CHICAGO, December 23 – Members of the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here are putting the racist liberal bosses on blast for their role in murdering our working-class siblings. Today and earlier in the week we have shared communist solidarity outside a mass shelter for migrant workers and families on the city’s near west side, where a five-year-old boy named Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero fell ill and died on December 17th.

As communist revolutionaries, we openly declare that a racist capitalist system that cannot guarantee the safety of children doesn’t deserve to exist and needs to be destroyed. While liberal politicians like Mayor Brandon Johnson offer empty words of condolences and point blame at their political rivals for stoking chaos, none of them have any real solutions for the genocides unleashed on our class. Their position under the system keeps them beholden to capitalism’s need for profit and war.

The only solution to genocide and war, to this sick system murdering children from Chicago to Gaza, is to build a revolutionary class struggle under the leadership of the mass PLP. When we say justice for Jean Carlos and so many others, we mean building the fight for an egalitarian communist world!

In the scene with communist solidarity
The thing most tragic about the death of Jean Carlos is that it was almost certainly avoidable. He and his family had been staying at the former warehouse turned shelter for barely three weeks, herded like cattle next to hundreds of others in a public health catastrophe. Over 2,000 migrant workers and youth were cramped at the same wretched site. In addition to Jean Carlos, four other children and two adults from the shelter were hospitalized in the same week (WTTW, 12/21).

Community organizers quickly organized a memorial vigil outside the shelter for Jean Carlos on the Wednesday after his death. PLP members attended, bringing not just our sympathy, medicine, and some clothes to donate but also our righteous class anger. While everyone present found some comfort in grieving collectively, many workers felt inspired by our sign that read “Justice for Jean Carlos – A system that can’t guarantee the safety of children doesn’t deserve to exist.” Many came up to take pictures, get a copy of CHALLENGE, exchange contact information, and share stories of their struggles under the system.

Today we returned to the same site with an even larger contingent of comrades to continue expressing our solidarity with workers all over the world. We brought pitchers full of warm champurrado to share, along with more CHALLENGEs, medicine, and winter clothing. PLP members took to the bullhorn and gave speeches in Spanish that placed the blame squarely on the bosses for so much chaos. We quickly distributed close to 200 CHALLENGEs and made more contacts.

In a situation of seemingly inescapable desperation and disorder, we point out not only the limits but also the potential. As one comrade shared in his speech, “We are a small party of workers and students. We don’t have many resources and we haven’t taken state power yet from the bosses. But what we do have is our communist ideas and internationalism, which are powerful and will one day create a revolution to build a better world.”

The capitalists’ “solutions” are killing us
The train wreck of a response from the Chicago city bosses to tens of thousands of migrant workers and youth arriving over the past year and a half demonstrates not only their treachery to our class but also the bankruptcy of their so-called “solutions.”

“Progressive” but still capitalist politicians like Brandon Johnson can call out the blatant racism of gutter fascists like Texas Governor Greg Abbott or Florida’s Ron DeSantis for sending busloads of workers from the southern U.S. states. However, his criticism conveniently leaves out the role that his faction of the U.S. ruling class, the Big Fascist wing, has historically played in destabilizing national economies around the world through their control of international finance capital and command of the world’s largest military.

These Big Fascist bosses (mostly Democratic Party “liberal” hacks) position themselves as the more “humane” alternative even as their aid can never be more than a Band-Aid on a mortal wound. Even if shelter conditions were to dramatically improve, there is little to no path for most migrant workers to integrate themselves more widely into a capitalist system in crisis. The status quo of the system will continue to relegate them into positions of instability and as a reserve labor pool for the bosses to super-exploit for higher profits.

We must contrast such notions of capitalism’s “charity” with our vision for a worker-run communist society. Beyond just the working class receiving what we need based on our collective control of distribution, we would be free of the alienation and waste of potential that exists under capitalism. Billions of workers would finally be able to contribute towards the organization and functioning of society.

