CHICAGO, August 23 – Dozens of members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) wrapped up a powerful summer project this afternoon, after nearly five straight days and nights in action against the capitalist bosses’ system of genocide, fascism and war. PLP comrades, ranging from the newly recruited to veteran members with decades of experience, traveled from across the country to directly challenge the liberal Big Fascist U.S. bosses as they held their Democratic National Convention (DNC) here.

Our revolutionary, pro-worker efforts contrasted completely with those of the liberal racists and their pro-genocide spectacle. The deadly Democrats trotted out international war criminals from the Clintons to the Obamas, all endorsing the nomination of Killer Kamala Harris for president in a desperate bid to save their declining U.S. empire in the face of fierce competition from imperialist rivals. Meanwhile, those of us in the summer project showed egalitarian communism in action: workers and students of all ages and genders striving to give leadership and act collectively.

Summer projects like these are the perfect opportunity to expand our revolutionary movement, our base in the working class, and our limits as a Party. While the bosses in the U.S. and around the world can only offer different brands of fascism to the working class, PLP remains YOUR international Party for a future free of racism, sexism, and world war!

Jumping into the struggle

Our project formally kicked off Monday morning, as our local collective held a welcoming event for all participants. We gave a rundown of the week’s activities and shared our goals of sharp agitation, building camaraderie, and political education. Equally important, we stressed the necessity of having security plans and collective discipline in the face of potential violence from the bosses’ police state.

This planning was essential as we jumped right into the first scheduled mass rally and march against the DNC that afternoon in a park near the convention site. Among thousands of workers and students, PL’ers seized the opportunity to engage our class and distribute hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE newspaper and other literature.

After hours of congregating in the park, the march was finally mobilized to begin. Our PLP contingent kept tight ranks behind our banner of “No War but Class War,” using our own marshals to keep pace. We had multiple bullhorns on hand to lead chants calling for internationalism over so-called “revolutionary” nationalism. We also called for the necessity of communist revolution. 

A number of comrades made speeches in between chants, including a newer PL’er who gave her first Party speech! Once the march reached its end point, we returned in groups to our original briefing place where we socialized and created some revolutionary art to use in our actions through the rest of the week.

Base building and class struggle over voting

Day two of the project began with the first of two scheduled study groups, centered around PLP’s foundational document “Build a Base in the Working Class.” Unlike the bosses’ dishonest relationships with the working class, in which they make empty promises and outright lies to mobilize workers to vote, the Party strives to develop deep personal connections with workers to build a foundation for revolution. Comrades shared personal experiences in our small groups of how we embed our own lives in the working-class struggle and build confidence in our class’s potential to win power.

This discussion dovetailed well with our event that same evening, a mass forum titled “Don’t Vote, REVOLT!” The forum championed the international working class and revolutionary action as the real source of social progress over the bosses’ bogus elections. Two comrades gave a fiery presentation to kick off the discussion, before we broke into smaller groups to share historical and personal examples of class struggle being the engine of change. We came back together to share discussions as a group before a veteran PL’er gave a rousing speech for everyone to build PLP!

Struggling beyond reforms and nationalism

Day three kept up the pace with our collective joining forces with an organization on the west side of Chicago which has been pushing for the U.S. bosses to provide reparations to Black workers and families who had their lives destroyed by the arch-racist “War on Drugs.” Although as communists we have doubts about the likelihood of capitalism to ever remotely address the harm it has unleashed on Black workers, we were proud to participate in the group’s march to build ties with our fellow workers, talk politics, give speeches and lead chants.

Later in the afternoon, we dove deep into discussions of internationalism, first with another study group on the topic and later with a movie night where we watched the documentary Israelism about Jewish soldiers and workers rejecting the Zionist state. Given the overwhelmingly nationalist tone of the mass movement against the genocide in Palestine, it remains essential that we continue to debate and sharpen our line on what communist internationalism means in theory and practice.

Finish strong for the working class

For our final full day, we jumped right into a picket line at a local hospital where over 1,000 nurses were on strike. We unfortunately ran into some anti-communist attitudes from the union hacks and some nurses, but overwhelmingly our Party was well-received, allowing us to have good conversations and make some contacts.

