Chicago: Working-Class Unity Revs Up Auto Mechanic Strike

CHICAGO, August 5—A strike of 1,700 auto mechanics from 130 car dealerships is now in its second week. Workers are demanding that the Chicago Automobile Trade Association (CATA) give workers what they deserve after the last two contracts have given concessions to the bosses.
The workers represented by Automobile Mechanics’ Local 701 are fighting for a guaranteed 40-hour work week, better schedules, higher apprentice wages, and a reinstated 4-year apprentice program in place of an 8-year one. They have said that mechanics have not been paid for all the hours they work, and that bosses are making it more difficult for apprentices to find their way into the industry.

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Nissan Workers’ Anti-Racist Campaign to Unionize

MISSISSIPPI,  August 4—“It’s the beginning of a war!” That’s how one Nissan worker responded to his co-workers voting 2,244 to 1,307 to reject union representation. The United Auto Workers union (UAW) has led a 14-year campaign at the Nissan plants here to unionize the workers. Nissan has 48 auto plants around the world and all are unionized except for those in the U.S. This most recent vote is another disappointing defeat for union organizing across the southern U.S., following similar setbacks at Volkswagen in Tennessee and Boeing in South Carolina.

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Venezuela Crisis Rooted in U.S.-China Rivalry

Venezuela has become a flashpoint for the global crisis of capitalism and the escalating fight between big-power imperialists to control the world’s oil. The division between the Chinese-backed Nicolas Maduro regime and the U.S-backed opposition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), reflects the shifting tectonic plates of inter-imperialist rivalry. Once the unchallenged power in Latin America, U.S. rulers are under challenge by rising Chinese imperialism. China is Venezuela’s second-largest trading partner, just behind the U.S. By 2025, the Chinese capitalist bosses have pledged to increase trade with the region by $500 billion and foreign investment to $250 billion (foreignpolicy.com, 3/6).

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Chicago: PLP Honors Workers’ Battle Sites

CHICAGO, July 13—A feature of the Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) recent Chicago Summer Project was a “Labor History Bus Tour” around the city. The tour showcased locations of historical working-class battles dating to the nineteenth century, and locations of current struggles involving PLP.
Union Stockyards: Hotbed of Class Struggle
We started at the former location of the giant Union Stockyards, once a world famous animal slaughterhouse known as the “hog butcher of the world.” Formerly sprawling over a square mile, thousands of Black, white, and women workers waged intense class struggle against the capitalist meatpackers who treated the workers horribly while stealing millions of dollars in profits. The Union Stockyards were named after the Union side of the U.S. Civil War. Basing the stockyards entirely on war production needs, the northern industrial capitalists settled on

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Haiti: Fight for Minimum Wage Continues Workers Expose Bosses’ State

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, July 12—Workers have kept their word: The fight against the capitalist bosses for an increase in the minimum wage continues into its third day. Class struggle is intensifying, with several thousand workers and students demonstrating in the streets of the capital. After marching for miles, they arrived at the Parliament and called on legislators to reject the report of the High Council on Salaries, which recommends a measly 35-gourde increase in the daily minimum wage of 300 gourdes (US$4.60).
Reinforced by two loudspeakers, the militant protestors marched through downtown streets and residential neighborhoods, singing and chanting slogans against the bosses. In particular, they targeted Jovenel Moise as a “puppet of the bourgeoisie,” the famously corrupt capitalist ruling class that bleeds workers for profit. Moise is a protégé of former President Michel Martelly, the brutal thug who ran a plundering police state and collaborated with MINUSTAH, the hated United Nations occupation army that caused a cholera epidemic in Haiti. In 2015, Martelly’s ruling-party machine propelled Moise into a runoff despite exit polls showing he’d received only six percent of the vote in a low-turnout, massively fraudulent election (Haiti Sentinel, 11/19/15). So much for capitalist “democracy!”

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Chicago Project Trains Communists, Builds Working-Class Confidence

CHICAGO, July 17—More than 100 members and friends, ages 11-72, women and men, Asian, Latin, Black, and white participated in the weeklong Summer Project. The goal of the Summer Project was to support the political struggles in Chicago, educate ourselves and our base, and reach out to workers across the region with a revolutionary communist analysis.

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Colombia Teachers Strike, Bosses Counter with State Terror

BOGOTA, Colombia, July 20—Three hundred and fifty thousand public school teachers went on a 37-day strike demanding better healthcare, more funding for school maintenance, supplies, student meals, higher salaries and the end to racist policies against working-class teachers and students. The bosses, falsely promised that the money that went to fighting the fake left Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would now be used for education, and now owe the teachers several billions of pesos. Teachers’ quality of life is suffering as they work in subhuman conditions for millions of students.

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Chicago: Smash Racist Healthcare, Build Communism

CHICAGO, July 11—Over 50 comrades and friends participating in Progressive Labor Party’s Summer Project took action to blast the racist and sexist “healthcare” system under capitalism. They brought a revolutionary communist vision of health and collective power to the working class of Chicago, during a packed day of CHALLENGE sales, forums, and a bold rally.

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Four-Year Struggle for Kyam Livingston Cultivates Working-Class Unity

Brooklyn, July 21—A speaker for the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) chanted, “How do you spell racist? NYPD.” It grew in power as other workers joined in. This was the 4th anniversary of the death of Kyam Livingston, who died in police custody when she was denied medical care. The speaker continued, “Justice for Kyam Livingston, killed in a Brooklyn cell! Until we get rid of this damned capitalist, racist system there is no justice.“
This was our 48th monthly demonstration as about 50 people rallied for Kyam on the corner of Church Avenue and E. 18th Street. We were young and old, men and women, Black, white, Asian and Latin. It was also a day of remembrance for Kyam, who became ill while awaiting arraignment on a minor matter and was refused medical care while she cried in agony for seven hours. Kyam’s mother, Anita Neal, has led this battle for justice. Her fire, her organizational skills, and her unrelenting demands for justice have inspired all of us.

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Forum: One United Working Class vs. Sexism

On June 22, I joined my community organization for a forum on sexism. I did not expect the conversation that was to come, in which a fight to understand sexism also became a fight for multi-racial unity.
The forum began with a total of 35 men on one side of the room and the women on the other. Not sure if the men did this on their own or not, but whatever the case, being a communist man, I felt it my responsibility to sit with the women. The leader of the forum began to dissect what is a woman and what is a man. It soon became two long lists of what men and women ought to be by society’s standards. I tried my best to raise the fact that women are paid less than men as well. Not to the benefit of male workers but to the benefit of this profit system, which is run by both women and men.

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