TEXAS, May 30—In the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), over 60 layoffs were recently announced. SAISD has 91 percent Latin and 75 percent “at risk” students. Teachers are targeted based on claims of low performance evaluations—including seven teachers in the district’s historically Black high school. A letter written by an SAISD assistant principal exposed how district bosses forced principals to create lists of teachers to target and then ordered them to give teachers poor evaluations to justify mass layoffs.
Across Texas, school boards in major cities have announced mass layoffs. Schools face massive reduction in enrollment and as a result millions of dollars in budget cuts due to the loss of state and federal funds. In Houston, administrators announced a $115 million budget cut and the layoff of over 200 district employees.
Last year there was 100 percent teacher turnover in several middle schools as Texas state administrators seized control of school boards in smaller, poorer districts. The schools under attack educate mainly the lowest income working-class Latin and Black children.
Inequality under capitalism guarantees that these students will face a future of the highest unemployment rate and lowest wages. U.S. capitalism superexploits Black, Latin, and Asian workers and uses high unemployment to keep white workers’ wages lower, with the threat that they can be replaced easily if they don’t keep their mouths shut and take what they can get.
These cuts are connected to charter school chains—KIPP, IDEA Academy, Great Heart, Energized for Excellence Inc.—pulling students out of neighborhood schools. In addition, charters are being hired to take over schools in the working class neighborhoods in San Antonio and Houston. The SAISD’s recent hiring of a charter chain, Democracy Prep, to take over a local school, was met with outrage by teachers and their unions. Charters aren’t better for teachers, either—teachers at charter schools are also being screwed, often receiving half the pay of public school teachers.
Profit system hurts students the most
When public school funds are cut by the state, every student suffers. Although some families support this effort because they’ve been convinced they might get a slightly better education for their kids, the big picture is that there is a movement amongst the ruling class to kill off sections of public education because it costs too much to educate kids who will be underpaid in unskilled jobs or face unemployment, and to lower working-class youth’s expectations of their future.
The current attacks are only the most recent phase of a more general attack on the state’s public schools that has been occurring for several years. In 2010, Progressive Labor Party stood with parents and prevented the closing of several SAISD schools. Eight years later, though, many of those same schools are under attack. These attacks on public schools are intensifying because to stay competitive, U.S. businesses must raise profits. Lower pay and higher unemployment of workers is inevitable.
Students, parents, teachers denounce layoffs
In Houston, parents, students, and teachers are united to confront the school board. At an April board meeting, they angrily demanded that the board stop the charter school takeover, wearing shirts that read “Save Our Black and Brown HISD Schools.” They boldly called out the Black liberal board president for her complicity in carrying out the state’s racist plans. Outnumbered and afraid, the board revealed their fascism, forcibly removing and arresting two parents who went over their allotted speaking time, and then ordering police to clear the room. Because of the mass resistance to the board’s plans and outrage following the arrests, the board has since backed off their charter plan, but are still moving forward with hundreds of layoffs.
At this month’s SAISD board meeting, over 300 teachers and parents turned out to denounce teacher layoffs. The protest was so large that it spilled into the hallway, and outside the building. Many teachers being targeted with layoffs bravely spoke out and exposed the hypocrisy of a school board that gets rid of its best, most dedicated teachers. Even teachers with over 30 years of experience who have been honored in the past for their achievements were on the chopping block. Parents stood in unity, erupting with the chant, “Save Our Teachers!”
Working class unity creates potential for revolution
Members of PLP discussed the recent teacher strikes around the country with the teachers in the crowd. Some agreed that a strike in Texas could have put them in a stronger position. The struggles over the past two months have made it clear that all workers must unite to fight the bosses. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s Chancellor, have instituted similar attacks on civil service workers, teachers, airline employees and many others, all intensifying in the last few months. These attacks are being met with street protests, and as in West Virginia, Arizona, and Kentucky, by wildcat strikes of school teachers. The parents and teachers in these schools are leading the way and PLP is working to deepen our base in these areas of growing struggle.
We must explain to workers and students how the daily, systemic attacks against the working class inherent in the capitalist system are just as violent as any mass shooting. The anger and energy of the working class around mass layoffs and cuts shows that in a period of increasing crisis, there is increasing potential to grow and build a movement for communism.

