Howard U. Students Invade Pol’s Office, Back Katrina Victims

Howard U. Students Invade Pol’s Office, Back Katrina Victims
WASHINGTON, D.C. –– Twenty students from Howard University marched from campus to the office of Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) who has been complicit in the gentrification process of New Orleans by blocking a moderate bill that would have supposedly guaranteed one-for-one replacement of demolished affordable housing.  Vitter was “unavailable,” so the students sat-in, demanding action. A dozen cops were called to intimidate the students, to no avail. The students presented a petition signed by 400 students to Vitter’s aide demanding that Vitter stop blocking the bill, and the students vowed to return to his office in solidarity with public housing residents in New Orleans, while several students will also return this summer to continue the struggle in New Orleans itself. Several of these bold students joined the May Day march in New York City and brought their message of struggle against fascism to the May Day dinner.

These actions were a result of Howard University Political Education and Action Committee spending spring break in New Orleans working with “C3/Hands Off Iberville,” a coalition of New Orleans activists and public housing residents fighting against the demolition of their public housing homes.  Major real estate developers, with support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the New Orleans City Council, are using the lie that Hurricane Katrina made public housing uninhabitable to demolish affordable housing and replace it with high-end condos.  They already did this—before the storm!—by demolishing St. Thomas public housing and creating River Garden, with only 200 affordable of the 700 that had been promised to the community.

New Orleans gives us an early look at fascism USA. Bulldozers and police brutalize people and their homes, while the ruling class tests out strategies of social control while letting their buddies make huge profits from the “recovery.”  All the more reason to fight for revolution!

PL-led Action Hits Mexico University’s Oppressive Rules

MEXICO, April 16 — PLP organized a protest at a school in UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico) against the Rules of  Inscription reproduced on April 7th, in an edition of the “Rights and Obligations of the Universities” by the Administration’s Committee in “ Defense of the University Students.”

These rules require that only students who have finished their Bachelor’s degree in three years and with an average grade of nine (barely 10% of the students achieve this) are allowed to choose a major and their preferred school. This same rule excludes from UNAM those who finish their bachelor’s degree in more than 4 years. And for the faculty, to achieve permanent status, a professor would have to work 5 times longer (505% more) than the current plan.

The UNAM student strike of 1999-2000 demanded the repeal of this same rule. In the face of the mass and prolonged protest against the police intervention to smash the strike, the Rector declared that this rule would be suspended until it was discussed in the University Congress (that they could never organize). However, since the protests got smaller, now the government in using the Administration’s  Committee in the Defense “of the university students” to remind us of their regulation. The majority of students are against this.

The PLP quickly called for a protest inside one of the schools where we demanded that the Director take the message of our anger against this ruling to his superiors. We also demanded a cafeteria for the students, improvements in the showers in the sports area, and permanent status for the “interim” professors, some of whom have been in this interim situation for 10 years, and other demands.

About 60 students came to the protest and hundreds watched it, including teachers and workers who’ve shown their support and agreement. We brought red banners of PLP and we talked abut the need to build a new type of proletarian party that fights directly for Communism.

We recognize that even though we’ve been timid in putting forward the ideas of the liberation of the working class, we’ve taken steps that have also led to the  math professors demanding the same things of the school administration. We’ve also carried out a campaign to distribute copies of PLP’s Road to Revolution IV. Several professors have shown us their support and encouragement to continue fighting actively for revolution.
Greetings to all the comrades!

Building for May Day Young and Old, Across All Borders

NEW JERSEY

We had a very international May Day dinner in New Jersey to raise funds for the Party’s big events to celebrate this working-class holiday. Twenty-six of us came — some immigrants from 11 different countries:  Jamaica, Peru, Italy, Hungary, Ecuador, the Philippines, Macedonia, Guatemala, Israel, Korea, Honduras and from Africa. There was fabulous Ethiopian and Guatemalan cooking, black-eyed pea fritters, with desserts of apple pie and brownies.
We heard stories of immigration, of untold expense and deadly injuries. Many undocumented immigrant pay smugglers (coyotes) $7,000 to $10,000 to come from Central America. There is no guarantee the immigrant will arrive safely to his/her destination and many have died either abandoned by the smugglers, crossing the desert, the river, or even asphyxiated piled up in cargo train cars, trucks, etc.

