Workers Raise $ for Terminally Ill Brother; Bosses: Not 1¢

Recently at work we learned that one of our maintenance workers was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. His doctor gave him only six months to live. Those closest to him began to take up a collection to send him on one last trip to fulfill a dream of his, watching a NASCAR race in Daytona, FL. Our machine shop pays the lowest wages in the area, with most workers making between $10 and $15 per hour in one of the most expensive areas in the country to live. But the workers in the shop stepped up, donating what they could. They raised the needed funds in less than two weeks.

Even though this was a modest dream and this maintenance worker had given more than five years of his life to this company the bosses could not find it in themselves to donate a single penny for this man’s last vacation. After initially claiming that they would allow workers to donate through paycheck deductions (something that would help people who live paycheck to paycheck) the company went back on that, claiming that it simply wouldn’t be possible.

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Fiscal Cliff Crisis Declares War on Workers

Much has been made by the capitalist media and their politicians of the looming “fiscal cliff.” This is occurring amid intensifying imperialist rivalry causing the bosses to impose more fascist austerity measures to force workers to pay for unending wars.

In a political move described as “kicking the can down the road,” the fiscal cliff date was arbitrarily set by lawmakers two years ago as a time bomb to guarantee creation of a new crisis if draconian cuts were not made. On that date the Bush tax cuts would expire, amid sweeping spending cuts threatening to cause a massive retraction of the economy. We’re told that without massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and other benefits, an economic doomsday is inevitable.

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Gaza Carnage Prelude to U.S.-Israeli War on Iran?

For eight straight days, U.S.-armed Israel bombed Palestinian civilians in what the New York Times called a “practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran” (11/23/12). Meanwhile, President Barack Obama was on a Southeast Asia road trip to round up allies for any potential conflict with China.

These actions underscore the fundamental dilemma facing U.S. capitalists. They are desperate to maintain their global top-dog status, but they’re not quite ready for the regional and world wars that inevitably loom as imperialist rivalries intensify. Obama stands ready to expand U.S. military adventures beyond Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, but has failed to build the domestic unity and patriotism that his ruling-class backers need. At the same time, the U.S. bosses lack international support to secure Iraqi oil and Afghan gas routes against Islamist militias.

Factional fighting has destabilized Iraq and limited Exxon Mobil’s ability to extract barely half its goal for oil production there. The Taliban and Islamic militias have prevented construction of the gas pipeline extending through Afghanistan from central Asia. As they struggle in these smaller arenas, U.S. imperialists know it will be far more difficult to confront the militaries in Iran and China.

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Striking Teacher-Student March Roars Through Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, November 13 — Up to 15,000 students and striking teachers marched through the capital today, their battle cry, “The  only solution is revolution”  filling the streets.

The march stopped at over a dozen public and private schools, with students and teachers swelling the ranks at each one. At many schools, large metal gates locked by administrators to keep students inside and marchers out were forced open by persistent students banging on and climbing the gates, signaling to the students and teachers inside that the strike was here to pick them up. Soon the gates were flung open and a flood of students poured out into the march. The demonstration was carried along on the energy and vitality of students chanting: “Schoolchildren today, university students tomorrow.” 

Strike Spreads

In the militant march, tires were set afire and eventually the police shot into the crowd, essentially made up of schoolchildren, while the UN force MINUSTAH lobbed tear gas into the march for hours, including at

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Avenge Racist KKKop Murder of Reynaldo Cuevas

BRONX, NY, November 17 — Tonight a crowd marked our weekly protest and march against the NYPD’s racist murder of 20-year-old Reynaldo Cuevas. The next time the police peddle their sick lie that their job is to “protect and serve,” we must remember Reynaldo’s murder and how they gunned down another innocent youth whose only “crime” was “living while Latino.”

On September 7, Reynaldo and his uncle were finishing work at the family bodega when they stumbled upon a burglary. Three armed robbers forced them to the floor. When the cops arrived, the two workers seized the moment to flee for safety. Or so they thought. Rey’s uncle ran outside with his hands up, with Rey right behind him. Surveillance video clearly shows Reynaldo fall onto the sidewalk in an attempt to avoid cop Ramysh Bangali. Bangali pounced on him, pointed the gun at his head and fired, killing him.

