As the international crisis of capitalism deepens, Minneapolis is under siege by state terror—and the working class is fighting back. In a city of less than half a million residents, more than three thousand federal shock troops have been given free rein to detain, arrest, brutalize, and murder any who cross their path. Over a span of 17 days, the paramilitary thugs of ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol executed a mother of three and an ICU nurse for the capital crime of protest. (So much for the bosses’ fake “freedoms” of speech and assembly!) Renee Good and Alex Pretti are just two of the latest casualties of the rulers’ vicious drive to scapegoat immigrants for the profit system’s failures and the plight of a waning and desperate U.S. empire. Thirteen workers have been shot by trigger-happy agents since last September, including Silverio Villegas Gonzales, a line cook near Chicago who tried to flee a traffic stop, and Keith Porter, a father of two gunned down in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve (themarshallproject.org, 1/26). The killings of Good and Pretti-both white workers-also show that no worker is safe from this racist terror.

But even under siege, Minneapolis is once again showing the world how to stand up against gutter racism and sanctioned state violence. While the liberal mayor and governor and police chief make useless pleas for “peace,” thousands of heroic workers have mobilized to defend and protect each other while standing up to the death squads dispatched by State-Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump. On January 23, tens of thousands marched downtown and hundreds of businesses closed in a general strike (democracynow.org, 1/26). In these selfless acts of working-class solidarity, in the hard lessons we are learning, there is a glimpse of a communist future—of a new and better world. It’s never been clearer that the working class must break free of the chaos and callous oppression of capitalism. It’s never been clearer that the liberal capitalist misleaders have nothing to offer us. Fighting the rise of fascism shoulder to shoulder, and led by the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party, we will build the communist world our class deserves.

Why we are under assault

Minneapolis is feeling the bloody brunt of an empire’s decline. As U.S. imperialism competes for dwindling global resources against a rising China and other rivals, it has splintered into two bitterly warring factions. The Big Fascists of finance capital, the multinational banks and oil companies, still seek global domination through endless, far-flung war and a nuclear-girded network of 750 overseas military bases (globalstatistics.com). The domestically based Small Fascists behind Trump, as they move to restore a more isolated Fortress America, have a cheaper plan for plunder. 

Case in point: the U.S. oil grab in Venezuela. While the two sides have different strategies and tactics, both are faced with a system that’s drowning in debt and squeezing workers’ standard of living. Both sides must rely on racist terror to keep workers in line and also to divide them. 

Both sides, in short, are being forced to turn to fascism, a phase of capitalism that strips off the mask of liberal democracy and reveals the rotten core beneath.  

This is the context for the federal government’s declaration of war on immigrant workers. While Trump has a long way to go to beat Barack Obama’s 5.3 million deportations and “repatriations” of migrating workers, or Joe Biden’s single-year record of 1.5 million (newsweek.com, 1/15), his no-holds-barred agenda marks a qualitative escalation. The ICE goons in combat gear are being recruited with naked appeals to white nationalism and wink-wink tropes familiar to the Proud Boys and other nazi groups in the U.S. and Germany (New York Times, 1/27). It can be no surprise that they’re freely assaulting people in parking lots, dragging them from their cars—or shooting them when they get the opportunity. ICE agents are casing schools and daycare centers. In one horrific case, they snatched a five-year-old child and used him as bait to lure family members from their home before shipping the boy and his father to a Texas concentration camp for deportation (NYT, 1/22). Locked and loaded with live ammunition, stun grenades, tear gas, and pepper spray, these masked cowards have turned Minneapolis into a class war zone. 

Occupied but not defeated

Though the terror is real, so is the collective response of the working class. Growing groups of workers are forming parent patrols around schools. Watch groups are alerting their immigrant neighbors to ICE’s presence and bringing food to those too terrified to go outside. Each day they are chasing ICE vans, confronting the thugs with whistles and an emerging multiracial class consciousness. 

