The appointment of the sexist liar Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court exposes the true nature of a “representative democracy”, a system where workers are excluded from any influence in decision-making. President Trump, who lost the popular vote by over 2 million people, chose the nominee. It was reviewed by the Senate, which has two members from each state regardless of the size of the state. The Supreme Court contains 9 members appointed for life who are the final decision makers for the entire judicial branch. Compare the grip of this tiny number of people over the lives of 300 million workers in the U.S. with the vast opportunity for all workers under communism.
Communism is a system where direct participation by workers is essential; where workers play a continuous active part in every aspect of running society, and where the first obligation of leaders is the development of new leaders, not keeping a grip on power.  What a better world we can build.  
Courts Are Battle Ground Between Capitalist Factions
The courts are part of the bosses’ state apparatus. They exist to give a stamp of approval to the laws that keep the bosses in power over the working class and fill the prisons with our class brothers and sisters. They are also a place where the ruling class fights out their differences. Most Supreme Court cases are disputes over business and banking issues having nothing to do with workers.
Since it has the final say, battles over the make-up of the Supreme Court have occurred throughout U.S. history and always reflect conflicts within the ruling class. Every one of these fights over the court has been between one set of racist murderers versus another.
President Franklin Roosevelt, for example, was frustrated with the Supreme Court in the 1930s.  At that time, the issue was also a split between an isolationist, anti-regulation wing of the ruling class and the then emerging global, imperialist Rockefeller wing. The Rockefeller wing wanted far more regulation of business and banking to hold onto its power. They also needed more control to allow them to make rapid decisions. They anticipated a future of U.S. imperialism launching wars across the globe. The Rockefeller wing won and held power for over 60 years.
The modern battle over control of the Supreme Court began in 1982 with the formation of the Federalist Society. (NPR 6/28/18) This group of extremely conservative and libertarian lawyers and judges has grown into a forceful voice supporting the interests of the domestic section of the ruling class (see CD Editorial 9/24). That wing has targeted control of the judiciary as a strategy for competing with the larger more entrenched main wing capitalists (NPR 3/14/18).
These domestically oriented bosses wish to cut the size of the federal government, slash all regulations, and pass a huge tax cut for the rich. The 91 judges Trump has nominated came from a list prepared by the Federalist Society (Chicago Tribune Oct. 2018). The Federalist Society now dominates large sections of the federal courts. With the Kavanaugh appointment they are now the dominant section of the Supreme Court.
The main wing of the ruling class is equally aware of the need to control the Supreme Court to try to hold onto their dying empire. During Obama’s first term there was an effort urging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire so she could be replaced by a younger person. She refused (The New Yorker Sept. 2018). Ginsberg, a liberal media icon, is herself a big racist who won’t hire Black law clerks (National Law Journal 2/1) and publicly attacked Colin Kapernick for kneeling (NY Times 10/11).
Then in early 2016, Justice Scalia, a member of the Federalist Society, died suddenly. Obama had his chance. He nominated Merrick Garland, but the Republicans refused to hold hearings to appoint him. The seat was saved til after the 2016 presidential election and the choice went to Trump.
The bosses obviously won’t say that they are fighting to control the courts to keep themselves in power. Instead they cynically use our hatred of sexism and racism to try to get us to fight their battles. When it appeared that Kavanaugh was sure to be appointed, the Democrats revealed the name of Christine Blasey Ford who credibly accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault and unleashed the honest passion of millions of anti-sexists to take Kavanaugh down. This was a corrupt ploy on their part.  These same liberal Democrats defended the serial sexual predator President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. They launched vicious attacks against the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and several other women who had been abused by Clinton. Well known feminists of that time, like Gloria Steinem (The Atlantic 11/13/17) and women politicians like Maxine Waters (House of Representatives 12/18/98), openly defended Clinton just like Trump defended Kavanaugh.
In 1991 President George H. W. Bush nominated Judge Clarence Thomas, the most conservative of all the Justices, because he felt he needed a Black man. During those Senate hearings Anita Hill reported being sexually harassed by Thomas. It was two liberal Democrats, then Senator Joe Biden and Senator Ted Kennedy, who led the vicious, sexist attack against her. Just as with Kavanaugh, the woman was traumatized and the nominee became a Supreme Court Justice.
Don’t vote!—organize against sexism!
Brett Kavanaugh is a horrific sexist. But voting for the corrupt liberalism of the Democrats will not stop sexism. Only women and men workers fighting side by side against the bosses’ sexist division of the working class and the capitalist system that breeds it will lead to equality. Capitalism is steeped in sexist culture as we saw daily in the defenses of Kavanaugh and the Democrats exploitation of sexual assault victims. Sexist culture supports the capitalist profit generated by the gender wage gap, the super-exploitation of women and the added burdens they take on as mothers and caregivers.The Democrats are loyal to the same capitalist system as the Republicans. None are friends of workers.

