ISRAEL-PALESTINE, January 27 —What’s the reward for a politician who takes $155,000 in bribes and spends two years in prison? A promotion! Aryeh Deri has been appointed as the interior ministry for the Negev and Galilee regions. He is the leader of the Shas party, known for its fundamentalist nationalism. Deri’s main task will be to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing the border, increasing deportations, and redefining city boundaries for property taxes. The Shas party is important to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
Similar to the U.S., racist violence and deportation of undocumented immigrants and refugees will increase. Whereas in the U.S., they are mainly from Latin America, these refugees are mainly from war-ravaged regions like Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt. Deri’s predecessor, Eliyahu Yishai, was also virulently racist and led brutal attacks on asylum seekers from eastern Africa and deported many of them to the Holot concentration camp in the Negev (southern desert). In 2014, Holot was an international focal point for racist Israel’s treatment of the 50,000 African refugees.
Deri, who tries to paint himself as a “social” candidate, remained in the government when it sold off Israel’s massive natural gas deposits to local and foreign tycoons. Combining religion, racism, and graft, he is a loyal servant for the billionaires.
Israel does not have a separation of religion from the state. To the contrary, the government cynically uses religion as an excuse for its racist policies of segregating Black migrants, Palestinians, and white Jewish workers. Candidates like Deri leverage religion and racism to get re-elected as the faithful servants of big financial capital. Capitalist rule cannot exist without racism and fraud.
There is no such thing as a “clean,” “fair,” or “tolerant” capitalist government. Deri and the whole capitalist system has got to go. The international working class must build a society without politicians and capitalists. We need the leadership of those locked in Holot, brutalized in the West Bank, and exploited in Israel to fight back!

HAITI, January 26—Thousands of angry workers have taken to the streets throughout the country, burning tires, breaking windows, fighting with the police. PLP has participated in the demonstrations, calling for workers to build revolution, not electoral reforms.
The demonstrations have been in response to the widespread election fraud and incompetence in the presidential elections held in October with 54 candidates and the run-off scheduled between Jovenel Moïse, hand-picked front-man of the current president, Martelly, and Jude Celestin, protégé of previous president Préval. The government and its senior partners in the U.S. Embassy were forced to cancel the run-off because their complicity was exposed.
The United States has spent $33 million on these elections (The Nation, 1/27).
The first wave of protests was peaceful; no one paid attention. U.S. ambassador Peter Mulrean advised they be ignored.
Then the protest turned violent. Many chanted, “Down with Obama”; “we are rebels. We will not obey.” The workers in Haiti are exposing the hand of U.S. imperialism and its long history of occupying the country. The United Nations occupying force, an arm of U.S. imperialism, brought cholera to Haiti and killed over 9,000 people.
But the election debacle is neither fraud nor incompetence on the part of the ruling class. It is, in fact, part of an ongoing plan to suck workers into getting behind a capitalist system of mass exploitation and oppression. Democracy and elections are nothing but a cover to build popular support for a system that offers nothing to the working class but suffering: unemployment, hunger, toxic water (like Flint, Michigan), illiteracy and illness.
It matters little to the masses here which section of the ruling class wins the election: Jovenel the banana exporter or Jude the fake-left construction boss. Nor does it matter if Martelly stays beyond his Feb. 7 term end, as demanded by Guy Phillipe, a known drug dealer and former army leader behind the ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Phillipe has threatened an armed insurrection by former army members to support Martelly.
Only by organizing the masses into a revolutionary communist party that fights to end capitalism and its imperialist masters, can workers build a society that responds to its own interests.
In the anti-imperialist Haitian song “Y’a Danger,”  Jean Jean Roosevelt warns the bosses of the coming dangers. Indeed, the ruling class should be shaking; once armed with communist consciousness, the might of the working class will move mountains.

