NEW YORK CITY, September 21 — An estimated 310,000 came from all over the country to march in New York’s People’s Climate March. A contingent of PLP marched among them, distributing hundreds of CHALLENGEs and talking to marchers about the causes of climate change.
This massive march showed important developments in the environmentalist movement — it was more integrated and there were many people carrying signs attacking capitalism for climate change. These marchers want to see laws or reforms go into effect to protect the environment. Many were open to us as we explained that capitalism cannot be “cleaned up.” It is the nature of a profit-driven system notorious for short-sighted decisions to grab onto and maintain its major source of profit — fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
One day after the march, heirs to the Rockefeller fortune announced they will divest $50 billion in holdings in fossil fuels. This is nothing more than a crucial ploy to co-opt support from the working class. This sum of money is a drop in an ocean of profits this ruling class family squeezes from the working class. It is also a distraction because these are the same heirs that control ExxonMobil and drive U.S. imperialism.
The integration at this march is key, as racism is the ruling class’ strongest weapon against the working class. To work to end climate change, capitalism must be smashed. Smashing racism is key to that fight.
This march was held days before the UN Climate Summit, but considering the competition that is inherent in capitalism, climate change conferences will always disappoint the world’s working class. Capitalism is by its nature a dangerous system — dangerous to workers and dangerous to the environment. Only when workers everywhere take state power under the banner of communism will we eventually be able to stop global warming. Only with workers running the world can we make the decisions that best protect us. That means a PLP-led revolution for communism.

Brooklyn, September 30 — School starting back in New York this year has meant much more than in recent years. Besides catching up on Math and English, students and staff have needed to address the multiple racist murders committed by kkkops across the country. The liberal politicians and the media have tried to convince workers that all they need is to vote and look to the courts for justice. This line did not resonate with the working class of Ferguson though. They took the streets for two weeks in rebellion. Students, parents and staff in schools in New York are now trying to follow their lead.
On the first day of school, English and Social Studies teachers initiated with lessons discussing the murder of Mike Brown and the resulting uprising. This was not enough for students. They wanted to take the streets.
The Student Government Organization of one Brooklyn school led a study group of about 30 students and staff. Students who attended had been grappling with ideas like “Is it still racist murder when a black officer kills a black youth?” and “the role of police in general” since the first day of class discussions. The next day, they made posters and chant sheets. Throughout the week, they organized their friends, teachers and parents to attend a rally after school on a Friday.
The turnout was outstanding. About 50 students, teachers and parents chanted “The police are violent and we will not be silent” and “Mike Brown means we got to fight back!” The students led the rally from start to finish. Their vigorous chanting encouraged many in the liberal neighborhood to join in as they walked by. Then, the rally was closed with a speech by a student who encouraged all in attendance to continue to organize and fight until there was “real justice”. She explained that to her this meant an end to all police terror and racism.
When parents, students and teachers are united in the fight against racism, Progressive Labor Party has tremendous potential for growth. Every conversation that emphasizes the need for revolution over reform to end racism and police murder is potential for new comrades to join our fight. When our class is under sharp attack by the bosses, we must be ready to fight back.
Events like the murder of Mike Brown, Shantel Davis, and children in Palestine lay capitalism bare for what it truly is: a system that can never serve the needs of the working class. These glaring examples draw a line in the sand and force everyone to choose sides. Workers in Ferguson and around the world have chosen the side to fight back. PLP will continue to push that fight towards communist revolution, the only system that will provide real justice for the working class.

