ROME, August 5—“Italians first! “Immigrants, go home!” The racist movements we see around the world—from Myanmar to Hungary to the U.S.—flourishes in Italy. At the same time, workers are fighting back. At the forefront of this fight are African migrant workers.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of la Lega, Italy’s most overtly anti-immigrant political party, refuses to allow boatloads of African refugees rescued at sea onto Italy’s shores. In the last two months alone, 850 have died in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. “No sooner had Salvini been sworn in than he was proclaiming his eagerness to kick out the 500,000-600,000 immigrants who are reckoned to be living without authorisation in Italy” (The Economist, 6/7).
The need for proletarian internationalism is urgent. The need for revolutionary, proletarian internationalism is urgent. We must fight to welcome refugees and immigrants wherever we are. We must organize to better the working and living conditions of all workers. But really, the whole damn capitalist system has to go!
Sixty percent of Italians elected the coalition of the Lega and the Five Star Movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo and led by Luigi di Maio. Although some cracks are appearing in this coalition—the Five Star Movement pretends to distance itself from the Lega’s blatant racism—together the two parties control the “populista’, or “populist” government.
Since citizenship in Italy is determined by blood rather than soil, the populists want benefits restricted to native Italians only. This political line is blatantly anti-immigrant and racist. But the proposed 15 percent flat tax rate would benefit only the rich, while sharply reducing revenues for working-class education and healthcare.
Rulers scapegoat immigrants
The Lega-Five Star coalition is a ruling-class strategy to control an increasingly alienated working class by scapegoating immigrants as the source of its problems. The pensions of Italian workers have been cut to the bone. Immigrants serve as super-exploited labor and as scapegoats to bolster the racism that divides the working class.
Thus, immigrant workers, many from sub-Saharan Africa, labor in the fields of southern Italy for three euros (about $4) an hour under slave-like conditions, or toil as precarious labor in the northern factories.
In fact the director of Italian Social Security said the system would collapse without the taxes paid by immigrant workers, most of whom will never receive a pension.
Racist murder of organizer,
Soumaila Sacko
Just two days after the installation of the new government, a 29-year-old Malian organizer of agricultural workers, Soumaila Sacko, was murdered. This sparked a strike and large union-led protests throughout the country (The Local It, 6/4).
He had lived in a tent city of San Fernando in Reggio Calabria, an encampment at least 3,000 of migrant workers— primarily from Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and the Ivory Coast—who pick fruits and vegetables for abysmal wages. They are deprived of electricity, running water, and proper toilets.
The protesters correctly pointed out that this is nothing new. “In 2010, migrant workers staged a revolt against the conditions after three labourers were injured in a [racist] street shooting as they returned from the fields. Hundreds of migrants were expelled from an area nearby in what some commentators called ethnic cleansing” (Al Jazeera, 6/27).
Capitalism in global crisis
The bosses’ attacks on workers lays bare the instability of global capitalism. The top owners of European capital want the European Union (EU) to survive.
For six decades, the EU has enabled capital, goods, services, and labor to flow across borders. This created an economic bloc conjoining the interests of the capitalists in different European nations. Yet these bankers and industrialists also benefit from the divisive nationalist movement, enabling them to keep wages low and cut public expenditures. European capitalists need the EU at the same time that they need the nationalist movements opposed to the EU. As Marx pointed out in Das Kapital 150 years ago, capitalism creates contradictions that it cannot resolve.
Fascism or communism?
How will the Italian working class respond to rising fascism? History provides no clear guidelines. Benito Mussolini was first to usher in fascism in 1920s-1930s led by. But the anti-fascist movement was strong throughout World War II; in the late 1940s, Italy had the continent’s largest and most militant Communist Party.
To this day, communist songs—“Bella Ciao,” “Bandiera Rossa,” and the “Internationale”—are sung at protests against the current right-wing trend. But the old Communist movement, led by the PCI (Partita Comunista Italiana) strangled itself with its commitment to work within electoral politics.
The capitalist crisis is global, but workers often think nationally—which means their response can be easily misdirected in the direction of racist, xenophobic “populismo.”
Only revolutionary proletarian internationalism can meet the needs of the workers of Italy—and of the world. There is a desperate need for PLP, in Italy and everywhere, to organize the class struggle and lead the communist transformation of society.

SILVER SPRING, MD—Over 100 Montgomery County residents held a multiracial rally and march protesting the racist police murder of Robert White, a 41 year old mentally ill Black man on June 13. His crime? Walking while Black. Progressive Labor Party (PLP)distributed leaflets and connected the murderous Ku Klux Klan and the killer cops as part of the racist state power that must be overthrown with multiracial communist revolution.
