NEW YORK CITY — Never let it be said that the liberal politicians and their appointees don’t serve the needs of the ruling capitalist class as well as or better than the conservatives. William Bratton, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s choice for police commissioner, is a perfect example of this.
 Under capitalism, we are taught that the job of the police is to protect “society” from serious crime. But because capitalism is based on the exploitation of a large group of workers by a tiny minority of bankers and bosses, the rulers need a group of armed cops to help them enforce their aims. The real role of the police is to protect private property and serve the capitalists. This includes using terror to intimidate sections of society which are dissatisfied with the status quo of a few billionaires dictating to the rest of us.
Mass Protests Hit Cops’ Racist Murders
In the wake of an epidemic of police killings, a mass upsurge of protests engulfed NYC, the whole U.S. and the world. Mass hatred of racist murders by the cops, and class love for our brothers and sisters who were struck down, provided the spark for this movement. In response, Bratton recently announced a two-pronged program to “fight terrorism and improve community relations” (NY Times 1/30/15). Under this program, the NYPD “will spend more time visiting with community members to learn their concerns.” The idea here is to win workers to side with the cops in the sharpening debate over racist police terror.
At the same time, the NYPD will create a “heavily armed unit to patrol the city and to respond to large-scale events, such as protests or terrorist attacks” called the Strategic Response Group (SRG). Cops assigned to the unit “would be equipped with heavy protective gear and machine guns and receive advanced training in counterterrorism tactics and “advanced disorder control” (NYT, 1/30). Workers must see this for what it is: a dangerous move by the NYC bosses.
Remember, it was Bratton who claimed that anti-police brutality demonstrators were partly responsible for the murder of two cops in Brooklyn by a mentally unstable man who later committed suicide back in December (NY Post, 12/22/14). It was Bratton and de Blasio who blasted demonstrators’ calls for the death penalty for Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO., and for the Staten Island cops who killed Eric Garner.
The openly fascist SRG unit is not mainly designed to go after ISIS supporters in the U.S.
From the rulers’ point of view, in order to create a larger base of support for imperialist war, they need to paint workers from the Middle East and South Asia as the enemy. And if they can win workers to equate militant rebellion against racist conditions in the U.S. with “terrorism,” so much the better for them.
Bosses Equate Anti-Racist Rebellion with ‘Terrorism’
 But the reality is — under the cover of “the fight against terrorism” — the SRG is an attack on militant anti-racists and communists who give leadership to those fighters. By lumping “protests” with “disorder control” and then with “terrorism”, Bratton & Co. continue to implement the ruling-class strategy of using “homeland security” to justify fascist measures.
While the cops, the politicians, and the big bosses who stand behind them continue to use a “carrot-and-stick” approach, make no mistake that the last thing the U.S. ruling class needs as they prepare for war against their imperialist rivals is a vibrant, growing anti-racist movement that is challenging the whole nature of policing under a viciously racist capitalist system. However, the rulers are going all out to try to pacify or buy off as many workers as they can with reforms and politicians. But they are holding their rabid dogs for when they need them to crush any future uprisings against police terror, mass racist unemployment, poverty wages and lousy working conditions. SRG is a step towards that.
Although our numbers may be small now, the ideas of PLP have broad appeal to the masses. Workers who have fought back have earned the bosses’ wrath. But the bosses’ attempt to clamp down on dissent will backfire, exposing what their “democracy” really means for workers. Join the fight against racist police terror by joining the fight for communist revolution.

