On April 18, Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik directed the New York Police Department to arrest 108 students. The students’ crime? They were encamped on a campus lawn to protest Israel’s racist murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, as well as Columbia’s investments in companies that profit from the Zionist regime’s genocide and apartheid (see article on page 3). The incident marked the killer kkkops’ first invasion of Columbia in decades. To some it recalled the 1968 eruption against the University’s racist expansion into Harlem and the U.S. rulers’ genocide in Vietnam, when a police riot ended with nearly seven hundred students arrested and more than one hundred injured (Washington Post, 4/18). 

The recent wave of campus lockdowns, suspensions of pro-Palestine students, banning of pro-Palestine groups, firings of anti-Zionist workers—all are signs that the U.S. bosses’ can’t rely on liberal democracy to gain mass support for the genocidal project in Gaza. More broadly, as they look ahead to the racist austerity they’ll need in the runup to World War Three, the bosses are determined to pacify and intimidate workers by any means necessary. We’re nearing the point where the U.S. rulers can no longer afford the phony spectacles of “freedom of speech” or “freedom of assembly.” As they struggle to fend off rival imperialists in China and Russia, their only alternative is to unleash fascist terror in a bid to save their crumbling empire. That’s the message they’re sending at Columbia and dozens of other campuses.

The bosses’ strategic weakness

But with every starved and murdered Palestinian child, the lies and desperation of the bosses’ liberal politicians—from Genocide Joe Biden on down—are revealed for all to see. Strong-arm tactics are often a sign of strategic weakness—and students and education workers are fighting back! As CHALLENGE goes to press, antiracist Columbia students—including many anti-Zionist Jewish students—are defiantly resisting Shafik’s orders to disband the encampment. Four days after the arrests, hundreds of outraged Columbia faculty walked out in solidarity (Guardian, 4/22). So have hundreds of CUNY and local high school students. Dozens of students have braved arrest at NYU, Yale, and the University of Minnesota. Others have fought with cops at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California (Associated Press, 4/24). Anti-genocide encampments and occupations have sprung up across the country (New York Times, 4/24). 
These bold resisters have a historic message for sanitation, transportation, and industrial workers around the world: We can take on the bosses’ system, build confidence in our class, and lay the foundation for a revolution that will wipe every capitalist, every backer of genocide, off the face of the earth. That is what Progressive Labor Party fights for! 

Declining U.S. imperialism spurs fascist attacks 

Amid the deepening crisis of worldwide capitalism, Israel is a forward base for maintaining fragile U.S. dominance over Middle Eastern oil. It’s the counterweight to Iran, backed by China and Russia, and Iran’s proxy armies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen—as well as Hamas, the Iranian ally that poisons workers with nationalism and religion. As tensions between Israel and Iran continue to escalate (see CHALLENGE, 4/24), and the U.S. seems unable to stop Israel from invading Rafah and endangering the lives of more than a million Palestinian refugees, a dangerous new phase in this regional war is unfolding. 

We’re seeing the crackdown on college campuses against this backdrop of U.S. imperialist decline. Peeling back their liberal mask, the main-wing capitalists of finance capital are out to squash any opposition to the genocidal Israeli regime. While right-wing Trumpers like Rep. Elise Stefanik may be grabbing the headlines, it’s the liberals’ well-paid front people, from the Democratic Party to the bastions of elite miseducation—who are bringing down the hammer. Before taking the top job at Columbia, Nemat Shafik made her mark as an outspoken reformer at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In her book, What We Owe Each Other, she denounces “a winner-takes-all business culture that offers the spoils of capitalism only to those that rise to the top” (Guardian, 1/22/22).

But scratch one of the bosses’ liberal stooges and you’ll find a budding fascist. On April 17, when Shafik appeared before Stefanik’s congressional committee, she couldn’t roll over fast enough to name names and disclose confidential disciplinary proceedings against professors (NYT, 4/17). Feeding into the false narrative of rampant antisemitism on campuses, she eagerly agreed that the Palestinian liberation slogan—“from the river to the sea”—should probably be censored (NYT, 4/17). So much for “academic freedom”!

