Washington, DC, August 12—A pathetic count of 24 white supremacists showed up at the “Unite the Right” rally. Thousands of antiracists came to oppose them. This morning was the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville rally where Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist. Progressive Labor Party and friends interjected the mass liberal politics with the communist idea of “no free speech for racists.” Many followed the Party’s multiracial lead.
Transit workers blast the Klan
A multiracial PLP continent of 50 met up with several Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) union workers and other members of labor unions in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters. One transit worker from Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) gave a speech attacking the racist ideology of the Ku Klux Klan. Another protester read a statement of solidarity with the anti-racist Metro workers (see page 3).
The transit union knew the mainly Black workforce would be, to say the least, unwilling to transport the white supremacists. So, the ATU put out an official statement saying they would refuse to give the racists any type of special treatment and would not be driving any trains to get them to the rally.
However, a union member was forced into driving a train. The police commander took over a single car for white supremacists and the press. Union misleaders were present yet did nothing to stop the transport of racists. The driver of the train was an ATU 689 member and the union officers present did not intervene. The Metro police protected and allowed for the racists to have a secure, heavily guarded ride in an empty train car. So much for the “leadership” of the Metro union.
There was a follow-up protest by ATU 689 in the aftermath of the August 12 rally demanding, “General Manager, Paul Wiedefeld’s termination for breaking the public trust and giving special accommodations to white supremacists on Sunday.”
Communist-led antiracists would have been able to effectively shut down the trains and busses to ensure that no racist rides on public transit. The city spent  $2.6 million protecting these fascists and their freedom of racist speech. (Yet, They want to raise fares, cut service, cut workers’ benefits and freeze wages. It shows Metro’s priorities.) This is the equivalent of promoting hate speech and racist violence. PLP knows that racist speech leads to racist violence.
No free speech for racists
The PLP communist contingent marched over to the rally at Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. Fencing lined the park, with a 75-yard gap in the middle to keep the racist scum safe and to keep the counter protesters far enough away so that no brick or bottle thrown could hit its intended target. This sizable distance also kept the Nazis from being heard by anyone except the cops and members of their own group.
In the blazing sun, we distributed over 600 CHALLENGEs and had a welcoming and encouraging response. When the racist Nazi scum finally showed up, we led chants and were joined by those around us. Later, a liberal woman attempted to silence our bullhorn when PLP led the chant, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all are a part of the bosses plan!” She was unsuccessful.
One protester took the lead in confronting some stray Trump supporters who were against “left-wing violence” (see bottom photo, page 1). The crowd and PLP followed his antiracist lead. The racists eventually left the park, despite being protected by a team of “de-escalators”, who believed that all views (racist or otherwise) should be allowed. The argument for free speech is one that allows, promotes, and protects racists and fascists. No free speech for racists!
After much chanting and a timely rainfall, PLP, friends, and many protesters departed, knowing that we had successfully suppressed the racist message of the Trump supporters.
More fights to come
For the past 40 years, DC has never been a hub for racist and fascist groups. This is largely due the city’s history of beating, chasing, and drowning out racists every time they come, many times led by PLP. Today, many restaurants had signs refusing service to white nationalists. Uber and Lyft drivers also refused service. There is clearly a history of antiracist consciousness among workers here. It’s up to communists to turn those antiracist actions into an international class-consciousness.
There are still many battles to come, and we must be prepared for them. We have our work cut out for us. We must take a stand wherever and whenever a racist or fascist rears its ugly head. We will shut them down and chase them out. Fighting back against racism and fascism isn’t a choice to be taken lightly; this is about the survival and well being of the entire working class. Fight for communism, power to the workers!

CHICAGO—At least 100 workers, community members and many youth, have been organizing nightly in the Lawndale neighborhood on the west side of the city, to draw attention to the alleged “suicide” of 15-year-old Black teen Steven Rosenthal. He was murdered after a foot chase by the kkkops of the Chicago Police Department (CPD).
Comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP), our co-workers, and friends have taken an active role in building for and supporting the nightly rallies and connecting Steve’s death to other racist attacks of the capitalist system, and the need for international communist revolution.
‘Suicide’ by kkkop
On the evening of Friday, August 17, Steve was stopped by the racist kkkops for questioning, for nothing more than being a Black youth in the path of the police. Steve took off on foot, and according to the CPD, shot himself in the back of the head while cornered in the stairwell of his grandmother’s home.
The working-class residents of the area immediately converged to confront the kkkops and demand answers. Like always, the racist hit men put their crime scene on lockdown, pushing away and intimidating any community members present.
‘Weaving words to smother the kids who die’
The CPD quickly put out a statement expressing their “condolences” over the tragic “suicide” of a young teen. The county medical examiner has corroborated with the killer cops by ruling the death to be self-inflicted.
But the working class is intelligent, and not so easily fooled. A talented and bright 15-year-old with no history of mental illness doesn’t just suddenly decide to end his life, much less by putting a gun to the back of his own head. Several witnesses state that it was in fact the CPD that shot Steve in the stairwell. One of his friends even stated that she was on Facetime with him at the time the cops rolled up, and they were talking about what they were going to wear to a party that they were planning to meet up at that same night.
