Mayoral candidate Mamdani makes his pro-boss positions known

New York Times, 8/28–Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and current front-runner in the New York City mayor’s race, sought to distance himself on Thursday from the national Democratic Socialists of America platform, which includes proposals to eliminate all misdemeanor offenses and to close local jails. “My platform is not the same as national D.S.A.,” he told reporters after an unrelated event.

When asked whether he wanted to eliminate misdemeanor offenses, he said “no.” “You can’t find that on my platform, because it’s not there,” he said. Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens, has taken steps over the course of his campaign to moderate his image, including by making clear that while he previously expressed support for defunding the police, he has long since abandoned that stance.

U.S. looks to textbooks on how to defeat China

Foreign Affairs, 8/19–In the continental world, the currency of power is land. Most countries, by geography, inhabit a continental world with multiple neighbors…Those with enough power to conquer others…believe the international system should be divided among them into huge spheres of influence…states with an oceanic moat have relative security from invasion…The United States can prevail…by hewing to the successful strategies of maritime power…China has 13 landward neighbors and seven seaward neighbors, and no shortage of disagreements with them. With submarines, shore artillery, drones, and planes, these neighbors can shut down China’s merchant traffic and make its naval passage perilous.

Israelis continue genocide in Gaza

Al Jazeera, 8/31–Israel has stepped up its destruction of Gaza City, as it plans to seize Gaza’s largest urban centre and forcibly displace around one million Palestinians to concentration zones in the south, as it killed at least 78 people across the besieged enclave since dawn, including 32 desperately seeking food…“There is non-stop heavy artillery targeting the Zeitoun area and Jabalia, where we are seeing the systematic demolition of homes. There is hardly any fighting going on, but heavy artillery and bulldozers are moving from one street to the other, destroying all of these residential clusters”...

China and Russia work on replacing U.S. as dominant imperialist powers

The Guardian, 8/31–Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have met on the sidelines of a showpiece summit in China that seeks to challenge US-led, western-dominated blocs and is being attended by the leaders of more than two dozen nations. The Chinese and Russian leaders, who are closely allied under what they have termed a “limitless” partnership, discussed Putin’s recent meeting with Donald Trump…The Tianjin summit is the largest held by the bloc since it was formed in 2001. The SCO is a key part of Beijing’s push for stronger multilateral alternatives to western or US-led blocs such as NATO.

Contradictions of capitalism migrate to Germany

Der Spiegel, 8/26–They are images for the history books. The photos of young men with backpacks and weary faces who set out on foot in September 2015 from Hungary on their way to Austria and Germany…more than a million asylum seekers arrived in the country – an unprecedented number…Ten years have since passed. The number of refugees in the country has climbed from 750,000 in 2014 to 3.3 million by the end of 2024…German new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, campaigned last winter in part on a significant shift to the country’s migration policies…Since Merz entered the Chancellery, Germany’s federal police force has begun rejecting asylum seekers at the border…

War in Sudan continues to devastate workers

France24, 8/31–Shelling by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces killed at least seven people and wounded 71 others in El-Fasher…El-Fasher, the last major city in the vast western Darfur region still under army control, has become the most violent front line in the war between the Sudanese army and the RSF…In recent weeks, paramilitary forces have escalated their long-running siege, launching fierce artillery barrages and ground incursions into densely populated neighbourhoods…The RSF, which evolved from the Janjaweed Arab militias accused of genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s, is seeking to wrest full control of the region…

Gangster-in-Chief Donald Trump’s tariff shakedown  is a marker of U.S. imperialism in decline. With capitalism mired in global crisis and China’s power rising, the shift toward fascism in the U.S. is accelerating. Rival gangs of U.S. bosses are at each other’s throats as they scramble to deliver shrinking profits to their billionaire patrons. Within  the U.S., the rulers lean on racist scapegoating and armed-to-the-teeth KKKops to crush dissent. At the same time, they’re igniting proxy wars to prop up U.S. dominance and push the world closer to World War Three.

