CHICAGO, August 2 – “Hitler rose, Hitler fell – Fascist scum, go to hell!” With this bold antifascist chant, a comrade kicked off a rally at a busy west side intersection today. Local members of the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) organized this CHALLENGE distribution/rally as a direct response to disgusting fascist graffiti that was found on the office door of a non-profit group as well as on a Palestine solidarity mural in the neighborhood. In the span of little over an hour, we distributed close to 200 copies of CHALLENGE, made new contacts, and received small donations.
As capitalism spirals worldwide into a deeper economic and political crisis, the bosses are going to be forced to resort to more open fascist attacks to discipline not only the working class but also other factions of bosses. This is not mainly a voluntary “choice” made by specific politicians such as Donald Trump, but is a necessary stage of capitalism when international competition between countries becomes so severe that the bosses of different regions are forced to tighten the noose to prepare for wider war.
Building the mass international PLP and fighting for communist revolution is the only way to stop fascism and imperialist war dead in their tracks. In the inevitable struggles and revolutions to come, the international working class will again defeat fascism and finally destroy the deadly capitalist system it grows out of. What we do today plants the seeds for a future worker-run society free of racism, exploitation, and war.
Fascism more than an individual – it’s capitalism in crisis
Many workers across Chicago were enraged to wake up on July 20 to learn of the fascist graffiti spray painted on the buildings (Block Club Chicago, 7/20). The racist filth was especially jarring considering the higher concentrations of Black and Latin workers who live and work around this neighborhood. As if dealing with threats of state violence in the form of ICE raids or kkkop terror weren’t enough, it’s unacceptable to have to deal with such sickening imagery put on by local gutter racists.
The pathetic racist goon who was responsible for the vandalism was eventually arrested about a week later and charged with felonies, but as communists and antiracist fighters, we were hardly satisfied with that outcome. Emboldened by our experiences in the recent PLP summer project in Boston as well as PLP members and friends in the state of Kentucky recently beating down the fascist Proud Boys (see CHALLENGE, 7/30), we knew we needed a militant response in the face of this attack.
During today’s rally, speeches were given in both Spanish and English denouncing the growing fascist attacks against workers and calling on our class to fight back with multiracial unity. A comrade on the bullhorn explained how fascist ideas and violence are rearing their ugly heads not just in the attitudes and actions of individuals but more broadly how fascism reflects the needs of the capitalist profit system and its rulers to terrorize and subdue our class as we fight back against our worsening living and work conditions.
The comrade pointed out that although liberal bosses (like those who have run Chicago for decades) on their surface pay lip service to “tolerance” and inclusivity, they have proven more willing and better prepared to unleash fascism on our class than Trump and his white nationalist allies. For proof, we need to look no further than the deportation records of both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, whose numbers Trump still has yet to match (Washington Post, 7/18). Their ability to mislead and deceive genuine antiracist workers while raining misery on us is why the Party identifies liberals as the main danger to our class.
Many workers walked up to us to directly thank us for being out and sharing our messages, while more drove past honking their horns and raising their fists out the window in support. Our antiracist revolutionary messaging was registering loud and clear!
Up with communist revolution!
An essential takeaway from today’s action was the importance of being bold and confronting racism and fascism head on. The international working class is the only force that is capable of radically transforming society for the better, and we can never rely on the bosses or their laws to defeat or even slow down fascism, especially as the same bosses are using fascism to try and save their profit system.
Actions like today, even when small, show the way the working class and its mass PLP advance towards the egalitarian world we need and deserve. We are ready to build this fight with our working-class siblings in Chicago and everywhere else! Down with fascism, up with communist revolution!
WORCESTER, MA July 17 – This summer, members of the Boston area Progressive Labor Party (PLP) chapters hosted a commemoration of the Boston’75 Summer Project. In the summer of 1975, PLP organized over 150 volunteers to join the successful Freedom Ride to Boston in the spirit of building multiracial working-class unity. People came from across the country to oppose the racist policies of the Boston City Council and the violent segregationist movement.
