NEW YORK CITY, March 7—PLP has been fighting to smash racism at Columbia University, organizing and forming study groups within the Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) club, which currently is fighting for a $15 minimum wage on campus.
SWS’s fight is an antiracist one for low-income, mainly Black and Latin student workers here, who earn most of their living expenses via work-study programs. Often, they cannot afford food or books on their pitiful salary.
The college often fails to pay students for months after their work is done. Graduate students, who do much of the undergraduate teaching, are attempting to unionize to guarantee themselves a livable wage.
This while the school sits on a $9.6 billion endowment! But what does capitalism care if it leaves these students out to hang, while bosses steal the profits?
Last Thursday, 40 militant SWS students again marched to the administrators’ offices of Columbia and Barnard after rallying and dropping a banner on the main university quadrangle.
They plan to hold these marches every two weeks. Students from other groups joined them, reflecting the recently formed coalition of all activist students. They’ve approached faculty members to garner support, and two departments, sociology and history, have agreed to their demand. Two other small administrative units have also acceded to a higher wage.
Many faculty members are sympathetic but too intimidated to voice their support, fearful of losing their jobs. Indeed, the University has been threatening disciplinary action against undergraduate activists.
Columbia’s wealth is devoted to educating the U.S. financial and political elite. However, the massive student strike of 1968 and the civil rights movement forced them to admit more Black, Latin, immigrant and working-class students, and they now brag about their diversity and of accepting of students regardless of financial need—as if they’ve suddenly turned anti-racist.
In addition to the $15/hour demand, SWS is also pressing the campus to pay volunteers.
Impoverished student volunteers can’t participate in volunteer programs, which may involve working in the community, making ties with future employers or providing medical services. One pre-med student was interested in the emergency medical service, but could not afford it as not only are volunteers unpaid, but they are expected to pay $3,000 for training.
This group of students, and many more at Columbia, are engaged in fighting racism in the community as well.
Columbia is in the process of building a new campus on 35 acres of land they’ve taken over in west Harlem, displacing Black and Latin residents and businesses and helping gentrify the area. Students participated in a sleep-in on the streets of Harlem several years ago and have also allied with the struggles against police brutality and evictions.
Increasingly, they are realizing that poverty, racism unemployment and war cannot be solved under capitalism and that eventually the system must be overthrown. Many who have been long-time intellectual opponents of capitalism are realizing that to overthrow capitalism one must belong to and organize with a party with a long-term outlook, vision of the future, and program of fightback. With consistent struggle, we can raise class-consciousness and destroy racism through organized communist revolution.
MARYLAND, March 2 —The fight against the racist 1974 Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBR) is intensifying. The murder of Freddie Gray by Baltimore cops sparked mass rebellion and led to an enduring upsurge in public protests. People have taken to the streets and invaded the halls of government to denounce the racist terror tactics of law enforcement and demand justice for victims of police terror.
Cops Protect their Right to Terrorize
The centerpiece of the capitalist system’s protection of cops in Maryland is the1974 Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBR). This law limits the deadline to file complaints against police terror to 90 days, lacks meaningful oversight of police conduct by residents, allows cops 10 days to get their collective lies together before they can be questioned, prohibits internal police department hearings until after criminal charges against the cops have been resolved, and blocks any consequences within the department if a board of fellow cops decides there is insufficient evidence of excessive force. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house!
In the Reform For Revolution
Progressive Labor Party has joined a range of groups and individuals holding press conferences, staging protests and testifying before Maryland legislators. Legislation won’t stop killer kkkops, but illusions die hard. But, by battling on all fronts, including the legislative arena, the PLP is winning more workers to the idea that it takes mass rebellion like Baltimore and Ferguson make change.
Our participation has informed these actions with a revolutionary communist perspective that has enlightened and engaged many friends in the struggle. The value of our work goes beyond the immediate issue. After all, any legislative change will have little impact on police terror because it is rooted in the system itself. But by exposing the police and the government as an instrument of capitalist oppression, we can strengthen the foundation of our movement to abolish capitalism.
The reinforcement of racial inequalities by state power serves the profit interests of the capitalist class, which benefits from repression and intimidation of the most oppressed sections of the working class in order to undermine class solidarity. Racism is a tool designed to drive a wedge between workers—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—so the capitalists can continue to extract maximum profits from labor.
So when cops commit outrageous acts of racist violence, the criminal (in)justice system protects them. It will take a revolution to demolish the capitalist state. More and more, the working class in Maryland is recognizing that we need to dismantle the racist criminal (in)justice system that essentially guards the bosses’ profits and property.
