As of July 21, according to the New York Times, more than 600,000 workers worldwide have been killed by the coronavirus pandemic. In the U.S. alone, more than 140,000 workers have died and more than 58,000 are hospitalized with Covid-19 (COVID Tracking Project, 7/21). In the midst of this deadly siege, as the capitalist rulers push to “reopen” their economy and sacrifice our class for their profit, the burden of supporting and safeguarding workers has fallen primarily on women—and especially upon Black, Latin, Asian, indigenous, and immigrant women.
The profit system creates a stark division between paid and unpaid labor like housekeeping and childrearing, and between the status accorded to “women’s work” and jobs mostly reserved for men. With Covid-19 intensifying every toxic aspect of capitalism, woman workers are the most economically and socially vulnerable and the most physically exposed to the lasting effects of Covid-19.
Capitalism cannot exist without sexism, the super-exploitation and special oppression of women. According to a 2018 report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which considered both wage differentials and the gap in responsibility for childcare, women earned just 49 cents for every dollar earned by men over a 15-year period (Vox, 4/2/19). When the capitalists pay women less, they’re able to use sexist inequality to lower wages for men workers as well. Long before the pandemic surfaced, sexism infected our class through the objectification of women and gender discrimination against gay and trans workers. Most of all, sexism divides women and men workers and fractures our fightback.
Only under communism, when we abolish money and smash for-profit labor, will we see egalitarian, collectivized living. Only then will we break ourselves free from our sexist and racist chains.
The value of unpaid labor
While working men are dying from Covid-19 at even higher rates, women “make up more than half of low-wage workers in every state, leaving them in particularly vulnerable positions as the economy sheds jobs at an unprecedented rate. Almost 90 percent of nurses are women, as are the majority of child care workers, housekeepers, cleaners, maids, nursing assistants and home health aids in elder care and rehabilitation facilities” (NBC News, 4/20).
Internationally, women workers have been hit hardest by sexist and racist inequality and violence, the bosses’ deadliest weapon against our class. Thousands of women working in nursing homes and hospitals are perishing from capitalist neglect and the lack of protective gear. Millions more are unemployed after working in industries shuttered by the pandemic or needing to stay home with school-aged children. In the U.S., women account for 55 percent of the 20.5 million thrown into unemployment, with the highest jobless rates among Black and Latin women (NPR, 5/9). In India, women are more likely to lose their jobs and to be pushed into arranged marriages, which limit their future autonomy (NYT, 7/15). In Britain, Black and Asian working women reported struggling to feed their families (fawcettsociety.org). From the U.S. to Mexico to South Africa, reports of domestic violence have spiked.
Globally, women workers carry out 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work every day. If valued at minimum wage, this would represent a contribution of at least $10.9 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry (OxFam International).
Sexist healthcare worsens in crisis
Under capitalism, health care is not only abysmal but also notoriously sexist and racist. Studies have shown that women are more likely to be inadequately treated for pain or dementia (Guardian, 11/20/17) and suffer a higher death rate after heart attacks (MedCity News, 5/4/19). Two of three pregnancy-related maternal deaths would be preventable with adequate medical care (NYT, 7/13).
Even before Covid-19, Black women in the U.S. were bearing the brunt of the healthcare system’s sexism and racism. They were 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease, and 71 percent more likely to die from cervical cancer (npr.org, 12/7/17). This criminal situation has only gotten worse during the pandemic. In April, Deborah Gatewood, a Black nurse who worked for 31 years in a Detroit hospital, was denied treatment by hospital doctors four times before eventually dying from Covid-19. Murderous neglect is par for the course in a system that “routinely treat[s] black people’s pain and suffering far less seriously than that of other patients. It is the result of preposterous, anti-science assumptions [doctors] hold about black people, which their medical schools and hospitals still have not forced them to unlearn” (Guardian, 5/4).
Black women are key to revolution
As Black and Latin workers confront police violence and are killed by kkkops, it is often the mothers and sisters of these lost workers who march to the front and lead us in the fightback. They are the warriors and leaders we need against sexism and racism!
Since December 2019, the family of Alex Flores, who was murdered by the Los Angeles Police Department, has been fighting back. The political leadership of their marches and organizing is largely led by the women of Alex’s family. Many of their husbands stay home with the children, a great example of what life will be like under communism, when all labor will be collective.
