Haiti: National Teachers’ Strike: School for Revolution?

PART I

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, October 17 — If “a strike is a school of revolution,” as Lenin said, then this October 25-26 in Haiti a national school of revolution may be on the class schedule. The teachers’ union UNNOH (a union of the graduates of several Haitian teachers’ colleges) is not a revolutionary organization. But, like the Chicago Teachers Union which just carried out a successful teachers’ strike in Chicago, UNNOH’s strike-call and nine strike demands have many progressive features which can drive our class, the working class forward. All workers internationally should support this strike.  

Four demands refer to teachers’ own needs — back pay, a minimum living wage of $1,185/month, credentials giving job security, and a say in social insurance policies.  These improvements lifting teachers above abject poverty and insecurity will also benefit their students because teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.

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Haiti: National Teachers’ Strike: School for Revolution?

PART II

Whether this strike remains a strike only, or becomes a step towards communist workers’ taking state power away from the bosses by armed revolution, depends on the activity of revolutionaries with their fellow workers during the struggle. They will be arguing for striking for the whole working class rather than only for the teachers’ interests. They will argue that “winning” the strike means not winning the strike’s reform demands (urgently necessary though they are in the misery of Haiti), but building the revolutionary party PLP and its communist influence. 

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France: Bosses’ Laws, Union Hacks Take Airline, Rail Workers for A Ride

In Puerto Rico, as in the U.S., the “War on Drugs” is another ruling-class weapon in the class war waged against the working class to prevent it from organizing and seizing control. In the name of this fraudulent “War on Drugs, Puerto Rico has suffered years of devastation by the U.S. and its law enforcement agencies.

The coined phrase “War on Drugs” was invented by the Nixon administration in the late 1960’s to use drug laws to suppress student agitation, the civil rights movement, and urban protests in impoverished black communities. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration added mandatory sentencing laws to exert social control over such communities, as neoliberal economic policies slashed government aid.

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Capitalism: The Mother of All Hurricanes

Hurricanes may be acts of nature, but the damage they wreak is an act of the profit system.

As TV journalists depict in graphic detail the hardships suffered by millions from Hurricane Sandy, the one thing they hide is the root cause of this devastation: capitalism. The capitalists’ drive for maximum profits has destroyed the environment and resulted in climate change and more violent weather phenomena. At the same time, they ignore their own scientists’ warnings of the danger of floods to urban tunnels and electrical plants, and how catastrophic damage might be avoided. 

Had the Japanese government erected a seawall around the Fukushima nuclear plant, it would not have been flooded; millions would have been spared the dangers of radiation. Had the proper dams and levees been in place in New Orleans, thousands of residents would have been saved from the horrors of Hurricane Katrina.

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PL Panel Makes the Case for Communism

WASHINGTON, DC — Four friends of PLP and a veteran PL’er developed a panel on communism for the October 6-7 Public Anthropology Conference, which PL’ers have attended before. It “brings together professional anthropologists and archaeologists, public health professionals, social justice activists, community organizers, filmmakers and educators to discuss new approaches to progressive political action.”

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Obama, Romney Debate: How Best to Widen War

While the capitalists’ election circus offers nothing of value to workers, it is an important mechanism for opposing sections of the ruling class to battle out their differences. The U.S. presidential campaign fight between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney reflects in part a disagreement over the best way to expand the looming inter-imperialist conflict with nuclear-bound Iran.

The major difference pits a less expensive warfare policy of air strikes and Special Forces (Romney) versus a longer-term, mass mobilization for a full-scale ground war (Obama). At stake is nothing less than U.S. imperialism’s top-dog status over Russia, China, and other imperialist rivals.

Securing Iran’s oil and gas reserves—the second largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia’s—has been the Pentagon’s mission since the fascist Shah of Iran, the U.S.-installed puppet, was ousted by the fascist ayatollahs in 1979. It remains the top long-term priority of

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Rally Protests Greek Neo-Nazi Gang

ASTORIA, QUEENS, NEW YORK, October 9 — Over 200 people rallied in a church this evening to discuss preventing the Greek neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn from opening an office in this largely Greek neighborhood. A number of people from Greece were there, including one of the former leaders of the Stella D’Oro strike in the Bronx, as well as teachers, students and labor activists.

The meeting began with a panel of six speakers, who provided a history of Golden Dawn — a group that uses Nazi symbols, celebrates Hitler’s birthday and has a record of attacking and beating immigrants and leftists. Fortunately, the latter have often defended themselves and “shown the fascists the pavement.” This is the only response thugs like the Golden Dawn respect.

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Protest UN Troops in Haiti, Inaction on Cholera

NEW YORK CITY, October 12 — Members of the End Cholera in Haiti Organization (ECHO) came out today to rally at the UN in ECHO’s first public action in NYC, building on a petition campaign. This will be a long struggle with many such actions. We joined a protest with other Haitian groups and international activists against the continued stationing of UN Minustah troops in Haiti.

We highlighted the demands of our campaign to end cholera in Haiti: universal vaccination, beginning with schoolchildren; a country-wide network of treatment centers; and most fundamentally, a modern infrastructure for clean water and sanitation.

Comrades from Progressive Labor Party were there distributing CHALLENGE and explaining how capitalism continually causes these preventable water-borne diseases. It is an example of the gross racism of the imperialist system towards workers in places like Haiti or West Africa where these epidemics are allowed to spread.

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Workers Shut Down Indonesia’s Capital

 On October 3, a strike by more than two million factory workers in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta brought the city to a halt. They’ve taken to the streets across the country to protest the government’s slave-labor wage policy. The minimum wage for a 6-day week is below $80 a month (see CHALLENGE 10/17). 

DC Transit Rank and File Sharpen Anti-Racist Contract Fight

WASHINGTON, DC, October 16 — The bosses and their union misleader allies continue to attack Metro Access workers here. These drivers handle special trips for the disabled and elderly. In most major cities, such para-transit systems are generally treated as stepchildren of the mass transit systems, with wages and benefits far below regular bus and train operators. The bosses rely on private contractors to provide these poverty-level jobs and on racism to super-exploit these mainly black workers. 

Here Metro Access is operated by MV Transportation, a contractor that is barely represented by ATU Local 1764. One DC Metro Access worker contacted a PLP member known for his long-time activism in the Metro transit union and said the workers wanted to leave their local because it didn’t serve their needs. However, the PL’er said it would be better for workers to organize a their own fight around a new contract for January 2013, including preparing to strike.

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