WASHINGTON DC, May 29—As the semester ended at Howard University, students, triumphant from the nine-day occupation by 450 students of the administration building, headed for home. The students understand that they must remain vigilant and engaged to ensure accountability to the commitments made by the administration.
As one member of the student group Howard University Resist said, “We’ll all be here next year, and the administration building is in the same place, if things don’t go our way.”
With summer break here, we can begin to evaluate this past semester’s action in terms of its outcomes and strategies.
Here is a summary of the modest concessions from the administration: 

• On overcrowding: A later date for applying for housing was set, and the university agreed to keep open one of the dorms originally slated for renovation if demand for housing exceeded the remaining supply.
• On tuition: The administration also committed to keep tuition constant through the 2019-20 school year and to fund a community food pantry initiated by HU Resist for the coming school year.
• The administration also agreed to begin providing transportation for sexual assault victims to the local hospital that handles rape kits and to provide students a voice in selecting a student ombudsperson.
• The administration agreed to establish several committees and task forces including students as co-leaders to address other issues.

Task forces were established to:

• Review the campus police’s use of force, training and the need for armed officers
• Enhance psychiatric and behavioral health services
• Establish a grievance system that holds faculty, administrators and students accountable in their language and actions
• Consider implementing a mandatory one-credit course with a curriculum around prevention of sexual assault, sexual harassment and interpersonal violence.

Assessment of the struggle
HU Resist was born in the Spring of 2017 in opposition to the secret visit of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to the campus. It led the bold seizure of the administration building (see CHALLENGE, 4/18) and held it for nine days after locking out the campus police. The leading HU Resist members engaged in negotiations with the Board of Trustees throughout the occupation, while President Wayne A. I. Frederick refused to meet with the students. His resignation/firing was the leading demand of the protest.
The occupying students received ongoing support from faculty, community members, veterans of previous occupations (from 1968 and 1989), and students from several area universities. They created an egalitarian and sharing environment in the building and conducted political education and other creative activities during the occupation. One student described it as a “microcosm of communism.” Ultimately, they retreated from their key demands, of firing the president and disarming the campus police, and left the building peacefully with both legal and academic amnesty provided by the administration.
One HU Resister said that they had to come to terms because they were beginning to lose people from the administration building. Another said that the idea of upping the ante in the struggle by sending groups of resisting students to shut down classes and establish a full strike on the campus--classroom activity generally continued uninterrupted—was not likely to be effective. Another resister said that the decision to leave the building was premature, and had the leadership been more decisive and followed the organizational principles of democratic centralism, the struggle could have been extended and become even more successful, perhaps ousting the president.
The dominant ideas within HU Resist are Black nationalist in sentiment, a weakness in welding together the unshakeable solidarity of the working class and its allies. Such ideology also tends to limit one’s understanding of the role of Black institutions like Howard University, leading to the incorrect idea that with enough struggle and “student power,” Howard could become a vehicle for revolutionary change.
Howard is a capitalist institution whose purpose is to support capitalism and mislead its students into supporting the system while accommodating modest, temporary reforms. Its Board of Trustees is filled with corporate executives and other pro-capitalist forces.
On the other hand, many HU Resisters consider themselves communists and anti-capitalists, and the potential exists for communist ideas to take root and grow!
The way forward
PLP members supported the occupation in several ways. A PLP member brought a group of labor activists to the occupation after a demonstration against Wendy’s fast food restaurant. Another worked to gain support from faculty in the form of a letter of support ultimately signed by 75 faculty members. Other PL’ers provided food to the occupiers.
PLP salutes the boldness and the courage of the Howard University students who took the fight into occupation of the administrative building. HU Resist members, and students fighting back against racism and sexism worldwide, must take this struggle to the next level and join PLP, and become members of an international revolutionary communist party. That means acting locally—by immersing once again into uniting the day-to-day struggles of campus workers and students—while thinking globally and organizing a movement to destroy this system once and for all. Join us!

Mexico—To celebrate International Working Women’s Day, PLP attended a conference on violence against women. It took place at a kindergarten in an industrial area where Progressive Labor Party has done political work for three decades, and where we are well known as organizers. The school’s principal sent out the invitations after a woman was killed nearby.
She invited the mothers of school families to the conference, which focused on fighting sexism.  About 50 young mothers between the ages of 20 and 25 attended.
During the meetings we spoke about the Party document: “Communism and the Struggle Against Sexism”, which notes that the key to ending violence against women is to struggle against capitalism. The other main discussion was around the book: Caliban and the Witch in which the writer Silvia Federici speaks about the division of labor between women and men in child rearing and earning wages. The discussions were well received by the women workers in attendance. While the questions asked were fairly timid, the women seemed to seriously identify with the Party’s explanation of how sexism functions under capitalism.
At the end, the principal invited us back for future talks, and issues of Challenge were distributed along with Road to Revolution IV and Communism and the Struggle Against Sexism.
It is important that all women and men to start organizing to defend themselves against the violence directed against women workers because it is an instrument of capitalism that terrorizes, and super-exploits this section of our class. The responsibility to change this unequal society lies in our hands. We must reeducate youth and workers to care for each other and see each other as true class sisters and brothers. This will guarantee that all families understand we must change this society for one that serves the interests of our class and not the interests of the rich. It is the ruling class that is guilty of all the violence, discrimination, murders, kidnappings, sexual assaults and super exploitation of women workers.
Join the international communist PLP and fight for an egalitarian society. Let’s get rid of capitalism and the traitorous rulers that are guilty of so much violence, unemployment, hunger and misery in Mexico and worldwide. Long live  communism!

