Haiti: State terrorism, aftermath of the 2018 fightbacks
The experiences of 2018, mass demonstrations in the streets by tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of workers against all forms of corruption by the Haitian state and the bourgeoisie, pushed the working class in Haiti to fight for radical change of its living conditions. Now is the time to organize to overthrow the bourgeois state, and its imperialist enablers, and build a society that serves the interests of the working class. Communism.
This struggle has involved the majority of workers from the working-class districts, that is to say the neighborhoods impoverished by the local bourgeoisie, by the imperialist countries and by the restavek (impoverished children taken from their homes in the countryside to toil under slave-like conditions in the homes of the middle-class) Haitian state itself. All these working-class movements for reform are part of the fight against the rulers’ vicious dictatorship and impunity. They are against hunger, unemployment and the increase in the prices of basic necessities.
Workers are demanding an increase of the minimum wage, access to decent education and clean water to drink, and now action against the Covid-19 pandemic. Fearful  of the potential of these workers and students to undermine their rule, the ruling class and their bourgeois state continue to use their police and their armed gangs to terrorize them in an attempt to keep them from occupying the streets. This is why we speak of state terrorism working side-by-side with the bourgeoisie to undermine all popular demands.
The disparity between rich and poor is becoming more and more obvious, unemployment is becoming more and more aggressive, poverty is becoming more and more severe, the life of workers is becoming more and more difficult. In sum, the level of exploitation is becoming more and more glaring and unacceptable. Each morning, workers’ corpses are discovered in the nooks and crannies of their neighborhoods. Tens of thousands are displaced as they flee their homes under gunfire in search of some respite from the violence. The terrorist state and the rapacious bourgeoisie are allowed by their imperialist masters to continue this carnage(see editorial on page 2). And the working class, despite its overwhelming numbers and heroic attempts to fight back, is not sufficiently organized to make these battles their last against capitalism and imperialism. That is the real tragedy for the workers of Haiti.
Some middle-class people have the means to live in the comfortable suburbs or to leave the country. Workers do not have that luxury. They don’t want to give in to their vulnerability—they have shown time and again that they want to fight back! But they don’t want to be used as cannon fodder by different sectors of the “loyal” opposition, those politicians and would-be rulers who want power as a way to line their own pockets. Workers have been hoodwinked by these types too many times in the past. Our liberation will not come on the wings of the bosses’ craven politicians and their bankrupt democratic elections. Only the working class in Haiti armed with revolutionary class politics and an international communist Party, PLP, can free the deadly grip of capital.
The assassination of Jovenel Moise will not change anything for the working class (see editorial, page 2). All the usual players are now vying to take over until (and if) another round of sham elections can be held, supervised as usual by the various imperialist powers. We have only one response to this: “Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!”Fight for worker’s power! Fight for Communism!
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Colombia: PL’ers fight social democracy
The current struggles of the working class in Colombia have been relatively successful for the time being, by stopping the economic reforms projected by the bosses’ state. But they also reveal the opportunistic and defeatist character of the trade union leaders and capitalist social democracy.
The workers who took to the streets to protest in large numbers have been abandoned by the strike leadership, who have given into inferior demands and who could never, by their nature, match the revolutionary potential of the masses.
However, the student sector, and “informal” workers, have continued the fight, but lose strength every day due to the lack of a political orientation for the movement. Since the fight is largely fought under a nationalist line and against corruption, it basically amounts to mass participation in demonstrations that keeps the capitalist political class intact.
On the other hand, the demonstrators have been affected by the capitalist stooges, who see an opportunity to “fish in a troubled river,” by using their control over media to discredit and ignore the struggles of the most politically advanced section of workers.
The advancement of the struggle is evidenced in the leadership by the youth, and the identification of the crises of capitalism in general terms. Unfortunately they believe in bourgeois democracy and defend the “homeland” and its bosses, which is why the struggle becomes sterile.
However, the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been present with its newspaper DESAFÍO and the revolutionary line for a communist world, trying to raise awareness among the working class, to take better advantage of these struggles. In the immediate future, it is urgent to consolidate the most revolutionary bloc of workers, resolve the internal class contradictions and advance to give communist leadership under the PLP to lead the working class to rule its own destiny.
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On June 24, capitalism killed an untold number of people in Surfside, Florida, when a high-rise apartment complex fell without warning. Dozens of bodies have been recovered from what used to be Champlain Towers South; more than 100 people remain unaccounted for. According to the New York Times, it may be “the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history” (6/27).
