40%. ID checks and police harassment are a way of life. (See page 4)

These French citizens and immigrants face the worst housing. All those who died in last summer's fires in run-down Paris buildings were black, from sub-Saharan Africa. While two-thirds of French children receive the equivalent of a high school diploma, less than half of foreign-born children do.

Police State

Now a three-month "state of emergency" exists nation-wide, permitting local officials to impose curfews and a ban on demonstrations as the rulers try to institute more of a police state. They've unleashed the special CRS "anti-riot" cops, known for their own brand of unlimited racist brutality.

With no communist political leadership, the young rebels have often targeted the most obvious symbols of a society that treats them like trash: the police, who brutalize them; the schools that humiliate and fail them; and the town halls symbolizing the government that exploits and discards them. Sometimes they've made serious mistakes, like trashing and burning thousands of cars, most belonging to other workers, or a deadly assault on a retired auto worker.

One wing of the racist French government and ruling class is using these incidents to characterize the rebels as "rabble" and "scum" and to depict the rebellions primarily as "vandalism" (Interior Minister Sarkozy). Another wing, resembling U.S. ruling-class liberals including Prime Minister De Villepin, Sarkozy's main rival for the presidency in the next election is shedding crocodile tears over a situation its system helped create, hypocritically decrying racism and calling for reform . The French "Communist" Party long ago gave up the idea of fighting for revolution. Along with the "Socialist" Party, more right-wing sections of both support the government crackdown and some called for even harsher measures. The unions they lead are misleading workers into the racist trap laid by the ruling class. And the Muslim religious "leaders" joined the chorus — the French Union of Islamic Organizations issued a fatwa telling young Muslims to "calm their anger" if they want to obtain "divine grace."

The conditions that prompted these justifiable uprisings can't be reformed. Their history proves the indivisibility of racism and the profit system. The universal laws of capitalism apply to France just as rigorously as they do to the U.S.

French Rulers' Long History of Racist Warmaking

Many in the international anti-war movement saw the French rulers as "allies" in the fight against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But Chirac opposed that invasion only because French oil companies lost their Iraq contracts when the U.S. expelled Saddam Hussein.

In the 19th century, French rulers colonized large parts of northern and western Africa, seeking an advantage in their competitive dogfight with British and German imperialism. This dogfight eventually led to two world wars. By the end of World War II, two developments were emerging. First, French rulers needed a massive influx of cheap labor power for their drive to become a major industrial force on world markets. Second, throughout the French empire, a growing independence struggle, led in large part by sincere communists with the old movement's incorrect pro-nationalist line, was taking shape.

The sharpest expression of this struggle for France was the Algerian War, which began in 1954, ended in 1961, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. French President DeGaulle understood better than most of his political rivals the key class needs of French bosses, that an "independent" Algeria could be much more lucrative than an Algeria kept "French" by a costly colonial war threatening to tear France apart. So he signed the deal that made Algeria an ex-colony and turned its new bosses into business partners.

Importing Immigrants For Low-Wage Jobs

The war's end led to an explosion of immigration from Algeria and other parts of northern and western Africa to fill the most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs in heavy industry. The government gave French companies huge tax concessions to import these workers. The politicians were quite frank about the purpose of the newly-liberalized immigration policy. In 1963, Prime Minister Pompidou admitted: "Immigration is a way to loosen up the labor market and resist social pressure." When the bosses began to fear that legal immigration quotas might not fill the expanding economy's demand, Labor Minister Jeanney warbled praises of "Clandestine immigration" as "…not entirely useless…[otherwise] we might lack manpower."

But the profit system is unstable. Boom quickly turns into bust. By the mid-1970s, the "glorious years" of economic expansion were over. The bosses were laying off super-exploited immigrant workers rather than recruiting them. In 1974, Prime Minister Chirac, now president, suspended immigration. In 1978, Secretary of State Stoléru promoted an infamously racist measure to expel 500,000 immigrants over a five-year period. Throughout this period, Jean-Marie Le Pen was building the "National Front" — the most successful openly fascist electoral party in Europe since Hitler - around blatantly racist, anti-immigrant slogans.

The mainstream bosses' parties were co-opting his agenda while pretending to distance themselves from him. In 1991, Chirac was preparing his eventual presidential campaign. He visited a French family living in the same neighborhood as Arab immigrants and wondered aloud how "good French people" could bear the "stench and noise." Four years later he won largely because he captured a large section of Le Pen's political base, much like the two Bushes and Reagan before them, who pandered to the openly racist elements of the U.S. electorate. Now main-line fascistic leaders and presidential hopefuls like Sarkozy are again co-opting LePen's followers.

'Socialists' Back Anti-Immigrant Racism

But France's anti-immigrant racism doesn't belong exclusively to the open fascists and right-wingers. Barely two weeks after Chirac's racist tirade in 1991, Edith Cresson, then the "Socialist" Prime Minister, proposed charter flights to forcibly repatriate "unwanted" immigrants. Two weeks later, President Mitterrand, another "socialist," made a speech on July 14 (France's national holiday) supporting Cresson. Mitterrand had earlier distinguished himself as a collaborator with the Nazi occupation in World War II — supplying the Hitlerites with intelligence that sent anti-Nazis to prison and/or execution- as well as the Interior Minister who launched the French government's first wave of brutal colonial repression when the Algerian war erupted in 1954.

So Interior Minister Sarkozy's racist filth against today's rebels hardly falls from the sky. Every single cause of the present rebellion — racist super-exploitation of immigrant labor power, racist unemployment, racist police terror against immigrant workers and their unemployed children, racist schools that miseducate children and throw them onto a labor market to seek non-existent jobs, and racist insults by victim-blaming politicians — can be traced directly to the profit system.

The universality of racism and its consequences under capitalism is one important lesson to draw from the current rebellions in France. Others include:

•During the time the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong was sincerely fighting for workers' power, he wrote, "Revolution is not a tea party." Well, neither is spontaneous rebellion. The masses of young workers involved in today's uprisings are lashing out as best they can against a system that has made their lives intolerable. They aren't doing so in the most effective way, but they're hardly to blame for the current vacuum of revolutionary political leadership in France. The old communist movement first betrayed them, then abandoned them. Our Party salutes their rebellion and recognizes in it a sure sign that class struggle will always rise to the forefront sooner or later, even in the bleakest of periods.

•In a context of sharp, massive international class struggle, today's anti-racist rebellion by French youth could potentially serve as a catalyst to galvanize the world's working class. This was the case in April-May 1968, when a militant protest by university students outside Paris led to a general student strike and very rapidly thereafter to a general strike of the French working class that virtually shut down the country for three weeks. The powder in France and throughout the world is just as dry today as it was then. The difference lies in the absence of a vital communist center (like the inspiration drawn from that era’s Chinese Cultural Revolution) to transform class hatred into a force for the seizure of political power. However, a looming national rail strike (Nov. 21) against privatization of the railroads and an accompanying mass demonstration in Paris is an opportunity for oppressed youth to unite with workers in a pro-working class, anti-racist alliance.

We have a long way to go before we become such a force. But that's the Progressive Labor Party's goal, in the U.S., France and everywhere. We salute today's rebels. We celebrate their anger and their fighting spirit. We are inspired by their actions, which have once again placed class struggle on the front page. And we promise to keep building the PLP until it deserves to be recognized as the revolutionary communist leadership of the world's workers.

3,000 Marchers Confront KKK in Texas

AUSTIN, TEXAS, Nov. 5 — More than 3,000 protesters marched against the Ku Klux Klan today at City Hall here, the state capital. PLP members and friends from three Texas cities participated, some seizing leadership and leading chants, including "Black, Latino, Arab, Asian and White; No KKK No Way!"

This leadership galvanized the largest contingent of several hundred demonstrators, encouraging hundreds to join the march, and united with members of the U. of Texas Black Students Association to try to confront the racist Klan. Fake leftist organizers had no plan and were pushed aside as they almost led the march into an early police trap. Liberal peace groups trying to drown out militant chants were told by marchers, "We’re here to confront the Klan, not listen to speeches and songs." Hundreds more at two other intersections were less organized, some obeying misleaders’ instructions to hold a "silent vigil."

Austin’s mayor protected the Klan with several hundred baton-wielding riot police, including dozens on horseback, with spotters, snipers and photographers on rooftops. These Klansmen in blue protected the seven Klansmen who tried to rally, sealing off two square blocks and keeping the racist Klan right next to a large armored police vehicle. Each street intersection leading to the City Hall where the Klan hid was blocked by lines of cops, their batons at the ready.

For the week before this Klan action — "in support of family values and against gay marriage" — the mayor, peace groups and newspapers pleaded with Texans not to demonstrate and to ignore the Klan "so it wouldn’t get publicity." Obviously many workers and students refused these pro-fascist instructions, but some took them seriously until they heard the various ways the government is building fascism, including publicizing Klan events. Others argued the demonstration "wasn’t important" if there was no way to physically attack the Klan.

But asking people to protest the Klan is important; strength of numbers can change what’s possible. The bottom line is that thousands will fight racism and sexism, even without understanding how capitalism depends for its survival on keeping people divided.

PLP members talked to people about the militant rebellions of North African youth against the racist French government this week, the anti-Nazi rebellion in Toledo, and the massive street demonstrations against the U.S. and Bush in Argentina. We in PLP have a great opportunity to rebuild an international revolutionary communist movement among these thousands of angry demonstrators, from Austin to Argentina to the suburbs of Paris, to turn their militancy into a fight to destroy capitalism, the root cause of racism and fascism.

One radio station predicted hundreds would come to support the Klan because it supports a law banning gay marriage. But only a tiny handful of KKK’ers showed up while thousands came to protest. This indicates that the Klan is a product of the rulers’ media which publicizes its racist actions, and of their government which protects them. Every such event is an opportunity to win people to the need for revolution, not just reform.

In that vein, PL members met and exchanged phone numbers with marchers and spectators, including undocumented workers from Latin America who face attacks today from U.S. rulers’ newest nazi group, the Minutemen.

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The bosses' state is not neutral. It represents the interests of the capitalist class. Workers must understand its nature, and why different ruling-class factions fight to control it. When workers grasp that concept we can see that we have no friends in the ruling class and that the only state that serves our interests is one where workers rule and abolish wage slavery, capitalist profits, their wars and racist/fascist terror — communism.

The presidency of the United States is both supremely powerful and precarious. A president can make war (see box on Imperial Presidency), steer the economy, and shape society in significant ways. But the very importance of the office makes it a highly unstable element of the capitalists’ class dictatorship. Factions among them constantly battle tooth and nail over control of the White House. For more than a century, the struggle has essentially involved two camps: imperialist liberals, the dominant group, who need to militarize the U.S. for ever larger wars; and bosses who would only employ capital and manpower for their own companies’ gain. This fundamental rift, inseparable from the profit system, turns elections into circuses and underlies an endless series of presidential scandals, impeachments, and attempted and successful assassinations.

Today the liberal imperialist wing is using the Cheney-Libby-CIA flap to scold Bush for failing to secure Iraq and failing to whip up patriotic spirit for future wars. In response, Bush is taking small, halting steps to get on board the liberal agenda. In a Veterans’ Day speech, he vowed to finish the job in Iraq and even spoke the liberals’ magic word, half-heartedly acknowledging "the sacrifices that might lie ahead." "Shared sacrifice" has become the liberals’ slogan for the coming phase of inter-imperialist conflict. Capitalists will have to sacrifice some profits in the form of war taxes. Workers will have to sacrifice their wages, personal freedom and lives. But Bush’s efforts are too little and too late for liberal media outlets like Newsweek, which recently saddled him with a dismal approval rating of 36%.

The imperialist camp upholds Franklin D. Roosevelt as the presidential ideal. The regulatory agencies he created bent finance and industry to U.S. imperialism’s needs. He boosted U.S. troop strength from 400,000 to 14,000,000. But until FDR actually accomplished the liberals’ tasks, they employed their media to correct and direct even his administration. In 1938, the New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent Arthur Krock praised FDR for his "political execution of the right-wing conservative" and for planning "to mobilize industry under...a government agency reminiscent of the [World War I] War Industries Board." But simultaneously, Krock — speaking for the impatient imperialists — attacked FDR’s "incapacity to consolidate progress." FDR’s vindication, for the liberal warmakers, came only with the U.S. invasion of Normandy. Liberal sainthood followed soon after FDR’s death, when Truman executed the nuclear genocide FDR had planned for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The liberal wing hasn’t yet determined what it can do with Bush & Co. But it clearly wants them either ousted or thoroughly purged and the White House reshaped in the liberal image. The Times’ editorial (11/8) lamented, "It's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long." The Times, targeting Cheney as a chief hindrance to the liberal war agenda and complaining that he can’t be fired, urges Bush to "keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm."

We can’t predict which of the bosses’ favorite forms the housecleaning will take (see box, "Uncertain Terms", page 2) — or even if the liberals can pull it off completely. But we can be sure they’ll keep trying. As scandals pile up and harsher actions become more plausible, we must avoid the trap of siding with either of the rulers’ factions. This is not about the ethics or intelligence of any politician. What drives the Oval Office dogfight is the liberal imperialists’ need to dominate the world, while killing millions of workers in the process.

Imperial Presidency

The growing need for U.S. rulers to expand and protect their worldwide profit empire by force has led to ever broader presidential war powers:

When the U.S. was just joining the ranks of the major imperialists in 1917, Wilson had to battle Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Fifty-six congressmen voted against it. By 1941, the war declaration had become a rubber-stamp formality. Congress’s 470-1 vote for war on Japan merely blessed the mobilization FDR had begun years before. Truman dispensed with war declarations entirely, never bothering to ask for congressional ratification for the Korean War.

Presidents since then have had a free hand. JFK had troops in Vietnam long before Congress discussed the matter. Nor did the White House seek Capitol Hill’s advice for subsequent U.S. military assaults on the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Sanctimonious debates in Congress over launching the two Iraq wars were hollow farces. They both took place as the invasion fleets were already under way. Bush had Special Forces in Afghanistan well ahead of 9/11.

Uncertain Terms

As the importance of the presidency increases, recent history shows tenure in the White House gets shakier:

Kennedy: Assassinated in first term. His call for economic sacrifice for U.S. imperialism angered many capitalists, great and small.

Johnson: Forced to forgo second term by failure in Vietnam and rebellions at home.

Nixon: Forced to resign under threat of impeachment over Watergate. Economic policies hindered U.S. imperialism.

Ford: Never elected. Two assassination attempts. Defeated by Carter who vowed U.S. war for Persian Gulf oil (Carter Doctrine).

Carter: One term. Iran revolution and hostage crisis revealed inability to deliver on Middle East.

Reagan: Two terms. Courted right-wing voters. Doubled-crossed them by pursuing imperialist agenda once in office. Shot by neo-Nazi, domestic oil heir Hinckley. Continued military expansion begun by Carter. Benefited hugely from collapse of politically corrupt Soviet Union.

Bush, Sr.: One term. Won back Kuwaiti oil for U.S. but fell short of seizing Iraq.

Clinton: Two terms. Impeached by anti-regulation camp over "sex scandal." Bombed ex-Yugoslavia. Bombed and starved Iraq with sanctions. Never managed to launch ground war. Failed to rein in industry, especially drug companies.

Bush, Jr.: Stole 2000 election from liberal imperialist Gore. Future uncertain.

Hundreds of D.C. Marchers Link Racism to AIDS Epidemic

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 9 — On Nov. 5, hundreds of marchers from the national movement to stop HIV/AIDS took its anti-racist message to the predominantly black Anacostia southeast neighborhood here. They included PLP public health activists and local members of Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) and the Prince George’s County Health Action Forum. PLP members distributed dozens of CHALLENGES to marchers and residents, emphasizing that capitalism is to blame for AIDS having gone from being a disease to a genocidal epidemic, and that only communism can organize society to consistently stop such social disasters.

The Anacostia community is the most at-risk for the disease but the most-ignored by the bosses. Residents welcomed the march, declaring, "You’re doing the right thing!" During the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) Days of Action (11/5 through 11/8), chants rang out like "HIV Prevention Worldwide — Anything Less is Genocide!"; "Fund Condoms Not War!"; "Dead Addicts Don’t Recover — Needle Exchange and Harm Reduction Now!"

Three days later, C2EA convened in a park near the White House and "awarded" Golden Tombstones to right-wing groups which promote "abstinence only," fight sex education in the schools and oppose life-saving needle exchange programs for drug-users. After an energetic visit to the headquarters of one of these fascist lobbying groups, marchers demonstrated at the White House where 29 demonstrators were arrested after lying down on the sidewalk with gravestones reading, "Killed by Abstinence Only," and "Killed by Lack of Medications." In reality, racist capitalism is the killer, from the AIDS epidemic to the war in Iraq.

The MWPHA’s Disparities Committee, in fighting the racist HIV/AIDS epidemic, will be holding monthly street outreach, and education in the libraries of the most affected neighborhoods, and will be organizing residents to demand drug treatment on demand, HIV prevention policies, outreach to vulnerable groups, testing and care for all.

All this is greatly needed here where 1 in 20 people (over 75% black) have the deadly HIV infection, a rate comparable to Tanzania and Mozambique. HIV is one of the most racist health inequalities in the world. Over 40 million people have HIV, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa. In the U.S., nearly half of all black gay men have HIV; rates are growing fastest among young people ages 15 to 24. In D.C.’s poorest areas, drugs fuel the epidemic with IV drug-users spreading HIV to women.

The C2EA is demanding: HIV prevention based on science — condoms, comprehensive sex education, clean needles for drug users; treatment for all everywhere — maintain Medicaid for all beneficiaries; medications for people everywhere; full funding for the Ryan White Care Act, a critical source of financing HIV programs; Research for a cure and better treatment and prevention options; and an end to stigma and discrimination against people with HIV. Actions need to go beyond politics as usual.

Generating profit, not health, is intrinsic to capitalism. Blood-sucking drug companies insist on unaffordable prices for their drugs, so in Africa only 15% of the people who need medication are treated with the HIV drugs that keep people alive in the U.S.

Here, Democratic and Republican politicians all know that as long as there are enough reasonably healthy people to work (and fight wars), infected people can be ignored and disposed of. On the march we met a woman living with AIDS and ovarian cancer in a Mississippi shelter who was denied disability compensation because she "wasn’t sick enough." Then she couldn’t qualify for AIDS-related housing because she didn’t have an income!

The C2EA days of action were mild reform actions. They showed that only the working class can lead the fight. Virtually no one from AIDS service organizations, Schools of Public Health, Health Departments or the D.C. City Council participated. Just as during Hurricane Katrina, it’s up to the working class to lead the fight for a better society based on equality and health for all. Our class must be organized around PLP’s revolutionary politics, not the wishful thinking that a better politician will come along.

Racist Contract Sparks Growing Fight in NYC Teachers Union

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 4 — The recent contract vote in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) here saw 63% in favor and 37% against, the closest vote in the union’s 40-year history. Among classroom teachers, the percentage against was probably 40%.

This contract reflected the intense racism that permeates the NYC school system, with its overwhelmingly black and Latino student body. Nothing in the contract did anything for the students, whom billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and the ruling class view as the source of an endless supply for their low-wage economy and of cannon fodder for their imperialist wars.

An Important Contract

The large opposition vote has the union leadership running scared. They’re making plans to try to maintain control of the members. As CHALLENGE reported (11/16), opposition groups are growing within the union, some comprising young teachers who the bosses and the UFT assumed were in their hip pockets.

Two years ago the Mayor won direct control of the schools, no longer having to play political games to get what he wanted. He moved the headquarters of the renamed Department of Education (DOE) downtown, next door to City Hall. The UFT leadership agreed to this change, and therefore it was O.K.’d by the State Legislature. Mayoral control has increased many educators’ fears of harassment and increased oppression.

This contract is one more step in the increasing control of individual classroom teachers, dictating placement of classroom furniture, materials to be placed on bulletin boards and walls, timing and pacing of lessons, down to the minute. This harassment places the burden of the students’ success solely on the teachers, not on the DOE at all.

Even more critically, UFT’ers have lost the right to grieve this harassment, having given up the second step of a 3-step grievance process. They can no longer complain when administrators place letters of reprimand in their personal files. The day after the contract was ratified, union members began hearing about administrators’ plans to target teachers they want to fire.

Due to the increasing harassment and the tremendous workload, many new teachers leave before they’ve worked in the system for five years. The DOE bosses encourage that turnover since they assume these inexperienced teachers will not be loyal to their co-workers or to the union. While somewhat true, we’ve met younger teachers willing to fight and organize, some forming school groups against racism, others engaging in struggles against this contract.

We have to bring our co-workers and friends into action, struggling together against this harassment, micromanagement and racism, and build support for co-workers targeted by the administration. Even more important, we must build a fight for our students who are consistently losing out — class size is still far too large, resources are scarce in most schools, and overworked, harassed teachers cannot do their best.

We must involve the students, their parents and rank-and-file teachers in a united anti-racist fight against these fascist conditions, which are keyed by racist neglect of the students, a situation which the union leadership either does nothing about or, worse, fosters. Gaining strength from fighting for the working-class black and Latino students is the only way teachers can improve their own lives. (The last contract teachers won both better working conditions and higher salaries was in 1975; it’s been all downhill since then.)

The intensification of racism in the schools and control of the teachers adds up to fascism in the educational system. Through a united student-parent-teacher anti-racist struggle, PLP’ers can bring communist ideas to the fore and demonstrate that the racism of capitalism can only be defeated by overthrowing the system itself. That lesson is the best education students can ever receive, to extricate themselves from the rat hole which the profit system has created.

Puerto Rico: 3,000 Teachers March to Demand End to Wage Freeze

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, Nov. 9 — Workers here are on the move. Today, 5,000 members of UTIER (Union of Water and Electrical Workers) marched to the governor’s house (La Fortaleza — "The Fortress") protesting his privatization plan and demanding a new contract with decent pay. Several Senators met with the workers, saying they supported the demands, but the workers don’t trust them and will continue their protests.

Earlier, over 3,000 teachers marched from the Capitol to La Fortaleza in the biggest teachers’ action in recent years, demanding the government negotiate a new contract, with an 18% wage hike, smaller class size and better working conditions. For the last 11 years a teacher’s basic wage here has been frozen at $1,500 a month (a cop’s starting wage is $2,300 a month, over 50% more).

The teachers union — affiliated with the U.S. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — has broken with the AFT, accusing it of just collecting their dues and doing nothing for them. The local here is fighting the AFT’s attempt to put it in receivership.

The teachers are rejecting the government’s claim of a "fiscal crisis" while money is being funneled to the Iraq war, in which many young soldiers from PR have been killed and injured.

One problem affecting teachers, and the population in general, is violent crime. Many teachers fear violence in their schools. The government’s "solution" is increased police patrols. The governor has responded by sending more cops into housing projects and working-class communities. But the main causes of this violence are unemployment, drugs — which cops are part of — and the general crisis of capitalism.

The government has increasingly employed the police state Patriot Act. Even Senators were surprised when they found hidden cameras monitoring them in the Capitol building. A few months ago, an FBI death squad ambushed and, in cold blood, killed Filiberto Ojeda, leader of an underground pro-independence group here. This was repudiated by many, viewed as an attack on all workers fighting back.

This fight-back is a good thing. From this workers can learn that under capitalism lousy education for working-class youth, rotten working conditions for workers and crime are constants. Turning such struggles into schools for communism — learning how to fight for workers’ power, a society without bosses — is he best lesson to be drawn from them.

Laws of Capitalism Erasing Reform Gains in Auto

The latest bosses’ offensive in the auto industry (see article below) proves in spades that trying to reform capitalism is a dead end. Over the last 60 years, of all industries and unions, auto and the UAW are the ones claiming to have provided workers, especially unskilled workers, with the greatest job security, pensions and health care "for life." Of course, the auto companies didn’t just give these reforms out of the goodness of their hearts. It took communist leadership in the unionization drive of the 1930’s to win them, with sit-down strikes occupying the plants and defying the bosses’ laws.

Then along came World War II and the no-strike pledge. In the post-war period, the class struggle resumed, with strike after strike in those years winning cost-of-living wage increases, pensions, health benefits and finally the so-called Guaranteed Annual Wage, SUB pay (Supplemental Unemployment Benefits) that would grant workers 95% of their wages throughout layoffs.

UAW chief honcho, Walter Reuther (who had ousted the communists from leadership in the late 1940’s during the height of the anti-communist cold war hysteria), proclaimed paradise for the workers. But capitalism — the system that Reuther and all his successors in leadership champion — doesn’t work that way.

No sooner had the Big Three — GM, Ford and Chrysler — faced stiff competition from their imperialist rivals in Germany and Japan, the U.S. auto industry hit the skids. Plant closings, mass layoffs, wrecking SUB pay, and billions in wage and benefit concessions became the order of the day, destroying any measure of previously-won job security. The fierce worldwide competition for market share — intrinsic to capitalism — squeezed profits out of the backs of the workers.

Soon GM and Ford greatly increased the number of their plants in Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere, long before they started business in China. Now they could export many more jobs and pay these workers anywhere between 58¢ to $2 an hour, leading to even more massive layoffs in the U.S. This outsourcing partly helped cut the UAW auto membership in half. Ironically, VW, Nissan, Honda and Daimler began building plants in the U.S. (mainly in the non-union South) where labor costs are lower than in Germany and Japan.

Now wages, "guaranteed" pensions and health care are taking still another hit. This falls especially hard on black workers, who were the last ones hired in auto and the first ones to go because of the historic racist hiring practices of the Big Three.

So the laws of capitalism — competition, export of capital seeking the lowest labor costs (imperialist "globalization") and racism — are smashing all these reform gains won by the union, enforced by the bosses’ state in the person of bankruptcy judges and laws. The UAW leadership always operated within these bosses’ laws which guarantee that the bosses’ class interests are primary and that their profits must be defended at all costs. Now this means installing fascism in the work-place, which is exactly what these company attacks are producing, similar to what the Nazis did under Hitler.

All this is intensified by the U.S. rulers’ need to launch war after war to defend their class interests internationally against their imperialist rivals. This permanent war economy requires, among other things, money to pay for the enormous cost of their military machine. And the primary source of this money is lowering the living standards of the working class.

Once again, all this proves what PLP has always maintained: no reform is safe under capitalism because the bosses hold state power and, in the last analysis, their pro-capitalist laws and rule hold sway. Therefore, workers must understand that politics are primary — even in struggles for reforms — and that our class interests can never be served under capitalism. So sooner than later, workers must confront the bosses, their state and their union agents, along with their pro-war patriotism, racism and anti-communism, and fight for a system where workers rule: communism.

UAW Sellouts Giving Away Store to GM, Ford

DETROIT, MI, Nov. 1 — Tremors continue to rock the domestic auto industry. Delphi, the country’s largest parts supplier, filed the largest bankruptcy in the history of the U.S. auto industry and demanded billions in concessions, including wages as low as $10 an hour, a cut of more than 50%. GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced health care concessions of $15 billion in GM’s previous contractual commitment, marking the beginning of the end of "guaranteed" benefits. Ford’s plan includes ‘’significant plant closings’’ and job cuts for its North American operations. In September, it was forced to reclaim 24 Visteon plants to bail out its former parts division.

Ford reported a $284 million loss in the third quarter, and GM lost nearly $4 billion through three quarters, including its largest quarterly loss in over a decade ($1.6 billion).

Now UAW president Ron Gettelfinger reported details of the tentative agreement with GM to impose health benefit cuts on union retirees, unanimously approved by several hundred GM local union leaders. Membership ratification (retired workers won’t be allowed to vote) is awaiting a court ruling that prevents retirees from suing the union and the company (see CHALLENGE, 11/16)).

For the first time, GM retirees will have to pay deductibles, monthly premiums and hospital co-payments. Right now this means a $15 billion down payment on a new 2007 contract that will include plant closings, elimination of the job bank for laid-off workers, and a possible end to the "30 and Out" retirement. In the long run, these concessions prove that as long as the bosses hold power, even benefits built up over a century of struggle cannot survive.

Retired GM workers will pay up to $370 a year for traditional coverage, ($752 for a family). The cost of some prescription drugs will double or triple. Current GM workers will give up $1-an-hour in 2006, deferring cost-of-living adjustments and wage increases to help pay retiree medical costs (GM will contribute $3 billion to the fund by 2011). Current workers will also face increased co-pays. Ford and Chrysler are looking for similar deals.

The bosses and bankers are locked in a sharpening struggle with their imperialist rivals, punctuated by high gas prices and declining market share. For them, $15 billion isn’t enough. Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa said, ‘’Should GM’s results worsen, we are concerned that the door to additional UAW assistance would be closed, increasing the chance of a serious strike.’’ GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said, ‘’It’s a very important step. I didn’t say it was the last step…’’

The brutal restructuring of the auto, steel and airline industries are not only destroying pensions, healthcare and wages, but bringing fascism to the work-place amid a permanent war economy. It will also shatter many illusions, the hard way. Along with the naked racism of the Katrina disaster and the building of a Homeland Security police state, the bosses are loaded for bear. Workers will not spontaneously draw revolutionary conclusions. That’s PLP’s job, and this is our opportunity.

a name="Young French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’"></a>"oung French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’

(Interviews with young Citroen workers from the housing projects, L’humanité hebdo, 11/12/05)

"Today it’s like an erupting volcano," said Housni…. Young people have accumulated years of discrimination."

"Me, I worked for Citroen for eighteen months," said Salim, 23…. "They promised [to]…hire me. I took the tests and the medical check-up…. But in the end they told me ‘no’." That was on May 5, 2003. Since then Salim hasn’t found anything. "I’m still furious. I would really have liked to work at the factory…. I had done all the jobs. But the bosses don’t want us."

"I work. I have nothing on my conscience, but I get stopped all the time by the cops." Lionel has registered several complaints on the police blotter against harassment. "I try to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the cops tell me: ‘You’re from the housing project, you’re a delinquent.’ The other day I went to eat in a little restaurant, they pass by in their patrol car,…they stop. They call out my name. I come out, I ask them why. For nothing."

"If my name was Franck, I’d have a good career," said Ahmed. "We’ve always got to slave away four times as hard as the others to be recognized…. When I went to ask my boss for a raise, he answered: ‘In the old days your parents didn’t ask any questions.’ I didn’t understand what he meant right away. Afterward it really hurt me. Our parents left with less than nothing in the way of a retirement pension, without any thanks, without any gratitude. And yet they worked like mad. Today, it’s the same thing all over with us."

Ahmed…echoed: "It’s not normal for them to burn cars. But that’s the only way you can make yourself heard…. What they did to our parents, they want to do to us….The old guys at Citroen tell us they were called n-----s, they got hit. Today it’s starting over again. But they won’t be able to do the same thing with us…. I can’t be any more French than I already am…. They sell us…the dream of equality. But it’s like the American dream. It’s not for us."

The Struggle at CUNY: What Does Unity Mean?

(Second of four-part series)

"I will strike. Labor has been holding up the wall for too long." This overworked CUNY academic counselor, an underpaid Higher Education Officer (HEO) with no real dental benefits, grew angrier as she spoke with the picket captain. The latter was one of 350 faculty and staff organizers trying to inform the 20,000 members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) that the union might need to strike for a decent salary, health benefits and equity raises for the most exploited. The counselor then signed on to perform picket captain duty herself. She attended the next organizers’ meeting. Her reports of conversations with her list came in on time. She brought people to our first picket, unifying the rank and file at a higher level of organizing.

What does this new unity mean? As an African American woman in the HEO job title, she lives some of the structural inequalities in our own ranks that make unity so difficult. As in other industries, the capitalist organization of workers in higher education profits from racism and sexism through the division of labor. HEOs, with the same salary scale as faculty, earn less as a group because there is virtually no promotion in their series. The majority are women, compared to the 58% male faculty (68% male in the full professor title), and a majority people of color compared to only 23% of the faculty. Narrow professional and status consciousness among faculty, combined with residual racist and sexist ideas, increase their separateness from the more exploited professional staff, HEOs and College Lab Technicians (CLTs). CLTs are also a majority black and Latin with a very low salary scale.

Language Immersion and Continuing Education teachers are even more grossly exploited. The greatest inequality is between full-time and part-time workers. The latter comprise more than half the faculty and teach 60% of all CUNY courses, for one-third the per-course pay of a full-timer at the Lecturer rank. And though community college and senior college faculty have the same salary scale, their teaching loads are harshly unequal, especially because CUNY community college faculty hold Ph.D. degrees at twice the national rate. Meanwhile, management expresses contempt at the negotiating table for all but full-time senior college faculty.

Yet our new picket captain has a sense of workers’ need for unity as a class. Here reference to "labor," pointed to thinking of workers as a whole and the way unions are failing us all in the class war. Precisely as a PSC’er, an HEO, an African American and as a woman, she classifies her specific situation as "labor," as part of the working class. Unusual in her political clarity, she sees the particular in the general, unity in difference. The PSC has a fair representation of HEOs, African Americans and women in the union leadership, but fall short among core activists. The union feels that’s a major issue, so why haven’t we won our new picket captain before now? (Self-critically, a PLP’er on the same campus believes, it is because of white radicals’ fear of rejection by colleagues with black nationalist views.) How can the PSC sustain her new activism? How can faculty unite with staff, white with black, and faculty with our students as full political equals? Tough questions.

This sister prompts both the main question of this article, and perhaps suggests its answer: how to create unity amid inequality in our ranks? As the new picket captains form a permanent network of activists to last far beyond this contract, we cannot placate those who are most exploited with small gains and expect unity to flow from that. We must agitate for the most oppressed, never stop "speaking bitterness," as Chinese communist women once put it?

Capitalism cannot end inequality because the wage and profit system itself endlessly reproduces it. The PSC must agitate for radical labor egalitarianism, not placate everyone as liberal unions do. The union (especially the PLP’ers among us) must win people to a notion of work not as capitalist wage labor, but, in communist style, as commitment to others in a collective social project. We will answer these questions of theory and practice through struggle. In the PSC we’re holding up the wall no longer.

A Dialectical View of Unity

The unity and struggle of opposites is a central idea in the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism. (A brief readable introduction to dialectics is the PLP pamphlet "Jailbreak.") What seems to be one thing (e.g., a union like the PSC) is in fact a unity of opposites, whose connection constitutes the thing as long as it lasts. But the tension between opposites eventually transforms the thing into something else, for good or ill.

In the PSC an equal number of full-timers and part-timers work together in a single union even though part-timers earn only one-third to one-fifth of the full-time scale. But there’s a tension between the two, which, if each group looked out only for itself, could turn unity into division. The faculty at Nassau Community College on Long Island is divided into a full-timers’ and a part-timers’ union (the latter about to strike). "The literature shows that adjuncts who are represented by full-time faculty unions are treated as an afterthought…we must stand alone," said an officer of the Adjunct Faculty Association. Maybe so, if the unions are badly led. But a union in which both really stood together, at a higher level of unity, would put all faculty in a better position.

In dialectics we regard the unity of opposites as secondary, while the struggle of opposites is primary; in other words, everything is in flux, everything changes. In the PSC the tension is not yet at that point and that unity still exists, but the PSC could also split if the leadership treats adjuncts as an afterthought. Revolutionary communists would say politics is primary over economics here. In the PSC leadership and rank and file there’s still enough workers’ solidarity to challenge the capitalist myth of me-first. Enough full-timers want to fight alongside part-timers for equal pay for equal work for the PSC to remain united. But capitalism constantly threatens this unity, with its enforced inequality between the two and its culture of everyone standing alone. The CUNY bosses will fight to the bitter end to maintain the profits of inequality, and that means our political unity will be a constant struggle against the bosses’ ideology. The class struggle entails a constant battle for workers’ unity.

But politics is primary over economics, so higher and higher levels of workers’ unity are possible. The most oppressed workers in France are showing us the way. The political leadership of the union, and for the working class as a whole the revolutionary party, is the key factor. Pressing forward with a strike on the basis of mass organizing behind a strong demand for adjunct parity could lift unity in the PSC to a higher level and make it stronger for both groups. Dropping that plan and settling for a deal that leaves adjuncts behind will weaken unity in the PSC. ("10% of crap is crap," said one PSC adjunct leader.) The New Caucus leadership brought such unity to the PSC in 2000 and it has been much stronger since then. But things can still turn into their opposite under pressure from the boss. PLP’ers strive with our PSC sisters and brothers to keep the pressure on from the workers’ side, fighting for unity not only in one union but in our whole class. Then we can turn the petty mythology of inequality into its noble opposite.

Bringing Class Consciousness to H.S. Struggles

"An injury to one is an injury to all." When that call sounded over the high school’s PA system, teachers all knew it signaled an emergency union meeting to defend a popular counselor who the administration had attacked. It exemplified struggles occurring at this school.

While reforms that fundamentally improve workers’ lives are impossible under capitalism, involvement in the class struggle in the union, even when it appears to be only about "reforms," can contribute to a deeper understanding of capitalism among many people. During this period of increasing wars and war budgets, we can fight for stronger ties among teachers, students, staff and parents, and greater awareness of the long-term fight to destroy capitalism.

This large urban high school has a history of struggle. Its students come from families of Latino and black workers. Some at the school tell the truth about the class struggle, and have close ties with other students, parents, teachers and staff. Some — although too few — have distributed CHALLENGE.

The first struggle this summer involved taking away the right of the local school governance body to choose a principal, because our test scores had not met No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements. While we don’t advocate fighting to choose our own oppressor, this struggle enabled us to explain that NCLB is a war-time austerity measure attacking teachers and parents while making no improvement in the schools. We linked this attack to the need to attend a union-sponsored anti-war conference. A multi-racial effort broke down barriers of "race," age and status so prevalent in the schools. Without having picked our principal, we won more unity and class consciousness, and more people reading CHALLENGE.

This struggle made distributing a communist leaflet about Katrina in the school cafeteria easier. It helped more people understand that capitalism as a whole is a racist, killer system, and see the connection to the war in particular. This complemented work with students who, learning about racism, strikes, imperialism and past soldier rebellions, saw the links to current events in the capitalist system.

Students participated with PLP in the September 24 anti-war mobilization, distributed CHALLENGE, attended PLP study groups and played a leading role in organizing a school club on campus.

In October, when the new principal demoted a competent and popular counselor over an altercation with a notoriously rude administrator, and the union rep called an emergency meeting, announcing that "an injury to one is an injury to all," the entire school community mobilized to defend the counselor. All week the majority of the staff wore red union shirts and stickers with this slogan. Students were sitting-in in the principal’s office, and parents insisted on meeting with the principal. This struggle was victorious and has built unity in the school community.

While the union bureaucrats and many honest teachers were campaigning against Schwarzenegger’s anti-teacher and anti-labor ballot propositions, we emphasized that it’s the unity and struggle of the working class that won back the counselor’s job — teacher tenure laws, the union contract, politicians and elections were of no use here. Now students and teachers are interested in reading PLP leaflets that prove it’s not just Bush and Schwarzenegger, it’s capitalism, especially since it’s the Democrats who are pushing for more troops and more fascist homeland security.

During this struggle the district also canceled the union’s permission to hold the anti-war conference. Teachers district-wide responded by donating hundreds of dollars to pay conference expenses. Students and staff signed petitions demanding the conference be held — and the District backed down.

This has all helped increase class consciousness among many in the school community, especially measured by the doubling of hand-to-hand CHALLENGE distribution since last year. Fighting on a daily basis inspires confidence in the working class, and the need to deepen the struggle for the working class to take power. When communists give even modest leadership, to the class struggle, drawing communist lessons, we’re further along the road to ending this murderous system, and building one based on communist equality and workers’ power.

Letters

a name="Vets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade">">"ets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade

At the NYC Veteran’s Day parade, I joined my group of anti-war vets on 28th Street and Fifth Avenue. As luck would have it, a large group of politicians, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was directly in front of us, stalled by the marchers in front of them. Our thunderous chants of "Troops home now!" had a visible effect on them, especially on Bloomberg, who began twisting and squirming until some police brass ran over and cleared a path so they could move out of hearing range.

About five minutes later 50 cops, some on motorcycles, surrounded our group trying to shield the rest of the marchers from us. I yelled, "This is Democracy folks — your right to dissent — as long as you’re completely surrounded by cops."

We raised our signs and banners and chanted louder, continuing to grab attention from the recruits marching by until a plainclothes cop ordered his KKKohorts to push us into a side street. They pushed us and we pushed back a few times and then started to chant, "No Police State" until a top cop told the plainclothes ones to back off. The situation was heading toward a battle and arrests so I guess they realized that dragging off vets (some in wheelchairs) might not do their phony democracy image much good.

The cops then informed our group that if we wanted to march we had to walk back a couple blocks and wait on a side street (where we wouldn’t be too effective). We moved there and waited until the very end of the parade, missing contact with the rest of the marchers. After almost two hours one vet joked, "Folks the Veterans’ anti-war parade has now officially become part of the Thanksgiving Parade."

