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Defend youth vs sexist laws, expose liberal fascism
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- 27 April 2023 122 hits
MIDDLESBORO, KY, April 7—Members of Progressive Labor Party worked with the Redneck Coalition in organizing an antisexist rally in response to Senate Bill 150 that attacks trans youth. The small but mighty contingent of PL’ers distributed food and CHALLENGE, and spoke of how transgender workers’ struggle is linked to capitalism. A PLP organizer declared that revolution for communism is the only path for liberation. Communism will provide healthcare for all, while eliminating exploitative and sexist gender roles, enabling all working-class people to participate in the labor activities needed for the new society’s progress.
Capitalists need gender roles to turn workers against each other and divide our class into hostile camps. They rake in massive super profits from paying women less in the labor market, while at the same time often keeping them shackled to the home and limited to forms of reproductive labor. Gender divisions help the bosses organize society to reproduce future generations of cheap labor and maintain their political power over us.
Capitalism divides
Capitalism, not “transphobia,” is to blame for the latest attacks against trans youth. These attacks are a further intensification of divisiveness rooted in a deeply sexist and racist system that thrives on super-exploitation of Black and women workers. This is the same system that prematurely kills hundreds of millions of workers around the world through poverty and a horrifically substandard health care system that is depriving trans workers and youth of gender affirming care. Only a communist system run by the working class can grant us the life affirming care we all desperately need.
Today’s rally was specifically in response to the anti-trans legislation (Senate Bill 150) about to pass in Kentucky. Such a law will give teachers the right to misgender students, require doctors to deny gender-affirming care for working-class youth, and prohibit discussions on topics like sexual orientation, sexually transmitted diseases, and more. Attacking the working class based on gender and sexuality divides our natural unity as working people whose labor is exploited. Gutter sexists can only thrive when the society is built on sexism and treating a section of the population as “less than.”
In response, we are determined to build working-class solidarity in the resistance to fascism, where all workers can unite to smash this racist sexist capitalist system once and for all.
Distributing event flyers around town and publicizing on Facebook resulted in a strong attendance at this event, the first of its kind in this area. “When I saw that this was happening, I had to go because I’d never seen anything like this before around here!” said a new attendee.
The Redneck Coalition is made up of anti-capitalist workers from Appalachia who seek to bring the term “Redneck” back to its radical roots, which comes from a history of multiracial struggles of mine workers against company owners in the mountains. The term has been degraded to a negative term for southern white workers, but its original meaning is antiracist militancy against capitalism! (WVpublic.org, 5/18/2015).
PLP and organizers in the Redneck Coalition demonstrated how the fight against racism and sexism must attack their source in capitalist exploitation. Fascism uses lies to get workers to attack each other to keep workers divided. A PLP speaker noted that “trans people . . . make up a disproportionate share of the homeless and unemployed, because capitalism places profit over human decency and human life.”
Big and Small Fascists
The entire U.S. ruling class is floundering—economically, politically, and militarily—as China rises and the U.S. hegemony is under siege. In the U.S., there are two main camps of what we call the Big Fascists—representing the more powerful bosses like Chase and Citibank, multinational oil companies like ExxonMobil — and the Small Fascists — represented by domestically oriented U.S. capitalists like the Kochs, Mercer, DeVos.
The Small Fascists are reluctant to spend money fighting wars to defend the global U.S. empire. Their agenda includes a racist gutting of social services at home and a retreat from U.S. imperialist alliances and commitments internationally. This faction is making inroads into winning millions of workers to see the Big Fascists as their enemy. Workers correctly understand that many of their lives have worsened under the leadership of Democrats, but they are allowing themselves to be led by outright racist, sexist, nationalist ideas spread by the Small Fascists. This cynical scapegoating has the effect of misleading and confusing people about their common interests against capitalism as a whole.
Reject all shades of fascism
Still, the Big Fascists present the biggest danger for the working class in the U.S. because their liberal, “antiracist,” “antisexist” sounding jargon is pacifying millions by building the illusion that they can create a “nicer capitalism.” In reality they are attempting to win us to patriotically fight and die in the name of U.S. imperialism. We need to expose the hypocrisy of the liberal bosses. They are the leaders in attacks on healthcare, from attacking retired workers health insurance to slashing healthcare budgets to refusing to codify Roe vs. Wade.