The prosecutor ruled Robert’s murder was justified and released body camera footage of the encounter. The cameras show that the police officer, Anand Badgujar, got out of his car and started following Robert who was walking in his neighborhood as he did daily. Robert became agitated with the cop, and understandably so, because there was no real reason to stop him. The officer persisted, harassing him and even using pepper spray on him.
Kkop Badgujar claimed Robert knocked him down and continuosly hit him, so he responded by shooting him instead of backing off and de-escalating the unjustified confrontation. At one point on the video evidence showed footage of, Badgujar  saying, “This looks like suicide by cop” and called for backup. Despite thisProsecutor Broccolino stated, “We have, unanimously, concluded that [the officer’s] actions were justified under the circumstances,” and closed the case.
Mental illness is not a crime
Speakers from the community who knew Robert White were incensed that he was harassed and then killed simply for “looking suspicious.” A neighbor from the Silver Spring Justice Coalition said that she walks the same routes.
Robert often exchanged pleasantries with him at the store or library. No one had called the police to investigate. He walked the neighborhood daily.
He lived with his mother and father (retired school teacher and minister) and had no history of violence. Mental illness is not a crime. Walking is not a crime. Robert just “wanted to be left alone” as one speaker put it, and their is no crime in that. But don’t tell the bosses’ racist media that!
This rally followed a protest held in June at the time of the murder that highlighted the murder’s systemic, racist nature, even at the hands of a non-White cop. At that protest, Lakshmi Sridaran, Director of National Policy and Advocacy of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) declared, “It is unfortunate that in this case [the cop] is a South Asian American and we will not stand behind that person simply because of their identity.”
After all, it is every cop’s ultimate task—whether they’re Black, white, Latin, or South Asian—to protect this rotten capitalist system at workers’ expense.
Another speaker, mother to Emmanuel Okutuga, who was murdered by cop Christopher Jordan of the same police force in February 2011, spoke passionately about the need to fight for justice and called on the Black community to realize that this can happen to them also.
Her son was about to graduate from college at Bowie State University. Video showed he was not a threat. Somehow, though, the prosecutor’s office “accidently” deleted the video and left the judge free to rule in favor of cop Jordan, calling the death “justifiable homicide.”
Montgomery County borders Washington, D.C. and appears, on the surface, not to have the level of police brutality and murder that has characterized its neighboring Prince George’s County. But the police play the same role everywhere.
Robert’s case echoes the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson—murdered for walking while Black. The struggle against racist police terror will continue under capitalism until all workers unite to create a communist world.

While U.S. imperialism is losing its grip on the Middle East, regional capitalists are at war to fill the vacuum. From Syria to Yemen, millions of workers’ lives are at stake as Israeli, Saudi and Iranian capitalists wage war to control the Middle East and its oil. The U.S. and Russian imperialists are providing military and political support to opposing sides in these wars that could escalate quickly.
The most destructive of these current conflicts are in Syria and Yemen. At least six million Syrians have fled their homes and at least 400,000 have died since 2012. In Yemen, at least six million are on the edge of starvation and over half a million were devastated in the world’s worst-ever cholera epidemic (NYT, 8/22). In both conflicts, U.S. imperialism has been mostly confined to fighting small-time terrorists (ISIS in Syria, Al Qaeda in Yemen).
The U.S. decline has their allies second-guessing U.S. power. This has created an opening for capitalists like Iran and Russia who oppose the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia, have decided to take matters into their own hands, creating more murder and mayhem.
Syria: Iran and Russia Advance Israel Readies for War
With U.S. influence weakening in the Middle East, both presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump have done little to oppose Syria’s Russia-backed President Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia have moved in, concentrating on propping up Assad’s regime. Russia has deployed significant air power while Iran has recruited 80,000 fighters from across the region.
Assad’s Syrian army only numbers about 20,000, and many desert or go on strike if ordered to deploy outside their own neighborhoods, where they serve as guards.
 When news reports talk about a Syrian advance on rebel positions, the advance is led by Lebanese Hezbollah and units recruited, trained and paid for by Iran.
Despite Trump’s rhetoric and sanctions against Iran, he has not taken on Iran in Syria and pushed to withdraw all 2,000 troops in Syria (NYT, 4/4).  “In his haste to withdraw from Syria, Trump stands alone.
The Pentagon, the State Department and CIA are all deeply concerned about the potential ramifications if the U.S. leaves behind a power vacuum in Syria, as are Israel, Arab leaders, and other nations in the U.S.-led coalition that has fought ISIS in Iraq and Syria since 2014” (Military Times, 4/4).
