As Progressive Labor Party prepares for our 2017 Summer Project in Chicago, the city’s working class is under intense attack. Decades of rule by the “lesser-evil” Democratic politicians have done nothing but make the political, social, and economic life of workers more unbearable, as shown by unprecedented numbers of Black families leaving the city (WGN, 6/22).
As always with capitalism, racist and sexist attacks are the tip of the spear in the drive to bring down the living conditions of all workers. More than ever, workers in Chicago and everywhere need PLP’s communist politics and organization as the only permanent path out of capitalism’s destruction and towards a working-class egalitarian world that meets our needs.
Gang Violence vs Economic Violence—The Real Criminals
The working class of Chicago has received a lot of media attention in recent years, the overwhelming majority of it negative. The bosses’ racist and sexist mouthpieces depict the city as a lawless warzone, with gang violence running unchecked in hyper-segregated west and south side neighborhoods. But this skewed perspective purposefully deflects attention and the proper blame away from the capitalists and their politicians, the criminals most directly responsible for the violence that workers face.
Far less noted in the bosses’ media is the fact that capitalism’s racist unemployment prevents at least 50 percent of Black youth between the ages of 20-24 from finding jobs in the city (Chicago Tribune, 1/25/16). Practically forgotten is how Obama and Clinton protégé Mayor Rahm Emanuel led the charge in 2013 to close 50 public schools—the majority in Black and Latin neighborhoods—in addition to closing half of the city’s mental health centers. For over three years, the bosses’ infighting has prevented a budget from being passed for the state of Illinois, shredding various social programs and destroying countless working-class lives.
A communist class-conscious outlook cuts through the hypocrisy and places blame on the bosses, exactly where it belongs. The poverty, desperation, and lack of opportunity inflicted on the working class by capitalism, which needs rising unemployment, a shredded safety net, and ultimately war to survive through its economic crises, is a violence that far outweighs that of any street gang. The communist society that PLP fights for would be the exact opposite: our needs and development as workers would be the primary goal. There’d simply be no reason to turn to drugs or reactionary violence in order to survive.
No KKKops, No Fake Councils, Only Workers’ Power
The bosses’ only consistent answer to address the class violence and inequality in the city has been to advocate for more of their own racist attack dogs. In September of 2016, Mayor Emanuel made his proposal to hire 1,000 more cops by 2018 (CNN, 9/21/16). A thousand kkkops just means a thousand more potential Jason Van Dykes (murderer of Laquan McDonald) or Dante Servins (murderer of Rekia Boyd) roaming the streets, terrorizing and murdering our working-class sisters and brothers. Chicago already has a relatively high proportion of cops compared to other cities. All it has led to is more bloodshed and a costly federal investigation regarding the rampant institutional racism of the police department (CPD).
PL comrades and friends in Chicago have made our presence known in many of the actions taken over the years against the notoriously racist and sexist CPD. We marched on Van Dyke’s home last summer to let everyone know that there’s no refuge for racist murderers.
We helped organize and lead a mass demonstration against the racist Fraternal Order of Police headquarters in Chicago this past September, pointing out how the kkkops’ “union” essentially helps them get away with murdering workers and youth.
With every action, we’ve made it our responsibility as communists to explain to the working class that freedom from racism and murderous cops doesn’t come through hiring more Black or Latin cops or through civilian “control” of the department—only through organizing for communist revolution and workers’ power all over the world.
The Fight for a Communist World Involves YOU!
The more intolerable that conditions get for the working class, in Chicago and all over the world, the more important our task as revolutionary communists becomes.
Readers of Challenge, anti-racist, anti-sexist fighters everywhere are strongly encouraged to connect with PLP during the week of July 9 through the 16 in Chicago as we fight back and continue building the movement to destroy the bosses and their profit system. Join the fight!

