Drivers, Riders Unite vs. Service Cuts, Fare Hikes

SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND BAY AREA, April 9 — “I really don’t have a problem raising the price of the youth pass.” These were the words of one of the AC Transit Board of Directors last month, as they discussed a range of plans to raise bus fares. How insulting! These are the bus passes that kids need to get to school!

The bus already costs $2 a ride, plus 25 cents for a 1-use transfer. On top of that, service was cut 15 percent in 2010, stranding many passengers and leading to longer waits and crowded buses. Where else but public transit can you get away with charging much more for less and worse service?

Several transit activists and transit workers attended the meeting and spoke out against the proposed fare increases: “You say there’s no money. Why don’t you go talk to Chevron?” said one speaker. Another commented, “It’s ironic that you talk about honoring Rosa Parks with a poster — if Rosa Parks were here, she would be disgusted by these proposals. It’s not about whether you sit in the front or back of the bus, but about whether there’s even a bus at all to catch!” These fare increases will have a racist and anti-working class effect as they hit our riders who are around 70% low income.

Unfortunately, there were very few in attendance (perhaps 15 passengers and nine transit workers). It will take much, much more pressure to slow down these major attacks on the ridership. Our union leadership says they are in favor of this type of activism, but they didn’t even put out a memo to the members, letting them know about this board meeting!

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‘Education’ in France: Layoff Protest Hit By Riot Cops’ Clubs, Tear Gas

BESANCON, FRANCE, April 6 — Riot police attacked 500 parents, teachers and high school students with riot clubs and tear gas during a peaceful demonstration outside the board of education protesting teaching staff layoffs in this city of 117,000.

The action was called by Federation of Councils of Parents of Pupils (equivalent to the Parent-Teacher Association [PTA] in the U.S.). The demonstrators chanted, blew on whistles and beat saucepans with wooden spoons. When a long-distance coach drove down the narrow street, the crowd was forced to surge towards the police, who immediately reacted violently.

Some parents had brought small children. One two-year-old child’s eyes went all red and was seized with a fit of trembling.

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1,000 March vs. Indiana’s Fascist Anti-Immigrant Law

EAST CHICAGO, INDIANA, April 2 — Today, a large multi-racial group of nearly 1,000  people  marched against SB 590, the proposed state anti-immigrant law. This may have been the largest protest in this part of Indiana in decades, demonstrating that the working-class is ready to fight back.

The bill, similar to Arizona’s racist SB 1070, would allow local police to question and potentially detain individuals who they “suspect” to be “illegal.” In fact, the Indiana bill even exceeds the Arizona bill. Indiana’s bill would require that only English be used in a variety of public and formal settings. The bill also enables the state to maintain its independence of federal law, something that slowed the enactment of Arizona’s law.

The demonstration, named “La Gran Marcha (The Great March),” was organized mainly through numerous different churches and immigrant rights coalitions in northern Indiana and had a distinctly religious tone. Numerous bishops and religious leaders dominated the michrophones during the opening rally, leading chants with slogans such as “Somos el pueblo de Dios (We are the people of God).”

Though church leaders organized the bulk of  the demonstrators, the contingent of PL’ers and allies projected a communist perspective, countering the church leaders’ dead-end liberal reformist “solution.” Signs expressing the need for international working-class solidarity were proudly held high, in stark contrast to the few U.S. and Indiana state flags being waved. During lulls in the religious hymns, chants of “Obreros unidos jamas seran vencidos!” won a positive response.

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Japan Quake: Rail Union Raps Bosses’ System of Profits First, Workers Last

JAPAN, March 24 — The reaction of Japan’s capitalist government to the disaster unfolding in that country reflects the horrors of a system that puts profits before workers, a fact that has spurred Japan’s rail union into mass protests.

While the ensuing controversy over the possibility of a nuclear disaster continues to unfold, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) has confirmed that 27,000 people are dead or missing following the recent earthquake and tsunami that hit Northeast Japan on March 11. The  situation has become dire for over 200,000 living in temporary shelters (mostly in school gymnasiums) with limited access to hot meals, fresh water, adequate hygienic utilities or medicine, amid outbreaks of influenza and other contagious diseases. All this particularly affects the elderly who comprise a large percentage of the evacuee population.

NHK reports that many hospitals have had to move patients into shelters, which has also increased the risk of disease and death to those already housed there.

The most immediate threat is the continual decline of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which the Japanese government and the operators of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, (TEPCO) have been unable to control. A significant amount of radioactive material has leaked from the plant and into soil and drinking water within a large radius which has forced restrictions on local produce. NHK website reports, “Efforts to cool the plants are being hampered by the leakage of highly radioactive materials” which have forced rescue operators to abandon some of the reactors.