The rally ended with a call to reject Republican and Democratic politicians because they represent respectively the open gutter racists like Trump and the slippery, dominant, liberal spokespeople for major financial capitalists like Biden. Both are poisonous! The liberal bosses stoke these culture wars for their own cynical purposes. They want to appear as the saviors so they can lead youth into world war.
Instead, building an antiracist, antisexist, internationalist communist movement is the path forward. Such organizing will create a hopeful vision for the future in an isolated area like rural Kentucky often written off by the rest of the U.S. A trans organizer with the Redneck Coalition declared the need for solidarity, saying, “We must build independent political power by and for the working class. If the fascists, like they would prefer, could ban trans people from even getting food at the grocery store, we must be able to feed them.”
The better world we require is communism, where we will take care of all of each other’s needs. Workers of the world, unite!
BALTIMORE, MD, April 8—With increasing hostilities among the imperialist powers pitting workers against their international class sisters and brothers, our job as communists is to continuously point to international revolutionary struggle as the only reasonable answer. This capitalist system must be destroyed and replaced with an egalitarian communist society run by workers. Twenty-six people, including members (PL’ers) of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), joined at a local park to celebrate the history and significance of the international workers’ holiday May Day, and to inform people of upcoming local May Day celebrations.
A custom playlist of revolutionary, pop, hip hop, and R&B songs from the 1950s to the present accompanied the outdoor dinner. People brought food, drinks, and desserts—with jerk chicken and homemade deviled eggs being the highlights of the dinner. One comrade’s family member even volunteered to grill burgers and hotdogs. Flags decorated with “Progressive Labor Party” and a triumphant fist were hung from the roof of the pavilion rented for the day.
Building an army to crush the bosses
Baltimore PL’ers are creating a plan to actively recruit more members, with hopes of doubling our size by May Day 2025. Hosting May Day dinners not only emboldens the newer leadership, but also strengthens the confidence that our working class sisters and brothers have in the Party. We are serious about pushing for a revolutionary transformation of the horrendous kkkapitalist system. Hosting dinners and cadre schools with the focus on connecting our local struggles to capitalist terror and war abroad reflects the commitment we in the Party have to our class in Baltimore and worldwide.
The dinner included a program filled with important talks about current reform struggles against police brutality and attacks against transgender students and workers, who have been heavily scapegoated and vilified by gutter racists and politicians. Comrades in Kentucky coincidentally led a rally against these sexist attacks on transgender youth and workers the same day. There was also a spoken word piece about the doomed future of youth under a capitalist system and a short comedic play performed by PL’ers. A friend of the Party, who wrote the play, used it as a tool to describe what communism is.
One comrade illustrated her experience working with college peers in a student organization at a predominantly white, liberal arts college. Everyone engaged in the program, listening as PL’ers upheld working class solidarity and gave critical analysis of capitalism’s deliberate tragedies and destruction of society.
No money, and no nations
Despite the unpredictably cold spring weather (Maryland isn’t known for the smoothest start to spring), everyone enjoyed the company, discussions, and political program. One attendee wrote to a comrade afterward, “I loved reading the PLP paper, and am especially happy about the concept of no money, and no nations.”
A previously active comrade came and also encouraged people to attend the May Day rally in Brooklyn. After a few years away from the Baltimore club, her attendance and enthusiasm to hold up our CHALLENGE newspaper was greatly appreciated. One attendee remarked, at the end of the gathering, that he learned a lot more about communism from the program. Comrades from DC and Virginia also came towards the dinner’s end, reinforcing our practice of local clubs supporting each other in our area.
As we ramp up our efforts for May Day and summer actions, we remember that our daily actions must be rooted in the workers, since we are the ones with the power to shut the entire system down. Workers know this, have seen this, and it is our responsibility as revolutionaries to ensure that the process is pushed with communism and multiracial leadership at the forefront. Until we win!
The folloing letters are International May Day Greeetings!
Our Party, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been sending out the alert to the workers of the world that the capitalist, imperialist world needs wars, big and small, as they fight each other to secure their profits. Every day events show that this is real and inevitable. The end of the reign of the U.S. capitalists is not acceptable to the Western imperialists. They are ready and willing to shed every last drop of our blood to keep their power.
