Prince George’s County, Maryland, July 5—Since 1977, Progressive Labor Party here has joined and led workers to fight against government-sponsored terrorism by police, prosecutors, judges, and jails. Today was no different!

Antiracists, PLP, and the family are demanding justice for William Green and conviction of killer kop Michael Owen. William deserves nothing short of a communist revolution, for all reforms are a dead-end plan for the working class.

Who was William?
On January 27, 2020, William had been in a car accident. He was searched, handcuffed behind his back, and put in the front seat of the police cruiser. None of the bosses’ typical racist excuses for killing applied—William was not resisting, he was not armed, and there was no warrant for him. Yet, kkkop Michael Owen entered the police cruiser and almost immediately fired seven shots, killing William, who was only 47 and a father.
Killer cop Owen was charged with second degree murder and other offenses related to the killing and has been in prison for three years, but he is still on the Prince George's County Police Force on administrative leave!

Slow-walking the murder case
The prosecutors and the cop’s attorneys seem to be determined to drag out the case against Cop Owen, hoping people will forget this racist murder or get tired of protesting. The family, however, as a result of the efforts of Nikki Owens (William’s cousin and family spokesperson), has doggedly stayed on the case. No advocate from the States Attorney’s office was assigned to the family as is usually the case, so Nikki kept checking the PG County Case Search to keep abreast of changes to the case. When she noticed changes in the trial dates, she demanded more information about the change from the prosecutors.

After multiple emails and notifying the press, her diligence forced the prosecutors to reach out to the family just two weeks before the start of his trial to schedule a meeting. At the meeting, one week before the trial, they told the family that they offered Owen a plea deal and he accepted.

That was unacceptable to Nikki! She made “NO PLEA DEAL" for this killer cop the theme of a hastily-called rally on the court day. A week of press conferences and interviews with Nikki, other local fighters, and non-profit groups all had the same demand to prosecute the killer cop fully. Ironically, the plea deal was so bad that the judge declined the deal and set a trial date of November 27, 2023.

State-sponsored terror
PLP describes police brutality as a key part of state-sponsored terrorism because police act as agents of the capitalist class and their state apparatus. Their role in capitalist society is to oppress and terrorize the working class, especially Black workers.

The rulers fear that Black workers, super exploited and oppressed by capitalism, will fight back militantly as they have in the past. Police are to protect capitalism, property over people and attack all working-class people who oppose them with strikes, rallies, protests, and rebellions.

Broadening the fight
PL’ers have joined Nikki’s family at hearings on procedural motions leading up to the trial. Recent efforts by the cop’s lawyer to move the trial to a more conservative location in Maryland failed, as family and supporters filled the courtroom.

Baltimore PLP comrades and friends active in the West Wednesdays (a struggle to seek justice for Tyrone West who was killed by  police in 2013) joined local supporters in the courtroom. One is a young leader who is quickly learning about the court system! Nikki’s family and other community members welcomed the West Wednesday brothers and sisters to this fight for justice.

On September 28, 2023 at 9 am, there will be another hearing. The cop’s lawyer is trying to  have evidence against Cop Owen ruled inadmissible. This type of lying lawyering led to Zimmerman's acquittal in the Trayvon Martin murder case. PLP will continue to mobilize more people to attend all hearings leading up to trial and the trial itself on November 27.

The antics of prosecutors and defense attorneys in cases that involve victims of police violence should themselves be considered criminal. Families are experiencing repeated trauma by court systems that allow trial delays for frivolous reasons, toy with the time of the court and families with unnecessary motions, and have families sit in court as defense attorneys criminalize victims in hopes of getting reduced sentences or charges dropped. And most families endure years of this government-sanctioned treatment as they fight for some resemblance of justice for their loved ones.   

Reformism a dead-end
Reform groups that PLP members participate in fought in the state legislature to establish county-based Police Accountability Boards (PAB). Predictably, no county in Maryland gave their Board investigatory or subpoena powers, so such toothless organizations will, like civilian review boards across the country, rubber stamp police reports.

These groups keep focusing on who to elect and then pressure them to push a police accountability agenda. They organize many trips to Annapolis, Maryland’s state capital, to testify on bills and meet with state legislators. Canvassing to bring out workers to vote is crucial to them. This is an example of how reform misleaders dull the fightback and steer workers away from revolution.

PL members involved in all of these efforts constantly point out how these strategies are dead-ends in the struggle and that militant, revolutionary struggle for communism is the only strategy that makes sense. Some fighters are tuning in!J

HAITI, July 2—Since January 2023, the two-year “Humanitarian Parole” program has offered Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Salvadorans the possibility of entering the U.S. without going through the traditional “illegal” channels. This program, which in reality aims to reduce the number of migrants crossing the U.S. borders, has been praised by many Haitian workers and others who only dream of fleeing a country plagued by gang terror, economic misery, and political instability. Even children only talk about traveling. But the reality is that U.S. imperialism prefers to camouflage the problems that we are facing more than to really come to our rescue. In the capitalist world, solidarity is not an option: the big fish have no mercy for the little ones—the countries of the global north have no compassion for the countries of the global south. Their only aim is to squeeze profits off the cheap labor of migrants.

