On November 30th, 2023, we lost Lorrell, a devoted comrade, organizer, teacher, leader, and friend, to a medical complication. Her absence creates a hole in our lives that is immense and unfathomable. Trying to understand this tragedy is impossible and awful. We will carry on in her memory but what has been lost can never be replaced. We will do her justice by celebrating her life, spirit, and commitment to the international working class.

Early life, meeting Progressive Labor Party
Lorrell spent her early years in the southeast suburbs of Chicago, a region marked by brutal environmental racism due to concentrations of heavy industry and pollution. Undoubtedly witnessing firsthand from a young age how capitalism treats whole populations of workers – particularly Black and Brown workers – as disposable, influenced Lorrell’s understanding of the system and fueled her desire to fight to destroy it.

She met the Progressive Labor Party while a university student and quickly became a committed comrade in the struggle for revolution. Her sharp insights on how racism is indispensable to capitalism notably superseded the liberal interpretations of race and class within the mass movement in general. Her dialectical understanding of how racism, sexism, and capitalism all work to reinforce one another and oppress all working people influenced her to organize firmly based on multiracial working-class unity.

After graduating college, Lorrell committed herself to teaching at local universities attended by working-class students. She also worked as a program director for a disability rights organization, one of her life’s principal passions. She went above and beyond to fight alongside other workers with disabilities to demand their respect and basic accommodations so often denied under the profit system.

Although Lorrell always acknowledged the scale of the class struggle in nearby Chicago, she never once abandoned what she saw as revolutionary potential in workers and students in the smaller towns and cities of Northwest Indiana where she lived. To this end, she passionately advocated like she did for so many other issues for their inclusion in the Party’s overall political work. Because of her, countless people became closer to PLP and remain in our base to this day.

Tireless leadership fighting racism, sexism, and capitalism
As Lorrell’s experience and commitment grew, she was asked to give more leadership, joining the area city committee which included leaders from Chicago and Northwest Indiana clubs. Lorrell played a great role in this body and especially stepped up in 2016 when two leaders were gone for the year. During this year she helped plan the demonstration we held in front of the home of Jason Van Dyke, the racist kkkop murderer of 17-year-old Black teenager Laquan McDonald.

This action took weeks of planning and multiple meetings to make sure everyone agreed with and was committed to the plan. Security planning was crucial given we were directly targeting Van Dyke where he lived. The action was successful and caught Van Dyke unaware—the dirtbag was actually out front watering his lawn when we marched up! This was one of the sharpest actions that took place nationally that year.  

That same summer she led another struggle after city bosses in East Chicago tried to abruptly uproot the majority Black worker residents of the West Calumet Housing Complex after allowing them and their children to live for decades on soil contaminated with lead and arsenic. Lorrell personally made connections with mothers whose children had suffered serious health effects, driving them to doctor appointments as well as protests.

When the GEO corporation was trying to build an immigrant detention center in her area, Lorrell organized to have people oppose their efforts at every turn. She organized workers to go to council meetings and speak out against this racist project. Gary, Indiana is a majority Black city and as a Black worker, she spoke of solidarity with immigrants of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Gary and the surrounding areas needed jobs (since so much manufacturing left the area) but she argued fiercely that jobs jailing other workers was not what the region needed or wanted. This was a struggle that was won—GEO did not get to build their immigrant jail.

Lorrell also participated in a coalition group that found out that a local airport was being used weekly to deport immigrants from the area. Weekly protests at the airport began and Lorrell once again played a leading role. Rejecting the average performative liberal protest tactics, she helped lead other workers onto the actual airport tarmac towards the airplanes during one particularly memorable confrontation against security forces in 2017.

Like millions of other antiracists around the world, Lorrell dove headlong into the mass rebellions that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. She was a mainstay in all the protests in the region, pushing the envelope to be more openly confrontational with the killer cops and gutter racists across the suburbs. The militant organizing spaces that she helped develop stayed busy in the years that followed, notably when staging mass antisexist protests around reproductive justice after the reversal of Roe v Wade in 2022.

Her memory marches on
Lorrell was the stabilizing force in her family and cared for the previous generation with devotion and kindness. Whether it was driving her aunt, mom, or dad to their doctor’s appointments, or having them move in with her, she always went the extra mile. Losing her is being felt deeply by her immediate family, her comrades, and her friends.

Speaking with a friend, she said, “You know, if something were to happen to me, don't mourn me with candles. Make it loud and revolutionary. Make it reflect the movement I gave my energy and passion to. Don't stand around silently with candles. Have a bullhorn, march the street, and more than anything join the struggle I believe in so strongly.”