From NYC to Rafah, nationalism is deadly

One key to fighting rising fascism is to expose the dangers of nationalism and its toxic sibling, identity politics. It was the Egyptian-born Shafik, Columbia’s first woman and first Arab president, who sicced the Klan-in-blue on students, many of whom were Arab. The NYPD is led by a Latin commissioner who spends every day overseeing racist police terror against the Latin, Black, and immigrant working class in New York City. He works for a Black mayor, Eric Adams, who does nothing about the twenty percent of Black workers in New York living in poverty, twice the rate of impoverished white workers (osc.ny.gov). Whether in Rafah, Tel Aviv, New York, or Beijing, workers can’t afford to be seduced by the bosses’ cynical appeals to “their” nation. The capitalists’ only loyalty is to profits—and all profits are created by working class exploitation, oppression, and murder.

Again, Columbia students are showing the way forward. Their encampment was built by a multiracial force of Arab and Jewish students, Black and Latin, Asian and white. Their unity and solidarity must continue to guide us. In the 1968 Columbia rebellion, anti-racist students were no less brave in taking on the cops. But like much of the anti-war movement, most of them deferred to the idea of “self-determination,” the idea that workers would fare better under Vietnamese capitalist bosses than under the French or U.S. varieties. The tragic error of that position can be seen in today’s Vietnam, where over 6,000 sweatshop factories employ more than 3 million people “who work their hands raw just to barely provide their families with food and shelter” (medium.com, 10/24/23). Our class has learned this lesson the hard way: Workers have no borders!

From all the rivers to all the seas, communism will set us free

We can’t predict the spark that will set off the inferno of the next world war. But it’s becoming clearer all the time to workers and students that capitalism is in crisis. It’s growing more obvious each day that the imperialist bosses will turn to fascism to discipline both their own class and the working class. Sooner or later, rival superpowers will move beyond proxy wars and drag the international working class into a global conflagration. We have only one option: to organize to turn the horror of world war into class war. The fight for the workers of Gaza must become a fight for communist revolution. The two are inseparable.

PLP aims to unite the workers of the world and arm them with communist politics, to turn the guns around against the bosses, and to destroy capitalism once and for all. Our task today is to struggle on the campuses and on the job to expose the brutal reality of the profit system—and the necessity of building a mass PLP. From all the rivers to all the seas, only communism will set us free!  JOIN US!

The following is an excerpt of the main speech that will be given on May 4 at the Brooklyn, NY May Day march. 

Fellow workers from the international working class, veterans, new, and future members of PLP—Happy May Day! 
There is no holiday like May Day. It’s the only day when we unite as one international working class to celebrate our collective struggles and triumphs. It’s the only day where we wave the red flag, the only flag, symbolizing our courage, power, and vision for a new world when we will all be rid of the oppressive chains that bind us. 

Whether it’s your first May Day or your 50th, or whether you’re watching from your window or passing by, being here with you is an honor. May Day is the day we in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrate our history of internationalism, antiracism, antisexism, and communist revolution. We are a revolutionary organization committed to fighting for a world in which workers will own, share, and run all of society—a communist world. 

For more than half a century we have been a fighting Party standing shoulder to shoulder with striking auto, transit, mining, factory, farm, and education workers on the picket lines from the U.S. to Mexico to Pakistan. We organized against the U.S. rulers' slaughter in Vietnam. PLP championed antiracist rebellions against police murder in Ferguson, Chicago, Missouri, LA. We took the streets of Flatbush for Kimani, Kyam, and Shantel. It is an honor to be celebrating my ninth May Day as a member of PLP and to contribute to this long tradition of fightback with the vision that one day millions of workers will flood the streets and drown this rotten capitalist system in the bottom of the sea.

Since October 7, the streets have erupted with workers’ collective rage against genocide. From Michigan to Yemen, the masses marched to the rhythm of one slogan: From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free! With revolutionary potential, dock workers from Belgium to India refused to load weapons for Israel. Workers shut down bridges and blocked airports from NYC to San Francisco. Students at Columbia University, NYU, and other campuses are risking suspension, expulsion, and deportation to take a brave stance against genocide.

Today we celebrate May Day under increasingly dangerous times for the international working class. For 210 days, the Israeli rulers have bombed Gaza into dust, murdered untold thousands including aid workers. The U.S. rulers’ are scrambling to hold on to their top-dog status, tested by rival imperialists from China and Russia. The rulers are staring down the barrel of World World III as the situation grows hotter in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Taiwan. When faced with these dilemmas they have no choice but to rip off their liberal democratic mask and break out their fascist mask. The Middle East is a tinderbox with the fascist Israeli and U.S. rulers at war with Iran. It’s a future that can only promise world wars and nuclear holocausts.

