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France workers’ rage reveals fracturing EU & world order
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- 22 December 2018 70 hits
The Yellow Vest anti-government movement in France is driven by the rage of masses who are profoundly dissatisfied with capitalist society, its politicians, and above all, with banker-president Emmanuel Macron. But lacking revolutionary communist ideas and leadership, these working-class fighters will be funneled into dead-end political options: passivity, electoral politics, cynicism, even open fascism.
As the rebellion continued into its fifth week, a multiracial movement of high school students has put forward some of the most anti-racist and class-conscious ideas in the movement. Little noted in the bosses’ newspapers, the students are having a multiracial fight in defense of open admissions. From what we can tell, their resistance is more integrated than the protests in Paris and other cities, where super-exploited workers from immigrant neighborhoods are mostly conspicuous by their absence.
Students in over 350 schools nationwide barricaded their schools and took to the streets, blocking roads and fighting back against the cops’ brutal attacks. Students are angry over the change in exit exams instigated last year by Macron, which makes it more difficult to graduate from high school or attend college. They are also protesting a proposal for forced national service (France 24, 12/11). Rejecting the inequality and nationalism inherent in capitalism has earned these students a brutal response. Images of dozens detained on their knees, hands laced behind their heads tore across social media last week. The pictures stoked mass outrage against Macron’s police state, where cops use tactics reminiscent of Nazi roundups of resistance fighters during World War II.
Worker-Student Alliance
The Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) take their name from the roadside hazard vests the protesters have adopted as a symbol of their class anger. In the largest and most militant protests in France since the 1968 general strike, hundreds of thousands of workers have been in the streets for over a month.
The protesters have demanded an end to the “efficiency” program Macron promised in his 2017 campaign and ruthlessly implemented after his election. The rebellion began in rural areas and the suburbs, where a heavy gas tax hurts workers chased out of the cities by gentrification and the resulting increase in the cost of living. Macron’s “solution for people who can’t afford food by the end of the month is to buy solar panels and electric cars” (Washington Post, 12/5).
The French bosses are trembling at the potential of an anti-capitalist student-worker alliance. They remember the May 1968 general strike that forced President Charles de Gaulle to flee the country. It began with students taking over universities and eventually spread to workers taking over factories. More than two-thirds of the French working class actively participated in this near-revolution. Will history repeat itself? “Worryingly for the Macron administration, there are tentative signs the unrest may also be spreading to universities, where students are angry at the government’s plans to hike fees for non-EU nationals in a bid to make French universities ‘more competitive’” (France 24, 12/11).
We want the whole baguette!
After the third week of protests, Macron attempted to pacify the Yellow Vests by repealing his hated added gas tax. He added some negligible tax cuts for pensioners and a $114-a-month bump in the minimum wage. The bosses hope to buy off workers with crumbs—far short of the whole baguette that the more militant protests have demanded.
History shows us that unless workers seize state power, the bosses will steal back reform concessions. To end the general strike of 1968, the French ruling class increased wages for industrial workers by 35 percent and for others by 10 percent. Fifty years later, most workers are again struggling to make ends meet.
Without a clear antiracist, internationalist outlook, workers will continue to be divided and vulnerable to rotten capitalist ideology. Open racists like Marine Le Pen and her fascist National Rally party are attempting to sway the Yellow Vest movement to anti-immigrant ideas. The far right “has sent its own activists to join—critics say infiltrate—the protests, pushing its line that immigration is the central problem and that Mr. Macron sold out the country by agreeing to a nonbinding United Nations pact on migration recently reached in Marrakesh, Morocco” (New York Times, 12/16).
As little fascists like Le Pen square off against big fascists like Macron and fake leftists like Jean-Luc Melenchon, workers in France have no good choices—unless they break with liberal “democracy” and are won to a movement for communism.
This weakness in the Yellow Vest movement gives the bosses maneuverability to proceed with their top priority: preparing for inevitable world war.
Uniting native-born and foreign-born, white, Arab, and Black workers throughout France would shake the capitalist rulers to the core—and far beyond the halls of power in Paris. Working class power will come when our class realizes that we can organize the world to meet the needs of all, not for the profit of a few at our expense.
