Comrade Robert “Bob” Patterson died in Brooklyn, NY on May 8 of heart failure. He was 72 years old. He leaves behind a son, daughter-in-law, grandson, brother, nieces and nephews, and a large group of friends and comrades.
Bob was a presence that could always be counted on. His passing leaves a tremendous hole that we will work hard to fill. After Bob was introduced to the Progressive Labor Party, he embraced it and regretted that he had not met our Party earlier in his life.
As a child, Bob was taught anti-racism by his Mennonite grandmother. This was solidified on a trip to Cape Canaveral, Florida which he won for selling newspapers as a teenage delivery boy. As the van with the winners drove deeper and deeper into the Jim Crow South, he was angered at the treatment of two Black youth who also won the trip. They were not allowed to use the same hotels and restaurants as the white youth, their dignity being stripped away. This was the start of his militancy. Bob was deeply involved in struggles for workers’ rights and antiracism for the rest of his life.
As a young man, he worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. He also participated in the famous anti-racist march for voting rights over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, a life-changing event for Bob. The marchers were trained to be passive in the face of all attacks that were directed at them. Bob was outraged when one of his best friends, a young Black man, was doused in white paint by the racists and no one fought back. When Bob met PLP 17 years ago, he came to understand the misleadership of pacifism and on relying on legislation to end racism, and how reform movements lead to reversals. Comrade Bob also took part in antiwar efforts of the 1960s, helping many Vietnam Vets who went AWOL (absent without leave).
Bob’s acting ability was recognized by Sir Tyrone Guthrie and he received a full scholarship to act in Minneapolis’ prestigious Guthrie Theater. All through his professional career as an actor and teacher of the acting craft, he continued to promote and organize around antiracism and for social justice. He was a visionary and always thinking about the larger world, in his studio, in his church, in the community, and in the Party. Bob thought of acting as a collective craft and that actors could be won to be politically antiracist and fighters for social justice. He thought actors must search for the truth in the world around them and that this truth leads to understanding the necessity for an egalitarian world. Through his years in the Party, he brought many of his students to PLP events and study groups. And through PLP cultural work, Comrade Bob used his skills to help spread our political ideas, helping develop collective performances and presentations.
Bob aided in creating a social justice group in his church 20 years ago, which continues to this day. He proposed and organized forums, marches and protests, to which we could invite our friends, always making sure we were in motion to fight racism and injustice. He was the “go-to guy” if you wanted information or wanted to plan an event, but he did not do all the work himself. He was able to encourage others to step up and realize their untapped talents. He often got people to go beyond their limits (such as shyness) to make presentations at forums, dinners, demonstrations, etc.
The forums were on a range of subjects: “single payer health insurance,” racist treatment of Hurricane Katrina victims, anti-Muslim hysteria after 911, racist police killings such as the murder of Kyam Livingston, etc. Bob also encouraged those of us working at Downstate Medical Center to have a big rally against plans to close down the hospital, resulting in the largest rally there since the 1960s. Four hundred workers, doctors and patients rallied, putting the fear of workers’ power into the bosses and building our confidence. Thanks for the push, Bob.
Up until his last breath, Bob was organizing for a better world for his grandchild and all of our grandchildren, making dozens of daily phone calls; he was sorry that he missed the Brooklyn May Day March.
Bob was, modest yet immodest. He did say that he was the best acting teacher around but rarely boasted about his standing in the profession or the famous people he knew. He was also a man of many interests, beyond art and politics. He loved basketball and watched every NBA game he could. He had long arms and was quick on the court. He battled to keep in shape and hid his failing health from his friends.
Bob was a great presence and constant organizer. If a measure of a person is that they leave the world a better place, then Bob has more than exceeded that measure. He will be greatly missed by all who worked with him.

Google’s move to cut off Huawei phones from access to the company’s software is a stark reminder to capitalists worldwide and a blunt message to the rising Chinese ruling class: U.S. imperialism will be ruthless in defending its global profits. Google’s signing on to U.S. efforts to beat back the projection of Chinese power intensifies the pressure on European and other capitalist rulers to choose sides in the escalating cyberwar between the two superpowers. Neutrality—for companies as well as countries—will be difficult, if not impossible. But workers must choose our own side, the side of the international working class. As World War III gets closer, we must be prepared to turn imperialist war into class war for communist revolution.
High technology: spy vs. spy
U.S. President Donald Trump’s assault on Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, is an attempt to block the Chinese bosses’ “digital silk road.” Chinese advances in global high technology, the centerpiece of the country’s “Made in China 2025” industrial policy, work hand-in-glove with its Belt and Road Initiative to gain political power through infrastructure projects and economic thievery around the world. Hauwei was born to spread Chinese power globally. It was founded in 1987 by a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army (npr.org, 12/18/18). Just as AT&T and Verizon are arms of U.S. imperialism, Huawei is an arm of Chinese imperialism.  
