PERIODICO EN ESPAÑ OL ADENTRO

volume 43 no. 16 August 3, 2011 suggested donation $.50 EDITORIAL>> Draft on the Way: Obama’s War Budget Makes Workers Pay page 2

NEW YORK>> Summer Project: Youth Learn, Spread and Are Inspired by Communist Ideas page 3

Women Hospital Workers EDUCATION>> Parents Resist Lead Fight vs. Boss- Demolition of Community Library Union Hack Gang-up page 7

BROOKLYN, NY July 18 — “Strike! Strike! Strike! most with CHALLENGEs in their hands, New York City Strike!” That’s how a rally of two hundred Brookdale councilman Charles Barron pandered to their anger, but OBITUARY>> Hospital workers ended after a night of picketing, offered no leadership for the class struggle they need. marching and chanting in front of their hospital. Al- Barron’s divisive black nationalist politics reinforce rac- Comrade most every worker carried a copy of CHALLENGE with ist divisions between black and white workers. Work- Milt Rosen: the story of their struggle on the front page. Militant ers don’t need division — they need class unity! Bar- workers from Downstate, Methodist, Woodhull, Long ron’s and 1199’s attempts to control the workers failed Founding Island College and other hospitals and unions came when the 1199 VP tried to prevent a white worker from Chairperson out in solidarity, greeting their Brookdale sisters and another hospital to speak in solidarity with the Brook- brothers with warm hugs, handshakes, and plenty of dale workers, prompting angry shouts from the crowd of PLP, Great conversation. and chants of “Let him speak!” The VP backed down. 20th Century One worker said, “The entire hospital would walk Brookdale is being bled to death by racist Medic- Revolutionary out and strike if the union said so, but they keep telling aid and Medicare cuts on the one hand and a pack of us to wait…” These racist cutbacks are taking place in thieving bosses from MediSys, the hospital’s parent page 4 every city, designed to make workers and patients pay company, on the other. MediSys Chief Financial Officer for the trillion-dollar imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghani- Doss steals $3 million-a-year in salary, and top MediSys stan, Pakistan and Libya, and for the bailouts of the executives (including CEO Flanz and Human Resources TRANSIT>> bosses and bankers. Director Sclair) also draw salaries from 22 dummy cor- Just before the rally, a vice-president from Local porations that bill Brookdale for their “services.” Doss 1199 of the Service Employees International Union runs a collections agency that bills Brookdale for col- Racism In S.F. (SEIU) played emcee to a collection of city and state lecting unpaid medical debts! He draws another salary Transit, Driven politicians in a town hall meeting. Their aim was to from Brookdale as a “consultant”! numb the workers into staging a silent “candlelight At the same time, “Brookdale has no toilet paper,” By Capitalism; vigil,” unsurprising, considering that SEIU’s idea of one worker said. “We have to borrow it from other Muni Workers “struggle” is a bus trip to beg Governor Cuomo and hospitals. Nurses are telling families to bring their own other politicians at the state capitol. [adult] diapers. We’re borrowing medicine from Jamai- Fight Back These politicians are part of the same city and state ca Hospital [a smaller hospital also owned by MediSys] government that orchestrated the closures of eight and I’m always on the phone trying to borrow extra Call for Strike city hospitals in the past five years. They said the same envelopes and paper to get my job done.” “fighting” words before shutting down St. Vincent’s Another woman related the racist and sexist abuse, to Battle D.C. and North General hospitals. Parts of Brookdale, a where 80% of the workers are women. “The manag- Bosses, Union page 8 3,500-worker hospital, have already shut down, rob- ers sexually harass the women...making open sexual bing the mostly black, Latino, Caribbean and women advances. They suspend anyone who complains. They Hacks workers and patients of their jobs and health care. don’t fear anybody. They think they’re invincible. Re- page 6 Speaking to a crowd of workers at the town hall, continued on page 3

email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 page 2 • CHALLENGE • 3 August 2011 Draft on the Way: Obama’s War Budget Makes Workers Pay The U.S. ruling class’s “debate” over raising the retirement benefits from age 65 to past 66 and debt limit above $14 trillion and cutting the budget eventually to age 69. Consequently, millions more is all a cover to hide the goal of forcing the working workers will die on the job before they can retire. Fascism Means War, class to foot the bill for U.S. imperialism’s global Meanwhile, the needs of struggling U.S. im- wars that are slaughtering workers internationally. perialism belie his promise to curb the military and Workers Pay, Wars for control of Mid-East oil and gas and for budget by 7%. In fact, the imperialists themselves strategic footholds against China and Russia cost demand a whopping 67% boost. (See CFR’s Se- Then and Now U.S. imperialists a fortune — $3.7 trillion so far in bastian Mallaby quote below.) The only significant “We can do without butter, but…not with- Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, as battlefields “cost-cutting” move likely at the Pentagon, one out arms.” (Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph widen to Libya, Yemen, Somalia and beyond, the now pushed by the highest brass, is restoring the Goebbels, 1936) current depression leaves U.S. rulers with inad- draft. Most draftees, unlike career enlistees, get “American power requires economic sacri- equate ready cash. So Obama and the major capi- rock-bottom pay and no pension. fice....Trends in military spending do reveal some- talists he serves are pushing a budget plan that Lying Obama Promises Tea Partiers thing about a country’s capacity for coercion. (U.S. shoves even more war burden onto the backs of Council on Foreign Relations, 2011) workers. Pentagon Cuts; Bigger Bosses say Obama’s proposal for 2012-2020 slashes $655 ‘Forget about ‘em’ Mallaby refers unmistakably to reducing health billion from the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Se- Obama’s phony Pentagon pruning aims solely care’s 17% share of U.S. GDP. Furthermore, his de- curity benefits workers have earned. (White House at appeasing obstructionist, anti-tax Tea Party el- mand to revert to 1950 military budget allocations Budget, published in 2010) This includes lowering ements in Congress. The latter front for smaller of one-tenth (10%) from the current 6% means a Social Security benefits and gradually raising full domestically-minded U.S. capitalists who don’t di- rectly benefit from the bigger bosses’ expensive two-thirds increase, or 67%. and expanding war agenda. But the main U.S. im- Anti-Worker Draft Coming Back perialists, whose profits depend on war, and who as ‘Money-Saver’ bankrolled Obama into office and fill his cabinet, reveal the intentional hollowness of his rhetoric. From the Korean War in the 1950s to the Viet- OUR FIGHT nam War in the 1960s and ’70s, U.S. rulers main- Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on LProgressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to destroy tained the draft. Today, massive unemployment Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism’s leading capitalism and the dictatorship of the capitalist and under-employment of over 30 million workers think-tank, representing the Rockefeller-dominat- class. We organize workers, soldiers and youth into forces job-seeking youth to enlist, which may help ed wing of U.S. rulers, such as Exxon Mobil and JP a revolutionary movement for communism. make