Alabama strike reveals capitalist corruption 
After visiting Alabama miners and staying in touch with them over the last month and a half, our club has been able to reach out to miners in other countries to connect with them and support them. A few activities are coming up! One, is to celebrate Bolshevik Revolution Day on November 6 at Brighton Beach. We will sell some home-made mead and food to collect funds and support the striking miners in Alabama. Our second goal is to organize an international conference on November 20 to study the history of mining as well as to understand and learn from the miners' experiences. These two events will prepare us for a winter project in Alabama on December 20, where we will support the strike, collaborate at a toy drive and continue building solidarity with the miners.
BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world and the largest shadow bank. It is the largest stockholder of WarriorMet, the coal company in Alabama where the miners are on strike. Aside from Alabama, this multinational company is involved in the exploitation of mine workers in countries from South America and Africa. At the same time, this corporation fuels war and death around the world by investing in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and civilian firearms manufacturers in the U.S., Afghanistan and the Middle East.
We, as a Progressive Labor Party club, think that it is important to build internationalism and to draw the connections that one struggle has with another. The world is run by a few companies that control the money and resources and decide the future of the working class.
Our mission is to unveil these capitalists that create war and destruction across the globe and build solidarity among us so that we can overthrow imperialism in and outside of the U.S. We hope you can mark off these dates on your calendar and join us for the events. They will be fun!
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Building a base fundamental to struggle and morale
We are Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members that have been organizing with a collective of students, staff, and faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY). During the ongoing pandemic, we have had some modest successes in helping to lead the campaign to build strike readiness against racist austerity. This includes a number of militant caravans to the homes of CUNY presidents, marches through the community, teach-ins and speak-outs, CHALLENGE sales and study groups. We are also active in a collective of rank and file union members who are open to our ideas and agree that students are the key element in building this fightback.
This semester started somewhat slowly for us. It’s been hard to get students to attend events and sometimes our Zoom meetings, usually robust, have ended up small and more low key. We always have big plans, call for mass events, and are good at being bold, but after a few meetings that were not well attended, we wondered if this semester might be one where we just can’t get things going.
Subjectivity is the enemy! That feeling that “things are not going my way,” that our own view on things is what should guide our actions, these are fatal mistakes in the class struggle. The power of the collective is much stronger than subjectivity. Through discussions with other members of our mass organization and insisting that we keep trying, the last few weeks we saw our perseverance pay off. We had an excellent student study group with some of our students where we discussed many important political questions, including the key question of how we can reach more people with PLP’s ideas. We had a well attended student meeting and we helped to lead a student speak-out on campus two weeks ago against CUNY’s racist disorganization. The speak-out was well organized, got front page coverage in a local newspaper, and energized all of us to continue fighting back!
There are important lessons that we can learn from the masses of students and workers.In this period we have learned that relying on our base is key—they were the ones pushing us forward to hold these events. We also learned that our seriousness and dedication builds confidence in us as organizers, and in PLP as a Party that can lead the workers to our ultimate victory. We learned that we need to continue pushing forward, meeting, planning, struggling…and even in what can feel like difficult times, keep going forward!*
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Young communists learn from leadership in action
I recently attended my first Party cadre school, which I led along with four other Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members. Being a new and young member of PLP, I was intimidated by the task when first offered. However, it was a valuable experience in many ways. In the months leading up, I coordinated planning meetings with my comrades, and we gradually built our vision for the event. Up until the day of the event, we had only met and discussed virtually—which helped in terms of seeing all the planning notes but lacked the same energy as in-person gatherings.
Our cadre school completely made up for the time apart. With one of our discussion leaders out of state, we led virtual and live discussions based on the theme Communism: Past, Present, and Future. About 40 comrades and friends of  the party participated in discussions and reflected on communism’s distinction from capitalism and socialism. Two of our comrades, who are Metro workers, ended our event with a discussion on an ideal transportation system. One comrade from New York pointed out the ruling class’s tactics to divide workers over financial insecurities for transportation fare.
An older comrade, who introduced me to the Party, commended me and our fellow comrade who led virtually. Despite technical issues and timing, we succeeded in facilitating engaging conversations and using our time to analyze the flaws of the old communist movement and our own actions to fight against the oppressive system of capitalism.
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