On November 24, I joined three other comrades at the "Save Gaza," Black Friday March on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, the "Magnificent Mile," of expensive shops and restaurants. Several progressive groups were present at the event such as the US Palestinian Community Network and Students for Social Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC).

Shoppers unnecessarily crossed through the rally, and at one point a racist shouted, "Stop killing babies and raping women!" While I don't know what kind of statistics there are about rape in this conflict, the hard evidence about the Israeli Defense Force's current killing of 6,150 children in just under two months should be spiking the radar of any "pro-lifer." The dehumanizing tactics of Hamas are centered in the imagination of those all too unwilling to grapple with Israel's own dehumanizing, US-supported tactics on Palestinians, where prior to the current slaughter 40% of the male population in Palestine had been imprisoned.

Once the march of about 1,000 took off,  there were several stopping points in front of businesses like Victoria's Secret and Starbucks shouting, "Shame on You!" while cops blocked the entrances. At one point we chanted, "CPD, KKK, IDF, they're all the same!" At another point an Arab American cop guarding a business was a particular focus for a small group of Arab protesters.

I carried a sign with the picture of Murod Kurdi, an Arab American worker from the nearby suburb of Oak Lawn who was murdered by a drunk driver. I got the opportunity to explain the PLP's support of the case to a worker handing out flyers. He referred to the area Murod was from as "Little Palestine,” on account of the large diaspora there. A family with a 5-year-old boy and his family holding signs of support for Palestine came closer to have him read my sign and ask about it. When the boy struggled to understand the importance of an Arab worker killed by a drunk driver, a member of their group explained that if the driver hadn't been white, they likely wouldn't have gotten away with it.

Though most shoppers hid away in stores or acted as unaffected as possible, I did get some CHALLENGEs to a few of them. A pair of young workers gazed from the sidelines in awe, and when handed a CHALLENGE and told it was a communist paper, one responded, "The people control the means of production!" I got handed one  to a young Black worker who raised her fist and began to march along the sidewalk with us. Another worker outside of Starbucks recognized CHALLENGE and asked for one.

Ending at the historic Water Tower, an organizer called for high school students to organize walkouts, for college students to challenge their learning institutions that often have Zionist backing, and to continue coming out every week.

No shackling of patients
November 14 was a busy day for U.S. PLP members and friends at the American Public Health Association (APHA) meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. We joined protests against Cop City in Atlanta and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians abroad. We were also instrumental in getting a policy passed by the APHA against shackling prisoners in health care settings (like handcuffing them to the metal rails on a hospital bed).

We worked for over a year with friends and PLP members to craft this resolution, just as we have done before on successful resolutions against police brutality and for prison abolition. This strong anti-racist policy statement gives us a new tool to demand humane treatment of prisoners at our local institutions. Two of us engaged in this policy work also hit the streets as a security team at the Cop City rally, openly advocating against capitalism and for communism. These actions opened the door to deeper political conversations at a later social event. A fellow rally security member was excited to meet a communist and to learn more about the PLP.

Handing out our newsletter, APHA Challenge, at sessions where we presented or spoke from the floor was another way we got into good conversations, including one with an interested activist who remembered us from our campaign last year around global vaccination access.

While PLP has provided consistent leadership in struggles at APHA for decades, today’s multiple crises for the global working class mean that the party group in the APHA must grow as class struggle intensifies!
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We will remember Claude
We live in a world where it’s “normal” to commit genocide, but it’s “unreasonable” to remember the dead.
In one New York City high school, on what would’ve been his 18th birthday, students wanted to memorialize Claude.* After what happened in March, in fear of retaliation, students wanted permission before putting up a memorial again.

Claude was a son, brother, friend, thinker, creator, student—and a victim. He was doubly targeted by the capitalist violence in the street and the racist education system in the schools. Following his killing, students had fought to memorialize Claude. In response, the administration had taken down the memorial not once, but twice! And each time, we rebuilt it bigger. (See CHALLENGE 4/12 and 4/26 for the full backstory.)  

When I met with the principal this week to submit the students’ request, she eventually said yes.  I quickly informed the students of the small win. I also asked staff to join me in wearing Black in memory of Claude.
Twelve hours later, before the school day, I received an email revoking permission to post the memorial.
When I arrived at school, I saw many workers in Black. Students and I began our morning with a circle in the hallway in front of the memorial. One student led us through a speech and ten seconds of silence. We then wrote messages on the poster.

After morning check-in, I was told by the administration to take down the memorial.

I replied, “No, I’m not doing that. I won’t be the one to remove it.”

