FERGUSON, Missouri, August 11 —  “Racism means? We got to fight back!” came the shout down West Florissant Avenue, as hundreds of Black youth and PL’ers took the streets one year after the murder of Mike Brown by the racist Ferguson Police Department. In defiance of both the Ferguson PD and a thunderstorm, we chanted and stopped traffic.
PLP sent contingents from the South, the Midwest, and Los Angeles to Ferguson to organize around the one-year anniversary of Brown’s murder. Because of PLP’s consistent work in Ferguson over the past year, we have been welcomed by workers there. We received an especially warm response at CHALLENGE sales near the site of Mike Brown’s murder, a segregated Black working-class area. Many residents agreed with our analysis on the need for multiracial unity and workers’ power.
We have developed relationships with Ferguson youth who have organized themselves under the name of Lost Voices. For three nights in a row, PL’ers have joined with them and other young protesters in nightly marches from West Florissant Avenue to the Ferguson Police Department. These energetic marches would start small, with 50 to 60 people and a few cars, and then grow into masses of hundreds that took over the street. When PLP and Lost Voices led chants on the bullhorns, they were picked up by the rest of the marchers. These marches were powerful and loud, with a level of militancy that many people haven’t experienced before – even veteran members of PLP.
Ferguson: School for Communism
Many PL’ers have learned a lot about commitment and perseverance from the young people of Ferguson. Less experienced PL’ers have gotten a crash course in how to protest and fight back in this class struggle against the Ferguson PD and the capitalist state.  The lessons they have learned are invaluable.  
While standing shoulder to shoulder in this struggle, PLP has also struggled politically with our friends in the community to share our vision of the fight for communism. PL’ers held a study group that stressed the need for multiracial unity while discussing the divisive role played by all types of nationalism and the false notion of “white skin privilege.”  Some friends of PLP defended the idea of needing a “Black space,” and a comradely and passionate discussion ensued. PL’ers argued that ideas like “Black spaces” are pushed by the ruling class through organizations like Black Lives Matter, which is funded by the Ford Foundation and billionaire imperialist George Soros.  These backward ideas can only mislead workers into aligning with bosses of like “identity.” Unity with bosses is a death trap that leads workers to fight each other instead of the ruling class. PLP fights for worker unity: Asian, Latin, Black and white.
It is our discipline as a Party that allows us to grow and advance. Discipline means learning to recognize the limits of a situation.  During one march, the numbers of workers and community members dwindled to the point that continuing to hold the street would have unnecessarily risked our comrades and friends. Once the Party leadership determined it was time to leave the street, we made a tactical retreat. One individual who’d joined the march toward the end criticized the Party for leaving when we did.  He was a provocateur who wanted to attack the cops on the spot or provoke the cops into attacking the marchers. PLP believes in organizing a mass party for mass revolutionary violence, not spontaneous anarchy!
The Struggle Sharpens and Continues
Later that day, the police showed up in riot gear, and shots were fired between them and some community members. This gave the cops their opportunity to crack down. Tyrone Harris, who’d just graduated from high school and was a classmate of Michael Brown, was shot by St. Louis County Police. He is currently in a local hospital where his family has been banned from entering.
Our primary focus has been on the youth and community who were most active in the rebellion over the past year. However, this Summer Project has given us a new perspective on organizing and opened new possibilities for struggle. After the police crackdown, we attended a public meeting with progressive local clergy who are organizing their parishioners in direct action against racism in the area. We also are planning a rally and CHALLENGE sale at the hospital where Tyrone Harris is being held. We will reach out to health workers to make the connection between racist police terror and the racist healthcare system.
The fightback in Ferguson is far from over, and PLP’s work here is just getting started! Getting all workers to see that the Ferguson fight is their fight will be another nail in capitalism’s coffin. Multiracial unity of the entire working class is the only way to smash this entire system, and PLP’s Summer Project is bringing that future closer!

