CHICAGO, January 20—“FREE THEM ALL! DROP THE CHARGES!” This was the main rallying cry heard in front of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse as over a dozen antiracist fighters braved freezing temperatures outside. Today marked the date of a court hearing for an antiracist fighter who was among the thousands attacked and charged by the racist capitalist state for their participation in a militant rebellion last year.
For nearly an hour, we led chants, gave short speeches, and picketed in front of the stairs leading into the bosses’ racist criminal injustice center. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) helped lead chants, held up anti-capitalist banners, and shared copies of CHALLENGE newspaper. Many drivers and workers passing by honked their horns or raised their fists in support.
Our rally today took on an even wider significance given that it was the inauguration of the latest fascist-in-chief, U.S. President Joe Biden. Those of us in PLP made it clear that no matter who holds the reins of power in the capitalist system, the attacks on our class are bound to continue. In the wake of the Donald Trump-led Small Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class storming the Capitol building, the splits among the bosses and the racist contradictions of the system have been made even more apparent.
PLP has been honored to fight alongside our class within these worker and student-led struggles. The solidarity and collectivity shown in these fights, no matter the size, is what gives our class the confidence and training that we need to ultimately run an egalitarian communist world in the masses’ collective interest.
The struggle expands
The newly created Chicago Activist Defense Committee (CADC) organized the action today. What originally started as an initiative to support Black artist/worker Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson (see previous CHALLENGEs) after his arrest by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) during an anti-racist demonstration last August has grown into a wider network to support all those attacked by the capitalist state, citywide.
Adding more fuel to our fire is the clear racist double standard that was on display during the Capitol building siege on January 6th (see editorial on page 2). A mob of mainly white racists quickly overrun scant security forces and were allowed free reign to livestream their mayhem. To date, approximately 100 of those who participated have been arrested and face charges, compared to at least 3000 who were arrested in Chicago alone for fighting back against the racist murder of George Floyd.
As one CADC member put it, “A Black woman was shot to death for driving too close to the White House and our protests are met with extreme violence just for standing in the street and speaking out.” Racist terror and exploitation are ingrained in this capitalist system!
Fight for a system that serves workers
One PL’er concluded, “We fight today to get our comrades freed and their charges dropped, but we must have no illusions that this capitalist legal system exists to serve us.” We must continue fighting and winning others to defend and protect ourselves not only in the present, but also to build the mass PLP which represents the only force that can free us from the racist and sexist misery of capitalism. Let’s keep fighting!

