Jan 1 soup celebrates liberation from slavery
January 1 is an important date for the working class in Haiti, but not for the reason you may think. There is a tradition of eating soup joumou today, which celebrates the victory of the revolutionaries of Haitian independence in 1804 over racism, slavery, and colonialism, and therefore against the domination and exploitation of capitalism. January 1 marks the liberation from chattel slavery and the formation of the world’s first Black republic, Haiti. Under slavery, this thick stew with meat and vegetables  was reserved only for the enslavers and other exploiters.
For the working class, international solidarity and solidarity with our communist party is key. Capitalism pushes individualism, which is the negation of solidarity. Yet, while the bosses compete with one another for markets and power, they are united as a class to defend their own interests. They unite to sow divisions inside the working class, using a three-pronged weapon of racism, sexism and nationalism. Our task is to defeat those ideas ideologically and in action, build our mutual confidence, and put the working class in the driver’s seat of humanity.
So workers of the world unite, gather ye strength with a bowl of joumou, and get ready to fight back!
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John Brown’s legacy: violent revolution necessary, not ‘crazy’
We have to finish the job of defeating systemic racism, and after our trip to Harpers Ferry we are even more inspired to do so. On Sunday December 10, a small caravan of Baltimore and DC comrades and family spent the day at the historic site bonding and enjoying the John Brown Museum and the John Brown Wax Museum, along with a short hike and lunch.
Among us were members of the Baltimore West Wednesday Coalition, which has been fighting for accountability in the police murder of Tyrone West on July 18, 2013. One of our first stops was the federal armory, which Brown and his allies used as a fort for their raid. Together, we stood with fists raised as one of our comrades took a picture. The museums were undertoned, but John Brown’s resolve to end slavery resonated clearly. “I have only a short time to live and only one death to die and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for.”
In fact one comrade said that while he noticed the capitalist attempts to revise him and even call him insane, “What is certain is that true change may require violent struggle.” Truly Brown’s commitment is a rallying cry for those of us to our cause. The capitalist system must be done for!
*****
Bosses’ Omicron put workers’ lives on the line
I recently began attending a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) study group and it has taught me so much. One of the first things that communism opened my eyes to is that capitalism can only breed racism and misery.
The latest Covid-19 Omicron spike has only amplified the racist divisions between low-income predominantly Black and Latin working-class neighborhoods, and less integrated,  higher income neighborhoods. I saw this play out while waiting on a Covid-19 testing line in Brownsville, Brooklyn that snaked around the block. I overheard people saying that they had been waiting for hours. Rather than wait on the line and expose others, I began calling local pharmacies in search of a home rapid test. I was disgusted to discover that there were no test kits in the Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Bushwick neighborhoods. They were not accepting appointments and were turning people away. After calling about ten pharmacies I finally found a test in Park Slope, and later found another where I work on the Upper East Side, two neighborhoods known for being wealthier and whiter.
 I began noticing a pattern in these last two weeks. Testing is more widely available in richer and whiter neighborhoods compared to working class Black and Latin areas. The wealthier, mostly white areas seem to have a constant stock of over-the-counter tests and shorter lines. Meanwhile workers in Brownsville and East New York have to stand on lines for hours without proper social distancing.
 Workers in areas ravaged by Omicron are more heavily policed, and this limited testing often results in workers facing rude security guards. To maintain their profits, the capitalists are currently attempting to avoid another lock down, going so far as to lower the recommended quarantine mandate. How many lives will be lost to keep this death machine running?
Omicron is more proof that we must continue to expose and fight back against this system that forces workers to work sick, and die for profit. I’m beginning to understand that as long as capitalism exists, racist and preventable disparities in death and illness will never end. That’s why I will continue to attend study groups and learn more about how we can create a better world by fighting for communism.
With the Omicron variant of Covid-19  spreading like wildfire in the U.S. imperial core, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) changed its recommendation of quarantining, if one tests positive for Covid-19, from ten days to 5 days…and workers are awake and upset! We know that U.S. airline companies asked the CDC to make this recommendation to keep their businesses open as Omicron surges at record-breaking rates. Workers infected by coronavirus  are already being forced by their bosses to come into work even though they are still contagious at the five day mark of their quarantine. This recommendation has shown millions of working-class people everywhere that the capitalist bosses prioritize profit over human life.