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Link Workers’ Struggles to Fight vs. Racism

New York, November 17 — Over 200 workers and students attended a conference to make plans to fight racism with multiracial, international unity. The goal of the day was to unite seemingly unconnected struggles into an antiracist army. Attendees were drawn from movements fighting back against the racist police murders of Ramarley Graham and Shantel Davis; fighting the layoffs and closing of Downstate Hospital; Hurricane Sandy victims and volunteers; immigrant workers’ rights organizers; workers organizing on their jobs; organizers of the anti-Cholera campaign struggle in Haiti and U.S.; as well as high school and college students and teachers.

The conference began with messages from representatives of these movements. The keynote speaker set the tone for the day when he called for workers and students to walk out if kkkop Richard Haste, Ramarley Graham’s murderer, was acquitted. Organizing a walkout isn’t easy, he said, but if we start building now in all our organizations then “if Haste walks, we walk,” could become a reality.

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Workers Strike vs. Walmart’s Exploitation

WASHINGTON, DC — MARYLAND

Washington, DC, November 23 — Over 400 workers took to the streets here to protest slave-labor conditions at Walmart, the world’s largest retailer and third largest corporation. Walmart has branches around the world and over two million wage-slaves working for them. Fiercely anti-union, Walmart systematically keeps workers as low-wage part-timers to avoid paying any benefits, forcing workers onto food stamps and Medicaid to survive. If black and white workers fought a civil war to end racist chattel slavery over 150 years ago, it is high time to fight a revolutionary war for communism to end racist wage-slavery!

Such a revolutionary line was not, however, the order of the day except for the message brought to various rallies in the U.S by the Progressive Labor Party and its friends, distributing CHALLENGE to participants in the various actions around town and making several new contacts interested in revolution.

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No to War on Gaza! Yes to Class War!

TEL-AVIV, November 17 — Hundreds of Jewish and Arab demonstrators marched in central Tel-Aviv protesting the murderous war waged by Israeli rulers against the Gaza Strip. They demanded an end to the bloodshed and to the suffering caused by the ruling classes (both Israeli and Hamas bosses) to the workers of all nationalities and religions in and surrounding Gaza.

A small gang of Zionist fascists gathered near this rally, dancing with Israeli flags and shouting support for the war. But the fascist thugs didn’t dare approach the leftist demonstrators.

Israeli Rulers’ Phony Excuses

While Israeli rulers claim they’re acting “in defense of Israeli citizens in the south” facing rocket fire from Gaza, that’s as phony excuse as the one used to launch the war four years ago — in which 1,300 Palestinians were killed — “to liberate an Israeli POW from Hamas captivity.” The fact is they

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Bangladesh: Workers Shut Bosses’ Death Traps

DHAKA, BANGLADESH, November 27 — Thousands of garment workers poured into the streets of Ashulia, the industrial belt north of here, protesting the deaths of at least 112 mostly women workers, burnt alive in the Tarzeen Factory, trapped by poor escape routes.

The protesting workers paralyzed much of Ashulia, blocked roads and forced the closing of many of the country’s 4,500 garment factories. They produce $18 billion in profits per year, second in textile exports only to China.

The workers were burned beyond recognition because the capitalists who run these factories won’t spend money on fire escapes or follow safety rules. Most of the workers who died were on the first and second floors and were killed, fire officials said, because there were not enough exits for them to get out.

“The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor,” said Maj. Mohammad Mahbub, the operations director for the fire department, according to The Associated Press. “So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building.”

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Petraeus Dumped by Rulers’ Battle Over War Strategies

After helping to slaughter millions of Iraqis and Afghans, the fact that ousted CIA chief and former general David Petraeus cheated on his wife should shock nobody. Like their U.S. bosses, military leaders propagate capitalism’s exploitation of women inside and outside the armed forces. What matters is the scandal’s political aspect, and how it points to the main finance capitalists’ push towards wider wars and the military draft that likely will be needed to carry them out.

Barack Obama’s policies faithfully serve finance capital’s outlook for long-term war. But while Obama won his second term in the White House, the Republican Party — despite deep divisions in their ranks over war policy — maintained its majority in the House of Representatives. This is the context that reveals the significance of the Petraeus scandal.

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