The September 17 bombing in New York City left 31 wounded, and the working class, especially Muslim workers, terrorized. While the capitalists’ cops apprehended the alleged bomb-maker, the biggest terrorist—U.S. imperialism—remains at large.
Media + Arms = Fascist Drill
At 7:54 a.m. Monday, September 19, every phone in New York went off to signal an alert by the New York Police Department: “WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-year-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” The description fit hundreds of thousands of men. Mayor Bill de Blasio seized the chance to use the local population as an extension of the racist police force—to put the bosses’ “see something, say something” slogan into practice. That day, the police received 406 calls on “suspicious packages,” none of which turned out to be explosives.
Normalizing collaboration with the NYPD, the largest state terrorist force in the world, is a great danger for the international working class. This is the same police force that has been spying on Muslim students and workers wherever they hang out—colleges, mosques, community centers, restaurants. It’s the same NYPD that routinely terrorizes Black and Latin working-class men and women. But this latest attack by our common enemy can also be an opportunity for Muslim, Arab, and South Asian workers to unite with Black and Latin workers.  
Following their 9/11 model, the bosses respond to terrorist acts (or purported terrorist acts) with heightened fascism. They mobilize anti-terrorist police units, SWAT teams and the FBI. They militarize U.S. cities, from Ferguson to New York to Charlotte. In Chelsea, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security, the FBI and other gangs of government thugs all descended on the bomb site.  
As they move to pacify the working class with guns and tanks, the bosses also use their news machine. The New York Post wrote an outright racist piece that claimed that terrorism ran in Rahami’s family (9/24). (In the 1980s, Rahami’s father fought with the Mujahideen, the Islamic “freedom fighters” funded by the CIA in their war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.) Every minute of the day, every day of the year, the network and cable news channels create more terror by spitting vile bigotry about Muslim and Arab workers, the front line of their war to divide us.
Racist crime against Muslim workers is at its highest since 9/11: “New data from researchers at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes against American Muslims were up 78 percent over the course of 2015 (New York Times, 9/17). According to the same report, anti-Arab hate crimes rose by 219 percent. The epidemic of individual violence stems from the systematic racist violence perpetuated by the capitalist U.S. government, police and military.
These abuses and atrocities are all part of the capitalists’ drill for war. Breeding anti-Muslim racism enables the ruling class to build the patriotism it will ultimately need to butcher Muslim and Arab workers throughout the Middle East.
U.S. State Terrorists: Mass Murders by the Day
While the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey were indeed cowardly acts against innocent workers, we must not forget that thousands are murdered by capitalist state terror every day. The finance capitalists of the U.S. ruling class are the world’s biggest terrorists, by far. With one hand, they sign “peace treaties”; with the other, they drop another cluster of bombs on civilians. During World War II, U.S. imperialists killed hundreds of thousands with the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Today, when U.S. bosses aren’t bombing hospitals in Afghanistan, they are wiping out whole families with reckless drone strikes across Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia. Nearly half a million have been slaughtered in the proxy war in Syria (Frontline, 2/11), and more than 4.8 million displaced (Syianrefugees.eu).
On their home front, the bosses are shattering the lives of millions with mass racist incarceration, deportation and unemployment. To divert attention from their own monstrous crimes, they are exploiting fears of ISIS and Al Qaeda to provoke anti-Muslim racism and divide workers against one another.
At stake is the immense oil wealth of the Middle East. The imperialists in Russia and China want to control this cheaply extracted oil themselves; U.S. and European capitalists will stop at nothing to secure it.
As the great Soviet communist leader Vladimir Lenin pointed out, imperialist rivalries can be resolved only by war. No matter how many remote-control drones they have on military bases, the bosses know they will need real-live soldiers to fight for and hold oil-rich territory in the Middle East. Their problem is that they haven’t been able to win the workers to support this bloody mission. Nor can the U.S. capitalists control their so-called allies, including Turkey and Iraq.
The Progressive Labor Party must organize workers to stop imperialist war by fighting to smash capitalism and build a communist society. Under communism, workers will supply their own needs without bosses or money. They will construct a world free of terrorism, racism and sexism.
Fight Through the Dark Night
While it is true that we remain—for now—in the dark night of unchecked imperialist horrors, with no mass workers’ movement to challenge them, the international working class is stirring. The bosses’ ideological control—the crucial element for their continued dominance—is visibly shaky. When the working class rebels as it did in Charlotte, against yet another murder of a young Black man, it hurts U.S. imperialism. If multiracial rebellions were detonated across the United States, with the bold leadership we saw two years ago in Ferguson, they would seriously hinder U.S. war plans. Throughout the world, workers are fighting back. From solidarity marches in New York and Chicago to strikes in India, France and Spain, workers are raising their level of struggle against the capitalists.