HHHHH
Hunger strike leaves workers starving for revolution
Comrades, greetings from New York!  We continue to be involved in community organizations. One of the latest actions in which we participated was a “Hunger Strike for Excluded Immigrant Workers’’ (excluded from funds during the pandemic). Although the “leaders” of this strike declared victory, in reality the state funds allotted to these workers was not enough,  so those of us in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) raised that crumbs are handed out to the  working class in an attempt to pacify fightback from the masses.  Following this initial action, the alliance of organizations involved called a rally and march to demand funds for the thousands of workers who were left empty handed. Many workers attended! The rally started with testimony from immigrant workers against oppression explaining  how they’ve received  nothing from the “authorities.”
After the rally we marched to the governor’s office where “invited politicians” gave speeches and select workers wore indigenous clothing.  Our comrades, however, called out that these events laced with liberal fascism and identity politics won’t solve workers problems.
We do continue to participate though as a way to connect with our friends and build future comradely bonds. We use these opportunities to share Party changes and pass out copies of CHALLENGE.
This is all done in the name of raising international class consciousness on the road to communist revolution. The workers united will never be defeated!
*****

MEXICO—The “Green Revolution” of the 1950’s was a ploy of the Rockefeller Foundation to sell high-yield wheat—along with fertilizer and pesticides—to Mexico. In 1938, President Cardenas nationalized the oil industry, cutting out Rockefeller’s Standard Oil interests. Cardenas promoted land reform, but restricted it under the laws of capitalism. Later in 1943,  President Manuel Ávila Camacho, promoted industrialization. Camacho saw Rockefeller and his Green Revolution as a way to move the workforce off the urban farmlands into the factories as cheap labor.
Capitalists make deals like this all the time, at the expense of the working class. It soon became clear  that capitalist land reform in Mexico yielded quickly to the pressures of imperialism. Only communist collectivization of the land—not for profit, but to promote healthy organic farming—can provide nourishment to the working class and sustain the earth.
At first, in the 50s, farmers grew more wheat, some of it to make cereal. Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production by 1951 and began to export wheat thereafter.
Hybrid maize and wheat required pesticides and fertilizers that the original Mexican wheat didn’t need. Meanwhile, thousands of farmers couldn’t afford the pesticide/fertilizer packets  and the hybrid seeds that had to be purchased year after year. Just as Camacho predicted, they went bankrupt and had to leave the farms for the factories in the city.
But the ruling class revolution didn’t stop in Mexico. Rockefeller spread the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides and profitable hybrid seeds to India next, and then to Pakistan, Southeast Asia and Africa.  In all these places, only big farmers could afford to grow wheat and rice, and millions of farmworkers, saddled by debt were forced to sell their land and go work for factory bosses.
The pesticides were bad for many reasons.  They poisoned the field workers’ skin and seeped into the water, poisoning the drinking supply. The insects which they were supposed to kill became resistant. The pesticides killed the fish and green weedy vegetables that families in Southeast Asia relied on for food. The fertilizers also contained petrochemicals (from Rockefeller oil, of course).  The hybrid plants become completely dependent on yearly fertilizing, which ruins the soil, making the earth less able to hold its own water, air and nutrients.
The heavy reliance on irrigation has compromised large swaths of arable land in India and Pakistan through the process of salinification, wherein salts build up in over-watered soil. Africa for its part has fared particularly poorly from the Green Revolution. African soils are generally unsuitable to intensive monoculture because of insufficient or excessive rains, high incidences of pests and diseases.
Today, in the Yaqui Valley of Mexico, of 225,000 acres, only 23 percent  can be farmed because the water reservoirs have been depleted to 13 percent .  The hybrid plants require vast amounts of water, and only a few farmers can afford to pump water from wells.  Ultimately, the biggest yield from this impoverished land has been unemployed workers, because the industries of the 1960s couldn’t employ many of the displaced farmers. Consequently Mexico’s farmers began a mass emigration to the United States to feed their families.

The bourgeoisie of all countries … covers its predatory aims with “national” ideology, [which] inevitably creates … revolutionary sentiments in the masses. Our duty is to help make these sentiments conscious.
--Vladimir Lenin, “Turn Imperialist War Into Civil War” (1915)

Russia’s massing of troops on the border of U.S.-backed Ukraine is one more step toward World War III. Notwithstanding the Joe Biden-Vladimir Putin video conference “in an effort to defuse a growing military crisis” (New York Times, 12/7), the U.S. and Russia are on a collision course. Politicians represent the capitalist ruling class interests behind them, the biggest banks and corporations. Since there are limited markets to control and limited resources and workers to exploit, the U.S. and Russian capitalist gangs are locked in a constant, deadly competition.
The U.S. has called the shots for the old liberal world order for the last 75 years. But with a rising China and a resurgent Russia, and U.S. rulers weakened by a deep split in their own ranks, their days of supremacy may be numbered. As in the run-up to World War I, the decay of an established order creates extreme volatility. Finance capital, the U.S. bosses’ dominant wing, has less and less control over world events. A seemingly minor confrontation could spark a bloody big-power conflict and a nuclear war.
