Recently, the U.S. Congress came to the aid of the railroad bosses, bankers and Wall St. and voted to impose a contract on 120,000 freight railroad workers in 12 different unions, who are subject to the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA).

President ‘Jim Crow’ Biden, “the most pro-union President in history,” stepped in to make sure that workers didn’t defy the bosses and union leaders with wildcat strikes and job actions. Congress, which can’t seem to agree on anything except war budgets and billions to Ukraine, acted with remarkable speed, proving that despite all their splits and in-fighting, all the politicians can unite on stomping out any threat from the workers.

The capitalists run the government to serve their interests: profit. We need to organize for a communist revolution where the working class runs the government and all society.

Eight unions have voted to ratify the imposed contract, with many workers feeling like this was the best they were going to get knowing that their union leaders were not prepared to take on the government and the bosses. But the four largest unions, representing almost 60 percent of rail workers have, as of this writing, rejected the imposed contract. These union leaders are actually misleaders. They accept capitalism with all its racist and sexist profiteering and laws benefiting the bosses. They don’t organize workers to fight back. But fight back we must with the goal of eventually seizing power for the working class - that’s communism.

CHALLENGE spoke with Windy City, a Black railroad worker in Chicago with 15 years on the job.

CHALLENGE (C) : What are some of the main issues facing railroad workers?

Windy City (WC): Railroaders are mostly concerned about quality of life as it pertains to long hours and lack of employees. We are overworked because of the greed of the bosses. Maybe the #1 issue is "Precision Scheduled Railroading.” It’s like the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing brought to the railroads to further speed us up and get us back to work quicker, driving down costs by firing workers, selling equipment, outsourcing work and more. Instead of knowing you have multiple people in front of you, now you can get called back to work in 15 minutes to fill a train.

Thousands of jobs have been eliminated over the past few years and now the bosses want to run these trains with just one person; that’s their goal. Having no sick days is perhaps the most well-known demand but scheduling and job cuts are there as well. This contract is going to continue to eliminate jobs. It does not address job cuts or make our jobs any safer.

C: What’s the makeup of the workforce?

WC: I would have to guess the railroad is about 30 to 40 percent Black workers, mostly in the cities. Many workers are from rural areas, and many are pro-Trumpers. They understand that we work in an industry that is heavily regulated by the federal government. A lot of workers are approaching 20 years in the industry, and may soon be eligible for retirement or disability. We have a lot of health issues.
A lot of older workers are holding on to get back pay and bonuses. Then they will be coming out.

C: How do the workers feel about the government imposing a contract on them? What has been the role of the union leadership?

WC: Most workers knew that this was probably going to happen. The union leaders have been transparent about how the government would use the Railway Labor Act to prevent a strike. We were never seriously prepared or mobilized to shut down the industry, let alone defy the U.S. government. In a certain sense, the union leadership used the government to impose a contract that they could not get us to ratify on their own.

C: What have discussions with your coworkers been like?

WC: We have discussed how Biden could issue an executive order for paid sick days, but he has not. We know we are going to get a contract that will lead to further cutbacks and higher profits for the bosses. They are hoping a big raise will get us to swallow these worsening conditions, but many current workers will not be around long enough to see the next contract.

C: Do you think you can show this issue of CHALLENGE with this interview to some of your coworkers and introduce them to Progressive Labor Party?  

WC: Our workforce is so thin and so spread out, sometimes I go weeks without seeing the same people. So, it's hard to have real discussions and build that trust, but I'm always on the lookout. Sure, I’ll take a few.

The following is part five of a seven-part series reprinted and lightly edited from the communist newspaper Daily Worker in September-October, 1932, written by famous communist Mike Gold. The series was titled, “Negro Reds of Chicago.”

Workers here are referred to as Black instead of the original “Negro” to reflect our antiracist principles as well as the linguistic shifts that occurred over decades of antiracist class struggle.

Communists have a long history of fighting against racist attacks on our class. One such fight was against landlords and evictions. In the early 1930s, amid Jim Crow segregation, a Great Depression with record unemployment levels that sank the working class—particularly Black workers living in the urban industrial core—into deeper poverty and despair, the Communist Party in the U.S. (CPUSA) was fighting for revolution inside U.S. borders. This period was a golden age of class-conscious fightback when communist ideas were popular and gripped the imaginations of the working class. Under the leadership of the CPUSA, workers organized militant housing councils, tenant unions that led bold actions that weakened the power of profit gluttonous landlords.

