ATLANTA GA, November 13—Twelve thousand public health workers descended on Atlanta for the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) conference.  Some were there to learn, some to present their research, and some to network, but Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were there to organize against fascism and for communist revolution. For weeks we had been planning to have a rally against Atlanta’s COP CITY, which has revealed the true fascist nature of the Democratic Party politicians in Georgia (CHALLENGE, 12/13). But then the Israeli government responded to the Hamas attack on Israeli and migrant workers by murdering tens of thousands of Palestinians. This fascist attack was fully supported by the United States government and further demonstrated the role of the Democratic Party in promoting fascism. They have attacked workers, professionals, and students who oppose genocide, labeling them anti-Semitic (See article on this issue). Throughout the conference, PLP members spoke openly about why the U.S. is so determined to support Israel no matter what:  the U.S. ruling class is determined to protect its Mideast oil resources and pipelines and maintain a power base against Iranian, Russian, and Chinese competing capitalist interests.

The leadership of APHA is firmly in bed with the Democratic Party. These liberal misleaders of public health workers have opposed any resolution or action against racist state violence and imperialism for years.  Just before the conference, Georges Benjamin, head of APHA, tried to head off debate about genocide in Gaza by putting out a mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing statement about all violence being bad for health, while emphatically stating that Israel has a right to “defend” itself. He did not even call for a ceasefire, infuriating APHA members.

Public health workers fight back, take on the Zionists
A few friends quickly wrote a “latebreaker” policy statement calling for an immediate ceasefire, and the release of all hostages, and included historical information about the Zionist apartheid system in Israel and Palestine (www.multiracialunity.org). The Zionists within APHA instead called for peace through charity and never once mentioned the word “occupation.”  We organized our friends to attend hearings on the competing policy statements and spoke in favor of the ceasefire policy and against the deluded ahistorical Zionist position.  

PLP members and the Palestine Health Justice group of the APHA’s International Health Section prepared quickly for the APHA Governing Council (GC) meeting where such policy decisions are made. At a planning meeting the night before the vote, 75 people agreed to hold a silent protest and observe the GC vote. PLP members suggested being prepared with a chant if the ceasefire resolution failed.  One newer member gathered everyone’s contact information and started a Signal group chat that grew from 10 that evening to 80 by the following morning. Other students in the chat began helping refine and remind folks of the plan in a great collective effort.  

The morning of the vote, the Zionists handed out flyers full of lies about the ceasefire policy, but when the policy debate started, the back of the GC room was filled with 50 people wearing all black and holding or wearing single sheets of paper that said CEASEFIRE!  As the meeting went on, that number tripled! The Zionists had organized their people to speak against the statement, repeating racist and false propaganda and calling our advocacy of a ceasefire “unbalanced.”  PLP members provided leadership to the supporters of the anti-genocide policy statement on the convention floor. We spoke about the number of healthcare workers murdered by the Israeli government and the number of people who supported a ceasefire in the U.S.  Supporters also attacked the racist statements of the Israeli fascists about the Palestinians (calling them animals)—a reminder that “racism is a public health crisis.”

The outcome
As the room kept filling with young people interested in seeing whether the APHA would take a stance on ceasefire, Executive Director Benjamin moaned, “What are we going to do? This could be awful” to a friend of ours, as he gestured to the determined young people in the back of the room. A compromise position was reached by jettisoning the 11-page policy statement with its 40+ references and just voting on a one-sentence resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Eighty-nine percent of the governing council members voted “Yes” and the crowd broke out in cheers.  This victory, while hardly complete, represented the only large health-related organization to call for a Ceasefire and can be used to defend the many healthcare workers and students who face attacks by their institutions for opposing genocide.

Forty-five of us, including eight PLP members, met outside to debrief and discuss the next steps. Fighting imperialism and capitalism took center stage, as 25 people signed our mailing list and everyone got both a CHALLENGE and an APHA CHALLENGE. We met up with many of these students later that evening and had more political conversations with them.  

