BROOKLYN, NY, April 12—After a 17-year-old former student Claude* was killed in the streets, it forced the working class—students and teachers—of a small school to choose: fightback or passivity. While the final verdict is still out, the struggle has become a test for pro-communist ideas in the face of liberal fascism.
School, union, city: all gangsters for capitalism
The racist Black principal has been able to get away with blood on her hands (see boxed letter). When Progressive Labor Party says liberal fascism is the greater danger for the working class, this is what we mean. This principal—in a liberal city run by a Black ​​mayor Eric Adams—has successfully created an environment where students and education workers feel pressured to “lay low” and accept the expendability of Black youth as “normal.” This is one way the school stays one of “America's Best High Schools” in the U.S. News and World Report. To stay on top, the Black leadership throws out Black students like they’re trash.
But, it’s not just her.  The UFT District Representative—the educator workers’ union that prides itself on putting the needs of students on the back burner—was silent when one teacher had said, “The union needs to make a fight against these racist pushouts.”
This is the same district rep who spent what felt like hours detailing his diligence in keeping his teacher file up to date.
While this seems small, it’s a reflection of the limits of unions. The UFT leadership cynically puts electoral politics and teacher salaries over students’ learning conditions. This was no surprise considering the racist strike of 1968, when the UFT walked out as a response to the efforts of Black parents to exert community control over schools in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. A union that sacrifices Black and Brown students is a racist one.
One tenet of fascism (an old capitalist system in crisis headed for world war) is the idea of accepting expendability.
As the future of capitalism becomes more uncertain (see editorial, page 2), the bosses need a tighter control of their class and the working class. Capitalist schools train us to treat our class as disposable—to accept that some youth will just be homeless, unemployed, jailed, killed in war, erased. The ones who can make this fascist argument most convincingly are the ones who present themselves as pro-worker. This is the same type of idea that threw workers into gas chambers.
We will always remember him
How do you respond when a Black principal makes it taboo to discuss and honor a victim of capitalism and pressures a mainly-white-teacher force and a mainly-Black-student force to simmer down?
Several teachers have stepped up in the reform struggle—one organized a card and funds for the family, another made photos of Claude, another printed the poem “Kids who Die,” and yet another helped blow up balloons for the third memorial wall. Every teacher also received a la​​minated tag, “we will always re​​member [Claude].”
Several have now made a small memorial with all these items inside their classrooms. Some have also folded Claude into their lesson plans.
Some teachers and students wore a button on their shirts or bags. It was made using printed text, clear packing tape, and a safety pin.
However, through one-on-one conversations, approved personal days, bending of some dress codes for “good kids,” and awarding field trips to previously banned students, the administration has pacified many staff and students.
One described the niceness as “the calm before the storm.”
The working class is not dumb. We understand the administration was threatened by the show of worker-student unity. And it will be our unity that the administration will come after. They will pit “good” students against struggling students, new teachers against tenured teachers.
This divide-and-conquer strategy will be no match for a politically conscious working class. That’s why linking this fight to capitalism and war is key. CHALLENGE readership has grown tremendously compared to its meager distribution before Claude, and building relationships with co-workers and students is needed more than ever. We need to win the masses to see the fight for communism as the only answer deserving of Claude’s memory. Communism means we serve ALL kids. No child is expendable.
Kids over capitalism
If Claude weren’t pushed out, would he have been alive to walk on graduation day in three months? An administration that cares more about data and awards than a Black child has got to go. Claude’s killing has exposed a criminal policy that we need to fight.
Claude was not a number. He was a member of the working class, and he deserved better. A system that treats certain students as expendable DOES NOT deserve to exist. For our students, shut this racist system down.
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
*****

Letter: Fight to stop student pushout!

