WEST ORANGE, NJ, December 11—The attempted genocide by the Israeli government has sparked international outrage among workers around the world. New Jersey has been one of the sites where sharp struggles between antiracists and Zionists have been on display. Antiracist actions led by high school students and teachers have been a catalyst for students and workers to fight back in the area. The courage and multiracial unity of workers have also been met with nationalism and fear. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been involved in such a struggle at the urging of one of the parents in town. We stand alongside these workers and struggle to win workers to see that capitalism is the main enemy that needs to be smashed.
Students lead the way
Though there have been several protests at U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s office, it was the students in West Orange who exposed the Zionists and their political misleaders. West Orange is a suburb of Newark and a town that likes to praise itself for its “diversity.” During the George Floyd protests, West Orange saw multiracial rallies chanting Black Lives Matter.
But when a Palestinian and Jewish student organized a walkout to protest the genocidal bombing of Gaza, the Zionist leadership responded by getting the Mayor and Superintendent to shut it down. Then, on a Zionist Facebook group, they exposed the names of these high school students who were planning the walkout.
In response, dozens of students, parents, alumni, community activists, and teachers filled the board of education meeting to support the students. The unity of Jewish, Arab, Black, and white workers showed the bravery and potential of the larger working class to fight back. As a result, the students held their walkout a week later. This shows that when workers fight back they can win.
Liberalism and nationalism - a tool of the bosses
Like many movements that we are part of, liberal misleaders make sure they can control the mass line of the movement. In this case, many of the leaders are winning workers and students to focus on city and school officials. At one recent town meeting workers and students were protesting the appointment of a human relations commissioner. This person was also head of the Zionist Facebook group that exposed the names of the students who were planning the walkout. Many members of the group spoke specifically about the commissioner. Some residents, however, made the wider connection to imperialist war and genocide by the Israeli government. One teacher stated, “I believe it is crucial to recognize that support for international wars will always impact our local dynamics. The ongoing support of a bloody war funded by the United States, driven by profit, has repercussions at the micro, local level.” Another worker also spoke out about the role of U.S. and British imperialism in the war - attempting to win workers to develop a more international, class analysis of the situation. The Party was also there to pass out a leaflet arguing that both nationalism and Zionism are two sides of the same deadly coin for workers. A Palestinian state will only funnel workers to be exploited by Palestinian bosses like Israeli workers are exploited by Israeli bosses. If workers are going to sacrifice their lives - it should be for a system that is going to free our class from these wars once and for all. We were met with positive reactions, particularly from some of the students who attended the meeting.
Overcome fear with struggle
Despite the growing anti-racist movement in West Orange, many of the organizers refuse to come out in person and instead participate through Zoom. The big reason is that Zionists have been doxxing (sharing personal information) of critics of the Israeli genocide. The town government has been supportive of the Zionists in trying to silence any opposition. At one of the meetings, a Zionist threatened the anti-racists by claiming “they are armed” at public gatherings. As a result many of the organizers, especially Muslim workers, stopped going to public meetings and instead attended through Zoom.
This was a temporary setback for the movement. As a result, the group was planning to speak at a town council meeting. Seeing that there were only a few workers there to speak out against the genocide and racist support by the administration, the council was able to delay the public speaking part until 1 am! Even those in attendance sat quietly despite attempts by more militant activists and PLP members to speak out against the silencing.
Some steps have been made, however, to try and fight this fear. A community group in the neighboring town of Orange held a potluck dinner to talk about and make plans for further fightback. This included parents, students, and organizers from West Orange, Newark, Orange, and neighboring towns. The dinner was opened by a long-time anti-racist fighter who connected the Palestinians to the millions of displaced workers all over the world. She also brought out the oil motives in the Middle East and connected them to the resources in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Haiti that drive imperialist ambitions. We then heard from various workers and students who reported on student walkouts, the desire to build groups that include working with organizers and their children, and how to build a movement that is going to fight both anti-semitism and anti-Muslim racism. The dinner was a perfect example of how workers overcome fear: by bringing workers and students together to organize and fight back.