In Brooklyn, the family of Shantel Davis, murdered by the New York Police Department in 2012, continues to lead antiracist fightback in the name of Shantel and so many others killed by capitalism. And this past week, we remembered and continued to fight for Kyam Livingston, a 37-year-old mother killed by medical neglect in Brooklyn Central Booking in 2013. For seven years now, Kyam’s family, led by her mother, have been calling the bosses to account.
Capitalist feminism is not anti-sexist
Only a mass working-class revolution, led by a revolutionary communist party, will free our class. Workers must be wary of the rise of women politicians who have risen to serve the capitalist class. They have been handed “power” only to use it against us.
Hillary Clinton’s shameful career as a racist misleader who championed mass incarceration and the deeper impoverishment of welfare recipients, made it clear that feminism and liberal identity politics are dead ends for the working class. Calls to break the corporate world’s “glass ceiling” are supported by the capitalist rulers for a reason. These backward ideas are designed to confuse women workers’ class loyalties and to funnel their anti-sexist anger into individualism and empty electoral reform.
Is that antisexist? No!
Michelle Obama, often touted as the feminist pinnacle of “Black excellence,” encouraged workers to vote for Clinton, saying: "The best qualified candidate in this last race was a woman…and she wasn't perfect, but she was way more perfect than many of the alternatives” (Newsweek, 4/5/18).
Is that antisexist? No!
In 2019, Lori Lightfoot, former assistant U.S. attorney, became Chicago's first Black woman mayor and the city's first to identify as lesbian. She then fought against a citywide education strike, arguing against increased school funding and staffing while handing out over a billion dollars in workers’ taxes to finance private real estate developments (see CHALLENGE, 2/20). By attacking the mostly women workers, Lightfoot also attacked those who will get hurt the most—students.
Is that antisexist? No!
Communist revolution is antisexist
The Progressive Labor Party fights against sexism and capitalist feminism. It is crucial to attack sexist practices and understand how capitalist crises heighten the sexist and racist super-exploitation of sections of the working class.
As women workers internationally fight to keep themselves and our class brothers and sisters alive, we must continue to fight for a world that follows their leadership. Above all, we must stay vigilant against liberal misleaders who try to pacify our calls for revolution with reformist crumbs and the promise of seats at the bosses’ table.
Workers of the world, unite to smash the whole damn profit system!
JOLIET, ILLINOIS, July 21—For the past 16 days, nearly 700, mainly women nurses gathered for a courageous anti-sexist strike braving summer heat and rain. Taking action after their contract with AMITA Health St. Joseph's Medical Center expired, these Black, Asian, and white nurses joined the ranks of workers worldwide who are fighting back against increased abuse, hypocrisy, and exploitation from the capitalist healthcare bosses during the pandemic.
For the first time in nearly 25 years, the workers of AMITA authorized a strike through their union to demand sufficient staffing, livable salaries and benefits, and an end to the bullying working conditions. While the sellout Illinois Nurses Association (INA) signed a new contract today, nurses have shown that the fight is far from over. Reforms under capitalism can always be reversed. Comrades from the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) salute the bold striking nurses for their example, and invite them and all workers to fight for genuine power through revolution. We fight for the line that only a worker-run egalitarian society can guarantee freedom from pandemics, racist police terror, sexism and war. By fighting for communism, we are fighting for our collective health!
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the deadly sexism and racism that fuels the capitalist system. The overwhelming majority of frontline workers thrown into dangerous and unknown working conditions as the infections ramped up have primarily been Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant women (see page 2). Thousands of workers nationwide have already been sent to an early grave in the bosses’ ruthless scramble for profits. But thousands and thousands of workers, especially women workers, have fought back and set a militant example for others to follow.
Picket against capitalist exploitation
Shortly after learning about the strike, PLP comrades visited the nurses’ picket on multiple occasions to extend antisexist, antiracist communist solidarity to these working-class fighters. We instantly received warm welcomes from the nurses, and praise for our homemade signs attacking racism and capitalism. Practically everyone on the picket took CHALLENGE, and we were able to engage in conversation with many and make new contacts.
The nurses personally confirmed many of the bosses’ attacks, including chronic short-staffing and the proposed elimination of sick pay for new hires. They openly called out the hypocrisy of the hospital bosses for their empty words that have hailed healthcare workers as “heroes” throughout the pandemic, but who have consistently failed to address the dangerous conditions inside for nurses and patients alike. In a field that is 91 percent women, these working conditions are inherently sexist.
