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.

Tulsa, Oklahoma is the story of looting and dispossession. It is one of the countless massacres in the history of the United States, often skipped over in history class. It left behind untold suffering as thousands of Black residents were left homeless after three  days of racist terror and violence. As U.S. bosses celebrated  Independence Day, Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” rang even more true this year—“for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”
Early setbacks for Black-white unity
Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the fastest growing towns during the oil boom of the early 1900’s. Jim Crow laws were among Oklahoma’s first legal acts after statehood and segregation was more complete in Tulsa than it was in most other American cities (see Death in the Promised Land by Scott Ellsworth).
Both the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Oklahoma Socialist Party had active chapters in Tulsa . Both had Black members and called for multi-racial unity. Their slogan was “raise our wages.” The IWW had been leading strikes in Texas and had attempted to organize in the oil fields in Tulsa. They were clearly a threat to local bosses and politicians. But, in 1917 the police raided the local union hall, arresting 17  IWW members who were later brought up on various phony  charges.
In an editorial from the local bosses press, the World, the advice was “All is necessary is the evidence and a firing squad.” Found guilty after a short trial, IWW members were attacked on their way to county jail, by a Klan type group, Knights of Liberty. With the help of the police, the union men were tied to a tree, whipped and tortured. That evening signs were posted- Notice to IWW’s Don’t Let The Sun Set On You in Tulsa. The Tulsa Klan boasted a “thriving chapter” in 1921 with chapters for men, women, and even boys. In Tulsa county, both the Republican and Democratic candidates for county attorney were Klansmen (Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest by Charles Alexander).  They were not about to have union organizers who believed in Black-white unity in their midst.
Bosses unleash a reign of terror
From May 31-June 1, 1921 the Black community in Tulsa experienced what can only be described as a reign of terror. After rumors that a 19 year old Black man, Dick Rowland, had attempted to assault a 17 year old white woman, Sarah Paige, in an elevator were published in the Tulsa Tribune, thousands of white men, with the aid and direction  of the cops and city leaders , were deputized and armed.
In  the course of one day they  burned down one  square mile of a suburb called Greenwood, later to be nicknamed “Black Wall Street.” Homes and shops were destroyed. Black residents were shot down in the street. Both the National Guard and local cops joined the attack, dropping sticks of dynamite and firing machine guns. Local Black towns came under the surveillance of “airborne reconnaissance.” A brave but unsuccessful armed defense of the community was led by Black World War I veterans. As W.E.B. DuBois wrote- “We went to fight. We came back fighting.”
Thousands of Black residents spent the winters of 1921/1922 in flimsy tents. According to an investigation by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, almost 300 Black people were killed and 6,000 Black men were jailed. Some men stayed in jail for as long as eight  days. Martial law was declared, Black people were rounded up at gunpoint and taken to refugee camps. They could only travel if issued a green pass (Tulsa Race War by  R Haliburton, Jr.).
The only solution is communist revolution
The use of violence against the working class, especially Black and Latin workers is ongoing and constant. There are hundreds of examples of massacres by the U.S. government dating back to the 1700s. Teaching about Tulsa, or Rosewood, or the Red Summer of 1919 forces the question- what kind of system do we live under? Why would we not unite together to build a better system where workers’ needs are met without grinding others under foot? Who wouldn’t want to be able to live in union with workers regardless of perceived differences? Communist revolution is the only solution for a multi-racial, united, and free working class.  A world where there is food, housing and work for all is possible The Progressive Labor Party fights for this, join us!

The following editorial has been written by comrades in Mexico to warn the international working class about the dangers of identity politics and liberalism.

