Letters of January 29

Class Analysis Needed on Zionist Kibbutzim
The article in the January 15th CHALLENGE issue on protests against expropriation of Bedouins and ethnic cleansing in Israel was on the mark.  However, when calling attention to the Zionist government’s favoring collective farms, or kibbutzim, a more precise class analysis is called for. The article refers to “....dozens of well-off Kibbutzim, Moshavim and individual farms, all exclusive to upper-class Jews.”  True, the majority of these Israeli farms have by now succumbed, or soon will, to privatization and other capitalist influences.  Like the commune movement in the U.S., establishing islands of egalitarianism in a sea of profits and private property is an impossibility.  However, be it in centers like Tel Aviv or the countryside, Israeli workers struggle constantly.  Rural workers have much more in common with the urban proletariat than is generally believed.
Workers in Israel/Palestine, nomadic or landed, like those worldwide, share equally in the class struggle.
Ruby
Court Hits Women’s Birth Control Needs
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a temporary injunction barring the administration from enforcing the Obamacare birth control requirement against an order of Colorado nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor and related groups. An anti-woman ruling coming from a woman in support of a religious group made up of women!
Capitalism will never negate sexism. Women’s bodies are the source of the next generation of workers. Less birth now means less cheap labor later. Some feminists may be surprised that the first Latina female judge would rule this way, but it stands to reason that the bosses’ courts would use religion as the ideological justification to deny birth control for women.
Religion tells the working class that to use birth control is a sin, but in a time of economic instability adding a new member into a working-class family is a decision that is harrowing and personal. The ruling class wants to make that decision of child birth beneficial to them even as they scapegoat black and Latino workers, using the stereotype that they are leeching the system by having children, particularly out of wedlock.
Religious organizations are in existence to mislead the working class ideologically and this latest ruling is an attack on women disguised as religious freedom.
An Antisexist

Letters of January 15

Strike Against Racist Police Terror
This is an excerpt from a speech read at the latest demonstration for Kyam Livingston. She was a black woman who was left to die in prison by the New York Police Department and the city’s prison guards.
We come from St. Mary’s Church in Harlem. We are in support. Support of the Family of Kyam Livingston. Support for the friends of Kyam Livingston. And support for EVERY family that could be victimized by Racist Police Terror!
Our own daughter could wind up dumped in a jail cell. Our own son could be dragged behind bars there. For hours and hours in sickening filth. Waiting, stuffed in with other prisoners. While “the papers get lost.” Hoping not to get sick! Not to DIE. While the racist guards ignore, threaten and disrespect them. All while you are dying! DYING!
Who could this Not happen to. You!? You! You!
It could happen to any of us. It’s so True!! At St. Mary’s we know about dying.
We counted and we discovered the average age when brothers and sisters die is forty-eight years old. This is from a system of racist health care  and from the fascist denial of healthcare, that murdered our sister Kyam.
Who is going to fight this? New Mayors? New police chiefs? We will hear promises; we have heard thousand of promises.
Promises from mayor-elect Bill DeBlasio who just promised “I can’t be at war with Wall street. Wall street is our Hometown industry.” Promises from Bill Bratton who arrests workers who have to beg for a sandwich and coffee. Who fires rubber bullets at demonstrators? Bill and Bill. We’re going to make you Pay UP Your Bill!
Because we know who we can trust!
Our sister Kyam could only trust her fellow workers. Sisters who cleared a bench for her, sisters who smoother back her hair, fellow workers who tenderly tended her. Sisters who saw her seizures begin. Working-class sisters who confronted the fascist guards and demanded HELP! Kyam Livingston could rely only on her fellow workers standing up to fascist terror. And so can we.
The barons of Wall Street are paying for fascist terror to protect their staggering system of exploitation and death. Here and worldwide.
They are losing in the profit squeeze struggle with their rival thugs around the world. They must make the U.S. workers ready for their new plans for oppression. And for their new plans for war.
That is why they pay these killer kkkops. They are paid to intimidate us. They are paid to murder us. They are paid to control us! But sisters and brothers we can pay too. We must pay too. We must pay them back. We must push them back!
Since November two years ago police have murdered at least eleven of our sisters and brothers throughout our region. We must act, and act together.
We must continue the struggle for justice for each of our fallen workmates, and for their families. But we must sharpen our message.
We must take our message into every school, into every congregation, into every workplace, into every community and into the hearts and minds of everyone we know.
And we must stir our anger into action. More and more into action.
Protest. Yes. Picket Lines Yes. Marches. Yes
But we must urge and plan walk outs. We must organize strikes. With every racist murder we must hit them harder and harder the only place Wall street cares about: their money. What they steal from us we will deny to them.
Only by going on the labor and student strikes offensive can we push back racist police terror. Many lives depend on this. Our lives in fact!
So as we say at St. Mary’s, Let us join together and fight the good fight.
Comrade
Capitalist Devastation in the Philippines
Recently one of the biggest typhoons in history devastated the residents of Tacloban and surrounding areas in the Philippines. Thousands have been killed and injured. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. Capitalism created the poverty that condemned thousands to be the victims of Typhoon Yolanda. Most Filipino workers barely survive on two dollars a day!
In a communist society, the working class would mobilize to build safe buildings and have a concrete plan to evacuate workers. We have hints of what can be done now. Cuba has a plan to evacuate workers in the event of hurricanes. The China of 40 years ago had far more concern for workers’ lives. When an upcoming earthquake was detected, thousands were evacuated.
In 1989, the city of Baguio in the Northern Philippines suffered a 7.8 earthquake. Like the recent typhoon, capitalism was responsible for many deaths and injuries.
Six months before the earthquake my wife and friends had vacationed in Baguio’s Hyatt Hotel. Speaking of capitalism, when the earthquake hit, the hotel went to the ground and 400 people were killed. What happened to the steel for a stronger structure, which would have saved many lies?
The money “rested” in capitalist pockets! In comparison, my wife’s parents’ house, nearby, had steel supports anchored in cement. The house shook and shook, but didn’t go down.
The lessons of capitalism, especially in places like the Philippines, prone to natural disasters, will continue to be deadly. The only answer to this is a communist revolution and a workers’ society which values equality and our well-being.
Stockton California Comrade

