Chicago: Honor 125th Anniversary Where May Day Was Born

“The kkkops, the kkkourts and the minutemen, all a part of the bosses’ plan!” shouted high school students as Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched to commemorate the 125-year anniversary of May Day. In this immigrants rights march, 3,000 Asian, Latino, black and white workers marched through the streets of the Pilsen neighborhood surrounded by cops. Despite the presence of the bosses’ thugs, hundreds of CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed to marchers and workers on the street.

Fake leftist groups were there en masse. One young friend of PLP asked, “What’s the difference between those groups and PLP?” They chanted, “The people, united, will never be defeated,” while we chanted, “The workers, united, will never be defeated.” The weakness in their chant is that bosses are also “people,” but they are only interested in exploiting workers, especially super-exploiting others.

Another group opposed federal spending on war in favor of jobs and education. All imperialist wars must be opposed, but the working class needs state power, not temporary jobs or mis-education from the bosses. Yet another group pushed the line of their individualistic leader. The young friend felt more assured that he marched with the party that had the best line.

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FRANCE: Internationalism, Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism

Working-class internationalism, anti-racism and anti-fascism marked the May Day marches in France this year. The main banner in the Paris demonstration of 30,000 read: “International Solidarity and Social Progress.” In Rennes, where 1,000 rallied in Town Hall Square, workers chanted, “French workers, immigrant workers, same bosses, same struggle!”

Among the 120,000 who marched in 280 cities nation-wide, May Day slogans included equal rights for foreign workers and support for the Arab peoples who are rising up for their dignity and freedom.

Hundreds of North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, particularly recently-arrived Tunisians, participated in this years’ May Day. Support for these workers, who were and are victims of racism going back to French colonial times, reflected the anti-racist feelings of the overall marches. This was their answer to the racism of the fascist National Front .

A group of 200 young Tunisians followed the lead banner in the march here, chanting “Defend the Tunisian Revolution.” Syrians, Libyans and Moroccans chanted other slogans attacking authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. “Bashar Beat it!” proclaimed a banner attacking Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad. In previous years, undocumented workers from sub-Saharan Africa had also joined the May Day celebration.

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SAN FRANCISCO: ‘Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders!’

PL’ers a rallied before the May Day March of over 1,000 workers here. Old and new friends sought out our contingent as they identified with our emphasis on the international working class, armed revolution and on our open advocacy of communism. Our enthusiasm came from confidence in the working class worldwide because we knew that our comrades were marching around the world for communism.

Our banner read, “Workers, Soldiers and Students, Fight for Communism!” as we led chants in the March and distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets. The literature focused on how capitalism attacks all workers; whether they be immigrants, public workers, or workers in other countries. We addressed the local battles of SF MUNI (public transit) drivers, the growth of racism with the jailing of millions of black and Latino youth, anti-immigrant attacks and U.S. Imperialism. One unifying demand was “Smash All Borders!” We chanted with many: “Workers’ Struggles have no Borders, Fight for Communism!” One immigrant worker asked to carry our red flag and spoke at length with a PL’er about why we need a party. 

The March itself was organized by a Coalition Immigrants Rights group and others opposing imperialist war. Immigrant rights issues such as amnesty, ending the federal Secure Communities program, fighting low wages and exploitation of immigrant workers related to the needs of many workers who watched the march.

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ALGERIA: Fight Massive Unemployment

ALGIERS, May 1 — Despite a massive police presence, nearly 100 workers and students held a May Day rally today organized by the National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed (CNDDC) — [initials in French]) to highlight the massive 30% jobless rate in Algeria. Slogans included “dignity, equal opportunity and decent work.”

The CNDDC is a coalition of various student, teacher and youth organizations. The main speaker was a long-term unemployed woman with a college degree, Dalila Touat. The cops had arrested her last month for handing out leaflets and had just released her three days ago.

“The demands of the unemployed are simple,” she declared with tears in her eyes. “How are we to explain the fact that, in a country that is rich in so many natural resources, there is so much scorn for citizens who only ask to work and to live?”

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Osama bin Laden: the CIA’s Frankenstein

Reprint of a 2001 CHALLENGE Editorial

The New York Times (9/14/01) published an extensive article by Middle East expert Judith Miller, titled "Bin Laden: Child of Privilege Who Champions Holy War." While it is no secret that Bin Laden was a creature of the U.S. intelligence services, Ms. Miller merely smoothes it over by saying, "…the U.S. had worked ‘alongside’ him to help oust the Russians from Afghanistan…" The U.S. "work" poured in $2 billion!

If anyone is to blame for the terrorist activities of Bin Laden, it’s the CIA.

