Attack Hacks’ ‘Anti-War’ Hypocrisy at AFT Convention

CHICAGO, July 15 — A growing anti-war sentiment filled the ranks of the 3,000 delegates to the biennial American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Convention here. However, the union mis-leadership, which pretends to be “anti-war” and has backed anti-war resolutions, undermines any member attempts to organize against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less the capitalist system which causes them.

The AFT Executive Council presented a resolution to make the “spread of democracy and human rights in the world a major tenet of American foreign policy.” It urges the AFT to “increase funding for programs to assist pro-democracy organizations, political parties and workers organizations that are struggling in opposition to repressive regimes.”

A  delegate countered  that the U.S. has a sordid history of promoting U.S. corporate interests in the name of “democracy and human rights” while supporting repression of workers and student movements in countries allied to the U.S. A second delegate explained how the U.S. CIA had overthrown the Mossadegh government in Iran when it nationalized its oil, and in the 1980’s had encouraged and assisted Saddam Hussein to attack Iran resulting in a seven-year war where over one million died.

A major goal of outgoing AFT Pres. McElhenny and  incoming Pres. Weingarten is continuing to lead union members into the arms of the Democratic Party.

Hillary Clinton was an invited speaker and Barack Obama spoke later via a satellite hook-up. PLP’ers distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and issued three Party leaflets.  We explained that both the Democrats and Republicans represented parties of capitalism and imperialist war.  Another leaflet analyzed the role of the public schools under capitalism and exposed the so-called  school reform plans that various sections of the ruling class are advocating.

Our literature was well-received by the delegates. We had many productive discussions with members of our delegations as well as with new contacts from other locals. These kinds of ties are important and we’ll make a serious plan to follow them up.

One of the convention’s bright spots was the development of the AFT Peace and Justice Caucus.  The Caucus broadened its discussions to include school-based issues as well as anti-war issues. In four programs  rank-and-filers gave presentations about the problems in their schools and the fight-backs over them. Anti-racist and internationalist sentiments were strongly expressed.

The Caucus has good potential but contains major contradictions.  At organizational meetings some felt the AFT leadership can be “worked with” and even “pushed to the left” by progressive rank-and-file forces.  But opponents of that view, including PLP’ers, see AFT “leaders” like Weingarten as firmly in the bosses’ camp. These “leaders” are staunch anti-communists and supporters of U.S. imperialism. In fact, in her inaugural address Weingarten said that sometimes when she doesn’t know what to do, she thinks, “What would Al say,” referring to Albert Shanker, former long-time president of the UFT and AFT.

PLP’ers remember well Shanker’s support of the U.S. rulers’ imperialist invasion of Vietnam and his organizing racist boycotts against parent involvement in NYC public schools.
(Next issue: From Shanker to Weingarten — Supporting U.S. imperialism.)

PL Youths’ Red Ideas Greeted At International Festival

ATHENS, GREECE, July 30 — Seven PLP youth representing our international party participated in the  Resistance 2008 Festival, a worldwide gathering of thousands of young students and workers, hosted by the fake leftist Communist Organization of Greece (KOE). Our young comrades gained much experience in fighting for PL’s revolutionary communist politics internationally — helping develop new political leadership for PLP. We also fulfilled our aim of making many contacts among workers locally and from elsewhere, all seriously interested in our Party. These comrades come from different areas and work backgrounds. Some have been in PLP for a long time while others joined the Party within the last few years.

We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and several thousand special supplements, as well as hundreds of PLP’s document “Road to Revolution 4” and recent issues of the Communist Magazine. While there were many fake leftist groups present, most of the participants were young Greek students and workers. While unable to speak Greek, we managed to advance our ideas among many of them.

We hit the ground running to spread our ideas. Our tables displaying all our literature and banners was one of the most popular. We worked nonstop talking to new people and always had a group of people hanging out and chatting!

We fought for international working-class unity against nationalism, explaining that nationalism builds false loyalties to capitalists instead of being loyal to the working class across all borders. It is another tool, like racism, to divide the world’s workers. We were also the only group to advocate the dictatorship of the proletariat. This put us at odds with the festival, which supported the Maoists in Nepal and their leader “Prachanda” who is fighting for unity with local capitalists. Almost everyone we spoke with was interested in our ideas, even if they disagreed.

