Join the fight to defend Black Migrant Workers
The Gestapo ICE is terrorizing immigrant communities. As of now from New York City to Boston, New Jersey and elsewhere in the U.S., tens of thousands of Haitian workers facing the end of TPS (along with workers from 16 other countries) face deportation, detention and job loss. As of Aug 4th, thousands of Haitian healthcare workers in New York City have been told not to come back to work. Communities are living in fear locked inside their apartments. What will happen to children and parents when school starts? In Springfield, Ohio (where Trump claimed Haitians were eating their neighbors’ pets) Haitian workers face immediate deportation or are shackled with ankle braces awaiting their so-called day in court! Their neighbors are now protesting their deportations! Let’s all protest, defend and support our brothers and sisters in any way we can! Haitians deported to Haiti will arrive in a country devastated by starvation, violence, gangs and chaos where survival is a full time job.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is committed to the fight against racism, ongoing from the first Africans stolen, shackled and forced into slavery in the Americas, in the whites-only USA, so-called “land of the free and home of the brave.” A 12 year old young man who attended a protest on Aug 1 in Brooklyn carried a sign that said, “Imperialism has destroyed Haiti.” Correct! Comrades and friends we must all organize to support our brothers and sisters in Haiti and the U.S. We need to fight, build the PLP to prepare a revolution to destroy capitalism and imperialism and establish communism. Join us! ! We can do it!
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‘I found a political home in PLP’
I am a Black Transwoman whose political journey has been a rocky road but not unfulfilling. It is hard to put into words what communism means to me but perhaps if I share my political journey, I can appropriately tell you what communism means to me. It is more than an ideology or symbol to me but an enlightenment of what should be. Like many I wasn’t always a communist and I hadn’t heard of the Progressive Labor Party until I started college. But I am getting ahead of myself since it isn’t about the destination but the journey after all.
When I was younger, I struggled with my political identity among my other identities. I longed for a solution to all the suffering I saw from, at the time, a society meant to crush the spirits of its citizens. During this time my politics swung like a pendulum from right to left, left to right but never settled on an ideology. Even in my U.S. government class in my senior year of high school I felt there was a better option than what we have today. A common question I kept asking myself was “Does a society have to suffer to survive and shouldn’t the government take care of its people instead of exploiting them?” But after high school I stopped thinking so politically and just accepted my grim fate of being a gear in the ever-present machine our society has become to make others rich while making us, the common person, poorer.
Though I started to explore my political identity again once I started to work in factories and during the pandemic, it occurred to me that to my employer, I was nothing but the number assigned to me to express my seniority. And although I was a part of the union, I could see that those who were supposed to represent us were benefiting from the workers’ suffering too, like our corporate overlords. During this time, I toyed with the idea of being a communist, but I was ignorant of what it actually meant even though I had joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) hoping their words would give me the guidance I strived for. At the time, I was satisfied with what words they offered during their orientation.
Yet something was still missing and the lack of strength the CPUSA showed was starting to concern me especially during the 2024 elections. So I decided to support the Democrat party in part of my late mom’s concern for me supporting communism openly. But the more I heard the Democrats speak, the more I realized they were just preaching the inverse of what the Republican party was spewing. This was evident when I attended my first Young Democrats convention. Those who were present said they were there to fight for the common person yet all I heard was naivety and rehearsed speeches. I left the event feeling there had to be a better solution to all this suffering.
When I enrolled in college and settled onto campus, I saw fliers for the Young Communist League and this piqued my interest in communism again. After a few meetings I felt I was getting closer to the answer but was still a little bit away from the whole enlightenment I was searching for. However these meetings led me to meet members of the Progressive Labor Party and start attending their meetings more. I even attended their May Day Demonstration and it felt like I was among friends and comrades. And then one day, I was given a CHALLENGE newspaper and after reading the issue (The May 20th issue), everything fell into place. The Progressive Labor Party was the answer I was seeking. Not only did their words win me over but their emphasis on action as well.
If you are on the fence, dear reader like I was, I encourage you to take a leap of faith. Our two party capitalistic system does not benefit us but the rich. We have the power to make change and empires have crumbled under the pressure of revolution for less. You are not alone in your doubts but don’t let them keep you from reading the literature the PLP offers. For once in a long time, I found a home where I feel like a person and it is among my comrades of the Progressive Labor Party. And you too have this opportunity in front of you. Together we are strong but divided we are weak.
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From Continental Struggle to Internationalist communist solidarity
In early July, I attended a meeting in East Africa with comrades from the (Progressive Labor Party) PLP to discuss contemporary trends of fascism and imperialism in global politics, with particular attention to their impact on local struggles in Africa. This was my first opportunity to connect with African PLP members, whose sharp insights I greatly admired. They shared firsthand accounts of how certain African countries welcomed Sudanese refugees during the atrocities of the Sudanese civil war. Once again, the human costs of geopolitics were borne by marginalized populations. We also reflected on the decline of Pan-African solidarity, as evidenced by xenophobic violence in South Africa and the subsequent large-scale exodus of migrants. Using Tanzania as a case study, we examined the ongoing land grabs facilitated by both bourgeois politicians and foreign investors through the “block farming” model. Although Tanzania seeks integration into the global crop supply chain to modernize its smallholder farming and aims to address youth unemployment, local populations whose land is implicated face displacement and resource conflicts with commercial leaseholders and pastoralists. We discussed if such supply-chain capitalism in agriculture, exemplified by Chinese investment in maize-soybean intercropping in Africa to secure its own supply chain, constitutes a form of imperialism. The core of our meeting is to develop strategies for advancing working-class struggles in Africa. Participants raised the issue of class consciousness, noting that many Africans are not employed within capitalist systems. For instance, unemployed youth are often more responsive to economic incentives than to communist ideology, as their primary concern is to avoid hunger. Recent youth protests across the continent have been mobilized primarily by social media influencers rather than by working-class organizations. But only a movement of youth, farmers and the working class for communist revolution is likely to solve the problems of the people of East and all of Africa. These discussions are expected to continue in future meetings. We need to build the Party throughout the continent.
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Retirees Refuse Hikes in Healthcare
When the coalition of unions that hold bargaining certificates for New York City employees reached a deal with the NYC government to force retirees into medicare “advantage” health plans and to charge new copays, retired city workers refused to quietly accept inferior and costly health insurance. To date, mandatory “dis”advantage plans are off the table. Copays from January 2023 to January 2024 are being refunded per a $53 million settlement of a court case. For the past five years retirees have fought against all attempts to diminish our health coverage or make us pay more for our coverage. Today’s press conference announced the settlement of the copay case and outlined plans to continue the fight to protect our health coverages.
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