NEW YORK CITY, July 21—In July 2020, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) got involved in a struggle on the Upper West Side of New York City when 280 homeless men were moved to the Lucerne Hotel from a congregate homeless shelter so that they could physically distance during the Covid-19 pandemic. The vast majority of the workers were Black, and a wealthy, racist community organization hired a high-price lawyer, a friend of both Small Fascist Rudolph Giuliani and Big Fascist Bill de Blasio (See Glossary on Page 6), to have the workers evicted from the hotel.
An antiracist community organization, Open Hearts UWS, was formed to defend the men and fight the racist eviction. It is through Open Hearts that PLP met Andre, a Black worker who became a leader in this fight. After a lot of pizza and conversation, inviting him to Zoom meetings and getting to know each other better, Andre marched with us on May Day and said he wanted to join PLP. He recently participated in a Summer Project study group on homelessness and displacement. Below is a brief interview with Andre.

CHALLENGE: Where were you a year ago?
Andre: I’d like to go back a little further. I got out of prison in 2017 and lived with my lady in Harlem. For a while I was working as a dishwasher in the tourist industry. I lost my job in March, when everything shut down due to Covid. In April, I attended the funeral of one cousin, and a few days later, another cousin died of Covid. In June, I found myself back in the shelter system, and on July 3, 2020, my lady died of a stroke, yet another painful funeral. In a matter of weeks, I was transferred from a shelter in Brooklyn to the Lower East Side, to 51st St. and finally to the Lucerne.
CHALLENGE: What were your thoughts about the racist backlash on the Upper West Side when you and the men were housed in the Lucerne? How did you feel about getting involved in the struggle? Were you a political person?
Andre: I really wasn’t aware of the racists. My lady had just died, and I was working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard making face shields and masks for front-line workers. In one of the shelters, I came in contact with the Coalition for the Homeless and got involved with them, going out once a week and feeding homeless people on the streets. I also had my first interview for an apartment. The Coalition for the Homeless had a media person who arranged for me to have a letter in the Daily News about the need for housing, not shelters. I never thought of being an activist. It wasn’t in the plan. I was just thinking about the rotten conditions in the shelters and trying to survive on $200/month in food stamps and $54 cash every two weeks. I always tried to keep up with current events, even when I was locked up. Everyone in prison is trying to keep up.
CHALLENGE: How did you get involved in the legal case to stop the evictions from Lucerne? How did you come to discover the billion-dollar “homeless industry” in NYC? [see CHALLENGE, Crush Racist Parasites That Live Off the Homeless]
Andre: One of the homeless shelter providers I worked for was Ready, Willing and Able, run by the Doe Fund. [There are many shelter providers with similar operations that have replaced city sanitation workers-CHALLENGE.] We sweep up sidewalks and streets in different business districts around the city for minimum wage. Then the Doe Fund withholds 25 percent of that for rent! I knew there was a lot of exploitation going on here and spoke with my friend in PLP about it. The CEO of the Doe Fund and his wife made $350,000 salaries and their kids each made about $150,000, getting us to work for minimum wage and replacing City workers.
I got active in the Lucerne legal fight after we held our first march on Gracie Mansion [the Mayor’s home]. I met another leader from our shelter and some of our supporters in Open Hearts. After a court hearing, the judge ruled that he could not hear the case unless there were residents of the hotel bringing the case against the City, so three of us decided to sign on as the lead plaintiffs.
CHALLENGE:  How did you decide to march on May Day?  What did you think of it?
Andre: I believe if you want something different, you have to do something different! We had just come through the summer of Justice for George Floyd and a lot of talk about revolution. I keep an open mind and look for different experiences. I learned a little about communism in prison, which we all called “Pen State,” a play on words for State Penitentiary. There are a lot of talented and smart people locked up. For a while, I was a facilitator for the Nation of Islam, and I read a lot in jail. I read about the Soledad Brothers. Some people get radicalized in jail.
I was most impressed by the unity expressed at May Day–Black, Latin and white, young and old, there was a real spirit of unity! After that, I decided to join.
