Thousands of refugees from Central America—notably Honduras and El Salvador—are fleeing poverty and U.S. armed death squads as part of a worldwide workers’ struggle to escape the hell of capitalist exploitation.  In 2017 fifteen million refugees, over half from South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria, were forced to flee for their lives as U.S. bosses fought to hold on to their declining empire. U.S. Capitalists would rather lock immigrants up for a profit and treat our working class brothers and sisters like animals, than provide jobs, educations or housing.
The U.S. uses Honduras as a military hub for Central America where the police, gangs and drug cartels are indistinguishable and work for the same bosses.  The U.S. supplies the Honduran military with weapons used to kill and intimidate workers from fighting back.
In the U.S. there are currently 100 camps in 17 states jailing 13,000-unaccompanied immigrant youth. While thousands of families are locked up, I.C.E in August increased its factory raids rounding up 1192 undocumented immigrants. These attacks are attacks on all workers and we must stand and fight back!
Politicians are no allies of refugees
The separation of families and camps for children cannot be blamed solely on Trump. They are the product of decades of policies by both Democrats and Republicans. In 1994,  Clinton’s  “Operation Gatekeeper” poured billions into border security including high-tech surveillance systems and an increased border force. Bush II doubled the size of the border force to 20,000 while deporting over two million and building a wall from the Pacific Ocean across California where thousands of migrants died in search for a better life. Deporter-in-chief Obama left office with a record of over 3 million racist deportations. .
Racism and borders divide workers
Capitalists of all nations are trying to blame the global capitalist crisis on the immigrants who are fleeing U.S.-supported terror regimes, gang violence and endless wars. In the aftermath of endless chaos, the bosses use racism against the victims of imperialism by installing concentration camps all over the world.
Mexico’s “populist” president Manuel Obredor has created his own border police to violently repel Honduran refugees..  In 2017, the Mexican government detained 95,000 migrants, most of them children from Central America’s gang-plagued Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
In Greece on Lesbos, camp Moria houses 8,000 Syrian refuges where  police brutality occurs regularly and conditions are unsanitary with sewage running through the camp. Against the current of rising nationalism, the only solution is communist internationalism
As the crisis of refugees worsens and capitalism descends further into chaos, the bosses are pushing more racism and nationalism attempting to keep workers blaming each other instead of capitalism. Italy’s new populist coalition is forcing refugees away, hate crimes have risen 10-fold since 2012 and a tide of neofascism is sweeping the country. France, Austria and Switzerland tightened their borders and increasing anti-immigrant racism has led to violent demonstrations across cities in Germany.  Rising of nationalist politicians and parties in Europe are hoping to manipulate the working class into more racism against migrants to save their rotten system.
Well-intentioned, good people try to help immigrants with donations or lunches. Some argue that the camps should have better conditions, but the issue is not that the camps should be “better”, Yet the real problem is that the camps should not exist in the first place.
Fight for a communist world
A strong communist movement of millions of multi-racial workers is the only way to end these attacks. Workers of the world must reject all nationalism and borders that benefit only the bosses when they need to move money, their businesses’, or fool workers to die in imperialist wars.
No worker benefits from borders that divide the working class by fomenting racism between workers suffering the same capitalist exploitation all over the world. The capitalist bosses are doing their best to scapegoat immigrants for the deepening crisis of U.S. capitalism amid sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry.
Progressive Labor Party has taken up the cause to smash all borders and create one united working class against profits and exploitation. The international working class has no borders! In the face of these attacks by the bosses, we must continue building the revolutionary communist PLP to smash all walls that serve the parasitic capitalists. We must create a new world that honors workers’ labor and serves workers’ needs.

 Murderous World War I, known as the Great War then, ended one hundred years ago on November 11, 1918. It might be impossible to overestimate the impact of this war upon world history. It was by far the bloodiest war in history until that time. The slaughter horrified even those many patriots who had anticipated it and had celebrated when it began.
The Great War was pure imperialist—that is, capitalist—slaughter for empire and territory. There were no reasons behind it that could be called recmotely morally redeeming.
It wasn’t for “freedom”, whatever that means, or for “national self-determination”, or for an end to colonialism, or against racism or brutality. All these notions mask the fact that, in essence, World War II was also imperialist.
 No such ideological excuses can hide the fact that the Great War was over the division of the earth, a war FOR, not against, subordination, colonialism, empire.
It was a war among “democracies” — in that Germany was no less “democratic” than the United Kingdom (both were parliamentary monarchies) or, the monarch aside, than the United States.
The Great War led millions of people worldwide to seriously question or even reject “patriotism” as a cover-up for capitalist and imperialist rule.
This massive revulsion against imperialist slaughter and the misery it brought to the vast majority of the peoples of the world led to social and political progress. The Russian Revolution and the International Communist Movement; the militancy of organized labor; the certainty that a better world than capitalism, imperialism, and the devastation they produce must be possible.
The Great War was an event with mighty lessons for all of us today. No wonder it is neglected, Although largely forgotten those lessons were dynamite in 1918, and still are today.

