I was one of thirty comrades who, in 1961, met and decided to break away from the old communist movement and eventually form a new party, the Progressive Labor Party. If any one of us had predicted that in fifty years our Party would be active in 27 countries, we would have thought that person was smoking something.  But here we are!

The words above are from a founding member of Progressive Labor Party at the convention dinner celebrating 50 years of fightback.
In the week leading up to convention this August, in the face of the storm clouds of imperialist war and the fascist attacks unleashed on workers worldwide, young PL’ers waged a week of spirited class struggle. Comrades from all over the world injected their international experiences into our Party’s fight against racist cop murders in New York City. More than 50 comrades with little or no writing background collectively produced our newspaper, CHALLENGE, from start to finish (see page 5).
Friday night’s welcoming address from our outgoing chair was moving in its rock-solid confidence that not only has capitalism outlived its time, but that a communist world can and will be won.  Our four incoming leaders are multi-racial, mainly women, international and inter-generational, and will divide the tasks of the chair and lead as a collective. Two of them spoke on Friday night, focusing on the state of the world and the potential power of workers to transform it.  
Our Saturday workshops saw more than 300 comrades focused on implementing the revolutionary-optimist strategy in our most recent guiding document, “Dark Night Shall Have its End” (see CHALLENGE 9/2).  At Saturday evening’s reunion dinner, we sang working-class songs from South Africa and heard a series of greetings from international comrades. Some had traveled to be with us; others were prevented from attending by racist visa restrictions and sent written greetings in their stead. The nearly 500 comrades cheered each message as it was read out loud. We felt their presence nonetheless!  
In the last two speeches from our new leadership, the comrades charged with international and U.S. work rocked the house with visions of a growing party worldwide and a review of the many, many fights that have made our party the vibrant force it remains today.  As each fight was recalled, comrade veterans of each struggle rose and were recognized with thunderous applause.  The evening was topped off by the singing of the Internationale in more than eight languages, led by workers and youth from five continents.
Sunday’s session was an open-mic discussion of five resolutions our Party will unify around in the coming period. It was a strong exercise in communist centralism, the political process that will lead the working class to power and to the final victory of a communist future. Lively discussion and disagreement was held around the most correct way to implement our anti-racist, anti-sexist, internationalist strategy to build the Party and wage armed struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.  
Our Party has thrived for half a century as a vigorous fighting force because we have always understood the importance of entrusting leadership responsibilities with new generations of communist leaders.  Those original thirty comrades were nearly all white and mostly male.  Anti-racist struggle has played a key role through our Party’s fifty years, and seeing this new leadership group come into its own at the 2015 convention was a huge highlight for me.
We know that workers will develop to their full capacity as human beings only when the working class has wiped out capitalism and established communism. Capitalism wastes more than precious natural resources. Above all, it is wasteful of human potential.  Our convention was a small glimpse of how communism will tap into this great potential of the working class.
Our first 50 years gives us inspiration for the next 50 years and more. The Progressive Labor Party—as long as we wage both class struggle and an internal struggle against reformism/revisionism—will continue to lead workers and youth down the long and winding road to communist revolution.

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International  Greetings

Hello our fellow comrades in the U.S. and around the world.  It is our sincere hope that you are all working and fighting hard against the unfairness of the capitalist system existing among the world’s population. It was our plan to join your summer project against racism and capitalism in the US, particularly in Ferguson, but our plan failed because we were denied visas by the US Embassy here in East Africa. The Embassy wanted to harass us and pocket more than 160US dollars per visa. At the anniversary of Mike Brown’s murder, we saw (through the mass media) your unity and commitment to fight back regardless of the government’s attacks against you. We join your struggle here in East Africa by fighting against the government on the issues concerning the constitution and the general elections. Your fight is our fight, your success is our success.  Let us continue to fight against the capitalist system that creates racism, sexism, injustice and inequalities.  In doing so, we will create a classless world with a happy life.
— PLP in East Africa

