For hundreds of years, women have been leaders and fighters against sexist and racist oppression in the class struggle. They have been instrumental in victories for women and men alike. It’s this reality that gave birth to International Women’s Day. In celebrating this historic day, members and friends of Progressive Labor Party must shift the discussion to the necessity of anti-sexist struggle within the fight for communism. Capitalism requires sexism; we cannot end sexism without destroying capitalism.  
International Women’s Day was born out of the working class. The first IWD was held on February 28, 1909, as part of the fight for socialism and against capitalist working conditions throughout the world. It recognized the role of women as essential fighters against sexism and racism. PLP keeps this militant history alive by fighting against sexism and building for communism.
Eliminating sexism hinges on workers holding state power and destroying the divisive capitalist system that thrives on gender inequalities and oppression. In Copenhagen in August 1910, with the leadership of German communist Clara Zetkin, an international conference adopted March 8 as the day to recognize the contributions of women in the class struggle. In 1913, women in Russia demonstrated in observance of the first International Women’s Day in Saint Petersburg.
In 1917, the women of St. Petersburg (later renamed Leningrad) let uprisings which sparked the Bolshevik seizure of state power in the October Revolution. They then IWD a national holiday. After seizing state power, the Bolsheviks pioneered many material and social changes in the lives of women, from access to higher education to equality in the workplace. Later, in China after the 1949 revolution, the communist movement eliminated prostitution, sexist foot-binding and the disparity in literacy between men and women.
As we prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, the capitalist bosses are intensifying the exploitation of women while pretending to fight against it. In the U.S., women will soon be allowed to serve in combat positions in the U.S. military — a move that Barack Obama and the ruling class media champion as a victory against sexism. But what does this really mean? Many more working-class women will be sent to the front lines to kill and be killed for the profits of U.S. capitalism.
Meanwhile, Sheryl Sandberg, the billionaire chief operating officer of Facebook, wants to build a new movement to push women to “lean in” and work harder to reach the top tiers in business. Her ideas push the lie that women are to blame for their lack of success, even as the economic crisis hits women — and particularly black and Latino women — the hardest.
With the betrayal of communism around the world, IWD has lost its working-class character. Sexism is an attack on the international working class. It is taught in the schools and media. It corrupts our workplaces and our personal relationships. It permeates the military and infiltrates the mass movements. It abuses, rapes, and murders women every day in every capitalist country. Last November, a fire in a garment sweatshop in Bangladesh killed 112 workers, mostly women, as they made clothes for Walmart. It thrives on the disunity between women and men workers.
We must take back International Working Women’s Day and renew our dedication to building a communist movement led by Progressive Labor Party. Raise anti-sexist politics and struggles at the point of production in the workplaces, schools, and mass organizations. Fighting side by side with men, women workers must become leaders of the revolutionary struggle worldwide.

In 2007, Christopher Dorner, a three-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and former U.S. Navy Lieutenant, accused a fellow officer of kicking and punching a mentally ill man while handcuffing him. The claim of excessive force was declared “unfounded” and subsequently Dorner was fired in 2009 for “making false statements.”
Dorner issued a manifesto accusing the LAPD of using excessive force, of being racist and of firing him for raising those issues through official channels. He retaliated by vowing to kill cops and did so, as well as killing some family members of one and vowed to kill others. Such tactics will not fulfill Dorner’s aim of “reforming” the LAPD. Yes, the LAPD has a long history of racism and of brutalizing the working class of Los Angeles — but it cannot be reformed.
Now Dorner is dead, which is exactly where the LAPD wanted him. They had no intention of capturing him alive and allowing him to use a trial to tell what he knows about the racist evils rampant in the 10,000-member LAPD.
A multi-county manhunt for Dormer lasted almost two weeks. The bosses’ media tried to convince everyone that the police and sheriffs throughout Southern California were working around the clock to keep us safe from Dorner, but in reality they were only protecting their racist institutions.