Today our class is in a different period marked by increasing volatility. We are choked by record-high inflation, rent hikes, food price gouging compounded by stagnant wages, high unemployment, and an eviction crisis worsened by a still-raging global pandemic. Though the CPUSA is a shell of its former self, decaying into a toothless, reformist party, its history provides valuable lessons for us today.

This series highlights this antiracist revolutionary fightback and contains kernels of working-class wisdom.

In past issues “Reds vs. Evictions” covered the story of Claude Lightfoot, a communist activist and author who, like so many communists before and after him, was brutalized by the klan in blue for fighting against racism. In this issue’s edition we look at how another Black worker was ultimately able to see through the bosses’ nationalist and religious dead ends, realizing his true path was in joining the Communist Party, and being embedded in working class fightback.

No liberation in religion
Leonidas MacDonald was a Mohammedan only a few years ago. He joined that sect, which finds a fertile field for proselytes among the Chicago Black workers, after he had become disillusioned with the Garvey movement and the Christian religion. There are several Arabian and American gentlemen in Chicago who have made quite a racket out of this Mohammed. But MacDonald took it seriously; once he fasted 40 days.

“It appealed to me on race grounds,” he said. “I had seen so much of the brutality and hypocrisy of white Christians. Mohammed was colored, and I thought maybe it was more fitting for us to follow him. Anyway, I can’t tell what I expected, but one day I started to read the Koran. It was the same old bible bunk – Adam and Eve and the rest of it. I quit about a month after I had finished studying the Koran.”

He was ever searching for a way out for his suffering Black race. Tall, lean, humorous, always neat but out at the elbows and knees, MacDonald is one of those born intellectuals who come out of the working class. Some betray it, sell out to the capitalists, others are loyal to their class and lead the fight for freedom.

Son of the working class
Born in Jackson, Tenn., in 1897, MacDonald’s father was a railroad brakeman earning $38 a month, “swell money, big money”, and there were eight children. The parents were ambitious to give all their brood a first-class education. But Leonidas went to school for only two years. Then the inevitable proletarian tragedy. The father was killed; the child was left with a large family.

He was six feet tall at the age of fifteen, and tried to join the army, but was rejected because he was Black.

He drifted north, working in all the southern states, then came to Chicago in 1916 and held a swell foreman’s job. The war came and he volunteered. He served in the 39th Infantry, a Black regiment attached to the 10th French Army. He went through the battles of Soissons, Metz, the Argonne, and was wounded and invalided home.

He was mustered out in July, 1919, year of the race riots in Chicago. These made a deep impression on him: killed some of his orthodox faith in Christ, and roused his race consciousness.

Seeking answers
MacDonald had been working for years as a butcher in the Chicago stockyards when Marcus Garvey came to town. The man swept him off his feet; he was ready for this message, and soon became an active speaker and organizer at night, rising to the position of Colonel in Garvey’s fantastic empire.

Whatever the crimes and mistakes of this misleader Garvey, I learned a lot about organization from him,” says MacDonald, “I could see, too, that all this talk of returning to Africa was a false solution. Liberia was a slave-holding colony controlled by the United States government. The rest of Africa was owned by other white imperialists. We were as enslaved in Chicago as we could hope to be there; we would have to fight for our freedom in the place we lived.

It was then that MacDonald joined the Mohammedans. When that failed to satisfy his clear, hungry mind, he felt lost, bewildered. In his bewilderment he took to the soapbox and every night, after his day’s work, he talked to the south side crowds. He was thinking aloud, trying to find his way.

One night some heckler shouted at him, “You talk like one of those damn reds.”

“Do I?” Mac answered in amazement, “Do I? If  so, I am going to study the matter, and see whether I am red.”

This taunt opened his eyes to the work of the Unemployed Councils. Now he first began to see the mass funerals, the demonstrations of the Reds. He began to discover Lenin and Marx. It all beat on him like a cloudburst – the new world, the new world was being born again in another proletarian mind.

Quoted Mac: “If the white man suffers, the Black man always is made to suffer twice as hard.” That is proving true in this depression.

“But where did Oscar De Priest the Black landlord fit in? He wasn’t suffering, he was causing Black workers to suffer. Class interests were stronger than race.”

Home at Last
MacDonald flung himself into the Unemployed Council work – a fine speaker and able organizer. He spoke at the hunger march at the stockyards. Four cops surrounded him. He was arrested often, he studied and grew. In August 1931, he joined the Communist Party.