recruitment adequate for U.S. bosses now. Morgan Chase. They seek to undermine Obama’s But that won’t be the case if rebellion reaches Sau- LOnly the dictatorship of the working class — cheap talk and rally Republican imperialists, the di Arabia, Big Oil’s biggest energy source, and sets communism — can provide a lasting solution to the socially-liberal and fiscally-conservatives like Sen- the whole Middle East aflame or if armed conflict disaster that is today’s world for billions of people. ators John McCain and Maine’s two Senators, part breaks out with Iran’s or China’s bosses. Then the This cannot be done through electoral politics, but of the old Nelson Rockefeller wing of the G.O.P. requires a revolutionary movement and a mass Red U.S. “all-volunteer” forces won’t be able to cut it, Boot wrote in the conservative Weekly Stand- Army led by PLP. economically or politically. ard (7/18/11), “Obama’s proposed cuts...would With pay raises, benefits and pensions, the vol- LWorldwide capitalism, in its relentless drive for seriously impair the military’s ability to meet its unteer force costs the bosses too much. And only profit, inevitably leads to war, fascism, poverty, global commitments.” Boot then lets loose a a shrinking segment of the population, increas- disease, starvation and environmental destruction. flood of rhetorical questions that pretty much lay ingly poor white workers, seems won to enlisting. The capitalist class, through its state power — out his bosses’ money-burning order of battle for So here comes conscription again, in the guise of governments, armies, police, schools and culture the near term: “economizing.” The Air Force Times (7/14/11) re- — maintains a dictatorship over the world’s “Should we completely pull out of Afghani- ported that, “The Pentagon is considering massive workers. The capitalist dictatorship supports, and stan? Even with the overly hasty withdrawal of changes to the force — including a draft — amid is supported by, the anti-working-class ideologies surge forces ordered by Obama, we still will have fears that new and far deeper budget cuts are of racism, sexism, nationalism, individualism and 70,000 troops there at the end of next year, cost- looming just over the horizon…. It quoted Gen- religion. ing at least $70 billion. Pulling out troops even eral James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint LWhile the bosses and their mouthpieces claim faster risks giving jihadists their biggest victory Chiefs of Staff: “You may just shift the balance of “communism is dead,” capitalism is the real failure since 9/11. the services from active to Guard or reserve or to for billions worldwide. Capitalism returned to “Perhaps we [U.S. rulers] should stop fight- — the dirty word — a draft. Those are all different Russia and China because socialism retained ing pirates off the coast of Africa? Stop fighting characters and they have different costs that you many aspects of the profit system, like wages and in Libya so that arch-terrorist Muammar Qaddafi can manage.’” privileges. Russia and China did not establish can claim a victory over the West? Stop targeting A new draft would force millions of U.S. youth communism. al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen and elsewhere? into a war machine that would kill them and mil- LCommunism means working collectively to build Stop deterring China, North Korea, or Iran? Stop lions of our sister and brother workers worldwide. a worker-run society. We will abolish work for patrolling the Persian Gulf through which much of (World War II saw 14 million in the U.S. armed forc- wages, money and profits. Everyone will share in the world’s oil flows? Stop fighting cyberattacks es, with half the current U.S. population.) But, at society’s benefits and burdens. emanating from China and Russia?” the same time, in laying bare to millions the horrors of capitalist war, it would also expand the opportu- LCommunism means abolishing racism and Obama’s Ruling-Class Handlers Want nities for communist revolutionary anti-imperialist the concept of “race.” Capitalism uses racism to Massive 67% Boost, not Mini 7% organizing in the military. super-exploit black, Latino, Asian and indigenous Cut, in War Funding workers, and to divide the entire working class. Historically, the two great communist-led rev- Of course, all this call to expansion of U.S. olutions in the last century, in Russia and China, LCommunism means abolishing the special rulers’ wars means mass murder of untold num- arose out of the imperialist World Wars I and II. oppression of women — sexism — and divisive bers of workers in these countries. Boot obviously With our lives, labor, declining wages, and ev- gender roles created by the class society. seeks a “No” answer to the military cut question.

His colleague, CFR fellow Sebastian Mallaby, goes er-diminishing living conditions, workers have paid LCommunism means abolishing nations and much further, urging drastically increasing war for capitalists’ wars for centuries. Aside from the nationalism. One international working class, one funding and reducing workers’ living standards. In incalculable money loss, their harm to our class world, one Party. amounts to billions of human beings impover- a piece entitled, “American Power Requires Eco- LCommunism means that the minds of millions nomic Sacrifice (CFR website, 7/7/11) he says: ished and murdered. We must turn the tables on of workers must become free from religion’s false the profit-driven killers by building for communist “...[I]f the U.S. has the will to allocate a ris- revolution to destroy them. promises, unscientific thinking and poisonous ing share of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] to the ideology. Communism will triumph when the Pentagon, it can sustain its global dominance for Our Progressive Labor Party works towards masses of workers can use the science of dialectical a long time to come. After all, defense claimed this goal, as is evident from PLP’s immersion in, materialism to understand, analyze and change the more than a 10th of U.S. GDP during the 1950s, and helping to lead, class struggles: for a com- world to meet their needs and aspirations. munity library (page 7); among transit workers in compared with just below 6 per cent today. But San Francisco and Washington, D.C. (page 6); for LCommunism means the Party leads every aspect military budgets on the scale of the 1950s entail client-worker unity against budget cuts in New of society. For this to work, millions of workers — social and economic sacrifices.” Jersey (page 7); among hospital workers in NYC eventually everyone — must become communist (page 1) and in Chicago (page 6). PLP joins and organizers. Join Us! Why Articles Are Not Signed leads these battles to be able to raise revolution- PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY The fact that CHALLENGE/PLP articles are ary communist ideas and recruit these workers to P.O. Box 808 Brooklyn NY 11202 not signed grows from PLP’s criticism of the cult build a mass Party. J • www.plp.org of the individual in the former socialist Soviet Un- ion and China. We do not want to encourage the • email: [email protected] possibility of building up a “following” around • blog: challengenewspaper.wordpress.com any particular individual. While an article may be CHALLENGE/DESAFIO (ISSN 0009-1049) published bi-weekly by written by one person, the final version is based Challenge Periodicals. One Year: $15. Six months: $10. Send address on collective discussion and criticism. Many times changes to CHALLENGE Periodicals, GPO Box 808 Brooklyn, NY 11202, this collective discussion even precedes an indi- August 3 2011. Volume 43, No. 16 vidual’s writing of an article.

