NEW YORK CITY—This spring as anti-Asian hate crimes came into focus for the main wing media, thousands of New Yorkers protested in Manhattan’s Chinatown where Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined fellow workers in calling out the racist capitalist system that fosters these types of attacks. The protest was sparked by the March 16 mass shooting in Atlanta, GA where eight workers, including six women immigrant workers were shot and killed by a gunman. At the New York protest, amidst an integrated crowd of Black, Latin, Asian and white workers, PLP responded to speeches calling for the misleadership of liberal and Democratic politicians by distributing copies of CHALLENGE and holding a rally nearby that put our communist and revolutionary line front and center.
Asian, Latin, Black, and white: Workers of the World Unite!
At the rally, Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential candidate and current mayoral candidate took the mic. He promised to put more funding into the city’s New York Police Department (NYPD) Asian Hate Crimes Task Force if elected, to which the crowd chanted “Defund the police!”
Protesters pointed out that police have not protected Asian American workers in the past, and PLP added that they have never been on the side of the working class! The same Klan in Blue that murdered so many Black and Latin workers—George Floyd, Eric Garner, Shantel Davis and so many more. This is the same NYPD that liberal politicians are saying will “protect” Asian lives. The NYPD however has proved to be no friend to Asian workers - not now, not ever.
In 2017, a 38-year-old sex worker from China, died after she fell from a four-story window as officers were trying to arrest her during an NYPD raid on a massage parlor. In 2014, NYPD officers beat Kang Wong, an 84-year-old man for jaywalking on the Upper West Side.
At the protest the multiracial crowd was not fooled by Yang’s misleadership. Workers don’t need more or better policing - there is no such thing as better policing. Workers need an international communist revolution that delivers to each worker based on need, from each worker based on ability.
Multiracial unity shuts down liberal misleaders and myths
PLP and our class brothers and sisters cannot be fooled by the bosses’ attempts to pit Black, Latin, and Asian workers against one another. Despite the racist trope that Asian-Americans are a “model minority,” capitalism thrives off the super-exploitation of many Asian workers, just as they super exploit Black, Latin, and immigrant workers.
One quarter of Asian residents in New York City live under the poverty line (NBC News, 10/21/20). The true purpose of the unscientific “model minority” myth is to blame Black and Latin workers for their own suffering, when in actuality it is anti-Black racism and capitalism that paves the way for bosses to launch racist attacks against all workers.
Anti-Asian racism is fueled by U.S. imperialism, which was only able to take hold through the enslavement and exploitation of Black people worldwide. The fight against anti-Black racism must therefore be at the center of the struggle, just as Black workers are key to our revolutionary fight back.
That’s why PLP organizes a multiracial working class. Communism will win when workers internationally unite!
Covid-19 pandemic adds gasoline to racist flames
The recent wave of anti-Asian racism during the Covid-19 pandemic is not a new trend. In response to an influx of Chinese immigrants in the 1850s, the U.S. government passed its first major immigration law—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—suspending Chinese immigration for over 60 years and making Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization. This law reinforced the racist trope of “Asians coming to steal jobs from white workers,'' when in actuality it is capitalism that leaves all workers without sustainable means of living.
Similarly, in 1900, an outbreak of the bubonic plague struck San Francisco. It is likely that the outbreak began with a ship from Australia, but since the first stateside victim was an immigrant from China, the whole Chinese-American community was blamed for it and police violence followed overnight.
Over 120 years later, Asian workers are again being scapegoated and victimized during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the most recent protest, to show a truly working-class, antiracist response to the attacks, a group of PLP members and supporters led a rally to drive the politics of the mainstream march towards our revolutionary and international line.
One comrade gave his prepared speech and others led chants such as “Asian, Latin, Black and white, workers of the world unite!” on the bullhorn as hundreds walked by and we distributed nearly 240 copies of CHALLENGE. We also handed our bullhorn to a worker in the street, who led a chant of “No more hate!”
Comrades voiced the anger and fear they feel for family and friends in light of the recent racist attacks and named communism as the only answer to ending these racist attacks. We denounced the anti-Asian racism as the same racism that our Black and Latin students face in racist Department of Education schools and called for an international, integrated, worker-led revolution worldwide! Join PLP! Fight Racism!
On April 20, Minneapolis killer kkkop Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder for the execution of George Floyd, a racist atrocity that set the international working class on fire last summer. The liberal capitalist bosses and their media were quick to celebrate the verdict as evidence that “the system worked.” In fact, however, Chauvin’s conviction was the exception that proves the rule. Beneath the bosses’ charade of “democracy” and “the rule of law'' lies the ugly truth: The capitalist profit system cannot work without violence, coercion, oppression, and racist and sexist exploitation.
