CLEVELAND, July 21—“I agree with the communists,” said a retired worker at the Cudell Recreation Center, where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and murdered by the Klan-in-blue in 2014. As part of our summer project during the Republican National Convention, a small and inexperienced but enthusiastic contingent of Progressive Labor Party focused on raising class-consciousness among families in Cleveland.
In both the counter-RNC protests and neighborhood organizing activities, PLP raised communist politics and revolution as the only alternative to the bosses’ electoral sham.
Playground for Revolution
Aside from the rallies downtown (more on that later), PLP made the working class of Cleveland their focus. Tamir’s only crime was to be a Black child living under capitalism. Like so many killer kkkops before them, Timothy Leohmann and Frank Garmback were never indicted, despite the findings of a municipal court judge that they should have been charged with murder, manslaughter, and homicide (The Atlantic, 6/12/15). Every person we spoke to—from elementary school children to retired grandparents—knew Tamir or heard the cops’ gunshots or both. As one worker said, “If a kid can’t be safe at a playground, there’s no such thing as a safe place.”
The neighborhood turned the playground’s gazebo into a memorial. Tables were covered with teddy bears, candles, flowers and messages. In honor of Tamir, we made the gazebo a symbol of fightback. Youth from the neighborhood and PLP made a banner, “Rebel against KKKapitalism,” to be hung there (see photo).
Learn From the Working Class
The first thing we noticed at Cudell were the multiracial families, and the Black children playing side by side with white and Latin children. Every white worker we met had no illusions about the racist nature of capitalism and the need to fight back. In contrast to Los Angeles and New York City, where the ruling class has more practice in centralized control, neighborhoods like these are not saturated with anti-working-class ideas like Black nationalism and white privilege theory. Instead, the Party found multiracial unity and the routine integration of Black, Arab, Asian, Latin and white workers. We were reminded of the pathetic misleadership of Black Lives Matter, who attacked the Party’s multiracial presence and fightback at their Cleveland convention last summer.
As we went door to door canvassing with CHALLENGE and flyers, aiming to build connections and expand our newspaper subscription base among local workers, we learned that Frank G. Jackson, Cleveland’s Black mayor, had discouraged people from coming to the Cudell playground during the Republicans’ week of racist rhetoric.
After the city announced plans to demolish the Cudell gazebo and erase the memory of Tamir Rice, it was no surprise that our banner went missing overnight. Some suspected the kkkops. So the Party made another message, again with the help of neighborhood youth, to be left by the monument. The struggle to transform the gazebo from a symbol of trauma to one of fightback was welcomed by residents, young and old. Nearly everybody who passed us walked away with a CHALLENGE, a conversation, and an anti-racism button pinned to their shirts.
Don’t Vote, Now What?
Workers at Cudell taught Party members to have greater confidence in our class’s potential for pro-communist politics. Most workers had an anti-voting reflex, rejecting both Trump and Clinton as solutions. With the few who saw Clinton as the default choice, we pulled out the back page of CHALLENGE and sourced Clinton’s racist remarks and policies that targeted Black youth.
One frustrated worker asked, “Then what do I do?”
A Party comrade said, “We have a strategy for communist revolution and organizing in the masses.”
“Yes, I read your paper. I know that. But what do I do?” This worker was asking how he could organize for communism in his neighborhood. During this study group, we brainstormed on three specific steps he could take to build a base among his neighbors and friends.
How Do You Spell Racist? R-N-C!
The counter-demonstrations downtown, near the convention site, were smaller than projected. Ruling-class media worked overtime to scare people away from attending. Even so, the boldness of the immigrant working class, including undocumented youth, was awe-inspiring. At both the March for Economic Justice and the Wall Off Trump street actions, they were the most militant and organized. We chanted alongside them in both Spanish and English: “Asian, Latin, Black and white, workers of the world unite!”
The crowd readily accepted PLP’s leadership. Our banner called for communist revolution. When we chanted, “Republicans, Democrats all the same, racist terror is the name of their game!” the crowd did not miss a beat. They chanted with us, shoulder to shoulder. Though the bosses’ media reported on the actions of Black Lives Matter, if truth be told, BLM could be found only online, in hashtags and tweets. They were missing in action on the streets.
Using our bullhorn, comrades explained that the threat to the international working class goes beyond Donald Trump and the Republicans, and that all politicians are more alike than different in defending the bosses’ bloody dictatorship. Our fightback must be in our workplace, schools and neighborhoods—in the real, not the virtual, world.
