WASHINGTON, D.C., March 20—There is no better way to spend the first day of spring than in solidarity with the international working class! Progressive Labor Party (PLP) called on workers to join in solidarity with the mainly Black Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama who were fighting (ultimately unsuccessfully) for union recognition.
Over 35 workers and students responded to PLP’s call with a militant picket line outside Whole Foods grocery store. Billionaire Jeff Bezos owns both Whole Foods and Amazon and fights tooth and nail to bust union organizing efforts at both places. The picket line was followed by a march to the Washington Post newspaper headquarters, a leading propaganda outlet for the capitalists, also owned by the disgusting Bezos.
PLP speakers declared that capitalists like Bezos always block efforts by workers to unionize and improve their lives. But pro-capitalist politicians like President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders “support” unions, mainly because they can control the union misleaders and those misleaders do their best to control the workers. Ultimately these union misleaders want a few crumbs for the workers while they live well off their inflated salaries.
Yes, we want to join unions, turning them into antiracist, fighting organizations for the working class. But to get off the treadmill of reform, we must advance the goal of communist revolution – working-class power. Join us in the fight for communism, a permanent victory for the working class by joining and building the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.
Unfortunately, Bezos and other Amazon bosses beat the union drive in a vote of 738 to 1,798. Why the 2-1 vote against joining the union? Amazon used lots of tricks to win and the union response was ineffective. And in this capitalist system, the government serves the interests of business and unions function within that system. So Amazon got the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees union recognition elections, to expand the definition of the Bessemer warehouse bargaining unit to include office staff, part-time and occasional workers, swelling it to over 5,900 workers, instead of the 1,500 workers who actually work in the warehouse who were seeking recognition.
Amazon bosses connived with the U.S. Postal Service to set up a drop box for the mail balloting on company property, intimidating workers by spying on them as they voted. In their cleverest trick, they arranged with local government for the traffic lights to change to green whenever a worker left the warehouse, minimizing the time that union organizers had to chat with workers. Then they even paid incentives to workers fed up with Amazon to quit before the union election to reduce the pro-union vote. The union is now filing unfair labor practices complaints with the NLRB, but that will take many months before a decision is made and the outcome is uncertain. How weak is that?
For communists, life and death organizing requires going to the homes of workers to have conversations about union misleaders, about how to fight company exploitation and racism, and about the worldwide fightback of workers. It means talking about the coming world war and how that’s related to fighting for better conditions and pay at Amazon. Relying on movie stars and politicians (like Biden) to influence workers is similar to the losing strategy of trying to elect “progressive” politicians, who generally end up doing the bosses’ dirty work.
Historically, unions gain recognition by closing down production like they did in the famous Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936 (see CHALLENGE, 12/22/18) . Those communist organizers won some gains for the working class in the 1930s but failed to organize for a communist revolution. So here we are in 2021 with unions horribly weak and we are still on that reform treadmill. As we fight reform battles such as unionization, let’s make them schools for communism, a system that workers run. Let’s get rid of capitalism where we must constantly battle for our survival. Until capitalism is destroyed with communist revolution, all workers, including union workers, will continue to be oppressed by racism and exploitation.
GREENBELT, MD, April 7—Over 50 parents, teachers, students, and residents rallied at Eleanor Roosevelt High School (ERHS) here to demand the reopened schools be made safe. Prince Georges’ County(PG) failed to do so, backtracking on its promises to have weekly coronavirus testing and upgrades to the air filtration systems before re-opening. The rally was sparked by teachers angered by the Board of Education and the County Council turning a deaf ear to their concerns.
A young teacher involved in a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) study group helped organize the rally by knocking on doors in the Spring Hill Lake apartment complex and struggling with fellow teachers to attend. Several PLP members came in solidarity, distributing over 30 copies of CHALLENGE as well as flyers linking the school battle to the upcoming communist-led May Day rally in Malcolm X Park in D.C.
The CHALLENGE article about the fight to remove School Resource Officers (regular armed cops) from the schools especially resonated with a few folks and started lively conversations. Attending May Day will be an important step forward, recognizing that the capitalist system is organized around profit, not good education or safe schools, so moving from attempting reforms to the school to organizing for communist revolution is a necessary next step.
The protesters marched to the Greenbelt City Hall with their safety demands including vaccinations for all employees before returning to the school building, teleworking as an option, and equity learning labs. Teachers worried that children could infect other children who in turn could infect family members.
The lead organizer of the rally, a teacher and mother of five, gave a rousing speech to end the rally including a shoutout to our Party, “PLP is in the house!” A PLP member caught up with her after the rally and invited her to join a study group. Several other participants including a grandmother who came with her grandson who goes to the high school expressed interest in the PLP’s activities.
