On September 17, in a desperate campaign to stop global warming, thousands of climate activists, business leaders, government officials, and “civil society representatives” will converge upon New York City for the fifteenth annual Climate Week. Co-sponsored by the United Nations, an organization born in 1945 to serve U.S. imperialism and the postwar liberal world order, the event has a bold slogan: “We Can. We Will.”
In reality, the reformists can’t—and the capitalist bosses won’t. After a summer of lethal heat waves, biblical floods, hot tub oceans, runaway wildfires, and toxic orange skies, liberal reforms cannot prevent wholesale catastrophe from climate change. Climate action has hit a wall. Greenhouse gas emissions set an all-time high in 2022, and will do so again in 2023. The rulers are wedded to heat-trapping fossil fuels for two fundamental reasons: maximum profit and inter-imperialist rivalry. From China to the United States, their system is falling into crisis. With fascism rising and World War III on the horizon, capitalism has no answers for perpetual war, massive poverty, or resurgent infectious diseases. It surely has none for the vast challenge of climate change and the racist horrors we are witnessing in real time.
Only a communist world, run by and for the international working class, can balance our needs for energy with the priorities of health, safety, and development that serve our class interests. Only the working class can be trusted to make life-and-death decisions on how to heat and power our world—to build more safely run nuclear reactors, for example. There’s no climate solution without communist revolution!
Clean energy “transition” is dead in the water
Beginning in the 19th century, coal and oil and gas fueled the rise of capitalism. They brought millions of workers out of the cold. They created modern industry and transportation—and modern wars for profit. But today, fossil fuels are Exhibit A of capitalism in decay. They’re filthy and inefficient and force multipliers of racist inequality. Climate change is deadly for workers, and for Black and Brown workers most of all. Nine million people a year die from the fine particulate matter linked to greenhouse gasses. Half a million die from extreme heat alone. In 2022, climate disasters forced 100 million workers to flee their homes. One third of Pakistan was under water.
In 2015, at a benchmark climate summit in Paris, the UN set a “binding” target for global warming of 2 degrees Celsius—or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—over pre-industrial levels. (For context, the Earth has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius.) Based on current climate policies, according to Columbia University physicist James Hansen, the planet will punch through the Paris ceiling before 2050 (“Global Warming in the Pipeline,” www.columbia.edu, 7/5). By 2100, within the lifetimes of children here today, the Earth projects to be at least 2.7 degrees hotter (climateactiontracker.org). That might not sound like much, but consider: The last Ice Age was triggered by a temperature shift of just 6 degrees Celsius. At 2.7 degrees of warming, scientists predict that the Earth will pass calamitous tipping points of no return (nature.com, 11/27/19). Coral reefs will go extinct. Polar glaciers will dissolve and drown islands around the globe (abc.net.au, 3/28/22). A billion or more climate migrants will be trapped between unbearable conditions and the bosses’ borders (economicsandpeace.org, 9/9/20).
Meanwhile, recent UN climate summits have been hijacked by Big Oil, the same monsters who for decades spewed climate disinformation alongside their carbon dioxide. This December’s conference is set for the capitalist Disneyland of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Presiding will be Sultan Al Jaber, head of the state-owned energy company. Like Saudi Arabia, another immigrant slave state, the UAE is committed to unlimited exploitation of its oil and gas reserves to 2100 and beyond.
Fossil fuels and imperialist plunder
Why can’t the capitalist rulers tackle this existential threat? The short answer is that fossil fuels remain highly profitable, at least in the short term—and capitalism has a chaotically short-term outlook. After Russia invaded Ukraine, energy markets went haywire. The price of oil soared. The “supermajors”—ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP—junked plans to diversify into renewables. With lavish financing from the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Citi, they doubled down on their old business model. In 2022, they plowed $4 trillion of record windfall profits into dividends, share buybacks, and expanded fossil fuel production. Barely half of 1 percent of their ill-gotten gains went toward clean energy (iea.org, May 2023). Exxon spent less than $3 billion on “lower greenhouse gas emissions initiatives” and $23 billion on new oil and gas projects (euronews.com/1/2).
