And so it begins: On June 27, eight kkkops of Akron, Ohio fired at least 90 bullets at a Black young man, Jayland Walker and pierced his body over 60 times. Jayland, only 25 years young, is one of the 528 people murdered by police this year so far (Statist Research Department, 7/5). The U.S. police, descended from protectors of enslavers, function to terrorize the working class and protect the ruling class. As the bosses’ system spins further into chaos and towards imperialist war, our class’s main danger are the liberal bosses, also known as the Big Fascists.
The following are a few of the fights the Progressive Labor Party seeks to connect during this year’s Summer Project. The cities highlighted—Chicago, Newark, New York City, and Los Angeles—reflect areas of fightback PLP is involved in, even through the pandemic.
When the bosses kill one of ours, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Every single example you are about to read resulted in mass fightbacks. The mainly Black and Latin women workers who lead these campaigns defy the sexist gender roles that capitalism imposes on our class.
If we are immersed with these families and fighters for the long haul, these lifelong fighters will become the gravediggers of this racist, sexist, murderous capitalist system!

Four fighting cities:
LOS ANGELES, CA
Alex Flores:  On November 19, 2019, the LAPD shot and murdered Alex, 34 years old, near South Central Avenue and East 28th Street. Through this work, more people understand the true role of the police in a capitalist society and see PLP as leading the fight against their racist terror.
For instance, PLP and other organizers met the Flores family for a BBQ and banner-making party to prepare for a protest during the height of the pandemic. By the end of the discussion, the family decided that they were going to find creative ways to fight back regardless of repression tactics used by the bosses. They also discussed the importance of keeping one another safe. During the protest a few days later, everyone present was diligent about remaining socially distant and taking safe health precautions.
The Flores family remains courageous and hasn’t allowed their fight to diminish the two and a half years since Alex Flores was murdered. PLP has worked alongside the family and made it clear that our support is not going anywhere. This strong working class unity has empowered the community to be relentless against police terror.

BROOKLYN, NY

Shantel Davis: In June 2012 when NYPD “Bad Boy” Phillip Atkins shot Shantel Davis on E. 38 St. and Church Avenue members and friends of Progressive Labor Party responded immediately to the scene of the crime where a crowd of angry Black workers and youth had gathered. Marches to the 67 precinct, marches of a very militant character shutting down traffic for short periods on the side street where the precinct was located, became weekly occurrences.  CHALLENGE was a vital tool in this fight from the start. There is also an annual basketball tournament in honor of Shantel and Kiki (see below). The family and local PL’ers have become an integrated part of each other’s lives.

Kimani "Kiki" Gray: Less than a year later, on March 9, 2013, the police in East Flatbush on East 52nd Street murdered this 16-year-old student, not far from where Shantel was murdered. Kiki was just leaving a friend’s party. Police fired eleven shots at the teenager, hitting him seven times, three times in the back. Justified anger ignited the East Flatbush rebellion, and the bosses’ instated a curfew, came out with helicopters and riot police.

Kyam Livingston: A few months later, in July 2013, a 37-year-old mother of two was killed out of medical neglect at a holding cell at Brooklyn central booking on Schermerhorn St. to await arraignment with 15 other women. The police let her suffer in pain for seven hours, each minute in time she went through a slow torture as her life drained away and she received no help from the callous jailors. She even had seizures. She and the other women in the cell with her were told, “shut up or we’ll lose your paperwork!”  This is what a human life is worth in this system. We were able to sustain monthly rallies decrying this racist system. The family is a strong presence on May Day, and more.
One lesson from this struggle is that fightback is the best form of self-care. The bosses’ forces constantly sold passivity and isolation. The Party’s unbending confidence in the ability of women workers to channel anger into leading our class was confirmed throughout our struggle.

