BROOKLYN, NY, November 10—“Racism means?” “WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!” More than 30 students and staff chanted as they marched through the campus of Kingsborough Community College (KCC). Students and staff are in motion following racist attacks against a student last week, and this fightback is led by multiracial Black, Latin, Asian and white, women and men students. These antiracist fighters bravely marched despite a week of campus and New York Police Department threats of arrest, campus cops assaulting students, daily harassment, and constant surveillance. The cops even locked down our campus the day of the march!

The week before, students made detailed plans to resist this racist police terror, even organizing a “flash protest” in the main administration building one day to practice for the planned rally. They were long gone before campus police arrived! Meanwhile, our YouTube video “KCC Students vs Racism and the Police” spread like wildfire through the campus and beyond. These working class students are showing their ability to organize. Workers and students like them can and should run the world. That’s communism. That’s the fight of the international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP)!

This ongoing struggle is exposing KCC’s and the wider CUNY (City University of New York) administration as the lapdogs of the liberal Big Fascist wing of the capitalist class (see Glossary, page 6). The struggle is also exposing the bankruptcy of the capitalist class’ identity politics, liberalism, and fake capitalist democracy.

The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party’s politics of building militant student leadership and smashing racism with multiracial unity are spreading among the student body. Through this sharpening struggle, we’re winning new comrades to our fight to build a mass, international PLP and smash this racist, sexist and imperialist profit system once and for all with communist revolution!

Racism means?
WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!
On November 3, a racist student in Kingsborough’s cafeteria was having an argument with a multiracial group of students who are part of a large antiracist student club. The racist became confrontational using the n-word, and KCC’s campus cops arrived. Instead of detaining the racist, they tackled a student trying to defuse the situation, put their knees in his back, and detained him in handcuffs. Their chief later lied saying Adrian “shoved an officer.”

Since the antiracist club had just met, over twenty students were still together. They immediately marched on the cops’ “Public Safety” office, where Adrian was held. We chanted and demanded Adrian’s release and the name of the officer who tackled Adrian. In response, the NYPD was called “to calm the situation” — with tactical gear, tasers, guns, and batons! The NYPD arrested Adrian and secretly took him to the 61 police precinct. We followed him there.

We were told Adrian would be released “in 30 minutes” — another lie. Finally, after four hours of detention, Adrian was freed with a bogus charge of “disorderly conduct” and a threat to charge him with weapons possession.

Students dare to struggle and organize!
The next day, the Dean of Student Affairs emailed all students saying “an incident” happened, warned students to “not threaten anyone,” and advised everyone to “move on.” Students, staff and PL’ers met that weekend and used our Party study group to write a collective leaflet explaining the situation. Our demands are: drop the charges; terminate and charge the officers and the racist; and abolish law enforcement from CUNY campuses.

Students and staff began distributing thousands of leaflets. “Public Safety” declared all leafleting illegal and began assaulting students, including a member of the student government. Campus police approached students reading leaflets and ripped them up, while following and harassing prominent student organizers. So much for U.S. capitalism’s “free speech!”

Scratch liberalism, find fascism
Adrian was tackled by a Black campus police officer, held and charged under the orders of a Black campus police chief. All under the misleadership of Kingsborough’s Black woman president, Claudia V. Schrader, and CUNY’s Latin chancellor, Felix Matos Rodriguez, in a city ruled by a Democratic city council and a Black Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

The Big Fascists rely on servants like Schrader, Rodriguez and Adams to give capitalist, racist and sexist oppression an inclusive appearance and mask the role of institutions like universities in supporting and reinforcing capitalist dictatorship. Capitalism depends on the political-economic division of the working class to enable exploitation and racist super-exploitation for profits. Universities have a dual role: producing workers suited for various types of manual and knowledge labor, while promoting the ideologies of anticommunism, racism, sexism and countless professional schisms.

