LOS ANGELES, January 16—While criminal charges are being recommended for the racist cop who killed Brendon Glenn, an unarmed, homeless Black worker last May, workers and members of the Progressive Labor Party fighting for justice are not holding their breath.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s recommendation was made on January 11, and can only be carried out by a District Attorney or grand jury.
As of January 15, hypocrite Beck had not done what is within his power: initiate disciplinary proceedings against cop Clifford Proctor, who has been on paid leave since he killed Glenn.
Antiracist Workers in Churches Take Lead
During the summer, workers and PL’ers in our local church’s social justice committee took the lead in organizing three marches on Venice’s Ocean Front Walk. One of our chants at these marches was, “No justice, no peace—no racist police!” One of our demands was that Proctor be indicted. We also raised that demand November 29 at a march in Koreatown against racist police killings, organized by anti-racists from another church in that area we’ve been working with. During that march, as we wound through the streets, we called out the names of many of those mowed down by police in LA and throughout the U.S., and chanted, “The whole damn system’s got to go.”
Another demand of our marches—and of hundreds of angry Venice residents at a town hall meeting two days after the May 5 shooting—was that the video be released to the public. According to their attorney, Glenn’s family will demand release of the video.
While an indictment is welcomed for Brendon Glenn’s murderer, true justice for Glenn or anyone in the working class will never be found under capitalism. In the midst of these rallies and marches, we are building PLP to build a mass party to lead a revolution and build a communist society. Under communism there will no such thing as kkkops or racist police terror.
Capitalism: Bosses’ Dictatorship
Capitalism is based on the injustice of exploiting all workers, and was founded on the enslavement of Africans. Capitalism’s development depended, and its survival depends, on the racist super-exploitation of some workers over others. The bosses developed and refined their racist state apparatus like their prisons, cops, and political system over centuries to defend murderers like Proctor and Beck.
Even if Proctor is charged, history has shown that cops tend to be acquitted or, less often, found guilty of relatively low-level crimes with light sentences. According to the LA Times (1/12/16), “prosecutors have not charged a law enforcement officer in an on-duty shooting in 15 years.”
Top kkkop Beck served in the same elite, fascist LAPD “CRASH” unit whose goal was to arrest gang members “by any means necessary” (PBS 8/14/12). This meant carrying a supply of illegal weapons to plant on Black and Latin workers, with plaques and honors awarded for shootings that killed their victims. Much of the LAPD’s internal investigation into CRASH is still suppressed, including a 40-page report on three officers investigated for the murder of rapper “Notorious B.I.G.”
This is a taste of the bosses’ dictatorship that only a mass communist PLP can destroy, when millions of workers are organized and fighting for armed revolution. Our movement is growing —one of the marchers just agreed to be on the Party committee that is organizing our April 30, PLP May Day dinner.
May Day is the only international working class holiday. It’s a day we celebrate our class’ history of fightback all over the world, and gather our forces to look forward to smashing the bosses’ capitalist dictatorship, its imperialist wars, killer kkkops like Clifford, and the bosses they serve.
We will continue the immediate struggle with a rally at the District Attorney’s office. We join the workers demanding that Proctor be indicted for murder, and continue fighting and organizing for a communist society where our class rules the earth.

NEW JERSEY, January 21—Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party recently won a victory against anti-Muslim racism. For years, we have been part of the Radical Caucus (RC) of the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization of primarily language and literature professors, scholars, and graduate students. Through this caucus, members and friends of PLP worked together to pass an emergency resolution condemning anti-Muslim racism and supporting Muslim students and professors.
This action is a victory against the MLA misleadership. Although the MLA had issued a statement in late December defending the academic freedom of professors who teach about Islam, the statement failed to take an anti-racist position. To put forward the sharpest possible anti-racist, anti-imperialist resolution, we had a vigorous discussion within our PLP concentration. Then we struggled with others who directly affected by anti-Muslim racism to support the resolution. They responded with enthusiastic support and gathered dozens of signatures. Within 24 hours, the resolution was widely circulated in sessions at the MLA convention. By the time it came to the floor for debate the next day, many delegates were eager to speak in favor. But we didn’t stop there.
PL’ers reached out to local activist groups, like Jewish Voice for Peace, some of whose members joined us in leafleting and picketing the Delegate Assembly before its meeting. Although the resolution still needs to be ratified by the MLA membership, its passage through the Delegate Assembly by a two-to-one margin is a clear indicator that professors and graduate students want to fight anti-Muslim racism and the drumbeats of war.
While the resolution is a long way from a call for revolution, it enabled us to sharpen our political discussions with our friends. We stressed that anti-Muslim racism comes from U.S. imperialism and benefits the bosses by dividing workers worldwide. We also linked anti-Muslim racism to anti-Black racism. Both serve the same purpose: winning workers to wars that devastate workers while benefitting only the ruling class.
Rooted in System, Not Psyche
The resolution read: Be it resolved that the MLA support professors and students opposing the militaristic, xenophobic, and racist effects of Islamophobia.
