Interimperialist competition on display in “coup belt”
New York Times, 7/29–Africa’s coup belt spans the continent: a line of six countries crossing 3,500 miles, from coast to coast, that has become the longest corridor of military rule on Earth. This past week’s military takeover in the West African nation of Niger toppled the final domino in a band across the girth of Africa, from Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east, now controlled by juntas that came to power in a coup — all but one in the past two years…Until this past week, Niger was the cornerstone of the Pentagon’s regional strategy. At least 1,100 American troops are stationed in the country…Any American withdrawal could open a door to Russia. The sight of Russian flags being waved by coup supporters in Niamey this past week echoed similar scenes after a coup in neighboring Burkina Faso last year.
Expanding war requires expanding weapons production
NikkeiAsia, 7/27–The Ukrainian military has begun using cluster bombs in its counteroffensive against Russia, following Washington's decision to supply Kyiv with the controversial weapons amid a munitions shortage…U.S. President Joe Biden…defended what he said was a "very difficult decision. This is a war relating to munitions. And they're running out of that ammunition, and we're low on it," he said in an unusual admission of U.S. limitations that could potentially undermine its deterrence…the U.S. initially resisted Ukrainian requests for the arms…But it reversed its stance as an ammunition crunch left it with few other options to support Kyiv. The shortage has also affected U.S. commitments to Taiwan, including by delaying the delivery of Stinger portable anti-air missiles and other arms…The Pentagon is now working to boost production…With U.S. intelligence assessing that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the military to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan, addressing supply constraints in the defense industry could prove to be a race against time.
French racism has long history
Al Jazeera, 6/30–French police brutally killed a 17-year-old in broad daylight during a traffic stop. Police initially lied and accused the youth of trying to run over an officer. And, as is often the case, national media reported police fabrications as facts — until cell phone video from a bystander showed the devastating truth…people across the globe have seen the horrific images of French police brandishing rifles and menacing the occupants of a yellow vehicle in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre before summarily executing the teenage driver with a bullet to the head as he pulled away...France has a long and sordid history of colonial racism…stretching from Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean to Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, North and West Africa as well as Vietnam, among many other populations. France has ruthlessly oppressed Algerian people in particular – including those who are French citizens…During the Algerian war for independence (1954-1962), hundreds of thousands and possibly more than 1 million Algerian people were slaughtered and systematically tortured by the French regime…In 1961, French police killed more than 100 French Arabs who were peacefully protesting in Paris.
U.S. ally deadly for human rights defenders
The Guardian, 4/4–Colombia was the deadliest country in the world for human rights defenders in 2022, accounting for 186 killings – or 46% – of the global total registered last year, according to the latest report from the international human rights group Front Line Defenders…killings of rights defenders across the globe increased in 2022, with a total of 401 deaths across 26 different countries, compared with 358 deaths in 38. Colombia saw more than three times the number of human rights murders than Ukraine last year, which was the country with the second highest number of rights defenders killed in 2022, with 50 registered cases. In 2021, Colombia also topped Front Line Defenders’ charts registering 138 rights defenders killed.
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Chinatown: learn to fight, fight to learn - Picket shows how to fight liberal racists
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- 03 August 2023 1004 hits
CHINATOWN, New York City July 12—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) ended our summer project on a red-hot note, turning the working-class neighborhood of Chinatown into a hub for communist ideas. Workers and students braved the heat and poor air quality (capitalism-induced) and joined a PL'er, leading the antiracist fightback in Chinatown on a historic tour, culminating in a rally to support a two-year picket led by workers in the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and Lower East Side against the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) and the museum’s board of liberal finance capitalists overseeing the displacement of Black, Latin, and Asian workers.
MOCA accepted a bribe to support the City's racist jail expansion plan. As capitalism tumbles, more workers will be evicted or imprisoned. Nonprofits like MOCA are just some of the politricks the liberal rulers use to manage the hell they create for workers, using identity politics to cover their racist, sexist tracks. Experience shows us only our class can make change. If all workers put their collective muscles and brains together, we can smash this system once and for all!
Learning to fight
The PL’er walked us through landmarks of class struggle they helped lead in the neighborhood and shared stories of antiracist fightbacks. We began our tour on Bowery where an inspiring militant and antiracist multigenerational group of mostly women immigrant workers from Fuzhou, China fought against their landlord Joseph Betesh. The tenants united 100s of multiracial workers against liberal fascist Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio’s racist displacement agenda.
