The statistics about the deadly nature of the migrant journey from Africa to Europe are grim. 3,000 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2023 alone (Guardian 15 February 2024).  Countless others have died on the trek across the Sahara to the Libyan coast. The governments of different European countries are united in their efforts to close the gates. Italy’s “post”-fascist prime minister Giorgia Meloni is attempting to induce the government of Albania to set up “transit camps” for would-be migrants to Italy. Tunisia is being paid to steer dark-skinned migrants back to sub-Saharan Africa. The migrants who arrive safely in Italy may face long-term confinement and are frequently forced to take jobs paying as little as ten euros a day, if they find work at all.  The lives of people fleeing from the effects of imperialism and climate change—hunger, war, poverty, super-exploitation—are, from the standpoint of the world’s ruling classes, worth next to nothing.|

The capitalist nightmare of migration makes  it on to the silver screen
It is the great virtue of Matteo Garrone’s “Io Capitano ''—celebrated at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for the International Feature Film category of this year’s Oscar awards—that these statistics take on faces and names.  From a left political standpoint, the film invites critique.  But this account of two Senegalese teenagers making their way across Niger and the Saharan desert in search of better lives is very harsh—and very moving. The two principal characters, Seydou and Moussa, are played by young men (Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall) with no previous acting experience; they speak in Wolof, a Senegalese language, which requires the audience to understand them through subtitles. They are warned that their planned journey is laden with corpses. But they nonetheless seek the blessing of their ancestors and embark on an “adventure” (as they view it) that soon turns into a nightmare. They are robbed by bandits and witness the deaths of fellow-travelers abandoned in the desert. 

In Libya they are imprisoned in foul conditions and witness torture by fire and amputation; Seydou is enslaved as a construction laborer. When they finally make their way to the shore, they are allowed passage on a drastically overcrowded, rusty boat on the condition that Seydou—who has never seen the sea before--function as captain.  (Since he is not an adult, he cannot be arrested, and the boat’s owners cannot be charged with criminal trafficking.) The film’s last shots show the Italian coast looming into view. Seydou—who has been proudly proclaiming, “Io capitano!” (“I am the captain!”)—has a worried look on his handsome young face. 

“Io Capitano” is hardly conceived from a politically radical standpoint.  It is based upon Garrone’s extensive consultation with an Ivorian migrant, Mamadou Kouassi, whose three-year-long journey to Italy was still more violent and tragic.  

Many rapes occurred in the Libyan prison; kidnapped people unable to pay ransom were driven back to the desert to die; others died in the Mediterranean; upon arriving in Italy Kouassi spent years laboring for near-slave wages in the fields of Catania. Garrone deliberately “removed [such events] because we want the film to reach a wide audience,” explained Kouassi (“Migrant’s 3 brutal years trying to reach Italy inspired the Oscar-nominated film ‘Io Capitano,’” AP 16 February 2024). 

Arguably, however, the cost of shielding the audience from the full brutality of Kouassi’s experience is to deprive them of knowledge they need to have. The film’s extraordinary panoramic camera shots of both the desert and the sea are set against the suffering of the people who traverse them: for the viewer, does this beauty supply relief from pain?  There are a few mystical moments (as when a woman who has died of thirst in Seydou’s arms is magically elevated and flies back home) that soften the hard-hitting realism.

By focusing on the protagonist’s journey from naivete to knowledge, the film adheres to the familiar “coming-of-age” plot, suggesting that the phrase “Io capitano” affirms Seydou’s hard-won attainment of manhood. Finally, the film’s lack of explicit confrontation with the root causes of migration in imperialist domination of West Africa—welcomed by many critics as signals of its humanist universalism—enables the viewer to empathize emotionally with the characters on a personal level without fully coming to terms with the reasons for their imperiled situation. 

Bosses’ film hides the true cause of mass displacement
But the film also invites an ironic interpretation that weakens some of these criticisms. The startling beauty of the landscape reminds us that the ugliness of the world is social, not natural. The rare moments of surreal mysticism testify to Seydou’s intense need for quasi-religious consolation for his suffering.  Above all, the film’s title—“I am the captain!”--suggests that we humans are anything but the captains of our own fates: Seydou’s troubled look as he approaches the forbidding Italian coastline hardly indicates that a bright future awaits him.
 
“Io Capitano '' illustrates the capacity of most commercial films to pitch to different levels of political understanding, from humanistic liberalism to radical antiracism. This ideological flexibility is inherent in the nature of popular cinema production under capitalism (Graeme Turner, Film as Social Practice, 131-33). 

Nonetheless, Garrone’s powerful film testifies to the urgency of the current historical moment, when the crisis of mass migration—like the current war on Gaza—is stripping away any veils legitimizing imperialist racism. Communists are urged to see this film with their friends and discuss how it illustrates the need for a very different world—one in which true universalism is made possible by the abolition of capitalism and the creation of egalitarian communism.

