NEWARK, NJ, June 12—“Asian, Latin, Black, and white—workers of the world unite!” For the first time in decades, a multiracial group of workers chanted Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) line down Clinton Avenue in Newark, a predominantly Black, working-class neighborhood with strong ties to the Mayor. Along the march, workers and students were attacked and blocked by Black city officials that work for Big Fascist Mayor Ras Baraka while marching down the hill to protest outside the 5th Pigs Precinct. Big Fascists are members of the liberal, imperialist ruling class, who pretend to be on the side of workers.
Nevertheless, this march affirmed PLP’s line that liberal rulers are the main danger to the working class. It is our responsibility as communists to tear down the veil and challenge both nationalism and identity politics while pushing for a multiracial, internationalist, communist, working-class leadership under PLP.
The system is violent, we will not be silent
Mayors and politicians around the world are weaponizing their identities as Black, Latin, lesbian, gay and women alike while manipulating the worldwide fightback inspired by workers in Minneapolis in response to the murder of George Floyd. Peaceful protests that show solidarity between the liberal politicians and workers are a cover up to push a Big Fascist agenda towards a war on the international working class. The same workers that politicians recruit to become *insert identity here* cops, judges, and military officials will become pawns to crush the revolutionary fightback of the working class.
Mayor Ras Baraka, son of the late Black nationalist poet Amiri Baraka, is using his community ties in Newark to attack workers and students that challenge his complicity in racism, sexism and anti-working class leadership. Since the ‘protest’ in May led by NJ Senate candidate Larry Hamm’s camp (People Organizing for Progress), Newark has been hailed by the New York Times as a city that has remained “relatively calm” (NYT, 6/1).
The mainstream media has always used the theme of “peaceful protest” to “calm” the potential of organized revolutionary anger and tactically directed violence against the bosses and their cronies. To win people away from the dead end of politicians and voting to a more revolutionary approach, we MUST build a larger base.
Base building for communism
Leaders of the Newark Water Coalition (NWC), a multiracial group of workers and students organizing for clean water in Newark have been brave enough to identify and speak out against Mayor Ras’ politricks. However, the extent of their critique stopped there. While we also had criticisms of Baraka, PLP's goal is to win workers to understand that the capitalist system fails workers, no matter what politician is in place. To do that we build with the working class and win them to understanding the limits of reform work under capitalism.
When NJ comrades and friends asked what we should do as a response to workers of the world uniting to fight against police terror and racism, the first thing we did was build with some of the dedicated fighters in the reform movement. Two weeks prior to the Mutual Aid March we had a plan to lead a NJ wide protest but realized we had gone about the organizing incorrectly. Veteran comrades of PLP warned newer members that marching down Clinton Ave could leave everyone vulnerable to being physically attacked by the cops and the Mayor’s thugs. We needed to be prepared with a plan and to be accountable for everyone. We also realized that we had not checked in with other friends and PL’ers. Back to the drawing board. We shared this same warning with the Newark Water Coalition that we could very likely be attacked, not just because we were marching toward a police precinct but because Ras Baraka and his family had been base building in the area for the last 50 years and have won workers over ideologically. In the end, they decided to march in that area.
No good mayors in a racist system
From the start of the march, workers from the neighborhood yelled “you know don’t nobody want you here, go somewhere else, we have political power in our city.” When workers who were part of the march tried to hand them water, vegetables and diapers that friends of the Newark Water Coalition donated, many refused. Still, PL’ers pushed the politics further and chanted, “When Black workers are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” to remind workers on the sidewalks and on their rooftops that no matter what we identify as, we are all a part of one international working class.
Chants were used as a tool to push forward and boost the morale of the march when friends of Baraka antagonized us. While some of us chanted, other PL’ers distributed CHALLENGE. About 20 store owners and workers accepted CHALLENGE. Before the march, we made it our goal to push our line with chants and CHALLENGE sales. The final chant was “No good MAYORS in a racist system.”