HAITI, July 28 — On the one hundred year anniversary since the 1915 U.S. imperialist invasion of Haiti, more than a thousand angry workers, students and youth demonstrated, marched and sang under the Progressive Labor Party’s leadership in the south of the country! The demonstration was called denouncing hunger, high prices, and the MINUSTAH occupation. MINUSTAH is an acronym for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, an imperialist military occupation began in 2004, following a U.S. imperialist-backed coup. This occupation intensified after the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010, which massacred more than 250,000 workers, injured 300,000 and displaced 1.5 million more. MINUSTAH’s occupation is also responsible for the spread of cholera in the earthquake’s aftermath.
Workers from all over marched for kilometers singing militant songs with lyrics like, “why do the dogs of those with money live better than the poor, poverty is destroying them, it will not stay that way” and “we are rebelling, we cannot bear hunger [poverty, high prices, capitalism, etc.]. They arrived with plates, pots and spoons to hit to demonstrate that they cannot feed themselves. Many who came were inspired, and one participant later summarized his impressions to a friend: “the people who fight, will win, and we need to change the welfare of everyone.” Everyone agreed that we must organize other mass mobilizations and denounce the evil of capitalism.
Our Party extensively prepared for this event. After a quick meeting we got to work: hundreds of pamphlets were printed and sent for distribution, and mobilizations were called via social networks and on the radio station of the city. Contributions were taken for the banner and placards. Some of our comrades visited a nearby town days prior to the march. They gave a lecture about how the struggle is not about “poor” countries versus “rich” countries, but rather the fight against capitalism in every country and organizing for communist revolution. Other PL’ers mobilized door-to-door with friends and relatives in the area with a megaphone, and under a veil. On the day of the march itself we obtained a sound system, and our comrades ensured there was enough water for the marchers.
The lesson from this demonstration: workers were hesitant about the march, but when they saw it was a PLP comrade giving leadership to the demonstration, they asserted their confidence that this is a revolutionary and correct event. From the masses to the comrades, it inspired confidence.
The working class in Haiti and the abundant natural resources there have long been a target of U.S. imperialism. In 1915, the U.S. imperialists invaded, massacred thousands of workers, and began a brutal twenty year occupation claiming they were building “democracy.” While the French imperialists were busy stealing 80% of Haiti’s budget for over a century as punishment for the 1803-4 revolution that ended French colonial rule, the U.S. imperialist occupation re-instituted slavery to the working class of Haiti. The U.S. bosses also claimed its forests, oil and gas reserves, for exploitation. While the U.S. imperialist occupation supposedly ended in 1935, Haiti has been ruled by a string of U.S. imperialist-backed murderers since. MINUSTAH is only the latest.
This insatiable imperialist drive for labor and resources in Haiti is essential to capitalism. Under capitalism, competing imperialists are driven to exploit workers and resources all over the world that will guarantee them the greatest profits, and greatest power over other rivals. Meanwhile, workers in Haiti face escalating food prices, and whole communities are still displaced in camps without water, healthcare, or schools. The international working class has no stake in capitalism. PLP fights to smash the capitalist source of imperialism with armed revolution.
Our Party will continue to mobilize and work in this area where our demonstration inspired many and where there are friends and relatives becoming involved with our Party. Our struggle is the struggle with and within the working class for the establishment of communism!

OAXACA, MEXICO — On July 21, the Governor of Oaxaca, Gabino Cué, announced the elimination of the State Institute of Public Education of Oaxaca (IEEPO) and the creation of a “new” governing body of education in the state. As Cué made this announcement, the sinister head of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) Emilio Chuayffet was there showing his support, and that of the federal government.
These politicians state that this measure will put an end to teachers’ control of the IEEPO, held since 1992 under Section 22, won by the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) union. At the core of the announcement is a fascist hit against Section 22, openly excluding teachers from participation in decision-making on educational programs and the organization and supervision of the schools. According to Cué and Chuayffet these things must be performed by personnel as corrupt and sinister as they are, not the teachers who are responsible for the education of the children and youth in the classroom. That is the capitalists’ vision for all aspects of society.
