Colombia: elections only resolve fights among bosses

COLOMBIA, June 13—The Colombian ruling class finds itself in the middle of a historic election campaign between former member of leftwing rebel group and mayor of Bogota Gustavo Petro against Ivan Duque. Duque is “handpicked by ex-President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, a towering figure among the country’s conservatives for his staunch opposition to the peace deal signed between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group” (The Nation, 4/18).
Colombia, the U.S.’s closest strategic ally in Latin America, is dealing with a fractured ruling class that risks upending the peace deal. Volatility in Colombia means uncertainty for imperialist rivals U.S., Russia, and China.

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Santa Monica police racist to the core

SANTA MONICA, CA— The Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD) is racist to the core.
It was April 21, 2015. Justin Palmer, 36-year-old, tried to use the electric car charging station in Virginia Avenue Park in Santa Monica, California, to have power to drive to work the next day. It was well before 11 PM, the closing time for the park. He waited his turn and when he pulled up to the station, it was slightly after 11 PM. A cop car arrived and told Palmer the park was closed. When he explained he had arrived before 11 PM and had to wait, the cops asked for identification. When he asked what he had done wrong, the father of four was thrown to the ground and handcuffed, and pepper sprayed in the face. Palmer suffered lingering back and shoulder injuries.

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Capitalism’s profit drive destroys transit

New York City, the wealth capital in the most powerful country, has the worst subway system in the world. Chronic breakdowns and track signal problems have caused the on-time train rate to plummet to 65 percent (NYT 11/18/2017).
Governor Andrew Cuomo said the MTA “estimates it will cost $43 billion and take about 15 years to turn around New York City’s struggling subway and bus systems…That comes in addition to the approximately $50 billion in capital improvements the systems are likely to need over the next 15 years (Wall street Journal, 5/23). As the politicians and capitalists hash out an MTA plan this week, we look at the racist profit motives of the subways.
MTA is an example of how the profit drive destroys even the useful things under capitalism. Infrastructure like the subway system is only built, maintained, and renewed when the bosses need it for profits or to fight their wars. The MTA, which is not profitable to run except to the banks, historically has been minimally maintained leading to succeeding crisis. Only a communist society will build an infrastructure system to serve the needs of the working class worldwide.

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Capitalist culture lethal for youth

On May 18, eight students and two teachers were shot and killed at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas. Coming on the heels of the February murder of 17 people at a Florida high school, the latest massacre reflects a horrifying trend. Since 2000, more people have been killed or wounded in mass school shootings in the U.S. than in the entire 20th century (Science Daily, 4/18). In 2018, the shooting death toll in U.S. schools is higher than in the U.S. military (Washington Post, 5/18). As families and friends mourn the loss of young lives, it is time to hold accountable the rotting U.S. capitalist system that drives teenagers to become murderers.

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Iran deal exit U.S. splintered & exposed to Russia, China gains

The rivalry between top imperialists keeps getting sharper. This intensifying struggle pressures all local ruling classes and leads various factions to more openly fight it out. One clear example is the May 9 move by U.S. President Donald Trump to dump the Iran nuclear deal and escalate economic sanctions against the struggling country. Trump’s move reflects competing strategies within the U.S. ruling class, which is split into two camps: the dominant multilateralist wing versus a more domestic-oriented, isolationist wing.
In recent years, going back to the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the multilateral imperialist U.S. strategy has been to keep control over Middle East oil by playing regional powers off against one another and limiting any one country’s influence. The Iran nuclear deal of 2015, in accord with Europe, Russia, and China, was designed  to keep Iran relatively stable by relieving economic sanctions.

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FIGHT MASS LAYOFFS IN TEXAS SCHOOLS

TEXAS, May 30—In the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), over 60 layoffs were recently announced. SAISD has 91 percent Latin and 75 percent “at risk” students. Teachers are targeted based on claims of low performance evaluations—including seven teachers in the district’s historically Black high school. A letter written by an SAISD assistant principal exposed how district bosses forced principals to create lists of teachers to target and then ordered them to give teachers poor evaluations to justify mass layoffs.

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Lessons from 9-day occupation at Howard University

WASHINGTON DC, May 29—As the semester ended at Howard University, students, triumphant from the nine-day occupation by 450 students of the administration building, headed for home. The students understand that they must remain vigilant and engaged to ensure accountability to the commitments made by the administration.
As one member of the student group Howard University Resist said, “We’ll all be here next year, and the administration building is in the same place, if things don’t go our way.”
With summer break here, we can begin to evaluate this past semester’s action in terms of its outcomes and strategies.

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Mexico: Working-class mothers study sexism, pledge to organize against capitalist violence

Mexico—To celebrate International Working Women’s Day, PLP attended a conference on violence against women. It took place at a kindergarten in an industrial area where Progressive Labor Party has done political work for three decades, and where we are well known as organizers. The school’s principal sent out the invitations after a woman was killed nearby.
She invited the mothers of school families to the conference, which focused on fighting sexism.  About 50 young mothers between the ages of 20 and 25 attended.

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Antiracists protest Israel’s virulent fascism in Gaza

NEW YORK CITY, May 18—Rivalries between imperialist powers are ravaging the workers of the Middle East. The United States, Russia, China and their junior partners like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel care nothing for working class lives as they compete for power and oil profits.
Today about 1,000 Arab, anti-Zionist Jewish , and other anti-racists demonstrated with militant chants in Times Square and then marched to the Israeli Consulate to protest the barbaric slaughter of Gazan demonstrators over the past month. Two days earlier about 300 members of Jewish Voices for Peace and other anti-racists marched in the rain to the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, who have said nothing to condemn the violence.

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Colombia May Day: down with capitalist dictatorship

Bogotá, COLOMBIA, May 1—We do not believe in capitalist democracy, we organize for communist revolution! One working class, one communist world, one Progressive Labor Party! Peace between social classes serves criminal bosses!
Revolutionary slogans resonated for more than four hours in Bogotá, Colombia where, once again, the International Workers’ Day, May Day, was commemorated.

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