Baraka shut down the march. By doing so, he sent two messages that protesters must remember
To the workers: don’t come into our neighborhood until you have built a base amongst the working class and are ready to fight.To Prudential, Goldman Sachs, Audible, and the rest of the capitalist class in Newark: stick with us as your political representatives because we can control the working class for you better than anyone.
It is impossible to support the exploiters and the exploited at the same time. Some friends from the Newark Water Coalition are running for local office. This is the same framework that politicians like Baraka, former president Barack Obama and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used to become Big Fascist leaders.
How do you build strength and power in the working class? By standing in COMPLETE solidarity with workers and fighting for a communist revolution where workers around the world lead. Anything short of that is a tool to crush working-class power and potential. History and lessons from workers around the world teach us that. Find a study group near you and join PLP today!
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Letter: From Alex Flores to George Floyd, hell yeah! We’ll unite and fight!
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- 27 June 2020 88 hits
For the last seven months, we have been involved in the fight for justice for Alex Flores, killed by LAPD on November 19, 2019. For six weeks, we protested every night in front of the “Shootin’ Newton” police station. After Alex was buried, we moved to Friday nights and have not missed a Friday yet.
As we continued to get ignored by the police, the DA, the politicians, and pretty much everyone who makes decisions about Alex’s case, anger grew. We surrounded police cars leaving the station. We took over street intersections. The community began to know us through our regular presence and canvassing. More recently, many joined us. When the politicians wanted everyone to stay home, we fought to make protesting this system “essential business”.
George Floyd was killed on a Monday and within days, protests erupted in every U.S. state. On that Thursday, our friends from the Progressive Labor Party called us and asked if we wanted to travel with them to Minneapolis. Our answer was “Hell yeah!”
Two days later, we were on a plane heading into battle, which our seven months of fighting prepared us for. We did not know yet that this would be “the best worst experience” of our lives.
Arriving on the ground, we went directly to the 5th precinct where thousands were gathered. Across the street from the station was a Wells Fargo bank burned to the ground. That hit us because we never saw anything like that before. It was covered in graffiti saying, “You Don’t Own Us” and “F*ck Capitalism”. It clearly represented the intense hatred workers in that city had for this racist system. By this time, the fires that started in Minneapolis had already spread around the globe. It felt great to be a part of that worldwide struggle.
As we looked around the crowd, anyone and everyone was there. It was somewhat surprising because we never saw anything like that before, but also incredibly inspiring. Even though likely no one there personally knew George Floyd, they were still fighting for justice, not just for George, but for all workers. There were men, women, transgender and gender non-conforming workers. There were Muslim, Asian, Latin, Black and white workers. There were young and old. And everyone was hungry; hungry for answers; hungry for fightback; hungry for change. When we started a bullhorn rally, hundreds gathered to listen as we explained that police murder and racism will always exist under capitalism, so we need communist revolution. Workers grabbed for CHALLENGE like they were starving, and it was the only food in sight. Workers screamed our chants, fists in the air. Many asked if the Party had a chapter in Minneapolis.
The sun started to set; curfew was upon us. Hundreds around us chanted, “F*ck your curfew. We’re not going anywhere.” Minutes later a march of about 300, mainly young people, moved quickly down the main street. We jumped in the middle and started to lead chants. We were nervous about what might happen. Would the cops beat us up? Would we be arrested? But we kept going because we had confidence in the people around us and the members of the Party we came with to take care of us. There was so much solidarity around us. People passed food, water, hand sanitizer, goggles to protect from tear gas. And the Party has experience in these kinds of movements, so we continued and left our fears behind us.
The police did not disappoint. They upheld their history of brutality against those who stand against the system and attacked our march with tear gas. We also heard stories that were later verified (NPR) that the police slashed the tires of cars parked near protest meet-up locations. We were not deterred though. That stand-off with the police, while scary, reminded us of the system we are living under and why we so desperately need to overthrow it. Being on this trip made it clear how many of the things we struggle with in our day-to-day lives are caused by capitalism.