The announcement was accompanied by the presence of thousands of federal police and the military, who have been patrolling by ground and air trying to intimidate the teachers and the community. They have canceled the bank accounts of teachers and the delivery of union dues. Teachers have responded with massive demonstrations at the state and national level, and teachers from other cities like Michoacan, Chiapas, Guerrero and Mexico City have shown their support of Section 22.
On behalf of Cué’s education reform, the ruling capitalists, their apologists and their repressive governing bodies have launched a fascist attack to get rid of Section 22. There is no doubt that this is an attack by the capitalist class against the entire working class. Its education reform has nothing to do with improving the quality of education, but to fire teachers and privatize education.
The assessment that the SEP is supposed to make does not seek to retain effective teachers who are committed to the education of children and youth, their true goal is to dismiss anyone who questions the rotten education system and defends their rights as workers. Tens of thousands of education workers will be laid off because the SEP is moving all administrative work to municipalities, who will subrogate these services and will force parents to pay for them. Teachers from Oaxaca are the ones with the strongest resistance to this repressive and privatization reform, thus they are being targeted, and eventually eliminated.
In Mexico and throughout the world, capitalists blame teachers for backwardness in the education system, but the ruling capitalists are solely responsible for this as they subject and degrade education to their needs and monetary gains. They spend public funding to sustain hundreds of thousands of military and police murderers who defend the capitalists and their profits, and commit mass murders, in particular of young people who the capitalists’ hypocritically claim to defend with this reform.
Behind the current education problem, unemployment, growing poverty rates, narco-state genocide, among other calamities, are the capitalist ruling elites who accumulate enormous wealth daily through cheap labor, seizing natural resources and privatizing basic social services such as health and education.
The capitalist ruling class exploits, represses, imprisons, tortures, disappears, spies and corrupts — it is a burdening liability to humanity. Workers have the need and the power to put an end to it. We must break nationalist borders and expand this struggle internationally, with the understanding that we are one working class and our enemy is the entire imperialist capitalist class. Workers of the world unite! It is a powerful slogan that puts all the world’s oppressed on the offense.
A true good quality education for all youth will only come when we’ve smashed this system of markets and profits, when society is run by and for all workers and their families, and where all members of the working class are provided for. The working class united and organized by Progressive Labor Party has the power to end this rotten capitalist system. PLP has already begun the fight for communism. Join us!

Beginning with our May 6 issue, CHALLENGE has run a series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party. These articles have described the origins of PLP — including its forerunner, the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) — as well as our concentration among industrial workers; the fight against racism; our Party’s leadership of the anti-Vietnam War movement; the breaking of the government ban on travel to Cuba; the defeat of the fascist House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Here we will review the Party’s championing of internationalism.
Progressive Labor Party advanced a tradition of communist internationalism that began with the First International and the Paris Commune of 1871. We have carried the torch of internationalism to its logical and necessary conclusion: one world, one class, one Party fighting directly for communism. No retreats along nationalist lines!
PLP is an international communist party because the working class is one class everywhere, with a universal class interest. Since workers produce everything of value, we can collectively determine how to share it according to need. We don’t need bosses, a class that steals most of that value through wage slavery. We stand for the abolition of capitalism; we fight to eliminate racism, sexism, and nationalism.
Our internationalism means working-class unity that follows the slogan, “Smash All Borders!”
It means a united working class led by one mass, international Party containing hundreds of millions of communist workers. We reject the call by various national “communist” parties for nationalist “roads to socialism.” This formulation is drawn from capitalist-created countries that divide the international working class and negate its universal class character.
Unlike the old communist movement, PLP does not separate along nationalist lines. Though our circumstances and tactics may differ in the U.S. and East Africa, our political line for communist revolution is the same everywhere. We oppose nationalism, which leads to workers uniting behind “their” capitalist bosses and fighting “foreign” or immigrant workers. The concept of two opposing, worldwide classes — workers against bosses — is fundamental to destroying capitalism and establishing communism.
