WASHINGTON DC, May 29—As the semester ended at Howard University, students, triumphant from the nine-day occupation by 450 students of the administration building, headed for home. The students understand that they must remain vigilant and engaged to ensure accountability to the commitments made by the administration.
As one member of the student group Howard University Resist said, “We’ll all be here next year, and the administration building is in the same place, if things don’t go our way.”
With summer break here, we can begin to evaluate this past semester’s action in terms of its outcomes and strategies.
Here is a summary of the modest concessions from the administration:
- On overcrowding: A later date for applying for housing was set, and the university agreed to keep open one of the dorms originally slated for renovation if demand for housing exceeded the remaining supply.
- On tuition: The administration also committed to keep tuition constant through the 2019-20 school year and to fund a community food pantry initiated by HU Resist for the coming school year.
- The administration also agreed to begin providing transportation for sexual assault victims to the local hospital that handles rape kits and to provide students a voice in selecting a student ombudsperson.
- The administration agreed to establish several committees and task forces including students as co-leaders to address other issues.
Task forces were established to:
- Review the campus police’s use of force, training and the need for armed officers
- Enhance psychiatric and behavioral health services
- Establish a grievance system that holds faculty, administrators and students accountable in their language and actions
- Consider implementing a mandatory one-credit course with a curriculum around prevention of sexual assault, sexual harassment and interpersonal violence.
Assessment of the struggle
HU Resist was born in the Spring of 2017 in opposition to the secret visit of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to the campus. It led the bold seizure of the administration building (see CHALLENGE, 4/18) and held it for nine days after locking out the campus police. The leading HU Resist members engaged in negotiations with the Board of Trustees throughout the occupation, while President Wayne A. I. Frederick refused to meet with the students. His resignation/firing was the leading demand of the protest.
The occupying students received ongoing support from faculty, community members, veterans of previous occupations (from 1968 and 1989), and students from several area universities. They created an egalitarian and sharing environment in the building and conducted political education and other creative activities during the occupation. One student described it as a “microcosm of communism.” Ultimately, they retreated from their key demands, of firing the president and disarming the campus police, and left the building peacefully with both legal and academic amnesty provided by the administration.
One HU Resister said that they had to come to terms because they were beginning to lose people from the administration building. Another said that the idea of upping the ante in the struggle by sending groups of resisting students to shut down classes and establish a full strike on the campus--classroom activity generally continued uninterrupted—was not likely to be effective. Another resister said that the decision to leave the building was premature, and had the leadership been more decisive and followed the organizational principles of democratic centralism, the struggle could have been extended and become even more successful, perhaps ousting the president.
The dominant ideas within HU Resist are Black nationalist in sentiment, a weakness in welding together the unshakeable solidarity of the working class and its allies. Such ideology also tends to limit one’s understanding of the role of Black institutions like Howard University, leading to the incorrect idea that with enough struggle and “student power,” Howard could become a vehicle for revolutionary change.
Howard is a capitalist institution whose purpose is to support capitalism and mislead its students into supporting the system while accommodating modest, temporary reforms. Its Board of Trustees is filled with corporate executives and other pro-capitalist forces.
On the other hand, many HU Resisters consider themselves communists and anti-capitalists, and the potential exists for communist ideas to take root and grow!
The way forward
PLP members supported the occupation in several ways. A PLP member brought a group of labor activists to the occupation after a demonstration against Wendy’s fast food restaurant. Another worked to gain support from faculty in the form of a letter of support ultimately signed by 75 faculty members. Other PL’ers provided food to the occupiers.
PLP salutes the boldness and the courage of the Howard University students who took the fight into occupation of the administrative building. HU Resist members, and students fighting back against racism and sexism worldwide, must take this struggle to the next level and join PLP, and become members of an international revolutionary communist party. That means acting locally—by immersing once again into uniting the day-to-day struggles of campus workers and students—while thinking globally and organizing a movement to destroy this system once and for all. Join us!
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Mexico: Working-class mothers study sexism, pledge to organize against capitalist violence
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- 01 June 2018 78 hits
Mexico—To celebrate International Working Women’s Day, PLP attended a conference on violence against women. It took place at a kindergarten in an industrial area where Progressive Labor Party has done political work for three decades, and where we are well known as organizers. The school’s principal sent out the invitations after a woman was killed nearby.
She invited the mothers of school families to the conference, which focused on fighting sexism. About 50 young mothers between the ages of 20 and 25 attended.
During the meetings we spoke about the Party document: “Communism and the Struggle Against Sexism”, which notes that the key to ending violence against women is to struggle against capitalism. The other main discussion was around the book: Caliban and the Witch in which the writer Silvia Federici speaks about the division of labor between women and men in child rearing and earning wages. The discussions were well received by the women workers in attendance. While the questions asked were fairly timid, the women seemed to seriously identify with the Party’s explanation of how sexism functions under capitalism.
