Letters of March 27

Communist school inspires youth for May Day
We had a big Communist PLP school on February 16 and 17 in South America, with more than 42 members and friends of the PLP participating from: Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador and the United States; more than half were young people and a good number were women.
It was a wonderful experience; especially for those who hadn’t had the opportunity to experience this personally. We spoke about racism, sexism and the importance of fighting against these bosses’ ideas that are integral to this system. The discussion and camaraderie played an important role in committing ourselves to put into practice the Party’s line.
It was inspiring to see how the youth and veterans exchanged their knowledge about their experience in the struggle; the discussion displayed a lot of knowledge about PL’s politics.
We analyzed how the racist attacks against the working class, products of the capitalist crisis, makes living conditions within this capitalist system worse each day. We see how the betrayal of the old communist movement and the pseudo-left and union mis-leaders, have made workers very cynical in facing the bosses. We see how the bosses use our children in their violent wars for oil and their bloody profits, while they step up fascist attacks.
But our Party is still alive and present in workers’ lives, despite any temporary defeats. We explored how in reality little by little we have become an international party of the working class. We concluded that Challenge must be our main vehicle to spread our ideas and to report workers’ struggles in every corner of the globe against capitalist oppression and exploitation. We must learn from them.
Reports of our participation in the teacher strikes in Chicago and Haiti, and the participation of our comrades from Mexico in the Summer Project, were very inspiring to our young students and other comrades.
The leadership of young people in many countries have shown their potential of growth in our Party, especially the struggle against sexism which should be one of our daily tasks in building our base.
All of the criticism and self-criticism was very constructive in the school. It was two days of communist experience, where we shared our politics as well as our lives. This inspired the youth towards our goals for May Day to be more committed in mobilizing our friends and also in intensifying recruitment for PLP.
We said goodbye, singing excitedly the international anthem of the working class, firmly dedicated to building PLP and communism.
Comrade in Colombia

Great Train Robbery: Bankers Profit, Workers Pay
New York City’s racist bosses are ganging up on mass transit riders and workers who are mostly black, Latino and immigrant. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has raised fares for the fourth time in five years, handing the bankers who own the MTA a $450 million windfall.
Twenty percent of the MTA budget goes to “debt service” which allocates billions to Wall Street banker-bondholders. Obama also handed over hundreds of billions of our taxes to these same bankers who “failed” and his administration doles out tens of billions monthly to fund imperialist wars worldwide.
Department stores, shopping centers and real estate properties, which pay nothing for, and profit the most, from transit, would make 90 percent less profit without a mass transit system to provide them their customers, tenants and workers.
Workers must pay sales taxes on most everything they buy, yet bankers and their clients ride on transit to Wall Street where they sell a trillion dollars in stocks, bonds and debt daily without paying a nickel for sales taxes or transit. Masses of workers, many subsisting on poverty wages, and those jobless because of the bosses’ crisis, must fork over still more money to get to their jobs or to try to find one.
The transit union “leaders” never utter a peep about the tie-in of the banks, the MTA and the billions spent on the bosses’ wars, nor about the bankers’ gravy train of billions to cover “deficits.”
PLP fights for a communist system without profits, bankers and phony “deficits.” Workers will put these leeches six feet under.
Transit Worker

