The bitter U.S. midterm elections exposed the all-out battle within the U.S. ruling class—and how far the two main factions may be willing to go as they prepare for fascism and war. Both sides are attacking the liberal democratic trappings of capitalist dictatorship, from the U.S. Senate and Supreme Court to the vote-counting process itself. President Donald Trump called the ballots in Florida “massively infected.” The rulers’ mainstream media are worrying that the U.S. has “arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war” (nationalreview.com, 7/31). The New York Times’ Paul Krugman warned of “a growing crisis of legitimacy for the U.S. political system” (11/8).
As U.S. bosses fight among themselves, China’s more united imperialist rulers are positioning themselves to overtake them economically and militarily, from Africa to Latin America. As the Times recently noted in a five-alarm package of articles on China: “An isolated, impoverished backwater has evolved into the most significant rival to the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union” (11/18). From aggressive tariffs (taxes on imports) to rising tensions around Taiwan to a near collision of rival warships in the South China Sea, the two superpowers are charting a collision course for global conflict.
In periods of crisis, in order to close ranks against outside enemies while bringing workers at home to heel, the capitalists must discipline and unify their own class—by any means necessary. The midterm elections represented their latest clash over how best to keep their lethal profit system afloat. At some point, these disagreements will get bloodier.
Two parties, one capitalist nightmare
For workers, the stakes could not be higher. The U.S. bosses—Republicans or Democrats, open gutter racists or lying liberal misleaders—have nothing to offer us but racism, poverty, fascism, and imperialist war. Like fellow mass murderers George W. Bush and Barack Obama, or Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, they are two sides of the same nightmare. But in the absence of a world-wide communist movement, workers are vulnerable to the false ideology of voting as the road to social change. On November 6, the horrific racist policies of Trump and the Republikkkan Party led tens of millions to try to find something better.
Though only 47 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot, it still marked the highest turnout for a U.S. midterm since 1966 (npr.org, 11/8). There were 36 percent more voters under 30 than in 2014 (realclearpolitics.com, 11/8). Electoral enthusiasm spells progress for the bosses: “’When you have two Muslim-American women in Congress, suddenly every young Muslim-American woman sees that as a possibility,’ said Sayu Bhojwani, president of New American Leaders, an organization that helps immigrants run for public office” (NYT, 10/31). As the New York Times gloated, “Democracy did remarkably well last week” (11/14).
But there is no lesser evil under capitalism—only profit-driven evil. Capitalism cannot be reformed or voted into providing a decent life for workers. Only a communist revolution can stop racism, sexism, mass unemployment, and imperialist war. Only a communist society, run by and for workers, without money or profit, can serve the needs of the international working class.
There are no good bosses
The international main wing of the U.S. ruling class is centered in finance capital and multinational corporations like JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil. It is predominantly represented by the Democratic Party, alongside billionaires like George Soros and Warren Buffett. The main wing derives much of its profit from multilateral trade and imperialist control over labor, markets, and cheap Middle Eastern oil. To defend their interests, these bosses need military alliances, and a mass, multiracial U.S. military—including immigrant troops—to fight an inevitable World War III. In general, they would prefer fascism with a liberal, “democratic” cast, to contain workers’ anger within the electoral system.
The smaller, nationalist wing makes most of its money from domestically based industry. More focused on short-term profits, they oppose paying extra taxes to prepare the U.S. for a leading role in the next global war. Their strategy is to establish a “Fortress America”—a more contained, less ambitious world power. Backed by billionaires like the Koch and Mercer families, these bosses have used Trump and his white supremacist base to advance their agenda and withdraw from entangling, costly agreements like the Paris climate accord. They would use Nazi-style fascism as the way to discipline workers to accept whatever sacrifices are required as economic and political pressures intensify.
