OAKLAND, CA, May 22—The 73-car caravan to cancel rent and mortgages was loud and militant involving hundreds of members of the National Day of Action, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The workers arrived with signs on their cars and flags flying with messages, “Rent Strike Today, Cancel Rent Tomorrow!”  The PLP contingent exposed capitalism. “Workers Build Houses, Capitalism Creates Homelessness” – “Capitalism is Killing Us” -“Communist Equality, Not Capitalist Inequality.”
Most cars had two protesters. From the sidewalks and balconies, workers cheered and raised their fists in solidarity. Many were tenants of real estate racist capitalist Neveo Mosser. The worker’s response inspired us. We drove to San Francisco and protested at the home of rent profiteer Mosser, who owns 600 apartment units in Oakland and is steadily raising rents forcing tenants into homelessness. We placed a notice on his door to quit or be evicted, made speeches, and passed out leaflets. PL’ers sold CHALLENGE, promoting communism, a system  where workers would distribute housing based on need.
 Community groups around the U.S. have been organizing rent strikes, as the Communist Party did during the Great Depression. “The rent strike is a cry for dignity: We are all deserving of a home, no matter the color of our skin, financial status, or culture,” said Donnette Letford, an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica and a member of the group New York Communities for Change (The Intercept, 4/25). Capitalism can never provide what Donnette wants. Communism will eliminate both profits and homelessness.
Homelessness in Oakland, California
To pay the high rents in Oakland requires a full-time job at $45/hour. That means with 4,000 homeless in Oakland before the pandemic, 70 percent Black workers, there are four empty units for every homeless person. Land speculators like Mosser hold the empty units, waiting for the higher rents coming with gentrification. In November 2019 four Black mothers occupied an empty home, saying “it is a crime to keep homes vacant while people suffer on the street from the California housing crisis”. They won a concession from the landlord but homelessness continues (see CHALLENGE, 2/5). Also, demonstrators took over  Mosser’s restaurant in San Francisco in February (see CHALLENGE, 3/18). But until workers take political power and run all of society the struggle continues.
Covid-19 exacerbates exploitation and inequality
Increased homelessness and starvation during the pandemic is inevitable. First, every Federal government since the Clinton administration has closed down public health agencies and barely prepared for the predicted pandemic. Medical personnel and equipment were disorganized as the government and corporations competed instead of cooperating. For-profit privatization had led to multiple hospital closures. During the chaotic state government lockdowns tens of thousands big and small businesses have closed or gone bankrupt. So that 40 million workers have had to apply for unemployment (democdracynow.org, 5/21), not counting millions of undocumented workers who don’t qualify. Over two-thirds of workers live pay-check to pay-check (Forbes, 1/14/19) and can’t pay an unexpected expense. Once laid off, many could not and did not pay rent. As the rent strike says, “Can’t Pay?  Won’t Pay”. That’s capitalism: 1) inadequate racist health care, 2) a racist housing crisis, and 3) racist layoffs. The Progressive Labor Party says join the fight. For housing. For jobs. For healthcare. And for a communist revolution.
Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York have declared temporary moratoriums on evictions. San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose temporarily cancelled evictions and rent increases, but refused to cancel rent or utility bills. San Jose said it would be unconstitutional to cancel rents, which are private property. Right! The constitution protects property and not workers!!!
Capitalism is the disease; communism is the cure
The capitalist system caused this pandemic.Communist society would put workers’ health and well-being as the first priority through disease prevention and creating a healthy environment. Experiences in post-revolution Soviet Union and China show that when workers control society, disease is prevented. China is now a capitalist country, and initially tried to cover up the outbreak to protect their stock market. But after the revolution in 1949, workers ran China and placed workers’ needs as the top priority. All workers were housed, and they eliminated several devastating diseases like syphilis and schistosomiasis using public health education and working class ingenuity.
But capitalists put profits first, endangering workers’ lives on the job and in their imperialist wars. This is especially true for health care and front-line workers during the pandemic. Internationally they are leaving refugees to die in camps (rescue.org) and in ICE detention and jails, and on indigenous reservations where the Navajo have the highest rate in the U.S. (Wired, 5/23). Capitalists can’t change because the laws of capitalism (profits first, exploit to the max) make them the murderers they are.
The blatant racism and inequality of capitalism make building the communist movement more important than ever. At the caravan, one new recruit saw all the people out demanding rent cessation and commented that revolutionary thinking may be awakening. Break the chains of capitalism! We have a world to win!

