Fanning the flames of antiracist fightback

NEW JERSEY, February 7—“I know we should try to stop police brutality, but it seems like all these revolutions we are learning about show us we need a more revolutionary approach.” This was the conclusion a college student in New Jersey shared while summarizing an event featuring multiracial women and men student leaders from Kingsborough Community College (KCC) in Brooklyn, New York. KCC students gave a presentation and a skit reenacting the racist attacks on students by college public safety officers (see article in 11/17/22 CHALLENGE) and participated in discussions with over 50 New Jersey college students. One thing became clear: students are eager to challenge the racist and sexist system. Antiracist fightback is spreading, and the more it spreads, the more this racist, sexist, imperialist capitalist system is doomed.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were also present to distribute CHALLENGE. Between the presentation and revolutionary communist politics, debates and discussions show that these working class students are more than capable of both analyzing the world and organizing to change it. Workers and students like them can and should run the world—that’s communism, and our fight for that world is expanding!

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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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Strike against racism, steer toward revolution!

LANDOVER, MARYLAND, June 15—“The bosses can’t profit when the workers unite, shut it down and shut it tight” rang out in front of the Transdev Metro Access site, located on Hubbard Road in suburban Maryland. Transit workers at Metro Access garages are fighting for a living wage and decent benefits as they prepare to strike. These frontline workers drove disabled workers to doctors’ appointments, emergency rooms and other essential trips during the COVID pandemic and continue to serve despite their lower wages and benefits compared to other transit workers.

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Tupelo, 1976 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 and 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 heroic struggle of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About 100 communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.

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Letters of July 6

Fired for being a good teacher
This letter is to support a fellow comrade. A wonderful, bilingual, antiracist, high school teacher who has just been fired, not for doing his job poorly, but for doing his job extremely well!
The conditions that he teaches in are deplorable, racist and dangerous - made even worse since Covid-19.
• The school is severely understaffed.
Since September his rosters have changed like a revolving door, making consistency difficult, but he worked to create continuity by making home visits to make sure his students were OK.
During the pandemic, this caring communist teacher - a resident of Newark, and an immigrant, ORGANIZED his co-worker

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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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