Teachers, Students Give Out Marks: A+ for PLP’ers Under Attack; ‘F’ for Racist Principal

BROOKLYN, N.Y., July 1 — ”I feel like I am back in my country under the dictatorship of Noriega.” So spoke one Panamian-born Clara Barton High School staff member after hearing that some teachers would be “excessed” from the school (and moved to another building) after a year of sharp struggle. One of them has been an outspoken fighter in the school and a champion of student rights. It’s no surprise that the administration has been scheming how to discipline or get rid of outstanding teachers who have challenged the racist regime of Principal Forman.

This struggle began in 2007, when several Clara Barton teachers volunteered to accompany students to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After PLP teachers organized a few very successful trips with parent support, the teachers involved received “warning letters” in their files. The school community was outraged when the principal and assistant principal of security attacked us for the trip.

We realized then that only a racist could oppose our efforts to respond to the genocide that was taking place in New Orleans. As one parent involved said of the volunteer effort, “It was the best thing that my son ever did in his life.”

New Orleans: Students Got Real Education

By supporting workers who were being brutalized by capitalism and racism in New Orleans, Clara Barton students got a powerful lesson in class struggle. This was real education. It’s also the kind of learning that the New York City Department of Education (DoE) doesn’t want them to get.

Since then, the principal and his lackeys have insisted that any activities involving teachers and students outside of the school represent a violation of a chancellor’s regulation — unless approved in advance by the principal. As we’ve pointed out, this ridiculous policy could never be put forward in a more affluent or elite school; it was a racist insult to the entire Clara Barton community. As predicted in CHALLENGE (6/22), the despicable, racist principal lived down to his reputation. The day after the term ended, two PLP teachers — both among the most effective and committed in the school — received a “U” rating, for “unsatisfactory.”

The response in the building was immediate. About 40 teachers attended an emergency union meeting called the next day. After a discussion ranging from the imminent excessing and Forman’s relentless harassment, the teachers endorsed a resolution demanding that the principal remove the U ratings. They also considered withdrawing their contributions from a union-sponsored fund to show that they were dissatisfied with our union leadership’s weak response to this attack. Finally, it was proposed that the staff rate the principal. There is no question that he would get a U!

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Workers’ Support for Murder Victim Exposes Rulers’ Use of Racist Cops

PHILADELPHIA, PA, June 23 — Albert D. “Audi” Purnell was murdered by a racist Philadelphia cop. Hospital workers here are supporting their co-worker Albert Purnell, Sr., demanding justice for his murdered son. PLP members and friends are actively involved in this struggle. On June 15, we took part in a march to the office of District Attorney Seth Williams to demand that this racist cop be brought to court. On June 23, we attended a meeting of the Philadelphia City Council where Audi’s parents demanded justice for their murdered son. But to the racist Philadelphia cops he was nothing more than a black animal that they could slaughter at will.

When we first started talking to co-workers about this racist murder we ran into some cynicism. Some responded “Why would the police murder him?” What was he doing?” We decided to continue talking with these workers patiently. As more of the details of the murder are coming out, the cynicism of these workers is starting to soften.

Many who are black are under pressure from crime in their neighborhoods. They want to believe that the police will deal with this problem if they are given a free hand. This is the basis of support for Mayor Nutter’s “stop-and-frisk” policy. This idea that the role of the police is to protect workers from crime is an illusion.

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‘Jobs, Yes! Deportations, No!’ Workers Fight Fascist Attack on Immigrants

NEW YORK CITY, July 1 — The most important task for the world’s working class is rebuilding the international communist movement, learning from past successes and failures and advancing the struggle for workers’ power. Crucial to this process is fighting racism and all racist divisions within the working class. We must understand global immigration in this context.

Workers migrate for many reasons: work, hunger, misery, war, repression and persecution. The world is the marketplace where international wage slaves look for work, regardless of capitalist-imposed borders. The world’s capitalists exploit the working class in part based on immigrants, both outside and inside their so-called borders. The lower the wages and the worse the situation for immigrant workers, the better capitalists can create the conditions to exploit the whole working class while building racist ideology and divisions. We must understand how capitalism works, unite across “borders” and fight for our class worldwide.

Bosses Spread Anti-Immigrant Lies

Within capitalist “nations,” the bosses super-exploit undocumented workers, reaping huge profits. Meanwhile, their government and media system blame undocumented immigrants for “stealing” jobs from “Americans”; “taking services away” from “law-abiding citizens”; “committing crime”; “ruining neighborhoods”; and being “terrorists.” These statements are based on racist lies and myths that foster a climate of racist hate and division that masks the nature of capitalist exploitation and builds a base for ruling-class-led fascism.

In the U.S. there are a rash of new anti-immigrant laws, often passed in states with the highest immigration rates, like Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Arizona and Utah. The latest law, enacted in Alabama:

• Requires public schools to check students’ immigration status using birth certificates or sworn affidavits;

• Bans undocumented immigrants from attending state colleges;

• Makes it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants;

• Makes it illegal for citizens and documented immigrants to transport or shelter undocumented immigrants; and,

• Makes it a crime to hire undocumented immigrants and forces employers to use E-Verify, a so-called “voluntary” program run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to verify a worker’s immigration status.