email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 3 August 2011 • CHALLENGE • page 3 NYC Summer Project Youth Learn, Spread and Are Inspired by Communist Ideas NEW YORK CITY, July 16 — “Fight Back!” could have been a spark in a tinderbox; the bosses As one young person put it, “I was scared of the could be heard ringing through the streets as Pro- fear the potential of the working class to rise up police, so I chanted louder to not have to think gressive Labor Party marched in Harlem to arouse and smash them. about them.” When we arrived at the Columbia the working class. We had a flyer that denounced employment agency, we condemned them for not Obama as a racist puppet of the U.S. ruling class. ‘Give me a CHALLENGE….They took providing jobs and for stealing homes from black Our militancy, multiracial unity, and revolutionary mine…’ workers. politics won many workers to pump their fists, A black woman health care worker came angrily Afterwards, we attended a forum on anti-com- clap their hands, and chant along with us. This final out of the building towards us saying, “Give me a munism based on Grover Furr’s book “Khrushchev march of the Summer Project illustrated our suc- CHALLENGE; they took my copy and I want one.” Lied,” which exposed deceitful questions on the cess and power to win workers to PL’s communist She was mad about their confiscating her paper. New York High School History exam. We also heard ideas. On Wednesday, we headed to the Bronx. Com- about the attack on PL teachers at Brooklyn’s Clara The NYC Project began with an orientation that rades there did an excellent job organizing our Barton H.S. The forum helped us sharpen our argu- included over 50 young people — teachers, work- site, ensuring that food and drinks arrived. Young ments against those who spread the bosses’ lies ers, soldiers, students, parents; women and men; people from LA performed a great skit: some com- about the history of the world communist move- black, Latino, Asian, and white — the backbone of rades acted the role of bosses; another group were ment. They spend billions of dollars to portray our Party and its friends. We discussed why PLP communists; and a much larger group acted as the Stalin as a “mass murderer” because they fear his was having the Project. working class. A debate ensued which helped raise communist ideas.J the awareness of all to understand and contrast A group of largely undocumented workers Summer Project Impressions spoke in Spanish about unemployment; a PL sol- the bosses’ arguments with the ideas of commu- dier outlined the role of imperialism. Racist health nism. An enriching discussion followed on what it (The following are three expressions of volun- care was analyzed as well as PLP’s organizing means to build a base in the working class. teers’ experiences.) “I really enjoyed the diversity of the Summer among transit and hospital workers (see CHAL- Force Shutdown of LENGE 7/20). PL brought young people together Project and how hospitable the host-comrade was. Recruiting Center from all over the U.S. — Chicago, LA, Baltimore, It inspired me in ways that no other experience and beyond — to both recognize that we’re fight- After the study group, we all moved in a disci- could. The rallies we held had an outcome that I ing the same enemy and that the working class is plined manner to a military recruitment center in did not know was possible from an organization facing similar conditions everywhere. the Bronx where we distributed 400 CHALLENG- that is frowned upon as much as the PLP. The anti- ES on the surrounding corners and picketed the communism forum was one of the most helpful Racist Cop’s Threats Fail center. The recruiter became so upset when we in teaching us on how to defend communism. It Tuesday started off bright and early as we showed up that he shut down the center. Speech- showed how far the bosses and pigs go to make surrounded an unemployment center in Trenton, es in Spanish and English condemned U.S. impe- sure their despicable way of living prospers.” NJ (see page 7). We rallied outside and handed rialism. LLLL out flyers. A racist cop almost drove his car into After the rally, the HBO film “No Contract, No “The NY Summer Project was different in at- a group of disabled people in his rush to try to Cookies” and another “independent” film on the mosphere and surroundings, but in some ways intimidate us. He waddled out of his car wearing Stella d’Oro strike were screened, with about 10 similar to the LA Project making you realize the a bulletproof vest, hoping to scare us, but did not former Stella d’Oro workers present. A sharp dis- struggle is the same everywhere, like the issues succeed. He would be the first of the bosses’ at- cussion followed, illustrating how the strike was with the government. The NY project was a fun tempts to shut down our rally. both a school for communism and an inspiration to experience.” The unemployment center’s security force con- us in the class struggle. LLLL fiscated CHALLENGE from all the workers who Thursday was Harlem Day. After individual walked into the building. The state will always groups sold the paper in the morning, we picketed “My experience during the Summer Project break its own laws whenever it chooses to prevent the military recruitment center there. We distribut- was inspiring, and I learned more about what is go- workers from hearing communist politics. New ed a flyer denouncing Columbia University’s racist ing on in the world. My comrades taught me how Jersey’s fascist governor Christie is spearheading expansion, exposing Obama’s racism and attack- to be strong and fight for what is right. We are the attacks on the working class’s education, health ing U.S. imperialism. The racist KKKops showed up workers and we will not let the bosses rule us.” care and aid checks, the latter amounting to only and began following us, “escorting” us over a 10- (Write to CHALLENGE with your Summer $140 a month! How are workers and their fami- block march. They told us to turn off our bullhorn. Project experience.) lies expected to live on such a pittance? Our rally treat us like garbage and the union lead- Brookdale ers always give us reasons why we can’t continued from front page fight, but we know we gotta fight!” cently, fifteen of us women went to one of Beyond MediSys, their offices and put a stop to it. We haven’t we are confronting heard from him again!” The women leading the whole racist prof- the struggle have shown incredible bravery it system and a U.S. and strength, continuing the fight against the ruling class that is bosses even while 1199 tries its best to cool struggling to keep its the workers down. world empire amid We heard similar stories of fight-backs and stiffening competi- job actions from every department, including tion. Today they fight a three-day sit-in at the hospital last month, Iraq, Afghanistan after MediSys stopped paying into the 1199 and Libya, but down CHALLENGE networks within Brookdale, SEIU National Benefits Fund. This “forced” the road looms China. With the help of the we are injecting our ideas of fighting back the union to cancel the workers’ health insur- union misleaders, they are taking back eve- with multi-racial working-class unity. Should ance and replace it with a much worse plan rything that U.S. workers have gained in the Brookdale close, in whole or in part, these with sky-high, unaffordable co-pays. Aside past 80 years in order to meet their growing workers will bring these ideas with them into from stripping the workers of their health competition. care, no one knows what steps, if any, the un- the looming struggles ahead, wherever they PLP is fighting for a base among the work- ion has taken against the bosses to recoup go. Our long-term success will be measured ers in order to challenge the bosses and union their losses. in how many workers understand that only misleaders. The Brookdale workers are fight- Either way, the union is worth over a bil- when millions of workers join PLP and the ing on behalf of every worker affected by fight for communism, can the international lion dollars. It could have paid for the work- racist hospital closures. Every worker world- ers’ health insurance while fighting to get its working class destroy capitalism and seize wide can support the Brookdale Hospital power. money from MediSys. Instead, it meekly ac- workers by raising their fight on the job and The politicians and union misleaders had cepted the hospital bosses’ benefit cut. Had in their union, sending messages of support their say at the town hall meeting, but the George Gresham and the union leadership to CHALLENGE. Workers in the New York mostly-female Brookdale workers will have really wanted to support the struggle, they City area can sign up to sell CHALLENGEs at their say when they strike against the bosses. had every “legal” reason to strike back in Brookdale. January, when MediSys first violated the labor We ask every one of these fighters to join While the bosses ultimately control wheth- contract. As one worker said, “The bosses us.J er or not Brookdale closes, through building email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 page 4 • CHALLENGE • 3 August 2011 Comrade Milt Rosen, 1926-2011

