Google’s move to cut off Huawei phones from access to the company’s software is a stark reminder to capitalists worldwide and a blunt message to the rising Chinese ruling class: U.S. imperialism will be ruthless in defending its global profits. Google’s signing on to U.S. efforts to beat back the projection of Chinese power intensifies the pressure on European and other capitalist rulers to choose sides in the escalating cyberwar between the two superpowers. Neutrality—for companies as well as countries—will be difficult, if not impossible. But workers must choose our own side, the side of the international working class. As World War III gets closer, we must be prepared to turn imperialist war into class war for communist revolution.
High technology: spy vs. spy
U.S. President Donald Trump’s assault on Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, is an attempt to block the Chinese bosses’ “digital silk road.” Chinese advances in global high technology, the centerpiece of the country’s “Made in China 2025” industrial policy, work hand-in-glove with its Belt and Road Initiative to gain political power through infrastructure projects and economic thievery around the world. Hauwei was born to spread Chinese power globally. It was founded in 1987 by a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army (npr.org, 12/18/18). Just as AT&T and Verizon are arms of U.S. imperialism, Huawei is an arm of Chinese imperialism.  
Currently China is leading the world in building infrastructure for the future 5G wireless network technology. The implications for the U.S. bosses are terrifying: A recent joint statement by several senior American military leaders noted that Chinese-led 5G infrastructure provides Beijing opportunities for forced data collection and could potentially compromise the integrity of future U.S. military operations. Moreover, they warned that this would give China’s fascist government the ability to clandestinely collect private information from billions of people and use that data for coercion (nationalinterest.org, 5/21).
Of course, these U.S. fascists are hoping that everyone forgets about Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Their revelations exposed the global expansion of spying by U.S. telecommunication firms on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency.
China and U.S. vie for allies
In both Latin America and Europe, U.S. warnings of future Chinese spying have largely fallen on deaf ears. Huawei phones make up only 7 percent of the Latin American market, as compared to 25 percent in Europe (New York Times, 5/25). Besides, Latin American governments and workers have lived with U.S. spying for decades. Hamilton Mourão, the Brazilian vice president, gives voice to the predominant ruling class view: “China wants our products; we need trains, ports, and highways that facilitate the transport of these products”(Foreign Affairs, May 2019).  
In Europe, meanwhile, close NATO allies like Germany and Britain are resisting U.S. appeals to ban Huawei from their own 5G projects. U.S. intelligence officials are conceding that Huawei and other Chinese telecom companies will “most likely control 40 to 60 percent of the networks over which businesses, diplomats, spies and citizens do business” (NYT, 5/28).
The bosses are pitching 5G technology as a big improvement in our quality of life, from faster movie downloads to revolutionary medical breakthroughs via augmented and virtual reality. They claim that 5G will tie together the “internet of things,” from autonomous cars to security cameras and industrial equipment (NYT, 5/25).  
But we should remember that the primary reason the bosses are building this infrastructure is for “national security”—in other words, for internal surveillance and repression to enhance military readiness. Any “benefits” for workers will take a back seat to the needs of the capitalists’ war machine and their move toward full-blown fascism.
Trade wars push patriotism
As the superpowers’ trade war intensifies, the U.S. rulers’ use of state power seems clumsy next to China’s state capitalists, who are more efficient in disciplining and unifying their own class—an essential element of fascism. The current impasse between Trump and Congress threatens to paralyze the U.S. government’s ability to implement new policy, at least in the short term. In a fast-moving world situation, this is highly unfavorable for the U.S. ruling class. Throw in Trump’s ally-smashing style, and U.S. imperialism may be isolated as it falls from its brief perch atop the profit system’s global pecking order.
U.S. workers have come to rely on cheap goods from both China and the U.S. to offset some of the rampant income inequality that concentrates obscene wealth within the tiny ruling class. But as Trump imposes more tariffs and China retaliates, prices will continue to rise. Both sets of rulers will need to win many millions of workers to the idea that it is our “patriotic duty” to sacrifice and pay higher prices for “Made in the USA” and “Made in China” products. The extra dollars and yuan to flow through the bosses’ respective treasuries will ultimately finance the cost of mass slaughter, as the trade war erupts into a shooting war.
Confronting China
All U.S. rulers grasp the need to keep a critical mass of war industry physical plants on the North American continent.  But in recent years, a number of U.S. manufacturers, including critical sectors like aerospace (warplanes) and trucks (tanks), have come to rely on cheap steel and electronic components from China. Sooner than later, a non-Chinese supply chain will be needed.
Though the immediate outcome of this latest trade war is unclear, the rising stakes are unmistakable.  Thomas Friedman, in-house cheerleader for U.S. imperialism at the New York Times, declares: “We could look the other way when trade was just about toys and solar panels, but when it’s about F-35s and 5G telecommunications, that’s not smart” (NYT 5/23). While Trump’s style is chaotic, it puts important needs of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the finance capitalists, front and center.  
