BROOKLYN, April 14 - An intergenerational, multiracial crowd of nearly 120 workers and students gathered for Sunday brunch in preparation for May Day or International Workers Day. Each year, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) invites the working class to marshall under one flag, the red flag for the communist revolution. 

The international working class, particularly students, is publicly exposing the duplicitous nature of the liberal ruling class. Since the 2020 elections, U.S. President Biden has folded on his promises to support reparations for slavery, address rampant police murders, create pathways for citizenship for migrant workers, and erase student loans. Instead of serving the needs of the working class, the ruling class is sending $95 billion toward Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan’s militaries. Bosses also stamped sanctions against China, Russia, and Iran. This package demands that TikTok creators sell their stake in the company or face a ban in the U.S. (Reuters, 4/20). As one of the event's first speakers, a Black woman comrade, said, “The U.S. ruling class is continuing to leave millions dead, homeless and starving…our supposed leaders are more concerned with protecting profits and winning the public to blame rivals like China or Russia for the crises under capitalism.” 

PL’ers continue the momentum and victories of the past year

In reforms, misleaders often push us to put communist ideas and building the Party for revolution, on the back burner. The international fight against genocide in Gaza is no different. Some workers believe that fighting for a Palestinian state and exchanging the war budget for money for health and jobs is the solution. We challenge that even if workers from Iran to Palestine-Israel were to be freed from Israel and the U.S.’ grip, the horror of capitalism and racist divisions that affect us all would still exist. No matter what immediate gain we seize from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or U.S. President Joe Biden, they have the state power to turn around the victory, and bosses like them always do it.

PLP is involved in active militant fightback to affirm that eliminating the profit-driven system is the only way to break out of this prison. We need a mass multiracial, antiracist, antisexist communist party with deep roots in the working class to break free. Unlike individual reforms and pushes for nationalist sovereignty, developing and sustaining an internationalist party that makes class politics primary is the hardest victory for the ruling class to overthrow. Hosting social events like the recent Sunday brunch, paired with militant, collective actions like our May Day march, is a tactic we use to deepen our roots and our understanding of communist ideology. 

Turn reformist fightback into revolutionary wins

Each table contained a bowl with printed guided questions. One question read, “What is the difference between communism and socialism?” Another Black woman comrade explained that communism at its core is equality and community. Following this discussion, one veteran comrade took the stage and reminded us that what we do counts. “People remember what you do; you might not always agree with friends politically, but what you do in the face of struggle counts.” Workers and students also shared the history of May Day, ranging from comrades in Chicago being murdered for organizing workers in Chicago to fight for the 8-hour work day in 1887 to the Soviet Union, where workers turned the imperialist World War II into a class war for workers to run one-sixth of the earth’s surface. We solidified that we stand on the shoulders of great movements and have the opportunity that they didn’t to learn from the past.

During the brunch, we lovingly remembered our comrades who passed and reflected on their commitment to dedicate their lives to building the party. We sang Bella Ciao with these comrades in mind and lifted comrades who recently battled attacks. One teacher spoke about openly supporting students who wrote a letter to demand the school administration take a stance against anti-Jewish racism AND anti-Muslim racism. In retaliation, this anti-racist worker was held for 100 days in a room akin to solitary confinement. Days after this comrade was removed from his school, over 100 students, with their parents' support, immediately sent letters of protest to the school administration, superintendent, and school chancellors. This fight, amongst others, proves that we, as workers, have the stamina to forge a communist world when we have confidence in the working class and commit to building a fighting party. What we do does count.

We have nothing to lose but our chains

As members of the Progressive Labor Party, we carry with us a rich legacy of 59 years of struggle. Throughout the decades, our unwavering dedication to empowering the working class in the fight for communism has defined us. Our ongoing mission is to mobilize the working class, challenging capitalist elites' dominance and resisting oppression across every facet of our existence. Our journey is etched with tales of resilience in the face of adversity, victories hard-won, and the somber acknowledgment of setbacks endured. 

As workers and students, May Day is our day to raise our red flags unabashedly and unafraid. May Day is our day to declare the need for an internationalist communist party in the face of Israel-U.S. sanctioned ethno-nationalist genocide, sexist terror, and racist murder from NYC to Haiti. May Day is our day to stress and cement the wins of our struggles. We must build the foundation and a long-range outlook toward communist revolution and egalitarian world-building to win the world we deserve. Progressive Labor Party is organizing May Day marches in Brooklyn, D.C., L.A., and Chicago this year. We are marching with our friends, united with us in smashing racism, smashing borders, and building an internationalist communist Party under the banner of PLP. From all the rivers to all the seas, communism will set us free.

