Now, the workers’ anger confirms a) the shallowness of identity politics as a tool to divide us, and b) reforms don’t work.
Instead, workers need to join PLP. Smashing the racist, fascist police terror that robbed Tyre’s life is a pillar of our Party’s work.
A Black cop is still a kkkop
The protest was led by the liberal reformers in the city of Newark and had more local government officials than workers present. This can only be explained by the historical contradiction of this period–where identities are primary to the capitalist ruling class to divide and exploit workers and squash rebellion more intensely. Tyre Nichols, Carl Dorsey, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán or Tortuguita, and Keenan Anderson are victims of the liberal fascist state ruled by Black and Latin politicians and cops.
“See, us Black people are suffering everywhere,” one woman said. Monique Rodwell, mother of the Rodwell-Spivey brothers, assaulted by police in 2020 and friends of PLP replied, “it’s not just Black people; it’s poor people.” Another educator with us noted, “the protests stopped once Biden got in office. He’s the same one that introduced the 1994 Crime Bill.” This is someone that has been in our base for years and a former student of a comrade in Newark.
We were not strong enough in numbers to provide leadership at this rally but we do plan to organize a worker-led response to the murder of Tyre and the rise of liberal fascism in the near future. When liberal fascists are forced to face the rage of the working class and manage to get away, we as communists cannot stop organizing. For every Tyre there are masses of workers killed by racist police terror around the world that don’t make the headlines. Fighting for Alex Flores, for Shantel Davis, Raymond Chaluisant we didn’t stop. And we won’t stop until masses of workers around the world see that police brutality is as vital to capitalism, as communist revolution is to workers!
Liberal fascism unleashes killer kkkop gangs
In the aftermath of the George Floyd worldwide movement led by Black workers, liberal fascist mayors and politicians misled workers with the most revolutionary potential, funneling our class’ rage into the ballot box, while also unleashing a viscious wave of racist police terror.
Black mayors from Atlanta, Washington, DC, and Newark painted Black Lives Matter slogans on the same streets where they send their killer kkkop special units to spill workers’ blood. These units–from the Jump Out Boys in Newark that killed Carl Dorsey and threatened the Rodwell Spivey family to the Executioners in Los Angeles to the Memphis Scorpion Unit that killed Tyre Nichols – are essentially a kkkop murder inc., a persistent nationwide element using corruption and intimidation tactics to cement their control over the Black and Latin working class communities they cannot profit without.
Like Newark, Memphis is a model for Big fascists to pour in their finance capital. For Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, extracting superprofits from the guaranteed racist super-exploitation and super-neglect of a majority Black and Latin workforce is a winning formula! These parasites are the largest beneficiaries of extra payments, commonly known as a “Black Tax,” placed on such municipalities forced to take loans to close gaps in budgets unmet by taxing such low wages (Bloomberg, 09/29/22). Tennessee, the state where Memphis is located, is on par with the lowest minimum wage across the U.S. $7.25.
The answer of fascist U.S. President Jim Crow Joe Biden has been to betray workers by riding the wave of workers’ anger into office. Once elected, Biden assured finance capitalists that there would be no effort to defund the police (itself a liberal reform) under his administration.
Today, U.S. police forces represent the third largest military expenditure globally; as former New York City mayor Bloomberg called it, the NYPD is one of the world’s largest armies. Expect the Biden administration to opportunistically milk the Nichols tragedy to stoke their political momentum for the 2024 election. As we go to press, Kamala Harris–a former prosecutor who sent hundreds of workers to prison– hopes we will forget that when announcing that she will attend Tyre’s funeral.
Fight fascism with communism
Under capitalism, there can be no justice for workers against racist killer kkkops. Their job is to serve and protect the ruling class, especially the Big Fascists–the liberal politicians and finance capitalists. For decades, these Big Fascists have wielded the lethal power of the police with near impunity to clear cities of Black and Latin workers for gentrification. At the same time, these liberal fascists push reforms to keep workers invested in the system–from voting to hiring more Black and Latin cops. Tyre Nichols brutal slaying shows that neither works. Only with organized worker fightback with international communist leadership like PLP will we finally realize communism and smash racist police terror once and for all.