My doubts were stilled; now I knew where I belonged. I came to my home, where I shall live and die. Yes, comrade, I found the Party at last. But it was through much struggle, many struggles and illusions. This is the crooked path that life takes.

Dominican Republic officials: gutter racists
Al Jazeera, 11/24/22–Authorities in the Dominican Republic have rounded up thousands of Haitian migrants — and anyone who looks like they could be from Haiti — and deported them to a country in the grips of deadly gang violence and instability, advocates say. The forced removals, which rights groups say have escalated this month, have drawn international criticism and calls for restraint amid reports that unaccompanied children, pregnant women and other vulnerable people are being deported.

Some deportees have never set foot in Haiti…Dominican police and armed forces are detaining Haitians in the streets as well as “all those who look like Haitians.” More than 20,000 people had been deported in a nine-day period this month…including some Dominican citizens with Haitian ancestry.

An official source with knowledge of the matter…approximately 40,000 people will be sent from the Dominican Republic to Haiti in November. That is in addition to the 60,000 who were deported in the past months…UNICEF said an estimated 1,800 unaccompanied minors were expelled from the country this year alone, a number the Dominican Republic denies.“These deportations have resulted in the separation of families. People with valid documents have been deported, people who were born here in the Dominican Republic have been deported, ...These aren’t deportations. It’s persecution based on race.”

European imperialists revise plan to rob workers in Africa
Der Spiegel, 11/11–Starting next year, a consortium led by BP [British Petroleum] is to begin extracting natural gas here on the border between Senegal and Mauritania…Extraction is planned to continue for 30 years, with the profits being divided up between the energy giants BP and Kosmos, and between the governments of Senegal and Mauritania…Processes that normally take years must be completed within just a few months in order to meet European demand as rapidly as possible and to profit from the high global prices...German Chancellor Olaf Scholz …noted…It is sensible…to "intensely pursue" cooperation in gas exploitation. Berlin is currently under pressure to quickly find alternatives to Russian natural gas, and the West African country is more than happy to jump into the breach…The mood marks a significant shift from last year, when European governments were singing the praises of the potential in Africa for renewable energies and warning against the exploitation of oil and gas.

Elon Musk joins the ranks of military contractors
CNBC, 12/5/22–Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expanding its Starlink satellite technology into military applications with a new business line called Starshield. Starshield is likely to further tap the company’s biggest U.S. government customer – the Pentagon – which already represents a high-value buyer of SpaceX’s launches and has shown significant interest in the capabilities of Starlink. Few details are available about the intended scope and capabilities of Starshield. On its website, SpaceX said the system will have “an initial focus” on three areas: Imagery, communications and “hosted payloads” – the third of which effectively offers government customers the company’s satellite bus (the body of the spacecraft) as a flexible platform. The Pentagon has already made clear that it’s willing to spend heavily to have companies build out next-generation satellite capabilities.

Academic study shows capitalist control of state policies
Cambridge University Press, 9/18/14–Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? …it can loosely be divided into four families of theories: Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism—Majoritarian Pluralism, in which the interests of all citizens are more or less equally represented, and Biased Pluralism, in which corporations, business associations, and professional groups predominate. Each of these perspectives makes different predictions about the independent influence upon U.S. policy making of four sets of actors: the Average Citizen or “median voter,” Economic Elites, and Mass-based or Business-oriented Interest Groups or industries.

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.

Imperialism is making us sick
On December 1, World Aids Day, I went to a rally at the White House to join with other health organizers demanding the Biden Administration extend the public health emergency on Covid-19 and take executive action to boost global vaccine manufacturing. These demands were combined with a call for increased funding for HIV/AIDS as the “two pandemics collide.”

The fight for  Covid-19 prevention and care is similar to the long, militant struggles in the U.S. and South Africa for global access to HIV medication.  Covid-19 and HIV continue to be major health problems despite being downplayed by the Biden administration, which instead is funding war in Ukraine.

I shared fliers and CHALLENGE newspapers with 10 of the 25 folks present. I shared our work in the American Public Health Association (APHA) to get policy for global vaccine development and to build the struggle to embrace a revolutionary solution—communism. Two organizers from ACT UP from New York agreed that we should be fighting against imperialist war and thanked me for bringing this up. For an excellent Progressive Labor Party (PLP) presentation linking health and imperialist war go to: https://youtu.be/fzJ9ENoRjLs .

