LA Summer Project Energizes Antiracist Fightback

Los Angeles, July 28—What a way to end our summer project! We started with a rally in support of the anti-racist fighters who were arrested for fighting back against the KKK invasion of Pearson Park on February 27th. While the KKK scum who stabbed 4 people were let off, these 7 anti-racists were arrested and are being charged with combinations of misdemeanor assault, battery and resisting arrest. Before the hearing, a crowd of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends as well as anti-racists from various Unitarian Universalist churches rallied for an hour chanting: “The Cops, the Courts, the Ku Klux Klan: All a Part of the Bosses’ Plan!” We met many people including a lawyer who asked if he could work pro bono as a part of the Anaheim 7’s defense. Afterwards we went into the courtroom to show our support for the defendants. We made a united exit en masse when the hearing ended. Reducing the courtroom audience by half was a dramatic end to our summer project.

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KKKapitalist Courts Declare Cops Innocent

In June 2016, all cops responsible for Freddie Gray’s murder were let off the hook. This monstrous miscarriage of justice is just one of many; Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Kyam Livingston, and too many others have failed to get justice. Why does this racist injustice happen nonstop? Non-indictments and exonerations of kkkops result from deliberate decisions made by the courts even before the trial. The courts and cops work together to ensure that the racist terrorization of Black, Latin, and immigrant workers continues and to thus protect capitalism. It is not a failed or corrupt system—this is just capitalist government at work.
In April 2015 Freddie Gray, a Black man in Baltimore, was killed in transport to the police station. His hands and legs were shackled while in transport. He arrived at the station in a coma with a broken neck and injured spinal cord, and died soon after.

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Elections: Media Aims to Build Fascist Consensus

As the main-wing, finance capitalist bosses fend off attacks from both internal and inter-imperialist rivals, the U.S. presidential election has led them to drop much of the facade of liberal democracy—most obviously in the capitalist mass media.
While the candidates fill the airwaves arguing over who is the bigger racist, the election is accelerating the rise of fascism, the state of monopoly capitalism in decay, when the bosses can no longer rule in the old way. When pressed by growing competition from competing capitalists, they take more direct control of the state, both to discipline the smaller bosses and to attack the working class in preparation for war. To those ends, they need a tighter alignment between the media and the bosses’ state.

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Russian Imperialism Strikes Back

Frontal engagements of large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past. Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational goals...
—Valerie Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation (2013)

Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.
—Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1917)

As the capitalist bosses of the U.S., Russia and China intensify their fight over global resources, from Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Africa and Latin America, their lethal competition is taking on a more complex form. Known as “hybrid war” or “non-linear war” or “new generation warfare,” these inter-imperialist conflicts are mostly indirect and undeclared—and far less expensive than a conventional ground war. They use a broad mix of elements, from special operations assassins and private-sector mercenaries to cyberattacks and social media propaganda.
In the South China Sea, Beijing is building artificial islands and making territorial claims to fend off both regional rivals and President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia. The U.S., while still relying on the threat of NATO’s brute force in Europe, used a computer virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program; it funded “color revolutions” to undermine pro-Russian regimes in Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, the “Gerasimov Doctrine,” named after Russia’s top strategic military planner, combines “low-end, hidden state involvement with high-end, direct, even braggadocio superpower involvement”—most significantly in Ukraine and Syria (Association of the U.S. Army, 5/20). Dealing from a position of economic and military weakness versus the U.S. and—increasingly—China, clobbered by falling oil prices, President Vladimir Putin is using “a number of equalizers,” wrote Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.
These will range from increased reliance on nuclear deterrence to the creation of local balances in Moscow’s favor; from swift decision-making and bold action, including the use of force, to ambiguity and hybrid operations (3/18).

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OLYMPIC NATIONALISM AIMS TO DOPE WORKERS

A sign placed above Olympic Park in Brazil reads, “The Olympics Bring So Much More Than Just the Olympics.” For the international working class, that slogan carries a lethal meaning. The media hype for the Olympics hides the Games’ vicious anti-worker reality. Behind the surface appearance of internationalism, beyond the flags and costumes and music, lies a relentless promotion of nationalism—the capitalists’ essential tool to keep workers loyal to “their” nation and “their” bosses.
Rulers worldwide, and especially rival bosses in the U.S., Russia and China, need intensified nationalism to prepare the working class for wider war. The real winner of the 2016 Olympics is imperialism; these Games are another step toward devastation for the working class. Workers in Brazil have already experienced this terror firsthand—and are fighting back.

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KKKop Chief Bratton: Wanted for Racist Crimes Worldwide

NEW YORK CITY, August 10—While the ruling class laments the departure of  their darling “top cop” William Bratton, the working class knows better! Under his first watch (1994-1996)  many Black and Latin workers and youth were murdered in cold bood by the NYPD, including  Anthony Baez, Hilton Vega, Anthony Rosario, Nicholas Hayward Jr.—and under his second watch ( 2013-2016) Shantel Davis, Kimani Gray, Ramarley Graham, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, Kyam Livingston —and countless others. According to a report by Amnesty International, for instance, there was a 34 percent increase in people fatally shot by NYPD in Bratton’s first year as Police Commissioner alone.

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Metro Workers Driving Towards Strike

Washington, DC, July 30—Union misleaders of the Metro transit system are working around the clock to derail the fight back efforts of over 500 transit workers who rallied today against racist attacks on wages, pensions, inadequate safety provisions and management abuse. Yet, transit workers and PLP members are eager to take militant actions to end these racist attacks.
Transit workers came to the rally hoping that union leaders would lay out a plan for launching a serious fight that would smash the racist attacks. Instead, they found themselves being the receivers of empty words by union leaders, local politicians and management officials.

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Shut Down System that Protects Klan

LOS ANGELES, July 23—The Orange County, California District Attorney re-filed charges against seven of the antiracist fighters who fought the Ku Klux Klan scum earlier this year (see CHALLENGE 3/23). The original charges against the antiracists were dropped, after the DA’s office kept most of the antiracists in jail for three days, including four who sustained serious injuries from the Klan. They were released with a warning that the charges could be re-filed up to four years later, under California state law.

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J.E.B Stuart High School: Multiracial Youth Battle Racist Legacy

FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA July 28—A multiracial group of students in the Social Justice Club at J.E.B. Stuart High School are leading a fight to change their school’s shameful racist name. J.E.B. Stuart was a Confederate general who fought and died to preserve slavery. The school mascot was a Confederate cavalryman, a raider, flying a Confederate battle flag. Recognizing the Confederate flag’s offensiveness, school officials shaded out the flag in 2001 so it looks like a solid blue pennant. But everyone knows they simply painted over a flagrant symbol of racism and that the raider was still fighting to preserve slavery. Today’s students have made a video declaring they are not raiders! (http://bit.ly/2aSPchz)

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Phyllis Scheer, Lifelong Warrior

Comrade Phyllis Scheer died on July 25 peacefully in her sleep near her family in Houston, Texas. She was 86.
Phyllis will long be remembered as an anti-racist fighter who lived all aspects of her life as a communist, reflected in her relations within her family, with all those around her and in her unceasing struggle for a communist world. She was part of the group of men and women who founded the Progressive Labor Party. She remained active in the party throughout her life.

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