That white workers are hurt by racism is a key principle of communist analysis. The standard liberal rant is that white people—regardless of class—all benefit from “white supremacy.” The only basis for white people to engage in antiracist fightback is thus missionary sympathy or guilt; they can be at best “allies” in struggles in which, so to speak, they have “no skin in the game.” The reality is much different.
The truth is that all members of the working class worldwide are hurt by the racist super-exploitation and division of Black and nonwhite workers. While workers with darker skin experience greater levels of poverty and state-sponsored violence, many working-class people designated as “white” suffer from low wages, lousy housing, inadequate medical care, unemployment, and hunger. To the extent that racial divisions depress wages for all workers—and keep workers of all skin colors and nationalities from uniting in their shared class interest—the bosses laugh all the way to the bank.
Legacy of multiracial unity
But such divisions have also been fought and overcome. In the U.S., there is a rich legacy of white-authored proletarian literature that attests to an often obscured history of militant multiracial unity. The novels of Myra Page—The Gathering Storm (1932), Daughter of the Hills (1950)—feature white and Black organizers among sharecroppers and miners. Her 1935 novel Moscow Yankee—set among unemployed U.S. auto workers finding employment in the early 1930s USSR—features antiracist class consciousness as a key measure of whether or not white workers embrace Soviet-era socialism. That a Black expatriate worker takes the lead in saving a tractor factory from anticommunist sabotage testifies to the integral connection between multiracial unity and communist internationalism.
Especially significant is a cluster of novels–all authored by white working class women–focused on the 1929 textile workers strike in Gastonia, North Carolina: Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike! (1929); Grace Lumpkin’s To Make My Bread (1932) and A Sign for Cain (1935); Fielding Burke’s Call Home the Heart (1932) and A Stone Came Rolling (1935). While ultimately brutally crushed by the arm of the state, the strike taught many lessons: about the key role of women in the class struggle, about the need for multiracial solidarity.
Fictionalized versions of Ella Mae Wiggins—an inspiring singer-songwriter-strike leader who was murdered by bosses’ vigilantes—are featured in several novels. According to Vera Buch, a communist organizer, Wiggins was singled out because of her commitment to racial equality (Kristina Horton, Martyr of Loray Mill: Ella May and the 1929 Textile Workers’ Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina, McFarland, 2015). In To Make My Bread, Wiggins
is featured as Bonnie McClure, a mountain woman turned millworker whose close friendship with a Black co-worker sets a model for other white workers at first hesitant to abandon their racist socialization. In A Sign for Cain, multiracial relationships are solidified, conjoining the struggles of sharecroppers and millworkers facing intensified state violence in the face of labor militancy.
By no means is multiracial solidarity always portrayed in utopian terms in this body of literature. In Call Home the Heart, Burke honestly confronts the intense emotional battle experienced internally by her white protagonist upon being embraced by a Black woman whose husband has just been saved from lynching.
Although the 1935 sequel shows that the two women have become good friends, their bond is clearly the personal fruit of the broader class struggle.
Now as then, it is those inhabiting the “big houses” (and big banks!) who profit from racist division—whether their representatives are the bigger-danger flash liberal smiles and preach “inclusion” (for war) or are the smaller fascist Proud Boy muscle shirts and preach “replacement theory.
It is no accident that almost all the writers associated with the proletarian literary movement of the 1930s and 1940s were communist or pro-communist. Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party—as well as the multiracial crowds of millions who are standing up against racism—have a red legacy of which we are justly proud. The working class fighters are all comrades—not allies—in the struggle for a better antiracist world.
Camacho’s legacy will live on
The Delano giant is gone. It is with deep sorrow in my heart that I received the news that one of the Farmworker Leaders from Delano, California died yesterday. Epifanio Camacho dedicated his life to fighting against the injustices of the ranchers to the undocumented farm workers. His non-pacifist struggle found an echo in the immigrants who suffered beatings and mistreatment at the hands of the police and immigration. Such was the importance of this charismatic fighter that his home became known as "The Sanctuary of Immigrants.”
