BROOKLYN, June 4—The cancellation of not one—but two—student-demanded Eid celebrations at this majority-Black high school is a symptom of deepening racism inside the bosses’ institutions. This suppression unmasks a Black liberal administration using the rhetoric of inclusion (see bottom) to uphold racist divisions in a capitalist society.

In response, the working-class community is learning how to fight for antiracist solidarity under a chilling political climate. This small fightback has opened the doors to deeper political relationships and exposure to communist ideas through CHALLENGE. For many students, this struggle was their first step in questioning capitalist authority as part of an organized collective. Progressive Labor Party makes it clear multiracial and student-worker unity are mortal threats to the threads of this profit system. One way the bedrock for communism grows is through seeds of class struggle and solidarity. 

Suppressing working-class unity 

In 2025, we are bearing witness to an all-out assault on working-class people—migrants terrorized, kidnapped, and deported; students policed and suspended for minor infractions; healthcare, medicaid, and social security funding attacked; DEI programs gutted; antiracists doxxed and removed for fighting genocide; abortion effectively criminalized; and the equivalent of six atomic bombs dropped on Gaza, and more. The liberal school’s Black woman principal joins in to attack a majority-Black student population for organizing multiracial unity. That’s the political climate we are breathing in. 

After the silencing of Eid in April, student organizers gathered to plan their response (see box). Even after multiple attempts—the issue was presented at a union meeting, in which ten teachers were openly supportive another Eid proposal was submitted—the administration stonewalled the effort. 

This isn’t about stopping a celebration; it’s about how capitalist institutions deeply fear, and hence suppress, students and staff organizing independently. While the working class has yet to realize their potential power, the bosses shiver at the first sign of unity. 

the bosses’ censorship, some students and staff independently organized a henna table, distributed stickers that decried Palestinian genocide, wished Eid Mubarak, and demanded “RESPECT” in four languages. We created informal spaces for Arab and Black students to mingle and build solidarity. These small actions are the seeds of a future communist society, one built on multiracial unity and working-class power.  

The alternative to this profit-based system is to fight for a needs-based one, where every-day students and workers like ones at this school are the decision-makers. To see a glimpse of that, many were invited to May Day, the communist holiday. Through struggles like these, CHALLENGE readership increased by nine people. 

An annual tradition of unity broken

At this mainly Black school, Eid celebrations without pushback date back to 2019, and students from all backgrounds participated with enthusiasm every time. Eid was a cultural moment of joy, food, and recognition for students who are so often asked to shrink themselves. It was always explicitly about creating a space of multiracial unity in a public school system that fails working-class, migrant, Black, and Brown youth. 

So derailing Eid hits different. Students are not only grieving what they see in the news; now they’re being told that even a cultural celebration in their school is too much. It sends the message that certain students don’t fully belong.

Why the obsession to police celebrations? In a system that thrives on dehumanization and disunity, students independently organizing a cultural event is a declaration: we matter and an injustice to one is an injustice to all. Schools, institutions controlled by the ruling class, fear ideas that threaten to challenge this chokehold of capitalist isolation. 

Bosses sow chaos, we can sow solidarity

The assault on Eid is no isolated matter. Many see a deeper pattern of canceling or delaying or last-minute changing initiatives that build unity—student events, advisories, clubs, field trips, and so on. The goal, it seems, is disorganization and demoralization. Because divided and disorganized we fall. 

One thing is for sure: Black faces in high places don’t serve the working class. This mainly-Black administration clearly fears student organizing, teacher organizing, and family organizing. And what better way to keep us disconnected than by fostering chaos and confusion?

We need a different model rooted in collective organizing by students, families, and education workers. We need student-family-worker unity now—to fight back against anti-Muslim racism, against a dictatorship over school culture, and against the manufactured chaos meant to keep us apart. 

And in this model is the seed for communist ideas, for that’s a system based on working-class power. To nurture and sustain any growth, the working class needs to be won to the long-term solution of communism.