The Río Grande is cold and deep.  Many don’t survive the swim.  One man loaded his three children into an inflatable raft and swam with one arm, pushing the raft with the other.  Another woman spent one night with two other adults in the trunk of a car, almost dying of dehydration and suffocation.  Each had a story of having to leave individuals in the desert who could not walk or be carried.  Two people related how Mexican workers often carried other people, children or adults, to the border who would never have survived the journey without their help.

The message was stated throughout that an international Party, the PLP, is essential to get rid of borders forever.  With each horrific tale, it became more obvious that borders mean only separation of families, lowering wages, starvation and death for working people.  The clear communist solution has to include doing away with wage slavery, profits and the entire capitalist class of parasites who suck the blood from workers trapped by borders.  The working-class immigrants have already demonstrated the fortitude and courage necessary to win! J
NJ Red

NEW YORK CITY

A collective of young and veteran members of Progressive Labor Party is coordinating efforts for a large gathering to celebrate May Day in New York City. We’re developing both the program and our organizing around a central theme of increasing class struggle to build the Party.
Our program features young comrades, helping to develop their leadership abilities, which is already reflected in the struggle they’ve spearheaded against NYC’s Department of Education. (See CHALLENGE, 04/09/08.) The excitement generated around this struggle has increased CHALLENGE distribution and produced potential new recruits to PLP. The energy of students and teachers and their understanding of the class struggle sharpened during this fight, which should help make our celebration an exciting one.
We will also acknowledge the contributions of long-standing members as we build for the future. A veteran of many on-the-job struggles will stress the importance of communist organizing at the workplace, linking his experiences with a call for participation in a Summer Project at some of PLP’s industrial concentrations.
Finally, we plan to ask the audience four questions about communism that our friends frequently ask. We hope the May Day celebrators will participate via their answers.

May Day marks a review of the strength of our communist organizing. The efforts of comrades, young and old, will ensure it will be inspiring and successful.
NYC May Day Collective

Spain: PL’ers Defend Immigrant, Organize for May Day

SPAIN — We are celebrating May Day, the international working-class holiday, including distributing a leaflet outside Metro (subway) stations in a major city here. This occurs amid growing attacks by the regular and immigration cops.
A friend from Brazil was arrested at his job just for the “crime” of being an undocumented immigrant. From the U.S. to Spain, capitalism, to survive, needs repression and racism against workers by forcing immigrant workers to work for less and produce super-profits for the bosses.
A group of us went to the police station to support our fellow worker. He was lucky not to be beaten by the cops. We celebrated a small victory because he wasn’t deported, just given a letter of expulsion.
Communist ideas are being spread among workers in this and other struggles. Our May Day leaflet will bring these ideas to other workers who don’t know about PLP. Anarchist ideas are widespread here and there’s a fear about communism because anti-communist ideas are rampant. But now PLP’ers are working in many areas of the world with the aim of winning workers to understand what’s best for our class: communism. Long live May Day and the workers of the world! J
(For El Salvador PLP May Day Call, See PLP website –– www.plp.org)

Campus PL’ers Expose Racist Cuts, Link to War, Prison System

“These cutbacks on education are racist to the core,” a PLP member stated during a campus meeting against the cuts. California has proposed a 10% budget cut to both the California State University (CSU) and UC systems, leaving them $312.9 and $417 million short, respectively. Student fees are projected to rise 10% for the upcoming Fall Quarter in the CSU system. This system has large African-American, Latino, and immigrant populations (many of whom don’t qualify for financial aid because of their immigration status). The cuts, a racist attack on these students in particular and all working-class students generally, are part of a series of racist attacks such as the closing of healthcare facilities like King-Drew hospital. Students should unite with workers because we’re all bearing the brunt of a society hell-bent on waging profit wars.