Only a communist revolution can end these devastating imperialist rivalries by smashing nationalism and replacing it with working-class internationalism. Only a communist society, where money and profit are abolished and production is geared to workers’ needs, can serve the interests of our class.
Russia strikes back
Russia’s massing of 120,000 troops on the Ukraine border may be a warning to stop the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization from bringing Ukraine and Georgia into its military alliance. Russia is also responding to “plans by some NATO members to set up military training centers in Ukraine” (AP, 11/24) and reported U.S. military drills just 12 miles from Russia’s border (The Sun, 11/26). Ukraine is a critical export corridor into Europe for oil and gas, the main source of wealth for Russian capitalists.
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, U.S. rulers settled on a policy of “containment” to encircle Russia and prevent its re-emergence as a global superpower. The U.S. pushed NATO to absorb former Warsaw Pact (World War II Soviet-led, anti NATO alliance) states like Poland and Hungary, and, in 2004, the former Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Strategically located Ukraine is a lynchpin of this U.S. strategy.
But in the name of profit, Russian imperialist rulers have struck back. Along with a series of military incursions—from Georgia and Syria to the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014—Russia has aggressively courted U.S. rivals like Iran and Venezuela. It has engineered the massive Nord Stream 2 pipeline to export its oil and gas to Europe via the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine—so much for containment! U.S. bosses have continued to back Ukraine’s nationalist ruling class, sending $2.5 billion in military assistance since 2014, a time when Ukraine’s government was stocked with ministers from the openly Nazi Svoboda Party (Reuters, 3/18/14). Along with a dozen other NATO countries, the U.S. has significant numbers of military advisers in Ukraine.
As Russia continues to threaten an invasion, the limited U.S. response—possible economic sanctions—exposes its ever-weakening position. In their imperialist proxy war, the bosses killed tens of thousands of lives in Eastern Ukraine with Russian-backed separatists. As the conflict in this region expands, it’s the working class that will be fighting and dying for the bosses’ profits.
Nationalism: dead end for workers
 After the great communist revolutions in Russia and China, workers were freed from capitalist exploitation on one-third of the globe. At one time, the old communist movement vigorously promoted proletarian internationalism. But because of concessions to rotten capitalist ideas like higher wages for “experts” and an emphasis on production over politics, the international working class was left wide open to nationalist ideology. Nationalism is an essential tool for rulers to convince workers to be slaughtered in imperialist wars for “their country.” The world’s bosses, a tiny minority of the population, must rely on the working class to win their battles for them. Following the example of Russian soldiers in World War I, internationalist class consciousness can lead working-class soldiers and sailors to turn their guns around—and fire on the ruling-class warmakers!    
Since the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the threat of an imperialist alliance between Russia and China has petrified the U.S. ruling class. The U.S. bosses would be left at a huge numerical disadvantage in troops, tanks, and warships, as well as in nuclear weapons (Sun, 11/26). Over the last decade, China’s capitalist rulers have seen growing U.S.-Russia tensions as an opportunity to forge closer ties to Russia’s bosses. Joint air and naval exercises last month, including “bomber flights into Japanese and South Korean air defense zones,” led to “a new pact to further deepen defense ties” (Al Jazeera, 11/25). Russia is the number-two exporter of oil to China, after Saudi Arabia, while China has been a lead investor in Russian natural gas projects in Siberia (Al Jazeera, 11/25).
 U.S. ”democracy” flimflam
On December 9, Biden hosted a virtual “Summit for Democracy” to try to rally its allies against the so-called “autocracies” (or dictatorships) in Russia and China. In reality, all capitalist “democracies” are dictatorships of the capitalist bosses that will fight each other to the end for maximum profit. As the Council of Foreign Relations, the bosses’ top research and strategy institute, recently acknowledged, capitalist ruling classes “have little choice but to compete for power in what is at root a zero-sum game” (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2021).
If the past is any guide, the U.S. ruling class will deploy a media frenzy of nationalism and patriotism (and likely a 9/11-type provocation) to win workers to fight and die for JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil’s profits. But the U.S. bosses have an uphill battle to achieve their vision of all-class unity. The vicious split between the liberal racist Democratic bosses and the gutter racist Republicans has divided workers as well. Without a unified, multiracial armed forces and mass acceptance of a military draft, the U.S. rulers will be hard-pressed to prevail over the more disciplined rulers in Russia and China.
Communist revolution is the only solution!