NEW YORK CITY, March 18 — I joined several comrades at the City Univeristy of New York Graduate Center to hear a professor from Mexico. He was representing the parents of the 43 students from a rural teachers college who were kidnapped in September 2014 and never found. Since tens of thousands of disappeared people have turned up dead in the last decade, the parents dread they will never see their children again.
The teachers college, in the town of Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero, admits students from poor backgrounds, trains them to become teachers, and sends them back to their community to educate others. The college views teachers not simply as transmitters of knowledge, but as agents of social change who will join with workers and peasants to demand a better life. When they were kidnapped, these students had been rallying for more funding for their college, just as students and faculty at CUNY are demanding more funding now.
What I found most admirable about the professor’s talk were his repeated calls for a revolution in Mexico to — in his words — “end the exploitation of man,” referring to the corporations and the politicians who serve them. He said the parents had no faith in any of the bourgeois political parties and that all of them “should be dumped in the trash can.”
On May 4, 1886, in what led to the first May Day, 80,000 workers marched down Michigan Avenue to Haymarket Square in Chicago to demand a reduction in their workday from ten hours to eight with no loss of pay. We’re often told that people can’t change. But one of the leaders of that march was Albert Parsons, who as a teenager had fought for the Confederacy — that is, he’d fought for slavery, on the opposite side of Harriet Tubman. After the war, however, Parsons moved to Texas, worked with ex-slaves and dramatically changed his outlook. He became an advocate for equal rights for former slaves. He also married a former slave, Lucy, who became an important radical activist in her own right.
Albert Parsons was among four trade union leaders hung in 1887 after being falsely convicted of throwing a bomb at the Haymarket Square rally. He was targeted because he was a well-known socialist and anarchist who edited The Alarm, a newspaper whose banner headline read: “Workingmen of All Countries, Unite!” In the week before he was executed, Parsons advised his followers, “Lay bare the inequities of capitalism; expose the slavery of law; proclaim the tyranny of government; denounce the greed, cruelty, abominations of the privileged class who riot and revel on the labor of their wage-slaves.”
Like the students and teachers in Mexico, Albert and Lucy stood for something more than reforms. They believed in bringing to birth a new society, one that would end class exploitation — a society where we share the fruits of our labor.
A friend  of mine is one of the hardest-working, most determined young people I know. Tragically, her mother died when she was young and her life has not been easy. Yet she’s worked hard and well as an Emergency Medical Technician. She would like to go to college and get her degree, but it’s been difficult for lack of money and time. When we talk about a new society — a communist society — we’re talking about one where everyone has the right to a life-long education, to decent housing, to proper food and health care. These won’t be commodities for sale; they will be basic human rights. Socially-needed work will be shared, to give everyone the opportunity to learn and to teach. Racist and sexist practices will be abolished, and we’ll erase those capitalist-created lines called borders.
There will be two May Days this year in New York City. The first will be on Friday, May 1, and it will demand some worthwhile reforms. But in the end, all reforms to capitalism are inadequate bandages on a system of festering wounds. The Progressive Labor Party understands that radical surgery is necessary. The following day — Saturday, May 2 — PLP will lead a rally and march in Flatbush, Brooklyn, to put forward our vision of the classless, egalitarian society so urgently needed by the workers of the world. Join us!

NEW YORK CITY, March 17 ­­— Monday night, my friends and I had a dinner and discussion about sexism. This is part of a series of study groups for college students leading up to May Day. We began by looking at clippings from ruling-class newspapers. One “news” article was about pop-star Taylor Swift insuring her legs for $40 million. Another was about the systemic starvation of women in India, a country where kids are shorter, smaller, and more likely to be malnourished than the world’s poorest countries: Congo, Zimbabwe, or Somalia.
We then watched clips of PLP’s “The Fight against Sexism” educational documentary. We learned that sexism is the super-exploitation of women and the gendered division by the bosses for profit. It also includes the brutal ideas and practices that justify this oppression. Some target culture and religion as the origin. We agreed that human nature is not the cause of sexism.
We searched for the economic foundation of sexism: class society. There wouldn’t be unequal gender division of labor without such things as private property and surplus value. What became “women’s work” was free and cheap. Now, we have the division between unpaid work and paid work, which is the root of sexism. Raising the next generation of workers and sustaining family units just enough to be exploited is a lot of work, and saves the bosses a lot of money.
Today, sexism equals profit. Capitalism isn’t the birthplace of sexism, but it has intensified the super-exploitation and oppression of women. Sexism helps the bosses to make their money. It has become the lifeblood of capitalism along with racism and all the other ills that capitalism breeds.
We also watched a clip about violence against women during the depression of the 1930s.
This clip helped us target the root of domestic violence, and violence against women in general, such as cuts on healthcare, food stamps, and other social services.
One student commented how just a couple of years ago, he thought he couldn’t be with a woman who made more money than he did. However, being around the Party and his life experience has taught him the importance of uniting with women. He noted that, “Now, taking care of the kids, massaging her feet when she gets home after work, I could do that.”
The final clip we watched was about how feminism cannot defeat sexism. While well-intended people who consider themselves feminists are fighting for the equality of workers regardless of gender and sexual orientation, we asked what solution does feminism offer?  We can elect Hillary Clinton as president. Or we can equalize exploitation to the same level as men workers.
Or, there is a better alternative than feminism.
I don’t want to be associated with an ideology where Miley Cyrus, Bell Hooks, and Allexandra Kollantai can exist in the same sphere. A movement that could be diluted so that anyone no matter their class can identify with it, where the bosses can promote it, is a losing strategy for women workers. Feminism is a ruling-class movement that dilutes, muddies, avoids, or outright rejects a class analysis.
If we believe in an anti-sexist society, fight directly for communism. No half-way houses needed! One student commented, “I never understood how you could marginalize your power [by labeling men as the enemy]!”
Now the most important question remains: how do we combat sexism? Fight against the cuts in daycare at work? Wage a campaign against the rise of sexual violence on campus? Join the fight against police murders? Target the enemy: the administrators, the politicians, the school and hospital bosses, the cops, the state? Develop women leaders to lead mass struggle? The people around the table had a lot to think about.
Finally, I looked around and noticed the international quality of the dinner. We had mostly Black students from the Caribbean and Africa. We also had someone from Europe and South Asia.
One student was someone we met just four hours ago through a friend on campus during a CHALLENGE sale. After the study group, he said, “I vaguely knew a teacher in high school who had these communist ideas like you.”
We quickly figured out who that teacher was. “If you come to our retreat next weekend, you will be sure to meet him,” we said.
This just goes to show how the work our high school teacher did a decade ago had a profound effect on this youth, enough to identify communist politics years later through a chance encounter. Thank you to PL teachers who plant deep roots in working-class youth, for their work continues to bear fruit years later.

