H.S. teach-in vs genocide
Last week, a few days after Israel began bombing the workers in Gaza, my coworker and I decided we needed to organize a space for our high school students to learn more about what was happening. My co-teacher and I had already spent a class lesson teaching students some of the history of Palestine and taking questions and comments, so I knew some students wanted to learn more. I spoke to other coworkers, including one who has family in Palestine about the plan to respond to this war with a discussion. Because there is a Zionist teacher at the school, who has a history of opening up investigations on coworkers, I was given lots of warnings to think twice about having this event and to be careful.

We went ahead and organized it by making announcements in all of the history classes, so all students were invited. This was a good way to build with the teachers in the department, too. Given the email by the New York City Schools Chancellor expressing support only for those killed in Israel and implicitly threatening anyone with an alternate point of view, it was a big deal that teachers agreed to announce it.

At the meeting about ten students showed up. My co-worker, who is a relatively new teacher, and very antiracist, wanted to lead by explaining why he, as a Jewish worker, felt strongly about criticizing Israel’s fascist attacks. Students responded by expressing what they had been hearing on the news and Tiktok. They compared what was happening in Palestine over the last six or so decades to gentrification in NYC. They expressed outrage at the racism of it all and the attacks on innocent people. One student asked what we thought the solution was. I immediately took the opportunity to explain that I was a communist and why I thought communism was the only solution. I invited them to a study group happening a few days later. Although none made it, a few have told me they are interested in attending future events. The next step is to share CHALLENGE with them and get to know their parents!
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Boston UAW picket: mood of the workers is changing
Several groups of Boston/Worcester PL’ers and our friends walked the UAW picket line at the Stellantis distribution warehouse in Mansfield, MA to bring our solidarity and communist politics. The picketers welcomed our Challenges and leaflets. It was clear that the mood of the working class is changing!

I have never seen striking workers so open to an anti-capitalist perspective. It was pushing an open door for them to condemn the Democratic Party and Biden for bailing out the Big 3 in 2008 and coercing the workers to accept give-back contracts. They also know that the future of auto production works against them. Electric vehicles production is simpler, and uses fewer production workers. This is the logic of capitalism that they can do nothing about short of destroying the profit system.

There were workers who were also walking the picket line from several different unions—SAG-AFTA, Steel Workers, Electrical Workers. This organizing of strike support represents some improvement in the leadership of the AFL-CIO, and It made a big impression on the UAW workers. They commented on how their demands were clearly resonating with all workers. It fostered their class consciousness in that they could see that their bold strike action was leading the way for the working class. Strike support should always be a cornerstone of our practice.
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How nationalism poisoned the communist movement
The CHALLENGE editorial in the Nov. 1 issue stated, “The...U.S. ruling class....supported the creation of a ‘Jewish state’ and the displacement of millions of workers from Palestine in exchange for a Cold War ally against Soviet influence in the Middle East and support in the fight to control...the region’s oil.”  However, the issue of nationalism is much more complex.

Zionism, a form of Jewish nationalism, was always an anathema to early Jewish communists. The book Perfidy, by Ben Hecht exposes the role of Israeli rulers in sacrificing Jewish workers in the Holocaust in order to gain control and pad their own nests. But in addition, the Soviets were instrumental in establishing the State of Israel in 1947. The U.S. was, in fact, at first opposed to it.

The Soviets had hoped to find a home for the remnant of Jews after the Holocaust, during which six million were murdered, and established Birobidzhan in Siberia, which didn’t succeed for long. During the war, once they realized the magnitude of Hitler’s designs, they moved surviving Jews to Uzbekistan in the East to save them. In 1948 the Soviet ambassador to the U.N., Andrei Gromyko spoke about the Jewish historical claim to Palestine and the need to respond to “...the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own state.”  The U.S. would be the first to recognize this new state, but the U.S.S.R. soon followed, the first to offer ‘de jure’ recognition, a stronger form of international recognition and one that the U.S. delayed in giving.

In 1948 the U.S. had joined with Britain, its wartime ally, in following a U.N. embargo on arms shipments to the Middle East, leaving the Zionists with only one major lifeline of weapons, the then-socialist Czechoslovakia. Included were weapons, ammunition, fighter airplanes, and secret training areas for Israeli troops.  A brigade of Czech volunteers was also trained to fight with the Israeli army.  The Arabs knew something was going on, and in the U.N. an Arab diplomat charged that Zionists were using weapons, “the source of which was known to the U.S.S.R. representative.”

