We are pausing the luminous four-part series on the Scottsboro Boys to bring you the first of a four part series commemorating the 50th anniversary of Boston’s 1975 Summer Project. That summer, the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played a pivotal role in the struggle against local Nazis and their racist political allies from attacking young Black youth who were being bussed in effort to desegregate, all-white schools in Boston. The movement mobilized working-class youth and community members in an unforgettable, militant struggle against gutter racist capitalism and state-sanctioned violence.
The Boston ’75 Summer Project had broken the back of the fascist ROAR movement but 50 years later, the fight against racist state sponsored violence is not over. Like the Black workers in Cincinnati militantly organizing their against Neo-Nazis and multiracial groups of workers standing against ICE in L.A., Chicago, and Newark, to smash racist attacks and any far-right movement, we need Progressive Labor Party (PLP)— a mass internationalist communist Party, committed to militant fightback and revolution.
The Boston ’75 Summer Project
The capitalist ruling class and the media and academic pundits that serve them often distort history to hide the truth of working class struggles against oppression. They seek to convince us that any improvement in the lives of working people is a result of enlightened liberal capitalist politicians, judges, foundations, and philanthropists, not the class struggles of workers, students, and soldiers. In this way, the capitalist rulers promote a sense of powerlessness and cynicism within our class.
Sometimes the history of a working class struggle is simply erased. Such is the case with the 1975 Boston Summer Project to fight racism and support desegregation of public schools. Fifty years ago, over 150 college students and young adults came to Boston for the summer to fight the segregationist anti-busing movement ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights). This was more than a struggle for civil rights. It was a fight to check the rise of a fascist movement among the white Boston working class. Inspired by the Mississippi Freedom Summer, which 10 years earlier had mobilized 600 volunteers to register Black voters, the Boston ‘75 volunteers sought to unite Black and white workers to demand quality, integrated public schools and to defeat racism. Officially sponsored by the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR) and its ally Progressive Labor Party (PLP), the Boston Summer Project held daily rallies and demonstrations throughout the city. It collected 35,000 signatures on an anti-racist petition, ran a multiracial Freedom School in a Black church, defended Black families that moved into segregated white neighborhoods, led the effort to integrate a public beach, and physically confronted the ROAR fascists in street battles. More than 250 InCAR members and friends were arrested. Three received prison sentences.
Putting fear into racists
The last official action of the Summer Project was to welcome Black students who were bussed to South Boston High School on the first day of school. A year earlier, when busing in Boston began, a racist mob of thousands had stoned the buses carrying Black students to this school. The police arrested few if any of these racists and made no effort to protect the Black students. But 1975 was different. There was no racist mob at South Boston High. The cops had no one to arrest except for the hundred InCAR members who’d come to the school to welcome the students. The Boston ’75 Summer Project had broken the back of the fascist ROAR movement. It broke it by speaking to tens of thousands of white and Black working people on the streets and convincing them that bad schools and poor living conditions weren’t caused by other workers with a different skin color, but by the greedy capitalists and their corrupt politicians. The Project broke ROAR by canvassing door to door with antiracist literature at poor white workers’ housing projects in South Boston. It broke ROAR with multiple militant confrontations, with a bold and multiracial group of InCAR members squaring off against the ROAR racists and the cops who protected them. While other forces played a role in the downfall of ROAR, the role of InCAR and PLP was critical.
In many ways, the ROAR anti-busing movement was a trial balloon for U.S. fascism. The United States had just lost the war in Vietnam after spending $4 trillion and killing 2 million Vietnamese and 60,000 U.S. soldiers. Japan and West Germany and their revived economies were challenging the U.S. manufacturing base. But when former President Richard Nixon experimented with fascism with his FBI COINTELPRO program aimed at antiracist and antiwar activists, he mostly succeeded in turning millions of working people against the U.S. government.
