PAKISTAN—Here, as in any place generally, unemployment and the high cost of living make workers desperate to find jobs. During the Covid-19 pandemic especially, however, the Pakistani bosses have been playing even deadlier games with the lives of working class people. The bosses here are using the pandemic crisis to boost their regional political power by intensifying working class exploitation and increasing profits.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here have been organizing the working class to fight back and for a world where we produce everything that is essential and vital for life. Only communist revolution can defeat the coronavirus pandemic and the virus of capitalism, as capitalism proves itself again incapable and uninterested in protecting working class life.
Capitalism creates exponential coronavirus growth
Today, Pakistan records more than 170,000 new Covid-19 patients daily . According to official numbers, every day 2,000 new patients are hospitalized and about 110 people die. The estimates, according to some non-governmental organizations, present an even more dangerous situation, with between two and four million people infected and 800,000 of these in Lahore alone, the second largest city of Pakistan.
The government is not allowing enough people to get tested , showing their careless attitude towards the working class and leaving them to infect their families and coworkers. But even the testing kits that are available do not give accurate results; test results on the same patient taken in private and government labs yield different results. Since the bosses are only interested in increasing production for profit without ensuring test kit quality, they do not ensure that the testing kits produced are accurate. Furthermore, big landlords and factory owners out to make money force workers to come to work even if they will get infected. Bosses know there is no scarcity of workers if some get infected because there are millions of others looking to get a job.
Religion: virus’ vector, bosses’ tool
Capitalist bosses use many different techniques to make money. The best way to make money in Pakistan is to create a disaster-like situation to justify increased racist and sexist exploitation and oppression, and then promote religion. Some of the bosses’ religious propaganda says “there is no coronavirus, it’s just a conspiracy...”. This propaganda affects some among the working-class who believe this, when in reality the capitalist bosses are eager to distract with conspiracy theories rather than providing basic necessities. The medical system is utterly unable to handle more Covid-19 cases, with no hospital beds available even in Islamabad, the capital.
Shia religious ministers were allowed to travel to Pakistan from Iran without staying in quarantine at the Pakistani-Iranian border. People who came back from Saudi Arabia were also allowed to go home without any testing or isolation. Sunni religious ministers and ruling party leaders influenced the authorities to grant permission to hold “tablighi Ijtimah” (an Islamic congregation organized by Islamic organizations every year) at Raiwind Lahore where people from all over the world participated, spent days together and then traveled freely around Pakistan.
According to the reports about 70-80,000 people participated in this congregation from various parts of Pakistan and 3,000 attendees from 40 countries. 60 percent of the coronavirus cases in Pakistan have been linked to the people who attended this Islamic congregation, and pilgrims returning from the Middle East. Twenty percent out of the remaining 40 percent of cases are linked to people from Italy, Spain, the UK and other European countries. They were not tested at the airport because they bribed the officers while screening at the airports. The remaining 20 percent were infected by local transmission.
Workers living in abject poverty are more susceptible to Covid-19 because of worse sanitation conditions and higher population density in some places, increasing risk of exposure at the workplace or on the street. Public transport is filled with workers who cannot afford masks or gloves because masks, gloves and hand sanitizers sell for astronomical prices.
Bosses exploit crisis, workers organize and fight
A Pakistani minister told the bosses’ media that he is expecting two million official cases by the middle of July 2020, and that the daily death rate will also be increased to 8-10,000 per day. Despite this prediction, the prime minister is against taking any steps to slow down the spread of disease. Their thinking is that Pakistan needs millions of cases to postpone paying loan installments taken from the IMF, World Bank and other monetary institutions or governments, and to petition for aid from the main imperialist countries.