The following letter is written by a new teacher who became involved in the fight for Claude and against pushout.
As a person new to teaching and new to Brooklyn, the treatment of the legacy of a former student who was fatally shot near the school where I teach opened my eyes to not only how the school to prison pipeline functions, but to how treatment of working class students in a capitalist system kills.
When Claude was killed, the school that I work for not only did nothing to memorialize their former student, but fought hard against students and teachers who wanted to memorialize him themselves. Students created a memorial for Claude that was hung in the hallway. It was taken down by administrators the next day. When they hung it back up it was taken down almost immediately. Students overheard their principal admonishing Claude to other students and teachers, using racist rhetoric and accusing him of being in a gang in order to justify erasing his memory from the school after his death. The principal even antagonized teachers who took a personal day to attend their former student’s funeral.
This strange response can be explained by the fact that Claude was pushed out of our school. Our school boasts a 95 percent graduation rate which is very rare for our district, and one way that they achieve this is by pushing out students who threaten this misleading statistic. Student pushout is incredibly common in New York City, and this event has opened my eyes to how it unfolds in real time. Students are suspended with little reason, harassed by administrators, and working class parents are consistently asked to leave their jobs to attend disciplinary meetings at the school. Since forcing students to leave is illegal, employees of the Department of Education instead harass and bully children and parents until they decide that it is best to leave. Often administrators will convince parents that their students' needs would simply “be better met at another school.”
But this is not the truth.
Suspensions and push outs follow students, making it difficult to keep up with classwork, maintain good grades, and apply to college. It is already widely understood that suspensions, which is a critical aspect of the pushout process, are damaging to students and greatly increase their likelihood of being incarcerated. In a racist school system these practices disproportionately affect Black and brown students. So why do schools continue this practice?
Capitalism forces schools to compete with each other for scarce funding, resources, and even for students. Graduation rates and test scores are important to school bosses, and one way to keep high scores with limited resources is to get rid of students who threaten their scores. Instead of viewing students as fully formed humans, they are viewed as pawns to be traded, bargained for, and cast off. But schools don’t have to be this way!
Teachers should understand that this system not only harms students, but harms us as well. When we treat students like numbers, like problems, and pawns, we create a hostile environment that affects our lives too. We watch students that we care for be harassed, excluded from our classrooms, and disappeared from our schools without our consent. Teachers need to understand that this is a problem that is worth fighting about. Together, with parents and students we can fight for schools that care for all students, not just students who are willing to follow the status quo.
Parents, teachers, and students unite to end this violent, racist practice. Unite to end capitalism!

CHICAGO, March 9 – A multiracial crowd of dozens of students and workers rallied and marched across the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) to protest the administration’s decision to allow fascist scum Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk space to spread their brand of gutter racism and sexism. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our friends joined the action to support the fight and spread communist revolution as the only alternative to fascism, capitalism’s response to a crisis in their system.

Owens and Kirk are right wing organizers and talk show hosts. They travel across the U.S. promoting open sexism, mainly against trans workers. They serve the domestic U.S. capitalists who are mainly represented by the Republican Party. But these are the Small Fascists (see Glossary, page 6).

Although the threat presented by these open fascists is very real for our class, PLP holds that they do not represent the primary danger for workers – the finance capital, liberal bosses within President Joe Biden’s camp do. These are the Big Fascists, the finance capitalists who want to maintain their worldwide empire. They want a united working class brainwashed by patriotism and willing to fight and die in a world war to defend these capitalist’s profits.

So while we directly confront these gutter racists head on, we need to fight even harder against the multicultural, liberal Big Fascist bosses that seek to disarm our class through shallow identity politics as they build the path to all-class unity and imperialist war.

Fascism is at its core not just about “wicked people” but rather the desperate strategies employed by all capitalist bosses to save their profit system in crisis. We need to build our international Party to overthrow the capitalist system that ultimately gives rise to fascism and war–no matter the appearance or the promises of the bosses at the top

Fight gutter fascists head on
The anti-fascist, antisexist students and workers first gathered at the quad area to assemble before marching a short distance across campus to the forum site. Those of us in PLP and our friends came equipped with signs, a flyer about growing fascism, and copies of CHALLENGE in order to sharpen the militancy of the protest.

