CHICAGO, January 30—“Same enemy, same fight — Students of Chicago unite!” It was with this chant and many others that hundreds of multiracial, multigender public high school students led a bold walkout and sit-in today at City Hall in protest of the ongoing genocide against workers and children in Gaza. Their efforts were the result of a brilliant organizing effort across more than ten schools in different neighborhoods.

The inspiring action occurred just the day before the Chicago City Council was set to vote on whether to officially endorse a ceasefire resolution. But as history and current experience show, the capitalist politicians’ timid calls for an end to the slaughter will do little to nothing to stop the current genocide or the inevitable next one that grows out like a cancer from their blood-soaked profit system.

To transform these exploding imperialist bloodbaths into class war and our collective liberation, we need an international communist revolution and nothing less. Those of us in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) salute these students for their urgency, antiracism, and internationalism, and invite them to join the revolutionary movement to crush the parasitic exploiters and their system once and for all. 

Youth protest genocidal capitalism
As the clock struck midday, the students at the specific schools poured out of the buildings. At one of the schools on the city’s southwest side, the daughter of a PLP member helped to lead her peers in marching and chants around the campus. She also gave leadership to the planning efforts with other student leaders from different schools before today’s action.

In the majority working-class neighborhood where the school is located, neighbors and those driving past vocalized their support. The students proudly waved signs with messages like “End the Genocide” and “The occupation has to go!” They used bullhorns to give speeches that connected the state-sponsored racist attacks against Black and Brown youth in Chicago from forces like the KKKops to the U.S. imperialist-backed Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) currently murdering Arab workers and youth.

Later in the afternoon, the bulk of the students walking out converged in the city’s downtown at City Hall. After marching around the block and shutting down busy intersections, they forced their way into the government building despite a heavy kkkop presence and took over the entire first floor. Most of the students eagerly took copies of CHALLENGE newspaper and shared their sharp insights into the nature of the system.

The same young organizer leading the walkout at her school continued while at City Hall, pushing the chants to have a more anti-capitalist tone, including “Democrats, Republicans, all the same – Genocide is the name of the game!” and “From Palestine to Mexico, these border walls have got to go!”
She also gave one of the more militant speeches during the sit-in:

“Today we are here to stand for the Palestinian people and demand an end to the genocide and the system that causes it, and that is capitalism. Local government and especially our city council has failed to support Palestinians and instead, they are supporting this racist government to continue the mass genocide. How many more kids need to die? How many more need to fear for their lives? The answer should be zero but there are over 27,000 Palestinian people who have died over land and capitalism. 
This doesn’t just affect Palestine; it affects the world. The working class is suffering because the ruling class controls the government and therefore the military is killing our people. The government is supposed to uplift our lives but they’re serving their bosses and killing our people! They’re killing our people to put money into their pockets. They’re benefitting from this mass genocide. We need to use our voice as  youth to begin this revolution and breakthrough capitalism! People are suffering, people are dying – Innocent people, innocent children! We demand a ceasefire!”

Reject liberal misleaders,  fight for communism
Our collective ability to end exploitation and profit wars is ultimately a question of armed class struggle and state power. The liberals and so-called “progressive” politicians like Mayor Brandon Johnson use radical-sounding language to pretend like they’re on our side while they are managers of the very same profit system responsible for so much racism, nationalism, misery, and war. They are the class enemies who will tell these working-class youth to ultimately get in line to fight and die for the imperialist war machine in the next world war. That’s why we in PLP identify liberals as the main danger to our class!

As communists in the international PLP, we want to arm our youth and the working masses with the ideas and weapons that will violently seize power away from the capitalists and build a society based on our collective needs and development. A gigantic goal, but ultimately the only future worth fighting for!

New Jersey, February 14—Students throughout New Jersey coordinated a student walk out in protest of the genocide in Gaza. From West Orange to Teaneck, workers and students are exposing a hub of racist Zionists and the true intentions of City Council members—to squelch anti-imperialist, antiracist rebellion and realize their dreams of Mayoral and Senator elections. Progressive Labor Party members were in attendance at these walkouts, with signs and CHALLENGE in hand to encourage our collective revolutionary potential.
In Teaneck, one PL’er held up a sign that read, “THE PRIORITIES OF US IMPERIALISM: 27,947 KILLED IN GAZA IS ACCEPTABLE! A 20 PERCENT DROP IN RED SEA TRAFFIC IS NOT.” 

Many workers and students at the march complimented the sign. When they did, the comrade would say, “If you like my sign, you’ll also like this paper” and hand them a CHALLENGE. A former Teaneck High School student said, "Yes,I'll take one—I am a communist!" And she proceeded to use the front cover as her sign while marching.