When we finally got to march, we were dead last, with cops at our backs hurrying us along. We had a float for the disabled, playing music. The first song was, "War; what is it good for?" An 80-year-old vet in a wheelchair yelled, "Oil profits!" Everyone laughed and took up that chant, along with our anti-war drill cadences like, "We’re veterans against the war, We know what we’re fighting for; Bring our troops back to our soil, We say no more blood for oil!"

I had made a sign with Marine General Smedly Butler’s quote, "The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag." When vets asked who Butler was, I showed them a CHALLENGE with articles about him and another one about soldiers being turned into mindless killers.

It turned our to be a day when about 50% of a supposedly patriotic and pro-military crowd gave us the thumbs up or cheered us on wildly and when some vets and recruits learned something about "Democracy" and who the cops really protect. I want to thank CHALLENGE for its very timely articles and I hope it continues to take note of dates important to veterans and workers.

Veteran Comrade

Spontaneous Rebellions Not Enough

The CHALLENGE article (10/19) saying Toledo youth supposedly "put revolutionary ideas into practice" is incorrect. Their actions surely were fantastic, militant and an expression of violent anti-racism, which we should encourage. But "revolutionary"? That implies they supported, or at least were aware of, communist politics, but that hasn’t been the case. These brave, local, mostly black youth acted completely out of their own anti-racist volition.

The article doesn’t counterpose the issue of the militant anti-racism with the need for a communist society. We must be as disciplined in our writing as we are in real life. We cannot afford to write something that — in the heat of unbridled praise — supports "revolutionary spontaneity," a concept all serious Marxist-Leninists oppose.

Young Red

a name="Capitalism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options"></">Ca"italism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options

The "Other Superpower" letter (CHALLENGE, 11/16) makes good points about working-class power but draws an incorrect conclusion about Katrina, that the ruling class is "glad" when large groups of workers die in disasters and other tragedies caused by capitalism because there will be fewer unemployment benefits, Social Security payments and less people to protest their crimes. The writer is criticizing another letter about Katrina saying the ruling class doesn’t care about the victims.

Of course, bosses don’t care if workers suffer as long as it means more profits, but they cannot be glad to be exposed for their racist neglect at home while spending hundreds of billions for imperialist oil wars abroad. A recent health study showed that while over 80,000 black and Latin people died last year from lack of health care — equivalent to almost one Katrina every week — it took the hurricane to make the rulers’ gross indifference a media event. The recent honoring of Rosa Parks and the resurrection of other black heroes shows that the ruling class realizes it needs millions of consenting minority troops for its imperialist plans and is desperately trying to repair its image.

The specter of black and Latin rebellions during the 1960’s and ’70s — which caused troops to be diverted from Vietnam — still haunts the U.S. ruling class, especially now with an ongoing two-week rebellion of exploited Muslim workers throughout France, spilling into Belgium and Germany.

While U.S. rulers cannot be glad when workers they need for imperialist expansion become devastated or politically hostile, the bottom line is that the anarchy of capitalist profiteering limits their options and creates the conditions for fascism which our Party should use to build its forces.

A Comrade

Red Leadership At Phila. Strike Picket Line

On November 3rd a group of D.C. Metro workers drove to Philadelphia to support the transit workers' strike there. We didn't know what to expect, but when we arrived, we found something definitely: leadership. The workers were sitting and talking amongst themselves. When we walked over, the workers were very receptive and excited about us being there to support them.

Soon the news cameras showed up and asked what we were doing there. We said we were showing solidarity with the strikers and helping do whatever is necessary to win the struggle. However, once I mentioned we also had to stop an imperialist war, the reporter quickly stopped asking questions. That's when we realized we needed to give some political leadership.

We started some chants with the strikers, including, "Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!" Just like that the strike went from people standing around to people talking about what needs to be done to fight the bosses. It was an example of what correct leadership - communist leadership - could do for the workers.

Red D.C. Metro Worker

D.C. Transit Workers Bring Solidarity to Philly Strikers

PHILADELPHIA — On Nov. 3, a group of Washington, D.C. Metro transit workers brought solidarity greetings to transit strikers here during their recent walkout. The predominantly black strikers welcomed them to two picket lines and joined their chants, "Black, Latin, Asian, White; Workers of the World Unite!"; and "Healthcare Cutbacks mean Fight Back!"

The strikers were fighting the racist bosses’ attempt to make workers pay a $600 annual premium for health benefits. The Transport Workers Union conceded a payment of 1% of their base wage for health costs. Although the strike saved the drug prescription plan, it will be denied to all new hires when they’re covered by Medicare.

The act of solidarity by Metro workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, in supporting rank-and-filers from a "rival" union, sharply contrasts with the airline unions that not only refused to support striking Northwest mechanics but ordered their members to cross their picket lines.

Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Catastrophe for Working Class

MEXICO CITY —Under capitalism, natural phenomena become a problem for the working class, provoking destruction, death, further impoverishment of the people and in many cases leaving them without enough to survive.

The hurricane Katrina devastated some U.S. cities and revealed the great contradiction that saw U.S. rulers sending thousands of soldiers to Iraq to defend the rulers’ oil interests, while being incapable of sending adequate aid to those affected by Katrina. It also brought racism to the forefront, since New Orleans is inhabited mainly by black and Latino workers, for whom aid was practically nil.

This same problem was seen even more cruelly in Mexico and Central America with Hurricane Wilma. Many communities were buried in mud and thousands died even though the bosses’ press lied that it was only a few dozen.

In Chiapas the government hasn’t shown the slightest interest in helping those hurt by the hurricanes and floods. On the contrary, the funds slated for natural disasters (10 billion pesos) were stolen by the ruling politicians.

The human losses could have been prevented if the government had evacuated those who lived in the areas at risk. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments had the meteorological warnings.

Some bourgeois foundations like Televisa, TV Azteca and some politicians have taken advantage of this terrible situation to try to present themselves as the "saviors" of the communities by doling out crumbs.

Certainly very soon the government will disburse considerable monies to reconstruct devastated areas, but not to the communities where the poorest and most affected people live. Rather it will be used to rebuild tourist areas, the benefits going to the hotel and restaurant owners, as happened in Cancun.

We workers should be clear that under communism, natural phenomena will not become natural disasters, since people will live in secure areas and will build decent housing. They won’t lack services or food, since all will work for the common good, not for profits.

Building the communist PLP should be the most important job of every worker if we want to rid ourselves of this criminal system of exploitation which cannot solve the problems of the majority of the population, the working class.

We must fight for a society where the common interests are primary, not the interests of the individual or a small group. Communism will abolish racism, nationalism, sexism and exploitation, all of which only divide and weaken our class.

Spreading Communist Ideas in Reform Struggles

Being a relatively new full-time factory worker, I’ve sometimes mistakenly thought that mass ideas can only be reformist. The major contradiction facing me is, on the one hand, keeping my job by not exposing myself to my enemies, versus spreading communist ideas. The way forward is to develop closer ties with, and confidence in, my co-workers. My enemies are the bosses. Some workers seem right-wing, possibly snitches and close to the bosses. My outlook is building friendships of trust and organizing social gatherings leading to political discussions off the job.

Recently one worker, Humberto, with whom I’ve made friends, said, "Man, what should I do? The boss was all upset because I told Health and Safety our workbenches are an injury risk. They said they’d observe my workbench. The boss told me to lie, to tell Health and Safety we aren’t at risk."

I told him he should lie to Health and Safety, that he should work on multiple machines and workbenches and then lead them to where I work all day hunched over a workbench assembling parts. Then I’d tell them about the way I worked.

The day before I tried to adjust my chair because my neck was hurting. This angered another co-worker who said he’d been using this chair for over 20 years and that I shouldn’t adjust it. Actually the chair was difficult to take apart and adjust for my height.

I told Humberto about this conversation, noting that the bosses don’t want to buy new chairs because they’re locked into a global competition for profits and have accountants counting every single penny — that’s why we risk injury.

I’ve been struggling with Humberto for some time. Occasionally he says a worker must be on friendly terms with the racist bosses in order to get higher wages and keep one’s job. I’ve continually told him to keep it cool, not get too involved with them, that greater power lies in friendships and unity with co-workers.

We ate lunch at a nearby restaurant and discussed a plan to bring Health and Safety by "chance" to my workbench. My neck hurts too much not to say something.

Humberto told me about an uncle, much older than us, working as an assembler in another factory, and that he had gotten surgery on both hands and on his neck because of the repetitive stress of the job. Now, when he brought the conversation down to something personal, I seized the moment to sharpen the struggle over his ideas. I said that’s why the bosses can never be your friends. No matter how nice you are to them, no matter how friendly they may seem, even shaking your hand, they’ll never be your friend because their sole interest is in profits. You could die, have multiple surgeries, but they don’t give a f--- about us. They count the pennies that add up to billions of dollars of profit.

He then said we needed a union. I mentioned the Boeing machinists’ strike in Seattle. I said these were some of the best-paid workers in the country and yet they’re still having to fight for their healthcare and benefits. If workers do manage to get something, the bosses take it from somewhere else, because their profits always must be made. In general, they’ve been outsourcing most of their work to people like us, to break their union and pay lower wages, raising their profits in order to compete with other bosses.

He then asked what we should do. I said workers need to fight every day, fight for power from top to bottom. For that we need — in the long run — revolution in the complete interest of the workers, a state where the betterment of the workers is the sole interest. He nodded. Health and Safety never came. But I’m planning to get CHALLENGE to more co-workers.

A Factory comrade

REDEYE

Liberals don’t deliver fairer incomes

Income inequality is now near all-time highs….The average CEO now takes home a paycheck 431 times that of their average worker….

And inequality is non-partisan. The pace of inequality has grown steadily over three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. The Gini index, the global measure of inequality, grew as quickly under President Bill Clinton as it has under President George W. Bush. (MINUTEMEIDA.ORG. 10/27)

Business bigs find judge Alito all neato

…Business cases, which arise far more often than privacy and abortion cases,…are the bread and butter of the appeals courts and the Supreme Court….

Judge Alito’s record in business cases….over the last 15 years was such that corporate lawyers relished the prospect of his participation.…

Officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce said that as they combed through his record, they had been favorably impressed with what they had learned.

"He has come down on a host of issues in a way that the business community would prefer"… (NYT, 11/5)

Democrats help deny rights in Guantanamo

Democrats…provided the margin of victory…for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts….

"A foreign national who is captured…in the world war on terrorism has no more right to a habeas corpus appeal to our courts than did a captured solider of the Axis powers during World War II," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement….

Fewer than 200 of the approximately 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have filed petitions for habeas corpus hearings. They are not seeking trials, merely asking why they are being held. And according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority should not have been taken prisoner in the first place. These men have been in isolation for nearly four years, subject to months of interrogation… (NYT, 11/12)

40% in US have skipped their costly drugs

…America’s health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.

But don’t people in other countries sometimes find it hard to get medical treatment? Yes, sometimes — but so do Americans….

The journal Health Affairs recently published the results of a survey of the medical experience of "sicker adults" in six countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany and the United States. The responses don’t support claims about superior service from the U.S. system….

Above all, Americans are far more likely than others to forgo treatment because they can’t afford it. Forty percent of the Americans surveyed failed to fill a prescription because of cost. A third were deterred by cost from seeing a doctor when sick or from getting recommended tests or follow-up. (NYT, 11/7)

Despite laws, CIA has secret prisons

…The reported existence of secret prisons in eastern Europe where the CIA has detained top al-Qaida captives….could violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention Against Torture.

….It is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the US, which is why the CIA placed them overseas… (GW, 11/7)

Thousands of homes mined by $trip mining

Last month, the Bush administration demonstrated just how regal King Coal remains when it issued a long-delayed report on mountaintop removal that callously announced that "these expensive studies" on damages to the countryside have become too "exorbitant" to be continued.

…Scientific studies confirmed the damage to streams and forests….Thousands of Appalachian residents pleaded in hearings and petitions that the government bring mountain-top removal under control…

Many hamlets spared condemnation found the…stripped mountains causing torrential drainage shifts and floods dismissed as "acts of God" by mining officials.

"It wasn’t God who went up on our mountain with a dozer to leave it naked," observed Betty Banks amid the muck in her house in Kentucky…

Estimates are that by the end of the decade, an area larger that the state of Delaware will have been laid waste by dynamite and bulldozer… (NYT, 11/7)

Elections make public education worse

Almost all states report that, based on their own tests, incredibly large proportions of their students meet high standards. Yet the scores on the federal test (which was given to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders) were far lower. Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation….

Why the discrepancies? The states function in a political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making progress….

States…cling to lower standards for fear of alienating the public and embarrassing public officials responsible for education. (NYT, 11/7)

a name="Need Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans">">"eed Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans

We’re told that universities are neutral institutions with little involvement in U.S. imperialist wars. But actually universities play a major role in planning and carrying out U.S. capitalism’s policies, used to fight rival capitalists and dominate the world. Universities also play a key role in pushing ideas that keep the rulers in power. The fight against these policies can lead to united action and building the long-term struggle to destroy the profit system, the source of imperialist war and racist exploitation.

Many imperial policy-makers circulate between the universities, private consulting firms, the State and "Defense" Departments, or White House jobs (see below). Recent examples include Condoleezza Rice (Stanford), Madeline Albright (Georgetown), and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Johns Hopkins). These universities have institutes specializing in particular aspects of imperial policy. In one Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) project, Charles Kupchan (a Clinton National Security Council staffer) argues that the U.S. needs a multi-lateral foreign policy to maintain world dominance.

The elite schools are the major sources of pro-imperialist ideology for public consumption. In a New York Times Magazine article (Jan. 2003), "The American Empire (Get Used to It)," Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff argued that imperialism is a good thing for Arabs and especially Iraqis.

Guns, Too…

Some universities develop weapons. Univ. of California-Berkeley’s Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos Laboratories develop and produce nuclear weapons. At MIT (Mass. Institute of Technology), labs that developed MIRV nuclear warheads in the 1960’s are now working on military robots. MIT’s Security Studies Program researches "The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," and "The United States as an Asian Power."

Although policy planning is concentrated on a few campuses, all universities support imperialism. College ROTC programs provide 60% of all U.S. military officers and 75% of Army officers. The Solomon Amendment bans all Federal money for faculty research and students loans from colleges refusing to have ROTC. Clearly, for the rulers, these schools exist to serve imperialism, not the students or working class.

Many courses teach that capitalism is eternal, "the best of all possible worlds." Others teach that workers are powerless, that the U.S. "way of life" or "democracy" is superior and needs to be spread to other countries, and that communism cannot succeed. Teachers who encourage students to challenge these deadly lies are attacked and must be defended.

Programs students need for graduation — remedial classes and financial aid — are being cut drastically, along with workers’ pensions, to pay for the growing war budget. The CFR’s Chairperson pushes politicians to cut all entitlement programs to fund wars in coming decades. Liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton support these attacks, calling for 100,000 more troops in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Homeland Security planning is implemented on most campuses.

What We Can Do

As long as the capitalist class holds power, universities will be capitalist-run institutions and serve the system’s interests, supporting imperialism, racism and fascism. Students, faculty and campus workers are getting angrier. We have opposite interests from the rulers. We’re starting to unite to expose and fight pro-imperialist and racist activities on campus. We can: (a) attack and discredit the lies that justify imperialism and racism; (b) campaign against military recruiters and ROTC, exposing their imperialist nature, demanding they be removed, and reaching out to rank-and-file soldiers whose class interests are anti-imperialist; and, (c) oppose planners, research and spokespersons for imperial policies.

Some student activists are uniting with workers to fight cuts in wages, benefits, classes and financial aid that pay for imperialism. Such activities can lead to united strikes against both racist cutbacks and imperialist war, turning schools into arenas of struggle against imperialism. Through CHALLENGE, more students, faculty and workers can see the potential and need to build a mass PLP to destroy the root cause of the problem — capitalism.

Students alone cannot stop imperialism. The working class is the key, not just another "interest group." They can become leaders in the fight against imperialism and for a communist society. Under communism, schools and production itself will serve the working class, not the imperialists. Wars for profit, and the profit system itself, will cease to exist.

The CFR: Center of the Web that Spins U.S. Foreign Policy

The hub connecting the small group of institutions which makes U.S. foreign policy for the ruling class is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It includes executives of giant corporations, government officials, politicians and academics, who meet every few weeks in New York or Washington. The CFR publishes the journal "Foreign Affairs," and sponsors numerous books, study groups and special projects.

Other major foreign policy sources include top officials of the State Department and the National Security Council, a few key Senators, some think-tanks (Brookings, American Enterprise, Center for Strategic and International Studies), certain foundations (Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Shell Oil, Olin), and a few elite universities — including Harvard, Columbia, Rice, MIT and Stanford. Universities develop military technologies — from missiles to robots — that are crucial for present and future imperialist wars.

A much larger group of universities provides training for military officers, spies and diplomats, develop pro-imperialist and racist ideology, and are currently developing spying programs for Homeland Security.

Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco

MAR del PLATA, ARGENTINA, Nov. 4 — Thousands repudiated Bush’s visit here during the Summit of the Presidents of the Americas. Bush just doesn’t have too many friends, from Washington, D.C. to the South Cone. Instead of churrasco (a popular steak dish here) he got a fiasco. The Summit sharpened the differences between the U.S. imperialists and the leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela over the U.S.-controlled continent-wide Free Trade Agreement.

The rulers of Brazil and Argentina see this U.S. plan as a blow to their own free trade agreement (Mercosur). Venezuela’s President Chavez was Bush’s most vociferous critic. This has ballooned into a fight between Chavez and Mexico’s President Fox, a supporter of the U.S.’s Free Trade scheme. Chavez and the rulers of Mercosur are fighting for their own class interests, seeking better deals with China and other imperialists.

Many workers believe Chavez’s "Bolivarian Socialism" is the road to their liberation. That’s a big mistake. Chavez’s main aim is strengthening the power of the section of the ruling class he represents, which controls the state-owned oil monopoly PDVSA. This powerful company owns CITGO, the largest gasoline-station owner in the U.S.

Under Communism: What will prisons be like?

A Political Prisoner in China

(Part Three)

In the early 1960’s, while author Edgar Snow was in China, he was invited to question a prisoner of his choosing. He selected a political offender under a suspended death sentence. The man was rugged in build, middle-aged and solemn. When Snow asked what his crime had been, the man answered that as a cop for the Kuomintang (the capitalist ruling party before the 1949 communist-led revolution), he led an anti-Red squad and had arrested many suspects.

Urged to elaborate, he said he had personally killed four revolutionaries, including a pregnant woman. He had compounded his crime by not coming forward after the revolution when everyone was given an opportunity to confess, repent and ask for punishment. Instead he hid, taking a textile mill job, pretending to be an ordinary worker. This worked for almost nine years, until someone recognized him and had him arrested.

Snow asked him if he felt he’d been treated fairly. He responded, "I ought to be dead. I deserved death but instead I’ve been given back life. I am being educated and I can now handle machines and do useful work. I am doing my best to remold myself to show my gratitude."

To Snow the man seemed sincerely remorseful, undoubtedly realizing that one bad mistake could be his last. Further, the man knew his salvation was completely dependent on his own repentance and reform. Snow thought that this knowledge must have placed a far heavier burden on him than there would be on a condemned man in a U.S. prison. In the U.S., prisoners realize that even a change of heart will generally have no effect on their situation, so at least they’re not subject to the agony of attempted self-reform. Instead they can blame society or their lawyers for their fate and avoid responsibility in their own minds. Rehabilitation is next to impossible under these circumstances.

Snow explained that the starting point for Chinese prisoners was sincere repentance, recognition of the crime and welcoming the sentence as "good." Once this happened their confinement was relaxed somewhat. The next step was the genuine desire to reform. Many prisoners were "really ignorant and understood nothing about the revolution or what the government was trying to do for the people." To overcome this ignorance, prisoners visited communes, factories and schools. Seeing the good being performed by workers was designed to make them ashamed. Those who were illiterate were taught to read and write. Everyone attended political lectures.

Prisoners who had already undergone these changes did much of the teaching. They were placed in cells with new arrivals and backward prisoners. True reform increased a prisoner’s chance of release.

Order and discipline was mostly maintained by these advanced prisoners, instead of by prison guards. Political prisoners did the same shop work as others but were subjected to much more intensified thought remolding in cells led by reformed prisoners. Punishment in prison consisted of overtime work or loss of holidays, but Snow was told that violence was never used and that solitary confinement never lasted more than a week.

Sometimes it took up to two years for prisoners to see the light. Very infrequently did prisoners refuse to admit error. However, even these silent resisters would be released when their sentences expired, as long as they worked well and were not political prisoners. But they were made to serve out their entire term. (Source: Edgar Snow, "The Other Side of The River")

(Editorial comment: Some American Indian cultures utilized similar "punishments," confining a murderer to the family of the person he had killed, forcing him to provide for food and maintenance for the family.)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, Nov 16 2005

Information: 16 November 2005 727 hits

Bushites, Liberals: Both Racist Warmakers, Strikebreakers
Liberal Democrats' `Blueprint' for Fascism
Angry Howard Students Protest Bushes' Visit
Role Of Communist Influence In Rosa Parks' Act of Defiance
Racist Hypocrites `Laud' Rosa Parks
Workers, Youth Vow to Fight Nazi Return to Toledo
Six Hundred Anti-Racists Confront Fascist
Howard U. Students' Anti-Racist Resolution Wins At Amnesty Int'l
D.C. Metro, Health Workers Unite vs. Racism, AIDS Crisis, War
Workers Shut Down Philly Transit
NYC Teachers Angry Over Misleaders' Give-Away of Grievance Rights
Union's Reliance on Politicians Won't Stop Racist Attacks on `1199' Members
Struggle at CUNY Needs Unity, Solidarity and Class Consciousness
1. Preparing for an Illegal Strike
Students and Workers Unite to Fight Racist Subcontracting
Protest Pay Cuts, Job Losses At Massachusetts Community Colleges
UAW GOES TO COURT...TO BLOCK RETIREES
LETTERS
1. GI's: Sign Up For Revolution
2. THE OTHER SUPERPOWER
3. Mountain Dew, Army Take Aim at Students
4. Church Members Organize Against Iraq War
5. Mitterrand: `Socialist' Torturer
6. Hire Mercenaries from Peru for Iraq War
7. Mexico's Rulers and `the Train of Death'
8. Belgium: Two General Strikes in Three Weeks
REDEYE
1. Hussein trial should quiz his US backers
2. Like Iraq, Vietnam War was sold by a lie
3. Black enlistment drop threatens army
4. Chevron in Ecuador: `Environmental disaster'
5. Could these really be headlines in 2035?
6. Muslim chaplain tells Guantanamo crimes
7. Recyclers turn computer gifts into scam
Marine Vet Exposes Truth About
UNDER COMMUNISM
1. Part II: What will prisons be like?
  The Story of a U.S. Prisoner in a Chinese Jail

Bushites, Liberals: Both Racist Warmakers, Strikebreakers

The scandal that has led to the indictment of V-P Cheney's aide, Lewis Libby, is nothing new in U.S. national politics. Fights among the big bosses over how best to exercise their state power in their own class interest have in the past produced civil war, presidential assassinations, and impeachments. Today the stakes for the rulers are as high as they've ever been, and we should expect the internal struggle among them to sharpen. At issue is the survival of the U.S. empire. Workers must avoid the deadly trap of choosing sides among the bosses' factions. Our interest lies in gaining strength as a class until we can eventually seize power and smash their rotten system. Understanding the nature and details of the current dogfight over the Bush White House can help us avoid fatal illusions and learn how best to build our own revolutionary forces in this period.

Not one, but three big lies ooze from the deepening Bush-Iraq-CIA scandal. The lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has cost the lives of at least 100,000 Iraqis -- a recent estimate put it as high as 194,000 -- and over 2,000 GI's. The second lie is that Bush and his neocon cronies alone fabricated the WMD story and that they pushed for the Iraq invasion against fierce liberal opposition. The third claims that liberals can end the carnage in Iraq by "cleaning up the White House." The last two lies are even more lethal than the first because they build support for the ruling-class faction that has a widening array of armed conflicts on its agenda.

The truth is that the loudest cries for war came from the liberal wing of U.S. capitalism -- especially from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), its chief imperialist think-tank, and the New York Times, its leading media outlet. In 2000, the CFR published a book by its "diplomat-in-residence," ex-UN weapons inspector Richard Butler, called "The Greatest Threat." It began: "The greatest threat to life on earth is weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, biological....The most determined and diabolical of such challenges has been mounted by the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein." Judith Miller, a Times reporter, filed story after story, backed by Times editorials, "proving" the existence of WMD in Iraq.

Democrat Gore made "regime change in Baghdad" a central plank of his 2000 campaign. Meanwhile, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), Gore's (and Clinton's) idea factory, put out manifestoes with titles like, "When to Go In." Seeking allies for a U.S.-led invasion in February 2003, liberal darling Colin Powell parroted Butler's and Miller's falsehoods at the UN. The CFR had prepared plans for the occupation a month earlier in a report entitled "Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict Policy in Iraq." It outlined everything from the future government of Iraq to the disposition of its vast oil wealth. And U.S. forces entered an Iraq "softened" by years of sanctions and bombardment courtesy of liberal Clinton.

But now, with U.S. casualties mounting and Iraqi oil barely trickling, the liberals most responsible for the fiasco are trying to lay the blame on the Bush gang exclusively. Fareed Zakaria, a CFR director, wrote in the Times (10/30/05), "A few neoconservatives, most prominently Paul Wolfowitz, had long believed that ousting Saddam Hussein would pave the way for a grand reordering of the Middle East."

War criminal and CFR member Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush, Sr., in the first Iraq massacre, reminded the world of his August 2002 article in the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Don't Attack Saddam" (New Yorker, 10/31/05). Like other main-wing strategists, Scowcroft thought Bush & Co. invaded with too few troops. The CFR favored postponing D-Day until a larger force could be built but nevertheless praised Bush for "pursuing the only realistic alternative (CFR Publications, 3/13/03).

Liberal columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, the Times' top anti-Bush snipers, are having a field day rewriting recent history. Referring to the Cheney-Libby mess, Dowd says, "To protect a war spun from fantasy the Bush team played dirty." (10/29/05) Rich targets neocon defense undersecretary Doug Feith, "whose rogue intelligence operation...supplied the vice-president with the disinformation that bamboozled the nation." (10/30/05) In reality, the fantasy driving the war is the liberal rulers' dream of pumping six million barrels of Iraqi oil a day and establishing permanent military supremacy over the entire Middle East.

While Rich himself provides disinformation on the causes of the war, he hints at the real reasons why the rulers are attacking Bush & Co. It's because they have "bungled the war in Iraq," in other words, have not won decisively and secured the oil fields. Rich criticizes the "utter ineptitude" of the Homeland Security department. The bosses require a police state apparatus more effective and far-reaching than Bush's stepped-up airport screenings.

The liberals are headed down a path deadlier than anything the Bush gang can envision. An overview of the challenges, which liberals complain Bush is not steeling the nation to meet, comes from the liberal Brookings Institution and Democratic Leadership Council. Testifying in Congress on October 26, Brookings' Michael O'Hanlon rattled off a list of "plausible scenarios" for near-term U.S. military action: defending Taiwan against China, countering a North Korean invasion of the South, reversing a fundamentalist coup in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, blocking a Chinese-backed Iranian grab of Persian Gulf oil, propping up strategic states like Indonesia, Nigeria or Congo, and so on. Some operations would demand a rapid three- or four-fold increase in troop strength, necessitating "drastic policy changes including a full activation of the National Guard and Reserves -- or perhaps even a form of military conscription." The DLC calls for an all-out fascistic militarization of society to bail out U.S. imperialism. [See box below.]

Gloating over the Bushites' come-uppance would be a serious political error, amounting to cheering on their warmaking liberal assailants. The liberals remain the more dangerous band of murderers, no matter how hard they try to hide that truth.u

(Next: The U.S. presidency, key to the rulers' state power.)

Liberal Democrats' `Blueprint' for Fascism

The Democratic Leadership Council, led by Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, represents the party's dominant wing. The following are excerpts from its publication "Blueprint," July and October 2005.

[PROMOTE PRO-BOSS "PATRIOTISM"]

* Democrats need to show the country a party unified behind a new patriotism -- a progressive patriotism determined to succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror, to close a yawning cultural gap between Democrats and the military, and to summon a new spirit of national service and shared sacrifice to counter the politics of polarization.

[EXPAND IMPERIALIST MILITARY]

* We challenge Washington to increase America's Armed Forces by 100,000 troops. Iraq isn't the last war we'll have to fight, and we need a bigger army. We need to challenge more Americans to serve, and give them the means to do so.

[BRING BACK DRAFT IN "NATIONAL SERVICE" DISGUISE]

* We need a voluntary system of universal service that offers every young American the opportunity and responsibility to serve his or her country in a military or civilian capacity.

[PREPARE FOR WORLD WAR III]

* We need to evaluate what a rising China means to our national security policies. So, our military must be equipped not only to look at the jihadist threat and the ongoing threat of terrorism over the next few decades. But, it should be equipped to do more than that.

[TURN SOCIETY INTO A MILITARIZED POLICE STATE]

* Democrats should lead in ensuring the tightest possible bonds between the Army and the American people. Democrats must be seen to embrace a philosophy of uniformed leadership. We need homeland security that puts safety ahead of bureaucracy and politics by securing one of our greatest vulnerabilities -- our borders -- and launching a new domestic intelligence service to prevent terrorist attacks from within.u

Angry Howard Students Protest Bushes' Visit

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 27 -- Over 200 Howard University students broke through campus police lines and a Secret Service/campus cop lockdown -- defying sharpshooters on building roofs and a ban on entering the main yard -- to rally there, condemning the war in Iraq, racist cutbacks in education, and the presence of George and Laura Bush. In a vain attempt to get a fig-leaf cover over the government's racism, Laura Bush and Howard's administration convened a conference on "youth development." She brought hundreds of hand-picked individuals to this photo-op, excluding virtually all Howard students and faculty from the event. Their contempt for us was evident in thinking they could use this historically black university as a backdrop for their mutterings about youth violence. This very plan is racist!

The students angrily denounced their exclusion from the event, their detention in buildings that open onto the yard, and their blockage from the student cafeteria.

Panicked, the school administration first sent Franklin Chambers, vice-provost of student affairs, to control the students. He warned them that the Secret Service sharpshooters might fire if they felt Bush was threatened! Still, the students refused to move. Then university president H. Patrick Swygert arrived to "reason" with the students, grabbing one by the arm and insisting she follow him to a newly-designated rally spot. She refused, tearfully stating that her father was in Iraq, and that she would not be moved. The students remained until the end of the conference when Laura Bush was whisked away past the line of protesters. (George W. entered separately with his Lincoln Navigator/motorcycle entorourage and sped away shortly afterwards.)

This student anger and militancy bodes well for the development of a revolutionary movement opposing the entire system of capitalism that generates the wars, cutbacks, and poverty facing the working class. Liberals and revisionists (phony leftists) will try to channel this energy into voting for a "better" administration, but Democratic politicians, like Republicans, are determined to continue the war in Iraq, reduce social benefits, cut wages, and beat their international competitors by any means they deem necessary (see adjoining editorial).

To deal decisively with the U.S. ruling class, more students should be reading CHALLENGE, attending PLP study groups and building a long-term alliance with the PLP-led Metro workers union in order to form a more powerful anti-capitalist force.

Role Of Communist Influence In Rosa Parks' Act of Defiance

Rosa Parks, whose action 50 years ago this coming Dec. 1 partly triggered what turned out to become the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's, died Oct. 24 at the age of 92. Although her refusal to move to the back of the bus was a crucial factor in setting off that movement, she is often described as a "simple woman with tired feet" who out of nowhere spontaneously decided to do what she did. But this is far from what actually occurred, as described by author Diane McWhorter in her book, "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama -- The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution"; Simon & Schuster, 2001 (the source of all quotations and information that follows, unless otherwise indicated).

Rosa Parks herself was measurably influenced by left-wingers and communists, as were the events that preceded and led up to her action. She met her husband when they were both raising money for the communist-led defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men who were framed on a "rape" charge in the early 1930's. "Her action [refusing to move to the back of the bus], spontaneous though it seemed, was actually the world-changing vindication of Alabama's long tradition of civil rights activism...by the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the Southern Negro Youth Congress." (Both organizations had communists playing leading roles.)

In 1942, the Youth Congress began a "premeditated `direct action' against segregation on public transportation.... Mildred McAdory, a young cook who moonlighted as an organizer of steelworkers, had boarded a Birmingham streetcar with two SNYC colleagues and moved the `segregator,' a wooden bar posted with a warning against touching it. After the police beat her up and took her to jail, the SNYC mounted a campaign to desegregate the streetcars." However, "it never amounted to the intended legal challenge.... McAdory ended up moving to New York, where she became active in the Communist Party. But her protest had made an impression on Montgomery's premier black activist, E. D. Nixon."

Nixon, a member of the SNYC advisory board, also had founded the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first significant black trade union, and was a leader of the Montgomery NAACP, whose chapter secretary was Rosa Parks. Nixon had remembered McAdory's heroic action and began looking for someone to challenge bus segregation.

Now in 1955, Virginia Durr, who worked closely with communists in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (which she helped found), received "a request from...a fellow architect of Rosa Parks's rebellion, Myles Horton, a poor white son of Appalachia...[who] ran the Highlander Folk School in his native Tennessee." The school taught how " oppressed people [can] collectively hold strategies for liberation that are lost to individuals."

Horton had no hesitation "about embracing...communists, which included "Don West, who founded the Highlander School." Horton asked Durr "to recommend a Montgomery Negro for a scholarship he had available" for a Highlander workshop "to develop grassroots leaders for an offensive against segregation." She "nominated her seamstress, Rosa Parks, who went to Highlander that summer to discuss the possibility of mobilizing blacks in her hometown."

Four months later, Rosa Parks, 42, a $23-a-week seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store, boarded a bus home, sitting in an aisle seat near the front. When a white man got on after her, the driver ordered Parks to get up and move to the back of the bus. ("Blacks had been...killed for disobeying bus drivers." N.Y. Times, 10/25/05) Instead, Parks just slid over to the window seat. The driver called the cops; two came and took her to jail.

She called Nixon, reporting what had happened and asking him to bail her out. Nixon and Durr freed her and Nixon told her, "Mrs. Parks, this is the case we've been looking for." When Nixon got home, he told his wife, "Our people should just stop riding the buses." That weekend, in a frenzy of activity, organizing, mimeographing, leafleting, and preaching, urging blacks to boycott Montgomery buses, the stage was set for Monday morning, when "the buses rolled through black Montgomery, empty." The bus boycott was born.

The next day 500 people showed up at the court hearing for Rosa Parks. It was the largest mass protest in modern Alabama history. The city's black leadership met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Nixon headed up the organizing of car pools, taxis and just plain walking for blacks to get to work.

Although Martin Luther King, Jr. had just arrived in Montgomery as minister of the Holy Baptist Church, he was goaded -- much to his surprise -- into heading the MIA. Given his pacifism, King was anointed as "America's answer to Mahatma Ghandi," but Nixon said, "I figured on pushing him out so far that he couldn't run away." The boycott was to last 13 months, until the Supreme Court outlawed segregated seating on public buses.

Many more anti-racist actions flooded the South, including armed self-defense groups in North Carolina and Louisiana, as well as various reformist groups leading non-violent actions. However, it took the violent black rebellions from Harlem -- in which PLP'S CHALLENGE became the "flag" of the rebels in the streets -- to Detroit, to Newark to Cleveland to Los Angeles to really shake up the ruling class and begin to win jobs and break down some racist barriers. When Memphis' black sanitation workers struck against racist conditions, King was sent there to cool things down, but he fled a militant march which had turned into a mini-rebellion. Reformist leaders managed to dampen many of these protests -- but working within capitalism meant they could never end racism. The profit system thrives on racism and it will not end until capitalism is overthrown by communist revolution, eliminating bosses and profits, the source of racism,

Still, Rosa Parks should be remembered as a heroic black working-class woman who bravely stood up against the system's vicious racism. Yet it still exists across the country for black and Latin people in double rates of unemployment, infant mortality, job discrimination, lousy schools and housing, all netting the bosses super-profits, as the latest layoffs in auto and other basic industries take away any gains made in these militant struggles.

Racist Hypocrites `Laud' Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, an unassuming black working-class woman who defied the racist segregation laws of the South, stands in sharp contrast to the politicians, black and white, who are trying to use her legacy to hide the source of the racism -- capitalism -- that created the conditions she stood up to. The likes of Jesse Jackson, FBI stoolpigeon Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton and the other Democrats who are praising her are themselves defenders of that system.

They put on a great show professing to laud her defiance of racism while they themselves continue to support the Democratic Party, the author of the Clinton racist wipe-out of welfare which disproportionately affected black and Latino working people, and the racist Clinton immigration "reform" law which also made life miserable for immigrant workers.

And for Bush to extol her is the height of hypocrisy. His presidency has contributed to more racist laws and actions that exploit black and Latin people which bring down the living conditions of white workers as well. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and cuts in social services especially affect black and Latino workers, not to mention the racist slaughter of Muslim people in Iraq. The latter was also part of Clinton's "legacy" in bombing that country for the eight years he was in office, and the Democrats who all voted to authorize Bush's invasion of Iraq.

When the final history of the struggle against racism is written, the memory of those who fought and died against Jim Crow segregation and racism will long outlast these hypocritical murderers who benefited and fostered from these evils of capitalism.

Workers, Youth Vow to Fight Nazi Return to Toledo

TOLEDO, OH, Oct. 22 -- "Yeah we kicked their asses. And if they try to come back... we'll do it again." That's what one young white resident of North Toledo told PLP one week after a planned Nazi rally sparked an anti-racist rebellion against the Nazis, cops and politicians. A PLP group came here today to spread our politics and build the revolutionary communist movement among these anti-racist rebels.

We received a warm reception going door to door and standing at busy intersections. In barely three hours, we distributed more than 160 CHALLENGES, hundreds of PLP leaflets and got the names, addresses and phone numbers of interested workers and youth. Our message of fighting racism and destroying capitalism was well received. Some people gave donations for CHALLENGE and took extra copies for friends and family. One woman asked for a stack of leaflets to distribute at work.

When we arrived at noon, the streets were virtually empty. An 8:00 PM curfew had been lifted days before but the streets were under constant police patrol. However, people didn't fear speaking with us about the rebellion and the conditions leading to it.

The rebellion erupted in an integrated neighborhood called Polish Village. The bosses' press reported a bar and a house being burned down as well as a Seven/Eleven being looted. However, the bar was torched because of a long racist history of hostility towards black residents, who weren't welcome there. The looted store had drawn over 160 complaints of mistreatment against blacks over the past two years. Finally, the house that was burned to the ground is said to have belonged to the racist who contacted the Nazis and was responsible for them coming to Toledo in the first place.

About 120 workers and youth were arrested in connection with the rebellion and curfew violations. The police still have outstanding warrants for others.

The decline of the U.S. auto industry has ravaged Toledo with mass racist unemployment and cutbacks spawned by the war budget. Over 40% of black youth live in poverty. One woman said she's been looking for a job for over a year while trying to support two teenagers.

When those mass layoffs hit the auto industry, the rulers tried to use the Nazis and Klan to divide the workers and thereby weaken any potential fight-back. In the 1960's, mass rebellions had the Nazis on the defensive. In the 1970's and 1980's, PLP led a total of 100,000 anti-Klan, anti-Nazi demonstrators throughout the U.S. wherever these racists raised their heads.

Now there's talk the Nazis are planning to return here. Black and white workers and youth will not tolerate these racists in their community. The militant anger of these workers and youth represents a good sign for the building and growth of a mass fighting PLP.

Six Hundred Anti-Racists Confront Fascist

SACRAMENTO, Oct. 29 -- Between 100 and 150 racist Minutemen rallied today at the State Capitol building. The cops protected them from 600 angry counter-demonstrators confronting these racists. When the cops busted the anti-racists' picket line, a scuffle broke out and four people were arrested.

While coalition leaders who organized an opposition rally -- including leaders of MAPA (Mexican American Political Association) -- tried to keep counter-demonstrators far away from the racists, many said "let's go confront them" and moved as close as they could get. Even after the coalition leaders led anti-racist demonstrators away from the racists, members and friends of PLP, along with members of MeCHA (a Chicano student organization) and others, led the crowd back to confront the racists.

We led chants like, "La clase obrera no tiene frontera" ("The working class has no borders") and, "The cops, the courts, the Minuteman, All a part of the bosses' plan!" Our speeches to the crowd linked the racist Minutemen to the rise of fascist attacks on all workers and to the war in Iraq. About 60 CHALLENGES and 300 PLP leaflets were distributed, all showing the need for building unity to end racism with revolution.

Before the rally, at debates within MeCHA at some area schools, one MeCHA leader opposed joining the demonstration, stating that, "We shouldn't be reacting to these people. It's reactionary to confront them. We should be doing our daily work and not be diverted." But another member totally disagreed, saying the racist vigilantes must be confronted and, when possible, stopped by a united working class. "It's more reactionary to refuse to confront them," he said.

