Chicago PL: Culture is a Weapon

CHICAGO, October 3 — “This is what a communist society will look like!” remarked one comrade after observing our international and multi-generational, working-class gathering. The occasion was our city collective’s second annual October Revolution Celebration Dinner, hosted at a banquet hall on Chicago’s south side. More than fifty comrades and friends, hailing from Oakland, Guyana, Mexico and the Philippines, came together.

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“West Wednesdays” Build Fightback Against Kkkops

BALTIMORE, October 7—A multiracial group of more than 40 protesters rallied against racist police brutality in front of Central Booking in downtown Baltimore today. This was the 115th consecutive “West Wednesday” decrying the 2013 murder of Tyrone West by Baltimore cops after a routine traffic stop. One young activist, seasoned by the rebellion sparked by Freddie Gray’s murder here in April, gave a stirring speech about the need to organize against police terror.

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Tanzania: Crooked Candidates Bleed Workers Dry

With an election set for October 25, Tanzania is in the throes of electing its fifth president. The naked corruption of national politics shows how quickly the bosses can steal back whatever crumbs they’ve thrown at the working class. The working class of Tanzania could meet all of its needs—if it weren’t for capitalism.  
Since Tanzania’s multi-party system was established in 1992, the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, or “Party of the Revolution”), has stood openly for capitalism. The CCM descends from the incorrect line of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), whose platform called for “ujamaa,” or “African socialism.” For all these years, workers voted the CCM in, believing that their leadership would benefit the masses. But throughout the government, politicians have enriched themselves at the expense of the working class.
For decades, leaders from opposition parties appealed to the masses by exposing the corruption of CCM. Events leading up to this year’s election, however, show clearly that electoral politics and allying with the bosses is a lose-lose scenario for workers.

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Communism Will Avenge Ayotzinapa

MEXICO CITY, October 14—The liberal capitalist bosses and their capitalist-controlled media have been spreading their version of last year’s disappearance of the 43 activist students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, blaming the “incompetence” of the government of president Enrique Peña Nieto.
But this outrage is not about official incompetence or the brazen corruption of the “justice” institutions. The lack of punishment for the guilty in Ayotzinapa is evidence of the rise of fascism in México. Fascism is reflected in the capitalists’ intensification of racist and sexist violence against the working class. The disappearance of these youth is a racist crime, showing nothing but contempt for the lives of oppressed youth across Mexico!

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Airline Workers Throttle Bosses

PARIS, October 12 — French airline workers proved last week that they won’t take the capitalist rulers’ cuts “flying down.” In defiance of union misleaders, several hundred workers raided the Air France-KLM headquarters, broke up the Central Works Council meeting and forced the company’s top executives to flee and clamber over a chain-link fence. Two senior execs had their suit jackets and shirts ripped off their backs.
The company provoked workers’ rage by announcing it would eliminate nearly three thousand workers, including pilots, ground crew and flight attendants, and require pilots who kept their jobs to fly 100 hours a year extra with no pay. Whenever capitalist competition cuts into profits, the bosses aim to make workers pay the price.

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Obama’s Africa Strategy: Divide and Exploit

When U.S. President Barack Obama traveled to Kenya and Ethiopia this summer, capitalist rulers in both Africa and the U.S. worked overtime to foster illusions about the trip. The chair of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, called it a “historic visit” and a “concrete step to broaden and deepen the relationship between the U.S. and the AU.” The bosses’ media focused on future benefits promised by Obama: a joint campaign against terrorism, shared technology, and the alleviation of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in three people are undernourished and more than 250 million live without access to clean water (borgenproject.com).

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Iran Nuke Deal: U.S. Bosses Buy Time for War

Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran—hailed by the capitalists’ liberal media as a step back from global war—is in fact a strategic move toward broader imperialist conflict. It is another sign that the U.S. bosses are not yet ready to launch an all-out invasion, at least not until they’ve put their own house in order. The current U.S. presidential campaign, with the Republican Party in disarray and leading Democrat Hillary Clinton even less trusted by voters than Donald Trump (washingtonpost.com, 8/20/15), reflects the rulers’ predicament. For now, they have neither the political leadership nor the working-class base for a new military draft, an essential element in a major ground war.

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Kolkata Students Blast Bosses’ Bribes

KOLKATA, INDIA, September 15 — Hundreds of students at a public engineering
university raged in protest at the cricket association’s attempt to privatize one of the campus cricket fields—a seemingly small struggle that reflects a big surge in working-class consciousness and rebellion.
Privatization is the process whereby publicly owned property is given—or rented at a low cost—to private businesses, which then make a profit at the expense of the working class. Such actions by the rulers destroy the illusion of any division between the public and private sectors. In reality, both are controlled by the capitalist bosses.
Bosses’ Bribe Rejected
The association claimed the university’s fields would be turned into “world-class venues” to which students would still have access.

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Smash KKKops with Communist Revolution

BALTIMORE, September 23—The Northeast District police station is home to the racist animals who beat unarmed Black man Tyrone West to death in July 2013. This evening, a toilet was symbolically placed in front of the station’s sign. We chanted, “Killer cops in cell blocks!” This marked the 113th West Wednesday rally, led by Tyrone’s inspiring family every week without fail.

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To Avenge Kyam, Smash Racism Worldwide

BROOKLYN, September 21 — Forty workers and students demonstrated today in the continuing struggle for justice for Kyam Livingston, murdered in 2013 by the kkkops’ medical negligence in Brooklyn’s Central Booking Jail.
Kyam’s family and the Justice For Kyam Committee, with strong support from the Progressive Labor Party, have guaranteed monthly actions to remember July 21, the date of her murder. The racism of Kyam’s indifferent cop jailers caused her death, the speakers explained to scores of neighbors who stopped on their way home from work. Members of PLP explained that the capitalist rulers use their police forces to terrorize workers and discourage fightback. Many residents of this mainly immigrant working-class neighborhood listened, donated money, and took leaflets and over 300 copies of CHALLENGE. The overwhelmingly positive response to our monthly actions prove that the bosses, their lackeys and their brutal profit system can’t stop the struggle of the working class.

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