LOS ANGELES—Over 100,000 workers came out to show their support for the LGBTQ members of our class and all workers facing repression. In the past, LA Pride has hosted a parade and street fair in West Hollywood.
A local congregation with Progressive Labor Party members has marched in the parade with banners and signs proclaiming our church’s long history of performing gay marriages and supporting LGBTQ rights.
This year, in this period of heightened sexism and racism, especially towards immigrant and Muslim workers, the organizers announced that there would be a #Resist March for “human rights” instead.
We in PLP understand that there can be no rights for the working class under capitalism but applaud the efforts to broaden this struggle.
Rampant Racism
The roots of Pride originate in rebellion against racist, sexist, anti-gay police terror that we still see today. Black transgender women and gay men still face far more police harassment, terror and incarceration than any group within the LGBTQ section of our class and the working-class as a whole.
The rate of HIV/AIDS has recently reached staggering numbers. One in two Black gay men or transwomen will contract HIV in their lifetime. In other words, if the Black gay and trans youth and workers in the U.S. were a country, it would lead the world in HIV/AIDS rates.
Anti-Gay Violence & Police Terror Interrelated
In 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York at the Stonewall Inn bar, led by Black and Latin transgender, gay and lesbian patrons rebellions erupted against the police who raided and terrorized them. In fact, the first Pride march in Los Angeles in 1970 was also a response to police terror against the LGBTQ working class. Over the years though, Pride has become a weekend of celebration culminating in a parade.
Anger Limited to Anti-Trump
This year, the march itself was a step up in the level of political anger. Unfortunately, it was almost exclusively directed at Trump and the Republicans, instead of also calling out the complicity of the Democrats and the capitalist system as a whole—which requires police terror, racism, sexism and anti-gay politics to divide our class in order to maximize profits.
Through mass organizing in the church, on the job, and in the schools we were able to organize over a dozen base members to join a multiracial, multigenerational group of workers. When we passed a group of anti-gay counter-protesters, we led the group in a chant of “No Trump, No KKK, No fascist USA!”
But we have a long way to go in overcoming the identity politics, nationalism and pro-democrat ideology which are rampant in the march and in this congregation—all of which keep the working class more divided.
Mayor Garcetti, No Friend of Working Class
Mayor Eric Garcetti, the first Jewish mayor and second Mexican mayor of Los Angeles, who is a frequent speaker at Pride (and Women’s March) is not only given a platform to speak but is called “a champion of LGBTQ rights.” He gives lip service to the plight of transgender workers who face higher rates of unemployment and double the homelessness in the nation, claiming “this is a city built on diversity and inclusiveness…transgender Angelenos have limitless potential and deserve every chance to find employment” (LGBT Weekly, 12/2016). Under his leadership, the rates of homelessness (which increases the risk of HIV transmission) continue to rise under his tenure just as the number of unaffordable luxury condos sprout all over the city.
He’s justified the continuing privatization (charters) of public schools in LA that disproportionately affect Black, Latin and immigrant workers. He is silent while the school board terrorizes the students who walked out after the Trump inauguration and teachers face suspensions for supporting these students (including one PLP teacher). And while LA boasts the most diverse police force, the LAPD KKKops continue to the lead the way in the number of Black and Latin workers murdered by the police!
Next time, we have to do a better job at calling out these liberal misleaders for their role in the racist, sexist, anti-gay attacks on our class!

CHICAGO, June 11—Bernie Sanders’s second People’s Summit attempted to draw in and mislead 4,000 progressive-minded people. Much like UK’s Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, this faction of the Democratic Party aims to build liberal fascism with the backing of young people.
Rebuilding Democratic Party
While a good part of the working class hates the Trump administration, they also hate the Democrats. A national poll found 62 percent of people felt the Republicans were out of touch with the public, compared to 66 percent for Democrats (ABC, 4/23).
Taking place the day after the Labour Party in London won the second-largest number of seats in Parliament, the People’s Summit sought fresh blood for the murderous anti-worker organization: the Democratic Party. Sanders said, “The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure” (The Nation, 6/15). The Democratic Party faces a “widening breach” within their leadership and ranks, many bitter and trying to recover after its election failure. While some faction of the Democratic Party has reacted by moving to the right, the Sanders faction has continued to build faith in liberalism.
Using a lefty face, the Sanders faction, which includes Elizabeth Warren, is advocating for liberal fascism: mild reforms of wages, healthcare, and education while disciplining both the ruling and working class for a world of war. One of their main concerns is how best to sell a party of imperialism and war to a divided working class of an empire in decline. This faction seeks to assimilate those fed up with business as usual.
Bernie Con
This summit charged people up to $200 to attend and hear Sanders and other misleaders try to persuade workers that “we can vote out racism, sexism, imperialism and capitalism.” Progressive Labor Party was also at the summit to give a different message to workers: only communist revolution can destroy capitalism.
The People’s Summit was mainly a “Comic Con” for Sanders supporters. There were classes with topics such as “Building a Movement that will Win,” “The Rigged Economy” (but hardly talk about capitalism), or “Voices of Resistance & Power.” The Sanders faction has co-opted language of mass fightback but hardly any Black or Latin workers were to be seen, neither on the panels nor in the audience.
They also had a session on “Down-Ballot Revolutionaries” led by Khalid Kamau, a Black Lives Matter activist turned politician, which focused on getting those under 35 into office at all levels of government. This session shows how important it is for the bosses to funnel working-class anger into state-sanctioned politics. It also exposes how desperate the Democratic Party is for younger leadership.
They talked about “building a movement” but the summit failed to invite or even talk about the fightback or the local organizations from Chicago, the very city in which this conference is being held.
Sanders and his group allowed various revisionist groups to have information tables at this summit.
Classic Misleadership
During this summit, the talk going around was about “resistance” but Sanders and his cronies don’t say take to the streets and fight racism and sexism. They preach voting for change. Hardly any of the misleaders at this conference encouraged the attendees to join the local protest against the Neo-Nazi group Act for America and kkkops at a rally that took place on the Saturday of the conference (see CHALLENGE, 6/28). Most of the people there didn’t even know it was going on.
A PL’er talked to some workers at the summit about going to the rally and joining with the party and other anti-racists. One conference attendee said, “I paid a lot of money to be here and I want to get my money’s worth.”
Honest Workers Ready to Fight
But out of the dead-end of Sanders’ ideas, there were workers, young and old that truly wanted to fight back against capitalism and imperialism. One of the only highlights of this summit was the meeting of Black workers at the end of the conference. Again like all capitalist movements, Black workers were marginalized and issues were ‘pushed to the back’ if they were talked about at all.
During the meeting, a Party member gave a speech about how only communism can truly destroy racism and sexism and that Black workers are the key to revolution. Most of the workers in the meeting were interested in the party and took CHALLENGE. Many didn’t know about communism or had disagreements, but they too were interested in Progressive Labor Party’s fight to abolish racism and sexism.