Shell Game Downplays Profit System’s Role

As local officials, the Japanese government and TEPCO play the blame shell game among each other about the possibility of a nuclear disaster little has been said about the system which has produced the problem in the first place: capitalism.

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While Billionaires Profit, Racist Democrat Cuomo Cuts Schools: Protestors: STOP THE WAR ON CUNY!

ALBANY, NEW YORK, March 23 — Outside the Albany Capitol offices of Governor Andrew Cuomo, 200 City University of NY faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students picketed and loudly chanted “Tax the Rich, Not the Poor, Stop the War on CUNY!” and “Workers and Students Are Under Attack, What Do We Do?, Stand Up, Fight Back!” We were joined by parent and tenant activists.

The Professional Staff Congress (the CUNY faculty and staff union) organized this protest to demonstrate its anger at the Governor for cutting $95 million from the budget of the four-year colleges, and $17.5 million of the community colleges, to which NYC Mayor Bloomberg may cut an additional $35 million in NYC funding. Forty-six percent of community college students at CUNY come from households with incomes of $20,000 or less. Many of these students hold jobs in order to pay tuition and fees and buy textbooks.

Reducing funding for the community colleges will mean larger class sizes, less guidance, and further hikes in tuition, making it harder to graduate and forcing some to drop out. Slashing the funding of the community colleges is also racist, as 81% of the students are black, Latino, and Asian.

From Egypt to Wisconsin, workers and students are not accepting business-as-usual. This day was no different. Thirty-three of us sat down and blocked access to the Governor’s office. With the chants of 170 or so fellow demonstrators reverberating in the Capitol building, we were arrested. 

‘They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back’

The Governor’s slashing of billions from education and health care in a state with more billionaires than any other in the U.S. is outright class warfare. In NYC alone, there are 60 billionaires, and the wealthiest 1% of its residents receives an extraordinary 44% of all income. In NY State, there are 44,000 millionaires, who year after year increase their share of total income. Yet they object to extending a relatively small tax surcharge on high income, dubbed the “millionaire’s tax.”

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Murderers Without Borders Imperialists Cloak Libyan Oil Grab with Phony ‘Humanitarianism’

Obama’s invasion of oil-rich Libya marks U.S. imperialists’ first major use of their phony “Responsibility To Protect” (RTP) excuse for waging wider wars. The RTP doctrine, adopted at a 2005 UN summit, despite China’s and Russia’s objections, eliminates capitalist national borders as obstacles to imperialist intervention. The invaders have only to assert that they’re “rescuing the locals.”

Bombing and missile raids by the U.S. (with junior partner Britain and temporary ally France) supposedly aim at saving Libya’s citizens from dictator Qaddafi, under RTP. But the wave of Mideast rebellions made U.S. rulers and their imperialist allies shaky over maintaining the oil deals they’ve made with each other and Qaddafi over past years.

Obama was very ready to allot hundreds of millions for this latest war while cutting billions from education and social service budgets, causing massive layoffs of teachers and other government workers. The initial U.S. Navy attack with 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles alone cost nearly $100 million. As of March 29, the Pentagon had spent $550 million in the first ten days.

The upsurge that spread from Tunisia to Algeria to Egypt, where thousands of workers struck for higher wages and against mass unemployment as they did in Iraq — and continues to spread throughout the region — made the oil-thirsty imperialists nervous. Therefore, the U.S.-led campaign focused on protecting the Libyan assets of oil giants Exxon Mobil, Marathon, and Occidental (U.S.); BP (U.K.); and Total (French). At this writing, NATO air strikes were helping pro-U.S. rebels seize two oil refineries and a strategic export terminal. On March 27, they captured two oil-export ports.

Of course, the U.S. chose not to “rescue” protestors in Bahrain, the base of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and allowed its government and invading Saudi troops to kill hundreds to ward off any rebellion that might eventually threaten Saudi’s oil fields, the world’s largest.

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Only Communist Revolution Can Free Our Class Madison: Thousands Pack Capitol to ‘Stop War on Workers!’

MADISON, WISCONSIN, March 5 — Arriving at midnight on March 3, I went to the Capitol early the next day. The streets were packed with people carrying picket signs, some from their unions, some homemade. Inside the Capitol rotunda a tremendous spirit of solidarity and joy filled the air. A group of boilermakers and pipefitters wearing hardhats entered to applause.

One of their leaders took over leadership of the chants. “Hey-hey, Ho-ho, Governor Walker has got to go! Union Power; Worker’s Rights” reverberated through the hall.

I asked if I could make some remarks. When I said I was from the Bronx, people chanted, “Thank you, thank you!”

I replied, “No, thank you, workers of Wisconsin. All over people are rooting for you who are on the front lines leading the struggle against attacks on working people.” I explained that on my campus we had a Support Wisconsin Day and showed them the stickers my local, the Professional Staff Congress, was distributing throughout NYC.

