July 24, Washington DC —“[Benjamin] Netanyahu, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide” was one of many angry chants directed at the fascist mass murderer during his trip to Washington D.C. to address Congress and seek continued financial support for his racist slaughter in Palestine. 

Students and workers from around the country gathered at 2nd and Constitution Avenues and marched on the Capitol while many others blocked streets, forcing his U.S. imperialist handlers to divert his entourage. To no surprise, butcher Netanyahu spent his visit spewing lies about Gaza's death toll and  calling criticism of Israel “Hamas propaganda” (Anadolu Agency, 7/25).

Protestors at Union Station burned a large Netanyahu puppet along with the U.S. flag that represents U.S. ruling class complicity in genocide. Police responded with arrests and attacked the Capitol marchers with pepper spray. 

Israel and Hamas dead ends for workers 

A small Progressive Labor Party (PLP) contingent and friends  joined thousands in the rally at the Capitol to demand an end to financial and military support for Israel. We also challenged the idea of a two-state solution and support for Hamas. Communists fight for multiracial, multiethnic unity and a communist world of equality, not new capitalist nations. Hamas has exploited Palestinian workers and will continue to do so if a peace agreement creates a new nation for them. 

On the eve of Netanyahu’s visit hundreds of young members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) occupied the Cannon Office Building and were arrested. Jewish-Palestinian worker unity is possible! 

The imperialists in the U.S. and European Union (EU) prefer to keep workers divided by race, religion, and nationality and use both mainstream and social media to lie about Zionism's blood soaked past: executing countless Palestinian  workers, farmers, and students.

Building communist movement to bury this genocide system

At the rally we distributed hundreds of flyers and CHALLENGEs. We called for support for local  teachers and students under attack for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. Our attack on nationalism was well received by our friends from Iran who describe their country as fascist. Many marchers were open to taking communist literature with interest and enthusiasm. We met new friends interested in communist ideas and reconnected with teachers, neighbors and public health activists that we have been organizing with since October 7. 

Many of the speakers at the rally supported Hamas and called for a ceasefire and a two-state solution. Others we have worked with attacked the racist police in D.C. for their treatment of Black residents. Students from the George Washington Encampment attacked the capitalist state in a rousing speech. 

Our organizing efforts must continue to reach out to workers such as the members in transit (ATU Local 689) who have passed ceasefire resolutions but rarely join in these demonstrations. Their strength could shut down the city and raise the struggle to a new level and bring us closer to state power.  International communist revolution remains the only way to stop fascists like Netanyahu, widening wars, and the capitalist bloodsuckers who are behind both fascist and liberal politicians.

August 12, Washington DC—The American Public Health Association (APHA) recently blocked health workers within the association from submitting a resolution against the genocide in Gaza. Last October 2023 the APHA became the first health organization to pass an emergency ceasefire resolution about the war on Gaza, good for one year. While its governing body watered down the proposal from a statement of eight pages to one sentence, it voted overwhelmingly in favor as hundreds of supporters stood in the back of the room with signs and fliers. APHA officials looked on in horror. They showed themselves as more interested in supporting U.S. imperialism and Israeli genocide than promoting public health. The successful resolution read:

“In light of the continuing escalating of civilian casualties by Israel and the collapse of the healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, APHA calls upon President Biden and Congress to urgently demand an immediate cease-fire and call for de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the hostages and those detained; by restoring water, fuel, electricity and other basic services; and by passing adequate humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”

This was a resolution calling for humanitarian decency. It was certainly not revolutionary yet it scared the APHA pro capitalist leaders. But out of this struggle, more members than ever came to a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) meeting, and an ongoing cadre of supporters grew within the organization and created the Palestine Health Justice Working Group (PHJWG). This year, it submitted a more comprehensive permanent resolution for a vote at its 2024 meeting that condemns the Israeli occupation of Palestine, U.S. aid for Israel, and the constant bombing of Gaza that destroys health, lives, and infrastructure. It calls for humanitarian aid, sanitation, public health interventions for workers in Palestine and the end of the war, occupation, and U.S. aid. 

