MEXICO, October 20—In a community east of Mexico City, where the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been organizing for almost three decades and CHALLENGE circulates regularly, a group of approximately 150 residents organized to prevent the theft and dismantling of the Infrastructure and Network of Electric Power. Workers of the state controlled Federal Electricity Commission’s (CFE, Spanish acronym) contractors steal the existing better-quality copper wiring and install poorer quality wiring.That is the main reason why workers in the area are opposed to changing their electrical power wiring and the installation of the new meter system. Not only is it a breach of the agreement that they entered with former employees of defunct Luz y Fuerza del Centro  (see CHALLENGE 1/26/2017), but it would also result in a rate increase. The advancement of CFE plans that they deceitfully want to impose as a supposed benefit to the population, will cause greater service deficiencies and bigger profits for the financial bosses.
Workers counter growing fascism with class struggle
A crew of about 20 CFE workers arrived in the community. This time they were accompanied by members  of three police forces: municipal cops, a special state police group and National Guard elements, which are military police. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has militarized the police, to guarantee the bosses’ projects, and repress the people that protest against them. (CHALLENGE 2/6). This spectacular display failed to intimidate the brave neighborhood residents who confronted the overbearing CFE gang leader. The neighbors had a small victory when they forced the CFE workers and the cops who protected them to leave.
The tensest moment came when the police tried to surround some of our comrades who have helped to organize and lead this movement, but far from being cowed, they managed to escape the encirclement. They took shelter and began to organize the next action in which one of the objectives is to summon a larger group of neighbors big enough to surround the police. These plans reflect the fact that the best lessons on confronting growing fascism are learned amid class struggle.
With the existing copper cables, some working-class  neighbors improvise connections in order, according to the company, to “steal” electricity. By switching to aluminum cables, this will no longer be possible. Similarly, the new digital meters allow the CFE to remotely cut off service at debtor homes. The government, the bosses, and their media have tried to call these workers who "steal" electricity or have payment debts abusers and thieves, who prevent modernizing the electrical infrastructure.
At the same time, they hide the fact that the CFE grants millions of dollars in subsidies for electrical service to large and medium-sized private and state companies.
Co-opt and attack: what liberal fascists do best
In 2009, the criminal government of President Felipe Calderón fully acquired the electricity company, Compañía de Luz y Fuerza del Centro, which left around 40,000 electrical workers unemployed. The CFE used contractors to keep providing service, which caused excessive and irregular charges, so that residents, mainly from marginalized neighborhoods, organized together with some of the fired workers from Luz y Fuerza, against these unfair charges. They also promoted a payment strike and other actions to prevent any electrical infrastructure changes. This is what happened in this community with PLP’s leadership.
AMLO’s liberal government has launched a defamatory and repressive campaign against social movements to carry out the bosses’ plans. Supported by its political force, it has managed to appease traditionally combative sectors of the working class, such as the teachers of Section 22 of Oaxaca. The movements that it fails to co-opt, it tries to intimidate or represses. That is what happened here and with other movements like the movement against the Morelos Comprehensive Plan.  
PLP’s presence in this type of struggle, in addition to confirming our trust and dedication to our class, is key to unmasking the liberal politicians as enemies of the workers and building the organization to end this criminal system. The international working class must support these actions of resistance to the bosses' plans. This solidarity across borders produces a powerful force to confront fascism.

After nearly 200 days of protesting the cops who murdered 26-year-old Black Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), Breonna Taylor, the city of Louisville, Kentucky agreed to pay a settlement of 12 million dollars to Taylor’s family. The settlement is considered “historic” because it is one of the largest payouts (and in a relatively short amount of time) for a police killing of a Black worker in the U.S. Meanwhile, the one cop who was charged, did so for accidentally spraying his ammo into a neighboring apartment.
No amount of money will substitute for the lives stolen by this system, no matter how many times the bosses try to wash their blood-soaked hands with it. Racism is essential for capitalists to divide and control the working class and the ruling class will never truly punish the thugs who maintain their power. Therefore, we are left with one choice: turn our anger into action and organize ourselves into the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) for communist revolution.
Louisville: the rule, not the exception
There’s a heap of lies surrounding the actions of Louisville police. The attorney general, Daniel Cameron, lied about the grand jury unanimously agreeing to drop charges against the officers. Then, Cameron used his race to appeal to the Black community as he stood before the public to say that the officers would not be charged. In one account, the officers claim to have had a no-knock search warrant, but say they knocked and announced themselves anyway. In another account, they claim to have had a “no-knock” warrant initially, but then claimed that it changed to a “knock and announce” warrant.
Either way, “no-knock” warrants will never stop the police from murdering workers, especially Black workers. As Professor Alex Vitale said in his book, The Ending of Policing, the police are “violence-workers”. They are trained to be violent, and use excessive force in Black and immigrant communities. Police reforms like those promoted by Black Lives Matter-aligned groups cannot deter them from doing that job.
