CHICAGO, December 15—Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with a 96 percent “yes” vote. For several months, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have threatened a racist layoff of 20 percent of a workforce that serves mainly working-class Black, Latin and immigrant students. If the Illinois General Assembly fails to approve $500 million in funding by the end of January, and the layoffs are enforced, a strike is a strong possibility.
Members and friends of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are in the thick of organizing and fighting with multiracial unity against these racist cutbacks.
Racist Bosses Take Aim at Students
Students in Chicago’s school system, like others with a mostly Black and Latin population, are bearing the brunt of U.S. capitalists’ sharpening imperialist rivalry with Russia and China (see page 2). The rulers need to keep our class divided, impoverished and intimidated to enable them to restore a military draft for the broader global conflict to come. The CPS slogan, “Students First,” is, in reality, “Bankers First.” The school system borrows hundreds of millions of dollars in municipal bonds, and pays back billions to the biggest banks in debt service. Meanwhile, CPS bosses claim they are too broke to pay for basic necessities for Black, Latin and immigrant students.
The CTU’s liberal leadership has fought militantly for the rank-and-file. But like all labor unions, it fights within the confines of a capitalist system that can never meet workers’ needs. By contrast, PLP’s ultimate goal is to organize a revolution to overthrow capitalism, seize state power, and create a communist society.
The capitalist class holds state power, and to end capitalism the working class must take that power from them.
Chicago Class Struggle: School for Communism
PL’ers and friends organize and support anti-racist struggles within the CTU. While PLP fights within the working class to win reform demands, we also understand that a final victory can be won only by building CHALLENGE networks and a mass PLP for communist revolution. In September 2012, PL’ers joined Chicago’s teachers, students, parents and workers citywide in a massive, seven-day, anti-racist strike. As a result of this militancy, workers won some temporary concessions. But under capitalism, any crumbs the bosses concede are inevitably taken back. In May 2013, Chicago’s Board of Education closed 50 schools, virtually all of them in Black neighborhoods. The closures disrupted students and laid off school workers. Since then,. Chicago’s working class has fought back with boldness.
CTU’s contract expired July 1, 2015. Over more than a year of negotiations, the union has put forward reform demands for fewer police in schools, smaller class sizes, racial integration, an end to over-testing, a $15 minimum hourly wage for all CPS and vendors’ employees, and more school nurses, social workers, librarians, and services for homeless students. Union members have been emboldened by a rally of 5,000 students and workers in November, a hunger strike, demonstrations at Bank of America, and numerous walk-outs and “walk-ins” (morning rallies by staff, parents, students and community members, who then walk into the school together.)
When the Chicago police were forced to release a video of the police killing of Laquan McDonald in cold blood, the CTU leadership called on workers to support demonstrations against the murder and its coverup. But the CTU leaders again revealed the limits of liberalism by fixing the blame on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney and notorious defender of killer cops. They called on workers to back “better” politicians, like Hillary Clinton. As anti-racists passed a resolution in the CTU’s representative body to protesting Laquan McDonald’s killing, PL’ers attacked the whole racist capitalist system.
Our fight for communist revolution and to build a mass revolutionary party stands in contradiction to the union’s reliance on liberal politicians. We’ll keep organizing our friends and coworkers to keep picketing, chanting, sitting in, and marching. We are learning and fighting in the class struggle with our sisters and brothers, and building an anti-racist movement with multiracial unity and our Party’s communist vision up front.

QUEENS, NY, December 9 — A picket line at LaGuardia Community College united professors, staff, campus workers and students to overcome a climate of fear and speak out. Members of Progressive Labor Party helped organize this alliance to expose the racist disinvestment in public education. The chant, “Students, faculty, staff unite. Same struggle, same fight!” fired up over 100 protesters who made time on the last day of classes to join the struggle.
Union members of both the Professor Staff Congress and local DC 37 (campus workers) have gone more than five years without a contract, while students have seen their tuition increase each year. Where is the money going?
In short, it’s going to make up for racist city and state budget cuts in education for mainly working-class Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant students. In 1990, tuition covered 22 percent of total community college budgets, with the rest paid by the city and state. Now, tuition covers 45 percent of overall costs. Meanwhile, students who can’t afford college are being pushed into the military by a capitalist system that needs the working class to fight imperialist wars, not to learn. But students, faculty, and staff have had enough! We need education, not oil wars in the Middle East. We need a communist world that will value our labor and intellect not as commodities for profit, but for the good of society.
