El Paso Dayton. Gilroy. Add these cities to the growing list of mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. in 2019 alone. Of the 968 victims, 196 people have died. The shooting in El Paso, Texas on August 3 was among the deadliest attacks in the U.S. motivated by gutter racism. It happened as the greatest terrorist of all, U.S. imperialism, is declining around the world and is rotting internally. The answer is multiracial working-class unity and comradeship as we fight against racism and sexism now and for an egalitarian, communist world in the future.
While the “threat of the great replacement,” or the idea that white people will be replaced by Black, Latin or Asian people was cited by the shooter in El Paso, the actions of these “domestic terrorists,” are motivated by racist and/or sexist hatred which is connected to a deeper and often overlooked trend of social and economic alienation. The U.S. working class is disaffected, isolated and living in a constant state of uncertainty and fear—fear of losing their jobs, healthcare, homes and more. Youth are mired in hopelessness, increasingly turning to suicide and/or drugs. Some horrifically turn to mass killing sprees as a way of achieving some form of notoriety. Capitalism and imperialism breed and profit from a culture of drugs and violence.
Racism and violence at the U.S.-Mexico border are nothing new. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, politicians, big businesses and the Texas Rangers often depicted Mexicans and indigenous peoples as criminals to justify the theft of land and resources. At the present, the brutality of racism is intensified, with President Donald Trump calling Mexicans drug dealers, criminals, and rapists. He has appealed to his base to “build a wall” to keep immigrants out of the U.S. His administration has locked up and detained thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers from Latin America, separating families and denying their rights to claim asylum—a legacy continued from former Democratic president Barack Obama.
Capitalism begets violence
Mass shooting trends clearly indicate the intensification of racism, a result of the toxicity that capitalism breeds. Politicians are spinning their wheels, saying these mass shootings are mental health issues, or are the result of violent video games. They squawk about gun control and make calls for universal background checks.
However, the real culprit is the capitalist profit system and its rotten culture of individualism, racism and sexism. In a period of escalating inter-imperialist competition and declining U.S. global dominance, capitalists are seizing every opportunity to use tragedies such as mass shootings for their own purposes. There is an increase of police force presence. Fascism is increasing with calls for more vigilance and surveillance to create and encourage a culture of paranoia and distrust among workers. These deadly mass shootings have only exacerbated fears and anxiety that capitalists have always used to divide workers against each other, especially the fear of being replaced by some other “race.”
Opportunity for bosses to build fascism
Politicians and the bosses’ media use psychology to explain what’s behind U.S.’s “domestic terror problem.” They would rather have people believe that these “lone wolves” are isolated individuals who act on extreme beliefs independently.
Instead, these shootings are an opportunity to build all-class unity. The liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class would love to use these shootings as a way to build allegiance to the system. In the name of safety, the working class will face greater surveillance and repression. Due to racism, this will disproportionately affect Muslim, Black, and immigrant workers. The lesson here is that capitalism begets violence. Capitalists cannot keep the workers “safe.” Only the working class can provide that.
Meanwhile, the U.S. rulers are preparing for the inevitable global land war to defend their dying empire. They need masses of workers ready to fight against China and Russia, thinking they are defending some non-existent democracy and the “American Dream.” This imperialist wing of the U.S. ruling class wants workers to have guns only to kill workers in other nations as they defend the bosses’ worldwide empire.
While this single incident may be the deadliest mass shooting in “modern” U.S. history, it pales in comparison to the mostly Black, indigenous and Latin workers murdered by the police every year in the U.S. It pales in comparison to the number of killings that are a result of U.S. military operations around the world in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. A system that engenders violence cannot be part of the solution.
Opportunity for us to build communism
The rulers have no answers for the working class. They are fighting profiteering wars all over the world, and the big imperialist powers are preparing for world war. And it is only the workers that fight and die in these wars and many more in the coming world war, quite possibly with nuclear weapons. So let’s sharpen our struggles against racism and sexism. Let’s promote a better world, run by the working class, for the working class. That’s communism. Let’s plant those revolutionary communist seeds in every struggle that we are in. Join us. Join the international, revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party!