At first, the leaders of the march and their marshals directed the protestors to an open site on the other side of the street from the forum. But after a short while enough participants pushed to be closer to where the gutter fascists were entering. Once there, we were able to confront the open fascists more directly.

Organizers from different student groups led chants and gave speeches that shared their “disappointment” that the university had permitted the forum. All in all, a naïve tone dominated the politics of the event, as if we could ever trust the university bosses (or any boss) to really be on the side of the students or workers.

Thankfully, a more militant Black student took the megaphone and called for more open confrontation with the fascist goons. He recalled recent experiences that he had getting arrested while protesting against the racist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in more remote areas of the state. Other speakers followed, highlighting the connections to March 2016 when a multiracial crowd of hundreds of protestors were able to shut down a Donald Trump rally (see CHALLENGE, 3/25/16).

Self-critically, our contingent of PLP members and friends could have been bolder in giving leadership to this event. Even though the protestors moved across the street to be closer, there was still a good fifty yards separating us from the entrance where the pro-fascists were entering. The working class can’t be satisfied with taking the “moral high ground” against the fascist foot soldiers of the capitalist class – we need to organize to attack them head on! As such, we need to be much less timid in sharpening the struggle in these settings.

Capitalist bosses, big and small, attack workers
The recent rise of fascist hate speech is nothing new under capitalism. As the profit system barrels through crisis after crisis en route to world war, we can expect to see more scum like Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk getting platforms to scapegoat sections of the working class for the failures of capitalism.

At present, LGBTQ+ workers are a principal target for the domestically-oriented Small Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class that Kirk and Owens belong to. These Small Fascists pin practically everything wrong with capitalist society on LGBTQ+ workers, maliciously smearing them. In doing so, they are directly responsible for obscene rates of violence committed against LGBTQ+ workers and youth, particularly Black and Latin workers who are transgender. We need to fight side by side as a united class against the attempts by the bosses to divide and attack us.

However, to side with the “lesser evil” liberal bosses in this battle is the kiss of death. The still-dominant Big Fascist bosses like those in charge of Chicago and UIC pay lip service to “diversity” and other high-minded concepts while still opening the door for gutter racists in their own backyard. They lie to our face and stab us in the back, all the while promoting a “friendlier” multiracial capitalism.

By avoiding more overt fascist ideology, they can package a more insidious version of pro-capitalist nationalism that is necessary to win our class – including many LGBTQ+ workers -- to future bloodbaths against imperialist rivals like China and Russia. There is no “lesser-evil” – the whole system has got to go!

Communist revolution is the only solution
To accomplish a communist revolution to get rid of capitalism, we need the mass international PLP and our own Red Army. The fascists -- Big and Small -- already have a wide head start on organizing and arming themselves. But they are no match for a united working class armed with communist politics and leadership! Join PLP and fight back today!

Communist politics best self-care
Coming to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) [over the past three months] was a new type of experience that I hadn’t had before, really.  Since I was young, I had been relatively politically involved, but primarily focused on women’s and LGBTQ issues; mostly I was involved in online debate.  Several times my mom brought me to political events, though there was not really historical discussion at these events (marches, getting people to vote in local elections, etc.)

I was pretty surprised when I came to the PLP meeting.  My first and most preeminent observation was that the meeting was set up almost like a classroom and almost like a group therapy meeting.  That structure was definitely reflected in the dynamic and in my experience; the goal was to educate people on history but PLP inadvertently (or not) created a space that allowed people to let out their feelings and analysis of the world and our system.  The way that it imitated professional group therapy can definitely be connected to a topic we dealt with in one of my classes - that resistance itself can be a form of self-care.  

