Given the clear signal that tens of thousands of people have helped Zohran Mamdani become the Democratic candidate for Mayor (over 50,000 volunteers) and over 400,000 people voted for him in the New York City primary for Mayor, at least some of whom are in our base, and that the wealthy capitalist and real estate interests are being driven wild by his possible Mayoralty, I would like to ask that we write about him without the snark we sometimes use in describing socialists who do not stand for revolution.

Rather, we should respectfully describe his campaign as an example of how public opinion is shifting. This permits, at least in NYC, a wider discussion of alternative ideas of organizing society. Naturally it begins in people considering the reform of capitalism and that is generally good.

The growing wall of resistance from capital to his campaign shows how difficult reforming capitalism is. 

If he wins he may be able to temporarily freeze the rent, or get the buses free, but the latest wild threats from Trump to give less funds to the city demonstrates the notion that every improvement in one area of life in NYC won by working people will be met by a take-away somewhere else.
In fact a win by Mamdani is likely to prove the Marxist position that state power is not a neutral force.  Building a just and more egalitarian society requires that the working class seize the power of the state by revolutionary means and empower the working people to achieve an end to capitalism and the establishment of a communist society.

I plan to work on the Mamdani campaign along with members of my base. I do not plan to do it to stop him from getting elected but to challenge capitalism. A  movement of hundreds of thousands fighting for working class reforms and immigration rights and anti-Zionist positions and against the power of wealth is a movement we should be part of while respectfully in the pages of our paper challenging the notion that “socialists” can take power from the wealthy and usher in the millennium. Only revolutionary communists can do that. While we fight for reforms, it is with the knowledge that reforms are transitory. In an era of increasing inter-imperialist competition, rising Fascism and growing threats of World War, the folks working on the Mamdani campaign along with others can grow into the base of the Party.

Let’s not disrespect them or for that matter their candidate. Argue about the logic of their political position, struggle with and struggle against.

IDF continues to murder Gazans looking to eat

Al Jazeera, 6/29–Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip have killed dozens of Palestinians, including people seeking food at aid distribution hubs, as the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave deteriorates by the day…at least 72 people were killed since dawn in Israeli strikes targeting multiple locations across Gaza, including at least 47 in Gaza City and the north of the territory. The victims on Sunday also included at least five Palestinian aid seekers killed near food distribution centres…A recent report by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they had received orders to fire at crowds of unarmed aid seekers to disperse them.

U.S. fascists-in-charge prepare to deport 500,000 Haitian workers

AP, 6/27–The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it is terminating legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, setting them up for potential deportation. DHS said that conditions in Haiti have improved and Haitians no longer meet the conditions for the temporary legal protections. The termination of temporary protected status, or TPS, applies to about 500,000 Haitians who are already in the United States, some of whom have lived here for more than a decade. It is coming three months after the Trump administration revoked legal protections for thousands of Haitians who arrived legally in the country under a humanitarian parole program…

DR Congo, looking for peace, makes a deal with the U.S.

Financial Times, 6/27– The Democratic Republic of Congo is in talks with a Texan businessman allied to Donald Trump to make a notorious source of conflict minerals a central part of US-backed peace plans for the region. Gentry Beach, the chair of investment firm America First Global and former finance co-chair of Trump’s campaign in 2016, is part of a consortium negotiating for rights to the Rubaya coltan mine, said Congolese officials and people familiar with the matter…Both Washington and Kinshasa have expressed hope that any deals that flow will also dilute Chinese dominance in what is Africa’s richest store of minerals. DR Congo accounts for about 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt, as well as some of the continent’s largest reserves of gold, copper, coltan, tin and diamonds…

Workers OK strike plans against Tyson

Parade, 6/28–Workers at a Texas-based beef processing plant just "voted by a 98 percent margin" to authorize a strike at the facility amid ongoing negotiations…Teamsters Local 577 members at Tyson Foods of Amarillo–described as the "largest beef processing plant in the United States" and "essential to the beef supply chain"–announced that its some 3,100 members had voted to authorize a strike at the facility and should the strike happen, it could create a domino effect of chaos…

Japan gearing up for war with China

Newsweek, 6/26–Japan will begin building bomb shelters next year on its remote islands closest to Taiwan amid fears that its far western territory could become a legitimate target for Chinese missiles if China and the United States go to war…Japan's Self-Defense Force is among the world's most well-armed militaries thanks in part to historically strong heavy industry and U.S. export licenses for the production of platforms like the F-35 stealth jet and the future operation of weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile.