Join PLP
As we go to press, Andre now has his own apartment, and the Lucerne is closed. More than 200 workers at the Lucerne were given permanent housing during this struggle and about 60 were recently moved back into a congregate shelter, before the Legal Aid Society temporarily stopped the City from moving 6,000 hotel residents back to shelters.
As a result of the City’s rush to crowd people back into shelters, Andre and many others have lost their jobs. There are many workers, working 40 hours, living in homeless shelters in NYC. About 90 percent of the families in shelters are Black, including thousands of public-school students and many City University of New York community college students. Andre is helping us to open the door to many more of them finding a home in PLP.

Communists are mourning the loss of a prominent antiracist fighter, Richard Lewontin, a pioneer of molecular evolutionary biology, who died on July 4th at the age of 92. Although his position as a distinguished Harvard professor may not make it obvious that his fight was our fight. After he established himself as one of the preeminent hereditary biologists of his generation, Lewontin turned his sharp eye – and sharp words – to opposing racist pseudoscience. That fake “science” was used by the Nazis to murder millions of Jewish workers and further utilized by  U.S. racists, past and present, to justify slavery, Jim Crow segregation, police killings of Black people and imperialist wars.
Lewontin famously took on his Harvard colleague, E. O. Wilson who achieved notoriety with the 1975 publication of Sociobiology: A New Synthesis. Lewontin characterized the book as “the work of a modern, pro-industrial Western ‘ideologue.’” His outlook toward works like Wilson’s was characterized in his New York Times obituary: “He considered the perpetual debate over race, I.Q. and heritability to be an irritating scam, a rebith of Nazi inflected notions of eugenics and master races.”
Lewontin identified as a Marxist, and could be seen around Harvard in his khaki pants, work boots and work shirt – in solidarity with the workers and students engaging in debate over the nature of human diversity and debunking the notion of biological differences between so-called “races.” His impact on students and colleagues went beyond his ability to demystify the complicated science of heredity but also in his principled political stands. He was an outspoken opponent of the U.S. war against Vietnam and, after being admitted to the revered National Academy of Sciences, he resigned from it in 1971, accusing the Academy of sponsoring secret military research.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) also played an important role in protesting racist pseudoscience, both in mass organizing and in academic activity. Twenty years ago, PLP comrades carried out a struggle in the American Pubic Health Association (APHA) against one particularly ugly racist theory, that violence results from genetic defects in Black people.Richard Lewontin participated in a Party organized panel in front of a few thousand convention attendees. Lewontin used clear and precise logic to totally demolish the false racist theories being advanced by a reactionary panelist the APHA leadership had insisted upon inviting.
Communists and other anti-racists should learn from Richard Lewontin’s example: the struggle against bad ideas is a real and very important struggle. Some of our fights against Nazis will be in the streets, others in the ivory tower or in scientific publications, but fighting on all fronts is necessary. The working class lost a strong fighter this month and we must step up to fill the large gap left by his death.

Haiti: State terrorism, aftermath of the 2018 fightbacks
The experiences of 2018, mass demonstrations in the streets by tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of workers against all forms of corruption by the Haitian state and the bourgeoisie, pushed the working class in Haiti to fight for radical change of its living conditions. Now is the time to organize to overthrow the bourgeois state, and its imperialist enablers, and build a society that serves the interests of the working class. Communism.
This struggle has involved the majority of workers from the working-class districts, that is to say the neighborhoods impoverished by the local bourgeoisie, by the imperialist countries and by the restavek (impoverished children taken from their homes in the countryside to toil under slave-like conditions in the homes of the middle-class) Haitian state itself. All these working-class movements for reform are part of the fight against the rulers’ vicious dictatorship and impunity. They are against hunger, unemployment and the increase in the prices of basic necessities.