By the evening, we were fired up for the final mass march on the DNC, coinciding with Harris accepting the nomination. Even compared with the previous march, there was a noticeable rise in the energy and enthusiasm in which our collective – stimulated largely by the youth – engaged with all workers present. Beyond getting CHALLENGE into the hands of countless marchers, we set the tone with our multiracial group and militant chants. We even riffed off a popular track: “Kamala, she a genocide cop! She not like us!”

Dare to struggle, dare to win

Although many of us are leaving Chicago and heading back to our areas, we realize the need to keep up the same urgency and collectivity where we’re at. Although our Party is still small, our communist ideas and leadership remain the only solution to this nightmare of capitalism and will one day be wielded by billions to take power! Dare to struggle, dare to win!

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members from Kentucky organized a protest in downtown Corbin on Friday, August 30th to bring attention to rising rents and record evictions in the state. We also wanted to call out HB5, a bill which criminalizes homelessness, as an anti-worker bill supported by both Democrat and Republican legislators. The protest was sparked when local PL’ers noticed that a particular group of landlords, known as the Freeman Brothers, were notoriously infamous in Corbin for charging high rents and doing very little maintenance or upkeep on the properties they manage. The brothers are not just landlords, but also lawyers who own a property management business, a real estate brokerage, and have their own podcast. They have been known to make posts on social media websites such as Facebook, where they gloat about the negative attention that they receive from workers online who have seen their own rents go up as a result of the Freeman Brother’s influence on the market. Freeman Brother’s posts are often littered with comments from working-class tenants complaining and attacking the landlords for their disgusting behavior. 

Shutting scum landlords down with communist fightback

This was how local PLP members realized the need to organize a protest and bring these workers together so that they can realize their struggles are the same! The local PL’ers sprang into action before the summer came to an end by creating an event page with a flyer that had the PLP logo. By sharing it with friends on social media, the event page quickly got 52 responses because of the already existing hatred against the crooked landlord brothers. In addition to this, PL’ers went to properties managed by the Freeman Brothers and spoke with the local tenants, handing out flyers and explaining the causes behind this crisis and the need for workers to join together and fight back. The response was positive and many of the workers who we spoke to were in agreement with the need for a communist society run by and for the working-class. 

At the protest we had a small turnout made up of PLP members from the area, members of the Madison County Tenant Union, as well as local residents. The turnout was smaller than expected, but despite this, PLP led the group of militant organizers out into the street where they marched to the Freeman Brother’s Property Management office. We were  shouting chants against landlords, capitalism, racism, and the Brothers themselves, linking together all these things as symptoms of the capitalist system which needs to be gotten rid of. When the protestors made it to the Property Management office, it was closed despite being during their business hours. The group decided to stand in front of the office anyway and chant, where many passing cars honked in support, and some workers even pulled over expressing their hatred for landlords and sympathy with our cause! We gave them copies of CHALLENGE and invited them to join us. 

Liberals show their true, racist colors 

Afterwards we returned to the park where the protest began and shared hotdogs that a PLP member cooked while having important discussions. One member gave a speech highlighting the absurdity of workers being the ones who built all of the houses, only to be forced to pay rent to landlords who produce nothing. This same comrade also called out the Democrats for supporting HB5, as well as the lackluster response from Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky who vetoed the bill, but in a letter, wrote that his concerns were the bill’s lack of any plan for increased prison funding that would be needed to deal with increases in incarceration. “He claims to be against the criminalization of homelessness, but at the end of the day it’s only under the condition that anti-working-class legislation isn’t carried out logistically.” 

This same governor was also one of the potential candidates for Kamala Harris’ VP pick, which makes sense as he has been a large supporter of police, and has also stood idly by as anti-trans legislation has been passed in Kentucky, and as abortion was banned. A worker at the protest in a discussion about electoralism as a route for change said “I think that’s what’s caused me to become cynical, following electoral politics and seeing very little change made.” Another PLP member who works as a social worker gave a speech sharing her experiences seeing those who struggle with housing. Her speech was submitted as a letter to CHALLENGE. By the end of both comrades’ speeches, they stressed that the reason housing was treated as a luxury and not a necessity is because of capitalism’s drive for profit, and that in order to change this we need to fight for a communist society and join the PLP!

