Capitalism kills off workers with racism, sexism and war. We are reminded of this when we discuss the destruction going on in Yemen, Haiti or Puerto Rico. However, capitalism also kills workers without the open viciousness of war, racism or sexism. Day after day it also kills workers based on class.
This sometimes goes unnoticed. We can explain how Shantel Davis was killed by a Black cop in the name of racism. We can say that the lack of a response or fightback for any woman killed by the racist police system is a product of sexism. We can describe the deaths that are happening in Yemen, supported by U. S. money and military equipment. But sometimes it’s just the bottom line taking over and killing. The need for bigger profits ultimately leads to the death of many workers.
Track worker murdered by MTA
That’s exactly what killed 23-year-old St Clair Zaire Richards Stephens of Transit Workers Union (TWU) local 100. Profit margins killed him.
He was a track worker of the NYC subway system, run by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and held together by bandaids. On March 20, he fell to his death because of lousy management and a subway system where the MTA bosses place profit over safety. They make rules for the workers that produce death on the job. The bosses know what’s safe and what’s not safe but if it doesn’t make sense, they let it ride until a worker gets killed. It’s a reactionary system. Nothing changes until someone gets hurt.
Bosses blame the dead for dying
The union bosses are also in bed with this plan. One mouthpiece of the bosses, also known as the New York Post, pointed out the weight of St. Clair, as if his death was his own fault, and the union leadership pushed the same line. “He was a big worker,” said Union President Utano. No one asked about the working conditions that led to the death of St. Clair.
The management organizes stand-downs to discuss what happened when track workers die. They use these to cover up the underfunded transit system and blame the workers. At the stand-downs these bosses pushed the same line. “He was a big worker” was the phrase of the day. They also reminded all track workers that there’s a rule against leaning on the handrails. There was no mention of why wood handrails were still in use. They did nothing to stop St. Clair from falling to his death. Wood handrails were supposed to be phased out decades ago.
Subway delays
The subway delays are also the product of capitalism. The bosses don’t care how the wage slaves get to work; they better just get there. The workers pay when the rich decide it’s time for cutbacks. They will pay with fare hikes. The Governor of New York took $60 million from the MTA’s budget. That budget does more than pay the union workers. It takes cares of repairs. The riding public are second-class citizens. Many believe the workers are the reasons for the delays but the MTA bosses hide the real truth. The MTA bosses pay their loan payments to the banks before they make repairs or pay workers. The banks milk the system in the name of profit. The union leadership doesn’t point this out and this puts it’s union dues paying members on the wrong side of the ridership’s anger. The New York Daily News recently reported about the MTA bosses fudging data for over 10,000 subway delays (3/27).
Ask anyone who works for the MTA and they will explain the delays. The bosses don’t care about moving the poor working class around the city. They only react after a delay. The system has been left to rot for decades and now we are seeing the results.
Worker-rider unity needed
Basically rank and file transit workers and riding workers have to pull together and fight for any improvements in the transit system. Both suffer the effects of a capitalist profit-driven system. United the two groups could fight against the billionaire bosses and their management stooges. We should fight to improve both the working conditions and the riding conditions for the entire working class. However, like every reform the bosses will eventually push back and so we would have to organize and fight again.
We need a system run by the workers for the workers. The ultimate response to these poor conditions is communism. Only then will workers have good working conditions and be able to help improve our society while getting to their location on time.

GARY, INDIANA—Over 30 multiracial and multi-generational women and men gathered today in downtown Gary, Indiana, to protest racist police terror and the capitalist injustice system that protects it.
A local Black Lives Matter (BLM) group, with Progressive Labor Party members and friends organized the action to support the family of Kemonte Cobbs, a 15-year-old Black student killed by police on August 1, 2017. We marched through the city’s downtown area, calling for an end to racist police terror, and for the murderous cop in question, Justin Hedrick, to be fired and arrested.
KKKops and courts work hand-in-hand
Kemonte was allegedly involved in the robbery of a cellphone store earlier in the day that he was murdered, but instead of allowing him “due process” and to be tried by a “jury of his peers,” he was executed, shot in the top of his head.
Immediately following the murder, cops and hospital officials began the process of withholding information from Kemonte’s mother, Tasheena Brooks, while also pressuring her for information to find her son’s alleged partners in the robbery.
Three local police departments were on the scene of the incident, and they withheld their detailed reports from Tasheena and the public. Three months after his death, his mother had to take the police departments to court because she still hadn’t received the reports and video from the killing.
