Over 1,000 New York City high school students walked out of school to protest the U.S.-backed, Israeli genocide in Gaza. Composed of students from every borough in New York City, hundreds of young people rallied at the headquarters of the Department of Education to demand justice for their class siblings in Palestine. Brave high school students spoke out, connecting the fact that NYC has the largest, most segregated school district in the nation, the same anti-Muslim, racist system of apartheid that fuels mass murder in Palestine.

From Gaza to NYC worker-student fightback is key

A student from the Columbia University encampment also spoke of the police terror and rising fascism that young people are facing for their protests. From suspension and expulsion to brute police force, youth understand that the veneer of liberal democracy is crumbling. The ruling class has run out of arguments and reasonings—Joe Biden and his clique are falling back on naked violence to silence dissent. But it is despite this ruling-class terror that young people continue to risk and sacrifice in the name of multiracial and internationalist solidarity. Indeed, young people see themselves in the cause of Palestine: the genocidal destruction of worker’s futures in Gaza echoes the receding future that young people everywhere are experiencing as climate change, poverty, and escalating war rack the planet.

As courageous students put everything on the line in these protests, it is critical that they do not  succumb to cynicism. Nationalist misleaders are already attempting to hijack youth energy, diverting it into supporting the Palestinian ruling class. These nationalist elements are ready to sell out workers, to silence calls for revolution, and to accommodate a future occupation of Gaza on terms acceptable to Israel.

To liberate Palestine, nationalism must go

Against nationalist misleaders, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was also at the high school rally fighting for internationalism. Educators of the Party stood with their students, distributed CHALLENGE, and continued to build a base for nothing less than communist revolution. The working class needs a party that unifies the entire working class and sustains revolutionary optimism. From all the rivers to all the seas—you too should join PLP to keep the fire of class struggle burning brightly from the Department of Education to Palestine, to Sudan, to Congo, to Haiti, to the ends of the earth.

Newark, NJ, June 5 - The Rutgers-Newark encampment was squashed by liberal university bosses in cahoots with Black nationalist misleader Mayor Ras Baraka. Although students and workers did not win their demands after 40 days of demonstrating, winning workers closer to the Party is a victory. To steel our minds and morale for inevitable fascist attacks, NJ school teachers within Progressive Labor Party (PLP) held a fiery teach-in on fascism at the encampment days before. 

With many workers and students one emergency away from homelessness and one ruling class conflict away from genocide, liberal misleaders are struggling to sell the idea of keeping capitalist democracy alive. Despite well-intentioned words and reforms,  liberal misleaders are marching our class into the hands of fascism and World War III. To reverse and smash this plan, workers, students, and soldiers must channel mass fightback into a single internationalist fight for communism. Only a united multiracial, multi-gendered, multigenerational working class of millions organized under the red banner of a communist Party—PLP—can smash this genocidal system for all time.

From the masses to the masses: learning to identify fascism to smash it

The PLP-led teach-in began with questions from two dozen multiracial, working class fighters. How is fascism connected to Newark? What does fascism look like in schools? Afterward, we read a May Day speech from a Brooklyn-based PLer who was reprimanded by the school administration for encouraging his students to fightback against the genocide in Gaza. PLers mobilized students and teachers against the bosses who violently forced him to stop teaching. He won his job back.

The shared working class wisdom revealed the following: What we associate with fascism, be it violent racist, sexist, or anti-working class tendencies within our families, neighborhoods, or workplaces, is always linked with the competition of ruling bosses across nations. For example, a principal firing a teacher for encouraging students to take a stance against the genocide in Gaza is acting on behalf of U.S. bosses. We discussed how the popular conception of fascism as attacks from the far-right on progressives is just the tip of the iceberg. Fascism involves a larger process of class warfare responding to the changing conditions of capitalism. 

Our collective conclusions were put to the test in determining Mayor Ras Baraka’s roles. Two older workers argued Baraka was not fascist because he implemented reformist initiatives, including temporary shelters for some unhoused workers. In response, a Black community member revealed those small deeds didn’t change Newark’s economic apartheid. Baraka is allowing a division to grow between Black and Latin workers facing evictions and the more stable base of multicultural workers for capital being used to replace and isolate them. A high school student brought the teach-in home by declaring: “Ras and these people are still participants in a fascist system and cannot ultimately avoid having to play their role in developing fascism when it is needed.”