The Bronx, NY–The newly formed Common Ground student club at one Bronx CUNY (City University of New York) campus took the lead in mid-March and called for a Rally Against Genocide in Gaza on the steps of our community college. A multiracial, multigenerational group of about twenty people including students and staff held a spirited picket line and rally – it included student leaders from a Parents Club, students, professors from a nearby community college, and union members. Short speeches were given as different people stepped up to the mic. One speaker pointed out how the Democrats and the Republicans are all the same and that voting will never put an end to the genocide. Another student spoke about the need for us to get more students involved and to see this struggle as our struggle. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members linked the racist austerity we are facing on our campuses and the bosses’ imperialist wars in other countries— that we are also in a war with CUNY as classes are cut, adjuncts are fired, our cafeterias are closed, etc.

We chanted “Arab, Jewish, Black, Latin, white—to smash genocide we must unite! We were warmly received and greeted by students and over 50 CHALLENGEs were distributed. This was the first public action on campus against the genocide in Gaza, inspiring others to plan more rallies and events.

Fight racist gentrification & displacement!

Early April saw a different type of event on a neighboring campus. Community organizers from the South Bronx and Chinatown joined in a conversation about what is happening in New York City (NYC) with displacement and gentrification. About 35 students and staff joined the discussion, followed by a delicious meal of Oaxacan food. The two speakers focused on sharing their experiences in the movement. We heard first-hand about the sharp struggles that have been going on for years in Chinatown. The first speaker laid out the falsehood of identity politics. He explained how growing up he learned the goal was for marginalized groups to get a “seat at the table.” But he quickly learned the truth while organizing against the Chinese American Planning Council (CPC), a non-profit that super-exploits thousands of immigrant Asian, Black, and Latin healthcare attendants, forcing them to work 24-hour shifts. This speaker also denounced Jonathan Chu, Chinatown’s biggest developer/landlord, who is the head of the board of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). Chu has accepted a $35 million deal in exchange for supporting a new mega jail in Chinatown. That’s not a “seat at the table” for workers. It’s just big profits for the capitalists. The speaker made a very clear case of why workers must reject nationalism and identity politics and fight all bosses, no matter what they look like.

The second speaker has been working directly with migrant families in shelters. It was vital to hear what is happening to migrant families in NYC and not believe the news stories that migrants “have it made” or are staying in luxury hotels. In fact, one of the students present worked as a security guard in the Roosevelt Hotel, one of the main locations where migrant families were placed. He joined the conversation to share what he learned from meeting and talking to people there and pointed out how even in the richest city in the world, capitalism and racism create the most inhumane conditions for workers. The speaker, who is a part of a mutual aid kitchen, engaged the students by asking them how they felt about paying tuition knowing that at one time tuition was free at CUNY. She encouraged them to see the connections between constantly hearing that there is no money when we know that money exists - it exists for war, but not for education. 

As the discussion opened up, several key points were raised, all pointing to the understanding that migration and movement are always a result of imperialism and U.S. foreign policy. People began to speak about U.S. policies in Latin America, the “dirty wars” of the 1980s, the sanctions, etc. One person who grew up in Chile shared about the brutality she witnessed growing up under the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Another professor spoke about hosting a migrant family and seeing first-hand the very difficult reality these families face every day. 

Members of the college progressive group, The Bronx Action Committee, also gave brief speeches about the need for students to challenge racist austerity, get involved with the city-wide strike movement that is growing, and find ways to reach out to newly arrived workers in solidarity. Students, staff, and professors were invited to join the PLP Mayday in Brooklyn. Since then, several students, faculty, and staff have signed up to march with us!

Lessons learned on our Bronx campuses

These two events were important learning experiences. At the Gaza rally, we relied on students to lead, organize, and step forward, and they did! We saw the power of the unity between education workers with different job titles as we all marched and chanted together. We realized the power of “showing up” to support a struggle on a different campus. 

At the forum, which was a conversation, we learned the importance of putting May Day forward in a mass and open way. We were encouraged as students, staff, and faculty expressed interest in marching with us on May 4. PLP will continue to make friends, distribute CHALLENGE, build ties with students and education workers, and fight for communist ideas. As we engage in these struggles we help to lead and learn how to lead even better.

