Brooklyn, February 11—More than 40 antiracists participated in a multigenerational and multiracial forum on the necessity of multiracial unity in the fight against racism. Participants included high school students, college students, teachers, and other young workers. This gathering was so inspiring that one person joined the Party! That’s another nail in the bosses’ coffin. Fighting to understand how we, workers all over the world, can and must unite to overthrow this racist system of capitalism requires urgency, especially as the bosses continue to torpedo towards world war.
Fighting racism and preparing to turn the capitalists’ imperialist war into a class war for communism. That’s our task as communists. Only a communist society, one run by and for the international working class, can rid this planet of all the inequities and injustice we face day in and day out.
Fight for working-class unity, not multicultural capitalism
After a few icebreakers to help everyone get to know each other a bit more, we began our study on racism as a tool of the capitalists. We used a number of political cartoons to demonstrate how the ruling class uses racism to divide workers and prevent us from fighting back. By paying white workers more than Black and Latin workers, the bosses create a culture of violent competition and pit workers against one another. The bosses’ media pushes racist narratives to make workers see other workers as the enemy. But communism means workers uniting to fight back against a common enemy: the capitalist ruling class. Fighting for a society where everyone works to benefit the international working class - that’s communism.
And multiracial fightback is working class history. As recently as 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by the kkkops, the United States saw the biggest multiracial uprisings against racism in the country’s history. Hundreds of thousands marched in cities large and small, with antiracist solidarity demonstrations occurring all over the world. The protests included the countries of Nigeria, Argentina, Lithuania, South Africa, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Austria, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Norway, India, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Africa, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Syria, the United Kingdom, Senegal, and more.
We also used photographs and cartoons from around the world, from Colombia to Alabama, to show how workers fight back against racism in strikes and on the street, despite all the racist lies we are bombarded with. These cartoons demonstrated the power workers have when they reject the ruling class’s murderous lies and unite with other workers. One such cartoon showed workers resisting the phony messages of politician misleaders and fighting back against the bosses’ KKKop army to climb a mountain of justice.
After discussing the images and political cartoons, we broke out into small groups to discuss the history of racism. We debunked the myth that “racism has always been around” and discussed the ruling class’s intentional use of state power and violence to separate and define “Black” and “white'' as a way to prevent multiracial working class rebellion in the 1600s and 1700s in colonial America. For example, the ruling class of Virginia passed a law in 1661 that stated that “in case any English servant shall run away in company of any Negroes,” the servant would have to work extra years for the Black person’s master. Also, in 1691, Virginia provided for the banishment of any "white man or woman being free who shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free." The bosses’ have always feared multi-racial unity and antiracist fightback.
Only communism can end racism
Capitalist misleaders try to fool us by putting multiracial faces in high places. We cannot be fooled into thinking electing Black mayors like Eric Adams and Lori Lightfoot or so-called progressives like AOC’s Squad are going to spare the working class from capitalist exploitation. Nor can we be swept up in false hope from the elections of indigenous presidents in Peru or “left” ones in Colombia. These liberal fascists are the greatest danger for the working class. We cannot smash racism by voting in a rainbow of politicians committed to the same mass murder, deportation, and exploitation of workers as their white counterparts or by diversifying police forces who will continue gunning down youth like Tyre Nichols.
We need to fight for communist revolution, which will never be on the ballot. Capitalists need racism, workers don’t. Communism means workers run everything. Only through communism can we end racism.
You too can join the fight to smash this racist, capitalist system and build a communist future. Join us on May Day! Join Progressive Labor Party!

 

