Comrade Jerry Weinberg, one of the earlier editors of CHALLENGE, died on January 2 at the age of 79 after spending nine months in hospice care. Jerry was known for his withering sarcasm directed against all the agents of the ruling class, many examples of which showed up in the pages of CHALLENGE.
Jerry and his wife Ginger were attracted to Progressive Labor Party(PLP)when its predecessor, the Progressive Labor Movement, broke the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba. They later became active members of PLP. In the late 1960s, Jerry became the CHALLENGE editor and Ginger a columnist.
Jerry would devise headlines and front pages that exposed individual rulers and capitalism in general. One vivid example showed two pictures pasted together of Ted Kennedy seemingly kissing George Wallace, representing the ties that bound the liberal ruling class with racists and fascists like Wallace.
Jerry was not only a lover of jazz — which had its roots among Black workers —  but pointed out the racist politics which enabled white musicians to appropriate this music. Being an atheist, he was particularly sharp on exposing how religion was used by the bosses to maintain their oppression of the working class.
Some years following his editorship of CHALLENGE, Jerry became an accomplished chef in New Jersey and would set up fund-raising dinners to raise money for PLP. Eventually Jerry’s family moved to Burlington, Vermont, where he established the Five Spice Café, which for 25 years became one of the most popular eateries in the city. It was there that his working-class sensitivities evolved into training numbers of youth who worked in his kitchen to themselves become accomplished cooks. (One said that Jerry “deserved a plaque for his peanut sauce alone!”) He was well-known in the area, donating to many worthy causes.
Jerry was a storyteller, a lover of poetry and taught about the necessity of living as if we have the obligation to do right by each other. He is survived by Ginger, their daughter Cheryl, and beloved grandsons Ethan Charles and Zander Reed.
Comrade Jerry’s devotion to communism and the working class will be sorely missed, but the delicious meals he prepared will also be remembered by anyone who savored the food in the Five Spice Café.
(Anyone wishing to tangibly honor Jerry can donate to help get a new wheelchair for Jerry’s hospice roommate Chris at Birchwood Terrace https://tinyurl.com/yagsjxqu) Chris and Jerry looked out for each other while rooming together, and Chris was a friend and guardian to Jerry as his health declined.)

NEW YORK CITY, January 3— A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) club rang in 2019 with a forum in New York City to raise awareness about the plight, of our longsuffering sisters and brothers fleeing Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and who are now desperately seeking refuge at the Tijuana-U.S. border.
After an intense week of preparation, 35 workers attended. PLP panelists sharply contrasted the horrors refugee workers experience under capitalism, with that of a liberated worker-run society devoid of economic and physical violence, and artificial borders.
The discussions and experiences that we shared inspired workers to become more deeply involved in struggle to help our fellow migrant workers. The forum began with a panel talk that gave a historical and political overview of the current crisis. In his introduction, the PL’er spoke about how U.S. imperialism destroys the countries of Latin America socially and economically through U.S. interventions militarily and politically in these countries and also about how workers there led the resistance against the criminal U.S imperialism.
This panel was followed by a talk from a member of a community organization who was in Mexico with a group of volunteers. She spoke about her experiences with workers in the caravan, who she built relationships with, and she shared some of their stories. These stories gripped the audience and brought many of us to tears as she laid bare the harrowing conditions these families are experiencing. Many,she explained, are going hungry without food, clothing, or shelter, and many others suffer illnesses due to lack of medical attention and unhealthy conditions.
Nevertheless she counter-posed these with stories about the solidarity, and selflessness that workers from Mexico and the U.S are showing these families in their darkest hours. They lend a hand by donating food, supplies, and their time in order make worker’s lives more bearable. These examples are bright spots of hope that remind us that only our class is truly capable of protecting, and caring for others in times of need.
Another young woman in the panel, working with the sanctuary movement, also told us about the work they are doing to help the members of the caravan in different ways, from fundraising to volunteering in order to meet worker needs. Finally a young worker concluded the panel by sharing her inspiring work in the sanctuary movement. She and her mother created a group to help immigrants who face deportations, which presently boasts 670 members.
After the presentation we opened up the panel for discussion and Q&A, and we had the opportunity to express some ideas and at the end we also had the pleasure of distributing CHALLENGEs. By the end of the discussion, we came to the general consensus that the workers were fleeing from violence, the corruption of governments, poverty, hunger, misery, lack of work, lack of opportunities and repression, and that the bosses—not workers—profit from borders. More importantly, we discussed ways to help our brothers and sisters who are already on the border, and several proposals were made. In the future we agreed to:
 Elaborate and present workshops in all the committees of the community organization about the caravan.
 Prepare a list of volunteers to go to the border in support of the migrants.
Collect funds and supplies to help the members of the caravan and deliver it to the Sanctuary Movement.
Carry out protests or action plans of the committee within the organization.
Work with a PLP member who works at CUNY (who during the forum also participated and gave a speech about his anti-racist work at his campus).
Finally, we concluded with a fundraiser. We gave the funds to the Sanctuary Movement to contribute to the organizing efforts at the border. Perhaps the most valuable gain from this event was that it demonstrated the willingness of the workers to challenge the system and to fight for the things we really care about.
Although we are working inside a reformist organization run by the liberal rulers, this was a small victory for the members of PLP and our friends. We know that with this, we need to continue on the path of larger struggles for communist revolution and workers’ power.

