As the capitalist world becomes more volatile, the world of entertainment cannot escape the instability it produces. In fact, bosses use culture as a key arena for keeping workers distracted from the source of our problems. The November 5 pandemonium at hip hop artist Travis Scott’s Astroworld Music Festival killed 10 young people. This event gives workers yet another reason to see that only a society led by and for workers—where money does not exist—can prevent such needless tragedies from occurring in the future.
Profit-driven greed from the concert’s Live Nation promoters. Fascist “crowd control” tactics from Houston, Texas police. A megalomaniac mindset on the part of Travis Scott himself and the cult-of-personality worship on the part of concert participants. High levels of drug and alcohol-induced violence–in the midst of the pandemic. These factors all culminated in the literal crushing to death and murder of these young people and critical injuries to countless others.
Under communism, we too will hold large festivals and enjoy the culture of our youth, but we will not promote antisocial culture or risk the health and safety of our youth’s lives all for the sake of preserving a profit-based system of inequality.
“Live Nation” is a profit-hungry death trap
While everyone points fingers at other sources for who is to “blame,” it is the capitalist system itself which must be put on trial. The drive for maximizing profits at the expense of workers’ lives is, once again, at the core of this tragedy.  Live Nation, the official concert organizer for Astroworld, accumulated over $2 billion dollars from the week of festival events.  They sold more than 100,000 tickets within minutes even though the plan was for 50,000 ( They wanted the extra cash). Live Nation has had a long standing history of safety violations, including a previous Astroworld disaster in 2019 where three people were injured in a stampede; 200 deaths and 750 injuries have been connected to Live Nation since 2006. This is a disgusting example of capitalism prioritizing profit over the lives and well being of workers. Travis Scott himself reportedly made $65 million from the event (Yahoo, 11/10). While it is just speculation, some believe Scott to be making money off the back end in the wake of these deaths as well by promoting Betterhelp.com, an online therapy network that has been accused in the past of utilizing celebrities to promote a substandard mental health service for vulnerable youth (The Atlantic, 10/ 12/18).
Travis Scott: proof that cult-of-personality hurts our class
While the profit motive is a constant, bosses also need the political ideologies of individualism and cynical passivity put forward by musicians like Travis Scott, so this is another way in which the Astroworld concert proves that our youth deserve better.  Scott has had a history of inciting violence at his concerts.  In 2015, he was arrested at Lollapalooza for encouraging his fans to ‘rush the stage’.  In 2017, he encouraged a fan to jump off a stage. His 2018 song ‘STARGAZING’ contains the lyrics ‘It ain’t a mosh pit if it ain’t no injuries, I got them stagedivin’ out of nosebleeds.’
While hundreds of thousands of brave young people took to the streets during the pandemic to stand up against racist police brutality, Scott made disparaging remarks about Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, calling Black workers who protested their deaths ‘fake activists’.  Bosses love and promote this kind of anti-working class cynicism, and Scott was rewarded generously for his beliefs, being allowed a mass concert even as Covid-19 rages for workers across the world.  Cited as ‘Corporate America’s Go-To-Pitchman’, Scott’s many endorsements include McDonald’s, Nike, and Sony, accumulating over 100 million dollars from these endeavors. This is how the ruling class tries to indoctrinate the youth into buying into the individualist, bourgeois lifestyle, instead of learning the power of class consciousness and organizing a strong working class.
Let’s rage against capitalism, not each other
During this Covid-19 pandemic, where millions have died, capitalists have shown that profits matter more than the well being of workers. The idea of ‘going back to normal’ despite being in year two  of the pandemic, where workers have died or have lost loved ones, faced unemployment and homelessness, has shown young people that capitalism will never place the importance of the workers first. Young people have experienced or witnessed the contradictions of capitalism during this pandemic and are embittered and disillusioned by a system that offers them no hope or solution.
Very few entertainers command the cross-section of racially and ethnically diverse fans of Travis Scott, but this multiracial would-be army of young people is aligned behind a cultural force that weakens rather than strengthens the fans themselves and their working class brothers and sisters. The rage of these young fans is produced by capitalist alienation, unemployment, inadequate education, overconsumption of drugs, and racist and sexist ideas. These fans for the most part have not been exposed to communist ideas that would allow them, like so many youth before them, to apply their anger toward the overthrow of capitalist exploitation.  That’s why a communist revolution is needed.
PLP fights for true youth power
Many of the fans broke away from the raging, toxic scene by taking action to save lives and stop the viciousness that was taking place that night. Several young people mounted the cameramen’s stands to redirect their attention to the tragedies only feet away, but the cameramen were paid to literally turn a “blind eye” from everything except Scott himself. Hundreds broke from Travis’s blind following and chanted “stop the show.”  Many others rescued people who were being crushed and suffocated by breaking the rules and throwing them over the gates into the so-called “VIP” section where $1,000 ticket holders were secured from much of the mayhem.   And this is just a minor reflection of how young people all over the world have sacrificed their lives in the fight to end capitalist oppression.
