Letters of January 30

Fighting Racists in the Class Struggle

As a Progressive Labor Party member, I recently came across a 1976 CHALLENGE article I had written called, “Acting in the Class Struggle.” It described some actions that took place among my fellow students in a retraining program we were in because our jobs had been closed down to prevent unionization.
I had just lost my job at a jewelry workshop in Pittsburgh where I had successfully led an organizing drive to join the jewelry workers’ union.  The boss, in order to destroy the union, closed the shop at the insistence of other, bigger bosses, whose shops in the same manufacturing building were also being organized.  I was, consequently, out of a job and went into a government-sponsored retraining program run by Airco Technical School to learn welding.  
We were to be paid a wage of $80 a week during the 13-week course. Everyone had to sign a notarized contract swearing that we were not troublemakers, criminals, or communists. During the 13-week course, I was involved in about nine sharp trade union political struggles, which eventually led to a strike in the school. Two people became friends and although they never joined the Party, remained friends for quite a while. Three of the nine struggles are useful to retell because they show that 1) you can trust the working class,  2)  you can struggle against racism among white and black workers,  and  3)  you can develop firm friendships from these struggles.  
How to Shut Up a Racist
We were learning welding on a factory floor with 40 or 50 small cubicles, each containing some welding equipment. There were only two toilets — which were filthy — and  two small rooms with tables to eat our brown-bag lunches. There were two teachers for 72 trainees.  I was in a group of 18 students. There were classrooms upstairs where we learned blueprint reading and theory.
It was difficult not to make friends and raise ideas.  I got into lots of discussions, and soon most of my 17 classmates knew about my work in the  Committee Against Racism, and a few knew I was a revolutionary.  After four weeks, during a blueprint class lull, a white young man shouted a racist joke about sickle cell anemia from the back of the room.  I wanted to finish the course, but I couldn’t listen to this kind of racism. I waited a few minutes for someone else to shout him down, and nobody did.  This was a very multi-racial class.  
I spoke up, “Stop this disgusting racist filth! You’re likely to get your head broke.”  A young man on the other side of the room told me that I’d better watch it. I told him that he’d better watch it too, “I’ll say what I like to racist scum.”  At that point a black man sitting near me told the racists that I was right, and that he had better watch out. Soon a number of people, both black and white, spoke out against the racism. The fight was over. The rats had been cornered.  Two days later, one young African-American man told me he’d name his new son after me.
Worker Against Vending Machine
During the next couple of weeks, a group of African-Americans usually congregated in one spot and a group of whites in another. I moved between the groups, bringing blacks into white conversations, and whites into black conversations. In this lunch area there were four vending machines that often stole some of our money and did not dispense the goods.
One day, a young white man put money into the soda machine, and got no drink.  He got mad and started to kick the machine. Almost all of the 72 students were watching.  Just then, the machine’s owner walked in; his new Mercedes-Benz was parked outside. He began yelling “Get away from that machine. Don’t touch it.” Then he asked for the kicker’s name. The student gave his name. The owner told him he would sue him or beat him up outside.  Most students remained silent during all this.  
Five minutes later the machine owner left and in walked the blueprint teacher who proceeded to insult everyone and told us, “Leave the machines alone or the owner will remove them.”  Nobody reminded the teacher about the machines’ thievery.
Once again I hoped somebody would say something, but nobody did.  I then explained to the teacher that he didn’t understand the way capitalism works: “The capitalist gives us services, but if the machine keeps ripping us off and the workers smash the machines, another capitalist with new machines will come in to make more money.”  Conversations around the room stopped while everyone watched the blueprint teacher and me. The teacher told me that we still shouldn’t kick the machine. I told him, “No man has any right to come in here and threaten a student.”  By this time he was getting irritated with me and told me take it easy. I said, “It probably would be best for me to shut up, but I have no intention of shutting up while a fellow student is being threatened.”
At that point a black woman student came over to me, patted me on the back, looked squarely at the teacher, and said, “If he tried to touch anybody 80 people here would beat the sh-t out of him.” The teacher stopped. Two days later, four new machines came in.  After that, they never stole money — except by their high prices.
The Power of Multi-Racial Unity
About three weeks before the end of the course, we were told that our minimum-wage pay that was due on Friday would not be paid until Monday.  We staged a successful strike to get our pay.
The following day I was welding, and, after doing the weld, I went, as we all did, to show the welding teacher and ask for constructive criticism. He told me to get the f-ck away from him as he wasn’t interested in me. “Boy, get away.”  I was 40 years old at the time.
About 10 people gathered around and told him he’d better tell me what I wanted to know because I was a student and he was a teacher. He asked me if I wanted to go outside. He was a very big fellow and could certainly have beaten the crap out of me.  So I told him that if I went outside with him, I’d also bring a slab of steel with me to smash him with. “Anything to win,” I told him.  “You’re crazy,” he said.  “Then you’d better watch out!” I said.  The students who had gathered around were very sympathetic. They wanted to end the argument and told him, “Just show him what he wants to know.”  Seeing the multi-racial group of students ended his argument.  
About ten days later, after a particularly nasty incident between a racist who was spouting filthy racist tripe about how African-Americans got “X” after their names. “They have to kill a white person,” he said, “I read it in Life magazine.”  I started to explain to the young white workers who were listening to him with interest that some African-Americans had taken the X because they did not know their original African names, since all slaves were named by their slave-master. The racist shouted obscenities at me and started to swing at me. I backed away and told him he was still a liar.
Michael, one of the white strike leaders, grabbed the racist, told him to stop his BS, dragged him to his welding booth and pushed him in. By then around 15 people had gathered.  The racist screamed that he was going to get me. He dragged out a 5-pound hammer and started to swing it around. Several people, black and white, moved towards him and he backed away.  Dwayne, one of the young black workers said, “Do you have a gun in there?”  The racist gave up.  Another of the young white workers said, “We don’t need any of that sh-t in here,” and thanked me for telling the truth. He became one of my friends.
Class struggle exists all the time because of the contradictions between capital and labor. It takes many forms.  You can either fight and become part of the solution, or you can give in and move closer and closer to fascism. It doesn’t always require fists, or hammers, or anger.  But it does require constant struggle.  You can’t make an omelet without breaking the eggshells.

