MIDDLESBORO, KY, April 7—Members of Progressive Labor Party worked with the Redneck Coalition in organizing an antisexist rally in response to Senate Bill 150 that attacks trans youth. The small but mighty contingent of PL’ers distributed food and CHALLENGE, and spoke of how transgender workers’ struggle is linked to capitalism. A PLP organizer declared that revolution for communism is the only path for liberation. Communism will provide healthcare for all, while eliminating exploitative and sexist gender roles, enabling all working-class people to participate in the labor activities needed for the new society’s progress.

Capitalists need gender roles to turn workers against each other and divide our class into hostile camps. They rake in massive super profits from paying women less in the labor market, while at the same time often keeping them shackled to the home and limited to forms of reproductive labor. Gender divisions help the bosses organize society to reproduce future generations of cheap labor and maintain their political power over us.

Capitalism divides
Capitalism, not “transphobia,” is to blame for the latest attacks against trans youth. These attacks are a further intensification of divisiveness rooted in a deeply sexist and racist system that thrives on super-exploitation of Black and women workers. This is the same system that prematurely kills hundreds of millions of workers around the world through poverty and a horrifically substandard health care system that is depriving trans workers and youth of gender affirming care. Only a communist system run by the working class can grant us the life affirming care we all desperately need.

Today’s rally was specifically in response to the anti-trans legislation (Senate Bill 150) about to pass in Kentucky. Such a law will give teachers the right to misgender students, require doctors to deny gender-affirming care for working-class youth, and prohibit discussions on topics like sexual orientation, sexually transmitted diseases, and more. Attacking the working class based on gender and sexuality divides our natural unity as working people whose labor is exploited. Gutter sexists can only thrive when the society is built on sexism and treating a section of the population as “less than.”

In response, we are determined to build working-class solidarity in the resistance to fascism, where all workers can unite to smash this racist sexist capitalist system once and for all.

Distributing event flyers around town and publicizing on Facebook resulted in a strong attendance at this event, the first of its kind in this area. “When I saw that this was happening, I had to go because I’d never seen anything like this before around here!” said a new attendee.

The Redneck Coalition is made up of anti-capitalist workers from Appalachia who seek to bring the term “Redneck” back to its radical roots, which comes from a history of multiracial struggles of mine workers against company owners in the mountains. The term has been degraded to a negative term for southern white workers, but its original meaning is antiracist militancy against capitalism! (WVpublic.org, 5/18/2015).

PLP and organizers in the Redneck Coalition demonstrated how the fight against racism and sexism must attack their source in capitalist exploitation. Fascism uses lies to get workers to attack each other to keep workers divided. A PLP speaker noted that “trans people . . . make up a disproportionate share of the homeless and unemployed, because capitalism places profit over human decency and human life.”

Big and Small Fascists
The entire U.S. ruling class is floundering—economically, politically, and militarily—as China rises and the U.S. hegemony is under siege. In the U.S., there are two main camps of what we call the Big Fascists—representing the more powerful bosses like Chase and Citibank, multinational oil companies like ExxonMobil — and the Small Fascists — represented by domestically oriented U.S. capitalists like the Kochs, Mercer, DeVos.

The Small Fascists are reluctant to spend money fighting wars to defend the global U.S. empire. Their agenda includes a racist gutting of social services at home and a retreat from U.S. imperialist alliances and commitments internationally. This faction is making inroads into winning millions of workers to see the Big Fascists as their enemy. Workers correctly understand that many of their lives have worsened under the leadership of Democrats, but they are allowing themselves to be led by outright racist, sexist, nationalist ideas spread by the Small Fascists. This cynical scapegoating has the effect of misleading and confusing people about their common interests against capitalism as a whole.

Reject all shades of fascis​​m
Still, the Big Fascists present the biggest danger for the working class in the U.S. because their liberal, “antiracist,” “antisexist” sounding jargon is pacifying millions by building the illusion that they can create a “nicer capitalism.” In reality they are attempting to win us to patriotically fight and die in the name of U.S. imperialism. We need to expose the hypocrisy of the liberal bosses. They are the leaders in attacks on healthcare, from attacking retired workers health insurance to slashing healthcare budgets to refusing to codify Roe vs. Wade.

The rally ended with a call to reject Republican and Democratic politicians because they represent respectively the open gutter racists like Trump and the slippery, dominant, liberal spokespeople for major financial capitalists like Biden. Both are poisonous! The liberal bosses stoke these culture wars for their own cynical purposes. They want to appear as the saviors so they can lead youth into world war.

