The year 2021 affirmed how workers worldwide are fed up with this diseased system. Capitalism functions on this logic: capitalists profit from exploitation and division, thus mangling or killing us, then use reforms to strangle any rising working-class consciousness. When we recollect that 281 million workers have been infected by Covid-19 and 5 million are dead, we realize just how deadly reforms are for our class. Nothing short of communism will immunize workers and youth from the horrors of this profit system.
U.S. President Joe Biden is giving war-mongering vibes; he signed his intentions for the New Year with a $768 billion military bill, the largest since World War II (NYT, 12/21). Goodbye 20-year war in Afghanistan, hello World War III preparation. As the U.S., China, and Russia bosses prepare to nuke it out, it will be at the expense of the working class. Haven’t workers experienced enough? Could it be that our lives only matter when bosses say they do?
The despicable ruling class pushes for us to go “back to business as usual” (see page 2) while in our schools and jobs, we are getting sick en masse, hospitals are filling up with Covid-19 infected children, evictions are coming, with police enforcement.
If we learned anything from 2021, it is that if one section of our class is under attack, that attack will soon spread to another. That is the way the infectious system of capitalism works. In order to smash Covid-19 and this racist, sexist system for good, we must think and act collectively across borders. That is what Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights for – an international, communist world where the needs of ALL workers are primary.
Awaken ye workers—strike, rise, revolt!
As bosses are demanding  more productivity during the pandemic, workers declared NO MAS (no more) and striked against killer working conditions, turning their workplaces into schools for communism.
Colombia: PL’ers protested beside workers and students in the midst of capitalist crisis and are going underground to build communist fightback. Our class led national strikes on the ground against pandemic death, unemployment, tax hikes that line the pockets of President Iván Duque Márquez. We rebelled against the electoral circuses while pushing workers to fight for a worker-led revolution.
Alabama: Workers in Washington D.C., New York City, and New Jersey responded to PLP’s call to join in solidarity with Black warehouse workers unionizing in Bessemer, AL and made trips to unite with Black and white miners right up the road from the Amazon warehouse.
A delegation of students and City University of New York (CUNY) faculty met with striking Warrior Met Coal miners. Since April of last year, miners have been striking for higher wages, benefits and time off after the company broke off negotiations with their local union. One of Warrior Met Coal’s owners is Black Rock, a major investor in ICE detention centers and an honored guest at a CUNY college event.  Same enemy, same fight! Students traveled down and learned from their efforts, building confidence in workers ability to  feed and care for each other in the midst of struggle (see page 8).
New York City: CUNY students and faculty members marched to remove the Klan in Blue from John Jay college and the carceral state altogether.
 After the assassination then-president Jovenel Moise PL’ers in Brooklyn showed solidarity with workers in Haiti and the raging issues of mass unemployment, hunger, need for clean water, decent housing, medical care and education on the island.
Haiti: After another devastating earthquake, PL’ers led mutual aid efforts with food, water, surveying of damage and an exchange of communist ideas.
Chicago: 2,000 workers protested against Chicago’s Democratic and Black leadership led by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and State Attorney Kim Foxx for their hand in the police murder of 13-year-old Adam Toledo and state terror against Black and Latin workers.
Thousands of health care workers, majority of them Black and Latin women, in Cook County striked against racist service cuts and hospital closings.
Newark, NJ: New and veteran comrades are building with and offering communist leadership to Black and Latin working class familes fighting back against police terror and deteriorating housing conditions. This past summer PL’ers led a summer project with study action groups based around these struggles, calling out the liberal misleadership of Mayor Ras Baraka.
Only solution is communist revolution
Although this is a period of mass death and detriment, it’s been a time of responsibility for communists to maintain ties and unity with workers, lead dialectical study groups, and turn reform fights into schools for communism. Workers CAN run a communist society; we’re putting that potential into practice already but we need to struggle with each other against selfish, individualist ideas that say workers are to blame for our conditions. Nothing will ever change if we rely on capitalist, self serving politicians.
For some, January 2021 was filled with wary relief that U.S. President Biden would steer away from Covid-19, erase student loan debt, and workers, documented or undocumented, would receive some protection and support in the pandemic. Yet, each day we wake, the more capitalist bosses' profit intentions and disarray are exposed (see page 5).
With this realization, paired with collective leadership, workers must continue to rise up and strike for better wages, worker protections and provide a glimpse of how we can turn an impending world war into a class war, a class war for a communist future. A communist world where international, collective thought, building, and strategy is the only way to break this heavy, racist, sexist ball and chain! Join PLP to make it happen!

