NEW YORK CIY, October 11—A local rally denounced the racist displacement of working-class families.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are active in a community organization that is confronting evictions and dislocation. Members of the community organization were frustrated and angry. A community coalition led by evangelical pastors organized a march supposedly against gentrification. In reality the purpose of the march was to win the community to religion and to their churches. They actually discouraged any kind of fightback, as a sound truck blared out religious music and people distributed church cards.
They boldly chanted, “Tenants, yes. Evictions, no,” and distributed 800 flyers calling on tenants to fight back. The contradiction was obvious to all. The working class in the area grabbed the PLP flyers, saying, “This is what we need.”
The financial system and the real estate industry, which are directly tied to the New York City government, are attacking working-class neighborhoods across the city. The result is dislocation of largely Black and Latin tenants from the South Bronx, Harlem, East New York, Bushwick and elsewhere.
two PLP comrades distributed 160 copies of the revolutionary communist newspaper, CHALLENGE. Some of the Party’s friends told a comrade that the “real political march” they had gone to was PLP’s May Day march last spring. When the pastors stopped at the local precinct to pray for the police a comrade shouted, “We should be fighting police violence and supporting the families of the two black men killed by police in Oklahoma and North Carolina.” People cheered.
The rulers’ strategy, based on profiteering and racism, is to build “mixed income neighborhoods” where working-class families are reduced to 10 percent low income, 30 percent medium income and the rest high income. In some new rezoned buildings the minimum income to even apply for a new apartment is $48,000 a year, even though more than 30 percent of the current residents earn $25,000 and less.
The rulers want to break up long-term Black and Latin neighborhoods to divide the working class. They pack in three or four mainly white students into small “renovated” apartments, while middle income families end up paying huge rents between $2,500 and $3,500 a month. We need to unite and fight back!
A World without Landlords
PLP members are committed to continue our work in the community organization. We are exposing capitalism, racism and calling for sharper struggle. We expose the dead end of reform struggle led by the politicians. We call for an egalitarian communist society where the working class will organize housing for our class; no landlords! As we get to know people we are building our PLP study group and expanding readers and networks of CHALLENGE distributors, who also give donations to support our paper. The working class is open to the ideas in CHALLENGE and slowly and steadily we are building a solid group of friends and supporters. Our friends have many questions about the successes and failures of the old communist movement. As the capitalist ruling class is trying to bury us in racism, sexism and anti-communism, PLP is boldly answering workers’ questions and raising working class consciousness as we fight back. Our Party has confidence in the working class because our class is smart and strong. What we do now counts on the long road to communist revolution and workers’ liberation.

On October 2, the peace deal between the Colombian government and the fake leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was narrowly defeated in a public vote, leaving a 50-year conflict in limbo. While the deal may still be revived, the “no” vote—like Britain’s Brexit vote in June—exposes the limits of imperialist control by the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, which had pushed for a settlement as a tool to expand its presence in Colombia.
As communists, we know that life under capitalism is anything but peaceful for the international working class (see history of fake left movements in Latin America on page 4). However the deal in Colombia sorts out, it will be no victory for workers. Instead, it will enrich a section of the Colombian ruling class while opening new opportunities for imperialists from the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Local Bosses’ Fight Spoils Deal
The peace deal’s failure also exposed a split within the Colombian ruling class. On one side is President Juan Manuel Santos, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who represents the “international” wing of the local ruling class. These bosses, mainly in the banking, mining and oil sectors, want to open Colombia to more international trade and investment. According to Stratfor, “If the deal wins approval, Colombia’s rural areas will become more accessible...and Bogota will begin considering how it can attract foreign investment to the regions” (8/16).
The opposing wing, led by Alvaro Uribe, the former president linked to paramiltary massacres, represents local landowners who are fighting to hold on to territory seized during the war with FARC. In Colombia today, less than half of one percent of the population controls half the land (Guardian, 10/3). This faction is also fighting to keep money flowing into the paramilitary forces and a militarized Colombian state. With the support of U.S. imperialism, paramilitary death squads have killed thousands of Colombian workers over decades (New York Times, 9/10).
U.S. Bosses’ Ulterior Motives
The 21st century has seen the U.S. ruling class lose a lot of ground in Latin America. This was a region where U.S. capitalists once created a new country in1903 (the part of Colombia that became Panama) to secure a canal for U.S. strategic and economic interests. But more recently, the rise of Chinese and Russian involvement in the region has changed the dynamics.
Since 2000, under the guise of a “war on drugs,” the U.S. has given Colombia over $10 billion. That money bought the most secure U.S. ally in the region, and the U.S. wants to make sure it stays that way. In anticipation of an eventual peace deal, the Barack Obama administration pledged to increase aid next year “from $300 million to nearly $500 million, with funds for removing land mines, replacing illegal mines, and other rural development projects” (Washington Post, 9/27), along with a $390 million aid package for post-conflict recovery. With oil imports from Colombia rising modestly of late, U.S. bosses are eyeing substantial future profits from infrastructure development.
Colombia is a strategic location for the U.S.’s military’s South Command. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “During the FARC detente, the United States can increase offshore interdiction activity without evoking feelings of Reaganesque Latin American policy,” a reference to former U.S. President and death squad funder Ronald Reagan (9/20).
China Challenging U.S. Power
Other imperialist powers are also planning for life after the Colombian peace deal. The European Union pledged an aid package of $638 million USD. Though China has pledged a mere $8 million, they are now Colombia’s second-largest trading partner. Once it is settled, the peace deal will open up more opportunities for the Chinese bosses and sharpen their rivalry with the U.S. China already has strong economic and political ties with Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. A stronger relationship with Colombia might give the Chinese rulers access to its ports in the Pacific.
As the fight for Latin America intensifies, the U.S. clearly has the most to lose in Colombia.
Our Struggle Is for Communism
Whether or not the peace deal passes, workers in Colombia will remain mired in inequality, poverty, unemployment and war. Whether the country is nominally ruled by Santos, Uribe or FARC, workers will be under the bosses’ thumb. Only a communist revolution can bring power to the working class.
The Progressive Labor Party in Colombia is building a base in the working class as an important part of our international fight for communism. We have young women and men in the factories, neighborhoods, and schools who are fighting each day to reach our goal, a communist world.