Long road ahead
We have already learned many lessons. Whether it is struggling against the narrow liberal (and often nationalist) politics of the group or organizing social gatherings, we have learned that this is going to be a long-term struggle and we need to build stronger bonds with many of these members to win many of these students and workers to our line. When having one-on-one conversations when distributing our leaflet we see that students and workers are open to it. Still, as usual, the leadership of these groups ensures that the liberal line of the misleadership prevails. The potential is there, and we plan on being there for the long term to build the Party and win many of these courageous workers to fight for a communist future.
Columbia and NYU are landlords that happen to offer classes
NY Times, 12/10–State lawmakers will unveil legislation on Tuesday that would eliminate enormous property tax breaks for Columbia University and New York University, which have expanded to become among New York City’s top 10 largest private property owners. The bills would require the private universities to start paying their full annual property taxes and for that money to be redistributed to the City University of New York, the largest urban public university system in the country…The amount the schools save annually has soared in recent decades as the two have bought more properties, and the value of their properties has also increased…the city’s wealthiest universities were bigger and richer than ever before, amassing vast real estate portfolios that have drained the city budget…Columbia has grown its physical footprint to become the city’s largest private landowner.
KKKops murder one man and arrest protesters as anger builds in Decatur, AL
SPLC, 11/17–“Over the course of the times we’ve had rallies and demonstrations to protest there’s been nine arrests,” said Aneesah Saafiyah…Her father, Danny Saafiyah Sr… “Our protests haven’t been violent. None have been. No one has been attacking the police or anything like that. It’s just the intimidation tactics that the police use.”
Stephen Clay Perkins, 39, was shot to death in the early hours of Sept. 29 in front of his home…Perkins was hit seven times. He was declared dead at a local hospital…Despite early assurances that the bodycam footage would be released in mid-October, that did not happen. As of today, the family has still not seen it.
Oil in Guyana means profits for ExxonMobil
Der Spiegel, 11/24–"There's the new Guyana! Guyana with oil!,” Nicholas Deygooo calls out as the boat heads towards his artificial island. "It wouldn’t be possible without Exxon!”…Within just a few months, floating dredgers created some 44 acres of new land, roughly the size of 24 football fields. Such a thing has never been seen before in Guyana, the sparsely populated country on South America’s Atlantic coast, sandwiched between Venezuela and Suriname…Enormous oil reserves were discovered off the coast here in 2015, shortly before 200 countries agreed to the Paris Climate Agreement, which was to herald the end of the fossil fuel era. Huge quantities of first-class "light sweet crude” are buried below the ocean floor, highly valued for its low sulfur content and the relative ease with which it can be refined…According to the plans forged by ExxonMobil and Guyana’s government, the country will produce more crude oil per capita than any other country on the planet within five years. Despite the fact that the climate crisis poses a greater threat to Guyana than almost any other country in the world.
Capitalists weigh their anti immigrant racism with their need for workers to exploit
Washington Post, 11/9–National Population Projections estimate that the population will peak at almost 370 million in 2080 before receding to 366 million in 2100, an increase of only 9.7 percent between 2022 and 2100. That is far below the rate the country has grown each decade for most of the nation’s history…Immigrant adults tend to be younger and have higher fertility rates than their native-born counterparts. Demographers say they are key to providing enough people to fill the labor force and balance out the swelling population of older Americans, and avoid the fate of countries such as Japan and Germany, which have among the world’s highest share of people over 65. “These projections make clear that immigration is absolutely essential to the nation’s future population growth,” said William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the data. “It is also necessary to counter the extreme aging we will otherwise experience with the youthfulness of immigrants and their children.”
On the auto workers’ picket line
I traveled to Michigan during the auto strike and a couple of us headed out to the auto workers’ picket lines to talk to workers about class struggle, fighting racism, and the communist revolution. We had some great conversations. One worker from the Dominican Republic has been working there for ten years. He has had several surgeries in that period, including his knee and hip, due to job-related problems. He emphatically denounced the multiple-tier system and proceeded to explain several aspects of our communist line to us! He said, "When you've got people doing the same job for different pay, some are struggling while some are not. That's nothing but division and it just shouldn't happen!" I told him how coal bosses in Kentucky pulled the same racist tactics because they thought bringing immigrants into the coal camps would prevent miners from organizing. I pointed out how such anti-worker ideology seeks to divide workers and create a justification for paying some even less. He exclaimed, “Right, they even used it to justify slavery! The capitalists take as much as they can convince us to allow.” We talked about the media slander the union has been getting, using the same talking points from 100 years ago. "Yeah”, he said, “it's corporate media for a reason -- that's who they work for. They say prices will rise if we get a raise. Well, prices have already been rising!"