Our broad goal is to meet more people in the community, invite teachers to our study groups, join with them to lead the struggles in the schools in this county, and create more communists.
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U.S. & China will make world war; workers can make revolution
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- 02 April 2021 348 hits
Facing the ‘Thucydides Trap’…the military must step up its efforts.
—Xu Qiliang, Vice-chairman of China’s military
[China] stated that war with the United States is inevitable...When you [U.S.] send an armored brigade combat team anywhere in the world...you have made a strategic decision to fight and win
—Major General Richard Coffman of U.S. military
Imperialist rivals China and the U.S. are caught in the “Thucydides Trap,” an inevitable drive towards war when a rising power threatens to displace the established world power. Driven by their need for maximum profit and world supremacy, the capitalists are on the course toward World War III.
From signing the Iran deal to challenging the world’s currency, top-dog wannabe China marks more territory while the decaying U.S. flounders and loses allies along with its credibility. The U.S. reigned as a superpower since the end of World War II and established what they call the liberal world order, which has been in decline since the 1970s. Their dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power, its strategic control of the Middle East, and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. To sustain this dominance, they need to rebuild for war and foment nationalism against their arch-rival, China.
War, with working-class lives as cannon fodder, is how rulers resolve their contradictions. Progressive Labor Party calls on all workers to reject both U.S. and Chinese warmakers. Instead, the international working class must embrace their historic role of turning world war into a revolution for communism.
China’s big flex Imperialist China is asserting its growing dominance against the U.S. by any means necessary. All areas of life have become arenas for war, including technology. China updated its “Made in China 2025,” a strategic policy to make itself the ultimate ruler in high-tech manufacturing (U.S. Department of Defense, 3/25). Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s sanctions, intensified by the current Joe Biden & Kamala Harris administration, cut China’s access to U.S.-licensed microchips, the technologies that industries, including defense, rely on (Asia Times, 3/14). To counter this roadblock, China is spending $90 billion in hopes of developing groundbreaking technology that will render the U.S. irrelevant (The New York Times, 3/10). The world’s economies are increasingly forced to choose between the U.S.-led world or China’s rapidly rising dominance. China officially expanded its imperialist influence with Asia-Pacific countries in the U.S. orbit (like South Korea, Australia, and Japan) through its RCEP trade agreement. Meanwhile, in true gangster fashion, China seeks to exacerbate tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a country of massive oil and geopolitical importance. Iran, hurt by U.S. sanctions, agreed to discounts on oil and greater “military cooperation” with China in exchange for $400 billion investment over 25 years (Seattle Times, 3/27). In efforts to prepare for the Thucydides Trap, China strengthened its military systems with U.S.-rival-imperialist Russia. China’s rapidly developing military has now “achieve[d] parity with—or even exceed[ed]—the United States” in terms of its army, navy, and rockets (Congressional Research Service, 1/5). To add insult to injury, China has been leveraging its imperialist Belt and Road Initiative (infrastructure deals with over 60 countries and two-thirds of the world population) to promote business in the yuan. Abandoning the dollar—the world’s principal reserve currency since the end of World War II— is a punch in the gut to U.S. world supremacy. The capitalist law is to compete and expand, or die. U.S. empire’s crisis accelerates war plans No empire falls without a fight. The botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the Trump debacle, exposed the emperor’s clothes for the whole world to see. The U.S. rulers’ clumsy efforts to maintain dominance are met with mistrust from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, to name a few. Take the almost-completed Nord stream 2. This pipeline will provide cheap Russian gas directly to Germany, under the Baltic Sea, bypassing hostile Ukraine, a slighted U.S. ally. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is threatening their so-called friends Germany and the European Union to reject it (Reuters, 3/28). But the warlords whine, “[T]here is nothing...Biden and his team...can do to stop that [skepticism]. From now on, all countries, everywhere, must hedge their bets about the United States'' (Foreign Affairs, March/April). Like any predator, a superpower is most dangerous when wounded. The dominant finance wing of the U.S. ruling class, represented by Biden, will build fascism (see glossary, page 5). They seek to unify their own capitalist class for war. That’s the essence of Biden’s “Build Back Better” campaign. Biden’s cynical claim that he’s investing in workers is an attempt to win our class to the rulers’ imperialist agenda. Let’s make no mistake: reforms are part of the war effort. U.S. capitalism—once a ruler, now a wound-licker—is incapable of coping with the international instability it faces. No wonder general Richard Coffman is desperately calling for troops and fighting vehicles (Military Times, 3/11). Nationalism, racism part of U.S. arsenal The finance capitalist wing of the U.S. ruling class has a contradiction on its hands. As they cry crocodile tears for the gutter racist attack on Asian women workers in Atlanta, the bosses still need anti-Asian racism and nationalism against their imperialist rival, China. Of