BOSTON, September 25 — The Progressive Labor Party here hosted three student comrades from New York City who brought their youthful energy and insights about campus organizing to Roxbury Community College (RCC) and University of Massachusetts (UMass), where we are building a base for communism.
Pizza and Politics, a student club exposing members to a class analysis and communist ideas, hosted a panel about fighting back against U.S. imperialism on campus. The NYC students shared their experience organizing at the City University of New York (CUNY) in the Fall semester of 2013 against General Petraeus, a leading U.S. general from the Iraq war. The CUNY administration, behaving as true lackeys for the U.S. ruling class, had hired Petraeus to recruit the mostly black, Latin, and immigrant students to support U.S. imperialism, along with reinstating Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and stepping up military recruitment. Fascism is creeping into campus, with the imposition of laws that aim to suppress organizing and enable college administrations to crack down on protests, like the CUNY administration did to the anti-Petraeus campaign. They spoke about how the struggle had transformed them into communist organizers.
Sharing fightback stories can strengthen and motivate others to organize. RCC students were inspired by the courage, clarity, and determination of the young comrades. One RCC student asked how they built the kind of organization that could sustain such a struggle and whether being PLP members helped that to happen. The young comrades responded that their membership in PLP established the trust and shared values that became the foundation of their unity. Another RCC student, who has recently begun reading CHALLENGE and meeting with PLP, spoke eloquently about how the media’s job is to confuse us and win us to a capitalist outlook. He explained that he is educating himself about the murderous history of the U.S. from the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II to the U.S.’s intentional spreading of syphilis in Guatemala in the 1940s. He and other students are interested in attending PLP’s annual College Conference on November 8 in New York City. Several signed up to meet with a CHALLENGE Reader’s Group at RCC.
Long History in Fighting Fascism
The CUNY students met at UMass, which while a small group, was inspiring to all involved. One local black student was interested in fighting back and organizing his friends to come to the Conference. He expressed deep hatred against racism and sexism.
Boston has a long history of organizing students against war and fascism. In 1969, Harvard PL’ers in Students for a Democratic Society led an occupation of the campus against Harvard University which is a critical nerve center for U.S. imperialism and was a key supporter of the Vietnam War. In the late 1970s, Boston PL students and workers built a worker-student alliance against racist terror. In the 1980s, PLP members on campuses throughout the area led demonstrations against U.S. imperialism in Central America. In the 1990s, PLP led demonstrations and actions against military research at Boston University. Today, PLP is rebuilding an antiracist, worker-student alliance in Boston to sharpen the fight against capitalism, war and fascism in the colleges. Last semester, students and workers at RCC fought off the implementation of armed cops on campus.
‘Microcosm of Communist Society’
Boston PL’ers held a dinner discussion about Ferguson, Missouri, where rebellion erupted in August in response to the racist murder of black teen Michael Brown by cop Darren Wilson. One NYC student reported on her experience meeting with the youth group, Lost Voices, that formed out of the rebellion. Youth and workers in Ferguson refused to be co-opted by black politicians like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and other celebrities brought in as a pacification tactic. Instead, the working class in Ferguson is open to PLP’s communist solution. She described how Ferguson confirmed her confidence in the working class’s ability to fight for communism, and that black workers are indeed a key revolutionary force. They were building the kind of caring collective that is a microcosm of a communist society. Those of us in the room felt confident in our Party’s ability to organize in places like Ferguson, where unemployed and oppressed youth are wide open to our ideas.
PLP in Boston has many opportunities to take advantage of students’ growing desire to fight back. The older comrades here were heartened by the visit, confident that the Party is in good hands. The local students were exposed to a positive view of communists and committed revolutionary youth for the first time in their lives. Some can now envision for themselves a life of revolutionary organizing and service to the working class.

Port-au-Prince, September 7 — It’s 10:30 am and a tire is still burning in front of the gate of the Medical School of the State University of Haiti (UEH). Today is the day of the competitive entrance exam. As many as 11,000 students are set to take the test for 170 to 200 seats in the incoming class. But this test will not take place!
A PLP member at the medical school found out about a fraud corrupting the exam. Certain privileged students had been given advance copies to guarantee their success. The PL’er alerted other students of this plan to keep the sons and daughters of the working class from gaining admission.
The Medical School has been in crisis since the turn of the new century due to conflicts between working-class students and the administration, which is closely tied to the bourgeois elite of Haiti. One administrator declared he was “ashamed” to see medical students take a “tap-tap” (public bus) to and from the Marché Salomon, a nearby market where students share transportation with the street vendors. He said he remembered when medical students came to class in their own private cars!
In Haiti, riding a tap-tap is a sign of belonging to the working class. Owning a car signals membership in the middle class or the bourgeoisie.
The UEH has a long history of struggle between the working masses, both urban and rural, and the light-skinned bourgeoisie and their henchmen. For several decades now, the UEH has mostly enrolled children of workers, who are mainly black. The bourgeoisie and middle class send their children either to the few private universities in Haiti or to the Dominican Republic, the U.S., Canada and France. This is a consequence of a racial hierarchy and racist policies dating from the periods of slavery and post-independence.
Education to Advance, Not Escape, the Working Class
Students from different branches of the UEH, following the leadership of comrades in PLP, have stopped the entrance exam from taking place. They are also demanding that the dean throw out the disputed test and start over. Many times, the comrades recall, the college administration has tried to disadvantage workers’ children in favor of more bourgeois children. This reflects the ruling class’s effort to deny workers access to knowledge, in order to
better dominate and exploit them. This racism and elitism will stop only when workers understand the class nature of capitalist society and rise as one to smash it. We must struggle for more children of the working class to gain access to higher education. Then we must use that education to advance the working class, rather than trying to escape it.
The applicants quickly adopted this position and began chanting their refusal to take the fraudulent exam. Meanwhile, applicants at other locations, unaware of what was happening at the Medical School site, were waiting for their exam to arrive. To their surprise, the students marched to tell them about the exposed fraud and that there wouldn’t be any test that day. These applicants became even angrier when pro-administration students threatened that the SWAT police would be called in, just as they had in 2009, when the heavily armed cops brutally occupied the Medical School for several months. At that time the medical students were engaged in several struggles: against special treatment in training for those related or connected to the bourgeoisie; a demand for more seats for children of the working class; and a campaign to support an increase in the minimum wage.
With the support of communists and the solidarity with the applicants, the students have won this skirmish. The role of Progressive Labor Party is to give leadership to the class struggle on all fronts. We must win the masses to understand why this double-dealing exists, and how the bourgeoisie uses class and race to super-exploit the vast majority of the population. Most of all, we must tell people the only way this hell will end — with communist revolution, the destruction of capitalism, and the creation of a new system of equality.