The Hunger Games Don’t Be A Player in the Bosses’ Games

 The Hunger Games movie, based on Suzanna Collin’s first part of the trilogy, is the most popular film in theatres. When analyzed, there are many scenes that teach lessons about capitalism and the power we workers have.

The movie is set in Panem, what was once North America. Due to the failed revolution, the Capitol uses the annual Hunger Games to maintain fascist control of the masses. A boy and a girl of ages 12-18 are chosen from each of the 12 districts to participate in a nationally televised event in which they fight to the death until one is crowned victor.   

The plot focuses on the life of working-class 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in 12, the coal district. (For a detailed synopsis, see CHALLENGE, 3/28/12.) Almost everyone is utterly dispossessed. What was a crucial part of the protagonist’s actions was reduced to a mere scene: Katniss’s father’s death. He was blown

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Occupation Protests Columbia’s Expansion

NEW YORK CITY, March 26 — A five-day occupation in West Harlem on 125 Street is protesting Columbia’s University’s displacement of primarily black and Latino residents and businesses to build a new campus.  About 50 Columbia U. students, community activists and residents marched from the college 20 blocks north to the West Harlem site. 

The main community contingent came from a church where for years PLP has been actively building anti-racist struggle. Students and activists began the occupation, within the expansion area, with a shelter and bathroom provided by a business that has been seized by eminent domain. At least 10 people have slept there nightly, while others

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Students, Parents, Teachers Unite: Fight Fascist Attacks in U.S. Education

The bosses’ assault against students and teachers in the United States has reached epic proportions. The capitalists are using standardized curricula and tests to assert more direct control over what is taught. They are attacking wages and conditions for school workers even as they blame teachers for the system’s decay. In large and overcrowded urban districts, where student populations are predominantly black and Latino, dress codes, rigid discipline, and metal detectors are the norm. Students are treated like criminals, with no time off for good behavior.

These racist attacks serve two

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Anti-Racists Cheer PLP’s Call for Communist Revolution

CHICAGO, March 24 —  Events and circumstances change if we are prepared, bold and militant! To support the call for justice for Trayvon Martin, twenty Progressive Labor Party members and supporters joined a rally of 300 people at Daley Plaza. The outraged participants demanded that the racist George Zimmerman be arrested for the murder of Trayvon in Sanford, Florida. Speakers called for everything except a communist revolution. Some wanted a U.S. Justice Department investigation, while others took the opportunity to vent about all sorts of past grievances. Only the PL’ers came there to

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Pakistan: Workers Fighting Hell of Capitalist Crisis

A capitalist crisis is ravaging Pakistan. The working class is fighting back against its devastating effects and against the bosses’ attacks as the latter tries to shift the crisis onto workers’ backs. 

Almost daily workers are organizing demonstrations against the bosses across the country, including railroad and airline workers, and among teachers and women in the healthcare industry who’ve organized huge strikes. In Lahore, the Paramedical Association is waging a militant walkout to win a contract. They have no job security and work long hours at low wages.

Workers Beat Cops

In Faisalabad, during violent street protests against

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Bronx: Capitalism’s KKKops Are ALL ‘Bad Apples’

BRONX, NEW YORK CITY, March 22 — “NYPD KKK!” chanted two hundred demonstrators marching with their fists in the air as they approached the 47th Precinct station house in the north Bronx. Workers and students from the Wakefield section have organized since the New York Police Department’s recent execution of black teenager Rhamarley Graham last month. “That’s what it was!” cried a neighbor of Rhamarley. “They executed Rhamarely and we will have the last word!”  

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Marchers Blast Murder of Trayvon Martin

NEW YORK CITY, March 21 — “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” “The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All Are Part of the Bosses’ Plan!”

About 2,500 demonstrators, mainly black and Latino youth, defied the NYPD and protested the February 26 racist murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman — a racist one-man neighborhood watch vigilante in Sanford, Florida. At this writing, Zimmerman remains free. 

Most demonstrators demanded Zimmerman’s arrest and conviction. While hundreds regrouped before a second march, a PLP member pointed out that racism won’t stop until we stop the racist system of capitalism. “They want us to elect Obama again. But Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo, Ramarley Graham — how many more people will have to die before we realize we need communist revolution?”