“I can't wait, I can't wait any longer for my approval to come,” admits a young graduate in legal sciences who is doing his second year of internship as a lawyer. He draws up a list of others like himself who have sponsors in the U.S. and have already applied to the program. He adds that many of these applicants, who have been waiting six months in limbo, are in danger of developing mental disorders from the stress, in particular depression. They are living on the edge, fearful of the insecurity created by the gangs and the rampant inflation that increasingly impoverishes them and their families. And there are others who can not find sponsors because the conditions set by Biden & Co. are very difficult for sponsoring friends and family members.

Those who do manage to leave come from all sections of society: workers (employed and unemployed), professionals, public and private executives, teachers and students. “Our country is pushing us out; we are not needed here,” said one person interviewed for this article. “It’s like we are in a pressure cooker, and the chief chef has opened the valve to let some steam out. This won’t solve the problems that the Haitian masses are facing because of the profit system.”

This is the march to Canaan, the Promised Land. Some people say it is a forced exodus even believing that the U.S. has hidden interests. Many know that what waits for them on the other side is not the gold in the streets but rather more racism, unemployment or low-wage jobs, underserved schools and hospitals, crowded and overpriced housing. So many deplore the program, but the contradiction is that it is hard to resist the urge to take advantage of it. They hope they will be able to fade into the population after the two-year “parole” ends.

U.S. Imperialists Can’t Find Other Countries to Intervene/Invade Haiti
For several months now, the “international community,” that is the imperialists and their local lackeys, have been dithering on finding a solution to the crisis in Haiti. None of the countries in the region is willing to give in to U.S. demands to field an invasionary force to restore some semblance of stability. The U.S. bosses’ decline in influence in the region is evident. Even Canada, a long-time imperialist player in Haiti, is hedging; the best they could come up with is setting up an office in the neighboring Dominican Republic to monitor the situation. The Dominican government rejected that idea, and both countries issued a toothless statement regarding their commitment to stability in Haiti.

The politicians in the Haitian bourgeoisie continue to act as if they are wearing blinders. Most working class people understand that these politicians are not their friends but are looking out for their own personal interests, looking for any opportunity for some sort of power grab. The local bourgeoisie crawls on hands and knees, in search of favor from the imperialist powers and multinational organizations.

The only solution is to stand up and fight back
You can feel the level of insecurity and fear in the masses. So when a Progressive Labor Party comrade says that she is not going to look for a sponsor to leave, that she is willing to “fight back against the capitalist system that has created this mess,” she is often met with skepticism. But using patience and all the tools of historical and dialectical materialism that she has learned in PLP cadre schools and study groups, she can say that the workers of Haiti have fought for their liberation in the past and will do so again. Capitalism and imperialism have built-in contradictions that make life a misery for one, very large class of human beings who produce all value in society. That we have not just a few Polish soldiers (who deserted Napoleon’s army during the Haitian Revolution and fought on the side of the enslaved workers), but will fight for the solidarity and unity of the entire international working class. We will build a new revolutionary communist movement that fights resolutely in the interests of our class.

This young comrade can make the difference in our ability to organize workers for communism and an egalitarian society! We have taken modest steps, engaging with our local populations in fighting against “food insecurity”—hunger through collective kitchens; organizing to provide masks and public sanitation kiosks against the Covid-19 pandemic; working together with our neighbors to rebuild homes and infrastructure after the 2021 earthquake in our area. These are all struggles that our Party initiated along with our friends to combat the local bosses who neglect the needs of workers and line their own pockets with ‘international aid.”

We can do better and we can do more. There are many more like her who would like to maintain their conviction and their composure in such troubling social, economic and political situations. In the current chaos, the ideological foresight of the members of the PLP is revolutionary. Raising class consciousness through struggle and political education is a necessity for the growth of our Party. This will be our goal this summer in our cadre school.

Long live our struggle, long live PLP. Onwards to the final victory!

NEW YORK CITY, June 16—“Worker unity is stronger than any law!” This was one Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member’s message during a recent UFT (United Federation of Teachers) town hall about Union misleader Michael Mulgrew and KKKop-Mayor Eric Adams’ new tentative agreement (TA) contract for UFT members. A group of comrades joined other education workers to sharpen the criticism of the contract proposal and make plans to fight back. Capitalist education will never meet the needs of working-class educators or students. It is designed to train young people to be exploited in the workforce or serve as cannon fodder in the next imperialist war.

