Communist Party Statement on statewide elections

The 2010 elections:

Strengthen the fight for peace, democracy and equality!

The National Situation

We’ve got our work cut out for us.

Since the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the extreme right has gone on a rampage, especially with the formation of the so-called Tea Parties, perhaps the most openly racist “movement” this country has seen in decades. While polls show that they represent a very small portion of American working people, they have an undue amount of influence, as they are supported by, even created by, much of the mainstream media and the Republican Party, the tools of extreme sections of monopoly capital.

Labor and the people’s movements have won some amazing victories under the new balance of forces that was ushered in with Obama’s election, especially health care reform and the stimulus package of 2009—but much more needs to be done. Every good initiative by the President, by Congress and by the people’s movement has run up against immediate obstruction by the minority Republican Party. The recent attempts to deny extensions of unemployment compensation are but one example of their callous disregard for the well being of America’s working people.

This is why the 2010 elections are of historic importance: we could consolidate the victory of 2008 and move forward in a pro-people and anti-racist direction, or we could see the beginning of a big step backwards. In order to improve the economic situation and the situation of working people overall, and to beat back the Republican-Tea Party offensive, we need to ensure that the Republicans do not pick up seats in the midterm elections and to further turn the Congress against them. While the Democrats are far from perfect, the biggest obstacle to progress it the Republican extremists’ bloc.

The Situation in New York State

Using the current economic crisis as a pretext, monopoly capital—the corporations, the big developers and so on—is on a rampage to break unions and to decisively shift power even further away from working people towards Wall Street. Here in New York, their first line of attack has been to cut services and, as we’ve seen in the budget fights and the attempt to privatize schools under the guise of creating more charters, to break the public sector unions.

The assault on public workers is an assault on all workers: they hope to divide public and private working people in order to weaken the working class fightback overall.

While monopoly capital has a home in both the New York Democratic and Republican parties, the Republicans are leading the most vicious assault. And while there are Democrats in our state leadership who’ve taken some terrible positions, the legislative Democrats have by and large been the group that has been most responsive to the needs of working people. Senate Democrats, for example, were able to restore $600 million in education funding, and more in health care funding, to the budget. The prospects of overriding the gubernatorial veto would be much greater were there far fewer Republicans.

Consequently, as bad as Governor David Paterson has been, our main enemy is at the present time still the Republican Party, the preferred party of Bloomberg, Wall Street and the big developers. In the upcoming elections, working people have a great stake in ensuring that there are more Democrats and less Republicans in office.

Andrew Cuomo and the state Democratic ticket

Still, there’s absolutely nothing to be excited about when it comes to the Democratic candidate for governor, Andrew Cuomo. He’s been arguing for exactly the same business-friendly, anti-worker policies as David Paterson. Further, his shocking insensitivity to the African-American, Latino, Asian-American and Afro-Caribbean communities is despicable. How can it be that, in a state where millions of African Americans and Latinos live and contribute, there is not a single member of either of these communities on the statewide Democratic ticket?

The only possible response to this is condemnation.

The way forward in the fight against racism

While we understand the indignation felt by the African-American and other communities, we don’t consider the creation of the new Freedom Party, co-chaired by City Council member Charles Barron, to be a viable tactic to fight racism. We believe that history has shown that the only way to defeat racism is for all working people, Black, white, Latino, Asian, male and female, old and young, unionized and unorganized, to unite together in common struggle. We see the anti-union posturing and chauvinism that has come from some of the state Democratic leadership as two sides of the same coin. You can’t defeat one without the other. Consequently, you can’t win workers’ rights without all sections of the working class, and you can’t defeat racism without the participation of white working people.

When united, we win; divided we lose.

Council member Barron has said that African Americans have been used by Democrats. It is true that the African-American community has overwhelmingly supported Democrats in all of the most recent elections, including between 80-90 percent support for Spitzer in the previous gubernatorial elections. And we’re sure Barron is right to suggest that Cuomo is banking on the mature political sense of the African-American and Afro-Caribbean people of New York to vote, despite the obvious shortcomings and chauvinism inherent in his campaign, against the Republican candidate.

We see the answer to this differently, however, and also take note of the fact that no other leaders of the African American community have as of yet endorsed Council member Barron’s proposals. We have to ask the question of how the working class, the racially and nationally oppressed, women and youth can build up the movement to push the state Democrats to offer better choices. We’ve seen that, in communities across the state, we’ve been able to do so: all one has to do is to look at the progressive, labor-oriented, Black, Latino and Asian city council members. There are many in the Democratic Party, and even more in its orbit, who are part of this fight: the labor movement, especially the transport workers, the service workers, SEIU 32BJ and 1199, and the teachers; organizations of racially and nationally oppressed people; women’s rights organizations—all of these groups especially, as well as the African-American and Latino Democratic clubs, the progressive Democratic clubs, the peace movement and so on. This movement must defeat the Republicans in November, but at the same time it has to strengthen the anti-corporate, anti-racist currents pressuring the state Democratic Party. Many of these important progressive forces are working within the Working Families Party.

