NEW YORK CITY, November 14–With the blessing of New York’s racist-in-chief Andrew Cuomo, City University of New York (CUNY) administrators have used the Covid-19  pandemic, as the pretense to launch an all-out racist attack that will hurt students the most.
Covid-19 crisis has killed more CUNY workers than at any other university system (Higher Ed, 6/23). What’s more, almost 3,000 part-time faculty lost their positions at the start of the fall semester. A hiring freeze has left administrative offices severely understaffed, as workers left, got sick and/or died.
Class sizes have ballooned, with some online classes hosting 80-100 students. Research suggests that effective online classes should have no more than 12 students (Forbes, 6/28).
Most recently, CUNY has indicated that this spring they will impose a 20 percent operating budget cut and decided unilaterally to indefinitely postpone the 2 percent pay increase for faculty and staff that is part of the current contract.
The racism of these attacks is undeniable. Nearly 50 percent of students at senior colleges and 67.3 percent at community colleges are Black and Latin. Due to the inherent racism of a capitalist system that breeds off of profit and competition, any cuts to CUNY will affect Black and Latin students more adversely.  
It won’t end until we make it end
The students and workers at CUNY are coming to the realization that this unrelenting wave of attacks will never end unless we make it end. There is a growing militancy within the entire CUNY community. Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have struggled to heighten this awakening—making the case that what is happening at CUNY is just a symptom of the capitalist disease and that we can never have education that serves the working class until rid ourselves of this disease. We say this as we fight side-by-side every day with our coworkers, students and classmates.
The struggle within the faculty and staff union has picked up as more and more workers understand, not only that the attacks from CUNY won’t end, but also that the union has not led the kind of militant struggle that is necessary to defeat them. PL members are present in a number of union committees, pushing for greater militancy, antiracism and the need for a worker-student alliance.
As the possibility of a strike develops, we will strengthen ties and more boldly share our politics of replacing capitalism and its educational apparatus with communism.
Students lead the way
Most importantly, students have led the way as the CUNY struggle continues to unfold. They have provided leadership at events held throughout the past few semesters, including a forum and speak-out on the murder of Breonna Taylor, the need for a strike at CUNY, elections and multiple demonstrations against adjunct layoffs and increased class size.
Some of these students are in Party-led study groups, which have been a steady occurrence during the pandemic, discussing and learning about communist ideas and the need for communist revolution.
The situation at CUNY is both disturbing and inspiring. The racist bosses, attempting as they always do to solve their financial crisis on the backs of workers and students, will continue their attacks. This spring looks especially grim, and even greater layoffs and cuts to services are almost certain.
Where there is oppression, however, there is always resistance, and so there is reason to be optimistic. Militancy among workers and students is growing as the contradictions of capitalism become more apparent every day. We communists are right there, struggling with ourselves to more boldly share our vision of a capitalism-free future and with our classmates and coworkers to join the fight.

Ethiopia, once considered a linchpin for the U.S. imperialists in the Horn of Africa, is on the brink of civil war between two fighting factions: the rival Tigray People's Liberation Front and the Prime Minister Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed administration.
This conflict has the potential to draw in imperialists of all stripes because control over the Horn of Africa is critical to controlling oil routes, the capitalists’ lifeblood. The working class in Ethiopia and everywhere have nothing to gain from these ethnic divisions.
Bosses in the Tigray region (the ethnic group makes up six percent of the population) proceeded with regional elections after the central government had canceled elections nationwide suppoedly due to the pandemic. This set off a military fight. There have been rocket attacks on airports, jet fighters and infantry sent into Tigray by the central government and reports of brutal massacres of civilians. Workers’ access to the internet, phones, and electricity has been shut down as well. Over 550 have already died and countless others still stand to be displaced. Nearly 30,000 have already fled to Sudan. We must turn our guns on all these bosses and fight for communism, where workers run society.
A land mine for proxy wars
A conflict in Ethiopia could draw in the whole region and then some. These include regional imperialists like Saudi Arabia and Turkey but also the main imperialist superpowers, the U.S. and China. The competing interests can be a landmine for an eventual world war—something no imperialist is yet ready but all preparing for.
Eritrea, former enemy of war, is on the side of Abiy administration. Egypt, a competitor, can “could exploit current circumstances to sow further divisions…Somalia’s fragile government has long been underwritten by Ethiopian security…Finally, the United Arab Emirates has interests in both Ethiopia and Eritrea, and enjoys good relations with Abiy and Isaias — as well as Egypt and Sudan’s military brass” (Brookings, 11/16).
