Dump electoral politics and support the fight for communism by purchasing this graphic hoodie. click the image to donate.The capitalist class around the world is sliding towards wider war and the various national bosses are moving towards more fascism amid growing volatility.  This is the true nature of capitalism. Liberal democracy is a mask that the bosses remove when it is “inconvenient”. They then use their state apparatus, the politicians, media, police and military to increasingly rule with the iron fist of fascism creating further chaos as bosses fight each other and attack the working class
This election has seen an unprecedented effort by the ruling class to use the state to elect Hillary Clinton.
The building up of the openly racist and sexist Nazi Trump by the liberal press in the primaries was meant to get an opponent that would scare the working class towards Clinton.
 “In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the candidates, but make them [Cruz, Trump and Carson] more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream Republican Party.
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously.” (email from Clinton campaign to DNC, dated 4/7/2015. Reprinted in Counterpunch, 10/11/2016)
Trump became the Republican candidate the main wing ruling class ultimately settled on out of fear that Clinton could lose to Cruz and thus strengthen the relatively smaller Koch-led “Tea Party” bosses.
Black, Women Workers refused War
One main reason the rulers want Clinton is to win Black and women workers to fight the bosses wars. The last 15 years of a two front war in the Middle East exposed the limits of the U.S. military. As combat ramped up the military was unable to recruit enough soldiers. A key factor was that the numbers of Black and women workers in the military dropped drastically:
“reflecting a lack of support among African Americans for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan….Since fiscal 2000, when African Americans made up 23.5 percent of Army recruits, their numbers have fallen steadily to less than 14 percent in [2005]… A similar trend has reduced the number of female Army recruits from 22 percent in 2000 to about 17 percent.” (Washington Post 3/9/05)
This predominantly white working class male military was soon worn down, and lost both wars.
“It’s probably accurate to say that in the course of one disappointment or disaster after another from Afghanistan to Libya, Somalia to Iraq, Yemen to Pakistan, the US military never actually lost an encounter on the battlefield. But nowhere was it truly triumphant on the battlefield either, not in a way that turned out to mean anything.” (The Nation, 2/8/2016)
The refusal of so many Black and women soldiers to refuse to kill workers in the Middle East points to the greatest hope for the working class. The only way to get off the spiral of capitalist war and fascism is to build a revolutionary communist movement of workers and students to smash capitalism and build a communist society led by the working class. Workers are right to be scared of the mass racism of Trump - but the seemingly lesser evil of Clinton is a suicidal path for us to follow - a path leading to even bigger imperialist wars.
Clinton Leads the Way to Next War
The next war is on the horizon. While the U.S bosses were busy slaughtering workers in the Middle East, the Chinese bosses were moving into the U.S. stronghold of Latin America, investing in Africa, and building an anti-U.S. alliance with the Philippines bosses and others. At the same time, they are building island military bases in the South China Sea, daring the U.S. to stop their military build-up.
The Russian bosses have also made big gains at the expense of the U.S. bosses, becoming a military player in the Middle East. Today, the U.S. and Russian rulers are in a devastating proxy war in Syria that threatens to escalate into open confrontation. Already 400,000 people have died in that civil war, started by the Obama and then-Secretary of State, Clinton. As the capitalists from Washington to Beijing to Moscow slide towards another world war, Clinton is being charged by U.S. bosses to win the U.S. working class to this death match.
Fascism Attacks Workers, Disciplines Capitalists
 As imperialist rivalries sharpen and the threat of war increases, imposing fascism is central to the bosses’ plan to win the working class to imperialist war. Fascism means the rulers mobilize the entire society for the war effort, bringing their own class into line as relatively smaller capitalists are sacrificed and the big ones use every means available to protect their profits. Second, it means increasing racist and sexist attacks on the working class to terrorize them into submission, all while being downplayed in the bosses’ media.
The U.S. bosses are turning to the fascist state capitalism of their Chinese and Russian competitors.
Compared to the U.S., the direct control by the Chinese bosses’ state over all aspects of society gives them more ability to suppress local capitalists who don’t cooperate.
Headlined “China’s disappearing billionaires,” CNBC (2/1/2016) reported, “Though it has received far less attention, another more ominous sign of trouble is the “disappearance” of senior executives from at least 34 Chinese companies over the last year.”
The Chinese bosses also assert more direct control over news outlets then the U.S. bosses, who are now moving towards their own version of state media. Ruling class politicians that hesitate to fall in line with the main wing of the bosses, like Paul Ryan, are hammered by the bosses’ media into submission until they do. Meanwhile, the mass flooding in Louisiana and days of antiracist rebellions in Milwaukee this summer were mostly ignored, with capitalist media attention fixated on the Olympics.
Rulers Attempts at Total Control Bring Their Own Chaos
From the U.S. to China, when capitalists attempt to assert greater control, the inner contradictions of capitalism create more volatility – and revolutionary opportunities. In spite of the U.S. rulers’ all-out efforts to anoint Clinton, millions of young people refuse to support her or any candidate. The antiracist rebellions of Black workers in Baton Rouge, Raleigh and Milwaukee against racist police terror show us the terrified and weak U.S. bosses are desperate to avoid another Ferguson or Baltimore.