Health Gap reports that 690,000 die yearly from HIV and 38 million are living with HIV and 25 percent still do not have access to treatment. Thus, rally organizers demanded a  $750 million increase for international AIDS work to PEPFAR in 2023 and 2024 to address HIV, Monkey Pox, and Long Covid. (PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that began in 2003). Also, consistent with PLP’s work on global vaccination justice, the rally called for $100 million to fund the South African mRNA hub.

Speakers from ACT UP PHILLY,  Health Gap and others gave dynamic antiracist speeches,  denounced the failure of the U.S.  to provide health care for all,  and demanded that Biden extend the public health emergency to keep 15 million U.S. residents under Medicaid.

Hatred for the profit-gouging pharmaceutical industry was palpable. But there was no call to end the funding for imperialist wars.

Communists can join and give leadership to  these health care struggles while raising communist ideas. I talked with several of the 25 protesters and urged them to call out imperialism as much as they attack the drug companies. Imperialism is hurting workers through continued illness and war. Time to stand together for health and communism!

In ‘class’ struggle: building working-class unity
I teach at a nearly all Black Caribbean high school. When a student used the n word in class, I shut down my lesson. “We don’t do that here…next class, we will explore the power of words,” I told my 9th graders.

With the support of  comrades and our study group, I created a lesson that places the n word in its historical context: the violent system of slavery. As a comrade put it, “it’s on the lips of lynchers,” enslavers, and the Klan. That word is a weapon of the bosses to treat a section of our class as subhuman and divide us. Using it evokes and normalizes anti-Black violence. No one should participate in the degradation of our class siblings.

The lesson began with journaling about hurtful words said to us. “I’ll go first,” I said. “I was told I was too dark…a terrorist, to go back to your country.”

After sharing our personal experiences, I presented my claim: “we can’t separate words from their history. Hurtful language leads to hurtful actions. Using dehumanizing words spreads the message that some are less than.”

I gave students three pieces of evidence to break down and discuss. At the end, I asked if anyone would reconsider using this word. Many said yes, while others still believed the word can be reclaimed.

One student wrote, “I can try to lessen it…because it can dehumanize some people.”

Next time someone uses a slur, say, “That word is about accepting a part of our class as less than. We are constantly sent the message that we are worthless. I want you to be one of the sides of history that uplifts, not degrades, us.”

Does this mean I won’t ever hear slurs? No, but it gives me a basis to show students and teachers are on the same side.

Now, how does this connect to building communism? Winning students to a class-conscious outlook is non negotiable. In this lesson, they were introduced to the words, working class and ruling class (something we will return to in future lessons).

Capitalist education teaches us to view our co-workers and classmates as enemies. One student wrote, “I agree with the lesson 100 percent. It made me realize what white people said to downgrade our ancestors.”

We had a conversation differentiating between enslavers and poor white people. Without showing how language, like people, belongs to a certain class, it’s easy to fall into the trap of blaming those around us, instead of the system, for hateful language. It’s the ruling class that teaches us we are worthless, and that’s a system we ultimately have to smash. Of course, we don’t fight with just words. More struggle ahead!

Exploitation is the bedrock of capitalism
A CHALLENGE article (11/16/22) called racism “the bedrock of capitalism.” However, the bedrock of capitalism is exploitation. Racism, sexism, etc. divide our class to prevent resistance to our common oppression by exploitation. Racism enables exploitation, not the reverse.

Housing segregation leads to school segregation, discrimination in jobs and income, and different quality lives for Black and white workers.

Greater oppression is dealt to Black workers, in police brutality and killings, evictions, poverty, jobs, unemployment, housing, lower life expectancy, greater newborn and maternal mortality, incarceration, more deaths from Covid, etc.

So while white workers experience lesser oppression, on average, this is no “privilege.” White workers suffer greater numbers, but lower proportions, of all forms of oppression. U.S. whites average lower life expectancies than Asian or Lation but higher than Native or African Americans.

Exploitation explains the oppression of our entire class, and the enabling divisions victimize both white and Black.

Liberal antiracism fosters the lie that whites are privileged, that all white workers oppress all Blacks workers The 2019 NYT “1619 Project” pushed this lie, enabling the rightwing to target “critical race theory.” Both sides promote division, disabling a multiracial working-class movement against racism and exploitation, the true bedrock of capitalism.PLP has rightly focused on fighting racism, mainly because of its role in shoring up exploitation —the oppression of all workers. Fighting exploitation means in the workplace, not just neighborhoods, schools, and churches—wherever workers congregate.