QUEENS, NY, December 9 — A picket line at LaGuardia Community College united professors, staff, campus workers and students to overcome a climate of fear and speak out. Members of Progressive Labor Party helped organize this alliance to expose the racist disinvestment in public education. The chant, “Students, faculty, staff unite. Same struggle, same fight!” fired up over 100 protesters who made time on the last day of classes to join the struggle.
Union members of both the Professor Staff Congress and local DC 37 (campus workers) have gone more than five years without a contract, while students have seen their tuition increase each year. Where is the money going?
In short, it’s going to make up for racist city and state budget cuts in education for mainly working-class Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant students. In 1990, tuition covered 22 percent of total community college budgets, with the rest paid by the city and state. Now, tuition covers 45 percent of overall costs. Meanwhile, students who can’t afford college are being pushed into the military by a capitalist system that needs the working class to fight imperialist wars, not to learn. But students, faculty, and staff have had enough! We need education, not oil wars in the Middle East. We need a communist world that will value our labor and intellect not as commodities for profit, but for the good of society.
The atmosphere at LaGuardia is tense, with untenured teachers and adjuncts fearful of losing their jobs if they speak out. A recent survey found that of all CUNY faculty, those at LaGuardia overburdened by job demands outside teaching. Overworked, underpaid, untenured faculty hop from meeting to meeting to comply with administrative policies to “improve” the college. These initiatives often leave devoted faculty members with no time or energy to actually help students—or to fight back for our class. At the rally, student leaders reported intimidation from administration to discourage their involvement. For at least one student, the warnings led to a deeper commitment to this struggle.
On the morning of the rally, College President Gail Mellow sent a long email to LaGuardia workers. It suggested that CUNY faculty should be grateful that the administration’s proposed contract did not include furlough days or increased contributions for health benefits, like SUNY’s recent sellout contract. Mellow also said:
I wanted…to remind us all about the freedom of expression. It is a hallowed tenet of our democracy, and one we should all cherish. Throughout America’s history, the ability to publicly state one’s opinion without interference is part of what makes us a great country, and I want to simply affirm and welcome the LaGuardia’s chapter efforts.
This “reminder” was a threat to silence militant fightback, the only way for students and staff to win anything of value. The college administration fears a strike, but most of all they fear a multiracial worker-student alliance.
But we will not be pacified by crumbs from the bosses when we know the working class has created all value and can run the world without them. In defiance of the president’s email, students, faculty and staff shouted out for solidarity: “Tax the Rich, Not the Poor! Stop the War on CUNY!”
Students who were not yet courageous enough to stand with the picketers said they were inspired. With more struggle, those students will soon be leading the way! This is only the beginning of a long fight. Over coming months, PLP and friends need to build worker-student unity. We must raise class consciousness and win people to see that attacks by the bosses will continue as long as capitalism exists. The only way to create schools and work that meet our needs is to build a communist society. Students and workers, unite!

NEW YORK CITY, December 17 —“Capitalism is war. We have to educate the masses about [it], so they see how it’s all connected,” one worker stated.
Another said, “Bosses I’ve worked for keep saying, ‘I’ll pay you next week, there’s no money right now.’ This guy right here is owed $2,000. We even know where the boss lives. We have to raise the consciousness of the workers.”
In response to the intensifying anti-immigrant racism inspired by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and others, PL’ers went to a local intersection to befriend mainly Latin undocumented workers and distribute CHALLENGEs in its Spanish-language edition, DESAFIO.
Every day of the year, rain or snow, up to 400 undocumented construction workers gather here at sunrise. They are mainly from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru. “We go all across the city,” one of them said. “Some bosses treat us okay, others are abusive. Sometimes we get paid, or it takes months, or not at all.” The threat of cops and deportation is used to exploit and terrorize workers into accepting wretched wages.
Yesterday a PLP member distributed 30 DESAFIOs to a large group of workers, sparking a three-hour political debate. With limited Spanish, we did our best to communicate, often through pantomime. It reminded us of the importance of learning the language of the workers in the places we live. After reading the DESAFIO headline, they would tell the others, “No, take the paper, they’re against Trump!”