Our guide exposed the harsh reality behind the myth of "good Chinese workers"and revealed how these so-called "prosperous" businesses were built on the backs of underpaid and overworked Chinese workers.
We then saw the four restaurants her organization picketed to demand the $1 million in wages stolen from exploited workers. She spoke of the struggles of the first Chinese restaurant workers’ union, which struck against powerful Chinese boss gangs, exposing the nationalist lie that bosses and workers shared the same interests. Despite a hard-fought victory resulting in a temporary win for workers, the restaurant shut down, and many of the relegated workers have been central in the mega-landlord Jonathan Chu-MOCA conflict.
For more than a half-century, the Chu family increased their wealth through property investments in Chinatown, owning Hotel 50 Bowery, East Bank and more. During the pandemic, Jonathan Chu closed the largest dim sum eatery in Chinatown and threw 180 employees out of work. They picketed his business, while MOCA called for his reopening of one of the only unionized restaurants in Chinatown. Recently Jonathan Chu had a hand in a local rezoning plan to destroy rent-controlled units and incentivize luxury development.
Inside NYC liberal fascist toolkit: jails and museums
In an act with seemingly good intentions, the Big Fascist Bill de Blasio administration, and City Council green-lit plans to shut down Rikers Island - one of the most oppressive jails in the nation. But they had another agenda: providing lucrative building contracts for their developer friends, funded by taxpayers' hard-earned money. In Chinatown, they proposed constructing the tallest jail (40 stories) on North America’s soil - demolishing the current Manhattan Detention Center and displacing Black, Latin, and immigrant youth and working-class victims of their profiteering for whom they deny education, living wages, employment, and housing.
Capitalism forces two options for workers in Chinatown: To be buried in their jails or be displaced and have a historical marker put on display at MOCA. It is with these two options that workers see how liberalism seamlessly paves the way for fascism.
When MOCA opened in the early 80s it was run by Chinese scholars and organizers with the intent of popularizing Chinese working-class histories. Since then, however, it has strayed from its roots. It got swept up in the non-profit industrial complex, receiving funding from foundations like Bloomberg Philanthropies and a board stacked with finance capitalists of Asian descent. Nancy Yao Maasbach, MOCA's former president and Goldman Sachs financier, initially opposed the new jail construction —until she accepted Councilmember Margaret Chin's $35 million bribe as part of a community agreement deal. Now, while workers suffer, MOCA plans to expand with this money.
From the South Bronx Hip-Hop Museum to Chinatown’s MOCA, cultural institutions are being used by real estate bosses to promote toxic identity politics and push their liberal fascist agenda.
Fighting to Learn
At the end of our tour, we began to prepare for the picketing. We made colorful signs and practiced chants. We fueled ourselves for the fightback with steamed buns and dumplings while our comrade shared a victory for the picket line: in a similar fightback, Nancy Yao was ousted from her #girlboss gig at the Smithsonian Women’s Museum after the picketers exposed her sexist dismissal of sexual harassment at MOCA (NYTimes, 7/5).
Our multiracial contingent headed down to MOCA armed with our signs that read “Displace Racist landlords with communist revolution.”
The chant "M-O-C-A: how do you spell racist?" reverberated in the air.
PL’ers distributed dozens of CHALLENGE newspapers and flyers while curious onlookers stopped to talk to us about what was happening, asking questions about the issues behind this fight, and walked away with a copy of our paper. Two PL’ers gave speeches exposing racist displacement and criminalization of Chinatown workers, saying the only solution is a communist revolution, as workers drove by and honked in approval.
Though MOCA doors were closed, their racist building director wasted no time in calling the kkkops to shut us down. Two kkkops approached the PL’er giving the speech to snatch the bullhorn but they were quickly intercepted by two other comrades. As they talked the cops down, our group began to chant without the bullhorn: “Cops and landlords don’t protect us, working people defend us.”
A red delicious lesson
We ended the day with ice creams from Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, and digested an important lesson. We, the working class, have the tools to run society. The workers fighting in Chinatown are an example of how we can unite and fight racism with one of our sharpest weapons: multiracial unity.
PL’ers will continue to fight alongside workers and youth, raising the need to go beyond reforms and realize that the only way out of a racist system is to fight for a communist system where we will be in full control of the property, wealth, culture, and history WE create.
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Kentucky: We confronted the Klan & spread communist ideas
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- 03 August 2023 1090 hits
KENTUCKY, June 24—When the Ku Klux Klan tried to intimate antisexist protesters with a gun, we didn’t back down. Progressive Labor Party joined with an LBGTQ+ rally to fight the racist, sexist Klan and share communist politics.