Worcester, MA, September 1— Progressive Labor Party (PLP), workers, and students rallied at City Hall against the racist and sexist murder of our class sister, Sonya Massey, a Black grandmother who should still be alive with her loved ones. Instead, she was shot in the face by killer KKKop Sean Grayson for the crime of  being a Black woman in distress simply  calling  911 to report suspicious activity outside her home. A grand jury indicted Grayson, but that does not mean much since far too many of our class brothers and sisters have met the same fate at the hands of the racist police. No politicians or apologists for capitalism can reform this cesspool of a system. A PL’er at the rally spoke and summed it up best when they said:  only workers, students and soldiers can smash this racist system. Workers can shut it down  at the point of production in the factories, hospitals, and offices, students can shut it down on college campuses and soldiers in the battlefield, in the air, and at the drone controls. She called on soldiers to turn their guns around and shoot the profit system down! She called for the abolition of borders and to fight for communist revolution!

Our literature table was well received, and CHALLENGEs and leaflets were distributed. Members of the community spoke at the open mic and shared their thoughts, and class anger about the murder of our class sister. A young, Black high-school student said, "We should be safe in our houses."  A Latin woman said "I should be able to sit in my car and not be worried about getting shot by the police."  Another woman said, "Here we are again at another rally mourning the loss of a Black person murdered by the police." Progressive Labor Party members led antiracist chants "Racism means, fight back!" "Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite" and called for an end to this profit system with communist revolution. This racist capitalist system has been murdering and terrorizing Black, Indigenous, and Latin workers for hundreds of years. As Progressive Labor Party has been saying for years, racism opens the door for attacks on all workers, and that is why we see attacks on the unhoused, mentally ill, students on the college campuses against the genocide in Gaza, and the attacks on unions, abortions, and healthcare. Inter-imperialist rivalry is intensifying between China and Russia and the U.S. rulers see their empire slipping away, so in order to hold on to their power and resources both here and abroad they need to keep us in line, and get us ready to fight their next war. We have to be united from the Mexican border, Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza and Israel to smash this capitalist system.

Liberals show their true, racist colors

Our comrade who took leadership in organizing this rally, was fierce in his pursuit of making sure this demonstration took place and exposed the systemic nature of racism in Worcester. As a result, our multiracial rally had 45 members of the community attend. We called out the city bosses and police who are in lock-step with criminalizing our Black and Latin youth in public spaces. Another comrade spoke about the role of the police under capitalism. She said the cops are not your friends. They might help you cross the street, or play basketball with your kids, but don’t be fooled. They are there to protect the ruling class and their property, and at the end of the day they will throw your child up against the wall after playing basketball with them. The kkkPD run a summer camp for Black and Latin kids in the city. These gutter racists refer to it“thug” camp or the “gang unit” of the Boys and Girls Club. She said the police should have nothing to do with the education or mentoring of our youth, especially our Black and Latin youth. 

In Worcester, systemic racism is alive and well. The crime rate is at an all-time low nationally; according to the FBI there has been a 13 percent decline in homicides relative to 2022. (ABC News, March, 22, 2023.) But in Worcester, the police department made disproportionate numbers of arrests in Black and Latin neighborhoods. Progressive Labor Party and others have opposed these arrests. A report of an independent audit of the Worcester Police shows that arrests show systemic racism. The new police Chief stated that systemic racism has a negative impact and harms Black and Latin communities, but he is now walking back his comments. The City Manager has refused to hold hearings with the public about the report, and the Mayor has blocked efforts to investigate it. The City Councilor who heads the Public Safety Committee says systemic racism is not her job. This is an example of how the government protects the bosses and their profit system. It cannot be reformed. We have to fight for an egalitarian communist world and smash all borders, and end poverty! Fight for communism sisters and brothers! Join us!

The following letters were written by PL’ers who participated in our annual summer project. 

Though this is only my first Progressive Labor Party (PLP) Summer Project, I  gained a lot of hope for the future through the strength of the Party’s line and through the strength of all our comrades. I initially thought we would just be working on political education and mass agitation, however we learned so much about camaraderie and other things not taught in a classroom or on the picket line. Moreover, because it was at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), I expected to be integrated in protests for Palestine. However, PLP led these protests with energetic chants that set forth our line, but more importantly the Party joined workers on the Westside of Chicago and nurses at the University of Illinois-Chicago campus  highlighting the Party’s working class character and commitment. 

Although the most inspiring strike was on the West Side, the nurse’s strike left the most profound impact upon me. Union misleaders remained hostile to our support for the picket which was an eye opening experience for me. Furthermore, despite the union leadership’s moderate stance, the nurses revealed the truth about working conditions and how the bosses cooperate with the courts and police in order to maintain exploitation.

