On January 9, racist killer capitalism struck again—this time in the Bronx, when it murdered 17 working-class immigrants from Gambia, including eight children. After a faulty space heater ignited, the fire ripped through the Twin Parks North West building. Thick, black smoke enveloped the staircases and killed whole families as they tried to escape. Their deaths were the direct result of racism and the capitalists’ callous obsession with profits. In the 1970s, to save money, developers built this 19-story tower—and countless other buildings for low-income workers—without fire escapes or sprinkler systems. Though New York City later tightened its rules to require these basic safety measures, a loophole left “older” buildings exempt—even though buildings constructed in wealthier areas in the same period included these safety features (NPR, Up First, 1/10).
This racist inequality reflects the stranglehold that landlords and real estate interests hold over the local bosses. The Bronx fire was more than a tragedy. It was an inevitable repercussion of this racist, profit-driven system, where murderous landlord negligence is the norm. Liar Eric Adams, New York’s new liberal Black mayor, disgustingly blamed the victims for not closing the apartment door behind them as they fled for their lives. He neglected to mention that these doors should have been self-closing and were a violation of the city’s building codes. Like so many other buildings that house the working class, Twin Parks North West has a long history of management neglect, unaddressed code violations, and resident complaints over a lack of heat and ventilation.
Capitalism’s law of maximum profit makes it impossible to protect the international working class from burning buildings, crumbling housing, skyrocketing rents, or homelessness. In response to this tragedy, workers have responded with working-class solidarity. A GoFundMe account has raised over a million dollars. Workers have collected supplies for those left homeless and given emotional support to victims’ families. These efforts should give us confidence in the future—in a better world to come. A state run by and for the working class can guarantee safe and decent shelter for all workers, just as communists once did in the Soviet Union and China. Only communism—a society without money, exploitation, racism, and sexism—can put out the raging fire of this disastrous system.
Global housing and infrastructure crisis
Three days before the tragic inferno in the Bronx, an “accidental” fire wiped out three adult sisters and their nine children in a Philadelphia row house where four smoke detectors failed. Under capitalism, “accidents” are code for racism and the disproportionate killing of Black workers.
The legacy of early zoning laws across the country that promoted segregation exists today in housing instability that forces Black people into neglected rental units rife with maintenance issues that place them at higher risk for everything from fire deaths to lead poisoning. Black workers are more likely than people of other races to die in accidents like fires. Though Black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 25 percent of individuals killed in residential fires across the country, according to the New York State Department of Health (CNBC, 1/13).
The everyday atrocity of workers forced to live in death traps extends far beyond U.S. borders:
“About 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing and 100 million are homeless, according to United Nations’ statistics” (Forbes, 5/21/21).
Last October, a fire tore through a 13-story building in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s main port, killing at least 46 people and injuring dozens more. According to the city’s fire chief, “the majority of residents were elderly; the stairwells were full of debris; and the building materials did not meet fire safety standards” (cnn.com, 10/14/21).
In 2018, the Grenfell Towers in London ignited, killing 72 mostly immigrant workers because profit-driven owners used cheaper, highly combustible materials to refurbish the building.
Meanwhile, international corporations and private equity firms are amassing obscene wealth by the minute as they create the conditions for worldwide home prices and rents to soar. “In 2015, corporations purchased $1 trillion in real estate in the world’s top 100 global cities…” (Bloomberg, April 2018). As these real estate profiteers build a glut of luxury housing, much of which sits empty, rents for basic apartments skyrocket. Millions of workers are jammed into unsafe living conditions. In this nightmare system, substandard housing—much of it lacking electricity, running water, or basic sanitation—is the norm worldwide. War and poverty displace millions more, forcing our brothers and sisters into dilapidated shantytowns.
The real fire starter is capitalism, a system spiraling into fascist decay as the bosses put their short-term profits above workers’ lives. The rulers use their capitalist state to blame the victims and to win the working class to accept mass slaughter. There’s no way to reform this rotten system—we need to burn it down!