I decided to come with a friend the first time for a few reasons - 1) I spend the majority of my time with this friend, 2) it was the closest thing to coming alone and 3) coming with this person provided me with more expansive analysis after the meeting ended.  Only after the first meeting did I decide to bring more friends.  I was hesitant to bring one friend, but did so.  

The discussions were interesting because they were composed of people who were educated and familiar with the content and people who came because they were curious.  I think that I was better equipped to respond to that same curiosity back at school.

In all honesty I don’t really know what is next.  I guess I could continue to just try to discuss the world and educate those around me but that also does not feel effective or impactful.  I’ll be coming back to the PLP meetings and continuing to try to self educate and share my findings, but I struggle to construct a plan that is satisfactory. 

Editorial note: A plan to get to know the family and recruit this student to PLP is in place.

*****
Talking about a (communist) revolution
“Based on what you are saying, reform can have the opposite effect. It could keep people away from revolutionary ideas.” “Exactly.”

My response of “exactly” ended a two hour lunch conversation with friends and leaders of one of the strongest more militant reform unions in Chicago. All of them are committed, and tireless fighters against racism, and committed to fighting injustice, and fighting for equality for their members. The lunch I discovered is a customary send off for those workers who retire from the union.

We started lunch talking about the contentious Chicago mayoral election taking place between the two runoff candidates: Brandon Johnson (Black) a County Commissioner, former middle school teacher, and former union leader that has been endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union.  Johnson is running against Paul Vallas (white), former Chief Operating Officer at Chicago Public Schools, proponent of charters, vouchers, and balancing education budgets off the backs of teachers’ pensions. The Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed Vallas.

My friend said that the spirit of racism will always be here in reference to the election and the unions’ effort to build a union that fights for the “common good” and that history is cyclical racism. I immediately responded to both her statements and said that racism is rooted in the economic system of capitalism and it’s far from a spirit or a belief. It has a material base in capitalism and that history is not cyclical because there are times in history where race did not exist.  

Well, my friend immediately disagreed with me and I was totally taken back when two other friends said that they agreed with me. W-H-A-T! That had never openly happened before in department meetings. I acknowledged that my experience working in this union was both rewarding and inspiring.

However, if we don’t take advantage of the opportunities of pointing out the limits and the contradictions of fighting for reforms our class will get cynical and be won over to bad ideas.  My friend said to the whole table after packing up and paying the bill, “We should have more discussions like this.”

The conversation helped me realize that we must have these conversations with everyone. Going into the lunch I was feeling one-sided about my friends/leaders in terms of them even wanting to talk about revolution and reform. I also was not clear if they would be the liberals that would lead us into fascism. As I left the restaurant, I was humbled by the contradictions and the period that we are in as we build for communist revolution. I’m more confident in the Party’s line and confident that our class will win.

*****
Capitalism = bosses' dictatorship
Most people I speak to believe the government is a democracy where capitalists and workers decide issues, but capitalism has always been a dictatorship of the capitalist class. Some examples include, the majority of the French National Assembly just voted to defeat an anti-worker raise of the retirement age only to have their votes ignored by the capitalist rulers.

The U.S. railroad capitalists ignored government regulations on safety and maintenance that have greatly increased the number of train wrecks and have subjected communities to poisonous air and water pollution in Ohio and elsewhere.

Many U.S. banks ignored liquidity obligations and used low government interest rates, meant to create jobs, to provide loans to capitalists who used the money to buy back their own stocks to raise their profits and CEO’s salaries. The result so far has been worldwide bank failures and a possible recession requiring bailouts by taxpayers while the bankers retain their wealth.

The U.S. has been involved in endless wars but I can’t remember the government asking workers to vote for those wars. The wars in Korea and Vietnam that I remember offered only jail time for war resisters.

Capitalist dictatorships have been a disaster for billions of workers worldwide and now threaten a nuclear war from which the world may not recover unless workers, soldiers and youth join PLP and the revolutionary movement for communism. Read CHALLENGE.

