Worldwide, the summer months have historically been a time of training for Progressive Labor Party (PLP). As we gear up for summer of learning, fightback, and recommitment to communism, it’s to reflect on one of PLP’s pillars from inception: the fight against racism is key to revolution.
Join our international 2023 Summer Project in the NYC-NJ area from July 6 to July 12, and our Party Convention “Build the Party Under Sharpening War and Fascism” from July 14 to July 16. Contact your local PL’er for more information.
In 1964, the young Progressive Labor Movement played a lead role in the historic Harlem Rebellion, the first Blackled urban uprising of the era against police terror. On July 16, an off-duty cop, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, shot and murdered James Powell, a 15-yearold, 122-pound ninth-grader, in cold blood. For six consecutive nights, the anger of the Black masses boiled over in open rebellion in central Harlem and then in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
The Harlem Rebellion of 1964 raised the fight against racist oppression to a new level while exposing the class treason of Black reformist leadership. After Harlem, more than 100 cities in the U.S. felt the torch of rebellion. PL’s leadership in this struggle set the tone for our unceasing fight against racism:
From the 1970s to the current day, PL’ers have organized hundreds of attacks on the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis wherever they spread their racist garbage. Rejecting the pacifist mythology that these gutter racists would fade away if ignored, we have attacked them head-on—and confronted the capitalists’ cops who protect them. We have mounted these anti-racist, multiracial actions in New York City, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Detroit and St. Louis. We’ve done the same in smaller communities like Tupelo, Mississippi; Scotland, Connecticut; Jamesburg and Morristown, New Jersey; and scores of cities and towns in California. We invaded the Nazis’ headquarters in Chicago. We beat a white supremacist leader in a Boston television interview. These militant anti-KKK/Nazi actions have involved an estimated 100,000 or more workers and youth.
On May Day, 1975, we mobilized 2,500 anti-racists in Boston to march against the segregationist, terrorist organization called ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights, accurately nicknamed Racists On A Rampage). When they physically attacked us, we routed them. We subsequently organized a summer project to combat ROAR’s mob violence and its anti-busing racism. We integrated formerly all-white beaches, held anti-racist summer schools for Black children, and rallied to escort Black children into their first day of integrating formerly all-white schools. Our efforts smashed ROAR.
On May Day, 1976, we marched into Chicago’s Marquette Park, where Nazis had barred Black people. We integrated that neighborhood.
Simultaneously, PLP exposed academic charlatans — like E.O. Wilson, Richard Herrnstein, and Arthur Jensen — who spewed racist filth about the “inferiority” of Black workers and the Nazi fantasy that unemployment was inherited in their genes. We mobilized demonstrations wherever these racists appeared, chased them off auditorium stages, and even poured a pitcher of water over Wilson’s head in the middle of a lecture. (Our member called out, “Wilson, you’re all wet!”) PL’s position was clear and uncompromising: No free speech for racists.
Throughout this period, PLP helped organize the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), a mass anti-racist, multiracial group that led many of these struggles.
In Southern California, our Party has organized against the anti-immigrant Minute Men. We have gone to border towns to fight racist attacks on immigrant workers from Mexico, rallying support from citizen workers around the slogan, “Smash All Borders!”
In 2015, PLP advanced the protest against the cops’ murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. We raised our slogan — “Fight Like Ferguson!” — among thousands across the country. Our Party was building a movement for rebellion against racist police terror, not pacifist appeals to ruling-class officials from then-president Barack Obama’s Justice Department on down. We were doing the same in solidarity with workers and youth in Baltimore who are outraged by the cops’ murder of Freddie Gray.
More recently, PL’ers have taken to the streets—before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic—from Brooklyn to Chicago to Los Angeles to protest the police murders of Black women, men, and youth by racist cops.
Antiracism on the Shop Floor
PLP has consistently raised the issue of racism among organized workers to unite them against the bosses’ racist attacks.