Many students are eager to connect campus struggles to the fight against the exploitation of the whole working-class. PLP encourages all students to participate and to push for more mass-actions on and off campuses against the cuts, the war and the prison system. We are struggling to unite students, faculty and staff for system-wide strikes against these attacks. After all it’s not just Governor Schwarzenegger and a few administrators; we’re up against the capitalist system. This fight could help many see that joining and building a mass communist party is the best way to fight for workers’ power in an era marked by fascism and wider imperialist wars.

We’re exposing the role of the university under capitalism. While the CSU produces teachers, nurses, and engineers, it also builds false, capitalist ideology. While the educational system teaches students skills, it instills ideas that divide the working-class and disarm us politically, telling us we can escape the ills of capitalism by graduating from the university and “making it.”

While the CSU produces 87% of all of California’s teachers, it also creates a booming 89% of all of Criminal Justice graduates. The CSU system helps the bosses mobilize students to serve as agents of repression in law-enforcement careers. CSU San Bernardino works with the Department of Defense to commercialize technologies geared towards homeland security. CSULA recently opened a $100 million Crime Lab built in conjunction with the Los Angeles Police and the Sheriff Department. The rulers want to use the CSU system for repression, which most students and faculty oppose.

Some student organizers call for a tax on the rich, as do Obama and Clinton. The liberal ruling class sees that they must direct more profits into war programs and homeland security. They are willing to attack minor bosses’ profits to wage more war in defense of imperialism. Without communists putting forward the party’s ideas, the bosses and their misleaders can channel the anger of working-class students into illusions in the liberal imperialists while doing nothing to stop the cuts.

Many students who earnestly want to fight against these cuts are being told that the budget cuts are the result of the greed of a few administrators and Governor Schwarzenegger (who certainly are willing servants of the system!), and that just by delivering petitions to Sacramento we can win this fight. With the elections approaching, the misleaders will attempt to mobilize angry working-class students to support Obama or Hillary. Both of these candidates support expanded wars which can’t take place without cuts on wages and social services such as education and health care.

By expanding our hand to hand CHALLENGE distributions, we aim to politically equip our friends to see that in the long run, workers and students need to build a movement to destroy capitalism and create a Communist society, free from profit wars, racism, and sexism. CHALLENGE-based study action groups can connect what may seem as an isolated struggle to a capitalist society becoming more ruthless.

Students, Farmworkers, Vets Get PLP Exposé of Hillary’s War Plans

Ten thousand people lined up around our college campuses to try to hear Hillary Clinton speak at a campaign rally. While they stood in a long single file line we were there with CHALLENGE and a leaflet exposing Clinton’s support for war and exposing the DREAM Act as a preparation for war. The flier quoted her website: “The DREAM Act would also strengthen our nation’s military readiness, allowing these well-qualified young men and women to serve their country with honor.” A teacher-comrade explained as she handed out the leaflet: “I know the rulers’ plans for my students — war.” Nearly everyone took our literature from her including both the flier and CHALLENGE. We also explained that it wasn’t just about Clinton, but that all the candidates, Clinton, Obama, and McCain, support wider war in the Middle East and war with China in the future. We tried to show that no matter the candidate, it is the system of capitalism that causes and requires war.

At the rally Clinton pushed race and racism as she played up the support she received from the United Farm Workers (UFW) and attacked Barack Obama. She tried to use the UFW to lie that she supports working-class struggles, invoking the name of another union sell-out: Cesar Chavez (he attacked militancy and undocumented workers as the head of the UFW). We made sure to talk with the farmworkers and give them CHALLENGE/DESAFIO as they left. We also had a good conversation with some Iraq war veterans who were there to protest against Clinton and the continued war in Iraq. One vet agreed that it was imperialism that caused war and that we would have to completely change the economic system. He got a CHALLENGE and we got contact information as well.

