SACRAMENTO, CA, June 23—At the State Capitol today, the communist Progressive Labor Party physically whipped the local Nazi scum while bringing red leadership to a mass of anti-racists.
The white-supremacist Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) and their arch-racist honcho, Matthew Heimbach (described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the new face of hate”), made the grave mistake of trying to rally by the Capitol building. In concert with dozens of anti-fascists, a PLP contingent ran toward the fascists to stop them in their tracks. The first clash left three anti-fascists with stab wounds but sent the cowardly racists running.
Based on our Party’s collective experience against similar cockroaches in Anaheim in February and in Charleston, South Carolina last summer, our comrades used wooden poles because we assumed the fascists might have knives. We were correct—and the poles punished the fascist scum. We pursued them down the street, beat them three more times and busted their car windows. The fascist TWP members were bloodied and defeated!
PLP understands that mass, organized revolutionary violence will be necessary for the working class to seize state power from the capitalist bosses. For now, we must treat opportunities to confront racist terrorists as training for the revolutionary period in the future.
Expose Racism, Long March to Communism
Before the planned TWP rally, a multiracial communist contingent of 18 PL comrades—students, workers, and retirees; women and men; Black, Latin, and white—marched onto the Capitol lawn, chanting, “Death, death, death to the Nazis! Power, power, power to the workers!” The presence of PLP was well-received by the many different anti-fascist groups along the sidewalk.
As the PL’ers distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets, an anti-fascist leader approached us and explained their main goal: to stop the fascists from leaving the parking garage and setting foot on the Capitol grounds.
The main goal for PLP was to defeat the fascists and build a movement for communist revolution to smash racism once and for all. We made speeches tying the kkkops, the Nazis, and the California State Legislature together as tools of the capitalist class. The role of the TWP is to win the white working class to attack their working-class sisters and brothers, scapegoating Black, Muslim and Latin workers for the spiraling crisis of capitalism. The role of the police is to protect the gutter racists on the street, the slick-talking racists in the government, and the suit-and-tie racists in the capitalist business world. The state’s Democratic Party, which has historically controlled California, led the way in racist mass incarceration, increasing the prison population by 572 percent between 1980 and 2010 (Washington Post, 5/18).
Our role as communists is to expose liberal racists like Hillary Clinton as the greater danger to the working class, as proven by her racist, sexist record against the working class as a U.S. senator and Secretary of State. If elected, Clinton will pave the way for inter-imperialist war by accelerating the rise of fascism in the rulers’ embattled profit system.
Red Discipline vs. Anarchy
After a scout reported that the fascists weren’t in the parking garage, we collectively decided to take the Capitol steps and make the scum come to us. They came wielding pepper spray. Anarchist forces successfully counter-attacked one fascist and then got into a skirmish with the police.
Instead of running around the Capitol lawn, the PLP contingent maintained discipline. Our friends played critical roles in the planning and execution of the strategy. Two young women helped lead chants throughout the day, and one young man was a part of the sub-contingent that slammed the racists. Their contribution was crucial to the quality of political leadership the Party was able to provide.
After witnessing our organization in action, a lefty leader told PLP to coordinate the crowd of 200 anti-fascists. A PL member gave a speech calling for a unified, organized march back to the Capitol steps to shut down the fascists. The crowd followed our leadership. Shortly thereafter, we advanced towards the fascists and bloodied them.
Coming after our successful action in Anaheim, this is the second battle the Party has waged against the fascist forces this year. Our comrades’ courage and boldness reflects PLP’s long history of beating, shutting down, and weakening the Ku Klux Klan, other racist organizations like ROAR, and racist bosses at our jobs and schools. Our power comes from our confidence in the working class’s ability to understand our ideas and fight for communist power.
She Joined the Reds
While anarchist fighters can be bold, they lack the revolutionary discipline and organization that comes only from communist leadership. For example, some militant fighters were injured because they thought they could defeat the fascists in isolated hand-to-hand combat.
Our battle in Sacramento showed one friend of the Party the necessity of organized collective action to defeat fascists. It showed another friend that “the Party provides the only clear path towards ending exploitation and building working-class power.” She has now joined PLP. Welcome the newest brave member of our Party, a woman whose leadership to and from the working class has just begun.
The TWP has announced that they will defend supporters Donald Trump, the openly racist U.S. presidential candidate, at the Republican Convention in Cleveland in July. Much as Brexit was promoted with virulent anti-Muslim racism (see page 2), the bosses use extreme racist groups like the TWP to divide and exploit the working class in the U.S. But with a small but rising communist PLP, the working class can oppose these fascist tendencies and unite as one class against capitalism.
