Obama Asia Trip Flops; Imperialist, Domestic Rivals Add to Trade, Fiscal Woes

Huge deficits in foreign trade and the federal budget are hampering U.S. imperialists’ ability to pay for the widening wars they need. The trade gap sucks $44 billion out of the U.S. every month, as the U.S. imports more than it exports. The federal budget deficit jumped from $960 billion in 2008 to $1.42 trillion in 2009. The growing division among U.S. capitalists, evidenced by the Tea Party phenomenon and its proclaimed “anti-tax” and “anti-big government” advocacy, makes it more difficult for the rulers Obama represents to tackle the federal deficit in the U.S.. Meanwhile, the total cost of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and now Yemen and Pakistan) has topped $3 trillion.

Obama’s recent Asia trip, intended to address the trade problem, was a failure. “Confidence in U.S. global economic leadership continues to wane,” was how the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism’s top think-tank, summed up the G20 summit. (CFR website, 11/12)

Seoul G20 Meeting Showed 
Imperialist Rivalry Driving Force in World

Open conflict prevailed in Seoul. Chinese and U.S. bosses charged each other with devaluing their currency to boost exports. “A 7.5 percent drop in the dollar over the past four months is making American goods cheaper overseas as demand in emerging economies propels sales for companies like General Electric Co.” (Bloomberg, 11/11/10).

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Shades of Old Jim Crow Pickets Hit Racist School Bosses’ ‘Separate and Unequal’ Scheme

BROOKLYN, NY, Oct, 28 — “The parents united will never be defeated!” This chant greeted parents as they entered school for parent-teacher conferences. About thirty students and teachers picketed at the entrance and passed out flyers inviting parents and neighbors to an upcoming meeting to discuss the Department of Education’s (DoE) plans for racist attacks against our schools. PLP members and friends helped organize this event as part of a growing campaign to build multi-racial unity against the destructive plans of the local education bosses.

Our building houses several schools, which were created as part of an earlier reform program. Education officials broke up large comprehensive high schools around the city and created smaller schools which they hoped would be easier to control. In our case, the building is physically located in a mainly white, middle-class neighborhood. However, the students who attend all the schools are black, Latino and Asian working-class youth from surrounding neighborhoods. While teachers have struggled to help these students learn, graduate and go on to college, the DoE has placed every obstacle they can in the students’ path. Budgets in the schools have been cut every year, the 100-year-old building has not been renovated and students are scanned through metal detectors every day as if they were criminals.

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PL’ers Lead Anti-Sexist Battle Chicago Moms’ 43-day Sit-in Beats Bosses

CHICAGO, November 15 — The mothers of the Whittier elementary school here have given workers of the world another glimpse of our ability to establish a society of, for and by the workers. When Ron Huberman, the racist CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, threatened to raze the Whittier field house to build a soccer field for the nearby private school, the mothers collectively occupied the building for 43 days. “La casita”, as the field house came to be known, will remain as a community center and be under the control of a non-profit led by the mothers.

The struggle for “La casita” (our “little Stella d’Oro”) was within the confines of the bosses’ reform struggle, but by participating in the occupation, bringing food, spending the night at the field house, doing the “grunt” work necessary, we gained the confidence of the community and were able to raise communist ideas.

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Work Stoppage Rips Racist Slur:Mass Rank-and-File Action Needed vs. Racist Transit Bosses

NEW YORK CITY, November 15 — The recent annual mass meeting of TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100, representing most, but not all,  MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) workers, painted a grim future for the union. However, angry rank-and-file workers who want mass confrontation against MTA bosses over racism, unemployment, pay, service and fares have the potential to spark a bright beacon of mass anti-racist class struggle for the entire international working class.

Transit workers move New York and they can stop New York in fighting the racist MTA bosses, who focus cuts on mainly black, Latino and immigrant riders and workers. Bus Operators in an MTA Queens Village depot, represented by ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1056, demonstrated some of this power on November 12 when they refused to take assignments from a racist dispatcher who called a Bus Operator a n-----. Their protest halted more than 20 buses for two hours and defied New York’s Taylor Law that bans job actions by government workers.

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Baltimore Teachers Defy Bosses, Union, Obama Plan; Reject Contract

BALTIMORE, MD, October 16 — In the largest turnout of teachers in memory for a contract ratification vote, Baltimore teachers voted 1,540 to 1,107, on Wednesday and Thursday last week, to reject the proposed union contract.

These teachers in Baltimore handed a small but significant defeat to the education plans of the ruling class, which includes Obama and his secretary. of Education Duncan, the national leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the leadership of the Baltimore Teachers’ Union, Alonso (CEO of public schools in Baltimore), the local school board and the main Baltimore newspaper, The Sun. They had all hailed the proposed contract as a ground-breaking, progressive step forward.

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‘Movie Night’ Links School Cuts to Capitalist Crisis

LOS ANGELES, CA, November 6 — Our PLP college club hosted a movie night to watch the film “A Grain of Sand.” This film documents the struggle that began in the late 1970s of high school teachers in Mexico around public education. Over twenty students from various campuses in Southern California attended the event and discussed the significance of local and international fights against budget cuts to public education. Through this discussion we reached a better understanding of how these cuts reflect the crisis of U.S. capitalism, and how neo-liberal policies aiming to privatize education in Latin America are really just a form of imperialism.