Liberals behind fascism
For fascism to succeed, it needs popular support among the masses. In Boston, a propaganda campaign was aimed to mobilize white racist support for fascism by promoting the racist myth of Black crime and attacking “forced busing” (school integration) and affirmative action. South Boston, with its impoverished Irish-Catholic population terrorized and controlled by the Irish Mafia, was a perfect venue for the bosses. If a popular fascist movement could be built inside Boston, a bastion of liberal antiwar activism, fascist populism might spread across the country. Both the liberal and openly racist factions of the U.S. ruling class backed this racist campaign. The Boston ‘75 Summer Project succeeded in blocking this fascist movement and set back the development of U.S. fascism for years, if not decades. That is the legacy of Boston ’75 that both the liberal fascist and gutter fascist rulers wish to bury.
Today we face yet another concerted effort to build fascism in the U.S. While immigrants are the main focus of the bosses’ scapegoating attack this time around, Black workers and other oppressed groups are also targets, as indicated by the aggressive elimination of DEI and affirmative action programs. Once again, the U.S. capitalist rulers are deeply divided, with the gutter fascist Donald Trump administration attacking the liberal fascists at Harvard University as part of a bitter dispute over how to manage the declining U.S. empire.
There is much that the anti-fascist fighters of today can learn from Boston ’75. How racism is used to build populist fascism. How the liberal establishment manipulates the mass movement to promote their own version of fascism to defend the U.S. imperialist empire. How a relatively small group of militant antiracists can affect the course of history. This series will provide examples to illustrate these lessons. While the rise of U.S. fascism may be inevitable, so too is growing opposition to it—and the potential for mobilizing the working class to fight for a communist revolution.
Stay tuned for Part II in our July 30th issue.
- Information
Retired, not resigned: Ed workers declare war on fascism
- Information
- 03 July 2025 556 hits
NEW YORK, June 27 —In a city where billionaires craft education policy behind closed doors, and the Democratic Party mayor makes dirty deals with President Donald Trump to save his own corrupt skin, the Retired Teachers Chapter (RTC) of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is putting the workers’ fight front and center, not just for educators’ pensions or perks, but in antiracist defense of our students and the entire working class. At the last two RTC meetings of the year and the last UFT Delegate Assembly, both in-service and retired educators converged to demonstrate their overwhelming desire to fight rapidly rising fascism, showing unmistakable potential for building workers’ power inside the UFT, one of the largest union locals in the U.S. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been in the thick of this significant mass struggle.
Union leadership destabilized
This past year has laid bare deep fractures within the UFT. In the union-wide election in May, Michael Mulgrew and his “Unity” Caucus—the incumbent leadership since the UFT’s early years—barely scraped by with 54 percent of the vote, their worst showing in history. Unfortunately, the opposition—with the chance to capitalize on the RTC’s overthrow of the Unity leadership in last year’s retiree chapter election (see CHALLENGE, 10/30/24)—suffered an ugly split, primarily caused by a renegade Unity faction that broke with Mulgrew and topped a new slate they dubbed A Better Contract (ABC), which stridently attacked anything but what they labeled “bread and butter” issues. A second opposition slate, the Alliance of Retired and In-Service Educators (ARISE), was composed of the union’s three opposition caucuses. Though ARISE made some attempt to address broader “social justice”/pro-student issues, they studiously avoided or minimized crucial “hot-button issues” like the Israeli genocide in Gaza or fighting racism.
PLP members actively organized throughout the campaign, mostly in the ARISE coalition, bringing our newspaper and antiracist, pro-student/pro-working-class, internationalist politics to bear at critical points. In the end, in an election poisoned by nasty infighting, the result still underscores a growing restlessness from the rank and file, retirees included.
Retirees rise up against rising fascism
But a major turning point came at the final RTC meeting of the year with the membership’s resounding passage of a resolution on the rising threat of fascism. To the surprise of some, the vote wasn’t even close (85 percent), and it sent a clear message: retirees recognize the urgency of the moment and won’t sit quietly while reactionary forces—from school boards to statehouses—attempt to erase hard-won rights.
