BROOKLYN, NY, August 19—Over a dozen multiracial, women and men members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party rallied in Brooklyn today with signs and leaflets that read “No Free Speech for Racists” and “Death to the Klan with Multiracial Unity.” In one hour, contacts were made, over 550 leaflets were distributed, and over 200 CHALLENGEs were sold at a busy street corner in the heart of this Black and immigrant neighborhood.
In particular, workers responded to the call for “death to the Klan from Charlottesville to New York City.” Many workers stopped to read the leaflet and discuss how we can organize; on one street corner, a worker helped advertise our leaflet and called other workers over to read a leaflet and buy a newspaper.
Even the Christian groups passing out their own literature listened to our discussions and took our leaflets. At one point a lively and friendly debate was held between a Black, religiously-minded woman worker and a white, communist-minded male worker in PLP. The debate was brought down to earth when the Black worker opened up about her disgust at the open revival of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. Religious or not, masses of workers share this workers’ exasperation at what we can do about the Klan, apart from “having faith.”
The religious worker and the communist worker did not reach consensus on whether or not there is life after death. However, they both agreed in freeing workers - in this life - from the Klan, racial segregation, racist borders, and imperialist war. Both agreed in multiracial unity, and the need to organize and fight back. While clear disagreements regarding religious faith remain and cannot be casually dismissed, agreement on these points of unity in action can be important to our class in building a political base for the sharpening struggles to come. Hopefully this dialogue will continue developing into genuine friendship, based on antiracism and political struggle!
Above all, communists don’t write off or surrender whole sections of workers to the bosses’ ideas, ever; from white workers to Black workers to religious Christian and Muslim workers! All workers are hurt by racism, sexism, and imperialism, and capitalism uses its most vicious attacks on Black workers, especially women. Today more than ever, masses of them are looking for a way out. Charlottesville has sharpened the mood of the masses. For how long is impossible to predict, but the workers who took hundreds of leaflets and CHALLENGEs, who donated their money to our Party and shared their time to discuss politics and life, taught us we can return to work bolder. And, more confident that communist revolution is an idea whose time has come, if we persist and struggle to spread it.