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We are getting ready for May Day! More than 30 people, including many City University New York (CUNY) professors and students, came to Astoria, Queens for a spirited radical cultural event this evening. It was a collective effort: members and friends of Progressive Labor Party prepared delicious food for dinner, helped set up, and provided amazing performances. We sang revolutionary songs celebrating anti-racist and militant workers struggles, we listened to powerful anti-racist poems from a young artist whose book of poetry has just been published, and we listened to the virtuoso guitar playing of a young comrade.
We watched a phenomenal one-woman performance of a short play about the life of Harriet Tubman, the courageous abolitionist who escaped slavery, but then returned to the South thirteen times to liberate 70 other slaves via the Underground Railroad. Tubman was an important figure in the great 19th century struggle against chattel slavery. She was an ardent friend and supporter of militant abolitionist John Brown, and she helped him prepare his attack on Harper’s Ferry, which was the opening shot in what would become the U.S. Civil War that decisively crushed the country’s slave regime. When Brown was hung, Tubman declared he had “done more in dying, than 100 men would in living.”
Today the struggle is to end capitalist wage slavery and to bring to birth a new society that isn’t based on class exploitation and profits. That was the dream of Albert and Lucy Parsons, the radical leaders of the first May Day march in 1886, when 80,000 workers marched down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on behalf of the eight-hour day. They advocated the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Our May Day rallies and marches this year will carry on the hopes and aspirations of the Parsons and the millions of others who have fought hard for a communist society, which is needed today more than ever, as capitalist crisis pushes down the living standards of workers everywhere, from Greece to South Africa to Mexico. A comrade urged every one at the event to join PLP on Saturday, May 2 in marching along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on behalf of revolution and a communist future. We collected money for the May Day dinner, and our friends said they were looking forward to May 2.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress and the drama surrounding it highlight geopolitical shifts and internal divisions dogging U.S. imperialists. As U.S. foes Iran, Russia, and China get stronger, the two main factions of the U.S. capitalist class are competing to assert control over U.S. foreign policies concerning oil and nuclear-rich Iran.
The main wing of U.S. capitalists, under Obama, seems more reluctant to rely on Israel as the gatekeeper of the Middle East. But some leading Republicans are dancing to the tune of billionaire donors such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who advocates for little or no accommodation with U.S. enemies and instead points to Israel as a viable solution. Netanyahu’s speech illustrates that the U.S. capitalists are at odds and are unprepared for the impending imperialist crisis with Iran.
No matter which ruling faction comes out on top, workers worldwide will ultimately pay the price. Workers will both finance and fight a war that will only serve the bosses. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, however, is organizing the working class worldwide not only to fight against the next global war for profits that Netanyahu’s speech forecasts, but to rid the world of the capitalist system that generates these wars along with racism, nationalism and sexism.
Iran Looms over the Middle East
Netanyahu’s hollow bluster and Obama’s need to negotiate both stem from Iran’s rising regional might, backed by Russia and China. Pro-Iranian groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi forces combat Israel, the U.S. and other allies in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen respectively. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard now has troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, in the latter 10,000 men six miles from Israel. Though Netanyahu won’t admit it, Iran’s preparedness makes an Israeli, U.S., or joint strike on its nuclear plants impractical:

