New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ move to roust homeless people from the subways while slashing $615 million from services for their care is a declaration of state terror against the working class. Each time ex-cop Adams dons his New York Police Department (NYPD) gear to announce another new policy, he exposes his allegiance to the same racist system that used police to brutalize him as a Black teenager in the 1970s, dropped a bomb on Black workers in Philadelphia in the ‘80s, and has assaulted countless Black workers and youth in the decades since. CHALLENGE has repeatedly pointed out that liberal capitalist bosses and their stooges are the greatest dangers to the international working class. Given the current wave of identity politics, class traitors like Adams may be the most dangerous of all.
In response to a recent surge of antiracist protests against global police terror and to reformist calls to “Defund the Police,” the capitalist rulers are using Black mayors like Adams, Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, and Newark's Ras Baraka to whip workers back in line. Like U.S. President Joe Biden, Lightfoot has called for more funding for the cops. In his first budget, Adams cut most city departments by three percent but maintained funding for New York’s police and promised to “redeploy” more cops on the street. He also promised to reinstate the plainclothes units that were dissolved in 2020 after instigating “a disproportionate number” of fatal police shootings in Black and Latin neighborhoods (New York Times, 6/15). One of the units’ members was the racist monster Daniel Pantaleo, who murdered Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014.
Adams’ role is to turn militant fighters into passive voters, to funnel rebellious Black and Latin youth into the school-to-prison pipeline, and to help build a multicultural patriotic movement for the bosses’ next big war. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) says that multiracial faces in high places are a dead end for our class! To improve workers’ lives and build a society without racism, sexism, or imperialist slaughter, we must organize a mass communist movement through antiracist class struggle. The only solution is a communist revolution!
Liberal fascism rises with inter-imperialist rivalry
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a clear sign of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. As the crisis of capitalism deepens and China, Russia, and the U.S. head closer to global conflict, the U.S. bosses know they must build fascism to coerce workers into following their plans for war.
In their drive to build a multiracial imperialist machine, the Big finance capital Fascists use both the carrot and the stick. The carrot is the myth that a “democratic” capitalist system has workers’ best interests at heart, even if certain sections of the working class must be sacrificed along the way. The stick—the criminal injustice system, the bosses’ kkkops and kkkourts—works to criminalize Black, Latin, and immigrant workers and youth. In places like Eric Adams’ New York, it’s also used to bludgeon the homeless.
Unfortunately, many workers have been won to an anti-working class perspective and support these attacks. They have failed to learn history’s lesson: Fascist policies that target the most vulnerable and super-exploited among us are ultimately used against the entire working class. In fact, the biggest criminals—by far—are the capitalist bosses. The most dangerous gangs are the cops, who kill more than one thousand workers each year (Washington Post, 3/22).
Once a cop, always a cop
Upon declaring his candidacy for mayor, Adams became the darling of the liberal bosses, with an endorsement from billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and donations from the Rockefeller family and major landlords and real estate developers (NYT, 11/2/21). Three weeks after he was sworn in, Adams seized on a relatively minor rise in street crime to put out his “Blueprint to End Gun Violence.” More than 230 leaders of the Big Fascist camp—including Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, and Tony Utano, president of Transit Workers Union Local 100—were quick to sign a letter of support (nyc.gov, 1/31).
Designed to stoke fears that divide workers, Adams’ blueprint calls for rolling back bail reforms and allowing judges to determine a defendant’s “dangerousness” in deciding whether to grant bail. Given the racism that infects the court system, studies say this measure will push thousands of Black youth through the prison doors (Slate, 1/28). The mayor’s plan also calls for expanding the use of fascist surveillance technology, including facial recognition software - a racist tool that consistently generates disproportionate numbers of false positives for Black workers, and particularly for Black women (MIT Technology Review, December 2020).
Last year, when disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used the Covid-19 pandemic to terrorize the homeless, the Urban Justice Center pointed out: "The rules are not about 'safeguarding public health' and ensuring that essential workers are 'able to maintain social distancing,' but rather are about permanently excluding homeless persons from the subway system" (Gothamist, 2/21). In a city notorious for its lack of affordable housing or safe shelters, the liberal bosses are endorsing Adams’ use of health care workers to crack down on homeless workers, most of whom are Black. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, “the large majority of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers are people living with mental illness or other severe health problems.” Adams is taking a page from the German Nazis, who targeted workers with mental and physical illnesses for sterilization and extermination.
