NEWARK, NJ, July 18—The Progressive Labor Party just hammered another nail into the bosses’ coffin. Over 200 people participated in our two-week Summer Project through four study groups, CHALLENGE sales of over 500 copies, a rally in Brooklyn, cookouts, and our motorcade protest finale.
This was a political success: workers supported us, and several pledged to be more involved, and six newer members strengthened their commitment to leading the fight for communist revolution.
Politicians with the support of the cops, courts, and media, try their hardest to force workers to accept the brutal abuse and murder we experience at the hands of gangs and police as a standard, everyday reality. Still, PLP reminded our class that we DO have an alternative to capitalism in every corner of the world: join the fight for communism today.
Liberal bosses like mayor Ras Baraka are raffling off reforms like Universal Basic Income and a Community Review Board of the kkkops (see glossary, page 6) while ramping up police terror in working class neighborhoods. For Big Fascists, reforms are part of their imperialist war plans; to have a fighting chance, you need an army that is loyal to U.S. capitalism.    
What workers need is class war for communist revolution. To get there, we need workers—from the U.S. to Haiti to Pakistan and everywhere else—to commit to a lifetime of fighting for our class with PLP.
Study groups, frontlines in the battle for ideas
The bosses’ ideas hold workers back from overthrowing this system, so we took on two of the most insidious ideas: identity politics and nationalism. We also exposed the brutal nature of capitalist forced displacement and homelessness by showing how gentrification and the refugee crisis are born from the same source: capitalist drive for land and wealth accumulation at the expense of workers from Newark to Chicago to Palestine.
When workers ask about where our conditions stem from, all arms of capitalism—politicians, reformist organizations, education, media—leave workers confused, divided, or won over to one faction or another of the ruling class. That is why the leaders of the Project decided to focus on the topics of nationalism and identity politics.
Without a class analysis, concepts like “identity politics'' and “intersectionality” do not offer any way of changing workers’ material conditions, i.e., housing, job protections, and education systems that super-exploit Black, Latin, and women workers. These concepts obscure the material roots of racist- and sexist-based labor and ensure that exploitation continues. No wonder liberal bosses and misleaders rely on these concepts.
As we’ve seen in our workplaces and online, these capitalist concepts primarily make white workers the enemy, rather than focusing on gutter racists like former president Donald Trump or liberal racists like the current president Joe Biden, who created and expanded these racist systems.
Black women workers key
Sexism is another insidious idea of the bosses, and besides fighting it in the class struggle, building leadership of women workers, particularly Black women, is key. Sexist division of labor in the home is one way that bars women workers from contributing. When some comrades took on the daily tasks of the home and made it collective, one single parent was able to provide leadership to the Project. Her leadership was critical to the success of this project.
These summer projects are schools for communist ideas and practices. When we fight to bring these ideas to life, we strengthen our Party, our friends, our political work, and the movement for communism in a small but significant way.
Driving towards communist revolution
The closing event, a motorcade of eight cars and 25 fighters, focused on three specific neighborhoods where the police are terrorizing workers, reflected PLP’s commitment to calling out the local misleaders in our city—from bought-and-paid-for activists to mayor Baraka. For decades, Baraka has been winning a base among Black workers and when workers speak out or fight back, they are attacked. It is precisely this reason why the political leadership of “progressives” is so deadly to workers: they divert us from communist revolution as the only solution.  
So when we rode through this stronghold of Baraka’s liberal fascist organizing and not one of the 200 passersby booed, it showed the potential to win workers to reject capitalist ideas. When presented with a viable alternative, our class can choose to fight to be a class for itself.
PLP acknowledges that the conflict between gangs in Newark has been a long-standing reality for workers, but the increased police terror is indicative of rising fascism. Baraka is quick to increase police presence in the area to “clean it up” but betrays workers at the height of the mass struggle. At the beginning of our Summer Project, we exposed how Baraka sold workers out in struggles around decaying water pipes and public education. During the motorcade, we called out that he will do so again.
At the cookout that launched the Summer Project, the Rodwell and Spivey Families, recently  terrorized by the cops (see CHALLENGE, 6/23), participated. During this motorcade, we slowly drove through their block. We honked and chanted, “Cops, courts, and the Ku Klux Klan—all are part of the bosses’ plan!” and “NPD you can’t hide—we charge you with genocide.” The only way state terror and racist policing within our communities will end is when we commit to building for communism with our fellow workers.
Criticism as opportunity for progress
The summer project exposed our main political weaknesses: individualism which resulted in the insufficient logistical organization and spreading out the leadership during our protests and events; uneven political understanding of our criticism of the pandemic; and a constant need to ensure that translation is insured at every event so that workers from any part of the world who are interested in our events and politics feel supported, respected and included.
Some of our comrades tend to “show up” for newspaper sales, rallies, or meetings and think that is good enough, but it is not. We have to bring passion and openness to each event. We have to see speaking on the bullhorn as a duty and an honor, not as a task for certain comrades over others.
Everyone must sell papers, but it will not inspire workers to listen to us or take us seriously if we do not encourage ourselves when we approach them. To rely on a few loud people who lead the event while others in the rear tend to fall back is not communist—these are the bosses’ ideas that must be struggled with.
But these errors are opportunities for growth, not reasons to quit. We have to be sharp and encouraging and help show our comrades in practice what is required.
The importance of struggle within and outside the Party is obvious when we hear participants say things like, “I’ve been looking for this organization for my whole life and I feel I finally found it” at the commencing cookout, or “I’m starting to find more people who think like me” during one of the CHALLENGE sales.  When we feel responsible for the collective and our whole class, we can see how struggle is in the benefit of both the movement and the individual worker.
Lessons learned in the class struggle
Our class sisters and brothers face countless daily attacks: poverty, homelessness, exploitation, and terror from kkkops and landlords. Workers viewing our protests see everyone, and we all have to show the enthusiasm and militant passion needed to win others to the urgency of our line.
Every time we show up, workers cheer us on. On Broad and Market, the busiest intersection in Newark, workers stopped and listened to us. With consistent work, workers in Newark will take communist leadership as a valid alternative to the cult politics of voting, nationalism and anti-communism. So we take these lessons in stride and look forward to even bigger and stronger protests, meetings, and numbers of workers who join us from Colombia to Haiti to Newark and beyond.