The fact that the CPD is refusing to release body camera footage or allow the family to view Steve’s body makes it almost certain that he was murdered at the hands of the killer cops and their racist capitalist masters. He tragically joins a growing list of victims of racist police murder in the city, including Maurice Granton Jr. and Harith Augustus, two young Black workers executed by the CPD during the course of this summer alone.
Can’t stop, won’t stop the working class from fighting back
Although the racist capitalist bosses and their killer cops inflict so much violence on our class daily, what never ceases to inspire is the capacity and determination of workers to fight back. Steve’s family and friends have succeeded in mobilizing dozens of other working-class fighters on a daily basis to rally in front of a local school, and to march and block traffic in front of the 10th District Police Station on Ogden Avenue. Their vow is to continue disrupting the bosses’ “business as usual” for 30 days straight until the city starts giving answers and taking action over Steve’s death.
PLP comrades have been honored to take leadership from these working-class fighters in their fight against racism and for justice. We have met and began building ties with his immediate family and other supporters. Those of us who work at the nearby hospital where Steve’s body was first taken have struggled with our co-workers to participate in the rallies to support the family, fight back, and see this fight as their own.
Throughout our participation, we have been bold and unapologetic in blaming the racist capitalist system for Steve’s death, and advocating for communist revolution as the only solution to ensure justice for all members of the international working class. We have linked his death to the increasing racism and fascism facing workers in the city, particularly Black and Latin workers, and the system’s need to terrorize, divide, and weaken all working-class people in order to preserve their deadly profit system.
These attacks from the bosses are certain not only to continue but intensify as the capitalist system spirals even deeper into crisis. They can only be overcome by building a mass international multi-racial Red Army led by a PLP of millions that smashes the capitalist state and its racism, sexism, and inequality, and replaces it with a communist society run by workers that guarantees our needs and development.
Fight for the kids who die
“This is for the kids who die,” begins a classic poem by Black communist poet Langston Hughes. We rise up in revolutionary struggle against racist capitalism, which can only offer death, misery, and alienation to the overwhelming majority of the world’s workers, including 15-year-old children like Steve.
Justice for Steve! Fight for international communist revolution!

LOS ANGELES, August 23—The teachers’ union UTLA is taking a strike authorization vote to demand smaller class sizes, funding for “community schools,” and salary increases. Class sizes in regular subjects are now 42 students per class. In some subjects, it is as high as 55. Many schools have nurses and psychologists only one or two days a week. Working-class Black and Latin students are hit the hardest. Extremely segregated schools, and decades of racist policies against Black and Latin students and communities, has resulted in large racist disparities in education. As Progressive Labor Party always asserted, the teachers’ working conditions are the students learning conditions.
Additionally, teachers struggle with the cost of living and are desperate to get whatever the bosses give them. On average, teachers in California make $4,000 less per year than the national average for teachers, yet cost of living in Los Angeles is 43 percent higher than the national average. The bosses’ media attacked teachers, claiming they are getting overpaid, and that raising salaries and school funding  would “lead to insolvency and state takeover.”
The best way to have an education system worthy of the working class is to overthrow the ruling class through communist revolution. Only under communism will students achieve a meaningful education that will serve our class. In the meantime PLP will help lead the organizing around this potential strike with our students, their families and other school workers. Through fighting to give schools our students deserve, the LA working class can realize the power we have and our potential to lead society.
Beutner serves the ruling class
The new LA Unified Schools District (LAUSD) Superintendent Austin Beutner is ready to “prevent a strike, which will harm students, families and the communities we serve” (Los Angeles Times, 8/28). This is the typical rhetoric used by the ruling class to divide the working class in order to convince us that it is not in our interest to fight together against the system. Capitalism is the enemy of the whole working class, teachers, parents and students alike.
Beutner is no friend of working-class students and families. He was an investment banker, has no experience managing a school or district, and used to work for then-mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (a well-known enemy of the working class in LA). Beutner was also a board member for Inner City Education Foundation’s Public Schools, a charter group with schools in south LA. Many pro-charter groups lobbied for him to become superintendent, and one of the school board members responsible for hiring him was Ref Rodriguez, a charter school backed ruling-class criminal convicted of laundering at least $25,000 in public education funds.
It is no secret that Beutner’s role is to cut funding for public schools and continue to attack students and working-class families. Charter schools have been used to divide student populations into two groups: those who will serve the ruling class in “management” positions, and those who will remain super-exploited workers. In essence, they increase racist exploitation and divisions in order to serve capitalism.
Working-class anger bubbles up
All this has angered students, parents and teachers, especially in working-class Black and Latin schools. Many are ready to fight back. The teachers union is using this righteous anger to “bargain for a better contract” with the school district. As usual, they are attempting to divert our anger away from our true enemies —the ruling class and the racist, exploitative system of capitalism—and focus it on getting a pay raise and a few concessions. Let’s not be taken for a fools by neither the bosses rhetoric,or by the union misleaders.