Falling back on skills and connections gained in the George Floyd resistance and then the fightback against genocide in Gaza, the working class in Minneapolis has built a broad and inspiring movement. They aren’t focused on the dead end of voting in the next election. With advanced antiracist politics, they are defying both Trump and the equally dangerous reformist misleaders (The Guardian 1/2). The workers’ collective will and commitment were on display on January 23, when thousands braved frigid temperatures to take to the streets after the murder of Alex Pretti. The deafening message from that day remains clear: Workers United Will Never Be Defeated! 

The enemy of our enemy is our enemy

Even as Trump’s forces use a racist welfare investigation to target their Democratic Party rivals and migrating workers from Somalia, we can’t lose sight of a hard fact: The Democrats are no friends of ours. Just as most of them, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, stood opposed to defunding the police who killed George Floyd and so many others, they now have no intention of abolishing ICE (NYT, 1/15). In essence, these are the same liberal racists who built the foundation for Trump’s ethnic cleansing machine, dating back to the Illegal Immigration Responsibility Act that Bill Clinton signed in 1996. Under Obama, the Democrats built the razor-wire-topped cages for migrating workers and children—the same inhuman holding pens that Trump used in his first term (politifact.com, 9/13/19).

Whoever wins the next rounds of U.S. elections, we know that capitalism can never be reformed to meet the needs of the working class. The politicians will still lie as they serve their billionaire masters. The cops will still be brutal. And the working class will continue to suffer. But there is another solution to put the state terrorists out of business for all time: communist revolution.

Organize to stop ICE, fight for communism

Workers understand that we can’t stop ICE with whistles and snowballs and cell phone cameras. Though there will be cheers if and when Trump’s gestapo leaves Minnesota, we all know they’ll be off to terrorize workers someplace else. Capitalism is built on the exploitation and oppression of workers everywhere, from Minnesota to Gaza and Sudan and Tehran. No capitalists, no matter how much they hate other capitalists, can rescue us from fascism and inter-imperialist war. To build a world without bosses and borders—a communist world—we can rely only on our class. That is the lesson we learn in the struggle. Organize ICE Watch and fight for communism! Organize food distributions and fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party and fight for communism!

Minneapolis, MN—A multiracial collective of students and workers from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) brought the heat of antiracist communist politics and organizing to the city of Minneapolis this weekend. In subzero temperatures, we proudly stood shoulder to shoulder next to tens of thousands of other students and workers demanding an immediate end to the ICE nazis’ racist and fascist assault on the city.

The ongoing racist raids, arrests and deportations are rooted in the capitalist profit system, which can only exist from the division and intense exploitation of the international working class. Facing this truth, we shared the goal and vision of a communist revolution led by the mass PLP to overthrow the hated bosses and their wretched system and build an egalitarian worker-run society in its place!

ALL OUT for the general strike!

Our plan to travel to Minneapolis coincided with the call of unions and social organizations to hold a general strike on January 23rd. The ICE gestapo has ratcheted up their invasion of the area over the past weeks, sending thousands of agents to make arrests of our immigrant worker siblings while executing mother of three Renee Good in cold blood on January 7th.

The working class here has responded to the raids with passion and skill, organizing rapid response networks and mobilizing the masses to protect their neighbors, family, co-workers and friends through direct action. The general strike is the logical escalation of the class struggle: withholding our labor in a mass coordinated way across different industries to confront the bosses’ plans and damage their ability to make profits.
In inspiring solidarity, with the wind dropping the air temperature to around -30º, the working class showed up around 100,000 deep in the downtown commons area to participate in the strike. Our PLP collective chanted and spoke amidst enraged masses of workers rallying, chanting and marching to demonstrate the earth-shaking power of a unified working class.

