TEANECK, NJ, March 10—Upwards of 500 angry workers and youth gathered outside of the Teaneck National Guard Armory on Sunday to protest the U.S. military’s active support and local New Jersey Zionists participation in the genocide in Palestine. An Israeli real estate company, My Home in Israel, is one of many companies around the world where Zionists are clamoring to purchase lands where workers in Palestine have been violently displaced (NYT- 3/11). As mass starvation and famine sets in due to the imperialist genocide of workers in Palestine, workers around the world are intensifying their rage which manifested at the protest of this property showcase.
The U.S. bosses revealed again their role in the genocide by calling out local Teaneck police to insure that the showcase took place, About half a dozen members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) attended and hundreds of CHALLENGEs were distributed, as well as a letter of anti-racist solidarity connecting workers from Gaza to workers facing eviction and gentrification in New Jersey.PLP demonstrated once again that in spite of the limited, nationalist leadership of the anti-occupation movement, our class supports the internationalist vision of workers’ power and that our ideas are indeed mass ideas.
Workers militantly confront zionism—open to communist politics
While the Zionest counter protesters were to be expected, what was not expected was the militant reaction of protesters. A group of young and courageous protesters broke ranks during the rally in front of the Teaneck armory, setting a militant tone for the rest of the day. Meanwhile the bosses quickly showed that their lackey police were there only to serve and protect the Zionists and not the rights of our protest. When one lone Zionist showed up across the street from the rally at the armory, dozens of courageous youth crossed the street and encircled him with chants and flags.
As members of PLP, we met before the rally, developed our own strategy for security, and ensured that we were supportive but not spontaneously driven to a fight that our class was not prepared for. The anger and desperation that workers feel can only be resolved by waging internationalist class war against phony capitalist democracy and its inevitable path to inter-imperialist war and fascism.
Later on during the demonstration we drew on that anger and militancy against another group of Zionist counter protesters by leading dozens in a chant calling them the Nazi fascists that they are. Many were invigorated at the identification of Zionism with the historical fact of fascism during World War II. Our goal was to offer a counter-narrative to the lie that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, and workers appreciated that.
While the protest leaders energetically led the crowd for hours, they failed politically to make the connections between the Teaneck armory and the property sales of stolen land. In other words, none of the leaders gave a speech about how U.S. imperialist strategy for the past 75 years has entailed naked support for Zionist Israel as an anchor site for their profiteering domination in the oil-rich Middle East. Even more, U.S. bosses' imperialist dogfights in the Middle East–anywhere from Yemen to Iran–were not addressed at all. Thousands of New Jersey National Guard soldiers were deployed to unknown parts of the Middle East in the past few weeks (News 12 NJ, 1/16).
The so-called “aid” efforts of the U.S., such as a proposal for a temporary port on the Gaza coast, will more than likely become launching pads for future U.S. operations. The leaders of the protest avoided these larger geopolitical concerns and simply declared that one ethno-nationalist Palestinian state was the solution.
We were there to fill in the gaps and offer a counter-analysis and solution through our bullhorns, papers and one-on-one conversations. We led dozens in a chant screaming “Arab, Jewish, Black and white, same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite!” And as we left, many of the protesters thanked us for our contribution to the internationalist militancy of the event.
Communism internationalism smashing racist borders
The highlight was perhaps when we got dozens of protesters at the rally to take letters of support for a Morristown-based PLP comrade who stands to face eviction after denouncing the brutal, racist housing authority in their remodeling scheme of her complex. Utilizing PLP’s slogan that “U.S. Israel Hand in Hand, Racist Displacement is the Bosses Plan,” we spread this message at the rally while actively encouraging protesters to send their letters to the Morristown courts in defense of our comrade. While we could have more courageously disrupted the rally in front of the armory, we maintained our politics and made efforts to bring our line to the fore any chance we got. Many were left with these words to ponder on, written by a Morristown PL’er and communist politics.
Poem to inspire workers power
“It Happens Here and There”
Waiting on a response from the powers that Be
To be the powers that see or not to see
What capitalism is doing to our communities
Still waiting and contemplating on the next
Chess move that maybe the best move
To take down the upside down frown of the
The people who take the beating with a smile
Still being whipped in such a clever way
Because today the scars are not visible
They use the Willy Lynch tool to break
Down the mental in hopes that we never
See or understand that the power is in
Our hands if we take a stand and fight together!
