As the Joe Biden administration jails thousands of immigrant children and plans to warehouse tens of thousands more in tent camps and army bases, the liberal bosses’ hypocrisy and blatant inhumanity is on full display. Last fall, millions of voters were misled into voting for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The candidates vowed to stop Donald Trump’s vicious war on immigrants and shed crocodile tears for the “kids in cages”—but that was then. As hundreds of thousands of workers flee capitalist-inspired violence and poverty in Central America, Biden’s Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, vowed to charge more of them with felonies—for the “crime” of crossing the bosses’ borders (Washington Times, 4/6). Mayorkas hailed the “noble mission” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a notorious nest of white nationalists, card-carrying Nazis, child abusers, and sexual predators (vice.com, 1/6/20; Los Angeles Times, 10/1/20). Then he promised to fill “gaps” in Trump’s pathetic border wall (New York Post, 4/6).
The next time anyone tells you that Democratic Party liberals are “lesser evils” next to gutter racists like Trump, don’t believe them. Evil, yes—lesser, no! All capitalist politicians—from Biden to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) —are loyal, first and last, to a profit system that feeds on racism, sexism, and inter-imperialist war.
Hidden behind the “border crisis” headlines is another story with vast implications for the working class. Finance capital, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, is trying desperately to maintain control over their imperialist “backyard,” Latin America and the Caribbean. But as they jockey for position in advance of the next global conflict, the U.S. bosses’ chief rivals, China and Russia, have other ideas.
Borders exist to divide up profits among different groups of capitalists. But the bosses themselves cross these artificial lines all the time to plunder resources, exploit sweatshop labor, and dodge restrictions on poisoning the environment. They also use borders as essential tools to divide the working class and build patriotism for war.
Under communism, borders will be relics of the past. The workers of the world have one and the same class interest: to smash the bosses with communist revolution, and to create a society run by and for the people who create all value: the international working class.
Liberals are still the main danger
When it came to criminalizing immigrants, Trump followed squarely in the footsteps of Democrats Bill Clinton and Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama. As a U.S. senator during Clinton’s regime and then as Obama’s vice president, Biden actively supported his predecessors’ racist policies. Even so, the “socialist” Ocasio-Cortez continues to defend “lesser-evil” Biden: “What is happening here is not the same as what happened during the Trump administration where they took babies out of the arms of mothers and deported their families and permanently traumatized these children” (thehill.com, 4/1). In other words, AOC is okay with the traumatization of children as long as her fellow Democrats are running the show.
In March, U.S. border kkkops apprehended more than 171,000 migrant workers and children trying to cross the border from Mexico, the highest monthly total in 20 years (Reuters, 4/2). That mind-numbing number is a product of sheer desperation. As Mexican journalist Leon Krauze wrote, “People from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador don’t migrate in search of a better life. They are looking for a shot at survival” (Washington Post, 3/24).
The Biden administration needs to push back on migration from Mexico and Central America because their concentration camps are overflowing. After four years of Trump, there’s a backlog of 1.3 million pending asylum cases (Washington Post, 3/31). “Temporary shelters” include the Fairplex in Pomona, California, the site of an internment camp for Japanese workers during World War II (Daily Bulletin, August, 2016). In announcing the Fairplex opening, Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor under Obama and now chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, seemed proud to be incarcerating children who’d fled mass devastation from summer hurricanes, fascist cops, murderous drug cartels, and starvation caused by 200 years of U.S. domination (Los Angeles Times, 4/9; see box).
Jim Crow Joe and Top Cop Kamala are pushing the utterly racist lie that the recent surge of migration is mainly the result of a failure by Mexico and Guatemala to secure their borders. Biden is conveniently silent about the U.S.-engineered coup in Honduras in 2009, when he and Obama were in charge—or about the horrific violence that ensued and forced workers to flee to the U.S. In Biden’s latest budget draft, he is asking for an insulting $861 million—less than $20 per person--to “fix” the problems in Central America. He wants half again as much, around $1.2 billion, for high-tech border security (New York Times, 4/9).
Covid-19 vaccine imperialism
As the U.S. empire continues to falter, capitalist bosses in Latin America have welcomed a rising tide of Chinese and Russian influence. As Argentina’s powerful Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner mused: “Who would have guessed that…the only vaccines we’d receive are Russian and Chinese?” Victor Jeifets, a professor at the School of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University, boasted: “If you’re in trouble [Russia] is here to help you…We have the ability, we have the technology. The same goes for China” (Christian Science Monitor, 4/2).