The war in Ukraine, for example, is leading to an escalation of economic and financial difficulties throughout the planet. The risk of major conflict in Taiwan is drastically increasing. Meanwhile, the struggle for the riches of the African continent continues to escalate between the Western powers, Russia and China. Alliances shift between countries according to their capitalist interests.
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The working class, our class, is the most threatened by the escalation of conflict among the world’s bosses. Exploitation, poverty, hunger, lack of free access to clean water and health care, racism and sexism: these capitalist ills are on the rise throughout the world. So, comrades, we must say no to the capitalists' wars for profit. We must shout loudly, “Turn the guns around!” and prepare to fight in our own class interests.
Our war is the war to bring about communist revolution, the war to end once and for all the criminal capitalist system. Our war is the war to save the planet from the destruction caused by the profit system. Our war is to build an egalitarian world free of racism, sexism, and poverty. Comrades, this May Day—and every day—we are organizing workers wherever we live and work to remind our class that the fate of the world is in our hands, that we must pick up the red flag of communist revolution and foil the capitalists’ plans. We must amplify revolutionary struggle.
In this tumult of war, in these moments of uncertainty and torment for the working class, our Party must continue to grow, strengthen and expand. Despite a most monstrous level of misery for workers by the criminal bosses and their flunkies, the Progressive Labor Party in Haiti is organizing workers and students to bring them into the Party and to fight for communist revolution. We are in working class communities, involved in struggles big and small, to win our class brothers and sisters to understand the roots of the tremendous exploitation they face and why egalitarian communism is the only solution. We are in schools and universities to win students, teachers and campus workers to fight back against the miserable conditions that capitalism has created. Our Party is modest, but our commitment is growing: our confidence in the working class and the Party expands our possibilities. Criticism against practices of the capitalists and the communist solidarity that we struggle to show every day allows us to build trust in the masses and allows the masses to have trust in the Party.
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The PLP in Haiti sends you these revolutionary greetings. Let the struggle of the working class and its communist party—the PLP—continue! Let our voices ring out loudly along our marches and in all our May Day events: “Workers of all countries, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
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Chicago: ‘System is violent, we will not be silent’
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- 27 April 2023 110 hits
CHICAGO, April 7 – Communists from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined with a multiracial crowd of dozens of workers and youth to organize against capitalist-caused gun violence. The occasion was an annual “Peace Walk” on the city’s northwest side, organized by various faith groups and mass organizations.
The physical and emotional trauma unleashed upon workers who are victims of gun violence is horrifically profound and wide-reaching. For many Black and Latin workers particularly, living in neighborhoods that have been systematically neglected by the city’s racist liberal mis-leadership, the damage cannot be understated.
But whatever amount of violence is committed by workers against other workers, it pales in comparison to the poverty and violence inflicted on our entire class by the racist and sexist capitalist bosses every day. Rather than relying on one set of fascist bosses to “protect” us from another set of fascist bosses, PLP calls on workers everywhere to build a mass revolutionary movement that overthrows our common oppressors and constructs a communist world where all workers are given an opportunity to thrive.
Revolutionary versus reactionary violence
The action began at the front of a local church known for social-justice organizing. A handful of speakers addressed the crowd, including those who had personally lost loved ones to gun violence. Different proposals were put forward during the speeches on how to address the violence, including praying more, pushing politicians to pass stricter gun laws, and finding ways of building community and mental health treatment among neighborhoods.
In the absence of a revolutionary communist outlook, many well-intentioned efforts from workers can get funneled into treating just the symptoms of this sick profit system and not attacking it at the root. At their worst, many of the reform campaigns pushed by the liberal Big Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class can lead to gun laws that get enforced in racist ways and result in more criminalization and incarceration of Black and Latin workers.
To sharpen the political tone, a PLP member made a sign that read “A violent system breeds more violence – Let’s build a collective world” which was met with agreement by many in attendance. We also distributed at least ten copies of CHALLENGE newspaper to help connect this struggle to the wider international movement against capitalism with its deadly competition and wars for profit.
As communists, it’s important to make it clear that we are not pacifists – but there is a legitimate difference that must be made between reactionary violence and revolutionary violence. Reactionary violence is that violence inflicted by the bosses and the kkkops and militaries that they control to prop up their decadent system. This reactionary violence is also unfortunately used by many workers who sometimes choose to mimic the capitalist bosses to attack and prey on our own class.
