Communists Are Attacked: Teachers, Students and Parents Fight Back!

Updated on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 9:30PM by Challenge_Desafío

BROOKLYN, NY May 26 — More than one hundred students, teachers, and parents held a militant rally outside Clara Barton High School to fight an attack against two communist teachers. The protest was sparked by the principal launching an investigation against four teachers since last fall.

The teachers subsequently received a letter from the Special Commissioner of Investigation that detailed their political activities over the last several years and concluded that they had “recruited students to attend an unauthorized trip to [an anti-budget-cut] rally in Washington, D.C.” The letter concluded, “It is the recommendation of this office that appropriate disciplinary action be taken against….” The teachers are still waiting for a decision on this disciplinary action, which was supposed to be handed down by May 27. 

The day before the decision was due, the Department of Education (DoE) and its accomplices drew a resounding response at the rally. The protestors demanded an end to the investigation, and that no charges be lodged against these two teachers. Chants of “Fight back!” and “Education, not investigation!” rang out loud and clear. A student and a teacher gave excellent speeches attacking the DOE’s racist and fascist methods (see below).

When the cops were called and stopped the use of our bullhorn, the picketers continued without it. The head of the security lied to students, telling them they had to move away from the school. When the crowd heard this, they started chanting “The principal is a liar, we’ll set his ass on fire!” As they booed the security chief, he quickly ran back inside the school. The rally ended on a high note, with everyone marching through the neighborhood. The community was enthusiastic at the sight of young and old, black, Latino and white marching together!

A Fascist Culture of Investigations

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Afghanistan: TAPI Pipeline, Imperialist Rivalry Make U.S. Troop Withdrawal Impossible

Obama and his war counselors continue to engage in a tactical debate over the length and duration of the occupation in Afghanistan, as noted in the June 6 New York Times. But the United States’ long-term strategic necessity to protect this valuable real estate was made plain in a brutal terror attack one week earlier.

On May 28, U.S. bombs killed five girls, seven boys, and two women as they slept in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, one of the devastated areas (along with Kandahar province) that lie along the path of the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline. At the time, U.S. puppet Afghan president Karzai was off in neighboring Turkmenistan, negotiating details of TAPI. The killings stem directly from this deal and exemplify the anti-worker violence inherent in capitalist competition.

Obama & Co. ordered the Helmand strike in retaliation for the death of a Marine whose job was to help secure the pipeline. It makes little difference whether the targeting was accidental or deliberate. Either way, U.S. rulers have been indiscriminately killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq for three decades. Their willingness to slaughter millions in this imperial exploit ranks with Hitler’s terrorist V-2 rocket raids on London and the U.S. holocausts in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

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World Cup and Olympics Prep Devastates Workers’ Lives in Brazil

With the largest economy and armed forces in Latin America, and the eighth-largest economy in the world, Brazil is poised to mount a challenge to U.S. dominance in the hemisphere. Already a member of the G-20 (the leading capitalist powers that guide the international financial system) and of BRIC (the counter-U.S. bloc that also includes emerging powers Russia, India, and China), Brazil now seeks a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

To advance its position, the Brazilian ruling class is busy strengthening its imperialist credentials around the world as it imposes police fascist terror at home.

As the military leader of MINUSTAH, the U.N. occupation force in Haiti that terrorizes the populace in the name of “security,” Brazil has spearheaded numerous atrocities since 2004, from a massacre in the City Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince to the murder of union leaders and students. But Brazil’s brutal rulers were just getting started.

The Brazil-Israel Security Connection

In late 2010, Brazil signed a “historic” security cooperation agreement with Israel that could generate billions of dollars in classified procurement contracts between top Israeli defense manufacturers and various Brazilian security agencies (Xinhua, 12/2/2010).

Beyond giving Israel a platform to penetrate other South American markets, these arms deals will provide Brazil’s ruling class with the tools it needs (including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and advanced satellite surveillance technology) to contain guerrilla uprisings on the continent.

“Homeland security” is a growing concern for the Brazilian ruling class as the country prepares to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. The Israeli arms industry will be the merchant/consultant for security arrangements for these events — a role for which it is more than qualified. Six of the seven companies competing for these contracts have been implicated in war crimes or in espionage, or both.

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Mass Class Struggle Needed vs. Racist Transit Bosses

NEW YORK CITY — A week after a wheel fell off an in-service bus in Queens, and six months before the largest city transit worker contract expires, TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100 safety inspectors found 96 unsafe buses at the College Point bus depot on May 25. The disregard of the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) for safety and the workers’ enforcement of their contract effectively shut down morning rush-hour service.