The U.S. ruling class’s internal weaknesses paralyze them from acting on their profit-driven needs. “The United States, meanwhile, has long deemed Ethiopia an important ally in a volatile region, and might have been an ideal intermediary. But the Trump administration’s wayward policies — including its unbalanced support for Egypt in the...Nile water negotiations — have left Washington with little clout at a moment of extraordinary peril” ((Brookings, 11/16).
Chinese imperialists wasted no time; they have poured money into Ethiopia, accounting for about 60 percent of foreign investment last year (Xinhua, 1/29). Recently, the Chinese bosses also established their first overseas military base in the neighboring country of Djibouti (see CHALLENGE, 12/9/16).
Under the president-elect Joe Biden’s administration, the U.S. imperialists will try to reclaim some of their influence in the region to counter their Chinese rivals. At stake is the chokepoint at the strait of Bab el-Mandeb.
Crisis opens the door to anti-worker violence
Local rulers of different ethnic groups have once again channeled the anger and distress of the working class from one region into violence against workers of other ethnic groups.
What is missing in this unstable mix is the leadership of communists and the building of a mass revolutionary party. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) can and must fill that void, uniting all workers and bringing internationalist politics and class struggle against this capitalist carnage. We must build that leadership for millions of workers and students and break free of the bosses’ global power struggles in the name of imperialist war.
The deadly consequences for the working class of this capitalist system are apparent and sharpening worldwide. We also see the mass fightback of workers and students who are standing up to the chaos and misery. PLP proudly salutes the example set by our class sisters and brothers and invites them to join our international struggle for a communist world without bosses or borders.

Jacob Lawrence, the great Black social realist artist and one of the major U.S. painters of the 20th century, understood that struggle was primary. The first and overdue exhibition from his mid-1950s series of paintings, Struggle: From the History of the American People, is now touring the U.S. When it came to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in an opening delayed by the pandemic, long lines greeted viewers. But this unique exhibition was worth the wait. Unlike most Met exhibitions, this show featured the politics of struggle. Lawrence (1917-2000) counted communists like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright among his friends. While he never joined the Communist Party himself, he had a deep understanding of the racist inequalities of capitalism.
Lawrence knew struggle from an early age.  His parents were part of the Great Migration of Black workers who left their persecution in the South in the early and mid-20th century to seek better job opportunities in the North.  The family lived briefly in Atlantic City, where Lawrence was born, before moving to Philadelphia, where his parents split up. Leaving Jacob and two siblings in foster homes, his mother moved to Harlem for better job prospects. The children joined her a couple years later, and Lawrence took art classes in the mid-1930s funded by the Federal Art Project, one of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies.  
  Framing art in antiracist and working-class struggle
Other artists, writers, and communist intellectuals recognized Lawrence’s incredible talent for design, his knowledge of history, and his singular focus to expose exploitation. After his Toussaint L’Ouverture series of 1938 won the young artist acclaim, he used a fellowship to fund his work on three more historical series about anti-racist fighters: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown.  In 1941, Lawrence completed his landmark Migration Series. This epic, 60-panel work showed the exploitation and hardships for Black workers in the South, the ordeal of their journeys to northern cities like Chicago and New York, and their challenges in adapting to new social structures. Lawrence’s family was part of that migration and his experiences informed his work. While he grew up in the supportive community of Harlem, he knew what it meant to live as a Black man in Jim Crow America. He had a sharp eye for the capitalist structures perpetuating racism, a hatred of the poison of racist segregation, and a deep appreciation for the power of working-class fightback.   
In the mid-1950s, during the height of the Cold War and U.S. anti-communism, Lawrence embarked on his Struggle series that’s now on exhibition . As he told an interviewer:
The history of the United States fascinates me.  Right now, I’m reading in it, looking for any episode that suggests a symbol of struggle.  The part the Negro has played in all these events has been greatly overlooked.  I intend to bring it out.  We were not just slaves before the Civil War.  We were volunteers in all the wars.  We played a great part.
Informed by Lawrence’s research at the Schomburg Library in Harlem, the result was a series of 30 paintings that ranged from the American Revolution to the War of 1812. The panels focus not on generals and politicians, but on the struggles of ordinary people.  Many represent the strivings of indigenous and women workers for social justice.  