Planting the seeds for an egalitarian world
Such a reality might seem far off, but we can see the seeds of a more communist world planted in the current struggle. Countless workers in the city have volunteered their time in recent months -- from cooks to carpenters to student doctors -- not because they expect to be paid, but rather because they understand their common existence with workers forced to migrate by capitalism.

PLP will continue to fight alongside workers wherever we are to minimize the immediate harm of this racist system while stressing the need to overthrow it entirely. In the memory of Jean Carlos and so many others, we deserve nothing less.

LOS ANGELES, January 7- “Joe Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”; “If we don’t get it (an immediate ceasefire), shut it down.” These and other chants rang through the air as 150 mainly young Palestinian demonstrators and supporters rallied in front of the Israeli Consulate in LA. and they condemned the Zionist regime’s genocide in Gaza. The demonstrators then took to the streets and partially shut down traffic on Wilshire Boulevard.

Progressive Labor Party members joined the rally and march and held signs saying “Arab, Jewish, Black, Brown, White; Workers of the World Unite.” The nationalist leadership of the action focused on demands for a ceasefire and to “Free Palestine.” Our comrades distributed 50 flyers with the editorial from the current CHALLENGE newspaper which exposes the danger of wider wars in this oil-soaked tinderbox of the world and calls for international working class unity against imperialist wars for profit and against all forms of nationalism.
Our group here is struggling to become more involved in the fledgling, but growing, anti-war movement that has taken root in the U.S. and around the world.

An upcoming meeting will discuss how we can deepen our commitment to the Party, and bring our communist politics to the masses of people who have taken to the streets in the last three months.

After more than 100 days and 29,000 bombs, the genocidal Israeli “Defense” Forces have leveled the Gaza Strip to an uninhabitable concrete graveyard. This U.S.-backed military is killing more than 250 civilians in Gaza every day, a higher rate than in any other conflict in this century (Aljazeera, 1/11). The death toll now surpasses 24,000, including over 10,000 children—more than one percent of Gaza’s population.

Genocide is the physical destruction of a group of people and the communities that knit them together—the classrooms where their children learn to read, the bakeries that make their daily bread. The families in Gaza who fight for survival each day are surrounded by rubble. More than two thirds of homes, schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, and olive groves have been decimated by the nonstop Zionist bombardment. Drinkable water, electricity, fuel, and medicine are scarce commodities (Wall Street Journal, 12/30/23). Since October, Israel’s criminal invasion has caused nine terrifying communications blackouts (New York Times, 1/12). Nine of ten people in Gaza, nearly half of them children, go without food for whole days. The United Nations is predicting famine—widespread starvation—by February (aljazeera.com, 12/23/23).

Israel’s devastation of infrastructure is an act of ethnic cleansing—to push all or most Arab workers out of Gaza altogether. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be entirely different” (msn.com, 1/5). The Israeli rulers’ most powerful argument for “resettlement” is to make Gaza uninhabitable. It’s a vicious, racist strategy enabled by arms and political cover from baby-killer Joe Biden and the capitalist rulers who run him. The U.S. bosses, led by the likes of ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, are the world’s most deadly state terrorists. Their heinous attack on workers in Palestine makes our task of organizing for communist revolution even more urgent.

