QUEENS, NYC—At a film showing of Burn! a woman Emergency Medical Technician announced that TransCare had shut down and laid off nearly 2,000 EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers and others.
The workers received no warning and were told they were not getting paid for the last week they worked. To add insult to injury, many learned that the paychecks they received three weeks ago had bounced!
Lynn Tilton, owner of TransCare, will continue be a millionaire while capitalism burns workers’ livelihoods. The TransCare workers have no union and because they received no warning about the coming mass layoffs, were not prepared to take collective action. They began to scramble and do the little they could to protect themselves: file for unemployment benefits, file complaints with the Attorney General over the lack of notice, and contact lawyers about a suit against the company.
However, our TransCare comrade had another idea—organize workers to protest in front of the company’s office in lower Manhattan. So we decided to call a rally for two days later, write a flyer, post it on Facebook and contact as many TransCare workers as we knew.
Capitalism Burns Workers
Burn! depicts a revolution of slaves in the Caribbean during the 19th century. We realized that as the film Burn! perfectly illustrates wage slavery is a brutal system of exploitation, and like chattel slavery it only serves the interest of the capitalist class. We decided the rally would offer us many advantages in bringing our fight to the forefront but total eradication of wage slavery will only come to fruition under a communist system, moreover a communist system led by the PLP. This led to our talking about marching on May Day (Saturday, April 30)—the only true workers’ day where workers affirm their connection in the struggle for a world without racism, sexism and other forms of capitalist exploitation.
PLP fights with TransCare Workers
The first rally PLP organized drew only six workers and two supporters. Four days later, we had another rally, this time with a dozen workers and five supporters, including members of the CUNY faculty and staff union. Another rally is planned for next week.
Under capitalism, any company can shut down and throw their workers out onto the streets. So while we fight for back pay, we also need to explain to TransCare workers, and to CUNY students and professors, that we need to take state power.
Power will in the hands of working people women and men, who will carry out the task of using the wealth we create to provide everyone with the things we need: housing, health care, jobs that make use of our talents and interests, international cooperation of workers without wars and national borders, and the elimination of racism and sexism. March on May Day!

