BROOKLYN, October 6—“Honestly I didn’t think that the leafleting against Goldstein would accomplish anything or even get a reaction. I was wrong. Those leaflets really scared the administration - it’s freaking them out, and now they’re going to respond.” A sympathetic Kingsborough Community College (KCC) faculty member recently related this to a member of the Progressive Labor Party. The racists fear direct, mass confrontation and at KCC, they are getting it!
Last spring, a group of students, faculty and workers came into possession of hundreds of extreme racist, sexist social media posts by KCC administrator Michael Goldstein. Goldstein shared Facebook posts that said Islam “executes gays, chops off heads and stones women.” Another shared post said “Confederate veterans are American veterans.” Still another questioned “politicians who protect illegals who rape and murder.” In response, about 1,500 leaflets were collectively produced, printed and distributed around campus calling for Goldstein’s termination. Phone calls were made to the Human Resources office and Chief Diversity Officer to complain. Some students even discovered where Goldstein’s office was, and slid the leaflets under his door!
Students, sympathetic faculty and staff and some PL’ers found out recently that Goldstein has been removed from his position as KCC’s Director of Public Relations. The stripping of his formal power - and his embarrassment to the administration - is a partial victory for the student-led antiracist forces at KCC! The administration continues protecting him by shuffling him around, and it will take mass struggle to drive racists likeGoldstein out.
Racists show their colors
Now the racists have responded. In an article on a rightwing website Goldstein claimed the leafleting is part of a systematic campaign of anti-Jewish racism against him. Also, around two dozen KCC professors received certified letters saying Goldstein is considering legal action against them.
On September 6, an “exclusive” article appeared on a website, Campus Reform (see box) featuring an interview with Goldstein. He whined that he’s been accused of “vile, false allegations of racism,” and accused a group of faculty of being anti-Jewish. The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israeli, nonprofit law firm, sent a letter on his behalf to CUNY Interim Chancellor Vita Rabinowitz, crying about a supposed “ongoing discrimination campaign” against him. As if antiracism was discriminatory!
The Campus Reform article, faithful to its fascist heritage, made bizarre and dangerous allegations. With no evidence whatsoever, it names and blames a professor who had absolutely nothing to do with the leafleting campaign.
Goldstein threatens legal action
Then on October 3, a group of about two dozen KCC faculty received certified, confidential letters from the Lawfare Project notifying them that Goldstein is considering legal action. In “anticipation of litigation,” the professors are instructed:

“to retain and preserve all emails, voicemails, text messages…social media postings and communications as well as all other electronic or printed documents, records…in any way relating to:
-Mr. Goldstein
-Your views on Israel
-Your views on Zionism
-Your views on Jews
-Your views on Palestine; and
-the Progressive Faculty Caucus [group of left-minded KCC]
…This notification extends to all emails generated on a CUNY/KCC server.”

The fascists are on a fishing expedition. They have no idea who is responsible for the antiracist campaign against them. Like the Israeli fascists they adore, they attack indiscriminately. They feel protected by a government that promotes racism. Their “freedom of speech” is a farce that only applies to racists like Goldstein, whose connections to fascist, terrorist groups like the Leadership Institute (see box) show us how deadly serious the bosses are about defending racism and capitalism.
The leaflet distributed at KCC is 100 percent right when it states: “It will take as many of us as possible to unite and build a movement to fight back [against racism].” However many were involved, it will take many more in the struggles ahead. That’s because as communists we know that fighting racism is necessary for any progress for all workers and students. Join us!

In this period of escalating inter-imperialist competition, rival capitalists worldwide will seize on every opportunity to undermine the ultimate threat to their profit system: a united international working class. Within the U.S., bosses use anti-Muslim racism both to deflect workers’ anger over a failing economic system and to ready them for enlistment into World War III. In their ruthless battle for control over Middle East oil, U.S. and Russian bosses are waging a war of terror against millions of Muslim workers, from the devastation of Syria to the carpet bombing of Yemen. Meanwhile, both Washington and Moscow are keeping a close eye on the Chinese imperialists, who are making significant Middle East inroads, via trade and investment, from Iran to Egypt to Israel (theasiandialogue.com, 1/22).

Caught in the middle are the Uighurs, a minority group in China now under the bosses’ media spotlight. According to an August report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), as many as a million Muslims in Xinjiang, most of them Uighurs, have been held in “re-education camps” that are “shrouded in secrecy” (Guardian, 8/30). There are allegations of torture and of thousands of children being herded into de facto orphanages while their parents are held indefinitely (Associated Press, 9/21).

The Chinese bosses have predictably denied these allegations of brutal mass repression. Since Xinjiang is closed to outside journalists or observers, the story is open to question.  While the Uighurs are clearly super-exploited and oppressed by the Chinese capitalists, they also have a long history as pawns of U.S. imperialism. This dates back to the late 1970s, when Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, formulated a strategy to use disaffected Muslims against the U.S. imperialists’ competition in Central Asia and the Middle East.

