Dear CHALLENGE, I was a participant in the 50th anniversary of the Boston Summer Project. My visit to Boston was the second time there. The first time I was privileged to fight against the racist movement to prevent the desegregation of the public schools; this time I was amazed at how the Party has continued to evolve and the many young faces who joined the communist ranks of our Party. Multiracial and multigenerational, we are the fighting force against racist deportations, police murders, and the fascist government movement. I can visualize what Marx said, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” The future is bright for the working class as we struggle to defeat our enemies and build a communist society. Let the bosses tremble at the forces being built to smash their cruel, degenerate, dying system of oppression. Long live the communist working class!
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Going to the summer project this year was beneficial for many reasons. 1. It is always good to connect with comrades, new and old. Knowing you have people you can rely on in this struggle is primary, because we can’t do anything without each other. 2. As I have started to develop my own politics I have been able to identify disagreements I have with the party line. These disagreements have created new ways in which I engage with the Party. The biggest difference is that I can now play a more active role vs before when my role in the Party was more passive. I have found that other comrades share similar disagreements and through those conversations we are able to synthesize a sharper line. 3. Being at the summer project this year, I have been able to further refine and synthesize my thoughts about the Party line and the disagreements I have with it. I’m looking forward to the continued struggle, within the Party and outside of it, for the correct internationalist line for revolution and communism.
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I want to tell you my experience at the Boston Summer project. The experience that stood out the most to me was the march to the Federal Building.
We started marching after doing a picket line at Park St. From there, we shouted chants such as “Arab, Jewish, Black, and white, workers of the world unite!” and “Boston PD you better start shaking, today’s pigs are tomorrow’s bacon!” I participated in the picket line while holding a red flag.
I thought this experience was the most valuable (despite the heat) because of the messages it sent and what we are fighting for. If I had the chance to do it again, I would have no problem doing so.
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One major takeaway for me from the Boston summer project (other than the amazing antiracist history of Boston 75) is the importance of thinking and and acting collectively. During the project, we are often in houses with five to ten other people, and no one comrade has the exact same needs or approach. Because of that, we need to be really upfront and disciplined in how we communicate so we can not only arrive at where we need to be each day, but also so we can keep the places where we are staying functional.
There is beauty in working together to figure out something like public transit in a new city because even though something like that isn’t world changing, it shows the confidence and communication we must have with each other that is a microcosm of our class running society one day.
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Attending the summer project in Boston has been a fulfilling experience for my growth as a Party member. It is very exciting to hear the stories of our comrades who attended the summer project in Boston ‘75. They told how the struggle has been strengthened over time and how the working class must continue this legacy, and it is an honor and a pride to share with these people who set a precedent in history in the struggle of the working class.
One of the things that captured my attention the most was interacting with different comrades from many places and how we all share the same interest to fight against the fascist capitalist system and strengthen our communist struggle.
In the study groups we touched on topics of great importance such as violent deportations of migrants, overexploitation of labor, as well as how there is conflict between small and big fascists for world control.To overcome this imperialist deception the working class needs to know in a proper way and understand the Party’s policy in order to transmit it, so it is important to continue with these study groups to strengthen what we have learned. The class struggle has no racist borders.
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This week marked my first time on a bullhorn, getting donations, and getting contacts. I was not confident in my ability to get loud or project my voice, fearful that I would mess up or get confused, but eventually a comrade asked me to read off a piece from our flyers that were passed out at rallies. I was extremely hesitant to try something new, as I never would’ve imagined doing something that seemed so bold before this project. I remembered making a joke that I blacked out when I was talking but it felt natural. The words were on the paper for me already but the way I spoke was completely new and unexpected. The next day was even better; we started a march on the federal building moving towards those both receptive and unwilling to listen. As we started to circle around the front of the building, I was asked to get on the bullhorn again and chant. That was initially a hard no, but I remember being motivated to get on after getting told that everyone that was chanting was tired and losing their voices. I think that this culmination of experiences is what made me join the Party on the last day. Even though I was already in agreement with the Party, this year’s summer project brought me more positive and extroverted experiences than I’ve had in my whole life. I don’t think that next year’s project could come soon enough.