Although Soviet Jews were prevented from emigrating to Israel, other countries permitted it.  During the “thaw years” between 1948 and 1952, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Poland allowed almost 300,000 surviving Jews to go to Israel.The Soviet Union’s help ended almost as soon as it began, and Israel started turning to Western imperialists who welcomed them in the competition for dominance of local resources, especially oil.  What had motivated the Soviet Union to take the position it did? Stalin’s concern for the Jews was already evident.But nationalism as a political ideology was not thoroughly rooted out in the Soviet Union. There were so-called progressive nationalists, who were to be supported,whilst bad nationalists were to be opposed.  Progressive Labor Party says all nationalism is bad. In this way we attempt to correct errors which led to the revival of capitalism in the Soviet Union and China.

Some of the reasons historians have offered for the Soviet Union’s stance on Israel are: that Stalin was angered with the Arabs for being pro-German during the war and sided with the Jews who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis; that the Soviets wanted to penetrate the Middle East and the Mediterranean and saw a Jewish state as an opening wedge; that the Jews were more open to communism than the reactionary Arabs; that the Jewish state would grow increasingly favorable to the Soviet Union and thereby spurn the U.S. imperialists. That isn’t how it turned out.

Our comrade, Horace, passed October 14th 2023, at the age of 94. Horace, you were a communist, and the light of so many lives. Words cannot express the grief we feel at your loss. You were striving for a new world, a world that would not know the meaning of exploitation, racism, nationalism and sexism, a communist world.
Horace was born in Trinidad and Tobago on June 9th 1929 during the Great Depression. He became interested in world affairs at the age of nine, as World War II loomed. At 15 he joined the Negro Welfare Cultural Association (NWCA), which was organized by the international communist movement. He started reading the works of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. He married in 1955 to his lifelong partner, Cynthia, and they had three children, two boys and a girl.

After WWII Horace participated in the struggles of workers in Trinidad against the inhumane harsh economic conditions suffered under the racist British colonial system. He became the secretary of the Federation Workers Trade Union, organizing bus drivers and conductors. There he joined many workers on a march to the U.S. military base in Trinidad, to protest against the racist conditions. In 1970, the working class rebelled in an insurrection against the capitalist-run government. Horace’s committee united Indian and African workers marching through the streets of Trinidad. Unfortunately, the insurrection was put down by the government. Many workers were arrested and sent to prison. Horace lost his job. His family was forced to bag up peanuts which Horace would sell for 6 cents a bag to put food on the table.

In the early 1970’s, he moved to New York City. He got a job at Montefiore, a hospital where workers were represented by 1199 SEIU. In time he received a scholarship allowing him to become an x-ray tech and was able to bring his family to Brooklyn.

At the hospital he came in contact with a PLP member. PLP’s newspaper, CHALLENGE, resonated with his militant anti-capitalist experiences in Trinidad.  His journey began on the long struggle for communism. He participated in many May Day marches in Washington, D.C., always bringing a busload of workers from his building. He organized many social events among family and friends. He was a great chef. Using tropical ingredients: peppers and chilies , coconuts, plantains, sweet potatoes and spices, he gave us a taste of the Caribbean. On behalf of our entire Party, our class, our women and youth, dear Comrade, Farewell.

U.S. bombs dropped by Israeli jets rain down on children
France24, 10/15–Israel's strikes on the Gaza Strip have led to an "unprecedented human catastrophe" in the Palestinian territory, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Sunday. "Not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel has been allowed in the Gaza Strip for the last eight days," Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, told journalists. More than 1,000 people are missing under the rubble of buildings that were destroyed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza, the Palestinian civil defence team said on Sunday. Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 2,450 people since Hamas's bloody attack on southern Israel last week, the Gaza health ministry said Sunday.

Palestinian medical workers experience raw lessons of capitalism
Al Jazeera, 10/14–Dr Nisreen al-Shorafa has gotten barely 10 hours of sleep over the past seven days. The 30-year-old surgeon runs the emergency room at Al Awda Hospital in Tal al-Zaatar, between Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, and she cannot recall a time when she has worked harder. Dedicated completely to helping save the people who survived the relentless Israeli bombing, she has pushed herself beyond what she thought she could do. On Saturday, the hospital started receiving warning calls from the Israeli military. The message was stark and ominous: The hospital had to be evacuated because it would be bombed. “I’ll bet they [Israeli army] are proud of themselves, threatening to bomb the hospital,” said resident nurse Asala al-Batsh. “They insisted that everyone and everything move. All hospital personnel, all the patients, including those in the ICU, and the bodies in the morgue.” After trying to explain to the Israeli army on the phone the inhumanity and impossibility of moving everyone out of the hospital and southward, the team gave up. “We decided not to leave,” al-Shorafa said…The Palestinian Ministry of Health has urged the international community to intervene several times, but no response or assistance has come.