In the U.S., the capitalist bosses—whether Republicans or Democrats—have yet to win masses of workers to the patriotic fervor needed for a serious inter-imperialist confrontation.  Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the same boat. In both countries, individualism and consumerism reign supreme. To the extent that the Trump-Xi trade clash represents the start of an effort to politicize consumers with anti-Chinese or anti-American sentiment, it is a significant building block for wider war.
In 2020 and beyond, – fight for communism
As capitalism heads toward world war history teaches us that the working class is the only force that can change this course of mass devastation. In the coming period, the bosses will undoubtedly attack every section of society to prepare for war. Communists must be positioned in growing mass movements, from fights for national healthcare and reproductive rights to teacher strikes and struggles against racist police murders. As we sharpen the class struggle, we must extend our work into basic industry.
PLP’s aim is to build a mass base of class-conscious workers who can be won to international communist revolution. As workers reject nationalism and reformism, they will come to understand that if you leave one wolf alive, the sheep will never be safe. Only then will humanity emerge from the threat of capitalist-inflicted annihilation and advance into a future where the world’s working class is free from exploitation.

BALTIMORE, May 15 —After 37 days of refusing to hold any discussions with members of the Johns Hopkins University sit-in about their powerful anti-racist demands on May 8, president Ronald Daniels used state power to break into locked-down Garland Hall. About 80 armed Baltimore City police forcibly ended the occupation and arrested everyone inside after fire department personnel broke through the Hall’s heavy glass doors.
This sit-in at Hopkins has helped set the foundations for future struggles, proving that the antiracist work we do today counts. It also forces us to define the meaning of victory.
Violence against the working class
One arrestee was a trans woman. She was misgendered, strip-searched, and humiliated. That afternoon, she and the others who had been arrested at the Garland Hall occupation were released and welcomed back with great comradely respect and excitement.
Later that evening, a weekly West Wednesday was held. That week’s rally was right outside Central Booking where those arrested at the sit-in had been detained. Once again West Wednesday was huge, with many participants and supporters from the sit-in enthusiastically attending.
Beating back racism with multiracial unity!
The West Wednesdays have grown as the antiracist struggle has sharpened and taken on a mass character. As CHALLENGE reported in the last issue, right after the conclusion of the powerful 300th West Wednesday on May 1, a racist hiding out in the dark attacked two people by the car belonging to Tawanda Jones–sister of Tyrone West. That racist punched two women in the face as they challenged him about his repulsive ideas, and he then got a taste of his own medicine.
One week later, in the middle of the night of May 8, just a few hours before the large-scale police action against the sit-in, a group of about six people, apparently led by fascists, forcibly pushed their way into the sit-in through a door that wasn’t chained shut at that moment.
This group had a bolt cutter, hoping to cut the chains on various doors and end the lock-down of Garland Hall. One of them violently grabbed a Black woman and tried to throw her down a staircase. Their plan failed when members of the sit-in, despite an injury, were able to get the racists out of the building. Therefore, for West Wednesday on the evening of that same day, a security plan was quickly developed,to ensure the safety of the rally.
At the rally, everyone marched around the corner to face the jail, and chanted very loudly, in massive unison, to support not only the jail’s general population, but also one of the inmates in particular: Keith Davis Jr. He was the first person shot by police, subsequent to the police killing of Freddie Gray. Davis has since been falsely accused of murder, and incarcerated in that prison while awaiting his fifth trial, scheduled for July. Rally participants were moved to see that prisoners were holding themselves up above the cell floors, keen to see and hear the rally. One of the prisoners that cheered the rally from his cell was Keith Davis himself!
Racists get scared;masses mobilize
At today’s West Wednesday, the racists made their presence felt, circling with their cars and sometimes parking near the rally. One of them was driven by killer cop Nicholas Chapman, one of the two animals who initiated the murderous attack on Tyrone West in July of 2013. Perhaps his goal was intimidation. Or perhaps he was scoping out the sizeable rally and starting to seriously worry that West Wednesday, along with additional elements of this struggle, is going to succeed in getting some accountability, and he may well be facing firing, and a cell block.
By the time this article is published, participants from the sit-in will have had a meeting with Hopkins president, to push for complete amnesty and, even more importantly, to continue pushing hard for the three demands: no private armed police force; no contracts with ICE; and justice for Tyrone West. Hopkins alumni, concerned academics, students, and community members are being mobilized in support. In addition, Hopkins students are being urged to continue attending the West Wednesday rallies.
The meaning of victory
There was some sense of defeat that the Hopkins sit-in had been forcibly ended without yet winning any of its three important demands.