This APHA conference was one of our most active annual meetings in years and showed that organizing in professional spaces and on the job is crucial for communists.  The young people who spent much of their first professional conference organizing this protest and demonstrating for three hours at the GC meeting show the great possibilities for the international working class.

LOS ANGELES—As the strike wave continues to roll across the country, more and more workers are gaining a deeper understanding of the true meaning of “labor power.” In Los Angeles alone, we have seen teachers, hotel workers, hospital workers, writers, and actors all take to the streets to fight for better working conditions, a living wage, and respect from their employers. Combine this historic moment with a communist educator who has been putting forward these ideas with teachers at a school for nearly a decade and some pretty exciting things can happen.

Charter schools are notorious for overworking their staff even more than traditional public schools. A charter network in LA where comrades work requires 10 more work days for staff than all the other schools in the county. Additionally, we have two professional development sessions a week which add up to one hundred hours of meetings each school year. So when the principal wanted to add even more training this year outside of our contracted work year, the teachers said “hell no.”

We started by trying to find a compromise with the principal. We would have these meetings if she canceled something else in its place. Of course that was refused. We decided collectively to file a grievance through the union. We found out it was not just our school where this was happening. The management of the charter network refuses to follow the definition of the workday in our contract and thinks they can add meetings whenever they want. This is just one small example of how education workers are exploited under capitalism.

The plan: no talk, collective action
The grievance process is unbearably and intentionally slow of course. The first meeting happened before we even got to step two of the process. When the second non-contractual meeting was coming up, we decided as a staff we needed more action than just waiting on the results of a grievance. During our union meeting, we decided that people should either call out completely and no-show on the meeting or for those who didn’t have hours available for that, they could keep their cameras off and refuse to participate. The meeting was on Zoom.

The night before the meeting, the assistant principal sent an email trying to scare people from participating in our plan. She sent a veiled threat that people would be docked for not participating. Our comrade reached out to staff immediately to reassure the team that we must face our fears together and stand united.

Less than 24 hours later we would see just how united our staff was. Of the 28 teachers on campus, 12 were no-shows to Zoom altogether. Of the 16 who came on Zoom, 15 had their cameras off. Some teachers had planned to message the facilitator at the start of the meeting to let them know why we would not be participating. Our comrade sent a private message in the chat to the facilitator saying that this meeting was non-contractual and that’s why so many teachers had their cameras off and we would not be participating verbally either.

Small victory builds solidarity
After about five minutes of welcoming people into the meeting and sharing the nearpod, the facilitator thanked us for all our private messages in the chat giving us the context of the situation. He said he is a union member also and therefore stands united with us and refused to facilitate the meeting. Both the assistant principal and our area superintendent were on the call, scowls on their faces.

A couple minutes later the person who seemed to be the facilitator’s supervisor came on the call and asked the admin present if they wanted to reschedule the meeting for another time. After jumping off the Zoom for about five minutes, the assistant principal returned and said that since we all refused to participate she was going to close the Zoom and have a “nice” Thanksgiving break.

Ironically, the topic of that professional development session we boycotted was “checking for understanding.” Our action checked the bosses’ understanding of where the power lies. While we will always be exploited workers as long as we live under capitalism, that day we got a small taste of our power as workers when we stood together. Nothing runs without workers contributing their labor power. The more we can help our coworkers learn that lesson, even if in small bites, the better positioned we are to fight for a communist world where exploitation is ended for good!

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD, December 6 -The meeting of the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) was greeted tonight by a lively contingent of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends circulating a flier and petition calling for “Solidarity not Silence” in the case of teachers being attacked for alleged antisemitism because they have supported Palestinian workers in Gaza.

