MAY DAY IN SAN SALVADOR

A clear sky, with a sun that came out to brighten not just any morning. It was our day, our holiday, our meeting: the day of the working class, International Workers' Day. The setting was the streets, plazas, parks; messages on banners and fabrics that were no longer just this but became subversive signs. These were the announcements of the day.
The heat of the morning was cold compared to the effervescent heat of the masses. We are here! The ICWP is present, united, and together with the working class, our class comrades. Not like those who, I don't know if they are trying to separate from our class, saying, "we accompany the workers." Can it be that they don't belong, that now they are bourgeois? Can it be that they now only do it for protocol? They shout "cheaper medicines," "fairer wages." Does such a thing exist? Our struggle is definitely antagonistic.
We, already there, started distributing Red Flag. The workers asked for it, they stopped us for copies. The truth is that it took us longer to get them out of the box in which we carried them than to distribute them. And not only that; if one stayed a moment more, the workers began to browse through and read it.
This fills us with satisfaction in the work done, because of the worker's interest in knowing and learning. And so with the articles, notes, letters, editorials that Red Flag publishes, it is removing the veil imposed by the capitalist system and informing all that another society is possible.
Farewell comrades!
--Young Red Poet

Students: Fight for the Future of the Working Class!

"I'm not repeating any classes. It doesn't affect me." That's what one of our fellow students said when we told him that the Cal State University system plans to charge an extra $100 per unit if we have to repeat a class. They're also planning to lay off professors and cut back the number of classes offered. This makes it that much harder to graduate, while they charge us extra if it takes us too long to graduate, or if we take more than a full class load.
Capitalist education pushes the idea of "getting out of the ghetto/barrio." It creates very individualist ways of thinking. Our parents tell us that we have to go to college to "be somebody." This insinuates that they are nobodies and worthless to society because they don't have a capitalist education, even though they work hard every day to feed us, put a roof over our heads, and create everything of value in society.
Individualism is created and imbedded in our brains since we were young. If they had raised everybody's tuition, our friend and everybody else would have been angry. Instead, they cut certain groups of people within the working class. This is a divide and rule plan which keeps people from seeing what's really going on and could keep us from uniting against these cuts. That's probably why there haven't been big protests like in the past.
The extra fee for repeating a class is an especially racist attack on Cal State students, most of whom, on most campuses, are black and latino/a working class youth. We come from inferior schools where we don't get the preparation we need to be successful in the bosses' classrooms, and a lot of us do have to repeat classes—and don't have the money to pay for it.
We went to the rally on our campus protesting these fee increases. Many students were really angry. "I voted for Governor Brown, and to increase taxes, and now I'm getting stabbed in the back!"
We told them that it's a good lesson—you should never trust the Democrats or any capitalist politician. They are in office to do what the capitalist rulers want, and what they want now is to force working-class students out of the universities, especially liberal arts majors.
As they step up their long-term plans for world war, they're cutting back on lots of services, including liberal arts education. They are funding technical education—math, science, and technology that will help them prepare for war. Students have to think about more than what's in it for them. We have to think about how we can fight for a better future for the whole working class.
We have to plan how to turn the bosses' world war into a revolution for communism, and how we can build a communist society where we educate each other for the betterment of all and value the contribution of every worker.
—Students in California

Venezuela:  Vultures Fight Over Control of Oil and Natural Gas

The death of Hugo Chavez caused a commotion in Venezuela and throughout Latin America, especially among his political followers and opponents. His opponents wanted to return to power and thus give the coup-de-grâce to
21st Century Socialism and to the treaties of Alba and Petrocaribe signed with some countries.
No wonder there's a fight. Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, calculated at more than half a billion barrels, and also of plentiful natural gas in the area of the Orinoco River. This struggle of vultures, between the current government and the opposition, has been unleashed over control of these resources. They see in the control of these deposits the source of $millions in individual interests and those of their class for years to come.
The current, newly-elected President Maduro, will continue with his socialism, which in essence is nothing more than a form of capitalist exploitation. His "socialism" tolerates the existence of the same conditions of exploitation of the working class: money, unemployment, religious fanaticism and especially the idolatry and cult of the personality of Chavez, who is considered a god.
On the other hand, Maduro assures the capitalist powers, mainly the US empire and China, the supply of oil for domestic use and mainly for war, which is unstoppable.
The fear and terror that erupted in many countries of Central America, South America and the Caribbean that maintain treaties or agreements for the supply of oil, has temporarily passed. If the opposition had won, these treaties would have been eliminated or revised.
In essence these treaties with Petrocaribe are the most blatant capitalist political blackmail that allowed Chavez to win allies and some degree of popularity. He allowed his allies to pay 50% of the oil bill outright and the other 50% in the long term at low interest rates.
Make no mistake: Venezuelan oil is the source of the bosses' fight. Whoever is in power will not bring greater benefits to the poor and working class. Under the capitalist system, all the earth's natural resources serve so that the rich bosses continue to increase their profits. Only in a communist system will we guarantee the efficient development of the natural resources for the good of the whole society.
—Comrade in Honduras