BALTIMORE, January 5—A nearly unanimous “No way!” was the powerful answer to the confirmation of Mayor Catherine Pugh’s nominee, Joel Fitzgerald, as Baltimore’s next police commissioner. He would have been the City’s fifth top cop in less than four years since the Freddie Gray rebellion in 2015, which put fear in the hearts, and instability in the decision-making, of the local ruling class.
Several days before the City Council hearing, 11 West Wednesday protesters participated in the third monthly CHALLENGE Readers’ Discussion Group. (West Wednesdays are the continuing protests in response to the murder of Tyrone West in July 18, 2013.) One of the topics was about organizing speakers at the hearing, which we succeeded in doing!
Tawanda Jones, main organizer of the weekly West Wednesday rallies that demand accountability for her brother’s death and for all victims of police terror, declared to members of the City Council, about Fitzgerald, “Get him out, or we’ll push you out!”
Fitzgerald’s defining moment
The defining moment, in Fitzgerald’s career, was not the exaggeration and dishonesty in the resume he submitted for this job. Nor was it his racist response to a question about police-community relations: sometimes the best thing is to call an emergency pro-police “back the blue” rally, as he has done in Ft. Worth Texas, where he is currently police commissioner.
No, the defining moment was probably when Ft. Worth cop William Martin responded to a 911 call by Black woman Jacqueline Craig, who accused a white male neighbor of grabbing and choking her 7-year-old son. Shortly after arriving on the scene, Cop Martin forcefully shoved his taser into Ms. Craig’s back, and brutally arrested, not the neighbor, but Jacqueline and her two daughters. Even the Ft. Worth police internal investigation found Martin guilty of excessive force.
Commissioner Fitzgerald de facto let Cop Martin get away. Martin was docked two weeks pay. Fitzgerald instead demoted who commanders for releasing the video revealing the violence against Jacqueline and her family. This led to outrage and protests. In other words, Fitzgerald was far more upset about the truth getting out, than he was about racist police terror. His handling of that crisis was his defining moment.
Speak out at City Council hearing
If he became Baltimore’s police chief, killer cops here would be even more emboldened. That’s why it’s reasonable to argue that shutting down the Fitzgerald confirmation will probably result in prevenient murder of working-class lives in Baltimore. And we did shut it down! Two days after the City Council hearing, Fitzgerald withdrew himself from consideration.
Among the 70 speakers, many focused on advocating for various reforms: calling for a home-grown police commissioner, more community policing with foot patrols, no reinstitution of the deadly “jump out boys,” and no “Back the Blue” rallies.
No use in reforming wage slavery
The limiting the goal to an effort for reforming capitalism is equivalent to folks during slavery trying only to limit the length of whips. Clearly, the bigger goal—complete abolition of slavery—was the necessary focus.
The same is true today. We need to abolish this system of wage slavery. Progressive Labor Party upholds the communist view that as long as capitalism is the framework, vicious policing of the masses is essential to the survival of this system. Trying to control and repress the working class, by way of violence and terror, is the sword of this vastly unequal system. Only a relentless marathon towards a communist society can cut off racist police at its knees.
Over time, we plan to back up sharp words with unified mass action against politricksters, the Klan in blue, and all the other treacherous attacks of capitalism.

I recently returned from a week in Tijuana, Mexico, responding to a call by the New Sanctuary Caravan to lend moral and other support to our brothers and sisters fleeing from Central America. Their bold call was a pro-internationalist to president Donald Trump and the U.S. ruling class’s racist divisiveness.
Tijuana is one of the largest ports of entry in the world, and even though the vast majority of migrants/refugees are from Central America, they are also from many other countries, like Haiti, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico itself, fleeing the poverty and instability that the system of imperialism produces.  And the U.S. embassies refuse to grant them visas to the U.S. (So much for the argument that “They should come ‘the right way’”). 
Sexism and racism are also at play here.  Many of the Central American refugees are young women fleeing sexual violence and persecution. A brave 14-year-old Central American girl walked away from home one night without informing her family where she was going. Fleeing the sexual abuse of a family member, she carried nothing with her except a little money in her pocket. She told the lawyer who found her at the border crossing that she found her way to the border by following the lights from the cars and buses.  Many refugees are indigenous workers being victimized by racist abuse and oppression in their countries of origin.
As bad as then-president Barack Obama was “Deporter in Chief”, Trump’s policies are carrying on, and advancing, that legacy. He’s raising the level of state sponsored cruelty to new heights by separating families, effectively shutting the border, and torturing workers and children in Customs and Border Patrol facilities (nicknamed “The Icebox” by refugees).  I watched the face of a little girl sitting on the curb at the border crossing listening intently as a lawyer advised her mother to write her own name and date of birth with a sharpie pen on the girl’s shoulder in the event they are separated. The trauma that children and their parents are experiencing is reminiscent of Southern slavery and the boarding schools for U.S. indigenous children. 
