LOS ANGELES, November 6 — Nearly one hundred students participated in forums to discuss the mass deportations of immigrant workers under the Obama administration. It was organized at University of California Los Angeles and a nearby Cal State University. This discussion took place in the build-up to Obama’s announcement of an executive order to grant approximately five million undocumented immigrants a temporary reprieve from deportations. Students from the Progressive Labor Party participated in these discussions and are building a base for the Party’s ideas among other students. This includes  inviting Ezell Ford’s (25-year-old black man killed by the cops on August 11) family to speak at a future event on campus to discuss how students can build a multiracial response to racist police terror.
The main speaker at the campus forums argued that mass deportations and the building of a police state are symptoms of capitalism in crisis and the need for compliant, flexible and disposable labor, both U.S. urban centers and in Latin America. PL students drew the connection between the racist killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the police terror experienced by immigrant families fearing deportation.
From Debate to
Demonstration
In the weeks following these forums,  PL students involved in immigrant rights groups have helped organize regular weekly protests. They  “chanted down the walls” outside of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center demanding the release of undocumented immigrants being processed for deportation. As protestors rally outside the detention center, immigrant workers who can be seen through their cell windows wave back. Last week, students connected the fight against anti-immigrant racism to solidarity actions in support of the 43 Ayotzinapa college students who were disappeared. An outdoor teach-in and rally was held on campus. Later that day students participated in a mass mobilization of approximately 500 people who occupied 6th street in front of the Mexican Consulate and McArthur Park in solidarity with Ayotzinapa.
Connecting the racist policing of immigrant workers, black youth and our working-class sisters and brothers in Mexico is critical during this period. We need to encourage students and workers to fight against the oppression of global capitalism, as exemplified by the working class in Ferguson and Ayotzinapa. As we continue to build the Party, our abilities to move masses of workers into battle against the root of the oppression in both places will bring the day when we can abolish racism and borders for good!

San Francisco, CA — In solidarity with rebellions in Mexico, over 400 workers and students marched in San Francisco’s main commercial center. PLP members joined the demonstration with signs and flyers linking State Terrorism in Mexico to the systematic, state-sponsored racist imprisonment and murder of black and Latin youth in the U.S.
PLP is organizing for another demonstration on Dec. 3 to build international working-class unity.  The crowd was mainly young and Latin without delegations from “traditional” non-governmental organizations or immigrant-oriented unions.
There is no “democracy.” There is no justice — there’s just us, the working class.  Only a revolution against capitalism will get these murderers out of power.  That is the goal of the communist Progressive Labor Party. Join us!