U.S. bosses kill to protect profits
The catastrophe in Gaza is part of a larger battle between the U.S., European, and Israeli bosses, on one side, and rival imperialists in China and Russia, which back regional power Iran, on the other. The three-month-old conflict in the oil-rich Middle East is steadily expanding. In response to Iran-backed Houthi attacks on ships in the commercially and strategically vital Red Sea, the U.S. Army and its allies have bombed more than 30 sites inside Yemen. On January 16, Iran jumped directly into the simmering fray with missile strikes on neighboring Pakistan and Iraq, ostensibly in response to terrorist attacks within its borders. Iran-backed militias have also repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. interests in the region are so crucial to the bosses that they’re clamping down on their liberal stooges with a blunt message:  No criticism of Israel will be tolerated. Claudine Gay was forced to resign as president of Harvard University after her weak support for genocide offended wealthy Zionist donors. Like “the good Germans” who looked the other way in the face of the Nazis’ rise in Germany in the 1930s, liberal misleaders have stayed largely silent on the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. From Democratic Party politicians to union bosses and clergy, the overwhelming majority have fallen in line in support of genocide, if only by their silence. They have exposed their true allegiance to U.S. capitalism and the war and fascism that the profit system demands.

Hamas nationalism is poison for workers in Palestine
In Gaza, workers and their families are heroically resisting death and destruction. Medical workers go days without sleep to tend to the sick and injured. Families share whatever shelter they have. Relatives and friends take in orphaned children. Adults go without food and water to keep their children alive as they dodge the latest 2,000-pound bomb from Israeli planes.

Their suffering has not gone unmarked by the international working class. Millions of workers and students around the world are demanding an immediate cease-fire. Aid workers are imploring the UN to remove Israeli blockades on humanitarian support (AP, 1/16). On January 13, in mass demonstrations around the world, workers marched under Palestinian flags for a “free Palestine.” Meanwhile, top political figures in Hamas, the de facto leaders of this national liberation movement, are mostly missing in action in Gaza. They are busy brokering weapons deals in Beirut or with their patrons in Iran as they maneuver for more power.

Workers must reject the misleadership of Hamas just as we reject the U.S. liberals who demand our silence on the crimes of Israel. The Hamas leadership calls for the creation of an Islamist-capitalist state. For all workers who deplore the atrocities of capitalism, the Hamas vision is just more of the same nightmare.

The history of Iran is a cautionary tale for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. For decades after World War II, the U.S backed the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Beginning in the late 1960’s, communists in the Tudeh Party and other leftist movements led resistance to the Shah and his ties to U.S. imperialism. At the same time, Islamists led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought for an Islamist-capitalist state. In 1979, the left joined forces with the Islamists to overthrow the Shah. But immediately upon securing control over Iran’s new government, Khomeini denounced the communists and soon banned the Tudeh Party and imprisoned over 10,000 members (https://merip.org/, March-April, 1982). In 1988, the Iranian ruling class executed tens of thousands of leftists (France 24, 10/8/21). Though left-wing forces in Iran were instrumental in defeating U.S. imperialism, their terrible error in backing “progressive” Islamist nationalists has left the workers there in capitalist misery to this day.

The only solution is communist revolution
The communist revolutions that put the working class in power in the Soviet Union and China should continue to inspire workers of the world today. At the same time, we must also learn from and overcome these revolutions’ mistakes, including the embrace of nationalism. [See Road to Revolution III at plp.org.]

Workers in South Africa, Vietnam, Congo, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and many more have fought courageously to oust imperialist colonial forces. But over and over again, we have seen wars for national liberation replace one set of capitalists with another. They ultimately benefit only the new set of bosses. Meanwhile, workers continue to suffer. The movement for communism—for a society run by and for the international working class—is set back.

The mass murder in Gaza is an attack on workers everywhere. To defend our class, we cannot be lulled into silence or make popular concessions to nationalism. When we say that the only solution is communist revolution, we know we have a long struggle ahead. We also know that nothing short of communist revolution will end imperialist war, racism, sexism, and exploitation. The historic victories in the Soviet Union and China are evidence that workers—ourselves, our coworkers, our families and friends—can change the world. Progressive Labor Party calls for unity with our class sisters and brothers to denounce the genocide in Gaza, to reject capitalist misleadership, and to fight on for communist revolution. Join us!