Meanwhile Texas Representative Lamar Smith has introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to make the use of E-Verify at workplaces federal law, thus mandatory. (E-Verify is a faulty system with a high error rate, causing many documented workers to be either fired or refused employment.)

Obama Expands Bush Program

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Obama’s Boeing Buddies, Union Hacks Pave Way for Sellout

SEATTLE, June 28 — The court case between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists (IAM) kicked off earlier this month with a judge hearing Boeing’s request to have the IAM’s complaint thrown out. The latter is accusing Boeing of moving part of its 787 aircraft production to a non-union plant in South Carolina in order to punish the union for its 2008 strike. Boeing has denied the charges and wants the case dismissed.

However, the fact that Boeing’s move to South Carolina was made to punish its workers is undeniable. And the fact that Boeing has chosen South Carolina reveals the racism of the company’s move. The state’s history of centuries of racism as a union-busting “right-to-work” area has kept wages much lower than in Washington State and enables the racist bosses to use it as a club against white and black workers in Seattle.

In 2010, Boeing CEO Jim Albaugh told the Seattle Times (4/22/10) that preventing strikes was the key factor in deciding to move to South Carolina. A 2009 conference call with then Boeing CEO Jim McNerney had the company again stating that the move was made to prevent “regular strikes.” More recently Boeing’s chief counsel told a Senate committee hearing that the move was undertaken to prevent further strikes. (LA Times, 6/26/11).

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N.J. Demopublicans Agree: Serve the Bosses, Screw the Workers

TRENTON, N.J. June 23 — The New Jersey Assembly, with the Democratic leadership fully supporting the deadly proposals of their pal Governor Chris Christie, voted for the pension and health “reform” bill here tonight. About ten thousand workers turned out earlier to protest these severe attacks on the working class; at one point, thousands surrounded the statehouse and chanted,  “Kill the bill!” Hundreds of PLP flyers and scores of CHALLENGEs were received positively by the workers.

At the rally, the sorry union leadership held a mock funeral for “the soul of the Democratic Party.” Ironically, a person in blackface joined the New Orleans jazz band walking ahead of the coffin. (The union leadership was apparently ignorant of the racism behind this tradition.)

One after the other, the politicians and union hacks who spoke at the rally claimed to be “true” Democrats. Here is the solution posed by the “most radical” speaker: “Take back the party” in the November election. But these are the “friends” they put in office in the last election.

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Mexico: ‘Drug War’ Hides U.S. Slave Labor Empire

The recent revelation that 70% of the guns seized by police and the army in the Mexican drug war are in fact from the United States (Christian Science Monitor, 6/15) has infuriated people on both sides of the border. But for those who have followed the drug trade since the 1980s, the revelations of U.S. officials fueling the drug trade were nothing new.

The transfer of guns from the U.S. to Mexico was largely orchestrated by the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agency in an operation codenamed “Fast and Furious.” Now that disgruntled ATF officials have leaked the story to the press, the Justice and State Departments have moved quickly to deny involvement and lay the blame at the feet of the ATF. However, in the wake of the ATF’s bungling of the 1994 Branch Davidian standoff, it is hard to believe that they would have undertaken such an operation without Bush and Obama administration support.

Indeed the U.S. ruling class has a long history of supporting the drug trade in Latin America. In 1982 the CIA linked up the Medellin Cartel in Colombia with the anti-communist death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua and built the cocaine pipeline between Colombia and the United States. The 38% increase in cocaine users in the United States and the ensuing crack epidemic covertly funded the anti-communist wars in Central America. Drugs flowed north from Colombia to El Salvador and Nicaragua and then through Mexico into the U.S. Southwest or over the Gulf into Florida. Then guns and money for the death squads flowed south through the same channels. (See Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury, 8/18-20/1996).

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Watch Your Garbage…. FBI Manual Aims At Anti-War, Pro-Labor Groups

The new edition of the FBI’s manual for domestic investigations grants agents extensive powers to search databases, go through household garbage and start surveillance on people or groups suspected of crimes. The new manual stresses that evidence of criminal activity is not a pre-requisite for opening investigations or beginning surveillance (NYT, 6/12).

The new rules are in fact only codifying behaviors that the FBI has engaged in since its inception and with increasing frequency since the 1970s. These surveillance powers, “justified” by the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror,” have been primarily used to monitor and harass anti-war, anti-capitalist, pro-labor and other Left-leaning groups.