Finally, Tasheena was given three different police reports. One stated that he was running while shot, another saying he was “lying in wait” to ambush police, and the last claiming he charged at officers with his gun drawn. At first they told her no weapon was recovered near Kemonte. A week later, they called her back to inform her that “a weapon was recovered near his body.”
Despite the police story’s incoherence and lack of evidence, the county prosecutor, Bernard Carter ruled the murder justified. This is the same Black prosecutor who is notorious for locking up Black and Latin youth. Most infamously, Carter fought to get legislation passed to fine and possibly arrest youth for “sagging pants,” a racist law that would be used disproportionately to profile and criminalize Black youth.
Taking the fight back to the kkkops
The first stop of the rally was the Gary Police Department, home base for racist kkkop and proud #BlueLivesMatter thug Justin Hedrick. We formed a picket line and chanted for them to stop hiding Hedrick and other racists like him. Fired up in spite of the freezing Midwest weather, we next marched on to Kemonte’s school.
At the school his friends spoke up for him. The story they told contradicted the vile racist image the police and media have tried to present, that of a hardened criminal at age 15. His friends spoke about how much of a generous person Kemonte was, and how he would go without so his friends and family would be okay. Upon leaving the school, we marched to our final destination: Gary City Hall.
At this time, a PL’er called out the profit system of capitalism as the real culprit that emboldened Hedrick to murder Kemonte. She stated capitalism has enabled countless racist killer cops and vigilantes alike to murder and maim working-class people around the world.
At City Hall, a member of Black Lives Matter read the press release and demands, culminating with the demand to fire Justin Hedrick. The rally was finalized with a heartfelt speech from Tasheena, a fighter who, in spite of police intimidation, a county prosecutor who justified her son’s death, and a stalling lawyer, has chosen to stand up and fight.
Black workers are key in the struggle for revolution, and Tasheena’s courage further highlights that Black women workers are an essential aspect of that force.
Reform must build toward communist revolution
The capitalist bosses are more than ready to unleash their police attack dogs on workers, because their system can only be profitable when the majority of workers are so weakened through intimidation, division, and violence that they can’t organize to fight back.
And alongside this developing fightback here, we can’t be content with just getting Hedrick fired. Building an electoral campaign to oust county prosecutor Bernard Carter cannot be the end of the tunnel either. Until we destroy capitalism, someone else will replace these two fascists in the role of suppressing Black and Latin working class youth. No matter what face capitalism uses—Obama’s or Trump’s—the result is exploitation of our labor, unemployment, racism and war for our class.
Deepening our ties with workers everywhere, sharing leadership and experience as we challenge our enemies, provides our class and its Party with the skill and confidence that we can and will win. Together through constant struggle we will crush this racist, sexist profit system and build an egalitarian communist world that meets the needs of all workers and youth.

Brooklyn, ny—Saheed Vassell was a 34 year old Black man widely known on the block where he was gunned down on April 4th by a New York Police Department (NYPD) hitsquad with no questions asked. This racist killing shows “community policing” as a liberal farce meant to cover up the true nature of the cops. Community policing is portrayed as helpful, friendly and in tune with the needs of the residents. In reality the cops shot and killed Saheed within seconds of arriving on the scene.
The bosses’ racist media presented Saheed to the world as “crazy” and “homeless” in the days since this racist murder.  But neighborhood residents described him as “a friendly man who was mentally ill.” He was helpful and did odd jobs for neighborhood businesses.
A man who knew him for years said, “He’s harmless. A very willing guy, a very nice guy, a good guy.” (New York Times, 4/4).
The local cops knew him. That’s how community policing is supposed to work. But witnesses at the scene said that the kkkops fired immediately with no warning. Just that quickly community policing is exposed as a liberal cover to hide the true role of the police. Their job is to terrorize the working class to protect the profits and property of the capitalists. “These officers are trained to kill Black and brown people” explained a speaker at the rally the next day.
Close to 50 people gathered at the scene of the killing just hours after it happened. The next day a multiracial crowd of several thousand rallied and marched to the 71st precinct. Speakers at the rally suggested “Stop calling 911.” The Progressive Labor Party maintained a vigorous zone of chanting in this integrated march.  We interspersed familiar chants to “Shut it Down!” and tagging the NYPD as the KKK. We also called for  “the only solution is communist revolution” and “liberal misleaders you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”  
Meanwhile Mayor Bill de Blasio apologized for and defended his kkkops by repeating the excuse that they were responding to 911 calls of a man with a gun.  This was a setback for the model of community policing that he promotes. The bosses want to direct the multi-racial anger this case has sparked into a renewed push for community policing.