The Klansmen were creeping around the parking lot with guns but fled once they were spotted. But then more Klansmen walked to the rally site. Since we had the permit, they weren’t able to counter-protest on the parallel sidewalk, so they were just shouting at us from way down the block.
The uniformed and undercover cops were there—but only to prevent violence in front of local businesses. It’s evident who the kkkops protect. The cops, the state, the ku klux klan—all are part of the bosses’ plan.
The small fascists and their racist and sexist taunts were pitiful and unintelligible. In the end they cowardly slinked away. Our bold protest showed that nothing can stop antiracists, antisexists, and communists from standing our ground, advancing the struggle, and generating mass support for communist politics.
How it started
On TikTok, comrades learned of a confrontation with Klansmen at an LGBTQ+ organizer rally in early June. The rally was protesting the state’s anti-trans sexist legislation (Senate Bill 150) that legalizes discrimination against transgender youth in schools and healthcare. SB 150 misgender students, require doctors to deny gender-affirming care for working-class youth, and prohibit discussions on topics like sexual orientation.
In this early June rally, the cardcarying members of small fascist scum from the town of London had shown up at the park handing out membership cards. They waved membership cards in the face of protestors.
One organizer smacked the card out of the Klansman’s hand. That;s when the fascist vermin drew a handgun.
The kkkops made him put the gun down and berated “both sides.'' Both the cops and klan are foot soldiers for capitalism, using terror to defend this virulent racist, sexist system.
When the PLP members saw this, they got in touch with the LBGTQ+ group and participated in their follow-up protest today. Why? Because injustice to one is injustice to all.
How it’s going
At today’s rally, fighters in the crowd chanted antiracist, antisexist slogans like, "K-K-Cowards!" and "Gay Workers! Trans Workers! All Workers!"
A PLP member had sketched up a PLP poster that said “Smash sexism. Smash fascism. Smash capitalism.”
Another PL’er talked about our Party to others. They spread revolutionary ideas throughout this action, handing out CHALLENGE, making connections, and stressing the need for workers to organize our forces. During the protest and march, one young woman even asked us how to unionize!
Fight the Fascists, Big and Small
According to The New Republic (7/12), the KKK has been posting flyers all over Kentucky. They have been emboldened by the Small Fascists (see box). But we also cannot let the closeted racists—the Big Fascists— get off scot-free. The different factions of the ruling class are fighting, but the working class cannot fall into the trap of picking a side.
To end these attacks on workers we need to smash the racist and sexist system that breeds fascism, kkkops, and the klan with communist revolution.
A bigger fascist danger
The entire U.S. ruling class is flailing—economically, politically, and militarily—as China rises and the U.S. hegemony is under siege (see editorial, page 2). There are two main camps: the Small Fascists and the Big Fascists. It is important to expose both.
The Republican lawmakers controlled by Small Fascists (billionaires whose capital is concentrated in domestic oil, tech, etc.), across the country are ramping up their sexist attacks on gay and trans youth.
Meanwhile, the Big Fascists (billionaires whose wealth is concentrated in global finance capital and oil), who claim to be on our side, are the ones who birthed and bred this racist, sexist system to begin with.
The Big Fascists are the biggest danger for the working class in the U.S. because their liberal, friendly-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. Historically, they layed the foundation on which these Small Fascists attacks are possible.
Summer Project inspired me!
The 2023 summer project inspired me to recommit myself to mass work in the service of communist revolution. The sustained fightback of many comrades in different areas was really impressive to witness and support. It was inspiring to find out Shantel Davis’s close relative had joined the Progressive Labor Party and called for communist revolution. In addition to the mass work scheduled into the trip, it was informative and encouraging to meet the comrades involved in mass struggles I had read about in CHALLENGE and hear from them first hand about the conditions faced by the international working class. Multiple comrades – including Black and Latin comrades – had been attacked and called racist by liberal misleadership in mass organizations for their principled stands in Chinatown and in the Rutgers strike. These comrades worked closely with a multiracial base in fightback against reformist and class collaborationist misleadership.
The accusations were ridiculous and invariably related to the bosses’ lackeys in union and community misleadership deflecting justified criticism. It was an eye opening experience. Sadly I learned that one of my comrades had lost their job since last summer as a result of their workplace fightback. However, seeing them continue to fight and organize motivates me to take more risks in struggling for communist revolution and the Party’s line. I learned a lot about the real conditions workers face on the ground, and fighting shoulder to shoulder with the dedicated PL’ers through the summer project is once again the highlight of my year.
