WASHINGTON, DC, January 23—For two hours a multiracial group of 50 Metro transit workers and supporters, including members of Progressive Labor Party, held a picket line in front of Northern Bus Garage in Washington, DC.   With chants of “Workers united will never be defeated!” and “If we don’t get it, Shut It Down!,” Amalgamated Transit Union 689 workers upped the ante in their contract struggle. Capitalism leaves workers no choice but to strike, even to keep gains that we had already won in the past, let alone to win new improvements. Only a communist system run by the working class would remove that necessity by ridding the world of bosses who profit from our labor.
The workers of the Metro Transit system have been without a union contract for over 18 months. Management wants to impose a three-year wage freeze, increase our contribution to our health insurance, and eliminate Metro’s contribution to pensions for new employees. They hope to get away with this outrage by relying on racism directed against the largely Black workforce. But many white workers are also affected, and multiracial unity can defeat this attempt.
The Washington regional transit system serves DC, Maryland, and Virginia and needs a major overhaul. Years of deferred maintenance have caused breakdowns, deadly derailments, and smoke incidents. The local governments refuse to tax the businesses that rely on transportation of their employees to pay for this maintenance, and instead cut workers’ wages and raise fares to make the working class pay.
The action at Northern Garage is the first in a series of coming actions to prepare the members to fight back. The traitorous union leadership has assured management that this action would not lead to a strike. But the picketing rank-and-file workers sent the opposite message, which is taking hold throughout the system.
Following the action, the workers debated whether to rely on local politicians to protect our interests (always a losing proposition) or to rely on ourselves, on other workers, and the riding public by organizing militant actions. PL’ers plan to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE among these groups to build the PLP at Metro and throughout the area. This will help answer this question in favor of a grassroots fightback and direct action. These are the building blocks of a revolutionary change to abolish capitalism and put the working class in the driver’s seat of a worldwide communist system.

BALTIMORE, January 10—Activists and the family of Tyrone West continue to see through the bosses’ attempted bribes as they held the 233rd West Wednesday rally. Held once a week without fail, ever since the police execution of Tyrone in July 2013, this week’s rally got an infusion of enthusiasm and energy from five dynamic members of a high school club.
Tonight’s protest was held right outside Northeast District – the police station at which Tyrone’s killers worked. One member of the student club kicked off the rally with a powerful mix of singing and spoken word. Later, after a strong speech by Tyrone’s sister, Tawanda Jones, two other members of the club gave their own heartfelt speeches. And just after the rally, club members did a high-energy, impromptu freestyle rap, condemning injustice and upholding Tyrone’s name.
Holding these rallies unflaggingly for 233 weeks is a big deal. When families and friends of a worker killed by the police fight back, the bosses work hard to try to quiet them down, even paying out money. The West family rejected a potentially large settlement from Baltimore City – except for a portion specifically targeted to the children and grandchildren of Tyrone. Accepting that deal would have required agreement with a gag order, stipulating that family members could no longer say anything publicly about the horrific police murder. Selflessly rejecting temptation, the family turned their backs on that payoff so they could continue to wage the long-term anti-racist struggle for police accountability.
One of the key lessons from this struggle is the need for long-term commitment to the struggle against racism, and against capitalism. Decades of Progressive Labor Party’s work with the high school club made it possible to give students this opportunity to participate in a fightback against racist kkkop murder.
The weekly participation of PLP in the West Wednesday rallies, and the regular distribution of CHALLENGE newspaper, has had a significant, positive influence on the ideas embraced by regular attendees. As many PLers have in past West Wednesdays, a PLer spoke this evening, condemning capitalism as the root of police terror. Police accountability under capitalism, whatever that might mean, is not enough for workers. The role of police in this system is to keep workers in line and to keep them from being able to fight back against the exploitative, murderous nature of this system. The police can’t be “fixed” to make them nicer—it’s their job to terrorize!
The students, participating in their first West Wednesday, thought the rally was terrific, and said they’d be back. One of the students, a ninth-grader, said that her life’s goal is to be a fighter. Each of the students took a copy of CHALLENGE to bring home, and there was talk of perhaps incorporating one week’s West Wednesday into the club’s spring concert.
The working class needs masses of young people with this energy, and all workers, to see through to the essence of this system and fight back to ultimately smash capitalism. There are ups and downs in the struggle, as there was in the fight against slavery, over a span of several hundred years. But if the working class remains committed for the long haul, we will win!