      A member of Progressive Labor Party, one of the speakers at the May 8th rally, pointed out that the sit-in actually succeeded, very effectively, at popularizing an understanding of the issues, and the need to vigorously and boldly fight racism.
The speaker pointed to a link between this struggle and early opposition to the Vietnam War. The speaker said that when the Vietnam War began, antiwar students and workers were spat upon and yelled at. Over the next seven years of leafleting, teach-ins and struggle, as well the masses witnessing the mostrosity and devastation of the war in the evening news, most workers in the U.S. grew to become opponents of the war.
Large numbers of workers, students and soldiers came to understand that this war, which killed about two million Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers, disproportionately Black, was rooted in the dynamics of imperialism — a system that PLP continues to fight worldwide to replace with a communist, sisterly and brotherly egalitarian world.
When U.S. capitalists suddenly expanded that war by invading neighboring Cambodia, based upon the growth of political consciousness over seven years, half the colleges in the U.S. went on strike, virtually overnight.
Similarly, said the Party speaker, the sit-in at Hopkins, through its boldness and its consciousness raising, has helped lay the groundwork for larger struggles in the future, exclaiming to everyone at the rally “What you have done, counts!”

New York, May 29–Recently a subway conductor for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) got stabbed while sitting on a bench in his uniform.  Meanwhile, toxic silica dust will be released during major repairs of the L Train subway tunnel and will affect both transit workers and riders. To top it off, the MTA bosses just raised the fares.
The billionaire capitalists who run New York City and control the MTA blame the workers for these problems.The MTA’s plan is to try to drive a wedge between transit workers and fellow workers who ride the train. The vast majority of transit workers, have resisted their attempts, by not playing into the bosses’ fear mongering. They don’t fear the riding public, and are eager to help whenever they can. Similarly most riders do not blame the workers for train delays or unsafe conditions.
Mental health
Actually, the stabbed conductor was closer to the truth: ”What’s going on is that there’s a heavy mental issue … And I think this really needs to be dealt with... Someone like him, he’s possibly a victim of mental illness … so it’s something that we have to take care of” (abc7news, 4/22).
This “heavy mental issue” is capitalist exploitation of the working class, so bosses can make maximum profits. It is the job of communists in the Progressive Labor Party to not only fight for safer working conditions, but also to unite workers to fight against the whole capitalist system.
Mental health is a major issue in this country. The stressors caused by racism and exploitation are the main drivers of mental illness. Many workers never receive the care they need, due to the closure of mental health hospitals. “The disappearance of long-term-care facilities and psychiatric beds has escalated over the past decade, sparked by a trend toward deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients in the 1950s and 1960s, says Dominic Sisti, director of the Scattergood …”(NPR 11/30/17)
Silica dust kills workers, as bosses profit
At a recent Transit Workers Union (TWU) meeting it became clear that the bosses and the union have the same “solution” to the silica dust health problem:“Educate” workers about the health risks it poses, while scheduling workers for routine medical evaluations. As for the health risks to riders, the bosses have no answers and the union says, “We’ll get back to you.” This is how the working class is treated in liberal New York City with a Democratic mayor and governor.
Progressive Action is a group of transit workers organizing against the dangers from silica dust. They also held a march to City Hall to demand that Transit Authorities take action against the assaults on transit workers. Unfortunately, this march has led to demanding more police to ‘protect’ transit workers, which is a dead end. Kkkops will more easily harass Black and Latin transit workers; no MTA badge will change that. This “solution” will also send more workers with mental illnesses to prison. “The Treatment Advocacy Center reported American prisons and jails housed an estimated 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness in 2012 ... That figure is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in state psychiatric hospitals in the same year—about 35,000 people” (The Washington Post, 4/30/2015).
Fare hikes
But wait! The bosses want to squeeze the workers some more by raising the fares. Then they can get the media to blame the lack of money for transit repairs on fare beaters.There was a big media blitz about how workers don’t pay the fare on the busses and jump the turnstiles to ride the subway. That won’t be a problem under communism as public transportation will run everywhere and it will be free. Here the MTA bosses and the TWU union sellouts have a “disagreement.” The bosses want more cops to go after workers who apply for too much overtime! But the union, and even the Progressive Action group within the union, want more cops to supposedly protect the transit workers. They want the cops to protect the transit workers from other workers. When asked what the union was doing to improve the relationship between MTA workers and riding workers, union reps replied with, “y’all ain’t got to worry about that because no one’s gonna want to fight with a guy swinging a Jerry [slug hammer].” This was probably the most callous, and individualistic thing heard from the union misleaders. The union member responded that he cares about the safety of all workers, not just those in his division.  