January 13,Washington, DC—Marking 100 days after Israel’s fascist attack on working class in Gaza, at least tens of thousands rallied and marched here to condemn Israel’s genocidal attacks, calling for the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Progressive Labor Party brought the message that the liberation of the working class, from Palestine to the U.S. and China, will come with communist revolution and global working-class unity. This message resonated with marchers, as they eagerly took  500 Challenge newspapers and hundred-plus communist leaflets from PL’ers, with some making donations to build the PLP.

The PLP rallied within the broader rally behind a banner calling for communist revolution. A leader of the local transit union declared that ATU Local 689, based on the initiative of PLPers in the union, voted overwhelmingly to demand a ceasefire in Palestine and an end to U.S. supply of weapons and money to Israel. But, he added, it was time for the labor movement to move beyond resolutions and take job actions and solidarity strikes to force the U.S. bosses to stop supporting Israel’s military devastation of Gaza, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

“Not another penny, not another dime, No more support for Israel’s crimes!”
Another PLP member, suspended from her job teaching middle school for Facebook posts opposing Israel’s murders of children, called on the crowd to never back down. She said that, when asked by “investigators” from the school board whether she was scared by the charges of antisemitism against her, she replied, “Scared of who? Look, I was in Charlottesville fighting real Nazis, you and the Zionists don’t scare me!” Dozens of contacts were made with marchers interested in the fight for communism, boding well for the long-term struggle.

A group of 150 trade unionists in D.C. rallied and marched to join the larger protest, a glimmer of what engaging the labor movement with communist leadership could mean to intensifying this struggle against genocide.

The rally in DC and other US cities was part of a global day of struggle, with millions worldwide marching to condemn Israel’s attacks, demanding an immediate ceasefire, and condemning the U.S. and Genocide Joe Biden for arming Israel to the teeth as part of its imperialist project. Many of these rallies globally were held at U.S. embassies and consulates, exposing the truth that the U.S. imperialists provide military and financial backing to  Israel to enable it to serve U.S. economic and political interests in the Middle East. Control over energy resources and trade routes are vital to U.S. imperialism.

Don’t be lulled into complacency by countries opposing Israel
South Africa made a powerful, chilling case against Israel at the United Nation’s International Court of Justice for murdering 23,000 Palestinians including thousands of children. Israel’s president Isaac Herzog arrogantly dismissed the charges as “preposterous” and a “blood libel”. The majority of the UN General Assembly has supported Palestine, but the U.S. has vetoed any Security Council resolution calling for a “ceasefire” or “cessation of hostilities”. The U.S. finally agreed to abstain on a meaningless resolution to improve humanitarian assistance in Gaza. But none of the countries that have lined up to support Palestine diplomatically or judicially will stop Israel. Only armed struggle can change the situation on the ground, which is exactly why the US imperialists have placed two aircraft carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and 12 battleships in the Red Sea area to intimidate and kill any armed resistance to Israel’s genocide.

A wider war looms
Inter-imperialist rivalry is intensifying globally. The genocide in Palestine is one particularly brutal instance of this. The U.S. side is weakening and shrinking, but it will not cede power, money, and influence without a fight. Already engaged in two wars (Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine), depleted of much of its weaponry and with vastly understaffed armed forces, the U.S. imperialists are increasingly vulnerable as other imperialists sharpen their knives. The UN vote reflects the decline of US power. In the Middle East, several armed groups (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Islamic groups in Iraq and Syria) have already engaged in a limited way militarily against the U.S. and Israel. Many at today’s rally understood the danger of a wider war, holding signs saying “Hands off Yemen”! Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road extends into the Middle East, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and the African continent, implicitly challenging U.S. hegemony.

For those seeking solutions to this sharpening conflict, rebuilding the communist movement on an internationalist and revolutionary basis is the first order of business. Intensifying the class struggle goes hand in hand with this approach. Let’s be clear-eyed about the devastation that imperialism is creating in Palestine and the rest of the world as well, and move urgently to boldly advance into the battle against racism and genocide and for communism!