MEXICO—The approval of the national security law by both chambers of the legislature will enshrine the military’s role in law enforcement. This law, which was promoted by President Peña Nieto along with the consent of the Supreme Court, establishes the ability of the military to take over civilian law enforcement and exposes the power the capitalists have. It clearly shows we live in a dictatorship lead by oppressive billionaires who use democracy or fascism to guarantee the existence of their system of exploitation and profit.  
The law legalizes the military state imposed by Calderon when he was president. Solidifying the Mexican Army’s role as the frontline of fascism. “Since Mexico launched its “war on drugs” in 2006—with major deployments of the armed forces to fight organized crime—more than 100,000 people have been killed and more than 30,000 have gone missing. Homicide rates dropped in 2014 and 2015, but have climbed steadily since, with 2017 on track to be the deadliest year in Mexico in two decades”(Human Rights Watch 12/7/17).
On the imperialists interests in Mexico, Trump’s fuss at the beginning of his presidency about sending troops to Mexico to control the drug cartels and possible terrorist threats shows that the U.S. wants a more fascist control of the population, and to guarantee control of its backyard.  This has become more pressing to the U.S. bosses with the increased presence of is world arch rival China, which has more and more investments in Latin America.  
Even though there were some capitalists and their institutions, intellectuals, artists and human rights organizations, like the useless UN who opposed to the law, the government still approved it. But, the workers know the capitalist class needs its legal system to protect the bosses interests when the workers try to fight its abuses. The history of the military’s attacks on workers is long. For example: the mass murders in Tlatelolco in ’68 and El Halconazo in June 1971. The dirty war of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. The systemic murder of dissident teachers from the CNTE union and militant PRD base members. The repression of the Zapatista communities. The massacres in Aguas Blancas and Acteal. The brutal repression of the Oxaca Comuna. The murders in Tlatlaya and Tanhuato. The Ayotzinapa students disappearance. The criminal repression in Nochixtlan.
Capitalism is a genocidal and murdering system. It is a dictatorship that uses different forms of violence against its workers, the violence mentioned above and the violence of inequality and misery.  The bosses will use their state apparatus, its laws and repressive forces to defend itself.  We can’t make a system like this one fulfill the needs of the working class, that is an illusion. We need a communist revolution to end this capitalist dictatorship of a minority over the whole population.   
One sector of the capitalist class, including many of its intellectuals and artists, believe that capitalism can function democratically, they trust that the system can be more fair, and they have convinced millions of workers. One of the leaders of these ideas is López Obrador.  But it is a scam, capitalist dictatorship has a two face mask, one is fascist, the other democratic, using each one according to its needs and class interests.  Behind the mask are the same class oppressors with their guns to our backs.
All electoral candidates defend capitalists interests; Jose Antonio Meade, Ricardo Anaya, López Obrador, Jaime Rodríguez “El Bronco” and Margarita Zavala.  Not one is going to end the profit system of exploitation, but they want us to believe that we have the power to decide who will govern us. Yet, in a system rigged against us, we are only free to choose the next oppressor.
There is a difference with Mari Chuy, the Indigenous Council’s candidate. Much of the support for her represents resistance of our class to capitalist oppression, but her candidacy is a reflection of the wrong line. Her candidacy represents support for the capitalist framework on elections, autonomy, and nationalism within the leadership of the Zapatista’s Army of National Liberation.  
During the debate on the new security law, many specialists and opposition leaders exposed how it violates the Constitution, but even in this exchange of ideas the fact that the bosses dictate the laws and modify them at will did not come up.  
One example of how laws are used is the energy reform law, approved along with several other reforms, it was the result of the work of the capitalist class since the De la Madrid presidency. The energy law, helped along over the years by even the most liberal administrations increased the ruling class’ control over the energy riches. While workers in Mexico suffered cuts in pay and a lengthening of the work week.
We have to fight against the National Security Law and all the injustices in the capitalist system.  We have to be prepared for what this law has in store for the working class and be prepared to keep fighting and build a communist movement that will end the oppressive and enslaving capitalist system with a communist society of social equality.

Ines Weiner, a beloved math teacher in the New York public schools and a revolutionary communist with Progressive Labor Party (PLP), died on January 16 after a year-long battle with cancer. She was only 61 years old. In her last week, over a hundred people visited her hospital bed.