Like all capitalists and their loyal bureaucrats, the MTA management responded to Local 100’s safety inspection by putting profits first. Workers’ tax dollars, transit workers’ labor and riders’ fares enable the MTA to pay Wall Street investors $1.2 billion interest in profits. These payments increase annually, coming from worker layoffs, reduced service and maintenance.

Management’s job is to preserve those profits, above all. So instead of dealing with the safety problems that put passengers and operators in danger, depot supervisors took four bus operators out of service for refusing to drive unsafe buses. Communism, a worker-run society without profits and bosses, would put the needs of the international working class first.

This latest attack on transit follows two years of layoffs, delays in transit worker raises, fare hikes, and deteriorating service. One of the four out-of-service operators, a shop steward with two unrelated pending charges, faces dismissal. (Another bus operator with no disciplinary record is now back in service.) These latest attacks on transit workers, along with the dangerous conditions that sparked them, are inherently racist because they strike the majority black, Latino, and immigrant riders and workers hardest.

Militant job actions, such as safety shutdowns, are workers’ best response to these racist attacks. But the political line that drives the militancy matters as much as the actions themselves. Under a capitalist system, the bosses who run society will inevitably take away a “good” contract or decent safety measures over time. U.S. public-sector workers, who represent 20 percent of all black workers, are under the gun from politicians of all the bosses’ parties.

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Politicians, Union Hacks Collaborate to Close Hospitals and Attack Workers

BROOKLYN, May 26 — Nurses, maintenance staff and clerical workers occupied the lobby of the Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center. These workers are Fighting against a pattern of racist hospital closures and cutbacks affecting workers in nearly 500 hospitals. The 3,500 workers in this hospital in the Brownsville neighborhood have lost their health insurance coverage because Brookdale has fallen behind in paying $23 million to their benefits fund.

The Brookdale administration claims that it fell behind on payments over the past six months due to its well-publicized financial struggles. But apparently the hospital’s parent company, MediSys Health Systems, had enough money to bribe State Senator Carl Kruger and Assemblyman William F. Boyd, Jr.

In March, federal prosecutors unveiled a criminal case against CEO David F. Rosen, who received millions of dollars in state and city grants and other favors in exchange for giving the politicians fake but well-paid “consulting” jobs. MediSys is also the parent of Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, another major hospital close to bankruptcy. This obscene corruption is nothing new under capitalism, and will remain the norm until workers remove profits from healthcare entirely by smashing it with communist revolution. The fight-back at Brookdale can be one step in that direction.

Brownsville is one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods, and is 96% black and Latino. For insurance, the community relies primarily on Medicaid, which was cut this April by $2.8 billion. According to a May 2010 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute, unemployment here is 15% to 20%, or about twice the city’s 9.2% average.This excludes from the unemployment rate : the overworked, underpaid, and job-hunters, and those who’ve given up.

The infant mortality rate is on par with Mexico’s —  at 16.7 deaths per 1,000 live births — whereas the U.S. national average is 6.3 deaths per 1,000 births. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, only 32% of the population has a high school diploma, and the neighborhood contains the highest concentration of public housing projects in the United States.

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Protesting Peter King’s Anti-Muslim Racism

“The people united will never be defeated!” rang through the main street of Massapequa Park, outside the office of Rep. Peter King, the U.S. congressman who is building racism and xenophobia by holding hearings on Muslims. Eighty people chanted after one of the keynote speakers spoke of the need for unity of all people against bigotry, racism and hatred. By providing communist leadership to this movement, we can demonstrate that racism is a tool of the larger, systemic problem that is capitalism.

People from peace groups, church groups and others united to speak out against King’s poisonous ideas and to help build a new and growing coalition. There were many different ideologies within the circle of demonstrators chanting on the street that day. But almost everyone joined in chants like, “Muslims, Christians, Jews unite. We’re all in the same fight.”  There were cops on the street and a handful of King supporters who were shouting their usual garbage about demonstrators “not being Americans.”

The various groups that are working to develop relationships and build the movement against racism and xenophobia face a long and uphill struggle. A number of cars drove past; some people hooted at us while others supported us. About half the demonstrators and some passers-by took CHALLENGE.

The church group that sponsored the demonstration also organized a march against AgroProcessors for their abuse of Mexican-born workers, as well as a march in Staten Island against racist attacks on Latinos. These were other examples of uniting people against racism. All of these struggles grew out of church forums to educate members and friends about the particular manifestations of racism. We are getting better at developing these actions. We will do more and become stronger as the struggle continues.