This desperation is both a danger and an opportunity for the working class.
We should have no illusions that anything will dissuade the bosses from pursuing more fascism. The U.S. bosses allowed a passenger ship, the Lusitania, get sunk by German submarines to win U.S. workers to fight World War I, an imperialist bloodbath that ended in the world’s first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. A resurgent German ruling class burnt down their own parliament, the Reichstag, to usher in the Nazis and begin World War II—a war communists led the resistance to and ended in workers seizing power in China in 1949. Capitalists will do anything to keep power and win workers to die for it. As world war becomes more of an imminent possibility, the more they’ll try.
The working class has history on its side, and a choice to make: of following the capitalist death march towards devastation, or joining the Progressive Labor Party, building a revolutionary movement for communism and smashing this capitalist system once and for all.

photo used from Sana SaleemBAY AREA, October 22—Workers and students from Progressive Labor Party and friends demonstrated against the racist and sexist murder of Jessica Williams, a Black mother of five. Sergeant Justin Erb killed Jessica on a Thursday, May 21 this year in Bayview, the only Black neighborhood in San Francisco.
The police try to justify her murder by saying she was driving a stolen car. This is similar to the racist, sexist murders of Shantel Davis (June 2012) in Brooklyn, New York. The police try to paint these Black women workers as criminals in order to justify their murders. We refuse to accept this! None of these women deserved to die!
Jessica’s murderer Sergent Erb has a history of terrorizing the working class. One such complaint includes lying to obtain a search warrant that lead to the arrest of an innocent person, complete trashing of the young person’s house (48Hills, 7/13). The place was so badly damaged, the Housing Authority had to relocate the family to another apartment. The only “crime” the cops, with their guns drawn, found was a father caring for an infant. Erb was exonerated.
In the Bay Area, these racist murders help real estate bosses make more money. As San Francisco (the profit trinity of banks, real estate bosses, and government sanctions) builds property for greater profit, the police ramp up terrorize against Black and Latin workers to drive them out. The Black population has dwindled down to only 3 percent (Counterpunch, 1/11).
Mario Woods (20 bullet wounds), Alex Nieto (15 bullet wounds), and Jessica Williams are three more names added to the list of people murdered here. They were executed in the street with no indictment, no trial, not even words exchanged between the police and the victim.
Workers Indict Capitalism
Workers joined the rally, raised their fists, joined in chants, thanking us for keeping the fight going. One woman asked for a no-racism button and asked if she could give out CHALLENGE at her senior center. Another woman wanted a copy of our “KKKop Wanted for Racist Murder” poster (see photo). Yet another woman said, “What can I do to help this rally?” and she took leaflets to distribute. Some made connections between the system, racism, and war. It was a reminder that the working class has so much to teach us.
PLP raised the idea that the whole system, not just one cop, is guilty of racism. It’s the whole damn system! One worker said, “I don’t care what color they are! They’re all [bad]!”
Another worker responded to us saying, “Of course they murder. The culture of the police is ‘shoot to kill’ Black people.”
It was clear that police serve and protect the system that feeds off of the oppression and exploitation of the working class.
Justifying Murder with Psychobabble
When asked if they thought elections could fix the system, one worker said that all politicians are messed up and serve people with money. He’s right! These racist murders are supported by Obama and his Department of inJustice (DOJ). The DOJ has paid psychologist William J. Lewinski to train officers to shoot by instinct and testify at their trials when they murder workers. Lewinski has used phony science to justify why officers should “shoot first, ask questions later.” His studies are not published in science journals and the editor the American Journal of Psychology said his studies “lacked basic elements of legitimate research…and drew conclusions that were unsupported by the data” (NYT, 8/1/2015). Obama and his administration don’t care about Black and Latin workers any more than the previous presidents Bill Clinton or George Bush did.
Whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becomes president, racism will still be the order of the day. Clinton is the greater danger for the working class, as proven by her long history of starving, maiming, bombing working class families all over the world (see Elections Supplement).
Multiracial Unity
So what can we do about racist terror? One worker told us, “Black people and white people gotta get together and fight.”
That’s what Progressive Labor Party is doing all around the world. Our demonstrators included men, women, Black, white, Asian, and Latin workers from ages 7 to 70! The action was organized and led by three young women. This is just one rally out of many we’re planning in the future. We won’t stop fighting until we’ve gotten justice for Jessica by getting rid of capitalism.

LOS ANGELES, October 17—What was supposed to be a peaceful, orchestrated town hall meeting with the Black District Attorney of Los Angeles, Jackie Lacey, was quickly taken over by hundreds of angry multiracial protestors, with chants that shook the room. “Shut it down, shut it down!”  This action emphasized the vital importance of fighting racism in any reform struggle and several friends moved closer to the revolutionary communist ideas of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). As the Ferguson rebels have said, “It’s the whole damn system.”
Los Angeles boasts the most diverse police department in the country while also leading the nation with the most racist murders by cops!  Since 2000, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in LA County and since 2004 over 2,000 people have been killed in six Southern California counties.  Even with all of this bloodshed, only one cop has ever been indicted and he was later acquitted.