We will do just that, comrade. We will pick up your rifle and keep fighting this racist and sexist system that took you from us far too soon.

January 13,Washington, DC—Marking 100 days after Israel’s fascist attack on working class in Gaza, at least tens of thousands rallied and marched here to condemn Israel’s genocidal attacks, calling for the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Progressive Labor Party brought the message that the liberation of the working class, from Palestine to the U.S. and China, will come with communist revolution and global working-class unity. This message resonated with marchers, as they eagerly took  500 Challenge newspapers and hundred-plus communist leaflets from PL’ers, with some making donations to build the PLP.

The PLP rallied within the broader rally behind a banner calling for communist revolution. A leader of the local transit union declared that ATU Local 689, based on the initiative of PLPers in the union, voted overwhelmingly to demand a ceasefire in Palestine and an end to U.S. supply of weapons and money to Israel. But, he added, it was time for the labor movement to move beyond resolutions and take job actions and solidarity strikes to force the U.S. bosses to stop supporting Israel’s military devastation of Gaza, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

“Not another penny, not another dime, No more support for Israel’s crimes!”
Another PLP member, suspended from her job teaching middle school for Facebook posts opposing Israel’s murders of children, called on the crowd to never back down. She said that, when asked by “investigators” from the school board whether she was scared by the charges of antisemitism against her, she replied, “Scared of who? Look, I was in Charlottesville fighting real Nazis, you and the Zionists don’t scare me!” Dozens of contacts were made with marchers interested in the fight for communism, boding well for the long-term struggle.

A group of 150 trade unionists in D.C. rallied and marched to join the larger protest, a glimmer of what engaging the labor movement with communist leadership could mean to intensifying this struggle against genocide.

The rally in DC and other US cities was part of a global day of struggle, with millions worldwide marching to condemn Israel’s attacks, demanding an immediate ceasefire, and condemning the U.S. and Genocide Joe Biden for arming Israel to the teeth as part of its imperialist project. Many of these rallies globally were held at U.S. embassies and consulates, exposing the truth that the U.S. imperialists provide military and financial backing to  Israel to enable it to serve U.S. economic and political interests in the Middle East. Control over energy resources and trade routes are vital to U.S. imperialism.

Don’t be lulled into complacency by countries opposing Israel
South Africa made a powerful, chilling case against Israel at the United Nation’s International Court of Justice for murdering 23,000 Palestinians including thousands of children. Israel’s president Isaac Herzog arrogantly dismissed the charges as “preposterous” and a “blood libel”. The majority of the UN General Assembly has supported Palestine, but the U.S. has vetoed any Security Council resolution calling for a “ceasefire” or “cessation of hostilities”. The U.S. finally agreed to abstain on a meaningless resolution to improve humanitarian assistance in Gaza. But none of the countries that have lined up to support Palestine diplomatically or judicially will stop Israel. Only armed struggle can change the situation on the ground, which is exactly why the US imperialists have placed two aircraft carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and 12 battleships in the Red Sea area to intimidate and kill any armed resistance to Israel’s genocide.

A wider war looms
Inter-imperialist rivalry is intensifying globally. The genocide in Palestine is one particularly brutal instance of this. The U.S. side is weakening and shrinking, but it will not cede power, money, and influence without a fight. Already engaged in two wars (Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine), depleted of much of its weaponry and with vastly understaffed armed forces, the U.S. imperialists are increasingly vulnerable as other imperialists sharpen their knives. The UN vote reflects the decline of US power. In the Middle East, several armed groups (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Islamic groups in Iraq and Syria) have already engaged in a limited way militarily against the U.S. and Israel. Many at today’s rally understood the danger of a wider war, holding signs saying “Hands off Yemen”! Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road extends into the Middle East, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and the African continent, implicitly challenging U.S. hegemony.

For those seeking solutions to this sharpening conflict, rebuilding the communist movement on an internationalist and revolutionary basis is the first order of business. Intensifying the class struggle goes hand in hand with this approach. Let’s be clear-eyed about the devastation that imperialism is creating in Palestine and the rest of the world as well, and move urgently to boldly advance into the battle against racism and genocide and for communism!

After more than 100 days and 29,000 bombs, the genocidal Israeli “Defense” Forces have leveled the Gaza Strip to an uninhabitable concrete graveyard. This U.S.-backed military is killing more than 250 civilians in Gaza every day, a higher rate than in any other conflict in this century (Aljazeera, 1/11). The death toll now surpasses 24,000, including over 10,000 children—more than one percent of Gaza’s population.