The bosses need mad dog cops to intimidate workers’ fightback against the racist, sexist profit system. As we march on May Day, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) declares that we must end these legalized lynchings—by smashing the capitalist rulers who sanction them. Cops can’t be brought to heel with reform legislation or oversight boards or body cameras. There’s one way to put these gangsters with badges out of business for good: with communist revolution.
Murder as usual
Under capitalism, police terror is business as usual. On average, on-duty cops in the U.S. kill 1,000 workers a year. From 2005 through 2018, according to a study at Bowling Green State University, fewer than one percent of these killers were arrested for murder or manslaughter (https://www.bgsu.edu). Only four—around three-hundredths of one percent—were convicted of murder. Were it not for a brave 17-year-old who recorded more than eight minutes of Chauvin choking Floyd to death last May, the cop would likely be walking free today.
Since March 29, when the Chauvin trial began, three workers a day have been killed by the bosses’ death squads (The Hill, 4/21). Chicago’s gestapo chased down 13-year-old Adam Toledo in an alleyway and killed him as he stood with his hands in the air (see CHALLENGE, 4/28). Barely 10 miles away from where George Floyd took his last breath, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was murdered for the capital crime of expired license plates (New York Times, 4/23). Even as the verdict against Chauvin was announced, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was fatally shot four times after calling the police for help.
Fighting back against kkkop terror
In the wake of Ma’Khia’s murder, fellow officers shouted out “Blue Lives Matter!”—a slogan that affirms the cops’ freedom to slaughter Black, Latin, and immigrant workers at will. The police knew that Ma’Khia’s murder would be another match to ignite working-class rage (Newsweek, 4/21). Over the past year, millions of workers in more than 50 countries have taken the streets in solidarity with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, Stephon Clarke, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and too many others.
Under capitalism, murder-by-cop is a worldwide phenomenon. Last June, 14-year-old João Pedro Matos Pinto became one of more than 600 people killed by police in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil—in less than six months. On April 27, in Bangladesh, at least five were killed and dozens injured “after police opened fire on a crowd of workers protesting to demand stolen wages and a pay rise at a Chinese-backed power plant” (reuters.com, 4/17). On March 27, a worker from Honduras named Victoria Salazar was killed in Tulum, a tourist hot spot, after a Mexican cop—taking a page from the murderer Chauvin—knelt on her neck (elpais.com, 4/6).
But just as bosses worldwide use U.S. racism as a model to terrorize workers in their own countries, anti-racist movements can be schools for workers to put communist ideas into practice for the communist future to come. When PLP joins these mass movements and struggles side by side with the working class, we teach and learn the importance of antiracist fightback and class struggle.
Imperialists sharpen their knives
In the context of inter-imperialist competition and a period of capitalism in crisis, the U.S. bosses have an insoluble problem. On the one hand, they need their killer cops to keep the working class in check—a policy that goes back to the 18th-century slave catchers, the original U.S. police forces. On the other hand, this brazen terror undercuts the rulers’ ability to rally its allies against its rivals under the banner of “human rights.” As the U.S. tries to focus the world’s attention on China’s racist attacks on the Uighurs in Xinjiang, China and Russia joined 23 other countries in a joint statement at the United Nations to condemn “systematic racist discrimination and violence.” They cited the cases of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, the Black worker who was shot in the back and paralyzed in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after cops were called to respond to a domestic dispute (American Military News, 10/7/20).
The liberal U.S. rulers also desperately need to figure out how to win more Black and Latin workers to fight and die in the next global imperialist war. That’s the impetus behind Jim Crow Joe Biden’s latest reformist crumb to rein in killer cops: The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The legislation would officially ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants and eliminate “qualified immunity,” which gives cops a license to kill without getting sued. But even if anyone believed that this law would change the KKKlan-in-blue’s behavior when so many others have failed, the cops have nothing to worry about. Because of splits in the ruling class and hard-core Republican (Small Fascists) opposition in the U.S. Senate, the bill’s passage is “extremely unlikely for now” (New York Times, 3/4).
Workers cannot trust liberal rulers like Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are bought and paid for by finance capital. They will stab us in the back as soon as the latest reform struggle no longer fits their agenda.