Many nurses on the picket line were immigrant women from the Philippines. Coming to the U.S. and signing work visa contracts with hospitals, they historically have been harassed and intimidated against organizing or even speaking out against the bosses’ sexist working conditions.
Their energetic leadership in this struggle and in so many others shows clearly that the most oppressed workers under this rotten system are suited to give some of the most militant and revolutionary leadership against it.
#unionfails
The INA did nearly nothing to draw wider working-class support into the struggle.
After spending more time on the picket lines, PLP learned that negotiations were really going nowhere, and that there was no real vision or political leadership on the direction or goals of the strike.The first contract offer was so bad, that over 70 percent of nurses voting rejected it (NBC Chicago, 7/12). Over 170 nurses didn’t even bother to vote on the second proposal (Patch, 7/20). Many were clearly discouraged after realizing that they were basically only “breaking even” after a two-week strike.
The fact that the union failed to take any kind of real stand for the nurses should come as little surprise. At their core, unions exist under capitalism to limit workers’ struggle within acceptable limits for the bosses, and to decide the terms of our exploitation through periodic contract negotiations.
Contrast this with a communist society, where institutions like hospitals and clinics would be organized and run by workers, for our own benefit. There would be no bosses to rip us off and put us and our patients in danger, no leeches profiting off our labor. We would make decisions collectively and advance workers’ health tremendously, just like was done after the communist revolutions in Russia and China in the 20th century (see CHALLENGE, 7/8).
A world to win
But such a society requires a mass international workers’ movement, under the revolutionary leadership of the communist PLP. The reform struggles that we find ourselves in today, both big and small, can arm our class with the consciousness and courage that we need to take on the capitalist bosses as we build for revolution.
We are thankful to learn and draw inspiration from our fellow working-class fighters, from the nurses in Joliet to workers all over the world. We call on all our class sisters and brothers to connect their struggles against capitalist exploitation, unemployment, hunger, and disease together and fight to wipe them all out by fighting for an egalitarian communist society. We have a world to win!
INGLEWOOD, CA—Seventy people rallied in support of tenants fighting back against racist gentrification and landlord abuse. Tenants from the Inglewood Gardens (IG) apartments have been subjected to inhumane conditions for months. These conditions are the result of a racist system of private rental property that puts landlord profits way above the needs of tenants for safe, decent housing. Capitalism is a system that allows profiteering bankers and landlords to make enormous profits off the backs of working class people by treating shelter, a human need, as a commodity. When that system is overthrown and replaced by communism, housing will be distributed according to need; there will be no money.
The rally, called by the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU), was a major success. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been active in the union. Despite the pandemic and threats and harassment from the landlord, five tenants joined the rally. There was overwhelming support from passing drivers, who honked loudly. The rally ended with a well-received march around the neighborhood. The marchers chanted, “When Inglewood tenants are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back” among other chants. The rally also inspired almost 20 new people to attend the next online LITU general meeting, after which eight workers joined the tenant union.
Fight racist gentrification and landlord profiteering
LITU has been organizing at IG for close to a year. IG is directly across the street from SoFi Stadium, the new home of the Los Angeles Rams and the LA Chargers football teams, and was scheduled to open this summer. The LA Clippers basketball team is building another stadium within two miles of SoFi. It is scheduled to open in 2024. Los Angeles is also hosting the 2028 Olympic Games, and will undoubtedly use these two stadiums.
Inglewood is a predominantly working class, Black and Latin city southwest of Los Angeles. Partly because of mass pressure from Inglewood’s workers, the Inglewood City Council was recently forced to institute rent control, limiting increases to three percent per year or the cost of living, whichever is greater. However, the ordinance still allows unlimited rent increases once a unit is vacated.
Not long after the beginning of construction of SoFi in late 2016, property values soared and the former IG owner jacked up rents 40 percent and more. Some tenants moved out then. In September 2019, Alfa Investments LLC, bought the building, planning even more increases.
Alfa’s strategy is typical of real estate capitalists everywhere. They refused to repair apartments with nasty, extensive mold. They overlooked roaches and other insect infestations. Sinks were left totally inoperable or allowed to leak. Meanwhile, Alfa performed noisy repair work on weekends and into the early evenings, focusing exclusively on the vacant apartments. Cosmetic changes on the outside of the building and in the building courtyard masked the true conditions of the remaining tenants’ apartments. More tenants moved out, thereby removing those apartments from rent control.
