NEW YORK, February 17—On President’s Day, thousands of protestors took to the streets of lower Manhattan as part of nationwide calls to resist fascism and reject President Donald Trump and Musk. About a dozen comrades joined the protest, took leadership, and pushed the militancy and politics of the march beyond its otherwise pro-America and pro-democracy tone.

The march, which was mostly attended by white, older workers, centered around stopping Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s actions and the importance of preserving U.S. “democracy.” Unfortunately on brand, the crowd was somewhat littered with American flags, nationalist rags soaked with the blood of millions of our class siblings from around the world. Many protest signs focused on getting rid of Musk and Trump, while other sharper posters demanded a free Palestine and an end to deportations. We pushed the political line of the march by chanting “It’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism” and “Republicans mean / we got to fight back! And Democrats mean / we got to fight back! ‘Cause capitalism means / we got to fight back!” as well as “Smash racist deportations / working people have no nations!” Many workers in the crowd responded to our electric militant energy by chanting along and taking a copy of CHALLENGE. One young worker turned the paper down, but for a good reason; he has already been receiving copies from a retired PL’er, whom he met at a City University of New York school, for years now!

As the march closed out at a park, we stayed in the street, chanting, “Together we will / fight back, Across all borders / fight back.” We were surrounded by enthusiastic chanters, who accepted CHALLENGE by the hundreds, and we closed out with a short speech. We distributed 800 newspapers in all and got the contact of a college student who marched with us the entire route. We met up with the student after the march, and they plan to go to an upcoming study group. 

Capitalism Is ruling class dictatorship 

A few participants attacked our chants by shouting in our comrades’ faces, “You need to be more pointed!” “Be more unifying!” and “Stop the coup!” In capitalism, there are two classes–the ruling class and the working class. The ruling class uses violent suppression to stay in control of the working class. Getting rid of Trump and Musk and “stopping the coup” will not end the inherent nature of the ruling class dictatorship. As long as we live in a capitalist system, we will always live in a dictatorship of the ruling class. Only when we, the working class, take state power will we be free from their rule. We call on the entire international working class to unite and smash this racist, sexist profit system. What’s more unifying and pointed than that? 

It’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism

Fascism is a stage of capitalism, not a system imposed by one individual. As China’s imperialist power ascends, the U.S. ruling class’ once-unchecked imperialist power over most of the world is becoming less and less of a given. As U.S. imperialism descends further into crisis, the ruling class has no choice but to take on more and more extreme fascist tactics to discipline themselves and suppress the working class. In fascism, the veil of liberal democracy is removed to reveal more and more of the ruling class dictatorship that has always been underneath. 

Trump is currently the figurehead of developing fascism in the U.S., but it is capitalism in crisis that is driving the ruling class’ need for intensified racism and nationalism to maintain control.

No good presidents

Another participant held up a photo of Kamala Harris and exclaimed “This is what a president looks like!” She is right, but probably not in the way she meant it. All presidents and vice presidents serve the ruling class, and Harris did her best to do exactly that. As vice president, she oversaw a genocide in Gaza and the deportation of millions of workers. As a presidential candidate, she repeatedly promised to be tougher on the border than Trump. 

As overtly racist and terrifying as Trump is, the liberal ruling class, at least for now, remains the main danger to the working class. While hundreds of thousands bravely fought back in the streets and on college campuses against the genocide in Gaza during Biden’s administration, some protestors are marching in the streets again for the first time since Trump’s last presidency. Liberal politicians spread the lie that they are “lesser evil,” all while pacifying workers and undermining fightback. Democrats paved the road for the fascism that Trump is currently the face of.

Presidents? We don’t need ‘em!

The U.S. empire and its liberal democracy are crumbling before our eyes. We do not mourn its demise: This is the same empire that was born from genocide and chattel slavery, manufactured eugenics ideas that inspired the Nazis in Germany, and forced Japanese workers into concentration camps. It’s the same empire that continues to incarcerate more people than any other nation in the world and fund the bombing of children around the world. 

The international working class deserves far more than this murderous profit system has ever provided. We know that the ruling class will not go down without a fight, slaughtering workers in tantrums of fascist terror as the empire clings onto dear life. We, the working class, must fight even harder than they do. In the wake of this decay, there is an immense opportunity for us to build a new world, a communist world free of exploitation. We don’t need presidents. We need a society run by and for the working class. Join us in the fight for communism!

BROOKLYN, NY, March 1— While the long winter break for our CUNY campus usually means less political activity since we’re not on campus, this year we made a resolution to push our limits and build a year-round mass presence. Our Progressive Labor Party club has been busier than ever attending pro-migrant worker rallies, building our base and inviting our friends and coworkers to our biweekly study group. And we are holding regular CHALLENGE sales with bullhorn speeches at a busy transit hub. This is a collectively written article reporting our winter preparations to hit the ground running once the spring semester starts. 

