Burn Wage Slavery

QUEENS, NYC—At a film showing of Burn! a woman Emergency Medical Technician announced that TransCare had shut down and laid off nearly 2,000 EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers and others.
The workers received no warning and were told they were not getting paid for the last week they worked. To add insult to injury, many learned that the paychecks they received three weeks ago had bounced!
Lynn Tilton, owner of TransCare, will continue be a millionaire while capitalism burns workers’ livelihoods. The TransCare workers have no union and because they received no warning about the coming mass layoffs, were not prepared to take collective action. They began to scramble and do the little they could to protect themselves: file for unemployment benefits, file complaints with the Attorney General over the lack of notice, and contact lawyers about a suit against the company.

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Burn Wage Slavery

QUEENS, NYC—At a film showing of Burn! a woman Emergency Medical Technician announced that TransCare had shut down and laid off nearly 2,000 EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers and others.
The workers received no warning and were told they were not getting paid for the last week they worked. To add insult to injury, many learned that the paychecks they received three weeks ago had bounced!
Lynn Tilton, owner of TransCare, will continue be a millionaire while capitalism burns workers’ livelihoods. The TransCare workers have no union and because they received no warning about the coming mass layoffs, were not prepared to take collective action. They began to scramble and do the little they could to protect themselves: file for unemployment benefits, file complaints with the Attorney General over the lack of notice, and contact lawyers about a suit against the company.

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International Working Women’s Day FIGHT SEXISM, BUILD COMMUNISM

As we mark International Working Women’s Day on March 8, the state of the world seems grim. Imperialist wars fueled by the U.S., Russia and China are intensifying. Capitalist economies are in crisis or on the brink. As always, instability in the profit system means more attacks on working-class women.
In Syria, a civil war manipulated by the U.S. and Russia has displaced millions of women. They are twice as likely to die from shelling or air strikes as men. In refugee camps in countries like Jordan, where women and children compose more than 80 percent of the population, they are at higher risk of sexual assault. Often they lack basic reproductive and sexual health services, resulting in higher death rates.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama is ramping up racist deportations of women and children who fled north to escape pervasive violence in Latin America—a result of two centuries of U.S. imperialism. Women are the majority of immigrants entering the U.S. on the “Train of Death.” An estimated 100,000 women per year are kidnapped into forced labor and, increasingly, sex slavery (Congressional Research Service, 7/29/15). The situation is worsening by the day. Drug cartels are shifting their operations into highly profitable global trafficking networks, while capitalist governments look the other way.
As for the immigrant women who survive the journey to the U.S. and now face deportation, what is waiting for them at home? A Zika virus linked to deadly diseases and birth defects, with capitalist health services promoting abstinence as the only solution.

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Rally Against Racism Toughens Up Working Class of Worcester

WORCESTER, MA—On Martin Luther King’s birthday Progressive Labor Party provided a revolutionary alternative to the passivity and treachery of local liberal misleaders and the working class responded in force! The Progressive Labor Party and friends organized a militant march against racism while the town bosses lorded over a traditional Martin Luther King Day breakfast which they hijacked from grassroots organizers years ago. In defiance of the local bosses scores of people came to our march despite the very cold temperatures.

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Students Expose Columbia’s Racism

NEW YORK CITY, March 7—PLP has been fighting to smash racism at Columbia University, organizing and forming study groups within the Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) club, which currently is fighting for a $15 minimum wage on campus.
SWS’s fight is an antiracist one for low-income, mainly Black and Latin student workers here, who earn most of their living expenses via work-study programs. Often, they cannot afford food or books on their pitiful salary.

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Tear Down Racist Criminal Injustice System

MARYLAND, March 2 —The fight against the racist 1974 Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBR) is intensifying. The murder of Freddie Gray by Baltimore cops sparked mass rebellion and led to an enduring upsurge in public protests. People have taken to the streets and invaded the halls of government to denounce the racist terror tactics of law enforcement and demand justice for victims of police terror.  

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ANTI-RACISTS SMASH KKK TERROR

Anaheim, CA, February 27—The Ku Klux Klan scums showed up to hold a racist “White Lives Matter” rally against Muslim and immigrant workers. But 200 anti-racists, including communists Progressive Labor Party, put an end to that before it started. Stopping a rally by these terrorists is a small victory in the fight against racism.

We are working now to get anti-racists out of jail. The racist cops targeted anti-Klan demonstrators while racists were stabbing people. Hugo Contreras and Mark Liddell, who are members of Unitarian Universalist congregations, were among those arrested and still held on “elder abuse” charges. Hugo has a broken arm, possibly at the hands of the police. The cops have now released all of the Klansmen—saying the stabbings were justified. Meanwhile, they trump up charges against anti-racists. The police are bigger racist terrorists than the Klan.

Mass incarceration holds 7.3 million in jail, prison, probation or parole and stigmatizes another 13 million as felons.

The biggest terrorists are the capitalists and their military. Obama’s ICE police are rounding up and deporting immigrant workers in record numbers—2.5 million since 2009. The U.S. military has or controls at least 700 military bases or installations worldwide as it engages in constant warfare. All of this is in service of a small class of capitalists, particularly oil interests responsible for constant wars in the Persian Gulf region.

Only communist revolution can end these racist horrors. We will create a society without their racism, exploitation, sexism, mass incarceration, and terror against the working class. Join us in celebration of the international workers’ holiday, May Day.

KKK leader hits the pavement

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Mapping Imperialist War

National borders are drawn by the capitalist rulers to serve the profit system and divide the international working class. These borders—and the “countries” they define—are repeatedly redrawn through imperialist war. This is the essence of the latest tensions in the South China Sea. As CHALLENGE goes to press, the U.S. capitalist media is raising alarms over the Chinese capitalists’ deployment of advanced missiles and fighter jets on a disputed island chain called the Paracels.
Workers have no side in this dispute, which signifies another step toward inter-imperialist war.

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Fighting Fascism in India—Avenge Capitalist Murder!

INDIA, February 22—Students rose up today against the capitalist-caused suicide of 26-year-old Rohith Vemula, a Dalit left-wing student protester at the Nehru University (JNU) in Hyderbad. The rise and suppression of student protests demonstrate the growing fascist dictatorship here and, more important, the growth of widespread resistance.

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Workers Declare, ‘It ain’t right!’ DC BUS DRIVERS FIGHT BACK

WASHINGTON DC, February 10—With the help of communist leadership from Progressive Labor Party, bus drivers poured out of the 175-bus Northern Garage to protest the agency’s racist disregard for their safety.
More than 35 transit workers, joined by some riders, picketed for an hour with signs calling for “Service With Protection” and “Transit Workers Lives Matter.”  In a lively call-and-response, workers chanted, “It ain’t right!” after each example of abusive action by the bosses was called out by speakers at the rally. People driving by honked and cheered.
Instead of standing up for assaulted drivers, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) bosses are supporting the arrest, suspension and disciplining of any drivers who defend themselves when attacked.

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