On the auto workers’ picket line
I traveled to Michigan during the auto strike and a couple of us headed out to the auto workers’ picket lines to talk to workers about class struggle, fighting racism, and the communist revolution. We had some great conversations. One worker from the Dominican Republic has been working there for ten years. He has had several surgeries in that period, including his knee and hip, due to job-related problems. He emphatically denounced the multiple-tier system and proceeded to explain several aspects of our communist line to us! He said, "When you've got people doing the same job for different pay, some are struggling while some are not. That's nothing but division and it just shouldn't happen!" I told him how coal bosses in Kentucky pulled the same racist tactics because they thought bringing immigrants into the coal camps would prevent miners from organizing. I pointed out how such anti-worker ideology seeks to divide workers and create a justification for paying some even less. He exclaimed, “Right, they even used it to justify slavery! The capitalists take as much as they can convince us to allow.” We talked about the media slander the union has been getting, using the same talking points from 100 years ago. "Yeah”, he said, “it's corporate media for a reason -- that's who they work for. They say prices will rise if we get a raise. Well, prices have already been rising!"

The workers I talked to believe that strikes are necessary or else living standards will continue to deteriorate."It's just unsustainable,” declared another worker. Another worker mentioned that he had family from Germany, and I said, "Don't ask the media what Ford and GM were doing during WWII to support the Nazis!" He responded by calling out Ford's anti-Semitism, noting how the Nazis awarded Henry Ford with the highest award a foreigner could receive for collaborating with them. Another worker declared, "You put your body on the line here for 30 years and the boss doesn’t even wanna give us healthcare? No way! Health care shouldn’t be a boss’s bargaining chip, we workers should own the whole economy, state, and society. It's only common sense!"

The workers we talked to are clear -- they will fight hard not to be sold out like in 2008 – and they’re optimistic!
*****

What a small world
In 1995 I was in a San Francisco hospital and was in conversation with another patient.  We started talking about authors, and I said one of my favorites was Tillie Olsen, the beloved writer of working-class women’s lives.  We talked a little about her and he finally said “It sounds like you really like her.  She’s my aunt, and she’s visiting me this afternoon. I’ll introduce you.”  

When we met, I mentioned my father had been in the Communist Party in San Francisco in the 1930s, and she said “You look just like him!”  They’d worked on the CP newspaper together, and during the 1934 general strike, they’d moved the printing press for leaflets from house to house every night to prevent the cops from smashing it.  

We visited her friend in the hospital, Bill Bailey, a longshore worker whose lungs were so bad he could hardly speak, from corrosive cement dust in the holds of ships he was unloading.  During the 1930s, he led a big group of CP members who crashed a party on a nazi luxury liner anchored in New York City and tore down the nazi flag.

According to a 3/23/2019 New York Post story, I read much later, Bailey quit the CP in 1956 saying Stalin was a “paranoid, sick SOB.”  This must explain why, after the visit, Tillie Olsen said seemingly out of the blue, “I never believed Khrushchev’s lies about Stalin!”

The fight for against genocide of Palestinian workers on a college campus
As a new college student, it was motivating to see activism on my campus coming from a high school in which many weren’t politically involved. On November 8 and 9, I joined many in the fight for Palestine: students led speeches and chants such as “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”
Even after walking and chanting, these students only grew with fervor and the chants became louder. One of the rallies culminated with students beating pinatas of Netanyahu and Biden, with only more enthusiasm from the students. Another rally delivered a coffin to the administration building in protest of the school’s holdings in investment firm BlackRock, the world’s largest investor in military hardware.

This wasn’t taken lightly by the school chancellor and board, who sent out a letter one day later condemning “Anti Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab hate,” but it was very targeted toward the peaceful protests against racism and genocide in Gaza, mentioning an instance of “Anti Semitic language.” He however, did not mention many of the instances of harassment and intimidation that occurred against Muslim students.
While school leaders claim to be against all forms of bigotry, they turn a blind eye towards that affecting the already oppressed – their only aim is to further the capitalist, fascist agenda, by intimidating students and protesters. The true nature of their financial and political interests is being revealed, reflecting the interests of wealthy business tycoons and political pawns that run the board. The primary goal of their funding of the Zionist government of Israel is to gain control over Mideast oil, furthering their financial assets through such a valuable resource.

