TEL AVIV, March 9—“Residents and refugees refuse to be enemies!” “No to deportation, yes to rehabilitation!” These were among the chants of 700 multiracial women and men workers who marched through southern Tel-Aviv on International Working Women’s Day. They demanded an end to the racist, sexist deportations of 40,000 African workers seeking Israeli asylum.
The marchers came from a multitude of organizations, from liberals to phony lefists to the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. The women-worker-led, multiracial character of the demonstration showed the Israeli government that the workers who actually live in southern Tel-Aviv do not buy the government’s lies. The workers here welcome the asylum seekers as neighbors, friends, and comrades, contrary to what the bosses’ propaganda claims!
A few fascists organized a counter-demonstration, parroting the most virulent lies of anti-Black racism. They got a boost from the government, because it now repeats similar claims. The aim of the regime and its goons is to lock up asylum seekers in the Holot (officially called a “Residential Facility,” but actually a prison camp) in the Negev desert, in horrid conditions - which particularly harm women and children. The Israeli government pressures them into what they call “voluntarily consent” to being deported to Rwanda and other countries like Eritrea and Sudan.
Inter-imperialist rivalry creates refugee crisis
Many African workers understand that signing the “voluntary consent” to deportation means sealing their and their families’ fate of certain danger, and even death. These workers escaped Eritrea because of its murderous fascist government, and Sudan because of the wars between U.S. and Chinese imperialist-backed proxy armies vying to project one or the other imperialist’s power over this strategically important region of Africa.
According to the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish pro-migrant group HIAS, “many of those who were relocated by Israel to third countries in Africa indicate that they did not find durable protection…Some have drowned at sea en route to Europe, while others were reportedly detained, tortured and extorted by human traffickers” since, once deported to the countries they initially escaped, migrant workers are forced to move yet again (The Atlantic, 1/30).
Fascist Israeli bosses
Asylum seekers, particularly women, and especially single mothers, are super-exploited by Israeli bosses and face daily supression. Many are undocumented, and thus the employer can pay less than the minimum wage wihtout any benefits. Single women asylum seekers must work long hours to feed their children; sometimes they can only afford horrid makeshift daycare—nicknamed “children warehouses”—where their children live in misery while the mothers toil for some boss’s profits.
The exploitation and oppression of migrant African workers goes hand in hand with imperialist rivalry. As one of U.S. imperialism’s most important pillars of control in the Middle East, and a regional imperialist in its own right, Israel’s growing regional rivalry with Iran has spurred fascism to climb to new heights. This week, the Israeli prosecutors offered a plea deal to racists who lynched and murdered Abtum Zarhum, an African asylum seeker, in 2016. They will only some short “community service” sentences rather than pay for their crimes. Zarhum happened to be around the Beersheba central bus station when a terrorist attack totally unrelated to him occurred. Fascist forces suspected him to be the terrorist, and shot and injured him. While he was bleeding on the ground, a lynch mob of Israelis came and beat him to death, included off-duty cops. These lynch mob fascists will now walk free.
Israeli and migrant worker unity resists fascism
The workers of south Tel-Aviv shows us a glimpse of resistance. This International Working Women’s Day showed that it’s women workers taking the lead of this anti-fascist fightback.
For these reasons the resident and migrant unity of southern Tel-Aviv is all the more powerful, inspiring, and vital for all workers to know about and support. As dark as the fascist night is in Israel, and as the threats of wider regional and world wars grow, the working-class fightback here show the potential of PLP’s communist ideas of internationalism, women leadership, multiracial unity and militant antiracist fightback taking root.
One of the women speakers at the demonstration connected the growing displacement of Israeli workers with the growing movement of Israeli citizens and rabbis who commit to hiding refugees in their homes: “The deportation of asylum seekers is just one step before they deport us, long-term residents of southern Tel Aviv, in favor of the tycoons [capitalists]” (972mag.com, 3/9).
Capitalism breeds racism and sexism. Along with imperialism these are the legs upon which this rotten profit system walks. PLP fights alongside the struggle in southern Tel-Aviv and will continue to fight back while raising our ideas of and revolution. Join PLP and expel the bosses.

PAKISTAN—“PLP is an international revolutionary communist party that is fighting for international communist revolution” is a statement that attracts the attention of workers. They raise many questions to understand communism, the Party and revolution. Unfortunately, they have been misguided and dragged away from the path of revolutionary struggle by misleaders, kept away from unionism and working class politics by the bosses and deprived of meeting their needs by the ruling class. Despite of all these tactics of capitalist rulers, workers are curious about an international communist revolution.