Neither faction of the U.S. ruling class—the Big Fascists of finance capital nor the isolationist Small Fascists—have a solution for the contradictions of capitalism. For the international working class, the only solution is to build and organize toward communist revolution– on the job and in communities, in schools and hospitals and the bosses’ militaries. We must smash the capitalist state and replace it with a society run by and for the working class.

U.S. caught in a web of its own making

The U.S. emerged from World War II as the world’s biggest imperialist power.  Finance capital–the big oil companies and the multinational banks that finance them– built this imperialist system. They will slaughter millions of workers to try to save it. 
Seventy five years later, the finance capitalists admit that their old liberal world order  has been “diseased” by the rigidity of liberal values (Foreign Affairs, 7/28). To counter rising imperialist China, the Big Fascists must destroy their own rules-based system and the multilateral deals it promoted. Jim Crow Joe Biden paved the way for Trump by bypassing the UN and the World Trade Organization (WTO) whenever they stood in the way, most brazenly in expanding sanctions on Iran and Russia.

Trump’s tariff crusade stems from the same crisis. Decades of falling profits have made trade a matter of “national security.” Tariffs—a tax on imports that mostly gets passed on to workers–mean higher costs and weaker wages. The Small Fascists represented by Trump are lining up behind “Fortress America,” a protectionist drive to shield domestic industries, including domestic oil. They’re also reluctant to  fund and defend the U.S. empire with expensive ground troops. In sum, high tariffs sharpen inter-imperialist rivalry, force workers to pay more, and expose fractures in the U.S. ruling class.

Deals vs. sacrifice

The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is a tentpole of U.S. global power. Because most global trade, investment, and debt are in dollars, Washington can print as much money as it chooses to finance deficits, force other countries to hold dollar reserves, and weaponize the financial system with sanctions. Since World War II, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the WTO have rigged its “rules-based” governance to maintain dollar supremacy. To maintain  access to the global financial system,  other countries are forced to comply with Washington’s agenda. The liberal Big Fascists defend multilateralism because it cloaks U.S. domination in the guise of cooperation.

The bosses fronted by Trump want a different coercive model. Trump’s tariff strategy links trade and currency policy to military leverage. Targeting China’s dollar reserves while punishing allies like the European Union, India, and Canada (New York Times, 4/7), Trump’s trade chief Jamieson Greer openly calls for bilateral deals to force open foreign markets and extract “strategic sector” investments (NYT, 8/7).

Trump’s volatility on tariffs is pushing the EU and others to build trade systems less dependent on a “fickle United States” (NYT, 7/13), creating openings for Russia and China to advance alternative world orders. Central banks are diversifying reserves, boosting gold, and experimenting with non-dollar currencies (JPMorgan, 7/1). As its manufacturing sector has hollowed out, U.S. dominance has slowly eroded. For workers, however, it matters little whether the Big Fascists defend dollar supremacy or the Small Fascists weaken it.  The result is the same: higher prices, job insecurity, and intensified exploitation. 

In the U.S., the Small Fascists’ trade offensive is paralleled by a campaign of gutter anti-immigrant racism: ICE raids, mass deportations, border militarization. Trump is targeting workers who’ve been displaced by U.S.-driven wars, climate disasters, and predatory trade policies. This mix of external economic coercion and internal repression defines the “Fortress America” project: global confrontation abroad and domestic control at home in service of U.S. imperial power in a world edging toward war.

Trump’s war on data

Economic fragility (see box) is playing out in the U.S. jobs market. After a weak July jobs report, Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics head Erika McEntarfer after accusing her, with no evidence, of fudging the numbers. From public health to climate to the economy, Trump’s wholesale assault on data science is designed to prop up illusions of endless growth and prosperity (Financial Times, 8/6).

When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell refused to cut interest rates on command, Trump floated a plan to install a “shadow chair,” a loyalist who would surrender central bank independence and tighten Trump’s control over monetary policy. It would be a desperate move to buy time against the falling rate of profit (FT, 7/10). 

As U.S. manufacturing continues to slump and more than half of industries are already shedding workers (fortune.com, 8/10),  “facts” are becoming optional–another hallmark of rising fascism.

