Dialectics Provoke Sharp Discussion on Racism on Campus

Recently I attended a PLP communist school on dialectics with a friend; she’s a student and I’m a teacher at Chicago State University. Our opening presentation described how dialectical principles apply to the process of development from a seed to a bean plant and provoked many questions and challenges about precisely how the principles are to be understood.
In our workshop we continued the discussion of dialectics as a general theory of nature, but it was hard to pin down the discussion. Moreover, it tended to exclude people, such as my friend, who were less familiar with communism. I proposed applying the principles to my friend’s work with a campus group, the Students for Justice (S4J).

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Philippines — Key U.S. Imperialist Base

The dispatch of a U.S. aircraft carrier and 14,300 troops to the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda has nothing to do with humanitarian interests and everything to do with securing an imperialist base to counter China.

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SOS! From Haiti to Cuny

An appeal from students of the State University of Haiti to CUNY students for your help against the cruel and criminal Michel Martelly regime:
Since this neo-Duvalierist dictatorial régime came to power, students here, like so many other working-class people, have suffered under the jackboots of all sorts of government repression.  Arrests, assassinations, beatings, and other contemptuous criminal acts unworthy of human beings are the deliberate policies of the police and of MINUSTAH, the United Nations “peacekeeper” force.
In February 2012, President Martelly himself arrived at the School of Ethnology campus with an armed group firing guns, beating students, and looting offices.  Well before this, however, the repressive machine had cracked down on us. This year the violence and arbitrary arrests are more and more frequent.  We hate this!  It fills us with rage!

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Students, Faculty Back Leaders Attacked by Rulers, Cops

NEW YORK CITY, November 23 — On Tuesday, November 19, more than 120 students and faculty packed the courtroom or waited outside during the arraignment of two anti-fascist City College students. The two are leaders of a movement to oppose the teaching appointment of war criminal David Petraeus, the restoration of ROTC, and the police seizure of a student/community organizing space, the Morales/Shakur Center. They are being charged with disorderly conduct, riot, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration.
The two students, previously suspended by the college bosses, have demonstrated tremendous courage and determination in the face of serious criminal charges. Our presence showed the court they do not stand alone.

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U.S. Warmakers Hit Roadblock from Germany, Japan

U.S. capitalists have a growing crisis on their hands. As they prepare for a wider global conflict with their imperialist rivals, they’re having trouble forging the coalition they need. This process will have unpredictable twists and turns. What’s clear is that the U.S. is in sharp economic decline and increasingly unable to go it alone in paying for their war machine.

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Anti-Fascist Fighters Defy College Bosses’ Attack

NEW YORK CITY, November 8 — Thirty people gathered in the frigid cold morning to protest the disciplinary hearing for Taffy and Khalil, two students suspended for rallying against the closing of the Morales/Shakur Center at City College of the City University of New York (CUNY). After the students refused to be bought out by the administration, their hearing was postponed to 9 a.m. Friday, November 15. A rally will be held in front of the City College North Academic Center.

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Solidarity from Haiti: ‘Comrades, We Are a Single Class’

Comrades,
The capitalist system, aware of its decline, knowing that even the most apathetic are losing confidence in its false promises, is growing fearful behind its façade of humanitarianism. The workers, employed and unemployed, are more and more grasping the fact that it is the bourgeois system responsible for the poverty, the misery, and wars that ravage the world. They understand too that all the wars in the world today are the consequence of the capitalists’ greed.

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Philippines, Bangladesh: Capitalism Is the Disaster

For five days and counting….
Ten thousand workers in the Philippines are expected to be among the dead in just one city, with hundreds of thousands left homeless by a fierce typhoon bringing winds of over 200 miles per hour. NGOs are flooding the affected region, but if this is a repeat of the recent experience in Haiti — after the devastating 2010 earthquake — most of the aid promised by the big imperialist countries will not be delivered, and what is delivered will mostly be spent in the donor countries.
Young soldiers carrying M-16 assault rifles were sent by the government to “restore order,” accusing angry hungry people of “highjacking” relief vehicles. Food and water are slow to be distributed and dead bodies are piling up, endangering public health.
The “super typhoon” was known to be coming, but evacuation was mismanaged because the government was calling it a “storm warning” instead of a “tsunami” — a word which carries much more significance in the area.
Capitalist greed is solely responsible for this unnatural disaster. Storms are increasing in intensity due to global warning, with an 11 percent upsurge expected by the end of this century, causing sea levels to rise. Capitalists don’t want to eat into their profits by limiting carbon emissions and other protection for the environment. (Full analysis next issue)

DHAKA, BANGLADESH, November 11 — Another one of capitalism’s unnatural disasters — extreme poverty and exploitation — drove 30,000 angry garment workers into the streets here in a mass strike that shut over 100 factories. The workers who produce clothing for billion-dollar corporations like Walmart, the Gap and Sears are demanding a 260 percent increase of the $38 monthly minimum wage to $100. The government offered $67 which the bosses rejected as “too high,” which government official admit hardly meets a basic diet.
The cops used tear gas and rubber bullets against the workers but the latter fought back, stoning the cops, blocking key highways and roads, smashing vehicles and factory windows.

March vs. Cuts in Jobs, Food Stamps, Legal Services

NEWARK, NJ, November 1 — As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens, sparks of working-class resistance continue to flare up internationally. More workers search for leadership for this fightback. Some see the capitalist system behind the attacks. They’re eager to learn how our class can shape our collective future. PLP needs to be in these struggles, where these fighters will see the truth of our politics.

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Attack Racist Bloomberg Award; Expose UN’s Cholera in Haiti

BOSTON, November 6 —  “Bloomberg is NO Public Health Hero” was the rallying cry of activists at this year’s meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA).  APHA leadership was giving New York City Mayor Bloomberg the “Legislator of the Year” award, down playing the NYC mayor’s racist stop-and-frisk program targeting hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino men was unimportant, given his anti-smoking, anti-gun and anti-soda stances.
PLP members and friends organized several anti-racist campaigns at this year’s public health meeting, along with the Medical Care Section of APHA, and Radical Public Health students from Chicago informed the 13,000 attendees. They worked with fighters in several APHA Sections to write a formal protest letter to the Executive Board, and distributed over 2,000 leaflets exposing the Board’s decision.  Many thanked us and could not believe racist Bloomberg would be given a public health award.

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