Letters of November 26

Standing Up for Communism
A recent experience reaching out to Chicago workers about a police murder has shown me again that communism is strong, and nationalism is weak, and a tool of the bosses.
I went to Polk and California on the west side of Chicago to participate in a community demonstration against the police murder of a young black man two days before. I live only a few blocks away but Ogden Ave has become a dividing line in our area between black families on the north and mostly Latin to the south. I didn’t know anyone in that community and didn’t know who else from the Party would be there.
I wore my May Day T-shirt from last year, with “Workers of the World Unite!” on it. I had Challenges and leaflets explaining the events in Ferguson, Missouri. When I got there, before the starting time, there were people sitting on their front porches and sitting and walking along the sidewalk. I offered them Challenge and the leaflet. Almost everyone was hungry for information and analysis. One young fellow began reading the leaflet out loud. I waited as he read the first few paragraphs.
When he got to the line I liked, and which I felt separated us from the liberals, I emphasized it: “that the rebels were not mistaken, they pretty much had their enemies in their sights and met them…” It made me wish that segregation was not so strong in Chicago — it’s kept me from having much chance of meeting these people any other way.
After a while, another PL’er and I were confronted by a guy who said he was a Nation of Islam nationalist. He said that he and the black community could never be free following a European style philosophy, and demanded that we stop distributing literature. I challenged this idea, but a local political leader or undercover cop was watching, and I thought they might be setting up an incident. I walked away towards my car, but as I went I continued to hand out literature. The nationalist confronted me again, and I decided that since I had no base on this block, I decided to put my literature away for awhile and see how things developed.
More and more people kept coming. More Party people arrived and some of them began getting out literature as well. This same nationalist fellow confronted one of them like he had me. He talked back like I had but he held his ground and never put away his literature. Speakers started, more people were coming, and we marched to the police station soon after. I went to get my literature and got all of it handed out. People were friendly and glad to see us there and welcomed our class perspective. I liked pointing out the Challenge article on the back page which read, “No Cops, No Crime” about China in the early revolutionary days of the Cultural Revolution.
On our way back to the car, a young mother and her daughter stopped my wife and me and said that they had been trying to get in touch with some group and gave us her email address.
So nationalism is weak. Communism is strong. We have a lot of work to do to win black workers to the Party.
Chicago Comrade
Fighting Cynicism
The feeling of cynicism and apathy, which so commonly afflicts those who understand the path our world is heading for, had me in its grips for a long time. I wasn’t losing hope, but I wasn’t exactly looking forward to anything either. But when I made the decision to go down to DC (see page 5), to show support for my comrades there, I knew it was the right one. The five-hour bus rides were full of laughs, sleep and serious deliberations on the way back.
I asked the highly technical question: “Why is everyone in PL so… chill?” I’m sure there’s a good answer — the type of people who will dedicate their lives to revolution tend to have a deeper understanding of things. Those who are critical of the world around them are probably critical of the sh*t they do. But for now I’m just enjoying the fact that even though some of these people I haven’t seen in months, and some of these people I’ve only just met, there’s still the mutual connection it seems only comrades can have.
The political work was sharp. Older comrades did an amazing job of supporting younger leaders. There were a few wrenches in the works, mainly people touting nationalist, black economy ideas. There was also a fire alarm during the panel discussion. It ended wonderfully, with a rally, working-class fists and voices from the neighborhood going up in solidarity.
DC was a place where some new perspective was gained about what it means to organize. From the students there who shared the lessons they’ve learned, to just getting out and having a rally, it reminded me of what our communist world will look like. As I step back into my capitalist world with increasingly meaningless obligations, that even as I write I’m pushing up against, I’m inspired once more to work towards a communist world that now seems much more possible.
NYC Red Student
 Struggles from the Underground
The time has come to address a primary issue that many of us face and which we are silent about. This key issue is how to keep ourselves in line with our principles when facing capitalists in our careers.