While chants such as “from the river to the sea” have been viewed as anti semitic by some, they advocate for nationalist ideals that further divide the working class. Even during many of the speeches at these rallies, Hamas was not criticized for its slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7 and nationalist ideals were further pushed to students by the leaders of the rally.

For the working class to be truly united, and for the true liberation of Palestine, it is important for us to acknowledge how we should unite and reject both anti-Palestinian racism and nationalism.

BROOKLYN, NY — After marking one year of the multiracial antiracist fightback against racist police terror, Kingsborough Community College (KCC) students and faculty continue the struggle in a campus atmosphere of sharpening fascism at the hands of the liberal administration, public safety, and their bootlicking accomplices. However, students, faculty, and Progressive Labor Party (PLP)members in the campus antiracist club, Common Ground, are adapting to the racist administration’s normalization of police surveillance and increased bureaucratic red tape.

PL’ers have contributed to continuing the struggle by deepening old friendships and making new ones. We struggle to push back against our previous limits in the dark night of low class struggle by expanding CHALLENGE newspaper distribution networks. This has kept the politics of multiracial antiracist fightback, internationalism, and communist revolution upfront as we marched through months of difficulty after difficulty!

Mass work tests patience and persistence
We soon learned that KCC’s administration introduced new obstacles for Common Ground this year. The first was cracking down on informational club tabling by requiring that only both registered and “active” clubs could set up tables and distribute literature. In the past, any club could set up an information table and meet interested students before registering or reactivating.  

Each semester, new paperwork including election results must be submitted for the club to be “reactivated.” Common Ground’s reactivation process entailed weeks of properly formatted paperwork, collecting signatures, and losing several potential club officers who were either a) barred for being freshmen and/or b) didn’t pass the GPA eligibility requirements. Then came mandatory training meetings with the administration.

Upon reactivation, we met our next obstacle: this year: the administration has declared that informational tabling counts as a club “event,” and therefore requires one month of notice to reserve through an online portal for event registration. On most days the tables are utterly empty, except for the regular military recruiters. (A Marine recruiter/ CHALLENGE reader confessed to us that the administration is very helpful in getting recruiters onto campus.) When Common Ground students and faculty agreed on a tabling schedule and requested it, we were denied, and given alternative days and times we were unable to meet!

As a final insult, our assigned general meeting room’s newly installed door doesn’t open with the student keys. Opening it requires contacting Public Safety officers with the master keys each time, who often linger by the door. At the start of one recent meeting, a sergeant entered to wipe a stain off a table “to avoid the paperwork” of requesting custodial staff to do it.

The racism of requirements
The ease of allowing military recruiters on campus contrasts with the technical difficulty of getting student clubs started here. KCC is a two-year, predominantly Black, Muslim, Latin, and Asian immigrant campus where over 74 percent of students receive income-based Pell Grants, and 99 percent receive some type of city or state financial aid (NCES, 2021-2). Since the rules have tightened, the number of active clubs has dropped from over 130 at the last available count about a decade ago, to less than 30 today.

Brooklyn College, also in CUNY and not far from KCC, is a four-year campus with a mostly white student body. Their administration does not bar freshmen officers or demand as many club requirements, including a minimum GPA. Many of the campus’ 140 registered clubs table around campus grounds, distribute literature, and post it on various public bulletin boards. Unlike KCC’s requirements for stamped Student Life pre-approval on posted flyers, many of the various political flyers found posted around Brooklyn College during a recent visit had no such stamp.

Overcome all hardships and STRUGGLE!
Difficult objective circumstances never excuse us from failing to organize and fight back. During this semester’s club fair, our vibrant multiracial crew attracted the most student interest, as per usual. When the fascist Israeli bosses launched a genocide against the workers of Gaza, we defied the prohibition on tabling, distributed hundreds of leaflets, and made enthusiastic new contacts. We organized Latin America - Palestine solidarity through a Palestinian former student who spoke at a Brooklyn mass organization (see previous CHALLENGE).  

