CHICAGO, October 14—“FREE MOHAWK! FREE THEM ALL!” This militant chant and others were taken up by at least two dozen antiracist fighters outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse/Cook County Jail this morning. We stand in unshakeable support for local Black artist and activist Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson who was scheduled for a hearing in the capitalist bosses’ racist kkkourts today. The campaign to free Mohawk demonstrates the power of working class unity and the necessity of smashing the bosses’ racist state. Mohawk was arrested during an antiracist, anti-kkkop protest in downtown Chicago on August 15. After the klan-in-blue corralled and viciously attacked demonstrators, he was caught up in the fray. Even after posting bail, he was still held for days in jail before being released on house arrest with an ankle monitor.
The notoriously racist Chicago Police Department (CPD) released his mug shot and personal information—including his home address—to the public, which has led to death threats and racist assaults on his character. But despite facing down this capitalist state violence, Mohawk is holding strong, grounded in his own convictions and growing mass support. The international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting to help build the campaign in support of Mohawk. There’s no shortage of examples of how racist capitalism and its courts and cops attack and murder our class, particularly Black workers worldwide. It will take a mass worker-led movement fighting for communist revolution in order to crush racism and capitalism, and truly achieve justice and liberation for the international working class.
Getting to know Mohawk
Although the kkkops and the capitalist media have painted him as a “monster,” anyone who spends a moment in his presence knows that Mohawk is anything but. Among his many friends, family, fans and supporters he is known for his exceptional talents as an artist/rapper as well as being a funny and caring individual.
Mohawk was raised in an environment committed to fighting against racist structures, having had a number of relatives involved in working-class struggles. These interactions have influenced his antiracist worldview, and largely are what led him to be present at the protest on that fateful day in August.
During a recent virtual conversation with several PLP members Mohawk shared many statements of antiracist wisdom over a range of subjects concerning racist inequalities and over-policing in Chicago neighborhoods: “I think there’s a lot of money we need for schools. I think there’s a lot of money we need for roads, a lot of money we need for mental health institutions and hospitals and access to food and access to housing. If we were to address those core needs within our neighborhoods and environments, crime would probably drop significantly… They have better schools, they don’t have food deserts or stuff like that, so if we can get every neighborhood in Chicago to be like that, crime would go down and then the necessity for police.”
On the racist priority of property over workers’ lives under capitalism: “It’s a scary day when you turn on the TV and Target is getting more sympathy for a broken window than hundreds of Black people being murdered on camera… It’s just a harrowing thought to come face-to-face with the realization that I don’t matter as much as the Nordstrom window.”
Regarding what drives him to fight back, “You just have to see something wrong and go,...I’m not gonna let that happen... and then do the best you can with the best you have. That’s it.”
Building the mass antiracist campaign
The mass student and worker-led support in defense of Mohawk has been amazing. Immediately after learning of his arrest, friends and supporters jumped to social media and other outlets to organize court support and fundraising events.
For every day that he has been scheduled for a court hearing, there have been dozens of supporters protesting outside. At the beginning of this month, friends organized a “Freedom Ride” downtown where people rode bicycles and skateboards to Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx’s,  a Black woman politician elected in 2016, office to demand that she drop the racist charges. A 24-hour virtual fundraiser on his behalf drew local artists and even more support.
Members of PLP have helped contribute to a number of these actions, helping to lead chants, give speeches against this racist system, and distribute CHALLENGE newspaper. Some friends and supporters have since committed to CHALLENGE reading groups where we work to connect Mohawk’s fight for justice to the need to tear down this entire racist, sexist profit system and replace it with an egalitarian communist society based on workers’ development and needs.
The masses make history
Although Mohawk has received significant support so far, we can’t sugarcoat the danger of the bosses and their system, or the hard battle that lies ahead. Just by standing outside Cook County Jail, we’re forced to think of all the incarcerated workers, mostly Black and Latin, detained inside risking exposure to coronavirus and other racist attacks.
In the 1930s, when nine Black youth from Scottsboro, Alabama faced execution for fake charges of raping two white women, it was a communist-led mass movement of millions that forced the bosses to retreat. More recently, it was the mass movement of thousands here in Chicago and across the country that forced the arrest and conviction of racist killer cop Jason Van Dyke after he murdered Black teen Laquan McDonald on video in 2014.
This is to say: it’s the militant mass movement of millions of workers and students that truly holds the potential to force change, not confidence in the bosses’ legal system or politicians. PLP will continue to build the mass movement wherever we are, fighting for working-class justice and communist revolution. Free Mohawk! Join PLP!