Every movement in the past 100 years to abolish racist inequality and capitalism in general has seen tremendous youth leadership.The Soweto uprisings in South Africa against racist aparatheid had the participation of over 20,000 young people, with over 170 killed in the monumental June 16 protest of 1976 that was a turning point in the fight against racism there.   In Cuba, the July 26 movement to overthrow the U.S.-based Batista fascist regime was not only led by the relatively young Castro brothers and Che Guevara, but there were also hundreds of young people–literacy teachers, party members, singers, militia members–who went on to make their deeply flawed but still significant effort toward communism come to life. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in spite of tremendous political errors, one of the greatest achievements was the decision of the Communist Party to place China’s working-class youth in charge of the schools, factories and many other sectors of the socialist society.
College students in Haiti have led workers in Haiti since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in recent years they were the first to take to the streets time and again in the aftermath of the massive natural disasters since 2010 and incessant government destabilization that costs the lives of workers every day. Our Progressive Labor Party fights to keep alive the courage and selflessness of revolutionaries past, placing young and invigorating people at the front of our annual May Day marches down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, every year. Young people have led our summer projects against racist police brutality.  Young people write for our newspaper. PLP strives to be the place for young people to grow up to be communist leaders.

NEW YORK CITY, November 4—Strikes and struggle marked this year’s 104th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the first time the working class seized state power and freed millions of workers from capitalism and imperialism. On Thursday, November 4, hundreds of workers, miners, members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and friends demonstrated in solidarity with the multiracial Alabama miners who continue their nearly eight month  strike. On November 6, PL’ers and friends held an anniversary event in honor of the Bolshevik (revolutionary communists in Russia) Revolution, while also applauding the ongoing miners’ strike. This was a  multiracial social event connecting  revolutionary history to  present day reform struggles that displays our resolve to fight back amidst the growing imperialist threat of World War III.
These rallies and events were led by new comrades. They celebrate that even as capitalists try to keep their boots on the necks of the working class we are always preparing for a communist revolution. Sustained strikes and fightbacks are schools for communism and they teach us how to lead, organize, and support our fellow brothers and sisters. While the Alabama miners’ strike is not the Bolshevik Revolution, in this dark night it reminds us that our fighting spirit is still burning.
Miners’ rally: Union misleaders show their true colors
The November 4  rally in support of striking Alabama miners was called by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) president, Cecil Roberts, in front of the Manhattan headquarters of  Warrior Met Coal’s largest shareholder, BlackRock, a key capitalist asset management firm overseeing more than $14 trillion in investments. BlackRock is financially interlocked with top ruling class banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase and is one of the largest shareholders in ExxonMobil. It owns billions of dollars in real estate in working class neighborhoods, and rounding out its portfolio are major investors in top U.S. and Israeli weapons makers.
On October 27 the courts issued a temporary restraining order on pickets at Warrior Met mines until November 15. The company released highly edited videos of strikers defending themselves and their jobs on the picket line to make it look like they attacked unprovoked. In reality, Warrior Met has been attacking strikers with vehicles and sending scabs across the picket line with KKKop escorts.
Members of unions such as CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress, the National Writers Union, airline and hotel workers’ unions also attended and with them a group of PL’ers and friends. While PL’ers sold CHALLENGE and spoke with miners about revolution, the UMWA president tried whipping up nationalism saying miners are “real American patriots.” He explained that the UMWA’s strategy to win the strike hinges on convincing Warrior Met and BlackRock to ‘also be patriots' and ‘do the right thing’ by agreeing to their contract demands. Finally, he asked the crowd to face the U.S. flag hanging from BlackRock’s headquarters and recite the U.S. pledge of allegiance. Following that, he led the crowd in a round of cheers for the killer KKKops in the NYPD. Members of PLP turn their backs on the U.S. flag and all that it stands for. Patriotism
continues to be used to exploit and manipulate working people who have given their lives for the bosses’ profit system. PLP only salutes the red flag of international working class solidarity!
This gross display of U.S. patriotism and the strategy behind it reveals the UMWA leadership as the class traitors that they are. They said nothing connecting the recent court injunctions against the miners to the capitalist state. If they had, the need to break the bosses’ laws would have become crystal clear. The Alabama miners’ strike is an example of  the international working class struggle and how the fightback of workers in one place inspires fightback in others. The union leadership not only spits on the memory of the proud history of miners’ fightback, their nationalist, pro-KKKop rant pits miners in the U.S. against miners from around the world, who in recent years have fought violent struggles against their own bosses. PL’ers offer the only alternative that is in the miners’ and every workers’ interest: smashing the bosses’ laws and their cops, while fighting back and building PLP!
