After weeks of vocal protest, Indiana Governor Mike Pence has begun to walk back his bigoted “religious freedom” law, which sanctioned refusal of service to customers based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Sexist Attacks
Members of the homosexual and transgender population are frequently targeted in sexist campaigns for violating gender norms. Forced to the margins of society, these people make easy targets to enforce the sexist order. Their persecution in Indiana will reinforce the persecution of women while dividing a potentially united working class.
Women are always targeted by the sexist anti-abortion movement. On March 30, under a 2014 amendment to the state criminal code, a judge in Indiana sentenced Indian immigrant Purvi Patel to 20 years in prison for having a miscarriage and abandoning her stillborn fetus (NYT, 4/1). This year to date, 235 bills have been proposed around the country to limit abortion rights. Many seek to criminalize pregnant women as well as doctors and clinics that provide for women’s health (RHRealityCheck, 3/31).
The attack on women is often intertwined with racism. In an atmosphere of surging anti-immigrant racism, Indiana has chosen Purvi Patel and Chinese immigrant Bei Bei Shuai to test the new law’s limits precisely because they are Asian immigrants. Once precedent is set with these prosecutions, the attack will be extended to all women.
New Southern Strategy
Governor Pence’s attack is an extension of the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy,” a 50-year-old campaign to appeal to the most reactionary elements in capitalist society. The strategy uses racist and sexist attacks on the working class to roll back the social safety net while escalating police violence in poor neighborhoods.
Capitalism needs scapegoats for the misery caused by their system. This is the ultimate goal of the Southern Strategy: white workers fighting Black workers, men fighting women, native-born workers fighting immigrants, straight people fighting gay people.
In 1981, Republican strategist Lee Atwater summed up the strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘n-----, n-----, n-----.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n-----’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct … is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites” (New York Times, 9/25/07).
Democrats quickly joined the game. In 1976, president Jimmy Carter vowed to protect “ethnic purity” in the U.S. and to oppose any mandate to integrate federal housing, a stand that helped him win the presidency. In 1992, Bill Clinton took time off from his campaign to fly back to Arkansas and personally oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally handicapped Black man. The gambit helped to swing a large portion of the white vote and enabled Clinton to “end welfare as we know it” as president. In 2009, Barack Obama, feeding the myth of a “culture of poverty,” castigated Black working-class youth for “aspiring to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne” rather than scientists or engineers (Reuters, 7/16/09).
The U.S. bosses’ effort to roll back the gains of the civil rights and labor movements has taken different forms over the last forty years. Black and Latin workers are gunned down in the streets by racist police — 111 people were murdered by police in March alone — or railroaded into a vast system of concentration camps. The U.S. prison and jail system, with more than two million inmates, holds the largest incarcerated population in the world.
During the economic crisis that began in 2008, 90 percent of U.S. workers have seen their income decline (EPI, 2/20/15). As banks were bailed out, workers lost their homes in record numbers. As the business community received record tax breaks and handouts, union membership has continued to decline. As salaries for top university administrators grow at a record pace, tuition hikes have created more than $1 trillion in student debt. Workers are rightfully angry, but it remains an open question as to who they will blame for their troubles.
Mike Pence may have overstepped with his religious freedom law, at least for now. Pence has deferred to his masters in the Indiana business community by demanding revisions to put a humanitarian face on the law. But workers should not be fooled. Only a united working class can hope to challenge the capitalist class. Only a communist analysis can give us the tools workers need for unity.

April 13 is “Katyn Memorial Day.” This is the day that Polish nationalists, and anticommunists everywhere, commemorate the alleged murder by the Soviet Union of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in April to May 1940 in the Katyn forest.
And IT DID NOT HAPPEN!
This is an anticommunist lie. It was invented by the Nazis in 1943, and taken up by all the capitalist powers during the Cold War.
In 1990 to1992 two fanatic anticommunists, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, “admitted” Soviet guilt.
I believed it myself for a few years. Then for a longer time I believed that “We just can’t know — there’s too much conflicting evidence.”
But now we know that this story simply cannot possibly be true. Much of the evidence for this conclusion is only available in Russian. One English-language article was published in August 2013:
“The ‘Official’ Version of the Katyn Massacre Disproven? Discoveries at a German Mass Murder Site in Ukraine.”
http://sdonline.org/62/the-official-version-of-the-katyn-massacre-disproven/
No communists or pro-Soviet people made the discoveries that utterly disprove the “Katyn” story. Polish and Ukrainian archeologists did that. They found things they never expected to find, and certainly hoped no one would ever find.
And now they are keeping quiet about it. Yes, the Poles, the Ukrainians, and the Russians too, are keeping this secret. This, the biggest World War II-related discovery of the past several years, is simply hushed up, a real “conspiracy of silence.”
“Katyn Memorial Day”, April 13, is a good day to tell the world:
“Stalin and the Soviets Are Not Guilty of Killing The 22,000 Polish POWs! They are innocent!”
This isn’t going to stop the anticommunists. Of course not! Since when have anticommunists cared about the truth?
Capitalist Poland has spent at least $500 million on hundreds of memorials all over Poland, and three of them in Russia. They aren’t going to allow a little thing like historical truth spoil their wonderful anticommunist orgy!
So we should do our best to spoil it for them. Today is a good day to tell the world:
“The so-called ‘Katyn Massacre’ Is An Anticommunist Fraud!”
Spread the word!

