BROOKLYN, September 8—Workers, professors, and students unite against the racist and sexist lockout of professors at Brooklyn Long Island University (LIU)! Students are leading the fight: hundreds walked out of their classes and they lead the daily protests with chants and signs. Electricians, carpenters, and custodians from LIU haven’t had a contract for four years and also joined in.
In solidarity, several dozen members of the Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York (PSC-CUNY), including members of the Progressive Labor Party, came to the demonstration. This is an important struggle for the working class because students, professors, and workers are seeing that this is everyone’s struggle. When workers unite, we are a force to be reckoned with and we are one step closer to communism!
Students Bear the Burden
The professors are locked out without salaries or health benefits because the administration wants to force already low-paid adjunct professors to accept pay cuts. This is just the latest attack. For the past two years, LIU President Kimberly Cline has made cuts to departments and student services and laid off professors, forcing other to take on higher work loads. All this translates to students getting fewer resources and a worse education. Cline says it is to “balance the budget” while she pockets an annual salary of more than $650,000.
These budget cuts attack students and make it increasingly difficult to get an education. Students at LIU pay over $34,000 in tuition, with tuition increasing every year. That doesn’t even include the cost of food or housing. Many go into crippling debt just to pay for college. What do they get for their money? The LIU administration replaced 400 of the faculty with a couple hundred “scabs with doctorates” who were unprepared or unqualified to teach the first day of class. When professors are attacked, students bear the brunt.
Several speakers at the rally also pointed out that these attacks are racist and sexist. The LIU C.W. Post campus has mostly white students, while the Brooklyn campus is over 50 percent Black, Latin, and Asian students and 70 percent women. Students pay roughly the same tuition, but funds are re-routed to the LIU C.W. Post campus. Professors at the Brooklyn campus make lower salaries and receive fewer benefits. One of the demands of the faculty union, the LIUFF, is for equal salaries for both campuses.
Worker-Student Alliance
All across the country, both public and private universities are using more and more non-tenure track, contingent professors—adjuncts—who are given low salaries and few, if any, benefits. Workers seldom get new contracts to match the insane cost of living. Students are constantly paying more in tuition and getting less for their money. That’s how capitalism works everywhere: bosses maintain profits by making it easier to fire workers and by cutting benefits and resources.
The fight at LIU is for students, workers, and faculty everywhere. The bosses want us to believe that professors, students, and manual workers all have different struggles and that they must fight back separately. That is why it is key that all different workers are coming together in this struggle. The protesters understand that if management is able to lock out union members and force them to accept concessionary terms, it’s a blow to working people everywhere.
As the working class at LIU fight for better living conditions, we must all follow their example. Workers and students everywhere should support the professors and students of LIU. CUNY students are facing tuition hikes and should join the struggle. CUNY professors, and especially adjuncts, are facing similar attacks and must show solidarity. Demand that our unions rally in solidarity. Rank and file members should demand that the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) organize its hundreds of thousands of members to come to LIU, join the picket lines and shut the campus down until we win this struggle!
Let’s not forget that as long as the bosses still run this capitalist system, they can always take back whatever we win in our struggles. We need to build solidarity, fight racism and sexism, and organize for a better world in the future! The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is organizing in over 25 countries against the many abuses workers suffer under capitalism. These abuses will only end with communist revolution where workers run the world. Staff and students at LIU should join this worldwide struggle. Join us in the fight for communism.

PAKISTAN, September 14—Pakistan has become a laboratory for the capitalist bosses to see how much labor they can grind out of the working class while worsening their misery, but the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is growing in the fight to organize workers into our international party. All over Pakistan, workers are organizing small and big fights against the bosses, and coming into conflict with the influence of capitalist politicians and professional fake leftist misleaders, who try to sell out the struggles.
PLP is striving to give the working class true leadership and build a mass party that can end capitalism and build a state run by the working class: communism. To succeed in communist revolution, we have to smash the bosses’ state by freeing the working class from the illusions pushed by these misleaders. PLP in Pakistan has been exposing the misleaders’ role while leading the struggles against the bosses and their system- in industries all across the country!
Roll Call of Workers’ Fightback
Below are a few of the struggles PLP is in the thick of in Pakistan.