Take the body cameras, for instance. Since the killing of Mike Brown in 2014, the use of body cameras was expanded. Yet, the cops have shot and killed nearly the same number of people every year since (Washington Post). In the case of Breonna Taylor’s murder, the footage from the body-camera was only recently made public and strongly suggests the lack of integrity of the crime scene after the raid and the investigation that followed.
The city of Louisville installed their first Black woman chief of police, Yvette Gentry. When asked what she thought about the lack of reforms in the department, Gentry said the reforms would “take a life of their own” and made clear that she’s “not a fan of taking too many tools off the table”, claiming that it’s more of a matter of recruiting the “right men and women.” This is how the ruling class uses identity politics to persuade workers into fighting for broken reforms and accepting  the racist murders capitalism has to offer. But no matter the gender, race, or ethics of the individual person, or which end of the political spectrum they are on, the job of the police is to protect and serve the ruling class and to keep the working class subdued. It’s in their history.
Police: frontline defenders of capitalism
Today’s police are descendants of capitalism’s growing need to terrorize and control the working class. Their origins began in the British colonial era, when the bosses formed patrols of native-born Irish workers in 1812 to suppress violent Irish working class rebellions against British imperialism. Wearing distinctive uniforms with copper metal buttons, these “coppers” or “cops” were formed in London as masses of workers first joined militant trade unions in the 1820s.
By 1855, policing was adopted by the U.S. bosses in rapidly industrializing Chicago, amid growing working class strike movements. While the British bosses may have invented the concept of police, it was their former apprentices, the U.S. bosses who gave birth to racism, who took it and ran with it. The Chicago Police Department, is comprised of fugitive slave catchers, terrorist anti-union Pinkerton detectives and later KKK scum, soon spread their model to cities like New York and everywhere as this model was adopted by capitalists worldwide, all developing into the police forces we know today.
While bosses try to placate the working class with a number of police reforms, including implementing what they’ve called, “Breonna’s Law”, which bans no-knock search warrants—it can never alter the fundamental character of what the police are.
The ruling class has nothing to offer the working class. The working class as a whole cannot be bought or bribed into forgetting the rulers who murder us for the sake of profit. What will truly be historic is when the entire international working class unites behind the red banners of PLP, and throws this entire capitalist system into the garbage can of history once and for all.

Hundreds of workers and community members at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center have signed a petition “Beds not Body Bags” protesting racist Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to consolidate three hospitals (Kingsbrook, Brookdale and Interfaith). This would eliminate over 200 hospital beds as we move into a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. These hospitals are located in and serve the heavily Black neighborhoods of Flatbush, Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, and Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Cuomo serves the billionaire capitalists of Wall Street and New York real estate; racism is the lifeblood of  capitalism.
Over the last 20 years over 20,000 hospital beds have been cut in New York State.  Cuomo closed Long Island College Hospital Center, pared down Brookdale Hospital, and closed many services at Downstate Medical Center. Many workers were laid off, mostly women and Black, Latin and Asian workers. In the end, Brooklyn has 2.2 hospital beds per 1000 people while Manhattan has 6.4 beds per 1000 people.
Covid-19 a disaster in Brooklyn after years of cuts
The lack of infrastructure in medical care caused by the continual cuts led to thousands of unnecessary deaths in the outer boroughs of NYC even before Covid-19. The pandemic starkly exposed the racist nature of these cuts. You can put a bunch of beds in the hospital cafeteria, but you can’t staff them quickly. Skeleton teams  of nurses, doctors, technical, and housekeeping staff could not keep the hospitals safe for patients or workers. Covid patients lying in hallways, shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), medications and bodies piling up in refrigerated trucks (and sometimes unrefrigerated trucks) were the order of the day. During the height of the pandemic in the spring, the hospitals being downsized were seeing  500 Covid patients a day. The years of cuts absolutely contributed to higher numbers of deaths in Brooklyn, especially of Black and Latin workers.
Capitalist inequality can’t be voted out
This goes way beyond racist Donald Trump. It implicates the whole capitalist class, and both Democratic and Republican politicians, as racist agents of genocide. Liberal politicians like Joe Biden and Cuomo get the cuts done. And they get away with it because they claim to be more pro-the-little-guy, more antiracist than the conservatives. The main finance wing of the ruling class needs this because they need more resources for maintaining their imperialist world empire (this means wars).  And union leaders are part of this liberal cover for the racist inequalities of capitalist health care. Instead of taking on liberal capitalist politicians like Cuomo, most union leadership tells people to vote for them on November 3rd. In Progressive Labor Party we say don’t vote, revolt. . Lead walkouts, rallies, marches, and strikes against racist health care. Unite hospital workers with our communities. But make no mistake. Capitalism will not, cannot provide decent health care for workers, especially Black and Latin workers. We need a revolution to get rid of it.