Instead, building an antiracist, antisexist, internationalist communist movement is the path forward. Such organizing will create a hopeful vision for the future in an isolated area like rural Kentucky often written off by the rest of the U.S. A trans organizer with the Redneck Coalition declared the need for solidarity, saying, “We must build independent political power by and for the working class. If the fascists, like they would prefer, could ban trans people from even getting food at the grocery store, we must be able to feed them.”

The better world we require is communism, where we will take care of all of each other’s needs. Workers of the world, unite!

Imperialist conflict explodes in Sudan
France24, 4/23–As gunfire again echoed through Khartoum and fighter jets roared above, foreigners also fled the capital in a long United Nations convoy, while millions of frightened residents hunkered down inside their homes, many running low on water and food. Across the city of five million, army and paramilitary troops have fought ferocious street battles since April 15, leaving behind charred tanks, gutted buildings and shops that have been looted and torched. More than 420 people have been killed and thousands wounded, according to UN figures, amid fears of wider turmoil and a humanitarian disaster in one of the world's poorest nations.

Russia and Ukraine look to Koreas as new sources of weapons
Bloomberg, 4/23–Half a world away from the front line of Russia’s war in Ukraine there’s a stockpile of probably more than a million artillery shells on the Korean peninsula — a hoard that’s drawing attention as South Korea’s leader heads to Washington. President Yoon Suk Yeol has indicated his government may be open to changing its policy about providing lethal aid to Ukraine under certain conditions. That would be welcome news for US President Joe Biden, who has been seeking help from partners to ease Kyiv’s perennial ammunition shortage.

The Kremlin has said that if South Korea supplies arms to Ukraine it would make it a participant in the conflict, with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev suggesting Moscow could respond by selling advanced weaponry to North Korea, according to a Tass report. The Koreas have two of the world’s largest artillery forces, with thousands of big guns pointing at each other across the demilitarized zone that separates them. They have stockpiled hundreds of thousands of shells that include North Korean artillery inter-operable with Soviet-era artillery in Russia, and South Korean 155 mm caliber shells, which are the standard used by the NATO countries supplying Ukraine.

Chinese and Russian bosses look to expand military power
Foreign Affairs, 4/12–But the truly significant developments took place during closed-door, in-person discussions, at which Xi and Putin made a number of important decisions about the future of Chinese-Russian defense cooperation and likely came to terms on arms deals that they may or may not make public. The war in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia are reducing the Kremlin’s options and pushing Russia’s economic and technological dependence on China to unprecedented levels. These changes give China a growing amount of leverage over Russia. At the same time, China’s fraying relationship with the United States makes Moscow an indispensable junior partner to Beijing in pushing back against the United States and its allies. China has no other friend that brings as much to the table.

Workers in United Kingdom spiral deeper into poverty  
Der Spiegel, 4/18– As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months…Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future…it is impossible to deny the dismal reality of Blackpool…

The life expectancy of male residents is just under five years below the national average, while that for women is almost four years lower. Almost one in five residents suffers from what local doctors call "shit life syndrome," while anti-depressants are prescribed here twice as often as in the rest of the country. "If you are poor, sick, weak or tired, don’t come to Blackpool,"..."Nobody will help you here."

Strike: ‘we don’t need bosses or their system’
Last week I had the honor of participating in the Rutgers strike. It was great that in the very issue of CHALLENGE newspaper that was being passed out during the strike, there was an editorial on the protests in France which made the following point: strikes show us just a glimpse, just a small window into the panoramic potential of workers’ power when we run the world without answering to bosses. This  is the point that should have been the mass line that we spread during the strike, but it was not. Instead, we were so upset and worried at the sellout social democrats who were selling us short at the bargaining table, that we focused instead on pushing for the most radical strike possible as the penultimate show of workers’ power.

When I gave my speech, I should have made the point that striking shows us that we don’t need the bosses or their system. Instead, our strike under capitalism gets turned into a tool for bargaining for more power under the bosses’ system. And while it was an empowering week, inspiring even my colleagues next door at Essex County College (ECC) to become more militant, it did not and does not inherently lead to workers’ power.

It is our job to make that point as often as possible: the bosses need us; we don’t need them. So this is the point I will be continuing to push in my own union, New Jersey Education Association, and with my honest and hard working co-workers. In fact, many ECC full-time faculty teach at Rutgers part time just to make up the difference in our ridiculously low salaries, so we were in fact involved in the strike directly via some of our faculty members. Yes, we salute our fearless and militant colleagues at Rutgers!