One Red Flag
With red leadership, these protests eventually will move to a more conscious level. As we know from practice, every protest deepens workers’ understanding of the world as it truly exists. The anti-racist movement alive in the streets today is preparing our class to face fascism and world war—the potential levers for revolution. Led by communist ideas, the workers’ revolution will smash the capitalists wherever they now stand, from Ferguson to Charlotte, from India and Patagonia to Africa and China.
Only communism can forever cure the lethal disease that capitalism has inflicted upon the working class: racism. Under communism, workers will have no need to fight over natural resources. There will be no “ours” and “theirs.” All resources will be shared, according to need. The state terrorists of capitalism will be eliminated for all time.

BROOKLYN, September 22—“Can I have a sheet of those stickers Miss? I want to help give them out” That ‘s what we heard from at least a dozen students Thursday morning as we handed out anti-racist stickers to wear at a local high school. Some students and teachers also made a plan to hold a rally after school in response to the rash of racist police killings this last week. To abolish racism and build a better world, we must fight back!
At lunchtime, teachers and students gathered to make signs for the rally after school. As we searched for slogans on the Internet, we came across a website that tracked the amount of police killings in the U.S. There were 13 in the last 6 days! This led to a discussion where students pointed out that it’s not just a few bad cops, but the whole system that is racist. We were outraged at the murders of Keith Lamont Scott in North Carolina, Terrence Crutcher in Oklahoma and 13 year old, Tyre King in Ohio. But these racist killings expose a capitalist system that is a daily horror for billions of  people around the world. And life will get even worse as competing capitalists around the world bring us ever closer to world war.
Learning to Fight, Fighting to Learn
So it’s more important than ever to fight back and not just go on with business as usual. Even if one rally, or wearing a sticker will not stop innocent people from being killed at the hands of the police, these small acts help to raise everyone’s consciousness. When others see people fighting back, they think about the racist inequality in our world. That has an impact on people even if we don’t see it immediately.  
In some English classes, students made posters for the rally as part of the lesson. In those classes they have been reading the biography of Malcolm X and discussing the fight against racism during the Civil Rights Movement. In U.S. history classes, all students received a copy of CHALLENGE as we discussed these racist killings in connection with the bigger question of “What is Race?” and “Why Does Racism Exist?” Racism is the biggest tool of billionaire bosses around the world. They use it to divide the working class as they reap huge profits. We must fight racism now as we build a revolutionary movement for communism. Only under communism will we be able to finally destroy racism, sexism and all the other evils of capitalism.
Schools, like the cops, are run by the government; they are part of the “state apparatus.” The cops try to control us by intimidation and terror. The schools try to brainwash us into being obedient workers who think only about ourselves.  They want us to salute the flag, do as we are told, and don’t rebel or think for ourselves. Yet here we have young people thinking, discussing and organizing with leadership of communist and antiracist education workers. This can be a step towards joining the lifelong battle for a better world, communism.
Student Leadership
After the end of the last class, some teachers and students headed out with the signs made earlier in the day. At first, many students were intimidated and felt unsure, but a group of senior girls gave leadership by taking signs and beginning a picket line. More students gathered, many watched as we chanted, took pictures and held up our signs.  Although the rally was not as big as some in past years at this school, we were happy because some new students, teachers and staff participated. We have a planning meeting coming up for future fightbacks. The fight for communism continues, sometimes one small step at a time. Join us!

The U.S. presidential election is taking racism, and racist attacks against the international working class, to new heights. As Black workers are being killed by the police on a daily basis, Clinton and Trump have continually fueled the racism behind these murders.
Capitalism has always used racism to divide the working class—from enforcing segregation between Black slaves and white indentured servants to developing pseudoscientific theories about racial superiority. Racism has taken different forms among different groups of capitalists around the world depending on their needs, but few bosses have matched the genocidal brutality of the U.S. ruling class, within U.S. borders and through imperialist wars around the world.
In this context, the U.S. presidential election is really about which candidate, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, stands to inherit that legacy. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party aspires to inherit a different legacy – a legacy of international working class unity against racism, sexism and imperialism. PLP fights for armed revolution for the working class to take state power, and smash the capitalist class, and their racist politician representatives.
Trump: Representative of Open Racism
Trump’s long history of racist attacks are first documented in 1973, when he was singled out in a court case for systematically denying apartments to Black people applying to live in his buildings. As the 2016 Republican nominee, Trump is making open racism the binding theme of his campaign by attacking Middle Eastern workers, Black workers and immigrant workers in the U.S. for the problems of capitalism that white workers are increasingly experiencing. He has encouraged his supporters to attack Black protesters at his rallies, and has accepted support from a host of openly racist Klansmen. Trump also brags regularly about his endorsements from most of the U.S.’ police unions.