At our scheduled panel discussion on the final day, the seats were full; chairs were added three times for the overflow audience. After a KOE member spent 20 minutes criticizing our ideas on nationalism, a comrade drew applause with a powerful response  that used the history of what nationalism produced in Africa and elsewhere, saying Nepal is currently following that path. We also explained why we fight directly for communism since socialism retained too many remnants of capitalism (like the wage system) and led to the return of open capitalism in the former Soviet bloc and China.

We adapted to the fact that most people didn’t speak English and that parts of the festival were dedicated to non-political events like rock concerts. So each night we distributed our literature to the concert-goers. At one point, the hundreds gathered were all reading CHALLENGE, not even paying attention to the band!
We were also fortunate in meeting a young Greek airport worker moments after landing. She took a day off to accompany us to the festival, translated our literature and banners into Greek and helped explain our ideas to those Greeks who didn’t speak English. She is very supportive of the Party and is being struggled with to join us and help build PLP in Greece.

Racism was much more prevalent in Greece and Western Europe than we expected. Our nonwhite comrades were constantly ID’d while whites weren’t. One comrade was ID’d three times by three different cops within about three minutes, while they searched for “illegal” immigrants. On the trains the police challenged the comrade’s passport for “authenticity.”

In one southern Italian city, swastikas and Nazi propaganda were plastered all over the walls. In Paris, we encountered and supported a strike of immigrant workers who were demonstrating right across from the Champs-Elysees, the main tourist drag. We tried speaking for a while in our broken French and bought them all lunch.

Our trip has built confidence in ourselves and in each other, trusting the collective and carrying out decisions in a disciplined way (both personally and politically) as well for each comrade to make decisions consistent with our goals when they were on their own and under various pressures. We internationalized our perspective of the working class. Almost all of us made separate groups of friends with whom we plan to stay in touch and collectively recruit to the Party

While the U.S. ruling class is making long-term investments in Obama and building new weapons of war, we made a long-term investment in our movement, by solidifying young comrades and laying the groundwork for the growth of PLP.

Student’s Answer to Testing: ‘Shut the School Down!’

NEW YORK CITY, June 30 — The ruling class has been forcing NYC teachers to give testing so the bosses can intensify fascist practices at home, enabling them to continue their imperialist wars. Some PL teachers met to discuss the new preparatory tests that would presumably “predict” what students would do on the final tests. These would be given three times a year, administered by teachers, then graded by the State. One PL teacher was in a high school that was administering the test, a joint partnership between the State and Houghton-Mifflin Corporation. The PL teachers decided that a written report on the test was needed.

As part of his training, the PL teacher saw the computer program of the standardized test. One screen correlated the teachers, the number of students taking the test and the students’ scores on that test. The rulers will use this test to determine what teachers teach in the classroom. They want to tie a teacher’s tenure to the test scores, which would provide a basis for their merit pay schemes. Communists must lead the working class to struggle against the bosses’ attempt to implement this new weapon against us.

A week later the school discussed the testing. The bosses’ puppet facilitator tried to explain that “data-driven education” would be positive. The PL teacher exposed the test as a “tool of oppression,” to loud applause from the majority of teachers. Every teacher who spoke afterwards condemned the test. Only the school administrators showed even tacit support for it. This did not happen in a vacuum. Over 100 CHALLENGES are distributed in the school, more than 20 among the staff. Years of friendship and political discussion with these teachers encouraged them to express their anger toward the ruling class’s plans.

With PL’ers confident in our ability to extend the struggle among teachers, it was time to involve the students directly. PL’ers have patiently built ties among the students for over four years. More than 80 students read CHALLENGE regularly; 10 have joined the Party.

After carefully estimating the balance of forces, the PL teacher encouraged his freshman classes to boycott the test. He told them his job was to give them the test, but they could decide whether or not to take it. He informed them that over $100 million had already been spent on the test.

The students were already frustrated with standardized testing and asked if the tests would affect their grades. The answer was no, but the State could come down on them hard. One student declared, “Well, let them throw the first punch and we’ll shut the school down.” Another replied, “Just give us the excuse.” (Continued next issue.)