As we mark International Working Women’s Day on March 8, the state of the world seems grim. Imperialist wars fueled by the U.S., Russia and China are intensifying. Capitalist economies are in crisis or on the brink. As always, instability in the profit system means more attacks on working-class women.
In Syria, a civil war manipulated by the U.S. and Russia has displaced millions of women. They are twice as likely to die from shelling or air strikes as men. In refugee camps in countries like Jordan, where women and children compose more than 80 percent of the population, they are at higher risk of sexual assault. Often they lack basic reproductive and sexual health services, resulting in higher death rates.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama is ramping up racist deportations of women and children who fled north to escape pervasive violence in Latin America—a result of two centuries of U.S. imperialism. Women are the majority of immigrants entering the U.S. on the “Train of Death.” An estimated 100,000 women per year are kidnapped into forced labor and, increasingly, sex slavery (Congressional Research Service, 7/29/15). The situation is worsening by the day. Drug cartels are shifting their operations into highly profitable global trafficking networks, while capitalist governments look the other way.
As for the immigrant women who survive the journey to the U.S. and now face deportation, what is waiting for them at home? A Zika virus linked to deadly diseases and birth defects, with capitalist health services promoting abstinence as the only solution.
Feminism vs. Fightback
In reaction to these sexist attacks, some women workers choose feminism and the dead end of identity politics. Millions are rallying behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan: “I’m with her.” They are being won to the dangerous idea that a woman president will somehow make things better for women workers—an echo of Obama’s election in 2008 as a “post-racial” president. Eight years later, Obama’s racist immigration apparatus has deported more workers than all previous presidents combined. His administration has murdered thousands of workers with drone strikes. He continued his Republican predecessor’s policies of forcing workers to bail out the very banks that profited most from the genocidal war in Iraq. These banks also evicted millions of workers, of whom a disproportionate number are Black workers, from their homes.
Here is the hard reality of the profit system: If elected, Clinton will do no more for women workers than Obama did for Black workers.
Internationally, the same trend holds true. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has failed to improve conditions for working women, who are stuck at 78 percent men’s income for comparable work, a ratio unchanged for the past five years (Deutsche Welle, 3/16/15). In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brutally suppressed striking railway workers and pushed their families out of their homes. In Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attacked striking miners, closed unprofitable industries and privatized those that remained.
Why is it that women politicians don’t make things better for working-class women? Merkel, Clinton, and Gandhi are allied with the capitalist class. The capitalists fund their campaigns and dictate their policies. Sexism means lower pay for everyone, for both men and women, and super-profits for the bosses. Men’s wages are depressed precisely because women’s are even more depressed. Sexism means that working families, and working mothers in particular, are overburdened by childcare and housework. Sexism means that women are a disposable labor force for the bosses. When the occasional woman attains a position of power, the bosses use this exception as another excuse to blame other women for being poor.
Above all, the capitalist bosses need sexism to exploit and divide the working class.
Communism Will Smash Sexism
And so: What is to be done? How can we eliminate sexism? Sexism is inseparable from class society. The only way to end it is to eliminate classes by creating a communist society, where all workers can contribute and have our needs met.  Revolutionary victories of the past show us the potential of the future. In socialist China, prostitution was virtually eliminated. In the socialist Soviet Union, educational facilities at all levels granted equal access to men and women. (At the height of the Soviet era, 60 percent of engineers were women.) Maternity leave with full pay was universal; new mothers had no worry about losing their jobs. There were ample kindergartens, day care centers, nurseries, and playgrounds, as well as communal dining rooms. The concept of housekeeping as “women’s work” was abolished.
While the Soviet and Chinese revolutions made progress in many ways, they also had flaws we can learn from. They represent only the beginning of what we, the working class, can achieve in the future! This International Working Women’s Day, we must celebrate women as the holiday’s communist founders intended: for their historical contributions to building society and for their revolutionary strength.
But one day is not enough. We must dedicate ourselves to a lifetime of fighting sexism in our homes, at our jobs, and in the streets. In Pakistan, Progressive Labor Party is advancing the leadership of women in the fight against slave-labor working conditions for men and especially women. In PLP in Brooklyn, women are leading the fight for justice for Kyam Livingston, Shantel Davis, and Kimani Gray, all killed by racist and sexist kkkops. In PLP in Mexico, women comrades are at the forefront of the fight against racist education reforms and fascist state terror.
All around the world, waging anti-sexist battles is a way to put another nail in the bosses’ coffins. Help us bury the bosses and their profit system! Join PLP in the fight against sexism, racism, and capitalism. Let’s work together to create a communist society that meets all workers’ needs and frees us of exploitation. We have a world to win!

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What is International Working Women's Day?

International Women’s Day (IWD) is an international holiday on March 8 that celebrates women and their revolutionary power. It has strong roots in the communist movement. IWD first began in New York as “Women’s Day,” organized by the Socialist Party of America. In 1909, it became a commemoration of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In the 1910 international meeting of communist and socialist leaders, known as the Second International, women members pushed to establish an International Women’s Day. By 1911, more than a million workers were celebrating IWD. Anti-sexist struggle continues to make it an historic day for all workers, women and men.
During Czarist Russia, the struggle for working-class women became synonymous with the open call for overthrowing the government. During World War I, the Russian Bolsheviks made IWD a demonstration of women workers against imperialism. On March 8, 1917, the women of St. Petersburg sparked and led the February Revolution, which in turn paved the way  for the October revolution and the first workers’ state.