Meanwhile, the government is rapidly privatizing different government-owned factories and laying off workers in the face of dropping exports and dropping demand for factory production. In Lahore, Karachi, Multan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar bosses have fired thousands of workers for this reason. In one steel mill factory alone, 9,350 workers lost their jobs all at once. Demonstrations have erupted at textile factories for Qasim textiles and U.S. Apparel, but so far have been broken by the factory bosses’ private security and private police. PLP is working to organize more demonstrations against the bosses.
Communism is the cure for capitalist virus
Capitalism is spreading death everywhere in this world. The bosses have no intention of saving working class lives and do not care about us. We communists in the PLP know that communism can fight against pandemics and disasters, as we communists in Pakistan have taken care of working class people who were in danger during past disasters, and now during this pandemic despite our limited resources. Only with a communist revolution for state power can we organize society and our resources to take care of each other. PLP continues to fight!
- Information
Antiracist healthcare workers expose liberal misleaders
- Information
- 10 July 2020 255 hits
LOS ANGELES, June 13—Over 300 healthcare workers marched on two LA County jails, and then on to the ICE detention center. The LA County jails are the largest jail system in the country, which is the largest jailer on the planet! As we marched with a pickup truck and sound system Progressive Labor Party chants led all along the way. Chants such as, “Racism means… Alex Flores means… Our healthcare means… WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK” rang out through downtown Los Angeles! We were also joined by three families who had their loved ones murdered by LA Sheriff’s including the family of Alex Flores, killed by the LAPD in November 2019.
A reform group that gets money directly from George Soros (liberal, capitalist billionaire) and is connected to the Movement4BlackLives (M4BL) organized this march. The Progressive Labor Party has been involved in this group over the last two years.
Multiracial unity against racism confronts identity politics
During the march the identity politics of ONLY talking about “Black lives” fell flat on many workers, as hundreds of multiracial health care workers joined forces with the families and friends fighting against racist police murders. Meanwhile a PLP comrade gave a rousing speech describing the horrors of racism created by the capitalist system, the creation of the police from slave patrols, and the impact of racism on our health, particularly with the role of mass incarceration on the HIV epidemic.
Our comrade was followed by an even more powerful and passionate speech by the sister of Alex Flores. She talked openly about her brother’s struggles with a racist education system, difficulties he had landing a job, and connected this racism to her job as a dental hygienist. She described the inferior care the mostly Black and Latin patients get. She openly called for multiracial unity and fightback against this racist, capitalist system. She got a great reception by the hundreds in attendance. It was inspiring!
This group was formed to organize healthcare workers to join the “abolitionist” fight around reforms surrounding LA County Jails. Our work has consisted of ending money bail, ending pre-trial assessments that lead to increased incarceration for Black and Latin workers, and more recently around the “Alternatives to Incarceration” plan to move County money from the Sheriff’s to the various health agencies within the County.
Let’s march on the jails, not send emails to politicians
We have been meeting mostly to discuss campaign-specific issues, with little political discussion. So it’s been difficult to really get to know the members in a deep way (they’re all over LA). We’ve mainly brought friends into this group and also politicized our on-the-job work at an HIV clinic. In this crisis period of racist Covid-19 pandemic and police terror, this work has provided an opportunity to mobilize some medical workers and students to participate in the Flores fight, especially our protest at the DA’s house.
More recently we pushed for this march which had us leading over 300 healthcare workers. The leader of this group is also part of the national leadership of M4BL. He has a reformist outlook, while espousing words like “abolition” and exposing “capitalism” to some degree. For the last two years, he has been calling on members to attend meetings with politicians and send them “angry” emails, like the “digital action” he had us do toward the end of the march. He has been reluctant to build for any concrete actions against the LA County ruling class.
However, in this post-George Floyd and Breonna Taylor moment, the multiracial uprisings of workers all around the country, made it difficult for him to oppose a march on the jails. Our comrade, with some support, made the call for the march that he was forced to support.