In West Orange, students chanted as they marched from the school grounds “ FROM PALESTINE TO MEXICO, THE WAR MACHINE HAS GOT TO GO!” Another PLer was able to share a chant with the students, “BIDEN BIDEN COME NOVEMBER, ALL THE VOTERS WILL REMEMBER.” Self critically, it would be stronger to alter this chant to say WORKERS instead of VOTERS but this was an opportunity to open up a conversation with students about Biden being a liberal President and sanctioning aid to Israel despite their mass murdering and bomb dropping. “I’m not going to vote for Biden in November.” One 17 year old Black student shared to the crowd. Another Indian student commented, “Biden is okay funding Israel because he doesn’t want to be at war with the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Stunned, I told him yes, many of my friends would and I say that Israel is an acting watchdog for the U.S. in the Middle East. 

We were able to share CHALLENGE and exchange contact information with this student and his older sister, who is a student at Rutgers. More work in exposing these students to a third option — building under the banner of PLP with revolutionary communism is being planned through an upcoming forum. With capitalism, there will always be a path to imperialist wars including World War 3, Biden and ALL the International Bosses will pull out all genocidal stops to gain power or to hold onto power.

NEW YORK CITY, February 12—In Washington, the stumbling, bumbling racist politicians of the DemoPublican bosses' parties argue about how much to cut benefits for workers, how much to spend on a military budget to try to hold onto their empire, how to attack immigrants fleeing intolerable conditions in their country of birth and how to end the federal Medicare health plan as it has been run for the last sixty years. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) says don’t be fooled by the bosses' system and their ideas. We fight against the bosses’ plans and for a new egalitarian society run by workers to meet the needs of workers, that’s communism!

Capitalism puts profits above worker’s health
Here in New York City, workers are not passive in the face of the bosses and union honchos’ plans. For the last three years, retired New York City municipal workers have been fighting against a plan agreed to by the city government and the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC),an umbrella group of over 100 unions that have collective bargaining rights for current city workers) that force retirees out of traditional Medicare health coverage and into a so-called Medicare “Advantage” plan run by one of the health insurance corporate giants. Retirees have fought this plan because it would narrow our ability to use some doctors and medical facilities, impose preauthorization requirements that have been shown to deny or delay needed medical procedures and tests that cost more money. New copays would hit lower-income retired workers (who are disproportionately Black, Latin, and women retirees) the hardest, making this plan a racist and sexist one. The reality of healthcare in the U.S. is that more and more working folks are forced to make the unthinkable choice between paying for housing, food, healthcare, or prescription medicine. Amid this struggle, PLP members have pointed out that under capitalism, the healthcare system is always designed to make profits for the healthcare bosses, not to guarantee the best health outcomes for the working class. That’s why PLP builds for a communist revolution.

The fightback is spreading 
For the last two years, the Medicare  grassroots retiree organization has pursued a legal challenge that stopped the NYC Medicare (dis)advantage plan in its tracks. Now retirees have been placing ads in various print and online media outlets signed by 4,000 retired union leaders, staff, members, and organizers. The ads attempt to show that this fight is directed against fat cat MLC leaders who act as agents of the bosses rather than leaders of the fight for workers.  

Now this struggle is spreading as retired NYC transit workers from TWU Local 100 have begun a similar fight against their boss, the NYC Transit Authority. In addition, government workers in the state of Delaware have stopped a Medicare (dis)Advantage plan there and workers in Illinois, Vermont and Washington State are joining the struggle. PLP members have said that the attack on retirees will sooner rather than later lead to healthcare cuts on current NYC government workers. Now, the MLC is currently in backroom negotiations which we predict will restrict healthcare options and impose additional costs for 350,00 current workers.

Fighting back and not passively listening to bosses’ politicians or pro boss union hacks is a good thing. However, as long as capitalist bosses are in control, every victory we win is temporary. That’s why workers need to join the PLP and fight for communist revolution!

History has segregated the fight against racism and the fight for an egalitarian system, communism. In reality, the two were connected like flesh and bone. Many antiracist struggles were led by, initiated by, or were fought with communists and communist-influenced organizations. Many Black fighters were also dedicated communists and pro-communists of their time.

In turn, the bosses have used anti-communism as a tool to terrorize and divide antiracist fightback. Regardless of communist affiliation, anyone who fought racism was at risk of being redbaited. Why? 1) The ruling class understands the natural relationship between antiracism and communism, and 2) Multiracial unity threatens the very racist system the bosses “work so hard” to maintain.

Below is part I of a series aimed at reuniting the history of communism with antiracism. Robin D.G. Kelley’s book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, excerpted throughout this piece, is a good supplement for those who would like to find out more. This series originally ran in May 2017 (volume 49 no.11), and in this period of increasing nationalism and liberal fascism, it’s worth revisiting again!

In the years after slavery, Southern U.S. bosses used racist terror in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, police beatings, and lynching, legal and extralegal, to keep Black workers oppressed and as a source of cheap labor to drive down the wages of all workers Black and white.