‘Bolshevik Striketober Fest’ celebrates workers’ power, history
On a mild sunny afternoon two days later, a group of  PL’ers and friends held a Bolshevik anniversary event at a public beach in Brooklyn. Two new, young comrades, including a comrade who visited Alabama in August, kicked off the afternoon with a rousing speech connecting the miners’ strike in Alabama with the “Striketober'' strike wave around the U.S. and the world.
The PL’ers saluted and gave a roll call to the recent October strike wave of miners across Mexico and Colombia over safety, wages, and the environmental destruction and attacks on workers in these countries and all over the world.
 In Colombia, miners halted the exports of over 200,000 tons of coal and cost the bosses $80 billion in profits. These workers and their sisters and brothers in Alabama were joined with strikes, strike authorizations, walk-outs and work stoppages of tens of thousands of workers from Massachusetts to New York, West Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas, Nevada, California, Oregon and Hawaii in industries including steel, agricultural machinery, telecommunications, transit, healthcare, bakeries and whiskey distilleries.
Despite the darkness of the current period, these strike waves show us that every dark night must have its end. In 1917, amid the dark night of the imperialist slaughterhouse called World War I, communists ended the war in Russia and toppled their capitalist government in revolution.  Communist workers led by their party waged a multiracial, integrated, revolution of workers from all over the world spreading communist politics in over 135 languages.
As the world’s first workers’ state, these pioneering communists made many errors which PLP has analyzed elsewhere. However, 104 years after workers first proved victory over capitalism is possible, PLP proudly carries the torch of their legacy into the class  struggle against capitalism today. We fight to smash racism, sexism, nationalism, profit systems, and racist borders with a communist world run by and for the international working class. FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM and JOIN US!

LOS ANGELES, November 17—After two years of being immersed in the mass movement against police terror, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here has been connected  with lots of people interested in abolishing the police. The kkkops, used to uphold and defend capitalism, will never be abolished under capitalism. We will need our Party to lead a violent revolution to overthrow this system. Only then can we abolish the police. At the suggestion of an impacted family member, we brought this understanding to 20 members of our base through an engaging forum.
PLP from its inception has been involved in the mass work against police terror. Over the decades, we have seen calls for reforms like more Black cops and mayors, more training for police, the need for body cameras, and more. Over that same period of time, workers have seen these various reforms implemented yet have no impact on the brutal nature of the killer cops. It has become harder and harder for the bosses to fool the working class into having confidence in reforming the police or the system. After the last year and a half of struggle, if someone tried to call for a basic reform like those mentioned above, they would be laughed off the street. People know changes that address the root of the problem are long overdue.
When the ideology of the working class shifts to the left, as it has since George Floyd was killed, it is no surprise that misleaders have attempted to co-opt the ideology and language of the masses. We see this especially with the liberal Democrats who remain the main danger to our class. To distinguish ourselves from these fake leftists and opportunists, we have to be able to combat their ideas.
Red book club
Our mass organization is starting a book club with the book “Becoming Abolitionists—Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom” by Derecka Purnell. The author, a Harvard Law School graduate, advocates for so-called "non-reformist reforms" and purports that these reforms over time can lead to the abolition of the police.  Some abolitionists recognize the root cause of capitalism, but have a distorted view of the state. They claim that with these "radical" reforms, ultimately the bosses' state would "wither away."    
What Purnell and other activists who are being used to mislead the working class are missing is the inescapable class antagonism that exists between bosses and workers. This very antagonism led to the creation of the bosses state and their police in the first place. The state is not neutral nor can we win power within their institutions. This class antagonism can only be resolved through communist revolution and a complete destruction of their state. It will then be supplanted with the dictatorship of the working class led by the international Progressive Labor Party.  
Deep dive into abolition
To prepare to raise these ideas skillfully in our mass organization book club, we read and discussed excerpts from the book in one of our Party club meetings. This club includes impacted family members and other friends. It was clear to all who attended that not only was Purnell’s path a dead end, but that we needed to present the Party’s perspective on this to our broader base.
One seasoned comrade, one new comrade, and a close base member (a young Black healthcare worker) volunteered to plan the forum. We settled on presenting three parts to the forum - history and role of the police, historical examples of the shortcomings of abolition, and the Party’s plan for how to abolish the police. We created folders with readings, guiding questions, and graphic organizers for attendees to use in their small group discussions and whole group share outs. Of the 20 base members who attended, almost all came from the mass organization that comrades have been active in or their on-the-job work that has successfully been connected to the anti-police violence work.