The atmosphere at LaGuardia is tense, with untenured teachers and adjuncts fearful of losing their jobs if they speak out. A recent survey found that of all CUNY faculty, those at LaGuardia overburdened by job demands outside teaching. Overworked, underpaid, untenured faculty hop from meeting to meeting to comply with administrative policies to “improve” the college. These initiatives often leave devoted faculty members with no time or energy to actually help students—or to fight back for our class. At the rally, student leaders reported intimidation from administration to discourage their involvement. For at least one student, the warnings led to a deeper commitment to this struggle.
On the morning of the rally, College President Gail Mellow sent a long email to LaGuardia workers. It suggested that CUNY faculty should be grateful that the administration’s proposed contract did not include furlough days or increased contributions for health benefits, like SUNY’s recent sellout contract. Mellow also said:
I wanted…to remind us all about the freedom of expression. It is a hallowed tenet of our democracy, and one we should all cherish. Throughout America’s history, the ability to publicly state one’s opinion without interference is part of what makes us a great country, and I want to simply affirm and welcome the LaGuardia’s chapter efforts.
This “reminder” was a threat to silence militant fightback, the only way for students and staff to win anything of value. The college administration fears a strike, but most of all they fear a multiracial worker-student alliance.
But we will not be pacified by crumbs from the bosses when we know the working class has created all value and can run the world without them. In defiance of the president’s email, students, faculty and staff shouted out for solidarity: “Tax the Rich, Not the Poor! Stop the War on CUNY!”
Students who were not yet courageous enough to stand with the picketers said they were inspired. With more struggle, those students will soon be leading the way! This is only the beginning of a long fight. Over coming months, PLP and friends need to build worker-student unity. We must raise class consciousness and win people to see that attacks by the bosses will continue as long as capitalism exists. The only way to create schools and work that meet our needs is to build a communist society. Students and workers, unite!

NEW YORK CITY, December 17 —“Capitalism is war. We have to educate the masses about [it], so they see how it’s all connected,” one worker stated.
Another said, “Bosses I’ve worked for keep saying, ‘I’ll pay you next week, there’s no money right now.’ This guy right here is owed $2,000. We even know where the boss lives. We have to raise the consciousness of the workers.”
In response to the intensifying anti-immigrant racism inspired by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and others, PL’ers went to a local intersection to befriend mainly Latin undocumented workers and distribute CHALLENGEs in its Spanish-language edition, DESAFIO.
Every day of the year, rain or snow, up to 400 undocumented construction workers gather here at sunrise. They are mainly from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru. “We go all across the city,” one of them said. “Some bosses treat us okay, others are abusive. Sometimes we get paid, or it takes months, or not at all.” The threat of cops and deportation is used to exploit and terrorize workers into accepting wretched wages.
Yesterday a PLP member distributed 30 DESAFIOs to a large group of workers, sparking a three-hour political debate. With limited Spanish, we did our best to communicate, often through pantomime. It reminded us of the importance of learning the language of the workers in the places we live. After reading the DESAFIO headline, they would tell the others, “No, take the paper, they’re against Trump!”
But soon they understood that the PL’er was more than just against Trump; he was against the whole damn system.
Immigrant Wage Slavery
Attacks on undocumented workers are sharpening. Rising racism has fueled job competition and cut wages. Painting an apartment pays about $160. “But when winter comes and your hands are shaking from standing out here from 7 a.m. until sunset, some will take anything,” one worker said. “Some do it for as low as $70 because they need to eat. That makes it harder for the rest of us freezing alongside them to negotiate more and feed our families.”
Many also work in nearby restaurants, where bosses force them into 14- to 16-hour shifts, six days a week, for $250 or less. “It’s brutal exploitation,” a worker said. Taking Leadership From Workers
We read the “Nuestra Lucha” (“Our Fight”) section, and the PL’ers shared information about reform groups helping undocumented workers in their day-to-day lives. The workers said their immediate problem was a lack of class consciousness, and an unwillingness to hold out for higher pay for their labor. We discussed the connection between imperialism and immigration, and PLP’s struggle within the working class in 28 countries to build for communist revolution.
One worker said, “If you want to organize, you can’t just come here once, you need to build friendships and confidence. Be here tomorrow, when hundreds more of us will be here.”
The worker from Peru agreed: “I support these ideas about communism and smashing all borders. Do you know the International?”
