Lessons from the Newark water fight

NEWARK, NJ, March 3—After months of working-class struggle for clean water, the City will provide residents with replacements to lead service lines. The water fight is an important lesson in understanding the difference between reform and revolution. As members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) continue to organize workers and youth, it is evident that revolutionary organizing is needed more than ever.
The outcomes of this Newark water fight illustrate how the main wing bosses are willing to give workers a limited reform in order to stifle class consciousness. This fight has also reaffirmed the need for communists to be integrated in mass work. PLP continues to try to win workers and students to attend study groups, distribute CHALLENGE to their friends, and put build collectives of fightback for communism.
Small gain for workers = longterm victory for bosses
After months of working-class fightback, the bosses approved a loan to allow Newark to replace all of the lead service lines (the main contributor of lead in the water) at no cost to residents. Normally it could cost residents up to $10,000 to get these replaced.
This news was met with fanfare: many saw the loan as a victory and let the City bosses and politicians look like heroes. Only under capitalism would we celebrate something that should be an absolute and inviolable necessity of living—clean pipes and clean water.
Gain pacifies fight
There is no doubt that workers’ fightback made this reform possible.
In the long run though, the bosses have the most to gain. First, this money is coming from a loan from the county government. This means that the City of Newark will have to repay the debt of $120 million. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka claims the City will use its revenue from its contracts with Port Authority to pay the debt service (Wall Street Journal, 10/1/19).
When the bosses give with one hand, they take away with the other. The question is what resources were those funds from Port Authority going towards before this debt service decision? Those funds could have gone to other services that the residents are in dire need of. Once again the billionaires walk away without having to pay while the workers are left holding the bag.
Under capitalism, workers are forced to choose between impossible decisions—clean water or medical services, education or rent. Assuming the bosses will follow through, what will workers have less of in exchange of these new service lines?
Furthermore, the announcement of the lead service line replacement has won many fighters to abandon the struggle for clean water. If one section of the working class succumbs to the sentiment that “we got ours,” the entire working class continues to suffer. So, what about Flint? What about the thousands of U.S. areas still afflicted with lead poisoning that’s worse than Flint? What about Mexico? The Congo? Pakistan? The working class needs an international communist Progressive Labor Party. to be able to solve the problems capitalism created.
At a period of low class struggle, workers can become cynically content with small gains. In this period, the liberal fascist wing of the bosses can afford to give in to some reforms that workers fought for. The question is why. In giving a limited reform, the bosses are able to clamp down on fightback, pacify workers, and buy allegiance to their imperialist system.
Militancy doesn’t equal revolution
The fight is never over. A recent EPA study showed that a fourth of the City filters tested were improperly installed and exposed workers to lead (EPA.GOV, 11/22/19). Many workers demanded that the City hire residents to go door to door to help install these filters. The city claimed that it was too expensive. However, they would rather spend over $1 million hiring lawyers and the same public relations firm that was in Flint, Michigan. While there are still fighters going to city hall meetings, there has been little organizing to fight these ideas.
Some sections of the working class continue to fight for larger ideas such as taxing the rich to pay for these reforms. There are also organizations that connect the water struggle to the ICE attack on migrant workers. All of these issues could be used to illustrate the necessity for workers to unite against the bosses, but these are not substitutes for communist ideas.
Organizing workers to fight for communism means that we must be in the struggle and show how a world run by the working class is possible and viable. We don’t have a blueprint but we do have history and our politics to give other workers a glimpse of what communism can be like. If the communists during the Chinese Revolution were able to eliminate foot binding, illiteracy, prostitution, and syphilis, surely the working class can figure out how to provide clean safe water to its members. A glimpse of the potential of working-class unity can be realized at PLP’s May Day on May 2.
Communist experience & May Day
PLP gained experience and potential in working in mass organizations to coordinate and get out communist politics. We gained confidence and experience working in the mass movements. It also helped train and consolidate younger members.
PLP continues to distribute and discuss CHALLENGE with friends in this struggle. Friends have our communist holiday May Day to look forward to. Newark comrades have been holding study groups on the Communist Manifesto, Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, and a Marxist analysis of culture. We will carry on the fight. We don’t know when the struggle will sharpen again; when it does, PLP will be there.