PLP Comrades of Pakistan, El Salvador, Africa, France, Mexico, Colombia, China, the Dominican Republic, the U.S. — comrades from all around the world! Once again the capitalist-made borders are preventing us in Haiti from being physically present among you to share our experiences in organizing in the class struggle. One day, we will put an end to these divisions created by this system of inequality. In fact, in spite of the distance and different capitalist divisions of racism, nationalism, borders used prevent the unity of our class, we are more and more organized! We believe in communist revolution, and our international Party and our revolutionary line grows and strengthens day by day. Our presence in different struggles inspires the working class’s confidence in our communist leadership and our confidence in the working class and our future.
Our convention brings new blood to the building of our Party and strengthens each comrade. We have much to lose if we fail to win the working class to destroy capitalism. If we fail, the current system will lead humanity to another stage of barbarism. We must not allow this to happen!
Only communist revolution can put an end to the material conditions and ideology that lead to racism, sexism, terrorism, climate change: all the phenomena that can only lead the world to savagery. We building a fighting organization and the decisive struggles to change the world. This is the enormous task ahead faced by each comrade of our party: to organize millions of workers around the world under the red flag of Progressive Labor Party!Long live communist struggle! Long live our Party, the PLP!
— PLP in Haiti

TEXAS, August 24 — Today an international group of students, teachers and workers rallied in front of our city’s Mexican Consulate to support the struggles of teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Progressive Labor Party and friends marched down city streets chanting, “When students and teachers are under attack, what do we do, stand up fight back!” And “Las Luchas Obreras, No Tienen Fronteras!” (workers’ struggles have no borders).  
U.S.,Mexico — It’s All the Same
We passed out leaflets that connected the struggles of students and teachers in Mexico to the struggles of students and teachers in the U.S. Workers at bus stops and in storefronts expressed agreement with our chants and leaflet. One worker pointed out the similarities of the U.S. Common Core education reforms in the U.S. to the reforms in Mexico.
The Mexican ruling class’s reform efforts have shut down the teacher-union run education institute that serves primarily indigenous working-class families. This reform includes a new teacher evaluation system that ties student test scores to the teachers’ job security. This new system mirrors the Common Core education reforms in states such as New York, and the new T-TESS evaluation system in Texas, which uses a similar system of rating teachers based on students’ standardized test scores. This tactic pits teachers against students and blames teachers rather than capitalism for the inequalities in the education system.
Following the lead of the federal government, Texas is taking more direct control of teacher job evaluations. This is a fascist attack. Fascism is the outgrowth of global capitalism. It is the intensification and centralization of the repressive and ideological forces in order to maintain the existing capitalist class domination. Under these reforms, the government targets teachers, threatening to fire them for low-test scores. This new system is racist, hurting working-class Black and Latin school districts the most.
At a recent faculty meeting in a Texas school where this new evaluation system is being rolled out, school administration showed a film of a supposed “master” teacher teaching a class. This “model” class was of an all white senior honors English class. Afterward the faculty was asked for their input. One teacher stood up and explained that the video was disrespectful to teachers who teach in mainly Black, Latin, and immigrant schools and to their students who face greater challenges from capitalism. The faculty erupted in applause.
Rely on the Working Class
The local teachers’ union claims to oppose this new system. However, in practice they have actually helped implement this all-out attack on teachers. The union has known about the development of this new system for at least one year, but has done nothing about it. Now, instead of organizing teachers, students and parents to fight back, they have hired “experts” to help teachers avoid being fired. The working class must only rely on itself to fight back, not experts. That power of workers must be organized under a revolutionary party fighting to end this system.  
We will continue to fight alongside all teachers and students of the world. The fight against capitalist education reforms has no borders. We will continue to discuss the connection of struggles of teachers around the world with teachers and students on our campuses.  We will continue to raise international working class unity with our friends until our working class army destroys all borders and build a communist society.