PLP is organizing students, workers and soldiers into a red army that is capable of waging revolutionary war against the capitalist class and their state apparatus, from the police and military to the courts and mass media. PLP fights for a world where workers will control all aspects of society.
As communists, we understand that building a revolutionary movement for and by the working class requires organization, commitment to each other, and reliable leadership. We are building a mass party around the world—join the communists!
*************
I Joined the Party After Battling Fascists
During the planning meeting for the Sacramento Nazi rally, it was hard to comprehend what exactly it would mean to “shut down a fascist rally,” but I felt confident in the capacity and organization of the PL members sitting around the table. The older members showed a level of respect and confidence towards their younger comrades that I have never seen before during my time organizing in the mass movement.
The moment we began marching towards the state building it felt clear to me what we were doing and why it needed to be done. I felt strong knowing I was going into battle with PLP. As we marched on the sidewalk chanting, “death, death, death to the fascists! Power, power, power to the workers!” other anti-fascist groups appeared surprised by our brazen entrance.
My PL team’s role for the day was to lead chants on the megaphone, and to support the PLP team clashing with the Nazis in any way we could. It was an incredible feeling for me to get on the megaphone and scream out, “power to the workers!” and hear it echoed back hundred times louder.
The leadership of my group remained disciplined and focused during the most chaotic moments throughout the day, and they made decisions only after involving other group members in the process. It was this kind of Party discipline that kept us safe that day. No one was arrested.
The level of commitment, trust, and love for the working class that I’ve experienced throughout the last three months of working with PL members has made it clear that the Party is my only path towards fighting for a society free of exploitation and racism. I joined the Party after the rally and look forward to fighting for a communist world.
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I See Red Freedom Poles
This working-class poem, written by a fellow fighter with PLP, depicts the tumult and confusion preceding the clash of communists against the yellow-bellied fascist who were beaten with wooden poles.
The hot peppers
Caught in my throat.
Coughed out spices
Of warning.
Only to be
Mirrored by the reflections
Of my own
To protect.
Voices that came to gather
Soon forced
Bodies to separate,
To be gathered soon,
After
In different forces.
Black shadows
Against
Other black shadows.
Fist clashed
Against
Flesh.
Hard to depict.
Hard to understand.
Who is who?
What is What?
As confusion comes
I see
the RED freedom poles.
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Murderders! Teacher, Student Rebellion Shake Fascist State
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- 01 July 2016 44 hits
MEXICO CITY, June 28—As murderous capitalist rule in Mexico accelerates its decay into fascism, hundreds of thousands in the capital are protesting in solidarity with the teachers’ rebellion in the majority-indigenous state of Oaxaca. On June 19, at least ten workers were killed and dozens wounded after the cops opened fire on a group of teachers, students and other demonstrators blocking a major highway between Oaxaca and Mexico City.
Masses of rebels have taken the streets to protest racist President Enrique Peña Nieto’s education reforms. They were met by thousands of federal and local cops, as well as military forces equipped with riot gear, high-caliber weapons, planes, helicopters and tanks. The struggle is growing. On June 22, more than 200,000 doctors and nurses joined the teachers’ national strike to protest Pena Nieto’s Universal Health System reform, which they called a “disguised way of privatizing health in Mexico” (telesurtv.net, 6/21).
Progressive Labor Party is fighting with the working class in these battles. We are bringing communist revolutionary politics as an alternative to this capitalist hell that promotes relentless attacks on the working class and inter-imperialist war.
We call on all Party members to mobilize and protest at Mexican consulates in support of our class brothers and sisters in struggle. San Francisco and New York City comrades have responded with solidarity rallies (see more next issue). Workers: Struggles have no borders! Fight for communism!
Fighting the Terrorist State
More and more, the battles against racist cops and education reforms, which hurt indigenous and Black workers most of all, are becoming one fight against the ruling-class state apparatus. The rebels linked the murders of the protesting teachers to the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in the state of Guerrero.
Organized by the National Coordinator of Educational Workers, a militant branch of the national teachers unión, teachers in Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas have been on strike for a month to try to force the rulers to cancel the proposed education reforms. These bosses’ attacks would impose standardized testing and use teacher evaluations to discipline education workers, similar to anti-worker reforms in the United States. They would also severely curtail the influence of the teacher unions and threaten teacher colleges with a history of class-conscious fightback.
Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero are the poorest states in Mexico; Michoacán is the tenth- poorest. That says a lot in a country where the minimum salary is 73 pesos—less than four U.S. dollars—a day!
