Although a federal budget deal was reached between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, workers should have no illusions that either party has our class interests at heart. President Donald Trump’s open, vicious, anti-immigrant racism and his fascist “state of emergency” is a big attack on our class. But both competing wings of the U.S. ruling class—the  main-wing finance capitalists represented by the Democrats, and the Fortress America nationalists fronted by Trump and his Republican base—serve the needs of U.S. capitalism. Both sides back the maximum exploitation of the working class, using whatever terror is necessary. Immigrant workers and children languish in torturous detention camps on the border with Mexico, and throughout the U.S. interior, with at least 22 deaths in the last two years (nbcnews.com, 1/6). Meanwhile Democrats and Republicans are quibbling over how many tens of thousands of bunks and cots the camps should contain!
Communists reject the bosses’ phony national borders, which are designed to control labor and resources while keeping our class divided. Communists understand that working-class solidarity knows no boundaries. The slogan of Progressive Labor Party is “One world, one class, one flag.” Workers share a class interest to smash the profit system, the fundamental cause of the misery and death inflicted upon us. Only a communist revolution can abolish profit and exploitation, enable workers to seize state power, and create a borderless world that serves workers’ needs.
On January 25, after a long impasse and a 35-day partial government shut-down over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall. Trump finally signed a budget bill pushed through by the Democrats. The legislation allowed for $1.3 billion for the wall and an additional $1.75 billion for surveillance technology and more immigration cops. Now Trump wants to take  more money for his wall from military construction and other funds. His declared “state of emergency” is dangerous to our class for several reasons. First, it is rooted in the racist “immigrant invasion” myth that plays into Trump’s white-supremacist base. Second, it expands the executive power that has marked the growth of U.S. fascism since the 1980s. Finally, it sets a precedent for extra-legal fascist rule in the bosses’ run-up to their war with China and/or Russia.  
   In the face of a furious inter-imperialist challenge by China’s bosses, the U.S. main wing will be pushing new forms of “multicultural” patriotism (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2019). Unlike Trump, the finance capitalists know the U.S. needs to recruite immigrant fighters for an inevitable World War III. They continue to push for the DREAM Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which would funnel young immigrants into the U.S. military. Most of the U.S. population, including 92 percent of Democrats, are against Trump’s wall (Washington Post, 1/14/19).  But the Democratic Party’s opposition to Trump only highlights their own hypocrisy and a criminal history of attacks on immigrant workers.
Racist Democrats no friends of immigrants
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law two bills passed by a majority Republican Congress: the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The first used the spectre of “Islamic terrorism” to justify “secret evidence” in deportation hearings. The second vastly expanded the list of federal and state criminal violations as grounds for deportation. Both laws led to today’s mass deportations and rising fascism. By empowering anti-immigrant racism, they also drove down working conditions for all workers.More recently, Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama deported 3 million immigrants during his eight years in office. Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ 2016 presidential candidate, recently warned Europe’s governments to “get a handle on migration” and “send a very clear message [to immigrants]–We are not going to be able to provide refuge and support’” (The Guardian, 11/22/18).Clinton previously backed her husband’s racist immigration reform policies. As a U.S. senator, she joined Obama and Chuck Schumer, the current Senate minority leader, in voting for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized 700 miles of border fencing (Washington Post, 1/10/19).
While Trump promotes open racist terror through forced family separation, renewed workplace raids, and extended imprisonment of asylum-seekers in his Nazi-style concentration camps, the liberals’ brand of fascism is more dangerous to our class. Some Democratic Party leaders, recognizing the rise of anti-capitalist sentiment among younger workers, try to pose as friends of immigrants. They use popular social democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to enhance their “progressive” image. But the social democrats records expose them for the liars they are.