In the 1980s, Uighur nationalists were recruited to join Osama bin Laden in the CIA-backed war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. To generate anti-China propaganda, the U.S. government funded Uighur networks on Radio Free Asia and through the World Uighur Congress. The lead spokesperson for the UN’s CERD is a lawyer named Gay McDougall, who sits on the board of the Open Society Justice Initiative—an organization founded by billionaire George Soros, the CIA’s partner in sponsoring the anti-Russia “color revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia, among other places.

Why Xinjiang Matter$

Four times the size of California, Xinjiang is a strategically situated “autonomous” region in northwest China that borders Russia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and four other countries. Of late, Xinjiang has seen an economic boom, with major development projects bringing prosperity to cities like Kashgar. The region accounts for more than 20 percent of China’s natural gas, oil, and coal reserves (powermag.com, 1/1/16), along with significant cotton production, technology and textiles manufacturing, and gold and uranium.

Xinjiang is critical to the Chinese bosses’ Belt and Road Initiative, their blueprint for dominating trade throughout Asia and into Europe and Africa. The region has 16 Class A “land ports,” where foreign vehicles can deliver goods directly (china.org.cn). In addition, Xinjiang contains a dense network of natural gas pipelines, railways, highways, and air routes linking China with Eurasia.

The Uighurs are predominantly Sunni Muslims who speak a Turkic language and are ethnically distinct from the Chinese rulers who have controlled the region since the 19^th century Qing Dynasty. Over the last 20 years, as economic opportunities have soared, the region has seen a mass influx of Han Chinese, the main ethnic group in China, to the point where they nearly match the Uighurs’ numbers in Xinjiang. But that’s where any semblance of equality ends, according to an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (3/18/14):

The best jobs have gone mostly to the Han Chinese. Uighurs lucky enough to find jobs often end up doing manual labor—toiling in coal mines, cement plants and at construction sites. Unemployment among young Uighurs is widespread….There’s little wonder that discontent has become so widespread.

Chinese bosses: opiate dealers for the masses

The stark inequality in Xinjiang has led inevitably to a spike in anti-Uighur racism, a resurgence of Uighur separatism, scattered incidents of violence, and a Beijing attack against the Uighurs’ practice of Islam—or what it calls “religious extremism.” Two years ago, President Xi Jinping sent former Tibet boss Chen Quanguo to set up “internment camps that hold Muslims without trial and force them to renounce their faith and swear loyalty to the [so-called] Communist Party….Former detainees say one can be thrown into a camp for praying regularly, reading the Quran…” (Associated Press, 9/21).

Capitalism needs nationalism and religion to divide workers and deflect their class hatred against the capitalist system, the real source of workers’ misery. As Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the masses.” After the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that followed in the late 1960s, workers freed themselves from the chains of religion that had strangled class struggle in favor of the old ruling class. 

But the fake “communists” who rule China today have no problem with religion—as long as they’re the ones pushing the opium. In August, China’s famous Buddhist Shaolin monastery “raised the national flag for the first time in its 1,500-year history” (NYT, 9/24). And on September 22, Beijing and the Vatican reached a compromise deal to recognize seven bishops appointed by the Chinese government and fully legitimize the Catholic Church in China (NYT, 9/22).

U.S. bosses: world leaders in anti-Muslim racism

The turbulence in Xinjiang gives the capitalists yet another opportunity to bash the Cultural Revolution, a historic working-class victory—however temporary—to uphold communist ideas and practice among hundreds of millions of workers. The bosses are using the Uighurs once again to push their poisonous, anti-communist mythology: “As in Stalin’s Russia, children are encouraged to inform on their parents” (Guardian, 9/15). As a trade and tariff battle pushes the U.S. and China into “a new economic Cold War” (NYT, 9/19), 17 U.S. senators and congresspeople have called for sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for the reported detention camps.

Now consider the U.S. record of anti-Muslim racism since 9/11: the torture and rendition of terrorism “suspects” to murderous regimes, the indefinite detention of uncharged individuals at Guantanamo Bay, the indiscriminate drone killings expanded by President Barack Obama, the proposed “Muslim ban” by President Donald Trump.

And consider, too, the more than 2 million workers imprisoned in the United States, the nation with the world’s highest incarceration rate—more than four times the rate in China (World Prison Brief, prisonstudies.org).

Even by the standards of the U.S. ruling class, the hypocrisy is overwhelming.

A better alternative

Neither ethnic nationalism nor religion can solve the problems of Uighur workers. Only the international working class, united against racism and sexism and led by a revolutionary communist party, can smash capitalism and its oppression of workers everywhere. Join us!