Only communist revolution will keep us safe
In the summer of 2020, Progressive Labor Party proudly joined the millions of workers who protested the police lynching of George Floyd. As we fought side by side with many friends, we also struggled with them to see the limits of reforms under capitalism. Body cameras and “redeployments” won’t put an end to racist police terror. The bosses need police terror to intimidate and divide the working class and hold on to state power. Racist terror will end only when the working class seizes state power through communist revolution and creates a society without money or profits. Only then can we do away with cops and their murderous brutality, once and for all.
In Road to Life, A.S. Makarenko documents how the Soviet working class set up schools for homeless students who’d joined gangs. The book shows how through collective struggle, these young workers were developed into leaders of the Soviet Union. This is just one example of what workers can accomplish after taking state power. Building the Party through all of our struggles will bring us closer to that reality.
Click here for the latest magazine article on sexism, "Only Communist Revolution Can End Sexism."
March 8 is International Working Women’s Day. The capitalist media stripped this holiday from its communist roots in order to push feminism, an ideology that blames men, instead of capitalism, for sexism.
In the U.S., March 8 is used to prop up women politicians and women profiteers. As of last year, women make up just over a quarter of all members of the 117th Congress, “the highest percentage in U.S. history” (Pew Research Center, 01/21). Meanwhile, Black, Latin, and immigrant working class women continue to suffer the most under the extreme sexist conditions of this system– in all aspects of life. And Texas legislators are trying to outlaw abortion. What good is more representation in a system that that profits off of, depends on, and perpetuates sexism?
Born from class society, the sexist division of workers is a pillar in both maintaining and justifying this capitalist system. Like racism and nationalism, sexism keeps the capitalist bosses in power by dividing workers—in this case, by driving a wedge between working-class women and men. This generates superprofits for the bosses and society then assumes women will freely provide daily and generational reproduction of labor power.
Capitalist ideology reinforces the special oppression and exploitation of women. Capitalism teaches us that society is naturally unequal, that women are intrinsically nurturing. Communist history and leadership celebrates International WORKING Women’s Day instead, highlighting the international efforts of working-class women leading fights to improve the material conditions of women and our class as a whole. Only working-class solidarity can build a movement against sexism.
Confront the dangers of feminism
Like all identity politics, the women’s movement is a dead—and deadly—end for workers. It obscures the fact that capitalist society is driven by a fundamental conflict between the class that owns the means of production and the class that creates everything of value—between bosses and workers.
Feminism misleads women workers, in particular, by recruiting sell-out stooges like Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and the late (and unlamented!) Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Black women workers key in the class struggle
Women workers are still leading present day fights against sexist terror. The thousands of garment workers in Port Au Prince, Haiti are a case in point that offers leadership across borders for all workers. The mainly-women textile workers are calling for a minimum wage increase– $ 15 a day– from the power-hungry companies Nike, Levi Strauss, and Gap. Even if companies like Nike, with a net worth of $30.44 billion (statistica.com)pay workers in Haiti the $15 per hour rate that many U.S. workers demand, it would still be crumbs for the working class, and a drop in the bucket for garment bosses.
The women were met with police repression from fascist acting-Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Henry is in the pocket of U.S. imperialist bosses and pushed to squelch the workers' act of resistance immediately, no doubt knowing what a threat a victory for the workers would be to his capitalist regime.
However, this did not stop the working-class women from fighting back. Women workers who make up the majority of the workforce in the garment industry have the understanding that the imperialist bosses will never remove their racist boots off our necks and the only way to remove them is by force. The workers met again the next day, where violence intensified, injuring several, including one pregnant woman. This sexist, violent attack demonstrated that women are forced to work in dire conditions while pregnant and simultaneously being expected to perform unpaid labor as mothers. In a communist society, women, as all workers, will no longer be alienated from their labor or subject to the racist, sexist violence engendered by this system. We will smash the material basis for sexism: capitalism.
In a system designed to prioritize profits over people, imperialist corporations exploit with absolute impunity one section of workers in Haiti more severely than they do in the U.S.
Similar to these women workers in Haiti, communist women in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) lend us the tools of how to fight. Women workers—who lead fights against police terror, exploitative landlords, and bosses—are the ones that should be celebrated during International Women’s Day, not commercialized petty increases in wages or the election of women to a government who will in turn uphold the super exploitation of international working class women. Reformist solutions, such as closing the gender wage gap, will not suffice to end sexism. Under capitalism, they will only create more incentives for individuals to strive in their own self-interest. Only by eliminating the wage system can we bring an end to sexism. Only then will the profit system’s dogma—“Every man or woman for themselves”—be replaced by the communist principle, “To each according to need.” Only then will collective behavior overcome the selfish me-first thinking enshrined by capitalism.