When Ocasio-Cortez and others call for an end to ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), their plan is to reassign the immigration gestapo to other agencies that will continue to terrorize workers (The Atlantic, 7/11/18). None of these fake-leftists question the legitimacy of national borders. None of them are calling for the detention camps to be dismantled, or for freeing these victims of U.S. imperialism. None of them are friends of the international working class.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s willingness to make a deal with Trump shows that her objection to the “immorality”of the wall is nothing more than opportunist rhetoric. In 2013, Pelosi supported a bipartisan bill for more border fencing. She and other key Democrats want kinder, gentler concentration camps that allow parents and children to be jailed together, not separately. They want a smaller wall and more drones, surveillance, and cybersecurity—potentially greater threats to workers than anything Trump has imagined.
Anti-immigrant racism is nothing new in the U.S. It is deeply embedded in the country’s history.  From the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1796 to the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s to the eugenics-based national origin quotas of 1924, U.S. bosses have used their control of the state to divide the working class.  The latest bipartisan budget agreement continues the same pattern. Working class struggle may temporarily force changes to the rulers’ immigration policy.  But anti-immigrant terror, enforced by racist cops, has been a given from the beginning.
Workers’ power can shut down racist borders
Workers have the power to fight all of these racist attacks. As the caravan of thousands of workers from Central America moved northward to flee the capitalist horrors of poverty, gang violence, and state-sponsored fascism, hundreds of workers from Mexico and elsewhere responded to the call for working-class solidarity. They provided the travelers with food, water, clothing, and shelter. Despite the bosses’ racist anti-immigrant propaganda, many workers recognize how our own lives are tied up with those of our class brothers and sisters. Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have joined this mass movement of support. We call on our comrades, friends, and all workers to join these heroic efforts now!

CHICAGO, February 18—Working-class educators, students, and parents were able to secure a hard-fought reform victory from the racist bosses today. After nine days on the picket lines, teachers from Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) and their employer have agreed on a tentative contract for the network that limits class sizes, provides protections to counselors and social workers, and guarantees teacher raises.
The CICS struggle was the second charter school strike in the city within three months, and is part of a growing anti-racist education movement taking place across the U.S. Comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were honored to be a part of this struggle, offering daily support and communist politics on the front lines. In the classrooms and in the streets, our Party remains eager to keep fanning the flames of working-class fightback and international revolution.
Segregated learning conditions
On February 5, nearly 200 workers from four different CICS schools, responsible for educating over 2,000 students, began their strike. Their decision to strike was motivated by the need to fight back against the racist learning and working environments inside their schools. According to the CICS website, some 96 percent are non-white  (chicagointl.org, 2/19). Because of the inherent racism of capitalism, these overwhelmingly Black and Latin students chronically lack resources such as up-to-date textbooks, internet and computers, proper heat in the classrooms, and support staff such as paraprofessionals.
In Chicago, one of the most segregated cities in the world, these striking teachers were able to organize lively multiracial, multi-generational picket lines that incorporated music, dancing, chants, parents, and community members. Even as temperatures on the picket dropped below freezing most mornings, morale was high. Working-class solidarity was alive in the form of donated food and coffee, hand warmers, and honks of support from workers driving nearby.
Beyond the school campuses, the racist education bosses were also targeted in their luxurious downtown corporate offices, as the strikers and their supporters found more ways to apply pressure. On February 13, they held a sit-in and shut down the lobby and elevators at 1 Wacker Drive, a large office tower housing the offices of the CICS Board President and Treasurer, for two hours. The next day, racist Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office was targeted during a visit to City Hall.
Racist police bully students & strikers
Bringing the fight on multiple fronts and enlisting a broad base of working-class support throughout the city were no doubt critical in winning the strike. PLP comrades stressed the role of the kkkops in protecting the interests of the capitalist bosses.
On one of the first days of the strike, the police were called in to threaten picketers at a south side school where students and teachers are mostly Black, but not at the more diverse, and less integrated, north side schools.  Many strikers correctly interpreted this as a racist attack.  The cops went so far as to tell the picketers they couldn’t talk to the parents on the public sidewalk and threatened to arrest them.