On the day prior to the march, he wanted to “clarify” messaging on “defunding the sheriff’s” and to call for closing the Men’s Central Jail, only one of seven jails in LA County. Our comrade asked him why he was singling out only one jail and not all seven given the many calls to “defund.” This leader then exposed himself when he basically said that the Board of Supervisors, who run the entire LA County system, wants to close the jail anyway because it is completely rundown. It was pathetic. He was forced to take the position of closing all the jails, though of course we know that under capitalism that will never happen.
Nevertheless, this period of heightened racist attacks on our class and the uprisings following have created opportunities in a struggle that was seemingly non-moving for the last couple of years. It proves the absolute necessity of working in mass organizations for the long term. That slow work has provided an opportunity to move our base into action, expand our base, and grow our Party for the long-term fight for a communist world.
Tanzania: capitalism’s brutal disregard for workers lives
On June 1 schools in Tanzania reopened after a coronavirus shutdown for almost three months. From all over the country, students were returning to their boarding schools, where they live and study in very close quarters. With no testing, masks, or plan for social distancing, teachers were very concerned for their own and their students’ safety and they took action to protect themselves from the pandemic.
The Tanzanian government’s failure to offer safety precautions is consistent with their whole approach to the pandemic. Unlike many African countries, (Rwanda, Senegal, Ethiopia, and Uganda) that have controlled the spread with extensive testing and contact tracing, Tanzania’s President has ordered victims of the virus to be buried in the dark of night, underreported the number of cases and deaths, and “led a crackdown on anyone who dares raise concerns about the virus’s spread”(Washington Post, 5/22). In spite of the fact that some hospitals here are reportedly overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients, and 50 Tanzanian truck drivers tested positive on the Kenyan border, President Magafuli claims that prayer has defeated the virus and that the economy is the main priority. Along with U.S. President Trump and Brazil’s President Bolsonaro (who this week tested positive for Covid-19), President Magafuli’s open defiance of public health guidelines is leading to untold unnecessary deaths.
The pandemic is exposing President Magafuli’s anti-scientific incompetence and it has strengthened China’s hand throughout Africa. The Chinese National Health Commission has been sending medical teams and supplies to help African countries fight the pandemic. At the same time, the U.S. did utterly nothing to help other countries fight the pandemic, but they backed a coup-d'etat in Venezuela and ramped up their air war in Somalia.
As the fascist Tanzanian government fires health ministers and jails or disappears reporters who are critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic, the working class needs to organize in the schools, churches, unions, and communities to take care of each other through the pandemic and beyond. We need to stop waiting for the opposition party or unions in bed with the government to challenge government repression and anti-working class policies. Fellow workers and students need to take actions that will embolden the working class and point the way to a communist world run by and for the working class.
*****
Nooses in the hood: kkkops complacent, workers speak up
Our North Bronx Racial Justice group has just led two sharp actions against racist police terror: one against police complicity with fascist noose-hangers in VanCortlandt Park and one against a City Council member who failed to challenge a brutally racist precinct captain as promised.
On the eve of Juneteenth two neighborhood residents discovered, to their horror, three nooses hung on the west side of the park near 242nd St. When reported to the NYPD they refused to categorize this as a hate crime and dismissed the action as leftovers from piñatas suspended for celebrations the previous weekend.
The rope loops, however, in no way resembled knots tied for such a purpose and the location was not that of an earlier party. Moreover, the deed reflected months-long activity by "Identity Europa" fascists in the park, and occurred in the wake of the discovery of an assault rifle found left in the park by a Yonkers racist to "kill enemies.”
All this was committed in the national context of a number of other nooses suspended and six other questionable hangings of Black and Latin men in response to the massive, ongoing revolt worldwide against racist police terror. The most recent of these occurred in nearby Morristown, New Jersey. Our coalition mobilized an action at the sight of the rope loop outrage with the slogan "A Noose is a DEATH Threat, Police Indifference is Complicity!" A number of speakers demanded a full investigation, with arrests and prosecutions -a demand we will continue to fight for, in the process exposing Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Shea as the city's main fascists.
