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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Union Hacks, Bosses, Obama Gang-up — So GM Workers Picket UAW HQ Over Wage-Cuts

DETROIT, MI, October 16 — “Eventually, we’ll all be Tier 2!” That’s what one woman said as about 200 autoworkers picketed outside the locked gates of UAW headquarters at Solidarity House today. They were protesting a 50% wage cut for 40% of the workforce at the Lake Orion GM assembly plant, UAW Local 5960. Workers came from a number of plants and locals, including Local 23 at the Indianapolis stamping plant where workers rejected wage-cuts, defied the Governor and ran UAW International reps out of their union hall.

Under the new contract, Tier 2 workers will make $14.50/hour and work alongside Tier 1 workers making $28/hour. Fearing a repeat of the Indianapolis rebellion, where wage-cuts were overwhelmingly voted down, 457 to 96, workers would not be allowed to vote on the wage-cuts. This is UAW President Bob King’s “UAW for the 21st Century,” where GM and the union “share common goals and a common vision” of keeping U.S. bosses on the top of the heap with a future of low wages and endless war.

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France: As Millions Marched and Thousands Struck: Sarkozy, Union Hacks Push to End Rank-and-File Movement

PARIS, October 31 — Two million workers and youth took to the streets in massive nation-wide demonstrations — 170,000 marching in Paris — to protest the ruling class’s raising the retirement age and the rising unemployment caused by the bosses’ economic crisis. A movement that began in the spring over pensions broadened to encompass a fight for jobs amid workers’ rage over the tremendous disparity in wealth between the ruling class and the working class.

Large numbers continue to join the anti-retirement demonstrations against low wages and President Sarkozy’s connivance with the wealthy. The focus on retirement “reform” stems from the fact that it affects the largest number of people. “The wage problem is overshadowed by the jobs problem which is overshadowed by the retirement problem,” explained Antoine, an unemployed worker in his forties. “It all results from the unequal distribution of wealth.” And all that is integral to capitalism’s drive for profits. Only a communist revolution that destroys this system and replaces it with one run by and for workers can end these evils.

Initially Sarkozy and the sellout union leaders had figured that some one-day strikes and demonstrations would allow the workers to vent their anger and then the pension changes would sail through. But this became a miscalculation when the rank and file pushed past the union leaders, organizing unlimited strikes, with polls reporting from 65% to 71% of the population supporting them. It then became difficult for the union hacks to back out of the struggle and to control it.

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Boston: Students March vs. Racist Police Terror

BOSTON, MA., October 29 — About 50 students and faculty from Roxbury Community College (RCC) marched to the police station today to protest the vicious October 22 police beating of a sixteen-year-old-youth in the Administration Building. The youth had run away from a Department of Youth Services facility in order to be present at the birth of his child.

A student recorded the incident with her cell-phone camera and posted it on Youtube while a cop attempted to intimidate her. If not for her, the incident would have been swept under the rug.  No one except those who had witnessed it knew it had happened. The RCC administration kept it silent for almost a week, helping the police cover up their crime. They didn’t address it on the campus until the Youtube video made it an issue in Boston.

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Elections: Bosses’ Charade to Enforce their Dictatorship

The workers of the world are struggling through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Jobs are disappearing, wages are falling, and millions of people are being thrown out of their homes and into the streets. In the U.S., over half of the federal budget is going to fight imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia and the rest is being funneled into the hands of the capitalist class through bank bailouts and other giveaways.
Naturally, the ruthless greed and relentless attacks provoke anger in workers. This mass anger represents an opportunity for communists, who must strive to transform this unorganized and often misdirected anger into a mass communist movement. To do this, we must expose one of the bosses’ primary ideological weapons: elections.

Elections are a Ruling-Class Charade

The controlling forces in society — government (including elections), cops, military, schools, culture, etc. — comprise what we refer to as “the state” and are funded, organized and led by the ruling class. They function solely to reinforce the existing, racist structure: bosses exploiting, workers exploited. Elections, no matter who is elected, can NEVER change this.

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