KENTUCKY, SEPTEMBER 10—On Thursday, Sept 10th, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members in Kentucky attended a demonstration put together by students from A Nature Group (ANGr) and Intersectional Feminist Collective in response to the Indian government agreeing to lease land in Kaziranga National Park to a company wanting to build luxury hotels. Concerned about environmental destruction under capitalism and mushrooming fascism from the U.S. to India, these students came together with signs, literature, and music to march through the streets to a local park where speeches were given and traditional Indian chai was shared. Fascism is capitalism in crisis. It is when the system can no longer rely on the illusion of “democracy” in order to maintain itself and must turn to more violent methods, using racist, sexist, and nationalist ideology as a justification.

PL’ers distributed copies of CHALLENGE to the march, stressing the need for working-class solidarity in the face of the climate crisis as capitalist imperialism creates ecological disasters affecting workers everywhere. We also wanted to point out the limits of reform, but a student already brought this up in a speech, saying that class struggle is the most effective means of changing society. PL’ers were there to drive the point further by saying we need class struggle led by a revolutionary communist party not the ballot box. To save the environment we need nothing short of a communist revolution where workers are in charge of all aspects of society, not Democrats, Republicans, or socialists.

Speaking up  

Workers in India have been standing up to a fascist government that violently punishes anyone who speaks out, foreshadowing the struggles we will face here in the U.S. as fascism continues to grow. 

The main organizer gave a speech at the event, detailing the ecological importance of Kaziranga National Park, not just for the world but for the indigenous people in the area who will be most severely affected by the environmental destruction. Kaziranga is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to more than 2200 Indian one-horned rhinoceros, or two-thirds of the world population. It is also a tiger reserve and home to other endangered species. 

On top of this the local indigenous have been living in the region for thousands of years and depend on the local ecology for their existence. Particularly the wetlands, grasslands, and mangroves serve to prevent devastating floods. To date at least 45 indigenous families have been forcefully evicted from their homes. To make matters worse, India’s fascist government has been labeling anyone who dares fight back against capitalist development in Kaziranga an “anti-national.” Pranab Doley, an indigenous organizer has been unlawfully imprisoned under the draconian National Security Act for speaking out against the destruction of Kaziranga. He has been denied bail, and the judicial system repeatedly pushed his trial to new arbitrary dates, the whole process amounting to punishment without trial.

This mirrors the way that Native Americans have been treated by the Trump administration as well as showing the arbitrary way in which nationalism divides workers.

Bosses destroying the environment worldwide

When discussing how we can fight back, we talked about many of the differences as well as similarities between India and the U.S. Firstly, a PLer brought up how environmental crises happen all over the world because of capitalism, referencing how land was destroyed in Appalachia in order to mine coal, displacing many people in the area and causing violent flooding that yearly leads to deaths and homelessness. In response to that a student brought up how data centers are also being built in Appalachia, which will drive up energy costs and use lots of water. One important thing that the student leading the event said was that if we were to host an event like this in India, there’s a good chance we could have been detained without trial by fascist state military/police. This was followed up by another student who said that we should fight even harder in the U.S. while we can because our struggle here affects struggles in the rest of the world. 

From the hills of Kentucky to the wetlands of Kaziranga, we are fighting the same system. Communist internationalism is the only thing that can take us from fighting small, isolated battles to a world without borders, racist exploitation, climate disaster, or imperialist war. Join the Progressive Labor Party and fight for a future for the working-class, an international communist future!

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), have attracted much interest among workers and students who are searching for something better than the racism, violence, inflation, genocide and wars of both the Republicans and Democrats. Recently, 35 candidates endorsed by DSA won primary elections for federal or local government. There are now 250 DSA office holders nationwide, including New York City Mayor Mamdani. But “democratic socialists” promote the deadly illusion that capitalism can be reformed to serve the working class simply through voting, and they recruit thousands to participate in electoral politics, as opposed to revolutionary class struggle.

The history

DSA arose from a split in the old American Socialist Party (SP) that formed in 1901 as part of the Socialist International, or Second International. Their most important internal disagreement was over the question of revolution. Could capitalism be voted out and socialism be voted in? Or would the capitalists never permit this to happen? 

To its credit, the SP refused to support U.S. participation in the imperialist First World War. Many of its members were jailed for this, some even deported or murdered. The U.S. government formed the Bureau of Investigation—later the FBI-toarrest, imprison, and deport active socialists. These repressions strengthened the position of those who believed violent revolution against capitalism was necessary. 

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 attracted the support of many members of the American SP. The Bolsheviks established the Communist International and called on all workers to reject the Socialist International and form Communist parties. Over the next few years the anti-capitalist, revolutionary members of the SP quit to join the new Communist Party (CP), which changed its name several times. This meant that only the rightists, who rejected revolution and supported capitalism, remained in the SP. 

