CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 28—A multiracial, multigenerational group of over 50 workers and youth gathered in a local fieldhouse to celebrate our annual Black and Red event today, a tradition that elevates and honors the vast contributions and leadership of Black communists, past and present.
Black and Red serves to dispel the anti-communist myth that revolutionary struggle grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory and practice exists in the limited domain of white workers and those of European descent. Revolutionary communist struggle has in fact been embraced over generations by billions of working people all over the world – including across Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America – to advance the cause for liberation from racism, oppression and exploitation.
As Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has long stated, the militant leadership of Black workers has always been essential in the ongoing fight against capitalism and its use of racism to divide, attack, and exploit the entire working class. The intimate experience and rage of Black workers everywhere confronting this racist capitalist system lights the fire for the international working class to rise and fight for a communist society free from all the chains of the old world.
Celebrating antiracism and Black leadership
To kick off the event, our veteran comrade emcee spoke on the ongoing need for communist revolution in a volatile and dangerous world. Everyone in the room had woken up this morning to the news of the US and Israeli imperialists launching a racist war on Iran. Sharing a common space with other workers helped to process the grim news in a grounded way and still face the growing carnage with a sense of revolutionary duty and optimism.
There was no better way to express some revolutionary optimism than starting our program detailing the experience of Black workers in the small island country of Grenada, who led a successful revolutionary movement to repel British imperialism in the late 1970s. We watched some short videos about how the socialist government led by the New Jewel Movement was able to advance democratization of workplaces on the island as well as significantly improve health and literacy efforts. A table talk followed in which everyone present broke out into smaller groups to discuss and gather lessons from the revolution which was ultimately toppled when U.S. imperialists invaded in 1983.
This was followed by a “fireside chat” with a long-time Black veteran comrade who detailed his experience over decades of antiracist struggle in PLP. In an inspiring way, this comrade described his journey from early childhood and how the politics of egalitarian communism always found a way to align with his personal experience and influence him to do the right thing in the moment. He spoke of the supportive and guiding role of the Party in providing a vehicle for his desire to see an antiracist society, and how committing ourselves to the organization should not be seen as a sacrifice, but the highest expression of dedication and love to the working class.
Finally, we wrapped up with a fun activity, joining with others at our tables to answer trivia questions about Black communists and their incredible history of fightback, including leaders like Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, and many others.
Communist revolution charts path to worker power
The road ahead for the international working class will not be an easy one, as the capitalist ruling classes around the world are set on unleashing more racism, fascism, sexism and war to prop up their profit system in crisis. However, events like Black and Red and the commitment of the mass multiracial PLP to turn the coming wars into communist revolution help chart the path to a far better future.
Boston, February 21 - The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in the Boston area held a one-day school designed to help our members and base understand the roots of the rapidly growing crises in the U.S. and the world. From brutal racist ICE deportation raids to the U.S. invasion of Venezuela to soldiers deployed as cops in cities to the war in Ukraine, Iran, Sudan and Gaza, the world today is unstable and more dangerous than ever. In order to strengthen our commitment to fighting for communism, the only way to destroy capitalism and the misery it wrecks on the working class, we need a deeper understanding of Marxist political economy, imperialism, and the nature of fascism.
Discussing the U.S. situation
We had five short presentations about imperialism, developing fascism in the U.S., the economic basis of fascism, opposing fascism today and the role of social democrats, and building the party/base-building. After each one, we held workshops, carefully constituted with new people and veterans, to discuss the presentations. People learn best through discussion and connecting the ideas to their own experiences.
One important strength of the event were the new and younger Party members who gave political and organizational leadership. The final presentation on party building given by two active members who have only been in the Party for about a year was an inspiration to all, but especially the young friends we brought. Young people today, who are deeply skeptical of capitalism and horrified by the world it created, are looking for a community to be a part of. Social Media, with all its problems, has radicalized many youth who we can bring into our Party when we get to know them. This event helped to solidify and grow our Party.