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NEW YORK CITY, November 21 — “Ayotzinapa vive, vive, la lucha sigue, sigue!” (Ayotzinapa: lives, lives! The struggle continues, continues!) So chanted over 100 black, white, Asian, and Latin workers picketing at the Mexican consulate with signs linking the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri to the murder of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico in a loud and spirited demonstration. This event was the product of weeks of planning and organization by professors, students and other members of the Progressive Labor Party, who organized through their participation in several different mass organizations. By linking the struggle in Ayotzinapa with the struggle in Ferguson, PL’ers and friends exposed capitalism as the root cause of the murders in both places and called for internationalism as the answer.
Organizing to Fight
PL’ers organized in multiple mass organizations to build for this demonstration:
PLP educators in one union sent comrades in a different union a copy of the resolution which they had attempted to pass, calling for teachers to come to the November 21 demonstration at the consulate. PLP students and teachers then discussed the rally in their classes and with their coworkers, helping guarantee the makeup of the rally to include black and Asian youth as well.
At another teacher’s union monthly meeting, a PL’er managed to get the resolution placed on the day’s agenda, including a call for the leadership to invite the entire membership, which amounts to tens of thousands of workers.  While some union misleaders attempted to bait the members with thinly veiled anti-communism, it did not sway the membership and it passed unanimously.
PLP members spoke in three different union committees calling for solidarity with the 43 kidnapped and murdered students in Ayotzinapa.  We exposed the connection between the government, police, the army and drug cartels there.  We connected the racist attacks in Mexico to racist police terror in Ferguson, Missouri to Brooklyn, and Staten Island, New York to applause from members and friends of the group.
PL’ers and our friends who meet in a study group translated and distributed 200 flyers in  various meetings. One comrade used the leaflet in English class to talk in English about the protest and to invite interested students to a discussion after class. Another comrade from Mexico described the history of rural schools for teachers like the one in Ayotzinapa which has a long history of revolutionary struggle in farming areas.
In one community organization, we worked hard and enthusiastically. As a result, 25 people of all ages came to the protest with signs they made. They also chanted and leafleted.  It’s ties like the ones we are building at our jobs and community organizations that give us the opportunity to know many people over a long period of time and win more of them to internationalism and other elements of our analysis, even though illusions about reforming the system persist.
March and Build for Internationalism
The bullhorn was kept hidden in a bag until it was time for speeches. One speech in Spanish portrayed how corrupt the Mexican government is. Another speaker from PLP linked the whole murder to capitalism and imperialism, and the increasing attacks on the working class; the cartels are a key part of capitalism. The final speech was from a professor who had just returned from the protests in Mexico. She discussed how inspiring they were and how they sparked a great amount of rage. PLP will continue to build our Party in the midst of the struggles in Mexico and the U.S.
One union misleader showed up and made sure to get a photo opportunity with the protest as the background. But it was the collective organization of PLP that gave leadership to the protest and distributed hundreds of leaflets and over 100 CHALLENGEs.
Returning to our neighborhood the participants were upbeat and eager to continue the struggle. To reach hundreds more with the message that only communist revolution could end the constant misery of fascist disappearances of young people, some members and friends plan to read a message in their churches in order to call for plans to show solidarity and support for the struggle to build resistance and communist revolution in Mexico. ¡La lucha sigue!

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MEXICO CITY — The murder and disappearance of our 43 student-teachers in the the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa that have shocked workers worldwide is the product of a capitalist system that has nothing to offer our youth. The massive protests in Mexico show that this crime is a painful thorn stuck in the heart of the international working class. The murders indicate the increasing development of fascism in Mexico, where in addition to using liberal misleaders and electoral politics to control the working class, the bosses rely increasingly on open violence and terror. Only under a system where exploitation has been eliminated — communism — will we ever have justice and an end to fascist police terror. We must not expect justice from the same capitalist state that murders our youth!
Guerrero is predominantly rural and one of the poorest states in Mexico, with a long tradition of insurgent movements. For this reason the ruling class has set up in this state a sophisticated repressive apparatus involving the police, the military and drug lords. These groups, some of them trained and financed by the U.S. with support of the local Mexican bosses, are responsible for the murder and disappearance of our youth.
According to the World Bank, 60 percent of  youth in the world lack education and job opportunities. In Mexico that number is 70 percent. Conditions for the remaining youth are not much better: existing jobs are precarious, with miserable salaries, no benefits, long and exhausting work hours, with some working 12-hour days, seven days a week. Mexico is one of the countries in which the working class works the most hours per year.
The electoral political parties would have us believe that the local mayor of the town of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, the Governor of Guerrero state Angel Aguirre, or President Peña are the ones responsible for the disappearances, and that if we get rid of them and elect different politicians, all our problems would be solved. That’s a lie! They will not lead the working class to overthrow the capitalist system because they serve it. Capitalism killed and disappeared our youth, and for that we must destroy it.
For decades, rural teachers have earned the sympathy of the working class because of their commitment to educating working-class youth in these impoverished communities. For this reason the bosses of liberal NGO Mexicanos Primero and the capitalist media like Televisa and TV Azteca have publicly accused rural schools of being “guerrilla training places” that must be eliminated. But the real aim of this campaign was the approval of the lucrative education reform, which will generate huge profits from turning education into more of a commodity and which will benefit the groups promoting it.
Ayotzinapa is
Mexico’s Ferguson
Ayotzinapa is not an isolated case of police terror. Countless number of unarmed black and Latin youth are killed by the police from Ayotzinapa to Ferguson, Missouri. On the other side of the world, immigrants in many European countries face mass deportations and are terrorized and massacred by the police.
The top imperialists in the world, the U.S., China, Russia, and the European Union, are preparing for world war, and aim to push our youth to fight their war. We workers must win our youth to fight against the capitalist system which can only offer working-class youth oppression, unemployment, and death. We must win them to become organized in our international communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, to lead a communist revolution to put an end to fascism, capitalist oppression and war.

