The U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and demolishing the right to abortion is a brutally sexist attack on women workers, and particularly on Black, Latin and immigrant workers. Backed by gutter sexist Republicans and the domestically oriented faction of the capitalist ruling class, the Small Fascists, the Court is poised to escalate its attacks on workers and erase decades of hard-won reforms within the limits of the profit system.
Meanwhile, the rulers’ long-dominant imperialist wing, the Big Fascist liberals of finance capital, are losing one fight after the next: on abortion and guns, on voting rights and climate action—not to mention the growing debacle in Ukraine. As U.S. capitalism spirals into decline, and the split within the bosses’ ranks deepens, we have entered a period of extreme instability. The Big Fascists will stop at nothing—including full-blown fascism—to hold on to their power and their profits. They will try to use the backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision to mobilize workers and to defend their empire from imperialist rivals China and Russia. They know they can’t fight an imperialist war without women workers committed to their murderous system.
After the reversal of Roe v. Wade, tens of thousands of workers took to the streets in rage. Like the upsurge after George Floyd’s murder, these protests show the potential of an angry and militant working class. These workers and millions like them must break the bounds of reformism to smash the blood-sucking bosses and create a new society run by and for our class—that’s communism! PLP calls for a mass, multiracial, working-class movement to fight for a communist world that will end sexism and racism once and for all.
Chickens come home to roost
Donald Trump and the other hack politicians backed by the Small Fascists are openly sexist and racist; they’re Klanspeople in business suits. But beware of the Democratic Party liberals who swear their commitment to workers’ rights—and then stab us in the back time after time. The liberals’ longtime strategy is to pacify workers by masking the real ugliness of capitalism, which makes them the main danger to the international working class. No less treacherous are the pro-capitalist leaders of the historically racist and segregated feminist movement, led by the likes of admitted CIA agent Gloria Steinem, who pushed the idea that Black men are the enemies of Black women (Moguldom Nation, 6/29/21). The same goes for the “pro-choice” movement, whose founding icon Margaret Sanger was an open advocate of eugenics, a racist ideology (later adopted by the Nazis) that has led to the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of Black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and immigrant women (pbs.org, 1/29/16). The legal foundation for this barbaric practice was laid by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 in Buck v. Bell (npr.org, 3/27/16).
The Big Fascists’ lack of unity and discipline has come back to haunt them. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, Jim Crow Joe Biden dismissed Anita Hill’s testimony of blatant sexual harassment and cleared the way for arch-sexist Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. More recently, liberal hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg selfishly refused to retire during Barack Obama’s presidency, when the Democrats could have confirmed a pro-choice successor. (In 2019, a year before she died at 87, Ginsburg praised anti-abortion colleagues Brett Kavanaugh—another sexual predator—and Neil Gorsuch as “very decent and very smart” (cnn.com, 7/26/19), and singled out Kavanaugh for praise for hiring women as his law clerks.)
At this point, the bosses’ state apparatus seems up for grabs. The Small Fascists have a death grip on the Supreme Court and have paralyzed Congress. They have mobilized their base in “red” states to control most of the state legislatures, which are now passing reams of anti-abortion laws while refusing to expand Medicaid or any reform that might benefit working women’s health. The overturning of Roe—despite a large majority of workers who favor abortion rights—is a watershed moment in a volatile time. It undermines the legitimacy of the bosses’ capitalist dictatorship, aka liberal demoracy. It throws a wrench into the Big Fascists’ plans to win women workers to fight in the next world war. The liberal rulers will do their best to use the pro-choice movement to keep women workers inside their dead-end system by voting for Democrats in this fall’s 2022 elections. Communists must be in that movement as well—to steer workers toward the fight for communism, the only way to abort this sexist, racist system.
Capitalist healthcare racist & sexist to the core
Like racism, sexism is essential to capitalism. The bosses use it both to divide workers and to super-exploit them. Internationally, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, even less if they have children (UN Women). The Big Fascist liars, constantly promoting the U.S. as the “greatest country in the world,” preside over a sexist, racist health care system that is exceptional only for its inability to serve workers’ needs or protect their lives. The U.S. ranks behind 55 other countries for maternal mortality; its rate is four times as high as Japan's and ten times as high as Italy's. Because of racist inequalities, the rate is three times as high for Black women as for white women. Infant mortality rates in the U.S. show similar patterns–so much for the "right to life!” (CDC & CIA World Factbook) A capitalist system that cannot provide decent health care to the working class does not deserve to exist. It must be destroyed by communist revolution.