Even as solar and wind prices have plunged, and clean electricity runs much of the world’s power grids, the fossil fuel sector keeps growing. When President Joe Biden rammed through his Inflation Reduction Act, media cheerleaders said it could stimulate $1 trillion in renewable energy investments. They glossed over the fact that Biden also greenlit the immense Willow oil project in Alaska and three huge pipelines for natural gas. His Energy Department is ready to lease eighty million acres of the Gulf of Mexico—twice the area of Florida—for offshore drilling (cnbc.com, 11/17/21).
The U.S. and Europe, which have plundered the world for centuries with the aid of fossil fuels, are at odds with emerging economies—notably China—that want their turn at the plundering. Although China dominates the solar panel and battery industries, and soon will dominate offshore wind, it also consumes more than half the world’s coal. Over the last year, China approved an average of two new coal-powered plants per week, a source of cheap energy and jobs in a country where youth unemployment exceeds 21 percent (statista.com).
In July, President Xi Jinping told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry that future cooperation on climate would hinge on U.S. policies on Taiwan and trade. All bets will be off if the two superpowers keep sliding toward world war—oil is the life’s blood of their armies, after all. The U.S. military alone consumes more than 100 billion barrels per year (ucusa.org, 6/1/14).
Carrots, sticks, and communism
It’s easy for the capitalists to shower clean energy with the carrots of subsidies and tax breaks. But no matter how much solar and wind and hydropower is deployed, global warming won’t stop until the fossil fuel economy gets mostly dismantled. That can’t happen without some big sticks, beginning with a punitive tax on carbon.
The issue with sticks is that they hurt certain bosses’ profits. With the U.S. ruling class deeply split, and the Republican Party significantly controlled by Koch Industries, coal giant Peabody, and other domestic energy interests, Biden’s Democrats have little room to maneuver. But the primary obstacles to meaningful climate action are the lack of discipline and long-range thinking within finance capital, the liberal main wing of global banks and multinational oil companies. Nor is there much appetite for sticks on the world stage. When recent climate summits floated a “phaseout” of coal or a “phasedown” of all fossil fuels, they were vetoed by China, India, Brazil, and imperialist Russia, which gets nearly half its revenues from oil and gas.
As workers join the mass movement against climate change, we need to be clear that individual actions can’t win this monumental battle. It’s not nearly enough to compost or recycle or buy an electric vehicle—or to vote for a “green” politician. The rulers and their callous greed created this crisis; the international working class will solve it. The fight for a sustainable planet can’t be set apart from our fight to smash the racist, sexist profit system that chokes the atmosphere. A communist society, led by Progressive Labor Party, will unleash the technology and creativity we need to forge a new world, one where workers’ lives and well-being come first. Join us!
Fight vs anti-migrant racism grows
As reported in the last CHALLENGE, racists have been demonstrating against the housing of refugee asylum seekers in a former Catholic school on Staten Island. Led by attention-seeking “patriot” Scott LoBaido and supported by Staten Island politicians of both parties, the racists have been verbally attacking the refugees-many from Latin American and West African countries- with vile epithets, frightening some of them so much that they asked to be moved to a different shelter.
After a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member learned on Monday, August 28th, of the hate rally to be held on that evening, he notified the Party leadership, who quickly organized a pro-migrant support rally to confront the racists. More than 30 comrades and friends, including a couple of antiracists from the neighborhood, marched to the shelter, formerly St. John Villa School, chanting loudly in support of the refugees. Outside the shelter, we spoke on a bullhorn to let the migrants know that we were there to support them, not to attack them. We let the racists know that we were communists, and that we would be back in growing numbers.
The racists announced another hate rally for Tuesday, September 5th. Some Party members learned about the racists’ march from friends in Peace Action Staten Island (PASI). PASI endorsed the next migrant support rally to counter the racists. A leaflet was quickly disseminated. Antiracists from Staten Island and Brooklyn gathered at a predetermined location and marched to the rally point at the shelter. Again, we shouted encouragement to the refugees.
One of the talking points of the racists had been that there was a school with girls very near the shelter, and that they could be in danger from the male migrants. We discovered that an alumna of that school, St. Joseph Hill, had garnered over 200 alumni signatures on a petition supporting the migrants and condemning the racists. Then, on Thursday, September 7, a group of immigration organizers and leaders of faith-based organizations attempted to hold a press conference outside the shelter in support of the refugees. According to news reports, the racists drowned them out so that few of them could be heard.