The workers I talked to believe that strikes are necessary or else living standards will continue to deteriorate."It's just unsustainable,” declared another worker. Another worker mentioned that he had family from Germany, and I said, "Don't ask the media what Ford and GM were doing during WWII to support the Nazis!" He responded by calling out Ford's anti-Semitism, noting how the Nazis awarded Henry Ford with the highest award a foreigner could receive for collaborating with them. Another worker declared, "You put your body on the line here for 30 years and the boss doesn’t even wanna give us healthcare? No way! Health care shouldn’t be a boss’s bargaining chip, we workers should own the whole economy, state, and society. It's only common sense!"
The workers we talked to are clear -- they will fight hard not to be sold out like in 2008 – and they’re optimistic!
*****
What a small world
In 1995 I was in a San Francisco hospital and was in conversation with another patient. We started talking about authors, and I said one of my favorites was Tillie Olsen, the beloved writer of working-class women’s lives. We talked a little about her and he finally said “It sounds like you really like her. She’s my aunt, and she’s visiting me this afternoon. I’ll introduce you.”
When we met, I mentioned my father had been in the Communist Party in San Francisco in the 1930s, and she said “You look just like him!” They’d worked on the CP newspaper together, and during the 1934 general strike, they’d moved the printing press for leaflets from house to house every night to prevent the cops from smashing it.
We visited her friend in the hospital, Bill Bailey, a longshore worker whose lungs were so bad he could hardly speak, from corrosive cement dust in the holds of ships he was unloading. During the 1930s, he led a big group of CP members who crashed a party on a nazi luxury liner anchored in New York City and tore down the nazi flag.
According to a 3/23/2019 New York Post story, I read much later, Bailey quit the CP in 1956 saying Stalin was a “paranoid, sick SOB.” This must explain why, after the visit, Tillie Olsen said seemingly out of the blue, “I never believed Khrushchev’s lies about Stalin!”
The fight for against genocide of Palestinian workers on a college campus
As a new college student, it was motivating to see activism on my campus coming from a high school in which many weren’t politically involved. On November 8 and 9, I joined many in the fight for Palestine: students led speeches and chants such as “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”
Even after walking and chanting, these students only grew with fervor and the chants became louder. One of the rallies culminated with students beating pinatas of Netanyahu and Biden, with only more enthusiasm from the students. Another rally delivered a coffin to the administration building in protest of the school’s holdings in investment firm BlackRock, the world’s largest investor in military hardware.
This wasn’t taken lightly by the school chancellor and board, who sent out a letter one day later condemning “Anti Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab hate,” but it was very targeted toward the peaceful protests against racism and genocide in Gaza, mentioning an instance of “Anti Semitic language.” He however, did not mention many of the instances of harassment and intimidation that occurred against Muslim students.
While school leaders claim to be against all forms of bigotry, they turn a blind eye towards that affecting the already oppressed – their only aim is to further the capitalist, fascist agenda, by intimidating students and protesters. The true nature of their financial and political interests is being revealed, reflecting the interests of wealthy business tycoons and political pawns that run the board. The primary goal of their funding of the Zionist government of Israel is to gain control over Mideast oil, furthering their financial assets through such a valuable resource.
While chants such as “from the river to the sea” have been viewed as anti semitic by some, they advocate for nationalist ideals that further divide the working class. Even during many of the speeches at these rallies, Hamas was not criticized for its slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7 and nationalist ideals were further pushed to students by the leaders of the rally.
For the working class to be truly united, and for the true liberation of Palestine, it is important for us to acknowledge how we should unite and reject both anti-Palestinian racism and nationalism.
