CUNY Fightback Students and staff speak out against racist administration

NEW YORK CITY, July 9—“It’s the best meeting I have attended all year!” This statement was made by a professor who participated in the City University of New York (CUNY) Student Speak Out, where over 30 students, along with professors, from CUNY participated in this virtual event to challenge the latest wave of racist attacks coming from the administration. Four students immediately joined a student strike community at the end of the event and pledged themselves to get more involved with this growing movement.
Friends and members of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are part of this organizing effort. From learning about the daily frustrations that the racist CUNY administrators impose on students to guiding the fight-back with principles of multi-racial unity, youth leadership is growing to transform these reform struggles into a fight for communist revolution.

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End of strike—Capitalist healthcare conditions sickens workers

CHICAGO, July 13—Today marks the official end of an 18-day strike of Cook County workers against the racist and sexist city bosses. Over 2,500 workers united across many different job titles and workplaces to fight against the County board’s profit-based cutbacks. The majority of these workers are Black and Latin women, providing another clear example of Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) outlook that those most exploited and oppressed under this ruthless capitalist system are those most ready to organize for its destruction.
The striking workers of the Cook County system have fought boldly, asserting their dignity and a good deal of power in the face of a system not designed to suit working-class needs. But even the gains of the most militant and prolonged strike can and will be blunted or even erased, as long as the racist capitalist profit system remains intact.

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A worker experiencing homelessness finds a politcal home with PLP

An antiracist community organization, Open Hearts UWS, was formed to defend the men and fight the racist eviction. It is through Open Hearts that PLP met Andre, a Black worker who became a leader in this fight. After a lot of pizza and conversation, inviting him to Zoom meetings and getting to know each other better, Andre marched with us on May Day and said he wanted to join PLP. He recently participated in a Summer Project study group on homelessness and displacement. Below is a brief interview with Andre.

CHALLENGE: Where were you a year ago?
Andre: I’d like to go back a little further. I got out of prison in 2017 and lived with my lady in Harlem. For a while I was working as a dishwasher in the tourist industry. I lost

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A man of science and the working class: Remembering Richard Lewontin

Communists are mourning the loss of a prominent antiracist fighter, Richard Lewontin, a pioneer of molecular evolutionary biology, who died on July 4th at the age of 92. Although his position as a distinguished Harvard professor may not make it obvious that his fight was our fight. After he established himself as one of the preeminent hereditary biologists of his generation, Lewontin turned his sharp eye – and sharp words – to opposing racist pseudoscience. That fake “science” was used by the Nazis to murder millions of Jewish workers and further utilized by  U.S. racists, past and present, to justify slavery, Jim Crow segregation, police killings of Black people and imperialist wars.

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Letters of August 4

The experiences of 2018, mass demonstrations in the streets by tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of workers against all forms of corruption by the Haitian state and the bourgeoisie, pushed the working class in Haiti to fight for radical change of its living conditions. Now is the time to organize to overthrow the bourgeois state, and its imperialist enablers, and build a society that serves the interests of the working class. Communism.

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Capitalist infrastructure murders workers; U.S. imperialism crumbles

On June 24, capitalism killed an untold number of people in Surfside, Florida, when a high-rise apartment complex fell without warning. Dozens of bodies have been recovered from what used to be Champlain Towers South; more than 100 people remain unaccounted for. According to the New York Times, it may be “the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history” (6/27).

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Fighting on the Road to workers’ power

CHICAGO, June 25—A multiracial group of over a dozen Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) workers and supporters rallied at a busy station today for a spirited “Hour of Power” demonstration. We are fighting for equal pay for equal work, rights and benefits for the growing ranks of part-time CTA workers and to organize more workers to fight the sellout union misleaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are also fighting for the idea that workers can run all of society without profiteering bosses and their puppet politicians. That’s communism—working class power.

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Newark summer project: Ignite heat in new communists

Newark, NJ, July 4—Fifty Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends collectively kicked off this year’s Summer Project by sharing food, speeches and international solidarity. The goal was to sharpen the fight against racism, sexism and nationalism as we organize for communist revolution - working class power. One participant commented that as communists, “we make a commitment to free ourselves from capital and invest our lives into the international working class.”

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Retired, not expired! Workers protest sickening healthcare system

New York City, June 30—Over 200  angry retired New York City workers demonstrated in over 95 degree heat in the continuing effort to stop the privatization of their Medicare health insurance (see CHALLENGE, 6/23). Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been actively building this fight for decades. It was heartening to see marchers whose average age was certainly over 70 fighting back. We may be retired but we haven’t expired!

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Collectivity, not profit, must be the foundation

It is widely if not explicitly acknowledged that profit motive lies behind the evolving horror of the Miami condo collapse (see editorial, page 2). The evidence is incontrovertible: cost-cutting in both building materials and building maintenance are to blame. The apparently inescapable reach of profit-driven tragedy leaves any decent person feeling sickened and perhaps even defeated.
Readers of CHALLENGE deserve to know—what would housing be like under communism?

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