Building PLP Means Choosing Life Racist Healthcare Murdering Kids

“Medical conditions like this just happen and that’s God’s plan. My sister had Lupus and she just died two days ago. It happened so fast. I dreamed about her last night. Why did God take her? That’s not for me to know…It’s a spiritual thing,” said a patient as she lay in bed.

Because of diabetes she had both legs amputated below the knees, and she suffered from hypertension and HIV. But in the housing project where she lives, her story is not unique. Recently another child died of cardiac arrest following a severe asthma attack, the third in a month for one Emergency Medical Service (EMS) crew. There’s nothing spiritual about heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, HIV and asthma murdering black workers and youth. It’s called racism and it’s the plague of capitalism.

On January 14, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) released its “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” (MMWR), focusing on racial disparities in U.S. health care. Among the findings:

   • Babies born to black women are up to three times as likely to die in infancy;

   • High blood pressure is twice as common among blacks as whites;

   • Blacks die of strokes and heart disease much more commonly than whites, and die younger;

   • Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, whether gay or straight, all have higher rates of new infection with the AIDS virus than whites, and the situation is worsening.

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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 misguided, 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, reported 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

 Egypt holds vast significance in the sharpening rivalry among waning and rising imperialist powers. Martin Indyk, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and Clinton’s ambassador to Israel, spoke of “huge potential consequences for U.S. strategic interests in a vital region.” (NY Times, 1/30) The Times explained:

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Students, Parents, Teachers Fight School Bosses’ Racism: INTEGRATE, DON’T SEGREGATE!

Protesting before the hearingBROOKLYN, NY, January 11 — “They say cut back, we say fight back!” “Separate is never equal!” These were just two of the many chants that over 300 militant students, teachers and parents shouted while picketing outside the John Jay HS campus.

It preceded a public hearing on the racist Department of Education’s (DoE) proposal to four millions of dollars into installing a new, “selective school” within our building, catering to the mostly-white, middle-class Park Slope neighborhood. These are millions that could have been used all along to improve the four existing schools in the building. The “selective school” will segregate incoming white students from the current black and Latino school population

Our chants grew louder and our numbers mounted in a block-long picket line, joined by workers from a nearby hospital. Drivers honked their support. Students and teachers from many other city schools answered the call to protest the racism and continuing re-segregation of public schools. PL’ers have played a leading role in this struggle to win everyone to understand the DoE actions as a racist attack on the predominately black and Latino student population in the building.

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Capitalism Is Cause of Violence Tucson Gunman Murders 6; U.S. Imperialists Murder Millions

Capitalist politicians of all stripes are falling all over themselves to capitalize on the Tucson shootings and boost their popularity. Obama responded to the sickening massacre with sickening hypocrisy. At a memorial service there, he called for “more civility in our public discourse.” Meanwhile, Obama commits barbaric mass murder for the benefit of his liberal, imperialist bosses. As Obama spoke of “healing,” the U.S. war machine he heads was busy maiming and killing. Since Inauguration Day, Obama’s escalating Afghan war has slaughtered 2,002 civilians, most along a U.S.-planned pipeline route.

Jared Loughner murdered six people. But Obama & Co. perpetuate atrocities far more deadly against workers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Millions have died so that Exxon Mobil could gain access to Iraq’s biggest oilfield. Pilotless drones, Obama’s preferred instrument of terror, target villages in Pakistan and Yemen.

Obama commands secret U.S. death squads called Special Operations forces “in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year....Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world” (Washington Post, 6/4/10). So it was particularly stomach-turning when assassin-in-chief Obama exploited the innocence of  nine-year-old Tucson victim Christina Green.

To sugar-coat his imperialist masters’ widening war agenda, Obama talked of “forging a country...worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.” In other countries, however, U.S. attacks regularly incinerate and dismember children Christina’s age.

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An Anti-Racist Struggle Grows in ‘Flatbush Gardens’

BROOKLYN, NY, December 29 — At a December retiree meeting of former city workers, “C” told us of a struggle our retiree group should support. She is a member of the tenants’ association of “Flatbush Gardens.” This is a sixty-year-old housing complex of some 59 buildings and over 10,000 tenants. Seventy members of Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ have been locked out by their employer, Renaissance Equity Holdings, since November 29, 2010. She told us that her tenant association had joined the picket lines already. They see a common interest in fighting a landlord who has been cited for over 7,000 violations in this housing complex. 

Many of us knew of this complex when it was called Vanderveer Estates. The management company wants to attract more affluent white tenants from Manhattan. The name has changed but the rats have remained.

A group of retirees visited the picket lines to show solidarity and to get to know these workers. We learned that the workers’ contract expired last spring and after they filed an Occupational Safety and Health Complaint in October, Renaissance locked them out. As is the experience of many workers, their boss is demanding a big cut (34%) in pay and reductions in family health coverage.

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France: Fierce Fight vs. Lipton Bosses Is No Tea Party

MARSEILLES, FRANCE, January 4 — Nearly 200 workers at the Fralib factory in nearby Gémenos are engaged in a fierce fight to prevent the Unilever company from closing its plant here, which has been producing Lipton Tea for 118 years.

Unilever has just “bought the U.S. company Alberto-Culver for $3.7 billion,” declared union steward Oliver Leberquier. “That’s proof they don’t have any financial worries.”

Last spring, the Fralib workers struck for nine weeks for a 200-euro/month ($260) raise but were forced to accept the company offer of 16-euros/month ($21), although they did win wage payment for three strike days, a week of paid holidays and a 1,200-euro ($1,560) one-time bonus.

