Oppose fascist anti-masking laws

Fascist state campaigns to pass laws to penalize people for wearing masks when “committing a crime” are spreading from the initial efforts in New York, North Carolina, and other states (CHALLENGE, 10/16). Here in Maryland, the Zionists in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are leading the charge with the support of Black politicians and organizations (Jewish Insider, 2/16). The ADL claims that Jewish students are being harassed by masked pro-Palestinian students based on their lie that anti-semitism is widespread on U.S. campuses. The bigger lie -- that opposing genocide in Gaza by the Israeli state is antisemitism -- has been raised once again in the halls of the Maryland General Assembly. This is the state where a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teacher and several others have been disciplined for social media posts (CHALLENGE, 2/16/24) while allowing Zionist narratives to be pushed uncritically in schools. PLP is fighting this anti-masking bill, gathering support from students at the University of Maryland who themselves have protested martial law in the Philippines and genocide in Gaza and recognize the dangers of facial recognition and drone surveillance.  

The bill is being sponsored by several well-known Zionist politicians but also by Black delegates from Prince George’s County (Karen Toles and Adrian Boafo).  These delegates hail from the same area represented by Glenn Ivey, a Black politician who is now in the U.S. House of Representatives and received contributions of $7 million dollars from AIPAC and refused to criticize Israel’s genocide when confronted by protestors. It appears these local delegates are following in his footsteps. The NAACP and Urban League are supporting this legislation despite the fact that it will lead to racial profiling in largely Black areas such as Baltimore and Prince George’s County. By comparing the masking of protestors against genocide with the masks and hoods worn by the KKK and the Proud Boys, these misleaders are helping lead Black students and workers to  jails and prisons. This is like the Nazi collaborators in Germany’s Jewish Councils (the Judenrat), collaborators with the Nazis that led masses of Jews to the gas chambers in exchange for helping an elite few escape to Palestine and other destinations.

Other opposition is coming from disability justice groups who support masking for both health and political reasons and from groups opposing Maryland’s investment in Israeli businesses. As CHALLENGE has pointed out before, masking to protect against airborne viruses and poor air quality needs to be expanded, not discouraged, and the public health concerns are important as flu, COVID variants, and possibly bird flu circulate and sicken our friends and coworkers. Testimony continues in Annapolis and the struggle to stop this legislation will continue. 
*****

Liberal misleaders, fascists show their unity 

In the recent Professional Staff Congress contract struggle, the liberal and fake leftist faculty have shown their true colors across CUNY by lining up behind the PSC misleadership’s claims that our new bogus wage-cut contract is a “victory.” At one campus, amazingly, a fake leftist PSC officer co-hosted a local chapter meeting defending the new contract — alongside the rightwing leadership, which includes rabid Zionists. All in the name of “civility,” they’d argue – because after all, we’re all in the same boat and must work together!

This chapter meeting was an illustration of the essential unity of liberal misleaders and fascists, especially when contrasted against years of student and Progressive Labor Party-led antiracist fightbacks. This unity is evident in the outright hysterical lies and ongoing lawsuits from the fascists on one hand, to the fake left’s typical redbaiting claims of indoctrinating students, exaggerating facts, their history of cooperation with the administration, and blaming PL’ers for provoking Zionist attacks. 

When the fake leftists rejected PL’ers calling for unity against Zionist attacks, they suggested PL’ers turn themselves in to campus police and “confess” that we, not the inspirational mainly women Muslim students organizing antiracist struggle - for the very first time - were the leading force behind a struggle. And by magic, the Zionists would stop their harassment! In a later struggle when campus police beat and arrested one of our students, mass protests and fightback rocked the campus. The absent fake left audaciously spoke on behalf of the struggle to the PSC’s newspaper, Clarion, about their mildly worded petition.