The Peterloo Massacre is a snapshot in the history of class struggle around the world that is largely hidden from workers by the rulers. Though this was not a revolutionary struggle but rather one for electoral rights, it does show the determination of workers to fight back against the intolerable conditions that capitalism imposes on our class. And, as always, the lessons learned lead to advances for workers’ struggles.
On Monday, August 16, 1819, a mass demonstration of working women and men and radical reformers in the city of Manchester was attacked by the British Army, leaving 18 dead and 700 wounded (peterloomassacre.org). This brutal and bloody atrocity was soon called “Peterloo” in mockery of the victory over Napoleon Bonaparte’s army at Waterloo in 1815. (The journalist who coined that phrase was sentenced to a year in prison!)
The end of the 20-year long Napoleonic wars caused a depression in the British economy. Manchester was a center of developing capitalist industry, especially in weaving. The powerloom industry was growing, with 20,000 workers, but there were still 40,000 handweavers, working from home. Many thousands of these workers and their families became homeless and starving after the war period. Wages for a 16-hour days had been cut by 50 percent (theguardian.com).One account from a book entitled The Peterloo Massacre by Robert Reid vividly recalls the conditions that triggered the rebellion:
Nothing but ruin and starvation stare one in the face [in the streets of Manchester and the surrounding towns], the state of this district is truly dreadful, and I believe nothing but the greatest exertions can prevent an insurrection [rebellion]


Workers rebel against
bosses crisis
Three years earlier, in November and December, 1816, protest demonstrations at Spa Fields, London had been attacked by the bosses. After that, a few small revolutionary societies, mainly composed of middle-class radicals who supported the now-defeated French Revolution, had conspired to overthrow he British government. Each was infiltrated and betrayed by government spies – the Blanketeers, Manchester, March 1817; the Pentrich Rising (June, 1817); and the Cato Street Conspiracy (1820).
Strikes against the capitalist class had targeted economic issues, such as low wages and lack of food. But Peterloo was different.
Workers go out and
cops target women
Called on a Monday, so that handloom weavers, who didn’t work Mondays because they had already worked throughout the weekend, the Peterloo demonstration was not revolutionary, but a demand for a reform of Parliament—to give more men the vote (women could not vote until the 1920s). Afraid of the might of the organized workers, local politicians demanded that the leaders of the demonstration be arrested. They sent in the army. The Hussars (heavy cavalry) charged the workers on horseback, swinging sabers (heavy swords). Many women were among the demonstrators. Soldiers specifically targeted the women for wanting the same rights as men. They were three times more likely to be killed or wounded than men.  
Shelley commemorates peterloo
Percy Bysshe Shelley commemorated Peterloo in his poem, “The Masque of Anarchy,” which includes this stanza:        
               
   

Karl Marx said that Shelley, who died in 1822, “was a revolutionary through and through and would consistently have stood with the vanguard of socialism.”
Lessons for the working class
Peterloo is recognized as the beginning of mass, organized working-class protest for political and social reform in England. It showed that the working class is capable of organizing for its class interests at many levels, and it showed the intransigence of the ruling class in fighting in its own interests. The experience of Peterloo led to the Chartist Movement (a mass, and often violent, working-class movement for political reform in the first half of the 19th century, which led to the development of the trade unions. (The British imperialists used similar, and even more brutal and bloody tactics to presrve their rule in India in 1919, when they opened fire on a peaceful gathering at Amritsar, killing 400 and injuring 1,000.)
The experiences at Peterloo led to the development of revolutionary communist ideology and the fight to completely overthrow the capitalist system.

After months of mass demonstrations against a military coup and crackdown that killed over 100 protesters in June, Sudan’s governing generals, the Transitional Military Council (TMC), are negotiating a power-sharing agreement with liberal capitalists in the political opposition, the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). But the main contradiction in Sudan, the tension that generated the current crisis, is the same one shaping events around the world: inter-imperialist rivalry between a rising China and a declining U.S. as they head toward the next world war.
Sudan is a gateway into Africa from the Middle East. The country’s current instability is an opening for the U.S. main-wing finance capitalists to reassert their power in the Horn of Africa and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial trade route and potential choke point between the Persian Gulf and the open ocean. Only 24 miles wide, the strait is “the only route to the open ocean for over one-sixth of global oil production and one-third of the world’s liquified natural gas” (aljazeera.com, 7/11). For the main wing bosses, control over eastern Africa is critical to their control over Middle East oil, the capitalists’ lifeblood.
