Imperialist exploitation created border crisis

The following is a speech given during the Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) Summer Project at the  border.
Capitalism is a system that tries to prevent us, workers and students, from living fulfilling lives. Imperialism is a stage of capitalism, a system under which the capitalists move their money and power all over the world in order to control more of it. Imperialism, and particularly U.S. imperialism, has proven many times over that it cannot and will not provide for decent lives for the international working class. Racism, sexism, wars for profit, theft of the value of our labor, destroying the environment, and national borders—all are the product of capitalism.

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G20 Summit highlights U.S. split & decay

The recent G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, highlighted the escalating battle between two packs of U.S. bosses. The main wing U.S. finance capitalists were hit by both the domestic U.S. bosses, fronted by President Donald Trump, and by Russian capitalists led by President Vladimir Putin. In response, the big U.S. imperialists are trying to rally what’s left of their alliance in the European ruling class to counter expansionist moves by Russian and Chinese rulers.

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TEXAS PROJECT FIGHTS BORDERS, BUILDS COMMUNISTS

TEXAS, July 7—The Progressive Labor Party organized 50 workers and youth against capitalist borders during a summer project here. The focus of our fight was a call to unite against racist borders and anti-immigrant racism. We strengthened our commitment to multiracial unity of the working class and the struggle for communist revolution to destroy capitalism.
Every year, PLP and friends join to fight collectively in an area of focus—to connect struggles, grow our organization, and develop young leaders. Throughout the week, we demonstrated, volunteered, distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets, engaged in workshops and discussions and strengthened our relationships with each other.

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Fight racist borders like a communist!

CARRIZO SPRINGS, TX, July 3—“Smash racist deportation, working people have no nation!” This international chant resounded as multiracial and multigenerational contingent of Progressive Labor party (PLP) members marched in firm formation towards a newly opened concentration camp for children, a site only 12 miles away from the Crystal City concentration camp that held Japanese, German, and Italian families during World War II. They joined liberal organizers of the protest, who kicked the protest off in a pacifist fashion: mini banners, carrying gifts of bookmarks and teddy bears, all while urging protesters to decorate a fence a hundred yards from the entrance to this Carrizo Springs child detention facility.

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Letter: Student and teachers fight back to end racist random searches

The school board of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) just voted to end the racist “random search” policy that has been dehumanizing our youth since 1993. For 26 years, working class students of color were pulled out of class every day and faced intrusive searches that subjected them to the culture of criminalization that capitalism creates. Basic items would be confiscated such as markers, highlighters, white out and/or body spray. However, the LAUSD did not end this policy because of the annoyances it brought upon these students every day. They ended it because of pressure from anti-racist students, teachers, parents, and community members who fought against it for many years.

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Wayfair workers lead the way; reject liberal fascist bosses’ trap!

BOSTON, MA—Hundreds of workers at Wayfair Inc. walked out against their company’s sale of beds for an immigrant detention center that housed children at Carrizo Springs, Texas (the same detention center where the PLP held a summer project protest, page 1).Strikes and protests by workers against fascist detention centers can help build the movement to destroy capitalism. This fightback is a good example of what workers should do and we as a class must be wary of political misleadership that will not lead us to the only solution to destroying fascism: communist revolution.

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CUNY struggle builds student worker solidarity

“7K or strike” was the chant heard outside in the hallway after a group of CUNY (City University of New York) faculty walked out together after a heated union meeting on Thursday night . Numerous militant speakers rose to talk against tuition hikes, for improved wages for adjuncts(part timers), and for a strike. Part timers, who receive poverty wages and are the majority of the teaching staff tried to get a resolution passed that would delay the contract vote until the fall. While unsurprisingly, the union leadership of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) was able to squash that resolution, they got a taste of what an organized fightback  looks like. PLP members and friends are part of this 7K or Strike Campaign and have organized our students to sign solidarity statements with the adjuncts.

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Left forum: Build a mass multiracial party for communism

BROOKLYN, June 30—“What’s your strategy to organize the left in the United States?” asked a young man who was a part of the Yellow Vest movement in Paris as he approached our Progressive Labor Party table this weekend at the Left Forum. (The Left Forum is a NYC-based event that seeks to “bring progressive people together to share radical ideas for social change.”) Our international strategy is to build a base in the working class and focus on organizing a mass party with workers, students, and soldiers. Only a revolutionary communist party of millions can turn the coming imperialist world war into a war for communism, a society totally run by the working class.
So organizing a revolution for communism will take tens of millions of workers, students, and soldiers worldwide. And that will take a worldwide party of millions. Not an easy task. “Organizing the left” certainly won’t do it.  But it was useful to reach out; you never know when you might meet someone who will join the fight for communism.

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Zina Portnova, teenage communist hero

Capitalist history textbooks rarely tell us real working-class history. They especially don’t teach us about the countless working-class heroes. One such hero is Zinaida Portnova, or “Zina” for short, a Soviet teenager, Soviet partisan, and hero of the Soviet Union under leader Joseph Stalin.
She was known for killing over 100 Nazis by poison. She is said to have shot the Nazi detective who captured her. Zina was born on February 20, 1926 in the city of Leningrad in a working-class Belarusian family. Her father Martyn worked at the huge Kirov factory. She graduated from seventh grade in 1941, then left for her grandmother’s home in in the countryside.

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Book review: Beat back the white supremacists

In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew exposes the broad, coordinated nature of the U.S. gutter racist and fascist “white power” movement and its responsibility for many killings by so-called “lone wolves.” The white supremacist movement itself is a loose collection of many racist, nationalist and anti-communist groups from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to neo-Nazis to militias and is a part of how U.S. capitalism maintains control over the working class through racism.

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