Making inroads towards communism with transit co-worker
I've had discussions in recent months with my Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) train operator classmates about the bosses' racist attacks against us on the job. For some time, I was not confident my efforts were bearing fruit. My colleagues oftentimes laughed me off as just some crazy anarchist guy rambling. It felt like a hopeless endeavor. Though I still kept trying.
But recently, a classmate texted me that he was seriously interested in becoming a union representative because, “[L]ike you said, stand up for the little guy,” referencing a conversation we'd had around late January.
During the aforementioned talk, I spoke with him about how the MTA blames its workers for fare hikes during contract negotiations, and how the racist media parrots the same lies. He was amazed to discover this information.
He asked me a question later that same day: “Would you rather be the corporation going up against the little guy? Or the little guy going up against the corporation?”
“I'd rather be in a collection of little guys (and gals) teaming up against that corporation and this system,” I responded.
Though we as communists know that bosses have today's unions under their boots and use them as campaign vehicles for their stooge politicians, this worker's shift shows his rising class-consciousness.
He sees how capitalism is devastating workers at the MTA, with over 120 of us dead from Covid-19, within a two-month time span, because Transit bosses didn't give a damn about safeguarding us from the virus.
He wants to bring change, but just needs nudging in a more communist direction. Before this discussion, he may not have seen much reason for us to organize. We plan on going to union meetings when they reopen again, and I'm looking into books about the TWU Local 100's communist roots for us to read together.
I'll continue talking with him whenever I can.
Eventually, I want to give him CHALLENGE as well. But for now, baby steps. I'm taking this as a lesson well learned. NEVER give up on workers, and never assume they'll never be able to get it.
You just might be surprised.
*****
CHALLENGE is essential news
Around the world, workers are finding creative ways to continue to fight back amid the Covid-19 Pandemic. Progressive Labor Party knows that an important way of fighting for the working class is spreading communist ideas with CHALLENGE newspaper. In order to do this many have been encouraging people to check out www.plp.org or sending their contacts the newspaper in the mail.
Another approach used recently in NYC, the center of the pandemic, was to build a portable CHALLENGE stand and place it near a line of folks getting food as well as a protest against racist ICE incarceration. It was then possible to offer it to people “hands-free“ and many eagerly took the paper as they passed. Let’s keep creating new ways to resist and spread our important message.
*****
Sanitation workers on strike
I have been working in New Orleans testing folks for HIV and Covid-19 in a Federally Qualified Health Center. We serve workers like the sanitation workers who have been collecting trash without safety equipment. These front-line workers are subcontracted by People Ready and paid $10.25 an hour with no benefits or health insurance. They work long hard hours starting at 4 AM sometimes until 6 PM. As summer heats up in New Orleans their job gets even harder. Between the heat, the increase in people doing yard work—disposing of tree branches and such in the trash—there is even more to do. They are not provided with masks or gloves and work closely with others. On May 5 some “hoppers” (those who jump on and off the truck collecting trash) went on strike with these demands:

• PPE for all workers each day starting NOW
• Fix broken trucks that leak toxic hydraulic fluid on workers every day
• Provide hourly pay of $15/hour
• Provide weekly hazard pay of $150/week

The first day on strike a boss told them they were fired and some returned to work the next day. A week later they received a letter saying they weren’t fired, and they are hoping that will motivate others to join them. The company (Metro Services Group) has started bringing in prisoners on work release to scab during the strike.  Those on work release were threatened with being sent back to jail if they did not comply.  These workers are paid about half of what the sanitation workers were making – definitely forced slave labor. As of May 21, the bosses were still not meeting with them. The workers are trying to form a union—the City Waste Union— and have gained support, including solidarity with striking baristas and a large rally at City Hall on May 18.
The worker’s signs say I AM A MAN, a reprise of the slogan of the famous Memphis sanitation workers strike that brought Martin Luther King Jr to the city where he was assassinated.  I have been talking with the strikers and put support signs in my apartment windows in the gentrifying area of Bywater, New Orleans.
I will be bringing revolutionary ideas and CHALLENGE to the picket line. This fightback has inspired other workers to donate nearly $60,000 to support the strikers through a Go Fund Me page: https://tinyurl.com/y7duxffg. Workers of the world unite!
*****
Communism: news bosses too scared to print
The New York Times, mouthpiece of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, proclaims itself as reporters of “All the news that’s fit to print.” But that “All” doesn’t seem to include the truth about communists.