Baltimore Youth Fighting for Job Funds

BALTIMORE, MD, June 2 — On May 30th, students, teachers and education advocates gathered at the Inner Harbor amphitheater to protest Mayor Sheila Dixon’s refusal to appropriate $3 million toward knowledge-based jobs for 750-1,000 young people through the Peer 2 Peer (P2P) network. P2P Youth Enterprises, a coalition of approximately 20 local youth groups, organized the demonstration. They then marched to the Legg Mason plaza and announced a hunger strike, commencing that evening. The protestors chanted and gave speeches on education, followed by an open mic session featuring socially conscious hip hop and spoken word poetry.

P2P has been engaging in activities from workshops to overnight camp-outs in front of City Hall to demand these funds. “It’s outrageous that the City is not giving $3 million to young people to do positive work,” said a public school teacher. “When the City schools were predominantly white, about 20% to 40% of the city budget went to education. Now that the City’s student population is 90% African-American, the portion of the City budget devoted to education is just 11%, a severe, racist cutback that hurts all students, no matter what their racial background.”

The Baltimore City Council voted 11 to 3 against the P2P funding. Many speculate that pressure from Mayor Dixon forced that negative vote.

Two weeks ago, when the coalition began a four-day, overnight campout in front of City Hall, Dixon appeared and told the young people they ought to just get jobs at Target. But P2P seeks funding for programs like tutoring and mentorships, so young people can be paid to teach other youth important skills, like algebra, debate and video production.

“Target is not a comparison to Peer 2 Peer,” said one P2P organizer, nor is P2P an after-school or summer program, as misrepresented by the bosses’ media. It’s a year-long program designed to create jobs and prepare youth for careers in a knowledge-based economy.

The $3 million figure would come from the annual interest earned on the City’s $88 million rainy-day surplus emergency fund, not from the fund itself, as inaccurately portrayed by the capitalist media. “The state of youth in Baltimore City is definitely an emergency,” declared a P2P youth leader.
One excuse offered to refuse funding is “a sluggish economy,” yet City funds are going into the build-up of tourist areas like the Harbor.

As the event concluded, committed hunger strikers were transported to a church where nightly shelter is being provided.

The young people view the hunger strike as necessary to attain their goal, with no plans to end it until the mayor and the City Council grant their demands.

Progressive Labor Party applauds the selfless commitment of the hunger strikers and all their many supporters. But we recognize its limitations. In general, hunger strikes seek to embarrass the rulers, but the rulers really have no shame. After all, capitalism starves millions of workers worldwide.

P2P activists stepped up the level of struggle by bringing many supporters to the Mayor’s Night-In, which she had promoted as an opportunity for youth and adults to talk about solving problems in various neighborhoods. The vast majority of participants were P2P supporters, who spoke out very forcefully, essentially taking leadership of the event away from the politicians. At one point the mayor physically grabbed the microphone to defend herself and to accuse adult P2P supporters of misleading P2P youth.

However, she received meager applause, compared to the overwhelming repeated applause for P2P speakers, a vigorous standing ovation for the hunger strikers, and powerful applause supporting the $3 million for P2P youth jobs.

In a broader sense, political awareness is growing, learning how politicians and the government, though claiming to represent all people, are really puppets for the ruling class of big business owners. Some of the young activists recently attended PLP’s May Day march in New York City.

It’s becoming clearer that the government is not neutral but really a dictatorship of the capitalist class. The government is theirs, not ours.

Even if a reform victory is achieved — winning $3 million — the rulers, having state power, can always take it away later, as they’re doing in cutting wages for millions of workers. This is especially true, given the bosses’ need to direct resources toward carrying out imperialist oil wars in Iraq and elsewhere.
Capitalism cannot be reformed, nor can it solve the problems it creates for the working class. We need a future in which the working class shares the fruit of all the value our labor produces. Only communist revolution can achieve this.

FRANCE: Teachers’ Strike in 130 Cities Against Gov’t Cuts

PARIS, May 16 — Yesterday, according to the government’s understated figures, 860,000 public workers struck against job cuts and government policies dismantling public services, demonstrating in over 130 cities. It was particularly strong in education, with over half of junior and senior high school teachers and nearly two-thirds of primary school teachers on strike. Large contingents of high school students livened up the protests.