In the short two days we were there, a kinship developed. With the unity we saw, we feel like if we continue to fight back, there is no way we cannot make changes to this system. We brought the story of Alex Flores to Minneapolis and they embraced it like he was their family. Alex’s story even ended up live on the Monday morning news in Australia!
Workers of the world unite! During this trip one of us decided to join the PLP and make the commitment to fighting for communism. The other one of us wants to learn more through staying involved. But for both of us, one thing is clear: if the opportunity to take another trip like this comes up again, we will both say again “Hell yeah!”
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Book Review: What communism in China achieved in public health
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- 27 June 2020 110 hits
For a shorter version, see CHALLENGE pdf issue (7/8/20) https://betalp01.com/storage/challenge-archives/2020/C070820-WEB.pdf
A Review of Away with all Pests: An English Surgeon in People's China Dr. Joshua S. Horn 1954-1969. (London: 1969.)
In March of this year, CNN reported this about the connection between America’s awful health record regarding the Covid-19 pandemic: “The US is the only developed nation without universal health care. Nearly 28 million non-elderly Americans, or 10.4%, were uninsured in 2018, according to the most recent Census Bureau data available. This is an improvement from what it was before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. That year, 46.5 million non-elderly people -- or 17.8% -- lacked coverage. But the uninsured rate has started ticking up again over the past two years. The uninsured largely depend on a patchwork of community clinics and hospital emergency rooms for care. This means they often wait until their conditions become serious before seeking medical help -- which could lead to their infecting many others during viral outbreaks like coronavirus. ‘Addressing coronavirus with tens of millions of people without health insurance or with inadequate insurance will be a uniquely American challenge among developed countries,’ tweeted Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at Kaiser. ‘It will take money to treat people and address uncompensated care absorbed by providers.’" In other words, a run-for-profit healthcare system—the way capitalism runs everything from public health, housing, the prison system, and education—guarantees that the well-being of the vast majority of Americans, let alone undocumented workers (10.5 to 12 million), inmates (2.3 million, more people per capita than any other nation), and the homeless (as many as 3.5 million Americans are homeless, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development), will be defenseless when they get ill. It is instructive, therefore, to see how communism in China in the 1950s and early 1960s—one of the world’s poorest countries when it declared its independence in October, 1949, addressed its own terrible epidemics and its nearly non-existent healthcare system. One startling fact is that between the time the Communist Party took control in 1949 and 1975, life expectancy in China more than doubled, from about 28 to 65 years. By the early 1970s, infant mortality rates in Shanghai were lower than in New York City. Away with All Pests (1969) by Doctor Joshua Horn is a perfect place to start to understand how politics, an economic system, and a philosophic commitment to (or a disregard for) the public good determine the well being of people. “In 1954, we [my family and I] uprooted ourselves and went to China. Apart from a few home visits we have lived in China ever since. I will not go into the numerous reasons behind our decision to go to China ■ Foremost among them was the political reason. I had glimpsed the old China I knew that in 1949 the Communist armies had finally liberated the whole mainland and that now the Chinese people were engaged in the construction of the modern Socialist state on the ruins of one that was colonial. I was on China’s side. I ardently wished to contribute what little skill I had to an heroic undertaking which would change the face of China and of the world.” “Poverty and ignorance were reflected in a complete lack of sanitation as a result of which fly and water-borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery, took a heavy toll. Worm infestation was practically universal, for untreated people lived on the fringe of starvation and this so lowered their resistance to disease that epidemics carried off thousands every year. The average life expectancy in China was stated to be about twenty-eight years. Reliable health statistics for pre-Liberation China are hard to come by but conservative estimates put the crude death rate in time of peace at between thirty and forty per thousand and the infantile mortality rate at between 160 and 170 per thousand live births. The plight of the women and children was bad beyond description. The men had to have what grain there was, to give them strength to work in the fields. The women, especially those who stayed at home to look after the children, ate only thin gruel, grass and