NEW JERSEY—Led by undocumented workers and youth, 200 protesters demanded what governor Phil Murphy had promised last year but (like the racist opportunist he is) never delivered: the basic access to drivers’ licenses. This protest exposed the hollowness of liberal politics and the potential for a workers’ movement with international communist influence. Progressive Labor Party fights for the idea that a system that uses borders, a ruling-class creation, to rob and terrorize workers deserves to be abolished.
Racist Murphy had preyed on the legal capitalist-created torment of undocumented workers and youth. He had made the point of licenses for the undocumented working class a part of his election campaign; today 500,000 in New Jersey alone still live under the threat of deportation every time they are stopped by the police for driving while undocumented. These workers refused to accept Murphy’s lies.
A PL’er talked  about their experience of crossing from Mexico into the U.S with their family, highlighting the repressive nature of the U.S. border patrol. They finished with the chant “Las Luchas Obreras, No Tienen Fronteras!/The Fight Of The Workers, It Has No Racist Borders!” The hundreds of workers present embraced the chant.
Working inside the Cosecha Movement
The march, organized by the Cosecha Movement, gathered workers from ten cities in Columbus Park, in the city of Trenton. From there we marched from this mostly Black, Latin, and Asian  neighborhood to where the politicians have their offices. This is the fourth and largest march that the Cosecha Movement has organized in Trenton since January, 2018, and shows the determination of the workers to escalate our fight against the capitalists and their state government to win this much needed reform!
Workers have drive for mass antiracist movement
Cosecha is a national U.S. grassroots organization that is coordinating reform campaigns around the needs of undocumented workers. The organization hopes to win workers to eventually unite around a nation-wide strike to achieve citizenship reform, which many workers believe will provide them with permanent protection from racist deportation.Marches are growing in numbers, with collective leadership. For this march, more families with children from more cities came. Taking inspiration from what a small but militant group of workers from New Brunswick contributed to the last march, more youth participated in preparation for and during the march and rally. Workers in each of the different cities made and sold traditional tacos, coordinated local festivals, partnered with various cultural events, organized yard sales, donated clothing, and held countless gatherings in homes and churches from June to September to raise funds.
These organizing activities encouraged new workers to come with us. And with the funds raised from these activities, we acquired six buses for workers from the different cities to converge at the rally in Trenton.
Politicians turn away workers, workers turn towards CHALLENGE
At one stop along the march, a mother gave a compelling speech: “Today I, because of [drivers’ licenses] I am here, because my son needs treatment and I have to travel to another state. I want all of you to grow conscious that this is a need. Not for luxury. Because it is a necessity.”
When we finally arrived at the state house, some politicians walked past and ignored the rally., and workers began chanting, and jeering at them.
The workers’ decision to take to the streets is a political victory - a literal step forward. In turning to the masses and youth in preparing for the struggle, the workers built the confidence to physically assert their growing power on the streets. And yet this is only a glimpse of what a small group of construction, agricultural, cleaning, household, factory, and professional workers, undocumented, documented, and citizen workers are able to collectively achieve.
Along the way, more than 400 CHALLENGEs in English and Spanish were sold or distributed, along with a pamphlet about the need to read and engage in discussion about solidarity with other workers’ struggles, including the need to smash racist borders.
Getting on the road to revolution
The exposure to communist ideas in CHALLENGE is key. No laws or politicians, or even a nationwide strike like Cosecha calls for, can provide “permanent protection” and/ or end the anti-immigrant racism capitalism relies on, no matter how many millions of workers might support it. Workers live in a dictatorship of capitalism- what reforms we do win are ultimately taken back when it suits the capitalists. However, when communists participate in these mass reform movements, which attract other strong working class fighters, these relationships can powerfully develop class consciousness.
Workers united across the world as a class by one party - PLP - are capable of transforming these energies for reform into a revolution for workers’ power. We do it by struggling for these reforms while introducing communist politics to the workers we meet, and showing the futility of attempting to reform capitalism.
Liberalism: main danger to working class
Liberal politicians, on the other hand, attempt to deceive workers into believing capitalism can be reformed, while channeling their struggles into the opposite direction- support for one or another sector of the genocidal, imperialist U.S. ruling class.
In 2009, liberal Deporter-In-Chief Barack Obama failed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, which he promised within his first 100 days in office. Militant reform struggles led by “Dreamers” - undocumented youth fighting for access to higher education - began exposing Obama’s hypocrisy and empty promises.
By April 2011, Obama’s approval rating suffered drastically among Latin workers (Gallup 12/2014).
In June 2012, Obama signed into law the immigration executive order Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
By the end of 2014, the nature of liberals like Obama’s service to the bosses’ increasingly fascist system was even clearer. While breaking deportation records, Obama’s administration illegally awarded a one billion dollar contract to Corretions
Corporation of America (now known as  CoreCivic) “to build a massive detention facility for [immigrant] women and children seeking asylum...In 2015, the first full year [of the contract], CCA — which operates 74 facilities — made fourteen percent of its revenue from that one center while recording record profit” (America’s Voice, 10/12).
Today, the declining U.S. imperialist bosses’ reliance on the private prison industry continues to grow while the bosses’ latest mouthpiece, Donald Trump, has terminated DACA.
While the bosses’ plans for undocumented youth in the U.S. are unclear at the moment, communists in PLP will continue to learn from, struggle with, and forge international fightback by bringing workers together from across Cosecha and other movements, and continue to advocate our own plans and fight for nothing less than workers power - communist revolution!

