Cop city, training ground for fascism

ATLANTA, GA, February 15–Rejecting much of the bosses’ liberalism over the past year, the working class has taken direct action against the building of Cop City, destroying vehicles, damaging banks, and erecting a tent city to try to stop the construction of this urban warfare  training center. Within the context of 19 protesters being arrested and charged with terrorism,  the Atlanta Police Department (APD) murdered Latin worker Manuel “Tortugita'' Teran during a raid to clear the encampment.
After weeks of militant multiracial fightback led by Black and Latin workers, the APD released body camera footage of the killing. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta’s killer kkkops, and politicians claim that Tort shot cops first, and thus, “deserved” to die. However, Tort’s family in Panama and friends in Atlanta called it: the police shot each other first and used it as ammunition to shoot at workers occupying the forest and killed Tort with 13 shots in the crossfire.

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Justice for Raymond: How Do You Spell Racist? NYPD

The Bronx, NY, September 10 –-Today Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends joined with family and friends of Raymond Chaluisant to rally for justice for Raymond who was murdered by racist KKKop Dion Middleton (See CHALLENGE, 8/24). At the rally, youth led chants demanding justice including "How do you spell racist? NYPD," "If we don't get it (justice) shut it down" and "white cop, Black cop all the same; racist terror is the name of their game." A sound system was used so neighbors could hear the speeches and chants. A picket line with signs caught people’s attention.

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Summer Project: ‘Committed to fighting this racist system’

This summer project centered around two major events: 1) a march in protest of the murder of Shantel Davis by police detective Phil Atkins in 2012 and 2) the imprisonment of Justin Rodwell and the legal attacks on him and his brothers for resisting police terror. These two struggles encapsulated what the party is all about and were an opportunity to demonstrate our politics in practice to everyone at the SP.
The march was a powerful experience; it connected the murder of Kyam Livingston to Alex Flores (LA) to Shantel Davis. Families of all three spoke about losing their loved ones is something no one should ever have to experience. But under capitalism these racist killings are the order of the day. We took the streets! It was a show of resistance against the bosses and their enforcers and also an unapologetic expression of the party’s politics. Many gave speeches about how we need to unite to fight this capitalist system that creates these police who kill us. This had a profound effect not only on the PL’ers and friends present but also on the workers who marched, chanted, and raised their fists with us.

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SMASH RACIST POLICE TERROR!

And so it begins: On June 27, eight kkkops of Akron, Ohio fired at least 90 bullets at a Black young man, Jayland Walker and pierced his body over 60 times. Jayland, only 25 years young, is one of the 528 people murdered by police this year so far (Statist Research Department, 7/5). The U.S. police, descended from protectors of enslavers, function to terrorize the working class and protect the ruling class. As the bosses’ system spins further into chaos and towards imperialist war, our class’s main danger are the liberal bosses, also known as the Big Fascists.
The following are a few of the fights the Progressive Labor Party seeks to connect during this year’s Summer Project. The cities highlighted—Chicago, Newark, New York City, and Los Angeles—reflect areas of fightback PLP is involved in, even through the pandemic.
When the bosses kill one of ours, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Every single example you are about to read resulted in mass fightbacks. The mainly Black and Latin women workers who lead these campaigns defy the sexist gender roles that capitalism imposes on our class.
If we are immersed with these families and fighters for the long haul, these lifelong fighters will become the gravediggers of this racist, sexist, murderous capitalist system!

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Rodwell-Spivey Anniversary Smash kkkops with communism!

NEWARK June 1- One year after the racist kkkop attack on the Rodwell-Spivey family, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the family joined to hold a spirited rally in front of their house, where the attack took place. The year before, undercover officers in Newark targeted and attacked two of the Rodwell-Spivey brothers as they looked at clothes in a van on the dead-end street. The killer kkkops claim they were searching for another Black man wearing a white t-shirt with dreads, but nothing under this capitalist system is coincidental or a mistake when Black workers worldwide are super-exploited and jailed on a mass scale. The phony reform to end cash bail reform in New Jersey is not working in New Jersey. Justin Rodwell, one of the brothers that came to defend their younger ones from police, is still being detained as he awaits trial in Essex County Jail.

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Justice for Adam Toledo: SMASH RACIST STATE TERROR

CHICAGO, April 13—Antiracist mass struggle is heating up across the city in the wake of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) racist murder of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) called for communist revolution as the solution to racist state terror that is essential to capitalism (see box).
Adam was a student and resident of Little Village, a west side neighborhood that is a majority home to Latin workers.

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To end police terror, revolt!

ANNAPOLIS, MD—Chants and demands rang out in Maryland’s state capital as over 150 protesters, with support from 90 mass organizations, marched on the Annapolis statehouse. The collective of the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability had high hopes that a bill repealing the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) would finally pass but as is the case with many reform struggles, these hopes came crashing down as multiple amendments obliterated demands. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the voices calling out the legislative betrayal of the working class and chanted: “only communist revolution will break our chains.” We can’t reform away racism that’s integral to this profit system’s survival.
PLP has been working with the coalition to end racist police terror and murder for years now. Several PLP members who also work with Community Justice in Prince George’s County and the West Wednesday Coalition in Baltimore attended the march, distributing copies of CHALLENGE.
Our message to workers: ending police terror and murder requires a revolutionary overthrow of the whole damn system—appealing to the legislature will never free the working class. Pandering politicians represent and manage this racist capitalist system.

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Justice for Victoria! Sexist police terror part and parcel of capitalism

On March 28, in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, Victoria Salazar, a working-class woman from El Salvador was murdered by police. Victoria committed the capitalist crime of being a worker, a woman and a migrant in a system that only serves the ruling class. Capitalism uses sexism, nationalism and racism as the ideological pillars to keep the working class divided and to perpetuate its system of exploitation and oppression. Without fighting for a communist society, we will never bring down these deadly pillars.

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SMASH RACISM, BUILD WORKERS’ POWER

LOS ANGELES, CA, March 17—“We are going to turn our pain into power” shouted one of the daughters of Marco Vasquez Jr.
This impassioned sentiment was met with cheers and raised fists from about 100 protest supporters. As the struggle against police murder moves forward in Los Angeles, more and more people, especially the families who are closest to this form of racist oppression, recognize the need for systemic change. Through being immersed in the class struggle and intertwining our lives with our base, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are showing that communism is the only system that will meet those aspirations for workers’ power and PLP is the vehicle to achieve it.

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Road to revolution: West Wednesday unites families terrorized by kkkops

BALTIMORE, March 6—Two days before the trial of Derek Chavin for robbing the life of George Floyd, antiracists and six families whose loved ones were murdered by the kkkops here  rallied to denounce capitalist state terrorism. The West Coalition, with Progressive Labor Party (PLP), organized a demonstration for the prosecution of killer-kkkop Derek Chauvin, the reopening of all local cases of murder-by-police, and the jailing of those cops too! As the masses here fight racist police terror and demand more accountability, it’s becoming more common to hear—even if the speaker is not a member of PLP—that communist revolution is the only solution!

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