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No Free Speech for Racists! ANTI-RACISTS BATTLE KKK, KKKOPS
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- 10 March 2016 30 hits
ANAHEIM, CA, February 27—In a pitched battle with the Ku Klux Klan and their allies in the Anaheim Police Department, local anti-racists and the Progressive Labor Party suffered casualties but also served notice: No free speech for racists!
Leading a group of bold Black, Latin, and white anti-racists, PLP fought back against KKK scum who’d planned to hold a “White Lives Matter” rally. Emboldened by the openly racist filth spewed by the capitalist ruling class’s presidential candidates, KKK members felt they could intimidate Muslim and immigrant workers here. But when we heard about their planned rally, we determined to fight back.
Drawn by PLP signs that said “No Racism” and “Smash Racism with Multiracial Unity,” local anti-racists gathered around us. Party members and friends used a bullhorn to lead the group in anti-Klan chants. As we distributed CHALLENGE, comrades spoke about multiracial, working-class unity as the key to fighting racism and smashing capitalism. Others explained that the battle against the KKK was just one front in the fight against the kkkops and imperialist war. Other community members were invited to speak, including a mother whose son was murdered by kkkops.
No Honor Among Slime
While we were rallying, a black SUV pulled up. Half a dozen KKK racists, dressed in black uniforms with Confederate flags and iron cross patches, slimed out. When our large group confronted them, these racist thugs speared one anti-racist with an American flagpole. We cracked their car windshield and fought back against the vicious attack. Cowed by our militancy, three Klansmen drove off in their smashed car, leaving the other three gutter racists to fend for themselves. We beat them back, even as they continued to attack us with knifes. This sexist, racist gang was beaten by a multiracial group of women and men.
Throughout the attack, the kkkops did nothing to stop the Klansmen, who were allowed to walk away from the scene with bloody knives. We would not let them get away, and a few protesters confronted the fleeing cowards. This forced the kkkops to pretend to detain the Klansmen. But even when the cops finally took the criminals’ knives, they were laughing and joking with the Klan and protecting them in a cordoned-off area. While six Klan members and seven protesters were arrested, five of the Klan members were released within hours.
Sending Our Message
The aftermath? Some serious stab wounds, broken arms, ribs, and other injuries—some inflicted by Klansmen, some by kkkops. Plus three KKK thugs beaten and many more seriously intimidated. We sent a clear message: The working class will not allow our class brothers and sisters to be harrassed and attacked.
The police sent their own clear message as to whose side they are on. They defended the Klan, let most escape, and quickly released the few Klansmen they did arrest. The police are never there to defend the working class. They enforce the laws of the capitalist class, so it is no wonder they use and defend racism. Capitalism needs violent, racist intimidation to keep the working class divided and stop us from fighting back.
Anaheim has a long history of pro-Klan sentiment. Historically, many Klansmen have also been police officers or city officials. In the early 1920s, four of five City Council seats were held by Klansmen. “At the height of the group’s power in Orange County, nearly 300 Klansmen lived in Anaheim, patrolling city streets in robes and masks. A large KKK rally once attracted 20,000 people to the city” (Los Angeles Times, 2/29/16). Klan activity in Southern California is not ancient history. In 2003, an eight-foot cross was burned outside a Black resident’s home in Anaheim Hills. Within the past year, these cowards have left racist flyers on driveways in Whittier, Fullerton, and Santa Ana.
Our Proud History of Fightback
PLP has a strong understanding of the ties between the KKK and the police. We know the only way to stop the Klan is to fight back with organized violence. There is no such thing as a peaceful demonstration by a racist hate group. Even if they don’t throw the first punch, their racist speech directly leads to more attacks against Black, Latin, and immigrant workers.
For more than 40 years, Progressive Labor Party has organized to beat back these racist attacks. In 1975, in Boston, at a May Day march and summer project, PLP stopped racists from blocking and throwing stones at buses carrying Black students who were integrating white schools. The racists never showed their faces again. In 1978, in Chicago we led a multiracial march through so-called “Nazi territory,” broke into Nazi headquarters and closed it down. In 1999, in New York City, we infiltrated a KKK march and beat up its leader. They have not dared to march in New York City since.
