Act Against School Privatization ‘Fired up, won’t take it no more!’

CHICAGO, December 3 — More than 500 black, Latino, and white parents, students, education workers and other working-class Chicagoans, including PL’ers, assembled today at a local school to say, “We’re fired up; we won’t take it no more!” Earlier in the week, Chicago Public School (CPS) officials had announced the racist closing or restructuring of 21 schools. Since 2001, CPS has already closed 44 schools, “turned around” 17 more, and opened 80 charter schools in their place.

The overwhelming majority of the closed or reorganized schools are predominantly black or Latino. These attacks disrupt the lives of students, especially the disproportionate numbers of homeless children who attend them. The immediate aim of today’s conference, representing thousands, is to stop these proposals.

As many declared, the responsibility for these actions lay with the politicians at City Hall, the capitalists on the Board of Education, and the bank and corporation directors. They expressed their disgust with the  CPS spokespeople who claim that the changes will help prepare every student for college. In reality, students who move from one school to another generally do no better academically, and sometimes do worse.

The real motive for these actions is the money that comes from privatization. The ruling class has decided to spend less on educating poor black and Latino working-class students, in order to boost profits in the developing education business sector. Their plan for our children consists of unemployment, war, prison, and at best a low-wage, dead-end job, not college.

Students Aren’t Just Test Scores

Turnaround and charter schools are also models for the teaching of capitalist ideology. As conference speakers pointed out, many education workers at community-based schools, those targeted by CPS, take pride in serving the children and their families. They aim to provide support when loved ones die or become ill, or unemployed or lose their house. They nurture the emotional, artistic, and physical aspects of the child, as well as the intellectual. This is not what the capitalists want for our children.

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March vs. Columbia U.’s Ravaging of W. Harlem, Fake Jobs ‘Pledge’

NEW YORK CITY, December 9 — Today,  there was a breakthrough in the long struggle to force Columbia University to live up to its commitments to the West Harlem area that it has destroyed in order to build a new campus. Columbia promised to create 7,000 new jobs, but no one from the community has been trained or hired yet by the fake “Employment Information Office” just south of 125 Street.

At our past actions at this center to demand these jobs, we involved a few Columbia students and a small number of community residents and local church members. This time we had a very spirited demonstration, complete with drums and noisemakers, with a group of about 60, including 30 students, some supporters from Occupy Wall St, more church activists and members of the Coalition to Preserve Community, which has fought the expansion for years.

The marchers’ energy and militancy was exciting to the participants and passersby alike. We started at the gates of the Columbia campus where the NYC police and University security had previously tried to stop us from marching to the middle of campus; this time they didn’t even try.

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Workers, Students Battle Murderous Regime Fighting Fascism in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, November 19 — Huguens Leroi was a 24-year-old student at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FASCH) campus of the University of Haiti (UEH), and an actor in a university theater group that commemorated the 2010 assassination of his activist mentor, Professor JnAnil Louis-Juste.  In October, Huguens was himself killed by two gunshots at a busy intersection near the Port-au-Prince airport. As usual, the police are lying about “an investigation being under way.” Another FASCH activist, Onald Auguste, was “disappeared” from the campus on October 31 (the second recent case), and has not been heard from since.  On November 10, students organized a one-day strike to protest his kidnapping, blocking roads with a demonstration at the Ministry of the Interior.

FASCH students regard these assassinations and disappearances as more than just business as usual by Haiti’s ruling class. They see them as part of a new attempt by President Michel Martelly to accelerate the move toward fascist social control. The Martelly regime is organizing vigilante killers known as milis wòz (literally “pink militias,” because Martelly often wears pink) to eliminate “extremists.” A music video on Haitian TV shows macho uniformed officer-thug types rapping and recruiting young men from the United Nations earthquake refugee camps, and lining up young children to salute them.

Martelly recently attempted to reinstate a Duvalier-style Haitian army under his direct control for the stated purpose of eliminating foreign and local “extremists” and “terrorists.” But this plan led Martelly into conflict with the imperialists who really rule Haiti. Although the U.S. embassy maneuvered to get Martelly into power and then supplied him with a prime minister from former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s staff (Gary Conille), they apparently do not trust him with his own army for now.  Martelly was forced to accept instead a beefed-up Haitian National Police. (The disagreement may have prompted Martelly’s attack on the U.S. embargo against Cuba during his visit to Havana this week.)

