U.S. vs. China Trade Deal Means Trade War

Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) represents a major step toward war between capitalists in the U.S. and China. With the two imperialist powers locked in an escalating competition for global dominance, the TPP is more than a trade deal that will heighten exploitation and destroy jobs for U.S. workers. It’s a sign that U.S. bosses are preparing to square off against their ascending rival.
The international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is fighting to unite workers worldwide to smash imperialism at its source: the capitalist system. We call on all workers to march with us on May Day and fight for our class, not the bosses’ country. Join PLP and the fight to turn imperialist war into class war for communism!

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50 Years of PLP: The Fight for Communism Needs YOU!

April 17 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party. From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international Party now organizing in 27 countries.
Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism — first by leading anti-racist, working-class struggle, and through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy — practice and theory — is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.
Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine the future of society. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism and sexism that drags down all workers. It will smash the racist cops who break our strikes and kill our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will put an end to the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.

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May Day: International Workers’ Holiday

May Day is the international holiday celebrated by tens of millions of workers worldwide. It was born out of — and honors — the Chicago workers’ historic struggle for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1886. This launched general strike that spread to 350,000 workers across the country. It’s a day when workers around the globe march for their common demands, signifying international working-class solidarity.

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Workers Target High-Flying Bosses

Newark, NJ, April 15 — Airport workers at the three major New York area airports are beginning to fight back against low wages, meager benefits and unsafe working conditions. They are called “passenger service workers” (PSWs), which include screeners, wheelchair attendants, baggage handlers, skycaps, ticket checkers, cabin cleaners, ramp agents and dispatchers.
Despite union misleadership and attempts to ally the workers with politicians, the workers are in a fighting spirit. About 75 airport workers joined 75 other people at a $15/hr minimum-wage demonstration today. Over 100 workers took copies of CHALLENGE. They chanted loudly as they marched from Newark City Hall to a local McDonald’s restaurant.

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KKKops Off Campus!

TEXAS, April 17 — In response to Dallas Police Department’s (DPD) racist recruiting efforts on campus, Progressive Labor Party students and neighborhood fighters demonstrated against police murders of mainly Black and Latin workers!
The DPD posted signs attempting to entice 200 students to join their racist police force. On the surface, DPD was looking for students from 18 to 24 years of age with 60-plus hours of college credits. The real reason they were specifically targeting our campus is because it’s an urban community college. In other words, they are trying to recruit working-class Black, Latin, and immigrant students, the very same students targeted by the cops. A comrade went up to one of the recruiters and asked what they were looking for, and the recruiter replied, “People from tougher neighborhoods.”

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Low-Wage Workers: Smash Wage Slavery

New York City, April 15 — In one of the largest labor actions in recent history, tens of thousands of workers in 40 countries around the world went on strike against low wages today.
In New York City, workers and their supporters briefly blocked the Brooklyn Bridge and closed down a McDonald’s. Members of PLP marched and chanted shoulder to shoulder with these workers and over the course of the day we distributed hundreds of CHALLENGEs and 1,000 leaflets inviting workers to march with us on International Workers Day May 2.

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Imperialism Is Poison for Workers

Howard French’s new book, China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa (2014) advances the notion that China is building a new empire. This is a country still admired by many workers in smaller capitalist countries for standing up to the old imperialist powers of Europe and North America. The Chinese government describes its activity in Africa as a “win-win” interaction, fraternal solidarity between developing countries.
Communists dismiss this as self-serving capitalist propaganda, based on the analysis of imperialism developed by Russian communist Vladimir Lenin nearly a century ago (see box on page 7). Even some African bosses fear the burgeoning Chinese presence as a form of “soft power” empire building. This would represent a dramatic change from China’s activities in Africa during China’s socialist period under Mao Zedong, a time when “third world solidarity” was more than an anti-colonialist slogan.

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March On Dilley,TX To Smash Anti-Immigrant Racism!

TEXAS, April 20 —  In December 2014, the racist Obama government opened a new prison in Dilley, a small southern town in Texas to hold up to 2,400 immigrant women and youth who have been crossing into the U.S. since last summer. The new prison space was justified by Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers because, they claimed, that the women and youth pose a “threat to U.S. national security” by their mass migration. Therefore all are held without bail even if they have a potential claim for asylum for fleeing persecution in their native countries.
The U.S. government has a profound racist fear of Latin and Black workers, who have the potential to lead a new wave of struggle. Almost all of these women and youth are fleeing violence, especially sexist attacks and killings, in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

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Colombia: Teachers Strike for Students

BOGOTA, April 22 — Teachers of a rural town in Bogota, Colombia, went on strike in response to the Ministry of Education’s racist policies against working-class students.
The school administration maintained overcrowded classrooms by assigning 50 students to a room which can hold a maximum of 30, creating a health hazard, and harassing the students. This abuse, when added to the lack of a budget to respond to students’ needs, motivated the strike.  

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Israel/Palestine: One State or Two, Capitalism Rules

Dallas, TX, March 29  — Several PL’ers attended a small conference here of members of the One Democratic State (in Palestine) group.
This group oppose the two-state proposal because of two basic reasons: 1) Given the use of the right-wing settlements by the Israeli government to divide up and take over more and more of the remaining West Bank, any “Palestinian state” will be a collection of geographically separated islands. 2) All residents of, and refugees from, Palestine of all ethnicities should be able to live together in peace, justice and equality. They also want to see the end of both the Zionist government and the Palestinian Authority, which they view as a puppet of the government of Israel.

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