Genocide is the physical destruction of a group of people and the communities that knit them together—the classrooms where their children learn to read, the bakeries that make their daily bread. The families in Gaza who fight for survival each day are surrounded by rubble. More than two thirds of homes, schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, and olive groves have been decimated by the nonstop Zionist bombardment. Drinkable water, electricity, fuel, and medicine are scarce commodities (Wall Street Journal, 12/30/23). Since October, Israel’s criminal invasion has caused nine terrifying communications blackouts (New York Times, 1/12). Nine of ten people in Gaza, nearly half of them children, go without food for whole days. The United Nations is predicting famine—widespread starvation—by February (aljazeera.com, 12/23/23).

Israel’s devastation of infrastructure is an act of ethnic cleansing—to push all or most Arab workers out of Gaza altogether. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be entirely different” (msn.com, 1/5). The Israeli rulers’ most powerful argument for “resettlement” is to make Gaza uninhabitable. It’s a vicious, racist strategy enabled by arms and political cover from baby-killer Joe Biden and the capitalist rulers who run him. The U.S. bosses, led by the likes of ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, are the world’s most deadly state terrorists. Their heinous attack on workers in Palestine makes our task of organizing for communist revolution even more urgent.

U.S. bosses kill to protect profits
The catastrophe in Gaza is part of a larger battle between the U.S., European, and Israeli bosses, on one side, and rival imperialists in China and Russia, which back regional power Iran, on the other. The three-month-old conflict in the oil-rich Middle East is steadily expanding. In response to Iran-backed Houthi attacks on ships in the commercially and strategically vital Red Sea, the U.S. Army and its allies have bombed more than 30 sites inside Yemen. On January 16, Iran jumped directly into the simmering fray with missile strikes on neighboring Pakistan and Iraq, ostensibly in response to terrorist attacks within its borders. Iran-backed militias have also repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. interests in the region are so crucial to the bosses that they’re clamping down on their liberal stooges with a blunt message:  No criticism of Israel will be tolerated. Claudine Gay was forced to resign as president of Harvard University after her weak support for genocide offended wealthy Zionist donors. Like “the good Germans” who looked the other way in the face of the Nazis’ rise in Germany in the 1930s, liberal misleaders have stayed largely silent on the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. From Democratic Party politicians to union bosses and clergy, the overwhelming majority have fallen in line in support of genocide, if only by their silence. They have exposed their true allegiance to U.S. capitalism and the war and fascism that the profit system demands.

Hamas nationalism is poison for workers in Palestine
In Gaza, workers and their families are heroically resisting death and destruction. Medical workers go days without sleep to tend to the sick and injured. Families share whatever shelter they have. Relatives and friends take in orphaned children. Adults go without food and water to keep their children alive as they dodge the latest 2,000-pound bomb from Israeli planes.

Their suffering has not gone unmarked by the international working class. Millions of workers and students around the world are demanding an immediate cease-fire. Aid workers are imploring the UN to remove Israeli blockades on humanitarian support (AP, 1/16). On January 13, in mass demonstrations around the world, workers marched under Palestinian flags for a “free Palestine.” Meanwhile, top political figures in Hamas, the de facto leaders of this national liberation movement, are mostly missing in action in Gaza. They are busy brokering weapons deals in Beirut or with their patrons in Iran as they maneuver for more power.

Workers must reject the misleadership of Hamas just as we reject the U.S. liberals who demand our silence on the crimes of Israel. The Hamas leadership calls for the creation of an Islamist-capitalist state. For all workers who deplore the atrocities of capitalism, the Hamas vision is just more of the same nightmare.

The history of Iran is a cautionary tale for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. For decades after World War II, the U.S backed the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Beginning in the late 1960’s, communists in the Tudeh Party and other leftist movements led resistance to the Shah and his ties to U.S. imperialism. At the same time, Islamists led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought for an Islamist-capitalist state. In 1979, the left joined forces with the Islamists to overthrow the Shah. But immediately upon securing control over Iran’s new government, Khomeini denounced the communists and soon banned the Tudeh Party and imprisoned over 10,000 members (https://merip.org/, March-April, 1982). In 1988, the Iranian ruling class executed tens of thousands of leftists (France 24, 10/8/21). Though left-wing forces in Iran were instrumental in defeating U.S. imperialism, their terrible error in backing “progressive” Islamist nationalists has left the workers there in capitalist misery to this day.

