U.S. Elections SERVANTS OF IMPERIALISM

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them.”
— Karl Marx

The U.S. capitalist class’ media mouthpieces and think tanks have been on overdrive with the narrative that this is not a “normal” election year (New York Times, 9/24/16) or even that “this is the most important election since 1932” (Brookings, 12/18/15). This election finds the U.S. ruling class in volatile condition, with their imperialist power declining relative to growing Russian and Chinese imperialism. For the international working class, however, this election is important for another reason: the U.S. bosses are betting on Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism” (NYT) to unite the U.S. working class behind the embattled flag of U.S. imperialism.
A lopsided majority of the boss-owned media supports Clinton, and openly labels Trump a racist. The U.S. bosses are well aware that bigger imperialist wars are looming. They cannot afford rebellions like Ferguson, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, and Charlotte. Meanwhile, Clinton, a “progressive,” campaigns on a slogan for U.S. working-class and ruling-class unity: “Stronger Together.”

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East Chicago Fight Racist Housing & Poisoning

EAST CHICAGO, October 1—The blatant environmental racism of capitalism is on full display in the industrial city of East Chicago, home to a majority Black and Latin working class population. As many as 1,100 residents are on the verge of being evicted from their homes in the West Calumet Housing Complex, after the city’s racist neglect of a lead and arsenic crisis that spans decades. But the working class of East Chicago and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are fighting back. We want decent housing now and a communist world in the future, where the workers run society.

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MEXICO: Sexism Central to State Terror

MEXICO—Sometimes the targets of state terror are outright murdered or disappeared, like in the cases of the Ayotzinapa 43 or Mike Brown of Ferguson. Other times, the targets live to witness the perpetrators get off the hook.
That was the case in 2006 for over 40 women protesters in San Salvador Atenco who had been captured, abused, and tortured by police.
Eleven of those women have now come out to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the sexist violence unleashed on them by the government. They were raped, beaten, openly humiliated, and then denied medical care. Not one of the nearly two dozen cops involved have been convicted.
The governor overseeing these atrocities was none other than the current president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. The New York Times admits it is “unlikely that Mr. Peña Nieto’s government will conduct an investigation into whether he knew of or covered up the assaults.” The only impact this court ruling will have is a “deep embarrassment for [Nieto]” (9/22). Embarrassment will not stop the daily harassment, exploitation, and terrorization of women workers!

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Need Justice for Kyam, ‘Voting Won’t Do It’

BROOKLYN, September 26—The protesters moved out into the middle of the street, stopping traffic on Church Avenue on Sept 21. Kyam Livingston’s mother, Anita, echoed many of the speeches made at this demonstration when she said, “We need this struggle to end the killings. Voting won’t do it.” Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were at this rally with our newspaper Challenge. We encouraged people to join the lifelong struggle for communism, a society run by the working class that will end racism and sexism once and for all. The demonstrators then released balloons and Kyam’s mother said an invocation to her daughter’s memory.

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Colombia: Youth Raise Red Flags High

COLOMBIA—We are a group of young students, unemployed, workers, and soccer players. We are tired of war, bureaucracy, hunger, unemployment, injustice, capitalist laws that serve the few, inequality, the grave economic crisis, and tricks of all kinds played against the working class. We saw the need to organize a work and revolutionary action collective, and through this undertake the political road to building a party. Since we did not have the ideological base and were politically disoriented, one of our first steps was to participate—at the invitation of PLP members—in the May 1st “International Worker’s Day” march.

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A Workers’ History of Fake Leftists in Latin America

With history as a guide, the current “peace” process between the Colombian government and the FARC will only lead to more misery for the working class. FARC, who had abandoned revolutionary struggle decades ago, will only serve as the new bosses in the capitalist government.  We have seen this happen in a number of Latin American countries.  Below are just three examples.   

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Attica Lives On National Prison Strike Enters Month 2

TEXAS, October 9—The national prison strike is heading into its second month, prompting the Department of Injustice to make a show of an investigation in Alabama prisons.
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the biggest prison rebellion in U.S. history at Attica, New York, thousands of worker-prisoners in 40 jailhouses covering 24 states went on a labor strike this past September 9. Outside groups helped prepare for this strike for months. The tremendous ability of workers to organize actions, even separated in different prisons, was deliberately blacked out by the major capitalist media.
A spokesperson for the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, explained:

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HURRICANE MATTHEW—CAPITALIST DISASTER

Haiti, October 8—Hurricane Matthew has struck Haiti with a vengeance this week, and the working class and the masses are the main victims. According to the latest reports, over 900 are known dead, and more than 500,000 affected by the collapse of tens of thousands poorly built “little box” houses, totally uprooted crops, and untold thousands of farm animals in mainly three departments, South, Southeast and Grand’Anse. With a wholly inadequate infrastructure to begin with, now smashed bridges, washed out roads and mudslides are making recovery of people from rural at-risk areas even more difficult. This disaster is not “natural” as the bosses want us to believe but rather the result of the systematic impoverishment of the Haitian working class by the racist capitalist system. Why it is they who are the victims of the disaster?

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Manhattan, NJ Bombs: U.S. Terrorism Still Reigns Supreme

The September 17 bombing in New York City left 31 wounded, and the working class, especially Muslim workers, terrorized. While the capitalists’ cops apprehended the alleged bomb-maker, the biggest terrorist—U.S. imperialism—remains at large.
Media + Arms = Fascist Drill
At 7:54 a.m. Monday, September 19, every phone in New York went off to signal an alert by the New York Police Department: “WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-year-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” The description fit hundreds of thousands of men. Mayor Bill de Blasio seized the chance to use the local population as an extension of the racist police force—to put the bosses’ “see something, say something” slogan into practice. That day, the police received 406 calls on “suspicious packages,” none of which turned out to be explosives.

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Students, Teachers Rally vs. Racist Murders

BROOKLYN, September 22—“Can I have a sheet of those stickers Miss? I want to help give them out” That ‘s what we heard from at least a dozen students Thursday morning as we handed out anti-racist stickers to wear at a local high school. Some students and teachers also made a plan to hold a rally after school in response to the rash of racist police killings this last week. To abolish racism and build a better world, we must fight back!

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