Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA, FEBRUARY 1 —“We will hide you. In our school, in our homes— we will do what’s necessary to protect you. We are a community and we will take care of you.” As undocumented students shared their fears during the Advisory about the changes to immigration policies with the inauguration of President Donald Trump, teachers let them know we all belong here and we will defend you. This sentiment was widespread among the staff in part due to the long standing work of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fighting for the culture of the school to be rooted in ideas of antiracism, internationalism, and student-teacher solidarity. As Trump attempts to evoke terror in immigrant communities and promote them as the scapegoat for the inherent failures of capitalism, our school is united in demanding the working class have no borders.

Liberal bosses no solution to open fascism

The liberal bosses and their flunkies will try and use the issue of immigration to galvanize the working class behind them as their saviors. School districts across the country have sent out a flurry of calls, texts, and emails about Know Your Rights cards and are even prepared to deny school entry to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without a proper warrant. And while it may feel at the moment that the Democrats have our back, a short look back at history reminds us that former President Barack Obama proudly earned his title as deporter-in-chief. Lenin reminds us “we must distinguish between the programmes of the bourgeois parties, between the banquet and parliamentary speeches of the liberal careerists and their actual participation in the real struggle of the people.” Anyone serious about fighting for migrant workers rights must be in the fight to smash capitalism. As long as capitalism exists, the system that created and profits from borders, immigrant workers will never be safe.

The illusion of choice

While some school districts have taken a seemingly strong stance against Trump’s policies, others won’t even call a spade a spade. One school district where the Party does work put out an Advisory lesson asking students to identify an emotion they were feeling after the inauguration. The list of choices included words like “elated” and “refreshed.” An additional slide asked students what hopes they had for Trump and the next four years. 

The Party member at the school said, “Hell no” and organized other staff members to do the same. In a team meeting one teacher responded to the “hope” slide by saying they hope Trump is assassinated before the end of his term. Another teacher in the base of the Party shared she hoped all this would lead to revolution. By the end of the day numerous teachers, particularly those new to the school, came up to the Party member to thank them for speaking out and wanted to engage in further conversation about how to fight back. We also created an alternative Advisory deck that empowers students with information on how to fight back instead of normalizing support for an open fascist and racist.

This Advisory deck created by the school district again exposes the problems with liberal ideology. The district has self-proclaimed their commitment to antiracism, yet to appease Trump voters and to honor the results of democracy, the district validated support of the president who refers to immigrants as “animals” and “stone cold killers.” Their message is everyone’s opinions and feelings are valid and welcome here. In contrast, the Party has always proudly shouted “no free speech for racists.”

The real fight begins!

The coming period will continue to demonstrate the fight has never been about liberal versus conservative. The real fight is fascism versus communism. Workers will eventually have to choose. What we do as a party will determine the level of impact we have on that choice. As communists, we must fight to ensure workers don’t follow the liberals into the arms of fascism.

There will be countless opportunities over the next four years and beyond to convince workers that communism is the only choice. In our schools it starts with communists fighting for an antiracist, antisexist school culturel. Sharing our line will open the doors to workers and students joining us. The culture of the school then determines the level of fight back that we will be able to inspire in  the school community. What we do has always counted, but it counts even more in the continuing buildup to fascism. The struggles we lead will reveal that the only solution is communist revolution.

Brooklyn

BROOKLYN NY, FEBRUARY 1—Almost 20 teachers and staff answered a call to make plans for potential Immigration  and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at school. Every person who was invited to this first meeting agreed to participate. Many of them receive CHALLENGE regularly. The meeting started with a discussion about the need to organize to protect our students from the promise to deport millions that Racist in Chief Donald Trump is making. On January 21, the Trump administration rescinded a federal policy that made schools, hospitals, and other sensitive locations off-limits to ICE, attacking the most vulnerable members of the working class, our immigrant families (both documented and undocumented). 

Organizing workers against anti-immigrant racism

An important discussion ensued about the importance of organizing in the face of rising fascism. Here were some of the main points raised:

• One of the hallmarks of fascism is the government openly attacking a group of workers labeled as “unwelcomed.”
• Trump is building on the work of past U.S. presidents such as deporter-in-chief Barack Obama, who oversaw more deportations than any other U.S. president in history (Independent.co.uk, 11/19/24)
• We can’t rely on politicians or the Department of Education (DOE) to protect our students because when the bosses need to overturn or break their own laws, they do!
• We must build a movement where we, the working class, keep each other safe. 
• Helping to protect our students and their families from ICE raids is similar to participating in the Underground Railroad during slavery.