In 1973, when a New York City Police Department undercover cop shot a Black 10-year-old in the back in Queens, a PLP club at the Ford auto plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, brought the atrocity onto the factory assembly line. Our Party petitioned the do-nothing union local leadership to take a public stance and demand that the cop be indicted for murder. The workers’ response was electric. They were galvanized into action during a contract struggle that previously had been limited to economic issues. Their heightened political consciousness and militancy led to a weeklong wildcat strike against 100-degree temperatures in the plant, which in turn set the tone for the Chrysler Mack Avenue sit-down strike two months later (see CHALLENGE, May 6).
Beginning in the 1980’s, PLP has provided antiracist leadership to 6,000 Washington, DC Metro transit workers. At one point, the local’s overwhelmingly Black membership elected a white PL’er as their president, defeating a passive Black incumbent. As Metro bosses exclude people convicted of crimes by the rulers’ criminal injustice system, they close one of the few avenues for many Black workers to obtain a decent-paying job. PLP has demanded that the union oppose racist background checks. Many workers have been won to our Party in this antiracist fight.
Fighting Racism Internationally
PLP is still small but mighty and connected across the U.S., Latin America, South Asia, and East Africa.
Ever since the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, with tens of thousands still living in tents, we have spread the struggle against U.S. imperialism and racism, which have enslaved workers there for two centuries.
In Colombia, comrades are putting “Black workers are key to revolution” into practice by organizing among Black workers and fighting against imperialism.
In Israel-Palestine, PL’ers exposed and fought the intense racism of the Israeli bosses (with U.S. ruling-class support) against workers from Africa and Palestine, who are victims of super-exploitation. We are also organizing workers against the Israeli rulers’ mass evictions of villages inhabited by Palestinians.
In Pakistan, PL’ers are mobilizing thousands of workers to fight racist super-exploitation and against floods. In the past, the bosses have slaughtered thousands in sweatshops and in Obama’s drone attacks.
These are only a few highlights of PLP’s long fight against racism, the ideological foundation of the profit system. The struggle against racism will prepare our class to overthrow capitalism and obliterate exploitation and divisions among workers. It is the watchword of our Party.
French army prepares for coming war
Economist, 6/18–In 2021, a year before Russia invaded Ukraine, General Thierry Burkhard told The Economist that the French army had to “harden” itself and prepare for “high-intensity war”, possibly on the European continent. One hypothetical adversary was Russia. Today, the former head of the army is France’s top soldier, in charge of all its armed forces…For 17 days in April and May General Burkhard led a full-scale division-level exercise in eastern France, on land that the great powers fought over more than a century ago. In his office in Paris, where a print featuring Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s most senior general, hangs opposite a portrait of Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, General Burkhard reflects on the lessons emerging from the exercise and from the war in Ukraine. “A high-intensity war is fought on a completely different scale,” he says. “I probably underestimated that.” During two decades of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and the Sahel, the death of ten soldiers was a “national tragedy, and rightly so,” says the general. “That is what is happening in Ukraine every half hour—for weeks on end.”
China bringing South China Sea to the Gulf of Mexico
Al Jazeera, 6/20–China has been negotiating the creation of a new joint training facility on the Caribbean island nation of Cuba, creating concerns it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops in the waters off the U.S…discussions between the two countries are in advanced stages, but had not concluded…officials from the administration of President Joe Biden have been trying to discourage their Cuban counterparts from finalising the deal. The latest report came days after the Biden administration confirmed that China has maintained surveillance operations in Cuba for years, which were upgraded in 2019.
Fair elections? Not so fast say New York Democrats
New York Times, 6/8–For generations, deep-pocketed donors have called the shots in New York State politics, leaving ordinary voters with less power and less of a voice in their government. Incumbent lawmakers are bankrolled by moneyed special interests and are routinely re-elected with little competition, and there has been no real alternative to the traditional system of big campaign contributions influencing candidates and politics. A law passed in 2019, one of the most promising New York campaign reforms in decades, was supposed to change that…But this week, in the final days of the legislative session, the Democratic lawmakers who dominate the capital are preparing to severely weaken those reforms. The changes proposed by lawmakers would protect incumbents and discourage challengers — the opposite of the program’s goal…“They don’t want to be primaried,’’ said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany…“They know the public match will mean they will get more primary opponents, and so they’re making it harder to run. It wrecks the core idea of the program, which is to make these races more competitive.”