As the ruling-class owned CDC announced that Covid-19 infections only require a five-day quarantine instead of 10, workers worldwide can see that this decision is profit driven (see editorial, page 2).
Following their conversation with the Delta airlines CEO, the CDC reinforced  that cashing in on overpriced airline seats was more important than the lives of the workers who are now being required to return to work, sick, exhausted, and infectious to their fellow class sisters and brothers.
In the face of exploitation, these humorous memes all shed light on one thing: because of our class position and  the experience of exploitation, our class can see through the lies that ruling class bosses throw at us. With struggle and conversation, these memes can be an opportunity to develop class consciousness and unity among our co-workers, friends, classmates, and family.
To put it bluntly in the words of Malcolm X, truth is on the side of the oppressed.
Follow us on twitter, facebook, and instagram at @PLPchallenge

*****

Letter
CDC: criminal, diseased, capitalist
This is not the first time the CDC has implemented violent recommendations in favor of the bosses and their profits. In the summer of 2021, while Covid-19 cases were at a record-low since the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC carelessly recommended that vaccinated individuals not be required to wear masks while in public spaces even though vaccinated people could still contract and spread the virus to others regardless of vaccination status. All to create more profits in the bosses’ economy. Of course, cases skyrocketed nationwide by the end of the summer.
This latest surge comes as healthcare workers across the board continue to battle racist and sexist staffing shortages, burnout, and overflows of hospital admissions. Although health care under capitalism has always essentially been about profit, the pandemic has truly laid bare how inadequate and ill-prepared the system really is.
We as workers keep each other safe. The CDC is not the epitome of scientific knowledge. In fact, their scientific pursuit is inherently tied to the profiteering of U.S. imperialism. They’re a tool of the capitalist state that does not fundamentally care if workers live or die.
This is why Progressive Labor Party needs you! As we continue to build a base with more scientists and healthcare workers, we can better understand science from a materialist-communist lens and organize to destroy capitalism’s racist violence.

*****

Letter
Sickening working conditions
How would you feel if you were forced to work involuntary overtime for a different city agency after you worked a full work week at your regular job? Well that is the reality that I faced after having Covid-19, being vaccinated, and returning to work.
I am a bit of a trouble maker so when I was asked if I had done the required 10 hours of weekly overtime I said “no, working my regular hours is all I can do with my family responsibilities.”
I felt that my coworkers and I were being tricked into doing work we hadn’t been hired to do. When I asked to see written documentation of requirements for overtime, there was no response. When I called my union reps, I also got no response.
Bosses try to trick us every day to force us to do more work. If we are doing two different jobs we should get two paychecks  or better still, hire a second worker to do the extra work. I look forward to reading and sharing how others in the Progressive Labor Party  and their friends are confronting similar attempts by bosses to use Covid-19 conditions  to increase workloads. Here in my office, my co-workers and I need to sit down and plan on how we can fight this.