Thin the Palestinian population “to a minimum.
I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.”
Which of these was said in 1938 by Israel’s first Prime Minister and which was said by the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu recently? Well, Netanyahu’s is first, but you can see that the plan has not changed. In fact, as far back as 1895, the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, said: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border…discreetly and circumspectly.” An Israeli intelligence document on 10/13 stated: “The evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai…will yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel, and is an executable option. It requires determination from the political echelon in the face of international pressure, with an emphasis on harnessing the support of the United States.” And the support of the U.S. they certainly have, to the tune of $14.3 billion extra dollars.
When the Israeli state was founded in 1948, with the support of Britain, it was to gain a pro-Western ally to control the newly important oil in the Middle East. The first Israeli government already had a plan to dispose of the nearly one million Arabs then living there – Plan D: expel them all. They succeeded in forcefully removing 5 out of 7 Palestinians and destroying 530 villages on 55 percent of the land Israel controlled. In 1967 Israel fought a war to conquer the rest of Palestine, which they have illegally militarily occupied since – the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. is now the main funder of Israel for the same reasons that Britain first supported it – a base to protect oil and to protect U.U. interests against Iran, Russia, and China.
It is abundantly clear that Israel is now carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza, forcefully homogenizing an ethnically mixed population. Genocide is the deliberate killing of people from an ethnic group to destroy them. Over 18,000 Gazans have been killed to date, plus countless others buried under rubble, and countless thousands wounded. 85 percent of the 2.2 million inhabitants have been forced from their homes, and much of the surviving population is on the brink of death from starvation and dehydration according to aid agencies. Attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank are also increasing, with many killings by Israeli settlers as soldiers look on and the seizure of land and homes continues.
The justification for the current slaughter is the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, in which 1200 Israelis were killed. And there is no justification for this murder of civilians. However, it has recently been revealed that Israeli intelligence knew about Hamas’ plan a year in advance but claims that the leading politicians were never told. This seems highly unlikely, less likely than that they welcomed an excuse to enact their genocidal plan. In truth, Israel helped found Hamas in 1987 to counter secular nationalism, and the NY Times documents (12/10) that Israel has been giving millions to Hamas for years to keep two Palestinian leadership groups afloat – the other being Fatah in the West Bank – to prevent Palestinian unity.
The majority of Israelis and many Zionist Jews around the world have been won to applauding this massacre because they are raised on a diet of lies: that all Arabs inherently hate Jews and wish to kill them, that the Arabs left in 1948 voluntarily purely because they hate Jews, that there is no way to prevent another mass slaughter of Jews such as the Holocaust without having a fortress state. Zionists even think that Israel is a democracy despite giving rights only to Jews. Most Israelis also have little conception of what life is like in the Occupied Territories – that it is an ordinary civil society beset with brutalization by soldiers, massive imprisonment without charge, and severe restrictions on work, housing, travel, and health care. Nonetheless, most Palestinians are anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic, and welcome Jewish allies.
This Zionist nationalist hatred serves the Israeli ruling class well, for Israel is a capitalist state with a very small ruling elite and a shortage of adequate services for much of the population. But workers in Israel vent their anger on Palestinians, not the ruling class. Nationalism in Palestine, which although occupied is also a capitalist society, has also prevented the growth of a working class movement even though most Palestinians do not like Fatah or Hamas. The only hope for Palestinian or Jewish workers is to band together, indeed with other workers of the world, in a fight for an anti-racist, anti-nationalist communist society. Thousands are now protesting around the world as this pitiless genocide unfolds on our TV screens, but all of us too must join together in the long-range fight against imperialism and racism and for communism.
BROOKLYN, NY — After marking one year of the multiracial antiracist fightback against racist police terror, Kingsborough Community College (KCC) students and faculty continue the struggle in a campus atmosphere of sharpening fascism at the hands of the liberal administration, public safety, and their bootlicking accomplices. However, students, faculty, and Progressive Labor Party (PLP)members in the campus antiracist club, Common Ground, are adapting to the racist administration’s normalization of police surveillance and increased bureaucratic red tape.
