ANAHEIM, CA, July 9—The Anaheim 3, who stood up to Ku Klux Klan in February 2016, won the day in court this morning! The injustice system was forced to back down.
Multiracial organizing forced the bosses’ hand
For the fourth time in this battle, anti-racists rallied outside the courthouse. This morning’s picket line was 30 strong. We led militant chants and distributed CHALLENGEs and leaflets. “Wherever racist scum spew their hate, the PLP and other anti-racist fighters will be there to smash them.” Passersby honked their horns, stopped to take pictures, and offered support.
After the picket line, we packed the courtroom. Our upbeat and unapologetic multiracial unity was a stark contrast to the somber atmosphere in the room. When it was announced that two of the defendants were having their charges dismissed, we exploded in applause and cheers. The last defendant pled no contest to the two misdemeanor charges of battery and resisting arrest. The no contest plea can be expunged after a year.
This victory is not without complications. We know that the capitalist criminal injustice system is racist; the defendant whose charges were not dismissed is a Black man. True “justice” can only be found through communist revolution. Under communism, racism and all other anti-worker ideology and policy will be illegal. Nonetheless, this is a victory for workers and anti-racist fighters. After being attacked, we were able to organize and fight back.
The ripple effect of fightback
As we left the courthouse, other defendants in the courtroom for unrelated cases congratulated us and said, “Keep up the fight back.” This is significant because it shows the power of multiracial organizing. Workers will always rally in defense of antiracist communists and fighters against the KKK, the racist cops and courts who protect them, and this racist, capitalist system which creates all of this.
Out in the hallway of the courthouse our base raised funds to help cover the court fees for the day. While a PL’er began to deliver a “thank you” speech to one of the lawyers who worked hard to defend the Anaheim 3, he turned it into a “thank you” speech to the crowd. He heralded the brave antiracists who came from afar to ensure that the Klan was not allowed to spread their racist filth. The lawyer said he was proud to represent these courageous fighters. He and many others will celebrate with us at our upcoming victory party.
Lessons from a two-year battle
Organizing in the churches, schools and on our jobs is what made this two-and-half year battle possible. On the road to communism, fighting these charges was a tiny pothole, but we learned valuable lessons to prepare us for future struggles.
We must continue to build long-term, deep ties in mass organizations. Without a decade worth of work in our mass organizations, this fight back effort would have been very difficult. These ties helped us with fundraising, widespread circulation of a petition, hosting speaking events about the case to a larg base of people, and keeping significant numbers at the court appearances we had to make over the last few years.
When we fight, we can win. Other people were arrested and charged that day in Anaheim. Although, we encouraged them to fight the case with us, they chose to plead guilty. They were coerced into accepting multiple charges, exorbitant fines, and lengthy probations. We battled both inside and outside the courtroom and showed why it is so important to fight back.
Working class wants to join
The working class wants to join us on this road to freedom. Today a young Black worker appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She had heard about the court date when the Anaheim 3 spoke at a Unitarian church nearby and felt compelled to show her support. After watching us rally in the morning and reading our literature, she joined the PL crowd for the rest of the afternoon.The worker was interested in attending upcoming antiracist activities. In the future, when we continue to organize, we are sure to meet many more workers like her.
Our class understands that we live in a racist world. We see, live and breath this every day. What the Progressive Labor Party and communism offer are the tools to end racism once and for all. With a class analysis, we can see how capitalism requires racism for its survival and therefore racism can only be eliminated with the destruction of this rotten system. We will continue to battle the gutter racists whenever they appear, but we will win the war when masses of workers understand communism is the only solution. Join us.

WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 4—Today the DC-area transit workers held an “unathorized” work action to protest management’s racist mistreatment. Hundreds observed a “1:59” action, which means they came to work one hour and 59 minutes late, causing widespread disruption of public transit on the July 4 holiday. Actions like these reveal how power comes from labor. It also reveals the limits of union leadership. Under communist influence and mass organizing, more transit workers can gain confidence to shut this system down.
We need to do more
In addition to the racist background checks, the transit bosses have increased their harassment on the job, including random screenings of workers. We’ve had some rallies and pickets protesting this harassment. But we need to do more. The bosses are demanding more givebacks in the contract negotiations. We need to organize strike committees at every job location. We need to collectively develop our demands. We need to organize for a strike.