leaves. They were so ill-nourished that by the time they reached middle age, they were toothless and decrepit. Many adolescent girls, lacking calcium and vitamin D, developed softening and narrowing of the pelvic bones, so that normal childbirth became either impossible or so dangerous that six to eight per cent of all deaths among women were due to childbirth. Babies were breast-fed for three or four years, and also resulted in child malnutrition and such vitamin deficiency diseases as rickets and scurvy. There were no preventive inoculations against infectious diseases, and from time to time epidemics of smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough and meningitis swept through the countryside with devastating results. Lice and poverty went hand in hand, and with them louse-borne diseases such as typhus fever. Military occupation and the licentiousness of the landlords and local gentry spread venereal diseases among the people and no treatment was available. The prevalence of tuberculosis can be gaged from the fact that in 1946 sixty per cent of all applicants for student visas for study abroad were found to be suffering from this disease.” The Communist revolution had been victorious in 1948, and one of its principal tasks was providing healthcare, once reserved only for the wealthy, to China’s poor, especially in the countryside. Before 1948 the vast majority of those living in China’s countryside, almost a quarter of the world’s population, lacked access to any healthcare at all. Bringing healthcare to almost a quarter of the world’s population was one of the great achievements of Chinese communism. Millions of Chinese workers and peasants gained access to healthcare. Life expectancy was doubled. Infant mortality greatly reduced. So how did the Communist Party of China build from scratch a public health system to eradicate these epidemics that more than rivalled in lethality our current coronavirus pandemic? The starting point of this herculean effort was to mobilize thousands of ordinary people, together with medical personnel, to go into the countryside-- where 80% of the total population lived-- to provide health-care education, prevention, and treatment to millions of peasants and workers. It was necessary to minimize the social gap between the destitute peasants in the countryside and the relatively better off workers and educated in towns and cities. One way that this was accomplished was through the health teams. To break down the distinction between town and countryside, and as part of the effort to bring care to the sick, mobile medical teams were organized and sent to the countryside. At the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Horn reported that one third of the hospital staff at his Beijing hospital was stationed in the countryside as part of a team on a rotation basis. Mobile teams were sent out to the poorest areas. The doctors and other health providers sought out the patients, not the other way around. The team that Horn referred to was made up of 80,000 people who worked among twelve people’s communes in the countryside. These teams were divided into smaller brigades which maintained health clinics. Doctors and medical personnel were sent out from these clinics into the local areas and remote villages to administer healthcare. Different kinds of groups were sent where they were needed most. Some focused on dental and birth control. Others that specialized in one disease were sent to areas affected by that affliction, including very remote areas, sometimes travelling on foot or by riding donkeys. A distinctive feature of how the Chinese communists delivered medical care was that the medical personnel usually either lived together in peasant cottages or they lived with the peasants in their homes in the villages. Healthcare was no longer a luxury afforded only by the wealthy. Doctors and their patients lived and worked side by side. These health care providers came to be called “barefoot doctors.” Young people who were motivated by this new infusion of public-oriented, cooperative spirit, were given a kind of abbreviated training in basic medicine, training in the most common ailments and diseases encountered in the countryside. Periodically, they would return for greater formal medical training. Mobil teams also trained sanitary workers and midwives to be sent to the rural community. The intention was not merely to impart medical knowledge to young people, but to promote the communist ideology of egalitarianism, in which rural health workers would retain close links with the peasants and who would remain permanently in the countryside. Overall, the barefoot doctor movement was an example of the Chinese Communist Party’s belief that collectively people, not extravagant personal wealth, are the most important resource in determining a nation’s wellbeing. Horn witnessed the success of this approach first hand. Concretely, this trust in the potential of working people was demonstrated by the campaign against schistosomiasis or “snail fever.” At the time that Horn was writing, it affected 250 million people, almost all in the poorest countries. As late as 1955, there were 50 million victims in China