The exhibition’s first panel, called . . . is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? – Patrick Henry, 1775,” quotes from Henry’s closing line from a speech in Richmond. It depicts a group of men gathered in a circle with fists raised in response to the speech. The exhibition catalogue points out the irony of Henry’s Give me liberty or give me death rhetoric, given that the War of Independence from Britain would perpetuate slavery. Like many of the “Founding Fathers,” Henry was a significant enslaver himself. At the time of his death, he owned 112 enslaved people (redhill.org).
Panel five shows a clash of swords, bayonets, and long knives, with Black soldiers fighting against the British. The title is: We have no Property!  We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country! – petition of many slaves, 1773.” The quotation comes from Herbert Aptheker’s A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (1951), in which slaves were petitioning the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Aptheker, a communist historian, was hounded by the U.S. government during the anti-communist assaults of the 1950s. The point is that there is a long history of workers struggling against racism.
The title of Panel 11 consists of a string of numbers followed by the words “—an informer’s coded message.”  In this panel, one figure in profile whispers into the ear of a man facing forward.  The string of numbers is the code used by the traitor Benedict Arnold when he betrayed the war movements of General George Washington.  The panel clearly references FBI informants who were called as witnesses to the mid-1950s hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.  The catalogue reproduces a photograph of McCarthy and his infamous lawyer Roy Cohn, who later went on to mentor the young Donald Trump. Many of Lawrence’s friends were called to such panels of inquisition; some had their careers ruined by informers.
The writers in the exhibition catalogue are a multiracial group of artists, curators, historians, and art collectors. One curator commented, “In the tradition of artist-educators, Lawrence produced his Struggle series to make history more rebellious, democratic, and complex in a manner that continues to resonate today.”   
Jacob Lawrence’s paintings brought real history alive in the spirit of Karl Marx, who with Friedrich Engels wrote in the 1848 Communist Manifesto: Workers of the world, unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains! Many artists today follow in Lawrence’s footsteps, and the exhibition catalogue includes illustrations of their works and their words. The exhibition is now at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama and then will move on to the Seattle Art Museum and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

NEW YORK CITY, November 18 – The liberal New York City (NYC) bosses’ racist handling of the pandemic is coming to a head as positive Covid-19 cases among students led liberal misleaders Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to shut down school buildings and revert back to all remote learning today.
These past two months have taught the working class—students, parents, and education workers—some lessons on who this system is built for and who it is built against. Progressive Labor Party in the education field is gathering virtually this Sunday to report back and share our experiences, lessons, and fightbacks.
Promising developments
This week, teachers’ anger bubbled over in recent social studies department meetings at two different Brooklyn high schools. A promising sign is that teacher frustration is not directed at students. School leaders who haven’t a clue on how to engage students in distance learning are demanding that teachers “figure it out.”  Heat in buildings has not kept pace with the need for open windows, leaving classrooms routinely just a few degrees warmer than the outdoors.  Through a class-conscious lens, teacher anger is being directed at school bosses, not at students.
In schools where communist ideas have a history, union chapters have been won over to the pro-student idea that our presence as education workers in school buildings is important to guarantee that it is safe to return. Otherwise the bosses will take shortcuts that risk student health. Some of the “me-first” ideology that capitalism teaches is being displaced as a more  pro-student form of class-consciousness is taking hold.  
But in schools where communist practices have taken root, school-based “equity teams” have moved from theoretical to actual antiracist work. An example is offering support for teachers in correctly handling racist outbursts in virtual classrooms.  
Going against the grain
Teachers are trained by the bosses, that when things go wrong, they should blame students and their parents. But most of us also know on some level that the main purpose of schools under capitalism is not to educate working-class students to become critical thinking humans, but rather to recreate capitalist inequities and teach students to accept them.
It’s no wonder,then, that remote and hybrid education is a mess that leaves both students and their educators frustrated. For instance, it’s hard to teach a class of students when their cameras are off.  Kids are depressed because they live in a world where there is no sense of a stable future, short or long term.
Teaching students that their anger and sadness is a completely logical response to the crisis of capitalism is necessary. Above all, teaching students that they have to become part of a movement to smash this racist system is the most important lesson we as communists and antiracist fighters need to impart. When feeling frustrated in school the best remedy is to become more political with students!