PLP’s Summer Project started off with teachers and students going to a high school in Washington Heights, an area that used to send thousands to May Day marches. CHALLENGE was distributed to students and to workers at the subway stop.

In the evening, we viewed the film “Sir! NO Sir!,” about resistance by rank-and-file soldiers in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. A parent and some students came to the movie showing. It was the parent’s first introduction to the Party, and she was interested. It is important to have parents, students and teachers united, as PL is trying to build a Party that includes all members of the working class.

Summer Project participants had a CHALLENGE sale at a local community college. Students eagerly took the paper and one was interested in coming to a protest in Harlem on Wednesday. Campus security guards told the PL’ers that they couldn’t do their sale as the college was “private property.” How a campus that is paid for with public money is off-limits to the public is a contradiction that only makes sense under the logic of capitalism. These students, like those on campuses all over the U.S. and the world, are seeing their tuition skyrocket while their quality of education declines.

The sellers refused to move as one participant talked to the campus KKKops. Eventually they moved to the sidewalk and distributed some more papers. Even though we don’t have state power in this period of history, it is important to challenge the state within the limits that we can, whenever we can. When campus security yelled at a female CHALLENGE seller, they all stood their ground and refused to make it easy to drive communists off the campus.

On August 8, the racist thugs in blue — NYPD KKKops — murdered a young Latino man and shot over 20 bullets at another, putting him in intensive care in Harlem Hospital (HH). Comrades working in a church in Harlem wrote up a leaflet condemning the racist murder, as well as racist cuts at HH, and called for a rally there and a meeting at the church later on in the evening.

The small but spirited rally chanted against police brutality. Hundreds of leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed to angry workers leaving and entering their shifts, as well as passers-by. Comrades working in the church brought out children, youth, and adults from the black working class of Harlem. PL’ers must continue to work in community organizations and churches to build the Party, coordinate actions, and increase the level of militancy within the working class to build for communist revolution.

Manhattan PL’ers participated in a discussion of the important PL document “Build A Base in the Working Class.” Comrades from all over the world discussed the difficulty of creating ties with people based on revolutionary communist politics. Their stories underscored the Party’s present analysis of our line, “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” Great amounts of work lead to modest results, but this period will lead to greater advances when the tide of history shifts and the working class takes the offensive. Only communist leadership will prevent the working class’ offensive against the bosses from becoming mired in reformist struggles and Obama worship.

Highlights of the Experiences of PLP Summer Project Participants

My experiences during this past week have been a self-revelation. Selling CHALLENGE and actually standing up for a cause has made me feel like I can make a difference in this capitalist society we live in. Everyone I’ve met is highly intelligent, inspiring and motivated. We see a cause and stand up for it. We don’t allow the working class to get walked over or get taken advantage of. I appreciate listening to everyone speak about communism and the different terms I heard, because I’m constantly learning something new. Having this unity and common cause makes me feel like we can rise up and win. I feel appreciative to be here and have the reins handed over to me and pass it on from our generation to our kids.

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My first day here was a nervous one. I haven’t participated in anything political in a while. But after hearing from the people who are experienced, I realized why I was really here in NY. I’m here to unite the working class, to fight imperialism, racism and sexism!

The first day selling CHALLENGE was very difficult. I didn’t have a chance to read the issue first, so that made it hard to sell. I offered, and some would listen then ignore me. Some would put me down. It did put my morale down. Luckily, I had comrades to help me and lift my spirits. They explained to me what I could say  and what’s a good way to get donations. Each day of selling the paper got easier. I read the paper and supplement, which helped to understand our fight a lot better.

I felt the study groups would be difficult, but after listening to everyone I realized it was more about sharing our thoughts on the paper. We get a better understanding of what we are here for and how to improve our Party.

The experience I enjoyed the most was our rally protesting the Council on Foreign Relations. I hadn’t realized the bosses had secret meetings in regular old buildings. As I looked around my comrades, I saw unity. What made me really feel our unity was that even when the cops came, no one moved. Our line marched on, chanting, “Exxon Mobil, BP Shell, take your war and go to hell!”