While Trump has millions of supporters, millions of multiracial workers and students know Trump’s history and militantly oppose his open racism. More dangerously for the working class, however, is the long history of Hillary Clinton’s racist attacks. While Trump has played to openly racist workers, Clinton has spent her career leading racist attacks against the working class that have destroyed millions of families with a liberal, pro-worker mask.
Clinton: The Grooming of a Professional Racist
There’s a predictable upsurge in racism during every U.S. presidential election, at the least. The bosses’ politicians and media foment this racism to divert the working class from uniting against capitalism. Racist cops, mass incarceration, blaming Black workers for capitalist-caused poverty, and using racism and nationalism to convince workers around the world to fight each other in imperialist wars while the capitalists reap the profits, are how politicians earn their value in the eyes of the ruling class donors. In the eyes of many U.S. bosses, Clinton has earned her value as a professional racist, whose capabilities of maintaining racist working class divisions while stoking nationalist, pro-U.S. imperialist unity are second only to Barack Obama. Her history shows us how.
Clinton frequently champions her working class upbringing in an openly anti-Semitic household. She was a teenager in the 1960s during the height of the Civil Rights movement. While hundreds of thousands of young people marched against segregation, Clinton volunteered for Republican Barry Goldwater’s openly racist 1964 Presidential campaign.
While many workers have had racist upbringings that they later reject through struggle, Clinton’s early racism laid the basis for bigger attacks against the working class as a high-achieving and promising tool of the U.S. capitalists. While in Arkansas she supported her husband, Bill, then Governor, who signed a law supporting the Arkansas State Flag’s celebration of the Confederacy, the short-lived nation during the slaveholder’s rebellion during the 1800s.
While her husband was Governor, Clinton took a position on the board of Walmart, while they launched a campaign that built racism and nationalism to sell American-made products, called “Buy American.” This campaign to “Buy American” happened while Walmart hypocritically exploited slave labor wages in Asia (PBS, 11/16/04).
“Wal-Mart continued to get most of its products from overseas during its buy America program including from this factory in Bangladesh that used 11 and 12-year-old girls. (Good Morning America 1/31/2008).
The Clintons Get Promoted
The Clintons ultimately proved their worth to the ruling class as racist killers during the 1992 presidential election, when Bill Clinton was down in the polls: “Clinton proved his toughness by flying back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired Black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him for later. After the execution, Clinton remarked, ‘[N]o one can say I’m soft on crime.’” (The Nation 2/10/16)
Bill Clinton won, and this racist execution foreshadowed the hiring of 100,000 more police officers nationwide, and his racist destruction of welfare (see below). Internationally, millions of workers in Mexico were driven off their lands by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as U.S. bombs rained down on the former Yugoslavia. Throughout the 1990s, when the U.S. wasn’t routinely bombing workers in Iraq, workers there faced sanctions at the cost of over 500,000 children’s lives. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, later said this was “worth it.”
Hillary Follows Bill, Obama’s Footsteps
In 1994, Hillary Clinton campaigned for Bill Clinton’s Federal Crime that wreaked havoc on the working class calling it a “smart, tough” bill that will “make a difference in police officers lives.”  (White House Press Secretary, 8/10/1994). She followed that up in 1996 describing Black children as “super-predators” as openly racist a statement as anything Trump has uttered and a justification for the devastation caused by the new laws.
Hillary Clinton’s racist statements in 1996 describing Black children as “super-predators” are as openly racist as anything Trump has uttered, and had dire consequences. Among other crimes of Bill Clinton’s presidency, Hillary Clintons’ overt racism dovetailed with the skyrocketing numbers of incarcerated Black youth during the 1990s that, combined with the other attacks, wreaked havoc on the working class.
Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history….he escalated [The War on Crime] beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible.. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983 (The Nation 2/10/16).
Hillary Clinton then led the charge to drive the poorest section of the working class into abject poverty by supporting her husband’s dismantling of welfare benefits, an attack that was another hugely disproportionate attack on Black workers, this time targeting single mothers and children. She bragged about her role in the onslaught, and of her service to ruling class, in the face of opposition. “I agreed that he should sign it and [I]worked hard to round up votes for its passage—though he and the legislation were roundly criticized by some liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system,” (Hillary Clinton, Living History, 2003). The result of Hillary Clinton’s efforts were that “By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been allocated to food stamps.” (The Nation, 2/10/20016)
The New York Times is one example of the leading ruling class mouthpieces praising their servant Clinton’s phony “record of service to children, women and families” (NYT Editorial, 9/25/16). Hypocritically, the exploitation of child workers in Bangladesh mentioned above is just one example of Hillary Clinton’s racist attacks on the very children she claims to champion. As Secretary of State in the Obama administration, she led the effort to start the civil wars in Libya and Syria that have shattered millions of lives, especially children, women, and families, and left the Middle East in flames. The Clinton State Department-backed militia in Libya is murdering Black workers on a mass scale. “ Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director for Human Rights Watch, said there was violence throughout the uprising against black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans in the capital, “It really is racist violence against all dark-skinned people,” Bouckaert said. “This situation for Africans in Tripoli is dire.”