Of course, not everyone welcomed the resolution’s clarity. A well-known retired Unity misleader attempted to strike it down—watering down some of the language without fully gutting the intent. It was an act of bureaucratic sleight-of-hand, but we answered it head on, and it failed to derail the momentum.
This decisive and inspiring retiree vote came in the wake of another major, hard-fought victory at the last UFT Delegate Assembly of the year just a week before. After seven months of often intense struggle, delegates were able to push through a comprehensive resolution in defense of our immigrant students, families, and staff. Not only were we able to push it to the top of the agenda and extend the meeting to guarantee a vote, the resolution passed with an astounding 93 percent!
Small steps to a larger fight
We in PLP are fully aware that resolutions are often only token measures, but each of these carefully crafted measures deliberately includes concrete, practical steps both educators and retirees can now put into practice in the schools as well as on the streets, and has the potential to qualitatively improve our organizing efforts.
We are taking this momentum through the summer and rolling straight into the Labor Day March, where RTC members will carry signs and wear shirts that broadcast our anti-fascist, pro-worker stance without ambiguity. This isn’t nostalgia—it’s strategy. We retirees are reclaiming our power not in memory of past struggles but in continuation of them.
The RTC’s growing militancy isn’t accidental—it has been influenced by the sustained ideological engagement and organizing by our Party and its allies. While the mass movement may surge with righteoussanger, we in PLP understand that the class struggle is long-term, and our work must harness that energy toward a revolutionary horizon. We fight within the struggles of today, not as an end in themselves, but to deepen political understanding and forge leaders for the struggles of tomorrow.
We don’t romanticize retirement; we radicalize it. Our goal is to win masses of people to communism, and that requires a conscious, organized base willing to challenge capitalist decay with revolutionary communist clarity. The fight isn’t easy! But we’re not in it for symbolism or reform. We’re in it to win it.
- Information
ICE = Nazis: No Kings, no borders, no liberal illusions
- Information
- 03 July 2025 620 hits
NY: Capitalist rulers got to go
“How do you spell racist? I-C-E!” Millions of workers stood up against Trump’s fascist military parade by participating in over 2,100 “No Kings” rallies and protests across the United States. In New York City, about a group from the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined tens of thousands who defied the rain to march. In our chants, we received applause and cheering from surrounding marchers with the more popular chants being against ICE and also “Stop racist deportations! Working people have no nation!” and “No kings, no bosses! Capitalism has got to go!”
When PL’ers chanted “the only solution is communist revolution,” many marchers surrounding us hesitated. At the same time, however, these same antiracists took over 1,100 PLP leaflets and several hundred CHALLENGE newspapers, cheered at our communist speeches explaining our revolutionary politics, marched alongside us, and some joined us on the bullhorn.
This reveals the contradictions, dangers, and opportunities of the current political period – and the potential for building a mass PLP to smash this racist, sexist, imperialist system with communist revolution!
No flag but the red flag
The liberal misleader-led groups are pushing U.S. nationalism as a way for workers to fight for “our freedoms,” with march organizers handing out thousands of miniature U.S. flags. It was therefore no surprise that many workers hesitated to cheer for communist revolution! As several PL’ers said in their speeches, reaching the hundreds marching around us, PLP rejects all bosses’ national flags. The U.S. flag, in particular, is the symbol of manifest destiny and holocaust, of dispossession and hypocrisy, of slavery and Jim Crow. It’s the flag of the Monroe Doctrine and the Carter Doctrine — of theft, plunder, and the smoking ruins of cities from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Gaza. The international working class has no country, and no flag but the red flag.
In response to these politics, many people carrying U.S. flags around us expressed agreement and asked for our literature. One young person who took CHALLENGE said they agreed with every point but had never connected the dots of history this way and wondered if revolution was really possible. Another young person with a U.S. flag earned cheers when they spoke on the bullhorn, saying they agreed with us communists - and revealed they wore a Karl Marx t-shirt under their jacket!
