The call by the U.S. President Joe Biden and the United Nations for a multinational invasion of Haiti is motivated in part by their racist dread of yet another refugee crisis. If you ever needed an example of how capitalism is hell on earth, look at what the bosses have done to our class in Haiti. Yet even as capitalist institutions failed at every turn, workers organized a general strike. The masses, led by Progressive Labor Party, (see page 4), will lead the way out of this hellhole.

Working-class lives are expendable for all bosses. For the working class, trading in local gangs for the biggest gangster of them all—U.S. imperialism—is a losing strategy. There is just one choice that can fundamentally change conditions for our class and rid the world of profit and exploitation. The only solution is a communist revolution to smash capitalism and build a new society on the bedrock of need and commitment.

Capitalism in the raw
In July 2021, the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse, a U.S.-backed stooge, ignited a wave of unrest and terror from organized gangs that now control 60 percent of the country (Foreign Affairs, 12/1/22). The resulting chaos has led to deadly waves of hunger, rape, and extortion, and the lethal return of cholera, an absolutely preventable disease that is spread by contaminated water.

The unelected U.S.-backed prime minister, Ariel Henry, has asked for international military forces to intervene in Haiti to bring “order” to a society in upheaval. Henry had recently cut fuel subsidies and doubled the price of gasoline, which is now in short supply. Haiti’s ruling class has discarded the mask of liberal democracy and is calling on U.S. imperialism to install fascist discipline and protect the local bosses’ riches—and their despicable lives.

Local bosses back gangs
When the state lacks legitimacy, organized crime becomes a dominant political force. Gangs are essentially capitalists without state power or the “rule of law” that regulates the bosses’ vicious competition. Haiti’s power vacuum is being filled by former cop Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier’s gang “G9 Family and Allies,” which controls access to the essential Varreux fuel terminal. For a country that runs on diesel generators, a blockade of the main fuel port means that schools and hospitals cannot function (The Daily Podcast, 12/8/22).

The G9 Alliance uses murder and sexist violence against women workers as systemic tools of terror (New York Post, 10/15/22). The gang is demanding amnesty, cabinet seats, and Henry’s resignation.  They are “financed by Haiti’s tiny clique of import-export oligarchs” (Foreign Policy, 10/31/22), which is nothing new. Working hand in hand with French and U.S. imperialists, these local bosses have played a critical role in Haiti’s impoverishment over the past two centuries. What may appear to be anarchy among rival gangs is in reality an internal fight among bosses against a backdrop of a divided and weakening U.S. ruling class.

U.S. impotence
Since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the U.S. has treated the Caribbean and Latin America as its “backyard.” But with the relative decline of U.S. imperialism, China’s capitalist bosses have made inroads in the region, investing over $10 billion in Caribbean countries since 2005.

The U.S. bosses’ weakness is exposed by their inability to respond by rallying its allies and its own military leaders into putting boots on the ground in Haiti. “The U.S. doesn’t want its own troops included” in the multinational force (New York Times, 11/29/22). It hasn’t been able to persuade Mexico, Brazil, Canada, or France to lead the assault. At this point, U.S. imperialists are uncertain if they can pull off an Afghanistan-style invasion.

One sure thing to come is an exodus of more refugees from Haiti to the U.S., where the state-sanctioned thugs of the U.S. Border Patrol will greet them with more racist terror, just as they did in June. Biden expanded temporary protected status for 110,000 workers from Haiti to stay for 18 months—a drop in the bucket for people who have lost everything to the instability and callousness of the profit system. It’s up to our class to welcome and organize refugees of capitalism.

Humanitarianism = imperialism
Beginning in 1791, enslaved Black workers in Haiti led the first successful revolution to abolish slavery, striking fear in the hearts of rulers around the world. Imperialists have been bleeding workers in Haiti ever since. Imperialist extortion of Haiti by the U.S. and France explains why Haiti suffers the worst poverty and inequality in the Western Hemisphere.

