BRONX, NY, December 12– Before court officers brought kkkop/Corrections Officer and murderer Dion Middleton into court on Nov. 16, they wanted a word with the block of 18 supporters that packed the small Bronx courtroom. Looming over our group and looking directly at the mother of Raymond Chaluisant (the victim of Middleton’s racist rampage), they said they didn’t want any trouble. No one could make any moves toward Middleton, or make any noise while he was escorted in or during his appearance in front of the judge.

No one could express any emotion, they said, “no matter how you feel.” You could feel the threat of violence in their words. But there was also great fear. Because the bosses and their minions know something we must keep reminding ourselves: the working class is mighty, and if we rise up, we can overthrow them and their racist profit system!

After this stern lecture, the racist murderer was escorted into the courtroom (and later, back out again) flanked by armed bodyguards, in a display that showed both the power and panic of the state (the government).

This was but one of the lessons we have learned during our campaign as we fight this case and support the family of Raymond Chaluisant. This  18-year-old was gunned down in the street this past July in a hit-and-run by off-duty kkkop Middleton for allegedly playing with a toy water gun.

We communists know that, if we fight to build our movement, the days of racist police terror are numbered and can one day be extinguished forever. Even our relatively small group that day had the power to disrupt court and to broadcast the contempt that millions of workers have for the bosses’ criminal injustice system.

We were appearing in court alongside Raymond’s family to make a clear statement that the working class is watching these proceedings. Middleton, who is a Black corrections officer, is one of the few kkkops to be charged after murdering a Black or Latin youth or worker. But we aren’t kidding ourselves: even if he is convicted, which—even for such an egregious (extreme) criminal act as a hit-and-run, is not guaranteed—it will do nothing to change the nature of the police or corrections officers, whose job it is to “enforce” the racist capitalists’ anti-worker laws.

You can’t reform the police!
As communists, we have come to understand that we can never reform the police to somehow serve the working class. Our study of the history of capitalism and the police (including in these pages of CHALLENGE) exposes how slaveowning plantation owners in the Antebellum South formed the original police patrols to capture escaped slaves, and how factory bosses in the industrial age of the late 1800s and early 1900s expanded the cop’s role to break strikes, and, always, to quell (put down) rebellions. From post Civil War times and continuing to this day, cops were intimately involved in building and protecting the Ku Klux Klan (often occupying leadership positions)—which is why we use the nickname kkkops! Many of those right-wing fascists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—not to make revolution but to stage a fascist coup—were members or former members of law enforcement.

We continue to study history to learn the invaluable lessons from every struggle we involve ourselves in so we can improve our work to build our revolutionary movement to liberate the working class. We may be students or home health aides or transit workers or teachers, but we can all become professional revolutionaries and communist organizers.

The bosses are terrified of the power of the working class
We see over and over again, from the bosses’ fascist response to the freight railroad workers (see editorial, p. 2), or to anti-racist students at Kingsborough Community College (see CHALLENGE, 11/30 and 12/14), the bosses use their laws and stormtrooper kkkops to attempt to control the working class. They do this because they know they are outnumbered. They know their sick exploitative profit system is diametrically opposed to the needs of the working class. But they don’t care!

So they train their kkkops, their politicians, even their teachers and social workers, to fall in line and enforce their rules and laws that serve their interests.

We need to learn from this essential fact! Like the Kingsborough students have shown, when the working class unites in militant, multi-racial action, we are unbeatable!  

Our campaign to support Raymond Chaluisant’s family has been modest, but we should not underestimate its importance. We have had multiple Saturday demonstrations and marches in the neighborhood where he lived. We have spread the word, passing out leaflets, taking turns speaking on the bullhorn, and distributing hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE. We have also been reaching out to the family, offering practical support and sharing our vision for a different world.

Our work is important enough that the court is afraid of us; there’s our proof!

Smashing racist police terror: a lifelong struggle
Some of us in our group have a lifetime of struggle going back decades. We have seen over and over the same MO (pattern): kkkops murder and the bosses explain it away. Once in a while, as if to throw a dog a bone, the rulers do discipline one of the kkkillers (and then, often an Asian cop, or a Black cop like Middleton, easier to scapegoat), and make a cosmetic change or two. But as we saw in the wake of the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd protests, these “reforms” are often reversed (by the liberal Big Fascists (see page 6), it should be noted) in the very next breath. And their racist terrorizing and murder of the working class? They don’t stop!

Even if they convict Middleton and send him to prison, they can never bring Raymond back, and they cannot stop their terrorizing of the working class, because the bosses NEED the kkkops to terrorize us. When they say “protect and serve,” they mean serve their racist profit system!

But good luck trying to pacify us: we know better! In our experience, many families of slain youth and workers have become active in the struggle for a better world; some have joined Progressive Labor Party. We must acknowledge the profound trauma and cost of losing a loved one in such a shocking and vicious manner. As we continue trying to support Raymond’s family in every way we can, we have become more resolute as a collective to marshal our forces and continue the struggle for a communist world.