The editorial in its April 29 issue is headlined, “Another Way the 2020s Might Be Like the 1930s.” What “way”? In alluding to current strikes by Amazon workers and others protesting the rulers’ ignoring the unsafe effects of the coronavirus, it recalls “The consequential strike wave of 1934…a year of unrest in workplaces across the country,” when workers could “look to President Franklin Roosevelt as an ally.”
It fails to mention that this “unrest” was a product of massive sit-down strikes led by communists in the auto plants and among basic industries like electrical and steel. Six of the seven members of the strike committee that organized the 1936-37 44-day Flint sit-down strike that smashed the open shop and established the auto union at General Motors were communists.
That strike sparked scores of others across the country, battling the National Guard and U.S. Army troops. It was part of a red-led movement that championed the eight-hour day. Communists organized 800,000 workers into the National Unemployment Councils which forced Roosevelt to quell the workers’ protests and establish the Unemployment Insurance and Social Security systems and the 40-hour work-week.  Somehow the Times’ editorial writer didn’t feel that this news about these communist-led movements in the 1930s was “fit to print.”
Just below that editorial was an op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman in which he labeled the coronavirus a “war,” asserting that “wars are fought and won by humans.” So who were the humans that won the Second World War? That happened, says Friedman, because “We” — meaning the U.S. — “could out-mobilize the Nazis and Japanese to win World War II.” (!)
Somehow he “forgot” that the working-class in the communist-led Soviet Union was squaring off against 80 percent of Hitler’s armies on the 2,000-mile-long Eastern Front, from the Arctic to the Crimea, smashing them at Stalingrad, which was universally viewed as the turning point of WWII. It was their heroism that greatly reduced the number of Nazi divisions that the U.S. and Britain had to face in the West, enabling them to open up the Second Front in France in 1944. This, after the Soviets had fought alone for three years.
Perhaps Friedman never read what the U.S. General Douglas MacArthur told the Associated Press on February 23, 1942: “The hopes of civilization rest upon the worthy banners of the courageous Russian Army.” Their heroic “resistance to the heaviest blows of a hitherto undefeated enemy, followed by a smashing counterattack which is driving the enemy back into its own land” is “the greatest military achievement of all time.”
Now THAT is “news that’s fit to print.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

The capitalist world is crumbling. Workers everywhere are witnessing this typically, insidious “boss move.” The billionaire capitalists wait and continue accumulating billions until the deaths of workers affect their profits. This is true of the transit system in New York City. Capitalism is the real disease. Workers’ power with communist revolution is the only cure.
The ruling class is enforcing fascism through surveillance and racist police terror and murder against mostly Black workers. A transit worker said, "they told us we're essential workers, now get back to work." Under capitalism workers’ labor is essential, but workers’ lives are never essential. Under communism, not only will workers’ labor and health be essential, but as we learn to run all aspects of society, all our abilities and talents will be developed to the fullest. That’s the world the Progressive Labor Party fights for!
  Only communist organizing can defeat kapitalist killers
Meanwhile, in New York City the death of predominantly Black transit workers has surpassed 100, more than the deaths of cops and firefighters combined. Many workers have been told to work without the proper PPE (personal protective equipment). These numbers are actually much higher. Many workers have posted on social media the deaths of their beloved coworkers that are not mentioned by the bosses or the Transportation Workers Union (TWU).
Progressive Labor Party members have been reaching out to coworkers to provide any help that may be needed as well as discussing on-the-job issues and the world situation. On the job we need a safe work environment for ourselves, and a safe riding environment for workers to get to their jobs. As far as the world goes, we need the working class to run it. That’s communism and that means revolution. This whole damn capitalist system has to go.
 The transit union leaders or misleaders are doing very little. They want compensation for the families of the victims of the virus, and for hazard pay. That’s it.  Governor Andrew Cuomo wants the federal government to pay for hazard pay. He’s just passing the buck to President Donald Trump. Meanwhile the transit bosses save money from the deaths of veteran workers who were hired on better pensions. They will be replaced by lower-paid workers, if they are replaced at all.
