FERGUSON, MO., August 11 — “Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son” reads a sign held here by the stepfather of Michael Brown, another black youth who’s become the latest victim of racist police murder. At a vigil angry protestors chanted “No justice, no peace” and “Stop police terrorism!”
Soon a rebellion erupted. Hundreds of youth, tired of police terror, smashed cop cars and storefronts in reaction to the blatant murder. “The only good cop is a dead cop” was painted on the walls of businesses. “RIP Mike” and “burn the city down” appeared on the side of a burned-down store. Youth fired gunshots at cops and police helicopters attempting to quell the rebellion. In response, the police have turned the town into a war zone.
We should applaud these black youth for sending a strong, violent message against racist murder. We need more such reactions when the bosses’ media, politicians and preachers are telling youth to “be patient” and “wait for answers” from the same people who are responsible for these murders.
No Justice in Bosses’ Courts
In NYC, antiracists are reacting in horror to the video of Eric Garner being choked to death by an NYPD officer as Emergency Medical Services stood by, despite Eric’s pleas of “I can’t breathe.” The Brooklyn District Attorney has shown us in the cases of Kimani Gray, Kyam Livingston and Shantel Davis that we need communism. Neither elections nor grand juries will stop racist police murders. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio’s election didn’t save Eric Garner, and it didn’t bring killer cops who roam the Flatbush neighborhood or any part of NYC closer to justice.
Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has announced that no indictment will be brought against officer Mourad Mourad who murdered Kimani Gray with eleven bullets and watched him bleed to death on an East Flatbush sidewalk in March of 2013. The same district attorney has told the Shantel Davis family that unless witnesses present themselves at his office the case of Shantel’s murder at the hands of racist detective Phillip Atkins will also be closed. And the same authorities have refused to do anything about the murder of Kyam Livingston who was left to die in Brooklyn Central Booking while pleading for medical attention.
Brooklyn’s black DA Thompson’s actions prove the working class should not rely on any agents of the capitalist state.
Members of the Shantel Davis Committee for Justice and Beyond and PLP secured witnesses months ago, but they have been lost in the shuffle of a cynical legal system in which justice is an afterthought at best. On TV, liberal mayor de Blasio tells us to look for justice in the courts. Meanwhile, politicians like Jumaane Williams, Al Sharpton, and Charles Barron show up at the scenes of racist murders and in the living rooms of the survivors to deliver the same racist message, attacking black youth. They give the family false hopes of justice while blaming youth for being murdered by cops.
We need More Rebellions
As the frustration mounts with each new message that black youth are — in the words of Kimani’s mother Carol Gray — “expendables,” more and more rebellions will occur. Their only missing ingredients are communists and antiracists who see the problem as the system of capitalism, not black or Latin youth. This exploitative system spawns racist unemployment, wars and police murders which no amount of voting or reforming departments can change.
Kimani’s friends and family rallied two consecutive nights when the news was announced that his killer would go free. The following Monday a picket line was held at the Brooklyn DA’s office. Kyam Livingston’s family and supporters confronted the cops outside Brooklyn Central Booking last month on the anniversary of her death, demanding justice and an end to the hellish conditions at that site.
The Shantel Davis Committee organized the second annual Hoops for Justice basketball tournament in both Shantel’s and Kimani’s memory in these recent weeks. Players waiting to compete looked through CHALLENGE as announcers mixed in play-calling with political consciousness. Teachers determined to see their students as more than suspects united with Shantel’s sister and local coaches to pull off the event. Young people in attendance wanted to know the date of the next demonstration at the 67th precinct.
CHALLENGE is not only connecting the dots of racist, senseless murder — from Gaza to Ukraine to New York City to Missouri. It’s also become the news source for many youth. The youth are listening. Families stricken by racist cop murders are forming new bonds with each other. We refuse to forget our working-class brothers and sisters taken from us. PLP will carry the call for justice forward to the only solution that can put a stop to racist cop murders: communist revolution.

“Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s latest invasion of Gaza, is now in its final stages, as politicians of both sides hammer out a long-term cease-fire agreement. This war saw sporadic rocket and mortar fire from Gaza (mainly by Hamas) and massive bombing and shelling of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The latest death toll: 67 Israelis (three of them civilians) and 1,948 Palestinians (1,402 of them civilians). In addition, 11,855 homes were destroyed in the impoverished Gaza strip, and 425,000 Gazans are now homeless (United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 8/10/14). For the most part, the victims were ordinary working people.
The goals of Israel’s racist rulers are simple, though often kept hidden behind a wall of lies. They desire as many Jews as possible on as much land as possible, and as few Arabs as possible on as little land as possible. Their land-grab objective hasn’t changed since the inception of Zionism in 1882. Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), spilled the beans on Israel’s plans for ethnic cleansing by calling for the deportation of Gaza’s population into concentration camps on the Egyptian border, pending deportation to other countries. Then Gaza would be reconstructed as an Israeli (Zionist) city on the ruins of Palestinian Gaza (Mail Online, 8/4/14). This prime piece of coastal real estate, which sits on huge natural gas deposits, would generate super-profits for Israeli tycoons and contractors.
But Jewish workers in Israel will never profit from such racist schemes. Under misleaders like Minister of Economics Naftali Bennet, who has a net worth of $25 million (The Times of Israel, 9/3/13), Zionist bosses are attempting to abolish overtime pay and force workers to work long hours at base rates (Calcalist, 9/1/13). The Israeli ruling class claims that it fights to defend the south of the country from Gaza rocket attacks, which are virtually harmless. Then, it uses the rockets as a pretext for mass killing in Gaza.
Hamas Profiteering
Hamas claims they are fighting to defend the Palestinian residents of Gaza from Zionist aggression. But in reality, they are content to see the Gazan working class starve from the siege or die from Israeli bombings, while Hamas rakes in massive profits from exploitation. Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas political wing, has an estimated net worth between $2.5 billion and $5 billion, much of it invested in real estate throughout the Arab world. Ismail Haniyeh, until recently the Hamas Prime Minister of Gaza, is worth an estimated $4 billion. How did these fat cats make their fortunes? From the Israeli-Egyptian siege. To help feed the starving population and provide for their necessities, Hamas buys goods cheap in Egypt, smuggles them into Gaza through tunnels, and sells them at a much higher price to the starving locals (Asharq Al-Awsat, 8/31/12). From this misery, they have grown monstrously rich. The death of more than a thousand unarmed workers doesn’t faze them — it’s just the cost of doing business.
Like all capitalist wars, the latest conflict in Gaza is a war for the rich that is fought by workers. For the international working class, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Hamas counterparts are all enemies. Zionism is a death trap for Jewish and Palestinian workers alike. For workers, the only way forward is communist revolution. Tyrants and profiteers must be eliminated and replaced by workers’ rule, the dictatorship of the proletariat. We call all oppressed people in Israel-Palestine to unite and rise up against war, exploitation and racism, and to build a mass communist movement for a better future.

As American bombs began falling on Iraq, Obama shedding crocodile tears, declared that he cannot stand by while the lives of children are threatened by ISIS: “When we face a situation like we do on that mountain — with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale,…when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye.” He was referring to 10-40,000 Yazidis, a religious minority, driven from their homes in northern Iraq. Of course, he had no remorse for the slaughter of 2,000 (and counting) Gazans over the past month, including about 450 children, and instead armed their Israeli murderers. And when U.S. sanctions led to the death of an estimated half million children in Iraq prior to 2003, then Secretary of State Madeline Albright under President Clinton said, “We think the price is worth it.”
