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.”
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CUNY’s liberal fascism: Workers & kids we will liberate - Bury the bosses & their state
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- 30 November 2023 100 hits
November 29, PELHAM, NY—On Sunday, more than 40 faculty, students, and staff from the City University of New York (CUNY) marched to the home of Félix (Felo) Matos-Rodriguez, the CUNY Chancellor. Like liberal fascists around the world, Matos-Rodriguez’s reaction to the U.S.-Israel genocide of workers in Gaza has been to demonize worker-student solidarity with the working class in Palestine struggling against Israeli fascism and to minimize the suffering of workers in Palestine as U.S.-made bombs rain down on Gaza. The protest was organized to object to his statement of October 11th, which ran to more than 450 words and didn’t mention “Palestine” or “Gaza” a single time.
The march gave us, members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), an opportunity to put forward an internationalist line – unity between workers in Palestine, Israel, and around the world – that is absolutely critical in this period of crisis and war. The opening speech (see box) highlighted the connections between the genocide happening in Gaza and CUNY’s treatment of its mostly Black and Latin students and its super-exploitation of part-time professors, most of whom make poverty wages. The success of our efforts was highlighted by the fact that instead of the “Free Palestine!” or “Ceasefire Now!” chants that dominate most of the recent protests, our main chant was “Arab, Jewish, Black and White, Workers of the World Unite.”
As we marched up to the Chancellor’s home, the quiet town of Pelham heard our chants. At his home, students and workers spoke about struggling to survive on adjunct wages, about how the voices of Palestinian and antiracist groups have been muffled on campus, and how we need international solidarity to fight back. Throughout, PLP members tried to drive home key points: capitalist crises will always lead to war and fascism, U.S. bosses need Ukraine and Israel as allies against their imperialist rivals, and they will make workers and students pay for their wars. Meanwhile, there is no money for heat in our buildings, or for functioning cafeterias.
Workers protect one another
We also had discussions about the necessity of taking risks and putting something on the line. One student asked us recently in a meeting if there could be repercussions for this kind of public protest against the Chancellor. And we had to respond truthfully - we couldn’t make any promises, but of course the bigger the turnout, the safer we are. The working class keeps us safe, in other words.
Those of us who work or study at CUNY have a big job ahead of us. We must participate in the fight against Israeli fascism and, in doing so, put forward internationalism and working-class solidarity as the only solution. Our motto should be “No War but Class War!” We must continue to be a part of the class struggle and keep building PLP so that we can permanently end the horrors of capitalism, whether in Gaza, Haiti, the Bronx, or anywhere. And the only way to end these horrors is with communism, where workers run society.
Speech:
Good morning! Originally planned around adjunct poverty, uncertainty racist austerity, and issues that workers and students have been fighting for decades. Then, of course, the Hamas attack on October 7th was followed on the 11th by the Chancellor’s horrible, racist statement. 450 words and not one single one about what was already an unfolding slaughter in Gaza. Israel’s 75-year campaign of terror against Palestinians went unmentioned. The horrors of the occupation and settler violence were nowhere to be found. In short, absolutely no context - just the acknowledgment of Israeli lives and the erasure of Palestinians. And so in some sense, our focus for today needed to change. The Chancellor’s denial of Palestinian humanity and his attacks on those of us fighting against genocide demand a response.
But in many ways, our message is the same. CUNY administration’s attitude towards Palestine and those of us fighting for its liberation is really just a sharper, more openly fascistic expression of the racist disregard that they have shown for CUNY’s Black and brown students for decades. In the Bronx, we’ve had to fight for basic services, such as heat in the winter, a cafeteria on campus, and functioning elevators. Throughout CUNY our buildings are crumbling, class sizes are increasing and the treatment of students and workers is being degraded.
The chancellor’s erasure of Palestinians mirrors the way adjunct super-exploitation and precarity are erased. We shouldn’t really be surprised that there was no mention of Israel’s brutal occupation. CUNY has never had anything to say about the cops who occupy our students’ neighborhoods and they welcomed the cops who are currently occupying our campuses attempting to intimidate and silence us. They have also said absolutely nothing about a Zionist councilwoman who threatened pro-Palestinian demonstrators with a gun. This councilwoman, by the way, has had her charges dropped because the gun, which she turned in more than a day after the fact, was “inoperable.” I met a public defender at a demonstration yesterday who told me she wished she could use that defense for her clients. But no, this is a defense reserved only for those doing the work of the U.S. ruling class who are desperate to squash mass opposition to the fascist regime in Israel - their only reliable ally in the oil-rich region.