But what happened to these Florida condominiums was no accident. It was the result of a system that values profit over workers’ lives. It exposed a United States in decline, where a divided ruling class has neglected basic infrastructure for decades. The world’s wealthiest “developed nation” is a mess of crumbling roads and bridges, asbestos-ridden school buildings, and toxic public water systems. And while the capitalist bosses cheat and steal and dodge paying taxes, the working class pays the price—often with our lives.
The main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the finance capitalists represented by the Joe Biden administration, knows it needs to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prepare for inter-imperialist war with an increasingly aggressive China. But the main wing lacks leadership, unity, and a general willingness to sacrifice their own shorter-term gains for the long-term interests of their class. They’re also facing stiff resistance from the isolationist wing led by ex-president Donald Trump and domestic capitalists like the Koch, Mercer, and DeVos families. To get the war budget they need, they’ll need to impose more open fascism against any bosses who refuse to get on board. To get the soldiers they need to fight and die for their failing empire, they’ll need to do the same against the working class.
Capitalism cannot protect the working class—not from the next infrastructure disaster, not from the next bloody global conflict. Workers will never be secure until we smash capitalism with communist revolution. Only communism—a society without money, exploitation, racism, and sexism—will put workers’ lives first. Only a state run by and for the working class can guarantee that all workers will have safe and decent shelter, just as communists did in the past (see housing article, page 3). Under communism, we will use our collective power to meet the needs of the working class.
Workers pay for capitalist decay
As investigators sort through the rubble, there is no shortage of theories on what caused the building to fall: design flaws, shoddy construction, lax building codes, erratic code enforcement. A New York Times report pointed to malfeasance by a negligent city inspector (7/1). A class action suit has accused the Champlain condo association of “reckless and negligent conduct” for ignoring years-old reports of major damage to the building’s concrete structure (CNN 6/29). In an area vulnerable to hurricane winds and corrosive saltwater, capitalist over-development may also have contributed to the collapse. In 2019, a member of the condo board expressed concerns that heavy construction next door may have damaged the Champlain structure. Surfside officials ignored him (NYT, 6/27). That’s a typical response in cities that are dominated by contractors and real estate interests—basically Anytown, U.S.A.
The tragedy in Florida is no isolated event. In Puerto Rico, schools are in danger of collapse from earthquakes. In New York and New Jersey, the Hudson River tunnels have yet to be repaired, nearly nine years after Hurricane Sandy (Wall Street Journal, 4/2). From Newark to Flint, Michigan, more than 5 million people get their drinking water “from systems that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead action level of 15 parts per billion” (theatlantic.com, 9/11/19).
Death and taxes
The decay and destruction of capitalism trickles from the top down. Biden’s “compromise” infrastructure bill—already cut from $2.3 trillion to $579 billion in new spending—reflects both the split in the U.S. ruling class and the bosses’ drive toward war. Biden has pushed to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent (msn.com, 6/13).  
As the U.S. president fake cries in Florida, he's proposing to use taxes stolen from workers to fund $753 billion for U.S. military “defense.” That’s two percent more than the previous year’s budget, even “as the Biden administration pulls the nation out of the U.S. military’s longest war [in Afghanistan] and shifts focus away from the Middle East to address emerging threats from China” (cnbc.com, 5/28). But none of these measures will give the finance capitalists anything close to what they need both to repair critical infrastructure and prepare for conflict with China.
On June 12, Biden and other imperialist leaders from the G7 (see editorial from 7/7) launched their Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership, a strategy to compete with China by meeting  the “tremendous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries” (whitehouse.gov, 6/12). This “unified vision” is aimed to “create new opportunities to demonstrate U.S. competitiveness abroad and create jobs at home”—code for intimidating rival imperialists while unifying the U.S. working class in a patriotic war drive.
There is a long history of infrastructure projects that were ultimately geared toward military dominance. As reported by the Center for American Progress, the largest U.S. government investments of the 20th century include the Panama Canal, Ellis Island, the Marshall Plan, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo space program. From generating cheap labor to occupying strategic territory to bribing essential ruling-class allies, all of them were driven by the bosses’ agenda to reinforce their economic and military dominance.
Fight for communism!