Camacho will never die because his legacy will live on forever. There is not enough space to write about the fights he led, the attacks he received and his fascinating life. That is why I only say that from the lands of Sandino, we say goodbye to you with great respect, admiration, deep affection and sadness.
*****
Solidarity needed to smash the sexism
One of the most important issues today is a woman’s right to an abortion.In June, the Supreme Court made abortion in the U.S. illegal unless allowed by state law. This decision threw out the 50 year old Roe vs. Wade decision making abortions legal throughout the U.S. Before and since this change in federal law thousands of women and men have been protesting this anti-working class decision.
On Saturday, July 2 a friend and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) attended a Women’s Pro-Choice rally in Easton, Pennsylvania. People were demanding the right to an abortion for women and equal rights for women and men.
We thought less than a hundred people would show up. We were very happy when we saw almost 500 very angry and determined women and men fill the street. Next was a march through the center of Easton ending at another rally. Here several women provided strong leadership. Each spoke loud and sharply. They said that for women’s rights and gender equality we must reject the Democratic Party and build an alternative movement.
This rally was the first for our friend. He found this event incredibly eye opening. The rally, to him, was a clear demonstration of the power we wield as a single concentrated movement. It is the exact kind of solidarity that we need to smash the racist, sexist capitalist system forced on us everyday.
Here’s where PLP enters the scene. We are the best, only real, alternative to capitalism because we organize and fight for communist revolution. The working class can and will win and build a society based on total equality or egalitarianism.
*****
East Africa: Comrades say only PLP can lead the way
On International Workers Day, while the government carried out its customary brainwashing rallies, we organized a discussion among teachers and students about why workers celebrate May Day and the way forward for building our movement. Our slogan was “Fighting together we can unite the workers of the world, smash borders, and build one world.” A teacher made a presentation about why workers celebrate May Day. Our discussion focused on the failure of the government to represent our interests and the betrayal of the trade union leaders to lead the working class to fight back against their bosses’ false promises. Here, the unions that represent government workers, like teachers, are formed by the government itself. Government agents operate inside them to keep the unions focused on their own narrow self-interests, so they don’t unite with other workers. Also, they offer different wage increases to workers as a weapon to divide and weaken the class struggle. We discussed our way forward—meeting and introducing our ideas to friends in various workplaces. One participant asked when our movement will take over, a question that comes up often in our discussions. It shows that most people here like the idea of communism, but they need the science of dialectical materialism and the Progressive Labor Party to know how to make it a reality.
*****
Haiti: analyzing news with a communist lens
On May 20, the New York Times began a major series on Haiti in an effort to explain why the masses of workers within Haiti are facing such a dire situation. The “exposé” was a revelation to many. It detailed the roots of the poverty that most Haitians have been facing for over two centuries. Our PLP club studied and discussed the articles and wanted to try to figure out why the New York Times, the mouthpiece for the Big Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class, went to such lengths to put this information—damning both French and U.S. imperialism—out there.
Here is a brief summary of the Times article:
Haiti ended slavery and won independence from France in a bloody battle from 1791-1804. For about 20 years, the new Haitian ruling class, made up of mixed race landowners and Black former military leaders, tried to restore the economy (the richest slave colony producing sugar, coffee, cotton and more) by forcing the former slaves back onto the plantations.
In 1825, the former French slave masters demanded reparations for their lost property—human and otherwise. The French government backed their claims by sending a flotilla of warships into the harbor of Port-au-Prince. The message was clear: “Pay up or be conquered again!” The Haitian bourgeoisie could not fight or pay the ransom—the first time the winners had to pay the losers!—estimated by the Times at $560 million in today’s dollars. But the French had a solution: French banks would “loan” the Haitian government the money to pay this now “double debt,” taking their cut off the top. Of course, the Haitian ruling class was not saddled with this debt: it was paid completely on the backs of the rural Haitian workers who paid taxes on every pound of agricultural goods that came from their labor.