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A night of collective culture
Our club was so very motivated by the recent Progressive Labor Party convention that we wanted to bring our base and members together to celebrate. The following weekend, we organized an evening of song and poetry in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole—and lots of good food to keep us going—for over 25 people: young and old, workers and students, veterans and folks who joined us for the first time, from several countries.
There were three guitarists; one comrade brought rhythm instruments so that whoever wanted could join in making music. Another comrade brought copies of a PLP songbook so that everyone could sing along, which was very helpful for those who were new to this kind of event. A couple of friends sang both original political as well as traditional songs in Creole and several people got up and danced.
We think that events such as this one, though modest and spur of the moment, helps us understand our role in creating the kind of collective culture—antiracist, antisexist, international, and pro-revolutionary communist (the polar opposite of capitalist culture)—that our Party and our class needs to develop to build a new world. Power to the working class!
*****
My first convention: I was so impressed!’
I had the privilege of attending the 2023 Progressive Labor Party convention for the first time. Since it was my first time, I had no pre-existing thoughts about what to expect. I must say that I was very pleased with the way the convention went. I was very impressed to see that the Party is really a multiracial group of individuals from different parts of the world who are fighting for the same vision and goals.
Ideas and solutions were debated in an open forum in which every member had the opportunity to express their struggles, experiences, and opinions in trying to advance the Party’s line forward which includes fighting against racism, sexism, for better healthcare, and for an egalitarian world and much more.
I was able to witness firsthand how a decision is made. It was really a collaboration among different folks from different walks of life. In addition, while there, I was able to see that the working class struggle is always at the forefront of their agenda.
*****
Remembering comrade Donna
Comrade Donna Perone was one of several comrades who passed away since the last Progressive Labor Party convention in 2015 (see Obituary in CHALLENGE, 5/1/19). During the 1980s she was chairperson of the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR) in Boston. While in Boston she was also part of the PLP security forces who physically battled the racist anti-bussing group Restore our Alienated Rights (ROAR) and the KKK. She was active in the bilingual education movement, and fluent in Spanish, French, and Italian. She created the first parent, teacher, student bilingual education organization, Project Pride, in the Spanish community while a counselor in the Framingham, Massachusetts public schools.
Family members in Italy were anti-fascist partisans in Italy during World War II. Her father was a member of the Young Communist League in the forties, and taught building trades in the South Bronx to Black and Latin students.
Donna organized to fight environmental racism and successfully led a movement of hundreds of people to halt the construction of a toxic waste burning incinerator in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Later, while a professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia she opposed the teaching of identity politics putting forth as an alternative a Marxist class analysis.
Further, she taught that IQ testing and standardized tests were part of the bosses’ racist plans to segregate the schools. Her award winning doctoral dissertation on reducing violence in the schools by creating parent, teacher, and student organizations served as a model program in the Philadelphia public schools.
Donna was a PLP member for over forty years, and her motto was “Serve the People,” which she did as an internationalist revolutionary communist throughout her life before succumbing to cancer after a heroic two and a half year struggle.
Boston, June 16–Why, at this year’s annual conference of the Marxist Literary Group (MLG), were more people than ever before talking about communism? It’s a sign of the times, the deepening crisis of imperialism and racism and war. It’s also the result of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stepping up our fight for communism and the Party at the MLG. It’s still the Marxist as opposed to the Communist Literary Group, but by taking the Marxist work of the conference seriously we are putting communism and the question of the party more on the agenda of these mostly younger academics and grad students.
With a lot of support, we proposed for next year’s conference a reading group on revolutionary organization, so that the need for a communist party would be explicitly on the table. On the literature table this year for the first time was a stack of CHALLENGE, and our papers were all taken. Several people wanted to know more about our history, the article on the Cultural Revolution, etc. Not enough radical people know about PLP, and we are taking some simple steps to correct that at the MLG.
The conference focus this year was Capital Vol. 1 and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. To prepare, our comrades took part in three year-long study groups on Marx and Du Bois. Out of this we helped form a panel on Capital and one on Du Bois, and were often able to intervene from the Party’s point of view in the general discussions of both books.
Many people, not only PLP, emphasized that Marx’s book shows in great detail why capitalism can never be thoroughly reformed. The drive to expand capital accumulation through every corner of the world is inevitably reproducing insoluble problems: extremes of wealth and poverty; more masses of wage workers but at the same time masses of the unemployed; constant economic crisis each worse than the last; and capitalist competition leading to imperialist war. An anti-capitalist reader of Marx has to conclude as Marx did that capitalism can never be made to benefit the working class. It’s not usual to point out at the MLG that this conclusion from reading Capital entails a commitment to communist revolution. We made that point.