Many MeCHA members went in carpools together. They confronted the racists and helped take leadership. They now see PLP in a new light. This gives us the obligation and opportunity to initiate more mass discussion about the growth of fascism in the U.S. and how to build a movement to fight it. This will lead to more mass struggles against the racist MinuteKlan, fascism and the war in Iraq, and to the growth of a mass, revolutionary communist PLP.

Howard U. Students' Anti-Racist Resolution Wins At Amnesty Int'l

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 23 -- Howard University students presented a hard-hitting resolution at Amnesty International's (AI) Mid Atlantic Regional Conference on the racist character of the Katrina catastrophe and the need for AI to investigate and respond to these attacks on New Orleans' black population. It contrasted sharply with AI's weak statement on Katrina, which didn't mention racism, focusing instead on crime!

The students' resolution explained the history of racism in terms of employment, police brutality, and housing as ongoing attacks on New Orleanians, and that Katrina was just the climax of this process, one which is continuing with the government's plans for -- and racist exclusion from -- gentrification of the city.

The resolution won resounding support from other AI student and local groups. It's part of a continuing effort by the Howard chapter to turn AI's attention towards fighting racism. AI's general meeting in Portland, Oregon is the next stop in securing passage of this important anti-racist initiative.

The Howard students sponsoring the resolution are all CHALLENGE readers and agree the paper needs a wider distribution. During the trip they discussed how to make that happen, in classrooms and among friends. This points the way forward, while the struggle within AI will help us learn better how to win even more students to revolution.

AI's limitations are clear. Seymour Hersh (a major speaker) gave a moving talk about the war in Iraq, attacking both Democratic and Republican leaders for being pro-war. But when queried about alternative political strategies for fighting against the war and racism, he only offered the hope that grassroots groups like Moveon.org could grow in strength and generate better candidates for future elections.

However, "better candidates" won't solve the problems of imperialism. The system requires racism and war to survive; militancy and revolution are needed to destroy its capitalist roots. AI would reject this approach out of hand, so AI members who see the need for revolution should consider a lifelong commitment to PLP, to raise the revolutionary flag in whatever jobs they enter or organizations they join after leaving college.

D.C. Metro, Health Workers Unite vs. Racism, AIDS Crisis, War

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct, 29 -- The transit workers union here hosted its 2nd Annual Committee On Political Education conference. It was a significant step forward in building PLP among Metro workers because it was led almost entirely by rank-and-filers, advancing their political leadership and development. In the discussions and debates, Metro workers demonstrated that they're gaining an increasingly scientific analysis of the world around them, which will lead some to become strong Party organizers in the future.

The discussion-based conference featured four topics: how racism affected the outcome of Hurricane Katrina, HIV/AIDS and the healthcare crisis, the war in Iraq and the state of the labor movement. The daylong meeting showed how communist leadership could create an open environment of struggle, ideas, learning and strategy. About 15 Metro workers participated, joined by a group of allied public health workers.

A militant young worker kicked things off with a powerful, energetic poem about the dismal state of the capitalist world and the absolute need to fight back. A Metro worker pointed out that Katrina shows the bosses don't care about our health. We must rely on ourselves to stay healthy and help each other to make time to see the doctor and demand service. Exercising, no smoking and eating right should be our watchwords.

A public health worker then led a discussion that followed, with emphasis on creating a campaign to stop AIDS (among 41 major cities, D.C. leads the nation in the number of new cases of infection --one in 20 people lives with HIV/AIDS in D.C.). Metro workers took buttons and flyers to spread the word about the upcoming D.C. rally by the Campaign to End AIDS and to plan for new ways to combat the epidemic in our neighborhoods. One worker declared that the bosses don't care about stopping the AIDS epidemic because, with millions unemployed (especially black workers), to them workers are disposable.

Another Metro worker then led a discussion on the war in Iraq, highlighting oil company profits and how their stock has skyrocketed due to the war. He said we can best honor the troops who imperialism has killed by awakening our fellow workers to the horror and injustice of this war, and the continuing wars that will occur under capitalism. A worker declared that we need to make the war unprofitable for the bosses to stop it. The speaker then played a short excerpt from Martin Luther King's speech opposing the war in Vietnam, showing the parallel need today to address the linked issues of racism and poverty at home and racist imperialist war abroad.

Another Metro worker then gave a presentation on the racism apparent in Hurricane Katrina. She spoke on New Orleans' future, predicting high-cost housing that will make the city "better, which means [for the rulers] making it whiter." The workers were disgusted with the government's blatant disregard for lives. The speaker passed around a poster she and a comrade had made that showed the disparate impact of Katrina on the white and black communities.

The union president (a PLP'er) concluded the conference with a brief history of the labor movement, focusing on its decline due to the leadership's shift away from class struggle and towards electoral politics once communists were purged from the unions. He stressed the need for the labor movement to fight racism and imperialist war.

Then workers stood with their fists in the air as they sang "Solidarity Forever," a class-conscious song that was an inspirational ending to this excellent conference.

Workers Shut Down Philly Transit

PHILADELHIA, Oct. 31 -- Five thousand workers struck this city's transit system today, the country's fifth largest, shutting the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's (SEPTA) buses, subways and trolleys. SEPTA demands for workers to begin paying for health care is a central issue, along with pensions and wages. A union official said that, "Under their health care proposal, if you or your spouse or kid... [were in] the hospital for five days, you'd spend your whole raise." SEPTA workers' wages rank 20th among the country's mass transit workers.

The ruling class is attempting to destroy workers' healthcare benefits --won through decades of struggle -- so they can afford their imperialist wars and maintain profits. The rank and file must guard against any leadership sellout as has occurred in the airline and auto industries. All workers, especially in this predominatly black and Latin city, should back the strikers as they attempt to beat back the bosses' latest assault. An attack against one is an attack against all.

NYC Teachers Angry Over Misleaders' Give-Away of Grievance Rights

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 24 -- Many members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) are furious over the contract deal made by their union leadership with the city's Department of Education (DOE) and are demanding its rejection. There was an angry picket line at a city-wide Delegate Assembly (DA) which voted to recommend approval of the contract by a slim margin. Ten days later about 200 members protested outside the union's headquarters. (The rank-and-file vote was to be announced Nov. 3)

In this period of increasing U.S. fascism, oppression of the working class is increasing. Jobs, pensions and wages are being cut or eliminated altogether, to help pay for the bosses' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See CHALLENGE, 10-19-05.) This onslaught now includes teachers and other education workers.It is a racist attack that falls heaviest on the overwhelmingly undereducated black and Latino student body, leaving them with the "choice" of a minimum-wage job (if any job at all) or joining the military to fight and die in bosses' imperialist wars, killing other workers.

City bosses have been demanding more work for the same or slightly more pay, essentially a bribe to go along with the racist educational system. Teachers have repeatedly been blamed for students' failures -- while the DOE and the rest of the ruling class are really at fault. But if teachers and their union don't fight for the students, they, too, bear responsibility.

Using the dead end offered the students, the ruling class responds by sending military recruiters into the schools to convince the mainly black and Latin students that the military is their only option. Meanwhile, most education workers struggle under difficult conditions, but don't see that the problems they have on the job are tied to the problems the students have getting an education.

Some in the union claim this contract will help the students because it will be easier to oust "poor and abusive" teachers. They also say the extra work-time, which will be packaged into 37_-minute blocks of "small-group tutoring" will help students prepare for state exams. But others say the extra hours and days will tire teachers, and that increasing their student load will make it more difficult to reach all of their students. The contract doesn't address working and learning conditions, and neither side has made that an issue.

The UFT focuses on "fighting" cases in the courts, and even when a case is "won," no force compels the city to carry out the court's orders. Significantly, the contract will nullify teachers' rights to grieve letters placed in their file. Therefore, they'll be unable to challenge that letter, meaning supervisors will have a free hand to write up anyone who dares to open their mouth.

The union has been losing at Steps 2 and 3 in the grievance procedure, revealing the weakness of the leadership. The answer is not to dump Step 2, as has been done in this contract, but instead to organize ourselves to win those grievances, both within the process as well as through mass militant action outside it. Since the union leadership picks which grievances are taken to Step 3, workers will have lost any real right to grieve.

The sellout UFT leadership claims this is the best that can be done in the current anti-union environment. But the answer is not to surrender to the bosses' attacks -- the UFT leadership constantly tells workers not to fight while relying on endorsing one politician after another, the very same politicians who push these sellouts. With that kind of leadership the DOE can start planning the next round of its demands and give-backs.

There is growing mass opposition to the contract, reflected in the rallies at the DA and at UFT headquarters. Many teachers opposing the contract do so for good reasons: they want better teaching and learning conditions. But just defeating the contract will not produce those changes. The struggle must take place in the schools, and must include the understanding that these conditions and contracts only stem from capitalism, which is well served by their education system. Only the overthrow of the bosses' profit system can lead to real education. Communist leadership must unite parents, students and education workers, to turn this short-term battle into a real "school for communism," winning these working-class forces to become part of a mass PLP fighting for that goal.

Union's Reliance on Politicians Won't Stop Racist Attacks on `1199' Members

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 30 -- At the September 1199 SEIU union meeting, one worker spoke passionately about hardships endured by workers under capitalism, particularly in these days of endless wars and a Homeland Security police state: "U.S. workers' living standards continue to deteriorate. Layoffs, speed-up and overtime are increasingly the norm. The bankruptcy of U.S. industries is leading to racist mass layoffs, healthcare benefit give-backs and a freer hand for bosses to lower wages."

At the same meeting, the union leadership endorsed the NYC Democratic mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer. It also proposed changing the union's name to 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. This adds healthcare workers from Maryland, Washington D.C. and Massachusetts, creating an opportunity for the leadership to involve more members in the capitalist-run political system. It also partly compensates for the many hospitals in arrears in payments to the benefit fund, which includes workers' pensions.

The 1199 SEIU healthcare workers face huge problems. Since 1996, 32 hospitals in New York State have closed, mostly in poor areas. Recently, St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn, located in a black community, shut its doors, laying off 1,000 workers. 1199 put on a "show," pretending to stop the closing, but in reality the leadership agreed with the elected officials, along with the racist hospital bosses, that St. Mary's was not profitable and therefore should be closed.

The union also represents thousands of home health care aides, mostly black and Latin women, earning from $7 to $10 per hour, with limited health care coverage. Agencies that employ these workers charge Medicare, Medicaid and other insurance companies between $30 and $40 an hour for these services and keep the difference, netting huge profits. The 1199 leadership has failed to mount a militant campaign for higher wages and full health care coverage, equal to members' rates in hospitals and nursing homes. The leadership's passive approach weakened the workers' struggle.

Yet for 73 years, 1199's involvement in capitalist reform politics has spent millions of members' dollars to elect Democratic or Republican politicians who represent the bosses' profit system. This has proven deadly for workers, the majority of them black and Latin.

Endorsing Clinton for President only allowed him to abolish welfare and institute slave labor "Workfare" programs, forcing former welfare recipients to replace unionized workers and "earn" their welfare checks at a rate well below the legal minimum wage. They endorsed Pataki who cut millions of dollars from health care, helping to close those 32 hospitals during his reign.

Now they're spending huge sums to elect Ferrer, mobilizing members to canvas door to door, establishing phone banks to remind members to register and then vote. But no matter who is mayor, both candidates' "promises" will never meet the needs of working-class families.

Under capitalism, political parties exist first, to serve individual groups of bosses pursuing their particular profit goals, and second, to mislead workers into backing politicians that represent these profit goals with the illusion that the "right vote" makes the U.S. a democracy.

Workers must fight against a union leadership that defends and supports the bosses' capitalist system. They must unite workers across all borders to wage war against capitalist exploitation.

Local 1199 union workers are always fighting to keep whatever benefits we now have, waging battles against the hospital bosses, their using agency workers to do union work at lower rates, their short staffing, and their violations in patient care. We in PLP must increase our activities among these workers, distributing more CHALLENGES and spreading our political ideas which will help eradicate the basis for capitalist exploitation that creates all these problems.

Struggle at CUNY Needs Unity, Solidarity and Class Consciousness

(First of a four-part series.)

The City University of New York (CUNY) today is a political battleground, and the struggle is sharpening. The university is a harsh boss to its workers (especially adjuncts), and an aggressive cop and military recruiter to its students. It trains the city's workforce for wage slavery, and its curriculum is mostly a propaganda machine for the capitalist system. The cost of imperialist war in Afghanistan and Iraq has U.S. bosses scrambling to wring more money out of workers and students by concessionary contracts and higher fees, so the economic attacks at CUNY are worsening.

Political attacks are also escalating, as the system reorganizes its universities for racism, fascism and war. Recruiters -- protected by the administration -- exploit the economic draft, deceiving students with offers of tuition money to kill and die for imperialism. The administration, backed by cops and the courts, represses counter-recruitment and anti-tuition students at CCNY, Hunter and Hostos Community College. Others like Borough of Manhattan C.C. are put forward as training facilities for Homeland Security. David Horowitz's fascist academic group ABOR -- the mislabeled Academic Bill of Rights outfit, with its classroom spies in Students for Academic Freedom -- tries to muzzle progressive teachers at Brooklyn and Queens Colleges. Racism continues to exclude masses of youth from CUNY and instead sends them to prison or the military. CUNY has dismantled the developmental courses at senior colleges that once helped students left unprepared by the racist public school system.

CUNY, like the entire system, is not all-powerful. Contesting the bosses' national interest and ideology, some of its 200,000 mostly working-class students and 20,000 unionized faculty and staff are fighting back against these economic and political attacks. Some are beginning to look for allies: K-12 teachers and students, the adjunct unions at New York University and the New School University who are preparing to strike, and transit workers whose contract expires in December.

Can these forces stop the escalating annual tuition hike being voted on by CUNY's Trustees on November 21? Can they make CUNY a base for a more militant worker-student alliance against imperialist war? Win a better union contract, showing the way by busting the anti-strike Taylor Law? Can they deal with the racism that divides us here and makes many believe the lives of Iraqi workers are not as worthy of those of GI's? It's long odds, but the moment may be ripe to try.

Preparing for an Illegal Strike

Presently CUNY's professional workers are better organized than the students. The PSC (Professional Staff Congress, AFT Local 2334) declares it won't accept the give-back contracts signed by other city unions, and has begun serious rank-and-file organizing to prepare the union for an illegal strike if necessary. On Sept. 29, at its biggest mass meeting ever, the PSC announced a Nov. 3 deadline for an acceptable settlement. If not, a strike referendum may be held.

The PSC actively seeks student allies, saying correctly that its working conditions are the students' learning conditions. The new leadership elected in 2000 has opposed the war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, defended immigrant students and those on welfare, and fought for remedial courses, open admissions and free tuition. Students too are beginning to organize, a few joining counter-recruitment groups, opposing tuition hikes and supporting the PSC. A student-faculty-staff alliance is becoming possible.

Can the PSC go beyond the limits of liberal reform unionism? If the PSC sticks to its guns, and if it unites effectively with masses of students, it will be poised to advance even under heavy attack from the city and state bosses. PLP student and faculty/staff members at CUNY think three things are necessary to make this advance. First, unity in the workers' ranks; second, solidarity with students and other unions (by-passing their sellout leaders); and third, class consciousness, understanding that we are in a class war, and need to expand every struggle to more and more workers if we are to counter the bosses' use of their state power. None of these three communist principles is easy and we're far from attaining them yet. (Three subsequent articles will elaborate on these principles and try to show their application at CUNY.) We aspire to win political leadership for PLP's ideas through joint struggles in which they prove their worth in practice. We aim to build a mass party at CUNY that energizes and leads the struggle.

The U.S. labor movement is taking big blows industry after industry. Decades of anti-communist, pro-boss union sellouts have left workers disarmed on all fronts. Universities are not "ivory towers," benign and isolated from the rest of society; they function to reproduce capitalism.

Recently, a student stood up in a large lecture class and said: "What we really should be talking about is revolution. Who's with me?" About half the room applauded. This shows the potential of building a mass revolutionary movement among CUNY students, who represent many nationalities and ethnic groups, the basis for an international worker-soldier-student-alliance to fight racism, imperialist war and a police state. (More next issue.)

Students and Workers Unite to Fight Racist Subcontracting

A group of nearly 30 students and workers disrupted a secret meeting a subcontractor had called between themselves and service workers. The bosses wanted to intimidate the workers from joining a rally that day supporting their unionization on a west coast campus.

Students stormed the meeting chanting, "Si Se Puede!" ("We can do it!") and confronted the managers, vowing that students and workers would stand united against their attacks. Some dining workers at the meeting started pounding on the table, backing the students. Management resorted to threats, and later called the campus police.

Forced to leave the meeting, the students surrounded the building, chanting, "Obreros, Unidos, Jamas Seran Vencidos!" ("The workers, united, will never be defeated!"). Many workers later joined the main demonstration organized on the main campus.

The dining workers and groundskeepers are attempting to kick two subcontractors off the campus and become regular employees, working directly for the university. This would raise their wages and benefits under the union contract already in place for other campus workers.

For months, students, working closely with local AFSCME union organizers, have been speaking to and struggling with the dining workers and groundskeepers, building a strong worker-student bond. A formal campus-based group was organized, calling itself the Student-Worker Alliance. Some of the active participants have struggled with other students and workers, broadening the issues of the union campaign. The outsourcing of labor in the U.S., mostly the racist super-exploiting of immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America as well as black workers, is the product of U.S. capitalism's growing political and economic crisis. Because of the war in Iraq and sharpening rivalry between U.S. and other imperialists, the bosses are cutting wages, benefits and pensions to secure profits and fund their war simultaneously.

The alliance between workers and students on campus is getting stronger. Many workers as well as students are beginning to realize the power they have to confront the bosses. Some are also seeing the limits of trade unionism. Many are seeing the connection between the cutbacks on campus and the devastating war in Iraq. With intense struggle, the unity we're building could grow into a strike against the outsourcing of workers, the attacks on students and the war in Iraq. That would send a powerful message about the possibility of uniting to win the long-term fight against these attacks.

Some in this struggle are beginning to see that PLP's communist politics are the road forward: to smash racism capitalism must be destroyed.

Protest Pay Cuts, Job Losses At Massachusetts Community Colleges

BOSTON, MA, Oct. 18 -- Today, 25 faculty and students picketed the Administration Building at Boston's Roxbury Community College (RCC). Signs said: "Parity for Adjuncts at RCC" and "Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions." Inside a grievance was being heard challenging last semester's forced pay-cut of adjunct faculty. The picket line heightened campus awareness of the super-exploitation of adjunct faculty and how it divides the faculty and erodes the quality of education.

Ten years ago there were 2,100 full-time faculty members at Massachusetts' 15 Community Colleges; today there are 1,700. Those 400 were replaced by adjuncts. These full-time positions are some of the millions of decent jobs lost to the next generation of U.S. workers. The adjunct faculty are among the 46 million without health benefits in the U.S.

At RCC this has an added racist character. As a college that serves black, Latin and Asian students, most of whom are immigrants, it has been victimized by the State's racist neglect over decades. RCC is in a continual budget crisis, contributing to the administration's attempts to cut costs off the backs of the adjuncts.

Today, 7 of 10 faculty in the community college system are adjuncts, and growing. This is the elephant in the living room staring us in the face -- a powerful bosses' strategy (used in every industry) designed to both save labor costs and divide the workforce. However, in general, neither faculty unions nor student governments are fighting it, essentially because of the destruction of class consciousness and working-class solidarity that plagues our class.

The RCC chapter of the state's community colleges is fighting the inertia, cynicism and fear that grip its membership. Like workers everywhere, the faculty/professional staff has become passive, conditioned to allow legislators, union misleaders and local "progressive" black politicians to advocate for them. Many full-timers, focused on their retirement, have illusions that they will be able to escape the full wrath of capitalism in decline. Adjuncts, meanwhile, have been terrorized into silence.

The immediate future of the class struggle at RCC will depend on winning more faculty and students to see that the fight to protect their working conditions and education is part of the broader working-class struggle. This is what PLP is trying to do by selling CHALLENGE and raising class politics at the school.

UAW GOES TO COURT...TO BLOCK RETIREES

Anticipating a wave of legal challenges by retirees against both GM and the union, the UAW filed a complaint asking a U.S. District Court in Detroit to legally sanction the agreement, enforcing $15 billion of GM cutbacks. Auto analyst Brian Johnson told the Detroit Free Press, "They're worried about being sued by retirees for changing benefits. They're out to make sure they don't."

Federal labor law does not automatically recognize the right of unions to bargain for retired workers. Labor specialist Thomas Kienbaum said, "The UAW cannot bargain on behalf of retirees. So the only way you are going to bind every retiree to the agreement is through a court order."

The complaint, filed in the name of two retired auto workers as representatives in a class action on behalf of half a million retired autoworkers and their families, requested a permanent injunction against GM unilaterally terminating or modifying retiree health benefits. But this was all window dressing, since an agreement had already been reached. The real purpose, as a GM spokesman said, was to "bind retirees together so that there is no doubt the settlement applies to all of them." A UAW rep said, "It's strictly part of the approval process. It's the way things have to be done." GM issued an official statement that said, "GM and the UAW agreed...that the UAW would seek court approval."

If the federal judge rules that the UAW is the legitimate legal representative of the retirees and sanctions the agreement, it will be a new low in the union's defense of the bosses, stripping retirees and their families of any legal defense against being sacrificed in the name of "global competition."

These are the same retirees who, for the previous four decades, fought like hell and struck numerous times to wrench these benefits from GM, who produced tens of billions of profits for GM, the same retirees who built the union in their working lives, who gave up wage increases to win these benefits. But now they're forced by the class collaborationist UAW misleaders to sacrifice all this on the altar of profits. Could there be any further proof that capitalism is a system which has the destruction of workers' lives built into it?

LETTERS

GI's: Sign Up For Revolution

I'd like to thank the "D.C. Metro Operator" for his/her heartfelt letter "Reflections on the War." The operator eloquently sizes up the situation: "Our government can legally murder our loved ones and there's not a darn thing we can do about it -- or can we?" This driver ends with the warning, "...the line [you sign on to join the armed forces] is dotted for a reason -- all the spaces in between the dots are where they expect you to fall."

The letter writer challenges us to shed our illusions about U.S. imperialism's viciousness. Even the notorious liars at the Pentagon admit nearly 27,000 Iraqi casualties (New York Times, 10/30). We all know there are many more. It stands to reason we must smash the capitalist system that breeds this imperialism.

There can be no thought of accomplishing this without large sections of the military won to the side of revolution. Many contradictory ideas weigh on the minds of today's troops. Winning them is not for the faint-hearted. Nonetheless, the overwhelmingly preponderance of our experience, both historical and current, points to the potential for revolutionary growth -- even among those who joined for more "patriotic" reasons.

History is filled with examples of the working class turning the bosses' armed forces to our side. The bosses hide this history from us. Check out PLP's web page for past articles on troop rebellions. We should definitely study this history. We can win soldiers again with the correct combination of perseverance and confidence in working-class troops.

The D.C. Operator asks, "What can we do about it?" Revolutionary youth must "sign on the dotted line" to win fellow soldiers to anti-imperialism and revolution. We can struggle with the many soldiers we know from CHALLENGE sales, high school classes, our relations, etc. True, there are serious dangers, but also the greatest of opportunities.

Red Veteran

THE OTHER SUPERPOWER

In an excellent letter in CHALLENGE (10/5) from New Jersey Comrade titled "Primary Lessons of Katrina," about the predicted devastation of Hurricane Katrina, I disagree with one important point. Talking about the destruction of large parts of the working and some in the middle class and what little possessions they owned, the writer said of the ruling class: "They don't care."

It's far worse than that, and the implication that the rich and their government should care is misleading. In fact they do care -- they're basically glad when large groups of workers starve, die from disease, commit suicide, get destroyed on jobs or in disasters -- or are "just" worked to death. Then there are far fewer people to protest the U.S. rulers' rape of the world, here and abroad. The rich have shipped out millions of industrial jobs to poor[er] countries. But the working class is and always will be here, and is the one force that can stop the rich in their tracks. (Don't look for answers from liberal politicians.) So if hypertension wipes out ever greater numbers of black men (and women and white workers and others too), why should the rich do anything but smile? Then they don't even have to pay a dime in unemployment or social security benefits.

The rich and their government like to call the U.S. the "one superpower." But with all their arrogance they know there's a bigger superpower that must, to save themselves, learn of their power to wipe out the murderous capitalists -- that's the international working class. When we rise up, the murderers will be wiped out for good.

The longer it takes to organize the working class and their allies against the rich, the more people they will have killed.

North Country Red

Mountain Dew, Army Take Aim at Students

Recently, nearing my college campus, I noticed a large party-like spectacle in the distance. It was indeed a party, in mid-day, sponsored by the Mountain Dew corporation. The DJ was encouraging bystanders to "get down," while the scantily-clad Mountain Dew girls distributed merchandise stamped with the official Mountain Dew logo. This extravaganza was no surprise considering Pepsi, Mountain Dew's parent corporation, has a monopoly on our campus.

Sick of listening to the DJ, I rounded the corner and lo and behold, looking back at me were over 50 glowing plasma big screens featuring videogames of all kinds. Hordes of students stood mesmerized. One particular game stood out. Commanding four screens alone, "America's Army" promised a real Army-like combat experience to its players. Its caption read, "Empower yourself -- Defend freedom."

So there I was, at the crossroads of capitalism. To my left, a corporate monopoly soft drink corporation pushing its product on students, solidifying the image in their minds that Mountain Dew = party and fun! And to my right, a videogame aimed at allowing students to "experience" the Army, and at the same time, ideologically duping them into supporting the very military violence that facilitates the larger profit-making adventures of corporations like Mountain Dew.

People do not naturally gravitate toward things like Mountain Dew. Capitalism could not function if it didn't continually trick people into buying its products. Further, it couldn't survive without the military occupations that rob the wealth of other countries and funnel it back into the coffers of the capitalist U.S. ruling class. The very people that the ruling class kills with its products, it sends to die in its military.

Southwest comrade

Church Members Organize Against Iraq War

The activities around the Sept. 24 Washington anti-war demonstration helped sharpen our PLP club's understanding of imperialism. For two months we built for the demonstration both at our weekly soup kitchen and our church's morning services. We joined with a peace group in a much larger church nearby that chartered a bus, and we filled half of it. Several of our parishioners were unable to go, but subsidized members of the soup kitchen family who are barely surviving.

Eight of the children in my Sunday School class came with their aunt (a comrade) and their mother. Several made posters on the bus stressing anti-imperialist slogans like "US Out of the Middle East" and "Support Soldier Rebellions." These contrasted sharply with the demonstration's liberal anti-Bush line. Church interns made signs for us to wear with the names of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers killed in the occupation. This led to many good discussions, especially as I distributed CHALLENGES apart from our group.

Prior to and after the demonstration our members and some close friends saw a powerful play about a Vietnam vet from Detroit. This led to excellent exchanges linking racism to imperialism. I think we'll be recruiting a friend who has read CHALLENGE for years but only began organizing with us this summer, and was deeply impressed by our work around Iraq and in our immediate response to the contradictions raised by Katrina. Our Party leaflet distributed three days after the flood destroyed New Orleans greatly sharpened our struggles to bring people to D.C. We now have four more people taking the paper and interested in our study group.

Red Churchmouse

Mitterrand: `Socialist' Torturer

Recently Michelle Mitterrand, the wife of former French Prime Minister François Mitterrand, was interviewed by Spanish journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina (rebelion.org). Mme Mitterrand attacked neo-liberalism (free market capitalism) and the U.S. ruling class for championing it.

But let's face it, her husband François Mitterrand, like all Social-Democrats and other "friends" of the workers (like Bill Clinton) were in the forefront of neo-liberalism. Mitterrand never stood up against U.S. imperialism because he never dared to depend on the working class. And that's because he was running France in the interests of capitalism.

It was Mitterrand who broke with post-World War II "welfare capitalism." It was under Mitterrand that, for the first time since WW II, profits began growing faster than wages.

When Mitterrand was Minister of Justice during the Algerian insurrection, he agreed to subordinate the French judicial system to the military establishment. Concretely that meant sanctioning torture. Someone I know was a soldier in Algeria then. He told me they would make an Algerian "suspect" bend his knees and assume a position as if sitting in a chair. Then they inserted the neck of a wine bottle in his anus. He had to remain in that position, neither standing up nor squatting down. As his legs began to give out, the wine bottle would be pushed further and further up his rectum. He had the choice between splitting, ripping his rectum and talking, and if he knew anything, betraying his comrades.

The French "Communist" Party, the ultimate in phony communists, withdrew from Mitterrand's coalition government because it didn't want to be blamed for participating in his program.

Mitterrand was a government official under the Vichy Nazi-collaborationist regime. He only jumped onto the De Gaulle bandwagon when it became clear that the days of the Vichy regime were numbered.

A Friend in France

Hire Mercenaries from Peru for Iraq War

The U.S. military in Iraq is doing what occupation armies have always done: using mercenaries to fight their wars, like the ancient Roman legions, the British and French colonial armies and the Nazis. As the "Coalition of the Willing" dwindles, the Pentagon is relying on mercenaries from throughout the world. The Pentagon's contractors have been busy in Chile, Colombia and El Salvador hiring former soldiers and cops (many of whom have lots of experience in killing innocent civilians back home) to serve in Iraq. Latin mercenaries are used because at a distance they can "pass" as Iraqis. Now they've added Peru.

Two Peruvian subcontractors -- Gesegur and Gun Supply (both linked to retired military and intelligence officials and to high officials in the Toledo government) -- are hiring hundreds of former cops and soldiers for duty in Iraq. They've paid the Peruvian army $400,000 to train them and provide them with ammunition for target practice.

They're paid $35 a day (cheap compared to mercenaries from the U.S., Israel, Europe and South Africa) and get other small benefits plus insurance which only covers "on-the-job" personal injury or death, not if they're blown up "off duty."

These two subcontractors work for Triple Canopy, an Illinois-based "security company." The U.S. military uses many more of these "Mercs Corporations" to "privatize" imperialist war-making.

According to the Peruvian daily La Republica (10/29), up to 700 Peruvians are already in Iraq. The newspaper also reported that Gesegur's owner is the brother of Ramiro Mendoza, chief fund-raiser for President Toledo's re-election campaign.

The other subcontractor, Gun Supply, also contracts with CNI (Peru's National Intelligence Service), and has sold ammunition to President Toledo's security guard, even though they're officially members of the National Police, and therefore should be armed by it. Gun Supply's owner is the son of retired Col. Jorge Mendoza, now security chief at the U.S. embassy in Lima.

Most of these mercenaries had become unemployed after no longer being needed by Peruvian rulers to fight the now-disappeared Shining Path guerrillas. Some of their relatives are afraid for their lives and for the rotten "life insurance" they're getting from Triple Canopy.

Tupac Rojo

Mexico's Rulers and `the Train of Death'

While Mexico's rulers rail against the "Minutemen," self-appointed border vigilantes to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the U.S., the Mexican "Migra" arrests, robs and deports thousands of Central Americans. Mexico's rulers and their U.S. counterparts have agreements to "strengthen border vigilance" and therefore prevent the flow of immigrants. They're part of the racist, repressive measures against the international working class.

However, in many towns on the route north, Mexican workers respect and sympathize with their Central American brothers and sisters. For example, hundreds of workers travel atop a cargo train going from the south to the north of Mexico. Many die trying to climb onto the moving train. Others fall asleep due to fatigue and fall off. This is the "train of death." But amid these adversities, many Mexican workers express their solidarity by bringing food, water and clothes to those on the moving train, wishing them luck in gaining their goal.

Capitalism and its insatiable thirst for profits impoverishes workers worldwide, leaving many jobless. Thousands must emigrate from poor countries to the imperialist nations of Europe and the U.S. But when it serves the class interests of the capitalist rulers, they decree this "illegal," that labor has no freedom to travel between nations, that the only power possessing this freedom is the capitalist exploiter.

As long as imperialism exists -- now euphemistically called neo-liberal and globalization -- in any form, the workers will continue uprooting themselves seeking work. Neither the European Union nor the U.S. will totally reject them. U.S. bosses view the workers who actually make it across the U.S.-Mexican border as the strongest youth, able to survive this trial by fire, while hypocritically attacking them to conceal the roots of the problem. They need such workers in their industries, farms and imperialist army.

PLP also sees great revolutionary potential in these millions of emigrating workers, who can play an important role in the struggle for communism worldwide. Their experience with capitalist oppression and the struggle to survive, combined with communist ideas, can help convert the workers' "train of death" into one for the bosses and their system.

We workers in Mexico must organize protests against the Mexican "Migra," demanding they stop persecuting our brothers and sisters from Central America, Korea and China, many of whom have been arrested here recently. We must expose the bosses' hypocrisy and unite all workers to fight for abolition of all borders.

Communism would provide freedom of transit for all areas liberated by the working class, strengthening the links among our class to continue fighting against all the vestiges of capitalism, which, without doubt, will persist for some time.

Comrade in Mexico

Belgium: Two General Strikes in Three Weeks

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- In the second general strike to hit this country in the last three weeks, over 100,000 workers rallied here on Oct. 28. This second walkout followed Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's Oct. 11 "state of the nation" speech announcing a "Generation Pact," backed by the union bureaucracies, the bosses and politicians.

The "pact" was negotiated after the huge Oct. 7 general strike. The bosses blamed that one on "older workers" wanting to retire early. But the latest strike drew a huge number of 20- to 30-year old workers who see the new retirement law of " work till you drop" as an attack on them. Many bosses and union leaders couldn't believe two general strikes could occur so quickly, since it's been a decade since the last one.

The latest general strike began with wildcats in the big southern factories. Then Volkswagen workers -- Flemish and Walloon -- struck for 32 hours, followed by a strike in another big factory to the North.

Workers are angry not only at the retirement law but also at capitalism's general attacks here, as well as those suffering throughout Europe and the world. The bosses and their media are mad at the union hacks because they can't control the workers as much as in the 1970's and '80s.

Workers must seize this moment to break with the union hacks and politicians -- particularly in the Socialist Party -- and to unite both of Belgium's regions to fight the wave of anti-immigrant racism now blanketing Europe. Workers must refuse to pay for the European bosses' plans to drive down their conditions in the name of competing with the U.S. and other imperialists.

REDEYE

Hussein trial should quiz his US backers

To the Editor:
It seems to me that no one has asked Saddam Hussein the truly revealing questions about his longstanding relationship with the United States...How did Saddam Hussein attain and retain power? Who were his global backers?

I seem to recall a certain photograph of our current defense secretary shaking hands with this criminal... (NYT, 10/21)

Like Iraq, Vietnam War was sold by a lie

The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence....

...Communications intercepted by the N.S.A. the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the suppose attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack....

...Government historians argued that it should be made public....Higher-level agency policy-makers...were fearful that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq... (NYT, 10/31)

Black enlistment drop threatens army

...Black enlistment has fallen off, particularly in the Army....

This year, about 14 percent of new Army recruits were black, down from nearly 23 percent in 2001.... A study commissioned by the Army last year also concluded that more young blacks were rejecting military service because they opposed the war, or feared dying in it....There is broad agreement among military experts that if black enlistments continues to fall, it could create long-term manpower problems for the Army. (NYT, 10/26)

Chevron in Ecuador: `Environmental disaster'

...Chevron's lawyers are in Ecuador defending the company against charges that it contributed to one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. The company is accused of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, over a period of 20 years, into the soil and water of a previously pristine section of the Amazon rain forest.

According to a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of some 30,000 impoverished residents of the rain forest, this massive, long-term pollution has ruined portions of the jungle, contaminated drinking water, sickened livestock, driven off wildlife and threatened the very survival of the indigenous tribes, which have been plagued with serious illnesses, including a variety of cancers....

Crude oil was also spilled in the jungle, millions of gallons of it.

Disasters of this kind, involving poor people in remote areas of foreign countries, tend to stay low on the level of awareness of the American news media. The suffering tends to go unnoticed by the outside world. (NYT, 10/20)

Could these really be headlines in 2035?

*President George Z. Bush says victory in Iraq "just around

the corner"

*Hurricane Katrina victims still awaiting federal aid

*South Florida voters confused by octopus-shaped ballot

*Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman

*51st state to be named "Halliburton"

*New study: Diet and exercise keys to weight loss

*Gas prices top $20 a gallon; GM introduces 4 mpg SUV

*Only 2 percent of registered voters cast ballots

*Microsoft patents zeroes[and] ones (NYT News Service, 05)

Muslim chaplain tells Guantanamo crimes

James Yee, who retired from the US Army as a captain last January....was investigated, thrown into solitary confinement and threatened with the death penalty in 2003 for mutiny, sedition, espionage and aiding the enemy....

His book about this experience...For God and Country is an indictment of the sloppy assumptions and religious and cultural blindness that he charges US officials frequently reveal...

...Yee writes that it was commonplace for testosterone-charged military police to goad detainees by poking or kicking the Muslim holy book, and he even names a Connecticut army reserve unit that he says took particular relish in doing so. Hundreds of detainees ended up demanding that their Qur'ans be removed from their cells to reduce the chances of desecration, but officials declared the books must remain; inmates who refused to grasp the Qur'ans when they were returned through slots in cells doors were physically attacked, he writes.

Yee tried to get Guantánamo officials to change their handling of both Qur'ans and detainees which, he writes, led to the investigations of him. Soon he was in solitary confinement....

...All the charges were ultimately dropped. (Washington Post)

Recyclers turn computer gifts into scam

...Americans may be lulled into thinking their old computers are being put to good use....

Much of the used computer equipment sent from the United States to developing countries for use in homes, schools and businesses is often neither usable nor reparable, creating enormous environment problems in some of the world's poorest places.... The unusable equipment is being donated or sold to developing nations by recycling businesses in the United States as a way to dodge the expense of having to recycle it properly....

...An average computer monitor can contain as much as eight pounds of lead, along with plastics laden with flame retardants and cadmium, all of which can be harmful to the environment and to humans. (NYT, 10/24)

Marine Vet Exposes Truth About

Kill! Kill! Kill! by Jimmy Massey with Natasha Saulnier. Paris, Editions du Panama, 2005.

(Note: Co-author Saulnier says in the book's introduction that it was published in France rather than the U.S. because several big U.S. publishing houses -- although initially enthusiastic -- later said they couldn't obtain "legal clearance." Others objected to the accusations of criminal killing, while "progressive" independent publishers objected to the descriptions of Marine sex life as "too crudely honest.")

"... I fired. I watched the bullets hit the demonstrator right in the chest ... I found a new target right away, a demonstrator on his hands and knees, who was trying to get away as fast as he could. I quickly aimed at his head ... I wanted to continue shooting and I kept saying to myself: `My god, there's got to be more of them.' It was like eating the first spoonful of your favorite ice cream. You want more."

How does an ordinary young man get turned into a merciless killer? Sgt. Jimmy Massey thinks the Marines have got it down pat. He should know. Massey spent 11 years in the Corps, as a recruit, a recruiting sergeant and a participant in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

According to Massey, the Marine Corps' recipe is to recruit vulnerable young men and brutalize them so they will kill without any second thoughts. As long ago as 1947, Army historian S.L. Marshall said the military needed to "free the rifleman's mind in relation to the nature of his target."

To do that, Massey says, the Corps begins by targeting men who were raised by single mothers, and who need to prove themselves. As a recruiting sergeant, Massey found intelligent men who "came from broken homes and were loaded with problems" to be "easy prey." He was also in cahoots with the local district attorney to offer small-time criminals and drug addicts a choice between prison and the Corps.

Once in the Corps, Massey writes, the men are brutalized not only by military training but also by the whole Marine culture. They become fans of music and films that push the image of the noble barbarian -- Rambo and Conan the Barbarian, among others. In 350 pages, Massey evokes 13 bands and 14 films.

He says drinking and violence are also part of the culture. On one drunken spree in Okinawa in 1993, one of Massey's buddies disemboweled a stray dog and drank its blood. "I can honestly say that Marines are monsters," Massey writes. "Nobody is safe when there are Marines around."

The macho Marines culture is also hostile to any meaningful relationship with a woman. According to Massey, sexuality in the Corps is a whirl of pornographic magazines and films, group masturbation, group sex with prostitutes, some homosexuality -- and periods of impotence. "I had become insensible to any romance, to any sensuality," Massey writes. "For me, love was just `slam, bam, thank you, ma'am.'"

Finally, Massey says, the Marine Corps teaches soldiers to scorn civilians as wimps.

According to Massey, the Marines behaved like an invading barbarian horde during Operation Iraqi Freedom. His unit's first mission was to seize "the crown jewels," the Ar Rumaylah oil fields. The workers were rounded up, hooded, and packed off as "prisoners of war."

