WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 4—Today the DC-area transit workers held an “unathorized” work action to protest management’s racist mistreatment. Hundreds observed a “1:59” action, which means they came to work one hour and 59 minutes late, causing widespread disruption of public transit on the July 4 holiday. Actions like these reveal how power comes from labor. It also reveals the limits of union leadership. Under communist influence and mass organizing, more transit workers can gain confidence to shut this system down.
We need to do more
In addition to the racist background checks, the transit bosses have increased their harassment on the job, including random screenings of workers. We’ve had some rallies and pickets protesting this harassment. But we need to do more. The bosses are demanding more givebacks in the contract negotiations. We need to organize strike committees at every job location. We need to collectively develop our demands. We need to organize for a strike.
Prior to the action, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members of the union (Local 689) discussed this proposed protest with other workers. We found that there was a lot of enthusiasm for finally taking an action against management.
Workers who participated in the action will be charged with a “miss” but not a “failure,” a much more serious violation of company policy. The union president suggested that there may be additional work actions in coming weeks. We can’t rely on that. Let’s organize at every barn, at every work location. Let’s fight against every case of harassment. Let’s get ready to strike by fighting back now.
Debating politics of the work action
There was some legitimate skepticism about the likely effectiveness of the action, since there was no advance planning and no specific demands.
How could you measure gaining “respect” from management? Since more workers with less seniority work on holidays, was there unfair pressure on them to bear the likely reprisals from management?
Most importantly, how will we fight back, should Metro take action against the workers who participated?
Workers can’t rely on union leaders
At the union meeting immediately before the action, a militant member declared that it was good to take work actions that disrupt transit service since that is where our power comes from. But it was also vital to organize to get strike ready and collectively develop specific demands against management.
The union president Jackie L. Jeter is clearly feeling the pressure from a restive membership, gave a flimsy excuse about the absence of demands, indicated that a strike might not be necessary, but that each member should have $20,000 in the bank if there was a strike.
Her rhetoric and bluster was an attempt to hide the fact that she has always dragged her feet in challenging management. And her $20,000 comment showed that she had no idea of how a well-organized strike would proceed and was simply trying to scare people away from becoming strike ready.
The PLP influence in Local 689 continues to grow. We will continue to struggle for ever-sharper class struggle as we also strive to bring additional transit workers into the revolutionary struggle for communism. Workers would be in full power and there would be no such thing as exploitative bosses to deny us respect.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 9—Thousands exploded in mass working-class violence to protest the government’s fuel price hikes.
 Prices for basic products, especially gasoline (38 percent) and diesel fuel (47 percent) (Reuters, 7/8). Commercial activity everywhere was impacted: tires burned in the streets, protesters downed the main antenna of Digicel (largest cell phone operator in Haiti), and singled out international hotels that were built since the 2010 earthquake instead of housing for those made homeless; major air carriers cancelled flights. The police, called out in force, were blocked from carrying out their brutal suppression of the popular will.
Thus was the hatred of the working class for our exploiters and oppressors expressed, but spontaneous expressions of hatred are not enough to solve our problems. Nothing short of the abolition of a system founded on profit for the small class of capitalists will prevent continuous and worsening attacks on our class. Only a system that is run by workers through our class’s international Party, PLP, can serve our needs and end this exploitation and oppression.
For weeks the IMF (International Monetary Fund) had demanded a halt to government subsidies for gasoline and diesel, thus increasing the portion of the prices on life necessities that workers are forced to pay. It diverted the revenue for running the oppressive government and paying debts to the IMF. Social networks were buzzing, so that when President Jovenel Moïse announced the price increases at 4pm last Friday everyone was prepared to fight back. They took to the streets, called the president a tool of the local and international capitalists and demanded that he step down.
Members and friends of PLP participated in and supported the rebellions, pointing out the need to destroy capitalism altogether and build communism everywhere in the world. There is mass despair, especially among the young, who have no hope of employment. This movement has avoided the usual mis-leadership of the traditional politicians. There is a level of understanding among the masses that we have to fight together for our class interests, and against the “me-ism” that the rulers encourage. But this is no substitute for building a mass communist party to foster and lead these periodic struggles as battles in the war to defeat and remove the capitalist-class enemy altogether, rather than to seek relief from each manifestation of our oppression as it arises. Millions need to join PLP to reach that goal.