A world led by PLP
Progressive Labor Party’s deep commitment to seeing a world beyond the shallow gaze of identity politics is one of the tenets of our Party’s line. Working women’s power will be self-evident in a communist world, as they will be giving leadership in the fight against sexism. In a world led by millions of communists in the PLP, we have the basis to live an egalitarian life free from capitalist chains.
Click here for the latest magazine article on sexism, "Only Communist Revolution Can End Sexism."
BROOKLYN, February 26—On a weekend afternoon in Flatbush, workers heard the chants of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) as war exploded on the European continent. “Asian, Latin, Black and white! Workers of the world, unite!” These words are now even more important to workers in Brooklyn to Kyiv to Yemen to Haiti. While workers from Haiti strike for increased wages in the bosses’ sweatshops, workers from Yemen live and die under U.S. made missiles and bombs, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians are fighting and dying to decide which bosses earn the right to exploit workers in Ukraine.
Attacks on workers are ramping up throughout the world. More than 20 members and friends of PLP chanted and marched in solidarity with our working-class sisters and brothers all over the world. We expressed anti-imperialist and internationalist politics and brought a message of revolutionary hope.
Not the nonsense coming from the mouths of local and national politicians and liberal apologists for capitalism who preach about equity and then stab workers in the back.
Making revolution through protracted struggle
PLP has been a presence in this neighborhood, especially over the past year. The oppression and murder of workers from Haiti is felt in Flatbush, where a large number of immigrant workers live and work. Many send money and supplies regularly to family members suffering under the control of U.S. imperialists. In Brooklyn, workers suffer from slumlords, racist cops, and say-everything-do-nothing politicians. Capitalists and their cronies work to convince workers to become cynical of fighting for change and cynical of each other.
PLP’s regular presence in the community is the antidote to these vicious lies. During our rally, a worker with a young child joined us and marched, yelling out “we will be back!” Another worker told us that we need “to be out here all the time because the suffering isn’t just overseas, it’s here.” As we march, as we distribute CHALLENGE, we build confidence in the international working class to one day overthrow this vicious racist imperialist system. We build confidence to build a communist world- one without nations, borders, and war.
Building internationalism is key to our plan
Each corner of the busy intersection where we rallied had PLP members distributing CHALLENGE. It was an opportunity to talk with workers. The war in Ukraine may seem far away, workers are suffering everywhere. Many of the workers who took the paper commented on how workers fight to survive while the top dogs benefit from capitalist war. Many workers in Flatbush work for transit and in healthcare. Those essential workers took the brunt of the pandemic at the start and any suffering they experience is now long forgotten by the bosses. Many of these workers are Black and many are women. This exposes the racism and sexism of capitalism and will be an Achilles heel for the bosses’ plans to convince us to fight in their wars. It is our job to make that contradiction clear to workers and to convince them to join us to turn the guns around and fight for communism instead of bosses’ profits.Workers demand minimum wage: only HOPE is revolution.
- Information
Retirees at the ready Rx: eradicate the whole damn system
- Information
- 07 March 2022 109 hits
NEW YORK CITY, February 14—Despite bitterly cold weather, 200 retired city workers demonstrated today against the racist, profit-driven privatization of their health insurance. This fight against this latest attack by the bosses on our health reflects our anger at this first opening shot in the reduction of health coverage. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) points out that the entire healthcare system is driven by the profit motive. From medical practices to hospitals to labs to the pharmaceutical industry, capitalism determines who has access to good health.
If we’re serious about optimizing our collective health, we need to be fighting to build the mass international PLP and the struggle for communist revolution.
Only in a communist system, run for and by the working class, can there be a healthy life with less stress and alienation. There will be opportunities for exercise and a healthy diet. Quality healthcare will be provided equally to all based solely on need.
Racist unequal society= Racist unequal healthcare
Speaker after speaker blasted the change from traditional government-run Medicare to a for-profit Medicare (dis)Advantage plan run by insurance companies. Most expressed support for universal single-payer Medicare, a government plan without insurance company middlemen sucking out profits.