The Iranians are not fools. They observed the ease with which the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. They buried theirs deep underground. It is therefore not clear…tshat the United States could destroy Iran’s nuclear program from the air. It would require, at the very least, special operations on the ground, and failing that, military action beyond U.S. capabilities…The Israelis are quite aware of these difficulties. (Stratfor, a U.S. strategy analyzing group, 3/3/15)

Liberal Democratic politicians, including Obama, servants of U.S. financiers and industrialists, ExxonMobil and JP Morgan, have long-term global military requirements that for now will allow them to make concessions with Iran. They are thus easing off support for ineffective Israel. U.S. imperialism’s main journal, Foreign Affairs, published a piece on March 2 headed, “The Breakup: The Slow Demise of U.S. Bipartisan Support for Israel.” It said in part:

In the fall of 2013, AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] lobbied for a bill that…. would have required the United States to “stand with Israel” if Israel decided to attack Iran. The bill…won the support of 43 of 45 Republicans, but only 16 of 55 members of the Democratic caucus. 

Many Republicans, however, have personal wealth-enhancing outlooks far narrower than the Liberal Democrats’ vision of post-world war domination. Liberal journalist Bill Moyers, who served U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam Genocide criticized the U.S. Republican party/Netanyahu alliance by outing its’ profit motives:

Everything you need to know about…Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Tuesday was the presence in the visitor’s gallery of one man — Sheldon Adelson…The party’s presidential hopefuls line up to kiss his assets, scraping and bowing for his blessing, which when granted is bestowed with his signed checks…[He, in 2013] denounced President Obama’s diplomatic efforts with Iran and proposed instead that the United States drop an atomic bomb...” (BillMoyers.com, 3/4/15)

U.S. Lack of Preparation
It’s not that Obama and the far bigger capitalists he serves are against using nuclear weapons. Just the opposite is true. Until and unless the main wing of U.S. rulers can mobilize the population militarily, WWII-style atomic bombs remain their inter-imperialist trump card. The British ruling-class-owned Economist (3/7/15) notes, “The Nobel peace laureate [Obama] in the White House has asked Congress for almost $350 billion to undertake a decade-long programme of modernisation of America’s arsenal.” Competition, however, is widespread:

Russia’s defense budget has grown by over 50% since 2007, and fully a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons…China…is adding to its stocks and investing heavily in submarines and mobile missile batteries… North Korea…is working on missiles that can strike the west coast of the United States.

The Economist offers a grim, accurate observation of the bosses’ hardball: “No government could allow itself to lose a war that it would win if it were to reproduce nuclear weapons.” When Obama & Co. speak of peace negotiations, grab your helmet!
Workers Pay the Price
The troops needed by the U.S. ruling faction which Obama represents will come from working class youth. Obama and his supporters are working to entice jobless youth, immigrants and undocumented workers into joining the military by promoting nationalism, racism and sexism. Once there, they will fight and kill their working-class sisters and brothers. The picture also looks grim if the Republican ruling-class faction wins.

Only a communist revolution under the leadership of PLP can put a stop once and for all to racism, sexism, nationalism and all wars. Join us today!

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U.S.-Israeli Nuclear Cooperation

The Israeli-U.S. hypocrisy over their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program knows no bounds. While it long been known that Israel itself has nuclear weapons, a U.S. Defense Dept. report detailed how the U.S. aided Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb while violating international standards.
According to “Courthouse News,” Roger Mattson — formerly of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff — said, “I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the U.S.”
Grant Smith, director of the think tank Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, told a Washington, D.C. District Court late last year that, “In 1987 the Department of Defense discovered that Israel has a nuclear weapon, detailed it  and then…covered it up for 25 years in violation of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing U.S. taxpayers $86 billion.”
“The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards,” wrote Smith. “The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology.” But meanwhile, U.S. rulers continue to shell out $3 billion a year in aid to Israel.
Smith further told the court that, “Under two known gag orders — punishable by imprisonment — U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program.” Furthermore, the 1987 government report entitled “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, found that, “As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapons field in about 1955 to 1960….The Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.”
So Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rant about an Iranian nuclear threat while the Israelis themselves have been stockpiling H-Bombs for decades.