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My name is Dion and I’m a worker. For the last week, I was in NYC with other fellow workers like myself, working on the Project. When I first was asked to come, I was glad, but I didn’t think it would be work. I thought it was going to be all play. It was my first time on a plane and in NYC, so I was hyped up. I met all types of people from all over the globe and everybody was here for one reason: to fight for the working class, to get the public’s attention and to show them that the times we are living in are not right at all. We all want to expose these ruling-class assholes for who they really are.

I’m from the block, the hood. We don’t really pay close attention to those things at all. We just chill, live our life the way we always do and pray to see tomorrow. I love my experiences in this past week. It has opened my eyes, my mind and given me new questions about life.

The most important thing I learned is that workers are all just one big family that wants to be treated fairly, and if not, we will fight back. Like I said in the beginning, and as it will be in the end: I’m Dion and I am a worker.

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My favorite part of the Summer Project was seeing the many different “races” in NY. There are many different types of food, clothing, languages and music. Seeing all this in one place is inspiring. Staying with other people in the Party made me feel comfortable. I liked being in NY, helping others in the same struggle as me. It’s inspiring to meet other people from different parts of the world who come together with me and fight for the same cause. This trip gave me the experience of selling CHALLENGE for the first time, and learning new ways to organize a communist group by attending study groups and movie nights. I also enjoyed sightseeing on the Staten Island Ferry and going to the best museum I’ve ever been to. I am grateful I was invited to come here and make a difference.

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What I loved the most about the Summer Project was taking naps. Seriously though, this
summer, I learned to remind myself not to quit when people intentionally ignored me while trying to sell the paper. I felt welcomed from the NY comrades and being in the Party really feels like being in one big family.

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This Summer Project was fun and filled with new ideas and new people. I have done three Projects before, but none were like this one. I went to the VA hospital with two young comrades and we gave out a few CHALLENGES. I had a nice discussion with a 40-year veteran. He was telling me that we are doing a good thing, but we need to make sure that we are doing what we talk about. Hospital security kicked us out. I never got kicked out of anywhere before, but I was proud that we made a plan to get out safely and we executed it perfectly. I loved the CFR rally. It was full of energy. I really felt like we were an army.

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I sold the newspaper CHALLENGE. I watched a movie about how back then women couldn’t decide or vote to help their family (Salt of the Earth). I went marching with people, protesting for the workers. I think in all the things we did, it was important how everybody stood together; they never gave up. I learned how many people were fighting and how many people agreed and others didn’t. I felt great about this Summer Project.

JERUSALEM, September 1 — Dozens of Palestinian-Arab residents of the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem, supported by more than a hundred anti-racist activists, marched against a phony “scientific convention” serving as a cover for a racist land-grab in the neighborhood by upper-class Jewish settlers.

The settlers, backed by the cops and by city hall, use a massive archeological dig in that neighborhood — supposedly revealing the remains of the ancient City of David — to justify their violent takeover of multiple houses in the area while evicting their original, Palestinian-Arab, residents. First they take over a few houses, then harass the local Palestinian-Arab population and make their lives miserable until they have to move away. Then the settlers take over more houses. The same policy is used in Silwan, Shiekh Jarrah and Hebron to seize real-estate assets.

The demonstrators tried to march towards the City of David “archeological park,” where the convention was being held. Their way was blocked by armed riot cops, despite the fact that they were marching in one of their own neighborhood’s main streets. The cops then proceeded to brutally attack the residents and the activists, injuring three activists and arresting six. But the demonstrators did not back down; for three hours they stood up against the fascist cops and shouted slogans such as “King David died a long time ago — cops and settlers go away!” and “Wake up! Fascism is marching against us!”

This land-grab is not an isolated incident, nor is it a local initiative by a few extremists, as some of the liberal activists believe. The ELAD organization, which is behind the settlers, is funded by several real-estate tycoons, including the Miami mogul Irwing Moscowitz and the big Israeli bosses Lev Leviev and Roman Abramov. Irwing Moscowitz funds a number of racist land-grabs all over Palestine, such as in Ras El-Amud and Shiekh Jarrah. Similarly, another U.S. capitalist, Ron Lauder — the heir of Estee Lauder’s business empire — is
behind the fascist demolition of the entire village of Al-Araqib in southern Palestine. Obviously, such skilled investors did not throw all this money into the fascist settler NGO’s out of philanthropy alone: there are business interests involved, and the whole wave of house demolitions and evictions of Palestinian-Arabs from their homes is nothing but a real-estate land-grab by big capital at the expense of local workers.

