Oakland Strike exposes capitalist education in crisis

BAY AREA, June 7—In the interest of the “common good” (read: pro-student and class-solidarity demands), over 3,000 education workers went on an eight-day strike against the Oakland Unified School District. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) went to picket lines at schools where we knew striking teachers to build solidarity, raise class consciousness, and communicate communist ideas. From May 4 to 15, these workers honored the picket line, 34,000+ students were out of schools, parents & students joined the picketing and rank-and-file teachers set up solidarity schools for younger children of working parents. A Temporary Agreement (TA) for 2.5 years was signed late Sunday night on the 7th day for a return to school on Tuesday.

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The strike’s demands go past the economist limits

The strike had two types of demands that addressed conditions for teachers and students. OUSD is one of the lowest paid districts in the Bay Area, had difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers, teachers and staff could not afford the cost of living in the areas where they worked, schools with the largest population of low-income Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled/special needs students had the most unmet needs, had unhoused families & deteriorated School Building/physical plan.

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Sharpening class struggle towards communist revolution

The following is part 1 of a report given at the Abolitions Conference (May 6-8) in Washington, DC. As a Metro transit worker in DC and a member of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 representing over 10,000 bus operators, train operators, mechanics, custodians, landscapers of Metro, and hundreds of paratransit workers, I wanted to share thoughts about building a revolutionary movement in my workplace.

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Rx: free healthcare from profit system

New York City, May 31—Almost 1,000 retired city workers from former blue-collar workers to clerical, teachers, professors, librarians, nurses, social workers, EMTs, firefighters and more packed the sidewalk outside of City Hall in the continuing struggle against forcing 250,000 retirees into a privatized for profit medicare coverage known as Medicare Advantage. Chants like “healthcare is a human right, fight fight fight” reflected the understanding that health insurance companies are not in business to provide healthcare; they are in business to make profits! Progressive Labor Party says that only in a communist society will healthcare be provided to all based on need rather than on ability to pay. Only then will hospitals, prescription drugs and medical care be free of the profit system.

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Fighting bio racism, a feature of capitalist healthcare

CHICAGO, IL, June 7—“Ummm, it looks like there’s a room full of people behind you?” The head boss of the local health system sounded surprised and nervous when they saw the numerous supporters who came to the online meeting with U.S. kidney leaders. Getting rid of racist kidney lab tests had proven to be no easy task! This meeting was supposed to be just the two leaders of our antiracism group and U.S. kidney leadership to explain the struggle in medicine to change decades of racism in biology. The head boss was not expecting us to bring the whole group! We had to show that the number of people determined to remove biologic racism from medicine was large and ready to act outside the usual standards of academia and business.

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Smash sexist policies with communist revolution

The vicious racketeering and collusion charges, carrying up to a 12-year sentence, leveled by the Joe Biden administration against abortion rights organizers illustrates how the liberal ruling class is the greater danger to the working class. The antisexists’ crime? Spray painting. The profit system requires maximum profit at all times. Workers are the ultimate source of profit. Every commodity is produced by a producer. Women workers produce the producers of everything. So, the need to produce workers to be bullet sponges is the context wherein we should understand the rising attacks on our working-class siblings and reproductive rights.

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Wildfires a smoke signal for capitalism in decay

June 7—As we go to press, wildfires are burning across six Canadian provinces and a territory and they’re still spreading, pouring more smoke throughout the Atlantic Coast as Code Red for air quality spread. The equivalent of 5 million football fields are on fire! New York City is declared to have the worst air quality in the world today. One calculator suggested breathing in the air here for 24 hours is the same as smoking 22 cigarettes (Daily Mail, 6/7).

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First Cover: ‘Police War on Harlem’

The two stories below are excerpts from the late Walter Linder’s memoir, A Life of Labor and Love. Wally was a founding member of Progressive Labor Party and passed away on January 3, 2022 at the age of 91, after a lifetime of principled struggle on behalf of the international working class. In addition to being a leader for the working class in school and on the job, he served as an editor and contributor to CHALLENGE, and to the Magazine of Progressive Labor Party.

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Speech calls out wage theft

The following letter is a testimony given by a comrade in support of the Securing Wages Against Theft (SWEAT) bill at a New York State legislative hearing. Annually billions of dollars are stolen from workers in New York City alone. Loopholes in the state rulers’ laws make it easy for bosses to ruthlessly steal from workers and hide their assets in such a way that makes it nearly impossible for workers to recover their stolen wages. Antiracist organizers are fighting for a lien law that freezes criminal bosses’ assets.

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Letters ... June 21, 2023

Neither education bosses nor union misleaders care about students There’s a reason why the club is the most important part of the Progressive Labor Party. It is the collective that we need in order to do the important work that we do. As soon as the teachers union in our city put out an email saying that they were having actions as a reaction to the Department of Education (DOE) putting out a calendar that stripped holidays away from kids and forced us into what almost amounts to a sixth class, we knew that the sellout was underway.

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