course, anti-Asian racism is nothing new. A century ago, the U.S. locked Japanese families into homegrown concentration camps during World War II. Every time the U.S. needs to prepare for war, they ratchet up their racism. They are using every opportunity to foment anti-China patriotism. “Beijing suspended the export of face masks…at the very moment when [U.S.] needed them most” (New York Times, 3/18). Their ideological strategy seems to blame China for the U.S. Covid-19 deaths while threatening that democracy is at stake. So the hypocrites shed tears over the murder of 6 Asian women workers while trying to mobilize soldiers to kill millions of Chinese workers. One Pew Research poll suggests 90 percent of the U.S. population sees China as an enemy (Yahoo News, 3/4). Stoking anti-Chinese racism feeds the flames of war. The working class must reject this with fierce internationalism. Turn imperialist war into class war World wars lay bare the ruthlessness of imperialists and their readiness to shed workers’ blood. That’s why we must make communist revolution and rule this world for ourselves. World War I gave birth to the Bolshevik Revolution; World War II gave rise to the Chinese Revolution. The first proletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union, the Soviet-led fight against fascism in World War II, the Chinese Revolution, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, along with the courageous anti-imperialist struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, gave hope to workers everywhere. The world saw that the oppressed could throw off their chains. If wars are preconditions for communist revolution, China and U.S. imperialists are showing the working class a historic responsibility to break through this capitalist trap. As the next world war approaches and capitalist oppression intensifies in every corner of the earth, Progressive Labor Party can make great leaps in infusing the class struggle with communist politics. Only through a protracted struggle through this slow period can we make gains towards a communist revolution. We can do that by fighting back in our workplaces, schools, and community organizations, with the principles of antiracism, antisexism, and internationalism. Come join the fight on May Day!
ANNAPOLIS, MD—Chants and demands rang out in Maryland’s state capital as over 150 protesters, with support from 90 mass organizations, marched on the Annapolis statehouse. The collective of the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability had high hopes that a bill repealing the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) would finally pass but as is the case with many reform struggles, these hopes came crashing down as multiple amendments obliterated demands. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the voices calling out the legislative betrayal of the working class and chanted: “only communist revolution will break our chains.” We can’t reform away racism that’s integral to this profit system’s survival.
PLP has been working with the coalition to end racist police terror and murder for years now. Several PLP members who also work with Community Justice in Prince George’s County and the West Wednesday Coalition in Baltimore attended the march, distributing copies of CHALLENGE.
Our message to workers: ending police terror and murder requires a revolutionary overthrow of the whole damn system—appealing to the legislature will never free the working class. Pandering politicians represent and manage this racist capitalist system.
A history of racism, masked as reforms
Following the passage of the National Fair Housing Act in the 1970s, Black workers moved into Prince George’s County. As the population grew more integrated, the government established the racist LEOBR, providing a free pass for the klan-in-blue. Since its establishment, LEOBR has inspired similar measures in surrounding counties, giving cops extra protection whenever they are charged with excessive force and murder.
LEOBR has been the focal point of antiracist protests for over 30 years. However, despite growing awareness of racist murders and attacks at the hands of the police, minimal reforms were granted only after the Baltimore uprising against Freddie Gray’s murder.
The insulting reform simply reduced the time that cops can refuse interrogation from 10 to five days. Of course, five days is plenty of time for a racist murderer, emboldened by the system, to “get stories straight,” tamper with evidence, and evade accountability.
A militant working class can never be defeated
In response to these continued racist measures The Coalition was formed and established a set of demands to protect Black and Latin workers: abolish LEOBR; open records for cops charged with misconduct; remove armed police from schools; establish a state-wide policy to minimize force used by cops; and return the Baltimore City police department to local control.
Demands for these reforms have been largely led by the voices of mothers whose children have been killed by cops. Many participants in the march this month were also fighting for “Anton’s Law” named for a victim of police murder in which the cop’s questionable records were not reviewed when he was hired on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Over 20 bills related to these demands have been introduced by one politician or another, but predictably, virtually all were amended to make them useless, and few were even passed by the State Senate. Liberal politicians, the sneakiest wolves in sheep's clothing, posture as friends of our class. Workers have seen this betrayal repeated in state legislatures throughout the U.S.
Learning from a summer of struggle
About 15 million people, in the U.S. alone, participated in the massive protests and rebellions this past summer against police terror. Workers worldwide joined in solidarity, fighting racism in the name of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many more lost to racist murder.
