Multi-gender Unity Deals a Blow to the IS

Women guerilla fighters fighting alongside men in an example of multi-gender unity have been able to halt and give the Islamic State its first defeat. This is a blow to both sexism and fascism. Paralleling the first defeat of Napoleon at the hands of black former slaves who became adept guerilla fighters, thousands of veteran female guerilla fighters using small arms and without air support have done what none of the bosses’ forces have been able to do: they’ve halted IS’s advance. They have proven what the Communist revolutionaries in China pronounced, It is the political commitment of the soldier that brings victory, not the technology.

Much like we did during the war of US imperialist aggression in Vietnam, The Progressive Labor Party is taking a principled left position. Just as we supported and were inspired by the heroic Working class in Vietnam to struggle with and eventually defeat US imperialism, but criticized their nationalism and correctly pointed out that it would not lead to Communism, we are doing the same thing with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).

The PKK has even given up the pretense of fighting a national liberation struggle for Socialism as a means to achieving Communism, not that Socialism could anyway. They have embraced terrorist tactics and have allegedly run narcotics that enslave and destroy the lives of many workers. They have targeted the working class in Turkey and are currently negotiating the price of their exploitation with the bosses! So, even though they do make a point of fighting against patriarchy, PLP knows the answer to the national question is that all revolutionaries must fight nationalism, a rotten and divisive ideology utilized by the bosses to divide the working class and win us to an all class unity against our own interests. We know that the other side of nationalism is racism. The nationalism for a Kurdistan is racism towards the working class in Turkey. Our comrades in Israel struggle against both Israeli nationalism and Palestinian nationalism just as out friends in Pakistan struggle against nationalism and religious fundamentalism. So, even with the opportunism, revisionism, and watered down Marxism of the PKK, due to their commitment to struggling against sexism, they are still able to be the only force to go toe to toe with the extreme fascism of the Islamic Stare and win.

This struggle illustrates that even such a low level left movement as the terrorist-labeled PKK can be a burst of inspiration in this dark night of capitalism as they struggle against the downright turn to medievalism that the IS represents. Objectively, and ironically, it is better long term for revolutionaries to build PLP where they are than it is for them to go to Northern Syria to join the PKK in armed struggle against IS. They are not a revolutionary Communist organization. We applaud their victory and multi-gender unity and their example of how to defeat fascism, but we know they are running full speed down the dead end of nationalism and will eventually betray the working class. PLP is the revolutionary Communist organization that will end exploitation once and for all.

The multi-gender unity in such intense struggle against IS parallels the multi-racial unity needed to defeat the extreme racism that US capitalism needs in order to survive. Capitalism can survive any crisis except an armed working multi-racial working class directly struggling against racism. Capitalism needs racism, whether the gutter racism in Ferguson or the religious based racism of IS, it still fuels the same machine.

RACIST NYPD KILLS AGAIN

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Eric Garner was murdered by the racist NYPD last Thursday. Choked to death by killer cop Daniel Pantaleo. Already, despite the assertions of Mayor DeBlasio that he was deeply disturbed by the video of the racist attack on an unarmed Black man, DeBlasio’s medical examiner(ME) is already leaking info to the NY Post trying to take the heat off the cops.

Any honest person who sees the video knows that Eric Garner’s murder was another continuation of the long line of people killed by the police for being Black or Latin.

When DeBlasio ran for Mayor he tried to get working class people out to vote for him by saying he was going to do something about there being two New Yorks, one for the rich and one for the poor. Well we see what he’s doing: first he hired Bill Bratton as Police Commissioner, the same Bill Bratton whose “Broken Windows” plan was nothing more than increasing police harassment and arrests of people in working class neighborhoods for any excuse possible.

Now DeBlasio’s ME office is trying to figure out how to get these racist murderers from the 120th Precinct off the hook. As if a man dying while being brutally strangled is anything but murder.

Pantaleo and the other racists from the 120th came out there looking to hurt someone. They were called because of a fight on the street, and when they didn’t get to hurt those guys, they went after Eric who had done the right thing by trying to break up the fight.

Yes, Pantaleo and the other cops who jumped on and then stood around while Eric garner died must be indicted and convicted of murder. However, if this was just an isolated incident, you could say that would be enough, but we all know it’s not. This is the NYPD doing their job.