One important lesson we learned is that appearances can be deceiving. Many seemingly die-hard Clinton supporters or Democrats were just looking for a change and were interested when we argued that change could not come about through elections. We saw that people with Clinton or Obama buttons liked the idea that only communist revolution could create change. This showed many of us the importance of talking to people about our line of communist revolution no matter their T-shirt or button.

PL College Forum Links Anti-Racism To Anti-War Movement

New York, NY, Feb. 5 — Recently, some 30 professors, teachers and students attended a PLP forum on racism. In preparation each person was asked to read a packet of articles reprinted from CHALLENGE on the Jena 6 case and the PL History series about the 1975 struggle against the racist ROAR organization in Boston.

The first speaker gave an extensive explanation of the Party’s position that the concept of “race” and racist ideology were created by the capitalist system to divide the working class and maintain power. It was also pointed out that profits capitalists gain from super-exploiting black and Latin workers are essential for survival of their system.

The next presenter led us in discussion about the bosses’ need to win workers to racism in order to get workers to fight in their endless imperialist wars. The student presenter explained that when soldiers enter the U.S. military they are bombarded with racist ideas: “Those people are different from us. They have no respect for human life. They are inferior.” Without this racist brainwashing, workers would balk at orders to massacre non-combatants and torture prisoners.

One of our friends remarked that if racism had a brother it would be nationalism. He said that racism, nationalism and religion were all divisive and that our task was to unite the international working class.

A lively discussion followed about many of the manifestations of racism in education and on the campuses. Not only must we confront military and CIA recruiters when they come to campus, but we must investigate and expose how the university is involved with research that helps the military and promotes racism.

In addition we must increase our efforts to bring the anti-racist struggle into the anti-war movement. Campus anti-war committees should discuss racist issues such as the Jena 6. In our unions we must address racism as well as opposing the war.

After the discussion we saw a documentary film “Another Brother” which deals with the racism faced by black soldiers in Vietnam and upon their return home. Our next planned forum is entitled “For a World Without Borders: A Communist Perspective on Immigration.”

This electoral year, more HS and college youth are being won to vote. Because of the dangerous illusion that Obama and to a lesser extent Hillary represent “change,” it is important to demonstrate more openly our revolutionary alternative to these politicians. Their only “change” will be to expand the current wars and make us pay more for the capitalist economic meltdown. Being involved in mass organizations, using CHALLENGE and having frequent party-building events are necessary to make our Party grow.

Exposing Bosses’ Politicians Builds Support For PLP

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, January 26 — During a regular CHALLENGE sale we encountered the student government on our campus urging students to register to vote as a way to stop the tuition increases we’re facing. We were distributing a leaflet exposing Clinton, Obama and the whole lie that voting would end the war and the cutbacks, leading to good conversations about the elections. We also explained to some that the tuition increases were caused by the loss of tax money resulting from the capitalist crisis and the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During that sale, a professor invited us to her class where an Obama campaign organizer was speaking. Because of previous discussions in the class, it became clearer to many as he spoke that electoral politics would not produce the social change many students sought. A more fundamental change from the system that is inherently racist, exploitative and imperialist was needed.

When students asked how to end segregation and racism, even the organizer couldn’t explain how electing Obama would help stop school segregation or racism generally. Clearly Obama and electoral politics are incapable of solving the problems the working class faces every day — racism, lack of healthcare and widening wars.

Even the speaker emphasized that change would come from grassroots organizing, that there was little Obama himself could solve alone. When a student said change would stem from us, the working class, the organizer had no reply. He couldn’t challenge the power of the working class, which the Clintons and Obamas try to manipulate on behalf of the ruling class.

Afterwards, we had useful conversations with a few students; some expressed interest in communist politics and a fresh perspective instead of the failing reformist politics presented by the speaker and politicians. One student wanted to join a study group and subscribe to CHALLENGE. Another student invited us to an event later that day where he wanted us to explain our ideas about alternatives to voting. We were welcomed at the event, given time to speak and we invited everyone to read our paper. About 20 CHALLENGES were gladly accepted. We exchanged phone numbers with several students we knew from previous classes who are interested in discussing politics and to plan activities against the cuts.