Capitalism climate crisis worsens
The Guardian, 10/5–At least 43 million child displacements were linked to extreme weather events over the past six years, the equivalent of 20,000 children being forced to abandon their homes and school every single day, new research has found. Floods and storms accounted for 95% of recorded child displacement between 2016 and 2021, according to the first-of-its-kind analysis by Unicef…The rest – more than 2 million children – were displaced by wildfires and drought. In absolute terms, China, the Philippines and India dominate with 22.3 million child displacements – just over half the total number – which the report attributes to the countries’ geographical exposure to extreme weather such as monsoon rains and cyclones and large child populations, as well as increased pre-emptive evacuations. In August 2022, unprecedented floods submerged a third of Pakistan underwater, causing billions of dollars in damage and displacing around 3.6 million children – many of whom went months without access to proper shelter, safe drinking water and sanitation.

Liberals remind us that they attack immigrants, too
Gothamist, 10/1– A top advisor to Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday called for the federal government to “close the borders” in order to prevent more migrants from coming to New York City. “We need the federal government, the Congress members, the Senate and the president to do its job: close the borders,” Adams’ senior advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin said during an interview on PIX11. “And until you close the borders, you need to come up with a full-on decompression strategy where you can take all of our migrants and move them throughout all of our 50 states.” Lewis-Martin’s comments marked an escalation in the rhetoric from the mayor’s office surrounding the city's migrant crisis…Lewis-Martin said more than 61,000 migrants remain under the city’s care. The call to “close the borders” resembled comments made by several right-wing members of Congress who threatened to shut down the federal government if strict border policies were not included in a new funding bill.

While workers around the world watch in horror, the escalating slaughter taking place in Gaza leaves many people feeling helpless. With the demise of the old communist movement, workers are increasingly being led to the slaughter by one group of nationalists, religious fundamentalists or another.

While we cannot control the outcome of events right now, we can affect the outlook of our coworkers and within our unions, and fight for the political leadership of the working class. What we do, where we are, is all-important. We can, if we are creative and bold, expose the hellish world the capitalists have built, and organize to destroy these bosses and their system with communist revolution.

Last week, the NYC Jewish Labor Committee hosted an online panel on the Gaza war, chaired by Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union (RWDSU) President Stuart Applebaum and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten. It included Peter Lerner, Director General of International Relations at Histadrut (the Israeli General Federation) and a Lt. Colonel in the Israeli reserves, Rami Hod - Executive Director at Berl Katznelson Center, a Liberal Zionist think tank, and Congressman Dan Goldman of Brooklyn.
Fascism was on full display! The main point of the call was to rally progressive labor leaders to support the genocidal collective punishment the Israeli government, with U.S. support, is unleashing on Gaza.  

But the Jewish Labor Committee ironically got one thing right; war is union business. No imperialist can wage war for long without the active or passive support of their workers, and their willingness to sacrifice for the costly war effort. Our job is to win workers to oppose imperialist war and overthrow the bosses.

At the urgent request of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which has hundreds of members in Gaza, the leadership of the National Writers Union issued a statement that opposed the collective punishment, shed light on the journalists who have been targeted and murdered and the 50 media offices that were destroyed.

The statement called on the mainstream media, especially in the U.S. to not rely on unconfirmed statements from the Israeli and U.S. warmakers, and to defend any journalist or author being fired or threatened for daring to oppose the rush to war. It said that we should not repeat the post-9/11 story where the media led us to a 20-year war in Iraq and sanctioned the mass roundup and surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. There are numerous reports of writers and events being canceled and disciplined in the U.S. and across Europe.   

The current situation demands that Progressive Labor Party (PLP) be bold and speak out in our unions, and with our coworkers, in transit, in healthcare, in the schools and campuses. We should boldly oppose Randi Weingarten, who has been a spokesperson for U.S. imperialism in Ukraine and around the world.  There is no short-term solution to this endless nightmare. We must do our best to build the Party. Have lunchroom discussions, raise union resolutions, invite your coworkers for dinner for more discussions, and bring some coworkers to local anti-war actions. Getting CHALLENGE to workers is essential to countering fascist ideas.

Let’s do what we can, as limited as that may be, to oppose the current slaughter that is now underway. The answer in Israel/Palestine, and everywhere, must start with international solidarity, antiracism, and building the unity of Jews and Palestinians, which has been done before, yet today seems unimaginable. It ends with turning imperialist war into communist revolution, and the international working class coming to power.