Economists map out investing plans for NATO-Russia war

Bloomberg, 6/23–NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte suggested that Russia may be in a position to consider such an attack on the alliance within five years, echoing the assessments of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and several European intelligence agencies…Denmark has said Russia could engage in a local war with a neighboring country within six months and pose a credible threat to one or more NATO countries within two years. A war, even in its initial phase, would see many people killed and likely trigger a flood of refugees…

Progressive Labor Party salutes the bravery of the Los Angeles-area working class in defending our immigrant sisters and brothers in the face of a vicious attack by State-Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump and the masked thugs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In response to state violence by the kkkops in L.A. and other cities, workers’ resistance—most of it peaceful, some of it violent in turn—pushed Trump to retreat and order a five-day pause on deportation at farms, meatpacking plants, restaurants, and hotels. The capitalist bosses are terrified of mass worldwide uprisings that strike at the heart of their rotten, racist system. They’ve been shaken by antiracist fightback after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and by the militant response to Zionist genocide in Gaza. They’re worried that the next wave of protests could light the match for an even broader rebellion.  

The U.S. rulers have a dilemma they can’t solve. On the one hand, they absolutely need labor by immigrants, including more than eight million undocumented immigrants, to keep their fragile system afloat. On the other hand, they need racist scapegoating to divide and discipline the working class. As Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and the U.S. threatens to set off an all-out war in the Middle East, global instability is deepening by the day. Confronted by a rising China and their own relative decline, the U.S. bosses are on red alert for World War Three. Trump’s nazi-style immigration raids—like the mass deportations of Joe Biden before him—reflect the endangered state of U.S. imperialism. Regardless of which lying politician gets elected president the next time around, the bosses will be forced to keep moving toward open fascism, the parasites’ last-ditch move to protect their profits in a time of international capitalist crisis. 

In the face of this escalating state terror, L.A.’s antiracist rebellion shows the need for organizing by Progressive Labor Party for communism—for a society run by and for the working class. More has been accomplished in a few days on the streets than over decades of useless voting for ruling-class stooges. It is clearer than ever that a system that runs on the racist super-exploitation of immigrants (see bottom section) and Black workers, and the exploitation of all workers, must be smashed for all time. 

ICE and LAPD: two faces of fascism

In early June, the Trump regime kicked off a mass deportation campaign by invading the so-called sanctuary city and county of L.A. It started small, with federal agents lying in wait at the downtown courthouse to kidnap immigrant workers as their cases were dismissed. Then, on June 6, ICE descended on a garment factory and two Home Depot parking lots. But they underestimated the power of working-class unity. Neighborhoods quickly mobilized to defend their immigrant siblings. ICE vehicles and gestapo agents were attacked. 

This kicked off a wave of anti-ICE demonstrations now into its second week. The phony stance of liberal L.A. politicians was exposed when the militarized Los Angeles Police Department charged in to maintain “public order” with horses, batons, chemical weapons, stun grenades, and “less lethal” bullets. Then Trump mobilized the National Guard and Marines. Each night, the LAPD has ramped up their violent attacks on the protesters.

While ICE has been deployed in several Democratic-run cities, including Chicago and New York, Los Angeles represents the first large-scale kidnapping and deportation operation—and, according to Trump, just the beginning of his mass immigration crackdown. So be on the lookout for more ICE raids in a city near you. Arch-racist Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, is pushing ICE to deport 3,000 workers a day (LA Times 6/6), or more than one million per year. While these numbers are dwarfed by the annual totals of expulsions, returns, and removals under Biden, Trump’s more open fascist terror is a declaration of class war. Workers must stand together to reject it.

Fight fascism in the streets

For now, the multiracial, multigenerational movement in Los Angeles is mostly leaderless. But it has great potential. PLP is out in the streets alongside these militant fighters, bringing our base and communist politics to the movement.  We must be clear that no protests for reforms, no matter how militant, can “fix” immigration under the profit system. Capitalism relies on racism, sexism, and nationalism to divide and exploit workers, to drive down wages, and to promote patriotism and war.

