New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ move to roust homeless people from the subways while slashing $615 million from services for their care is a declaration of state terror against the working class. Each time ex-cop Adams dons his New York Police Department (NYPD) gear to announce another new policy, he exposes his allegiance to the same racist system that used police to brutalize him as a Black teenager in the 1970s, dropped a bomb on Black workers in Philadelphia in the ‘80s, and has assaulted countless Black workers and youth in the decades since. CHALLENGE has repeatedly pointed out that liberal capitalist bosses and their stooges are the greatest dangers to the international working class. Given the current wave of identity politics, class traitors like Adams may be the most dangerous of all.
In response to a recent surge of antiracist protests against global police terror and to reformist calls to “Defund the Police,” the capitalist rulers are using Black mayors like Adams, Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, and Newark's Ras Baraka to whip workers back in line. Like U.S. President Joe Biden, Lightfoot has called for more funding for the cops. In his first budget, Adams cut most city departments by three percent but maintained funding for New York’s police and promised to “redeploy” more cops on the street. He also promised to reinstate the plainclothes units that were dissolved in 2020 after instigating “a disproportionate number” of fatal police shootings in Black and Latin neighborhoods (New York Times, 6/15). One of the units’ members was the racist monster Daniel Pantaleo, who murdered Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014.
Adams’ role is to turn militant fighters into passive voters, to funnel rebellious Black and Latin youth into the school-to-prison pipeline, and to help build a multicultural patriotic movement for the bosses’ next big war. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) says that multiracial faces in high places are a dead end for our class! To improve workers’ lives and build a society without racism, sexism, or imperialist slaughter, we must organize a mass communist movement through antiracist class struggle. The only solution is a communist revolution!
Liberal fascism rises with inter-imperialist rivalry
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a clear sign of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. As the crisis of capitalism deepens and China, Russia, and the U.S. head closer to global conflict, the U.S. bosses know they must build fascism to coerce workers into following their plans for war.
In their drive to build a multiracial imperialist machine, the Big finance capital Fascists use both the carrot and the stick. The carrot is the myth that a “democratic” capitalist system has workers’ best interests at heart, even if certain sections of the working class must be sacrificed along the way. The stick—the criminal injustice system, the bosses’ kkkops and kkkourts—works to criminalize Black, Latin, and immigrant workers and youth. In places like Eric Adams’ New York, it’s also used to bludgeon the homeless.
Unfortunately, many workers have been won to an anti-working class perspective and support these attacks. They have failed to learn history’s lesson: Fascist policies that target the most vulnerable and super-exploited among us are ultimately used against the entire working class. In fact, the biggest criminals—by far—are the capitalist bosses. The most dangerous gangs are the cops, who kill more than one thousand workers each year (Washington Post, 3/22).
 Once a cop, always a cop
Upon declaring his candidacy for mayor, Adams became the darling of the liberal bosses, with an endorsement from billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and donations from the Rockefeller family and major landlords and real estate developers (NYT, 11/2/21). Three weeks after he was sworn in, Adams seized on a relatively minor rise in street crime to put out his “Blueprint to End Gun Violence.” More than 230 leaders of the Big Fascist camp—including Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, and Tony Utano, president of Transit Workers Union Local 100—were quick to sign a letter of support (nyc.gov, 1/31).
Designed to stoke fears that divide workers, Adams’ blueprint calls for rolling back bail reforms and allowing judges to determine a defendant’s “dangerousness” in deciding whether to grant bail. Given the racism that infects the court system, studies say this measure will push thousands of Black youth through the prison doors (Slate, 1/28). The mayor’s plan also calls for expanding the use of fascist surveillance technology, including facial recognition software - a racist tool that consistently generates disproportionate numbers of false positives for Black workers, and particularly for Black women (MIT Technology Review, December 2020).
Last year, when disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used the Covid-19 pandemic to terrorize the homeless, the Urban Justice Center pointed out: "The rules are not about 'safeguarding public health' and ensuring that essential workers are 'able to maintain social distancing,' but rather are about permanently excluding homeless persons from the subway system" (Gothamist, 2/21). In a city notorious for its lack of affordable housing or safe shelters, the liberal bosses are endorsing Adams’ use of health care workers to crack down on homeless workers, most of whom are Black. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, “the large majority of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers are people living with mental illness or other severe health problems.” Adams is taking a page from the German Nazis, who targeted workers with mental and physical illnesses for sterilization and extermination.
Only communist revolution will keep us safe
In the summer of 2020, Progressive Labor Party proudly joined the millions of workers who protested the police lynching of George Floyd. As we fought side by side with many friends, we also struggled with them to see the limits of reforms under capitalism. Body cameras and “redeployments” won’t put an end to racist police terror. The bosses need police terror to intimidate and divide the working class and hold on to state power. Racist terror will end only when the working class seizes state power through communist revolution and creates a society without money or profits. Only then can we do away with cops and their murderous brutality, once and for all.  
In Road to Life, A.S. Makarenko documents how the Soviet working class set up schools for homeless students who’d joined gangs. The book shows how through collective struggle, these young workers were developed into leaders of the Soviet Union. This is just one example of what workers can accomplish after taking state power. Building the Party through all of our struggles will bring us closer to that reality.