Jan 1 soup celebrates liberation from slavery
January 1 is an important date for the working class in Haiti, but not for the reason you may think. There is a tradition of eating soup joumou today, which celebrates the victory of the revolutionaries of Haitian independence in 1804 over racism, slavery, and colonialism, and therefore against the domination and exploitation of capitalism. January 1 marks the liberation from chattel slavery and the formation of the world’s first Black republic, Haiti. Under slavery, this thick stew with meat and vegetables  was reserved only for the enslavers and other exploiters.
For the working class, international solidarity and solidarity with our communist party is key. Capitalism pushes individualism, which is the negation of solidarity. Yet, while the bosses compete with one another for markets and power, they are united as a class to defend their own interests. They unite to sow divisions inside the working class, using a three-pronged weapon of racism, sexism and nationalism. Our task is to defeat those ideas ideologically and in action, build our mutual confidence, and put the working class in the driver’s seat of humanity.
So workers of the world unite, gather ye strength with a bowl of joumou, and get ready to fight back!
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John Brown’s legacy: violent revolution necessary, not ‘crazy’
We have to finish the job of defeating systemic racism, and after our trip to Harpers Ferry we are even more inspired to do so. On Sunday December 10, a small caravan of Baltimore and DC comrades and family spent the day at the historic site bonding and enjoying the John Brown Museum and the John Brown Wax Museum, along with a short hike and lunch.
Among us were members of the Baltimore West Wednesday Coalition, which has been fighting for accountability in the police murder of Tyrone West on July 18, 2013. One of our first stops was the federal armory, which Brown and his allies used as a fort for their raid. Together, we stood with fists raised as one of our comrades took a picture. The museums were undertoned, but John Brown’s resolve to end slavery resonated clearly. “I have only a short time to live and only one death to die and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for.”
In fact one comrade said that while he noticed the capitalist attempts to revise him and even call him insane, “What is certain is that true change may require violent struggle.” Truly Brown’s commitment is a rallying cry for those of us to our cause. The capitalist system must be done for!
*****
Bosses’ Omicron put workers’ lives on the line
I recently began attending a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) study group and it has taught me so much. One of the first things that communism opened my eyes to is that capitalism can only breed racism and misery.
The latest Covid-19 Omicron spike has only amplified the racist divisions between low-income predominantly Black and Latin working-class neighborhoods, and less integrated,  higher income neighborhoods. I saw this play out while waiting on a Covid-19 testing line in Brownsville, Brooklyn that snaked around the block. I overheard people saying that they had been waiting for hours. Rather than wait on the line and expose others, I began calling local pharmacies in search of a home rapid test. I was disgusted to discover that there were no test kits in the Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Bushwick neighborhoods. They were not accepting appointments and were turning people away. After calling about ten pharmacies I finally found a test in Park Slope, and later found another where I work on the Upper East Side, two neighborhoods known for being wealthier and whiter.
 I began noticing a pattern in these last two weeks. Testing is more widely available in richer and whiter neighborhoods compared to working class Black and Latin areas. The wealthier, mostly white areas seem to have a constant stock of over-the-counter tests and shorter lines. Meanwhile workers in Brownsville and East New York have to stand on lines for hours without proper social distancing.
 Workers in areas ravaged by Omicron are more heavily policed, and this limited testing often results in workers facing rude security guards. To maintain their profits, the capitalists are currently attempting to avoid another lock down, going so far as to lower the recommended quarantine mandate. How many lives will be lost to keep this death machine running?
Omicron is more proof that we must continue to expose and fight back against this system that forces workers to work sick, and die for profit. I’m beginning to understand that as long as capitalism exists, racist and preventable disparities in death and illness will never end. That’s why I will continue to attend study groups and learn more about how we can create a better world by fighting for communism.
With the Omicron variant of Covid-19  spreading like wildfire in the U.S. imperial core, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) changed its recommendation of quarantining, if one tests positive for Covid-19, from ten days to 5 days…and workers are awake and upset! We know that U.S. airline companies asked the CDC to make this recommendation to keep their businesses open as Omicron surges at record-breaking rates. Workers infected by coronavirus  are already being forced by their bosses to come into work even though they are still contagious at the five day mark of their quarantine. This recommendation has shown millions of working-class people everywhere that the capitalist bosses prioritize profit over human life.
HHHHH
Hunger strike leaves workers starving for revolution
Comrades, greetings from New York!  We continue to be involved in community organizations. One of the latest actions in which we participated was a “Hunger Strike for Excluded Immigrant Workers’’ (excluded from funds during the pandemic). Although the “leaders” of this strike declared victory, in reality the state funds allotted to these workers was not enough,  so those of us in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) raised that crumbs are handed out to the  working class in an attempt to pacify fightback from the masses.  Following this initial action, the alliance of organizations involved called a rally and march to demand funds for the thousands of workers who were left empty handed. Many workers attended! The rally started with testimony from immigrant workers against oppression explaining  how they’ve received  nothing from the “authorities.”
After the rally we marched to the governor’s office where “invited politicians” gave speeches and select workers wore indigenous clothing.  Our comrades, however, called out that these events laced with liberal fascism and identity politics won’t solve workers problems.
We do continue to participate though as a way to connect with our friends and build future comradely bonds. We use these opportunities to share Party changes and pass out copies of CHALLENGE.
This is all done in the name of raising international class consciousness on the road to communist revolution. The workers united will never be defeated!
*****