Letters of December 25

Annual Thanks-for-Fighting-Racism Feast
The 28th Annual Thanks-For-Fighting Racism Feast in the Washington, DC area started with a burst of energy from the younger comrades. Developing such young comrades into leaders is important for our Party to grow. They helped move furniture, mash potatoes (10 lbs) and carved turkeys (2).  Most of all they brought many friends.
Our program included a report from the struggles at the Boston meetings of the American Public Health Association against the racist stop-and-frisk policy in New York City and imperialism’s racist exploitation of workers in Haiti. A Metro transit worker told of the ongoing struggle against privatization and racist criminal background checks, supported by public housing residents at Stoddert Terrace in Northeast DC.  A leader of the Peoples Coalition of Prince George’s County gave a stirring account of the many struggles against racism carried out by that group over the past year, including the 20-year-old fight for justice for Archie Elliott III and the 10-mile-march denouncing the Zimmerman verdict.
The program also featured students from a Baltimore high school cultural club who sang and gave powerful spoken word against racism. Then a woman from the Peoples’ Coalition performed a dramatic piece about Trayvon Martin and the movement that grew up around his murder that brought tears to the eyes of many. A young comrade delivered a passionate speech about the need for a revolutionary party to defeat racism, sexism, and capitalism. She called on people to join the Progressive Labor Party to help smash the system.
A raffle was won by a woman involved in Stoddert Terrace which is fighting the racist criminal background checks at Metro.  Positioning a person at the door meant more consistent donations. We raised over $700 for the End Cholera in Haiti Organization (ECHO).  The Party has been working with them since the earthquake devastated the island nation. The comradely, multi-racial, multi-generational crowd bodes well for the future of our Party.
DC Red

Colonialism At City College
Students, community supporters and local residents took to the streets during a recent protest against the City College of New York (CCNY) administration’s stealing of the Assata Shakur-Guillermo Morales Student & Community Center in October.
But before the action began, students held an open mic session outside the school’s North Academic Center, where they gave the fascists in charge a well-deserved mouthful.
“It is pretty obvious that my college never cared about consent,” said Alyssia Osorio, the center’s director, referencing how the school took the space without consulting any student governments. They violated an agreement between Students For Educational Rights and CUNY that the center remain under autonomous student control.
“It’s a problem of colonialism, and neo-colonialism, when they can take what’s yours, what you deserve as a human being, and tell you that it’s for your own benefit, or not even give you an excuse at all,” said a speaker. “That’s colonialism!”
As I covered the march, I overheard Osorio revealing in an interview that the administration told her to pick up the property it stole from the center the Monday of the attack. That was reportedly her only chance to pick up the items.
Before long, the group began marching down Convent Avenue to spread word about the center. This drew a lone NYPD cruiser, but the group ignored the pigs’ demands to go on the sidewalk, a small example of working-class power! They eventually stopped outside the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr building, where they spoke out once more before dispersing. Though our turnout could’ve been better, it felt empowering. And when we take state power for the working class, it will only get better from there.
New PL’er

