Celebrate the Might of Workers This May Day

Why does Progressive Labor Party fight for communism? Because capitalism doesn’t work for our class. It doesn’t work when racist kkkops murder hundreds of black and Latino youth in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. It doesn’t work when U.S. drones kill over a thousand civilians in Pakistan. It doesn’t work when the capitalists’ austerity in Europe throws millions of workers onto the streets. It doesn’t work when Obama deports 1.6 million immigrant workers. It doesn’t work when mainly women workers in Bangladesh are burned alive in textile factories with locked exit doors. It doesn’t work when schools and hospitals all over the country are shut down. It doesn’t work when hundreds of thousands of families near Mexico City are threatened with being flooded out of their homes because of the government’s hydro project. And it doesn’t work when the South African government massacres striking miners.
Truth is, capitalism has never worked for the working class.

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Workers Have No Stake In: China-U.S. Rulers’ War for Global Control

As their competition for global supremacy intensifies, Chinese and U.S. bosses are scrambling for allies in a conflict that looks more likely by the day. Speaking in Moscow on March 23, China’s new president, Xi Jinping, “made a case…for closer economic and foreign policy cooperation with Russia” (New York Times, 3/24/13). Xi argued that China and Russia have “converging goals, including an expansion of the oil and gas trade, as they pursue dreams of ‘national revival’ and seek to offset the influence of the developed West.”
A China-Russia axis could be a mortal challenge to U.S. economic power and political influence. China has a huge and rising economy and more people of military age than the total U.S. population. Russia has vast energy supplies and the world’s second biggest nuclear arsenal, most of it aimed at the U.S. Well aware of this threat, U.S. rulers have unveiled their own long-term coalition schemes. In February, Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama’s new defense secretary and the outgoing head of the Atlantic Council think tank, called for military links with potential anti-China allies: India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey.

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WANTED — NYPD, For Racist Murder

BROOKLYN, NY, March 25 — The fight-back against the racist police murder of 16-year-old Kimani “Kiki” Gray sharpened the class struggle here in East Flatbush. Young neighborhood students and workers led a militant anti-racist rebellion on March 11, two nights after Kiki’s murder. The youth returned every night for nearly two weeks, joined by protestors to confront the police that occupied seemingly every inch of the neighborhood 24/7 out of fear of another uprising.

The rebellion helped popularize proof that the police are lying about Kiki pointing a gun at them. Witnesses say Kiki tried to walk away from police — who never identified themselves — and begged for his life as he was gunned down. An autopsy revealed that seven out of eleven bullets hit Kiki, three in his back. The officers involved have a history of falsifying evidence. The facts exposing the cops as liars are all similar to nearly every case of police murder, but without the rebellion that followed Kiki’s death, the truth would not have been exposed as it has been.

Youth Defy Media Lies
Politicians, preachers, cops and the media all labeled the militant youth everything but what they were. They were rebels that led a small, brief but powerful uprising, not looters, rioters, misguided or committed gangsters. On the whole the youth targeted the racist bosses and their goons.
Young men and women defied police by taking the streets, overturning trashcans, and surrounding two cops. The youth targeted a local Rite Aid convenience store whose manager constantly followed black and immigrant youth while shopping. Not a dime was stolen out of the registers. Dozens of local barbershops, beauty salons and restaurants were untouched.

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MAY DAY: Symbol of History’s Long March to Communist Revolution

As the May Day organizing heads into its final month, we should take a moment to think about the future. On April 27 in New York City, hundreds and hundreds of workers, students and soldiers will march for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.
In Chicago and Los Angeles, many will celebrate at dinners around the same theme, as well as marching on May 1 in the Immigrant Rights May Day.
In order to win these goals, our Party must grow until its members number in the millions. To win a communist world, we must become billions. Is this possible, or as some believe, are we merely a bunch of well-motivated people who are spitting into a hurricane?

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DOE Lesson Plan: Death Sentence for Teacher

The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has sentenced a veteran teacher to death.
The teacher, who has been battling a stage 4 cancer for 18 months, applied for a “Restoration of Health” sabbatical (partly-paid leave) for the Spring 2013 term. Even though the school’s principal approved it, giving false hope to the teacher, DOE’s medical director turned it down saying she has “no chance for recovery — sabbatical denied.” The DOE didn’t even consult the teacher’s oncologist! Their answer comes down to “you’ll die anyway…but we’ll get your last drop of blood.”
The teacher was told by her United Federation of Teachers district office that she could take her case to “medical arbitration,” but the process could take up to a year!

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Chicago: Mass School Closings Fire Up Students, Teachers

CHICAGO, March 28 — Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has announced the closing of 54 schools, plus a turnaround for another six and co-shares for 11. This unprecedented attack on students, parents, teachers, and other school workers is racist to the core. Virtually all of those impacted by these actions are low-income working-class black students. Many of these students (and teachers) have been shuffled from school to school as CPS goes about the business of destroying public schools. CPS has systematically starved schools in the city’s predominately black South and West sides of the resources they need, and now they are shuttering them completely.

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Brooklyn: Expose Billionaire’s Wrecking Crew

March 20, BROOKLYN, NY — “When our schools are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” Chants, led by angry students, parents and teachers of the Tilden High School Campus, rang out again against the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) meeting today. They arrived at the meeting ready to fight, even though they knew that the panel of bosses’ puppets would approve the “proposal” to co-locate a charter elementary school in the Tilden campus, which already houses three district high schools. In fact, the PEP, whom are mostly hand-picked by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg to vote on educational policy and decisions, have always voted in favor of the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposals.

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PL’ers Fight Racist Attacks on Community College

SAN FRANCISCO, CA March 14 — Days after New York City shuts down 22 schools and Chicago plans to close 54 schools, students and workers fight to keep their community college open here. Two hundred protestors carrying signs lined Ocean Avenue in front of the entrance to San Francisco City College (CCSF) fighting against the attacks on public education. Passing cars and buses honked their horns in support.
After an hour of spirited rallying, we marched to the racist Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting to continue the protest. Despite demands from union leaders (who had called for this protest) and others who spoke, the BOT decided to use Proposition A funds to shore up the reserve funds. The protestors outside and the protestors who packed the meeting room thundered their disapproval.

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Students and Profs Rally Against State University Cuts, Racism

CHICAGO, March 24 — Chicago State University (CSU) President Watson must go, but students and faculty have different reasons from the Board of Trustees who want to fire him. A March 8 rally at the student union building, organized by faculty members who are building unity with students and campus workers, rang with chants of “Watson Must Go.” They condemned his disregard of the needs of CSU’s mostly-black student body and its workers and his tight control and clamp-down on all forms of dissent.

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Indict Racist Chicago Schools

CHICAGO —Capitalism is not interested in creating a society of people who can think critically and work for the well-being of the working class.
Capitalism wants to create poorly educated wage slaves to accept low-paying jobs with no benefits. It wants to send both men and now even young women to fight and die in imperialist oil wars and that kill our working-class brothers and sisters and make profits for the bosses.
Capitalist education wants to turn children into test takers and not thinkers because capitalism doesn’t need thinkers.

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