BROOKLYN, NY, November 6 —  “While demonstrating for education for all Haitians outside the Ministry of Education in Port-Au-Prince, a teacher was killed by the Haitian militia.”  There was a gasp from the audience as the details of the assassination were described.
As the speaker made clear, even though it was a cop’s bullet that ended the life of Louis Jean Filbert on October 9, 200 years of racist imperialism are as much to blame. Haitians have never been forgiven by the rapacious capitalists of the world for freeing themselves from the yoke of slavery. As the speaker finished, it was clear that viewing the current catastrophe as simply the result of a geologic event was seriously one-sided.
This speaker and others were part of a forum called “Haitians Abandoned,” attended by 80 people, which was held in the chapel of our congregation. Communist ideas are present in this church through our social justice group, which organize activities such as the forum.
There was an air of expectancy at the beginning of the event. The forum had been collectively organized between the Haitian community and the church community. The event was a success in that there was a great response from the Haitian community. In fact, they outnumbered the church community, clearly pointing out that we have to organize better in our church.
The speakers also made the point that it is not charity the Haitian people seek, but unity with their brothers and sisters in the rest of the world. The willingness of many hundreds of honest working-class people (including many Party members) to go to Haiti should offer us a small reminder of the Spanish Civil War, when thousands of workers from around the world streamed into Spain in an attempt to beat back fascism. In Haiti, like in every “natural” disaster, the class-consciousness and solidarity of workers pokes its head through the unrelenting individualism and cynicism that capitalism heaps upon us.
After the two-hour presentation and question time, attendees shared a meal together, supplied by both the Haitian and church communities. The multi-racial unity on display in our church spoke well for the future, not only of the church, but of our class. Armed with communist ideas, a future of multi-racial unity is one that the working class can achieve.
In one conversation a church member spoke about the horror of 200 years of imperialism that had made Haiti almost the poorest nation on Earth. The visitor, with boundless positive energy  said: “A new day will come. Nobody will put up with this for much longer. “
The Haitian pate, chicken, salad, fruit and cheeses and the coffee brought conversation to an even deeper and friendlier level. We will continue to work with our Haitian brothers and sisters and within our church. There is great desire on both sides to continue the relationship and to stand together against imperialism and its racism. Coming out of the forum we will organize a CHALLENGE readers group in the church to continue this struggle.
In a moment of excitement during the forum, one of the speakers called out a Haitian expression which talked of the freeing of the people. The applause was astounding. The echoes will not be forgotten. Those in power had better tremble.

STATEN ISLAND, NY, November 13 — “Wherever we live no one is illegal because people can never be illegal!” These words echoed across Staten Island, a place that has seen the ugly face of capitalist racism. In response to more than 17 violent attacks against immigrants in the area over the past year, a multi-racial, multi-generational group of church members and peace activists had come together.
In the march, PLP’s vision for the future was clearly present: a society where all labels that are assigned to us by the racist, capitalist system will be eliminated. All of these categories: “Black or white,” “citizen or immigrant,” “legal or illegal,” “employed or unemployed.” will disappear in a society where borders are abolished, racism is outlawed and everyone will contribute to society in some form.
At the first rally a worker from Colombia spoke about the racist media that portrays Colombians as drug pushers and criminals. She said what many workers know to be true: that immigrants are looking for a job, a place to live, and peace. She stood as a figure of strength, not bowed down by the problems she faces.
The next speaker was the daughter of a worker from Mexico who had been severely beaten in a racial attack. She stood with her child in her arms to speak out against the brutality towards her father and to thank everyone present for standing up and speaking out. She said that all they ever wanted was to work and to live.
The march was called to order and as we marched we passed many signs of how capitalism is failing workers of the world: a huge bus barn that could employ many hundreds more for public transportation; a parking area for school buses that needs drivers and aides to help students to settle down, feel comfortable on their way to and from school; an ambulance company that could train and use more emergency medical technicians to treat sick workers. But capitalists and their government only care about profit, and so there are cut-backs in all of these areas.
The signs bobbed up and down as people marched down the street chanting “Asian, Latin, Black, Red, White — Workers of the World Unite”;  “What Do We Want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!”; “Racism means – fight back!, unemployment means – fight back!”  Although this is not a densely populated area people came out to watch us. Some smiled, some waved, some joined us. Workers stood in shop doorways taking literature, happy that people were speaking out.
As the march neared its end between a housing project and an elementary school, our message became clearer. There were demands for more hiring in education and elsewhere and an end to racist discrimination.  These people who marched and spoke exposed the boss-inspired theme of  separation. 
As the march ended one ninth-grader from a high school whose parents are Haitian immigrants, who has had to watch and endure the terrible conditions that have been going on in Haiti since the earthquake, spoke with emotion but without the slick phrases of political leaders. He said we need to be educated; we need jobs and we need to end racist hatred.  These oppressions affect us all no matter what our color. Over the course of the day we distributed 200 CHALLENGE newspapers to workers of Staten Island. They opened the paper to read Our Fight (see pg. 2); We dedicate our lives to smashing capitalism and all the labels it puts on workers.