The question we must ask ourselves from now is, what is our vision for a new world for a better future? Capitalism or communism? 

Only one can guarantee freedom for the working class from all the rivers to all the seas.  

A future under capitalism looks like millions more workers starving, homeless, and unemployed. 
It looks like killing our children’s potential with mediocre education or being drafted in the next world war. It looks like working till you're in your grave. It looks like millions dying in hurricanes, droughts, pandemics, or at the hands of killer kops. It looks like more Gazas, Haitis, and Congos. 

Many of us are infected by the rulers’ toxic ideologies of individualism, nationalist ideas, and electoral politics. Misled workers wave nationalist flags instead of the red flag. The goal of national liberation was a dead end then and it’s a dead end now. 

Nationalism is a fire that will engulf the world in conflict. From the rivers to the seas, only communism can put out that fire. It will set us free! 
The history of nationalism was inked in the blood of our class. Yesterday it was Nazism that killed millions of Jewish workers. Today it is Jewish nationalism (Zionism) that commits genocide of our class siblings in Palestine. It’s nationalism that dupes workers in Israel with the false promise of protection under a Jewish state, a promise only the few ruling families in Israel enjoy while most live under extreme inequality and are forced to conscript and die for the Jewish star.

At the same time, an independent state won’t mean liberation for workers in Palestine. Like most former colonies, it will be the same capitalist prison. Before October 7, the Hamas and The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rulers that managed Palestinian oppression already proved that this would be the case. Working-class resistance is happening, but it will be drowned under nationalist misleadership.

A future under communism would be vastly different. It is a world without borders where all workers are free to move across all the rivers and all the seas whenever need arises. A communist world looks like food, housing, education, and healthcare for all. It is a world where our labor helps us all lead full and meaningful lives. Communism means our society's greatest assets would be workers’ collective knowledge and labor. Communism means that the people who make things run will rule the world.

A communist world means collectively owning our labor and the land. It means all children can unleash the full potential of our class. It means ending the cycle where some kids excel while other kids are disposed of, and become soldiers or prisoners, or gun statistics. Only communism means all children — Black, white, brown, girl, boy, or non-binary— from all the rivers and all the seas will have a future to succeed in.

From the seas to the rivers the working class can have it all if we're in power!

There are billions of us. Workers are like oceans, we are everywhere and our potential is bottomless. The working class will seize power through revolution. 

We see these glimmers of our class’ infinite potential. From the East River to the Arabian Sea we are the workers in NYC who ran mutual aide kitchens and distributed PPE to when liberal rulers left many of us to die. We are the workers in Pakistan who organized medical camps and food banks when we were left reeling after the rulers’ flood disaster. 

From the Acech River to the Mediterranean Sea, we are the fishery workers in Indonesia who brought drowning Rohingya refugees to shore. We are the fishery workers in Lampedusa, Italy who rescued hundreds of African and Arab migrants from the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean. 

From the Jordan River to the Red Sea, we are the working class in Palestine fighting to save lives amid bombs and death. We are doctors tending to thousands of bomb injuries and delivering babies in collapsing hospitals. We are the journalists doubling as rescue teams to save those trapped in the rubble and countering Zionist propaganda. 

We are the international working class. Only we can keep us safe in times of crisis. We are who we’ve been waiting for. 

So now’s the time to fulfill our revolutionary mission. Now's the time to organize! Now's the time to reclaim our lives and get free. Check us out, grab a CHALLENGE newspaper, and follow us @plpchallenge. We need every one of you to fight for communism!  
Fellow comrades—young, older, present and future—we call on you to join or recommit to the Progressive Labor Party this May Day. Together we can build the communist world we all so desperately need and deserve, struggle by struggle, brick by brick. Let's smash this capitalist, imperialist, genocidal system once and for all! We have a whole world to win! 

From the rivers to the seas, communism will set us free! From the seas to the rivers, communism will live forever!

Thousands of antiracist students at Columbia University (CU) have taken a bold stance against the genocide in Gaza, staging an ongoing, five-day-plus protest on the campus’s lawn 24 hours a day.The killer KKKops have repeatedly attacked an encampment the students set up and arrested over 100 students. The NYPD is acting at the command of the racist, Zionist-loving bosses, led by CU President Nemat Shafik and the U.S. Congress. 