Throughout the action, we marched with our red communist flags high, distributing hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE and leaflets. We sharpened the tone and militancy of the chants, stressing the need for multiracial working-class unity to challenge the bosses: “Asian, Latin, Black and white – Workers of the world, unite!” We peppered these chants with speeches that were well-received, especially by connecting the history of slavery to racist police terror and the murder of George Floyd with the genocides in Palestine and Sudan, and that our goal should not just be to kick the hated ICE out of Minnesota. General strikes can teach us our own power, but the only way to end this terror everywhere is to use our power to uproot the vicious capitalist society requiring such ruthless force to maintain their imperialist system. To do that we need a mass Red Army waging revolutionary violence and millions of workers building a mass international PLP. Anything less and we will repeat this same murderous cycle.

Capitalism keeps murdering us – Justice for Alex Pretti

The morning after the general strike we awoke to the horrifying news that the ICE fascists took the life of yet another worker in Minneapolis. 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti was wrestled to the ground by at least six agents and shot dead on a crowded street at point blank range.

Just as they did after the racist murder of Black worker George Floyd in 2020, liberal racist bosses like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz rushed to do damage control and provide cover for the murderers, pleading for calm and a peaceful response. 

They were answered with a resounding HELL NO! As usual, the liberal misleaders like to pose as an alternative against Donald Trump and project a more friendly face of capitalism, but through hard experience workers see through their treachery. Their attempts to mask the brutal reality of the system make them the greater long-term danger to our class.

Connecting with local workers we met from the day before, our collective rushed to the growing scene of rebellion on Nicolett Avenue. The ICE fascists were quick to unleash crowd control, making arrests and shooting clouds of tear gas. But they failed to repel the working-class wrath and were forced to retreat as hundreds of workers weaved through a flimsy police perimeter to gather near the site of Alex’s murder.

Barricades were quickly erected by workers at street intersections to the north and south of the site of the shooting to keep ICE and any kkkops out. Businesses along the street opened their doors in solidarity to the antiracist fighters as spaces to warm up, strategize, and get free food, beverages and hand warmers. Members from our PLP collective who work in healthcare connected with other workers in a donut shop to create a street medic space for any people who were potentially injured in clashes with the police or ICE.

Soldiers: Turn the guns around!

Later, at that day’s mass vigil for Alex, we learned the Minnesota National Guard was staging to clear the area, prompting some to compare soldiers to kkkops and chant of “f*ck the Guard!” Amidst this chant, a woman took the mic and movingly spoke as a former soldier who refused orders to kill in Iraq and shared that many soldiers didn’t enlist to commit racist crimes, aren’t police, and often question their orders. In the stunned silence, a PL’er inspired by the veteran’s passion connected their experiences in Iraq to the murders of Shantel Davis, George Floyd and now these latest martyrs and said that only communist revolution can avenge them and bring the world we deserve. 

Grief turned into militant cheers, and in the conversations that followed, we learned the soldiers nearby were in contact and questioning their orders. We were able to send messages to refuse orders to harm their class siblings, and to join us and turn the guns around. Ultimately, the Guard wasn’t sent out – but with our contacts here we can plant the seeds for future rebellions.

Contrary to the capitalist bosses and their mouthpieces’ constant lies that communism can’t work because it goes against “human nature” and other nonsense, Minneapolis gave genuine examples of communism in action. Workers of every background came together to organize, share, and defend one another without any motivation of personal gain. As one of our friends put it, it was “the dream within the nightmare.” 

The class struggle continues 

The mass openness to communist ideas in this atmosphere isn’t a coincidence. For the apparent future, our class will remain in mortal struggle against these capitalist parasites and the fascists protecting their property and wealth. But the fighting example of workers across Minneapolis as well as the entire world shows how rapidly the illusions of capitalist strength vanish in the face of workers’ power. Minneapolis demonstrates that our class has the potential and spirit to destroy this capitalist system before it destroys us. ALL POWER to the international working class! We salute the antiracist fighters everywhere – JOIN PLP, FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

Newark NJ, January 19 – Over a dozen Progressive Labor Party members and friends attended a rally commemorating MLK Day by protesting racist ICE abductions across the U.S. We are currently facing a rising tide of fascism (see editorial on page 2) and must prepare to take the streets with students and workers every chance we get. In New Jersey, we called up students from local colleges, antiracist fighters against the genocide in Palestine, and fierce organizers against the murderous ICE jail, Delaney Hall, to join us at the nearest march. Our class is righteously fired up about the public execution of Renee Good, the murder of Keith Porter by an off-duty ICE agent and the murder of ICE detainees like 41-year-old Jean Wilson Brutus, dying within days of detainment. 