lesson: that communists must fight back against fascism, no matter what the risks. The industrial work in Buffalo became both PL’s foundation stone and Milt’s point of departure from the old Communist Party. By the late 1950s, in retreat from McCarthyism, the CPUSA had aban- doned any effort to organize the working class for revolution. It hid its most advanced ideas from workers and plunged into the sewer of electoral politics, running its own candidates and support- ing “lesser-evil” liberals for office. Socialism, the CPUSA leaders declared, could be achieved by reforming capitalism. On the international stage, they joined with fellow revisionists in the Soviet Union in calling for “peaceful coexistence” with the U.S. and its capitalist bloc — an impossible strategy, given the fight-to-the-death reality of im- perialism. By contrast, Milt (by then the CP’s industrial or- ganizer for New York State) defied the old party’s directives and openly called for communism and the need for mass, violent revolution to achieve it. He and his comrades saw that the future of com- munism lay in negating the old movement — in preserving its progressive elements while dis- carding what had become outworn or harmful. In In the fall of 1961, Milt Rosen convened a small build a communist future. That struggle endures January 1962, they published the first issue of a collective that would soon leave the Communist today. It is PL’s living history, and Milt’s legacy to monthly magazine called “Progressive Labor.” In Party of the United States (CPUSA) to form the all of us. July of that year, in a meeting at the Hotel Dip- Progressive Labor Movement. Four years later, lomat in New York City, they formally broke with Comrade Milt became the founding chair of the Milt Meets Stalin the CPUSA and established a new Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor Party. He served our organiza- Milt’s first brush with the enormous power of organization called the Progressive Labor Move- tion and the working class in that capacity until communist ideas came as a 17-year-old soldier (he ment, or PLM. 1995. had lied about his age) in Italy in World War II. Each Others split with the CPUSA around the same On July 13, Milt died of Parkinson’s Disease at morning he would see a name in fresh red paint time, over essentially the same ideological disa- the age of 85. He is survived by family, friends, and on the buildings’ walls: “STALIN.” The anti-fascist greements. One new group, Hammer and Steel, thousands of comrades — and by a revolutionary partisans, knowing they risked execution if caught, had 500 members; PLM began with 12. Yet our communist party deeply rooted in the international had come out at night with their paint cans to raise movement grew while the others all dwindled working class. morale. away. Why were we different? PLM’s strategy, as After the war in Italy ended, Milt, now a ser- Since PL’s birth half a century ago, many left originally put forward by Milt, was to turn away geant, was in charge of a motor pool. His unit was organizations have withered and died. Others have from the organization that had given it birth. Milt ordered to break strikes led by communist resist- decayed into the living death of electoral politics could see dialectically that the old CP had reached ance fighters, the soldiers’ former allies. Milt led or a fake Marxism which allies with “progressive” the end of its historical process. sections of the ruling class. PL is the exception “search-and-avoid” missions, as they later be- While Hammer and Steel tried to pull the because it never stopped evolving. Milt grasped came known in the Vietnam War. His troops would CPUSA to the left, a hopeless and sectarian pur- the essence of dialectical materialism, the philos- board the trucks and set off, but they never found suit, PLM reached out to non-communist workers ophy of communism: that the objective world is a strike. Instead they’d get “lost” on the winding and students and led them in militant class strug- ever-changing, and that the Party must continue mountain roads. gles. The wisdom of that strategy soon became to learn from its own experience and those of the In and Out of the CPUSA obvious. courageous but flawed workers’ movements that After returning home to Brooklyn from the preceded it. He was staunchly principled, but nev- continued on page 5 er rigid. Army, Milt joined the Jewish War Veterans, the first of many mass movements he would Sparked by Milt early on, PL exposed both enter. Influenced by his future wife, Harriet, counter-revolutionary revisionism and “revolution- he then joined the Communist Party of the ary” nationalism as death traps of worker-boss United States. unity. It indicted the state capitalists of the Soviet Union as far back as 1966, and then broke with the In the 1950s, Milt went to Buffalo, New ones ruling the People’s Republic of China. Those York, to organize fellow workers at a steel failed revolutions led PL to advance beyond Marx’s mill. He soon became a local union leader. two-stage theory that socialism was a first step to- Citing the mill’s status as a “war plant,” man- ward communism; history had shown that socialism agement said they had to fire Milt because inevitably led back to the exploitation of capital- he was a communist — otherwise, they said, ism. And unlike any other group on the landscape, they’d lose their government contracts. the Party emphasized the importance of the fight They gave each worker a letter stating they against racism as a basic communist principle, not were sure Milt would “want” to be fired a mere tactic. It understood that all struggles are rather than cost everyone else their jobs. As essentially anti-racist struggles. Most important, it the workers came off shift, they walked past saw that capitalism cannot survive without racism a fire in a steel barrel and dropped their let- dividing groups of workers, and that racism injures ters into the flames. As a result of their unity and exploits the entire working class. and struggle, Milt got “unfired.” PL stayed vital and relevant because Milt and Milt rose to become the CP’s leader other comrades refused to shrink from struggle in Erie County, centered in Buffalo, a plat- or to compromise our communist politics to make form he used to advance the politics that expedient alliances. The Party stood apart from ultimately created PL. In 1957, when the others parading as “left” groups; Milt called that House Un-American Activities Committee separation “glorious.” He knew that our unity, first (HUAC) brought its witch hunt to Buffalo to and last, must be with the working class. destroy communist influence among indus- trial workers, Milt and Mort Scheer (later Over decades of action and analysis, the Party the vice-chairperson of PLP) led the charge was built by Milt and by people he directly influ- against it. They turned HUAC’s hearings into enced and developed. They steered PL to its early a political battleground. Rather than hiding growth amid the opportunities of mass movements behind the Fifth Amendment, which the CP and the threats of government attacks. Then they used to avoid “self-incrimination,” comrades kept us on course through the “dark night” of ris- in Milt’s collective proudly espoused their ing fascism. As Milt noted in “Jailbreak,” his down- communist beliefs and attacked the com- to-earth booklet on dialectics, “We must be able mittee’s fascist inquisitions. Meanwhile, Milt to combine urgency with patience.” and Mort organized mass demonstrations The Progressive Labor Party is now growing on outside the hearings and marshalled mass five continents. It continues to sharpen its practice support. HUAC fled town, discredited. Milt and its political line to overthrow capitalism and was both teaching and learning a valuable

email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 3 August 2011 • CHALLENGE • page 5 Founding Chairperson of PLP, Great 20th Century Revolutionary

continued from page 4 To sustain its fight against the Vietnam War along with students and other non-communists, The Hazard, Kentucky Miners PLM founded the May 2nd Movement and built In one of its first mass activities, PLM stood chapters on a number of college campuses. As the behind 500 wildcatting, armed coal miners in Haz- war expanded, liberals and fake leftists grabbed ard, Kentucky, who were locked in an all-out war the leadership of the broadening anti-war move- with the coal barons to win decent conditions and ment. Even so, our anti-imperialist politics and mili- wages. Milt convinced one PLM member, a rail- tant leadership led to a period of rapid growth for road worker and local union president, to take PLM on campuses nationwide. More young people two weeks off to mobilize solidarity for this fight. were drawn to our organization when we broke the Out of this was born the Trade Union Committee U.S. government’s travel ban on Cuba and brought to Support the Hazard Miners. A relief campaign 134 students there over the summers of 1963 and raised critical funds and sent truckloads of food 1964. and clothing to the strikers. When the miners’ rank-and-file leader came to New York City, PLM CHALLENGE-DESAFIO organized a mass meeting of a thousand people In June 1964, PLM began publishing CHAL- to hear him. LENGE-DESAFIO. At a time when bilingual publi- cations were unheard of, and despite our organiza- Milt saw the need to highlight the role of in- tion’s small size and limited funds, Milt fought for dustrial workers as a crucial force for revolution. a paper in both English and Spanish. We had no PLM made the Hazard strike a national cause. For choice, he said; we had to make communism avail- the ruling class, it was an equation for big trou- able to the many New York workers from Puerto ble: wildcatting strikers + armed violence