Brazil’s Elections Part of China-U.S. Imperialist Rivalry

Brazil’s ongoing fight to impeach President Dilma Rousseff under charges of corruption is being touted as an effort to restore “democracy” from the political and economic turmoil that the country finds itself in. But make no mistake: Brazil’s current political and economic dilemma represents the inherent failure that is capitalist democracy. So why is congress really trying to impeach Rousseff? Like in capitalist democracies everywhere, Brazil’s ruling classes are fighting neck-and-neck to shift the country’s alliance along pro-U.S and pro-China imperialist lines. But no matter which capitalist calls the shots, Brazil’s working class is always the target. Neither Dilma Rousseff’s phony left party or its opposition serve working-class interests.

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PLP College Conference—Advance the Fight against Racism

HARLEM, April 2—Some powerful images of the rally following the Progressive Labor Party’s College Conference are worth sharing for readers of CHALLENGE. Picture militant chants and speeches from a multiracial, multigenerational picket line. Black workers leaving stores to come out and watch and at turns solemnly and enthusiastically raising their fists—and six of them joining the rally.
On the outskirts of the picket, CHALLENGE sellers struggling to keep up the demand for the newspaper, while engaged in excited debates about smashing Trump and communist revolution, and balancing pens to take down contact information from interested workers.

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We Have the KKKillers’ Names, Shut Racism Down

BROOKLYN, NY, March 21—More than two and a half years have passed since Kyam Livingston was killed in Brooklyn Central Booking. The police killed Kyam, in a filthy holding cell, by ignoring her pleas for medical care. She had been arrested on a minor charge and never even came before a judge. Each month members of the Progressive Labor Party, along with relatives, friends, neighbors, members of churches and unions, and the Justice for Kyam Committee rally for justice for this racist, sexist police murder.

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Courts Rule KKKops Guilty, Justice for Tyrone Needed

BALTIMORE, March 30— Our weekly West Wednesday rally was really powerful this evening! PL members and other antiracist fighters are calling for Tyrone West’s killers and the racist capitalist system they defend to be indicted.
Just yesterday, two of Tyrone’s murderers along with about a dozen other cops were found guilty of brutally beating Abdul Salaam in July 2013, just a couple weeks before they murdered Tyrone. This is the nature of capitalism: killer kkkops who beat a member of the working class are set free to murder another worker.

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Shut Down TPP, Fighting Racism Is Key

 WASHINGTON, DC, April 1— The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a globally racist attack on already super-exploited workers. Members of PLP and George Washington University public health students joined the demonstration today to lower the cost of medicines that can cure Hepatitis C, and treat HIV and cancer.

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Communists’ Pivot to Workers in China

CHINA, April 6—Friends of Progressive Labor Party recently had a study group with industrial workers here. We discussed the editorial “Mapping Imperialist War” from CHALLENGE (March 9) and the article about fighting fascism in India.

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Israel Hides Bloody Ties with Argentine Nazism

TEL-AVIV, April 4—It is now well known that the fascist junta who took over Argentina between 1976 and 1982 has committed crimes against humanity, including kidnapping and torturing working-class activists and murdering at least 30,000 in the name of US imperialism. It is also well-known that the Argentine regime of the day was viciously anti-Semitic and specifically singled out Jewish activists for torture and murder—3,000 of those murdered were Jewish, ten times greater than their proportion in the general Argentine population at that time.

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Learning to Crush Bosses’ Lies

The following is an excerpt from the Keynote speech given at the college conference by a young woman leader (see article, front page).
What are we learning in school today? I see a lot of beautiful and diverse faces, and I know I’ll get a million different answers. For today, let us take stock of what the bosses really want us to learn.
We’re learning about the artifice of race, class, gender, religion, and national borders that divide the international working class. We’re learning that we must climb this elusive social ladder to separate ourselves from the working class. We’re learning that the role of the university is to accept the inevitability of war, and to remain loyal to a system that murders, deports, and exploits our working brothers and sisters abroad, and to accept the fascist conditions at home.

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Syria: Key to Russian Imperialism

As the Russian capitalists scale back their recent bombing campaign in Syria, they’re calling it a “withdrawal.” But the international working class should make no mistake: The Russian bosses are leveraging their military might to consolidate and expand their influence in the oil-rich Middle East. They will use their strengthened position to extort more favorable terms in the upcoming “peace” talks that could wind up partitioning Syria.
Sooner than later, the Russian rulers’ maneuvering will translate into a more intense conflict with the U.S. bosses, whose empire also relies on controlling Middle Eastern oil. In the current period, capitalists around the world are intensifying racism, sexism, nationalism and fascism in attempts to coerce workers to kill and be killed in the bosses’ wars.

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The Brooklyn Park Five: Capitalism Fails Black Youth and Women

BROOKLYN, NY, March 7—An innocent student’s arrest on trumped-up charges has intensified anti-racist, anti-sexist fightback inside our school. Communist women in Progressive Labor Party are helping to lead this ongoing struggle.
In January, we learned that kkkops had arrested five teens, including one of our students, in connection with the rape of a young woman in a Brooklyn park. The news spread quickly, and one communist teacher asked the principal for an emergency staff meeting. By that point, even before the teens’ first court appearance, the racist capitalist media had done its worst to convict them.  Ranging in age from 14 to 17, these young people’s photos, names and schools had been splashed over newspapers and websites. They were painted as violent, brutal rapists.

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