Decay of capitalism and growing fascism
In recent weeks, the liberal finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class has tried to divert our attention to last year’s January 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, an insurrection organized by Donald Trump and his gutter racist supporters. But it is the liberal racist bosses and their stooges—from Joe Biden on down—who pose the greatest danger to the working class.
Eric Adams’ predecessor, the fake leftist Mayor Bill de Blasio, created a sham affordable housing plan (Reuters, 1/29/21), paving the way for developers like Rick Gropper and his Camber Property Group to leverage generous tax breaks and purchase thousands of Section 8 buildings, including Twin Parks North West (Yahoo News, 1/13; The Guardian, 1/14). Not long before the fatal fire, Adams invited Gropper to join his transition team for housing issues (NYT, 1/9).
When government officials and the media openly justify mass death in service of capitalist profit, it is a sign that fascism is around the corner. As capitalist interests gain tighter control of the state, Black liberal fascists like Adams will continue to toe the line. Ultimately, as they move toward inter-imperialist war to defend their profits and the failing U.S. empire, the rulers are planning the deaths of millions of more workers. That genocide will be anything but an accident.
Communism is the only solution
During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen workers intensify the fight for decent housing. They have bravely resisted eviction, exposed predatory landlords, and taken over vacant buildings. Through these struggles, workers are learning the important lesson that the capitalist rulers can never meet the needs of our class. Under capitalism, affordable housing for all is an impossibility—even though it’s the working class that builds all the housing. When the bosses and their profits call the shots, whether it’s for housing or food production or public health, workers lose out every time. Only by fighting for communism can we smash the profit motive and build a world to meet worker’s needs. Under communism, workers will collectively own all resources and our own productive capacity.
We can look to past revolutionary societies for a glimpse of what is possible. After the Chinese Communist Revolution, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, tenants in the countryside forced landlords to stand trial. The oppressors’ land was confiscated and redistributed to workers in need. Unfortunately, these gains were reversed with the emergence of capitalism in China. Our brightest hope is to rebuild a revolutionary communist movement led by Progressive Labor Party. Join us!
The following is adapted from Wally Linder’s memoir, A Life of Labor and Love:
In the early 1970s, Progressive Labor Party saw the Chinese Communists as the main revolutionary hope for the future. The Party shipped them nearly a thousand issues of every issue of CHALLENGE. The official Chinese news agency would begin every article on events in the U.S. with, “U.S. Challenge says….”
To have more direct contact, it was proposed that I travel to Geneva to talk with China’s ambassador.
This was years before Richard Nixon established relations with the Chinese—or before PLP oncluded that China was going the way of the Soviet Union and becoming what is now the world’s second biggest capitalist economy. My trip had to be secret, even from my own family. How to tell my wife Esther that I would be gone for a week doing Party work? I told her I had to meet with our comrades in San Francisco.I flew to Paris and took a cab to the train station to travel to Geneva. After renting a hotel room near the Chinese ambassador’s residence, I walked there to meet their officials. I was greeted by the ambassador and sat down to a delicious seven-course meal of Chinese dishes, ones I had never encountered in Brooklyn.
Afterwards, the ambassador asked me about my experiences as a communist in the U.S. I told him about my 11 years on the railroad and answered questions about the Party’s ongoing activities. I told him we wanted to have closer relations with the Chinese Party; the ambassador said he would report our discussions to Peking and get back to me soon. He then suggested I rent a car and become a “tourist” for a week before returning to get the answer from Peking.
This was my first trip anywhere beyond the U.S. and Canada. I decided to drive over the Alps to Italy. I arrived in Milan and took in the sights, especially the outdoor debates in the central square, and ate some delicious Italian food. I then returned to Geneva to receive the reply from Peking, which I would take back to New York.
By the time I got back to Brooklyn, two weeks had elapsed—a week longer than I’d told Esther I’d be gone. By the eighth day of my trip, she’d been getting concerned about what was happening “in San Francisco,” so she asked our chairperson Milt how to get in touch with me. Somehow he convinced her he couldn’t phone me because I had gone down to Mexico to exchange experiences with the famous communist painter, David Siqueiros, who had strong ties with Mexico’s railroad workers.