Nurses confided to me how the bosses utilized a court injunction in order to force emergency nurses back to work without a deal. They also explained how the hospital tries cutting costs through ‘floater’ nurses meant to care for patients across different floors, therefore taking the jobs of multiple nurses. Near the end of the strike, after being pushed out by union leadership, I met a linen worker on their break. We agreed how it was crazy and unacceptable how the nurses who save lives have to be forced to strike, while the police, courts, and bosses never strike. She also mentioned how travel nurses are being brought in to break the will of the strike and earn more. Lastly, she left me with a piece of advice: no matter how hard you work or how well you get along with your coworkers, the company has no interest in your well being. 

The Summer Project left me thinking about how across the country and throughout the world, all workers face the same cruel capitalist exploitation. However, knowing that all my comrades remain committed to the fight and can plan such a project left me hopeful. Now that the regular fight resumes back home, I can think of all the new comrades I met, and all they taught me, and depend on each other to motivate ourselves in the long struggle towards communism.
*

The Summer Project inspired confidence in the working class and their potential. My Chicago comrade made the concise and insightful observation that if we had the same number of people year round it would be a game changer. We need to work harder to build our base to the point where we can operate with the intensity of the Summer Project in class struggle all year long.

I noticed that at all the marches we attended our large group of multiracial, multigenerational communists marching and chanting together in a disciplined way attracted positive attention and curiosity from bystanders. They joined our chants and took our newspaper, which advanced our line. 

This is my third summer project. The camaraderie of the Party is always very strong. It is not only inspiring to passersby; it is inspiring to all of us to be a part of the collectivity. We are all anxious to see our revolutionary theory and aspirations become a practical reality. The Democratic Party is also building their base with a false collectivity. We should have joined other protesters who were yelling at the Democrats as they left their events. We also should have engaged with jailed protestors to spread our line to other comrades who were impatient for revolution. 

During our mass work there were two important confrontations. One confrontation was with the union misleadership at a picket line we canvassed. A paid union organizer told us that we were making workers feel unsafe. Half of us were intimidated but half of us continued talking with the workers including one comrade who asked the workers what do you think about us building a base in the working class. Many workers had militant ideas. One even told me "there's more of us than there are of them," showing advanced class consciousness. Another confrontation was with the nationalists. They were leading chants, and a comrade gave a speech against nationalism. They became violently agitated and attempted to physically fight a comrade but it turned out they were only a handful of people and after they settled down there was no issue. I was intimidated during the confrontation but after it was over I realized it was the right thing to do. We should build base year round collectively so that we can obtain the numerical strength for the revolutionary practice necessary to make our theory a reality.
*

This past week I was able to attend the DNC Summer Project. Something that stuck out to me was meeting new comrades who were my age. I am a college student and my campus is very disconnected and nothing really happens here. I’ve tried to talk to people about communism but they ultimately do not care or have had bad experiences with other so called communist parties when they have visited my campus a handful of times. Even when the faculty was on strike, there was maybe one other student I saw at the strike, even though they were striking against our tuition hikes along with their raises. This experience on campus has been so disheartening because I felt like there was no one out there that was interested in what I was saying. 

This Summer Project however, completely got rid of that feeling for me. For the bulk of the project, I found myself talking to the younger comrades in attendance, most of them college students like me. Ideas and conversations came so naturally and it felt like we had been friends for years already. We formed circles of support while distributing CHALLENGE, we stuck together during marches, and our conversations came together to show us how similar all our struggles are even though we are all from different places. In the marches we went to, especially the last one, people were very receptive to our chants. Our flags caught the attention of many people and this encouraged me to fight harder back home to build a base. While this work will never be easy, it is insanely necessary and I am proud to be doing it alongside all of my comrades. The Party brings together so many different people from so many different backgrounds which highlights the fact that this truly is the Party of the workers. Regardless of age, race, gender, we all are here to fight for the same thing and that will unite and strengthen us for years to come. 
*

