The following letters were written by PL’ers who participated in our annual summer project.
Though this is only my first Progressive Labor Party (PLP) Summer Project, I gained a lot of hope for the future through the strength of the Party’s line and through the strength of all our comrades. I initially thought we would just be working on political education and mass agitation, however we learned so much about camaraderie and other things not taught in a classroom or on the picket line. Moreover, because it was at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), I expected to be integrated in protests for Palestine. However, PLP led these protests with energetic chants that set forth our line, but more importantly the Party joined workers on the Westside of Chicago and nurses at the University of Illinois-Chicago campus highlighting the Party’s working class character and commitment.
Although the most inspiring strike was on the West Side, the nurse’s strike left the most profound impact upon me. Union misleaders remained hostile to our support for the picket which was an eye opening experience for me. Furthermore, despite the union leadership’s moderate stance, the nurses revealed the truth about working conditions and how the bosses cooperate with the courts and police in order to maintain exploitation.
Nurses confided to me how the bosses utilized a court injunction in order to force emergency nurses back to work without a deal. They also explained how the hospital tries cutting costs through ‘floater’ nurses meant to care for patients across different floors, therefore taking the jobs of multiple nurses. Near the end of the strike, after being pushed out by union leadership, I met a linen worker on their break. We agreed how it was crazy and unacceptable how the nurses who save lives have to be forced to strike, while the police, courts, and bosses never strike. She also mentioned how travel nurses are being brought in to break the will of the strike and earn more. Lastly, she left me with a piece of advice: no matter how hard you work or how well you get along with your coworkers, the company has no interest in your well being.
The Summer Project left me thinking about how across the country and throughout the world, all workers face the same cruel capitalist exploitation. However, knowing that all my comrades remain committed to the fight and can plan such a project left me hopeful. Now that the regular fight resumes back home, I can think of all the new comrades I met, and all they taught me, and depend on each other to motivate ourselves in the long struggle towards communism.
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The Summer Project inspired confidence in the working class and their potential. My Chicago comrade made the concise and insightful observation that if we had the same number of people year round it would be a game changer. We need to work harder to build our base to the point where we can operate with the intensity of the Summer Project in class struggle all year long.
I noticed that at all the marches we attended our large group of multiracial, multigenerational communists marching and chanting together in a disciplined way attracted positive attention and curiosity from bystanders. They joined our chants and took our newspaper, which advanced our line.
This is my third summer project. The camaraderie of the Party is always very strong. It is not only inspiring to passersby; it is inspiring to all of us to be a part of the collectivity. We are all anxious to see our revolutionary theory and aspirations become a practical reality. The Democratic Party is also building their base with a false collectivity. We should have joined other protesters who were yelling at the Democrats as they left their events. We also should have engaged with jailed protestors to spread our line to other comrades who were impatient for revolution.
During our mass work there were two important confrontations. One confrontation was with the union misleadership at a picket line we canvassed. A paid union organizer told us that we were making workers feel unsafe. Half of us were intimidated but half of us continued talking with the workers including one comrade who asked the workers what do you think about us building a base in the working class. Many workers had militant ideas. One even told me "there's more of us than there are of them," showing advanced class consciousness. Another confrontation was with the nationalists. They were leading chants, and a comrade gave a speech against nationalism. They became violently agitated and attempted to physically fight a comrade but it turned out they were only a handful of people and after they settled down there was no issue. I was intimidated during the confrontation but after it was over I realized it was the right thing to do. We should build base year round collectively so that we can obtain the numerical strength for the revolutionary practice necessary to make our theory a reality.
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This past week I was able to attend the DNC Summer Project. Something that stuck out to me was meeting new comrades who were my age. I am a college student and my campus is very disconnected and nothing really happens here. I’ve tried to talk to people about communism but they ultimately do not care or have had bad experiences with other so called communist parties when they have visited my campus a handful of times. Even when the faculty was on strike, there was maybe one other student I saw at the strike, even though they were striking against our tuition hikes along with their raises. This experience on campus has been so disheartening because I felt like there was no one out there that was interested in what I was saying.
This Summer Project however, completely got rid of that feeling for me. For the bulk of the project, I found myself talking to the younger comrades in attendance, most of them college students like me. Ideas and conversations came so naturally and it felt like we had been friends for years already. We formed circles of support while distributing CHALLENGE, we stuck together during marches, and our conversations came together to show us how similar all our struggles are even though we are all from different places. In the marches we went to, especially the last one, people were very receptive to our chants. Our flags caught the attention of many people and this encouraged me to fight harder back home to build a base. While this work will never be easy, it is insanely necessary and I am proud to be doing it alongside all of my comrades. The Party brings together so many different people from so many different backgrounds which highlights the fact that this truly is the Party of the workers. Regardless of age, race, gender, we all are here to fight for the same thing and that will unite and strengthen us for years to come.