On the same day that the first Black woman police chief, Cerelyn Davis, fired the five Memphis cops, the Newark police force under Black Mayor Ras Baraka’s leadership walked away scott-free for murdering another Black worker, Carl Dorsey, in 2020. Politicians at the rally praised Davis, the murderer-in-chief, for swiftly penalizing the cops that killed Tyre. When agents of the capitalist state are disciplined, our class must beware that this is not a victory but a sign of developing fascism.
However, locking a few cops up will never smash racist police terror. Only when workers recognize capitalism as the sham it is and commit to building an internationalist, communist, worker-led state will racism, sexism, and exploitation be eradicated from the face of the earth.
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Editorial: Peru’s crisis, a flashpoint of imperialist rivalry
- Information
- 02 February 2023 70 hits
With capitalism in a worldwide crisis, inter-imperialist rivalry on the rise, and the bosses’ liberal democracies under siege, Peru is in bloody turmoil. Competing ruling-class factions are pushing our class to fight and die for their profits. Following the ouster of fake-left misleader President Pedro Castillo in December, mass demonstrations have erupted against his unpopular successor, Dina Boluarte. Workers have barricaded roads, blocked airports, and even forced the shutdown of the historic Inca site of Machu Picchu (Washington Post, 1/26). More than 50 workers, many of them Indigenous workers who’ve been targeted for racist oppression since the Spanish conquest of Peru in the 16th century, have been killed in clashes with the cops.
Militant, antiracist fightback against capitalist exploitation is always welcome. But when protests are channeled into support for one rotten, corrupt politician or another, they only strengthen the bosses’ hand. Our struggle must be aimed at the very core of the racist, sexist profit system. Capitalism must be smashed, root and branch. Without revolutionary communist politics and leadership, mass movements wind up funneled into dead-end reforms. Workers are left with crumbs—and even those crumbs will be taken away with the bosses’ next crisis.
The international Progressive Labor Party is fighting to build a mass revolutionary movement to destroy the capitalist profit system and create an antiracist, egalitarian world. We invite workers across South America and worldwide to join the Party for true working-class liberation.
All politicians serve the capitalist state
Peru is simmering for rebellion. Rich in natural resources, the country is one of the world’s top exporters of gold and copper (Ernst and Young, 2/21/22). It is also marked by staggering racist inequality, with one of three workers living in poverty (Foreign Policy, 1/25). With a healthcare infrastructure in a state of collapse, Peru has the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality rate (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center). Indigenous workers in remote rural areas suffer from intense discrimination and high unemployment (Lima Easy, 5/6/21).
To win election as president in July 2021, Castillo, an Indigenous former schoolteacher, campaigned as a political “outsider” who promised sweeping reforms. He followed the playbook of other “pink tide” misleaders, from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Once elected Castillo railed against U.S. imperialist policies, promised a new constitution, agrarian land reforms, and wealth redistribution to the working class from levying heavy taxes on imperialist mining companies.
After Castillo was impeached and jailed on charges of rebellion and conspiracy, his number-two, Boluarte, seized the reins. She quickly changed sides to ally with Peru’s right-wing bosses. Her new best friend is one-time rival Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, the CIA-backed butcher whose regime killed thousands of civilians in the 1990s in its “dirty war” against the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement guerilla groups (Silvio Rendon, Research & Politics, January-March 2019.) Castillo and Boluarte prove once again that “lesser evil” capitalist stooges have nothing to offer the working class.
Rival imperialists scrap over spoils, workers pay the price
The extreme instability in Peru reflects sharpening, worldwide inter-imperialist competition. Like most of Latin America, the country has been pillaged by U.S. imperialists for more than 200 years. It recently served as the seat of the so-called “Lima Group,” a U.S.-led coalition that tried and failed to topple the government of oil-rich Venezuela (Pressenza, 9/13/21).
But over the last decade, China has replaced the U.S. as Peru’s top trading partner. Chinese bosses have poured billions into the country as they build ports and mines, including deals to connect Peru to its massive Belt and Road infrastructure project (Jones Day, January 2020). Far from bringing new prosperity to the region, this infusion of Chinese capital has only perpetuated worker exploitation in Peru. In 2022, workers repeatedly blocked roads leading to the Las Bambas copper mine after the Chinese firm MMG refused to share revenues with working-class communities (Reuters, 2/16/22). Perhaps not coincidentally, the incarcerated Castillo had moved Peru closer to the Chinese bosses and away from the U.S.
While we have no way to know when rising tensions between U.S. and Chinese imperialists will spill into open conflict, it’s clear that the two imperialist powers are heading toward World War III. When proxy conflicts inevitably expand into a global conflagration, the international working class will pay the highest price.