At the end, the principal invited us back for future talks, and issues of Challenge were distributed along with Road to Revolution IV and Communism and the Struggle Against Sexism.
It is important that all women and men to start organizing to defend themselves against the violence directed against women workers because it is an instrument of capitalism that terrorizes, and super-exploits this section of our class. The responsibility to change this unequal society lies in our hands. We must reeducate youth and workers to care for each other and see each other as true class sisters and brothers. This will guarantee that all families understand we must change this society for one that serves the interests of our class and not the interests of the rich. It is the ruling class that is guilty of all the violence, discrimination, murders, kidnappings, sexual assaults and super exploitation of women workers.
Join the international communist PLP and fight for an egalitarian society. Let’s get rid of capitalism and the traitorous rulers that are guilty of so much violence, unemployment, hunger and misery in Mexico and worldwide. Long live communism!
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Antiracists protest Israel’s virulent fascism in Gaza
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- 01 June 2018 77 hits
NEW YORK CITY, May 18—Rivalries between imperialist powers are ravaging the workers of the Middle East. The United States, Russia, China and their junior partners like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel care nothing for working class lives as they compete for power and oil profits.
Today about 1,000 Arab, anti-Zionist Jewish , and other anti-racists demonstrated with militant chants in Times Square and then marched to the Israeli Consulate to protest the barbaric slaughter of Gazan demonstrators over the past month. Two days earlier about 300 members of Jewish Voices for Peace and other anti-racists marched in the rain to the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, who have said nothing to condemn the violence.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), have killed 111 protestors and wounded thousands of others with expanding bullets aimed to cripple, if not kill. These atrocities were committed with the full support of the U.S., in response to weekly mass protests involving thousands of Gazans, including entire families.
Gaza is uninhabitable
Gaza is small strip of land at the southwestern corner of Israel where thousands of Palestinians fled after being driven from their homes when Israel was founded in 1948. Initially under the control of Egypt, Gaza was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, along with the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Ever since, these territories have been brutally and illegally militarily occupied. For the last 11 years Gaza has been under siege, with very little food or other life necessities allowed in. Gaza is surrounded by a wall and is closely surveilled by Israel. In 2009 and 2014, Israel launched brutal military attacks on Gaza, killing over 3,500 and destroying multiple dwellings, schools, hospitals, power plants and water treatment facilities. Today Gaza has almost no drinkable water, sparse electricity, huge food shortages and very little employment. It is called the world’s largest open-air prison and the United Nations has declared that it is about to be totally uninhabitable.
Israel breeds anti-Arab racism
Jewish Israelis are bombarded with profound anti-Arab racism from the cradle in order to justify the ongoing occupation of Palestine. They are taught a totally distorted view of history, such as that Arab workers fled in 1948 out of anti-Semitism, as opposed to 750,000 being forcibly expelled and their homes and villages razed.
Today Jewish soldiers, or any Israeli, can steal from, injure or kill Palestinians with impunity, only rarely suffering mild consequences if an abuse gains international traction. Palestinians who rebel or protest in any way are painted as vicious terrorists, who have little regard for their own lives and are filled with hatred of Jewish workers. Even children who throw stones are arrested, tortured and sentenced to years in prison.
Israel is only able to exist because of the more than $3 billion in military aid it receives annually from the U.S. This support has enabled it to become a nuclear power and serve as U.S.’s and the West’s main protector of Middle Eastern oil. Israeli military terror also helps the U.S. to limit the power of rivals like Iran and Russia. For this reason, even Arab powers like Saudi Arabia support Israel and ignore its abuse of Palestinians.
Workers need communist leadership
The Palestinians are also weakened by their own divided and traitorous leadership. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank, spends as much money on police to prevent opposition to Israel as it does on health and education combined. The PA cooperates with a small financial elite who control most of the economy and are in bed with Israeli capitalists. Gaza is run by Hamas, a fundamentalist organization, which also preserves most jobs and resources for its loyalists. Most Palestinians despise both these groups, but there is no strong alternative leadership at the moment. Israeli workers, though few recognize it, also play a high price for the occupation, with low wages, high unemployment, and scarce affordable housing, along with a racist moral atmosphere.
What is needed is a multiracial anti-capitalist consciousness and struggle in all of Palestine/Israel. Our comrades there raise this idea in the work they do in a multiracial union in Israel. In other countries we try to build communist consciousness in organizations of anti-occupation Jewish, Palestinians and other anti-racist fighters. Internationally there is a boycott of Israeli goods, academia, and cultural events. However, at this moment, it is wars for power and profit that are dominating the Middle East. The wars in Syria and Yemen, where the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel attack each other in increasingly vicious and dangerous conflicts foreshadow larger wars and even world war. An international communist, anti-imperialist movement is the only hope for our class, in Israel/Palestine or anywhere.
Bogotá, COLOMBIA, May 1—We do not believe in capitalist democracy, we organize for communist revolution! One working class, one communist world, one Progressive Labor Party! Peace between social classes serves criminal bosses!