Only solution: communist revolution

While they have different strategies for war and austerity, the two factions of U.S. bosses agree on one thing: Workers will foot the bill for capitalist decline. The profit system always finds money for ICE, war, and genocide, but never for housing, healthcare, or schools. But by organizing within the chaos, waste, and exploitation created by capitalism, we can turn its crises into the basis for our power. 

Under communism,  unchained from the brutal rule of the market and the drive for profit, resources will go where they are most needed: to rebuild infrastructure, expand public health systems, decarbonize energy, and ensure that every person has access to decent housing, education, and meaningful work. 

We must reject the deadly illusion that capitalism can be managed rationally or humanely. Our class needs a communist horizon: a system organized for the needs of the many, not profits for the few. Join Progressive Labor Party and fight for a world without bosses or borders!

The political economy of decline

Capitalism faces deep structural decline. The trends destabilizing the profit system include:

Financialization: In 2023–2024, over half of S&P 500 gains came from seven tech monopolies while core industrial profits fell (FT; The Atlantic, 8/6).

Job Growth Stagnation: Gains are concentrated in low-profit sectors like eldercare and healthcare.

Investment Decline: Speculation in AI data centers surges as industrial investment lags (Bloomberg, 7/31).

Inflation: Service prices rise as growth slows; the June ISM Services Index hit 50.1, signaling stagflation risk (ISM Report, June).

Climate Costs: Extreme weather has cost $2.86 trillion since 2000; annual losses could exceed $3 trillion by 2050 (WEF, 10/12/23).

BROOKLYN August 1—, “Our firing is the start of something, not the end of something!” One of “Fired Four” part timers, an adjunct lecturer, addressed the crowd of over 150 students, staff and faculty at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Though there was torrential rain and flooding all over the city, people showed up to fight back against the politically motivated firing of four adjunct professors who took a stand against U.S. imperialist genocide in Gaza.

Members and friends of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), comprising students and faculty from several CUNY campuses, have been actively involved in organizing to widen this campaign to rehire the Fired Four into a mass struggle. We have participated in meetings, and some of us have been active in a rank-and-file caucus challenging the present union leadership and bringing students to meetings and rallies.
Ultimately, the only way to smash rising fascism in New York City and genocide in Gaza is through building campus student-worker-solidier alliances, building a mass international Progressive Labor Party, and building a red army that can destroy this imperialist system once and for all!

CUNY Fired Four: a racist attack on students

At the rally, we distributed CHALLENGE, and we had some good conversations with workers and students. We carried signs calling for international solidarity and the unity of students and CUNY workers. We also met after the protest to make plans for organizing in the fall semester.

We discussed how the attack on the Fired Four was primarily an attack on students and reflects a sharper turn toward full-blown fascism. As our campuses physically collapse from racist defunding, the U.S. bosses are fighting for political control over education. Meanwhile, student-led outrage over the genocide in Gaza is hurting the U.S. ruling class around the world. More importantly, this fightback is robbing the bosses of willing soldiers as the U.S. prepares for even bigger wars. Russian and Ukrainian workers are – so far – dying by the thousands for imperialist war, and the U.S. needs a similar level of commitment from workers, especially our students.

Fight big to win: SHUT IT DOWN!

CUNY is the largest urban university system in the U.S. and has a proud legacy of student-faculty struggle throughout the years. It has also been built on contingent or adjunct labor, part-time instructors who have the least amount of job security, earn low wages, and have little job protection. The Fired Four were all fired by Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez in a preemptive strike so that he could report to the gutter fascist House Committee’s “Anti-Semitism in Higher Education” hearing that he was disciplining professors for criticizing Israel.

These four professors did not receive negative reviews from their chairs or coordinators, proving that the firings were purely politically motivated. There was also a suspension of a student leader from City College. The bosses’ free speech and academic freedom talk is just that – talk - when imperialists are on the march!