Workers pay the heaviest of prices for buying into capitalist ideas, which in every country capitalism tries convincing us are universal truths— in the U.S., schools and movies alike saturate us with ideas like “individual freedom.” But when evaluating the toll of COVID-19, the cost of these ideas is measured in the hundreds of thousands of workers dead and the millions of workers’ lives uprooted and shattered in the U.S. alone: in the belly of the beast of history’s richest and most powerful imperialist power.
And the very first mechanism by which capitalism guaranteed the lethality of the COVID-19 was the infection of the working class with capitalist ideas, starting with individualism.
To be sure, the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party recommends the COVID-19 vaccine, universal mask wearing, physical distancing, and self-isolation when necessary – to protect ourselves and everyone around us. These are common sense mandates. In many countries workers willingly obey these public health mandates and lockdown orders for that reason.
Yet the U.S. leads in the share of people who defy such public health measures. Many refuse to accept these mandates because they regard them as infringements on “individual freedom,” even though this individualism directly harms others. Misled by politicians like Trump and Christian fascist preachers who promote superstition over science, around more than 25 percent of all U.S. workers —rising to 33 percent of Black and 34 percent of Latin workers— believe the pandemic is “probably or definitely” a hoax (Pew Research, 7/24/20), dismissing the one-third of one million deaths and counting. Far too many of our working class sisters and brothers are incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.
Mimicking Trump’s irresponsibility, many state governors and politicians aligned with the Small Fascist, domestic-oriented “Fortress America” capitalist wing tell people to do what they want. Many small-time capitalists are on the brink of failure, squeezed by monopolies like Amazon on one hand and falling profits on the other.
But it’s not just Trump – it’s capitalism. Such blatant “me-first” disregard for the well-being of others didn’t begin with Trump or any particular faction of the capitalist class. It flows from the entire history and ideology of capitalism, from its early competitive days to today’s monopoly capitalist stage, imperialism.
Politics are primary
Capitalism consists of a relatively tiny class of capitalists at the top: the owners of production and wealth. These capitalists control the lives of the rest of society beneath them—the working class, in countries the world over—control that they exercise through their state power, represented for them by self-serving politicians. And these politicians are (usually!) protected by the bosses’ police and military.
These politicians are a key part of capitalist state power, along with the entire monopoly-owned mass media and educational institutions, who are all represented on think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations. Capitalist state power is supported by and enhances individualism alongside racism, sexism and nationalism to weaken working class-conscious interests like equality, collectivity, internationalism and solidarity.
Communist collectivity vs capitalist individualism
Communist-led workers in China won a revolution and established socialism in 1949. For the period of time that the heroic struggles of workers in China were led by communists, many millions of workers became conditioned with a collective working class consciousness that opposed capitalist individualism.
These movements ultimately failed and came under the leadership of pro-capitalist, fake communists. The old communist movement, for so many achievements and advances, kept many capitalist ideas. They wrongly believed that the international working class could not be won directly to communism, and PLP has analyzed the lessons of these failures elsewhere.
Even so, remnants of that collectivity and solidarity persist. Russia and China have long ago betrayed revolutionary struggle and become fascist states today. And yet China’s success in containing COVID-19 would’ve been impossible were it not for masses of workers selflessly volunteering.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health conducted a study on the “volunteerism” in China (Miao et al, 8/7/20). As the pandemic rose, 85,699 middle-aged worker volunteers interpreted and carried out public health mandates, as public services facing decades of China’s capitalist cutbacks became overwhelmed. Volunteers formed grassroots networks connecting hard-hit cities like Hangzhou, Wenzhou and Taizhou with smaller cities, towns and villages, from running public services to organizing logistics for food and medicine deliveries, to performing invaluable sanitation duties.
Zero praise is due for the fascist “Communist” Party of China or their response to the pandemic; workers in China organized despite their fascist capitalist government, and the bosses found themselves tailing the masses. Tellingly, the survey found that 85.8 percent of these worker volunteers volunteered “on their own initiative,” whereas 10.8 percent stated they were officially mobilized. Tragically, without a mass revolutionary communist party like PLP, these selfless worker volunteers saved lives, but also strengthened the hand of Chinese imperialism.
These volunteers’ parents and grandparents would remember the 1960s when China was led by real communists. Communists organized and channeled working class consciousness to eradicate the disease schistosomiasis, caused by snail-borne parasites that the Centers for Disease Control lists today as both an indication of extreme poverty, and the deadliest of all tropical diseases. Communists mobilized millions collectively, and is documented in Joshua S. Horn’s must-read book, Away With All Pests.
Forward to communism
“Personal choice” and “individual freedom,” are illusions of capitalist ideology, stand in opposition to working class liberation, and under capitalism lead to death-dealing pandemics for which capitalist ideas also have no solutions. Capitalist individualism only tightens our chains. The international working class’ historic task is therefore smashing capitalism and capitalist ideas through communist revolution and communist ideology.
Communism is a new concept of freedom—mass freedom. Where the condition for the free development of each is the free development of all, empowerment of the majority through abolition of the capitalist state, and organization of a working class dictatorship. This collective rule requires mutual responsibility, based on an objective and scientific appraisal of the needs of the global working class. Such an outcome is only possible through a mass organization of millions into PLP and encouraging the full participation of all workers in deliberating, planning, and implementing ideas.
Under communism, the collective power of the working class can be mobilized to solve any problem history and nature presents, from pandemics to crop failures to climate change. Liberating the creative power of each and every worker through communism and dialectical materialism will ensure the survival and progress of all. Join us and join the fight for freedom: to smash the ideological chains of individualism, racism and sexism with communist revolution.