against Rico, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere who the bosses + communist ideas. Reformist forces spoke mainly Spanish. moved into the Committee to seize its leadership and destroy it, but not before countless workers As our movement expanded into Chicago and and students came to see the world with new con- Southern California, which had large numbers of sciousness. workers from Mexico and Central and South Amer- ica, an English/Spanish newspaper became even As Mao said, “To be attacked by the enemy is more important to organize workers for commu- a good thing.” Milt was not discouraged. He real- nism on a multiracial, internationalist basis. Years ized that we couldn’t control the content or ulti- later, DESAFIO would also pave the way for our mate direction of reform movements. Our power work in Latin America and the Caribbean. came from expressing our revolutionary ideas within these groups and winning workers to com- Fighting Racism munism. From its very beginning, Milt led the struggle The Struggle Against Revisionism within PL to see racism as the ruling class’s primary tool to divide workers. He helped us understand In October 1963, before PLM’s National Coor- how the capitalists’ racist ideology poisons every dinating Committee, Milt delivered a comprehen- facet of workers’ lives, from unemployment to po- sive report on the fight against fake Marxism, or lice terror to the eugenic pseudo-science pushed revisionism. After months of discussion, the report on college campuses. Given this analysis, it be- was published in March 1964 as “Road to Revolu- The PL poster that rocked New York came clear that the key to communist revolution tion.” A devastating ideological assault upon the was to build a mass, multiracial, anti-racist move- old communist movement, it begins: Milt was chosen as the first chairperson of PL ment. PL could not lead the working class without “Two paths are open to the workers of any because he was unafraid of struggle. He’d led the masses of black and Latino workers and youth as internal fight that transformed the Buffalo CP into given country. One is the path of resolute class members and leaders. struggle; the other is the path of accommodation, a red force, in sharp contrast to the CP’s national “POLICE WAR ON HARLEM” was the front- collaboration. The first leads to state power for leadership and its accommodation to capitalism. page headline of the first issue of CHALLENGE, the workers, which will end exploitation. The other PLM was born out of that internal struggle, as was over a photo of a man who had been beaten by means rule by a small ruling class which continues Milt’s analysis in “Road to Revolution.” Milt himself a cop’s billy club. The article described the grow- oppression, wide-scale poverty, cultural and moral had been steeled in class struggle, from his experi- ing anger that would lead to the Harlem Rebellion decay and war.” ences in World War II to his vanguard communist one month later, when the police shot 15-year-old work in Buffalo’s steel industry. PLM and the Anti-War Movement James Powell in the back, killing him. Work in Mass Organizations As of early 1964, active opposition to the grow- New York’s mayor placed Harlem under virtual ing U.S. war in Vietnam was limited to a few paci- martial law, and more than eighty “left” and civil Following the massive Washington anti-war fist groups. PLM chose to break through the exist- rights groups agreed not to demonstrate. Milt had rally in the spring of 1965, Milt saw that Students ing limits and organize a militant, anti-imperialist a different idea. He proposed that PLM print thou- for A Democratic Society (SDS) had grown into the movement to demand immediate U.S. withdrawal. sands of posters: “Wanted for Murder, Gilligan the center of radical student politics. He proposed In March of that year, Comrade Milt sat on a panel Cop.” They became the anti-racist flags of Harlem that the May 2nd Movement be dissolved and that at Yale University with representatives of suppos- residents in their struggle against police brutality. our student members move into SDS, which had potential for far greater growth. Some PLM mem- edly left organizations, most of them Trotskyite. When PLM members stepped out of their bers felt comfortable in M2M, and fought against The panelists were arguing heatedly about “de- Harlem clubhouse to start a march, they were im- this change. Some even left our organization when mocracy” in Cuba when Milt changed the subject mediately arrested. One leader was charged with their view did not prevail. in his characteristic style: “You guys are full of shit. “sedition” for “attempting to overthrow the State We should be talking about building a movement of New York,” and faced up to 20 years in prison. This internal struggle was an early battle over against the war in Vietnam. Our organization, the Others were rounded up in predawn raids and the need to work in mass organizations, which are Progressive Labor Movement, is doing just that.” jailed for contempt of court after refusing to tes- invariably led by the ruling class. Despite their While Milt acknowledged the critical impor- tify. Even the printers who produced the Gilligan limits, these groups connect communists to large tance of theory, he always taught that practice was posters were jailed! Nothing scares the capitalists numbers of workers and students. They allow us to primary. That conference was a case in point. Be- more than multiracial unity under communist lead- bring our revolutionary ideas to people even as we fore an audience of more than 500 students and ership, and they were quick to suspend their so- fight alongside them for reforms. From the begin- faculty, he focused on the Vietnamese revolution called “freedoms” to squash us. But the bosses’ ning of our movement, Milt was a firm advocate for and the efforts of U.S. imperialism to crush it — legal terror backfired. As a result of its activity in working in unions, community groups, churches, and what we could do to help the Vietnamese Harlem, PLM gained respect among black workers and academic organizations. working class fight back. throughout the country. From 1966 to 1968, PL would do its largest- Milt electrified the crowd. When he proposed a Throughout this inspiring period, Milt helped scale political organizing among students. We nationwide mobilization to protest U.S. aggression to give our members the confidence to “dare to recruited hundreds of members by building the in Vietnam, the conference overwhelmingly voted struggle, dare to win.” He understood that the Worker Student Alliance, which became the ma- its approval. main threat to a communist movement was not jority caucus within SDS. Many of those students ruling-class terror, but our own timidity. joined the Party, and Milt led the push to send On May 2, 1964, under PLM’s leadership, the large numbers into the factories, where our work first major demonstrations against the Vietnam From Movement to Party continues today. We also organized students to War were staged in cities around the country. In In April 1965, two hundred comrades met waive their deferments, enter the draft, and join New York, one thousand people attended a rally at in New York and took a bold step forward: the the military to build our movement there. With 110th St. and Central Park West, where they heard founding convention of the Progressive Labor three U.S. imperialist wars now raging, that work PLM speeches about the necessity of communist Party (PLP). The transformation from a movement is more important than ever. As Milt liked to say, revolution. Breaking a police ban on demonstra- to a party signified greater unity over our politics, “You’ve got to be in it to win it.” tions in midtown Manhattan, the marchers wound greater trust and confidence in our members and through Times Square to the United Nations for a the working class, and greater commitment to or- second rally. continued on page 8 ganizing for communist revolution. email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 page 6 • CHALLENGE • 3 August 2011 Racism In S.F. Transit, Driven By Capitalism; Muni Workers Fight Back SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 — Once again, the out the NO vote, hoping that the credible threat experienced in Alabama.” As the driver noted, it San Francisco mass transit (Muni) drivers are lead- of a strike would make management back down. has made no difference that departing executive ing Bay area workers in class war. For a second Activists forced the leadership to call a strike au- director Nate Ford (who’s leaving with a $384,000 time they rejected a give-back contract with a re- thorization vote and passed a resolution against severance package) is black. During the recent ne- sounding two-to-one vote, 994 to 488. These NO binding arbitration. gotiations, Ford was part of the management team votes show the potential for Muni drivers to stick As many rank-and-file leaders now recognize, a that spent $100,000 on a PR firm to leak stories together and act in their class interest, a terrifying NO vote is not enough. With workers now saddled that attacked drivers. This created a hostile, racist, possibility for corporate San Francisco. with the contract, new debates are raging: Can anti-worker atmosphere where passengers com- Drivers’ vote defied the combined forces of the we really do job actions or strike independent of plained that some drivers were “rude” and “over- city’s labor leaders, the Democratic political