“We want equality!” That’s how one worker described the strike of 50,000 GM workers, women and men, black, Latin, Asian, and white workers in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. A big red salute to GM strikers. Their courage serves as an inspiration for workers everywhere. At least 12 strikers were arrested in Spring Hills, TN for attempting to stop car haulers from moving finished cars out of the company lot. From Michigan toTexas strikers confronted the police, whose historical role has been to protect property and attack organized labor.  
Capitalism is the antithesis of equality. A system rooted in exploitation cannot bear the fruits of equality. Only communism can cultivate a worker-run system that will eliminate racism, sexism, and nationalism. For that, workers need an international party, Progressive Labor Party.
Two-tier wage system
Seven percent of the 430,000-strong workforce is made up of temporary part-time workers (TPTs), who earn about $15 an hour, the same as the New York City minimum wage. They do the same work as fulltime workers. Meanwhile, GM CEO Mary Barra made $28 million last year.
GM wants to expand the use of TPTs, who are referred to as “in progression” workers that have not been accepted as fulltime even after working for 5 or more years. They work unpredictable schedules, cannot build seniority, and are subject to arbitrary discipline and firings without union protection, even though they pay union dues. It’s a slave labor system. The strikers want them hired as full-time and the TPT classification ended!
Awash with record profits, they closed four plants, demand further concessions in order to cut costs by $4.5 billion by the end of 2020 and reduce capacity. “The strike could be costing GM $75 million-a-day, according to JPMorgan analysts” (Business Insider, 9/21). This reflects both the power that workers have collectively, and the level of exploitation under the racist profit system. “It’s a staggering figure, but it pales in comparison to GM’s whopping $26 billion in profits in 2018.” (Business Insider).
This also points out the need to abolish wage slavery with communist revolution, where we will produce for the needs of the working class, not the profits of capitalists.
Capitalist competition hurts workers
GM is caught in the sharpening competition for cheap labor and markets as the global auto market heads into a systemic downturn. They have to reduce capacity and make big investments in electric cars or face extinction. It’s also estimated that Trump’s trade war with China has cost GM and Ford roughly $1 billion each in North America. Workers everywhere will pay a much higher price as the U.S. and China continue on a collision course to another world war.
UAW leadership in bed with bosses
The corruption of the UAW leaders is hanging over the strike like a toxic cloud. The UAW and Fiat-Chrysler executives were charged for a bribery scheme. UAW president Gary Jones and former president Dennis Williams are also the targets of a federal criminal complaint “in a conspiracy to embezzle more than $1 million of member dues and spend it on Palm Springs villas, steakhouse dinners, cigars, more than 100 rounds of golf and $400 bottles of Cristal Champagne” (Detroit News 9/18). UAW Region 5 Director Vance Pearson, who succeeded Jones as Regional Director, was recently arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.
Nationalism is a capitalist idea
The unions in the U.S. are a shell of its former self. In the absence of a communist movement and the then-beacons of working-class power, Soviet Union and China, nationalism and reform consumed the unions. Decades of economist fights and patriotic, anti-worker slogans of “Buy American” have crippled working-class fightback. The union bosses serve to negotiate the exploitation of workers with the capitalists. These unions have in effect become ruling-class institutions.  
On the other hand, there are 50,000 workers who are fighting back, following the strike wave of teachers, hotel, fast food, and Stop & Shop workers.
PLP supports the strike by going out to picket lines with whatever bosses’ organization we are in: unions, schools, churches, community groups, hospitals, and transit. There is always a potential to turn strikes into schools for communist ideas and practices.
Workers want equality. Workers can build equality when we smash capitalism and build a dictatorship of the working class. Smash GM! Fight for communism!

BALTIMORE, September 10—As the weekly West Wednesday rallies continue to demand accountability for the murder of Tyrone West by twelve to fifteen Baltimore Police and a Morgan University officer, President Donald Trump spent most of a week tweeting that the city of Baltimore is a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” This disgusting racism means, in his eyes, that the people of this majority-Black city are sub-human.
Two of the liberal bosses in Baltimore organized a statement by ten major capitalists and their allies – published as an op-ed in the local Sun newspaper – to seemingly defend Baltimore against Trump’s venom. The article praised their large investment activities in the city as moving the city to ever-greater prosperity. A speaker from Progressive Labor Party at one of the West Wednesday rallies, pointed out that anti-racist organizers should not be misled into thinking that Trump’s liberal opponents, those who signed the statement, are in any way our allies in the fight against racism.