Django Unchained:Conceals Rebellions vs. Slavery
I thought that Django: Unchained was a good movie. Despite the fact that it is set in the pre-Civil War era of the United States, the movie had a sense of humor. It is also violent and gory. This violence was not in the form of the brutal treatment of slaves received from their masters. As a matter of fact, violence of this nature was severely downplayed. The movie had a few torture scenes; a “man-dingo” fighting scene; and a scene in which a male slave was eaten by dogs while still alive. Several characters mention how some female slaves were labeled as “comfort girls,” women who were forced to have sex with their masters and the master’s guests. None of that is shown on screen. The main form of violence came from the many gun fights that occurred throughout the movie. If you watch Quentin Tarintino films, the violence will not surprise you.
The two protagonists of the movie are Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist turned bounty hunter and Django, a slave who was separated from his wife. Early in the movie, Dr. Schultz frees Django from two slaveholders. Schultz’s motive is that he needs Django to identify some men who are wanted. As the two travel together, Schultz decides to make Django his partner.
Django: Unchained carries the misconception that the Southern states were the only bad guys. Most of the white southerners in the movie are slavers or just plain racist. The only character from the North is Dr. Schultz. At the beginning, Schultz tells the slaves they have just been freed, and are free to go to a more enlightened part of the country. In truth, the “enlightened” northern states benefited from slave labor. At the time the movie takes place, the Southern states’ main cash crop was cotton. This cotton was used in the Northern textile factories. Going back even further, when slaves were shipped from Africa, the North had a booming ship industry. Many products passed through its’ ports, slaves included.
For most of the movie, Schultz is the star of the show despite Django’s name being in the title. It’s Schultz’s actions which push the plot forward. Who frees Django? Schultz. Who does most of the negotiating? Schultz. Who does most of the planning to get them out of nasty situations? Schultz again. Django is able to become his own character after he and Schultz part ways, but by then the movie is almost over. Furthermore, this development was only possible because of Schultz. Django did little, if any of it alone. Django did not empower himself. Schultz did.
It is a shame that Django’s character wasn’t given more power. There are many examples from history to draw from. There were slaves who deceived their masters; slaves who escaped on their own; and slaves who organized others and led rebellions. Even if Django was empowered by Schultz, a saving grace in Django’s character could have been his desire to tackle the institution of slavery. Unfortunately, that potential is left untapped. Django is only interested in freeing his wife and riding off into the sunset.
Red movie-goer

Slave Labor: From Lincoln to Obama
From the mind of Abraham Lincoln who advocated shipping Negroes to some colony, with Congress paying the cost:
“I will say then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality…” (Quincy, Illinois, 1858)
Union President Lincoln was a core racist who represented northern banking and textile industries. His main Civil War goal was to restore seceded southern states to Union control. Cotton produced by southern slave labor was a high-profit commodity that capitalists of that era went to war over, just as today’s imperialist war over the cheapest oil and gas resources.
But in 1863, after two years of military disasters, the Union army’s morale was devastated and faced troop shortages, draft riots and bankers’ resistance to more war loans. Lincoln offered the South a law guaranteeing 40 more years of slavery if they disarmed and rejoined the Union — to no avail. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation “freeing” southern slaves was a last desperate attempt to prevent a Union defeat by tying down Confederate troops trying to prevent slave escapees to the north and encouraging military enlistments of 200,000 brave, motivated ex-slaves (including 20 Medal of Honor winners) who turned a Union defeat into victory.
During the war, Lincoln ordered his generals to return escaped slaves to assure the South that he would not interfere with their profitable racist exploitation of blacks. After the war Union troops were withdrawn as soon as possible to prevent integration of “free” black soldiers with whites. This encouraged southern capitalists to create Jim Crow vagrancy laws that condemned former slaves to long-term chain-gang labor for the crime of being unemployed. Today a similar form of slavery continues with Obama’s approval of the mass incarceration of blacks and Latinos — 70 percent of the 2.4 million inmate population — many working in prison industries at slave wages because of notoriously racist drug laws.
The New York Times reports (1/5/13) on a 2010 book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander who confirmed: “Today there are more African American adults under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”
The history outlined above shows that although the laws and forms of capitalist terror have changed, racist oppression, wars and exploitation remain. And although our class has won many brave battles, we will never end this parasitic system that lives off our misery and death without struggling to bring discussion about the fight for communism into our organizing efforts.
A Comrade