Student-worker alliance = internationalism & multiracial unity

Our struggle to build a student-worker alliance continues. This winter, student and faculty PL’ers attended a City University Of New York (CUNY) faculty meeting of an opposition caucus. The caucus organizes against the fake leftist, sellout leadership of the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, who recently negotiated a bogus labor contract (see BOX). The following is a student’s account of the meeting:

“As a student guest at this union meeting, I was welcomed by professors who are committed and willing to fight for the most vulnerable, like the adjunct professors and graduate students, that the union leadership isn’t representing. They seemed antiracist and pro-fighting, and the meeting successfully organized the pro-strike opposition union caucus. I didn’t notice any other students there though, and also, I was the only Black woman in the room. As communists, we want to win them to fight for the whole international working class, and we must struggle with faculty to tune in and organize with students. 

As a student, CUNY isn’t just about the teachers. It’s the students and staff and students are under attack and facing deportation threats. So, how can you go on strike without organizing the majority at CUNY? On the bright side, loud applause came for a proposed CUNY-wide student-worker alliance connecting strike demands with ICE watches, and students are invited to attend future meetings. There’s potential here.”

Red ideas spur excitement over CHALLENGE 

Another student reports: our weekly CHALLENGE sales are at a busy transit hub, an area home to a diverse population largely made up of Black workers, immigrants and transit workers. Recently, our experience there was eye-opening. In windy, below freezing temperatures, we used a bullhorn to give speeches and we distributed and got donations for almost 250 copies of CHALLENGE in one hour! Then we delivered 200 more on our paper route of the corner delis, laundromats and public housing where CHALLENGE is welcomed and read. But today wasn't just about distributing papers. It was about the conversations, the reactions, and the shared sense of hope that we encountered.

This is a bustling area. Everyone is rushing home, to work, or shopping and running errands. But the moment we started bullhorn speeches and connecting President Donald Trump, racism and local gentrification to capitalism and calling for communist revolution, people stopped. The diversity of those who took the paper was striking. Black, Latin, Asian, Russian, everyone. We all seem so different, but we are all connected looking for solutions to our struggles!

One moment stands out: One lady began reading the paper right there while waiting for the bus while another woman, juggling children and several heavy bags, initially declined the paper politely. But she heard our speech, stopped, and sent her daughter to grab a copy. Then a group of college students asked for extra copies to share with their friends. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, a crowd of women who heard our speeches crossed over excitedly. Some even began to chant along with us! A transit worker took a paper shouting "Fight Back! Fight Back!" raising his fist. Solidarity was in the air.

The energy from the crowd was palpable. And this was just one neighborhood. Imagine this outreach around the world!

Forward to spring and May Day

Our preparations for the spring semester are in full swing. Connections are being made on our club’s campuses to form Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) watches and student-faculty committees to defend immigrant students. We’re also fundraising for students at risk of deportation. As life gets more expensive, fundraising even more urgently builds solidarity and class consciousness. These are opportunities to enlist our base and expand our solidarity networks – and practice to eventually demonstrate solidarity in even bigger material ways. With International Women’s Day and May Day around the corner, we’re digging in for the fights ahead. JOIN US!

Historical context:

For decades, the bosses have launched unrelenting attacks on student-worker alliances, ever since the mass, communist-led student-faculty antiracist strike that shut down City College of New York (CCNY)) in 1949. In the 1960s, the bosses rigged the anticommunist-led United Federation of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress over the communist-led unions. The Communist Party by then fully retreated from fightback and revolution – and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) formed to carry the red flag forward. 
At CUNY today, one way segregation continues is the separate unions divided by job title and race, by mental and manual labor. The PSC for mostly white faculty, and District Council 37 for the laborers and custodial staff. DC 37 is the largest union in New York City, and the most racially diverse.

Separate unions based on labor only benefit the bosses, who use the division to screw us and prevent a repeat of the communist-led 1930s and 40s: for example, the city negotiated a wage-cut contract with DC 37’s sellout, pro-Mayor Eric Adams misleadership first. This established “pattern bargaining,” which the city then used with each separate city union. The PSC misleadership used this excuse, saying they “broke the pattern” — only marginally, and only through major concessions hurting adjuncts. 

There is no “fair” contract under capitalism. Communists fight for maximum contract demands while exposing that until workers seize state power, no contract with the bosses’ state can protect us from fascism and imperialist war. Only organizing a mass PLP can students and workers strike against and smash the capitalists who slash our pay, let our campuses collapse and allow rabid ICE and NYPD kkkops to run wild.

NEW YORK CITY—Recently, I led my first virtual transit workers’ meeting. This is a very exciting time to be gathering workers across multiple departments in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), where I work, and sharing how the bosses attack us and how we fight back. Between the terrible conditions on the job, union misleaders and the increase of fascism by President Donald Trump, workers may be discouraged, but they are also searching for someone and something to trust and have confidence in. We need to struggle with transit workers to help them realize that “someone” is their fellow worker and that “something” is communism through Progressive Labor Party!

Laying the groundwork

This meeting has been building since my campaigning through November with a fellow employee and union member who ran for president of our union, TWU Local 100, but lost. I was expecting to lose, but my primary goal was organizing the workers. But two weeks before the meeting, the then union president got removed from his seat for sexual misconduct and stealing money. Now fighting for reelection is what the person who I campaigned with wants to rally workers for. The union’s electoral board recently chose a new president the way they have in the past but it is the workers who should choose their union leadership even if they're not the leadership we need.