But the domestic wing of the U.S. ruling class, represented by the Koch and Mercer families, Sheldon Adelson, and President Donald Trump, is less inclined to commit a big outlay of troops and tax dollars to keep its clamps on the region. Instead, these bosses are giving free rein to the rabid ruling thugs in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel to do their bidding.
As this split deepens, it will accelerate the bosses’ move toward war and fascism. It will only hurt the working class. Only under an international communist movement, led by Progressive Labor Party, can workers end wars for profit and create a society to meet our needs.
An echo of Darfur
In the June massacre in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, “heavily armed troops burned tents, raped women and killed dozens of people, some dumped in the Nile”(New York Times, 6/15). This brutal paramilitary was following the leadership of the TMC’s  General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. The murderers were carrying on the legacy of Darfur, the Sudan region where a genocidal civil war slaughtered hundreds of thousands and displaced millions between 2003 and 2008 (The Lancet, 1/30/10).
As one protester said, “For years Hemeti killed and burned in Darfur. Now Darfur has come to Khartoum” (NYT, 6/15). The militias had carried out massacres and atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2003.  The U.S. bosses, who looked the other way under both George Bush and Barack Obama, also have Darfur blood on their hands.  
Sudan: a notch in China’s belt
As the U.S. bosses’ infighting under Trump has created a global vacuum of power, the more unified rulers of China have filled the void. Given its location on a vital trade route between Asia, Europe, and Africa, Sudan is critical to the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (formerly One Belt One Road). As the Chinese bosses take on U.S. imperialism and push to become the world’s leading economic power, Port Sudan on the Red Sea will be an important notch on that belt. (Nearby Djibouti, which borders the Strait of Hormuz, houses China’s first foreign military base).
The Chinese rulers’ challenge has been a long time coming. In 1995, they signed an oil deal with Omar al-Bashir, the recently deposed Sudan president. China now controls 75 percent of Sudan’s oil output of 133,000 barrels a day (thediplomat.com, 6/17). The ousting of al-Bashir in April by the TMC was a blow for China—and a potential opening for U.S. imperialists to reassert their influence.
Meanwhile, faced with a weakening U.S. and an aggressive Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are moving to align the Horn states with their axis against rival regional imperialists Iran, Qatar, and Turkey. After funding the ouster of the unreliable al-Bashir (Foreign Affairs, 7/19), they are now backing the ruling TMC with political and military support, as are Egypt and Eritrea. The prize is control over the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Hormuz, which figure to play a prominent role in the coming battles leading up to World War III.  
U.S. bosses’ splits play out in Sudan
While both factions of the U.S. ruling class understand the importance of Sudan, they are split on how to manage that relationship. In 2017, after al-Bashir’s dictatorship committed 7,000 troops to the U.S.-backed Saudi-Emirati coalition’s genocidal war in Yemen, a campaign now opposed by the main wing, the Trump administration lifted economic sanctions and removed Sudan from the Muslim travel ban list (NYT, 7/18). Most recently, the Trump administration is considering “new ways to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism” (reuters.com, 4/16) and has refrained from open criticism of TMC repression. This hands-off policy squares with the domestic wing’s push to outsource the job of maintaining Middle East stability to its regional thugs-for-hire.
On the other hand, the main-wing finance capitalist coalitions—including the European Union, the United Nations, and the African Union—all support the “pro-democracy” FFC’s “nonviolent civil disobedience” opposition. Their hope is for the U.S. to take the lead in extending the liberal world order’s long-term influence over Sudan. This will be a rebuke to China and Russia, neither of which backed the UN’s condemnation of the TMC junta: “U.S. leadership has been badly lacking…The [African Union] has an important role to play, but it needs an international ecosystem of support” (Council of Foreign Relations, 6/11).
Democracy for the bosses, dictatorship for the workers
The U.S. and EU bosses’ media are hailing Sudan’s power-sharing agreement as a step toward “democracy,” the term they use for a dictatorship of the bosses. But history has shown  that workers can never negotiate the terms of their freedom through our oppressors’ democracy. When workers are duped into compromises with the capitalists, the consequences are always deadly.  Workers in Sudan will be “sharing” power with the very forces responsible for the genocide and displacement of millions of our working-class brothers and sisters in Darfur and Yemen.