The movie night resulted from our participation in the student coalitions that have been protesting fee hikes and cuts to state universities and community colleges in Southern California. This year many students have begun to question more deeply the nature of the cuts and whether it is enough to attack the university administration or state politicians for mismanaging the budget. We’ve struggled to connect the cuts to the global crisis of capitalism, pointing to the student and worker fight in Europe around austerity measures.

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Bolshevik Revolution:Workers Took Power; Can Do It Again

Ninety years ago, November 7, 1917, marked the beginning of the single most important event of the 20th century, the Bolshevik revolution, which directly inspired the Chinese revolution and anti-imperialist struggles around the world from Vietnam to Africa to Latin America.

Russia’s working class, headed by the revolutionary communists of the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, freed one-sixth of the world’s surface from capitalism. They proved once and for all that it was possible to strive for a world without exploitation, where those who produce all value, the working class, can enjoy the fruits of their labor and not have it stolen by a few parasitical bosses and their lackeys.

The Russian revolution was the first serious attempt by workers and peasants to seize, hold and consolidate state power. Even though capitalism has returned to the former Soviet Union, workers will not forget that the Soviet working class defeated capitalism in 1917; smashed the imperialist armies of 17 countries (including Japan, the U.S., Britain, France, among others) which invaded Russia in 1918 to try to crush the revolution; freed the masses, especially women, from the yoke of capitalist, feudal and religious oppression; and then in 1945 defeated the mightiest and most barbaric army the capitalists had ever organized: the Nazi Wehrmacht.

The revolution frightened the world’s bosses, who immediately sent armies from 17 countries to try — in Churchill’s words — to “strangle it in the cradle.” From 1918 to 1923, millions of workers led by the Red Army defeated the imperialists’ counter-revolution. Nearly five million died in that battle, many of whom were the most committed workers the revolution had produced. Lenin himself died because of injuries inflicted by a hired killer.

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Cholera in Haiti: How Many Ways Can Capitalism Kill?

PORT-AU-PRINCE, OCT. 28 — Cholera is making a comeback globally, with 100,000 deaths annually, in African countries, and in Pakistan after the floods. In the living spaces of the “wretched of the earth,” workers die all the time of completely preventable diseases. Under capitalism, workers are used only to provide the cheap supply of raw materials, assembled products, and labor power for the rich.

 We watch this with anguish today in the rural, rice-growing Artibonite region of Haiti, where cholera has killed around 300 people to date. The media give medical explanations of the epidemic focused on the contaminated Artibonite River, but never touch on the racism of capitalism which is the real explanation of such recurring, preventable epidemics.

The media blames “underdevelopment,” about which simply, tragically, nothing can be done. Nor can much be done, apparently (“it’s tied up in the Congress,” explained Bill Clinton), about the criminal, total non-delivery of promised U.S. government aid, which might have helped; nor about the thousands of undistributed rehydration kits CNN’s Sanjay Gupta found in a Port-au-Prince warehouse.

The Artibonite River, the largest in the island, is the heart of rich, irrigated  agricultural land long used for rice-growing. When the World Bank program (with Aristide’s agreement) pushed through the import of cheap U.S. rice (subsidized by the Clinton Administration), local production was crippled. On the Aeribonite River, Péligre dam is also the main source of electricity in Haiti.

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Yemen Threat, Iraq Atrocities Steer Focus Back to War in Oil-rich Mid-East

The Rockefeller-led U.S. imperialist wing which Obama serves couldn’t have asked for more timely delivery from UPS and FedEx. Arriving the weekend before Election Day, the Yemeni parcel bombs helped shift attention, for a while at least, back to widening U.S. wars.

Until recently, this year’s election had centered almost entirely on the domestic, economic crisis facing U.S. rulers. It reflected a sharpening battle among various U.S. capitalists, waged between the Tea Partiers and the liberal politicians serving the dominant, imperialist faction.

Those forces financing the Tea party, especially the Texas billionaire Koch brothers, are focused on short-run, immediate profits, favoring tax cuts for the rich and little or no financial regulation. The Rockefeller-led group represents the long-range interests of U.S. capitalism, more dependent for profits from, and control of, foreign oil, making imperialist wars abroad vital for their system’s survival. The Tea Party election struggle has been overshadowing the main wing’s most urgent efforts overseas.

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Israel: Arab, Jewish Women Workers Unite in Day Care Fight

ISRAEL, November 2 — Arab and Jewish women day-care workers are showing multi-racial unity by battling against their extreme sexist exploitation. While some are fighting only for a wage increase, others are also demanding direct employment with full wages and benefits, as well as for an end to their demeaning working conditions.

Day-care workers are employed through a kind of a scam. They’re considered “freelancers” and thus ineligible for a minimum wage and legal benefits. But the bosses treat them as employees. While they earn about $1,500-$2,000 a month and work far more than 50 hours a week, they’re forced to pay operational costs out of their own pockets, so their net wage is usually below $1,000. Their bosses constantly bombard them with increasingly irrational and expensive demands disguised as “safety regulations” but actually amount to wage-cuts.

Last July, more than 700 day-care workers from throughout the country rallied in front of the ministry of employment, commerce and industry in Jerusalem, fueling their struggle with great enthusiasm and energy. (There are about 2,400 day-care workers in this status; more than 1,000 are unionized).

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