She did a double take and said, “Okay, I’ll take it down myself. I’m not scared.”

The simple act of remembering a Black working-class student is defiance in this Black-run school. The fact that a memory of a child’s killing is so threatening exposes the racist anti-student nature of schools under bloody capitalism. One purpose of capitalist education is to recreate all the inequalities that make this profit system run. Capitalism’s schools censor and repress anti-working-class ideas. Bringing attention to Claude shatters the image of this “good school.” His memorial is a reminder that this whole system is disproportionately rigged against Black, Brown, and immigrant students. Such a system doesn’t deserve to exist.

Well, the principal finally backed down for now: “I don’t want to fight…we’ll keep it.”
Taking small risks like these helps build working-class confidence for the bigger battles ahead. Our next battle is fighting anti-Muslim racism (more next time).

Throughout the day, students from all grades signed the poster. Hundreds were careful to not let it wrinkle as they passed through the hallway. For now, the memorial is up.

Our principal was trying to bury Claude’s memory like how Israel buried 14,000 of our working-class siblings.
Students and education workers here have yet to see it, but the very group of people who kill kids overseas are the same people who kill kids in the streets.  

Be it Brooklyn or Gaza, this profit system tries to bury us, but the working class remembers. We will remember Claude. We will remember the genocide. In their memory, we will fight for the kind of world they deserve.

*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
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Canada: worker organizer solidarity with our class in Gaza
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member organized a solidarity event with workers in Palestine in his rural Maritime-Canadian community. The event was part of a national day of action demanding that the Canadian government support an immediate ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and call for an end to the blockade of Gaza.

More than 250 workers and their families showed up, a substantial turnout in a town of 5000. The highlight was a “complicity tour” that involved marching to various sites in town at which designated speakers critically connected the location to Canadian support for the ongoing genocide. The stops included the local university, where the speaker called out the administration’s cowardly unwillingness to condemn Israeli state violence and made the case for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. Then it was on to Scotiabank, whose logo blazes the same shade as the blood of Palestinian children, with the institution’s massive investments in Elbit Systems, an Israeli death merchant.

The gap between a ceasefire demand and PLP’s call to turn the guns around appears wide indeed, but by working in a reform-oriented organization Party members will continue striving to keep the revolutionary horizon in view, testing our line among an expanding coalition of community members.
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Response to Gaza genocide: teacher stops business as usual
As the bombs were falling on our working-class brothers and sisters in the Levant (Gaza and surrounding area), the New York City Department of Education dropped a bomb on NYC teachers. The Chancellor put out an email saying that teachers could be fired for anything they post on social media. This is a clear escalation, and an example of liberal fascism increasing,  due to the need for the ruling class to silence any criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Not a word of criticism was broached by the Teachers’ Union thus their silence is complicity. Upon seeing the letter, my club of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teachers began formulating a plan to respond. One teacher shared a template that some teachers were using to write a letter to the teachers union’s president. We then decided that the club would take this course of action.

In addition, I decided that I wouldn’t be teaching my usual classes and would, instead, have a class discussion on Israel/Palestine. I was able to have a sharp conversation in the classroom and had several students — including some Muslim students — thank me. This also opened up the ability to have conversations with teachers, in which  I consistently brought up the Party’s analysis thatU.S. support of Israel’s genocide is all part of inter-imperialist rivalry.

While sitting in the teacher’s center during my off period, I quickly wrote a letter and asked for input from a young Latin teacher with whom I’d had a few political conversations. She was happy to help, and shared that not only was the Israeli genocide fueled by the Leviathan Oil fields off of the coast of Gaza, but that there were plans to create a canal that would rival Egypt’s Suez Canal and be totally under the control of the U.S. and Israel.

I then sent the letter to our entire staff. Several teachers thanked me, especially one teacher with a Muslim name who said he was afraid of speaking out due to racism. Many good conversations with students and teachers and much base-building occurred by following and carrying out the plans that my club had made. Of course, as part of our plan, we decided to share our experiences with CHALLENGE to help the Party grow and learn.

Biden kept “baby-killers" propaganda in speech
Al Jazeera, 11/27–US President Joe Biden reportedly rejected the advice of staff to refrain from repeating unverified reports that Hamas had beheaded babies during its attack on Israel on October 7. Some White House advisors appealed to the president to “cut a line about Hamas beheading babies because those reports were unverified,” according to a report by The Washington Post. An Israeli news outlet made the original claim, which was picked up by media outlets across the globe. However, no such beheadings have been verified by any Israeli or international source. Not long after Biden’s speech, the White House said in a statement that it had not confirmed the veracity of the reports.

