Letters of July 6

Fired for being a good teacher
This letter is to support a fellow comrade. A wonderful, bilingual, antiracist, high school teacher who has just been fired, not for doing his job poorly, but for doing his job extremely well!
The conditions that he teaches in are deplorable, racist and dangerous - made even worse since Covid-19.
• The school is severely understaffed.
Since September his rosters have changed like a revolving door, making consistency difficult, but he worked to create continuity by making home visits to make sure his students were OK.
During the pandemic, this caring communist teacher - a resident of Newark, and an immigrant, ORGANIZED his co-workers to:
• Collect and deliver food to students and their families, helping the school community to be more cohesive.
• Raised thousands of dollars for some families so that they could pay rent.
• Went to the airport to get the siblings of students who had been released from deadly detention centers.
• Regularly worked with a social worker to try to figure out how to help his students
He also volunteered after school for “the Big Blue Student Academy” which consists of 95 percent Black male youth who have been removed from their classes. This was important for him to find a way to learn from, and to build ties with these students who legitimately were angry.
• He organized an Amnesty International club so students could learn about imperialist war and racist borders, and that it’s never OK to kill our working-class brothers and sisters for the bosses.
He always had good evaluations, until the racist administration said this teacher did something they ruled as very dangerous. What was this dangerous thing? He REFUSED to allow students to be forced to remain outside in freezing temperatures waiting for the guards to show up. This communist teacher ushered his students into his classroom so they wouldn’t get sick. For this they put a letter in his file, and the district has now deemed this teacher as UNSATISFACTORY and he cannot be hired back into any school in the district.
PL’ers, coworkers and parents of this teacher’s students have been organizing to fight to get his job back – the working class needs him in the classroom; because as we move towards war and fascism these schools will turn into a larger fascist monster. Some students will be forced into the killing fields, while others, both immigrant and “citizen,” get swallowed up in the growing industrial prison complex feeding the same imperialist war machine.
Our number one job is to continue to follow the courageous example of this communist teacher:  Apply the ideas in CHALLENGE, use it to organize and STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK! Update: the teacher got his job back! Read all about it in the next issue!
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In fight vs racist shootings, demand multiracial fightback
Recently, two of us participated in the rally against mass gun killings at the courthouse in Hackensack, N.J.  The very positive aspect was that it was organized by a thoroughly multiracial group of students from several high schools in Bergen County. Many of them spoke about the fear most students and their loved ones have in the wake of the Uvalde, Parkland, and too many other massacres. They each called for action!  Sadly, the event was poorly attended by primarily white supporters. We are trying to meet with the leaders of this movement to encourage wide outreach to Black and Latin communities in the county. Recently , most of the victims of these vicious assaults have been Latin and Black.
Of course, our main task is to sharpen our efforts to explain to our expanding base that such depraved, racist assaults are caused by a decaying, murderous capitalist system.  Capitalism can be ended only when the working class takes the guns and turns them around to seize power. We can then build a communist society that stamps out all racist terror.
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Working-class liberation, not rainbow capitalism
I am finishing up my second year as a club advisor for my high school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA). Initially I took on the role because a friend left who had been doing the job and it was a vibrant club with lots of student participation. I was also concerned about at-risk LGBTQ+ youth who relied on the club for support.
In my time as advisor I have been able to have regular meetings with up to 30 students, hold events in the cafeteria that involved the whole student body, and organize student-led meetings that tackle issues such as sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
The club has helped me to develop deeper relationships with many students and introduce more of them to CHALLENGE newspapers. We have also created a club that promotes multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-gender unity with bilingual meetings.
It can be difficult walking the line between being supportive of students and not encouraging identity politics. However, the fight for unity and struggle with some student leaders over the need for unity have helped to bring out pro-student, pro-working class politics.
Since there are many activities in June for pride month, it has been particularly busy lately. While there are many LGBTQ identity-based flags that students embrace, I took the opportunity when putting up flags to include the Red Flag. This led to several good conversations when students asked what the flag represents. My response was “communism and working-class unity.”
I am looking forward to further discussions with students about how we, the working class, can make things better by building a communist movement.
*****
Chats at the rail: guns, laws, free speech all protected by capitalism
I’m a transit worker, and in light of the recent mass shootings, I’ve been having many discussions with my coworkers about their ideas and possible solutions.
In a group of four during our lunch one worker said,“We should just have armed guards at every school.”
 I said, “What’s gonna stop them from using the guns on the students? There’s already cases of unarmed security guards using  excessive force now.”
Another coworker, Dave, agreed by adding a case he read of where that happened. Another worker, Sam, said “It started with that shooter in Columbine, that started the ideology of shooting kids in schools.”
I mentioned that it’s the ideologies of hate that existed before him that he acted upon. We left and headed to clock out before we could finish. Next day during lunch, I continued the conversation with Sam.
 I told him,“This conversation about gun laws or armed guards is like treating the cough instead of the virus. It’s capitalism that needs racism and sexism, and women and Black, Latin and Asian workers seem to be the main targets of these shootings. Then in order to protect these ideas of murder in the media they call it ‘free speech.”
Sam, who is also an ex-marine, said “We have to have free speech cause if we don’t then the country could slip into a totalitarian state.”
I told him there are many examples of countries who have been able to make racism and prostitution illegal successfully and that not making racism legal wasn’t a factor in their downfall, for example, the Soviet Union and China.” We agreed to continue this conversation later after giving it some thought.
I’m finding many of my coworkers siding with protecting “freedom of speech.” This will be my focus in future discussions, on how we can have freedom of speech but not if it hurts the working class.
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The solution to capitalist gun violence
U.S. capitalism is the greatest producer and exporter of worldwide, racist terror and violence in history. It has been at war for 95 percent of its existence, committing genocide and slavery against Native American and African people while conducting colonial and imperialist wars. It has produced and exported guns, weapons, troops and drone strikes to protect stolen profits throughout its Empire of occupations with presently 800 military bases in over 100 countries.
Currently over 100 million refugees fleeing the mass destruction and slaughter from 60 U.S. wars since WWII are being subjected to racist harassment and accusations of terrorism from capitalist owned media. Recent U.S. racist massacres at an all Black shopping center in Buffalo, NY and at an all Latin school in Uvalde, Texas just this week are being blamed on the mentally ill but they are really the consequence of capitalism’s culture of violence to prepare their youth for war and profits. The same culture of violence is responsible for the millions, including veterans, who are homeless, living on the streets, or the 31 million without healthcare or the unemployed.
Capitalists are the real mentally ill. They have lost their humanity and have become sociopaths who rationalize that they are not responsible for their countries’ imperialist slaughters or numerous domestic rebellions opposing capitalist exploitation and violence against workers. These workers produce the very profits capitalist existence depends on and they also fight in capitalist wars against other workers. Democrats and Republicans pose as the people’s political voice, but both give 95 percent support for all war-funding legislation proposed by their capitalist masters.
The international working class can produce a prosperous living for our entire worldwide class without violence if we recognize the need to organize to end this capitalist system of inequality which uses violence for profits. Only an antiracist, antisexist, borderless culture achieved through communist revolution advocated by the Progressive Labor Party can accomplish that. It will be based on need, equality and a collective system that needs everyone and develops individual self-esteem, confidence in the collective and working class, respect for the needs of others and the satisfaction of being able to contribute our own innovations to help others and create a better world. Join us!

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