Voting for liberals will not protect women’s reproductive rights. This fact was not the atmosphere of the May 21 rally that Planned Parenthood of NYC hosted against the anti-abortion laws. It was the kind of rally the bosses wanted. It was a collection of middle-class white women who believe that the next presidential elections will put an end to the Trump trend. There also were a few white middle class men there. Routine.
Six states passed a six-week abortion ban, including Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, Iowa, and North Dakota. Most women don’t even realize they’re pregnant at that time. This includes cases of rape, incest, and human trafficking. Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed a near-full ban on the procedure, the harshest anti-abortion measure in the country (The Cut, 5/21).
The issue of reproductive rights is an attack by the bosses. It’s the same bosses who let police kill Black and brown youth—including young women like
Shantel Davis, Kyam Livingston and more. It’s the same bosses who pay white males more than any other group and pay Black women the least. These workers must take a multiracial stand on all these issues. Working-class women are affected the most. Working-class men need to show up. Once we see the connection, the workers cannot be defeated.
Anything you believe is a feminist issue, we see as a communist issue. The workers cannot win if we are divided. That was our stance as we distributed CHALLENGE. This led to a fairly cool response from the crowd but we stuck to our position.
The workers who unite will be victorious when it comes to reproductive healthcare issues. The answer to the sexism women face is communism. We don’t simply mean that communism is good for women; we mean that women should be leading the fight for communism. It’s the only way sexism, police terror, or any other fascist attacks the workers face will be beaten back.

On May 13, on Chicago’s West Side police shot and killed yet another Black man, 26-year-old Sharell Brown. A Progressive Labor Party member was informed soon after the deadly shooting by one of their hospital co-workers. They quickly relayed this to fellow Party members who went door-to-door in an effort to get more information about the killing. It was reported on the Internet that Sharell was shot multiple times in confrontations with two cops, who—of course—claimed he was shooting at them. PL’ers went to neighborhood people to give PL’s perspective on the need to organize in order to advance the fight against these racist murders. They brought CHALLENGE with them too to help bring home that racism pervades the whole country and is the life-blood of U.S. capitalism. Capitalism needs and breeds racist hatred and racist murder, and if there’s going to be an end to racist murders it means building and winning the revolutionary fight for communism. It’s the only way.
Just like police killings all over the U.S., this police murder came as no surprise to the West Side. Police murders here are not rare. Last summer, another young Black man, 15-year-old Steven Rosenthal was killed by a cop who claimed that Steven committed suicide at the back door of his grandmother’s house after being chased on foot by the cops. PLP joined Steven’s family and friends in many marches to protest this fake account, which was supported by the Chicago Police Department.
The lives of Black folk in poor neighborhoods like the West Side are cheap to capitalist bosses. They not only don’t care but have to harass, pin crimes on, jail and terrorize working people, especially Black workers, to keep them down. The police are an essential part of the whole machine that oppresses working people and then blames them for the problems we face. Those who run the U.S. look like they’re above it all, because the cops do their dirty work.
PL’ers distributed CHALLENGEs and made contacts in an effort to develop a bigger base to keep the fight going. We’re clear that we need to get the word out to our co-workers and neighbors. One way was to have our May Day March and Dinner this year in the community itself. As we marched, many said that we all need to get better organized. It’s said that the bosses create their own gravediggers, but it’s not enough to be a gravedigger. You have to take the life out of capitalism first to have something to put in the grave. We’ll be continuing to protest this latest killing and to organize for the struggles to come.

Comrade Robert “Bob” Patterson died in Brooklyn, NY on May 8 of heart failure. He was 72 years old. He leaves behind a son, daughter-in-law, grandson, brother, nieces and nephews, and a large group of friends and comrades.
Bob was a presence that could always be counted on. His passing leaves a tremendous hole that we will work hard to fill. After Bob was introduced to the Progressive Labor Party, he embraced it and regretted that he had not met our Party earlier in his life.
As a child, Bob was taught anti-racism by his Mennonite grandmother. This was solidified on a trip to Cape Canaveral, Florida which he won for selling newspapers as a teenage delivery boy. As the van with the winners drove deeper and deeper into the Jim Crow South, he was angered at the treatment of two Black youth who also won the trip. They were not allowed to use the same hotels and restaurants as the white youth, their dignity being stripped away. This was the start of his militancy. Bob was deeply involved in struggles for workers’ rights and antiracism for the rest of his life.