The only solution is communist revolution
The communist revolutions that put the working class in power in the Soviet Union and China should continue to inspire workers of the world today. At the same time, we must also learn from and overcome these revolutions’ mistakes, including the embrace of nationalism. [See Road to Revolution III at plp.org.]

Workers in South Africa, Vietnam, Congo, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and many more have fought courageously to oust imperialist colonial forces. But over and over again, we have seen wars for national liberation replace one set of capitalists with another. They ultimately benefit only the new set of bosses. Meanwhile, workers continue to suffer. The movement for communism—for a society run by and for the international working class—is set back.

The mass murder in Gaza is an attack on workers everywhere. To defend our class, we cannot be lulled into silence or make popular concessions to nationalism. When we say that the only solution is communist revolution, we know we have a long struggle ahead. We also know that nothing short of communist revolution will end imperialist war, racism, sexism, and exploitation. The historic victories in the Soviet Union and China are evidence that workers—ourselves, our coworkers, our families and friends—can change the world. Progressive Labor Party calls for unity with our class sisters and brothers to denounce the genocide in Gaza, to reject capitalist misleadership, and to fight on for communist revolution. Join us!

U.N. calls Palestinian conditions “horrific”
New York Times, 1/13–The twin specters of a widening regional war and intensified suffering of civilians loomed over the Middle East on Saturday as the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen threatened to respond to American airstrikes, and a senior U.N. official warned of a “horrific” humanitarian crisis in Gaza that he said was hurtling toward famine…In northern Gaza, corpses are left in the road and starving people stop aid trucks “in search of anything they can get to survive,” Martin Griffiths, the top U.N. aid official, told the United Nations Security Council on Friday. With the risk of famine in Gaza “growing by the day,” he repeated earlier criticisms of Israel, which he said was delaying or denying permission to humanitarian convoys bringing urgently needed aid to northern Gaza…Israeli attacks have killed at least 23,000 people in Gaza since, according to the Gaza health authorities. At least 1.9 million people, or 85 percent of the population, have been forced from their homes, Mr. Griffiths said.

Gaza war spreads into a wider conflict
Al Jazeera, 1/12–For months, top United States officials have repeatedly said that President Joe Biden does not want to see Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip escalate into a wider conflict in the Middle East…later, the US confirmed it had collaborated with the United Kingdom to launch “strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels'', in coordination with a handful of other countries…“It does run contrary to what the administration has been saying, but it was also inevitable, “Everybody watching this situation knew that it was a matter of time before the war in Gaza spilled out across the region…The Iran-aligned Houthis control large swaths of Yemen including the western coast overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which leads to the Red Sea. The group began firing missiles at Israel and attacking commercial ships shortly after the war on Gaza began in October.

Is inter imperialist struggle accelerating?
The Guardian, 1/13–The first of what may be many US-led air strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi Shia militants in Yemen… reflects…another unwelcome fact. The dominant power in the Middle East is no longer the US, western-aligned Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even Israel. It is the Houthis’ main ally, Iran…China has created spheres of geopolitical and economic influence to rival and, if possible, supplant those of the US… In 2021, the two countries [China and Iran] signed a 25-year strategic investment and energy pact. Under Chinese sponsorship, Iran has joined the Brics group and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation…Iran sells millions of barrels of discounted crude to China each month, transported there by “dark fleet” oil tankers…With Russia…Iran supplies armed drones that Moscow uses to kill Ukrainians. US intelligence reportedly believes Russia’s Wagner mercenary group plans to provide Hezbollah with a medium-range air defense system…Iran…may soon take delivery of advanced Russian Sukhoi SU-35 fighter-bombers…nuclear weapons-related enrichment programme is reportedly advancing rapidly…an Iranian bomb, may be closer than ever.

War in Asia would be much worse
Bloomberg, 1/8–War over Taiwan would have a cost in blood and treasure so vast that even those unhappiest with the status quo have reason not to risk it. Bloomberg Economics estimate the price tag at around $10 trillion, equal to about 10% of global GDP — dwarfing the blow from the war in Ukraine, Covid pandemic and Global Financial Crisis.

China’s rising economic and military heft, Taiwan’s burgeoning sense of national identity, and fractious relations between Beijing and Washington mean the conditions for a crisis are in place…Everyone from Wall Street investors to military planners and the swathe of businesses that rely on Taiwan’s semiconductors are already moving to hedge against the risk. National security experts in the Pentagon, think tanks in the US and Japan, and global consulting firms are gaming out scenarios from a Chinese maritime “quarantine” of Taiwan, to the seizure of Taiwan’s outlying islands, and a full-scale Chinese invasion.