 The implosion of the Soviet Union and China’s return to capitalism are both direct results of the poison of nationalism. Only with internationalism--the end of all borders, patriotism, racism, and sexism--can workers truly be freed. Progressive Labor Party needs to fight harder and more creatively to win masses of workers to our ideas on inter-imperialist rivalry and the inevitability of war under capitalism--in mass organizations, at our workplaces, with our neighbors, and especially in the military. As the ruling class prepares for World War III, we must organize to turn their imperialist wars into wars of communist liberation from capitalist savagery. Join us!

 Hundreds of members of the graduate and undergraduate Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2110 (STC-UAW) blared their chants as both retired professors and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the picket line along with many other supporters protesting Columbia University. Protesters are pushing back against this institution of “higher” education’s racist, profit-driven core. Despite its endowment of $14.4 billion, Columbia claims it can’t afford to pay super-exploited student workers a living wage nor provide them with expanded health care coverage and greater protections against harassment and discrimination. Scenes of the protest at Columbia illustrate the power of militant students and workers to force bosses not only to grant the short-term demands of this strike but also how to build a communist system run by workers without bosses.
“Up, up, up with the workers! Down, down, down with bosses!”
The notion that some students, mainly working class Black and Latin students, must work to earn their education while others are handed it for free is a racist practice implemented at colleges and universities across the county. It’s time to smash this capitalist system and the education system that upholds it. Capitalist schools are designed to protect the structures in place that allow inequality to thrive. Under communism, education will be available to all at no cost and will be rooted in thought, collectivity, and ensuring all members of our class are taught skills and ideology that serve the greater good, not a profit system.
This struggle has revealed once again how fearful bosses become when workers realize their true power at Columbia University and beyond. PLP distributed about 30 copies of CHALLENGE, and some picketers nodded their head when we said that the conflict at Columbia needs to become part of a larger collective campaign, like the struggles at CUNY (City University of New York) and many other campuses and workplaces all over the country.
 Meanwhile, the bosses of the institution, scared of the political significance of this struggle, resorted to the same-old fear tactics to protect their financial interests, such as preserving President Lee Bollinger’s salary, apparently having earned $4.5 million in 2018 (Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/31/21).  Administrators’ goals of suppressing rebellion backfired when, after threatening by email to fire strikers who did not return to work by December 10, student workers responded with outrage rather than fear (NYT, 12/3/21).
 At the height of the protest, a 10-foot banner reading “Fair Contract Now” set the backdrop for hundreds of protestors blocking campus entrances and preventing students from attending class, joined by NYU, Fordham and CUNY faculty union members, and members of Teamsters Local 804.  Buses and trucks blew horns in support.
Class struggle is necessary, but workers need communism!
We need to find ways to make these short-term limited struggles part of a larger battle to dismantle a racist capitalist system. When we fight and win limited reforms for better pay, health care, reduced tuition, or classes that teach our real history, we should use them as resources for the larger fight to overthrow capitalism altogether.  We need revolutionary thinking for a new world and need to recruit militant Black, Latin, Asian, immigrant, and white working-class students and their teachers into expanding these reform struggles into a revolutionary movement and an education for communist liberation. Columbia student strikers are already helping provide this important education.
For example, when about 500 protesters demonstrated on October 28 and then disrupted President Bollinger's "Freedom of Speech and Press" classroom chanting: "Bollinger in your ivory tower, we'll fight you with union power."
The Columbia student workers’ unionization drive and strike are part of a seesaw wave of actions by graduate students that has been sweeping the country since 2000 when the National Labor Relations Board first ruled that graduate students at NYU could unionize – only to reverse that decision in 2004. When this decision got reversed again in 2016, it opened the door for Columbia student workers to unionize with SWC-UAW Local 2110, and to include undergraduate as well as graduate student workers, an egalitarian step that counters the divisive tendency to separate workers into different categories.
Graduate student organizing drives and strikes have taken place at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Harvard, University of Michigan, Rutgers University, and many other campuses. The UAW (United Auto Workers) has helped lead these campus struggles, but its total reliance on Democratic Party politicians and labor board decisions is a huge weakness because without shutting down the whole campus, Columbia strikers have a limited capacity to challenge the University which has already dragged out the contract struggle for two years.  
These student strikes – like the growing wave of strikes in industry, of coal miners in Alabama, and workers at Nabisco, Frito-Lay, Kellogg as well as near strikes in the television industry, healthcare, and other areas – all are in response to the growing economic crisis of capitalism, which has seen workers’ wages go down while CEO salaries and corporate profits soar. The root of the problem is not the Columbia budget but capitalism itself. It should be our goal to be part of these struggles with the goal of building personal ties and turning limited union struggles into a larger revolutionary communist movement.