Summer Project: ‘Committed to fighting this racist system’

This summer project centered around two major events: 1) a march in protest of the murder of Shantel Davis by police detective Phil Atkins in 2012 and 2) the imprisonment of Justin Rodwell and the legal attacks on him and his brothers for resisting police terror. These two struggles encapsulated what the party is all about and were an opportunity to demonstrate our politics in practice to everyone at the SP.
The march was a powerful experience; it connected the murder of Kyam Livingston to Alex Flores (LA) to Shantel Davis. Families of all three spoke about losing their loved ones is something no one should ever have to experience. But under capitalism these racist killings are the order of the day. We took the streets! It was a show of resistance against the bosses and their enforcers and also an unapologetic expression of the party’s politics. Many gave speeches about how we need to unite to fight this capitalist system that creates these police who kill us. This had a profound effect not only on the PL’ers and friends present but also on the workers who marched, chanted, and raised their fists with us.

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Sri Lanka: inflamed by crisis, caught in rivalry

Suffering from the worst shortages of gas and fuel, food, and medicine not seen since independence in 1948, workers and students in Sri Lanka rebelled. Many hundreds of thousands joined a protest movement demanding the ouster of the ruling Rajapaksa family. When president Gotabaya Rajapaksa refused to resign, protesters stormed the Presidential palace, occupying the extravagant grounds and chasing him out of the country. Workers even took a swim in the presidential pool.
The new president is now-former prime minister Ranil Wickremesing, whose official residence was burned down after over 100,000 protesters surrounded the mansion (CNN, 7/13). Working class rebellion is a good thing.
This system is getting worse each day. Fighting back is the only way to change it. Long-term victory means going beyond rebellion or demands for different capitalists to be put in power.  It requires us to organize to build a communist movement with the outlook of putting the working class in power.

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MLG: PL’ers expose roots of fascism in liberalism

NEWARK, NJ, July 15—The Marxist Literary Group (MLG) is a group of progressive academics who have met annually for half a century; Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades have been regular participants. A hundred members attended this year’s week-long conference, whose theme was “Transition.” As the rulers who run the imperialist world-system gear up for World War III and unleash their guided missiles on the working class, the Party went in with a much stronger political presence than in the past. We distributed dozens of copies of CHALLENGE and spoke openly about the need for a party to make revolution for a communist world.

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Part 10: Black communists in Spanish Civil War Crawford: ‘I fought fascism with bullets’

If the working class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers’ leadership is essential. That is the only way our class can destroy racism, the lifeblood of capitalism. The following is a story of one such leader, Crawford Morgan.

Crawford Morgan was born in 1910 in Rockingham, North Carolina. After high school, he became an apprentice printer. He moved first to Norfolk Virginia, then to New York City. During the Depression, he became involved in organizations of the unemployed in New York City and was arrested in a demonstration at the Home Relief Bureau.
Morgan joined the Young Communist League (YCL) in 1932. The YCL was the vibrant youth wing of the Communist Party, which he joined four years later. Despite anticommunist lies in the bosses’ media, communism was held in high regard among masses of Black working women, men, and youth.

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Proletarian literature shows multiracial unity

That white workers are hurt by racism is a key principle of communist analysis. The standard liberal rant is that white people—regardless of class—all benefit from “white supremacy.” The only basis for white people to engage in antiracist fightback is thus missionary sympathy or guilt; they can be at best “allies” in struggles in which, so to speak, they have “no skin in the game.” The reality is much different.
The truth is that all members of the working class worldwide are hurt by the racist super-exploitation and division of Black and nonwhite workers. While workers with darker skin experience greater levels of poverty and state-sponsored violence, many working-class people designated as “white” suffer from low wages, lousy housing, inadequate medical care, unemployment, and hunger. To the extent that racial divisions depress wages for all workers—and keep workers of all skin colors and nationalities from uniting in their shared class interest—the bosses laugh all the way to the bank.

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Letters of August 3

Camacho’s legacy will live on
The Delano giant is gone. It is with deep sorrow in my heart that I received the news that one of the Farmworker Leaders from Delano, California died yesterday. Epifanio Camacho dedicated his life to fighting against the injustices of the ranchers to the undocumented farm workers. His non-pacifist struggle found an echo in the immigrants who suffered beatings and mistreatment at the hands of the police and immigration. Such was the importance of this charismatic fighter that his home became known as "The Sanctuary of Immigrants.”
Camacho will never die because his legacy will live on forever. There is not enough space to write about the fights he led, the attacks he received and his fascinating life. That is why I only say that from the lands of Sandino, we say goodbye to you with great respect, admiration, deep affection and sadness.

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This sexist system —shut it down!

 The U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and demolishing the right to abortion is a brutally sexist attack on women workers, and particularly on Black, Latin and immigrant workers. Backed by gutter sexist Republicans and the domestically oriented faction of the capitalist ruling class, the Small Fascists, the Court is poised to escalate its attacks on workers and erase decades of hard-won reforms within the limits of the profit system.

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SMASH RACIST POLICE TERROR!

And so it begins: On June 27, eight kkkops of Akron, Ohio fired at least 90 bullets at a Black young man, Jayland Walker and pierced his body over 60 times. Jayland, only 25 years young, is one of the 528 people murdered by police this year so far (Statist Research Department, 7/5). The U.S. police, descended from protectors of enslavers, function to terrorize the working class and protect the ruling class. As the bosses’ system spins further into chaos and towards imperialist war, our class’s main danger are the liberal bosses, also known as the Big Fascists.
The following are a few of the fights the Progressive Labor Party seeks to connect during this year’s Summer Project. The cities highlighted—Chicago, Newark, New York City, and Los Angeles—reflect areas of fightback PLP is involved in, even through the pandemic.
When the bosses kill one of ours, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Every single example you are about to read resulted in mass fightbacks. The mainly Black and Latin women workers who lead these campaigns defy the sexist gender roles that capitalism imposes on our class.
If we are immersed with these families and fighters for the long haul, these lifelong fighters will become the gravediggers of this racist, sexist, murderous capitalist system!

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Student-parent-worker unity wins, more fights ahead

New Jersey, July 5—Liberal fascist school bosses rehired a communist teacher after recognizing the growing support for that teacher. In mid-May, a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member was fired from the school where they teach, supposedly due to performance issues and budget cuts. In a community meeting organized to build fightback, the teacher’s co-worker stated: “There is possibly no other teacher that the staff and the kids like more, and the administrators like less.” The antiracist, pro-student and worker solidarity this teacher represents in this school emboldened the community to win back the job of this communist fighter! This fight also helped to strengthen the confidence that the teacher had in himself to build for a lifetime in the working class.

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Honor Harriet & reject the flag

BALTIMORE, July 4—Comrades in the Baltimore area organized a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) sponsored trip to Cambridge, MD, where we visited two museums—the community-built Harriet Tubman Museum & Educational Center, and the ruling class-run Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center—dedicated to the life and struggle of antiracist abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.
Despite the heavy holiday traffic—during the July 4 weekend, dedicated to hypocritical celebration of U.S. capitalist independence—family and friends of the Party made the most of the occasion.
Before the trip, one comrade gave a short speech on the significance of Tubman’s—and many many others’—resistance to the institution of slavery, connecting her determination to the same attitude needed in the Party’s fight for the upcoming sisterhood and brotherhood of a communist world.
It was also emphasized that, like Tubman herself, we need to be active in mass organizations, building bonds with a diverse array of workers, to knock down the oppressors of the world.

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