Baltimore, MD, July 14—Communists have a responsibility—in the fight against police terror, and in all struggles against racism—to go beyond reformism. Think for a moment about the fight against slavery. Looking back, the people we most respect are those who were dedicated to fully abolishing that institution: the hundreds of thousands of folks like Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and John Brown. We don’t look back, with heartfelt admiration, at people who thought slavery couldn’t be defeated, and therefore devoted themselves to the lesser goal of trying to make it slightly less horrific.
Similarly, today, we must work hard to share a very important understanding: capitalism—which is the root of racism and police terror—can and must be abolished. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in Baltimore strives  to make that contribution, as part of our vigorous activities supporting the weekly West Wednesday rallies, streaming events, and other parts of the struggle—demanding accountability for the vicious police murder of Tyrone West on June 18, 2013 and for all victims of police terror. In ahave recently made the decision to join Progressive Labor Party.
As an example of striving to fulfill our responsibility—bringing a revolutionary perspective into the reform struggle—here is an excerpt of a speech given by a member of Progressive Labor Party at a recent West Wednesday streaming event.

Not long ago, in May, President Joe Biden met with the family of George Floyd. After the meeting, Biden said, “…we need to build lasting trust between the vast majority of the men and women who wear the badge honorably and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect.
In other words, he says the vast majority of cops are honorable, and we need to trust them. But we know that racism is systemic. What does that actually mean? Think about it. If police were really here to serve and protect, the police cars and helicopters would be everywhere equally. Why are they concentrated in working-class neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods in which the residents are predominately Black & Latin? It has to do with power and control.
High up on the scale of power are the owners of factories and businesses. Above them are the large banks. For example, when Intel wants to build a new factory to make computer chips, the cost is about $10 billion. Businesses like Intel usually don’t have $10 billion. They have to borrow it from the biggest banks.
The owners and directors of the biggest banks really run things. Systemic racism allows business owners to pay Black and  Latin workers less than white workers. That’s how businesses make about a third of their profits. All workers are exploited, but paying lower wages to [non-white] workers is super-exploitation. On top of that, capitalists use systemic racism to divide the working class, weakening our unity. The billionaires want white workers to refuse to unite with Black workers. This disunity keeps us from fighting successfully against our common enemy, the capitalists.
The combination of super-exploitation, together with divide-and-conquer, probably accounts for a huge chunk of their profits—from racism! The big banks know this. They have think-tanks that make policy. No matter who is the mayor or governor or president, the big bankers control the economy and the government. That means they have ultimate control over the role of the cops, the courts, the state’s attorneys, and the attorney general.
Remember, after Freddie Gray [in Baltimore, 2015] was killed, and people fought back, the rulers brought in every local police force—plus the National Guard—and concentrated those forces to protect what’s important to them: major businesses, Hopkins, the Central Police station, and City Hall. At the same time, the National Guard and the police forces attacked and locked up hundreds of people who didn’t hurt anyone, but who DID challenge this system. When you get to the heart of the matter, we live under a dictatorship of the capitalist class. No matter who gets elected, the capitalists call the shots.
Yes, [Derek] Chauvin may spend years in jail, where he belongs, for killing George Floyd. But only seven cops in the whole United States have been convicted for murder since 2005. The cops kill about 1,100 people a year. If you do the math, that means just one single cop will get convicted of murder for every 2,500 people they kill. This is systemic racism. It serves the capitalist class. They want to make us fearful, so they can control us, make us passive, and continue to make their profits off our backs.
Think about the onlookers who felt horrible while watching Chauvin steal the life of George Floyd. Why didn’t they rush in and pull Chauvin off the neck of George Floyd? The young woman, Darnella Frazier, who videotaped the horrific murder, wakes up at night thinking about this, and feels awful that she couldn’t do more. In the middle of the night, all by herself, she apologizes to George Floyd.
The onlookers didn’t rush in to drag Chauvin off of George Floyd’s neck because they knew they would most likely be brutalized, arrested and incarcerated—if not killed. That’s capitalist power. It has to go!
Progressive Labor Party has a vision of the future, something worth fighting for. There is a broad range of political thought within the West Coalition, and we respect one another. But speaking from the viewpoint of Progressive Labor Party, the future we need is communism. That means sharing all the wealth that the working class produces.