We Rebel Against the Bosses’ Laws
Some 150 Maryland residents followed up on the MLK Day die-in (see CHALLENGE 2/25) on with a vigorous, rally-style press conference inside the Maryland House of Delegates Office Building that forcefully attacked LEOBR. Petty changes to LEOBR have been proposed by state legislators in response to last year’s Baltimore rebellion. But the bill still has the police controlling their own review and disciplinary process and limits the time to file complaints.
More than 20 anti-racist fighters of all ages and ethnicities filled the conference room of Delegate Joseph Vallario, Chair of the Maryland House Judiciary Committee. Led by the mother of a young Black man murdered by a cop, and barely controlling their anger, they pressed Vallario to move the bill with stronger amendments instead of quashing reform like he has done for years. He hesitated, clearly shaken by this bold confrontation.
At the press conference that followed, a PLP member decried the long history of police terror in Maryland, emphasizing that its source is the capitalist profit motive. Two representatives of a local community group gave spoken word, one affirming support for the uprising in Baltimore by repeating the refrain “we rebel” throughout his piece. Mothers of murdered youth spoke of the anguish of losing their children to police thuggery and called on others not to wait until police murder was at their front doors. Calls for robust amendments to the LEOBR bill rang out from the diverse crowd of Maryland residents.
Testimony before the Judiciary Committee continued well into the evening and was attended by large numbers of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). Officer William G. Porter, one of the cops indicted for Freddie Gray’s murder, had the nerve to show up to oppose any change in LEOBR. Protesters filmed his arrogant presence. He confronted Tawanda Jones, a leader of the weekly Tyrone West rallies in Baltimore for more than two years seeking justice for the July 2013 police murder of her brother, Tyrone West, demanding to know why he was being filmed. The cop then denied his identity.
On March 1, public outrage over LEOBR moved to the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee where Maryland residents vehemently confronted some cop-loving senators. The fight against racist cops must be an international one, linking capitalist state violence from one country to another. Workers all over need communist revolution to put the working class in state power!
Anaheim, CA, February 27—The Ku Klux Klan scums showed up to hold a racist “White Lives Matter” rally against Muslim and immigrant workers. But 200 anti-racists, including communists Progressive Labor Party, put an end to that before it started. Stopping a rally by these terrorists is a small victory in the fight against racism.
We are working now to get anti-racists out of jail. The racist cops targeted anti-Klan demonstrators while racists were stabbing people. Hugo Contreras and Mark Liddell, who are members of Unitarian Universalist congregations, were among those arrested and still held on “elder abuse” charges. Hugo has a broken arm, possibly at the hands of the police. The cops have now released all of the Klansmen—saying the stabbings were justified. Meanwhile, they trump up charges against anti-racists. The police are bigger racist terrorists than the Klan.
Mass incarceration holds 7.3 million in jail, prison, probation or parole and stigmatizes another 13 million as felons.
The biggest terrorists are the capitalists and their military. Obama’s ICE police are rounding up and deporting immigrant workers in record numbers—2.5 million since 2009. The U.S. military has or controls at least 700 military bases or installations worldwide as it engages in constant warfare. All of this is in service of a small class of capitalists, particularly oil interests responsible for constant wars in the Persian Gulf region.
Only communist revolution can end these racist horrors. We will create a society without their racism, exploitation, sexism, mass incarceration, and terror against the working class. Join us in celebration of the international workers’ holiday, May Day.
KKK leader hits the pavement
click the photo for a pdf version of the flyerclick here for a doc version
National borders are drawn by the capitalist rulers to serve the profit system and divide the international working class. These borders—and the “countries” they define—are repeatedly redrawn through imperialist war. This is the essence of the latest tensions in the South China Sea. As CHALLENGE goes to press, the U.S. capitalist media is raising alarms over the Chinese capitalists’ deployment of advanced missiles and fighter jets on a disputed island chain called the Paracels.
Workers have no side in this dispute, which signifies another step toward inter-imperialist war.
Profit and Blood
For the U.S. and Chinese bosses, the South China Sea dispute is a typical capitalist conflict. Each side attempts to justify imperialist aggression with treaties and laws that favor its respective empire. An ExxonMobil-funded policy group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), warned:
This marks a historical turning point…[T]he United States finds itself in a competition among great powers…. It is more important for the United States to increase its own military presence in the Baltic states and the South China Sea….[G]round troops constitute a more credible demonstration of U.S. power, because they advertise the country’s willingness to shed blood to honor its commitments (March/ April 2016).
