Obama, U.S. Rulers Push Pacifism to Derail Workers’ Rebellion

U.S. rulers are pushing two big lies about dictator Mubarak’s ouster and the mass protests that forced it. First, Obama and the bosses’ media try to mislead workers into thinking that large numbers of unarmed protesters demanding elections can produce a “revolution” against fascist oppression. But an election installing another group of pro-capitalist politicians is not a revolution, which only results from a fundamental change in class rule. It occurs when the oppressed working class overthrows the oppressor capitalist class and its state.

Secondly, elite analysts offer capitalist audiences groundless reassurances of Egyptian “stability.” The pundits say — while ignoring workers’ fight-backs — that continuing military control there means business as usual in the greater Middle East, the oil-rich cornerstone of U.S. imperialism. Both falsehoods hold grave consequences for workers.

Mass Murderer Obama, Rulers’ Media Praise Peaceful Protest, Steer Workers Down Political Dead-End

Just after Mubarak fled, hypocrite-in-chief Obama, dripping with the blood of workers from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan, compared protesters in Egypt to Ghandi’s and Martin Luther King’s movements. “In Egypt,” said Obama, “it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” News broadcasts depicted crowds in Tahir Square exulting in “newfound freedom” and then dutifully tidying up afterwards.

There was almost a total blackout on strikes and mass violence against the police and government (see top article). Many of these strikes are continuing.

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Auto Workers Act vs. Bosses’ Racist, Sexist Attack

Dozens of workers on all shifts of a major truck assembly plant in the South fought changes to the paid-time-off (PTO) policy the bosses suddenly imposed. The changes set up hundreds for possible firing for calling in sick too often. The most threatened workers were Latino single parents with children who need to use more sick time. This means the change is both racist and sexist and sets up all workers for attack.

Under the old policy, all write-ups for absences were cleared every 90 days, but if you had four write-ups you could be fired. Under the new policy only one write-up is cleared every 90 days.

The bosses need these changes because each country’s auto companies — Toyota, Ford, GM, in Korea, Europe, Russia and China — are desperate to squeeze high enough profits from their workers in order to survive against their competitors in their inter-imperialist rivalry. The stakes are high and will ultimately lead to larger wars.

When the new PTO policy was announced, word spread that the bosses were requiring all workers to sign a form acknowledging the changes. Workers were given no notice. The bosses demanded that workers sign the new policy without reading it.

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Employed and Unemployed: Unite to Fight Racist Healthcare Cuts

BROOKLYN, NY February 14 — Long Island College Hospital (LICH) is at risk of closing. LICH employs about 2,500 workers and serves the Red Hook Houses, the largest public housing project in Brooklyn, with over 10,000 black and Latino workers and youth. LICH is a 300-bed hospital that delivers more than 2,500 babies and sees more than 55,000 patients in its emergency room every year.

The State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center had been poised to take over LICH, which would have been bad enough, threatening the entire emergency services department. But last Wednesday, Democratic Governor Cuomo put that on hold when he announced a $2.84 billion cut in Medicaid, freezing the $62 million for the Downstate take-over and threatening to close LICH. As we go to press, a deal may be in the works to release some or all of the take-over money. Either way, there will be less health care for the workers and youth who need it.

Whether LICH closes or not, capitalism can never meet the needs of the working class because it puts profits over healthcare. Goldman Sachs gave out executive bonuses totaling $15.3 billion in 2010 and Mayor Bloomberg’s personal fortune hit $18 billion, while 30 million are unemployed and over $1 trillion goes to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that closing LICH is even being considered illustrates capitalism’s inherent racism.

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Pakistan’s Flood: Organize vs. Rulers’ Crimes Engulfing Workers, Farmers

The devastation from last year’s floods in Pakistan — 2,300 mostly poor, working-class farmers dead, 24 million displaced and 2.3 million houses and 4,655 villages destroyed — was blamed on unprecedented monsoon rains, but the real cause was the ruling class’s refusal to protect the working class.