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From Florida to the Bronx to Afghanistan Capitalism Breeds Racist Murders

The racist profit system has killed two black teenagers — Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, and Ramarley Graham in the Bronx, N.Y. — and 17 unnamed Afghan working-class civilians. These horrendous murders are nearly beyond comprehension. But the history of capitalism is the story of racist slaughter. These outrageous, cold-blooded killings prove it once again.

A racist vigilante — a self-appointed neighborhood watchdog — stalked Trayvon, 17, who was innocently walking to a friend’s house carrying only candy and soda. Trayvon was fatally shot, the vigilante said, because he was “suspicious” (see page 3 and 4). This “suspicion” was based solely on the fact that he was “walking while black” in a mostly white neighborhood. After local police stated that the killer, George Zimmerman, acted in self-defense, they let him walk free. Only working-class fury over the murder forced the temporary ouster of the Sanford police chief, whose force has a history of ignoring violent crimes against black residents. Only nationwide protests — and the threat of more militant action — forced

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‘Kony 2012’ Builds Mass Support for U.S. Rulers’ Wars

As the United States ruling class digs in for an indefinite occupation of the Middle East, weighs its options for war against Iran, and expands its presence in East Asia, it faces a major obstacle: the lack of enthusiasm for this future of expanding war among working-class youth. The bosses’ dilemma is the context for the viral spread of the “Kony 2012” video, an attack on a murderous warlord in Central Africa that collected more than 70 million hits on YouTube within days of its release.   

Invisible Children, the organization that created the video, was founded by three former film students at the University of Southern California. They have gained a reputation for profiteering (they’re charging $35 for a Kony 2012 “action kit”) and for on-line “slacktivism,” where social change is supposedly just a mouse click away. They also promote the neocolonialist myth that U.S. do-gooders represent the best hope to cure Central Africa’s ills.

Despite these evident weaknesses, the “Stop Kony” campaign has grown into a dangerous mass phenomenon. Endorsed by celebrities like George Clooney, Rihanna, and Sean “Diddy” Combs, and dovetailing with the needs of U.S. capitalism, it may have the potential to break through cyberspace and spill over into action in the real world — a phenomenon that one blogger called “crowd-sourced internvention.”

An Excuse To Expand Troops in Uganda

In reality, the “Stop Kony” campaign is a carefully crafted call to mobilize young people to support U.S. imperialism in Central Africa. By building public pressure for a stepped-up fight against Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, and in particular for the U.S. to expand its current ranks of military advisers in Uganda, the video is misleading millions of well-meaning viewers. By siding against such an easy target, the vicious and brutal Joseph Kony, Invisible Children prompts people to side with the U.S. capitalist class, its politicians and its armed forces.  

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The Hunger Games: Rebellion Against Injustice Inevitable

This is the first of a three-part review of the young adult sci-fi trilogy by Suzanne Collins that made the NY Times best seller list. It is widely being used by high school reading and English teachers and has now been made into a much-anticipated motion picture.

Hunger Games, the first book and also the name of the series, begins at some indeterminate future time after natural disasters, droughts, storms, fires and finally a brutal period of wars have devastated North America. While there are futuristic, sci-fi gimmicks throughout the story, the main characters are very down-to-earth, mostly young adults, from working-class families. The society described is an openly fascist one with many parallels to the current day U.S.

Following the natural disasters, a nation “Panem” was created with a luxurious “Capitol” city of the rich rulers and their allies (somewhere in the Rocky Mountains), surrounded by thirteen districts whose workers and resources are exploited for the profit of the rulers. The districts rebelled but were defeated. District Thirteen was apparently leveled into dust and left abandoned as an example of how futile any acts of revolution would be against the Capitol rulers.

‘Games’ Extreme Version of Capitalist Culture

The rulers also tried to discourage workers’ rebellion by creating a yearly “Hunger Games” in which each district was forced to send a boy and a girl (chosen by lot) between the ages of 12 and 18 to a televised battle to the death where only one child can survive. The Games represent an extreme version of the current capitalist culture’s obsession with “reality” shows where there can be only one winner in survival, love or creative pursuits, or where the lives of working-class young people are exploited for entertainment.

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