|
Reality Produces Qualitative Change; Youth Blames Obama for Racist ‘Mess’ |
 |
 |
|
Tuesday, 03 November 2009 15:06 |
|
“She wants us to think like Obama?” my student asked incredulously. “He’s the one who got us in this mess!” Moments earlier, we were meeting with a student-led social justice organization. Instead of discussing the fatal beating of a black student and it’s connection to our struggles against public school sabotage, a professor was ringing a chime and announcing, “We are progressing!” to transition from task to mind-numbing task. This is progress? The last straw was when an adult said our mission statement was too confrontational. Mission statement authors were stunned when the principal
suggested the students who were fighting at school “take it outside.” The authors were students from near where Derrion Albert had been beaten to death. The moderator added, “We need to think like Obama.” At this, I walked out. To my surprise, a Summer Project participant was at my heels. I asked why he walked out. Though hesitant in L.A. about blaming Obama, he was dead-set today: “He got us into this mess!” From what the students learned fighting attacks on neighborhood schools, they instantly blamed Arne Duncan for what happened to Derrion. I asked if that made it Obama’s fault and they said “Yes!” In the hall, we agreed Derrion wasn’t the only victim, all the young men involved are victims of this racist system. If they don’t get killed, they will be lost to prisons. When we returned, the meeting hadn’t changed. My friend struggled with me to give it a chance. I said it’s patronizing the students and wasting time we could discuss issues. I said telling students to be compliant with the system that’s destroying their schools invalidates their experiences with attacks and neglect in their schools. He asked how PLP meetings are run. “With respect!” was my first answer. “We talk about immediate issues first. Everyone sees themselves as a leader, so everyone makes sure meetings run well. Our job here is to develop our students into leaders.” Just then, a student interrupted the professor. “Why are we ignoring communication issues [between black and brown students] and talking about pens and paper?” He opened a dam, all the students chimed in, “This isn’t what’s wrong,” “We don’t run meetings like this!” When the students spoke up, my friend admitted, “I was wrong, you were right!” Last year, this group organized and participated in more actions than ever before. They got the attention of teachers who want to get involved due to our militant line against the (now nationally-led) attacks on, and re-segregation of, Chicago Public Schools. Students who come around PLP are stepping up their political leadership. The student who walked out of the meeting now meets with a club and is pulling this group to the left as we struggle to recruit Chicago students to the Party. Red Teacher |
|
‘I really want NATO and U.S. troops to leave….’ |
|
|
|
Thursday, 15 October 2009 01:27 |
|
[A CHALLENGE reader received this message from a friend in Afghanistan.] Today there was an explosion in an area in Kabul close to the U.S. embassy, NATO and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), killing 80 people, not 16 as the media reported. I don’t know when they will stop killing innocents. The U.S., NATO and ISAF, the Taliban, the Jihadis (warlords) — they are all killing innocent people. Westerners are committing most of the explosions and killings. I really want NATO and U.S. troops to leave. If they can’t bring security, why are they here? The election will go to the second round. There will be chaos and, according to the constitution, a state of emergency. There will be a loyal jirga (a nation-wide council of representatives) but I’m afraid that the warlords who are now in power, like Masud, Rabani, Fahim (vice-president and minister of defense), Sayyaf and Dostum will dominate it again. All those in power, including [president] Karzai, are rich, making money from the situation. They have militias and weapons and are only looking to fill their pockets. (Russia and Iran recently gave money to two warlords who control territory close to the Russian and Iranian borders.) They are criminals. They stole the reconstruction money. In eight years of U.S. occupation, they built no public projects. Even foundation work has not been started! Who will bring work, education and security? Do you think the Americans will do this? They have done nothing in the last eight years. And they say they will not leave until 2015. The military situation is very bad. They have plans to divide Afghanistan like Yugoslavia. But they will not succeed to divide Afghans; we will fight against that. A friend in Afghanistan CHALLENGE Comment — PLP supports our friend and the exploited masses in Afghanistan. We are fighting wherever we can against the U.S. rulers’ imperialist invasion of that country, which leads to our thoughts about the question our friend poses: “If they [NATO and U.S. troops] can’t bring security, why are they here?” U.S. bosses invaded Afghanistan not to bring its people security but to attempt to control oil and gas pipelines from that region and its strategic military position, in their inter-imperialist rivalry with China and Russia. All of the forces the writer mentions are enemies of the country’s workers and farmers. This bosses’ battle is what is killing innocent people. The U.S. ruling class is trying to remain the world’s dominant power to be able to exploit the world’s working class, not bring it security. In fact, it is these profit motives that are the source of the insecurity that tramples on the aspirations of the masses in Afghanistan and everywhere else, including on the U.S. working class. |