Fascist Baraka shows himself

Days later, antiracist fighters woke up to a blaring bullhorn, warning demonstrators to clear the encampment or face arrest. While most of the city was home asleep, Newark PD mobilized to close off all traffic surrounding the encampment so that the Rutgers PD could move in. PLers met campers at nearby Harriet Tubman Park, where many young people started to see the role that Baraka plays for the ruling class. Some took to social media to blast the Mayor. Baraka distanced himself and the Newark PD from the incident, but the fighting workers and students shot back with photos and videos of Newark PD on the encampment clearing them out. 

As the Black community worker expressed in the teach-in, this isn’t about one person. If it isn’t Baraka, it would be someone else. These encampments are teaching the working class lessons about internationalism and multiracial unity as anecdotes against fascism, be it from a liberal or outright racist. The danger of the Trump-led racist and sexist movement is real, but the attacks from the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class (the Big Fascists) exposed their willingness to be servants to ruling class bosses when capital is on the line. 

As comrades reflect on this teach-in and the end of the Rutgers encampment, we are reminded that what we do counts. Only by fighting alongside the students and workers at the encampment and within our schools were we able to have a great turnout and enthusiasm at the teach-in. Several of our friends advanced their political understanding as a result of not only seeing the need for internationalism and multiracial unity but also a communist, internationalist party to keep up the fight. The quantity of these efforts qualitatively advances the fight for communism.

In a community east of the Valley of Mexico, a group of comrades and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have organized with our neighbors to fight the water shortage that has affected our neighborhoods for years. Recently the shortage has worsened, due to the overexploitation of wells and the criminal negligence of the bosses who refuse to maintain the hydraulic network, instead favoring the business of selling bottled water or workers needing to pay for supply through pipes.

Capitalism is incapable of meeting workers’ basic needs, even access to clean water, that under this system becomes a commodity that you can only have access to if you can buy it. Under a system of social equality like communism, workers’ needs would be the top priority, as our collectively organized society will ensure access to healthy water for all.

Bosses monopolize water

The capitalist ruling class in Mexico has privileged the business of selling bottled water. The country ranks first place in the world in consumption of bottled water (and sweetened drinks) because only around 60 percent of homes have a reliable daily supply (El País, 9/8/2023). Additionally, the bosses prioritize the water supply for agricultural use, the brewing industry and mainly for agroindustry and industrial zones.

The Valley of Mexico, where 22 million people live, is supplied with water mainly extracted from wells (75 percent), which are overexploited and of poor quality (La Jornada, 4/1). The rest is brought from the Cutzamala system, which is at critical levels due to low rainfall, overexploitation and pollution of the basins.

Within the community in struggle, the neighbors first organized a protest to demand that water be supplied to the area's hydraulic network, but the municipal government responded that the pump to extract it is useless and it will take months to repair, so they offered to extend the water pipes to homes, free of charge.

While the authorities agreed to install enough pipes to supply each household with two thousand liters of water, the municipality only sent three to four water pipes which only supplies half of what they promised – an insufficient amount to provide water for the working class here.

Workers can and must take control 

In an example of how the working class can organize society collectively, neighbors formed brigades to direct the supply of water in pipes to the homes where it is needed most, those with children, elderly or workers with illnesses. Our comrades meet every week with neighbors to evaluate and organize actions and report on the problem. We have helped organize marches where chants like “Water is not for sale, it is cared for and defended” ring furiously in the streets. But capitalism, which makes everything about profit, can't help but exploit and destroy nature and put a price tag on it. 

In places like Ecatepec’s fifth district, a municipality in the state of Mexico, water comes from the Cutzamala system, a complex network of canals, tunnels, pipelines, pumping plants, dams, and reservoirs, yet around 90 percent of the water pipes have been privatized (Sin Embargo, 6/25/22).

The system has been overexploited as the local bosses smuggle the water out of the systems and resell it back to the working class for profit. The local authorities have exposed this criminal business, but are “powerless” to stop it.  Also, there are car assembly companies that, in collusion with the municipality, steal water that they pay an average of 1,500 pesos for when they should pay close to 2 million, due to their high consumption. This is another clear example that capitalism is based on corruption, violence and theft, above the needs of workers.