elite, the union? Will the courts save us from Prop G? paid” and “don’t even speak English.” and San Francisco’s downtown big business inter- How can we mobilize to overcome our fears and The new Muni contract neatly dovetails many ests. Labor leaders publicly denounced the drivers. divisions? How do we unite with passengers and aspects of racism. The transit agency plans to Meanwhile, local billionaires campaigned against other Bay Area transit workers to make this a class bring in part-time drivers to eliminate up to 7.5% city worker pensions (Fortune Magazine, 6/13). war against corporate San Francisco? of full-time jobs and cut the pay of current drivers. Corporate money passed a City Charter amend- Despite the threat of firing and other reprisals, Muni used to offer jobs where black, Latino, Asian ment, Proposition G, which specifically attacked activists see the need for militancy and tighter or- and immigrant youth could move up the economic the drivers’ salary formula as the way to “fix Muni.” ganization within the membership. When the union ladder. Now incoming workers will face full-time Muni management boasted that it would save $41 is siding with the bosses, workers cannot afford to bills with part-time pay. This system forces them to million from union concessions. Corporate-con- wait for an official go-ahead to sanction their next accept these conditions with a gun to their head; trolled media promoted vicious, anti-working-class move. their alternative is unemployment. Meanwhile, service cuts targeting mid-day and off-hour transit lies, many of them coded against black and immi- Muni workers need to unite in mass strikes fall hardest on those with the lowest incomes, an- grant drivers. All of these forces joined the stand- and demonstrations with working-class passen- other example of institutionalized racism. Poorer, ard fascist chorus: “We need shared sacrifice.” gers. Local 250A’s path of legal action — playing geographically-isolated neighborhoods are sac- Pushing the fraudulent ideology of all-class uni- the bosses’ game by the bosses’ rules — is a dead rificed to bolster rush hour “trunk” lines leading ty, the leadership of Transit Workers Union (TWU) end. Communist leadership is needed to fight for to downtown businesses. Profits, as always under Local 250A had recommended the contract pack- workers’ power and to get off the reform politics capitalism, come first. age as a “win-win.” Here is what the workers are treadmill, where bosses will always be free to take slated to “win”: a pay freeze, big cuts in full-time back the crumbs won in yesterday’s struggles. Muni management, like all servants of the capi- jobs and transit service, reintroduction of part-time talist class, works overtime to divide workers with work, and the weakening of worker rights to allow ‘Shared Sacrifice’ Is Coded racism. In the short term, this strategy gives the speedy firing. Racial Scapegoating bosses the cover they need to destroy the drivers’ standard of living and impose inequitable service On June 13, an “independent” arbitrator used Presently, Muni drivers are 80% black, Latino, cuts. Over the long haul, it’s an essential tool for Proposition G to shove the rejected contract down and Asian, many of them immigrants. Since the the rulers to maintain an economic system based the drivers’ throats. The arbitrator had the full 1980’s, growing numbers are single parents, most on social control and profits for the few. Reform backing from the union leadership, which worked of them women. victories cannot change that fundamental system. to sabotage any real strike preparations. Racism and sexism have always lain at the We need a communist revolution to replace capital- heart of Muni contract negotiations and city elec- The media attacks fueled intense anger and ism with a society run by and for the working class, tions. As one driver with relatives in the South told resistance among the TWU membership. Many where mass transit will take all workers where they CHALLENGE, “Racism is worse here than I ever members devoted their time and energy to turn need to go.J Step-by-Step: Workers Battle Bosses’ PLP Builds Class Consciousness Fascist Attacks with PL’s Politics When change is gradual we sometimes can’t see it. To others who’ve been watching all along the change is obvious. Over sev- Call for Strike to Battle eral years fascism in health care has slowly taken shape in Chica- go and those of us in the middle of it sometimes aren’t struck by the changes. The gradual dwindling of staff as more and more D.C. Bosses, Union Hacks uninsured workers show up at the County Hospital, the scores of tiny cuts in supplies, services and support, the steady increase WASHINGTON, D.C. — The battle fear of striking is having a party organiza- in video surveillance cameras, police presence, swipe cards that against the Metro transit bosses and sell- tion which has the support of the workers track workers as we go about the day’s work — then we wake up out union leaders is heating up. PLP mem- and a plan to move forward. Most of the one morning and think, “So this is what fascism looks like!” bers at Metro used a union-called town hall groundwork for this has been done. Now it meeting for workers and riders “to get in- is time to consolidate this base into the Par- As reported in CHALLENGE some of the more in-your-face put” to expose the sellouts and have radi- ty by helping our brothers and sisters gain a Nazi-style attacks have been impossible not to notice. When the cal conversations with fellow workers about clear vision of a lifetime struggle to destroy administrators decided to kick the respirator patients out of the the need for communist revolution. capitalism and replace it with OUR power, chronic care unit which they had slated for closure, health work- workers’ power. ers fought back. We organized a loud demonstration at the front Party members testified that a strike door of Stroger Cook County Hospital. When the County bosses at Metro would help all D.C. area workers, A strike will not end the bosses’ domina- cut the WIC program, taking milk out of the mouths of babies, including Metro riders, resist today’s rac- tion of us, but a strike can give us good train- we were there to call them out. When they made plans to de- ist offensive against workers. Those state- ing in how to fight. Workers are terminated mand cash co-pays for clinic visits from patients who couldn’t ments from both Metro workers and riders all the time without just cause at Metro. afford bus fare, we organized our co-workers to protest at their got the loudest applause of the meeting, There is no reason to expect Metro would Board meeting. and helped build an attitude of rebellion not attempt to continue these policies dur- that opens the door for building the PLP at ing a strike. The difference is that we will be In all this what we didn’t see was a greater openness to com- Metro and throughout the community. fighting back in a mass way to advance our munist ideas. Hospital workers who have been getting out a few Although support for a strike to resolve goals. Through sharper struggle against the dozen CHALLENGEs most issues for years were surprised when bosses, we will be able to see the need to PLP Chicago Summer Project participants from out of town held our contract dispute is wide spread among riders and drivers, the union leadership is build a new kind of society where workers a picket line and sold 200 CHALLENGEs outside Stroger in just collectively run things — communism — so over an hour. At one point a bullhorn speaker explained how strongly opposed to any work action by members of ATU (Amalgamated Transit Un- that we can get off the treadmill of constant the inevitable oil wars caused by the capitalist system drained attacks from bosses. all the money out of the bosses’ government coffers, leaving ion) Local 689. hospitals, schools, housing, transportation – everything workers Since strikes by transit workers in D.C. For a strike to be successful, strengthen need – to fall apart. This led into a chant, “The only solution is are illegal under the bosses’ laws, the un- the union, and build greater class conscious- communist revolution!” Patients who had grown frustrated and ion president is afraid to lead a strike. She ness, the racist divisions that exist in our un- angry waiting for hours to be seen in the ER joined in the picket fears it would bankrupt the union and she ion must be overcome. Black, Latino, Asian, as it passed the Emergency entrance and took up the chant like would wind up in jail. Without a plan to win and white workers standing side by side in a veteran comrades: “The only solution is communist revolution!” a strike, many workers are afraid of losing fight against the bosses will be a strong sig- their jobs if it fails. nal of our ability to win against the bosses Of course getting the paper into the hands of 200 new read- in the long run. ers and collecting a few new contacts and phone numbers does Many workers have illusions about what not make a revolution. But it is a step in the right direction. More a strike can accomplish. Some believe that important, maybe, is that it provides a wake-up call to some of if we strike, the bosses will be on their us who have been looking at this situation so long that we didn’t knees begging us to come back to work. really see one side of it. The fear is mixed with anger, lots of it, This is an unlikely scenario. They will try to maybe even more in patients and their families than in the staff. hit us hard, and we must be prepared to We need to ramp up our work among patients and strengthen hit back! ties between patients and staff so we can join forces against the PLP’s job is to help people overcome Chicago rulers who are hell-bent on destroying public health. their fears of a strike as well as give a realis- Veteran Hospital Worker tic estimate of what it takes to advance our interests under current conditions. Part of helping workers overcome their email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 3 August 2011• CHALLENGE • page 7 Parents Resist Client-Worker Unity Vital Demolition of Step Towards Revolution Community Library