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MAY DAY 2011: PL’ers Bring Communist Politics

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, May 1 — Over 60,000 people participated in the May Day march, commemorating the day of the International working class. There were courageous youth who hissed and ridiculed harassing cops and politicians claiming to be the saviors of the working class. There were trade union misleaders demanding more crumbs from the capitalist system, and groups of peasants and indigenous communities, displaced by violence, denouncing state and paramilitary crimes.

There were relatives of the disappeared demanding justice, workers in low-paying jobs denouncing their abusive bosses, groups of teachers and students rejecting the privatization of public education. Doctors and nurses denounced the enormous theft of healthcare resources. Opportunists of every shade and color sabotaged the event with loud whistles and without any slogans, dancing as if in a carnival.

Members of PLP began the distribution of more than 3,000 revolutionary fliers and the selling of CHALLENGE very early. Comrades and friends, women and men, arrived in small groups to avoid police harassment. We organized ourselves behind our signs and proudly raised the red flag with the distinctive symbols of our Party.

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No Recovery for Economic Crisis Workers Must Fight Capitalist System

The New York Times (NYT) reported on May 31st that housing prices fell for the eighth straight month and hit the lowest level since the current depression began. According to ShadowStats, the actual unemployment rate has crept back up to 22.3%, despite a brief dip down to 22% in March as seasonal employment began to pick back up. Consumer spending has remained flat as wages continue to fall, despite a small spike due to rising gas and food prices.

The April index of pending deals (a measurement of anticipated home sales) dropped well below a predicted 1% dip to a collapse of 11.6%. With continuing high unemployment and mass wage-cuts, workers are in no position to buy a house in a market flooded with foreclosed homes.

According to the NYT (5/22), banks currently own 872,000 foreclosed properties and in are in the process of foreclosing on one million more. As long as this massive shadow inventory of homes exists, housing prices will continue to fall.

In his blog, economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman (5/25) proposed that the U.S. is entering a third great depression, less like the Great Depression of the 1930s and more like the Long Depression that dragged on for four decades, from 1873 to the start of World War One. Workers should be warned that both the Long Depression and the Great Depression were worldwide crises in the capitalist imperialist economic system, and that they were “alleviated “ only by world wars.

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India: Capitalism Continues to Murder Workers

A recently released report from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (Every Thirty Minutes, 2011) revealed that farmers in India are committing suicide at a rate of one every thirty minutes. During the past sixteen years, more than a quarter of a million farmers in India have committed suicide: a tragedy due to the ever-growing cycle of debt that U.S. agro-companies like Monsanto force on Indian farmers.

The IMF and World Bank, institutions controlled by U.S. and European imperialists, have forced market liberalization on India which means the elimination of government subsidies and government-backed loans to farmers. The introduction of U.S. agribusiness, particularly Monsanto, into the region has strong-armed many farmers to being dependent on seeds and fertilizers that are far more expensive than local varieties.

This economic imperialism has thrown agriculture in India into crushing poverty with most farmers making only $250 for an entire year of labor. Many of those who have committed suicide have done so by consuming the very pesticides that put them into so much debt. These victims of capitalism have left heart-wrenching suicide notes addressed to the Indian Prime Minister begging for assistance.

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Combat Capitalist Culture with Communism PL Culture Committee Growing

Members of the recently-reorganized Culture Committee of PL continue to struggle over ideas for presentations to counter the bourgeois culture that surrounds us with the hatreds and anti-working-class propaganda of the ruling class and their mass media.  Our discussion reviewed the pre-May Day event we organized in April. 

We conceived of the idea of a No Borders event to counter the vicious attacks upon undocumented immigrants called “illegal” or “alien” by the bosses’ press. As was pointed out at a demonstration in Staten Island, “How could anyone from the Earth be an alien?”  If anyone is alien, it’s the bosses who don’t care if workers live or die. They use us like pawns, an important cultural understanding. We produced the show, touching on the many facets of anti-immigrant propaganda that are becoming prevalent through media outlets and popular culture in the United States.

We opened the show with a little musical presentation that spoke to the need to smash all borders. Our poetry and song reflected the common humanity of ordinary people struggling in the face of the enormous obstacles that the rulers create to stop us from uniting. The show went on with excerpts from Paul Robeson’s speech made at the Peace Bridge on the Canadian border because Robeson was not allowed to leave the U.S. 

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