But while there are important differences among the bosses, and the political stooges who front for them, there are no good bosses. Ayanna Pressley, soon to become the first Black woman in Congress from Massachusetts, stumped for the arch-racist Hillary Clinton in 2016 (Boston Globe, 1/31). “Progressive” winning candidates like Ilhan Omar and the “fake “socialist” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned on abolishing the gestapo-like Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Within a week of their election, they were already retracting their pledge (CBS News, 11/12). They know that the racist abuse of immigrants is fundamental to U.S. capitalism. Case in point: their political forebear, Obama, who deported more than 3 million men, women, and children.
Bosses’ infighting, racists’ terror
The main wing owns significantly more resources and grassroots support. Yet after the October confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the domestic wing held all four centers of political power: the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. This unprecedented situation sparked vicious infighting. The bosses’ liberal democracy seemed off-balance, unstable, even unsustainable.
But after the “blue wave” that swung the House of Representatives back to the Democrats, and peeled off millions of white women and suburbanites who had backed Trump in 2016, it seems more likely that the main wing could recapture the White House and possibly the Senate in 2020. Post-Trump, the Republican Party might be reclaimed as the loyal opposition. Two-party electoral democracy might continue to serve the dominant imperialists’ purpose, at least for a while longer.
It’s another question entirely whether the domestic wing will be willing to take a back seat again—or whether Trump’s angry, racist base will continue to play by the rules. On November 9, a fervent Trump supporter named Cesar Sayoc was charged with mailing homemade bombs to 13 individuals or companies associated with the main wing, including Obama, Soros, and the TV network CNN. As Sayoc’s former lawyer said, Trump “welcomed all extremists, all outsiders, all outliers, and [Sayoc] felt that somebody was finally talking to him” (Washington Post, 10/29).
This was not an isolated case. Since the summer of 2015, when Trump’s presidential campaign took off, more than a dozen of his known backers have planned or committed acts of racist terror (theintercept.com, 10/27). More generally, the number of terror-related incidents in the U.S. have more than tripled since 2013:
In 2017, there were 65 incidents totaling 95 deaths. In a recent analysis of the data by the news site Quartz, roughly 60 percent of those incidents were driven by racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, antigovernment or other right-wing ideologies. Left-wing ideologies, like radical environmentalism, were responsible for 11 attacks. Muslim extremists committed just seven attacks (NYT, 11/3).
In mid-November, in Pasco County, Florida, investigators “seized 110 illegal weapons including a rocket launcher and two functional pipe bombs … and indicted 39 members or associates of Florida white supremacist gangs” (wftv.com, 11/18).
Class struggle, not bosses’ struggles
Both wings of the ruling class want political loyalty from masses of workers, and will stop at nothing to get it. While Trump’s open racism is abhorrent, the main wing bosses are not the answer. For them, “fighting racism” is about neutralizing real struggle while building patriotism en route to inter-imperialist war.
Progressive Labor Party has a different plan. We seek to organize sharp and principled anti-racist class struggle on the road to smashing capitalism. Our only ally in this fight is the international working class. Join us!
CHICAGO, November 18—In the early morning hours of November 11, the racist killer kkkops murdered another member of our class. The Klan-in-Blue opened fire on 26-year-old Black security officer Jemel Roberson at a bar in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, while he was actively trying to diffuse a fight that had broken out at the location.
Jemel tragically joins the ever-growing list of workers legally lynched by the racist kkkops. These sexist and racist thugs can’t be reformed any more than the sexist and racist capitalist system that they serve and protect. The only way to permanently end racist police murders –and achieve true justice for Jemel and countless other victims of capitalist state violence –is to join and build the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) as the force to crush capitalism with communist revolution!
Guilty of being a Black armed worker under capitalism
To his many loved ones, the racist murder of Jemel at the hand of the Midlothian Police Department has been completely devastating. Those closest to him have described him as a “gentle giant,” and devoted father, brother, uncle, and boyfriend. He was widely respected by his fellow workers, and was a talented athlete as well as the organist for his church.