Workers in struggle today must rebuild a communist movement that will correct the errors of its predecessors. Otherwise, the brave struggle against Sudan’s junta will be diverted into fighting for the interests of either U.S. or Chinese imperialism. Protesters must pick up the red flag where the old communists of Sudan left it, before making a wrong turn toward national independence. Join the communist movement with PLP!

Chicago, July 13—Thousands of workers poured into downtown Chicago this weekend to protest against the racist attacks on undocumented workers. This multiracial, multi-gendered and multi-generational crowd showed the power of a united working class. As a youth marching with our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) contingent said, “If we don’t get it, shut it down!”
As in: a revolution, where we replace capitalism with an egalitarian communist world run by the working class. We led anti-racist, anti-sexist chants and even got many protesters to abandon the slogan “close those camps” and start chanting “smash those camps.”Closing them isn’t enough; we have to destroy them along with the borders the bosses use to justify creating them.
This protest showed working class anger and will to fight back especially when we passed a city jail in the middle of downtown that is believed to detain undocumented workers. We paused there, chanting and showing solidarity with workers we could visibly see at the top of the building, but it isn’t enough.
Six days later, ICE, in collaboration with Homeland Security and the TSA, detained three children ages 9, 10 and 13 at O’Hare International Airport in an attempt to lure their parents into picking them up and being arrested. All three children were born in the United States, but their parents are undocumented (Chicago Tribune 7/19).
 Until the working class holds state power, the ruling class will continue to terrorize and brutalize us. Whether it’s ICE raids or “stop and frisk”, we have to beat back the bosses’ attacks, as we build a revolutionary movement for communism.    
Bosses go on the attack
Trump’s threat of deportation raids against immigrant workers and their families, kicking off his 2020 re-election campaign, is just the latest attack caused by this racist, declining, capitalist system. There has already been an increase of immigrants being detained by ICE. In early June, there had been approximately 52,500 immigrants detained in more than 200 detention centers. Families have continued to be split up and forced to live in torturous conditions.
Hundreds of migrants are being forced to take more dangerous routes across the U.S. border since there is a bottleneck at the ports of entry where workers wait for an asylum interview. And the conditions on the Mexican side are becoming unbearable because of extortions and kidnappings. As a result, hundreds are dying in the desert, in the rivers and in the extreme heat. Instead of trying to help or rescue these workers, the bosses’ government has been harshly prosecuting people who leave water and other supplies for these immigrant workers!
Two brands of fascism: overtly racist or liberal veneer
As they attack immigrants, the U.S. bosses are deeply divided because their international rivals, mainly China and Russia, have been challenging and competing with them for more markets and resources. Trump does the bidding of the more domestically oriented bosses who are content with  a smaller, less expensive, predominantly white military trained as racist killers. But the dominant finance capital bosses, who have a world empire to control, understand that they need a “multicultural” army for World War III. These bosses see immigrants as invaluable cannon fodder in the bigger wars to come.
Under Trump, the attack on immigrant workers has shifted and intensified, but history shows that the working class can’t trust the Democratic Party to defend and protect immigrant workers. Last fiscal year, U.S. Enforcement and Removal Operations deported more than 250,000 undocumented immigrants. But, under President Barack Obama, the “Deporter in chief,” the annual number of deportations peaked in 2012 at about 410,000 (New York Times, 6/18).
Working people have no nation
As internationalists, communists welcome immigrants as fellow workers who are fighters against capitalist brutality and exploitation. We are encouraged by the growing movement in Chicago to defend and protect our immigrant sisters and brothers from the ravages of these bosses’ attacks. Workers have struggled against loopholes in the Sanctuary City laws, the racist gang databases, orders of deportation against countless immigrants and their families, and against the holding of children separated from their parents.
But the biggest lesson workers must learn is that we will be stuck in the endless struggle for reforms as long as we rely on billionaire politicians, like the governor of Illinois J.B Pritzker, for protection and relief. We must destroy the capitalists’ state power and replace it with working class power. The Progressive Labor Party calls on all workers to defend our immigrant fellow workers against deportations and murder in concentration camps and along the border. Smash capitalism! Fight for communism!