FERGUSON, MO — The capitalist ruling class has been rocked by the protests that have gone on for over two months since the racist police murder of our working-class brother Mike Brown. The rebels have shown creativity in fighting back against police terror, including interrupting baseball games and a symphony performance to keep attention on Ferguson. A group of PLP comrades went to the St. Louis area for the recent protests and are all going back to their areas with new energy and a better political understanding of why the rulers are terrified by this rebellion.
The bosses are using two main tactics to stop the movement: outright fascism, and liberal co-optation. These reflect both a tactical split but also a strategic unity in the ruling class. With the first tactic, fascist terror, the rulers and their police thought they could just beat the fight out of the workers and students in St. Louis County. After weeks of daily protests, they had underestimated the resolve of the protesters who refused to give in to fear and terror, images of which were seen around the world.
Our Party contingent experienced this in a very direct way. On Friday, October 10, riot police with heavy armored vehicles confronted about 150 protesters in St. Louis during a march for another black youth who was recently shot eight times by an off-duty cop after purchasing a sandwich at a convenience store.
After being harassed by police at a march on the following day who demanded our literature and to know why we were there, we were again stopped by St. Louis County police when we entered a predominately black apartment complex in Ferguson to talk to residents. They told us that since the Brown shooting this harassment has stepped up, with St. Louis County police joining the Ferguson police in patrolling the largely black working-class neighborhoods.
Contrary to our assumption that Ferguson residents would be reluctant or even tired of talking to us, the workers and students in the apartments were enthusiastic about talking to us about communism and taking CHALLENGE, with some even giving small donations.
Complementing outright fascist terror, the liberal wing of the ruling class has a more sophisticated – and dangerous — tactic to stop these spontaneous rebellions from turning into a more organized working-class movement: to co-opt the protests and portray themselves as the protectors of the black residents against the racist/fascist police and openly racist white politicians.
After the rulers figured out they could not terrorize the rebels and crush the rebellion with violence alone, they unleashed hordes of liberal misleaders on the protesters, aggressively promoting U.S. nationalism and racial identity politics, particularl, the anti-working class ideas of “white privilege” and
“black power.” These ideas are an ideological attack on working-class consciousness by dividing our class for the rulers who will need more boots on the ground for larger imperialist wars brewing.
The demand for the indictment of racist cop Darren Wilson is being promoted by the liberal wing of the ruling class in order to diffuse the class anger and prevent a larger rebellion. They want the protesters to settle for a resolution to the situation through the rulers fake injustice system and in doing so restore faith in that system- the same system that murdered Mike Brown.
They especially don’t want the young black protesters to believe that the ruling class is all about maintaining super-profits for a few billionaires by exploiting the entire working class.That the rebellion has been so multiracial and has drawn in Asian, Latin, black, and white workers and students from all over, terrifying for the rulers because they see the potential unravelling of their race-based system of rule. Liberal rulers have had some success in promoting the idea to the protesters that only black, Latin, and Asian are beaten, oppressed and killed by the police.
Even as blacks are killed far more in proportion to their population, a plurality of workers shot by the police are white. From 2003 to 2009, there were 1,529 blacks and 949 Latinos killed by the police in the U.S., and 2,036 whites in this same period (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011). Liberal misleaders like those at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice want to reform the police only so the racial disparities don’t look as blatant, and so legitimize police violence. Black workers are disproportionately terrorized in apartheid neighborhoods at the same time many working-class whites are also oppressed, but invisibly to the media because their job is to carry on the racist lies of the bosses. Communists don’t want equality in police shootings — we want to smash all police terror!
We militantly opposed the liberals through our bold presence at each demonstration, and through our interactions with the other protestors and workers. We approached them sincerely and looked for points of unity in their political understanding in order to move them toward communist ideas.
Crucial to our success was our organization and discipline in discussing and criticizing our efforts in a democratic centralist manner, and applying our lessons to future plans. In spite of battling exhaustion and sickness. This infused our group with tremendous energy.
We held two large discussions, one with interested college students and another with a group of contacts we had made and wanted to discuss our ideas, which led to new friendships, and furthered understanding of our fight.