What we saw was the potential of a united working class to change the system. In the face of an organized, multiracial, multi-generational, and antiracist, antisexist fightback, politicians were forced to take up issues they’ve historically ignored. To the degree that laws or practices were changed to reduce police terror, we’ve experienced the limits of reform.
Communist revolution is the only solution
As the Maryland legislative session draws to a close for 2021, it looks like the only substantive change in law enforcement legislation is that the records of some officers may be made open to the public, but only if it is deemed reasonable to do so by the police department. Cops will remain in schools, police will continue to be shielded and parents will go another year without justice despite a summer of open rebellion against the racist capitalism.
The struggle against racist police terror predates even the Civil Rights movement by decades. These fightbacks are often schools for communism and sharpen the politics of the working class but fall-short as capitalist rulers continue to foster racist police brutality, intimidation, and terror to maintain their power over us.
PLP continues to bullhorn the belief that only communist revolution can put the working class in power. While many workers are still not won away from the racist and capitalist ideas that have been ingrained in us, we struggle every day to counter racist stereotypes and expose racist laws and structures.
We remain encouraged by workers taking to the streets and the extensive mutual aid and support for our neighbors during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those disillusioned with the capitalist system should consider joining PLP and build towards revolution to create a communist system for the working class, run by the working class.
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Red presence matters: Brooklyn teachers go extra mile with antiracist commuter plan
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- 02 April 2021 412 hits
BROOKLYN, March 29—In early March the bosses’ media finally reported a year-old wave of anti-Asian violence in a serious way and the antiracist reflexes of dedicated staff at the mostly-Asian Brooklyn Technical High School sprang into action.
The school's equity team organized a schoolwide response which included devoting time in all classes to solidarity lessons and setting up travel groups from Chinese immigrant neighborhoods to the school.
Then came the horrific Atlanta shootings targeting young Asian women. Asian students shared stories of families afraid to leave the house. The week’s lessons and a town hall organized by the sophomore class took on increased urgency. In a promising sign of potential class-consciousness most students who spoke up have resisted the twin poisonous ideas of anti-Black racism (since some attacks on Asian workers have been carried out by Black workers or youth) and reliance on the heightened police protection as a source of safety.
Fighting racism at Brooklyn Tech
A long-festering racist impact of New York City’s worst-in-the-nation system of segregated public schooling is that the student body at the highly selective Brooklyn Technical High School is disproportionately Asian and white, about 85 percent. While 70 percent of the city student body is Black or Latin, the combined presence of Black and Latin students in the student body at Tech hovers around 15 percent.
Across all the city’s magnet high schools The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test has reproduced and worsened these racist results for years (NY Post, 3/19/20), sending the message that Black and Latin students do not belong at the city’s “best” schools. But any school that reproduces such a racist lesson is not a good school.
Since 2015 Black students at Brooklyn Tech have hit back in a series of public (msnbc, 1/16/16) and in-house campaigns to expose racist bullying that is baked into school life at Tech. This reprehensible behavior, exhibited by some staff along with some students, merely reproduces the constant racist broadcast from ‘liberal’ NYC school bosses that the ‘best’ schools cannot be Black or Latin. An increasing proportion of the staff have responded to the student outcry by dedicating themselves to establishing an antiracist tone in school life.
Student’s voices, including sharp criticism of faculty complicity in racism, have come to guide school life more and more. In many schools the ‘equity team’ is an empty vessel. The equity team at Tech has managed to carve a space for itself in the face of an ongoing campaign of administrative harassment of vocal Black and Jewish teachers. It has fought to become the home base of antiracist activity.
Results are incomplete, but in close unity with a long-established and open Proressive Labor Party (PLP) presence, multiracial unity is being strengthened in the class struggle against the NYC bosses’ segregation and its disgusting racist effects. When in-person schooling returns after spring break, staff stand ready to organize commuter groups.
Next stop, May Day!
Anti-Asian violence is nothing new in the U.S. This most recent manifestation has been whipped up in the context of China-bashing trade wars, a Covid-19 blame-game and infrastructure development all designed to plant the seed of support for future war against U.S. imperialism’s chief long-term rival – Chinese imperialism (see editorial, page 2). Beyond Covid-19, the warmongering suggestion that Asians living in the U.S. may be spies for the Chinese ruling class is connected by a bright line back to the fascist internment of the Japanese during World War II.
The international working class has one interest, communism, and one day to gather our forces to express our determination to get there—May Day. Show your solidarity against racist attacks and the future imperialist bloodbath the imperialists have in store for us all by joining Progressive Labor Party for May Day 2021. J
March down Flatbush Avenue, 1pm Saturday May 1. Evening zoom celebration at 6pm.