Millions of workers have been devastated by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio–and most of all, by capitalism. These tragic events were not “natural” disasters or accidents. Corrupt building practices and neglected infrastructure are part and parcel of  a system that’s based on the ruthless drive for maximum profit.
On February 6,  the mass collapse of flimsy buildings in Turkey and Syria killed 50,000 workers and displaced millions. Three days earlier, an oversized Norfolk Southern train with inadequate brakes burst into flames. Fifty cars derailed, spewing toxic chemicals into the air, killing thousands of fish in nearby waterways and potentially contaminating the area’s drinking water (Newsweek, 2/17).
As imperialist rulers hoard resources to prepare for their next global conflict, more corners will be cut at the expense of workers’ health and safety. To get workers to passively accept these disasters and then agree to fight in World War III, the capitalist bosses will need increasing fascist repression.  ‘Lesser evilism,” the idea that some bosses are less racist, less sexist, or less profit-driven than others, will be a literal “dead end.”.  
Under the leadership of Progressive Labor Party, the international working class must turn the guns around and seize state power. Only then can we guarantee that the construction industry, the railroads,  the chemical plants, and the water treatment facilities serve workers’ needs. The only solution is communist revolution!
Turkey’s bosses: profits over workers
Instead of going all out to save and help workers after the earthquakes, the Turkish ruling class went all out to prepare for their regional oil wars with neighboring bosses in Syria and Iraq. Because of decades of racist displacement by the Turkish rulers, the Kurdish and Syrian populations were hardest hit by the disaster.  Predictably, Turkish President Recep Erdogan dodged all responsibility: “What happens, happens, this is part of fate’s plan” (The Guardian, 2/09). Days later, Turkey resumed its bombing of Kurdish forces in Syria and resumed its pursuit of a $20 billion deal  for F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. (Associated Press, 2/20). As the U.S. bosses square off against Russian imperialism in their proxy war in Ukraine, they’re doing all they can to strengthen NATO and consolidate its relationship with the Turkish ruling class. But Turkey has become an unreliable regional ally, as evidenced by its purchase of $2.5 billion in Russian missiles in 2017.
Like all capitalist rulers, Turkey’s bosses have long placed profits over people. To deflect the masses’ rage after a previous earthquake killed over 18,000 people due to faulty construction,  Erdoğan promised tighter building safety codes. But in 2019, he boasted of granting zoning “amnesties” to contractors,  40,000 of them in the hard-hit city of Gaziantep alone (NPA Syria, 2/23). Warnings from disaster specialists were ignored (Birgun, 2/06). After the most recent earthquakes, Erdoğan’s regime moved quickly to funneling relief efforts into the corrupt Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, which is notorious for rewarding patronage jobs to Erdogan supporters.
U.S. infrastructure strategy a train wreck
President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Plan focused on the U.S. infrastructure crisis over  helping workers survive the bosses’ latest economic crisis. As the U.S. rulers drive toward more full-blown fascism, they are calling for workers’ “sacrifice” and funneling more resources toward war preparations.One big problem for the bosses is the lack of discipline within their own class, including the railroad bosses. A core principle of Precision Scheduled Railroading, the operating standard for major railways in the U.S. is to eliminate “unnecessary” costs. In practice, this translates to fewer workers per train line, fewer safety measures, and less inspection time. Fronting for the dominant finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class, Biden is squeezed between  the railroad bosses’ push for maximum short-term profits and the rulers’ broader need for reliable transportation infrastructure for the coming global war, most likely with  China. Regardless of how the bosses’ internal struggle plays out, workers stand to lose. Last December, cheered on by union misleaders, Biden signed legislation designed to kill a potential strike of over 100,000 railroad workers (CNBC, 12/12/22). Once again, we saw that workers’ allegiance to liberal capitalist politicians leads only to the betrayal of our own class interestsThe only thing that can save us from the rot of capitalism and the bloodbath of imperialist war is to fight back against all bosses and to build PLP.
A related example: Every two days, the bosses’ chemical companies have accidents.  When workers fail to fight back, it’s more profitable for the capitalists to absorb the cost of these accidents than to pay for rigorous safety measures (CNN, 2/22). The bosses at Norfolk Southern are well aware that their accident rate has increased each of the last four years (NS Corp, 1/25). From 2016 to 2021, there were 13,000 violations relating to hazardous materials, or triple the number in the previous five years–a clear reflection of weak federal oversight (NYT 2/17). With over 12,000 chemical facilities across the country, many nearby residents have reason to live in fear. The predominantly white working class population of East Palestine and the surrounding area have been, systematically segregated from their Black and Latin class sisters and brothers. They are chronically unemployed, under-employed, and underpaid. Capitalism’s racist system hurts the entire working class.
For safety, workers need communist revolution
Over and again, we see workers saving workers. In Pakistan, workers risked their lives by wading through toxic, deadly flood waters to distribute vital donations. In Haiti, workers are funding and running community kitchens, and providing clothing and shelter for striking garment workers.. In Turkey and Syria,  thousands of workers and youth are breaking through the border to help other workers after the earthquakes.All of these efforts are courageous and essential.  But ultimately, they will be futile if we fail to understand that we can save ourselves and our class only by smashing capitalism, the root of all these problems.  
Earthquakes will keep happening under communism. But when the working class gains state power, and enforces strict rules for development and building safety, the human toll of these disasters will be far less. Transportation accidents will also occur under communism, though there will surely be fewer of them when workers are empowered to oversee the production and maintenance of these systems. When the means of production are owned by and for the working class, rather than by private individuals and corporations, a strong and resilient infrastructure will be viewed as a social necessity.  By working together and sharing resources, liberated from the divisions of private property and wage slavery, workers will create a safer, freer world. Join us! Build Progressive Labor Party!

