…Not only are conditions worse today than they were during Attica,… Attica once again…. is synonymous with prisoner resistance.
—Heather Ann Thompson, history professor at the University of Michigan, (Jacobin, 9/9)
NEW YORK, September 9—Forty-five years ago, Black imprisoned workers led their white and Latin counterparts in a rebellion against the racist deplorable conditions at Attica prison in northwestern New York State. Today prisoners nationwide are organizing once again. Capitalism is a never-ending disaster. For workers, students and prisoners worldwide only communism is a solution: a world without racism, sexism or imperialist wars.
Concentration Camp
In September of 1971, the conditions at Attica prison in the northwest corner of New York State were brutal. Inmates suffered from starving bellies, untreated infections, falling teeth, lack of toilet paper, and showers only once a week often without any soap (Jacobin, 9/9). With about 2,300 inmates, Attica was overcrowded to almost twice its capacity. The prisoner population was 54 percent Black, 9 percent Puerto Rican and 37 percent white. All 383 guards were white.
So the prisoners organized. They read Marx and Frantz Fanon. They formed the Attica Liberation Faction uniting different political groupings. They had educational rap sessions in the prison yard. They put together demands for improved conditions and sent them to state, city and prison officials. All demands for change by the prisoners were ignored.
Rebellion
After a prisoner fought back against a brutal guard, the prison bosses ordered a crackdown that led to a violent fight. The prison guard was beaten and eventually died. But a small group of more politicized prisoners immediately changed it into an organized rebellion. Meetings were held, demands were discussed and formulated, and leaders were chosen. A central part of the prison called Times Square was fortified. They chose a negotiation committee. They figured out how to feed 1,300 people and obtained medical care for those most in need.
Rockefeller’s Fascist Savagery
But New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller and various authorities were not interested in negotiations. They had a two-pronged racist strategy: spread vicious lies about the rebellious prisoners and viciously attack them as soon as possible. Both the media and various officials spread racist lies about supposed atrocities committed by the rebels, including slitting the throats of the hostages. The attack by the state involved hundreds of state cops, National Guardsmen, and both current and former prison guards. They were handed weapons from a supply truck without regard to serial numbers and they had their own personal weapons.
Road to Mass Incarceration
The attack started with a gas that incapacitated the rebelling prisoners. This was followed by fifteen minutes of indiscriminate shooting that slaughtered 29 prisoners and 9 guards. After the prison was totally secured, four more prisoners-leaders of the rebellion- were hunted down and killed. That was followed by vicious beatings, torture and no medical care. Heather Ann Thompson: “In the aftermath is when the real brutality begins. The doctors are trying to help prisoners, while guards are dumping them off of stretchers, kicking them, urinating into wounds, making the most horrific scene unfold.” (Democracy Now, 7/9).
President Richard “Nixon repeatedly assured Rockefeller he did the right thing, because Attica was “the Blacks,” and part of a nationwide conspiracy by the communists and Black radicals to undermine [U.S.]” (truth-out, 9/9). Within a year, Rockefeller enacted a law that formed the seeds of the “war on drugs” (racist war on workers) operation.
Attica scared the bosses, and they reacted with more terrorization of the Black and Latin working class. In 1970, the year before Attica, there were nearly 200,000 people in prison. By 2015, that number to 2.3 million people, a 400 percent increase in the rate of incarceration (Five-Thirty-Eight, 2/12/16).
Attica is a symbol of working-class rebellion and viciously racist aftermath. Attica today means fight back against racist state terror.
Prisons can be a site of struggle and fightback. At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan 400 prisoners protested today to commemorate Attica. And more are organizing again against deplorable prison conditions throughout the country. Nationwide protests are growing against racism and sexism. More than ever, we need to fight for communism to end these capitalist atrocities once and for all.
Phyllis Schlafly, presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hero, a leading architect of conservatism in the twentieth century died in early September. Schlafly was a committed anti-communist, racist, and sexist. But, what she is known for the most is her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would have banned denial of rights due to sex. Schlafly campaigned against the ERA, and won many working women to join the fight, arguing a women’s place is in the house with the kids. Of course, this denies the reality of the millions of working class women who worked. However, it maintained the ruling class lie that working was optional for women, and helped them keep women’s pay low.
