The following is a speech given during the Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) Summer Project at the border.
Capitalism is a system that tries to prevent us, workers and students, from living fulfilling lives. Imperialism is a stage of capitalism, a system under which the capitalists move their money and power all over the world in order to control more of it. Imperialism, and particularly U.S. imperialism, has proven many times over that it cannot and will not provide for decent lives for the international working class. Racism, sexism, wars for profit, theft of the value of our labor, destroying the environment, and national borders—all are the product of capitalism.
I’m from Puerto Rico and I can speak of the many ways capitalism ruins our lives. The island has been a colony of the U.S. since 1898. The colonial economy has produced, among many other terrible things, an overall debt of some $74 billion, approximately $40,000 for every single Puerto Rican: child, retiree, worker and maybe even dead folks.
We are presently confronting a sharpening crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border that has trapped workers escaping imperialist-created misery primarily in Central America. The conditions that are forcing workers and their families to flee right now date back to colonial times, when these countries were colonies of Spain. The current U.S.-Mexico border crisis reflects conditions for the working class throughout the hemisphere, and beyond, as workers from the Middle East and Africa migrate to Europe to escape war and poverty. There are currently an estimated 244 million international migrants (3.3 percent of the world population, iom.int/wmr/2018).
As communists, we do not recognize capitalist-created borders! We say: “Workers of the World, Unite! Smash All Borders!” Communist education teaches us to understand our reality as members of class society. We currently live under the capitalist profit system. And the capitalist rulers have created colonies in many parts of the world, where they extract super-profits.
The workers in all colonies are coerced militarily, they are displaced by war, their traditional means of earning a living are destroyed. When they can no longer tolerate these conditions, they are forced to migrate. This is what is happening now in Central America. But let’s be clear about this. Most of us would overwhelmingly prefer to stay in our countries of origin. But because of imperialism we end up elsewhere.
The ruling class bears all responsibility for these conditions because of its drive for profits. This is capitalism’s reason for existence. It is invasive, oppressive and provides only the absolute minimum for the working class to live on, while the bosses and their lackeys grow rich.
Imperialists penetrate
borders at will
The imperialists have ignored—or created—national borders when it serves their own class interests. The U.S. has a long and bloody history of penetrating the borders of other countries in the hemisphere to support its claim for hegemony in the region.
Guatemala: The U.S. CIA backed a coup in 1954 against elected president Jacobo Arbenz in order to support the interests of the U.S. owned United Fruit Company. In the ensuing 36-year civil war, thousands of workers and their families were massacred by the U.S. trained and equipped fascist military.
Honduras: The U.S. crossed the border in 1890, to enable U.S. fruit companies as they turned the country into one large banana plantation. By 1914, they had acquired one million acres of the best agricultural land, carrying profits back to U.S. banks, and turning Honduran peasants into landless rural workers. The U.S. later dominated banking and mining sectors. In the 1980s, Honduras became the U.S.’s military base to train and arm the right-wing Contra forces to counter the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Mexico: The U.S has disputed Mexico’s sovereignty since colonial times. Later, in 1910, it intervened in Mexico’s affairs to prop up dictator Porfirio Diaz for 31 years. It supported the creation of death squads that killed some 3,000 communists and tortured another 7,000 during this period. These interventions resulted in the drastic reduction in wages and impoverishment of the working class in Mexico. Another byproduct of U.S. intervention is the flowering of the maquiladoras factories that produce textiles and electronics while paying Mexican workers starvation wages. Another cross-border activity is the U.S. oil companies’ partnering with Mexican drug cartels to steal tens of millions of dollars in oil from government pipelines.
Clearly, when the interests of the imperialists are at stake, borders mean nothing. It’s only when their actions force workers to try to cross those very same borders to save their own lives that national borders become sacred!
To close, I would like to quote a piece of writing I found in CHALLENGE newspaper. It summarizes what we must do. “To liberate ourselves, an ember of class unity must be fanned into the flame of class consciousness.”
The recent G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, highlighted the escalating battle between two packs of U.S. bosses. The main wing U.S. finance capitalists were hit by both the domestic U.S. bosses, fronted by President Donald Trump, and by Russian capitalists led by President Vladimir Putin. In response, the big U.S. imperialists are trying to rally what’s left of their alliance in the European ruling class to counter expansionist moves by Russian and Chinese rulers.