The Israelis and their U.S. backers justify the slaughter of innocents by blaming Hamas for using civilians as human shields. Of course, the 1.8 million residents in Gaza have no place to run. The entire area is about the size of Manhattan, and 44 percent of that has been made a no-go zone by Israel. Whether armed resistance is a good tactic or not, Hamas has no place to go that is not near civilians. Israel, which has precise U.S.-supplied weapons capable of focusing on single individuals, has chosen to destroy a third of Gazan hospitals, 144 schools (many sheltering refugees), a home for the disabled, the only power water/sewage plant, and has displaced 25 percent of the people. Clearly the wholesale massacre and intimidation of workers in Gaza is their strategy, with the “transfer” of as many Palestinians by rapid or slow death as their goal.
The utter hypocrisy of the Israelis is made clear when one examines their history. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, when Zionist Jews were fighting against the British colonialists and the local Arabs, they used all the “terrorist” tactics they now decry — the tactics of the weaker party. In 1946, the Irgun (a Jewish paramilitary group) blew up the King David Hotel which housed the British administrative offices, killing 91 people. The leader of the attack, Menachim Begin, later became Prime Minister. In that same year, Tel Aviv’s largest synagogue was used to store weapons, and a plaque is displayed there today to memorialize this action (see photo). The leader of that group, the Stern Gang, was Yitzhak Shamir, who served two terms as Prime Minister in the ‘80s.
During the Israeli war on Lebanon in the 1980s, the Israelis approved the attack on the Sabra and Shatila camps for Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite refugees, which killed 1,800 to 3,500, mostly women and children. Ariel Sharon, the military leader at the time, also became Prime Minister.
We must however not fall into the trap of siding with the weaker parties as conflicts rage in the world today. Though besieged on every side, Hamas does not rule in the interests of workers in Gaza. Elected in 2006 over the corrupt Fatah party that runs the West Bank, Hamas had to fight Fatah to take power. Since then they have not been able to institute their ultimate goal of fundamentalist Islamic rule, but they have increased inequality and corruption in their besieged territory.
No opposition groups are allowed to protest or meet openly, and their members are frequently arrested; no opposition press exists. Imports of goods through tunnels, nearly everything necessary for life, is heavily taxed, as are all licenses, permits and administrative functions, which has allowed Hamas leaders to live at a much higher standard than others. In a place with near 50 percent unemployment, all government and associated jobs go only to Hamas supporters. If the situation permits, they would like to severely curtail the rights of women and insert conservative Islam into all areas of life.
All capitalist rulers, be they secular or fundamentalist, superpower or colonized state, aim to enrich themselves at the expense of workers. The large powers, the U.S., Russia, and China, are fighting over control of the resources of the world — oil, gas and minerals. Their smaller proxies, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, are competing to sell their resources to the highest bidder. Proxy wars are raging in Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan, but we workers have nothing to gain no matter who the victors are. We are only deceiving ourselves if we think that the rulers of the weaker parties, be they ISIS, Hamas or the Ukrainians, have any more interest in the well-being of their own workers than do the rulers of the larger powers. Like the U.S. bosses, they all lie about their own humanity while vilifying their competitors, but they are all mass murderers. They are fighting for the oil of northern Iraq, the gas under Gaza, the pipelines of Ukraine — not to save any children.
Our job is to fight for international unity of all workers and to defeat nationalism and patriotism, which try to lure us into support of one exploitative leader or another. Together we must build a society where all workers share the world’s resources in order to provide the best possible lives for all and where racism, sexism and nationalism are forbidden. That society is a communist one.

The thousand people — and counting — killed by the latest outbreak of the Ebola virus are victims of capitalism and its racist neglect of longstanding health concerns in Africa.
Ebola has been around for nearly four decades. Past outbreaks, at the rate of more than one every two years, were concentrated in Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Zaire, Sudan, and Uganda. This time the lethal virus has struck western Africa: Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country. Once again, the capitalist healthcare system is unprepared to deal with it.
The virus is believed to originate in animals, from fruit bats to the wild animals butchered by impoverished Africans for “bush meat.” It spreads through the racist inequalities of capitalism, from substandard sanitary conditions to an inferior healthcare infrastructure. Despite its forty-year track record, capitalist medical science has yet to find a way to treat the disease, which kills up to 90 percent of those who are afflicted. Nor has it come up with a protective vaccine. As the New York Times noted (8/10/14), “Many drug companies have little interest in devising treatments or vaccines for Ebola because the potential for profit is small.” Instead, drug companies focus mainly on developing immensely profitable drugs, such as statins (to lower cholesterol) and anti-depressants.