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

Letters of February 27

Capitalism is Hell for Mentally-ill People
As a worker diagnosed with a mental illness, I can tell you, my dear readers, that little has changed since the Dark Ages with regard to attitudes toward mentally ill people. We are horribly stigmatized and find it very difficult to find a job or enroll in a university. Capitalist society treats us in a hypocritical way.
On one hand they don’t give us jobs because of our health problems and on the other hand the bosses say that we don’t deserve disability benefits because we are not physically disabled and thus “are able to work”. Capitalist society treats us as disabled or as healthy people when it better fits their interests.
The mental health system, in Israel-Palestine (where I live) and elsewhere in the bosses’ world, is horribly underfunded and understaffed and the bosses love to cut back its budget. Psychiatric medication is expensive and it is almost impossible to get any other form of psychotherapy in the “public” (read: mostly privatized) system.  Private therapy is prohibitively expensive.
Occupational rehabilitation for all disabled people has been privatized to NGOs (non-profits) who exploit disabled people. The NGO officials earn high salaries while the disabled “clients” get almost nothing, sometimes 25 cents an hour. Because disabled people — be their disability physical or mental, find it hard to get a job, they are often forced to go through this “rehabilitation” and earn next to nothing.
Psychiatric wards are still terrible places, and patients are humiliated and abused. They still restrain patients to their beds, even now in the 21st century! A person in restraints, usually left in them for long hours, cannot go to the bathroom and has to lie in his or her own excrement. The same goes for the now-privatized “hostels.”
A person who attempts suicide — often due to unemployment or the other horrors of the class system — is forcibly hospitalized.  Officially this is to keep her from killing herself, but the system does nothing to give her a reason to live.  Many doctors do not tell their patients in advance about the side effects of the medications they prescribe and do not prescribe medications against these side effects. The drug companies are in constant touch with psychiatrists and make deals with them at the patients’ expense, all for money.
In many cases, mental illness is caused by conscription into the military and post-traumatic stress, all due to wars created by capitalism. The stress of capitalist competition causes many mental illnesses in the first place. If we lived in a more egalitarian and less repressive society, with less poverty and jobs for everyone, there would be much less mental illness.
A comrade

Koch: Here’s Egg in Your Racist Face
As the gaggle of ruling-class politicians and media fell all over themselves praising New York City’s former Mayor Ed Koch upon his death, I couldn’t help remembering the racist and anti-working class actions of this bosses’ flunky. I lived through all 12 years of his reign and recall his role in the 1980 transit strike which he tried to break.
Taking the bosses’ side, he would stand on the Brooklyn Bridge urging commuters to keep walking to work in the hope that this would outlast the workers’ efforts to win a decent contract, after they shut the transit system tighter than a drum.
The year before, he championed the closing of city hospitals — often the only ones workers could afford — which included Harlem’s Sydenham Hospital, the lone institution serving that black community. But Progressive Labor Party didn’t let him get off so easy in that one.
When he addressed the American Public Health Association at the New York Hilton, members and friends of PLP and the International Committee Against Racism led protestors in chanting, “Racist Koch, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”
Immediately three members of PLP and InCAR stormed the stage and pelted him with eggs. He then ordered the cops to seize and arrest them.
When the working class takes power, we’ll be aiming more than just eggs at the bosses and their mayoral servants.
Old-timer who remembers French Legalize Mali Invasion
Changing “legalities” to suit bosses’ needs is a worldwide capitalist scam. The recent French imperialist invasion of Mali is the latest example.
A recent UN resolution precluded any military intervention in Mali. So in order to conform to a sort of international legality, French Socialist president François Hollande asked Mali’s president to send him a call for aid, in writing. On January 10, the latter’s letter arrived in which he called on Hollande for “help.” No sooner said than done. Five hours later — after a rapid meeting of France’s Defense Council — French troops were landing in Bamako, Mali.
All this followed Hollande’s pledge not to invade. On October 11, 2012, he said, “There will not be French troops engaged in Mali….We cannot intervene in place of the Africans.” Then Le Drian, the French Defense Minister, reiterated: “It’s up to the Africans to intervene, not the French” (La Croix newspaper, 12/24/2012).
When Hollande arrived in Mali for speechmaking, he made no mention of any UN resolutions. Obviously Mali’s uranium, gold and oil reserves were too big a bonanza for French bosses to ignore. (See CHALLENGE, 2/13)
When it comes to legality under capitalism, the overriding one is the law of maximum profits.
Brooklyn Comrade

