IWWD in Tel-Aviv: smash Sexist, racist deportations

TEL AVIV, March 9—“Residents and refugees refuse to be enemies!” “No to deportation, yes to rehabilitation!” These were among the chants of 700 multiracial women and men workers who marched through southern Tel-Aviv on International Working Women’s Day. They demanded an end to the racist, sexist deportations of 40,000 African workers seeking Israeli asylum.
The marchers came from a multitude of organizations, from liberals to phony lefists to the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. The women-worker-led, multiracial character of the demonstration showed the Israeli government that the workers who actually live in southern Tel-Aviv do not buy the government’s lies. The workers here welcome the asylum seekers as neighbors, friends, and comrades, contrary to what the bosses’ propaganda claims!

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Pakistan: Workers Fight Back, Bosses Tangled in Imperialist Rivalry

PAKISTAN—“PLP is an international revolutionary communist party that is fighting for international communist revolution” is a statement that attracts the attention of workers. They raise many questions to understand communism, the Party and revolution. Unfortunately, they have been misguided and dragged away from the path of revolutionary struggle by misleaders, kept away from unionism and working class politics by the bosses and deprived of meeting their needs by the ruling class. Despite of all these tactics of capitalist rulers, workers are curious about an international communist revolution.
Whenever PL’ers bring communist analysis of society to a meeting, strike or rally, workers, peasants, and students express interest in changing this capitalist system.

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Fight segregation in bilingual education

WASHINGTON, DC—A passerby at 8 in the morning might see a multiracial groups of students enter a public school building. But inside school, segregation dominates, as most of the Black and Latin children (and many low-income working class whites) end up in a lower ‘track’ with less access to enrichment resources. I am engaged in a struggle around bilingual education that, in its own way, is promoting segregation by race, class, and ethnicity.

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The December protests: class struggle in Iran

This past December, a rebellion began in Iran that exposed the myth of a passive working class- like the rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore. Iran, like the U.S., Russia, China and every capitalist country in the world, is a class-divided society with exploited workers and oppressed minority populations on the one hand, and exploiters who use religion to enslave on the other.
Back in 2009, there was a “Green Movement” in Iran with demonstrations numbering up to three million workers. This anti-government movement was manipulated by the U.S. and European Union to overthrow then-President Ahmadinejad. The Green Movement’s leadership was made up of politicians and local capitalists clamoring for U.S. investments.

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Fascism U.S. style: radiation experiments on workers and youth

Hitler would have been proud of how U.S. rulers conducted a series of human radiation experiments on thousands of U.S. citizens during and after World War II. Author Eileen Welsome’s book The Plutonium Files takes its name from one experiment involving the injection of plutonium on 18 patients from 1945 to 1947. Almost all were given 5 micrograms  (two with 94 micrograms) when the “tolerance dose” of plutonium was listed as 1 microgram. (All quotes  are from Welsome’s book.)
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) supervised a “vast network of national laboratories, universities and hospitals that would investigate every imaginable effect of radiation.”

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A terrorist system cannot stop individual terrorists

U.S. bosses’ hypocrisy has been front and center since the February 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which a student murdered 17 of his former classmates and staff members with an assault weapon. This open act of terrorism has further identified splits within the ruling class, as Democrats and Republicans make a show of battling over gun control on a national stage.
Neither demands for gun control—nor, on the other side, for proposals to arm teachers—will save working-class lives. The liberal bosses’ calls for perceived safety and control (read: trust the capitalist state, consent to fascism) will never protect the working class—only we can break our own chains. Progressive Labor Party counts on you to join us and build a mass movement against the capitalist rulers’ imperialism, by far the biggest killer of working class lives.  

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Lerone Bennett, Jr., 1928-2018 A lifetime of anti-racist myth-busting

Against the deliberate evasion and enshrouding of the truth, Lerone Bennett, Jr. was among the first scholars to survey Black history and lay bare the roots of racism. This Black historian and longtime editor of Ebony magazine spent a lifetime fighting the racist rewrite of history. In his landmark The Shaping of Black America, he wrote:

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Origins of International Working Women’s Day

March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day all over the world. Many people are unaware of the working class origins of this day.
The Second International was the international organization of the socialist movement. Before the First World War, this movement contained some progressive elements. In 1910 the Second Women’s Conference of the Second International established International Women’s Day. Clara Zetkin, who later became a communist leader in Germany, proposed the following resolution:

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With Student & Parent solidarity, Teachers STRIKE, Defy BOSSES

WEST VIRGINIA, March 7—33,000 education workers shut down schools in a two-week strike, shaking the entire state, and inspiring workers nationwide to gear up for a similar fight.
In a period when strikes are at a historic low, and class anger has been steered towards the bosses’ Democratic Party or participating in passive marches, the education workers in West Virginia flexed their workers’ power and set an example for their 270,00 students.
This mainly-women workers’ rebellion have not only combatted the state politicians and defied their laws (striking and collective bargaining is illegal in the state), but they have also defied their union misleaders who tried to put a quick end to the strike.

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Black Panther reinforces Black capitalism

No matter how “woke” a film seems, we can’t rely on the cesspool known as Hollywood to be a voice of freedom. Hollywood, controlled by the ruling class, re-writes history, generates racist and sexist stereotypes to shape mass ideas, and broadcasts ideology that supports U.S. imperialism.
Black Panther—which has already grossed $909.8+ million—is no exception.
Protagonist King T’Challa rules the fictional African country Wakanda. It poses as poor but it’s the wealthiest and most technologically advanced society in the world—with an isolationist policy. Wakanda possesses the most valuable resource, vibranium.
T’Challa’s leadership is tested against the U.S. Black villain Erik Killmonger, who starts off as a bitter antiracist and is determined to replace Western imperialism with his own.
Many antiracists are drawn to this depiction of Black empowerment. After decades of endless racist depictions of the continent of Africa and Black workers in general, finally a movie that shows Black actors at the center of their own narrative. However, representation is not power for the working class.

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