On the contrary, revolutionary violence is organized force wielded by the masses under communist leadership to overcome the oppressive capitalist forces. It is ultimately what will be necessary to do away with a system that crushes so many workers and our potential every single day. Destroying capitalism is our proposal to end gun violence!
KKKops and bosses are the real gangsters
During the walk portion of the event, we were disgusted by the presence of two kkkop escorts from the racist Chicago Police Department (CPD). Although some of the marchers might be won to the idea of the cops keeping our class safe, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth – CPD is by far the biggest gang in the city!
To protest their presence, a PLP member quickly listed a number of names of Black and Latin youth gunned down by CPD in recent years and waved it in killer cops’ faces. The list included LaQuan McDonald, Rekia Boyd, and Adam Toledo. We can expect no peace while the klan-in-blue are given free rein to stalk and terrorize our class for the benefit of their capitalist masters.
We were quick to point out to our friends at the event that it’s impossible to expect a city to take care of its youth when over one-third of the annual Chicago budget is spent on the kkkops (The Civic Federation, 6/23/20). This mind-blowing amount doesn’t even account for the payouts to workers who are victims of police terror, which in itself has amounted to close to $600 million since 2016 (WGN, 4/3).
What’s all the more telling for us workers is that all these attacks have been going on for decades with the open consent of Chicago’s Big Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) liberal leadership. New Black progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson – who predictably walked back previous claims to defund the police during his campaign – will not alter this trend. A capitalist system that is rocked by crisis has no choice but to resort to more fascist violence against workers, and all politicians back capitalism at the end of the day.
Join PLP for working-class power and collectivity
Imagine a society where all youth and workers were given the resources and means to contribute to the wellbeing of society, free of cost. Where youth engage in learning and collective action to shape society based on their interests, and practice pro-worker means of resolving conflict among ourselves. It’s not a pipe dream; it’s an egalitarian communist society! For all of us who truly want a world of peace among all working people, we invite you to join and help build PLP today.
International Workers’ Day, represents a day of unity for the working class, but not as an end in itself. Despite our diversity as an international class—women and men; young and old; workers and students; rural and urban; Black, Brown and white; immigrant and native-born—we should use May Day as a catalyst in our struggle to thwart the will of all the bosses—the worldwide ruling classes and their flunkeys. Their aggressive attempts to trample on all the needs and aspirations of workers everywhere will, in the end, fail and capitalism/imperialism will come crumbling down and be replaced by an egalitarian society through the means of communist revolution.
And make no mistake about it: ruling classes everywhere are becoming more and more aggressive in the race for power, where imperialist war (or war between the imperialists’ proxies) would be one of the surest strategies to increase not only their capital but also their control of the world’s resources. If we follow the strategies put in place by the bosses, our class will pay the cost: the lives of workers (soldiers and civilians), more racism and sexism, more economic and health misery.
The bosses need to increase social inequality to try to save their crumbling system, while workers need to fight back to stop them. There is no other choice. It’s “them” or “us,” and we want “us” to be the winners—short-term and long-term—in this struggle.
Rebellion needs communist focus
Workers in France are currently fighting back valiantly against the cutbacks in pension benefits that the rulers need to impose to save their system. Students are fighting side by side with them, against the class enemy, because they know that their own future is in the balance. And we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them as well. But we need to fight for more than reforms of the capitalist system. Reforms won can be taken away if the same capitalist system remains. Yes, we can win this battle but lose the war if we don’t fight to rebuild the international communist movement, fight to smash the capitalist tread-mill of reformism once and for all. This is the goal of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)—one working class, one mass party, all fighting for the same political line!
Our world to win
Solidarity between all comrades, among workers on a planetary scale, is the only way we can win. By building the PLP, we will fight for communism everywhere, following the leadership of the most advanced among us, and fight for the emancipation of our class and transform society on an egalitarian basis.
To our comrades in the PLP and our friends everywhere: Let this May Day be the beginning of a new year of revolutionary struggle on the part of the foes of capitalism and imperialism. To all comrades, current and future: Our struggle against the bosses/ruling class will inevitably lead to a transformation of society on an egalitarian basis.