Whenever PL’ers bring communist analysis of society to a meeting, strike or rally, workers, peasants, and students express interest in changing this capitalist system.
Fight contract labor
Bosses need to keep the working class alienated from real issues, i.e. exploitation, poverty and despicable working conditions to maintain their profit system. Here, the bosses have adopted a contract system that keeps workers under the threat of unemployment. We organize workers against this vicious contract system by exposing the intentions of bosses.
Bosses’ profits continue to soar since they don’t have to give workers any benefit, security or insurance. Instead, workers are harassed and tortured at their workplaces. The most exploited are women and child laborers, who risk being tortured, raped, and murdered at work.
Misleaders of workers
The union leaders are no help. They act as puppets and protect the interests of the bosses by dividing the workers into different religious sects, nationalities, and ethnicities. Almost every capitalist political party has a “labor wing,” which is used to segregate workers and cripple the class struggle for a communist society.
Phony left parties and organizations are also working for the capitalist class. They spread lies and confusion about communism among workers. We are determined to bring unity among workers by spreading communist ideas and recruit them to PLP.
PLP brings revolutionary line
PLP is striving to seize every opportunity to express its revolutionary line. We are involved in class struggle alongside workers, farmers and students. We are involved in organizing strikes, demonstrations, rallies, seminars and public meetings with health workers, teachers and other professional organizations. Our work gives us more courage and experience to strengthen our fight amid a hazardous social, economic and political situation.
Our communist line gives us an opportunity to explain the history of working class struggles, triumphs and defeats. It gives us strength to struggle in a society filled with mass attacks on workers.
While explaining our line, we always find that working class brothers and sisters are interested to learn how to organize ourselves against bosses and their capitalist political system. They try to understand how elections are a tool being used by the bosses to keep us divided. Pakistani bosses always kept the workers away from class struggle to avoid dissemination of class-consciousness. Every political party and trade union in Pakistan is strengthening the capitalist system one way or another.
We are fighting with full dedication and enthusiasm for international communist revolution. And we will win.

*****

Pakistan pivots towards China

South Asia is important to the U.S. because of its regional interconnectivity. China’s new imperialist vision for Asia to counter the U.S. is known as the “Asia-Pacific Dream.” While the U.S. power in the region is mainly exercised through military-related deals and pacts, China is increasing its power primarily through economic projects with regional countries—like the new Asian Infrastructure investment Bank, One Belt One Road, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that links the port of Gwadar to the province of Xinjiang, China. CPEC will serve as a gateway to Central Asian countries, showing Pakistan is building stronger ties with China. But where there is “soft” economic power, a hard military backing will follow.
Feeling threatened, in January, president Donald Trump used “harboring terrorism” as the reason for suspending its $1.5 billion aid to Pakistan. That same week, China announced it plans to build a navy base near the Gwadar port, its second military base after a recently-built base in Djibouti.  
Pakistan is also part of the $10 billion natural gas TAPI pipeline that stretches 1,800 km from Turkmenistan to India. TAPI will demand cooperation between the historical rivals: Pakistan and India. TAPI’s, a long-awaited inauguration ceremony in Afghanistan was held just last month. This reflects the U.S. bosses’ consistent objective to weaken Chinese and Iranian influence in the region. The Asian Development Bank, the prime sponsor of the long-stalled pipeline, is controlled by Japan, the U.S. and the European Union.
The Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) is a Pakistani think tank that studies the world’s geopolitical situations and promotes the country’s national interests. The following is from the report “Sino-U.S. Competition: Implications for South Asia and the Asia-Pacific” (Strategic Studies 2017, Vol. 37. no. 4):
The emergence of new conflicts amongst the US and its competitors, Russia and China, could turn South Asia into an arena for the pursuit of geo-strategic goals by major powers. Pakistan possesses an important geo-strategic location. It enjoys good relations with the P-5 [permanent UN members] nations and regional states including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Qatar.
Pakistan’s special relationship with China gives it an advantage in the Asia-Pacific region...Pakistan should leverage the CPEC and its own geostrategic location...
Pakistan has an interest in the stability of Sino-US relationship for the success of the CPEC.