UN ‘Peacekeepers’: An Occupying Army

The National Police is no less a fascist force; one unit is now on trial in Les Cayes for the massacre of unarmed prisoners.  And behind the police, as always, stand the UN’s “peacekeepers,” the occupying army MINUSTAH, which recently had its mandate renewed with strong backing from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

FASCH students are fighting this fascist trend, linking up with unionized workers and warning all workers of the need to organize against it. An antifascist resistance cannot rely on liberal bourgeois forces. PLP in Haiti is saying that the only way to defeat fascism is to overthrow the capitalist system itself with communist revolution.  And the key to launching a revolutionary movement in Haiti is to build the international Party here as a communist fighting force. The struggle against rising fascism today will test and harden communists in Haiti and other students and workers for the even greater battles ahead. PL is in a position to lead this struggle because of our growing roots among workers both organized and unorganized, including the camp residents.

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U.S. Rulers Seek to Use ‘Occupy Wall Street’ to Re-elect Warmaker Obama

Occupy Wall Street has given U.S. capitalists high hopes that clash with the egalitarian goals of the movement’s rank and file. The bosses dream most fondly of enlisting OWS in re-electing war-maker Obama, who just upped the likelihood of a new major war by killing twenty-five Pakistani soldiers and opening a U.S. Marine base in Australia, opposite archrival China.  

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism’s top think tank, gushes that the occupiers “could emerge as a battle-hardened cadre of skilled organizers well-positioned to influence the issues at stake in the 2012 elections” (CFR website, 11/11/11). The CFR thinks that OWS can help sell Obama’s push to tax the rich to pay for global war readiness, in the guise of “fairness” and job creation: “Increasing taxes on capital gains and closing corporate tax loopholes would allow renewed investments in critical public goods like roads and railways.”

This plan dovetails with the U.S. Army War College’s calls for renewing “infrastructure required to effectively project our military forces overseas” (USAWC report, 3/15/06). But many in OWS see through the voting booth farce. At the New York City camp near Wall Street, the idea of voting was highly unpopular. Some protesters sat on voter registration tables set up by Democratic Party flunkies and refused to register.

Bosses Misguide Workers with ‘99%’ Politics

Savvier ruling-class strategists, however, understand that the success of OWS reflects the growing alienation of Obama’s base due to widening Middle East wars and a flagging U.S. economy. In the liberal, imperialist, Rockefeller-bankrolled Nation magazine (12/12/11), William Greider wrote, “Many of the young people and minorities who campaigned and voted for [Obama] in 2008 might drift away to Occupy’s direct action... [and] may just skip voting in 2012.”

On the other hand, Greider sees how his imperialist masters could benefit from the lack of revolutionary, communist leadership within OWS: “Yet this new force can ultimately help Obama if he responds to its message. Led by the young, the movement is aligning with the reviving militancy of labor and other progressive constituencies. The spirit is open-armed and patriotic, not negative and divisive.... [T]his movement is not about electoral politics — not yet, anyway. It is about saving the country.”

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‘Wow! You guys are serious!...’ Communist Ideas Gaining Ground at Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK, November 13 — Four student members of PLP from the City University of New York (CUNY) camped at Zuccotti Park this weekend and spread communist ideas among occupiers and supporters. Our multi-racial group stood out in an occupation that was at least two-thirds white. In addition to fighting racism, these young comrades gave the occupiers a glimpse of communism.

It was 47 degrees when we arrived on a late Friday afternoon, though it felt much colder. One student comrade of Nigerian descent and a recent friend we made at OWS last week came to help us settle in. It is encouraging to see how quickly young people can grasp and even defend PL’s ideas. We spent three hours circling the park, trying to find a living space. Luckily, we had an old friend and made a new one at the occupation library, and they offered us a living space there for the night.

That night was spent forming relationships and putting forth communist values. We took in as many people into the library as possible, including two young women from Occupy Nova Scotia. Working together, we put up a tarp to block out the wind. We read stories in a circle before going to sleep on the concrete.