|
|
Need More Info on LA Fight |
|
|
|
Sunday, 11 October 2009 01:36 |
|
In the last CHALLENGE (9/30), the page 3 article “Call for Teachers’ Strike vs. Fascist School Reform,” is a scathing attack on L.A. school reform, but not much of what we are doing about it. PLP has been active there for some time, with some of our most committed cadre. But this reads more like a leaflet that might have been distributed at the meeting. We, as readers, need more information about what actions they are organizing. For example, it says that some teachers called for a strike at an area union meeting. How? Did they make a resolution? Did they give out a flier? Did it get discussed and/or voted on? What was the response of the union leaders? How did they take them on in the meeting? What was the response of other teachers? How are they working in the union to spread these ideas? How are they answering questions teachers have? How much support is there? How are they building a base for PLP? The article closes by saying that “a trade union response is totally inadequate,” and “PLP calls…[for a] strike…based on expanding CHALLENGE networks…” Are they expanding? If so, tell us how so we can follow that example. If not, what are the obstacles? The formulation makes it sound like PLP is trying to organize a strike led by us and our base, outside the unions and other mass organizations. If so, that would be a big mistake. Unions and other mass organizations are reform groups, even if we lead them. The same is true for strikes at Stella D’Oro and Boeing, or job actions against transit workers getting killed in Washington, DC. But if we are not in the thick of these struggles, fighting for our communist outlook and trying to lead workers in sharper more militant actions, we will just be spinning our wheels. The fake-left Trotskyite groups are always “calling” for a General Strike, or demanding the union leaders do something. But they are not the least bit interested in making anything happen. They attack PLP for “working with the liberals” because we are active in our unions. We shouldn’t make their same mistake. The revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin said that by fighting for the political leadership of the workers and leading class struggle, unions could become “schools for communism.” The founder of scientific communism, Karl Marx, said that workers would have to wage 50 years of class struggle in order to be fit to rule. By fighting shoulder to shoulder with workers within mass organizations, we can expand the circulation of CHALLENGE and the size and influence of PLP. A Chicago Comrade |
|
Last Updated ( Sunday, 11 October 2009 01:39 )
|
|
Salvador ‘Left’ Pro-Capitalist |
|
|
|
Sunday, 11 October 2009 01:35 |
|
What irony that the contingent of the fighters from El Salvador’s FMLN, which is today a political electoral party, can’t use the word “revolution” in their meetings and street actions. They are left with the populist “change,” an infamous ruse to fool and mislead the working-class masses from El Salvador to China. I was a member of the FMLN. Thanks to PLP, I’ve been rescued from the claws of capitalism. Today I can see a party which claims to be leftist accommodate and adapt itself to a profit system where the bosses don’t care how much blood has been spilled or struggle waged, and to fall into state capitalism. During the 1980’s the Salvadoran Communist Party joined the FMLN. This organization still exists and is very well known for worshiping and praising capitalism. What real communist ideas could this party present to us? If they currently quarrel among themselves, it’s a fight over positions inside the FMLN. We shouldn’t be fooled by these sellouts. We are internationalists. We hear Latin American leftists talk and I ask myself, “What left?” There isn’t one, and that’s why indigenous slavery continues, as well as wage slavery. These nationalist “leftist” groups have made us accommodate for centuries to the bourgeoisie when they are our enemy, those who we have to destroy. That’s why in El Salvador’s PLP we’re fighting for communism, so that the working class sees the light of a new world. Recently, ex-fighters, refugees of the FMLN, met in Sweden with the goal of founding the Communist Party of Sweden. We communists of PLP don’t go around founding parties based on nations, because we want one world, one class without borders, without the disgrace of money, without racism or races. We don’t want a different party in each country. The nationalist parties divide the working class and that’s why there’s not enough working-class unity. We fight for the slogan “One class, one international party, one fight for communism.” PLPers continue to organize the red army. A Red Comrade |
|
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to smash capitalism -- wage slavery. While the bosses and their mouthpieces claim "communism is dead:" capitalism is the real failure for billions all over the world. Capitalism returned to the Soviet Union and China because socialism failed to wipe out many aspects of the profit system, like wages and division of labor.