Attack Paul Ryan
Our summer project kicked off with a few comrades attending a panel discussion on poverty at Cleveland State University. Mouthpieces for both Democrats and Republicans made excuses for the failures of capitalism; one panelist went so far as to praise racist House Speaker Paul Ryan as “a champion of the poor.” PL’ers loudly blasted the panel for their blatant lies, forcing the apologists to end the session. Audience members applauded the boldness of the comrades, and many took CHALLENGE.
Without deep roots in the working class, a communist party is doomed to fail. In Cleveland, PLP brought our ideas directly to the masses and learned from them as well. We look forward to building the Party in Cleveland in years to come!
ST. PAUL-MINNEAPOLIS, July 21— Setting a militant tone of fightback from the first hours of the American Federation of Teachers convention, the Progressive Labor Party disrupted an arch-enemy of the working class: Hillary Clinton. A multiracial group of PL’ers took positions in the convention hall with a concealed banner that urged, “DON’T VOTE, REVOLT.” When Clinton mentioned Philando Castile, the Black education worker murdered by a cop in a St. Paul suburb twelve days earlier, PL’ers started chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot! Fists up, fight back!” We unfurled the banner and marched toward the stage. As we chanted, “Democrats, Republicans, all the same; racist terror is the name of the game,” Clinton became visibly upset and raised her voice to try to be heard over us. We continued our demonstration through the hall until security and the U.S. Secret Service surrounded and escorted us outside.
While Clinton is famous for her dishonesty and hypocrisy, it was an insult to every worker when she invoked Philando’s name. Alongside her husband, former president Bill Kkklinton, Hillary Clinton was instrumental in the passage of the monstrously racist 1994 crime bill. The Clintons’ “tough-on-crime” policies put 100,000 more cops on the street, expanded the racist death penalty, funneled nearly $10 billion to build more federal prisons, and led directly to racist mass incarceration (see page 4). Mad-dog cop Jeronimo Yanez pulled the trigger on Philando, but the Clintons—and the big bosses they represent—turned Yanez loose.
The AFT, one of two national unions of education workers, is a vital component of U.S. capitalism. The ruling class knows that the cannon fodder for their coming imperialist wars will pass through the public school system. The bosses have a vital interest in tightly controlling the AFT misleadership and guaranteeing that the union supports their pro-imperialist agenda, from the voting booths to the classrooms.
With more and more workers seeing that the system isn’t working, the rulers are more desperate to keep them tied to capitalist illusions and the big lie of electoral “democracy.” The convention appearance by Hillary Clinton was heavily promoted and carefully choreographed. But the AFT misleaders didn’t anticipate four days of political challenges from PLP. Our Party fought to break the union heads’ ideological hold over the more than 2,000 convention delegates. It took planning and hard work to distribute daily bulletins and hold meetings with delegates and friends, and it was worth it. PLP became an alternative voice to the AFT leadership. We showed the possibility of a communist alternative to a world with shoddy schools, racist borders, police terror and imperialist war.
Dare to Plan, Struggle and Win!
We built for the first-day action with a leaflet titled, “Walkout on Hillary Clinton.” Initially, there were angry reactions; some delegates argued we were helping Trump, and that whatever her flaws, Clinton at least was better than him. But many others agreed that Clinton was no friend of workers and students. The AFT and the liberal bosses—who represent finance capital, the dominant wing of the U.S. ruling class—foster the idea that there’s no alternative to electing the “lesser” evil. But communists understand that no capitalist ruler can ever meet the needs of the working class. In reality, liberal capitalist bosses like Barack Obama and the Clintons are more dangerous than open racists like Donald Trump. They disarm working-class fightback and pacify resistance by co-opting workers’ anger and channeling it into boss-led movements and unions. They are the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
In Minnesota, it was essential for PLP to show that a working class under attack cannot accept “business as usual.” AFT President Randi Weingarten is one of the capitalists’ most important agents in leading workers into the arms of Hillary Clinton—and the deadly embrace of U.S. imperialism. In the guise of fighting sexism, class traitors like Weingarten and Clinton defend the source of all sexist oppression and exploitation in the world today: capitalism.
Fight Back for Philando
On the second day, building on our protest of Philando Castile’s legal lynching, St. Paul teachers, parents, students and a local community organization, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, led the way in a multiracial march from the convention to the doorstep of U.S. Bank. Inside the hall, the lying Weingarten paid lip service to the “struggle for racial justice.” But when push came to shove, she tried to limit participation in the march by extending the general session. Many delegates ignored her and walked out to march with the thousand protesters.