In Marseilles and five other cities, teachers’ general assemblies voted to renew their strike on May 19, in some cases over the opposition of the union leaders. They hope to spark a break with the ritual 24-hour protest strike.

Longer and more intense strikes are needed to force the government to back down from the 22,900 education job losses programmed in the 2008 budget. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reaction to yesterday’s walkout was to propose new strike-breaking laws to “protect” the “right to work.”

The government’s onslaught on public workers — which includes last year’s elimination of special retirement plans for mainly rail workers performing particularly hard jobs — is not driven solely by budget-balancing needs, after giving the rich tax breaks of 222 million euros ($350 million) in 2007 (to increase this year). Privatizing public services is also part of the bosses’ strategy to cut wages and benefits for ALL workers.

France’s 5,000,000 public workers cannot be laid off or fired for union activity as easily as private-sector workers. They form the core of the French trade union movement. About 15% of public workers belong to unions, as against 5% of private-sector workers.

Given that French bosses are competing with rivals worldwide, they need to smash the French labor movement in order to maximize profits. For instance, while from 1996 to 2007, labor costs in Germany fell 5%, they rose 20% in France. (Charlie Hebdo, 5/7/2008) Nevertheless, with inflation, real wages in France have fallen 4.2% in the private sector and 7.0% in the public sector since 1994. (Council on Employment, Income and Social Cohesion)

Furthermore, French bosses are participating in on-going wars to re-divide the world. The French expeditionary force in Afghanistan now numbers 3,200 soldiers, and France is suspected of having tried to overthrow Sudan’s government (Le Canard Enchaîné, 5/14/08). The bosses need a docile workforce on the home front.

Successful extension of the teachers’ strike movement would build the May 22nd national strike called by all the major unions to protest government plans to increase the number of work-years needed for a full retirement pension. Previous pension “reform” laws have already led to a 30% relative fall in pensions as against wages. Air France and rail-worker unions have joined the strike call.

While it’s necessary to fight against job cuts and for decent pensions, as long as capitalism exists so will the bosses’ drive to increase exploitation and launch imperialist wars.      That’s why workers here and worldwide must go beyond struggles to “reform” capitalism and organize for communist revolution to destroy capitalism. J

BULLETIN  May 19 — About 40,000 teachers and their supporters demonstrated in Paris yesterday. An inter-trade union federation meeting today proposed no action except to renew the call, initially launched by the French PTA, for a demonstration on May 24. It also ignores the high school students’ protest movement. In short, most of the union “leaders” are doing everything they can to alienate the teachers’ potential allies and keep the movement “manageable.”
In such a situation, communists put forward organizing the widest possible support for striking teachers, forging the links necessary to help develop the revolutionary potential of the working class.

NYC YOUTH VOW MAY 1ST WALKOUT

Brooklyn, NY April 16  — More than 70 students from six different high schools in Brooklyn, Harlem and the Lower East Side joined together and held an after-school conference about billionaire Bloomberg’s promised budget cuts and how to oppose them. Six young black and Latino women representing a school’s student government led the conference and electrified its closing moments unifying walkout proposals from across the room into a call for a city-wide walkout at noon on May 1st!

Students showed up ready to organize against not only the budget cuts but the increased police presence and criminalization of students that has run rampant in NYC schools. An opening talk set the political tone of the event by reminding us that the capitalist system is based on theft of the value workers produce on the job every single day. Most participants in the conference took CHALLENGE and everyone got a copy of the PL leaflet describing how debt service means that billionaires always get paid whether schools face cuts or not.

“These cuts are racist! Eighty percent of NYC school children are black and Latino, can’t nobody tell me these cuts aren’t racist!” one student shouted. “Bloomberg has 16 billion dollars; if he wanted to he could fix the schools’ budget problems,” one student stated in her speech. “The government is trying to put us down before we even get up,” another student shouted. One student talked about being arrested and verbally abused by cops just for having her head outside of the window while watching a crime scene. We live in a period of growing fascism.

