Union Hacks End Bus Strike, Workers Have No Say

NEW YORK CITY, February 24 — After standing strong through a month-long strike in bitter cold, rain and snow, striking New York City school bus workers were told by their Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)  Local 1181 “leaders” to end their strike and return to work February 20. The order came via a teleconference that let the sellouts dodge any questions and avoid any objection to ending this strike. And the workers were not permitted to vote on this decision.
The role of the union leaders became increasingly clear to the workers. On the last day of picketing, workers at one site did not receive their weekly check while the union representative boasted that “you are damn right, I received mine.” Workers were furious and talked about picketing the union headquarters demanding their full pay. This union hack actually thought what he did was more important than what the striking workers were doing.

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United Action Challenges S.F School Downsizing

San Francisco, February 24 — Several hundred students, faculty, and supporters occupied the administration building of City College of San Francisco (CCSF). They were challenging state bosses’ plans for cuts to classes, programs, faculty and staff, and to limit community colleges to full-time students transferring to 4-year colleges or earning vocational certificates. The changes, if they go through, could turn working-class students’ dream of lifelong learning and chances at a good living into a nightmare of lifelong debt slavery and grinding servitude to the ruling class. 
Under the bosses’ “Student Success” initiative, even those allowed to continue in community colleges would graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt which they could neither pay off with low-paying jobs, nor escape from by filing bankruptcy.
Students are demanding that all the cuts be reversed, and that Proposition A tax money, approved by the voters to save City College, be used precisely for that, and not by the bosses. They are demanding town hall meetings at all campuses to help students organize. The bosses want to go forward with a list of 14 demands from the accreditation agency for downsizing and more administrative control at the colleges. The student-worker campaign is demanding that the agency’s changes be scrapped.
The strong points of the struggle are solidarity between students, faculty, and the community. Two to three times the number of expected people showed up at a recent community meeting. The weak points are Internal tensions between some people’s desire to “fix” the school by bowing to the accreditation agency’s demands for downsizing and administrative control.
This contrasts with others’ call for a more wide-ranging fight against the bosses’ national educational agenda of downsizing, privatization, and control of teachers and students with standardized testing.
The fact is education under capitalism follows the golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules. These bosses’ rules push racism, sexism, and the idea that capitalism is the best system possible. No matter how many reforms may be won, the schools will always teach the bosses’ ideology. PL’ers involved are discussing the communist vision of education where we work to serve society. Stay tuned.

‘Restructuring’: Latest Racist Attack on Working-Class Students

MASSACHUSETTS — As inter-imperialist rivalry and the worldwide capitalist crisis continue to deepen, the U.S. ruling class is forcing the government to restructure public schools, healthcare, and other public services, like the Post Office. Its twofold goals are to enforce cutbacks and centralize control. These cutbacks in higher education severely effect working-class students’ access to colleges and universities. After the revolts in universities in the 1970s and 1980s, the ruling class created community colleges to appease the masses. This tricked many working-class students, including immigrants, into believing they were getting a piece of the “american dream.”
Now, as the needs of the ruling class are changing, working-class students are under attack. The bosses no longer need as many workers with college degrees. The government is more tightly controlling local institutions and intimidating workers in community colleges. For bosses to gain maximum profits and control, options for many working-class students are

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Women: Leaders of Class Struggle and the Revolution

For hundreds of years, women have been leaders and fighters against sexist and racist oppression in the class struggle. They have been instrumental in victories for women and men alike. It’s this reality that gave birth to International Women’s Day. In celebrating this historic day, members and friends of Progressive Labor Party must shift the discussion to the necessity of anti-sexist struggle within the fight for communism. Capitalism requires sexism; we cannot end sexism without destroying capitalism.  
International Women’s Day was born out of the working class. The first IWD was held on February 28, 1909, as part of the fight for socialism and against capitalist working conditions throughout the world. It recognized the role of women as essential fighters against sexism and racism. PLP keeps this militant history alive by fighting against sexism and building for communism.