A Glimpse of Communism

We later pointed out how collective values would be the basis of relationships under communism. When asked how the library came about, our friend said, “First there were a couple of books. Then someone brought in a bin. Then people started organizing the books. From just working together, we now have a whole library.” This is a glimpse of how society could be run under communism — each according to commitment, without any wages.

At 5:30 AM, one PL’er began helping out in the kitchen. We all began our morning with a CHALLENGE sale. A few passersby said, “I remember you guys from the 60s!” Later we landed at a meeting on Islamophobia in the public-space atrium on Wall Street. One PL’er connected the attack on Muslims to the infiltration of NYPD spies inside Muslim Student Associations at various campuses of CUNY, which gave Muslim students’ records to the cops. We also exposed “Islamophobia” for what it really is: racism.

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Haiti: Workers, Students Sound Off on Fascism

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, November 15 — “Mr. Martelly (the president of Haiti) is a fascist, no doubt about it.”

“Haiti is becoming more and more fascist every day.”

“Look at what happened to G, a small vendor jailed and moved from one prison to another one even worse, just for talking back to the son of a Tonton Macoute [the armed paramilitary organized under the Duvaliers’ dictatorship, 1957-1986]. That’s fascism!”

“Or, comrade C here, head of his union at the General Hospital. He and three other leaders were suspended from work without trial and charged with ‘presumed’ acts of vandalism after a long strike for back pay for nurses. They’re just trying to crush the unions.”

“This is not 1957. If Martelly dreams of being a fascist, we will show that we don’t agree.”

These were some of the comments made by a dozen rank-and-filers, private- and public-sector union leaders, and university students at a chita-pale (literally, “sit down and talk”) in a union confederation office. The subject at hand was whether Haiti was turning fascist and what the workers’ response should be. The consensus was clear about the political situation. A lively debate followed about what to do.

Today’s Student, Tomorrow’s Worker

One worker, enthusiastic about building a worker-student alliance, noted that today’s student is tomorrow’s worker. In that spirit, a student suggested that the hospital union leaders now under attack not rely solely on a legal defense. He proposed that workers be mobilized to take many forms of action, from a press conference to a sit-in at the Ministry of Public Health to demand an end to repression at the hospital.

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Workers Need PLP’s Ideas, Strike vs. Racist Transit Bosses

NEW YORK CITY, November 28 — More than 600 members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 demonstrated before the Sheraton Hotel on the first day of official negotiations between city transit workers and the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Local 100 president John Samuelson said there’s no midnight strike deadline on January 15 when the current contract expires.

City transit workers are directly up against Wall Street’s rulers. Bankers and wealthy investors of MTA bonds drain more than $2 billion a year directly out of the $11 billion-a-year MTA budget, forcing service cuts, layoffs and fare increases.

All the transit bosses’ attacks hit the majority black, Latino and immigrant workers and riders the hardest. Now the racist bosses want a three-year wage freeze, $6,000-a-year per worker for healthcare, and elimination of the conductor title.

The most important action transit workers can take to fight the racist bosses is to organize a rank-and-file, multi-racial group of women and men that both prepares for a strike while spreading communist ideas as the solution for workers’ problems.

The MTA’s attacks on transit workers and riders are a natural organic part of capitalism. These attacks can’t be fixed by taxing the rich, regulating the banks, improving campaign finance rules or working with a “nice” MTA boss. The entire political system, including the promotion and appointment of the MTA heads, was created by and for the rich.

Bosses’ Dictatorship Cannot Be ‘Improved’

Capitalism is not a democratic system that “needs to be improved.” It’s a bosses’ dictatorship that needs to be smashed and replaced with workers’ power. Only in a communist society can workers make transit decisions and work for the world’s working classes’ needs, with no profit, money or bosses.

The 2005 transit walkout, despite being sold out, showed that black, Latino and immigrant-led workers can bring the racist city bosses to their knees. Today hundreds of thousands of workers in city unions are looking to Local 100 to set a pattern of gains in these hard times, particularly the smaller ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) locals that have stalled negotiations with the MTA.

