HARLEM, December 10—A multiracial group of over 30 people protested racist harassment of Black, Latin, and Muslim workers following Donald Trump’s election. Protesters included Columbia, CUNY, and Fordham students, members of the church sponsoring the action, neighborhood residents, and PLP members and friends. People are angry and afraid of the gutter racism, sexism, and fascism Trump has encouraged. We had a rally to show solidarity and give confidence to all workers that we can fight back against attacks. Our energetic chants electrified people on this cold wintry day and people eagerly took our fliers as we marched.
One PLP member took the bullhorn and angrily denounced racism’s effects: inferior schools, poor health care, no jobs, and inadequate or no housing. One member of Columbia’s Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) organization spoke about being arrested during a militant $15-minimum-wage action. Other SWS members spoke about their campaign against payroll lag time for student workers. CUNY students demanded NO tuition increases and NO budget cutbacks. Another speaker talked about the ongoing work to end police violence and to demand that no killer cop can remain anonymous. A PLP member led us in a song about Ramarley Graham and Deborah Danner’s murders and Eric Garner’s lynching.
It is no coincidence that police terror, tuition hikes, and other attacks are all happening now. As the bosses prepare for more wars in the Middle East and beyond, they need to terrorize workers to keep them in line. They also devote less money for education so that they can fund their wars. Whether we’re fighting for a living wage or against racist housing practices, we need to make the connections that these problems are all caused by capitalism.
Feet to the Ground
We then marched to the State Office Building (SOB) with energetic drum beats and militant chants. Neighbors noticed us and one CD vendor even shut off his loud music so that we could be heard. Several people joined the march as they read our signs and heard our chants. With hands and feet frigid from the cold, we stood before the SOB as church choir members led us in a militant, anti-racist version of “Go Down Moses.”
We ended with a PLP speech where the comrade called for an end to the vicious attacks on our working-class brothers and sisters by the kkkops. She also spoke of the murderous steam heat burning of two babies who died in a New York City apartment for the homeless even though the building’s landlord is on a list of the city’s worst slumlords.
Given the bitter cold weather, we had a great turnout and made our demands heard. We were very heartened by the church members and leaders who participated, including the pastor. Going forward, we must make the issue of racist police violence even stronger. As important as these actions are, we must not forget that as long as capitalism exists, we are not going to end racism and sexism. Only communism can end all of these capitalist-caused problems. With patience and boldness, we are finding more are open to revolutionary communist ideas. Stay tuned for more fightback!
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Book Review: True-to-Life Depiction of Workers’ Collectivity
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- 22 December 2016 49 hits
Most mysteries’ main characters are either a police detective or a private eye who works with the cops or a citizen who works closely with the police. Author Timothy Sheard has created a viable mystery with little or no police involvement, thus concretely illustrating how the working class itself can solve society’s problems. That’s what we get with the latest Lenny Moss mystery, Someone Has to Die.
The protagonist Lenny Moss is a maintenance worker in a hospital in Philadelphia. He is a union steward in his workplace, and is very active in defending the workers against management’s harassment and callousness. His commitment to his co-workers is genuine and is returned with deep friendships and mutual aid off the job. His anti racist principles and militant hatred for the bosses cement the friendships with his coworkers. Lenny Moss is nominally the detective, but five or six characters pool their information and put together enough pieces of the puzzle to solve the mystery.
The workers are portrayed realistically. They have good hearts and burn with righteous anger over injustice, but are not without human faults and failings. There are times when Lenny wants to just give up and lead a quiet life, but his sense of duty to his co-workers keeps him going. Lenny’s firm principles, which include multiracial unity and service towards the workers he represents, as well as his refusal to be intimidated by management, earns his coworkers’ trust. He is not a communist and there is no discussion of overthrowing capitalism, but Lenny understands that loyalty to the working class trumps personal gain.
This mystery begins with a nurse falsely accused and fired by the bosses when a patient is found dead in the morning. Scapegoating a worker as cover to make the hospital administration look good rather than trying to understand what actually happened rings true for workers in medicine, transit and education. Meanwhile, the hospital management plans to slash pensions and health care for retirees as well as current workers. Lenny and his union co-workers and retirees creatively plan a rally against these cutbacks while the union leadership negotiates with management. Lenny has his hands full as he tries to find out why the patient died, support the fired nurse, and outwit management.
Sheard shows his understanding of hospital practice and the need for teamwork in caring for patients in a secondary issue where a friendly doctor refuses to follow the computer guidelines in managing a sick patient despite intimidation from a manager who is heavily invested in the new and expensive technology.
This is the fifth in a series featuring Lenny Moss. The best part of this mystery series is that it is grounded in the working class. Lenny cannot solve mysteries without the collective efforts of clerks, lab techs, and clinicians. Sheard himself worked as an Emergency Room nurse for forty years. Lenny is based on a real janitor who was his coworker in a Philadelphia hospital. Tim started Hardball Press after his regular publishers told him they could not make any money selling his books. You can purchase this mystery novel at http://amzn.to/2hNApv3.
It is important to support books about strong, antiracist workers and their struggles. Otherwise, the stories would not be told and workers would not be inspired to action.
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No Cops in our Homes! Woman Fights Racist NYPD’s Assault
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- 22 December 2016 41 hits
BROOKLYN, December 17—On two consecutive Saturdays, plainclothes thugs of the NYPD descended on the apartment of a strong Brooklyn mother who refused to take their assault. Her son is wanted by the NYPD. In the style of imperialist and fascist forces across history, terrorizing the immediate family of sought-after individuals is official policy.
