The strike of New York City transit workers is our fight too – that’s the word at the City University of New York. Thousands of courageous members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 are hanging tough against the Republican mayor and governor, Democratic state attorney general, a hate campaign in the big business press, huge fines and vicious threats. Come down to the picket lines with us – Victory to the transit strike!

CUNY students are the sons and daughters of NYC’s multiethnic working class, and a big part of its future. We have the same enemies. The gang attacking the TWU is hiking tuition every year, pushing thousands of working-class and minority students out. That gang has a name: the ruling class, a/k/a capitalists. The government (city, state, federal) is their tool.

Together, let’s beat them this time! Shut it all down! Bring out the LIRR, Metro North, PATH, NJ Transit, taxis – and the Professional Staff Congress (CUNY faculty union) too! They’re trying to break the TWU with the Taylor Law – the same slave-labor law the CUNY administration threatens against the PSC, which has gone three years without a contract. PSC signs read “Right to Strike, Right to Organize” – this right will be won only through hard class struggle, together with decisive sections of the working class, and the time is now. This is also how to smash NYU’s attempt to break the striking grad students’ union.

Above: CUNY Internationalist Clubs on TWU picket lines.
Below: In Mexico City, internationalist solidarity with TWU strike.
(Internationalist photos)

In militant support of the TWU strike, members of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs are bringing students to picket lines around the city and helping distribute The Internationalist. It’s a great lesson in class struggle! At East New York, an activist from Bronx Community College started chanting, “The Taylor Law Is Just a Piece of Paper.” The workers responded: “Tear It Up!” and “We Run New York, We Can Stop New York.” Another favorite is our chant “Screw Mayor Mike with a Solid Transit Strike!”

At West Farms Road in the Bronx, a black bus driver and army veteran was glad to hear about our fight to drive military recruiters off the campuses. “They’re recruiting blacks and Hispanics to go fight in Iraq,” he said, “and this is not our war.”

The rulers of this country tried to “shock and awe” the people of Iraq into submission, and now they’re trying it against labor “at home.” They go after the TWU because it is the bedrock of NYC labor – but in mobilizing around the power of the striking transit workers, all working people can defeat the arrogant ruling class, which finds itself in a jam over the war, and win our own demands. While Bloomberg & Co. scream that the TWU “broke the law,” the MTA lies, cheats and steals. “Law”? Bush vows to keep up the latest spy program no matter what any law or Constitution says. And the Democrats? Hillary “I Love the Iraq War” Clinton loves the Taylor Law too. Our war is the class war, it’s going on right here, and we fight to defeat the capitalist rulers from the streets of New York to Iraq.

One more thing: like many New Yorkers, CUNY students (and adjuncts!) worry where they will get the money to pay for their MetroCards. The subways and buses should be free – tear out the turnstiles! But that requires a society based on what we need, not capitalist profits. This means breaking from Democrats, Republicans and all the capitalist politicians. It means joining in the fight for a revolutionary workers party – for a workers government. As transit workers chanted at the East New York depot shop in Brooklyn: “Workers Power!”

21 December 2005

Students: get in contact with us to come down to the picket lines!

CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Bronx Community College Revolutionary Reconstruction Club. We publish the paper Revolution in accord with the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International