The bosses’ immediate objective is to crush the most militant sector of Mexico’s working class: the teachers, and especially the teachers in Oaxaca, long a combative force. Communists understand that an attack on one section of the working class is a forewarning of attacks on the whole working class.
Workers Block Oil Refinery
The massacre of teachers in Oaxaca reflects a mandate for the Mexican capitalists from their big-power imperialist masters in the U.S. and China, who are competing to control natural resources throughout Latin America.
In contrast to the well-publicized teachers strike, the bosses’ media are ignoring a recent insurrection in the Istmo de Tehuantepec, a region in Oaxaca State that includes the second-shortest route between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, after the Panama Canal. In the port of Salina Cruz, forces of resistance have blocked the entrance to the country’s biggest oil refinery run by Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company.
This area is of high economic, strategic and geopolitical importance—and a potential flashpoint of the rivalry between China and the U.S. After decades of trying to establish an industrial and logistics corridor, better known as the Transístmico, Pena Nieto inaugurated a wind farm in the Istmo (Milenio.com, 2/3/16), ignoring fierce opposition from teacher unions and indigenous groups that condemned the project as harmful to their way of life. As a report by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico noted, the prevailing model of wind energy development in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec “favors developers, limiting the benefits received by local communities and increasing social backlash against the projects” (Problemas del Desarrollos, July-September 2014).
On March 4, the Communication and Transportation secretary inaugurated the Autopista Mitla-Tehuantepec, a 40-kilometer road through the Sierra Madre Mountains (Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca, 4/3/16). In addition, a Transístmico train will connect Salinas Cruz, Oaxaca, with Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, creating a regional cluster of industry, including oil refineries. In June 2014, Pemex began building a pipeline to “allow for the transportation of cheap, clean and secure combustibles” (El Financiero, 1/27/15). The goal of Transístmico is to exploit the demand for transporting goods from the East coast of North America to China. Meanwhile, China will be able to further its interests in the petrochemical industry in Veracruz.
Fascist Control Aids Imperialist Aims
As a result of these high-stakes capitalist investments and the super-exploitation of local workers, resistance and repression are both concentrated in this area of Oaxaca state. The local and national authorities defend the criminal capitalist system, where blood, death and jail are the order of the day. They will stop at nothing to try to check the mobilization of rebelling teachers, students and parents. The Istmo is testament to the fact that control of the working class is crucial to the bosses’ imperialist aims.
Fascism is the natural outgrowth of global capitalism. It represents the intensification of the repressive and ideological forces to maintain the domination of the capitalist class. As R. Palme Dutt wrote in Fascism and Social Revolution, “The causes of fascism lie deep-rooted in existing society. Capitalism in its decay breeds fascism.” These rising fascist conditions are what we are witnessing today in Mexico.
This is not a local fight; it is part of a global class war. The teachers’ movement is directly confronting the bosses who are enriching themselves by exploiting and terrorizing the working class. This fight is crucial to the resistance against the capitalist state terrorists who have left hundreds of youth, teachers and farmworkers dead or disappeared. Our class is waging a crucial fight to create a “corridor” of struggle that will take us to the ultimate solution, a communist revolution.
SOUTH INDIA, June 21— A community organizer who shares Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) anti-racist outlook united Hindu and Muslim workers, countering India’s ruling-class arch bent towards fascism.
This struggle ensued when a follower of the Hindu religion placed a stone in the middle of a public street as a symbol of religious devotion. This was seen as provocative and Muslim workers were angered by this and were planning actions against it. This is during the Muslim religious month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast all day every day to commemorate the first revelation of their religious text, the Quran. Some Hindu workers were also beginning to mobilize. Tensions were high.
The community organizer immediately met with both the Hindu and Muslim workers. After some serious debate and struggle, they were able to resolve the conflict. This built more trust among the working class’s ability to solve problems without buying into the divisive bait of religious strife.
This set an example for others in this city to follow and for members and friends of PLP worldwide to follow as we continue to work to oppose racist exploitation and build unity against the different kinds of racism all over the world.
Using Religion to Divide Workers
The serious work of this fighter helped prevent a dangerous situation that could further feed the drive towards fascism. The right wing, nationalist government of prime minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is building fascism (all-class unity during a capitalism system in crisis) by breeding conflict and violence against the Muslim working class.