Liberal world order teeters
The liberal fascists in the European Union know they are in crisis. “While Britain’s political class is, rightly, in the spotlight for having made a mess of Brexit, the EU’s establishment is in a similar bind over its colossal failure to civilise the eurozone—with the rise of the xenophobic right the hideous result” (The Guardian, 12/13).
The EU bosses had high hopes that Macron could lead the way in forcing “economic structural reforms” to maintain the EU’s clout in its inter-imperialist competition with the U.S., China, and Russia.
If [Macron] can loosen hiring and firing rules, overhaul a deeply indebted unemployment benefit system and stick to deficit-reduction targets, he will effectively have robbed Germany of a major excuse not to press ahead with eurozone reform plans (Politico, 7/18/17).
As Macron’s finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, put it more recently: “France’s attractiveness for investors is at stake. That is why it is important to remain on the path of reform” (BBC.com 12/11).
But the Yellow Vest protests have weakened Macron’s standing among bosses throughout Europe and the world. The repercussions could be severe. “Macron was the European establishment’s last hope. As a presidential candidate, he explicitly recognised that ‘if we don’t move forward, we are deciding the dismantling of the eurozone,’the penultimate step before dismantling of the EU itself” (The Guardian, 12/13).
Red vest of communism
In the absence of determined, internationalist, class-conscious leadership—in a word, communist leadership—workers in motion will be open for co-optation. Yet the working class remains the wild card that can force bosses to recalculate their plans for war and fascism. An unorganized movement to break the bosses’ laws is not enough. Our next step is to gain confidence as a class to overthrow the ruling class parasites—to trade the Yellow Vests of reform for the red vests of communist revolution.
Under communism, we will reorganize society to meet workers’ needs and end exploitation forever. National borders and imperialist war will be abolished. In each militant uprising, we see a flash of the strength we will need to accomplish such a task. While the goal of communism remains distant, the forces that will create it refuse to be extinguished. As Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “Let the ruling classes of the world tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. We have a world to win.”
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Worldwide, workers break bosses’ laws
France is far from the only country where workers are mobilizing to break the bosses’ laws. In recent months, workers fleeing capitalist chaos in Central America crossed into Mexico with no regard for the bosses’ borders.
In Haiti, tens of thousands of workers and youth, incensed by rotten PetroCaribe corruption and robbery, overcame the Haitian ruling class’s best efforts to crush them. In November, they organized the biggest demonstrations in Haiti since 2004, paralyzing the island in what amounted to a one-day nationwide general strike.
In China, meanwhile, thousands of “mass incidents” are erupting each year, threatening to derail the efforts of the capitalist Chinese “Communist” Party to pursue its program of ruthless profit-seeking and imperialist expansion (Economist, October 2018).
The caravan movement suffers from religious pacifism and the misguided aspiration of “making it to America.” In Haiti, illusions over the possibility of an “uncorrupted” capitalism limit how far workers and youth can go. The left in China is still small and heavily repressed.
Yet, in each case, workers’ courage in the face of police terror has forced the rulers in their countries to take notice—and to fear the wrath of the working class.
BROOKLYN, December 3—When high school bosses suddenly suspended three Black football coaches, one without pay and health insurance, over a hundred students and parents rallied to call out the systematic racism of the Department of Education. As a result, 11 police cars, vans, an ambulance and a fire truck rushed to the school. They are so quick to treat working-class Black and Latin children and parents as criminals!
Despite the Department of Education’s (DoE) talk of equity, the liberal DoE and the New York Police Department collaborate to attack working-class Black and Latin students. They demonstrate over and over how fearful they are of organized Black and Latin students and parents.
In a climate of intimidation and fear, antiracists and communists are working to create an atmosphere of fightback. The Progressive Labor Party fights for the political outlook that Black and Latin students are key to an antiracist and egalitarian future. We cannot be silent as this capitalist institution dehumanizes and crushes the leadership potential of our youth.