Politicized at an early age in the Dominican Republic, Ines graduated from Walton High School in the Bronx and got her degree in math at Lehman College, where she began Party organizing. She was known for her fighting spirit first as a student, and then as a teacher she was popular with her students, who often sought her out for help.
Her family remembers her as someone who valued growth—of a flower in her garden, a child, a husband, a comrade, a communist party. They say she knew struggle—through all the anger, frustration and tears—was growth. Though capitalism failed Ines like many millions of others, she knew that communism would eventually destroy it. Her family will miss her and remember her as someone who showed them and many others how to struggle, grow, and win. As she wished, they intend to scatter her ashes at abolitionist John Brown’s grave.
”La Maestra, Luchando, También Está Educando”
As an active PLP teacher in the Bronx, Ines was critical to many political struggles. First, she fought against police terror. When Jose Luis Zarate, a young unarmed worker from Mexico, was gunned down on the job by the KKKops, Ines helped the family see why they should take to the streets with a group of victims’ parents and PLP. A few months later in 1999, ten blocks from where Zarate was murdered, Amadou Diallo, another young unarmed worker from Guinea, was shot 41 times by the NYPD, and Ines was key to PLP’s launching the first demonstration against one of the most infamous of New York racist police killings. In 2012, she helped the Party organize against the murder of Ramarley Graham. Ines was clear that there will never be justice for the working class under capitalism.
Second, Ines struggled on the job. She believed students should “fight to learn and learn to fight.” She created math lessons that taught her students the system of capitalist inequality. When she spoke at union meetings, everybody listened. When her large school was being restructured, her organizing infuriated the school bosses. As Ines neared retirement, morale at her school was so low that staff no longer held celebrations. They made an exception, however, for Ines—a grand retirement party of 100 staff members.
Third, she was a communist organizer. Ines was a collective base-builder: she knew how to work jointly with other comrades to help build a wider base for the Party, spending many hours with them visiting the families of their students, or forming friendships with those they brought to Party events. Ines helped build the Party among many people, such as the Bronx Stella D’oro biscuit company strikers.
Boston: ”Death to the Fascists!”
Ines also took part in the 1975 PLP Boston Summer project, showing great courage in the face of the vicious racists of the anti-busing movement. In 2002, Ines went to Boston with other NY comrades to help shut down a Nazi meeting scheduled to take place at the Wakefield Public Library. PLP set up a militant picket line and Ines helped lead our action, hitting a Nazi over the head with a stick. She was charged with assault and battery, and a long court case ensued with her teaching license and pension at risk. The party built a strong legal defense that eventually won the case. Ines came up to Boston for many court dates, and became comrades forever with her Boston family. Her communist courage made that day in Wakefield a victory for the working class.
Haiti: When the Trees Marched
Ines came from the Dominican side of Hispaniola and belied in unity with workers in Haiti. Our Haitian comrades loved her for overcoming the bitter history of Haitian-Dominican relations, poisoned by the bosses of both sides. Once, on an afternoon swim in that sea which had been a graveyard of slaves, the swimmers of different nations and colors floating over the swells seemed to promise the future Ines dreamed and fought for.
A hunger strike by a protesting high-school teacher gathered union teachers in support. He lay half-dead on a concrete floor and Ines whispered that we had to put a stop to this. We tried, but it was not in our hands. We marched in the streets and headed for the Education Department with our demands. Teachers flanked and led students as though on a school trip, but this was an unauthorized march which stopped traffic for over an hour as hundreds of us crowded through the dust and mud and noise, swept along by the memory of the man lying on the schoolroom floor to protest with his life. We all carried branches the children had pulled from trees to act as flags and banners. The trees marched. The trees marched, the children danced and sang, and there was Ines waving her branch, and there she will always be for us, in the streets of the whole world, in the struggle of all the workers, among the children, with the teachers, singing for liberation.
Bella Ciao, Comrade
Ines had the inspiring life of a comrade so able in working for our class, and so human with everyone, including your second family of comrades spread around the globe. Ines, you loved nothing more than to speak with us, to struggle with us, to eat with us. Students who came to be tutored, family stopping by, comrades in a struggle or just there to talk. A house of love, comradeship, and food. Bella ciao, comrade! We will continue the struggle for communism, and through the struggle, you will live on.