These cuts have prompted major fightback by hospital workers in Brooklyn in particular, but also nationally with strikes in Chicago and massive marches and rallies in the affected neighborhoods.  Over the years, Progressive Labor Party has joined and at times led marches and protests at Brookdale and Downstate. We will unite with all workers to help smash the racist system of capitalism that values profit over human life. Only an egalitarian communist revolution can create a society of equality and solidarity that can transform the capitalist world into a world where the international working class is empowered to run society. The rebellions against racist police terror all over the world this past summer show our class is ready to fight. Now we need you to join our Party (see www.plp.org) and help us fight not only for “beds not body bags” but also for communism.

NEW JERSEY, October 21— “Workers created unions to fight, not be in bed with the bosses. You run this union like a country club!” Class struggle has been heating up at Essex County College (ECC) with faculty and members of the Progressive Labor Party indicting their local racist local union misleaders at a local meeting recently against racist cutbacks and layoffs on staff and services amidst the pandemic.
PL’ers and friends have been in the thick of organizing fightback and student and staff unity, and the fight is only just beginning to fight back against these conditions and build a mass revolutionary communist PLP that can smash this entire system!
Cutbacks are racist attacks on students
ECC is a community college in Newark with currently around 5,000 working class students, with the majority of the students, faculty and staff Black, Latin, immigrant and women. Every cut and layoff is a racist and sexist attack on this student population, who depend on the staff and services being cut. Meanwhile, while the cuts were being announced, ECC received eight million dollars in federal Covid-19 relief.
Over the summer, ECC students and faculty organized 300 students and workers to sign a petition demanding to know where this money had disappeared to and presented it at an online Board of Trustees meeting. The students were not only prevented from speaking because of a rule requiring all comments be submitted 24 hours in advance, their petition was openly laughed at by several of the Trustees.
Furthermore, and conveniently for the bosses, the person who could best answer the students’ questions—ECC President Andrew Munroe— had just resigned to assume presidency of a college right across the Hudson River: at the City University of New York’s Borough of Manhattan Community College in neighboring New York City.   
Sharpening fascism and ‘shared sacrifice’
Fascist attacks on the working class in Newark have been sharpening for decades. ECC’s new president, Augustine Boakye, is connected to both Newark’s local real estate bosses and Democrat Mayor Ras Baraka through organizations like the Greater Newark Convention and Visitors’ Bureau.
The GNCVB and Big Fascist-tied investment banks Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and insurance giant Prudential have poured hundreds of millions of dollars to attract property developers and companies like Amazon while driving out working class Black residents (NYT, 11/26/19; PR Newswire, 9/26/19).
ECC’s Board of Trustees is composed of former politicians and lawyers from firms who have helped lead these attacks. ECC’s union chapter looks and acts like a capitalist country club: led by an all-white group of racist men whose chapter chair is paid more than the ECC president. The chapter is part of the National Educators’ Association (NEA), the largest union in the U.S. with over two million members. Along with their counterpart the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the union is close allies of the Big Fascist-aligned Democratic Party.
These fascist union misleaders have joined with the ECC Trustees and NJ Governor Murphy in calling for “shared sacrifice” through five per cent pay cuts, which will force faculty deeper into poverty and searching for additional jobs, all of which worsen student learning conditions.
Fightback grows
ECC students, faculty and PLP have waged years-long battles against both the ECC administration and these union misleaders. As a sign of our growing strength, after two years of struggle we scored an important victory in getting a racist, sexist administrator fired. With PLP leadership, faculty continue to expose the ECC union misleaders utter collaboration with the bosses, and more and more faculty who have never been “political” before are stepping up to join us.

During a recent faculty town hall following the Trustees meeting, PL’ers and friends received support for calls to unify with workers in other departments under attack, including a mail clerk who was recently laid off. This semester we are also organizing with our students who reported to faculty that ECC Enrollment Services has been utterly unresponsive to them due to the cuts. We are currently planning campus demonstrations with them, and using CHALLENGE to connect these struggles with the racist attacks on workers in Newark, and that it’s these same bosses driving our entire class to more fascism and imperialist wars.
Liberalism, identity politics main danger
Both ECC and Newark are led by Black misleaders—Ras Baraka, a liberal Democrat, was the target of PLP demonstration this summer. Workers are told to trust that these bosses somehow “identify” with Black workers’ struggles because of their race and/or gender—yet they are forcing the most brutal cuts! Communist leadership of worker fight-back is more necessary than ever in the face of liberal fascist and gutter fascist attacks on us.  As more workers see through their lies—the bosses won’t stand a chance!