Instead of seeing ourselves as pawns in the bosses’ profit game, imagine a mobilized working class confronting the city bosses and demanding what we need. Instead of waiting for the union to negotiate our demands away, we could be building a revolutionary movement to wrest power away from the bosses ourselves. A hundred thousand working-class educators, over a million working-class students, and add their working-class families: WE ARE MIGHTY!

Union misleaders are class collaborators: “Fair Deals” impossible under capitalism
While UFT leadership is trying to pressure workers to vote yes on the proposal, dangling so-called “raises” and “bonuses” in our faces and threatening the possibility of an even worse deal if we don’t go along for the ride, we must be clear on the truth: The contract proposal is nothing other than a viciously racist attack on educators, students, and their families. It does nothing to address the recent underhanded assault on workers’ healthcare (see box) or the overcrowded classrooms, woefully inadequate mental health services, and rampant racist segregation that systematically deprive primarily Black and Latin students. Instead, it serves to further divide teachers and families and placate education workers into accepting a raw deal.

Throughout the nearly year-long contract struggle, UFT leaders have exposed themselves as lying, racist, class-collaborators. Mulgrew may brag about his 500-member negotiating committee, but the UFT’s function, like that of all unions, is to make a deal it can “sell” to its members. They can have 500 or even 1000 members on the “negotiating committee” and congratulate us on our “hard work” and “activism,” but the fact is, this contract is a result of backroom deals with the city, being sprung on us at the last minute and rushed to a vote during the last two weeks of the school year.

This is the role of unions under capitalism: keep the workers in line and “manage” the class struggle for the bosses, as well as push them to vote for the Big Fascists’ pro-Wall St./U.S. imperialist agenda. To accomplish this, they bribe, sweet talk, deceive, manipulate, obstruct, divert, pacify, steamroll, threaten, and try to wear us out until we capitulate. But communists in PLP and many of our class sister and brother educators are saying NO!

Bosses’ contracts and laws serve only the ruling class
The contract does nothing to address students' abysmal learning conditions. Mulgrew’s claim that new state laws will protect smaller class sizes is a proven lie. Not only does the recently passed law allow for numerous exceptions–including lack of space, “over-enrolled” programs, a shortage of licensed teachers, and schools in “severe economic distress"–but the bosses already break their own laws whenever it suits their interests. One school’s administrators recently packed 42 kids (8 more than the current law) into a PLP teacher’s classes. Only when the comrade united with other teachers and fought back did the local bosses take measures to reduce the class size. Meanwhile, thousands of other NYC students are forced to remain in overcrowded classrooms.

The ruling class knows that teacher-student-parent unity could threaten to destroy them. That's why they do everything they can to sow divisions. The TA would also phase in new forms of remote work that will further isolate students, educators, and families. One change will deemphasize parent engagement time and parent-teacher conferences, potentially making them fully remote. This will make it more difficult for teachers to build meaningful relationships with families. A major expansion of virtual learning included in the contract proposal opens the door to use more online programs instead of real instruction, further decaying the quality of education for hundreds of thousands of students and contributing to the racist fast-foodification of learning, while also paving the way for larger class sizes.

Even on its face, the proposed pay “raises” do not even keep up with inflation and are actually a pay cut. Even worse, there continue to be union educators like paraprofessionals, mainly Black and Latin, who are making nowhere near enough money to survive in the city. Many of these educators are forced to take on second jobs or choose between basic needs like food and rent.

Can’t get mired in dead-end reforms; fight for communist revolution!
MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators) is one opposition caucus in the union that has raised criticisms of UFT leadership, taking a “social justice” stance that includes pro-student positions against “racial segregation” and spotlights the interests of the mostly Black and Latin paraprofessionals and other non-teaching titles that the city has already tried to outsource. Although MORE has provided some useful inside information and caught the union leadership in their duplicity (doubletalk) multiple times, their criticisms of the contract abandon their most powerful antiracist arguments.

Educators and students in Oakland launched a more pro-student mass struggle when they went on strike in May with a list of “common good” demands (see CHALLENGE, 6/21). Strikers demanded not only better pay for teachers, but also increased staffing for school nurses, librarians, and counselors, as well as school building improvements and the opening of unused school properties to unhoused and housing insecure students. While this struggle has the potential to build class consciousness, it still relies on the limitations of reform. Educators, students, and their families need MORE than that!

That’s exactly the problem with fighting only for reforms. As long as we are fighting over crumbs, we will be missing the big picture: the need to unite with our students and their families to take on the whole capitalist system. Workers need STATE POWER!

As the U.S. bosses prepare for world war with China, they are pushing the working class to make even more sacrifices to preserve U.S. imperialist power. This means worsening conditions in schools, as well as pay cuts and cuts to healthcare for workers across the board. The working class has no choice but to fight for a completely new system: communism. We need a revolutionary communist party, PLP, to get there.