DeBlasio and the ME and the Staten Island DA are all hesitant to go after the cops because they know the cops were doing what they’ve been conditioned to do, attack and terrorize Black and Latino workers in this city. That is a big part of how the wealthy, the capitalists that run New York, and this whole country stay in power and they are who these cops serve and protect.

Pantaleo must be brought to justice, but we will never be free of this racist police terror until we are free of the capitalist system. Freedom from police terror will only come from the working class taking power from the capitalists with communist revolution.

Basta Ya! Armed struggle comes to Michoacán!

The PLP applauds the angry workers in Michoacán that have had enough of the Cartel’s violence and picked up guns and fought back. In an inspiring example of working class rage, many members of the working class not only picked up the gun, not only attacked the criminal cartel, but also attacked the police and federal agents. The armed struggle is the intensification of the conflict between the exploited and the exploiter. There is another contradiction.  This contradiction illustrates appearance vs. essence. It appears that this vigilante uprising against the cartels is spontaneous and fully rooted within the working class, but in essence, there may be another cartel arming and directing this movement as well. There may also be opportunist elements within the Ruling class in Mexico helping them as well.   They are attacking a symptom of capitalism, and not the cancer of capitalism. Either way, the fact that many workers have turned to the armed struggle, challenged the cartel that was brutally dispossessing them, and also challenged the capitalist state apparatus is a very positive development.

A major question is, where did these vigilantes get their guns? Their narrative is that they, paralleled Mao’s tenets of guerrilla warfare. A small group began with a few hunting rifles and shotguns, they then raided the police stations and some of the cartel’s arms caches. If this is the actual way that they acquired their guns, it is even easier to see a method of how PLP will be able to arm ourselves, develop a Red Army, and seize state power. Though our primary way is by organizing directly in the bosses military. The vigilante armed workers now have automatic weapons and armored vehicles. Needless to say, much of the ruling classes are worried about lots and lots of armed workers taking power into their own hands and acting as an example to workers all over the world — from Cambodia, to Bangladesh, to France, to The United States — armed struggle against capitalism!

 

PLP also recognizes that politics are primary. Though the armed workers have had enough, Basta Ya! (enough is enough), they are not fighting to seize the means of production, institute the dictatorship of the proletariat, or transform society through Communist revolution. We must recognize that there is a contradiction occurring there between the positive aspects of elements of the working class arming and organizing themselves against a ruthless oppressor and the fact that without negating the systemic structures of capitalism, they are just either putting a new boss in charge or preserving the social order that allows the ruling class in Mexico to rule. In fact, the cartel they are deposing actually started as an armed reaction against exploitation! We applaud the armed struggle, but we are critical of the lack of a political thrust apart from a populist reaction to the terrible exploitation and brutal violence that the cartels enact upon them. The armed workers also recognize that the Mexican police and agents, despite the millions that they receive in aid from the US, are ineffectual in stopping the cartels.

The police, the agents, the bourgeoisie, the banking system, the DEA, and a whole line of federal agents all make some money off of the very lucrative drug trade. The poisoning of the working class is big money that flows into a lot of pockets. A scandal is just now breaking of how the US directly helped the Sinaloa Cartel and there is another scandal, Fast and Furious, where the US directly supplied weapons to the cartels themselves. PLP recognizes that the cartels are part of the exploitative apparatus of capitalism because they divide the working class, brutalize the working class, and make vast profits for the bosses either indirectly through money laundering or directly through kickbacks, bribes, or outright gun sales that echo the British gun running in Africa during slavery.

The PLP, both in Mexico and around the world, will continue to struggle to bring Communist politics to the armed struggle taking place. This group of vigilantes, though it may dismay some elements of the ruling class in Mexico, may also be a godsend to other elements. The Knights Templar Cartel had been ruling their territory like a feudal fief. They extract extortion on every sale and confiscate farmer’s whole crops for a price of their choosing. They may be just too abusive for some elements of the bloodthirsty ruling class, so the armed workers may have elements of another cartel that may not be as medievally brutal in their exploitation of the working class. Either way, the vast majority of the vigilantes appear to be workers who were deported from the US and are refusing to passively accept the burden of brutality that the workers in Michoacán have stoically accepted up until now.  This illustrates a consequence of the US deporting so many workers into Mexico and destabilizing the extortion rackets that the ruling classes of The US and Mexico have been enriching themselves on.