We draw inspiration from you and learn the lessons of the victories from that strike–such as folks agreeing to come to May Day–as well as the pitfalls–such as thinking the most militant strike is the goal of our time and energy. Above all, we are inspired that the strike helps us see the necessity for building Progressive Labor Party and sharpening our fight for a world run by our class–a communist world!

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Rutgers strike gave us a chance to talk
The struggle at Rutgers is an important event for the working class to be part of.  It gives us the opportunity to talk to our coworkers, friends, and students about the importance of class struggle.

As a high school teacher I discuss the role of unions and strikes in class, but it is  actions like this that make it real for high school students. Some of my fellow coworkers joined me at the strike. They began to raise questions of fighting back and organizing within our own union. This led to a larger discussion with a coworker of the limitations of strikes - and more importantly - the dangers of focusing too much on individuals like Rutgers President Holloway while ignoring the larger capitalist system. This was somebody who has been reading the paper for over a year, but it was still hard for him to conceptualize how you build a revolutionary movement while still fighting for reforms. We discussed it more when we went back to school this past week.

Thank you to the Rutgers strikers for creating this opportunity to raise our line of reform and revolution in a period of relatively low class struggle in Newark.

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Teacher speaks out vs ‘profit nest’
Schools in Montgomery County need more funding to serve our students. As a teacher in the county, I spoke at a County Council hearing about raising taxes to do this. After hearing dozens of testimonies about student needs, I decided to change my 3-minute testimony from appealing to the Council and instead blasted them for listening to real estate developers who opposed the tax.

I remembered what a Progressive Labor Party comrade had suggested a few years ago: “You’re talking to the crowd of working class peers and comrades, not the politicians.”

The audience did include many teachers, bus drivers, education support staff, mechanics, public nurses, students and parents. As I spoke to the council, I turned and faced my real brothers and sisters. I asked them if their wages met the median wage in the county.

“No way!” rang out from the crowd!

I pointed out that the county council salaries go way over the median threshold and that there are five billionaires and 2,500 millionaires in the U.S. who could easily fund the needed budget. The County has 21 large real estate and/or construction companies. Are their interests really with keeping taxes low for the immigrant pursuing the “American dream” or the young couple buying their first house? Not at all. They just want to feather their own profit nests!

Here’s a thought: tax the rich to pay for our basic educational needs in the name of antiracist, equitable action and fund our schools.

I have no illusions that the bosses will “take the losses” on their own, but militant struggle to force such changes has a chance!

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CHALLENGE: It’s always a win when we can expose the bosses’ profit motive! But, the main-wing U.S. bosses do want their class to “take the losses” to some extent. In addition to exposing the rulers’ limits of reform, it is important to show workers that reforms of “shared sacrifice” and “tax the rich” are all part of the bosses’ fascist war preparations.