Haiti, January 1—It is a tradition to eat pumpkin soup (“bwe soup joumou” in Creole) every January 1. This soup, sometimes called “Independence Soup,” is a symbol of liberty for the Haitian masses because prior to January 1, 1804, enslaved people were forbidden to have soup. It has also become an occasion to show solidarity: you get up at four o’clock in the morning to prepare the pumpkin soup in the largest pot you can find. It is shared with all your family, neighbors and friends, who come by to have soup and share the news of the day.
But for a long time now, because of the impoverishment of the working class and the strengthening of the capitalist ideology of individualism, some families, especially the most vulnerable, can’t afford the ingredients for the soup. Little by little, the feeling of liberty and solidarity that the practice represents is being lost.
It is in this context, that for the last three years, every January 1,Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has organized a “solidarity soup” in a small provincial town. Party members and friends raise money and families guarantee the cooking. When the soup is done and piping hot, we distribute the soup in our working class neighborhoods and on the public square, using the occasion to talk about what is really going on in Haiti and in the world, from a communist point of view. Hundreds of people share the soup—turning the social inequality created by the capitalist system on its head, if only for a little while, allowing our friends and neighbors to savor their traditional soup in dignity and respect.
More and more, the workers of this town understand the importance of class solidarity, which is essential for the struggle of workers against the class of exploiters, both domestic and international, which threaten their daily existence. In essence, there is no victory without unity and the communist concepts of sharing and collectivity among the oppressed workers of the world. We are all living the same reality, in differing degrees: if we want to win the class struggle we must unite, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels remind us in The Communist Manifesto. There is no better way for our class to win than to build solidarity in all aspects of life.
In Haiti, 2018 was a year of intense mass struggle against a viciously corrupt system. While many politicians and bankers and bosses are complicit in the theft of funds in the PetroCaribe affair, they are all guilty because they all defend the interests of their class against the working class. Workers have no friends in this den of thieves. But the struggle was mostly spontaneous, with workers, students and youth pouring out into the streets by the thousands over and over to demand an end to capitalist corruption. Many were killed and injured by cops and their death squad agents. But it will take more than spontaneity to defeat the capitalist system, and that is what PLP in Haiti and around the world is organizing to do. Let 2019 be the beginning of the end of the dark night of global capitalism. Let us, the international working class, commit to becoming united into a single fist, to arming both ideologically and militarily, to carrying the red flag of communist revolution, to fighting for an egalitarian world, under the leadership of the PLP. Then we will truly be able to savor our pumpkin soup, knowing that we have changed the world.

NEW YORK CITY, December 23—When General Motors announced the closure of four U.S. and one Canadian auto plant late December, workers in Canada walked out!  Almost 16,000 jobs were at stake. As capitalist corporations compete with each other to maximize their profits, workers suffer. Investors loved the cost-cutting news as GM stocks shot up by almost eight percent.
At the GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Canada, workers had a different response. They walked out and then blocked the gates to prevent supplies from getting in and finished cars from getting out. Auto workers from Canada, the U.S.,Mexico and worldwide will have to organize many more such actions to fight the auto bosses. They will get no help from politicians or even their own union ‘leaders.’ Canadian President Justin Trudeau tweeted “I spoke with GM (Chief Executive) Mary Barra to express my deep disappointment in the closure” (Reuters.com, Nov 26, 2018). President Trump said “he was ‘not happy’ with the decision and spoke ‘very tough’ to Barra about the moves” (Autonews.com, 12/23/2018). The union leaders also talked tough with no plans for action.
Auto bosses get government bailout; workers get layoffs and low wages
The auto industry has had eight straight years of big profits thanks to the $60 billion Barack Obama bailout of 2009 and billions more from United Auto Workers (UAW) union concessions. But now comes the crisis of overproduction, a regular feature of capitalism and the auto industry in particular. The plants slated to close are all operating below full capacity. In the global cutthroat competition for markets, resources and cheap labor, the bosses ruthlessly pursue profits. At some point those factories not functioning at full capacity become a drain on those profits. In these closings, all five plants were operating on one shift. Entire shifts had already been laid off. And according to the Detroit Free Press, GM has four of 12 plants, Ford has three of nine plants, and Fiat Chrysler has two of six plants operating below capacity. More closings are likely.
This reflects yet another restructuring of the global auto industry. Sales have dropped in North America and China and the world’s auto bosses have been losing money in Europe and South America. More than 1,000 Nissan workers are losing their jobs in Mexico and Ford could soon announce its own job-cutting plan, which could wipe out as many as 25,000 jobs.
Fight for more jobs,
higher wages and communism
With the GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler contracts set to expire in the U.S. and Canada in Sept. 2019, the bosses and the UAW leadership will use these cuts to divide workers and play them against each other.After the national contracts are resolved, each local plant negotiates its own local agreement. That is where the union and the company “whipsaw” the workers against each other into accepting labor agreements that boost corporate profits, each hoping that the most profitable arrangement will get more work assigned to that factory.
As we head toward the contract talks, let’s follow the lead of the workers in Canada and make 2019 a year of militant fightback. Workers are already angry after a major corruption scandal involving UAW officials accepting bribes from Fiat Chrysler officials during the last contract negotiations. While UAW officials accepted tens of thousands of dollars in cash, gifts and trips, sell-out auto contracts opened the floodgates to lower paid, temporary and part-time workers in assembly plants. This, in an industry already flooded with low wage jobs in the supplier industries. Workers could decide to take matter into their own hands. Wildcat strikes could return.
As communists, members of the Progressive Labor Party will support any rebellion in the ranks against the bosses. At the same time we fight for a communist world where production is based on the needs of the international working class, not the profits of the war-making bosses and bankers.