As for my experience, I struggle daily with it. I am a part of the capitalist aspect of a non-profit, and I find it very hard to cope when I attend financial conferences and grant meetings. In a room full of the ruling bosses, I feel as though I am injected with toxins as I shake hands with the one percent and politicians. “Wooing” them becomes an objective for me as my goal is geared towards assisting my superiors to recoup funding, or advocating for potential new funding in order to keep our project functioning.
At those moments, I feel as though I have compromised myself and that I am going against our Party’s strong core principles. But here is the silver lining for me: the struggles of the workers (both employed and unemployed) who are our clients seeking our help at the non-profit out-weights it all. Seeing how tired and hopeless our brothers and sisters and potential comrades are changes my perspective. Fighting to keep our doors open for our brothers and sisters is the driving force and it prompts me to see this struggle in a new light.
I see this dilemma as working with other comrades in disguise collectively to ensure that the safety nets of the working people remain protected. This is a primary opportunity to share our Party’s objective and introduce them to a new way of living.
What has surprised me in my journey during my first year as a communist is how I have been able to reshape the mind of my trusted manager/friend, thus having him express the same shared beliefs without me pushing. Seeing how my manager/friend has evolved as the struggle of the workers at our project has increased, and how his beliefs have change to being somewhat in line with what we believe in is a small victory to the advancement of our Party. It’s only a matter of time before we can build a movement that will encourage people to fight for a new society of communism that works for the benefit of all peoples.
La lucha continua! Power to the working people!
Working-class Fighter
End Racism from Belize to the U.S.
The Eric Garner march in August was important to me because it was the first time I was able to be a part of something I was angry about something that’s in our community. That was my first time taking a stand and putting it out there that I’m going to fight for what I believe in.
When I was eleven months old my dad was killed by a cop and instead of being treated and instead of calling EMS, they put him bleeding in the back of the cop car and took him to the precinct and let him die. They figured he was just another street kid. My father was 21; he was here in New York while I was still living in Belize.
I lived there until I was sixteen. It’s a really beautiful place, a jewel. But in the working-class neighborhoods it’s all about gang wars over drugs. The government calls these little “truce meetings” with the leaders of these gangs, take pictures and looks good, and a few days later more people are shot. The cops are all bribed by the gang leaders and you fend for yourself.
Most people work for the tourist industry. Others work in the banks. Other people make extra money carving beautiful wooden statues of our national bird out of wood to sell to the tourists. Opportunities for education are bad and it comes down to money. In high school I wanted to study biology and chemistry to become a doctor, and I realized that only the rich can do that.
There’s no healthcare in Belize. Most people take the two-hour bus ride to Mexico to the hospitals near the border. Poor people have to go there because the Belizean dollar is stronger than the Mexican peso. Forget about it during a medical emergency, and every child grows up knowing to not go to the hospitals in Belize because they’re for the rich.
Racism is in Belize in every way possible, and when I came to the United States it was a shock because I thought it would be completely different, but it’s just the same. In Belize, politicians tell people what they want to hear and make promises, and have these puppets come to the neighborhoods where people are outraged and calm everyone down and to trust the government, just like after Eric Garner. After a police or gang shooting the cops claim to be “interviewing” the suspects they arrest but they’re all on the payroll and their mentality is, “Let them all kill each other so we don’t have to do anything.” It’s just like how the NYPD treated my father.
I used to think I would never go back because there is nothing for me there. Belize is such a small country, and it’s like no one else in the world cares about what’s going on there. How can you live in a place where every day you don’t know if you’re going to die or not, if you or your kids can just walk outside into a crossfire? But I see what’s going on everywhere and it makes me angry, and people in Belize need to know there’s an organization fighting back. Now I would go home and see if I can make a difference.
I’m excited to go with the Progressive Labor Party to Ferguson if I can. I don’t think people in Belize know that there are places where people are fighting back. For me, Ferguson would be an experience to see people standing up and fighting instead of being divided and struggling alone.
EMT from Belize