We communists plan to continue fighting tooth and nail alongside our students and their families, as well as struggling with our fellow educators over our revolutionary line, helping to advance the class struggle for workers’ needs and build workers’ unity. We need to continue to work inside groups like MORE to better mobilize workers for the many fights ahead.

Labor misleaders sellout NYC workers
In 2018, the New York City Municipal Labor Committee (MLC)—a coalition of labor unions representing some 390,000 city workers—made an unprecedented backroom deal that assaulted workers’ health care. The leadership of the unions in the MLC collectively agreed (without any union members’ approval or input) to save the city $1.1 billion dollars from 2019-2021 and then $600 million per year, in perpetuity (permanently)! As part of that deal, this year city bosses and the unions are jointly forcing retirees to join a misleadingly named “Medicare Advantage” plan instead of their previous healthcare plans. Medicare Advantage is a private Preferred Provider (PPO) program run by Aetna that will place limits on which doctors workers can see, forcing them to get pre-approvals, and may restrict available treatments. Lower quality healthcare plans are now forecast for next year for all active members of MLC unions.

Global warming causes intense wildfires and widespread Code Purple health alerts for smoke-based air pollution. The warming of the planet is the result of two centuries of capitalist production. It is caused by a rapid increase in greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the atmosphere. These gases (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) have increased steadily since the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution. Global capitalist development has been fueled by burning coal, oil, and natural gas to power production, consumption, and transportation. GHGs allow the sun’s radiation to reach the earth, but trap the heat in the atmosphere that radiates from the ground, creating a hotter planet and disrupting previous weather patterns. It is similar to how cars get hot in the summer when the windows are rolled up.

Wildfires flourish under capitalism
Forest fires have historically been a natural process and often helpful to ecologies. Lightning strikes in forested areas often start beneficial fires. Today, however, global warming has created droughts in many places in the world, leading to some forests becoming tinder boxes rather than resilient stands of trees and brush. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “a single spark can start a prairie fire.” That now applies forcefully to much of the planet. Now even historically wet areas, such as the Amazon rainforests, permafrost areas, and marshy peat bogs have experienced huge fires. More are expected even in the Arctic by the end of the century. MacArthur Fellow Stephen Pyne has labeled the new era of massive fires the “Pyrocene” in his 2022 book, The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next.

The United Nations Environment Program projected the risk of these extreme wildfires would rise 14 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2050. By the end of the century, that risk would increase by 50 percent.

Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2020 is a harbinger of things to come. Extreme fires raged for many months, fueled by record-shattering temperatures, severe drought and fierce winds. The fires directly killed 33 and another 500 deaths were caused by inhaling smoke. That same year, the world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal in South America (located in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia) burned following severe drought and scorching weather. Nearly a third of this forest was destroyed. The wildfires in wetlands were intensified by capitalists, hungry for profit, plundering rainforests and wetlands through logging, road construction, agriculture and mining activity. Such extractive activities led to the loss of tree canopy, leading in turn to accelerated vegetative undergrowth that was then exposed to the extreme drying of global warming, and hence even more massive wildfires.

Burning forests emit vast amounts of carbon dioxide previously locked in their trunks and branches, creating a vicious feedback loop intensifying global warming. For example, about 55 million tons of carbon dioxide was emitted from Canadian wildfires in May 2023, approximately equal to 10 percent of the country’s total carbon emissions for an average year.

Workers suffer, bosses profit
The direct health impacts on the working class are severe. In the United States alone, between 2006 and 2010, fewer than 500,000 people every year were exposed to a single day of extreme levels of fine-particle pollution, also known as PM2.5. Between 2016 and 2020, that number rose to over 8 million. Such small particulates lodge in the lungs much like the deadly Black Lung disease faced by coal miners, leading to difficulties breathing, lung disease, and early death. These increasingly unnatural emissions also tie in to environmental racism. Asthma ER visits in New York City during the recent Canadian wildfire smoke were the highest in low-income, majority Black and Latin neighborhoods (Gothamist, 6/12).

The multitude of problems caused by global warming including intense wildfires will deepen over time as the world’s capitalists refuse to significantly reduce reliance on coal, gas, and oil to augment their fortunes. They pretend that solar panels and wind turbines can replace fossil fuels in the world economy while knowing full well that substantial fossil fuels are required even with these limited alternative fuel sources. Why such inhumane treatment of the global working class? Why burn us up and make us sick and die from deadly smoke? Because they have sunk trillions of dollars into infrastructure to extract fossil fuels, and they refuse to ever take a hit to their profits!

The whole damn capitalist system has to go!
That’s why nothing short of the destruction of the capitalist system can seriously address the environmental disaster that is more evident by the day. Between war, racism, repression, and devastating climate change, the need for building a revolutionary party is ever more urgent.