As they advanced on Baghdad, Massey says U.S. soldiers shot up abandoned Iraqi bases and equipment with depleted uranium munitions, spreading enough radioactivity to "slowly kill off the Iraqis, one after the other." At the deserted Al Rashid base, the Marines devastated everything and then crapped on the overturned desks and bookcases.

At one point, Marine intelligence officers used Massey's unit as gunmen to neutralize the armed guards at a wealthy Iraqi's house, and then seized "huge quantities of cellophane-wrapped American dollars and Iraqi dinars." It's clear that Massey believes the officers pocketed part of the money, but didn't share it with the enlisted men.

Massey's unit despised the Iraqis, calling them sand-n-----s and ridiculing English-speaking Iraqis who asked for information or help. Massey overheard one Marine express the general sentiment: "These f-----s aren't human. We're gonna blow away their gene stock so they'll never be able to reproduce ever again."

All this forms the backdrop to the massacres of unarmed civilians Massey describes. Killing is compared to having an orgasm and being in nirvana -- an echo of the feelings of Nazi storm troopers, as set out in Klaus Theleweit's two-volume study, "Male Fantasies."

According to Massey's co-author, Natasha Saulnier, "The portrait of the Marines painted by Jimmy bears witness to the success of the American strategists." But, she continues, the battlefield success -- soldiers who do not hesitate to kill -- comes at a high price for the soldiers themselves. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, one in six Iraq war veterans suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome -- in plain English: intense, life-long feelings of guilt.

Massey describes how guilty he and other soldiers felt after the killing frenzy: "Schutz just stared at the dead Iraqis. When I got close to him, I heard him muttering: `I know I killed him. I know I killed him...' I felt bad for him."

This is not inevitable. Soldiers need to know that the U.S. ruling class wants to turn them into mindless killing machines, but that soldiers have to pay too high a price. Most rank-and-file GI's come from the working class and are turned against their class by the rulers' armed forces. Thousands of Marines were part of the rebellions inside the military against the Vietnam War, including a massive black Marine rebellion against Klan forces at Camp Pendleton, California. Winning the GI's to defending their class interests means turning them against the brass and the interests of U.S. imperialism.

It's not surprising that Massey couldn't find a U.S. publisher for his book, which is presently only available in French (a Spanish translation is to come out early in 2006).

`I WAS A RACKETEER FOR CAPITALISM . . .'

(In 1933, Major General Smedley Butler, a 33-year Marine veteran, was in the center of a fight between two U.S. ruling-class factions: the Roosevelt liberals and the conservative right-wingers -- somewhat similar to the current dogfight.

There were many pro-Hitler forces in the U.S. in those years, including such luminaries as Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg. The NY Herald-Tribune (May 22, 1932) ran an editorial entitled "Fascism for America," saying "each `race' has originated a fascism to meet its crisis of the moment." In fact, U.S. rulers were more worried about the threat to their system by Soviet communism than by German fascism until they realized that Hitler actually threatened Western capitalism. And they didn't actually launch a Second Front in Western Europe until 1944 when they feared that the Red Army, already having wiped out millions of Nazi troops on the Eastern Front, might go all the way to France.

In 1933, General Butler testified before a Congressional committee about having been approached by a group representing the J.P. Morgan-DuPont-Wall Street banking interests to lead a fascist military coup to overthrow the Roosevelt presidency. Fearing the liberals' approach to handling the Great Depression would squeeze their profits, this fascist group promised Butler unlimited financial backing and 500,000 soldiers to march on Washington. Butler refused. The Congressional committee concluded that his testimony was true, but no prosecutions followed.

It is during such ruling-class dogfights that the truth sometimes comes out.)

Following is an excerpt of a 1933 speech by General Butler:

War is just a racket....It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses....

When the dollar only earns 6% over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100%. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

...The military....has its "finger men" to point out the enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism....

I spent most of my time [in the Marine Corps] being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism....

I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street....I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912....I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....

I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

UNDER COMMUNISM

Part II: What will prisons be like?
The Story of a U.S. Prisoner in a Chinese Jail

Harriet Mills was an American who went through four years of "thought remolding" in a Peking (Beijing) jail and released in October 1955. She was born in China to a family of Presbyterian missionaries and spent 25 years there. A Wellesley College graduate, she returned to China in 1951 as a Fulbright scholar and then was arrested, charged with espionage. After her release she taught Chinese at Cornell University in upstate New York.

In the Atlantic Monthly magazine (Dec. 1959), Mills described "thought remolding" this way. "The communists know that only if people are truly persuaded of the justice of (their) position will they release their spontaneous and creative energy and cooperate not from necessity but from conviction." Physical violence would not produce sincere changes in thinking, the main objective of imprisonment.

She continued, "In serious cases where criminality is involved, thought-reform and punishment are combined but the essential aim remains redemption through criticism [her emphasis].... Reform by labor goes hand in hand with reform through study in rehabilitation of prisoners [and] the right to labor comes only after a certain level of reform through study has been achieved."

In group study, she explained, prisoners were not free to be silent. Merely parroting answers was not acceptable. Those who resisted or lacked sincerity faced tou-cheng (struggle) from the rest of the group, "a humiliating combination of loud criticism...and -- very rarely [her emphasis] -- minor violence." Criticism was the primary method of change, with self-criticism more important than criticism of others, a method used by PLP since its founding in the early 1960's. Intellectuals proved the most difficult to redeem.

Ostracism from the group was the worst punishment. Group study was effective because people have an essential need to belong, to achieve and maintain emotional balance. In this way, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convinced people from various social classes, both in and out of prison, that it was right that China should be made new and strong [PLP does not agree with this nationalist position -- Ed.], and that opposition to the CCP bringing medicine, schooling and security to half a billion peasants was wrong and not to be tolerated. They convinced millions to resist the U.S. aggression in Korea in the early 1950's. They convinced millions that women should be emancipated and guaranteed equality with men.

Mills explained the use of carrots and sticks. The strongest stick was the general sense of social guilt that developed as prisoners engaged in group criticism, worked side by side with the others and were allowed visits to collective projects outside the prison. The carrot might be the right for the prisoners to work unguarded on a dam or a bridge or on something else needed by the people whom they had wronged. This contribution to social welfare became a kind of joyful freedom.

Mills stated in an interview with Edgar Snow in 1962 that "even strong-willed persons who might never bend before force alone did undergo slow, stage-by-stage, and finally dramatic and wholly convincing transformations." ("The Other Side of the River," by Edgar Snow)

Contrast this with prisons under capitalism, in which rehabilitation is a rare exception in the U.S. injustice system, while brutality against prisoners and preventing unemployed workers from endangering capitalist state power is the rule (see CHALLENGE, 11/2/05).

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, November 2, 2005

Information: 02 November 2005 674 hits

Anti-Racist Rage Explodes in Rebellion Against Nazis, Cops

a href="#GM/Delphi’s War Contract: What’s Good For Bosses Will Kill Auto Workers">GM"Delphi’s War Contract: What’s Good For Bosses Will Kill Auto Workers

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a href="#Black Capitalism Won’t End Racism">"lack Capitalism Won’t End Racism

Auto Workers Paying for Nazi-like Sellouts

a href="#Mexico’s Workers Have No Team in this ‘League’">Mexi"o’s Workers Have No Team in this ‘League’

a href="#British Columbia: Strikers Defy Bosses’ Laws">"ritish Columbia: Strikers Defy Bosses’ Laws

a href="#Salvador’s Disasters: Workers’ Tragedy is Bosses’ Bonanza">Salv"dor’s Disasters: Workers’ Tragedy is Bosses’ Bonanza

Hundreds Protest Racist Minuteman Group

a href="#DC Metro Workers Fight for Unity vs. Bosses’ Attacks on Healthcare">"C Metro Workers Fight for Unity vs. Bosses’ Attacks on Healthcare

Reflections on the War

a href="#Students Confront Fascist D’Souza’s Anti-Muslim Racism">St"dents Confront Fascist D’Souza’s Anti-Muslim Racism

Rulers Use Charter Schools To Undermine Public Education

LETTERS

NYC Teachers Vow Action Against Sellout Contract

What Is Winning?

Teachers get mad, take action

Attacking KKK In Coal Country

Not All Critics Are Bad Critics

Physical Fitness And Revolutionaries....

D.C. Metro, Health Workers Step Up Fight

a href="#Change in Bosses’ Skin Color Won’t End Racism">Ch"nge in Bosses’ Skin Color Won’t End Racism

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Dems won’t solve Iraq or other issues

Capitalism offers us ‘creative destruction’

1957-77: China lifted low-income groups

Polls say: for Katrina aid, cut Iraq $$

Democracy in action: Congress using Katrina to rob the poor

New war front: US is shooting Syrians

Cheeky Nipsey Russell wouldn’t turn cheek

Workers Seize Plant, Confront Argentine Rulers

a href="#Workers Fight U$ Imperialism’s Grip on Paraguay">"orkers Fight U$ Imperialism’s Grip on Paraguay

Under Communism: What Will Prisons Be Like?

Anti-Racist Rage Explodes in Rebellion Against Nazis, Cops

TOLEDO, OHIO, Oct. 15 — "They don't have the right to bring hate to my front yard," said one black worker. "You can't allow people to come challenge a whole city and not think they weren't going to strike back," said another, who watched the violence begin near his home. They were referring to the anti-racist rebellion that erupted today as more than 600 mostly black workers and youth overwhelmed the police and the mayor, who were trying to protect a planned Nazi rally here.

In the days leading up to the Nazi march, preachers and community misleaders pleaded with workers to stay calm, as they organized "peace" rallies. The police delayed releasing the route so protesters wouldn't know where the racist/terrorists planned to march. The Nazis didn’t apply for a parade permit and planned to walk along sidewalks of North Toledo shouting their racist filth.

But nothing would stop the angry workers and youth, who hurled rocks and bottles at the police. Mayor Ford, a black Democrat, defended the cops and tried to negotiate with the growing anti-fascist crowd. A young man in a mask threatened to shoot him, and others cursed him for allowing the march. The march was cancelled and the cowardly fascists left. Twelve cops were injured, one suffering a concussion when a brick flew through her cruiser window. In all, 114 people were arrested and charged with assault, vandalism, failure to disperse and curfew violations.

After about four hours, the mayor declared a state of emergency that remained in effect through the weekend. About 200 cops patrolled the neighborhood overnight, and an 8 p.m. curfew was in effect. Ford said if the Nazis try to come back he will seek a court order to stop them.

The rebellion was as much against racism and poverty as it was against the Nazis and the cops. More than 8,000 manufacturing jobs have moved out of the city since 2000.

The black unemployment rate is 14.2% here in Lucas County.

Jeep once employed tens of thousands of workers here. The new Toledo North Plant, which borders the North Toledo neighborhood where the rebellion took place, began operations in 2001 with 1,400 fewer workers than the old Jeep facility. Black youth stand no chance now of finding a decent-paying job in an auto factory. About 16.5% of the population lives in poverty, including 44.6% of black children.

This weekend’s rebellion is an expression of the contradictions simmering just below the surface of cities nation-wide. They reflect the anger over the Katrina disaster and the beating of a 64-year-old black former schoolteacher by New Orleans police the previous weekend. It reflects a deep distrust of both Democratic and Republican politicians, who bring workers only wars, racism and cut-backs. It may reflect the beginning of a change in the class struggle. It certainly is an opportunity to build a mass revolutionary PLP.

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DETROIT, MI — "We simply cannot afford to continue to be encumbered by high legacy issues and burdensome restrictions under current labor agreements that impair our ability to compete." That’s the brief civics lesson Delphi CEO Robert Miller gave to the New York Times, to show how the bosses use their courts and laws to enforce their dictatorship over the working class, and explain why the largest domestic auto parts supplier filed for bankruptcy protection. But the day before they filed, Delphi sweetened severance packages to its top 21 executives, "to retain its newly assembled management team," which was recently purged due to an accounting scandal now under investigation.

This largest bankruptcy filing in the history of the U.S. auto industry underlines a deepening crisis that is unraveling over 70 years of wage increases, health care coverage, pensions, work-rules and protections against job losses that were fought for by generations of workers. It shows that as long as the bosses hold power, no worker is secure:

• It reflects the weakening position of the domestic auto bosses on their home turf, especially compared to Toyota, Honda and Nissan;

• It mirrors the global race to the bottom, pitting U.S. workers against their brothers and sisters in Mexico, China and other low-wage havens;

• Delphi makes auto parts that are installed in about 75 million cars and trucks, but has lost $5.5 billion in the last six quarters. Half of its business comes from GM, whose plunging fortunes have dragged down the parts supplier.

• Delphi’s filing could push G.M. closer to the edge. Delphi is seeking to stop paying health care and life insurance benefits to 12,000 retirees, who — until the 1999 spin-off — were GM workers. GM agreed to pay those benefits in the event of bankruptcy, and could be on the hook for as much as $11 billion. GM lost more than $2 billion in the first half of 2005, and its own drive to wrench concessions from the union and parts suppliers has just born its first fruits — the UAW has just given back $1 billion worth of health benefits from its employed and retired members.

• When the United Automobile Workers union (UAW) ultimately accepts major concessions at Delphi, it will set the pattern for the 2007 contract talks with GM, Ford and Chrysler.

With U.S. imperialism’s war in Iraq continuing to sour, and the Katrina disaster exposing the system’s racist brutality for all to see, the same contradictions that forced the brutal restructuring of the steel and airline industries are now in full bloom here. These contradictions are leading the imperialists to fascism and world war. For the international working class, the only solution is communist revolution and the building of a mass PLP!

a name="‘…You Can Kiss The Pension Plan Goodbye!’"></a>"…You Can Kiss The Pension Plan Goodbye!’

Delphi wants pay cuts for its 34,000 union workers by as much as two-thirds, to as little as $10 to $12 an hour. Currently, they make more than 10 times their co-workers in Mexico and China. Delphi also wants to close plants and stop paying 4,000 laid-off workers, as required by their current contract. It filed for bankruptcy protection after weeks of failed negotiations with both GM and the UAW.

UAW president Ron Gettelfinger called this an "extremely bitter pill," implying the union would have to swallow it. The filing will hang like a sword over the UAW as it tries to negotiate cuts before the company asks a judge to set aside union contracts and impose them. If Delphi has no concession contract by December, it will seek a court hearing to terminate union contracts. Then a judge can impose the cuts, and the UAW can strike. Whether they will is another question, but PLP will take up this challenge to build a mass base for communist revolution among autoworkers, union and non-union, and across all borders.

Bankruptcy will allow Delphi to reduce a contribution to its employee pension fund, due in June 2006, from $1.1 billion to $160 million. Delphi boss Miller said, "If the union says, "No, I don't want to give on wages and benefits’ and we…are break-even instead of profitable, then you can kiss the pension plan goodbye."

This Can Be A Turning Point

Miller speaks from experience. He was the chief executive at Bethlehem Steel and a director at UAL, the parent of United Airlines. In his wake he left more than 150,000 steel and airline workers with slashed pensions, health care, wages and jobs. He was hired three months ago and vowed to file before major changes in bankruptcy laws took effect on Oct. 17.

Delphi workers are about to be marched down the same road as steel and airline workers, and pay the price for a union "leadership" that cannot answer the increased attacks on workers because it is blinded by nationalism and committed to capitalism. GM, Ford and Chrysler workers are close behind. But just as Katrina laid bare the brutal racism built into the system, these attacks on high-paid union workers can show the fleeting nature of any reform and the class dictatorship that hides behind endless elections. This can be a turning point for our efforts to build a mass base for communism among industrial workers. We must meet this challenge.

Delphi Super-profits Span From Mexico To China

Delphi has 185,000 workers worldwide. Since being spun off from GM in 1999, it is the largest private employer in Mexico, with 70,000 workers. Many have worked there 20 years, and earn between 500 and 700 pesos weekly ($50-$70) plus bonuses of about 150 pesos ($15).

But even these wages are not low enough. The company has closed several plants and slashed nearly 8,000 jobs. Delphi is invested heavily in China, where auto parts workers earn about 90¢ an hour. They produced $650 million of components there in 2003, and roughly 20% were exported to North America and other destinations worldwide. That’s expected to grow significantly over the next five years.

a name="Bosses’ ‘Cure’ for Avian Flu: Militarization of U.S."></a>"osses’ ‘Cure’ for Avian Flu: Militarization of U.S.

When capitalists worry about our well-being, don’t look for humanitarian motives. The rulers’ concern for the health of the working class extends only to our fitness to produce their profits and fight their wars. That’s the real worry behind fears recently trumpeted in the liberal media that a bird flu virus now migrating from Asia to Europe might trigger a pandemic in the U.S. as deadly as the flu of 1918.

"The health of the nation is at risk," warns Teddy Kennedy (Boston Globe, 10/16). He’s backing a bill that would create a public health preparedness czar, compel drug companies to make vast quantities of vaccines and boost hospitals’ surge capacity. Kennedy dreads a repeat of 1918, when, he says, "entire cities and even our military were brought to a standstill," in the midst of World War I.

Today U.S. rulers are embroiled in an intensifying, and increasingly armed, rivalry among the world’s imperialists. They are hyping the flu scare as part of a broader plan to discipline the nation for ever deadlier conflict. When Kennedy demands "preparedness" and "surge capacity," he speaks the language of wartime mobilization.

Bush feebly attempted to advance the rulers’ agenda by saying that the military would conduct quarantines during an outbreak. But for some time, the big boys have had far more sophisticated and drastic plans in the works. In 2000, Harvard University, working in concert with the Hart-Rudman Commission, issued a report describing just how the government should prepare for public health catastrophes. It called for establishing a federal agency with wartime mobilization powers (see adjoining box below).

Richard Falkenrath, the report’s author, joined the Bush administration in May 2001 and helped establish the Homeland Security department following 9/11. He quit the Bush team in 2004, when its efforts at implementing a police state proved half-hearted, and now works for the liberal Brookings Institution.

Falkenrath’s original concern was bioterrorism. But he recently said, "The highest probability, highest consequence devastating incident in America is an outbreak of pandemic flu….It exceeds by an order of magnitude the severity of a risk of an al-Qaeda biological attack" (Global Security Newswire, 6/10/05). Falkenrath hopes the flu frenzy will elicit "an enormous response from the government."

One of the rulers’ goals is bending the big drug companies to their will. In their view, stockpiling strategic vaccines is now more important than peddling highly profitable anti-cholesterol drugs and painkillers. Costing billions to develop and market, blockbuster drugs tie up capital that the rulers could use elsewhere, such as funding the half-trillion-dollar Pentagon budget or rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. Kennedy’s recommendations mesh both with Falkenrath’s fascistic blueprint and the current legal woes of Merck and Pfizer.

With military recruitment and popular support for their Iraq fiasco dwindling, U.S. rulers desperately need patriotism. They’re cynically manipulating real and potential disasters to encourage workers to seek government protection, especially the military. But the main threat to public health and safety remains capitalism. The wars it ceaselessly spawns have cut short more lives than any illness ever could.

Furthermore, the capitalists’ wars compound the effects of disease exponentially. In 1918, the rulers turned a flu outbreak into a scourge that killed tens of millions by confining troops in filthy trenches and then shipping them all over the world.

A glimpse at the alternative comes from China in the 1950’s, before the Communist Party there utterly embraced capitalism. The then red-led Chinese government eradicated a widespread killer disease called schistosomiasis by mobilizing virtually the entire population to destroy the snails that spread it. [For a detailed account, read Joshua Horn’s "Away With All Pests," reviewed in CHALLENGE, Oct. 5 and 19.] The lesson here is that the working class can address problems like pandemics only after it seizes state power through communist revolution. That’s the ultimate goal of the Progressive Labor Party.

a name="Key Provisions Of Harvard’s Fascist Plan To Militarize U.S. Society">">"ey Provisions Of Harvard’s Fascist Plan To Militarize U.S. Society

• Impose a state of emergency, including curfew;

• Compel people to remain in one location or move to another, including temporary detention;

• Use the military for domestic law enforcement, population control and mass logistics;

• Seize community or private property, such as hospitals, utilities, medicines, vehicles, or transit centers, or to compel the production of certain goods;

• Compel individuals to undertake decontamination procedures, take medicines, or be quarantined;

• Censor and control the media;

• Relax standards for conducting searches and seizures;

• Dispose of deceased individuals;

• Compel civilian public servants to work;

• Waive regulatory requirements on the use of certain pharmaceuticals.

a name="Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Mass Murder of Workers — Again">">"apitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Mass Murder of Workers — Again

Capitalism has again turned a natural disaster into mass murder of workers and their families. Since last December we’ve seen the tragedies of the Tsunami, Katrina and now an earthquake in Pakistan-India and hurricane Stan in Central America, the latter causing about 2,000 needless deaths in Guatemala, and leaving another million or more homeless. (Also, see article on El Salvador, page 4.)

As we go to press (10/19), the death toll in South Asia’s earthquake is approaching 80,000, about half in Pakistani-held Kashmir and half in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. The numbers are significantly higher than the central government’s figure of 42,000, a count that has lagged behind the local count since the disaster’s early days.

Asif Iqbal Daudzai, information minister for the North West Frontier Province, told the Associated Press that 37,958 people died in the province and at least 23,172 were injured, the vast majority in the Mansehra district. He said the figures were based on reports from local government and hospital officials.

In addition, about 40,000 people died in Pakistani-held Kashmir. India has reported 1,360 deaths in its part of Kashmir. There are also possibly two million refugees who’ve received very little government help. Meanwhile, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has reported that in Pakistan, over 1.1 million jobs may have been lost in this earthquake. Widespread destruction has threatened or destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people, according to an Oct. 18 report by ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.

Both countries are nuclear powers (threatening war against each other). While India has a large number of well-qualified scientists and engineers, the Science and Development Network web site reported (Jan. 2005) on India’s neglect of earth sciences. It pointed to a qualitative and quantitative deficiency of scientists in geophysics, geology, seismology and atmospheric science, despite the fact that the country is located amid one of the most earthquake-prone regions on earth. Both India and Pakistan lack any building codes insuring housing capable of withstanding earthquakes.

This contrasts with India’s funding of space-related activities — directly benefiting its military ambitions — that have created a sizeable pool of specialists to support them, along with an educational infrastructure. Sixty percent of its annual budget goes to the military and debt service.

The Pakistani ruling class is even worse, investing most of the country’s resources in the military. ( President Musarraf is a general and an ally of U.S. imperialism.) The rulers have also encouraged and financed Islamic fundamentalism at the expense of education and science. The military uses one-fourth of Pakistan’s annual budget while an astonishing half of the budget goes for debt service. Education gets only 2%.

A system that can’t protect its citizens from natural disasters indeed must be destroyed.

a name="Black Capitalism Won’t End Racism">">"lack Capitalism Won’t End Racism

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 15 — Today PLP greeted thousands of participants in the Millions More Movement (MMM) rally on the mall here with the message that only building a mass revolutionary communist movement will answer the attacks on workers by the racist capitalist system (such as the bosses’ response to Hurricane Katrina). Four thousand leaflets were distributed along with 1,000 CHALLENGES. Its lead article showed the crucial role industrial workers play in the leadership of social movements, providing the power to advance the interests of the entire working class and its allies. We were able to spread our communist politics during a PLP bullhorn rally held on the edge of the MMM rally during the afternoon speeches.

Meanwhile, hundreds of black workers and youth in Toledo, Ohio put revolutionary ideas into practice by attacking both the neo-Nazis who tried to rally there and the politicians, police, and city officials who dared to allow these racist scum into the city. These assembled workers met offers of "negotiation" from city officials with flying bricks! (See article, front page)

The contrast between the two events is illuminating. At the MMM, sponsored primarily by the Nation of Islam (NOI), tens of thousands of black workers, students and professionals heard Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton propose a ten-point conservative black nationalist reform program that stresses building black businesses. It relies on self-help activities, resembling the tradition of Booker T. Washington who, at the end of the 19th century, encouraged such "self-help" and discouraged any activities challenging the bosses. Most MMM rally participants we spoke to showed little interest in these proposals, and were much more interested in PLP’s strategy: building a revolutionary movement to destroy capitalism and its government, and replacing it with an anti-racist workers’ state. They were also attracted to PLP’s militant local anti-racist campaigns — against racist police brutality, the AIDS epidemic, relief and support of Katrina evacuees, the struggle against the racist reconstruction plans for New Orleans and on-the-job fights against the bosses.

The NOI attempted to stifle such discussions and our rally by calling the cops, who insisted we move or be arrested. So we moved — across the street! — and continued the rally and discussions.

Ever since the 1972 Gary Conference, black nationalist strategies for black progress have been exposed as incapable of meeting the needs of black workers. The MMM simply continued this dead-end approach, which at best will help a handful of African Americans to become wealthier on the backs of the working class.

The choice is clear: revolutionary mass action against racist capitalism, or following capitalist politicians to our doom. Choose life and join the PLP!

Auto Workers Paying for Nazi-like Sellouts

The Delphi case shows again how rotten the U.S. union leadership is and how it is leading workers to fascism and another world war. Winning workers to willingly or grudgingly sacrifice to save the bosses is a major aspect of fascism.

This is what the Nazis did in preparation for war after defeating the labor movement and crushing Germany’s Social-Democrat and Communist Parties. U.S. rulers and all the imperialists have enjoyed a similar free hand with the defeat of the old communist movement some three decades ago.

In the domestic auto industry, things took a dramatic turn in the 1970’s when the UAW:

• Violently smashed any revolutionary challengers, using 1,000 goons to crush the PLP-led Chrysler Mack Ave. sit-down strike and purged PLP from the industry in 1973:

• Sponsored racist anti-Japanese rallies that led to the racist murder of Vincent Chin in a Detroit bar, a Chinese student mistaken by two racist Chrysler employees to be Japanese;

• Gave away billions to bail out Chrysler in 1979, including half the workforce. This ushered in the era of "jointness" with the companies, and decades of concessions, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, from Carter to Reagan to Bush, Sr. to Clinton to Dubya.

Delphi CEO Miller said he did "not…want to put [UAW president] Ron Gettelfinger on the hot seat. He is on the hot seat." Gary N. Chaison, Clark University professor of industrial relations, said, "These were the aristocrats of labor, and now they're in the position that their jobs are going to become lower-wage manufacturing jobs, as if they were producing hairdryers."

This comes with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. disintegrating, the UAW having lost half its membership (even more among industrial workers), and the domestic auto industry about 50% non-union.

The union leaders may be on the hot seat, but it’s the workers feeling the heat. No sooner did Delphi declare bankruptcy than the UAW announced "progress" in talks to grant GM concessions on healthcare. GM spends $1,500 per vehicle on health care, $5.6 billion annually, and wants big cuts right away even though the contract doesn’t expire for two years. They’re clearly looking for GM to come to their aid with Delphi. This strategy, called "leverage" by the union, relies on the biggest bosses pressuring the smaller ones to give the union a break.

PLP will again challenge the UAW leaders for the political leadership of the workers. We will oppose "leverage" by fighting to sharpen the class struggle and to expose the union hacks as agents of imperialism. We will oppose helping the bosses compete globally by raising the banner of "Workers of the World, Unite!" We will show the bosses’ agents the truth of what Haymarket martyr August Spies said at his trial more than 100 years ago. The workers’ desire for revolution "is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out!"

a name="Mexico’s Workers Have No Team in this ‘League’"></a>"exico’s Workers Have No Team in this ‘League’

MEXICO CITY — When fighting his removal as this city’s mayor, Lopez Obrador, was mainly concerned about assuring big businessmen that if he became president he would guarantee to make them even richer.

The bosses’ electoral circus tries to suck workers into the fight for power within the ruling class. One faction wants to continue profiting from the current alliance with U.S. imperialism to share the country’s most profitable businesses. Their "labor reform" would legalize the current fascist working conditions, and guarantee stability behind the mask of "democracy," strengthening the repressive apparatus. This faction represents the Fox government and his legislature. Behind them are the businessmen of Monterrey. The fascist group Yunque is their ideological head.

The other faction comprises the bosses who — without breaking alliances with U.S. rulers — are looking for a greater share of the profits through an economy more independent of the U.S. They want relations with imperialists in the European Union, Asia and Mercosur (the Brazil-Argentine-led common market). These nationalist bosses push policies that expand the internal economy, including social and cultural programs that strengthen nationalism.

Carlos Slim, Mexico’s most powerful boss, has interests in both groups and favors one or the other, according to circumstances. Under capitalism, these bosses hardly lose. We need a communist revolution to get rid of this slime.

The supposed "left groups" and "pro-democracy sectors" are debating their position on the presidential elections, especially since August when Sub-commander Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, declared the PRD (Party of Democratic Revolution) and its candidate Lopez Obrador, to be traitors. Marcos called on the "rank and file and the left" to unite their struggles, to agree on a national program, a new constitution, and how to fight for it.

But capitalism — whether neo-liberal or "socially conscious" — causes poverty and oppression of the working class. We’ve lived for 70 years under capitalism with a "social conscience" and almost 20 years with Neo- Liberalism. None of these bosses offer anything different. We must have no illusion that capitalism will change its nature if we elect a different boss.

None of these factions or bosses’ political parties want to eliminate the wage system, abolish racism or sexism, all of which lead to the special oppression of tens of millions. None want to prohibit profits, the fruit of exploitation, hunger and poverty. They’re proven and sworn enemies of the workers. The only alternative for a world without exploitation or poverty is the continual building and growth of our communist party, the PLP.

Whichever faction wins power, they send their whole police and military apparatus to smash us. We can’t ally with any boss. All are bad. The ruling class unites against any movement that threatens their continued power.

A plot does exist, but not against Lopez Obrador. It’s a plot by the ruling class against the workers. We need unity of all workers against them, but unity based on communist ideas and practice. This unity will be more powerful than all bosses put together!

a name="British Columbia: Strikers Defy Bosses’ Laws">">"ritish Columbia: Strikers Defy Bosses’ Laws

BRITISH COLUMBIA, Canada, Oct. 18 — Thousands of public employees (members of the CUPE union) walked off their jobs today across this province in support of the striking teachers here. More large-scale protests are planned this week. The escalation follows Monday’s B.C. Federation of Labour protest in Victoria by teachers and other union workers that shut down many government services for the day.

The B.C. Teachers’ Federation began its illegal strike a week and a half ago after the provincial government imposed a contract extension on the union. The union is also defying a civil contempt of court ruling, after they disobeyed a B.C. Supreme Court order, telling them to go back to the classroom. The teachers are demanding a smaller class size and a 15% wage increase over three years.

a name="Salvador’s Disasters: Workers’ Tragedy is Bosses’ Bonanza"></a>"alvador’s Disasters: Workers’ Tragedy is Bosses’ Bonanza

SAN SALVADOR — "These are natural disasters and we can do nothing about them," said Salvadoran President Antonio Saca about the recent storms, avalanches, eruptions of the volcano Llamatepec and a 6.2 earthquake that shook the nation.

"Nature is not the enemy. Our real enemy and killer is capitalism," declared a comrade in a meeting with workers from the areas most affected by the storms. "Eruptions, rainstorms and hurricanes cannot be avoided. What can be avoided are the disasters that follow, which are not natural; they’re created by poverty and capitalist greed. We’ve seen this from Pakistan to New Orleans to Mexico to Central America." Under communism, workers’ needs and security will be the priority. Profits will be a thing of the past.

"This is history being repeated," said a worker from Bajo Lempa, a community south of the country’s main river. "When it rains hard like this, they open the dam called Sept. 15 and they flood our homes and land. Here in this area they’re thinking of building a containing wall, but not until the big businessmen carry out their tourist project for a hotel chain."

"That’s why they want to kick us out of here, but we’re going to fight," said another youth from this community. "We’re not willing to leave. What’s more, we won’t let anyone who brings us aid bring the flags of any electoral party, as they’re doing in other communities, asking for votes in the middle of so much tragedy."

President Saca cynically designated ANEP (National Association of Private Businesses) to receive all the international aid. ("The wolf will take care of the sheep.") These are the same killers who for decades have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of workers through hunger, poverty and outright murder. The European imperialists have sent the most aid, almost 80%, trying to win the favor of the local capitalists and the workers as well. They’re seeking to be the new imperialist exploiters of Salvadoran workers.

Although the people who’ve become homeless are demanding control of these donations from workers of other countries, actually much of it will stay with the bosses and the government.

Just like in New Orleans, Italian engineers have been recommending since 2002 that repairs or big changes be made in the drainage system here, where many workers died in mud slides. These studies also recommended stopping construction in the area, but the construction companies are out to make maximum profit, not save lives.

"We must evaluate the cost of maintaining these people in the refugee camps. It’s necessary to leave," said Mauricio Ferrer, director of COEN, the Committee of National Emergency, about those affected by the volcano eruption. More than 75,000 are now homeless. Days earlier people in Palo Campana, Santa Ana, were told they’d be notified 24 hours before an eruption. This became a deadly capitalist promise. The forest rangers and other workers stayed, waiting for Ferrer’s official order until it was way too late. The deaths increased, but for the capitalists they don’t count.

There are hugs for children in the refugee camps and promises of help by the bosses and politicians. The workers’ tragedy is a bosses’ bonanza. Every refugee camp had signs depicting the candidates. Bags of food contained logos of the fascist ARENA party.

The conclusion? This murderous system can’t be reformed; it must be destroyed. PLP’s members and friends feel more urgency to build networks of CHALLENGE readers, meetings and study groups, and to organize struggle against the bosses to prepare a real revolutionary communist earthquake that will destroy the capitalists and their system. This will be a truly NATURAL phenomenon!

Hundreds Protest Racist Minuteman Group

CHICAGO, Oct. 17 — While 600 protesters were chasing Nazis out of Toledo on Oct. 15 (see article front page), PL’ers helped lead a protest in the suburb of Arlington Heights against the racist/fascist Minuteman group, who held a meeting/benefit at a local church. Many protesters knew that the Minuteman is a group similar to the KKK and neo-nazis, and are deputized by the Office Of Homeland Security to carry out not only its racist anti-immigrant worker acts of deportation but also outright terror and murder.

PLP sought to show that these actions are intrinsically tied to capitalism, a system which lures in immigrants, super-exploits them, and then threatens to deport some to maintain the exploitation of the rest. Meanwhile, it uses their children as cannon fodder in imperialist wars. The only solution is to smash all borders and fight for a society without bosses — communism.

After a small number of people trickled into the Minuteman meeting, buses arrived filled with about 200 workers, their families and students, including Latino workers, and others from India and the South Pacific. The cops sought to terrorize them, bringing in riot teams from at least four local police departments. Armed with M-16s and holding agitated attack dogs, the cops walked into the middle of the group of demonstrators over a span of two city blocks. PLP members sought to help allay the workers’ fears, and distributed copies of CHALLENGE. Meanwhile anarchist groups provoked the police and ran back into the crowd, chased by the cops, in effect siccing the police on the undocumented workers.

Towards the end of the rally, a PL member spoke on a bullhorn, saying that as long as these racists gathered to spread their message of hate, protesters would continue to come in increasing numbers to resist them.

As we chanted, "The only solution is communist revolution!" we were joined by local college students. One said they were glad they were not the only communists there. They gave us their contact information and took CHALLENGES to read and give to interested friends.

Several Pl members rode back to Chicago on a bus with a group of local students who were members of a Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage collective. They seek to give local youth a safe place to express themselves artistically.

While this group has a nationalist outlook, they were not at all disrespectful of PLP’s communist message. One of their leaders said that at some point there would be a need to bring people under a far more unifying symbol than any national flag. We said that symbol already existed, the Red Flag of communism. We offered to send them one. They invited us to stay in contact and participate in their future events.

While the Minuteman group was able to carry on their police-protected meeting, we were able to bring PL’s politics to many new workers and students, and establish the basis for continuing contact.

a name="DC Metro Workers Fight for Unity vs. Bosses’ Attacks on Healthcare">">"C Metro Workers Fight for Unity vs. Bosses’ Attacks on Healthcare

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 17 — A PLP-led group once again had to respond vigorously to a right-wing critic at the meeting of Metro Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Union, this time about healthcare negotiations. The bosses, including those running Metro, are seeking ways to save money in this weakening economy. This means cut-backs in workers’ benefits, eliminating retiree health benefits, raising premiums and offering, at best, a tiny wage increase. Sound familiar? U.S. bosses are attacking workers’ health care in industry after industry (see Delphi, front page). Capitalism in crisis means a real crisis for us workers!

The bosses’ demands have raised consciousness among the workers here. We distributed a militant leaflet to the workers entitled, "Our Healthcare is Under Attack." It definitely worked — meeting attendance was higher than usual.

The president (a PLP’er) spoke on healthcare, on health cost escalation, on the bosses’ proposals, and the need to unite to fight these attacks by developing membership solidarity. When he opened the floor for discussion, just as expected a right-winger jumped up to blame the president, saying he needed to negotiate harder. But more talk won’t get to the bosses. It takes solidarity and militancy at least. At some point workers will have to break the bosses’ laws. (See British Columbia teachers strike, page 4) Functioning within the bosses’ rules means submitting to their demands.

When the right-winger finished, a contingent of 15 workers, led by another PL’er, told the fool to shut up and sit down. A comrade took the mike, stating how individuals like this right-winger were individualistic rather than collective-minded, that we must recognize who the real enemy is, and that the union and its members must challenge themselves to take responsibility for sharpening the struggle against management. We’re no longer relying on empty promises from politicians and the old sellout union leaders. Many of us now understand we must step up and fight the bosses’ attacks, and eventually their entire system. Mobilizing workers to attend this union meeting to discuss these issues was a first step.

Reflections on the War

This war has put us in despair. It’s caused us pain and suffering. Our government can legally murder our loved ones and there’s not a darn thing we can do about it — or can we?

I work for a transit company. Recently a homeless man was attacked for no reason by a passenger. The homeless man defended himself and could have done serious damage to the man, but he kept saying, "just leave me alone, I don’t want to hurt you." The attacker ran out the rear door of the bus.

I couldn’t help but wonder about this homeless man with such control in an angry situation. I asked him was he in the military at any time. He said yes, he was in the army — he told us the wars he’s fought in. Told us that at one time he was proud to defend this country.

I don’t know if being homeless has made him numb, but I found myself being very angry. This administration is trying to entice our young men and women to join their slave organization (armed forces) in the guise of fighting for "our freedom" to make them richer, promising these youngsters things they’ll never deliver!

At the anti-war rally I attended with my union, they had boots of dead soldiers spread out on the lawn — the average age was 21. The government left out the "promise of death"!

I would encourage anyone to take pictures of our homeless veterans and show anyone interested in joining the army what their future is — tell them it’s the fine print of the promise they’re not told about when they sign on the dotted line. Also, that line is dotted for a reason — all the spaces in between the dots are where they expect you to fall.

Well, that’s enough for now. Transit’s calling me to do what they underpay me to do.

In solidarity, DC Metro Operator

a name="Students Confront Fascist D’Souza’s Anti-Muslim Racism"></">St"dents Confront Fascist D’Souza’s Anti-Muslim Racism

Recently our PLP campus in the southwest organized an action in which hundreds of students were won to militantly oppose an appearance by the fascist mouthpiece Dinesh D’Souza. This bosses’ tool endorses U.S. imperialism and spouts a viciously racist anti-Arab ideology. By emphasizing D’Souza’s racism in various political and non-political campus groups to which we belong, we were able to organize many people to attend the event and oppose him.

Our flyers detailed D’Souza’s connection to the bosses’ think-tanks, enabling people going to the event to prepare questions exposing D’Souza as a fascist. We also distributed these flyers to those attending the speech, including D’Souza’s family! Meanwhile, the campus Democrats sat on their hands and did nothing to oppose him.

When planning to confront D’Souza, many students questioned obstructing his "freedom of speech." PL’ers explained that freedom of speech is an illusion when one oppressive class controls all media outlets. Still, many were engaging in their first political action and were uncomfortable with the idea of shouting D’Souza down. We decided to be flexible, asking questions that pointed out the speaker’s racism and endorsement of U.S. imperialism. Then, if people became upset with him, we’d encourage them to disrupt the event and shout their objections to D’Souza.

Of the three hundred students who attended, about 200 came to oppose his message in various ways. When he praised the American Empire, the majority of the crowd booed and hissed. People stood and applauded when one professor berated D’Souza for his racist characterizations of Arab people.

One PL’er, disguised as a conservative student, even got to address D’Souza. When the Party member challenged D’Souza’s historical analysis of U.S. Mid-East adventures as completely incorrect — raising the Hart-Rudman Reports on U.S. bosses’ imperialist plans — people from the campus group that brought D’Souza yelled "shut up" and "write your own book."

The majority of the audience shouted back to let the "dissident" speak. Then, when the fascists summoned a cop to threaten the Party member, people began shouting their disagreements with D’Souza, calling him a racist. D’Souza was made to feel completely unwelcome on our campus.

Afterwards, Party members talked to people who were furious about what they’d heard. Many were angry at D’Souza’s mocking and laughing at those who asked questions disagreeing with him, and angry at D’Souza’s sponsoring group that shouted at and ridiculed those who opposed him. Muslim students were furious at D’Souza’s defining all Muslims as "fundamentalists," and "therefore" terrorists.