Prior to the action, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members of the union (Local 689) discussed this proposed protest with other workers. We found that there was a lot of enthusiasm for finally taking an action against management.
Workers who participated in the action will be charged with a “miss” but not a “failure,” a much more serious violation of company policy. The union president suggested that there may be additional work actions in coming weeks. We can’t rely on that. Let’s organize at every barn, at every work location. Let’s fight against every case of harassment. Let’s get ready to strike by fighting back now.
Debating politics of the work action
There was some legitimate skepticism about the likely effectiveness of the action, since there was no advance planning and no specific demands.
How could you measure gaining “respect” from management? Since more workers with less seniority work on holidays, was there unfair pressure on them to bear the likely reprisals from management?
Most importantly, how will we fight back, should Metro take action against the workers who participated?
Workers can’t rely on union leaders
At the union meeting immediately before the action, a militant member declared that it was good to take work actions that disrupt transit service since that is where our power comes from. But it was also vital to organize to get strike ready and collectively develop specific demands against management.
The union president Jackie L. Jeter is clearly feeling the pressure from a restive membership, gave a flimsy excuse about the absence of demands, indicated that a strike might not be necessary, but that each member should have $20,000 in the bank if there was a strike.
Her rhetoric and bluster was an attempt to hide the fact that she has always dragged her feet in challenging management. And her $20,000 comment showed that she had no idea of how a well-organized strike would proceed and was simply trying to scare people away from becoming strike ready.
The PLP influence in Local 689 continues to grow. We will continue to struggle for ever-sharper class struggle as we also strive to bring additional transit workers into the revolutionary struggle for communism. Workers would be in full power and there would be no such thing as exploitative bosses to deny us respect.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 9—Thousands exploded in mass working-class violence to protest the government’s fuel price hikes.
 Prices for basic products, especially gasoline (38 percent) and diesel fuel (47 percent) (Reuters, 7/8). Commercial activity everywhere was impacted: tires burned in the streets, protesters downed the main antenna of Digicel (largest cell phone operator in Haiti), and singled out international hotels that were built since the 2010 earthquake instead of housing for those made homeless; major air carriers cancelled flights. The police, called out in force, were blocked from carrying out their brutal suppression of the popular will.
Thus was the hatred of the working class for our exploiters and oppressors expressed, but spontaneous expressions of hatred are not enough to solve our problems. Nothing short of the abolition of a system founded on profit for the small class of capitalists will prevent continuous and worsening attacks on our class. Only a system that is run by workers through our class’s international Party, PLP, can serve our needs and end this exploitation and oppression.
For weeks the IMF (International Monetary Fund) had demanded a halt to government subsidies for gasoline and diesel, thus increasing the portion of the prices on life necessities that workers are forced to pay. It diverted the revenue for running the oppressive government and paying debts to the IMF. Social networks were buzzing, so that when President Jovenel Moïse announced the price increases at 4pm last Friday everyone was prepared to fight back. They took to the streets, called the president a tool of the local and international capitalists and demanded that he step down.
Members and friends of PLP participated in and supported the rebellions, pointing out the need to destroy capitalism altogether and build communism everywhere in the world. There is mass despair, especially among the young, who have no hope of employment. This movement has avoided the usual mis-leadership of the traditional politicians. There is a level of understanding among the masses that we have to fight together for our class interests, and against the “me-ism” that the rulers encourage. But this is no substitute for building a mass communist party to foster and lead these periodic struggles as battles in the war to defeat and remove the capitalist-class enemy altogether, rather than to seek relief from each manifestation of our oppression as it arises. Millions need to join PLP to reach that goal.
President Jovenel Moïse was forced to rescind the price hikes for the moment. However, like all victories short of smashing the system, this will be only temporary. Furthermore, we cannot rely on the spontaneity of working-class hatred of our exploitation and oppression in the battles to come. We have to build our Party, the PLP, among the masses of workers and youth. Through class struggle and ideological struggle, win them to the need for communist revolution to end this system of misery once and for all.

