NEW YORK CITY, March 17 ­­— Monday night, my friends and I had a dinner and discussion about sexism. This is part of a series of study groups for college students leading up to May Day. We began by looking at clippings from ruling-class newspapers. One “news” article was about pop-star Taylor Swift insuring her legs for $40 million. Another was about the systemic starvation of women in India, a country where kids are shorter, smaller, and more likely to be malnourished than the world’s poorest countries: Congo, Zimbabwe, or Somalia.
We then watched clips of PLP’s “The Fight against Sexism” educational documentary. We learned that sexism is the super-exploitation of women and the gendered division by the bosses for profit. It also includes the brutal ideas and practices that justify this oppression. Some target culture and religion as the origin. We agreed that human nature is not the cause of sexism.
We searched for the economic foundation of sexism: class society. There wouldn’t be unequal gender division of labor without such things as private property and surplus value. What became “women’s work” was free and cheap. Now, we have the division between unpaid work and paid work, which is the root of sexism. Raising the next generation of workers and sustaining family units just enough to be exploited is a lot of work, and saves the bosses a lot of money.
Today, sexism equals profit. Capitalism isn’t the birthplace of sexism, but it has intensified the super-exploitation and oppression of women. Sexism helps the bosses to make their money. It has become the lifeblood of capitalism along with racism and all the other ills that capitalism breeds.
We also watched a clip about violence against women during the depression of the 1930s.
This clip helped us target the root of domestic violence, and violence against women in general, such as cuts on healthcare, food stamps, and other social services.
One student commented how just a couple of years ago, he thought he couldn’t be with a woman who made more money than he did. However, being around the Party and his life experience has taught him the importance of uniting with women. He noted that, “Now, taking care of the kids, massaging her feet when she gets home after work, I could do that.”
The final clip we watched was about how feminism cannot defeat sexism. While well-intended people who consider themselves feminists are fighting for the equality of workers regardless of gender and sexual orientation, we asked what solution does feminism offer?  We can elect Hillary Clinton as president. Or we can equalize exploitation to the same level as men workers.
Or, there is a better alternative than feminism.
I don’t want to be associated with an ideology where Miley Cyrus, Bell Hooks, and Allexandra Kollantai can exist in the same sphere. A movement that could be diluted so that anyone no matter their class can identify with it, where the bosses can promote it, is a losing strategy for women workers. Feminism is a ruling-class movement that dilutes, muddies, avoids, or outright rejects a class analysis.
If we believe in an anti-sexist society, fight directly for communism. No half-way houses needed! One student commented, “I never understood how you could marginalize your power [by labeling men as the enemy]!”
Now the most important question remains: how do we combat sexism? Fight against the cuts in daycare at work? Wage a campaign against the rise of sexual violence on campus? Join the fight against police murders? Target the enemy: the administrators, the politicians, the school and hospital bosses, the cops, the state? Develop women leaders to lead mass struggle? The people around the table had a lot to think about.
Finally, I looked around and noticed the international quality of the dinner. We had mostly Black students from the Caribbean and Africa. We also had someone from Europe and South Asia.
One student was someone we met just four hours ago through a friend on campus during a CHALLENGE sale. After the study group, he said, “I vaguely knew a teacher in high school who had these communist ideas like you.”
We quickly figured out who that teacher was. “If you come to our retreat next weekend, you will be sure to meet him,” we said.
This just goes to show how the work our high school teacher did a decade ago had a profound effect on this youth, enough to identify communist politics years later through a chance encounter. Thank you to PL teachers who plant deep roots in working-class youth, for their work continues to bear fruit years later.