Then the media went after workers who worked “too much” overtime. “The study found MTA workers are putting in so many extra hours … that the agency spent $418 million on overtime last year (CBS New York, 4/23).”With over 50,000 transit workers, a majority is required to work seven days a week. These workers are not rolling in the dough. There is lots of overtime because the MTA bosses refuse to hire more workers.
All things change
After the union meeting a PLer had a lunchroom discussion with his coworkers. At first they were afraid he would lose his job for criticizing the company. Many felt it wouldn’t change anything raising the issues with the union. They were right about the sell-out union. One worker mentioned how hard it would be just to get the workers to a union meeting, himself included. The PLer’s response was that all things change. The PLer also proposed a flyer to pressure the union and to address mental illness. The workers are in the midst planning a struggle.
So what do the MTA bosses, politicians, and media lackeys have in store for the working class? More fare hikes and pay cuts in workers salary overtime. Not to mention, exposing workers and riders to toxic silica dust. We need to fight back with a united working class and eventually seize power with a communist revolution for the working class.

Newark, New Jersey, May 6 – About 75 people in this working class, mostly Black and Latin city, attended a forum whose key purpose was to alert neighborhood residents about the ongoing lead contamination of their water. Progressive Labor Party(PLP) alerted residents to the destructive nature of capitalism that destroys our environment and all aspects of our lives, from working conditions to education to healthcare.
 Many of the forum’s organizers were critical of the city administration’s initial failure to address the crisis and their attempts to lie their way out of public criticism. PLP members have consistently pointed out that capitalism’s insatiable demand for profit is the source of racist attacks on the working class such as lead poisoning. Only communism, a society run by the working class, can end these atrocities and build a world where profiting from the sale of toxic products will become a distant memory.
Liberal misleaders
Electing “progressive” politicians like Newark’s Mayor Ras Baraka can never end these racist attacks. As one of the forum panelists said: “I tell my students that politicians running for president in 2020 promise us they will fix the system; but I ask my students why we, as working class parents, teachers and students, couldn’t run things much better than the politicians and the rulers behind them do.”
The forum opened with a short statement summarizing the 20th century history of corporate use of lead products. In the 1920s, the oil, auto, chemical and lead industry bosses conspired to promote lead in gasoline. Even before that, the lead industry was successfully campaigning to convince city administrations to use lead pipes to transport water. While raking in billions in profits from the sale of products containing lead, these capitalists were well aware of their lethal toxicity. Years later, cities like Newark were left to deal with the murderous consequences of long-term exposure to lead.
The panelists included one of the attorneys currently suing Newark over the lead contamination, a scientist who specializes in the effects of chemical contamination, and a Newark high school teacher actively involved in the fight to rid Newark’s water of lead. The panelists discussed the centuries old history of the human use of lead, the deadly long-term consequences of lead exposure, and the current status of the lawsuit.
The environmental attorney pointed out that lead poisoning disproportionately affects cities with large Black and Latin working class populations. As with Flint, Michigan, Newark’s lead testing in 2017 and 2018 showed that almost 20 percent of measured households had levels above the federal action limit, and both cities measured elevated amounts among children (nrdc.org). Just as racist unemployment, police brutality, gentrification and skyrocketing rents have plagued former industrial cities like Newark and Flint, so have environmental catastrophes.
Several residents accused the city administration and Mayor Baraka of lying about the safety of Newark’s water. In July of 2017, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection gave the city six months to develop a plan to address the problem of lead leaching into the water system. The city only commissioned a further study, doing nothing to remedy the problem.  
In February of 2018, Newark’s own consultant advised the Water Department that preliminary results also showed that corrosion control was ineffective. But, in June of 2018, the Water Department Director issued a statement proclaiming that the water was completely safe, accusing the environmental lawyers of “outrageously false” charges. Ras Baraka said the same thing during his 2018 reelection campaign, with mass Robocalls and mailings, claiming the water was safe to drink. The city did nothing until October 2018, after the lawsuit was filed, when the final results of its study showed conclusively that the corrosion control in one of the two city reservoirs was not working.
Workers need clean water and communism
Several media outlets, including the Newark-based Star Ledger, have reported extensively on the lead crisis. All of these outfits have their own motives for exposing and controlling Mayor Baraka, including keeping gentrification on track in Newark. Also, the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit has already made it clear that she thinks the city’s belated remedial actions absolve it of legal responsibility for the problem. Both the bourgeois press and the rulers’ courts serve the capitalists and their lackey politicians and have little care for the interests of the working class.   
PLP members and friends are actively fighting for clean water. We want the local bosses and developers to pay the entire cost of the lead clean-up and we want workers and students to join us in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow this racist, capitalist system. Then we can end capitalism’s environmental disasters behind and focus on building communism, a healthy and productive world for the working class.