Letters of December 1

March vs. ICE-NYC Prisons’ 
Anti-Immigrant Gang-up

On Tuesday, October 19, we joined a group of over 1,000 workers and students from Brooklyn and Queens belonging to the reformist community organization “Make the Road New York”and marched over the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate at the mayor’s office in Manhattan.

We protested the collaboration of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) in the city jails. The DOC has been sharing the information of each and every person incarcerated with ICE, including name and place of birth. They can deport an undocumented worker no matter the charge or accusation, whether they were found guilty or innocent, and no matter how much time they’ve been incarcerated. The DOC voluntarily turns over up to 4,000 undocumented workers to ICE every year despite no legal obligation to do so.

Make the Road New York made a legal challenge to stop the collaboration between city prisons and ICE, and these Arizona-style deportations. One participant following the event stated that Make the Road New York’s solution doesn’t give them much hope, and will only serve as a smokescreen for opportunistic politicians.

This struggle must be directed against capitalism, and we’re planning to lead that struggle as we make contacts and expose the dead-end of reformism. Currently we are expanding our CHALLENGE readership, and are pushing for another demonstration in front of one of the prisons themselves.

Worker from Manhattan

U.S. Airport Workers Back Chicago Moms, French Strikers

Some of the airport workers who get CHALLENGE helped with two Party-led efforts to aid workers here and internationally. They collected a small donation to send to Chicago to contribute to the support of the Whittier rebels who are trying to save their community center from the racist Chicago bosses who want the land (see page 3).

A solidarity letter written in French was e-mailed to trade union workers of CGT, one of France’s largest trade unions, which is the rough equivalent to the SEIU. They were also sent a shipment of CHALLENGES. 

Party members have emphasized to the airport workers how these two class struggles on a larger scale are similar to our smaller airport fights against our racist bosses: we are all victimized by racist, sexist, and anti-working-class capitalism which can’t meet workers’ needs. Only a communist society lead by PLP and workers can. Here is a translation of the letter to the workers in France:

“Revolutionary Greetings to our French, African, and Arab brother and sister workers. We know of your struggles in France against anti-worker and racist Sarkozy. We stand in solidarity with you! We work at a large airport in North America. We are citizens and immigrants. Your class struggle is ours too! Against this racist, sexist, and anti-worker system we call on the international working class to support you! 1968! Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!”

Airport Red

Jon Stewart to D.C. Rally: 
‘Sit Down, Shut Up!’

The October 30th Rally to Restore Sanity put on by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a clear message to those on the Left: “sit down and shut up.” The 250,000 people who attended (dwarfing the numbers of Glenn Beck’s rally and the unions’ rally) were treated to what was largely a commercial for various Viacom products (Viacom owns Comedy Central) occasionally interrupted by anti-communist attacks and nationalist pandering.

The stage was surrounded by U.S. flags, the hosts wore U.S. flag suits, and soldiers and musicians were brought out to reverently sing the national anthem and other patriotic songs. Both in the lead-up to, and during, the rally Stewart attacked those that loudly and vocally opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as “unreasonable extremists.” He chided as ridiculous those that have called the Tea Party racist and those that criticized Juan Williams’ racist statements about Muslims. During the rally he called these critics “Stalinists” (the indefinably evil boogeyman of capitalist propaganda) and “Marxists actively subverting our Constitution.”

As much as the working class needs Marxists to actively subvert the capitalists’ Constitution (and yes, also celebrate the legacy of Stalin), one wonders where this mass party is other than in the minds of John Birchers and Jon Stewart? The reality is that this rally, whose audience was not the Tea Party or the Fox News set, but liberals and Leftists, was held to ridicule and mock the Left into not questioning U.S. imperialism or racist ruling-class power.

Stewart and Colbert mocked the idea that we live in a society of class struggle and in so doing undermined workers’ ability to fight back in that struggle. Stewart closed by saying that we are in “hard times but not end times” so we should cool it with the outrage and the demands for change. This is an easy statement for him to make from his penthouse in Manhattan. But for the millions whose unemployment benefits are running out, or the millions more who are being kicked out of their houses and thrown into the streets this is the end times. Likewise, for those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and now Yemen who have to worry about U.S. troops killing them in the night, it most certainly must feel like the end times.

He will excuse us if some of us are outraged and refuse to be polite about a system that has murdered more people through slavery, poverty, starvation, neglect, imperialism, and war than any other in human history.

Red Beard

Anti-War Vets Defy Fascist Cops

This year’s NYC Veterans’ Day parade included a cat-and-mouse game between anti-war vets and cops trying to snatch their signs and arrest them. The ruling class invested heavily in patriotism, with 3,000 active-duty military, dozens of marching bands and cadet groups from all parts of the country, war vehicles, thousands of free flags and every politician they could get out of bed.

I joined some Vietnam anti-war vets I knew and a few Iraq and Afghanistan vets who were marching with the peace groups because everyone was notified that only peace groups and banners were permitted; anti-war groups and personal signs were prohibited.

We anti-war vets decided to keep our signs folded until we had marched a few blocks and if that idea failed, we would continue our chants, like “Jobs are what we’re fighting for, we don’t want your god-damned war!” Our political chanting proved very effective for creating crowd support (like at PLP events).

When we opened our signs, cops started breaking into our formations, threatening arrests if we displayed them (my sign read, “Bring the Troops and the Money Home Now!” We folded our signs until the cops challenged vets in another row and then we re-opened them again.

This went back and forth for a few blocks while ironically the peace groups were chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.” I believe they were referring to their right to preach “peace” but with the cops running around like Nazis, the chant took on the meaning of, “This is what fascism looks like!”

I guess the fascist cops realized that we would not yield and they decided against a mass arrest, so we were able to complete 90% of the parade without harassment. Despite the two-hour patriotic fanfare the crowds were exposed to, when our group, which is always placed at the end, got to march, we were received by the majority with such applause and enthusiasm that I began to understand why the ruling class feels so vulnerable and fears our presence

Korea War Vet

Racist Tea Party Brings Back 
Jim Crow

The mid-term elections (11/2) once again saw the intensification of efforts to intimidate black and Latino voters. Part of a long tradition of racially-based voter intimidation campaigns in the U.S., such campaigns have been rapidly escalating since 2000.

Tea Party groups across the country formed voter-fraud teams. They patrolled polling sites in “suspicious” communities, all of which “just happened” to be working class and either black or Latino. In Illinois, Congressman Mark Kirk was caught on tape urging the dispatch of intimidation teams to black neighborhoods to discourage voters. Across the country Tea Party poll watchers were encouraged to go to polling places and directly accuse people of fraud. In Phoenix, people were encouraged to attack those who looked “illegal” as fraudulent voters. In Houston, Tea Party thugs directly intimidated people in black neighborhoods to prevent them from voting.

In this case it is immaterial that voter fraud (of the kind they are “fighting”) is virtually non-existent or that the whole election circus is a fraud. It exists only to legitimize the capitalist class dictatorship; these acts of intimidation are solely for the purpose of intensifying and perpetuating racism. While useless for changing the system, voting does send clear messages about who is and who is not a legitimate member of society. By actively working to exclude black and Latino workers from voting the message of these peoples’ second-class status is reinforced. The fact that the government does nothing to stop these attacks only confirms their legitimacy and that of racism as a whole.

A comrade