The capitalist system uses religious conflict, like they use other kinds of racism, as a way to exploit the working class and divide us. As the system moves closer to fascism, this conflict gets more intense. In India, the Modi government is taking this to new extremes, using people’s religious feelings to build fascism. Modi is well known for his anti-Muslim racism. When he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, his security forces stood by as over a 1,000 Muslims were slaughtered in 2002. The evidence was so strong that he ordered his security forces to allow this massacre, which the United States denied him an entry visa in 2005.
His anti-Muslim racism also didn’t hamper him from becoming prime minister of the country. His racism is no isolated incident. In fact, Modi’s BJP is the political wing of the extreme right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organization founded in 1925 and openly modeled on Mussolini’s National Fascist Party.
No Small Act
The actions of our friend might seem like a small act, but in many parts of India, violent conflict has broken out against Muslims and this is a part of the racist strategy to control not only the Muslim working class, but also the Hindu working class.
Sincere members of the working class can get tricked into fighting against our working-class sisters and brothers. As Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital: “Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.” Multiracial unity is fundamental to defeating capitalism.
Real communists today understand that no member of the working class can ever be free as long as there is any exploitation or oppression of workers from any group. That is why we try to win workers to a scientific understanding of the world, rather than a theological one. There are no real differences between Muslim and Hindu workers—our history and earthly fate are tied to each other and our level of class struggle.
Workers in India, and all over the world, must join with the Progressive Labor Party and build a worldwide movement for communism! You can get started by reading and distributing our local CHALLENGE!
Chicago, June 25—A passionate crowd of 30 PL’ers and anti-racist friends boldly rallied at the home of Jason Van Dyke, the kkkop who brutally murdered Black teenager LaQuan McDonald in October 2014. Organized mainly through women leadership and under the slogan “No Refuge for Racist Murderers,” the anti-racist fighters marched directly to Van Dyke’s house in the Archer Heights neighborhood, to drive home the message that a killer cop will not live in comfort while working people continue to live in terror by the capitalist state.
The rally began at noon, with bold anti-racist chants and a picket line meeting curious onlookers at an intersection not far from the house. As more participants filtered in, the multi-racial, multi-generational group began its march through the working class neighborhood towards his residence. There were some jeers and insults sent our way, but overall, the response we received, especially from the younger workers, was positive. Many on the block took videos with phones, and a number of them came up directly to us to take fliers and newspapers and learn more about the demonstration.
For the majority of the action, it was clear that we had caught the kkkops with their guard down. In fact, those of us towards the front of the march saw Van Dyke scurry into the house from where he was watering his front yard when he saw us approaching! However, as we continued our march back to our cars, the cops began their harassment tactics. A number of squad cars pulled up, with officers trying to intimidate the comrades with the bullhorns, saying we were “breaking the law.” We met their bulls*** tricks by chanting louder and refusing to allow the racist pigs to separate the marchers. They issued one of our comrades a citation, but all those present left the demonstration safe and empowered by our collective action.
No Safe Spaces for Killer Racists
The march culminated with us arriving at Van Dyke’s house, and driving a sign with the heading “Guilty of Racist Murder,” complete with the pig’s mugshot, in his front lawn. We continued to picket in front of his house as PL’ers on the bullhorn explained the connections between racist killer cops and capitalism. As PLP has consistently pointed out, the degradation and poverty that are inevitable under capitalism make it essential for the ruling class to unleash their attack dogs on workers when they eventually rise up to resist the system’s miserable conditions. Police murders are not the actions of “a few bad apples;” they are a necessary part of the ruling class’ strategy to control the working class through fear and violence. We see this especially in Chicago where, within the last five years alone, kkkops have killed 70 people, the majority of whom are Black and Latin.
No justice will ever come from a system that desperately needs police murder and other forms of violence against workers to maintain itself. Yes, Van Dyke was formally charged with murder but if he is convicted (unlikely), he’ll be characterized as an isolated bad apple, and state terror will go on as business as usual. If he’s acquitted, it will only lend more power to the idea that Chicago cops can kill young Black and Latin workers with impunity. Either way, the bosses’ racist apparatus will continue unchecked. The only way to forever get rid of police murders is to organize a mass international communist revolution that overthrows capitalism and establishes a worker-run society based on commitment and need.
Collective Struggle Leads to Bolder Action
The planning for this demonstration actually began a few months ago, when a comrade was made aware of Van Dyke’s home address. It was quickly decided that a militant, anti-racist action was essential for Party work in the area, and the event slowly but surely began to take form. Over this period, we met numerous times in meetings large and small as we struggled with our ourselves and our base members over the best ways to organize the action.