Appearance and essence in winning masses
These were not isolated examples. The fact that hundreds of workers — thousands in total over the day—were waving the U.S. flag but also embracing internationalist chants reveals the material basis for international working class unity. It’s no coincidence that one of our most popular chants was “same enemy, same fight! Workers of the world, unite!”
Contradictions abound. Despite mass confusion around nationalism, reformism, and belief that elections and the U.S. slave owners’ Constitution will somehow stop fascism, the response to our presence showed the masses are also looking for answers. Wherever we can intensify the struggle for revolution over reform, our communist politics sharpen these contradictions in favor of it.
No war but class war — for communist revolution!
We call on PL’ers and friends to join antiracist mass struggles such as progressive union caucuses, workplace and community watch groups fighting ICE raids – and even political campaigns attracting masses of antiracists but still under illusions about capitalist state power. Struggling with our coworkers, classmates and friends we can introduce communist ideas while exposing the reality of the capitalist dictatorship. And by moving this political base into action, we can build a mass PLP that will overthrow this entire system from New York to Kinshasa and Shanghai.
Workers fight back with the best ideas and symbols they have available to them. The sharper their ideas and the more deeply they resonate, the greater the opportunities to link these interconnected fights and take them all the way. Communism – and our red flag - represents the ultimate needs and deepest aspirations of the international working class. Join us and fight to make that world a reality!
NJ: Not just Trump, it’s capitali$m
In the pouring rain over 200 workers and students attended the No Kings rally in Newark. The rally, which was called by the Democratic Party liberals, looked to direct the working class anger towards President Donald Trump. It was our job in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to let workers know that there is an alternative to war and fascism – fighting for communism. Despite a small group of us at the rally, we reached over a hundred students and workers in distributing CHALLENGE and leading chants in the rain. Electoral politics still holds a lot of sway over the working class, but this rally has shown us that workers are looking for something more.
Workers need to steer clear of bosses fight
From organizations like Make the Road to politicians like Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, the liberal Big Fascists (see Glossary,page 6) ensured that the only analysis was that Trump must go. They spoke about the attacks on migrant workers but failed to mention the role of liberals like Joe Biden in deporting record numbers of migrant workers or McIver’s history of supporting landlords and finance capital.
PLP brings alternative - and workers responded
That is why PLP showed up that day. While the different speakers were singing the same tune about Trump - we distributed CHALLENGE and explained our line that it isn’t just Trump - It’s capitalism. The reception that we got from our conversations shows the potential of our class and the fight for communism. We distributed over 100 papers and got great feedback. One example from a worker: “I was kind of cynical about coming cause I knew it was just going to be the same Democratic Party BS - so I am glad I got this paper and I’m gonna check it out when I get home.”
After the speakers were done a short march began. The chant, led by Larry Hamm of People’s Organization for Progress, was predictably “Trump Must Go.” One self-criticism is that we should have had our bullhorn with us. Even without the bullhorn our small contingent lead chants like “Democrats and Republicans Are all the Same - Racist Terror Is the Name of the Game.” Others took up the chants for a while until the march leaders heard us and dropped back by our section to take back the chants.
What we do counts
It can be easy to dismiss these ruling class events. We know what the rulers and their mouthpieces are going to say. At the same time workers are organizing rapid response networks and putting their life on the line in fighting these racist anti-immigrant attacks. That is why it is so important to show up. Trump’s open racism is attracting new workers and students to the struggle.
After the rally we discussed the importance of being ready and prepared to give political leadership to the workers. While the liberal misleaders still have a lot of influence over the working class, there is a window for us to spread our ideas and win workers to a life of communism. Our next steps are to reach out to those we met at the rally and plan for future actions.
As the bosses try to limit the imagination of what workers can accomplish, our Party is winning workers to realize that we can run the world - and not rely on the bosses. No Kings was the chant of the bourgeoisie of the past - No Bosses is the chant of the workers’ future. Join Us!