There were rich discussions guided by questions like “are abolitionists reformers or revolutionaries?”, “how can revolution succeed where reforms and abolition cannot?”, and “what do we need for the successful overthrow of capitalism?”
Participants recognized the shortcomings of abolition movements and gave numerous examples of where this has turned into its opposite. We read excerpts from an article that highlighted the rise in the treacherous convict lease system to guarantee free labor after the abolition of slavery.
Even if the mass movement put enough pressure to “abolish” the police, the capitalist class would just reinstate them under a different name.
So what’s the plan? Build PLP!
During the third segment where we focused on the Party’s plan for abolishing the police—a revolutionary party to overthrow capitalism and create a communist world in its place — one base member raised doubts that the working class could shed its selfish nature for this new society to thrive. Another base member jumped right in and reminded him that so-called human nature is determined by the capitalist class, but when we have state power, workers would be that driving force.
Everyone who attended thoroughly enjoyed the rich discussions. Many asked for a part two where we could dive deeper into a vision for communism. We will also follow up with a Party retreat that will call for those close to us to step up their commitment and join. Through our commitment to working in mass organizations and being active in the mass movement, our base of the Party in LA has grown both quantitatively and qualitatively. While there is still a ways to go to recruit and consolidate those closest to us, the potential absolutely exists and can be actualized if we all redouble our efforts and tighten our focus. Onward!

WASHINGTON, DC, November 15— After a 34-day occupation that turned Howard University’s Blackburn Center into a “tent city,” Howard students forced the administration to “plan to find a resolution” to the campus’s horrid, racist living and learning conditions.
It remains to be seen if the administration will fulfill its promises. When one of the organizers returned to her dorm, she found  flooding from a broken pipe! Even in victory, reforms are limited under a nightmare system called capitalism! These deplorable conditions are “normal” because this system is built on profit, not working-class needs. At Howard, we have a Black President, Wayne A.I. Frederick, subjecting mainly Black students to deplorable housing conditions in a historically Black campus (HBCU).
Only communist revolution can create a society that meets the needs of workers and working class students.
Racist conditions at an HBCU
Students were fed up with mold, broken pipes, intermittent WIFI, and roaches in their dorms, and were also incensed at the administration’s indifference to their plight (see CHALLENGE, October 23). Just last month, the university’s own report listed 34 concerns related to “suspected fungal growth, across more than 5,050 beds-- 0.67% of all on-campus beds” (ABC News, 11/17).
The students demanded what would have never been an issue in the first place under a needs-based system—a) an in-person town hall with Howard's president, b) a meeting with university leaders about housing and legal, disciplinary and academic immunity for protesters, c) student voice in Howard's new housing plan, and more.
Support from faculty
Faculty and alumni rallied in support of the students during the occupation, which has come to be known as #BlackburnTakeover . On Friday, November 5, the adjunct faculty members organized in the SEIU union sponsored a support rally, linking their working conditions to the students’ learning conditions.
Tenured faculty also spoke, one noting that their participation in negotiations with the adjunct faculty union was summarily canceled when the administration hired a union-busting lawyer to represent the university in these negotiations instead.
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member spoke of the need for revolution against the entire capitalist system, since the horrendous conditions facing students are a trickle-down from the entire racist exploitative system of which Howard University is a part. Alumni speakers recounted their own negative experiences with the administration, and set up a tent to join the protesters in their 24/7 occupation and tent city.
What was the victory?
After 20 whole days of negotiations with the administration, students felt their concerns had been met, on paper. “We came, we saw, we declared, and we won,” claimed one of the organizers of the University’s Blackburn Center occupation. What was the victory?  What have we won? President  Frederick “plans to make improvements throughout the campus, and is committed to maintaining ‘safe and high-end housing’” (ABC News, 11/17). While they may make some improvements in housing, it remains locked in a process of gentrification as it sells off its properties to developers, forcing Black workers out of the city. There is no escaping the capitalist system, with profits primary, as long as we limit our vision to reforming our immediate circumstances.
Jesse Jackson and Ras Baraka visited the protesting students. The former is a historically Black misleader who functions as a pacifier against antiracist fightback. The latter is a leader of student rebellion at Howard in 1989 and current mayor of Newark responsible for racist policies! But these liberal reformers lead us to accept a system in decay. No matter how hard we try, we can’t expect a tree with rotten roots to bear fruit.
Real victory against rotten daily conditions, racism, and capitalism can only come with the building of a revolutionary organization. Step up to fight in the class struggle today to build the long-term struggle for communism, the abolition of all forms of exploitation, and join the PLP!