The SP cozied up to the American Federation of Labor, the very conservative group of skilled workers. Together they de-certified union locals that voted in communist leaders. During the 1920s and ‘30s the SP continued to lose its most active members to the CP, becoming more and more pro-capitalist and viciously anti-communist. In the post-WW2 period they backed the anti-communist Cold War repression of CP members in unions and elsewhere. They received funds from the CIA for their publications like The New Leader. 

The SP, now renamed the Socialist Party of America (SPA), made anti-communism its main goal. Its organizers worked with the CIA to break up militant trade unions worldwide. Two leaders, Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, promoted anti-communism in speeches and CIA-sponsored books. In the early 1970s the SPA split over the Vietnam War, with younger members refusing to support the murderous U.S. imperialist war while the anti-communist leadership supported it. They formed two groups that merged to form the DSA in 1982.

DSA today

Although DSA today attracts many young people who are disillusioned with capitalism, the organizational position remains staunchly anti-communist, and “recognize[s] opposition to authoritarian communism as a central moral obligation of democratic socialists.” And so DSA indulges in anti-communism even more harmful than that of the right, since they influence many who do dislike capitalism.

DSA thinks that workers can become such a powerful force in this government that they can legislate that workers “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.” They imagine that if they get enough votes, corporate owners will allow workers to take over ownership of many enterprises and produce and distribute goods and services based on need. Before that vision becomes reality, they will fight to gain power in legislative bodies in order to vote for reforms, paid for by taxing the rich, such as single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, and the Green New Deal.

DSA fails to understand that capitalism depends on, and is defined by, making profits. Profits are only amassed by the owners of productive forces by paying workers less than the value of what they produce, what we call exploitation. And because of competition, investment only flows to those producers who make the most profit the fastest. Thus it is not a moral or philosophical question of whether capitalists can be made or won to lessening the degree of exploitation, lessening the damage they might cause the environment or the quality of life of the vast majority or humans. No, they must maximize their gain in order to survive. Whether they do so with glee or regret is irrelevant- they have no choice. And clearly, as they violently suppress strikes and protests, cut lifesaving benefits like health care and food stamps at home and militarily devour nations abroad, they have no regret over bringing hardship or an end to workers’ lives. 

DSA’s political reality

Doubtless, most people who join or seek office through DSA are genuine in their desire to better the lives of workers. In an interview with the nominated Manhattan congressional candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier, she talks about the desperate need for affordable housing, her desire to eliminate all borders, and the belief that crime stems from social stress and would not exist in an egalitarian society, thus eliminating the need for prisons and police. And how will this come about? When the legislature votes to tax the rich, with which the rich will, of course, comply.

Perhaps the best place to investigate this model in current reality is to examine the rule of New York City Mayor Mamdani, elected November, 2025. Most of his promises were based on his intent to tax the rich, which is not in his power, and New York State Governor Hochul has made clear that she will do no such thing. So the Mayor has to work within the confines of the city budget, over which he has limited control. 

Most grievously, Mamdani has left the billionaire heiress Zionist Police Chief Jessica Tisch in power. The notorious Strategic Response Group that attacks demonstrators remains intact, and the disproportionate arrests of Black and Latin men for minor infractions continue apace. The NYPD is now negotiating a $750,000 agreement with Israeli technology company Cognyte to better track mobile phones. 

When Trump ended Haitians’ temporary protective status, Mamdani immediately fired all Haitian city employees after losing their work authorization. Although he is opening one lower priced grocery store in each borough and is providing free child care for 2,000 two year olds, he cannot do many other things he has promised. This includes renovating 500 public schools, raising teacher wages, housing the homeless and repairing public housing.

DSA reduces understanding and struggle

So DSA’s actual role is to deceive its adherents and oppose the mass organizing that is necessary to threaten capitalism. DSA maintains that capitalism can be reformed by voting, reformed in such a way that owners will give up their capitalist entities and allow benefits to flow to workers. From this follows the misconception that the force that keeps capitalists in power, the state and its armed might, will not be used to protect capitalist enterprises against the workers’ wish to take over, whether they’ve only voted for it or are actually engaged in workplace actions. 

DSA is dangerous because it has taken the energy of thousands of its adherents and directed it into electoral campaigns instead of organizing for actual demands. As the U.S. hurtles towards a larger war with Iran and then possibly with China, as climate change accelerates, as unemployment rises and social benefits decrease, workers, students and soldiers will need a mass, multiracial, militant and overtly anti-capitalist movement to fight back. Such a movement can only grow out of struggles at worksites, schools, and military bases that are organized by the rank and file who do not harbor illusions that liberals or bosses or elected officials will fight with them for systemic change. In the course of such struggles, it is essential that participants not only gain confidence in their own leadership, but come to understand the dynamics of capitalism and the need to build a mass party that aims to ultimately attack capitalism itself and establish a worker-run society, a communist society. That is what the Progressive Labor Party aims to do. Join us.