Our multiracial, immigrant and native-born PLP contingent was itself a visible statement of internationalism. We proclaimed loudly that is impossible to get true justice through this murderous system and only a communist revolution, which overthrows the entire ruling class and their state, can bring true justice. Through our new friends and contacts with the workers and students there, and through our internal experiences organizing and practicing bringing our line to thousands of workers and students, we’re closer to that day.
WASHINGTON, DC, October 18 — Today, high school and college students concluded three days of study and struggle hosted by the Progressive Labor Party here, raising the commitment of the participants inspired by Ferguson and connecting the fight against racism to the fight for communism. The weekend was also a major advance for our youth leadership in the area, with high school comrades taking the responsibilities upon themselves to lead everything from discussions to demonstrations.
On the first day, PL’ers and friends participated in a forum called “Inequality, Racism, and Capitalism: Advancing the Struggle,” sponsored by the Howard University Department of Economics. Over 60 participants, including public housing residents, transit workers and healthcare workers and other workers joined faculty members from Howard University and North Carolina A&T in analyzing mass racist incarceration, gentrification, educational struggles.
There was also a critique of the current best-selling book Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty, a book being pushed by the liberals because it ignores racism and the need for working-class struggle, cynically arguing for reforms that even Piketty admits are not likely to happen.
The next day, PL’ers met to study dialectical materialism, the philosophy of the working class, as a way of analyzing struggles like that in Ferguson. Comrades who had just returned from the battle in Ferguson showed clips of the struggle there to illustrate some principles of dialectics. Then, on Saturday, the high school PLP leaders met for several hours in a strategy session to plan for a demonstration. This was a new experience, not only for the young PL leaders planning this but for many students this was their first time demonstrating! Everyone agreed that the goal of the demonstration should be to inspire workers and students here in Washington, DC to “fight like Ferguson” and once a plan was made, everyone collectively made signs for a rally.
We marched with our signs and red flags, chanted, and distributed over 200 CHALLENGEs to students, Howard University alumni heading towards the homecoming game, and neighborhood residents.
Our boldness paid off and the response was fantastic — as our march culminated in a rally outside a train station, our chants of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, Fists Up, Fight Back” were met by almost everyone coming up the escalator raising their hands in solidarity. Our first-time marchers were energized and this rally raised the bar for our work here in DC- everyone returned to their area enthusiastic about continuing the struggle and learning more about the Party’s fight for communist revolution!
BERLIN, November 8 — Caving in to patriotism and nationalism, the leaders of the German train drivers union, GDL, cut short the national strike that has crippled train traffic, so as not to dampen the November 9th celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The climb-down points up the dilemma faced by rail workers, who without communist leadership are stuck with choosing between two reformist-led unions.
The strike was the largest in the state-owned Deutsche Bahn’s 20-year history. The workers’ main demands were a 5 percent wage hike and a two-hour reduction in the work-week to 37 hours. The GDL also wants to win the right to represent all train crew members, not just train drivers.
The rival EVG union is run by corrupt, do-nothing hacks, and many conductors and dining car workers have switched to the GDL. Of the Deutsche Bahn’s 37,000 train crew members, 19,000 now belong to the GDL.
Eleven conductors gathered in a Berlin café and spoke to reporters. Linda shoved her work schedule across the table and said, “If I wasn’t on strike, I’d be doing a 12½-hour shift.” Another co-worker, Michael, explains: “We’re only supposed to work one 12-hour shift a week, but after that they kill us with 11½-hour shifts.” “At the end of the shift,” Linda continues, “I wouldn’t be home in Berlin — I’d be in Cologne. This strike isn’t just about money, it’s about being able to have a family life.” Her colleagues around the table nodded in agreement.
The GDL has threatened to call another strike if no progress is made in negotiations. Today, only one train in three was running because management was unable to react quickly to the ending of the strike. The strike cost the rail company an estimated 200 million euros ($250 million).
