The following are letters from PL’ers who participated in the 1975 Boston summer Project.
Summer ‘75, the racists won’t survive!
I was a volunteer in the summer of 1975 in Boston. Here are some of my remembrances and takeaways. I look forward to the reunion and to the new generation that will lead the struggle. Our chant was “In Boston 75, the racists won’t survive!” Perhaps this summer it will be in Boston 2025, the fascists won’t survive!”(or ICE won’t survive)!
A call was put out to college students coming to Boston in the summer of 1975. The year before, when Boston was forced to desegregate (read Death at an Early Age by Jonathan Kozol to see the impact of segregation and racism), Boston became an experiment, as liberal politicians and racist anti-bussing politicians ran the city. As this mass racist movement was being built and Black children were being attacked on school buses, Black and Latin families attacked on public beaches and firebombed in their homes, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) answered the call to fight back.
We got volunteer jobs and real jobs, moved into communities and formed committees. Violence was a routine occurrence from the beginning and quickly people learned to be prepared, to defend ourselves, to move in groups, etc. After a brutal attack on our volunteers at Upham Corners, we learned to be more prepared to protect our events. We ran a Freedom School based on the ideas of multiracial unity and serving the working class and we were well received; eighty students had signed up for the first week and parents were very involved. The summer was filled with activities, rallies, including a sit-in at the Mayor's Office and a mass protest on Carson Beach, where Black and Latin workers had been beaten by racists. The project ended with a mass demonstration downtown presenting the 35,000 signatures gathered.
Some people stayed on in Boston to continue the work there. For many of us it strengthened our commitment and we returned to do more summer projects. For others, perhaps a chapter in their life that has passed, but something they will always remember and be proud of. A relatively small group under the leadership of PLP could do big things. The combination of mass work, militance, and communist ideas was and is the recipe for the world we are fighting for. A Summer Project with PLP will change your life…so please consider coming to Boston this summer !!!!
*****
From picket line to party line: the making of communists
On May 17, 1975, I was part of a Progressive Labor Party picket line of about 100 workers and students in front of the ROAR convention. We were there to support and protect our comrades who were infiltrating the “secret” meeting as New York City supporters. Later that day we marched in a march called by fake leftists and the NAACP which was nowhere near the racists’ stronghold. After the march, those of us from NYC planned to hop on any charter buses heading back to NYC. A group of 16 of us were on one of those buses and were happily recounting the day’s events to others on the bus, when it pulled into a rest stop in Worcester, Massachusetts and was taken out of service. While we waited for buses to pick up those stranded, the fake leftists tried to divide the 16 of us because they feared we 16 might attack 40 of them. We refused to be divided, and when we learned that the bus had been repaired and would head back to NYC, the 16 of us boldly took over that bus and refused to allow the fake leftists to ride with us! We had a comfortable ride home while the phonies crowded into other buses that arrived later. Of these 16 workers and students who had taken part in the day’s events, three started the day as members of PLP. By the end of our ride back to NYC, all 16 had joined the Party.
*****
Communists infiltrate & expose racist ROAR’s flop ‘convention’
They asked us to walk in front of the NBC cameras and pretend to register, even though we had been there for half an hour. We were five PLP members who individually went into the ROAR convention to come out later and show them up to the city of Boston. It was 1975, two weeks after PLP’s May Day march to slap the racists in the face. The march happened and was successful in spite of the police who tried to stop it and the racist thugs who physically attacked it. PLP’s security contingent drove off the thugs, and a couple of thousand multiracial marchers paraded in South Boston. Right after our march, a coalition of “left” and liberal groups announced they would have a demonstration on Boston Common – Saturday May 17, 1975 (nowhere near the racists’ stronghold in South Boston). The racist group ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) announced they would hold a convention on the same day. ROAR was organized by klan types led by a gangster and a city councilwoman and supported by the local cops. They beat people up and stoned school buses carrying children to integrate the public schools. These gangs were given lots of coverage by the national media. PLP decided to show them up again.
On the morning of the 17th , we had to walk past a PLP demonstration in order to get into Hines Hall (the convention center). Inside I was surprised to see that five PL’ers, pretending to be supporters of ROAR, and 30 or so ROAR people were the only attendees in the large convention hall. This is where I learned how the national media can make a movement sound larger and stronger than it actually is. Because we were the only people not already known as ROAR members, we were asked to parade in front of the cameras when NBC showed up. We listened to their stories of “being nonviolent”, and their plans of following Ted Kennedy around heckling him, and how “some of them were in the John Birch society.” They had no formal speeches or workshops organized. They just tried to convince us to support them but had no plans for what they wanted us to do.
We had plans, though. PLP had rented a room in a downtown hotel for a press conference. When the “convention” took a lunch break, the five of us left and went to the hotel. The only TV station that showed up was ABC. They asked us what proof we had that we, as PL’ers, were in the ROAR convention, and we told them to look at NBC’s footage. “That’s us pretending to register,” we said. When we left that hotel and were on the downtown streets walking towards Boston Common where the “left wing” and liberal groups were having a demonstration, we were passed by three cars of racist rabble from the ROAR “convention.” They saw us and waved their fists at us, but we were in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, and they couldn’t get to us in time to beat us senseless. Good thing we left that hotel when we did.
When I got home to New York that night, I put on the late night news to see what they covered. NBC just played it straight and showed the footage of us “registering” for the ROAR convention as though it had really happened as a legitimate event. This is how the media builds up groups for the bosses. By that fall ROAR split apart from within because of the pressure brought by the Party’s anti-racist summer project to build multiracial unity. Two years later the media (Time Magazine) was still reporting on the “Boston Marshalls” (read that as racist thugs) as a going organization.
(P.S. On the morning of the 17th a PL’er asked a Boston policeman for directions to Hines Hall. The cop told him to “hop into the car – we’ll take you there”. When they arrived the cop invited him to come into the local station, use the phone, and have some donuts. We know where their sympathies lie.)
Signed,
Glad I did it.
*****