One activist in the environmental movement was shocked recently when a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that he had been under intense surveillance since 2001. There had been at least five FBI informants in his various groups, and the FBI had collected 1,200 pages of documentation on him (Democracy Now, 6/14/11). Two years ago anarchists were dismayed to discover that Brandon Darby, a man who had run an anarchist collective in post-Katrina New Orleans, had been an FBI informant for years (This American Life, 5/22/2009). In 2007 it was revealed that the FBI had been abusing national security letters, presidential edicts that allowed surveillance without judge-issued warrants, to spy on people with no evidence of a crime (NYT, 3/10/2007).

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Billionaires Rule the Schools, but — REAL Education Comes from Class Struggle vs. Capitalism

As the economic crisis and wars abroad deepen, the U.S. ruling class has moved toward more direct control of the schools nationwide. In New York, billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg runs the city’s school system on a corporate model, with lawyers and business people in top leadership roles while teachers and school staffers are downsized. This structure attacks the students, the working-class of the next generation.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed a new school board full of corporate “movers and shakers” like board chair David Vitale, the former vice-chairman and director of JPMorgan Chase, and Penny Pritzker of the Hyatt Hotel dynasty. John Veasy, the Los Angeles schools superintendent, worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and completed an executive training program funded by billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad.

In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, these billionaires and millionaires have no intention of creating policies to benefit students. Children who attend urban public schools are disproportionately black, Latino and low-income, the children of the same workers these bosses exploit. The racist segregation of housing and education in the U.S. makes poor black and Latino students the most likely victims of closed schools, empty test-prep curricula, and inexperienced teachers.

In this still-racist (not “post-racial”) country, children of the most exploited workers, including the unemployed, are the ones most likely to attend schools where rigid obedience is demanded and rote learning is the norm. The critical analysis skills that all students need are the last thing the rulers want most of them to learn.

The degraded conditions of these schools — and of an economic system that thrives on low-wage/no-wage workers — push nearly half of their students to leave without having graduated. The system needs only a handful of working-class students to be well-educated, for skills the bosses need and for use as misleaders of the mass of workers who are left behind by the school system.

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Racist School Bosses Use Anti-Communism to Mask Budget-Cutting Attacks

BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 22 — “At a time when political attacks are met with little response, what you all are doing there gives others the example needed to fight back!” This was the message sent from a teacher in New Jersey to those involved in the struggle at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, and a reminder of how our political work can inspire other workers and students.

As reported in last week’s CHALLENGE (6/22), more than 150 students and staff demonstrated in front of Clara Barton to protest the investigation of two communist teachers who attended a union rally with students in Washington, DC, last fall. It’s no accident that communists are being targeted by the Department of Education (DoE). Communists build class struggle and class consciousness. We struggle to win our class to see its power so that we can build a mass party to fight for revolution. At this rally, the largest and most visible action at the school this year, we did begin to see our strength.

In our continuing efforts to build the Party, more than 500 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed at Clara Barton last week. Students greeted the paper with enthusiasm. They read it carefully, line by line. There was a lot of discussion about the cover story — why did CHALLENGE call principal Forman a racist pig? Some thought that we needed to provide a more thorough explanation of why we regard him as racist. The ensuing discussions both clarified that point (see below) and also addressed a broader one: that capitalist schools can never serve the needs of working-class students. Students also began to wear 700 buttons with the slogan: “SCHOOLS NOT JAILS”.

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PLP’ers Bare Union Hacks’ Sellout Racist Bosses Demand Cuts; Hospital Workers Say ‘FIGHT’!

“Run, Bruce, Run! You can run but you can’t hide!” sang hundreds of spirited Brookdale Hospital workers about CEO Bruce Flanz as they picketed outside of the hospital’s main entrance on June 15th. PLP brought support and CHALLENGEs to these workers, who lost their insurance coverage when Brookdale violated the labor contract and stopped paying into their insurance benefits fund six months ago. This forced the workers onto a more expensive plan under Blue Cross Blue Shield (see CHALLENGE, 6/22). More than that, their very jobs are at stake, as the workers face union decertification, bankruptcy and possible closure. Brookdale workers are mostly black and Latino, and all together over 1,000 workers picketed at some point during the day as workers came out in uniform on their lunch break from almost every department.

We distributed our CHALLENGEs quickly, and realized we had not brought nearly enough. At the same time, some hospital workers and members of the main hospital union 1199-SEIU (Service Employees International Union), distributed 400 leaflets that exposed the attack on Brookdale workers as a racist ploy to increase profits on the backs of the majority black and Latino workers that live in the Brookdale community. The anti-racist leaflet called on workers, patients and community residents to unite and called on the Brookdale bosses to pay up. Both CHALLENGE and the leaflets were greeted with positive responses from the workers. On a couple of occasions, PL’ers were asked for more copies of the paper. We made several contacts, and will bring more literature next time.

The conversations we had with workers described a hospital that has been sucked dry by the bosses for years. A nurse who worked there since 1982 told us: “We serve the poor but the bosses don’t give us anything! We never have supplies or nearly enough staff. We’re gonna have to take the hospital back!” Under-staffing was the unanimous complaint with every worker in every department, especially among the janitors and food and nutrition workers.

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