LOS ANGELES, January 16—While criminal charges are being recommended for the racist cop who killed Brendon Glenn, an unarmed, homeless Black worker last May, workers and members of the Progressive Labor Party fighting for justice are not holding their breath.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s recommendation was made on January 11, and can only be carried out by a District Attorney or grand jury.
As of January 15, hypocrite Beck had not done what is within his power: initiate disciplinary proceedings against cop Clifford Proctor, who has been on paid leave since he killed Glenn.
Antiracist Workers in Churches Take Lead
During the summer, workers and PL’ers in our local church’s social justice committee took the lead in organizing three marches on Venice’s Ocean Front Walk. One of our chants at these marches was, “No justice, no peace—no racist police!” One of our demands was that Proctor be indicted. We also raised that demand November 29 at a march in Koreatown against racist police killings, organized by anti-racists from another church in that area we’ve been working with. During that march, as we wound through the streets, we called out the names of many of those mowed down by police in LA and throughout the U.S., and chanted, “The whole damn system’s got to go.”
Another demand of our marches—and of hundreds of angry Venice residents at a town hall meeting two days after the May 5 shooting—was that the video be released to the public. According to their attorney, Glenn’s family will demand release of the video.
While an indictment is welcomed for Brendon Glenn’s murderer, true justice for Glenn or anyone in the working class will never be found under capitalism. In the midst of these rallies and marches, we are building PLP to build a mass party to lead a revolution and build a communist society. Under communism there will no such thing as kkkops or racist police terror.
Capitalism: Bosses’ Dictatorship
Capitalism is based on the injustice of exploiting all workers, and was founded on the enslavement of Africans. Capitalism’s development depended, and its survival depends, on the racist super-exploitation of some workers over others. The bosses developed and refined their racist state apparatus like their prisons, cops, and political system over centuries to defend murderers like Proctor and Beck.
Even if Proctor is charged, history has shown that cops tend to be acquitted or, less often, found guilty of relatively low-level crimes with light sentences. According to the LA Times (1/12/16), “prosecutors have not charged a law enforcement officer in an on-duty shooting in 15 years.”
Top kkkop Beck served in the same elite, fascist LAPD “CRASH” unit whose goal was to arrest gang members “by any means necessary” (PBS 8/14/12). This meant carrying a supply of illegal weapons to plant on Black and Latin workers, with plaques and honors awarded for shootings that killed their victims. Much of the LAPD’s internal investigation into CRASH is still suppressed, including a 40-page report on three officers investigated for the murder of rapper “Notorious B.I.G.”
This is a taste of the bosses’ dictatorship that only a mass communist PLP can destroy, when millions of workers are organized and fighting for armed revolution. Our movement is growing —one of the marchers just agreed to be on the Party committee that is organizing our April 30, PLP May Day dinner.
May Day is the only international working class holiday. It’s a day we celebrate our class’ history of fightback all over the world, and gather our forces to look forward to smashing the bosses’ capitalist dictatorship, its imperialist wars, killer kkkops like Clifford, and the bosses they serve.
We will continue the immediate struggle with a rally at the District Attorney’s office. We join the workers demanding that Proctor be indicted for murder, and continue fighting and organizing for a communist society where our class rules the earth.

NEW JERSEY, January 21—Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party recently won a victory against anti-Muslim racism. For years, we have been part of the Radical Caucus (RC) of the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization of primarily language and literature professors, scholars, and graduate students. Through this caucus, members and friends of PLP worked together to pass an emergency resolution condemning anti-Muslim racism and supporting Muslim students and professors.
This action is a victory against the MLA misleadership. Although the MLA had issued a statement in late December defending the academic freedom of professors who teach about Islam, the statement failed to take an anti-racist position. To put forward the sharpest possible anti-racist, anti-imperialist resolution, we had a vigorous discussion within our PLP concentration. Then we struggled with others who directly affected by anti-Muslim racism to support the resolution. They responded with enthusiastic support and gathered dozens of signatures. Within 24 hours, the resolution was widely circulated in sessions at the MLA convention. By the time it came to the floor for debate the next day, many delegates were eager to speak in favor. But we didn’t stop there.
PL’ers reached out to local activist groups, like Jewish Voice for Peace, some of whose members joined us in leafleting and picketing the Delegate Assembly before its meeting. Although the resolution still needs to be ratified by the MLA membership, its passage through the Delegate Assembly by a two-to-one margin is a clear indicator that professors and graduate students want to fight anti-Muslim racism and the drumbeats of war.
While the resolution is a long way from a call for revolution, it enabled us to sharpen our political discussions with our friends. We stressed that anti-Muslim racism comes from U.S. imperialism and benefits the bosses by dividing workers worldwide. We also linked anti-Muslim racism to anti-Black racism. Both serve the same purpose: winning workers to wars that devastate workers while benefitting only the ruling class.
Rooted in System, Not Psyche
The resolution read: Be it resolved that the MLA support professors and students opposing the militaristic, xenophobic, and racist effects of Islamophobia.
Liberal language like “Islamophobia,” meaning the fear of Muslim people, is more than just inaccurate language. It muddles the class nature of racism! It is not an individual mental condition that causes people to be afraid of Muslim workers and children; it is the systematic oppression and scapegoating of the Muslim working class, fueled by imperialist propaganda. “Anti-Muslim racism” gets at the class nature of the oppression and reminds us that to destroy it, we must fight back. The ruling class generates racism. “Anti-Muslim racism” also suggests that fighting racism can be a uniting factor for Muslim, Black, Latin, Asian, white, and all workers worldwide.
Self-critically, PL members in the MLA should have fought against the liberal term “islamophobia.”
This resolution is just the start. As ideological battlegrounds, classrooms and campuses are places where the fight against anti-Muslim racism must intensify. It is essential that we win education workers to anti-racist ideas and practice, in the MLA and elsewhere, and then to a communist outlook.
This experience reminds us of the vital role played by communist leadership in the class struggle. PLP members moved the resolution to the left and built the necessary support to get it passed. Passing the resolution was a significant step, but more important gain were the many connections we made with local activists and other groups in the MLA.
This struggle will continue to expand our limits, encouraging campus activism and creating an opportunity for alliances with students and other organizations. The sharper the fight against U.S. imperialism abroad and racism at home, the more powerful our Party will grow.