So, it appears that support for the migrants is growing on Staten Island, but the racists still dominate the scene. What is clear is that if it had not been for us communists in PLP, the racists would have had a clear field for their hate. We were the spark. Whenever racism and fascism rear their ugly heads, communists must organize to chop them off. To paraphrase what one of the participants in the latest rally said, “I just want to be able to come back with more numbers than they have!” That is what we will continue to build on Staten Island - an antiracist movement to shut the racists down.
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Big Fascists undermine workers’ education
At a community college in rural northwestern New Jersey, Sussex County Community College (SCCC), self-styled “progressive” administrators actively undermine front-line faculty members who fight for workers to receive a decent education.
In a resignation letter from the start of the fall semester, an accomplished student counselor outlined the problems at SCCC: 1) The condescending racism that the Latin counselor faced from his supposedly enlightened liberal colleagues, 2) Disconnected senior faculty and administrators who didn’t listen to faculty “below” them who actually interacted with students on a daily basis, 3) The lack of initiative to solicit student feedback — all pointing to one conclusion. Senior level faculty and administration at the college, who claim to be enlightened progressives, are more interested in their own careers than helping students.
This counselor had struggled heroically to keep working class students in school in spite of the horrendous material conditions that capitalism imposes on them. He succeeded against all odds -- only to have his more senior colleagues undermine him at every turn.
In a classic example of bourgeois individualism, other faculty members grew jealous of the relationships that he had worked so hard to cultivate with students. These more senior faculty demanded that he send more of his students to them for future counseling needs — regardless of who the students themselves actually wanted to talk to. When he refused, his supposedly “progressive” bosses at the College stripped his position of any student-facing activities, relegating this talented counselor to administrative busy work.
This, combined with the lack of support for front-line faculty who directly help students, the racism shown by more senior faculty towards an increasingly diverse student population, and the smug and condescending attitude towards his important mission to help working-class students, was too much for him to bear and he resigned.
While it’s sad to see such a talented staff member leave due to egregious burnout, his resignation letter points to a silver lining. It is the students and frontline faculty and staff themselves who can carry the struggle forward and secure decent education for workers in rural New Jersey. If they are unified in their cause and armed with the Party’s level of analysis and dedication, they will be unstoppable!
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Firefighters die defending the bosses profits: A tribute to Augie and Bear
On July 5th, two firemen from the Newark Fire Department were trapped and killed fighting a fire that started aboard a cargo ship bound for West Africa from Port Newark, NJ. The cargo ship was filled with over 1200 new and used cars and approximately 157 shipping containers (NJ Spotlight News).Augusto “Augie” Acabou and Wayne “Bear” Brooks entered the ship along with their captain and other firefighters. They reportedly found and extinguished the fire, but upon their way back out Augie and Bear became disoriented and trapped, and died. The ship’s crew had been completely evacuated prior to the firefighters entering. There were no lives in danger aboard the ship, but firefighters were still sent in to risk their lives to protect burning cars that will likely be replaced. The families want answers.
At a tribute to the firefighter’s lives held at a shopping mall New Jersey on August 8, Bear’s widow stated “He went in there to put out a fire to save materialistic things, not a person, not a human being - materialistic things. And he never came home” (Abc7ny.com, 8/23).
Urban firefighters are sent in to risk their lives to protect the bosses’ property and businesses. In cities like Newark, fires occur predominantly in Black neighborhoods, many of which are neglected due to decades of class war against Black workers and gentrification led by self-serving politicians like Newark’s fake leftist mayor Ras Baraka. Meanwhile, in wealthy communities, fire suppression systems are relatively efficient and adequate.
In a society led by and for the working class - a communist society - workers can take the lead on building the safest housing conditions to prevent fires from starting in the first place. Workers can discuss how to approach extinguishing fires with minimal loss to human life and the damage to the environment.
Only a revolution led by the working class can bring about the freedom to do this. For all workers like Augie and Bear, for the countless firefighters that die every year protecting the property for the blood sucking landlord class and banks, workers must build a dedicated party whose primary objective is to smash capitalism and rid society of the profit system that will gladly exterminate the workers to preserve their wealth.
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Natural disasters or capitalist genocide?