Currently China is leading the world in building infrastructure for the future 5G wireless network technology. The implications for the U.S. bosses are terrifying: A recent joint statement by several senior American military leaders noted that Chinese-led 5G infrastructure provides Beijing opportunities for forced data collection and could potentially compromise the integrity of future U.S. military operations. Moreover, they warned that this would give China’s fascist government the ability to clandestinely collect private information from billions of people and use that data for coercion (nationalinterest.org, 5/21).
Of course, these U.S. fascists are hoping that everyone forgets about Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Their revelations exposed the global expansion of spying by U.S. telecommunication firms on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency.
China and U.S. vie for allies
In both Latin America and Europe, U.S. warnings of future Chinese spying have largely fallen on deaf ears. Huawei phones make up only 7 percent of the Latin American market, as compared to 25 percent in Europe (New York Times, 5/25). Besides, Latin American governments and workers have lived with U.S. spying for decades. Hamilton Mourão, the Brazilian vice president, gives voice to the predominant ruling class view: “China wants our products; we need trains, ports, and highways that facilitate the transport of these products”(Foreign Affairs, May 2019).  
In Europe, meanwhile, close NATO allies like Germany and Britain are resisting U.S. appeals to ban Huawei from their own 5G projects. U.S. intelligence officials are conceding that Huawei and other Chinese telecom companies will “most likely control 40 to 60 percent of the networks over which businesses, diplomats, spies and citizens do business” (NYT, 5/28).
The bosses are pitching 5G technology as a big improvement in our quality of life, from faster movie downloads to revolutionary medical breakthroughs via augmented and virtual reality. They claim that 5G will tie together the “internet of things,” from autonomous cars to security cameras and industrial equipment (NYT, 5/25).  
But we should remember that the primary reason the bosses are building this infrastructure is for “national security”—in other words, for internal surveillance and repression to enhance military readiness. Any “benefits” for workers will take a back seat to the needs of the capitalists’ war machine and their move toward full-blown fascism.
Trade wars push patriotism
As the superpowers’ trade war intensifies, the U.S. rulers’ use of state power seems clumsy next to China’s state capitalists, who are more efficient in disciplining and unifying their own class—an essential element of fascism. The current impasse between Trump and Congress threatens to paralyze the U.S. government’s ability to implement new policy, at least in the short term. In a fast-moving world situation, this is highly unfavorable for the U.S. ruling class. Throw in Trump’s ally-smashing style, and U.S. imperialism may be isolated as it falls from its brief perch atop the profit system’s global pecking order.
U.S. workers have come to rely on cheap goods from both China and the U.S. to offset some of the rampant income inequality that concentrates obscene wealth within the tiny ruling class. But as Trump imposes more tariffs and China retaliates, prices will continue to rise. Both sets of rulers will need to win many millions of workers to the idea that it is our “patriotic duty” to sacrifice and pay higher prices for “Made in the USA” and “Made in China” products. The extra dollars and yuan to flow through the bosses’ respective treasuries will ultimately finance the cost of mass slaughter, as the trade war erupts into a shooting war.
Confronting China
All U.S. rulers grasp the need to keep a critical mass of war industry physical plants on the North American continent.  But in recent years, a number of U.S. manufacturers, including critical sectors like aerospace (warplanes) and trucks (tanks), have come to rely on cheap steel and electronic components from China. Sooner than later, a non-Chinese supply chain will be needed.
Though the immediate outcome of this latest trade war is unclear, the rising stakes are unmistakable.  Thomas Friedman, in-house cheerleader for U.S. imperialism at the New York Times, declares: “We could look the other way when trade was just about toys and solar panels, but when it’s about F-35s and 5G telecommunications, that’s not smart” (NYT 5/23). While Trump’s style is chaotic, it puts important needs of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the finance capitalists, front and center.  
In the U.S., the capitalist bosses—whether Republicans or Democrats—have yet to win masses of workers to the patriotic fervor needed for a serious inter-imperialist confrontation.  Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the same boat. In both countries, individualism and consumerism reign supreme. To the extent that the Trump-Xi trade clash represents the start of an effort to politicize consumers with anti-Chinese or anti-American sentiment, it is a significant building block for wider war.
In 2020 and beyond, – fight for communism
As capitalism heads toward world war history teaches us that the working class is the only force that can change this course of mass devastation. In the coming period, the bosses will undoubtedly attack every section of society to prepare for war. Communists must be positioned in growing mass movements, from fights for national healthcare and reproductive rights to teacher strikes and struggles against racist police murders. As we sharpen the class struggle, we must extend our work into basic industry.