“It’s disgusting,” said a Whittier mother of the Chicago Public EAST ORANGE, NJ, July 12 — “Can’t the person on the other side of the glass Schools’ (CPS) latest attempt to demolish the community center and you see what they are doing to us? Listen as the enemy rather than the bosses who library known as “La Casita.” Last fall, the Whittier parents kept the to these people we need to start fight- profit. This is not a coincidence. The cap- building open with a heroic and grueling 43-day sit-in. After following ing back,” yelled an angry black worker italists spend billions promoting racist, all CPS stipulations on how to keep the center open, La Casita par- standing in line to collect his monthly anti-working class ideology so that work- ents were surprised when demolition workers showed up with per- welfare check. He was one of hundreds ers don’t see who their real allies are. mits. This shows that no matter how hard workers fight, the bosses exposed to PLP’s ideas as we organized will lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. Regardless, the par- over 30 students and workers to rally in Workers welcome CHAL- ents quickly jumped into action to stop the CPS demolition. front of the Essex County Development LENGE and PLP Center. As we sold CHALLENGE to the work- The next day, with the demolition crew scheduled to arrive at 6 ers waiting to get into the building, it was AM., the Whittier parents, with support from the community, mobi- Racist Cutbacks and Unem- clear from their comments that they saw lized 60 workers, teachers and students to begin a new sit-in. Only ployment the Republicans and Democrats as no one demolition worker showed up at 6:30 AM, scouting the area to As the ruling class continues to spend more than attack dogs for the bankers, check on the protest. A PLP member and a La Casita mother attempt- more money on imperialist wars across bondholders, and billionaires who are ed to win this worker’s support. He refused. With true working-class the globe, the working class is facing profiting from this. Last year alone, the solidarity, the Whittier mother gave the worker her phone number, more and more cuts. A recent study by banks received almost $3 billion. saying that while the bosses aren’t coming for your neighborhood now, they will be soon, and we can help. Brown University put the cost of “post PLP showed that, besides just attack- 1 9/11” wars at around $4 trillion. Mean- ing the Republicans and Democrats, we At 7:45 AM, the Chicago KKKops blocked off all roads leading while 300 General Assistance (GA) clients must smash capitalism, the main cause for into La Casita. In response to this fascist attack, PLP members and lost their Emergency Assistance benefits. these attacks. We exposed the racist cut- allies went door-to-door in the neighborhood informing residents Thousands had their “benefits” suspend- backs and called for clients and workers about the situation, trying to get them involved in the fight-back. ed without notice (while still eligible) to unite as the first step towards build- This made many sit-in’ers feel more confident that no matter what pending state review. Even those that do ing a communist revolution. Many of the CPS and the KKKops did, we would respond. get GA get only $140 a month! workers eagerly took CHALLENGE. As At the heart of this struggle are the CPS’ lies. They planned to While the bosses talk about unemploy- the crowd got more and more energized, build a library in the adjacent school by cutting in half two classrooms ment being at 9.5% in NJ, that number is the cops tried to stop our rally but with that are already overcrowded, with 30 or more students. Addition- at least doubled for the mostly black and no success. One woman came running ally, this second-floor library would be inaccessible to handicapped Latino workers of Essex County. In Ne- out saying, “[The cops] wouldn’t let a guy students since the school has no elevator. A CPS spokesperson pre- wark it is over 20%. This is why PLP calls in because he had one of your newspa- tended to care about the students’ well-being, saying it doesn’t make it racist unemployment. While it hurts all pers. They made him throw it out. But sense to have services outside the school. Yet CPS refuses to reno- workers, it is always worse for black, latin they didn’t see mine cause I put it in the vate the school “cafeteria” where students eat in a basement with and immigrant workers. pile of other papers.” After she said that sewage water running on the ground. Meanwhile, the Democrat controlled the workers on the line folded up their The mass media has helped to spread pro-CPS distortions, stat- State Legislature voted to force thou- papers and put it in their pockets so they ing, “Parents protest construction of library” without giving the par- sands of public employees to pay huge wouldn’t get taken away. ents’ side of the story. However, it makes sense that the bosses’ me- increases in their pension and health care Many workers also left their contact dia would further the bosses’ interests against the working class. coverage contributions. information and urged us to keep in PLP will continue to lead, and be led by, the valiant parents of While the workers and their clients real touch. This has given us a chance to build La Casita in order to save the center from demolition. Yet we must interests are to unite against the bosses’ a base amongst the many unemployed fight the cause of this and all working-class struggles: capitalism. To tremendous attacks, many are motivated workers here in NJ. Through base build- do this, we ask La Casita parents and friends to join PLP to fight for by a lack of class-consciousness and see ing and class struggle our aim is to win a communist revolution. Only with a communist victory in that battle many of these workers to be leaders in will workers be able to breathe easy, without the bosses’ (like those 1 http://news.brown.edu/ our party. in CPS) boot on our necks.J pressreleases/2011/06/warcosts [Party], aware that too close an as- sociation with unions has worked against it in the past, tried to walk a fine line on Thursday, sympathizing with the workers’ grievances while saying they should not have gone on strike. U.S. blocks workers’ will in Below are excerpts from mainstream newspapers that may be of use for our readers. Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, Haiti GW=Guardian Weekly, LAT=Los Angeles Times GW, 7/8 — …In June 2009 the Haitian parliament unanimously Voters don’t decide national policy passed a law that would raise the NYT, 7/16 — To the editor: With regard to Chi- minimum wage to $5 a day. Given na’s slow move to copy western democracy, one Haiti’s endemic poverty and brittle has to look with the impartial eyes of the outsider democratic culture, the fact that an as to exactly what this democracy has degenerated elected parliament could pass a law into. The Anglo-Saxon countries in particular have that would earn such popular sup- assessment.... eroded the democratic concept of choice to cre- port was encouraging. While the findings may seem obvious, health ate a Henry Ford system, where you can have any The U.S. thought otherwise….[They] lobbied economists….and other researchers said the study colour of governing party provided it is the same alongside the factory owners, including contrac- was historic and would be cited for years to come, — the same monetarist economic policy, the same tors for some of the priciest jeans and underwear shaping healthcare debates.... retreat from social welfare…the same two-speed in the west, to force the 60 cents an hour rate in The study found that those with insurance… systems of education, health and pension policies. the poorest nation in the western hemisphere even We have no choice, but we have the right to vote. were 40 percent less likely to borrow money or fail lower. to pay other bills because they had to pay medi- Worker anger broad, aims narrow They pressured the former Haitian president, cal bills…. “Being uninsured is incredibly stressful NYT, 7/1 — Joining a growing wave of unrest in Rene Preval, to undermine the popular democratic from a financial perspective, a psychological - per Europe over government austerity measures, tens will in the interests of greater profits for garment spective, and a physical perspective.”…. manufacturers until he created [a] two-tier mini- of thousands of British teachers and public-sector Capitalist world keeps slavery alive workers walked off their jobs on Thursday to pro- mum wage with workers in the textile industry get- test proposed changes to their pension plans. ting just $3 a day. NYT, 7/2 — Anyone who thinks slavery ended Two years later, during presidential elections, with the 13th Amendment is not paying attention. More than 10,000 schools were affected by the According to the latest State Department statis- strikes, as were universities, Social Security offices, the U.S. was back, interfering even as it preached democracy and good governance.