When I finally arrived back in Brooklyn, I apologized to Esther and stuck with the Mexico story. Later that spring, however, she was gathering clothes for the cleaners when lo and behold, she plucked my passport from an inside jacket pocket—and found entries for Paris and Geneva. She confronted me and said, “What’s all this?” Now that it was all over, I felt obliged to explain the whole business. At first she was suspicious, but then she relented. Her last words on the subject were: “Why couldn’t you take me with you?”
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In Memoriam: Walter Linder served international working class for a lifetime
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- 22 January 2022 113 hits
Wally, as he was known by all, was the last surviving founder of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). He died January 3, 2022, at the age of 91, his family and comrades at his side, after a lifetime of principled struggle on behalf of the international working class.
Although Wally missed being a “May Day baby” by a few hours, the international workers’ holiday would be a big part of his life. Wally attended his first May Day demonstration with his mother in 1942, at the height of the war against fascism. Later he would help to organize decades of May Day marches for PLP, a day that represented our Party’s commitment to raise the red flag high and advance the historical communist movement.
Wally dedicated his life to the interests of the working class. For many years he was a member of the Communist Party (CP) USA. In 1951, as a student at the City College of New York, he helped lead a walkout over racist admissions policies that excluded Black, Latin, and Jewish students.
Later he helped to lead the CP’s industrial union work in the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, including an epic strike that shut down the entire New York-New Jersey waterfront. Wally also began his long and prolific writing career on the sports pages of the Daily Worker, where he covered the New York Yankees and honed a lifelong devotion to baseball.
In 1962, recognizing that the Soviet Union and the CPUSA had abandoned communism in favor of state capitalism, Wally joined a group of comrades to establish something new: the Progressive Labor Movement, which led the first demonstration against the U.S. war in Vietnam. In 1965, Wally helped to organize the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.
For many decades, Wally led PLP’s trade union section, where he recruited, developed, and inspired generations of organizers. He was proud of his leadership role in a number of PLP-affiliated organizations, including the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), which fought the resurgence of the KKK and Nazis in the 1970s; the Workers Action Movement (WAM), which led a new era of militant class struggle in the 1970s and 1980s; and the Solidarity Organizing Committee (SOC), which spearheaded militant and politically advanced labor actions.
in the U.S. and internationally in the 1990s.Throughout, Wally served as an editor and contributor to CHALLENGE, and to Progressive Labor Party magazine and later The Communist magazine. His work on behalf of the Party led him to worldwide travels and correspondence in the monumental effort to build a mass international communist party. Wally’s enormous legacy consists of the hundreds of communist organizers he trained and influenced, many of whom would go on to devote their lives to the class struggle. Wally also had an indirect impact on thousands more who were inspired by the people he trained, and by the hundreds of thousands whose lives were changed by these collective efforts.
Wally was preceded in death by his first wife, and comrade Esther Chanzis. He is survived by his son Andrew Linder, his daughter Anita Caref (Doyle O’Connor), and his grandchildren Kevin Caref (Crystal Clark); Peter Caref; Elisa Caref (Pascal Abidor); and step-grandson Gavan O’Connor. Wally was also preceded in death by his second wife Toni Ades and is survived by his stepdaughter Andrea Ades Vasquez (Gerald Markowitz) and their daughter Isa Vasquez. Wally was additionally preceded in death by his long-time companion Vera Dumont.
Wally Linder will be remembered as a loyal and dedicated comrade for as long as there is a revolutionary workers’ struggle to change the world.
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For Valentina, Daniel, and too many names, SHUT THIS RACIST SYSTEM DOWN!