Between the class and the evening film and discussion, we sold over 30 CHALLENGES and distributed 50 PLP leaflets. We realized how important it is to expose the deceitful electoral campaigns, be they for Obama, Clinton, McCain or Ron Paul.

Workers, Students Slam Columbia U.’s Racism

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 10 — “Harlem: not for sale! Hunger strikers: not for sale! Our homes: not for sale! Our jobs: not for sale!” chanted a multi-racial crowd of 250 angry community residents, students and faculty marching today on Columbia University’s main campus and at President Lee Bollinger’s house.

Protesters gathered at the Low Library to hear speakers express their outrage — in English and Spanish — over Columbia’s racist expansion northward into Harlem, displacing 5,000 black, Latino and white working-class residents. Then everyone marched to Bollinger’s house, rhythmically accompanied by a radical marching band. He wasn’t home, but the crowd demanded community residents not be displaced or have a hazardous biological agent research facility near their homes. Student organizers and hunger strikers spoke of Columbia’s long history of supporting brutal U.S. imperialism and exploitation, responsible for genocide against millions of Native Americans. One explained it was the profit system that made Columbia not give a rat’s ass about workers and students.

PLP members and friends made several new contacts from Columbia, Hunter and City College. Black and Latino workers eagerly grabbed all 50 copies of CHALLENGE faster than we could keep up. One marcher exclaimed, “Hey, is that CHALLENGE? Give me a copy!” saying that he first encountered PL as a Columbia student participating in the big 1968 strike. We also helped distribute community leaflets exposing the utterly racist nature of Columbia’s actions and as an institution.

The students have four demands: administrative reform, ethnic studies, community involvement in Columbia’s expansion into Harlem and core curriculum. In the 1960s and ’70s, some colleges instituted such reforms after similar protests. While we support the anti-racist actions of the students, such demands won’t change the basic nature of Columbia or of U.S. college education, the essence of which is as racist and pro-war as ever.

There will be another mass protest on December 1. We’re working with other campus student organizers as well as raising these issues in the graduate schools. We’ll also struggle with our friends over the necessity of exposing Columbia and capitalist higher education (with or without ethnic studies) as essentially racist, anti-working class and pro-war.

We must fight for students to accept leadership from the multi-racial masses of workers in Harlem, who have been fighting Columbia’s racist expansion for decades. We in PLP organize for a worker-student alliance based on fighting racism, imperialist war and all other monsters created by capitalism. Our aim is to fight for a communist society based on need, not profits of a few bosses, like the owners of Columbia.

Rally Support for ‘Jena 6,’ Hit Criminalization of Youth

Southern California –– A multiracial group of students and teachers woke our community college with a rally supporting the ‘Jena 6’ and opposing the criminalization of youth in California and nationwide. It was the first public event organized by a new campus club.

Students took turns speaking on the bullhorn for the first time, while others held signs, collected surveys and passed out leaflets all over the campus. Students eagerly took the leaflets, which exposed the racist treatment of youth (especially black and Latin) in court and prison systems. For example, 16-year-old Jena defendant Mychal Bell was originally tried as an adult.

He was one of over 7,000 youths confined to adult prisons every year, of whom 3/4 are black and Latin. In California, black and Latin youth are over three times as likely to be tried in adult court as white youth. This attack leads to greater criminalization of all working-class youth.

One speaker at the rally related these issues to problems on the campus, where cops routinely hassle groups of black students who are just hanging out after class. Now we are spied on by new “Homeland Security” cameras. The cops recently called a teacher to warn that a “young Latino man with baggy pants and a shaved head was just seen on camera entering your building.” The teacher replied, “He’s one of our students!”

Like many campuses, this one has a large “criminal justice” department that trains future racist cops and prison guards and regularly holds “law enforcement career fairs.”