 United workers can halt means of production and
transportation
Transit is an essential part of the economy. It’s a huge concentration of workers who, with the right leadership can shut this system down like they did in NYC back in 2005, bringing the bosses to their knees. It was transit workers who initially blew the whistle on how dirty the subways are, putting pressure on the bosses and politicians to do something. But instead of shutting down transit for a complete cleaning of trains and stations, the bosses’ response was chaotic and weak. They removed the homeless from the trains from 1-5 AM every 24 hours and used underpaid contract workers to do the cleaning. There aren't enough workers to do the work, so they will clean the main stations like Times Square or Grand Central, but ignore local stations, which is pointless. The way capitalism works it will also be racist, as the stations poorly cleaned will be in Black or Latin neighborhoods. This is just another political move by the bosses, and their politicians so they can say they did something to protect the workers.
Profits created the unsanitary and unsafe conditions that caused this disease. A profit-driven health care system left us unprepared for this disease. And chaotic, capitalist competition has led to an ineffective response to this disease. The high death tolls are the product of capitalism. Capitalism is the pandemic. Capitalism is the real killer. All over the world, the working class is under the same attack by capitalist vermin.
 Crisis calls for class struggle and communism
 But there is a silver lining. The brutality of capitalism has become clearer to many workers.
In Haiti the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is leading workers to pressure the rulers to provide proper masks and sanitation. The Party in Chicago joined workers in a caravan supporting imprisoned workers, distributing masks and CHALLENGE to arm them with communist ideas. The Party from Mexico to New York City continues to fight for their students, by making sure they still have an education. All over the world workers are fighting back.
But capitalism cannot be reformed; it works only for the capitalist rulers. We need a world where workers are in charge because we are the ones who create what we need! A world that is free from racism, sexism, imperialism, and poverty. A world run by and for the working class. That world is called communism.
But this world that communists fight for will not come from the voting box. It will not come from liberal politicians. It will not come from Fascists Liberals Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders. You will not feel the Bern. The bosses must feel our feet, as we revolt and take state power. Only then will everyone have health, education, shelter and food. Only then will the next pandemic be fought because workers’ lives matter. Join the Progressive Labor Party!

Thousands of adjuncts at the City University of New York (CUNY), who fought hard for a wage increase in the last contract, are now facing imminent layoffs (see interview). CUNY students are facing the prospect of a tuition hike, additional fees, less course offerings and the possibility of overcrowded online classes. These cutbacks will be devastating to the careers and dreams of the working class students and adjuncts of New York City. NYC billionaires and their puppet politicians control CUNY. They don’t want to educate the Black, Latin, Asian and white working class students of NYC to run the world. These billionaires want students that are obedient, that can perform the many tasks that keep the capitalist profits flowing, and they want us to fight in their imperialist wars.
Rank and file members within the union have been steadily organizing both students and faculty to oppose these pre-emptive layoffs and budget cuts. With the #CutCovidNotCUNY hashtag they have produced a few short videos and held some well attended events. They have organized town halls and virtual meetings to launch a campaign of “grade striking” or withholding grades until the last minute to send a message of strength and solidarity to CUNY. This campaign, along with a campaign called “A for All”, has been an attempt to galvanize both students and faculty to draw a line in the sand and not go on with “business as usual.”
But stopping “business as usual” is not enough. A CUNY education is meant to reinforce the racist and sexist inequalities of capitalism. Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  members have been active in these reform campaigns, but we have been stressing that the entire capitalist system has to be destroyed. These attacks at CUNY are racist and sexist in nature. We need a united, multiracial working class, not only to stop layoffs and budget cuts, but also to fight for communism, a system actually run by and for the working class. We have been promoting these ideas from study groups to mass meetings and town halls. PLP professors have been explaining to students why we are participating in this grade strike, why we need to plan much larger strikes and protests in the fall, and why we ultimately need a communist revolution. We plan to make this a “summer of struggle” whether virtual or on the streets, to build a bigger base for communist ideas and joining PLP.  
At a very well attended Solidarity Town Hall meeting for Bronx CUNY campuses, over 220 people attended and discussed issues such as how to build the worker student alliance, how to fight these cuts and layoffs, how to address the racist inequities at CUNY and how to keep ourselves strong during the ongoing pandemic. We talked about how the Bronx has been so hard hit by Covid-19, pointing out that Lincoln Hospital had the highest numbers of coronavirus deaths, how the subway system is totally inadequate and still crowded during the pandemic, and that Bronx politicians have  basically abandoned the community.
Two PLP members spoke at the town hall, one pointing out that while some folks think Governor Andrew Cuomo is “doing a great job” he is the politician who closed hospitals and has helped to starve CUNY. He pointed out that militant collective action with students and faculty together is the best strategy. He also commented that the stress that adjuncts live with, not knowing if they will have employment (and health insurance) can be deadly.