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We are getting ready for May Day! More than 30 people, including many City University New York (CUNY) professors and students, came to Astoria, Queens for a spirited radical cultural event this evening. It was a collective effort: members and friends of Progressive Labor Party prepared delicious food for dinner, helped set up, and provided amazing performances. We sang revolutionary songs celebrating anti-racist and militant workers struggles, we listened to powerful anti-racist poems from a young artist whose book of poetry has just been published, and we listened to the virtuoso guitar playing of a young comrade.
We watched a phenomenal one-woman performance of a short play about the life of Harriet Tubman, the courageous abolitionist who escaped slavery, but then returned to the South thirteen times to liberate 70 other slaves via the Underground Railroad. Tubman was an important figure in the great 19th century struggle against chattel slavery. She was an ardent friend and supporter of militant abolitionist John Brown, and she helped him prepare his attack on Harper’s Ferry, which was the opening shot in what would become the U.S. Civil War that decisively crushed the country’s slave regime. When Brown was hung, Tubman declared he had “done more in dying, than 100 men would in living.”
Today the struggle is to end capitalist wage slavery and to bring to birth a new society that isn’t based on class exploitation and profits. That was the dream of Albert and Lucy Parsons, the radical leaders of the first May Day march in 1886, when 80,000 workers marched down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on behalf of the eight-hour day. They advocated the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Our May Day rallies and marches this year will carry on the hopes and aspirations of the Parsons and the millions of others who have fought hard for a communist society, which is needed today more than ever, as capitalist crisis pushes down the living standards of workers everywhere, from Greece to South Africa to Mexico. A comrade urged every one at the event to join PLP on Saturday, May 2 in marching along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on behalf of revolution and a communist future. We collected money for the May Day dinner, and our friends said they were looking forward to May 2.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress and the drama surrounding it highlight geopolitical shifts and internal divisions dogging U.S. imperialists. As U.S. foes Iran, Russia, and China get stronger, the two main factions of the U.S. capitalist class are competing to assert control over U.S. foreign policies concerning oil and nuclear-rich Iran.
The main wing of U.S. capitalists, under Obama, seems more reluctant to rely on Israel as the gatekeeper of the Middle East. But some leading Republicans are dancing to the tune of billionaire donors such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who advocates for little or no accommodation with U.S. enemies and instead points to Israel as a viable solution. Netanyahu’s speech illustrates that the U.S. capitalists are at odds and are unprepared for the impending imperialist crisis with Iran.
No matter which ruling faction comes out on top, workers worldwide will ultimately pay the price. Workers will both finance and fight a war that will only serve the bosses. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, however, is organizing the working class worldwide not only to fight against the next global war for profits that Netanyahu’s speech forecasts, but to rid the world of the capitalist system that generates these wars along with racism, nationalism and sexism.
Iran Looms over the Middle East
Netanyahu’s hollow bluster and Obama’s need to negotiate both stem from Iran’s rising regional might, backed by Russia and China. Pro-Iranian groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi forces combat Israel, the U.S. and other allies in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen respectively. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard now has troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, in the latter 10,000 men six miles from Israel. Though Netanyahu won’t admit it, Iran’s preparedness makes an Israeli, U.S., or joint strike on its nuclear plants impractical:

The Iranians are not fools. They observed the ease with which the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. They buried theirs deep underground. It is therefore not clear…tshat the United States could destroy Iran’s nuclear program from the air. It would require, at the very least, special operations on the ground, and failing that, military action beyond U.S. capabilities…The Israelis are quite aware of these difficulties. (Stratfor, a U.S. strategy analyzing group, 3/3/15)

Liberal Democratic politicians, including Obama, servants of U.S. financiers and industrialists, ExxonMobil and JP Morgan, have long-term global military requirements that for now will allow them to make concessions with Iran. They are thus easing off support for ineffective Israel. U.S. imperialism’s main journal, Foreign Affairs, published a piece on March 2 headed, “The Breakup: The Slow Demise of U.S. Bipartisan Support for Israel.” It said in part:

In the fall of 2013, AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] lobbied for a bill that…. would have required the United States to “stand with Israel” if Israel decided to attack Iran. The bill…won the support of 43 of 45 Republicans, but only 16 of 55 members of the Democratic caucus. 

Many Republicans, however, have personal wealth-enhancing outlooks far narrower than the Liberal Democrats’ vision of post-world war domination. Liberal journalist Bill Moyers, who served U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam Genocide criticized the U.S. Republican party/Netanyahu alliance by outing its’ profit motives:

Everything you need to know about…Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Tuesday was the presence in the visitor’s gallery of one man — Sheldon Adelson…The party’s presidential hopefuls line up to kiss his assets, scraping and bowing for his blessing, which when granted is bestowed with his signed checks…[He, in 2013] denounced President Obama’s diplomatic efforts with Iran and proposed instead that the United States drop an atomic bomb...” (BillMoyers.com, 3/4/15)

U.S. Lack of Preparation
It’s not that Obama and the far bigger capitalists he serves are against using nuclear weapons. Just the opposite is true. Until and unless the main wing of U.S. rulers can mobilize the population militarily, WWII-style atomic bombs remain their inter-imperialist trump card. The British ruling-class-owned Economist (3/7/15) notes, “The Nobel peace laureate [Obama] in the White House has asked Congress for almost $350 billion to undertake a decade-long programme of modernisation of America’s arsenal.” Competition, however, is widespread:

Russia’s defense budget has grown by over 50% since 2007, and fully a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons…China…is adding to its stocks and investing heavily in submarines and mobile missile batteries… North Korea…is working on missiles that can strike the west coast of the United States.