Jemel was hired security and attempting to subdue an armed individual who was threatening other people at the bar when the kkkops responded at the scene and opened fire. Although their “official” report states that Jemel had no identifying markers that he was working security and that he was given multiple warnings to drop his weapon, other workers are challenging their racist cover-up.
According to other workers at the scene, Jemel was clearing wearing a cap and a sweatshirt that had the word “security” clearly written on them. They also claim that “not even five seconds” passed before the kkkop entered the room and shot him. The racist murder was so reckless that another cop present was heard to openly criticize the one who fired the shots (Chicago Tribune, 11/16). Despite Jemel wearing security clothing and having a legal license to carry a gun in the state, he was instantly perceived as a threat and gunned down.
This murder of an armed Black worker reflects in large part the racist profiling in the thoughts and actions of millions of kkkops, but also reflects a deeper fear of a major threat to the bosses and capitalism. For all the bosses’ fascist rhetoric about the “sacredness” of gun ownership in the United States, the fact is that workers–especially Black workers– possessing weapons has always presented an inherent political problem for them. The ruling class wants to control all the guns, preferably in the hands of their cops. The ruling wants guns to control workers, not in the hands of workers. What the bosses fear most is a multiracial working class armed with guns and class consciousness.
Racist murders mean—we got to fight back!
Committed to building such a movement for communist revolution, a group of PL comrades and friends attended a vigil in Jemel’s memory the Friday after his murder. The vigil took place at his former high school, Lane Tech College Prep, on the north side of Chicago, and was organized by classmates and other school alumni.
Many of the speeches reflected a deep sense of shock and grief over the loss of Jemel. A group of his classmates had difficulty in even expressing the depth of the pain that they were feeling after his murder. They spoke on the racism and alienation that they had already experienced as a result of being a small Black student minority in a selective enrollment high school made up of mostly white students. After losing Jemel to the hands of the killer kops, they were handed another harsh treatment of feeling invisible and unwanted under capitalism.
Other Lane Tech alumni, friends of Jemel, and community organizations also made statements in his memory. One Black worker came to the microphone and made a clear call on the need to take action. He said, “We are in a war, and we need to choose sides.” Other speakers echoed the need to get organized to fight back against the racist bosses and their killer kops, but unfortunately stopped short of calling for mass multi-racial working-class unity as the most effective way to build that fight.
For our part, our small multi-racial group of PLers worked to make that message clear. We distributed our communist newspaper CHALLENGE, engaged in conversation, and made a few contacts that we intend to follow up with.
We build this fight, for Jemel and workers everywhere
Justice for Jemel Roberson goes beyond getting his kkkop murderer fired and thrown in jail. Although these outcomes,in and of themselves won’t lead to a world where working-class people everywhere can live a productive life in safety and dignity.
For that future, we need to connect racist police murders, deportations, unemployment, and imperialist war to their common root of capitalism, and build the struggle for international communist revolution as the only solution to wipe these anti-worker attacks from the face of the earth. It’s no simple task, but for us, it’s the best possible way to honor fallen working-class heroes such as Jemel.
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Nurses strike, gives bosses a taste of workers medicine
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- 22 November 2018 84 hits
CHICAGO, November 16—Over 30 Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) from the University of Illinois Hospital (UIH) officially went on strike yesterday, and have backed it up with pickets and open confrontations against their racist and sexist bosses. The LPNs are striking over stalled contract negotiations, disrespect from the bosses on the job, and an overall decreasing stability for their profession.
A comrade from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was present at the picket today to push the politics even further to the left, calling for mass multi-racial working class unity as the strongest weapon we have to take the offensive against the capitalist bosses and their profit system.
Multi-racial women LPNs challenge bosses
When the strike began, the nurses were out in force. They held their largest picket on the lawn directly across the street from the front entrance of the hospital, complete with signs, chants, and bullhorns. At the various clinics connected to the main hospital throughout the city, there were smaller pickets in solidarity forcing the clinics to close down early. The make-up of these actions was multi-racial, led mostly by Black and Latin women, who are by and large the majority of as LPNs.
