Killer kkkops and mental health are class issues
May was mental health awareness month and National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) hosts a fundraising walk every May. During 2020 our family weathered some serious mental health crises and NAMI helped provide education, resources, and support.
Unfortunately many workers in crisis do not get the help that they need. In our work with families whose loved ones have been murdered by police, we have seen that many of them were in a mental health crisis and instead of giving assistance, the police killed them.
We decided that we would walk in memory of those workers whose lives were taken during a mental health crisis. Talking about mental health and how we can get help without calling the police is still a big problem. We know that under capitalism, workers’ health and well-being is not a priority. Only under communism will workers’ needs be put first.
We continue to fight for justice side by side with these families. We share with them the limited resources that are available as alternatives to the police under capitalism. We also struggle to turn this movement into a larger fight against the capitalist system that needs these racist, killer cops to terrorize the working class.
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Remembering a comrade
Regarding the obituary on Len Ragozin, many of us old-timers remember Len as having been the editor of Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) CHALLENGE newspaper around 1970 and as a writer of important articles for PL Magazine, especially on science and Marxism. He leaves quite a legacy in helping build PLP in our earliest days.
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Racist class violence, bedrock of capitalism
U.S. rulers regularly reject gun control because they say the problem is violent people not guns. But who are the violent people? Many participants in the Capitol insurrection were police and military who are responsible for most of the violence in the U.S. and worldwide. Capitalism exists because U.S. imperialism and fascism  created the armed forces that allow bosses  to steal labor and resources through violence.
Martin Luther King named racism as the essence of that violent culture. The U.S. is unique among imperialist powers in having built its wealth on the backs of chattel slavery situated within its own border. African workers were kidnapped and exploited by many imperialist powers, but only the U.S. brought chattel slavery to its own shores.
It didn’t take long for the early U.S. ruling class to understand that the most violent, brutal wedge – racism – had to be driven through the heart of the multiracial working class in order to reap the profits of chattel slavery. The all white slave patrols were the origin of the modern police force. Racist ideology was driven into the minds of white workers. This origin of profound racist division required constant reinforcement through violence. From the horrors of slavery itself, to the years of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings and the mass slaughter of Black workers who tried to fight back, the foundation of the U.S. was cemented with racist violence. It still is today.
Racism creates hate, division and fear among workers, creating huge profits for capitalists from wage differentials for workers of different races and genders doing the same jobs. Materialism and individualism are drummed into worker’s heads as the way to succeed by exploiting other workers and avoiding human and collective instincts like unions that would threaten capitalist power.
Only a communist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist struggle can defeat the racist, violent and war culture imposed on workers. The working class must defeat racism in all its forms in order to unite as one mighty force to smash capitalism and imperialism and build a communist society
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 “The Internationale” comes to WBAI
The Memorial Day program for The New Day radio show on WBAI, New York asked for listener’s favorite songs. I was connected and asked them to play “The Internationale” to honor people worldwide who were fighting for a new world. A technician said he never heard of it but would look it up. I said it was sung in every language.
A few minutes later, “The Internationale” started to play and as I jumped around my room with my fist in the air, I realized the working class words to the music were changed.
After the song ended, the show’s moderator apologized that the song was a revisionist interpretation of “The Internationale” and that she would try to get the original to play sometime.
Anyway it was great for many radio listeners to hear “The Internationale” and connect it to people’s struggles around the world.
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The Gaza Strip is a burial ground for thousands of workers massacred in the never-ending Palestine-Israel Conflict, with the self-serving nationalist bosses of Hamas on one side and the apartheid Israeli state, in alliance with U.S. imperialism, on the other. In the latest round of violence over 11 days in May, at least 248 people—including 66 children--were killed in Gaza, while Israeli fatalities stood at 13 (Aljazeera.com, 5/24). The gap in death tolls is nothing new; it reflects a deliberate policy of collective punishment by the Israeli war machine and its openly racist government.
This one-sided war is also a sign of the deepening crisis of U.S. imperialism, as Russia, China, and Iran try to expand their influence in the area. The resulting instability could become the spark that sets off a global war.
Two toxins: Israeli state terror, Palestinian nationalism  
With U.S. President Joe Biden defending Israel’s “right to defend itself,” the murderous Netanyahu regime is unleashing its military might against Gaza’s working class. As they hide behind their façade of “democracy,” the Israeli rulers are committing atrocities to guarantee their profits. In out-and-out war crimes, Israeli planes bombed at least six hospitals and 50 schools, devastated electricity and water plants, and shut down Gaza’s only Covid-19 testing lab (New York Times, 5/18).
As brave Gaza workers and youth rise up in the streets against impossible odds, we should ask: What is our fight in the Gaza Strip? Is it to demand an end to the Israeli occupation, the dismantlement of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, an end to ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, the establishment of a Palestinian state? We submit that none of this is enough. The working class deserves much more.
Progressive Labor Party condemns both the Israeli-U.S. massacre and the dead-end Palestinian nationalism promoted by Arab bosses in Gaza and the West Bank. We call instead for proletarian internationalism and communist revolution. We envision a world without profits or borders, where society will be run by and for the workers of the world. Only through the unity of Arab and Jewish workers can we defeat nationalism and smash the capitalist bosses on both sides.