This tragedy in Florida is a material reflection of the sharpening contradictions of capitalism. The future of our class depends on workers’ ability to see through the manipulations of the Big Fascist finance capitalists and their phony “solutions” to the problems generated by the profit system. We in Progressive Labor Party must continue to lead the march toward communist revolution and a society that is built for a safe and decent life for the working class. Join PLP!

CHICAGO, June 25—A multiracial group of over a dozen Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) workers and supporters rallied at a busy station today for a spirited “Hour of Power” demonstration. We are fighting for equal pay for equal work, rights and benefits for the growing ranks of part-time CTA workers and to organize more workers to fight the sellout union misleaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are also fighting for the idea that workers can run all of society without profiteering bosses and their puppet politicians. That’s communism—working class power.
We rallied near a busy transit stop and then marched down the streets to the Howard Street maintenance shop where workers leaned over the concrete wall to check us out. They discussed the rally all day. More people discussed  the need to strike. As we were wrapping up our rally in a nearby park one of the women workers said, "We should do this again next week!" Later, another worker said she was proud to be there.
A bus driver and a rail mechanic have organized two previous rallies, but this was the largest one. Black women workers, who make up the largest group of lower-paid, part-time workers have added militant leadership to this fight! Their leadership has clarified how the workers, armed with
class-conscious politics can and will overcome the bosses’ efforts to divide us. Through our own experience fighting back, the class struggle becomes illuminated. We see that capitalism needs racism and sexism to exist, so we can only smash these inequalities by smashing capitalism.
Members of the international PLP have been at all three rallies selling CHALLENGE, handing out fliers and leading chants. We are helping to create opportunities for the Party to grow and to spread communist ideas among more workers.
Reject all capitalist misleaders, steer towards communism
The CTA and the ATU use the part-timer workers for the money they save the company and the dues they pay the union. Many of them are part of the so-called “Second Chance” program, meaning that they have previously been deemed guilty by the bosses’ racist injustice system for non-violent offenses.
Under this label, the transit bosses try to rationalize a higher rate of exploitation that is inherently racist. The rank-and-file union members in fact voted down this program during negotiations around five years ago, only for the union hacks to turn around and still include it in the contract! For this, we have included in our demands that all CTA workers be offered full-time positions to push back against their divide-and-conquer attacks.
What’s more, the union mis-leadership wants us to rely on the politicians, but these ruling-class parasites will never serve our needs. Decades of relying on the liberal bosses in Chicago has led to nothing for workers here but evictions, layoffs, closed hospitals and schools, and racist police terror.
More union members are beginning to believe that it is the international working class who has the power to fight back against the politicians, bankers and billionaires. After all, it was our class that has kept the world running as we risked our lives during this deadly pandemic. We have the potential to create a worker-led communist society that abolishes racism and money and puts our needs first!
Board the train to workers’ power
All workers, part-time and full-time, are seeing our paychecks shrink as the cost of living continues to rise. The CTA and the ATU have worked overtime to create divisions among the membership. As a consequence of their efforts some full-timers unfortunately have been won to believe that the part-time workers don't really have it so bad. But all workers – part-time or full-time, employed or unemployed—can do so much better than what this racist, sexist profit system has to offer!
The struggle in front of us is difficult, but what we do today counts. Rank-and-file organizing and arming the working class with communist politics and a fighting mass PLP will slowly but surely build the revolutionary movement that finally buries the bosses and their rotten system. Board the train to workers’ power – Join PLP!

Newark, NJ, July 4—Fifty Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends collectively kicked off this year’s Summer Project by sharing food, speeches and international solidarity. The goal was to sharpen the fight against racism, sexism and nationalism as we organize for communist revolution - working class power. One participant commented that as communists, “we make a commitment to free ourselves from capital and invest our lives into the international working class.”
At each summer project like this one, workers from around the world put communism into action in one central location of struggle. With an ongoing pandemic, we are raising working class consciousness about how fascism, or excessive state control and police terror is rampant in Newark. To smash this, we need to build an internationalist communist party with Black, white, Latin, Asian and Arab workers leading the way toward a world where the needs of all workers are put first.
