LENNOX, CA, March 7—Working class tenants in an apartment complex in Los Angeles (LA) County have lit a fire under their profit-hungry slumlord! One-third of the tenants in these apartments have come together to demand immediate and necessary repairs, and to deduct future rent money to pay for the materials and labor cost of those repairs if the landlord continues to refuse to make them. The unity of Latin workers in the face of their racist landlord attempting to divide them, intimidate them, or buy them off bodes well for this struggle. It also reflects the growing numbers of workers who are fighting back against landlord abuses and evictions, and are also beginning to see the bigger picture of racist gentrification, homelessness, and the capitalist system that is behind these plagues on the working class.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members remain active in these battles. We have given CHALLENGE to a number of tenants. We have been open with them about the need for a revolutionary war by the working class to take down the capitalist system that enables these parasitic landlords. We have a great opportunity to explain why this deadly system that turns human needs like housing into commodities to be bought, sold, and made a profit from has to be destroyed and replaced with a communist system that distributes essentials based on need.
Under communism, with the elimination of the wage and money system, housing will be organized based on need. No more hotels and mansions sitting empty while workers live on the streets, shanty towns, tent cities, or dilapitated apartments. Repairs and improvements will be done collectively. No one will be without safe, adequate housing for themselves or their families.
As CHALLENGE readers will recall, PL’ers have been actively involved in the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU). LITU organizers have engaged in a door-to-door campaign to bring workers together and get them involved. These efforts have not gone unnoticed by the property manager, who reported back to landlord Nick Murillo. In a vain attempt to stem LITU’s organizing, slumlord Murillo told at least one tenant that he would be happy to make repairs if they would stop attending on-site meetings organized by LITU. That worker refused Murillo’s sleazy offer!
Murillo, who owns numerous other buildings in LA County, has a history of half-ass fix-ups. This do-nothing attitude dovetails with his goal of squeezing as much profit as possible from his investments. Mold is painted over, not removed. Workers are told they must just deal with carpets infested with bed bugs and roaches. Leaky ceilings are patched up shoddily, making it only a matter of time before the water starts dripping again.
DO-nothing politicians
Calls to the LA County “Public Health” Department are worse than useless. Several tenants were able to get pictures of mice freely roaming their apartments. The inspector, who appeared with Murillo, was confronted with the recent date-stamped cell phone pictures of the mice. Her insulting response was, “Those pictures aren’t evidence.” The only evidence she would accept was an actual mouse sitting while she was present or rodent droppings! That same inspector, when shown a cracked front door that swells up after it rains and at times can’t be opened from the inside, said nothing could be done about that safety risk!
One of the tenants and several LITU members attended a community meeting sponsored by LA County Board of Supervisors “progressive” Holly Mitchell. Mitchell’s tactic is to make it appear she is responsive to resident complaints by having administrators from various county departments present to whom she can hand off responsibility. Then the particular administrator assigned the complaint either never gets back to the resident or tells the complaining resident there is nothing that can be done.
Tenants' leadership shows working class potential
Some workers have taken leadership, boldly asking the other tenants to post LITU signs in their apartment windows and by going door-to-door after each meeting to make sure everyone knows about the plans moving forward. LITU plans to encourage these tenants to set up a local leadership group that can build an ongoing tenants’ association.
PLP will stay on this long road with the tenants, continuing to point out along the way all the roadblocks that the capitalist system inevitably throws up to discourage and deter class struggle.
The development of international class consciousness can unlock the untapped power of the working class, including working class tenants, to change the world. Revolutionary communist ideas combined with the lessons learned in these struggles and the growth of PLP can bring that enormous energy to fruition.
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EDITORIAL ... One year of war in Ukraine: WORKERS MUST TURN THE GUNS AROUND!
