“We’re sick of them treating us like scum!”

SAN FRANCISCO, June 7 — “We’re sick of them treating us like scum!”  That’s how one bus operator explained the massive three-day sick-out at the MTA (mass transit) that kept two-thirds of city buses parked in the garage.  On June 2, MUNI bus operators, members of TWU Local 250-A, showed tremendous unity and their potential power.  This was the biggest service disruption since the strike in 1976.  

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Transit Workers’ Power Can Cripple Bosses’ Profits

SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. capitalist class is competing for domination and control of energy, basic resources and cheap labor worldwide. Meanwhile, they own trillions of capital (money) which they refuse to invest until they’re guaranteed the higher rate of profit resulting from the devastating cuts in the cost of labor. Mass transit, roads and bridges are falling apart, workers are unemployed, and yet there is “no money for infrastructure.”

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ISIS Wild Card in Imperialist Fight — The Next Oil War

A fundamentalist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), has seized Iraq’s second biggest city, Mosul, and its biggest refinery. Though still a minor capitalist player, ISIS adds a volatile element to the local and inter-imperialist competition over Iraqi oil, and its influence is growing. If the group reaches the point of threatening Baghdad, raiding ExxonMobil’s Iraqi installations or imperiling Saudi Arabia, the current conflict could soon escalate.

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Stop Courtney Hill, Killer Cop

CHICAGO, June 8 – “I’m here now trying to explain to you how my grandfather was killed by his next-door neighbor, who is a cop and is getting away with it. It just doesn’t make sense.” That’s how one relative described the April 24 murder of 86-year-old Joe Huff by Chicago cop Courtney Hill.  Hill also shot Joe’s 92-year-old wife Hazel three times, then had her arrested on charges of aggravated battery against a police officer. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) immediately cordoned off the Huff yard and tampered with the evidence to take the blame off killer cop Hill and his wife Kathy. The next day, the CPD announced that the shooting was justifiable.

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UAW Convention: Opposition Emerges to Pro-Boss Misleaders

Detroit, MI June 5 — The 36th United Auto Workers (UAW) Constitutional Convention ended today as delegates followed newly elected UAW President Dennis Williams and Teamster President James Hoffa across the street to the Crowne Plaza Hotel to support a union organizing campgain. Following Williams and Hoffa across the street is already more than they deserve.

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NYPD Unleashes Racist Violence in NYC Projects

HARLEM, June 13 — Today 150 angry residents of 2 Harlem housing projects and fighters held a militant rally in the pouring rain at the State Office Building nearby. Longtime local church friends gave out fliers and invited protesters to our next action group meeting and a flier decrying racism and calling for revolt against racist police and housing authority abuses. Progressive Labor Party distributed 60 CHALLENGEs.
Grant and Manhattanville are two huge public housing projects on either side of 125 St in West Harlem. Altogether there are about 4,500 residents and 1,900 youth.

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Class Struggle, Not Lobbying, Path for Transit Workers

WASHINGTON, DC, May 20 — Today several hundred east coast transit workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union (TWU), rallied and lobbied Congress for increased capital funds (for buses, subway cars and new track) for city mass transit systems. International union officers spoke, along with former FBI stoolpigeon Al Sharpton. PLP members came to oppose the lobbying strategy and instead distributed hundreds of PL flyers calling for sharper class struggle against the racist attacks on transit workers throughout the country, a large proportion of whom are black and Latino.
The ongoing economic crisis of capitalism, the flyer noted, demonstrated the need for communist revolution to take power out of the hands of the bosses and put it into working-class hands. A communist workers’ government would organize transit to meet the needs of workers and riders instead of the profits of the capitalists and bondholders.

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Schistosomiasis: Capitalism Kills Again

Along the shores of Lake Malawi in Africa schistosomiasis — a disease that causes abdominal pain, diarrhea, malnutrition and in long-term cases liver damage, kidney failure, and even infertility — has become common over the last few decades. According to a medical researcher in the area the disease has become ubiquitous, “In some villages around Lake Malawi up to 70 percent of the people and 95 percent of schoolchildren are infected” (All Things Considered, 5/28). Lake Malawi is no small region either, it is about the size of New Jersey and borders Tanzania, Mozambique, and Malawi with over 14 million people living on its shores.

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Racist Bosses Dump Pre-School Literacy Program

This school year, my three-year old son and I attended a school program called Family Literacy. The program is scheduled for half a day and is designed for 2-to-5 year-old children to learn phonemic awareness and social skills while the parents are receiving English instruction in another classroom. Not only are the children learning but they also have the opportunity to interact with their parents at certain times during the day.
Three weeks before the school year ended, teachers and staff got the news: we had one week to pack up all our belongings and school material and turn it in to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). These racist district officials told the school staff that no school funds are available for the program serving immigrant families, which was a operating on a grant from First Five LA.

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France: RR Strikers Challenge EU Profit Edict

PARIS, June 16 — Tens of thousands of railroad workers are striking the government-owned railroads against a proposed law that would split the system into three public companies. It would open the railroads to private company competition in accordance with a 1991 European Union (EU) deregulation directive 91/440.
The workers refuse to bow down to an EU globalization plan laid down for all countries in the EU: turning public-service railroads into for-profit railroads. The workers know that this is a capitalist scheme to push through a race to the bottom, channeling everyone into the worst possible working conditions and wages existing in the most backward countries in the EU.
The Socialist government is introducing legislation to do this in France. Already the French national budget for 2014 includes an austerity plan to eliminate 2,500 jobs.

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