BOSTON, August 19—The City braced for a post-Charlottesville, Neo-Nazi Free Speech rally at the Boston Commons. The Progressive Labor Party contingent joined the 40,000 antiracist demonstrators, which included their co-workers, friends, and union. We held a large banner that read “No Free Speech For Fascists, Smash Racism With Multi-Racial Unity.” We distributed 1,500 leaflets.
Various unions, Black Lives Matter groups, and others planned two anti-racist protests. One demonstration was held in front of the Massachusetts State House, a quarter mile away from the speakers. The other began two miles away from the Boston Common.
The racist speakers were located in a bandstand in the center of the Common, protected with jersey barriers, fences, Boston police and tactical police, with state police support. Helicopters flew overhead, and sound cannons setup for crowd control.
Reject Republicrats
While public schools face cutbacks and school closures and working people increasingly can no longer afford to live in the city of Boston, Mayor Walsh has chosen to spend over a million dollars to protect fascists and white supremacists. By granting a permit, without even a court fight, Walsh and his capitalist puppet masters have given a victory to these racists. Students of history might remember that the Nazi party rise in 1920s Germany was accelerated after Hitler successfully rallied in left-leaning Berlin. The current crop of fascists, view this rally as a similar opportunity.
Liberal politicians like Walsh and right-wing politicians like president Donald Trump are two sides of the same capitalist coin. While Trump openly promotes the fascists, the liberals protect their ability to organize. Both types of politicians serve various factions of the U.S. capitalist class. These capitalist see their empire slowly crumbling. They are willing to use any means necessary to preserve their investments, including going to war abroad and promoting fascism at home. They fear a united working class opposing their plans. They do whatever they can to divide us along racial, gender, national and other lines. This is why we must unite Black, Latin, Asian and white working people to fight these fascist vermin and their capitalist backers. Ultimately, we must abolish capitalism, a system where  eight capitalists have more wealth than half the world’s population.
Fight Back like a Worker
The fascist rally used only 45 minutes of their state-sanctioned two hours. The police escorted them out. The police were in formation and marching out to confront anti-racist demonstrators. We leafleted, spoke to friends and anti-fascist demonstrators, and learned a few things: As police were leading out the fascists, workers on the streets boldly attempted to fight them; there were 33 arrests. There were unaffiliated anti-fascists at the bandstand shouting to the 30 or so fascists. One of the racists came off the bandstand and into the crowd raising his hand in a Nazi salute. He was then punched by an anti-racist.
Unlike Charlottesville, this march had a large number of anti-racist protesters, and few to no vigilante fascists roaming about. This shows that there are many people willing to stand up against fascism.
However, we should not let down our guard. Fascist and racist groups are being reorganized under a less overt racist guise emphasizing a “clean cut” look without the skinhead image or KKK robes. More average white workers, who are victims of capitalism too, are being enticed to see racism as the answer to the problems of capitalism.
Working Class Has A Record for Smashing Nazis
We influenced many demonstrators with our leaflet, the only literature with a class analysis of racism. It made the important point that fascist and racist speech comes at a cost; which is the lives of countless numbers of workers in the U.S. and worldwide. It cost the lives of 6 million Jewish people and 60 million lives to defeat the Nazis in WWII. Racism has made life a living hell for millions of Black and immigrant people in this country. The ending of slavery came at the price of 600,000 deaths during the Civil War.
The few strides made by Black workers in this country owe as much to urban rebellions and militant confrontation against racists groups such as the KKK as to non-violent civil rights marches. PLP and other anti-racist forces have being fighting fascist and racist groups since the 1960s. Past PLP Actions have made attacking the KKK/Nazis popular! One veteran demonstrator said, “Back in the 1970s, PLP and INCAR (Committee Against Racism) terrorized the KKK in Boston. That was great.” In 1979, we led hundreds to attack the KKK Grand Wizard at Boston City Hall. This has inspired the working class to fight and stop fascist and racist groups.
Let us not cheapen these past fights by allowing the rebuilding of racist and fascist movements. Reject the liberal fascist warmongers when fighting fascists; we must build a mass movement that fights racism, sexism and imperialist war and unites workers of all races and nationalities to build a world where all work and fruits of the labor are shared. That society without wages or racism is called communism.