Sexism, like racism, is a necessary part of capitalism. Women still earn less than men (79 cents to every dollar men earn,) and that pay differential leads to tremendous profits for the bosses. While the ruling class has allowed some changes for women (the right to vote in 1920, the ability to open bank accounts or get a mortgage without a husband’s approval in the 60s and 70s), these have not changed the economic reality for most working-class women.
Schlafly helped build the conservative wing of the Republican party, which brought us the trickle-down economics of Ronald Reagan and the consolidated racist politics of the party since the 1960s. She helped build a movement to counter working-class fightback. Schlafly is a clear example how ruling-class women are perpetrators of sexist oppression for the working class.
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No Honor Among Imperialists Widening War in Syria
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- 01 September 2016 350 hits
Turkey’s August 24 assault on northern Syria, its first direct involvement in a five-year-old proxy war, points to even more instability in the Middle East—and U.S. imperialists’ precarious position there..
Turkey’s bosses, who are critical to U.S. control over the region’s vast oil reserves, have become unreliable allies. By sending tanks and troops into Syria and authorizing airstrikes over the border, Erdogan has “transformed this horrific war into a completely unpredictable battlefield” in which “the Russians would seem to have gained the most” (Der Spiegel, 8/26). The threat of a global conflict is closer to reality, as noted by the main-wing U.S. bosses’ mouthpiece of choice, the New York Times:
Because Syria has sucked in two of the world’s leading military powers, Russia and the United States, [the situation] could most likely be cleared only by a full-scale invasion. In the best case, this would require something akin to the yearslong American occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan. In the worst, invading a war zone where so many foreign adversaries are active could ignite a major regional war (NYT, 8/26).
For the millions of workers murdered and displaced in Syria, the horror of wider war is already a reality. Rival imperialists in the U.S., Russia and China are seeking to divide and conquer the world. With smaller imperialists like Iran and Turkey armed to the teeth on the big powers’ behalf, workers in these countries are slaughtered, forced to fight in the bosses’ interests, or turned into refugees.
Regardless of the nation, large or small, capitalists have no allegiance to the working class—including workers within the bosses’ borders. Their only loyalty is to the profit system—to control over markets and resources, and to racist, sexist super-exploitation. Communists in Progressive Labor Party have but one allegiance: to liberate the international working class by smashing the capitalist class, along with their borders, imperialism and racist police terror. Our aim is armed revolution by a working-class red army.
Why Turkey Matters to U.S. Imperialism
Bordering Greece to the west, Syria to the south, and Iraq and Iran to the east, Turkey bridges the Middle East with southeastern Europe and central Asia, and links the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. Controlling this vital crossroads was U.S. imperialism’s top priority after World War II. In 1947, when a communist-led armed insurrection against British and U.S. imperialism in Greece inspired workers across Turkey, the U.S. poured in money and weapons to strengthen the Nazi-like Turkish bosses.
In return, Turkey’s rulers condemned thousands of communist-led workers to prison, then helped the U.S. build its imperialist NATO military alliance. Turkey is now the Middle East’s largest economy and fields the second largest army in NATO, behind the U.S. The recent U.S. “peace” deal with Iran was intended to buy time for U.S. bosses to withdraw from the Middle East and rebuild its military, leaving Turkey’s bosses as their well-armed stand-in (CHALLENGE, 2/10). As explained by George Friedman, arch-imperialist advisor to the Pentagon, noted, “The only country capable of being a counterbalance to Iran and a potential long-term power in the region is Turkey” (Stratfor, 11/24/14).
The Turkish bosses’ recent actions call into question these long-term plans. Day by day, U.S. imperialism seems to be reacting to events more than controlling them. Capitalist “allies” constantly fall out; any unity is temporary.
