Study Group Exposes Sanders

BROOKLYN, January 8—Teachers and their friends had a delicious dinner and an even more scintillating conversation about possible presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the current elections. This teacher discussion group was focused on the how elections are used by capitalism. We began by discussing how things were going in each other’s schools, getting to know one another, and introducing ourselves. This was the second time for most that they were all meeting, but there were some new people for the first time. We all watched a video on Trump from The Guardian and read CHALLENGE’s July 2015 editorial that discussed Sanders in depth.

Click to read more ...

Workers at Community College Fights Racism

BOSTON—Black, Latin and immigrant students from working class families at a small urban community college in Boston are experiencing sharpening racist attack. The U.S. capitalists’ imperialist war machine is taking money away from workers’ education now, and soon it will try to take their lives in the coming imperialist wars. Community colleges, with their disproportionate percentage of Black, Latin and immigrant workers, are on the front line of these imperialist cuts!

Click to read more ...

MLA Conference: PL’ers to Spur Class Struggle in Academia

Members and friends of PLP in the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association (MLA) will be doing important political work at the annual MLA convention in Austin, TX on January 6-10,2016. Brutal budget cuts, involuntary “furloughs,” rapidly rising tuition, threats to academic freedom, increasing pauperization of non-tenure track faculty: these are the consequences of cutbacks and escalating Middle East wars.
The annual convention of the MLA, the professional organization of teachers of language and literature, brings together over 8,000 professors, graduate students and adjuncts—most seriously affected by the current crisis. Many tenured professors face stagnant incomes or pay cuts and threatened or actual closings of humanities departments.

Click to read more ...

U.S. Bosses Under Siege

Three recent events exposed the current crisis of U.S. capitalism. On December 19, the Chinese capitalist bosses accused the U.S. of a “serious military provocation” a week after a U.S. Sir Force B-52 bomber—capable of carrying long-range nuclear weapons—few within two miles of a disputed artificial island built by China in the South China Sea.
On December 21, in Afghanistan, a geopolitical linchpin for both the U.S. and Russia, six U.S. troops serving with NATO were killed by a suicide bomber in the Bagram district—an area made infamous by the torture and murders committed by U.S. military personnel at the district prison.

Click to read more ...

2015: Year of Advancing Communism, More Struggle Ahead

We are marching in a compact group along a steep and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have…chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh!...[L]et go of our hands…[F]or we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!
— Vladimir Lenin, What Is To Be Done?

In 1901, when Lenin wrote these words, the Bolsheviks were a small communist party struggling to earn the leadership of the Russian working class. Revolution seemed a long way off. But between 1905 and 1914, a massive strike wave in Russia was followed by a ruling-class crackdown and then a global, inter-imperialist conflict: World War I.  By 1917, these upheavals had set the stage for the world’s first successful communist revolution.  The revolution couldn’t happen until conditions matured—but at the same time, the Bolsheviks had to be ready.

Click to read more ...

Chicago Students, Teachers Fight Back With Multiracial Unity

CHICAGO, December 15—Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with a 96 percent “yes” vote. For several months, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have threatened a racist layoff of 20 percent of a workforce that serves mainly working-class Black, Latin and immigrant students. If the Illinois General Assembly fails to approve $500 million in funding by the end of January, and the layoffs are enforced, a strike is a strong possibility.
Members and friends of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are in the thick of organizing and fighting with multiracial unity against these racist cutbacks.

Click to read more ...

Worker-Student Alliance at LaGuardia Leads by Example

QUEENS, NY, December 9 — A picket line at LaGuardia Community College united professors, staff, campus workers and students to overcome a climate of fear and speak out. Members of Progressive Labor Party helped organize this alliance to expose the racist disinvestment in public education. The chant, “Students, faculty, staff unite. Same struggle, same fight!” fired up over 100 protesters who made time on the last day of classes to join the struggle.

Click to read more ...

Need Leadership of Undocumented Workers

NEW YORK CITY, December 17 —“Capitalism is war. We have to educate the masses about [it], so they see how it’s all connected,” one worker stated.
Another said, “Bosses I’ve worked for keep saying, ‘I’ll pay you next week, there’s no money right now.’ This guy right here is owed $2,000. We even know where the boss lives. We have to raise the consciousness of the workers.”
In response to the intensifying anti-immigrant racism inspired by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and others, PL’ers went to a local intersection to befriend mainly Latin undocumented workers and distribute CHALLENGEs in its Spanish-language edition, DESAFIO.

Click to read more ...

Street Talks Reveal Protesters’ Revolutionary Side

CHICAGO, December 6 — I went downtown to the shopping district to join a march against the racist cop murder of 17 year-old Laquan McDonald and the racist cover-up by the politicians running the city. It was advertised on the evening news the day before, so it was probably being used to lead angry working class people back into the fold of pacifism and politics as usual.

Click to read more ...

Israeli Gas Deal Pumps Racism, Nationalism

TEL AVIV-JAFFA, November 28 — Thousands of people protested against the “great gas robbery,” a government plan to grant control of the second largest natural gas field in the Mediterranean to a handful of capitalists and exempt them from taxes or regulations.

Click to read more ...