MEXICO—The “Green Revolution” of the 1950’s was a ploy of the Rockefeller Foundation to sell high-yield wheat—along with fertilizer and pesticides—to Mexico. In 1938, President Cardenas nationalized the oil industry, cutting out Rockefeller’s Standard Oil interests. Cardenas promoted land reform, but restricted it under the laws of capitalism. Later in 1943,  President Manuel Ávila Camacho, promoted industrialization. Camacho saw Rockefeller and his Green Revolution as a way to move the workforce off the urban farmlands into the factories as cheap labor.
Capitalists make deals like this all the time, at the expense of the working class. It soon became clear  that capitalist land reform in Mexico yielded quickly to the pressures of imperialism. Only communist collectivization of the land—not for profit, but to promote healthy organic farming—can provide nourishment to the working class and sustain the earth.
At first, in the 50s, farmers grew more wheat, some of it to make cereal. Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production by 1951 and began to export wheat thereafter.
Hybrid maize and wheat required pesticides and fertilizers that the original Mexican wheat didn’t need. Meanwhile, thousands of farmers couldn’t afford the pesticide/fertilizer packets  and the hybrid seeds that had to be purchased year after year. Just as Camacho predicted, they went bankrupt and had to leave the farms for the factories in the city.
But the ruling class revolution didn’t stop in Mexico. Rockefeller spread the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides and profitable hybrid seeds to India next, and then to Pakistan, Southeast Asia and Africa.  In all these places, only big farmers could afford to grow wheat and rice, and millions of farmworkers, saddled by debt were forced to sell their land and go work for factory bosses.
The pesticides were bad for many reasons.  They poisoned the field workers’ skin and seeped into the water, poisoning the drinking supply. The insects which they were supposed to kill became resistant. The pesticides killed the fish and green weedy vegetables that families in Southeast Asia relied on for food. The fertilizers also contained petrochemicals (from Rockefeller oil, of course).  The hybrid plants become completely dependent on yearly fertilizing, which ruins the soil, making the earth less able to hold its own water, air and nutrients.
The heavy reliance on irrigation has compromised large swaths of arable land in India and Pakistan through the process of salinification, wherein salts build up in over-watered soil. Africa for its part has fared particularly poorly from the Green Revolution. African soils are generally unsuitable to intensive monoculture because of insufficient or excessive rains, high incidences of pests and diseases.
Today, in the Yaqui Valley of Mexico, of 225,000 acres, only 23 percent  can be farmed because the water reservoirs have been depleted to 13 percent .  The hybrid plants require vast amounts of water, and only a few farmers can afford to pump water from wells.  Ultimately, the biggest yield from this impoverished land has been unemployed workers, because the industries of the 1960s couldn’t employ many of the displaced farmers. Consequently Mexico’s farmers began a mass emigration to the United States to feed their families.