In addition to the pickets, a group of the nurses and other workers marched to a meeting on campus of the hospital executives, where they demanded that they be allowed to speak directly to UIH CEO Michael Zenn and the other bosses about contract negotiations. The majority of them were met with rude insults from the racist and sexist bosses and denied a chance to participate, with the excuse that they were being “disruptive” and that there wasn’t enough space in the boardroom.
Another short picket took place the following day, again on the lawn in front of the hospital. A number of the chants focused on the “second-class” status of LPNs as compared to registered nurses (RNs) and the racist and sexist character of the bosses’ disregard of their contributions to patient care. A number of UIH LPNs gave personal testimony on the bullhorn about their key role in improving the health of their working-class patients and the need to continue fighting back.
A comrade from PLP, who works in another local hospital, took the mic to express solidarity, emphasizing the need for workers to unite across workplaces under capitalism as the only real way to begin building our power in the face of the bosses’ attacks.
Don’t fall for bosses’ traps.
Reject union misleaders, elitism
Although this comrade was applauded for this statement, the reality is that the state of working-class struggle is a long way from taking any kind of legitimate offensive against the capitalists and their system. A large reason for this is an over-reliance on the role of unions under capitalism.More often than not they follow a toothless legalist strategy to try and enforce a contract, or even worse, direct workers down the path of dead-end electoral politics to put another one of the bosses’ tools in power.
Many of unions’“militant” actions are nothing more than publicity stunts that try to deceive their members that they are taking action on their behalf. In fact they are well-planned in advance with news media and the kkkops and therefore present no real threat to the bosses. The day two picket of this “unfair labor practice” (ULP) strike itself only lasted barely an hour before the union mis-leadership made the call to wrap it up.
Another factor working against a struggle such as this is the elitism that saturates health care under capitalism. Despite at least 1,000 UIH nurses working within this hospital system, very few of the registered nurses have demonstrated active support of the LPNs strike, even though they themselves faced off against the same racist management’s attacks just over a year ago (See CHALLENGE, 9/15/17).
Many workers can be fooled into thinking thatwage differentials, education level, and professional titles make their work more “important” than that of other workers. But this just works to hide the fact that our labor is connected and we can only fight back effectively when we organize across trades to shut down entire hospitals, schools, and other industries.
Communism connects our struggles
To fight for communist revolution and the complete destruction of racist and sexist capitalism, means understanding the contradictions that weaken working-class unity, and then taking active steps to overcome them to build internationalvworkers’ power. To this end, comrades in PLP will continue to organize within unions, in the workplace, and in the neighborhoods to win more workers to communism, a system that values the contributions of all workers and puts our needs first.
We salute to the University of Illinois LPNs! Your work is important, and your multi-racial fightback is, too!
NEW JERSEY, November 10—More than 65 workers, students, teachers, and community members from Puerto Rico, New York and New Jersey convened at this year’s Progressive Labor Party college conference about internationalism and smashing borders. Those in attendance represented immigrants from West Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Black, Latin, Asian and white students and workers born in the U.S. Along with the help of more experienced communist fighters, a new and younger group of working class organizers led this conference and committed to spreading the Party’s ideas as we organize for communist revolution (see letters).
Break down concepts, break down borders
A new comrade opened the conference, highlighting the importance of breaking down the meaning and power of concepts like working class internationalism, exploitation and fascism for newer people being introduced to communism and PLP. There are no borders for capitalists as they span the globe fighting wars and looking to exploit workers and raw materials. Meanwhile, workers are held prisoners by these same borders, and used as cheap labor and cannon fodder in the bosses’ wars. This conference focused on building multiracial unity to smash all borders.
The panels that followed linked historical, communist-led working class fightback against capitalist oppression to three modern day struggles where PLP is active. The conditions arising from imperialist intervention in Yemen and Palestine have sharpened the class consciousness of community college students in New York fighting against racism on their campus. Similarly, the imperialist interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean have left working class people in Puerto Rico with a crumbling infrastructure and massive insecurity. This has produced the forced migration of undocumented workers to places like New Jersey, where they are forced to drive without a license and are in constant danger of state violence.
