Fight Displacement of Working Class Families

NEW YORK CIY, October 11—A local rally denounced the racist displacement of working-class families.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are active in a community organization that is confronting evictions and dislocation. Members of the community organization were frustrated and angry. A community coalition led by evangelical pastors organized a march supposedly against gentrification. In reality the purpose of the march was to win the community to religion and to their churches. They actually discouraged any kind of fightback, as a sound truck blared out religious music and people distributed church cards.
They boldly chanted, “Tenants, yes. Evictions, no,” and distributed 800 flyers calling on tenants to fight back. The contradiction was obvious to all. The working class in the area grabbed the PLP flyers, saying, “This is what we need.”
The financial system and the real estate industry, which are directly tied to the New York City government, are attacking working-class neighborhoods across the city. The result is dislocation of largely Black and Latin tenants from the South Bronx, Harlem, East New York, Bushwick and elsewhere.
two PLP comrades distributed 160 copies of the revolutionary communist newspaper, CHALLENGE. Some of the Party’s friends told a comrade that the “real political march” they had gone to was PLP’s May Day march last spring. When the pastors stopped at the local precinct to pray for the police a comrade shouted, “We should be fighting police violence and supporting the families of the two black men killed by police in Oklahoma and North Carolina.” People cheered.
The rulers’ strategy, based on profiteering and racism, is to build “mixed income neighborhoods” where working-class families are reduced to 10 percent low income, 30 percent medium income and the rest high income. In some new rezoned buildings the minimum income to even apply for a new apartment is $48,000 a year, even though more than 30 percent of the current residents earn $25,000 and less.
The rulers want to break up long-term Black and Latin neighborhoods to divide the working class. They pack in three or four mainly white students into small “renovated” apartments, while middle income families end up paying huge rents between $2,500 and $3,500 a month. We need to unite and fight back!
A World without Landlords
PLP members are committed to continue our work in the community organization. We are exposing capitalism, racism and calling for sharper struggle. We expose the dead end of reform struggle led by the politicians. We call for an egalitarian communist society where the working class will organize housing for our class; no landlords! As we get to know people we are building our PLP study group and expanding readers and networks of CHALLENGE distributors, who also give donations to support our paper. The working class is open to the ideas in CHALLENGE and slowly and steadily we are building a solid group of friends and supporters. Our friends have many questions about the successes and failures of the old communist movement. As the capitalist ruling class is trying to bury us in racism, sexism and anti-communism, PLP is boldly answering workers’ questions and raising working class consciousness as we fight back. Our Party has confidence in the working class because our class is smart and strong. What we do now counts on the long road to communist revolution and workers’ liberation.