Why are bin Laden and the U.S. bosses now enemies? Although the present conflict is posed as a "holy war," it is basically for control of the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden represents a section of the Saudi ruling class (from which he comes) that does not want to share this oil with Exxon-Mobil. U.S. bosses know if they lose Saudi Arabia after having lost Iraq, they won’t control the biggest oil producers of the cheapest oil in the world. Without it, U.S. imperialist supremacy is in serious question. Bush’s "holy war"for oil is likely to wind up with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

CIA Trained bin Laden to Wage Anti-Communist Holy War

In 1979, bin Laden, who inherited a personal $300 million fortune from his father (a construction boss billionaire), decided to abandon his former life of luxury and dedicate himself to fight communism. When the Soviet army entered Afghanistan to support a pro-Moscow government there, bin Laden was recruited by the CIA to become the financier of the anti-Soviet "holy war." In 1986, William Casey, CIA chief under Reagan-Bush Sr., approved an old proposal by the Pakistani intelligence services to recruit Islamic fundamentalists worldwide to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

While the Pakistanis did the recruiting, Saudi Arabia provided money and the U.S. gave political support and "funneled more than $2 billion in guns and money…during the 1980s. It was the largest covert action program since World War II (Washington Post, 7/19/92). Soon, 35,000 fundamentalists came to fight alongside the Afghani holy warriors. Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo III (1988) was based on this CIA vision of the world: then the "good" guys were the bin Laden "holy warriors" types fighting the "evil communist" Soviet empire.

Bin Laden and his followers learned all their tricks from the master terrorists: the CIA. "It was the CIA which taught him how to be bold…It was also the CIA which taught him the tricks of a secret war: how to move money around using ghost companies and off shore fiscal paradises, how to prepare explosives, how to use coded messages to communicate with his agents and avoid detection, how to retreat into a safe base after a big blow to the enemy…"(El Pais, Madrid, 9/14).

Soon after the Soviet Army left Afghanistan and the Soviet Union itself imploded, the U.S. and its Pakistani allies began supporting the most backward of all the holy warriors, the Taliban. The Pakistani intelligence services financed all of this by smuggling opium and heroin from Afghanistan. In 1991, when the U.S. led an imperialist coalition against Iraq, and U.S. troops were stationed in the Moslem "holy land" of Saudi Arabia, the fundamentalists united against the new "evil empire," their old friends in the U.S. Bin Laden joined forces with other fundamentalist forces like Islamic Jihad of Egypt who had murdered Anwar Sadat, considered a lackey of the U.S. and Israel. These forces represent a section of the Middle Eastern ruling classes which use religion to cover their desire not to share the oil wealth with U.S, imperialism/Exxon-Mobil.

But even while bin Laden has become the number one bad guy on the U.S. hit list, some of his followers are still serving U.S. bosses. Last April, Secy. of State Colin Powell approved $43 million in "humanitarian" aid for the Taleban. Furthermore, many of the veterans of the Afghan "holy war" were fighting alongside the U.S.-supported Kosovo-Albanian "freedom fighters" during the 1999 air war against the former Yugoslavia. And more recently, some have fought with the Albanian forces against the government of Macedonia.

Again, when one talks about terrorism, don’t lose sight of the big ones: U.S. imperialism and its CIA. And don’t lose sight of what is behind the "holy war" between bin Laden and the U.S. bosses: control of oil profits.

Join the PLP and make a RED entrance at…

MAY DAY 2011

NYC MAY DAY 2010

Los Angeles: Sunday, May 1^st at 11:00am

W 12^th street and W Broadway  

San Francisco: Sunday, May 1st at 11:00am

24th  Street and Mission St

New York City: Sunday, May 1^st, 2011 at 12:00 PM

Chatham Square (intersection of Bowery and Park Row)

Chicago: Sunday, May 1^st, at 2:30pm

Union Park (intersection of Lake St And Ashland Ave)

May Day 2011: WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

PLP Must Spark Revolutionary Opportunities from Crisis Hitting the Working Class

May Day is the day the international working class reviews its forces, assesses the struggles over the past year and marks the beginning of a new year of struggle against the dictatorship of the capitalist class. The international working class faces its worst crisis in decades, but within every crisis is an opportunity. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is using it to unite the working class to smash racism, sexism and nationalism with communist revolution.

PLP has mantained the tradition of marching on May Day and calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class)  for 40 years, since 1971, picking the red flag up out of the mud where it was dropped by revisionists — fake “communists” — who abandoned the fight for revolution. Despite weaknesses, PLP is in motion, leading and participating in struggles around the world.