This murderous system has robbed our class, the working class, of too many people to name. The only way we can avenge our class is to fight to end this capitalist system and organize for the inevitable clash between the ruling class and the working class that is to come. If we organize for it, we can win the communist future that our class has the potential to win.

To strengthen our spears, our Party consistently stands beside antiracist fighters and families outside of Delaney Hall. We share CHALLENGE newspapers and host study groups, connecting police terror to the needs of this system—profit, war and imperialist competition, which is clearly leading us down a deadly road to World War 3. The bosses want our class to be under the boot of killer kkkops and ICE, long enough to figure out how to untangle the mess of their previous wars and expeditions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Latin America. As we prepare ourselves for what’s to come, we must bridge the confidence we have in our class to every worker, neighbor, and student, inviting them to join us in class struggle and build an internationalist Party that can contest the ruling class.

Liberalism poisons our class

A few days before the march, teachers, organizers, and parents met and exposed a connection between Delaney Hall and Newark Public Schools. Both corporate and state funded entities share Driscoll Foods as its food distributor. The same rotten food being fed to school children is killing workers like Brutus in Delaney Hall. Workers detained inside the ICE jail have complained of moldy or frozen food, freezing temperatures, and zero medical care. We decided to print this information on leaflets and call for every fighter at the rally to turn up at the upcoming Board of Education meeting.

The march’s organizers are known to be the mayor’s go-to for bringing out masses of workers and then ushering them behind the Democratic Party and collaborating with the police. This rally was no different. One speaker essentially declared that she didn’t want to abolish police but stop ICE from the fascist level of terror. Some fighters in the crowd boo’ed. We let out the chant: HOW DO YOU SPELL RACIST//G-O-P//HOW DO YOU SPELL MURDERERS//D-N-C. Some workers were taken aback by our boldness but still joined in. We made it our goal to not have the same few PL’ers chanting but to encourage fellow fighters to raise their voice, sharing printed versions of chant sheets that we made for the day.

Black workers are key to revolution

As we marched, undercover cops murdered a 43-year-old Black worker, Wali Bey. Newark’s Mayor, Ras Baraka’s weak response: “It is a heartbreaking tragedy for everyone involved when a police officer feels the need to draw a weapon—and so much more so 
when they are compelled to fire.” The officer had no reason to draw the weapon, as Wali and another man were sitting in their car. The KKKops terrorized and shot them because police are given the rights under this system to murder in broad daylight and without impunity. Wali was a beloved member of the community and his murder exposes the contradictions of liberal responses to racist police terror under this capitalist regime. Baraka has built a base around the idea that Black workers and students, the primary targets of police terror under capitalism, could befriend and soften the nature of their captors, Killer KKKops in the Newark PD.

Days later, there was a statement released that officers could no longer wear a mask while patrolling the street. Not only is this reformist order too late; it’s a hollow peace offering in exchange for the life of a man and the lifelong trauma of his family and community. Wali’s family and supporters who were in Baraka’s base have protested outside of the local police precinct and disrupted the recent City Council meeting with chants to demand that they SAY HIS NAME. They are pressuring the local police and misleaders like Baraka to explicitly state what happened to Wali and are exposing the crimes that are inflicted against all of our class. One PL’er is related to Wali and is leading ways for our NJ section to support the family turning this tragedy into class struggle.

