Haiti: no vaccines, capitalist crisis fails workers

 As this is being written, another wave of Covid-19 is hitting the working class in Haiti with ferocity. Under “normal” conditions of imperialist-imposed misery, there is little or no health care. In the capital city, there is one public hospital—understaffed, under-resourced and underfunded—for about three million people. In most departments (states), the situation is the same. For the majority of workers, there is nowhere to go, so they are ill and dying at home, unnoticed except by their loved ones. Needless to say, private hospitals, while only moderately better, are off-limits to workers.

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Colombia: divide and conquer

It’s already been a month since the workers’ blockades and marches here in Colombia. The national bosses have offered both the carrot and stick. They have managed to weaken the strike committees with the same strategy they used in 2019, buying time by offering negotiations but never really complying with workers’ demands.

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Tupelo Summer of ’79: Fight racism like a red!

To many who remember the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Mississippi symbolizes the most extreme racism, the most brutal murders of Black workers, antiracists, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.
For Progressive Labor Party, Mississippi signified a base for revolution among Black and white workers, spreading the ideas of multiracial unity and the fight for communist ideas in the South. Today, we celebrate the 42th anniversary of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About one hundred communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.

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Letters of July 7

I am not free.
The following poem has been written by a student.
I am not free because I’m forced to

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Workers rebel vs. Colombia’s capitalist crisis

As CHALLENGE goes to press, and mass protests involving more than one million workers in Colombia enter their seventh week, we are witnessing the power of the working class in real time. Initially triggered by a government plan to raise taxes on wages and basic necessities, the uprising has virtually shut down the country. It has channeled the class anger of young workers into a mass fight for basic income, opportunities for youth, and an end to police and military brutality. The working-class rage has exposed the weakness of the U.S. bosses and the rise of their rival Chinese capitalists in the imperialists’ sharpening competition for control of the country.

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Support the Rodwell and Spivey Families: Smash racist police terror

Newark, NJ, June 8—“That’s why [the youth] lost hope in this system, even the adults lost hope. That’s why they don’t come out to vote,” shouted one of the family members outside the 5th precinct in response to recent police attacks on her family. Despite attempts at intimidation from the police and Mayor Baraka, the Rodwell and Spivey families pushed forward with the protest to let the city know that Black workers are fed up with the constant police harassment. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands with these families as they fight to free their family members from prison. As “radical” mayors try to silence these fighting voices, we know that these families are the future leaders in creating a communist world.

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International solidarity for workers in Colombia

NEW YORK CITY, June 5—Protests and demonstrations have shaken the rulers of Colombia (see editorial, page 2). The working-class across the globe has shown a lot of solidarity with the workers in Colombia. In New York City, under the hashtag #SOSColombia, a bus was organized to join a national march in Washington, D.C.

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Smash sexism with communist revolution

As U.S. bosses grow tired of lost profits after over a year of pandemic driven shut downs, we are seeing cities internationally struggle to “reopen.” Workers have been asked to return to unsafe work conditions, send their children back to schools that might not have their health as a priority, and mentally readjust to a world that has been further thrown into crisis. While these domestic duties fall on all workers, we still live in a society where women bear the brunt of these responsibilities. So we, in the Progressive Labor Party, ask our fellow sisters and brothers, what has been done fundamentally to advance the fight against sexism for the working class?  

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Put bus strike on the route to PLP

HYATTSVILLE, MD, June 9—A few weeks ago, over 100 MetroAccess workers, an on-call service for people with disabilities, went on strike against the private contractor MV Transportation, over disputes regarding pay and working conditions. The strike was led by Black women, who organized dispatchers to temporarily close down the call system for the regional MetroAccess bus system in the Washington, D.C. region for a day. Once again proving that Black workers are key to putting this racist, sexist, rotten system out of its misery.

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Student gets political, asks for CHALLENGE

I got a text from one of my students in the Social Justice Club last night that read “I was wondering if you knew where I could get the next issues of the newspaper that was handed out at the protest we attended? It was named along the lines of “communist labor party” or something like that. I remember you used to give them to a classmate and I was wondering if there’s any where I could find them whether online or if there’s some sort of mailing list.”

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