Medical supplies in short supply
BBC, 6/7–Experts say the U.S. is currently suffering one of the most severe shortages of chemotherapy drugs it's seen for three decades. As of this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said over 130 drugs were in short supply, 14 of which are cancer treatments…Experts say a myriad of factors have contributed to the shortages, which this time have heavily affected two front-line therapies - carboplatin and cisplatin - used to treat a host of cancers, including head and neck, gynaecologic and gastrointestinal cancers…As a result, some providers have been forced to extend the time period between patients' chemotherapy sessions, while some patients have had to drive several hours to get treatment at different cancer centres…While the medications are cheap to manufacture, pharmaceutical companies are not incentivised to do so because they don't bring in large profits, said Dr Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. The drug shortage issue has also worsened as U.S. life expectancy has increased, meaning more people are becoming ill with cancer.
Contract pushers out themselves as anti-worker
When all the union chapters under one high school campus united to discuss the new proposed contract (see page 3), my naive self didn’t expect the union leaders to attack rank-and-file workers for merely raising concerns. I also didn’t expect so much dissent, which goes to show how we should never underestimate the working class.
Every rank-and-file member who spoke raised a reasonable concern: no livable wages for paraprofessionals, inflation, cuts to healthcare, privatization, and more.
One of the union heads who is also part of the NYC Central Labor Council showed up to defend the contract and later apologized “if I sound defensive.” The district leader kept interrupting and began shaming workers who are vocal for “not being active.” I told him to stop blaming the victim. The contract pushers and their bed-partner politicans are not our friends!
When given room, people reveal themselves. The union leadership’s contract was correctly critcized for, in the words of many education workers, “throwing us crumbs,” being “threatened, pressured, and rushed” to sign “without knowing our healthcare details’ “and being a “business union” instead of a “social justice union.” The misleadership had to listen when I finally got the chance to speak uninterrupted:
Many of us have said the union should be representing us workers but they sound more like another managerial boss who just wants to keep us in line…I agree with my co-worker here who said, ‘we don’t need another boss.’ If the richest city in the richest country can’t meet the needs of the U.S.’s largest education system, this just further exposes how absolutely hollow the union leadership is and how none of these capitalist institutions can meet our basic basic needs.
Listen, we are not dumb…when a pay cut is being sold as a wage increase, that’s an insult to our labor. But more importantly, what about students and parents? That’s who we are here for. Where are the ‘social justice’ and ‘common good’ demands? The remote option [that you are lauding] is an assembly line model to funnel kids out of the system as fast as possible.
What we really need is more support for the influx of refugee students, resources to meet special needs of all students, fighting the push-out of Black and Latin students, the de facto segregation of schools, smaller class sizes and bigger mental support services, and a living wage for paraprofessionals. Otherwise, this is a racist contract. I’m not even saying anything radical yet. This is the bare minimum.
You keep saying ‘that’s the way it is,’ and expect us to just take it. What we are all saying is ‘the way it is isn’t working for us.”In the heat of the moment, I didn’t think to end with, “a racist system that can’t meet students’ and workers’ needs does not deserve to exist.
Many education workers—some from the other schools—approached me later to thank me for “speaking up.” When we are isolated, it’s easy to think “maybe it’s just me.”
But when we unite, the truth is undeniable. And that’s why the union misleaders kept interrupting and getting defensive—they are threatened by just the potential of a united working class that realizes their power.
If the UFT misleaders are threatened by just a few questions, imagine their shock when we organize for real. Imagine the might of family-worker-student unity.
The next day, I distributed the Progressive Labor Party flyer against the contract and invited some to a communist fundraiser. The brouhaha of the meeting became a conversation starter with many other co-workers.
When we speak up, it invites the passive antiracists to also speak up and build working-class unity. There is usually more support for pro-communist ideas than we give our class credit for. Having confidence in our people—parents, students, workers—to act in the interest of our class is key.Whether or not the contract passes, this fledgling group of education workers are learning what it means to serve the working class. It means to unite our class, fight back, expose the phonies and enemies, and build a better world.