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NEW YORK CITY, August 24 — Education workers in Mexico are fighting back against the government racist education reform law. Progressive Labor Party here in NYC organized a protest outside of the Mexican consulate today in solidarity with the struggle of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) union of section 22 in Oaxaca.
We denounced the killings, disappearances, and harassment of workers and youth. Some of the consulate workers supported us and took our literature. A Dominican woman passing by stopped to chanted with us in solidarity. Another worker congratulated us and said he was happy to see this movement. He said we must not minimize things because out of each worker that supports us we can build hundreds more. No matter how few in numbers we are now, the communist politics will spread. That is why what we do now is important.
Situation in Oaxaca
The government is dissolving the Oaxaca State Institute of Public Education (IEEPO), putting an end to the CNTE’s over 20-year control of education. Judges have also ordered arrests of 15 CNTE teachers in Oaxaca, charging them to disrupting elections. This is a part of the fascist move to discipline a militant workers’ struggle that has been going on strike almost every year since 1970. The bosses seek to exert control over a crucial institution through which they rule: the schools.
The government Governor Gabino Cué Monteagudo and his lackeys don’t tell the public that Section 22 of the CNTE fought along with parents more than 20 years ago for schools to be built, uniforms and books to be given so that children could study. And now, they take away the gains workers have made. They only want education according to the bosses’ needs.
Bosses Attack from All Angles
The teachers’ union, a profession of mainly women, there have been one of the most militant and the largest force in Oaxaca, not only for the positions they can give other teachers, but also their militant defense for workers and education against the policies of the local and federal state government. In the last elections they burnt all the voting ballots, so there would be no voting. They’ve carried out many strikes against the disappearance and killings of teachers. These education workers fight racism, and in the interest of indigenous and rural working-class families.   
Scared, the government responded with militarizing the city with the navy, establishing a curfew, and firing and attacking workers any way they can. They are using scabs to break the movement and have infiltrated paramilitaries and provokers in the demonstrations. It has even used another unions as an alternative of organization and the teacher’s national union has frozen the accounts of section 22 so that they don’t have any funds. Despite solidarity from parents, the bosses and their media have been using some parents to discredit the movement.  Government officials are also paying home visits to parents to coerce them into opposing teachers.
Struggle Must Continue
There is no solution under capitalism. Any reform we win is temporary, as we know from Oaxaca, because the capitalists will take it away as soon as they can. The real solution will come when workers organize under our party the PLP to destroy the capitalism with a communist revolution. Only then can lives of workers and students change in every sense; education will be in service of the working class, no more nationalism, sexism, racism, or any other divisive rubbish the capitalist system throws at us.
There is great potential for international solidarity here. It would be important for the teachers of Oaxaca to link this struggle to teachers currently on strike in Uruguay. As schools open in the United States, youth and teachers have a lot to learn from workers in Latin America about defying the bosses. From Mexico to the United States, the struggle continues!

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WASHINGTON, DC, August 24 — When communists set the stage for fightback, the working class takes it up with enthusiasm, and advances the fight. This is what happened at a local Progressive Labor Party rally here near the Mexican Cultural Center. We called on workers and students to join in the anti-racist solidarity with the bold mainly-women teachers of Oaxaca as they embarked on a strike against the Mexican government’s militaristic gang-up against them.
Suddenly, a worker from Oaxaca joined our rally with great joy and took the bullhorn, declaring that he had many friends in Section 22 (the union local in Oaxaca) and that all workers had a stake in the outcome of this monumental battle. A worker at a local non-profit housing developer rode by on his bicycle, and later noted that his son has spent several months organizing with workers in Chiapas, another of the areas under racist attack by the Mexican government. A board member of the local postal union also joined in speaking on the bullhorn, expressing his union’s solidarity with the teachers and insisting that his local and PLP participate in each other’s future actions against the bosses. No problem! Many drivers and passersby grabbed 180 leaflets and 120 CHALLENGEs. This response from workers shows workers across borders have every reason to unite and fight back as one class.
As this demonstration proves, the opportunity for international solidarity is real. The fight in Mexico is a battle against racism against the indigenous workers of southern Mexico. Similar to movements in the U.S., the government in Oaxaca is trying to seize centralized control of education. The bosses are blaming fighting workers for a capitalist crisis they created.
The struggle will continue worldwide!