Meanwhile, in 2008 then-Unilever CEO Patrick Cescau raked in 4.7 million euros for himself — almost 400,000 euros ($520,000) a month!

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Students, Parents, Teachers Unite: Slam Racist School Bosses

Updated on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 10:11PM by Challenge_Desafío

Join us at the public hearing. Show the racist Department of Education that we won’t take this lying down!
Date: January 11th, 2011
Time: 6pm
Location: John Jay Campus, 237 7th Ave,    
                Brooklyn, NY 11217

BROOKLYN, NY, December 16 — “Segregation means we have to fight back! Scanning means we have to fight back!” were just two of the many chants that rang out on cold, windy Seventh Avenue as over 100 students and staff rallied in front of the John Jay HS campus. This biggest and most energetic rally yet caused many passers-by to stop and congratulate the students for standing up to the racist Department of Education (DoE).
As CHALLENGE has reported in recent issues, the DoE is advancing its proposal to install a new, well-equipped selective school within our building, catering to the mostly-white, middle-class Park Slope neighborhood. All this while the DoE continues to slash the budgets of the “non-selective” overwhelmingly black and Latino schools that already exist.
This anti-racist struggle is uniting students, parents and staff from the schools within the building, directly countering the DoE’s divide-and-conquer policies implemented throughout the city. We’re counteracting its creation of segregated and unequal schools as well as its lies that “lazy teachers” and “neglectful parents” are the main causes of school failures.
The truth is that the racist, capitalist system has no need to provide a decent education for all. Current schooling is geared to supply future soldiers ready to kill or die for Big Oil’s imperialist wars and the next generation of low-wage workers and unemployed youth. These are just some of the lessons learned from our struggle to stop the opening of this new school.

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U.S. Rulers’ Profit Aims for 2011: Worldwide Wars Against Working Class

The New Year opens with the U.S. ruling class contemplating expanded wars for profit on many fronts, especially the Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq campaigns — all inherently crimes against the international working class. By drones and other means, U.S. rulers are committing racist atrocities in order to secure Central Asian oil and gas supplies and energy transit routes, as well as positioning themselves strategically against future clashes with China and Russia.
Obama Steps Up Nazi-Style Drone Terror in Pakistan, Targets Civilians
U.S. imperialists “celebrated” New Year’s Day by slaughtering 18 “suspected militants” with CIA-guided drone missiles in Pakistan. Assassin-in-chief Obama okayed the hits from his Hawaiian vacation resort. The killings follow a “record number of 124 attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan in 2010, more than double the number of Predator strikes conducted in 2009, killing 1,184 people, compared with 2009’s death toll of 760 in 53 such attacks.” (The News, Pakistan, 1/1/2011)
Terrorism from the air, recalling the World War II Nazi’s V-2 rocket blitz on London, has joined massacre and torture as part of U.S. rulers’ standard operating procedure. Many of the dead are civilians. According to Britain’s Channel 4 News (12/22/10), “Women and children...have also perished while the sheer number of drone flights has caused panic and terror among ordinary tribespeople. It is clear that a changing strategy has often put villages rather than remote hideouts in the firing line.”

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Racist Panelists Duck Anti-Racists’ Challenge

BOSTON, MA, December 15 —  Two students at Roxbury Community College (RCC) took immediate action by organizing a protest against the brutal attack on a black youth by Boston police on Oct 22 (see, CHALLENGE 12/15/10). Some members of the RCC faculty took a different approach to the racist attack. They responded to the militancy of the students by organizing a symposium on urban violence.
A local judge, police lieutenant, and a youth advocate from “Street Safe” (all black) were guest speakers on the panel that tried to convince predominantly black and Latino students to trust in the racist justice system. The symposium shifted into a therapy session instead of a political discussion on the systemic racism of urban violence. The panelists purposely ignored political questions raised by students. One student asked “When will the boy who was brutalized by the police get justice.” The question went unanswered.
The lack of consciousness from the crowd gave the panelists some advantage over the symposium. They focused on pushing people to rely on the police as a solution. “You guys know who the killers and drug dealers are, so pick up the phone and call the police.” However, some people did not fall for this statement because they distrust the police who routinely harass and attack workers in the community. 

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United Arab-Jewish Anti-Apartheid Rally Stuns Israeli Cops

ISSAWIYE,  ISRAEL, December 3 — About 500 demonstrators, including many local residents and youth as well as hundreds of Israeli workers and activists, marched in multi-national solidarity against the crimes of the Israeli apartheid regime against the Issawiye neighborhood. Stunned cops were too scared to enter the neighborhood while the rally lasted! The cowardly riot cops and “border guards” (paramilitary cops) dared to show their ugly faces in Issawiye and brutally assault the locals with clubs and tear gas only after most of the Jewish demonstrators had left the area.
The Israeli regime does anything in its power to grab lands and encircle — and, indeed, strangle — the local Arab-Palestinian residents. Soon after the Israeli conquest of Issawiye in 1967, the Haddasah Hospital and the Hebrew University expanded their buildings at the expense of the neighborhood, blocking most of its entrances with gates, fences and structures.
Many lands to the east of the neighborhood, which were once owned by local residents, were seized and given to settlements, such as Maale Edomim, as well as to a large police base observing the neighborhood.
This goes to show that workers have no stake in the bosses’ laws regarding private property or security. Such laws exist to serve the most powerful capitalists and they are happy to rewrite or break them whenever they like. This is life in the Issawiye ghetto: ever-tightening encirclement, less and less space and ever-increasing police brutality.

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