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- 22 January 2022 92 hits
LOS ANGELES, CA January 8 – In response to the brutal murders of Valentina Orellana Peralta and Daniel Elena Lopez by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends attended a march to protest this racist capitalist system. The march began outside the clothing store where LAPD opened fire on innocent workers and murdered Daniel and Valentina on December 23 after Daniel was in the midst of a mental health crisis and hit a customer with a bike lock. The LAPD KKKop, William Dorsey Jones, fatally shot Daniel and then Valentina who was shopping for a quinceanera dress. The protest culminated in front of the LAPD North Hollywood station. Party members sought to bring to light that killer cop Jones, a Black cop who championed the fallacy of “good policing” is the ultimate symbol of liberal Big Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) reforms.
This case is a stark reminder of the futility of “reforming” the police in a capitalist system where the ruling class holds power at the point of a gun. Only with a communist revolution will the working class be able to truly live our lives free of terror and violence.
A revolutionary party
Since its founding in 1965, PLP has boldly championed the fight against racist police terror and murder. We have been actively involved in countless campaigns for justice with the families of the victims of this terror, who are disproportionately Black, Latin, indigenous and immigrant workers. We have repeatedly pointed out the role of the police in a capitalist society — they serve the bosses and protect their property, money and power in the face of potential rebellion by the working class. We have said that nothing less than a violent overthrow of this racist, murderous system and the establishment of a communist, antiracist workers’ dictatorship can destroy the bosses’ armed forces and end capitalism’s reign of terror.
The march was organized by several reformist and nationalist groups. The organizers handed out signs and buttons with pictures of Valentina, but none with Daniel’s picture, playing into the mainstream media’s criminalization of a worker in need. The march took the street and continued for several miles. The chanting was loud and continuous. About 60 people participated in the march and rally, 23 of whom took copies of CHALLENGE. The speakers at the rally mouthed the need for “revolution,” but did not explain that the police cannot be reformed because their job is to keep the ruling class in power. Copying the racist liberal media and politicians, who believe that police terror is justified, the speakers said not one word about the murder of Daniel Elena Lopez.
Rulers’ phony solutions for racist murder
Politicians and other reformist mouthpieces for the bosses’ lies have proposed various “solutions” to the problem of racist police terror and murder over the years. Here are some of them, and how these recent murders again prove that reforms can never benefit the working class:
More Black, Latin and women cops. Jones, the killer cop who murdered both Daniel and Valentina, is Black.
Better training, including “de-escalation.” One month before the murders, Jones and all of his fellow LAPD thugs were given training instructing them to “consider their surroundings when firing their guns” “to minimize the risk of hitting innocent bystanders.” As was reported in the January 19, 2022 issue of CHALLENGE, the LAPD first claimed a 911 call identified Daniel as having a gun. But, as soon as they arrived, the cops were told by a store employee that Daniel had no gun. There were zero attempts by the cops to “de-escalate” the situation. Killer KKKop Jones ran into the store and just kept running until he saw Daniel and immediately opened fire with his rifle (LA Daily News, 1/11).
Community-oriented policing In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and many others, Jones created his own non-profit, called “Officers for Change.” Its logo is a police cap with a red heart in the middle. Jones identified himself as a proud Black man who had been a “victim of racism.” The nonprofit's mission is to win Black and Latin working-class children to view the police in a positive light (Orange County Reg, 12/30/21).
Elect district attorneys who promise to prosecute killer cops. Recenty elected “progressive” LA County District Attorney George Gascon is still “investigating” whether Jones will be charged or not. Of the over 600 murders of workers by killer cops in LA County between 2012 and when he was elected in 2020, Gascon has stated that he will reopen the investigation of exactly four of them. None of the cops have yet been prosecuted by Gascon’s office.
But, the reality is that the murder machine goes on and on and on. Valentina Orellana Peralta and Daniel Elena Lopez are but its latest victims in Los Angeles.
Smash racist KKKops
The worldwide 2020 mass uprisings of tens of millions against racist police terror taught us that mass antiracist anger can temporarily force the capitalists to take actions to make it appear that their “justice” system can benefit the working class. But despite that bold upsurge, the capitalist-controlled media and other institutions are now promoting the need for more cops. Los Angeles is just one example of this trend. The liberal racist LA City Council voted for a 3 percent increase in LAPD funding in 2021-22 and the LA Police Commission is proposing a further 12 percent increase for 2022-23 (LA Daily News, 11/23/21).More blood money for cops means more racist terror. In 2021, the LAPD killed almost as many workers as in 2019 and 2020 combined (LA Times, 12/27/21).
