INDIANA, April 28—Members of the Progressive Labor Party in Indiana have been connecting with community members through collective fight back against deportations, arrests, and racist police murders.
On Tuesday, April 24, eight workers were arrested by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) while doing construction work on an apartment complex in Highland, Indiana. This vicious attack subjects workers and their families to the psychological terror that the police continue to inflict on working class communities.
Mothers Against Police Violence
After finding out about the police terror these workers experienced, members of Progressive Labor Party immediately met, got in contact with friends and coworkers, and together organized a response.
The day after the arrests, PL’ers held an event with an anti-racist campus organization and a local Black Lives Matter chapter. The event, titled “Mothers Against Police Violence”, prioritized the voices of two mothers who have also experienced racist police terror, when their sons were murdered by kkkops.
One mother noted that a third to a half of violent encounters with law enforcement involved people with disabilities. She shared stories about her son, who had autism spectrum disorder, and was murdered by kkkops in their own home while she was asleep.
Making connections
Discussions at the event connected kkkop murders with the eight workers arrested just the day before as well as the deportations that occur at the Gary International Airport, every Friday.
All point to a common enemy: a racist police state permitted only by kkkapitalism. Attendees of this event were invited to rally at the apartment complex along with other community members who organize against racist deportations out of Gary International Airport. They were called on to oppose the killer kkkops that killed fifteen-year-old KeMonte Cobbs in Gary and fifteen-year-old Stephon Watts in Calumet City.
Through collective action, the PL’ers and friends successfully united 30 community members, with militant chants denouncing racism and police terror in all forms. While one protester urged the community to vote out our oppressors, a PL’er stressed the importance of direct action, stating that we will only change this racist system when we come together as one: the international working class. Racist police terror is everywhere, and it only gets worse under capitalism.
The struggle to unite these struggles continues, and our Party will continue fighting to link them to our growing movement for communist revolution. Only communism can abolish the police state and provide true justice for our class. Join us!

NEW YORK CITY, April 25—The Columbia University campus resounded with the chants of hundreds of graduate teaching and research assistants who began a five-day strike yesterday. They are supported by many undergraduate students, including about 50 undergraduate clubs, many professors, area construction workers, and other campus United Auto Workers (UAW) locals.
Graduate students do a large bulk of the teaching, grading, and even research their professors. In December 2016, they voted to join the UAW, at a time when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had asserted that these students are to be considered workers. For all the teaching and grading of papers they do, they are demanding a living wage, on-time pay, better health care, and protection from sexual harassment.
Columbia has refused to bargain with them, has appealed the decision in court, and is hoping that Trump’s new anti-union appointee to the NLRB will be approved and the recognition of grad students as workers will be reversed. But after waiting over 18 months for Columbia to “come to the table” and with a 90 percent strike authorization vote, the workers’ action began. Many classes have been cancelled or moved off campus.
Columbia’s anti-worker stance is nothing new. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the massive student strike and occupation of 1968, when students protested Columbia’s takeover of a park in Harlem to build a gym for students and the University’s participation in research supporting the Vietnam War. The action lasted a week and ended with the brutal arrests of over 700 students.
Columbia is still run by a Board of Trustees 75 percent of whom are bankers and it has now taken over a huge portion of Harlem and displaced thousands of low-income, mostly Black residents. It continues to educate an elite student body to become the managers, political and financial leaders of worldwide capitalism, and the scientists and academics who will oversee the U.S. attempt to maintain economic and military control in the world.
The last five years have witnessed an upsurge in student activism, stimulated by the summer of Occupy Wall Street. One group, Student Worker Solidarity (SWS), has fought for the rights and wages of campus workers and undergraduate student workers. Other groups have formed around divesting from fossil fuels, fighting racist speakers and racism on and off campus, supporting Palestinian workers, and other issues.
PLP members have been welcomed into SWS, and we continue to struggle with students about the need for revolution to abolish all exploitation of workers, and to join PLP to make that happen. Many hate capitalism, but have not yet been convinced that all reforms are temporary and that a long-range plan to change the system is necessary and possible. A five-day strike may not win any concessions, but it has heightened the class-consciousness of many. It is our job to build on this energy and win participants to a life-long journey of struggle with the ultimate goal of communist revolution.

LOS ANGELES— When the U.S. bosses expanded the Middle East war by targeting Syria’s ruling class and moving the U.S. into a more direct military conflict with  Russian bosses, 3 students from the local health university showed up on a day’s notice to join the PLP contingent  marching against the war downtown. Unlike the previous anti-gun violence march or Women’s March which drew thousands of unaffiliated workers, most workers who joined ANSWER Coalition’s demonstration were with revisionist groups.
