NEW YORK CITY, January 21—At the second annual Women’s March, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched to demonstrate our determination to see sexism defeated once and for all. Yet capitalism needs sexism like we need air to breathe.
The mass bravery of the #MeToo trend points the way forward. But powerful elements of the U.S. ruling class are engaged in a comprehensive effort to re-direct the anger of this moment into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party.
The same capitalist class that has mounted attacks on women of breathtaking scope and violence now wants to own/control the movement against “systemic” sexism.
Many signs pointed to voting and the 2018 election as the next step in the anti-sexist upsurge. Our leaflet with the headline “It’s not just Trump, It’s Capitalism” was met with an enthusiastic reception from many, and a handful of PL’ers were even able to turn that slogan into a chant that was taken up by marchers nearby as we made our way through midtown Manhattan.
As the march turned the corner from 59 Street to Sixth Avenue and passed the Trump International Hotel,  liberal chants, “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” resounded; our slogan “stop racist deportations, working people have no nation” did not strike as much of a chord with the mainly white middle-class elements that formed the bulk of the participants. Anger is high but consciousness is relatively low.
In other portions of the demonstration where more Black, Latin, and Asian and youth formed the body of the crowd, when the crowd chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” we chanted “Capitalism has got to go” and people switched and joined us.
As we chanted, people grabbed up leaflets and challenges from us. Hundreds of papers and over 1,500 leaflets were distributed. We made short speeches and some people thanked us for calling out more than just Trump as the problem.
Liberalism: the main danger
The Trump agenda—from the tax bill to the proposed attacks on Medicare/Medicaid, a re-imposition of a global gag rule on abortion and more—is a huge attack on working-class women. Yet we delude ourselves in believing that power in the hands of Democrats means progress.
Capitalists and their media don’t care for women workers. The bosses see women workers as instruments of production of future workers, or as objects. The capitalist media empires rake in staggering profits from sexist marketing and pornography, while their friends in the informal capitalist economy traffic women into slavery.
Women and girls comprise the majority of refugees forced across racist capitalist borders from Central America to East and Central Africa, and the Middle East to the Bay of Bengal. Tens of million of our working class sisters are herded into refugee camps and subject to extreme poverty, abuse, exploitation and trafficking by the forces of imperialism that remain the same from Obama to Trump.
We cannot cheer the fact that record breaking numbers of women ran for public office under Democratic banners in 2017, a trend looking to continue into 2018. Supplying racist and sexist U.S. capitalism with more women and nonwhite politicians to front for rising war and fascism is the core mission of the Democratic Party.
Advances against sexism
The women’s movement in the U.S. struggled for seventy years before the ruling class granted women the right to vote in 1920.
In the Soviet Union women won this right three weeks after the seizure of power in 1917. In then-revolutionary China, communists banished foot-binding forever. Prostitution was abolished in Cuba after the 1959 revolution.
The list of massive advances for women goes on. Even the women’s strike of March 2017 took place on International Women’s Day, a communist-inspired holiday.
As capitalism has returned to Russia and China, sex trafficking and oppression of women have returned. Women have paid perhaps the highest price for the reversal of communist revolutions.
Feminism will not defeat sexism
Learning from the errors of the old movement and rebuilding the movement for communism is priority number one for the Progressive Labor Party.
Feminism aims to bring about a capitalism that “works” for women, too. It relies on the fatal strategy of “all-class unity:” erasing the difference between the experiences and interests of working class women and ruling class women.
The special oppression of Black women is a matter of cardinal importance, and the heightened dangers of capitalism across the board for Black women, from adverse health outcomes to racist police murder, cry out for abolition of this entire social order, not the minor rearrangements of oppressive relations that feminism entails.
Feminism, in tagging men as the source of sexism and not capitalism, serves to further divide the working class. In demanding “equality” within a system built on exploitation and war, feminism leaves us advocating for arch-imperialist demands such as putting women in combat in imperialist wars.
Oppurtunity for fightback
The #MeToo struggle is an opportunity for communists to raise anti-sexist fightback at their place of work, and dig deep with their friends about the roots of sexism. Until the international working class—multiracial, multi-gender, multigenerational—abolishes capitalism, no one is liberated. Build a communist movement with Progressive Labor Party.

