With communist influence, DC metro workers disrupt transit & reveal union’s limits

WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 4—Today the DC-area transit workers held an “unathorized” work action to protest management’s racist mistreatment. Hundreds observed a “1:59” action, which means they came to work one hour and 59 minutes late, causing widespread disruption of public transit on the July 4 holiday. Actions like these reveal how power comes from labor. It also reveals the limits of union leadership. Under communist influence and mass organizing, more transit workers can gain confidence to shut this system down.

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Capitalism fails Haiti; Workers rebel

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 9—Thousands exploded in mass working-class violence to protest the government’s fuel price hikes.
 Prices for basic products, especially gasoline (38 percent) and diesel fuel (47 percent) (Reuters, 7/8). Commercial activity everywhere was impacted: tires burned in the streets, protesters downed the main antenna of Digicel (largest cell phone operator in Haiti), and singled out international hotels that were built since the 2010 earthquake instead of housing for those made homeless; major air carriers cancelled flights. The police, called out in force, were blocked from carrying out their brutal suppression of the popular will.
Thus was the hatred of the working class for our exploiters and oppressors expressed, but spontaneous expressions of hatred are not enough to solve our problems. Nothing short of the abolition of a system founded on profit for the small class of capitalists will prevent continuous and worsening attacks on our class. Only a system that is run by workers through our class’s international Party, PLP, can serve our needs and end this exploitation and oppression.

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Baltimore: West Wednesday Rally denounces racist ‘predictive policing’

BALTIMORE, June 25—A recent West Wednesday rally—an anti-racist rally against the 2013 murder of Tyrone West that’s become a fixture in Baltimore over five years—may have been modest in size, but it was bold in action.
It began when a cop in an unmarked car stationed himself directly across the street from the rally.
Perhaps the Baltimore Police Department was trying to see if intimidation would scare people and minimize participation at this weekly action. Since 2013, we have been demanding the prosecution and incarceration of the cops who killed unarmed Tyrone West, while in police custody.
Or perhaps the intimidation was coincidental, and just part of BPD’s new strategy, which they call “predictive policing.”

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Newark: Teachers fight for clean water, expose toxic pols

Newark, NJ, June 30—Members of Progressive Labor Party in Newark are participating in a vitally important anti-racist struggle for safe drinking water. High levels of lead contaminate the city’s water. This is particularly toxic for children. Water contamination is a dangerous and frightening crisis of racist neglect that besets cities like Flint, Cleveland and Newark, where the majority of the residents are Black and Latin. It is a stunning example of how capitalism couldn’t care less about the health and safety of working people, and how workers, regardless of skin color, are hurt by racism.

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Supreme Court is no friend of workers

The recent retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the fact that racist, fascist President Donald Trump will appoint the new Justice, have caused an enormous outcry from liberals and the media about the disaster to come. This is a dangerous illusion. All levels of government, including the Supreme Court, constitute the capitalist class’s means of controlling and oppressing the working class. The government also settles disputes between competing capitalists. But it is all the bosses’ government.
Class struggle, organized and led by the working class and its communist party, can and will change society, seizing power with a working class revolution. Only then will the government serve the working class.

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Commemorating 25-year fight for Archie, killed by kkkops

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, June 23—Antiracists, including members of Progressive Labor Party, paid tribute to the struggle for justice for Archie Elliott III, murdered by the police here 25 years ago. Archie’s mother Dorothy Copp Elliott, who has been waging the decades-long struggle, raised the importance of multiracial unity. The night showed why all workers should unite to end police terror. An injury to one is an injury to all.  

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The violent nature of U.S. world order of peace

The principle criticism of Donald Trump by the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, as advanced by liberals flooding the pages of their chief mouthpiece, the New York Times, is that Trump is destroying the “world order of peace and prosperity” that the U.S. has led for the 70 years since the end of World War II. They indict Trump’s “systematic rejection of longstanding American values…that actually made America great,” a “benign empire, held together by…respect rather than force.” NYT, 6/19)

While the decline of U.S.-led world order is very much real, the “peace and prosperity” is all fake news. Those 70 years of “benign peace” include these

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Trump accelerates anti-immigrant fascism amid U.S. decline

President Donald Trump’s latest vicious attack on undocumented immigrants and their children has accelerated the rise of fascism amid U.S. imperialist decline.
Trump is supported by a mass, racist section of the working class that scapegoats and dehumanizes immigrant workers for the failures of the profit system—even as the bosses super-exploit immigrants for needed labor.

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Housing crisis unsolvable under capitalism

Today the local and federal bosses have left the public housing system in a state of disrepair, on the verge of ruin. The decline of public housing shows the limits of reforms under capitalism and the inability of capitalism to meet the long-term needs of the working class.

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Tenants call out racist Cuomo’s housing crisis

NEW YORK CITY, June 15—In a march yesterday meant to disrupt Governor Cuomo’s “Master Builder” award ceremony, 1,000 working class-tenants and youth—Black, Latin, Asian and white—marched against high rents and homelessness.  They chanted, “What do we want? Housing! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it, shut it down” and “This is class war. Tax the rich and house the poor.”
As capitalism continues to decay, housing for the working class is getting more and more scarce.

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