Santa Monica, Sept 10—A multiracial group of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends joined hundreds of antiracists to shut down Nazi disrupters at the Committee for Racial Justice (CRJ) in Santa Monica. This was an opportunity to fight racism.
The CRJ, established in 2010 after a racist incident in Santa Monica High School, is a multiracial organization committed to fight racism. They have organized vigils for the murders of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and they also fight for equity and justice for Black parents in the Santa Monica school system.
Recently CRJ was come under siege by a collection of fascists known as the Proud Boys, Red Elephants and Da Goyim Know. These groups of white men armed with bandanas over their faces and baseball caps have interrupted the CRJ meetings with racist, anti-Semitic filth and even denounced one of the white co-leaders of the CRJ as a Jewish agitator, and chanted, “Blue lives matter.” The racists were preventing CRJ from functioning.
Since the racists vowed to return with bigger numbers, we began to mobilize. We called our friends and co-workers. Fighting racism is an essential part of fighting for a communist future, so we saw this as a serious opportunity to do both. Armed with knowledge and experience of driving racists out of San Francisco and Berkeley in Northern California (see CHALLENGE, 9/13), we were ready to take on the racists in LA.
Insight with Other Groups
In an effrot to protect the 124 members in the building, CRJ had a closed meeting. Some of the PL contingent were inside and some were outside.
Trump’s presidency has emboldened the racists and is creating a base for a mass racist movement in the U.S., but many antiracist groups have emerged to fight back. There are lots of groups and individuals with whom we can dig in and build long term relationships. Through the class struggle and building political relationships, we can make in-roads with our communist ideas.
Those of us outside talked members of one group in particular called Redneck Revolt. They are a predominantly white, but multiracial (and usually armed), community organization against racism. The group claims back the word and history of “Redneck,” originally synonymous with armed working-class fightback. The mineworkers tied red bandanas around their necks during the Battle of Blair Mountain, a two week long armed multi-racial revolt in coalfields of West Virginia, earning them the lable “redneck.”.
Through conversations it was clear that the group is mainly reactionary, but the group’s existence shows that some white workers indeed know the history of working-class fightback and choose the side against capitalism and racism.
One Fight Won
Those who went into the meeting have been part of CRJ for a while. Through this mass organization, they are making connections with the community and pushing to sharpen the anti-racist fight back in the neighborhood and schools.
The meeting was able to continue as planned. The racists did not show up, but we have to be on guard for future events in this organization. They flaked out because of the huge antiracist crowd ready to take them on if need be.
The anarchists and Redneck Revolt provided “security”, but the biggest “protection” was the Santa Monica Police Department. Therein lies a big contradiction. While the CRJ is committed to standing up against racist police murder, the struggle still continues to understand the nature of the police and capitalism. We must show up in bigger masses to wage this struggle and ensure the Nazi creeps don’t show their faces again.

The timing couldn’t be worse for the 575,000 undocumented immigrants in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Racist President Donald Trump shut down DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, effectively putting 800,000 young people at risk of deportation. This signifies the rise of concentration-camp style fascism for a section of the working class. The possible, but unlikely, action of Congress to pass a new DACA program will be an opportunity for liberal fascism via military service.
Trump tweeted, “We are a nation of laws. No longer will we incentivize illegal immigration. Make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST!”
Intensified racism, nationalism, and use of “law and order” to terrorize workers are some of the hallmarks of rising fascism.  
Horrors for the Working Class
DACA was a concession by then-president Obama after hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undocumented-led youth fought for legalization and immigration justice. Their actions included occupations, demonstrations, marches, hunger strikes, blocking deportation buses, and more. The Dreamers Movement centered around a liberal narrative of “deservingness,” which not only reinforced the racist good-bad immigrant divide, but also was patriotic and legalist in nature (analysis of the movement in future issue).  
Unsurprisingly, DACA coincided with the largest deportation operation in U.S. history under the first Black president who ran on a progressive Democrat ticket. In exchange for voluntarily giving their biometrics, address, and all personal information to the government, DACA recipients were permitted to work, study, serve in the military with the promise to delay, not block, their deportation for two years.