No Honor Among Thieves
On August 9, using alleged U.S. complicity in the aborted July coup in Turkey as a pretext, Erdogan visited his “dear friend,” Russian president Vladimir Putin, and promised to restore diplomatic and economic ties. On August 21, Turkey’s government suggested Russia’s military “might also wish” to use Incirlik Air Base, a critical NATO facility and the decades-long home to a U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal (Anadolu News, 8/20). Days later, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to meet with Erdogan and “smooth over” tensions (NYT, 8/25). Biden was snubbed, however. He was met at the airport by only the deputy mayor of Ankara, Turkey’s capital city. Unknown to the U.S., Turkey had already begun its invasion of Syria (Asia Times, 8/26).
Michael Maloof, a senior analyst in the U.S. Defense Department during the 2003 Iraq genocide, believes that Erdogan “has given up on NATO and even the EU and is pivoting more towards the East” (rt.com, 8/18). It remains to be seen how far Turkey’s bosses will go in playing U.S. and Russian bosses off against each other, as they did Allied and German bosses during World War II. What’s clear is that a Russia-Turkey alliance—and Turkey’s acceptance of Syria President Bashar al-Assad staying in power in a “transitional” role—could make it appear “as though the United States is the lone irrational outlier in Syria...However Russia responds to Turkey’s proposals, it will help determine the trajectory of the Syrian conflict” Stratfor (8/12/16).
In any event, the U.S. bosses have every reason to be nervous. In their eagerness to save face and downplay any splits with Turkey, a U.S. State Department spokesperson maintained that Biden and Erdogan had a “good and fruitful meeting”—one full day before they actually met (Sputnik News, 8/24).
Build PLP to Smash Imperialism
The proxy clash between U.S. and Russian imperialists over Syria has already created the largest refugee crisis in history. While U.S. imperialism stands in relative decline versus a resurgent Russia and a rising China, it still far outmatches them in military strength. The U.S. bosses will not give up their empire without an all-out war.
Meanwhile, smaller-scale capitalists in organized crime prey on vulnerable workers with impunity. The United Nations has documented women workers facing systematic rape, sexual abuse, and abduction in refugee camps. Gangs are selling pre-adolescent girls to wealthy men in Jordan, or burning their faces to make them undesirable to criminal militias backed by the U.S., Russia and Iran (Guardian, 7/25). Thousands of young men are conscripted at gunpoint as cannon fodder for those same militias.
The tasks of communists and friends of PLP include raising these ideas and selling CHALLENGE at our workplaces. Every CHALLENGE subscription sold is another nail in the bosses’ coffin. We must organize study groups to analyze a world in which every sharpening attack on our class is connected to inter-imperialist rivalry. Further, we need to organize rallies in solidarity with our class sisters and brothers in the Middle East. The more communist ideas become mass ideas among soldiers, students and workers, the more we can take these ideas all the way to seizing state power—to free our class once and for all!
The flash flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, home to the July rebellion following the racist police murder of Alton Sterling, is a capitalist disaster. The floods expose both the bosses’ rotten profit system and the working class’s potential to run society without exploitation.
More than 7,000 have been made homeless and are trapped in over-crowded shelters. Thirteen have died and 100,000 homes were damaged. Altogether, 400,000 people were devastated by the floods. Every one of them is a victim of capitalism.
“Natural” Disasters are Preventable
Nature may create massive downpours, but capitalism—a system run by and for the bosses—creates the disasters. After a historic 1983 flood of the Baton Rouge area, the result of an improperly built highway bridge, politicians and government agencies made promises to prevent future problems. But since the capitalist bosses don’t view infrastructure for the working class as a lucrative source of profits, nothing happened. “Local officials began taking steps to improve flood protection systems such as raising highway bridges, upgrading levees and even approving a tax to fund a portion of the project by 2000. However, those efforts were not sustained” (veoci.com, 8/25).
The Comite River Diversion Canal could have protected people and homes, but the project—despite funding by workers’ taxes since 2001—has been delayed for more than 30 years. This isn’t new technology. The human species has been cutting canals since Mesopotamia around 520 BC.
