Brooklyn, February 21 — “What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now!”
“No justice, no peace! No racist police!”
 “We want justice for Kyam Livingston killed in a prison cell.”
And so the chants continue now for 18 months. Kyam Livingston’s mother, along with many church members, teachers, union members, activists and PL’ers, have stood strong fighting for justice. Kyam was left to die in a holding cell in Central Booking in Brooklyn on July 21, 2013. As the family continues its struggle, Kyam’s mother has forged ties with the families of other victims of racist police murder. PL’s strategy and tactics have helped lead this fightback. We will not stand aside under any circumstances whatsoever. The Justice for Kyam Committee speaks against systemic racism of the criminal justice system.
We seek change the whole system. We don’t rely on elected officials or politicians or others in high places. Our power is generated by the activities of working people enraged by the ongoing murders from Ferguson to Staten Island to Flatbush. When we chant “Fight like Ferguson,” we salute the leadership given by the mainly young Black workers of Ferguson. They refused to back down in the face of a highly militarized police terror campaign instituted to stop them from the murder of Mike Brown.
For 18 months, whether at Central Booking or in front of racist liar District Attorney Ken Thompson’s office, we have stood through snow, rain and heat asking simple questions. Still no answers. We have confronted Ken Thompson’s office, but still no answers. We have confronted Central Booking as they laugh at death through their windows. We have the names and we have the tapes of the murder.  We will continue to fight. 
One thing is very clear. The only solution is communist revolution and only through the Progressive Labor Party can we smash a system that doesn’t deserve to exist, and build a system for all working class people. 
One theme becoming more apparent with Kyam’s mother’s leadership is she does not want to see this happen ever again to other workers’ children and she will stand out here fighting until this system is gone and begins anew. We in the Progressive Labor Party stand with her. Join us on the 21st of every month in solidarity, as the working class stands strong.

Because of the recent outbreak of measles among some children who visited Disneyland, the mass media have focused on parents who are afraid to have their children vaccinated. Measles can kill, but many parents have been fooled by widespread disinformation that measles vaccinations may lead to autism. This is a blatant lie. No one knows what causes autism, but we have voluminous proof that vaccines do not.
The lie was raised to prominence by Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon who profited hugely by submitting a fraudulent paper in 1998 to the leading medical journal Lancet. Beforehand he had been hired by lawyers trying to sue vaccine companies to prove their case, and the journal paper was the result. His paper reviews the cases of 12 children, claiming that they all developed autism within two weeks of receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. It was later shown, however, that some of these children had signs of autism prior to the vaccinations and others never had autism. Wakefield’s medical license was subsequently revoked.
Every study since then has rejected Wakefield’s attribution of autism to the vaccine, any vaccine. But his murderous lie lives on through self-serving celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, the Playboy model, who refuses to vaccinate her children. Wakefield himself has built a following in his adopted home of Texas, where he continues to claim he is the victim of government collusion with vaccine manufacturers. One doesn’t have to support either government or vaccine makers to conclude that Wakefield is responsible for crimes against the working class.
When unvaccinated children catch the measles, or other potentially deadly contagious diseases, they expose other children. When too few children in a community (less than 90 percent) have been vaccinated, all are at risk of epidemics, even those who have been vaccinated. Measles was once virtually eradicated in the U.S. and Europe, even if not everywhere in the world, due solely to the vaccine. Of every thousand children who contract measles, one or two will die. But no children will develop autism from the vaccine.
Laws passed by pandering and ignorant politicians in many places allow vaccination exemptions for parents on the grounds of religious or simply “personal” beliefs. But what if someone has a “personal” belief that it’s all right to steal?  Stealing, though enforced by capitalist conditions, is still a violation of working-class morality. And incidentally it’s against the law, unless committed by huge banks and corporations. The stunning hypocrisy of vaccine exemptions in turn supports the spread of anti-scientific mysticism and superstition — useful tools for the reigning capitalist class to keep workers divided and subjugated.
Most parents who fail to vaccinate their children out of fear are simply trying to protect them. But it’s not the motivation that counts; it’s the effect. Despite opposition by the American Pediatric Society, some pediatricians refuse to accept children as patients whose parents won’t have them vaccinated, on the grounds that exposure to unvaccinated children raises the disease risk for their other patients. Likewise, some school districts refuse to allow children to attend school until they are vaccinated. Both of these measures represent a scattered approach that does not solve the problem for the children or their parents.
Only a centrally planned cooperative system, based on the best that science can offer — i.e., communism — will be capable of stemming the effects of mysticism and disinformation and be able to protect children as well as adults. Communism is a system that will encourage families, friends, and neighbors to help each other with childcare and other needs. Communism raises science to a premium while eradicating mysticism and superstition. Under communist leadership, with the Progressive Labor Party having grown to include millions of workers, the working class will see to it that all parents have the wherewithal to feed, clothe, and shelter their children, and to be guided only by science rather than be confused by superstition.