On November 30, a Takoma Park Middle School teacher was charged with antisemitism and put on administrative leave because of Facebook posts protesting the massive attacks on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Two other teachers in the same district have been similarly punished. Having the  email tagline“From the river to the sea” can be a crime these days. While MCEA’s staff is making sure they get due process, the elected Body should follow the lead of other unions, including Local Transit Union 689, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Postal Workers, and the UAW, who have called for a ceasefire along with the American Public Health Association (APHA). Petitions and resolutions are great steps but a walkout would be even better!

Students, doctors, workers, and organizations have been censured, fired, lambasted, and banned for false charges of antisemitism. Events have been canceled, and public and private funding revoked. In Maryland, for example, CASA de Maryland, which serves the immigrant community, was forced to issue a  mea culpa and grovel for funding after they remarked  on the horrors of the Gaza genocide . Legislators and private funders publicly shamed CASA and threatened the funding it uses to serve the needs of our immigrant community members — including public funds contributed in part by immigrants themselves through the taxes they pay.  It is wrong to punish CASA for expressing solidarity, and it is wrong to punish the people they help by cutting funds to those in need of their services.  The capitalist class uses the First Amendment to protect the speech of fascist and racist demonstrators while using its media to distort reality, but apparently, it does not protect those speaking up to defend Palestinian lives. This smacks of the anticommunism of 1950s McCarthyism.

The Takoma Park teacher is a working class leader . Because this teacher works tirelessly with others to challenge a racist system that attacks workers by not investing in programs that the most vulnerable students, their families, and our colleagues need, this attack (and others) is intended to silence all of us. From culturally sensitive, age-appropriate reading materials to affordable housing, she strongly fights for improved conditions in the schools and communities where the most vulnerable students live and attend public school. She organizes with workers around housing and provides personal and organizational support to immigrants in the DC area. After thousands and thousands of Facebook posts on many topics challenging systems of oppression, why this moment? Because the U.S. government is desperate to support the Zionist Israelis who represent their imperialist interests in the Middle East, such as oil, pipelines, and sea routes.  

The Facebook posts included a drawing of Israeli tanks aimed at babies in neonatal units and called the destruction of lives in Palestine by Israeli bombing “a massacre.” Condemning the Zionist Israeli government and its U.S. government support is not antisemitism. Nevertheless, an Assistant Superintendent came to her school and lied to teachers, claiming the Facebook posts contained  inherent threats of violence and reducing one teacher to tears. Spreading lies and stoking fear is part of this orchestrated fascism. The fascists who write the Daily Wire piled on in this case and further attacked a 2020 post that called out the billionaires in Montgomery County for ripping off the working class. Posting the names of billionaires is NOT “anti-Semitic.”  Lies and more lies will follow, and PLP and its friends who joined this action will continue to step up the struggle as it unfolds.

Imperialist war drums are beating loudly in the Pacific as the U.S. and China vie to control resources, markets, and geopolitical leverage. At the center of this grab bag is Taiwan, the island republic claimed by China-- and viewed by the U.S. as a strategic counterpoint to China’s rising power. In advance of Taiwan’s January 13 elections, the two superpowers are competing for regional supremacy as they move toward World War III. Their maneuvers lay bare their bloodthirsty drive for profit and also expose the lethal dangers of nationalism.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands firm that working people have no nations—and no side in the capitalist bosses’ dogfight. The bosses cloak their insatiable greed in nationalist rhetoric and calls for a false unity with “their” workers. But all alliances with capitalists offer workers only misery and death.

The working class can turn inter-imperialist war into class war, a revolutionary war for communism. We can connect our communist politics to every struggle we’re immersed in, from the fightback against racist cop terror to strikes and struggles for decent healthcare. We can call out nationalist misleaders who distract the working class and divert their anti-imperialist anger. It’s up to the workers of the world to reject all criminal bosses and respond with international working-class unity and communist revolution.

