Building Communist Unity among Workers and Students here ♦ Industrial Workers are Important here ♦
TORRANCE (USA), September 27— Workers at Lisi, a Boeing subcontractor, stopped for copies of Red Flag and a communist leaflet about the Boeing strike. “I wish them the best,” one said.
Building Communist Unity among Workers and Students
The Seattle collective distributes Red Flag regularly at the Boeing Renton plant and three Seattle high schools. Hundreds of workers and students see each issue. The Boeing strike has given us an opportunity to make clear the connection between the school work and the Boeing industrial work. We wrote a leaflet, which we are distributing at the high schools along with the paper. It speaks to the strong connection between the school employees and students and the Boeing workers.
Education workers train a new generation of workers who will enter the military and work in the factories. Education workers struggle with having too many students in their classes. Staff shortages mean that some students do not get the help they need. When students are not able to meet goals, the teachers are blamed.
Boeing workers produce planes for the bosses to sell and make profits The workers also make weapons that are used to fight the rulers’ wars, such as in Gaza and Ukraine. The workers are forced to speed up production and work under unsafe conditions. When planes fail, the workers are blamed.
The leaflet explained that capitalism creates these conditions. And that the only way to end them is with a revolution for a communist world, without money, bosses, wage slaves, borders, racism, and sexism.
We included an excerpt from Langston Hughes’ poem “Good Morning, Revolution” (below) and invited students and school workers to join us at the picket line.
The leaflet has been very well received. We are hoping to turn the contacts we are making with the school workers and students into communist relationships to build ICWP and advance the fight for a communist world. Some school workers have already gone to the picket lines and are organizing others to join them.
Our main goal is not to “win” any strike, but to win workers to join the ICWP and fight for communism. Everyone has something to contribute to the struggle. When we become closer to them, we can struggle together and with each other. This is an essential, long-term commitment, including ups and downs. And it is the only way the working class can win!
—Seattle Comrades
From “Good Morning, Revolution” by Langston Hughes
Listen, Revolution,
We’re buddies, see —
Together,
We can take everything:
Factories, arsenals, houses, ships,
Railroads, forests, fields, orchards,
Bus lines, telegraphs, radios,
(Jesus! Raise hell with radios!)
Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas,
All the tools of production,
(Great day in the morning!)
Everything —
And turn ’em over to the people who work.
Rule and run ’em for us people who work.
Industrial Workers Are Important
Five or six young Boeing workers were leaving the strike vote at the IAM union hall in Seattle. A comrade approached them with our ICWP leaflet and Red Flag. They were all glad to take both.
They said they were definitely ready to strike against Boeing. The comrade said, “I bet you’re tired of being blamed for Boeing’s failures in producing safe planes.” They all answered “Yes!” They added, “They don’t pay us enough. They don’t hire enough people and then they blame us!”
The comrade said that, also, some people who are furious over the genocide in Gaza blame Boeing workers for the US government and Boeing sending war planes and bombs to Israel to kill Palestinian workers. She told them, “You aren’t the problem. You’re the solution.”
“We are important,” said one young worker.
She told them about the Putilov workers in Russia who, in 1917, made tanks and guns and drove them right into the revolution. “Workers like you are key to the communist revolution we need to end exploitation and genocide. Workers can run the world.”
“I like the way you’re thinking,” said another young worker.
We hope to see them on the picket lines.
—A Comrade