COLOMBIA, October 20 —The long-yearned-for peace for the working class of Colombia has once again been made into a joke, as a result of capitalism and its contradictions, in which the working class has nothing to gain. It is a truly shameful joke, to the point that the people affected by the war, those who have suffered displacement and assassinations, are simply spectators in the process.
The only people who will receive landholdings as a result of the “restitution” will be the politicians who lead the opposition parties and those with influence and privilege. And of course the other beneficiaries: the multinational corporations in mining, oil, and other industries who will be able to invest in Colombia at the expense of the exploitation of the working class, with pitiful wages and terrible working conditions. One example is the case of the Alabama-based Drummond mining company which paid paramilitaries to torture and murder union leaders in 2001.
Now they suppress any protests or workers’ struggles, murdering workers and union leaders. There is widespread rape of female wage workers and agricultural workers by the armies (both official and private), which shows the racist and sexist character of the exploitation. European, American, and Asian capitalism all want a piece of the pie, so they offer generous donations supposedly to guarantee and end to the conflict, but we revolutionaries understand that these capitalists are only buying their right to exploit the working class of Colombia.
World capitalism is in crisis. The apparent sympathy shown by legislation in favor of undocumented workers in the USA or the abolition of visas in Europe are only strategies to prop up the falling rate of profit. As revolutionaries, we are aware of these situations and we avoid siding with any capitalist gang. We redouble our efforts to organize and fight based on our revolutionary program, winning a communist base for the not-to-distant future, when we will put an end to capitalism and its imperialist war with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

LOS ANGELES, September 26—A multiracial group of 50 women and men marched up the Venice Beach Boardwalk for the second time in two months to demand justice for homeless workers Brendon Glenn and Jason Davis, killed by LAPD cops—and for one of the latest local victims, Jascent-Jamal Lee “Shakespeare” Warren, slain on August 30 by a Cadillac Hotel security guard.
Shakespeare was killed when he went to the aid of homeless friends being harassed by the hotel owner, Sris Sinnathamby, who used a racial epithet as he ordered guard Francisco Guzman to shoot Shakespeare. Charged with murder, Sinnathamby has been released on $1 million bail. Guzman, a felon, ran away but was captured six days later. He is charged with murder, attempted murder (he shot another man in the leg), and firearms possession.
As Google and other tech firms transform Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey and other Westside neighborhoods into “Silicon Beach,” they are accelerating these neighborhoods’ gentrification and pushing to rid the boardwalk of homeless workers. The racist Los Angeles City Council has declared a homeless state of emergency and pledged $100 million to address the problem, with no known source for the funding or a plan to spend it. Of a previous $100 million the city earmarked to combat homelessness, $87 million went to “law enforcement.” Currently, there are police-escorted sanitation sweeps every Friday morning to run homeless workers off the beach, but no plans to provide housing or even bathroom facilities. As L.A. continues to plan for a 2024 Olympic bid, these crackdowns will only increase. L.A. bosses are eliminating homeless people, not homelessness.
One speaker at the rally raised the issue of racism and recent efforts to integrate police forces throughout the U.S. He concluded that having Black, Latin, and Asian cops, whether rank and file or top brass, does nothing to change the racist, brutal essence of the job. Capitalist bosses in every country use the police to terrorize the working class, he explained, as can be seen with the 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, and the striking miners murdered in the Marikana Massacre in South Africa. The cops in those countries are the same color as the workers they slaughter, but they’re on the opposite side of the class war.
We are meeting new faces and groups who are cosponsoring these protests. The two Unitarian Universalist church contingents were larger this time. PLP distributed CHALLENGE to marchers and passersby. We identified capitalism as the root cause of the problems of homelessness, racism, and police brutality, and communist revolution as the solution. We are inspired by reading in CHALLENGE about the ongoing protests PLP has helped build in New York City around the murders of Kyam Livingston, Shantel Davis, and others. We will be marching in Venice again on Sunday, October 25.

