A Brief History of 'Reds at the Blackboard'

As school returns to session for parents, students, and teachers across the northern hemisphere, readers of CHALLENGE and millions more aim to make the fight against racism a central part of the coming year. Donald Trump’s embrace of Nazi and KKK scum in the wake of Charlottesville is the most open show of support for racism from the White House since Woodrow Wilson screened the pro-Klan film, “Birth of a Nation,” a hundred years ago.

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Mohamed Bah & Dwayne Jeune No Justice for Mentally Ill Workers under KKKapitalism

New York City, August 22—It could be the open fascist terror of Nazis and Klansmen marching in Charlottesville with the tacit approval of the Racist In Chief.  Or it could be the bosses’  “Klan in Blue” - cops who kill over 1000 working class people a year.  Wherever we are, workers and students must fight back! Recently several Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades in a local congregation mobilized a group of protesters to join two anti-racist demonstrations.

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Faith, Confidence, and ‘Death to the Klan’

BROOKLYN, NY, August 19—Over a dozen multiracial, women and men members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party rallied in Brooklyn today with signs and leaflets that read “No Free Speech for Racists” and “Death to the Klan with Multiracial Unity.” In one hour, contacts were made, over 550 leaflets were distributed, and over 200 CHALLENGEs were sold at a busy street corner in the heart of this Black and immigrant neighborhood.

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Piatnitsky Part II: Prison, Escape and Exile

Osip Piatnitsky was a revolutionary leader who played a key role in organizing the working class before, during, and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Much of this three-part series was taken from his memoir, Memoirs of a Bolshevik. The first of the three-part series looked Piatnitsky’s early life and his role in guaranteeing communist propaganda, including the Bolshevik newspaper Iskra. The following part deals with his life while in prison and exile under Czarist Russia, leading up to the year of the Bolshevik Revolution—the first successful workers’ state in history. At every turn, any accomplishments were made possible by the masses and working collectively.  

Early in March of 1902, Osip Piatnitsky was traveling with a comrade to secure the underground route to smuggling their newspaper, Iskra, from Germany to Russia. They were arrested and sent to the Kiev prison in Russia.
Inside the prison, hundreds of arrested students protested, creating such an uproar, crowds from the distant town came to the prison gates. It was in this prison that Piatnitsky had the time to be a teacher of Marxist literature. At age 17, he had four years of organizing.

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NO FREE SPEECH FOR RACISTS! DEATH TO THE KLAN WITH MULTIRACIAL UNITY

KKK and Nazi fascists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, have murdered antiracist fighter Heather Heyer as the local ruling class used their state power to protect these racists. They deployed hundreds of kkkops in riot geclick image for leafletar to protect their banks and racist monuments, only intervening after it became clear the antiracist students and workers were bloodying the fascists.

Whether the president is Obama or Trump, this exercise of state power – and the Nazi murder - proves again that racism is critical to the life of capitalism.

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Russia Sanctions: U.S. Desperate to Regain Imperialist Control in EU

On August 2, the U.S. declared new economic sanctions against Russia. This move reflects a growing desperation among U.S. capitalist bosses, whose declining but still-lethal empire faces growing challenges from Russian and Chinese imperialists—especially after Russia’s successful military intervention in Syria.
Sanctions are a standard tactic in capitalist competition. In this latest economic attack, U.S. bosses will be freezing money and blocking business deals involving the Russian bosses. For the international working class, it’s only a matter of time before trade wars among major imperialists become a global shooting war—a war in which workers have no side.

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Mass Famine Rooted in Imperialism

From Nigeria, South Sudan, and Somalia to Yemen across the Red Sea, famines threaten the lives of tens of millions of workers. Mass starvation in Africa and the Middle East has been triggered by climate change (including more intense and longer-lasting droughts) and, even more significantly, by ever wider and more brutal wars. The root cause of this genocidal disaster is the sharpening rivalry between U.S. imperialism and capitalist bosses in China. As the U.S. rulers’ own mouthpiece, the New York Times, noted, “Each country facing famine is in war, or in the case of Somalia, recovering from decades of conflict” (NYT, 2/22).
Half of the 20 million threatened with starvation are children, including 1.4 million “at imminent risk of death” (NYT, 2/22). How did imperialism lead to this famine disaster? More important, how do we respond to it? The United Nations, controlled by the world’s dominant imperialist powers, can offer no real solution. While UN chiefs circle the planet begging for billions of dollars for food aid from the very imperialists causing the wars that created the famine, the institution itself has a murderous track record in similar disasters (NYT, 3/27).

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No Cops in Schools: Smash Fascist Education Plan

TRENTON, NJ—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined a multiracial group of over thirty protesters who marched through the state’s capital chanting “No Cops—In Our Schools” to protest the racist A1114, “Police Respectability” Bill.
In response to police murders and subsequent protests, the bosse are fearful of working-class youth armed with class consciousness. They are trying to pass a bill aimed to fool workers into believing the police are on our side.
A1114 will force all schools—from elementary to high school—to create courses that teaches students how to “interact” with cops, essentially putting the responsibility of an arrest, shooting, or murder on the victim rather than the police force. According to the bill, the class will give students information on “the role and responsibilities of a law enforcement official in providing for public safety; and an individual’s responsibilities to comply with a directive from a law enforcement official” (NJLEG). This bill is fascist, as it aims to build all-class unity between class enemies—working-class kids and ruling-class forces.
To smash racism, we must smash capitalism. Only a revolutionary communist PLP can bury this racist system once and for all. Many protesters received CHALLENGE and responded warmly to discussions about capitalism and communism.

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Students, Workers Win Fight to Change Racist School Name, Struggle Continues

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA, July 27—To thunderous applause from over 70 supporters in the room, the Fairfax County School Board (FCSB) voted 7-2 with two abstentions to change the name of J.E.B. Stuart High School, capping a campaign of over two years. The struggle was launched by a multiracial group of current Stuart students, the Students for Change, who declared in 2015 that having their school named for a Confederate general, with his image adorning some walls, was not acceptable.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) salutes the brave antiracist student fighters of Fairfax County, Virginia! Workers and students throughout the nation are tearing down Confederate statues and renaming schools, and Fairfax County has joined this process! This struggle is an important victory that can add momentum to the antiracist struggles against Confederate monuments nationwide.
As in every struggle for reform under capitalism, there are limitations and challenges ahead, such as the opening left for the neo-Confederates. They have lost this round but are not out, as we shall see.

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Smash Racist Murder of Immigrant Workers

CHICAGO, July 29—In San Antonio, ten people were dead and 20 hospitalized in dire conditions after found in what was essentially an oven and gas chamber on wheels—100 migrant workers and children crammed into a tractor trailer in searing Texas heat without water, food, light, or fresh air.
The workers trapped were as young as 15 years old and one was the father of 5. These workers came from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Most were fleeing increasing capitalist violence or horrible economic conditions.
Some escaped the hospital to avoid ICE agents and the threat of deportation. Those who survived asphyxiation and heatstroke now face deportation. Among the death-via-deportation list are migrants who are now permantely disabled with irreversible brain damage. This is a murder case of 100 members of our class by capitalism.

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