It’s Not Clinton or Trump—It’s Capitalism
As the U.S. bosses’ imperialist rivalry sharpens with Russian and Chinese imperialism from the devastation in Syria to the South China Sea, the threat of increased racist, sexist, and imperialist assault on the international working class increase every day. Clinton and Trump’s racist campaigns to keep the working class divided mean the working class will lose no matter who wins the election. Clinton may very well defeat Trump, but this is no victory of the “lesser evil.”
For the international working class, Clinton’s services to the ruling class and crimes against the working class, of which this is a partial list, would just be getting started—on a bigger scale. But the bosses have a problem. Millions of workers around the world were inspired by the Black youth and workers rebelling in Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Baton Rouge, and now Charlotte.
These rebellions against racist police terror took aim at the very capitalist system responsible for racist mass incarceration and unemployment. On the other hand, the U.S. bosses know that to keep their sagging, but heavily-armed empire, they must win masses of U.S. workers, especially Black workers and immigrants, to sacrifice for U.S. imperialism, and fight in imperialist wars against their class sisters and brothers of other bosses’ countries.
PLP salutes the rebellious Black workers and youth who dare to fight back. PLP is organizing a mass movement in more than two dozen countries to spread the many flames of rebellion into a fire to burn capitalism to the ground once and for all. It is time to smash all the bosses, their politicians, and the racist system they represent, with communist revolution.

BROOKLYN, September 24—Once again workers have turned up the level of class struggle in response to racist police murder. In Charlotte and Tulsa and in cities across the U.S., workers are fighting back against the latest racist murders by the bosses’ police and gaining confidence that the working class can unite and take on the ruling class.
In Tulsa, hundred of workers and students marched on Police Headquarters forcing the Tulsa bosses to indict killer cop Betty Shelby who murdered Terence Crutcher. In Charlotte NC, thousands of Black, white, Latin and Asian workers rebelled against the bosses after the murder of Keith Lamont Scott.
Workers in Charlotte defied the bosses police and National Guard, shutting down the business center where brave workers have taken the streets night after night in the face of tear gas and rubber bullets used against them, even after one of the protestors was killed, likely by one of those rubber bullets. As the Charlotte ruling class declared a State of Emergency and tried to enact a midnight curfew on the third day of the rebellion, workers took over streets and defied the 12 AM deadline, holding their ground into the early morning hours.
Solidarity Rally for Charlotte, Tulsa
In Brooklyn, “No Justice No Peace, No Racist Police” rang out on the streets of Flatbush as a spirited group led by PLP distributed almost 400 CHALLENGES and took turns making speeches on the bullhorn and leading chants in unity with the fight back in Charlotte and Tulsa against the latest police murders.
Family members of two different women murdered by the NYPD, took turns chanting and speaking on the bullhorn.  These women have been leading the fight against the KKKops in NYC since Shantel Davis and Kyam Livingston were murdered by the police four years ago and three years ago respectively. Liberal NYC mayor de Blasio’s administration hasn’t provided anything close to justice for these women and their loved ones.  We have learned and re-learned that continuing to fight back is the only way we will ever end this racist, capitalist system and all its horrendous attacks against the working class. PLP has grown as several workers and students involved in fighting for justice for victims of police murders have joined the fight for communist revolution.
Fertile Ground for Revolution
Charlotte and Tulsa join Baton Rouge, Baltimore, Ferguson and the Flatbush neighborhood as a site of militant resistance. This learning and inspiration and fight back is part of a long history. It is what gives Progressive Labor Party the confidence that we can and will make a revolutionary change for communism.
Communism means a system run by workers, in the interest of the whole international working class, not for the profit of a few billionaires. Communism means smashing racism and sexism because all of humanity will need to work together to run society, unlike capitalism, which needs these ideologies to divide us so we don’t unite to smash their profit system.
Although communism may still be a long way off, building confidence in the working class brings us a step closer to our revolutionary goal. Inspired by the rebellion in Charlotte, a young black woman volunteered to give her first speech ever on a bullhorn. A passerby asked to sing a song he had written about the need to unite Black and white against racism. When the working class fights back like they have in Charlotte and Tulsa this past week, and more workers strive to help give communist leadership to these struggles, there will be more opportunities to build the revolutionary communist movement that will smash capitalism once and for all.