Liberal language like “Islamophobia,” meaning the fear of Muslim people, is more than just inaccurate language. It muddles the class nature of racism! It is not an individual mental condition that causes people to be afraid of Muslim workers and children; it is the systematic oppression and scapegoating of the Muslim working class, fueled by imperialist propaganda. “Anti-Muslim racism” gets at the class nature of the oppression and reminds us that to destroy it, we must fight back. The ruling class generates racism. “Anti-Muslim racism” also suggests that fighting racism can be a uniting factor for Muslim, Black, Latin, Asian, white, and all workers worldwide.
Self-critically, PL members in the MLA should have fought against the liberal term “islamophobia.”
This resolution is just the start. As ideological battlegrounds, classrooms and campuses are places where the fight against anti-Muslim racism must intensify. It is essential that we win education workers to anti-racist ideas and practice, in the MLA and elsewhere, and then to a communist outlook.
This experience reminds us of the vital role played by communist leadership in the class struggle. PLP members moved the resolution to the left and built the necessary support to get it passed. Passing the resolution was a significant step, but more important gain were the many connections we made with local activists and other groups in the MLA.
This struggle will continue to expand our limits, encouraging campus activism and creating an opportunity for alliances with students and other organizations. The sharper the fight against U.S. imperialism abroad and racism at home, the more powerful our Party will grow.

CHICAGO, January 27— A mass student walkout and a sick-out by Detroit’s public school teachers reveals the racist core of the capitalist bosses’ schools and the need for communist organizing.
The teachers forced the bosses to shut down 69 of 100 segregated schools by calling in sick en masse. Teachers are fed up with the disgusting learning and teaching conditions and attacks on wages and benefits. Ninety-five percent of their students are Black or Latin; the under-funding of Detroit’s schools, under state control for 12 of the last 15 years, is clearly racist.
The teachers are calling for funding to guarantee clean and safe learning conditions, smaller classes, more workers, and social services for children with special needs. They are also demanding restoration of pay and benefits, including the return of nearly $10,000 each teacher was forced to “lend” the district under an agreement negotiated by the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) in 2012.
Rank-and-file teachers have organized job actions independently of the DFT. As disillusion with unions grow, so do the red opportunities for mass leadership from students and teachers toward shutting down capitalism. The student walkout from Cass Technical High School is a good example.
Bosses’ Emergencies, Workers’ Disasters
The teachers are also demanding the removal of the bosses’ hatchet man, Darnell Earley, the emergency manager appointed by the Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to “save” the bankrupt city. With sole decision-making power, Earley has slashed school and pension budgets while increasing funding for the police department.
This is the same Darnell Earley who’d recently served as emergency manager of Flint, Michigan, where he played an instrumental role in switching the water supply in the majority Black city from Lake Huron to the toxic Flint River, leading to widespread lead poisoning (see page 2).
This is What Capitalism Looks Like
After decades of budget cuts and the layoffs of thousands of teachers, engineers, janitors and other support staff, many schools are in a state of acute physical decay, making it impossible for students to learn (see sidebar).
The school district has 200 teaching vacancies yet to be filled. One DPS high school now has only one certified math teacher. One student said she’s had a substitute teacher in her Spanish class since the beginning of the school year—and the sub speaks no Spanish.
Under capitalism, only a certain percentage of the population needs higher education. And only a certain percentage gets jobs. The rest are set up to be unemployed or join the military. These cuts in the education factories—and in other social services—are designed to conserve the bosses’ resources as they prepare for war with their imperialist rivals. Under communism, all students will develop to their greatest potential and contribute to society.
Union Play their Racist Part
On Jan. 12, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, accompanied by state union chief David Hecker, toured several schools and feigned shock over finding rodents and other unsanitary conditions. In fact, city and union officials have disregarded complaints by teachers, parents and students for years!
On Jan. 15, the DFT, whose interim president has opposed the sick-outs, held a meeting that drew more than one thousand teachers. AFT President Randi Weingarten was flown in from Washington to break the rank-and-file’s resistance. She exposed the unions’ true role: subduing militant fightback while distracting workers to work within the capitalist system.
Only a communist revolution can enable workers to build a world where students can learn under safe and dignified conditions and give collective leadership. Detroit teachers and students are heading in the left direction. They have refused to heed the union’s call to calm down. Many feel a strike is the next step.
Public Enemy #1: Capitalism
Cities like Flint and Detroit have been decimated because of capitalism’s drive for maximum profit. Many higher-paying union jobs have been moved to non-union states where workers—weakened by racist divisions that prevent fightback—are paid poverty wages. Outside the U.S., workers are paid even less. This super-exploitation drives wages down for the entire working class.Millions are left unemployed.
Capitalism is so saturated with racism it can never meet the needs of the working class. The Progressive Labor Party stands with the students and teachers of Detroit and their fight. An attack on one student or teacher is an attack on the international working class. The bosses use their state power to breed racist working and learning conditions. PLP fights for state power by building an army for communist revolution—student by student, worker by worker.
