Newark, NJ— Members of the Progressive Labor Party joined about 25 other workers today to protest the U.S. ruling class’s planned attack on Syria.  Called by the community organization, People’s Organization for Progress, the rally leaders criticized Obama and then discussed the history of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. But they stopped short of identifying capitalism and inter-imperialist rivalry as the main reasons for attacking Syria. CHALLENGE  was welcomed by workers in the demonstration and on the streets.

Brooklyn, NY, August 30 — Students, teachers,  and workers, Asian, black, Latino, and white rallied against the racist murders of Shantel Davis in Brooklyn and the looming racist bombing Syria. The protesters pointed to racism as a necessary element of capitalism. The racism that allows fascism to be built at home, illustrated by racist police murders, is also the bedrock that facilitates imperialism abroad.
PLP rallied in this Flatbush neighborhood because it experiences racist police terror each and every day. It is important to win black workers to struggle against all forms of nationalism, enabling them to be won to communism. They are crucial to communist revolution.
The Flatbush community had a positive response to our presence. Many good conversations occurred about communism, why we should oppose Obama’s bombing of Syria, and the links between racism and imperialism. As of this writing, the U.S. has yet to bomb Syria. Obama parroted the same Weapons of Mass Desrruction lies as his predecessor Bush. In building an anti-war movement, we must keep class war for communist revolution front and center.

NEW YORK CITY, September 4 — As President Barack Obama prepares to strike workers in Syria, former CIA director and war general David Petraeus has found a new stomping ground as an honors professor at the City University of New York (CUNY).  Meanwhile, students and faculty from many senior and community colleges have launched a campaign against further militarization of CUNY.
Amid perennial tuition increases and financial aid cuts, CUNY’s Board of Trustees appointed Petraeus to teach a one-year course to Macaulay Honors College, whose top-tier students are 60 percent children of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
Commanding U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions, Petraeus’s role was to solifidy U.S. control over the world’s largest energy reserves. Alongside Colonel James Steele, who commanded death squads that killed tens of thousands in El Salvador and Vietnam, Petraeus oversaw torture chambers and death squads in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is likely that some of Petraeus’s honor students are from the very countries he brutalized.
During Petraeus’s tenure as head of the CIA, the agency expanded the use of drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, killing thousands. According to the New York Times, drones killed an estimated 50 civilians for every “militant” slain.
The hiring of this war criminal is an attack on the mainly black and Latino students at CUNY. Even as the U.S. war machine murders and tortures workers in the Middle East, it spreads patriotic propaganda to the same class. Petraeus’s CUNY course is titled, “Are We On the Threshold of the New North American Decade?”
Of particular interest to this imperialist warmaker is U.S. energy policy. He will be advancing the interests of the Wall Street investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Robert, which hired him after a scandal over an extramarital affair ended his government career. His seminar includes readings that support fracking and the Keystone pipeline.  
It’s Not Just Petraeus, It’s Imperialism
Petraeus symbolizes the creeping of war fever onto our campuses. In addition to hiring this war criminal, CUNY restored the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) on several campuses last semester, including the College of Staten Island, Medgar Evers, York, and CCNY. ROTC was kicked out of CUNY in 1971 after mass protests against the war in Vietnam. Now the U.S. ruling class is preparing for larger wars. It needs working-class students’ ideological support — and working-class boots on the ground.
We must recognize that war and imperialism have always been a part of capitalist universities’ curricula, be it through research, propaganda, or recruitment. But students and professors have also played a historical role in fighting U.S. imperialism. We must revive the campus movement and help win the masses to communist revolution as the only solution against imperialism and war.
Fascism on the Rise
As the ruling class prepares for war, it also needs to train working-class students for fascist control. Students are harassed by cops on the streets, and the surveillance continues once they enter college. Our campuses have become centers for spying and patrols by the New York Police Department. Cameras, turnstiles, campus cops, and the presence of the NYPD is now normal at CUNY. The cops spy on Muslim students and disrupt any sign of protest. The FBI works with campus cops to investigate and intimidate students on campus.
Join college students and professors as we kick off our campaign against imperialist forces at 2:30 p.m. Monday, September 16, in front of the Macaulay Honors Building on 35 W. 67 St., between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. The U.S. can start its wars; the working class will finish them with communist revolution.

