PHILADELPHIA, June 30 — This afternoon about 175 retired and working Local 1199C union hospital workers gathered at the union hall to see if the Jefferson Hospital bosses would retreat on taking health benefits from retirees and part-time workers. Over 50 retirees were called to the union hall at the last minute and hoped to confront the Jefferson negotiators. The negotiators never came, and to our cheers, the announcement came that Jefferson had backed down and an agreement had been reached! As the hospital day-shifts ended in waves, the hall filled with a mixture of working and retired union members full of anger, determination, solidarity and comradeship.
While celebrating this victory, CHALLENGE readers and friends of PLP should turn to the wise words of the 1970s-era Scottish funk band AWB: “Got work to do, got so much work, yeah yeah.” Storm clouds are still gathering on the horizon, both for Jefferson Hospital retirees and workers everywhere.
The union mis-leadership and liberal Democrats often portray attacks like the ones at Jefferson as disconnected from similar attacks happening across town or in other cities, let alone happening to workers worldwide. Workers are saturated with the lies spread by these vipers, which can take their toll and spread cynicism on the most battle-hardened among the Jefferson Hospital workers. “Here we go again,” was one retiree’s observation when a group of 1199C retirees invaded a hospital administration office in May. She referred to the 40-50 years of history that her and her fellow union members created by proudly fighting first to unionize, and then to win the benefits that we’re now desperately trying to keep.
In reality, attacks like the ones on retirees here are being waged against workers in many forms all across the U.S. Such attacks are necessary for the U.S. ruling class to discipline the workers as the bosses prepare for potential wars with their Chinese and Russian capitalist rivals.
The Progressive Labor Party fights to get us off this losing “Merry-Go-Round” of fighting tooth-and-nail for reforms which the bosses can just take back later, but to end ALL wars for profit by destroying the profit system itself.
The fight at Jefferson Hospital is one hot spot in the class war between the capitalists and workers. Under capitalism, workers are exploited for profit, and every organ of the capitalist state serves the bosses to help maintain this status quo. We are limited to fighting by laws, courts and legal decisions made by these bosses. Now and again, workers succeed in organizing and winning reforms. However, as long as capitalism exists, we stand to lose the victories it took us decades to win, amidst growing racism, sexism and eventually world war.
PLP stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the workers and retirees of Jefferson Hospital. We believe that an injury to one is an injury to all! Through CHALLENGE networks and new readers gained from this struggle we are building an international, multi-racial movement, a class war to overthrow capitalism once and for all with communist revolution. The more readers of CHALLENGE who see the bigger picture, the sooner we can become a real game changer in the battles that loom ahead.
The power and spirit we could bring to a fight for this bigger picture was present all day among these union members. PLP fights to direct this energy to the battles ahead. We have two years to build for our contract fight and we can be sure the bosses and union hacks will demand more cutbacks. In the short- and medium-term, we have the tremendous task of using CHALLENGE to raise political awareness and build study groups to understand our fight in the global context of coming imperialist war. When the Jefferson bosses refuse to back down next time we can be strong enough to march four blocks from the union hall to the hospital and shut it down.
Win or lose the next contract battle with the bosses, through building workers’ power among the rank-and-file and building on the power and spirit felt in that hall today, our struggle over the next two years will show even more workers that fighting back is possible and that a communist world — a world run by the working class — can be won.

Tel Aviv, July 12 — Hundreds of antiwar workers, including members of Progressive Labor Party, protested in Habima Square against the mass bloodshed in Gaza. This fight between bosses props up all rulers. The Israeli capitalists have united many workers behind them in nationalistic and racist fervor; the Hamas heads claim to be fighting a “resistance” war against Zionism while robbing the Gazan population blind. The bosses get rich and powerful while workers, especially those in Palestine die.
Amid this mass murder, we PL’ers came to support the demonstration against fascism and imperialist war. But the class enemy was also prepared. A large gang of fascist thugs from groups such as Kahane and LAHAVA (a racist group fighting against marriage between Jews and Arabs) also came out. They shouted racist slogans like “Death to Arabs” and beat up many demonstrators. The cops — the fascists’ best friends — stood aside and let them beat up the antiwar protesters.