Smash capitalism to liberate resources

Our comrades have put forward the communist analysis of this water struggle in our community by showing that capitalism promotes companies to monopolize water and profit from the need for the vital resource, putting the health and lives of millions of workers and their families at risk. But at the same time, we show in practice that these problems must be faced through the fight against capitalism, a harmful and deadly system that needs to be overthrown, so the working class can organize and run a superior communist society.

The following article was excerpted and from PLP 
history, a five part essay  published in PL Magazine Spring 2018 Vol. 15 No. For the full article visit www.plp.org. 

In the early 1960s, class struggle was heating up. The U.S. bosses embarked on a genocidal war in Vietnam. The  leadership shown by the working class in Vietnam after decades of resistance to French imperialism inspired millions of workers worldwide. Black workers led rebellions in almost every major U.S. city and rocked the capitalist class back on its heels. In the midst of intensifying class struggle in March 1964, a Yale University conference on socialism was attended by many pseudo-left organizations, including the “Communist” Party USA and various Trotskyite groups.

The conference was geared for a scholarly debate on theory. Only Progressive Labor Movement (PLM)  broke through this nonsense to advocate building a militant anti-imperialist movement! PLM leader Milt Rosen electrified the audience of 500 students and faculty by focusing on opposing U.S. imperialism’s efforts to crush the revolutionary movement in Vietnam. He called for a nation-wide mobilization on May 2 to protest U.S. aggression there. The proposal was approved overwhelmingly and a May 2nd Committee was organized under PLM’s leadership.
PLP launches anti-war movement

On May 2, thousands of workers and students marched and rallied in cities nationwide. In New York City, 1,000 heard PLP speeches about the necessity for communist revolution. They broke a police ban on demonstrations in midtown Manhattan, winding their way through Times Square to the United Nations, demanding: “U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!” It was the first national demonstration against the U.S. imperialist invasion and the forerunner of countless protests against U.S. rulers in the years ahead. 

The Committee became a national organization called the May 2nd Movement (M2M). Hundreds joined. They played a major role in popularizing the struggle against U.S.  imperialism’s war against workers and peasants in Vietnam. They issued hundreds of thousands of leaflets, buttons and pamphlets; initiated numerous university teach-ins; organized rallies and marches; and developed “Free Universities” as an off-campus alternative to the rulers’ educational system.

PLP steers anti-war movement in a militant, communist direction

Following a massive Washington, D.C. anti-war rally of 25,000 organized by Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) in the spring of 1965, PLM’s leadership fought inside M2M to dissolve it and join SDS, a move supported by the overwhelming majority within M2M.

M2M did play a vanguard role in opposing U.S. imperialist aggression in Vietnam and successfully broke with the old pacifist “peace movement” dominated by the Communist Party USA. That movement was never anti-imperialist but rather championed ruling-class collaboration behind slogans like “Ban the Bomb”; “Peaceful Co-existence”; and “For A Sane Nuclear Policy” — as if the working class could ever make peace with imperialist rulers! PL’s slogan--“U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!”—was eventually adopted by millions.

M2M helped move the emerging anti-war forces to the left and toward anti-imperialism. Many youthful fighters joined PLM, having learned from their mass struggles in the M2M.  It was youth of this and many mighty struggles against racism and imperialism that our Party— Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was born.

Fast forward 60 years, once again youthful fighters around the world are  lifting their fists and voices in defiance against the imperialist war machine which sacrificed  tens of thousands of working class lives in Palestine to its deadly meat grinder in less than a year. Students are hungry for an alternative to this racist genocide system and are searching for solutions  that can never be  found in nationalist movement or the rulers’ blood soaked ballot box. The solution to genocide can only be found in joining the only Party with 60+ years of experience, steeped in the working class, who continues to learn  from  the lessons and mistakes of the past, evolving through struggle and theory. Together students, workers, and PL’ers, united under the red flag, have the power to smash this system and create the world our class deserves from Congo, Gaza, to the U.S.A. Until then read and spread CHALLENGE widely, join a study group, become a member of PLP. We have a world to win!