History shows us there is no such thing as "humanitarian intervention" in an imperialist system. The U.S., its allies, and the UN have been invading Haiti for more than 200 years, causing ever greater super-exploitation, impoverishment, and instability for workers (see box). The working class in Haiti is rightly feared by the bosses. The politicians and the gang leaders know that once they’re forced to remove their boots from the neck of the working class, their days will be numbered.

Workers have no borders
Progressive Labor Party must fight to turn this hellhole into a hotbed of revolutionary communist fightback To eliminate gangsters on the street and in the halls of government, we need communism.

Organize across borders! An attack on one is an attack on all. We must build international working-class solidarity through our mass organizations. Borders were created by the capitalists to define which workers were theirs to exploit. Working people have no nation!

“I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers…I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism.”
— U.S. Maj. General Smedley Butler

The current crisis in Haiti is the consequence of more than 200 years of gangsterism by the U.S. and other capitalist powers.

• 1915-1934: Following the assassination of President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, the U.S. invaded and seized control over Haitian finances in the name of “stability” for U.S. interests (Foreign Affairs, 12/1/22). Then it violently suppressed uprisings against the U.S. occupation.
• 1994: After decades of U.S. money, weapons, and troops to support the brutal, anti-communist Duvalier gang—which massacred as many as 60,000 people —President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 troops to Haiti under “Operation Uphold Democracy.”
• 2004:Partnering with France, Canada, and Chile, the U.S. invaded Haiti to escort President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out after the CIA orchestrated a coup to oust him (Guardian, 3/13/22). The troops remained until they were replaced by the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which became infamous for mass rape (Al Jazeera, 10/6/22). This 13-year occupation also brought a siege of cholera that killed 10,000 people and sickened more than 850,000 (AP News, 10/18/22).

THIS is what the capitalist bosses mean by “order” and “stability.” The working class in Haiti has fought back at every step. They fought enslavers, imperialists, super-exploitative industry bosses, the cholera-spreading MINUSTAH, and the Tonton Macoute death squads. Haiti is a harbinger of the rulers’ decay, an example of what’s to come as the worldwide crisis of capitalism deepens and intensifies. There are no certainties in this world, except one: Our class will continue to fight.

Baltimore, Maryland, November 30—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined about 40 students, faculty and community supporters to protest Johns Hopkins University’s plan for a $10 million private, armed police force. The day’s activities included a two-hour march through the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University (JHU), an evening vigil, and then a West Wednesday rally outside City Hall. During the campus march, a PLP member distributed 20 flyers and copies of CHALLENGE, and engaged in conversations about socialism, communism and the history of racist police murder in Baltimore.  Racism is a pillar of capitalist society and that includes universities. Over policing and murder by kkkops are glaring examples of racist attacks on all workers and students, Black and white. The whole capitalist system has to go.

That night’s West Wednesday rally condemned the recent police killing of Tyree Moorehead, the main creator of Baltimore’s “no shoot zones.” Some maintain that Mr. Moorehead was threatening a woman’s life with a knife, but the police shot him 14 times, continuing to shoot even after Mr. Moorehead, lying on the street, had rolled a distance away from the woman. This is yet another case of the police acting as judge, jury and executioner.

School kkkops enforce campus fascism
At the evening vigil, a member of PLP explained that armed campus police forces, starting at private universities in the 60s, were not created to protect the safety of students or neighboring community members, which Hopkins officials claim to be their goal. No, explained the speaker, the real reason was to enable universities to suppress powerful on-campus protests supporting civil rights, and opposing the imperialist war in Vietnam.

When Hopkins started their propaganda campaign, seeking to win Maryland State approval for an armed campus police force, Hopkins Students Against Private Police researched University statistics. Hopkins already had about 1,000 unarmed security guards. It turns out, for the year researched by the students, regarding “suspects” detained by campus security, 97 percent were Black, even though the student body includes only a small percentage of Black students. Hopkins has orchestrated this racial profiling, and now wants to put guns into the mix. Two students explained that, while the university claims to uphold “democracy,” it has consistently refused to listen to the majority of students, faculty and community who oppose an armed campus force.