In our recent article on the Gaza Board of Peace, we regret that portions of the text may have mischaracterized the motivations of Palestinians who remain in their homeland. The article suggested that workers who stay are primarily driven by firm nationalist commitments and support for Hamas. While nationalism influences many workers in Palestine, our failure to properly develop this point resulted in an oversimplification. Workers remaining in Gaza amid conditions of war and mass deprivation cannot be reduced to an expression of nationalist ideology alone. Such a framing flattens the lived realities of the working class in Palestine who are effectively trapped by violence, destruction, and severe restrictions, including many who would leave if they had the opportunity (The Media Line, 05/15/2025).
Additionally, the article stated or implied that there has been no history of class-conscious fightback in Palestine. In fact, there were significant efforts to build a Israeli-Palestinian worker and communist-led movement during the 1920s and 1930s, though these ultimately fragmented along nationalist lines. Palestinian nationalism has also been tied to the interests of a Palestinian elite that has exploited workers and collaborated with successive colonial and imperial authorities. This dynamic has played a significant role in shaping political outcomes in the region.
To read our analysis on Palestine and Israel visit https: tinyurl.com/4h8c55z4
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International Working Women’s Day: When we fight, we strengthen our roots for revolution
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- 15 March 2026 628 hits
The following is an excerpt of a speech that was given at our annual Pre-May Day International Women’s Day brunch in Brooklyn, New York. To read the speech in its entirety visit www.plp.org.
Thank y’all so much for coming out to celebrate International Working Class Women’s Day!!
Today, we are here for a communist celebration of March 8th—where we recognize the crucial role that women have played in the fight against capitalism. We are here to struggle for a world where this celebration extends far beyond one day in March. That world will be won through the revolutionary leadership of women.
We know this because it is our very leadership that has historically propelled us toward that world.
Women workers lead the way to revolution!
After the revolution in Cuba, women led education programs to combat high illiteracy rates that disproportionately affected rural women. Integrated groups of urban Cubans moved to the countryside to teach. And just two years after the revolution, illiteracy rates had fallen from 23 percent to 3 percent. Under socialism, the working class was uplifted through a collective antiracist, anti-sexist fight against capitalism’s failings.
In PLP, leadership from women of color has been integral to our growth, and the sharpening of our fight against capitalism.
Our last chairwoman, Gracie, led with force into the 21st century, providing militant direction as our organization fought against racist neo-nazis and imperialist war. Now, leadership has been passed from that chairwoman to an integrated collective.
We are here to affirm that, therefore, it will be leadership from women, specifically Black and Brown women, that will liberate ourselves from capitalism’s chains. So we stand here as the fertilizer for our next harvest.
And everyone is necessary in this fight, sexism hurts us all. Women were initially forced into free domestic labor so men could be exploited more heavily at work. But in a communist world imagined by PLP, we would abolish the entire profit system. And “without that system, there will be no motive for gendered inequality, and without that, gendered exploitation and violence would be collectively confronted and, over time, eliminated.”
This task is no small feat, but let us be invigorated from the recent communist struggles led by women that are displayed around the room. And let that motivation deepen by the multi-racial, gender-inclusive, multi-generational crowd that fills it.
Our class is the only one we can truly depend on to liberate ourselves. We confront police terror in Brooklyn, with the families of Kyam Livingston and Shantel Davis. We strike at the Stella D’oro cookie factory in the Bronx. We occupy the La Casita community center in Chicago.
And our fight extends far beyond the US. Sexism knows no borders—it follows through the Darien Gap, at the southern border of Mexico, in the midst of war in Sudan, at the intersection of Church and Nostrand, and in the West Bank. Our revolutionary struggle must be as ignorant to borders as sexism and racism are. We are building an international fight that will abolish capitalism and the divisive borders it creates.
So though capitalism has cut our movement at the trunk, they have no idea our roots are alive and well, deepening with each action. One root when we take the streets and resist ICE raids. When women in Sudan form grassroots committees against sexual violence in wartime, another root strengthens. “The only solution is a communist revolution” amplified for all of Flatbush to hear, that’s another root. Come to our May Day (May 2nd)—that’s another. Join our Party, another.