Thousands of refugees have been living for months in Tijuana in tents and unheated shelters (the temperature is in the 40’s at night) waiting for their numbers to be called to begin the asylum process. Working hand-in-glove, the U.S. and Mexican governments have manufactured this crisis to force people to self-deport or accept the one-year Mexican work visas offered. Every day, the Mexican government shuttles refugees and migrants to a job fair, channeling them into the low wage jobs that will boost the Mexican economy.
The refugee crisis is more than an immigration issue. It’s part of the racist division of labor across borders that capitalism needs to maximize profits.  It’s part of the legacy of sexism that began with class society when women became the property of men.  It’s a reflection of capitalism’s view of workers as tools for profit with disposable lives.  It’s a reflection of workers’ mass impulse to resist exploitation and claim their full humanity. It’s an issue that lay bare capitalism’s failures, and the neccesity for a new social system: communism.
Now, a new caravan is leaving Honduras, continuing to challenge the existence of the capitalist borders that keep the poor countries poor and the rich countries rich.  We need to bring the communist line to the struggle “Working People have no Nation, Smash the Borders” and do all we can to build solidarity.
The hundreds of volunteers coming to the border also need to hear our class analysis, the only answer to a movement, that is heavily influenced by the liberal establishment.  Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto, “All history is the history of class struggle”.  Here it is.  The refugee movement is overwhelming the status quo and pushing history forward. Volunteers mostly see themselves as providing service and moral support to the immigrants but not as organizers of struggle to change this system. The Party’s involvement could help transform it into a fighting movement of the international working class. 
I worked with Al Otro Lado that has a Pro Se Clinic that prepares refugees to advocate for themselves in the asylum process. Spanish speakers, and speakers of Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, and other languages, lawyers, law students, or medical professionals are most useful, but everyone can play a role.  There are others organizing support too—World Central Kitchen, Food not Bombs, Border Angels, Deported Veterans, DACA moms, Pueblo sin Fronteras.
 I raised the Party’s ideas in conversation with some of the volunteers and distributed a party flier to them, but was unable to get very far with the little time we had together. I plan to continue this solidarity work in my home city with the community college students I work with. Tijuana and other border communities where migrants confront a militarized border, present a great opportunity for the Party to bring its ideas.

WASHINGTON D.C, January 20–There is one thing the now 29 day old government shutdown shows for sure; neither Donald Trump nor his Democratic opponents have any concern for workers, the main victims of this power game between the main imperialist wing of the ruling class and the domestically oriented, Republican Trump supporters.
 78 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (CNBC, 1/9).Now 800,000 federal employees and hundreds of thousands of contractors, who are 40 percent of government personnel, are without one, whether or not they are being forced to work. To understand the devastation, we must know that 21.2 percent of U.S. families have no savings, including over 32 percent of Latin and 37 percent of Black families. 40 percent of all families have less than $400 in available cash for emergencies, according to the Federal Reserve. What more proof need there be that workers cannot afford to live under this capitalist system?
Indigenous workers living on federally funded land have been hardest hit. Snow covered roads are not being cleared, ambulances are not running and a 60 percent unpaid healthcare workforce devastates medical care. Some of the other concrete effects of the shutdown, which disproportionately affects Black and Latin workers, are: food stamps, used by 38 million people, were given out early for February and will no longer be available; federal cash welfare for $34 million is gone and being temporarily replaced by states; USDA loans and federal rent subsidies for low income rural dwellers will end by 2/1; food inspections have markedly decreased; approvals for opioid drug antagonists (drugs that counteract narcotic overdoses) cannot be had. If workers have not already died from these measures, some soon will, and it is certain that widespread effects of the stress and deprivation will continue long after the shutdown ends.
Why make a crisis out of immigration?
Trump pretends that there is an “immigration crisis,” but illegal border crossings have dropped from 851,000 in 2006 to approximately 62,000 in 2016, and both documented and undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than the native born and have a lower unemployment rate (NYT 1/11). Most illegally imported drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry. Given the falling fertility rates of native-born Americans, the U.S. would need to admit more than a million immigrants a year until 2050, more than double the current number, just to maintain current levels of production (NYT, 1/15).
What the maintenance of legal barriers to immigration does accomplish is to keep this large body of workers in a state of constant fear, drastically limiting their ability to demand higher wages or organize. By branding immigrant workers as dangerous and criminal, racist and nationalistic divisions are also sown between them and other workers, including Black workers and legal immigrants or their descendants.
Why is this happening now?
There may be no better explanation than that Trump is a bumbling politician, without any stable advisors representing the usual ruling class forces. He sees himself as beholden to his most racist and reactionary base to fulfill a campaign promise to “build the wall” and earn his racist and nationalist stripes. However, there should be no illusions that the Democrats or liberals who oppose him have any interest in treating immigrants with humanity. Since a century ago, Presidents Wilson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, both Bush’s and Obama have set up draconian barriers to immigration and increased deportations. Obama deported more immigrants than any president ever (about 3 million), and Democrats have built more of the existing wall than Republicans. Workers should not only fight against this racist border wall and this racist government shutdown; we should fight for a world without borders – communism.