Throughout this action, PL’ers connected with fellow workers from Philando’s school. Our leadership reached a high point with chants like, “Shut this racist system dwown,” and a rousing series of “Fight back!” chants that drew local drummers, dancers and marchers into a unified mass of militancy.
Education Workers Gain Confidence in PLP
By the convention’s closing session, after three days of consistent Party leafleting, education workers were eagerly taking our bulletins. Many approached us to find out what PLP was saying. We continued to call out the AFT misleadership’s collaboration with the capitalist bosses and their racist cops. We linked them to the section of the Mexican teacher’s union that has worked with the government to attack and kill teachers in Oaxaca.
This bulletin led to conversations with workers about education workers’ need for international solidarity. We have far more in common with workers in Mexico than with the AFT bosses inside the U.S. We found that ,many workers agree that standing with our class brothers and sisters, and particularly with our students, means we can never collaborate with the police unions that terrorize and murder us.
PLP Poses Threat to AFT
After four days of our disrupting the convention, the union chiefs finally sent security to kick us out of the hall. This was a victory for PLP: We’d become too big a threat to their ideological control of their rank and file. Too many workers were resisting! As security tried to rush us out, a PL’er made a speech about why we were being ejected: We’d exposed the misleadership’s racism and their role as a tool of the bosses.
Then we went back inside with a single copy of our leaflet. We loudly announced that Weingarten and her fellow stooges were so scared that they’d no longer allow us to distribute literature, and so we had returned to read it to the workers. About two paragraphs in, AFT officials came running to stop us, terrified of being even more exposed. They insisted that our ejection was all a misunderstanding. As we handed out hundreds more leaflets, several workers thanked PL’ers for standing up to the union misleadership.
Workers Can Break Bosses’ Hold
The AFT convention powerfully showed to all the union misleaders’ traitorous service to this racist, imperialist, blood-soaked profit system. Even more important, PLP showed our potential to weaken the bosses’ ideological control—the foundation for capitalist state power. Workers can be won to see communism as workers’ only alternative. By developing deep ties with workers and building a communist political base, the Party can break the bosses’ death grip on our class.
Members and friends of PLP must take these lessons and sharpen the struggle to organize within the bosses’ mass organizations, including unions and reform groups. When we share our lives and communist ideas with our co-workers, and fight alongside them in open class struggle, workers who seem passive today may be moved into battle tomorrow. This work will be crucial in leading our class to make the ultimate break with capitalism, build for a communist revolution, and create a world run by and for the international working class.
PHILADELPHIA, July 25—“This was my first march with the Party and at first I felt nervous but after I got on the bullhorn and started chanting it just felt right,” said a young comrade during the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Over 60 members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) descended on the DNC here to show workers and students there is an alternative to the bosses’ politicians—communist revolution. Through our commitment to multiracial unity and our reliance on the working class, this summer project was a microcosm for the kind of world we are building towards.
Leadership from Baton Rouge
From the rallies to the study groups about elections and the history of PLP’s fightback in Philadelphia, it was clear how PL’s political line serves workers’ interests. However, it was a report from our friend in Baton Rouge that illuminated our Party’s purpose for fighting. The organizer, who became active after Alton Sterling’s murder by kkkops on July 5, joined our project after meeting PLP in Baton Rouge (see letter, page 6). The details of her interactions with the police and the working class’s resilience were a tremendous inspiration to the friends and comrades. The working-class bravery against the cops and military confirms our line that it is the working class, not the bosses’ politicians, that will smash capitalism.
As PLP marched in a mass demonstration towards the convention, many workers, including those wearing Bernie shirts, picked up our chant, “The Only Solution Is Communist Revolution.” Supporters of Bernie Sanders, who was inside the convention urging people to vote for Hillary Clinton, were very receptive to communism and some saw us as a real alternative to voting. Our experiences in distributing CHALLENGE and leading a contingent of workers and youth demonstrates the potential to win workers to communist politics. Many were open to our idea of not voting, and instead organizing class struggle where they live, work, and go to school.
Reliance Only On the Working Class
PLP has always believed that our Party will grow as long as we have confidence in the working class. The Baton Rouge fighter said the protests began when workers took the streets instead of waiting for the preachers and politicians. She said, “At first they announced a march for Sunday, but that was a whole week after Alton was shot, so a bunch of us decided to organize a march the next day instead.” Even after the police arrested over 150, workers still fought back. When the cops threatened to arrest the protesters for walking in the street, a worker from the neighborhood invited the crowd onto her private property to avoid arrests. The kkkops, proving that laws under capitalism only serve the capitalist state, broke down the woman’s door, ruined her lawn, and made many arrests. Her willingness to side with the protestors shows that the working class will support you, and join you, if you are willing to fight.