The volatile dynamic between these U.S. factions is accelerating a worldwide drive toward fascism. The desperate U.S. main wing (the Big Fascists) sees its empire slipping away. But they won’t give it up without a fight. With the bosses heading toward World War III, Progressive Labor Party calls on the working class to battle for our own class interests. PLP is building an international communist movement to fight for a revolutionary communist society. It’s our only alternative to the bosses’ rising fascism, chaos, and destruction.
Putin attacks liberal world order
In an interview on the first day of the summit, the blood-soaked Putin openly challenged the U.S. main wing. He declared that “the world’s liberal political order had outlived its purpose” (New York Times, 6/28). In attacking the liberal world order led by the U.S. main wing ruling class since World War II, Putin signaled that Europe is up for grabs.
Trump, who is backed by the isolationist, domestically oriented wing of U.S. capitalists, joined the Russian president in jokes at the U.S. liberal bosses’ expense (BBC News, 6/28). Trump also staged a sit-down with Mohammed bin Salman, the ruthless crown prince of Saudi Arabia, despite a United Nations report confirming that bin Salman was responsible for the savage killing of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, a main wing voice at the Washington Post (The Guardian, 6/19).
Finance rulers call for war in Europe
In the face of expanding influence by Russian and Chinese bosses in Europe, the main wing U.S. capitalists are rallying their allies in Europe’s finance capitals. The ruling French and German finance bosses used their tenuous victory in May’s European Parliament elections to install pro-main wing bureaucrats at the head of the European Union.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, an Angela Merkel protégé who backs a strong European military, was appointed president of the EU’s executive body. Christine Lagarde, chief of the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund, was nominated as the next head of the European Central Bank. Though splits inside the bosses’ camp are significant, the finance capitalists are consolidating their power and doing their best to bolster their old NATO alliance. As the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. finance capital’s leading think tank, points out, the stakes are high:
The more internally divided Europe is, the more it will find itself at the mercy of … great powers [Russia and China]. This is a recipe for a Europe once again roiled by nationalism, an EU that is irrelevant, and a transatlantic alliance in which Europe has little influence and the United States lacks a strong partner…The only prudent way to avoid this nightmare scenario is for Europe to … develop the ability to better defend itself … pursue common European interests … [and] do more to secure neighboring regions (Foreign Affairs, July/August 2019).
Big Fascists use climate movement to enlist the working class
In 2017, the isolationist U.S. bosses, who have significant holdings in heavy-polluting domestic fossil fuels, pushed Trump to pull out of the Paris climate agreement negotiated by predecessor Barack Obama, a reliable stooge for the main wing. Now finance capital is back on the offensive. Emmanuel Macron, the French president and former Rothschild investment banker, threatened “not to sign any joint statement from the Group of 20 summit … unless it deals with the [climate] issue, which he called a ‘red line’” (New York Times, 6/26).
Liberal environmentalism is on the rise. The Sunrise Movement and its Green New Deal, championed by phony leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was incubated at the Sierra Club (E&E News, 12/3/18), where the agenda is driven by main wing billionaire donors like Michael Bloomberg and finance capital nonprofits like Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (opensecrets.org).
From its start, the environmental movement was designed to force smaller domestic capitalists to fall in line. In 1970, the main wing Ford Foundation began funding the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and the Southern California Center for Law in the Public Interest. “In the ensuing years, [these groups]…advocated …for environmental protection on virtually every public policy issue at the federal, state, and local level” (Duke Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society). Environmentalism is a partisan issue because “any attempt to regulate pollution is an attempt…to regulate the economy” (medium.com 1/26/17)—and because regulations hit the small capitalists much harder than the big ones.
But the environmental movement isn’t just about the economy. Back in 2002, after the Sierra Club backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq over phantom “weapons of mass destruction,” the organization threatened to dissolve its southern Utah chapter for “speaking out against the Bush administration’s push toward war” (Huffington Post 5/25/2011). To protect their control over Middle East oil, the finance capitalists were willing to sacrifice the lives of more than a million workers and children in Iraq. Now their targets are the Chinese and Russian rulers, plus the “Fortress America” U.S. bosses who are against committing taxes and treasure to an expensive global conflict. If history is a guide, the environmental movement will help sound the main wing’s battle cry.
