BRONX, NY, February 2 — Three hundred people gathered outside the house of Ramarley Graham, the 18-year-old black youth who was murdered by the NYPD when they broke into his house one year ago.  The cops had no warrant and Ramarley had no gun.
Various politicians including city comptroller John Liu who is running for mayor spoke at the memorial rally.  They all tried to steer the masses into believing that electing better politicians and legislating more laws was the answer to the harassment that black and Latino youth face on a daily basis. 
However, as we left the house and marched towards the police precinct chants such as, “We don’t need those police, those racist police” rang out.   It is not just a few bad apples but the entire system that has to go. CHALLENGEs were sold and a PL flyer was distributed which explained that the role of the police is to protect the capitalist class’s profits stolen from the poverty and racist unemployment of black and Latino youth.  Justice for Ramarley Graham and all of the other victims of capitalism will only be achieved when we join together and revolt against capitalism and establish communism.
Because PLP has been active in building and sustaining the Ramarley’s Call movement during the last year, a comrade was invited to speak at the last stage of the day’s memorial inside the local church. He related the struggles of workers around the world against unemployment and war and explained how PL believes that capitalism was built on racism and used racism to maintain itself by dividing the working class.  He recounted how striking school bus workers had eagerly received leaflets about the  Ramarley Graham struggle  and understood that Bloomberg and the police were the common enemy. 
The Ramarley’s Call movement has made important steps in uniting several families who lost love ones due to police brutality.  PL members must step up their efforts to convince  these militant anti-racists to ally with communists, not politicians and capitalists. Together, we can challenge the entire system to build a better world devoid of racism and oppression.

MEXICO, February 12 —Workers living in the Lakes Xico-Tlahuac area, southeast of Mexico City, who are already threatened by flooding, now must fight the bosses’ plans for a grand-scale hydro project that will increase the danger. There are 120,000 families living in 12 residential colonies in the state of Mexico and the Federal District that could be affected.
Faced with the threat of flooding and later eviction from our homes, members and friends of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have begun to organize meetings with our neighbors to denounce these actions of bosses and politicians against workers. Over two years ago, we began discussing the problem of flooding that results from unrestrained over-extraction of underground water that is sinking the area.
Now the bosses want to start building their project, called Sierra Nevada, which they have already approved. They claim it will bring “Water for Everyone Forever,” by building a series of ponds to collect fresh water, mainly from the ice melting off the volcanoes Popocaltepetl and Iztacihuatl, as well as from rain sources. According to the plan, this water could supply the western zone of the Federal District.
With this project, the bosses are trying to placate the anger of residents who are almost permanently living without water — but it will be at the expense of other workers’ lives. But they are also planning an “eco-tourism” zone around the project showing that the true beneficiaries will be those bosses who own the land and resorts.
University Bosses Complicit
The National Autonomous University of  Mexico (UNAM) directed researchers to plan a project that in fact cannot guarantee workers’ safety. They failed to incorporate a back up plan to protect residents in case of flooding. And the threat is always present, as the researchers themselves have admitted, in case of strong rains or a malfunction of the system of drainage channels, given the decrepit and inadequate municipal infrastructure.
Through the use of CHALLENGE, we warned residents about the dangers and the need to organize ourselves to fight. We have distributed more than 6,000 flyers and newspapers in the two years of this struggle. These actions have given workers confidence in us, and the confidence that if the workers are organized, we could accomplish much.
The local government tried to derail the movement, arguing that it was a false alarm, but during the rainy season they chose to sacrifice the lives of workers of several other districts, such as Reyes, La Paz, Nezahualcoyotl y Ecatepec, flooding their homes with residual waters from the general drain.
Join the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party. Come to the meetings and to the political education circles.

Tunis, Tunisia, the springboard of the Arab Spring in January, 2011, recently witnessed the eruption of mass demonstrations and a general strike to protest the assassination of a leader of the opposition party challenging the Islamist government. However, two of the key factors that led to the 2011 uprising, mass unemployment and poverty, are as prevalent as ever, essentially because their cause, capitalism, still rules. These conditions have sparked violent protests, which is why the government’s state of emergency remains in force.
All this exposes the hollowness of liberals in the U.S. and elsewhere labeling the Arab Spring a “revolution.” Revolutions occur when an oppressed class overthrows the oppressor class.
The General Union of Tunisian Workers called a one-day general strike on February 8, although the country’s universities were shut down until the 11th. However, the ruling class was taking no chances. Soldiers were deployed outside the main government buildings in Zarsis, Gafsa and Sidi Bouzid where masses of workers and youth marched, chanting “Assassins,” accusing the Islamist governing party of being behind the assassination.
Following the funeral at which tens of thousands assembled, taking “on the air of a demonstration against” the government (El Wonton newspaper, 2/9), army helicopters began overflying Tunis and military trucks were deployed on the city’s main avenue. But all of this did not prevent young demonstrators from occupying the street, clashing with police using riot clubs and tear gas.
CHALLENGE pointed out in 2011 when uprisings spread across the Middle East that they were limited to challenging the region’s dictatorships by calling for “free elections.” They weren’t aimed at overthrowing capitalism so the system’s exploitation of the working class would continue. No elections will change this, as workers and youth are discovering in  Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere.
Capitalism’s ruling classes still hold state power and use it to clamp down on mass rebellions in Tunisia. Only the leadership of communist ideas aimed at completely destroying the profit system and its bosses can free the working class of the hell wrought by that system.