Daniels, misleader # 1
One organizer of the newspaper statement, Ron Daniels, is the President of Johns Hopkins University. Just a few months ago, Daniels used a massive mobilization of city police to suppress the 37-day sit-in that was boldly fighting for three powerful, anti-racist demands:  
Stop the administration’s plan for Hopkins to have its own private armed police force.
Stop the University’s complicity with ICE. Specifically, end university contracts funded with millions of dollars from ICE, to train medics, without whom many viciously anti-immigrant ICE activities cannot be conducted.
Support accountability regarding the cops who murdered Tyrone West.
Ever since the very beginning of the sit-in, protestors at West Wednesday have included Hopkins students, and they know, all too well, that Daniels is definitely not our friend.  
Plank, misleader # 2
Kevin Plank is the other organizer of the newspaper statement against Trump’s racist remarks about Baltimore. Plank is the CEO of Under Armour, which is headquartered in Baltimore, and participates in racism globally. Virtually all of Under Armour’s products are made by third-party manufacturers in some 15 countries, with about 60% of the company’s products made under sweatshop conditions in China, Jordan, Vietnam, and Malaysia (Capital Gazette, 2/11/17).
In Baltimore, Plank – who is one of Maryland’s richest men–is developing a large new section of the city known as Port Covington, which will include offices, shops, apartments, and the new headquarters for Under Armour, all on a long waterfront expanse, a plan that profits from the crumbling conditions of predominately Black working class neighborhoods.
When Daniels and Plank were named, during the Party member’s speech, there were loud boo’s for each of those men, from participants at West Wednesday. It was therefore easy for the PLP speaker to stress that the liberal, anti-racist & anti-Trump mask worn by these two capitalist organizers – Daniels and Plank – must be ripped off, for they, even more than Trump, directly exploit and oppress the workers and students of Baltimore. At one point, the speaker said, “The liberal businessmen like Plank, and the liberal education leaders like Daniels, in a certain sense are more dangerous than the right-wingers like Trump because they fool us, and therefore can get away with more horrible realities.”
In response, one of the students who had boldly participated in the sit-in, called out, “That’s right! That’s dope.”
Much the same can be said about the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other liberal politicians will not lead us to an anti-racist future, despite their posturing. Perhaps even more effectively than Trump and the Republicans, liberal politicians will lead us to more intense racist exploitation and world war. They will attempt to rally the multi-racial working class of the U.S. into a nationalist force to defend U.S. imperialism, as its empire sinks in relation to that of its imperialist competitors, like China.
The event ended with an invitation to attend the CHALLENGE discussion group, right after the rally, once each month. PLP members in Baltimore vow to continue to raise communist politics in these bold anti-racist actions one CHALLENGE at a time. This action is affectionately known as C-DAWWG (Challenge Discussion After West Wednesday Group). This November we will celebrate our one-year anniversary with perhaps some cake and commitment to analyze and change the world.
The only way out of the false choice between liberal and conservative bosses is to build a mass movement to fight them both, and ultimately get rid of them and their racist system altogether with revolution and communist workers power!

OAXACA, MEXICO–Last weekend, members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) participated in a forum with a huge group of teachers of Section 22 from Oaxaca of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE, its initials in Spanish) about PLP’s dialectical materialist analysis concerning education, imperialism and the working class alternative.
A group of comrades presented the party’s assessment that the greatest threat confronting the world’s working class is the big fascists of the liberal US financial wing of the ruling class. The role of the López Obrador government was also discussed. They showed that the imperialist and Mexican capitalists plan to carry out their megaprojects in the south of the country with the mask of this democratic and popular government. Finally, we talked about the importance of teachers having an active role in organizing and raising awareness of the communities where they work to change the system in which we live.
Teachers expressed the commitment and difficulties they face in giving a better educational alternative to their students and their communities through the Plan for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO) that is promoted by our union section against the employers’ plans. One teacher acknowledged that the effort they have made for 35 years has not been enough and that they must prepare for a long struggle; this reflects their understanding and confidence that their class will get involved in a long-term struggle.Another teacher said that education is related to politics and that changing education means changing the system. This understanding has emerged from the union struggle, but also from the effort that our party has made to expand the political boundaries of the immediate union struggle towards a more revolutionary struggle.