Communism will liberate all women workers
Over a century ago, a communist-led revolution in Russia revealed the power of the working class to break their chains and remake the history of humanity (see box). While PLP supports abortion on demand under capitalism, the true liberation of working-class women can only be achieved by the violent overthrow of the sexist capitalist ruling class. Under communism, as part of a fundamental commitment to women’s health care, women would have access to abortion. But the conditions that make abortion necessary for so many women workers today—from poverty to a lack of decent child care–will no longer exist. With the elimination of money and wage slavery, free health care will be available to all. Free and collectivized child care will be the norm. That’s the world that all workers need to fight for!
And so it begins: On June 27, eight kkkops of Akron, Ohio fired at least 90 bullets at a Black young man, Jayland Walker and pierced his body over 60 times. Jayland, only 25 years young, is one of the 528 people murdered by police this year so far (Statist Research Department, 7/5). The U.S. police, descended from protectors of enslavers, function to terrorize the working class and protect the ruling class. As the bosses’ system spins further into chaos and towards imperialist war, our class’s main danger are the liberal bosses, also known as the Big Fascists.
The following are a few of the fights the Progressive Labor Party seeks to connect during this year’s Summer Project. The cities highlighted—Chicago, Newark, New York City, and Los Angeles—reflect areas of fightback PLP is involved in, even through the pandemic.
When the bosses kill one of ours, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Every single example you are about to read resulted in mass fightbacks. The mainly Black and Latin women workers who lead these campaigns defy the sexist gender roles that capitalism imposes on our class.
If we are immersed with these families and fighters for the long haul, these lifelong fighters will become the gravediggers of this racist, sexist, murderous capitalist system!
Four fighting cities:
LOS ANGELES, CA
Alex Flores: On November 19, 2019, the LAPD shot and murdered Alex, 34 years old, near South Central Avenue and East 28th Street. Through this work, more people understand the true role of the police in a capitalist society and see PLP as leading the fight against their racist terror.
For instance, PLP and other organizers met the Flores family for a BBQ and banner-making party to prepare for a protest during the height of the pandemic. By the end of the discussion, the family decided that they were going to find creative ways to fight back regardless of repression tactics used by the bosses. They also discussed the importance of keeping one another safe. During the protest a few days later, everyone present was diligent about remaining socially distant and taking safe health precautions.
The Flores family remains courageous and hasn’t allowed their fight to diminish the two and a half years since Alex Flores was murdered. PLP has worked alongside the family and made it clear that our support is not going anywhere. This strong working class unity has empowered the community to be relentless against police terror.
BROOKLYN, NY
Shantel Davis: In June 2012 when NYPD “Bad Boy” Phillip Atkins shot Shantel Davis on E. 38 St. and Church Avenue members and friends of Progressive Labor Party responded immediately to the scene of the crime where a crowd of angry Black workers and youth had gathered. Marches to the 67 precinct, marches of a very militant character shutting down traffic for short periods on the side street where the precinct was located, became weekly occurrences. CHALLENGE was a vital tool in this fight from the start. There is also an annual basketball tournament in honor of Shantel and Kiki (see below). The family and local PL’ers have become an integrated part of each other’s lives.
Kimani "Kiki" Gray: Less than a year later, on March 9, 2013, the police in East Flatbush on East 52nd Street murdered this 16-year-old student, not far from where Shantel was murdered. Kiki was just leaving a friend’s party. Police fired eleven shots at the teenager, hitting him seven times, three times in the back. Justified anger ignited the East Flatbush rebellion, and the bosses’ instated a curfew, came out with helicopters and riot police.
Kyam Livingston: A few months later, in July 2013, a 37-year-old mother of two was killed out of medical neglect at a holding cell at Brooklyn central booking on Schermerhorn St. to await arraignment with 15 other women. The police let her suffer in pain for seven hours, each minute in time she went through a slow torture as her life drained away and she received no help from the callous jailors. She even had seizures. She and the other women in the cell with her were told, “shut up or we’ll lose your paperwork!” This is what a human life is worth in this system. We were able to sustain monthly rallies decrying this racist system. The family is a strong presence on May Day, and more.
One lesson from this struggle is that fightback is the best form of self-care. The bosses’ forces constantly sold passivity and isolation. The Party’s unbending confidence in the ability of women workers to channel anger into leading our class was confirmed throughout our struggle.
NEWARK, NJ
Rodwell-Spivey Brothers: This is a story of four brothers targeted for breathing while Black. Two brothers were looking at clothes from a mobile vendor in front of their house when two undercover kkkops attacked the brothers. The killer kkkops later claimed they were searching for a Black man wearing a white t-shirt with dreads, but nothing under this capitalist system is coincidental or a mistake when Black workers worldwide are super-exploited and jailed on a mass scale.
