NEW YORK CITY, December 4 — A forum organized by professors and grad students called “The War Here & Abroad: CUNY and U.S. Empire” drew a packed audience of 60 in a room meant for 40 today, a sign that the fight against CUNY’s complicity with the imperialist war machine is on many people’s minds.  There were no communist panelists but many key points were raised and debated.  PLP’s ideas were summarized in a flyer.
Grad student/adjuncts, undergrads and some senior professors united in the desire to research CUNY’s involvement in “defense” research, to oppose any more ROTC chapters, and to challenge the hiring of war-criminal generals like David Petraeus.  Teachers asked how they could teach Arabic language or International Relations classes from an anti-imperialist point of view; how they could reach students who are drawn to security-state or police jobs out of economic need; and how organizers can reach beyond the mostly left-wing folks already active. One young student challenged a famous Marxist professor to dig deeper into his Marxism and expose the main contradiction underlying the capitalist drive to war — social production vs. private expropriation — and not simply claim that a lot of capitalists profit from war (a secondary factor).  
PLP’s stress on inter-imperialist rivalry as the main manifestation of that principal contradiction in capitalism was our flier’s main point. We will have to fight for this perspective, which seems to come up rarely in discussion. Many are limited in opposition to unipolar U.S. imperialism as the only focus of anti-imperialist struggle.  But imperialism is now multipolar (as it has always been, in fact). All imperialisms are our deadly enemy, and international proletarian solidarity our strength and our hope.  
There is great potential to widen and deepen this struggle, but as two of the panelists said we have to link it to other workers’ struggles, especially to the social movements in other lands which imperialist armies are designed to crush.  One called New York City’s stop-and-frisk “counterinsurgency before the insurgency,” to underline our common fate facing such armies overseas and militarized police here. “War IS Terror” was the striking slogan of the forum.  How can we dig deeper and show how capital is terror, how capitalism drives war? PLP study groups and expanded CHALLENGE sales are crucially needed in this moment of honest searching and political desire.

On November 29, “Black Friday,” one of the busiest shopping days in the U.S, masses of workers nation-wide protested and struck against Wal-Mart, the country’s largest retail store, second largest corporation and largest private employer, with over 1.4 million workers.
By pioneering tactics to cut labor costs and avert union organizing, using intimidation among suppliers, subcontractors and competitors across industries, Wal-Mart has reaped billions in profits and is hastening a transformation toward a future of low-wage, non-union jobs.
The Waltons comprise the richest family in the world, their wealth inherited from company founder Sam Walton. Collectively the Waltons own over 50% of the company and are worth a combined total of $150 billion.  In 2011, six members of the Walton family had the same net worth as the bottom 30% of U.S. families combined. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart workers’ wages are low enough to qualify them for public assistance.

WASHINGTON, DC, November 20 — Over 100 students and workers from four local universities and many job sites jammed a Howard University conference room today to hear a panel discussion entitled “A Conversation on Racism and Capitalism.” The conference was organized in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Studies Association.
The panel was brought together by a sociology professor from the University of California. She initiated this conference because she was concerned that university discussions of racism had become disconnected from racism’s source: the capitalist exploitation of the working class. The seven panelists included historians, economists, political scientists and sociologists who discussed the many aspects of the indelible link between racism and the capitalist system.
The fact is the bosses reap several hundred billion dollars in super-profits from the racist and sexist difference in family income between white workers, as compared to that of black, Latino, and Asian workers, as well as women workers.
During the question-and-answer period, an engineering professor asked whether a party was needed to overthrow racist capitalism. The panel members generally danced around this question, leaving it to a PL’er in the audience to carefully explain why, in fact, a revolutionary party was needed to unify all sectors of the working class and its allies around the goal of communism and the elimination of racism, sexism and the wage system.
The participants expressed great appreciation to the panel. Several said that capitalism’s drive to maximize profit by minimizing wages for workers was helped by racist divisions and oppression. They said that now they had much better understanding of how capitalism requires racism to work for the very rich.
The next step is the launching of a Marxist Study Circle in January. Over 25 conference participants said they would join such a group. Preparations are well underway.  Anyone in the Washington-Baltimore area who is interested may sign up by completing a short survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WS8LD5J.

Negev, November 30 —Striking back against the Israeli government’s Prawer Plan for “ethnic cleansing” of Bedouins in the Negev, thousands of Palestinian-Bedouin workers and peasants, as well as Jews and Palestinians from the rest of the country, rallied near the poverty-stricken Bedouin town of Hura. The multi-ethnic protestors stood for two hours, facing heavily-armed cops and mounted police and demanded justice, as well as recognition of all Bedouin villages.
Then the cops charged in, attacked the unarmed workers and peasants with clubs, tear gas, concussion grenades, water hoses and horses. Dozens were arrested and brutally beaten, including a 10-year-old child. In response, local youths threw stones at the cops and blocked the road with burning tires. The fighting continued for two more hours. Then some of the protestors drove to the police precinct to demand the release of their arrested comrades.
Two PL’ers joined the protest standing together with their Bedouin comrades against the racist plan. Further demonstrations are scheduled around the country in the following weeks
The plan, also called the Prawer-Begin Plan, would deport 40,000 Bedouin workers and subsistence farmers from the so-called “unrecognized” villages (unrecognized by the government) where they have lived for many generations. They would be moved  to crowded (mis-)”planned” towns where unemployment reaches 50% and over 60% are below the poverty line. The stolen land would then be handed over to real-estate tycoons, including New York City’s billionaire Ronald Lauder, to build housing for the rich. The state calls the Bedouins “squatters,” but the real “squatters” are the Zionist regime and its fat-cat U.S. patrons, who now want to repeat the 1948 deportation of 750,000 Palestinians.
Even if the plan is defeated, the Bedouin workers and peasants who live in the “unrecognized” villages lack basic infrastructure and amenities, and have inadequate education and healthcare. The government claims it can’t provide services to small “scattered” villages, but that’s exactly what it does for dozens of well-off kibbutzim, moshavim and individual farms owned by upper-class Jews.
Capitalism, especially in its Zionist form, is hell for all workers in Palestine, but experience from South Africa and Zimbabwe shows that replacing colonialist (in this case, Zionist) capitalism with national boss capitalism will solve none of the workers’ problems. In both of these countries, racist apartheid was replaced by local capitalist rule, in the service of U.S. imperialism, which oppresses workers and murders striking miners.
As in these countries, capitalist “national liberation” holds no promise to the impoverished workers of all ethnicities and “races.” The only real solution is communist revolution under the red flag of Progressive Labor Party and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under communism we will share all land and resources, and smash all remnants of racism. Join us!