Racism and imperialism were not often discussed enough, although the Du Bois discussions did show how racism and capitalism are twinned both in the USA and in global imperialism. (Du Bois was an outstanding anti-imperialist voice his whole life long). Capital defines the global market as the heart of expanding capital accumulation, even in Marx’s time; and his book is full of references to the war against American slavery and the parallels between chattel and wage labor. The transition to wage slavery and the missed opportunity of a united Black and white workers’ struggle against capital is Du Bois’s great theme—inspired by Marx—in Black Reconstruction. Other panels did explore capitalist racism: one on Richard Wright, several on the so-called “surplus” (chronically unemployed) population produced by capital, others on colonial land theft. We are friends with many of these presenters and got to know others this year.
If our proposal on revolutionary organization is adopted, we can put more focus on racism and imperialism next year by bringing more Lenin into MLG Marxism, and going beyond Lenin to advocate a single global revolutionary party which summarily banishes nationalism from workers’ struggle. Examples from parties in India, South Africa and the Philippines could make the point that in our day revolutionary communism has to be organized in a single global party. Only such a party form, going further than the Comintern, can fight all the competing imperialist blocs on a global scale, in the process overcoming racism and nationalism in the workers’ ranks. PLP has a lot to contribute in MLG discussions of the theory of the party form, coming out of our analysis in documents like Road to Revolution IV of the defeat of communism in the Soviet and Chinese parties.
There was, except for us, an eerie silence about the already begun inter-imperialist global war. Perhaps because people feel powerless? Another reason to join the Party. The door is open for us to advocate that at the moment, though we are aware that we will face anti-communism here eventually. [See Box, “The New Liberal Anti-Communism”]
For our part, what we got out of the conference is best summarized by a young comrade: “This is our theory! Marxist theory belongs to us, to the communists, to the working class.” There is a problem with the MLG: theory being divorced from practice. On the one hand, it’s good that the powerful intellectual tradition of Marxism is alive and well among some academics; on the other hand, Marxism does not belong mainly to academics. As Brecht wrote once, “Communism is simple: if you’re a worker you can understand it.” Communism is also complex, but workers trained in a revolutionary party led by workers—a party like PLP where academics too are welcome—can also master its complexity.
We are encouraged by this work among intellectuals, feeling our collective power to mobilize as a class if we can bring our academic co-workers into a worker-led PLP, building the Party to fight for communism as capitalism spins off into racist violence and war.
The new liberal anti-communism
Three comrades on a panel at the 2023 MLG conference called “The New Anti-Communism” showed how anti-communism remains alive and well in new forms, even in the absence of a mass communist movement. Why? Because communism remains the greatest threat to the ruling class, and both liberal and rightist wings of the capitalist parties in the USA and Canada are united in slandering it. In its identity-politics guise, anti-communism helps to recruit marginalized workers to fight in imperialist wars against “authoritarianism,” to subdue white workers who might want to combat racism, and to provide political cover for racist attacks on the whole working class.
For one speaker, the Florida and Texas government attacks on “wokeness” as educational brainwashing (i.e., teaching about slavery, labor insurgency or gender politics) were dog-whistle accusations that recalled McCarthy-era portrayals of Communists infesting the brains of innocent Americans. Another speaker pointed out that it is wrong to point to “the right” as the main danger in such attacks on teachers and their unions, since liberal multicultural identity politics have prepared the ground for the likes of fascist Florida Governor Ron De Santis. Often, antiracist folks are disarmed against these attacks by their allegiance to divisive liberal identity politics which hide workers’ common interests.
The third speaker discussed how the Canadian government has historically manipulated the status of “refugees.” “Good” refugees have been those fleeing from communism, like those from Vietnam decades ago, or Ukrainians today fleeing a capitalist Russia falsely identified as communist through the word “authoritarian.” But refugees from places like Haiti are to be turned away at the border. Propaganda like the short TV ads “Heritage Minutes” falsely feature Canada as a land of freedom from “totalitarian” oppression, while their multicultural imagery helps the liberal ruling class depict marginalized workers as full citizens of a free country. Liberals in Canada, fascists in Florida: both use anti-communism to shatter workers’ unity, attack workers in struggle, and prepare a population of patriots for world war.