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I am a comrade who flew from Raleigh, North Carolina to participate in the 50th anniversary of the Boston Summer Project of 1975. This anniversary is politically important to learn from and be inspired by PLP’s revolutionary commitment to defeat ruling class tactics that were a trial balloon in how to use fascism to attack the working class, particularly Black workers during the boss instigated 1975 busing crisis. The lesson for 2025 is to use the sharp Party politics of 1975 to fight racist ICE raids on immigrant workers. We had CHALLENGE and leafleting in multiracial Cambridge.
I absolutely loved visiting Boston and being an active participant in the Summer Project. It was great meeting my Comrades of many years and new ones. The fight against racist ICE is one of the important antiracist struggles of our day. On one of the days we visited a Haitian working class neighborhood. Two comrades came across the street wanting to know ‘Anyone speak French?’ I said I can speak some. They needed to explain CHALLENGE to a Haitian worker! One of the reasons PLP will win the workers to communist revolution is that in our Party, workers have many talents that can be called on in a moment’s time.
We visited Worcester to protest ICE, and Thursday was a free day, so I went to see Harvard Square, Harvard Bookstore, and Harvard University. On the way downtown, I met a young Black university student. We chatted, and I told him I was a former teacher in town for the Boston Summer Project. I didn’t have a CHALLENGE newspaper on me, but I directed him to a Party website. Bottom line, it’s those human connections with working class people is why we are going to have a successful communist revolution against our oppressors.
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Worldwide, the summer months are a time of political training and struggle for the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) (see article on page 1). This summer, we returned to the city of Boston—50 years later—to commemorate the 1975 Boston Summer Project, a watershed moment in PLP history, and to honor the antiracist and communist workers who volunteered in that fight.
Just a few years later, PLP led another major summer project in 1979, this time confronting racist Klansmen in Tupelo, Mississippi. The following article is a reprint from CHALLENGE, originally published in 1979, documenting that crucial battle.
With fascism resurging around the globe, sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., China, and Russia, and a rise in racist kidnappings and attacks targeting migrant workers, there’s no better time for antiracist education—and for learning from our history to fight back.
For this issue, we look at the Tupelo Project of ’79. Lessons include:
In the face of the Ku Klux Klan and the racist capitalist government, we must be bold and have confidence in the working class to take the lead of communists.
Multiracial unity is our class’s weapon and the bosses’ greatest fear.
To sustain our gains, we must grow the Party and train more Black, Latin, Asian, and white young people in leadership.
Significance of Mississippi
To many who remember the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Mississippi symbolizes the most extreme racism, the most brutal murders of Black workers and antiracists, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.
For Progressive Labor Party, Mississippi signified a base for revolution among Black and white workers, spreading the ideas of multiracial unity and the fight for communist ideas in the South. Today, we celebrate the heroic struggle of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About 100 communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.
Though relatively small (population of 20,000), Tupelo, Mississippi was an industrial center with over 14,000 workers. The South was important to the ruling class as an industrial area because its carefully-nurtured tradition of racism made it the citadel of low-wage, non-union labor, where the bosses have been able to keep the working class divided and weak in order to extract extra profits.
The project showed that masses of white workers and students in Tupelo and throughout the South are winnable to antiracism.
Below is an edited excerpt from PL Magazine (Fall 1979) analyzing an aspect of the Tupelo Summer Project:
The great July demonstration
Sixty-five antiracist marchers, organized by Progressive Labor Party and its [then-mass organization] International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), were marching through the streets in Tupelo, Mississippi chanting, “Death to the Klan.”
Shots rang through the air.
As the bullets grazed two marchers, a disciplined group of people, Black and white, rushed out of line, isolated the racist who wielded the gun, and beat him to the ground. In the fight that ensued with this Klansman, or Klan supporter, the antiracists broke his neck. While this was happening, the marchers, maintaining a tight discipline that won them the respect of Tupelo’s working class, continued the march. The marchers, encouraged by the friendly faces that lined the streets and by the workers who joined the march, were able to withstand the menacing threat of the Tupelo police, who aimed their cocked guns at them.
From the start, it was clear that the racist local rulers wanted to stop this march. A new ordinance was created by the city government banning sound devices (in response to successful PLP-led rallies in the past). The police and their flunkies systematically tore down posters in the housing projects; and a permit for the march was not granted until the very last minute.