China’s merchandise trade with Latin America has soared from $17 billion in 2002 to $315 billion in 2019. “Reuters reports that, if Mexico were removed from calculations, China is now Latin America’s biggest trading partner” (Newsweek, 3/29). Nineteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will be using a new $3 billion container port in Freeport in the Bahamas, part of China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure project (Newsweek, 3/29). Biden has countered by forcing Mexico, the country with the world’s third-highest Covid-19 death toll, to send troops to stop immigrants at the Guatemala border in exchange for a measly 2.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine (NYT, 3/18; CHALLENGE, 4/2).
Capitalism, no matter which national flavor it comes packaged in, will never be able to solve the problems of war, mass migration, economic instability, or public health disaster. Why not? Because the capitalist system itself lies at the root of all these ills. A communist revolution will unleash the enormous power and creativity of the world’s working class to meet and overcome all challenges to humanity. The aim of Progressive Labor Party is to organize millions to make that revolution by smashing the racist, fascist warmakers who now hold our class in bondage.
*****
SIDEBAR:
U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean and Latin America
With the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, U.S. rulers told European rivals to stay out of “their” hemisphere.
U.S. bosses have a long and sordid history of military intervention, installation of puppet governments, and economic extortion. The seizure of Panama to build and guard the Panama Canal, the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala, the multiple invasions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the 1980s backing of fascist death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua--these are just a few examples of the blood on these criminals’ hands.
The U.S. has been policing and destabilizing Latin America and the Caribbean for almost 200 years. Immigration from these countries is in no small part due to the devastation that has followed. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a “good” imperialist. Bosses from Russia and China are governed by the same laws of capitalism as those in the U.S. They are all driven to exploit resources and labor and to expand their markets. Workers should never betray our class interests by allying with any imperialist.
CHICAGO, April 13—Antiracist mass struggle is heating up across the city in the wake of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) racist murder of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) called for communist revolution as the solution to racist state terror that is essential to capitalism.
Adam was a student and resident of Little Village, a west side neighborhood that is home to mainly Latin workers. On March 29, allegedly responding to gunfire, the racist attack dogs of CPD chased Adam and another young person into an alley near a school where they cornered Adam and shot him in the chest.
It was when the morgue called to identify Adam’s body two days later that Elizabeth Toledo was made aware of her son’s death. In a sick throwback to the dashboard camera cover-up of Black teen LaQuan McDonald’s racist murder in 2014, CPD and the city bosses, fronted by racist, liberal wolf in sheep’s clothing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, have held off on the release of the killer kkkop’s body-cam footage. They know they are sitting on a ticking time bomb of working class rage.
PLP calls on our working class sisters and brothers to keep rebelling against this racist capitalist system that killed Adam just as it kills countless other workers and youth every day. We invite workers everywhere to take the next step: joining our mass international Party in order to crush capitalism and its endless misery, inequality, and war.
Take the streets for Adam
A few days after Adam’s murder, on April 5, close to 200 protesters, mostly young people, gathered for a community vigil in Little Village in his honor. Many workers and friends of Adam took to the mic, voicing their disgust for the racist murder of a child by the KKK-in-blue.
A PL’er took the opportunity to share communist politics, exposing the role of the police under capitalism for being assassins and terrorists in a rousing bullhorn speech. We ran out of CHALLENGE newspapers and 200 bilingual leaflets, which explained that only communist revolution can rid society of killer racist cops, and build a world where children and all workers flourish, achieving our full potential.
Many agreed that no one is safe under this bloody capitalist dictatorship. As history has shown, we cannot depend on the courts for justice. As long as capitalism exists, the cops will always be used as tools for social control and repression, especially to attack Black and Latin workers.
A couple of “community groups” funded by the police tried to take over the leadership of this struggle. These non-profit groups are used to try and keep a lid on workers’ anger, and to mislead workers into dead-end movements like electoral politics. It’s the Party’s role to expose these misleaders and build unity with the rank and file against our common class enemies and their agents.
A young Latin worker, who called out the non-profits, approached a PL’er and said he had taught him at an after-school program when he was 12 years old. This shows how important our relationships are, and what we do really counts! We plan to follow up with him.
After the more pacifist vigil, community members upped the ante with a bold march through the neighborhood. Residents pumped their fists in the air as we shouted militant chants like “CPD, KKK! How many kids did you kill today?!” The kkkops trying to corral the march were quickly shouted down and forced to retreat. We ended blocking a busy intersection, where working-class Black and Latin youth made anti-racist speeches and openly attacked both liberal misleaders like Lightfoot as well as the police and the capitalist state.