*****
To expose bosses: keep writing simple
The article “Fight Imperialist Warmongers” in the March 15 issue of CHALLENGE, reporting on a Libertarian Party led rally at the DC Lincoln Memorial had some good points.  However, the sentences were convoluted and probably not intelligible to the regular worker.  I almost thought that it was attacking the left, but after reading it twice, I realized that it was referring to the “left and right-wing media,” which is offered as a ruling class alternative to the true left, which is Progressive Labor Party.  Simplification is the solution to most problems in all, and  especially expository writing.

French bosses face angry workers as they dismantle capitalist welfare system
BBC, 3/22–More than a million people took to the streets across France on Thursday, with 119,000 in Paris, according to figures from the interior ministry. Police fired tear gas at protesters in the capital and 80 people were arrested across the country. The demonstrations were sparked by legislation raising the retirement age by two years to 64.

"I oppose this reform and I really oppose the fact that democracy no longer means anything,"...The unrest also disrupted train travel, oil refineries and saw teachers and workers at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport walk out of work.

In the northern city of Rouen a young woman was seen lying on the ground after sustaining a serious injury to her hand. Witnesses said she lost her thumb after she was hit by a so-called "flash-ball" grenade fired by police to disperse demonstrators. There were other clashes in the western cities of Nantes, Rennes and Lorient.

Hunger rises in U.S. as bosses shift to war production
Urban Institute, 3/21–With significant food price inflation in 2022 and the expiration of COVID-19 pandemic aid, food hardship has increased for many households across the country. In this brief, we examine trends in food insecurity and receipt of charitable food using data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS), a nationally representative survey of more than 7,500 adults ages 18 to 64.

Between December 2021 and December 2022, the share of adults reporting food insecurity in the last year increased from 20 percent to 24.6 percent. The rate of food insecurity in 2022 was not statistically different from the rate in the year just before the pandemic (23.4 percent in 2019).

Hispanic/Latinx and Black adults were consistently at greater risk of food insecurity than white adults between 2019 and 2022, reflecting longstanding disparities in opportunities and access to resources.

NYPD pigs feast on City budget
Gothamist, 3/20–The NYPD’s ballooning overtime budget faced scrutiny from City Council members on Monday…Overtime expenditures were $2.2 billion last fiscal year, 93% higher than budgeted…last month, halfway through the current fiscal year, the NYPD had already exceeded its budgeted allotment for the year, spending $472 million on overtime for uniformed officers.

[City Comptroller Brad] Lander’s office found that NYPD annual overtime totals have skyrocketed $700 million over the last decade. One large chunk of overtime through the last three years went to what the NYPD categorizes as “anti-police protests” — $225 million in all..

The NYPD’s $5.44 billion allotment in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 stands in sharp contrast to the flat funding proposed for the city’s public defenders, who also testified at Monday’s budget hearing. The defense attorneys say salaries are so low that attorneys are quitting, even as there are 450 pending homicide cases that their lawyers are handling.

U.S. struggles to maintain territory in Middle East
Al Jazeera, 3/27– The governments of Iran and Syria have condemned the United States for attacks on Syrian soil that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a drone attack on US forces. Both the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministries late on Saturday slammed the US air attacks that targeted the strategic region of Deir ez-Zor bordering Iraq.

In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the “terrorist” attacks by the US hit civilian targets and constituted a violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty. “The US claims that it is present in Syria to fight Daesh [ISIL] that itself had a major role in creating is just an excuse to continue its occupation and loot Syria’s national wealth, including its energy resources and wheat,” he said.

The latest confrontation with the US comes as Tehran works to re-establish formal diplomatic ties with regional rival Saudi Arabia and potentially other Arab states. Syria will reportedly restore its relations with the kingdom after Tehran and Riyadh review an agreement reached earlier this month with Chinese mediation.