From Turkey to Nigeria to Iraq... Imperialist Strategy Drives Atrocities

On May 13, 301 miners died in a preventable disaster in western Turkey. Like the girls taken captive this month in Nigeria, or the garment workers killed a year ago in Bangladesh, or the workers slain by U.S. imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were victims of capitalism and its relentless drive to maximize profits. For capitalist bosses in the U.S. and around the world, the lives of workers have no value except for surplus value — the difference between the value that workers produce and what they are paid. Since the ruling class holds absolute state power and controls the factories and other means of production, the working class is enslaved by the profit system. This will change only when we smash these bosses, eliminate the profit system, and seize state power.

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Invade Hospital, Hit Bosses’ Attack on Retirees’ Funds

PHILADELPHIA, PA, May 7 — “Here we go again!” Venetta said as 50 Local 1199C Hospital Workers Union retirees marched spontaneously to Jefferson Hospital demanding the hospital bosses stop their attacks on our union Benefit and Pension Funds. We’re older now so we marched a little slower, several with canes, several with oxygen tanks.

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Low-Wage Workers Need Communist Revolution!

NEW YORK CITY,  May 7 — More than 1,000 low wage workers and their supporters jammed into Riverside Church tonight, in a “Service for Low Wage Workers.” The service was billed as “We Are All Workers!” The very integrated and international crowd of women and men were in high spirits, feeling their unity and ready for a fight. The speakers included fast food, airport, retail and car wash workers. Challenge was sold.
The rally was mainly organized by SEIU, United NY, and the various unions involved in the different organizing drives. The idea was to rally 25 clergy from around the city to give “moral authority” to the campaign to raise the minimum wage. The low wage workers who spoke were given two-minutes each, and if they went over, someone was there to tap them on the back. The clergy, on the other hand, preachers, rabbis, priests and imams, couldn’t shut up when given a microphone and a big crowd. Throw in the head of the NY Central Labor Council and the Speaker of the NY City Council and workers were eager to get out of there and on the buses taking them home.

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Red Eye on Two Movies: Expose Mandela; Exploitation in the Sugar Fields

PLP Saturday night movie events at Roxbury Community College have developed from social events to serious base-building, with friends joining with us to learn and discuss our ideas, based on the films. The discussions have been very sharp and informative: Everyone who came with us knows we fight for communism, and the movies we chose open up real discussion. Multiracial and multigenerational groups of 20 to 30 have attended.

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Petraeus Leaves CUNY But Fight Continues

New York City, May 6 — Today a small squad of 30 City University of New York (CUNY) students and 10 faculty bid a noisy farewell to the hated mass murderer general David Petraeus. He has been masquerading as a professor for a year to cover his war crimes and his disgrace after a sex scandal drove him out as CIA director.  This was his last public appearance here and chants of “Death Squads Petraeus, you can’t hide, We charge you with genocide!” greeted him as he slunk into Macaulay Honors College behind a wall of uneasy administrators and city police.

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Profits Depend on Mass Murder of Miners

SOMA, Turkey, May 19 — “This is not something that suddenly happened. I can tell you that there are people here who are dying, people who are injured and it’s all because of money…They send us here like lambs to slaughter. We are not safe doing this job.”
That’s what a surviving coal miner told CNN Turkey about the fire that officials claim killed 301 miners. The actual number will be much higher. He also accused a supervisor of giving the wrong directions to trapped miners, leading them away from the oxygen supply. This fire was not a random accident. It was mass industrial murder.

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How Bosses Sabotage May Day

NEW YORK CITY, May 1 — There were two marches here today. The one in Union Square was dominated by pseudo-left parties and groups and included some immigrant and community organizations. The one at City Hall was led by the NY Central Labor Council and the Democratic Party. On the surface, they appeared to be very different. But in essence, they were similar. Both stripped May Day of its revolutionary content and both reflected their lack of confidence in the working class.
And this is no surprise! These marches were organized by professional misleaders who seek to divide our class and fight for scraps instead workers’ power. A small PLP contingent marched, calling for a communist revolution. Many workers and passersby took the paper. A group of young women joined our chant, “Democrats, Republicans, All the Same. Racist Murder is the Name of the Game.”

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Mexico May Day

MEXICO, May 1 — On May Day, 30 members and friends of PLP marched in two cities, Mexico City and Oaxaca. We distributed around 6,000 communist flyers, chanted our slogans and sang our revolutionary songs: The Internationale and Bella Ciao. Amongst a sea of phony leftists and reformists, it’s significant that PLP put forth the direct struggle for communism and publicly called workers to join us,  the international communist revolutionary party.

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Colombia May Day

Bogota, Colombia —  A large group of workers, from different sectors, as well as students, farm workers, the unemployed, and right- and “left”-wing politicians,   participated in May Day, a celebration of the International Workers’ Day.
PLP’s contingent of workers and students joined the march from two different places, since the march had three different starting points, in addition to the neighborhood marches. Over time May Day has become a phony left electoral event, manipulated by trade unions, which have turned it into a carnival of whistles, nationalist street theater, and support for reformist “democratic left” candidates.

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Why I Joined PLP: ‘Done watching capitalism destroy our lives’

What does capitalism mean?
You gotta fight back!
All of us, every single one of us has gone through the indoctrination machine, the behemoth which attempts to crush you from all sides, the machine which tries to dehumanize you and destroys any semblance of hope in our unity.

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