 This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Boston Summer Project, the first such project held by the Progressive Labor Party and its Party-led mass organization, the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR).
Forty years ago, Boston was one of the most segregated and racist cities in the country. The ruling class of Boston profited greatly from dividing workers along racial lines and many white workers bought into the racist ideas pushed by the politicians. It was dangerous for Black workers to enter all-white neighborhoods like Charlestown and South Boston. Black families who moved into white neighborhoods were attacked. Schools in Black neighborhoods were woefully underfunded and overcrowded; schools in working-class white neighborhoods were not much better. Racist covenants by white homeowners banned sale of homes to  Black families.
For years, Black parents and community organizations had fought for better schooling for their children. It was found that the city of Boston had engaged in a deliberate, systematic pattern of segregation of its public schools. Therefore, in 1974, Boston was ordered by a federal judge to desegregate its schools by busing Black children to schools in white neighborhoods and vice versa. Immediately, racist city council members Louise Day Hicks and Albert O’Neil organized a group called ROAR-Restore Our Alienated Rights, (which was more accurately nicknamed Racists on a Rampage) to protest the busing order. During the 1974—75 school year, ROAR organized mob violence against Black children bused into South Boston.
PLP decided to organize a project in the summer of 1975 to combat this blatantly racist violence. It began with our May Day march in Boston where we were physically attacked by a group of racists and soundly defeated them. Then the Party and InCAR sent more than 125 people from all over the U.S., mostly students, to Boston for the summer. Our activities varied. Some organized an anti-racist summer school for Black children who had lost considerable schooling due to a year of racist attacks. Others enrolled in courses in community colleges to spread ideas of multiracial unity. We held daily rallies against ROAR’s racist ideas and collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for multiracial unity, an end to mob violence and quality, integrated education for all. We went on the offensive against the local racists by fighting them physically again and again. There was a constant tension that permeated the city. By the summer’s end, we so weakened the power of the racist anti-busing movement that ROAR was defeated.
Then in September 1975, PLP and InCAR members rallied to greet Black children on the first day of school. The cops pushed us into a crowd of racists throwing stone at the kids. PL’ers turned their bullhorn on the racists with a message of multiracial unity.
For many, Boston ’75 was a defining moment in our lives. For some it marked an increased commitment to fight for a communist revolution. Even for others who are no longer members of Progressive Labor Party, it was a time of political commitment and activism that we can look back on with pride.
Today, capitalists are still building racist terror to prevent workers from uniting. We invite all antiracists to join us in celebrating May Day 2015. It is especially important now to learn about that movement since the ruling class rewrote history, and expunged the blatant racism of the anti-busing movement from the record.

I’ve been going to the B.P. Amoco picket line about every third day. I am a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) but not of their local. Other supporters from other locals have also come to the picket line. The striking refinery workers really appreciate this worker solidarity that brings into view the bigger picture of the struggle facing the working class as a whole. Like one picketer pointed out, “It is easy to honk your horn as you pass by, but it’s something very different to stop and picket in bitter cold weather.”
The oil industry in 2014 made over $90 billion in profit. The workers know the history of Rockefeller and Standard Oil and know that they are up against a ruthless set of bosses. For example, the first demand the company made to the union was for it to cease being the bargaining unit of the workforce!
The refinery is loaded with outside contractors who are crossing the USW lines and are minimally qualified. Some of the contractors are union members, but their leaders claim that they have to honor previous contracts to do certain jobs. The USW is playing by the rules laid down by the bosses.
The USW has produced a sign reading “Solidarity is Strength.”  But the most obvious example of solidarity is the strikers themselves. All the strikers meet at the union hall right across from the plant. They are assigned particular gates to picket. Drivers drop off and pick them up as needed. Hot food is always available at the union hall and canned goods are stockpiled there. Rank-and-filers put on a fundraiser of music and raffles to raise funds for the fightback and raised hundreds of dollars. Speakers called for keeping their rights and dignity on the job and won’t go back without it.
The workers speak of the refinery being understaffed and unsafe. Often four workers are assigned to a job, two working 12 hours and the other two working 12 hours as their reliefs. But if someone takes off, the other two-crew members have to work 18 hours to cover for the missing crewmember. Morale and safety go out the window. Twenty-seven refinery workers have been killed and hundreds hurt in the past five years. Close calls are a frequent occurrence. They work with highly explosive gases and chemicals. One fellow said that he has worked 12-hour days for 19 days in a row (see Red Eye, page 7 on bosses’ risking workers’ lives)!
The strikers are open to communist ideas. One worker upon learning that CHALLENGE was a communist paper said that, “I have some communist leanings and I will check this out.”  Many good discussions were held and contacts made. A strike is a good opportunity for workers to see who are their friends and who are their enemies. We will stay involved and make communism clearer to these striking refinery workers.