Fascism is the response of a ruling class in crisis. U.S. bosses are preparing for such a crisis, composed of a critically unstable financial system along with increased competition from imperialist rivals such as China. A dominant section of the ruling class recognizes that the future includes wider and deadlier wars, perhaps a world war. Their response is increased militarism and internal discipline necessary for the bosses to wage and win wars.
In addition to intensifying racist attacks, the rulers are remaking criminal law and processes on the grounds that the “war on terror” requires special laws, and then applying the new procedures to all workers.
During the recent U.S. presidential campaign, Obama and Romney competed with each other to see who could be tougher on terror. This posturing occurred even though the main threats to U. S. capitalism come from rising powers like China, not from small terrorists.
Most recent acts of “terrorism in the U.S” — which Obama claims is the main threat facing America — are usually orchestrated by the FBI or the New York Police Department using informants to entrap a person or group to launch an attack, something they would have been incapable or unwilling to do without the informant.
These traps have been set against the Arab/Muslim community to build fear of, and racism against, this group among other workers. The “war on terror” remains central to the plans of the U.S. ruling class. This lie is part of the plan to lull workers into accepting a future of wider war and increased racist attacks.
Secret Courts Maintain Bosses’ Dictatorship
The laws about “terror” have been written so broadly that 92 percent of those charged are convicted. For example, the “Material Support” Law, which existed before 9/11 but was significantly broadened when the USA Patriot Act was passed in 2001, makes it a crime to provide anything, including humanitarian aid, to any group that the State Department has designated as “terrorist.” The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of lawyers providing advice about why to give up violence, as well as groups trying to provide aid to tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and human rights monitoring in Turkey. The government has turned this law into a tool against any group not supporting the overall plans of U.S. imperialism.
Although this law sounds like it’s aimed at groups outside the U.S., it’s also been used to convict people and groups inside the country. This includes the defense attorney Lynne Stewart as well as Sami Omar Al Huassayn, an Idaho student accused of running a website where radical Islamists posted materials. This trend will continue. All the Feds have to do is classify dissidents and communists as “terrorists” — who advocate violence — and it becomes a crime to give support of any kind.
The main fear of the ruling class is that workers will follow the communist ideas of workers overthrowing capitalism and running society in their own class interests. That’s the only thing the ruling class can’t survive. And that’s why workers must be won to understand that attacks on communists are attacks on their own class interests.
The “material support”  law has been the cutting edge for expanding the use of laws once used primarily in criminal cases: “conspiracy” laws which allow conviction for the “crime” of cooperating with people who talked about doing bad things, and “false statement” laws which make it a crime to tell cops anything which is not completely true. This is particularly vicious when the cops ask, “Is that all you know?” If you say “yes” then they can arrest you if you forgot the slightest detail.
After the 1970s’ scandals about warrantless snooping in the name of “national security,” Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allegedly to prevent illegal spying on U.S. citizens. However the Act created a secret court that could issue warrants for covert spying against foreign enemies including activities within the U.S. The law was also expanded by the Patriot Act in 2001.
The “war on terror” has been used to justify issuance of FISA secret warrants against anybody accused of “terrorism.” This is a very broad category, enabling thousands of warrants to be issued each year.
Not satisfied with having to go to court — even a secret one which approves more than 99 percent of all requested search warrants — the USA Patriot Act gave the FBI authority to issue “national security letters.” They ordered banks, phone companies and other institutions to hand over records without telling the person whose records were being seized. When five small phone companies refused to comply with such letters, the Justice Department pounced, suing them for interfering with national security.
By 2011, there were 16,511 national security letters, plus tens of thousands of more informal requests from the Feds for information from phone companies and banks.
These “anti-terror” rules have defined the new norm. Judges have long been able to “seal” (keep secret) search warrants, but that used to be very unusual. However, one outraged judge revealed that in 2008 in Houston, 99.8 percent of all electronic surveillance orders were sealed. He estimated that 30,000 sealed surveillance orders are issued each year nationwide by Federal courts alone (state and local courts issue more).
The cops increasingly dispense with court orders, just writing phone companies. Cell phone carriers report that in 2011 they received requests for information about 1.3 million subscribers. What started out as a special authority to be used in special circumstances (first against “spies,” then against “terrorists”) has now become a normal practice by every police department.
Return of the Red Squads
In the 1960s and ‘70s, special police units called Red Squads were used to harass and attack communists. After 1970s scandals in which the FBI had been openly investigating protestors (strikers, opponents of U.S. imperialism, anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, anti-racists), the ruling class switched course and instructed the FBI to concentrate on crimes rather than protests. Meanwhile, it created FISA to quietly proceed with domestic spying.
This two-pronged approach has been scrapped given the “war on terror.” Now the 2011 FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide explicitly allows the FBI to use all its intelligence-gathering techniques against people not suspected of any crime. Agents are allowed to open an “assessment” “proactively” (without any indication a crime is being planned), and, as part of that assessment, to follow people, search their trash, send in informants, and troll the internet — all in the name of capturing terrorists. The Feds have had to admit using “community outreach” meetings with the Muslim community to recruit informants and identify those whom they will prosecute.
(Conclusion next issue: New technology made exempt from privacy rules.)