Reading the editorial on the Maui fires, there seems to be a link between the wildfires in the forests of Canada. While these fires are labeled as ‘natural’ disasters, but the real issue is the capitalism and it’s continual genocide of indigenous workers. Corporations and their sugar plantations played a large role in depleting the water sources, as sugar is a very water intensive crop. Water is crucial to Hawaiian cultural practices and they believed that water couldn’t be owned, that it belonged to all. I am seeing a connection between the fires in Maui and Canada and the forest fires that occurred in Brazil and Australia a few years ago. These fires led to the displacement of many indigenous communities. In the case of Brazil, the burning of the Amazon forest was set by the Brazilian ruling class to make way for their agribusiness. Prior to that, an Amazonian tribe had won a court case to halt the cutting down of the Amazon forest. If we’re going to discuss climate change, we need to include the role of indigenous workers and the ongoing legacy of colonialism into these topics.
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Editorial: The only climate solution is communist revolution
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- 07 September 2023 256 hits
STATEN ISLAND, NY, August 28—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends rallied against hundreds of gutter racists who oppose housing migrant workers in an abandoned Catholic school, St. John Villar.
In Staten Island the racists put out flyers online calling their gathering a block party. A local PL’er here made the Party aware of the situation and we immediately decided we needed to organize to support the migrant workers the very same day (See letter on page 6). 30 antiracists marched armed with multiracial unity, communist internationalism and CHALLENGE. PLP is a fighting party, so when the international working class is under attack, we stand up and fight back.
As this system sinks deeper into decay, more crises like climate change, inter-imperialist war, and inflation will force more workers to flee and seek refuge in imperialist strongholds like the United States and Europe. Our only refuge from this global misery is to smash this lethal racist system, and build a communist world without profits, wars, nations, or borders. We welcome migrant workers to fight for communism. Join PLP!
Racist anti-migrant propaganda along with decades of segregation, liberal misleadership, and widening inequality pushed many workers in Staten Island into the hands of gutter racists, followers of Donald Trump. These misleaders use toxic patriotism and anti-migrant racism to pit white workers against their fellow class brothers and sisters. We call them Small Fascists.
But the Democratic Party liberals are just as bad if not worse. From mass incarceration, to brutal deportations to killer cops in the big cities and migrants sleeping on sidewalks, the liberals are responsible. And they are more dangerous because they talk nice. We call them Big Fascists.
The plan, the action, the reaction
Everyone gathered an hour before the racists “block party” to discuss what to expect and assigned tasks for the march. We wanted to respond quickly to any situation and get close to deliver messages of solidarity to migrant workers.
At our designated starting point, before kicking off our march we made signs, distributed CHALLENGEs and talked with workers standing nearby. One worker expressed gratitude that communists from Brooklyn came to Staten Island to fight racism, and talked about how Staten Island was purposefully designed to be politically and geographically segregated to keep workers divided. We then started picketing, chanting Asian, Latin, Black, and white workers of the world unite, which immediately grabbed workers attention. Our multiracial group, our discipline and our militant antiracist chant: Racism means we got to fight back! inspired two young Black workers to join our march. Along the way, we got positive receptions from antiracist white, Latin, and Black workers.
But with the positive also comes negative. We encountered several racists heading to their racist block party, clutching American flags. Some of the racists began to shout at us but we chanted even louder to drown their provocations.
As we neared the end of our march we noticed the school area was swarming with kkkops who set up barricades, blocking us from moving closer to the racists. We quickly moved to form a picket line and began chanting as loudly as possible, making sure our message reached the migrants inside.
As we picketed, PL’ers took turns giving out speeches in English, Spanish, and Kreyol on the bullhorn, highlighting internationalism and multiracial unity, letting migrants know that communists are welcoming them, and that they deserve better than what they've been provided. Migrants are only seeking refuge in the first place because of this racist capitalism. Big Fascist politicians like KKKathy Hochul, Jim Crow Joe Biden and Top kkkop Eric Adams represent the set of imperialist liberal bosses that helped create the miserable capitalist conditions they’re trying to escape from.
A PLP public school teacher gave a speech saying that migrants come here to escape violence in search of a safer place to educate their children. Instead they are facing homelessness and a racist overcrowded and under-resourced public school system. Neither Democrat Adams, who cut hundreds of millions in school funding (NYCLU, 8/26/22), nor any Republicans have a plan in place to manage the volume of migrant children who need to attend school in September.