-Brick kiln workers, many of whom are women, are the most exploited in Pakistan. They are routinely tortured, harassed, and raped by the kiln owners. They are also among the worst paid. Kiln workers are striking and hunger striking for the implementation of a minimum wage for kiln workers: 1,036 Pakistani rupees per 1,000 bricks made, which is about $9.94 in U.S. dollars.
—Electricity workers have held nationwide rallies, protests and meetings to press the government to accept their demands. Workers raised slogans urging the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) management to ensure safe working conditions to the field staff. There has been a rise in fatal accidents involving the line staff during the past year. Workers and PL’ers said it is capitalism which has no concerns about the lives of the working class, because capitalism needs more and more profit at the cost of ever more working class lives. PL’ers and supporters condemned the so-called leaders of their trade union, and declared only the fight for international communist revolution can improve the lives of the working class.
—Comrades and friends in the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) trade union are protesting against the bosses, shutting down work at different WASA stations and urging the government to implement their charter of demands. The demands include payment of three-month salaries to employees, one-month salaries to the sacked contractual and work-charged workers, reinstatement of laid-off workers, implementation of deceased’s sons quota, payment of provident fund, gratuity and other allowances.
—Hundreds of workers and PL’ers working for MOL (a Hungarian oil and gas company) organized a strike against the firm’s contract system. Workers gathered outside the main gate of the central processing facility where they staged a protest sit-in, restricting the movement of the company vehicles. They chanted slogans against the MOL administration, claiming they had been working in the company for the last eight years on contract at very low wages. The workers said they would not tolerate the cruelty under the contract system anymore, and demanded that they be brought under the direct payroll of the company with all perks and privileges which were being provided to the firm’s other employees. Meanwhile, on the alleged directives of the administration of the company, police raided the protest camp and arrested about 100 workers. The workers were later set free by the police when their fellow workers and comrades, waving red flags, marched and agitated for their release.
—Teachers and nurses are agitating against the bosses’ policy to exploit them vigorously without increasing their wages and securing their lives. Nurses and other health workers are organizing demonstrations in different parts of the country, but their union misleadership routinely compromise with the authorities to break the strikes. Teachers are still waiting for the fulfillment of the bosses’ promises about better service structure and resolving their promotion issues but nothing changed because of their puppet right-wing union leadership. Teachers began boycotting academic activities at government universities across Sindh, Pakistan’s largest and most industrialized province, as academic activities were suspended at eight major public sector universities in the province. The so-called leadership of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) is doing nothing for academic staff except to get a good position or posting for them. However, in this fight also, PLP is struggling to expose these misleaders.
‘Politicians and Pushers…’
When Pakistan’s capitalist politicians aren’t busy pushing illusions on the working class with nationalism, sexism and racism, they’re blaming each other for corruption and money laundering. They serve Pakistan’s capitalist class well by hiding the real issues for the working class - exploitation, low wages, long working hours without overtime, no safety at workplaces, poverty, and increasing  unemployment.
Unemployment is increasing on a daily basis for many workers. No social service structure exist even for impoverished government employees. The bosses harass and assault women workers with impunity, while workers are caught in the middle of various feuding mafias and terrorist groups. Not a single trade union or employee’s organization organizes actions against any of this. PL’ers are engaged with the working class to expose that the people claiming to be our “leaders” are in the pockets of Pakistan’s top bosses. Pakistan’s capitalists depend on keeping the working class here submissive and beaten down, while they fulfill their expanding regional imperialist ambitions.
Pakistan: Vital to Global Imperialist Chessboard
Pakistan’s capitalists were, for decades, reliable U.S. imperialist allies. Today they are central players in the Chinese capitalist class’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR), otherwise known as the “New Silk Road.” The OBOR project consists of $1.4 trillion in infrastructure projects like railroad and highway networks and deep-water ports, pushing four billion workers in 64 countries into a Chinese capitalist-dominated market ten times the size of the markets dominated by U.S. imperialism. In particular, the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has the potential to unblock vast swathes of South Asia, with [Pakistan’s deep-water port] Gwadar, operated by China Overseas Port Holdings, slated to become a key naval hub of the New Silk Roads (Sputnik News, 8/31/16).