On October 17 marks 159th anniversary of the raid on Harper’s Ferry. It was a revolutionary revolt showing the need for militant, anti-racist, multi-racial, revolutionary struggle!The southern slaveholders were terrified by the Harper’s Ferry raiders’ militant, multi-racial unity, a real-life rebuke of their racist stereotyping. One of the raiders’ five black freedom fighters, Osborne Anderson, described the atmosphere before-hand:
“I have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an Anti-Slavery family, carrying out to the letter the principle of the Anti-slavery cause. In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self — no ghost of a distinction found space to enter.”
From childhood Brown vowed to fight slavery
This trust among whites and blacks did not happen overnight. John Brown’s father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. At 12, Brown met a fugitive slave boy and saw the suffering slavery had inflicted on him, influencing Brown forever. He believed blacks and whites were completely equal. He put this knowledge into action daily.
As an adult, Brown moved his family to a farm in North Elba, N.Y. near a black community of former slaves. Blacks were regularly invited to the house for dinner with Brown’s family. He addressed them as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” sharply contrasting with the era’s racist mores (true even among many slavery opponents).
Preparing for the raid, Brown turned to both black and white abolitionists.
In April 1858, while gathering money, arms and volunteers in Canada, he visited Harriet Tubman. She was well-known to the black fugitive slave community there, having personally guided many to freedom. Tubman supported his plans, urging him to set July 4, 1858, for the raid and promising to bring volunteers. They agreed to communicate through their mutual friend Frederick Douglass, black abolitionist and former slave.
Tubman single-handedly freed 300 slaves
Tubman’s own experiences made her and Brown allies. Born around 1820 of enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation, Tubman performed house and field work, was subjected to physical abuse and tearfully saw many of her nine siblings sold away from the family. In her teens, Tubman suffered a broken skull from brutal plantation life. Her “owner” tried selling her as “damaged goods.” Instead she fled, walking for several weeks, mostly at night, the 90 miles to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. She returned shortly afterwards, guiding her family out of slavery to Canada. And that was just the beginning.Over the following 11 years, with a bounty on her head, Tubman made approximately 13 trips south and guided an estimated 300 slaves to freedom in Canada.
This resolute, daring revolutionary declared, “I never ran my train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger.”Tubman warmly endorsed Brown’s armed struggles in Kansas against the pro-slavery gangs. Brown, in turn, knew Tubman’s courage, militancy, and knowledge of the land and Underground Railroad network, and felt Tubman would be invaluable in executing their plans to free the enslaved by any means necessary. He always addressed her as “General Tubman.”
Both believed in direct action and armed violence to end slavery.Tubman became ill and could not bring her forces to Harper’s Ferry, but her work inspired the rest of the raiders. Tubman’s example, like that of Osborne Anderson and the other black raiders, discredited the image of black people as passive victims, terrifying the southern slave-owners and politicians, and inspired the abolitionist movement.
To those today who say workers won’t fight oppression, the stubborn facts of history show struggle is universal. The slave-owners, although talking of “docile” blacks, knew this well. They were petrified of potential black rebels and of “outside agitators.” They patrolled all night with dogs and guns to intimidate their enslaved workers and to keep Yankees and abolitionist literature away from them.Today the “outside agitators” are PLP communists, fighting to abolish racist capitalism.
The bosses assure us that the impoverished working class is too ground down, too alienated to fight back collectively, saying workers hate communism. Yet they organize cops, plant security, the Minutemen, black nationalists and sellout union “leaders” to try to keep communists out, and instantly fire them when they’re discovered in a factory. Why are they afraid if the working class is supposed to be so passive?
Today, uniting to fight the mutual class enemy is one of the main ways people of different backgrounds are able to overcome the “natural” segregation capitalist society promotes. Brown and Tubman demonstrated that racist and nationalist ideas cannot be overcome primarily inside one’s head. It requires material change in the way one lives. Among the black and militant white abolitionists, multi-racial unity developed over years of working together, getting to know each other while struggling over their differences.
Today, U.S. capitalism has created its own contradiction. Workers still often live in neighborhoods separated by “race” but many are integrated within their workplaces and schools. The bosses try to divide us there as well, with racist job classifications and different types of bourgeois culture to keep workers apart (e.g., soul “versus” country music). Nevertheless, workers rub shoulders every day. Class-conscious workers in PLP must develop these acquaintances into friendships and unbreakable bonds in struggle.
Class struggle trumps racism
As in Tubman and Brown’s time, racism permeates society. But rebellions and strikes reveal multi-racial unity and struggle against the bosses. At the Smithfield Ham Factory in Tarheel, NC, for example, a 15-year unionization fight witnessed intense intimidation from the bosses to scare workers from signing union cards. But by organizing support from grocery workers from far and wide, Smithfield workers felt part of a larger community.
When the bosses got immigration agents to raid the plant, targeting Latino workers for deportation, the workers saw through this divisive trick and, in November 2006, 500 marched out in a two-day strike protesting this raid, forcing the company to re-hire all the fired immigrant workers!
In 2008 in the Bronx, NY, the Stella D’Oro workers struck for 11 months. These immigrant workers from across the world, men and women, overcame differences and stuck together. Not one worker crossed the picket line! PLP had organized friends, comrades, teachers and
students onto the picket lines, bringing solidarity and communist leadership. PLP members steadfastly stood in solidarity with the strikers via donations, rallies and marches, and supported their fight against plant closure.
John Brown’s raid and Harriet Tubman’s courage in freeing 300 slaves along the Underground Railroad teach us many lessons. Militancy was foremost in their thinking. Tubman declared she would never return to being a slave, that she would rather die fighting. Brown, after fighting in Kansas, realized that only bloodshed could end slavery. Many workers agreed with them, especially after the 1857 Dred Scott decision legalizing slavery nation-wide.
Multi-racial unity is essential in any fight. Black workers escapng from enslavement received needed help from whiabotionists to reach the North. Thousands of workers, black and white, helped escaping slaves along their journeys and defended them when attacked by slave-catchers. These workers attended public meetings, donated money, passed word to their friends and helpe harbor fugitive slaves.PLP does similar things today.
Join PLP
We discuss political struggles and the vital need for multi-racial unity against the racist system with friends, coworkers and neighbors. We urge them to join in militant anti-racist demonstrations, build a multi-racial base with fellow workers or donate to CHALLENGE.Every time someone we know does one of these simple acts, they’re making a political commitment in the fight against racism, capitalism and imperialism, just as thousands of anti-slavery supporters did against slavery — taking small steps to serve and defend those who had escaped slavery as well as those who fought it directly.We invite all workers, soldiers and students who participate in these struggles to join Progressive Labor Party.
Today’s supporters of anti-racist struggle understand — just as did the thousands backing Brown and Tubman 159 years ago — that revolutionaries like the raiders then and PLP now are the honest, reliable leaders in struggle. When direct action is required, they know to whom to turn. CHALLENGE constantly reports workers being won to militancy and multi-racial unity in struggles against the racist bosses, hailing those joining our ranks. Step by step, the communist movement will grow and lead the working class to revolution and a new world based on members of our class mutually meeting each other’s needs, without racist bosses and their profit system.