Fight for communism
The PL’er finished her speech by calling for migrants to fight for communism, the only system where our class and our children can receive the quality of life they deserve, where workers, not racist capitalist servants,will run society to meet all of our class needs. Shortly after we concluded our speeches, we marched and chanted all the way back to the intersection where we began. We quickly dispersed and got into the cars we arrived in, concluding our successful and militant action.
We left knowing that our action left a powerful impact. In this volatile period of crisis, growing fascism, and sharpening attacks against our class, these are just one of the many actions that will serve to train workers to build the multiracial, disciplined working class army needed to lead us towards communist revolution. Our Party demonstrated that while our forces were small we are the fighting, disciplined Party capable of leading our class to communist victory. Onward!
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For Duprey: To end police murder, smash capitalism
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- 07 September 2023 205 hits
THE BRONX, August 23—Killer KKKop Erik Duran threw a 40-pound cooler point-blank at 30-year-old father Eric Duprey while he was on a motorbike, murdering him within minutes. While the bosses’ media has been quick to do anything they can to smear Eric Duprey’s character, his family knew him as a loving father who enjoyed doing tricks on his motorbike.
On August 26, dozens of workers protested at the site of Eric’s murder, and demanded justice. A sign at his street vigil reads, “NYPD is the Blue Klux Klan.” Another reads, “Only we can keep us safe.” A march to the 52nd precinct was called on September 1.
We too want justice for Eric Duprey. Sadly, there will be no justice under capitalism, a system designed to kill and terrorize the working class with impunity. Workers need a system where racism is outlawed, where killer kkkops will no longer prowl the streets looking for victims, and where all workers will be able to live in dignity. This system is communism, and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights for it every day. Join us!
On August 28, members of PLP visited the vigil and spoke with Eric’s wife and some of his friends. One of Eric’s friends explained that other cops saw what Duran was doing, but none of them tried to stop him. Eric’s wife said that she knew Raymond Chalusiant, an 18-year-old Latin teen who killer kop Dion Middleton killed last summer for playing with a water gun. Raymond lived only a 10 minute walk from where Erik Duran murdered Eric Duprey this week. This exposes the reformist lies that there are merely a “few bad apples” within the police force. The police exist to keep the working class in check, particularly by terrorizing Black and Latin working class communities. The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan: All are part of the bosses’ plan!
Black cop, white cop, all the same: racist terror is the name of the game!
The Big Fascists, the liberal main wing of the U.S. ruling class, are trying to win workers to the idea that multiracial capitalism is the answer to these racist police murders. No amount of diversity initiatives or Black or Latin cops will end police murder. Dion Middleton, a Black correctional officer, murdered Raymond Chalusiant. Erik Duran, a Latin Narcotics Sergeant, murdered Eric Duprey. These Black and Latin KKKops enforce the same racist, murderous system as their white counterparts, all under the administration of Black ex-cop Eric Adams and Black Attorney General Letitia James.
Assassin Sergeant Erik Duran had already been named in two lawsuits and had 17 prior complaints, 15 of which were for “abuse of authority” and one for the use of “physical force.” But he is just one player in the ruling class’ ramp up of racist police terror in an era of expanding fascist control. In 2022, the New York Police Department (NYPD) conducted more stop-and-frisks than any year since 2015 (ACLU of New York, 2023).
Adams’ latest racist plan is to use drones to monitor the backyard parties of mostly West Indian Brooklyn residents during the annual J’ouvert celebration. And the policing doesn’t end in the streets. Black NYC Education department Chancellor David Banks just announced that elementary school principals will be holding regular zoom meetings with local police precincts. We cannot be fooled: While the bosses try to trick workers into supporting these initiatives out of concern for their “safety,” they are really trying to expand social control as part of the path to fascism. The Big Fascists need workers to obediently fall in line when they throw us into world war with their imperialist rivals.
No justice under a capitalist system
Erik Duran has been suspended without pay, but so far has not been arrested or charged with murder. We say, “NYPD–you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” Even in the very unlikely chance that Erik Duran ends up charged or even convicted with murder, no amount of jail time will bring Eric Duprey back from the dead or end racist police murder.
The ruling class depends on their killer cop army to prevent revolution and maintain social control. The cops use racist murder and violence as their primary tactic. No amount of reform or training will fix these issues. Only under communism can we end police murder and smash racism once and for all. Communism will remove the material conditions required for racism. The international working class will make sure that everyone’s material needs are met and focus on building community rather than tearing it down. Join the Progressive Labor Party!