When the cops attacked, their other two brothers rushed out in concern. Now, four brothers—Justin Rodwell, Branden K. Rodwell, Jaykill Rodwell, and Jasper Spivey—are all facing possible jail time. Justin, who came out to defend his younger brothers, is still being detained as he awaits trial in Essex County Jail. On the outside, the family is constantly surveilled and harassed by the police.
From protests and meetings to backyard BBQs, PLP is working to build relationships with the family and antiracists.
CHICAGO, IL
Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson: On August 15, 2020, the klan-in-blue viciously attacked demonstrators at a protest calling to defund the Chicago Police Department and abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mohawk was caught up in the fray and arrested. Even after posting bail, he was still held three days in jail before being released on house arrest with an ankle monitor. He’s been charged for allegedly hitting a cop.
The Chicago bosses’ terrorization of Mohawk may have been a tool to pacify the working class. Instead, this has turned into a campaign to Free Mohawk and further expose the inherently violent system that is capitalism.
Big Fascists, biggest danger
What insidious is that this is occurring under the watchful eye of liberal politicians. Every city’s mayor—Newark’s Ras Baraka (Black), Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot (gay Black woman), Los Angeles’s Eric Garcetti (white, liberal), and New York City’s previous Bill de Blasio (white, phony left) and current Eric Adams (Black)—represent the Big Fascists.
Following the mass George Floyd uprisings, the bosses talked about “defunding the police.” But now with President ‘Jim Crow’ Joe Biden’s blessing, all these Democratic-led cities have increased their police budget and cut funding for necessities like education and healthcare (Quartz, 1/25).
Since the worldwide, antiracist 2014 Ferguson uprising under former liberal Big Fascist president Barack Obama, and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, under the gutter racist presidency of Donald Trump, the liberal Big Fascist wing of the ruling class has ushered in Black municipal leadership to squelch working-class rebellion. They feed workers phony radical faces in high places as a win, and dupe many into believing a sliver of the decaying American pie is the best our class can do for survival.
The Big Fascists are the dominant finance capitalist faction of the U.S. ruling class. They represent the wealthiest and most powerful bosses in the U.S., including banks, oil companies, media, and industry—Chase and Citibank, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Amazon, The New York Times, and more. As the dominant grouping since World War II, the Big Fascists were the architects of the liberal world order with the U.S. bosses on top. Their dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power and its strategic control of the Middle East and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. To sustain this dominance, they need to rebuild a huge, multiracial military for inter-imperialist war, most likely with China.
The Big Fascists are confronted with a huge contradiction. On the one hand, they need racist police terror to keep the masses in check; on the other, they need these same Black and Latin youth to fight in their unending imperialist wars. The bosses can never resolve their contradiction. The job of communists and friends of the PLP is to sharpen the contradiction—and ultimately to smash the bosses—by winning workers to fight back in multiracial unity.
PLP cautions workers that the rising volatility between imperialist bosses in China, Russia and U.S, will continue to fester and explode into world war, and Black and Latin youth will be missile food forced to die for the bosses’ profits. The only hope of the working class is to build a class-conscious multiracial movement to smash capitalism and fight for communism, freeing the world from starvation, exploitation, racist politicians and their kkkops.
Build PLP
Whenever workers fight back, our Party aims to be shoulder-to-shoulder in struggle. A strength of the work within this struggle against police terror has been the base building—PL’s involvement in the fightback is more than the agitation in the streets, it has been the equally if not more essential work of bringing these families closer to the Party. Building strong relationships is a sign of our seriousness, love of the working class, and our commitment to fighting for a communist world that drives us.
The worldwide working class, led by Progressive Labor Party, must persevere to build a mass, anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement. We must struggle against frustration and cynicism. We must stay the course with both communist urgency and communist patience. There are no shortcuts to revolution.
The bosses will never give up state power voluntarily. We need millions to join us worldwide and take it from them. Join PLP, and fight back! The future is bright; we must make it so. J
New Jersey, July 5—Liberal fascist school bosses rehired a communist teacher after recognizing the growing support for that teacher. In mid-May, a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member was fired from the school where they teach, supposedly due to performance issues and budget cuts. In a community meeting organized to build fightback, the teacher’s co-worker stated: “There is possibly no other teacher that the staff and the kids like more, and the administrators like less.” The antiracist, pro-student and worker solidarity this teacher represents in this school emboldened the community to win back the job of this communist fighter! This fight also helped to strengthen the confidence that the teacher had in himself to build for a lifetime in the working class.