It is inspiring to see armed and masked workers not fighting for some rotten religious ideology, but actually fighting against elements of the state apparatus in order to improve the conditions of workers in this life. This struggle will not end the tyranny of the cartels, since too many capitalists are enriching themselves from our class’ addictions, because it lacks a Communist center, politic, and, most importantly, Party to organize it and defend the working class’ gains. That Communist Party is PLP and it needs to built in the furnace of the Michoacán uprising.

Protest Imperialist War in Syria on August 31

“Same Enemy, Same fight; Workers of the world, unite!”

This chant illustrates why the Progressive Labor Party is bringing our message of the need for Communist Revolution to the working class in Brooklyn.  The PLP will be rallying against the US protecting its dying empire by murdering workers in Syria just like their police murdered Shantel Davis and other workers in this neighborhood.  The police protect the private property and enforce the laws that protect the bosses’ profits.  

Fascism at home helps to build imperialism abroad.  The PLP stands against the bosses and their constant class war against us workers.  We want to resolve the class war so that the working class is victorious.  That message is going to resonate off of the buildings as we link the fact that the police are brutalizing and murdering the black working class in the US just like they are going to try to justify their bombing of the working class in Syria.  

If you can organize a protest against the war in Syria, then you should do so.  If you can come to Church ave and Nostrand tomorrow at 1:00, then you should as well.  Spread the word.  We must fight against imperialist war!

update: Today is a day of action against war in Syria. If there is an event nearby, we need to bring the need for Communist Revolution as the only solution to imperialist war. Here’s the link to see if there are any events near you.

Racism Murdered Trayvon Martin; Capitalism Let His Killer Go Free!

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U.S. racism led to the murder of 17 year old Trayvon Martin; from the police to the courts, the capitalist system continues to protect racist murders. 

In 2012 George Zimmerman gunned down Trayvon Martin because he was a Black youth in Amerikkka.  The capitalist system has protected Zimmerman ever since.  Masses of workers wanting “justice” protested to have Zimmerman tried for the racist murder of Trayvon Martin. 

Neither Trayvon nor any worker will ever get justice through the bosses court system.  Since the beginning of the trial the bosses have made it impossible to talk about the very essence of the case, racism.  At the very beginning the judge ruled that the topic of race would be “severely limited” and discussion of “racial profiling” would not be allowed.  Capitalism can never address the issue of racism.  Racism was created by the capitalist class and is the glue that holds their system together.

Bosses profit from Racism

Since Obama was elected in 2008 he has tried to convince us that Amerikkka has entered a “post racial” society.  The truth is that through Obama’s leadership, the most vicious racist attacks have occurred. 

The only solution is Communist Revolution!!!

The working class must take the streets! We cannot allow the murder of another young Black man to go down in silence.  We must fight back against racism and the capitalist system that depends on it.  But “justice” for Trayvon and all the other victims of capitalism will only come with the overthrow of the system that creates these conditions.  Once the bosses’ system is smashed, the need to divide the workings class and super exploit some will no longer exist.  Only then will we be able to smash racism, sexism and all other anti-working class ideas.  This is the fight of the Progressive Labor Party.  Join us!  

We Stand With The Protesting Workers and Students in Brazil

Que Vive! Que Vive! Que Vive Communismo! All Power to the Working Class; Kick the bosses in the Ass!  Although the first chant is not ringing off the streets of Brazil, the second one is clearly being carried out in practice.  The Working class in Brazil is fighting back against the forces of Imperialism and Capitalism.  The immense gains and economic boon that the wealthy in Brazil have enjoyed for the past decade has not been enjoyed by the working class.  A brief glimpse at the Rising Cost of Living in Brazil shows that all of the costs have gone up by almost 200%! The fare going up 20 cents was the straw that broke the camel’s back as quantity turned into quality and millions of workers and students have taken to the streets.

 

PLP applauds the brave protesters that have taken to the streets in Brazil, just like we applaud them in Turkey.  We support their struggle for a better world and urge them to join the PLP.  The fake left parties in Brazil have lost control of these protests; of course, it’s debatable whether or not they had control of them to begin with.  One positive example of this lack of “left control” is that the workers smashed the tolls on a bridge.  They are taking wield their anger against the state and reapropriating the fruits of their labor from markets, which the bosses are calling “looting”.  Under capitalism, it’s only a crime to steal if the workers do it.