All of this shows why we say from New York to Palestine, occupation is a crime!
I also want us to take a moment to look around. This is our way forward - solidarity between Arab, Jewish, Black, white, Latin, and Asian students and workers. This is not only how we defeat the attempt to erase the Palestinian struggle, racist austerity at CUNY, and the impoverishment of adjuncts. It’s the basis of a new world without capitalist-caused racism, occupation, and genocide. Arab, Jewish, Black, and white, workers of the world unite!
Thank you all for being here, for standing up and saying we will not be silent as the Chancellor continues to impoverish our adjunct brothers and sisters. We will not be silent as the Chancellor continues his program of racist austerity, degrading the education of our wonderful students. And we will not be silent as the Chancellor erases a people, excuses apartheid, and condones genocide!
We were here last year, we’re here today and we’ll be back again, for as long as needed, until we have won!
Hey, Felo you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide!
Biden kept “baby-killers" propaganda in speech
Al Jazeera, 11/27–US President Joe Biden reportedly rejected the advice of staff to refrain from repeating unverified reports that Hamas had beheaded babies during its attack on Israel on October 7. Some White House advisors appealed to the president to “cut a line about Hamas beheading babies because those reports were unverified,” according to a report by The Washington Post. An Israeli news outlet made the original claim, which was picked up by media outlets across the globe. However, no such beheadings have been verified by any Israeli or international source. Not long after Biden’s speech, the White House said in a statement that it had not confirmed the veracity of the reports.
Times economists fret that workers are pessimistic about the economy
New York Times, 11/23–Americans seem very grumpy about the economy lately, despite what looks like some pretty good news…To an economist, inflation is the change in prices…But to most people, inflation is high prices. So they look at high prices in the supermarket (for example) and say, “That’s inflation!”...Another thing bugging people is housing. Home prices and mortgage rates are up, and affordability is way down. Rents are also up. This is no problem if you already own it, but it’s awful if you’re a young person trying to buy your first place. That’s why you see TikTok talking about a Silent Depression; that might also explain why 93 percent of people 18 to 29 in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll said the economy was poor or only fair…In an NBC News poll released last weekend, only 19 percent of respondents said that they were confident the next generation would have better lives than their own generation. NBC said it was the smallest share of optimists dating back to the question’s introduction in 1990…That kind of pessimism might be easier to understand if the economy were in the tank.
Zapatistas dissolve autonomous municipalities
AP, 11/6–The Zapatista indigenous rebel movement in southern Mexico said in a statement posted Monday it is dissolving the “autonomous municipalities” it declared in the years following the group’s 1994 armed uprising…“In upcoming statements, we will describe the reasons and the processes involved in taking this decision,” the statement said. “We will also begin explaining what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy will look like, and how it was arrived at.”...Anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho, who has studied the movement for decades, said the Zapatistas — known as the EZLN, after their initials in Spanish — have become increasingly isolated, leading many young people to move out of the townships in search of work or more formal education opportunities…Chiapas has seen the rise of migrant smuggling, drug cultivation and trafficking, and bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels...The Mexican government has sent thousands of soldiers and quasi-military National Guard troopers to Chiapas…“The only reason they are here is to stem migration. That is the order they got from the U.S. government,” the statement read.
Arms race expands throughout Asia
NikkeiAsia, 11/28–By the 2030s, the Indo-Pacific region will be filled with thousands of new missiles as the U.S., China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan race to expand their arsenals, Ankit Panda, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow, said Monday. The danger, Panda told Nikkei Asia, is the "intersection between advanced conventional missile systems and the risk of nuclear war." The greatest fear is that countries such as China and North Korea may be more likely to resort to nuclear use if these conventional missiles are perceived to target their national leadership, he said. Since arms control talks are unlikely in the current geopolitical context, one idea is for the U.S. and its allies to publicly "forswear any preemptive" attacks on national leaders, he proposed in a recent Carnegie report, "Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals -- Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Escalation Risks."