HAMMOND, October 1 – A local university that serves mostly working-class and international students has seen a dramatic surge in fightback over the past few weeks. In response to the university bosses’ racist lies and indifference to their needs, hundreds of students and supporting faculty have built a struggle to challenge the bosses’ power.
Comrades and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been in the thick of this fight, building working-class support and helping push revolutionary communist politics. Collectively with other anti-racist, anti-sexist fighters, we are fast learning that life’s most important lessons are taught in class struggle!
Multiracial Unity against Admins’ Lies
Purdue University Northwest (PNW) is a smaller satellite campus of the much larger and highly-endowed Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. The PNW distinction reflects a recent merger of Purdue Calumet of Hammond, IN and Purdue North Central of Westville, Indiana. Both of these satellite campuses traditionally served as commuter campuses for working-class and non-traditional students, including many Black and immigrant workers. However, many top-down, anti-working class decisions from the university administration have alienated these student populations and made the university less accessible for them in recent years.
Case in point, since the merger PNW students were promised that they would receive a standard Purdue University diploma upon graduation. But on September 28, the chancellor sent an email to students stating that their diploma would in fact be different to the one received by students at the main Purdue campus. And just like that, a decision that could have serious consequences for graduates’ futures was shoved through with little to no input from students, faculty, or alumni.In response to the bosses’ shady decision, a petition began circulating to keep the Purdue degree at PNW (which 18,000 students and supporters signed), and students planned a protest to occur on the following Monday.
The protest, organized by a multiracial collective of Black, Latin, and white working-class students, turned out over 650 students and supporters from both campuses to push back against the bosses’ racist slap in the face. The action lasted about an hour as students began with chants and speeches in an open area between two main buildings. Students and supporting faculty and staff – some who serve double-duty – marched to the administration building where they soon found out that the chancellor did not show up to work that day. Students were demanding answers, and shortly after the action ended, an email was sent from the chancellor announcing an “open conversation.”
At that conversation, the chancellor admitted that PNW’s advertising has been a “bait-and-switch” all along; admitting that he has always felt “uncomfortable” with the idea that PNW was selling Purdue degrees.
Fight Racist Attacks in Education with Communism
The racist university bosses made this change in a primarily Black and Latin neighborhood, where over 28% of the Black population has dropped in the last year. Recently, at a Black Student Union cookout, when asked why there has been a decrease in Black student enrollment, one university stooge admitted to the university trying to attract more Latin students in order to receive federal funding. This same racist also said “kids from Gary, Indiana just don’t go to college” -- only reinforcing the racism that exists in higher education.
The truth is, all colleges and universities under capitalism foster and push these types of racist, anti-working class lies because their main purpose is to reproduce pro-capitalist, individualist ideology among the masses. Under the guise of “higher learning,” they serve to groom the next batch of capitalist bosses from the student body, stifle any real development of critical thinking for the majority, and charge astronomical tuition fees before throwing young people out into a highly competitive and cutthroat job market.
As communists, we fight for an education system that meets the needs of the international working class, not those of the bosses. Learning from the advances in education made in communist revolutions in Russia and China in the 20th century, we will make education free, accessible, and meaningful for all workers. Using our state power, we will completely erase any racist, sexist, and anti-scientific garbage in our schools and develop lifelong collective learning as the means to further liberate our class.
The Fight Continues
Students are planning to meet the Board of Trustees directly on October 12 at their meeting at the main campus in West Lafayette. We will come at the trustees with our sharpened understanding of our power as a multi-racial, multi-gendered fighting force. Working-class students united, will never be defeated!