Workers are demanding an increase of the minimum wage, access to decent education and clean water to drink, and now action against the Covid-19 pandemic. Fearful  of the potential of these workers and students to undermine their rule, the ruling class and their bourgeois state continue to use their police and their armed gangs to terrorize them in an attempt to keep them from occupying the streets. This is why we speak of state terrorism working side-by-side with the bourgeoisie to undermine all popular demands.
The disparity between rich and poor is becoming more and more obvious, unemployment is becoming more and more aggressive, poverty is becoming more and more severe, the life of workers is becoming more and more difficult. In sum, the level of exploitation is becoming more and more glaring and unacceptable. Each morning, workers’ corpses are discovered in the nooks and crannies of their neighborhoods. Tens of thousands are displaced as they flee their homes under gunfire in search of some respite from the violence. The terrorist state and the rapacious bourgeoisie are allowed by their imperialist masters to continue this carnage(see editorial on page 2). And the working class, despite its overwhelming numbers and heroic attempts to fight back, is not sufficiently organized to make these battles their last against capitalism and imperialism. That is the real tragedy for the workers of Haiti.
Some middle-class people have the means to live in the comfortable suburbs or to leave the country. Workers do not have that luxury. They don’t want to give in to their vulnerability—they have shown time and again that they want to fight back! But they don’t want to be used as cannon fodder by different sectors of the “loyal” opposition, those politicians and would-be rulers who want power as a way to line their own pockets. Workers have been hoodwinked by these types too many times in the past. Our liberation will not come on the wings of the bosses’ craven politicians and their bankrupt democratic elections. Only the working class in Haiti armed with revolutionary class politics and an international communist Party, PLP, can free the deadly grip of capital.
The assassination of Jovenel Moise will not change anything for the working class (see editorial, page 2). All the usual players are now vying to take over until (and if) another round of sham elections can be held, supervised as usual by the various imperialist powers. We have only one response to this: “Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!”Fight for worker’s power! Fight for Communism!
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Colombia: PL’ers fight social democracy
The current struggles of the working class in Colombia have been relatively successful for the time being, by stopping the economic reforms projected by the bosses’ state. But they also reveal the opportunistic and defeatist character of the trade union leaders and capitalist social democracy.
The workers who took to the streets to protest in large numbers have been abandoned by the strike leadership, who have given into inferior demands and who could never, by their nature, match the revolutionary potential of the masses.
However, the student sector, and “informal” workers, have continued the fight, but lose strength every day due to the lack of a political orientation for the movement. Since the fight is largely fought under a nationalist line and against corruption, it basically amounts to mass participation in demonstrations that keeps the capitalist political class intact.
On the other hand, the demonstrators have been affected by the capitalist stooges, who see an opportunity to “fish in a troubled river,” by using their control over media to discredit and ignore the struggles of the most politically advanced section of workers.
The advancement of the struggle is evidenced in the leadership by the youth, and the identification of the crises of capitalism in general terms. Unfortunately they believe in bourgeois democracy and defend the “homeland” and its bosses, which is why the struggle becomes sterile.
However, the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been present with its newspaper DESAFÍO and the revolutionary line for a communist world, trying to raise awareness among the working class, to take better advantage of these struggles. In the immediate future, it is urgent to consolidate the most revolutionary bloc of workers, resolve the internal class contradictions and advance to give communist leadership under the PLP to lead the working class to rule its own destiny.
*****

On June 24, capitalism killed an untold number of people in Surfside, Florida, when a high-rise apartment complex fell without warning. Dozens of bodies have been recovered from what used to be Champlain Towers South; more than 100 people remain unaccounted for. According to the New York Times, it may be “the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history” (6/27).
But what happened to these Florida condominiums was no accident. It was the result of a system that values profit over workers’ lives. It exposed a United States in decline, where a divided ruling class has neglected basic infrastructure for decades. The world’s wealthiest “developed nation” is a mess of crumbling roads and bridges, asbestos-ridden school buildings, and toxic public water systems. And while the capitalist bosses cheat and steal and dodge paying taxes, the working class pays the price—often with our lives.