NEW YORK CITY, October 16—Seventy five professors, students from CUNY, and workers from other unions were recently organized by the Progressive Labor Party and the International Committee of the Professional Staff Congress to see the documentary film, Miners Shot Down. It is a gripping depiction of the slaughter of 34 striking platinum miners on August 16, 2012 at Marikana, South Africa. We were fortunate to have the film’s director and activist, Rehad Desai, answer questions and describe the many current struggles of workers there.
As poverty and inequality grow in South Africa, workers are rapidly moving to the left, opposing the ANC government, and debating how to end capitalism. PL’ers pointed out that miners in Mexico and other countries are fighting against what’s shown in the film: company officials working hand-in-hand with the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state to stop workers fighting for a living wage. Militant strikes are powerful and necessary, and the Marikana miners set the example for workers around the world by fighting back with machetes and spears. But as long as the capitalists maintain state power, there will be more disappearances like Aytozinapa, more massacres like Marikana, and more Black Lung disease for the miners who live long enough to retire (see letter on page 6). What’s missing right now is a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary communist party the workers will continue to struggle but also continue to suffer, never obtaining what they need – a society where they share the fruits of their labor and decide their own futures.
People who came to the event contributed money towards the work of the Marikana Support Committee, which continues to demand reparations for the families of those killed and that those responsible pay for their crimes. Audience members asked tough questions—such as “How did the African National Congress, which fought hard against apartheid, come to betray the workers in South Africa?” Part of the answer to that question is that the African National Congress was led by the South African Communist Party, which fought for reforms. While SACP members displayed tremendous courage and dedication in the struggle against apartheid, they did not have a revolutionary program.
When the ANC came to power in 1994, they were now in charge of running a capitalist economy. The need to maintain corporate profitability outweighed other considerations, and the government was soon acting on behalf of the business class, which meant imposing austerity and suppressing workers strikes, as in Marikana. Moreover, some of the ANC leaders — like Cyril Ramaphosa, the former leader of the National Miners Union—were given high-ranking corporate positions and became very wealthy. Ramaphosa is personally worth $675 million, and sits on the board of directors of Lonmin—the very company the miners at Marikana were striking against! Lonmin, one of the world’s largest platinum companies, worked closely with the police who murdered the 34 workers, many shot in the back while fleeing.
Less than two years later, 70,000 mine workers shut down all three SA platinum companies for five months, until the company agreed to pay salary increases (though less than the 12,500 rand the workers were demanding as a minimum salary). In 2013, hundreds of thousands of workers in auto, construction, airport and other industries shut down their workplaces. The working class in South Africa has refused to be cowed. Someday they will take power and build an egalitarian communist society, inspiring and aiding workers in all of Africa — and the rest of the world — to do the same.

SIDEBAR

Campus Worker-Student Alliance Needed

On October 6, professors, students and campus workers at the Universities of Johannesburg, Witwatersrand and Cape Town held demonstrations demanding no outsourcing of work to private contractors, which has cost many their jobs and lowered wages. This developing campus worker-student alliance on behalf of the lowest paid workers at the universities is also demanding free university education and ending the repression of student activists.
Here in NYC, CUNY faculty and staff have been without a contract for more than five years. The union is planning a strike authorization vote, though not for a few more months. Our leadership stresses that “we don’t want to strike” and emphasizes the penalties for striking under the Taylor Law. However, there are also penalties for not striking, namely having to accept concessionary contracts that have long lasting effects, including continuing the poverty wages of adjuncts, who teach more than half the classes at CUNY. When unions like the transit union (TWU) have struck in the past, they did so in order to avoid painful givebacks, knowing full well they would be hit with fines and the loss of dues check off. There are also 10,000 CUNY workers in DC 37 who have also been without contracts and salary increases for years. If both unions shut down all 23 campuses and organized thousands of students to demand no tuition hikes, more money for CUNY and no concessionary contracts, it would have a powerful galvanizing effect on the city, energizing workers and students to stand up and fight back, as they’ve courageously done in South Africa.

COLOMBIA, October 18 —The capitalist class of Colombia has had a 205-year liberal-conservative dictatorship over the working class. The result is a deepening “dependency” on imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, which robs Colombia of its natural resources. The monopolies are the ones who are really in charge. They decide and order who will govern us, and how they will govern us, with the approval of worldwide imperialism.
The working class can never take power through the ballot box. A few real life examples prove this: Nelson Mandela of South Africa who spent 27 years in prison; Lula Dasilva, a metal worker who governed Brazil for 8 years; Luís Eduardo Garzón, a union leader and ex-mayor of Bogotá and current minister of labor; Michelle Bachelet of Chile, who survived the fascist dictatorship of Pinochet; or most recently Gustavo Petro, ex-guerrilla of the M19 movement and current mayor of Bogotá. These leaders came from the working class but are now instruments of the bosses to oppress workers and maintain capitalism. These examples only reinforce the concept of a bosses’ dictatorship.
The capitalists need elections to convince workers of the fairy tale that says voting can force the profit system to respond to workers’ needs. But that’s not the only reason. They also help to find candidates who are successful at misleading and pacifying millions of workers. For the working class there will be no difference if the candidate is liberal, conservative, or leftist. It does not matter what political party is in power. We don’t need the bosses nor do we need their electoral democracy in power; we say:
Don’t vote, let’s distribute CHALLENGE!
Don’t vote, let’s fight for workers’ power!
Don’t vote, let’s make a revolution and build communism!