*****

FARC – No Friend of the Working Class

The FARC was created in 1964 as the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party to fight against inequality, poverty and land consolidation.  Its attachment to Marxist politics reflected the influence of the international communist movement as the answer to imperialism and the exploitation of billions of workers around the world.  But FARC quickly turned into its opposite because of political weaknesses in the old communist movement. “Revolutionary nationalism,” the reactionary idea that elevates one country’s “people” over the international working class, led many groups to collaborate with “lesser evil” capitalists. Millions of brave fighters were derailed from a revolutionary path.  
FARC was not immune to this decay. Its leaders turned to the drug trade to finance their army.  Capitalist media accounts have estimated that FARC was responsible for 90 percent of the cocaine on the world market (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November 2014). These are the same drugs that have destabilized working-class communities throughout the world and led to the incarceration of thousands of Black and Latin workers in the United States.
FARC was also responsible for kidnapping minors into their army and other terrorist activities that hurt and killed working people in Colombia. As the state-terrorist Colombian bosses, backed by the U.S., damaged FARC economically and militarily, the group’s anti-worker acts only got worse.
The Progressive Labor Party believes in winning workers to fight for an international communist world.  We renounce terrorism as the bosses’ strategy. Only through the mass violence of a communist revolution can the working class take power. Join us!

Since the evening of the hurricane, our comrades were out to help people in danger. In one provincial town in the South that was hit hard by Matthew, we kept in phone contact until the networks went down. We warned against going out because of flying debris from roofs. During the night, the brother of a comrade, himself close to the Party, facilitated the evacuation of several disabled people.
During the storm, one of the comrades welcomed several people who had been flooded out into his already crowded house. Then, we organized several young people to help out at a local shelter. After the worst of the storm passed, we helped the family of a comrade to clean his flooded house. And we continued to meet with young people to see what needed to be done for the victims. We discussed the ideas and actions of the local bosses, who seemed incapable of providing leadership in this time of crisis. And we talked about why this storm was so violent and why we, as working people, had not been able to resist the ravages of the storm. Poverty and racism are “natural” under capitalism, and this storm was not a “natural disaster” but rather the capitalist disaster of a system that doesn’t deserve to exist.
Early the next day, under violent winds, heavy rains and flooding, we accompanied young people to patrol the area to see who needed help. We responded as best we could to appeals for food and water from both young and old. Another comrade, whose own house had been flooded, took in a dozen people who lost their home to flooding. Many others did the same, showing the solidarity of the working class in times of trouble, sharing food or some money. We also participated with a team in removing downed trees from the public square.
We spoke with our friends and neighbors about the bad decisions of the bosses and politicians, who had no “disaster plan” to protect the residents of this town or anywhere else in Haiti.
For now, one comrade is working with some who want to help in projects in the town, for example, in direct action for free drinking water (today you have to buy clean water in Haiti or risk cholera and other diseases).
We are in the process of building a base for PLP in this town, and building the confidence of the masses in us, and our confidence in them. People are seeing more clearly than ever how the system is the cause of this damage. Any help from the government and NGOs will not solve the problem of capitalism. Awareness continues in all our discussions and meetings. And that is part of winning.
Progressive Labor Party is a revolutionary party, not an NGO or a bourgeois political party that shows up in a crisis or wants to take advantage of disasters to be seen and buy votes. Our comrades are integral parts of the working class who try to fight capitalism every day.

