CHICAGO, June 8 – “I’m here now trying to explain to you how my grandfather was killed by his next-door neighbor, who is a cop and is getting away with it. It just doesn’t make sense.” That’s how one relative described the April 24 murder of 86-year-old Joe Huff by Chicago cop Courtney Hill.  Hill also shot Joe’s 92-year-old wife Hazel three times, then had her arrested on charges of aggravated battery against a police officer. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) immediately cordoned off the Huff yard and tampered with the evidence to take the blame off killer cop Hill and his wife Kathy. The next day, the CPD announced that the shooting was justifiable.  
Joe’s relative made his comments during today’s march, organized by the Huff family and friends to expose the CPD cover-up and demand that Hill be charged with murder.
As we marched down Carpenter St. with over 100 family and friends, many wore #HuffNation t-shirts. The streets echoed from neighbors and friends chanting, “Justice for Joe,” “Hill you murderer,” and “Everywhere you go, justice for Joe.” Neighbors came out of their homes raising their fists in solidarity.  The march ended in front of the Huff’s home, as family and friends chanted, “Racist Hill you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”  Hill and his family were on their porch laughing and making obscene comments as we marched by.
The Hills are black racists. For years they have harassed the Huff family and other neighbors on the block, where they are also landlords. Kathy Hill tries to run the neighborhood through bullying, intimidation and terror, showing the same racist disrespect for her black neighbors that the big capitalists exhibit toward black workers every day. Capitalism uses intimidation and terror to keep the working class in line.  That’s what the police are for. Why should his neighborhood be any different?
After years of racist harassment and continued abuse, Joe Huff had enough and went to get his gun. When he came back out, cop Hill killed him and shot his wife. Kathy Hill was also shot during the melee. Family members and neighbors were outraged.
Communists Fight Racist Terror
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was invited to the march by transit workers from the neighborhood. Several of Joe’s relatives also work at Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), where we hope to build the fight against police terror. What would it have mean if hundreds of anti-racist transit workers walked off their jobs and marched to police headquarters to protest Joe’s murder?
Transit workers know plenty about racist terror: the two-tier wage system that punishes younger workers; the blaming of workers whenever the bosses’ conditions cause an accident; the constant harassment and terror on the job. CTA bosses have fired 800 mainly black workers over the last three years, as the union sat idly by. One worker was fired after the police filed a false report against him.
Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Chicago’s communist-led meatpackers had a better idea. They fought racism on the job and racist terror against black workers who moved into previously all-white neighborhoods, linking the two. We can do the same.
There is no justice for the working class under the racist profit system. For that, we need communist revolution. We will try to organize more CTA workers to join the Huff family Monday, June 23, at the 111 Street Courthouse at 1 PM.

Detroit, MI June 5 — The 36th United Auto Workers (UAW) Constitutional Convention ended today as delegates followed newly elected UAW President Dennis Williams and Teamster President James Hoffa across the street to the Crowne Plaza Hotel to support a union organizing campgain. Following Williams and Hoffa across the street is already more than they deserve.
The endless self-congratulations and standing ovations for all the “great labor leaders” crowded onto the stage stands in stark contrast to the miserable conditions faced by workers and retirees and the storm clouds gathering for the coming year. It stands in even greater contrast to the racist attacks by the bankers and auto bosses on the workers and youth who live in the City of Detroit, where the jails are full and unemployment is about 50%, and significantly higher for black youth.
The two main goals of the convention were to raise morale among the delegates, who are mostly elected officers and the base of the International leadership, and to raise the dues for the International union. The hot item was a 25% dues increase, the first since 1967, which will go entirely into the International Strike and Defense Fund.
The urgency behind the dues increase is that 50% of the UAW membership is now in anti-union Right to Work (RTW) states. If Ohio goes RTW, that will jump to 60%. When the contracts at GM, Ford, Chrysler and others expire next year, workers living in RTW states will have the option of quitting the union. What’s more, in every RTW state there will be a massive campaign to win workers out of the UAW, financed by Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers, similar to the one that derailed the UAW campaign at VW earlier this year.  The dues increase is mainly to try to aggressively counter the anti-UAW campaign, and to build a cushion against potentially big losses.
Much was said about the 2015 contract talks and the need to have a strong strike fund in order to “show the bosses we mean business” in closing the two-tier wage gap. But the odds of a strike in the auto industry are slim to none. The UAW leadership is partners with the bosses, even more so since the Obama administration orchestrated the 2009 federal takeover and bailout of the industry. The only two-tier gap that was closed this week was among the UAW staff, who went from starting at 70% pay and taking six years to reach full pay, to starting at 90% and taking three years to reach top pay.
Back at the worksites, there was mass resistance to the proposed dues hike. At some plants, local President’s chose not to run for delegate rather than campaign for it. Every Ford assembly plant except one opposed the increase. One local President who ran in favor of the dues increase was defeated by a 3-1 margin. But that opposition was never organized to do battle on the convention floor and after some debate, it passed easily.
After more than 40 years of “Buy American” and partnering with the bosses, the UAW leadership has painted itself into a corner where they have to rely on the bosses to survive. This strategy has seen the union shrink from 1.5 million members to just under 400,000 and has left Detroit, Flint and many other auto towns in ruins. If they can’t win some significant reform in the 2015 contracts, workers will be able to vote with their feet and resign from the union. The chickens have come home to roost.
Beneath the balloons and standing ovations, between the hospitality suites and Directors’ dinners, despite the video message from Obama and the awards given to politicians, a battle was being waged to challenge the UAW leadership’s grip on the workers. It’s a struggle over whether we will be led by the Democratic Party to a future of fascism and war, or whether we can build a mass base for PLP and international communist revolution. This week, that struggle took place among a handful of delegates. Over the next year, it can grow.

