On November 29, “Black Friday,” one of the busiest shopping days in the U.S, masses of workers nation-wide protested and struck against Wal-Mart, the country’s largest retail store, second largest corporation and largest private employer, with over 1.4 million workers.
By pioneering tactics to cut labor costs and avert union organizing, using intimidation among suppliers, subcontractors and competitors across industries, Wal-Mart has reaped billions in profits and is hastening a transformation toward a future of low-wage, non-union jobs.
The Waltons comprise the richest family in the world, their wealth inherited from company founder Sam Walton. Collectively the Waltons own over 50% of the company and are worth a combined total of $150 billion.  In 2011, six members of the Walton family had the same net worth as the bottom 30% of U.S. families combined. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart workers’ wages are low enough to qualify them for public assistance.

WASHINGTON, DC, November 20 — Over 100 students and workers from four local universities and many job sites jammed a Howard University conference room today to hear a panel discussion entitled “A Conversation on Racism and Capitalism.” The conference was organized in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Studies Association.
The panel was brought together by a sociology professor from the University of California. She initiated this conference because she was concerned that university discussions of racism had become disconnected from racism’s source: the capitalist exploitation of the working class. The seven panelists included historians, economists, political scientists and sociologists who discussed the many aspects of the indelible link between racism and the capitalist system.
The fact is the bosses reap several hundred billion dollars in super-profits from the racist and sexist difference in family income between white workers, as compared to that of black, Latino, and Asian workers, as well as women workers.
During the question-and-answer period, an engineering professor asked whether a party was needed to overthrow racist capitalism. The panel members generally danced around this question, leaving it to a PL’er in the audience to carefully explain why, in fact, a revolutionary party was needed to unify all sectors of the working class and its allies around the goal of communism and the elimination of racism, sexism and the wage system.
The participants expressed great appreciation to the panel. Several said that capitalism’s drive to maximize profit by minimizing wages for workers was helped by racist divisions and oppression. They said that now they had much better understanding of how capitalism requires racism to work for the very rich.
The next step is the launching of a Marxist Study Circle in January. Over 25 conference participants said they would join such a group. Preparations are well underway.  Anyone in the Washington-Baltimore area who is interested may sign up by completing a short survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WS8LD5J.

Negev, November 30 —Striking back against the Israeli government’s Prawer Plan for “ethnic cleansing” of Bedouins in the Negev, thousands of Palestinian-Bedouin workers and peasants, as well as Jews and Palestinians from the rest of the country, rallied near the poverty-stricken Bedouin town of Hura. The multi-ethnic protestors stood for two hours, facing heavily-armed cops and mounted police and demanded justice, as well as recognition of all Bedouin villages.
Then the cops charged in, attacked the unarmed workers and peasants with clubs, tear gas, concussion grenades, water hoses and horses. Dozens were arrested and brutally beaten, including a 10-year-old child. In response, local youths threw stones at the cops and blocked the road with burning tires. The fighting continued for two more hours. Then some of the protestors drove to the police precinct to demand the release of their arrested comrades.
Two PL’ers joined the protest standing together with their Bedouin comrades against the racist plan. Further demonstrations are scheduled around the country in the following weeks
The plan, also called the Prawer-Begin Plan, would deport 40,000 Bedouin workers and subsistence farmers from the so-called “unrecognized” villages (unrecognized by the government) where they have lived for many generations. They would be moved  to crowded (mis-)”planned” towns where unemployment reaches 50% and over 60% are below the poverty line. The stolen land would then be handed over to real-estate tycoons, including New York City’s billionaire Ronald Lauder, to build housing for the rich. The state calls the Bedouins “squatters,” but the real “squatters” are the Zionist regime and its fat-cat U.S. patrons, who now want to repeat the 1948 deportation of 750,000 Palestinians.
Even if the plan is defeated, the Bedouin workers and peasants who live in the “unrecognized” villages lack basic infrastructure and amenities, and have inadequate education and healthcare. The government claims it can’t provide services to small “scattered” villages, but that’s exactly what it does for dozens of well-off kibbutzim, moshavim and individual farms owned by upper-class Jews.
Capitalism, especially in its Zionist form, is hell for all workers in Palestine, but experience from South Africa and Zimbabwe shows that replacing colonialist (in this case, Zionist) capitalism with national boss capitalism will solve none of the workers’ problems. In both of these countries, racist apartheid was replaced by local capitalist rule, in the service of U.S. imperialism, which oppresses workers and murders striking miners.
As in these countries, capitalist “national liberation” holds no promise to the impoverished workers of all ethnicities and “races.” The only real solution is communist revolution under the red flag of Progressive Labor Party and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under communism we will share all land and resources, and smash all remnants of racism. Join us!

I was on my way to our biweekly CHALLENGE sale when one of my comrades informed me about an event Hillel was having in conjunction with the Italian club. “Israeli ambassador on campus at 1pm. SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] is planning to disrupt.” He needn’t say more. Hillel, the largest Zionist campus organization in the world admitted, “Israel is at the heart of Hillel’s work.” It was bringing in an Israeli diplomat Gideon Meir to speak. I gathered my CHALLENGEs and met with SJP and other student organizers on campus. In a classroom of fifteen people, eight of us entered and sat in the back row. We were a group of , North African, Palestinian, brown and white students. While waiting for the racist Meir to arrive, I read the CHALLENGE article (11/27)  “Jews, Arabs, Africans Unite: Rip Israeli Rulers’ Racist Neglect, Segregation.” I then passed a stack of CHALLENGEs. “Turn to page five. Pass it down,” I said.
As soon as diplomat Meir began speaking, one didn’t need any background information on the Israel-Palestine conflict to realize what a racist this Israeli politician is. His first sentence was an attack on Palestinians, declaring them terrorists in a land that was given to the Jewish people as “the biblical promise of god.” I wanted to yell at this man who used religion and nation-building language to justify an apartheid system. I had just met these SJP and organizer friends. So, I passed a note asking to chant, “Racist Israel, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” Half of the group agreed, “but later,” they wrote back.
During the Question-and-Answer period, those of us who questioned him were labeled propagandists and Palestinians. When asked about racism and displacement of families, he yelled, “This is the way of your people. That’s why we don’t have peace.” The Jewish and Italian students first tried to ignore our presence and then tried to silence us. He refused to call on me and when I began speaking, “Israel is system based on racism. It is a watchdog for the United States —”
He called us Arabs. I continued to chant raising my brown fist in the air. Our group finally walked out and I began the Israel-Genocide chant. My new comrade chanted with me. When I later asked why didn’t we simply expose the racist for what he is, one organizer told me, “We are playing the game of who is the biggest a**hole.”  They were hesitant to chant so as not to appear militant and dismissive.
Earlier the diplomat Meir said, “We do everything according to democracy and laws.” The truth is Israel’s actions reflect the bosses’ laws. The very existence of a nation and a discourse based on ethnicity is racist. Borders are meant to protect the exploitative class in power and screw those who fall outside that imaginary line. That’s what a state does: consolidate power to manage and ensure the flow of capital.
While at the Zionist event, I wondered, how do I expose the Israelis while refusing to legitimize Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian state? By showing how nations and racism hurt all workers: Jewish, Arab, and North African, as written in that CHALLENGE article. No worker benefits from a nation state or racism. We must struggle with these new friends to win them away from a “progressive nationalism” discourse to a communist one.
After having a conversation with SJP, I invited them to our rally at the Board of Trustees the following Monday (see CHALLENGE 12/11). It will be awesome if we can build with these new friends to join the anti-militarization campaign and bring them to May Day!
College Red