Profit system treats children as dispensable
Several Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades joined a coalition of housing groups on November 3 to protest child homelessness in NYC. More than 104,000 public school children in NYC are homeless, 55,000 of whom are without shelter.
As we gathered in a primary schoolyard we saw a teacher explaining to her students why we were there. Young people led the rally and one speaker reported that while she’s not homeless herself she was protesting in solidarity with her peers who are homeless. Black, Latin, Asian and white united as we marched in the community chanting, “Tenants united will never be defeated,” “Tax the rich, house the poor,” and “What do we want? Housing! If we don’t get it, shut it down!”
PL’ers connected with old and new friends distributing 18 CHALLENGEs as we emphasized the militant housing fight back in Chicago on the front page. A comrade sent a comment to the members of the housing group she’s in saying the march was good, but we need to put antiracism up front. The majority of homeless children and adults in NYC are Black and Latin. She received two thumbs up responses.
PL’ers have been involved in a community organization for many years. We raise PLP’s ideas, have recruited new members and organized an ongoing study group. Recently comrades have been distributing fight homelessness leaflets and CHALLENGE in the streets of our community of concentration.
As we stand up and fight back inside the community organization we want to continue the Party’s presence in the street. Let’s seize the opportunities to lead class struggle and boldly win the working class to revolutionary communist ideas!
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Inspired by struggle against identity politics
Though retired for a few years now, recently I’ve been helping to organize for Progressive Labor Party on college campuses. So I’ve attended the yearly college conference for the last several years. They were all very positive, but this year’s conference was amazing. I was not just encouraged; I was inspired. And it was the new, young leaders that were so very impressive. By young I mean some that were in the Party for a year or two, while others were on the verge of joining.
During the opening session a comrade raised the issue of identity politics. A veteran comrade made the case against identity politics, but the issue was really left sort of hanging in the air. But not for long. It came up in several workshops with some new members being supportive of identity politics. And these were fighters who believed in multiracial unity and had been in struggles against racism from their college campus to Haiti. These were young working class fighters and organizers trying to learn and be stronger antiracists and communists.
But what really impressed and inspired me was the response of two young Black women leaders. In one workshop they patiently tore apart identity politics. They explained how it was a recent, higher education invention and how it divided the working class. How there was no such thing as white privilege; it was racism. How these divisive ideas originated and are being promoted on college campuses and did not have that great an influence in working class communities. I was so impressed with the quiet confidence, knowledge and sharpness of these young Black women leaders.
I briefly spoke to one of these women after the workshops and congratulated her on her leadership role. She mumbled a thank you and then added, but I think I spoke too much. That immediate self-criticism impressed me even more. The future of our Party is in good hands.
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Who should dictate: capitalists or workers?
At a Senior Center discussion group about abortion, I said communists were the first society that legalized abortion. A woman replied, “But communism is a dictatorship”, so I asked the following.
Who dictates…
If women get life saving or needed abortions?
If women and children suffer poverty, homelessness, poor health and starvation?
If women suffer sexism, especially cultural oppression that promotes inequality?
If women are forced to support and die in endless profit wars?
I replied that today it’s the worldwide capitalist class dictatorship’s greed for profits and privileges that determines and promotes sexist, divisive inequality and oppression within the working class.
Women in Iran and worldwide don’t need to just cut their hair; they need to cut their connections to their capitalist dictatorships and create their own communist society that can dictate their right to equality, abortions, education, housing, jobs and an end to sexism, racism, profits, classes, nationalism, endless capitalist wars and religious persecution.
I’ve had these discussions before with the workers thinking about it and the discussions will continue.
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Workers still fighting covid and capitalism
Capitalists have weaponized this disease against workers, using it to cull the less “productive” workers–the elderly and the ill, especially Black communities in the U.S. and Black and Brown countries worldwide. This is genocide and marks the growing tide of fascism. In the wake of the 1918 Influenza pandemic, Nazis rose to power in part by targeting the disabled and ill.
Meanwhile, capitalists continue to reap obscene profits off the pandemic, creating a global wave of inflation that has wreaked havoc on low income workers. The Big Fascists like Joe Biden and Goldman Sachs parrot concern while overseeing draconian economic measures to create mass unemployment and poverty worldwide in the name of fighting inflation. The imperialist U.S. and Russian bosses have started a war that threatens our entire planet with nuclear apocalypse when all workers want is peace to be able to recover from the pandemic.
When will we learn that capitalism can NEVER solve our problems? It only brings workers misery and death. Communism is the only practical solution at this point in human history. Let’s never forget the genocide that these filthy capitalists have waged against the working class as we rise up and put the bosses in their graves!
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