We will defeat racism. We will build a new world of sisterhood and brotherhood. We will abolish the wage system. No more buying and selling of human labor power.
Let’s not forget capitalism and racism arose together historically. They cannot be separated. To defeat racism, we must defeat capitalism. And to defeat capitalism, we must defeat racism.
Biden won’t do this. Marilyn Mosby [the Baltimore City State’s Attorney] and Brian Frosh [Maryland’s attorney general] won’t do this. Brandon Scott [Baltimore’s mayor] won’t do this. On the national level, there have been 30 presidents since the end of slavery, and—during that whole century and a half—they have not defeated modern racism. Politicians won’t—and can’t—end racism.
WE must be the ones to fight for a future without systemic racism. Dare to struggle. Dare to win!

New  York City, July 20—While the Colombian government promotes speeches to celebrate the country's presumed independence today, young workers living in New York City, including a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member, PLP supporters and other organizers, denounced the oppression and subjugation of the working class in Colombia by multinationals, corporations and the rulers of imperialist countries like the United States. We marched from Times Square to the consulate of Colombia to Bryant Park and finally to Flushing Meadows. Two months ago the organizing of these young people began, as they met protesting in the streets. The process of organizing has cost them time, debate, discussions and tears. PLP members are struggling to strengthen this international working class solidarity while building a movement for communist revolution where the working class runs the world.
Devastating capitalism
These workers, ranging from 19 to 50 years old, have recognized that the reason they are moved  to protest is the sad and cruel suffering caused by devastating capitalism. However, this collective suffering has called for the creation of a community. It has promoted solidarity among workers from different regions of Colombia and even with the struggle of other workers in Palestine, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, South Africa, Cuba, Peru, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
The march began with a speech in English and Spanish written by two communists, one of them a member  of the PLP. In this speech, 10 reasons why Colombia is not independent were listed, among them: capitalism and the accumulation of wealth that prevails over life; the colonialism that still displaces thousands of indigenous and Black workers, destroying their communities and culture; the decisions about the so-called Colombian territory that are made from the economic interests of Washington, Ottawa and other international powers. The official numbers of victims of police terror in all its forms during the last two and a half months were also listed, highlighting the violation of the right to protest.
No independence for workers under capitalism
The speech continues saying that we will only celebrate independence when there are no more people starving, there is no more unemployment, lack of opportunities and sexual assaults; no more displacement, environmental destruction and an inefficient health system.
The visual and performative structure of the march included five people with shields and helmets representing the front-line who, almost three months after the social outbreak, still continue to daily confront the oppressive and rapist Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (ESMAD).
There was a second line composed of five weeping women, dressed in black and veiled, carrying signs and mutilated and bleeding body parts. They intervened throughout the march with cries and voices of lament, which were interwoven with the voices that led the march to tell the story of their children and neighbors mutilated and found in the river, at the doors of their homes or still missing. The open fascism that has existed in Colombia throughout its history is reflected in these devious practices to silence denouncing voices, making this territory the number one country in assassinations of social leaders in the world.
Subsequently, came the tombstones with the names of the recent 73 police homicide victims, two large coffins and behind these, other signs and a distorted Colombian flag stained with red ink representing the blood of the victims.
During the march, a stanza from the Milonga del Fusilado composed by the Uruguayan writer Carlos María Gutiérrez was shouted to denounce the violent repression of the Tupamaros in his country, (national liberation movement) in 1973.
"My voice, the one that is screaming / My dream, the one that is still whole / And you know that I only die / If you are listening / Because the one who died fighting / Lives in each partner." The slogan says: For our dead: Not a minute of silence! Not a minute of silence for the disappeared, raped women, starving children, massacres, displaced Afro and indigenous communities.
The march continued on the train to Queens where artistic performances were displayed and people from other countries interacted, explaining the situation in Colombia and establishing similarities with their governments. Mexican, Ecuadorian and Cuban workers joined the chants. In Flushing Park, the anti-imperialist speech and the denunciations of the oppression of the working class in South America continued as people clapped, raised their fists and shouted along with the march.