To support this antiracist campaign, go to https://linktr.ee/FreeMohawk

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, October 17— Scores of antiracist fighters gathered to condemn racist police brutality in Prince George’s County, MD, Baltimore, and the world. Fiery speeches were delivered by relatives of Black men murdered by the police from the 1990s through today. The rally closed with a bold speech by a PLP member who urged participants to organize long-term to crush the fountainhead of racist brutality—capitalism—with multiracial militant organizing through the Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
Then came Part II  of today’s direct action – an unpublicized caravan to the opulent, corner-lot home of County Executive Angela Alsobrooks. She is a Black Democrat and former prosecutor who uses nationalism to cover up her cop-loving history and her selfish ambitions to be governor. She is one of many Black politicians in the county leadership who dismiss the needs of Black working class people in Prince George’s. Over 50 people filled the street and sidewalks by her house, with multiple bullhorns blasting her for her crimes against the working class. It took the cops over 15 minutes to show up to protect her and attempt (unsuccessfully) to intimidate us!
One mother condemned Alsobrooks for having indicted her son when she was States Attorney on a false gun charge. The gun in question actually belonged to the cop who made the false arrest and had been found under the laptop of the cop! A PLP member also lambasted Alsobrooks for having invited the mother of a teenager who had been murdered by the police to a meeting on false pretenses after a protest. She told this mother and her many supporters that she had no intention of re-opening the case! The teenager, Archie Elliott III, was gunned down by cops in 1993 while seated in a patrol car after having been searched, hands cuffed behind his back. The cops falsely claimed he pointed a gun at them from that position! The PLer declared, “We, the united working class, are coming for you and your capitalist partners in crime.” Other speakers criticized Alsobrooks’ attempt to co-opt the antiracist movement by establishing a police reform task force that includes mainly cops and prosecutors, with window-dressing slots for representatives from the NAACP, the SCLC, PG Changemakers, and the Public Defenders’ office.
This event was initiated by the sister of the Hyattsville police murder victim Leonard Shand (see CHALLENGE, 11/6/2019 and 5/27), and joined by other local organizations that have grown as a result of the summer of uprisings after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. It also comes on the heels of a major Zoom conference organized by Community Justice on police brutality in Prince George’s County. The rally occurred only a day after another young worker was killed by the Hyattsville police. PLP members have provided leadership and consistency to the past 45 years of struggle here against police brutality and continue to organize amidst the rising anger and militancy of these organizations. This bodes well for a resurgent working class revolt against the capitalist system.
But still, a recurring theme at anti-police brutality actions like this one is the imperative to hold cops and politicians accountable and to demand reforms to achieve this. The truth is that the police and politicians are doing the jobs they’re supposed to – on behalf of the capitalist class, not us! The capitalists need racist intimidation and terror against the working class in order to keep us fearful and divided, reducing our ability to unify and overthrow their racist exploitative system. We would do well, then, to expand our vision beyond fruitless efforts to reform an unchangeably exploitative system and heed the words of the PLP speaker who called for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism itself, and its replacement with a system of communist equality and collectivity.

MEXICO, October 20—In a community east of Mexico City, where the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been organizing for almost three decades and CHALLENGE circulates regularly, a group of approximately 150 residents organized to prevent the theft and dismantling of the Infrastructure and Network of Electric Power. Workers of the state controlled Federal Electricity Commission’s (CFE, Spanish acronym) contractors steal the existing better-quality copper wiring and install poorer quality wiring.That is the main reason why workers in the area are opposed to changing their electrical power wiring and the installation of the new meter system. Not only is it a breach of the agreement that they entered with former employees of defunct Luz y Fuerza del Centro  (see CHALLENGE 1/26/2017), but it would also result in a rate increase. The advancement of CFE plans that they deceitfully want to impose as a supposed benefit to the population, will cause greater service deficiencies and bigger profits for the financial bosses.
Workers counter growing fascism with class struggle
A crew of about 20 CFE workers arrived in the community. This time they were accompanied by members  of three police forces: municipal cops, a special state police group and National Guard elements, which are military police. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has militarized the police, to guarantee the bosses’ projects, and repress the people that protest against them. (CHALLENGE 2/6). This spectacular display failed to intimidate the brave neighborhood residents who confronted the overbearing CFE gang leader. The neighbors had a small victory when they forced the CFE workers and the cops who protected them to leave.
The tensest moment came when the police tried to surround some of our comrades who have helped to organize and lead this movement, but far from being cowed, they managed to escape the encirclement. They took shelter and began to organize the next action in which one of the objectives is to summon a larger group of neighbors big enough to surround the police. These plans reflect the fact that the best lessons on confronting growing fascism are learned amid class struggle.
With the existing copper cables, some working-class  neighbors improvise connections in order, according to the company, to “steal” electricity. By switching to aluminum cables, this will no longer be possible. Similarly, the new digital meters allow the CFE to remotely cut off service at debtor homes. The government, the bosses, and their media have tried to call these workers who "steal" electricity or have payment debts abusers and thieves, who prevent modernizing the electrical infrastructure.
At the same time, they hide the fact that the CFE grants millions of dollars in subsidies for electrical service to large and medium-sized private and state companies.