Six months after the floods, large areas, especially in the South, are still underwater, and over 7,000,000 people lack adequate shelter. Millions of flood survivors with immune systems weakened by stress, lack of food and cold weather are at risk of pneumonia and other respiratory and water-borne diseases.

Friends of PLP have been playing a key role in organizing nation-wide protest demonstrations which began last year over the government’s failed flood relief. (Pakistan is a federation of four provinces, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh, and four federal territories, altogether totaling over 170 million people.)

Our friends pointed out that while the floods were a natural event, the homelessness of millions and the massive destruction were a disaster produced by Pakistan’s capitalist class and U.S. imperialism, placing profits before workers’ lives. As our friends join in grass-roots struggles to provide basic necessities for flood victims, communist ideas are being spread promoting a society based on the interests of the working class where careful planning would prevent such devastation.

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Pickets Unite Haiti’s Quake Victims with Egypt’s Masses

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 4 — “Haiti, Egypt, USA: Workers’ Power Will Win the Day!”  At the moment Haiti marked the anniversary of its earthquake with hardly anything yet “reconstructed” for ordinary people, the working class in Egypt — youth and women workers joined by students and professionals — were taking a stand against the fascist regime of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.  Fifty picketers at the Haitian consulate in Manhattan took note of this moment, both condemning the Haitian ruling class and its imperialist overlords for their neglect, and cheering the power and resolve shown by the Egyptian demonstrators. 

Among our pickets were high school students embroiled in the struggles against school closings, against racist preferential treatment for charter and special middle-class schools, and against administration harassment of militant teachers who organize together with their students.  They vowed to join their own struggles internationally with those of other young people:  “Haitian students are under attack: what do we do?  Stand up, fight back!” 

One Brooklyn student led a chant for various demands for workers in Haiti, teaching us how to respond to each one in Haitian Kreyòl “Mwen dakò!” (“I agree!”).  We also taught ourselves Kreyòl versions of the great chants “The workers, united, will never be defeated!” (“Ouvriye ini pa pral jamè venki!”) and “Workers’ struggles have no borders!” (“Lit ouvriye pa gen fwontyè!”).

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Egypt: Without Red Leadership, Capitalism Remains, Imperialism Wins

Mass uprisings are destabilizing Egypt, an essential ally of war-making U.S. imperialists. Capitalism itself, however, the root cause of imperialist war and of the rebelling workers’ miseries, remains unthreatened. Unfortunately, the protesters aim solely at ousting dictator Mubarak. Lacking class consciousness, they do not seek to overthrow the profit system. Most follow either secular nationalist or Islamist politicians. Thus, even if Mubarak is ousted, workers in Egypt will continue to suffer under a new regime of exploiters. Nevertheless, our revolutionary communist Party can learn much from the courageous, though misled, struggles in the streets of Cairo and elsewhere.

The uncertainty over whether Islamist or pro-U.S. bosses will rule Egypt has Obama & Co. worried sick. In 2006, open elections (which the protesters demand) gave anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Hamas control of the Palestinian Authority.

Today U.S. rulers fear that Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidates might win in Egypt. MB leader and al Qaeda supporter Mohammed Akef told CBS News (5/22/08), “MB would send fighters to fight the occupation in Iraq and Palestine.” Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, received anti-U.S. indoctrination as a member of MB in Egypt.

U.S. War Machine Armed Dictator Mubarak

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‘Integration, Yes! Segregation, No! Angry Students, Teachers, Parents Expose Racist School Boss

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, January 19 — “Integration, Yes! Segregation, No!” The chant rang out across the auditorium, as students, teachers and parents stood to challenge NYC schools chancellor Cathy Black. The event was the Panel on Educational Policy (PEP) meeting to vote on putting a new selective school in the John Jay campus building. While the building currently houses four schools serving mainly black and Latino students, the new school is being added to meet the needs of middle-class, mainly white families in the Park Slope neighborhood.

The PEP meeting was the final, formal Department of Education (DOE) step in approving the new school. It was also the first public meeting of new schools chancellor Black. The crowd of about 200 people was angry about attacks on working-class students across the city.