So far, between 45,000 to 50,000 retirees have opted out of this new plan. They have chosen, under duress, to pay about $2,300 per person per year to keep the plan they have today. Those who have made this choice are mainly higher-income white workers. Lower income, disproportionately Black and Latin, retirees will be forced into the new plan if and when it goes into effect.
Racism also means that segregated living patterns continue to mean harder access to quality health facilities generally not found in predominantly Black and Latin working class neighborhoods. The coronavirus pandemic in less than two years slashed three years of life expectancy from Black and Latin workers in the U.S. (NYT, 7/21/21).
But ultimately, racism and racist inequalities drag down standards across the board to ensure that most workers receive inadequate health care, as evidenced by decreasing life expectancies for white workers as well. We need to recognize racism as capitalism’s chief attack against the working class, and fight for multiracial unity and the Party as our strongest weapons to fight back.
Don’t rely on politicians, courts or capitalism
Asking newly elected Mayor, the Black ex-police captain Eric Adams, to have a heart on Valentine’s Day is an example of wishful and misguided thinking on the part of the liberal organizers of the rally. Big Fascist Adams has already shown whose side he is on (see editorial, page 2). One of his first actions was to cut all city services except for the police and corrections. The corporate-sponsored Citizens Budget Commission called these plans “important, welcome, and refreshing initial steps in the right direction”(NYT, 2/16).
The court case initiated by rank-and-file retirees has delayed the privatization plan, but is unlikely to succeed in stopping it from taking effect at some time. The court is unlikely to buck the trend toward Medicare privatization. Throughout the U.S., retiree health benefits are being moved from publicly run Medicare to privately run Medicare (dis)Advantage plans steering profits to insurance companies tied to financial capitalists. Over 41 percent of all Medicare enrollees are now in such (dis)Advantage plans (Chatis group, 2/21). That is an astonishing 28.5 million people and growing (Axios, 1/22).
Retired New York City workers have shown over the last year that they won’t watch this racist attack go down without fighting back. As we say, we are retired but we haven’t expired. Learning lessons in this struggle, we can help build the movement for communist revolution!
BALTIMORE, February 19—Transit workers are in multiracial solidarity with their Alabama sisters and brothers who have been on strike since April of 2021. Our locale, learning from the Party’s efforts last year, continued this solidarity by demonstrating at Metro locations. Progressive Labor Party strives to organize millions to smash the wage system.
Win or lose their strike, the coal miners have demonstrated once again the crucial leadership of Black workers and women, and also the dangers of relying on liberal misleaders like the rotten sellout United Mine Workers of America president, Cecil Roberts.
Their fightback has been a model of multiracial unity for workers across the U.S. and the world. They show us the road to communist revolution, where a united international working class smashes racism, sexism, nationalism and imperialism with communism once and for all!
Dare to struggle, dare to win!
The workers in the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 voted “YES” to support the 1,000 multiracial Warrior Met coal miners who have been on strike fighting scabs and other management attacks for almost one year (see box). They also donated $2,500 to the strikers. Readers who would like to support the UMWA strike can donate to https://paypal.me/UMWAStrikePantry
ATU 689’s support and donation to the UMWA strike fund is a reform win for the miners. Today’s demonstration is a small but revolutionary win for the international working class.
Following the communist principle of relying directly on the working class, we distributed CHALLENGE and flyers about the strike to about 75 Metro workers at the Silver Spring, MD and Ballston, VA Metro locations.
Our strike-support signs and our boldness helped get the word out in support of the striking miners and called for international working class communist revolution.
The world’s capitalists today are arming themselves to the teeth to defend their empires, with new wars erupting such as in Ukraine.
Bringing multiracial fightback home
Since last summer, PLP has sent members and friends to Alabama to support the strikers (see previous editions of CHALLENGE). A new leader from the DC/Baltimore Party who made this trip quickly saw the will of the UMWA workers and the greed of the Warrior Met Coal bosses. She returned determined to raise more support for this militant multiracial strike. Her report to the collective led to this month’s actions and ongoing efforts to support the miners
Smash borders, build international fightback
From Tuscalooosa County, Alabama to Ukraine to Somalia to Yemen, with the support of the working class and additional mobilizing efforts to support fightbacks like these miners, it’s clear that the bosses will never work in the best interests of the working class These actions show the need for and logic of revolution, since only a communist society will meet the needs of the working class. We have plans of mobilizing at additional stations. We will not stop exposing the greedy bosses at Warrior Met Coal and calling on the international working class to join PLP and smash Warrior Met, racism, imperialist wars and capitalism once and for all! JOIN US.