As the march gathered in front of the courthouse, the bosses’ seat of power, a militant rally began, attracting a lot of people in the area who joined in chanting, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all a part of the bosses’ plan.”
‘Before I was scared, now I’m mad’
Many militant workers in Tupelo have come to see InCAR as the main mass organization that can lead workers in the fight against racism and the resurgence of fascist groups like the Klan. One Black woman worker said, “Before I was scared, but now I’m mad.” This represents the feeling of many people here, that there is no longer the luxury to sit back and watch the ruling class and its flunkies hold power, that they have to get active and build a movement that has as its goal the destruction of the ruling class ideas of racism and fascism, and in the final analysis, the ruling class itself.
The political climate is changing rapidly in the South, and only groups like PLP are prepared to respond to the changes, to give leadership and organize the multiracial, antiracist fightback that is necessary to move workers to the left.
The United League(UL), a Black reformist group, recently cancelled a march scheduled for Okolona (a town not far from Tupelo) today, because its leader, Skip Robinson, essentially chickened out of the struggle. More and more people are realizing that the leadership of UL cannot stand up to the rigors of the class struggle.
Workers put themselves on the line
Respect for PLP was growing in Tupelo. Two residents of Tupelo put up their houses as collateral so that our comrade could be bailed out of jail. When the two marchers who had been wounded were treated in the hospital, they were warmly received and treated by white doctors and other hospital workers. After the march stopped to rally, hundreds of Black workers surrounded the marchers to protect them from the cops (who would have been only too glad to be trigger happy).
This was the first time a racist had been beaten by an antiracist march in Tupelo. The leadership of the UL had always guaranteed the safety of the KKK and the cops by holding back the anger and hatred of Black workers in the fight to liberate themselves from the racism they faced every day. The bosses always think that they can destroy a worker’s movement by getting its leaders, but little do they know that leaders always spring up in the midst of struggle. There were many, many people right in Tupelo, and other cities North and South, and there still are today, who can develop as working-class leaders in the fight against racism and fascism, and they were and are being trained by Progressive Labor Party.
This was readily proven by the response not only of the marchers, in their determination to continue the march, not to be intimidated by the cops’ harassment, but also by the tremendous support of the local people. Over 200 copies of InCAR Arrow and CHALLENGE were sold, 4 people joined InCAR on the spot. Another demonstration was planned on the spot.
The main lesson PLP learned in Tupelo, as everywhere, is to be bold. The bolder we were, the more seriously people took us and the more willing they were to respond to us. Workers understand that the system will come down hard when you try to fight it. They are also ready to understand that you only win on the offensive.
No ICE on our block!
Working with neighbors, PLP members helped organize a neighborhood meeting in the Bay Area to build a solidarity and direct response team for our block if ICE or other racist forces showed up.
There was an interesting discussion about what to do. It ranged from:
“Know Your Rights” cards/videos from the ACLU with information about not opening your door unless there is a court order with a judge’s signature or giving ICE access to your phone.
To:
“You have no Rights” …The current experience with ICE, La Migra, is that they will act as a vicious, fascist force when mobilized. One person spoke about why she fled Roberto D’Aubuisson’s fascist rule in El Salvador and is now facing similar attacks here in the U.S.
Some neighbors brought up that the presence of PLP’s posters/images and communist messages on our outside porch made them feel safe on the block.
Everyone agreed that displaying and acting with neighborhood solidarity was the way forward. We also discussed the long history of attacks on immigrant workers. PLP members put these attacks in the context of USA capitalism of today where the ruling class can’t maximize profit and accumulate investments at the rate they need to “stay ahead of the competition” among themselves and with China.
These attacks are aimed at creating an insecure, desperate work force to lower wages. Most importantly, these attacks are used to divide & weaken any fight back of working-class people against the oppression of capitalism. Therefore, an attack on one is an attack on all.
We made plans 1) a signal hot line for people to turn out if ICE is spotted or comes to a house in the neighborhood. 2) an agreed-upon poster to show neighborhood solidarity and safe houses for those who live, work and walk in our area. 3) further outreach and meetings to expand the group; also, to include workers who go door to door selling food or do maintenance in the neighborhood.
