CHICAGO, November 18—In the early morning hours of November 11, the racist killer kkkops murdered another member of our class. The Klan-in-Blue opened fire on 26-year-old Black security officer Jemel Roberson at a bar in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, while he was actively trying to diffuse a fight that had broken out at the location.
Jemel tragically joins the ever-growing list of workers legally lynched by the racist kkkops. These sexist and racist thugs can’t be reformed any more than the sexist and racist capitalist system that they serve and protect. The only way to permanently end racist police murders –and achieve true justice for Jemel and countless other victims of capitalist state violence –is to join and build the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) as the force to crush capitalism with communist revolution!
Guilty of being a Black armed worker under capitalism
To his many loved ones, the racist murder of Jemel at the hand of the Midlothian Police Department has been completely devastating. Those closest to him have described him as a “gentle giant,” and devoted father, brother, uncle, and boyfriend. He was widely respected by his fellow workers, and was a talented athlete as well as the organist for his church.
Jemel was hired security and attempting to subdue an armed individual who was threatening other people at the bar when the kkkops responded at the scene and opened fire. Although their “official” report states that Jemel had no identifying markers that he was working security and that he was given multiple warnings to drop his weapon, other workers are challenging their racist cover-up.
According to other workers at the scene, Jemel was clearing wearing a cap and a sweatshirt that had the word “security” clearly written on them. They also claim that “not even five seconds” passed before the kkkop entered the room and shot him. The racist murder was so reckless that another cop present was heard to openly criticize the one who fired the shots (Chicago Tribune, 11/16). Despite Jemel wearing security clothing and having a legal license to carry a gun in the state, he was instantly perceived as a threat and gunned down.
This murder of an armed Black worker reflects in large part the racist profiling in the thoughts and actions of millions of kkkops, but also reflects a deeper fear of a major threat to the bosses and capitalism. For all the bosses’ fascist rhetoric about the “sacredness” of gun ownership in the United States, the fact is that workers–especially Black workers– possessing weapons has always presented an inherent political problem for them. The ruling class wants to control all the guns, preferably in the hands of their cops. The ruling wants guns to control workers, not in the hands of workers. What the bosses fear most is a multiracial working class armed with guns and class consciousness.
Racist murders mean—we got to fight back!
Committed to building such a movement for communist revolution, a group of PL comrades and friends attended a vigil in Jemel’s memory the Friday after his murder. The vigil took place at his former high school, Lane Tech College Prep, on the north side of Chicago, and was organized by classmates and other school alumni.
Many of the speeches reflected a deep sense of shock and grief over the loss of Jemel. A group of his classmates had difficulty in even expressing the depth of the pain that they were feeling after his murder. They spoke on the racism and alienation that they had already experienced as a result of being a small Black student minority in a selective enrollment high school made up of mostly white students. After losing Jemel to the hands of the killer kops, they were handed another harsh treatment of feeling invisible and unwanted under capitalism.
Other Lane Tech alumni, friends of Jemel, and community organizations also made statements in his memory. One Black worker came to the microphone and made a clear call on the need to take action. He said, “We are in a war, and we need to choose sides.” Other speakers echoed the need to get organized to fight back against the racist bosses and their killer kops, but unfortunately stopped short of calling for mass multi-racial working-class unity as the most effective way to build that fight.
For our part, our small multi-racial group of PLers worked to make that message clear. We distributed our communist newspaper CHALLENGE, engaged in conversation, and made a few contacts that we intend to follow up with.
We build this fight, for Jemel and workers everywhere
Justice for Jemel Roberson goes beyond getting his kkkop murderer fired and thrown in jail. Although these outcomes,in and of themselves won’t lead to a world where working-class people everywhere can live a productive life in safety and dignity.
For that future, we need to connect racist police murders, deportations, unemployment, and imperialist war to their common root of capitalism, and build the struggle for international communist revolution as the only solution to wipe these anti-worker attacks from the face of the earth. It’s no simple task, but for us, it’s the best possible way to honor fallen working-class heroes such as Jemel.
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Nurses strike, gives bosses a taste of workers medicine
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- 22 November 2018 709 hits
CHICAGO, November 16—Over 30 Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) from the University of Illinois Hospital (UIH) officially went on strike yesterday, and have backed it up with pickets and open confrontations against their racist and sexist bosses. The LPNs are striking over stalled contract negotiations, disrespect from the bosses on the job, and an overall decreasing stability for their profession.