KY: No borders, no nations, resist Deportations
On June 14th, Kentucky Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members attended a national “No Kings” day of action by the 50501 movement to protest the Donald Trump administration on the same day as a fascist military parade took place in Washington D.C. to celebrate Trump’s birthday. This protest was put together by a coalition of liberal groups including “We Show Up” and “Standing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ)” as a part of 50501’s movement to oppose fascism and protect “real American values” and “democracy.” The groups advised people to carry American flags and wear its colors to “take back the flag”, and paint themselves as even more patriotic than the pro Trump fascists. One liberal organizer brought up chanting “USA!” in order to “confuse” the other side.
We heard this and decided to show up waving a red PLP flag and make anti-nationalist signs reading: “No Borders, No Nations, Resist Deportations” or “No War But Class War, No War With Iran.” One comrade made a sign showing Joe Biden in a Nazi uniform saying, “It’s not fascism when we do it” to make a statement and remind people of the Biden administration’s fascist policies like funding genocide, cracking down on college campuses, beefing up border security, and the militarization of police. These workers, while misled by liberal identity politics, need a communist world and under the red flag will lead us in the battle to win it!
Rally leaders scared to call out anti-Palestinian racism
When we made it in front of Union Church, the pastor and movement leaders were on megaphones essentially singing kumbaya, with songs like “We Shall Overcome.” When we eventually caught up with someone we know from the local organization Berea4Palestine, the thought occurred to all of us to begin a pro-Palestine chant. A marcher then criticized us, claiming “that was a racist dog whistle” calling for the extermination of Jewish people. This is a line frequently used by Zionists to paint pro-Palestinian activists as antisemitic. We agree that this chant does show the limits of nationalist movements. We fight for a society in which the international working class is in power, not Palestinian instead of Israeli, not Ukrainian instead of Russian. Nationalism has been proven to be a tool of the bosses, whether those bosses are the Israeli government or Hamas. Both Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force operate on racist nationalist principles. Only a united international working class will be able to smash racism, antisemitism, and sexism.
The boss’s banner represents the conditions international workers are fleeing from!
We led other workers in chants: “Smash racist deportations, working people have no nation!” being received well by most of the attendees around us. However, an older white woman walked up after to say we were “putting out bad energy” and going to “manifest deportations” in a bizarre attempt to use spirituality to make us change our chants. The impending war with Iran didn’t seem important enough for them to bring up.
Liberals only care when Trump is in charge
As we continued leading chants, another older white woman, concerned about her produce, tried to get us to chant “who will pick my green beans.” We called this racist chant out for not focusing on how those workers are exploited, and placing their worth on what commodities they can produce. She then added, “I wouldn’t care if it was just the criminals [being deported].” Showing the type of attendees at these rallies– liberals who are fine with some deportations, as long as there is “due process.” As if “due process” is ever possible in a capitalist system.
Liberals in other states posted photos online holding signs that read, “If Kamala were president we’d be at brunch.” A self-report that all liberals wish for is a return to so-called “normalcy” where they can blissfully ignore genocide, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) round-ups, the constant expansion of the prison industrial complex, and the list goes on.
Young workers will lead this fightback!
On the positive side, we seized the moment, meeting some younger workers who are already eager to work with us! A handful of workers appreciated the accuracy of the fascist Biden poster and snapped a pic. We handed out ICE fliers, including to local students attending the rally. Political discussions were had and comrades explained how the emphasis on “king” is used to justify a pre-MAGA world of slaughter that is producing this fascism. Where every boss is a king who dictates every aspect of social life!
For revolutionary workers our outlook is always forward toward the goal, going backwards in this case would be reactionary. When the bosses are weak with crisis and lashing out at workers to offset it, there’s always room to win them to communist revolution! Dare to struggle, Dare to win!
