‘Traitor Go Home!’ GM Workers Kick Out UAW Hacks

INDIANAPOLIS, IN, August 31 — “Get Out! This is our hall!” “Traitor!” “Go Home!” That’s how hundreds of GM workers greeted UAW International reps on August 15. The standing-room only crowd of hundreds of stamping plant workers, members of UAW Local 23, had no intentions of cutting their wages in half to save their jobs. As the International reps headed for the doors, the workers jumped to their feet and started chanting, “Take [UAW Local President] Ray [Kennedy] With You, Take Ray With You!”

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Mosque, Tea Party Mania Shows: Racist Liberal War-makers: Evil, Yes; Lesser No!

Who poses the graver danger to the working class?

Openly racist, right-wing politicians who oppose the building of a mosque near Ground Zero? Or liberal U.S. imperialists who fear that an anti-Islamic image may hinder their drive for Mid-East oil profits as they slaughter millions?

Is it Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, who led a 300,000-strong, lily-white Tea Party/religious revival on the Washington Mall to boost Republicans in the November elections? Or Obama-led Democrats seeking to rally millions more for looming wars with Iran, China, and Russia?

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Stella D’Oro Workers Still Fighting Back, Now vs. Union Pension Sellout

BRONX, NY, September 1 — If you walked into this little restaurant, you wouldn’t notice him sitting there nursing a coffee. And you wouldn’t notice the steady stream of men and women that come in when they can, to either pick up or drop off the latest copies of CHALLENGES. They are former Stella D’Oro workers, who struck the company for 11 months only to lose their jobs when the company was sold and moved.

They are bruised, but not beaten, still fighting back. Now they are fighting the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) International union leaders, who have made it much harder for unemployed members to reach the “Golden 80” and qualify for a full pension.

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Multi-Racial Strikers Battle Union-busting Nursing Home Bosses

HARTFORD, CT, August 31 — “All the owners care about is money. They don’t care about the patients and they don’t care about the workers!” So declared a nursing home worker on  strike at the Spectrum-owned Park Place Health Center, one of four Spectrum-owned nursing homes in the state that have been struck for four months.

When Spectrum purchased the home following a fire a few years ago, the workers, members of SEIU District 1199, had a union contract. Spectrum has tried mightily to destroy the contract, and, if possible, to bust the union.

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Communists, Anti-Racists Confront Racist ‘Tea Party’

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 28 — PLP boldly confronted tens of thousands of lily-white Tea Partiers streaming into a rally led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. We challenged the racists, haranguing them on a loud bullhorn for two hours and individually in their faces as they walked by. Speakers exposed the Tea Party as tools of big business, especially Koch Enterprises, a multi-billion dollar energy company that organized and funds the Tea Party with millions of dollars. (Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” New Yorker, 8/30).

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Mosque Frenzy Masks Rulers’ War Aims: PL’ers Lead Intern’l Group vs. Racists at Ground Zero

NEW YORK CITY — “The racists are freely demonstrating in front of the mosque right now! And we’re the ones fenced in three blocks away by the NYPD,” a PL’er said to 150 demonstrators. They were assembled to counter-protest 500 racists opposed to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” a mosque that an Islamic association is hoping to expand into a community center.

The mosque has made headlines in the bosses’ press worldwide. Liberals like Obama have questioned the “wisdom” of its location two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center, and right-wingers have declared it a haven for “terrorism.”

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Malaysia: Migrant Workers Unite; Rebel vs. Fascist Oppression

JOHAR BARU, MALAYSIA, Aug.16 — Today, more than 5,000 migrant workers tore down a guard tower that monitored the “company-town” housing they were forced to live in, in this industrial city. They rebelled after a worker died because of the bosses’ racist healthcare system. The workers are undocumented migrant workers from all over the world — Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India. They united based on their needs as workers and did not let racism defeat their struggle.

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Yearning for Communism Burns Bright in Mexico

MEXICO CITY, September 4 — About 17,000 workers in the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME) continue fighting to win back their jobs. Ten months ago President Calderón ordered the police and army onto their worksites to advance the move towards privatization which would leave over 44,000 workers in the street and 22,000 retired workers in poverty.

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France: 100,000 Anti-Racists March vs. Gov’t Attack on Roma People

PARIS, September 4 — One hundred thousand anti-racists demonstrated in cities across France today condemning the Sarkozy government’s racist attacks on Roma people. But the movement’s leaders — the associations, trade unions and “left” parties — ignored the essential link between racism and capitalism.

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‘Workers are all just one big family….’ Militancy, Multi-Racial Unity Mark PLP Pre-Convention Events

PLP’s Summer Project started off with teachers and students going to a high school in Washington Heights, an area that used to send thousands to May Day marches. CHALLENGE was distributed to students and to workers at the subway stop.

In the evening, we viewed the film “Sir! NO Sir!,” about resistance by rank-and-file soldiers in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. A parent and some students came to the movie showing. It was the parent’s first introduction to the Party, and she was interested. It is important to have parents, students and teachers united, as PL is trying to build a Party that includes all members of the working class.

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