Two days later we joined a demonstration at Council member Andrew Cohen's office to press for diverting funds from the NYPD's bloated $6 billion budget. In particular we demanded billions to fund teams of mental health workers to be dispatched to calls for people in mental crisis as well as massive expansion of mental health counseling and treatment facilities citywide. The mayor's subsequent, cosmetic, mini reduction provided for none of these vital concerns, proving that the "Defund" movement will always fail under a capitalist dictatorship. The capitalists need brutal state power to enforce their rule.
We also took Cohen to task for failure to follow through on his promise to probe an avenged atrocity in our neighborhood's 50th precinct. NYPD were called to arrest teen-ager Alfred Burns who was alleged to be stealing a bicycle. The arresting officer, after subduing the young man on the ground, proceeded to pummel his head 13 times until pulled away by a fellow officer. When confronted with our coalition members' outrage at this racist assault, Precinct captain O'Toole baldly threatened: "He (Burns) will continue to resist arrest in the future so we probably will have to shoot him!" In a subsequent meeting Cohen promised to "speak" to “Toule." There is no evidence that he ever did as he claimed when confronted.
We are raising aspects of the Progressive Labor Party's line continually with our friends who share these actions with us, but our main weakness is that we are not significantly expanding the circulation of CHALLENGE newspaper. This must be corrected. The mass antiracist movement that has developed worldwide makes many more people open to our line. We must seize this opportunity to grow!
*****
Capitalism is a Cannibalistic system
Is it any wonder that the words Cannibalism and Capitalism both look and sound alike? Moreover, in comparing how capitalism actually works, these words have very similar meanings as well.
I am watching a documentary called “Blood Business.” It’s about “blood donation” and its comparison to cannibalism. It’s sad how such a noble deed as donating blood is dominated by giant corporations that monopolize that market. Through a process called “fractionation”, blood plasma is collected, frozen, and shipped to hospitals all over the world. The multi-billion dollar industry is ever growing.
These companies exploit working-class people in meager economic conditions to profit from life-saving drugs made from their “donations.” There's a connection to Covid-19's prevalence when you look at this cannibalistic industry. Donating blood and blood products multiple times per week for months and years leaves the donor's overall health vulnerable to infection. Consequently, it shortens their lifespan and creates poor living conditions. People become extremely lethargic because they are donating proteins necessary for proper life function. These are some of the problems ignored in literature these companies give to potential donors. Why must workers do this?
America's economy is in such disarray that people are forced to give their life away in order to maintain it.And if exploitation from these behemoths wasn’t bad enough, there are drug dealers who exploit some donors. After a donor donates his plasma, his/her fee is paid on a debit card. Donors who are addicts can go literally across the street from the donation center and give over their debit card to the drug dealer. Drugs are exchanged for the credit on the card.
Regularly contributing people feel like “cows giving milk.” A quote from the documentary is, “Isn’t it ironic that masses of poor people are willing to donate their life’s blood for the rich?” In the inner city, there are lines around the corner where people wait hours in line to give their blood/plasma so that the rich can live and continuously exploit them.
There are four major blood banking firms talked about in the documentary. One of them, named Octapharma, has a CEO worth $6 billion dollars. Because the donors are paid a small fee or compensation for their donation, the parasitic companies do not like to use the term “payment” for blood donation, so they superimpose the term “compensation” so that the connotation is not that drug users are being paid for donating blood for money.
Capitalism is a cannibalistic “dog eat dog” system. This film exemplifies that. We must abolish this system that screws us all!
*****
What the ruling class won’t tell you!
As an original member of the PLP, I am inspired by these young workers who are learning and getting more sophisticated and more demanding in their issues as the mass movement continues. I am inspired by their thirst to understand their society and to question what kind of society they are living in.