The Democrats today, representing the main finance wing of the ruling class, are anxious to weaken Trump, who is destroying years of policies that strengthened the U.S. ruler’s international military, political and financial alliances. They are horrified by his general undisciplined behavior. They fear that his withdrawing from Syria and Afghanistan, and threatening to withdraw from NATO threatens their worldwide, imperialist empire. They also oppose his total destruction of environmental regulations, overt racism, and destruction of “free trade,” all damaging to the reputation and sway of America’s large corporations and their international imperialist alliances.
Ultimately, workers must rise up collectively to defend ourselves from both parties. Mass sickouts among airport workers are already happening and may spread. Although federal workers are legally banned from striking, job actions are needed to fight for survival as all the bosses ignore their needs. Once again it is clear that capitalism cares naught for workers’ lives and that we need, in the end, to be fighting for a society we control–communism.

New York City, January 20—As the dust settles on the recent TWU local 100 (largest transit union in the country) elections the uncertainty that permeates the U.S., and is now is reflecting itself within the union and its members. This past election was held in the midst of pressure on the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) bosses to answer for unreliable service and mounting debt. The bosses’ answer has been a threat to raise fares, impose a hiring freeze, harsher discipline, and to cry broke.
The reality is that the best fix for the transit system is to do away with politicians and the MTA bosses. A worker run society will put the needs of the working class first about what and where service is needed. Under this capitalist system service needs are determined by what benefits the billionaire bankers and business owners. The working class ridership and MTA workers united against the politicians, real estate moguls, MTA bosses, and ultimately their masters the banks, is the only force than can win a better subway system in the short term and a better world, communism, in the long term.
The union sellouts’ misleadership regained power for many of the top union spots, while in the subways division (Service Delivery) of the union they lost almost all of their leadership posts to fake progressives. These ‘progressives’ talk about building morale amongst members and getting the union strike ready, all the while looking for friendly politicians. Their ultimate strategy still relies on using the bosses’ media, lawyers and arbitrators rather than workers powers’.  
This union misleadership has been ruling the union by pitting one division against the next, bribing workers in buses by controlling their overtime etc., while neglecting the needs of others outright. They back anti-labor Governor Cuomo, the boss of the MTA, without any criticism.
The subway is the cash cow of the MTA, moving over 5 million workers a day, but the life of subway workers is not easy. The average workday of the predominately Black and Latin workers ranges between 10-12 hours a day. Newer workers start with the worst schedules and very little certainty about where and when they work. Every Friday they must call to see if their days off have changed for the next week. The crew (screw) assignment section controls your life.
Bosses neglect subways–blame workers
The neglect of the subway system by the MTA bosses and politicians has left the subway workers to make do; making do with malfunctioning signals, no time to eat, and short to no recovery times between runs. Antiquated radios make communication impossible, leaving both ridership and workers in the dark about delays and other problems.
There has been a steady rise in operating crew discipline with little to no fight-back from the union. The best answer you receive from the union when fighting the MTA on discipline is to get your own lawyer. The latest round of news on the MTA is that they are aiming to speed up service by fixing broken signals. Immediately workers ask if there is going to be a lawsuit to win back lost jobs, wages and benefits for all the workers that have been disciplined for running into these malfunctioning signals. Starting from training you are told to do about 5-10 mph less that the posted speed when you encounter a time signal. But if you hit the signal doing less that 5-10 mph of the posted speed it’s your fault because you were “inattentive.” With the news that the MTA is now fixing these signals, they have finally admitted they are not working as they are supposed to. The union has been silent on the issue.
Workers must fightback!
The main organized resistance to the current union sellout leadership is coming from the subways division (Conductors, Train Operators, Tower Operators, Cleaners).This division has been under attack for about two decades and even more so under this new move to modernize. The resistance now is mostly angry talk, exposing the union misleaders backroom deals with management.
The election exposed many underhanded deals that the current union leadership made with the MTA bosses. They issued body cameras to spy on subway crews more than to prevent assaults. The cell phones policy is vague leaving workers open to harassment and disciplining. Recently, the MTA has installed cameras in work train cabs without a word to crew members who know this wouldn’t be possible without agreement with the union, but the union has been silent about this new camera program.
The coming election has emboldened more members to speak up and get involved but many still see allying with politicians as the only way we can make progress. We must have more confidence in ourselves, the working class, both transit workers and the riding public. Relying on politicians or the media builds cynicism.
Let’s turn our anger and discussions on the job into action. Let’s go to union meetings and confront our do-nothing misleaders. Let’s go to the bosses’ offices and confront them when they try to discipline one of us. Let’s reach out to our brothers and sisters who ride the trains and busses. Let’s build a stronger, fighting, strike ready union before the May contract deadline.  Join with the Progressive Labor Party in the long-term fight for a world run by the working class: communism.