But soon they understood that the PL’er was more than just against Trump; he was against the whole damn system.
Immigrant Wage Slavery
Attacks on undocumented workers are sharpening. Rising racism has fueled job competition and cut wages. Painting an apartment pays about $160. “But when winter comes and your hands are shaking from standing out here from 7 a.m. until sunset, some will take anything,” one worker said. “Some do it for as low as $70 because they need to eat. That makes it harder for the rest of us freezing alongside them to negotiate more and feed our families.”
Many also work in nearby restaurants, where bosses force them into 14- to 16-hour shifts, six days a week, for $250 or less. “It’s brutal exploitation,” a worker said. Taking Leadership From Workers
We read the “Nuestra Lucha” (“Our Fight”) section, and the PL’ers shared information about reform groups helping undocumented workers in their day-to-day lives. The workers said their immediate problem was a lack of class consciousness, and an unwillingness to hold out for higher pay for their labor. We discussed the connection between imperialism and immigration, and PLP’s struggle within the working class in 28 countries to build for communist revolution.
One worker said, “If you want to organize, you can’t just come here once, you need to build friendships and confidence. Be here tomorrow, when hundreds more of us will be here.”
The worker from Peru agreed: “I support these ideas about communism and smashing all borders. Do you know the International?”
With that, the worker and a PL’er sang the International in Spanish.
Build a Base in the Working Class
We returned today with a native Spanish-speaking comrade. We made many contacts, and distributed 129 DESAFIOs in an hour. We could have distributed more! One young worker told us, “It’s getting worse with Trump. Workers born here feel bolder yelling or attacking us. The bosses treat us even worse. I think it’s related…What’s my solution? Overthrow it all—the system. Fight back. We can’t live like slaves.”
Trump is a bullhorn for the systemic racism in the U.S. that creates divisions among workers. He is thriving in the polls because his speech reflects the racist practice and ideology of capitalism. Liberal politicians like Barack Obama carry out the racism Trump spews: higher rates of deportation, more surveillance of immigrants, the closing of hospitals that serve the working class. The finance capital wing of the ruling class needs anti-Trump workers to buy into the myth of “lesser-evil” capitalists who will carry out the same racist, sexist agenda for imperialist war.
These workers want to meet with PLP to learn more about communism, and we will invite them to upcoming study groups. They will strengthen our fight with their experience and leadership, born out of hatred for capitalism and imperialism. We can learn from them as we organize students for a possible City University of New York strike in the spring (see page 3), as we bring our ideas to industrial workers, and as we build the international PLP and a worldwide communist movement against imperialism.  Los nada de hoy todo han de ser. “We have been naught, we shall be all.” Stay tuned for struggles ahead!

CHICAGO, December 6 — I went downtown to the shopping district to join a march against the racist cop murder of 17 year-old Laquan McDonald and the racist cover-up by the politicians running the city. It was advertised on the evening news the day before, so it was probably being used to lead angry working class people back into the fold of pacifism and politics as usual.
Sure enough, Jesse Jackson the famous misleader was there. About 200 marched, mostly Black men and women, young and old. For a while I concentrated on being a part of the march. I am a white worker and wanted to help create a multiracial force marching down the street. The chants were fairly liberal like, “Sixteen shots, stop racist cops, “No justice, no peace, and “Rahm Emanuel [ the mayor] has got to go.”
A comrade and I got out a 50 CHALLENGEs along the march and used the cover of the paper “RACIST TERROR MEANS FIGHT BACK” as a poster. We both got out 100 papers more at the closing rally of the march.
People are interested in communism. I stressed that everyone agrees it takes a community to raise a child. Then I add that it will take communism to make a world fit for everyone to live in. Both “community” and “communism” basically means the same thing: we will all pitch in and meet people’s needs.
When I told another protester it was a communist newspaper, he asked, “What was wrong with socialism?”