Protestors are justifiably angry that they must pay taxes to police who kill them, but the majority of taxes we all pay goes to the military whose mission is to kill people in over 100 countries from over 800 U.S. military bases. Protestors need to understand that the racism and inequality they are protesting provides trillions in profits for this corporate capitalist system which continues to loot our communities and the world through unaccountable police and military forces who serve and protect the property and profit interests of their capitalist employers.
The capitalist media and their corporate backers want us to debate white supremacy and get rid of some bad cops instead of the real issue of unending class war between workers and capitalist blood suckers who use racism to divide workers in the U.S. and worldwide for their profits and power. These protests provide us with a tremendous opportunity to get CHALLENGE into the hands of these protestors who need to understand that capitalism is the main disease and killer and that only communism can provide for workers’ needs and justice.
*****
- Information
Antiracist healthcare workers expose liberal misleaders
- Information
- 10 July 2020 257 hits
LOS ANGELES, June 13—Over 300 healthcare workers marched on two LA County jails, and then on to the ICE detention center. The LA County jails are the largest jail system in the country, which is the largest jailer on the planet! As we marched with a pickup truck and sound system Progressive Labor Party chants led all along the way. Chants such as, “Racism means… Alex Flores means… Our healthcare means… WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK” rang out through downtown Los Angeles! We were also joined by three families who had their loved ones murdered by LA Sheriff’s including the family of Alex Flores, killed by the LAPD in November 2019.
A reform group that gets money directly from George Soros (liberal, capitalist billionaire) and is connected to the Movement4BlackLives (M4BL) organized this march. The Progressive Labor Party has been involved in this group over the last two years.
Multiracial unity against racism confronts identity politics
During the march the identity politics of ONLY talking about “Black lives” fell flat on many workers, as hundreds of multiracial health care workers joined forces with the families and friends fighting against racist police murders. Meanwhile a PLP comrade gave a rousing speech describing the horrors of racism created by the capitalist system, the creation of the police from slave patrols, and the impact of racism on our health, particularly with the role of mass incarceration on the HIV epidemic.
Our comrade was followed by an even more powerful and passionate speech by the sister of Alex Flores. She talked openly about her brother’s struggles with a racist education system, difficulties he had landing a job, and connected this racism to her job as a dental hygienist. She described the inferior care the mostly Black and Latin patients get. She openly called for multiracial unity and fightback against this racist, capitalist system. She got a great reception by the hundreds in attendance. It was inspiring!
This group was formed to organize healthcare workers to join the “abolitionist” fight around reforms surrounding LA County Jails. Our work has consisted of ending money bail, ending pre-trial assessments that lead to increased incarceration for Black and Latin workers, and more recently around the “Alternatives to Incarceration” plan to move County money from the Sheriff’s to the various health agencies within the County.
Let’s march on the jails, not send emails to politicians
We have been meeting mostly to discuss campaign-specific issues, with little political discussion. So it’s been difficult to really get to know the members in a deep way (they’re all over LA). We’ve mainly brought friends into this group and also politicized our on-the-job work at an HIV clinic. In this crisis period of racist Covid-19 pandemic and police terror, this work has provided an opportunity to mobilize some medical workers and students to participate in the Flores fight, especially our protest at the DA’s house.
More recently we pushed for this march which had us leading over 300 healthcare workers. The leader of this group is also part of the national leadership of M4BL. He has a reformist outlook, while espousing words like “abolition” and exposing “capitalism” to some degree. For the last two years, he has been calling on members to attend meetings with politicians and send them “angry” emails, like the “digital action” he had us do toward the end of the march. He has been reluctant to build for any concrete actions against the LA County ruling class.
However, in this post-George Floyd and Breonna Taylor moment, the multiracial uprisings of workers all around the country, made it difficult for him to oppose a march on the jails. Our comrade, with some support, made the call for the march that he was forced to support.