Then in 1915, under the guise of protecting U.S. citizens and their financial interests in Haiti, the Marines invaded, led by Smedley Butler, the self-proclaimed “racketeer for imperialism.” They marched directly into the Haitian national bank and marched out with $500,000 worth of gold bullion, which they put on a ship that moved it directly to the coffers of National City Bank (now Citibank) in New York City. The Marines then began a brutal 19-year occupation of Haiti, making it safe for U.S. financial interests and charging the cost of the occupation to the Haitian government.
The Times ended by asking: what could Haiti have been like today if as much as $120 billion dollars had not been stolen by French and U.S. business interests?
Our club wondered why the Times would publish, in such detail, the inner workings of capitalism and imperialism. How did this serve the interests of the U.S. ruling class (which committed similar crimes around the world, to make the history of Haiti pale in comparison)? Some thought that it was an attempt to win over Black workers and the middle class to the side of the Big Fascists in preparation for the next great imperialist war. Essentially, “See, we did bad things in the past—like an invasion and mass murder and even organizing a coup against a Haitian president (twice), but we can own up to them and now you can trust us.”
Others thought that there were greater geopolitical interests at play. The articles appeared on the eve of the so-called Summit of the Americas, where the U.S. was being rebuffed by many of its “allies” in the hemisphere. They thought that the articles were a nod to the global south (Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia) where China, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist rivals, are making huge inroads in investments and military cooperation.
If you have read these articles, please let us know how you analyze the Times’ and the ruling class’ motives in making this information public.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and demolishing the right to abortion is a brutally sexist attack on women workers, and particularly on Black, Latin and immigrant workers. Backed by gutter sexist Republicans and the domestically oriented faction of the capitalist ruling class, the Small Fascists, the Court is poised to escalate its attacks on workers and erase decades of hard-won reforms within the limits of the profit system.
Meanwhile, the rulers’ long-dominant imperialist wing, the Big Fascist liberals of finance capital, are losing one fight after the next: on abortion and guns, on voting rights and climate action—not to mention the growing debacle in Ukraine. As U.S. capitalism spirals into decline, and the split within the bosses’ ranks deepens, we have entered a period of extreme instability. The Big Fascists will stop at nothing—including full-blown fascism—to hold on to their power and their profits. They will try to use the backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision to mobilize workers and to defend their empire from imperialist rivals China and Russia. They know they can’t fight an imperialist war without women workers committed to their murderous system.
After the reversal of Roe v. Wade, tens of thousands of workers took to the streets in rage. Like the upsurge after George Floyd’s murder, these protests show the potential of an angry and militant working class. These workers and millions like them must break the bounds of reformism to smash the blood-sucking bosses and create a new society run by and for our class—that’s communism! PLP calls for a mass, multiracial, working-class movement to fight for a communist world that will end sexism and racism once and for all.
Chickens come home to roost
Donald Trump and the other hack politicians backed by the Small Fascists are openly sexist and racist; they’re Klanspeople in business suits. But beware of the Democratic Party liberals who swear their commitment to workers’ rights—and then stab us in the back time after time. The liberals’ longtime strategy is to pacify workers by masking the real ugliness of capitalism, which makes them the main danger to the international working class. No less treacherous are the pro-capitalist leaders of the historically racist and segregated feminist movement, led by the likes of admitted CIA agent Gloria Steinem, who pushed the idea that Black men are the enemies of Black women (Moguldom Nation, 6/29/21). The same goes for the “pro-choice” movement, whose founding icon Margaret Sanger was an open advocate of eugenics, a racist ideology (later adopted by the Nazis) that has led to the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of Black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and immigrant women (pbs.org, 1/29/16). The legal foundation for this barbaric practice was laid by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 in Buck v. Bell (npr.org, 3/27/16).