These confrontations with the Klan and other racist groups are extremely important, but they are only the beginning of our larger fight. We must use these battles to build a mass movement for communist revolution. Only by smashing capitalism and replacing it with communism can we eliminate racism. A communist society will not tolerate free speech for racists.
Across the U.S., our local fightback has sparked conversations among workers of all kinds. To consolidate our political gains, we must hold rallies of solidarity and build anti-racist struggles. In New York City, students and workers are using fundraisers for the Anaheim fighters as a way to talk to friends, coworkers, family, and people on the street about anti-racism.
What we do counts for the international working class. The more we fight back, the more it encourages other workers to do the same. When workers witness heroic militancy, they respond with overwhelming support. No matter where you are in the world, you can spark anti-racist struggle and work to tear this racist system down. Join the fightback!
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For Vincent and Tamir, Fight Capitalist State Terror
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- 10 March 2016 32 hits
INDIANA—“Racism means we got to fight back!” This chant set the tone at the vigil and rally for the non-indictment of slain youth Tamir Rice and all victims of state violence.
In response to continuing racist, capitalist-created violence and government-sponsored terror, a communist-led Black Lives Matter group organized this fightback. Over 30 residents braved the below-freezing temperatures to stand in multiracial solidarity against police violence and the conditions that foster violence in our communities.
People lit candles and carried signs with the names and pictures of some of the countless victims of racist police terror across the country. Among the victims discussed was Vincent Smith Jr., a Black teenager in Gary, Indiana who was unarmed when police shot him in the head in 2006. Back then, PL’ers joined community protests to bring the cop to trial. After a sham trial, the murderer got away scot-free. Much like Tamir, Vincent was yet another Black child whose life was cut short by police terror with impunity. It’s a very old song that workers know by heart.
Planting Communist Ideas
PLP had put forth the political line that there will never be justice for working class people in a capitalist system that needs to exploit to survive. Comrades have been introducing CHALLENGE to members in Black Lives Matter and highlighting how KKKop murders, crimes, garbage school systems, etc. all have a common root: capitalism. We’ve used the pamphlet Smash Racism to show the history of how racism is used to oppress all people, while specifically strangling Black working class people, and how organizing as a party to fight racism and to end capitalism is the only way to win.
The people in our mass organization recognize the connection between capitalism and racist state violence. At the rally, people enthusiastically took CHALLENGE and initiated conversations about how the ruling class makes money from racism, poverty, and mass incarceration. Workers here in this mainly Black region are living the racist nightmare of poverty engineered by politicians and profiteers in a dead-end capitalist system. As we build in the local movement against police violence, protests like this one provide opportunities to bring the message of communism to the masses. It is also good training for bigger fightbacks!
QUEENS, NYC—At a film showing of Burn! a woman Emergency Medical Technician announced that TransCare had shut down and laid off nearly 2,000 EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers and others.
The workers received no warning and were told they were not getting paid for the last week they worked. To add insult to injury, many learned that the paychecks they received three weeks ago had bounced!
Lynn Tilton, owner of TransCare, will continue be a millionaire while capitalism burns workers’ livelihoods. The TransCare workers have no union and because they received no warning about the coming mass layoffs, were not prepared to take collective action. They began to scramble and do the little they could to protect themselves: file for unemployment benefits, file complaints with the Attorney General over the lack of notice, and contact lawyers about a suit against the company.
However, our TransCare comrade had another idea—organize workers to protest in front of the company’s office in lower Manhattan. So we decided to call a rally for two days later, write a flyer, post it on Facebook and contact as many TransCare workers as we knew.
Capitalism Burns Workers
Burn! depicts a revolution of slaves in the Caribbean during the 19th century. We realized that as the film Burn! perfectly illustrates wage slavery is a brutal system of exploitation, and like chattel slavery it only serves the interest of the capitalist class. We decided the rally would offer us many advantages in bringing our fight to the forefront but total eradication of wage slavery will only come to fruition under a communist system, moreover a communist system led by the PLP. This led to our talking about marching on May Day (Saturday, April 30)—the only true workers’ day where workers affirm their connection in the struggle for a world without racism, sexism and other forms of capitalist exploitation.