In recent years, Big Fascists have been pushing the liberal flavors of racism and sexism by promoting identity politics and “white privilege” politics as fake alternatives to the Small Fascist gutter racists and sexists (see Glossary, page 6) like Trump, DeSantis and company. Scratch beneath the surface however, and they’re ALL fascists: smash them all with communist revolution.

The only solution is communist revolution
While PL’ers continue to struggle over these ideas through Party study groups and there is much political struggle ahead, comrades have confronted these political disagreements head-on. In the meantime, our Party’s confidence in these working class students is reflected with growing confidence in our organization. Following our successful march, a group of students took their commitment to smashing racism, sexism and imperialism to the highest level and joined our Party. This struggle and these students show the working class can run the world, and now we welcome their leadership to take us all the way!

The imperialists ruling the U.S., Russia and China are firing what could be the opening shots of World War III, and preparing our working class youth to be missile food. But PLP is growing and developing the next generation of leadership. Our international working class needs to build the Red Army that will destroy this entire capitalist hellscape once and for all! JOIN US!

On the anniversary month of the Bolshevik Revolution, and it’s time to debunk some anti-communist myths, again. The U.S. ruling class reviles Joseph Stalin, one of the first communist leaders of the Soviet Union (USSR), and so they lie about him.  But they lie about so many things, why would they tell the truth about Stalin. Yet the capitalist slander campaign against Stalin led many authors, university researchers and even ordinary people to dislike Stalin. Why so much capitalist hatred against Joseph Stalin?

First, some facts. After the Russian Revolution, 12 European countries (including the U. S. and Japan) invaded the Soviet Union to kill this new socialist society in its cradle. They were defeated. Instead Stalin led the socialist Soviet Union from being “the poor man of Europe” to a world power that challenged the worldwide empire of the capitalist United States.

Under Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union became powerful enough to defeat Hitler’s Nazis in World War II. Of the 250 Nazi divisions that fought in World War II, 200 of them fought to conquer the Soviet Union...and were defeated. Eighty five percent of German casualties were at the hands of the USSR. It was only after the Soviets began pushing the Nazis back, that the Allies invaded Normandy. The Soviet people and their Red Army suffered huge casualties (20 million dead) and destruction, but it was they that defeated the Nazis.

The Soviet leaders educated all citizens, including college and trade schools. They provided universal health care and employment. Workers had four weeks of paid vacation and received a pension at age 60, women at age 55. They had paid maternity leave and free childcare and they eliminated the centuries-old famines that had racked the Ukraine.

Some charge that Stalin was a dictator, yet he struggled mightily for a new constitution with secret elections so that the entrenched bureaucracy would be challenged. Local Party Secretaries defeated him in this effort.

It is helpful to see the sources of the criticisms of Stalin. The sources of the forced starvation stories in the Ukraine are anti-communist, pro-Nazi sympathizers who left the Ukraine and headed to the Western countries.

In 1956 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his achievements in a secret speech. Khrushchev wanted to take the USSR in a more capitalist direction. Professor Grover Furr documents that of the 61 charges Khrushchev levels against Stalin, 60 can be proven to be false. Needless to say that speech is the source of many of the attacks on Stalin.

Another source of attacks was the writing and organizing of Leon Trotsky. He was a charismatic individual with the emphasis on individual. Trotsky belonged to a different party than Stalin and Lenin. He joined the Bolsheviks when the Russian Revolution was imminent. When Lenin died, Trotsky thought that he should be the next leader. He organized for his ideas. They were publicized widely in the Party, but when it came to a vote, his position lost 724,000 to 4,000. The Bolsheviks and Lenin chose Stalin.

However, he continued to organize against Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership and was finally kicked out of the Party. He secretly continued his anti-Stalin organizing and propaganda. He appealed, not to the workers, but to the capitalists all over the world for support. Capitalists loved his stories because it gave them more ammunition against Stalin. But Furr speaks and reads Russian and English and has had access to Trotsky’s archives as well as the archives of the former Soviet Union. He has written and self-published several books on the period. For those who want to learn what really took place under Stalin’s leadership, please go to his website:https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/

The fact is that college professors who try to write a balanced or a favorable view of Stalin are ostracized by the system. They can’t get published. Those that promote anti-Stalinism get published, paid and praised.

