New York City, Sept 2–Thousands of protesters swarmed Union Square in NYC to protest the continuing genocide and slaughter of Palestinian families in Gaza, now spreading to the West Bank. With anger at the bosses’ continued bloodbath in Palestine, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades quickly distributed all 250 CHALLENGES we had. Protesters made fists as one comrade introduced a copy of CHALLENGE:

“Revolutionary communist paper, smash imperialism everywhere, fight for communism!” That’s the only way to put a permanent end to this racist genocide and build a world for workers!

Workers open to communist politics

A young man from New Jersey said he wanted to contact us. He added that Hamas were heroes, fighting for Palestinians. Our comrade responded, “No. Hamas is a group allied with Iran, a country allied with China and Russia, locked into imperialist rivalry with the U.S. What we need is a unified, international working class that fights to destroy all imperialists!” A young Korean-American woman, member of the New York Writers Guild, told us about her communist grandparents who were killed in Korea. She supports an organization that fights U.S. imperialism and military bases in South Korea. “I’m an internationalist, like you,” she said.      

Several comrades met friends in organizations they belong to and marched with them. As we circulated, we said hello to a group of Palestinian women who raised their fists as we gave them CHALLENGES. A PLP’er said, “Well, I can’t use a bad word.” “Go ahead,” they responded, “We use it all the time.” “OK. This f…ing system’s gotta go!” 

Genocidal public health crisis      

Later that day there was a fundraiser to send medics and medical supplies to Gaza. Protesters are enraged at the total destruction of hospitals and healthcare in Gaza. The health of Gazans continues to be at severe risk. In addition to the near 41,000 traumatic deaths to date, many of the nearly 94,000 wounded will succumb to wound infections and other complications for lack of medical care. Lack of food and clean water has led to a profusion of infectious diseases, such as hepatitis A and chicken pox, as well as widespread malnutrition and thirst. 

Most recently, polio virus has been found in sewage and one baby has been paralyzed. The Israelis are terrified it could spread beyond Gaza and so are allowing very limited half day ceasefires to vaccinate children. This effort is bound to be incomplete, although Israel is making sure its soldiers get the vaccine. Cholera is very likely to emerge. Medical facilities continue to be attacked and at least 500 health care workers have been killed and over 300 arrested and tortured.

Leading the way to smashing capitalism

There are huge opportunities to sharpen communist consciousness at these large protests, on college campuses and elsewhere. PLP must be present! A gated university like Columbia is closed to anyone who doesn’t have a Columbia ID. Students face a list of restrictions this semester: no encampments, no protests on campus, no information to be circulated except about “educational” matters. The fight will continue! No war except class war! Fight for communism!

     Violence has no place in America.
—Kamala Harris, after the latest attempt to assassinate Donald Trump.

“I believe in…ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.”
—Kamala Harris five days earlier, in her debate with Trump.

A funny thing happened on September 10, when tens of millions of workers watched a spectacle of shameless evasions, racist fabrications, and baldfaced lies. At the TV debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the “lesser evil” never showed up.

On one side, the gutter racist Trump promised mass deportations and gibbered his despicable blood libel about workers from Haiti eating household pets in Ohio. On the other, Harris mourned a failed bill that would have unleashed an additional 1,500 Gestapo agents at the U.S. border with Mexico—“to help those folks who are working there right now…to do their job.” And she repeated her pledge that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

In short, Harris doubled down on U.S. policies to criminalize desperate migrating workers and to underwrite the Israeli rulers’ genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. As Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu keeps carpet-bombing schools and defenseless tent camps, the debate was a reminder that Harris follows in the footsteps of Genocide Joe Biden, Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama, and mass incarcerator Bill KKKlinton. And that regardless of which side wins in November, it will not stem the rise of fascism in the U.S. or the growing momentum toward World War III. The billionaire bosses who back Harris will ultimately need the discipline of fascism as much as those who back Trump, and Harris has assured them that she’s ready and willing to do whatever it takes. She is the safer choice for finance capital—the Big Fascists, the main wing of U.S. imperialism—in part because she’ll keep funding two bloodbaths in their interests: the Ukraine bosses’ brutal clash with Russian imperialism, and the Zionist rulers’ savage onslaught against workers and children in Palestine.

As rival Chinese and Russian bosses flex their muscles from the South China Sea to Europe, the election is exposing the weakness of the U.S. ruling class—and the hard fact that workers are under attack from both sides. The crisis of capitalism is straining the limits of the bosses’ liberal democracy and the capacity of elections to sort out their differences with a “peaceful” transfer of power. Less than four years after inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Trump has made it clear that he won’t accept a loss this time around —and that he’ll jail any donors, “operatives,” “illegal voters,” lawyers, or election officials who try to “cheat” (Washington Post, 9/8). While the Democrats and their finance capital masters are more tied to liberal democracy, a valuable tool to mislead and pacify the working class, they’re planting their own seeds for a possible election challenge. They’re using their big media bullhorns for tales of Russian interference (New York Times, 9/4), of Trump loyalist “infiltration” of swing state election boards (Rollingstone.com, 8/14), and of Republican efforts to throw hundreds of thousands of potential Democratic voters off the rolls (NYT, 9/15).