A small group of nationalist Syrian workers supported the Syrian ruling class, carrying a Syrian flag and large Assad posters. Clearly, the Democratic Party and their sellout unions who are struggling to build  patriotism for sending ground troops into the Middle East and elsewhere are not going to spend  millions to supporting the anti-war movement like they have with the previous marches mentioned.
In fact, Trump’s excuse for bombing   Syrian workers  following supposed chemical weapons use  was in response to the “red line”  Obama drew during his presidency.  With Russian jets, tanks, and ground troops this marks the first time a foreign imperialist power has set foot in the Middle East-- other than the U.S—since World War II.  As the U.S. global hegemony and control of Middle Eastern oil has continued to weaken since their failed wars in Iraq, this new presence of Russian bosses is a further indication that larger war is imminent. Short of an all-out military invasion with  U.S. and likely European Union troops, their regional hold and global power will further diminish.  We cannot predict when or where, but it’s a slippery slope to World War III.
Our involvement  in the current movement  is crucial, particularly for Black, Latin, immigrant and Muslim workers  largely absent from the anti-war movement during the Bush years. The racist U.S. bosses will sacrifice these workers first on the frontlines for their profits.
Thus, it was a significant  that three Black future healthcare workers, one whom is an Iraq War veteran, marched with PLP and brought a revolutionary message to the small crowd. These three Party friends have participated in Party study groups and social events and after May Day. The plan is to recruit them. It’s a modest and yet significant development for our work here in Los Angeles.
It’s also a testament that even within this period of war and fascism, we can move our class, even if in small numbers, right now.
Just as these new set of bombings in Syria can quickly spillover into a World War III, our small work now, could lead to waves of growth of our organization, and the fight for communism.

As Progressive Labor Party mobilizes and marches for communism in over 20 countries across the globe on May Day, capitalism is moving headlong into crisis. In a time of global economic turbulence, extreme inequality, and intensifying inter-imperialist conflict, the international system that established U.S. dominance and governing norms after the Second World War is beginning to implode. Richard Haass, president of the main-wing U.S. bosses’ leading think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, is lamenting “the fading liberal world order” (cfr.org, 3/21).
Liberal institutions, from “free” media to an “independent” judiciary, are under attack in one-time “democratic” strongholds in Central Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Writing in the New York Times to promote her new book, Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright, the bloodthirsty U.S. Secretary of State under arch-racist President Bill Clinton, declared that “fascism—and the tendencies that lead to fascism—pose a more serious threat now that at any time since the end of World War II” (NYT, 4/6). Two days later, the ruling coalition led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his racist, anti-immigrant, hyper-nationalist Fidesz party swept their national elections to a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament. They are poised to tighten state control over “the media, central bank, constitutional court and nongovernment organizations. European Union leaders have warned those laws would undermine the country’s democracy” (cnn.com, 4/8).
Two faces of capitalist dictatorship
Capitalism is by definition an absolute dictatorship of the capitalists, the ruling class that holds state power—for now—in every country in the world. The bosses control every institution, from the schools to the unions to the cops to cable TV news. When they have a choice, they prefer to rule through liberal “democracy,” which conceals the true nature of their system: ruthless exploitation, murderous racism and sexism, genocidal wars for profit. (Albright is most infamous for asserting it was “worth it” to kill half a million children in Iraq with U.N. sanctions after the first Gulf War.) Phony elections and fake “freedoms” veil the rulers’ daily atrocities. Liberal democracy fosters the illusion that workers have a say in how things are run, and that capitalism can be reformed to serve workers’ needs. It is designed to mislead and pacify our class.
Fascism is a form of capitalism in crisis, when the capitalists can no longer rule in the old way. It typically gains sway when the balance of power among the top imperialists grows unstable—in this case, as a declining U.S. desperately tries to hold onto its shrinking empire against its authoritarian, state capitalist rivals, an aggressive Russia and a rapidly rising China. With ever-wider wars in store, the big powers’ bosses need to impose greater discipline on their own class (see CHALLENGE editorial on Facebook, 4/18). At the same time, they must squeeze workers to fund their war efforts—and to enlist the foot soldiers they’ll need for the coming global conflict. Seeing their vital interests at stake, the dominant imperialist bosses seek to crush resistance by both rogue capitalists and their most dangerous enemy—the working class. Meanwhile, smaller-capitalist bosses do the same as they scramble to find new alignments and protect their tenuous toeholds.
In such a period, the capitalists cast off their liberal mask and reveal the naked brutality of their system. “Democratic” institutions are discarded. The “rule of law” no longer applies. Racism and sexism—always essential to capitalism—become more codified and extreme, and yoked to the poisonous ideologies of nationalism and patriotism.