Free Speech Fights Are Necessary
The strong front-page article Dec. 11, “No Free Speech Under Capitalism,” is certainly correct that we live under capitalist dictatorship. The only rights we have under that rule are those we fight to get and keep through the power of the workers and students, and even then they will always be limited and often taken away by the state.
 “Free speech” in the sense of being able to put forward communist ideas without being beaten, prosecuted, and jailed is, however, necessary to our class and our Party, and “free speech fights” have been part of workers’ struggles and communist organizing from the get go.  A famous U.S. example was the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) in the 1920s, fighting for public speaking rights as they organized miners and loggers.
At City University of New York (CUNY) the fight against the Administration’s and the NYPD’s crackdown on political organizing is a classic free speech fight and communists should be (as we are) front and center in that fight.  Fighting fascism is often fighting for the public space to speak freely for revolutionary ideas.  When they show their contempt for their own laws or change them to fit their needs (CUNY is now doing both), we have to fight that and expose the underlying dictatorship beneath their prattle about the rule of law.  
If we call it an attack on First Amendment rights, however, we fall into the liberal illusions about the rule of law.  But if we attack it as a crackdown by the capitalist ruling class to prevent anti-war, anti-imperialist organizing on the campus, this becomes a teachable moment and brings to our friends the class analysis of the state that there is No Free Speech Under Capitalism. The article also points out that these attacks on organizers hope to derail the struggle.  We should have been picketing ROTC offices all this time, as well as defending the students facing suspensions and criminal charges. Expanding the struggle has to accompany any free speech fight.
When 60% of all university research in electrical engineering in the country is funded by the Department of Defense, they have too much invested in the university as a war machine to tolerate effective organizing against them without a sharp reaction. If we want a chance to speak freely about this we will have to fight for it.  
CUNY Prof

College Bosses Clamp Down on Campus Protest
The City University of New York (CUNY) Board of Trustees is planning to vote on a
set of regulations to control “expressive activity” of students and faculty. On December 3, over 80 people attended a town hall meeting at my community college. They were quite upset to hear the CUNY Board of Trustees is planning to vote on these new regulations. The CUNY Board of Trustees plans to tell us when and where on campus we would be allowed to leaflet and demonstrate, assuming we applied for permission.
During the Question and Answer period, students wanted to know who are these “trustees” and can their decisions be overturned. One professor explained that on our campus we had a history of protesting about many issues, including tuition hikes, run down buildings, the preservation of adjunct health care, the war in Iraq, and the support of cafeteria workers. We had never asked for permission and we never will!
The only way to stop repression is to organize and break the laws.
A student from City College was a guest speaker and explained the militarization of CUNY that was taking place across the city. We promised to support him and other students who had been arrested for fighting back.  A number of CHALLENGES were distributed and plans are being made to step up the struggle next semester.
Professor Red