We had to challenge reluctance expressed in liberal ideas about “justice” under capitalism to the rational fear involved in marching directly on a kkkop’s house. We also had to sharpen our arguments as to why the event was a necessary step forward for not just us as communists, but for all anti-racist workers in the area in the struggle against racist police brutality and the capitalist system that requires it. We needed to promote the event to a broad audience, while never allowing our communist line to be watered down or the participants’ security to be compromised.
The march was a success by all of those involved. In the fight for communism, struggling with ourselves and with our base members is important for sharpening contradictions and building a stronger collective. Our action is a testament to this fact. To build off of the momentum, we’re already planning a follow-up social, the PL summer projects, and an even larger demonstration at the city’s Fraternal Order of Police Headquarters. We will fight to make these follow-up events successful because the world needs to know that there’s a better system out there for all—communism. Under communism there will be no refuge for racist murders! Dare to struggle, dare to win!
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Shantel Davis Four Years Later, No Justice Under Capitalism
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- 01 July 2016 42 hits
BROOKLYN, June 14—Today marked four years since the day that the NYPD brutally shot down Shantel Davis. A multi-racial group of about 30 PLP members and friends and some other community organizers congregated with Shantel’s family on the street corner where she was killed to commemorate her life and our four years of fightback. With heavy faces and tear-stained eyes, our collective stood with a myriad of white balloons. In the wake of four years of fighting back against tragedy, one theme remained present throughout the night: Justice for Shantel and all victims of police brutality means nothing short of communist revolution.
The rally began with bullhorn speeches by PL members, the Davis family, and the families of other members of the working class who have been murdered by the kkkops, such as Ramarley Graham, Mohamed Bah, and Anthony Baez. Speeches were bolstered by chants from the crowd of “Racism means we got to fight back!” and “We will never forget Shantel! We will always fight for Shantel!” in between. We then blocked traffic in all four directions of the intersection as we formed a huge circle in the center. As traffic piled up, drivers were told why we were there and they stood in support. More remarks were made over the bullhorn as members of the neighborhood looked on and recorded the spectacle of a multiracial group of protesters on their phones.
Shantel’s sister delivered a particularly heartbreaking speech. She thanked PL and all in attendance for their extended support in the fightback against this grave tragedy. Her sister had been callously killed on false pretenses, shot in the chest while begging for her life, and her family hadn’t even been afforded the opportunity to properly grieve. Their first task had been to reverse the smear campaign set out by the bosses’ media, which was set in motion immediately after her death, describing Shantel as a criminal monster. Anything to try to convince the community that it was a necessary and justified killing! The reality is that it is the NYPD acting as the neighborhood thugs, violently instilling fear in the working class. In fact, the detective who killed Shantel is particularly known as a menace in the neighborhood—“Bad Boy” Atkins.
Shantel’s sister ended her speech choking past tears, with the words, “I just don’t know what to do anymore…” This speaks volumes about what capitalist “justice” means—there is none! Over the past four years, she has become an incredible, strong leader in the fightback movement against police brutality, but this is what a fight for reform, for a “fix” to the justice system, does to working class morale. Only communism smashes the racism that built this system, and so only the long-term fight for that world can keep us feeling that we can win. PLP knows what to do—and the families of kkkop victims are being won to that idea.
In the months immediately following Shantel’s murder, a group of misleaders tried to convince Shantel’s family that in order to get justice for their sister, they shouldn’t be too militant, as it would make it harder to win within the legal system. These anticommunists “cautioned” Shantel’s family that we in PLP were there for “our own reasons” and we “didn’t really care about Shantel.” 4 years later, the politicians have disappeared and it has become obvious that winning within the legal system is a myth. While the misleaders preached a “behind-the-scenes” approach, we fought for and won Shantel’s sisters to the strategy of organizing a justice committee, along with some of their close friends, to fight back militantly.
The struggle to move our marches from the sidewalks to the streets came out of a bigger political struggle to see that the biggest wins could only come from showing our strength as a multi-racial group fighting back in the streets, to see the courts and politicians as part of the same system as the cops—and to see their fight as part of a bigger working class fight, even if they never see capitalist “justice” for their family member.
This evening ended on a note of hope. We released our white balloons decorated with notes: ‘Justice for Shantel’, ‘We will always fight for Shantel; ‘Fight for Communist Revolution’. One comrade made this poetic observation as the balloons floated into the sky: “They’ve gone so far, and they’re still sticking together.” Let us take this metaphor as a reminder of how we must fight daily to strengthen our force of multi-racial working class unity, build PLP and work towards revolution, so one day we may all receive justice.