In fact, the LAPD demonstrated their racist reputation during this manhunt when, without warning, they shot two innocent Latina women who were delivering newspapers. Seven cops just wildly opened fired from behind them, riddling their truck and the surrounding neighborhood with over 70 bullets as if they were in combat. The semi-automatic fire destroyed the truck which was not even close to the make and color of the real suspect’s vehicle. The LA Times reported that in the area there were “bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs.”
Fortunately the women weren’t seriously injured, yet the round-the-clock coverage kept people in fear, afraid to drive around and get shot by mistake too. People started wearing T-shirts and posting signs on their trucks declaring, “Don’t shoot, I’m not Dorner!”
The cops searching for Dorner were using drones, not the first time they were being used to target civilians on United States soil. Drones have been used on the U.S.-Mexico border against migrant workers.
Imperialist wars in the Middle East continue to take the lives of tens of thousands of  workers there as well as that of  GIs and break apart their families. The returning soldiers are given little or no support to transition back into civilian life. Though we don’t champion Dorner’s actions, we can see where the problem stems from, because he likely suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his tour in Iraq with the Naval Reserves and snapped.
The LAPD has been a kind of paramilitary force, pioneering the military-style Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) approach to “policing.” The U.S. military has employed such a tactic in Iraq and Afghanistan — “spray and pray” — which has led directly to the massive civilian casualties in those U.S. invasions.
Some working-class people rooted for Dorner throughout the chase for exposing the police for their various forms of racism against workers and youth they claim to protect. Yet, Dormer’s methods and goals to “reform” the police system are flawed. We must not confuse exposing the racist police with actual change. The police are agents who “protect and serve” the ruling class when workers organize around their class interests. No killing spree can end the racism and oppression by the police on working-class people until the system that requires them — capitalism — is smashed through communist revolution.

Millions of public sector workers went on a two-day general strike to protest the government’s increase in fuel prices and opening markets to foreign investment in aviation and insurance. Workers say this will lead to layoffs and more price hikes. Workers are threatening further and longer walkouts if their demands are not heeded. Taxi and rickshaw drivers — victimized by police terror — are warning they’ll strike indefinitely as of March 1.
These militant workers, like the bus workers in NYC, are responding to capitalism’s attempt to put their economic crisis on workers’ backs. Once communist ideas and a party develop a base among these workers, their militancy can be transformed into a revolution that will dump the profit system and promote workers’ power.

The U.S. capitalist state has a long history of a “war on terror” against the working class and any dissenters, going as far back as 1798 in President George Washington’s second term. That year four bills known as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed to quell anyone favoring the French Revolution. Any “alien” who was a “danger to peace and safety or subject to a foreign power” are subjected to imprisonment. Newspapers were shut down and their editors arrested for publishing “any false, scandalous or malicious writing.”
Two hundred and fifty years of black slavery were enforced by the government, North and South. The Fugitive Slave Act sent slaves who escaped to the North from Southern plantations back to slavery. Post-Civil War conditions were hardly better for ex-slaves who were terrorized by racist Ku Klux Klan vigilantes, segregated and denied basic rights by Southern state governments for another 100 years.
From the 18th century on, the U.S. military enacted genocidal murder on millions of indigenous people of the U.S., driving them off their lands and restricting them to concentration camp-like reservations, which continue today.
In 1886, Chicago cops killed protesters demonstrating for the 8-hour work day — following a general strike — and later hung four of its leaders. It was out of this strike that May Day was born, which PLP has been celebrating for the past 42 years.
From 1918 to 1921, Attorney-General Mitchell Palmer launched an anti-communist crusade, carried out by incoming FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. Amid a wave of post-World War I strikes, communists were blamed for all social ills. Without warrants, Palmer thugs raided and smashed union offices and the headquarters of communist and socialist organizations. As many as 10,000 were arrested. In December, 1919, 249 resident aliens were seized and put on a ship deporting them to the Soviet Union (then two years old). The crusade’s hysteria was exemplified by the imprisonment of a Connecticut clothing salesman for saying he thought “Lenin was smart.”
