Battle in the courts, battle in the streets
Last issue (CHALLENGE, 3/12) , we described the fascist masking legislation being pushed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Zionists, the Baltimore Urban League and Black politicians in Prince George’s County. As promised, we fought back! The Maryland Senate Committee was blasted as over 20 students, disability activists, and Jewish Voice for Peace members along with a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member testified boldly to condemn this bill as racist and anti-public health because it criminalizes mask wearing. I felt like I was riding with masked crusaders! Legislative hearings can be as distracting from revolutionary struggle as voting, but this time I felt like I was at a militant rally, albeit in Senate chambers. By sharing CHALLENGE with these activists, I have helped lay the foundation for a sharper struggle against racist capitalism and for a broader vision of the communist alternative.
Just before this hearing, several students from the University of Maryland testified at another hearing about threats against them for protesting the genocide in Gaza, while their fellow students broke protocol by holding up signs in the hearing room against Israeli fascist attacks on Palestinians. A few days later, legislators advanced yet another Zionist-sponsored bill to suppress dissent on campuses, sparking meetings and strategizing at two Maryland campuses to fight this bill. I shared my written testimony with these students as a PLP member and am continuing to work with the Filipino student group.
Other friends are fighting in legislative hearings, demanding that Maryland defund the Maryland Israeli Development Center (MIDC) with the slogan “Drop the MIDC”. They have also been supporting the Maryland teachers that the bosses attacked for opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Palestinians and their supporters have taken up the challenge, in both the legislature and the streets, to stop the Zionist efforts to use the U.S. state apparatus for Zionist fascism and against protesters. They and others fight with us to support immigrants as well. While the legislative battle in some ways is just shadow boxing, in other ways it opens the way for PLP members to build a base and gain adherents—with real boxing gloves--in the fight for communism and the abolition of capitalism!
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‘Inequality is my whole LIFE’
As a nurse I knew how slashing insurance affected the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, those without hospitalization--in fact, most workers! I never suspected after my routine surgery that traditional Medicare benefits would leave me unable to work or function. Before the operation a panel of “experts” demanded a stress test to determine if my heart valve was “severely compromised” for insurance coverage. I passed the test but during surgery suffered a stroke. My insurance paid for the surgery all right, but to get back to work would require months of therapy. A friend of mine who had worked for thirty years at rehab told me that insurance used to pay for rehab until a person was well. I was released from the rehab after ten days, entitled to rehab once a week but unable to use my right hand and wheelchair bound.
So, in the first 24 hours at home, I fell twice. After an x-ray in a hospital ER, a friend from occupational therapy called me about state law. Extra insurance days were mine—IF I were to stay hospitalized three nights. A snowstorm secured me a room. No snowstorm and I would have been out of insurance.
All available rehab facilities were “sub-acute” enterprises for nursing home patients. Those patients were unable to manage their nursing needs unless they had relatives to depend on for support. I, too, found myself depending on an already stressed nursing staff for my medication.
Meanwhile my 95-year-old roommate, Sue, was in full control of her senses but her son had not come for two days. She had been patiently waiting in a chair since breakfast, not one to ring a buzzer. The aide ‘‘s response was, “You need to stay up.” My friend visiting thought we might try to move the woman ourselves. “You‘ll get yelled at,” said Sue. “They punish me already for not going to Occupational Therapy. I tell them there I get tired of sitting for hours alone at the wall.” When the aide came for lunch trays, both my visitor and I spoke up, “Our friend has been up since before breakfast. Please help her back to bed.”
But what troubled me in both hospitals and rehab was the hierarchy of command. From doctors looking down on nurses who then look down on aides, to cleaning/nutritional staff to the bottom rung: the patient. I noted that nurses’ aides and cleaning folks came also burdened with family and financial problems. One aide’s little five5-year-old would be going for heart surgery in two days.
“Me, as a patient, I find being treated unequally bothers me most,” I vented to a woman hoisting large plastic bags filled with laundry. She cried out, “Inequality is my whole LIFE!” I felt the power of a future fight back.
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Smash racist deportations
This is a Party leaflet being distributed to friends and progressive bookstores on the racist ICE anti immigrant sweeps, and anti working class attempts by Trump to destroy the Department of Education. Both are fascist attempts to recreate Nazi Germany. Trump and his isolationist MAGA capitalists are a symptom of capitalism ‘s decay. Communist revolution by Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and the working class is the only solution!
Fight racist deportations with communist revolution!
The fascist bosses under Trump have started rounding up undocumented immigrant workers from Mexico, Central America, South America, Haiti, and Africa. The new Gestapo, ICE, is not only going to work places, but also to churches, hospitals, and schools. The international working class knows no borders! Borders are racist, imaginary lines to draw where workers can be exploited, be it by U.S. bosses, Mexican bosses, or Chinese bosses.