While every struggle has its weaknesses, a fatal weakness is forgetting that the main danger comes from the liberal misleaders. Under fascism, the temptations for opportunism may be greatest. But the working class can’t share boats with liberal misleaders or fascists, and we aren’t civil with them either. This new contract is an opportunity to expose the liberal misleader/ fascist unity once again, and our growing CHALLENGE networks in CUNY are the alternative – as we build our campus student-worker alliances and become the leadership and build the mass PLP the working class deserves!
*****

Intl students speak language of fightback 

The students have come here from all over the world. They are studying to improve their English so they can enroll in college. For several semesters now I have been engaging them to improve their conversational skills, but they also need to work on their reading and writing, grammar, comprehension, the whole works. They are Black and white, Asian and Latin, men and women. Some are straight out of high school, most are a little older, often with children. 

We talk about their journey here. Those from Yemen, Ukraine, Russia or South Sudan come because of war. So sometimes we talk about imperialism. Nationalism comes up, but everyone gets along, including those from Russia and Ukraine. They often help each other to express themselves in English. When I say that rich capitalists (imperialists) promote these wars for profit and workers fight and die, some nod their heads in agreement. But others are angry that their nation or ethnic group is suffering. I should fight a little harder for the idea that workers and soldiers should make war on the warmakers instead of fighting and killing each other.

I asked about Trump and his viciously racist immigration policies. They are here legally but they are now worried, both for themselves and for friends and family. One pulled out a large envelope and raised it up. “These are my papers. I now carry them with me all the time.” I asked if anyone else did that. The reply was that almost everyone now carried their papers with them.

These students have all kinds of skills and potential. Some want to be nurses or teachers, some want to work in computer science or in fashion design. Some want to start a small business. When I ask them about communism, some are quiet but others immediately talk about equality and people sharing. There are very little to no negative comments. I agree with equality and sharing. Then I tell them that communism also means no money or profits and people like them will run the world.
*****

We need a mass party

The 1/15, CHALLENGE’s page 8 article was entitled “How Bolsheviks Built a Mass Revolutionary Party” but in the article a quote from Lenin’s What Is To Be Done is favorably reprinted STATING “that such an organization (i.e. communist party) must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity…”  Is our intention to build a mass communist party or to follow in the Leninist tradition and build a party of professional revolutionaries?

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has abandoned the idea of a cadre party of professional revolutionaries. We oppose the cadre party approach because we disagree sharply with the idea that the working class or its communist party needs “professionals” and experts to take charge. 

Leaders must understand and exemplify communist ideals a little better than the rest of us but those leaders must be workers and students fighting side by side with masses of workers and students in class struggle.  The first commitment of those leaders must be to help develop more and more working-class leaders with the goal of all workers being leaders.  

The Bolshevik reliance on expert and professional leadership eventually moved the revolution in the wrong direction. Both the Soviet Union and China turned to relying on privileged experts to oversee actual industrial production while professional revolutionaries in the leadership of both communist parties, the Soviet CP USSR and the Chinese CPC, made the political decisions.  

In the USSR the threat of Nazi invasion led the leadership of the CP USSR to unite with U.S. and British capitalist bosses to maintain their socialist rule.  In China decades later the CPC leadership moved so strongly in a capitalist direction that a mass movement of students and workers rose up in rebellion to the “capitalist roaders” launching the Cultural Revolution (CR). 

The CR was the beginning of the development of a mass party and their actions fighting for mass workers’ power inspired PLP to rethink our ideas on what a communist led workers’ movement should look like.  Mao, chairman of the CPC was too afraid of losing his position as China’s leader and used the Chinese army to smash the CR rather than take the risk of being pushed aside by the capitalist roaders who ruled alongside him.

How will PLP have a different outcome? The answer will be found in our ability to learn from the successes and mistakes of 150 years of communist struggles.  Some of that has already taken place.

PLP has a new, young and dynamic leadership who will not stop short of winning a mass communist led working class movement to rid the world of capitalist rule once and for all.  We have placed the leadership of the working class in the hands of men and women workers, many of them Black, Latin, immigrant and part of the LGBTQ community.

We also have to be completely honest and open about mistakes our movement has made in the past including mistakes we in PLP have made.

Communism is a living, breathing set of ideas in constant change and development like everything else and we can and will defeat the exploitation and oppression of capitalist rule.
*****