Pakistan is growing closer to China. As South Asia gets more entangled in the U.S.-China rivalry, it is in Pakistan’s nationalist interest to play ball with both the U.S. and China for now. No country—Pakistan or India—is thus far willing to put its own national economic growth in jeopardy by risking a global conflict between the U.S. and China.

WASHINGTON, DC—A passerby at 8 in the morning might see a multiracial groups of students enter a public school building. But inside school, segregation dominates, as most of the Black and Latin children (and many low-income working class whites) end up in a lower ‘track’ with less access to enrichment resources. I am engaged in a struggle around bilingual education that, in its own way, is promoting segregation by race, class, and ethnicity.
Jim Crow segregation and its new forms
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools had to end because “separate” was inherently unequal. This reversed the previous right of governments to mandate segregated facilities, and has been hailed as an historic step away from institutional racism.
But capitalists require a divided working class to exploit us more effectively. So school systems have created new, internal forms of segregation. The most common is ‘ability tracks’ within a school. Wealthy parents (mainly white) get their kids extra tutoring and enrichment that are not available to their working-class peers. These students are then placed in “advanced” learning tracks based on spurious test scores and guidance counselor advice.
Local governments have also maintained segregation through a policy of “neighborhood schools”, which reflect the segregated housing patterns of most communities. During the 1960s and 70s, as bussing was mandated to help overcome these racist patterns, the bosses used scare tactics to inflame racist attitudes by white parents, further dividing the working class. Today, most bussing programs have ended and schools are increasingly segregated by race and ethnicity. Children from low-income families, disproportionately Black, Latin, and/or immigrant, end up with fewer resources in their schools and lower opportunities for future success.
Bilingual education wrecked by racism
Language skills and general learning is best accomplished in a dual immersion process whereby half the school day is taught in Spanish and half in English with students from both language groups.
The elementary school where I teach has a student population that is 75 percent immigrant and 65 percent Latin. The school established a ‘partial immersion’ program aimed at students whose first language is English. Spanish was used to teach math and science. Students learned these subjects and also acquired Spanish skills. The program was designed to attract mostly white, affluent students. Children whose first language is Spanish were actively denied spots in this program. Latin students were taught only in English –in spite of extensive research showing that native language literacy improves overall academic progress.
This outright racist policy of flagrantly denying Latin families access to the partial immersion program was quietly ended when a few anti-racist teachers and parents protested this as a civil rights problem. We suggested a truly bilingual program —dual immersion—but policy makers continued segregation, citing budget constraints.
Segregation also reared its ugly head in the advanced math program. At first this special program was 90 percent white in a school where less than 15 percent of the population is white. Parents and teachers pushed back, forcing the administration to enroll more Black and Latin children. This required a struggle because racist segregation is so deeply built into the DNA of capitalism.
The partial immersion program ensured segregation of children by language as early as the age of five. Children learn early on that the system is designed to serve only some. This experience contradicts the idea that the system of public schooling in the United States is designed to educate everyone. People wonder why schools are failing Black and Latin children? Why are schools denying equal educational opportunities to low-income children? Why are people stuck in poverty? The educational system reinforces these inequalities generated by capitalism.
Education departments talk out of both sides of their proverbial mouths.  They hypocritically demand that teachers “close the achievement gap” and demonstrate “cultural competency” yet policy makers mandate racist, divisive policies.
Reform comes with a bitter pill
This country is now starting a dual-immersion program, where 50 percent primary-English speakers and 50 percent primary-Spanish speakers will be placed in the same classes and receive half of their instruction in one language and the other half in the second language. This is the great way for kids to become bi-literate and academically successful. When implemented correctly, it is a win-win situation for all kids. In theory, the Latin kids will get access to literacy development in their first language and anti-racists should be excited! We’re getting the bilingual program we wanted.
However, capitalist reforms come with a bitter pill. The partial immersion program that had attracted affluent families to our school is being moved to a more affluent neighborhood where they will get the whole day in Spanish. Thus segregation prevails and resource disparities between schools will grow. The possibility that our school will become integrated by race, ethnicity, and immigrant status will once again be remote.
Revolutionary change required
Communists in the schools must fight all forms of segregation because it weakens all working class students and families in the class struggle. Teachers must constantly resist all the forces working to segregate and re-segregate our schools. We must build a multiracial base with parents, and grow these battles into a mass movement for improved education and ultimately a new system of communism. Then the possibilities for the blossoming of our children will be endless.