The only way to end racist deportation is communist revolution led by the Progressive Labor Party. Under communism, workers will run society without borders, money, and racist divisions, which only divide workers from each other.
Fight for workers’ education with communist revolution!
The fascist attempt by Trump and Musk to destroy the Department of Education is an anti working class and racist attack on workers. Trump and company want for-profit charter schools that cater to wealthier families. These fascist attempts are not new. Nazi Germany fired thousands of Jewish educators, and turned German schools and universities into places to teach loyalty to fascism.
The only solution is communist revolution. Under communism, workers will educate children to respect knowledge, science, and art, without the racism and sexism found in capitalist schools.
JOIN THE PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY AND FIGHT FOR A COMMUNIST SOCIETY! For further information see www.plp.org
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U.S. policymakers argue for limited war in Taiwan instead of World War III
Foreign Affairs, March/April—The fate of Taiwan keeps American policymakers up at night…A Chinese invasion of the island would confront the United States with one of its gravest foreign policy choices ever. Letting Taiwan fall to Beijing would dent Washington’s credibility and create new challenges for U.S. military forces in Asia…Even if the United States prevailed—and it might well lose—an outright war with China would likely kill more Americans and destroy more wealth than any conflict since the Vietnam War and perhaps since World War II. Nuclear and cyber weapons could make it worse, bringing destruction on the U.S. homeland. These would be catastrophic consequences for the United States…
Turmoil and killing in Syria continues
N.Y. Times, 3/9—Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, appealed yesterday for calm and unity after violence erupted last week between fighters affiliated with his government and those loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad. More than 1,000 people have been killed, including about 700 civilians, mostly by government forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights…“We call on Syrians to be reassured because the country has the fundamentals for survival,” al-Shara said…It was unclear whether al-Shara was acknowledging possible killings at the hands of his forces or laying the blame entirely on al-Assad loyalists…
Israeli bosses continue to smash Palestinian refugees
Al Jazeera, 3/9—The Israeli army’s continued operations that began in January in the Jenin refugee camp, and expanded to other camps over the past month, have led to even more Palestinians fleeing these historic refuges, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said. “Coercive conditions, threats of demolition, and evacuation orders drove further displacement from these already near-empty camps,” UNRWA said in its weekly situation report on the occupied territory, adding that “Israeli Forces continued to deploy militarised tactics and advanced weaponry, including the use of tanks”...
Number of strikes in U.S. decreases in 2024
Labor Action Tracker, ILR, 2025—We documented 359 work stoppages (356 strikes and 3 lockouts) involving approximately 293,500 workers in 2024…The number of work stoppages in 2024 continued to exceed 2021 levels but were not as many as in 2022 or 2023. The number of work stoppages decreased by 23.8% in 2024 compared to 2023 and the approximate number of workers also decreased by 45.5%. The decline in the total number of strikes is overwhelmingly due to the decline in the number of one-day strikes, which is attributable in large part to the decrease in the number of strikes by Starbucks Workers United in 2024 as compared to 2022 and 2023.
Australian students rally against modern day eugenics professor
Honi Soit, 3/8—Students rallied outside the F23 Administration Building to protest USyd’s [University of Sydney] decision to platform Professor Julian Savulescu, whose upcoming talk entitled ‘Polygenic Selection and Editing: A Welfarist Approach’ …The rally began with an Acknowledgement of Country that powerfully connected historical eugenic practices to the continued oppression of First Nations peoples, setting the tone for a demonstration that highlighted the real-world consequences of ostensibly abstract academic debates. “This is, to put it bluntly, an argument for genetically selectively removing and eliminating personal traits that are wrongly assumed to be undesirable” …
French imperialists continue evacuation of Africa & flex nuclear muscle in Europe
France24, 3/7—France on Friday began handing over military bases in Senegal, as part of a withdrawal of troops from the west African nation where it has had a presence since 1960. The withdrawal follows the departure of French forces from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Ivory Coast in recent years…Niger, Mali, Central African Republic and Burkina Faso -- urged France to withdraw its troops from their territories, and have moved closer to Russia. The French military presence has similarly decreased in Ivory Coast and Gabon, as part of a restructuring plan in west and central Africa.