Racist Neglect
According to the latest report of the Global Funding of Innovation for Neglected Disease (G-FINDER), an independent non-profit, only $3.2 billion was invested in 2012 to create new drugs for 31 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), including Ebola. Only $527 million — or 16 percent of the total for NTD research and development — came from the pharmaceutical industry. While most Ebola funding comes from the public sector, led by the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., “some experts believe the federal government has not shown enough urgency to push these programs ahead” (NY Times).
That’s an obscene understatement. It generally takes at least $1 billion and a decade or more to get a single drug to market. By chronically underfunding the battle against diseases that afflict black people in Africa, capitalism guarantees research won’t get anywhere fast.
By contrast, consider the investment by U.S. capitalists in an area where the bosses’ oil profits are at stake. Since 2003, they have spent $1.7 trillion and killed at least half a million civilians in their invasions of Iraq (Reuters, 3/14/13) — not counting the current air assault against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
A History of Oppression
From a historical perspective, capitalism and its centuries-long imperialist devastation of Africa have created conditions that make Ebola and other epidemics severe and very difficult to contain. After the enslavement of millions of Africans for profit in the Americas, beginning in the 16th century, 93 percent of Africa was divided into colonies by the main European imperialists: Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Portugal. In the 20th century, U.S. imperialism intensified this conquest. In addition to the destruction wrought by slavery, the imperialists have exploited labor, plundered natural resources, and propped up a long string of corrupt African rulers who have lined their own pockets while preserving the capitalist status quo (see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa). President Barack Obama’s recent summit with 40 African leaders was just the latest example of efforts of rapacious U.S. corporations to exploit African workers by cutting deals with capitalist African leaders.
Despite the bold, socialist-inspired liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s, political independence has done little to change the impoverishment and oppression of the African masses Those movements ultimately failed because they never made a complete break with capitalism (see “Smash Racism: A Fighter’s Manual,” p 35-40 at plp.org). Today, imperialism still holds sway. The result?  As Ibrahima Toure, a Guinean official declared, “The poor living conditions and lack of water and sanitation in most parts of Conakry [the capital of Guinea] poses a serious risk that this [Ebola] epidemic will become a crisis. People don’t think to wash their hands when they don’t have water to drink.”
Imperialist instability sparked numerous deadly civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which ended about a decade ago after killing close to 300,000 people. After a 2008 military coup in Guinea, more than 200 protesters were killed or wounded in contested elections in 2013.
Workers Distrust Capitalist Medicine
In such a setting, it is virtually impossible to establish a public health infrastructure that might help contain the Ebola outbreak. Workers understandably do not trust the governments, and the governments put a low priority on public services. Well-intentioned efforts by groups like Doctors without Borders cannot possibly substitute for an indigenous, well-structured public health system.
There is also a shameful, racist history of pre-approval drug trials by U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies, which have used people in African and other less-developed countries as guinea pigs. Three years ago, the CIA made covert use of a vaccination campaign in Pakistan to cover the hunt for Osama bin Laden. These racist actions have rightfully made workers and farmers throughout the world deeply suspicious of any Western-related health initiatives. As a result, imperialism has made it virtually impossible to effectively contain Ebola in current conditions.
As air travel has increased, the threat of worldwide dissemination is greater than ever before. When the UN’s World Health Organization labeled the Ebola outbreak an international health emergency, it was one more reminder that the world’s working class must move swiftly to overthrow the perversity of capitalism and its profit incentive system by building revolutionary movements for communism. Communism will empower the masses, build social infrastructure to cope with any challenges, and crush the racist structures that murder and demobilize the working class. Africa has a rich anti-imperialist history. With the leadership of Progressive Labor Party, it is time to build on that history and smash capitalism once and for all!