I showed him the sidebar on page two that says, “Capitalism returned to Russia and China because socialism retained many aspects of the profit system, like wages and privileges.” We talked awhile and then I continued distributing the paper. He later returned for another paper because he had given the first one to someone else and wanted his own copy! A few people said, “Give me that CHALLENGE.”
One fellow specifically said that he was familiar with the paper. So CHALLENGE sales and everything we do for the Party does make a difference!
A young non-Black woman had made sandwiches and put them in a bag with fruit for the marchers! Free! I accepted and told her what she was doing was what communism is all about: helping each other meet our needs. She didn’t take the paper, but it was a good feeling to see a worker being selfless to support a rally against racist murder.
Also, I met a woman whose son had been shot several times by the police on her front steps. He had survived but is disabled. She struggles with him to get up and do things for himself and not solely rely on disability benefits. I agreed that this is what is important in life — to be able to contribute to the functioning of society, in whatever manner they are able to, and tie ourselves to co-workers¸ friends, family and neighbors. I mentioned to her the angry young people I had met in Ferguson, MO. Their most spirited chant went, “They think it’s a joke, they think it’s a game.” These young people are angry at the endless joblessness, the few opportunities and constant harassment brought down on them, and they are supposed to sit on it and accept their fate. And the bosses and politicians play with working-class lives like it’s a game.
I told her of a PL’er who had lost a nephew in a supposedly gang shooting, but he had lots of friends that came out in his support. She said that she cries for all the deaths dealt to the young people.
I invited her to a holiday gathering we were having in a few weeks. We exchanged phone numbers, shook hands, and hopefully she’ll come.
At the end, somebody called for a cheer for pacifier Jesse Jackson. It was very weak! We should cheer the workers and youth who made it out here today and want to fight for a world without racist police killings. The Party will stay in this fightback and win some new members to a lifetime of struggle for workers’ power: communism.

TEL AVIV-JAFFA, November 28 — Thousands of people protested against the “great gas robbery,” a government plan to grant control of the second largest natural gas field in the Mediterranean to a handful of capitalists and exempt them from taxes or regulations.
But there is one obstacle to developing the Leviathan gas field off the coast of Israel—namely Israel’s isolation in the Middle East. Its deplorable treatment of Palestinians has created many enemies, and few countries are willing to invest in critical infrastructure for potential profits. The exceptions? Noble Energy, a Texas energy company that conducted the initial exploration in 2010, is already investing in the gas reserves. In October, Russia made a deal with Israel to allow Gazprom, the mostly state-owned Russian gas company, to get in the mix. This adds another variable to the volatile competition between U.S. and Russian imperialists for control over Middle Eastern oil. But one thing is clear. Leviathan makes the region even more valuable to the imperialist powers—and more likely to trigger the next global war.
Jewish workers are demonstrating every week for regulation of the gas. Some groups want Israel to nationalize the gas field, while others are demanding limited taxes or price controls. Either way, the capitalist ruling class wins. Regardless of any controls or regulations, profits from Leviathan will be massive.
More important, the demands are racist and further divide the working class by feeding Zionism. Workers at the protests overwhelmingly wave Israeli flags and chant fascist slogans: “Left and right unite! Come together for Israel!” In reality, the politicians promoting the protests have no interest in meeting the needs of workers in Israel-Palestine. The Israeli bosses are using this struggle to promote Zionism and foster the continued exploitation of all workers, and specifically the super-exploitation of Arab, Black, and undocumented immigrant workers. Only when all workers of the world unite under the red flag of Progressive Labor Party will we be able to meet workers’ needs.
PLP’s response was to chant, “Arab, Jewish, Black and white, workers of the world unite!” We distributed CHALLENGEs and fliers that exposed the dangers of Zionism and the need to fight for communism. We explained that is impossible to be “progressive” and fight for the rights of only one group of workers at the expense of another. In fact, the oppression of Arab workers allows the bosses to exploit Jewish workers and keep the brutal profit system in place. If natural gas is truly to be controlled by the working class, we must overthrow capitalism and replace it with the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism is the only system where all workers will organize resources for the common good.