Obama No Lesser Evil: PL’ers Expose Dems’ Attacks on CUNY

NEW YORK CITY — Evil, yes; lesser, no. That was the point PL’ers  and friends made about Barack Obama at a recent discussion in the Professional Staff Congress (PSC). The PSC is a local of City University of New York (CUNY) professors and staff within the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). After a delegate in our local proposed a resolution to criticize the AFT’s endorsement of Obama, we took the opportunity to explain that all politicians under capitalism, regardless of their appearance or label, are the capitalists’ servants. 

 The first order of business was a discussion about the recent attack led by Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor, on the wages and pensions of New York State’s public workers.

The retirement age has been raised, forcing workers to put in more years for lower benefits. More of them will be funneled into the 401(k) system, a highly unstable retirement plan that depends on the stock market — and which wiped out millions of workers’ pensions after the 2008 market crash. 

Since taking office last year, Cuomo has also imposed a three-year wage freeze on 120,000 state workers, who now also must pay more for their health premiums — an effective wage cut. 

Meanwhile, the governor has cut billions from public schools and health care, leading to layoffs of teachers and hospital workers. At CUNY, which absorbed a $103-million cut, student tuition will rise $300 for each of the next five years, an overall increase of 37 percent! 

By leading this anti-worker attack, Cuomo has demonstrated that all politicians everywhere — be they Democratic, Republican, Labor, Center-Left, or Socialist — serve the bosses. There are no “lesser-evil” politicians or bosses.

The delegates in attendance were rightly critical of Cuomo and his racist plan, one of the worst attacks hitting New York’s public workers in a long time. There was unity about the need to take action and fight back against it, and Cuomo’s “Democratic” label did not matter. Later, when we were discussing the resolution criticizing the AFT’s endorsement of Obama, it became clear that “lesser-evilism” is still a powerful ideology. The delegates’ arguments and our responses:  

Myth: Obama will give us more room to operate as a progressive union. 

PL’ers pointed out that Obama has passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the police the right to detain any person indefinitely and without legal representation. He signed H.R. 347, a law that makes it illegal to enter a public space if a Secret Service agent is present. This law is directly aimed at stifling protests and demonstrations. 

Myth: Obama needs to be defended because he is black and his presidency is a blow to U.S. racism.

As the housing crisis has disproportionately affected black families, wiping out generations of slowly built-up savings, Obama has done nothing about it. He has responded weakly or not at all to the recent epidemic of racist police murders. He has expanded the racist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. He has said nothing about racist unemployment, education or health-care that continues to afflict black and Latino workers in disproportionate numbers.

Myth: Democrats are not as viciously and openly anti-woman as Republicans.

Obama has deported more than one million immigrants, more than George W. Bush ever did, separating countless mothers from their children and wives from their husbands. Furthermore, he has said nothing about the attacks on women coming from the Republicans. Most federal employees earning less than $50,000 are women. In 2010, Obama ordered federal salaries frozen for two years.  

Myth: Obama is not as anti-education as the Republicans. 

We challenged this claim at the microphone by noting that he supported the wholesale firing of teachers in Rhode Island. The president and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, are squarely behind the charter school movement and the racist attack on public education. Obama supports merit pay for teachers, a way of blaming educators for the fact that the education system fails so many students.

Another aspect of the discussion reflected the long-term struggle that PL’ers have undertaken in our union. Not a single delegate tried to defend the actions of Obama or the Democrats. Not a single delegate disputed the facts that showed Obama to be a servant of capitalists and the overseer of a violently racist system. In fact, a principal officer in the union admitted that both Democrats and Republicans are both parties for capitalists.

These views are the results of years of hard work to inject communist ideas into union debates and to constantly struggle for greater class consciousness and militancy. Our task now is to use this space we’ve created to recruit new PLP members. 

This is never an easy task. Though there was enthusiasm for the Occupy movement within our union, much of that energy was channeled into the idealistic notion that sniveling politicians would be swayed by the demonstrations into “doing the right thing,” like voting for stricter regulations and more oversight of banks. This lie must be exposed!

Electoral politics is a dead-end for workers. Our strength lies not in our ability to influence politicians, but in the fact that an organized working class doesn’t need them or their CEO masters! We must expand the limits of our thinking about what is possible. Our members and friends have decided to meet before each PSC delegate assembly to plan how to carry on the struggle within the meeting and expand the limits of ourselves, our Party and our class.