‘If we’re breaking the law, then we’ll just change it…’
The Postal Service wants to discontinue Saturday delivery of mail AND cut health benefits for postal employees.  However,  according to the law,  the USPS is not allowed to make such a change unilaterally.
SOLUTION: Change the Law! Isn’t capitalism wonderful?  While the capitalists love to tell us that “we are a country of laws,” this only applies to the working class obeying laws that benefit the bosses.
When the bosses make a mistake and find that THEIR laws aren’t helping them, they either change the law or simply ignore it.
Here is the relevant quote from the Post Master General (PMG) as reported in the Washington Post on Feb 7, 2013:
“Reading the law . . . we think that we are on firm ground,” Donahoe [the PMG] said during an interview. Not everyone on Capitol Hill agrees. “Even if we aren’t,” he added, “I would say to Congress, ‘Hey, let’s take the opportunity in the next couple of weeks to amend [that is, unilaterally change] the law and just get this behind us and get on our way.’ ”
Red Reader

Comment on Lincoln Movie Review
The last issue of CHALLENGE (2/13) had a review of Lincoln in the letters section. It’s true; Lincoln himself was a terribly complex character, plagued by clinical depression. In recent years there has been a load of projective analysis, such as that of the late Gore Vidal, into the seamier side of Lincoln’s personal life.   But, this top-award film steers clear of extraneous or inexpert interpretation. Thank goodness for little favors.
The review refutes something we know as bourgeois individualism, saying, “The movie inspires more talk about Lincoln’s personality than the fight against slavery.” The writing, though a bit verbose, is on the mark. It is instructive to learn about the series of anti-racist events proving the theme being from a  “top-down” view.
But there are several such series, or lists, of references, some lengthy for a movie review. An insertion about corrupt politicos is in parentheses and more such humorous asides may be useful in the interest of showing a liking for the readership. Film criticism could almost be seen as having a style of its own, unburdened, even sardonic, for mass appeal. Certainly less chalkboard.
Ruby

More Attacks on Sandy Victims
The newest hardship Sandy victims face in Manhattan hotels is eviction into homeless shelters. The agency the city has contracted to case-manage victims is BRC, the group that usually picks up chronically homeless people from the streets and puts them in shelters.
They have actually offered no help to Sandy survivors; they probably don’t even know anything about low-income stable housing for stable people. They have been treating people extremely rudely and threateningly.
Now they’re systematically telling people they have to leave their hotel (before their previously given check-out dates) and go to shelters, one by one. No one knows for sure if they, the hotels or the city are initiating this tactic.
So far three families have been removed. This leaves the families in yet another borough where their children have to change schools once again; where they are treated like prisoners; and where the environment is often unsafe. Others are planning to resist removal.
A campaign to notify politicians and the press is underway, although that is probably useless given their previous unresponsiveness. We are also planning a demonstration of families and supporters this Friday, February 15, 3:30 PM, at BRC headquarters.
Red Doctor


Letters of February 13

Mass Struggle in India Shows PLP Need to Intensify Anti-Sexist Fight
The millions of women and men in India who are waging a mass struggle against rape are taking a courageous stand against one of the most brutal aspects of capitalism. When they took to the streets protesting the gang rape and torture of a female college student, they were attacked and arrested by the corrupt cops and politicians who back sexist violence every day. The protesters kept up the struggle, though, even spreading it to other countries, in the face of deep-seated racist and religious support for long-standing sexist practices. They deserve our support.
But they didn’t get it in the last issue of CHALLENGE, where the struggle was placed on the back page with just a photo, a short caption, and a call for them to join PLP. Such offhand treatment of a mass struggle against sexism is the opposite of what’s called for — it’s not they who should join us, but we who should join them, and call for supporting their struggle wherever we’re organizing. They’re in the forefront here, taking a stand against deeply entrenched attacks on women, that goes beyond rape to include female infanticide, child marriage, forced sex trafficking, and grinding exploitation of women workers.
We need to bring a class analysis to this struggle, since capitalism is the root cause of sexist violence, and reserves the worst for female workers. But when women — and men — are facing water cannons demanding an end to sexist attacks, it’s dismissive to see it simply as a call to build our organization. It would have been far more constructive to give this struggle deeper coverage and say we fight for a society where that kind of brutality is wiped out, and we stand with the anti-sexist fighters in their struggle. That the article on the mass anti-rape struggle didn’t do so shows that as an organization we need to sharpen the fight against sexism, and the place to start is by giving our support to the women and men attacking sexist brutality in India and around the world.
Communist Organizing Against Sexist Violence

Editor’s Note: We do need a class analysis of India’s anti-sexist struggle. Such an analysis would include that sexism cannot be defeated under capitalism. Calling on workers to join PLP is understanding that the working class needs a Party to lead such a war, and today that party is PLP. The responsibility of waging an anti-sexist struggle and writing about it in CHALLENGE is on all members. We should lead solidarity demonstrations on the job and the campuses in each city. Onwards, comrades. 

