BROOKLYN, November 23 – “How many times have we been here before?” asked the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) singers in a new song they created in the week of the recent election. In the background of the song, a speaker listed countries where workers face growing fascism and ongoing imperialist oppression. At the end of the song, the whole room roared together: “The only solution is communist revolution!”

About 50 PLP members and friends gathered to analyze the impact of the election and growing fascist developments and to grapple with the question, “What is to be done?” Planned mainly by teachers and students, the forum was extremely interactive, leaving some attendees asking for more time to discuss the questions of the day.

Understanding fascism to fight it!

We began with a gallery walk in which small, integrated groups moved about the room, discussing a wide variety of articles, graphics, cartoons and other media depictions of current events and discussing how each item indicated growing fascism. Then the small groups combined to examine the definition of fascism and try to create a bigger picture understanding based on the different examples each group studied. After the gallery walk, a Party speaker called on us to fight back against the crisis facing workers around the world today.

Next steps to fightback

Next we returned to the tables and discussed a series of questions which moved us from analysing how the bosses have convinced workers to vote (and vote for Trump) to looking for examples of workers fighting back in recent times to thinking about what it would look like to fight for communism instead. In every group, people shared their own experiences and those of workers they are talking to. They took calendars of upcoming events and planned how to be more involved in the work of the Party. They took home communist literature, copies of CHALLENGE and PLP buttons. At least one base member told the friend who brought him that he thought he was ready to join the Party. A young comrade involved in the college work gave an inspiring speech that recapped the college conference.

Old and young, new and experienced, our multiracial gathering ended on our feet, singing the Internationale together, looking forward with revolutionary optimism to the challenges ahead.