Whose blood are the U.S. bosses willing to shed? Workers’ blood! The capitalists ruling China are more than willing to do the same. Both sides are working overtime to build nationalism to enlist our working-class sisters and brothers to support their imperialist ambitions.
The U.S. bosses’ empire is in relative decline and mired in political crisis. As reflected by the turbulent U.S. presidential campaign, leading forces of U.S. finance capital—ExxonMobil, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase—are struggling to impose political unity on their own ranks to shore up U.S. imperialism. But they cannot rebuild their war machine and defend their empire without the political loyalty of U.S. workers. They cannot fight the next big global war without workers as cannon fodder.
But there is an alternative for our class. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is organizing a mass movement—from the U.S. to Mexico, Africa, Pakistan, and China—for working-class power. Our goal is to build a Red Army that will smash the capitalist system once and for all.
A mass PLP must be organized within the bosses’ military war machines, to spread communist politics until soldiers can “turn the guns around” and fight for their class. The Chinese bosses’ so-called People’s Liberation Army fields 1.6 million soldiers, the world’s largest ground force. As China’s rulers expand the PLA’s high-tech elements (including surface-to-air missiles and electronic warfare), and the risk of confrontation between the U.S. and China grows, our military work becomes even more crucial for the international working class.
A Silk Road to Imperialist War
The Chinese rulers’ military deployment in the Paracel Islands, and their claims on the South China Sea, reflect a growing boldness in their projection of imperialist power. As they attempt to win workers across Asia and the Middle East with empty promises of a better life, the Chinese imperialists have advanced an ambitious plan called “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR). It’s been called the “New Silk Road,” in reference to the ancient trade route from Asia to Europe.
As projected, OBOR will link Central Asia and the Middle East and Europe via massive infrastructure and commercial projects. They will be funded by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China’s rival to the U.S.-backed World Bank. China President Xi Jinping’s first official visits of 2016 were to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, all founding members of the AIIB (China Central Television, 1/18/16).
China claims that OBOR will deliver prosperity for workers in the Middle East. But the Chinese bosses’ real concern is an acute labor shortage (Xinhua, 1/22/16). They see the Middle East’s millions of young, unemployed workers as potential wage slaves to protect the capitalists’ profit margins.
Land, Water and Oil
In addition to valuable oil reserves, Iran occupies a geostrategic position of increasing importance to China’s growing imperialist ambitions. Decades of brutal economic sanctions on Iran’s workers were lifted with last July’s nuclear deal, which also freed Iran’s bosses to purchase conventional weapons. Now China’s bosses are keen to enlist Iran as a full member of their Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) military alliance.
It was China that helped Iran kick-start its nuclear weapons program back in the 1980s…[T]he two countries’ military-industrial complexes have been close ever since, and one source…confirms that secret military protocols were also signed this week (Newsweek, 2/1/16).
Sixty percent of China’s imported oil is shipped over oceans patrolled by and vulnerable to the U.S. Navy and its fleets of warships. China’s agreements with Iran include refinery and pipeline construction deals linked to the Pakistani port city of Gwadar, where the Arabian Sea meets the Persian Gulf. An enormous operation financed, built and now controlled by China, Gwadar will route critical oil supplies to China over land, a safer bet than the 10,000-mile maritime route to Shanghai, the Chinese bosses’ only commercial port.
Same Enemy, Same Fight
From Latin America to the Middle East, millions of workers have been killed and millions more forced to seek refuge by imperialist-fueled wars. No sooner do workers cross the imperialists’ borders, in search of work and safety, than they face horrific anti-immigrant racism and sexism.
At the same time, workers within the borders of the U.S. and China, as well as Russia and Iran, are being coerced to fight and kill one another to defend the bosses’ capitalist preserves. In every imperialist power, rulers are intensifying their racist, nationalist propaganda to blame workers from other countries for their problems. The bosses know their days are numbered if they cannot deflect workers’ anger from the true cause of our misery: capitalist exploitation.
The working class has no country; our class has nothing to gain by respecting capitalist borders. Of all the political parties, only PLP represents workers’ interests.
PLP calls for international working-class unity. PLP organizes and fights to turn the coming imperialist wars into class wars for communist revolution. PLP calls on workers in the U.S., China, and every capitalist country to distribute CHALLENGE at their workplaces and in their barracks. Join our party, and help lead the working class in communist revolution! Same enemy, same fight! Workers of the world unite!