Workers and students from around New York City have rallied outside the campus in support of the protest. Despite the arrests and other attacks, these bold students are staying the course and providing a powerful example to the working class worldwide of how to fight back and what winning looks like. When we resolve to not stop fighting the bosses, we are on the path to a communist world free from Zionism, other forms of racism/nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism. 

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends moved quickly to support the students and join the protests around CU. We brought supplies like blankets and towels for students sleeping on the lawn in the cold. We distributed countless newspapers, fliers, and chant sheets. We infused the students’ strong, but nationalist calls for a “Free Palestine” with chants of, “To free Palestine, fight for communism, now’s the time” and “Asian, Latin, Black, and white, workers of the world unite!” We commend the leadership of students fighting back while also calling for a plan to destroy capitalism (beyond divesting in only the most despicable racist capitalists). 

The student-led fight back is inspiring students and workers at other colleges  – even as many such institutions are breeding grounds for the bosses’ racist ideas and members. Solidarity encampments sprung up at Yale and Harvard. Students at the New School launched a solidarity strike after the CU protest began. Students from the City University of New York (CUNY) led a march from nearby campuses to CU.

History of Fightback at Columbia

Columbia University’s history is steeped in gutter racism and service to U.S. imperialism. “Of the ten men who served as presidents of King’s and Columbia between 1754 and the end of the Civil War, at least half owned slaves at one point in their lives” (Washington Post, 1/24/17). Scientists at Columbia also assisted with the Manhattan Project, where U.S. bosses rushed to create atomic weapons used to massacre workers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union (New York Times, 10/30/07).
But along with that history, comes a tradition of fightback against it. After a Students for a Democratic Society (which PLP was once very active in) member exposed the university’s ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a fascist weapons think tank affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), during the 1960s, students in SDS began an anti-war campaign on campus (Columbia University Libraries).

In 1968, Black students occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, in response to the college’s IDA ties and a racist plan to create a gymnasium in Morningside Park that would restrict use for Black workers in Harlem. Only 12 percent of the gym would be open to the public (History.com, 7/7/20). Despite the college’s multiple efforts to quash the struggle, the students were ultimately successful in getting the campus bosses to drop their affiliation with the DOD and the gym proposal altogether. 

In more recent years, Columbia’s grossly underpaid graduate student workers have held strikes against the college for better wages (New York Times, 11/24/21).  Students have also been active against Columbia’s racist real estate expansion and privatization of public land in Harlem, which has caused mass displacement of Black and Latin workers since the 1940s. (planners network.org, 10/14/09).

No free speech against genocide

As U.S. imperialism backs the mass slaughter of our Palestinian brothers and sisters overseas and tells workers any anti-Israel sentiment is “anti-Semitic,” we see clearly that “free speech” on campus is tuned to which ideas favor the bosses. In the days since the encampment began, capitalist media and stooge politicians have united in denouncing the students as hostile to Jewish workers, pushing the lie that Zionism and Judaism are inherently linked (USA Today, 4/22). Yet of course, none of these clowns have had anything as forceful to say about the scores of workers and children in Palestine being killed daily by Israel. Or the Zionist trolls who have been walking through CU taunting the students by wearing the Israeli flag as a cape. 

Liberal “nonviolence” is a farce

As of this writing, CU has switched its classes to online only in response to the encampment, restricting who can access the campus and adding more security guards (NBCNews, 4/22). Fascism is palpable in the air, and even though the encampment has been non-violent, the bosses’ violent response proves the pacifism they preach to workers does nothing.

Multiracial students leading the way

PLP will continue to be active in CU’s demonstrations. We are holding discussions with the student organizers and hope to invite some to May Day on May 4th. Their rage at this system, when united with communist ideas and leadership, will guarantee the bosses’ days are numbered, and we will all run society for the better without them. Dare to struggle, dare to win!

CHICAGO (ROSEMONT), IL, April 19 —“Arab, Jewish, Black and White, Workers of the World, Unite!” rang out as over 200 militant workers at the Labor Notes Conference rallied in support of the workers of Gaza. These workers are facing famine, illness, death, and destruction at the hands of the terrorist Israeli State with the full backing of the U.S. ruling class. Led by members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and other labor organizers, the anti-fascist rally in front of the Hyatt Regency showed that workers from all over the U.S. are standing up to Israeli rulers’ fascism. It will take a global communist revolution to smash capitalist Zionism, and the PLP is building our Party to do just that.

