WASHINGTON, DC, September 3 — Public health workers, Progressive Labor Party members, Metro transit workers and community residents are leading a fight against racist unemployment enforced by new Jim Crow policies at the regional transportation agency.
In late 2011, Metro stopped hiring people who had criminal records even though they had served their sentences and passed all the job requirements. They also re-ran background checks of workers who left the job due to work violations or extended sick leave. If they discovered a conviction, they fired the worker.
Metro fired one worker after she served a small amount of time for fraud. Her crime: reporting a lower income in order to receive a childcare subsidy! Another worker lost his job but found one driving at another bus company.
Metro provides the best-paying jobs in the area for a largely African American workforce. Over 7,000 mostly black men and women will return to DC from prison this year. Most served time for non-violent and drug crimes. The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights just reported that black workers accounted for 80 percent of these arrests even though drug use is similar across all sections of the city among rich and poor, blacks and whites. They need jobs in order to succeed.
These intentional racist arrest and hiring practices enforce the same Jim Crow policies maintained in the U.S. for centuries, keeping black unemployment rates twice or more than that of white workers, and incarcerating masses of black workers.
Meanwhile, the City wants to turn over 25 bus lines to a for-profit company that will further reduce wages, good-paying jobs, health benefits and pensions.
It’s time to fight back! The Health Disparities Committee of the Metro Washington Public Health Association will rally on September 12 at Metro headquarters to demand an end to this ban on hiring and its privatization plans. Members and friends collected close to 1,000 signatures on our petition. People lined up to sign it and many organizations plan to attend the rally to speak and picket.
It will be Metro workers who can win this campaign. They have the awesome power to shut down the city with the support of the riders and the public. Students and professional workers need to unite with them to further their needs for higher-paying jobs and good transportation. Multi-racial and ethnic solidarity among residents, public health and Metro workers paves the way for greater working-class unity and strength. It will demonstrate to us that we can fight this system and eventually overthrow capitalism whose goals are further private ownership of bus, school, and health systems in order to make more profit for a very few.
Join the struggle and attend our PLP study/action group to learn how to build more anti-racism so we can take power and re-organize mass transportation and other services to benefit our class in a communist society.

PHILADELPHIA, PA  August 16 —Today,  the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) effectively destroyed its teacher union (the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers or PFT.) It declared that it is a “distressed school district” that “cannot efficiently educate its children” unless it is allowed to cancel its contractual obligations with its teachers and other employees.
In June, the SDP laid-off approximately 40% of its staff claiming that it was “financially broke.”  It is now seeking to re-hire some of them in the cheapest possible way by suspending seniority rules,  changing salary schedules,  and allowing principals to choose the “best” teachers for the students. The SDP will “re-hire” only those teachers whose salary is the lowest or those who are “willing” to accept an immense wage cut and not complain about it. None will get any of the “commonly accepted” benefits and protections. In other words: SMASH the union.
‘Changing Horses in Mid-Stream’
This is a perfect example of what PLP means when we describe capitalism as a dictatorship of the bosses (capitalists.) The rulers never tire of telling us that “we are a country of laws” and “the law must be obeyed.” But sometimes, the bosses don’t have laws to supposedly “justify” what they do, so they change them or create new ones to fit their needs. This is exactly what is happening here. It’s also exactly what happened when the government bailed out the banks and the auto industry using workers’ tax money. The bosses have declared war on the working class.
The Only Response: Fight Back!
The bosses are using both Philadelphia and Detroit as test cases to see how far they can push workers and see what kind of resistance the working class will organize. Teachers must join with other SDP employees, parents, and students, and not rely on politicians, union leaders, or “community organizers” to lead the struggle. Their main role is to pacify workers’ anger. A real fightback would include all Philadelphia workers. If the SEPTA (transit) workers, the sanitation workers, and the municipal clerical workers went on strike in support of the teachers, the rulers would be sure to get the message.
What Does ‘Winning’ Mean
Winning in this situation does not necessarily mean that the SDP backs down, partially or completely.  Even if the SDP reverses itself, education under capitalism will always be racist, anti-working class, competitive, and mind-numbing. Winning means PLP fighting for a class-conscious working class. That would mean that workers would understand that the only way to solve their problems is by overthrowing capitalism and establishing a communist society without social classes, racism, bosses, the wage system, endless wars, and all of the other horrors that capitalism creates. Winning this battle means convincing large numbers of people that capitalism cannot be reformed; it must be smashed.

