In Memoriam: Ines Weiner

Ines Weiner, a beloved math teacher in the New York public schools and a revolutionary communist with Progressive Labor Party (PLP), died on January 16 after a year-long battle with cancer. She was only 61 years old. In her last week, over a hundred people visited her hospital bed.
Politicized at an early age in the Dominican Republic, Ines graduated from Walton High School in the Bronx and got her degree in math at Lehman College, where she began Party organizing. She was known for her fighting spirit first as a student, and then as a teacher she was popular with her students, who often sought her out for help.

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CUNY’S teaching load reduction hurts students

City University of New York (CUNY) made an agreement with the Professional Staff Congress union (PSC) about reduction in teaching load for full-time faculty. While an improvement in the working conditions of full-time workers, it is also a prelude to increasing attacks on our job security. But most importantly, the workload reduction is a racist attack on the 270,000 students, who are mostly Black, Latin, Asian, and undocumented.
The reduction agreement reduces the annual teaching load by three credit hours, about one full course, across CUNY institutions. It will be phased in over three years, starting in the Fall of this year. This agreement will allegedly allow more free time for individual work with students, office hours, research, and scholarship.

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No to Oakland A’s Stadium! Fight racist displacement

OAKLAND—The owners of the Oakland A’s (Major ­­­­­­­­­League Baseball team) had set their eyes on the Laney College site for a new stadium. To many, this was impending doom for the neighborhood and Laney Community College.
Many seemed resigned to hopelessness or dreamed about what they could gain from a stadium deal. A fiery group of staff & students from Laney Community College and community groups organized against the capitalists and their administrative stooges. After over six months of fightback, the college bosses were forced to halt plans with Oakland A’s.

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U.S. & China prepare for new Korean War?

On February 9, when North and South Korea march side by side at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the two countries’ symbolic unity will signify the erosion of U.S. imperialist dominance on the Korean Peninsula. The capitalist rulers of the U.S. are increasingly desperate to hold onto their deteriorating global top-dog status, a crisis complicated by an unreliable President Donald Trump and the bosses’ own disarray. With China growing in economic and military might, longtime U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan are now hedging their bets and looking to fend for themselves.
As the U.S. bosses debate how best to prepare for the next Korean War, the Progressive Labor Party and the international working class must organize to bury these war-makers once and for all.

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Chicago Women's March: Only communism can eradicate sexism

CHICAGO, January 21—For the second annual Women’s March, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) again rallied with workers from the region against the sexism perpetuated by the U.S. ruling class. Hundreds of thousands of anti-sexists showed up today to voice their anger against the sexist ideology, violence, and oppression.
Despite many of the marchers’ anger towards Trump and the system, the overall tone of the march was reformist and passive in nature. More voting was the call many marchers were yelling. Also, the overall the majority white crowd is reflective of the racism and sexism of the Democrats that organized it.
These wealthy liberal capitalists and their politicians have historically exploited and left out Black, Latin, Arab, Asian, and indigenous women workers from their “movement,” co-opting many genuine working-class struggles against sexism for their own imperialist and profit-based ends.

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NYC Women's March: Feminism will not defeat sexism

NEW YORK CITY, January 21—At the second annual Women’s March, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched to demonstrate our determination to see sexism defeated once and for all. Yet capitalism needs sexism like we need air to breathe.
The mass bravery of the #MeToo trend points the way forward. But powerful elements of the U.S. ruling class are engaged in a comprehensive effort to re-direct the anger of this moment into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party.
The same capitalist class that has mounted attacks on women of breathtaking scope and violence now wants to own/control the movement against “systemic” sexism.
Many signs pointed to voting and the 2018 election as the next step in the anti-sexist upsurge. Our leaflet with the headline “It’s not just Trump, It’s Capitalism” was met with an enthusiastic reception from many, and a handful of PL’ers were even able to turn that slogan into a chant that was taken up by marchers nearby as we made our way through midtown Manhattan.

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Student solidarity vs. raids advances fight for internationalism

BROOKLYN, January 12—As mass struggle against Trump’s racist and fascist words and policies grows, learning to go beyond the limits the ruling class and its minions would like to contain, is the number one job for all workers and students who want to defeat racism and fascism once and for all.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is proud to have played a role in a small but potent action launched in response to Trump’s latest anti-immigrant attack: the mass deportation of Latin and Haitian workers as well as raids on 7-Eleven (chain of convenience shops) stores aimed at terrorizing undocumented workers across the country.

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In face of racist intimidation, students fight to learn

BROOKLYN, January 21—With the mounting attacks on Black and Latin working class students in NYC public schools, there’s no telling what will be the spark for students to fight back. For our school, one spark (out of the many over the years) was the removal of a special class. Student protests are inspiring and a great start on the long road to revolution.

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No pay, more layoffs—Oaxaca Healthcare workers strike

OAXACA, MEXICO, January 23— Striking doctors and nurses put locks and chains on the entrances to the Aurelio Valdivieso general hospital in Oaxaca city. In the last couple of days, thousands of workers of the Health Department demonstrated in a mass march to protest the direct attack against our job stability. The government intends to eliminate more than 2,200 regular jobs in Oaxaca and eventually many more in the whole country.

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Racism in the White House: business as usual

Klansman-in-Chief Donald Trump’s latest racist rant, his characterization of Haiti, El Salvador, and most or all of Africa as “shithole countries,” has been treated by the capitalist bosses’ media as an extraordinary event—“the lowest ebb of a presidency defined by a series of low ebbs and defining of the presidency downward” (cnn.com, 1/12).  Former CIA Director and torture defender John Brennan tweeted that “Lady Liberty, our founding fathers, and generations of right-thinking Americans are all weeping tonight.” Former Haitian President Laurent Lamothe declared that the world had witnessed “a new low today….never seen before in the recent history of the U.S. by any President!”
In reality, history—recent and otherwise—tells a different story.  The United States was born out of the genocide of native populations. Its wealth was created through the mass murder and enslavement of Black people from Africa. Its rulers have thrived from super-profits generated by imperialism and racism in the U.S. and around the world. Without racism, capitalism couldn’t effectively exploit, oppress, and divide the working class. Without racism, capitalism could not survive.

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