The mother is a student in a college classroom where communist ideas set some of the tone of discussion. She called on new friends to help her mobilize a campaign to resist the racist harassment from the cops. Visits and meetings will be building into a campaign that draws in neighbors, family, fellow students, friends and PLP members. It’s become clear that the cops who invaded her apartment have a long history of racist assaults on the homes of many in the public housing developments of this Brooklyn neighborhood. These are not “rogue” cops. They are essential to the performing the function of policing in a segregated, capitalist society.
While legal tactics, including filing reports and potentially a lawsuit, are a part of the response mobilizing our base. Picket the precinct and building on initial door-to-door efforts in the apartment is central to our response. This case is a new front in the battle against racist cop terror because PLP is on the scene and organizing not in response to cop murder but in response to the racist assaults that form the “business as usual” of daily life no matter who the president or mayor may be.
This proud mother’s resistance to the racist assault on her home is an inspiration and an opportunity for many more to stand against the terror that shapes daily life for our class brothers and sisters here and around the world. Stay tuned.
HARLEM, December 20—A Harlem congregation and Progressive Labor Party members within it have focused on two fights this season: opposing racist police terror and supporting the Standing Rock resistance. These fights toughen up the working class for more battles ahead, building communist fighters and a communist outlook along the way.
The two fights are in fact closely related. The indigenous organizers in North Dakota were leading the struggle against the emerging global fossil fuel disaster pushed by ExxonMobil. Predictably, they have encountered the kind of brutal, racist repression like Black children suffered in Birmingham Alabama in 1963.
In September, our climate justice fighters organized a march of fifty community people against the banks that fund the North Dakota pipeline. Then a friend began the mobilization that culminated in thousands massing at Foley Square on November 15 to demand that the Army Corps of Engineers continue to block the pipeline’s construction. We were there with five college students.
At the demonstration we noticed that a number of cops we were chanting against were not wearing badges. When we called them out, one cop yelled back “We don’t need any stinking badges!”
This shows that we are entering a new territory of sharpening fascist repression. Badge-less cops can’t stop us from identifying and organizing against vicious cop attackers.
More importantly, racist police have struck twice in within weeks of each other—Deborah Danner (Black, 66, schizophrenic) and Ariel Galarza (Latin, 49, emotionally disturbed, disabled) in the Bronx. We have been in the streets with militant workers from Harlem in outrage against these atrocities and are reaching out to college students, other congregations and community groups for a broader based actionas soon as possible: “Unite Against Racism and Sexism, No Deportations.”
Through the mass organizing, PLP is able to affect those around us, and foster a fighting climate based on communist values. We are building class consciousness, helping workers act on the principle that an injury to one member of our class is an injury to all. Engaging in the class struggle can lead workers and youth to have confidence in our class to make communist revolution. We aim to overthrow this dictatorship of the capitalists, and build a worker-run world.
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Forum Debates Multiracial Unity vs. Black Nationalism
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- 22 December 2016 36 hits
BROOKLYN, NY, December 17—To expose the racist ideologies of capitalism and broaden our fight against racism our church hosted a forum on Black Lives Matter (BLM). We wanted to unite with other community and faith based groups so we traveled from our middle class, downtown Brooklyn location to host it in a community, which has been repeatedly targeted by racist police attacks.
The host from our church began the panel with a story about our “Black Lives Matter” banner. Some antiracist church members hung up this banner to support the fight against racism. The banner was stolen overnight. Another one was put up, which was also stolen. Then one morning a “Blue Lives Matter” banner appeared outside the church. We took down this racist sign. Blue Lives Matter is a racist, pro-police reaction to the antiracist fightback. Such racism must be confronted everywhere, in every way!
The moderator was a Black pastor and professor who promoted the idea of Black Nationalism. The panelists consisted of a history teacher who has been fighting the racism in schools for 20 years, a recent college graduate who is involved in mentoring Black youth, and a young Black man involved in the Black Lives Matter movement.
The teacher gave a rundown of how racism was created to control and divide workers throughout history. She recommended a book by Black historian Lerone Bennett Jr. called The Shaping of Black America. He explains how in the early days of Colonial America Black and white indentured servants lived and worked together, intermarried and even united to fight against the plantation owners. In response to this, the slave owning plantation owners made a concerted effort to divide Black from white. From preachers who promoted racist ideas to laws which made all kinds of unity illegal, the racist rulers steadily built up racism over hundreds of years. Our task today is to smash all racist ideas and practices as we fight for a better world. Challenge newspaper was distributed to quite a few people at this forum as a small part of this anti-racist fightback.
The young man from BLM broke down his experiences which led him to the movement, sparked by outrage at the death of Eric Garner and Mike Brown at the hands of racist kkkops and Trayvon Martin who was killed by a racist vigilante. The college graduate spoke of how racist treatment in the school system inspired him to create a mentoring program focused on promoting “good” behavior. He realized that it wasn’t the fault of the students that they were unfairly singled out and criminalized because of their race. He also expressed an increasing frustration with voting.
During the open discussion many people expressed support for the anti racism of the BLM movement while questioning the nationalism and divisiveness. Some promoted white privilege theory. This idea serves to divide the working class. For some it may assuage guilt over the racist past of the US, but it also hinders a united, working class fightback against racism. In reality the whole capitalist system has to go. This can only happen with multiracial unity and, as some said during the forum, with an armed struggle.