It is not surprising that the Israeli regime — the same regime that maintains the fascist blockade over Gaza and slaughters its residents — actively supports these land-grabs. Ever since its foundation in 1948, the Israeli state followed the colonialist policy of “Judaization,” that is, as many Jews (especially upper-class) on as much land as possible, and as little Palestinian-Arabs (and Jewish workers) on as little lands as possible. This policy serves the interests of local tycoons and their wealthy U.S. masters, who gain profitable real-estate assets for cheap or for free. It also serves the need of all bosses to separate workers on the basis of racism and nationalism, thus weakening the working class.

Three local PL’ers came to the demonstration, armed with a red PL flag. They distributed leaflets revealing the real-estate business interests behind the house seizures. The PL’ers called for the workers of all nations and “races” to unite against the bosses and the fascist state and smash them once and for all.

PLP fights for the overthrow of the “Zionist” Israeli apartheid regime and its puppets in the Palestinian Authority, who might be getting a few more bribes in the current round of “peace negotiations.” We want the workers of the entire Middle East, Arabs and Jews alike, to unite and replace colonialism and capitalism with the communist rule of the working class. JOIN US!J

If Henry Louis Gates had actually wanted to raise legitimate questions about problems of reparations, he could have discussed the case of Israel, which has received reparations, as opposed to African Americans, who have not. If he wanted to raise questions about collaboration and complicity with Western perpetrators of slavery and genocide, he could have discussed Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.

However, unswerving support for Israel is itself treated as a form of obligatory reparations and atonement for failure to prevent Nazi genocide against Jews during World War II. Gates himself, like President Obama, is a strong supporter of Israel. He offered extravagant praise for his colleague and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz’s
lying plagiarized book “The Case for Israel.” What can an examination of reparations for Jews and Israel tell us about reparations?

The global struggle against Nazism/Fascism during World War II demonstrated that hundreds of millions of people were capable of great courage and self-sacrifice to defeat a common enemy. However, in every country where this struggle took place, there were people who collaborated with the Nazis or fascists.

These traitors were often called the “fifth column,” a reference to those Spaniards who supported fascist General Franco. In Norway they came to be called Quislings, a reference to a Norwegian fascist who helped the Nazis occupy Norway. Among European Jews, some of the traitors were members of the Judenrat, Jewish councils set up by the Nazis to help them administer the Jewish ghettos, conscript slave labor, and organize genocide. Jews who resisted the Nazis called them Judenverrat, meaning Jewish traitors.

Communists led resistance movements against Nazism/Fascism and understood that it was necessary to deal sharply and swiftly with traitors. Most of the three million European Jews who survived the Nazi genocide lived in the Soviet Union and survived because of communism. Nearly six hundred thousand Soviet Jews fought in the Soviet Red Army against the Nazis.

In contrast, the Zionists (Jewish nationalists), who founded the state of Israel after World War II in 1948, often collaborated with the Nazis and imitated their racist ideology. Zionists opposed efforts to organize international economic boycotts of Nazi Germany. Zionists opposed efforts to rescue Jews by resettling them in various countries, because the Zionists were determined to settle Jewish refugees only in Palestine. Zionists declared that many Jews were not worth saving from the Nazis, and they wanted only “the best biological material” to build a Jewish state.

Hungarian Zionist Rudolph Kastner struck a secret deal with Nazi leader Adolph Eichmann in 1944: Kastner would provide Eichmann with thousands of trucks and would not warn 450,000 Hungarian Jews that the Nazis were about to transport them to the death camps. In return, Eichmann would allow Kastner and few thousand Hungarian Zionist Jews to escape to Switzerland. Kastner later became a cabinet member in the Israeli government and was assassinated in 1957.