When Middleton has his next court appearance on Wednesday, Dec. 21, we will be there, and we plan to continue organizing in the neighborhood. As our international communist movement continues to grow, we will increasingly give the bosses of the world and their cronies something to REALLY be afraid of: communist revolution!

HAITI— At a birthday celebration of a child a mother asked: “In these times of misery, how can anyone have the courage to set off fireworks.” This mother knows how much fireworks cost. But it was a small opportunity to try to recapture some normality in this country where a vast number of workers and their children are starving. These “times of misery” are the direct result of the racist super-exploitation of capitalism. It is repeated millions of times worldwide. The “small opportunity” is a tiny glimpse of workers organizing together to help each other —that’s our communist future.

Capitalism starves workers
Since the worsening of the socio-economic crisis here, capitalist inequalities are manifesting themselves in a more glaring and horrifying way each day (see editorial, page 2). The bosses use the benign term “food insecurity” to describe a situation that means nothing less than starvation, and today it is ravaging more than half of the workers of Haiti. Because of rampant inflation and gangs, armed and supported by the bourgeoisie to terrorize the masses, provisions scarcely reach the hungry, whether in the cities, the towns or the rural areas.

In one locality called Pòsenlwi (Port St-Louis), long forgotten by the government, some workers engage in markedly rudimentary fishing, which cannot feed their families. There are no other means to earn a living.

Workers organize collectively
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here does not remain indifferent to this situation. Through contributions from friends and comrades of PLP in the U.S., we organized a community kitchen in this locality. Along with workers and students of the district, we prepared large pots of food, one so big the people nicknamed it “The Family.”

“It’s an event!” exclaimed one of the three cooks: “Bagay yo pa bon pou moun yo ditou non…Sak pi di a, etan map fè sòs la, manje a poko menm fin kwit, preske tout moun gentan vini avèk veso yo pou yo ka pran manje.” (“Things are not good for the people at all... The worst thing is, while I’m making the sauce, the food isn’t even finished cooking, almost everyone has already come with their dishes to eat.”)

A hot meal is considered a luxury. And that’s because this population is a victim of capitalism run wild, a corrupt, greedy and cruel system. What makes us all even angrier is that the bourgeoisie is getting fatter on the backs of the masses here while we watch our children starve. And that’s what we talked about as we shared the shopping, cooking and serving of the food: How the profit system serves a small class of parasites, which exploits us to eat well off our labor. Our class creates all value, but our labor is stolen by the exploiters. The bosses and their allies across the world use racism, sexism and nationalism to super-exploit some while exploiting all.

Stocking up class solidarity for a revolutionary feast
But our modest effort is beginning to make the work of the bourgeoisie harder. We are putting the lie to the saying “Chak koukouy klere pou je w.” (“Everyone for themself.”) The PLP always promotes and encourages class solidarity, not bourgeois humanitarianism and even less charity. It is sharing between brothers and sisters of the working class.

This community kitchen was organized under the leadership of a new young comrade who lives here. This comrade gives leadership to ideological struggle as well as practical work, as he and other young comrades organize local “ti lekòl yo” (freedom school-like study-action groups) in the areas where they were raised, to bring revolutionary communist ideas and practice to the rural working class.

Join us in building an international communist movement to fight hunger caused by greedy capitalism and individualism. As the International, our communist anthem, states, “The international working class shall be the human race.”

New York, December 13—Workers’ fightback and unity among part-time faculty (PTF), full-time faculty (FTF) and students has won major improvements in wages, job security, and health care for PTF at the New School in New York City. On strike since November 16 – the longest PTF strike in U.S. history -  the PTF’s union announced an agreement that met almost all of the strikers’ demands. Final ratification is slated for December 17.  Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined the PTF picket lines, bringing revolutionary politics into the mix of this class struggle. (see Challenge, 12/14/22).

The New School bosses were exposed during the strike as ruthless exploiters who have no concern for the welfare of students, workers, and faculty. But workers’ determination and solidarity pushed them back! This strike and the bosses’ response demonstrated again how all capitalist institutions, including universities, must be overthrown and workers' power established if we are to have an educational system that serves the global working class, the vast majority of people, rather than the capitalist class.

The New School bosses were forced to meet all of the union’s core demands, including across the board raises, guaranteed annual raises for all five years of the contract, and flat payments of $400 and $800 for out-of-classroom work. For example, a part-time professor teaching a 45-contact hour lecture who currently makes $5,753 will earn $6,475 in 2023, and $7,820 in 2027.They also increased healthcare eligibility and guaranteed that health insurance plans would remain comparable from year to year.

Why did the New School bosses finally cave? Many reasons! The full-time faculty (FTF) held a solidarity strike from the onset of the PTF strike. Parents filed a lawsuit against the university. Students picketed and then occupied the administration building to support their teachers. And the PTF maintained strong picket lines throughout the struggle.