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Having discovered the Party in an isolated part of California, there were many members I hadn’t met, and many protests that Progressive Labor Party (PLP) instigated/participated in that I hadn’t been a part of. The 2024 Summer Project changed that, and I saw a wonderful part of PLP’s work and struggle: protest. Protests alongside already existing groups, such as a nurses union from the largest hospital in Chicago, an organization fighting for reparations of previously incarcerated Black workers, and pro-Palestinian leftist organizations protesting against the Democrats at their convention. Our chants and our speeches were inspirational and hopeful, bringing together these crowds of diverse groups to see that we must fight for communism, to achieve all that these groups have been organizing and working for. The feeling of community in Chicago was exhilarating, but I understand it is also fleeting as we all retreat back to our home bases. I hold on to that feeling, though, to spread the message of communism here in my base, and awaken other workers struggling every day to a message: that the only true solution is a communist revolution.
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One of my favorite moments from the DNC was when some of us comrades were heading to the first march and a group of pro-Palestine protesters boarded the same railcar. Without hesitation, they started up some of their chants and we joined in. We then added our chants to the mix, and went back and forth before one comrade said, “I have a real hook... The only solution is a communist revolution!” Enthusiastically, they repeated this chant, giving me confidence that many workers would be receptive to the Party’s message.
A few days later, however, we were met with some who weren’t so receptive. When joining a nurses’ strike, we were asked by one of the union leaders to not pass out literature. He even went as far as to say we were making the other nurses uncomfortable, which largely, was not the case.
Many took a CHALLENGE newspaper and were willing to have conversations with us. Later that day, we went back to the DNC and were faced with other leftist groups as well as nationalist groups that were trying to get their own points across. However, by the end of the night, we were the ones carrying the chants amongst the sea of groups marching along us. We denounced fascism (“They not like us!”), called for an international revolution, and even sang Bella Ciao. On the way back home, one comrade started a conversation with some curious transit workers that resulted in each of them taking a flier, a conversation as smooth as the chants we had voiced on the train a few days prior. Having gone full circle, I have a newfound appreciation for Chicago’s transit system and its abilities to unite our class. I’ve also learned to not be discouraged by naysayers because every worker knows that deep down they have more power than the bosses, and every worker needs Progressive Labor Party to foster that idea.
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The 2024 DNC Summer Project, organized by the Progressive Labor Party, reaffirmed my commitment to communist ideas , base building and pro-working class optimism. I witnessed a rising fifth grader’s clarity and sense of understanding of the phrase capitalist versus communist society in a study group. I saw a dozen or more fresh leaders of the international working class in their 20s. I saw the fight for our line that replacing one set of bosses’ nationalism for another is a dead end. My commitment grew from the study groups, to the Israelism movie discussion, to the Thursday DNC protest march.
Encouraging each other to do the difficult but urgent work of struggling with workers around us to choose communism instead of voting in the upcoming elections for global war vs civil war. Staying with eight other comrades from 19 to 60 years old. Asian, Latin, Black, and white, living together for a week. Traveling from different places. Brimming with communist hope, sweetness, so much wisdom, and a lot, a lot of laughter as we shared our hardships, cooked, invented sandwiches, watched the Minions movie and made ice cream from scratch. The political peak was at the DNC protest march on Thursday. Early on, when the march hadn’t gone for too long, a comrade on a blow horn started chanting “Death! Death! Death to the Bosses! Power! Power! Power to the Workers!” It felt like it wired comrades and masses of workers around us alike. I felt like PLP was getting at how I and others around me felt and thought about capitalism and its horrendous bosses. Eventually, so many communists were unleashed. Gliding between taking on the weight of the multiple megaphones, to switching up the responsibility of leading the chants through the mic and giving spontaneous speeches, to the countless comrades who took multiple CHALLENGE newspapers and PLP leaflets and started weaving through the crowds of hundreds to the front, left, right, and back of us to distribute our literature. At some point we burst out into singing Bella Ciao as a drumline behind us joined.
After listening to other reflections during the closing barbecue of the summer project I was left with the following thoughts: Feelings, such as the communist affirming ones I felt during the summer project are great but fleeting. Continuously steeling ourselves with communist fightback and base building is necessary to grow those feelings. Capitalism takes a lot from us, but the one thing we get to choose that the bosses cannot take away, is choosing to fight for communism. Now, I have come back to my part of the world, recommitted to igniting the communist sparks in more of the workers around me. I specifically make the commitment to help run or start a student club to extend what the PLP makes me feel about myself to others and honor my commitment. I encourage others to join and inspire us in finding more ways to commit to the lifelong fight for communist revolution!