PLP is the party of the international working class
Outgunned but far from outnumbered, workers continue to fight back. From the striking farmers in India to the women workers in El Salvador who occupied Florenzi Industries, the courage and resilience of the working class is an unstoppable force, even during a deadly pandemic. We have seen our class forge mutual aid networks in Haiti and stop evictions in the United States. We’ve seen workers in Colombia risk their lives to protest police murder. Whether large or small, every fightback has the potential to win more workers to fight for a communist world.
The police will always serve the ruling class; they are the bosses’ blunt instruments for control. Under communism, a society with no money, profits, or exploitation, there won’t be any need for them. Workers will be accountable to one another. The collective will resolve problems and disagreements based on what’s best for our class. While we agree with those who chant to abolish the police, we know that it can’t be done in isolation. We’ll need to abolish the whole rotten capitalist system to get these thugs’ knees off our backs.
On May Day, across five continents and in more than two dozen countries, Progressive Labor Party will bring our revolutionary line to the masses. It’s the holiday of the international working class, the time when our fight for one party, one class, and one world is on full and open display. United, workers cannot be defeated. We continue to fight for a communist world. Join us!
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KKKapitalism killed Adam Toledo: Only solution— communist revolution
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- 30 April 2021 88 hits
CHICAGO, IL, April 16–Almost 2,000 people gathered a few blocks from Chicago’s Democratic and Black Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s house to protest the police murder of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. The working-class anger against this latest police atrocity had been seething all week long (see CHALLENGE, 4/28). This mass demonstration was in response to the video released of the murder of young Adam, which clearly showed that he was murdered with his hands up. It was the biggest march in Chicago since last summer’s uprisings against the racist murder of George Floyd (see editorial, page 2).
“Lori Lightfoot you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “KKKops how many kids have you killed today,”thundered loudly in Chicago’s Logan Square. 20 friends and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the masses in denouncing the cops and the capitalist/fascist system that spawns them. We quickly ran out of the 300 copies of CHALLENGEs and the hundreds of leaflets we brought to distribute.
The protesters marched down the middle of a major street, Milwaukee Avenue, stopping every few minutes to speak on the bull horn and invite marchers to join us on May Day, the revolutionary workers’ day that is celebrated all over the world on May 1. We called for a communist world we envision free from killer cops, racism, sexism, and exploitation. Many people responded by clapping and cheering us on when we spoke about communist revolution and the need for workers’ power. Many joined our communist chant, “The only solution is a communist revolution!”
Peace walk
Two days later, there was a peace walk of hundreds of people through the mainly Latin neighborhood of Little Village. We again distributed our communist literature inviting all to our May Day march which will begin a few blocks away from where Adam was savagely shot. We also led chants and more significantly briefly met with Adam’s father and let him know that our Party stood in solidarity with his family and that our goal was to abolish capitalism and the police forces who murdered his son.
For this peace walk, a young artist who we work with and has read CHALLENGE drew a beautiful mural. It was painted on the other side of the fence where Adam Toledo was murdered. The mural is of huge letters that read, “We need each other.”
Everyone was invited to write some words inside the letters for Adam’s family. We wrote, “death to racism and fascism, long live Adam Toledo. PLP”
Winning youth to communist politics
The next week, we participated in a press conference/rally that demanded that Kim Foxx, our county’s Democratic and Black State’s Attorney file murder charges against the kkkop Eric Stillman and that her lying Assistant, James Murphy, resign for lying about the video tape that clearly showed that Adam was murdered in cold blood with his hands up. We are working with community organizers we met at the first vigil for Adam. They have all taken our literature and have welcomed us to their struggle.
By taking bold leadership our Party is being recognized and looked to for guidance and leadership against this murder. As soon as we arrived at the Logan Square protest surrounded by 100s of protesters, we began a PLP mini-rally giving a communist analysis of this murder. People listened intently agreeing with many of our points. Our consistent communist anti-racist and anti-fascist politics are attracting many young workers to us. At work, we are recognized as leaders and they ask us about the next actions and then they accompany us to them.
By participating in the Free Mohawk struggles we’ve been participating in over 2020 and 2021, young workers sought us out at the Logan Square march and they held up our communist banners. We plan to recruit these workers and students to build a communist Red Army that will smash our class enemies, and their liberal, Democratic lap dog politicians. On to May Day and on to communist revolution.