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- 16 March 2023 103 hits
One year ago, the simmering conflict between Russia and the U.S.-backed regime in Ukraine became an inter-imperialist shooting war. At the time, CHALLENGE wrote, “It’s impossible to know how this war will ultimately play out, but we do know that small wars can lead to larger wars, particularly in volatile times.” As tensions among the top imperialist powers escalate, with their economies in crisis and World War III looming, that prediction looks even more likely today.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has long warned that the capitalist profit system breeds ruthless and never-ending imperialist competition, battles waged with workers’ blood. At the same time, violent shifts in the old world order create an opening for communist revolution, just as they did during World War I and after World War II.
The war in Ukraine has massacred hundreds of thousands of workers and displaced 14 million (PBS, 11/22/22). With supply chains for wheat exports disrupted, many millions more are going hungry, with Africa bearing the brunt (Reuters, 3/9).
As in all imperialist wars, workers have no side in this conflict. We have no class interest in fighting and dying for the capitalist rulers who sit and count their profits. For the international working class, victory will come only when we turn the guns around, smash all bosses, and build a communist world to serve workers’ needs.
Wavering alliances
Despite demands by the U.S. that its allies fall in line, it no longer rules the roost. From India and Pakistan to Turkey, South Africa, and Brazil, regional capitalist powers are resisting Western calls to isolate and end critical trade with Russia.
India has openly defied U.S. calls to reduce Russian oil imports. When Russia’s foreign minister spoke at an International Conference in India and attacked the U.S. and NATO for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was warmly applauded (Guardian, 3/4). China and Turkey have actually increased their imports of Russian oil, rendering U.S. sanctions mostly useless. More broadly, China has emerged as Russia’s most important trading partner. The U.S. bosses now fear that China may tip the balance in Ukraine by supplying Russia with advanced weapons (BBC, 2/4).
While the U.S. media makes it sound like Ukraine has thwarted Russia militarily at every turn, Russia has in fact seized at least 116,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, the equivalent of Bulgaria (CNN, 9/30/22). As the war drags on, the U.S. has justified concerns that even its closest friends may lack the appetite to continue. In Berlin, the capital of the U.S. bosses’ most important ally, more than 10,000 marked the war’s anniversary by marching against delivering more weapons to Ukraine (Reuters, 2/25). Wolfgang Ischinger, a senior German diplomat, called for the “immediate” initiation of “a peace process for Ukraine” (RT.com, 3/13).
The U.S. bosses rightly fear that an ascending China is using the conflict in Ukraine to keep chipping away at the old world order that the U.S. had dominated since 1945. China’s latest initiative was to broker the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the most important powers in the oil-rich Middle East, a deal that left the U.S. on the outside looking in (NYT, 3/11).
U.S. rulers are further weakened by the division and instability in their own ranks. The bosses’ finance capital main wing, fronted by Democrats from Joe Biden to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are committed to protecting the profits of ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and other powerful multinational companies–at any cost. A contending faction, led by the likes of the Koch family, Rupert Murdoch, and a growing “America First” contingent of the Republican Party, is pushing to suspend all aid to Ukraine. One of Russia’s big advantages is that its bosses are far more unified. Like China, it’s gotten a headstart on the U.S. in moving toward full-blown fascism.
War-hungry U.S. media
Unlike the minimal U.S. media attention to recent wars in Yemen or Africa, where thousands of Black and Brown children have been murdered, the war in Ukraine and its blond, blue-eyed victims are splattered all over the front pages. This racist coverage also is designed to prepare U.S. workers to sacrifice in the next world war.
The bosses’ media justify their round-the-clock focus on Ukraine by claiming that Russia’s invasion was an unprovoked attack on an independent country’s sovereignty. They never mention the eight NATO “battle groups” already stationed in Eastern Europe (NATO.int, 12/22), or that the U.S. helped to trigger the invasion by suggesting that Ukraine might be considered for inclusion in NATO, a longstanding “red line” that Russia would not allow to be crossed (Reuters, 12/21). Or that the U.S. itself has invaded 84 of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations. So much for sovereignty!
The media is obsessed with Ukraine not because it represents a sovereign “democracy” standing up to tyranny, but because the U.S. bosses need to divide the international working class as they drive toward war and fascism. They know that their biggest threat is an organized, militant, international army of workers fighting to smash capitalism.