Newark, NJ— Members of the Progressive Labor Party joined about 25 other workers today to protest the U.S. ruling class’s planned attack on Syria.  Called by the community organization, People’s Organization for Progress, the rally leaders criticized Obama and then discussed the history of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. But they stopped short of identifying capitalism and inter-imperialist rivalry as the main reasons for attacking Syria. CHALLENGE  was welcomed by workers in the demonstration and on the streets.

Brooklyn, NY, August 30 — Students, teachers,  and workers, Asian, black, Latino, and white rallied against the racist murders of Shantel Davis in Brooklyn and the looming racist bombing Syria. The protesters pointed to racism as a necessary element of capitalism. The racism that allows fascism to be built at home, illustrated by racist police murders, is also the bedrock that facilitates imperialism abroad.
PLP rallied in this Flatbush neighborhood because it experiences racist police terror each and every day. It is important to win black workers to struggle against all forms of nationalism, enabling them to be won to communism. They are crucial to communist revolution.
The Flatbush community had a positive response to our presence. Many good conversations occurred about communism, why we should oppose Obama’s bombing of Syria, and the links between racism and imperialism. As of this writing, the U.S. has yet to bomb Syria. Obama parroted the same Weapons of Mass Desrruction lies as his predecessor Bush. In building an anti-war movement, we must keep class war for communist revolution front and center.

NEW YORK CITY, September 4 — As President Barack Obama prepares to strike workers in Syria, former CIA director and war general David Petraeus has found a new stomping ground as an honors professor at the City University of New York (CUNY).  Meanwhile, students and faculty from many senior and community colleges have launched a campaign against further militarization of CUNY.
Amid perennial tuition increases and financial aid cuts, CUNY’s Board of Trustees appointed Petraeus to teach a one-year course to Macaulay Honors College, whose top-tier students are 60 percent children of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
Commanding U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions, Petraeus’s role was to solifidy U.S. control over the world’s largest energy reserves. Alongside Colonel James Steele, who commanded death squads that killed tens of thousands in El Salvador and Vietnam, Petraeus oversaw torture chambers and death squads in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is likely that some of Petraeus’s honor students are from the very countries he brutalized.
During Petraeus’s tenure as head of the CIA, the agency expanded the use of drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, killing thousands. According to the New York Times, drones killed an estimated 50 civilians for every “militant” slain.
The hiring of this war criminal is an attack on the mainly black and Latino students at CUNY. Even as the U.S. war machine murders and tortures workers in the Middle East, it spreads patriotic propaganda to the same class. Petraeus’s CUNY course is titled, “Are We On the Threshold of the New North American Decade?”
Of particular interest to this imperialist warmaker is U.S. energy policy. He will be advancing the interests of the Wall Street investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Robert, which hired him after a scandal over an extramarital affair ended his government career. His seminar includes readings that support fracking and the Keystone pipeline.  
It’s Not Just Petraeus, It’s Imperialism
Petraeus symbolizes the creeping of war fever onto our campuses. In addition to hiring this war criminal, CUNY restored the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) on several campuses last semester, including the College of Staten Island, Medgar Evers, York, and CCNY. ROTC was kicked out of CUNY in 1971 after mass protests against the war in Vietnam. Now the U.S. ruling class is preparing for larger wars. It needs working-class students’ ideological support — and working-class boots on the ground.
We must recognize that war and imperialism have always been a part of capitalist universities’ curricula, be it through research, propaganda, or recruitment. But students and professors have also played a historical role in fighting U.S. imperialism. We must revive the campus movement and help win the masses to communist revolution as the only solution against imperialism and war.
Fascism on the Rise
As the ruling class prepares for war, it also needs to train working-class students for fascist control. Students are harassed by cops on the streets, and the surveillance continues once they enter college. Our campuses have become centers for spying and patrols by the New York Police Department. Cameras, turnstiles, campus cops, and the presence of the NYPD is now normal at CUNY. The cops spy on Muslim students and disrupt any sign of protest. The FBI works with campus cops to investigate and intimidate students on campus.
Join college students and professors as we kick off our campaign against imperialist forces at 2:30 p.m. Monday, September 16, in front of the Macaulay Honors Building on 35 W. 67 St., between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. The U.S. can start its wars; the working class will finish them with communist revolution.