In May 2014, Ras Baraka was elected mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Many workers here, particularly black workers, saw this as a step forward in the fight against racism and toward the liberation of the working class. But diverting workers’ energy into electing anyone to office, no matter how “left” they may seem, is a recipe for selling out the struggle to smash racism and exploitation. Whether the bosses’ local figurehead is Baraka in Newark or Bill DeBlasio in New York City, the bourgeois electoral system is controlled by the capitalist class. We can’t elect our way to a society that serves workers’ needs. Only a communist revolution can smash the bosses’ class tyranny.
Ras Baraka is no stranger to Newark politics. He is the son of recently deceased Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones), a famous poet and critic and a very popular local figure. Ras Baraka first ran for mayor in 1994, when he was 24. He was elected to the Newark Municipal Council twice and was appointed deputy mayor by the openly corrupt and now disgraced Sharpe James administration.
In 1971, Amiri Baraka was a key figure in the nationalist National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. One of the goals of the NBPC was to elect black politicians, including Kenneth Gibson, Newark’s first black mayor. The elder Baraka later regretted his endorsement of Gibson and proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist. But this contradicts the fact that he never broke with nationalism. In 2008, he justified his support of Barack Obama as part of the struggle for a “people’s democratic united front” against Republican Party-led fascism. He attacked those who — like Progressive Labor Party — saw Obama as the main danger to the working class, calling them “infantile” leftists.
How Booker and Christie Elected Baraka
Ras Baraka’s campaign slogan was, “When I become mayor, you become mayor.” He beat Shavar Jeffries, who was backed by the same Wall Street interests and school reform organizations that elevated U.S. Senator Cory Booker, a former Newark mayor. Booker, a strong supporter of charter schools, teamed with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to devise the secret “One Newark,” a plan to privatize the state-controlled Newark public schools and close many of them in the process. Christie then appointed Cami Anderson, a reform hack, as superintendent of Newark’s schools.
In 2013, mass anger against the racist profiteers making a bundle off of One Newark turned into a mass campaign involving students, parents and teachers. By the time Booker was elected to the U.S. Senate, many Newark residents saw through him. They understood that both Booker and Jeffries were bought-and-paid-for servants of Zuckerberg, local bosses like Prudential Insurance, and the hedge fund managers behind the latest education reform scheme.
Christie told Newark residents that he didn’t “care about the community criticism” of Cami Anderson because “[w]e run the school district in Newark, not them” (Newark Star-Ledger, 9/5/13). Many were furious at Christie’s arrogance and the blatant racism behind mass school closings. Baraka’s campaign exploited this anger to push to regain “local control” of the schools. As the principal at Newark’s Central High School and city councilman for the South Ward, Baraka became a leader of the struggle to stop One Newark. Campaign ads touted him as the mayor who would “stand up” to Christie.
Capitalist Baraka’s Lies
Toward the end of the mayoral campaign, in response to several high-profile local shootings, New Jersey’s acting attorney general announced the deployment of dozens of state troopers in Newark, as requested by the city’s acting mayor, Luis Quintana. According to the Star-Ledger (4/17/14), the move “was met with praise” by both Jeffries and Baraka. A similar deployment in Irvington, New Jersey, had led to increased harassment of black workers, including more frequent use of stop-and-frisk.
After getting elected, Baraka revealed that Booker had left the city with a significant budget deficit. Baraka used this crisis as an excuse to approach Christie about increased state aid for Newark. Of course, any money forked over by Christie comes with strings attached. According to a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, “It appears the City is requesting [state] supervision” of the city budget” (Star-Ledger, 7/20/14). Baraka told the Star-Ledger: “We gonna do a little Martin Luther King. We gonna wear [Christie] down with love.”
This fall, when parents and students organized a schools boycott to stop One Newark, Baraka told them he couldn’t be a cheerleader for the boycott. When students organized by the Newark Students Union sat down in the street in front of Anderson’s office, the Newark cops (who answer to Baraka) arrested and injured a student leader who had chained herself to a light pole.