History of Newark
Three newer and two veteran comrades gave speeches about the history of Newark and how the education, housing and court system is impacted by racism. The first speech discussed the importance of recognizing Newark as a laboratory for Big Fascists (see Glossary, p. 6) to operate on a local scale under Mayor Ras Baraka. Praised as a “progressive” and “revolutionary” the Mayor has promoted reforms like Universal Basic Income, a worker-led review board of the police and temporarily fixed lead-poisoned water pipes.But in fact, he’s in line with what the Big Fascists are pushing worldwide. They want to throw a few crumbs or fake reforms to the working class to win us to support the finance capitalists’ plans for imperialist war against China and Russia. As we fight against racist police killings and for better housing conditions, PLP wants workers to see through the lies of the Big Fascists in Newark and worldwide to fight for a communist world.
In the United States, particularly during the 60s, the U.S. bosses were faced with hundreds of rebellions led by Black workers fighting against their racist conditions. As a result the bosses began to experiment with using Black politicians to control the masses. Ken Gibson was elected Newark’s first Black mayor in 1970. The speaker went on to say that the “Main legacy of the civil rights movement and those riots, where Black workers rose up against police brutality, is that Black politicians came into office and betrayed the workers.” Big Fascist politicians like Baraka ultimately steer workers away from fightback and into the ballot box, while smashing any revolutionary potential amongst the working class.
Another speaker talked about the history of the education struggle in Newark. Schools here “continue the legacy of molding children into compliant workers.” At the same time segregation in Newark contributes to the racist conditions in the schools. However, this does not mean there was no fightback. The Newark Teachers’ strike in 1970-1971, the student-led fightbacks for better curriculum and school conditions of the 80s and 90s, and the fightback in 2015 to get rid of Superintendent Cami Anderson and State control of Newark schools all provided valuable lessons for our Party.
The final speech addressed public housing in Newark. Like many cities, Newark saw a rise of public housing during the 1930s New Deal era. Then a decline in funding started in the 1960s. The speaker talked about the courageous tenants of the Stella Wright Housing Project who conducted a four year rent strike (1970-1974) against racist housing conditions that persisted for over a decade. But what was most powerful was her own experience of living in public housing and committing to fight for communism because of the strike. She had moved to a number of different housing projects throughout the city as one shut down after another. On top of the inhumane living conditions, many of those in public housing during Covid-19 had to deal with constant police surveillance, day and night. Despite these conditions, many residents who are on disability and rely on this housing are afraid to speak out. This even with the city's possible gentrification plans for this housing project. She then stated, “And Ras [Baraka] is on this trip that if you want to get rid of gentrification, then buy a house - but that’s not possible for us.” But PLP is continuing to organize and talk to residents so that they have the confidence through collective action to fight for what we all deserve.
As the cookout was wrapping up the Rodwell/Spivey family and a local organizer arrived. The lawyer for the family spoke about the case and how these young men were racially profiled and attacked by the cops. Then another local organizer, who has been leading the fight back in this struggle, spoke about his attempts to organize support around the family and how PLP was the only organization to respond. “After I saw the video and news headlines I visited the family myself. When I heard the real story I called every organization in the city. Nobody called me back except for PLP. And the next day at the rally they came out.” That’s what we do. In this period it is important for us to take a patient long term approach when organizing workers and students, but it is also necessary to act with urgency when situations like these arise. The mother of the young men also spoke about how the cops have been harassing the family by parking a mobile precinct on the street and checking Is of those coming in and out of the neighborhood. After she spoke we passed around a hat to raise funds for the family’s legal defense fund.
Just as Big Facist liberal bosses like Ras Baraka build a base for capitalism, PLP is building a base for communism. It was evident when one woman who attended and was alive in the 60s commented that when she was growing up in Jersey City, she never would have seen a multiracial, intergenerational group. Communist organizing was also clear in the way that members collectively produced the speeches.
As essential as it is for the 20 percent of non-english speakers at the opening event to listen to Black and white workers in the fight against racism and leading communism, as we move forward with our activities it’s equally as important for us to struggle with mainly English-speaking workers to experience live translation as a form of anti-racist internationalism. Practices like these smash the uneven divisions bosses flame to keep the most useful ideas for our class scattered.
What’s ahead
Over the next few weeks this PLP Summer Project will continue to build upon the barbeque through CHALLENGE distributions around the city, and study groups on topics like political economy, displacement, nationalism, and racism. We will end our project with a rally and a motorcade connecting the various struggles that the working class in this part of the world is currently involved in. We plan to maintain the common feeling of strong solidarity and joy felt throughout, as a way to strengthen the bonds among members and friends of PLP. Contact PLP if you would like to join us during this Summer Project.