Michael Brown. Kajieme Powell. Vonderrit Myers Jr. Shantel Davis. Kimani Gray. Roshad McIntosh. Eric Garner. Rhamarley Graham. Ezell Ford. Kyam Livingston. Reynaldo Cuevas. Tyrone West. Omar Abrego. Most recently the cops killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland and 28-year-old Akai Gurley in Brooklyn.  

The racist police murders of our black and Latin youth will continue since the grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson, butcher of Michael Brown. It’s evident that kkkop Wilson murdered Mike. That’s how capitalist justice works! Cops and bosses can get away with murder while the working class gets terrorized, deported, disappeared, starved, and killed — all legal under capitalism.

There are many demands: indictment, community policing, civilian complaint review boards, black and Latin cops, federal investigations. That’s like asking the fox to guard the henhouse! Going through the courts is a pacification method. The ruling class owns the courts, the cops, and congress: the whole state.

Police killings will continue because it’s profitable for the bosses. These increased killings are part of rising fascism: the capitalist system in crisis. It is becoming more evident that there is no future for our youth under capitalism, that we are living in a decaying system. So the bosses terrorize the working class into accepting a future of mass unemployment and wars. Expect more racist killings. Racism is the cutting edge of capital, producing superprofits for the bosses and a divided working class.

Rebellion Now!

The working class in Ferguson has shown another path to justice: rebellion. Led mostly by youth, the rebels have shown us all what’s possible when workers fight back! It’s time to stand up to the National Guard, tanks, tear gas and riot cops again. Defy Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, who all rushed and will rush to put out the fire and keep racism going. Our class needs to follow the leadership of Ferguson and continue to fight. We call on everyone to carry on the fightback that at your schools, at work, in your churches, in your unions, and into the streets!

Capitalism is the Real Criminal

The ruling class tries to paint black, Latino and immigrant workers as criminals. In reality, it is the bosses who are the real criminals, closing hospitals and schools, as well as murdering workers and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. They got money for bombs and the military, but never for food and medicine.

Everywhere, capitalism kills: through ISIS and U.S. air strikes in the Middle East; Ebola in West Africa; the UN goons in Haiti. In Mexico, 43 students were disappeared after protesting against the state. Capitalism fails our sisters and brothers every day. What we need in response to this global crisis is a global communist revolution.

Communism Abolishes Racism

Only a communist society where the working class has state power can rid the world of racist killer kkkops. Justice is a world without bosses, profits, cops, or borders. A communist world needs the unity of the working class to succeed and will destroy the economic basis for its existence: money and profit. Workers and youth can society run by and for themselves!

The communist movement is the only way to guarantee that the bosses won’t get away with racist murder ever again. No matter how long it takes, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) will lead the working class to smash the bosses’ cops and courts and establish a communist society worthy of every worker. Join PLP and build the revolutionary communist and build an international multiracial movement to crush racism from Ferguson to Gaza to Mexico with armed revolution!

The U.S. ruling class has a lot on its plate. Inter-imperialist competition is forcing the bosses to prepare for both smaller, regional wars and the broader world war to come. China, Russia, Japan, and the European Union powers are vying with the U.S. to control oil and other resources and to maximize profits from cheap labor. History shows there is no way to negotiate or cooperate out of these conflicts. They can be solved only by war.
But the capitalists cannot successfully pursue these wars without boots on the ground to do the killing. They must gain loyalty and support from the world’s workers — the same workers they need to exploit and brutalize in their racist system (see box).

Most workers today are opposed to the bosses’ current dogfights. Even without a mass movement to galvanize them, they understand that capitalist wars cannot serve their interests. Here, then, is the opportunity for communists to turn these imperialist wars into class war — as the Bolsheviks did in Russia during World War I, as the Chinese communists did during and after World War II. Here is our chance to lead the working class in revolution to destroy the profit system. Then we can establish communism, a worker-run system free of bosses, profits, unemployment, poverty, racism, and sexism. That is the goal of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. 