BALTIMORE, June 25—A recent West Wednesday rally—an anti-racist rally against the 2013 murder of Tyrone West that’s become a fixture in Baltimore over five years—may have been modest in size, but it was bold in action.
It began when a cop in an unmarked car stationed himself directly across the street from the rally.
Perhaps the Baltimore Police Department was trying to see if intimidation would scare people and minimize participation at this weekly action. Since 2013, we have been demanding the prosecution and incarceration of the cops who killed unarmed Tyrone West, while in police custody.
Or perhaps the intimidation was coincidental, and just part of BPD’s new strategy, which they call “predictive policing.”
Either way, participants at West Wednesday got right up—and stayed up—in one cop’s face, videotaping and practically surrounding him. Simultaneously, across the street, the rally continued, virtually without interruption, while the sister of Tyrone West incorporated into her powerful speech an astute, angry, loud, and unabashed denunciation of the new BPD police policy.
The “predictive policing” farce
Two years ago, following the police murder of Freddie Gray, the federal Department of ‘Injustice’ (DOJ) issued a report about Baltimore. It admitted BPD strategies routinely cause severe disparities in the rate of stops, searches, and arrests of Black workers. Additionally, the DOJ admitted that this pattern of police department conduct is carried out with excessive force—racist terror and murder.
Now they’ve given this enforcement of capitalist inequality a new name, “predictive policing,” trying to put a pretty face on an ugly reality. Even if you change a pig’s name, it still stinks.
“Predictive policing” claims to use crime data and high tech algorithms - supposedly without racial or class bias - to scientifically pinpoint areas of the city where street violence is likely to occur in the immediate future. Then the BPD aggressively targets those neighborhoods with cops. However, as Andrew Ferguson warns in The Rise of Big Data Policing, published eight months ago, “. . . The history of unjust policing practices will be justified by technical spin.”
As one might expect, “predictive policing” doesn’t send the cops to Roland Park—or similar neighborhoods—where the median household income is $104,482.
Their predictive model is just another version of racial profiling. It’s used to disproportionately send cops to neighborhoods like Sandtown-Winchester, Freddie Gray’s neighborhood, and to nearby Harlem Park. The median household income for the two neighborhoods is $24,374.
More than two-thirds of Black residents in Baltimore don’t have enough savings to survive for even three months, in case of job loss.
The primary role of police today—just like the very first U.S. police force, whose assignment was to catch escaped slaves - is to try terrorizing the most oppressed members of our class: Black workers. The ruling class of capitalists hopes, in this way, to keep themselves in power.
Capitalist terror shows their fear
Just as Nat Turner’s revolt made the slave owners deeply fearful, today’s ruling capitalists are afraid of working class strikes, uprisings, and revolution. That’s why Baltimore’s government—acting on behalf of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the main organization of capitalists in this area—gives the police department twice as much funding as they give to the City’s entire public education system.
Waverly, the neighborhood where West Wednesday is held most often - just like Sandtown Winchester, and much of Baltimore - has a predominately Black population. So, perhaps, “predictive policing,” not purposeful harassment of the West Wednesday rally, was the reason for a new cop presence at Greenmount Avenue and 33rd Street.
Prediction: fascism and imperialism under capitalism
No matter what the cops were trying to accomplish—they did not succeed.
We will continue rallying and exposing the reality that the police and the government are key parts of state power. State power means organized violence for the suppression of a class, unrestricted by any law. Though racial profiling is “illegal,” cops—during Obama’s presidency and now under Trump—continue to kill about 1,100 people a year, more than three each day on average, because it serves the fundamental needs of the capitalist class.
The only solution to capitalist state violence is to join the multiracial Progressive Labor Party. When our Party earns the respect of millions and millions of working class people, we will defeat capitalism with revolution. With state power we can build a wonderful communist society of sisterhood and brotherhood.
We will fight hard to fully eradicate racism, sexism, anti-gay violence, unemployment, and imperialist war. That’s a world worth fighting for. One day, the savagery of racist police terror, with Black and immigrant workers five times more likely to be victimized, will be so far in the past, it will be hard to imagine how humanity could have lived like that. Join us, and bring that day closer.