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Execution of Ex-Cop Reveals LAPD’s Rampant Racism

In 2007, Christopher Dorner, a three-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and former U.S. Navy Lieutenant, accused a fellow officer of kicking and punching a mentally ill man while handcuffing him. The claim of excessive force was declared “unfounded” and subsequently Dorner was fired in 2009 for “making false statements.”
Dorner issued a manifesto accusing the LAPD of using excessive force, of being racist and of firing him for raising those issues through official channels. He retaliated by vowing to kill cops and did so, as well as killing some family members of one and vowed to kill others. Such tactics will not fulfill Dorner’s aim of “reforming” the LAPD. Yes, the LAPD has a long history of racism and of brutalizing the working class of Los Angeles — but it cannot be reformed.
Now Dorner is dead, which is exactly where the LAPD wanted him. They had no intention of

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Millions Strike in India

Millions of public sector workers went on a two-day general strike to protest the government’s increase in fuel prices and opening markets to foreign investment in aviation and insurance. Workers say this will lead to layoffs and more price hikes. Workers are threatening further and longer walkouts if their demands are not heeded. Taxi and rickshaw drivers — victimized by police terror — are warning they’ll strike indefinitely as of March 1.
These militant workers, like the bus workers in NYC, are responding to capitalism’s attempt to put their economic crisis on workers’ backs. Once communist ideas and a party develop a base among these workers, their militancy can be transformed into a revolution that will dump the profit system and promote workers’ power.

U.S. Terror Wars Have 215-Year History

The U.S. capitalist state has a long history of a “war on terror” against the working class and any dissenters, going as far back as 1798 in President George Washington’s second term. That year four bills known as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed to quell anyone favoring the French Revolution. Any “alien” who was a “danger to peace and safety or subject to a foreign power” are subjected to imprisonment. Newspapers were shut down and their editors arrested for publishing “any false, scandalous or malicious writing.”

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‘War on Terror’ — Part II: Mass Red Movement Can Defeat Rulers’ High-Tech Tyranny

Part I  reviewed the ways U.S. rulers make their laws at will to suit their purposes, and use “illegal” methods to punish their opponents. Now they have new technologies to pursue their profit-making goods.

Many of the techniques being used here have come to light since the Arab Spring. Protesters released records showing that Western — usually U.S. — companies had been marketing to the dictators a wide array of technology for snooping on people without the latter knowing it. There are “surveillance industry conferences” all around the world (Prague, Dubai, Brasilia, Washington DC, Kuala Lumpur).
At the recent D.C. event, firms were selling products to enable a computer to snap a picture of who is using it and send the image to police; track hundreds of cell phones at once; read e-mails by the tens of thousands; use phony updates for iTunes to infiltrate phones/tablets/computers. When questioned, the firms’ response has been: we only sell to governments, and most of our customers are law enforcement agencies in the U.S.
Journalists’ probes discovered that the firms have been pushing sales to smaller and smaller police departments; what was once done only by the Feds is becoming universal. Moreover, the firms are now

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Rulers Debate Obama’s Killer Drones But They All Make War on Workers

President Barack Obama is facing a liberal backlash over his hardline national security policy, which critics say is more extreme and conservative than that pursued by George W. Bush (London Observer, 2/9/13).

Obama was supposed to be the people’s savior but now is outdoing Bush. Why? Because the profit-driven U.S. ruling class needs to maintain its dominance over the world’s resources, especially oil and gas. Wider war is essential to their goal, “by any means necessary.” Enter drones and assassinations.

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Parents, Students Unite With Workers: Bus Strikers on the March!

NEW YORK CITY, February 10 — Today, thousands of angry striking workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), took over the Brooklyn Bridge, insisting that the city and billionaire Mayor Bloomberg listen to their demands. The large and spirited march showed what CHALLENGE has been reporting from the beginning, that the school bus drivers and matrons are fiercely determined to make their stand in what they see as a life-and-death struggle for survival and dignity.
They have been facing freezing weather, constant attacks from the media and the latest indignation, threatened denial of food stamps to those who need them. Yet despite all this, and the remnants of the recent blizzard, thousands marched today.

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