Haiti, October 8—Hurricane Matthew has struck Haiti with a vengeance this week. The working class of Haiti has been attacked twice by the bosses—once by climate change that brought on the hurricane itself (see box, page 4), and again by the total disregard from local and imperialist bosses for human life. For both the hurricane and the destruction of lives and livelihood, capitalism is guilty as charged.
Over 1,000 are known dead, and more than 500,000 affected by the collapse of tens of thousands poorly built “little box” houses. Crops were totally uprooted and untold thousands of farm animals died in mainly three regions, South, Southeast and Grand’Anse.
With a wholly inadequate infrastructure to begin with, now smashed bridges, washed out roads and mudslides are making recovery of people from rural at-risk areas even more difficult. This disaster is not “natural” as the bosses want us to believe but rather the result of the systematic impoverishment of the working class in Haiti by the racist capitalist system. Why is the working class always the target?
Working-class families cannot build houses to adequate standards, earning less than $5 a day minimum wage, with which they must feed, dress, pay school fees for their children, and more. How could they not be vulnerable? In a communist society, everyone will live in a protected place in well-built houses, for the lives of all will matter.
Workers along the coast who could evacuate moved to higher ground; however, they weren’t safe from rains, winds and landslides. They didn’t have the safety of the concrete houses of the bourgeoisie. The masses were left to the mercy of the storm and were left largely unprotected. They certainly didn’t have an efficient disaster preparedness system, such as in the U.S. or Cuba, where there were well-organized responses and few fatalities.
Resurgence of Cholera
To add to the burdens of our class, there has already been a resurgence of cholera. In the last year alone, 26,000 people have become ill. As a result of Matthew, in one town alone, there have been over a dozen deaths and several dozen people sick. Cholera was imported to Haiti in 2010, 10 months after a devastating earthquake, by UN occupation forces (MINUSTAH) from Nepal, where there was an active cholera epidemic. The UN did nothing to test their soldiers as carriers of the disease, but did let them dump their waste into a river in the Artibonite Valley that Haitian workers use for bathing and drinking water. Over 800,000 were affected and at least 10,000 had died from cholera (NYT, 8/18).
A few months ago, the racist UN finally admitted what the working class already knew and scientists confirmed, that they were guilty of bringing cholera to Haiti. So far they haven’t come up with a plan to do anything to improve conditions for the future. In fact, almost all of the cholera treatment centers have been closed despite the ongoing epidemic. One year’s budget for the UN’s occupying army would pay for a modern and adequate sanitation and clean water infrastructure throughout Haiti. We say MINUSTAH out of Haiti now!
No Doctors, No Electricity
One hospital in the South that was visited during this hurricane was a horror; no doctors, water flooding all rooms, patients left alone without electricity, nothing. Instead of protecting the masses, capitalists promote their own wealth: NGOs (mainly charities), traditional leaders and politicians are now fighting among themselves for control of projects and funds in the post-storm period, just as they did after the earthquake. They  are preparing to exploit and take advantage of the masses’ woes. In a communist society, no one will benefit from the misfortunes of others; workers will build homes, schools, roads, and bridges that serve their needs under all kinds of conditions. When there are no more classes, racial or gender inequality, humanity will be protected.
Workers everywhere, join us. Fake projects and illusions about the leaders in this system will not bring any solutions to the problems of our class. We must unite to build a communist world, under the red flag of the PLP!

*****

Climate Change, A Product of Capitalism

The devastation and deaths due to Matthew is also a product of climate change.
MIT professor of atmospheric science Kerry Emanuel says, “We expect to see more high intensity events, Category 4 and 5 events that are around 13% of total hurricanes but do a disproportionate amount of damage.”
Penn State professor Michael Mann:  “Last year was the warmest our oceans have ever been on record... It’s their warmth that provides the energy that intensifies these storms.  And it isn’t a coincidence that we’ve seen the strongest hurricane in both hemispheres within the last year.”
Who is to blame? The multinational corporate butchers who now rule the earth. Among the ten most profitable are: the Chinese Sinopec Group ($455 billion in revenue), China National ($428 b), Saudi Aramco ($338 b), Royal Dutch Shell ($273 b), Exxon/Mobil ($268 b), and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation ($252 b).  Capitalist are weapons of mass destruction! (List of the Largest Companies by Revenue, Wikipedia). The bosses’ media and their academics openly admit this.
The Guardian published an opinion piece titled “We Can’t Beat Climate Change Under Capitalism” (9/3/15). Both academic specialist Naomi Klein and then-Australian Prime Minister Anthony Abbott agree that “perpetual economic growth” is in contradiction with prioritizing the health of the planet. An “intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main cause of the current global warming…The IPCC says that humans have most likely caused all of the global warming over the past 60 years” (The Guardian, 9/27/15).
For the health of the working class and our home planet earth, destroy capitalism.