Among the organizations supporting the schools boycott is New Jersey Communities United (NJCU), a liberal group tied to union leadership. At the height of the mass struggle against One Newark last spring, NJCU called on students and others to redirect their energies into the Baraka mayoral campaign. Instead of organizing the fired-up masses into direct confrontation with the racist capitalist system promoted by Anderson, Booker and Christie, the Baraka campaign dissipated that anger.
Baraka’s platform of restoring “local control” promotes the illusion that workers can curb racism under capitalism. For the working class, nothing less than violent revolution to overthrow capitalist dictatorship can bring an egalitarian, anti-racist world.
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Blacklisted: Communist Movement Must Create Its Own Culture
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- 13 November 2014 59 hits
Blacklisted by G.A Davis is a novel and a mystery….but really, it’s much more. As its sub title says, it focuses on “A Family Targeted by McCarthy.” It’s about working-class people and their community. It’s an exciting read for those who know about this period as well as for those who’ve never heard of McCarthy’s anti-communist witchhunts.
BUT…this is a novel, not an historical text. The central character and narrator is a high school student, 15-year-old Josie, who grew up in a left-wing, political and active union family. 
Josie’s Uncle Victor is a public figure in post-war Seattle, a long-time union organizer and fighter for the working class of every heritage, “race” and ethnicity. The novel takes place in the early 1950s when Victor is subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC.) The family is under intense FBI harassment. Unexpectedly, Victor dies in suspicious circumstances.
From then on, the novel’s main tension is Josie’s search for answers. How and why did her Uncle Victor die? Where is his missing death certificate? She emerges as an independent and critical thinker.
Josie’s family is interwoven with hundreds who respected them and acted on that respect as the family crisis grows. As Josie says “Seattle is a small town”:
There are union officials and active members who are integrated in the family’s life and help protect Josie from the police and FBI.
Mrs. Fujimoto, the vegetable seller at the market, refuses to take money from Josie’s Aunt. It’s “a donation to Victor.” Turns out, Josie’s Aunt and Mrs. Fujimoto have discussed the Japanese internment and the confiscation of the Fujimoto family farm during World War II.
Josie meets international figures like Paul Robeson as he sings at the border of the U.S. and Canada in 1952.
Josie also moves in a teenage world of high school friends, flirting and love interests. She goes to parties and sneaks into dance halls. She and her circle identify with emerging blues, jazz and early spoken word. She helps organize her friends to ridicule the principal at Garfield High for his racism.
Blacklisted is engaging on every level: characters, culture, mystery, relations among family and friends and historical context. The story helps the reader figure out what created these folks. It lets you see for yourself contradictions in individuals and society when massive pressure comes down from the government apparatus to try to maintain the existing order.
Historical Background
Blacklisted presents a political, social and cultural fabric of Seattle after World War II. The strands were created in the 1920s and 1930s. That was a period of battles for unionization among longshore, logging, cannery and other workers. There were fights against Jim Crow racism and for integration. There was a general strike in Seattle in 1919 and a movement to stop ships transporting arms to the enemies of the Russian Revolution. Internationalism, the fight for socialism and against fascism were real in peoples’ lives. Cultural change such as WPA (Works Progress Administration) murals, blues, jazz, and be-bop bubbled up from below in the post-war spread of African American culture.
These were battles where immigrant and U.S.-born members of the IWW (International Workers of the World) and the Communist Party of the USA played both leading and rank-and-file roles. Josie’s family lives in this context. Their life is made from this whole cloth.
What You Do Counts
PLP members and friends could introduce Blacklisted to a wide audience. It could be great reading for social studies, literature, sociology, labor or other classes in high school and college. Readers can learn much about a period omitted from the history books while engaging in the lives of people struggling for equality and a better life.
You can read Blacklisted to find out that “What you do counts,” counts in big ways like class struggle that challenges existing power relations and counts in smaller, less known, ways like how you live your life and immerse yourself with others. This book helps you imagine just who you can count on when you participate in the struggle for a more collective, communist world. It’s a breath of fresh air in today’s mass culture of cynicism.
As the title says, this is a story about your family, your neighbors, your coworkers and fellow students; people fighting back against massive attack. This story won’t be embraced in mainstream culture. We have to create our own. So, read and distribute the book.