Pakistan’s involvement with OBOR increased along with its status as a full member of the Russian and Chinese imperialist-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) (Voice of America, 7/7/15). The SCO is an international military alliance designed as a rival to the U.S. imperialist-led NATO. Much as NATO’s military power allied with the European Union allowed U.S. imperialism to project its economic power following World War II,
a lot of the (OBOR) action happens in member-states or observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The New Silk Roads are about to be totally intertwined with…the SCO as a security-economic cooperation umbrella (Sputnik).
The rise of the Russian/Chinese imperialist OBOR/SCO bloc sharpens the rivalry with the fracturing U.S. imperialist-led NATO/ EU bloc. The U.S. capitalist class, declining but still heavily armed and ready to defend their global empire, will not concede many such vital “pieces” of their imperialist chessboard without all-out war. The threat of World War III looms in this intensifying imperialist rivalry.
PLP is involved in organizing different small and big struggles against the capitalist system to show the working class that they are more than just chess pieces in an imperialist game. The working class can forge its own world, and through international communist revolution we can get rid of these imperialist wars, exploitation, poverty, slavery, illiteracy, racism, nationalism and terrorism- once and for all. Our fight continues. We have a world to win!

SAN JOSE, CA, September 2—“Same enemy same fight, to smash sexism we must unite,” PLP and other anti-sexists at the Santa Clara Hall of Justice where rapist Brock Turner was released.
Turner was convicted of three felonies for sexual assault against an unconscious woman and was sentenced to a mere six months in jail, only serving three. Progressive Labor Party gave leadership across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City to protest the special oppression of women (see LA report on page 3).
Building the Action
We built support for the protest by making posters and selling CHALLENGE at a public university in the Bay Area. We canvassed the day before, too. Eleven people, mainly women, came out to make posters. We also signed up eight students to either come to the protest at the Santa Clara Hall or come to future Party events. Many were angry at the sexist injustice system and one student said, “Revolution is the only way to stop this, I need to be with y’all.” PLP is hosting a “Smash Sexism BBQ & Movie” event to continue our efforts to fight against sexism and build working class unity.
It’s Not Just Persky, It’s Capitalism
Aaron Persky, the judge who served a careless ruling justified his decision by claiming Turner had given up a “hard-earned swimming scholarship” and that prison would be “severe.” Perksy is sending a sexist message: that an elite white man’s future overrides the safety of college women. This sexist judge and the whole injustice system have got to go! To draw this connection, we chanted, “Turner and Persky one and the same, sexist terror is the name of their game.”
Persky is one part of a wide criminal system that serves to protect ruling-class interests and idea, not working-class women. Harassment, intimidation, and abuse from courts and the police are common across the country, which is a large reason why women don’t report rapes and why few perpetrators ever face conviction or jail time.
In the few cases that went to trial, prosecutors could be brutal to the victim and judges extremely lenient to the rapist. In one email exchange, a prosecutor referred to a woman who had reported a sexual assault as a “conniving little whore.” A cop wrote back: “Lmao! I feel the same” (NYT, 8/11). In the Bay Area, 28 police from five districts used a 17-year-old girl as a sex slave (CNN, 7/3).
Sexism’s Twin: Racism
In New York City, we discussed how racism and sexism function together inside the police and the courts. If the judge can admit that prison is harmful for Turner, the millions of working-class Black and Latin working class, who are routinely criminalized? The Turner case is a sharp contrast to the five Black teens from Brownsville, Brooklyn who were wrongly accused of rape. The media instantly demonized and convicted them, while Brock Turner, an actual rapist, got away with a mere three months. In the sexist, dehumanizing profit system, which treats all workers as commodities, rape and sexist violence are rampant.
The San Francisco education club met to discuss the political points prior to publishing the leaflet. A comrade pointed out that state violence against women serves the same purpose as racist state violence against Black workers. These acts of violence create divisions between women, men, Black, and white workers. It breeds the kind of terror aimed to immobilize workers from uniting against oppression and exploitation, guaranteeing billions of super-profits and their rule.
Know Your Enemy
We discussed with friends about naming our enemy: it is capitalism or patriarchy? A patriarchy is a society in which men have systemic power, and women do not. But that analysis leaves out class society, and assumes women in power (i.e., bosses and politicians) will make life better for working women.