Fight back against imperialist warmakers!
As Russia and China continue to strengthen their alliance, a U.S. general recently predicted that the U.S. would be at war with China by 2025 (Time.com, 1/31). China’s leader, Xi Jinping, recently targeted what he called a U.S.-led campaign of “encirclement and suppression.” His new foreign minister said China had no choice but to fight back against U.S. sanctions (NYT, 3/9).
The current period contains both great danger and huge opportunity for the working class. The war in Ukraine demonstrates once again that wherever workers are attacked, it hurts our class brothers and sisters internationally. Whether it’s boots-on-the-ground carnage, disrupted food supplies and medical care, or economic devastation, it’s our class that has the most to lose under capitalism.
Only with communist revolution can we turn imperialist world war into class war against the capitalist parasites who put profits over human life. Only then can we build a world where wars, racism, and sexism will be eliminated for all time. Only communism can smash our chains, once and for all!
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Fight to Learn, Learn to Fight! A look at PLP’s Communist May Day History
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- 16 March 2023 123 hits
BROOKLYN, NY, March 11–As part of our monthly series preparing for May Day 2023, a multiracial group of over 30 students, parents, teachers, and workers engaged in a sampling of historic May Day events led by Progressive Labor Party (PLP) since our party resurrected the holiday in the U.S. in 1971.
The common threads of revolutionary communist boldness, creativity, militant class struggle, confidence in the working class, and our ever-evolving line of dictatorship of the proletariat and fighting directly for communism, and our uncompromising antiracism and multiracial workers’ unity, was all in full display over a series of events we studied.
See-Think-Wonder about May Day!
After an icebreaker, we took a gallery walk in groups around the room, looking at images over several decades of May Day marches and demonstrations, each person commenting on what they “see, think, and wonder” on chart paper (see photo). Here are some initial reactions of participants:
“Seems very militant and organized,”
“I love the bold/ambitious vision: building a worldwide movement,”
“They are brave!”
“What is martial law?”
“Workers on the streets waving their fists in support,”
“They must have been so disciplined and organized in the days before cell phones,”
“How did they plan this?”
“We need this in every city!”
May Day through the decades
Then, each group sat down to investigate one of the May Day events depicted in the photos—as one comrade observed—reflecting larger struggles PLP had been involved in for quite some time.
1974 – PLP organized a nationwide motorcade (including workers from Canada) that originated in almost a dozen cities, traveling to over a dozen more, organizing scores of rallies and demonstrations around factories, universities, and communities where the Party was actively organizing, and converging in Washington, D.C. for a grand May Day march. Marchers represented 30 U.S. cities and almost 30 different countries.
1975 – As part of a long campaign to smash a rising fascist group called ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) in Boston, PLP mounted a valiant and victorious defense of our May Day march against a physical attack by racist ROAR thugs, backing up our revolutionary communist ideas with disciplined and organized physical force en route to destroying ROAR as an organization forever.
1979 – PLP went on the offensive to rout Nazis from Marquette Park in Chicago, which had outlawed Black/non-white workers from as far back as anyone could remember. Following a military-style antiracist/communist-led raid on Nazi headquarters just a month before, PLP’s bold contingent led hundreds of multiracial workers to actively integrate the park once and for all, breaking the back of Nazi organizing efforts.
1992–Amidst open antiracist rebellion by Black, Latin, and white workers in response to the sham Rodney King verdict (a Black man brutalized by a gang of racist LAPD thugs), the rulers declared martial law in Los Angeles, banning all demonstrations. But PLP didn’t let that stop us from boldly carrying out a May Day caravan through Los Angeles, defying the law, outwitting cops, and engaging hundreds of workers, youth, and National Guard soldiers with communism and militant antiracism.
2002–In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and Patriot Act crackdowns on protests and in the throes of rising fascism and imperialist war in Afghanistan, PLP boldly and creatively planned spirited May Day marches and dinners in multiple locations to confidently put forward our communist line and allow workers to participate in our international holiday.