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Editorial: Big fascists in retreat - From the U.S. to Germany
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- 28 February 2025 1984 hits
As the capitalist bosses behind President Donald Trump push to shut off the spigot of arms to Ukraine in its war with Russia, an 80-year-old partnership between U.S. imperialism and Europe is fraying to the breaking point. Trump’s threat to make a Russia-friendly deal with Vladimir Putin (and/or extort Ukraine’s mineral wealth), his plan to pull 20,000 U.S. troops out of Europe (Stars and Stripes, 1/24), his open hostility toward NATO—all are signs of the deep split in a decaying U.S. ruling class. On one side are the Small Fascists backing Trump, the Fortress America wing that hijacked the Republican Party and has no interest in paying for a massive worldwide military footprint—much less a distant ground war with U.S. troops. On the other side are the Big Fascists of U.S. finance capital, the multinational banks and oil companies that seek to hang on to their failing empire as long as they can, at any and all costs to the international working class.
One side wants to protect and strengthen a U.S. sphere of influence, from Greenland to the Panama Canal; the other looks to contain the global rise of their inter-imperialist rivals, China and Russia. One side is led by open racists who scapegoat immigrants and Black and Latin workers for the failings of the profit system; the other by liberal racists who use identity politics and DEI initiatives to weaken class struggle. But make no mistake: No matter how Ukraine plays out, the international crisis of capitalism will keep sparking blood-soaked conflicts and rising fascist movements the world over. No matter which U.S. bosses ultimately prevail, or which maneuvers they choose, they’ll be forced to turn to full-blown fascism. They’ll need fascism to discipline their own class, put down workers’ rebellions, and prepare for World War Three. There are no good bosses! In this period of frightening instability and grave danger, the workers of the world have only one solution: communist revolution, led by the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
Why Ukraine matters
According to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Ukraine is a “gold mine” with $12 trillion worth of critical minerals, which the West “can’t afford to lose” (“Face the Nation,” CBS, 6/10/24). There is plenty of oil and wheat in Ukraine, too, plus a broad industrial base and coveted warm-weather ports. Perhaps most important, since the two countries share a 1200-mile border, a NATO-aligned Ukraine poses a security threat to Russia.
How did the current war start? To understand the history of this area of the world, we must go back to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, and a stated U.S. commitment to exclude the former Soviet republics from NATO. But there’s no honor among imperialist thieves, and ten former Warsaw Pact nations were brought into NATO, effectively encircling Russia. In 2002, further heightening tensions, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Imperialist Russia pushed back by intervening in the Transnistria War in Moldova in the early 1990s and in a civil war in Georgia in 2008. In Ukraine, tensions escalated In 2014, when the U.S. bosses organized a coup to install a pro-U.S. president.
The so-called Euromaidan movement relied on anti-Russia propaganda propagated by NATO, which promoted Ukraine’s tilt toward Western Europe and its application to join the European Union. The U.S. imperialists funded homegrown Ukrainian fascists as well as NGOs and CIA front groups like the National Endowment for Democracy. Russia countered by courting workers in Ukraine with cheaper gas prices and more open borders with Russia. The Russian bosses bribed their way into control of the contested Donbas region, which broke away from Ukraine in 2014.
That set the stage for Russia’s support of an eastern Ukraine “resistance,” the 2014 seizure of Crimea, and today’s three-year-old Russian invasion and Ukraine’s U.S.-funded military response under ex-president Joe Biden, which has badly faltered. Despite a terrible toll in Russian military casualties, the Big Fascists’ attempt to weaken Russia by grinding them down in Ukraine has been a stunning failure. The U.S. has become more isolated while Russia and China have drawn closer. The BRICS coalition led by the two U.S. rivals has grown stronger. The bosses’ old liberal world order is in tatters in both the U.S. and Europe, where openly fascist parties are flourishing. While all capitalist rulers are in crisis, the U.S. is facing a steeper relative decline.
Turn the guns around!
Under capitalism, ever deadlier wars are the grim future for the working class. But workers have no stake in these fights. Communists know better than to support either side in any imperialist conflicts, which at bottom are cynical competitions to exploit the working class. PLP says: No war but class war!
Only an international communist movement can end imperialist slaughter for all time. We must build a Party to lead this fight and help the working class build a better future, free of war, racism, sexism, and exploitation. Join us! We have a world to win!
London, KY, January 25— Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members from Kentucky attended a march to demand justice for Doug Harless, a retired white worker who the killer kkkops murdered in his home in search of a weed-eater that was stolen from a relative of the County Judge Executive. In the same state where the racist kkkops murdered Black woman worker Breonna Taylor, this incident shows how white workers don’t benefit from anti-Black racism and sexism, contrary to what liberal bosses’ tell us. The rulers say the cause of racism is white privilege identity politics, but racism is the lifeblood of capitalism and the rulers can’t get rich making superprofits without it. A multiracial communist revolution will benefit the whole working class!
