D.C. Protesters Slam Racist Police Murders

Washington, DC, October 8 — Today PLP rallied at a major subway station to denounce the police murders in this area over the past few days. PL’ers and friends distributed over 400 leaflets and CHALLENGEs to outraged workers and students. Several workers asked for bunches of flyers to share with their friends, and others expressed the need to take action against the kkkops. A resolution calling for the indictment of the cops has been introduced at the Association for Humanist Sociologists meeting in Arlington, and others are joining this effort against police brutality and racism.

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Drive Out Death-Squad Petraeus, Build Anti-Imperialist Movement

NEW YORK CITY, October 15 — More than 90 people filled the room to “Defend the CUNY Six--Drop the Charges Now!”  Others were barred from entering by campus security. As reported in the last issue of CHALLENGE, students demonstrating against General David “Death Squad” Petraeus teaching at the City University of New York (CUNY) were attacked by the NYPD on September 17. A panel composed of two students, two professors, and an Iraq war veteran addressed students and their supporters. They denounced the militarization of the community and explained how U.S. Imperialism must be defeated. While the audience responded well to the speeches, little practical plans were put forward.
An anti-war veteran of the 1960’s struggles gave the most concrete remarks. He stated, “The best defense is a good offense!” Because of the week-by-week demonstrations, Petraeus has been forced to teach his
Monday seminars in a bunker-like environment with underground garages. PLP and friends must resume these demonstrations wherever he hides, wherever he goes. More importantly, we must build a large citywide anti-imperialist movement on every one of the CUNY campuses because most CUNY students do not yet know about Petraeus, and the foul deeds of the U.S. military and the CIA.
More than that, Progressive Labor Party must be at the forefront of this struggle, calling for communism — a system without wages, imperialist wars, racism, and sexism — as the only solution to the terror capitalists rage against workers and students, domestically and internationally. PLP should use this momentum to build for their International College Conference to Smash Imperialism on November 8 and 9, as it will provide a real alternative to building illusions of a safer capitalism. The conference will engage friends in critical questions, such as what is the relationship between imperialism and fascism; how do we build an antiracist and antisexist movement on campus; why is a communist party, PLP, necessary to building, sustaining, and advancing a communist world.
The veteran suggested that we concentrate our forces next week on a particular campus. For example, the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) center is at City College. Despite strong faculty opposition voiced at a Town Hall meeting at the College of Staten Island, the Provost continues to connive to bring in ROTC (see CHALLENGE 10/16). Progressive forces from CSI must be brought together with folks from the three campuses where ROTC has already been instituted:  City College, Medgar Evers, and York.
At any rate the students are determined to fight on. They have received letters of support from the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY). Money has been raised to replace broken glasses and to pay for legal expenses. The workers in PSC will raise more money if needed. But the students alone cannot sustain the struggle by themselves. They need to build strong relationships with faculty and other campus workers, and with soldiers and sailors as well. History shows us that during the course of the struggle against the murderous Vietnam War, both soldiers and students alike rebelled against imperialism. And the majority of the U.S. working class was won to see that slaughtering workers in other countries was not in their interest.
Today the task of building an anti-war movement is more difficult than in the 1960’s because we live in a period of developing fascism. 
Police terror against black and brown youth has increased. The union movement has been decimated. Thousands of people remain in detention even though they haven’t been charged let alone convicted. More undocumented immigrants have been deported under Obama’s reign than in any other point in history. Every day new reports come out of increased government spying on civilians at home. Why is all of this happening now? U.S. capitalists are on a collision course with capitalists from China, Russia and other countries. (Russia has a naval base in Syria). To prepare for future conflicts the U.S. government plans a stronger military with more black and Latino officers being trained in ROTC on NYC campuses. The ruling class also plans to develop more and more patriotism among workers and students. Well, we are not going to go along with this program! With communist ideas and practice, fight back!

Rotten to the [Common] Core

As the bosses’ economy continues to tank, one news report after the next warns that young people are entering the worst job market ever.  This “new normal” of high unemployment and relentless attacks on salaries, benefits, and unions has teachers running scared as well.  In hot pursuit is the main wing of the U.S ruling class. As these capitalists find themselves losing ground to their imperialist rivals, they are pushing for greater, more centralized control over what is being taught.
Most recently that push has taken the form of the Common Core — our common enemy.
The Common Core is a set of learning goals the bosses have established that require even more high-stakes testing.  It is a part of President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top,” a competition where the losers — students and teachers alike — are trained to blame themselves, not the racist, exploitive capitalist system.   Education workers, parents and students must not be fooled by the bosses’ stated goal to use the Common Core to ramp up “critical thinking.” Real critical thinking would uncover the truth that capitalism can never work for the vast majority.

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Mexico: Striking Teachers Battle Fascism

MEXICO CITY, October 13 — The fascist repression against the striking teachers of the National Coordinating Committee (CNTE) unleashed by the bosses’ government of President Enrique Peña Nieto reveals the criminal and anti-working class nature of the capitalist system.  The complicity of Miguel Angel Mancera, the mayor of Mexico City, also illustrates how politicians of all the electoral parties — PRI, PAN, PRD, or PT — are capitalists’ loyal servants bent on turning education into a profit-driven business during their global crisis.
The brutal eviction from the city center carried out on September 13 by thousands of federal cops and Federal District riot police, and the subsequent military occupation of the city center, exemplify the fascism the bosses will use to impose their plans.
CNTE teachers’ courage in resisting fascist repression (see CHALLENGE, 10/2) as well as the attacks from the bosses’ media, has inspired thousands of teachers nation-wide, to go on strike, occupy public squares and fight the cops.