Co-opt and attack: what liberal fascists do best
In 2009, the criminal government of President Felipe Calderón fully acquired the electricity company, Compañía de Luz y Fuerza del Centro, which left around 40,000 electrical workers unemployed. The CFE used contractors to keep providing service, which caused excessive and irregular charges, so that residents, mainly from marginalized neighborhoods, organized together with some of the fired workers from Luz y Fuerza, against these unfair charges. They also promoted a payment strike and other actions to prevent any electrical infrastructure changes. This is what happened in this community with PLP’s leadership.
AMLO’s liberal government has launched a defamatory and repressive campaign against social movements to carry out the bosses’ plans. Supported by its political force, it has managed to appease traditionally combative sectors of the working class, such as the teachers of Section 22 of Oaxaca. The movements that it fails to co-opt, it tries to intimidate or represses. That is what happened here and with other movements like the movement against the Morelos Comprehensive Plan.  
PLP’s presence in this type of struggle, in addition to confirming our trust and dedication to our class, is key to unmasking the liberal politicians as enemies of the workers and building the organization to end this criminal system. The international working class must support these actions of resistance to the bosses' plans. This solidarity across borders produces a powerful force to confront fascism.

After nearly 200 days of protesting the cops who murdered 26-year-old Black Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), Breonna Taylor, the city of Louisville, Kentucky agreed to pay a settlement of 12 million dollars to Taylor’s family. The settlement is considered “historic” because it is one of the largest payouts (and in a relatively short amount of time) for a police killing of a Black worker in the U.S. Meanwhile, the one cop who was charged, did so for accidentally spraying his ammo into a neighboring apartment.
No amount of money will substitute for the lives stolen by this system, no matter how many times the bosses try to wash their blood-soaked hands with it. Racism is essential for capitalists to divide and control the working class and the ruling class will never truly punish the thugs who maintain their power. Therefore, we are left with one choice: turn our anger into action and organize ourselves into the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) for communist revolution.
Louisville: the rule, not the exception
There’s a heap of lies surrounding the actions of Louisville police. The attorney general, Daniel Cameron, lied about the grand jury unanimously agreeing to drop charges against the officers. Then, Cameron used his race to appeal to the Black community as he stood before the public to say that the officers would not be charged. In one account, the officers claim to have had a no-knock search warrant, but say they knocked and announced themselves anyway. In another account, they claim to have had a “no-knock” warrant initially, but then claimed that it changed to a “knock and announce” warrant.
Either way, “no-knock” warrants will never stop the police from murdering workers, especially Black workers. As Professor Alex Vitale said in his book, The Ending of Policing, the police are “violence-workers”. They are trained to be violent, and use excessive force in Black and immigrant communities. Police reforms like those promoted by Black Lives Matter-aligned groups cannot deter them from doing that job.
Take the body cameras, for instance. Since the killing of Mike Brown in 2014, the use of body cameras was expanded. Yet, the cops have shot and killed nearly the same number of people every year since (Washington Post). In the case of Breonna Taylor’s murder, the footage from the body-camera was only recently made public and strongly suggests the lack of integrity of the crime scene after the raid and the investigation that followed.
The city of Louisville installed their first Black woman chief of police, Yvette Gentry. When asked what she thought about the lack of reforms in the department, Gentry said the reforms would “take a life of their own” and made clear that she’s “not a fan of taking too many tools off the table”, claiming that it’s more of a matter of recruiting the “right men and women.” This is how the ruling class uses identity politics to persuade workers into fighting for broken reforms and accepting  the racist murders capitalism has to offer. But no matter the gender, race, or ethics of the individual person, or which end of the political spectrum they are on, the job of the police is to protect and serve the ruling class and to keep the working class subdued. It’s in their history.
Police: frontline defenders of capitalism
Today’s police are descendants of capitalism’s growing need to terrorize and control the working class. Their origins began in the British colonial era, when the bosses formed patrols of native-born Irish workers in 1812 to suppress violent Irish working class rebellions against British imperialism. Wearing distinctive uniforms with copper metal buttons, these “coppers” or “cops” were formed in London as masses of workers first joined militant trade unions in the 1820s.
By 1855, policing was adopted by the U.S. bosses in rapidly industrializing Chicago, amid growing working class strike movements. While the British bosses may have invented the concept of police, it was their former apprentices, the U.S. bosses who gave birth to racism, who took it and ran with it. The Chicago Police Department, is comprised of fugitive slave catchers, terrorist anti-union Pinkerton detectives and later KKK scum, soon spread their model to cities like New York and everywhere as this model was adopted by capitalists worldwide, all developing into the police forces we know today.
While bosses try to placate the working class with a number of police reforms, including implementing what they’ve called, “Breonna’s Law”, which bans no-knock search warrants—it can never alter the fundamental character of what the police are.
The ruling class has nothing to offer the working class. The working class as a whole cannot be bought or bribed into forgetting the rulers who murder us for the sake of profit. What will truly be historic is when the entire international working class unites behind the red banners of PLP, and throws this entire capitalist system into the garbage can of history once and for all.