Robin D.G. Kelley in Hammer and Hoe described it as the following:

White supremacist groups [including the KKK] organized by some of [Birmingham’s] leading citizens…enjoyed huge numerical and financial support…Klansmen [through intimidation and violence] sought to cleanse their city of Jews, Catholics, labor agitators, and recalcitrant African-Americans who refused to accept “their place” in the hierarchy of race.

The Southern bosses police and kangaroo courts (sham legal proceedings) were the heart of this injustice system.

“Fear [of the Southern injustice system] came from the knowledge that the color of your skin made you a suspect—a suspect that looked just like the prime suspect--every time the police were looking for a black man.” (WNYC 2//1/2013)

When workers united and fought back against this terror, the bosses often used racism and anti-communism to try to divide the working class.

The Scottsboro Boys
On March 25, 1931 nine Black teenagers age 13 to 19 were pulled from a freight car near Paint Rock, Alabama and charged with raping two white women. Within three days, the young men were tried by an all-white jury, convicted and sentenced to death. A lynch mob gathered at the jail in Scottsboro, demanding the young men be turned over to the racist rioters.

Courthouse lynchings like this were common for Black workers and youth living in the Jim Crow south. So common in fact that the local branch of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the other misleader organizations, focused on helping small business owners, didn’t even respond to the case.

Communists, First Responders
One organization did respond, the International Labor Defense (ILD), a workers’ defense organization initiated by the Communist Party. ILD was made up of communist and non-communist workers, Black and white. Within days of the sham trial, the ILD set up a defense committee, obtained lawyers for the nine young men on death row and built the defense of the Scottsboro Boys into a worldwide cause that saved them from the electric chair and after a many years-long battle eventually won their freedom.

The fight to defend the Scottsboro Boys involved several thousands of people around the world. The ILD organized mass meetings where family members of the wrongly convicted young men would speak alongside members of the ILD.

Bosses Counter with Terror
The Southern bosses were terrified of this multiracial movement against lynchings and responded with a campaign of terror against Black and white supporters of the campaign. Along with the physical terror carried out by the Klan, a campaign of anti-communism was launched to scare workers away from the fight to save the Scottsboro Boys.

The anticommunist campaign took several forms. The kkkops arrested people, and beat people suspected of being supporters of the ILD. Black and white women were arrested and threatened with rape by the police. The bosses’ press spread anti-communism.

The Birmingham Labor Advocate warned its readers to beware of outside agitators who, “under the cover of darkness,” disseminated ”Red literature preaching free love [and] inter marriage.(Hammer and Hoe)

The local NAACP was reluctant to help defend the working-class youth. But a whole year after the arrests, one of the women accusers of rape came forward and admitted there was no rape and that the police had forced her into lying. This created an upsurge in anger about the case and the NAACP finally joined the ILD in the campaign to free the young men.

In spite of the beatings, jailings and threats, the ILD kept both the mass campaign and the legal fight going by organizing meetings, rallies and raising money to pay legal fees and other expenses for the families of the Scottsboro Boys.

‘The All-Southern Scottsboro and Civil Rights Conference was one such mass meeting that went on in spite of Klan and police intimidation. In the days prior to the conference Klansmen organized a twenty-car motorcade through the Black community and distributed leaflets that read “Communism Will Not Be Tolerated.”

 Nonetheless some three hundred Blacks and fifty whites packed the meeting room and between 500 and 1000 were turned away because of lack of space and by the military presence of the police who stationed eighty cops equipped with three machine guns in posts across the street from the hall.

…As Hosea Hudson [a Black communist and labour leader in Deep South] recalled many stood up to the intimidation.  “[People] just walked all under them rifles, just went on in the door and on to the meeting.” (Hammer and Hoe)

The fight to free the railroaded young men took many years. Charges were finally dropped for four of the nine defendants. Sentences for the rest ranged from 75 years to death. All but two served prison sentences; all were free by 1946.

You Cannot Kill the Working Class
Angelo Herndon, a Black communist labour organizer, summed up the significance of the struggle in his essay entitled “You Cannot Kill the Working Class.”

If you know the South as I do, you know what the Scottsboro case means. Here were the landlords in their fine plantation homes, and the big white bosses in their city mansions, and the whole brutal force of [private security] and police who do their bidding. There they sat, smug and self-satisfied, and oh, so sure that nothing could ever interfere with them and their ways. For all time they would be able to sweat and cheat the [Black] people, and jail and frame and lynch and shoot them, as they pleased.

And all of a sudden someone laid a hand on their arm and said: "STOP." It was a great big' hand, a powerful hand, the hand of the workers. The bosses were shocked and horrified and scared. I know that. And I know also that after the fight began for the Scottsboro boys, every [Black] worker in mill or mine, every [Black] cropper on the Black Belt plantations, breathed a little easier and held his head a little higher.