Brooklyn, September 15—Communist politics featured prominently in the lead-up to a vigorous and multiracial march against racism, gentrification, and police violence. Organized by two neighborhood organizations, the Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network and Equality for Flatbush, the march was guided by a wishful liberal slogan: “Brooklyn is not for sale.” But a more militant note was struck by one of the event’s featured speakers, a Black woman who lost her sister to police violence. After experiencing capitalist state terror in this horrific fashion, she has developed into an important leader in anti-racist struggles.   
When this leader was invited to speak at the pre-march rally, she shared the microphone with a member of Progressive Labor Party. As CHALLENGE found its way into the hands of dozens of passersby, our comrade reminded the crowd that Brooklyn will always be for sale as long as we live under a system driven by profit. The capitalist world degrades any chance for meaningful neighborhood integration with racist gentrification. But we can create a better world!
The Tuesday before the march was election day, and many marchers likely had voted for progressive challengers to local Democratic Party incumbents.  Their presence was a sign that the bosses’ charade of electoral “democracy” has not completely crowded out dedication to class struggle.  In coming weeks, as liberal misleaders head into overdrive to divert righteous anger against capitalism into voting against Trump-backed Republicans, our number-one job is to keep the flame of struggle alive
Don’t Vote; Revolt!
The organizers of today’s march are seeking to mobilize the masses on a multiracial basis against the rulers’ racist attacks. They are serious about Black leadership. They are careful not to feature elected leaders or candidates for office, and they work to attract workers who are frustrated by the raging inequalities of this system. Their endgame, however, is to kill any momentum they build for change at the dead end of the voting booth.
Our communist message, delivered by Black workers, drew nods of appreciation and agreement from many people there.  Over decades of political work in Flatbush, our multiracial comrades have maintained a focus on winning Black workers and youth to communism and PLP.  Patient base-building has been punctuated by moments of sharp anti-racist class struggle in the schools and on the streets.  
The cumulative effect of this history is that our politics and our newspaper are an expected and welcome part of the political life of the neighborhood.  At today’s march, 250 CHALLENGEs were distributed.  Our comrades fell a bit short, however, in bringing out our Party’s base. It would have been good for more of our friends to see us in action.
Even in the current period of rising fascism, where the attacks of capitalism are constant and mass movements are politically weak, opportunities for fightback are all around us. Each one is pregnant with potential to win more workers and youth to communism.  Dare to struggle, dare to win.