Letters of December 11

The Common Core: Capitalism Blames the Victim
I recently attended a PLP study group of teachers where we talk about U.S. education reform and World War III.  Most of our discussion centered on the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS), which reinforces capitalist ideology. When it comes to education under capitalism, ideology is the name of the game. The ruling class needs a working class capable of producing for their needs and fighting their wars. They need us to have  enough rudimentary skills to do work that is profitable, they need another smaller group to be more advanced to handle their complex tasks, and then they need a subset of “intellectual” workers to produce the ideology capitalism requires to exist — racism and sexism.
The Common Core reinforces and intensifies racism in the United States. It unilaterally posits a group of standards that are out of reach of the disgusting amount of resources that the bourgeoisie is willing to spend on educating us, and then they blame students for not meeting them and teachers for not getting their students to reach them.
Capitalism lives to blame the victim for their own victimization by obscuring the actual process of that victimization. The intense systemic oppression that the working class is under due to capitalism’s non-stop crisis is not a factor in the assessment of the CCLS. This is primarily an attack on the students and secondarily an attack on the teachers. Black and Latino workers who are hyper-exploited under capitalism are feeling the brunt of the CCLS. Meanwhile, the ruling class and its puppets, including the union leadership, mouth the lie that it is racist to oppose the CCLS. These lying, deceitful parasites and their labor lieutenants, are obscuring that capitalism’s brutal exploitation, where students may not even have food at home, is the real reason why public education isn’t meeting the needs of a declining U.S. imperialism.
The CCLS is being opposed from the right, liberals and the left, but they are not pointing out that it is primarily an ideological weapon that will be used to prepare the workers in the U.S. for the next round of imperialist wars and eventually World War III.
Communists in the PLP stress the ideological aspects of the CCLS and that the liberal wing of the ruling class is the real danger to the working class and the development of fascism. We must oppose the CCLS and counterpoise a clear vision of an education system that actually meets the needs of workers. That education system is only possible under Communism.
Red Teacher
Shining A Light on A Public Hell
My visit to the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting was the best in years because of the energy and good politics of a group of young professionals. They established a campus organization called Radical Public Health at my university to bring active anti-racist politics into that otherwise buttoned-down academic setting. They raised issues that almost none of the faculty was mentioning in their courses, issues that have a huge impact on people’s health. Over the past year, their meetings, forums, speaker panels and film screenings have raised issues like mass incarceration, war and homelessness. These events shined a light on what they call “neoliberalism” causing a “public hell” for most people. I would simply call these things the hell of capitalism.
I teamed up with a few of my young colleagues, along with friends in the Black Caucus of Health Workers and with some PLP health fighters to produce a session at the annual meeting showing the devastating impact on health caused by mass incarceration. It is no surprise that locking up millions of working-class people for minor non-violent offenses, the vast majority of them black or Latino, would widen the already big gap in mortality between whites and these groups.
While preparing for and presenting our talks at this national meeting, these young people honed their skills at introducing complex, politically-charged material to an audience of health professionals. More important, doing this project over several months together enabled us to strengthen our ties and have more in-depth conversations about capitalism and how to eliminate it.
I wish I could say that my young friends are ready to talk about revolution. Part of the “dark night” we talk about in PLP is the illusion among most of our dedicated, principled anti-racist friends that revolutionary social change is no longer a possibility. A longer-range political outlook, measured in decades, not months or years, can make talk of revolution into more of a plausible theory and less of a pipedream.
But many friends cling to the hope that some sort of gradual, peaceful process can get us to a future society without racism, sexism and exploitation. History shows clearly that this is the pipedream. Our job is convincing our friends to look historical reality in the face and accept the need for a disciplined revolutionary party. Nothing else has ever successfully taken power from the vicious overlords of public hell.
Doc Com
Why Workers Can Never ‘Buy Back’ What They Produce
I liked the New York City election article in CHALLENGE (11/13) that explained why DeBlasio, like Obama, can never serve workers’ needs over the profit needs of their capitalist employers.
However, the article contained a false theory about the cause of capitalist crises. It stated, “Communists know that capitalism contains a basic contradiction: Workers don’t earn enough in wages to afford the products they produce.”
First, union “leaders” and liberal politicians have put forward this anti-communist “buy-back” theory to support their position that through higher wages capitalism can be reformed to benefit the working class.
Second, besides commodities, a big chunk of what workers produce is the means of production (factories) and the largest portion is the military (50 percent of the present budget) which is used to oppress them. No amount of wage increases could ever allow workers to “buy back” these products.
Third, production for markets and profits rather than for society’s needs (called the anarchy of capitalist production) is what creates regularly occurring crises of overproduction in the midst of scarcity and falling rates of profit.
In the 1930s, every capitalist country in the world was ravaged by deep cuts in production and massive unemployment. But in the Soviet Union, production increased and unemployment was almost non-existent. Under the then-communist Bolshevik Party, production was planned to meet the needs of the working class (including preparing to meet the Nazi invasion), not to maximize profits.
The anarchy of capitalist production and bosses’ rivalries produce unemployment, crises and wars which also serve them by wiping out decades of workers’ gains. Only when communist revolution overthrows this murderous profit system and the means of production is based on workers’ power will our needs be met.
A Comrade