 

Mao said that it only takes a spark to start a prairie fire, and that spark has instigated mass protests.  There will not be a revolution in Brazil due to the fact that there isn’t a Communist Party that is organized and ready to take power.  The best that can happen out of this is the reforms that were demanded are met.  The former Leftists Guerilla and current president is now rolling back the fare raises and promising other concessions to the workers.  

Brazil has spent millions and millions of dollars getting ready for the FIFA World Cup and does not want to jeopardize that cash cow. They just want the working class to calm down and go back to being servile and passive.  The workers are sick of the effects of the capitalist system.  They may not be voicing this explicitly, but their actions speak louder than words.  They need a Communist Revolution led by the PLP in order to end the hell of capitalism once and for all.

Workers, Students Slam Columbia U.’s Racism

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 10 — “Harlem: not for sale! Hunger strikers: not for sale! Our homes: not for sale! Our jobs: not for sale!” chanted a multi-racial crowd of 250 angry community residents, students and faculty marching today on Columbia University’s main campus and at President Lee Bollinger’s house.

Protesters gathered at the Low Library to hear speakers express their outrage — in English and Spanish — over Columbia’s racist expansion northward into Harlem, displacing 5,000 black, Latino and white working-class residents. Then everyone marched to Bollinger’s house, rhythmically accompanied by a radical marching band. He wasn’t home, but the crowd demanded community residents not be displaced or have a hazardous biological agent research facility near their homes. Student organizers and hunger strikers spoke of Columbia’s long history of supporting brutal U.S. imperialism and exploitation, responsible for genocide against millions of Native Americans. One explained it was the profit system that made Columbia not give a rat’s ass about workers and students.

PLP members and friends made several new contacts from Columbia, Hunter and City College. Black and Latino workers eagerly grabbed all 50 copies of CHALLENGE faster than we could keep up. One marcher exclaimed, “Hey, is that CHALLENGE? Give me a copy!” saying that he first encountered PL as a Columbia student participating in the big 1968 strike. We also helped distribute community leaflets exposing the utterly racist nature of Columbia’s actions and as an institution.

The students have four demands: administrative reform, ethnic studies, community involvement in Columbia’s expansion into Harlem and core curriculum. In the 1960s and ’70s, some colleges instituted such reforms after similar protests. While we support the anti-racist actions of the students, such demands won’t change the basic nature of Columbia or of U.S. college education, the essence of which is as racist and pro-war as ever.

There will be another mass protest on December 1. We’re working with other campus student organizers as well as raising these issues in the graduate schools. We’ll also struggle with our friends over the necessity of exposing Columbia and capitalist higher education (with or without ethnic studies) as essentially racist, anti-working class and pro-war.

We must fight for students to accept leadership from the multi-racial masses of workers in Harlem, who have been fighting Columbia’s racist expansion for decades. We in PLP organize for a worker-student alliance based on fighting racism, imperialist war and all other monsters created by capitalism. Our aim is to fight for a communist society based on need, not profits of a few bosses, like the owners of Columbia.

Back Jena 6 in Union and in Boeing, Subcontractor Plants

SEATTLE, WA — “It has to be brought to light,” insisted a white Boeing machinist as more than a dozen union members — black, Latin and white — prepared an anti-racist resolution to support the Jena 6. “I was just talking with my son about the way high schools are organized. Racism is everywhere.” The resolution now sits in the union’s executive board, but the struggle continues on the shop floor.

Before we entered the meeting, we knew we were in for a fight. We were not disappointed!

One low-level official described how he would shake his head at the roadblocks the union mis-leaders put up anytime our left-led, rank-and-file group raised racism. (He actively supported anti-racists during the battle to get the union to participate in last year’s May Day March calling for international unity.) “How can you run an organization like that!” he bemoaned.

Even as the resolution was tabled until next month’s meeting, debates broke out throughout the hall and in the corridors outside. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but what has this to do with the union?” asked one. We replied that anti-racism was crucial to answering the economic and political attacks on our members, like racist subcontracting. We pointed to the parts of the resolution calling for anti-racist, multi-racial solidarity in the upcoming contract struggle. The question of the class necessity of anti-racism was front and center at this overwhelmingly white union meeting.

