Camacho’s legacy will live on
The Delano giant is gone. It is with deep sorrow in my heart that I received the news that one of the Farmworker Leaders from Delano, California died yesterday. Epifanio Camacho dedicated his life to fighting against the injustices of the ranchers to the undocumented farm workers. His non-pacifist struggle found an echo in the immigrants who suffered beatings and mistreatment at the hands of the police and immigration. Such was the importance of this charismatic fighter that his home became known as "The Sanctuary of Immigrants.”
Camacho will never die because his legacy will live on forever. There is not enough space to write about the fights he led, the attacks he received and his fascinating life. That is why I only say that from the lands of Sandino, we say goodbye to you with great respect, admiration, deep affection and sadness.
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Solidarity needed to smash the sexism
One of the most important issues today is a woman’s right to an abortion.In June, the Supreme Court made abortion in the U.S. illegal unless allowed by state law. This decision threw out the 50 year old Roe vs. Wade decision making abortions legal throughout the U.S. Before and since this change in federal law thousands of women and men have been protesting this anti-working class decision.
On Saturday, July 2 a friend and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) attended a Women’s Pro-Choice rally in Easton, Pennsylvania. People were demanding the right  to an abortion for women and equal rights for women and men.
We thought less than a hundred people would show up. We were very happy when we saw almost 500 very angry and determined women and men fill the street. Next was a march through the center of Easton ending at another rally. Here several women provided strong leadership. Each spoke loud and sharply. They said that for women’s rights and gender equality we must reject the Democratic Party and build an alternative movement.
This rally was the first for our friend. He found this event incredibly eye opening. The rally, to him, was a clear demonstration of the power we wield as a single concentrated movement. It is the exact kind of solidarity that we need to smash the racist, sexist capitalist system forced on us everyday.
Here’s where PLP enters the scene. We are the best, only real, alternative to capitalism because we organize and fight for communist revolution. The working class can and will win and build a society based on total equality or egalitarianism.
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East Africa: Comrades say only PLP can lead the way
On International Workers Day, while the government carried out its customary brainwashing rallies, we organized a discussion among teachers and students about why workers celebrate May Day and the way forward for building our movement. Our slogan was “Fighting together we can unite the workers of the world, smash borders, and build one world.” A teacher made a presentation about why workers celebrate May Day. Our discussion focused on the failure of the government to represent our interests and the betrayal of the trade union leaders to lead the working class to fight back against their bosses’ false promises. Here, the unions that represent government workers, like teachers, are formed by the government itself. Government agents operate inside them to keep the unions focused on their own narrow self-interests, so they don’t unite with other workers. Also, they offer different wage increases to workers as a weapon to divide and weaken the class struggle. We discussed our way forward—meeting and introducing our ideas to friends in various workplaces. One participant asked when our movement will take over, a question that comes up often in our discussions. It shows that most people here like the idea of communism, but they need the science of dialectical materialism and the Progressive Labor Party to know how to make it a reality.
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Haiti: analyzing news with a communist lens
On May 20, the New York Times began a major series on Haiti in an effort to explain why the masses of workers within Haiti  are facing such a dire situation. The “exposé” was a revelation to many. It detailed the roots of the poverty that most Haitians have been facing for over two centuries. Our PLP club studied and discussed the articles and wanted to try to figure out why the New York Times, the mouthpiece for the Big Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class, went to such lengths to put this information—damning both French and U.S. imperialism—out there.
Here is a brief summary of the Times article:
Haiti ended slavery and won independence from France in a bloody battle from 1791-1804. For about 20 years, the new Haitian ruling class, made up of mixed race landowners and Black former military leaders, tried to restore the economy (the richest slave colony producing sugar, coffee, cotton and more) by forcing the former slaves back onto the plantations.
In 1825, the former French slave masters demanded reparations for their lost property—human and otherwise. The French government backed their claims by sending a flotilla of warships into the harbor of Port-au-Prince. The message was clear: “Pay up or be conquered again!” The Haitian bourgeoisie could not fight or pay the ransom—the first time the winners had to pay the losers!—estimated by the Times at $560 million in today’s dollars. But the French had a solution: French banks would “loan” the Haitian government the money to pay this now “double debt,” taking their cut off the top. Of course, the Haitian ruling class was not saddled with this debt: it was paid completely on the backs of the rural Haitian workers who paid taxes on every pound of agricultural goods that came from their labor.
Then in 1915, under the guise of protecting U.S. citizens and their financial interests in Haiti, the Marines invaded, led by Smedley Butler, the self-proclaimed “racketeer for imperialism.” They marched directly into the Haitian national bank and marched out with $500,000 worth of gold bullion, which they put on a ship that moved it directly to the coffers of National City Bank (now Citibank) in New York City. The Marines then began a brutal 19-year occupation of Haiti, making it safe for U.S. financial interests and charging the cost of the occupation to the Haitian government.
The Times ended by asking: what could Haiti have been like today if as much as $120 billion dollars had not been stolen by French and U.S. business interests?
Our club wondered why the Times would publish, in such detail, the inner workings of capitalism and imperialism. How did this serve the interests of the U.S. ruling class (which committed similar crimes around the world, to make the history of Haiti pale in comparison)? Some thought that it was an attempt to win over Black workers and the middle class to the side of the Big Fascists in preparation for the next great imperialist war. Essentially, “See, we did bad things in the past—like an invasion and mass murder and even organizing a coup against a Haitian president (twice), but we can own up to them and now you can trust us.”
Others thought that there were greater geopolitical interests at play. The articles appeared on the eve of the so-called Summit of the Americas, where the U.S. was being rebuffed by many of its “allies” in the hemisphere. They thought that the articles were a nod to the global south (Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia) where China, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist rivals, are making huge inroads in investments and military cooperation.
If you have read these articles, please let us know how you analyze the Times’ and the ruling class’ motives in making this information public.