In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brutally suppressed striking railway workers and pushed their families out of their homes. In Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attacked striking miners, closed unprofitable industries and privatized those that remained. Hillary Clinton destroyed the lives of countless women from the U.S. to the Middle East (see page 8). When the occasional woman attains a position of power, the bosses run a victim-blaming campaign against other poor women.
Sexism’s root cause is capitalism, not men. In fact, sexism hurts men—in very material ways. When women’s wages are depressed, the rest of the working class men go down with them. Ever since 1973, though productivity grew by 72 percent, workers wages rose only by 9 percent (ThinkProgress, 9/2/15).
Buying into the bosses’ ideas and practices benefits only the ruling class and destroys our chances of having a successful working class revolution.
Build an Egalitarian Society
PLP is committed to building a communist society where women and men will work side by side to meet the needs of the working class. We saw the beginning of what’s possible last century. In revolutionary China, prostitution was virtually eliminated. In the Soviet Union, educational facilities at all levels granted equal access to men and women. (At the height of the Soviet era, 60 percent of engineers were women.) Maternity leave with full pay was universal; new mothers had no worry about losing their jobs. There were ample kindergartens, day care centers, nurseries, and playgrounds, as well as communal dining rooms. The concept of housekeeping as “women’s work” was abolished.
We can learn from the successes and mistakes of China and the Soviet Union to build a better world under communism. PLP fights directly for communism, abolishing wages at once—the material basis for racist and sexist division.  
We saw the potential for this society during our protest, women and men, Asian, Latin, Black, and white united against the sexist violence of Brock Turner and the capitalist state protection granted by Judge Persky. From Brooklyn to San Francisco to Los Angeles, fight for communism!

LOS ANGELES, September 2—The Progressive Labor Party made an immediate coast to coast call to action when Stanford rapist Brock Turner was let out after a three-month jail sentence. Turner’s case is an example of the sexist culture and oppression that feeds on capitalism.
Who Benefits? The Moneybags
At our rally, a multiracial group of women and men exposed the sexist nature of capitalism in both Spanish and English. A common saying on the bullhorn was, “Who benefits from sexism?”
One comrade gave multiple examples of  how capitalism needs sexist ideology and how women are seen as disposable objects. He pointed at billboards surrounding the neighborhood.
One sign in particular had a huge logo of the Hustler Casino, owned by sexist filth Larry Flynt who is best known for his pornographic magazine. Hustler has a proud 42-year history of oppressing women and selling their bodies as commodities.
Wage Slavery
This sexist culture has an economic root—wage slavery. In 1921, Lenin wrote that “under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed….not only are they exploited as members of the working class, they continue to be ‘household slaves,’ for they are overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen and family household” (in a Supplement to Pravda No. 51). Wage labor exists as long as unpaid labor exists. Abolishing the wage system is the essential step to smashing sexism.
Passersby stopped to talk about how they have not heard many people talking about sexism and immigration in the same sentence. This was coming from Latin women, who are very familiar with sexism. It shows that sexism is very much on worker’s minds.
When one speaker was trying to explain how women were paid less by the bosses, a group of passersby screamed, “20 percent less than men!” The wage gap is much higher for Black, Latin, Asian, and undocumented women.
Sexist State Violence
Referring to this wage slavery, comrades pointed to the surrounding neighborhood homes of garment workers. Sexism affects women all over the world. “Since coming to office in 2009, Obama’s government has deported more than 2.5 million people—up 23% from the George W. Bush years” (Fusion, 1/7/16). In addition, the Deporter-in-Chief’s latest targets are women and unaccompanied kids fleeing capitalist violence in Central America.
The main violence against working-class women is coming from capitalism and the government that serves it. This capitalist state violence aims to terrorize and weaken the whole working class.
Women and Men Unite!
There is no doubt that capitalism is not on the side of the workers. We can even see that in the current presidential campaigns (see page 8).  What progress has capitalist society made now that our daughters can run for president and fight shoulder to shoulder with men on the front lines for U.S. imperialism? Progress for the bosses, greater attacks on workers. So again we asked, “Who benefits from sexism?” Not working-class men, or women.
Women and men must struggle shoulder to shoulder on the front lines for communist revolution. That would be victory for the working class. Let’s fight!