BOSTON, December 23 — The PLP college conference in November advanced the work at one college here. Several students from Roxbury Community College found it to be an “awesome experience” when they discovered that their opinions and values were shared by a diverse, sincere and interesting group of people who called themselves communists. Since then they have been meeting with the Party, getting to know each other better and learning more about capitalism, racism, fascism and communism. 
The experience they had at the bold and disciplined antiracist march and rally in East Harlem opened them to the idea of holding a rally after the Grand Jury decision in Ferguson. Even though they weren’t able to carry it out, just making the plan got them to consider what it means to be leaders of the working class. 
One student attended a recent Boston demonstration demanding justice for Eric Garner. She found it inspiring to see others fighting back against racist police terror. As part of the Pizza and Politics Steering Committee, they are planning to bring a class analysis of racism and fascism into the upcoming college discussion: “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot! I can’t Breathe! Taking a Stand Against Racial Injustice.” They are looking forward to the next opportunity to meet and rally with PLP students from around the country. Currently two of the students are meeting in a PLP study group on political economy.

SEATTLE, December 10 — Protests began in Seattle immediately after the grand jury in Ferguson refused to indict killer cop Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown. That night one hundred cops donning riot gear and brandishing assault rifles came out to meet over one hundred students, teachers and workers who were shutting down intersections in downtown Seattle.
When some demonstrators moved onto Interstate 5, police attacked with tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang grenades. Protesters on the overhead bridges responded by throwing rocks and firecrackers at police below. The police made some arrests and beat some people, but the workers and students were not deterred. On the national day of action four days later, over 1,000 people took to the streets to oppose racist police violence.
Since this initial outpouring of antiracist rage, demonstrations of varying sizes have been held almost every night. The Seattle Times (ST) editorial board attacked antiracists as a “roaming gang of belligerent hostiles” out to ruin Christmas and scare children. They harshly criticized Mayor Ed Murray for saying he sympathized with those angered by the Brown decision — a statement he immediately rescinded (ST, 12/2). Still, antiracists were not deterred.
On Saturday, December 6th, over 1,200 demonstrators marched from Garfield High School — a predominantly Black school — into downtown where they again committed the great crime of “bringing Westlake Center and Pacific Place mall to a standstill on the busiest shopping days of the year”(ST).
Leaving downtown, protesters formed a human chain shutting down multiple intersections in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood. A series of bars and restaurants were targeted because their owners had asked for a greater police presence to attack “Somali gangs” last summer (ST, 12/4). Demonstrators denounced the racist call for police use of profiling that could only lead to violence.”
Every step of the way police have sought to intimidate protesters. On last Sunday’s Dec. 7 march police herded the crowd of one hundred into a dark, largely abandoned street. Once there, the police surrounded the group, creating bike barriers on either side of the street while riot cops holding their batons out sealed the ends.
Marchers were kept there for half an hour while police presumably debated rioting through the crowd as their counterparts in Oakland had the night before. On Monday night one protest leader was attacked, arrested and held overnight by a gang of cops as she walked home from the demonstration alone. Still, antiracists remain resolute.
These marches have made the priorities of the police and the media under capitalism crystal clear. To again quote the Times, to stand up and oppose racism and police brutality is not “building a better world,” but “destroying it.” And police throwing flash-bang grenades into crowds is being “otherwise restrained.” The police line up to protect the banks while the papers call upsetting holiday shopping “violence.” For those who have never seen fascism with its mask off, the last few weeks have been very enlightening.
Meanwhile, on December 5th, the county prosecutor announced that he will not press charges against cop who viciously punched a Black woman while she was handcuffed in the back of his squad car. The victim, Miyekko Durden-Bosley, had her right orbital socket shattered, while the racist cop got a six-month paid vacation (ST, 12/5). Right now workers and students in the streets are only calling for reform, but that won’t change capitalism’s racist nature and the violence it produces. As the face of brutal capitalism is revealed, antiracist protests must be turned into revolutionary action!