We can and will run society as a united working-class
As capitalist politicians show their callous contempt for the lives of those who vote them into office, other workers are rallying to support protestors who risk their lives in the streets. From Ferguson and Memphis to Gaza, Tehran, and Lima, workers and students have opened their homes and donated food and medical aid. Amid a crisis created by the violence and corruption and greed of the imperialist bosses, workers continue to show the courage and ability to fight for their class. The historic task before Progressive Labor Party is to transform these isolated reform battles into a worldwide fight for communism. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat can permanently end the bloody nightmare of capitalist rule. Join us!
Through our intense involvement in the movement against racist police violence in Southern California, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have met family after family whose loved ones were taken from them by these animals who wear uniforms, serve the capitalist class and protect their profits.
These continuing murders (at least three more workers’ lives were stolen by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the first two weeks of 2023) have only hardened our belief that no reform or lawsuit can stop the hemorrhaging of the blood of our class by the cops. Only the violent take-down of the capitalists and their government and the establishment of communist working-class rule can put an end to this slaughter. Gradually, more family members are coming to agree with our politics.
An integral part of capitalist infrastructure here, METRO is the largest landowner in Los Angeles County (act-la.org/). Its 2022-2023 budget is $8.8 billion, with a 12.5 percent increase in spending for “public safety”, i.e. cops, fare inspectors, etc. (LA Metro, 5/25/22). It has a $786 million multi-year contract with the LAPD, LASD (sheriff's department) and Long Beach cops. Its Board of Directors is dominated by Democratic Party politicians, including LA Mayor Karen Bass, four current or former LA County Supervisors, and Inglewood Mayor James Butts. METRO, a supposed paragon of public service, enforces systemic racism. “Despite making up only 18 percent of riders, Black riders have been issued 50 percent of citations and arrests by METRO’s contracted” KKKops (act-la.org/metro-as-a-sanctuary).
Racist cop terror and lies stir working class anger
Like many other families in the LA area, Cesar’s family, including his mother and three sisters, has waged a heroic campaign publicizing their son and brother’s murder and fighting for justice. This organizing ensured that, during jury selection and every day of the two-week trial, jurors saw a multi-racial group of supporters sitting in the courtroom, including other victimized families, PLP members and local organizers. Day after day, family members thanked PLP members for our unswerving commitment to all the families’ struggles.
Many supporters of Cesar’s family understand that capitalism is at the root of racist cop terror and murder. Ron was never charged with any crime during the administration of former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna, who was recently elected Sheriff of LA County. In fact, he was promoted to Sergeant. As one of Cesar’s sisters said to the Telegraph Newspaper “No amount of money is going to bring Cesar back … This is not justice for us. It would be for (Ron) to be in jail.” By definition, the capitalist court system cannot stop the carnage reaped by a police force that the ruling class needs in order to stay in power.
With one exception, all of the witnesses for Ron were cops or wanna-be “fare inspector” cops.
Their racism was palpable - their lies vicious. In response to a question from the family’s lawyer, the inspector who pulled Cesar off the train said he appeared “not normal” and “dirty.”
Several cop witnesses claimed Cesar tried to escape and in doing so lunged towards the oncoming train. One other defense witness actually told the ludicrous story that Cesar tried to run across the tracks in front of the train and Ron tried to grab and save him!
Courts serve the bosses’ interests, not ours
After the jury rendered its negligence verdict against Ron and left the courtroom, along with the judge, court supporters got a lesson in which class the courts actually serve. Cesar’s mother collapsed, weeping. Within two minutes, a dozen LA County Sheriff’s officers invaded the courtroom.
The cops claimed they were there to render medical treatment to Cesar’s mother, an out and out lie since none of them was a medical person. Ron had apparently complained to one of the Court Clerks that he felt harassed or threatened. So the Clerk put in a call, and Ron’s fellow pigs came to his rescue. In the face of these fascist tactics by the cops, the mainly female supporters of the family stuck together and told the cops to their faces that their help was not needed or wanted. As the Sheriffs backed off, the supporters escorted family members out of the courtroom.