Alfa’s racist neglect of the Black and Latin IG tenant population knows no bounds. They ripped out tenant mailboxes without any notice. New mailboxes were put in months ago, but tenants still have no keys. The letter carrier continues to deliver mail into open tenant mail slots in a room that is open 24 hours a day. Alfa lies, blaming everything on a post office “backlog” in approving the new boxes. A postal service supervisor has said there is no backlog.
This was all done under the “watchful” eye of the city government. Politicians lie about supporting workers, but really they all serve the capitalists. Their job is to fool workers with their lies.
Because word of the rally and march spread widely on social media, the Mayor of Inglewood, who claims to have workers’ best interests at heart, vowed to have Inglewood Code Enforcement visit the IG apartments. So the landlord was forced to meet with the tenant leader, two LITU members and a City code inspector. But the inspector clearly sided with the landlord who refused LITU’s demand to move the remaining tenants into the newly renovated apartments, or to make anything other than superficial repairs to the tenants’ apartments. A capitalist is only willing to do for the working class as much as he feels forced to! But we fight on. LITU and the tenants, and members of PLP are planning further actions, including exposing the Mayor, City agencies, and the entire, racist, capitalist system.
As PLP members within LITU, we will continue to point out the treadmill nature of reform and the need to overthrow this entire, rancid system. The lessons from this struggle are clear. As long as capitalism is allowed to exist, members of the working class will be forced into constant struggles for their very lives. Only a communist revolution, led by the PLP, can eliminate this scourge from the face of the earth.
NEW YORK CITY, July 18— A mix of caravans and protests organized against the impending racist cuts to City University of New York (CUNY) that hurt Black, Latin, and immigrant students the most. The workers and students at CUNY are not taking these attacks lying down. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends participated, bringing CHALLENGE and the message that workers and students will only be able to create an educational system free from racism, sexism, individualism and idealism if we smash capitalism and build a communist world.
The racist administrators of CUNY have joined with bosses across the world in attempting to solve their pandemic-driven financial crisis on the backs of workers and students. Last week, they announced the layoffs of nearly 3,000 adjunct (part-time) instructors, amounting to nearly 10 percent of the unionized faculty and staff at CUNY. A simultaneous announcement of larger class sizes in the Fall semester, and their despicable silence about a pending $320 increase in tuition and fees, shows their racist contempt for the majority Black and Latin students at CUNY.
PLP pointed out the racist nature of the attack, for CUNY has exposed themselves as uninterested in their students, of whom 71 percent are Black, Latin, and Asian and 63 percent are women (CUNY Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, 11/12/2019). The bosses would rather prepare them for a world of fascist discipline and world war. It is worth noting that these racist attacks against students are taking place at one of the most liberal cities in the U.S., thus revealing that both Democrats and Republicans are enemies of the working class.
Bronx College, a site of growing fightback
A couple days prior, a multiracial and multi-generational group of 50 faculty, staff and students gathered in front of the gates of Bronx Community College to protest the callous and disgusting firing of 36 long-term adjuncts. Some of these instructors have been at the college for more than 15 years, but because they were the highest-paid, they were the first to be offloaded by a racist administration that is only concerned with balancing the budget.
Worker-student solidarity is key
Two of the laid-off instructors spoke passionately about their love for teaching BCC students. Even as they were facing the loss of a significant chunk of their livelihood, they recognized that the primary target for this racist attack was the students, who will be crammed into larger classes with fewer resources. They also both spoke about the need for militant fight back to be the primary way forward. There was no mention of politicians or voting, indicating that the bosses’ illusions about elections were secondary.
These moments present a tremendous opportunity for the injection of communist politics and friends.Comrades present attempted this in speeches and in conversations with coworkers and students. We made sure that every participant left with a copy of CHALLENGE.
There was a tremendous student turn-out, including two students who have been active in a PLP study group. They, and others, spoke about how CUNY’s racist policies in general, and these layoffs in particular, hurt both students and faculty and the need for unity in order to have any hope of defeating the attacks. The unity of students and teachers is the greatest fear of college administrators, because they will ultimately resort to portraying the faculty as selfish and greedy should a strike or other work action be organized. For this reason, having such significant student support is key.