From Atlanta, Georgia to Oaxaca, Mexico, the capitalist bosses are using identity politics and sell-out misleaders to try to pacify the angry masses. But as millions have rebelled around the world, more and more demonstrators are seeing that the problem isn’t just a few “bad” cops. Racist violence is an integral part of the capitalists’ racist profit system, a state apparatus that protects the bosses’ profits by exploiting, dividing, and terrorizing the international working class.
Amid a global pandemic and economic depression, as the rulers’ callous greed and glaring weaknesses are exposed, many protesters are embracing communist ideas. They’re coming to see that all politicians and cops are our class enemies, regardless of their skin color. And that only a mass, multiracial organization, led by communist politics and the most militant Black and Latin workers, can smash the capitalist system, the source of all racism and inequality. Our inspirational unity in this fightback is the bosses’ worst nightmare.
A lynching in Atlanta
On June 15, the racist Atlanta police shot to death a 27-year-old Black man, Rayshard Brooks.  His crime? Falling asleep in his car in the drive-through lane at a Wendy’s restaurant. The cops’ lynching of Brooks reignited the anger of Black, Latin, Asian, and white workers, who burned the restaurant to the ground.
The U.S. finance capital Big Fascists are desperately straining to quell the revolt by channeling it into electoral politics and promoting Black politicians who serve the racist bosses and their system. In Atlanta, the most prominent misleaders include Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Congressman John Lewis, and former Mayor Andrew Young, who recently invoked the racist slogan “All Lives Matter” and recalled the time he attempted a “reconciliation” with members of the Ku Klux Klan (New York Times, 6/19).
These bosses’ puppets are much like the Black politicians in South Africa, who work hand in hand with the old white apartheid ruling class to keep exploiting and killing Black workers. They promote the lie that the working class can fight the bosses’ racism by electing politicians who “look like them.”
The politicians’ opportunism is nothing new. Shortly after the current rebellion was sparked by the May 25 strangulation murder of George Floyd, a massive and integrated group of young workers took to the Atlanta streets. They burned a police precinct and attacked the offices of CNN, whose founder, Ted Turner, is a billionaire backer of Bottoms. Instead of blaming her police for viciously assaulting the protesters, the mayor berated Black youth for the violence. She was following the playbook of ex-Stooge in Chief Barack Obama, who attacked the young Baltimore rebels as “thugs” after the cops executed 25-year-old Freddie Gray in 2015.When the young Atlanta rebels ignored Bottoms and the demonstrations kept growing, she was forced to fire six cops caught on tape tasering two Black college students and dragging them out of their car. A local Black prosecutor then brought murder charges against killer kkkop Garrett Rolfe, who shot Brooks twice in the back. In a racist response, dozens of Atlanta police—the so-called “good cops”—called in sick to protest.
Last year, when workers weren’t out in the streets, Bottoms showed her true loyalties after a Black police officer on her own security detail shot and killed an 18-year-old Black youth, D’Ettrick Griffin, for sliding into the cop’s unoccupied, unmarked car at a gas station. With the mayor’s backing, the cop, Oliver Simmonds, was let off by the district attorney. It didn’t matter that Atlanta specifically forbids the police from shooting at unarmed people, even if they’re fleeing (AJC, 2/8/2019). Bottoms then rewarded the police with a salary increase to “allow them to live in the city of Atlanta” (CBS News, 6/18). As if having killers as our neighbors makes us safer!
Atlanta is a majority-Black city with an uninterrupted string of Black mayors since 1974. Together they have cleared the way for gentrification by pushing out  Black workers (AJC, 5/9/2019). Though the city is known as a haven for Black capitalists, it has the worst racist inequality of any city in the U.S. In 2018, the “lowest 20 percent in Atlanta earned an average of $9,400, while the highest 20 percent brought home more than $256,000.” The majority of the local Black working class lives in poverty (Statista.com, 11/27/2019).
AMLO punches right
In Mexico, the bosses have used identity politics to put down workers’ fury and rebellion against extreme poverty and racist attacks against our class. In recent weeks, we’ve seen the assassinations by cops of Giovanni Lopez, a construction worker from Jalisco, for the “crime” of not wearing a face mask, and of Alexander Martinez, a 16-year-old from Oaxaca.  In Mexico City, riot police kicked a young woman of 16 until she was unconscious and hospitalized. All were casualties of the class war between the oppressed, the excluded, and the debt-ridden, on the one hand, and those who protect the bosses and write the laws to guarantee the capitalists’ maximum profit, on the other.
The fightback against these killers and their governing accomplices has been blunted by the popularity of the fake-leftist Morena Party and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Trading on his identity as a mestizo, a person of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, AMLO has exploited the despair of the poorest of the population, who live day after day with the violence of the cartels and mining companies and ruthless bosses. The president has deployed the National Guard (NG) as a false promise of “public safety” from corrupt politicians and federal police who collude with drug traffickers. Formed out of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, and the federal police, the NG is a forceful warrior battalion that for decades has committed abuses against the population while smashing social protest.
As AMLO rivals U.S. Terrorist in Chief Donald Trump for mishandling the Covid-19 crisis, and racist capitalist inequality in Mexico only gets worse, the president makes phony speeches against capitalism. AMLO feints with his left and punches the working class with his right. His façade as a self-made “common man,” based in part on his mestizo identity, has deceived large sections of the working class to support big-money ruling class projects—like the Trans-Isthmus Corridor and the Mayan Train—that previous presidents only dreamt of.
A massacre in Oaxaca
In 2006, in Oaxaca, the working class experienced firsthand the danger of being represented by and supporting mestizo politicians. After teachers led a massive rebellion for improved working conditions throughout the Central Valley, and gained control of Oaxaca City, they were violently suppressed by an intervention of the military, disguised as police officers. But in reality, the movement’s fatal weakness was the influence of class traitors like Santiago Chepi and Flavio Sosa, who assumed leadership within the teachers’ movement and ultimately diverted the strength of the rebellion into negotiations with the government (https://tinyurl.com/y9dnamro). Like most teachers in Oaxaca, Chepi and Sosa came from working-class mestizo families. After betraying the movement and bringing it back under the bosses’ control, Chepi and Sosa promised to push for reforms as elected representatives in Oaxaca’s municipal government. After accomplishing nothing, Chepi and Sosa created more false hope and then widespread cynicism through the election of sell-out liberals like Gabino Cue as governor of the state of Oaxaca, a disaster for the working class. Cue intensified the bosses’ attack against the teachers, which culminated in the 2016 massacre at Nochixtlan. After teachers and students’ parents blocked highways, the police slaughtered at least six workers and injured more than a hundred more (La Jornada, 12/19/16).
Unite in communist solidarity
For the future of our class, workers in the current anti-racist movement must reject the bosses’ use of identity politics that leads to pacifism, liberal fascism, and inter-imperialist war against our class sisters and brothers. We have a better alternative: to unite with Progressive Labor Party and pour all of our anger and energy into building a multiracial, multigenerational party of women and men, Black, Latin, Asian, and white. To build an international communist party that brings us shoulder to shoulder against a system that oppresses and kills in the interests of capital.
We are dedicated to fighting for the international working class. Through our newspaper, CHALLENGE, our study groups and cadre schools, but most of all through political leadership in struggle with masses of anti-racist workers, PLP keeps alive the flame of communist ideas from Oaxaca to Atlanta, from Bogota to Mexico City and beyond. Don’t vote, revolt! Join Progressive Labor Party!