CLEVELAND, July 21—“I agree with the communists,” said a retired worker at the Cudell Recreation Center, where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and murdered by the Klan-in-blue in 2014. As part of our summer project during the Republican National Convention, a small and inexperienced but enthusiastic contingent of Progressive Labor Party focused on raising class-consciousness among families in Cleveland.
In both the counter-RNC protests and neighborhood organizing activities, PLP raised communist politics and revolution as the only alternative to the bosses’ electoral sham.
Playground for Revolution
Aside from the rallies downtown (more on that later), PLP made the working class of Cleveland their focus. Tamir’s only crime was to be a Black child living under capitalism. Like so many killer kkkops before them, Timothy Leohmann and Frank Garmback were never indicted, despite the findings of a municipal court judge that they should have been charged with murder, manslaughter, and homicide (The Atlantic, 6/12/15). Every person we spoke to—from elementary school children to retired grandparents—knew Tamir or heard the cops’ gunshots or both. As one worker said, “If a kid can’t be safe at a playground, there’s no such thing as a safe place.”
The neighborhood turned the playground’s gazebo into a memorial. Tables were covered with teddy bears, candles, flowers and messages.  In honor of Tamir, we made the gazebo a symbol of fightback. Youth from the neighborhood and PLP made a banner, “Rebel against KKKapitalism,” to be hung there (see photo).
Learn From the Working Class
The first thing we noticed at Cudell were the multiracial families, and the Black children playing side by side with white and Latin children. Every white worker we met had no illusions about the racist nature of capitalism and the need to fight back. In contrast to Los Angeles and New York City, where the ruling class has more practice in centralized control, neighborhoods like these are not saturated with anti-working-class ideas like Black nationalism and white privilege theory. Instead, the Party found multiracial unity and the routine integration of Black, Arab, Asian, Latin and white workers. We were reminded of the pathetic misleadership of Black Lives Matter, who attacked the Party’s multiracial presence and fightback at their Cleveland convention last summer.
As we went door to door canvassing with CHALLENGE and flyers, aiming to build connections and expand our newspaper subscription base among local workers, we learned that Frank G. Jackson, Cleveland’s Black mayor, had discouraged people from coming to the Cudell playground during the Republicans’ week of racist rhetoric.
After the city announced plans to demolish the Cudell gazebo and erase the memory of Tamir Rice, it was no surprise that our banner went missing overnight. Some suspected the kkkops. So the Party made another message, again with the help of neighborhood youth, to be left by the monument. The struggle to transform the gazebo from a symbol of trauma to one of fightback was welcomed by residents, young and old. Nearly everybody who passed us walked away with a CHALLENGE, a conversation, and an anti-racism button pinned to their shirts.
Don’t Vote, Now What?
Workers at Cudell taught Party members to have greater confidence in our class’s potential for pro-communist politics. Most workers had an anti-voting reflex, rejecting both Trump and Clinton as solutions.  With the few who saw Clinton as the default choice, we pulled out the back page of CHALLENGE and sourced Clinton’s racist remarks and policies that targeted Black youth.
One frustrated worker asked, “Then what do I do?”
A Party comrade said, “We have a strategy for communist revolution and organizing in the masses.”
“Yes, I read your paper. I know that. But what do I do?” This worker was asking how he could organize for communism in his neighborhood. During this study group, we brainstormed on three specific steps he could take to build a base among his neighbors and friends.
How Do You Spell Racist? R-N-C!
The counter-demonstrations downtown, near the convention site, were smaller than projected. Ruling-class media worked overtime to scare people away from attending. Even so, the boldness of the immigrant working class, including undocumented youth, was awe-inspiring. At both the March for Economic Justice and the Wall Off Trump street actions, they were the most militant and organized. We chanted alongside them in both Spanish and English: “Asian, Latin, Black and white, workers of the world unite!”
The crowd readily accepted PLP’s leadership. Our banner called for communist revolution.  When we chanted, “Republicans, Democrats all the same, racist terror is the name of their game!” the crowd did not miss a beat. They chanted with us, shoulder to shoulder. Though the bosses’ media reported on the actions of Black Lives Matter, if truth be told, BLM could be found only online, in hashtags and tweets. They were missing in action on the streets.
Using our bullhorn, comrades explained that the threat to the international working class goes beyond Donald Trump and the Republicans, and that all politicians are more alike than different in defending the bosses’ bloody dictatorship. Our fightback must be in our workplace, schools and neighborhoods—in the real, not the virtual, world.
Attack Paul Ryan
Our summer project kicked off with a few comrades attending a panel discussion on poverty at Cleveland State University. Mouthpieces for both Democrats and Republicans made excuses for the failures of capitalism; one panelist went so far as to praise racist House Speaker Paul Ryan as “a champion of the poor.” PL’ers loudly blasted the panel for their blatant lies, forcing the apologists to end the session. Audience members applauded the boldness of the comrades, and many took CHALLENGE.
Without deep roots in the working class, a communist party is doomed to fail. In Cleveland, PLP brought our ideas directly to the masses and learned from them as well. We look forward to building the Party in Cleveland in years to come!