A comrade from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was present at the picket today to push the politics even further to the left, calling for mass multi-racial working class unity as the strongest weapon we have to take the offensive against the capitalist bosses and their profit system.
Multi-racial women LPNs challenge bosses
When the strike began, the nurses were out in force. They held their largest picket on the lawn directly across the street from the front entrance of the hospital, complete with signs, chants, and bullhorns. At the various clinics connected to the main hospital throughout the city, there were smaller pickets in solidarity forcing the clinics to close down early. The make-up of these actions was multi-racial, led mostly by Black and Latin women, who are by and large the majority of as LPNs.
In addition to the pickets, a group of the nurses and other workers marched to a meeting on campus of the hospital executives, where they demanded that they be allowed to speak directly to UIH CEO Michael Zenn and the other bosses about contract negotiations. The majority of them were met with rude insults from the racist and sexist bosses and denied a chance to participate, with the excuse that they were being “disruptive” and that there wasn’t enough space in the boardroom.
Another short picket took place the following day, again on the lawn in front of the hospital. A number of the chants focused on the “second-class” status of LPNs as compared to registered nurses (RNs) and the racist and sexist character of the bosses’ disregard of their contributions to patient care. A number of UIH LPNs gave personal testimony on the bullhorn about their key role in improving the health of their working-class patients and the need to continue fighting back.
A comrade from PLP, who works in another local hospital, took the mic to express solidarity, emphasizing the need for workers to unite across workplaces under capitalism as the only real way to begin building our power in the face of the bosses’ attacks.
Don’t fall for bosses’ traps.
Reject union misleaders, elitism
Although this comrade was applauded for this statement, the reality is that the state of working-class struggle is a long way from taking any kind of legitimate offensive against the capitalists and their system. A large reason for this is an over-reliance on the role of unions under capitalism.More often than not they follow a toothless legalist strategy to try and enforce a contract, or even worse, direct workers down the path of dead-end electoral politics to put another one of the bosses’ tools in power.
Many of unions’“militant” actions are nothing more than publicity stunts that try to deceive their members that they are taking action on their behalf. In fact they are well-planned in advance with news media and the kkkops and therefore present no real threat to the bosses. The day two picket of this “unfair labor practice” (ULP) strike itself only lasted barely an hour before the union mis-leadership made the call to wrap it up.
Another factor working against a struggle such as this is the elitism that saturates health care under capitalism. Despite at least 1,000 UIH nurses working within this hospital system, very few of the registered nurses have demonstrated active support of the LPNs strike, even though they themselves faced off against the same racist management’s attacks just over a year ago (See CHALLENGE, 9/15/17).
Many workers can be fooled into thinking thatwage differentials, education level, and professional titles make their work more “important” than that of other workers. But this just works to hide the fact that our labor is connected and we can only fight back effectively when we organize across trades to shut down entire hospitals, schools, and other industries.
Communism connects our struggles
To fight for communist revolution and the complete destruction of racist and sexist capitalism, means understanding the contradictions that weaken working-class unity, and then taking active steps to overcome them to build internationalvworkers’ power. To this end, comrades in PLP will continue to organize within unions, in the workplace, and in the neighborhoods to win more workers to communism, a system that values the contributions of all workers and puts our needs first.
We salute to the University of Illinois LPNs! Your work is important, and your multi-racial fightback is, too!
NEW JERSEY, November 10—More than 65 workers, students, teachers, and community members from Puerto Rico, New York and New Jersey convened at this year’s Progressive Labor Party college conference about internationalism and smashing borders. Those in attendance represented immigrants from West Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Black, Latin, Asian and white students and workers born in the U.S. Along with the help of more experienced communist fighters, a new and younger group of working class organizers led this conference and committed to spreading the Party’s ideas as we organize for communist revolution (see letters).
Break down concepts, break down borders
A new comrade opened the conference, highlighting the importance of breaking down the meaning and power of concepts like working class internationalism, exploitation and fascism for newer people being introduced to communism and PLP. There are no borders for capitalists as they span the globe fighting wars and looking to exploit workers and raw materials. Meanwhile, workers are held prisoners by these same borders, and used as cheap labor and cannon fodder in the bosses’ wars. This conference focused on building multiracial unity to smash all borders.