Losing DACA is about more than the looming threat of deportation; it’s about fostering unlivable conditions, which may lead to what Friedrich Engels, called “social murder.” The prospect of being robbed of their jobs, education, right to drive, and housing is capitalist violence. Many may not be able to support their families or keep a roof over their heads. “…In Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, they would be barred entirely from enrolling in some colleges and universities” (NYT, 9/7).
War-Driven Concerns for the Ruling Class
Don’t mistake the outcry of big-time mouthpieces and politicians as compassion for the working class. Obama laid out ruling-class concerns very clearly: “’It is self-defeating— because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love’” (9/5). DACA youth are good for U.S. imperialism and their war drive. Many in the main wing of the ruling class understand that. Ostensibly, Trump does not. To some, it may look like ruling class anarchy. Within the bosses’ camp, there are deep-sown divisions and lack of centralization and discipline. This disarray flares up during a period of decline of the U.S. empire. In their infighting, blatant Nazi racism won out.
The DACA decision complicates their war plans. DACA soldiers applied to the exclusive military program MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest). “[It was] designed to exchange fast-tracked citizenship for crucial medical and language skills among foreign-born recruits. The program has rotated 10,400 troops into the military since 2009” (Washington Post, 9/7). One look at North Korea, Afghanistan, and China, and it’s clear they are going to need those troops.
Secondarily, they are worried about economic stagnation: “So this is a double blow to the U.S. economy; it will make everyone worse off. A cohort of relatively high-wage, highly motivated people mostly in their 20s, likely to pay lots of taxes for decades, is exactly what the doctor ordered” (NYT, 9/5).
Break the Racist Narrative
As if dividing the working class along the lines of race, gender, and nationality wasn’t enough, the rulers drive a wedge between “good undocumented immigrants” and “bad undocumented immigrants.” Part of the liberal pity over DACA is that the program was for the “hardworking, model civic citizens” who had so much “talent” to contribute to this warmongering nation. This put undocumented youth on the path of nation building, nationalism, and war.
All undocumented workers—DACA-eligible or not—must be defended by the rest of their working-class brothers and sisters. Workers migrate out of necessity because the choice is always between the degrees or types of oppression. The stateless undocumented Rohingya people choose to flee to the floods and mass poverty in Bangladesh over ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Similarly, people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras choose possible death across the border over mass anti-worker violence in their countries of origin.
We don’t get to choose our choices under capitalism. For the millions undocumented and refugees families across the world, there is one choice to end all state violence and terror. That’s the choice of communism. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can provide a solution because they are part of the capitalist state. Thousands took the streets after Trump’s decision, and more are looking for answers. In the name of a better world, wherever we are, seek out a community organization near you or organize in your schools, workplaces, and unions to stand with, and fight with, undocumented workers. Progressive Labor Party fights for a world without borders. Join us now.

As the fall semester begins at the City University of New York, nearly 275,000 students are returning to the classroom. Once again, the students are the primary targets of vicious racist attacks and cutbacks, as U.S. imperialism continues its relative decline and sharpening rivalry with Russian and Chinese imperialism. As imperialist wars rage and widen across the world, CUNY students - the majority of whom are Black, Latin, Asian and are immigrant - are saddled with rising tuition costs, crumbling infrastructure, increasingly poor job prospects, and increasing military recruitment to fight and die for U.S. imperialism.
Years of bosses’ racist attacks on students have made it possible for attacks on campus workers and faculty.
Fewer places is this clearer than at Kingsborough Community College (KCC), one of the largest colleges in the CUNY system. KCC has a total of over 15,000 full time and part time students, mostly Black, Latin and immigrants from across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central/ South Asia. Its maintenance and cafeteria staff is mostly Black, Latin, and Asian, in contrast to the faculty, which are almost completely white. With disproportionately higher numbers of immigrant, undocumented and students with DACA status, KCC students are at the cutting edge of capitalism’s system-wide racist attacks.
Members of the Progressive Labor Party have been selling CHALLENGE and making contacts outside KCC. The students, workers and faculty there paint a picture of a campus in need of building a mass, fighting PLP there to smash these racist and sexist attacks.
Students: Main Targets of Bosses’ Racism
To the capitalist bosses, students represent future wage-slaving workers, future empire-saving soldiers, or both. As the U.S. capitalist crisis worsens, increasing student tuition is the most obvious racist attack on KCC students.