ATLANTA, GA, February 15–Rejecting much of the bosses’ liberalism over the past year, the working class has taken direct action against the building of Cop City, destroying vehicles, damaging banks, and erecting a tent city to try to stop the construction of this urban warfare  training center. Within the context of 19 protesters being arrested and charged with terrorism,  the Atlanta Police Department (APD) murdered Latin worker Manuel “Tortugita'' Teran during a raid to clear the encampment.

After weeks of militant multiracial fightback led by Black and Latin workers, the APD released body camera footage of the killing. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta’s killer kkkops, and politicians claim that Tort shot cops first, and thus, “deserved” to die. However, Tort’s family in Panama and friends in Atlanta called it: the police shot each other first and used it as ammunition to shoot at workers occupying the forest and killed Tort with 13 shots in the crossfire.
For the last two years, working-class fighters have occupied the Atlanta forest in protest of what fighters call ‘Cop City,’ a 85-acre $90 million police training facility through an Atlanta forest. Police forces from Atlanta to Israel will learn how to squelch working-class rebellion, especially any fightback led by communist fighters like Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
With bosses in the U.S, China, and Russia ramping up for World War III, and the U.S. bosses sinking deeper into crisis the last thing they need is militant multiracial working class rebellion in the urban centers.
The desperate rulers will need fascism to discipline the working class and will need to build more kkkop cities to keep workers in check as they spend trillions oiling their war machine while workers are pushed into starvation and homelessness. Black liberal mayors across the U.S. are proving they are the best candidates for the job.
Black-led city attacks Black workers
Georgia is a key state in the battle to win workers to pledge allegiance to the U.S. The bosses plan to build Cop City in “South River Forest,” called the Weelaunee Forest, “one of Atlanta’s largest remaining green spaces, a prime example of environmental racism. The forest encompasses a three-hundred-acre, city-owned tract of land that sits in a poor and predominantly Black” part of Atlanta (New Yorker, 8/3/22).
After the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, Atlanta workers responded with mass antiracist protest, marching toward and smashing the headquarters of U.S. liberal news media– the CNN building.
Keisha Lance Bottoms— former mayor of Atlanta and now part of  the Jim Crow Biden administration—supports Cop City and openly shamed the protestors’ militancy and left her position to make way for liberal misleaders like Mayor Andre Dickens, Senator Reverend Warnock and Stacey Abrams.
“Most of the residents in neighborhoods around the forest are Black and municipal planning has neglected the area for decades. The plans to preserve the forest and make it a historic public amenity were adopted in 2017 as part of Atlanta’s city charter, or constitution. But the Atlanta city council wound up approving the training center anyway…” (The Guardian, 1/23)
The bosses want to ensure that they have a militarized and functioning force to attack the working class. The U.S. ruling class and bosses all over the world want to be prepared for the international uprisings that will spring up in the wake racist police murders.
Liberal politics and police murder
PLP stands with the protests against Cop City. With Cop City now being green-lighted, it is more urgent than ever that PLers connect the struggle to what’s happening locally and internationally. Antiracist leaders are calling protests the week of February 19-26.
For our class to smash racist police terror, workers around the world must commit to building a Party that will organize and shape struggle, galvanize it and focus it, and push for communist revolution.

This is part one of a three-part series. This article is a republication and originally appeared in CHALLENGE in February 2021. The history here is worth reprinting, revisiting, and relearning every year.

Langston Hughes was the premier 20th-century poet for the U.S. working class, and particularly for Black workers. He spoke to their dreams of a world without racism and the harsh realities of Jim Crow and pervasive segregation. Born in 1901 in Joplin, Missouri, and raised in the Midwest, Hughes spent his early 20s attending colleges, working on ships, and traveling through West Africa and Europe. He became one of the leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, when writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, actors, historians, sociologists, and organizers made Harlem a dynamic center for culture and politics. Even the Depression of the 1930s could not dampen this creative environment for Black artists, thinkers, and organizers.    
The 1930s was also the decade when many well-known artists embraced communist ideas in their quest to end the racist inequalities of capitalism. In 1932, Hughes went to the Soviet Union with a group of Black artists and filmmakers to create a film about Black life and racism in the U.S. South (The project was canceled after Franklin Roosevelt recognized the USSR). Later Hughes traveled to Spain for the Baltimore Afro-American, a weekly newspaper, to cover the anti-fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War. This was the period of his most radical poetry, much of it submitted to New Masses, a weekly edited by members of the Communist Party USA (CP).  One of his most famous was “Good Morning Revolution,” which Hughes wrote in 1932. It openly calls for a society run by and for the working class. Here are some excerpts:  

