The scourge of capitalism

As the Covid-19 pandemic nears a harrowing winter, with deaths surging to record levels around the globe, the profit system is killing masses of people by the day. Worldwide, thanks to capitalist inaction, incompetence, misleadership, and greed, more than 55 million workers have been sickened and over 1.3 million have died—official numbers that are surely huge undercounts. In Belgium, nurses and doctors were ordered to keep working after testing positive, as long as they weren’t coughing in patients’ faces

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APHA: Racism is a health crisis; revolution is the cure

November 18—This year the American Public Health Association(APHA) held its annual meeting virtually under the theme Preventing Violence, with racist structural violence perpetrated by the capitalist class a key focus of the program.In past years, this topic would have focused on neighborhood violence, gun control, and “violence interrupter” programs. This year, a culmination of years of communist organizing and sharpening mass fightback against racism succeeded in bringing antiracist politics to greater masses of healthcare workers.

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CUNY bosses use Covid-19 pandemic to attack workers and students

 NEW YORK CITY, November 14–With the blessing of New York’s racist-in-chief Andrew Cuomo, City University of New York (CUNY) administrators have used the Covid-19  pandemic, as the pretense to launch an all-out racist attack that will hurt students the most.
Covid-19 crisis has killed more CUNY workers than at any other university system (Higher Ed, 6/23). What’s more, almost 3,000 part-time faculty lost their positions at the start of the fall semester. A hiring freeze has left administrative offices severely understaffed, as workers left, got sick and/or died.

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Ethiopia: on the brink of civil war and a flashpoint for imperialist proxy war

Ethiopia, once considered a linchpin for the U.S. imperialists in the Horn of Africa, is on the brink of civil war between two fighting factions: the rival Tigray People's Liberation Front and the Prime Minister Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed administration.
This conflict has the potential to draw in imperialists of all stripes because control over the Horn of Africa is critical to controlling oil routes, the capitalists’ lifeblood. The working class in Ethiopia and everywhere have nothing to gain from these ethnic divisions.

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Working-Class Culture Jacob Lawrence’s powerful paintings of class struggle

Jacob Lawrence, the great Black social realist artist and one of the major U.S. painters of the 20th century, understood that struggle was primary. The first and overdue exhibition from his mid-1950s series of paintings, Struggle: From the History of the American People, is now touring the U.S. When it came to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in an opening delayed by the pandemic, long lines greeted viewers. But this unique exhibition was worth the wait. Unlike most Met exhibitions, this show featured the politics of struggle. Lawrence (1917-2000) counted communists like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright among his friends. While he never joined the Communist Party himself, he had a deep understanding of the racist inequalities of capitalism.

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Direct anger at the rulers, sow unity among our class

NEW YORK CITY, November 18 – The liberal New York City (NYC) bosses’ racist handling of the pandemic is coming to a head as positive Covid-19 cases among students led liberal misleaders Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to shut down school buildings and revert back to all remote learning today.
These past two months have taught the working class—students, parents, and education workers—some lessons on who this system is built for and who it is built against. Progressive Labor Party in the education field is gathering virtually this Sunday to report back and share our experiences, lessons, and fightbacks.

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To beat the bosses’ army, we need a red army of our own

You’re showing up to the protest and you’re saying with the weaponry, with the numbers, with the tank, with the National Guard, with all the stuff, ‘We’re going to hurt you if you don’t go home. We’re going to hurt you if you don’t stop. We’re going to cause you physical harm.’ You don’t put the public in imminent danger and then pretend like we’re the aggressors - Mohawk Johnson

CHICAGO, November 17— Antiracist students and workers here remain committed to fighting the bosses’ racist system and kkkops. Specifically, we continue to support the mass antiracist campaign to free Black artist/organizer Jeremy “Mohawk” Johnson, who was arrested during an anti-kkkop protest downtown in August and remains on house arrest (see CHALLENGE 11/4, 11/18). Members of the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fight to build this struggle not only for our class brother Mohawk, but for all working-class people whose lives have been shortened and destroyed by capitalism.

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U.S. capitalism still in decay; workers need communism

The U.S. presidential election—still undecided as we go to press—is exposing the chaos, decay, and decline of the U.S. ruling class for all the world to see. As arch-racists Donald Trump and Joe Biden jockey for power on behalf of the capitalist bosses’ two warring camps, and vigilante “poll watchers” storm the counting center in Detroit, the end game isn’t likely to be pretty. The world has changed since 2000, when the Democrats gave up on Al Gore and both parties still played for the same team. The stakes are much higher. The future of U.S. capitalism, the legitimacy of its democracy, the fate of the liberal world order—all may hang in the balance.

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For Walter Wallace Jr., Smash racist police terror

PHILADELPHIA, October 31—When the kkkops fired 14 shots and murdered our class brother Walter Wallace Jr., over a dozen workers answered the Progressive Labor Party’s call to bring solidarity to the masses of protesters here. This action reaffirmed the necessity of multiracial unity and international communist politics as a pivotal force for smashing racist terror. In PLP, we fight to win ourselves and the working class to build class consciousness through the lessons learned from participating in antiracist working class uprisings.
While the bosses’ media agressively promotes voting, politics based on identity, and racist divisions workers in Philly fought back against the racist murder-by-kkkop of  27-year-old Walter. Suffering from a mental episode, he needed medical workers, not the Klan-in-Blue. . This, along with the  intensifying racist conditions in Philadelphia, sparked a rebellion ending in the destruction of the bosses’ property.
Days before the election, presidential candidate Jim Crow Joe Biden turned his back on the masses in Philly when asked about his thoughts on looting at the nearby Walmart (NPR, 10/28).

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LA: workers slam racist kkkops on the streets and in the courts

Los Angeles, October 17—Dozens of workers militantly took to the streets to protest the racist police murder of David Flores by kkkiller kops Andrew Do and Bryan Tahuite of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). In a magnificent show of solidarity, four other families of workers who have been murdered by these killers, came out to speak and support following the strong leadership of working-class women.

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