A fight between monsters
The rulers’ cynicism knows no limits. The misleaders now beating the drum on the environment represent the same profit-mad bosses who built their fortunes by ruining our air, water, and food. They are the same animals who poisoned the children of Flint, Michigan. They are the same monsters who drowned the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to protect their French Quarter investments—and then exploited the tragedy to gentrify other formerly Black working-class neighborhoods.
When (and if) they prevail over their capitalist rivals, the main wing will use fascism to attack the working class. It was finance capital that funded Hitler and gave him the poison gas used in the Nazi death camps. It was finance capital that dropped Agent Orange and napalm on the children of Vietnam. It’s not just misguided to trust the liberal bosses. It is suicidal!
Are Trump and his Koch brother benefactors a gang of racist murderers? Without a doubt. They are enemies of our class and must be fought to the end. But we cannot allow fear of these Little Fascists to drive us into the deadly embrace of finance capital, into the camp of Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren. The Big Fascists have a long and ugly history of slaughtering masses of workers, all in the name of liberal democracy.Our fight must be for our class. It must be against our oppressors. Most of all, it must be for communism!
TEXAS, July 7—The Progressive Labor Party organized 50 workers and youth against capitalist borders during a summer project here. The focus of our fight was a call to unite against racist borders and anti-immigrant racism. We strengthened our commitment to multiracial unity of the working class and the struggle for communist revolution to destroy capitalism.
Every year, PLP and friends join to fight collectively in an area of focus—to connect struggles, grow our organization, and develop young leaders. Throughout the week, we demonstrated, volunteered, distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets, engaged in workshops and discussions and strengthened our relationships with each other.
Internationalism on July 4
After the protest against the new concentration camp in Carrizo Springs (see front page), we took the fightback to the Texas-Mexico border. July fourth in the United States is a day of hyper nationalism and morid hypocrisy. PLP comrades countered the bosses fake holiday by staging a militant anti-July fourth demonstration, and distributing communist literature to workers and shop owners around the international pedestrian bridge.
Many stopped to read CHALLENGE right then and there. Several joined in on our march through the streets and at the corners where we stopped to chant and hear speeches prepared by our comrades—a call to unite all workers and smash all borders!
Again, PLP’s commitment to international solidarity was proven by rallying directly at the border—connecting with workers who cross back and forth between the two countries on a daily basis. We urged them to take our message back to their families both here and in Mexico and beyond.
Solidarity with migrant families at the shelter
Throughout the week, PLP volunteered at a local shelter that housed migrant families who made the hellish journey from Mexico, Central America, the Congo, and Haiti. As many as 300 arrived every night. We served meals, played with children, and listened to many migrants share their experiences (see letters, page 3). We helped some make travel arrangements, for their journeys are far from over. Many are going to meet family already here—some are going to cities and states they never heard of.
Still, many are going to cities where they will face more racism, poverty, and exploitation. We ached for them, as they come to the U.S. with immense hope in having a chance at a new life. Ultimately, we learned from our fellow brothers and sisters, as their very presence once again shows the power workers hold in demonstrating their ability to defend themselves even in the harshest of conditions.
A week of learning
PLP also took to the streets in Texas, distributing CHALLENGE and leaflets to Toyota factory workers, passersby, shoppers, and shelter volunteers. We focused on spreading our sphere of influence and developing young leaders. Throughout the week, we engaged in discussions and workshops to increase and strengthen our understanding of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry, its dependence on racism and nationalism to divide the working class with borders, and to prove further, the heightening danger of fascist liberalism.
We fortified our understanding with direct experience to take back to our schools, our jobs and our communities. We ended the week with a real Texas barbecue celebration, sharing our impressions and lessons learned from the week.
Rising fascism and liberals are main danger to workers
While liberal politicians may cry “keep families together” to appear concerned with the humanity of migrant workers and families seeking refuge, merely keeping families together in a detention center is a complete sham. They use the suffering of the migrant workers for their own cynical purposes. Just like president Donald Trump and his conservative cronies, U.S. liberal bosses have high stakes in exploiting the working class—they just use smoke and mirrors to do so. They want workers to forget that it was Barack Obama who deported more migrants than any other president. Obama authorized the construction of detention camps for children at the border. Obama created DACA to target Latin youth for military recruitment.