History of students’ antiracist fightback
The struggle at Hopkins is not new. In 2018, militant rallies, a month-long take-over of the administration building, community petitions with thousands of names, and community groups - including West Wednesday – all strongly opposed the establishment of an armed force. Nevertheless, in 2019 Hopkins succeeded in getting the Maryland General Assembly to pass legislation allowing the university, medical complex, and Peabody Institute to move forward with a private, armed police force.
However, after the horrific death of George Floyd and the millions of people who stood strong against that racist police murder, Hopkins announced it would delay implementation of the armed force for two years. Now the time is up, and JHU – figuring the sit-in students and their supporters have largely graduated and gone – is moving forward again.

Still, anti-racist protestors disrupted hearings about this issue in September. Ongoing rallies, by students and community members, have demonstrated deep feelings against violent policing and the danger it poses, especially to Black and Latin students, and to nearby community residents.

Today’s rally and vigil started with a walkout at Gilman Hall. Speakers at checkpoints included a faculty member who recounted past attacks on student protests by the administration and campus security. Several students said they have been protesting for years against Hopkins’ plans for an armed force.

Can’t reform away police terror
Another parallel development is that the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) will soon be overseen by the Baltimore City government. Until now, for over a hundred years, it has been the State of Maryland that oversaw BPD. Some organizers see this as a reform that will lead to significant police accountability.

As communists, we understand that police brutality will continue under this system, no matter which level of government is in charge. This is because police terror is essential to capitalism, just as brutal slave catchers were essential to the institution of slavery. We will continue to fight against racist police murder, from Freddie Gray and Tyrone West, to the recent murder – by a security guard – of Kevin Torres in Baltimore. And we will continue to share our understanding of the need for multiracial unity, revolution, and the creation of a new egalitarian world with real sisterhood and brotherhood.

In 2022, the international working class faced what sometimes seemed like the darkest of nights.

January saw Covid-19 deaths soar above six million worldwide with no signs of slowing. In February, Russia invaded Ukraine in what may turn out to be the spark for World War III. The pink tide of liberalism continued to infect Latin America, with leaders opportunistically working both sides of the imperialist competition, cynically promoting all-class unity, nationalism, and identity politics while simultaneously escalating racist and sexist attacks. The Monkeypox epidemic, once again, magnified the gross inequalities of the racist, sexist capitalist for-profit healthcare system which is a disaster for our entire class, especially Black and women workers. Open racists made regional and national political gains in Italy, France, and the UK.  Monstrous imperialist monarch Queen Elizabeth II died amid pomp and mass mourning, despite seventy years of crimes against tens of millions of workers. And murders at the hands of the KKKops plagued our class.

Just as gutter racists in all their disguises seek to exploit and murder us, so do the liberal fascists of finance capital, led by the likes of Jim Crow Joe Biden. We fight to remember that these wolves in sheep’s clothing, with their false promises and manipulation of social issues like increased funding for racist cops, abortion, immigration and mass deportations, and student debt, present the biggest danger.

Yet, through this dark night of capitalist decay and low class unity, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and fellow workers continued to FIGHT BACK.

A new generation of communist leadership
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) kicked off the year with an Alabama Winter Project, in which an integrated group of  workers and students supported the ongoing Warrior Met Miners’ Strike. Hundreds of multiracial miners and the Women’s Auxiliary were open to our communist politics and set the tone for a year of Party fightback.

Across the U.S., students, teachers, and workers demanded that the bosses’ public schools take their health seriously. In Chicago, working-class youth took militant action as city bosses, Big Fascist Black Mayor Lori Lightfoot, representing the liberal, dominant wing of the ruling class,  and the sellout union bosses did nothing to stop Covid-19 infections and deaths on campuses.

At City University of New York (CUNY), ongoing struggles exposed that capitalist education administrators remain the lapdogs of the liberal Big Fascist wing of the capitalist class.
And as countless workers lost loved ones, and killer kkkops like Jason Van Dyke were set free, PLP continued to remind comrades that capitalism is at the root of the violence against our class. It is the capitalist bosses who attack us with poverty and police terror, disproportionately targeting Black and Latin neighborhoods.