BROOKLYN, NY, April 12—After a 17-year-old former student Claude* was killed in the streets, it forced the working class—students and teachers—of a small school to choose: fightback or passivity. While the final verdict is still out, the struggle has become a test for pro-communist ideas in the face of liberal fascism.
School, union, city: all gangsters for capitalism
The racist Black principal has been able to get away with blood on her hands (see boxed letter). When Progressive Labor Party says liberal fascism is the greater danger for the working class, this is what we mean. This principal—in a liberal city run by a Black ​​mayor Eric Adams—has successfully created an environment where students and education workers feel pressured to “lay low” and accept the expendability of Black youth as “normal.” This is one way the school stays one of “America's Best High Schools” in the U.S. News and World Report. To stay on top, the Black leadership throws out Black students like they’re trash.
But, it’s not just her.  The UFT District Representative—the educator workers’ union that prides itself on putting the needs of students on the back burner—was silent when one teacher had said, “The union needs to make a fight against these racist pushouts.”
This is the same district rep who spent what felt like hours detailing his diligence in keeping his teacher file up to date.
While this seems small, it’s a reflection of the limits of unions. The UFT leadership cynically puts electoral politics and teacher salaries over students’ learning conditions. This was no surprise considering the racist strike of 1968, when the UFT walked out as a response to the efforts of Black parents to exert community control over schools in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. A union that sacrifices Black and Brown students is a racist one.
One tenet of fascism (an old capitalist system in crisis headed for world war) is the idea of accepting expendability.
As the future of capitalism becomes more uncertain (see editorial, page 2), the bosses need a tighter control of their class and the working class. Capitalist schools train us to treat our class as disposable—to accept that some youth will just be homeless, unemployed, jailed, killed in war, erased. The ones who can make this fascist argument most convincingly are the ones who present themselves as pro-worker. This is the same type of idea that threw workers into gas chambers.
We will always remember him
How do you respond when a Black principal makes it taboo to discuss and honor a victim of capitalism and pressures a mainly-white-teacher force and a mainly-Black-student force to simmer down?
Several teachers have stepped up in the reform struggle—one organized a card and funds for the family, another made photos of Claude, another printed the poem “Kids who Die,” and yet another helped blow up balloons for the third memorial wall. Every teacher also received a la​​minated tag, “we will always re​​member [Claude].”
Several have now made a small memorial with all these items inside their classrooms. Some have also folded Claude into their lesson plans.
Some teachers and students wore a button on their shirts or bags. It was made using printed text, clear packing tape, and a safety pin.
However, through one-on-one conversations, approved personal days, bending of some dress codes for “good kids,” and awarding field trips to previously banned students, the administration has pacified many staff and students.
One described the niceness as “the calm before the storm.”
The working class is not dumb. We understand the administration was threatened by the show of worker-student unity. And it will be our unity that the administration will come after. They will pit “good” students against struggling students, new teachers against tenured teachers.
This divide-and-conquer strategy will be no match for a politically conscious working class. That’s why linking this fight to capitalism and war is key. CHALLENGE readership has grown tremendously compared to its meager distribution before Claude, and building relationships with co-workers and students is needed more than ever. We need to win the masses to see the fight for communism as the only answer deserving of Claude’s memory. Communism means we serve ALL kids. No child is expendable.
Kids over capitalism
If Claude weren’t pushed out, would he have been alive to walk on graduation day in three months? An administration that cares more about data and awards than a Black child has got to go. Claude’s killing has exposed a criminal policy that we need to fight.
Claude was not a number. He was a member of the working class, and he deserved better. A system that treats certain students as expendable DOES NOT deserve to exist. For our students, shut this racist system down.
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
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Letter: Fight to stop student pushout!

The following letter is written by a new teacher who became involved in the fight for Claude and against pushout.
As a person new to teaching and new to Brooklyn, the treatment of the legacy of a former student who was fatally shot near the school where I teach opened my eyes to not only how the school to prison pipeline functions, but to how treatment of working class students in a capitalist system kills.
When Claude was killed, the school that I work for not only did nothing to memorialize their former student, but fought hard against students and teachers who wanted to memorialize him themselves. Students created a memorial for Claude that was hung in the hallway. It was taken down by administrators the next day. When they hung it back up it was taken down almost immediately. Students overheard their principal admonishing Claude to other students and teachers, using racist rhetoric and accusing him of being in a gang in order to justify erasing his memory from the school after his death. The principal even antagonized teachers who took a personal day to attend their former student’s funeral.
This strange response can be explained by the fact that Claude was pushed out of our school. Our school boasts a 95 percent graduation rate which is very rare for our district, and one way that they achieve this is by pushing out students who threaten this misleading statistic. Student pushout is incredibly common in New York City, and this event has opened my eyes to how it unfolds in real time. Students are suspended with little reason, harassed by administrators, and working class parents are consistently asked to leave their jobs to attend disciplinary meetings at the school. Since forcing students to leave is illegal, employees of the Department of Education instead harass and bully children and parents until they decide that it is best to leave. Often administrators will convince parents that their students' needs would simply “be better met at another school.”
But this is not the truth.
Suspensions and push outs follow students, making it difficult to keep up with classwork, maintain good grades, and apply to college. It is already widely understood that suspensions, which is a critical aspect of the pushout process, are damaging to students and greatly increase their likelihood of being incarcerated. In a racist school system these practices disproportionately affect Black and brown students. So why do schools continue this practice?
Capitalism forces schools to compete with each other for scarce funding, resources, and even for students. Graduation rates and test scores are important to school bosses, and one way to keep high scores with limited resources is to get rid of students who threaten their scores. Instead of viewing students as fully formed humans, they are viewed as pawns to be traded, bargained for, and cast off. But schools don’t have to be this way!
Teachers should understand that this system not only harms students, but harms us as well. When we treat students like numbers, like problems, and pawns, we create a hostile environment that affects our lives too. We watch students that we care for be harassed, excluded from our classrooms, and disappeared from our schools without our consent. Teachers need to understand that this is a problem that is worth fighting about. Together, with parents and students we can fight for schools that care for all students, not just students who are willing to follow the status quo.
Parents, teachers, and students unite to end this violent, racist practice. Unite to end capitalism!