The fight against racist police murders has been the main struggle PLP has waged in the Unitarian church over the last two years since the antiracist rebellion in Ferguson. Locally, the focus was mainly on the murders of Ezell Ford and Brendon Glenn. Due to the struggle by a comrade, a group of church members have broadened this to make racist police terror in general the focus of our call to action.  It was in this vein that 16 Party members and friends from our church attended the town hall meeting to confront the district attorney.
Workers Frighten Racist DA
Scripted questions were presented to attendees as they entered the building.  Within the first two minutes of the start time, before DA Lacey could walk up the hallway to the stage, a participant jumped to the microphone calling the whole meeting a sham.  It was suggested that we take over the meeting and that the community run the meeting instead of the DA.
Cheers rang through the hall for this suggestion. DA Lacey hid behind security as Lisa Simpson, the mother of murdered 18-year-old Richard Risher Jr., took the stage. Ms. Simpson charged the DA and her goons with murder and demanded a response from Lacey. The DA cowered in fear and could only claim to not know about the case, but promised to call Ms. Simpson after the event. Others spoke about how they were wrongly incarcerated, including one man incarcerated for 29 years for a crime he didn’t commit.  A comrade spoke on the systematic nature of the police state, compared mass incarceration to slavery, and called out DA Lacey as complicit.
Speaker after speaker took aim at Lacey and the whole racist system. Participants were not fooled by the fact that DA Lacey is Black; this did nothing to quell the anger and hatred directed at her role as part of the system. It was really clear how the fight against racism unleashes the potential for workers’ power. We made several contacts who want to join the struggle. Friends in our church want to be more active. Others are moving closer to the Party. The struggle continues.

BALTIMORE, October 19—Powerful “West Wednesday” rallies continue to demand justice for Tyrone West and for all working-class victims of systematic capitalist police terror. Such rallies have been held every single week since the vicious, racist police murder of Tyrone in July 2013. Among fighters who participate in the weekly West Wednesday rallies, there is a growing understanding, due to PLP’s continual presence and influence, that the root of the problem is the system of capitalism.
Black Bosses, Enemy of Workers
The police—along with City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, both Black women and both of whom have refused to prosecute the killer cops that took Tyrone’s life—are part of capitalist state power. Along with the military, courts, prisons and federal government, this state power is, in reality, an apparatus that exists for the purpose of violently suppressing the working class. And, since Black workers are the most oppressed and the boldest in fighting back against injustice, state power terrorizes Black workers and students most violently of all.
Recently, Tyrone’s family has asked that many of us send letters to the national Attorney General, Loretta Lynch (fitting name) – another Black woman, who heads the Department of Justice (DOJ) – demanding that the case be reopened, and that the guilty cops be prosecuted and incarcerated.
But the national Department of Justice (DOJ), as part of that state apparatus, is guilty, on a nationwide level, of mass incarceration of largely (but not only) Black workers. Activists that regularly participate in West Wednesday know that Loretta Lynch will likely ignore our demand to prosecute Tyrone’s murderers. Nevertheless, as Tyrone’s family has requested, we’re giving the effort our best shot! If Lynch fails to respond, it will only further illustrate the way the entire capitalist system is stacked against the working class.
Student’s Uncle Lynched by KKKops
One teacher-fighter had discussions with her sixth-grade students about the death of Tyrone West, in preparation for letter-writing. During one of those discussions, it came out that a member of her class is a nephew of Anthony Anderson who, like Tyrone, was also murdered by Baltimore cops, both while unarmed. The cops deliberately held Anthony upside down and dropped him on his head, killing him right in front of his mother!  Even the Medical Examiner’s office labeled Anthony’s death a homicide (by the police), but the cops were never charged, and those racist killers remain on the force. During the class discussion Anthony’s nephew broke down in tears, causing also the teacher to cry in front of her class.
Students at Johns Hopkins University aim to get 300 signatures on a letter to Loretta Lynch. Other fighters, including a PL’er, have begun canvassing door to door in Sandtown/Winchester, the neighborhood where Freddie Gray was killed by the police, giving all 3,000 residents an opportunity to sign one of the letters. After just two days, there has been a mighty response.
No Such Thing as a Good Cop
Meanwhile, the federal Department of Justice, City officials, and the Police Department are negotiating an agreement, while admitting no past guilt, pretending that the cops are now going to all be “Officer Friendly.”
Last August a 163-page DOJ report admitted that the Baltimore Police Department is guilty of widespread racism, brutality, and general disregard for women complaining of sexual abuse. The last five pages argue that the solution is “community policing.” They claim that racism, brutality and sexism on the part of police will thus be rectified. They claim that now cops will instead attend neighborhood meetings and help solve problems.
However, past experience shows that “community policing,” at best, is a way for the police to gather intelligence on target communities, even in the absence of any crime. They then use this intelligence to disrupt activities of those they fear might pose a threat to the capitalist order.
No matter how long it takes, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) intends to lead the working class to smash the bosses’ cops and courts. We will establish a worker-led communist society worthy of Tyrone, Anthony, and the other countless victims of police murder—Black, white, and all other workers. Join us.