We have no time to lose

For Wali and the too many names of our class siblings slain by racist police and ICE, we must smash and bury this capitalist system. It is our role as antiracist communists during this period to also link struggles between racist ICE terror to racist KKKOP terror. Whether in the United States or anywhere in the world the horrors of capitalism are the same. Workers everywhere have the same needs and the same fight! Black, Latin, Asian, Arab, and white--workers of the world unite!

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day and again the following Friday, New York City workers took the streets twice in determined demonstrations of proletarian internationalist resolve against ICE terror. First hundreds, then thousands marched. These actions reflect a growing impulse among workers to fight back. It is up to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to make the most of this momentum by building the communist movement, the only force capable of winning the abolition of ICE and the capitalist system that sustains it.

Both demonstrations saw significant presence from organized labor, with UNITE HERE on MLK day and the United Federation of Teachers on Friday. On Monday workers gathered at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and thundered across the Brooklyn Bridge to 26 Federal Plaza. With vigorous chanting PL’ers laid bare the stakes for our class: the necessity of abolishing ICE and dismantling borders with communist revolution as the only solution. Liberal bosses commissioned the march, yet botched the basics: late start times, chaotic coordination, and a press conference were prioritized over building the kind of discipline our class will need to confront rising fascism.  

These bosses present themselves as defenders of “democratic values,” yet when ICE terrorizes immigrant workers, they offer nothing beyond reformist slogans. They call for a kinder, more efficient ICE, not its abolition. This trajectory is the politics of the Democratic Party’s big-wing fascism, which seeks a more legalistic Obama-Biden era deportation machine. The liberals’ reliance on and support of the NYPD—the very force that collaborates with ICE—underscored the hollowness of their values. The bosses will never protect workers, as their power rests on enforcing capitalist rule. 

Growing anger with racist ICE 

On Friday, hundreds of teachers joined a crowd of thousands in a march through lower Manhattan at an even colder after work rally and march. 

PL’ers marched with co-workers but were open about our plan to meet up as a Party to distribute the few papers we had remaining from Monday’s demonstration. This mattered. Co-workers saw communists bringing revolutionary politics directly into the mass movement, not hiding them. These moments open the door to future struggle and recruitment into the Party.

At both marches PLP took a ‘struggle with, struggle against’ stance, uniting with workers we were near while exposing the misleadership of the liberal head honchos directing the day’s events. On MLK Day, our leaflets invoked Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail to expose the real danger facing our class: that liberals are the main danger since they “prefer order over justice.” The moderate reformist urges perpetual patience and compromise while workers endure austerity, family separation, healthcare denial, and imperialist war. These misleaders lull workers into passivity as capitalism sharpens its claws and drives the world toward World War III and environmental catastrophe.

Throughout both marches, PLP members and supporters raised sharp communist slogans that clarified the political line required for this moment. We linked ICE, the NYPD, and the Ku Klux Klan as different instruments of the same class terror. We demanded the abolition of all borders, because workers have no country under capitalism. We called for workers of the world to unite against capitalist violence and repression.

We also injected a global, internationalist analysis into the march. Imperialist wars, driven by capitalist competition for oil and power, uproot families and create waves of migration. These displaced workers do not cross borders out of choice, but out of desperation created by capitalism’s crisis. Capitalist nations then fortify borders and unleash ICE, weaponizing racism and nationalism to divide the very class that should unite against exploitation. 

Red heat melts ICE

We must learn from 2020 that mass mobilizations co-opted by liberals lead only to cynicism, exhaustion, and defeat. We must expose the liberal bosses’ inability to lead workers. PLP showed the necessity of disciplined, communist, worker-led base building. Workers — whether in hospitals, schools, transit, or neighborhoods — are the only force capable of dismantling the capitalist system that produces ICE, racist policing, war, and exploitation. By building a base in the working class, we can build the capacity to shut this racist, sexist, capitalist system down from Brooklyn to Venezuela, to Iran, to Sudan, Palestine, to Mexico.  Join us, become a member of Progressive Labor Party!