Background:

In April, less than five business days before the high school’s planned Eid celebration, the Administration sabotaged it—declaring Eid will be “postponed” because we hadn't done anything for Easter. The postponement was de facto cancellation. 

They say: “[W]hy…only have an Eid celebration when there are hundreds of Christians in the school too…If [Student Council] truly represent and respect the whole student body, then everyone can be celebrated.”

We fight to say: This isn’t inclusion—it’s racism. Muslim students matter, and multiracial unity matters. This is a racist attack on students, period.
This student organization has been disciplined in the past for their pro-student activities, so it’s unsurprising the administration attacks one of the few events that unites students. 

Students debated the merits of the administration's top-down decision to change Eid. Their responses:

“I’m a Christian…and there are so many celebrations [but] the one day for Muslims after a month of fasting gets looked over? That’s genuinely so frustrating”

“We’re so bummed out!” 

“How about we call it Eid-ster?!”

“I don’t know why they’re complaining now”

“I think the fact the the school ISN’T majority Muslim is the biggest reason to have an Eid celebration”

On the surface, the idea of combining Eid and Easter into one “interfaith” event may sound like inclusivity. The logic behind this decision reeks of “All Lives Matter.” It pretends to call for unity, but in reality, attacks student unity. 

After the discussion, the students reached a decision: the Eid celebration should stand on its own. The student organization sent a second event proposal to celebrate the Eid in June. This was immediately dismissed in four words: “we already discussed this.”

When another student heard of the original postponement, they were inspired to write an article about it for the school newspaper, which became the basis for conversations with students and co-workers. 

Teacher organizers from the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are participating in the national teachers' strike, making inroads into the movement by distributing thousands of solidarity flyers, providing food supplies, and bringing people around the Party.

The National Union of Education Workers (CNTE) launched the teachers' strike and started a sit-in in Mexico City, demanding the repeal of the fascist Peña-AMLO-Sheinbaum Education Reform and the Institute for Social Security Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) Law that governs social security and health care services for federal employees. PLP rejects the bosses’ policies of repression and their violation of labor rights. We call on the entire working class to fight for communist revolution and against the attacks of the bosses' system, fascism, and imperialist war.
The 2007 ISSSTE law, imposed by former President Calderón, repealed the old pension system that guaranteed retirees a defined percentage of their final salary and replaced it with a privately-run system that pays retirees about 30 percent of their final salary. 

This new system is used by approximately 85 percent of state workers, including nearly two million teachers. Current President Sheinbaum promised to repeal the 2007 ISSSTE law when she was campaigning. But, like her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), she has failed to respond to the demands of the workers. Capitalist politicians, regardless of whatever party they’re in or promises they make, serve the capitalists and will always put the banks over the needs of the working class. Only communist revolution can create a decent life for workers.

Bosses lie and scheme to steal from workers

The 2007 law put the retirement system under the control of government-selected banks, called AFORES, that collected the pension payments of the workers and invested the money to create profits for themselves. So, while teachers who retire under the new system receive a fraction of what they need to survive, AFORES from March 2024 to February 2025 alone recorded capital gains of over 774 billion pesos, an unprecedented amount for any 12 consecutive months since records began (La Jornada, March 24, 2025). This attack targeted the most precarious needs of the working class, such as the retirement benefits of workers after a lifetime of work, only to favor parasitic financial capital that produces nothing for the benefit of society. AFORES gets rich through profiteering and speculation and has accumulated enormous profits using workers' individual accounts.

By monopolizing worker’s accounts, AFORES uses the worker’s money to conduct big business and extract multimillion-dollar profits, while the pensioners upon retirement will not even receive what they saved. They are given an amount that has been devalued over the years, condemning them to a miserable pension. This behavior of financial capital and the rulers who protect them is not an exception; it's the rule. This is how the anti-working-class capitalist system works. Therefore, we communists tell all workers that the cause of the problem is the capitalist system, and the only root solution is to destroy it and build a new communist system of social equality, where all the wealth produced by the working class is distributed among the working class itself. We must consign all capitalists and their apologists in the current government to the dustbin of history.