We explained that D’Souza was simply a mouthpiece for those who wish to maintain the profit system and that he, and others like him, must be opposed. It was then that people abandoned their timidity concerning "free speech." Many repeatedly said people like D’Souza have no right to speak at all and took a more militant stand against these fascists.

The same group that brought D’Souza is inviting the racist, anti-immigrant MinuteMan group to the campus to talk about "border security." Many attending the D’Souza event, and others who heard about it, are now pledging to organize and take a much more aggressive stand against these racists.

This was a victory for working people, a result of the hard work and leadership of PLP members.

Rulers Use Charter Schools To Undermine Public Education

I began working in a charter school several years ago. I wasn’t a certified teacher, which charter schools permitted then. The general buzz claimed charter schools were replacing failing public schools. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted somewhat later, also "to help our suffering public school system."

Charter schools offered a healthy dose of quality competition. NCLB set standards. Looks great on paper, but several years revealed to me the impact of charter schools and NCLB on public education — the exact opposite of what they promised. They are tools the ruling class is using to dismantle the public school system. This is a vicious racist attack, doubly affecting the children of black and Latin workers who attend public schools.

Virtually all charter schools cater to low-income, struggling students and their families. Charter schools offer an illusion of choice. They’re generally worse than the public schools they take kids from. They lack the resources and infrastructure. Our school doesn’t have a gym, a science lab or a library. Teachers tend to have less experience and stay only a few years. Charter schools’ quality is just rhetorical hype.

These schools are also less stable than public ones. Many of our students move from school to school as their parents try to maneuver their way through the education system, looking for help. But any help is generally no more than that received at a public school. The chances are greater the child will be ignored and then passed along to the next grade, or, if a behavior problem, be tolerated because the school needs the income from the state.

Many charter schools use corporal punishment or a demerit system. Others are faith-based. Both styles negate true learning and create environments where obedience and submissiveness are enforced and required. All this guarantees that working-class children whose families seek "better" schools will get the worst education.

Along comes No Child Left Behind, another wonderful misnomer like Operation Iraqi Freedom. One of its harshest components deals with Special Education. It limits the percentage of those diagnosed with a learning disability and placed in Special Education.

NCLB has thus forced many children out of special education and into the general classroom. Schools in poor neighborhoods are hardest hit. Although putting children with learning disabilities in a general classroom is not always bad, if in overcrowded classes and lacking resources, these students who need more individualized attention won’t be getting it. They’ll fall farther and farther behind academically.

NCLB also mandates heavy standardized testing in order to pass certain grades. But recent research shows that high-stakes testing doesn’t increase student performance; it only increases student retention and dropout rates.

Essentially NCLB throws kids who need the most help out of the main program that was supposed to help them keep up academically, shoves them into a crowded classroom, and then tests the hell out of them. By middle school, the kids feel like absolute failures and can’t wait to drop out when they turn sixteen.

So could the ruling class be making an honest mistake? Hell no! The pieces of their insidious puzzle fit too well together. Legalize privatization of public school education. Then pass another law eliminating individualized instruction for children who most need it and create high-stakes testing that "proves" these kids and public schools are failing.

Who wins? The ruling class and its profit system. The companies who make the tests, sell the curriculum and even charge to grade them; the educational management companies who run charter schools; the businesses who rent equipment; the tutoring companies who charge thousands of dollars because a child will possibly be retained.

The ultimate benefit for the ruling class? Those students not easily and cheaply trained become dropouts who will scramble for the lowest-paying job. This allows companies that globalize and send jobs overseas to now lower production costs at home too. When the U.S. dropout population increases, U.S. companies can make higher profits domestically.

We need to let others know how charter schools and NCLB hurt the working class. In my school we’re organizing to fight the special education cut-backs. But we need to expose the ruling class’s supposed "solution" to a serious problem as just another source of profit, and then pose possible real solutions. From that point comes the realization that there are no real solutions under capitalism. That’s the first step into PLP.

Southwest Comrade

LETTERS

NYC Teachers Vow Action Against Sellout Contract

A meeting of my school’s teacher union chapter occurred about the same time talk of a strike was floating around NYC. The chapter chairperson recapped the Fact Finding Report that formed the basis of mediation between the Education bosses and the union. We’d get a 15% raise over the 52-month contract, but lose the right to grieve administration letters in our files. A teacher asked how we could handle problems like the "dumping" of students into classes instead of figuring out which ones they really needed, and switching teachers’ programs without telling them until the last minute. The chapter chair said he’d consult the contract and would get back to us.

Having heard Party members’ reports about activities at their schools inspired me to think of some communist ideas I could raise at such a meeting. The above discussion gave me the perfect opportunity to relate these problems to the proposed contract and link them to the bigger picture. (I asked teachers who were beginning to leave to stay for just a few more minutes.)

I traced the low level of working-class consciousness nationally to the fall of the old communist movement. I said this contract was a step towards attacking workers’ nation-wide, giving the bosses more control to satisfy their need to carry out an imperialist war in Iraq. I described how historically workers’ militancy and unity against the bosses is what produced gains for our class. I noted the Boeing and North West Airline strikes as examples of workers fighting back. Then I proposed that we organize actions to fight for our students’ needs.

From that meeting an action subcommittee was formed, helping to convince a group of teachers and students to join the rally at the following Delegate Assembly protesting the contract. In the next few days, teachers told me they agreed with what I’d said and would help carry out actions we proposed.

Out of this small struggle, a few new teachers took CHALLENGE for the first time. We’re also planning a rally at the school to unite teachers, students and parents. While only a start, now the discussion centers around how we can better serve our students — one of our communist ideas.

Red Teacher

What Is Winning?

I’ve been a high school teacher for 19 years and was given a "U" (unsatisfactory) rating in the second year of a new license. I was fired under the fiction that I "could not teach and could not be taught how to teach." I’m working now as an ATR (Teacher in Reserve) only because almost the whole school — teachers, students, paraprofessionals and security — were angry that I was thrown out and forced the union to fight for my rehiring under my previous license. PLP leafleted the union’s Delegate Assembly protesting my firing.

The NYC Human Rights Commission agreed to file an ageism suit against the City’s Dept. of Education (DOE) because I’m 68 and have a spotless record as a teacher, with many previous commendations. Although the DOE was supposed to respond by the first week in October, up to now (Oct. 16) there has been none. However, I’ve now been moved from the job I’d been given back to my old school. I’m still an ATR, but I now have one class to teach in the subject area for which I was deemed "unsatisfactory." Upon my return, three very religious older teachers, one a Protestant minister, said they never believed I’d be back. They thanked the Lord; apparently I had hardened their conviction in God. A group of 12th grade students whom I had taught in the 9th grade were overjoyed, saying I was a legend in the school.

That day was overwhelming positive and ended with a union meeting at which I carefully raised PLP’s and my disagreements with the proposed contract. The following day, more joy: the basketball team and some other teams wanted me to watch them play. They hoped they would win this year. I spent a full day talking with students and teachers, giving advice and getting the news. Some students told me they were pregnant and that their parents were giving them a hard time. One decent Assistant Principal said I was like a grandfather to the school.

What, then, is winning? The vast majority of teachers and students felt it was a plus that I was back in the school. Although, I’m still an ATR and can be moved at any time, I am teaching the subject they said I couldn’t teach and I’m in the school they threw me out of. In my view that’s winning.

Now anti-communist forces have started to organize against me. This is another plus because it sets the stage once more for struggle. I’m now organizing a little after-school party at one of the local pubs to thank those teachers who never gave in.

Victories come in many different ways. Fighting back is always a victory. Dare to struggle, dare to win!

Brooklyn red teacher

Teachers get mad, take action

"But what about my family?" asked a fellow teacher when I urged her to vote against the current contract proposal. Sure, we haven’t had a raise in almost three years. It’s tempting to give in and vote yes.

But that’s a mistake. If we really want to think about ourselves and our immediate families, we must become conscious of ourselves as members of a class — the working class.

Many teachers have made a first step. They have gotten mad! They see this contract proposal as an attack. At my school, I’ve fought for class consciousness, explaining that this attack on teachers is more sharply aimed at the black and Latin working-class youth we teach.

When I wrote a newsletter and presented it at a chapter union meeting, it sparked the most advanced discussion we’ve ever had. I proposed we write our own leaflet and suggested someone write the draft. Teachers responded. One volunteered to write it and four others helped with editing, proofreading, Spanish translation and graphics. It argued for schools that better serve students, smaller class sizes, an end to racist inequalities in funding, and respect for the hard work of the teachers. Five teachers distributed it at a neighborhood train station.

Yet even these modest reforms — which the bosses refuse to grant — won’t change society’s fundamental power relations, but they’re providing a forum to discuss capitalism and the need for communist revolution. They’ve also inspired some teachers to feel like they’re fighting for something. They are! They’re fighting for the future of the working class. Fighting with class consciousness is the way they’ll actually fight for their families.

I’ve pointed out the big picture, that workers everywhere are under attack —from United Airlines, to Boeing, to Delphi, to Northwest Airlines, to other NYC unions. These bosses are attacking the entire working class, eliminating protections workers sacrificed and struck for.

Unless we build a class conscious movement to confront this capitalist system, we and our children face a future of drastic reductions in our standard of living, more wars for profit, more terrorist attacks and intensified racism. The bosses who run this system are in trouble, and they’ll force our children to fight and die in their wars, if we don’t stop them.

The U.S. ruling class is pushing nationalist/patriotic politics, asking workers to sacrifice, with lower wages and benefits, "for the good of the nation. " They also say, "Things are not that bad," like some delegates said at our recent union Delegate Assembly about this lousy contract proposal.

PLP advocates an internationalist/pro-working class line which asks workers to give their time and energy to build a movement that confronts capitalism’s endless profit wars, systemic racism and wage slavery. Workers must ally themselves with other workers, in other unions, outside of unions, unemployed workers and in other countries. All bosses are our enemy.

Many teachers have been won to think of themselves as "above" other workers. The teachers at my school are decent and honest but need more understanding of how their struggles relate to the working class as a whole. They don’t see themselves as part of history, rather just as people living their own lives. Capitalism fosters this illusion. All of us are supposedly separate "individuals" with our little families. This allows the ruling class to exploit some more than others, bribe some more than others and basically keep us divided.

Teachers need to realize that by fighting for our class, we’re actually serving our students and their parents.

NYC Teacher

Attacking KKK In Coal Country

I've helped organize and have participated in several protests against the Klan and Nazi skinheads in western Pennsylvania's coalfields. Of course, the major criminal in the U.S. is the racist capitalist system, perpetrating such racist atrocities as New Orleans — no aberration.

As CHALLENGE pointed out (10/19) in "Capitalism - Biggest Crime of All," in the U.S. "black workers suffer from the greatest racism, poverty, unemployment and disease," and that "black workers, because of their history in the U.S. and their relation to society, are also the key force for communist revolution."

When we formed the Coal Country Coalition (CCC) to battle the fascist KKK and to support workers' struggles, we made anti-racist action our central focus. At every KKK appearance, we distributed leaflets linking these ghouls to the capitalists. Our position was quite clear.

While it's good to protest the Klan, it's not good enough. We showed that the KKK worked for the bosses by trying to divide workers and make black workers the scapegoats for the problems created daily by the capitalist system.

We also believed that it was necessary to confront the Klan. This position was assailed not only by the cops, who defend the Klan, but also by members of local "unity" groups, who would hold rallies three miles or so from the Klan gathering. Needless to say, the CCC was not asked to speak at these "Love-me-I'm-a-liberal" rallies.

Though the KKK has vanished into the woodwork right now, the CCC continues to battle racism, imperialist war and capitalism and support workers' struggles. We have great respect for PLP because of its long history of courageously fighting racism and capitalism.

Finally, as Karl Marx wrote, "Labor in white skin can never be free, as long as labor in the black skin is branded."

Red Coal

Not All Critics Are Bad Critics

In an article I wrote for CHALLENGE (10/5), "Immigrant Workers: Braceros, Cannon Fodder or Revolutionaries," I claimed some immigrants are more exploited simply because they can't speak English. Later I contradicted myself by pointing out that the situation of English speaking immigrants is ultimately just as exploitative.

The idea that learning some skill is an answer to capitalist exploitation has no foundation in reality. This illusion has liberalism written all over it and shifts the responsibility of exploitation away from the bosses and onto the working class.

These workers are not exploited because they don't speak a particular language; they're exploited because capitalist profit is the order of the day. In any language this spells exploitation for workers.

While this idea isn't new to me, I couldn't see the contradiction until it was criticized at a PLP club meeting. We discussed the error, why it occurred, and what should be done to resolve the issue. By remaining open to my comrades' criticism, I learned more about my weaknesses and the need for vigilance in writing politically. Had I closed myself off to this criticism, as I've done in the past, I would have missed a valuable opportunity to learn and grow as a communist.

At times I find it difficult to be self-critical or open to criticism. I justify this by reasoning that older comrades are "out of touch" or that younger comrades are "too inexperienced." In hindsight, that's the easiest way to perpetuate my own weaknesses. With this in mind, in the future I will welcome such comradely criticism. I highly recommend it.

A Young Red

Physical Fitness And Revolutionaries....

At a recent PLP club meeting we discussed and struggled over the issue of cigarette smoking. One reason this arose was because at a recent Party event, a comrade's son asked his father, "Daddy, why are they smoking? Are they good or bad?"

This led some of us to believe that whether we like it or not, we're examples and we set examples. As revolutionaries, we should have high standards of health and physical fitness. Obesity is also a big problem. Some comrades are overweight. Is this the example we should set as revolutionaries?

The day will come (as if the current fascism isn't enough) when we'll have to train and prepare (physically) for revolution, not just organizationally or theoretically. Don't we owe it to the masses, if not to ourselves, to provide an example of better health, fitness and well being? How can we serve the people if we're physically unfit to do it? Many of us run, some are vegetarian and some actively train. My question is: is this an issue to be struggled over? Is there something to be said about a revolutionary who smokes and is overweight? Are these the kinds of people we want as leaders of a revolution?

Is there any Party material dealing with this topic? If not, we should create something, and wage an internal campaign for comrades to improve their health to better serve the working class.

Red Runner

D.C. Metro, Health Workers Step Up Fight

PLP'ers in Washington, D.C. and Maryland mobilized for the Millions More March (MMM) by building on the advances made in the anti-war march among health and union activists. We leafleted workers and students coming to the March with a hard-hitting statement about racist attacks on New Orleans workers, which showed that capitalism offered nothing before the hurricane and will further destroy lives in the reconstruction of the city.

Many D.C. workers at Metro and in Public Health for the first time joined with PLP in mass leafleting and CHALLENGE distribution. These are the workers who will build a real movement, not the charlatans on the MMM stage. Students from Howard and Georgetown Universities read the leaflets and spoke with Party members. One black Georgetown student exclaimed, "I didn't realize other people saw what is happening in New Orleans this way!"

Our leaflets on HIV/AIDS in D.C. called the AIDS epidemic the "Katrina of DC." Hundreds of flyers urged workers to build a city-wide campaign to target this epidemic which affects at least one out of every twenty residents. D.C. leads the nation.

One of the new members of the public health group we work in wrote us to say, "I had a great time helping on Saturday and was impressed at people's interest in what we were passing out. I also look forward to working with the committee more" — an important development as we prepare for the November 5 convergence of patients, health workers and advocates in Washington, DC for a rally for the "Campaign to End AIDS." This will be the beginning of continued activity to fight for housing, outreach, school education, substance abuse treatment, and federal AIDS funding.

PLP's work in sharpening politics among union workers to fight the war and among health workers to take on the AIDS struggle contrasts sharply with the political leaders prattling on at the MMM event and working only for their self-aggrandizement.

D.C. comrade

a name="Change in Bosses’ Skin Color Won’t End Racism"></">Ch"nge in Bosses’ Skin Color Won’t End Racism

I went to the Millions More Movement Washington rally on Oct. 15 with a school friend and his family. When we arrived we saw tens of thousands on the National Mall. But while Black Nationalism dominated the speeches, the masses of workers and students present were open to PLP's line of the need to smash the racist capitalist system, and with multi-racial unity.

While my friend listened to the speeches, I marched around the outskirts of the rally with other party members and led chants on our bullhorn. People joined us in shouting, "Racism means, we've got to fight back! Killer Kops mean, we've got to fight back!" Our speeches explained the nature of capitalism and how it breeds racism. We also pointed out that a few black capitalists cannot solve the problems facing black and white workers. Soon the Nation of Islam decided they weren't comfortable with our comments and sent their security to shut us down. Nonetheless, the Party distributed 4,000 flyers, 1,000 CHALLENGES and a revolutionary political line.

After our rally, I rejoined my friends on the lawn listening to Louis Farrakhan and others. Basically they called for a growth in black business and independence as the "answer" to racism. Farrakhan even made the outrageous call for a ministry of trade/commerce to tap the cheap labor in Africa and Latin America. Changing the color of the oppressor will not eliminate oppression. Farrakhan's mansion on Chicago's South Side has done nothing to rid neighborhoods of vacant lots and slum housing. Ultimately workers can never win by lining up behind a boss, be it Farrakhan or Rockefeller, Bush or Clinton. We can only win by taking power ourselves.

Red College Student

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Dems won’t solve Iraq or other issues

While Americans are turning increasingly against the war in Iraq…the support for the war among major Democratic leaders seems nearly as staunch and as mindless as among Republicans. On that and other issues, Democrats are still agonizing over whether to…try to present themselves as a somewhat lighter version of the G.O.P. (NYT, 10/17)

Farewell to US ‘middle-class worker’

There was a time when the American economy offered lots of good jobs — jobs that didn’t make workers rich but did give them middle-class incomes. The best of these good jobs were at America’s great manufacturing companies, especially in the auto industry.

But it has been a generation since most American workers could count on sharing in the nation’s economic growth….

….Corporations are squeezing wages and benefits, saying that they have no choice in the face of global competition. And with the Delphi bankruptcy, the big squeeze has reached the auto industry itself….

…America’s working middle class has been eroding for a generation, and it may be about to wash away completely. (NYT, 10/17)

Capitalism offers us ‘creative destruction’

Bait and Switch presents a world in which…believers in merit and achievement — which is to say, most of us — find themselves tossed aside. That is because they operate in an economy…subject to the relentless process of "creative destruction" — a phenomenon first named by the conservative 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter and previously analyzed by none other than Karl Marx….

The white-collar jobless…whom Ehrenreich encounters are carried along in a river that is indifferent to their work effort, needs, opinions, or moral worth. Schumpeter and Marx had a point: American capitalism today…regularly turns all workers — labourers and managers alike — into economic junk. (GW, 10/20)

1957-77: China lifted low-income groups

Gittings knows his China, and we can all be the wiser for reading him….

Such has been the preoccupation with the extremes of the Maoist period — notably the great leap forward and the cultural revolution — that its singular achievements have been largely neglected. The first World Bank report on China, citied by Gittings, concluded that its economic performance between 1957 and 1977 had been impressive: gross national product grew at an annual rate of more than 2% despite a 2% annual growth in population. This compared with an average growth rate of only 1.6% for other low-income countries. In the same period industrial production grew at more than 10%. There were also huge improvements in literacy, mortality rates, healthcare and women’s rights. The report regarded "China’s most remarkable achievement over three decades as making its low-income groups far better off in terms of basic needs compared with their counterparts in most other poor counties". (GW, 10/13)

Polls say: for Katrina aid, cut Iraq $$

…When asked by a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll how they’d prefer to finance the (at least) $200 billion Katrina relief effort, only 6 percent proposed cutting domestic spending and just 15 percent supported increasing the deficit. A majority — 54 percent — choose "cut spending for the war in Iraq." (Washington Post, 9/22)

Democracy in action: Congress using Katrina to rob the poor

As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda….Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.

… "We’ve gone…to the…likelihood, that the low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn’t actually happening."

…Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut: "Poor people are going to get the short end of the stick, despite all the public sympathy….poor people do not make campaign contributions. (NYT, 10/11)

New war front: US is shooting Syrians

A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current former military and government officials….

…Officials…say that as American efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified, the operations have spilled over the border — sometimes by accident, sometimes by design.

Some current and former officials add that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams… (NYT, 10/15)

Cheeky Nipsey Russell wouldn’t turn cheek

Nipsey Russell…was….One of the early black stand-up comedians who found success with mainstream audiences….

Speaking of nonviolent protest, he observed, "He who turns the other cheek will get hit with the other fist." (NYT, 10/4)

Workers Seize Plant, Confront Argentine Rulers

The workers of Zanon, Argentina’s largest ceramic/tile factory, located in the city of Neuquen, held a march and rally on July 7 (see photo) to reaffirm their right to continue to occupy and reconstitute their factory after seizing it four years ago following the owner’s lockout. The march, reflecting the wide community support for the tile workers, included health workers, public employees, teachers, professors and students, townspeople, and the unemployed organizations ("piqueteros"). They proclaimed the right of Zanon workers to establish a "Fabrica sin Patrones" — "Factory without Bosses."

Several weeks earlier, a bankruptcy court judge had reopened bids to place the factory in private capitalist hands once again. However, the workers had expropriated the plant without payment, arguing that since the bankruptcy declaration was both criminal and fraudulent, there must be no compensation to the former owner or creditors. Zanon’s boss owes back pay to his employees and paying off the fraudulent debts would weaken the community that depends upon the factory as a principle source of income.

An appellate court disallowed the new bid on August 5. The Zanon workers' ultimate aim remains state ownership of the tile factory under worker control.

The former owner, Luis Zanon, was awarded a $45 million loan and credits from the World Bank, Banco Rio and the Neuquen Province and then liquidated and sold the plant, after years of firing workers and instituting dangerous speed-up, killing one worker and injuring countless others. Zanon used his capital for speculative and personal investments. Of the 380 workers still on the payroll, 240 remained to occupy the factory and began production in February 2002 under worker control. (This action grew out of a mass nation-wide uprising in December, 2001, which forced the former president to flee.) By August 2005, employment had risen to 480 workers and production had increased 15-fold.

The workers’ take-over of the ceramic factory had become the symbol throughout Argentina of opposition to neoliberal governmental collusion with corporate finance. Governor Jorge Sobisch supported the former owner and the factory shutdown and viewed the worker takeover not as increasing provincial employment but as a working-class virus that had to be crushed. Given that Neuquen province contained the newly-privatized gas and petroleum holdings, employing over 15,000 workers, the Zanon workers represented a dangerous alternative model. Since the 2001 economic crisis, over 5,000 factories have closed and approximately 180 have been taken over by, and transformed into, workers’ cooperatives. Zanon stood out as workers beginning production without legal permission from a bankruptcy court judge or a provincial legislature.

While many Argentine labor unions have not supported worker cooperatives, in 1998 the Zanon Ceramic Workers local had won control against the former bureaucratic union’s collusion with the owner and began to confront the repressive factory administration. After defying the company shutdown in 2001, the union has organized a democratically-run factory with impressive outreach to the Neuquen community. They hire from among the unemployed "piqueteros." They have built and maintain a major neighborhood health clinic and have opened factory doors to cultural, artistic and sports activities. Majorities of weekly-run worker assemblies make all decisions. Constant rotation of positions of responsibility is this cooperative’s hallmark. All workers, whether in production, sales or administration, earn exactly the same monthly salary. The Zanon workers see their factory as servicing their community, not the capitalist market. Because of that the community has prevented the local police from retaking the factory.

A contingent of workers guards the factory day and night, with cell phones and walkie-talkies at the ready. Zanon workers are battling to be both a productive workers’ cooperative and a vanguard for social change against neoliberal capitalism.

Every move Zanon workers have made is explained in detail to the community through press releases, posters and leaflets. This has stood them in good stead. Every ceramic worker demonstration becomes a social movement. Zanon does indeed belong to the Neuquen community and the community has adopted Zanon.

[The above article was sent to us by a reader who recently returned from Argentina. We in PLP support the Zanon workers in their fight. However, given that capitalism still reigns in Argentina and the bosses still hold state power, eventually actions like those of the Zanon workers will eventually be crushed by the ruling class, be they Peronist like the current President Kichner or any other bourgeois ruler). The ruling class will use all of their state power to prevent the working class from seizing the means of production. Therefore, the best lesson workers can learn from such struggles is to turn them into schools for communism. In this way workers can learn they don’t need any bosses, as well as learn how to build a mass revolutionary communist party to prepare all workers and their allies to smash the bosses and their state power.]

a name="Workers Fight U$ Imperialism’s Grip on Paraguay">">"orkers Fight U$ Imperialism’s Grip on Paraguay

Paraguay’s bosses have long allied with U.S. bosses, dating back to the Chaco Oil War (Standard Oil in Bolivia and Royal Dutch Shell in Paraguay) and the days of fascist dictator Alfredo Stroessner. Then they collaborated with U.S. terrorist Henry Kissinger and puppet Pinochet in Chile during Operation Condor. Paraguayan generals have long trained at the fascist School of the Americas (Assassins) at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

In August, U.S. War Secretary Rumsfeld visited Paraguay to bolster this alliance. Thousands protested his visit, burning the U.S. flag and demonstrating deep anger among workers at U.S. imperialist oppression. Brazil sent over 700 troops to its border with Paraguay to conduct military exercises, simulating an invasion and take-over of a city, as a show of strength against U.S. intervention.

With over two million Paraguayans living in below-poverty conditions, the region needs a true communist revolution, not only anti-imperialist but anti-racist as well. PLP has begun some small efforts in the region. Several workers now receive DESAFIO. But we need more agitation, study groups and wider distribution of the paper. A true base-building effort can win Paraguayan workers, farmers and students to a struggle for communism.

Already, U.S. rulers are revamping and transforming an old airfield in Paraguay’s desert into a facility to improve and conduct "military exercises that have been going on since 1948." According to the Bolivian newspaper El Deber, this facility is located in Mariscal Estigarribia, 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia. It reportedly will allow the landing of large aircraft and can house up to 16,000 troops. This airport is bigger than the one in Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital.

Shortly after the Paraguayan Senate approved U.S troop maneuvers and granted the U.S. military immunity from Paraguayan and International Criminal Court jurisdiction, 500 U.S. troops arrived on July 1 with planes, weapons, equipment and ammunition on a "humanitarian mission." This transpired right after discussion about joint "anti-terrorism activities." The U.S. threatens to deny almost $25 million in "aid" to countries in the region if they don’t grant immunity, but Paraguay was the only country to accept the "offer." (Benjamin Dangl, 9/28/05)

This is part of the growing rivalry U.S. rulers face from their imperialist competitors in Europe and China for the energy and water resources of South America (the world’s biggest sweetwater supplies). Just a few months ago, a mass revolt ousted another Bolivian president after he tried to sell the country’s gas supplies to imperialist oil companies. Venezuela and Brazil are also fighting for that energy wealth, trying to take advantage of the U.S. quagmire in Iraq.

The Chaco War (1928-35) killed nearly 100,000 people in Bolivia and Paraguay. Today, workers and their allies are again faced with growing imperialist war threats. Their task must be to turn this coming war into a mass revolutionary struggle to get rid of all the bosses and fight for communism.

Under Communism: What Will Prisons Be Like?

Capitalism produces constant, mass unemployment. Crimes committed by members of the working class are mainly caused by capitalist-created poverty. Imprisonment for crime masquerades as punishment of offenders or protection of victims, but the rulers’ main purpose is protecting their system from the huge numbers of unemployed workers. Reintegration of offenders into society is the exception, not the rule. Therefore, life sentences are becoming more common in the U.S. Prison job "training" at pennies per hour is really slave labor for owners of privatized jails.

In this racist system, black and Latin men, mainly youth, are imprisoned at much higher rates because, (1) they suffer much higher rates of unemployment; (2) inadequate legal defense forces many innocents into plea bargains; and (3) racist police frame many. Because of their far greater oppression, black and Latin workers are correctly feared as a greater threat to the capitalists. The many black rebellions in the late 1960’s threw the rulers into a panic. To stifle further rebellions, drugs were poured into the cities. Far longer sentences for small amounts of cheaper crack cocaine than for larger amounts of more expensive powder cocaine reflected a specifically racist assault.

Prisons are conduits for drug trafficking, sexual assaults, beatings and murders, whitewashed as "suicides." U.S. prisons are the most repressive, and contain more prisoners than any country in the world. (See PLP pamphlet "Prison Labor: U.S.-Style Fascism.")

Under communism, the conditions that provoke crime — such as capitalist culture and poverty — would be non-existent. Secondly, for those still retaining the hangovers from capitalism, reintegration would be a priority. Education in literacy and political awareness, regardless of the crime, would foster understanding of the offender’s relationships to others in an egalitarian society. Selfish individualism, mimicking on a small scale robbery and exploitation by the big bosses, would be combated. Offenders would learn that family violence, theft and individual racist acts are violations against the working class as a whole.

More serious acts, such as racist organizing, anti-communism, murder and child molestation would be tried and judged by masses of workers. The pervasive ideology of capitalism may take generations to uproot, necessitating immediate imprisonment for these crimes.

In the then Soviet Union, prison leaders talked with new prisoners, determining their character and vocational abilities. Progress through three levels was determined by conduct. Some prisoners were granted leaves of up to two weeks a year. Farmers who cooperated received several-month furloughs to assist in the harvest.

Exercise and nutrition were emphasized. There were workhouses for young offenders and therapeutic facilities for the psychologically or physically ill. Detention houses, solitary residences or transitional facilities housed "correctional" and "political" inmates.

Rather than punishment or revenge, the goal was to help the offender work cooperatively in the community. Skills were taught, and work was creative. Those who at first refused to work were encouraged rather than forced. Generally inmates preferred work to isolation from the collective atmosphere. Prisoners wore regular clothes, and guards neither wore uniforms nor carried weapons.

In communist China, prisoners built their own houses, and some prisons resembled farms. One prison had three factories with eight hours shop work, two to three hours study and lectures, four to five hours for meals, exercise, reading, recreation and discussion, and eight hours sleep. Men and women shared a dining room and attended plays and sports contests in the prison compound. The windows had no bars. Cell doors remained open. Guards were unarmed. Prisoners managed barber shops, mess rooms, canteens and libraries.

Political prisoners underwent interrogation and thought reform, or hsueh-hsi, prior to formal trial and verdict. The process took up to several years. (Source: Edgar Snow’s "The Other Side of the River")

Once unemployment is eliminated and all workers have productive jobs, once the culture is transformed from one of individualism (look out for yourself, "number one") to one of the collective (everyone contributes to society as a whole), capitalism-created crime will cease to exist.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, October 19, 2005

Information: 19 October 2005 811 hits

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PL Teacher Links Imperialist Wars and Racist Education to Give-Back Contract
1. `' We cannot sell out our younger colleagues and our students for a salary raise . . . `
Bronx H.S. Teachers Fight Sellout; Charge Union Head in Bed with Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg
Students, Profs Building PLP in Mexico
Boeing, Union Hacks Use Liberal Gephardt to Swindle Workers
PLP in LA: `Only group calling for what's needed . . .'
RAISE MONEY FOR ANTI-RACIST FIGHTERS
Bronx H.S. Seniors Sit-Down Fights Attack on Counselors
Under Communism
1. The Elimination of Schistosomiasis in Early Revolutionary China
U.S. Constitution: The Illusion of Democracy
1. Book Review: "Toward an American Revolution -- Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions," by Jerry Fresia, South End Press, Boston, MA, 1988.
LETTERS
RED EYE ON THE NEWS

PLP-led Contingent:
Transit, Auto, Hospital Workers March Against Strike-breakers, Warmakers

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 24 -- A multi-racial group of over 100 workers and students -- Metro transit, government and health care workers from D.C., Ford auto and county hospital workers from Chicago, teachers and students from Baltimore -- formed one of the more militant contingents in the massive anti-war march that flooded the city today. They showed what a communist-led anti-war march would look like.

The group met first at a breakfast hosted by Local 689 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) at the union's headquarters. The local elected a PLP'er as president. After a hearty meal, rank-and-filers from the various unions and schools gave rousing talks which the audience greeted with loud "Right on's" of approval.

A young Metro worker linked the Katrina tragedy to the war in Iraq and racism at home, noting that capitalism was the root of all these working-class deaths. He said workers had to be at the forefront of fighting against racism and imperialist war.

A college student agreed, speaking about the importance of worker involvement in anti-war protests, which could make a real difference. She was very excited about being side-by-side with workers at the breakfast and in the march, fighting the same fight.

A Ford worker cited the attacks directed against auto workers but declared that organizing like this for an anti-war march means that UAW members were "coming back."

Local 689's President traced the plight of workers on the job and in cities ravaged by the hurricane to a system which is governed by profits, at the expense of our class. He said the war won't end simply by marching and pleading with the bosses' politicians to "bring the troops home," but rather by working-class soldiers rebelling like they did in Vietnam, which was an important reason for U.S. imperialism's withdrawal from that war, given the heroism of Vietnam's workers and peasants. He said that kind of action in Iraq with support by striking workers both in Iraq and here at home is the way to fight against the bosses' war. For this it was necessary to build a mass PLP

The participants made signs to carry in the march, such as, "Human Blood: $3.29/gallon" with "Hallibutcher" plastered on a gas station pump; "Support Striking Workers and Rebelling Soldiers"; "Warmaker, Strike-breaker, Fight Boeing!" and "Unions United to Fight Racism." The 8-year-old son of a Metro worker carried a sign proclaiming "Working-Class Revolution!"

These signs were matched by militant chants in the march itself, including, "Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!" These sentiments sharply contrasted with the pacifist "Peace Now" pleas put forward by the March leaders. While the latter directed all their fire at Bush, our contingent indicted capitalism as the cause of imperialist war, racism, poverty and the fate that befell the victims of Katrina.

The group caravanned to the train station and then took the Metro down to the rally. Our militant chants were applauded by many fellow protestors as we joined the main march, where we continued to chant. It was a powerful sight.

All this had an inspiring impact on the workers and their families. Having a militant political gathering beforehand added a broader anti-imperialist message to the superficial one of the march organizers, who blamed it all on Bush. The workers and students vowed to return to their jobs, schools and communities and spread the ideas they had brought to the day's events.

Billionaires' Dogfight:
Dumping Bush Won't End Imperialist Wars

Increasingly frustrated by Bush's failure to implement their wartime agenda, U.S. rulers are assailing his presidency on every front imaginable. As U.S. imperialism plans for ever bloodier military conflicts, the big bosses demand a leader who can create a climate of "shared sacrifice," says the New York Times.

By itself, this Bush-bashing isn't a good development for the working class. When the rulers call for "sacrifice," they really mean they want to spend more money forcing us to defend their profit system by spilling our blood. They require corporations and wealthy individuals willing to pay higher taxes to fund the war machine and workers willing to sacrifice their personal freedoms at home and their lives in battle.

The Iraq morass and Hurricane Katrina show how little the Bush gang has done to muster patriotic spirit or establish an effective, centralized apparatus of homeland coercion. So now the rulers are using state power in the form of the legal system and the media to sap the very foundations of the Bush administration. Bush's congressional base, donor base, electoral base, advisors and cronies are all taking ruling-class fire. But we should avoid getting caught in the middle. We have no side to take in a bosses' dogfight.

In late September, a Texas court indicted Tom Delay for campaign finance wrongdoing, forcing him to step down as House majority leader. But his real crime against the rulers lies in supporting the Bush gang's "on-the-cheap," undermanned, under-funded, and thus far unsuccessful Iraq invasion, all the while pushing for tax cuts for Bush-friendly corporations and budding billionaires. DeLay called for an immediate invasion with existing forces in August 2002. At the time, the ruling class's Council on Foreign Relations was advising an October 2003 operation with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and a sizable contingent of allies. Bush went ahead with a March 2003 invasion anyway, sending fewer than half the ground troops recommended by liberal think-tanks and the Pentagon. After the shooting had started, DeLay, like Bush, continued to thwart the plans of the main wing of the ruling class for a more general mobilization, telling reporters, "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."

Senate majority leader Bill Frist, another tax-cut champion, is now under federal investigation for shady stock deals involving his family's HCA corporation. Frist's pet project is to repeal the estate tax. But the rulers want the wealthy to willingly bankroll U.S. imperialism. A February 2001 statement published by the Rockefeller family and other members of the ruling class warned that eliminating the tax would harm "government programs so important to our nation's continued well-being." These programs included the Hart-Rudman commission's recommendations for transforming the U.S. into a militarized police state. Beset by his current troubles, Frist has postponed action on the estate tax.

Jack Abramoff, a top pro-Bush lobbyist, faces federal charges for ripping off Native American tribes. But the rulers want even more blood. On September 28, the New York Times ran a story under the headline "3 Arrested in Killing of Businessman With Whom Abramoff Feuded." It linked Adam Kidan, a Bush fund-raiser, with a Mafia murder. The feds have indicted Kidan and Abramoff as partners in a fraudulent casino financing scheme. And they recently arrested David Safavian, Bush's chief procurement officer, for obstructing the Abramoff investigation.

Karl Rove, the White House advisor known as "Bush's brain" is once again in the rulers' cross-hairs. Times reporter Judith Miller, having done a three-month jail stint as a First Amendment "martyr," has now agreed to assist the federal investigation into Rove's role in attacking an official who exposed Bush's lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Hypocrite Miller ignores how she herself promoted the war with stories "proving" the existence of Iraqi WMDs. Miller's hypocrisy reflects that of many leading Democrats, including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war in 2003.

Calling Bush worse than Nixon and implying the threat of impeachment, Frank Rich, another ruling-class mouthpiece at the Times, said (10/2/05) in comparison, "Watergate itself increasingly looks like a relatively contained epidemic of corruption."

The battle rages far beyond Washington. The rulers are moving to discredit the ideology and leaders of the Christian Right, which constitutes Bush's largest single voting bloc. Under intense coverage from the liberal media, a Pennsylvania court is hearing a case, dubbed "Scopes II," that challenges the teaching of "intelligent design," the supposedly more sophisticated version of creationism. In addition, the liberal media, which have promoted every racist theory from eugenics to Sociobiology, are now ratcheting up their criticisms of gross racist statements by pro-Bush Bible-thumpers like Pat Robertson and former Bush, Sr. Education Secretary William Bennett.

Bush has reacted feebly to the rulers' pressure to shape up or ship out. His only call for "sacrifice" has been a pathetic and impractical appeal to citizens to save oil by driving less. Bush did raise the idea of using Army troops to police U.S. cities in emergencies, but fell short of the detailed, far-reaching proposals for fascism outlined by the Hart-Rudman report.

Bush is indeed a sworn enemy of the working class. But this anti-Bush campaign is in no way good for workers, nor are his attackers our friends. When the liberals start assailing racism and calling for "shared sacrifice" in the so-called "national interest," watch out! Remember: the liberals brought us the war in Vietnam, the gunning down of working-class rebels in the 1960's and '70s, racist Workfare, Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia, and starvation of Iraqi children. The main strategic focus of U.S. foreign policy is the liberal doctrine of squashing all rivals by force and control of Persian Gulf oil at gunpoint.

The anti-Bush crusade stems from the rulers' overriding need to discipline, mobilize and militarize society in a period of intensifying conflict among the world's imperialists. But this is a time to mobilize for the building of PLP as a revolutionary, communist party that will some day bury the war-makers.

Capitalism -- Biggest Crime of All

Barely one month after Katrina exposed the deadly racism of the U.S. bosses, on Sept. 28, another servant of the ruling class, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, said on his radio talk show, "You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

"Genocide reduces the crime rate," is just one of the absurdities implicit in his statement. But the main point is that Bennett and the ruling class he serves are the biggest criminals in history, and capitalism is the biggest crime of all, a crime against the entire working class. To paraphrase playwright Bertold Brecht, "It's a bigger crime to own a bank than to rob one." When we smash capitalism with communist revolution and destroy the racist parasites in the ruling class, the crime rate will not only go down, it will be eliminated.

Capitalism depends for its very existence on stealing the surplus value produced by the working class . If capitalism stopped stealing, it would cease to exist. Since the defeat of the Bolshevik Revolution more than 50 years ago, and the Chinese Revolution in the late 1960's, capitalism has ruled the globe and its crime wave against the international working class has basically gone unchallenged. Today, more than half the world's population lives on less than $2 a day! And the death toll from imperialist wars, civil wars, ethnic cleansings, curable diseases, AIDS, hunger, famine and infant mortality is unprecedented in human history. Given the racist nature of capitalism and imperialism, the death tolls are highest in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Globalization -- imperialism on steroids --has only increased the levels of poverty and the numbers of children in sweatshops.

Social, and especially economic relations -- capitalist class relationships of exploitation -- cause crime. Wealth, and the lack of it, causes poverty, degradation, misery -- and crime. Workers and the poor who turn to crime are only aping the ruling class. "They rip off the workers, why can't we?" But the real looters in New Orleans turned out to be white and black cops, and now Halliburton, & Co.