Group participants actively debated our line and our practice to more deeply understand each event, its time period, and lessons for building the communist movement today.
In our share-out, commenting on the prominent multiracial character of our demonstrations and vital Black and Latin leadership throughout our Party’s history, one young participant made the point that these events obliterate the ruling class’s racist anti-communist lie that the communist movement is “white” or that communism is for “whites only.” One of the large banners highlighted in one of the marches punctuated the point by proclaiming “Racism Hurts All Workers.”
The presence of some high school students with their parents reflected PLP’s dedication to building a student-parent-teacher alliance in the schools.
Confidence in our class
These historic events on the whole also showed the development of PLP’s line through the years, advancing from advocating for “Socialism” in the ‘60s, ’70s, and ‘80s to fighting directly for communism over the last 35 years. Our long experience leading class struggle proved to us that workers are open to communist ideas.
In fact, studying these events, one can see how when we have confidence in the working class—that they would defend their homes from the fascists, that they would take the offensive against racist and sexist divisions, that they would travel across the country for communism, defy the bosses’ laws, even defend our party’s line with revolutionary violence when necessary—we grew as an organization capable of leading the working class to victory.
Indeed, the only way to guarantee the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class) in the long run is to fight directly for communism now.
BIG, BOLD COMMUNIST MAY DAY 2023!
After our share-out, participants shared their ideas for a May Day theme for this year’s NYC march. Some of our ideas included “Capitalism Divides Workers—Fight Back with Revolutionary Communist Optimism!” “Resilient Rebels on the Road to Revolution,” “Getting Ready for Revolt/Revolution,” and “Fight Capitalist Divisions with Communist Internationalism.”
People left the forum inspired! Now we must use our newfound understanding to inspire our friends to learn and participate in this proud communist, anti-racist, working-class heritage, for we—all of us—are making history, and EVERYTHING we do counts.
CHICAGO, February 26 – Around 50 Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends gathered on the city’s south side today to celebrate our fifth annual Black and Red event. The multiracial, multi-generational and international crowd in attendance engaged in an interactive program that highlighted the invaluable leadership and contributions of Black communists in past, present, and future revolutionary struggles.
Our local collective began organizing this event five years ago as a response to the many anti-communist distortions and outright lies by the bosses that falsely claim communism to be a political movement limited to white workers. The truth is that Black workers have always given key leadership to the fight for communist revolution, correctly understanding it as the only force to destroy the racism, sexism, and exploitation inherent in the capitalist profit system.
In contrast to the bosses’ Black History Month celebrations, which emphasize the need for more Black-owned businesses and individual success, PLP emphasizes the importance of Black workers leading the Party with comrades all over the world to put an end to racist capitalism once and for all. To be Black and red is to be an antiracist revolutionary!
Working-class Black history is communist history
We began our day at the DuSable Black History Museum, a south side landmark for over 50 years. The museum was founded by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs and her husband Charles, two Black organizers with well-known communist affiliations. PLP members made a list of scavenger hunt questions for our group to engage with the different exhibits and highlight the more radical history of various freedom movements.
We next headed to the local fieldhouse for lunch, socializing, and an event program. After dining on some delicious West African dishes, a new comrade kicked festivities off with an impassioned reading of “Good Morning, Revolution” by Black communist poet Langston Hughes. Although modern sources prefer to ignore or minimize Hughes’ embrace of communist internationalism, any serious analysis of his works such as this poem demonstrate his commitment to revolution.
Another veteran PLP member then took the mic to give some historical context to the violent mass struggle to end chattel slavery and the influence that struggle had on the theories of the communist Karl Marx. Through his work as a journalist reporting on the Civil War in the United States, Marx was able to better develop his understanding of how racism is essential to the profits of capitalism and how one could not be seriously fought without fighting the other.
We next watched a short video also highlighting the influence of communist theory and practice on countless antiracist mass movements in the 20th century, including the defense of the Scottsboro Nine against legalized lynching during the Great Depression and the struggle against the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa. Far from being confined to the history books, the lessons learned from these brave struggles continue to inform our fight in the present day.