The reason the capitalists hate Stalin is because he helped lead a revolution that threw them out of power. The capitalists who exploit workers, who bring death and destruction, who promote racism and sexism, hate Stalin. They benefit from our ignorance that it is possible to have a system where the capitalists do not exist. But a better world is possible. It’s communism where the workers of the world rule and the capitalists are in the trash heap of history.

LONG BEACH, CA – On Saturday, October 26 under the leadership of the Flores Family, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and their base held a well-attended march and rally in Long Beach to protest at the home of District Attorney (DA) George Gascón. He was elected to office in December of 2020. He defeated the previous DA Jackie Lacey who refused to indict over 600 cops who murdered mainly Black and Latin workers in Los Angeles during her eight  years in office. Gascón, a former cop, ran on a progressive platform. He assured the workers of Los Angeles County that he would prosecute cops and weed-out the “bad apples.” But just like Lacey before him, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our base know that he is another tool of maintaining ruling class control that will never bring justice for workers killed by KKKops.

Gascón has a long history of protecting the police and helping to enforce racist, violent policies and corruption. In fact, he was promoted to command the LAPD training unit in April 2000 in the aftermath of the Rampart Scandal where he was supposed to clean up the department with ethics and civil rights training (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gascón).The Rampart Scandal involved widespread police corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers either assigned to or associated with the Rampart CRASH unit were initially implicated in various forms of misconduct, including unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of false evidence, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury, and the covering up of evidence of these activities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal).Just three  years later he was sworn in as Assistant Chief of Police under Bill Bratton, a former NYPD police chief who served as the architect of the virulently racist Stop and Frisk Broken Windows Policing campaign in New York City. As DA in San Francisco, after serving as Chief of the San Francisco Police Department, Gascón continued to protect his fellow officers by not bringing charges in any police killings.

This is why we need a communist revolution. Politicians will never make racism illegal. We started the rally at a local park in Long Beach about a mile away from Gascón’s residence. The multi-racial group of 30 people came together to make signs specifically targeting not only Gascón but the racist system that protects killer KKKops. Young people held signs with slogans such as “No Good Cop in a Racist System” & “Gascón is a Tool of  the System! Down with Capitalism.” As the group marched down a busy street with restaurants and bars, workers in cars honked their horns; those sitting outside clapped their hands, held up their fists, and nodded in agreement and 57 workers took CHALLENGE eagerly.

Once we arrived at his residence, someone from the march started chanting “Vote him Out, Vote him Out.” That chant quickly turned into “Kick him Out.” But then, a PLP member got on the mic and made a speech about how voting the DA out will not change anything; we need to organize workers to overthrow capitalism. Voting is a dead-end for the working class, there is NO ONE we can vote in or out.

The working class will only free themselves through international revolution.
DA Jackie Lacey, a Black woman, made the same promises as Gascón and the people voted her out only to end up with another tool of the system, someone who protects the racist LAPD, LA Sheriffs, and all the other killer KKKops in LA County. Gascón as the DA in San Francisco is no different than Gascón as the DA in Los Angeles. On multiple occasions he made promises to families impacted by police violence and in a year and a half has prosecuted exactly zero police. Families close to PLP are recognizing that this DA is going to be no different than the last and no different than the next. The crowd was very accepting of the idea that there is no good DA in a racist system.
Our previous marches to protest at DA Jackie Lacey’s home had a bigger turnout. Families were fed up over years of being ignored. Some families are reluctant to protest Gascón because they are afraid of alienating him while they wait on his empty promises of reopening cases. We must continue the struggle to show that Gascón and the legal system will never bring justice to the working class. The only justice will be when the international working class overthrows capitalism with a communist revolution. Then we will have justice for all the workers killed by capitalism!