The faculty and staff union at CUNY (PSC-CUNY) has organized letter-writing campaigns to the Chancellor, the Brooklyn College president, and the chairman of the CUNY Board. This is a good start, but the only way for these professors to return would be by organizing mass militant action, like one-day strikes on as many campuses as possible and sit-ins at the Chancellor’s fancy home (he has, of course, more than one home paid for by CUNY).

While one union leader led a chant of “shut it down,” there is little evidence that these are more than words. We must organize not only union members to strike, but also the most powerful group of all, the hundreds of thousands of students at CUNY. To win big, we must organize big and shut it down! But we must also prepare for the long run by building the Progressive Labor Party. As the imperialists build for world war, we must fight to turn their war into a war for communism, where the working class rules.

Racist cuts for more racist police terror, imperialism

This means connecting the bosses’ attacks on the Fired Four with their attacks on public education and student opportunities. At one CUNY campus, Kingsborough, we have seen all academic and student support departments cut to the bone over the years. Library hours have been slashed. Hallways in many buildings are filled with trash cans to catch water that comes from the ceilings when it rains. Like many CUNY campuses, this results in high mold levels from years of deferred maintenance, with serious physical and mental health consequences. At the same time, KCC campus police have increased staffing, promoted Officer Pierre who tackled and beat a student (see CHALLENGE, 11/30/22), and increased surveillance infrastructure and ID-scanning technology. 

Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College, and Brooklyn College have no cafeterias. They cannot provide the most basic of services to students and workers–food. At Hostos, PL’ers and friends organized trips to Costco. The administration did manage to find a way to sell coffee, but only at airport prices. We opened a “People’s Pantry” to provide fresh food for students on both campuses, which also had the effect of increasing student awareness about the lack of food options and organizing to fight back.

This fall: up the ante, bring the fight to campus!

As we prepare for the fall, we are operating in a rapidly changing environment. Immigrant workers and students, as well as citizens, are being kidnapped by fascist ICE militiamen, academic departments are losing grants due to the attacks by the federal government on diversity efforts, and the administration is attacking anyone who speaks out on genocide.

While we organized rallies last semester denouncing ICE at our campuses and have been volunteering this summer at immigration court to show solidarity with immigrant workers, we know we need to up the ante. We pledge to continue our involvement in the campaign to rehire the Fired Four, to defend immigrant workers and to demand full funding at CUNY. We know that these attacks on workers will only stop when workers seize state power and smash this racist, genocidal system for good. Winning students and workers to PLP will move us toward that victory! J

The following article is a companion to Part I of our Boston ’75 series, published in the July 16th issue of CHALLENGE, which chronicled our struggle against the racist, fascist group Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR) in Boston during the summer of 1975.  In our previous supplement to Part I, we examined the virulent expansion of ROAR into the Bronx, New York City.  In this article, we examine expansion of racist groups like ROAR into the Rosedale section of Queens, where it sought to intimidate Black and Latin workers who dared to move into this segregated white neighborhood at the time—and how the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fought back with Black and Brown workers to oppose and rout ROAR in Rosedale as well.

PLP has a long history of fighting racism in the Bronx and Queens, New York City. In 1975, racists in New York were inspired by the Boston-based group ROAR (“Restore Our Alienated Rights”), which opposed busing to end segregation in Boston’s public schools. This was a fascist, openly racist movement with a significant mass base. ROAR leaders sat on the Boston City Council. The letters “ROAR” were plastered on the windows of the Boston municipal building, and one of its organizers served on the Boston School Committee, leading the charge against school integration. Boston ROAR attempted to organize nationwide.

When Black workers are under attack, it is the duty of all workers and antiracists to stand up and fight back. Fifty years later, the fight against racist, state-sponsored violence is far from over. Like the Black workers in Cincinnati militantly organizing against Neo-Nazis, and multiracial groups of workers standing against ICE in L.A., Chicago, and Newark, we must smash racist attacks and any far-right movement. For that, we need the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)—a mass, internationalist communist party committed to militant fightback and revolution.