What is happening in the Gaza Strip?
Since 1948, when the state of Israel was created, the people of Palestine have been violently pushed into only 20 percent of their former territory.  Blockaded by both Israel and Egypt, the densely populated Gaza Strip has little water, sporadic electricity, no jobs, and no freedom of movement.
To understand how Gaza came to its current misery, we must consider the forces of nationalism, racism, and inter-imperialist rivalry in the bosses’ quest for Middle East oil. The Zionist state, backed by billions in U.S. military aid, basically stole the Palestinians’ land and condemned them to life in a de facto concentration camp  while the bosses’ international organizations looked the other way (Amnesty International, 2017).  The Zionist rulers’ racist and nationalist ideology has created a state of desperation among young workers in Palestine.
Capitalism divides us, communism unites us
Throughout history, the capitalists and their governments have used ethnic and racial divisions to divide workers and advance their own political and economic agendas. Workers on both sides of the bosses’ borders suffer the cost of Israel’s occupation. The poison of anti-Arab racism leads workers in Israel to accept cuts in social services to finance the country’s military.
Meanwhile, workers in Palestine are misguided into taking sides in the dispute between the corrupt West Bank bosses of the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas. Neither faction has anything to offer workers. Palestine needs a mass anti-racist and revolutionary movement under communist leadership to create a society run by and for the working class.   
As we march in Colombia, Chile, Italy, and all over the world to protest against the occupation of Palestine, we must be clear that both racism and nationalism are tools used by capitalists to protect their profits. Wars between imperialists force workers to fight and kill their class brothers and sisters to protect the capitalists’ interests. History is rich with examples of unity between Arabs and Jews. Under communist leadership, we can rekindle that unity, defeat the exploiters, erase all borders, and smash the murderous capitalist governments.
The latest attacks on the working class in Gaza—and in India, Mexico, and Brazil--are driven by the international crisis of capitalism. We see it clearly in the U.S., where hundreds have died at the hands of the racist police. We see it in Colombia, where thousands have been massacred or disappeared, most recently during a general strike where 41 civilians were killed by the brutal cops.
PLP calls for workers to organize class interests, not the bosses’ rotten profit system. We call for the workers of the world to unite and fight to build a communist society without nationalism or religion, where the only flag will be red. Once workers unite in their struggle to build a communist future, it will spell the capitalist system’s demise.  
Fight for communism, abolish all borders!

NEW YORK CITY, May 14—In the French Revolution Georges Danton came up with the slogan “Boldness! Again, boldness! Always, boldness!” That describes the rally today of sixty City University of New York (CUNY) students and a few faculty, multiracial, multi-gender, and all ages marched from Hunter College to John Jay College. Their demand: abolition. Abolish the police, prisons, the carceral state, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) would add that all these forms of oppression are a necessity under the capitalist system, and we cannot eliminate them without abolishing capitalism itself, altogether and everywhere! That means building an organization, an international revolutionary communist party, PLP, which works explicitly to abolish capitalism and all its oppressions and build egalitarian communism.
These new keywords of struggle come close to but don’t quite say “Abolish capitalism.” But they inspire a new wave of militant youth, and here they lifted up the important specific demand to remove police from CUNY.  Speakers from Hunter also described struggles to save Asian American Studies and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies there.
The march refused to get a permit, took the streets and blocked traffic, had its own medics and lawyers in our ranks, and prepared everyone to link arms and stay together in case of an incident.
A young PLP comrade joined another marcher to block traffic on Park Avenue with their bicycles. Following the 2020 summer of rebellion which taught us to rely on ourselves in struggle, these marchers were serious. You can get too used to obeying bourgeois laws.
Remove kkkops from John Jay
The boldest demand was to remove the Klan in blue from John Jay, which was founded in 1965 as the College of Police Science (COPS). “John Jay’s training programs target its majority working-class, [Black, indigenous, Latin, and Asian] student body...to work for the institutions of organized violence,” said the pamphlet from the Cops off Campus Coalition (see box). “We believe that police and prison abolition is the work of our present and the promise of our future.”  They declared May abolition month.
The event also highlighted CUNY’s collaboration with U.S. imperialist war: John Jay’s Certificate in Homeland Security, Baruch’s agreement to “a formal partnership” with the CIA, and, the program of York and City Colleges with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC),  a college program training officers for the U.S. military. Education is one part of how the ruling class legitimizes its system; colleges function to reproduce oppressive class relations and support the bosses’ aims. We cannot separate colleges from its capitalist role.
The march attracted a heavy police presence as it exited Central Park into “Lenape Circle” (erase Columbus from that circle!), passing the Trump tower and heading for John Jay and CUNY’s Office of Public Safety. At these stops, speakers called for solidarity with Palestinian workers and slammed campus policing for attacking students who fight back.
The future will be bright with a new generation of anti-capitalists. The main danger continues to be nationalist and identity politics—on campus and in the streets.  PLP has to offer them the legacy of communist politics, boldness, and discipline; the organizational and political strength that comes from an experienced communist party; the long history and deep philosophy of communist workers the world over. The long march to abolish capitalism and build a society of comrades has a long past and a long future.