It was this Zionist movement of collaborators in the Nazi genocide that founded the state of Israel and drove most of the Palestinian population from Palestine. This Zionist leadership received and controlled the billions of dollars of reparations money obtained from European governments. These Zionists created what Norman Finkelstein calls “The Holocaust Industry” as a profitable racket, while distributing only a small fraction of this money to Jews most in need of assistance.

Israeli capitalists have used reparations money to consolidate and expand their state and their exploitation of Jewish and other workers. The U.S. alone has provided Israel with about $100 billion dollars in military assistance since the 1967 Arab/Israeli war. Zionist Israel has been a strategic asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East for more than four decades, helping U.S. rulers control the governments and oil of the region.

The mixture of reparations with nationalism serves the interests of imperialism and is toxic for the working class.

STATEN ISLAND, NY, August 4 — Hundreds of black, white, Asian and Latino workers, students and their families marched and rallied here against the more than 17 known racist attacks against undocumented workers from Latin America. This multi-racial protest was organized by workers from a group that fights for immigrants’ rights, along with PLP. PL’s years of work in a mostly black church united black workers and Latino workers here, in the face of anti-immigrant racism and police terror.

Carrying signs like “fight racist attacks” and “unite against racism,” PL’ers expanded the struggle to more than a narrow fight against violence or solely a citizenship issue that can be “solved” by the liberal bosses’ nightmarish immigration reform (see CHALLENGE July and August). PLP’s leadership sharpened the line of the protest to directly confront racism. Hundreds of CHALLENGES were distributed and were read by onlookers and virtually all the marchers.

Multi-racial Unity is Key

The recent racist attacks in Staten Island by black youth on undocumented workers is an example of how racism divides the working class. Black workers attacking and nearly killing Latino workers reflects the efforts of the bosses to pit workers against workers, and prevent a united multi-racial fight against capitalism. But PL can win workers to communist-led unity against racism.

The racism of the liberal left is highlighted by the mass organization at the forefront of the struggle pushing this solely as a “Latino issue.” This idea is dangerous, as organizing a group of workers based on race only further pits one group against another. Workers must see themselves as part of the working-class, not one “nationality” or “race,” more similar to other workers of the world than to their national bosses. Only with this understanding can workers unite to smash those capitalist bosses. At the rally, our chants, “Asian, Latin, black, and white — to smash racism, we must unite!” and “Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras” were taken up by many marchers.

The city is also increasing its police presence as a response to these attacks; the same NYPD KKKops who attack, jail and kill our class on a regular basis. The NYPD has set up 24-hour surveillance of the neighborhood with a Nazi-style mobile Skywatch tower and a Mobile Command Center truck. These are not measures taken to protect workers — this is part of the ramping up of fascist terror to keep workers, black and Latino, documented and undocumented, in line to be able to maintain the U.S.’s imperialist war needs.

Grow Through Struggle

Workers and students from across the country attending PLP’s Summer Project the following week held another rally in Staten Island. Hundreds more CHALLENGES were taken by black and Latino workers on the street. Bus drivers, steeled by their transit strike of a few years ago and the racism they faced, honked thunderously in support of our anti-racist signs.

Hundreds of leaflets were handed out, stating that the most vicious attack on immigrant workers is coming from Obama and the liberal Democrats who are deporting record numbers of our sisters and brothers. As the bosses dig us deeper into this economic crisis we face more unemployment, budget cuts, fare/tuition hikes, etc. Their media blames immigrants and promotes anti-immigrant lies, but the real culprit for this crisis is the profit system, capitalism.

PLP will continue to work and grow in the struggle. One student who attended the first rally joined the Party on the way home. Marches like this illustrate how by working patiently in a mass organization, PLP can lead workers to struggle against capitalism. By linking our work in these organizations together, a quantity of protests like this can lead to a qualitative shift where PLP eventually leads millions of workers into conflict with the state itself. Capitalists need racism to maintain their system, but the working class has absolutely no need for this destructive ideology. Through a communist revolution, we can build a world where one group of workers doesn’t attack other workers, but works together to meet their needs. (See page 4 article on black and Latino workers' unity in a pharmaceutical plant)