HARLEM, June 13 — Today 150 angry residents of 2 Harlem housing projects and fighters held a militant rally in the pouring rain at the State Office Building nearby. Longtime local church friends gave out fliers and invited protesters to our next action group meeting and a flier decrying racism and calling for revolt against racist police and housing authority abuses. Progressive Labor Party distributed 60 CHALLENGEs.
Grant and Manhattanville are two huge public housing projects on either side of 125 St in West Harlem. Altogether there are about 4,500 residents and 1,900 youth.
The residents, poor and nearly all black, are treated like dirt by the racist cops and politicians. There are no after-school programs in the local schools, and there are none in the projects either. There isn’t even an indoor recreational area, and the outside sports courts are in poor repair.
The unemployment rate for young men is around 50 percent, and there are no job training programs. Columbia University has taken over the property across the street to expand its campus, driven hundreds out of their homes, and is gentrifying the whole area.  In return, they had promised to spend millions to provide services and opportunities to local youth, but have done nothing.
It is no wonder that some young people turn to drugs and violence in these conditions. There has been one murder and 19 shootings in the last three years.  But in response, hundreds of police with helicopters overhead made a military incursion into the projects on June 4. They broke down doors with battering rams,  trashed whole apartments, and handcuffed old women and children. Over 100 indictments were handed down, many more than the numbers who have been involved in gang activities. If any of these young men are convicted of even minor crimes, they will be banned from living with, or even visiting, their families. There is no doubt that fascism is here in the projects of NYC.
All the residents of Grant and Manhattanville are angry, as well they should be, although some say we just need better cops. Many have the illusion that better trained “community” police would keep young people on track and decrease crime. In reality, the role of the police is to protect the interests and property of the rich. The NYPD can shoot black and brown youth — murdered 16 in 2012 — with impunity and inner city youth rightly hate them. Seventy four percent of people shot in the first half of 2013 were black. Twenty two percent were Latino.
The young people do need to fight back, but it should be against racism, unemployment, poverty and lousy schools, not against each other.
We need to help build an ongoing organization among these tenants and youth that exposes the nature of the system and fights back militantly against this capitalist cesspool that is destroying its poorest workers and youth.

WASHINGTON, DC, May 20 — Today several hundred east coast transit workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union (TWU), rallied and lobbied Congress for increased capital funds (for buses, subway cars and new track) for city mass transit systems. International union officers spoke, along with former FBI stoolpigeon Al Sharpton. PLP members came to oppose the lobbying strategy and instead distributed hundreds of PL flyers calling for sharper class struggle against the racist attacks on transit workers throughout the country, a large proportion of whom are black and Latino.
The ongoing economic crisis of capitalism, the flyer noted, demonstrated the need for communist revolution to take power out of the hands of the bosses and put it into working-class hands. A communist workers’ government would organize transit to meet the needs of workers and riders instead of the profits of the capitalists and bondholders.
The rally’s speakers demonstrated misleadership at its highest level. President John Samuelson of New York’s TWU Local 100 sang the praises of their new contract with the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority bosses. Rank-and-file New York TWU members at the rally said, however, that the agreement was trash. It had been ratified, they said, because they saw no other option — there was no fightback planned by the leadership.
Several PL transit workers and their friends who passed out PLP’s flyer learned that, without a doubt, it was up to us to organize class struggle, since our union leaders have long given up on serious battles against the bosses. Transit workers are under sharp attack since they’re generally better paid than the average worker and the bosses want to push them back down, using racism to divide and isolate the workers from the rest of the working class.
To resist attacks, it is critical for transit workers to go beyond their own immediate interests and build anti-racist and revolutionary politics among themselves as well as the general community. Then a broad militant class struggle against the bosses can be built in cities with major transit systems — uniting black, Latino, white and immigrant workers. This can turn the sharp attack against us into a resurgent working-class movement that can fight effectively against the bosses and move our class towards revolution.