Climate of racist intimidation and hypocrisy
Three football coaches, all Black men respected by the community, were suspended from work after one of them reported a fight in the boys’ locker room. The DoE prohibited the coaches from contacting students and parents but did not tell the workers the reason for the investigation. The football team, students, and education workers were shocked and angered by the DoE’s withholding of information. Two coaches have been suspended without pay and have had their families’ insurance cut since they are not members of the United Federation of Teachers, the teachers’ union.
The school administration claims to value and support student leadership; when students took the lead in organizing fightbacks, these mainly Black and Latin teenagers were threatened with suspension from both the school and football team. Administrators spent an entire morning calling parents of students who were suspected of fighting back.
Why has this urgency and persistence not been used to fight the DoE against the racist metal detectors that criminalize our students every day, or to fight for a change in the lead pipes contaminating our students’ drinking water, or to fight the underfunding our school faces?
Some people in the school community are hoping that the bosses’ politicians will make changes and save us. Yet, the politicians have not and cannot give the working class the schools we deserve. This clearly demonstrated that this racist education system can never serve the needs of our students and families.
Never meant to liberate
During this investigation, students have been arrested. Families and the school community have been given little to no information about what happened to these children. Despite the liberal bosses’ talk about “restorative approaches to discipline” as an alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline, the DoE and NYPD work hand in hand to control Black and Latin students. This collaboration with the number one terrorist organization in the country, the police, exposes this ruling-class institution of education for what it is—an instrument of control.
The main goal of schools is to serve the class in power. In other words, schools under capitalism serve and protect capitalism. While DoE actively silences and suppresses youth, struggles teach us that fightback is the only viable response in the face of that suppression.
The liberal bosses are the main danger. They used advisory groups, which are taught to be discussions where students are viewed as “equals,” to temper working-class anger. This shows that liberal school bosses have the same goals as any other capitalist administration. They just use different weapons of ideological control to maintain a division between the future workforce. Many in the school are fearful, but others have not lost their fighting spirit!
Yet, we fight back
One teacher in a union meeting said we need to show solidarity for our co-workers who have less protection than teachers in the union. Two years ago, this teacher refused to sign a petition to support a Black veteran teacher who was reprimanded for neglecting to post information on the board. He realized that his silence benefits the bosses and that it’s impossible to be “neutral” when a fellow worker is being attacked. He promised to be more active and to stand up when he can. His speaking out at the union meeting about racism is a good start.
Some students continue to protest, decorating and wearing shirts in solidarity with the suspended staff. They chanted in support of the suspended staff at a school event and confronted the principal. In response, the principal said the situation was out of their control. The student bravely retorted, “Did you stand up for them?”
This effectively exposed and silenced the racist principal.
Though many are fearful, some understand the need to fight. They stand up and encourage others to do the same. As more students struggled to fight through the fear, one student felt discouraged.
Another student said, “Don’t worry. Remember the novel we are reading in class? The character showed us that movements take time to build. Sometimes it just starts with one person standing up and then it grows. Just keep trying.”
Lesson of the day
The Progressive Labor Party has been fighting along with students and co-workers for years. We will continue to build a culture of fightback and student leadership in our school. When a multiracial group of students, parents, and teachers are united, we disrupt the natural pattern of this system. In these fightbacks lies the germ of a communist culture.
As 2018 comes to a close, we review and summarize the highlights of the past year in struggle. While it may appear to have been “more of the same”—expanding imperialist wars and growing racism, sexism and fascism.Yet 2018 was so much more than that for our class. It was a year that showed the potential for expanding mass antiracist fightback and opportunities for communists to spread revolutionary ideas to masses around the world! As always, the working class fought back hard in 2018. A big part of being a communist means placing our confidence and revolutionary optimism in the international working class. Our class shows the growing numbers of workers and students in the international communist Progressive Labor Party the way forward.
Only communism can provide what the working class in every one of these struggles needs. The attacks on workers worldwide will produce more and more uprisings. We must be present in every one of them, organizing solidarity on the job and on campus, explaining that these fights are schools for communism. They teach us how to take power and organize an antiracist, anti-sexist, egalitarian world.