Meanwhile, the politicians, particularly the Black mayor of Baton Rouge Kip Holden was nowhere to be seen. “We literally haven’t seen him for the past two weeks,” said the worker from Baton Rouge. His capitalist servant’s only contribution was to bring the “anti-police rhetoric…down to zero.”
“The ministers and activists who organize for everything are nowhere to be found. It’s just me and my friends, and who am I?” asked the worker. She is the reason why the Progressive Labor Party knows that we will win. It is the working class women and men who fight every day to survive under this system, and then respond to these racist murders with action, who lead our Party and will continue to lead it for as long as necessary. There will never be professional pacifiers like preachers and politicians leading PLP. The working-class instincts that many already have, accompanied with communist ideas, are dangerous to the bosses.
Working Class Got Your Back
Relying on the working class, whether on the streets of Baton Rouge or on the job in Philadelphia, will not only be key for communist revolution in the long term, but can save your life in the short term. A retired white hospital worker recalled how he began organizing for the Party and was immediately met resistance from a number of different groups within the hospital for decades, especially the local Black union leadership. The union leadership initially tried to spread rumors and keep other workers away from him. Witnessing his relationship and organizing among workers, they tried to physically attack him. The comrade said, “I didn’t realize that my friend on the job knew karate, but when the union thugs came after me, he jumped in and saved me.”
He also talked about how it was his co-workers and friends who made significant contributions to advancing the hospital work. After attending a social event that they organized, one of his friends didn’t look happy. When he asked him what was wrong, his friend said, “We are the only two white people here.” This caused him to go back to organize the white workers to join the other Black workers in these social events. Multiracial unity is important at the workplace, social events, and every aspect of building an impenetrable base among the working class.
Bosses Fear Multiracial Unity
The Summer Project also strengthened the Party’s convictions to fight for multiracial unity in our struggles. Whether it was the hospital worker organizing in the 1980s or the worker fighting back in Baton Rouge in 2016, the bosses ensure that racism keep workers divided, which makes our fight for multiracial unity even more important.
As our Party entered the mass demonstration at the DNC, we all recognized one thing immediately: unlike most of the other groups, we were truly a multiracial group. As one student who joined us at the protest observed, “we were definitely the most colorful group out there.”
One march down Broad St in Philadelphia may not seem significant. It is. Every opportunity we take to promote multiracial unity is another shot at the bosses’ racist system. The bosses understand this, and we have seen this play out in Baton Rouge.
But as the worker from Baton Rouge told the group, “they first went after the white protestors and put them in the car first.” This demonstrates how rulers lash out in fear when workers break out of the racist chains. When white workers put themselves on the line next to their working class sisters and brothers, there is no privilege. The ruling class will come after white workers just as sure as they brutalize and murder workers of other “races” in order to protect their system.
Our comrade in the hospital work talked about how it’s not only the police, but union leaders as well that make sure that workers don’t unite under communist leadership. The union leadership, who worked closely with the Nation of Islam, tried their best to keep the workers divided. Our comrade made it his commitment to organize Black and white workers. That meant starting with social events and outings. Eventually they turned into multiracial unity struggles on the job.
This first few days of the DNC Summer Project was possible because of the over 50 years of struggle of the Party. Our confidence in workers and commitment to building multiracial unity is what gave our comrade the strength to fight the bosses and union officials in the hospital. It was the same strength that sent us to Baton Rouge and fight along the courageous fighters there. It gave us the strength to stand among Sanders supporters and Jill Stein (the presidential candidate of the U.S. Green Party) supporters and to call for communist revolution. An overwhelming number of people took our leadership.
As the election comes closer, we should be bolder with our friends, coworkers, family, and fellow students about an alternative solution to the Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and this whole bourgeois electoral system. There’s only one solution: communist revolution. See next issue for more struggles around the DNC summer project!
Staten Island, NY, July 17—Over 250 people, including members of Progressive Labor Party, marched to and boldly denounced the 120th Precinct in Staten Island, the same precinct responsible for Eric Garner’s murder exactly two years ago.