As a young man, he worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. He also participated in the famous anti-racist march for voting rights over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, a life-changing event for Bob. The marchers were trained to be passive in the face of all attacks that were directed at them. Bob was outraged when one of his best friends, a young Black man, was doused in white paint by the racists and no one fought back. When Bob met PLP 17 years ago, he came to understand the misleadership of pacifism and on relying on legislation to end racism, and how reform movements lead to reversals. Comrade Bob also took part in antiwar efforts of the 1960s, helping many Vietnam Vets who went AWOL (absent without leave).
Bob’s acting ability was recognized by Sir Tyrone Guthrie and he received a full scholarship to act in Minneapolis’ prestigious Guthrie Theater. All through his professional career as an actor and teacher of the acting craft, he continued to promote and organize around antiracism and for social justice. He was a visionary and always thinking about the larger world, in his studio, in his church, in the community, and in the Party. Bob thought of acting as a collective craft and that actors could be won to be politically antiracist and fighters for social justice. He thought actors must search for the truth in the world around them and that this truth leads to understanding the necessity for an egalitarian world. Through his years in the Party, he brought many of his students to PLP events and study groups. And through PLP cultural work, Comrade Bob used his skills to help spread our political ideas, helping develop collective performances and presentations.
Bob aided in creating a social justice group in his church 20 years ago, which continues to this day. He proposed and organized forums, marches and protests, to which we could invite our friends, always making sure we were in motion to fight racism and injustice. He was the “go-to guy” if you wanted information or wanted to plan an event, but he did not do all the work himself. He was able to encourage others to step up and realize their untapped talents. He often got people to go beyond their limits (such as shyness) to make presentations at forums, dinners, demonstrations, etc.
The forums were on a range of subjects: “single payer health insurance,” racist treatment of Hurricane Katrina victims, anti-Muslim hysteria after 911, racist police killings such as the murder of Kyam Livingston, etc. Bob also encouraged those of us working at Downstate Medical Center to have a big rally against plans to close down the hospital, resulting in the largest rally there since the 1960s. Four hundred workers, doctors and patients rallied, putting the fear of workers’ power into the bosses and building our confidence. Thanks for the push, Bob.
Up until his last breath, Bob was organizing for a better world for his grandchild and all of our grandchildren, making dozens of daily phone calls; he was sorry that he missed the Brooklyn May Day March.
Bob was, modest yet immodest. He did say that he was the best acting teacher around but rarely boasted about his standing in the profession or the famous people he knew. He was also a man of many interests, beyond art and politics. He loved basketball and watched every NBA game he could. He had long arms and was quick on the court. He battled to keep in shape and hid his failing health from his friends.
Bob was a great presence and constant organizer. If a measure of a person is that they leave the world a better place, then Bob has more than exceeded that measure. He will be greatly missed by all who worked with him.

Google’s move to cut off Huawei phones from access to the company’s software is a stark reminder to capitalists worldwide and a blunt message to the rising Chinese ruling class: U.S. imperialism will be ruthless in defending its global profits. Google’s signing on to U.S. efforts to beat back the projection of Chinese power intensifies the pressure on European and other capitalist rulers to choose sides in the escalating cyberwar between the two superpowers. Neutrality—for companies as well as countries—will be difficult, if not impossible. But workers must choose our own side, the side of the international working class. As World War III gets closer, we must be prepared to turn imperialist war into class war for communist revolution.
High technology: spy vs. spy
U.S. President Donald Trump’s assault on Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, is an attempt to block the Chinese bosses’ “digital silk road.” Chinese advances in global high technology, the centerpiece of the country’s “Made in China 2025” industrial policy, work hand-in-glove with its Belt and Road Initiative to gain political power through infrastructure projects and economic thievery around the world. Hauwei was born to spread Chinese power globally. It was founded in 1987 by a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army (npr.org, 12/18/18). Just as AT&T and Verizon are arms of U.S. imperialism, Huawei is an arm of Chinese imperialism.  
Currently China is leading the world in building infrastructure for the future 5G wireless network technology. The implications for the U.S. bosses are terrifying: A recent joint statement by several senior American military leaders noted that Chinese-led 5G infrastructure provides Beijing opportunities for forced data collection and could potentially compromise the integrity of future U.S. military operations. Moreover, they warned that this would give China’s fascist government the ability to clandestinely collect private information from billions of people and use that data for coercion (nationalinterest.org, 5/21).