Our enemy is capitalism, which serves the interests of the ruling class by suppressing the interests of working class teachers, students and families. The only way to combat it is to fight as a united working class. We must strike, not to “bargain” with the capitalists, but to take the power back from them. The more the working-class struggle refuses to be contained within the bosses’ parameters, the more our class—students, parents, and teachers—will learn class-consciousness. No classroom can provide that experience or lesson.
The Progressive Labor Party and friends here will fight hard in the reform movement and use these struggles as a school for communism. Stay tuned for all the exciting details to come. Fight for communism! Power to the working class!

ROME, August 5—“Italians first! “Immigrants, go home!” The racist movements we see around the world—from Myanmar to Hungary to the U.S.—flourishes in Italy. At the same time, workers are fighting back. At the forefront of this fight are African migrant workers.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of la Lega, Italy’s most overtly anti-immigrant political party, refuses to allow boatloads of African refugees rescued at sea onto Italy’s shores. In the last two months alone, 850 have died in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. “No sooner had Salvini been sworn in than he was proclaiming his eagerness to kick out the 500,000-600,000 immigrants who are reckoned to be living without authorisation in Italy” (The Economist, 6/7).
The need for proletarian internationalism is urgent. The need for revolutionary, proletarian internationalism is urgent. We must fight to welcome refugees and immigrants wherever we are. We must organize to better the working and living conditions of all workers. But really, the whole damn capitalist system has to go!
Sixty percent of Italians elected the coalition of the Lega and the Five Star Movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo and led by Luigi di Maio. Although some cracks are appearing in this coalition—the Five Star Movement pretends to distance itself from the Lega’s blatant racism—together the two parties control the “populista’, or “populist” government.
Since citizenship in Italy is determined by blood rather than soil, the populists want benefits restricted to native Italians only. This political line is blatantly anti-immigrant and racist. But the proposed 15 percent flat tax rate would benefit only the rich, while sharply reducing revenues for working-class education and healthcare.
Rulers scapegoat immigrants
The Lega-Five Star coalition is a ruling-class strategy to control an increasingly alienated working class by scapegoating immigrants as the source of its problems. The pensions of Italian workers have been cut to the bone. Immigrants serve as super-exploited labor and as scapegoats to bolster the racism that divides the working class.
Thus, immigrant workers, many from sub-Saharan Africa, labor in the fields of southern Italy for three euros (about $4) an hour under slave-like conditions, or toil as precarious labor in the northern factories.
In fact the director of Italian Social Security said the system would collapse without the taxes paid by immigrant workers, most of whom will never receive a pension.
Racist murder of organizer,
Soumaila Sacko
Just two days after the installation of the new government, a 29-year-old Malian organizer of agricultural workers, Soumaila Sacko, was murdered. This sparked a strike and large union-led protests throughout the country (The Local It, 6/4).
He had lived in a tent city of San Fernando in Reggio Calabria, an encampment at least 3,000 of migrant workers— primarily from Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and the Ivory Coast—who pick fruits and vegetables for abysmal wages. They are deprived of electricity, running water, and proper toilets.
The protesters correctly pointed out that this is nothing new. “In 2010, migrant workers staged a revolt against the conditions after three labourers were injured in a [racist] street shooting as they returned from the fields. Hundreds of migrants were expelled from an area nearby in what some commentators called ethnic cleansing” (Al Jazeera, 6/27).
Capitalism in global crisis
The bosses’ attacks on workers lays bare the instability of global capitalism. The top owners of European capital want the European Union (EU) to survive.
For six decades, the EU has enabled capital, goods, services, and labor to flow across borders. This created an economic bloc conjoining the interests of the capitalists in different European nations. Yet these bankers and industrialists also benefit from the divisive nationalist movement, enabling them to keep wages low and cut public expenditures. European capitalists need the EU at the same time that they need the nationalist movements opposed to the EU. As Marx pointed out in Das Kapital 150 years ago, capitalism creates contradictions that it cannot resolve.
Fascism or communism?
How will the Italian working class respond to rising fascism? History provides no clear guidelines. Benito Mussolini was first to usher in fascism in 1920s-1930s led by. But the anti-fascist movement was strong throughout World War II; in the late 1940s, Italy had the continent’s largest and most militant Communist Party.
To this day, communist songs—“Bella Ciao,” “Bandiera Rossa,” and the “Internationale”—are sung at protests against the current right-wing trend. But the old Communist movement, led by the PCI (Partita Comunista Italiana) strangled itself with its commitment to work within electoral politics.
The capitalist crisis is global, but workers often think nationally—which means their response can be easily misdirected in the direction of racist, xenophobic “populismo.”
Only revolutionary proletarian internationalism can meet the needs of the workers of Italy—and of the world. There is a desperate need for PLP, in Italy and everywhere, to organize the class struggle and lead the communist transformation of society.