Students, parents, and co-workers take the lead
As word spread of the firing, many co-workers and students were adamant that the school needed this comrade. A former student who has consistently received CHALLENGE wrote a petition which received 44 signatures. A co-worker took the initiative to encourage several of her students, some of whom had been the comrade’s students in the previous school year, to sign up to speak at the school board meeting at the end of May. This inspired the comrade to encourage several current students of their own as well as a couple of education workers from across the city to do the same. A parent, who has had CHALLENGE placed in her storefront since the pandemic, hosted a community meeting where a multiracial group of youth, parents, co-workers and community members showed up to plan further action during the last week of school.
Throughout this struggle many people shared wisdom regarding the way the capitalist education system had attacked them in the past. They shared lessons learned from the ways they fought back. In response to the growing fight back and a letter written by the teacher and fellow PL’ers, being self critical of the ways the teachers could perform better while also citing the pandemic and huge class sizes as a reason for difficulty in delivering data and lesson plans, the bosses decided to bring the teacher back.
Capitalist schools in decay, communities need to fight back!
This teacher was essentially fired for insubordination. The administrators forced students to remain outside in freezing temperatures while waiting for underpaid security guards to show and process them into the school building. This teacher was accused of allowing potentially dangerous kids into the building, therefore putting everyone else’s life in danger. Our kids are not dangerous - this is the racist lie the bosses repeat over and over again. The real danger that threatens the lives of everyone in this and all school buildings is capitalism. A profit system where bosses abandon whole schools and the communities they serve when those particular kids and their families are no longer the most profitable to exploit. The resulting lack of resources leads school bosses to ramp up racist and sexist mistrust between staff and students, rather than compassion and community building.
Letting those students in and listening to them in the mornings allowed this teacher to deepen their understanding of who those kids really were and to build a working class culture of trust. It is this type of communist working class culture that the school community wanted to defend and the school administration wanted to get rid of.
Big Fascists mislead schools better than Small Fascists
The conditions of the school that fired this comrade reflect the main direction that Big Fascists (international finance capitalists, see GLOSSARY, page 6) have for the future of the international working class. This school is oftentimes the last stop for Black students whose needs and struggles have been ignored at all other schools in the city. It is also the landing spot for many undocumented students displaced by U.S. capitalists’ search for cheap labor and imperialist profits in Latin America and the Caribbean. The families of this overall student population are exposed to racist and sexist treatment in housing, health care, and employment. The super-oppression experienced by these students and their families translates into a higher workload for the education workers who struggle to educate while the material needs of students are not being met.
It also encourages chronic staff shortages from teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, security guards, to teacher's aides who cannot bear the alienation.
The response of U.S. Small Fascist (domestic capitalists, see GLOSSARY, page 6) Republicans to contain the crises of capitalism reflected in these school conditions is to promote erasing the history of U.S. ruling class racist terror and working class antiracist heroism, and criminalizing education workers for encouraging youth to embrace the diversity within the working class. The leadership of U.S. Big Fascist Democrats, from Biden to the Mayor all the way down to the Principal of this particular school, who attacked our comrade, is a lot more dangerous for workers and youth to follow. Being Black, Latin, gay or liberal, all they preach about is phoney antiracism and the need for diversity. Yet, they use the tool of identity politics to fool some into thinking they are on our side. Then they lie that “they are doing the best that they can'' hoping to pacify our anger and stop us from organizing against the system they serve.
Fight to build communist consciousness
Worldwide, workers and students in schools under capitalism have the potential to help expose the sharpening divisions that weaken Big and Small Fascists’ ability to conceal their attacks against our class and turn it into a communist revolution. Turning that potential into reality depends on the level of confidence we build in the working class. This happens when we fight, in small and large ways- as workers and youth with communist ideas - against the racist and sexist super-exploitation, divisions and attacks that weaken our class. Working class conscious fightback emboldens the masses that are increasingly linking their fight with the vision of PLP. This fightback gives everyone more confidence that one day we will smash capitalism with a system run by us for us, communism.
BALTIMORE, July 4—Comrades in the Baltimore area organized a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) sponsored trip to Cambridge, MD, where we visited two museums—the community-built Harriet Tubman Museum & Educational Center, and the ruling class-run Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center—dedicated to the life and struggle of antiracist abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.
Despite the heavy holiday traffic—during the July 4 weekend, dedicated to hypocritical celebration of U.S. capitalist independence—family and friends of the Party made the most of the occasion.
