Red Politics Lead Fight vs. N.J. School Cuts

NEWARK, NJ, April 17 — Around 250 teachers and students protested the new wave of capitalist attacks on the working class today. This time the attacks are taking the form of extreme cuts in education. The New Jersey governor has announced that he will cut $1.09 billion from schools across the state. As usual, these cuts are inherently racist because the schools which suffer the largest cuts serve primarily black, Latino and immigrant students. The results of these cuts will be larger class sizes due to teacher lay-offs, a diminishing of after-school programs and extra-curricular activities, wage freezes and healthcare give-backs, to name a few.

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Racist School Board Shows Capitalist Education’s True Colors

Hundreds of angry parents, teachers, and students gathered at last month’s Hammond City School Board meeting to confront the gross racism at one of their schools. Before the meeting had officially started, parents whispered their stories to one another, and the palpable energy and anger grew. Fathers and mothers shook their heads in disgust as they listened to account after account of students being made to eat their lunch on the floor for speaking Spanish, being addressed with racial slurs in class and similar racist practices. 

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PL’er Champions May Day: ‘The conscience of the union…’

“Why can’t we set up a May Day Committee in the union? We can then start to hold May Day, the international working class holiday each year.  Our union has designated May as Labor Month. That’s because of the struggle for the 8-hour day that led to May Day.”

The question hung in the air…..  It was not answered, so the PL’er continued. “After all, we just sang the song Solidarity Forever for the union’s fiftieth anniversary, today being that day. And it finishes with the lines: “greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold.” He then sang out, “We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old, for the union makes us strong.”

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‘Get Out Now!’ Wins the Day, Exposing Obama’s Wars

LOS ANGELES — “There is no ‘we’ that includes the U.S. government and working people.” A member of the political action committee of our organization spoke in favor of a resolution for the U.S. to withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately.  She continued:

“The politicians who make decisions represent U.S. corporations who are fighting to control the resources, markets, and investment opportunities necessary to make profits. Workers in the U.S. are losing their homes, their medical insurance, their jobs, their civil liberties. Do you really believe the same corporate interests that are screwing us will bring peace and prosperity to Iraq and Afghanistan? They haven’t brought it to New Orleans.”

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France: 6,000 Undocumented Strikers Press Ahead

PARIS, April 17 — Striking undocumented workers and their supporters rallied outside city hall here today as their strike entered its seventh month. Most of the 6,000 strikers are from Africa and work in construction, the restaurant trade and as guards.

They’re demanding general “legalization” according to “improved and simplified criteria that are the same everywhere in France.” Presently, “legalization” is decided arbitrarily and on a case-by-case basis by the 100 French prefectures. Estimates of the number of undocumented workers in France run from 200,000 to 400,000.

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Sit-downers Win A Little; Only Communism Can Win It All

SEYNE-SUR-MER, FRANCE, April 19 — The 120 Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) workers won a victory of sorts today in their struggle for a separation bonus (see CHALLENGE, 4/28).

The workers were demanding a 15,000-euro separation bonus (a total of 1,800,000 euros — $2,250,000) and a fund to tide them over until unemployment benefits kick in.

On April 17, a majority of the workers’ general assembly voted to end the one-week sit-down strike and lift the threat to burn down the factory after the prefect in Toulon promised to free up 450,000 euros for job training and to speed up the payment of unemployment benefits. Those measures were finalized today at a round-table meeting with the trade unions.

This, of course, is far less than what the workers were demanding, but they would have got nothing if they had not taken militant action. Only organizing for communist revolution can get workers off the treadmill of fighting for — and accepting — crumbs from the bosses’ table.

[Correction — PIP is owned by the U.S. company Heritage Worldwide, Inc., not Falic Fashion Group, as previously reported. CHALLENGE regrets the error.] J

Hiding U.S. Imperialism’s Carnage in Iraq is the Key to ‘The Hurt Locker’

“The Hurt Locker,” winner of six academy awards, follows a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team during the Iraq War. William James, Owen Eldridge and J.T. Sanborn are members of a U.S. Army “Bravo” EOD unit. They contend not only with defusing bombs but the insurgency of the “enemy.” Advertised as a suspenseful picture, which is “near perfect,” audiences know in advance that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) have killed many U.S. soldiers and thousands more Iraqis. Bigelow sets us up in a “perfect” omission of the reason for the U.S. Army being there in the first place. Soldiers are portrayed as life-saving heroes.

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Sustainable World Only Through Communism — Global Warming: It’s Profit System that Heats Up Planet

Part 1:

Global warming is not simply “man-made” as the Nobel committee stated — it is in fact capitalist-made. Capitalism, and not humanity, is the cause of global warming.

Grow or die is the law of capitalism. The net effect of this planless competitive system is that as each corporation is driven to expand by the drive to stay alive, the total accumulation of capital grows.

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Reforms Won’t Stop Capitalism’s MURDER IN THE MINES

MONTCOAL, WV, April 8 — There is probably no greater exposé of the failure of reforms than the murder of 29 miners in the Massey Energy-owned Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine here. The statements coming from Obama and his Secy. of Labor, from this state’s Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and this district’s Democratic Party Congressman, from the various Mine “Safety” officials and from the company’s CEO, Donald Blankenship, reek with hypocrisy. Their “cries” for these dead miners ring as hollow as anything the politician-servants of U.S. capitalism have ever come up with.

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Behind ‘Attack’ on Murderous Mine Baron: Liberal Bosses Vie for Control of Strategic Coal, Steel

MONTCOAL, WV, April 58 — When 40 workers died last month in a flooded Chinese coal mine, U.S. media strongly suggested the racist idea that human life is cheap to Asians. They followed a familiar script, trying to demonize an economic rival and potential military enemy.  “China’s coal mining industry is the world’s deadliest, with thousands of miners perishing every year in the pursuit of fuel for the country’s rapidly expanding economy.” (Wall Street Journal, 4/7)

But when an explosion killed 29 West Virginia coal miners a week later, U.S. rulers’ mainstream mouthpieces, like the NY Times, did something startling. They hammered at the profit motive behind the atrocity, editorializing (4/6): “[A]nger is building against the mine’s owner, the Massey Energy Company, which has long been accused by its critics of putting profits before the welfare of its workers.”

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