MTA KILLS AGAIN

Jose "Joe" Faundez, 52 years old from South America, a part time bus driver at division #9, of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, dropped dead in front of supervisors and other operators.
Joe showed up to work about 4:15am on Thursday, January 16th, signed in and went to set up his bus at the bus yard. He must have felt pain in his chest and came back into the office to notify the supervisor, Cynthia Garrett.
The supervisor told him, "It is not my problem; go report it to the radio dispatcher." Joe's heart was already in a delicate condition and the response and attitude of the supervisor were the final blow. He was not able to walk away from the window. He fell to the floor. As operators tried to help Joe, Supervisor Miss Anthony instructed all the operators present, "leave him alone and go on..." There was medical equipment at the division but it was not operational. Cynthia Garrett (supervisor) suffers a superiority complex. She usually does the work assignments but this week she was checking the sign-ins of the operators.
We can only speculate what was going on in Joe's mind but we can presume that he felt he needed to notify management that he would not be able to finish his assignment and to ask for help to seek medical assistance. Knowing the pressure that management is applying to the operators, Joe did not want to take the risk of using his cell phone to call the paramedics and then get penalized or even fired for doing the right thing in this case that would have saved his life.
If he had been under medical observation for his heart he would not have hesitated to seek medical help without taking his time to notify management. But he walked from the yard and tried to be responsible in notifying management that he wanted to be checked out and was not going to complete his work. It is obvious that Joe did not deserve what he was told, and he never expected it. The supervisor's response and attitude took its toll on Joe's heart; it was not able to handle it.
It is obvious that management does not care about its labor force. This is not the first such incident. There are numerous accounts of operators having been directly stressed out by management and having to get medical attention. Does it make anybody wonder if it is systematic to get rid of employees!
Is preserving our jobs more important than preserving our very own lives? Is the fear of getting fired greater than the fear of losing our life? Up to when are we going turn a blind eye to all the obvious hardship that operators are suffering?
If you are interested to start talking about the contract negotiations and what happened to Joe, go to the UTU General Committee Meeting at Feb. 7, at the Doubletree Hotel at 120 S. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles

—Transit Worker

Learn, Unlearn, Relearn!

Society demands substantial change in the face of the worldwide problems and this will only be possible through the training of the whole person through "education." This means that we need to consider that school is more than schooling, it includes all the ways that we are socialized: institutions, families, culture.
It can be said that the deterioration of a destructive society responds to an education based on inequality. In Salvadoran schools, the children of the rich are prepared to be bosses and the children of the poor to be workers or soldiers for the wars, to accept their functions… SHUT UP, learn individualism, competitiveness as a basis to live, better or worse. The school should combine the knower and the doer in one person.
This will be possible by conducting study groups, action conferences and summer projects with an education in which the work is FUSED: mental and manual, molecular biologist and nurse, for example, preventing a situation where only a small group has deep scientific knowledge. We must break down the barriers that divide experts and masses and end the idea that some people are more important than others and therefore should have an easier life than others.
Remove barriers between study and work, teacher and expert, student and apprentice. Workplaces must become centers of learning instead of isolated classrooms.
This enormous challenge can be carried out when we teachers no longer come to school to develop programs, but instead to form transformed generations, not divorced from the storm of life, from theory and practice.
Ché would say, "To build socialism, we need socialist men and women."
Marx: "To build communism, we need communist men and women."
Teacher: To transform education we need transformed teachers willing to learn to learn.
Unlearn.
Relearn.

—Comrade Teacher in El Salvador

Build Communist Nuclei in the Army and Factories

Comrade soldier, I read your interesting letter, "Would you pull the trigger?" in the previous issue of Red Flag. I appreciate your desire to hear the opinions of other ICWP comrades about some of your doubts.
First, I would like to express my admiration and pride at having comrades who will be the backbone of our future Red Army. I would also like to say that I agree with your observation that current conditions aren't the same as those present during the War in Vietnam. During that period there was a mass reformist movement, where soldiers found support as well as solidarity with their discontent and refusal to fight for imperialism, which created massive rebellions inside the army.
Nevertheless, in my opinion, the economic crisis wasn't as sharp or as deep as the one we are now experiencing. The appearance that soldiers are happy to be sent to battle zones in exchange for a few dollars more reflects both their feelings of powerlessness and lack of communist political consciousness.
In those days, the soldiers' movement was combative, but it was also spontaneous. There wasn't a serious plan to destroy capitalism, which is the cause of war.
Now, we have the advantage of having ICWP organizing within the armed forces, with a communist political line, well defined on the question of the key role that soldiers have in revolution.
We emphasize the pri-eminent need to build revolutionary communist nuclei in the army and the factories. They will guarantee not only the triumph of the revolution, but, more importantly, the installation and final victory of communism. We are like a chess player, at the point in a game where he is putting his pieces into position for checkmate.
Finally: to your question about what to do in a moment of combat where you find yourself face to face with the adversary. I hope, comrade, that today, while there is still time, you work, maneuver, influence and motivate other soldiers to prevent that situation. Remember that we, as a party, are doing our part. However, if, in spite of everything, that moment arrives, remember and never forget that ICWP needs you alive.