A positive sign was the obvious effect that years of struggle against racist police violence in the streets has had on public perceptions of the cops. In pre-trial questions designed to elicit “bias” of the 50 person jury pool, person after person related negative interactions with cops, either personal or involving a family member or friend. There was much refusal to trust police testimony, and a desire to award the family monetary damages, even if the cop was found not responsible for Cesar’s death. One prospective juror said he could not be unbiased because the role of the police is as an arm of a government responsible for systematic oppression. Because of this wide-spread anti-cop sentiment, defense attorneys ran out of challenges to the jury makeup and were unable to keep off all of those who criticized the cops.
Only communism will end racism
Despite the jury’s $12.6 million verdict, it may be a long time before the family sees any of that money, if at all. Cop Ron’s attorneys will no doubt appeal. This battle has already gone on for five and a half years. However, the family will keep up the struggle. One of his sisters said that the cops’ lies about Cesar have just made her want to fight back harder. At the post-trial party celebrating this small taste of justice for the family, a PLP member pointed out that “our class still suffers daily at the hands of these attack dogs for the ruling class and only a communist revolution can change that.” We in PLP pledge an unending battle to bring that world about.
Down with slumlords and kkkops, up up with community ties
PLers continue to base build with the Rodwell Spivey family as they grapple with another capitalist-borne crisis —an electrical fire to their home. The Rodwell Spivey brothers were harassed, stopped, and frisked by undercover Newark police officers in June 2021 and faced continued harassment for up to two years. Inspired by their ferocious fightback against police terror, PL stood with the brothers and family and continues to stand by their side. As their family felt like they were just starting to get their lives back on track, ready to celebrate Christmas together, a vicious slumlord left the family in their home without heat for days.
Like many workers, they thought a quick and harmless fix would be plugging in a space heater. Unbeknownst to them, the slumlord left them in a trap of a home with improper electrical wiring that led to a fire to a floor of their home, setting new furniture ablaze and leaving a six-month-old and teenage girl without many of their clothes. After the fire, members of PLP visited and called the family as soon as we heard the news. We also crowdfunded donations amongst our group, and a stylish friend of the Party donated clothes to the teenage girl, Justin Rodwell’s daughter, who’s interested in fashion.
The Rodwell Spivey brothers are still awaiting a court date for municipal court after local bosses detained Justin for over a year in Essex County Jail. Although the charges have been lowered, workers have to face the brunt of this system in a number of ways daily, and it sometimes feels like we can never catch a break. The slumlord, who manipulates workers for profit, fixed some of the electrical in their home but is hardly doing anything to fix the extensive damage to the property.
When I suggested that the family report this slumlord to code enforcement, they shared that they knew a woman who reported a slumlord and was forced to vacate her property with nowhere else to live. This was a reminder that workers cannot count on reforms. Even reforms that seem to work for some, most typically stable workers, leave mostly others out in the cold once the verdict is done.
The Rodwell Spivey family is now making do with what they can, just as workers do and always have and just as communists do and always have, we are standing by their side and practicing ways we can not just make this system easier to deal with but be smashed for good. As capitalism crumbles, more workers will be left with piecemeal reforms and our own crises to solve. We must keep pushing and showing how communism is the only solution.
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DSA fights for piece-meal reforms
The North Jersey Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) recently held a forum in Jersey City concerning the right for counsel for tenants. The event started with a panel of tenants, many transplants from New York City that moved to Jersey City for more space and cheaper rent and were met with decaying housing conditions in a new building.
When their landlords refused to fix water leaking into their homes and shoddy elevators, the workers in the building banded together. They said one of the best things about the housing horror is that they were able to build community with their neighbors. They ended off the tenants’ panel by encouraging other workers to build tenants’ associations in their homes and shared they’d even help show people how to do it.
After seeing what the world would be like if workers fought for and built better housing conditions, DSA followed the discussion with a panel about their right-to-counsel reform idea. Basically, what right to counsel means is if you are threatened with eviction by your landlord, DSA is touting that you should get a free lawyer at the bare minimum.
One comrade pointed out the contradiction in DSA’s plan: they want workers to get behind protesting for community developers to fund this program. Not only that but DSA leaders imagine that this right to counsel could be central in City Hall of Jersey City. A comrade, a nonprofit worker, pointed out on the open mic that public and private dollars seldom coexist and that the plan doesn’t seem tangible.
DSA leaders’ response was that developers would fund it if we made them fund it! Besides, this plan is a stretch of the imagination, it continues to allow evictions and illegal rent increases to be maintained. If profit motives exist, profit will always be put over people.