Having discovered the Party in an isolated part of California, there were many members I hadn’t met, and many protests that Progressive Labor Party (PLP) instigated/participated in that I hadn’t been a part of. The 2024 Summer Project changed that, and I saw a wonderful part of PLP’s work and struggle: protest. Protests alongside already existing groups, such as a nurses union from the largest hospital in Chicago, an organization fighting for reparations of previously incarcerated Black workers, and pro-Palestinian leftist organizations protesting against the Democrats at their convention. Our chants and our speeches were inspirational and hopeful, bringing together these crowds of diverse groups to see that we must fight for communism, to achieve all that these groups have been organizing and working for. The feeling of community in Chicago was exhilarating, but I understand it is also fleeting as we all retreat back to our home bases. I hold on to that feeling, though, to spread the message of communism here in my base, and awaken other workers struggling every day to a message: that the only true solution is a communist revolution.
*

One of my favorite moments from the DNC was when some of us comrades were heading to the first march and a group of pro-Palestine protesters boarded the same railcar. Without hesitation, they started up some of their chants and we joined in. We then added our chants to the mix, and went back and forth before one comrade said, “I have a real hook... The only solution is a communist revolution!” Enthusiastically, they repeated this chant, giving me confidence that many workers would be receptive to the Party’s message.

A few days later, however, we were met with some who weren’t so receptive. When joining a nurses’ strike, we were asked by one of the union leaders to not pass out literature. He even went as far as to say we were making the other nurses uncomfortable, which largely, was not the case.

Many took a CHALLENGE newspaper and were willing to have conversations with us. Later that day, we went back to the DNC and were faced with other leftist groups as well as nationalist groups that were trying to get their own points across. However, by the end of the night, we were the ones carrying the chants amongst the sea of groups marching along us. We denounced fascism (“They not like us!”), called for an international revolution, and even sang Bella Ciao. On the way back home, one comrade started a conversation with some curious transit workers that resulted in each of them taking a flier, a conversation as smooth as the chants we had voiced on the train a few days prior. Having gone full circle, I have a newfound appreciation for Chicago’s transit system and its abilities to unite our class. I’ve also learned to not be discouraged by naysayers because every worker knows that deep down they have more power than the bosses, and every worker needs Progressive Labor Party to foster that idea. 
*

The 2024 DNC Summer Project, organized by the Progressive Labor Party, reaffirmed my commitment to communist ideas , base building and pro-working class optimism. I witnessed a rising fifth grader’s clarity and sense of understanding of the phrase capitalist versus communist society in a study group. I saw a dozen or more fresh leaders of the international working class in their 20s. I saw the fight for our line that replacing one set of  bosses’ nationalism for another is a dead end. My commitment grew from the study groups, to the Israelism movie discussion, to the Thursday DNC protest march.

Encouraging each other to do the difficult but urgent work of struggling with workers around us to choose communism instead of voting in the upcoming elections for global war vs civil war. Staying with eight other comrades from 19 to 60 years old. Asian, Latin, Black, and white, living together for a week. Traveling from different places. Brimming with communist hope, sweetness, so much wisdom, and a lot, a lot of laughter as we shared our hardships, cooked, invented sandwiches, watched the Minions movie and made ice cream from scratch. The political peak was at the DNC protest march on Thursday. Early on, when the march hadn’t gone for too long, a comrade on a blow horn started chanting “Death! Death! Death to the Bosses! Power! Power! Power to the Workers!” It felt like it wired comrades and masses of workers around us alike. I felt like PLP was getting at how I and others around me felt and thought about capitalism and its horrendous bosses. Eventually, so many communists were unleashed. Gliding between taking on the weight of the multiple megaphones, to switching up the responsibility of leading the chants through the mic and giving spontaneous speeches, to the countless comrades who took multiple CHALLENGE newspapers and PLP leaflets and started weaving through the crowds of hundreds to the front, left, right, and back of us to distribute our literature. At some point we burst out into singing Bella Ciao as a drumline behind us joined.

After listening to other reflections during the closing barbecue of the summer project I was left with the following thoughts: Feelings, such as the communist affirming ones I felt during the summer project are great but fleeting. Continuously steeling ourselves with communist fightback and base building is necessary to grow those feelings. Capitalism takes a lot from us, but the one thing we get to choose that the bosses cannot take away, is choosing to fight for communism. Now, I have come back to my part of the world, recommitted to igniting the communist sparks in more of the workers around me. I specifically make the commitment to help run or start a student club to extend what the PLP makes me feel about myself to others and honor my commitment. I encourage others to join and inspire us in finding more ways to commit to the lifelong fight for communist revolution!