Letter: 33,000 Strike Against Israeli State

ISRAEL-PALESTINE, September 16 — The Zionist government continues its racism against the 20 percent Palestinian minority within the state. According to Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, the new school year in Israel began on September 1 in an orderly fashion. The 33,000 Palestinian-Israeli students on strike since the first day of school disagree! These students attend 47 “community schools” administered by a private Christian church whose existence precedes Israel’s itself. The schools teach students of all religions and employ teachers of all sectors as well.

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Tanzania: Albino Workers Murdered for Profit

Albinos workers are being mutilated in Tanzania (76 since 2007), and their body parts sold to witch doctors.  Men are raping albino women to cure themselves of HIV-AIDS.  Who bears the blame for these atrocities? So-called “human nature”? The ignorance and superstition of the masses?  Corrupt Tanzanian government officials?  Profiteers—the witchdoctors and middlemen who abduct, mutilate, and kill?
Knowing who or what to blame leads us to the solution.  The international Progressive Labor Party lays the blame squarely on imperialism, the competition among capitalist bosses that keeps the working class mired in ignorance, misery and desperation. Capitalism has transformed the centuries-old discrimination against albino workers into a profit-inspired atrocity.  Only by destroying this system can we liberate our class from the rule of profit and build a truly humane society: communism.

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Straight Outta Capitalism

“We aren’t pro-violence, our music reflects the reality we live in,” the actor portraying O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson says in one scene to a journalist in the recently released film Straight Outta Compton. He continues, “I thought we were here to talk about Rodney King...you can’t treat people like that and not expect them to rise up.”
Racist police terror, from the everyday harassment of the Black youth living in South Central Los Angeles to the 1992 rebellions against the savage police beating of Rodney King, frame the rap group NWA utilized to make their music. Straight Outta Compton follows the rise of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E. It is a piece of capitalist garbage that dodges every opportunity to confront racism, even though racism pervades almost every scene of the film. Which makes sense, because the present-day multi-millionaire capitalists Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy’s widow were all producers of this movie, and owe their vast fortunes to being part of the very dictatorship of capitalism their music pretends to rebel against.

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Abolish Wage Slavery

NEW YORK CITY, September 16 — Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Fast Food Wage Board recently recommended that the state’s minimum wage for fast food workers be raised to $15 per hour. The decision is a big victory for the Fight for Fifteen movement (FF15). But we cannot be fooled. This is a victory not for the working class, but for the liberal bosses.

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Toby Schwartz: Communist for Life

The life of Toby “Teddy” Schwartz (1928-2015) reads like a handbook for communists. He was a beloved family member, friend, and comrade. Toby helped to build the Progressive Labor Party and modeled how to win people to its ideas and to organize campaigns of class struggle.
Fighter from the Get-Go
Toby was raised in an immigrant family committed to fighting for workers and social justice. His mother was a seamstress and International Ladies Garment Workers Union organizer, his uncle a Bolshevik. From a young age, Toby committed himself to fighting against capitalism and racism.

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Trump: Racist Servant of Imperialists

Donald Trump’s openly racist presidential campaign is just the latest example of how the capitalist ruling class uses elections to sustain its dictatorship over the working class. From Haiti and Egypt to the United States, competing factions of millionaires and billionaires are sorting out which group will hold state power—and which will be disciplined and suppressed. In addition, the rulers need elections to keep workers tied to the myth that the profit system can be reformed to meet our needs. In the process, these bosses divide the international working class with appeals to racism, sexism, and nationalism. They use stooges like Trump to scapegoat immigrants for mass poverty, unemployment, and the perpetual economic crises caused by the profit system. Capitalism can never serve the working class!

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PLP Blasts Tianjin Explosion

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN, August 26 — “Tianjin means we got to fight back!” As we responded to the industrial explosion that has killed 158 people in China, hundreds of workers in this mainly Chinese and Latin neighborhood took our leaflets in Chinese and English. Many Latin workers took CHALLENGE in Spanish. Dozens stopped to observe our multiracial group of women and men chanting, “When the working class is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
This was Progressive Labor Party’s second rally in the neighborhood this week. Workers attentively listened to our speeches in Chinese and English calling for solidarity with protestors in China in the wake of the Tianjin massacre. We connected hazardous working conditions in China to those in the United States. In this neighborhood, one of three people live below the poverty line. Whether they are in Ferguson, Brooklyn, or Tianjin, workers have everything to gain by uniting to smash capitalism.

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PL’s 50-Year Convention: ONWARD TO A LIFETIME OF REVOLUTION

I was one of thirty comrades who, in 1961, met and decided to break away from the old communist movement and eventually form a new party, the Progressive Labor Party. If any one of us had predicted that in fifty years our Party would be active in 27 countries, we would have thought that person was smoking something.  But here we are!

The words above are from a founding member of Progressive Labor Party at the convention dinner celebrating 50 years of fightback.

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Education Battle Breaks Borders

TEXAS, August 24 — Today an international group of students, teachers and workers rallied in front of our city’s Mexican Consulate to support the struggles of teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Progressive Labor Party and friends marched down city streets chanting, “When students and teachers are under attack, what do we do, stand up fight back!” And “Las Luchas Obreras, No Tienen Fronteras!” (workers’ struggles have no borders).  
U.S.,Mexico — It’s All the Same
We passed out leaflets that connected the struggles of students and teachers in Mexico to the struggles of students and teachers in the U.S. Workers at bus stops and in storefronts expressed agreement with our chants and leaflet. One worker pointed out the similarities of the U.S. Common Core education reforms in the U.S. to the reforms in Mexico.

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Antiracist March on the Beach

Los Angeles, August 8 — A multiracial group of 70 women and men transformed the scene on Ocean Front Walk in Venice Beach by marching through the crowds chanting, “Justice for Brendon Glenn; Justice for Jason Davis!” and “Black, Latin, Asian, White, to smash racism we must unite!” The response was overwhelmingly positive.
Brendon Glenn was an unarmed, homeless Black man shot to death by an LAPD kkkop on May 5. In the months since, the only word from the LAPD is that they are “conducting an investigation.” The police have refused to release video from a surveillance camera, leading the marchers to chant, “Release the video. Now!” The cops involved—Clifford Proctor and Jonathan Kawahara—are apparently on paid home leave. The shooter, Proctor, is Black, exposing the lie that racist killings are solely the work of white cops, or individuals’ racist ideas.

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