This is the AFORES scheme that AMLO and Claudia Sheinbaum promised to cancel and now defend as the most faithful guardians of profiteering capital. This clearly demonstrates whose side they are on, and it is not on the side of the workers and "the people," as they falsely proclaim. All welfare programs represent an insufficient palliative for the great needs of workers, peasants, and students throughout the country. This aid is fleeting and momentary, as it soon ends up in stores and banks, enriching the richest capitalists. In this way, the government policy promotes the domestic market, which allows the capitalist elite to increase their enormous profits and maintain stability in the face of market fluctuations and their changing relations with the imperialists. The underlying problem remains the capitalist system. Those who defend the capitalist system are enemies of the workers. Fighting teachers, must fight for communism!

NYC teachers’ statement of solidarity

We, public school teachers in New York City,  send international revolutionary support and solidarity to the teachers in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico who are on strike. We admire your courage and your dedication to your students and communities in the face of continued state repression.

Your fight against the government’s attempts to weaken the union and for better conditions for students and teachers is important—not just in Oaxaca, but everywhere. We take inspiration from your struggle as we fight back against the increased fascist attacks on our own students here in the United States. Same Enemy Same Fight! Workers of the World Unite! 

On the morning of June 7th, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) Kentucky joined other local organizations for the 2025 festival of Richmond Pride,where we had many conversations, filling up an entire page of contacts within hours and managing to get out several stacks of CHALLENGE, while exceeding our fundraiser goal by double. It was for a second PLP Pantry, selling our collectively-made bracelets and painted tote bags. Our tote bags had a red hammer crossed with a rainbow color play on the sickle, the colors of which ranged from Palestine to trans in order to show the fight against oppression is the struggle against bosses and class society as the root of racist and sexist gender ideas and divisions. 

PL’ers in the tenant struggle and the movement for Palestine brought posters from past struggles to show interconnectedness. “Rednecks for Palestine” and “Smash Housing 4 Profit! PLP.” Club leaders had red “WV Mine Wars museum” bandanas around their necks signifying the coal wars as a multiracial working class uprising. Our club supplied free contraceptives, pregnancy tests, Plan B and Narcan and invited these new comrades to the next tenant’s meeting to get more involvement in mass struggle 

Some of us split from the tabling booth to drown out counter protesters with syncing bluetooth speakers. There was even a religious misleader who kept preaching on a mic with his own camera crew about how marginalized workers there needed to repent, clearly trying to sabotage pride. One portable speaker was no match, but just like the forces within our class, several combined together and our music overpowered this religious “scripture.” Comrades were blocking the cameras and playing the copyright music into them, using the Bosses’ own laws against them
There was a solidarity moment after we drove them out. PL’ers held up a Party banner and stood side by side with LGBTQ workers. The fight for an antiracist and antisexist world continues!

No kings, no bosses’ system

Dear CHALLENGE : In Raleigh, North Carolina, approximately 5,000 workers and students had a multiracial anti Trump  protest in conjunction  with national protests. There were people on both sides of Raleigh’s Highway 1. The sentiments  were antiracist  and people had signs calling Trump a fascist. The workers know what fascism is, and that’s  good. There were also U.S. and Mexican flags there, which was the downside. The international working class owes no  allegiance to U.S., nor Mexican bosses! As the PLP  gets larger, and more well known, nationalism can eventually  be challenged more sharply. On the  good side, 20 CHALLENGE papers were distributed.  The Party has much work to do. We must take advantage  of protests to get our communist line out because at some point, protesting will be illegal as fascism consolidates in America. It’s not just Trump, it’s the whole damn system,  capitalism,  which must be destroyed!
*****

Antiracists call out shipments for genocide

You’ve all seen those huge barges with shipping containers, many bearing the name Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies. They transport a huge proportion of the weapons the U.S. sends to Israel, including all the wings for the F-35 fighter jets since 2022. On June 11, Jewish Voice for Peace and some members of the Palestinian Youth Movement occupied the lobby of their NYC office with a demonstration of about 200 people during the lunch hour. 