PLP fights with TransCare Workers
The first rally PLP organized drew only six workers and two supporters. Four days later, we had another rally, this time with a dozen workers and five supporters, including members of the CUNY faculty and staff union. Another rally is planned for next week.
Under capitalism, any company can shut down and throw their workers out onto the streets. So while we fight for back pay, we also need to explain to TransCare workers, and to CUNY students and professors, that we need to take state power.
Power will in the hands of working people women and men, who will carry out the task of using the wealth we create to provide everyone with the things we need: housing, health care, jobs that make use of our talents and interests, international cooperation of workers without wars and national borders, and the elimination of racism and sexism. March on May Day!
QUEENS, NYC—At a film showing of Burn! a woman Emergency Medical Technician announced that TransCare had shut down and laid off nearly 2,000 EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers and others.
The workers received no warning and were told they were not getting paid for the last week they worked. To add insult to injury, many learned that the paychecks they received three weeks ago had bounced!
Lynn Tilton, owner of TransCare, will continue be a millionaire while capitalism burns workers’ livelihoods. The TransCare workers have no union and because they received no warning about the coming mass layoffs, were not prepared to take collective action. They began to scramble and do the little they could to protect themselves: file for unemployment benefits, file complaints with the Attorney General over the lack of notice, and contact lawyers about a suit against the company.
However, our TransCare comrade had another idea—organize workers to protest in front of the company’s office in lower Manhattan. So we decided to call a rally for two days later, write a flyer, post it on Facebook and contact as many TransCare workers as we knew.
Capitalism Burns Workers
Burn! depicts a revolution of slaves in the Caribbean during the 19th century. We realized that as the film Burn! perfectly illustrates wage slavery is a brutal system of exploitation, and like chattel slavery it only serves the interest of the capitalist class. We decided the rally would offer us many advantages in bringing our fight to the forefront but total eradication of wage slavery will only come to fruition under a communist system, moreover a communist system led by the PLP. This led to our talking about marching on May Day (Saturday, April 30)—the only true workers’ day where workers affirm their connection in the struggle for a world without racism, sexism and other forms of capitalist exploitation.
PLP fights with TransCare Workers
The first rally PLP organized drew only six workers and two supporters. Four days later, we had another rally, this time with a dozen workers and five supporters, including members of the CUNY faculty and staff union. Another rally is planned for next week.
Under capitalism, any company can shut down and throw their workers out onto the streets. So while we fight for back pay, we also need to explain to TransCare workers, and to CUNY students and professors, that we need to take state power.
Power will in the hands of working people women and men, who will carry out the task of using the wealth we create to provide everyone with the things we need: housing, health care, jobs that make use of our talents and interests, international cooperation of workers without wars and national borders, and the elimination of racism and sexism. March on May Day!
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International Working Women’s Day FIGHT SEXISM, BUILD COMMUNISM
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- 10 March 2016 31 hits
As we mark International Working Women’s Day on March 8, the state of the world seems grim. Imperialist wars fueled by the U.S., Russia and China are intensifying. Capitalist economies are in crisis or on the brink. As always, instability in the profit system means more attacks on working-class women.
In Syria, a civil war manipulated by the U.S. and Russia has displaced millions of women. They are twice as likely to die from shelling or air strikes as men. In refugee camps in countries like Jordan, where women and children compose more than 80 percent of the population, they are at higher risk of sexual assault. Often they lack basic reproductive and sexual health services, resulting in higher death rates.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama is ramping up racist deportations of women and children who fled north to escape pervasive violence in Latin America—a result of two centuries of U.S. imperialism. Women are the majority of immigrants entering the U.S. on the “Train of Death.” An estimated 100,000 women per year are kidnapped into forced labor and, increasingly, sex slavery (Congressional Research Service, 7/29/15). The situation is worsening by the day. Drug cartels are shifting their operations into highly profitable global trafficking networks, while capitalist governments look the other way.
As for the immigrant women who survive the journey to the U.S. and now face deportation, what is waiting for them at home? A Zika virus linked to deadly diseases and birth defects, with capitalist health services promoting abstinence as the only solution.