After breaking up into groups, students made lists of ways they can fight back against the cuts. Writing a petition, having rallies, getting the word out to more schools, letters to Bloomberg and having student walkouts were prominent on most lists. The plan is to link up with the immigrants’ rights march in Union Square on May 1st.

Some students made the connection that the money that is being taken out of the schools’ budgets is being used to fund the bosses’ imperialist wars and burgeoning police state. PLP students spoke of learning about communism in the classroom and thinking it is a good idea. Communist politics helped defeat the all-too-common liberal error of blaming these cuts on the war alone.

Students left the room with the message that capitalism itself is to blame and that communism remains a real alternative worth fighting for. The task now is to mobilize these same young people to be organizers for PLP’s May Day events this year on May 3rd and, over time, as another generation of young fighters for a communist future.

Calif. Teachers Fight Budget Cuts, Tax Hikes, Union Fakers

California’s educational system has been under attack from a combination of racism and the drive to maximize profits.  Now the capitalist crisis is making it much worse, with a state budget deficit expected to top $8 billion.  Republicans want to balance the budget by cutting education, health care, and other services. Democrats want “a combination of tax hikes and budget cuts.” This is a no-win situation for California workers, but liberal union leaders want workers to pay.

“If state lawmakers want to go for tax increases, they should focus on education,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle, citing James Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, which includes 245 of the region’s largest employers (including banks, oil companies, and war contractors).  “It’s a good way to get the public to acquiesce to paying more.” (4/12/08)

That same day, a workshop at the Oakland convention of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) discussed “How to Talk About Taxes.”  “We must … increase taxes.  This workshop will analyze obstacles to convincing the public this is necessary.”

This “public” is overwhelmingly the working class.  From 1975 to 1998, the income of the bottom fifth of Californians declined nearly 25% while that of the top fifth increased by 66%.

So why is a labor union doing the dirty work for Wunderman and his fellow bosses?
There’s a world of difference between the trade-unionist view of “labor” and “management” as bargaining partners and potential political allies versus the communist understanding that workers and capitalists are locked in a deadly class struggle.

The CFT convention gave lip service to the fight for “progressive taxation” but the truth emerged around a resolution to “support or sponsor legislation that would require the State of California to generate and allocate sufficient funds to education.” An amendment was proposed, seconded and supported to add the words, “without raising taxes on working-class families.”

Leading CFT’ers jumped up to object, claiming “taxes are the price of civilization” and “it’s hard to separate the working class from the middle class so this wouldn’t let us raise taxes on enough people.”  Some delegates asked why workers should pay for a government that serves the bosses and a crisis created by their drive for maximum profits. The amendment was defeated, but the sharp struggle — which the leaders neither expected nor wanted — was itself a victory.

At a demonstration against the cuts in L.A. a few days later, when teachers eagerly took PL leaflets, one teacher said, “All of this could be solved by taxing the oil companies.” This is unlikely since Exxon-Mobil and the big coporations run the system. A revolution will eliminate the profit-hungry bosses who run these and all companies.

Most CFT delegates sincerely care about students, oppose the Iraq war, and want to promote “labor solidarity.”  But without a communist leadership, they are being led into the hands of our enemies. For example, a video about the 1946 Oakland General Strike (which was smashed by the AFL Central Labor Council) claimed as a “victory” the formation of a coalition of labor and community organizations that channeled energy into the electoral politics of the emerging “cold war.” A presentation on the greatness of Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded with the idea that we should enthusiastically support the Democratic Party.

Delegates were urged to get 1% of their local membership to walk precincts for the November 2008 elections.  We should aim to win 100% to become CHALLENGE readers! In contrast to the liberalism of unions like the CFT, the Progressive Labor Party today is working to win workers and students to fight cutbacks with the goal of turning the bosses’ attacks and wars for profit into a revolutionary war for communism.   We invited teachers and students and parents to celebrate May Day with us and join our Summer Project!

Puerto Rico: Teachers’ Strike On Hold, Fight ‘Rat’ Rivera

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, March 5 — After a 10-day militant strike, 10,000 teachers held a mass meeting at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum and agreed to the proposal of Rafael Feliciano, president of the FMPR (Federation of Teachers of Puerto Rico) for a temporary suspension of the strike in order to evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of their struggle without surrendering the right to strike again.