*****

Letter

Today I commemorate my great-uncle, George Devine, a veteran and a victim of the Great War. He went off to war in 1917, at the age of 21.  In 1918 he returned “shell-shocked”—the name at that time for what is today called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He had been driven insane—literally—by the stress and shock of trench warfare. He never recovered.
For his family, this was worse than if he had been killed—to witness his unending suffering, year after year. My late mother remembered him living with her and her parents for brief periods in the 1920s. But then he had to return to the Veterans Administration hospital for the brain injured at Perry Point, MD, where he lived for the rest of his life.
 He died there on January 31, 1941. Poor young man! His whole bright future at the age of 21 ruined, and it was not to defend his country, or any noble ideal at all. To save J.P. Morgan & Sons, and other American banks, whose huge loans to the United Kingdom would have been lost if Germany had won the war. To put the capitalists of the United States ahead of the capitalists of Europe.My grandmother, his only sibling, could never speak of her younger brother George without weeping. Not wishing to cause her distress, we never asked her about him. And now it is far, far too late; Grandmother died in 1994, at the age of 99.
I think of him today, on the 100th anniversary of the end of the war that ruined his life.Yet he was but one of millions of young men, and tens of millions of men, women, and children the world around, whose lives were blasted by that terrible, imperialist war.
For me, great-uncle George stands in for all of them—all the people killed by wars for exploitation, for the enrichment of the few at huge cost to the many.And I prefer to believe this: As long as I—we—learn the lessons of the Great War, and struggle for a world of justice, free of exploitation, free of capitalism, free of inequality— then my great-uncle George, and the myriad of those like him throughout the history of the awful 20th century, did not die entirely in vain.

NEW YORK, October 19—Cheers from working-class fighters filled Chinatown’s Jing Fong restaurant in celebration today, as the 83-85 Bowery tenants (see Challenge 3/21) marked a historic victory against their racist slumlord Joseph Betesh. After a long struggle, the majority Asian tenants returned to their apartments in August. Betesh had colluded with corrupt NYC agencies like the Department of Buildings to have more than 75 tenants evicted in January after he reported building violations—ones he had done nothing to fix for years! The tenants were sent to shelters and single room occupancy hotels throughout the city. In the months before this victory, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the displaced tenants of 85 Bowery, along with Black, Latin, and white workers who formed part of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and Lower East Side, and other citywide anti-displacement groupings to swing our collective fist to beat Betesh and guarantee their return home.
Under capitalism, housing is a commodity that many working people have trouble affording, but which is the source of great fortune for developers and landlords. The lack of affordable housing is a serious crisis in NYC and other cities, with developers mostly building luxury housing and landlords trying to squeeze as much rent as possible out of tenants, while providing few services. In NYC alone, one million rent stabilized units have been lost since 2005 (wall treet journal 9/25).
Many hundreds of thousands in NYC are homeless, or doubled up with other families, or living in cramped and decrepit quarters. This in a city with the world’s highest number of billionaires!
Tenants unite against Betesh
When slumlord Betesh purchased 83-85 Bowery – along with eleven other buildings – in 2013, he began a relentless effort to force out long-time tenants and convert the buildings into luxury condos. Betesh used every dirty tactic he could to remove the tenants. It began when one worker received an illegal eviction notice. Immediately, occupants  banded together to form the 83-85 Bowery tenants’ association, dedicated to collectively resisting Bettesh’s many efforts, to evict or buy them out. Rather than falling into the trap of blaming gentrification on white workers, or viewing it as an individual workers failure, the tenants saw that these problems stemmed from the city’s rezoning plans favoring luxury development.
Throughout this fight, tenants united with the community to fight in favor of the Chinatown Working Group Plan. This is a plan developed by workers and organizations on the Lower East Side that would grant tenants legal protections and control over the city planning process. It would limit building heights, put a cap on rents, and ensure that any housing built be affordable. The tenants’ victory and their sponsorship of the plan has now galvanized dozens of neighborhood groups in the cross hairs of the city’s displacement agenda to take action.
Communism will solve the housing problem
One of the tasks that communism must devote itself to is guaranteeing that everyone has high-quality housing, integrated with nearby high-quality schools, recreational and health facilites, libraries and art spaces, and daycare and community centers. Housing will not be privately-owned, it will not be racially segregated, and it will be democratically run by councils of tenants. In the meantime, under capitalism we fight against the landlords and the city agencies that support them.
Lessons from Workers of 85 Bowery
The importance of the 83-85 Bowery victory did not lie in legal proceedings, or even the hunger strikes the tenants bravely waged. It came from elevating their battle from being against one slumlord to a much larger war against the city’s racist housing plan that is displacing workers. While housing battles historically have been reformist in nature, not challenging private ownership,  PLP workers engage in these struggle because of their potential to elevate the anti-displacement battle from a working-class reform to communist revolution.
The tenants victory did not come easily. Betesh and the city’s pro-capitalist apparatuses spared no expense to try stopping the tenants’ return efforts. In a cruel effort to break their spirit their slumlord threw their belongings in dumpsters. During a City Hall hunger strike, the Klan in Blue tried intimidating workers protesting by keeping an uncomfortably close watch, and asking us to keep our signs off their bosses’ property. Mayor De Blasio’s office removed port-o-potties, even after we received permits for them days earlier.
When the bosses discovered our plan to organize this hunger strike they mailed each tenant appointments to meet with HPD (Housing of Preservation and Development) workers for public housing in the Bronx the same day it launched! However, the tenants and their supporters continued to push back with more demonstrations and endless grit. They were able to win no rent increases, rent stabilization for both buildings, and monetary compensation.  
No reform struggle, no matter how impressive, will solve the housing crisis for working people. Yet, we must continue fighting the intolerable living conditions and the threat of displacement. The success of the 85 Bowery struggle came from its ability to unify our class around rezoning as a worker led process. Struggles such as this not only have the potential to build workers’ power, but will also build the confidence our class needs to win the more decisive battle to smash this system, and its racist borders be it locally or internationally, for a worker run communist society where decent housing will be provided for all.