Thus, we cannot ignore that it is Obama’s racist legacy that Trump’s anti-immigrant administration is built upon. While Trump’s administration uses open racism to mobilize its political base and fuel anti-immigrant sentiment, we must acknowledge that intensified racism, nationalism, and use of “law and order” to terrorize workers are strategies employed by a number of Democratic presidents—Obama, Clinton, Carter—and are a hallmark of rising fascism.
Worldwide, bosses are sliding towards wider war and the various national bosses are moving towards more fascism amid growing volatility. But, liberal fascists continue to insidiously mislead workers into believing they have our best interests at heart when they are agents of a violent system. They seek not to alleviate the exploitation of the working class, but to subdue workers with meaningless reforms. They seek not to unite workers in multiracial unity, but instead keep workers divided through identity politics. Time and time again, liberals screw workers over for power, profit and control. The working class shouldn’t be fooled!
Communism means no racist borders
Our work in Texas this week reflected what communism means—workers’ power, no racist borders, and no workers forced from their homes and families to find work. Our work this week reflected our dedication to building and strengthening PLP—and our fight to smash capitalism for good. We must unite and fight the increasing mass arrests of undocumented workers, ICE police raids on homes, jobs, military bases, bus stations and highways, mass detentions and deportations.
Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite! ¡El mismo enemigo, la misma lucha, los trabajadores del mundo se unen!
CARRIZO SPRINGS, TX, July 3—“Smash racist deportation, working people have no nation!” This international chant resounded as multiracial and multigenerational contingent of Progressive Labor party (PLP) members marched in firm formation towards a newly opened concentration camp for children, a site only 12 miles away from the Crystal City concentration camp that held Japanese, German, and Italian families during World War II. They joined liberal organizers of the protest, who kicked the protest off in a pacifist fashion: mini banners, carrying gifts of bookmarks and teddy bears, all while urging protesters to decorate a fence a hundred yards from the entrance to this Carrizo Springs child detention facility.
Liberal pacifism vs. communist militancy
It was clear that there was tension between liberals, identity centered organizations and PLP when sing-along sheets with “This Little Light of Mine” and “De Colores” were passed out. We knew that singing “This Little Light of Mine” was just a means of steering working-class anger into passivity—telling people to hold out for hope that things will change, rather than calling upon them to join in multiracial unity to defeat and destroy capitalism. PL’ers were immediately critical when these pacifist song-sheets were distributed, and when the leadership of the rally moved to sing them someone in the crowd yelled out, “WHY? NO!”
As the liberals stumbled to answer, members PLP sang “The Internationale,” the communist working-class anthem, while distributing CHALLENGE and communist leaflets. PLP won the crowd over with our anthem, our chants, and our speeches, exposing the politricks of both Republican and Liberal bosses and politicians to use racism to divide the working class and super-exploit migrant workers crossing the border, for their political and financial gain.
We called upon everyone to unite and fight back against capitalist bosses. The capitalist media has been supposedly uncovering the injustices at the US-Mexico border, but the end game is basically to push workers in the U.S. into the dead-end path of voting our way into a better world. But we know better, and in an effort to spread PLP’s line around building a united international working class, members took to protest against a new children’s detention center in Carrizo Springs, Texas.
The squalor in these concentration camps is a holdover from the Obama era but the media focus from outlets controlled by main wing finance capital is new, as they seek to build mass movements to attack Trump, the number one threat to their decades-old blood-soaked world empire.There were approximately 100 people in attendance, including PL’ers from New York, Chicago and New Jersey.
Part of communist training
This trip to the detention facility at Carrizo Springs was a part of a week-long summer project in Texas (see page 8).
We greeted the Toyota Factory workers with communist literature, protested racist deportations again at the border crossing of Laredo and volunteered in migrant shelters nearby.
Three leaflets were written and translated in one day for use through the week.Study groups and forums helped a new generation of young leaders achieve greater unity and understanding of how inter-imperialist rivalry is driving divisions in ruling classes worldwide and the danger that liberal misleaders backed by main-wing finance capitalists planning World War III present the gravest danger to the international working class.
