Communists know industrial workers’ labor is the major source of bosses’ profits and, with red ideas, the natural leaders of workers’ fight-backs and revolutions.

Education workers like myself need to link up with more strategically placed industrial workers to fight part-timers’ exploitation, anti-strike laws, racist tuition hikes or imperialist war recruiters.

So I and other professors in my union went to support the striking bakers at the union-busting Stella D’Oro, to bring them PLP’s ideas, and introduce other profs to workers in struggle. The Stella D’Oro strikers taught me plenty.

Lesson 1: Unlike many of my professional colleagues, workers stick together when the chips are down. The 135 strikers are solid — in nine weeks not a single scab from their ranks, workers of many backgrounds, senior and junior, women and men. One older South Asian worker was deeply moved by the solidarity of the young, mostly Latino/a workers, who refused to scab despite being there only one year. It made him determined to stay out, not so much for himself as for the next generation of workers. Those are feelings that help make everyone here a potential revolutionary.

Lesson 2: Class consciousness is alive. Though weaker now, workers feel it when things get tough. Members of their sister Local 3 brought a big cake they had baked for the strikers. A Verizon worker who refused to cross the line returned with ten pizzas and drinks for the picketers’ lunch. (My friend also brought two pizzas. And the picketers gave us food and drink, too, as we leafleted and talked with them.) A Local 3 electrician also refused to cross the line; the boss’s problem went unfixed. My own union’s members gave $450.

Lesson 3: Workers are open to communist thinking. As communists we tried to heighten class consciousness. The strikers agreed with our suggestion to leaflet nearby industrial sites to win those workers to their coming rally. In two hours we had MTA bus drivers, Time-Warner Cable electricians and Montefiore hospital workers coming to the rally!

The other side of class consciousness is hatred of the cops — who harass the pickets and chase motorists for their day’s ticket quota — and, of course, hatred of scabs. Professors were impressed hearing workers giving scabs hell. I asked my friend to relate how miners he worked with had fought scabs and also won some to stop.

Lesson 4: Many New York workers have family ties to the CUNY colleges, the basis of a real worker-student-teacher alliance. At Stella D’Oro almost every worker I asked had a nephew, a daughter, a friend, among the 400,000 CUNY students. It’s important to be there alongside our students’ families in struggle. We need to fight harder for the worker-student-professional alliance — a PLP idea — in the CUNY union.

On the line we learn it’s not as hard as some claim. There are many ways to broaden friendships made with strikers. We can’t build a revolutionary movement or recruit many intellectuals to PLP without this direct alliance with industrial workers.

Lesson 5: Workers think straight, figure things out, and know what has to be done. A strike is a great “school for revolution” (Bolshevik leader Lenin’s phrase). Many bakers have good political ideas far beyond the immediate strike issues — war, the elections and of course the bailout. And they’re open to the Left. One striker said the bosses actually did nothing in the plant; he saw that we don’t need the bosses at all, that workers can run everything.

Two leaders on the line were curious about our thoughts on the elections. They had little faith in the bosses’ two parties. One said war expenditures were part of the economic crisis (try to find that on CNN). He related a detail we hadn’t heard about, Iceland’s borrowing from Russia.

As a communist teacher, I was eager right then to start a “sidewalk seminar” to hear more of their ideas. It would have been one of my best classes, as both learner and teacher! The next step is discussing CHALLENGE.

One creep in my union said we shouldn’t do much to support this strike, since these little struggles were “a dime a dozen.” Hogwash! Every worker in struggle is a valued part of that age-old tradition that ultimately leads to communist revolution. The Stella D’Oro line is full of such lessons. If you live in New York, go to 237th and Broadway, lend your support and bring CHALLENGE. They’re there 24/7, and for all of us.

Still Learning