PLP’s aim is to build a mass base of class-conscious workers who can be won to international communist revolution. As workers reject nationalism and reformism, they will come to understand that if you leave one wolf alive, the sheep will never be safe. Only then will humanity emerge from the threat of capitalist-inflicted annihilation and advance into a future where the world’s working class is free from exploitation.

BALTIMORE, May 15 —After 37 days of refusing to hold any discussions with members of the Johns Hopkins University sit-in about their powerful anti-racist demands on May 8, president Ronald Daniels used state power to break into locked-down Garland Hall. About 80 armed Baltimore City police forcibly ended the occupation and arrested everyone inside after fire department personnel broke through the Hall’s heavy glass doors.
This sit-in at Hopkins has helped set the foundations for future struggles, proving that the antiracist work we do today counts. It also forces us to define the meaning of victory.
Violence against the working class
One arrestee was a trans woman. She was misgendered, strip-searched, and humiliated. That afternoon, she and the others who had been arrested at the Garland Hall occupation were released and welcomed back with great comradely respect and excitement.
Later that evening, a weekly West Wednesday was held. That week’s rally was right outside Central Booking where those arrested at the sit-in had been detained. Once again West Wednesday was huge, with many participants and supporters from the sit-in enthusiastically attending.
Beating back racism with multiracial unity!
The West Wednesdays have grown as the antiracist struggle has sharpened and taken on a mass character. As CHALLENGE reported in the last issue, right after the conclusion of the powerful 300th West Wednesday on May 1, a racist hiding out in the dark attacked two people by the car belonging to Tawanda Jones–sister of Tyrone West. That racist punched two women in the face as they challenged him about his repulsive ideas, and he then got a taste of his own medicine.
One week later, in the middle of the night of May 8, just a few hours before the large-scale police action against the sit-in, a group of about six people, apparently led by fascists, forcibly pushed their way into the sit-in through a door that wasn’t chained shut at that moment.
This group had a bolt cutter, hoping to cut the chains on various doors and end the lock-down of Garland Hall. One of them violently grabbed a Black woman and tried to throw her down a staircase. Their plan failed when members of the sit-in, despite an injury, were able to get the racists out of the building. Therefore, for West Wednesday on the evening of that same day, a security plan was quickly developed,to ensure the safety of the rally.
At the rally, everyone marched around the corner to face the jail, and chanted very loudly, in massive unison, to support not only the jail’s general population, but also one of the inmates in particular: Keith Davis Jr. He was the first person shot by police, subsequent to the police killing of Freddie Gray. Davis has since been falsely accused of murder, and incarcerated in that prison while awaiting his fifth trial, scheduled for July. Rally participants were moved to see that prisoners were holding themselves up above the cell floors, keen to see and hear the rally. One of the prisoners that cheered the rally from his cell was Keith Davis himself!
Racists get scared;masses mobilize
At today’s West Wednesday, the racists made their presence felt, circling with their cars and sometimes parking near the rally. One of them was driven by killer cop Nicholas Chapman, one of the two animals who initiated the murderous attack on Tyrone West in July of 2013. Perhaps his goal was intimidation. Or perhaps he was scoping out the sizeable rally and starting to seriously worry that West Wednesday, along with additional elements of this struggle, is going to succeed in getting some accountability, and he may well be facing firing, and a cell block.
By the time this article is published, participants from the sit-in will have had a meeting with Hopkins president, to push for complete amnesty and, even more importantly, to continue pushing hard for the three demands: no private armed police force; no contracts with ICE; and justice for Tyrone West. Hopkins alumni, concerned academics, students, and community members are being mobilized in support. In addition, Hopkins students are being urged to continue attending the West Wednesday rallies.
The meaning of victory
There was some sense of defeat that the Hopkins sit-in had been forcibly ended without yet winning any of its three important demands.
      A member of Progressive Labor Party, one of the speakers at the May 8th rally, pointed out that the sit-in actually succeeded, very effectively, at popularizing an understanding of the issues, and the need to vigorously and boldly fight racism.
The speaker pointed to a link between this struggle and early opposition to the Vietnam War. The speaker said that when the Vietnam War began, antiwar students and workers were spat upon and yelled at. Over the next seven years of leafleting, teach-ins and struggle, as well the masses witnessing the mostrosity and devastation of the war in the evening news, most workers in the U.S. grew to become opponents of the war.
Large numbers of workers, students and soldiers came to understand that this war, which killed about two million Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers, disproportionately Black, was rooted in the dynamics of imperialism — a system that PLP continues to fight worldwide to replace with a communist, sisterly and brotherly egalitarian world.
When U.S. capitalists suddenly expanded that war by invading neighboring Cambodia, based upon the growth of political consciousness over seven years, half the colleges in the U.S. went on strike, virtually overnight.