The capitalist system is inherently violent. As history shows, fascism can be defeated only by mass violence by a communist-organized working class. Whenever protests threaten the ruling class, whether violent or not, they will always be met with violent repression. The fascist terror in L.A. is just a taste of what’s to come.

It’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism

Trump fronts for an “America First,” isolationist wing of the U.S. ruling class, the Small Fascists who promote open gutter racism, white supremacy, and a predominantly white military. But as vile as they are, their competition, the Big Fascists of finance capital, have their own despicable history of scapegoating immigrants. The Obama administration built the border concentration camps now being used by Trump. Biden increased ICE funding to disappear immigrant workers.

The immigration crackdown is just one part of the rulers’ drive to build fascism and prepare the U.S. working class for imperialist war. The bosses need to win masses of workers to support their war efforts. They need workers to accept authority without question and develop hatred for the “other.” The fight by California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass against Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines is phony to its core. Bass has no problem with beefing up her cops’ budget and sending them out to maim protesters. Newsom has no problem with denying immigrants healthcare. The real issue is that California’s bosses make huge profits by exploiting immigrant labor in the garment, agriculture, food service, and hospitality industries. It’s the job of Newsom and Bass to protect those profits, no matter how many heads they need to crack to do so. 

Mass anger needs communist leadership

We’re seeing a lot of spontaneous, mass anger among the youth and workers of L.A. County against ICE, Trump, the local cops, and—to an extent—the capitalist system. Tens of thousands of workers have put their bodies on the line to try to stop the kidnappings. Some are prepared to fend off ICE with rocks and bottles. But as of now, a void of leadership has enabled liberal racist politicians, union hacks, and fake leftists to push identity politics, nationalism, pacifism, and the Democratic Party’s reformist line. There is little or no class analysis of what the bosses are doing.
Whether this movement will be sustained remains to be seen. Much like Black workers, immigrant workers have a long tradition of fighting back against racism and capitalist super-exploitation. As fascism intensifies, PLP’s challenge is to embed ourselves more deeply with workers, soldiers, and students by leading class struggles on the job and in the schools and colleges and community, and to move masses into the streets and other open battles with the class enemy. To overthrow the bosses and their blood-sucking system, local battles can and must lead to the mass violence of communist revolution.

Anti-migrant racist terror is in the U.S.A’s DNA

No capitalist country has a more violent or shameful history of superexploiting and scapegoating immigrant workers than the U.S. In the 1870s, Chinese workers were brought in to perform the deadly work of completing the transcontinental railroad. When the work was done, they were terrorized and deported. In similar fashion, Eastern European immigrant workers were crucial to early 20th century industrialization and garment bosses’ super-profits. When mainly Jewish women led mass strikes against brutal sweatshop conditions, they were assaulted by police and branded as “inferior” by the racist eugenics movement. In the 1940s, the mass internment of Japanese immigrants, many of them U.S. citizens, helped the U.S. bosses build racist war fever for their bloody, imperialist conflict with Japan.

The most obvious model for Trump’s current terror campaign is “Operation Wetback,” the mass deportations carried out under the “moderate” Eisenhower administration in 1954. The rise of corporate farming in the U.S. Southwest required a huge reserve army of super-exploited migrant laborers to generate maximum profits. Based on a 1942 U.S.-Mexico agreement, large numbers of Mexican immigrants were categorized as temporarily legal field workers under the Bracero Program. But the agriculture bosses’ insatiable profit demands required many more workers, including the undocumented. In response to class struggle against unlivable working conditions for both legal and undocumented workers, they militarized the border and brutally targeted Mexican immigrants. In the horrific spirit of ethnic cleansing, one million workers, including many U.S. citizens, were deported. Hundreds of thousands were sent away in boats that a Congressional committee later compared to “eighteenth-century slave ships” (http://newrepublic.com/article/132988/operation-wetback-revisited).   