The panels that followed linked historical, communist-led working class fightback against capitalist oppression to three modern day struggles where PLP is active. The conditions arising from imperialist intervention in Yemen and Palestine have sharpened the class consciousness of community college students in New York fighting against racism on their campus. Similarly, the imperialist interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean have left working class people in Puerto Rico with a crumbling infrastructure and massive insecurity. This has produced the forced migration of undocumented workers to places like New Jersey, where they are forced to drive without a license and are in constant danger of state violence.
Same enemy, Same fight!
Given the chance to choose internationalism or nationalism through the panel presentations and the small workshop discussions, many in attendance were especially driven by the connections made between the students from the Middle East and the workers from Puerto Rico. One of the students from Yemen described the horrible details of famine that forced her family to migrate, while another student from Palestine described concentration camp-like conditions in that nation. One worker from Puerto Rico was involved in PLP’s October Brigade, a summer project meant to initiate a new wave of international communist fight back. This worker warned that the government slogan of “Puerto Rico will rise again” was a just a message to capitalist investors. The government has no interest in investing in the workers of Puerto Rican so they can live and thrive again. He also explained how many workers and children have been drinking contaminated water, died from lack of medical access and at the hands of the state by isolation and suicide.
After the conference, many who have not yet joined PLP expressed how inspired they were by our young leadership and the commitment to put our revolutionary Communist Party in the hands of the world’s working class by fighting for an internationalist outlook. They shared the desire to go back and continue organizing with the communist fighters and friends in the Progressive Labor Party—learning together in both study groups and local organized struggles.
STATEN ISLAND, November 19—On July 17, 2014, Ramsey Orta turned on his phone and took a video of the murder of Eric Garner on Staten Island. Eric was his friend. The klansmen in blue who killed Eric Garner and the and EMTs who stood by while he said “I can’t breathe” eleven times have not been charged with any crime. They have not even been fired by New York City’s liberal mayor, Bill de Blasio. The current and former police commissioners even allowed Eric murderer, Daniel Pantaleo to continue to work and even make an excessive amount of overtime. Racist murder is business as usual, for this rotten system which will continually fail our working class sisters and brothers.
Ramsey made sure the video went viral by giving it to the New York Daily News. Workers all over the world became aware of the racist brutality of the New York Police Department. This created an international firestorm and made Ramsey a target of the police. People should not forget that if it was not for Ramsey’s courage, we would not clearly and vividly know the truth about Eric Garner’s death. There are many other cop murders of unarmed Black and Latin workers and youth, but their details are not known because there is no video. The Progressive Labor Party will not turn our backs on Ramsey Orta.
Targeted by the system
Ramsey was arrested five times after the video went public. He is now serving a prison sentence of close to four years, on trumped up gun and drug charges, for which he was forced to accept a plea bargain. This is “justice” under capitalism. The person who reveals the facts of racist police murder is jailed while the murderous politicians and their police are free to kill others. Capitalists, their lackey politicians and cops want to tell the working class to shut up about racism and these murders.
Over 100,000 people marched in Manhattan after the non-indictment of kkkop Pantaleo, expressing their anger and pushing the movement against police brutality. At the same time, a local group called Staten Island Against Racism and Police Brutality formed to get justice for Eric Garner. Whenever these murders take place, Progressive Labor Party members support the large demonstrations and the long-term grassroots organizations.
For daring to expose the system, Ramsey Orta has been and continues to be targeted for physical and emotional abuse by deputies and corrections guards. There has been a pattern of Ramsey being harassed, assaulted and then transferred to another facility every few months since he began serving his prison sentence. As a result of this, Ramsey frequently has had his privileges revoked and has been put into solitary confinement. Rat poison was even found in the food in his prison wing.
This is what happens when you expose the system. The constant facility changes makes it difficult for Ramsey’s supporters to visit him or send him letters. That’s part of his punishment for helping to unmask this racist system.
One of the things we’ve learned participating in these movements in the last few years is that many people talk about the fact that we must change the whole judicial system and police, but fail to realize that capitalism is the prime culprit for all these injustices. Racism and the resultant “justice” system formed the basis of the profit system and cannot coexist without them.
The working class must take power under a mass communist party or any minor change or reform can reversed. Bringing workers and students to that level of understanding is our job as members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party.