… tics, as many as 100,000 people in the U.S. are in courtrooms, airport customs desks and other gov- bondage and perhaps 27 million people world- Why vote if real power resides beyond demo- ernment operations, Union officials warned that the wide. The numbers are staggering. strike could be the first of a series of walkouts here cratic control?...Increasingly it is global economics in the next few months, reflecting growing unhap- that shapes the narrative. These victims of human trafficking are vulnera- piness over layoffs, salary freezes, tax increases... ble men, women or children coerced into servitude and a persistently sluggish economy. Life extra tough if no medical Plan for sex or labor. They might be transported form NYT, 7/7 — When poor people are given medi- Russia to Europe, from the Philippines to Dubai, or ….Around Europe, workers are feeling the cal insurance, they not only find regular doctors and held in their hometown. same way....Irish and Portuguese governments see doctors more often but they also feel better, have been voted out of office….Greece has been are less depressed and are better able to maintain convulsed with riots as residents reacted with fury financial stability, according to a new, large-scale to its harsh austerity package….Britain’s….Labour study that provides the first rigorously controlled MORE ITEMS AVAILABLE AT WWW.PLP.ORG email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202 page 8 • CHALLENGE • 3 August 2011

Comrade Milt Rosen: Great Revolutionary continued from page 5

Turning the Tables on HUAC In the summer of 1966, the House Un- American Activities Committee launched an investigation of “subversive activities” in the movement against the Vietnam War. They subpoenaed the movement’s leaders, includ- ing five student members of PL. Comrade Milt and other Party leaders and members seized the opportunity to mobilize 800 people to pack the Washington, D.C. hearing room, dis- rupt the proceedings, and demonstrate out- side Congress. Some were arrested, and at least one student joined PL while in jail. Once again, our comrades openly advo- cated communism when questioned by the Committee. We “took the offensive and ex- posed the racist HUAC members for the Na- zis that they are,” as Milt wrote. We turned the hearings into an attack on capitalism and on the liberal Johnson Administration, accus- ing it of mass murder in Vietnam and racist policies at home. Those hearings were a ma- jor step toward the abolition of HUAC. “Build a Base in the Working Class” At our 1968 Party convention, Milt gave a speech that was subsequently published as one of the Party’s most durably impor- Harlem rebels marching with PL poster and CHALLENGE. tant statements. “Build a Base in the Work- ing Class” advanced the necessity to develop seizure of power by the working class in the 1917 Committee that this was a dangerous practice. close ties with industrial workers, on and off the Bolshevik Revolution. Stalin consolidated workers’ Staying on as chair forever implies indispensabil- job, and to immerse ourselves in their lives. In this power in the Soviet Union, and led the proletariat ity, and no individual communist can be indispen- way, a party could be built from tens to hundreds to smash the Nazis in World War II. In 1949, Mao sable. Therefore, in 1995, Milt stepped aside as to thousands — eventually to a mass party of mil- advanced the concept of a people’s war with a Party chairman. He remained active in other ways, lions, capable of seizing state power from the mass base to overthrow the U.S.-backed fascist re- in meetings and fund-raising. “Communists don’t rotten capitalist class. Milt’s vision was the polar gime in the Chinese revolution. believe in retirement,” he said. “We contribute as opposite of the bosses’ vicious caricature of com- As another link in this historical chain, Milt was long as we can.” munists as isolated terrorists. the first to expose the weaknesses of socialism as a A Communist Forever Milt’s analysis linked selfishness and individu- halfway house back to capitalism. Where Lenin, Sta- After stepping down as Party chair and be- alism to revisionism, anti-communism, and lack of lin and Mao had viewed nationalism as a stepping fore becoming too ill to function, Milt continued confidence in the masses. It advocated “serving stone toward communism, Milt was the architect to make vital contributions to PL and the interna- the people” through a long-range outlook and a of a new concept: one international working class tional movement. Among his most significant les- lifelong commitment to fighting for communism. It with one international communist party, leading sons was the need to understand the character of stressed the need for collectivity and for criticism workers directly to communism. Milt clarified the our historical period. Shortly after the events of and, especially, self-criticism. contradiction between reform and revolution, and how communists must function as revolutionaries 9/11, he spoke of how he’d underestimated the “I believe that all the weaknesses displayed by within the reform movement. And it was Milt who impact of the old communist movement’s demise, party members are also exhibited by myself,” Milt led the fight against the “cult of the individual,” and how far it has set back the class struggle. This said. “Even after 22 years of trying to help build a showing how it prevented workers from becoming failing, he pointed out, could lead to one of two revolutionary movement, I believe that one of my communist leaders and thinkers. devastating errors: false optimism or despair over main motives still is self-serving. That is, I do my the formidable difficulties in building a mass com- work more to satisfy something within me than to ‘No Chairperson for Life’ munist party. Milt’s self-criticism reminded us that serve the people. Nonetheless, I would say that Milt believed that the only way our Party could the old movement’s defeat may have left us in a the biggest reason that I have been able to do the grow was to constantly train new leaders, espe- “dark night,” but the working class has lived and little I still do…is that I really believe the working cially black, Latino, and women comrades. Milt be- fought through dark nights before. people will, eventually, defeat imperialism.” lieved that fighting both racism and sexism was an While the end of the old movement was the With PL members worldwide doing commu- integral part of the class struggle, and he ensured worst setback we’ve ever suffered, it isn’t the end nist work within mass organizations, it would be that much of the Party leadership would be in the of history. It’s not the end of class struggle. Our useful to study this speech in our Party clubs and hands of women. One of the Party’s early militant Party exists all over the world, and small though it study groups, and to spread its ideas to workers struggles grew out of its organization of mothers may be, it is growing. With words and by example, and students with whom we are involved in class on welfare, who united with welfare workers to Milt taught the vital importance of a long-term out- struggles. demand services for their children. As the Party look. More clearly than most, he knew there were Road to Revolution IV immersed itself in class struggles in the garment no shortcuts to revolution. He embraced it as the districts of New York and Los Angeles, in the grape commitment of a lifetime. In 1982, after a year of discussion within PL fields of the San Joaquin Valley, and in the Stella More than anything, he taught us never to give and its base, Milt led the struggle to adopt “Road D’oro cookie factory in the Bronx, we learned that up.J to Revolution IV” as the political line of the Party. unity between men and women workers was es- RRIV analyzed the return to capitalism in the Soviet sential to building our movement. Union and China. It concluded that fighting for so- In all previous communist parties, the chairmen cialism as a preliminary stage before communism (and virtually all were men) stayed on as party lead- — a core principle of the international communist ers until they died, were too sick to continue, or movement since Karl Marx — was fatally incorrect. were thrown out. Milt suggested to our Central This theory had led inexorably to a reversal of all the gains from the heroic struggles of millions of workers. RRIV, by contrast, called for winning the working class to fight directly for a communist so- SUBSCRIBE or RENEW! ciety. This was a qualitative leap for PL and for the All the communist politics, news, and struggle from international working class. around the world! Great Revolutionary Leadership ••••$15 individual 1 year Milt Rosen, through his leadership of the Pro- gressive Labor Party, made ground breaking con- ••••$35 for institution 1 year tributions to an international movement that be- Name______gan with the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Marx Address______and Engels showed how capitalism exploits the working class — and how the capitalists will be de- City______State______Zip______stroyed by the workers they have brutalized. Lenin Make check or money order to: Challenge Periodicals, PO Box 808, organized the communist party that led to the first Brooklyn, NY 11202 email: [email protected] www.plp.org PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202