Feminism vs. Fightback
In reaction to these sexist attacks, some women workers choose feminism and the dead end of identity politics. Millions are rallying behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan: “I’m with her.” They are being won to the dangerous idea that a woman president will somehow make things better for women workers—an echo of Obama’s election in 2008 as a “post-racial” president. Eight years later, Obama’s racist immigration apparatus has deported more workers than all previous presidents combined. His administration has murdered thousands of workers with drone strikes. He continued his Republican predecessor’s policies of forcing workers to bail out the very banks that profited most from the genocidal war in Iraq. These banks also evicted millions of workers, of whom a disproportionate number are Black workers, from their homes.
Here is the hard reality of the profit system: If elected, Clinton will do no more for women workers than Obama did for Black workers.
Internationally, the same trend holds true. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has failed to improve conditions for working women, who are stuck at 78 percent men’s income for comparable work, a ratio unchanged for the past five years (Deutsche Welle, 3/16/15). In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brutally suppressed striking railway workers and pushed their families out of their homes. In Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attacked striking miners, closed unprofitable industries and privatized those that remained.
Why is it that women politicians don’t make things better for working-class women? Merkel, Clinton, and Gandhi are allied with the capitalist class. The capitalists fund their campaigns and dictate their policies. Sexism means lower pay for everyone, for both men and women, and super-profits for the bosses. Men’s wages are depressed precisely because women’s are even more depressed. Sexism means that working families, and working mothers in particular, are overburdened by childcare and housework. Sexism means that women are a disposable labor force for the bosses. When the occasional woman attains a position of power, the bosses use this exception as another excuse to blame other women for being poor.
Above all, the capitalist bosses need sexism to exploit and divide the working class.
Communism Will Smash Sexism
And so: What is to be done? How can we eliminate sexism? Sexism is inseparable from class society. The only way to end it is to eliminate classes by creating a communist society, where all workers can contribute and have our needs met. Revolutionary victories of the past show us the potential of the future. In socialist China, prostitution was virtually eliminated. In the socialist Soviet Union, educational facilities at all levels granted equal access to men and women. (At the height of the Soviet era, 60 percent of engineers were women.) Maternity leave with full pay was universal; new mothers had no worry about losing their jobs. There were ample kindergartens, day care centers, nurseries, and playgrounds, as well as communal dining rooms. The concept of housekeeping as “women’s work” was abolished.
While the Soviet and Chinese revolutions made progress in many ways, they also had flaws we can learn from. They represent only the beginning of what we, the working class, can achieve in the future! This International Working Women’s Day, we must celebrate women as the holiday’s communist founders intended: for their historical contributions to building society and for their revolutionary strength.
But one day is not enough. We must dedicate ourselves to a lifetime of fighting sexism in our homes, at our jobs, and in the streets. In Pakistan, Progressive Labor Party is advancing the leadership of women in the fight against slave-labor working conditions for men and especially women. In PLP in Brooklyn, women are leading the fight for justice for Kyam Livingston, Shantel Davis, and Kimani Gray, all killed by racist and sexist kkkops. In PLP in Mexico, women comrades are at the forefront of the fight against racist education reforms and fascist state terror.
All around the world, waging anti-sexist battles is a way to put another nail in the bosses’ coffins. Help us bury the bosses and their profit system! Join PLP in the fight against sexism, racism, and capitalism. Let’s work together to create a communist society that meets all workers’ needs and frees us of exploitation. We have a world to win!
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What is International Working Women's Day?
International Women’s Day (IWD) is an international holiday on March 8 that celebrates women and their revolutionary power. It has strong roots in the communist movement. IWD first began in New York as “Women’s Day,” organized by the Socialist Party of America. In 1909, it became a commemoration of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In the 1910 international meeting of communist and socialist leaders, known as the Second International, women members pushed to establish an International Women’s Day. By 1911, more than a million workers were celebrating IWD. Anti-sexist struggle continues to make it an historic day for all workers, women and men.
During Czarist Russia, the struggle for working-class women became synonymous with the open call for overthrowing the government. During World War I, the Russian Bolsheviks made IWD a demonstration of women workers against imperialism. On March 8, 1917, the women of St. Petersburg sparked and led the February Revolution, which in turn paved the way for the October revolution and the first workers’ state.