Despite recognizing the risks involved in protecting our students, everyone present agreed that we wanted to take part. One teacher shared what she had learned from reading about the Syrian resistance movement and made suggestions for how to apply them at our school. A self criticism was raised by a long-standing Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member and teacher at the school about the error of not having organized a meeting like this in response to the genocide in Gaza due to fear and how we need to organize more meetings like this one. 

Building an army against fascism

Besides plans for resistance we also discussed broadening our organizing to more staff and students with a “Know Your Rights” assembly. This assembly’s main purpose would be to make students at the school aware that many staff members care about them, want to keep them and their families safe, and are willing to help if they are in trouble. This provides us an opportunity to discuss the dangers of growing fascism and helps us also see even in scary times, we can organize! 

We have agreed to meet regularly to work on turning these ideas into reality. After the meeting a few of us stayed to talk, including a teacher who is newer to the school and very pro-student. They described the difficulty of keeping up morale in the face of all of the attacks worldwide the working class faces. This was the perfect opportunity to explain how being part of a revolutionary communist party, PLP, is what helps sustain our morale for the continued fightback that is needed. They were offered a CHALLENGE newspaper and gladly took it! Lots of work remains to be done…More updates to follow!

Newark

NEWARK, NEW  JERSEY, FEBRUARY 1 –  A week has passed since liberal politicians and reformist organizations began urging workers to rely on the weakening U.S. capitalists’ constitution, laws, and liberal leaders as the primary means of responding to newly elected President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and the broader rise of racist terror.

No safety for workers in fake liberal theatrics

The dominant message pushed by liberal misleaders is for workers to loudly denounce the violation of immigrant workers’ rights—but in ways that are hollow and leave us disorganized against these attacks. Simultaneously, these misleaders stoke fear, discouraging any real resistance. When state-backed fascists like ICE invade our communities, catch and cage our working-class brothers and sisters, and hurl them across borders like garbage, we are told to merely witness and report—not to interfere. ALL workers are reminded constantly that any attempt to interfere risks fascist repercussions.

The response of liberal bosses and their politicians will never go beyond performative outrage against fascist mobilizations. They refuse to confront the deeper realities revealed by immigrant raids: we need to smash the racist distinction between citizen and undocumented workers, and the oppressive existence of borders and nations as the division that weakens the international working class.
Racist divisions only benefit ruling class

These divisions allow competing bosses within nations across the globe to grind workers into the ground while scapegoating portions of our class with racist attacks. By prioritizing some workers over others—dehumanizing and super-exploiting the rest—they ensure that the working class remains fractured. Workers are left to passively endure the ruinous cycle of exploitation and displacement, shuffled from one nation to another, as the capitalist system deepens its crisis and its reliance on racist division to maintain control.

In contrast, a growing number of workers are gravitating toward a stronger, organized base within the working class, built on the communist principle that masses of workers must use our direct organized force to fight and defend each other to defeat this and every attack under growing fascism and global war. Workers are also demonstrating a growing urgency to struggle against the profit-driven system that fuels these assaults and more and more are embracing the necessity of its complete overthrow.

In that spirit, today three of us tenants went door to door canvassing in our building complex to grow the tenants’ union we are involved in. Through this outreach, we met six different neighbors who expressed a similar sentiment.  Each knock at their door aroused a feeling of fear ICE was starting their raid in the apartment building.  We did our best to reassure them, reminding them that we are neighbors wanting to build networks of protection for everyone to fight this vile system of capitalism that feeds from these racist attacks.  From the decrepit jail like conditions of the building, to the terrorising fascist means of deportation.  

Once the doors opened there were signs of relief.  Even though many neighbors did not speak English, with some translation efforts it didn’t take long for camaraderie. For one Haitian Creole speaking couple, they had the incredible patience to allow us to stumble through more than five different ways to try to translate for them!  Another Spanish-speaking neighbor expressed “No matter the color, the race of the person in the seat of the presidency of the U.S. the raids would still happen. We need to make this group as big as possible to defend each other.” Almost every neighbor asked, what was the plan? When we shared that we are knocking on doors every Saturday for the next month to build energy for an antiracist defend your neighbor training and a rapid response network they agreed to help knock on doors to get more people on board. One day these seeds of multiracial and antiracist mobilized unity will germinate and choke this whole racist system and overrun it with a life run by workers for workers: communism.