click hereLos Angeles, August 8 — A multiracial group of 70 women and men transformed the scene on Ocean Front Walk in Venice Beach by marching through the crowds chanting, “Justice for Brendon Glenn; Justice for Jason Davis!” and “Black, Latin, Asian, White, to smash racism we must unite!” The response was overwhelmingly positive.
Brendon Glenn was an unarmed, homeless Black man shot to death by an LAPD kkkop on May 5. In the months since, the only word from the LAPD is that they are “conducting an investigation.” The police have refused to release video from a surveillance camera, leading the marchers to chant, “Release the video. Now!” The cops involved—Clifford Proctor and Jonathan Kawahara—are apparently on paid home leave. The shooter, Proctor, is Black, exposing the lie that racist killings are solely the work of white cops, or individuals’ racist ideas.
How did this Venice march come about? Members of a Unitarian Universalist church, including several members of the Peace & Social Justice Committee (PSJ), attended the UU General Assembly (GA) in June, where a resolution was passed supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. A PSJ member suggested that our committee push for a #BlackLivesMatter banner in front of our church. PL’ers on the committee explained why, in the crucial fight against the racist police terror, unemployment, and healthcare of this system, we should not support Black Lives Matter organizations.
PLP fights racism and racist police terror at every turn, so it is important to show that the BLM movement, while attracting thousands who have the best anti-racist intentions, has a ruling class-funded leadership that divides the working class through identity politics. Billionaire George Soros funds them. These ideas are dangerous to our class, as they try to convince Black workers that they should have an alliance with Black bosses and not with their white, Latin, and Asian working class sisters and brothers. History shows that our class can never win without multiracial unity.
PL’ers on the committee did not entirely win that argument this time, but there was agreement on dropping the hashtag (#) from the banner, to support the concept but not the organization, and including “Racism” with the “No” symbol over it, as inspired by the anti-racism buttons many of our church members have been wearing.
Applying PLP’s understanding that anti-racist class struggle is a critical ingredient for building a revolutionary communist movement capable of defeating capitalism, we suggested that PSJ organize a rally and march in response to the police murder of Brendon Glenn.
The committee enthusiastically adopted that idea, and over the next several weeks we involved nine other local organizations as co-sponsors. (Black Lives Matter did not respond to invitations through its national and LA websites.) Fourteen members of our congregation were among the participants; we aim to bring at least 30 to the next march on September 26.
PLP has a history organizing in this church, getting to know people, developing confidence in each other, fighting for our ideas, distributing CHALLENGE, and helping lead other struggles, such as support for car wash and hotel workers.
Fight Racism
As we organized for the August 8 march, the LAPD killed again in Venice. Jason Davis, a homeless white man, was killed by the kkkops July 13. They claimed Jason, who appeared to be mentally ill, had a knife. The only thing visible, in a video made by a bystander, is a box cutter on the sidewalk about 10 feet from Jason’s body.
At the rally, a speaker said that her whole life she benefitted from “white skin privilege” and intended to use her privilege to support the movement against police killings of Black men. Another speaker responded, admiring her anti-racist dedication, but argued that white working people are also exploited and oppressed by capitalism, but not to the same degree as Black workers.
As evidence against “white skin privilege,” he said, “Look at a chart that breaks down unemployment by so-called ‘race.’ In a period where Black unemployment is going up, does white unemployment go down? No. It also curves up, although to a lesser degree.”
He said the same could be seen in healthcare, education and housing, and that the U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan were disproportionately (to their percentage in the U.S. population) white non-Hispanics. “Is that a privilege?” he asked. He concluded that white working people can be far more than “allies” or “supporters” of Black workers; they are comrades in struggle.
In fact, the concept of “white-skin privilege” is one more divisive tactic that convinces members of the working class that white and non-white workers do not have the same enemy and the same fight. It hides the true nature of capitalism—a system built on exploitation of the entire working class, no matter the ruling-class imposed “race” of a worker, because that is how profit is made. The super-exploitation and oppression of Black workers does not mean that white workers are “privileged”—it allows for all workers’ wages and living conditions to be lowered.
The continued struggle of PL’ers in their churches, workplaces, and schools against the concepts of “white skin privilege” and against BLM-promoted “Black-only spaces” is crucial in uniting the working class. To smash this capitalist system that builds itself on the backs of the working class, all workers must see themselves as having the same enemy, the same fight, and as communist fighters for a better future!