Bennett is drawing racist conclusions from faulty crime statistics. Different groups in the population commit different crimes disproportionately. People classified as "black" are convicted of certain kinds of crime in higher proportion than the proportion of black people in the general population (convictions and plea bargains often have little to do with guilt or innocence). The same is true of other groups.

Rates of violent crime -- murder, for example -- are highest in the Southern U.S., for whites as well as blacks. Bennett could have said, "Abort every baby born in the South, and crime rates will go down." He could have said, "Abort all male babies, and the crime rates for rape and murder and all violent crimes, will go down."

In the U.S., black workers suffer from the greatest racism, poverty, unemployment and disease. They are also victims of the highest crime rates, from the billionaires to purse-snatchers. The racist differential in family income between black and Latino workers and white workers reaps $250 BILLION in super-profits each year for the racist bosses. These super-profits are essential to the capitalists -- and that's only the beginning. Forget about paying rent for rat-infested firetraps or higher prices for rotten meat in local stores.

But black workers, because of their history in the U.S. and their relation to society, are also the key force for communist revolution. Building a mass base among black workers, soldiers, students and youth, winning them to join and lead the PLP, will make us worthy of the title, revolutionary communist party.

Small-Fry Pays for Big-Time Torturers

Lynndie England, the soldier photographed holding an Iraqi prisoner in Abu Ghraib on a leash, received a three-year prison term. No doubt she deserves this and more, but as Bob Dylan famously said about the killer of Medgar Evers, she's "only a pawn in their game."

Her trial -- like others of abuse cases in Iraq -- exposed the mass torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces. England described the organized beating and torturing of prisoners in interrogation cell areas.

The first trials all described teams of CIA and army intelligence interrogators torturing Iraqis, the vast majority randomly rounded up in sweeps by U.S. forces.

These crimes against innocent Iraqis were known up and down the chain of command. England's trial revealed how the soldiers in Abu Ghraib were given the wink and nod to torture, and how professionals were brought in specifically for that purpose.

One officer who exposed the abuses recently told the New York Times that instead of going after the higher-ups, the Army is investigating those who speak up.

Torture in Iraq is playing multiple roles for the U.S. ruling class. It serves to terrorize Iraqis as well as others worldwide who refuse to go along with U.S. interests. It also helps to build an army that loses its reservations about slaughtering innocents; and it's a trial balloon -- much like the imprisonment of Arab men in Guantanamo -- to see how much fascism people in the U.S. will accept.

At this point the U.S. rulers' position in Iraq seems to be worsening. Mass torture isn't winning the war for them. While there hasn't been mass rebellion in the U.S. Army, at home thousand of soldiers have deserted, many because of the racist nature of today's military, and recruitment is down. Amid the horrors the bosses are currently meting out to workers, these are hopeful signs that the U.S. working class will not march lock-step behind the rulers' growing fascism.'

One Million Strike vs. French Bosses' Privatization `Reform'

PARIS, Oct. 5 -- About one million workers went on a one-day nation-wide strike yesterday protesting high unemployment, low wages eroding their purchasing power and government "reforms" to privatize state-run firms that would make it easier for bosses to fire workers. The strike spread across 140 cities and towns, with the industrialized areas leading the way. It was the first time in 30 years that all the unions acted together.

Jean Aubigny, a sympathetic commuter at this city's Saint-Lazare station, told the Associated Press, "All of the rights that our ancestors took centuries to acquire are being squeezed."

The walkout involved postal, electricity, railroad, airline, ferry and some private sector workers. Two-thirds of trains were not running into Paris, one-half of the Metro was shut, the railroads were seriously disrupted and hundreds of flights were grounded, all combining to cause massive traffic jams. Some national newspapers failed to publish.

The loss of 400 jobs in ferry operations -- being sold off by the government -- out of the port of Marseilles to the island of Corsica impelled the Army to take over the ferries from striking workers. Port workers walked out in sympathy.

France's ruling class, trying to compete with its imperialist rivals in this age of endless war and fascist attacks on the working class, is driving to overturn the "social contract" that workers have won through decades of struggle. But this union "show of strength" will probably last for only this one day, given the union misleaders' ideology of "capitalism is here to stay." They're all committed to cutting a deal with the ruling class, competing with each other to be the capitalists' "preferred partner."

Mass actions like this are good if workers learn the lesson that all bosses are their enemies, and that the only solution for a world free of unemployment, racism and imperialist war is communist revolution.

Anarchy of Capitalism Creates Energy Crisis

Why have gasoline prices doubled in the last two years, and who are the winners? The real answers lie in the big picture, not the details the bosses' media like to cite to hide the basic truths.

Capitalism is an economic roller-coaster. The bosses have used a series of lame excuses, like Hurricane Katrina, to drive up prices and keep gasoline in short supply. But like those increases in California electricity prices, the crooked capitalists who steal a few billion dollars are only the tip of the iceberg. The main guilty party is the anarchy of capitalism, forcing it to lurch from one crisis to the next, leading to endless imperialist wars. The oil industry is a prime example.

In the 1960's, capitalists built cars and factories that guzzled oil while not investing much in new oil wells. The result of soaring demand and stagnant output was the 1970's "oil crisis." The capitalist "solution" to the shortages it had created was to drive prices sky high. They rushed to drill new oil wells and redesign everything from cars to more energy-efficient offices. As supply soared and demand crashed, in 1985 oil prices fell to one-fourth their peak price, and stayed that low through the 1990's, while hundreds of billions invested in oil projects and energy-efficiency schemes turned out to be unprofitable.

Did the capitalists learn from this roller-coaster ride? Hell, no! Capitalism is incapable of planning. So for the last decade, business "geniuses" have done exactly as they did in the 1960's: build cars and factories that guzzle oil while not investing much in new oil wells. Exxon has $30 billion cash on hand but has refused until recently, to invest more; Last month, Exxon was still insisting that oil prices would soon decline.

More than a century ago, Karl Marx wrote a brilliant analysis of why capitalism goes through irrational cycles of over-investment and crisis. It's not that the capitalists are stupid. Rather, capitalism is a wasteful system that can't pay attention to warning signs about looming problems. Communism is a system designed to plan ahead, where workers have the means and motive to solve problems before they become crises.

World's Bosses Gang Up on U.S. Rulers

So who's gained from the oil price rises? In part, the oil bosses - Exxon has done well, GM has been hurt. With the price per barrel of oil doubling in the last two years, U.S. oil companies have gained about $100 billion a year. These are the companies to which Bush is closest; no wonder he does little about it.

But the main story is that higher oil prices are part of the same pattern dominating world politics for most of the last decade, namely, a campaign by rulers worldwide to take the USA down a couple pegs. Whether in China or Germany, the Middle East or Latin America, the world's bosses, in various ways, have gone after "the world's only superpower," and oil is a tool in this campaign.

Oil is a weak spot for the U.S. and other big imperialists because it's the one vital commodity they cannot produce enough of domestically. They make their own steel, they pretty much grow their own food, but they must import much of their oil. That means oil is a useful tool for the smaller ruling classes to use against the bigger ones. Whenever U.S. imperialism is weak, the oil-exporting rulers take advantage. As the USA was losing in Vietnam, OPEC jacked up prices. And now that the USA is bogged down in Iraq and the "war against terror," lots of nationalists are taking advantage of the situation to take a tougher line against multi-national oil companies like ExxonMobil (and the two British oil firms, BP and Shell, which are in fact more U.S. than European). Putin jailed Khudorovsky, Yukos' owner, the one Russian oil boss ready to work with the multi-nationals, and has put the oil business back under state control. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez tore up the multi-national contracts, insisting on better terms.

Russia and Venezuela have each increased oil exports by about $50 billion a year, thanks to the $30 boost in prices in the last two years -- and nearly all that money has helped build much stronger states. Middle East rulers have been the main gainers. They reaped about half of the total $550 billion price hike, plus they're in the best position to increase output at a time when few others producers can. Smaller amounts have gone to African, Caspian, and Southeast Asian producers, plus to so-called U.S. allies Canada and Norway.

To be sure, U.S. bosses are not the only ones who must pay when oil prices rise. In fact, the total $550 billion world bill is just about divided equally with the U.S., the European Union and East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China), each paying about $150 billion annually. But the main political impact of the price rise undercuts U.S. influence and power. For instance, Russian military spending this year is twice what it was a few years ago.

Capitalism can't deliver because it is completely disorganized. Each group of bosses is constantly looking for a way to get ahead at the expense of the others, while the workers get stuck paying the bills. And this doesn't even include all the crooks who cheat us even more while the bosses' government helps them with their scams (the bosses have manipulated the U.S. oil refinery business to jack up their prices $15 per barrel, or about half as much as the rulers of oil-exporting countries have been able to steal). The bosses' long-range "solution" to this is war and more wars against their rivals, eventually leading to another world war.

Meanwhile, we don't need "better enforcement" of laws or a new "national energy strategy." To meet our needs, we must smash capitalism with communist revolution and build a society run by and for the workers.

NOT THE DOLLAR, NOT THE EURO -- WORKERS' POWER!

The longer U.S. imperialism is in a quagmire in Iraq, the weaker it looks, the more its rivals will probe for other, or secondary, weaknesses. The more probing, the more antagonisms, the more instability.

Today, the gigantic U.S. military appears lost in the sands of Iraq. From Gulf War I to blockade to Gulf War II to occupation -- in the 15 years of this bloodbath, U.S. imperialism's top-dog position has been increasingly challenged. In 1991, the "allies" paid $54 billion for Gulf War I. In 2003, the "coalition of the willing" could only muster $5 billion for Gulf War II -- in pledges, not cash in hand.

At its height, right after World War II, U.S. bosses set the capitalist world's financial and trade agenda. Bretton Woods, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and GATT (later to become the World Trade Organization) all resulted from U.S. initiatives. The rest of the capitalist world mostly reacted to U.S. programs. U.S. rulers had the atom bomb and the dollar had clout.

Lately, however, major capitalist initiatives have been launched over which U.S. rulers have little control: development of the euro as a viable world currency; emergence of a capitalist China; and the development of A-bombs in India and Pakistan. Today, it's the U.S. that often reacts to events.

EUROPE CHALLENGES THE U.S.

On January 1, 1999, a major challenge to U.S. imperialism materialized. The euro became the European Common Market's official currency. Because Europe had a bigger domestic market and because the U.S. was the world's biggest debtor nation, the euro looked more attractive than the dollar. It has threatened to rival if not replace it as the world's reserve currency.

This is no small challenge. If a country establishes its currency as the world currency, advantages approaching world domination flow to it. For example, most of the world's oil is traded in U.S. dollars. They're called petrodollars. If, say, Japan needs to buy oil, it needs dollars. Since oil prices can rise sharply from time to time, that country needs a large reserve of dollars. Millions of dollars sitting in a Tokyo bank vault would be of little use. So Japan, like other countries, earns interest on its dollars by investing in the U.S. stock market, especially in Treasury bills.

T-bills are the main way the U.S. government borrows money when it overspends (or runs a deficit). Every congressman, senator and cabinet member knows there are billions of free petro dollars in the world waiting to be invested temporarily in U.S. T-bills. This means Congress can cut taxes to the richest 10% and spend gigantic sums on military hardware regardless of the deficit. They know it can be easily covered by T-bills.

DOG-EAT-DOG IMPERIALISTS

Even if the euro were to just share a place with the dollar as a world currency, the balance of power would be radically shifted. For example, if China started buying oil in euros, they would need large reserves of euros. The most economical way to do this would be to invest in the European equivalent of T-bills, and divest a corresponding amount of dollars. This would enable Europe to be able to build a military machine rivaling that of the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. would have to cut back even more on all social programs and wages to pay for its military. Now add the reactions of Russia and China into all this. Clearly the issue of petrodollars or petro-euros creates fault lines around the imperialist world. Gulf War I, Yugoslavia, Gulf War II and oil pipeline wars like Afghanistan and Chechnya show that war, rather than conferences, has been the preferred method to deal with reserve currency and control of oil.

The seriousness of this was reflected in Saddam Hussein's decision to demand payment in euros instead of dollars for Iraq's oil. This sealed his doom. U.S. rulers -- who, in any event, wanted to take control of Iraq's oil (the world's second largest reserves after Saudi Arabia) -- also stood to lose trillions if the dollar was no longer the reserve currency.

This is the context in which we must understand Iran's recent announcement that beginning next March it plans to begin competing with New York's and London's oil stock markets, which trade in petro-dollars. Iran's "bourse" (oil market) will trade in euros. This is almost a declaration of war. While the existence of the euro and the dollar side by side might be negotiated short of war -- at least temporarily -- it's inconceivable that a country the size of Iran would announce such a bold plan without ensuring it had friends in high places.

Russia, China, Germany and France all fit the bill. China has just become Iran's biggest trading partner. Russia and Iran have long discussed trading oil and gas in euros. Germany and France, of course, were cut out when U.S. occupation forces reversed Saddam's order to sell them Iraqi oil in euros.

The War in Iraq Raises New Questions: The Dollar, the Euro, or ...

The longer the U.S. remains in a quagmire in Iraq, the more opportunities present themselves to imperialist rivals and the weaker the world's only superpower appears. When Gulf War II began, CHALLENGE warned the invasion might be easy but the occupation would be difficult. Today, we should add that, for U.S. imperialism, while the occupation is grim, its consequences are even grimmer. Two-thirds of world trade is conducted in dollars. Losing this advantage would be a major setback for the world's only superpower.

"A successful Iranian bourse will solidify the petro-euro as an alternative oil transaction currency, and thereby end the petro-dollar's hegemonic status as the monopoly oil currency," says W. R. Clark in his article "Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros, and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse." No wonder U.S. rulers are contemplating attacking Iran.

The invasion of Iraq, and Iran's newly-announced oil bourse, are gradually drawing all the major imperialists into the battle. Whatever ideology or ideals are used to recruit soldiers or insurgents (U.S. "democracy," Chinese nationalism, Pan-European unity or Islamic history), the outcome in reality means they either "car bomb" for the euro or "smart bomb" for the dollar.

There is a weak link for all the imperialists in this: most workers, soldiers and students are not totally won to die for their bosses. But, that never stopped the imperialists from waging war. That's why we in PLP must fight for the line of to hell with "power to the dollar" or "power to the euro." It's time to fight for power to the workers. This won't happen spontaneously. We must instill among all we know the confidence that workers will fight and produce for a world without exploiters and exploitation. We want share-and-share-alike communism, not the socialism that the revolutions in China and Russia fought for. The longer this dirty capitalist imperialist war drags on, the greater the opportunity to raise the need to build a new communist movement.uIraq Invasion Sharpens Euro-Dollar Fight

U.S. imperialism's supremacy rests on three pillars: oil, a dominant world currency and a gigantic military. Of course, central to military supremacy is the bosses' ability to win the troops politically to racism and nationalism. But from the day the euro was launched (Jan. 1, 1999), it threatened the dollar's supremacy. In three months it was already valued higher than the dollar. Yet by the end of that year, it was lower. The threat had waned. The U.S.-led NATO destruction of Yugoslavia showed the world that Europe - at that time - was incapable of calling the shots on its own doorstep, let alone defending a world currency. However, since the invasion of Iraq, the situation has changed, reflected in the comparison between the two Gulf Wars. The euro has again become stronger. This is another aspect of the sharpening deadly rivalry between the imperialists, who are attacking the international working class.

PL Teacher Links Imperialist Wars and Racist Education to Give-Back Contract

NEW YORK CITY, SEPT. 21 -- Thousands of teachers who packed today's Delegates Assembly(DA) meeting to show their outrage and dissatisfaction with a leadership-proposed contract heard a Bronx PLP teacher condemn it, charging that it was filled with give-backs. In a rousing speech, she charged that ruling-class attacks on teachers were really attacks on working-class youth. She called for rank-and-file rejection of the proposed contract, and of the politicians and their lies. (For extended excerpts, see box.)

The city's schools are overwhelmingly black and Latino and the ruling class has been getting away with racist attacks on these students for years, allowing conditions to worsen to a point where many feel their schools are more like jails. Two days before the DA, 1,500 students walked out at De Witt Clinton H.S., protesting the racist installation of metal detectors. (See CHALLENGE, 10/5)

Teachers have been working more than two years without a raise or a contract. Meanwhile, overcrowding, inadequate programming, and lack of books and supplies are rampant. School budgets are continuously being slashed while hundreds of billions are being funneled into imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The union leadership has been trying to hoodwink members into accepting an outside arbitrator's Fact Finding Report (FFR) as the basis for the upcoming contract negotiations. But some chapter leaders said their members had repudiated the FFR, labeling it "starting off at zero."

Not surprisingly, union president Randi Weingarten monopolized the time, confusing people with "Roberts Rules of Order" and other minutia, so angry teachers couldn't get the floor. By the time of the vote on the resolution, she had won many teachers to a line that didn't represent the class interests of students and teachers.

PLP members have been active in our respective schools, organizing picket lines, union meetings and confrontations with Weingarten's UNITY caucus leaders, explaining that the proposed contract is a racist attack on students, teachers and parents. It proposes a series of give-backs: elimination of important rules teachers need to defend themselves from administration attacks, giving principals more power, a small salary increase for longer hours and increased assignments.

The Delegates Assembly is somewhat of a circus; the dominating UNITY caucus runs the show. Although allowing some dissent, it basically rubber-stamps Weingarten at virtually every meeting. Even though many teachers vehemently opposed the resolution on the floor, the vote carried. Many angry teachers stormed out of the meeting in disbelief and grabbed CHALLENGE and leaflets, as well as newsletters distributed by other opponents of the union sellouts. PLP members encouraged teachers to take the struggle into their schools, to build for strikes and strike actions and to fight for the unity of students, parents and teachers.

As we go to press, the union and the mayor have announced a contract agreement modeled after the FFR, increasing teacher time, giving principals more direct control over teacher transfers and adding to their assignments in the schools, and seriously attacking teachers' ability to grieve attacks by the principal. This is in return for a decent-sounding raise, but that's not what it appears. New teachers will get 6% less.

We've all met teachers who didn't teach, and obviously school administrations let them get away with it because the ruling class doesn't care if the black and Latin student population gets an inferior education, primed for low-wage jobs or the military. We all know workers whose children have been badly served by teachers who just shouldn't have been in the classroom. However, we must recognize that the capitalist system is the source of the racist attitudes filling the schools. The vast majority of teachers work hard teaching far too many students, and this contract increases their workload, making it still more difficult for good teachers to do as well as they could. (More on this contract fight next issue.)

`' We cannot sell out our younger colleagues and our students for a salary raise . . . `

(Excerpts from the stirring speech of the Bronx PLP teacher to the Sept. 21 Delegates Assembly.)

"Proof that those who run this country don't care about the working class, especially black and Latino workers and their children, can be seen in New Orleans where thousands were left to die because they had no way to get themselves out ahead of Katrina. [When someone shouted "Get to the point," she shot back] This IS the point. The ruling class that allows workers in New Orleans to die and kills workers in Iraq for oil is the same ruling class that destroys the future of working-class students here in New York City. Our students are the main victims of the attacks by the Department of Education. So long as our students are considered expendable and unimportant, we as their teachers will be seen as unimportant.

"We must fight for the needs of our students and of ourselves. We must fight the racism of the Department of Education. We must build unity among students, teachers and parents. This is what the politicians fear.

"We cannot support a contract where we sell out our younger colleagues and our students for a salary raise. These younger teachers will be working under these conditions for a long time. Our working-class students will also be living with the disastrous results of them. And we will be allowing ourselves to be divided, which is exactly what the administration, politicians and all who run this city want.

"We must reject the Fact-Finders report. We fight for no give-backs, for smaller class sizes and other things that are good for the education of working-class students in New York City."

Bronx H.S. Teachers Fight Sellout; Charge Union Head in Bed with Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg

BRONX, NY, Oct. 4 -- As the teachers union leadership and billionaire Mayor Bloomberg race to force another pro-capitalist sellout on public school teachers, there's been widespread teacher and staff anger at Christopher Columbus High School (CCHS) here over the worsening working conditions, overcrowding, and the Public Employees Review Board Fact Finding Report (FFR). (For details, see above). UFT union boss Randi Weingarten led us into this union-busting predicament. Many are angry at her and her cronies for endangering the few meager protections teachers and other school employees still have.

For two years the CCHS staff has conducted a variety of activities for better working conditions and a better educational experience for our students. In addition, we're trying to prevent the school's closing. The Department Of Education wants to convert the building into a number of mini-schools, funded by the Gates Foundation.

Militant picket lines at CCHS, which PL members helped to organize and lead, have called for students and teachers to unite in demanding mini schools out of CCHS, more schools to alleviate overcrowding, smaller classes and a UFT contract.

Recently, staff and students picketed against the FFR. Teachers' signs condemned the union leadership's blatant class collaboration. Upon seeing a sign declaring, "Recall Randi; Randi is in Bed with Bloomberg; No to give-backs!" a local UFT hack went berserk, running to the principal, our chapter co-leader and the Bronx-wide UFT representative, demanding measures against whoever wrote this sign.

Nobody cooperated with the administration/hack witch-hunt except our local Trotskyite (phony leftist), who proceeded to destroy the sign. He wrote UFT Rep "deploring" the sign's content and profusely "apologizing" for our teachers "stepping out of line." So: union hacks in bed with the enemy and a Trotskyite trying to stop the flood of anger coming from those who must suffer the effects of their class collaboration.

We've been struggling for two years with many staff members about a strike and the issues listed above, with mixed success. Many staff members have feared to act, but others have been active in several ways.

Before this pending settlement, most staff was strongly pro-strike. However, we remain divided by years in service, grade level taught and what we do and teach. The UFT sellouts used these factors to weaken us and prevent unity at CCHS. However, these struggles have created opportunities to increase our CHALLENGE readership, bring pro-communist ideas to our school and move people to the left. We also need to expose the tentative contract's fascistic provision that impedes filing a grievance against any charge the bosses want to trump up against school workers, especially political activists. The UFT leadership and the school bosses want to bribe teachers with a "higher" salary in exchange for accepting more control over staff and surrendering the right to defend ourselves when the system attacks us.

Teachers must be won to see that capitalism will not and cannot provide the learning conditions teachers want for their students and for themselves. We must build a movement that will fight the billionaires out to save their rotten system, who put profits ahead of our students' well-being, and the pro-boss unions that don't serve our class interests. Ultimately, a communist system eliminating exploitation and racism will be the antidote to the atrocities we experience daily.

Students, Profs Building PLP in Mexico

MEXICO -- "Some fight for a year and that is good...Others fight all their lives: they are the ones we cannot do without." (Bertolt Brecht)

So read a poem read during the anniversary of a student organization in northwestern Mexico. Amid political apathy among many, the celebration's musical festival attracted some 200 people.

The atmosphere was great. PLP members and friends helped organize the activities. Women friends of the Party showed great potential. We now have the opportunity to develop closer social and political relations with them.

The next day, current and former students and professors from other universities met to evaluate the festival and plans for the growth of the Party, ideologically and numerically.

Just before last year's anniversary some students participated in a party welcoming new students. After a fight among some in the party, the cops came and attacked everyone. To confront this police brutality, we organized a mass march from the campus to the city's downtown. From the beginning, students "arrested" a cop and warned they wouldn't free him until all the arrested students were released. PLP comrades participated in this action and strengthened their commitment to fight for communism.

The trust and solidarity among all involved in these actions can help to win more students to a higher level of political activity. This can lead to joining and building PLP and the fight for the interests of workers and students internationally.

Boeing, Union Hacks Use Liberal Gephardt to Swindle Workers

SEATTLE, WA., Oct. 1 -- The 28-day Boeing strike ended today, concluding another chapter in a continuing class struggle. Desperate to maintain our allegiance, the union leadership declared victory, scheduled the contract vote one day before we would lose our medical benefits and got the acceptance they wanted. This "victory" came cheap as the new contract just shifted money around, freezing our wages. Throughout the strike, the Party's base organized meetings of dozens to fight for anti-racist class-consciousness -- a real victory in building a mass PLP on the long road for our class to take power.

Only when we act and think as a class can we begin the march to break the chains that bind us to the bosses' system. To that end, strikers distributed 1,500 leaflets and 500 CHALLENGES during the strike. One leaflet entitled "Holding the Line; Fighting for Our Class" was particularly popular. After explaining how the racist profit system is worldwide, it concluded: "Calls to fight for `American Workers' fall short. From Baghdad to Boeing to New Orleans we fight the same enemy. We fight for the working class. History is on our side. Eventually we will find a way to win."

Of course, no contract can liberate us. They only define the shape of the chains that bind us. Nonetheless, this contract contains some particularly nasty bits. The company paid for a measly additional $4 pension multiplier (an extra $4/month per year of service) and restoration of retiree medical benefits for new hires by eliminating all general wage increases. This wage-freeze contract gave the 3,500 called back from layoff in the last year smaller signing bonuses than the rejected contract. Over 500 got zilch. Nothing was won on outsourcing and selling of plants, while the medical part contains the same formulas that resulted in higher premiums under the last contract. "I'm going to burn my `Do The Right Thing' union T-shirt!" threatened one striker.

The company did agree to withdraw its demand for multi-machine operation -- up to four machines per operator. Of course, this won't help the many thousands already in sold plants or in subcontractor firms which all have multi-machine operation policies. Nor will it help the rest that will be sold in the future -- if they don't lose their jobs outright to outsourcing. The 1989 strike involved 56,000 workers. In the1995 strike, there were fewer than 40,000 workers. This time the number dropped to 18,000+. Signaling their continued intentions, during the strike Boeing offloaded machining work on two freighter programs from the Auburn site to the non-union Salt Lake City facility.

Secret Meetings; Democratic Party Pols

Even as hundreds of thousands marched against the bosses' oil war in Iraq, a secret meeting in the D.C. offices of former Democratic Party boss Dick Gephardt worked out a deal. Today the union misleaders are in control with their nationalist politics, but the bosses can never be sure. The longer the strike continued, the more opportunity we had to spread revolutionary anti-imperialist ideas amongst this crucial workforce in basic industry. They had to end the strike.

Boeing hired Gephardt to grease the works. A scant four months ago, he was rewarded with a seat on the board of Spirit AeroSystems (the outfit set up by the buyer Onex) in exchange for ramming a wage- and job-cut deal down the throats of recently sold Wichita workers. The union praised this corporate mercenary to the skies. "They probably got the union leaders in a room and lectured them about the `national interest' and we were sunk," said a former shop steward.

As long as we remain chained to capitalism, contracts and secret meetings will seal our fate. Victory is defined as not losing too much and even that is temporary as the bosses reorganize our industry to pay for more oil wars. When the IAM International president says this contract is an "opportunity [for Boeing] to make strides working with the union to stay competitive" he disarms us. There are bosses and workers. You can't serve both.

Many, if not most of the strikers, refused to return to work on Friday, the day after the contract was approved. A small group continued their Friday breakfast, just as they had every Friday during the strike. They, along with others, vowed to continue organizing the events we had planned if the strike had continued, events dedicated to building revolutionary class consciousness. And we will keep holding expanded Party meetings so our friends can continue to attend. It's from these events and these workers that we will gain our lasting victories.

Class Understanding Grows in Aftermath of Boeing Strike

"Have you all decided if you want breakfast?" asked the waitress. "It's getting too late for the early bird special." At a coffee-shop meeting with half a dozen Boeing workers, all CHALLENGE readers, we got so wrapped up in discussing the strike, scabs and holding the line that we forgot to look at the menu until the waitress reminded us.

KATRINA, IRAQ and BOEING

Whether it's a major corporation, a war for oil profits or a huge natural storm the results for workers are a disaster under the capitalist system. The IAM machinists are in danger of joining the working poor of New Orleans who were left behind to the fury of the hurricane. Boeing wants to leave its striking workers behind with inadequate pensions and a substandard health plan, and for some, no medical at all.

Wouldn't you think that one of the world's largest arms-producing corporations, the largest manufacturing exporter in the U.S. and a huge supporter (and beneficiary) of the war in Iraq would be making enough profit without trying to screw its workers blue in the bargain? But the capitalist law of maximum profit compels Boeing -- in competition with the world's other aerospace companies -- to attack its workers harder year after year. Similarly, the U.S. military attacks Iraqi workers so ExxonMobil can float along on a sea of Mid-East oil rather than let it flow to its European, Chinese and Japanese imperialist rivals.

Machinists Left to the Tender Mercies of `Hurricane Boeing'

Bush showed up late in Louisiana, but in time for his photo opportunities. How about IAM district president Mark Blondin? A Boeing worker asked, "What's the union leadership doing to keep up the spirits of the strikers? If I was in Blondin's shoes," he answered his own question, "I'd get some intense movies to show our workers the bloody history of the strikes in the 1930's and '40's. We need to know that our wages and pensions came out of workers and their leaders fighting the bosses, not just negotiating a deal with them at some hotel."

This worker is already moving beyond the union's line. He's talking about the need for class consciousness, which he thinks workers had in the thirties. He sees the need to educate and organize his fellow workers as a class against attacks from capitalism and big war-maker Boeing. He's looking to put the fire and the fight back into the soul of workers.

A woman comrade sitting next to him said, "And instead of going to sleep between contracts, we should be meeting like this to begin preparing for the next contract." A floor inspector agreed that what we do here in this strike affects the next contract. "Today -- and for the last 60 years -- unions are about making a deal with the boss," he said. "Is it likely that the union president would put out a call for the workers to come to films about the militant history of the U.S. working class?" he asked. No one thought so.

LOOKING FOR PLP'S COMMUNIST IDEAS

A CHALLENGE study group, the history of the class struggle, communist philosophy and ideas -- all this and more are what workers are asking for. Should we meet between the contracts simply to plan how we'll fight for another $1 an hour? Or are we going to focus on the fight to take everything they've stolen from us? Are we after a piece of reform or the prize of revolution?

"We have the resources to do this," the inspector continued. "With the workers from the roadhouse meeting yesterday, including the Northwest strikers, and today's meeting, that's thirty people at our first film showing." Someone else said, "We can do it, then present it to the union leadership at the membership meeting. That way we'll find out, do they want to pick up on it? Or do they drop it and expose themselves?"

ONE BILLION DOLLARS

Boeing says the IAM is asking for a billion dollars more than the company can pay and still remain competitive. How much less of that billion will the union leadership try to sell us and in what form? That's what "making a deal" is all about.

Is $1 billion all this strike is about, a struggle of IAM workers against the aerospace giant? Yes, but it's more. It's also part of the larger struggle of all workers against a capitalism preparing for endless wars that are grinding down every working man and woman. When we clearly see ourselves as waging a fight for our class and not just for ourselves, we have the potential to give leadership to the working class internationally.

Just as the bosses pay attention to every strike to gauge the mood of the workers, so the working class takes note of strikes. The potential to inspire our class to stand up for itself and fight for our own future is always there.

In this spirit two in our group said they could find a hall to show a movie. Another woman said she had a friend at the school district who would lend us a DVD projector. Two others are going to check out the films "Salt of the Earth" and "Matewan."

Can large things come from small beginnings? We aim to find out.

PLP in LA: `Only group calling for what's needed . . .'

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 24 -- "Iraq and Katrina, one and the same -- the capitalist system is a death game!" was one of Progressive Labor Party's chants heard by many of the 15,000 people who marched through downtown today protesting the occupation and war in Iraq. Many were young. All were angry. PLP's anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist politics stood out among the liberal anti-Bush and pacifist chants. Our contingent flew the red flag high for all to see.

This enthusiastic group, composed mainly of high school students, gave great leadership. Two young women led the chant: "The workers, united, will never be defeated! Obreros, unidos, jamas seran vencidos!" as well as rounds of "Fight Back" related to the war, the Boeing strike, the hurricane response and police terror. One comrade spoke attacking capitalism as the cause of both the imperialist war and the racist destruction after the hurricanes. PLP made a splash as the only communist group as well as a serious youth-led contingent. One man said, "You're the only group here calling for what's needed."

We distributed 1,000 CHALLENGES and 2,400 leaflets to the interested marchers, linking the Boeing strike, the imperialist war and Katrina. We pointed out that the workers, soldiers and youth are crucial to organizing a mass PLP to end imperialist war with communist revolution. Our attacks on imperialism and capitalism offered an obvious alternative to the pro-Democratic Party politics of many of the liberal groups that "led" the march. The students who helped lead our contingent left the march inspired to do more, not only on their own campuses, but also to discuss how to actually combat the system of capitalism that causes war and fascism.

Many were glad to receive CHALLENGE and gave donations. Quite a few gave their names to be contacted for upcoming events. Marchers as well as onlookers encouraged us to distribute more papers.

RAISE MONEY FOR ANTI-RACIST FIGHTERS

Nine anti-racist members and friends of Progressive Labor Party face trials in Los Angeles, Bridgewater, NJ and Farmingville, LI, NY, for fighting the KKK-type anti-immigrant Minutemen racists. They follow a long PLP tradition of fighting the bosses' racist thugs. The legal costs of defending these anti-racists amount to some $60,000. We're asking all CHALLENGE readers and friends to donate whatever they can.

Send checks or Money orders made out to Challenge Periodicals and mail to PLP, GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, USA

Bronx H.S. Seniors Sit-Down Fights Attack on Counselors

BRONX, NY, Oct. 3 -- On Thursday, September 29, about 200 seniors at John F Kennedy H.S. sat down in front of the principal's office, protesting the excessing (removal from their Kennedy jobs) of four counselors. Five other counselors were excessed in June, cutting the total counselor staff by nearly 70%. Four counselors are now expected to serve approximately 3,500 students.

The seniors depend on their counselors for help with college applications, guaranteeing all graduation requirements are met and for advice on other problems. When they learned they were losing their counselors, they questioned the administration. With no real answers forthcoming, the students sat down.

Immediately assistant principal Rashid Davis showed his fascist colors, frantically dialing his cell phone (presumably trying to reach the police), screaming, "I know how to deal with a riot! Hose them down!" Teachers old enough to remember the 1960's immediately thought, "Now his name is Bull Connor?" (the Birmingham police chief who used dogs, hoses and other violent attacks on civil rights marchers).

The seniors continued their protest until forced out of the building by security. Once outside some underclassmen who had joined the seniors were arrested by the cops. Many teachers were furious at the principal and gave the students "thumbs up" as they passed the protesters, a change from often previous support for the administration.

In meetings after the demonstration and on Friday and Monday, many students told how the principal had tried to convince them to go along with the excessing, saying he had no choice: "It was either the counselors or teachers. Do you want your classes bigger?" Some choice! Students said, "He [the principal] lies to us all the time!" Some students are beginning to realize the administration is their enemy and won't do anything to improve students' education. Many understand the fight must continue.

Students need to learn that racism is intrinsic to capitalism and guarantees that working-class students won't get a real education, especially at Kennedy where the vast majority of students are black and Latino. These are the youth U.S. rulers depend on for cannon fodder in Iraq and other imperialist wars. As students learn the true nature of not only their high school but also of the entire capitalist system, they'll realize they must fight against being used by their class enemy.

Under Communism

The Elimination of Schistosomiasis in Early Revolutionary China

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease that today ravages 200 million adults and children throughout the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America and Asia. It's caused by a small worm that enters through the skin. Its egg hatches inside tiny river snails and the worms are discharged into the water. The worms' eggs are discharged in the stool of infected persons. In stool-contaminated rivers the eggs are eaten by the snails and repeat the cycle.

The worms cause holes and obstruction in the intestines, bleeding and anemia, enlargement of the spleen, malnutrition and death. Children fail to grow and develop. Adults become sterile. Suffering is unimaginable.

But in the 1950's and 1960's, Chinese workers, led by their Communist Party (CCP), eliminated the disease by preventing exposure to, and contamination of, river water and by eliminating the snails, the latter through a mass campaign. The CCP sent health workers to teach the population about the disease, inspiring the workers with understanding, firing their enthusiasm, releasing their initiative and tapping their wisdom as to how to carry out the campaign.

The disease was concentrated around the lower Yangtze River, infecting more than 10 million people. The workers were mobilized to search for and stamp out millions of snails. They burned riverside vegetation and temporarily drained waterways. Where bridges made this impractical, they sprayed poisonous chemicals sparingly. Without ending the disease cycle, those treated would just contract it again.

All these steps were developed and carried out by the farm workers, often at great personal discomfort from the boredom, heat and mosquitoes, but led and inspired particularly by past sufferers of the disease. By relying on the workers, the CCP learned from them how to spread the campaign to other regions. For years, soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, students, teachers and office workers volunteered to help.

Once prevention was underway, all infected victims had to be found and treated. Everyone was instructed to submit stool samples, but many didn't treat this seriously. Workers who had suffered from the disease publicized its horrors, producing cooperation. The sufferers were treated with medicines and, when necessary, with surgery to remove massively swollen spleens or to relieve intestinal obstruction.

In 1955, when the effort began, some wanted to rely on a few "experts" from Shanghai, whose work proceeded slowly while the disease spread. Only with the reliance on the millions of workers themselves was the disease reversed. The class struggle between those who advocated reliance on "experts" and those who relied on the masses of workers was fierce and unrelenting. Wherever the former had the upper hand the disease flourished. Only where reliance on the masses won out was the disease driven back. Eventually the snails were eliminated in wide areas of China, but constant vigilance was necessary to prevent their return.

Under communism, vigilance and continued class struggle for communist theory and practice can never be relaxed. With them, monumental achievements in health and in all other human needs became the order of the day. Horribly for the Chinese workers and for workers worldwide, the class struggle there has been reversed. Capitalism's return to China has caused a return and increase of many diseases, including cancer, heart disease and stroke, as exploitation and oppression of the workers accelerates. But this situation, while long-lasting, is nevertheless temporary. One day workers will again seize power. The capitalists and the snails will again be eliminated.

(Source: "Away With All Pests," by Joshua Horn.)

U.S. Constitution: The Illusion of Democracy

Book Review: "Toward an American Revolution -- Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions," by Jerry Fresia, South End Press, Boston, MA, 1988.

From "liberals" to "conservatives," Congress and the media have been promoting a guessing game: will closed-mouth John Roberts, Bush's nominee for Supreme Court Chief Justice "follow the Constitution" or give free rein to his right-wing political views, thus hastening the erosion of hard-won rights for women, black people and the working class in general?

Behind this game lies an unquestioned assumption, namely that the Constitution protects the working and middle classes from oppression. But Fresia shows nothing could be further from the truth.

Actually, the Constitution was intended to be, and always has been, an instrument of the capitalist class to protect its wealth from former slaves and the working class, and initially to protect the slave-owners from the northern bankers and manufacturers.

Disguised as "protecting" us from terrorism by non-governmental groups, executive orders and laws have been issued recently that permit increased wiretapping and electronic surveillance, holding anyone the government chooses in extended arbitrary detention without trial, carrying out military tribunals with no appeal rights, and many other forms of governmental oppression.

But workers cannot appeal to the Constitution for protection from these orders and laws, since, as Fresia shows, they're all completely consistent with it. Abundant quotes reveal that the men (and they were all men) who wrote the Constitution intended to protect profit-making property-owners from the working class.

Furthermore the Constitution was sneaked through by the slave-owners over the anticipated objections of certain state legislatures whose populations -- fresh from an anti-colonial war against the British aristocracy -- were up in arms over the even greater oppression they now faced at the hands of domestic property-owners.

The Constitution's first 10 amendments -- the Bill of Rights -- are often touted as a guarantee of freedom from government oppression. The Bill of Rights, however, doesn't even address the right to participate in government, only protection from it, and only for capitalists at that. And there is nothing protecting workers from their bosses. Lincoln's famous claim that this is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" was then, and continues to be, a bald-faced lie.

Fresia gives detailed proof, intentionally or not, that supports Marx's and Lenin's declaration that all states (governments) serve only the interests of the class that owns the means of production, meanwhile drowning the interests of the oppressed and exploited (literally, in New Orleans).

For example, the Constitution's authors, including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison (first, third, and fourth U.S. presidents), owned vast amounts of property, listed by Fresia, including hundreds of slaves. He proves how they designed the Constitution to protect themselves from rebellion by those workers who generate the profits -- whether through chattel or wage slavery.

Bush is only one of the latest in a huge long and dishonorable line of wealth accumulators who display total contempt for workers -- most particularly, black and now Latin workers -- generated by a fear of losing this profit-making property. Murderous racism is no accident. It was and is designed as an insurance policy against united rebellion by the oppressed and exploited.

Fresia updates it all with the secret operations of the CIA and private mercenaries who assassinate, train in torture techniques, and otherwise blaze a trail worldwide to secure U.S. corporate profits. He details how the Constitution encourages and protects these secret operations in worldwide terrorism, and enables the government to wage war for oil in the Middle East, killing millions in the process. Significantly, he also shows how the non-violent and peace-directed approach of modern protest movements prevent effective opposition to the ruling class.

In summary, the book helps destroy the illusion that somehow things have "gone drastically wrong" in recent years. The fact is that conditions have been drastically wrong for the great majority of us for over 200 years. The book's major weakness is that Fresia never poses the only solution, a working-class revolution for a communist system. For the alert reader, this conclusion is all but inescapable.