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For Oscar, prove power of our class
This latest Juneteenth, workers are still fighting the fascist bosses over the racist capture and deportation of our class brothers and sisters across state borders. Monday June 19th, I went to a rally hosted by the Cosecha Movement encouraging workers and youth to challenge the deportation of Oscar. He was snatched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after he was accidentally driven across the Canadian border while on the road for work. As I stood in the crowd, one of the organizers struggled with me to speak. I empathize with the pain of Oscar’s family and shared the following:
For those of us who have attained a legal status, many can understand, though it is difficult to fight for, that papers will not protect us from the growing wars and fascism of the bosses. Deportations are symptoms of it…Organizing for a longtime, many have developed a cynicism of why call on the liberal politicians to tell them…, “If you are good Democrats show us.” That prevents some of us from building the type of fightback that Oscar and his family need…though we understand that the only thing that will stop the bosses’ growing war and fascism is to take the bosses’ power over their states. But that is something that takes millions of workers.
Every time we launch fightbacks [such as those] against deportation it reveals tools to build that…By getting our loved ones together to challenge the politicians we can also struggle to win them to see that what is primarily protecting Oscar is not the power of the Democratic liberal politicians [or prayer]. It’s not that they’re doing us a favor, it’s not that if they stop the deportation it means we can support them, that we can have confidence in them, that they are not as bad as other Democrats or Republicans. Instead what we can prove is the power of our class. So that in the future we can better respond to [broader attacks needed in preparation for their wars]…On that basis we will rip state power from the hands of the bosses. That will take…time. We can begin today by leaving this demonstration…and mobilizing those around us. Much gratitude to Oscar’s family who dared to fight back and opened the struggle to the rest of us.
Workers are being won to recognize our power as a multiracial class. Seeing this as the only force able to stop both liberal and openly fascist bosses’ from using their state to enact the material racist differential treatment embodied in such attacks as the increasing quotas of deportation. So too, can workers be won to see that it is that same class conscious power and level of organization that will make common workers’ seizure of state power through communist revolution inevitable.
We must fight our cynicism and depression through this historical period of dark night to join these fights that will accelerate workers’ confidence over these communist ideas more sharply.
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Racist ideas are deadly
The inspiring report on fighting biologic racism reported in the last issue of CHALLENGE was an excellent example of how serious collective work over years can win an important reform while developing the understanding of the need for revolution among our co-workers. The article makes a point about how structural racism in the U.S., built over centuries from the time of slavery, also hurts white workers.
Come to think of it, it’s no coincidence that the one rich capitalist country without universal health care today is the U.S. Obviously this hurts white workers and Black workers alike. The economic foundation laid in England’s North American colonies in the 1600s and 1700s was wealth extracted from the unpaid labor of kidnapped Africans brought to these shores. In 1776 those colonies, with their extensive set of racist ideas, customs and laws, became the United States of America. Racial divisions seen in the U.S. today date from that special history. No wonder despite a desperate need for a system of universal medical care, the population in the U.S. can’t develop sufficient unity across “race” lines to demand it. Racism truly hurts all workers, even though the worst abuse is reserved for Black workers.
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Murder by imperialism: refugee boat sinks
Migrants fleeing wars, starvation and climate change disasters attempt life threatening journeys from crossing the Mediterranean Sea to walking thousands of miles to reach the Mexico/U.S. border. On Wednesday, June 14 up to 750 migrants (Reuters), including many women and as many as 100 children, were locked in a hold below deck, when the overloaded boat sank in deep waters 50 miles from the Greek shore. The boat had left Libya bound for Italy. On Tuesday and Wednesday they reported distress but no rescue operation was launched. 104 men were finally rescued, including from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Palestine. 78 men were reported dead and ALL the others missing, one of the worst drownings in the Mediterranean in recent years! Protests erupted across Greece on Wednesday and Thursday as thousands took to the streets against the horrific deaths and the failure of the Greek government to respond to the distress signals (Al Jazeera). We in the Progressive Labor Party are outraged. Workers of the world must unite to fight back. Protesters in Greece lead the way! Join the long term struggle for communist revolution to free our class from racist genocide.