MARYLAND, January 20—Just a week before the finance capital wing of the ruling class gathered to celebrate Jim Crow Joe Biden’s inauguration, a working-class family was set to face eviction charges.
As soon as the family received the notice, members of the Mount Rainier Organizing for Racial Equality (MORE) and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) promptly began organizing assistance for their working-class brothers and sisters. Step one was creating and distributing flyers outlining tenant’s rights explaining that only working-class unity can protect us from bosses’ criminal capitalism.
The family faced challenges that so many working class families suffer under capitalism: the father is currently unemployed, the mother is six months pregnant, with two children requiring medical assistance and limited means to provide health insurance, food, or shelter. As the family struggled to protect themselves, they were faced with a rent increase in October amidst a deadly pandemic.
They live in the Heritage Park Apartments (HPA), owned by Dreyfuss Property Management (DPM), a large complex with seven rental buildings and condos, in addition to 33 other buildings in the Maryland area.
In November, just a month after they raised rents on HPA tenants DPM purchased another set of buildings to the tune of $15 million is the way of capitalism, profit is primary as bosses threaten the lives of working-class families.
Working-class fightback is our only protection
As members of MORE and PLP were alerted to the eviction notices, they wasted no time organizing. Comrades quickly gathered information on the family’s necessary healthcare, delivered food, money for supplies, and set up meetings with the family to begin organizing other HPA tenants.
PLP members active in the tenant struggle stressed to their base that all workers deserve decent housing, which cannot be achieved as long as housing is part of the capitalist profit-making system. A communist system, ensuring the fundamental needs for all workers, is the only acceptable alternative to racist landlords with extortionate rent and cold calculating evictions.
Once meetings were organized, the collective printed flyers and joined with Prince George’s County Tenants Defense and Prince George’s County Mutual Aid to canvass the HPA apartments.
Sustained struggle until revolution
PLP members have joined with other fighters from several small groups and neighborhoods to push forward in preparation for many more evictions as pandemic protections disappear. Since the summer of 2020 there have been two rallies to stop evictions and several organizing efforts in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The rallies have been integrated, including speeches in both english and spanish. In one instance a mainly Latin group, CASA, held rent strikes in Langley Park and ultimately negotiated terms with landlords.
This, however, is just the start. Under capitalism there’s always more to the bosses’ games. In Mount Rainier, a PLP member discovered that federal money for rent assistance was not being advertised or used.
In response, MORE reached out to the tenants throughout December and organized to have workers sign up for the available assistance. In that one month of organizing more people signed up for assistance than had in the previous three months.
At LaSalle Apartments in Chillum groups canvassed and organized zoom meetings with residents and held a rally on a chilly, snowy day in December. The hotline for mutual aid has connected with residents who are being threatened with evictions and other rental needs.
Landlords use and abuse the laws
Tenant organizing has introduced our collective to the ways so many of these slumlords benefit from their capitalist crimes and are never held accountable for the lives they ruin.
Under the current rent moratoriums it is “illegal” for landlords to raise rents or to evict residents for non-payment of rent. Meanwhile the “rental assistance” programs by the government forced residents to apply for money that went into the pockets of the landlords. Some landlords took the money but still threatened evictions.
Unless a worker breaks or ends their lease a landlord legally cannot evict them until they file in court and the tenant has the chance to appear. Still many landlords are threatening workers and evicting them illegally.
Housing courts have been closed for rental evictions but residents are afraid and often vacate their homes before getting evicted for fear of long term damages to their credit rating or their ability to regain decent housing in the future. These are symptoms so unique to capitalism and should be smashed.
Communist revolution is the only solution
We will continue to work with the multiracial group MORE and local residents to protect tenants but there are limits to this fight.
As we strengthen our understanding that class struggle, not liberal politicians or reform movements, are the way forward, we have armed ourselves and our friends with copies of CHALLENGE. It is only with revolution against the capitalist class that we can secure a path to workers’ power.
The enormity of the challenges facing our brothers and sisters during this capitalist crisis can be overwhelming. But stepping forward to rely on each other, fighting racism, encouraging discussions over a communist egalitarian future, and taking on the bosses with intensified class struggle, can move our class towards the solidarity needed for victory.
Many of the people we have been engaging with have been won to the Party’s ideas and are considering joining this long but necessary fight. We will continue to distribute CHALLENGE and organize until revolution is won.
Fight For Communism, Power To The Workers!

