Letters of August 5
Thursday, July 23, 2020 at 1:33PM
Challenge_DesafĂ­o

One club’s efforts to organize during pandemic
The time spent confined due to the pandemic has been a time of action that started since the beginning of quarantine.  Our club has been very active having virtual meetings and group studies with friends.  We have also been participating in the meetings and activities organized by the community organization, where we are building our base.  We have been a part of their campaigns to cancel rents; close the immigration jails, where our sisters and brothers are being exposed and dying of Covid-19; and approve a package for more than three billion dollars from the state government for people who have been excluded from federal aid.  We have distributed many issues of CHALLENGE especially during the last two protests and we have always expounded our Party line.
In those struggles for reforms, we have militantly participated, providing leadership with our chants and with our newspaper, CHALLENGE, in which it explains to people that the only way is communist revolution, which will lead the workers to power.
I have been very excited to participate with my comrades from our club.  Guided by our leader and other comrades, especially a friend from another club, who is a school teacher and has set up the Zoom meetings and participated in all of them.  We have been witnesses and a part of these important days that we have lived for the development of our communist ideology.  That is why at every march, in every protest and in every struggle, we have brought our line.
We should continue to be a part of this movement that prepares us for the Great Battle for the defeat of capitalism and imperialism, where we will be, in the front line of combat.
Communism is the salvation and the future of humanity.  Join our struggle.
*****
The tide of rising fascism
 The struggle against racist police terror continues to provide us with the responsibility to explain fascism and expose the liberal politicians’ role in developing fascism.
 Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) called the NYPD's response to the current wave of protests "shocking and unprecedented.” "I don't think in 50  years we had the level of protest we've seen in New York City and we certainly have not seen the level of police violence directed at protesters."
 Like all liberal misleaders, Mayor Bill de Blasio has backed the NYPD terrorists including "kettling" demonstrators who posed no threat whatever! Commissioner Dermot Shea, however, has decried the few reforms de Blasio has been forced to sign including a ban on chokeholds like the one that murdered Eric Garner in 2014. The mayor has made no response to Shea's criticisms implying that the cops can continue their brutal, deadly “business as usual" to intimidate multiracial protesters.
 The most obvious turning of the fascist screw has been Trump’s stormtroopers. In Portland, Oregon, the Homeland Security goons in unmarked cars teargassed and arrested antiracist protesters. The President has threatened to do this to the Chicago working class as well. We must mobilize more widely and sharper than ever against this expanded fascist attack!
 Another facet of fascist oppression is this oncoming tsunami of racist evictions nationwide. Clearly the police are part of the bosses' arsenal to enforce brutal, mass homelessness caused by the capitalist depression deepening by the week.
 Our PL club is reaching out to all of our members and friends to prepare to mobilize fightback wherever there is a threat of eviction. Two tenant actions have already challenged housing courts in Brooklyn and the Bronx. We must join them.
 Our organizing outreach is finding more of our base than in years open to the Party's analysis and considering JOINING! This is the real victory!
CHALLENGE responds: This forward thinking is very much needed in the coming period. While Small Fascist Trump may be the most obvious, the analysis here is incomplete. While it is difficult to swim against the current, communists must warn of war and fascism led by the liberals. The ruling class is divided. The Big Fascists—the main wing finance capitalists—are committed to U.S. dominance for the world’s resources and the world land war such dominance will require. Meanwhile, the domestic-oriented Small Fascists, who Trump represents, have little interest in making the sacrifices such a war will require. While Trump’s stormtroopers pose an immediate danger in this period; the liberal rulers, who are posing as the savior and alternative to this rotten system, are the principal danger. We must attack the liberals in the same breath as everyone attacks Trump. If we fail to do so, the working class will be hit hard by the high tide of fascism.
*****
An international Class Perspective on Tulsa
The 7/22 CHALLENGE article on the Tulsa Massacre lacked an international class perspective and viewed it as another domestic racist U.S. tragedy. The article does not mention the role of European radical immigrant workers, or the massive U.S. strike wave and Red Scare that triggered the U.S. government’s racist terror. Only the anarchists, anti-communist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Socialist Party, which sought an alliance with capitalism, are credited with any struggle against the capitalist bosses.
An international class perspective would reveal that in 1917 Russian workers made the first communist revolution and the U.S. entered imperialist World War I against Germany. In 1918 US troops were sent to put down the Russian workers’ revolution, which was part of a worldwide revolution against the capitalist world. In 1919 the U.S. Communist Party and the Communist International in the Soviet Union were formed. In the same year, the eight-hour working day was won in the U.S. where a massive strike wave swept the country triggering a Red Scare. In 1920 the U.S. Palmer Raids deported tens of thousands of immigrant workers who were radicalized in European class struggles and were accused of worker unity and union organizing. The 1921 Tulsa massacre was very probably capitalist organized racist terror to split white and Black workers (many WWI vets) and break the Red Scare strike wave.
Today’s antiracist movement should not be viewed as a U.S. racist terror struggle alone. It should be viewed but as part of an international class struggle against the worldwide system that oppresses all workers not only with racism but sexism, inequality and endless wars. Black-white unity today in the U.S. with support of this movement by millions of workers in most countries worldwide testifies to its class nature.
*****

Article originally appeared on The Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party (http://www.plparchive.org/).
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