We wanted to do more than engage in this useful debate. We planned beforehand to use this resolution to jump-start struggle on the shop floor. Jena 6 defense collections are now being taken in a number of buildings.

These “shop-floor” collections — in alliance with the collections taken among non-union subcontractor workers — can lead the way. There are many more black and Latin workers in the plants than at union meetings. Still more black and Latin workers suffer super-exploitation at the hand of vicious subcontractors.

CHALLENGE sales and mailings have increased modestly, spreading the revolutionary politics necessary to marshal this multi-racial force. We’re mobilizing to raise this resolution at various other meetings and conferences during the next month. We can measure the lasting value of this battle through the expansion and consolidation of our CHALLENGE networks here and among the subcontractors. Stay tuned!

Mass Outrage vs. Noose Hanging, Racist Columbia U.

NEW YORK CITY, October 10 — Mimicking the racism in Jena, Louisiana, racists hung a noose symbolizing lynching on the door of a black faculty member, Madonna G. Constantine, at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Today, a couple hundred students, faculty and members of the Harlem community demonstrated on the steps of Teachers College to protest this racist act. After several speeches, the demonstration turned into a march around the campus that culminated in a forum of about 600 inside the college. PLP’ers joined the march, sold CHALLENGES and distributed leaflets. Many of the marchers carried signs linking the racism of this incident to that of the attack on the Jena Six.

Although students and professors were outraged and surprised at this noose hanging, there should be no surprise. This incident followed anti-Arab graffiti found in Columbia’s SIPA building, stating that “AMERICA is for WHITE EUROPEANS!” That was swept under the rug. Since the noose hanging, anti-Semitic graffiti was found in a university bathroom. President Lee Bollinger’s e-mail about it said we should just ignore such racist terror. But the noose incident was too blatant to ignore.

Columbia has a long racist history. Its faculty included W. H. Sheldon, who “theorized” that “Negro intelligence . . . [comes to a] standstill at about the 10th year,” and that “Mexican intelligence” stops at age 12. It also included Henry Garrett, who wrote pro-segregation literature for the White Citizens Councils in the South. During the Vietnam War, Columbia’s racist weapons research helped slaughter Indochinese peasants. It seized part of a park in a black working-class neighborhood to build a gym for Columbia students. Current Columbia child psychiatrist Gail Wasserman carried out a variety of racist “violence-in-the-genes” research on black and Latin youth to “predict anti-social behavior.”

Today, Columbia pushes its racist eminent domain expansion into Harlem. It sponsors anti-Arab speakers, including David Horowitz, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Chesler, and Ibn Warraq as part of their so-called “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week.” It used the invitation to Iran’s president to provoke blatant anti-Muslim racism. The latest string of hate crimes simply flows from this racist history.

Meanwhile, the university tries to diffuse anti-racist action. It hides other racist incidents, requires multicultural “sensitivity” training and pushes “dialogue” to bury united militant action.

“White skin privilege” is pushed on white students while black and Latino students are saturated with divisive identity politics. Racism is portrayed as simply an “aberration” that can be “undone” if people are just “educated” enough. There’s no mention of racism being a means to class exploitation. Racism is a major weapon against the whole working class.

Columbia’s divisive propaganda is reflected in one discussion of the noose hanging when an Arab student complained about a lack of concern regarding anti-Arab racism. A black student countered that “foreigners” just don’t “get it” — “we must address anti-black white racism first and deal with all the rest later.” But this simply hands power to the same racists who hung the noose in Teachers College. The bosses love nothing more than working-class people fighting amongst themselves and focusing on their supposed “differences” instead of uniting to smash their common oppressor. Historically black workers and students have been in the forefront of fighting racism that has won victories for the entire working class.

Racism can’t be ignored, reformed or discussed away. Columbia students need multi-racial unity and mass militant action to answer these racist scum, not more talking and internal division.

The capitalist system that creates a culture like the noose incidents is the same one dropping cluster bombs on Iraqi children and gunning down immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border. Racism is the tool of a system that is an enemy to all workers, students, teachers and soldiers. Uniting to end this blood-drenched profit system and its imperialist wars through workers power — communism — will mean the bosses’ days are numbered.