The strike included many mass actions, street marches of thousands, militant picket lines, battling vicious attacks by riot cops and confronting the gang-up of the Dept. of Education (DOE) bosses, governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá and a court order to decertify the union for violating the anti-strike Law 45.

The strikers also had to deal with backstabbing by international union hacks like Dennis Rivera, vice-president of the SEIU “Change to Win” Federation and former president of NYS Local 1199 of the Hospital Workers Union. He lunched with Governor Vilá to urge decertification of the FMPR in favor of an SEIU union. During a mass rally, when a speaker called Rivera a “vulture,” striking teachers repeatedly chanted, “He’s a rat.”

The strikers did win a $150-a-month wage hike on top of a $100 monthly increase agreed upon last year. While the cost of living here is much higher than in the U.S., teachers’ starting pay here is $19,200-a-year, much lower than any U.S. school district. The DOE agreed not to punish any striking teachers “except those involved in criminal activities” (it was the cops who criminally attacked strikers) and to put on hold the privatization of many public schools (the DOE’s plan to make the 500,000 public school students and their working-class parents pay even more for the rotten conditions).
The strikers received support from other workers and students here, many of whom joined the marches and other activities during the struggle. A mass student meeting at the Univ. of Puerto Rico Río Piedras campus organized a 24-hour strike to support the teachers. Scabbing “dissidents” had little mass support among the teachers but got a lot of coverage in the bosses’ media. And the opportunist leadership of the National Hostos Independence Movement issued a press release backing the bosses.

In the U.S., the strikers won support from both college and public school teachers. (See adjacent article on support from the City University of NY Professional Staff Congress union). The March 5 Delegate Assembly of the NYC United Federation of Teachers (UFT), with 92,000 members, also unanimously passed a solidarity resolution “to support the Puerto Rican teachers in their struggle to be treated with dignity.” But the UFT leadership gave no real support to the strikers.

On March 4, the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Agency in Manhattan was picketed, backing the strikers. PLP teachers participated in these support actions, and distributed a PLP leaflet in NYC and L.A. supporting them.
The strike was more than a trade union struggle; it was a political fight-back against the rulers’ strike-breaking Law 45 (similar to the U.S. Taft-Hartley and NY State Taylor Laws which forbid public workers’ strikes). It also fought the colonial-master politics of the Change to Win and AFL-CIO hacks, as well as the brutal repression by the “shock police.”

The strike demonstrated that, despite all the odds, these teachers dared to fight back in a day and age when so many workers accept the bosses’ attacks that make us pay for their economic crisis and endless wars (the death rate of soldiers from Puerto Rico in the Iraq war is very high). But it also showed the limitations of reform struggles.
Workers must turn these battles into schools for communism, learning how to forge a revolutionary internationalist movement to carry on the long-range fight-back for a world without vicious cops, union traitors and capitalist-imperialist oppressors. That’s the goal of workers’ power — communism — that PLP fights for. Join us!

CUNY Faculty Union Supports Puerto Rico’s Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, March 6 — The February 25 Delegate Assembly of the City University’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) voted unanimously to “participate in strike support and solidarity efforts on behalf of the striking teachers of the FMPR [Puerto Rico’s teachers’ union].” Delegates contributed $700 on the spot, and quickly organized a network for strike support on the campuses. Fifty PSC’ers took 7,000 flyers and petitions to union colleagues and students on at least half of CUNY’s 20 campuses. Another $900 was raised by PSC leaders at a board meeting of the state teachers’ union body.

Class unity across borders is essential for teachers and all workers, so PL members and friends in the PSC took the lead organizing strike support on the campuses. Exclusive focus on economic gains for a single union’s members is a loser for all workers because it isolates us from each other. We need to combine struggle for our own demands with equal efforts to build international working-class unity and class consciousness, to win workers to PLP.

This struggle will remain a significant political one among PSC leaders and activists for some time. While all are sympathetic to the striking teachers, there is disagreement about priorities: amid a tough PSC contract campaign and an uphill battle for more State funding, should we spend time and resources on FMPR strike support?