Newark, NJ, October 17— The global housing crisis under capitalism remains relentless but opposition and fightback is growing. The spirit of workers around the world cannot be bought, evicted or defeated. A multiracial and multi-generational group of neighbors and comrades connected to the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are sharpening our confidence in building a fighting Tenant’s Union in one of New Jersey’s largest private housing complexes. Our recent pumpkin carving social empowered us as workers with the discussion of the (1970-1974) Newark Stella Wright Homes Rent strike.

No temporary reforms, all power to workers

Discussing our working class ancestors’ wins and losses in striking against the profits of their racist landlords back then drew us closer, and made it clear, as a mother and son exclaimed, that we can do it again and fight for a lot more! We left the social with five of us committed to attending a tenant’s organizing conference. At the conference we learned valuable lessons about organizing tenants into fighting leaders. The conference also pushed us to struggle over PLP’s communist ideas such as multiracial unity and internationalism vs white guilt as a response to racism within the working class mass movement. We also discussed the contradiction between building tenants’ leverage to negotiate with landlords vs building workers’ power to challenge the existence of the rotten housing profit system itself. 

The highlight of the pumpkin social was our viewing and discussion of a social media video on the Stella Wright Rent Strike. We learned that the United States’ longest public housing rent strike took place right here in our city of Newark. Neighbors were inspired by how all 1,206 tenants at Stella-Wright went on strike to protest the broken elevators, the lack of maintenance, and the disgusting condition of the homes built with cheap materials, withholding $2 million in rent. The defiant workers of Stella-Wright were joined by tenants city-wide to hold a rent strike in Newark 11,000 workers strong, denying landlords $6.5 million. 

We also discussed how the tenants, after the National Housing Authority threatened to evict all 11,000 of them (25 percent of Newark’s public housing population!) managed to win their strike in 1974, winning the right to operate Stella-Wright Homes under “tenant management.” While at first this seemed like an amazing idea, we also noted how by the end of the 1990s Stella-Wright was designated a slum and demolished. Our neighbors sharply pointed out that the tenants were only given $1.3 million to fix the decrepit Stella Wright towers and so were basically sold out by the city government, and “tenant management” at Stella-Wright was doomed to failure.

This helps us communists demonstrate to workers that no reform under capitalism will ever give workers what they truly need. As long as the bosses hold state power and steal workers labor in the form of profit, workers will remain enslaved. The workers of Stella-Wright were given phony “control” over their homes, but the bosses will never give us the profits our labor produces. We knew that our tenant union was heading in the right direction when two neighbors, when asked if the outcome meant workers should have never united like they did, shouted “No!!!! They absolutely should have.”

Over the conversations about our lives and the state of the world today, neighbors had a good time carving pumpkins like a jack-o-lantern barfing up its pulp and seeds, silly faces and more artistic colorful pumpkins. As we organize these gatherings we are increasingly becoming aware we are living in a time when bosses’ global wars and terror against the international working class is worsening. That is why it generated so much revolutionary optimism to see neighbors in this space both committed to and learning about communism (the fight to unify the international working class to defeat all horrors of capitalism) while they created jack-o-lanterns with symbols of workers’ fight for power: a hammer and sickle, workers raising their fists to a red star.  

One young neighbor organically painted a PLP pumpkin. Witnessing this was important because seeing how much PLP means already to this young neighbor who has only known about this fighting organization for four months has put those of us who have shared those strong feelings far longer on notice. If we push ourselves to be more direct about how PLP aims to empower the working class, more neighbors will understand why we are wielding its communist ideas to strengthen our struggle building a tenants union and will embrace its ideas beyond it.

The idea for holding a pumpkin-carving social came from our desire to continue friendships and a commitment to our neighbors. Over the past year neighbors and PLers have embraced each other while running an International Food & Culture Festival, hosting game nights, holding a picnic in the park, and going hiking. We have found that workers are suspicious of each other. This is understandable as housing under capitalism doesn’t encourage community. Workers suspect unexpected knocks at their door to be salespeople, electoral politricks, advocates for some church, or even possibly ICE terrorists looking to kidnap them and their loved ones. Rallying around holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Halloween has helped lower neighbors’ fear, and we always find that workers we speak to are eager for the opportunity to bond with their neighbors.