The Economist offers a grim, accurate observation of the bosses’ hardball: “No government could allow itself to lose a war that it would win if it were to reproduce nuclear weapons.” When Obama & Co. speak of peace negotiations, grab your helmet!
Workers Pay the Price
The troops needed by the U.S. ruling faction which Obama represents will come from working class youth. Obama and his supporters are working to entice jobless youth, immigrants and undocumented workers into joining the military by promoting nationalism, racism and sexism. Once there, they will fight and kill their working-class sisters and brothers. The picture also looks grim if the Republican ruling-class faction wins.

Only a communist revolution under the leadership of PLP can put a stop once and for all to racism, sexism, nationalism and all wars. Join us today!

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U.S.-Israeli Nuclear Cooperation

The Israeli-U.S. hypocrisy over their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program knows no bounds. While it long been known that Israel itself has nuclear weapons, a U.S. Defense Dept. report detailed how the U.S. aided Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb while violating international standards.
According to “Courthouse News,” Roger Mattson — formerly of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff — said, “I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the U.S.”
Grant Smith, director of the think tank Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, told a Washington, D.C. District Court late last year that, “In 1987 the Department of Defense discovered that Israel has a nuclear weapon, detailed it  and then…covered it up for 25 years in violation of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing U.S. taxpayers $86 billion.”
“The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards,” wrote Smith. “The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology.” But meanwhile, U.S. rulers continue to shell out $3 billion a year in aid to Israel.
Smith further told the court that, “Under two known gag orders — punishable by imprisonment — U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program.” Furthermore, the 1987 government report entitled “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, found that, “As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapons field in about 1955 to 1960….The Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.”
So Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rant about an Iranian nuclear threat while the Israelis themselves have been stockpiling H-Bombs for decades.

SEATTLE, March 7 — The struggle in Washington against racist police violence has continued at a high level since the decision not to indict the Ferguson kkkop who murdered Michael Brown last August. Rallies of 50 to 100 people have been held weekly in the downtown area of the city. When others — particularly people from the Black community — have been in charge, events have drawn much larger numbers.
The Martin Luther King day march on January 19th brought out the largest crowd in years as organizers and speakers spoke directly to the problem of police violence. A multiracial crowd of 15,000 people marched through Seattle stopping at the youth jail, the courthouse, and the former Yesler Terrace housing projects — the first racially integrated housing projects in the U.S. Demolition of Yesler Terrace began last year as part of an effort to gentrify the traditionally Black Central District neighborhood. Marchers joined in as we shouted “No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police” and “Racism Means, We’ve Got to Fight Back!”
After the march, a series of exposés in a local paper kept racist policing on the front burner. A video was released of police attacking marchers at the end of the MLK march. A teacher from Garfield High School — a predominantly Black school in the Central District — who had led students in walkouts was pepper sprayed by police in a targeted attack. In another post-march attack police attacked marchers after claiming a marcher had assaulted a cop. Later The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper, released surveillance footage that revealed the cop injured himself when he tripped and fell chasing a marcher. Those arrested for assault were quickly released without charge.
Later on Jan. 28, The Stranger obtained camera footage of a kkkop arresting a 69-year-old William Wingate for walking while Black. The cop fabricated a story that Wingate swung a golf club at her — an accusation easily disproved in the video — and then prosecutors conned Wingate into signing a plea for misdemeanor unlawful use of a weapon. The ruling was dismissed only after public outcry.
Further revelations showed that the arresting cop had a history of making racist comments online, and attacking people in the street. The cop pleaded with prosecutors to throw the book at Wingate. Far from being a “rogue cop” this cop actually had served as a training cop for the department for years.
City officials are reeling from the Wingate controversy, the released video from the MLK march, the video released of a kkkop punching a handcuffed and restrained Miyekko Durden-Bosley so hard that he shattered her right orbital socket, and continuing stories coming out of city hall that show that efforts to reform the racism and violence of Seattle Police Department (SPD) have been a complete failure. The cop in the Wingate incident was relieved of duty and the head of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) took time out from defending racist police violence to paradoxically claim it had no place at SPD — feigning support for reforms that SPOG has viciously fought every step of the way. Local bosses’ news media even dutifully stopped reporting on marches with the MLK march receiving only the barest of attention.
Then on Feb. 10, police in Pasco, WA — a town servicing largely Latin migrant farm workers in the Yakima valley — fired 17 shots in a busy intersection during rush hour murdering Antonio Zambrano-Montes. As always police lied stating that Montes — a mentally ill 35 year old — had endangered them by throwing rocks. Video taken by passersby and released the next day clearly showed police shooting at Montes as he ran away, finally killing him when he turned around with his hands up. Despite efforts to quiet local rage at police violence, Pasco has erupted in protest. In Seattle, Montes joined the names of Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and John T. Williams as the latest victim of racist police and vigilantes.
On February 25, 500 students and workers walked out at the University of Washington against racism: budget cuts, attacks on custodial workers, and police violence. That same day, students walked out at the Bothell and Tacoma campuses, too. At Seattle University, a walkout for union rights for adjunct (part-time) professors also took on the issue of cop terror. While these marches always lean toward passing the next reform, people have been unusually open to more revolutionary possibilities. As the fight against the police in Seattle continues, we will heighten the struggle to turn calls for reform into calls for revolution. Racist violence will not end until capitalism is destroyed.

