Racist U.S.-Israel, you can’t hide: Kill the bosses’ genocidal system

New York, NY, October 13—Thousands of workers and students gathered near Times Square and thousands more protested elsewhere in New York City to demand the end of Israeli bosses’ fascist occupation and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The righteous rage of the working class was potent as hundreds tore away from the sidewalk and took to the streets near Grand Central in an illegal march. Many workers took leadership by passionately leading chants with energy. Multiracial and multigenerational protesters chanted “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! (The people united will never be defeated), and Arabic chants. Several members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were in the crowd and we passed out at least a hundred copies of CHALLENGE. We also passed out flyers titled “War in Israel/Gaza means: Fight for the international working class, Join PLP.” One friend of the Party started up a sharper chant, “Biden you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”

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Mass organizing for Ivan: Systems that kill do not deserve to exist

INGLEWOOD, CA, October 15—Over the last two days about 100 family and friends showed up for the services of our fallen working class brother Ivan Solis Mora. Ivan, who was suffering from a mental health episode (see CHALLENGE 10/18), was treated with bullets by kkkop instead of compassion and medical care. That’s kkkapitalism for you! Mental illness is a death sentence under a system that routinely treats sick and disabled workers as disposable. Friday evening was the viewing followed by the morning mass and burial on Saturday. At the viewing, a family member made green ribbons for us to wear to bring awareness to the growing mental health crisis, along with pins with Ivan’s picture. Surrounding his casket were floral arrangements, most with religious messages, and one shaped like a guitar. Petra, his mother, told us how much he loved playing his guitar and writing music. His actual guitar was also on display.

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Students & Workers: Organize, Organize, Organize!

This fall has started off with a bang at our Bronx colleges as we started classes facing closed cafeterias on two of our campuses, canceled classes, crumbling infrastructure, broken elevators, and a myriad of other issues. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are involved in many fightbacks on our campuses, including demanding fair wages for adjunct professors, supporting the struggle against the privatization of healthcare for retirees, and building solidarity with migrant workers and our working-class neighbors. We are involved in organizing fightbacks that bring students and faculty, staff together.

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Staten Island: Deport racists, support migrants, destroy capitalism

The racists on Staten Island are not stopping their attacks on the asylum seekers being housed in shelters there, but the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and other antiracists are stepping up our efforts to support and defend them. By order of New York City officials, St. John's Villa, a former private school that was the site of two previous pro-migrant vs anti-migrant demonstrations, is to be emptied of its residents by November 15th. The racists are now concentrating their attacks on migrants in the former Island Shores Senior Residence on Father Capodanno Blvd. Every night, the racists have been congregating in smaller or larger numbers to loudly spew their anti-immigrant filth to disturb the residents. Their continued presence has caused the NYPD to set up barricades on the streets surrounding the facility, ostensibly to prevent any confrontations.

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Respond to Gaza Genocide: Build fightback & PLP on the job & in the union

While workers around the world watch in horror, the escalating slaughter taking place in Gaza leaves many people feeling helpless. With the demise of the old communist movement, workers are increasingly being led to the slaughter by one group of nationalists, religious fundamentalists or another. While we cannot control the outcome of events right now, we can affect the outlook of our coworkers and within our unions, and fight for the political leadership of the working class. What we do, where we are, is all-important. We can, if we are creative and bold, expose the hellish world the capitalists have built, and organize to destroy these bosses and their system with communist revolution.

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UAW Picket: No fair contract in a profit system

CHICAGO, October 7—Today members of the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) came out in force to support the ongoing United Auto Workers (UAW) strike here on the picket line at the Torrence Avenue Ford plant. We distributed dozens of copies of CHALLENGE and spoke with workers about the need for a communist revolution. Many workers are open to discussing these revolutionary ideas and thank us for our support in the struggle for a better contract.

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Letters . . . November 1, 2023

From Israel: Apartheid kills Palestinians and class consciousness The slaughter is the bosses’ doing. Those who would argue that we are “assuming symmetry between the occupier and the occupied” are missing the point. There is no symmetry between the big bosses – Chinese and American – and the exploited working classes of the Middle East. For them, we are all slaves to extract profit from and chess pieces in their struggles for geopolitical dominance. The Israeli worker is not the oppressor of the Palestinian worker – rather, the big businessmen oppress both.

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Red Eye On the News . . . November 1, 2023

U.S. bombs dropped by Israeli jets rain down on children France24, 10/15–Israel's strikes on the Gaza Strip have led to an "unprecedented human catastrophe" in the Palestinian territory, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Sunday. "Not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel has been allowed in the Gaza Strip for the last eight days," Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, told journalists. More than 1,000 people are missing under the rubble of buildings that were destroyed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza, the Palestinian civil defence team said on Sunday. Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 2,450 people since Hamas's bloody attack on southern Israel last week, the Gaza health ministry said Sunday.

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Editorial: Only communism can smash racist borders

As refugees from Central America, Africa, and the Caribbean swell in number at the U.S.-Mexico border, President Joe Biden agreed to grant 472,000 work permits exclusively for those coming from Venezuela. Seen as a kind gesture by some, the U.S. bosses are creating a racist divide as they fumble to address a disaster they themselves created. Workers without permits will be deported, and those who stay will be super-exploited, just as the Black working class has been for centuries.

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KKKapitalism killed Ivan, Workers grow fight vs racism

Inglewood, CA, September 24—Cesar received a call from a friend telling him that his house was being raided by the cops. First he thought of his undocumented parents, but also in the back of his mind, he thought about his friend and neighbor, Ivan. Ivan struggled with schizophrenia and everyone on the block was aware. They loved him and looked out for him. No one was ever threatened by him, even during his episodes, rejecting capitalist lies about the mentally ill.

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