The demonstration finished with a march, showing workers in the neighborhood that there is a multiracial, worker-student alliance that is ready to take the fight to a higher level. A PL’er led most of the chants, and so the sounds of “Shut it Down!” and “The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated!” were taken up by the marchers.
Driving the fightback
Nearly 200 cars, including some driven by PLP members, participated in caravans in four of the five NYC boroughs, organized by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing CUNY faculty and staff. A simultaneous Zoom online meeting expanded the action to another 800 PSC members, and in addition 2,000 more people watched the livestream on Facebook, many of them from other unions and other colleges around the country.
One caravan ended with a rally of participants proud of having brought this off and feeling closer to our co-workers. It was a gathering of force for the hard battles to come. For example, if the PSC calls a strike in the Fall, lessons learned from these first caravans can teach us how to organize a picket on wheels, or roving flying squads of bikes and cars going from campus to campus. There is agitation within the union for a strike to be called. But whether or not the union leadership takes this up, they cannot provide a solution that benefits students and education workers both.
What is victory?
One of the main victories of actions like these is workers’ and students’ growing sense of our own collective power and the confidence to wield that power. The recent rebellions against police terror are an inspiration for CUNY workers and students to beat back this racist attack.
In these and future events, PLP will bring students and workers into study groups and into the Party where they can work for communism together with and under the leadership of the Black and Latin youth they teach. We will be present at future demonstrations, increasing confidence in our ability to lead a communist revolution and secure a communist future.
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PL’ers bring ideas of multiracial unity and communism to rally
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BROOKLYN, July 16—A small group of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined a rally calling for an hour of “Black vulnerability.” The crowd that gathered was multiracial and multi-generational. Before the speeches began, the PL’ers walked through the crowd, distributed CHALLENGE, and had conversations with many workers.
But what do you mean by revolution?
In the first hour of an open mic, it was announced that only Black speakers should come up. This is an unfortunate theme within the Black Lives Matter uprising. While capitalism super-exploits Black workers, all workers are under attack by the system. A better world can only be won through multi-racial unity, and falling for capitalism’s ideology of dividing the working class and that some workers can only be involved in minimal ways, is a fast way to kill the movement.
The first several speakers gave passionate speeches about the oppression faced by Black workers under capitalism and by the bosses’ thugs, the kkkops. One speaker spoke of the failures of the system and said we need to be ready for a revolution—but what kind of revolution?
The only kind of revolution the workers need is a communist one. Capitalism needs to be smashed and communism is the way forward for workers. That’s where PL’ers must sharpen the fight.
Black nationalism: been there, done that
The dead-end path of identity politics and Black nationalism will inevitably lead workers into the capitalist bosses’ camp. From Haiti to South Africa, nationalism has derailed workers’ revolts and led them to death and exploitation by a new set of bosses. When these ideas take power within the working class, the oppressors win.
By dividing us, nationalism conquers us. There is another choice for all workers: multiracial unity.
Multiracial unity is non-negotiable
Unity of the international working class is the only force that can end racism and ultimately smash capitalism with communist revolution. Progressive Labor Party is taking that path. For over 55 years, PLP has built a multiracial movement and fought racism and sexism in the streets, in factories and hospitals, in schools and colleges. Struggle has taught us that there are no good bosses, regardless of color, gender, or nationalist identification.
The latest wave of rebellion keeps teaching us that multiracial unity is indispensable and non-negotiable. The only way forward is together.
On the road to communist revolution
A Black PL’er went up to speak and make these points. To break the idea of only Black people at the mic, a white comrade went up with her. Her speech was powerful, as she spoke about the failures of the system in her school and in her family’s healthcare. She broke down the reasons why multiracial fightback is essential, and why as we continue to join the fight for various reforms we have to always be in fact fighting for a communist revolution as the end goal.
At every key point she made, she made it clear, for example: “We can fight to abolish police, but only on the road to communist revolution.” With that repeated refrain, the protesters were energized and applauded. This shows that workers can be won to the most left ideas.
Anti-capitalist ideas are spreading, and this is inspiring and invigorating! But until workers own the idea that there is a whole alternative to this rotten system, we will be continuously roped back into the electoral system, being convinced that finally picking just the right politician will “fix” this. It is the job of communists to show that there is no end to the working class’ oppression and misery until a workers’ world, communism, is won. Keep on fighting!
