The toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan exemplifies capitalist state terrorism. Not only is the whole working class poisoned by the profit drive, but also the treatment of Black and undocumented workers exposes the bosses’ racist essence.
Flint, the birthplace of General Motors, is nearly 60 percent Black, and over 40 percent of its population lives below the official poverty line.
Under the pretense of saving the city money, Flint switched its water source in 2014 from Detroit to the local river. Residents pay $140 a month for this toxic waste. Nearly 9,000 kids were poisoned. There’s a spike in Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia. Ten died.
Within weeks of the change, families complained of a foul smell from the pipes. Researchers at Virginia Tech proved that the state government not only ignored complaints but also lied about lead levels and concealed evidence.
Who’s to blame? Capitalism, General Motors and its century of exploitation. “After decades of industrial dumping by GM and its suppliers, the Flint river became polluted” (Columbia, 1/26).
Flint is no isolated incident. Every city with a current or former industrial base suffers the consequences of this capitalist waste dumping.
Flint: No Stranger to Struggle
As home to tens of thousands of industrial workers, Flint was the site of one of the most significant labor battles in U.S. history, the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike. In 1936, from December to February, autoworkers occupied their GM factories for 44 days. Through collective action and unshakeable working-class unity, they counterattacked the bosses, took the offensive and won. It inspired a wave of sit-down strikes nationwide. The working class never forgot.
The bosses didn’t either; when GM left, it tried to defeat both workers and their environment. The arsenic, chromium, mercury, lead and other toxins will take centuries to dissolve. The unemployment and crumbling infrastructure in Flint may actually foreshadow more capitalist crises to come.   
Embers of that anger against capitalism still burn today. Workers chanted, “Hey hey! Ho ho! Snyder’s got to go!”
Many wore t-shirts printed with “Flint Lives Matter.”
A retired autoworker said it best, “We are being saddled with this toxic water because we are under a toxic system” (ACLUofMichighan).
Politicians, in an effort to cover their ass, point fingers at Snyder or the emergency manager Darnell Earley when it’s capitalism that caused this water crisis.  A system based on wage-slavery will always put profit over health and safety of the working class.
Capitalists Respond to Crisis with Fascism
After Snyder and president Obama declared an emergency, workers were greeted with the National Guard.
Many water distribution centers required identification cards, effectively barring up to 1,000 undocumented workers from clean water. Because of the language barrier and fear of the government, they were also the last to find out about the lead (abc12 news, 1/20). In times of crisis, bosses respond with fascist terror and the racist essence of the system exposes itself.
The backdrop of the Flint crisis is rising racism. In addition to the daily murder and terrorization of Black workers and youth, the U.S. has ramped up deportations and turned up the racism against Muslim working-class families. This is an attempt to divide our class so we blame each other instead of bosses for decrepit schools, lack of housing, imperialist wars, and toxic health environments.
Attacking one section of the working class effectively drives down the living conditions of all workers. The Huffington Post’s Race and Economic Jeopardy for All report explains how “politicians’ deliberate use of racism has hurt workers—Black, Latin, women, gay and white—while, simultaneously, advancing the agenda of the 1 percent….[White workers] suffered wage stagnation just like everybody else” (1/18).
While Black, Latin, refugee, and indigenous workers suffer the brunt of racist exploitation, racism hurts white workers, too. The 38,000 white workers in Flint can attest to that.
Communism Antidote for Workers
We can always look to the working class for solidarity. A Muslim community group donated 30,000 bottles of water to the workers in Flint. Multiracial rallies blasted the murderous government. PLP fights to build on this solidarity by organizing a mass party of workers to fight for communism.
There is no safe place for working-class people under capitalism. Whether you are battling toxic working conditions in China, the ISIS and other capitalist thugs in the Middle East, or the Zika virus in Latin America, communism is the antidote for our class.
We must build a world where we run society in our interests. That requires eradicating the toxic system of profit from human history.
We can begin the road to revolution by joining PLP.

BROOKLYN, January 21—A small anti-racist student movement has shaken Brooklyn Technical High School. Progressive Labor Party must turn this struggle into a school for communism.