This past December, a rebellion began in Iran that exposed the myth of a passive working class- like the rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore. Iran, like the U.S., Russia, China and every capitalist country in the world, is a class-divided society with exploited workers and oppressed minority populations on the one hand, and exploiters who use religion to enslave on the other.
Back in 2009, there was a “Green Movement” in Iran with demonstrations numbering up to three million workers. This anti-government movement was manipulated by the U.S. and European Union to overthrow then-President Ahmadinejad. The Green Movement’s leadership was made up of politicians and local capitalists clamoring for U.S. investments.
Iranian leaders have blamed the December protests on the U.S. CIA, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and even ISIS. While some combination of U.S.-Saudi involvement may be true, despite Donald Trump and U.S. bosses’ cheers at the revolt, workers and students can function outside the limits of U.S. control.
Economic underpinning of protests
Like the 2015 uprising in Baltimore against racist police terror, many battles preceded the surge of December 2017.
Workers have engaged in years of strikes, labor actions, and protests. Nurses, bus drivers, truck drivers, Teheran tire workers, sugar cane workers, petrochemical workers, bakers in Sanandaj (Kurdistan), and tractor-manufacturing workers in Tabriz have struggled as the economy deteriorated. Unions are illegal, and workers are generally on “temporary contracts” rather than “secure” jobs, allowing instant dismissal.
Since 1988, International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to Iran required the slashing of workers’ benefits. Government subsidies for petroleum, water, electricity, and bread accounted for 27 percent of the GDP in 2007, but they were changed to direct cash transfers, allowing the “free market” to set (rising) commodity prices. In 2014, even the cash transfers were cut back. This part of the budget declined to 3.4 percent in 2014, and current Iranian President Rouhani’s December budget entailed even greater cuts.
Now, half the population is impoverished, with 10-12 million workers in extreme poverty. Overall, workers makes 15 percent less than they did 10 years ago. The government estimates that $1,000 per year is needed for a family of three to survive, but it set the minimum wage at a third of this. Youth unemployment is 30 percent, and inflation is 15 percent per year, with prices of basics like chicken and eggs increasing 30-40 percent per year. Meanwhile, mullahs (religious leaders) get richer and flaunt their wealth, similar to the U.S.
A rift between President Rouhani and the hardline mullahs led to the initial December 28 demonstration, in Mashhad. Rouhani had exposed the billions in the annual budget intended for Islamic institutions, including the military’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the proposed termination of subsidies for millions of workers ($5.3 billion), 50 percent higher fuel prices, privatized schools, and infrastructure cuts of $3.1 billion. The nuclear deal with the U.S. and EU was expected to end sanctions and improve the standard of living, but the budget did the opposite.
Hardline mullahs organized the rally, but the workers and students grew to tens of thousands, in scores of cities, and attacked the entire capitalist regime, chanting, “People beg while Mullahs rule like gods!” and “Death to the Dictator” (Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei). Police killed 22 protesters and arrested 2,000 (90 percent 25 years old or younger). Social media was virtually shut down.
The Iranian communist movement
The Tudeh party, formed shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917, built trade unions. By the end of World War II, it earned a significant base among workers, as in many countries, based on the Soviet Union’s defeat of the Nazis. However, the two-stage theory of revolution (socialism before communism) led to Tudeh’s support of a liberal capitalist named Mohammad Mossadegh to head the overthrow of the Shah, the puppet ruler of the British imperialists. Mossadegh quickly turned on Tudeh at the behest of US rulers, and he was in turn overthrown by the CIA in 1953, who reinstalled the Shah. Tudeh retained working-class support, but within four years, Khomeini executed masses of pro-communist workers, using CIA lists.
Many left and formed new communist organizations, however, and some of these workers have been in contact with the Progressive Labor Party.
Implications of the current uprising
Building the revolutionary communist PLP is the key task and only solution for workers from Ferguson to Teheran. As with many recent uprisings—from the 2012 “Arab Spring” revolts to the rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore—the December protests may result in lower gas prices, but will bring no permanent solution to the workers’ chronic misery under this religious fascist state.
The uprisings world-over show that workers everywhere face the same exploitation, racism, and segregation that impedes the class war. Lenin argued that communist revolution required three things: that workers couldn’t live the same old way; bosses couldn’t rule the same old way; and a communist party fighting for armed revolution with deep roots in the working class. In Iran, as is the case globally, the first two are near fulfillment, but a mass PLP is still missing there—all the more reason to continue to organize!