“The schools aren’t educating kids,” said a student organizer, “so they get caught up in things and don’t see any options. Then they’re told to go into the military to learn some discipline.” She added, “It’s a result of capitalism — everything is connected.” She and several other CHALLENGE readers are forming a study group and plan to invite others to join them.

For a Better Contract, for a Better World:Fight Capitalism and Join Progressive Labor Party!

Negotiating within the vise of capitalism

Once again our union is fighting for a contract that meets the needs of faculty and staff, and once again the other side – CUNY managers, City Hall and Albany – has a tremendous advantage in negotiations. This advantage derives not from management’s negotiating skills, but ultimately from the fact that NYC is dominated by a business elite (Wall Street financiers, real estate tycoons, and the CEOs of scores of Fortune 500 companies, whose headquarters dominate the skyline of lower Manhattan). This elite has successfully pushed its pro-business agenda for decades, which includes keeping business taxes and commercial real estate taxes at a minimum, spending hundreds of millions on tax exemptions and abatements for office and luxury buildings, reducing the cost of social programs (including CUNY), and lowering the real wages and benefits of municipal workers. The decline in the real salaries of CUNY professors and staff and the increased use of adjuncts (whose miserable salaries are shameful) are two manifestations of the business elite’s success in realizing its agenda.

The process of negotiations is rigged in the following manner for the purpose of keeping both labor costs and taxes on business as low as possible.

(1) Pattern bargaining: The Mayor and the Governor pick the weakest city and state union with which to sign a contracts that grants wage increases no higher than the rate of inflation. These contracts are then said to “determine the pattern” for every other union. In NYC, the union selected to “set the pattern” has been D.C. 37, a fragmented coalition of locals, whose top leadership is renowned for its corruption and willingness to make deals with City Hall that sacrifice the interests of its members.

(2) Paying for our own contract: This concept states that any salary improvements beyond the inflation rate must be paid with concessions. So the UFT was able to “win” higher salary increases but only by making terrible concessions, including a longer workday and year, extra workload and assignments for teachers, and the surrender of due process rights.

(3) Taylor Law: Although we’re repeatedly assured by politicians that we live in a “free society,” city and state workers are forbidden from exercising one of our basic rights, the ability to withdraw our labor in order to press our demands. Even advocating a strike is illegal under the Taylor Law, and any union that’s courageous enough to strike – as the TWU was in 2005 – faces penalties intended to bankrupt it. The only way that workers can bargain from a position of strength is by breaking down the artificial barriers between unions, ignoring the Taylor Law and waging a general strike.

Another feature of labor contracts under capitalism is across-the-board salary increases, which only widen the gap between the highest paid employees and the lowest paid. This divides our ranks, and we believe that solidarity demands that we support higher increases for the lowest paid, including adjuncts. It also demands that we fight for lower class size for our students and more full-time jobs.

Business groups like the Citizens Budget Commission, the City Club, the Real Estate Board of New York, the Rockefeller-led Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, and the Partnership for New York (founded in 1979 by billionaire David Rockefeller) have aggressively lobbied for their pro-business agenda, which includes reducing the redistributive function of government. So has the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank that was founded and funded in the late 1970’s by denizens of Wall Street, and which found an enthusiastic advocate for its policies in former Mayor and now presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

For years following the fiscal crisis of 1975, unelected committees like the Emergency Financial Control Board and the Municipal Assistance Corporation controlled NYC spending and borrowing, and were headed by bankers like Felix Rohatyn and corporate executives like David Margolis of Colt Industries, who forced through mass layoffs, wage freezes and reduced pension benefits. Moreover, every Mayor in recent decades (Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani) has won office by procuring millions in campaign contributions from the investment bankers, real estate developers and corporate executives who form NYC’s “permanent government,” and who expect their interests to be advanced by City Hall. Bloomberg, who claims to be independent of special interests, is actually a leading member of the business elite and fully committed to its agenda. The Mayor, whose Bloomberg LP is the largest financial news and data company in the world, is a billionaire who spent $74 million of his own money on his 2001 campaign. Finally, when necessary, big business can always use its ultimate weapon – the threat to leave NYC and throw thousands out of work.

strong>Capitalism Works – But Only for the Rich!