The only way every worker will have a place to live is if we destroy profit, exploitation, and the whole capitalist system! Sell-out groups like DSA deter us from making this world possible.
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Need to explain material basis for racism
The January 4th issue has a lead article: John Hopkins Police Terror is Essential to Capitalism. It is a well written article documenting the history of racism on the John Hopkins campus and the role of campus security in fueling racism and attacking legitimate uprisings by students and workers at John Hopkins in fighting racism and injustice on the campus.
What I found lacking in the article was the material basis for racism in capitalist society. That is the underlying foundation for racism in the workplace and in communities in which we live. We as communists have a duty to educate and organize our class by developing communist consciousness. The material basis of racism which we have documented in Racism, A Fighter's Manual and other Progressive Labor Party (PLP) documents is the super-exploitation of Black and immigrant labor that allows Wall Street to steal trillions of extra profit through underpaying Black, Latin, and immigrant workers in excess of the exploitation of the rest of the working class.
A system of racist job classifications which channel workers of color into lower paying jobs, unsafe working conditions still predominate throughout the labor force. This super-exploitation transcends national boundaries and can be found in Europe, the Global South, Asia, the U.S., and wherever capitalism shows its face. This is the foundation of racism that generates its own racist culture globally to justify systemic exploitation. Racist police terror is not merely built on prejudice but the systemic racism of the profit system.Smash racist capitalism. Build PLP.
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KKKops doing what they’re hired to do: attack workers
The Guardian, 1/6 –U.S. law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence...Police across the country killed an average of more than three people a day, or nearly 100 people every month last year according to Mapping Police Violence. The racial disparities have also persisted: Black people were 24% of those killed last year, while making up only 13% of the population. From 2013 to 2022, Black residents were three times more likely to be killed by U.S. police than white people. The inequality is particularly severe in some cities, including Minneapolis where police have killed Black residents at a rate 28 times higher than white residents, and Chicago, where the rate was 25 times higher.
Capitalist healthcare = exploiting workers
Medscape, 1/10–Most of the 30 volunteers who work at the 130-bed, for-profit East Cooper Medical Center spend their days assisting surgical patients — the scope of their duties extending far beyond those of candy stripers, baby cuddlers, and gift shop clerks. In fact, one-third of the volunteers at the Tenet Healthcare-owned hospital are retired nurses who check people in for surgery or escort patients to a preoperative room, said Jan Ledbetter, president of the hospital’s nonprofit Volunteer Services Organization...“They’re kept extremely busy,” Ledbetter said. “We need to have four of those volunteers a day.”
The U.S. health system benefits from potentially more than $5 billion in free volunteer labor annually, a KHN analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Independent Sector found. Yet some labor experts argue that using hospital volunteers, particularly at for-profit institutions, provides an opportunity for facilities to run afoul of federal rules, create exploitative arrangements, and deprive employees of paid work amid a larger fight for fair wages. “The rules are pretty clear, and yet it happens all the time,” said Marcia McCormick, a lawyer who co-directs the Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University.
Imperialists fight over Taiwan
CNN, 1/9–A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would result in thousands of casualties among Chinese, United States, Taiwanese and Japanese forces, and it would be unlikely to result in a victory for Beijing, according to a prominent independent Washington think tank, which conducted war game simulations of a possible conflict that is preoccupying military and political leaders in Asia and Washington. A war over Taiwan could leave a victorious U.S. military in as crippled a state as the Chinese forces it defeated. At the end of the conflict, at least two U.S. aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific and China’s modern navy, which is the largest in the world, would be in “shambles.”
“The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Such losses would damage the U.S. global position for many years…China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war,” it said.
Egyptian workers cut back on meat, medicine and clothing to meet IMF demands
Wall Street Journal, 1/12–Egypt plans to cut spending after the International Monetary Fund extended hundreds of millions of dollars in an economic bailout package, as the country struggles to pay off debts accumulated from a decades long building boom. It will need to sell off $2 billion in public sector assets and borrow more than $1 billion each from the World Bank and China Development Bank to help close the gap, according to the IMF.
Across the country, families have been cutting back on meat, medicine and clothing. Bread, rice and cooking oil have been among the items missing from store shelves, after demand for cheap items soared. Authorities have been reluctant to announce any formal cutbacks to a food subsidy program that helps tens of millions of Egyptians access cheap rice, oil and sugar, although the government has become more stringent on who can receive ration cards.