Times economists fret that workers are pessimistic about the economy
New York Times, 11/23–Americans seem very grumpy about the economy lately, despite what looks like some pretty good news…To an economist, inflation is the change in prices…But to most people, inflation is high prices. So they look at high prices in the supermarket (for example)  and say, “That’s inflation!”...Another thing bugging people is housing. Home prices and mortgage rates are up, and affordability is way down. Rents are also up. This is no problem if you already own it, but it’s awful if you’re a young person trying to buy your first place. That’s why you see TikTok talking about a Silent Depression; that might also explain why 93 percent of people 18 to 29 in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll said the economy was poor or only fair…In an NBC News poll released last weekend, only 19 percent of respondents said that they were confident the next generation would have better lives than their own generation. NBC said it was the smallest share of optimists dating back to the question’s introduction in 1990…That kind of pessimism might be easier to understand if the economy were in the tank.

Zapatistas dissolve autonomous municipalities
AP, 11/6–The Zapatista indigenous rebel movement in southern Mexico said in a statement posted Monday it is dissolving the “autonomous municipalities” it declared in the years following the group’s 1994 armed uprising…“In upcoming statements, we will describe the reasons and the processes involved in taking this decision,” the statement said. “We will also begin explaining what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy will look like, and how it was arrived at.”...Anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho, who has studied the movement for decades, said the Zapatistas — known as the EZLN, after their initials in Spanish — have become increasingly isolated, leading many young people to move out of the townships in search of work or more formal education opportunities…Chiapas has seen the rise of migrant smuggling, drug cultivation and trafficking, and bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels...The Mexican government has sent thousands of soldiers and quasi-military National Guard troopers to Chiapas…“The only reason they are here is to stem migration. That is the order they got from the U.S. government,” the statement read.

Arms race expands throughout Asia
NikkeiAsia, 11/28–By the 2030s, the Indo-Pacific region will be filled with thousands of new missiles as the U.S., China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan race to expand their arsenals, Ankit Panda, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow, said Monday. The danger, Panda told Nikkei Asia, is the "intersection between advanced conventional missile systems and the risk of nuclear war." The greatest fear is that countries such as China and North Korea may be more likely to resort to nuclear use if these conventional missiles are perceived to target their national leadership, he said. Since arms control talks are unlikely in the current geopolitical context, one idea is for the U.S. and its allies to publicly "forswear any preemptive" attacks on national leaders, he proposed in a recent Carnegie report, "Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals -- Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Escalation Risks."

In the night, when the nazi Israeli military viciously bombed Gaza’s largest hospital-turned-shelter, they forced 60,000 displaced workers and children to flee. This is just one atrocity in what can only be described as a genocide of the working class in occupied Gaza.

Since declaring war on Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist bosses who massacred more than a thousand Jewish and Arab workers, the Israeli capitalist rulers have killed a child every ten minutes in Gaza (Reuters, 11/10). In an area smaller than the city of Detroit, Israel has rained 25,000 tons of bombs, 1.5 times the force of the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II (Anadolu Agency, 1/11). Israel redoubled its murderous efforts by cutting off water, food, fuel, and electricity to 2.3 million people.

Genocide is the natural outgrowth of a system of vicious competition for profits. The global crisis of capitalism is driving the carnage of workers in Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, and Armenia, as well as in the Gaza Strip. The bosses solve their contradictions with small wars that inevitably lead to world war. Progressive Labor Party calls for no war but class war! Let’s build an international movement from East to West, North to South, for communist revolution—our only solution.

U.S.’s entanglements amid decay
The instability in the world today reflects a dramatic shift in imperialist competition, with the U.S. in sharp decline and Chinese finance capital rapidly ascending to challenge for worldwide supremacy. The genocide now underway in Gaza was spurred by a move by Saudi Arabia and Israel to “normalize” their relations, a deal that threatened to further isolate Iran and Hamas (Egmont Institute, 10/11). It also reflects the fight to control Middle East oil and the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, a desperate attempt to contain China. This left traditional U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia feeling abandoned and the Middle East open for business with U.S. rivals—again, mainly China.