Use CHALLENGE to expose the racist conditions of Detroit schools. Demonstrate working-class solidarity—fight back where you are!

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Here is a list—from Detroit teachers—of racist learning conditions at their schools:
Spain Elementary Middle School: Black mold; buckling gym floor; broken swimming pool; defective boiler.
Thirkell Elementary-Middle School: So few teachers that eighth graders are housed in the gym and pulled out for instruction in core subjects for only an hour or so each day; rain and snow pour through the ceiling; teachers get one prep period a month.
Moses Field School (for students with severe cognitive impairment): Broken boiler; infestations of rodents, roaches and bedbugs.
Palmer Park Preparatory Academy: Pieces of the ceiling falling on students’ heads; infestation of rats.
Bates Academy: Security issues; heating issues; mice; broken computers.
Dossin Elementary-Middle School: Standing water in classrooms; holes in the ceiling; classroom without power due to black mold in the wiring.
Ronald Brown Academy: Special education class with no textbooks; slimy growth on the walls; crumbling ceilings.
Mann Elementary School: Untrained teacher forced to administer medication to student suffering severe seizures.

HARLEM, NEW YORK, January 9— In a neighborhood of mostly Black and immigrant workers, the antiracist chants rang down 125th Street and Broadway:
Racism Means We Got To Fight Back!,
Deportations Mean We Got To Fight Back!
Bibi, Bratton, Donald Trump —
Throw Those Racist in the Dump!
Thirty multiracial workers and students, women and men, marched against anti-Muslim racism with homemade signs and posters emblazoned, “REFUGEES WELCOME HERE.” On the bullhorn, a Black woman worker said that no Muslim worker had ever evicted her or denied her food stamps—but the bosses had. These capitalist terrorists are the same super-rich businessmen and politicians building the latest wave of anti-Muslim racism!
A member of the Modern Language Association read a statement against anti-Muslim racism recently passed at its convention. Others attacked the gutter racists emboldened by politicians like Donald Trump. Everyone spoke of the importance of uniting all workers to fight back against every form of racism.
This event was organized by members and friends of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, various churches, Jewish Voices for Peace, the Professional Staff Congress (the educational workers’ union at CUNY), the United Federation of Teachers, the Yonkers Federation of Teachers, and the American Postal Workers Union, among others.  We distributed more than 800 internationalist, antiracist leaflets and hundreds of CHALLENGEs.
Turn Up for Communism
Following the rally, we chanted and marched to a nearby New York State government building. All along the route, workers raised fists and took multiple leaflets and CHALLENGEs. When we approached a crowd of Black workers gathered around a sidewalk table of music vendors, they turned down the music to focus on our chants. Simultaneously, they erupted with raised fists and chanted along with us!
The building we targeted houses the offices of the liberal Democratic Congressman, Hillary Clinton supporter, and all-around racist viper, Charles Rangel. A self-proclaimed champion of Black and immigrant workers, Rangel was censured on 11 counts of tax evasion and other violations. When he isn’t cheating on his taxes or vacationing at his villa in the Dominican Republic, Rangel is busy preaching to workers about sacrifice and service to U.S. imperialism and openly calling for a military draft (CHALLENGE, 7/18/12, 1/30/13). For years, Rangel sold out Harlem’s Black workers to promote Columbia University’s expansion. The University rewarded his dedication to racist gentrification with a scholarship in his name that recruits Black, Latin and immigrant workers to diversify the face of U.S. capitalism.
Expose the Liberal Bosses, Join PLP!
In response to the New York City cops, who warned us not to use our bullhorn at the busy intersection, a church minister spoke deliberately, one sentence at a time, so everyone in the crowd could loudly repeat what he had said. He denounced Rangel and all liberal politicians as bigger dangers than Trump; while pretending to serve the working class, they actually do the bidding of ExxonMobil and Citigroup. The capitalist rulers and their liberal puppets attack Trump only because they desperately need the loyalty of Black and immigrant workers to slaughter and be slaughtered in the coming global wars of U.S. imperialism.
Students and workers in the Progressive Labor Party also spoke, putting racism and imperialism into class terms. Racism, be it directed against Muslim, Black, Latin or immigrant workers, hurts us all. It enables the bosses to super-exploit certain groups with even lower pay and worse living and working conditions, while dividing workers who share the same interests.
Following up on the minister’s point, PL’ers noted the sharpening rivalry between the U.S. bosses and Russian and Chinese imperialists in the Middle East and the South China Sea—with liberals like Hillary Clinton leading the charge. The PL’ers concluded by calling for workers in all countries to join and help build a mass, international PLP of millions that can smash capitalism and its racist borders and imperialist wars with communist revolution. Today’s event was a glimpse of the unity we need to build a communist world run by and for the working class. With the contact information gathered today, our diverse group of PL’ers and friends will strengthen this vital work.