CHICAGO, January 18—A group of multiracial workers and students braved the frigid weather to hold an antisexist vigil across the street from a Westside hospital where Juanita Hankins worked. She was a 32-year-old Black woman who was found beaten to death in a hotel room on Christmas day, at the hands of her ex-partner.
Juanita sadly joins the far too-long list of working-class adults and children who have lost their lives as a result of sexist violence. Far from being just a local issue here in Chicago, public health data and our own personal experiences show this type of violence as a worldwide systemic problem that is facing crisis levels.
Comrades from the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were active in organizing and participating in this event. We fight this antisexist struggle with our working-class folks because sexism is a divisive tool and exploitative weapon against our class.  
Capitalism = root of sexist violence
Even though individual and group actions against sexism can and do make a difference, they can’t alone attack the root cause. Sexism is highly useful to the capitalist bosses in the way that it generates billions annually in sexist wage inequalities. It also prevents workers from uniting to fight our common enemy. Although sexist oppression pre-dates capitalism and began with class society, the international capitalist class is the class that benefits from sexism. The biggest perpetrators of sexist violence are the bosses!
Much like fighting racism, the fight against sexism requires a united international working class organized in a mass PLP to destroy capitalism with communist revolution. Before, during, and after revolution, all workers, especially Black women workers, will take leadership in fighting for and building an egalitarian society that meets our needs.
Antisexist solidarity in action
When co-workers heard about Juanita’s brutal death, it was like a punch to the gut. We felt for her, her family, especially her mother and two young children left behind.
What was almost as shocking as hearing about her murder was the culture of silence at our workplace regarding it. In the face of such widespread sexist violence, it is easy to normalize it. This leads to greater mistrust, alienation, and trauma among members of our class.
But enough of us were unwilling to give into further divisions and fear, and so we organized this vigil: “We Will Not Be Silent: A Vigil against Sexist Violence.”
A PL’er kicked it off with a welcoming speech, giving some background of what motivated us to organize the event, as well as some goals for moving forward in a collective way. He stressed the profit system’s use of sexist violence and exploitation, and the need for all workers to become fighters against sexism.
This was followed by a public health graduate student/teaching assistant sharing some staggering data that detailed the vast extent of the problem. She explained that sexist violence is an international, systemic issue with deep connections to other forms of capitalist-based violence, such as imperialist war and racist police murder.
There were testimonies about local women who were lethal targets of this violence around Chicago within the past year:

• Dr. Tamara O’Neal of Mercy Hospital
• Ruth George, a 19-year-old college student
• Lyniah Bell, another college student who was shot in the head by her boyfriend who was showing off his gun.

Along with Juanita, our goal was to honor their memories, while stressing how seemingly sexist attitudes and actions can escalate into something much worse.
We concluded the vigil by inviting everyone present to sign a poster board that outlined eight antisexist pledges to help continue the political struggle. The pledges included fostering an antisexist workplace and being an active fighter against sexism in our communities. We plan to share the board in our workplaces as an invitation to other workers and students to commit to antisexist action.
This action helped bring friends, who got organizing experience, closer to the politics of PLP.
A violent sexist culture feeds off of capitalism
As our public health worker friend pointed out, the extent of sexist violence worldwide is downright shocking. In Chicago, the number of sexist attacks continues to rise, while sexist judges and courts under capitalism show very little interest in protecting victims, even as they’re attacked multiple times (Chicago Tribune, 5/2/19).  Far from being the hero “saving the day” as garbage TV shows like “Law and Order” would have us believe, racist and sexist kkkops are active abusers, such as when a Chicago cop sexually assaulted a worker in custody (WGN, 3/21/18).
Sexist murders in Mexico have reached new deadly heights in recent years, doubling in number (DW news, 8/21/19). Between  2008 and 2019, over 3,000 transgender people were murdered in over 74 countries (LGBTQ Nation, 11/20/19). This violent sexist culture feeds off of capitalism. The special oppression based on gender and sexuality stems from class society. No one in the working class, including men, benefit from such divisions. This culture of sexist violence stems from a profit system that super-exploits women’s labor and justifies this exploitation with sexist ideologies.
Sowing the seeds of antisexist struggle
PLP is building a mass antisexist, antiracist movement against capitalism. In doing so, we fight for the most exploited and oppressed sections of the working class to give leadership, especially Black women. Women and men must unite in fighting for an antisexist and antiracist communist future. Justice for Juanita, Ruth, Tamara, Lyniah, and all targets of sexist violence! Fight for communsim!