The following week saw even more fascist rampages inside the “Green Line.” Emboldened by the nationalistic hysteria whipped up by the war, the thugs threw stones and bottles at a demonstration by Palestinians in Haifa, again with no real sanction by the cops. In Tel Aviv, they violently attacked two more demonstrations with eggs and bottles, and threatened women fighters with rape.
As communists, we will not stand back and surrender while the Israeli government murders hundreds in Gaza, and these thugs rampage in the streets. One of our comrades has joined a broad self-defense group that is training to take the fight to the fascist enemy in the streets. Racist bullies have to be beaten back, just as Zionism and Hamas need to be thrown into the dustbin of history. We must build a mass communist party to defeat capitalism and establish an international workers’ communist state.

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New York City, July 25  —  “IDF, USA; How many kids did you kill today?”  “No more occupation! Working people have no nation!”  
These were the anti-racist, pro-working class chants led by members of Progressive Labor Party and friends at rallies on successive days at Foley Square and Times Square against the attacks on workers of Gaza by the fascist Zionist ruling class of Israel. These chants presented a sharp contrast to the pacifist and nationalist chants of the rallies’ leaders.
Gaza contains 1.8 million people, the great majority of them refugees, from other parts of Palestine/Israel, packed into an area of 140 square miles. It is often referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison. The Israeli massacres there have become so blatant that workers and students around the world are taking action against it.
Yesterday’s rally was led by Adalah and other groups pushing BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) as the way to stop the fascist attacks and occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. But in pointing to South Africa (which got 80 percent of its arms from Israel) as an “example of the power of pacifism and BDS,” they ignored two crucial points.
First, the struggle in South Africa was not primarily pacifist. Workers in South Africa fought back, often with armed violence; they did not wait for boycotts and divestment to work. Second, even with the official end of apartheid, South Africa remains a viciously racist country where black miners and other workers are murdered by police when they strike against inhuman conditions. Even if the Israel-erected wall goes down, Palestine/Israel will remain racist and fascist. Capitalism and imperialism will never be ended nonviolently. Only working-class unity leading to communist revolution can bring a just world.
While the chants and speeches of ANSWER and Al Awda, the organizers of today’s rally, were less pacifist, they were even more nationalist. The two main chants were “Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry, Palestine will never die!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”  While fighting against the Israeli ruling class and those workers won to fascism is necessary, it is equally necessary to build unity among all workers in Palestine/Israel — Jewish, Arab and immigrants. Just as Jewish workers must fight back against the Zionist rulers, Arab workers must refuse to follow Hamas or other nationalist wannabe rulers. Only unity of all workers, leading to communist revolution, will create a system that serves workers’ needs.
In spite of the misleadership at the rallies, most people took both CHALLENGEs and our flyer. Many agreed that only a working-class-run state could solve the problems faced by the workers of Palestine/Israel.
To have a world where workers and our children can be free of the evils of capitalism, racism, imperialism and war, we must unite to build a communist revolution. Join PLP!

Staten Island, NY July 19 — Youth, workers and residents here have been gathering for vigils, rallies and demonstrations to express their outrage over the July 24 racist killing of a 43-year-old black worker, Eric Garner.
Known as a “gentle giant,” Eric’s nickname was Nice. If you needed something and didn’t have the money, he would help you. Eric sold single cigarettes to try to get by, but wasn’t selling them at the time of his murder. After trying to break up a fight between two other people, he was choked to death by one cop as several others held him down. Unfortunately for the working class, this is not unusual. Unfortunately for the cops, there was indisputable evidence of this particular brutal attack. The soundtrack of Eric Garner saying, “I can’t breathe” over and over can be heard on a video from the scene, recorded by an antiracist young man. The next day, a second video documented the failure of the cops or EMTs to try to help the victim for nearly seven minutes after he stopped responding.
Even so, the prosecutors, the press and the politicians are still talking about “investigating,” but in essence are in cahoots to terrorize mainly black working-class men.
Broken Capitalism
Targeting minor crimes and violations is the policy of liberal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. His reappointed police commissioner, Bill Bratton, first established a “broken windows” enforcement policy in New York in the 1990s, based on the racist theories of social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. This policy has led to record numbers of arrests in New York despite a plummeting crime rate. In reality, it is designed to break down poor and working-class people, especially black and Latin workers. The murder of Eric Garner was no accident. He was trying to fight back against police harassment; he had told lawyers at Legal Aid that he wanted to take his cases to trial.