The Big Fascists’ lack of unity and discipline has come back to haunt them. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, Jim Crow Joe Biden dismissed Anita Hill’s testimony of blatant sexual harassment and cleared the way for arch-sexist Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. More recently, liberal hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg selfishly refused to retire during Barack Obama’s presidency, when the Democrats could have confirmed a pro-choice successor. (In 2019, a year before she died at 87, Ginsburg praised anti-abortion colleagues Brett Kavanaugh—another sexual predator—and Neil Gorsuch as “very decent and very smart” (cnn.com, 7/26/19), and singled out Kavanaugh for praise for hiring women as his law clerks.)
At this point, the bosses’ state apparatus seems up for grabs. The Small Fascists have a death grip on the Supreme Court and have paralyzed Congress. They have mobilized their base in “red” states to control most of the state legislatures, which are now passing reams of anti-abortion laws while refusing to expand Medicaid or any reform that might benefit working women’s health. The overturning of Roe—despite a large majority of workers who favor abortion rights—is a watershed moment in a volatile time. It undermines the legitimacy of the bosses’ capitalist dictatorship, aka liberal demoracy. It throws a wrench into the Big Fascists’ plans to win women workers to fight in the next world war. The liberal rulers will do their best to use the pro-choice movement to keep women workers inside their dead-end system by voting for Democrats in this fall’s 2022 elections. Communists must be in that movement as well—to steer workers toward the fight for communism, the only way to abort this sexist, racist system.
Capitalist healthcare racist & sexist to the core
Like racism, sexism is essential to capitalism. The bosses use it both to divide workers and to super-exploit them. Internationally, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, even less if they have children (UN Women). The Big Fascist liars, constantly promoting the U.S. as the “greatest country in the world,” preside over a sexist, racist health care system that is exceptional only for its inability to serve workers’ needs or protect their lives. The U.S. ranks behind 55 other countries for maternal mortality; its rate is four times as high as Japan's and ten times as high as Italy's. Because of racist inequalities, the rate is three times as high for Black women as for white women. Infant mortality rates in the U.S. show similar patterns–so much for the "right to life!” (CDC & CIA World Factbook) A capitalist system that cannot provide decent health care to the working class does not deserve to exist. It must be destroyed by communist revolution.
Communism will liberate all women workers
Over a century ago, a communist-led revolution in Russia revealed the power of the working class to break their chains and remake the history of humanity (see box). While PLP supports abortion on demand under capitalism, the true liberation of working-class women can only be achieved by the violent overthrow of the sexist capitalist ruling class. Under communism, as part of a fundamental commitment to women’s health care, women would have access to abortion. But the conditions that make abortion necessary for so many women workers today—from poverty to a lack of decent child care–will no longer exist. With the elimination of money and wage slavery, free health care will be available to all. Free and collectivized child care will be the norm. That’s the world that all workers need to fight for!
And so it begins: On June 27, eight kkkops of Akron, Ohio fired at least 90 bullets at a Black young man, Jayland Walker and pierced his body over 60 times. Jayland, only 25 years young, is one of the 528 people murdered by police this year so far (Statist Research Department, 7/5). The U.S. police, descended from protectors of enslavers, function to terrorize the working class and protect the ruling class. As the bosses’ system spins further into chaos and towards imperialist war, our class’s main danger are the liberal bosses, also known as the Big Fascists.
The following are a few of the fights the Progressive Labor Party seeks to connect during this year’s Summer Project. The cities highlighted—Chicago, Newark, New York City, and Los Angeles—reflect areas of fightback PLP is involved in, even through the pandemic.
When the bosses kill one of ours, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Every single example you are about to read resulted in mass fightbacks. The mainly Black and Latin women workers who lead these campaigns defy the sexist gender roles that capitalism imposes on our class.
If we are immersed with these families and fighters for the long haul, these lifelong fighters will become the gravediggers of this racist, sexist, murderous capitalist system!