The main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the finance capitalists represented by the Joe Biden administration, knows it needs to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prepare for inter-imperialist war with an increasingly aggressive China. But the main wing lacks leadership, unity, and a general willingness to sacrifice their own shorter-term gains for the long-term interests of their class. They’re also facing stiff resistance from the isolationist wing led by ex-president Donald Trump and domestic capitalists like the Koch, Mercer, and DeVos families. To get the war budget they need, they’ll need to impose more open fascism against any bosses who refuse to get on board. To get the soldiers they need to fight and die for their failing empire, they’ll need to do the same against the working class.
Capitalism cannot protect the working class—not from the next infrastructure disaster, not from the next bloody global conflict. Workers will never be secure until we smash capitalism with communist revolution. Only communism—a society without money, exploitation, racism, and sexism—will put workers’ lives first. Only a state run by and for the working class can guarantee that all workers will have safe and decent shelter, just as communists did in the past (see housing article, page 3). Under communism, we will use our collective power to meet the needs of the working class.
Workers pay for capitalist decay
As investigators sort through the rubble, there is no shortage of theories on what caused the building to fall: design flaws, shoddy construction, lax building codes, erratic code enforcement. A New York Times report pointed to malfeasance by a negligent city inspector (7/1). A class action suit has accused the Champlain condo association of “reckless and negligent conduct” for ignoring years-old reports of major damage to the building’s concrete structure (CNN 6/29). In an area vulnerable to hurricane winds and corrosive saltwater, capitalist over-development may also have contributed to the collapse. In 2019, a member of the condo board expressed concerns that heavy construction next door may have damaged the Champlain structure. Surfside officials ignored him (NYT, 6/27). That’s a typical response in cities that are dominated by contractors and real estate interests—basically Anytown, U.S.A.
The tragedy in Florida is no isolated event. In Puerto Rico, schools are in danger of collapse from earthquakes. In New York and New Jersey, the Hudson River tunnels have yet to be repaired, nearly nine years after Hurricane Sandy (Wall Street Journal, 4/2). From Newark to Flint, Michigan, more than 5 million people get their drinking water “from systems that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead action level of 15 parts per billion” (theatlantic.com, 9/11/19).
Death and taxes
The decay and destruction of capitalism trickles from the top down. Biden’s “compromise” infrastructure bill—already cut from $2.3 trillion to $579 billion in new spending—reflects both the split in the U.S. ruling class and the bosses’ drive toward war. Biden has pushed to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent (msn.com, 6/13).  
As the U.S. president fake cries in Florida, he's proposing to use taxes stolen from workers to fund $753 billion for U.S. military “defense.” That’s two percent more than the previous year’s budget, even “as the Biden administration pulls the nation out of the U.S. military’s longest war [in Afghanistan] and shifts focus away from the Middle East to address emerging threats from China” (cnbc.com, 5/28). But none of these measures will give the finance capitalists anything close to what they need both to repair critical infrastructure and prepare for conflict with China.
On June 12, Biden and other imperialist leaders from the G7 (see editorial from 7/7) launched their Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership, a strategy to compete with China by meeting  the “tremendous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries” (whitehouse.gov, 6/12). This “unified vision” is aimed to “create new opportunities to demonstrate U.S. competitiveness abroad and create jobs at home”—code for intimidating rival imperialists while unifying the U.S. working class in a patriotic war drive.
There is a long history of infrastructure projects that were ultimately geared toward military dominance. As reported by the Center for American Progress, the largest U.S. government investments of the 20th century include the Panama Canal, Ellis Island, the Marshall Plan, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo space program. From generating cheap labor to occupying strategic territory to bribing essential ruling-class allies, all of them were driven by the bosses’ agenda to reinforce their economic and military dominance.
Fight for communism!
This tragedy in Florida is a material reflection of the sharpening contradictions of capitalism. The future of our class depends on workers’ ability to see through the manipulations of the Big Fascist finance capitalists and their phony “solutions” to the problems generated by the profit system. We in Progressive Labor Party must continue to lead the march toward communist revolution and a society that is built for a safe and decent life for the working class. Join PLP!