BROOKLYN, January 12—As mass struggle against Trump’s racist and fascist words and policies grows, learning to go beyond the limits the ruling class and its minions would like to contain, is the number one job for all workers and students who want to defeat racism and fascism once and for all.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is proud to have played a role in a small but potent action launched in response to Trump’s latest anti-immigrant attack: the mass deportation of Latin and Haitian workers as well as raids on 7-Eleven (chain of convenience shops) stores aimed at terrorizing undocumented workers across the country.
Phony sanctuary in schools
Meanwhile the City’s schools chancellor Carmen Fariña has issued toothless guidelines pretending to make schools a “sanctuary” for undocumented students. Her proclamation is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents may not enter a school without visiting the principal’s office first. Pervasive racist, anti-student, CYA (“cover-your-ass”) and “me-first” ideology shapes decision-making in the schools. Few principals will offer resistance in such a circumstance.
Students and teachers worked to take the fight further in a busy week last month at a Queens high school. Over a thousand signatures were added to an online petition urging ICE to cease deportation proceedings against the parent of a member of our student body. After over a thousand signatures had been added then the school administration took up a petition urging the student body to add more. Then Nazi Trump made his infamous remark calling black nations “shithole countries.” Righteous working-class anger was in the air.
Liberal school misleaders are quick to push empty talk while undermining militant action. But when a call was made for a demonstration, this same administration was quick to throw cold water on the event, as vague threats of “consequences” for students who decide to demonstrate were spread across social media and group chats. In defiance to this intimidation campaign, several students showed up at a nearby 7-Eleven for a solidarity visit that turned into a vigorous picket line.
Young women lead picket
A multiracial group of a 6 high school students, almost all young women (and led by these young women) were joined by a group of teachers. Fighters from a local church, immigrants rights group, faculty from a nearby college and active retirees from a local trade union also joined the rally.
In total, there were 24 people at its height, which may be small, but “we weren’t all”! Especially considering the last minute nature of the demonstration.
We formed a picket circle in front of the 7-Eleven and chanted loudly. Many passersby stopped to watch, raise their fists, and cheer us on. Some chanted with us.
One chant was “Stop racist deportations! Working people have no nation!” Another was “Donald Trump, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”
And yet another popular one was a call and response that had a really great cadence to it: “Deportations mean? WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! Sexism means? WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! Imperialist wars mean? WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!”
High school students came up with their own chant: “Deportations hurt relations!”
Gesture of solidarity
Workers inside the 7-Eleven received us warmly. While they were not able to come out and join our picket line, as we wrapped up the workers inside offered the student internationalists free sodas, a meaningful gesture of appreciation and solidarity.
Everyone left the rally emboldened and determined to organize more of their friends next time. For many it was their first demonstration. It was moving to see militant young women who are Black, Latin and South Asian taking the lead, with support from veteran working-class fighters from the churches, colleges, retiree groups and community groups, all marching, picketing and chanting side by side.
Communist ideas, in the hands of the masses, can become a material force breaking down the divisions the ruling class seeks to impose on our class, whether they be borders between nations or lines that usually separate younger and older activists. We have a world to win!

BROOKLYN, January 21—With the mounting attacks on Black and Latin working class students in NYC public schools, there’s no telling what will be the spark for students to fight back. For our school, one spark (out of the many over the years) was the removal of a special class. Student protests are inspiring and a great start on the long road to revolution.
Progressive Labor Party fights (PLP) for a communist society from each according to their commitment, to each according to their need, because that is the only way to truly get the schools that our children deserve.
Constant attacks
Working class public schools throughout the country, majority Black, Latin, and immigrant, are under attack from budget cuts. Many schools are forced into overcrowding to gain more funding while secretive admissions processes help maintain racist school segregation, which is growing more severe every day. The partnership between the Department of Education and the NYPD criminalizes our students and helps perpetuate the school to prison pipeline. Metal detectors further criminalize and traumatize our students.
A spark at our school
A very popular special class offering was taken away over a technicality by the liberal, tone-deaf school administration. These hypocritical school bosses say students have a voice, yet over and over again they shut the students’ voices down. Students see through the bosses’ politricks and continue to struggle for the school that they deserve.
