STRIKE!

MEXICO — Thousands of striking teachers, battling tear gas and water cannons, are continuing their month-long protest against President Neito’s racist educational reform of privatization. Teachers occupied Zocalo Square for three weeks before being brutally evicted. Protesters used steel grates and plastic traffic dividers to block the streets. Many were arrested. This is a direct battle against the ruling class and its state.

GREECE — Like Mexico, teachers and civil servant workers are on strike for a week in response to a new law of planned layoffs demanded by foreign creditors. While the bosses get bailed out, thousands of public sector workers are losing their jobs, and tens of thousands are coerced with pay cuts. Thousands marched through the streets of Athens to parliament chanting, “Let’s kick the government, the EU, and the IMF out!” Students and other workers occupied the schools in solidarity.

Racist General Petraeus: Wanted for Mass Murder

NEW YORK CITY, September 16 — Shouts of “David Petraeus you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” rang out as nearly 100 people protested against the former general and CIA Director as he entered the Macaulay Honors College to “teach” his seminar. City University of New York (CUNY) students and more than 20 professors and staff were joined by high school students and teachers.

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PL Exposes Bosses’ Racist Assault on Health, Jobs

CHICAGO, September 16 — “You PLers!”  The nurses’ union organizer nearly shouted. “What is this s***? All you do is attack our union!”
The doctor and the half dozen nurses witnessing this sudden outburst while waiting for the Board meeting to begin were taken aback. The doctor responded, “I read that leaflet. It also criticizes my union, the Doctors’ Council, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), for not doing much to fight the administration’s attack. And I agree with what it says. Neither union has done much, really.”

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DC Rallies vs. Racist Attack on Transit Workers

WASHINGTON, DC, September 12 — Today 60 anti-racists, transit workers from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, community residents and others, picketed the transit authority’s monthly board meeting to protest its racist hiring and firing policies. Some challenged the transit authority’s board directly in the public comment time. We demanded they hire and retain workers who’ve been jailed in the past and “done their time.”
We explained that many former inmates have already worked successfully for years at Metro. Now that opportunity is gone. Communists, lawyers, civil rights activists, returning citizens and public health workers demand the policy be reversed!

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Fight Racist Eviction of 40,000 Bedouin Workers

Tel Aviv, August 31— A multi-ethnic group of 1,500 protesters marched in central Tel Aviv today to demand the cancellation of the racist Prawer Law. The essence of this law is the theft of the land of tens of thousands of Bedouin workers for the sake of U.S. real estate tycoons and their allies in the Israeli ruling class. The demonstrators called for the recognition of all Bedouin villages and for the abolition of the government’s plans of demolition, removal and land theft. Several protesters raised the workers’ red flag to challenge the fascist Israeli regime.

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U.S.-Colombia Bosses’ Trade Pact Death Penalty for Farmers

COLOMBIA, September 16 — For the past two weeks, thousands of farmers, truckers, miners and students have been on strike to protest sharp drops in their living conditions due to the “free trade” agreement between the U.S. and Colombia. The agreement, an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), was signed a year ago. It forces small farmers in Colombia to compete with huge U.S. agro-conglomerates.

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Italy: Bosses, Pope Gang Up on Migrant Workers

ROME, September 3 — As the war in Syria spreads, those who have the financial means to leave are escaping. Many have fled to Turkey, while others risk their lives and many die — just as do migrants from Latin America to the U.S. — boarding small boats heading to Italy. Almost 3,000 have drowned or died of dehydration since 2011. On August 31, more than 300 migrants, including many from Syria, landed in three different places in Italy. The Italian government reports that 24,277 migrants have landed in the last twelve months, 8,932 of whom arrived from July 1 to August 10 of this year.

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Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Behind Mexico’s Energy Reform

The document below is the flyer that members of the Progressive Labor Party distributed at the striking teachers’ encampment in Mexico City and during the protest against energy reform. In total, we distributed 3,000 flyers. Most teachers welcomed them. Many are already familiar with CHALLENGE and some asked for the paper. There was a huge national teachers’ rally to demand the repeal of the approved reforms, including clashes with the police and arrests. A group of comrades once again distributed our literature. There will be more protests in coming weeks, and we will be there to show our support — and, more important, to advance our revolutionary communist perspective.

Global capitalism is in crisis and inter-imperialist rivalry is sharpening, particularly between the U.S. and China. Eventually the bosses’ economic competition will lead to armed confrontation and push the world toward a broader war. The center of this fight is over the control of oil and gas, the raw materials essential to the capitalists’ militaries and industries.

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Debating Marxism and Revolutionary Practice

Nine members and close friends of PLP participated in the week-long annual summer institute of the Marxist Literary Group/Institute on Culture and Society (MLG-ICS) at Ohio State University. Over many years, a number of us have attended this gathering — which draws together faculty, graduate students and artists in the humanities.  This year’s experience was the best ever.

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Profits, Control over Oil Drives U.S. War on Syria

Barack Obama and the U.S. capitalists he serves care nothing about the working-class children murdered in Syria or anywhere else. The war in Syria is two years old and has already killed 100,000 people, with nothing but useless rhetoric from Obama along the way. Now he is ready to slaughter thousands more in a racist attack on yet another Middle Eastern country.
In its imperialist assault on Iraq, the U.S. ruling class had no qualms about dropping bombs with depleted uranium, which causes widespread birth defects and cancer in children. It is now using drones to terrorize thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. The U.S. military used Agent Orange and napalm to spread death and destruction among millions in Vietnam. Later, in the 1980s, the U.S. supplied sarin, the lethal nerve agent that may have been used in Syria, to one-time ally Saddam Hussein. He used it to kill thousands of Kurds in Iraq and untold civilians in his war with Iran.

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