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Cooperation Is the REAL Human Nature

Many people talk about human nature, saying that competition is “natural,” and that it leads to progress and that the selfishness of capitalism is really natural and acceptable. An important book puts a big hole in that idea, using scientific research into the emotions of animals. And it points out how capitalism has distorted the science for its own reasons by emphasizing competition over cooperation.
Marc Bekoff’s book, The Emotional Lives of Animals, (2007) records anecdotal evidence that most “higher” animals show rich emotional behaviours, more similar than different from the joy, grief and anger of humans. There is a foreword by Jane Goodall, famous for her years of observing primates in their natural habitat. Bekoff’s purpose parallels her work in his description of the interactions of many species. But by far the more interesting conclusion from his work lies in his secondary thesis that cooperation forms the basis for continuation of the species of all social animals.

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Lesson from History: A Half Million Workers Routed British Fascists

October 4 marked the 77th anniversary of a great battle against fascism — the “Battle of Cable Street” in London’s East End. Stories of that day are still talked about amongst the British working class.
For 300 years the East End of London had been a passageway of poor working-class immigrants into Britain. In 1936 the area’s population was largely Polish and Russian Jews, Irish Catholics and non-immigrant English working class. Most streets were a crooked tangle. Tiny houses were crammed together — 18th century industrial housing with flush toilets out the back. Many people worked on the nearby docks and in small factories, garment sweatshops and open air markets.
At that time, Sir Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts — the British Union of Fascists (BUF) — was by far the largest fascist grouping of many that were growing in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. They had close ties to Hitler. Moseley’s group sent committed fascists into the East End to beat up and terrorize Jews. They wanted to divide the Jews from all the other immigrant groups. They labeled Jews “tyrants of international banking.” On the streets, fascists would scream “kill the kikes” and “get rid of the yids.” Amid a severe depression, Moseley’s movement was growing among the unemployed, white collar workers and small businessmen.

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COPS MURDER TWICE IN WASHINGTON AREA IN TWO DAYS!

Following the racist tradition of police brutality in DC and Prince George’s County, cops have killed two unarmed suspects in two days. In Prince George’s County, the cops chased a man through woods and shot him as he tried to climb over a fence. The 7 year veteran of the police force claimed he feared for his life.  Of course!  No weapon was found at the scene—other than the cop’s gun.

In a gross display of brutal overkill, the Secret Service and the Capitol Police shot 17 times and killed an unarmed mentally ill young black woman who apparently tried to first crash the White House and then tried to crash the Capitol. The cops declared that there was “an active shooter incident”, but the only shooters were the trigger-happy cops. In fact, the chief of police boasted that the bollard barriers to both the White House and Capitol, put in place after 9/11, worked perfectly.  If that was the case, there was absolutely no reason to gun down the erratic driver. But in the Washington area, it seems that if you’re black, the cops shoot first and ask questions later.

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Mideast Wars, Oil, Imperialist Rivalry: A Lethal Mix

The murderous conflict in Syria and the killings in Iraq and Kenya are becoming yet another front in the world’s inter-imperialist rivalry. Bosses are jockeying for position in the fight over Middle East oil and gas. U.S. rulers are using a divide-and-conquer strategy — both to oppress the U.S. working class and to maintain their global supremacy over their capitalist enemies.
It is the task of communists in the Progressive Labor Party to transform this imperialist struggle into a class war to overthrow capitalism. Only communism can end the bosses’ perpetual carnage.
In 1990, U.S. president George H. W. Bush invaded Iraq with more than half a million troops to recapture the Kuwaiti oil fields seized by dictator Saddam Hussein. Soon after, U.S. forces withdrew. Then President Bill Clinton used sanctions and missiles to soften up Iraq for George W. Bush’s grab for the country’s oil wealth. Bush’s advisers thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union, previously the main U.S. rival, gave them an opportunity to take over Iraq swiftly, on the cheap, and with a relatively small army.

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Mideast Wars, Oil, Imperialist Rivalry: A Lethal Mix

MEXICO CITY, September 30 — It’s been a month since teachers from states throughout Mexico, organized in the National Coordinating Committee (CNTE), struck against the rulers’ attack on workers in the guise of education reform. Now the struggle has spread throughout Mexico as other teachers, parents and diverse groups of workers and students join the fight.
The bosses’ government, headed by the criminal lackey of imperialism and the local capitalist class, President Enrique Peña Nieto, is pushing this reform. It will privatize schools and put them out of reach for most working-class children.

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March Hits NYPD Racist Reign of Terror

BROOKLYN, NY, September 21— Over 200 people rallied and marched in Flatbush to demand justice for Kyam Livingston. Kyam was a 37-year-old African-American mom who was denied medical attention while in Brooklyn Central Booking and died in police custody. The death of Kyam, due to the callous indifference of the cops, is yet another instance of the racist reign of terror which is U.S. capitalism.
It has been over two months since Kyam’s murder by the NYPD, and still no one has been held accountable. The NYPD has refused to release the videotapes documenting what happened to Kyam and will not release the names of the officers responsible for her death. Marchers called out, “We want the tapes! We want the names!” as they followed in Kyam Livingston’s final footsteps.

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