In doing all this, these forces help to build their own independence.

We should throw ourselves into the fight with the optimism of knowing that, despite Cuomo’s shortcomings, we can build the movement stronger and better, and the November elections can be a huge step forward in defeating the anti-worker, racist extremists and building a broader and more united movement for peace, equality, civil rights and democracy, both at the state and national levels.

State Committee

New York State Communist Party

Islamic center has broad support in new york

To see original article, click here.

Some media reports give the impression that Islamic fanatics have won the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, over the wishes of the vast majority of New Yorkers. But the truth is far different. A self-described moderate Islamic group hoping to promote tolerance and diversity, and to do its part to help rebuild the community injured by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is hoping to build a community center-and people of all faiths are supporting them.

The controversy arose when the Cordoba Initiative, which aims at "improving Muslim-West relations" announced it would renovate a building - which is already used as overflow for a nearby mosque - into an Islamic community center.

"This is a center like the 92nd Street Y or the Jewish Community Center," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative said at a press conference. "It is meant to have programs to serve the community, to serve the Muslim and the non-Muslim community. This is also our expression of the 99.999 percent of Muslims all over the world, including in America, who have condemned and continue to condemn terrorism."

An assembly of extreme-right wing Republicans, Tea Party members and others influenced by their rhetoric has denounced the project because it is to be built near to the site of the 9/11 attacks. They claim it will be a "breeding ground" for terrorists and demand that the government intervene to stop its construction.

As many point out, despite the Republican-right hype, the center isn't actually that close to the old World Trade Center site. In a huge city like New York, a few blocks is essentially a world away.

And, said Feisal, "We condemn terrorism. We recognize it exists in our faith community, but we're committed to eradicating it." He appealed for the help of non-Muslims, saying, "We cannot do this by ourselves. We need your support, we need your cooperation. We need coalitions of Muslims and non-Muslims together to achieve the common objectives that we as patriotic Americans want to achieve."

People of all political and religious persuasions have voiced support, including Christians, Jews, and others, even outspoken atheists. These disparate groups all argue that, no matter how offended some may feel, there is no basis for interfering in the Bill of Rights guarantee that the government must not discriminate based on a person or group's religious affiliation.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the Jewish American group J Street, said the fight over the Islamic center is, in many ways, a battle over the soul of the United States. "The principle at stake in the Cordoba House controversy goes to the heart of American democracy and the value we place on freedom of religion," he said.

J Street collected 10,000 signatures "to counter the opposition" to the plans "to build a community center in lower Manhattan modeled after Jewish Community Centers and Y's all over the country."

New York's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an August 3 speech, noted that the building OS private property and "the owners have a right to use it as a house of worship" and said, "The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right."

"Part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance," Bloomberg said. "It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11."

New York City's progressive Comptroller John Liu voiced his support for the project, saying, "The development of both the mosque and the center gained strong support of the local community board earlier this month. Both are dedicated to promoting education and understanding, and intended to help bridge the divide and unify New York."

While those raising a hue and cry over the project say the Bill of Rights religious liberty protection must be suspended so as not to offend families of 9/11 victims, many survivors disagree.

Donna Marsh O'Connor, spokesperson for September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, said, "This building will serve as an emblem for the rest of the world that Americans stand against violence, intolerance and overt acts of racism and that we recognize that the evil acts of a few must never damn the innocent."

Lunatics protesting mosque aren't so different from bin Laden

An angry mob showed up in lower Manhattan to protest the opening of an "extremist Islamic center that aims to mock the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and create an army of jihadists who'll wage a battle that will eventually, if successful, destroy the America."

Sound far-fetched? That's because it is.

The above statement is pure fabrication. Pure fabrication - with the exception of the angry mob. They actually did show up.

Egged on by right-wing talk radio and the rest of the tea party crowd, these people descended to protest a "mosque" they perceived to be too close to Ground Zero.

Every mosque, they argued, is a "breeding ground for terrorists, as Islam is based in cruelty and terror and its logical outcome is the fight against modernity, democracy and tolerance."

Further, given that the 9/11 hijackers were Islamic, the hate-talkers say, the "mosque" must certainly be a slap in the face to those who perished. (Whether or not this would be an insult to the several hundred Muslims who also died there was never explicitly said.)