In the spirit of that solidarity, the Worcester PLP club, along with our Boston comrades from near and far, had a militant anti-ICE demonstration on July 17. Just before our demonstration, a silent vigil in for Congressman John Lewis was held, and we invited those attendees to join us in our fight. We rallied against the racist deportations of our working class brothers and sisters in Worcester, and against the ongoing genocide in Gaza by the Israeli fascists and U.S. imperialists.
Militant antiracism in full force!
On the steps of City Hall, we gathered about 25 PLP members from Kentucky, New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Our contingent of young people added their militant voices to the rally and march. Our chants of “Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!” were well received, as well as our most popular rallying cry: ” ICE Out of Worcester Now!” The bilingual chants in Spanish, led by new PLP members, were met with cheers from people driving by. Some of our signs in Spanish said: “Fuera ICE!”, and “Alto a las Deportaciones! Unidad entre Trabajadores!”
PLP members gave speeches in front of both City Hall and the Federal Courthouse about topics ranging from the role of the KKKops in supporting state-sanctioned violence against workers, to the inability of the Democratic Party to bring about radical change, including their role in channeling anti-fascist action against ICE and the Trump administration into support for liberal fascism. As we marched to the park behind City Hall, led by our anti-ICE banner, cars honked their horns in support.
Sharing experiences
After our rallies and march, we wanted space for PLP members to reflect on their experiences during the summer project, and to further build unity among members from across the country. Some workers who saw us marching came by and spoke with us about how happy they were to see us here. We shared our pizza with them, discussed their experiences organizing in the city, and distributed our flyer and issues of CHALLENGE to them. We took their names and plan to contact them in order to mobilize more of the community against ICE’s fascist terror.
The Boston Summer Project involved a lot of effort and time in planning the demonstration, marches, food, and literature distribution. It was a real collective effort across both the Boston and Worcester PLP chapters. Of course, none of this would have ever been successful without the enthusiastic participation of the PLP members who flew in from around the country to advance the banner of communist revolution.
50 years after the Boston ‘75 summer project, the struggle continues!
On the last night of the Summer Project the participants watched Lily’s Education, a play set in 2018 during Trump’s first term. Most of the actors were recruited from Chelsea HS where a comrade teaches and it was performed in Chelsea too, an immigrant community that’s been at the brunt of ICE’s terror.
Lily’s Education tells the story of a recent HS graduate who wants to go to college. When she applies for financial aid, she discovers she’s undocumented. This sets the plot in motion. Lily’s mother, Lupe, fled El Salvador with her infant daughter when she herself was a teenager. The stress Lupe experiences as a single mom keeps her laser focused on saving money to buy a house, which gives her hope in life. Lily, too, is determined to have a meaningful life. Her job at a supermarket teaches her about class and exploitation and solidarity—how to rely on fellow workers. When ICE raids their workplace, she learns that workers can unite and defend themselves.
Through Lily and her mother, the audience experiences the terror of Trump’s attacks on undocumented workers. Mother and daughter figure out how to work together despite their colliding goals. Lily's ability to transcend obstacles presents an empowering vision that can counter the fear and powerlessness that so many workers are struggling with today. The play shows what happens to a working class immigrant family when the cards are stacked against them and they are overextended with not enough support. It shows the destructive impact of the government’s racist anti-immigrant policies and how government policies, like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), are politically motivated to keep immigrants oppressed, and divide the “good immigrants” (the young ones who can build the U.S. economy) from the “bad immigrants” (who have a harder time assimilating).
Culture reflects reality. Under capitalism, it’s presented through the eyes of our exploiters, to promote cynicism, individualism, and escapism. Our movement needs to produce more of our own working class culture to build unity, solidarity and the spirit of resistance. We hope to stage the play again, at Chelsea HS and other parts of the community where we have a political base. We invite others to use the play and modify it as needed to fit their local circumstances. Our party should develop its use of culture and other creative means to engage others in political discussion. If you’d like a copy of the script or a video of the recording, contact
- Information
Letter: From suffering alone to struggling together
- Information
- 17 August 2025 734 hits
I was lucky enough to make it to this year's PLP Summer Project and had a great time. I was only recently introduced to the Party, so this was diving into the deep end for me, but the entire time I felt very welcome. It was incredibly inspiring to see an intergenerational struggle that is this well organized.