Learning to fight like a red, fighting to lead like a red

Two days after the pumpkin social, the group of us, including the young student-worker who has only recently been coming around both the budding tenant union and PLP, attended the Rutgers Tenant organizing conference. One workshop featured a charismatic, veteran tenant organizer leading a simulation where the conference’s attendees were asked to organize themselves as fictional tenants while the host played a vicious landlord. We all saw how landlords would try to divide tenants and punish workers who want to win tenants to organize under radical ideologies like communism. Yet, we also saw the strength of radical ideas as one of us led a chant “fix or strike!” that was taken up by nearly all attendees.

Unfortunately, while he gave us a powerful organizing manual we urgently need to bring back to our neighbors, the host was still playing the role of misleader and selling a message of anti-communism. He pushed the pacifying idea that even his own radical politics will only get in the way of organizing tenants, and that following the laws made by and for the landlords to rent-strikes is the most we can hope for. 

We can see from the Stella-Wright Rent Strike to the tenant conference workshop that winning reforms alone will never be enough. Our fight is to position tenants in our building complex over a very long period of time to read about these lessons through this CHALLENGE newspaper, experience conflicts with our landlords over anti-racist demands, and run rent strikes. Through this process more worker-tenants will conclude that we need a world without profit hungry landlords and capitalists - communism—to truly achieve the housing that we all deserve.

Fascism is on the rise internationally. As communists we have an obligation to organize to fight back against fascist terror. One aspect of this is strengthening our own and our base’s understanding of how fascism rears its ugly head and how we can fight back. It is with this in mind that we hosted our Fight Fascist Terror forum.

The forum focused on three forms of fascist terror— attacks on the Queer community, anti-immigrant attacks by ICE, and police terror. It was well attended by a group of multiracial, multigenerational, and multigendered groups of members and friends, including the families of two different victims of police violence.

Highlighting gay, transgender worker fightback 

One important aspect of our forum on fascism and working class fightback was to highlight sections of the working class that aren’t typically discussed, such as our gay and transgender working class siblings and their relationship to the class struggle, antifascist fightback and the communist movement.  The history is complicated, but the first openly gay organization was founded by communists in the CPUSA called the Mattachine Society in 1950. The Mattachine Society had chapters across the U.S. that focused mainly on reformist fightback. But its more radical elements fought militantly against fascist police violence such as in the Cooper’s Donuts rebellion, Blackcat Tavern rebellions in Los Angeles, and the Compton’s Cafeteria rebellion in San Francisco, preceding the more famous Stonewall Rebellion in New York City in 1967.  

We discussed the strong communist influence that modeled the Gay Liberation Front off the communist, anti-imperialist National Liberation Front of Vietnam.  Clearly these movements were negatively impacted by revisionism and nationalism and would ultimately succumb to reformism, electoral and identity politics.  Nevertheless, it is our duty to illustrate the multiracial, multi-gendered working class roots of the anti-fascist fightback that recognized the common enemy: the capitalist, imperialist class.  

The second section broke off the forum into smaller groups that discussed stories on current resistance movements against increasing fascist terror. These stories consisted of the connection between Trump ending TPS, as well as ICE shackling Haitian workers with ankle monitors in Springfield, Ohio. 

Black workers still key

Organizers of the forum wanted to highlight that Black workers are consistently under the sharpest fascist attacks by the bosses, as well as our line that Black workers are key to revolution. It was made clear by highlighting that the same Springfield,  which was a stop along the

Underground Railroad for slaves hiding from slave catchers, is maintaining that strong anti-racist history with residents now hiding their working class siblings from ICE. 

The small groups also discussed the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the oppression and brutal conditions of trans migrants under ICE, and police brutality against anti-ICE organizers. Through prepared questions and discussions, we were able to draw connections among fascist attacks across our class and share our strategy for communist revolution.

The third section of the forum highlighted the strengthening relationship we have worked to build with the family of Bryan Bostic, murdered by the Inglewood Police Department. This part was set up as a Q&A with members of the family so they could share how they are fighting back against fascist police terror. 

All cops serve fascist terror

For one question, they offered a particularly inspiring response. “At the weekly protest for Bryan, we all chant No Good Cop in a Racist System. What does that mean to you?”. A family member shared that every single cop in Inglewood PD is guilty of Bryan’s murder. If they weren’t the one who cut off his breathing, they stood by and watched as it happened, or helped cover it up after. Then she got the whole room spiritedly following her in the chant. This ignited the room and was followed by a call for all participants to join the regular weekly protest as well as the National Day against police brutality that we helped the family organize.

The Progressive Labor Party in LA has committed immensely to the struggle for justice for Alex Flores, Bryan Bostic and others murdered by the racist killer cops. The consistent support of the class struggle combined with regular base building has positioned us to unite these two families in the fight back against fascism and also continue to struggle with them for the need for communist revolution as the only solution to police violence.