Another PLP member spoke, suggesting that our demand be that the Chancellor (who earns $7,000,000 a year not including his exorbitant free rent) and the members of the Board of Trustees take salary cuts. She pointed out that there had been over 200 strikes and job actions since the pandemic, so we should be inspired and follow their lead.
The union leadership, meanwhile, has continued where they left off in the last contract campaign, prioritizing dead-end legislative tactics and demobilizing the membership. At a recent union meeting, the union president called the struggle “the fight of our lives” and then spent the next two hours explaining why we can’t break the Taylor Law (state law outlawing strikes).  It’s clear that the union leadership has no plan to save the jobs and healthcare of potentially thousands of adjuncts.
PLP members have been focused on organizing with students and other rank and file activists. We are experiencing modest success during these difficult times. We have a few weekly study groups where students discuss both communist theory and practice. In one group, students read the editorials and discussed how to apply those ideas to the struggles around them- it has a solid core of enthusiastic participants. In another group, we have discussed how students have been dealing with the pandemic as well as reading CHALLENGE articles and evaluating our participation in mass work.
This struggle will be ongoing – join the Summer of Struggle 2020. We must continue the mass virtual meetings, local caravans and protests in the street and more. We will fight hard against the attacks on our working class students and adjuncts, but always with a vision of the communist world we fight to build! Join PLP!

*****

Interview with adjunct

The The following is an interview with an adjunct instructor at CUNY
1. How long have you been an adjunct instructor? What kind of salary do you earn?
Since 2005, I started making $53 an hour and now after  three contracts it's  $92. It took me twelve years to have an increase of $10. It’s unfair that adjuncts have to also fight with the administration at times to get our raises - full timers automatically get their raises.
2.What are your working/teaching conditions like?
My wage from one college is not enough. I have to commute from one college to another . I have been in three  different colleges at one time, one in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx. Over the years, I  have taught at eight  colleges out of the fifteen [CUNY] colleges. I did have two semesters when I didn’t have enough classes to have health insurance (adjuncts need six  credits of teaching hours to get coverage). But, even when I have a full program, it’s not enough to earn a living wage.
We are always cramped into unventilated adjunct rooms where we have to scramble for chairs and computers. At the last campus, NYC Technical College, there was no paper for months and we had to buy our own. Adjuncts are not respected by CUNY. We are seen as second class citizens. We do the same work, but we get less respect. Actually, we are over 60 percent of the teaching faculty.
3. How well do you think the union has done in addressing the inequities?
They have maintained the two tier system.  It took me twelve years to get into the top level.  In your first year you cannot get health insurance. You must maintain two classes. We are still getting crumbs and facing difficult working conditions.  In terms of the dire living and working conditions, we must also emphasize the bloated salaries of administrations, The President receives $200,000, they don’t even play a role in the teaching and learning conditions of students.  It's outrageous I think the union is just reactive and not pro-active about these austerity cuts.
4. Do you support the “wild cat grade strike”? Why?
Yes, I think it’s a good step.  I haven’t seen enough concrete action in how you can fight the system and show them we are a force to be dealt with.  Even if its one day, it’s a big deal   It’s a way of dealing with tuition hikes and massive layoffs  This is one way of trying to force the CUNY administration’s policy of pre-emptive strikes against both adjuncts and students
5. How have you been impacted by the austerity measures/cutbacks at CUNY?
For the first time in 15 years, I have not been reappointed at any colleges in CUNY. The cut throat austerity measures mean me and potentially thousands of others will lose their positions. There are 435 adjuncts at John Jay who have already received “pink slips”. All adjuncts are now dealing with  the anxiety and uncertainty of not knowing if they will have work. We may not be killed by the Covid-19 pandemic, but we are being ravaged  by the cutthroat austerity measures.
6. What do you see as the possible solutions, both immediate and long term?
Organizing. Mobilizing. Networking. Coalition building. Unions must make themselves part of the grassroots struggle. In the short term, the unions must provide a  lifeline to vulnerable adjuncts. The union should divert funds from their legislative agenda and protect the workers.
We should threaten to strike if adjuncts are not reappointed. What will put pressure on CUNY? Striking is still the strongest weapon workers have. We need to confront both the neo-liberal capitalists  and the sellout union leadership in all of our unions. I have had enough of the dictatorship of the profit system which only serves the few.  Workers like me have the capacity to lead and re-imagine a better world.