One of the teacher comrades invited the teachers to read and distribute our Challenge newspaper, participate in our study circles and join the PLP. The forum was inspiring and represents the potential of our class to lift the flag of communist revolution; they understand that it will not be a quick or simple process.

SEATTLE, WA—Some vermin from the racist, nationalist group, the Proud Boys, confronted and attacked some anti-racist fans before a Major League Soccer (MLS) match in Seattle. The racists were responding to other anti-racist fans flying an anti-fascist, anti-Nazi flag at a previous game. Similar taunting and assaults have been taking place at soccer matches and clubs in New York (HuffPost, 3/9).
While ignoring the Proud Boys and their racist violence, the MLS bosses have instead put a league-wide ban against all political banners and signs at matches. Through this decision, they are effectively equating anti-racist politics with fascist hate speech, as both “extremist ideologies.” They are in fact giving a nod of approval to racism and fascism.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is involved in this struggle to carry on the communist tradition of organizing workers to crush racist and fascist garbage on the spot and to build a revolutionary movement to get rid of the capitalist system that breeds this garbage!
Anti-racists take action, defy league bosses
The anti-racist fans of MLS teams in a number of cities wasted no time in organizing a militant united response against both the fascist thugs and the MLS bosses. Portland and Seattle team fans came together during a game to protest against fascism. They started the game with 33 minutes of complete silence. The 33 minutes was to mark 1933, the year when the Nazi Party took power in Germany and immediately banned the iron front  anti-fascist symbol. After the silence, the fans played Bella Ciao, an anti-fascist song written by Italian partisans during World War II, for the rest of the first half.
Similarly, fans from the Chicago Fire team travelled to a game in Portland to show solidarity and support against the fascists. In defiance of the league ban, they flew anti-fascist flags from their seats in the stands and were thrown out from the game. Other fans have passed out leaflets in front of stadiums about the struggle. An MLS supporter group in which a PLP comrade is active is developing a petition to gather support from other community organizations, such as churches and schools, for the anti-fascist protests. In the face of threats and suspensions from MLS, working-class fans are keeping up the fight and members of PLP must be there pointing the fight towards workers taking power and running all of society! That’s communism.
Fascists fear the red flag most
But the iron front symbol (three arrows pointing down and to the left) reveals the contradictions in the anti-fascist movement. In 1930s Germany the Social Democrats used it to oppose monarchists, fascists and communists. Today it is used by the antifa (anti-fascist) movement and has been adopted by anti-fascist soccer fans. But a blogger on the website of the Portland Timber soccer team says “This simple symbol represents opposition to the three most prominent forms of totalitarian government: fascism, monarchy and communism” (timbersarmy.org, 9,9). This is a distortion of history. It is communists all over the world who have always led the fight against fascism. That includes the Italian partisans who sang Bella Ciao.
After the Iron Front was banned in Germany in 1933, it was communists who led the overwhelming bulk of the fight against the Nazis and other fascists in the years leading up to and during the Second World War. Mostly under the leadership of the communist Soviet Union, millions of ordinary workers and peasants were trained and fought as partisans in occupied countries across Europe, an essential complement to the heroic Red Army fighting the Nazi Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.
The Nazis and the Italian fascists were defeated by millions of workers mostly led by communists. Today we salute the thousands of soccer fans protesting against fascism. But anti-communism and the anarchistic tendency of the antifa movement are losing strategies. Then as now, the red communist flag of the international working class represents the sharpest fight against racism and fascism. Only a mass PLP can organize the workers of the world into a movement for communist revolution that destroys capitalism and the racism and fascism that it breeds.
Take a stand, fight for revolution
Capitalism affects all dimensions of our everyday life, including sports. To say that sports can be “neutral” or should be free from politics just flies in the face of reality, as these events are already soaked in the capitalist bosses’ politics. This can be seen by games that start with national anthems, or salute to the imperialist war machine, or display sexist images and shallow consumerism.
As the crisis of capitalism gets worse around the world, comrades from PLP and other anti-racist fighters will need to continue to build the fight that not only denies free speech to racists, but that also attacks the racist capitalist bosses that protect and condone them. Fighting for communist revolution remains the only way to wipe racism and fascism from the face of the earth! From the stands to the streets to the schools, wave the red flag of communism!