PLP invites every marcher at this CUNY event to come into our Party and build it up with their bold vision and action. Colleges are also an arena of fightback against tools of capitalism: cops,  ROTC,  and the CIA. Say it again: Join the PLP to abolish capitalism and build an egalitarian communist world.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE, May 21— Another round of warfare between Hamas and Israel ended with a ceasefire, with both Hamas and Israeli capitalists claiming “victory”. But with 13 workers killed in Israel and 258 workers killed and two thousand more wounded in Palestine, it was the working class of both sides, especially the Palestinian working class, who paid the price.
Contrary to both of the romanticized “self-defense” (Israeli propaganda) or “resistance” (Hamas propaganda) narratives pushed by the capitalist media, the cases for this latest massacre were the naked self-interest of the capitalists on both sides. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is the only party that represents and fights for all workers in Israel-Palestine, the Middle East and the world, and the only party organizing for a mass workers’ Red Army to smash the imperialist roots of this conflict once and for all!
Hamas: a movement for millionaires
Why are bosses on both sides claiming victory? Let’s start with Hamas, the capitalists controlling the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, the government claiming to run both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, recently scheduled elections to its Legislative Council on May 22, 2021. Fatah, representing the capitalist Palestinian faction ruling the West Bank, is infamous for its corruption. Many Palestinians support Hamas – the fundamentalist Islamic movement controlling Gaza and seen as the only “alternative.” With a Hamas victory in the West Bank elections clearly expected, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, indefinitely postponed the elections to keep the Fatah faction of Palestinian bosses in power.
Hamas would have none of that. With their road to power by electoral means blocked, they declared to represent all resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the siege on the Gaza Strip. Their hope was to ignite a third mass uprising (“intifada”) in the West Bank, with themselves in command, which would ensure their takeover of the West Bank. Hamas represents a different faction of Palestinian bosses than that represented by Fatah and are more skilled at robbing workers in Gaza. Claiming to fight for a religious state in Palestine and embracing the sexism of every religious movement, Hamas bosses live in mansions in Gaza City or hotels in Doha. They are funded by Iran, by international aid sent to Gaza, as well as by heavy taxes on the local population and smuggling operations through neighboring states like Egypt (Rose al-Yusuf, روز اليوسف, 2010). While workers live in ruins, building materials sent into Gaza serve Hamas’ military and tunneling industries rather than rebuilding after Israeli bombings..
Thus, the Hamas bosses started yet another round of warfare against Israel, hoping to maneuver themselves into power in the West Bank and expand their control.
Israeli bosses’ rivalry: sharpening imperialism and fascism
Similar political motivations led Israeli bosses to go to war: factional struggles within the Israeli ruling class, as U.S. imperialism’s crisis deepens and inter-imperialist rivalry with China sharpens (see Editorial, page 2). One faction, represented by the old “Labor” Party and its allies, has been in decline for decades and is being dethroned by a newer faction, fueled by a gutter racist, mass fascist base and headed by the corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu.
But the old bosses will not give up without a fight, and Netanyahu’s infamous personal corruption presented an opportunity after Netanyahu’s mediocre electoral performance in the March 2021 elections. The “Labor” Party faction attempted to remove Netanyahu but make no mistake: these opponents of Netanyahu are not on the side of the working class. They include far-right racist capitalists such as Naftali Bennet and Ayelet Shaked, both of whom dream of budget cuts and further attacks on workers.
Sheikh Jarrah, Al-Aqsa: the fuse
Hoping to eliminate any chance of the “Labor” faction’s removal, Netanyahu’s interests for war aligned with Hamas. Netanyahu’s calls for fascist “national unity” and “self-defense” attracted rival Bennet to his side.
With the bosses on both sides building for war, the fascist Israeli police attacks on Palestinian protests against evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and attacks on workers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque lit the fuse. Hamas bombarded southern and central Israel with rockets and mortars, disrupting Israel’s economy and killing several workers. Israel responded with massive airstrikes, killing hundreds of workers and making thousands homeless. While Israel managed to kill many of Hamas’ ground commanders, its very top leaders, as well as the capitalists behind them, remain alive and rich while Israel’s ruling class is equally unscathed.
Palestinian and Israeli workers: unite under the red flag!
Workers in Palestine paid for this war with their lives and homes. Workers in Israel face an economic downturn caused by the war and higher unemployment; one in five workers already live below the poverty line, including almost one million children. Workers of the world must take a side – the working class. Supporting Hamas’ “resistance” means supporting Hamas gangsters and their big-capitalist sponsors in Qatar and Iran. Supporting Israel’s “self-defense” means supporting a mass fascist movement in Israel bent on evicting and slaughtering workers in Palestine.
PLP fights to overthrow all bosses- Palestinian and Israeli. There are no “good” bosses, there is no “national liberation” or “national defense” – all enthrone one capitalist or another on the backs of workers.There is only one solution – communist revolution! Join PLP and help us build a mass Party “from the river to the sea:” from Sheikh Jarrah to Bogotá and everywhere in between!