PLP members and friends and other PSC’ers answered that question with a mass approach, working hard on the campuses to persuade our colleagues and students how vital it is to support our fellow teachers in a bitter struggle. We were not deterred by comments like, “I wish you’d spend this kind of energy on the contract campaign!” Some were anxious about relations with other unions “if we got too far out front” supporting the FMPR, which disaffiliated from our national union, and is being raided by SEIU VP Dennis Rivera. But we persisted, getting a warm response from CUNY students, especially those entering teaching and those from Latin America.

One cafeteria worker urged others to sign the petition, exclaiming, “This is to liberate my people!” And all workers, we told him. One signer was a union chapter leader in his high school.

We used different tactics: tabling, roving the cafeteria, faculty distributing flyers to their classes, getting signatures and donations in department meetings. We proved that relying on the masses of PSC’ers and students to express their international solidarity with the strikers was the way for revolutionaries to work in reform struggles, not as some sectarian groups do, saying some apparently “correct” things but building no base among the mass of workers.

Self-critically, comrades in the PSC know we must intensify our efforts amid these kinds of struggles to build the Party itself at CUNY. The Party is the essential weapon to win, not reform demands to be reversed by capitalists’ state power, but win all workers’ liberation — communism.

We’ve recently had two CUNY PLP forums, one on racism and another on immigration, each attracting 30 or more faculty and students. We’ve also expanded CHALLENGE readership and study groups, have collected $800 worth of new subscriptions. We’re planning a Party newsletter at CUNY, and winning some friends closer to joining, but we have more to do. Time presses: the whole world is a tinder box leading to a major imperialist war. Teachers in Oaxaca and Puerto Rico have taught us a good lesson in fighting capitalism: “¡Lucha sí! ¡Entrega no!” Struggle yes, surrender no!

PLP Students Lead Action vs. Racist NYC Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, February 14 — A multi-racial group of over 500 parents, teachers and students rallied on the steps of City Hall today, protesting the recent racist budget cuts. On January 30, a $180 million cut had been announced and it was carried out the very next day.

The idea for the protest grew out of a teachers union Delegate Assembly on February 6 when PLP members called for the immediate organization of a protest rally for February 14 at Department of Education (DOE) headquarters. They called for teacher unity with parents and students and for the union to use the press, radio and leafleting subway stations to bring out as many people as possible.

The union leadership attacked the call, saying the 14th was “too soon” to bring anyone out. (This from a union with over 100,000 members!) They said, “We can’t ‘hide’ behind our students.” Clearly the union leaders feared thousands of angry workers and students on the streets. Instead they called for a “coalition rally” for March 19, six weeks after the cuts were made.

But PLP students and teachers showed what could be done NOW. At several schools, PLP’ers immediately called for meetings to plan a student-parent-teacher fight-back. They proposed a rally on Valentine’s Day at DOE offices.

The students wrote a flyer advertising the rally and e-mailed it to other student governments city-wide; posted copies around schools; made announcements over school loudspeakers; explained the impact of the cuts in the classrooms. The news of the rally quickly spread to other schools and they took up the organizing as well, encouraging students to join the fight-back.

No Love on Valentine’s Day

At the rally some student speeches emphasized the need to build a movement to smash capitalism, that we must not rely on lying politicians. Some of the latter said they would “help” the students, asserting that the students and parents need Democratic politicians “to save them.”

One young woman speaker said if politicians really cared, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg would pay the school “deficit” out of his $11 billion fortune because he CAN. Instead we have Democratic candidate Obama wanting 92,000 more troops in the military while NYS Senator Hillary Clinton allows $504 million to be cut from the school budget. Some “help”! The speaker concluded that we need a revolution to end this racist system. Condemning the budget cuts as racist, students also linked them to the widening war and to a growing police state.

Liberals in the crowd told the cops that the students “weren’t a part of the demonstration” and wanted them to leave. The cops, eager to end the event, tried to negotiate but we told the crowd what was going on and they all began chanting, “Let them speak!”

The final speaker described the growing repression against workers fighting the attacks of the system. While Bloomberg rolled out the red carpet a week before for the NY Giants, he will never do that for angry parents and students on the steps of City Hall. Fight for communism!