Mass struggle kicked off 2018
The year started with hundreds of thousands marching in the second annual Women’s Marches in the U.S. and worldwide. Thousands of healthcare workers marched in Oaxaca, Mexico. Worldwide, workers and students welcomed and supported refugees amid the worst refugee crisis in human history—created and worsened daily by the sharpening rivalry among the world’s imperialists. In Brooklyn, NY hundreds of immigrant rights organizers and Legal Aid and Brooklyn Defender lawyers rallied against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In Baltimore, Maryland, the year began with dozens protesting against the racist kkkops who were framing Keith Davis for murder. In Brooklyn, dozens of high school students fought to keep a popular class from being cut. The Progressive Labor Party was in all these struggles, calling on workers and students to organize for communist revolution instead of relying on the bosses’ Democratic Party politicians.
Racist police terror and fightback
In the U.S., the struggle against racist police killings did not let up. In a number of places, it flared up into small rebellions.
Baltimore: PL’ers participated in the 272nd West Wednesday rally to remember the police murder of Tyrone West.
Chicago: Tyrone Williams, a Black worker, was arrested in court for protesting the privileged treatment given to killer kkkop Jason Van Dyke. In October, Van Dyke was finally convicted of second degree murder. Then the CPD killed Maurice Granton, and in another case, Augustus Harith, sparking a small rebellion. Workers and PL’ers are organizing in the wake of Jemel Roberson’s murder by the police.
Brooklyn: In August, Kyam Livingston’s mother held the 60th monthly rally demanding justice for the death of her daughter in jail.
In July, PLP won a victory against the racist injustice system in California: The “Anaheim 3,” who had stood up to the Klan, won their case. One comrade, a Black worker, must still wait another year to have his case finally dismissed. The fight continues.
Worldwide struggle
All over the world, the working class fought back. The Party was often in the middle of these battles.
In Puerto Rico, the working class united following the catastrophic Hurricane María and the gutter racist neglect of the U.S. bosses and their current servant, President Donald Trump. PL’ers and friends traveled there and joined the rebuilding efforts in solidarity, building friendships and comradeships that show potential for PLP to grow and lead militant fightback.
In Haiti, the Party has been involved in massive protests against fuel price increases and against government corruption in the PetroCaribe scandal, where several billion dollars were stolen. We are also involved in smaller local struggles.
In Oaxaca, Mexico, indigenous workers organized a community trial of the government and mining companies. On many campuses, students went on strike when thugs beat some protesting students. More than 30,000 marched on the main campus.
Meanwhile, PLP organized a study group of Mexican women and a conference for young people. And, of course, the workers of Mexico provided a welcome to the workers of the migrant caravan. They provided food, clothing, and housing as the workers marched to the U.S. border to seek asylum.
In Pakistan, PLP is struggling to win workers to communism and away from union misleaders who promote voting.
In China, workers of the world witnessed the birth of a new communist movement. It has potential to link up with many workers’ struggles that those outside of China never hear about.
This movement is serious enough that the Chinese capitalist rulers are cracking down on it. PL’ers are reaching out to this young movement.Last but not least, at year’s end, we have a major rebellion in France. Unemployment is high, wages are low, and retirement funding is inadequate. President Emmanuel Macron, a former banker, is trying to make France attractive to investors by making workers’ lives even more difficult. When the bosses raised gas prices, the working class exploded (see page 2). This uprising shows the tremendous power of the working class, and that it will always rise up! The reform struggle has won some crumbs, but these workers need the communist PLP to go for it all—to seize state power under communism.
The fightback list goes on
Back in the U.S., Trump worked hard trying to eclipse Obama’s racist legacy of deporting over three million workers. As Trump tore families apart, the working class responded. At LaGuardia Airport in New York City, workers welcomed immigrant children. In Texas, thousands demanded the abolition of ICE.
In Los Angeles, workers blocked a Homeland Security van. In Indiana, workers tried to block an airplane from leaving with immigrants who were being deported. At the Families Belong Together march in New York City, on a day of 700 rallies across the U.S., 30,000 marched with a vigorous PLP contingent.
The fightback list goes on:
Workers went on strike at an airport in Turkey.
Nurses in Chicago struck, as well as hotel workers in Hawaii, teachers in West Virginia, and workers all over China.