PLP Grows Worldwide
The following are just some of the struggles that reflect the Party’s internationalist practice:
In 1964, in solidarity with the workers and youth of Vietnam, PLP formed the May 2nd Movement to oppose the U.S. imperialist invasion of Vietnam. We organized the first mass demonstration against the war under the slogan, “U.S. Imperialism Get Out of Vietnam!” This slogan eventually was adopted by millions, challenging the calls by liberals and phony leftists to “Stop the Bombing” and “Negotiate,” neither of which indicted U.S. imperialism (see CHALLENGE, 8/12).
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, PL’ers joined the military to win soldiers to refuse to kill their sisters and brothers in Vietnam and instead to turn the guns against the U.S. ruling class.
During the 1984-85 British miners’ strike, PLP organized support campaigns, bringing miners to the U.S. to speak at rallies and on campuses. They exposed the brutal policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who ordered police attacks on strikers and laid off tens of thousands.
In El Salvador, PLP recruited from among former fighters for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, after the FMLN became an electoral party that betrayed the revolution.
In Palestine-Israel, PLP joined mass demonstrations against Israeli rulers’ demolition of Palestinian villages. We fought sub-standard wages enforced by slave traders and exposed the rulers’ racism perpetrated against immigrants from Africa.
In Mexico, PLP members in the teachers’ union fought government attacks to break their strikes and cripple the schools through privatization.
In East Africa, PLP is organizing among students and teachers and waging anti-sexist struggles.
In Colombia, PLP mobilized striking workers, from refrigerator factories to beer factories. PLP’s revolutionary line was so threatening to revisionists [fake leftists] and bosses alike that death threats to our comrades were common.
In Haiti, we grew from a club of trade unionists and students to one embedding itself into the agricultural working class. PLP fought against MINUSTAH, the UN occupation force that triggered the spread of cholera, as well as racist deportations and inadequate sewage and plumbing systems.
In Pakistan, PL’ers organized aid for workers devastated by an earthquake, while the government abandoned the victims. We are fighting to unite workers to challenge the bosses’ attacks, especially on super-exploited women working in subhuman conditions and earning little or no pay.
With the advent of U.S. imperialist assaults on the working class in Afghanistan and Iraq, PL launched campaigns attacking the murders of millions by U.S. rulers, from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Pickets were organized at embassies in U.S. cities. PL’ers enlisted in the military to spread the Party’s ideas among soldiers in Iraq and to oppose attacks on working-class families there.
Spreading Solidarity and Ideology
PLP has organized international solidarity for local struggles. Comrades in Haiti wrote letters of solidarity to City University of New York students during the campaign to oust war criminal David Petraeus from campus. In Brooklyn, PLP rallied in immigrant neighborhoods in response to racist deportations in the Dominican Republic.
Word of PLP’s actions and communist ideology have spread across the world, both through immigrant workers from Latin America and through CHALLENGE on the internet. Today, CHALLENGE is printed in English, Spanish, French, Creole, Arabic, Hebrew, Dari, Urdu, and more.
One Class, One Fight for Communism
The world we fight for is one where workers’ power will reign supreme. A communist world will wipe out borders created by the bosses to reap more profits from exploiting those they call “foreigners.” It will eradicate imperialist wars, which the rulers launch to grab resources and cheap labor. In a communist world, there will be no foreigners, no “illegal” migrants, no refugees from war or poverty.
While the reformists continue to fragment themselves with the identity politics of race, gender, sexuality, or national loyalties, PLP unites ALL workers, based on class consciousness. Over the last 50 years, our staunch internationalism made has helped us grow from an organization with a handful of workers in New York to a Party that spans 27 countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe. That is no small victory! Forward to another 50 years of communist organizing that puts the international working class above the individual.
Workers in Senegal has the same interest as workers in China or Chile or the U.S.: a society that will meet their class’s needs. An egalitarian, communist world. We invite all workers to join this struggle—for yourselves, for your children and for future generations.
We have a Party to organize and a world to win!