The U.S. may soon face a three-front war it can’t win: in the Middle East, against a Russia-backed Iran; in Eastern Europe via the Ukraine-Russia war; and in the South China Sea and Taiwan in a battle over shipping routes, naval dominance, and semiconductors. Tensions are growing between the U.S. and its NATO allies and the BRICS alliance of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, and South Africa as well as China and Russia.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has played a big role as a junior partner of U.S. imperialism—first as a counterweight to Russian influence in the region, then to counter Iran. In return, the U.S. has armed the brutal Israeli bosses to the teeth and financed their fascist occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, as children in Gaza are dismembered and premature babies in incubators die for lack of electricity, the U.S. is sending an additional $320 million in weapons to the Israeli killing machine (New York Times, 11/6).
Meanwhile, once-solid alliances seem more fragile by the day. Regional rulers make lukewarm calls for a cease-fire. Turkey and Colombia, formerly staunch U.S. allies, have pulled their ambassadors from Israel. Iran, the chief U.S. rival in the region, has exploited this volatility to its advantage. The chief funder of Hamas, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen (Vox, 10/14),  Iran has encouraged their attacks on U.S. installations. Iranian-backed militias recently attacked two U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria.

As a deterrent, the U.S. has shifted additional warships, missile systems, and 2,000 Marines to the Middle East (Reuters, 10/21). But now they’re worried they’ll be spread too thin to prepare for the coming war with China and Russia (NY Times, 11/9).

Despite the beginning of a global transition to renewable energy, oil will remain the lifeblood of capitalism for the foreseeable future. China gets half of its oil from the Middle East. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, it has gained a foothold in port cities that link the Persian Gulf to the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. China’s real agenda is “increasing military cooperation and exporting…surveillance technologies to countries under BRI” (Arab Center DC, 1/13/21).

Between the Abraham Accords,  a 2020 peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and the proposed Saudi-Israeli peace agreement, Iran was confronted with the prospect of “U.S.-centered” alliances controlling “the maritime choke points of the Straits of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Straits of Bab Al Mandab” ((Egmont Institute, 10/11). That was an existential threat to the Iranian bosses. To disrupt the deal between Israel and the Saudi bosses, Iran is widely speculated to have pushed Hamas to conduct its October 7 slaughter.

It’s important to note that workers shouldn’t be fooled by peace deals and promises of “normalization.” At best, these agreements only delay the eventual inter-imperialist war to determine which capitalists will reign supreme. Workers have only two choices: to accept war and fascism, or to build a revolutionary communist party.

Nationalism is deadly
Hamas, like all junior capitalists, is driven by profit, not the needs of workers and children of Gaza. The group’s nationalism undermines the essential unity of Arab and Jewish workers. To paraphrase a PLP document, “Nationalism Hurts the Palestinian Struggle” (1974), the task is not to determine who is the rightful owner of the land of Palestine/Israel. Rather, it is to fight for communism—for the collective ownership of all means of production by the working class.

No matter how militant they may seem, nationalist movements are counter-revolutionary. Consider Haiti, the world’s first “free” Black republic. Enslaved by debt to French bankers, occupied mercilessly by U.S. and UN forces, it has become a workers’ hell run by local capitalist gangsters. Or consider South Africa, where a courageous struggle wound up replacing white bosses with Black rulers who happily worked with the same white bosses—as long as they could steal their share of the spoils. Today South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with the wealth gap between white and Black workers unchanged since apartheid (Time Magazine, 8/5/21).

These national liberation movements, and too many more, show what happens when fights against imperialism fail to fight for international communist liberation. We must reject both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, both anti-Muslim racism and anti-Jewish racism. The workers united will never be defeated!

Workers charge bosses with genocide
We can’t fall into the trap of backing any bosses–not the ruthless gangsters of Hamas, not the genocidal state terrorists of Israel. We must win workers, youth, and soldiers to the idea that an attack on one is an attack on all. When the capitalist system resorts to violence, to remain silent is to fall in line with the bosses’ war agenda.

What we choose to do matters. We need to look no further than the anti-Vietnam War movement started by Progressive Labor Party in the 1960s. Though it was later co-opted by the liberal bosses, the movement inspired millions of workers worldwide to fight back against U.S. imperialist genocide and support the heroic workers in Vietnam—who later were themselves betrayed by their own nationalist rulers.

Today, wherever we look, we see sparks of working-class rage against the Israeli bosses’ genocide. From Britain and Barcelona, Spain to Tacoma, Washington, and Oakland, California, antiracist dockworkers and protesters are blocking shipments of arms and Israel-bound warships.

No ruling class of the world can stop the international working class. If you agree, let’s make these small victories last by building an international communist party. We need to arm millions upon millions with the most powerful weapon in the world: communist ideas. Only then can the working class smash the capitalists’ borders and end their terror for all time. Join us!