With that, the worker and a PL’er sang the International in Spanish.
Build a Base in the Working Class
We returned today with a native Spanish-speaking comrade. We made many contacts, and distributed 129 DESAFIOs in an hour. We could have distributed more! One young worker told us, “It’s getting worse with Trump. Workers born here feel bolder yelling or attacking us. The bosses treat us even worse. I think it’s related…What’s my solution? Overthrow it all—the system. Fight back. We can’t live like slaves.”
Trump is a bullhorn for the systemic racism in the U.S. that creates divisions among workers. He is thriving in the polls because his speech reflects the racist practice and ideology of capitalism. Liberal politicians like Barack Obama carry out the racism Trump spews: higher rates of deportation, more surveillance of immigrants, the closing of hospitals that serve the working class. The finance capital wing of the ruling class needs anti-Trump workers to buy into the myth of “lesser-evil” capitalists who will carry out the same racist, sexist agenda for imperialist war.
These workers want to meet with PLP to learn more about communism, and we will invite them to upcoming study groups. They will strengthen our fight with their experience and leadership, born out of hatred for capitalism and imperialism. We can learn from them as we organize students for a possible City University of New York strike in the spring (see page 3), as we bring our ideas to industrial workers, and as we build the international PLP and a worldwide communist movement against imperialism.  Los nada de hoy todo han de ser. “We have been naught, we shall be all.” Stay tuned for struggles ahead!

CHICAGO, December 6 — I went downtown to the shopping district to join a march against the racist cop murder of 17 year-old Laquan McDonald and the racist cover-up by the politicians running the city. It was advertised on the evening news the day before, so it was probably being used to lead angry working class people back into the fold of pacifism and politics as usual.
Sure enough, Jesse Jackson the famous misleader was there. About 200 marched, mostly Black men and women, young and old. For a while I concentrated on being a part of the march. I am a white worker and wanted to help create a multiracial force marching down the street. The chants were fairly liberal like, “Sixteen shots, stop racist cops, “No justice, no peace, and “Rahm Emanuel [ the mayor] has got to go.”
A comrade and I got out a 50 CHALLENGEs along the march and used the cover of the paper “RACIST TERROR MEANS FIGHT BACK” as a poster. We both got out 100 papers more at the closing rally of the march.
People are interested in communism. I stressed that everyone agrees it takes a community to raise a child. Then I add that it will take communism to make a world fit for everyone to live in. Both “community” and “communism” basically means the same thing: we will all pitch in and meet people’s needs.
When I told another protester it was a communist newspaper, he asked, “What was wrong with socialism?”
I showed him the sidebar on page two that says, “Capitalism returned to Russia and China because socialism retained many aspects of the profit system, like wages and privileges.” We talked awhile and then I continued distributing the paper. He later returned for another paper because he had given the first one to someone else and wanted his own copy! A few people said, “Give me that CHALLENGE.”
One fellow specifically said that he was familiar with the paper. So CHALLENGE sales and everything we do for the Party does make a difference!
A young non-Black woman had made sandwiches and put them in a bag with fruit for the marchers! Free! I accepted and told her what she was doing was what communism is all about: helping each other meet our needs. She didn’t take the paper, but it was a good feeling to see a worker being selfless to support a rally against racist murder.
Also, I met a woman whose son had been shot several times by the police on her front steps. He had survived but is disabled. She struggles with him to get up and do things for himself and not solely rely on disability benefits. I agreed that this is what is important in life — to be able to contribute to the functioning of society, in whatever manner they are able to, and tie ourselves to co-workers¸ friends, family and neighbors. I mentioned to her the angry young people I had met in Ferguson, MO. Their most spirited chant went, “They think it’s a joke, they think it’s a game.” These young people are angry at the endless joblessness, the few opportunities and constant harassment brought down on them, and they are supposed to sit on it and accept their fate. And the bosses and politicians play with working-class lives like it’s a game.
I told her of a PL’er who had lost a nephew in a supposedly gang shooting, but he had lots of friends that came out in his support. She said that she cries for all the deaths dealt to the young people.
I invited her to a holiday gathering we were having in a few weeks. We exchanged phone numbers, shook hands, and hopefully she’ll come.
At the end, somebody called for a cheer for pacifier Jesse Jackson. It was very weak! We should cheer the workers and youth who made it out here today and want to fight for a world without racist police killings. The Party will stay in this fightback and win some new members to a lifetime of struggle for workers’ power: communism.