Thugs in blue try to intimidate
In addition to the contradictions of the liberals, the police, true to fascist form, broke their promises to work with the rally organizers and proved that they were there to serve the bosses. From the jump, there was a heavy police presence. From kkkops standing among us in the crowd with Blue Lives Matter patches on their sleeves to squad cars cruising up and down the dirt road, whirring police sirens and ordering us to clear the already cleared pathway.
They cruised slowly up and down the main dusty road in front of the center in large black SUVs, inches away from protesters. They periodically interrupted the speakers with sirens and admonishments to “clear the road” and operated a drone over the crowd to identify demonstrators. Although we abided, police still called tow trucks without warning and ordered more officers to the ground, blocking both ends of the road in military fashion. At the close of the protest, three people were arrested and two cars were towed.
Leave the flags where they belong...in the gutter
When the contradictions of liberals are pointed out and acknowledged, especially by communists, workers and youth lean further left. Several dozen hand-held American flags the rally organizers planned to distribute went un-used, as the political tone we established made it clear that US nationalism and patriotism would not be well received by the crowd.
Workers won to these ideas will carry out mass murder overseas and, in the end, endorse a border regime of biometric fascism that will make Trump’s border wall look like child’s play as long as it adheres to the liberal fantasy of the “rule of law.” Due to our ability to boldly inject a communist alternative to the liberal misleadership on display, working class internationalism achieved a small but important symbolic victory over nationalism and patriotism, as the U.S. flag remained on the ground, where it belongs, like the flags of all bosses’ nations.New forces committed to raising the red flag of the revolutionary international working class were forged over the past week!
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Letter: Student and teachers fight back to end racist random searches
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- 12 July 2019 246 hits
The school board of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) just voted to end the racist “random search” policy that has been dehumanizing our youth since 1993. For 26 years, working class students of color were pulled out of class every day and faced intrusive searches that subjected them to the culture of criminalization that capitalism creates. Basic items would be confiscated such as markers, highlighters, white out and/or body spray. However, the LAUSD did not end this policy because of the annoyances it brought upon these students every day. They ended it because of pressure from anti-racist students, teachers, parents, and community members who fought against it for many years.
To fight the bosses is educate our youth
As a teacher and member of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), this struggle for me started about five years ago when a resolution was put forward in the teachers’ union. This resolution proposed taking a stand against racist police brutality and it passed. As a result, the union’s Racial Justice Committee was formed. Instead of this newly formed committee being a group that simply talked about racism, there was a struggle to take direct action against racist policies in schools, such as the aforementioned random search policy. We joined together with other students and community members and developed a long-term plan that consisted of educating ourselves about these issues by developing student curriculum, organizing forums, passing out flyers, and pushing for the union to fight to end random searches. This committee took direct action in the form of rallies, marches, and packing school board meetings.
There was a lot of resistance from educators worried about “safety,”and many also had racist ideas about Black and Latin students. There were also some problems that developed within the committee itself. For example, after Trump was elected, there was a serious debate over whether or not the fight against racism is also a fight that benefits white workers.
The ideology of “white privilege” was brought forward to contradict the communist view that the white working class’s interests would be served by fighting racism, as it would break down the fabricated barriers that stop all of the working class from fighting together.
Some members agreed with us and have since been interested in reading Challenge. Small issues such as lack of commitment and attacks from the administration slowed us down, but we continued to fight together and develop unity. The struggle continues with the skeptical teachers, but the few committee members who read Challenge agree with us on many points and consider themselves to be on our side.
Don’t fall for the bosses’ reform game
The bosses attempted to reform their racist policies by suggesting safe school programs such as comprehensive restorative justice, psychologists, therapists and counselors, and the Safe Passage program. However, through strength and determination, our committee pushed for the LAUSD to end this policy entirely.
Although a great victory for our students, it’s important to understand that reforms, no matter how progressive, will never eradicate the racist nature of this system. As long as capitalism remains, the need to criminalize and oppress working class youth will continue. In fact the bosses always seem to give us an inch to later cut off a mile, such that the next safe school policy they come up with may be more racist and fascist.
The education system itself is set up to teach youth to accept the bosses’ control or face dire consequences. However, this fight will not end until we take down the capitalist system and replace it with a better system for working people, a communist system that teaches the working class our history and science, and truly educates our youth, so that they can help build a better world for all. The struggle continues!