There is no justice or peace for workers under capitalism. Only a communist revolution and the elimination of racism from the face of the earth will ever bring the justice and peace that the world’s workers deserve. PLP is committed to lead that fight.
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Student walk-out demands safety ‘We’ve got to tear this system down’
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- 22 January 2022 91 hits
CHICAGO, January 14 – Hundreds of multi-racial, working-class youth took over the streets downtown to challenge a racist capitalist education system in crisis. Students across the U.S. staged walkouts from their campuses and students from across the city converged for a militant and spirited rally in front of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters.
This inspiring action was organized as negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), the racist education bosses of CPS and Big Fascist Mayor Lori Lightfoot fell apart. Working-class youth took this militant action upon themselves, as the city bosses and union hacks have done nothing to stop Covid-19 infections and deaths.
Communists from the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) proudly supported these bold youth in their fight. But the profit system offers no future for our youth other than unemployment, exploitation, or imperialist war. PLP offers the only real route out of this capitalist nightmare: that of an international communist revolution. Under communism, the initiative, creativity, and leadership of youth will help steer society forward, instead of being trivialized. The working-class youth that took the streets today are future generals in the Red Army that will bury capitalism forever!
Antiracist youth lead the future
As soon as we learned that CPS students were planning a walkout, enthusiasm grew among our local collective. In contrast to the closed door negotiations between CPS and CTU, this direct action represented a more militant and grassroots protest against racist education conditions.
We organized to support two high schools on the city’s south side where the Party has a presence. As the walkout started, the young people were met by PLP members distributing CHALLENGE, holding signs, and joining in on pro-student chants like, “When I say, ‘Youth voice,’ you say, ‘Youth voice matters!’” and “Get up, get down – We’ve got to tear this system down!” Many eagerly took copies of CHALLENGE.
The energy increased as students from many schools joined forces at the CPS headquarters. The front entrances were blocked, as the youth gave speeches and led more chants. Black and Latin students – those most viciously attacked under this racist capitalist system – delivered some of the most passionate speeches and militant leadership.
The protest closed with a short march to shut down traffic on nearby State Street. Despite a heavy presence of the kkkops, the young fighters were able to safely marshal the march in order to prevent any confrontations or arrests. Many students hung around to talk about communism and the Party with us, gave contact information, and even shared the link for our 1/17 forum on Revolutionary Violence on social media!
Liberal capitalists remain the principal danger
The working-class students leading this movement are demanding more social distancing measures, more testing, masks and therapy, as well as laptops for those in remote learning (Block Club Chicago, 1/14). But under the capitalist profit system even the most simple health and safety measures for workers are routinely denied. Under a communist society run by the working-class, basic health and safety measures will be routinely provided.
This social murder is being committed under the watchful eye of the dominant liberal capitalist bosses, particularly the racist Black misleader Lightfoot, who has been relentless in pushing working-class youth and education workers back into unsafe schools (see page 3). She’s following the lead of the Big Fascist wing (see Glossary, page 6) of the U.S. capitalist class. These Wall Street finance capitalists are currently fronted by Joe Biden. They are eager to return to their “normal” profiteering ways, while millions of workers get infected and thousands get sick and die.
And now these Big Fascists are promoting the idea that an ongoing pandemic will be normal for the foreseeable future. They want us to accept our deaths, and the deaths of our class brothers and sisters, as normal, as they live on and profit. As domestic Small Fascist rivals threaten them from within and imperialists in Russia and China threaten them abroad, they are desperate to control the youth they know will be needed to fight and die in their future wars for profit.
Class struggle is in session!
Workers and students must not accept this fate. Let’s keep this youth-led anti-racist fightback alive and connect it to our collective need to build the mass international PLP and a new communist world. Class struggle is in session! Join PLP!