Imperialists at sea
The South China Sea, a major shipping route and fishing ground, is a linchpin in the global battle for supremacy between China and the U.S.—and a flashpoint for inter-imperialist war. More than 21 percent of the world’s trade, amounting to trillions of dollars, passed through it in 2016 (CNBC, 11/17). China and the U.S. are Taiwan’s two biggest trading partners. The Taiwan Strait, the main shipping route for "goods from Asian factory hubs to markets in Europe, the U.S. and all points in between” (bloomberg.com, 8/2), anchors global supply chains.

Perhaps most important, Taiwan produces over 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors and over 90 percent of the advanced microchips that power everything from mobile phones and artificial intelligence technology to weapons of mass murder (The Economist, 3/26). China’s threat to take over Taiwan and its claim to nearly all of the South China Sea prompted U.S. rulers to bar Taiwan companies from selling their most powerful chips to China (NBC News, 6/29).

Fighting a rising global power
A decaying, divided, and desperate U.S ruling class is straining to contend with China, an economic giant that now sees itself as a global power and is acting as such. “Long reluctant to inject itself into conflicts far from its shores, Beijing is showing a new assertiveness as Xi Jinping begins his third term as the country’s head of state, positioning China to draw like-minded countries to its side and to have a greater say on global matters” (Wall Street Journal, 3/22). China’s willingness to wade into international matters sends a message to traditional U.S. allies that the old world order, dominated by the U.S. and its NATO allies since World War II, is a thing of the past.

In planning their takeover of Taiwan, China’s bosses have studied the Russian playbook. They have repeatedly warned the U.S. to steer clear of Taiwan. After former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the contested island last year, China defiantly conducted live military exercises in the area. While the U.S rulers want to avoid a military conflict with China until they are ready (Foreign Affairs, 8/23), make no mistake: War is coming. In a system based on theft from workers and the violent elimination of all competition, the imperialist bosses will ultimately have no other choice.

The dangers of nationalism
The poison of nationalism is an essential tool for the capitalists to win workers to fight in this impending war. China is fiercely promoting its nationalist “One China'' rhetoric (The Diplomat, 8/16). Taiwan and U.S. bosses use similarly divisive tactics. With the upcoming election around the corner, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party has deployed former ambassador Hsaio Bi-khim to the U.S. to fan the flames of nationalist identity politics. Hsiao’s popularity with younger voters reflects a surge in Taiwanese identity across the island and diaspora. By contrast, the main opposition party, Kuomintang, which favors close ties with China, has chosen a hardline anti-U.S. media personality, Jaw Shaw-kong, as its vice-presidential candidate “to appeal to the party’s traditional base of mainland-descended voters.”

Whether pro-China or pro-U.S., no brand of nationalism serves Taiwan’s working class, which suffers from the diseases of capitalism: unemployment, inflation, stagnant wages, and housing shortages (The Diplomat, 5/15). Racism, a natural byproduct of nationalism, prevails as well. The country’s prosperity has been built on apartheid and the racist treatment of 700,000 migrant workers from Southeast Asia. They labor in unsafe factories and are exploited by third-party labor brokers (thediplomat.com, 10/10/19). Whether peddled by bosses in Taiwan or China, Gaza or Israel, Ukraine or Russia, all nationalism represents a counter-revolutionary attack on the working class.

Dark night shall have its end!
The Chinese bosses long ago reversed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the historic uprising for communism, and plunged the world into a dark night from which we still struggle to emerge. But Progressive Labor Party declares that dark night shall have its end! Workers around the world are already showing it is possible to reject imperialist war and identity-based divisions. Anti-Zionist Jews in Israel and around the world have bravely called for an end to the genocidal war in Gaza. International protests against Israel’s vicious ethnic cleansing have been filled with workers of all stripes.

PLP must sharpen the struggle to turn struggles against imperialist war into struggles for communist revolution. Amid the growing danger posed by rival gangs of capitalist bosses, we must maintain our unwavering trust in and dedication to the international working class. Our goal is to end this criminal system and build a communist world run by and for workers. Join us!