APHA bosses back genocide

APHA officials decided to stop it in its tracks without consulting with or notifying the Working Group. They have declared that it cannot even be considered, in violation of all their own rules! Now the most militant antiracist fighters in this association are being targeted as anti-Zionists and antisemitic. One of the accused is a PLP member, who has pushed for Palestinian and Israeli workers to unite against the capitalist rulers of Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, APHA urges members to vote for the next U.S. President, although both candidates support Israel and its genocidal war. 

This October there will be mass actions at the national convention in Minneapolis, to protest the war and APHA actions. The PHJWG will attend pre-convention resolution hearings on Zoom, demonstrate with fellow workers, and loudly bring our concerns to the massive rank and file members of the union and the governing body. We have made t-shirts and buttons and leaflets that will be widely distributed. As we have done previously, PLP will prepare a special APHA Convention CHALLENGE issue and hold a meeting to put forward a revolutionary perspective.

Fighting back against genocide

Since the current war on Palestinians began, tens of thousands of students, young people, socialists, communists, and anti-Zionists around the world have risen in opposition. In the U.S., thousands have taken over streets, organized sit-ins from Grand Central to the U.S. Capitol and built over 50 encampments at universities. This has resulted in a militant movement against war, imperialism and racism. Despite many retributions, organizers continue to plan for local actions and days of rebellion at the Democratic Party Convention in Minneapolis, August 19 to August 23. Many have become more interested in communist ideas. 

The Progressive Labor Party applauds this commitment and militancy. We have joined demonstrations distributing thousands of CHALLENGE newspapers and conducting educational sessions about the war. Our line, “From the river to the sea, communism will set us free,” rejects a nationalist solution that divides Israelis and Palestinians into two (unequal) lands. We reject the policies of nationalism around the world, from those who support the fascist leaders of Israel to those who support the current leaders of Palestine, both the corrupt collaborators of Fatah and the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas.  No workers will be free until there is an international anti-capitalist movement that fights for a communist system that discards the profit motive and is run by the working class in order to maximize the quality of life of all workers. If we organize ourselves around the world, involving ourselves in many mass struggles, we can do it.

Members of our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) club in Kentucky recently hosted a trip to the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan to learn about one of the biggest labor uprisings in history known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. Among the key lessons we learned was the central role of multiracial unity in labor struggles, the need for militancy and even armed struggle in the battle against the bosses, and the danger of betrayal by union leaders. We held a cadre school after the visit and another friend showed interest in joining the ranks of the PLP.

PLP members and friends from Washington D.C., Kentucky, and Tennessee toured the Mine Wars Museum in Matewan and gravesites of Sid Hatfield. The museum tour summarized the history of union organizing in West Virginia that led up to the Battle of Blair Mountain. The early United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was one of the first unions to employ Black organizers. One of them, Dan Chain (AKA “Few-clothes Johnson”), was featured in the 1980s movie “Matewan” and was a prominent organizer during key strikes leading up to Blair Mountain. He was also one of the “dirty-eleven”, a group of militants  who used armed resistance against the coal companies.

Miners showed the way to workers in militancy against the bosses

We moved on to the gravesite of Sid Hatfield, the sheriff who had a shootout with anti-miner thugs, killing Baldwins-Felts agents who were trying to evict miners living within city-limits. At the gravesite, a PLP member from Kentucky gave a speech linking the global warming impacts of coal mining to the working class struggle and the broader analysis of the need for communist revolution, something the miners had missed. 

The miners who fought at Blair Mountain made the naive mistake of thinking that the U.S. National Guard was not their enemy, despite the fact that they were prepared to drop bombs on the miners in the event that they did not surrender to the coal bosses. We also learned that the iconic Mother Jones misled the miners after supporting them initially. She claimed that she had a telegram from President Harding promising an end to the coal bosses’ tyranny on the condition that the miners return home, but this was a lie! The miners marched on Blair Mountain despite this confusion. What an education!

PLP members study worker-led fights to learn how to defeat the bosses

The next day Kentucky PL’ers hosted a cadre school in Williamsburg, centered around Palestine and nationalism. Members from Kentucky explained how the current genocide in Gaza will not be solved through nationalism, and how workers can only end war and imperialism and racism through internationalist class struggle against both the Israeli and Palestinian bosses. 