In Israel, meanwhile, liberal democracy is struggling to sustain the apartheid oppression of workers in Palestine. Although Netanyahu and his Likud cronies narrowly lost their move to strip Israel’s judges of much of their power, they may not be done trying. The Israeli bosses urgently need more centralized, fascist control to keep their racist “Jewish state” afloat.

With the world’s capitalists both deeply divided and more dangerous than ever, workers must take the class struggle into our own hands. In our reform work, we must make election issues out of the struggle against atrocities in Gaza and the fight against police murders. We must declare our solidarity with migrating workers everywhere. Most of all, we must use these struggles to build Progressive Labor Party and a mass movement to fight for communist revolution—the only lasting solution.

U.S. bosses can’t afford liberal democracy

Liberal democracy has always been a cover for the rulers’ dictatorship. When the ruling class is relatively united, as it was in the U.S. for more than a century after the Civil War, elections gave workers the illusion of choice. Meanwhile, the big bosses backed both sides—heads they won, tails we lost. But over the last thirty years, U.S. imperialism has steadily lost ground to China, now the world’s leading industrial power. With global war on the horizon and their empire at risk, the U.S. bosses’ splits have grown much sharper. 

Today we have two vicious factions of racist murderers competing for power in the U.S. The Small Fascists, fronted by Trump, are focused on their profits in the U.S. and have no appetite for more taxes. The Big Fascists, who control the Democratic Party, are backed by the multinational banks and oil companies; they need a massive military to help them dominate world markets and call the shots on trade. Both sides are viciously anti-working class. Both use racism to divide us. And both will stop at nothing—including nuclear war--to keep their side on top.

In this fast-deteriorating situation, liberal democracy is a luxury the bosses—including the finance capital bosses—may soon be unable to afford. They can’t allow the working class to decide which faction will consolidate control, or where and when the U.S. is going to war. The stakes are too high. The electoral system simply does not work for the bosses when they’re in a crisis of this magnitude.

Don’t vote—revolt!

The working class is facing a critical choice, but it’s not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between the bosses’ blueprint for war and fascism and our fight for liberation through communist revolution. The working class can’t be liberated by elections because our power lies outside the electoral system. We give up that power when we fall into the trap of choosing one rising fascist or another. In this case, we know them by what they’ve already done. We’ve witnessed Trump’s embrace of open nazis. We’ve seen Top Cop Harris eagerly help fill the jails with Black workers while protecting crooked prosecutors. We should have no illusions that she’d be any better as president than Biden or Trump.

When do workers win? When we march in the streets. When we fight back against racism. When we unite against whichever mass murderer winds up in the White House. It’s in the class struggle where we are strongest and the bosses are weakest.

So far, the most significant moments of this election campaign have come when small groups of protestors bravely stood up to Harris in Detroit and Las Vegas to demand that she end her complicity with genocide. The victory is in the fight. When the working class fights back, it gains the confidence to smash the bosses and their nightmare system. When the working class fights back, it opens the door to building a movement to ditch the rotten profit system once and for all--with communist revolution.

CHICAGO, September 11—In yet another example of the anti-working-class nature of the bosses’ state, the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the permit today for the massive rock concert Riot Fest to return to Douglass Park this month. Riot Fest is a for-profit event that has raked in handsome profits for years by exploiting public parks that supposedly exist for working-class recreation. 

Given Douglass Park’s location in between Black and Latin neighborhoods, cutting off access to much-needed green spaces and sports programs is a despicable racist attack. Local residents and organizers have long suffered and documented the damage done to the park as tens of thousands of concert goers trample through during the three-day fest. Two nearby hospitals serving lower-income workers are confronted with loud music and snarled traffic despite being designated as official “quiet zones.”

During the public comment period of the board meeting, several workers spoke out against Riot Fest, including a member of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). It’s inspiring to see grassroots organizing efforts continue to oppose racist Riot Fest. However, we can never expect the government bodies under capitalism to fundamentally serve our interests. They will always exist to enforce the will of the bosses and their profit system, from the U.S. presidency all the way down to local park district boards.

To experience a government and society that is truly reflective of the needs of the international working class, we need a society that is RUN by the international working class. We need to reject all these gross opportunistic politicians in favor of mass working-class power, won by international communist revolution and PLP!

Liberal bosses lay out the welcome mat for exploiters

For those of us living near Douglass Park who have been involved in the efforts to get Riot Fest out, we were beyond excited to hear in June that the concert organizers had decided to relocate the fest to a stadium in the southwest suburbs. The owner of Riot Fest went on record painting themselves as the victim, calling out the park district board and saying they were left with “no choice” but to leave (Block Club Chicago, 6/12).

Unsurprisingly however, Riot Fest still had some friends in high places who were willing to mend the fence, not least so-called progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson who held meetings with the concert founder (CBS News, 8/14). So hardly two months after celebrating what we thought was a decent reform win for workers in the area, we learned that Riot Fest was again coming to Douglass Park, “back by popular demand.”