We came to the march prepared to bring our political message by going out and distributing CHALLENGE and explaining that this incident of police terror is not an isolated incident, but a result of the police’s purpose under capitalism, which is to enforce capitalist relations and keep the working-class under the thumb of the rich. We also helped get this message across by leading chants such as “Killer cops mean – We got to fight back!” and “No justice no peace, no crooked police!” During the march, close relatives to Doug inspired us with the chants “[London Police Department], lower your weapons!” and “LPD you’ve got blood on your hands!”
KKKops lie after killing
Police mistakenly showed up at Doug’s home at night to serve a search warrant for an address different from the one where Doug was sleeping. Upon arrival, the cops from the London Police Department went up to the door of Doug’s house and banged loudly, and shortly after announcing themselves, forced their way into his home and shot him five times. Despite the fact that it would have been wrong to have killed Doug even if he did have the weed-eater, the cops knew that they could not easily cover up their fatal “mistake.” So instead of immediately dispatching that shots had been fired, surveillance footage from one of Doug’s neighbors shows the cops regrouping outside the home and eventually dispatching that shots had just been fired, and then giving a different address from the one which they were at. The address that they reported shots had been fired at, had been abandoned for some time. It is no coincidence that Doug was killed over a weed-eater that belonged to a relative of David Westerfield, the County Judge Executive.
Local bosses, kkkops justify shooting
The purpose of the police is to protect property, not people, and the power imbalance is rooted in the fact that the capitalists own all the property, while workers only own their labor to be sold in exchange for a wage. This has been further demonstrated by the fact that an investigation is being launched by the police to supposedly find out the cause of the incident, but we know what happens when the police investigate themselves. The mayor of London, who was pressed by local workers during a town hall meeting that was arranged to get answers as to what happened, has offered nothing but excuses. He even released a statement condemning those who have been organizing protests and marches for “making this political.” All violence against the working-class is political violence, but to say that this is not political is especially absurd when it was a local politician whose name is directly tied to this murder!
History of racism
This incident in London is not the first clear example of police violence against the working class. Appalachia historically has been the battleground between militant union miners and volunteer armies made up of local deputies and sheriffs who were employed by coal bosses. As early as the 1920s in the events leading up to the battle of Blair Mountain, local sheriffs used everything from revolvers to machine guns to put down strikes, evict miners from their homes, and attack encampments made-up of displaced striking miners and their families. Similar events happened in the Harlan County Coal Wars, a bloody 10-year long struggle between the miners in Harlan and the coal bosses who owned the camps that they lived and worked in. Today, this history has been suppressed in order to make Appalachian workers unaware of their radical history, instead slandering them as “rednecks” a term which originally referred to members of the union who wore red bandanas, signifying their solidarity with the international working-class struggle.
These rednecks represented the most radical section of the Appalachian working-class, as they were the most willing to unite with Black and immigrant workers against the coal bosses who constantly used racism as a tool to divide and prevent them from working together. To the bosses, the term “redneck” was twisted in liberal media and used as a derogatory term to refer to someone as lazy and inbred. Today, this meaning is used to justify the intense poverty that continues to exist as a result of over a century of capitalist exploitation.
Lack of consciousness and efforts by the police to embed themselves in the community and make themselves seem as if they’re there to “protect and serve” has created an illusion amongst many Appalachian workers that the police are not bad. But recent events have exposed that it’s not a few bad apples, it’s the whole damn apple tree.
We WILL be back!
As of right now there are plans for another march to happen in February where we will again stand in solidarity and demand justice for Doug, and hopefully bring greater class-consciousness to the movement.
Today, thirteen workers attended our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) study group, including those who came with us to Springfield, OH, where Trump and Vance launched a racist attack against Haitian workers. There was a lively discussion on the theme, “an attack on any group of workers is an attack on all workers,” with many good questions and comments, as well as a delicious meal that was a collective effort in the communist spirit.
The meeting doubled as a fundraiser for a project to house immigrant families and a larger event coming next month. The main speaker was a recently retired Black Ford worker who we met on the picket lines during the 2023 UAW strike. He is also the pastor of a small congregation, and his church housed a family from Central America for nine months last year. Now, in the face of increased racist terror and ICE raids, he is getting ready to house more families and he can use our help. We are raising funds. He spoke about the necessity to support and build bridges to all working people who are under attack by any oppressive government, especially migrant workers attempting to stay safe from Trump’s racist attacks. Detroit’s Mayor Duggan has said he will cooperate with ICE, but the scapegoating of immigrant workers will not relieve the suffering of
Black workers and youth whether on the assembly line, the unemployment line, or trapped in these crumbling schools.
A PLP comrade also spoke, saying that yes, building these bridges is essential, and that it is our job to ensure that these bridges put us on the road to communist revolution so we can put an end to this sick racist system. Today was a good starting point for the larger event we are planning in March, which can involve more members of the church and some Ford workers. We are fighting to expand the base for PLP and looking forward to May Day.