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Mexico: Turn War vs. Youth into Class War vs. Capitalism

MEXICO — The “war on drugs” reveals that capitalism means death, violence and terror for the working class. It has allowed the ruling class to turn most of Mexico into a militarized police state. These attacks are felt most by working-class youth, who also experience huge unemployment. The few jobs that can still be found don’t provide social security and the miserable salaries range from 400 to 600 pesos per week (US $31 to $46).

Access to education is constantly shrinking; the government has slashed the budget for education and health and funneled the money to the police and the army. Youth have lost faith and many have been swept up to fight the war, either as hired guns or in the police and military. Thousands have died in this war.

The military and police state terrorizes workers and violently represses any resistance. This is the fascist face of bourgeois democracy. The war on drugs hasn’t reduced the profits of drug cartels, estimated at $40 billion dollars a year, a good part of which enters the country’s financial system.

This ongoing militarization is also part of a fascist strategy to guarantee control over the natural resources in case of an eventual privatization of oil, gas and water, and the further privatization of the electrical supply. Industries that provide services, such as telecommunications. They are the focus of intense conflict between national and foreign capitalists.

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France: Bosses’ Austerity Hits Workers; Union Hacks Roll Over

PARIS, November 23 — The working class here is reeling as one austerity plan after another destroys social gains won through generations of bitter class struggle. But the trade union misleadership, having lost last year’s battle to save retirement pensions, is marching workers straight into another Waterloo (British defeat of the French).

On November 18, five union confederations issued a call for workers nation-wide to rally on December 13 to protest the government’s austerity plans. In the build-up to that demonstration, they’re urging workers to “question the government and elected officials” — a give-away of their election treadmill aims.

With presidential elections five months away, the union misleaders are walking a thin line. They want to organize just enough action to mobilize workers to vote for Socialist Party candidate François Hollande. But they also want to avoid any disruption of French society that might cost the Socialists the elections.

Sellouts Control Workers’ Anger

This is a mirror image of last year’s losing kid-glove approach, in which 24-hour strikes were held at six-week intervals so that workers’ anger remained controllable.

On September 7, the National Assembly adopted a 12-billion-euro austerity plan (US$16 billion), followed by a November 16 vote on a new 7-billion-euro austerity plan (US$9.3 billion), now being debated in the French Senate.

The new plan includes higher taxes for 86% of the population, cutting health and welfare benefits further and forcing people to work one year longer before retiring and until 67 for a full pension. Even subsidies to associations providing services to elementary school children are being axed.

These austerity plans are racist in that they fall most heavily on immigrant workers — most of whom are of North African or sub-Saharan African origin — and are disproportionately among the poorest workers in France

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Bronx OWS: ‘Positive Thinking’ Won’t Halt Cops’ and Bosses’ Attacks

BRONX, NEW YORK, November 28 — For the past month, Occupy the Bronx, one of the offshoots of the main Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, has met every Saturday morning, providing further evidence that the anti-Wall Street sentiment is shared by large sections of the working class. The largely black and Latino group here expresses the same outrage and anger at bankers and bosses that is found on Wall Street. PL has been participating in the group’s activities, attempting to bring communist analysis and leadership into the darkness of reform and pacifism that limits this movement.

Perhaps the primary weakness in OWS is its lack of understanding of how racism is essential to capitalist inequality. In the Bronx, the links between racism and unemployment, poor education, and inadequate health care are more obvious.  But even here, the task of bringing communist or even anti-racist ideas to the forefront is not necessarily any easier. For one thing, the leadership of the Bronx group is straight from OWS, and they’ve brought the same organizational style with them. Called “direct democracy,” it is actually a strategy to block radical motions and stifle revolutionary ideas. Also prominent is vague, idealistic thinking, typified by slogans like “the power of the people” and “This is what democracy looks like.” While they sound good, these slogans leave the working class unprepared to confront our class enemy.

Idealism versus Materialism

Idealism says that thoughts and ideas are the most important things, and that they determine our material reality, the way we live. The opposite of idealism is materialism, which says that the way we live (including social relationships between workers and bosses or protesters and cops) determine the ideas that we have. To put it simply: Positive thinking, by itself, will never stop the police from attacking us. It will never stop capitalists from exploiting us. Materialist philosophy calls for a deep understanding of the role played by the police and politicians in maintaining capitalism — and the extent to which the ruling class will go to maintain its class rule.   

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