Members of the club also helped organize a contingent of KCC students for the solidarity with Gaza demonstrations in Washington, DC, continuing our practice of building rapid responses to racism, and one of these students attended PLP’s fall student conference. racism, and one of these students attended PLP’s fall student conference.

We continue ongoing sharp political discussions analyzing how it can be that the heads of KCC’s entire administrative Hydra are liberal, Black administrators; many are women. Despite coming from historically oppressed groups, so many of them not only continue to uphold racism but cynically draw on this history of oppression as part of their identity. Audaciously, they claim to have the students’ best interests at heart, while claiming that antiracists and PL’ers in Common Ground don’t.

Yes, the obstacles presented real challenges to reaching masses of students – but these attacks mean we’re hurting the bosses, and each advance weakens them further. The central head of this Hydra is capitalism, and the administration won’t let us organize without a fight. This fact exposes both illusion and reality: that liberal, Black-led institutions under the capitalist state can never be antiracist, and that the only solution out of this racist, sexist, genocidal imperialist hellscape is communist revolution. JOIN US!

ATLANTA GA, November 13—Twelve thousand public health workers descended on Atlanta for the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) conference.  Some were there to learn, some to present their research, and some to network, but Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were there to organize against fascism and for communist revolution. For weeks we had been planning to have a rally against Atlanta’s COP CITY, which has revealed the true fascist nature of the Democratic Party politicians in Georgia (CHALLENGE, 12/13). But then the Israeli government responded to the Hamas attack on Israeli and migrant workers by murdering tens of thousands of Palestinians. This fascist attack was fully supported by the United States government and further demonstrated the role of the Democratic Party in promoting fascism. They have attacked workers, professionals, and students who oppose genocide, labeling them anti-Semitic (See article on this issue). Throughout the conference, PLP members spoke openly about why the U.S. is so determined to support Israel no matter what:  the U.S. ruling class is determined to protect its Mideast oil resources and pipelines and maintain a power base against Iranian, Russian, and Chinese competing capitalist interests.

The leadership of APHA is firmly in bed with the Democratic Party. These liberal misleaders of public health workers have opposed any resolution or action against racist state violence and imperialism for years.  Just before the conference, Georges Benjamin, head of APHA, tried to head off debate about genocide in Gaza by putting out a mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing statement about all violence being bad for health, while emphatically stating that Israel has a right to “defend” itself. He did not even call for a ceasefire, infuriating APHA members.

Public health workers fight back, take on the Zionists
A few friends quickly wrote a “latebreaker” policy statement calling for an immediate ceasefire, and the release of all hostages, and included historical information about the Zionist apartheid system in Israel and Palestine (www.multiracialunity.org). The Zionists within APHA instead called for peace through charity and never once mentioned the word “occupation.”  We organized our friends to attend hearings on the competing policy statements and spoke in favor of the ceasefire policy and against the deluded ahistorical Zionist position.  

PLP members and the Palestine Health Justice group of the APHA’s International Health Section prepared quickly for the APHA Governing Council (GC) meeting where such policy decisions are made. At a planning meeting the night before the vote, 75 people agreed to hold a silent protest and observe the GC vote. PLP members suggested being prepared with a chant if the ceasefire resolution failed.  One newer member gathered everyone’s contact information and started a Signal group chat that grew from 10 that evening to 80 by the following morning. Other students in the chat began helping refine and remind folks of the plan in a great collective effort.  

The morning of the vote, the Zionists handed out flyers full of lies about the ceasefire policy, but when the policy debate started, the back of the GC room was filled with 50 people wearing all black and holding or wearing single sheets of paper that said CEASEFIRE!  As the meeting went on, that number tripled! The Zionists had organized their people to speak against the statement, repeating racist and false propaganda and calling our advocacy of a ceasefire “unbalanced.”  PLP members provided leadership to the supporters of the anti-genocide policy statement on the convention floor. We spoke about the number of healthcare workers murdered by the Israeli government and the number of people who supported a ceasefire in the U.S.  Supporters also attacked the racist statements of the Israeli fascists about the Palestinians (calling them animals)—a reminder that “racism is a public health crisis.”