Ramarley Graham, Kimani Gray, Shantel Davis, Kyam Livingston — all slaughtered by the cops in the past few years in New York. The local bosses “investigate,” but there can be no justice for these families under capitalism. In these committees against police murders, PLP is struggling around this point. Many protesters were also receptive to CHALLENGE and our communist leaflet about the killing of Eric Garner.
The murder spree by the racist criminal injustice system has occurred amid a growing attack on the entire working class. Real unemployment in the U.S. has been growing every year, and is even more brutal in poor neighborhoods. Wages have fallen for over 40 years. Falling wages and unemployment spur these racist killings. The capitalist ruling class needs to intimidate workers into not fighting back, and uses racism to try to divide us. The real broken window is capitalism.
Cops’ Crime Spree on Staten Island
While talking to people at the memorial site where Eric was killed, we heard two other stories of people severely beaten by cops in Staten Island in the last month. According to the New York Daily News, “seven of the city’s top 10 most-sued officers — and 14 of the city’s top 50 most-sued officers — are assigned to a Staten Island narcotics unit working in the territory of the 120th Precinct….The unit has racked up a staggering amount of lawsuits despite being the smallest narcotics bureau in the city.”
Eric Garner’s murder was shocking but not surprising. What else can we expect from a racist criminal injustice system in a notoriously racist preserve like Staten Island? Even electing liberal politicians won’t buffer us from racist murder; elections are a passive dead end. At the same time, the capitalist class is preparing for bigger wars. To fund them, they must steal even more profits by cutting wages, jobs and benefits to workers.
Under capitalism, workers produce all of society’s wealth but are ultimately expendable. The only justice for the working class will come with a communist revolution to smash capitalism once and for all.

Brooklyn, NY, July 21 — Outside Brooklyn Criminal Courts Building at 120 Schermerhorn Street, a mother still grieving for her daughter after a year, faced off against three court cops who told her she had to move her car away from the front of the courthouse.
“No parking,” one of them said. He wore three stripes. The mother’s voice, breaking but angry, said, “You killed my daughter in this building. Why aren’t you examining that and not me parking my car?” Her car had a large banner of Kyam Livingston’s photo surrounded by the dates of her birth and death. “Go inside and send out the captain. I’ll talk to him,” the mother said. The officers retreated.
No captain came out while a picket line was gathering. A few reporters from television news and newspapers showed up. No captain appeared. The chants started, “We want Justice for Kyam Livingston, Killed in a Brooklyn Cell!” The picket line grew larger as more people turned up from work. The chanting got louder and stronger. And then speeches began on a loudspeaker explaining that a racist system that can kill a black woman simply by refusing to get her medical care when she was clearly in distress for seven hours does not deserve to exist. The sounds of the picket line echoed down the street.
One-Year Memorial
This demonstration was larger and angrier than usual. Kyam’s mother had brought large photos of her daughter which some of the demonstrators carried. She also handed each demonstrator a red rose to carry in memory of her daughter. Small electric candles were given to everyone to turn on in unison. Balloons were released into the gathering dark and people watched them float higher and higher. For many it was a memorable moment. One woman struggled to maintain her erect posture as she walked on the picket line. There were the young, the old, black, white, Latin, men and women united in grief and anger.
The court police almost disappeared at the militancy of the demonstration. When the struggle against the cops for allowing Kyam to die first began one year ago, the officials would not release to the family the surveillance tapes of the cell or the names of the officers involved. The struggle has forced them to reveal the names and the videos, proving what they knew to be true all along. They now want those responsible to be brought to justice for racist murder.
To ensure that the officials don’t doubt that we will be back, every speaker said this is a continuing and growing struggle. The family is also demanding changes in the way those facing incarceration are handled. The committee wants to clean up the racist culture of indifference towards those waiting to be charged at Brooklyn Central Bookings and clean up the filth people have to endure while they are waiting. Anti-racist struggles like this are important for the survival of the working class in this racist, violent, and greedy system. PLP is fighting to end the system where racism rules the day and the bosses use their cops, courts, and prisons to threaten and divide workers.
The Progressive Labor Party knows that it’s necessary to end capitalism to destroy racism and all of the filth this system produces. This is the beginning of another year of attempting to build the Party as the agency of change. Dare to struggle, dare to win. Join us.