This rally was organized by The Legacy Eric Garner Left Behind (named after his last daughter, Legacy) and supported by Staten Island Against Racism and Police Brutality (SiaraPB). Eric Garner’s family, friends, and working class brothers and sisters feel sorrow. We miss Eric Garner, known as a “gentle giant” and nicknamed Nice. Whether he sold cigarettes or not does not justify the racist murder. After trying to break up a fight between two other people, he was choked to death by one cop as several others held onto him.
The soundtrack after the choking of Eric saying “I can’t breathe” eleven times has echoed around the world. Once everyone arrived at the police station, the crowd broke up and attempted to surround the whole block around the police station. A dozen vans and forty cars showed up.
At the precinct and during the march, PLP distributed CHALLENGE and lead people in militant chants like, “How do you spell racist? NYPD!” to show our rage not just at Pantaleo but at all the police who continue to terrorize Black, Latin, and immigrant workers.
These murders are business as usual for the police. They are part of a system that depends on racism to make profits and keep people divided so that they don’t fight back. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected with a promise to end “Stop and Frisk”, a policing practice where police stopped people on the street to search them for weapons or drugs. It is a racist policy that allows police to harass Black and Latin workers. DeBlasio’s first act as mayor was to hire police commissioner William Bratton, who substituted “Stop and Frisk” for “Broken Windows” policing. In this kind of policing, police arrest workers for small “crimes” like selling loose cigarettes or panhandling with the excuse that it will prevent more serious crimes. This is merely another way to continue the racist oppression of Black, Latin, and immigrant workers by giving cops a different excuse to harass, arrest and imprison workers.
This policy is a way that kkkops, politicians, and real estate bosses cooperate to gentrify an area. In New York City, San Francisco, and Newark, “Broken Windows” policing is used to intimidate Black workers out of neighborhoods so that they can rebrand the neighborhood as a “safe” area, develop it, and raise rents. The same thing happened in Brazil when the government was preparing for the World Cup. Thousands of workers were ruthlessly evicted from their houses and the slums were demolished, all in the name of developing valuable real estate.
If not reforms, then what?
Our march gives us an insight as to what we can do instead of fruitless reforms. Our march was multiracial and we took the street. Multiracial unity is much more powerful than a body camera. One leader of SiaraPB gave a speech about the continuing fight SiaraPB has been waging in the community and on the campus of the College of Staten Island to bring Pantaleo to trial for murder. She emphasized the multiracial character of SiaraPB and called for unity in the struggle. After the speeches, a local neighborhood youth choir beautifully sang, “I can’t breathe”. Then all of us in sorrow and rage said “I can’t breathe” eleven times. The march was followed by popcorn and ices for neighborhood children and adults who stayed in memory of Eric’s life.
This type of working class unity, where we all fight together and support each other, will ultimately smash racist police terror. A member of PLP gave a speech warning that the only way to end racist police terror is by smashing capitalism once and for all. Politicians want us to believe more Black, Latin, Asian and Muslim cops, body cameras, and “community policing” will make a difference. That won’t help anything. Black kkkops didn’t do any more for Freddie Gray in Baltimore than an Asian kkkop did for Akai Gurley in Brooklyn. In Baton Rouge, where Alton Sterling was murdered as the cops held him down on the ground, the police claim their body cameras “fell off.”
None of the reforms proposed by politicians can address the role of the police. Capitalism is a system built on racism and we must get rid of it to smash racism. She emphasized that whether Black, Latin, Asian, white, immigrant or U.S. born, men or women, we must unite to fight racism together. A united, multiracial working class is the only thing that can smash capitalism and build a communist world. Join the fight!
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U.S. Imperialism and ISIS: Big Terror vs. Little Terror
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As U.S. bosses use state terror to murder Black workers in cold blood and send drones to massacre workers and children from Pakistan to Yemen, the same capitalists are hypocritically denouncing regional imperialist ISIS (also known as the Islamic State) for its latest wave of slaughters in Turkey, Bangladesh, and Iraq.
The ISIS misleaders are mass-murdering capitalists cloaked as religious fundamentalists, lashing out in a desperate attempt to hang on to the Middle East oilfields they have seized since 2013. Meanwhile, some of the world’s biggest terrorists—U.S. imperialists, their NATO allies, and rival imperialists in Russia—are intensifying their bombing of ISIS-controlled areas to regain control of those same oilfields.
Whoever controls the production and flow of oil in the Middle East, home to the largest reserves of cheaply extractable petroleum in the world, gains a huge advantage over its competition. The region’s workers are caught in the middle of a deadly imperialist chess game.