Regional Wars vs. World War
Should U.S. capitalists continue to invest in regional invasions or keep their powder dry for an eventual World War III? Those are the strategic alternatives framed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the U.S. imperialists’ leading think tank. The latest issue of the CFR’s Foreign Affairs (November-December, 2014) opens with two opposing pieces: “More Small Wars,” by Max Boot, and “Pick Your Battles,” by Richard Betts. This is no armchair discussion; these writers are active participants in the bosses’ mass murder. Boot advised U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Betts consults for the CIA and the Army War College. And the CFR itself represents the finance wing of U.S. capitalism, the interests who have most to gain or lose from armed conflict. Among its main backers are ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and the Rockefeller family.
But this either-or debate is a false formulation. Imperialist war is both inevitable and incremental. As U.S. bosses combat their many overseas rivals, we can expect both kinds of war.
Boot points to more than 30 potential targets for a U.S. invasion, including Syria, Colombia, Iraq, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Ukraine. “Given how many of these conflicts involve U.S. allies or interests, it is wishful thinking to imagine that Washington can stay aloof.... Since Washington doesn’t have the luxury of simply avoiding insurgencies, the best strategy would be to fight them better.” That, says, Boot, means more ground troops and a greater effort at “nation building,” code for long-term military occupation.
In rebuttal, Betts dismisses the slaughter of millions in the Middle East and South Asia by the last four U.S. presidents as “half measures” and mostly failures: “Of the U.S. military actions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, only the first can be counted a success.” He concludes:

[T]he time has come to focus again on first-order dangers. Russia is back, and China is coming. These prospective opponents could not just hurt U.S. allies; they could inflict epochal damage on the United States itself....Now the United States needs to temper the ambitions unleashed by its post-Cold War dominance [and] to prepare for bigger wars for bigger stakes against bigger powers.

Oil and ISIS
In response to territorial gains by the Islamic State, Obama is doubling to 3,000 the number of U.S. military “advisers” in Iraq. It’s not just Iraq’s oilfields, as vast and profitable as they are, that the U.S. capitalists worry about. ISIS seeks “the next step: control of an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea,” says industry insider Oil Price (11/4/14).
It continues: “Access to the sea is absolutely crucial to the group’s survival as an oil-and-gas-producing state. In recent weeks there have been repeated missile attacks from Islamist forces around Latakia,” Syria’s main port.
Meanwhile, General John Campbell, Obama’s Afghan warlord, posed a parallel question in Foreign Policy, another ruling-class journal: “Do...we need more NATO forces in certain locations for longer? I’ve got to do that analysis and we’re just starting that now.” Foreign Policy answered his question for him: “The Taliban are gaining ground in key districts in the south and east of Afghanistan” (11/8/14).
U.S. Elections Boost Warmakers
Back in the U.S., where liberal Democrats took a beating in the midterm elections, ruling-class media guardedly proclaimed victory for interventionist Republicans over isolationist Tea Party challengers. “Establishment Republicans, who had vowed to thwart the Tea Party, succeeded in electing new lawmakers who are, for the most part, less rebellious” (New York Times, 11/9/14).
Imperialist war hawk John McCain, who advocates a land invasion of Syria with land forces, will now chair the Senate’s powerful Armed Services Committee. With former isolationists Ted Cruz and Rand Paul now in the fold and backing U.S. bombing of ISIS, McCain is aggressively promoting the rulers’ war aims around the globe. In collaboration with his fellow Republican chairmen of the Foreign Relations Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, he’ll be banging the drum on “arms for Ukraine’s government, examination of our strategy in the Middle East, our assets with regard to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the region, China’s continued encroachment in the South China Sea” (Daily Beast, 11/5/14).
Obama Unleashed
As chief executive, Barack Obama has the last word on war policy. Contrary to conventional wisdom about lame ducks (presidents completing their term of office and are ineligible to run for re-election) , Obama’s war-making powers may be enhanced in his last two years in the White House. The election results will give Democrat Obama greater freedom to side with Republicans on military appropriations.
As a historical parallel, the CFR website (11/8/14) cites George W. Bush, who made a number of pro-imperialist moves after GOP voting losses in 2006:

….freed from many domestic political pressures -- [Bush] instituted significant foreign policy changes. He fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and oversaw a major strategy shift in Iraq, including a troop “surge” and adoption of counterinsurgency doctrine....Looking ahead to the next two years, it’s easy to see a similar series of events unfolding....Indeed, President Obama will be free — should he desire — to implement an array of foreign policy “course corrections” via executive action. Obama can unilaterally set a policy regarding the U.S. stance toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (something urged by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel). He can revisit the glideslope for U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, as informally recommended by the general in charge of forces there.