alone. Remarkably, in China, which was still dominated by communist politics in the 1950s and 60s, snail fever was all but eliminated. The Communists claimed an 85% to 95% cure rate among afflicted people. The disease was all but wiped out in areas that had been previously afflicted on an epidemic scale. The Communist Party declared, wrote Dr. Horn, that it could “cure what the powers above [probably the European imperial powers] have failed to do.” How was this done? To mobilize the peasantry against the snails, medical workers explain the nature of the illness which has plagued them for so long with lectures, films, posters, and radio-talks. When the peasants came to understand the nature of the disease, they worked out methods to eradicate it. Twice a year, in March and August, the entire population in county after county, supplemented by soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, students, teachers and office workers, drained the rivers and ditches, dug away and buried their banks. Here is an excerpt from the book where Horn describes in details how doctors and other medical workers connected their lives with that of the peasants whom they served in combating schistosomiasis and other health issues: “At least once a week, and more often during the busy farming seasons, the medical workers join the peasants in manual labour in the fields. The usual period of service with the mobile team is one year, all its members are volunteers and a balance is maintained between new graduates and experienced doctors and between the different specialities. Whatever their original speciality, while they are in the countryside, doctors are expected to undertake any kind of medical work. To equip them for their new life and new work, they receive a preparatory course of training before leaving the city. They get eight days home leave every two months with free transportation and they are paid their normal Peking hospital salaries while in the countryside. Many of them apply to extend their tours of duty but usually this is not possible since their colleagues in Peking are anxious to replace them. Some volunteer to settle down permanently in the countryside; twelve doctors from my hospital have done so since the scheme started eighteen months ago. In addition to general mobile medical teams, there are also specialized teams according to local needs and resources. In this area, for example, there is a mobile eye, ear, nose, throat and dental team which spends a month in each People’s Commune in turn. There is also a birth control team. Smallpox, typhoid, diphtheria, infantile paralysis and whooping cough have now practically disappeared from this area and recently Chinese medical scientists have developed a method of active immunization against measles which has greatly reduced its incidence and severity. All children receive oral medicine against tuberculosis and during epidemics, injections are given against cephalitis and infectious meningitis.” As of this writing, May 18, 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has infected over 4 million people worldwide and killed over 300,00 people. The USA, supposedly the most advanced and wealthiest capitalist country, is leading the world in the wrong way as usual. It has the most deaths—91,000 plus, and the most cases, 1.5 million. It also has, ironically, the costliest health care system in the world.
Dr. Horn was a British trained surgeon, who served as a military surgeon during the Second World War. Before he went to China, he had been a dedicated Marxist in England. He and his family lived in China from 1954-1969 during the years of the Great Leap Forward, the period beginning in 1958 of the collectivization of agricultural production in China. The book is extremely valuable insofar as it details how a very poor, newly organized communist state went about eradicating some of the world’s worst diseases, plagues that had killed millions of Chinese over hundreds of years. During the nearly fifteen years he was in the people’s Republic, Horn saw firsthand how an entire nation built an effective and free public health system
When the Communist Party took power in 1949 China had been devasted by foreign imperialism and by its own misrule by various warlords. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, much of China had been dominated by European, Japanese, and American imperialists. The PRC suffered a war with Japan from 1937 to 1945 and then by a civil war with the Chinese Nationalists under General Chiang Kai-Shek. Approximately 25 million Chinese were killed or died from malnutrition between 1937 and the end of the war. Only the USSR suffered more total casualties.
By the time the communists took power in 1949, 80% of the population of over a billion were illiterate. Teachers, engineers, doctors and skilled labor were in very short supply; for instance there were only fifteen doctors in the whole of the vast province of Xinjiang. Industrial output had been decimated by war. Subsistence agriculture was carried out over much of the country with famine an ever-present fear. In Shanghai it was estimated that 20,000 people died on the streets each year from disease and starvation.