Lincoln: History Taught from the Top Down
The following review of the film Lincoln was produced by the New York City PLP Culture Committee for discussion and response within the Party:
Almost 700,000 people were killed during the Civil War, the bloodiest war in the U.S. And before 1861 the issue of slavery was debated and fought for over 250 years — not only with words — in courtrooms and state houses, the Underground Railroad, in 400 slave rebellions, Bleeding Kansas and in the attack on Harper’s Ferry led by John Brown, which sparked the Civil War.
Lincoln builds the story that the slaves were ultimately freed by a group of white politicians bribing a few lame duck Democrats in Congress. It’s a gripping movie, well acted and engrossing, but in the end it only reinforces the idea that history is really made from the top down. The movie sends a seemingly inspired but ultimately cynical and passive message. It’s the opposite of what’s needed to encourage fighting racism and the excesses of capitalism.
The movie deals with Lincoln’s efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery. As the movie portrays it, Lincoln thought it essential to pass the amendment before the end of the war, since he felt the Emancipation Proclamation wouldn’t have any legal standing after the war. As a film, it’s almost like watching a thriller, hanging on each scene to see who will get on board, who will sell out, how they’ll vote. Through a lot of persuasion, arguing, back-room deals and bribes (you mean politicians can actually be bought?), he and his agents muster just enough votes to get the Amendment passed.
But what it doesn’t say is as important as what it does. The movie inspires more talk about Lincoln’s personality than the fight against slavery. There are some gripping scenes that graphically show the brutality of the war, but they punctuate a film that’s mostly dialogue. The deals and diplomacy might have taken place. But what really ended slavery was the bloody defeat of the Confederate army, due in no small measure to the almost 200,000 black soldiers who enlisted, and to the growing hatred of slavery and slave-owners during the war (not that racism didn’t persist). The movie’s back-handed racism and elitism ignores the real mass struggle.
For a film that deals with freeing black slaves the movie is dominated by white characters. There are sympathetic, articulate and principled black characters in the movie. One black corporal even argues with Lincoln about unfair treatment of black soldiers in the Union army. But they’re bit parts, and are one-dimensionally portrayed. Historians Eric Foner and Kate Masur have criticized the movie for the lack of more developed black characters, for omitting key fighters like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, and for pushing the idea that the defeat of slavery took place by white men making deals in back rooms. (Harriet Tubman participated in planning the Harper’s Ferry Raid and recruiting people for it, but illness prevented her from getting there.)
But of course this is how we’re taught history; that Lincoln freed the slaves. Missing are the decades of struggle by the abolitionists, Underground Railroad, slave revolts, and the war itself. So-called “serious” Hollywood “historical” movies like Lincoln, Amistad, Schindler’s List, The Help, Platoon, Mississippi Burning, Glory, The Patriot, Dances with Wolves, all serve a purpose — so people come out of the theater recognizing past oppression, but feeling the system isn’t as bad as it used to be, and can be reformed for the better.
This film is being pushed hard by Hollywood, playing in 1,200 theaters, grossing over $140 million, sure to win several Oscars and to be shown in schoolrooms for years to come. But the film wouldn’t have been made, much less pushed, if it didn’t have a message for what’s going on today. They want to win people to the ideas that nothing can get done without cynical compromise; that this is what it takes to reform capitalism; and that our job is just to vote for people who can get the job done, so “cut Obama some slack; this is what he has to deal with.”
It’s useful to see this movie in order to discuss it with our friends. It isn’t often a Hollywood film enables discussion about struggle, history and racism. But let’s not get sucked in. History taught from the ground up, not the top down, would have a very different portrayal of the abolition of slavery.
Cultural Committee 

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