Raising my voice for workers in Gaza and for May Day

I spoke at a Rutgers University action in Camden, where students took over the Campus Center, demanding that Rutgers’ Board of Governors break ties with Israel. One student condemned Rutgers for being the largest university in New Jersey, while homeless and drug-addicted workers sleep below train stations in New Brunswick, where their main campus is located. Still, solving the homeless and addiction crises are not priorities of capitalist rulers of the academy. Rutgers President Johathan Holloway, a self-proclaimed Civil Rights scholar is instead partnering with Tel Aviv University to build a $665 million ‘Hub’ that will include cybersecurity research. This contradiction, highlighted by the students, resonated with me as a worker in the city of Newark. I work as a nonprofit worker, where the push for community development is explicitly advertised to Black and Latin workers as a solution to crumbling infrastructure and super-exploitation.

I shared with the students that the same night that students were demanding a ceasefire, workers who live in an apartment complex, Georgia King Village, owned by a ‘community developer,’ L+ M, were crying out to the multicultural City Council and Black liberal Mayor Ras Baraka about deteriorating housing conditions. These workers were met with empty promises by their city councilman to regulate developers while in the next breath, the council voted to give L+ M another 30-year tax abatement. 

At the same time that we’re fighting against racist displacement in Gaza, workers are also fighting against racist displacement in Newark. All over, the ones we’re fighting against are liberal servants of capitalism and imperialism and we need worker-student unity to win! I ended with the chant that PL’ers  out at a Newark city council meeting remixed from ‘No good politician in a racist system’ to ‘No good President in a racist institution!’ 

I also used this action as a chance to bond with a friend who is active in fights for a ceasefire in the surrounding suburbs of Newark. On the ride back, I asked them what they thought of the action and communist politics. They shared, “I think communism is most aligned with my politics, but I don’t know enough about it.” I shared CHALLENGE and the book that our club is reading, History of the U.S.S.R. by Andrew Rothstein. I also invited them to march with us on May Day.

This struggle is exposing our class’s potential to wage a militant, multiracial, internationalist class war against the bosses, but we have to be in it to win it! The fight for communist revolution continues.
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My first PL workshop: ‘I felt heard’

Even though I wouldn’t consider myself a beginner to communist theory if I’m being honest, I was still pretty anxious about attending a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) workshop for the first time. In addition to me generally being an anxious person, it’d also be my first time attending any sort of communist collective, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Maybe I’d be too far behind in my knowledge about communism, and I’d end up not having anything to add to the discussion. Maybe I’d be unknowingly too reformist, so even if I did attempt to add something to the discussion, it wouldn’t be worthwhile at all, or it’d just end up being completely regressive. 

In actuality though, my interaction with the PLP was nothing like my apprehensions. All its members were extremely kind and welcoming. Rather than feeling talked down to during our discussion, I played an active role in it, and I felt that my ideas were truly being heard and engaged with. In one workshop, titled, “Why Communism, Why PLP?”, we critiqued a quote by Jay-Z, underscoring its attempt to conflate radical racial progress with upward class mobility within capitalism’s inherently oppressive hierarchy. We also discussed what communism meant to us personally as people from a diverse set of backgrounds, and (re)affirmed that a more equitable, communist future could only be done through a grassroots revolution by the global working classes, and not through superficial reforms by the ruling classes. 

This is a collective that I’d keep returning to. I loved that, in addition to analyzing work by Marxist theorists, we also analyzed media and media figures that are more prolific within mainstream culture. This cultural analysis demonstrated that capitalism implicitly undergirds a large swath of the media we consume and that consumption done uncritically is bound to be accompanied by an uncritical acceptance of the oppressive ideologies and material conditions that said media is silently reproducing. Furthermore, what this cultural analysis also indicates is that, in spite of attempts by the ruling class to suppress it, resistance to capitalism, and a pursuit of communism, pervade and continue to accumulate within capitalist culture, especially as global capitalist powers continue to support and facilitate Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, whilst repressing those who protest in opposition. Discussions like these are integral to a communist revolution, serving both as a site of revolutionary communist praxis, and, through the warmness of its Party members, their sociality, and their collective sharing of childcare, as a site for revolutionary, everyday, communist practice.
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Bringing solidarity to students against genocide

On April 17th,  a couple of comrades with whom I have been organizing within a mass organization and I went up to Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus to show solidarity with students who have been organizing around Palestine and were having a rally that afternoon. We wanted to bridge the gap between Rutgers Newark, New Brunswick, and Camden campuses, and discuss some of the organizing we’ve been doing not just in Newark, but in Teaneck, Morristown, and West Orange, making parallels between gentrification and imperialism while reiterating that the genocide in Gaza is an attack against workers worldwide.  It isn’t enough to just fight for a ceasefire or to call for divestment. We have to continue to organize and build so that we can wrest power from the bosses! 