Beating racists in the streets

In 1973 and again in 1975 Progressive Labor Party (PLP) attacked the National Renaissance Party, an openly Nazi group, in Astoria, Queens.
In the “Battle of Steinway Street” on August 25, 1973, PLP members and friends broke up a rally by these Nazis. They had come three times before, and only the presence of cops prevented them from being driven off by local residents who were incensed by their obscene insults to Jews, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Catholics. The fourth time they were driven away, despite the cops.

About 40 members and friends of the PLP fought these Nazis because they understood the importance of fighting racism and anti-communism.
The action was well-planned and thought out. First, three picketers with anti-fascist signs appeared, drawing off some of the cops. Then we threw several eggs, drawing off most of the remainder of the cops. Finally the attack began and the Nazi loudspeaker system was demobilized. A multi-racial group of men and women charged. Nazi flags and signs were smashed. During a number of skirmishes the Nazis were scattered.

The only damage inflicted on our comrades and friends was caused by the cops who broke one comrade’s arm. Meanwhile a crowd of between 600 to 1000 people gathered. Many people said: “This is great. We should have done this six weeks ago.”
The cops detained one PL’er but released him when a crowd of workers chanted, “Let him go! Let him go!                                 

PLP opposes racists in Rosedale, Queens

At the same time in Rosedale, Queens, racist white residents, organized by ROAR, attacked a group of Black teenagers as they were riding their bikes during a “bike hike” through residential Rosedale. The racists waved an American flag, chanted “Civil Rights for Whites,” and threw rocks and hurled racist insults at the Black teens. On TV news one racist said that Black families had no right to move into Rosedale “because they’re black!”

Rosedale ROAR fire bombed a home that had been bought by a Black family. When the Spencers, another Black family, moved in,  a pipe bomb was thrown at their house. ROAR formed a “housing referral service” that harassed white residents who showed or sold their homes to Blacks. This “home referral service” showed houses for sale only to whites. ROAR members also tracked down former residents of Rosedale, went to their houses in their new neighborhoods, telling their neighbors not to allow non-whites to move to their new community.

ROAR did have a base, though most white Rosedale residents thought they were troublemakers and “nutjobs.” A Bill Moyers television special “Rosedale: How It Is” gave the impression that most white people in Rosedale were gutter racists. In reality, as the community group Elmont Excelsior said:

Many current and former Rosedale residents around at the time ... were very upset about how the media liked to play up the idea that the entire community was in support of ROAR’s actions (especially that Moyers documentary). This was far from the truth. Many residents tried to integrate Rosedale peacefully and were very welcoming to their new neighbors.

Rosedale residents who resisted ROAR formed the Rosedale Block Association and organized welcomes for the new residents. Nonetheless, the racists, who numbered several hundred, had to be confronted.

ROAR racists routed in Rosedale

PLP organized against a racist uprising in Queens. More than 200 members and friends of the PLP and the Committee Against Racism (CAR) marched to the house of Jerry Scala, the head of the local ROAR group. Carrying a banner which read “Multi-Racial Unity Will Smash Racism,” we picketed Scala’s home chanting antiracist slogans. Several speakers denounced ROAR and Scala, pointing out how the bosses and politicians love to see workers fighting each other instead of fighting unemployment and cutbacks and the many other attacks faced by all working people during the periodic crises of the bosses’ economy.

Several dozen cops protected Scala’s house, but very few residents of Rosedale came out to support him. News reports indicated that most residents of Rosedale were opposed to the fascists’ attacks against the Black families.

PLP played a key role in stopping the racists before they could consolidate a base. By the late ‘70s ROAR was finished in Morris Park and Rosedale, and by 1976 ROAR had ended in Boston. 

Sources –from CHALLENGE:

PLP Queensites Clobber Neo-Nazi Vermin, September 20, 1973, page 11; and “PLP Chases Nazis Again,” (Astoria, Queens), May 22, 1975, page 5.

“Dump R.O.A.R. in Rosedale, Queens,” September 11, 1975, page 5.

“Racist Boycott Flops,” September 18, 1975, page 3.

“Rip Rosedale Racists” September 18, 1975, page 6