If we determine the success or failure of an economic system by the well being of the majority of the population, capitalism would have to be considered a colossal failure. From Nigeria to South Africa, from Mexico to Argentina, from Russia to China, all over the world, the majority of people have trouble making ends meet. Most work in low-wage, boring jobs that sap their health and their intelligence. Many have no work at all and no access to health care or decent schools. Tens of millions die each year of hunger or preventable diseases.

What about NYC, the wealthiest city in the world? Consider:

• Despite the ‘90’s being a period of economic growth, four-fifths of NYC families saw their real incomes (adjusted for inflation) drop from 1989 to 1999. The poorest fifth of these families saw their incomes drop by 13 %, while the next poorest fifth lost 16%, the middle fifth lost 12% of their income, and the fourth fifth lost 5%. The fact that the wealthiest fifth gained 18% in income, while the wealthiest 5% gained 31% over the decade, led the NY Times to observe, “the rich are getting richer and the poor are growing in number.” Increasing inequality is one of the essential features of capitalism. By 2005, the top 20% of Manhattan earners made fifty-two times what the bottom 20% earned.

• The wealthy financial and corporate sector of NYC’s economy depends upon a large low-wage service sector, staffed by mainly black, Latino and immigrant workers, a contrast of wealth that reveals the racist heart of capitalism. In 2001, 20% of the city’s workforce earned $8 an hour or less, and 80% of these low-wage workers were black or Latino.

• With the wealthy sending their children to private schools, NYC’s public education system – which feeds CUNY – is a disgraceful failure. Overwhelmingly segregated, overcrowded and under funded, with class size considerably larger than the state average, NYC schools provide a quality education to only a select few. Most students, by the city’s own statistics, either drop out before graduating or are unprepared for college level work. Black and Latino communities have the worst performing schools, often with the most inexperienced teachers, and most students in those schools score poorly on state reading and math tests. Only a shocking 1% of black students in NYC pass a single Advanced Placement exam.

This failure to educate is deliberate, and reproduces the social hierarchy of capitalism. Spending on education fell from 29% of city expenditures in the early 70’s to 24% in 2005. Since large numbers of students are destined for dead-end jobs in the low-wage service sector, there is little motivation on the part of political and business elites to improve the school system, despite much rhetoric to the contrary.

Capitalism Has Failed and Should be Left Behind

It should be obvious that capitalism is a failed social system. It provides immense wealth for a privileged few and heart-wrenching poverty and insecurity for billions. A sixth of humanity, over a billion people, live in slums, without many of the basic necessities of life. U.S. capitalism, a dominant power for most of the 20^th century, now faces increased competition from rivals in the EU, Russia and China. As these regional rivals grow in economic and military power, U.S. imperialism has decided to use its superior military might to secure control over much of the world’s energy resources, a control that it hopes will give it an advantage in future conflicts. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have perished for this reason, and there is little doubt that more wars and more death and destruction are on the horizon. With more and more money diverted from social programs in order to pay for military expenditures, federal, state and city workers are being pressured to accept inferior “war contracts.”

Why continue to support a system that produces poverty, inequality, racism, environmental ruin, and endless imperialist war? We’re told that the failures of Soviet and Chinese socialism “prove” that there’s no alternative to capitalism, and many believe it. But people didn’t stop building bridges when the first ones they constructed fell down. People all over the world are looking for ways to get “beyond capital,” to build an egalitarian society worthy of humanity.

The capitalists have their organizations. The working class needs its own, one that fights for its class interests. The communist Progressive Labor Party is trying to be that organization. Professors can play an important role by letting their students know the truth about capitalism, by exposing the tracking and ideological functions of schools under bourgeois rule, and by recruiting a new generation of revolutionary communist fighters. Join us!