Speaking to the comrades who attended the 1975 project was one of the first times I’ve been exposed to leftist organizing in such a pragmatic manner rather than an exercise in theory. Hearing their stories of standing together in the face of violent racism gave me a framework of how we can push back against the transgressions we see mounting daily as ICE careens down a path of hostile militancy.
More than anything else, the biggest takeaway of this experience for me is simply that there is hope. Suffering is inevitable when alone, but struggle is possible when we unite- and with enough struggle we may finally find ourselves free of our chains. Until now, I had mistaken my suffering to be equivalent to struggle. Hearing and seeing what it takes to unite, fight, and win opened my eyes to this difference. As I move forward conducting myself in this struggle, I know this experience will help guide me.
On September 2nd, 1921 — 104 years ago this week — the Battle of Blair Mountain came to an end. It was the largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history since the Civil War and a striking example of multiracial solidarity between Black and white coal miners.
Ten thousand armed coal miners marched from Charleston, West Virginia, 70 miles south to Blair Mountain, Logan County, West Virginia, to destroy the unjust system that had taken their health, their homes, and many of their lives. During the battle, striking white workers, partly inspired by the new workers’ state, the Soviet Union, joined with Black and immigrant workers. While the immigrant workers were originally sent to break the strike, the multiracial miners foiled the bosses’ plans by organizing these workers and turning the strike into a worker’s army.
The U.S. bosses, determined to crush armed insurrection, deployed bombers armed with gas and bombs left over from World War I, some of which were captured by the workers’ army. The workers faced the U.S. army, 3,000 local deputies, police, gunmen and the State Militia.
This march was the miners’ immediate reaction to the August 21, 1921, murder of two of their own by the coal bosses’ hired gunmen on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse. These killings had followed years of unionizing attempts and guerrilla warfare in the West Virginia coal fields the previous winter.
Within 72 hours, 7,000 armed miners assembled outside Charleston and told the State government that they were going to “open up” Logan County for unionization and “blow it away.” On August 24, the miners’ multiracial army, white and Black, citizen and immigrant, began the 70-mile march to Logan.
As the miners made their way from town to town, their ranks swelled.” By the time they reached Blair Mountain, they were 10,000 strong. The miners were a “fully-trained, highly disciplined army ... All the officers were World War I veterans ...
They taught the miners troop movements [and] flank formations. They formed squadrons.
The original...rednecks
The white workers, indicating their pro-working class politics over the bosses’ racism, wore red bandanas around their necks, earning the insult “redneck” by the capitalist media (Appalachian Magazine, 5/23/16).
In the bosses’ attempts to rewrite history and erase multiracial unity , it was after Blair Mountain that the “redneck” term became, in dictionaries and media, obscured and synonymous with “cracker” (originally, a child of a convict) and “hillbilly” (originally, extremely poor, often interracial, whites living in the Appalachian mountains and outside the norms of southern society).
This multiracial workers’ army were the original “rednecks.” Perhaps in the future we should refer to racists in the South the same way we describe them anywhere in the world, simply as “racists.”
Matewan
The events that led up to the outbreak of this strike and the battle are depicted in the 1987 film “Matewan.” The film shows the miners fighting the bosses’ goons from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency and killing some of them.
But the main strength of the film is its realistic depiction of the militant multi-racial unity of the miners.
The key political struggle Kenehan [union organizer]wages in the first part of the movie is the one against racism. He attacks the racism of some of the miners and calls for organizing the Black and Italian workers into the union. ‘Few Clothes’ John, leader of the Black miners, also has an anti-racist position. There is a great showdown at the mine entrance, under the guns of the company thugs, as the miners stand all together, Blacks, white, and Italian. They march and sing ‘Avanti Popolo’(CHALLENGE, 10/21/87).
The miners lose in the end, as they did in real life. They have no communist party to build for a revolutionary overthrow of the bosses. In the film, as in reality, the bosses, the goons, and the courts defeat the miners in the end.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to be the heir of this legacy of multiracial unity. With the sharpening attacks on the international working class and growing threat of all out inter-imperialist wars looming, our understanding of history is more important than ever, as workers from every part of the working class seek out answers that only a new international communist movement can provide.
The quotes in this article are drawn from a video production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, entitled Even the Heavens Weep—The West Virginia Mine Wars.