Howard University students in Washington, DC, occupied the main administration building to fight racism and sexism on campus and support neighborhood workers.
At Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, students and workers supported cafeteria workers with a militant march that saw the college’s interim president flee the campus in fear. After exposing a racist administrator, a growing group of immigrant women and Black youth continues to fight anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim racism.
At Park Slope Collegiate, a secondary school in Brooklyn, students, staff, and parents are still fighting for school integration and defending communist, antiracist teachers.
Cheers to another year of struggle!
A system that destroys the lives of so many workers, the class that creates all wealth and value, does not deserve to exist. With their profit system in another crisis, imperialist rulers are plotting to bring even more devastation and misery as they organize for the next world war. Join the fight against capitalism. May Day is coming! Join with us as we march for a communist world, a world run by the working class.
CHICAGO, December 4—“I attended high school here and the administration fired one of our favorite teachers so the student’s lead a protest in and outside of school to bring him back…that protest changed my life. I never had a voice before and after that protest I decided what I needed to do with my life and that is to use my voice to make change in the world that’s what brought me out to the picket line today to support the teachers.”
This alumni Acero charter school student supported the first charter school strike in the country. Acero strike united students and parents on the picket lines for five of the unseasonal coldest days of the year. Parents and students brought coffee and doughnuts each day and joined the picket lines.
This student-parent-teacher unity is one of the pillars of an antiracist, communist culture. Progressive Labor Party supported the strike and brought the message of antiracism to the crowd. We fight for the idea that Acero schools’ working conditions are the 7,000 students’ learning conditions.
The education workers fought for pro-student and antiracist demands: smaller class sizes, meaningful sanctuary protections for the mostly immigrant students/ communities that Acero serves, and resources for students with language and special needs.
They also fought for better wages for the mainly Black and Latin paraprofessional and support staff workers. These workers have been deprived of salary increases since Acero unionized in May 2013. Teachers fought and won pay schedules that mirror the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). “Acero teachers earn, on average, $13,000 less than their peers in Chicago’s traditional public schools while also working around 20 percent more hours, the [CTU] union says” (NY Mag, 12/6).
Charter schools reinforce segregation and submission
This Acero win is only one part of a protracted fight that educators, students, parents, and the rest of the working class must unite around. Acero, like most charter schools, are organized to make money for wealthy backers and top administrators. However, that is not their main purpose. In addition to disciplining mainly Black and Latin students to take orders, the main purpose of charter schools is to divide our class. The bosses do this by dividing District teachers from Charter teachers; students from teachers; parents from teachers and students. Charter schools, because of their punitive discipline policies and their harsh rules they win teachers, students, and parents to a racist lie. Black and Latin youth are brainwashed into thinking that you’re weak if you can’t follow the rules or keep up with the piles of nightly homework. Many charters stress compliance among their primarily Black and Latin student body they service in working-class communities.
The growth of charter schools in Chicago, from 2005 to 2015, coincided with the destruction of public housing and the city’s loss of 250,000 Black people. Now the school district which was majority Black has shifted since 2010 to Latin students. Chicago district schools saw 83,000 fewer Black students in 2016 than it did in 2000, a loss of 36 percent (WBEZ).
In 2013, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed 50 schools in Black neighborhoods for “under-enrollment”. Many charter schools had opened in these same underpopulated neighborhoods, promising a better education but never delivering. In the early 2000s, when Chicago’s Latin population was growing, CPS made a decision to build new public schools rather than integrate Latin students into existing predominately Black schools. Later, the Acero charter network took advantage of Chicago’s growing Latin population by establishing 15 schools in Latin neighborhoods.
The only solution is communist revolution
Our job as communist is to win parents, students and teachers to see that all schools—charter, or otherwise—exist to educate our students for the ruling class. The U.S. is losing its hold as the number one imperialist in the world. That means world war is on the horizon, due to sharpening threats from rival imperialists in China and Russia. The same students that teachers like Acero’s fight for, will be cannon fodder for imperialist armies. The Progressive Labor Party, unlike other organizations involved in the Acero fight, consistently advocates for communist revolution as the solution to the horrors of capitalism. Struggles, such as the one waged by Acero workers, are important because of the lessons learned in the process.