This is how, in his book, Dr. Horn explains his reasons for going to China just six years after Mao Zedong declared China a communist nation—the People’s Republic of China—on October 1, 1949:
The following description is what Horn discovered in a vast country that for generations had been exploited and ravaged by various European countries, as well by its own ruling warlords and of course by Japan in World War Two:
The main diseases that Horn discovered in China were epidemic diseases, syphilis, leprosy, and schistosomiasis. Schistosomiasis is and has been one of the world’s great plagues. In 2015, for example, it affected about 252 million people worldwide. An estimated 4,400 to 200,000 people die from it each year. Around 700 million people, in more than 70 countries, live in areas where the disease is common. In tropical countries, schistosomiasis is second only to malaria among parasitic diseases with the greatest social and economic impact.
Horn ends his book Away with All Pests by repeatedly emphasizing the primacy of communist ideology in restoring social and medical health to a countryside of over 800 million peasants, a population which had for over a century been the victims of war, poverty, foreign invasions, and feudalism.
Antioch, CA, June 21—Recently graduated Antioch High School students organized a protest in support of abolishing and defunding the police. An integrated group of students, former students, and parents were greeted by the community with honking horns and closed fist salutes. Sparked by the racist murder of George Floyd, workers and students are rising up all over the world to stand against racism and often against the capitalist system that breeds racism. The Progressive Labor Party applauds the young workers and students of Antioch. We invite them to join us in the long struggle to destroy racism with communist revolution.
Community members shared water, snacks, and free masks. Students marched to the police station, accompanied by comrades in vehicles with signs attacking the racist system. People waved and cheered the march on. The people of Antioch are fed up with police violence.
At the police station, victims of police terror and their family members spoke. A mother described how an Antioch cop had pulled her son out of a car and attacked him in a way similar to the murder of George Floyd. The mother was wearing a sign that included a photo of smirking Antioch cop Calley kneeling on her son’s neck. She expressed concern over the attack on her son and spoke about her nephew Rakeem Rucks who was killed by Antioch Police in 2015 (Antioch Police paid $475,000 to the Rucks family in 2020).
Police terror protects racist system
A female student gave a powerful speech urging people to use the phrase “police terror” instead of “police brutality” because “police terror” is the intended effect. It’s a public display of force that’s meant to make the community fear the racist system. She then called for the abolishment of the police, which caused the crowd to erupt into cheers. But let’s be clear. The rich and powerful capitalists and their puppet politicians need the cops to protect them (see back page). The police will only be abolished through a working class revolution for communism.
Next, a man who was attacked by police spoke. The police knocked on his door claiming that the music was too loud and demanded to search the house, claiming to smell marijuana. He refused, so they pulled him out of his home, beat him badly, assaulted his friends, arrested him and charged him with assaulting the police. At the county jail, he was beaten again. More than a year later, all charges were dropped as a police video was produced proving no assault on the police.
Another female student addressed the crowd and said, “Cops are the armed assassins of a capitalist system which must use force to control the working class, especially super-exploited Black and Latin workers. Rebellion is not enough. This racist terror can only be smashed with a systemic advancement. Capitalism must be overcome and replaced with a new system where people, not profits are valued”. Reform struggles are important but limited. She finished by explaining why we need to organize for a new government system. In the Progressive Labor Party we fight for that new government system. It’s called communism.
The protestors had a range of outlooks. Some called for the “8 Can't Wait” reforms, some called for the defunding of the police, and others called for the abolishment of the police. Everyone called for an end to a system driven by racism and defended by police terror. CHALLENGE newspapers were distributed. Information about Antioch’s bloated police budget was distributed along with instructions on how to tell the city council that the police should be defunded in favor of programs that fit the needs of the people.
Protestors demanded the immediate firing of a killer cop named Michael Mellone who was hired by the Antioch Police after killing a homeless worker from Mexico named Luis-Gongora Pat while a cop in San Francisco. They demanded justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rakeem Rucks, and the countless other victims of police terror.
After rallying at the police station, the student-led group marched back to their school. Along the way, they took over an intersection and knelt for eight minutes where they chanted and were again greeted by supportive passersby.