Red-led Auto, Steel Workers Beat Back Bosses’ Attacks
Fifteen years later, vigilantes organized by General Motors attempted to smash the then growing communist-led auto sit-down strikes. The National Guard was ordered out to surround the plants in an attempt to starve out the workers. But 40,000 workers from four states descended on Flint, Michigan, surrounding GM’s struck plants and forced the company to recognize the United Auto Workers Union and agree to a 40-hour week.
May 30, 1937, saw the Republic Steel Memorial Day Massacre, when police shot at a crowd of 1,500 strikers marching peacefully on the company’s South Chicago plant. Ten workers were killed, shot in the back, and 90 others wounded. The workers eventually won union recognition.
In June, 1940, Congress passed the Alien Registration Act — commonly known as the Smith Act — which made it a crime to belong to an organization that advocated overthrow of the U.S. government. Over 200 members of the Communist Party were indicted under its provisions and its entire leadership was convicted and jailed for from five to eight years.
A Page from Hitler’s Book: Concentration Camps
In 1941, the Roosevelt Administration seized hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans and put them in concentration camps for the entire four years of World War II as “suspected spies.” They lost their homes, farms, and small businesses.
A decade later Congress passed the anti-communist Internal Security Act of 1950, the McCarran Act, mandating the fingerprinting and registration of all “subversives” in the U.S. and authorizing concentration camps “for emergency situations.” Six were constructed across the country.
That same year Congress enacted the Subversive Activities Control and Emergency Detention Acts which required “communist organizations” to register with the U.S. Attorney General. It allowed detention of  “dangerous, disloyal or subversive persons during wartime or in an “internal security emergency.” Such citizens could be barred from entering or leaving the country. The bill was used to revoke Paul Robeson’s (pro-communist artist) passport, preventing him from traveling outside the U.S. to expose its racist apartheid system.
During this period, Congress also passed two anti-communist, anti-labor laws. The Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin Laws barred communists from holding union office even if elected by the rank and file. They instituted injunction clauses to prevent workers from striking upon contract expirations. They also made it more difficult to organize non-union shops and proved a bonanza for the bosses.
Throughout this era, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) operated an all-out anti-communist witch-hunt, going from city to city to subpoena leftists and communists.
When reds were asked if they were members of the Communist Party and when the latter refused to answer, citing the 5th Amendment “protection” against self-incrimination, this led to firing as well as jailing for “contempt of Congress.” But here is where HUAC met its match with PL and ultimately its demise.
PL’ers Turn the Tables
on the Anti-Communist
Witch-hunters
After members of the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM, forerunner of the Progressive Labor Party) had broken the government ban on travel to Cuba, in 1963 they were called before HUAC in Washington, DC, and asked the big question. They not only did not hide behind the 5th Amendment but shot back that they “were proud to be communists.” HUAC was dumfounded. CP members had never replied in this fashion. PL’ers turned the hearings into a political attack on HUAC, exposing the Kennedy Administration’s imperialist invasion of Vietnam. Pictures depicting this counter-attack were flashed across the front pages of newspapers across the country.
After the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, a New York City Grand Jury was convened to try to prove that PLM had “incited a riot.” PL’ers refused to cooperate with the rich man’s Jury while mass pickets lined the streets outside the hearing rooms. Several PL members were cited for contempt for their non-cooperation and sentenced to continuous 30-day jail terms to force them to cooperate. They were held in the notorious Greenwhich Women’s House of Detention where they exposed the horrific conditions inside that jail while mass picket lines ringed the prison. The exposé led to the institution’s closing.
In 1964, HUAC came to Buffalo, where PL had a base among steel, auto and other basic industrial workers, as well as in the colleges, the Committee tried to “expose” them in order to get them fired. But PL turned the tables on HUAC. In the hearings, members exposed them as fascists while outside PL organized mass demonstrations on the streets, including a broad spectrum of anti-racist, anti-fascist workers and professors. This had never happened at any of HUAC’s previous anti-communist forays. HUAC was literally run out of town and gradually faded from sight.
From this base in Buffalo and with this counter-attack, PL showed that the bosses’ anti-communism can be challenged and defeated. It was out of such experiences that the Progressive Labor Party was born and to this day is the leading force against the terrorists in the U.S. ruling class, championing the fight for communism in the international working class.