The whole meeting was filled with chanting, singing and speakers interrupting the DOE and demanding the system serve all students. Angry teachers, parents and students represented many schools threatened with closing or with the co-location of other schools in their buildings. About 40 people from the John Jay campus came to continue the fight against the racist conditions students there are facing.

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Fight County Hospital Killers

CHICAGO, IL, January 28 —  “THEY SAY CUT BACK, WE SAY FIGHT BACK!”; “THE WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!”; “WE NEED OUR JOBS!”; These chants shook the halls outside a budget hearing as militant black women workers from Cook County and Provident Hospitals could not get into the packed hearing room. The commissioners were deciding how much money will be cut from each department, including hospital services and jobs. Our voices were heard loud and clear, inside and outside the hearing.

Driven by the war budget and the Great Recession, the bosses plan to sub-contract the jobs of hundreds of housekeeping, dietary and other workers.  These mostly black and Latino workers have historically been the mass base for PLP here. The bosses and bankers are also closing Provident and Oak Forest Hospitals, and have not restored the hundreds of jobs cut in 2007. The County health system is already more closed than open and more patients will die, all run by Democrats and in Obama’s backyard.

One doctor, a veteran anti-racist fighter, told the board that closing these hospitals was racist murder, comparing these cuts to what happened in Nazi Germany’s medical system prior to WW II. Someone also exposed short-staffing. It’s a scientific fact that complications — including death — increase sharply when the nurse:patient ratio exceeds 1-to-5 on medical-surgical units. At Stroger Hospital, nurses on these wards are routinely assigned 7 or 8 uninsured patients. Across the street at the University of Illinois Hospital, which only takes insured patients, proper staffing ratios are used.

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Potential Power of Workers ‘On Full Display’: Kicking Out Capitalism Creates a REAL Revolution

Open violent struggle has erupted in several North African and Middle Eastern Arab nations, inspired largely by the massive uprising of workers and students in Tunisia. That revolt has driven out President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who has fled to Saudi Arabia, reportedly with over a ton of stolen gold.

Workers are boldly fighting their bosses. In company after company —  airlines, insurance, petrochemical — workers are seizing management headquarters and demanding, with some success, that the bosses be fired. Workers are conducting regional and city-wide strikes nation-wide. In the cities of Sfax and Sidi Bouzid, mass workers’ organizations have actually seized political power, running out the mayor and city council and establishing direct organizational control over all city agencies.

These workers’ councils could develop a national network and seize power from the decrepit National Unity Government (NUG). But they don’t yet advocate expropriating the capitalists’ property and building a collectively-run communist society. Without bold communist leadership, they will fall victim to the illusion of “fair-play capitalism.” But revolutionary potential remains.

The sustained worker-student struggle continues to confront the remaining ministers from Ben Ali’s regime, including prime minister and self-proclaimed leader of a “National Unity” government Mohamed Ghannouchi.  Continued protests are demanding that all ministers of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RDC) party be kicked out as simply being “Ben Ali light” who would maintain the same corrupt capitalist clique in power.

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‘That’s how capitalism works — it starves people…’ HS Students, Workers Dissect Profit System at Communist School

CALIFORNIA, January 17 — This last weekend forty students and workers went to central California to a communist school on Political Economy. Five high school students came from one city, traveling six hours there and six hours back just to study with us. We discussed what creates value, how the wage system works, and what creates capitalism’s crises. Here are some things that the high school students had to say about the school:

“My experience was fun. I learned about why certain jobs get a certain amount of money, but I don’t understand why they don’t take money from the rich people. Instead they take it from the people that can barely get by with the money they do have.”

“My experience today was quite interesting. I learned many new things as well. I learned how the system works more in depth, and where the value of certain things comes from. Everything was explained very well, which is a good thing because it gives me a better understanding of what’s going on. I heard many personal stories that involved the system and how they do things to profit off of their employees. Ultimately, the experience was very beneficial towards my understanding of political economy.”

“My experience was amazing. I learned the difference between socialism, capitalism, and communism. It was nice. I don’t understand why the government takes more taxes from us and less from the rich.”

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