New York CITY, February 18 — “A Little Cold, A Little Pain, That Won’t Stop This Justice Train!” That was the chant today as about 150 workers and professionals held a very spirited picket line on the coldest day of the year, in support of the 56 attorneys, paralegals and secretaries who are on strike at Mobilization For Youth (MFY) Legal Services. They are represented by the Legal Services Staff Association (LSSA)/UAW Local 2320. After almost four weeks on strike in record-breaking cold weather, on February 24, MFY’s union signed a new contract with their bosses.
The strikers demanded increased staffing with affirmative action to reduce workloads and better reflect the they serve, and family leave and pay-equity for the lowest-paid workers.
The millionaire Wall Street lawyers who sit on the Board had basically told the strikers, “We can afford to meet your demands. We just don’t think it‘s worth it!”  The bosses also brought in scabs, a temp clerical worker and some contract attorneys.
What they don’t think is “worth it” is quality legal help for the poor, mostly Black, Latin, immigrant and women workers who need help with housing and family court, bankruptcy, benefits for the elderly and many other issues. They want to turn MFY and all legal services for the poor into a McDonald’s type operation, cheap and fast, and a workforce with a huge turnover.
PLP salutes the MFY strikers. Their militancy and solidarity during the bitter cold weather is a model for all workers to follow! But the struggle has only begun. Under capitalism, the living conditions of those MFY serves will only worsen and become more desperate. We call on the MFY strikers to take it to the next level and join PLP!

From the moment the vicious murders of the Ayotzinapa teachers took place, PLP members in Mexico have participated in the massive protests. At these protests, we distributed flyers criticizing the Mexican government, and every reformist and electoral “alternative” group being promoted among workers. The attack, which took place in Iguala, Guerrero State last September 27, is a reflection of the violence that the ruling class is willing to use to enforce its plans against the working class as the bosses consolidate and assert their power. Six other people, three of them students, were killed in a police and paramilitary attack. To this day, 57 youth are still missing.
Events like this become more frequent as the global capitalist crisis deepens and imperialist rivals, the U.S., Russia and China, get ready to fight World War III. We place all blame for the murders on the capitalist system, and call for the working class to organize for communist revolution.
A group of Party members participated in a demonstration of striking IPN (National Polytechnic Institute) teachers and students, who are fighting the consequences of the Mexican bosses’ education reforms. They distributed 2,000 flyers.
Ruling Class Needs Behind Ayotzinapa Massacre
The Mexican ruling class needs to discipline the workers’ and other ruling class rivals in controlling tax revenue and educational policy.
Energy reform allows the U.S. to have more control over energy resources like oil, which is vital to the U.S. military in the event of war. The education and labor reforms are designed to a cheap labor force. They represent more oppression and exploitation for workers.
The changes that the bosses are trying to put in effect at IPN are part of the education reforms, which are designed to suppress political participation in the polytechnic community, to make higher education more technically oriented and to reduce teachers’ benefits. These reforms respond to the needs of the capitalist system to reduce enrollment in public education to benefit the business of private education. It also turns public schools into cheap labor factories, where trained and docile workers don’t require the training of a highly qualified technician.
The approval of these reforms was framed by terror against the working class by the army, the police and the crime cartels. Against this terror, all of the electoral political parties to encourage passivity of the working class, while helping build unity of the most powerful ruling class groups in Mexico and the U.S. Due to their deep unpopularity with the workers, the bosses resort to using terror to blunt the workers’ resistance, which has a rich history in Mexico, especially in 1968, when IPN students played a key role in the anti-imperialist student movement.
Under capitalism, education is a business, and one of the most important means to indoctrinate youth with nationalist, sexist, individualist, and racist ideology. The attacks confronted by IPN teachers and students will not end as long as there is a capitalist system. It is essential for capitalism to destroy the living conditions of the working class because that’s one of the ways they maximize their profits. Capitalists will try, by any means, to cut salaries, retirement pensions,   health and education services.
Growing Worker-Student Unity Key as PLP Strengthens
Under these conditions, the massive protests of the IPN students against changes to administrative regulations and curriculum is very significant. This struggle is part of the entire working class resistance to the reforms imposed by the ruling class.
The struggle of the Polytechnic students is developing unity with workers and students in other schools like UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), UAM (Autonomous Metropolitan University), and UAEM (Autonomous University of Mexico State). This uity will be crucial to defeating attacks by school authorities and the ruling class.
We need to keep organizing the international revolutionary communist PLP, not an electoral party, to lead millions of workers in a communist revolution to abolish the oppressive capitalist system and build a new communist society. Workers’ power is the goal that in the last century inspired millions of workers around the world, including many of those who were part of the worldwide 1968 movement against imperialism. We honor their memory by renewing our commitment to the fight for a just and egalitarian society.
Our flyers were written collectively among our comrades and friends following lively debates about the causes of these attacks and their relation to global imperialist rivalry. Our friends participated in the discussion and helped distribute literature during the demonstrations.
One of our weaknesses was not quickly developing a plan for this struggle, which has already lasted months. We could have involved our friends in more than just passing our flyers. We plan to organize a group to participate more actively in the demonstrations with banners and flags, and organize conferences to put forward PLP’s position. From Ayotzinapa to Ferguson, the struggle of the working class for its liberation will put an end to capitalist oppression!