Before the trip, one comrade gave a short speech on the significance of Tubman’s—and many many others’—resistance to the institution of slavery, connecting her determination to the same attitude needed in the Party’s fight for the upcoming sisterhood and brotherhood of a communist world.
It was also emphasized that, like Tubman herself, we need to be active in mass organizations, building bonds with a diverse array of workers, to knock down the oppressors of the world.
Tubman brave fighter, not a“saint”
As part of the experience at the museums, both included short films depicting the numerous escape plans, tactics, and accomplishments of Tubman. One was an animated film that children could watch, and another was a biopic of Tubman throughout her life.
A comrade noted that the films portrayed Tubman as one of the many U.S. heroes who upheld the patriotic ideals…of the ruling class. Paintings in the national park museum added to that propaganda: Harriet Tubman as the Statue of Liberty, and others in a style inspired by Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych series.
Some art critics say those particular paintings by Warhol were commenting on the saint-like nature that fans often assign to celebrities, which in turn causes the public to approach celebrities with some sense of holiness. But Harriet Tubman was neither a saint nor someone to whom we should give glory, while remaining meek ourselves. No, she was one among many highly inspiring leaders in the struggle against slavery, someone we should emulate, but not praise passively.
The irony of equating Tubman with patriotism—which means being loyal to a country and its bosses, instead of upholding communist loyalty to the working class and oppressed people of the whole world—did not go unnoticed.
“Strenghtening connections, struggle, and the Party”
Throughout the day, we enjoyed snacks, meals, and the scenery of rural Cambridge. Along the way, we also enjoyed each other’s company and learned more about one another. At one point, a participant described his deep respect and appreciation for one of our comrades, from whom this participant has learned much about topics involving working class struggle and how they connect personally to his life.
We further connected through discussing family dynamics and history. This was of course the most significant part of the trip. Building connections with our working class family strengthens our bonds and deepens our respect for one another, making the Party stronger.
We ended our trip coming away with a more profound understanding and appreciation for the work that Tubman did. A strong-willed and compassionate woman, Tubman’s life ended with her continued practice of support for those in need, despite her own financial insecurity.
Of course, her diligence—working with many others to smash the horrid institution of slavery—must be a reminder to all of us, who expect change, that one must be in the fight completely for the oppressed with no tolerance for indecision or betrayal. Let Tubman’s leadership and legacy embolden the struggle for winning working-class state power and communism!
Four days after the bodies of our Latin American brothers and sisters were discovered in an abandoned trailer in Texas, the bosses' deadly borders claimed the lives of more workers— this time in Melilla and Ceuta, two Spanish enclaves on the North Africa-Spanish border (hrw.org, 6/30).
On June 24, 37 migrant workers, all men from Sub-saharan Africa fleeing capitalist-created poverty and famine, were brutally beaten to death by police forces as they attempted to scale the border fence that divides Morocco from Spain. The Spanish Guardia Civil fired tear gas at hundreds of fleeing migrants. Those left behind were savagely clubbed. Graphic images of our Black brother’s mangled bodies left in pools of blood, rotting for hours in the sun expose the rotten racism of global capitalist nations and their borders (hrw.org, 6/30). The Melila massacre is the deadliest episode in a long history of the Moroccan and Spanish bosses' brutality against Black African migrants seeking refuge in Europe (hrw.org, 2/10/14).
The Morrocan bosses have agreed to be Spain's border attack dog in exchange for regional independence (The New Arab, 7/4). Spain's rulers have learned well from their savage imperialist partners in the U.S., and have recently begged NATO to help them beef up the racist, fascist border security (Voanews, 7/5), calling the recent uptick in Black African migrants seeking asylum as a security threat. The vicious treatment of African migrants is in sharp contrast to the treatment received by the 75,000 Ukrainian migrants the Spanish government welcomed with open arms (La Moncloa, 4/26).
The Melilla massacre is a warning that as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens in Europe, so too will fascism. The Spanish bosses' war against African workers is an extension of the miserable conditions faced by workers in Spain where unemployment is the highest in Europe (FEE.org, 02/27). The massacre further exposes the fact that liberal fascists from Spain’s social democratic President Pedro Sanchez to the U.S. Big Fascist in Chief Joe Biden are the main threat facing our class.
As inflation, climate catastrophes, famine, and war choke our class, more workers will be forced to flee capitalist violent conditions. Sadly, this isn’t the last of the horrific violence we witnessed in Melila and Texas. The only way to put an end to the misery that displaces and kills workers is to build a communist world in which profits and racist borders cease to exist.