Time and time again, when workers fight for better working and living conditions, we are given a few reforms and permission to vote for our next ruler. Workers keep voting, and Black and Latin working class communities still get attacked. Workers keep voting, yet the schools continue to be shut down. Immigrant workers still get deported and Black youth are still gunned down by kkkops. The countless politicians that played on workers’ cynicism to get votes are that many reasons why the ballot is a failed path to workers’ liberation.
Only overthrowing the racist, sexist and imperialist system called capitalism, and building a borderless communist world will ever give us the world the working class deserves. Join the international PLP to create a world where education is truly a right for the world’s workers!
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Fight the fascist collaboration of NYPD and Israeli miltiary
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- 22 December 2018 75 hits
New York City December 10,–About 400 members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other organizations marched tonight to the offices of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to protest ADL’s sponsorship of U.S. police training by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). There were simultaneous marches inTel Aviv, Israel, and several other U.S. cities. These actions along with the pressure mounted by JVP caused two police departments to cancel their trips to Israel, which has never happened before.
Soon after 9/11, police departments from many major U.S cities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the New York City (NYC) Transit Authority and other security organizations made these trips to Israel to learn from the police, military and intelligence agencies there.
They are interested in Israel’s advanced techniques for controlling mass protests, collecting intelligence, recruiting informants, profiling at airports, and using drones for spying and investigations.
In 2009, the NYC police modeled their units for spying on Muslims and recruiting informants on Israeli practices. Some Israeli-trained units coordinated the attacks on Occupy encampments in many U.S. cities.
Always needing more tools for terrorizing and controlling immigrants and black and Latin workers, U. S. police are increasingly eager to learn from their fascist counterparts.
Murderous allies
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank and Gaza for 60 years and treats its own Palestinian citizens, dark-skinned Jews, and immigrant workers harshly.
Since independence in 1948, Israel has systematically driven most Palestinians off their land and into the occupied territories, where it continues to steal more land by building fortified settlements in the West Bank. Gaza, a 141 square mile area containing 1.85 million people, is completely surrounded by a wall and has been massively attacked by the Israeli army many times, killing at least 3,600 and wounding tens of thousands in the 2008 and 2014 attacks alone. Over the last 7 months, over 200 unarmed Gazan protesters have been killed and over 18,000 wounded.
The infrastructure of Gaza has been so destroyed, that there is barely any drinkable water, electricity only a few hours a day and a severe shortage of medicines.
Nonetheless, Israel is one of the U.S.’s closest allies and receives over $3 billion in annual military aid. Israel’s nuclear-armed military, by far the most powerful in the region, is the main U.S. guarantor of control over the vast reserves of oil in the Middle East.
Just as with Saudi Arabia, which has killed over 80,000 in Yemen, mass murder doesn’t mean that the U.S will not support its allies when valuable resources are at stake.
So-called social justice organization
The ADL, which claims to be a civil rights organization, recently blamed murder of 12 Jews in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania on white supremacist anti-Semites, and JVP. Because JVP opposes the Israeli occupation, of the West Bank ADL and many other Zionist (pro-Israel as a Jewish state) organizations, accuse the organization, of causing anti-Semitism. In reality, the brutal and racist treatment of Palestinians has contributed to an increase in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment in the world. The promotion of racism by right-wing forces like Trump and nationalists in Europe and South America is even more important.
In order to fight fascism, which is growing worldwide as economic, political and military conflicts sharpen,a multiracial international communist movement is needed, like we build in PLP. A weakness of the JVP actions was that they were nearly all Jewish, despite some attempts to build a broader coalition. The police who train in Israel are learning to repress workers of every stripe who dare to rebel, and we must build better ties with Arab, Black, Latin, immigrant and all workers to fight back .
Workers are taught to divide themselves along national or ethnic lines –identity politics. In reality, bosses are embedded in every such group. Instead, we must unite with all of our working class brothers and sisters throughout the world if we are to ever become strong enough to fight fascism or overthrow this racist capitalist system.