Similarly, said the Party speaker, the sit-in at Hopkins, through its boldness and its consciousness raising, has helped lay the groundwork for larger struggles in the future, exclaiming to everyone at the rally “What you have done, counts!”

New York, May 29–Recently a subway conductor for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) got stabbed while sitting on a bench in his uniform.  Meanwhile, toxic silica dust will be released during major repairs of the L Train subway tunnel and will affect both transit workers and riders. To top it off, the MTA bosses just raised the fares.
The billionaire capitalists who run New York City and control the MTA blame the workers for these problems.The MTA’s plan is to try to drive a wedge between transit workers and fellow workers who ride the train. The vast majority of transit workers, have resisted their attempts, by not playing into the bosses’ fear mongering. They don’t fear the riding public, and are eager to help whenever they can. Similarly most riders do not blame the workers for train delays or unsafe conditions.
Mental health
Actually, the stabbed conductor was closer to the truth: ”What’s going on is that there’s a heavy mental issue … And I think this really needs to be dealt with... Someone like him, he’s possibly a victim of mental illness … so it’s something that we have to take care of” (abc7news, 4/22).
This “heavy mental issue” is capitalist exploitation of the working class, so bosses can make maximum profits. It is the job of communists in the Progressive Labor Party to not only fight for safer working conditions, but also to unite workers to fight against the whole capitalist system.
Mental health is a major issue in this country. The stressors caused by racism and exploitation are the main drivers of mental illness. Many workers never receive the care they need, due to the closure of mental health hospitals. “The disappearance of long-term-care facilities and psychiatric beds has escalated over the past decade, sparked by a trend toward deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients in the 1950s and 1960s, says Dominic Sisti, director of the Scattergood …”(NPR 11/30/17)
Silica dust kills workers, as bosses profit
At a recent Transit Workers Union (TWU) meeting it became clear that the bosses and the union have the same “solution” to the silica dust health problem:“Educate” workers about the health risks it poses, while scheduling workers for routine medical evaluations. As for the health risks to riders, the bosses have no answers and the union says, “We’ll get back to you.” This is how the working class is treated in liberal New York City with a Democratic mayor and governor.
Progressive Action is a group of transit workers organizing against the dangers from silica dust. They also held a march to City Hall to demand that Transit Authorities take action against the assaults on transit workers. Unfortunately, this march has led to demanding more police to ‘protect’ transit workers, which is a dead end. Kkkops will more easily harass Black and Latin transit workers; no MTA badge will change that. This “solution” will also send more workers with mental illnesses to prison. “The Treatment Advocacy Center reported American prisons and jails housed an estimated 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness in 2012 ... That figure is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in state psychiatric hospitals in the same year—about 35,000 people” (The Washington Post, 4/30/2015).
Fare hikes
But wait! The bosses want to squeeze the workers some more by raising the fares. Then they can get the media to blame the lack of money for transit repairs on fare beaters.There was a big media blitz about how workers don’t pay the fare on the busses and jump the turnstiles to ride the subway. That won’t be a problem under communism as public transportation will run everywhere and it will be free. Here the MTA bosses and the TWU union sellouts have a “disagreement.” The bosses want more cops to go after workers who apply for too much overtime! But the union, and even the Progressive Action group within the union, want more cops to supposedly protect the transit workers. They want the cops to protect the transit workers from other workers. When asked what the union was doing to improve the relationship between MTA workers and riding workers, union reps replied with, “y’all ain’t got to worry about that because no one’s gonna want to fight with a guy swinging a Jerry [slug hammer].” This was probably the most callous, and individualistic thing heard from the union misleaders. The union member responded that he cares about the safety of all workers, not just those in his division.  
Then the media went after workers who worked “too much” overtime. “The study found MTA workers are putting in so many extra hours … that the agency spent $418 million on overtime last year (CBS New York, 4/23).”With over 50,000 transit workers, a majority is required to work seven days a week. These workers are not rolling in the dough. There is lots of overtime because the MTA bosses refuse to hire more workers.
All things change
After the union meeting a PLer had a lunchroom discussion with his coworkers. At first they were afraid he would lose his job for criticizing the company. Many felt it wouldn’t change anything raising the issues with the union. They were right about the sell-out union. One worker mentioned how hard it would be just to get the workers to a union meeting, himself included. The PLer’s response was that all things change. The PLer also proposed a flyer to pressure the union and to address mental illness. The workers are in the midst planning a struggle.
So what do the MTA bosses, politicians, and media lackeys have in store for the working class? More fare hikes and pay cuts in workers salary overtime. Not to mention, exposing workers and riders to toxic silica dust. We need to fight back with a united working class and eventually seize power with a communist revolution for the working class.