While the rally was happening, I found out that there was another rally being held by union faculty workers who were protesting President Holloway’s cutting of the writing program at the college. I saw many signs that were similar to PLP’s chants (e.g. The Students United Will Never Be Defeated; Make the Bosses Take the Losses). A Pro-Israel heckler disrupted the rally, and it led the Pro-Palestinian students and union faculty to split from one another. 

I felt that it was a big mistake for many of the faculty to ignore the students and not show solidarity with them. After all, Holloway’s attack on the writing program is the result of increasing attacks on the humanities programs in colleges, which is one of the hallmarks signs of fascism. We need to defend the humanities at all costs—which is where thoughts, ideas, and consciousness are spread. Furthermore, it was sad to see that one lone person could easily cause so much chaos and discord. It was a learning lesson, for sure.
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U.S. now directly involved in Israel’s military operations

Wall Street Journal, 4/21–Biden…ordered the Pentagon to step up its efforts to protect Israel, and the U.S. military activated highly classified plans for assisting Israel in a crisis…A team of U.S. military personnel secretly went to Tel Aviv to work out of a missile defense operations center with their Israeli counterparts…bulked-up force of F-15E fighter jets… F-16s based in the region…Plans were made for Saudi and Jordanian planes to defend their airspace.

…The more than 150 attack drones that Iran launched first…would take five to seven hours to reach Israel. Then…30 land-attack cruise missiles with flight times of two to three hours. Last were ballistic missiles that would reach Israel in just a dozen minutes. Israel’s Arrow system intercepted most of the ballistic missiles, while the two American destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean downed several others. An American Patriot anti missile battery in Erbil, Iraq, intercepted another one…drones, in the meantime, were shot down by a combination of American, British, French and Israeli aircraft…The White House had, at least for a time, avoided a wider war.  …

U.S. bosses use Israel as a forward operating base

Haaretz, 4/20–The U.S. House resoundingly voted to provide Israel with $26 billion in emergency assistance on Saturday, including nearly $14 billion in unconditional military aid…The bill's provisions include $4 billion earmarked to replenish Iron Dome and David's Sling missile defense systems and $1.2 billion for the Iron Beam defense system, designed to counter short-range rockets and mortar threats…$3.5 billion for the procurement of advanced weapons systems…$1 billion to "enhanc[ing] the production and development of artillery and critical munitions"... $4.4 billion will replenish military supplies and defense services…and $2.4 billion for current U.S. military operations in the region…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the U.S. Congress…saying it "demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel and defends Western civilization"...

The battle between imperialists for West Africa continues

Al Jazeera, 4/20–The United States will withdraw its soldiers from Niger as the West African nation is increasingly turning to Russia and away from Western powers. The US Department of State agreed to pull out about 1,000 troops from the country that has been under military rule since July 2023…The US built a military base in Niger to combat armed groups that pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS)...Like the military rulers in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, the West African nation had kicked out French and European troops following the military takeover. All three countries have now turned to Russia for support, with Moscow confirming earlier this month that it has sent military trainers and an air defense system and other military equipment to Niger as it deepens its security ties.

Ukrainian workers pay the price in inter-imperialist conflict

Foreign Affairs, 4/19–After more than two years fighting one of the world’s most powerful armies, Ukraine has enacted a new mobilization law…army commanders demanded 500,000 new soldiers…“Even the most determined [soldier] will consider this to be an eternal contract”...the original draft mobilization bill…proposed to mandate demobilization after 36 months of active duty. But that provision was dropped because of pressure from military leaders, who feared they would lose their most experienced troops…

…In early April, the president also signed into law a bill lowering the military mobilization age by two years, from 27 to 25…the military understands that soldiers in their 20s are fitter and recover faster, allowing them to bounce back from injuries and return to the front…a young person who has experienced a concussion from an explosion may be able to recover from temporary hearing loss, whereas someone over 40 faces a higher risk of permanent deafness…

The war is already estimated to have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage…Entire industrial regions and large corporations have been destroyed…Millions of professionals have left the country, and multiple economic sectors have simply disappeared…