Media Blackout, Government Disregard
To avoid distractions from the patriotic zeal of the Rio Olympics, the capitalist media has mostly ignored the worst U.S. disaster since Superstorm Sandy in 2012. As the New York Times’ public editor admitted, “No doubt this is a busy news period….But a news organization like the Times…surely can find a way to cover a storm that has ravaged such a wide stretch of the country’s Gulf Coast.”
The local bosses in Baton Rouge were no better. One resident. Linda Smith, said there were no effective warnings: “We got no calls, no texts, no nothing.” No one was evacuated from the area before the most serious rainfall began.
This disregard is blatantly racist. Black workers in Louisiana have an official unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, more than twice the rate for white workers. Baton Rouge, the state capital and a majority Black city, ranked first in the U.S. for HIV and AIDS case rates in 2013. The vast majority of these cases are in the segregated Black working-class neighborhood of north Baton Rouge, where one-third of Black workers live below the poverty line, and only 46 percent of Black men have graduated from high school (New York Times, 7/11).
Eleven days after the flooding began, President Barack Obama praised the notoriously negligent Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 2005, during deadly Hurricane Katrina, FEMA stopped rescue missions and food from reaching families and put people in trailer homes with toxic levels of formaldehyde. More than a decade later, people are still living in these poisonous tin cans!
Learning From Katrina
Some flood victims in Baton Rouge may have already suffered from the racism during Katrina; the city provided refuge for displaced families from New Orleans. Katrina exposed the racist core of capitalism, and how the bosses use disasters for the working class as an opportunity to develop fascist policies for the not-so-distant future. Understanding Katrina can prepare the working class for what to expect and fight today.
The capitalist class and their politicians turned the unnatural disaster Katrina into the mass murder of more than 1,400 mostly Black workers. New Orleans was treated as a war zone. Liberal politicians like Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic presidential candidate, called for expanding FEMA’s powers and withdrawing troops from Iraq for deployment in New Orleans. Military units were brought in to protect private property and join the police in harassing what was left of the city’s Black population.
But Black workers and youth took matters into their own hands. They provided water, food, diapers and rescue efforts for families and neighbors. This was working-class collectivity at its best. Meanwhile, the racist capitalist media condemned the workers as looters and violent criminals.
In solidarity with workers in New Orleans, Progressive Labor Party led a summer-long project with political actions, cleanup, and communist ideas, all while the city was still under military occupation. In other cities, PLP organized relief efforts and spread communist politics among refugees in Texas and the Midwest. We mobilized hundreds of workers to attack the liberal bosses’ plan to expand the military occupation. Our slogan: “From New Orleans to Iraq, the working class must fight back!”
Our work in New Orleans taught us how to strengthen solidarity with our working-class sisters and brothers in Baton Rouge. We are following the leadership of these workers, whose instinct for collectivity is apparent as they organize food, shelter and support for each other. As education workers and students head back to school in cities where our Party has concentrations, we can expose the racism of capitalism by making Baton Rouge a center of fightback.
Black Workers’ Revolutionary Leadership
In July, thousands of workers and youth in Baton Rouge rebelled against the local police murder of Alton Sterling. Sterling’s murder was no accident. As one Black worker told PL, “The police who shot him knew him. Knew who he was. These were the same police that always patrol the neighborhood. They knew what they were doing.”
The task of Progressive Labor Party is to help open the floodgates of working-class revolt and channel it toward communist revolution. Baton Rouge is yet another example of Black workers playing the lead role in our multiracial fight for an egalitarian world.
BALTIMORE, MD, August 14—Members of the Progressive Labor Party, along with students and workers in Baltimore, are waging an aggressive fight against the police murder of Black and Latin lives and the capitalist system that generates such injustices. Together with our friends, we have been part of the citywide protests against the police murder of Freddie Gray and the weekly Wednesday rallies for Tyrone West. On Saturday we joined a multiracial group of protesters that included the Baltimore Bloc, the City Bloc, and others, in marching through Artscape, the city’s arts festival. These protests have been militant in nature-with many arrests at the July 16 and today’s protests. We are showing that this racist system has to go and the working class will not stand by while the cops murder our sisters and brothers.