Disarray in the U.S. ruling class is creating more instability worldwide. On June 5, two weeks after President Donald Trump was feted by state terrorist Saudi rulers, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and four other Middle Eastern countries (Libya, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain) cut all ties with the tiny island nation of Qatar.
A flare-up between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both crucial to U.S. imperialism, can only make the region even more volatile. But the brunt of the Saudi coalition’s blockade will fall on the backs of the Qatari working class.
The Saudi rulers have charged that Qatar funds extremist Islamic groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood—and, most damning, because it’s too cozy with Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival, Iran. The hypocrisy of bosses the world over knows no limits. Capitalist-run Qatar attacks workers on a daily basis. So do all of the country’s accusers. And so does the United States, most monstrously of all. Collectively, these capitalist bosses have the blood of our class on their hands.
Isolation of Qatar, Proxy Attack on Iran
Amid its sharpening competition with China and Russia, the relative decline of the U.S. has created instability and anxiety for countries relying on U.S. hegemony to maintain their oil profits and control aggression by warring regional powers.
The Middle East contains two main imperialist camps: Russia, Iran, and Turkey on one side, and the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel on the other. Both sides are ready and willing to slaughter workers to come out on top. The international working class has no dog in this fight.
The bosses of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran have been at each others’ throats for decades. While they often couch their conflict in religious terms to mislead masses of workers, their real conflict is over political power and control over resources in the Persian Gulf. In moving against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, a virtual slave state and the world’s biggest oil producer, is closely allied with the U.S., aims to check Iranian influence. Qatar and Iran share the offshore North Field, the world’s largest natural gas deposit. The Saudis want to stop Qatar’s funding of regional threats (like Hamas in the Gaza Strip), and to quash Al Jazeera, the Qatari-based media outlet that builds unrest among workers in Saudi Arabia.
A Problematic U.S. Ally
Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base is home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. It hosts 11,000 military personnel in the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and is “a core part of Washington’s worldwide military infrastructure” (Foreign Affairs, 6/13). CENTCOM uses Qatar as a forward operating base for its mass murders in the Middle East, including bombings of civilians in Syria and Iraq. At the same time, Qatar wields political and economic influence that make it an uncomfortable U.S. ally:

Qatar…is known in Washington political circles less as a reliable partner than as the home of Al Jazeera (which is often critical of U.S. policy), a sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood (which many U.S. observers oppose), and an antagonist of the U.S.-backed government of Egyptian President Abel Fattah el-Sisi….
And Qatar’s liquefied natural gas is critical to states across the world, from the United Kingdom to China, India, Japan, and South Korea: a healthy set of allies should the situation escalate further (Foreign Affairs, 6/13).

By resuming development of North Field after a 12-year moratorium, Qatar’s gas supply is expected to increase by 10 percent, to a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, the equivalent of 400,000 barrels of oil (Reuters, 4/3). This signals a move to compete with Saudi oil, already hit by declining prices.
Meanwhile, the isolation campaign against Qatar puts Chinese imperialists in a bind:

[It] pressures China to take sides, complicates its effort to tiptoe through the minefield of Middle Eastern conflicts and rivalries by maintaining good relations with all parties, and threatens its Belt and Road Initiative with the likely expansion of the Saudi-Iranian proxy war into Balochistan, a key Pakistani node of the plan (South China Morning Post, 6/12).

U.S. Empire in Decay
After Trump recklessly applauded Saudi Arabia’s anti-Qatar campaign, the dominant section of the U.S. ruling class quickly reined him in: “In a phone call with the Qatari Emir, Trump extended an olive branch offering to help the parties resolve their differences by coming to a White House meeting if necessary” (CNN, 6/8).
Mindful of Qatar’s importance to U.S. military interests, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, added, “We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences….[W]e think it is important that the [Gulf Cooperation Council] remain unified” (Vox, 6/6).
Fightback Points to a Communist Future
The working class in the Middle East faces some of the most brutal horrors that capitalism can unleash. Divisive nationalism and religious dogma may be primary at the moment, but their hold on workers’ consciousness is far from eternal. The rich history of communist-led fightback in this region demonstrates how workers throughout the world have been won away from the bosses’ lethal ideology to international revolutionary struggle. Those workers can be won again!
Working people everywhere need to join and build the international Progressive Labor Party. We must develop the Party into the weapon that destroys the bosses’ deadly system—and into the tool that builds a classless, communist world.