Good-morning, Revolution:
    You’re the very best friend
    I ever had
  We gonna pal around together from now on.
    …
    Listen, Revolution,
    We’re buddies, see –
    Together,
    We can take everything:
    Factories, arsenals, houses, ships,
    Railroads, forests, fields, orchards,
    Bus lines, telegraphs, radios,
    (Jesus! Raise hell with radios!)
    Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas,
    All the tools of production,
    (Great day in the morning!)    
    Everything –
    And turn ‘em over to the people who work.
    Rule and run ‘em for us people who work.

Fighting Jim Crow and police murder
The political ground shifted in the 1940s, as the CP focused less on communist revolution and more on building an anti-fascist united front to defeat Germany in World War II. Black workers and communists advanced the “Double V” goal—victory against the fascists in Europe and victory against segregation at home.  In 1942, Hughes was hired by the Chicago Defender, another prominent Black newspaper. His columns attacked the racist abuse of Black soldiers stationed in the South, which Hughes compared to Nazi Germany. In a February 26, 1944 column, Hughes described a Black soldier just returned to the U.S. from fighting overseas.  The soldier suffered from “Jim Crow shock, too much discrimination—segregation-fatigue which, to a sensitive Negro, can be just as damaging as days of
heavy air bombardment.”  In August 1943, when a Black soldier was shot and wounded by a cop after a fracas at the Braddock Hotel at West 126th Street, the rumor spread that the soldier had been killed. In the ensuing rebellion, stores were looted and property damage was estimated at up to $5 million. Six thousand National Guardsmen were called in and over six hundred people were arrested. (See Dominic J. Capeci, Jr., The Harlem Riot of 1943, Philadelphia: 1977.)
To Hughes, the politics of the incident were clear. In his August 14, 1943, Chicago Defender column addressed to “White Shopkeepers Who Own Stores in Negro Neighborhoods,” Hughes wrote: “The damage to your stores is primarily a protest against the whole rotten system of Jim Crow ghettos, Jim Crow cars, and Jim Crow treatment of Negro soldiers.  But, you say, you are not responsible for those Jim Crow conditions.  Why should your windows be broken?  They shouldn’t.  I am sorry they are.  But I can tell you WHY they are broken.” Hughes goes on to cite Black workers’ grievances, from racist unemployment to price gouging and substandard housing. He ends by observing: “I do not believe in mob violence as a solution for social problems.  But I do understand what it is that makes many young people in Negro neighborhoods an easy prey to that desperate desire born of frustration—to which you contribute—to hurl a brick through a window.”  
    In his book-length poem suite, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), Hughes included the poem “Harlem,” which expresses visceral sensations of pent-up rage:  

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore----
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over ----
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Writing and Fighting anti-communist opppression
In the late 1940s, as the U.S. capitalist rulers vied for world supremacy against the socialist Soviet Union, the bosses’ federal government led the charge to investigate and harass members of the Communist Party USA.  In January 1949, twelve CPUSA leaders, including Black New York City Councilman Benjamin Davis Jr., went on trial for violating the Smith Act by “advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.” Though Hughes never officially  joined the CPUSA, his communist sympathies were clear. The FBI placed him under surveillance. Writing in the Chicago Defender, February 5, 1949, he declared that the trial was
the most important thing happening in America today . . . because it is your trial—all who question the status quo—who question things as they are—all poor people, Negroes, Jews, un-white Americans, un-rich Americans are on trial. . . . They are being tried because they say it is wrong for anybody—Mexicans, Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Armenians—to be segregated in America; because they say it is wrong for anybody to make millions of dollars from any business while the workers in that business do not make enough to save a few hundred dollars to live on when they get old and broken down and unable to work anymore; they are being tried because they do not believe in wars that kill millions of young men and make millions of dollars for those who already have millions of dollars; they are being tried because they believe it is better in peace time to build schools, hospitals, and public power projects than to build warplanes and battleships.
By the 1950s, the bosses’ blacklisting and FBI harassment led many communists and leftists to retreat from open activism. But Hughes kept writing for the Chicago Defender until 1962. His bold and lyrical poetry, notably the two poems of One-Way Ticket (1951) that address lynchings in the South, live on as an inspiration to all who struggle against racism and for the international working class.