ISIS: Death and Taxes
On June 28, at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, three suicide bombers killed at least 41 people and wounded more than 200 others. On July 2, in the capital city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, at least 29 people were killed after five ISIS gunmen took hostages in a popular café. On July 3, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, ISIS suicide bombs killed more that 200 people and wounded hundreds more in a busy shopping district. On July 4, four suicide bombers attacked three sites in Saudi Arabia, including one near the U.S. Consulate in Jidda.
Assuming ISIS was responsible for all of these strikes, why these particular countries? Turkey bridges Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and is an indispensable member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the main instrument of U.S. imperialist interests against Russia. Bangladesh is a staunch U.S. ally and lies a stone’s throw from China, the third big imperialist power. Iraq contains the third-largest oil reserves in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the region’s largest oil producer by far and a strategic counterweight to Russian ally Iran.
As inter-imperialist rivalries sharpen, and a broader global conflict looms, bosses of all stripes are driven to spill more workers’ blood to protect their investments and gain political, economic and military leverage. In the strategically vital Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Horn of Africa, the bosses’ media has focused on the recent violence by ISIS, the Frankenstein’s monster born out of the cataclysmic, 13-year U.S. war against Iraqi workers. Since mid-2014, ISIS’s proclaimed “caliphate” has lost 50 percent of its territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, along with much of its oil revenue. But even as the group has been forced to cut pay to its fighters, eliminate jobs and bribes, and impose harsh taxes in areas it still holds, it has intensified its indiscriminate killing of Muslim and other workers. As Op-Ed columnist Hasan Hasan noted in the New York Times (7/11):
Some people have suggested that this is a sign of the group’s desperation and weakness. In fact, it demonstrates its strength and long-term survival skills.…. Even American officials have told me privately that the political changes necessary to stem the group’s appeal in Iraq and Syria are lagging behind the military advances. The number of members volunteering to blow themselves up is not a sign of a dying group.
The threat is not going away. The group’s ultimate goal remains unchanged: control of the Muslim world.
Workers Caught in Imperialist Crossfire
The second, far deadlier source of terror comes from Russian and U.S imperialism, which routinely slaughters Muslim workers with both piloted and drone airstrikes. (Although China has signaled a willingness to join the Russian air campaign against ISIS, its current focus is to consolidate military control over the South China Sea and to challenge U.S. economic influence in Latin America and Africa.) In Iraq alone, the U.S. state terrorists have killed more than a million workers and orphaned an estimated 800,000 children (Iraqi Children Foundation website).
The future holds only more devastation for the working class. Beyond their callous destruction of workers’ lives, ISIS terror attacks have given the U.S. state terrorists cover to re-escalate their military presence in Iraq. In April, the fragile Iraqi government gave in to a U.S. push to introduce Army Apache attack helicopters, raise U.S. troop presence to more than 4,000, and move U.S. “advisors” much closer to the front lines (CNN.com, 4/18). On July 11, terrorist-in-chief Barack Obama authorized the deployment of an additional 560 troops to assist in recapturing Mosul, the largest city still controlled by ISIS (New York Times, 7/11).
Terrorism Fuels Fascism
Within the U.S., the bosses are attempting to exploit workers’ fears of terrorism to accelerate the rise of fascism. Spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Shared Responsibilities Committees” have the stated purpose of countering violent extremism in the U.S. Composed of of mental health professionals, social service workers, and religious leaders, among other ruling-class agents, these teams are designed to identify workers who may be “at risk” for committing terrorist acts or joining a terrorist group (Washington Post, 7/5).
The program has already been implemented in communities with large Arab and Muslim populations, like Dearborn, Michigan. Ron Haddad, Dearborn’s police chief, “has a deep network of contacts in the community and makes regular visits to Dearborn’s 38 schools and its many mosques…. At least twice in the past several years, fearing influence from [ISIS] or online propaganda on their children, Haddad says, Muslim fathers have turned in their own sons. In another case, it was students at a largely Muslim high school calling about a troubled peer” (politico.com, 3/24).
All things considered, the big terrorists and little terrorists are more alike than different. All of them exploit, oppress and divide workers to preserve and expand the bosses’ profits. None of them have any qualms about murdering our class brothers and sisters, regardless of race, religion or gender. To overthrow these blood-sucking monsters, the Progressive Labor Party must win masses of workers to fight for international working class unity and mass revolutionary violence. Only then will we smash capitalism and terrorism for all time. Join us!