The march ended in a sit-in by joining an abolitionist group that was waiting for the protesters to share food, dance, and speeches.
The speech that opened the march and accompanied the denunciations in the streets, concluded that we need to get rid of the capitalist system, end imperialism and get rid of all the rulers, multinationals and corporations that oppress us to organize, join forces and fight back.
Workers will only be independent when everyone in this world, including Mexico, Congo, Haiti, Palestine… Everyone is independent! That means workers all around the world run all aspects of society not for profit, but to meet all our needs. That’s communism. Power to the working class!

Washington, DC, August 4—As the moratorium on evictions in the U.S. was drawing to a close, tenants and organizers including members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) rallied with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-affiliated Stomp Out Slumlords (SOS) to protest the evictions of our brothers and sisters that landlords and their political flunkeys are eagerly seeking. Hundreds marched to the White House demanding a halt to evictions. Some camped out overnight in a vigil to protest this attack on the working class.
Stomp out bosses, build red leadership
Class struggle against the bloodsucking landlords—including blocking evictions directly and turning to militant action and support from the rest of the working class—is the way forward. A PLP member also attended the feebly symbolic anti-eviction protest by Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) at the Capitol, but as expected heard nothing about how capitalism plus a pandemic means disaster for workers trying to stay in their homes. These liberal politicians are the main danger for our class because they serve to pacify us, blunt the class struggle, and put our trust into this system.
Class struggle and direct action must stomp out slumlords along with their capitalist brethren through communist revolution. Many participants in this protest, march, and vigil happily received copies of CHALLENGE and pledged to look into the need for a long-term struggle for communism to defeat the racist anti-worker attacks of the bosses.
Protests help organizers and tenants practice their organizing and leadership abilities. Organizers put together graphics, secured food and resources, and spread the word to other organizers and the media. Tenant committees tapped their social networks to activate their neighbors for political actions. For some tenants, these are their first ever political actions. These political actions energized everyone. The main question is under whose leadership is the working class being energized under? PLP affirms the need for communist leadership against evictions, racist housing policies, and this entire profit-system.  
Racist eviction crisis
For organizers, tenants, and onlookers, being surrounded by neighbors with a shared purpose can be radicalizing—people begin to imagine the immense power they could have if they continue to organize and fight. We know the eviction crisis is hitting hard, and we cannot sit idly by while our neighbors are at risk of joining the homeless.
According to a 2020 report by the Aspen Institute, an estimated 30 to 40 million people in the U.S. are at risk of eviction due to the Covid-19 housing crisis. If past trends hold, the upcoming eviction crisis will lead to higher rates of Covid-19 infection, especially as new variants emerge, and the impact will be felt most strongly in communities of Black workers (Brookings, 8/2). The scale of this problem exposes fundamental problems of racist capitalism’s “profit first, people last” character.
Capitalism endlessly erodes communities and will continue to do so until it is gone and replaced by communist revolution, where we workers run society for ourselves.
Community potlucks, BBQs, and parties along with political protests can bolster revolutionary potential by building a sense of community and solidarity. Joining and building a revolutionary organization, the PLP, will ensure a future for the growth of such working class solidarity as we proceed together on the road to communist revolution.

“We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead—who knows where!'' editorialized Anna Louise Strong on February 4, 1917, the eve of the Seattle general strike.
These words were as much a reflection of her own enthusiasm and confusion as they were an analysis of the brave but naive Seattle working class. She found her way 15  months later to revolutionary Russia. Anna Louise Strong’s autobiography I Change Worlds (1937) is the chronicle of this journey to communism.
Drawn to the Soviet Union like so many progressives of her generation, her first assignment was famine relief on the Russian river Volga. Fresh from the Seattle general strike, Anna Louise thought she was hot stuff until she met the young Russian communist Sonia. Sonia was donating her month's vacation to help the relief efforts. Drought, civil war and imperialist invasion had left the area devastated. The world capitalists hoped to starve the new socialist state into submission with an embargo.
“It is utterly impossible,” lamented Strong upon seeing the starving thousands.
“There is nothing impossible” responded Sonia in clear firm tones.
“But millions will die!” said Anna Louise.
“Millions have already died” answered Sonia, with the steady hand of communist determination.