HONOLULU, October 11—“This is real education!” a professor shouted as a strike-support rally at the University of Hawaii (UH) drew to an end. It truly was. The rally also inspired because it represented the potential for mass worker-student solidarity and an island-wide working-class movement against the evils of capitalism.
About 2,700 workers had been on strike against Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, for three days. Organizers from Unite Here Local 5 got together with faculty and student leaders to hold a strike-support rally in front of university’s School of Travel Industry Management.
Everyone cheered when it was announced that a United Airlines’ flight crew had checked out of Marriott’s Sheraton Princess Kaiulani hotel, and that the International Association of Flight Attendants was supporting the strike. The Sheet Metal Workers and the United Public Workers unions in Hawaii have also taken actions to support the strike.The slogan for the strike is “One job should be enough.” This expresses the feeling that mass poverty among U.S. workers can no longer be tolerated and awareness that only worker rebellion can bring change. Workers shouldn’t need two jobs to survive, but the grim reality is that they do. A Local 5 hotel housekeeper gets $22 per hour. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that it takes more than $35 per hour to afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.
Everyone at the rally voiced enthusiasm for building unity between workers off campus and UH students, teaching assistants, professors and workers. The rally was also the first of its kind at UH. No one could remember a campus rally led by rank-and-file workers.
The following morning, a march of about 200 workers and supporters in Waikiki picketed  in front of Marriott hotels,and ended with a demonstration on the beach next to the giant Moana Surfrider luxury hotel. The speeches and chants were an inspiring show of worker determination to fight for as long as it takes to win the strike.

What is winning?
This raises the question, what does winning mean? The Marriott workers may gain a meaningful wage hike and greater job security. But, as many of the speakers at the strike rallies have been saying, workers throughout the state have been under attack from the bosses for a long time and the working class has suffered defeats as social and environmental problems worsen.
The Marriott struggle must be seen as one part of an ongoing worker’s struggle. For example, on the same day local workers joined the nationwide hotel strike, local postal workers joined a series of nationwide protests against Trump’s latest attack on the working class, a proposal that the postal service be completely privatized. The capitalists are determined to intensify super-exploitation of workers. This means more racist, sexist and anti-immigrant attacks aimed at dividing the working class.
Strikers called for a “fair share” of the massive profits capitalists gain from tourism. Working people should not have to share anything with capitalists. We have to build a communist movement uniting all working people to eliminate capitalism once and for all. Participating in such strikes helps us learn to fight back.
The rallies this week were well organized and spirited, but they weren’t big enough. Mass leafleting in advance might have increased participation. The message that the Marriott workers’ struggle is everyone’s struggle and part of an ongoing anti-capitalist struggle must be brought out forcefully to thousands.