We tried to bounce back even with short notice to mobilize speakers and a press conference for today’s park board meeting, but the approval already appeared to be a done deal. Opportunistic Alderwoman  Monique Scott organized her own crew of vocal pro-Riot Fest supporters, who all praised the alleged economic growth and shamelessly kept referring to the concert organizers as “family.” Although she claims that she’s standing up for the Black workers and youth in her neighborhood, by fully embracing profit-hungry developers she’s leading the efforts to push through racist gentrification and displacement on the west side of the city.

Even though the approval for Riot Fest was essentially a done deal, the PLP member spoke in their statement about the workers near Douglass Park not giving up: 

I believe in working-class power over those who would exploit public space and other people for their own gain, and again, I believe that we will win. The demands for transparency from Mayor Johnson and this board are clear from hundreds of supporters who want Riot Fest out, and who are ready to fight for a more equitable city. We await your reply. And we’re not going anywhere.

Keep fighting Riot Fest and racist capitalism

Facing another year of Riot Fest, the workers near Douglass Park are not giving up. We’re going to continue our efforts of documenting the damage done to the park, registering complaints, and building relationships with our neighbors and co-workers. As PLP members connected to this fight, we need to expose the contradictions of the system and the pitfalls of relying on any bosses to solve the problems that our class faces.

Although a worker-run society may seem far off, the seeds of a world beyond capitalism are already taking root. Through collective action we are reminded that it’s the masses that make history, and not relying on politicians and voting which just pulls the wool over our eyes. To fight against Riot Fest is to fight against racist capitalism!

This article is a reprint of a presentation a comrade in Colombia made at a red virtual school alongside comrades in Mexico.

Racism historically developed from colonialism and the emergence and development of capitalism. In Europe, this "development" that allowed the "primitive accumulation of capital" was based on the exploitation of the slave labor of Africans, Asians, indigenous peoples and other "colored peoples," justifying this method with the theory of superior and inferior races. In North America, it emerged in the form of a multiracial labor force with perks for whites and genocide for indigenous people. This is how anti-Black racism emerged, which today divides workers throughout the world and is the basis of capitalist superprofits and the absolute superexploitation of Black communities.

The Europeans brought indigenous people from the Americas to be displayed as "animals" in captivity, reinforcing the ideal of an inferior race to justify genocide in the Americas. Already in the industrial era, capitalists used children in factories, demonstrating the classist and merciless character that currently prevails in all areas of the planet where workers and the oppressed make up a large percentage of soldiers in the bosses' armed forces, which they are forced to enlist in due to the lack of employment opportunities. For this reason, these workers are the key to the success of the revolution in all countries where racism lies as a source of power and profit for the bosses. It is also their Achilles' heel, since every super-exploited worker is a potential revolutionary leader for the working class. Every unemployed youth mistreated by police brutality is a potential recruit for the class war for workers' power. This is the educational work that Progressive Labor Party organizers must carry out daily together with our readers, friends and family in building a base for revolution.

Racism, along with sexism and nationalism, is used to divide our class, creating armies as cannon fodder for their imperialist genocides and impoverishing the workers of countries with low levels of economic development, such as Ecuador, Peru, Haiti, Bolivia, Colombia, etc., where 90 percent of the inhabitants are Afro and indigenous, 85 percent are in poverty, and 42 percent in absolute misery.

Historically, these workers have led hundreds of militant class struggles such as strikes, occupations, labor actions, and dozens of rebellions, uprisings, stoppages and social uprisings. The capitalists use force and deceit to pacify the workers, whether by lying about the war against poverty, with miserable subsidies or terrible jobs as janitors, messengers, builders, artisanal miners, etc. Capitalists and the media make workers believe that they can gain more influence by electing mobster politicians, corrupt police officers or Black mayors.

Today, capitalism allocates very few resources and many lies to appease the anger of workers with minimal reforms, such as those currently being debated in the Colombian parliament, while unemployment for Black women has increased twice as much as that of whites, while all salaries have decreased.

In Colombia and around the world, Black workers are the key to the class struggle, but if we are not with them to win them over to communism, their anger will turn into fascism/liberalism or they will be meekly led to the ballot boxes. We have to raise communist consciousness in factories, universities, communities and barracks. We cannot win over the most advanced workers without being involved in their struggles. If we do not fight racism, the working class fights with its hands tied behind its back. 

The revolutionary struggle needs a united working class. This is why communists see anti-racist unity as the key to the fight against the bosses who are the creators and benefit from wage slavery. This must be a massive and violent struggle since segregation is a violent attack against the entire working class. Blacks, Latins, mestizos, Asians, whites and indigenous people must unite massively to attack racism as the enemy of the entire proletariat, since we have the same chains of slavery and many sufferings due to capitalist oppression. We must unite as a revolutionary class under the political line of the PLP to destroy the current warlike, mafia-like and fascist system.