One-day Wildcat Proves A Boss is A Boss is A Boss
I am a contract worker here in Tel-Aviv employed in housekeeping. I started a job under a new contractor in October. Initially, this was a better job than my last one, as it was a full-time job plus overtime, thus giving me a better salary than my old part-time housekeeping job. Now I work 50 hours a week and earn 4,600 ILS (equivalent to $1,200) a month, better than my old 3,600 ILS (equivalent to $950) monthly salary. I thought that now I could finally pay my bills and still have money for an apartment fit for a human being to live in!
But this contractor is no different from any other boss. He was late in giving me my salary, which I earned by the sweat of my brow. Of course, the bills still had to be paid on time. Twice already, in November and December, he paid me a week late and left me to deal with my bills with no wage. When he finally gave me my salary, it was in cash with no guarantee that my taxes, National Insurance (Israel’s Social Security) and benefits (mandated by law) were paid.
I was not the only worker to face this slavery of unpaid work. All four of us working at the same office met and decided to take matters into our own hands. We decided to go on a wildcat strike for one day to show the scumbag that he’d better pay us if he wants the office cleaned. As I was the only worker who speaks Hebrew well (the others were Russian immigrants), the manager directed all of her anger at me. She screamed at me in the most humiliating and inhumane way possible. She even threatened to fire me because I didn’t silently accept this form of slavery.
I will continue to fight this exploiter, and all other capitalists, whether I stay at this job or I move to another one. There are no good bosses — all of them are rotten to the core and make a fortune out of our hard labor.
Housekeeping Worker from Tel-Aviv

Capitalism Can’t Even Provide the Basics
What is wrong with a society that cannot even provide basics like food and housing? Everyone needs food to survive and housing to live in. The bosses have become so greedy that workers no longer even have the basics. People that have jobs are waiting in food pantry lines.  At an entry-level telephone-interviewing job where I worked part-time, there were lawyers, doctors and even older TV announcers working for minimum wage. I don’t know all their stories or how they got there. But there they were, not earning enough to rent apartments. Some of them live in overnight shelters.
Chicago’s Cook County Hospital is no longer free. As a patient you will get a bill and will pay for your medicine. This hospital’s mission was always to serve the poor. The poor are being forgotten by everyone.  The “American Dream” was for people to own homes. Many people struggled to own homes and worked hard at keeping the house in order. I watched three homes in one block in my working-class neighborhood go into foreclosure. These families are now homeless and in the street. Our society needs healthcare and housing for all. Join the fight!
Anti-Capitalist

‘Who needs the bosses? Nobody!’
I was on a picket line of about 60 people outside Millennium Carwash. We were demanding that a worker be rehired who management wouldn’t take back. They suspected he was involved in a union organizing campaign in Los Angeles County. There were chants about the immediate issue and the campaign.
Then someone started a call and response. It went like this. “Who washes the cars?” “The workers wash the cars.” “Who gets the money?” “The bosses get the money.” “Who needs the workers?” “The bosses need the workers.” “Who needs the bosses?” (pause.) “Nobody!”
Many people picked up on this chant and kept it going for quite a while. I think it’s adaptable to many industries and situations. It expresses people’s desire for a world without capitalist exploitation.
LA Red