Korryn Gaines: Murdered by KKKops
This message of fightback is critical in Baltimore, where the cops and politicians have shown wanton disregard for Black and Latin lives. On August 1, in a racist and sexist act, the Baltimore County police murdered Korryn Gaines, a 23-year-old Black woman, and shot her 5-year-old son when they went to her home to serve an arrest warrant for a missing license plate!
Not too long ago, a Baltimore judge acquitted three cops, and prosecutors then dropped charges against the rest of the racist police gang who murdered Freddie Gray on April 12 last year. This outrage occurred at the same time as the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Filled with rage at these injustices and countless others worldwide, we took to the street, joining hands with students and workers to bring revolutionary changes.
Protesters Defy Orders
As expected, the police state apparatus came well prepared to smash our fight back. When some demonstrators used a decoy protest to march onto the I-83 ramp (closed for Artscape) and then moved onto the northbound lane of the Jones Falls Expressway to block traffic, they were tricked by the cops. The cop had asked them to let an ambulance through, and when they complied, they found out that the “ambulance” was the police and their wagons! The protestors didn’t let this stop them however; they militantly locked arms in defiance of police orders to stop!
Turning Arrests into Talks of Communism
Echoing the escalation of police terror in the mass roundup of protestors in Baton Rouge, dozens of cops encircled everyone, including onlookers, legal observers, and photographers. None were allowed to leave. Police then swept up everyone in a mass arrest of 65 residents, including 10 youth. All were handcuffed, kept in vans in the heat, without water for 7-14 hours, and eventually released with fines and citations.
While detained, a young member of Progressive Labor Party successfully helped turn that awful situation into its opposite, into something positive. He and the five others in that particular wagon talked quite a bit. The young comrade helped everyone gain valuable insights about state power today, explaining how the police, jails, government and courts are really a system of organized violence to suppress the working class. He also contributed another very important understanding, that the working class can and must smash this capitalist state, and build a state of a new type, run exclusively by the working class, to lead a communist society in which we will struggle successfully to completely defeat the legacy of huge inequities and, in their place, achieve a fully egalitarian world!
Turning Reform into Revolution
Although militant in their actions, some protestors called for reformist measures to end police brutality. Some demanded that citizens be added to internal police trial boards because the community has a “right to self determination and a right to have an impact in the process of bringing a sense of justice… into their own community.” Some protesters also called for a “reallocation of 10% of the policing budget away from militarization of local police forces and mechanisms of community control and surveillance and towards community programming.” These demands are similar to those of the mass struggle to bring about police reform at the state level during Maryland’s legislative session this year. But those efforts, which engaged hundreds in protests, press conferences, and lobbying, led to only minor changes in the laws that protect the police from being held accountable.
The capitalist bosses and politicians will not rein in the racist cops that protect their exploitative system through violence and intimidation. Instead, PLP members fight for a world without prisons and racist police. That can only be achieved through communist revolution. As a result of the PLP’s engagement in these struggles, these revolutionary, communist ideas have begun to enter the consciousness of many who never considered them before
Say No to Capitalist Masters
No reforms under capitalism can eliminate racism, state sanctioned police intimidation and brutality, or the profiteering system that keeps these in place. The growing movement against the police and racism is facing a ruling class ever more desperate to heighten racism and support “law and order.” Listening to Trump and his supporters reminds us of the “tough on crime” rhetoric of Republicans Reagan and Nixon that ushered in the War on Drugs and the era of mass incarceration, followed by Democrat Bill Clinton’s 100,000 more cops and “Three Strikes and You’re Out” that accelerated mass incarceration and criminalization. Democratic and Republican politicians agree on serving their capitalist masters by deepening racism and repression in the service of maximum profits. Revolutionary leadership from PLP must expose both parties as they hypocritically call for reform. We must lead the working class to the conquest of state power through communist revolution.