The outcome
As the room kept filling with young people interested in seeing whether the APHA would take a stance on ceasefire, Executive Director Benjamin moaned, “What are we going to do? This could be awful” to a friend of ours, as he gestured to the determined young people in the back of the room. A compromise position was reached by jettisoning the 11-page policy statement with its 40+ references and just voting on a one-sentence resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Eighty-nine percent of the governing council members voted “Yes” and the crowd broke out in cheers.  This victory, while hardly complete, represented the only large health-related organization to call for a Ceasefire and can be used to defend the many healthcare workers and students who face attacks by their institutions for opposing genocide.

Forty-five of us, including eight PLP members, met outside to debrief and discuss the next steps. Fighting imperialism and capitalism took center stage, as 25 people signed our mailing list and everyone got both a CHALLENGE and an APHA CHALLENGE. We met up with many of these students later that evening and had more political conversations with them.  

This APHA conference was one of our most active annual meetings in years and showed that organizing in professional spaces and on the job is crucial for communists.  The young people who spent much of their first professional conference organizing this protest and demonstrating for three hours at the GC meeting show the great possibilities for the international working class.

LOS ANGELES—As the strike wave continues to roll across the country, more and more workers are gaining a deeper understanding of the true meaning of “labor power.” In Los Angeles alone, we have seen teachers, hotel workers, hospital workers, writers, and actors all take to the streets to fight for better working conditions, a living wage, and respect from their employers. Combine this historic moment with a communist educator who has been putting forward these ideas with teachers at a school for nearly a decade and some pretty exciting things can happen.

Charter schools are notorious for overworking their staff even more than traditional public schools. A charter network in LA where comrades work requires 10 more work days for staff than all the other schools in the county. Additionally, we have two professional development sessions a week which add up to one hundred hours of meetings each school year. So when the principal wanted to add even more training this year outside of our contracted work year, the teachers said “hell no.”

We started by trying to find a compromise with the principal. We would have these meetings if she canceled something else in its place. Of course that was refused. We decided collectively to file a grievance through the union. We found out it was not just our school where this was happening. The management of the charter network refuses to follow the definition of the workday in our contract and thinks they can add meetings whenever they want. This is just one small example of how education workers are exploited under capitalism.

The plan: no talk, collective action
The grievance process is unbearably and intentionally slow of course. The first meeting happened before we even got to step two of the process. When the second non-contractual meeting was coming up, we decided as a staff we needed more action than just waiting on the results of a grievance. During our union meeting, we decided that people should either call out completely and no-show on the meeting or for those who didn’t have hours available for that, they could keep their cameras off and refuse to participate. The meeting was on Zoom.

The night before the meeting, the assistant principal sent an email trying to scare people from participating in our plan. She sent a veiled threat that people would be docked for not participating. Our comrade reached out to staff immediately to reassure the team that we must face our fears together and stand united.

Less than 24 hours later we would see just how united our staff was. Of the 28 teachers on campus, 12 were no-shows to Zoom altogether. Of the 16 who came on Zoom, 15 had their cameras off. Some teachers had planned to message the facilitator at the start of the meeting to let them know why we would not be participating. Our comrade sent a private message in the chat to the facilitator saying that this meeting was non-contractual and that’s why so many teachers had their cameras off and we would not be participating verbally either.

Small victory builds solidarity
After about five minutes of welcoming people into the meeting and sharing the nearpod, the facilitator thanked us for all our private messages in the chat giving us the context of the situation. He said he is a union member also and therefore stands united with us and refused to facilitate the meeting. Both the assistant principal and our area superintendent were on the call, scowls on their faces.

A couple minutes later the person who seemed to be the facilitator’s supervisor came on the call and asked the admin present if they wanted to reschedule the meeting for another time. After jumping off the Zoom for about five minutes, the assistant principal returned and said that since we all refused to participate she was going to close the Zoom and have a “nice” Thanksgiving break.

Ironically, the topic of that professional development session we boycotted was “checking for understanding.” Our action checked the bosses’ understanding of where the power lies. While we will always be exploited workers as long as we live under capitalism, that day we got a small taste of our power as workers when we stood together. Nothing runs without workers contributing their labor power. The more we can help our coworkers learn that lesson, even if in small bites, the better positioned we are to fight for a communist world where exploitation is ended for good!