There were large banners condemning Maersk, t-shirts saying End the Siege and Stop Starving Gaza, and constant chants about genocide and Maersk’s crimes. About half the participants were arrested, while the other half took to the street outside and chanted for another hour. It was a militant and very well-planned action. What was lacking was a tie in with deportations, attacks on universities and science, and racist cutbacks in the U.S. - an understanding that capitalism is the problem that causes all these manifestations of fascism.
*****

Workers connect Bukele regime to Amerikkka

On Saturday, June 7, members of Progressive Labor Party attended a film screening on the fascist Bukele regime in El Salvador and its effects on working class families. The event was held at the Rutgers Labor Education Center and was sponsored by organizations fighting for immigrant justice such as Cosecha and Resistencia en Accion. Attendees ranged from workers passionate and ready to fight collectively to end the capitalist imperialist system to workers grieving their loved ones detained by ICE. It was heartbreaking to see workers both in El Salvador and the United States grieve over the violent breakup of their families and wonder aloud how their detained loved ones were being treated. Simultaneously, we witnessed workers’ inspirational desire from both countries to stand in solidarity with one another and fight back!

One worker brilliantly pointed out the limits of relying on the Amerikkkan judicial system for immigrant justice, calling for attendees to look to the power of the international working class as the way to solve the capitalist crisis of racist immigrant detainment; our battleground is not the Amerikkkan courtroom, but rather everywhere that capitalism exists. 
*****

DNA is not destiny

Dear CHALLENGE,

The May 9th issue contained a very good article on the racist killing of two high school students  on the streets of Brooklyn. The reports of students organizing and fighting back against the racist conditions in their neighborhood were truly inspiring. The reality of violence being endemic to capitalism was reinforced with the statement “Capitalism’s very DNA is the violent exploitation and oppression of the working class…” 
The idea that DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information, is somehow more essential and influential than environmental factors is a capitalist idea that seeks to blame individuals (and their genes) for all of the ills of our society. The underlying message behind this idea is that trying to get rid of capitalism is a waste of time, because all of these things are “natural” or “part of our DNA.” But this is not how biology works. Yes, DNA is important, but not more so than the environment that an organism experiences. Violent exploitation and oppression are indeed endemic to capitalism; it cannot exist without them. We can make this point without referencing DNA and its supposed centrality.
*****

Massacre at noon: nationalism kills revolution

I watched a movie about an event that is little known in the U.S. The movie was Massacre At Noon. Made in former Yugoslavia  in 1975, its plot is about Serbian communist partisans fighting the Nazi occupation army (Wehrmacht). In October, 1941, the German SS had over 100 Serbian workers and communist guerrillas executed in reprisals for the death of German soldiers. There are political lessons  to be learned from this movie. Marshal Tito was overall leader of the communist partisans, but they had a United Front with bourgeois groups like royalists forces that represented monarchy (Chetniks). Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  learned from working class struggles that in armed struggle, you don’t  make temporary unity with bosses. 

Nationalism means making concessions that end up being anti-working class. In the movie, the communists instead of singing the International, sing a nationalist song. Also, the Chetniks ended up selling  out communists to German fascists. While the communist partisans eventually defeated the Nazis, the issue of nationalism  was not fully resolved as a political contradiction. Eventually, Yugoslavian state capitalism  gave way to the breakup of Yugoslavia, and unleashed nationalism led to the Serbo-Croatian War. PLP rejects all nationalism, as it holds back communist  revolution. The only solution  is communist revolution and workers internationalism for a world without nations and borders.
*****