Students were immediately upset when they heard that this class would be taken away. Furthering the students’ anger was a right-wing administrative henchman who lied and said that students weren’t bothered by the class cancelation.
Students quickly planned a protest. They left their classes, knocked on the doors of other classes to gather other students, mostly seniors, and chanted down the hallway to the assistant principal’s office before returning to class. The air was electric, and students were already planning their next action.
Students put antiracist solidarity before self
The next day, word spread that the racist henchman was pulling students individually to identify a leader and tamp down fightback. The administration interrogated one senior student for over an hour through his lunch period. She tried to silence him by appealing to Black nationalism, but he did not falter.
Later that day, that student leader was asked to join a meeting with the assistant principal (AP) to discuss his concerns. Word quickly spread, and seniors planned a sit-in outside the AP’s office in solidarity with that student being questioned. As the student walked down the hall to the AP’s office, he was greeted with “We’ve got your back, bro” and “You’re never alone.”
Almost the entire senior class held an hour-long sit-in outside. These seniors knew leaving class put them in danger to not finish projects they needed to graduate, but they also knew that solidarity was more important. The courage and compassion were palpable.
Another student was meeting with the student leader, and was convinced by the AP to go outside and tell the seniors sitting in to disperse. The seniors knew better, and continued their sit-in. The henchman and another bosses’ lackey tried to stop the protest with taunts and insults of “being stupid.”
The students didn’t falter, despite the bosses’ tricks. This student-led protest brought excitement and optimism throughout the entire school and gave others courage to stand up as well. Students who were not part of the protest asked how they could become involved, and the seniors regrouped to figure out their next plan of action.
Students can think & lead for themselves
Many lessons are being learned through this struggle. Students realized that planning and organization are important, as students who were unclear with the messaging were not as disciplined in their protest.
One school worker, a bosses’ lackey who only sometimes questions administration’s actions, blamed antiracist teachers for the protest. We will fight to win her to the anti-racist idea that Black and Latin kids are politically conscious enough to speak up against injustice and organize on their own.
Students aren’t brainwashed into action. The bosses’ system is full of bad ideas, and we as communists must win ourselves and our co-workers away from anti-worker sentiment.
We applaud these students, and are excited to see the next stage of their fightback. This small resistance is a good start, and we are inspired by their boldness. Making revolution means going beyond what the bosses want, and we as communists must try to find struggles and push their limits.

OAXACA, MEXICO, January 23— Striking doctors and nurses put locks and chains on the entrances to the Aurelio Valdivieso general hospital in Oaxaca city. In the last couple of days, thousands of workers of the Health Department demonstrated in a mass march to protest the direct attack against our job stability. The government intends to eliminate more than 2,200 regular jobs in Oaxaca and eventually many more in the whole country.
The strike began last week throughout the state in hospitals and health centers by workers who  have yet to be paid this month (Mexico News Daily, 1/24).
Juan Diaz Pimentel, secretary of health and state, is using the excuse that there are more than 1,000 “temporary” workers and the staff is “full.” He has made threats of layoffs and has kept the bi-weekly pay corresponding to the first two weeks of January of more than 4,000 workers.
Mass cutbacks head
The capitalist system and its bosses are preparing the path for privatization of health services that undoubtedly will bring more misery, illness and death to the working class. For those of us that work in the healthcare field, privatization will bring huge instability at our work places.
All of us workers need to realize that this putrid system called capitalism will continue its mission to make more profits from healthcare. This is why the working class must organize to face this attack from the capitalist state and understand that one mass march is not enough.
We need to create organizational strategies to fight against the capitalist system, but also to build class consciousness. To achieve this, we need to establish the base of a Party led by the working class, a party that fights for the interests of the working class—Progressive Labor Party.
Fascist ”homeland security” law
Let’s take advantage of this critical moment and understand that the state will continue its attacks.  If needed, it will use the brutal force of the army. It is no coincidence that the army was given the freedom to act under the slogan to protect “homeland security” (see next issue). The oppressing state is allowed to act to violently subdue any outbreak of dissent. However, in history we’ve seen there is no power that can stop angered workers. That is why we need to understand that there is no other solution besides building a party with Marxist-Leninist ideas that leads workers.
The Progressive Labor Party aims to build a communist party to destory the capitalist system, which is the cause of death and misery in the working class.