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DC Metro: Steer class struggle towards communist revolution
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- 22 June 2023 146 hits
Last issue, a Washington DC Metro transit worker, a member of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 representing over 10,000 workers, shared her thoughts about building a revolutionary movement in her workplace as a communist, shop steward, and union executive board member for many years. This section concludes her story about the battle against the bosses and the union misleaders.
Communist organizing at Metro
Since the 1970s, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been militant organizers in Local 689. We led a week-long wildcat strike in 1978 that closed down the entire city. The issue that motivated the strike was the bosses’ refusal to pay cost-of-living raises required by the collective bargaining agreement. But the anger of the mainly Black working-class transit workers was deeper because of the abuse dealt out by management. The strike was partially successful – we got the raise! – and the Party gained respect among the other workers. Still, the effort to build a revolutionary party did not take hold among the workers.
Since then, we have won many reform battles and helped push the conversation within our union towards the left. We led fights against the criminal background check that blocked the hiring of formerly incarcerated workers. We led teach-ins and anti-war contingents in protests in DC. We organized many rallies outside of Metro headquarters around proposed cuts to our benefits, contracting out, and proposed fare increases on our riders. While these struggles have improved lives and raised class consciousness to some degree, we are still facing the same attacks we have confronted for the past 50 years.
Even when these reform efforts are successful, the bosses are always primed to take back any concessions they have made. Right now they are trying to go after our pension--after already taking back retiree health insurance for workers hired after 2010. The deepening economic crisis of capitalism means that the struggle will intensify in the coming years.
But who will lead and move our fellow workers to arevolutionary solution? Not the ATU 689 union leadership!
Failures of the union leadership and their reformism
In Loudoun County, Virginia, we struck for a better contract for commuter bus operators. We picketed for two months in the middle of winter. The union leadership relied on the County Executive to “find” funding for the transit contractor to meet our demands and end the strike. Such wishful thinking! When this “friend of labor” abandoned us, the union maneuvered to end the strike instead of “upping the ante.” We communists pushed to spread the strike to other transit workers, public-school teachers, and others. But the union leadership said no. The workers on the picket line wanted to keep striking, but the union leadership insisted that a “suspension” of the strike was the best strategy. PLP Metro members were unable to counter that losing strategy and workers went back to work without a contract, losing the strike.
Similarly, our union led a strike in Prince George’s County, Maryland against a contractor operating the paratransit service. The workers struck for two weeks, at the end of which they got a subpar contract. Many workers wanted to continue the strike, but at the union leadership’s urging, voted to accept the contract. The contract was somewhat better than it would have been without a strike but was still not a real improvement to the quality of life for those workers. As communists on the picket line, we tried but were not able to win the majority of workers to continue the strike in the face of the union leadership’s opposition. This, despite the agreement of most workers that much more was needed in the contract to keep up with inflation and secure enough benefits to be able to retire.
Gaslit by the KKK-Metro management team-up
Workers often look beyond basic bread and butter contract issues. Seven years ago, the KKK planned to hold a demonstration in downtown DC. The Klan members planned to take a special Metro train from Virginia into the city for their rally. We held an emergency meeting at the union hall to decide how to stop these racists. In an electric atmosphere, train operators declared that we should shut down the train in the middle of the tunnel. Others said to have a sick out to prevent any operator from being forced to drive the train. The General Manager (GM) of Metro – the top boss -- said that the Metro system would not provide a train for the racists and the union leadership believed him! Since when do we believe the lying bosses? The KKK boarded a boss-provided Metro train and were safely taken downtown for their rally that was opposed by thousands.
These three examples show how union leaders can undermine the militancy of the working class by channeling them towards limited change and then blunting that if the struggle gets sharper. We need unions to fight collectively against the bosses, but the union is ultimately a reform organization that props up capitalism. Our union leaders spend thousands of dollars of union dues supporting politicians and nothing on building a fighting organization that can beat the bosses.
PLP grows
Based on my 12 years of organizing at Metro, I know that workers can be won to the analysis that a disciplined communist party is necessary to abolish capitalism. As a result of our Party’s engagement in hundreds of struggles large and small, we have been able to swell the ranks of our Party group at Metro. The bosses have much to fear over the long run from our organizing work in the industrial working class!