The NEP and U.S. aid
The New Economic Policy (NEP), instituted a year later, allowed some capitalist exploitation. In return, the U.S. sent a little food to the famine areas. Strong’s misgivings about the U.S. relief and the NEP were reflected in her reports about Puriayeff, chairman of relief in a small village near Samara. Puriayeff, near starvation because he refused to eat more than the famine-stricken villagers he organized, had to meet with a U.S. representative from Washington. Strong reported:
Full-fed and aggressively content, he (the American relief man) sat in the best rooms Samara afforded, consuming a copious meal of borsch, chicken and wine. On the floor beside him were great baskets of hams, canned goods, wines and stronger drinks with foreign labels.
Puriayeff looked not at the food; he looked at the man’s uniform - an officer’s uniform of fine cloth with shining buttons and epaulets, well brushed as if for a parade ... He had seen such uniforms before ... He had seen them on the Tsar’s officers and on the officers of the intervention. He had overthrown the men who wore them.
Then Puriayeff looked down at the hampers of food and wine; in his eyes was not the look of hunger, but of worried contempt. Was the old world he had helped overthrow coming back to rule the Volga?
The NEP ended in the late 20s. Under Joseph Stalin the Soviet five-year plans replaced NEP. The U.S. relief bureaucrats were sent packing, but not before they were caught smuggling thousands of dollars’ worth of Tsarist jewels, now the property of the Russian working class, out of the country. Pravda (the daily newspaper of the then Communist Party of the Soviet Union) publicized the scandal to Strong’s immense satisfaction.
Strong met many workers ready to work themselves to death (in fact a small number did) to build socialism during the first five-year plan. The Molvitino peasants stand out as an example. Molvitino was a small, back-water village, 50  miles from the railroad. Under the Tsar, it was plagued by pestilence and superstition. The Molvitinians, determined to become 20th  century socialists, sent a delegation to the regional center for the Party’s agricultural meeting. Sleepless, this delegation hiked and hitched, bluffed and bullied their way on horse carts, “commandeered” trucks and freight trains throughout the night to make the meeting on time at noon the next day. At the meeting they debated and decided, then fought their way home to carry out the Party’s line on agricultural production. We could learn a lot from these “backward peasants.”
Anna Louise Strong also met with Joseph Stalin to solve problems in her newspaper, The Moscow News. She described the comrades present: one was witty; the other was handsome; some were just trying to cover their asses. Stalin, the chairperson of the  Communist Party of Russia, was the least imposing. Hours later, she realized that Stalin had guided the collective to find its own will with his constant probing and questions. He was the best communist of his time, she concluded.
The “comrade-creators,” Strong’s affectionate name for Party members, shook the foundations of her liberal progressive illusions. She saw that the Roosevelt New Deal in the U.S. was “making the poor support the starving to save the rich.” She also saw how Germany could fall to fascism. “The pacifists had talked and talked and never acted. They had explained all their strengths and weaknesses, yet remained passive — just worried the capitalists into action.”
Strong’s ideas on love matured
“... I chose my husband, not from any of those emotional flurries which American romanticists call love but from a need far deeper - the deep, instinctive need of my own future. American youth, which wastes so much of life in bewildering emotion, needs to be told what I took years to know. To fall in love is very easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be. This I have found and hold.
What is this thing, I thought, that I call ‘truth and frankness,’ when in Washington they tell you personal details while in Moscow they discuss a nation’s plan.” — Her very idea of truth had changed.
She was becoming a communist; she saw the value of communist theory. It had taken her 14  years of experience of revolution in three countries (Russia, China and Mexico) to know that the California co-op movement was getting nowhere. The  communists in the United States knew it just from California and a book by Marx; she observed. She saw the value of a party and party discipline. Joining the party was “not to be chosen but to choose with others'. Freedom and comradeship can always grow wider. Increasing organization does not squeeze out freedom, but multiplies its vast variety of choices.”
I Change Worlds is much more than the story of a remarkable journalist’s travels from the U.S. to Russia. Anna Louise Strong also changed sides on the barricades. She chose the working class and communism. Her autobiography is useful for those of us who also desire to change worlds.J
For a digital copy of this book, click here or go to https://tinyurl.com/ichangeworlds