Students: Take a Side!

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Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 819, 6 February 2004.

Since October, 70,000 supermarket workers organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union in Southern California have been locked in a strike battle against the rapacious Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs bosses. The bosses' campaign to slash health care coverage and drive down the wages and living standards of the heavily immigrant UFCW members to the poverty level imposed on employees of the miserable non-union Wal-Mart is emblematic of what working people around the country face. The Spartacus Youth Clubs call on students and youth who hate exploitation and oppression to join us in supporting the striking workers. Their fight is our fight!

The capitalist rulers are engaged in an all-out assault on working people and the oppressed—they're shredding democratic rights and targeting immigrants, black people and labor under the guise of the "war on terror"; there are massive cutbacks in education; layoffs are mounting and a generation of minority youth are being criminalized and incarcerated. From the bloody U.S. military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to the cop sieges of the Los Angeles black community and Miami anti-FTAA protesters, it is the capitalists who are carrying out a war of terror. A victory by the UFCW would be a blow against the same vicious ruling class behind this global onslaught. It is vitally necessary for all those who want to fight capitalist reaction to come to the aid of the UFCW strikers.

Unions across the country are raising funds for the striking workers. The SYCs appeal to youth nationwide to show their solidarity by donating money to help the striking workers pay rent, feed their families and remain on the picket lines so that they can hold out and win. We urge you to contribute! Where UFCW pickets are up, youth should help man the picket lines, as the Los Angeles SYC and youth we have brought along are doing.

The capitalist rulers would have you believe that you can change society for the better by deciding which of their representatives—Democrat or Republican—will oversee the repression and exploitation of the working masses for the next four years from the White House. What a charade! This illusion is echoed by the pro-capitalist union bureaucrats, who chain the workers to the class enemy. Gains for working people, black people, immigrants, women and all the oppressed have never been won except through hard struggle. If students are to have any hope of a decent future, they must ally themselves with the working class, which uniquely has the social power to bring the capitalist system to its knees. We fight to win students and young workers to the perspective of building the revolutionary workers party essential to the victory of socialist revolution, which alone can lay the material basis for the elimination of exploitation, oppression, racism and war.

The SYCs say: Victory to the UFCW strike! Show your solidarity—every dollar counts! All money collected by the SYCs will go to the UFCW strike fund. Make donations by contacting the local Spartacus Youth Clubs or by sending a check or money order to the Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013, earmarked "UFCW Strike Fund."