Supreme Court Janus Case Is A Racist Assault on Workers

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 this fall. This case centers on the ability of public sector unions to collect so-called “fair-share fees.” These fees are the equivalent of dues charged for services unions provide regardless of membership status to those workers who are not members. Fair share fees were have been collected since the Abood case in 1977 found them constitutional. Ending this practice would financially hurt the unions and further weaken them.

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Catalonia: Identity Politics a Dead End for Workers

With Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announcing plans to remove Catalonia’s separatist leaders and crush the region’s drive for independence, workers face a no-win proposition, a clash between rising fascism and nationalist identity politics. No matter which side prevails, workers will continue to be divided and exploited by the capitalist profit system.
With the U.S.-centric world order in accelerating decline, capitalism is in disarray throughout the world. On October 1, long-simmering tensions intensified when Catalonia staged an independence referendum. In scenes reminiscent of the fascist Francisco Franco regime that ruled Spain into the mid-1970s, Spanish police responded with clubs and rubber bullets, injuring 750 people. Even so, a reported 2.3 million turned out to vote, with 90 percent choosing to split from Spain (Telegraph, 10/2). In response, Spain has threatened to impose new elections for the region’s presidency (to replace the secessionist Charles Puigdemont), suspend the Catalonian parliament, and send in the police and army. Two prominent separatists were jailed without bail.

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Students Shut Down Anti-Muslim Fascist Speaker

NEW YORK CITY, October 10—Over 300 Columbia University students and others held a militant protest against Tommy Robinson, who had been invited by campus Republicans. Robinson, who founded the English Defense League, violently opposes all immigrants, whom he calls criminals. It is Robinson who has been jailed for assault and mortgage fraud. It is ironic that Robinson entered the US from the UK using a stolen passport.

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Bolshevik Revolution Centennial Series: The Great Insurrection OF 1917

This is the  part of an extensive series about the Bolshevik Revolution and the triumphs, as well as the defeats, of the world communist movement of the 20th century. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.
The following illustrates the Bolsheviks’ armed uprising in Petrograd on October 27 / November 7, 1917. It is often called “the Russian Revolution.” In fact, uprisings took place in a great many cities and towns.

In 1917, ordinary people took their lives into their own hands and remade their world. It was the most important event of the 20th century; for the first time in world history, workers seized state power and pioneered a worker-run society. The workers, organized in committees and councils, took over the means of production.
This event shook and influenced the whole world. The Soviet Union was an international beacon of hope for workers’ fighting to destroy the capitalists in their parts of the world.
A hundred years later, the capitalists of the world are still haunted by what our class was able to accomplish. And so, they slander the achievements of our communist predecessors every chance they get, in every media outlet they own. Progressive Labor Party reflects on the mass heroism of our class on this centennial celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Uprising
After the overthrow of the monarchy, the Bolsheviks and workers formed the Soviets (meaning “worker councils”) of Workers’ Deputies (Moscow Bolsheviks) and of Soldiers’ Deputies. As in Petrograd, there was sympathy for the moderate socialist parties. But by September 24, the Bolsheviks received an absolute majority of seats in district dumas (359 seats out of 710).
On the night of October 24 to October 25, the Bolshevik uprising began in Petrograd.

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100 Protest vs. Adjuncts’ Working Conditions

NEW YORK CITY—More than 100 adjuncts, graduate students and professors of the City University of New York (CUNY) picketed outside Democrat New York State Governor Cuomo’s office today, demanding salaries of $7,000 a course, and a seniority plan for adjuncts. Chanting “What’s Outrageous, Adjunct Wages!”, “Down, Down, With Exploitation, Up, Up, With Education.” We then marched a few blocks to the CUNY headquarters and picketed there.

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Capitalist Hospital Dumps its Sickest Patients

BAY AREA, October 9—California Pacific Medical Center, the biggest and richest hospital chain in San Francisco, wanted to dump its sickest and most frail long-term patients out of the city, where they frequently die without family support. It’s not profitable for capitalism to provide a healthy future for our class. The bosses’ profits will always come before workers’ needs. In the Progressive Labor Party, we say that a system that won’t guarantee proper care for its most vulnerable workers doesn’t deserve to exist!
CPMC plans to close its Subacute Unit at St. Luke’s Hospital, a community hospital in a poor and Latino neighborhood that CPMC took over and then tried to close. Subacute units give long-term care for very sick or frail patients, typically on ventilators or with tracheotomies, sometimes for decades. Patients are almost always poor and on Medicaid/Medi-CAL, which pays hospitals very little, so hospitals have closed their subacute units, causing a nationwide crisis.

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Iraqi Kurdish Nationalists: Caught in Three-Way Imperialist Fire

The internal conflict between Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is another example of inter-imperialist conflict between China and United States. The New Silk Road is a part of China’s strategy to protect their oil supply from the U.S. Navy.
The nationalist crisis can be traced back to World War I. After the war, the British and French imperialists carved up the Ottoman Empire, leaving the Kurdish people (spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Armenia) without the statehood they were promised.
Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region within Iraq, passed an independence referendum with a 73 percent turnout and 93 percent yes vote. A civil war between the Kurdish and Iraq is heating up. There’s fighting between the KRG’s and Iraq’s armed forces over control of the oil fields around Kirkuk.
At the heart of it are the vast oil fields at the edge of Kirkuk. Its oil reserves are estimated at 45 billion barrels.

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Chicago Beverage Tax Toxic for Workers

CHICAGO—Capitalism is a sick and sick-making system that at best allows the illusion of healthy choices for the working class. The Sweetened Beverage Tax in Chicago is a toxic choice for workers: either pay more for harmful sugary beverages or sacrifice what little health care remains available to you. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been struggling with co-workers, patients, and friends to oppose both unhealthy foods and the choices presented by liberal bosses and politicians, winning our base closer to a communist vision of a truly healthy society.

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Vietnam War: GI’s Turned the Guns Around

The Ken Burns documentary “The Vietnam War,” has been touted by the rulers’ media as an outstanding depiction of that U.S. invasion, presenting “both sides”—the opposition by GIs and the anti-war movement, as well as the soldiers’ so-called heroism on the battlefield and their families’ support at home.
But the 10-part series has a huge omission: It leaves out the mass rebellion of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, many times led by Black GIs. The achievements of Vietnam’s workers and peasants in their “people’s war” laid the basis for GIs to “turn the guns around” on U.S. officers, and which helped force the U.S. surrender.
How serious was that rebellion? While it was certainly the Vietnamese people and not the U.S. anti-war movement that was decisive in their victory, the U.S. rulers faced such a wave of rebellion that they were afraid they could lose control of the armed forces.

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Capitalism Causes Deadly Climate Change

In its entire 400-year-plus existence, capitalists have been hard at work decimating forests, poisoning rivers, polluting the air and exterminating ocean life. The pursuit of profit turns the life-sustaining qualities of the planet are commodities to be exploited and fought over. Moreover, the capitalist treatment of the planet mirrors its treatment of the working class. The same profit motive that drives them to ruin our environment also subjects us to the horrors of racism and sexism, brutal working conditions, and imperialist war, with its threat of nuclear holocaust.  Buying a hybrid car, recycling plastics and using more efficient light bulbs will not change the destructive tendencies of capitalism. Only communist revolution can rescue the planet, and the workers that inhabit it.

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