BROOKLYN, March  6 — Students and workers distributed leaflets, signs and made speeches in Haitian Creole, English and Spanish denouncing recent racist attacks on workers from the Dominican Republic (D.R.) to the U.S. Passersby in East Flatbush, a largely Caribbean and Latin neighborhood, stopped to take over 400 CHALLENGEs. Many chanted along and some stopped to give speeches on the bullhorn in Creole.
On Feb. 11, Henry Jean Claude, known as “Tulile,” a young worker from Haiti who shined shoes and did odd jobs for a living, was found hanging from a tree in a public park in Santiago, D.R., hands and feet bound. This lynching follows last year’s carnival parade where the Minister of Culture Jose Antonio Rodriguez allowed 50 white-robed and hooded KKKers to march. Racist speech inevitably leads to racist action! The day before Tulile’s body was found, a small group of Dominican nationalists gathered in Santiago to burn a Haitian flag and call for deportation of Haitian descent.
Local police immediately and without investigation said that racism was not a factor in the lynching, revealing themselves to be what PLP labels all cops under capitalism: KKKops. These same police arrested two Haitians for the murder in a blatant attempt to cover up government-inspired racism against Haitians in the D.R.
The Dominican ruling class has a long tradition of racism and nationalism directed against Haitians in a concerted effort to crush solidarity and unity between workers in the D.R. and Haiti. Workers from Haiti have been migrating to the D.R. for almost a century because of rampant racist unemployment and poverty created by the capitalist system.
This past week, the U.S. bosses declared that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death in Cleveland, Ohio by playing with a toy gun in a park, and that KKKop Darren Wilson would not be indicted by the federal government for the shooting death of 18-year-old Mike Brown. What do the murders of Henry Jean Claude in the D.R., Tamir  in the U.S. and refusal to indict killer cop Wilson have in common? The answer is simple: CAPITALISM!
This world-wide economic system cannot not survive without racism. The bosses use racism to divide and conquer. Workers are taught to scapegoat their working-class brothers and sisters for the failures of capitalism. When unemployment is rising, the bosses fuel anti-Haitian racism in D.R. and anti-Black and anti-immigrant racism in the U.S. to keep workers from blaming capitalism. Capitalism can never provide full employment, even in the “best” of times. Only communism will be able to provide jobs and a decent life for all workers and their families. Under communism, we will need collectivity to run society. All decisions made will be in the interest of our class, so racism will not be tolerated!
Let the militant march of 10,000 anti-racist Haitians on Feb. 25 in Port-au-Prince inspire us to reject racist government policy, from Ferguson to Santo Domingo! We call on workers on both sides of the island of Hispaniola to reject the bosses’ ideology and stand together to fight racism and nationalism. And likewise, wherever capitalist-inspired racism and nationalism rear their ugly heads, let workers stand together and fight the bosses who exploit us all! Let’s use the coming May Day — the International Workers’ Day — to build a movement together to reject and smash racism and nationalism and fight for communism and an egalitarian society in the interest of all working people.