‘Hoops for Justice’ serves our class

BROOKLYN, August 28—For the eighth time in nine years the families of Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray joined with neighbors, friends, community organizations and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to offer a different kind of basketball tournament to the Black youth of East Flatbush—Hoops for Justice.   
Shantel and Kimani were killed by killer kkkops working out of the 67th precinct.  In the weeks and months after Shantel’s death in June of 2012, PLP members built a base with her family in the process of organizing street marches to the precinct.  When Kimani was killed in March of 2013, a significant youth rebellion ensued along the same stretch of Church Avenue where our demonstrations had taken place over the prior months.  Hoops for Justice emerged as an annual event to continue the struggle in memory of Shantel and Kimani.

Click to read more ...

100th Anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain: Multiracial unity must march on

One hundred years ago, August to September 1921, the world witnessed the largest armed rebellion of workers in U.S. history since the Civil War: the Battle of Blair Mountain. It was a great example of multiracial unity between Black and white miners.
Ten thousand armed coal miners marched from Charleston, West Virginia, 70 miles south to Blair Mountain, Logan County, West Virginia, to destroy the unjust system that had taken their health, their homes, and many of their lives. During the battle, striking white workers, partly inspired by the new workers’ state, the Soviet Union, joined with Black and immigrant workers. While the immigrant workers were originally sent to break the strike. The multiracial miners foiled the bosses plans by organizing these workers and turning the strike into a worker’s army.

Click to read more ...

Letters of October 6

Would the miners think we were crazy?
When we flew to Alabama to support striking coal miners at the Warrior Met Coal Company, I was unsure what to expect. In addition to virtually ignoring the strike, national media had spent years depicting "red-state America" as a hopeless bastion of reactionary bigotry. Would the miners welcome support from communist New Yorkers? Would they think we were crazy? Would they be angry?
The response was extraordinary—we were welcomed, and so was our message. (There were exceptions, but they merely proved the rule.) The miners, feeling isolated by the national media's conspiracy of silence, were gratified to have support from outsiders.

Click to read more ...

History of Fordham: Antiracist, anti-imperialist worker-student unity

 52 years ago this fall, students at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York seized the administration building and demanded throwing the U.S. military’s ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) off campus. This student occupation was led by the Worker-Student Alliance faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and was a part of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle involving many millions against U.S. imperialism.

Click to read more ...

U.S. dominance crashing towards world war

The deadly August 26 suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport was yet another gut punch to the stature of the United States, an imperialist world power in steep decline. After the ISIS-K small-time terrorists claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed close to 200 workers and 13 U.S. military personnel, the leader of the world’s largest terrorist gang countered with a drone strike that slaughtered at least 10 civilians, including seven children (New York Times, 9/5). “We will hunt you down and make you pay” (Reuters, 8/27), said U.S. President Joe Biden. But Biden’s bluster fooled no one. The chaotic military withdrawal exposed the weakness of the U.S. ruling class as they move toward fascism and broader war in a more and more volatile world.

Click to read more ...

From LA to DC: Families, antiracists, communists— SMASH RACIST POLICE TERROR

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 7—Progressive Labor Party (PLP), families from police murder victims, and friends from here and Balitmore joined the PLP in Washington, DC for the National March Against Police Brutality. Communist leadership in the movement against police terror is bringing fighters closer to a communist outlook and PLP.

Click to read more ...

Alabama coal miner strike: solidarity, struggle, revolution

BROOKWOOD, AL—City University of New York (CUNY) students and faculty in the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) concluded a solidarity week in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, supporting 1,100 Black and white striking miners at the Warrior Met Coal Company. The miners have been striking since April 1 over outrageous safety violations, deep wage cuts, and slashed benefits, amid record coal profits. They have made history as Alabama’s longest strike.
Thousands of other miners, nearby Amazon workers, and railroad workers at CSX (see sidebar) are watching this strike. Warrior Met miners can potentially spread working-class rebellion throughout the South. PLP stands with these miners who have exposed “democracy” as a capitalist dictatorship. We are learning from the militant fightback and leadership of our new friends, as we build a mass Party for communism, where workers like the Alabama miners run the world.

Click to read more ...

Liberal bosses’ police reform movement builds fascism

LOS ANGELES, September 7—The worldwide multiracial, antiracist upsurge in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others was a positive development for the international working class. The mass rebellions and flurry of protests activated countless previously-passive antiracists, and became possibly the largest worldwide movement against racism in recent history. These mass actions gave revolutionary communists an enormous opportunity to expose how racism is endemic to the capitalist system, and that it can never be eliminated without the violent overthrow of the ruling class that profits from it

Click to read more ...

Hurricane Ida Capitalism fails workers in climate crisis, again

Hurricane Ida ripped through the U.S. and exposed once again the utter failure of capitalism to provide even the most basic necessities for millions of workers. The latest in a long and rapidly growing list of capitalist-created disasters, the system’s breakdown in the wake of Ida has killed nearly 100 people, many drowned in their homes, left over a million without power for more than a week, and hundreds of thousands more without drinking water. While the wealthy centers of New Orleans and New York were left relatively unscathed, the working-class areas where many Black, immigrant and poor white workers live took the brunt of the damage.

Click to read more ...

Brooklyn: antiracist outcry over Haiti earthquake

BROOKLYN, September 4—“Same enemy, same fight! Workers of the world, unite!” rang through the streets of Flatbush neighborhood. As the bosses’ racist attacks on workers in Haiti continue unabated, more than 30 members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) unfurled banners in solidarity with our working-class sisters and brothers in Haiti today. We expressed anti-imperialist and internationalist politics and brought a message of revolutionary hope. Not false hope through elections or fake leftist misleaders, but through confidence in the international working class to one day overthrow this vicious racist imperialist system. And build a communist world–without nations, borders, the ever-present threat of war, and profit-driven disasters.

Click to read more ...