With ICE’s fascist abductions escalating across the country, Los Angeles workers and students are rising up in resistance. In neighborhoods from Paramount to Downtown LA, tens of thousands have taken to the streets—fighting back against racist state violence and standing in defense of their families, neighbors, and fellow workers. With fascism burgeoning in the U.S., the ruling class is unleashing ICE, its cold and callous gestapo, on immigrant workers and anyone who dares support them. Capitalism needs these nakedly racist attacks to build for fascism to try and keep the working class in check as the crisis of their system deepens. But this is a program LA workers showed bosses they aren't going for!

PLP comrades lead the way against ICE in the streets!

In February, students led mass actions against anti-immigrant attacks. This spring, those protests have only grown in strength. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was there—on the front lines, distributing CHALLENGE newspapers, talking with workers, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the multiracial working-class community. 

The streets have now become sites of rebellion. In Paramount, residents stood outside their homes for blocks, confronting police barricades and razor wire. Protesters faced off against heavily armed cops, while some residents threw firecrackers, bottles, and rocks at the KKK-like occupiers. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) fired blank rounds, rubber bullets, and tear gas. Protesters responded by building barricades and setting cars ablaze. 

Young people on bikes and in cars lined the streets—not just watching, but joining. One young protester told us, “We’ve been out all day, from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.—this is our city and we are fighting back against ICE.” Another resident said, “We’re out here to support the ones who've disappeared—and if things go down, we’re here to protect those facing off with the police.” 

During the takeover of a freeway—mirroring February’s actions—PLP members witnessed Waymo self-driving cars set aflame and LAPD forces hiding beneath overpasses as protesters fought back. On horseback, cops tried to trample demonstrators, firing flurries of rubber projectiles and tear gas. But the protestors did not back down!

A protester wounded by a metal projectile was treated on the spot by a comrade. The fighting spirit never waned. Night after night, local youth launched car and bike caravans—horns blaring, engines roaring—keeping up morale and creating movement even as the police tried to scatter the crowds. 

Beating back capitalist terror 

This is more than a protest—it is class struggle. People are rising up not just against ICE, but against the entire capitalist system that enforces borders, racism, and exploitation. 

A friend of PLP who we know through the police murder fightback joined us for one of the trips into downtown. Her brother was killed by Long Beach police in 2017, and she has been one of the fiercest fighters for justice against police violence. Her immediate willingness to join us in this fight even after the fightback against police murder has died down shows that she is connecting the dots back to capitalism. Whether police, ICE, the National Guard, or the Marines, they all serve the state in terrorizing our class. The Party’s long term commitment to building a base in the working class positions us in the fight for a communist world.

Workers have the power

We rounded out a week of activity with an all out call to members and friends to rally outside of Inglewood City Hall, a community we have worked in for the last decade. We brought messages of multiracial unity, working class solidarity, and fierce fightback through our speeches and chants. Our leaflet and paper were well received by participants and those driving past. 

A Black mother with her two boys from the crowd gave a speech about standing up for each other because one day they come for your neighbor and the next day they will come for you. In talking to her after, we learned that her children’s school is one of the ones being closed in a racist attack by the school board and state. Capitalism is attacking workers constantly on all fronts. Our involvement in reform movements gives us opportunities to raise the Party’s line that capitalism is the root of all problems. We exchanged contact information with this sharp mother to stay in touch.

Workers laying on their horns as they drove by in their work vehicles led to an impromptu speech by a Party member about the power of our class to shut down the city. The crowd responded with thunderous cheers to that potential.

Workers in LA County are learning so many powerful lessons through these fascist attacks. We have heard people say:

*There are more of us than there are of them.

*They can’t take us all.

*We have to stand united for our neighbors.

*What do borders even mean? No one can own land.

These calls from members of our class for working class solidarity, multiracial unity, and to smash all borders give us so many opportunities to build for communism. Throughout these days of rebellion, PLP remained present—day and night. We are fighting to build a revolutionary movement of workers and students to smash racism, eliminate borders, and overthrow capitalism. Deportations, police violence, imperialist wars—they are all symptoms of a system designed to divide and exploit us. But we are one class, the working class, and united we have the power to destroy this rotten system. 

No more deportations. No more racist terror. No more borders. Join the PLP in the fight for a communist world.