No shackling of patients
November 14 was a busy day for U.S. PLP members and friends at the American Public Health Association (APHA) meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. We joined protests against Cop City in Atlanta and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians abroad. We were also instrumental in getting a policy passed by the APHA against shackling prisoners in health care settings (like handcuffing them to the metal rails on a hospital bed).
We worked for over a year with friends and PLP members to craft this resolution, just as we have done before on successful resolutions against police brutality and for prison abolition. This strong anti-racist policy statement gives us a new tool to demand humane treatment of prisoners at our local institutions. Two of us engaged in this policy work also hit the streets as a security team at the Cop City rally, openly advocating against capitalism and for communism. These actions opened the door to deeper political conversations at a later social event. A fellow rally security member was excited to meet a communist and to learn more about the PLP.
Handing out our newsletter, APHA Challenge, at sessions where we presented or spoke from the floor was another way we got into good conversations, including one with an interested activist who remembered us from our campaign last year around global vaccination access.
While PLP has provided consistent leadership in struggles at APHA for decades, today’s multiple crises for the global working class mean that the party group in the APHA must grow as class struggle intensifies!
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We will remember Claude
We live in a world where it’s “normal” to commit genocide, but it’s “unreasonable” to remember the dead.
In one New York City high school, on what would’ve been his 18th birthday, students wanted to memorialize Claude.* After what happened in March, in fear of retaliation, students wanted permission before putting up a memorial again.
Claude was a son, brother, friend, thinker, creator, student—and a victim. He was doubly targeted by the capitalist violence in the street and the racist education system in the schools. Following his killing, students had fought to memorialize Claude. In response, the administration had taken down the memorial not once, but twice! And each time, we rebuilt it bigger. (See CHALLENGE 4/12 and 4/26 for the full backstory.)
When I met with the principal this week to submit the students’ request, she eventually said yes. I quickly informed the students of the small win. I also asked staff to join me in wearing Black in memory of Claude.
Twelve hours later, before the school day, I received an email revoking permission to post the memorial.
When I arrived at school, I saw many workers in Black. Students and I began our morning with a circle in the hallway in front of the memorial. One student led us through a speech and ten seconds of silence. We then wrote messages on the poster.
After morning check-in, I was told by the administration to take down the memorial.
I replied, “No, I’m not doing that. I won’t be the one to remove it.”
She did a double take and said, “Okay, I’ll take it down myself. I’m not scared.”
The simple act of remembering a Black working-class student is defiance in this Black-run school. The fact that a memory of a child’s killing is so threatening exposes the racist anti-student nature of schools under bloody capitalism. One purpose of capitalist education is to recreate all the inequalities that make this profit system run. Capitalism’s schools censor and repress anti-working-class ideas. Bringing attention to Claude shatters the image of this “good school.” His memorial is a reminder that this whole system is disproportionately rigged against Black, Brown, and immigrant students. Such a system doesn’t deserve to exist.
Well, the principal finally backed down for now: “I don’t want to fight…we’ll keep it.”
Taking small risks like these helps build working-class confidence for the bigger battles ahead. Our next battle is fighting anti-Muslim racism (more next time).
Throughout the day, students from all grades signed the poster. Hundreds were careful to not let it wrinkle as they passed through the hallway. For now, the memorial is up.
Our principal was trying to bury Claude’s memory like how Israel buried 14,000 of our working-class siblings.
Students and education workers here have yet to see it, but the very group of people who kill kids overseas are the same people who kill kids in the streets.
Be it Brooklyn or Gaza, this profit system tries to bury us, but the working class remembers. We will remember Claude. We will remember the genocide. In their memory, we will fight for the kind of world they deserve.
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
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Canada: worker organizer solidarity with our class in Gaza
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member organized a solidarity event with workers in Palestine in his rural Maritime-Canadian community. The event was part of a national day of action demanding that the Canadian government support an immediate ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and call for an end to the blockade of Gaza.
More than 250 workers and their families showed up, a substantial turnout in a town of 5000. The highlight was a “complicity tour” that involved marching to various sites in town at which designated speakers critically connected the location to Canadian support for the ongoing genocide. The stops included the local university, where the speaker called out the administration’s cowardly unwillingness to condemn Israeli state violence and made the case for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. Then it was on to Scotiabank, whose logo blazes the same shade as the blood of Palestinian children, with the institution’s massive investments in Elbit Systems, an Israeli death merchant.
