LOS ANGELES — "Why do you concentrate on us?" an MTA driver at Division 18 recently asked. She is not the first MTA bus operator to pose this question to Red Flag distributors. "You are part of the industrial working class and as such you are key to the communist revolution we are organizing," is always our answer.
Understanding their importance and acting accordingly will be ever more crucial as MTA workers, increasingly unable to live in the old way, begin a planned fight-back against MTA's intensifying reign of terror. They are talking more and more about a strike at contract time next year. Given this, two recent struggles are pertinent to these workers: Brazilian bus operators and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) strike (Read about BART strike here).

Slogan of the Brazilian Masses: Free Transportation for All!
In the latest mass rebellions that shook the Brazilian capitalists to their boots, bus operators showed their power. They paralyzed São Paolo, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, when they joined the demonstrators protesting a bus fare increase. Their close ties with the masses - transporting 10.5 million passengers daily – and their supportive work actions positioned these operators to lead 50,000 demonstrators in pitched battle against the cops who attacked the demonstration. "Free transportation for all," became a rallying slogan of the Brazilian masses. It was picked up by these operators and other industrial workers. It shows that the Brazilian masses and the industrial working class there are clamoring for a different world: a world where we are not enslaved by money.
It shows the potential of winning millions to fight for a communist vision of a world without bosses, money and wage slavery. We urge the masses in Brazil, and bus operators there and everywhere, to raise that slogan to a higher level: "Free transportation for all in a world without money and exploitation!"

BART Operators Strike: Another Important Lesson
The BART strike shows that unions are part of the problem, not the solution. Yet, many LA MTA workers have illusions that SMART will be a different union. They are falling for the SMART officials' lies that they will support them in a strike and will build solidarity for their struggle with other unions locally, state and nationwide. Union officials' actions speak louder than words. These vipers are there – just like the cops - to "protect and serve" their capitalist masters, while stabbing us in the back.
Don't expect anything from these "union leaders." Their job is to help MTA and US bosses impose their reign of terror on us to super-exploit us and keep us away from communist revolution, the only true solution to our problems.
Therefore, we don't need "better unions or better union leaders." Furthermore, we don't need trade-unionist ideology, but a revolutionary communist one instead, in order to build a massive movement to destroy the profit system that condemns us to wage slavery.
We need political strikes against capitalism and for communism Slogans like "Free transportation for all in a world without money or exploitation" can inspire millions nationally and internationally to envision and fight for a different world. It could forge unity between MTA operators and their passengers who could identify with and support such a slogan. They, in turn, could influence and mobilize millions more. If millions can visualize a society with free transportation for all, they will find it easier to visualize a world without money, where everything is free: not sold or bought but distributed according to need! This would mean a political strike against capitalism, not for economic crumbs we might not get or, even if gotten, are quickly taken back. It would advance the communist understanding of our class to join and build the International Communist Workers' Party to fight for the communist world we need. MTA workers need to join ICWP and organize study-action groups of Red Flag in all the Divisions to coordinate our revolutionary struggle.