In New Jersey, our Party has been a thorn in the side of Newark's Big Fascist Mayor Ras Baraka by keeping the Rodwell-Spivey fight alive. Our fightback has gotten bogus felony charges against the  brothers reduced to misdemeanors, and we’ll continue to fight until they’re completely dropped.

PL’ers and friends declared there are NO GOOD MAYORS, COPS OR POLITICIANS! The only way to defend against attacks on our class by liberal misleaders like Baraka is to build toward communist revolution.

Rising inflation and an unsustainable cost of living had workers worldwide unable to meet their families’ basic needs. July saw Panama face one of its biggest protests in decades, spurred by rising food and fuel prices (LA Times, 7/19/22). Britain remains in the midst of one of its biggest strikes in recent years, with over 200,000 workers demanding better pay and working conditions (CNN Business 11/15/22).

In Greece, a 24-hour general strike called by private- and public-sector unions was set to shut down most services around the country (ABC News 11/8/22).

And in Belgium, authorities were forced to reduce airport capacity by 70 percent to avoid disruption from a strike (Crisis 24 12/10/22).

When workers of the world unite we can bring this racist capitalist system to a halt.

Shut this racist system down!
Liberal fascism looms ahead of WWIII, but working class solidarity prevails.

In 2022, both wings of the ruling class continued to splinter–particularly in the U.S., as the Big Fascists struggled to discipline themselves and the more openly racist Small Fascists as capitalism spiraled into deeper crisis.

One year after the assault on the Capitol by loyalists of Donald Trump, the vicious battle between the two factions of U.S. capitalism continues to grow hotter. In January, the Big Fascists took a clear step toward full-blown fascism by establishing a new federal unit to target “domestic terrorism.” Just one month later, we witnessed the old liberal world order disintegrated even further and the Russian capitalist bosses invaded Ukraine.

In this period, when capitalism is descending to a new level of hell, it is imperative for our class and PLP to forge a new way forward by smashing the rotten profit system with communist revolution.

In November, over 100 protestors rallied in defiance of a possible U.S. imperialist invasion of Haiti.
Hundreds of thousands in Sri Lanka joined a protest movement storming the Presidential palace and chasing the president out of the country.

In response to the floods in Pakistan, PLP organized medical camps with the help of friends and is trying to build a base among displaced workers.

In Colombia, thousands of workers, enraged by the breakdown of public services, tax hikes, a plan to privatize health care, and five-plus decades of civil war, mounted mass demonstrations. where workers and youth and PLP fought alongside our class siblings  in the trenches, injecting the struggle with revolutionary politics every step of the way.

Changing the course of imperialist wars is a monumental task, but it is something our class has done before. We must attack head-on the nationalism and racism being spread among our class by the bosses.

Who’s day? Our day!
No year in review would be complete without MAY DAY - OUR DAY!

It’s a day when workers from across the globe march to commemorate our triumphs, propelled by a vision of a world without exploitation, without capitalist borders, and run by the working class.

We march for the universal demands of all workers: against imperialist war, against racism and sexism, for the unity of immigrant and citizen workers, against wage slavery, against fascist police terror, and for the communist solution to all these attacks facing the international working class.

PLP celebrated May Day internationally and then carried that same fighting spirit to our Party’s annual Summer Project, which centered around two major events: a march in in Brooklyn to protest the 2012 murder of Shantel Davis by police detective Phil Atkins, and the imprisonment of Justin Rodwell and the legal attacks on his family in Newark. The project was a show of resistance against the bosses and their enforcers, an unapologetic expression of the Party’s politics.

Only solution is communist revolution!
Our rallying cry is for international working-class consciousness and solidarity. Our marching orders are to turn the guns around, to transform inter-imperialist war into communist revolution.

Our fightbacks of the past year offer glimmers of hope that the international working class will one day be the human race. With this unwavering faith in our class, scores of workers, students, and soldiers fight for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship, and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.

Workers of the world unite! Organize in the workplace, in mass organizations, with friends and family.
Look to our class brothers and sisters who have shut down trains, planes, and profit streams.
Smash racist chains and organize for one solution, and one solution only:
A communist revolution!