LETTERS

Military Families Must Expand Struggle

George Bush was not in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 24, but tens of thousands of angry workers, students, and soldiers were. We were there to rally, march and shout about our opposition to the oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our disgust for the bosses' racist disaster in New Orleans. Indeed, one of the march highlights of over 250,000 people was stopping in front of the White House and chanting "George Bush (Cheney, politicians, ruling class, etc.) you can't hide,...We charge you with genocide."

The marchers were delighted to join our militant chanting. There were no marshals to provide information or direction in order to move people in a safe and serious way. At times, the crowd was forced into small spaces and against cement barriers, causing people to be crushed.

One of the few groups that had organized security was the Campus Anti-War Network, with signs that read "College, Not Combat." A marcher close to a PLP member commented how elitist that sounded. A better slogan would have been, "Students, workers, and soldiers unite."

Some PLP members marched with their union, like SEIU and the ATU at D.C. Metro. Others came with church or community groups. The military groups (Military Families Speak Out-MFSO-VVAW, IVAW, Veterans for Peace, and Gold Star Families for Peace) were supposed to lead the march. But the March leaders decided to let celebrities like Jesse Jackson march at the front, with only a few military group members.

The following day, a national MFSO meeting took place. Many people had been in Crawford, Texas with Cindy Sheehan, and had been part of the cross-country bus tour that wound up in D.C. for the march. Some had loved ones who had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Their grief brought many to tears, but also brought anger against the war-makers. A few raised the question, "Where do we go from here." One person said MFSO should issue a statement of solidarity with thousands of Katrina victims, tying the racist nature of the economic draft to the bosses' criminal neglect towards these workers. The leadership cut off discussion on this idea, saying we should "stick to the issues."

Until recently, MFSO had been active mostly on the Internet, with only a few chapters sponsoring meetings or events. Emphasis has been on media coverage, and convincing politicians to call for an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal. Many felt it was time for a change. Some good ideas were raised about expanding the organization, including going to high schools and exposing the recruiters' lies, and forming groups of health care workers to advocate/agitate for better care for returning soldiers. Several people called for a campaign to integrate this mostly white, educated group. One person suggested reaching out to more oppressed military family members who live on or near the big bases.

The struggle within this group will sharpen. The leadership has many very loyal supporters. There's way too much faith in the system. We must continue to build ties with those who are ready to take the next step. Pleading with government officials or even militant marches won't get us what we need. And we are fighting for tens of thousands of families in Iraq who are grieving because their loved ones have been sacrificed on the altar of ExxonMobil, BP, Halliburton, etc.

PLP's goal is to unite workers, soldiers and students from Baghdad to Washington, DC, from Kabul to Newark, to fight for a society without any bosses and their imperialist wars. We have a long road ahead, but the seeds for this revolution are being planted in the small things we do today.

NJ Red

Worker-Student Unity On Chicago Bus to D.C.

As the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq grows daily, the economic gap between the rich and poor widens. As inter-imperialist rivalries sharpen, so does working-class discontent grow. It is for these reasons that hundreds of thousands traveled to Washington on the weekend of September 24-25 to voice their views.

While the march on Saturday may have been rather uneventful, the most memorable actions for us (two PLP members in our late teens), occurred during the trip to and from Washington.

On Friday afternoon people boarded buses throughout Chicago. Our bus was filled with local union members, professionals, high school and college students.

As we started, the bus captain asked people to come forward and say something about themselves and why they were making the trip. One worker made a profound statement when recounting a conversation he had with a co-worker. He said it was risky for him to be taking such a trip because of his health problems. "If I die at least I know I died doing something!"

A young college student stated that once she reached Washington she would link up with friends who have been vocal not just in the anti-war movement, but also in spreading awareness of the plight facing Coca-Cola workers in South America. She explained the situation and made the connection between the fight of these workers and the exploitation of our class world-wide.

When it was our turn, we said we aimed to show this was an issue far bigger than just the Bush administration. We stated we were PLP members and were fighting for a communist society, controlled by those who produce everything in society, not by a small ruling class. We answered the question of our mission by starting the chant: "Racism means: We got to fight back! Police state means: We got to fight back! Bush administration means: We got to fight back! Labor splits mean: We got to fight back! Capitalism means: We got to fight back!"

At one stop a UAW member told me of his fight against Apartheid in South Africa, how he was motivated by the actions of the South African unions, and the communists' role in that struggle. After seeing how no one person held a power greater than that of the collective, he was motivated to return and work at implementing changes in his local.

During a rest stop, one of three young sisters traveling with their mother asked where my friend was. I said my comrade had gone to eat. They asked me what the term "comrade" meant. I explained that as communists, there is a bond between us that we express by saying "comrade." This was repeated on the ride back as we distributed CHALLENGE. We declared that our mission in life -- to fight for freedom from exploitation at the hands of capitalism -- created a very strong and special bond among us. And that's why we fight for communism.

Young Red

`Bet there will be some different ideas here'

I went to the Sept. 24 anti-war demonstration in Washington with fellow comrades and others. Though the bus ride got us off to a rocky start, overall it was a good experience. Unfortunately the people in charge hadn't ordered enough buses, so some latecomers were left behind. And the bus leader did not promote collectivity among everyone.

However, this atmosphere changed when we arrived in Washington and joined the demonstration. We chanted and spread our revolutionary ideas to those around us, inspiring enthusiasm among them. They chanted along with us and some even spoke on the bullhorn

I began distributing CHALLENGES amongst the crowd. Many people took one and thanked me. Several became more interested once they saw the words "revolutionary" and "communist." One lady said, "I bet there will be some different ideas in here."

When I ran out of papers I returned to my group to get more, plunging again into the crowd, reaching people I hadn't reached before. I was proud of how many people I had exposed to revolutionary ideas and opinions.

When we were done marching we relaxed on the grass but soon I gathered up some leaflets and began distributing them to people in the area. All in all, it had been a good march and trip.

Returning to school on Monday, my English teacher asked me what I did on the weekend. I told her about the demonstration in Washington. She said she had heard about it and asked how it went. I told her it was good.

Showing this letter in CHALLENGE to my friends and other students will help bring my experience at the demonstration to them.

Brooklyn Student

`Whole gov't system has to change . . .'

On September 24, we went to the LA march protesting the war in Iraq. I chanted and helped with the bullhorn while others distributed flyers and posters. As the people ahead of me began to march, a huge rush of adrenalin came over me. I remembered one chant from May Day, "Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!" ("Workers have no borders!") We chanted that and lots of others like, "Bush and the Democrats, one and the same; fascism is the name of their game."

We've been meeting at school over lunch to organize a club on campus and to mobilize for the march. Everyone was wearing stickers we passed out two days before the march: "Stop the War in Iraq, March 9/24/2005." We distributed flyers and taped them to the walls, and more students really started getting into it.

We've also attended meetings with college students to organize a November conference against the war. They've encouraged us to raise our opinions. We've also gone to PLP study groups where we've learned about the war and Katrina and how to organize against such horrors.

Something we've discussed is "Life after Bush," because although some are organizing for a walkout to "Drive out the Bush Regime," we think it doesn't really matter who comes after Bush -- the Republicans and Democrats are pretty much the same and it's the whole government system that has to change.

West Coast Student

Immigrants in France: `Used up, thrown away'

Racism against immigrant workers is a worldwide capitalist phenomenon. A French national radio program (10/2) reported on the country's aging population of North African immigrants who entered France in the 1960's, presumably to work short-term and then return home, with no provision for them to remain here.

When reaching retirement age, they often find it difficult getting benefits due them. Very checkered employment histories require assembling lots of documents from many employers to calculate their benefits. Some have problems filling out forms, not being proficient in French. They make use of the French health system at one-third the rate of others in their age group.

Poverty-stricken, they continue to live in "foyers," public housing for laborers so rudimentary, they're smaller than studio apartments. As they age, their increasing health problems require a different kind of facility but no money is provided for that.

They don't return to their home countries for various reasons. Some are ashamed to return to their villages in Morocco or Algeria after having promised they'd be back driving a fancy car and loaded with money. But after a lifetime as a laborer here, that's impossible. Generally they feel they've failed and wasted their lives, leading to very low self-esteem, neuroses and other mental problems.

After spending nearly 40 years in France, some no longer have family or friends in North Africa. They aren't really French, but are no longer North African. They're stuck in the middle of a capitalism system which has failed them on two continents.

Some, of course, have raised a family in France and so want to stay to be with their children and grandchildren. But the latter are too poor to lift their parents out of poverty. Others also have health problems that cannot be treated in North Africa and are better off taking advantage of the French health system rather than returning to their native country, ruled by fascistic agents of one imperialist power or another.

The radio program noted that this problem has been developing for 40 years. It increasingly became clear that these immigrant workers wouldn't be returning home, leaving France with a large number of impoverished and aged day laborers. No French government ever provided for these workers.

The French have an expression for this: "Workers are treated like Kleenex -- used up and then thrown away. That's capitalism!

A Reader in France

French Subcontractors Use Bankruptcy to Screw Immigrants

My wife and I saw a French documentary on the Saint Nazaire shipyards, covering the building of the ocean liner Queen Mary 2 in 2002-2003. The film exposes subcontracting as a way for the bosses to make super-profits.

The shipyards require the subcontractors to do the same work for less and less money -- 5% less year after year. Subcontractors able to win the bids are subsidiaries of major firms. These subsidiaries are under-capitalized.

The subsidiaries hire foreign workers (from India and Romania in this film), pay them rock-bottom wages, then no wages, and then eventually go belly-up.

The shipyards are happy because they get the work done at a very cheap price. When one subcontractor goes bankrupt, they just bring in another one. The major firms are happy because they skim the profits off the subsidiaries before they go under. The workers get screwed because there's no way for them to recover their unpaid back wages once the subcontractor has gone bankrupt.

While the film explains very well how this works, and graphically depicts the human consequences for the workers, it doesn't show any way of fighting the system.

It does present French and immigrant workers supporting each other, but the French trade unions are clearly outgunned. They don't have the funds or the legal expertise to fight the bosses' scheme in the bosses' courts, and nowhere does the film pose the idea of all the workers striking together, instead of each group of foreign workers walking out individually, isolated from the others, when it is already too late, when they haven't been paid for weeks or months, and when their subcontractor is about to file for bankruptcy,

A Friend from France

Communist Future Not `Utopian'

The Oct. 5 letter criticizing the Sept. 21st "Under Communism" article on Katrina is wrong and superficial. For example, the letter states:

* "First, even if we're living in a pure communist world, at least some people will die during any disaster, even with prevention." This is wrong. A hurricane is predicted long in advance. Cuba evacuates everybody from hurricanes, normally without loss of live. Is Cuba "utopia"?

* "Thus, our ability to help those experiencing natural disasters would face severe limits" because of capitalists' viciousness. Sure, but that's true about everything. The example of Cuba is relevant here too. The Katrina article was not about "superior technique" at all, or any technique. Choosing to protect and defend the working class instead of profits is not "technique," but politics.

As for the characterization that the Katrina article was "utopian," I'd add, "Why should people become communists? Why should we give our lives fighting for it?" The vision of a communist society is that of a shining, wonderful future. "Utopian" implies a lack of struggle. Communist society will be full of struggle, but struggle for a better world and life for all workers.

This is an immensely inspiring vision. We must hold out this bright future to inspire ourselves and others. Our vision of the future is what gives us the strength to work for communism in the present. We should depict the communist future as infinitely preferable to the capitalist present and future, because it IS infinitely better and more beautiful. To call this inspiring vision "utopian" is a form of cynicism.

I thought the original article was very good.

N.J. reader

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Says abuse should be blamed on higher-ups

WASHINGTON, Sept.27 -- An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating [of]...higher-ranking officers....

In a Sept. 18 letter to the senators, Captain Fishback wrote, "Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."

...Investigators who have questioned him in the past 10 days seemed to be less interested in individuals he identified in his chain of command who allegedly committed the abuses....

"I'm...concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."

...When he took his complaints to his immediate superiors, Captain Fishback said his company commander cautioned him to "remember the honor of the unit is at stake." (NYT, 9/28)

Louisiana worker gives up on gov't aid

...Dartanian Sanders, a laborer from Abita Springs. LA.,...spent three days driving through two states seeking help for his family. "The lesson is...counting on the government in an emergency is like sending your kids to the candy store where the guy is selling drugs." (NYT, 9/24)

Iraq: Saudi Prince warns of regional war

WASHINGTON, Sept.22 -- Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war.

The prince said...the potential disintegration of Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish states would "bring other countries in the region into the conflict."

Turkey, he noted, has long threatened to send troops into northern Iraq if the Kurds there declare independence. Iran, he asserted, is already sending money and weapons into the Shitte-controlled south of Iraq.... (NYT, 9/23)

In US Jails, 9,700 were lifers before age 18

About 9,700 American prisoners are serving life sentences for crimes they committed before they could vote, serve on a jury or gamble at a casino -- in short, before they turned 18. More than a fifth have no chance of parole....

"It broke my heart," said Steven Sharp, [jury] foreman... "It's terrible to put a 15-year-old behind bars forever."

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does that. Life without parole, the most severe form of life sentence, is theoretically available for juvenile criminals in about a dozen countries. But a report to be issued on Oct. 12. by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found juveniles serving such sentences in only three others. Israel has seven, South Africa has four and Tanzania has one.

...More than 350 of them were 15 or younger....

Juvenile lifers are overwhelmingly male and mostly black... (NYT, 10/3)

Foreign investment leaves Africa worse off

The large inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa since 2000 looks good on paper but is unlikely to deliver lasting benefits to Africans, according to a United Nations report.

"...the resulting outflow of profits may be so high as to make it a substantial cost. Production...displaces local firms."

Multinationals often shield profits from a developing country's tax authorities depriving it of vital revenues. Mr Kozul-Wright said capital flight from Africa, by rich people or multinationals, was a huge problem....

...The global tax avoidance industry causes $500bn a year to flow out of developing countries, dwarfing the $78bn annual aid inflow. (GW, 9/29)

For 91% of poorest, no college degree

...The gap between rich and poor is widening. Students in the poorest quarter of the population have an 8.6 percent chance of getting a college degree. Students in the top quarter have a 74.9 percent chance. (NYT, 9/25)

Pols fail, so Religion helps rulers fool us

Most people believe that their government does not act according to their wishes, a worldwide opinion survey shows. Lack of confidence in governments is highest in the former Soviet bloc, where 75% say their country is not governed by the will of the people. But similar views are held by most Europeans (64%) and North Americans (60%).

...Worldwide, politicians represent the least trusted occupation, scoring only 13%....In the US 50% trust religious leaders and 40% would give them more power. (GW, 9/29)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, October 5, 2005

Information: 05 October 2005 728 hits

a href="#Bosses’ Racism the Real Disaster for workers">"osses’ Racism the Real Disaster for workers

a href="#Liberals’ Blueprint for a Police State">"iberals’ Blueprint for a Police State

a href="#Liberals Use Katrina To Push ‘National Service’">Li"erals Use Katrina To Push ‘National Service’

Fickle Workers?

Turning Fickle Into Fight . . .
a href="#…And Fight into Revolution">"And Fight into Revolution

a href="#U.S. Hides GIs’ Huge Mental Casualties">".S. Hides GIs’ Huge Mental Casualties

a href="#Stern’s Pro-Boss Politics Mirror Nazi’s ‘Labor Front’">Stern’" Pro-Boss Politics Mirror Nazi’s ‘Labor Front’

Grinding Down The Working Class

D.C. Metro Workers Reject Pro-War Patriotism at Union Conference

a href="#Protest Links Racist Attacks on Katrina’s Victims to Rulers’ War in Iraq">Pr"test Links Racist Attacks on Katrina’s Victims to Rulers’ War in Iraq

Nationalist Pols Undercut Militant March vs. Racist Minutemen

Stories of Police Terror and Worker Solidarity in New Orleans

a href="#Immigrant Workers: ‘Braceros’, Cannon Fodder or Revolutionaries?">Im"igrant Workers: ‘Braceros’, Cannon Fodder or Revolutionaries?

a href="#GI’s in Iraq Get Pizza, Laptops and Death by Mortar">"I’s in Iraq Get Pizza, Laptops and Death by Mortar

Raise Money for Anti-Racist Fighters

a href="#Liberals Aim to Turn Cindy Sheehan’s Fight into ‘Anybody-but-Bush’">Libe"als Aim to Turn Cindy Sheehan’s Fight into ‘Anybody-but-Bush’

1,500 Students Walk Out Against Prison-like School

U.S. Constitution: Document of, by and for the Ruling Class

a href="#‘Diamonds Are Forever’ Soaked in Blood">‘D"amonds Are Forever’ Soaked in Blood

Workers are the Real 'Saints'

UNDER COMMUNISM - China eliminated syphilis in the early years of the revolution.

LETTERS

PLP Impresses D.C. Metro Worker

a href="#PL’ers Help Stop Transportation Firings">"L’ers Help Stop Transportation Firings

Primary Lessons of Katrina

Touts Book on Big Bill Haywood Trial

No Cops Under Communism

Becoming Fighters for Communism

a href="#Politics Primary in Fighting ‘Natural’ Disasters">Po"itics Primary in Fighting ‘Natural’ Disasters

Challenge Correction:

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Black enlistment drops by 40 percent
Don’t look to Democrats to change US plan
Using hurricane as excuse for low wages
Top bosses grab $400 to worker’s $1
Russia Counter-Revolution Bleeds the People
Kill Chavez? In ’03 Robertson had other idea
High-tech army fails imperialist task

a name="Bosses’ Racism the Real Disaster for workers">">"osses’ Racism the Real Disaster for workers

The profit system and its racism caused most of the death and misery following hurricane Katrina. Millions have seen the racist criminal nature of the U.S. bosses. But it’s not just Bush or some inept bureaucrats. Workers and their allies must be won to see that it’s the whole capitalist system, and that the only long-range answer is to fight for a society without bosses and their racism and profit wars. That answer is communism.

Tens of thousands, mostly black workers, could have been evacuated from the storm’s path. Dams could have been built and levees reinforced years ago. Most of the damage and suffering could have been anticipated and prevented.

But capitalism once again proved that maximum profits and the war budget trump human sacrifice. Then, after failing to avert the avoidable, government at every level subjected the stricken to inhuman conditions. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands face unemployment in a "refugee crisis" without precedent in U.S. history. (New York Times, 9/11)

The Bush gang stands as guilty of mass murder by neglect in the U.S. Gulf Coast as they are of mass murder by gunfire and bombing in their filthy Persian Gulf oil war. Now the liberal politicians and media are lambasting them for their callous racism, greed and refusal to heed decades-long warnings pointing to such a catastrophe. Correct. But if these bosses are pushing this, something else is afoot here.

I name="t’s More Than Bush…"></">t’" More Than Bush…

Beware of the liberals. In fact, the liberal bosses pose a far greater danger to our class than Bush & Co. They want to channel popular outrage at the Katrina atrocity, and mass solidarity with its victims, into demands for a stronger police state, beefed-up armed forces and a general militarization of society. Bush’s presidency has proved woefully ineffective in carrying out the liberals’ agenda for U.S. world domination. The Iraq quagmire shows that the forces the Bush White House has fielded don’t meet today’s challenges, let alone bigger future conflicts U.S. imperialism is bound to face.

The mass indignation and charity inspired by Katrina show that millions of U.S. workers have a deep aspiration to serve the people. This is good. But the liberals want to use that for an electoral movement to "throw the rascals out" of Washington and, worse yet, for a broad patriotic mobilization to fight and die for imperialism.

The storm’s track was known for days before it hit. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the city evacuated but failed to provide for the 50,000 mainly black and poor households with no independent means of transportation. Hundreds of school and city transit buses sat in their lots. Yet the liberal media are now glorifying Nagin because he’s stridently criticized the Bush mob.

For half a century, scientists warned that New Orleans’ dams and levees wouldn’t withstand a powerful hurricane. In 1998, engineers devised "Coast 2050," a plan involving massive sea gates, like those built in the Netherlands after its 1953 disaster. Those gates might have saved the city. But the plan’s price tag was too high for Congress. In fact, Federal flood control spending for S.E. Louisiana was slashed in half between 2001 and 2005. As a result, the Army Corps of Engineers discontinued work on the levee system that could have protected New Orleans from flooding.

a name="Liberals’ Blueprint for a Police State">">"iberals’ Blueprint for a Police State

CHALLENGE readers will remember the Hart-Rudman Commission’s reports on National Security in the 21st Century — the liberal rulers’ "bi-partisan" blueprint for 20 years of a home-front police state and ever-widening wars to defend U.S. world domination, particularly of oil. Among other things, these reports proposed the National Guard function as a homeland Gestapo. Well, 40% of the Louisiana and Mississippi Guards are now in Iraq. A New York Times editorial (9/2) restated the Hart-Rudman thesis: "…the National Guard must be treated as America’s most essential homeland security force, not as some kind of military piggy bank for the Pentagon to raid for long-term overseas missions." For those, said the Times, "America clearly needs a larger active-duty Army."

From the beginning, the government’s inept response has been more of a military occupation than a relief effort. The Pentagon has shoved aside traditional aid organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army. While tens of thousands of victims ashore craved food and water, the Navy and Coast Guard immediately launched their largest domestic maneuvers since World War II, dispatching ships to secure oil rigs and shipping lanes.

But the liberals want still further militarization; they’re getting some. On September 9, Homeland Security replaced incompetent Bush crony Michael Brown with Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen as chief of FEMA operations along the Gulf. New York Senator Hillary Clinton, a leading candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, has introduced legislation to restore FEMA’s cabinet-level status and draw its top officials from the ranks of generals, admirals or police commissioners.

Liberal bosses also hope to use Katrina to reverse Bush’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich policy because it hampers imperialism’s ability to wage wars and implement a domestic police state. Alluding to the intensifying rivalry among the world’s top imperialists, the Times intoned (9/2): "Congress and the president had better get the message: an extraordinary time is upon the nation. The annihilation in New Orleans is an irrefutable sign that the national tax-cut party is over. So is the idea that Americans cannot be required to accept sacrifice or inconvenience."

a name="Liberals Use Katrina To Push ‘National Service’"></">Li"erals Use Katrina To Push ‘National Service’

But the liberals need millions of workers willing to give their labor power and lives freely to the capitalist state. On Labor Day, the Times cynically seized on the Katrina disaster to boost the liberals’ push for "national service," asking for Labor Day to be turned into "a day of national service." (See CHALLENGE, 9/21, p. 2). This is the same plan which flopped with the Kerry campaign.

But helping storm victims is not the service the liberal rulers really want or need. The 12 years of the liberal Carter and Clinton presidencies saw many opportunities to repair and improve New Orleans’ levees and dams.

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf, Demopublicans Call for More War

On September 7, as thousands festered and died in filth, a group of highly-placed liberal Democrat and Republican "statesmen" — "Partnership for a Secure America" — placed a full-page in the New York Times urging the nation to keep its eye on the imperialist ball. Warmakers and fascists among the signers included former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, as well as Hart and Rudman themselves. The ad pointedly didn’t mention the hurricane. Instead, it urged that leaders "from across the political spectrum…come together to develop a bi-partisan national strategy to address the terrorist threat." They called for more U.S. troops and more "allies" (i.e., European and other bosses whom U.S. imperialists might cut in on Iraqi oil profits) to achieve decisive victory in their current bloodbaths. The reasoning: "outcomes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan will affect global security for decades to come." This "Partnership" is bankrolled by the liberal, imperialist Rockefeller and Soros foundations, among others.

The rulers want to channel the sympathy for Katrina’s victims into its opposite: a deadly mass movement to help their class rule the world. The Katrina’s destruction will pale before the hundreds of millions of corpses imperialism will pile up in its pursuit of this goal. Charity won’t stop the bosses. Neither will an election that replaces Bush with a Democrat. A system that can build nuclear weapons and can murder workers by the millions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam but can’t repair dams and levees to protect workers and can’t transport children and old people out of harm’s way doesn’t deserve to exist. A system which cannot exist without launching wars that devastate humanity doesn’t deserve to survive.

Millions of U.S. workers have proved after Katrina that their hearts are in the right place. Many are open to radical ideas: disgust and anger at the Bush crowd’s antics have generated potential desire to discover the catastrophe’s true underlying causes and to take useful action. This mood provides an important opportunity for PLP. The aspiration to serve the people is crucial, but is insufficient. A communist analysis and communist practice are necessary to make it a reality for the working class. The best way to honor the victims of this and future capitalist atrocities is to build the PLP. Communism is a difficult goal, but it’s the only one worth fighting for — and eventually winnable.

Boeing Strikers Push Unity with Northwest Walkout, Katrina Victims

SEATTLE, WA, Sept. 16 — Contradictions have sharpened as the Boeing strike enters its third week. From the discussions and debates at union meetings and picket lines, barbershops, church fund-raisers for Katrina victims, breakfast and lunch meetings, one can tell strikers are coming to terms with the possibility of a long strike. At this date, no negotiations are scheduled.

Our questions — while inspired by the strike — go farther. How to explain the recent passivity of the U.S. working class? How does New Orleans, which most agree has exposed U.S. capitalism’s racism and anti-working class bias, relate to our struggle? Just who is our enemy? Certainly, Boeing CEO McNerney is, with his millions in salary and supplemental retirement. But what about a system that attacks us all to finance the bosses’ oil wars? Getting answers to these questions right will have as much to do with determining our future as the pension, medical and work-rules contained in the final contract settlement.

Fickle Workers?

"I think you will have trouble with scabs if this continues," warned a striker at a recent breakfast, noting that this is the first big industrial strike in a while. "Others fought before us, but too many are not willing to really fight now. I hate to say this, but I think your fellow workers are too fickle."

That kept the water boiling for a while! Everybody at the table had an opinion. Some argued that the only way to understand this behavior is to realize that we all have contradictions — contradictions between capitalist individualism and communist working-class consciousness. Fifty years of business unionism, combined with abject revisionism (acceptance of capitalist ideas in the erstwhile communist parties) that did in the old communist movement, have taken their toll.

"We don’t have the fight and fire deep in our soul that our predecessors had," said another striker, "We have to find that."

The working class will find that fight and fire when we develop a revolutionary communist vision of the future. Today, we must focus on recruiting and developing Party members who can lead the fight for this vision. They, in turn, must increase the circulation of our revolutionary communist paper, CHALLENGE, through expanding our network of readers and sellers. These networks will, in all likelihood, be the hub of any attempt to sharpen the struggle, like mass picket lines to stop scabs.

Good things happen when workers who are under increasing attack regularly read CHALLENGE. "They are always doing this," said one 62- year-old white striker and a relatively new reader, referring to the racist portrayal of black flood victims in New Orleans as looters. "I think it was you [a comrade] who showed me those articles on how the bosses’ media uses race to divide workers. You’d think we’d get it by now!"

Turning Fickle Into Fight . . .

One comrade striker told how she brought leaflets to her hair salon. Her half-hour appointment lasted hours. Her hair dresser took the flyers that urged "strike against a system that uses race and class to leave workers behind" and gave them to every customer. "She may not know it now, but she has a lot of communist ideas," said our comrade. (Strikers distributed a thousand of these flyers, linking New Orleans, our strike and the bosses’ oil wars, despite not being inside the plants.)

Discussions at the salon about New Orleans and the Boeing strike mixed with debates about racism on the job. "On my job, Mexicans told the boss we weren’t working hard enough," complained a black woman.

"Pitting one race against another makes the boss happy," answered our comrade. "We want to send the boss home stressed and unhappy so we’ve got to talk to these workers and beat racism". The hair dresser backed her up.

Strikers built on this concept of working-class unity at various union meetings during the last two weeks. The union misleaders’ concept of unity means supporting them in negotiations. They’ve staged intimidating shows of power at these meetings.

Apparently, not intimidating enough! Some rank-and-filers spoke about supporting the Northwest Airline strikers, which the leadership refused to do. The latter actually shut the meeting down before a resolution could be brought up. Others linked our struggle to New Orleans, saying that the mostly black workers "left behind" during the flood and in the Superdome had the same enemy as we did. The racist exploitation in subcontractor plants was detailed. All the gobbledygook about "how we are all Americans" was ridiculed. More still proposed additional ways to support Northwest strikers and Katrina flood victims. The hall burst into applause as one speaker ended, "Same enemy, same fight, all the world’s workers must unite!"

a name="…And Fight into Revolution">">"And Fight into Revolution

But even this applause revealed the contradictions within us. The same strikers who applauded the call for international working-class unity also applauded the union leadership’s nationalist, narrow trade union approach.

The bosses have state power now. Their labor lieutenants control the unions. It should be no surprise that their ideology dominates.

To turn this around we must understand the contradictions brought out by the strike in each and every one of us. The bosses want us to believe the lie that workers can’t be revolutionary leaders and that what we do doesn’t really matter. Quite the contrary, each worker who takes up the mantle of party membership and revolutionary leadership prepares for the day when our class thinks and acts in our own interests. Over time, our revolutionary vision will dominate. We will find the "fight and fire." Winning means preparing our class to take power.

U.S. Imperialism Attacks Workers from Baghdad to Boeing

Knowing that workers want to fight for something bigger than themselves, the union hacks frame this Boeing strike as a "fight for American workers." (Apparently, the hacks definition of "American" workers excludes Northwest strikers; Wichita commercial workers who were forced to vote and vote again until they agreed to wage, benefit and job cuts; and Lockheed strikers who the union was furious at because they overrode the hacks’ recommendation to accept the elimination of retiree medical benefits for new hires.) Even so, the term "American workers" excludes the majority of our class — and potential allies — not just in the U.S. but also throughout North and South America. Meanwhile, it sets us up for patriotic appeals to buttress the bosses’ oil wars, like in Iraq.

The chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), the bosses’ main foreign policy think-tank, makes the case perfectly clear. He, along with his friends on the Boeing Board of Directors who are also CFR directors, says we must prepare for more "stunningly expensive" wars to control Mid-East oil. We have to choose, according to the bosses’ logic, "between retirement security and national security." Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board concludes "competitive outsourcing could be the answer" to the bosses’ funding problems. (Aerospace Daily, 2/3/2000)

We have everything in common with the workers in Baghdad, and nothing with CEO McNerney and the bosses on the CFR board. The question for us is: which class do we want the fruits of labor to serve — the bosses and their oil wars for imperialist domination or the worlds’ workers?

a name="U.S. Hides GIs’ Huge Mental Casualties">">".S. Hides GIs’ Huge Mental Casualties

It’s the toll the Department of Defense isn’t adding up for you.

[The latest] toll everyone knew was 1,834—Americans dead in combat. According to the Pentagon, the toll of war wounded was 13,877.

But TV’s The Mclaughlin Group doggedly reports another casualty toll….

When one adds mental illness to the mix, the cumulative casualty toll exceeds 43,200, reports show.

That’s a stunning figure. With a fighting force in the vicinity of 200,000 at any one time, that would make for one of the highest percentile casualty counts in modern warfare. (COX newspapers)

a name="Stern’s Pro-Boss Politics Mirror Nazi’s ‘Labor Front’"></a>St"rn’s Pro-Boss Politics Mirror Nazi’s ‘Labor Front’

(Our last issue exposed SEIU chief Andrew Strern’s intimate tie-in with the ruling class. Sitting on the Rockefeller/Ford-funded Aspen Domestic Strategy Group, Stern helps set these bosses’ policies in winning workers to back U.S. imperialism worldwide. Having split from Sweeney’s AFL-CIO, Stern is pushing the drafting of undocumented workers in exchange for citizenship, with the unions acting as draft boards. Stern wants to help the rulers control millions of immigrants by exploiting them in low-wage war production plants and using them as cannon fodder in the U.S. Army)

Unions proved very useful in mobilizing for World War II. The rulers entertain a similar hope for them now, as global conflicts loom over the horizon. But the movement Stern spearheads more resembles the German model for fascism than the U.S. model of the 1930’s and 1940’s. At that time, millions of U.S. workers in largely red-led unions sincerely believed they were fighting against fascism, despite the disastrous United Front policy of the Communist Party. Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party, the Nazis, on the other hand, abolished existing unions from the outset and set up an all-encompassing "Labor Front" with goals inseparable from German imperialism. Stern’s open collaboration with top capitalists on matters of national service, national security, and competitiveness forms part of broader plans to spill workers’ blood so that U.S. imperialism reigns supreme.

Hitler and his bosses succeeded temporarily — before the Soviet Red Army ground them into dust — because they had managed to win the bulk of the German working class to fight and die for Nazi ideology. Although the Stern breakaway reflects a similar aspiration on the part of U.S. liberal imperialists, their chances for success are far from certain. It’s been a long time since U.S. workers enthusiastically went to war for this rotten system. By the end of World War II, GIs were holding mass demonstrations against the idea of invading the Soviet Union or China. The Korean war saw a significant number of desertions and defections. The bosses’ Vietnam genocide gave its name to a "syndrome" that described mass rebellion, desertion, defection, and violence by U.S. troops against their own officers. U.S. soldiers’ morale today in Iraq is declining, with desertions and AWOL cases mounting.

"Vietnam Syndrome" therefore remains a significant monkey on the rulers’ back. Furthermore, the Stern gang has so far concentrated on service workers, who represent a growing sector of the economy and are extremely important. However, the big prize from the bosses’ viewpoint remains the workers in heavy industry, telecommunications, aerospace, and auto — the major war industries. The rulers have enjoyed relative labor peace for many years on this front. For this they can thank AFL-CIO bigwigs like Sweeney and the collapse of the old communist movement.

Grinding Down The Working Class

But, as the Stern phenomenon is attempting to show, passivity is no longer enough to meet imperialism’s needs. The bosses now require several generations of industrial and service workers in the tens of millions ready to kill and die to keep the U.S. on top. For years, the rulers have attempted to bribe large sections of the working class with the promise of material benefits like home ownership and the latest gadgets — cellphones, computers, whatever fad comes down the pike. Stern & Co., along with the think-tanks behind Hart-Rudman, are looking to replace this crass, individualistic consumerism with a modernized version of Hitlerite ideology, a kind of fascist "collective" spirit based on nationalism and sacrifice for whatever mask they put over their need to spill blood for maximum profit. This is all the more important to them as they have begun the process of grinding down the entire working class economically, not just millions of the most oppressed workers, who have had to live for years with high unemployment, little or no health insurance, etc. The rulers need desperately for us to march enthusiastically toward our own doom.

Well, the jury’s still out on their chances for success. The direction the working class takes in the coming years will determine the outcome. Ideology and the political organization that flows from it will determine that direction. Stern & Co. represent an early version of 21st century U.S. "National Socialism. "Two political errors can arise from our reaction to the Stern phenomenon. One is falling for it. The other is underestimating its danger.

The only antidote to this danger is the growth of the Progressive Labor Party and revolutionary communist consciousness and militancy among the same sections of the working class the Stern gang and its bosses are attempting to win.

D.C. Metro Workers Reject Pro-War Patriotism at Union Conference

DENVER—The contrast between communist and capitalist leadership stood out sharply at a recent conference for leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). Our group from the Washington, D.C. Metro Local of the ATU was multi-racial, multi-generational, and as one young worker said, "the future of Local 689." We went with the goal of building political consciousness among the Metro workers who attended and on raising the war in Iraq with the other locals there. This was the exact opposite with the thinly-veiled pro-capitalist transit "leaders," promoting spending all their members’ money on electing politicians, who they even admitted are hard to hold accountable.

The union hack opening the proceedings set the tone by announcing the conference theme: "being under threat." He said we live in "daily danger of attacks on our freedom and our way of life." From whom? The bosses and their attacks on unions? Or from the ruling class’s attack on the workers in New Orleans? No, he was explicitly advocating the racist "war on terrorism."

Every morning we were told to stand for the national anthems of Canada and the U.S. and then to remain standing for a moment of silent prayer. Many Metro workers were offended by both the flag-saluting and the prayer. Two of our members refused to stand.

On the closing day, one misleader gave a speech about the flag, how it "stands for freedom and respect for the soldiers who have died fighting for that freedom." When the conference stood to applaud this pro-imperialist harangue, the entire contingent of Local 689 members remained seated. It was a great show of solidarity and power.

One comrade took the microphone to say, "When the U.S. and Russian soldiers met at the Elbe [River in Germany] in World War II, they sang the Internationale. They didn’t salute different flags; they united as workers under the red flag." Another comrade said, "The flag to me stands as a symbol of the oppression in this country. As a black man, I know that flag makes me three-fifths of a man. We were brought here in chains and suffered under that symbol of freedom."

When he finished, someone from another local shouted, "Want a plane ticket?" Six members of local 689 approached this racist and demanded a clarification. He backed off, stating he didn’t mean anything by his comment and that he was "a Native American."

Besides us, the only other mention of the war in Iraq came from the speaker on "terrorism and how to spot it." He distributed a list of "the worst offenders" of "state-sponsored terrorism" and the U.S. was not on it, causing someone to yell out, "the CIA!"

Near the end of the conference, one young Metro worker cited the need for solidarity between young and old workers, and for a fight against racist wage progressions. His speaking affected the other young workers he was working with; they saw his leadership and the need to speak out.

Another older comrade said the future of the labor movement shouldn’t rely on begging politicians, but on raising class consciousness through mass actions and demonstrations. He said the labor movement needs to be in the forefront of fighting the divisions within the working class such as racism and anti-immigrant attacks.

All this was an eye-opening experience for many workers in our contingent. It was very clear that these union leaders didn’t want to change society at all, or even build the labor movement. As one young worker commented, "They’re held bondage to their paychecks and nice suits and houses."

The conversations throughout the conference were the most important aspect of attending. We built commitment to organizing for the upcoming anti-war march in D.C., and built leadership among the younger workers who attended. Other local unions responded to our ideas and will be attending the anti-war rally at the union hall. We will continue to work with them to build class consciousness in the union and in our neighborhoods.

a name="Protest Links Racist Attacks on Katrina’s Victims to Rulers’ War in Iraq"></">Pr"test Links Racist Attacks on Katrina’s Victims to Rulers’ War in Iraq

NEWARK, NJ, Sept. 9 — Demonstrating at the Federal Building, over 50 college students, workers and community activists protested the racist and anti-working class treatment of our fellow workers in Louisiana and Mississippi. Linking the events of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, PLP members emphasized that racism and imperialism are not just part of the Bush administration, but two elements necessary to capitalism. A speaker also criticized the demand, "Troops out of Iraq, Troops into New Orleans," saying the National Guard’s role is to protect the bosses from working-class fight-backs, not to protect workers from these disasters. Actually the rulers are using the Katrina disaster to increasingly militarize civil society (see front-page article).

Although many participants were from liberal-led organizations, they joined chants, such as "From New Orleans to Iraq, the working class must fight back," and "Racism here, imperialism there; the struggle is growing everywhere." People responded very positively whenever speakers indicted capitalism, rather than merely blaming the Bush Administration. People bought 100 CHALLENGES.

The multi-racial demonstration of both young and old showed the importance of developing ties in these organizations, on the job, on campuses and in our communities. This led to the size and character of the rally. More importantly, it demonstrated that the working class is open to real left ideas. While many don’t have a communist analysis of capitalism, Katrina enabled them to see there’s a problem with "the system," that we need to do more than impeach Bush, a common call just weeks before this action.

Right now it’s important to talk to our friends, classmates and co-workers about events in Louisiana and Mississippi, and explain that one cannot talk about "race and class" without connecting them to how capitalism uses racism to divide and exploit all workers. As these events have shown, capitalism is not the answer for the working class, whether in Iraq or New Orleans. This is why we need to build a communist party that will represent the interests of workers worldwide. The bosses will fight back with everything they have to make sure our class doesn’t take state power, so we must fight back even harder to make sure it happens.

Nationalist Pols Undercut Militant March vs. Racist Minutemen

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 17 — One thousand people from many Texas cities marched against the racist Minutemen at the State Capitol today. The Minutemen are a vigilante group like the Klan who harass and threaten immigrant workers along the border and at day labor sites from California to New York, claiming to be protecting jobs for white workers. Some politicians are trying to deputize these thugs to enlarge the Border Patrol.

Many workers and students joined the march along the route. Marchers chanted, "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Racist Minutemen Have Got to Go." Near the Capitol, a half dozen racist thugs chanted anti-immigrant and anti-communist filth. They were surrounded by around 30 marchers, including PL students, who shouted, "Fight capitalism, not other workers," shutting them down until they finally left.

Some marchers questioned how much these thugs represent white workers’ sentiment. But just as with most KKK appearances, only five or six were ready to show up. Clearly these vigilantes are class enemies who should be physically smashed when they appear, in order to help stop a fascist movement from growing in the U.S.