NEWARK, NJ

Rodwell-Spivey Brothers: This is a story of four brothers targeted for breathing while Black. Two brothers were looking at clothes from a mobile vendor in front of their house when two undercover kkkops attacked the brothers. The killer kkkops later claimed they were searching for a Black man wearing a white t-shirt with dreads, but nothing under this capitalist system is coincidental or a mistake when Black workers worldwide are super-exploited and jailed on a mass scale.
When the cops attacked, their other two brothers rushed out in concern. Now, four brothers—Justin Rodwell, Branden K. Rodwell, Jaykill Rodwell, and Jasper Spivey—are all facing possible jail time. Justin, who came out to defend his younger brothers, is still being detained as he awaits trial in Essex County Jail. On the outside, the family is constantly surveilled and harassed by the police.
From protests and meetings to backyard BBQs, PLP is working to build relationships with the family and antiracists.

CHICAGO, IL

Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson: On August 15, 2020, the klan-in-blue viciously attacked demonstrators at a protest calling to defund the Chicago Police Department and abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mohawk was caught up in the fray and arrested. Even after posting bail, he was still held three days in jail before being released on house arrest with an ankle monitor. He’s been charged for allegedly hitting a cop.
The Chicago bosses’ terrorization of Mohawk may have been a tool to pacify the working class. Instead, this has turned into a campaign to Free Mohawk and further expose the inherently violent system that is capitalism.

Big Fascists, biggest danger

What insidious is that this is occurring under the watchful eye of liberal politicians. Every city’s mayor—Newark’s Ras Baraka (Black), Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot (gay Black woman), Los Angeles’s Eric Garcetti (white, liberal), and New York City’s previous Bill de Blasio (white, phony left) and current Eric Adams (Black)—represent the Big Fascists.
Following the mass George Floyd uprisings, the bosses talked about “defunding the police.” But now with President ‘Jim Crow’ Joe Biden’s blessing, all these Democratic-led cities have increased their  police budget and cut funding for necessities like education and healthcare (Quartz, 1/25).
Since the worldwide, antiracist 2014 Ferguson uprising under former liberal Big Fascist president Barack Obama, and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, under the gutter racist presidency of Donald Trump, the liberal Big Fascist wing of the ruling class has ushered in Black municipal leadership to squelch working-class rebellion. They feed workers phony radical faces in high places as a win, and dupe many into believing a sliver of the decaying American pie is the best our class can do for survival.
The Big Fascists are the dominant finance capitalist faction of the U.S. ruling class. They represent the wealthiest and most powerful bosses in the U.S., including banks, oil companies, media, and industry—Chase and Citibank, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Amazon, The New York Times, and more. As the dominant grouping since World War II, the Big Fascists were the architects of the liberal world order with the U.S. bosses on top. Their dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power and its strategic control of the Middle East and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. To sustain this dominance, they need to rebuild a huge, multiracial military for inter-imperialist war, most likely with China.
The Big Fascists are confronted with a huge contradiction. On the one hand, they need racist police terror to keep the masses in check; on the other, they need these same Black and Latin youth to fight in their unending imperialist wars. The bosses can never resolve their contradiction. The job of communists and friends of the PLP is to sharpen the contradiction—and ultimately to smash the bosses—by winning workers to fight back in multiracial unity.
PLP cautions workers that the rising volatility between imperialist bosses in China, Russia and U.S, will continue to fester and explode into world war, and Black and Latin youth will be missile food forced to die for the bosses’ profits. The only hope of the working class is to build a class-conscious multiracial movement to smash capitalism and fight for communism, freeing the world from starvation, exploitation, racist politicians and their kkkops.

Build PLP

Whenever workers fight back, our Party aims to be shoulder-to-shoulder in struggle. A strength of the work within this struggle against police terror has been the base building—PL’s involvement in the fightback is more than the agitation in the streets, it has been the equally if not more essential work of bringing these families closer to the Party. Building strong relationships is a sign of our seriousness, love of the working class, and our commitment to fighting for a communist world that drives us.
The worldwide working class, led by Progressive Labor Party, must persevere to build a mass, anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement. We must struggle against frustration and cynicism. We must stay the course with both communist urgency and communist patience. There are no shortcuts to revolution.
The bosses will never give up state power voluntarily. We need millions to join us worldwide and take it from them. Join PLP, and fight back! The future is bright; we must make it so. J