How do you spell fascists? IDF
How do you spell murderers? IDF
*
Hey, hey, ho, ho!
The occupation has got to go!
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Joe Biden, you can’t hide!
We charge you with genocide
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They are killing kids overseas...
Shut it down!
They’re killing kids in our streets...
Shut it down!
They’re getting killed by bombs...
Shut it down!
They’re getting killed by police..
Shut it down!
If they keep bombing...
Shut it down!
This racist system
Shut it down!
This genocidal system
Shut it down!
This capitalist system
Shut it down!
Shut this racist system down!
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U.S., Israel hand in hand
racist murder is the bosses’ plan,
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From Palestine to Mexico
The bosses borders, got to go!

Young masses reject liberal fascist ideas
The Cease-fire Teach-In hosted by the Newark Water Coalition last Friday reveals at once the intelligence of a fighting working class and the constant pitfalls that nationalism and liberalism present for mass consciousness in our class. Organizations representing the Democratic Socialists and also local college-based Palestinian organizers gave presentations that demonstrated how tactics for combatting imperialist genocide can be derived from workers who are not in our base directly.

The working class's knowledge from experience fighting local Zionist reactionaries in the streets of New Jersey reveals that we in the Progressive Labor Party must continue to learn from the militancy of our class brothers and sisters and spread this collective wisdom with those in our base. At the same time, our political participation in the teach-in and the strategic points that we made about widening imperialist world war–regardless of a cease-fire–and our larger critique of capitalism, strengthened our understanding of the need for a mass communist party as the basic historical necessity for our class to move forward. And the Newark Water Coalition will never host a meeting where we can make this plain. 

Several very smart young people who attended this teach-in validated our idea that a mass party for communism is necessary and possible. One young woman who has attended study groups in the past indicated that reform is limited based on her experience and that the need for a wider revolutionary commitment is necessary for true change. Others responded very favorably to our calls for an anti-capitalist worldview and the need to put forward internationalism rather than nationalism. 

Finally, we addressed observations about “white moderate” complacency and support for Zonist genocide made by the Palestinian youth from the college community. We pointed out that this “white moderate” agenda is led and put forward most viciously by the Black and Latin political class, or as we like to call them liberal fascists. And this point, too, was not rejected. So the bottom line is that it was heartening to see folks come out in large numbers to a Newark-based mass event and that our line was embraced. It shows that more and more we need to insist on the idea that workers do embrace our line and that it is up to us to put it forward and give them that chance to do so because these ideas DO NOT come about spontaneously or organically in a world that smothers our brains with nationalism and liberalism of all kinds. 

Patience guided by steady honest criticism, self-criticism, and effort, is how we will win folks in the ones and twos to our mass line. There are no shortcuts. 

*****
A communist’s valentine’s day
Some comrades and I recently hosted “A Communist’s Valentine’s Day,” which we hope to make an annual event. The idea was to collectively express love for the international working class. We had more than 20 PLP members and base members attend. For some, it was their first time hearing about the Party. 

At the beginning, we ate brunch and did ice breakers. We asked participants to write down questions to spark discussion. Questions included “What does success mean to you? Is success possible?” and “In a perfect world, what would you be doing tomorrow?”, which may not seem political at first glance, but quickly resulted in political discussion that prompted many of us to raise the Party’s line. 

One quote that resonated for me was “Success (in this system) means that you are meeting every one of capitalism’s demands, and that’s not possible.” We discussed how no worker can truly be successful individually and that “success” we may feel under capitalism can be taken by the bosses suddenly and without any remorse. Only by building a communist world can we achieve collective “success.”

After the discussion, we offered the paper and people readily took it and expressed interest in our upcoming study group. One friend took a copy and exclaimed in awe, “This is real?!” Yes, the fight for communism under the leadership of the PLP is real, and it’s growing! 

We closed out the night (the event lasted several hours!) with a candle vigil for workers who are under attack and for comrades and loved ones we’ve lost in recent years. We lit candles for migrant workers who are being denied adequate housing in NYC, for workers and children being bombed in Gaza, for students facing racist schooling, for loved ones lost to the capitalism-caused crises of COVID, suicide, and drug overdoses, for the late comrades Carolyn and Fernando, and for others. The vigil was a bonding experience that tied us closer together and served as a reminder of all those we will keep fighting for. 

