Chicago: Multiracial Nurses Fight Sexist Working Conditions

CHICAGO, September 13— In preparation for their planned one-day strike today, a multiracial group of nurses at University of Illinois Hospital (UIH)  protested for better wages and safer working conditions. They chanted, “You save money—We save lives!”
But the strike was called off this morning. Why? The union reached a tentative contract agreement, which must still be ratified by the nurses and approved by the University of Illinois’ board of trustees. Details of the contract has yet to be released. Yet, the struggle is far from over.

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Boston: Smash Nazis, KKK, & Republicrats

BOSTON, August 19—The City braced for a post-Charlottesville, Neo-Nazi Free Speech rally at the Boston Commons. The Progressive Labor Party contingent joined the 40,000 antiracist demonstrators, which included their co-workers, friends, and union. We held a large banner that read “No Free Speech For Fascists, Smash Racism With Multi-Racial Unity.” We distributed 1,500 leaflets.
Various unions, Black Lives Matter groups, and others planned two anti-racist protests. One demonstration was held in front of the Massachusetts State House, a quarter mile away from the speakers. The other began two miles away from the Boston Common.

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Santa Monica: Shut Down Fascist Disrupters

Santa Monica, Sept 10—A multiracial group of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends joined hundreds of antiracists to shut down Nazi disrupters at the Committee for Racial Justice (CRJ) in Santa Monica. This was an opportunity to fight racism.
The CRJ, established in 2010 after a racist incident in Santa Monica High School, is a multiracial organization committed to fight racism. They have organized vigils for the murders of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and they also fight for equity and justice for Black parents in the Santa Monica school system.
Recently CRJ was come under siege by a collection of fascists known as the Proud Boys, Red Elephants and Da Goyim Know. These groups of white men armed with bandanas over their faces and baseball caps have interrupted the CRJ meetings with racist, anti-Semitic filth and even denounced one of the white co-leaders of the CRJ as a Jewish agitator, and chanted, “Blue lives matter.” The racists were preventing CRJ from functioning.

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Trump Ends DACA, Intensifies Fascism

The timing couldn’t be worse for the 575,000 undocumented immigrants in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Racist President Donald Trump shut down DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, effectively putting 800,000 young people at risk of deportation. This signifies the rise of concentration-camp style fascism for a section of the working class. The possible, but unlikely, action of Congress to pass a new DACA program will be an opportunity for liberal fascism via military service.
Trump tweeted, “We are a nation of laws. No longer will we incentivize illegal immigration. Make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST!”
Intensified racism, nationalism, and use of “law and order” to terrorize workers are some of the hallmarks of rising fascism.

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CUNY: Gear Up for a Semester of Fightback

As the fall semester begins at the City University of New York, nearly 275,000 students are returning to the classroom. Once again, the students are the primary targets of vicious racist attacks and cutbacks, as U.S. imperialism continues its relative decline and sharpening rivalry with Russian and Chinese imperialism. As imperialist wars rage and widen across the world, CUNY students - the majority of whom are Black, Latin, Asian and are immigrant - are saddled with rising tuition costs, crumbling infrastructure, increasingly poor job prospects, and increasing military recruitment to fight and die for U.S. imperialism.
Years of bosses’ racist attacks on students have made it possible for attacks on campus workers and faculty.
Fewer places is this clearer than at Kingsborough Community College (KCC), one of the largest colleges in the CUNY system. KCC has a total of over 15,000 full time and part time students, mostly Black, Latin and immigrants from across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central/ South Asia. Its maintenance and cafeteria staff is mostly Black, Latin, and Asian, in contrast to the faculty, which are almost completely white. With disproportionately higher numbers of immigrant, undocumented and students with DACA status, KCC students are at the cutting edge of capitalism’s system-wide racist attacks.

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Obituary: Lenny, Communist Fighter Till the End

Soy communista, toda la vida
Y communista he de morir
—Bella Ciao, Italian anti-fascist song

Lenny Dick was a communist his entire life. His parents (a carpenter and a math teacher) were active members of the Communist Party and Lenny grew up in a family committed to revolutionary, anti-racist, working class struggle. When he died from a heart attack on August 26, at the too-young age of 68, he was on his way to a barbecue for CUNY students and professors. The day before, Lenny was enthusiastically talking about a planned rally at Bronx Community College about the expiring union contract. He was already making plans to invite faculty and students.

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Building Bolsheviks Part III: Legality and Revolution

Many workers, students, and soldiers are interested in fighting racism and building a movement for a better world. In countries like the U.S., violent clashes between antiracist workers and open fascists like the KKK have sharply raised the question: when is it acceptable to break the capitalists’ laws?
The Progressive Labor Party fights for communism, for the abolition of capitalism through armed revolution of masses of workers. Racism and these racist borders, police terror, sexism, and imperialist wars will be smashed and outlawed with an armed working class ruling society, and preventing a capitalist comeback with force. The capitalist class will never allow themselves to be removed from power without a fight. Whether the form of capitalist rule is more democratic or more openly repressive, threatening capitalism is always illegal, and the bosses’ state will always defend itself.

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Imperialism Means: Endless War in Afghanistan

With Donald Trump has endorsed the return of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a sign of the U.S. bosses’ anxiety about leaving a superpower vacuum in Central Asia and the Middle East. This 16-year-old war, the longest in U.S. history, is a product of inter-imperialist rivalries—mainly between the U.S. and China, but also between regional rivals Pakistan and India, and China and India as well.

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Charlottesville: Rising Fascism & Flux

The spectacle and aftermath of Charlottesville heralds a torch-bearing fascist movement in the U.S., a danger to the main wing of the ruling class. Donald Trump, the first U.S. president since the 1930s to fail to make a categorical condemnation of Nazis, finally yielded to bipartisan condemnation and pressure from leading U.S. capitalists and generals. Even then, however, the Racist-in-Chief proposed that the fighting anti-racists—acting in defense of their working-class brothers and sisters—were equally “bad.”
Homegrown Fascism
On August 12, hundreds of Nazis, KKK, and other white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, many carrying firearms.  Thousands of antiracists, joined by members of Progressive Labor Party, showed up to confront them.  The first Nazis to arrive were physically attacked by many. The police and National Guard were on hand to protect the fascists, but couldn’t save them from the ire of the masses.
As the fascists were leaving, a Nazi used a car to run over a multitude of antifascists, murdering 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19.

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Bay Area No Free Speech for Fascists

BAY AREA , August 27 — A multiracial group of twenty-five members and friends of Progressive Labor Party joined hundreds of antiracists to shut down Nazi demonstrations two days in a row.
Day 1: San Francisco
For three months, the racists had planned to have a rally in Crissy Field. As the date loomed closer, politicians and other officials began warning people to stay away and avoid the rally for fear of violence. They began giving police extra enforcement powers and creating restrictions on the protest to keep it peaceful. If politicians really cared about violence, they would not allow the racists to rally in the first place. Racist speech emboldens people to commit racist violence and normalizes a world where people face racist and violent poverty and state terror. Capitalism allows racists to have free speech because it allows the bosses to keep running society and making profits.

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