PL’ers have contributed to continuing the struggle by deepening old friendships and making new ones. We struggle to push back against our previous limits in the dark night of low class struggle by expanding CHALLENGE newspaper distribution networks. This has kept the politics of multiracial antiracist fightback, internationalism, and communist revolution upfront as we marched through months of difficulty after difficulty!
Mass work tests patience and persistence
We soon learned that KCC’s administration introduced new obstacles for Common Ground this year. The first was cracking down on informational club tabling by requiring that only both registered and “active” clubs could set up tables and distribute literature. In the past, any club could set up an information table and meet interested students before registering or reactivating.
Each semester, new paperwork including election results must be submitted for the club to be “reactivated.” Common Ground’s reactivation process entailed weeks of properly formatted paperwork, collecting signatures, and losing several potential club officers who were either a) barred for being freshmen and/or b) didn’t pass the GPA eligibility requirements. Then came mandatory training meetings with the administration.
Upon reactivation, we met our next obstacle: this year: the administration has declared that informational tabling counts as a club “event,” and therefore requires one month of notice to reserve through an online portal for event registration. On most days the tables are utterly empty, except for the regular military recruiters. (A Marine recruiter/ CHALLENGE reader confessed to us that the administration is very helpful in getting recruiters onto campus.) When Common Ground students and faculty agreed on a tabling schedule and requested it, we were denied, and given alternative days and times we were unable to meet!
As a final insult, our assigned general meeting room’s newly installed door doesn’t open with the student keys. Opening it requires contacting Public Safety officers with the master keys each time, who often linger by the door. At the start of one recent meeting, a sergeant entered to wipe a stain off a table “to avoid the paperwork” of requesting custodial staff to do it.
The racism of requirements
The ease of allowing military recruiters on campus contrasts with the technical difficulty of getting student clubs started here. KCC is a two-year, predominantly Black, Muslim, Latin, and Asian immigrant campus where over 74 percent of students receive income-based Pell Grants, and 99 percent receive some type of city or state financial aid (NCES, 2021-2). Since the rules have tightened, the number of active clubs has dropped from over 130 at the last available count about a decade ago, to less than 30 today.
Brooklyn College, also in CUNY and not far from KCC, is a four-year campus with a mostly white student body. Their administration does not bar freshmen officers or demand as many club requirements, including a minimum GPA. Many of the campus’ 140 registered clubs table around campus grounds, distribute literature, and post it on various public bulletin boards. Unlike KCC’s requirements for stamped Student Life pre-approval on posted flyers, many of the various political flyers found posted around Brooklyn College during a recent visit had no such stamp.
Overcome all hardships and STRUGGLE!
Difficult objective circumstances never excuse us from failing to organize and fight back. During this semester’s club fair, our vibrant multiracial crew attracted the most student interest, as per usual. When the fascist Israeli bosses launched a genocide against the workers of Gaza, we defied the prohibition on tabling, distributed hundreds of leaflets, and made enthusiastic new contacts. We organized Latin America - Palestine solidarity through a Palestinian former student who spoke at a Brooklyn mass organization (see previous CHALLENGE).
Members of the club also helped organize a contingent of KCC students for the solidarity with Gaza demonstrations in Washington, DC, continuing our practice of building rapid responses to racism, and one of these students attended PLP’s fall student conference. racism, and one of these students attended PLP’s fall student conference.
We continue ongoing sharp political discussions analyzing how it can be that the heads of KCC’s entire administrative Hydra are liberal, Black administrators; many are women. Despite coming from historically oppressed groups, so many of them not only continue to uphold racism but cynically draw on this history of oppression as part of their identity. Audaciously, they claim to have the students’ best interests at heart, while claiming that antiracists and PL’ers in Common Ground don’t.
Yes, the obstacles presented real challenges to reaching masses of students – but these attacks mean we’re hurting the bosses, and each advance weakens them further. The central head of this Hydra is capitalism, and the administration won’t let us organize without a fight. This fact exposes both illusion and reality: that liberal, Black-led institutions under the capitalist state can never be antiracist, and that the only solution out of this racist, sexist, genocidal imperialist hellscape is communist revolution. JOIN US!