The gap between a ceasefire demand and PLP’s call to turn the guns around appears wide indeed, but by working in a reform-oriented organization Party members will continue striving to keep the revolutionary horizon in view, testing our line among an expanding coalition of community members.
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Response to Gaza genocide: teacher stops business as usual
As the bombs were falling on our working-class brothers and sisters in the Levant (Gaza and surrounding area), the New York City Department of Education dropped a bomb on NYC teachers. The Chancellor put out an email saying that teachers could be fired for anything they post on social media. This is a clear escalation, and an example of liberal fascism increasing, due to the need for the ruling class to silence any criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Not a word of criticism was broached by the Teachers’ Union thus their silence is complicity. Upon seeing the letter, my club of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teachers began formulating a plan to respond. One teacher shared a template that some teachers were using to write a letter to the teachers union’s president. We then decided that the club would take this course of action.
In addition, I decided that I wouldn’t be teaching my usual classes and would, instead, have a class discussion on Israel/Palestine. I was able to have a sharp conversation in the classroom and had several students — including some Muslim students — thank me. This also opened up the ability to have conversations with teachers, in which I consistently brought up the Party’s analysis thatU.S. support of Israel’s genocide is all part of inter-imperialist rivalry.
While sitting in the teacher’s center during my off period, I quickly wrote a letter and asked for input from a young Latin teacher with whom I’d had a few political conversations. She was happy to help, and shared that not only was the Israeli genocide fueled by the Leviathan Oil fields off of the coast of Gaza, but that there were plans to create a canal that would rival Egypt’s Suez Canal and be totally under the control of the U.S. and Israel.
I then sent the letter to our entire staff. Several teachers thanked me, especially one teacher with a Muslim name who said he was afraid of speaking out due to racism. Many good conversations with students and teachers and much base-building occurred by following and carrying out the plans that my club had made. Of course, as part of our plan, we decided to share our experiences with CHALLENGE to help the Party grow and learn.
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Letter: Chicago’s Black Friday- Shut this genocidal system down
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- 30 November 2023 97 hits
On November 24, I joined three other comrades at the "Save Gaza," Black Friday March on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, the "Magnificent Mile," of expensive shops and restaurants. Several progressive groups were present at the event such as the US Palestinian Community Network and Students for Social Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC).
Shoppers unnecessarily crossed through the rally, and at one point a racist shouted, "Stop killing babies and raping women!" While I don't know what kind of statistics there are about rape in this conflict, the hard evidence about the Israeli Defense Force's current killing of 6,150 children in just under two months should be spiking the radar of any "pro-lifer." The dehumanizing tactics of Hamas are centered in the imagination of those all too unwilling to grapple with Israel's own dehumanizing, US-supported tactics on Palestinians, where prior to the current slaughter 40% of the male population in Palestine had been imprisoned.
Once the march of about 1,000 took off, there were several stopping points in front of businesses like Victoria's Secret and Starbucks shouting, "Shame on You!" while cops blocked the entrances. At one point we chanted, "CPD, KKK, IDF, they're all the same!" At another point an Arab American cop guarding a business was a particular focus for a small group of Arab protesters.
I carried a sign with the picture of Murod Kurdi, an Arab American worker from the nearby suburb of Oak Lawn who was murdered by a drunk driver. I got the opportunity to explain the PLP's support of the case to a worker handing out flyers. He referred to the area Murod was from as "Little Palestine,” on account of the large diaspora there. A family with a 5-year-old boy and his family holding signs of support for Palestine came closer to have him read my sign and ask about it. When the boy struggled to understand the importance of an Arab worker killed by a drunk driver, a member of their group explained that if the driver hadn't been white, they likely wouldn't have gotten away with it.
Though most shoppers hid away in stores or acted as unaffected as possible, I did get some CHALLENGEs to a few of them. A pair of young workers gazed from the sidelines in awe, and when handed a CHALLENGE and told it was a communist paper, one responded, "The people control the means of production!" I got handed one to a young Black worker who raised her fist and began to march along the sidewalk with us. Another worker outside of Starbucks recognized CHALLENGE and asked for one.
Ending at the historic Water Tower, an organizer called for high school students to organize walkouts, for college students to challenge their learning institutions that often have Zionist backing, and to continue coming out every week.