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Migrant caravans: Worker unity only solution to smash bosses’ racism
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- 22 November 2018 579 hits
TIJUANA, Mexico November 20—Some of the first migrants from the current Central American caravans have arrived in this border city. U.S imperialism and its Mexican capitalist lackeys have welcomed them with more xenophobia, racism and obstacles. Only the international working class, following the communist leadership of PLP, can organize a future for our sisters and brothers. Only our class can offer them the solution to get out of this capitalist hell together.
In Tijuana, in unprecedented acts, the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) mayor Gastélum has used the media to encourage protests and xenophobic and racist attacks against the migrants. This achievement represents a great danger for the international working class. It is a bosses’ victory in their constant battle to keep us divided.
Our victories will be accomplished by confronting and crushing all expressions of anti-immigrant racism. In fact, there were protests and actions of solidarity with the migrants, but they have to grow andstrengthen to be able to beat the racists.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) say that workers migrate because of the same reasons, they facing a capitalist-made tragedy. That is why we organize to change this criminal system. The PLP in Mexico organized a collection of food and clothing to support the caravans, but mainly we have taken them our communist alternative: revolutionary politics in the form of literature demonstrating the need for workers’ power to overthrow all the capitalists.
The bosses’ racism and nationalism are capitalist strategies to hide exploitation and dispossession. The imperialists for centuries have carried out these crimes in the main regions of the world where the great waves of migrants come from: Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Migrants try to find a better place to live with dignity, but with the capitalist economies’ crises and the imperialist wars that they cause, this is becoming more and more difficult. The caravans of Central American workers, mainly from Hondurans, show the tragedy experienced by our class sisters and brothers who flee poverty, oppression and violence in their places of origin.If this were not the case, no one would expose themselves to the horror of crossing Mexico to reach the United States. During this journey many of migrant workers are robbed, abused, kidnapped to work as slaves or hit men, women are raped or sexually exploited.Many of our class brothers and sisters are killed by criminal gangs, others are extorted by immigration authorities and the police.
In addition, hundreds have died or been mutilated in the dangerous journey they make on the train known as the Beast. Others, get sick without being able to receive any kind of assistance. They do not receive aid because nationalism has encouraged the population to see the migrants as enemies, they are seen as the ones that take away jobs, and in effect, they work for less than the minimum wage and without social security, under the bosses’ threats of termination, or deportation.
Faced with the migration generated by the crisis of their system, the capitalists and their governments close the borders with their armies, police, their criminal bands and their borders, while fomenting racist hatred against the migrants. For this, they use their media to blame them for the increase in crime, to steal from local workers the precarious and nonexistent jobs, to break the laws.
Working-class solidarity
But, in spite of this racist campaign, workers demonstrated their solidarity in the communities where the caravans have arrived. Despite the precariousness with which they live, people organize themselves to receive their class sisters, they prepare food for them, they give them accommodation, they also provide them with medical care and clothes and support them with transportation.
This solidarity can become an internationalist class consciousness to unite the workers of the world to fight against the cause of their problems, the capitalist system.Migration is provoked because capitalism is an unequal system at the local and global level. In Latin America and especially in Central America, workers have suffered chronic and millennial misery, it is a region that produces mainly raw materials and cheap labor, the precariousness and scarcity of work together with the violence of criminal groups has forced the migration of hundreds of thousands in recent years, mainly to the U.S.
Migrants are part of the labor force that capitalists use to perform the worst jobs, the heaviest and the worst paid, which means super profits for the bosses. But that situation affects all workers because it causes a general decrease in wages and working conditions.Migration is a phenomenon that occurs between countries and within the same country. It may have a political or economic origin.
For example, in Mexico, thousands of families have been displaced from their places of origin by the violence of drug trafficking groups, by land conflicts, by lack of work and livelihoods, by armed or electoral political conflicts, or by religious conflicts. These problems are generated by the capitalists, because in addition to providing them with cheap labor, it ensures the division of the working class, which limits our class’ ability to fight and face the attacks of their system.
The expulsion of workers also allows bosses to control the territories to take over the land for the mines, the extraction of gas or oil, also of the lakes, forests and rivers, and the richness of the biosphere. Because of all this, capitalism will never be able to provide our class with a decent, and stable future. Only the working class can change our situation with a communist revolution. That way, we will crush all borders as well as all the racist divisions that separate us. Solidarity with the caravans! Crush anti-immigrant racism! Join the PLP!