Revolutionary slogans resonated for more than four hours in Bogotá, Colombia where, once again, the International Workers’ Day, May Day, was commemorated.
PLP was present selling the newspaper Desafió, distributing more than three thousand communist leaflets. We talked to workers and students, letting them know about our revolutionary politics and inviting them to join our study and action groups to stop the continuous capitalist attacks. We explained that capitalism deteriorates our living conditions and fighting to destroy it and replace it with a communist society is the only solution.
Eighty participants which included comrades, sympathizers and readers participated in this march along our banner, enthusiastic young people also raised our red flags and chanted PLP slogans: “Down with capitalist dictatorship, up with communist revolution! The good life of the ruling class, makes the worker destitute!”
We were advancing our politics among the demonstrators, contrasting with the vast majority of trade union groups, politicians and phony left leaders that make this day an electoral carnival. To their reform messages, we responded, “Down with capitalist nationalism, up with communist internationalism” and “The history of the working class is not a carnival party.”
We received support and admiration for our anti-electoral and anti-capitalist slogans and support for PLP’s communist program as the only solution to the problems of the world’s working class. We emphasized the discipline and vigor of the students, workers, and sympathizers, women and men, that help us and demonstrate that organized workers’ struggles have a future, which makes our commitment even greater.
We sang the Internationale when we arrived at the Bolivar Plaza, the main site of the march and where the big unions had prepared their pro-boss speeches and support for social democratic candidates. There we chanted, “The history of the workers’ struggle is not in the ballot boxes!” Communists do not believe that racist capitalism can be reformed to serve the needs of the proletariat. We participate in these protests and local struggles to build the class consciousness and our social base. It is necessary to help the international working class, transform this outdated society by uniting ourselves in our common interests and against capitalism. PLP fights to win workers to communist revolution as the only way to a better world.
Oakland, April 28—Progressive Labor Party comrades, friends and families celebrated May Day with a rousing May Day dinner. There was living, breathing International working class unity as the 70 plus participants came from over 10 countries, were multiracial and multi-generational. We welcomed new members with applause and congratulations all around.
Every topic was about communism, and workers were involved in table talk conversation which followed each presenter.(See quotes from dinner participants.)
A young student opened with a bilingual greeting and history of May Day. We closed with singing the International.
Oaxaca teachers fight bosses’ terror
A slide presentation about the long, massive, on-going struggle of Teachers in Oaxaca against the State Violence of the Mexican ruling class and their fascist police/military apparatus by a comrade who has participated in leading that struggle for many years. Workers who heard the presentation commented:
“It was inspiring to hear about the hundreds of thousands who have united in this struggle and that PLP has played an important role in developing working class unity for 30 years.”
“It had an awesome, international flavor. Teachers in Oaxaca and teachers in the U.S. are fighting for their students and families. We think in local terms about our community…but here, we find out about what happens in other places. ”
“We can’t always predict when and how battles will unfold…Struggles happen that we don’t expect and have many contradictions. We admire the striking teachers in the U.S. but many were Donald Trump supporters…..Yet, they broke the law and fought for their students and families.”
Red social relations
A comrade from El Salvador described communist relations in the daily lives of her small town before and during the civil war in the 80s. Mass murder sponsored by U.S. Imperialism and the Salvadorian capitalist class caused huge internal migration so that workers and peasants flooded into her small town. The people mobilized to build shelter and feed the migrants—all without money or wages. For generations, families had produced for their needs, created products for their use value and shared or traded what abundance they had. This communal life-style developed from both the indigenous and African heritage of the people in the town.
Gradually, capitalist commodity production undermined this culture and introduced money and profit. People in the town needed products that they could not produce themselves, so they were forced into commodity production for individual use. Workers who heard the presentation commented:
“People feel better and healthier when they live as a community….it’s a side of human experience that capitalism destroys.”
“People already lived in a community…which is communism. They did not have a name for it.”
“This story gives me confidence to talk about communism as the best way to organize society because people have some connection with communist relationships. Anti-communism is not all we know.”
Game highlights gains & lessons of past revolutions
Three young comrades redesigned the game to show the victories and lessons from the communist revolutions of the 20th century. Each table discussed photos from the Soviet Union and China to illustrate the fight against racism, sexism, and capitalism led by the communist parties in the USSR and China.
Then with visual aids and participation at each table, they presented some policies that communist parties implemented which brought socialism back to full blown capitalism and reversed the gains of the working class. Such as: cult of the individual, wage differentials as material incentives which developed inequality, welcoming former bosses into the communist party, making productivity and efficiency primary over ideological struggle for “share and sharer alike” society. They thought communism required a prior state of abundance for the working class to get on board.
The presenters, then, connected these previous experiences to the struggle in PLP to learn and develop towards the fight for communism around the world: for example: collective leadership, internationalism not nationalism and much more.