—Greetings from a communist worker!

My Experiences in Leafletting Sweatshop Workers in El Salvador

Last week a group of ICWP comrades carried out an activity that had been planned for a long time. Five comrades distributed Red Flag and leaflets to garment workers leaving factories in the free trade zone. We took advantage of the trip to create an atmosphere of comradeship and trust.
We began to distribute our newspaper Red Flag and the leaflet to the workers who hurried out of the factories and received the literature with great interest. Some read it while they walked and others carefully put it in their pockets to read more quietly at home. Only a very few people were indifferent to the literature. We distributed about 100 Red Flag newspapers and 150 leaflets.
We arrived at the factories a little before the first group of workers leaves work; the second group leaves an hour later. We divided into pairs, and one comrade was the look-out, to be aware of what was happening around us. A factory guard approached a comrade and asked for a newspaper to find out what we were distributing to the workers. This shows the subugation in which the factory workers are kept. The bosses try to prevent them from reading literature that helps them realize that they are victims of wage slavery and exploitation.
At the same time, the literature shows them that we need to organize to direct a struggle against the boss and the system, to win a communist system, in which there will be no bosses or slaves. Instead there will be humanity respecting humanity, working now not for a boss but to meet the needs of all of humanity without social classes.
I think that the activity was good, but we should improve the distribution of the tasks, that we shouldn't wait until we are already at the place. A criticism that a comrade made that seems correct to me is that we shouldn't give newspapers to the same workers to whom we have given the leaflets, because the literature ran out very quickly with many workers not receiving it.
We shoud do the same thing in the universities, because it is also important that university students realize that the capitalist education system is only preparing them to go and sell their labor power and generate wealth for the bourgeoisie. They need to feel identified with the working class since they will be part of the working class in the future. We need all the sectors in the fight for communism.

—El Salvador Youth

Popular Militias in Michoacán, Mexico, Raise Questions about Self-Defense: Need Communist Answers
A mass movement has arisen against the extortions and different abuses of the masses carried out for about a decade by criminals linked to drug trafficking without the government doing anything against this abuse. Opinion surveys show the majority of the Mexican population supports the self defense groups.
People felt alone and the self defense groups helped them regain their liberty. The arrival of the federal forces (the police and the army) provokes a question: "Why now?"
On February 24, 2013: "When we began there were 15 of us in the morning, in the afternoon we were 3,000 and at 8 pm we were 5,000," said Commander 5. That day the self defense arose.
Something crucial was the entrance to the Apatzingán, stronghold of the Templars, and where the main economic activities of the Tierra Caliente developed. For years they made everything more expensive. Why didn't the government come before? Now it is a nuisance, say the self-defense groups.
Capitalism is in a permanent fight for business, whether it is legal or illegal. The working class is violently subjugated in trade wars and real wars so that workers sell their labor power in the worst conditions, even those of slavery.
In the case of Michoacán, the conditions of subjugation went to the extreme. "They had to rebel and the conditions existed. The cattle ranchers and immigrants from the US put up the money, the laborers would protect the remote areas in a strategy known as rural defense, and the rural population would be ready to leave their homes when necessary to defend the communities. At the beginning, remember, Commander 5 worked directly with Dr. José Manuel Mireles. Today, he is one of the 30 leaders who advise the self defense groups." (Excelsior 1/20/14)
"They got involved with important people like cattle ranchers," say the self defense groups, so it's not strictly a movement of workers. However, the workers' mass participation means a great opportunity for organization as a class against the capitalists.
The self defense groups see clearly the risk that they run if they disarm; the government, however, has decreed that they must disarm.
The hypothesis of the weakness of the State against "the criminals" is not credible, and neither is it a "failed state." In truth the State has gotten stronger, with a bigger army and more police, arms, and laws against the population. The same violence linked to drug traffic is used to subjugate the working class, control migration, etc.
The drug business is more profitable than others, so that the capitalists fight over it. Their profits enter into official circulation and nourish the legal businesses. It's all capitalism! Let's organize to get rid of the commodity system!
Let's spread communist ideas among the self defense groups and all workers through Red Flag.

—Comrade in Mexico

Protest of Police Murder of Kelly Thomas

Jan 18—Hundreds of youth and workers protested outside the Fullerton, California, Police Department after cops Manuel Ramos and Jay Cincinelli were found not-guilty of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter after they beat unarmed, homeless Kelly Thomas to death. Thomas was schizophrenic. He was taped pleading and yelling for his life during the attack.
Thomas was white, the victim of the same racist police terror that has murdered black and latino youth in growing numbers. Capitalism unleashes and protects its killer cops to terrorize the working class more in these times of crisis. Communist revolution will eliminate this terror and build a society without bosses or cops, where the mentally ill will be protected and integrated into society so they can do useful work.

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