What’s more, the cops escorted scabs across the picket line. The police play the role of paid racist goons on the side of the capitalists. Although some of the strikers disagreed with this communist outlook at the time, it provided an opportunity to sharpen the discussion on class struggle in later interactions.
Charter schools: racist capitalist scheme
Charter holders in Illinois are required to be not-for-profit organizations.But they take millions in public taxes (money that came from workers) for management fees.CICS has a charter for 14 schools. But they don’t manage any of them. Instead, they subcontract to for-profit management companies that are actually their wholly-owned subsidiaries.Then these companies take more money for managing the schools.
CICS pays their CEO, Elizabeth Shaw, over $200,000 per year to not run 14 schools. CICS has $36 million in on hand reserves, but prior to the strike had refused to spend any of it to improve the schools. At the same time, CICS raised its management fees by $1.2 million in this year alone (ctulocal1.org, 2/14).  This money alone is enough to meet the workers’ contract proposals.
Charter schools for many years have been touted as an alternative to the failing public education system under capitalism. But in reality, they represent a way for the bosses to increase inequality for working-class students and to undermine unionized teacher workforces in the public schools. Many charter schools act as fascist prison-like facilities for their mostly Black and Latin student populations, pushing intense discipline in an effort to prepare working-class youth for war.
In the end, they end up failing the majority of working-class youth, like their public school counterparts. Education under capitalism will always serve the interests of the bosses, serving to indoctrinate workers on the “virtues” of the system instead of providing the tools for liberation.
Learn to fight, fight to learn
Within the past year, working-class teachers in the U.S. have been teaching valuable lessons about the class struggle against the racist and sexist bosses. From West Virginia to California, to Arizona and Illinois, the movement against racist attacks in education has been growing in size and intensity as more workers grasp their potential class power.
PLP will continue to support and provide leadership to these struggles whenever possible. Beyond just a “fair” contract or a moratorium on charter schools, we will advocate communist revolution and a worker-run collective society as the only means to ensure an education worthy of unlocking the true potential of our children.

NEW YORK CITY, February 20—Eighteen years after the bill was first dreamt up in 2001, New York State just approved its own version of the Dream Act, giving a select few undocumented college students access to financial aid. The Dream Act is a win for the liberal bosses, represented mainly by the Democratic Party, who aim to exploit undocumented youth as a chess piece in their games of war and fascism.
A living nightmare
The DREAM Act (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) was a path to conditional permanent residency for undocumented youth who demonstrate “good moral character” and either serve two years in the military or college without aid.
This state-level Dream Act can neither stop deportation nor grant any legal rights to stay in the United States. Instead, it promises young people eligibility for state aid for college. “The Immigration Policy Center estimates that because of financial constrains, only 5 to 10 percent of the 4,500 undocumented students who graduate from New York high schools each year go on to pursue college degrees” (NY Times, 1/23). New York will now be one of the seven states that have passed similar legislation. When I broke the news to my undocumented family member, she cried then sighed, “better than nothing.”
While the anti-Trump liberal movement is hailing this as a victory, it’s actually a slap in the face. Much like our Black and Latin brothers and sisters (citizen or not), undocumented families live under the threat of state terror. Some state financial aid is helpful, for those who can afford to go to college in the first place. Our class deserves more than crumbs for the select few who keep their head down and don’t question. The liberal rulers are winning Black, Latin, and Asian youth to a degree of cynicism that strangles potential for rebellion in the cradle. Of course, no one sees this NY Dream Act as the end of a fightback. Rather, it’s the beginning. The question is, who will lead it—the working class under communist influence or the ruling class for their imperialist empire?
Liberal bosses play undocumented kids
The passing of this pathetic Dream Act reflects how the U.S. ruling class will be using the fight against deportations as a way to buy votes and allegiance to their imperialist war agenda. When workers ally with our class enemies, we are being won over to a key element of fascism: all-class unity.
