[The baby] “continued to cry when we got home and would hold on to my leg and would not let me go…When I took off his clothes, he was full of dirt and lice. It seemed like they had not bathed him the 85 days he was away from us. [my son] is not the same since we were reunited. He does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me ... he cries for fear of being alone.”
—Olivia Caceras (PBS News Hour 7/5).

NEW YORK CITY, June 30—Rage at stories like Olivia’s boiled over today as a crowd of 30,000 flowed across the Brooklyn Bridge. While bosses’ segregated schools enforce racism and preach passivity had closed for summer, a vigorous and integrated group of youngsters, some of them new members of Progressive Labor Party, joined the communist contingent at the Families Belong Together march. PLP infused communist ideas of no borders and rejection of the Republicrats into the march against family separation at the southern border.
Smash deportations
More than 700 demonstrations took place across the U.S. and on the border with Mexico today. PLP participated in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and other places.
In New York City,  the crowd was multiracial, and fewer U.S. flags were on display than in immigrants’ rights marches of the recent past.
The intergenerational, multiracial and vigorous character of our chanting pulled many hundreds who marched that day to our bullhorn:
“Stop racist deportation, working people have no nation.”
“The racist system – shut it down. Family separation – shut it down.”
“The only solution is communist revolution.”
Some of our chants targeted former president Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as no solution. We met another marcher, whose young son led a chant of “When I say abolish you say ICE. Abolish – ICE. Abolish ICE.”  “Abolish ICE.”  
This father then led a “people’s mic” and did a great job asking the crowd to repeat the phrase that “the policy of deportation represents a bipartisan consensus.”
Folks near our bullhorn, but not in PLP, joined in on the chant for communist revolution. On another occasion, it was met with a few boos.  A PL’er clapped back, “There has been many more opportunities to vote than we’ve had at communist revolution. Voting is the real failure.” The two times communists took state power (in Russia and in China), they eradicated poverty, diseases, the burden of individual child care, and illiteracy, just to name a few.
We met people interested in the idea that liberals are the main danger. This represents a new potential openness to the communist idea in the mass movement.
On the bridge we met a marching band and taught them the tune to Bella Ciao (Italian anti-fascist song during World War II). Soon after our inimitable resident PLP vocalist led us in a rousing performance, capturing our determination to press forward in the struggle. Folks around us were re-energized to add their voices in song. We sang in unison, “I’ve got a feeling that someone’s tryna hold us back and there ain’t gonna be no more stuff like that.”
Reject Democrats, too
The main message of the march was to vote Democratic. Some young volunteers walked around with clipboards, signing marchers up to be a registered voter. PLP and friends reject the Democratic Party’s plan to co-opt working-class anger. Likewise, we do not take heart that a “democratic socialist” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has won a Bronx/Queens district seat in Congress.
Yet we dare not drop responsibility of this moment. The profound disgust and anger that workers and youth have for the Donald Trump regime leaves many open to a more profound rejection of the system, of capitalism, than before. Informed people know that Trump inherited an emerging fascist state built up by Obama.
A crucial political lesson the schools teach is passivity. This year was a bit different, as liberal bosses now want to rebuild (much like the movement behind Obama) a momentum for a more inclusive U.S. imperialism and fascism. A vision to which Trump is an outrage.
Spectre of communism
Things are changing, and this was a school year full of boss-sponsored political ferment, from #MeToo to walkouts against gun violence and even a cynical push to integrate a tiny fraction of students at ‘elite’ schools. Movements of workers and youth angered by the racism and sexism inherent in capitalism will always be hard for the bosses to control.
Our Party is growing. Karl Marx’s spectre of communism continues to haunt the capitalists. Ten young people and one teacher joined PLP this year and plans for three new youth clubs are in place for the next school year. The task remains to be more involved with both the class struggle and these new members and their families. A communist world is the best world for all of our families.