Four fighting cities:
LOS ANGELES, CA
Alex Flores: On November 19, 2019, the LAPD shot and murdered Alex, 34 years old, near South Central Avenue and East 28th Street. Through this work, more people understand the true role of the police in a capitalist society and see PLP as leading the fight against their racist terror.
For instance, PLP and other organizers met the Flores family for a BBQ and banner-making party to prepare for a protest during the height of the pandemic. By the end of the discussion, the family decided that they were going to find creative ways to fight back regardless of repression tactics used by the bosses. They also discussed the importance of keeping one another safe. During the protest a few days later, everyone present was diligent about remaining socially distant and taking safe health precautions.
The Flores family remains courageous and hasn’t allowed their fight to diminish the two and a half years since Alex Flores was murdered. PLP has worked alongside the family and made it clear that our support is not going anywhere. This strong working class unity has empowered the community to be relentless against police terror.
BROOKLYN, NY
Shantel Davis: In June 2012 when NYPD “Bad Boy” Phillip Atkins shot Shantel Davis on E. 38 St. and Church Avenue members and friends of Progressive Labor Party responded immediately to the scene of the crime where a crowd of angry Black workers and youth had gathered. Marches to the 67 precinct, marches of a very militant character shutting down traffic for short periods on the side street where the precinct was located, became weekly occurrences. CHALLENGE was a vital tool in this fight from the start. There is also an annual basketball tournament in honor of Shantel and Kiki (see below). The family and local PL’ers have become an integrated part of each other’s lives.
Kimani "Kiki" Gray: Less than a year later, on March 9, 2013, the police in East Flatbush on East 52nd Street murdered this 16-year-old student, not far from where Shantel was murdered. Kiki was just leaving a friend’s party. Police fired eleven shots at the teenager, hitting him seven times, three times in the back. Justified anger ignited the East Flatbush rebellion, and the bosses’ instated a curfew, came out with helicopters and riot police.
Kyam Livingston: A few months later, in July 2013, a 37-year-old mother of two was killed out of medical neglect at a holding cell at Brooklyn central booking on Schermerhorn St. to await arraignment with 15 other women. The police let her suffer in pain for seven hours, each minute in time she went through a slow torture as her life drained away and she received no help from the callous jailors. She even had seizures. She and the other women in the cell with her were told, “shut up or we’ll lose your paperwork!” This is what a human life is worth in this system. We were able to sustain monthly rallies decrying this racist system. The family is a strong presence on May Day, and more.
One lesson from this struggle is that fightback is the best form of self-care. The bosses’ forces constantly sold passivity and isolation. The Party’s unbending confidence in the ability of women workers to channel anger into leading our class was confirmed throughout our struggle.
NEWARK, NJ
Rodwell-Spivey Brothers: This is a story of four brothers targeted for breathing while Black. Two brothers were looking at clothes from a mobile vendor in front of their house when two undercover kkkops attacked the brothers. The killer kkkops later claimed they were searching for a Black man wearing a white t-shirt with dreads, but nothing under this capitalist system is coincidental or a mistake when Black workers worldwide are super-exploited and jailed on a mass scale.
When the cops attacked, their other two brothers rushed out in concern. Now, four brothers—Justin Rodwell, Branden K. Rodwell, Jaykill Rodwell, and Jasper Spivey—are all facing possible jail time. Justin, who came out to defend his younger brothers, is still being detained as he awaits trial in Essex County Jail. On the outside, the family is constantly surveilled and harassed by the police.
From protests and meetings to backyard BBQs, PLP is working to build relationships with the family and antiracists.
CHICAGO, IL
Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson: On August 15, 2020, the klan-in-blue viciously attacked demonstrators at a protest calling to defund the Chicago Police Department and abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mohawk was caught up in the fray and arrested. Even after posting bail, he was still held three days in jail before being released on house arrest with an ankle monitor. He’s been charged for allegedly hitting a cop.