Tech is the tenth-largest high school in the United States. Over the last month, two speak-outs by students and one by angry Black alumni have put the education bosses in New York City on notice that the growing racism in our school system is intolerable. These bosses have held up Tech as a model of excellence as the school’s combined Black and Latin student populations have dropped to 15 percent—as compared to 68 percent in city schools overall.
The disgustingly racist message is clear: If more Black and Latin students are admitted, this “elite” school’s quality will diminish.
Safe Space for Racists
Racist messages emanate from New York’s educational system, top to bottom. On Tech’s website, an administration’s report defends the high-stakes exam that systematically excludes Black and Latin students from the specialized high schools. Inside the school, academic tracking has a decidedly racist character (see letter, page 4).
No wonder Tech has become a “safe space” for individuals to express racism. White students have gone so far as to tell a Black teacher rushing down an overcrowded hallway, “Watch it, n-----!” Sources say the dean’s office gave those students a mild talking to and no more.
Such shocking encounters pale beside the vicious racism faced by thousands of Black and Latin high school students in New York, as they are greeted each morning like criminals by police and metal detectors.
After the hallway incident, the teachers’ union chapter committee raised the problem of hate speech with the principal. At a December student speak-out, with teachers and administration in the room, two dozen Black students made their voices heard. A fightback began.
As #blackinbrooklyntech began trending on Facebook, racist assaults were hurled at Black students by their peers: “You are going to end up like Sandra Bland” (the young Black woman found dead in a Texas jail cell last July), and worse. Misguided students urged a return to silence because Black students are “ruining the name of the school.”
On a January weeknight, hundreds of Black alumni descended on Tech to hear the administration’s response—the strongest show of interest by Black alumni here, ever. Recalling a time when many more Black students attended Tech, they demanded that the Department of Education (DOE) confront the systemic racism responsible for the current crisis.
Even if current trends are reversed and Black and Latin enrollments rise in New York’s specialized high schools, they will still be part of a brutally racist terracing of education. The central myth will remain: If you fail under capitalism, it’s your fault.
Whose Schools? Bosses’ Schools!
Historically, the U.S. bosses have used public schools to create a myth of nationalist, all-class unity for imperialist war—and to recruit the cannon fodder they need to protect their profits.
The specialized high schools can’t perpetuate that myth if gutter racism runs rampant in their halls and classrooms.  It’s no accident that NBC—owned and operated by U.S. finance capital—seized onto #blackinbrooklyntech and made it national news. The major media outlets are controlled by the capitalist ruling class, the same interests that applauded Barack Obama’s plea to Congress to authorize military force against ISIS in his recent State of the Union address.
Unity and Pitfalls
Members of PLP working inside the bosses’ schools want to organize a different kind of unity. We need multiracial unity to fight racism. We need to prepare the working class to turn the next big imperialist war into a class war for communist revolution.
While the movement we are building has much promise, it contains pitfalls as well. The prevalence of “white privilege theory” has hampered white and Asian students from expressing their anti-racist sentiments. Anti-racist energy that should be directed at the DOE has been sidetracked into arguments over who can use the N-word. In a communist future, nobody will use that awful word.  
But we are making progress. At a second speak-out in January, the Muslim Students Association and the Gay-Straight Alliance joined members of the Black Student Union to broaden the scope of the struggle. Female students demanded action against sexism, from how the racist “dress code” is enforced to the way they are received by male classmates in math and science classes.
All students agreed that the endless stress of competitive, high-stakes testing and excessive homework leaves little room for building unity and compassion among students. They are beginning to hit at the heart of what is wrong with education under capitalism.
Fight Against Racism!
The anti-racist fight at Tech can spread across the entire city school system—but only if student leaders refuse to fall for the elitism fostered at exclusive, specialized high schools. This struggle is about racism in all the schools. Tech students come from every neighborhood in this city. A broad and vigorous organizing effort could demand an end to segregation and to racist policing of our schools. Imagine a day where high school students converge on Times Square instead of reporting to their first class. PLP and friends can have much to do to make this a reality.