Although the march was tremendously anti-racist, it was organized and controlled by liberal Mexican and Chicano groups like LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), and Hispanic AFL-CIO organizers who tried to turn the day into a nationalist and cultural festival. After excellent chants opposing racism and defending undocumented immigrants, these misleaders would shout, "Viva La Raza," "Viva South America" and "Viva Mexico." Unity of all workers from all nations was absent. There were almost no black marchers, no mention of immigrants from Asia and Africa nor of the Katrina victims (mainly blacks but also many immigrant and white workers). Only the PLP leaflet explained how anti-immigrant racism and capitalist-created borders hurt ALL workers and drive down everyone’s wages. The March organizers tried to tell the crowd that immigrants only take away jobs from dishwashers, or only take the jobs that no one else wants. These patriotic sellouts’ only argument was that immigrants from South America "deserve" to be in the U.S. and take part in the "American Dream."

Most important, speakers from the podium never said that borders serve the rich and should be destroyed. They never uttered the word "capitalism." But many, many marchers were open to ideas of international solidarity and destruction of the capitalist profit system because they have seen how borders serve the rich. Only the PL leaflet explained the need to destroy the profit system and its borders and build true communism. The March leaders’ speeches implored listeners to vote for liberal politicians, asking everyone to beg Hillary Clinton and her friends in Congress to help immigrants by passing the Dream Act. This would allow young undocumented people to become "legal" by attending college or most likely by joining the Army since many won’t meet the college requirements.

One young student speaker pleaded with the crowd to support the Dream Act so she could become a nurse practitioner, explaining that she had already lived the "American Dream" by attending college. She was blind to the fact that under such legislation, hundreds of thousands would become easier to control and deport while tens of thousands would be forced to fight and die in Iraq and elsewhere in exchange for every college student who might get a degree and a job.

But the marchers’ anti-racist and anti-vigilante enthusiasm was great. PL’ers met many people who can be won away from fake electoral reformism and nationalism to international working-class unity against capitalists everywhere.

Stories of Police Terror and Worker Solidarity in New Orleans

Much of the media coverage on the destruction in New Orleans has been a racist smear of workers suffering from the flood, depicting them either as helpless and inept or as thieves and criminals. "Sixty Minutes" on CBS (9/11) also showed the cops as "heroes," a mighty tough sell, considering that one-third of the force ran away. Interviews with workers trapped in the city reveal the true picture, however: the cops and National Guards threatened the lives of workers trying to escape or just survive, while workers organized themselves, their sharing saving many who would have died. Some were broadcast on the NPR program "This American Life" (9/9).

Denise Marsh, a black worker at the city’s Memorial Hospital rode out the hurricane in her home after she was kicked out of her hospital room to make way for two white nurses. After the levees broke, she spent two days at the hospital in rising water, and was taken by boat to the Convention Center, a sewer with an overwhelming smell. Every few hours the cops told them busses would come, lining them up in the sun without food and water. Armed police and Guards kept passing by with water, but never stopped.

Young men with guns broke into stores on St. Charles Street and got juice for babies, food, water and clothes, distributing them and trying to secure the area, fanning old people to keep them cool. They were well organized and thoughtful, Marsh said, distributing food, but were labeled "animals." "I was touched by them," she said. Some people tried to cross the bridge into Algiers, which was dry and had power. Armed National Guards turned them back, under Governor’s orders to shoot to kill.

Another story which has received wide attention came from several EMTs from San Francisco, in New Orleans for a convention.The conventioneers pooled their money to hire busses, but the latter were commandeered by the Guard. They camped near a police command center, but the cops told them their busses were across the bridge in Gretna. They walked miles through town, their numbers growing to 1,000 by the time they reached the bridge. Armed Gretna sheriffs fired over their heads, threatening to shoot them if they advanced further. The sheriffs told them, "we’re not turning the west bank into another Superdome," which the EMTs understood as "code words for racism."

In the pouring rain, they gathered on an expressway. sharing water from a stolen water truck. "Blessed are the people who loot," said one EMT. The driver took as many as would fit in the truck. Those left gathered food from a wrecked National Guard truck, cleaned up the area, and built an improvised bathroom. At nightfall, a Gretna sheriff drove them off at gunpoint: ""Git the f--- off this freeway." The EMTs hid in an abandoned bus until daylight. In the morning they phoned someone from the firefighters’ union, who arranged for them to cross the bridge.

A high school student who survived days without food and water summed up what she learned: "I didn't know it was a crime to be poor and the punishment was death."

These stories show that the bosses’ government was not just inept or indifferent to the people’s suffering but used its armed force to enforce racism and stop workers’ efforts to save themselves. This will be the future for millions of workers until we do away with the real disaster, the capitalist system.

a name="Immigrant Workers: ‘Braceros’, Cannon Fodder or Revolutionaries?"></">Im"igrant Workers: ‘Braceros’, Cannon Fodder or Revolutionaries?

Two articles in CHALLENGE, (8/17 AND 9/7) about the industrial working class must also address the plight and importance of immigrant workers in the class struggle. Contrary to the racist smokescreen of fascist groups like the Minutemen and Save Our State, and the like-minded right-wing politicians who advocate strengthening "our" borders, U.S. imperialists need this source of cheap labor and working-class cannon fodder. Without it they’d find it very difficult to compete against China’s low-priced products and to wage imperialist wars. This stubborn fact doesn’t escape the liberal bosses and policy-makers.

As detailed in CHALLENGE (7/20/05 editorial), Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) have introduced a bi-partisan immigration bill to secure cheap labor for war industries and millions of rank-and-file troops for their war agenda, stem the influx of undocumented workers (in favor of "regulated," "more manageable" workers), and expand their fascist plans for the entire U.S. working class.

Liberal bosses have also mobilized their labor lackeys. A Brookings Institution essay by SEIU president and Change to Win coalition leader Andrew Stern suggests, "Why not make a two-year commitment to national service one pathway to legalization. Union leaders and employers together could identify eligible current and future workers…." (United We Serve) The bosses’ plans to win immigrant workers to their imperialist agenda and persuade them that exploitation is a sacrifice for "their" country are clear. But it’s also clear that the revolutionary potential of this most intensely exploited sector of the working class, when empowered with communist analysis, could help lead the working class and PLP.

Since all ideas come from life, examining conditions for industrial immigrant workers in the factory where I work reveal "temps" who receive no benefits, have absolutely no job security, and receive on average $2 to $3 less pay per hour than regular workers. They are mostly undocumented immigrants hired through employment agencies in order to free the companies who exploit them from any legal entanglements. For the bosses these workers are more disposable than the rest of us and can be exploited for anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, without the added costs of medical insurance, pensions, vacations or even sick days, and then are discarded without fear of repercussions. One co-worker has been employed for seven months without benefits, while the bosses keep counseling "patience."

Some temps are legal-resident immigrants, but they’re exploited as much as those without green cards because they’re so busy working they can’t learn English. "I know they shouldn’t treat us this way," says another, "but I can’t even defend myself. They reprimand me in English; how can I argue with them?" While the bosses dangle the carrot of long-term employment to keep temp workers loyal, these workers rarely become permanent.

The "fortunate" immigrant workers who’ve learned English and have green cards get to slave away as "permanent" workers — until the next round of layoffs. They fill the ranks of workers described in the previous articles. Immigrants from more than seven countries comprise at least 60% of the workforce in this factory, indicating the importance of internationalism and the fight against nationalism. To the dismay of the Minutemen and other racists, it also reveals U.S. capitalism’s dependence on immigrants to keep its manufacturing alive and profitable.

Since U.S. bosses must produce commodities at prices competitive with China and other rival imperialists, they must exploit every worker as much as possible. But, as Karl Marx wrote, they "…create their own grave-diggers."

These workers are not defeated. They’re searching for a solution to capitalist exploitation. The conditions in industrial production create a work-force ready for communist ideas. They generally accept the fact that the bosses are stealing from them; that the unions are, as one worker put it, "sellouts, when push comes to shove." Although exploitation pits worker against worker for the higher-paying positions, most look at co-workers within their circles as comrades in a struggle to survive. Every day there’s talk of how the bosses couldn’t care less about workers, about how current conditions are unlivable. But this doesn’t mean winning these workers to communism and PLP will be easy. Like the rest of us, industrial workers struggle with internal contradictions.

But PLP has dedicated itself to building for a communist revolution that’s the only way out for these and millions of other workers worldwide, including Chinese workers. The road to that revolution must travel through the industrial working class.

a name="GI’s in Iraq Get Pizza, Laptops and Death by Mortar">">"I’s in Iraq Get Pizza, Laptops and Death by Mortar

They’ve been keeping us busy. I’ve been juggled around since the day I was sent here. But that’s the Army for you. And you wouldn’t believe how the Army attempts to kiss all our asses. Anything to keep us from uniting and complaining, right? Well, they can pay us more money; entertain us with large-screen TV’s to pass our down time watching movies; bring us Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway and even KFC. They can sponsor Karaoke nights, casino evenings and open up pools for relief from the HOT sun. We want books? They open up libraries. We want internet? Free internet access, or with a monthly payment the internet is brought to your room — via wireless access. We want gourmet coffee, not the mud water we were getting? Well, a coffee shop opens with an espresso machine — get your vanilla latté or café mocha or frappuccino (even with whipped cream).

Then on your day off, you’re sitting inside a building overlooking the pool filled with young bodies mingling. You decide to take it outside, so you pick up your laptop and finish sending that e-mail from a reclining chair while sipping on your mocha frappuccino.

Then you hear a mortar round coming towards the base, followed by an explosion that makes the ground you’re standing on tremble. At that very moment you realize where you are. The sirens remind you you’re at war, and how much you’d rather be home.

Suddenly, you realize all these crumbs are worthless — worthless for one’s self, despicable for the soldiers who were killed when that mortar round hit the dining facility, worthless for the father and husband who was killed when a roadside bomb exploded while patrolling the streets of Iraq. Almost 2,000 soldiers’ and tens of thousands of Iraqis’ lives lost — all for nothing, except oil profits.

Believe me, the pacifiers offered don’t fool everyone, just as the excuses manufactured for this war are being exposed as lies. Many soldiers are upset, and if we aren’t home by February, you can guarantee people will take it a step forward, because this isn’t worth being away from family and friends. So I’ll be home soon.

Raise Money for Anti-Racist Fighters

Nine anti-racist members and friends of Progressive Labor Party face trials in Los Angeles, Bridgewater, NJ and Farmingville, LI, NY, for fighting the KKK-type anti-immigrant Minutemen racists. They follow a long PLP tradition of fighting the bosses’ racist thugs. The legal costs of defending these anti-racists amount to some $60,000. We’re asking all CHALLENGE readers and friends to donate whatever they can. Checks and money orders can be made payable to Challenge Periodicals and mailed to PLP, GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202.

a name="Liberals Aim to Turn Cindy Sheehan’s Fight into ‘Anybody-but-Bush’"></a>"iberals Aim to Turn Cindy Sheehan’s Fight into ‘Anybody-but-Bush’

I was in Crawford, Texas twice, while Cindy Sheehan was there. She was indeed a powerful catalyst for anti-war action. My first time I went with some people I knew and some I didn’t know. We found hundreds of people from around Texas and other states in a Crawford park and later drove out to "Camp Casey," the ditch along a country road where Cindy Sheehan and other military families and vets had pitched tents and set up a row of crosses with names of dead soldiers.

It wasn’t just "peaceniks" from cities. An older man in his pickup truck, from a nearby small town, wearing his "Vietnam Vet" cap told me he and his wife had been bringing in supplies. "You know what that is in Iraq?" he said. "It’s just a desert Vietnam." He spoke disparagingly of the few pro-war counter-demonstrators. "I know a lot of them," he continued. "It’s just the same old, same old people from around here."

The speakers at the rallies took a very narrow line, noting only U.S. casualties in Iraq. Only Cindy Sheehan mentioned the deaths of Iraqis. When one speaker began saying, "We can’t come home from Iraq tomorrow," people in the crowd shouted, "Yes, we can!" and "Out now! Out now!" A vet who appeared to be one of the rally leaders spoke very hatefully to a young man who was taking a more left, anti-imperialist position.

Two weeks later in Crawford there were thousands of people meeting at "Camp Casey II," under a huge tent on donated space near the Bush "ranch." It was very well organized. I recognized some of the organizers/workers from Austin; they had apparently been there through the week. I wondered, do these people have paying jobs from some of the groups running the event? (Otherwise, how do they live?) I got the impression that groups allied with the "left" wing of the Democratic Party want to keep Cindy Sheehan under their wing and keep the message very very narrow. The Peace House where we parked initially was so bedecked with American flags that at first I thought we were at the pro-war rally. However, one Iraq War vet give an impassioned speech contrasting the Americans eating their fill in Fallujah while Iraqi children starved outside. But again, most of the event was narrowly focused on lamenting the deaths of young GI’s.

Out on the country road, Bush supporters were driving by slowly in SUV’s with flags and pro-war signs. I yelled, "Get out of Iraq NOW!" Some women and children joined the cry. But a rally monitor came along quickly and shushed us. There was a pro-war rally in a high school football stadium miles from Camp Casey.

Driving back home, we agreed that though Cindy Sheehan is a sincere person and an appealing personality, the anti-war "movement" is in danger of turning into support for "anybody-but-Bush" politicians and the liberal wing of the ruling class that wants to continue and expand imperialism "by proxy" — keeping the U.S. death count down.

An old friend in Austin

Red GI

1,500 Students Walk Out Against Prison-like School

BRONX, NY, Sept. 20 — Fifteen hundred students walked out of De Witt Clinton H.S. yesterday, protesting the installation of metal detectors through which they have to pass before entering school. "They’re treating us like prisoners," Marleesa Lee, 17, told the NY Times (9/20). "They have money for metal detectors, but not for books," she declared.

"This is school, not a jail," read a sign carried by junior Saira Asif, 15.

The students took to the streets and marched nearly two miles to picket the Bronx office of the Department of Education, snarling traffic on the way.

They were also protesting a ban on leaving school for lunch, which led to dangerous overcrowding in the cafeteria for the student body of 4,600. Many missed part of their first class because the lines to pass through the detectors were so long.

This student militancy, amid a racist "educational" system that crams nearly 5,000 mostly black and Latin youth into what passes for a high school, sets a good example for their teachers who have now gone over two years without a contract with a union that "fights" with TV commercials rather than walking out themselves. Prison-like schools are one more symptom of a war budget that constantly cuts funds for schools while spending hundreds of billions for oil wars — to which the rulers want to send these youth to fight and die. And that won’t change even if billionaire Bloomberg, the current Republican Mayor, is defeated by Democrat Fernando Ferrer, the "lesser evil" choice of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

The day after the student walkout, angry teachers at a UFT Delegate Assembly meeting rejected the city bosses’ latest contract offer and authorized a strike, while attacking both Bloomberg and union president Weingarten. Unity of students and teachers behind common anti-racist demands would really up the ante of class struggle against a ruling class that treats these students as fodder for capitalism’s low-wage sweatshops and its imperialist wars.

U.S. Constitution: Document of, by and for the Ruling Class

The U.S. ruling class has used the myths of freedom and democracy to win soldiers to support the government because it’s our job to supposedly protect these "freedoms," especially those found in the Constitution.

Well, Thomas Jefferson did write in the Declaration of Independence that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights" but he borrowed those words from John Locke, an English philosopher. However, Locke spoke of life, liberty, health, and property, not happiness. The signers of the Constitution talked about joy but they were inspired by the pursuit of property, not happiness.

After the U.S. War of Independence, the founding fathers — rich merchants, slave-owners, landlords and large farm owners — argued about the kind of government they wanted. A union of states with a strong federal government won. The reasons? Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay agreed: to control the effects of "factions." Madison explained that these "factions" were the haves and the have-nots. "The most common and durable source of factions have been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society." Factions also included various sections of the propertied class — "a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest and many lesser interests."

But the main "factions" were laborers, slaves and the property-less who might revolt and overthrow the propertied class, as well as competing bosses who might rise violently against the state to dominate or separate the union. Hamilton said, "A firm union will be...a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection." And Madison added, "The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation." Madison explained that the causes of faction cannot be removed but a strong federal government would deal with its effects such as, "a rage for…an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project."

After taking years to create the new government, the newly-formed United States elected as President George Washington a slave owner and the richest man in the former British colonies.

Today U.S. rulers have extended the vote to all citizens, males without property, women and black people. But workers remain oppressed because behind this "democratic" government is a group — the ruling class — that prevents working people from taking power, while disciplining competing bosses in the name of their national interest. As one political philosopher put it, "What better way to enslave a people then to give them the vote and tell them they are free?"

a name="‘Diamonds Are Forever’ Soaked in Blood"></">‘D"amonds Are Forever’ Soaked in Blood

When Kanye West attacked Bush for "not caring for black people" during an NBC-telethon fund-raiser for Katrina victims. he became part of the problem instead of the solution to a racist capitalist system that causes such mass tragedy from New Orleans to Sierra Leone.

His new "progressive" single, "Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix)," talks about "blood diamonds" in that African country.

The music mixes soul vocals sampled from a James Bond movie into an alluring hip-hop beat, similar to the DeBeers’ commercials music. Kanye relates events in Sierra Leone to those in U.S. ghettos. He explains that, "Over here, it's a drug trade, we die from drugs. Over there, they die from what we buy from drugs. The diamonds, the chains…"

Kanye laments, "…I thought my Jesus Piece was so harmless/'til I seen a picture of a shorty armless." The bosses and their lackeys who control the government and diamond mines terrorize their workers and other inhabitants, often cutting off mostly child workers' hands and limbs with machetes for not finding enough diamonds.

One scene in the song's video depicts a diamond dealer reaching into a jewelry display case and a small black hand reaches up, grasping a diamond. The dealer plucks the polished stone from the child's palm and places it on the counter for the enjoyment of two rich white women. Another man gives a woman an engagement ring, and blood runs down her hand. In this video, only white people buy and sell these "blood diamonds." Doesn't anyone else buy diamonds?

In one part of the remix, Kanye asks Jacob the Jeweler, popular among many celebrities, if he's selling Kanye conflict diamonds, and asks Jacob not to lie. If relying on a multi-millionaire celebrity jeweler, out for profits, to sell him "non-conflict diamonds" sounds like a contradiction that's because it is — one of many in the song.

Kanye West, who wears diamond-encrusted chains, explains the day he stops wearing his chain will be "the same day I give the game back." After delving into the blood and politics of Sierra Leone, how does Kanye West justify wearing blood diamonds? He crashes a Porsche and runs away with Sierra Leone kids into a church; the end of his video says, "Buy conflict-free diamonds."

Do "conflict-free diamonds" really exist? The Swiss-based DeBeers monopoly controls a majority of the world's diamonds, most of them mined in Southern Africa and South America. True, the diamonds used to finance the warlords and capitalists fighting in Sierra Leone and elsewhere are "drenched in blood," but everything produced under capitalism comes drenched in the blood of workers exploited by this profit system. The point is, how will we fight this.

Capitalism's music industry teaches youth to value diamonds, gold, sneakers, cars, and rims (expensive flashy car wheels) over human relationships. But Kanye says that the real conflict over blood diamonds is inside the "black soul" because "it is in a black person's soul to rock that gold." Not only is it racist to say it's in black people's "souls" to wear gold and diamonds, but Kanye is part of the capitalist music industry that promotes and teaches youth these capitalist values. In other words, "Do you," get your ice, and forget about everyone else.

In Kanye's other videos, he portrays women as possessions; their bodies are jewelry, things to display and own.

Actually, the first cut of this song, the one in the video and on the radio, brags about Kanye's wealth and status. He talks about a stripper named Porsche, her fat friend named Minivan (it's supposed to be a joke), and seeing Vegas through designer glasses while tripping on acid. The "diamonds are forever" in the chorus of the song refers to the Roc-A-Fella Record label and their trademark sign. Kanye told Vibe magazine that he made the video and the "progressive" remix after a fellow rapper told him about the Sierra Leone "blood diamonds."

In Jay Z's verse on the track, he boasts about selling kilos of coke and comparing drug-dealing to selling CD's. At first, lyrical "niceness," full of allusions and puns, distract what he's really saying. However, listening closely the verse has nothing to do with Sierra Leone. Kanye just finished talking about how drugs and money are means of exploitation, and Jay-Z is bragging about how rich and godlike he is. As much as these rappers think they are big capitalists with multi-platinum albums and millions of dollars, they're really just pawns for the ruling class.

Kanye West recorded a song that pretends to educate people about a serious issue but comes off looking stupid, regardless of how good the production and flows are, and actually deflects the real causes of conflicts, like Sierra Leone’s civil war and its blood diamonds.

Workers are the Real 'Saints'

Just to shed more light on the consistent inequalities that capitalism seems to shore up on a regular basis. On September 11, 30 some odd brand new cars, luxurious and expensive, were dropped off at San Antonio's largest sports stadium for New Orleans Saints football players. Ornate BMWs, Mustangs, Land Rovers, Cadillac Escalades, easily amounting to over $2 million, soon littered the parking lot.

Tens of thousands of workers from New Orleans have lost everything, and are sleeping in abandoned warehouses and sporting stadiums, while these celebrity football stars are staying in the nicest hotels and commanding luxury automobiles in which to tour the Alamo City. Resources should be going toward finding homes and jobs for displaced workers, and towards putting their children in school. Instead, they're providing expensive toys for sports celebrities, whose primary purpose is to divert our attention from real world problems. But this is capitalism, where profit always takes priority over people. The Saints football team makes millions for its owners and investors, and now has a new contract to play several games in San Antonio (which appears to be using the New Orleans tragedy to try to gain a city football team). So the Saints’ owners are spending obscene amounts of money on their stars to keep them happy and keep the profits rolling in. Whatever these sports stars are, they are not saints. The real saints are the workers who pulled together to survive the flood-induced hell of capitalist racism in New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama and those who have stepped up to volunteer.

UNDER COMMUNISM

Dr. Joshua Horn’s book "Away With All Pests" describes how China eliminated syphilis in the early years of the revolution.

In the late 1940’s, when the communist-led workers and peasants took power, more than 50% of the population in some areas of China suffered from syphilis. Syphilis, and the resulting secondary infections from other organisms, causes nerve degeneration, inability to have children, painful gaping wounds and many other horrible symptoms.

All sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are a result of, among other causes, (1) the subjugation of the population by outside imperialists like the U.S. and Britain; (2) war and the widespread rape that accompanies it; (3) poverty; (4) drug addiction; (5) prostitution; and (6) sexist attitudes towards women.

Public health campaigns in capitalist countries, even with antibiotics like penicillin, are unable to eliminate syphilis and other STDs because social and political conditions prevent it. But in revolutionary China, syphilis was completely eliminated in less than 10 years in the 1950’s. How did they do it?

First, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led mass campaigns to eliminate prostitution, making it illegal. Angry workers punished the brothel owners. Former prostitutes were given jobs and education. Their families and neighbors were taught that the old oppressive society, not a weakness of the individual, caused prostitution. Many former prostitutes eventually became leaders in their communities and members of the CCP.

But this alone would not have lasted if the inequality of women in society had not been transformed, with laws granting women equal rights and the necessary campaigns to change the attitudes of the entire population, both men and women.

Next came the elimination of poverty through the creation of relative equality of economic conditions of men and women, and across all former classes. Adequate food, clothing, shelter, education and health care were guaranteed to all.

Then came mass campaigns, with the help of medical workers, to educate the population about the nature of syphilis, how it’s contracted and how it’s treated. Medical workers met with communities and exchanged information about social relationships and about the disease. An army of fighters was mobilized to find, treat and educate all the victims of syphilis nation-wide. Attitudes about sexuality and STDs had to be changed. Relying on the masses made all this possible.

Doctors had to be convinced that workers could give penicillin to victims of the disease. Otherwise there would never have been enough people to treat the victims.

Chinese antibiotic factories turned out large supplies of penicillin and many drugs for other diseases. These factories produced surpluses to help workers in other impoverished countries as well.

In this way, China — once called the "sick man of Asia" — became the world’s first country to eliminate syphilis. Today, however, syphilis and other STDs are making a comeback in capitalist China. Until the Chinese workers seize power again, and institute a communist rather than socialist system, the rapid and deadly decline in public health will continue.

LETTERS

PLP Impresses D.C. Metro Worker

I became a supporter of the PLP quite simply and frankly because they’re darn good people!

I went to a protest sponsored by my job and was introduced to some PLP’ers. Following the protest, they invited me to "tag along" to a meeting. It was one of the best "tags" I’ve had in a long time.

At this meeting, I was totally impressed to see people of all different backgrounds pulling together for one cause. I was especially impressed by the ideas and logic of the younger members and their enthusiasm of how to fight capitalism and imperialism. I thought to myself, "There are people who still care."

I was invited to another meeting and found myself making excuses not to go. I called the friend who invited me and told her I couldn’t make it. She said she understood. My sister and I had plans to go grocery shopping, but there was this powerful force that would not let me. We both wound up at the meeting and enjoyed it so much that we do our best not to miss any others. My sister said it felt good to be around "intelligent people" again. I must agree.

I took my niece to the last meeting. She now wants to attend again. I’m grateful for the people who have entered our lives to show us there’s still hope for humanity. May the comrades and supporters of PLP stay strong and on the right path to get all of us what we deserve — RESPECT and the right to live our lives equally together without being slaves to the capitalists. Thank you!

D.C. Metro worker

a name="PL’ers Help Stop Transportation Firings">">"L’ers Help Stop Transportation Firings

Recently a group of comrades distributed leaflets supporting fired workers and others facing firings. The bosses are speeding up these transportation workers while cutting their wages and benefits. When the workers organized against these attacks, the company fired the leading workers.

Then some workers wrote a leaflet explaining the key role workers play in the profit system, producing all the wealth while the boss lives off their labor. They demanded an end to the firings and called on other workers to join their struggle.

When workers read the leaflets, they moved closer to us. We told them they were not alone in the struggle, that when workers get together and organize they can become a formidable force against the boss.

The bosses got scared and doubled the security at the company gates, to try to intimidate the workers. But workers continued to take the leaflet.

This action was a very good experience. It showed me that workers will confront their bosses and that, with PLP leadership, can be won to understand the need to fight the entire system, for a society without bosses.

Even though the action won’t end these workers’ problems, for now the bosses stopped the firings and offered them a monthly bonus.

Many workers there are very grateful for our solidarity action, which is winning new friends that could become future Party militants. That’s our challenge.

A comrade in Mexico

Primary Lessons of Katrina

We need to concentrate on a limited number of primary lessons to be drawn from the Katrina disaster. I was at two demonstrations/rallies about Katrina. There were many slogans, with an aspect of truth in nearly every one. But mixed in were some that were basically wrong:

• "It’s Bush’s fault"-type slogans ("worst administration ever," etc.).
• "Troops out of Iraq, Into New Orleans" — a very reactionary slogan, of the AFL-CIO/ liberal Democratic-type variety.
• Slogans about the main victims being "black and poor," (as though people who are "poor" do not work!). It was the working class!

There are certain primary lessons from Katrina:

• The bottom line is, it’s capitalism — not just "Bush," not just the Republicans, not just Brown and FEMA. (The black mayor who was on TV so much is just as much to blame). The little, tiny bit of collectivity the Cubans or the Dutch have is what makes their reactions to natural disasters better. That’s the secondary aspect of social democracy, the only aspect that works for workers, but we need supreme collectivity — communism.
• There was no mistake. It was deliberate. The studies were done. All the authorities knew this was going to happen eventually. They didn’t care if the working class — and even many middle-class professionals — lost everything, including their lives and property. They don’t care. The U.S. ruling class’s state represents pure exploitation. They’re interested in us for profit, nothing else
• RACISM: They use this to make the exploitation go over more easily and hike their profits. Equally important, racism divides the working class.
• The capitalist government can NEVER "be on our side."

We should concentrate on these primary lessons.

A New Jersey comrade

Touts Book on Big Bill Haywood Trial

I read a highly engaging story of class struggle in the silver mining region of the Western U.S. in the 1890’s and early 1900’s, "The Big Trouble," by J. Anthony Lucas, all 754 pages.

Based on the 1907 trial of union and IWW leader, "Big Bill" Haywood, Lukas — a master story teller — weaves in the important characters of the period from President Teddy Roosevelt to baseball pitcher Walter Johnson. This is the book for you!

West Coast Comrade

No Cops Under Communism

The letter from "Red Student" (CHALLENGE, 9/7) immediately reminded me of a 1998 CHALLENGE that said: "Under communism we would have no place for the Klan. Racism would not be tolerated. It will not exist, period." Also, in the early 1920’s, when the Soviet Union was still a workers’ state, a whole busload of people physically attacked and chased a racist off the bus when he shouted insults at a black man.

They told the stunned man (not used to such displays of violent action) that racism would simply not be tolerated any more, and that racists had better either get used to it or stop being racist.

Cases of domestic violence today are products of wider societal ills that express themselves in the most intimate relationships (romantic and sexual). Under communism they will be a sign of not having struggled hard enough to eliminate that old framework. A communist society’s proper response to such abuses would begin with a solid, scientific understanding among Party members of the fundamental divisiveness and anti-working class, pro-profit character of bourgeois gender roles. This summer in particular, Party members have already had great new discussions along those lines; these are steps toward that new understanding

The hope would be not only that communism could help victims recover more quickly and fully, but also that the fresh, inspiring political framework it would give society could enable the abusers themselves to be rehabilitated much more effectively. Consider that while such programs would be helping to eliminate the attitudes of abusive "significant others" or spouses, communism in the media, schools, etc., would simultaneously be dismantling and disallowing the present widespread images of females as objects for men’s pleasure (e.g., music videos).

We already know that abuse, murder and pedophilia are never O.K. for a person to act on, regardless of the circumstances. It would be the local workers’ militias’ job to deal with these saboteurs of the revolution, by force if they refuse to back off before inflicting harm.

Red Student specifically asks about a police force. We won’t need a police force separate from the ragtag militias on the one end and the professional army on the other. Those will be enough. It’s much easier, and more participatory, to keep things as direct as possible. We’ll still have lots of enemies, but if we do our base-building correctly, we’ll have even more friends. And a lot fewer ways of losing than our predecessors did.

Young Red

Becoming Fighters for Communism

The letter "Cops Under Communism" (9/7) asked how would the Party protect people. The answer depends on who's fighting on the front lines of the working class today against the horrors of capitalism. Our PLP, though small, is growing and trying to become the eyes, ears, conscience and champion of the international working-class battle to smash capitalism and win communism. Becoming a member of PLP is like becoming a fighter for communism who serves the working class, as opposed to cops who serve the capitalist class.

Cops' power appears awesome at times, like at the Republican convention in NYC or when they brutalize and force workers into dividing pens during anti-racist protests and strikes against bosses' exploitation. However, the essence of cop power is that it's temporary and dependent on the degree of political consciousness in the working class. From New Orleans come reports of cops turning in their badges and shutting their precincts in the face of outraged workers, along with TV images of uniformed personnel pointing rifles at desperate people seeking food, water and clothing but unable to stop them. The capitalist rulers are being forced to airlift in tens of thousands of soldiers — although desperately needed as replacements in imperialist wars — to protect locked-up property which people need to survive.

The cops' "protector" image can change very rapidly into their real role as mercenaries for corporations, as it did during the 1930's Great Depression when falling profits and a society fed up with imperialist war caused the capitalists to unleash a class war on workers. That same scenario may be underway today.

I remember that era as characterized by workers' mass hatred of capitalist bosses and especially of their cops who protect scabs crossing picket lines. Any workers seen talking to a cop were immediately classified as a "stoolies" and treated like lepers. For youth without knowledge of those times, the rulers' genocidal indifference to people's suffering in the Gulf States offers a crash course in capitalist racism and class warfare.

The most difficult time under communism may be when the majority of people will not be in the Party and crime may not be banished for some time because capitalist ideas of serving yourself have deep roots, and corruption will go underground.

The success of communism will depend on how well we recruit workers to the Party before the revolution and how well these recruits can win the uncommitted majority to see that communism not only serves their needs through the destruction of exploitation, racism and sexism but is a society that needs and honors their work. They will expose bourgeois ideas, practice and culture, protecting the working class by becoming fighters for communism.

A comrade

a name="Politics Primary in Fighting ‘Natural’ Disasters"></">Po"itics Primary in Fighting ‘Natural’ Disasters

The 9/21 column on how communism would deal with disasters like Hurricane Katrina made some useful points on the superiority of communist organization and coordination for mobilizing masses of workers for disaster relief and reconstruction, but in general, the article was too utopian. First, even if we're living in a pure communist world, at least some people will die during any disaster, even with prevention. We can't control everything. Second, after any successful revolution, the capitalists and those adhering to their ideas will fight viciously to re-establish their rule. Mass destruction may exist across parts of the planet (with food, clothing, etc. in short supply in many areas). Thus, our ability to help those experiencing natural disasters would face severe limits.

Superior technique, while important, is not primary in a communist-organized society. Communist politics is primary. We won't win workers and allies to communism by promising them some kind of paradise. We'll win them through the struggle to end privilege, individualism and profits with collectivity, accountability to each other and the desire to serve the masses, not the bosses. Whether we're sharing wealth or deprivation, the key difference is that we're mobilizing to serve the collective, not privilege and profits.

Boston Red

Oops

The headline No Cops Under Communism did not correspond to the letter in the last issue (9/21). The letter for which this headline was meant to is in the current issue of CHALLENGE.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Black enlistment drops by 40 percent

Recruitment among African Americans — who make up nearly one-quarter of active-duty forces despite making up only 13 percent of the U.S. population — has fallen by 40 percent in the face of strong community opposition to the Iraq war. (L.A. times, 8/22)

Don’t look to Democrats to change US plan

…While a debate over the war has erupted…Democrats…remind me of Gore Vidal’s description of the Vietnam-era Congress: Unsure of whether to be hawks or doves, they sound like capons.

A capon, for the enlightenment of the vegetarians in my audience, is a castrated chicken….

Leaders like Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid of Nevada, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York criticize Bush, but only for the way he has tried to win, not on…his goals…. (Chicago Tribune)

Using hurricane as excuse for low wages

…Around New Orleans, the prevailing hourly wage for a truck driver working on a levee is $9.04….

Thursday, Mr. Bush issued an order that exempts federal contractors working on disaster relief projects from a longstanding federal requirement that they pay workers "prevailing wages," which are usually pegged to union pay rates....

"There are a lot of opportunities to experiment," said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow… (NYT, 9/10)

Top bosses grab $400 to worker’s $1

…At 367 top corporations….for every dollar bill in a worker’s pocket, the boss gets $431. And here’s a nugget of perspective: If the minimum wage had kept pace with bosses’ pay since 1990, it would be $23.03 an hour. (NYT, 9/4)

Russia Counter-Revolution Bleeds the People

…Behind the glitz Russia’s counter-revolution has not stopped taking a heavy social toll. After the privatization of industry and the transfer of most oil and natural resources to Yeltsin’s cronies in the 1990s, a new stage is under way — the total commercialisation of the welfare state.

Many state assets, from kindergartens to trade-union holiday homes, were shut and sold off a decade ago. In recent years local authorities have been charging people a growing share of the cost of the hot water, heating and electricity that their centrally supplied flats use.

Last week a law came into effect that requires councils to charge people 100%....

Cost recovery is spreading to health and education. Prescriptions, blood tests and other minor procedures increasingly have to be paid for. State universities are charging fees….

The newspaper Izvestia…wondered last week whether the new cost burden would lead to demonstrations…. (GW, 9/22)

Kill Chavez? In ’03 Robertson had other idea

When I heard Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, my first thought was that….two years ago, Robertson’s hymnal of hate was open to a different tune.

"How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down,’…He doesn’t work for us!" he said.

In that instance, Robertson was sticking up for his buddy Charles Taylor, then the strong-arm dictator of Liberia, under indictment by a U.N.-backed tribunal for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone. Robertson has $8 million invested in a Liberian gold mine, which might have skewed his thinking.

Maybe if Chavez forked over some oil shares, Robertson would change his tune. (San Antonio Express)

High-tech army fails imperialist task

Remember shock and awe?....Now the shock is something else. It is shock of discovering that…America now looks like some fearsome robotic dinosaur stomping across the landscape, a gigantic Power Ranger toy, all bright gadgets and display but no power and nothing inside…It can’t actually do anything useful after all.

The hollow superpower stands exposed….The lessons that the Vietcong on bicycles thought they had taught the behemoth are being learned all over again… (GW, 9/22)

When money runs the world, hunger kills

The immediate cause of the hunger may be climate change or other "natural" phenomena, but the root cause is now recognised as extreme poverty, which causes more sickness, suffering and death than any disease on earth….

What is happening now is the relatively new phenomenon of terrible hunger amid ever-increasing plenty. India, which endured severe famines 60 years ago, now exports subsidized food and has never grown so much; yet figures suggest that half of all children on the subcontinent are malnourished.

…In 1970 sub-Saharan Africa had 18 million malnourished children. By 1997 there were 32 million. The UN predicts the figures will reach 350 million by 2015.

Extreme poverty and hunger are now so interlinked it is impossible to separate them… (GW, 9/22)

Page 791 of 824

CHALLENGE, November 30, 2005

France: Youth Explode Against Racism

Police State

French Rulers' Long History of Racist Warmaking

Importing Immigrants For Low-Wage Jobs

'Socialists' Back Anti-Immigrant Racism

3,000 Marchers Confront KKK in Texas

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Imperial Presidency

Uncertain Terms

Hundreds of D.C. Marchers Link Racism to AIDS Epidemic

Racist Contract Sparks Growing Fight in NYC Teachers Union

Puerto Rico: 3,000 Teachers March to Demand End to Wage Freeze

Laws of Capitalism Erasing Reform Gains in Auto

UAW Sellouts Giving Away Store to GM, Ford

a name="Young French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’"></a>"oung French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’

The Struggle at CUNY: What Does Unity Mean?

A Dialectical View of Unity

Bringing Class Consciousness to H.S. Struggles

Letters

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Veteran Comrade

Spontaneous Rebellions Not Enough

a name="Capitalism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options"></">Ca"italism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options

Red Leadership At Phila. Strike Picket Line

D.C. Transit Workers Bring Solidarity to Philly Strikers

Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Catastrophe for Working Class

Spreading Communist Ideas in Reform Struggles

REDEYE

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Guns, Too…

What We Can Do

The CFR: Center of the Web that Spins U.S. Foreign Policy

Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco

Under Communism: What will prisons be like?

A Political Prisoner in China

CHALLENGE, Nov 16 2005

Bushites, Liberals: Both Racist Warmakers, Strikebreakers

Liberal Democrats' `Blueprint' for Fascism

Angry Howard Students Protest Bushes' Visit

Role Of Communist Influence In Rosa Parks' Act of Defiance

Racist Hypocrites `Laud' Rosa Parks

Workers, Youth Vow to Fight Nazi Return to Toledo

Six Hundred Anti-Racists Confront Fascist

Howard U. Students' Anti-Racist Resolution Wins At Amnesty Int'l

D.C. Metro, Health Workers Unite vs. Racism, AIDS Crisis, War

Workers Shut Down Philly Transit

NYC Teachers Angry Over Misleaders' Give-Away of Grievance Rights

Union's Reliance on Politicians Won't Stop Racist Attacks on `1199' Members

Struggle at CUNY Needs Unity, Solidarity and Class Consciousness

Preparing for an Illegal Strike

Students and Workers Unite to Fight Racist Subcontracting

Protest Pay Cuts, Job Losses At Massachusetts Community Colleges

UAW GOES TO COURT...TO BLOCK RETIREES

LETTERS

GI's: Sign Up For Revolution

THE OTHER SUPERPOWER

Mountain Dew, Army Take Aim at Students

Church Members Organize Against Iraq War

Mitterrand: `Socialist' Torturer

Hire Mercenaries from Peru for Iraq War

Mexico's Rulers and `the Train of Death'

Belgium: Two General Strikes in Three Weeks

REDEYE

Hussein trial should quiz his US backers

Like Iraq, Vietnam War was sold by a lie

Black enlistment drop threatens army

Chevron in Ecuador: `Environmental disaster'

Could these really be headlines in 2035?

Muslim chaplain tells Guantanamo crimes

Recyclers turn computer gifts into scam

Marine Vet Exposes Truth About

UNDER COMMUNISM

Part II: What will prisons be like?The Story of a U.S. Prisoner in a Chinese Jail

CHALLENGE, November 2, 2005

Anti-Racist Rage Explodes in Rebellion Against Nazis, Cops

a name="GM/Delphi’s War Contract: What’s Good For Bosses Will Kill Auto Workers"></">GM"Delphi’s War Contract: What’s Good For Bosses Will Kill Auto Workers

a name="‘…You Can Kiss The Pension Plan Goodbye!’"></a>"…You Can Kiss The Pension Plan Goodbye!’

This Can Be A Turning Point

Delphi Super-profits Span From Mexico To China

Part II: What will prisons be like?
The Story of a U.S. Prisoner in a Chinese Jail

PLP-led Contingent:
Transit, Auto, Hospital Workers March Against Strike-breakers, Warmakers

Billionaires' Dogfight:
Dumping Bush Won't End Imperialist Wars