Maryland
“No Cops, No KKK, No Fascist USA” rang out as 300 residents of Greenbelt, a small community in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, gathered at the city hall and marched to the footbridge over the Baltimore Washington Parkway. Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and Greenbelt residents have been protesting the deportation of Kilmar Garcia and now are further incensed by the use of the military in Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE rallies. This was one of hundreds of NO KING rallies called around the U.S. to show opposition to Trump’s military parade and birthday celebration. One of our friends led the rally and was aided by another resident who provided militant chants. Later we met this resident, who described her frustration years ago with the communist party in Detroit that encouraged only reform struggles and pushed her into meaningless activities that were tedious and boring and “never improved anything anyway.” She was happy we wanted to photograph her poster “ICE is the new SS” and reflected on how we could advance the struggle.
Rally-goers did not initially advance revolutionary solutions to capitalism as part of their organizing so, despite the enthusiasm and large number of residents on the march and the bridge, we knew we had to bring our ideas to the fore. While cars honked in support of the banners and signs, we handed out our literature and generated discussions. We gave out leaflets of a new PLP flyer covering the events in Los Angeles and copies of CHALLENGE. Young marchers were particularly interested in our communist literature. We continued our campaign to urge Metro to remove recruiting ads for the Border Patrol with 50 fliers and 25 stamped postcards distributed to send to the transit system’s publicity department. When we spotted a sign that both supported opposition to genocide in Gaza with “Arms Embargo now” and support for immigrants with “Abolish ICE” we got another photo. Unfortunately this was one of the few signs that included the fight against war and genocide. It turned out that this signmaker was a former coworker whose family is friends with our comrades. We have to organize all the contacts and friends into the Party so that these marchers will march towards revolution and away from the Democratic Party dead end.
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.
*****
- Information
Mamdani can’t fix fascism; workers need communist revolution
- Information
- 03 July 2025 880 hits
This is a preview of a longer piece we’re working on analyzing Mamdani’s mayoral campaign and its implications for our class.
The mobilization of tens of thousands in Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoralty campaign presents an opportunity to strengthen the fight for communism. In a period of rising global fascism and looming world war, it also presents big risks for the working class. Many Mamdani supporters are honest workers who are fed up with the monstrous inequality of capitalism, with its brutal racism and sexism. Progressive Labor Party needs them—and millions more like them—to build an egalitarian society. The fatal catch is that they’re channeling their anti-capitalist frustrations into the dead end of voting. Electoral politics is a shell game run by the capitalist rulers to protect their trillions in profits and stop open rebellion. Our challenge is to win these workers to move from reformism to revolution, from the bosses’ clutches to working class liberation. This process is complicated. It calls for patience as well as urgency. But our message is straightforward: Don’t vote, revolt!
Mamdani’s campaign promises of free child care, free bus rides, cheaper groceries, and less exorbitant housing are New Deal-type reforms that hold obvious appeal in a city where one of four children live in poverty. But we’ve seen this movie before, and it never ends well for the working class. Under the profit system, in even the best of times, workers’ gains are too little and short-lived. In the current period, with U.S. imperialism in sharp decline, a desperate U.S. ruling class will be forced into a military showdown with imperialist China and other rivals. Sooner than later, they’ll be compelled to discipline bosses and workers alike. No politician—be they Republican or Democrat or Democratic Socialist—will be able to resist this nationalist, racist tide. They’ll either go with the fascist flow or be thrown overboard.
Capitalism can’t be fixed to serve the needs of the working class. History proves that it can’t be voted out. As the Russian and Chinese revolutions showed before they were reversed, capitalism can be smashed only through armed struggle by masses of workers led by communist ideas. The bosses’ dictatorship must be replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat. The great danger of the Mamdani phenomenon, like the Obama craze before it, is that it weakens workers’ class consciousness. It disarms them for the life-and-death struggle before us.
In reality, anti-capitalism has only one political home where its ambition can be realized—in the struggle for revolutionary communism under the banner of Progressive Labor Party. Join us. We have a world to win!