What's being built two block away from Ground Zero isn't even a mosque at all, but a community center based on Islamic values. According to the website for Cordoba House, the center's name, the mission will "[promote] tolerance, reflecting the rich diversity of New York City."

While these are likely not values appreciated by the frothing demonstrators, they are a far cry from mocking 9/11 victims.

Then there's the concept that if people of one religion do something wicked to some particular group or in some certain place, it naturally follows that the presence of that religion near the people or area where the atrocities occurred is somehow an insult. But except in the case of Islam, no one in America believes that. If that were the case, there should be no Christian churches near any synagogue, given the horrible persecution that Jews have experienced for centuries at the hands of Christians. But there are synagogues and churches side-by-side all around this city.

And, of course, Catholic churches are allowed not only to be near, but also to run, elementary schools.

Most nakedly obvious is the blatant bigotry against Islam. Those protesting the "mosque" argue that it is a religion of hate based on violence. A fair reading of the Koran will reveal some truly ugly verses-but the same can be said of the Bible. There are acts of genocide, incest, hatred, collective punishment, and so on in both the Old (Torah) and New Testaments.

But millions upon millions of religious people, Jewish, Christian and Islamic, base their faith not on this or that terrible verse, but on a perception that their preferred holy book tells them to love their neighbor.

Sure, Osama bin Laden calls himself a Muslim, but Pat Robertson (who told America we deserved 9/11) calls himself a Christian. In Israel, the hateful settlers take the Torah as their basis, but so do the progressive and democratic sections of the Zionist movement.

Just as most Christians and Jews are not extremists, neither are most Muslims. In fact, the very center being protested has as its aim to "provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by Islamic values in their truest form - compassion, generosity, and respect for all."

Compassion, generosity and respect for all: These are values common to billions of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as any nonbeliever, Communist or true progressive.

Perhaps, most chilling of all is what these demonstrators were demanding: the government to stop the construction of a community center specifically because of the religion of those building it. In short, they wanted the suspension of the Bill of Rights.

Is there anything more chilling than thousands of people demonstrating against fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution?

Osama bin Laden and his thugs wanted to destroy the west, particularly the United States. They failed miserably. Only seven years after 9/11, the American people elected the first ever African American president, a man who grew up in a Muslim country and whose middle name, Hussein, is the same as that of two current or recent Middle Eastern rulers.

There is a huge democratic movement in this country, with labor at its core, that is white, African American, Asian, Latino, Arab and that unites people of all faiths or lack thereof. Its aim is to continue the very American tradition of the fight for peace, equality, democracy, civil rights and freedom-including of religion.

In an ironic twist, though many of them sported American flags, those protesting downtown had much less in common with this movement-and much more in common with bin Laden.

Forget budget cuts; tax the rich

By Dan Margolis, for the NY State Communist Party

Reading the news, one could be forgiven for believing the false notion that there is too little money in the state of New York. The state budget - due on April 1 - still hasn't been passed, as Albany can't come to an agreement on how to plug the $5 billion deficit. Instead, the legislature has been passing a series of week-long budget extenders to keep the government running.

But while the effects of the crisis are real, the perceived lack of wealth is not.

A federal court struck down Gov. David Paterson's plan to furlough state workers and delay their pay raises, and now he is now calling for thousands of layoffs. Paterson openly questions whether or not an agreement made between labor and the state in 2009, which says that there would be no layoffs in return for big pension concessions from labor, is binding. Even if it can't be overridden, the governor is laying the groundwork for the layoffs to take place as soon as the agreement expires.

On top of that, many in the state Legislature are working to slash funding to education, aid to cities and towns, health care and other areas. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken advantage of the situation and is pushing to reduce the city's workforce by nearly 4 percent. After widespread protest, the mayor was forced to retreat on his plan to axe several thousand teachers, but he is now threatening their planned pay raises.

All across the city and state, the effects of the budget crisis are being felt. Even the New York Public Library has been forced to send out appeals to its supporters urging them to get in touch with their local representative to halt the mayor's proposal for the biggest funding cut to the library system in the city's history. The transit system is planning to lay off hundreds of station agents (there would have been more had a judge not intervened) and to shut down train lines and bus routes.

On the surface, the deficits seem huge. The state is short $9.2 billion, and the corresponding figure for the city is $4.9 billion. In addition, the MTA, a public authority, faces an $800 million shortfall.

What to do?

Of course, there are a number of ways to reduce wasteful spending without cutting services important to working people, and a number of watchdog groups and unions have pointed them out.

But the money is there. Instead of making draconian cuts, the state should simply raise revenue.