DENVER, CO, November 10 — Over 10,000 members of the American Public Health Association (APHA) met this year around the theme of “Social Justice.” Members and friends of PLP, with support from various groups in APHA, challenged the organization to live up to its theme. Our proposed APHA policy statement, “Opposing the Exclusion of Undocumented Immigrants from Health Reform,” hit a raw nerve and triggered a small struggle in the association.
The liberals who run the APHA don’t want to take any public position critical of the Obama administration. But rank-and-file members, most of whom work with underserved populations day in and day out, have less interest in currying favor with politicians and more gut-level commitment to justice for the communities they serve. APHA bureaucrats used their control over a key committee to block our anti-racist resolution.
Anticipating resistance from the association full-timers, the APHA members who wrote the resolution (“the troublemakers”) started circulating drafts in the weeks leading up to the annual meeting to all APHA sections (Epidemiology, Medical Care, Maternal and Child Health, etc.) The Black Caucus was specifically targeted through the friends we have made there fighting against racism in previous years. They gave their support as soon as they read it.
A key part of our strategy was to oppose Obama’s attempt to win African Americans to scapegoat Latinos for the failures of capitalist medicine. After all, it is no small thing that the country’s first black president signed a racist health care bill that doesn’t let undocumented immigrants even BUY health insurance through the exchanges! In the end the “troublemakers” were also able to join forces with the Latino Caucus to keep the policy statement alive.
This activity, along with open sales of CHALLENGE and raising different anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist ideas in presentations,  scientific sessions and one-on-one conversations with our friends, made for a productive five days of meetings. Healthcare social policy clearly has life-and-death implications. The stress of life under an oppressive wage-slavery system leads to high blood pressure, diabetes, premature labor and infant deaths. 
For black and Latino workers, who suffer the additional layer of racism-caused stress, this disease burden is higher, for some diseases over twice as high. Capitalist poverty breeds diseases and denying access to life-saving healthcare because a person lacks money or is the “wrong race” compounds this murderous injustice.
This fight has helped to illuminate the way APHA actually works, especially for our younger friends who were a little surprised at the dishonesty of the “progressive” professionals who control key positions in the organization. Small struggles like this can provide important lessons in the “school for communism.” To be most effective, though, the struggles need the context of on-going personal relationships. One friend who always seemed pretty conservative, a federal employee from a section where we have worked for years, heard about the trick to sideline our version of the resolution. “They are starting to run this association like a dictatorship!” he commented.
At the annual “Troublemaker’s Breakfast,” a number of new friends in attendance were interested in helping us organize more “trouble” at next year’s APHA meeting in Washington, D.C.  Several of our new friends live in cities with PLP clubs, giving us a much better opportunity for more conversations with them.
Some are ready to connect health problems to social causes and will be open to revolutionary solutions. A central component of our approach will be developing a multiracial group, including both Black and Latino Caucus members, to manage the resubmission of the resolution for permanent policy-statement status next year. Long-term friendships based on the shared need to fight racism will strengthen this work in the years to come.

MEXICO — Around 120 families in the 12 districts to the east of Valle de Mexico are at risk of flooding. The area where we live sinks about half a meter a year, because of the extraction of water from the subsoil through the fourteen wells installed in the area since the 1980s. The ground has sunk 15 meters from its original level and by 2020 may sink up to 19 meters. 

The politicians did not want us inhabitants to know about the problem, so they tried to sabotage meetings and to discredit CHALLENGE when it informed us about the risk. They sent agitators to break up the neighbors’ meetings. They paid for advertisements on buses warning the population about “an organization that is trying to deceive them and manipulate them.” They weren’t successful, since it was clear that CHALLENGE serves the interests of the workers.

Because of the constant attack from the bosses against our class, we have to be organized in a party that is not electoral, a party that unites and leads millions of workers to a communist revolution. Electoral parties only look to benefit the bosses that sponsor them and the politicians that lead them. Elections are a fraud for all workers and will never lead us to a change that will benefit us.

The government used another weapon when they realized that its strategy of provocation failed. It brought a group of college researchers to create the idea that something can be done without a struggle. At first they were successful in creating an atmosphere of passivity, but it was reversed when CHALLENGE was proven right and some of the neighbors spoke about the importance of being organized.

The governing politicians explored two alternatives to “solve” the problem: the first is to evacuate the population located in the area of highest risk, and the second is to conduct hydraulic work to decrease the possibility of flooding. In reality that area should have never been populated, because of its risks. Capitalism forces workers to live in regions of high risk, like in places where lakes or rivers pass by hills. Capitalism is the problem, and the solution is to organize and fight to destroy it. 

While hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in the poorest parts of Mexico City lack water, thousand of liters coming from the Sierra Nevada are sent to the river and end up drained in the city of Pachuca. CONAGUA (Mexico´s national water commission) began studies to take advantage of this water, a project costing an estimated one billion pesos. They expect to store the water in a lake in Xico, make it drinkable and channel it to Mexico City. The project doesn´t specify if it will avoid the risk of flooding. For now it only exists on paper. 

No one forgets the scenes in 2000 and 2010 when thousands of families lost all of their belongings to sewage flooded from the channel. The government sent police to suppress them when they demanded help. Once again we see the hatred that the bosses and governments feel towards us workers. Capitalism is a racist system, which destroys the lives of all workers, but especially of the poorest.

We also don´t forget our class brothers who died or were affected in Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz and Tamaulipas. The government says climate change is the reason for the disasters. The reality is that these phenomena become tragedies because of the permanent risk workers live under in this system. Capitalism is the disaster. Only a society led by the working class can give us safety. 

The risk of flooding and the lack of water in the eastern area of the Valle de Mexico show that the capitalist system doesn’t work for the working class. The only alternative is to be organized in a communist party, PLP, to destroy killier capitalists and build a society led by the workers.