We had ten workers show up including this person herself. I led the meeting with the state of the world. I talked about Trump's racist and sexist attacks on migrant workers and women workers, including deportation policies and being against abortion. I tried to make the connections between Trump and what the Democrats have been doing for years. Calling the Democrats just as fascist as Trump, I wanted to make the argument that the Democrats are the main danger but I didn't want that argument to take up the whole meeting. So I made the connections to how transit workers are also facing on the job attacks, including against our retiree medical, hiring non-unionized contractors, poor wage increases, etc.

Inspiring the workers

After I finished my introduction, I ended with a question: “How can we fight back?” One worker responded, “Workers need to be inspired. Many workers are too defeated to take a stand.” I agreed; another worker stated he liked the idea of trying to unite with other workers, so he mentioned a workers’ labor group he'll be attending. I asked him to report back about that meeting. After that, our former union president took the floor. She spoke about shop steward classes she'll be teaching. But then she started to drill me with questions, basically, trying to discredit me as a leader. 

Soon after that I cut her off. I said, “I agree with most of what [she] said and I support that we have the right to choose our union president. However, if we are not organized it doesn't matter who is in leadership.” So I ended the meeting by asking the workers to bring back stories of how management has attacked them or a coworker for the next meeting and ideas for future meetings. 

Following up

After the meeting, I called one of the workers. I think she has a lot of curiosity and potential. We spoke for half an hour about my take of the state of the world. She doesn't have confidence that workers would join a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She thinks they could only be motivated by money. It will be my goal to push her into leadership even though she may be quiet for now. I think there's something brewing, all she needs is a spark. More reportbacks to come!

Southern California, February 8—A multi-racial group of over 40 people, young and old, students and workers, participated in a forum on public school closures in a Southern California city here today. The forum was sponsored by a statewide Coalition for Local School Control and a local non-profit. The group resolved to carry on the struggle against these closures, which are scheduled to take place at the end of this school year. Many of those who attended were open to a class analysis of these racist attacks on the mostly Black and Latin workers who live in this city, and responded favorably to calls for revolutionary struggle against racism and the capitalist system behind the attacks.

State bosses use debt to take over 

This public school district has been under the control of the State of California since 2012, when it was forced to apply for an interest-bearing loan from the State to bail it out of its then precarious financial state. As a condition of the loan, the state seized control of the local school district, depriving the local school board of all its power. The loan is not scheduled to be paid off until 2034! In June 2024, the current State-appointed County Superintendent running the schools announced plans to close 5 schools, including one of the two high schools, effective June 2025. 
Several of the speakers at the forum referred to the racist nature of state takeovers of public schools in California. An audience member pointed out that all nine of the public-school districts currently run by the State serve predominantly Black and Latin populations. 

Racist conditions for Black and Latin youth

The city, once a major U.S. manufacturing center, has suffered from the ravages of long-term racist unemployment and, more recently, racist gentrification. The construction of two new billionaire-backed sports complexes sent real estate values through the roof. As rents rose, and school conditions deteriorated under the mismanagement of State-appointed superintendents, parents were forced to relocate outside the city, resulting in declining public-school enrollments. Since state funding is based on enrollment figures, this exodus of working-class families provided the rationale for the closures. 

The panel included a nine-year-old student. Her school was shut down in 2024 by order of the same State-appointed school boss. The student spoke passionately about the struggle last year to keep her school open. A video was shown of a protest against that closure last year involving scores of young students and parents. It was heartening to see parents raising their children to fight back- these same children have the potential to one day tear down the capitalist system that is behind the shut-down.  

There was some discussion in the forum of the need to vote for the right politicians in order to solve the problems of the working class. However, there is no clearer example of the Democratic Party’s role as abject servants of the ruling class in California than these school takeovers and closures. California has a Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. The Democrats have a veto-proof supermajority in the legislature. But, until a few days before the forum, all state and local representatives of this City (all Democrats) had refused to even meet with the Coalition to discuss the hardships these closings will inevitably cause.

School faculty, students make their voices heard

The highlight of the forum took place when antiracist students and teachers from local high schools, who had recently walked out of school along with hundreds of other students against the racist mass deportation plans of President Donald Trump and Co., spoke in solidarity with the parents and students who are faced with school closures. The students’ vow to keep up their campaign against the racist attacks of  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was met with loud and sustained applause from the audience and set a shining example for those of us involved in the struggle against racist school closures. It is the same capitalist system that needs anti-immigrant racism and terror to divide the working class that also promotes budget cuts based on racist lies about the inability of Black and Latin students to learn.

Going forward, Progressive Labor Party members will continue to participate in this fight. Under capitalism, the education of working-class children serves the needs of the ruling class of billionaires. The role of schools is to miseducate students with bourgeois ideology, and to reproduce the class structure of capitalist society. When the rulers don’t need schools that serve their class interests, they shut them down. Under communism, education would be universal and would serve the needs of the working class as we build an egalitarian society, without racism, without billionaires who profit off our labor, and without politicians who are puppets for the rich.