The conversation shifted towards unions and how there is a need to bring internationalism into the workplace, and link up local struggles with the wider class struggle, creating a sense of solidarity between workers in the U.S. and Gaza. A worker at the cadre school shared her struggles with her own union and started a wider conversation about how unions can betray the rank and file and seek to make deals with the bosses, and how unless we bring revolutionary politics into the workplace we are stuck fighting for reforms that eventually get taken away over time. 

The history of our class is filled with stories of militancy, multi-racial unity, betrayal by union leaders, and the prospects for revolutionary struggle. Long live the Battle of Blair Mountain!

This Black August, we are spotlighting an article from our 2014 Summer Project in Ferguson, Missouri. On August 9, racist killer kkkop Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown, a Black teen who had just graduated high school eight days prior. Wilson had fired 12 bullets, 8 of which pierced 18-year-old Mike. 

The racist disposal of his life, along with countless other Black youth and workers' lives, sparked a 10-day rebellion from Ferguson and what the bosses called a year of “unrest.” The ripple effect of that rebellion spread as far as Baltimore, Maryland for Tyrone West to New York City for Eric Garner to Omar Abrego and Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, just to name a few. 

Progressive Labor Party (PLP), taking the leadership of Black youth, marched alongside with youth and workers in Ferguson. Over the span of a year, every time a PLP contingent visited Ferguson, the communists and CHALLENGE were welcomed. We had built a relationship with a group of youth who organized themselves under the name of Lost Voices. The Ferguson Rebellion was a key historical event that shaped the antiracist consciousness of those who participated. 

Since then, that generation has experienced the non-indictment of killer kkkop Wilson, the gutter racist Donald Trump presidency, the #metoo movement, a pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, record deportations, the Genocide Joe Biden presidency, the Jan. 6 Insurrection, countless wars, a raging genocide in Gaza, and more. A decade later, Black members of the working class are still three times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterpart (Mapping Police Violence, 8/1). What was true then is still true today—racist police terror is part and parcel of the profit system. 

In this period of ever-spiraling capitalist crises (see editorial, page 2), many of our class siblings are searching for answers. PLP urges workers to unite based on our class interests, and antiracism and antisexism are prerequisites in the final defeat of the bosses’ system. The only way we can rid the world of exploitation is through running these bosses into the ground, while building for a communist society. 

Ferguson, Mo, August 29 — During the recent rebellions here, a young multiracial team from Progressive Labor Party visited the area to support these antiracist actions and put forward the idea that communism is the only way to defeat racism and capitalism. Here is one account. 

The bosses’ media keep spreading the lie that “outside agitators” aren’t wanted in Ferguson, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Hundreds of workers and students received CHALLENGE and a PL leaflet calling for more rebellion against racist police murders. They embraced communist ideas and calls for communist revolution. An older couple contributed to our lunch after a brief discussion on the history of racism in Ferguson and the U.S. and the lack of opportunities for working-class youth. 

During our time here, we connected with a group of young freedom fighters that formed a new organization during the rebellion following Michael Brown’s murder. The group consists of youth who met night after night to battle the cops. Calling themselves The Lost Voices, they are dedicated to preventing racist police murder from becoming the norm.

The Lost Voices have camped out on Florissant Avenue, Ferguson’s main strip, where protests have persisted for two weeks. One leader of the group said they march daily so that workers in Ferguson and around the world know that “we out here.” 

One of the most exciting developments was a PLP study group with these youth, where we discussed the Our Fight section in CHALLENGE. Beyond outright agreement with our antiracist stance, these young workers echoed our idea that the abolition of money will aid in creating a new, worker-led world.  

On our last night, we had a rally of 50 through the streets of Ferguson. Workers responded by joining the march with their kids, holding signs from balconies, honking as we marched, and yelling out words of solidarity. It was a powerful experience. After a brief water break from the heat, we rallied again and received even more overwhelming support from local workers. 

People’s fightback spirit against police harassment and the murder of black people was unwavering and inspirational: “The whole system is guilty!” We heard this statement over and over during our time in Ferguson. The ruling class and misleaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson pushed for peace and more black cops and politicians, but the working class wasn’t falling for it. Jackson was confronted by workers and youth who asked him, “When are you going to stop selling us out?” They told him, “Get out — we don’t want you here!” This trip to Ferguson has taught the young people who went a lesson on how to work among the masses. Two of them have joined PLP.