LENNOX, CA, November 13—Working class solidarity and  fightback around housing is  growing in this area of Los Angeles County. With the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the federal eviction moratorium, and state and local moratoriums already expired, or soon to, millions of workers nationwide are behind on rent or face imminent homelessness. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are actively  organizing within  the local battle for the needs of our class. We are bringing communist ideas to this sharpening class struggle, such as the need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist property relations.

CHALLENGE readers will remember that PLP has been actively involved in the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU). LITU has spent the last year organizing and responding to tenants who contact the organization. Tenant complaints frequently involve threats of eviction, illegal rent increases, or slumlords who refuse to do even the most basic maintenance on the apartments they rent for exorbitant amounts of money.

As part of LITU’s campaign to demand repairs in one apartment complex in Inglewood, we asked local skilled workers to volunteer their time to inspect several of the apartments affected to determine what repairs each needed. It turned out that two workers who have experience doing repairs live in an apartment complex in Lennox, a predominantly immigrant and solidly working-class city right next to Inglewood.

Workers living in the Lennox building have long had problems with their slumlord, Nic Murillo, including illegal rent increases and demands that workers pay for repairs that are the landlord’s legal responsibility. With LITU’s encouragement and help, one worker experienced in home repairs launched a door to door canvassing of his complex. The purpose of this grassroots effort is to get to know our friend’s neighbors, find out more about the rotten living conditions they are enduring, and see what they want to do about them. These are communist principles in action - workers supporting one another - from each according to commitment and ability to each according to need.

Housing problems can’t be solved under capitalism
Given how, under capitalism, property laws put landlord profits first and tenant needs last, the results were not surprising. Workers  living in the building  had a myriad of problems. One worker  that LITU spoke to had just found out that her three-year-old son had lead in his blood. Many workers’ apartments had bed bugs and roaches. Some had carpets infested with them and showed us their children’s bite marks. Several apartments had pervasive mold. Two tenants had just received court eviction papers even though slumlord Murillo refused rent money for them from a government agency, and even though he had adamantly refused to make any necessary repairs to their apartments.

But LITU members found something else - a burning desire to strike back against these abuses, and an understanding that tenants are only as powerful as the collective working class unity that underlies their actions. Many workers signed a letter to their slumlord demanding a meeting about the lousy conditions. They promised support to the tenant families who face eviction. They came together for several meetings, involving almost half of the tenants in the complex, where grievances were aired and a plan for action made. This action revolved around the building manager’s stubborn refusal to give tenants receipts for their monthly rent payments.

After scummy Murillo learned of the tenant meetings, he began slithering around the complex promising some, but not all, needed repairs. But tenants are not fooled! This tactic was exposed at one of the meetings as an attempt by the landlord to divide and conquer.

Fired up workers confront landlord’s agent
On the evening of November 1 about 15 workers organized and gathered beforehand, before making  a beeline as a group to the manager’s apartment. The manager was presented with a statement to the landlord signed by the tenants demanding that, starting in December, if receipts were not given to all tenants who paid rent, then rent payments would be stopped and held until that policy is changed. The manager at first refused to take the letter, but then gave in to the tenants demand that he do so.

No less than eight tenants spoke up, including several who spoke for the group and made sure the manager understood the anger and determination of this group of organized workers.With support from other tenants, one tenant whose family had no hot water, pinned the manager down and made him promise immediate repairs. The manager kept blathering that he had to do what his boss, Murillo, told him to do. He told the tenants they should be meeting with the landlord directly (of course, the tenants had already demanded such a meeting and been blown off by the scumlord). The next day all of the tenants who paid rent got receipts!

Working class tenants need communist ideas and leadership
Though small, this action demonstrates the potential power of a conscious and united working class. PLP’s tasks going forward will be to continue our involvement with these tenants and help sharpen the level of struggle against the slumlord. In this battle, we will show how the capitalist legal and political system protects the owners of private property. Decent housing for the entire working class, and the abolition of evictions and homelessness can and will only be achieved under communism.