Letters of April 14, 2010

Palestine: Communism Only Answer to Refugees’ Plight

During the 1948 war, the racist Israeli bosses forced 750,000 Palestinians to leave their homes which were confiscated, along with their land. Mostly workers and peasants, they were forced to become refugees, many in refugee camps.

Today these refugees and their descendants, totaling 4,618,141, live in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Of them, 1,373,732 are trapped in refugee camps in horrible living conditions, super-exploited by the local Arab bosses, and suffering from substandard housing and infrastructure and huge unemployment rates.

These villagers’ Right to Return to their pre-1948 lands is a basic right, the right to live where their families had lived for generations. However, even worse is their plight in these refugee camps, which capitalism has caused and maintains.

The Israeli ruling class does its utmost to prevent these refugees from returning to their lands, stolen from them by the Israeli state and used to enrich local and foreign capitalists. The Palestinian nationalist leaders pay lip-service to the Right of Return, but cannot solve — and in fact contribute to — the basic hardships faced by these refugees.

However, even if some of them were allowed to return to their lands, under capitalism their suffering will continue. Their villages have been ruined for sixty years. On many of them the Zionists established “Jewish Only” settlements. The capitalists will have no interest in ending their impoverishment with adequate and affordable housing, education, healthcare and infrastructure, or with jobs that can provide a decent living. In fact, if the refugees will ever return to Israel-Palestine while capitalism still reigns, their current refugee camps will simply be replaced by new ones there, and they will become nothing but a source of cheap labor for the Palestinian and/or Israeli bosses.

Only communism — a society run by the workers under the principle of “to each according to need, from each according to commitment” — can provide a real solution to the plight of Palestine’s refugees. A communist-run workers’ state will be able to satisfy their needs, wherever they live, enabling them to contribute to the construction of communist progress in the entire Middle East in particular, as well as in the world in general.

A communist in Israel/Palestine

Class Analysis Links Ancient Rome
to U.S. Now

I am a first-year NYC public school teacher. It becomes more clear to me daily that the education system is set up to make a certain large group of students fail, in order to keep the rulers’ system of exploitation viable. I do not know how so many great teachers survive in schools without a class analysis to explain why there are so many kids below the level they should be at. As a member of PLP, I feel that it is my job not only to try and expose students to communist ideas and recruit them to the Party, but also to give them the skills and knowledge they should have.

I teach Humanities and recently finished a unit on the Roman Empire. Because my students are at so many different levels, I try to use different materials and media in the classroom. For this unit, I spent some time teaching them about the Punic Wars and the Roman expansion.

The first film clip briefly showed the war in Carthage, and how Roman soldiers completely wiped out a town, stole all their valuables and enslaved the survivors. After the battle, we see the army return to Rome, where the plebeians (95% of the population) lived in misery. We then see a discussion between members of the Senate and the army’s generals. The Senators warn the generals that they need a new enemy for the plebeians to fear so they will stand up and support the “great” Roman Republic.

In Rome, not only did the rich create enemies out of people they wanted to conquer, they used disgusting tactics to keep the plebeians “occupied” or disillusioned about their power as a class. The coliseum was a prime example of this as up to 200,000, rich and poor, watched gladiators (slaves) fight to the death.

The rise of Christianity kept masses passive then and continues to do so today, along with other world religions. This same type of media and entertainment exists today and keeps millions of workers “occupied” and ignorant about who the real enemy is.

After watching the movie clip, my class had a great discussion about the similarities between the ruling class in the Roman Empire and the ruling class that exists today. Although, I am part of the system and unfortunately have to teach my students to the Regents exam, I always try to teach using a class analysis. Also, I always try to remind them and myself that the working class has the power to change the world and put power into our hands.

The Roman Empire fell, the U.S. and the other empires today will fall. That is why we need to bring communist ideas to the masses, so that we don’t replace one empire with another. Let’s break the vicious deadly cycle of class society.

NYC Teacher

Hospital Speed-up Helps MRSA Spread

The “Red Eye On The News” item “Antibiotics= farm profit; people die” hits me personally.

I have a MRSA infection that undermined a major surgery last year and forced me to retire from my job. The memory of standing in my shower and watching the six-inch surgical incision in my abdomen open up like a scene from the movie “Alien” still haunts me. The medications I take daily have side effects like diarrhea — truly a pain in the ass!

Farm antibiotics are not the only contributor to MRSA infections however. Short staffing and speed-up in the capitalist healthcare industry is a primary cause. Simply, if a healthcare worker is rushing from patient to patient or room to room, they are more likely to not practice the effective hand-washing which can prevent the spread of infection. Healthcare custodial workers moreover, should allow disinfectant to sit on surfaces from 5 to 15 minutes so the disinfectant may penetrate the layers of bacteria. After working 25 years in a major hospital’s housekeeping department I can tell you, ain’t no supervisor allowing any housekeeper to let anything sit 15 minutes without a fight!

I’ve spent years of being a union delegate and sitting on several contract negotiating committees fighting for more staffing to improve patient care and combat racist unemployment. Several times we actually won some jobs. But as U.S. fascism deepens with the increase of imperialist rivalries and wars, U.S. bosses have even less leeway to allow reform victories like more staffing.

The inadequate staffing of healthcare under capitalism guarantees the continued spread of MRSA and another killer infection, Clostridium Difficile or C-Diff as it’s known.  Our PL club was correct to make the need for communism primary in all those reform struggles over the years. Communist revolution is truly the only lasting cure for infections like MRSA and C-Diff.

A Comrade

CHALLENGE-DESAFIO A Hit At
Immigrants’ March

On March 21, over 200,000 people — Latino, black, Asian, white — from countries all over the world turned out to support immigrant reform.  Millions of dollars were spent by Catholic churches and government agencies for free buses to guarantee a big turnout.  On the buses, people were handed papers stating that police have every right to stop you if they have a “good reason to believe that you are involved in criminal activity.” If you are searched, you are to say clearly “I do not consent,” but to always be polite, respectful and calm.  

As we were gathered on the mall and handed little U.S. flags, one of the first speakers talked about Jose Sucuzhanay, the Ecuadorian immigrant whose murderers are still free because the intent of their motive has not been judged a hate crime.  

While most people who attended had illusions that reform would bring better conditions, the video of Obama continued the theme that the rights of immigrants were second to the demands of a capitalist system, “effective strategies to protect our borders and enforce the law while offering a path to citizenship for hardworking people who register, pay taxes, pay a fine, and agree to play by the rules.”  Reforms were promised by every speaker, but none went further than the Dream Act that offers two roads to citizenship:  college or the army.

One CHALLENGE-DESAFIO seller opened the paper to show the fight backs against education cuts in colleges across the country and how, with the cuts, classes were dropped, summer school eliminated and teachers laid off.  With tuition hikes every year, the only future open to most youth was certainly the army, Afghanistan or Iraq. Many of the families who were shown CHALLENGE-DESAFIO had come with two or three young children to the rally.  Their faces showed quick understanding of these issues as they saw the article about the liberal mask of CIR and  bought a copy.  Over a hundred papers were easily sold within a few hours.

New Jersey comrade