Greetings to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) May Day marchers in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and around the world; greetings to the international working class:
Today, in Haiti and around the world, imperialism’s relentless march for profits and power is worsening the living conditions of our class. The coronavirus pandemic is only one of the horrors that show how the racist and sexist inequalities of capitalism increase our suffering and make the precariousness of our lives even more glaring. In fact, in addition to the restrictive laws which reinforce authoritarian and so-called democratic regimes alike, the working masses have seen their purchasing power considerably decrease and a large majority of them sink into unprecedented unemployment and misery. All the while, the bourgeoisie keeps accumulating wealth, stolen from our labor and dreams of schemes for world war—where we workers are supposed to fight and die—to enrich themselves further with the spoils.
Kidnappings, gangsterism, unemployment, homelessness, the almost complete absence of medical care, repression of trade unionists and activists, massacres in working-class neighborhoods, expropriation of peasants in favor of large multinationals are the main daily challenges facing workers in Haiti. The far-right government imposed by the U.S. imperialists, through the UN, the OAS and their embassies, continues to destroy the rare social gains obtained by workers in Haiti at the end of the 20th century. Workers and students in Haiti are fighting back, but we need to know we are not alone! We need the resolute leadership of a revolutionary communist party with deep ties inside our class.
Comrades, workers all over the world are all experiencing similar difficulties. But, in Haiti as elsewhere, PLP must continue to organize workers, students and soldiers with a view to building a true international mass Party, capable of leading the class-struggle that will destroy capitalism and put an end to all its inequalities. Only then, under the leadership of our revolutionary communist party, will workers be able to liberate ourselves: we will abolish racism and sexism, we will abolish wages, and work according to need and commitment. We will build a society that serves the interests of the working class. .
Communist comrades of PLP: Our challenge is great but not impossible. The struggle for communism is at a crossroads. The fight against capitalism/imperialism is a fight to the death. Let’s choose to fight back—and win. We are committed to that fight. The struggle is for liberation of our class, for well-being, for life. Let us join forces and engage in the fight!
Long live communism! Long live the PLP!
The COVID-19 crisis has unmasked the inability of capitalism to ensure the health, work, well-being, and life of the working class. This system serves bosses’ profits, not workers, as evidenced by the following figures:
While big capitalists in Mexico increased their wealth by an average of 20 percent during the pandemic (Forbes, 4/6), 12 million people were left jobless and an estimated similar amount fell into poverty (Expansion, 2/28). As Morena-PT liberals and PRI-PAN-PRD conservatives blame each other, COVID-19-associated deaths through February reached 316,000 (Mexico Excess Mortality Report, 3/15).
Health authorities have presented population confinement as the most effective measure to control the pandemic, but they hide its class nature. Because the most unprotected sector of the working class live day by day, they can't stay at home and have to expose themselves to find a way to survive, resulting in increased contagion and deaths in the most marginalized areas of large cities. Industrial zones have not stopped regardless of the lives of the workers.
The confinement measures were used by the current liberal government of López Obrador, to strengthen the demobilization of social protest, the advancement of its social programs of electoral co-optation and the deployment of the armed forces disguised as the National Guard. All this helps continue the capitalists’ megaprojects of the Interocean Corridor, the Maya Train, the New International Airport of Mexico City, the Integral Morelos Project (PIM) and the Dos Bocas Refinery.
AMLO's liberal government, with its pro-worker mask, has also attacked labor rights. As is the case of the dissenting teachers’ faction of the CNTE, who demand that this government comply with the cancellation of the Capitalist Educational Reform and the fascist ISSSTE Act. It denies fair payment to pensioners and retirees through an administrative trap that calculates their payment using the Update Unit of Measure (UMA) and not the minimum wage as required by the constitution. In that conversion workers lose almost half their wages; UMA is worth $4.48 and the minimum wage is $7.08.
So, this May Day workers will mobilize to stop this action plan to attack the policy of the capitalist liberal state.
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the bosses will seek to drag us into their electoral circus, heralded as the largest in history at a cost of 694 million pesos, which could be better spent to slow the pandemic. But for capitalists, it is essential that workers see the thm as the only alternative and choose one of them as our savior. In fact, they cynically use vaccinations to build support for the ruling Morena party.
In areas under the control of organized crime, which according to the U.S. northern command estimates is between 30 percent and 35 percent of the national territory, organized crime in contention with the economic and political elites will decide who will participate in the elections and eventually rule. To date, there have been 252 assaults on politicians and 65 murders. (El Universal 4/27).
PLP members support the struggle of each sector of workers to fight for their immediate interests, making it clear that the real and definitive solution for the working class is the revolutionary unity used to destroy the lethal virus called capitalism. This will be done through a conscious and participatory process that leads to the building of communism, a society without oppressors, exploiters, bosses or liberal governments disguised as progressive.
For a revolutionary communist May Day!