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Anti-immigrant racism a global danger
The front page article of the July 2 issue, “Rebel Against Fascist Terror” and the editorial, “ICE, LAPD, U.S. Terror” were excellent examples of the need for communist leadership “in fighting back against racist state violence and standing in defense of their families, neighbors, and fellow workers.”
However, the “immigration crackdown is just one part of the rulers’ drive to build fascism and prepare the U.S. working class for imperialist war” does not mention that the immigration crackdown is a worldwide phenomenon. Our brothers and sisters across the globe are fighting the same fight. There were recent violent clashes between far-right groups, residents and North African migrants in Spain. Denmark is pushing the European Union to reduce immigration sharply across the continent. Germany will no longer fund organizations that rescue migrants at sea, meaning that the more than 25,000 who have drowned in the last ten years is only the beginning.
Albania is cashing in on imprisoning migrants from Italy, just as El Salvador is doing with U.S. deportations, to the tune of 800 million euros over five years. Across Europe immigrant bashing by the far-right parties leads to electoral gains, and the liberal fascists are quick to sing the same song in order to stop losing votes and hold on to their political power.
Workers have no borders and capitalism around the world must be smashed. Join the PLP in the fight for world communism.
*****
- Information
Letter: Zohran Mamdani campaign - Put some respect on workers, not politicians
- Information
- 31 July 2025 1206 hits
I was glad to see CHALLENGE publish a letter about Mamdani (see 7/2/25). The Mamdani mayoral campaign in New York City has national and international implications. I hope the pages of our paper fill with our experiences struggling with our base and in the mass movement over Mamdani’s candidacy. It’s a tremendous opportunity to show the contrast between capitalist reformers like Mamdani, who doom us to propping up a murderous, fatally-flawed capitalist system, and the revolutionary communism of PLP. But only if we fight hard for our line!
The letter writer made a plea for us to be “respectful” when we discuss Mamdani and the limits of capitalist politicians. I do understand that sometimes we can be strident and dismissive when we discuss the contradiction of reform and revolution with our base. This often happens when we don’t know people well. For sure, it’s not dialectical (and thus not true) to just say, “Reform is bad, revolution is good.” We have to understand that tendencies toward both reform and revolution coexist inside the class struggle; like all contradictions, they are inextricably bound together. Indeed, I would argue that there is no such thing as a “reform struggle” per se, only the CLASS STRUGGLE that can have both reformist and revolutionary tendencies.
For that very reason, it is not enough to say, “We are with you in the struggle, but in the long run we believe in revolution.” In this period of rising fascism—indeed, of fascism breaking out into the open—the question of reform and revolution has become more and more one of life and death, and our work in the mass movement has to take on a more urgent character. Instead of worrying about being respectful, we need to be worrying about how we struggle harder to win our fellow workers toward our revolutionary line.
How do we do that? Not by yelling at our fellow workers, to be sure, or by dismissing their opinions, even when we disagree. We do it by building deep ties with them. We need to build bonds of trust and solidarity with large numbers of workers, a major reason why we are actively involved in mass organizations for the long-term. We need to be immersed in the lives of the working class—in the thick of their everyday struggles to survive under capitalism and to fight for the society we all need. When we are close to people, we can struggle with them harder.
The fact is, the liberal ruling class remains the greatest danger to the working class, and democratic socialist candidates in particular are uniquely able to energize young people about a rebranded capitalism that is just as murderous, racist, and sexist as always. You can’t vote out fascism! Hundreds of thousands of workers that ultimately must be won to communism are now mobilizing for yet another one of the bosses’ elections. Mamdani is extremely dangerous to the working class and will help usher in fascism. Unless we win workers away, they will be disarmed.
If Mamdani is to remain a viable candidate for the bosses, he will necessarily need to make accommodations with them. The fact that he has been making nice with Wall Street billionaire CEOs and not ruling out keeping billionaire heiress KKKop Commissioner Jessica Tisch shows his willingness to “play the capitalist game,” just like any other capitalist politician. And while it’s true that because of splits in the ruling class, certain sections are gunning for Mamdani, other sections of the still dominant liberal wing have already moved to endorse him, like former mayor Bill DeBlasio and Congressmen Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler, and Adriano Espaillat. More will likely follow.
The bottom line is we must always be respectful with our fellow workers. But in this period, what we really need is a sharper struggle with them.