LOS ANGELES, January 5—On New Year’s Eve, I got news that my patient of more than five years had died of complications from Covid-19 two days ago. He called me just three days before he passed and was exhausted with speaking due to shortness of breath. The best I could do at the moment was encourage him to remain calm and stay on his oxygen. He was hospitalized at Martin Luther King Community Hospital which is currently overrun by Covid-19 cases.
I am heartbroken on getting the news of his passing and have mixed emotions on what more I could have done. I called a physician-friend I know who works there to get her take on his situation but to also get a firsthand account on the conditions for healthcare workers and its impact on the quality of patient care.
She looked into his case and informed me that he developed pneumonia with sepsis that led to organ failure. His family had made him “DNR” (Do Not Resuscitate) and after two days removed his life support. She lauded the doctors and nursing staff of their medical and intensive care teams and said that while they are working in terrible conditions, “I have never worked under [worse conditions] in my entire life,” she assured me the quality of care has not yet been impacted in any major ways. She felt confident that while tragic, there was nothing more the MLK medical team could have done for my patient.
What followed, however, was more disturbing.
Death panel protocols
She mentioned MLK hospital was thinking about implementing plans to ration care and that “Death Panel” protocols have been developed.  She was furious at the hospital bosses for even considering this of their medical teams when there is currently no county-wide coordination between hospitals and said, “I refused to deny care for my patients while resources in hospitals in Santa Monica or in West LA remain available!” She said, “They’ll get my resignation letter first!”
However, many hospitals in LA County are already reporting their ICU’s effectively full and as of last week the county had one percent of their beds available and the current surge is only expected to worsen in January. Hospitals are now discharging severely ill patients home sooner than they normally would. Ambulance services are being told to restrict the transportation of patients whose hearts have stopped and can only transport to the hospital if they’ve successfully resuscitated the patient out in the field. In other words, patients will be left to die in ambulances or at home (LA Times 1/4/2021).  Clearly, the move to fascist “Death Panels” is likely to become a reality.
In addition, the LA Times (1/2) has run a series of articles on MLK Hospital that illustrate how the pre-pandemic day-to-day lives and underlying health conditions of Black and Latin workers are creating “a crisis on top of a crisis….Many residents live in dense, multigenerational housing, work essential jobs and suffer from secondary health conditions due to a lifelong, systemic lack of access to quality primary care.”  
Chief Medical Officer John Fisher said:

I describe our healthcare system as separate and unequal and we have a community here that is a reflection of that. We’re all Black and Brown, low income, almost all publicly insured, and really lack the access to healthcare that other communities have. Because of that, we are being hit hard — harder than every other community — by Covid.  

My patient was a middle-aged Black man living with HIV and hypertension that was otherwise well controlled. Studies currently suggest that living with HIV and having an otherwise stable immune system poses no greater risk for Covid-19 than non-HIV infected individuals. Having said that, he worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant in a hospital also with rampant Covid-19 cases.  His job as an “essential worker” is likely the source of his exposure. In either case, his reality of being a Black worker from Compton in a racist, capitalist system is what killed him.
Sad, angry, but not helpless
While it may be true that it’s the underlying racist conditions that are leading to the high diagnosis and death rates of Covid-19 in Black and Latin communities, MLK Community Hospital is also to blame for being overrun by the virus. When it was rebuilt and opened in 2015, its number of medical beds declined by more than 100 (131 down from 233) and it now lacks the trauma center it once had.
Originally born out of the Watts rebellions of 1965, this current hospital, while staffed by committed healthcare workers putting their lives on the line , is a skeleton of its former self and under-resourced(Politico 11/8/2017).
In the LA Times piece (1/2), one of the ICU doctors said, “For a hospital already struggling under the weight of one healthcare crisis, the patients here are particularly helpless in this battle.”
That’s how my patient and so many other Black, Latin, immigrant and poor working class people are left by a system only concerned with profits. While I am deeply saddened, I am also angry and certainly don’t feel helpless.
Mass work leads the way
I currently work in a mass organization that has been fighting against racist incarceration and organizing healthcare workers, which has been written about in CHALLENGE. We have been building ties with families whose loved ones have been killed by the KKKops, and are getting to know the sister of Nicholas Burgos who was murdered by LA County Sheriffs at Harbor UCLA hospital in October of last year.
I’m talking about my patient and the circumstances surrounding his death with coworkers and friends because only our growth and movement to overthrow capitalism can ever avenge his death and so many others killed by this system.
My patient was deeply loved by family, friends and coworkers. On his social media there are countless messages of shock and sadness. One coworker wrote,

If you work in a hospital you know that your coworkers can quickly turn to family. When you work with people for long 12+ hour shifts dealing with critically ill patients and situations unlike any other work place, a special type of bond is formed. He was just an all-around cool person, one of the most generous, friendly and funny people I've known. He was able to connect with patients, make them feel comfortable, care for them and make them (and me) laugh on a daily basis. He was an amazing caregiver in every sense of the word and risked his life to save others. You're a hero in my book and we'll never forget you.

The bosses took one more of our loved ones and will continue to until we rise up. Healthcare workers need to fight for the lives of our patients, fight for access to vaccinations, refuse their racist “death panels” and join us to build for communist revolution and overthrow this pathological system once and for all!