Same enemy, Same fight!
Given the chance to choose internationalism or nationalism through the panel presentations and the small workshop discussions, many in attendance were especially driven by the connections made between the students from the Middle East and the workers from Puerto Rico. One of the students from Yemen described the horrible details of famine that forced her family to migrate, while another student from Palestine described concentration camp-like conditions in that nation. One worker from Puerto Rico was involved in PLP’s October Brigade, a summer project meant to initiate a new wave of international communist fight back. This worker warned that the government slogan of “Puerto Rico will rise again” was a just a message to capitalist investors. The government has no interest in investing in the workers of Puerto Rican so they can live and thrive again. He also explained how many workers and children have been drinking contaminated water, died from lack of medical access and at the hands of the state by isolation and suicide.
After the conference, many who have not yet joined PLP expressed how inspired they were by our young leadership and the commitment to put our revolutionary Communist Party in the hands of the world’s working class by fighting for an internationalist outlook. They shared the desire to go back and continue organizing with the communist fighters and friends in the Progressive Labor Party—learning together in both study groups and local organized struggles.
STATEN ISLAND, November 19—On July 17, 2014, Ramsey Orta turned on his phone and took a video of the murder of Eric Garner on Staten Island. Eric was his friend. The klansmen in blue who killed Eric Garner and the and EMTs who stood by while he said “I can’t breathe” eleven times have not been charged with any crime. They have not even been fired by New York City’s liberal mayor, Bill de Blasio. The current and former police commissioners even allowed Eric murderer, Daniel Pantaleo to continue to work and even make an excessive amount of overtime. Racist murder is business as usual, for this rotten system which will continually fail our working class sisters and brothers.
Ramsey made sure the video went viral by giving it to the New York Daily News. Workers all over the world became aware of the racist brutality of the New York Police Department. This created an international firestorm and made Ramsey a target of the police. People should not forget that if it was not for Ramsey’s courage, we would not clearly and vividly know the truth about Eric Garner’s death. There are many other cop murders of unarmed Black and Latin workers and youth, but their details are not known because there is no video. The Progressive Labor Party will not turn our backs on Ramsey Orta.
Targeted by the system
Ramsey was arrested five times after the video went public. He is now serving a prison sentence of close to four years, on trumped up gun and drug charges, for which he was forced to accept a plea bargain. This is “justice” under capitalism. The person who reveals the facts of racist police murder is jailed while the murderous politicians and their police are free to kill others. Capitalists, their lackey politicians and cops want to tell the working class to shut up about racism and these murders.
Over 100,000 people marched in Manhattan after the non-indictment of kkkop Pantaleo, expressing their anger and pushing the movement against police brutality. At the same time, a local group called Staten Island Against Racism and Police Brutality formed to get justice for Eric Garner. Whenever these murders take place, Progressive Labor Party members support the large demonstrations and the long-term grassroots organizations.
For daring to expose the system, Ramsey Orta has been and continues to be targeted for physical and emotional abuse by deputies and corrections guards. There has been a pattern of Ramsey being harassed, assaulted and then transferred to another facility every few months since he began serving his prison sentence. As a result of this, Ramsey frequently has had his privileges revoked and has been put into solitary confinement. Rat poison was even found in the food in his prison wing.
This is what happens when you expose the system. The constant facility changes makes it difficult for Ramsey’s supporters to visit him or send him letters. That’s part of his punishment for helping to unmask this racist system.
One of the things we’ve learned participating in these movements in the last few years is that many people talk about the fact that we must change the whole judicial system and police, but fail to realize that capitalism is the prime culprit for all these injustices. Racism and the resultant “justice” system formed the basis of the profit system and cannot coexist without them.
The working class must take power under a mass communist party or any minor change or reform can reversed. Bringing workers and students to that level of understanding is our job as members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party.