NEW YORK CITY, August 16 — Thirty comrades from Progressive Labor Party, including members from other countries, went from the 2015 PLP convention to join more than one hundred professors, students, and other workers of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) to turn up the heat on the South African consulate. We rallied in solidarity with the 20,000 South African workers who gathered on that same day in the northern town of Marikana to protest the brutal slaughter of striking workers there three years earlier. In August, 2012, platinum miners were on a wildcat strike against Lonmin, the British-owned mining giant, demanding a living wage and an end to intolerable housing conditions. On August 16, in a planned attack, the police opened fire on a large crowd, killing thirty-four miners and wounding eighty. The Marikana Massacre is the worst since sixty-nine demonstrators were slaughtered by the apartheid regime at Sharpeville in 1960.
The International Committee of the PSC, the union of faculty and staff at the City University of New York, organized the demonstration, whose members are in the midst of a difficult five-year battle to obtain a labor contract in the face of the insistence by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (close ally of NYC’s business elite) that all state workers accept concessionary agreements. As in Greece and South Africa, CUNY faculty, staff and students have been hit with tuition hikes and are experiencing the harsh reality that politicians serve the ruling class. Several PSC members and union leaders gave speeches drawing these connections, after which the crowd enthusiastically chanted:
Hey hey, ho ho, the murder of strikers has got to go! economic apartheid’s got to go!
Same struggle, same fight, South African & U.S. workers unite!
Same struggle, same fight, workers North & South unite!
One of our PLP comrades spoke of his experiences in Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was murdered and Black workers are fighting back. He compared Ferguson to the racist conditions in South Africa, which exist because the ouster of the apartheid government left capitalism in place. Although South Africa has tremendous mineral, manufacturing and agricultural wealth, it has enriched only the capitalists, while the actual producers – the working class – have been left impoverished. Our comrade told the gathering that if we want to defeat racist oppression here and in South Africa we must first identify the root cause – capitalism – and commit ourselves to overthrowing it.
A long-time PSC activist read a letter from protest organizer Trevor Ngwane, who blasted the African National Congress (ANC) government for working hand-in-glove with capital and making a mockery of the “freedom” millions fought for under apartheid. Another speaker, representing workers in New Jersey, noted that South African workers have a proud history of international labor solidarity. In 1986, for example, workers in Freehold, NJ were fighting the 3M corporation’s plan to close their plant. In support of U.S. employees, the 3M workers in South Africa went on strike. Imagine how much stronger the working class would be if concrete acts of worker solidarity like this became commonplace!
Revolution, not Reform
The decades-long, bitter struggle against apartheid was marked by tremendous personal sacrifices, and workers all over the world protested and were jailed supporting the anti-apartheid struggle. The ANC fought hard to liberate people from the iron heel of apartheid. But as the past two decades of ANC rule have shown, we must also topple the racist economic order that is its foundation: capitalism. Because that wasn’t done, life for Black workers in South Africa is even harsher today than it was under apartheid – more poverty and greater inequality. The only thing that’s changed is that a few ANC top officials – like Cyril Ramaphosa, the former president of the miners union who now sits on the board of directors of Lonmin – have become millionaires. Maintaining capitalism turns former “liberators” into exploiters, whether in South Africa, Mozambique, El Salvador, Vietnam or anywhere
The Progressive Labor Party has members in Africa, and we extend an invitation to workers in South Africa to join our party and organize for communist revolution throughout the continent. This time let’s nail the coffin shut on hundreds of years of colonialism, imperialism, and apartheid by smashing capitalism!