Our connections with other families in the fight for justice against police murder position us to take the politics of this latest outrage beyond the fake ’solutions’ of elections and ‘better’ community policing.  “Stop calling 911” is a slogan pregnant with revolutionary implications. It means workers have to rely on ourselves to solve our problems. We can’t be calling on the cops to help.
Relying on ourselves means building a mass, multiracial movement against racism and sexism, and also for communism. We don’t need the bosses murderous system or the cops who prop it up.  May Day is the opportunity for us to redouble our efforts to win anti-racist fighters to this understanding that only communist revolution can bring and end to racist police murder.

BROOKLYN, March 29—“What do we want? JOB RETENTION! When do we want it? NOW!” Chants echoed through Kingsborough Community College’s (KCC) cafeteria as a multiracial group of almost two dozen women and men students, faculty, and campus workers, paraded to the cash registers.
The rally was held in defense of about 50 mostly Black, Latin and women cafeteria workers facing mass terminations at the end of the day. Their privately contracted employer, Metropolitan Food Services (MFS), had announced earlier in the week that their contract was terminated by KCC.
Hundreds of international and multiracial students listened as a speaker greeted them in Russian, Haitian Creole, Spanish, Arabic, and English. We are here “standing alongside students and custodial workers, united against Metropolitan’s racist and sexist treatment of our working class sisters and brothers in the Kingsborough cafeteria.” Three demands were announced: guaranteed employment for all cafeteria workers with the next food vendor; recognition of the cafeteria workers’ union; and hiring double the custodial staff.
KCC’s pattern of racist behavior also extends to the mostly Black custodial workers. They are overworked with half the necessary staffing, and endure racist treatment by their white supervisors. One Black worker, who had a heart attack on campus last month, attributes it to the toxic racism at KCC.
But it’s the same capitalist system that attacks workers all over the world. All over the City University of New York (CUNY) students pay high tuition while course sections are cut and the KCC campus falls apart. There are a half-dozen military recruiters standing just outside of the cafeteria. The U.S. bosses want every one of these students fighting their next imperialist war with Russia or China. And if you aren’t shipped off to fight a bosses’ war, this system offers you unemployment, deportation, or murder by racist cops, just like Stephon Clark!
Dare to struggle
Quickly, a large number of CUNY Public Safety and NYPD cops arrived. Defying this attempt to intimidate then, the protesters marched to the president’s office, militantly chanting “Shut this racist system down! Shut this sexist system down!” A Black student delivered our demands to the president’s chief of staff. Guarded by police, she stated the president was out and “would issue a formal response.”
Under heavy police watch, a small group returned to the cafeteria. The workers began clapping and cheering. As some tearful hugs were exchanged, workers excitedly related how mad their supervisors were, how hard they tried to get their coworkers to walk off the job, and how to organize better next time! One Black worker, a young mother, said: “When we came in today we were all depressed and sad. But after that demonstration, our heads are held high.”
Progressive Labor Party fights for her to become a mass leader for our class because it’s capitalism that destroys workers’ lives, far beyond just KCC. Racist and sexist exploitation will only be ended when capitalism is burned to the ground by millions of workers, led by workers just like her in PLP. We invite this young woman, her coworkers, and the students and faculty of KCC to join this year’s May Day march in Brooklyn and help lead our movement. Join us, and dare to struggle with heads held high.
Workers need a revolutionary communist party
This demonstration was a step in breaking down the barriers of segregation by skin color and job title. And this multiracial unity of campus workers, students and faculty shows the potential for the growth of a revolutionary communist movement. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party have been supporting the struggles of the cafeteria workers (see CHALLENGE, 10/10/17). Our study groups show potential for new membership, while our regular CHALLENGE distributions at the college entrance have helped communist ideas spread into the KCC community. Hundreds of leaflets entitled “Fight for KCC Cafeteria Workers’ Rights; Unite to Smash Wage Slavery!” were distributed by members, friends and CHALLENGE readers. In this struggle, the need for our class to have a revolutionary Party has become clear.
The struggle continues
Many cafeteria workers received termination letters as they clocked out at the end of the day. But very quickly some have been transferred to other locations and others rehired by the new vendor. We will continue the struggle until all the workers have their jobs back. And a few days later a group of staff and students joined a multiracial march, 2,000 strong, to protest the racist killing of a Black man in Brooklyn. We took the struggle from the job to the streets in anti racist solidarity.
Many workers are developing confidence in our class and in the Party’s ideas. The fight goes on – for jobs and for communist revolution! Join us!