The mayor of the city and the council are under increasing pressure from the young people of Antioch. Recently the mayor announced an investigation into the killer cop Mellone. The protestors are under no delusions that getting one cop fired will cause a lasting change. The young people of Antioch are leading, and discovering their power through practice. They are a force for a better world. We invite them to join the Progressive Labor Party and fight for communism.
Englewood rally welcomed by working class
“White Cop Black Cop all the same, racist terror is the name of their game.” A multiracial, intergenerational group of 30 Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends chanted as they marched around an intersection on Chicago’s South Side. This was spurred on by seeing the cops roll up to some young men who had been appreciating our rally.
It turned out that the Black cops who had been talking to the young men were telling them that if they agreed with what those "White folks" were saying then they needed to go join them on the corner PLP was on. "These White folks aren't from here. They are trying to get you to act up."
The young man who had brought us an entire 24 pack of water bottles from the corner store just 15 minutes earlier said “I told them [the cops], ‘they’re [the marchers] not telling me what to do, I’m a grown man but, you [the cops] I know what you do” he said disgustedly, adding a vehement “F*ck the police.”
During this 90-minute rally, we distributed 200 fliers about the racist murder of George Floyd and the need for communist revolution, as well as 250 CHALLENGEs. We distributed masks, gloves, and hand sanitizers to anyone in need. Hundreds of cars honked in appreciation.
While the largest protests happened downtown that day (and many of us participated in those too), we chose to go to the Southside of Chicago in the morning because of the racist over-policing of these neighborhoods. Just the week before, near the intersection of our rally, the cops beat and arrested young black youths for not physically distancing. This is also a neighborhood where we have comrades who teach in the high school slated for closure by the City.
The combination of school closing and racist police terror show what the City has planned for Englewood—more racist state terror. Racism and capitalism go hand in hand and we have to fight both with every ounce of our strength to defeat them.
We can’t let the bosses’ racist plans for Englewood and the rest of Chicago be carried out. We will continue to build with workers and students in these neighborhoods to fight back. Power to the working class!
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Oakland: antiracist rush hour
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) led the way with a powerful workers’ action that shut the West Coast ports down on Juneteenth to end systemic racism. Thousands joined in: rallies, a march, bike brigades, and car caravans. The caravan was so long, we dubbed it the “antiracist rush hour.” This certainly shows that the working class on the job can have an outsized impact on profits when they shut it down against systemic racism.
Thousands of young men and women marched in multiracial unity with the Port shutdown. They expressed class-consciousness through chants like, “Ain’t no Power like the power of the workers ‘cause the power of the workers, don’t stop.”
One speaker, Boots Riley, explained “our power” is because “we create wealth.” He called on the thousands at the rally to organize where they work to shut it down. “We’ll stop the world and make them MFs, jump off.” Of course, the working class needs an organized international Party for that.
In the caravan, PLP’s car posters focused on multiracial, international working-class unity to smash capitalism and build a communist society. Marchers pumped their fists and took pictures of our cars. Some PL’ers distributed flyers and CHALLENGE. We joined in the just fury of the working class at this racist, fascist disregard of human life and are inspired by the rebellions of the past weeks. This can be the start of the strategic fighting force of workers joining with the demonstrations in the streets if the workers on the job go beyond the “legalisms” in union contracts and “shut it down” with political strikes or job actions.
At the same time, our leaflet addressed the limitations of reforms, which have not stopped the racist and sexist murders by the cops. We recognize that police murder is racist class terror. Capitalist profits need exploitation and a divided workforce; racism, anti-immigrant attacks and sexism are essential for that.
Replacing the present system with one where people not profits are valued and people can develop to their full potential requires a revolution for a communist political-economic system. PLP strives to be the party that builds that new system.
*****
Police terror is worldwide
I have been talking about racist police terror with a friend, who is a maintenance worker at the school where I teach, and a CHALLENGE reader who comes from Gambia. When I suggested that racist police terror was an international phenomenon under capitalism, he cried, “Oh yes, it’s true!”