WORCESTER, MA—On Martin Luther King’s birthday Progressive Labor Party provided a revolutionary alternative to the passivity and treachery of local liberal misleaders and the working class responded in force! The Progressive Labor Party and friends organized a militant march against racism while the town bosses lorded over a traditional Martin Luther King Day breakfast which they hijacked from grassroots organizers years ago. In defiance of the local bosses scores of people came to our march despite the very cold temperatures.
Liberal Bosses Exposed
Sharp struggle at the breakfast exposed fascists masquerading as liberals. A fighter was injured when police arrested him for passing out fliers on predatory lending practices—at a breakfast for Dr. King! A city official who was co-chair of the MLK Day breakfast ordered the arrest of the activist. Scratch a liberal—find a fascist!
PLP and others organized our march against racism. We protested retaliatory criminal charges brought against four protesters who blocked our city’s busiest intersection some time ago. We marched from a church on Temple St. to this intersection, Kelly Square. We showed the bosses and our working class brothers and sisters that we will not be intimidated by retaliatory prosecutions.
Our marchers were reflective of the whole working class. Among the marchers were women and men, Asian, Latin, Black, and white, young and old, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and atheists. One of our friends is a survivor of the Holocaust who is nearly 100 years old; he came and marched the entire distance.
At Kelly Square, we held a rally in where speakers connected capitalism and racism. Our words echoed across the frigid intersection, heard by passers-by and spread word of mouth, social media, and the local press. One speaker demanded a $15 minimum wage. Another demanded an end to mass incarcerations and discrimination against ex prisoners. The main speaker from PLP called for end of the capitalist system, which needs racism, with communist revolution.
To Be Attacked is Good
Racist columnists in our local paper were especially hateful in their attacks on the march and on PLP that appeared in print the next day. To be attacked is a good thing! In ensuing days the working class responded by sending letters to the editor defending our march against racism. The church near where we met for the assembly for the rally was attacked by some of the city bosses, even though it did not directly endorse the rally. Illusions about what side the city bosses are on cannot persist in the face of such brazen assaults on anti-racist fighters, especially with PLP in the mix constantly raising the need for workers to break with the bosses leaders and to become leaders ourselves in the fight for a communist world.
Because of this march, the working class of Worcester has become stronger in the fight against racism and economic injustice.

NEW YORK CITY, March 7—PLP has been fighting to smash racism at Columbia University, organizing and forming study groups within the Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) club, which currently is fighting for a $15 minimum wage on campus.
SWS’s fight is an antiracist one for low-income, mainly Black and Latin student workers here, who earn most of their living expenses via work-study programs. Often, they cannot afford food or books on their pitiful salary.
The college often fails to pay students for months after their work is done. Graduate students, who do much of the undergraduate teaching, are attempting to unionize to guarantee themselves a livable wage.
This while the school sits on a $9.6 billion endowment! But what does capitalism care if it leaves these students out to hang, while bosses steal the profits?
Last Thursday, 40 militant SWS students again marched to the administrators’ offices of Columbia and Barnard after rallying and dropping a banner on the main university quadrangle.
They plan to hold these marches every two weeks. Students from other groups joined them, reflecting the recently formed coalition of all activist students. They’ve approached faculty members to garner support, and two departments, sociology and history, have agreed to their demand. Two other small administrative units have also acceded to a higher wage.
Many faculty members are sympathetic but too intimidated to voice their support, fearful of losing their jobs. Indeed, the University has been threatening disciplinary action against undergraduate activists.
Columbia’s wealth is devoted to educating the U.S. financial and political elite. However, the massive student strike of 1968 and the civil rights movement forced them to admit more Black, Latin, immigrant and working-class students, and they now brag about their diversity and of accepting of students regardless of financial need—as if they’ve suddenly turned anti-racist.
In addition to the $15/hour demand, SWS is also pressing the campus to pay volunteers.
Impoverished student volunteers can’t participate in volunteer programs, which may involve working in the community, making ties with future employers or providing medical services. One pre-med student was interested in the emergency medical service, but could not afford it as not only are volunteers unpaid, but they are expected to pay $3,000 for training.
This group of students, and many more at Columbia, are engaged in fighting racism in the community as well.
Columbia is in the process of building a new campus on 35 acres of land they’ve taken over in west Harlem, displacing Black and Latin residents and businesses and helping gentrify the area. Students participated in a sleep-in on the streets of Harlem several years ago and have also allied with the struggles against police brutality and evictions.
Increasingly, they are realizing that poverty, racism unemployment and war cannot be solved under capitalism and that eventually the system must be overthrown. Many who have been long-time intellectual opponents of capitalism are realizing that to overthrow capitalism one must belong to and organize with a party with a long-term outlook, vision of the future, and program of fightback. With consistent struggle, we can raise class-consciousness and destroy racism through organized communist revolution.