- Information
Fighting Fascism in India—Avenge Capitalist Murder!
- Information
- 26 February 2016 66 hits
INDIA, February 22—Students rose up today against the capitalist-caused suicide of 26-year-old Rohith Vemula, a Dalit left-wing student protester at the Nehru University (JNU) in Hyderbad. The rise and suppression of student protests demonstrate the growing fascist dictatorship here and, more important, the growth of widespread resistance.
Rohith, Anti-Racist Fighter
Rohith Vemula was a Hindu from the lowest caste group, the Dalit (formerly known as “untouchables”), who was protesting against the Hindu nationalist organization Hindutva and their activities.
A right-wing student group, the ABVP (All-Indian Student Council), allied with the pro-fascist Hindutva party RSS (National Patriotic Organization), had shut down a film screening that exposed the complicity of government officials in an anti-Muslim riot in Uttar Pradesh (state in northern India) that killed at least 100 and left tens of thousands homeless.
Rohith was protesting that anti-Muslim racism as well as the 2012 execution of a Muslim for supposed involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. After a conflict broke out at the demonstration, Rohith and his four friends were suspended from school, while the upper-caste students from the nationalist group were not punished at all.
In protest, a multi-caste group of students pitched a camp in front of the university. They called their camp Velicada, or Dalit Ghetto. Many consider Rohith’s suicide to be his last symbol of protest—and yet another example of racist discrimination against Dalits. Students have taken to the streets and the hashtag #dalitlivesmatter.
Nationalism, Tool of the Bosses
At Nehur University in Dehli, students were given permission to hold a rally protesting the death penalty decision against the alleged Muslim terrorist. Contrary to reports by the bosses’ media, these student protesters were not pro-terrorist; they objected to how the government conducted the trial. Thirty minutes before the rally was scheduled to begin, the university revoked its permission. Students then went to the canteen in the cafeteria area, where political discussions are a common custom. Some students held up posters and shouted slogans that the Indian government considered “treason” because they criticized the government’s role in Kashmir.
The police arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, a leader of the student group, even though he was not present at any of the protests. Kumar was assaulted in the courtroom while the police did nothing, another indication of the breakdown of capitalist law and the move toward open fascism. The government crackdown against the student movement reflects the critical role of Hindu nationalism in sustaining the capitalists’ rule.
The role of Hindu nationalists is not simply to attack the Muslim working class, but in fact to suppress the whole working class. We are divided by caste, religion and nationalism when we need to unite as comrades in struggle.
While anti-worker hatred and violence is making news, it is class exploitation that needs to be exposed. This exploitation soars whenever there is an economic crisis and the bosses need to turn toward fascism. This is happening in India despite all the fake rhetoric about a prosperous middle class. Autoworkers and agricultural workers have been suffering. The jute industry is collapsing, with tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs or facing wage cuts to approximately USD $15 a week. At a recent protest by jute workers near Kolkata, a police attack critically injured a protest leader.
One Working-Class Struggle, One Party
Resistance movements are beginning to connect the many attacks on the working class. Students at two universities in Kolkata are protesting in solidarity with students in Hyderabad and Delhi. Some students have begun to show more direct support for workers’ struggles. In many parts of the country, the struggle against exploitation and oppression of women has also been growing in important ways.
As competition among the U.S., China and Russia intensifies, the Indian capitalist class will intensify its exploitation of workers here. They will use all kinds of racism, caste exploitation, and propaganda against different ethnicities in a desperate attempt to promote selfishness within the working class. Our allegiance must be to our working-class sisters and brothers, not our supposed race, ethnicity, or religion. All kinds of nationalism are suicide for the working class.
Only communist philosophy and strategy can free the working class. As long as there is capitalist exploitation for profit, there will be capitalist oppression to intimidate and divide the working class. We must dedicate ourselves to building a new international communist party that fights for equality and unity of all workers, across all borders. We PL’ers have dedicated ourselves to this for the past 50 years.
As PLP continues to grow throughout the world, including in South Asia, we can draw on the wisdom, experience and leadership of workers everywhere to build a Party that can put an end to all forms of class exploitation and oppression. Learn more about PLP—check out the website and contact us!
Our call to students, campus and education workers in the United States, Latin America, Africa, and everywhere there is a PLP base: Act in solidarity with the campus struggles in India! An attack on Rohith, Dalit students or Muslim workers is an attack on the whole working class. Fight back!