Caravan held back by nationalism, identity politics
A few days later, on April 9, dozens of young workers and students gathered in North Lawndale, another west side neighborhood that is home to majority Black workers. It is the same neighborhood where workers rebelled after CPD murdered 15-year old Black teen Steven Rosenthal in 2018. After a spirited rally in which PL’ers and other workers condemned this racist system, there was a car procession through mainly working-class neighborhoods, ending up downtown.
While downtown, protesters got out of their cars and blocked another intersection. Some protesters called for Black, Latin and Asian unity as a response to racism. Others carried nationalist Black and Mexican flags. These nationalist politics stem from the identity politics pushed in many boss-led or boss-influenced organizations. These ideas will not liberate the working class or end racist police murder.
Identity politics calls for workers to rally around more Black and Latin leaders—to manage the bosses’ state. But in Chicago, a very segregated, racist city, we have a Black mayor and a Black police chief, and racist police killings have not stopped.
As communists, we build the fight for international, multiracial working-class unity as the antidote to the bosses’ racist divisions and state violence. Capitalism needs racism, nationalism, and sexism in order to exist—as workers we need to reject all of these with egalitarian communist politics!
Workers deserve a communist world
The murder of Adam Toledo is connected to the racist murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright. It is connected to the mounting death toll of the pandemic, and the endless drone attacks against workers in other countries. All are the deadly reality of capitalism.
The justice we seek cannot and will not be found as long as capitalism exists! Let’s build the communist world we all need and deserve!
*****
SIDEBAR
Why do kkkops kill?
Legalized killings and mass imprisonment are age-old capitalist tools to control the working class. The first modern police force in what is now the United States, beginning in South Carolina in 1704, was the slave patrol. These forces hunted down and punished runaway and “defiant” enslaved workers; they were a form of organized terror to deter revolts that might threaten plantation profits.
To this day, state-sanctioned racist terror against Black workers and youth is an indispensable weapon for the capitalist class. Anti-Black racism is at the foundation of the racist treatment and division of all workers. Therefore, it is in the principled interest of all workers to unite against the capitalist state.
Under capitalism, the “state”—including all levels of government, the so-called justice system, the police, the military, the schools, and the media—is an instrument of ruling-class oppression and violence against the working class. Past communist leader Vladimir Lenin wrote in State and Revolution, “The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.”
We didn’t negotiate the end of slavery and we won’t negotiate our way out of capitalism. From slave patrols to the kkkops, the bosses’ state is the sworn enemy of the working class. Smash the capitalist state!
The world under capitalism is failing and there are two emerging options—the bosses’ option is fascism. Fascism through increased surveillance and police, war over profits and power, destruction of health and education systems, and other crimes against us. Covid-19 has laid bare the lethal racist inequalities of the profit system. From the United States to Africa, from Latin America to South Asia, workers everywhere are suffering unnatural deaths from the disease of capitalism. The choice between capitalist decay and an international communist future has never been clearer.
Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine the future of society. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into chronic unemployment and poverty. It will smash the racism and sexism that drag down all workers. It will eliminate the racist cops who break our strikes and kill our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will put an end to the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.
A Communist World
Here is our vision for a communist world:
• A society run by workers and for workers. The working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.
• Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the blood-sucking bosses who steal the value of our labor through wage slavery.
• Multiracial unity with women and men workers and an end to the racism and sexism that divides the working class. Racism and sexism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses use them to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide.
• Elimination of all national borders, artificial lines drawn by the bosses to make even more profits from workers called “foreigners.” Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor—and to war with other imperialists in competition for more profit. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.
This is the world PLP has fought for from our start, more than 50 years ago. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle—for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.
Our vision for communism can be realized only with millions of workers and youth, with people just like you. Our fight is sparked by class anger against the bloody bosses, kkkops, and all those who serve capitalism. But what sustains our communist movement is our working-class love—for industrial and domestic workers, for soldiers and students. United as one class, freed from exploitation and artificial borders, the working class can build a new world from the ashes of the old.
May Day is your chance to join Progressive Labor Party. Take the leap. And when you do, you will be joining hands with billions of fighters past, present, and future—with a historic movement of working-class struggle. The future belongs to us, but only if we dare to fight for it. The fight for communism can’t stop, won’t stop because workers can, workers did, workers will continue to fight back!
Long live communism! Power to the workers!