Then he recounted a story his cousin told him about an incident that happened just last week.
His cousin knows a man who is a poor farmer living in a village. One day last week, after tending his crops, he was coming back home on his scooter. The police stopped him in the street and asked him for his registration. He said that he had all his papers, but they were at home, and offered to get them. As an act of good faith, he even offered to leave them his ID until he could return with the registration. The cops refused and demanded the keys to his scooter. “How can I go home then? It’s far.”
The cops didn’t care. They forcibly tried to take his keys from him and in the process, they broke his arm. A few minutes after telling me this story, my friend texted me a photo of the man with a broken arm.
“Why do you think they did that,” I asked my friend.
“They want money,” he replied.
They are corrupt. Of course, this is true. Cops around the world are known for taking bribes, working with drug dealers, shaking down small businesses for “protection.” But as we spoke about it, we went deeper. Who are the cops protecting? Who are they attacking? They protect the large landowners, the big businesses. They are protecting the profit system. And they are attacking the working class, terrorizing them into submitting to the brutal capitalist order and a life of poverty. The racist aspect of the situation becomes clear when one realizes the history of Gambia, whose workers have suffered under the yoke of British imperialism for several hundred years. Even now, 55 years after “independence,” they remain part of the British Commonwealth.
This worker has been an enthusiastic reader of CHALLENGE who regularly takes extra papers to give to coworkers, friends, and family. This international solidarity is crucial to building our movement to destroy capitalism forever.
*****
Working-class fightback empowers young PL’er
Participating in these current mass demonstrations has been a great learning opportunity in how to advance the fight against this deplorable system we live under. My experience at a recent march through Washington Heights and Harlem showed me areas in which I could grow to be a stronger member of PLP.
In giving a speech, I learned that although I might have a clear understanding of our politics, the ability to deliver and spread party politics to the working class also requires confidence and practice. I was disappointed by how my speech went, and reflecting on how to improve forced me to reflect on other areas of my life similarly affected.
The perverse, self-destructive nature of capitalism infects our experience of life, and the only hope for a life of dignity is by building unity with our comrades and other workers. Being a revolutionary is something that must be practiced in both mind and action every day in all aspects of our lives; it is not like a light switch that can simply be turned on when there is a task at hand.
All this discomfort has only increased my conviction in the Party’s ability to bring power to the workers. Before entering the march, one of our comrades laid out our plan and said something that resonated with me: “When we go into these things, we need to treat it like we are going into battle.”
For the sake of all we that we love, and against everything we hate, I think these words are a reminder of the discipline we all must practice and embrace throughout our daily lives.
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A multiracial protest at Pelham Bay Park
A militant and unified group of 300 Black, Latin, Asian, and white students marched through Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. As a member of the Progressive Labor Party, and resident of this neighborhood for 20 years, I was thrilled to see the largest park in New York City become something more than just a place for exercise and festive gatherings.
This march, organized and lead by young students and workers, denounced the racist murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, while calling for an end to all racist cop terror.
“Defund the cops! Not our Schools!” and “No Justice! No Peace! No Racist Police!” echoed through the park as dozens of bystanders either cheered or joined the march en route to our rally destination.
While some of the speeches were antiracist, anti-cop, and pro-student, some of the leadership called for us to take “responsibility” and “revolutionize the electoral process”.
Thankfully, 150 PLP leaflets were distributed and I was able to speak with a number of protesters. Many were open to the idea of not relying on liberal politicians and their capitalist system. One Black leader cried out during his speech, “None of these politicians are gonna stop these cops killing black people on streets.”
He also called for multiracial unity. “We don’t see white people as allies. That’s not enough! We need you in the trenches fighting with us!”
One NYC teacher stated, “I have lived here for 30 years and never saw a demonstration or rally ever in this park.”
I plan to encourage our PL club to take advantage of this small but important opportunity and schedule some regular CHALLENGE sales at the local train station where many commuters, Pelham Bay residents, and MTA workers pass through every day.