*****
Origin fails to trace the origins of racism to capitalism
Watching the new docudrama by Eva DuVernay, Origin, a few things stand out. It is a movie showcasing systems of oppression in three places in the world: the contemporary U.S., Nazi Germany, and contemporary India. However, I don’t believe I heard the word capitalism or the phrase “working class” used even once in the movie. The word“racism” is submerged into the emphasis of the movie, the concept of “caste.”  The film is based on the best-selling book “Caste” by the former New York Times feature writer, Isabel Wilkerson (who also wrote “The Warmth of Other Suns’’ about the U.S. Great Migration from the South). The fact is that if you stay for the full credits, the movie’s production was supported by several capitalist foundations. The film has been promoted in a big way (with interviews by the director on television) and several newspaper reviews (e.g. the liberal bosses want this film to be seen).

The story correctly considers the fact that the ideology of Jim Crow, miscegenation laws, and racist pseudoscience of a century ago in the U.S. was very useful to Nazi Germany in creating concentration camps against Jews (but also against Roma people and many others). It also portrays the gross indignities that the Dalits (formerly called “untouchables”) are continuing to be subjected to in India. The glossing over of the origin (pun intended) of these divisions (that were exacerbated by British colonialism and imperialism) despite the movie’s name is frustrating. DuVernay may mean well but completely ignores the class divisions that largely define the various castes of each country. Without considering the class nature of these capitalist systems, the horrible conditions cannot be truly understood. Solutions to the question of ‘caste” were not provided probably because they do not exist under racist capitalist systems. Only an egalitarian communist society can conquer caste as well as class divisions that the bosses rely on.

*****

Poverty is up, up, up
New York Times, 2/21–Nearly two million New York City residents, including one in four children, lived in poverty in 2022, an increase of 500,000 people that amounted to the biggest single-year jump in a decade…The biggest reason for the surge in poverty, both nationally and in New York, was the end of several pandemic-era government policies, like the expanded child tax credit, enhanced unemployment insurance and cash payments that helped low-income families keep up with rising costs…Black, Latino and Asian New Yorkers were roughly twice as likely as white residents to live in poverty, and women were more likely than men to be unable to afford their basic needs, according to the report…While the city said in October that it had recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic, the positions that have returned have mostly been in low-paying industries, like home health care…At the same time, the retail sector, a higher-paying industry that disproportionately employs Black, Latino and Asian workers, shed more jobs than any other industry…The need for public aid is clear at Grand Street Settlement…has seen its food pantry lines swell to 2,800 people a month, up from 500 before the pandemic.

Iranian oil pipelines attacked
Al Jazeera, 2/21–Iran has accused Israel of being behind two attacks last week on gas pipelines that disrupted supplies in several provinces, further raising tensions between the regional archenemies amid the war on Gaza…“The explosion of the country’s gas lines was the work of Israel,” Oil Minister Javad Owji said on Wednesday after a cabinet meeting. Two explosions hit Iran’s leading south-north gas pipeline network on February 14. The blasts hit a natural gas pipeline from Iran’s western Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province up north to cities on the Caspian Sea. The roughly 1,270km (790-mile) pipeline begins in Asaluyeh, a hub for Iran’s offshore South Pars gas field. In December, a hacking group that Iran accuses of having links to Israel claimed it carried out a cyberattack which disrupted as much as 70 percent of Iran’s petrol stations.

Israeli soldiers share the loot
Haaretz, 2/19–...soldiers have been looting the property of Gaza Strip residents after taking over their homes…columnist Nahum Barnea quoted the testimony of one reservist doctor: "Smaller, less disciplined forces have looted telephones, Dysons, motorcycles and bicycles… At some point, I stopped commenting on it, because I was viewed as a nudnik."A combat soldier in the Givati Brigade proudly showed Uri Levy, a reporter for Kan 11 public television, a large mirror taken from a home in Khan Yunis. On social media, soldiers post videos like the one of a soldier proudly displaying soccer jerseys taken from a Gaza home, while reservists boast of gourmet meals prepared from food they took from Gazans' kitchens…The looting is dwarfed by the unprecedented death and destruction and the pride soldiers take in them, as documented in videos… Looting reflects a negation of the enemy population's humanity, making it acceptable to rifle through their personal belongings, even the most intimate ones, and choose what to take.

Australia prepares for Pacific war
Financial Times, 2/21–Australia is to more than double the size of its naval fleet with an extra A$11.1bn ($7.2bn) of investment to adapt to China’s military build-up in the Pacific region. The navy will expand to 26 warships, including 11 new frigates and six new large vessels with long-range missile capability, as Canberra toughens its military stance in response to rising regional tension. The investment will give Australia its largest navy since the second world war…The naval overhaul comes a year after Australia’s Defence Spending Review unveiled the biggest strategic shift in its military posture in almost 80 years, arguing that intense Chinese-US competition had become the defining feature of the Pacific region. It cited China’s military build-up as the “largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the second world war”.