The Chicago bosses’ terrorization of Mohawk may have been a tool to pacify the working class. Instead, this has turned into a campaign to Free Mohawk and further expose the inherently violent system that is capitalism.
Big Fascists, biggest danger
What insidious is that this is occurring under the watchful eye of liberal politicians. Every city’s mayor—Newark’s Ras Baraka (Black), Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot (gay Black woman), Los Angeles’s Eric Garcetti (white, liberal), and New York City’s previous Bill de Blasio (white, phony left) and current Eric Adams (Black)—represent the Big Fascists.
Following the mass George Floyd uprisings, the bosses talked about “defunding the police.” But now with President ‘Jim Crow’ Joe Biden’s blessing, all these Democratic-led cities have increased their police budget and cut funding for necessities like education and healthcare (Quartz, 1/25).
Since the worldwide, antiracist 2014 Ferguson uprising under former liberal Big Fascist president Barack Obama, and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, under the gutter racist presidency of Donald Trump, the liberal Big Fascist wing of the ruling class has ushered in Black municipal leadership to squelch working-class rebellion. They feed workers phony radical faces in high places as a win, and dupe many into believing a sliver of the decaying American pie is the best our class can do for survival.
The Big Fascists are the dominant finance capitalist faction of the U.S. ruling class. They represent the wealthiest and most powerful bosses in the U.S., including banks, oil companies, media, and industry—Chase and Citibank, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Amazon, The New York Times, and more. As the dominant grouping since World War II, the Big Fascists were the architects of the liberal world order with the U.S. bosses on top. Their dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power and its strategic control of the Middle East and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. To sustain this dominance, they need to rebuild a huge, multiracial military for inter-imperialist war, most likely with China.
The Big Fascists are confronted with a huge contradiction. On the one hand, they need racist police terror to keep the masses in check; on the other, they need these same Black and Latin youth to fight in their unending imperialist wars. The bosses can never resolve their contradiction. The job of communists and friends of the PLP is to sharpen the contradiction—and ultimately to smash the bosses—by winning workers to fight back in multiracial unity.
PLP cautions workers that the rising volatility between imperialist bosses in China, Russia and U.S, will continue to fester and explode into world war, and Black and Latin youth will be missile food forced to die for the bosses’ profits. The only hope of the working class is to build a class-conscious multiracial movement to smash capitalism and fight for communism, freeing the world from starvation, exploitation, racist politicians and their kkkops.
Build PLP
Whenever workers fight back, our Party aims to be shoulder-to-shoulder in struggle. A strength of the work within this struggle against police terror has been the base building—PL’s involvement in the fightback is more than the agitation in the streets, it has been the equally if not more essential work of bringing these families closer to the Party. Building strong relationships is a sign of our seriousness, love of the working class, and our commitment to fighting for a communist world that drives us.
The worldwide working class, led by Progressive Labor Party, must persevere to build a mass, anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement. We must struggle against frustration and cynicism. We must stay the course with both communist urgency and communist patience. There are no shortcuts to revolution.
The bosses will never give up state power voluntarily. We need millions to join us worldwide and take it from them. Join PLP, and fight back! The future is bright; we must make it so. J
New Jersey, July 5—Liberal fascist school bosses rehired a communist teacher after recognizing the growing support for that teacher. In mid-May, a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member was fired from the school where they teach, supposedly due to performance issues and budget cuts. In a community meeting organized to build fightback, the teacher’s co-worker stated: “There is possibly no other teacher that the staff and the kids like more, and the administrators like less.” The antiracist, pro-student and worker solidarity this teacher represents in this school emboldened the community to win back the job of this communist fighter! This fight also helped to strengthen the confidence that the teacher had in himself to build for a lifetime in the working class.
