Wanted for Shantel's Murder

BROOKLYN, NY, June 30 — Thirty marchers took to busy streets of Church Avenue today, chanting “Racist kkkops means you gotta fight back!” and “NYPD, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” This was the third week PL’ers joined with family, friends and neighbors of Shantel Davis in angry protest against the June 14 racist murder of this young woman by an undercover NYPD detective. “Wanted” posters made from the front cover of CHALLENGE (7 /5) were held high throughout the march. When PL’ers brought them to the corner they were grabbed up quickly. Promises were made to bring many more next Saturday. Marchers also eagerly took CHALLENGES, and many came back for more to make sure their friends got them.

Previous marches to the local kkkop precinct travelled along quiet streets with few bystanders along the way. But this time the march along Church Avenue, a very busy commercial street, was greeted by workers in stores and people on the sidewalks joining in our chants and raising fists in the air in solidarity with the marchers. As we approached the precinct, we marched strong into the street, ignoring the kkkops’ attempt to push us into a barricaded pen.

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Fight Bloodsucking Hospital Bosses’, Governor’s Mass Cuts

BROOKLYN, June 28 — “This is my hospital! They can’t close it!” a patient declared to hundreds of picketing SUNY Downstate Medical Center workers. Workers flooded out of the hospital to join patients and community people for a lunchtime rally against threatened massive layoffs and the possible closing of this central Brooklyn hospital.

Speakers addressed the racist nature of these cuts in a mostly black community where people already lack access to care, and spoke of the damage that the layoffs would do to the community’s economic health. It’s no coincidence that the cops’ racist murder on June 14 of 23-year-old Shantel Davis occurred only blocks from here. Inadequate health care, massive unemployment, and police killings all reflect the capitalists’ racist outlook that the lives of black and Latino workers have little or no value.

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Protestors Blast Boston Globe’s Racist Attacks

BOSTON, May 23 — Faculty, staff, and alumni of Roxbury Community College (RCC) demonstrated today at the Boston Globe headquarters, charging the newspaper with reporting racist lies to discredit the only predominantly black, Latino, and immigrant college in Massachusetts. The action was organized by PL’ers and friends. Our signs read: “Boston Globe: Racist Mouthpiece for the 1%” and “Boston Globe: Leading the Charge to Attack Public Education.” Many hundreds of motorists saw our signs and dozens honked in support of our anti-racist message.  

Over the previous two weeks, the Globe had printed several columns, articles, and editorials slamming the college administration for mismanaging financial aid for students, under-reporting crime statistics, and refusing to cooperate with businessmen who wanted to start a job-training program at the college.

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Immigration Lawyers Confront Obama’s Racist Scheme

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is the 12,000-member-strong organization of immigration lawyers. Several friends of PLP have been participating for several years in local chapters and at the national conventions, working in a mass professional organization which is led by liberals in the ruling class.

At the 2011 AILA convention, thousands of immigration lawyers were suckered by Obama’s top immigration cop’s announcement that his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and attorneys would use “prosecutorial discretion” to stop deportations of non-criminals. Instead, racist round-ups and deportations increased to its highest level yet. Prosecutorial discretion meant that the ICE might be nice in a few instances, but that fascist attacks on immigrants would get worse.

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Unitarians: ‘Tear down Racist Arpaio’s Jail’

PHOENIX, ARIZONA, June 23 — About 2,000 people attending the Unitarian convention boarded buses this evening for the 7-mile trip from the Phoenix Convention Center to “Tent City.” That’s the jail where fascist Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio houses people awaiting trial, including those he hands over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation.

The prisoners, swept up by the sheriff’s department that practices racial profiling, are tortured by brutal guards, exposed to extreme heat, insufficient and rotten food, and lack access to sinks, toilets and medical care. Women who go into labor are handcuffed.

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ConEd Workers Turn Lockout into Strike

NEW YORK CITY, July 1 — Electricity provider ConEd has locked out over 8,000 workers as it tries to maximize its profits by freezing workers’ wages and  “modernizing” pensions.  As we go to press workers are picketing around the clock against the bosses’ use of 5,000 managers as scabs. One of them has already gotten burned.

Mass Action Marks School Occupation

UPDATE, July 3 — Oakland kkkops and school security officers invaded Lakeview Elementary School at 4 this morning, arresting two occupiers and ousting the rest (more next issue). 

OAKLAND, July 1 — The occupation of Lakeview Elementary School has continued for 16 days (see CHALLENGE 7/4/12). Tonight, more than a hundred occupiers, parents, students and supporters held a “16 Candles” community potluck and a screening of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. 

Here are the demands the occupation has made on the Oakland Unified School District:

Superintendent Tony Smith must reopen all five closed schools or resign;

Keep all neighborhood schools open; 

Stop union-busting attacks against the Oakland Education Association and other school worker unions;

Repudiate the crippling debt and interest payments imposed by the state of California on the Oakland school district after the district went into receivership;

Fully fund quality public education for all.

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‘Lower Fares, Higher Wages, Make the Bosses Pay!’

WASHINGTON, DC, June 28 — Over 60 protestors including bus drivers, transit riders, workers from other unions, and Occupy activists rallied and picketed outside the board meeting of the DC Metro transit system. The rally demanded cancellation of the planned fare hike for riders and the racist pay freeze and benefit cuts for the predominantly black workforce. Chanting, “lower fares, higher wages, make the bosses pay”, demonstrators condemned the bosses for putting the cost of the system on the backs of the working class.

The transit system makes billions of dollars for the businesses (like the Verizon Center, the Nationals’ baseball stadium, and dozens more law firms and big office buildings) located near subway stops. It makes economic activity possible in the city as a whole. So why shouldn’t the real estate developers, big businessmen, and banks pay for something that makes profits for them?  Because they run the government and will do everything they can to maximize their profits at our expense.

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Pakistan: Enraged Workers Strike, Burn Government Buildings

PAKISTAN, June 28 — Prolonged daily power outages in almost every big city and small town have provoked widespread violent protests and strikes by angry workers. They have set fire to government-owned buildings, property, vehicles and offices belonging to the Water and Power Development Authority.

Almost every day the protestors are besieging grid stations, blocking trains, closing roads, pelting the police with stones and fearlessly facing attacks from cops wielding batons and hurling tear gas. They have destroyed traffic signals and attacked shops which do not close down. 

When angry workers burned a few homes of ministers and ruling-class-elected representatives, the latter’s personal guards and police shot four demonstrators to death and injured dozens of others. 

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How Obamacare Makes Workers Sick

he ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the core provisions of President Barack Obama’s health care reform is no victory for the working class. The mandate forcing people to buy insurance on a for-profit basis is a bonanza for the insurance companies and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). These companies will now have tens of millions of new customers from whom to reap enormous profits. The same is true for the pharmaceutical and hospital industries that will continue to rob the general population with over-priced drugs and tests, many of them unnecessary. The more money they rake in, the less workers will have for basic needs.

The money to pay for health reform will, in effect, come from a tax on the entire working class. This was the basis for the rulers’ new hero, Chief Justice John Roberts, to become the deciding vote in declaring Obamacare constitutional. Congress has the power to tax, he said, and tax it will. Not everyone will be covered by the reformed health care system, of course. Twelve million undocumented workers and their children will remain unprotected, facing Obama’s policy of mass deportations, upwards of 1.4 million and counting.

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