Following the most recent political-economic crisis of U.S. capitalism in 2008, the bosses bailed out Wall Street banks with billions of workers’ tax dollars, deeply cut education funding, and raised the cost of tuition. Tuition has increased every year since 2011. On June 26, CUNY trustees (who come from some of the top Wall Street-tied investment banks and firms) voted to increase yearly tuition another $200 for a total of $6,530/ year for senior colleges, and $4,800/ year at the community colleges. At this same meeting, the trustees voted to cut the operating budgets that actually fund the schools by 1 per cent. The top salaries of CUNY administrators, however, were raised up to $402,700/ year. Chancellor Milliken passed this round of salary increases. Apparently, he’s satisfied with his $724,470/ year (NY Post, 6/26).
The true costs of college are far more than just rising tuition, however. At colleges like KCC, where many students are non-white and disproportionately single parents, expenses like MetroCards, textbooks and childcare can present impassable obstacles to maintaining full-time student status. Many students have family or work obligations that do not allow a full-time course load, which can complicate financial aid and scholarship packages.
For example, students hoping to qualify for the “Excelsior Scholarship,” which provides free tuition to certain students, must be enrolled full-time in consecutive semesters, and do not even qualify if they make under $50,000/ year (studybreaks.com, 4/19).
In comparison, students working full-time at the New York state minimum wage of $10.50/ hour  will only receive an annual salary of about $21,840/ year. In 2020, when the minimum wage increases to $15/ hour, that full-time salary will reach $31,200/ year.
KCC Workers: ‘Too Many Coaches, Too Few Players’
The situation of the mostly Black and high percentage women campus workers at KCC is worsening fast. While CUNY cuts the entire operations budget each year, at KCC 28 maintenance workers have left in two years, out of about 80 originally. And the college isn’t replacing them- supervisors in suits are a common sight but, as one worker explains, it’s like having a sports team “with too many coaches and not enough players.”
CUNY’s cuts mean the campus is in a state of deterioration and collapse, with heavier burdens falling on fewer maintenance workers. Bathrooms regularly flood and are shut down; toilet tissue can be scarce. Workers are burdened with maintaining more buildings and tasks they can handle. Most workers are forced to do jobs outside of their specific job title, and do so out of their commitment to providing KCC’s students with the best learning environment they can.
Many workers have worked at KCC for decades. Despite worsening conditions, many campus workers look out ‘beyond their job title’ to take care of students, workers, and faculty alike - an attitude of solidarity that all must learn from, and emulate, if a strong movement is to be built here.
Faculty: Adjunct Profs Pitted Against Full-timers
The working conditions of the mostly-white working class faculty, while relatively better, are worsening with their class sisters and brothers among the students and campus workers.
CUNY has come rely on adjunct professors for instruction, who are now 59% of all CUNY faculty, but paid about one third of what full-timers make. Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. While the professors’ union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) won certain benefits for adjuncts recently, the situation is worsening faster than the union can hope to keep up.
Issues like scheduling and teaching loads, as well as a path to full-time status, are among the issues motivating adjunct professors, whose struggles must be joined by full-timers to achieve.
KCC’s reliance on adjunct labor is no different than throughout CUNY. With the rise of ‘adjunctification’ throughout CUNY, faculty are following their students and campus workers with intensifying factory-like exploitation, where the education itself becomes more visibly a commodity, like everything else under capitalism.
An Injury to One Is An Injury to All
Decades of attacks on students have occurred with the growing needs of U.S. imperialism for obedient, low-wage workers and obedient soldiers in the widening wars between the U.S., Russian and Chinese imperialists. By keeping our struggles separate, the capitalist class has been able to segregate and control our class with racism, sexism and nationalism.
There is very little, if any, significant political contacts and joint organizing among the segregated students, workers, and faculty. But all of this can turn be turned around, and we call on all students and workers to join PLP and organize to fight back together.
We need to organize together and fight back for better conditions for all- immigrant and citizen,  Black and white. The longer campus workers and faculty to remain segregated to their narrow unions, the longer this dark night of capitalist attacks will be.
PLP is building a mass, international party for communist revolution to smash these racist borders, racist police attacks, and racist cutbacks in education to pay for the bosses’ imperialist wars.