The bosses fear the power of working-class, multiracial unity. High officials at the DOE are directing Tech bosses to select a few Black student leaders and make them partners in quieting the struggle. So far, however, this effort has failed.
A strong commitment to push the fight forward persists. The time is now. Students, teachers and alumni, Black, women, Latin, gay, Asian, straight, white, men—turn up the fight against racism!

ANNAPOLIS, JANUARY 18—“Racism means we got to fight back!” Protesters chanted in front of the Maryland state capitol, where Tawanda Jones spoke at a rally of 200 workers and youth for her brother Tyrone West, a Black worker murdered by the racist police. Progressive Labor Party members participated in this multiracial rally on this night of below-freezing temperatures to add communist heat to the workers’ demands to end the state’s protection of the police from their racist crimes.
At heart-wrenching part of the rally, victims of Maryland racist police terror were called out by name, city or county, and racial background. Most of the dead were Black, but they also included Latin, Asian and white victims. For each, a paper with his or her name was held up, and anyone at the rally, who wished to volunteer, came up to take the paper, thereby representing and honoring that person by lying in the dark on the freezing concrete, and joining the growing die-in (see photo). Lawyers Mall, the open space outside the legislative buildings, ran out of space, with so many bodies—a chilling spectacle.
LEOBOR = Racist Terror Against Workers
The Maryland Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) is a law containing the strongest legal protections for police of any state in the US. The law was passed, years ago, as part of the notorious “War on Drugs.” This phony “war” was a decades-long excuse by U.S. bosses to intensify racist police terror in the U.S., and imperialist terror for workers across Latin America.
In another part of Maryland—Prince George’s County—PL’ers have done neighborhood canvassing against LEOBOR with the Prince George’s Peoples’ Coalition and the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability. Tonight, we invited our friends to an upcoming Baltimore PLP forum, to discuss and organize for communist revolution as the way to finally end police brutality.
The protest was one of many high points in the struggle during the past year, a year in which PLP has played a significant role. We distributed leaflets and CHALLENGE newspapers to Black, Latin and white workers and youth. We have consistently participated in the inspiring West Wednesday rallies, held in memory of Tyrone West, every week in Baltimore. These modest-sized but powerful street protests combine profound anger alongside deep, sisterly and brotherly compassion for one another. This combination is the foundation for our growing international communist movement in Maryland.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE, January 27 —What’s the reward for a politician who takes $155,000 in bribes and spends two years in prison? A promotion! Aryeh Deri has been appointed as the interior ministry for the Negev and Galilee regions. He is the leader of the Shas party, known for its fundamentalist nationalism. Deri’s main task will be to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing the border, increasing deportations, and redefining city boundaries for property taxes. The Shas party is important to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
Similar to the U.S., racist violence and deportation of undocumented immigrants and refugees will increase. Whereas in the U.S., they are mainly from Latin America, these refugees are mainly from war-ravaged regions like Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt. Deri’s predecessor, Eliyahu Yishai, was also virulently racist and led brutal attacks on asylum seekers from eastern Africa and deported many of them to the Holot concentration camp in the Negev (southern desert). In 2014, Holot was an international focal point for racist Israel’s treatment of the 50,000 African refugees.
Deri, who tries to paint himself as a “social” candidate, remained in the government when it sold off Israel’s massive natural gas deposits to local and foreign tycoons. Combining religion, racism, and graft, he is a loyal servant for the billionaires.
Israel does not have a separation of religion from the state. To the contrary, the government cynically uses religion as an excuse for its racist policies of segregating Black migrants, Palestinians, and white Jewish workers. Candidates like Deri leverage religion and racism to get re-elected as the faithful servants of big financial capital. Capitalist rule cannot exist without racism and fraud.
There is no such thing as a “clean,” “fair,” or “tolerant” capitalist government. Deri and the whole capitalist system has got to go. The international working class must build a society without politicians and capitalists. We need the leadership of those locked in Holot, brutalized in the West Bank, and exploited in Israel to fight back!