Of course, these U.S. fascists are hoping that everyone forgets about Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Their revelations exposed the global expansion of spying by U.S. telecommunication firms on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency.
China and U.S. vie for allies
In both Latin America and Europe, U.S. warnings of future Chinese spying have largely fallen on deaf ears. Huawei phones make up only 7 percent of the Latin American market, as compared to 25 percent in Europe (New York Times, 5/25). Besides, Latin American governments and workers have lived with U.S. spying for decades. Hamilton Mourão, the Brazilian vice president, gives voice to the predominant ruling class view: “China wants our products; we need trains, ports, and highways that facilitate the transport of these products”(Foreign Affairs, May 2019).  
In Europe, meanwhile, close NATO allies like Germany and Britain are resisting U.S. appeals to ban Huawei from their own 5G projects. U.S. intelligence officials are conceding that Huawei and other Chinese telecom companies will “most likely control 40 to 60 percent of the networks over which businesses, diplomats, spies and citizens do business” (NYT, 5/28).
The bosses are pitching 5G technology as a big improvement in our quality of life, from faster movie downloads to revolutionary medical breakthroughs via augmented and virtual reality. They claim that 5G will tie together the “internet of things,” from autonomous cars to security cameras and industrial equipment (NYT, 5/25).  
But we should remember that the primary reason the bosses are building this infrastructure is for “national security”—in other words, for internal surveillance and repression to enhance military readiness. Any “benefits” for workers will take a back seat to the needs of the capitalists’ war machine and their move toward full-blown fascism.
Trade wars push patriotism
As the superpowers’ trade war intensifies, the U.S. rulers’ use of state power seems clumsy next to China’s state capitalists, who are more efficient in disciplining and unifying their own class—an essential element of fascism. The current impasse between Trump and Congress threatens to paralyze the U.S. government’s ability to implement new policy, at least in the short term. In a fast-moving world situation, this is highly unfavorable for the U.S. ruling class. Throw in Trump’s ally-smashing style, and U.S. imperialism may be isolated as it falls from its brief perch atop the profit system’s global pecking order.
U.S. workers have come to rely on cheap goods from both China and the U.S. to offset some of the rampant income inequality that concentrates obscene wealth within the tiny ruling class. But as Trump imposes more tariffs and China retaliates, prices will continue to rise. Both sets of rulers will need to win many millions of workers to the idea that it is our “patriotic duty” to sacrifice and pay higher prices for “Made in the USA” and “Made in China” products. The extra dollars and yuan to flow through the bosses’ respective treasuries will ultimately finance the cost of mass slaughter, as the trade war erupts into a shooting war.
Confronting China
All U.S. rulers grasp the need to keep a critical mass of war industry physical plants on the North American continent.  But in recent years, a number of U.S. manufacturers, including critical sectors like aerospace (warplanes) and trucks (tanks), have come to rely on cheap steel and electronic components from China. Sooner than later, a non-Chinese supply chain will be needed.
Though the immediate outcome of this latest trade war is unclear, the rising stakes are unmistakable.  Thomas Friedman, in-house cheerleader for U.S. imperialism at the New York Times, declares: “We could look the other way when trade was just about toys and solar panels, but when it’s about F-35s and 5G telecommunications, that’s not smart” (NYT 5/23). While Trump’s style is chaotic, it puts important needs of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the finance capitalists, front and center.  
In the U.S., the capitalist bosses—whether Republicans or Democrats—have yet to win masses of workers to the patriotic fervor needed for a serious inter-imperialist confrontation.  Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the same boat. In both countries, individualism and consumerism reign supreme. To the extent that the Trump-Xi trade clash represents the start of an effort to politicize consumers with anti-Chinese or anti-American sentiment, it is a significant building block for wider war.
In 2020 and beyond, – fight for communism
As capitalism heads toward world war history teaches us that the working class is the only force that can change this course of mass devastation. In the coming period, the bosses will undoubtedly attack every section of society to prepare for war. Communists must be positioned in growing mass movements, from fights for national healthcare and reproductive rights to teacher strikes and struggles against racist police murders. As we sharpen the class struggle, we must extend our work into basic industry.
PLP’s aim is to build a mass base of class-conscious workers who can be won to international communist revolution. As workers reject nationalism and reformism, they will come to understand that if you leave one wolf alive, the sheep will never be safe. Only then will humanity emerge from the threat of capitalist-inflicted annihilation and advance into a future where the world’s working class is free from exploitation.