Let's put the deficit into perspective: If you add up the city and state deficit, and throw in the MTA to boot, you come up with a total of $14.9 billion. Our mayor, who is presiding over the gutting of people's living standards, is a billionaire. So much of a billionaire, in fact, that he could pay off all of the city and state debts and still have more than $2 billion left over. To put that number into perspective, Bloomberg would then, if he lives to be 108 years old, still have, not accounting for interest, $50 million per year to live off of.

And there are more like Bloomberg: According to a 2008 issue of Forbes, there are 70 other billionaires in the city limits, and they have an average net value of $3.3 billion. These 70 New Yorkers - out of nearly 8.5 million and not including the mayor - control $231 billion alone.

On top of all that, this is the home of Wall Street and its huge firms like Goldman Sachs and others, and countless multi-millionaires.

Compared to all this wealth, the $15 billion the state needs to sustain services to working people seems like a trifle.

Aside from the pressure that monopoly capital can put on the city and state governments, there is simply no reason for New York to face layoffs or cuts to social services. Perhaps more than any other state in the country, we can, if the political will is there, balance the budget - or go further and enact our own statewide stimulus plan.

A small surcharge on the billionaires, a stock transfer tax (specifically tailored to exempt 401k and other pension savings), ensuring that the Fair Share tax law doesn't sunset: all of these things could solve our budget problem.

A planned demonstration by AFSCME District Council 37, which represents 125,000 city public workers, as well as a number of other rallies and campaigns to get people to contact their representatives, are all steps in the right direction.

What's needed is the reemergence of the coalition that enacted the Fair Share Tax Reform a couple of years ago, a broad alliance of all New York City labor, the Working Families Party, the African American, Latino, Asian American communities, religious groups and others.

Fight for public parks in NY

By Elena Mora

Most mornings, I take a 45-minute walk around my Bronx neighborhood. My route takes me past Harris Field, where my kids played baseball with the Mosholu-Montefiore Little League. My oldest played there for seven seasons, and I have lots of good memories of Harris, of sitting in my portable chair, rooting for my kids and schmoozing with the other parents.

Unfortunately Harris Field has been closed for two years now, and from the looks of the place (construction fences closing it off, dirt and rocks everywhere), no one will be playing baseball or any other sport there anytime soon.

What's the problem? In a nutshell, lack of money.

In the spring of 2008, a renovation project began at Harris, with a budget of $6.6 million, which soon went up to $8.7 million. However, the price tag skyrocketed to $15 million, after high levels of lead were found in the soil.

Given the budget crisis facing the city, and the priorities of the Bloomberg administration, it's hard to imagine how they will find money for a park in the Bronx, despite the fact that Harris was a very busy place. In addition to the Mosholu-Montefiore sports program, the Bronx High School of Science, DeWitt Clinton High and others shared its six fields.

For the past two years, M-M has had to cut its Little League program from 1000 to 500 kids, and the high schools have scrambled for space. Unfortunately, playing field scarcity is a common story here in NYC- unless you have money, as when a group of private schools brokered a deal with the city to reserve for themselves the choice times on Randalls Island fields in exchange for paying part of the renovation costs.

What's happening at Harris is just a tiny part of the catastrophe that's in the works when it comes to the public places where working-class people relax, play and enjoy nature.

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, state parks from coast to coast are threatened with deep funding cuts - in fact, they list "state parks" as #1 of the most endangered sites.

This year nearly 30 states have proposed or enacted such cuts and a recent survey estimates as many as 400 state parks could close. And city parks are in as bad or worse shape.

Here in New York, Governor Paterson recently came up with a cynical proposal for saving New York's parks - cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Fund. Needless to say, environmental organizations are outraged at this King Solomon-like choice.

Is there no money for parks? The Central Park Conservancy (a private foundation that runs Manhattan's Central Park) raises 85% of its $25 million annual operating budget from private donors, and pays its president $364,000 a year. Richard Hammond, the CEO of the recently opened Highline park in lower Manhattan receives $250,000 a year.

When I read this, I thought about the fact that Paterson and gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo have both come out against the State Assembly's "millionaire tax" -- a 1 percentage point increase on millionaires, and another 0.75 points on those earning more than $5 million per year.

Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has estimated that a small tax of a quarter of 1 percent imposed on the sale of a wide range of securities would yield $100 billion to $150 billion.

As the Central Park Conservancy slogan says, "You gotta have park." Unless we believe that Manhattanites "gotta have park" more than people in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, then funding must be found to keep all of our parks open and cared for. Unless we believe that the students at exclusive private schools in Manhattan have more right to sports than kids in the Bronx, funding must be found to quickly clean up and renovate Harris Park.

So yes, tax those millionaires (the "half-millionaires" too). Tax those Wall Street bonuses, most of which were given as stock transfers to avoid income tax. Find the money, because we all gotta have park.