When Obama was in his honeymoon phase, I was struggling hard with my fellow workers, many of whom I knew well and had deep bonds of trust with. I am self-critical now that when they criticized me for being “pessimistic” because I warned of his allegiance to capitalism and his inevitable coming sellout, I backed off, out of what I thought was “respect” for my friends.
It wasn’t really respect for them that stopped me: it was cowardice and fear. I didn’t want them to be mad at me. But I was wrong. Within a year after his inauguration, the honeymoon was over and many of my friends could see that their hopes were hollow. Obama went on to manage five simultaneous wars for U.S. imperialism, deport over three million of our fellow workers, among countless other betrayals. Like Mamdani today, the allure of the Obama presidency disarmed the working class and set the stage for the more open fascism of Trump. And I missed the opportunity to engage them more fiercely on the need for them to take a leading role in changing our world instead of waiting for the next savior.
I will not make that mistake again, and today as the decline of U.S. imperialism accelerates, the stakes are that much greater.
Let’s not insult our fellow workers by being too “nice.” Let’s take them seriously and engage them in a struggle over what we urgently need to survive.
Gazan children continue to starve under genocidal conditions
World Health Organization, 7/27–Nearly one in five children under five in Gaza City is now acutely malnourished, as reported by Nutrition Cluster partners. Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM), which measures the percentage of children aged 6–59 months suffering from acute malnutrition, has tripled since June, making it the worst-hit area in the Gaza Strip. In Khan Younis and the Middle Area, rates have doubled in less than one month. These figures are likely an underestimation due to the severe access and security constraints preventing many families from reaching health facilities. So far in July, over 5000 children under five have already been admitted for outpatient treatment of malnutrition in just the first two weeks, 18% of them with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), the most life-threatening form.
Egyptian student murdered by police prompts workers to fight back
MiddleEastEye, 7/28–A university student has been tortured to death inside an Egyptian police station, a rights group told Middle East Eye. The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) said that 21-year-old Ayman Sabry Abdel Wahab died on Friday while in custody at the Belqas Police Station…following “a week of deadly torture”. Riots erupted in the aftermath of his arrest, with journalists sharing footage of protestors clashing with security forces outside Belqas court…so far in 2025, 15 prisoners had died in Egyptian custody, the majority of them due to medical negligence.
China continues competition with U.S. to control minerals
Financial Times, 7/6–Chinese mining acquisitions overseas have hit their highest level in more than a decade as companies race to secure the raw materials that underpin the global economy in the face of mounting geopolitical tension…The country’s huge demand for raw materials – it is the world’s largest consumer of most minerals – means its mining companies have a long history of investing overseas…Some military governments in Africa have sought to take control of Western mining assets and are demanding higher royalty payments.
Bank CEO tells Democrats get with the program
The Hill, 7/11–JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Thursday knocked Democrats for pushing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies instead of “real world” solutions. “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots”...“I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works…As Democrats look to rebuild after suffering a major defeat in 2024, the CEO suggested they lean away from candidates who resemble New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who won the Democratic nomination. “He’s more of a Marxist than a socialist...the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”
Liberal think-tank report says it’s time to move beyond the illusion of a fair world
Foreign Affairs, July 2025–The liberal international order is dying, and its transatlantic backers are grieving. During the first Trump administration, many were in denial, but few are now. Some are angry, denouncing a villain—usually U.S. President Donald Trump—for having unnecessarily destroyed what they hold dear and vowing to step forward to bolster global institutions…Praying for its resurrection is not just naive; it is counterproductive. All of these responses misdiagnose the order’s deepest illness and thus prescribe the wrong remedy. The liberal international order’s crisis cannot be blamed on Trump’s peculiar brand of nihilistic politics…
Worshippers in DR Congo killed in mineral-rich region
BBC, 7/28–More than 40 people were killed in an attack by an Islamic State affiliate in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN and the military said. Most of them were worshippers taking part in a night vigil at a church in the town of Komanda when they were attacked by Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) fighters. Nine of those killed were children, the UN peacekeeping mission said… In 2021, DR Congo invited Ugandan troops into the country to help tackle the ADF. Attacks however still continue. Komanda is in DR Congo’s mineral-rich Ituri province, which has been fought over by various armed groups for many years.