I attended a Martin Luther King march organized by the Coalition to Protect Chinatown & Lower East Side. The main lesson is that we cannot trust liberal politicians and that we can only rely on the working class to get what we need.
I’ve been involved in fighting the housing crisis affecting the vast majority of workers in New York City. This is the second year I’ve participated in the MLK march to call out the city’s racist displacement agenda. The rally had a multiracial and multi-generational character. While the march was smaller than last year’s, it was qualitatively better. The workers speaking testified to the communities organizing to unite all members of the community: Black, white, and Latin, and Asian against the City’s racism, in order to fend off their plans to build four luxury mega-towers not just  in Chinatown and the Lower East Side, but throughout NYC.
Moreover the politics of the march were sharper. Last year, the coalition ended the program by directing us to vote for a better public advocate. This year, the speakers emphasized the need to organize and not depend on politicians to change the system. Our speakers publicly exposed the local liberal Big Fascists by denouncing Councilmember Margaret Chin and Mayor Bill de Blasio, and their record of colluding with real estate developers and displacing communities. Though Chin is Chinese and de Blasio has Black family members, they are not friends of workers.
They also called out Corey Johnson, the head of the City Council, and a representative of the gay rights movement. We delivered a 5,000-signature petition demanding Johnson stop the mega-towers and support our community led rezoning plan to protect the entire neighborhood  from more luxury out of scale developments,that destroy the environment and displace workers.  He was nowhere to be found. The coalition charged him with covertly facilitating the displacement of the community by electing to use the city’s sham land review process called the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP).The ULURP process exposes the fundamental futility of capitalist democracy, because the bosses let you participate in it to fool you into thinking your voice matters, but ultimately they use it to give their class (in this case the developers) more power to exploit workers and rob us of resources.
Through experience, the workers in this mass organization are learning that the only way workers can win is if we unite against racism without the handouts of politicians. In this political climate, not many workers are calling out the liberals in addition to the conservative scumbags. Most nonprofits are laser focused on just president Donald Trump being the main enemy. Hence, it is progress for this multiracial group of workers to attack all politicians.
A few Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades who attended distributed CHALLENGE and made contact with workers. After the march, I spoke with friends about why liberals are the main danger. I pointed out that this system is rotten and even if we elect members of oppressed groups that profess the best intentions, they will continue to grease the machine that keeps the capitalist machine functioning. The response I received was very positive.
There is a lot of potential to win workers through this area of work. I plan to continue to build a base with the help of fellow comrades, to make CHALLENGE a staple there and to infuse the day-to-day organizing with communist politics. Under communism we would abolish the toxic cycle of ownership, exploitation, and the profiteering of workers’ labor and natural resources like air, sunlight, and water. No one  would be homeless and housing would be a public non-negotiable right not a commodity that can be bought and sold. We must win workers to the idea that if we the workers create all of the value in society, we should be able to control and decide how it is distributed and for what purpose. That’s communism. We must not only fight for better housing conditions today, we must fight for a whole new world, for a better tomorrow.

CHICAGO, January 19—Mass South Asian organizations protested against the increasingly sharp attacks on Muslim workers in India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Two members of Progressive Labor Party distributed CHALLENGE to 50 of the 200 marchers. We held up the paper so people could see the backpage headline, “India: Capitalist Turmoil Rears It’s Fascist Head.” Protesters responded warmly.
In addition to occupying and shutting down the Muslim-majority region of Jammu and Kashmir, BJP created a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the eastern state of Assam, forcing workers to prove that they’d arrived in India before the mid-1970s. Since most workers lack the required documentation, over two million people, mostly Muslims, have been stripped of their citizenship. They now face placement in detention centers or deportation to neighboring Bangladesh (Time, 12/20/19). Most recently, the BJP government drafted a Citizenship Amendment Bill for fast-tracked citizenship—except for Muslim workers.
Although the leading slogans were in defense of “liberal secular democracy,” the group also chanted “Narendra Modi you can’t hide, you committed genocide!” Calling for a secular democracy is a meaningless term under the capitalist dictatorship of the bosses; the phrase assumes there is democracy for workers to begin with.
Self-critically, the PL comrades could have done a better job to engage with these South Asian protesters. Putting a paper in their hand is a start but the personal connection is essential. We also need to learn some of those chants in Hindi. Due to the language barrier, we were unable to evaluate their politics.

LORTON, VA, January 22—After three brave and bold months of striking, the 130 TransDev transit workers at the Cinder Bed Road facility of the D.C. area transit authority (WMATA) have approved a contract and returned to work. (See earlier articles 12/4/2019 and 1/11/20).
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined the workers’ picket lines and rallies over this period, bringing revolutionary ideas and strategies to these workers, many of whom hail from African and Latin American countries and were enthused to have communist support. The bosses thought they could crush the efforts of these workers by refusing to negotiate seriously, and then not at all. But it was the bosses who finally gave in and the workers gained a partial victory.
Murky contract
The new contract provides for a $3.50 increase in pay for bus operators over two years and a 7 percent increase in pay for other workers in the bargaining unit. Much else remains murky, as the contract language on health insurance is not clearly defined. The contract uncertaintities are one way the bosses will try to take back what was won during the strike. That is the nature of capitalism, the bosses try and often do take back whatever gains our class makes during struggles like this. The only way to fully liberate our class from the bosses is to fight for a society run by the working class, communism.
The workers accepted the contract not so much because of its content, but mainly as a gateway to better paying jobs with Metro, the regional transit system. Metro has contractually agreed to end contracting out in two years, fire Transdev (the private contractor), and bring these workers into the main collective bargaining agreement as direct employees of the public transit system.
Lessons from the strike
An important lesson from the strike is that even a small group of workers who provide a key public service – in this case moving workers in Northern Virginia to jobs throughout the region – can, by withholding their labor and shutting down production, fight and win some reforms from the bosses. Could they have done better? More could probably have been won had the 8,000 D.C. Metro workers in the main Metro union forced their leadership to join the strike. While there were some rumblings about expanding the strike to all transit workers, the union limited its support to a large strike benefit and verbal support of the Cinder Bed workers.
Build a base for communism
But beyond the increase in wages, the fight is still going on to build a base for communism among the TransDev and D.C. Metro workers. Our class wins in these kinds of battles when we gain the confidence to fight for a society without the bosses. That is the most important thing about these battles. Under capitalism, any gains workers make are always subject to reversal. The bosses regroup and launch a counter-attack, which we expect to happen in transit shortly.
Only a communist movement which can defeat the capitalist system and replace it with workers’ power, communism, can sustain its victories.  Defeating racism and building workers’ confidence and committment to abolish the wage system of capitalism are essential to the struggle to take power from the bosses.
The PLP members fought hard through this strike to advance this understanding and expect that, before too long, more transit workers will join PLP in the long-term struggle for communism.