“The Dream Act’s passage reflected the Democratic Party’s turn to the left on immigration, an issue party leaders once handled gingerly out of fear of angering some white voters…The party’s 2020 presidential hopefuls — including some who once held more hawkish views on immigration, like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — are already moving to reassure liberal activists on the issue in an effort to protect themselves in the 2020 campaign” (NY Times, 1/23). Let’s not mistaken these politicians’ opportunism for actual support for immigrant families.
After all, this is the same party that deported 3 million people under liberal Barack Obama’s presidency. “As of 2016…the number of people living in the United States without documents decreased to 10.7 million from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. The sharp decline came largely during the Obama administration and in the wake of the Great Recession. Deportations also sharply rose during that time” (NY Times, 11/27). Where was the liberal cry for humanity then?
Driving a wedge between students and workers
The consequences of the Dream Act is much more insidious in that the legislation not only disciplines working-class youth for nationalism, but it also pits students against workers. NYC Department of Education Chancellor Richard Carranza called these students “‘the best of New York City and America…They have gone to school, gotten great grades, and in many cases served our communities and country…’”(Chalk Beat, 1/10). By limiting the fight to just “good children,” this elitist reform criminalizes parents and adults whose only “crime” was crossing an artificial border.
Nothing but desperation and love for one’s children will cause a parent to make the perilous journey across a desert, only to risk living in concentration camps or living under the threat of being snatched up like prey. These are the choices under capitalism. This reform reaffirms the myth of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. In that sense, the blame goes back on the undocumented families for being undocumented, while the system gets away scot-free. The working class did not fail; the system set us up for failure.
We must refuse the bosses’ attempt to divide us by “good” and “bad” immigrants. We must see through the liberal wing’s posturing. We must organize all those around us to invoke love of our class across borders by fighting for a world where we are defined, not by the pieces of papers we hold, but by our labor, creativity, and contribution to communism.

Maryland, February 12–A cohort of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members in Prince George’s County in Maryland have been working in a new coalition sponsored by an immigrants’ rights organization to address police misconduct. A town hall meeting was held that included Latin and Black victims of police brutality in collaboration with ICE (U.S immigrations and Customs Enforcement).
One particularly horrible case was described by “Jorge,”a “Dreamer.”He said, “local law enforcement’s job is [supposed] to keep us safe. Their job was to keep my mother, who was once a victim, of domestic violence safe,instead they arrested her,and told her she has 60 days to leave my sister and me alone in this country.”
Jorge’s mother was detained by a Prince George’s County Sheriffs officer while on her way to work. The officer said Jorge’s mother was speeding but Jorge pointed out “My mother’s driving makes other drivers go around her because it’s going so slow. I believe that the officer was racially motivated to pull my mother over.”
A petition calling for passage of “The Racial Equity in Policing” bill by the County Council is being circulated, and Council members are being lobbied.The bill includes the following points:
Prevent any cooperation between Prince George’s County police and ICE
Support police accountability through the mandatory use of police body cameras
Support an independent investigation with prosecutorial power anytime there is a death or serious trauma at the hands of the police
 Ban the use of internal, extra-judicial gang database.  
A strength of this emerging movement is the multiracial, multi-generational character of participants in the effort. But there are weaknesses in the group’s position,which holds that we can address the mistrust between law enforcement and workers by passing reforms that help deepen our engagement with police. This approach misses the fundamental role of the police in a capitalist society – intimidate, divide, and terrorize the working class to ensure maximum profits for the capitalists. Some participants in this coalition who have been reading Challenge are interested in this analysis and realize that it means we need revolution, not just working with politicians and police. We will continue to work on individual cases of brutality, of illegal police-ICE collaboration and of unjustified maintenance by the cops of a secret “gang list” while continuing to look towards a revolutionary future.