Newark, NJ, November 3 — Chanting “Same struggle same fight, workers and clients must unite”, and “The bankers got bailed out, we got sold out,” 125 unionized Essex County welfare workers marched and rallied here today. The workers were joined by the War Against Poverty Coalition (WAPC), the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) and several other organizations to protest the severe racist understaffing of welfare centers throughout Essex County. This is causing a huge backlog of Food Stamp and Medicaid applications. We demand jobs at living wages, restoration of all social service cutbacks, and an end to government subsidies/welfare for corporations.
Speakers included social service workers and one client. The client was laid off along with hundreds of other workers from a New Jersey factory. He spoke passionately about the inability of the understaffed welfare system to provide for the needs of people like himself. He called for welfare workers to unite with their clients, and not be sucked into an anti-client mentality. “Welfare reform” has deliberately promoted this kind of thinking.
Other speakers stressed the need to vote in the upcoming election. But one social services worker called for a revolution of the working people to shake up the foundation of the “1 percent”, calling on workers to “directly pierce the heart of capitalism squarely in the chest and reclaim the rights that have been stripped away from us”.  
Under communism, human needs like health care and food would not be commodities to be sold so that some boss makes a profit. That is because communism would eliminate the commodity exchange system that capitalism requires. Also, capitalism needs unemployment in order to drive down wages, a necessary measure for any boss to stay competitive. Stop-gap programs like Food Stamps are only necessary because of the mass racist unemployment we see under capitalism. Black, Latin, and Asian workers are super-exploited and continue used as a wedge against the white working class.
In the past six years, as a direct result of capitalism’s economic crisis, Food Stamp applications in Essex County and statewide have skyrocketed. Ten percent of New Jersey residents now receive Food Stamps, and thousands of others need help but can’t get it. Also, Medicaid income eligibility levels have gone up as the new Affordable Care Act is rolled out, resulting in thousands of new applicants for benefits in Essex County alone. These applicants for Food Stamp and Medicaid benefits are overwhelmingly Black and Latin residents.
Instead of hiring more staff so that all these new applications can be processed on time, the county bosses, backed by their state overlords, have kept a hiring freeze in place for years! As a result thousands of unfinished applications pile up in local offices, causing needy clients frustration, lack of health care and hunger. Rank-and-file caseworkers catch the brunt of the clients’ anger while the state and county bosses get off scot free!
Meanwhile, Prudential Insurance Co. received more than $200 million in state tax credits from the NJ Economic Development Authority last year alone. This was in return for a “promise” to create a measly 400 jobs, few of which will go to Newark residents. These giveaways to “Pru” bosses are paying half the cost of their new 20-story office tower (The Real Deal, Dec. 2013), clearly visible from the daily long lines at the main Essex County welfare office.
The campaign against racist understaffing in the welfare centers will continue. PLP will bring to participants in this campaign the idea of a communist world without unemployment where everything produced by the working class is shared according to need.

New Orleans, November 19 — PLPers injected a healthy dose of communist politics into the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) national meeting of over 12,500 health care related workers. The theme of this year’s conference was “Healthography” and was focused on the fact that your ZIP code is more important than your genetic code in determining your health.
As we have every year for the past 15 years, a dedicated group of PL members and friends participated in the conference with the goal of spreading our revolutionary ideas, challenging public health workers to think beyond small reforms, and recruiting to PLP.  This year’s conference was one of our most successful.  We helped organize an outstanding session, advanced a policy resolution, and hosted a very successful “Troublemaker’s breakfast.”  
Racist Police Violence and Mass Incarceration Hit Public Health
Louisiana leads the country in prison inmates per capita and their police have a long history of racist brutality and murder. The first speaker exposed how for-profit prisons and jails have proliferated in Louisiana, bringing in money to small communities and police departments.  While mass incarceration of Black men is clearly a method of racist social control, this dimension of making money off each inmate is appalling.  
Another speaker specifically addressed racist police violence in Chicago — 306 people have been shot by Chicago police in the past 5 years (89 have died), and 75 percent of police shooting victims are Black.  She belongs to a community group that petitioned the United Nations to condemn the U.S. for human rights abuses, and this group regularly leads demonstrations against police brutality.  
Another young Black woman’s talk was on the political economy of racism.  She showed how racism leads to the super-exploitation of Blacks, but also hurts workers of all races by dividing us and keeping wages low. Our session attracted 40 people and led to lively discussion afterwards, as well as many people requesting the special Challenge pamphlet written for the APHA meeting.  
When these issues are presented clearly, the limitations of reform (whether it be in healthcare, the prisons or the police) become very clear and lead many to see that the whole capitalist system must be challenged and destroyed.  
United Nations Guilty of Bringing Cholera to Haiti
For the second year in a row, a policy statement on the cholera epidemic in Haiti was brought to the APHA Governing Council. The resolution states that the UN troops brought cholera to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and infected more than 750,000 Haitians and killed more than 8,500 people so far. The resolution states that the UN should pay the $2.2 billion required for the building of a water and sanitation structure in Haiti to help end cholera there.  
The UN tries to hide behind its self-serving claim of immunity from this issue due to their agreement with the Haitian government.  This public health crisis and the ensuing UN and international response clearly show how racism and capitalism on the international stage can have devastating consequences. It is similar to the Ebola epidemic currently ravaging West Africa. The resolution was not recommended by the conservative Joint Policy Committee but it still went to a vote before the Governing Council. While it ultimately did not pass, it was a very close vote and many friends and strangers spoke in support.
Although the APHA leadership is clearly afraid to call out the UN, many general members recognize this injustice and want to hold the UN accountable: another example of how the leadership of many mass organizations is way to the right of the membership. We will continue to bring this issue to the APHA and build even more support for it next year.
Troublemaker’s Breakfast
We distributed 1,500 copies of a special four-page pamphlet detailing how capitalism destroys any possibility of a healthy society, and that communist revolution is our only chance to create a world where everyone has a right to be healthy. One young woman stated, “I knew this conference would be more interesting than usual when I saw this pamphlet.”  
We invited interested people to come to our traditional “Troublemaker’s breakfast” held on the second to last day of the conference. More than 30 people (mostly students and young professionals) attended the breakfast — we completely filled the restaurant and ran out of chairs!  
We broke into two groups for discussion and generated ideas on how to change society and what to do at next year’s APHA convention in Chicago.  We got everyone’s contact information and we will work with them over this coming year to build ties and raise revolutionary ideas.  
Current events are politicizing many people and it is up to us to radicalize them further.  We need public health workers to join PLP and fight for an equal, healthy society for all of us.