President Jovenel Moïse was forced to rescind the price hikes for the moment. However, like all victories short of smashing the system, this will be only temporary. Furthermore, we cannot rely on the spontaneity of working-class hatred of our exploitation and oppression in the battles to come. We have to build our Party, the PLP, among the masses of workers and youth. Through class struggle and ideological struggle, win them to the need for communist revolution to end this system of misery once and for all.

BALTIMORE, June 25—A recent West Wednesday rally—an anti-racist rally against the 2013 murder of Tyrone West that’s become a fixture in Baltimore over five years—may have been modest in size, but it was bold in action.
It began when a cop in an unmarked car stationed himself directly across the street from the rally.
Perhaps the Baltimore Police Department was trying to see if intimidation would scare people and minimize participation at this weekly action. Since 2013, we have been demanding the prosecution and incarceration of the cops who killed unarmed Tyrone West, while in police custody.
Or perhaps the intimidation was coincidental, and just part of BPD’s new strategy, which they call “predictive policing.”
Either way, participants at West Wednesday got right up—and stayed up—in one cop’s face, videotaping and practically surrounding him. Simultaneously, across the street, the rally continued, virtually without interruption, while the sister of Tyrone West incorporated into her powerful speech an astute, angry, loud, and unabashed denunciation of the new BPD police policy.
The “predictive policing” farce
Two years ago, following the police murder of Freddie Gray, the federal Department of ‘Injustice’ (DOJ) issued a report about Baltimore. It admitted BPD strategies routinely cause severe disparities in the rate of stops, searches, and arrests of Black workers. Additionally, the DOJ admitted that this pattern of police department conduct is carried out with excessive force—racist terror and murder.
Now they’ve given this enforcement of capitalist inequality a new name, “predictive policing,” trying to put a pretty face on an ugly reality. Even if you change a pig’s name, it still stinks.
“Predictive policing” claims to use crime data and high tech algorithms - supposedly without racial or class bias - to scientifically pinpoint areas of the city where street violence is likely to occur in the immediate future. Then the BPD aggressively targets those neighborhoods with cops. However, as Andrew Ferguson warns in The Rise of Big Data Policing, published eight months ago, “. . . The history of unjust policing practices will be justified by technical spin.”
As one might expect, “predictive policing” doesn’t send the cops to Roland Park—or similar neighborhoods—where the median household income is $104,482.
Their predictive model is just another version of racial profiling. It’s used to disproportionately send cops to neighborhoods like Sandtown-Winchester, Freddie Gray’s neighborhood, and to nearby Harlem Park. The median household income for the two neighborhoods is $24,374.
More than two-thirds of Black residents in Baltimore don’t have enough savings to survive for even three months, in case of job loss.
The primary role of police today—just like the very first U.S. police force, whose assignment was to catch escaped slaves - is to try terrorizing the most oppressed members of our class: Black workers. The ruling class of capitalists hopes, in this way, to keep themselves in power.
Capitalist terror shows their fear
Just as Nat Turner’s revolt made the slave owners deeply fearful, today’s ruling capitalists are afraid of working class strikes, uprisings, and revolution. That’s why Baltimore’s government—acting on behalf of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the main organization of capitalists in this area—gives the police department twice as much funding as they give to the City’s entire public education system.
Waverly, the neighborhood where West Wednesday is held most often - just like Sandtown Winchester, and much of Baltimore - has a predominately Black population. So, perhaps, “predictive policing,” not purposeful harassment of the West Wednesday rally, was the reason for a new cop presence at Greenmount Avenue and 33rd Street.
Prediction: fascism and imperialism under capitalism
No matter what the cops were trying to accomplish—they did not succeed.
We will continue rallying and exposing the reality that the police and the government are key parts of state power. State power means organized violence for the suppression of a class, unrestricted by any law. Though racial profiling is “illegal,” cops—during Obama’s presidency and now under Trump—continue to kill about 1,100 people a year, more than three each day on average, because it serves the fundamental needs of the capitalist class.