United faculty sees through bosses’ lies
During “negotiations”, the administration lied and threatened teachers and students. They claimed that meeting all the compensation demands from the PTF would lead to a $60 million deficit and tuition would increase by 50 percent. None of these numbers were backed by any transparent budget data and were only issued to scare students and parents who supported the PTF. The administration also threatened to withhold pay and health insurance contributions for any FTF and staff who struck in solidarity, issuing a “work attestation form” for everyone to fill out to prove they are working (i.e., scabbing on the strike) in order to receive pay. This policy, intended to be divisive, backfired.

FTFs fiercely objected to the work attestation form, noting that it contradicted the original core value of the New School, which was founded in 1919 by professors from Columbia University who refused to sign a loyalty oath. The attacks on FTF demonstrated that they too were just wage laborers whose economic security could easily be endangered, like workers in general. Solidarity between FTF and PTF skyrocketed. Some conservative FTFs were quickly marginalized and more radical voices dominated the
FTF solidarity action.

When New School administrators tried to use students to challenge the professional ethics of faculty on strike, the students responded by occupying the University in support of the strike and calling on all professors to honor the picket lines. The students’ occupation is ongoing as we go to press. Despite the union’s announcement of the end of the strike, students are using the momentum from the struggle to oust the President, disband the Board of the Trustees, and freeze tuition for the next few years.  

This success sets a positive precedent for many future academic strikes. This militant solidarity points the way to a revolutionary future if communist ideas of revolution, building the PLP, and intensifying the class struggle gain traction among engaged students and faculty.

Recently, the U.S. Congress came to the aid of the railroad bosses, bankers and Wall St. and voted to impose a contract on 120,000 freight railroad workers in 12 different unions, who are subject to the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA).

President ‘Jim Crow’ Biden, “the most pro-union President in history,” stepped in to make sure that workers didn’t defy the bosses and union leaders with wildcat strikes and job actions. Congress, which can’t seem to agree on anything except war budgets and billions to Ukraine, acted with remarkable speed, proving that despite all their splits and in-fighting, all the politicians can unite on stomping out any threat from the workers.

The capitalists run the government to serve their interests: profit. We need to organize for a communist revolution where the working class runs the government and all society.

Eight unions have voted to ratify the imposed contract, with many workers feeling like this was the best they were going to get knowing that their union leaders were not prepared to take on the government and the bosses. But the four largest unions, representing almost 60 percent of rail workers have, as of this writing, rejected the imposed contract. These union leaders are actually misleaders. They accept capitalism with all its racist and sexist profiteering and laws benefiting the bosses. They don’t organize workers to fight back. But fight back we must with the goal of eventually seizing power for the working class - that’s communism.

CHALLENGE spoke with Windy City, a Black railroad worker in Chicago with 15 years on the job.

CHALLENGE (C) : What are some of the main issues facing railroad workers?

Windy City (WC): Railroaders are mostly concerned about quality of life as it pertains to long hours and lack of employees. We are overworked because of the greed of the bosses. Maybe the #1 issue is "Precision Scheduled Railroading.” It’s like the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing brought to the railroads to further speed us up and get us back to work quicker, driving down costs by firing workers, selling equipment, outsourcing work and more. Instead of knowing you have multiple people in front of you, now you can get called back to work in 15 minutes to fill a train.

Thousands of jobs have been eliminated over the past few years and now the bosses want to run these trains with just one person; that’s their goal. Having no sick days is perhaps the most well-known demand but scheduling and job cuts are there as well. This contract is going to continue to eliminate jobs. It does not address job cuts or make our jobs any safer.

C: What’s the makeup of the workforce?

WC: I would have to guess the railroad is about 30 to 40 percent Black workers, mostly in the cities. Many workers are from rural areas, and many are pro-Trumpers. They understand that we work in an industry that is heavily regulated by the federal government. A lot of workers are approaching 20 years in the industry, and may soon be eligible for retirement or disability. We have a lot of health issues.
A lot of older workers are holding on to get back pay and bonuses. Then they will be coming out.

C: How do the workers feel about the government imposing a contract on them? What has been the role of the union leadership?

WC: Most workers knew that this was probably going to happen. The union leaders have been transparent about how the government would use the Railway Labor Act to prevent a strike. We were never seriously prepared or mobilized to shut down the industry, let alone defy the U.S. government. In a certain sense, the union leadership used the government to impose a contract that they could not get us to ratify on their own.

C: What have discussions with your coworkers been like?

WC: We have discussed how Biden could issue an executive order for paid sick days, but he has not. We know we are going to get a contract that will lead to further cutbacks and higher profits for the bosses. They are hoping a big raise will get us to swallow these worsening conditions, but many current workers will not be around long enough to see the next contract.

C: Do you think you can show this issue of CHALLENGE with this interview to some of your coworkers and introduce them to Progressive Labor Party?  

WC: Our workforce is so thin and so spread out, sometimes I go weeks without seeing the same people. So, it's hard to have real discussions and build that trust, but I'm always on the lookout. Sure, I’ll take a few.