Washington, DC, August 24 — Today’s March on Washington, 50 years after the historic march that helped lead to the Civil Rights Act, was a timely reminder that reformist politics cannot fundamentally change the racist inequalities of capitalism.
Back in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other mainstream civil rights leaders argued that working within the system — by allying with liberal President John F. Kennedy — would win the fight against racism in the United States through federal action. Others, like Malcolm X and Jim Forman of SNCC, engaged in a more militant struggle against racism. The Progressive Labor Party went a step further by calling for revolutionary action to smash capitalism, the source of systemic racism in the United States.
The same political debate raged at the anniversary event. PLP called on marchers to join the fight for revolution, while the leaders of the march stressed the importance of working through the courts and elections to bring about change.
In reality, the advances made against racism decades ago grew out of grassroots militancy and rebellions in black communities throughout the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, those gains have eroded as a reformist, electoral strategy came to dominate the struggle. PLP asked the marchers: Why embrace the losing strategy that has cost us so much? Instead, let’s build a revolutionary party to smash the racist capitalist system and replace it with communism, a system of workers’ power based on equality and collectivity.
Spread Anti-Racist Grassroots Struggle
PLP members joined the People’s Coalition of Prince George’s County, Maryland, and the Shantel Davis Committee at a major subway stop to spread this message and to assist with the goal of strengthening anti-racist grassroots struggles. These include battles against the police murders of two young black people, Archie Elliott 3rd in Prince George’s County and Shantel Davis in New York City.  PL’ers also joined with Metro transit workers and residents of Stoddert Terrace, a local public housing site, to fight against the new Jim Crow in the Washington, D.C. transit system. New management policies ban for life anyone with a criminal record. This excludes thousands of black youth from even being considered for a job in public transit (see page 3).
Many marchers cheered on the rally and scores signed our petitions. At noon, participants marched to join the main rally on the national mall, where they brought our message of anti-racism and revolution to thousands more

On August 24, I rode with hospital workers attending the 50th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The bus ride seemed to be shortened for us by watching Salt of the Earth. I have seen this film many times, but this group of mainly black women hospital workers, who are fighting their hospital shutdowns, was simply the best audience I have watched it with.
As the film plot developed, Ramon and other men’s sexism were greeted with jeers in the bus. As the men stopped work, ignored their bosses’ demand that they return to work and set up their picket line, cheers of approval rocked the bus. Hoots of anger greeted the injunction to limit the strikers’ picket line. As Esperanza and the women took over picket duty and showed their ability to lead the struggle, approval was heard over and over. In fact the movie hadn’t ended as we reached RFK stadium and groans were heard as the bus captain started making announcements. On the ride back to NYC, a tired group watched the end of the movie and took a well-deserved rest after a grueling day.
One reason we showed this film was to help overcome the divisions in the three hospital struggles in Brooklyn. Workers are looking at their “own” hospital as most important. Each union acts as if the struggle affects only their members and makes deals allowing for layoffs, service cuts and closings. They urge workers to rely on politicians to “save” us rather than using the power of our class to fight back.
Although seemingly dated in its black-and-white format and old cars, Salt of the Earth is powerful as it shows workers fighting sexism, the need to fight racism and nationalism, the role of the police and courts, the limitation of simple bread-and-butter trade unionism, and much, much more. Directed by one of the blacklisted pro-communist Hollywood Ten and banned for years in the U.S., this film offers many opportunities for us to discuss with our friends the wide-ranging reasons why capitalism needs to be overthrown with communist revolution.
Red Glasses