Lastly, to give the keynote speech, another veteran comrade drew on her decades of experience as a Black communist in PLP and how that has guided her fightback against racism and sexism in profound ways:
“The earliest comrades of our Party realized that the people who had this generational commitment to fighting the capitalist power structure had to lead this revolutionary movement for it to ultimately win.
Along with this leadership being mandatory for this Party to win, multiracial working-class unity also had to be a defining factor. Our Party views antiracism as more than just a ‘good feeling.’ It is dedicated fighting action in just about every way imaginable.”
Black workers are key revolutionary force
In the fight to destroy capitalism, the international working class must rely on the leadership of those workers most exploited and oppressed by this rotten racist system to truly win an egalitarian communist world. We salute our Black comrades and fellow workers for their ongoing role as an indispensable revolutionary force.
Fight back and crush the bosses’ traps
Wage theft in New York City, despite the existence of laws that “protect” the worker, is very much a common thing. We know about the law against wage theft, but it is increasingly difficult to find justice, since for any claim they divide the workers so that they make these actions only individually.
At the beginning of this month, a group of more than 40 workers from different community organizations met, marched and held a sit-in in front of a luxurious hotel, on 60th Street near Central Park. The action was taken because the hotel bosses fired, unfairly and without reason,and stole wages from a worker with many years of service. That worker had not been informed of her dismissal and she was not allowed to go into work when she had arrived to do so.
The organization, where several Progressive Labor Party comrades are members, accompanied her and we chanted our classic slogans in the march: “Workers United Will Never Be Defeated!” … “This Fist Can be Seen, Workers in Power,”and other chants. At the door of the hotel, the letter was delivered to those in charge of the administration on duty, and we hope soon for the solution and reinstatement to the worker at this employment.
The bosses make the laws and the traps; the workers must fight and crush their traps.
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Capitalist disaster steals lives
After viewing daily media video on the Turkey-Syria earthquake, two contradictions emerge, the first being the total absence of any steel beams in the concrete-wire mesh debris from endless photos of modern high-rise buildings that collapsed over each other. The second contradiction was many perfectly intact high-rise buildings right across streets from rows of collapsed homes. Turkish leader Erdogan had granted amnesty to housing contractors who’d defied safety codes and regulations using wire mesh instead of steel beams to provide faster, cheaper building frames. Not only did the cheaper constructed buildings fail to prevent the earthquake from flattening them, but the wire mesh debris has prevented rescuers from digging victims out. There are also protests over a missing billion-dollar fund collected after the last earthquake to build aid stations and care for victims of future catastrophes. Because of capitalist greed and corruption, Turkey is approaching 50,000 casualties and 13 million homeless.
Meanwhile in the US, a two-mile long 150-car train crash in Ohio is flooding thousands in poor communities with toxic gasses and poisoned water. Railroad companies are profiting big time in cuts in their workforce, maintenance and safety.
Today’s events prove capitalists will sacrifice to the last worker for their own profits and will stop at nothing to stay in power. Progressive Labor Party calls for a communist revolution to replace our profit dominated social system with a communist society without wages, profits and divisions.
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She was a comrade to look up to
A comrade to look up to. The day after the family of Raymond appeared in a Bronx court, I called Carolyn to find out what happened. She said she debated with herself whether to go to the court and decided to go. Raymond’s mother and our comrade hugged and shared a few words. An example of Carolyn’s confidence and undying love of our working class.
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Workers call out China CP’s sellout
Some older people in China seem to remain boldly supportive of real communist principles, and critical of the Communist Party’s sellouts.
The following passage is from a New York Times article yesterday about recent protests in China against cuts in government-provided medical insurance.
“Video footage that circulated online indicated that large crowds gathered around Zhongshan Park in Wuhan, as the police tried to divide them by imposing barricades. When police officers tried to push the crowds back, older men and women refused to back off and shouted in officers’ faces. Some sang songs like “The Internationale,” an anthem employed by both the ruling Communist Party and by protesters, who have used it to suggest that the party has strayed from its ideological roots.”