If U.S. backs off, Israeli and Saudi bosses fear that Russia-backed Iran will become the dominant power across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
Yemen: Saudi Tail Wags U.S. Dog
In Yemen as in Syria, U.S. bosses are not calling the shots as a war unfolds. In 2015, the Saudis and United Arab Emirates invaded after Iran-backed Houthis seized the capital of Sana’a. The latest outrage has been their assault on the main port of Hodeidah. “The U.A.E…wants the port out of Houthi hands as soon as possible, saying it generates up to $40 million a month for the Houthis” (WSJ, 7/8).
It’s important to note that though the UAE is one of the smallest countries in this region, it is one with a growing imperialist appetite. “With an active-duty military of just 63,000, the U.A.E. has rapidly expanded its footprint across the Arabian Peninsula and eastern Africa.
It has a string of bases in Somalia and Eritrea and along the Yemen coast” (WSJ, 7/8)The principal weapon in Syria has been mass starvation created by attacking shipping routes so as to deprive millions of Yemenis of food and clean water.
This murderous campaign has been financed and equipped by the U.S. war machine.The UN estimates this attack will lead to 250,000 deaths from the resulting food shortages.
To stop this slaughter of profit-hungry rulers, we must oppose all capitalist and turn their imperialist wars into class wars against all bosses.
 We must rebuild the international communist movement, overthrow all the war makers, and organize a society run by the working class.

BROOKLYN, August 29—This summer, a multiracial group of more than 30 Kingsborough Community College students and workers held a beach barbecue called “Unity in the Community,” to review and celebrate the past year of struggle, and plan for the year ahead. Short speeches summarizing the past year, political discussions about CHALLENGE, good food, and sports were the orders of the day as old friends reconnected and new friendships were kindled!
Anti-racist and anti-sexist political struggle are what unites these workers and students, who hailed from Africa, across the Middle East and South Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Many of them participated in various struggles throughout the past year, while others were relative newcomers.
A year of building struggle
In late 2017, Kingsborough cafeteria workers suffered under incompetent and racist management. They endured the indignities of obeying orders from lazy sexist supervisors and incompetent administrators at the College. The workers, many of them parents, saw the absurdity of their working conditions. As we engaged in discussions over the semester, their political awareness began to grow, culminating in a bold and powerful rally. Students and staff banded together in a direct confrontation with administrators and NYPD at the President’s office.
At the end that semester, we made contact and began to build relationships with students of the Muslim Association on campus. We learned of their struggles on campus. In the spring semester we built on those discussions to take action against a racist stooge of the administration who admitted to spying on the Muslim Association. Students took the lead in confronting the racist and the administrators who supported him, resulting in his ouster. The leadership in the Muslim Association has to deal with years of history of control by faculty and administrators as well as sexism in their own group. The success of this struggle led to the beginning of another struggle to call out and oust a racist, sexist and homophobic administrator on campus, Michael Goldstein, who is protected by a network of Zionists among the faculty.
Building collective leadership
Students at the barbecue explained the collective process that went into writing the leaflet calling for Goldstein’s termination, and the collective decision-making that went into how best to distribute them and involve more students. A strength of the struggle against Goldstein is that it is drawing in and developing strong women leaders among students who have never participated in political struggle before.
PL’ers who have been involved alongside the KCC students and workers commented on the development of strong women leadership through the struggle, and talked about how important CHALLENGE has been in sharing news about these struggles among the students and workers on campus. They connected the cholera outbreaks in Yemen or Haiti to imperialist rivalry and capitalism’s insatiable need for profits and labor to exploit. They stressed that the bosses’ media always buries these stories, and that is why everyone must help sell and write for CHALLENGE. As students passed around CHALLENGE, several new contacts were made, as well as plans for new PLP study groups.
Struggle continues
Students and workers brainstormed on how to build on and sharpen the struggles of the previous year, and how to reach out to more of the 10,000 or so students on campus. They unanimously agreed that this event should be held annually! As one student put it, “we needed this. With everything going on in the world, we need to keep doing this every year for the students after us.”
Political struggle shows that education is far more than just about sitting in a classroom and learning from books or lectures from professors. Political struggle gives us a vision of a world to fight for, and a goal for our education in all subjects.
This barbecue served to break down barriers and expand the bonds of solidarity among the segregated groups of students, as well as the workers who came: the custodial, cafeteria and faculty.
With stronger personal and political ties, we head back to school this semester with the promise of struggle and hopefully even greater victories.