Letters of March 13

Capitalism Kills Philly’s Homeless
Terrible things happen to people worldwide because of capitalism.  Tens of millions are homeless or live in dangerous conditions because they lack money for rent or mortgages.  Misery and sickness come with being homeless, but the capitalist class is concerned only with whether workers will report for the next shift. Life for most working-class families is lived on the edge. The slightest thing can bring disaster.
Philadelphia used to be a “prosperous” city with tens of thousands of industrial jobs.  Workers suffered from racism, exploitation and corruption as we do now, but at least almost all could pay rent and buy groceries. That is not true anymore. Many jobs have disappeared forever and the Philadelphia population has declined by 25% since the 1950 high of two million.  
 Fifty percent of Philadelphia’s population is black or Latino,  but according to 2006 figures from the Center for Urban Community Services’ housing resource center, 86 percent of Philadelphia’s homeless are black or Latino.  The major cause of homelessness here is racism. Other causes include poverty from a lack of good jobs, minimal government assistance, lack of affordable housing and adequate housing assistance and a lack of affordable health care.
 Here on our block in a black neighborhood, a neighbor’s house has no heat or water due to damage from a falling tree. The kitchen wall fell into the back yard. She has been unable to get the slightest help from the city.  Nine neighbors held a meeting to discuss her dangerous situation and look for answers. But no agency, private or public, will offer her emergency housing or repairs. So she continues to go three times each week to a dialysis center from her freezing house with no water.  The house could be condemned at any moment.  Then where will she go?
No capitalist society will ever provide safe housing for the working class.  Only we workers can and will do that! Until then, racist homelessness and misery will continue to grow around the world. That is why we fight for communism: workers’ power.
Philly Worker

Inspired by Passion at Salvador Communist School
Three dozen of us were silent as the Salvadoran comrade spoke. He was a small man and the skin of his face was brown and deeply creased from years in the sun. He did not talk of the gun battles he had survived as a guerilla with the (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) FMLN. He talked of the precious thing that all of us in the room shared: “Our Party, the PLP, has a line that is clear and correct. With this the working class can win.”
As the hours of reports and discussion continued, I struggled to understand every word (Spanish is not my native language) and I missed a lot. But again and again, as I heard reports from comrades in vastly different situations in cities large and small in all the different countries represented by the group gathered there, I realized that our struggles were more alike than different.
Fascism may be police murder of black youth in New York or assassination of trade union activists in Bogotá, community policing in Chicago or cops paying off unprincipled workers to spy on their neighbors in Oaxaca, but it’s the same enemy.  There are masses of workers in all these places who hate the system and respond to our politics.
In one country after another, new people are coming forward. Growth may be slow but the quality of new comrades is humbling. The energy and sharp political analysis of young workers and university students from Colombia, Mexico and the U.S. was exciting to witness.
The school for communism was exhilarating and emotional. At one point a comrade with thinning gray hair and hands that looked like they had seen their share of hard work over the decades quietly described getting up early with his bag of CHALLENGE and heading off to another demonstration. His calm, even voice communicated an unshakable determination. I noticed tears running down the cheeks of a comrade across the room and realized her’s were not the only moist eyes in the room. Our work can be daunting, but the passion that drives us is deep.
A Comrade

Need More Action vs. Criminal Jailing of Immigrants
Here in Newark, NJ February 13 marked the 17th year workers and students have demonstrated against the criminal detention of immigrants. Organizations involved included First Friends, Pax Christi, Wind of the Spirit and AFSC, as well as other immigrant rights groups. Protests continue to be needed because even after so many years, the number of workers deported has soared to over a million under Obama’s executive watch.
Last year 60 people participated. This year, when over 100 showed up, most of the increase came from high school youth, from schools as far as fifteen miles away!
We gathered at Liberty State Park, across from Ellis Island where immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean historically entered New York City. We then rallied across from the Bergen County detention center in Hackensack. Seven of us wore the orange jump suits of detainees and showed placards with the names of the seven people who have died during incarceration in New Jersey alone. Next we marched from the Newark Hall of Records to the Federal building and then through the Ironbound district, carrying two cardboard “coffins” symbolizing the real death and destruction of undocumented workers and their families.
During the rallies we held at two other detention centers later the same day, many truckers from the busy receiving district of Port Newark honked in solidarity. We were accompanied at each of our six points of protest by musicians and vocalists who called themselves the “Dirty Rotten System.”     
At the soup dinner following a two-hour vigil in Elizabeth, we discussed fundraising for a Salvadoran woman who needed $3,000 bail for her release after nearly two years of detention. She has not seen her three-year-old son all this time.  An article in CHALLENGE concerning communist work in El Salvador was shared with each person during this dinner.
These protests are just a beginning. More than peaceful protests will be needed to end these abuses. We will need to topple the powers that support this system of capitalism, destroy the world-wide borders that separate workers and build a communist society where we all benefit from the fruits of our labor.
A N.J. Comrade