From streets to jobs, spread the fight

On July 4 residents of Greenbelt celebrated the holiday by holding a rally with speakers in the Roosevelt pavilion to stand against the passage of Donald Trump’s Big, “Beautiful” Bill and to call for sharper fightback. A Progressive Labor Party speaker shared part of Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the 4th of July” and went on to call for workers to take control of society and support the struggle against genocide in Gaza and Sudan.  A young man running for Greenbelt City Council said that Greenbelt should oppose genocide. This is a step forward in Greenbelt which was one of the few cities in Prince George’s County that did not pass a ceasefire resolution – using the excuse that they are only concerned with local issues. After the speeches we distributed a dozen CHALLENGES and had good discussions with our friends and neighbors about communism and the need for a revolutionary party. 

We join in struggles against ICE including Monday rallies in Baltimore at the detention center. Local rapid response groups are becoming better organized to respond to events and show up to local mutual aid events where ICE might appear.  We are continuing to demand that  the courts  bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to Maryland and to stop Trump’s threat to immediately  deport him to another country. 

A PLP  member addressed the Metro Board demanding that they remove their ads recruiting for the Border Patrol and apologize to the community! Over 150 postcards protesting the ads have been sent to the board and it was clear they knew that this has become an issue.

Meanwhile we joined ATU 689 members (transit system workers) in their protest against cutbacks among station managers and train operators with the chants: “Who has the Power, We Have the Power.” We will expand our struggles against ICE, against Genocide and for workers’ power in an ongoing campaign with these workers. 
*****

You got to talk to people

I go to a lot of demonstrations, and I always have a good supply of CHALLENGEs and/or Progressive Labor Party (PLP) leaflets. Usually it is possible to have a conversation with at least a few people, which is the most important activity. Recently, I asked one young man who was handing out “socialist” literature what he liked about the group. He knew very little, just that they were large, friendly and active, and he was interested in our differences with their uncritical support for national liberation and China. A second young person had hooked up with a phony left group just because he met them first, and we then had an email discussion about their line vs. ours. Both of these contacts showed up the next week at a PLP study group. Many young people are out there looking for answers and how to get involved. It certainly doesn’t always work out this well, but I was just reminded how vital it is to talk with as many folks as we can.
*****

Say the F word: fascism

I recently heard my minister describe the Donald Trump administration as an example of “competitive authoritarianism.” Not long after, I saw the same term used in a Facebook post criticizing Trump’s military parade and drawing comparisons to Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey—leaders who also operate within what some call competitive authoritarian regimes. 

But let’s be clear: this term is increasingly being used by liberals as a softer stand-in for what is, in fact, creeping fascism. 

It reminds me of the old saying: it’s a recession when your neighbor is out of work; it’s a depression when you are. In the same way, liberal commentators seem comfortable labeling foreign regimes as authoritarian or fascistic but hesitate to apply the same label to the United States—even as it unleashes the military and federal agents against domestic populations. 

It is fascistic when Marines and National Guard troops are deployed to suppress protests. It is fascistic when ICE raids schools, car washes, and Home Depot parking lots to round up and deport workers—often without due process. These are not anomalies; they are symptoms of a capitalist system in deep crisis. 

When capitalism enters crisis, its mask slips. The claws come out: nationalism, racism, sexism, and anti-communism are pushed to the forefront to divide and discipline the working class. We saw this in the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. We saw it in Jim Crow segregation. And we see it today in the scapegoating of immigrants and the erosion of civil liberties. 

As the U.S. ruling class becomes more desperate in its global competition with rising powers like China, Russia, and Iran, it will rely more and more on fascist methods—not just abroad, but at home. This will mean not only repressing workers and the oppressed but disciplining even those members of the elite who fail to toe the fascist line. 

In such moments, quantity turns into quality. What begins as authoritarian drift becomes full-blown fascism. Liberal democracy is not “under threat”—it is being dismantled before our eyes. 

The only real alternative is not a return to some idealized version of U.S. democracy, but the abolition of the capitalist system itself. We need to build a revolutionary communist movement capable of eliminating the ruling class and its fascist machinery once and for all. 
Fight for communism. Join PLP.
*****

For a world without bosses, smash racism

No Bosses Day of International Action

The bosses are working overtime to ensure Black workers don’t join the current 50501 (50 protests, 50 states, one movement) “No Kings” protests. In contrast, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has raised the slogan: “No Bosses!” The contradictions within these protests—where over five million workers have taken to the streets—reveal liberal fascism in action. The liberal line frames the protests as opposition to Trump as a “king,” aiming to build the nationalism necessary for all-class unity.

Black workers have every reason to be skeptical. Organizers are demanding only U.S. flags for optics, pushing non-violence rhetoric, encouraging protesters to register online, and training marshals to make marchers sit when violence erupts—making it easier for police to identify and arrest them.

The fake left, saturated in the errors of the old communist movement, pushes workers to organize around nationalism, race, and identity—anything but class. PLP is clear: the working class must unite against the bosses, and Black workers are key to revolution.. Racism divides the working class. Capitalism needs both racism and sexism to divide and dispossess workers.

Borders are used to justify lower wages and devalue labor globally. U.S. imperialism depends on exploiting South American workers, with corporations like Dole funding death squads to ensure extreme violence and profit. But that’s not enough: prison labor drives production costs even lower. In Alabama, 40 percent of mostly Black prisoners’ meager wages are garnished—60 percent left is 3/5ths, a grotesque echo of slavery. Our imprisoned class siblings produce hundreds of millions in value while earning as little as 23 cents an hour.

Now, the same bosses building Cop Cities in NYC and Atlanta are opening super-prisons to detain deportees. Undocumented workers there earn $1 a day and pay $5 per phone call. It’s easy to imagine deals made where detainees “volunteer” to stay in exchange for avoiding deportation—creating racist concentration camps, suppressing wages, and enriching the ruling class.

Videos of ICE agents kidnapping children and students damage the U.S.’s carefully crafted image. U.S. imperialism is losing its ideological cover. The 50501 movement wants to abolish kings—but only to preserve the system that let Obama and Biden deport millions and cage children without media scrutiny. Kamala Harris, who made her name locking up Black youth, would’ve been a loyal servant of the empire.

U.S. liberalism is more dangerous than Trump’s vulgar racism. The Black working class, grounded in hard-won experience, is right to distrust liberal leadership. PLP’s role is to connect the dots: every struggle—wars against Iran, new Cop Cities, environmental destruction, racist deportations, fascist cops assassinating enemies—is part of a dying empire clinging to power. Fascism signals weakness. The only way to end this dying beast is with communist revolution.
*****