Fighting Racism Is A Key Struggle

Racism is capitalism’s lifeline because it is both the source of super-profits and the primary weapon against the international working class. Racism, along with its twin — nationalism (advocating unity of all classes in subjection to the bosses’ flag) — divides and pacifies our class from unity.

 Anti-immigrant racism is the cutting edge of racism today. Bosses worldwide hope to build nationalist loyalty among workers to fight their imperialist wars while simultaneously building anti-immigrant racism.  This intimidates both “legal” and “undocumented” workers into passivity.

Capitalists worldwide use racist immigration laws to do this. In the U.S., workers from Latin America are mainly targeted; in France, workers from northern Africa; in Germany, workers from Turkey; in China, workers from Southeast Asia. In many countries, Muslim and Arab workers are also especially terrorized. In an address to members of the German Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) on October 17th, 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the German “experiment in multiculturalism” had “utterly failed,” stating non-Germans, particularly Arabs and Muslims, were incapable of living “side-by-side” with the German people.

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How U.S. Rulers Decide: Where the Oil Is, Make Wars

U.S. imperialism needs to control militarily whatever it can of the world’s energy supplies. This hard fact underlies U.S. rulers’ selective response to uprisings and crackdowns across North Africa and the Middle East, and enables us to make sense of these responses.

Libya contains 42 billion barrels of oil and over 1.3 trillion cubic meters of gas. Testifying before the Senate on April 6, Richard Haass, president of the Rockefeller think-tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) representing the dominant wing of U.S. capitalists, said: “U.S. interests in Libya simply do not warrant such an investment [of ground war]…” But nevertheless, Libya’s oil and gas resources do make it worth killing Libyans from the air — invoking a phony “responsibility to protect” Libyan citizens — while saving U.S. resources for strategically more important areas.

Meanwhile, hypocrite-in-chief Obama stands by as Syrian ruler Assad slaughters protesters — even mourners — since that country possesses little oil and gas. U.S. imperialism’s top oil source, Saudi Arabia, holds a hundred times more crude than Syria. So, when demonstrations in neighboring Bahrain — where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is stationed — threatened to spill over the Saudi border, Obama, instead of “protection,” saw a “responsibility to suppress.” The invading Saudi troops that shot Bahraini protesters got a White House green light.

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PL’ers, Workers, Students Force Nazis Out of Worcester, Mass.

WORCESTER, MA., February 23 — Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) helped force the Nazis out of Worcester. The North East White Pride had been using the Worcester Library for their monthly meetings, violating Library policy about groups holding monthly meetings as distinct from educational events.

When anti-racist forces here recently found this out, we began to organize to stop the Nazis. Clark University students initiated this effort and PLP joined with them, calling for an anti-Nazi rally at the Library. Within hours of PLP’s organizing efforts, the Library — at the Mayor’s request — told the Nazis they couldn’t meet there due to “public safety concerns.” They did this in order to reduce the number of people at the anti-fascist rally but we still held it.

Over 60 people came — workers and students, Asian, black, Latino and white. We served notice to the bosses that Worcester would not become fertile ground for racist, sexist and fascist ideas and actions. We also sent a message to the Nazis that if they returned there would be strong opposition. We urged all workers, students and soldiers to unite and fight back against these fascist ideas and to build an egalitarian world.

Many people indicated their reasons for coming. One cited the war at home and abroad and explained that we all have a stake in fighting this capitalist profit system, from Wisconsin to Worcester. He said the bosses use racism to divide us and we can’t let that happen here. He connected conditions in Haiti to attacks on workers in the U.S.

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Black and White Workers in NJ Back PL’ers’ Anti-Nazi Protest

TRENTON, NJ, April 16 — The Nazis of the National Socialist Movement celebrated Hitler’s birthday in Trenton and Progressive Labor Party was there to protest their celebration. New Jersey Governor Christie continually prattles on about not having enough money for schools, health care, or any of the other services that the working class needs. However, he had the funds to protect the Nazis with SWAT, attack dogs, armored personnel carriers, helicopters and other elements of the state apparatus. This is a clear slap in the face to the mostly black working class of Trenton. 

PLP changed tactics on the ground after surveying the area in which the state would permit us to protest. The KKKops had set up a metal detector and a cage and were not allowing  any signs or bullhorns. They wanted to set us up in an isolated area, many blocks away from the working class, and with a canal to our backs.

This was too dangerous a scenario due to the fact that we would be in the cage with the anarchists and the New Black Panther Party, whose beliefs are just as racist and destructive as the Nazis. We would not have been able to get to the Nazis who were demonstrating their “freedom of speech” to push hate and genocide, protected by the KKKops. But there was a big chance that the black nationalists would have attacked us for our belief in internationalism and multi-racial unity. 

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