The only solution to capitalist state violence is to join the multiracial Progressive Labor Party. When our Party earns the respect of millions and millions of working class people, we will defeat capitalism with revolution. With state power we can build a wonderful communist society of sisterhood and brotherhood.
We will fight hard to fully eradicate racism, sexism, anti-gay violence, unemployment, and imperialist war. That’s a world worth fighting for. One day, the savagery of racist police terror, with Black and immigrant workers five times more likely to be victimized, will be so far in the past, it will be hard to imagine how humanity could have lived like that. Join us, and bring that day closer.

Newark, NJ, June 30—Members of Progressive Labor Party in Newark are participating in a vitally important anti-racist struggle for safe drinking water. High levels of lead contaminate the city’s water. This is particularly toxic for children. Water contamination is a dangerous and frightening crisis of racist neglect that besets cities like Flint, Cleveland and Newark, where the majority of the residents are Black and Latin. It is a stunning example of how capitalism couldn’t care less about the health and safety of working people, and how workers, regardless of skin color, are hurt by racism.
Newark Education Workers (NEW) Caucus, a social justice caucus inside of the Newark Teachers Union, has joined the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) in a lawsuit to force the city and state to ensure safe drinking water. It’s encouraging that a multi-racial group of workers in the city have joined the teachers in planning neighborhood meetings to organize a campaign to demand clean water.
Once the lawsuit was announced, the fake-radical mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, repeated the lie that the water is safe despite the city’s own sampling: “In 2017, 10 percent of water samples collected by the city showed lead levels above 26 parts per billion, nearly twice the federal action level of 15 parts per billion (NRDC, May 2018).”  One home had as high as 182 parts per billion (NJ Drinking Water Watch 5/16/18).
Baraka has been peddling his lie of clean water for two years. In 2016, Newark Public Schools had to turn the water off in thirty buildings because of high lead levels. While students were drinking boxed water, Baraka and other city officials told residents that the water in the homes was fine even though the home water travels through the same pipes as the school water.
According to the law, the city was supposed to replace seven percent of the lead pipes by June 30th. Yet they have not even broken ground. This blatant disregard for Black and Latin workers’ health exposes the true nature of these fake Democratic Party misleaders. While Baraka talks a good game about equality, he has proven that his loyalty ultimately lies with Newark’s corporations.
Having allowed the water pipes in Newark to crumble for decades, it will now cost billions to repair. During a forum about the water crisis, a worker in the audience stood up and said we are shooting ourselves in the foot because the city will raise taxes on the working class to pay for the repairs. And indeed, there have been proposals to raise workers’ taxes. However, NEW Caucus has demanded that the real estate developers and corporations that are making millions in the city should be the ones responsible for funding the repairs.
Baraka, however, continues to support tax breaks for major corporations. The city and state are offering Amazon over seven billion dollars in tax breaks, allowing this multi-billion dollar business to maximize profits while workers suffer with poor infrastructure. Other corporations, such as Mars Wrigley, are also moving their headquarters to Newark with the promise of a tax break. In all, the state has given over eight billions dollars in tax breaks since 2010 (Patch.com, 10/12/17) while not doing a damn thing about the lead in the water.
Communism, the antitdote
The lawsuit brought against the city and state opened up the eyes of many workers in the city. However, history has shown that relying on the courts doesn’t work. Lawsuits must be accompanied by workers organizing and taking to the streets to win improvements. Recent events reveal who the courts truly serve. From the recent Janus decision to the racist Muslim travel ban, the courts are here to serve the wealthy. Even liberal victories, like Brown v Board of Education, which supposedly outlawed segregation in schools, are ignored or systematically weakened. In this case, it’s clear that the city and state are in violation of the Clean Water Act. However, without workers organizing, demonstrating, and disrupting the everyday operations of capitalism, the ruling class can drag this suit out for years while Black, Latin and white workers continue to be poisoned.
The Progressive Labor Party is taking part in the struggle for clean drinking water, while exposing Democratic Party misleaders like Baraka. Most importantly, we’re inviting Newark workers to join us in organizing for a communist world where workers’ health and well being will be the top priority.