Class War

“Too many people have struggled and died for workers’ rights. There’s no way we will allow these gains to be erased.” Pointing to a Teamsters Local sign saying, “Stop the War on Workers,” I declared, “Class war was being waged against the working class. We must organize ourselves to make class war against the bosses. We should live to see the day when there are no more rich over us to exploit us!” The crowd agreed.

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Workers, Patients, Youth Unite to Fight: Racist Hospital Cuts — Murder the Nazi Way

CHICAGO, March 21 — Hospital workers on the picket line noticed an older man marching with them shaking his fist as they all yelled, “They say cut back, we say FIGHT BACK!” He was wearing a hospital gown under his coat. The dozens of hospital workers, community members and students protesting in front of Stroger Hospital of Cook County had attracted some patients, too. The protest was sparked by the plans of the County Board to close two of the three hospitals in Chicago’s public system, turning the patients out to fend for themselves.

PL’ers at the hospital, meeting with Coalition Against The Cuts in Healthcare (CATCH), had heard the most dramatic aspect of this particular cutback at a meeting weeks earlier. A nurse from Oak Forest Hospital, one of the hospitals about to be closed, described the plight of patients in the chronic ventilator unit, some of whom had been living there attached to breathing machines for many years. “They’re more like family than patients to me,” she explained. “We’ve been together for years.” These patients had been given a deadline of the end of the month to find themselves a nursing home to be transferred to. “This unit is closing,” they were told.

“I’ve known many patients from here who left for nursing homes,” said Michael Yanul, an Oak Forest ventilator patient with muscular dystrophy who tells his story on YouTube. “They all died. And that’s what frightens me.”

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Capitalism Survives By Destroying Workers’ and Soldiers’ Lives

Recently we had a forum on political economy and the current crisis.  At this forum there seemed to be some confusion about three concepts: how the bosses realize their profits, the crisis of overproduction and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.  These three important ideas deserve to be understood individually and in their dialectical connections.

The realization question is an important basic concept in Marxist political economy.  Marx posited that while economic value is created in the production process by human labor, this does not put money in the hands of the boss.  That is, the boss has to actually sell products in the market to translate into the money form the surplus value (profits) produced by workers being paid less than the value their labor adds in the production process. 

A major problem is that workers are not paid enough to purchase everything that they make.  This is the realization question.  There are numerous ways that the bosses deal with this issue.  The bosses can buy up a lot of goods themselves. They can extend credit to the working class, which forces the workers to work off their debt in a kind of credit-card-slavery.  Most important, though, the bosses answer the realization question through competition and expansion.  The bosses look to find new “markets” by trying to undercut their competitors or by selling their goods to new people who have never had access to them before.  This is part of the initial drive toward imperial expansion.

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Quake Exposes Capitalism’s Inherent Fault Lines

Updated on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 9:45PM by Challenge_Desafío

On March 11, a massive 9.0-magnitude quake hit Northeast Japan on the east coast of Honshu, the country’s largest island, which, combined with the 33-foot waves of the tsunami it created, killed 4,100 people and ignited hundreds of fires. In the disaster’s wake, entire villages, ports and even schools vanished. Some were evacuation sites for local residents situated on the coasts.

The tsunami hit Miyagi and Iwate prefectures the hardest, obliterating everything in its path, causing the highest death tolls, which could exceed 10,000. The quake’s magnitude has led to frequent aftershocks, including a 6.0 quake on March 15 that hit Shizuoka, extending over the entire Kantou (Eastern) region.

Additionally, the quake disabled the cooling mechanisms of Japan’s oldest nuclear power plant, sparking a meltdown that has forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands in the surrounding area and causing widespread fear that is being spread by the mainstream media on a 24-hour basis.

While there has been some criticism of the warning systems that gave residents little time to evacuate, most mainstream media sources in the U.S. and elsewhere emphasized Japan’s preparedness for such disasters and have praised the rapidity of rescues, evacuations and recovery efforts. As the world’s third largest economy, Japan has taken significant steps to safeguard its vulnerability against such disasters through fortification in infrastructure and the training, beginning in kindergarten, on how to react to earthquakes and other disasters. Workers in all areas hold weekly practice drills.

Workers Most Vulnerable, Suffer the Most

The protection and preparedness against such disasters, however, is more evident in the capitalist centers like Tokyo or Sendai (the largest city in the Northeastern region, which suffered significant damage), but become lax moving toward the outer regions where the damage and loss of life was the most substantial.  This is because most of the residents of these areas — like the small village of Saito in Miyagi prefecture which was totally wiped out — are predominantly working-class families: factory workers, farmers and fishermen/women, and the elderly who built homes there which are the most vulnerable to such catastrophic events. Moreover, tens of thousands of jobs will disappear, further intensifying the exploitation of the working class.

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