Labor Notes

Labor Notes is a media and organizing project started in 1979 to “put the movement back in the labor movement” per their website. This year was their largest conference to date, with about 5,000 attendees including rank-and-file union members, local union leaders, and labor organizers. The revisionist (fake leftist) leaders of Labor Notes showed their lack of revolutionary spirit by inviting Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (and former Chicago Teachers’ Union misleader) to speak on the first night of the conference. While Johnson is credited with helping get a symbolic ceasefire resolution through the Chicago City Council, meanwhile his administration attacks the working class in Chicago. He has increased the budget for the Chicago kkkops and supported them when they murdered Dexter Reed with 96 shots fired. He refused to allow permits to protest the Democratic National Convention and set an impossibly short 60-day stay limit for newly arrived migrants in the city shelters. With that record, he should never have been invited to speak at a conference for labor organizers who want to build a militant labor movement. Fake left politicians like Johnson serve the capitalist class, as do all politicians. The liberals just use more honeyed words to cover their poisonous attacks against our class.

Communists called for militancy

A comrade raised the idea of a rally at an earlier meeting of Labor for Palestine and continued to work with another organizer to have a rally outside the hotel. PLP members in Chicago brought a sound system and militant signs and other protesters brought banners from their areas. The rally started just before the planned speech by lying Mayor Johnson. The rally was spirited with energetic chants–“U.S. Imperialism Means, We Got to FIGHT BACK!”—and had enough angry people mobilized to take the street. The young people outside the hotel contrasted with the entrenched union hacks listening to his speech. Outside, speakers called for an end to arms to Israel and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. A graduate student from Columbia University spoke eloquently about the bold fightback in support of workers in Gaza and against repression on that campus. A PLP comrade gave a speech calling out the inter-imperialist rivalries (mainly between the U.S., China, and Russia) that are making the world situation increasingly chaotic, dangerous, and headed for wider wars. The PLP member also pointed out the hypocrisy of Labor Notes having the Mayor as the keynote speaker when Black workers and newly arrived migrant workers in the city are being attacked by his administration.

Cops Attack

The cops tried to move the rally away from the hotel, but the protesters stood their ground and refused to move. The cops then tried to arrest two of the protestors. Workers shouted “Let Them Go!” and grappled with the cops to free them. The attack by the police changed the focus of the rally to getting our comrades back, though there were still many chants in support of Gazan workers. 

With the leadership of PLP members and some of the Labor for Palestine organizers, it was decided to send forces from the rally into the convention with a bullhorn. The breakaway group of more than 15 militant workers charged into the conference to disrupt the Mayor’s speech and demand that he get our comrades out of police custody. The group scuffled with hotel security while fighting to get into the hall. A union hack inside threw a punch at one of the protestors to try to stop us. The mayor’s speech quickly ended and he left. Some workers in the hall were inspired by the disruption and stood up and yelled support in solidarity, while others were upset and one even cried about the disruption on stage. There is serious work to do in raising class consciousness and building a fighting movement.

Our modest action was a step in that direction! Outside at the ongoing rally, the suburban Rosemont police were outmatched in both numbers and commitment. We held the street and surrounded the police car that held our comrade for almost an hour. The cops finally let the protestor out to cheers. The other protestor who had been taken away from the rally, was brought back and released without charges. We were shocked but excited to see the cops capitulate! Once both protestors were recovered, we ended the rally, victorious for the moment. For some reason, about an hour later, about 25 cops, some on bikes and some in riot gear eventually showed up at the hotel. Too little too late to stop the working class!

Leadership from PLP was essential in this event and gave new members some experience in putting forward the Party and sharpening the struggle. We debriefed about ways we could have done even more and were energized to keep going. After all, if the labor movement called a general strike to stop the flow of weapons to Israel, the U.S. imperialists would have to reconsider their genocidal actions. As the U.S. imperialists get involved in more and bigger wars, organizing more such actions will be needed. And that will include building our revolutionary communist Party. To that end, over 300 CHALLENGE newspapers were distributed at the rally, which will lead to more discussion with other attendees at Labor Notes about the need to make a revolution against capitalism.