While the fight for revolution seems improbable in day-to-day struggle, history shows that revolutions can be propelled forward by major crises of the capitalist system and win. Communist revolutions can change the world, abolish capitalism, and create a world of creativity, equality and collectivity that meets the needs of all workers.
Global warming causes intense wildfires and widespread Code Purple health alerts for smoke-based air pollution. The warming of the planet is the result of two centuries of capitalist production. It is caused by a rapid increase in greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the atmosphere. These gases (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) have increased steadily since the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution. Global capitalist development has been fueled by burning coal, oil, and natural gas to power production, consumption, and transportation. GHGs allow the sun’s radiation to reach the earth, but trap the heat in the atmosphere that radiates from the ground, creating a hotter planet and disrupting previous weather patterns. It is similar to how cars get hot in the summer when the windows are rolled up.
Wildfires flourish under capitalism
Forest fires have historically been a natural process and often helpful to ecologies. Lightning strikes in forested areas often start beneficial fires. Today, however, global warming has created droughts in many places in the world, leading to some forests becoming tinder boxes rather than resilient stands of trees and brush. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “a single spark can start a prairie fire.” That now applies forcefully to much of the planet. Now even historically wet areas, such as the Amazon rainforests, permafrost areas, and marshy peat bogs have experienced huge fires. More are expected even in the Arctic by the end of the century. MacArthur Fellow Stephen Pyne has labeled the new era of massive fires the “Pyrocene” in his 2022 book, The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next.
The United Nations Environment Program projected the risk of these extreme wildfires would rise 14 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2050. By the end of the century, that risk would increase by 50 percent.
Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2020 is a harbinger of things to come. Extreme fires raged for many months, fueled by record-shattering temperatures, severe drought and fierce winds. The fires directly killed 33 and another 500 deaths were caused by inhaling smoke. That same year, the world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal in South America (located in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia) burned following severe drought and scorching weather. Nearly a third of this forest was destroyed. The wildfires in wetlands were intensified by capitalists, hungry for profit, plundering rainforests and wetlands through logging, road construction, agriculture and mining activity. Such extractive activities led to the loss of tree canopy, leading in turn to accelerated vegetative undergrowth that was then exposed to the extreme drying of global warming, and hence even more massive wildfires.
Burning forests emit vast amounts of carbon dioxide previously locked in their trunks and branches, creating a vicious feedback loop intensifying global warming. For example, about 55 million tons of carbon dioxide was emitted from Canadian wildfires in May 2023, approximately equal to 10 percent of the country’s total carbon emissions for an average year.
Workers suffer, bosses profit
The direct health impacts on the working class are severe. In the United States alone, between 2006 and 2010, fewer than 500,000 people every year were exposed to a single day of extreme levels of fine-particle pollution, also known as PM2.5. Between 2016 and 2020, that number rose to over 8 million. Such small particulates lodge in the lungs much like the deadly Black Lung disease faced by coal miners, leading to difficulties breathing, lung disease, and early death. These increasingly unnatural emissions also tie in to environmental racism. Asthma ER visits in New York City during the recent Canadian wildfire smoke were the highest in low-income, majority Black and Latin neighborhoods (Gothamist, 6/12).
The multitude of problems caused by global warming including intense wildfires will deepen over time as the world’s capitalists refuse to significantly reduce reliance on coal, gas, and oil to augment their fortunes. They pretend that solar panels and wind turbines can replace fossil fuels in the world economy while knowing full well that substantial fossil fuels are required even with these limited alternative fuel sources. Why such inhumane treatment of the global working class? Why burn us up and make us sick and die from deadly smoke? Because they have sunk trillions of dollars into infrastructure to extract fossil fuels, and they refuse to ever take a hit to their profits!
The whole damn capitalist system has to go!
That’s why nothing short of the destruction of the capitalist system can seriously address the environmental disaster that is more evident by the day. Between war, racism, repression, and devastating climate change, the need for building a revolutionary party is ever more urgent.