On the day prior to the march, he wanted to “clarify” messaging on “defunding the sheriff’s” and to call for closing the Men’s Central Jail, only one of seven jails in LA County. Our comrade asked him why he was singling out only one jail and not all seven given the many calls to “defund.” This leader then exposed himself when he basically said that the Board of Supervisors, who run the entire LA County system, wants to close the jail anyway because it is completely rundown. It was pathetic. He was forced to take the position of closing all the jails, though of course we know that under capitalism that will never happen.
Nevertheless, this period of heightened racist attacks on our class and the uprisings following have created opportunities in a struggle that was seemingly non-moving for the last couple of years. It proves the absolute necessity of working in mass organizations for the long term. That slow work has provided an opportunity to move our base into action, expand our base, and grow our Party for the long-term fight for a communist world.
NEW YORK CITY—“Same enemy! Same fight! Workers of the world unite!” This chant filled the streets regularly in June in New York City, as Progressive Labor Party members and friends joined countless other workers and youth who took to the streets. The masses of antiracists have a path to choose: the road towards communist revolution or the road to reforming racist capitalism. For us, the answer is clear: abolish exploitation and build a world by the working class, for the working class.
Masses open to communist leadership
Rebellions have erupted across the U.S. and around the world in response to racist police terror. In NYC, every day of the month was marked by protests. From the Bronx to Brooklyn, the Party brought a class-conscious political understanding that called out capitalism as the system built off racism in need of destruction by communists.
At least five times we united in large PLP contingents with bullhorns to share this message by leading chants, giving speeches, taking over the streets, holding signs, having conversations, and distributing thousands of CHALLENGEs and fliers. We made new contacts and have begun involving them in Party study/action groups. Individually party members attended dozens of protests.
At one march, family members of those murdered by kkkops addressed the crowd. These included friends of PLP, who we have marched alongside for years. These friends once again provided much-needed political leadership when they sharply called for multi-racial unity to shut this racist system down. When a few reformist organizers led calls to “cut cut cut” the police budget, the crowd responded with more volume and energy when chanting, “No more cops!”
“How do you spell ‘murderer?’ N-Y-P-D” was also popular in many of the demonstrations. Workers are rejecting the idea that racist police are merely “a few bad apples” and seeing racist terror as inherent to policing. PLP chants that the Party has been spreading for decades in NYC have caught on as mass chants.
Comrade, not ally
Another march in the mostly Black and Latin neighborhoods of Uptown Manhattan focused on promoting “Black and brown unity.” PLP succeeded at times in shifting the tone away from limiting identity politics. Many embraced our chants, so much so that neighboring bullhorns (including those of mass organizations in which we have been involved) at times followed our message rather than persisting with nationalist chants.
PLP speeches advocated for international, multiracial unity of the working class, which was met with cheers and applause, even as one of our comrades boldly affirmed “I stand with you today to fight, not as your white-ally, but as your white comrade ready to burn this racist system down.” As Karl Marx said in Capital, “Labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.”
On Juneteenth, protestors took over the Brooklyn Bridge and high school students led chants to shut the profit system down on two different megaphones. One high school comrade gave a speech about her experiences with the racist use of metal detectors at her school (see the same comrade’s speech at a protest the day before, page 3).
As fellow protestors saw the leadership of Black and Latin youth in our organization, many took copies of CHALLENGE.
What now?
Throughout all of these protests, we have seen a positive response to chants that push multiracial unity and call out capitalism. Less popular were revolutionary chants like, “Don’t vote, revolt!” This demonstrates the need to continue to struggle with workers over dead-end electoral politics. The danger for these movements is that, in the absence of a widely supported communist leadership, the liberal bosses will co-opt mass anger and funnel it towards reforming and supporting the system. The question to ask friends is: do we want to fight inside the system or outside the system of capitalism?
While calls to abolish the police are gaining popularity, capitalism requires police, and elections will never get rid of capitalism. Workers need to organize in a revolutionary communist party, the PLP, in order to abolish capitalism and police.