NEW YORK CITY, May 18—Rivalries between imperialist powers are ravaging the workers of the Middle East. The United States, Russia, China and their junior partners like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel care nothing for working class lives as they compete for power and oil profits.
Today about 1,000 Arab, anti-Zionist Jewish , and other anti-racists demonstrated with militant chants in Times Square and then marched to the Israeli Consulate to protest the barbaric slaughter of Gazan demonstrators over the past month. Two days earlier about 300 members of Jewish Voices for Peace and other anti-racists marched in the rain to the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, who have said nothing to condemn the violence.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), have killed 111 protestors and wounded thousands of others with expanding bullets aimed to cripple, if not kill. These atrocities were committed with the full support of the U.S., in response to weekly mass protests involving thousands of Gazans, including entire families.
Gaza is uninhabitable
Gaza is small strip of land at the southwestern corner of Israel where thousands of Palestinians fled after being driven from their homes when Israel was founded in 1948. Initially under the control of Egypt, Gaza was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, along with the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Ever since, these territories have been brutally and illegally militarily occupied. For the last 11 years Gaza has been under siege, with very little food or other life necessities allowed in. Gaza is surrounded by a wall and is closely surveilled by Israel. In 2009 and 2014, Israel launched brutal military attacks on Gaza, killing over 3,500 and destroying multiple dwellings, schools, hospitals, power plants and water treatment facilities. Today Gaza has almost no drinkable water, sparse electricity, huge food shortages and very little employment. It is called the world’s largest open-air prison and the United Nations has declared that it is about to be totally uninhabitable.
Israel breeds anti-Arab racism
Jewish Israelis are bombarded with profound anti-Arab racism from the cradle in order to justify the ongoing occupation of Palestine. They are taught a totally distorted view of history, such as that Arab workers fled in 1948 out of anti-Semitism, as opposed to 750,000 being forcibly expelled and their homes and villages razed.
Today Jewish soldiers, or any Israeli, can steal from, injure or kill Palestinians with impunity, only rarely suffering mild consequences if an abuse gains international traction. Palestinians who rebel or protest in any way are painted as vicious terrorists, who have little regard for their own lives and are filled with hatred of Jewish workers. Even children who throw stones are arrested, tortured and sentenced to years in prison.
Israel is only able to exist because of the more than $3 billion in military aid it receives annually from the U.S. This support has enabled it to become a nuclear power and serve as U.S.’s and the West’s main protector of Middle Eastern oil. Israeli military terror also helps the U.S.  to limit the power of rivals like Iran and Russia. For this reason, even Arab powers like Saudi Arabia support Israel and ignore its abuse of Palestinians.
Workers need communist leadership
The Palestinians are also weakened by their own divided and traitorous leadership. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank, spends as much money on police to prevent opposition to Israel as it does on health and education combined. The PA cooperates with a small financial elite who control most of the economy and are in bed with Israeli capitalists. Gaza is run by Hamas, a fundamentalist organization, which also preserves most jobs and resources for its loyalists. Most Palestinians despise both these groups, but there is no strong alternative leadership at the moment. Israeli workers, though few recognize it, also play a high price for the occupation, with low wages, high unemployment, and scarce affordable housing, along with a racist moral atmosphere.
What is needed is a multiracial anti-capitalist consciousness and struggle in all of Palestine/Israel. Our comrades there raise this idea in the work they do in a multiracial union in Israel. In other countries we try to build communist consciousness in organizations of anti-occupation Jewish, Palestinians and other anti-racist fighters. Internationally there is a boycott of Israeli goods, academia, and cultural events. However, at this moment, it is wars for power and profit that are dominating the Middle East. The wars in Syria and Yemen, where the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel attack each other in increasingly vicious and dangerous conflicts foreshadow larger wars and even world war. An international communist, anti-imperialist movement is the only hope for our class, in Israel/Palestine or anywhere.