Students, parents, and co-workers take the lead
As word spread of the firing, many co-workers and students were adamant that the school needed this comrade. A former student who has consistently received CHALLENGE wrote a petition which received 44 signatures. A co-worker took the initiative to encourage several of her students, some of whom had been the comrade’s students in the previous school year, to sign up to speak at the school board meeting at the end of May. This inspired the comrade to encourage several current students of their own as well as a couple of education workers from across the city to do the same. A parent, who has had CHALLENGE placed in her storefront since the pandemic, hosted a community meeting where a multiracial group of youth, parents, co-workers and community members showed up to plan further action during the last week of school.
Throughout this struggle many people shared wisdom regarding the way the capitalist education system had attacked them in the past. They shared lessons learned from the ways they fought back. In response to the growing fight back and a letter written by the teacher and fellow PL’ers, being self critical of the ways the teachers could perform better while also citing the pandemic and huge class sizes as a reason for difficulty in delivering data and lesson plans, the bosses decided to bring the teacher back.
Capitalist schools in decay, communities need to fight back!
This teacher was essentially fired for insubordination. The administrators forced students to remain outside in freezing temperatures while waiting for underpaid security guards to show and process them into the school building. This teacher was accused of allowing potentially dangerous kids into the building, therefore putting everyone else’s life in danger. Our kids are not dangerous - this is the racist lie the bosses repeat over and over again. The real danger that threatens the lives of everyone in this and all school buildings is capitalism. A profit system where bosses abandon whole schools and the communities they serve when those particular kids and their families are no longer the most profitable to exploit. The resulting lack of resources leads school bosses to ramp up racist and sexist mistrust between staff and students, rather than compassion and community building.
Letting those students in and listening to them in the mornings allowed this teacher to deepen their understanding of who those kids really were and to build a working class culture of trust. It is this type of communist working class culture that the school community wanted to defend and the school administration wanted to get rid of.
Big Fascists mislead schools better than Small Fascists
The conditions of the school that fired this comrade reflect the main direction that Big Fascists (international finance capitalists, see GLOSSARY, page 6) have for the future of the international working class. This school is oftentimes the last stop for Black students whose needs and struggles have been ignored at all other schools in the city. It is also the landing spot for many undocumented students displaced by U.S. capitalists’ search for cheap labor and imperialist profits in Latin America and the Caribbean. The families of this overall student population are exposed to racist and sexist treatment in housing, health care, and employment. The super-oppression experienced by these students and their families translates into a higher workload for the education workers who struggle to educate while the material needs of students are not being met.
It also encourages chronic staff shortages from teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, security guards, to teacher's aides who cannot bear the alienation.
The response of U.S. Small Fascist (domestic capitalists, see GLOSSARY, page 6) Republicans to contain the crises of capitalism reflected in these school conditions is to promote erasing the history of U.S. ruling class racist terror and working class antiracist heroism, and criminalizing education workers for encouraging youth to embrace the diversity within the working class. The leadership of U.S. Big Fascist Democrats, from Biden to the Mayor all the way down to the Principal of this particular school, who attacked our comrade, is a lot more dangerous for workers and youth to follow. Being Black, Latin, gay or liberal, all they preach about is phoney antiracism and the need for diversity. Yet, they use the tool of identity politics to fool some into thinking they are on our side. Then they lie that “they are doing the best that they can'' hoping to pacify our anger and stop us from organizing against the system they serve.
Fight to build communist consciousness
Worldwide, workers and students in schools under capitalism have the potential to help expose the sharpening divisions that weaken Big and Small Fascists’ ability to conceal their attacks against our class and turn it into a communist revolution. Turning that potential into reality depends on the level of confidence we build in the working class. This happens when we fight, in small and large ways- as workers and youth with communist ideas - against the racist and sexist super-exploitation, divisions and attacks that weaken our class. Working class conscious fightback emboldens the masses that are increasingly linking their fight with the vision of PLP. This fightback gives everyone more confidence that one day we will smash capitalism with a system run by us for us, communism.