But while rising fascism and inevitable global war have devastating implications for the workers of the world, they also present our class—and our revolutionary communist Party—with a historic opportunity. They reflect the unsolvable contradictions of capitalism and the essential weakness of the old order. They set the stage for the possibility of a new world. Out of the fascist onslaught of the 1930s and 1940s, the communist revolution in China—one of the two greatest political advances in history—was born. Communist ideas triggered a wave of anti-colonial rebellions in Africa and Asia; a mass communist movement flourished in the United States. Though these advances were eventually compromised and lost in a reversal to capitalism, they point the way to a communist future, when the world will be run by and for the working class. This May Day, we will march to symbolize our commitment to and our confidence in that future. We have a world to win!
Central Europe: return of the Eastern Bloc?
The landslide re-election of Hungary’s Viktor Orban—the champion of “illiberal democracy” and an open admirer of strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan—signals the rise of fascist policies in this front-line state between Russia and Western Europe. Orban’s program includes the destruction of liberal institutions, an executive-controlled judiciary, and the scapegoating of immigrants and refugees. Similar policies are being embraced by the Czech Republic, Poland, and some of the Balkan states (Washington Post, 4/12)—all members of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. No less ominous to the U.S. bosses are pro-fascist opposition mass movements in Western Europe, notably Alternative for Germany, Golden Dawn (Greece), the National Front (France), and the League (Italy).
U.S. politicians are concerned that Central European allies are abandoning both liberal democracy and the orbit of U.S. imperialism as they seek better deals with U.S. rivals: “ Hungary sits right on the edge of a declining European Union and a resurgent Russia….Centralizing power will improve Budapest’s negotiating position for what Orban sees as an inevitable opening to the East” (Stratfor, 10/11/13). The Russian state-owned company Rosatom, chosen without competitive bidding, has been engaged by Orban to expand Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant, with Putin extending a $€10 billion loan to facilitate the project (Politico, 2/1/2017).
In January, after President Milos Zeman was re-elected in the Czech Republic, Putin “praised Zeman’s ‘authority,’ and Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized the [two countries’] ‘strategic partnership’….[In]the coming years Zeman will concentrate on sealing strategic business deals with Russian and Chinese state-owned entities” (dw.com, 1/31).
In Asia, U.S. bosses losing ground to Russia, China
The U.S. has dominated the Philippines’ economy and political system since granting independence to the Pacific regional power after World War II. Now, with Chinese and Russian imperialists seeking leverage in the South China Sea, President Rodrigo Duterte is welcoming Russian hardware to shore up his repressive regime. In October 2017, during the first-ever visit by a Russian defense minister, the two countries signed a military logistics deal. A leading military figure noted, “We still prefer U.S. and Western equipment but they are very expensive. If the Russians and Chinese equipment can be comparable in quality, then they can be excellent alternatives” (Reuters, 11/10/17). China has been even more assertive in wooing the Filipino ruling class. When Duterte visited Beijing in October 2016, he was gifted with a $24 billion business deal (ASEAN Briefing, 4/10/2017).
Turkey, poised on the edge of the Middle East conflagration, is also pivoting toward Moscow. Despite its strong trade ties to the U.S. and European Union, half of Turkey’s gas resources come through the Blue Stream pipeline from Russia across the Black Sea, with a second pipeline already approved. Meanwhile, Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) is set to build a $20 billion nuclear power plant in southern Turkey, to be operational by 2023 (Brookings, 10/4/2017). Despite threatened penalties, Erdogan has flouted U.S. sanctions by purchasing Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system. Since the S-400 cannot be integrated into NATO’s common defense system, it represents a potential fracture of NATO’s military coordination (Reuters, 4/4).
Liberal fascists the greatest danger
While the likes of Putin and Viktor Orban—or Racist-in-Chief Donald Trump—are obvious harbingers of fascism, the greatest danger to the working class has historically come from the liberal fascists who mislead our class to slaughter. In France, for example, Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron has vowed to tighten state control over the internet “to protect [our] democratic life” (rt.com, 1/4). His regime has decimated the country’s labor protections. In the name of anti-terrorism, it has installed a surveillance state with expanded police powers that would be the envy of the National Front (Financial Times, 10/2/17).  
In the U.S., such “friendly faces” as Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren are capitalizing on Trump’s unpopularity to usher disaffected workers back into the Democratic Party. But beware: These are the same figures who will strive to unify and mobilize the population for war and fascsism in the interests of imperialism. As revolutionary communists, we have a different job. Our task is to expose the liberal misleaders and prepare our sisters and brothers to turn the guns around. As world war draws closer, our challenge is to prepare for class war against racism, imperialism, and the bosses’ fascist crimes.
R. Palme Dutt, a prominent communist theoretician in the 1930s, argued that as a global capitalist crisis destabilizes society, there can only be one of two outcomes: socialism (communism) or a descent into barbarism. Around the world, that descent is well underway. This May Day, join PLP to fight for workers’ power instead!