So, while at the surface we may only see a stump, our efforts are deepening, entangling, until we force them to break ground with communist revolution. I’m fighting for the day that my sister, her beautiful friends, you, me, and our class siblings harvest our revolutionary fruit, plentiful and sweet.
Happy International Working Class Women’s Day.
PLP members in the Bay Area attended a rally for International Working Women’s Day (IWWD), with about 100–150 workers present. Attached is the flyer we distributed and discussed, explaining how the collective action of working-class women led to the creation of this day and contributed to both the 1917 Russian Revolution and the revolution in China.
One new friend met with us and helped distribute the flyer. We also distributed copies of CHALLENGE and gathered a few contacts to follow up with, as well as people interested in joining our May Day celebration. In total, we handed out about 100 flyers, including to people walking by the demonstration.
We don’t think the numbers are the most important aspect of this action. Rather, what matters is the struggle that this flyer represents—the discussions it can spark with friends, family, and comrades.
International Working Women’s Day (IWWD)
Today the media often shortens this to International Women’s Day, but International Working Women’s Day began as a working-class holiday, rooted in the long history of women-led struggles around the world.
The history below highlights collective action, not individuals. Working-class women organized, fought, and led struggles against class oppression. In 1977, the United Nations officially recognized March 8 as International Women’s Day, but the day itself was built through decades of struggle by working women.
These examples show how class consciousness and multi-racial, multi-ethnic unity—among women, men, and all workers—develop through collective struggle, often with leadership from women.
Hidden histories of women’s struggles in the U.S.
Much of the history of women-led struggles has been hidden or erased.
- Women and slave revolts: Historian Rebecca Hall, in Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, documents rebellions on slave ships during the Middle Passage. Through research into slave ship manifests, she shows that enslaved women fought their captors throughout the Americas, though these stories were largely erased from official history.
- Indigenous resistance: There are many untold stories of Indigenous women who fought European colonization and westward expansion in the Americas.
- Women abolitionists: Black and white women organized against the system of slave labor and helped lead the Underground Railroad.
- 1832: Black women founded the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society in Massachusetts. Black women were leading abolitionists in both the North and the South, though many of their stories remain buried.
- 1833: Quaker women founded the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. In 1838, racist mobs attacked their interracial meetings. The Second Anti-Slavery Convention brought together 175 Black and white abolitionists.
- 1848: These struggles helped lead to the first Women’s Rights Convention in New York.
Women lead labor struggles
Women workers also led major labor battles against capitalist industrialization.
- 1857: On March 8 in New York City, garment workers organized a strike against inhuman working conditions, a 12-hour workday, and poverty wages. Hundreds of women demonstrated across the city.
- 1907–1908: Women on the Lower East Side of New York organized a rent strike that lasted until January 1908.
- 1908: About 15,000 women marched through New York City, demanding shorter hours, better pay, and improved working conditions in the garment industry.
- 1912: The “Bread and Roses” Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led largely by immigrant women and children, became one of the most famous labor struggles in U.S. history.
Women workers and revolution
Women’s struggles have also helped spark revolutionary movements.
- February 23, 1917 (March 8 in the Western calendar): After nearly three years of brutal World War I, women textile workers in Petrograd struck over food shortages. Within days:
- 75,000 workers struck
- Then 200,00.0
- Eventually nearly 400,000 workers, including students, teachers, and office workers.
- Their demand for “Bread and Peace” helped ignite the Russian Revolution, forcing the Tsar to abdicate. Later that year, the October Revolution overthrew the Provisional Government and established a workers’ state.
- China’s Revolution: During the Chinese revolutionary movement, the slogan “Women hold up half the sky” reflected the central role women played in building the revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party, even though many individual stories remain untold
Today
Today, March 8, 2026, living conditions for workers are worsening around the world. War, genocide, and economic crisis continue under capitalism and imperialist rivalry.
At the same time, resistance is growing.
Let’s build a movement capable of overthrowing capitalism and creating a communist world based on sharing and collective power.