Letters of November 27

Youth Inspired at PL Campus Conference

I’ve always known I was against capitalism; up until recently I didn’t know there was an alternative. I’m grateful to have learned I am not the only one who thinks this way. I’m guilty of accepting the capitalist opinions and views of what communism means. I am excited to have begun my journey in learning the truth. Destroy capitalism before it destroys us!
I’ve noticed this illusion of powerlessness being promoted amongst today’s youth. I want to expose this illusion. I think that’s one step toward revolution.
******
I must say this conference was the proper jolt of political discussion I needed. When I came for the last day and walked through the doors, it was almost like entering a new world. One where I can truly discuss with like-minded, truly progressive individuals, the dangers of capitalism — its racist, sexist vices. I thoroughly enjoyed these talks, where we cut through lies about what this world is and what it can become. It’s a shame I will have to depart the conference and return to a world where garbage like Kim Kardashians are regularly promoted and discussed. But at least I was able to escape that reality briefly. And one day, maybe I will for good!  
******
This conference was pretty dope [awesome]. We got into small groups. We ended up just discussing and sharing our ideas, learning from each other and bonding. I look forward to attending these events for years to come.  
******
Today I actually learned a lot of things. I learned how imperialism is related to sexism. We criticized it. I also liked the Langston Hughes poem.
******
This conference was amazing. I never thought about communism till today and how capitalism affects us every day.
******
The PLP college conference was excellent in that the students organized, planned, and led the workshops. The student leaders of my workshop were well prepared, articulate, and very enthusiastic. The materials and workshops were well designed. The opening keynote speech was excellent and should be printed. There should be more students! This was the main weakness. I was able to bring only one student. It was not enough.
******
Excellent organization of the conference! Inspiring leadership, especially to see the development of a new generation of young leaders. One of the strengths of Party events, including this conference, was the practice of collectivity, the valuing of and contribution of experiences from all types of people. Young and old, women and men, black and white and Latino and Asian participants, U.S.-born and immigrant participants, student and faculty — together we were able to go deeper in analyzing experience and the world.
I left here with a new appreciation — a reminder actually — that building close personal ties is political. I also was inspired to see so many young people with such a deep understanding of the contradictions of capitalism and belief in communism.
******
As is the case with every Progressive Labor Party event I’ve attended as a student, every conversation we have is a learning experience and the collaboration between everyone in the Party really gives you hope for a better future.  When you look out to the crowd of people at any one of PLP’s events you see how we can start to end the horrible discrimination that is present under capitalism. Black, white, Latino, Asian, old young, men and women all working together; egalitarianism is more than possible, I see it every day in the Party and I definitely saw it this past weekend at the New York City College conference.
Learning and participating in conversations about things that effect not only students but ultimately
everyone, all of us left with a plan on how we’re going to fight against racism, sexism, and militarization when we go back to our schools. As I left the workshops I felt inspired and I knew that we weren’t just talking but that we were going to make real change, and really that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
******
New faces. Good conversation with lots of struggle. Some older faces still struggling with communist ideas, inching closer to joining the Party. Lot of good questions from people totally new to communism to people who have been thinking about communism for a while. Good responses from a variety of comrades, though some a little too wordy.
Reform is still pervasive. We got to be in it to win it, but winning is communism. Let’s sharpen the fight to make revolution primary.
******
It was an enlivening and inspiring experience. It was great to see many young comrades share not only their anger toward the present system but also their hope/desire to see a new world, a communist world, come into being. It is very easy to get caught up in our own problems; although these problems are not nothing (what with the current crisis of capitalism!). It is great to interact with other working people who share your plight — and your hopes for a future devoid of war, racism, borders, classes, etc. All in all, I am leaving the conference extremely satisfied, and already looking forward to the next one!
******
It was a good experience to hear different ideas and different viewpoints on racism and sexism. I was glad to learn more about PLP and find out how to fight the system.
******
The general line of the Party lives in the particular thoughts and actions of our members and our friends. This conference brought me together with many young comrades and many more students just looking into communism and PLP. This was profoundly refreshing and enriching to my own understanding of our line. Our future is in capable hands.
******
This conference was successful in my point of view. When working in a group of diverse characters, you tend to learn multiple points on a specific subject. Each individual idea comes together to give you a collective understanding and a broader picture. In each workshop, every group member raised arguable questions and provided details to support their case. It was helpful listening and discussing with everyone, in the sense of it providing more information and a clearer understanding of communism and PLP’s goals. I would encourage more people to attend every conference!
******
The Saturday morning opening session included a great poem “The Same,” by Langston Hughes, written during his best days of commitment to communism. I was pleased and inspired by the passion and political astuteness of the keynote speech by our Party’s leader of college student organizing, a position she should really stick with for at least five more years, preferably ten — to nurture the growth of many more communist campus organizers.
In the workshops, as everywhere, we learn from experience, and some of our first-time workshop leaders will undoubtedly know how to better engage all participants, especially those who are new or shy. We should work harder to win young people and their parents to seeing the importance of building the communist movement because they believe it’s important to do so.