Even more ominous is Obama’s strengthened ability to “correct course” on Russia, whose “military aircraft conducted aerial maneuvers around Europe this week on a scale seldom seen since the end of the Cold War, prompting NATO jets to scramble” (Wall Street Journal, 11/8/14). With gross understatement, a Pentagon spokeswoman said, “We don’t think those flights help de-escalate the current situation at all.”
China looms as another top target for Obama and his masters. On the eve of the president’s upcoming trip to the world’s second-largest economy, Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times top China hand, stated (11/9/14), “In tfhe East China and South China Seas, [President] Xi has taken an aggressive approach to maritime disputes. There may be a thaw, but risk remains of military accidents, escalation and even war.”
Whatever their differences, in short, U.S. capitalists are displaying greater unity around their central mission: the escalation of inter-imperialist war. Communists have their marching orders too — build the international PLP to smash racism and sexism, and turn imperialist war into class war for communism.

BOX:

U.S. Bosses’ Dilemma: Getting Boots on the Ground

As CHALLENGE has noted (10/29/14), U.S. capitalists are short on real allies in the Middle East, which contains the largest reserves by far of cheaply extractable oil. With only token support from other powers for their assault against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Taliban in Afghanistan, they need to step up military recruitment of U.S. youth. The bosses are flooding TV with commercials about “serving your country.” They’re re-instituting Reserve Officers Training Corps on college campuses, with a special emphasis on grooming more black officers. They aim to reform education  to focus more on patriotism and pro-war ideology. In Washington, as a bipartisan war coalition spends more billions of workers’ money on war, Barack Obama will pursue “executive actions” to pressure the GOP on immigration reform and other ploys to buy off workers and youth.
But with their system in crisis, U.S. rulers face a dilemma. Nearly seven years after the outset of the “Great Recession,” mass racist unemployment persists. Since the capitalist system depends on super-profits from the super-exploitation of black and Latin workers, along with lower wages for women workers, the bosses must ramp up racism and sexism. To divide the working class, they must scapegoat Muslim, South Asian, Arab and Chinese workers, blaming them for the shortage of jobs for black and Latin youth.
Despite the bosses’ best efforts, imperialist war is a hard sell. As their police kill and imprison black and Latin youth in cities large and small, from New York and Los Angeles to Ferguson, Missouri, it becomes much harder to recruit them to the military. Desperate to fill their enlistment needs, and fearing a compulsory draft would be too unpopular (at least for now), the capitalists are marketing military “careers” to unemployed black youth and promises of citizenship to undocumented Latin youth. They are even taking small steps to reduce the number of black and Latin youth behind bars, though the U.S. prison population of more than two million is still the largest in the world. (China and Russia, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist rivals, rank second and third.)
Bosses’ Election Bust
U.S. workers’ alienation may be at an all-time high. In the recent U.S. elections, only 36 percent of eligible voters actually voted, “the lowest it’s been in any election cycle since World War II, according to early projects by the United States Election Project” (Washington Post, 11/10/14). The big story in the bosses’ media was that the Republicans trounced the Democrats. The real story is that both parties are controlled by the same big business interests that financed the elections. Whatever their differences, both parties are driven by the goal of U.S. imperialists to maintain their top-dog status. And both parties know they must enlist U.S. workers — whether with a “democratic” carrot or a fascist stick — to slaughter their working-class brothers and sisters around the world.
Opposing these ruling-class attacks means organizing workers and youth worldwide to wage class war against the exploiters. A communist party is essential to lead this war. Progressive Labor Party, active in more than twenty countries around the world, is dedicated to that aim. Join and build PLP!