Protecting working class children from lead poisoning is not a priority for a U.S capitalist class in disarray and decline.  The lead water crisis that has poisoned workers from Flint, MI to Newark, NJ has hit New York City’s school system and the local ruling class has no real plan to protect children here from ingesting this toxin at thousands of water fountains and sinks across the five boroughs.  
Over the summer, the Department of Education (DoE) inspected the fixtures that funnel water to our children daily. Instead of accurately checking the lead levels, the water was allowed to run for long periods of time, which allowed a lot of the lead to be flushed out before measurement.  These bogus ‘tests’ have ‘proven’ that the water which 1.1 million kids drink is ‘safe.’ However, even by their own admission, the DoE admits that their safety inspection did not involve switching out lead plumbing fixtures with non-toxic alternatives (WNYC, Aug 2018).
Hot on the heels of the DoE’s summertime water inspection subterfuge, locally-based capitalist Sarah Kauss (CEO of S’well bottles) decided to donate over 300,000 bottles to provide every high school student in the city with a re-usable S’well brand water bottle.   The liberal political establishment is pushing for a youth campaign to “BRING IT” which “challenges New York City students to reduce waste through advocacy and activism.”  By their estimates if each high school student in the city foregoes disposable water bottles waste will be reduced by up to 54 million plastic bottles (NYT 9/18).
Such ‘activism’ – where crises that capitalism makes necessary are viewed as results of ‘individual’ choice – is a type that liberal mis-leaders like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio champion.  They would have our youth believe that racism in our schools comes from ‘microaggressions’ that we carry out against each other as individuals, not from a ‘school choice’ system that has for decades cast schools with too many Black youth as undesirable.
Consumption of bottled water has exploded since the 1970s and is a major contributor to plastics production and pollution.  Today’s mounting plastics crisis was entirely predictable decades ago but the pursuit of maximum profit has meant cities have been built up with no plans to supply quality water to workers who live there.  Under communism access to clean water would be treated as a true human right.  It’s beyond a doubt that the unbelievably huge portion of society’s wealth which imperialists have poured into arms races and war since the 1970s could have, by now, provided workers worldwide with access to clean water in an environmentally sustainable way.  We have needed communism for a long time.
On top of a festering lead crisis, New York City students endure a long-running segregation crisis.  Racist policing of Black and Latino youth mean that they pass through a metal detector/scanning procedure to enter school each day.  (see letter).  These students are routinely prohibited from bringing any liquids into school.  They will be forced to fill their environmentally-friendly S’well bottles at water fixtures fed by lead pipes while their more middle-class white and Asian peers are free to bring their bottles to school with water that is (perhaps) safer.
Speaking of the rise of her company, Kauss once proclaimed:
“We’ll be a billion-dollar company,” she says. “It’s easy. I know what to do now. We have the people and the processes in place, and the market is just there.” The alternative? “We could just be a $50 million company,” she says, “but that seems kind of boring.” (Inc. Magazine, July 2016).The iron rule of capital, which spawns imperialist rivalry and requires racism to divide and super-exploit the working class, has positioned Kauss to solve the ‘easy’ problem of creating a billion-dollar company.”   
 Her naïve, ostentatious and self-serving campaign to expand her firm’s visibility and help ‘fix’ a plastics crisis that clogs the oceans of the globe has run up against the hard reality of segregation in New York City schools.  Only liberation from the rule of capital through a communist revolution gives us a shot at clean water and integrated schools for all.

*****

Student Letter

We are students, not suspects!

Every high school student in New York City received a free metal S’well water bottle. This was an initiative to eliminate the single-use plastic water bottles. The highly-policed and over-surveilled high schools with metal detectors, in New York City force their predominantly Black, Latin and Asian, low-income students to dump out their water bottles before entering school premises. This effectively denies clean water to nonwhite students. Denying students their right to bring water and drinks from home forces them to drink the lead-contaminated water present in many of the city’s public schools. The inability of these students to get through school security with their water bottles lies at the intersection of three of the city’s structural, unresolved problems: the policing and criminalization of Black and Latin students, segregated schooling, and lead contaminated water in “more than 33,000 water fountains” in New York City public schools (WNYC, 3/6).
WNYC, a New York City public radio station, completed an analysis finding that despite the city’s claims of replacing all lead contaminated fixtures, only 20 percent of schools have been notified of the water being safe to drink. Despite the dangerously high levels of lead being found in school pipes, not all students have the right of bringing their own water to class.
The denial of students to bring their own bottles of water to classes feeds into the racist and anti-working class violence students are subject to in the city’s public schools. Students are not only stripped of their autonomy but also criminalized under school security and surveillance technologies. This creates a hostile, unsafe environment not conducive to our student’s education. It is harmful to their mental and physical health. Students should not be suspects in their own schools. This inequality and denial of the basic right to clean water is a critical sign calling us to fight back against school housing and segregation.