On April 11, 20-year-old Black worker Daunte Wright became the latest victim of the murderous system of capitalism. Kimberly A. Potter, a thug in blue, murdered Duante in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota during a traffic stop, a routine harassment much of our class goes through daily.
This murder-by-cop took place just ten miles from Minneapolis where the trial over kkkop Derek Chauvin, who murdered Black worker George Floyd last May, is ongoing. This deadly profit system can’t help but terrorize. It’s not a flaw; it’s the fundamentals of capitalism. A system that terrorizes our class does not deserve to breathe.
Potter is a murderer
Reminiscent of the murder of Oscar Grant in an Oakland subway, kkkkop Potter —a 26-year veteran of the police department—claimed she thought she was firing a taser instead of gun. It was a mistake, says the murderer. Daunte was left to die in the street, being denied potentially life-saving treatment. After he died, his body was left exposed for up to six hours. Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter and the state gets off scot-free.
These capitalist-incited murders have long been commonplace. The biggest job for our Party and our class is to resist. The fight against every aspect of this blood-soaked capitalist system will continue until workers take state power under Progressive Labor Party’s red flag of revolutionary communism!
Workers in Minnesota have given us recent examples of how we must respond to every instance of kkkop violence towards our class. The resistance movements after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Eric Gardner, Dreasjon Reed, Trayvon Martin, and many others, have taught us that these capitalist lackeys will not stop their primary job of terrorizing workers and protecting the profit system. The response to these atrocities shows our class is resilient, purposed, and has the potential power to change the world.
Revolt against racism
The same day Wright’s life was stolen, workers revolted. As usual, militarized kkkop forces met them head on. The multiracial crowds of mostly young workers have not backed down. They are providing a lesson for us all about what it means to go against the bosses’ state (see box, page 1).
As CHALLENGE goes to press, workers in Brooklyn Center continue to confront these murderers on the third night of protests. They face the threat of arrest and attacks with chemical weapons. Chants of “if we don’t get no justice, they don’t get no peace” continue to ring out.
The interconnection of racist terror is deep; Duante’s teacher was George Floyd’s girlfriend. This is reminiscent of how Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton’s mother babysat Emmett Till, a 14-year-old lynched in Mississippi in 1955. Our class continues to be shown there is no justice or peace under capitalism (see page 1).
As we approach May Day, the international workers’ holiday, we know that these fightbacks must continue. We are learning how to defeat all the divisions that capitalism breeds: racism, all forms of sexism, nationalism, and more.
Only through uniting as one class, under one mass international PLP, will we be victorious in strangling capitalism and breathing life into communism.
For Duante, join the fight.
- Information
Fight racist exclusion from federal aid, build worker solidarity
- Information
- 16 April 2021 246 hits
NEW YORK CITY—The Covid-19 stimulus packages have racistly forsaken many members of our class. While millionaires and billionaires harvested during this pandemic, millions of people across the country, undocumented immigrant workers, and those who have been released from jails, are excluded from federal aid.
About 40,000 New Yorkers recently released from incarceration or immigrant detention and 500,000 undocumented immigrant workers are excluded, “despite paying $140 million annually in unemployment taxes” fundexcludedworkers.org). They have not been able to pay rent, buy meals or meet basic needs, in order to survive in a society and a government that does not care about workers in general and especially the undocumented workers who have been essential during this pandemic.
A coalition, under the slogan of “Essential and Excluded,” is made up of various community organizations and others who have stood in solidarity with our cause of raising more than $3 billion from the state government for the excluded. Many activities have been carried out, meetings by zoom, to plan all the actions that have been done to achieve that objective.
There have been several protests at the homes and offices of politicians including the governor's house. On March 5, workers took over two bridges and a hunger strike has been planned that started on March 16.
As part of Progressive Labor Party’s outlook of being involved in activities and struggles of community organizations, our PLP club has actively participated in these actions, leading the protests, shouting loudly and in a very militant way our slogans:
The workers united will never be defeated!
The workers’
fight has no borders!
This fist is seen, the workers at power!
During this period, we have distributed hundreds of our newspaper DESAFÍO, which have been received with gratitude by workers and the community who have participated in this campaign.
Capitalism will never solve the needs of the working class and our communities. Only the unity of all the workers of the world around a mass party, the Progressive Labor Party, will be able to make the revolution for Communism, where we will work to satisfy our needs and the needs of the community.
We must continue to work and fight within these organizations to broaden our base leading the line of our party. Communism is the future of humanity. Join us to massively grow our party, to wage the revolution for communism.
