CHICAGO, November 17 — Rekia’s brother led the crowd in, “I am Rekia Boyd!”  Outside the hearing, PLP led, “Racist cops you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
More than a hundred people protested at the monthly Chicago Police Board hearing against the March 2012 murder of Rekia Boyd, a young Black woman, by off-duty kkkop Dante Servin yet to be fired. We distributed CHALLENGE and a leaflet about the Paris attacks. We exposed how the police terrorize workers to maintain the boss’s system.
Servin fired into a crowd in a West Side alley and killed Rekia. He was found not guilty because Cook County Judge Dennis Porter ruled he should have been charged with murder instead of manslaughter. Rekia’s brother said she would have been 26 years old this month and demanded to know why her killer had not been fired in the three years since the murder.
This case illustrates how the police get away with murder, and especially racist murder of Black and Latin women and men. In just three cases of racist murder, the city of Chicago has paid $8 million dollars to the families of the slain victims.
Some protesters were Black nationalists, who advances the idea that Black workers and students have more in common with Black bosses and politicians than with non-Black workers and students; and therefore should ally with bosses and politicians of the same color rather than their class. Nationalism is a ruling class idea to try to divide the multi-racial, multi-ethnic working class. It is a way to divert the communist internationalism PLP fights for. We will organize more workers to attend the next hearing to expose the racist cops and their nationalists.

Washington, DC, December 1 —Chanting “Pills Cost Pennies, Greed Costs Lives” a spirited picket line challenged the pharmaceutical lobby, PhRMA at noon on World Aids Day. Friends and members of Progressive Labor Party, Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association and DC Fights Back attacked the exorbitant prices charged by Gilead Sciences for curative Hepatitis C medications, which hit Black workers the hardest (see article in Challenge, (date)). Protesters also attacked international trade agreements that will deny many HIV medications to countries such as Vietnam, and the profits made by drug companies on the back of workers who pay taxes for government drug development and then have to watch more tax dollars given back to the companies from Veterans Affairs, Medicaid and Medicare funding. Protesters also attacked the tax dodges (“inversion”) when companies like Pfizer merge with Allergen in Ireland to avoid paying U.S. taxes, declaring “Inversion Is Perversion”!

THE BRONX, December 2 — Students worldwide are raging at the exploitation and racist oppression of capitalism. From South Africa — where tens of thousands demanded and won a cancellation of fee increases — to the University of Missouri — where the president was forced to resign after repeatedly ignoring racist attacks on campus — students are rising up. While these actions should rightly be championed for challenging the ruling class’s racism, we must also be aware that militant reform movements will neither end capitalism nor fundamentally change its racist foundations. Only a mass revolutionary party--Progressive Labor Party—can accomplish that. Still, reform actions can be a training ground for communist revolution.
Student fightback on a smaller scale recently played out at a community college. Thirty-five students and professors, including members of Progressive Labor Party, demonstrated against a planned tuition hike throughout the City University of New York. The CUNY bosses’ plan, coming on the heels of five straight years of tuition increases, is clearly racist, as the CUNY system serves primarily Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant students.
The demonstration was bold as we marched through campus and into the cafeteria. For many, it was their first protest, yet they loudly chanted and held up signs as other students and faculty looked on. Many observers gave thumbs-up in approval and nodded their heads, boosting our confidence to fight back. The protest showed that people are open not only to fightback, but to being trained in class struggle with communists.
Model of Student-Worker Alliance
Students also attacked injustices to the CUNY faculty, who have worked five years without a contract. “The professors have waited long enough!” they chanted. This reflected an understanding that students and faculty and staff are all on the same side, and that the same factors driving up tuition are also driving down wages. Students spoke about having adjunct instructors who need to rush off to teach at another school immediately after class. Many adjuncts live in poverty or are on government assistance. As the faculty fights for a new contract, it is vital to build a student-worker alliance, and to demand that any raise for workers not be funded by a student tuition hike.
Cutbacks for War
After we marched to picket at the college’s front gate, PL’ers injected a communist perspective. One comrade exposed the root cause of the cutbacks attacking the working class worldwide: inter-imperialist rivalry. The U.S. ruling class is raising tuition and cutting financial aid because they need to funnel money to their military war machine to prop up their failing empire. As China and Russia increasingly challenge the U.S. worldwide, as in Syria, we can expect even more racist cutbacks.
The battle against ISIS, a group formed out of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq that the U.S. ousted in 2003, reflects the increasingly dire situation facing U.S. imperialism. The money U.S. bosses need to wage this fight is being stolen from our class in the form of racist and sexist cutbacks in healthcare, childcare, education, housing, jobs and social services. In their attempt to pacify and neutralize the working class, the capitalist rulers are trying to exploit workers’ fears to build all-class unity for an escalated war in the Middle East.
Calling Out the Prez
Finally, we marched to the administration building. Our volume forced the college president to emerge from his office. Campus cops came running down as well, exposing their fear of student-professor power. He offered the usual platitudes about taking our message to the CUNY chancellor and “being on our side.”
One student called out the president’s bluff and took out his cellphone, demanding that Marti call the Chancellor then and there. Of course, that didn’t happen. Under capitalism, at all levels, it’s the job of politicians and administrators to pacify workers and students. While some students seemed to take Marti by his words, there were many looks of healthy skepticism. Most people knew the president’s promise wasn’t worth a damn.
This growing skepticism is an opportunity for PLP to raise our ideas, above all the need for communist revolution and the making of a new society. Over recent years, the fighting spirit of the working class may have burned more dimly than in the past. But the fire is far from extinguished! From South Africa to the Bronx, students and workers are rising up in ways large and small. Their fighting spirit, combined with PLP’s communist politics, will pave the way to a future without bosses, racism, capitalist exploitation or imperialist wars.

DAVIS, CA, December 3—Mounting a tabletop in the center of the local university cafeteria, a student started chanting, “Black lives matter!” “It is our duty to fight!” and other anti-racist chants. Forty students then rallied and obstructed entrances inside the cafeteria in protest of the racist police murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago.
‘Remember The Dead…’
Organized by a campus group called Davis Stands With Ferguson, the students also denounced the vicious, firing-squad-like execution of Mario Woods, a 26-year-old Black man, in San Francisco a day earlier (see page ). Meanwhile, three other groups stood in front of three entrance doors, holding signs protesting racist police killings. Students were greeted by their fellow students and their signs as they entered and left, bringing the issue of racist police killings up front to several hundred students at the noon lunch hour.
‘…Fight Like Hell For The Living!’
Planning for today’s action began on November 18, after students had assembled at the plaza outside the Memorial Union to write the names of victims of racist police violence. On the Tuesday before the rally, students gathered once more to finalize the details of today’s action.
These actions show that students are aware and angry, know how to organize, and can act together. In a follow-up discussion, a general student strike on campus was proposed as a goal. We will continue to be involved in the planning and execution of these actions to build solidarity between students and faculty.
Progressive Labor Party encourages these students to continue these bold actions! We will struggle with the students to continue organizing students on campus, and organize and build a movement that includes campus workers.
PLP organizes workers, students and soldiers unite and build a mass international communist party that can end capitalism, and its racist police terror and imperialism, once and for all. Only a communist revolution, which unites all workers in the fight against racism and for egalitarian communism can end police racism forever and give our class the future that we want. We look forward to helping these students sharpen the fight against racism on campus, and fighting alongside them in the struggles ahead!