The cost of silence in face of genocide
At a local United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union meeting, I asked the district representative a basic question: Our retirement money, labor from teaching kids, is being invested into killing kids. TRS [pension system] holds over $112 million in Israeli securities. As an education worker, I don’t want our savings to go towards the genocide of kids and their families. In these 400+ days, what has the UFT done?
This District Rep was conveniently chatting with other union members when it was time for him to respond. Eventually, he told me to call the pension hotline if I wanted to get information because he doesn’t know. He didn’t fail to mention that I might be wrong about “those numbers.”
I cut off the gaslighting union mouthpiece by saying, “Your answer would’ve made sense if I was asking about my own individual fund. I am asking as a collective, for everyone, what is the union’s response to our pension money being invested in genocide?”
He then attempted to discredit me, and the union meeting returned to its bureaucratic tedium as if there wasn’t a Palestinian holocaust happening. I was seething inside, not at the union misleader—he was doing his job of misdirecting the working class—but at my co-workers who mostly stayed silent. To my co-workers’ credit, two spoke up to revoice me. The District Rep eventually said, “He’ll find out information.”
The next day, however, my co-teacher initiated a conversation. “What you said at that meeting, I didn’t know that. You’re saying our money is going to kill kids? How is that even possible?”
The TRS invests in Israeli weapons manufacturers and cyber systems for the Israeli Occupation Forces. Why? The U.S. keeps Israel alive because that’s their proxy for U.S. power in the Middle East. The U.S.’s position as a global superpower is shaky in the face of its rivals China and Russia. It’s always been about imperialist power, not workers’, students’, soldiers’ lives.
I need to remember the silence and blatant denial of reality I witnessed at the union meeting is a feature of increasing fascism, which is the capitalist system decaying. Still, let’s continue to voice the truth and find the moments in our daily lives to jolt class consciousness.
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Workers united will never be defeated
We held a press conference in the city hall park to launch our campaign for the Unemployment Bridge law. Around 300 people attended, representing a coalition of community organizations and workers’ unions that support our cause. The proposed law would establish a permanent fund to provide unemployment benefits to undocumented workers, self-employed individuals, and formerly incarcerated people, similar to the benefits available to workers with Social Security numbers.
Several supporting politicians attended the event, along with members of our Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Our members energetically chanted slogans including ‘United Workers will never be sold out,’ ‘This fist is seen,’ ‘Workers in power,’ and ‘From North to South, from East to West, we will win this fight no matter the cost.’ We distributed dozens copies of our Desafío newspaper and made a new contact at the event.
Our club members understand that growing our party requires active involvement in community organizations, workplaces, churches, and other social spaces. We are committed to this outreach while promoting our party’s platform at every meeting and protest. We believe that building a strong movement of communists is essential for our working class to achieve revolution and gain political power.
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Conference inspires student to organize!
Early this month, I had the opportunity to join my comrades in the yearly Progressive Labor Party college conference. This past year has been a great time to be a communist college student and it was great to hear from people on other campuses. While our struggles are all the same, they unfold so differently on different campuses. Hearing from everyone showed me what I could be doing on my campus better.
A comrade in attendance shared that she used to campaign for the Democratic Party which resonated with me because I had a lot of faith in Democrats when I was younger until I saw their lies unfold in the years after the 2020 election. It was great to see this as I have been struggling with friends and family who still have faith in Democrats. Seeing this comrade join the Party at the end of the conference made me ready to keep struggling with my family no matter how frustrating it may get.
My group also discussed the rise in bigoted behavior from frantic liberals in the wake of their beloved genocider and KKKop Kamala Harris losing the election. As a nonbinary person, a lot of people I have talked to have shown transphobic behavior to me that I would only have expected from a conservative, things like calling me privileged as a man when I have made it known that I am not a man at all! In addition to this, anti Latin and anti Arab hate have gone rampant in liberal online spaces as liberals express their disdain for these groups “not voting hard enough” for them.
This transactional view on organizing is going to continue if we don’t keep struggling with the people around us. On a brighter note, as soon as I came back home to LA I started organizing with the pro palestinian movement at my college taking the advice of some comrades from New York and leaving Challenge at my library. Some of the people I met even recognized the paper from when I had left it in the library in the past. There is still a lot of work to be done over here but I feel the most prepared and inspired to get it done than I ever have as a student.
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Using CHALLENGE in the classroom
The day after the U.S. presidential election, I went into my high school classes ready to give my students a real alternative to the misery this capitalist system has to offer. The week before I shared a short excerpt from a New York Times article about the U.S. military preparations for war with China with them. One line from the article that really stood out to students said, “But no matter who wins in November, the United States will continue to prepare for war with China.” My students had a lot of questions and insights about it. Some even came to the conclusion that no matter who gets elected, what is in store for them is the possibility of world war.
So when I distributed CHALLENGE newspapers in my classes and we read from the article Voting: The Big Con, many students were receptive to what the article had to say. One student broke it down really well. He explained that the U.S. as all other countries around the world are capitalist.
Therefore the rich only care about making themselves richer. Elections don’t matter because the candidates are just puppets of the rich. We had great discussions that day and I emphasized the importance of organizing and fighting back against all capitalist attacks.
This discussion gave me the motivation to invite students to an upcoming Progressive Labor Party study group, and three of them came! A few others let me know that they were unable to make this one but want to attend the next one. Being bold with a communist alternative is the only way forward. I look forward to continuing the struggle to strengthen the fist that will one day smash this horrific system.
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In a lose-lose scam, what’s the way out?
The CHALLENGE post-election editorial (Nov. 27 issue) begins, “In a lose-lose election for workers, Donald Trump’s victory marks the toxic divisions within the U.S. working class...” The editorial mostly emphasizes the negatives.
In the second half of the editorial, the view becomes more all-round: “We must not lose sight that millions of workers who voted for Trump did so out of their hatred for the horrors of capitalism.”
This is our opening! More people see that capitalist democracy does not give us any good choices. This system of voting for one of their candidates cannot solve our problems, will not construct an economy of common prosperity, and cannot live at peace with the rest of the world.
So what’s the way out? We can pose this question to more people and spell out the answer: revolution and the communist path!
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