The following is an excerpt from an oft-reprinted PL magazine article titled “Black Workers Key to Revolution.” From standing on the frontlines with Black workers during the Harlem Rebellion to fighting the Klan in Tupelo, Mississippi, PLP has long made fighting racism a core part of our struggle to smash this rotten capitalist system and build an antiracist, communist world in its place. This summer, PLP continues that proud legacy as we resist the racist ICE gestapo and the fascist rulers’ concentration camps.

This key work showcases our Party’s understanding that racism and capitalism are bound together — one cannot exist without the other. Only an international communist revolution can liberate the world’s working class from the ravages of racist imperialism, and only a united, multiracial working class can win the fight for communism. Black workers are central to that struggle.

In 2026, as was the case over 500 hundreds years ago, Black workers remain the most brutally attacked section of our class. Now, as then, they must help take the lead in building an international communist movement. U.S. history is a chronicle of genocide, slavery, segregation, and enduring racist oppression. Black workers have less invested in the capitalist status quo. Since racism infects all relations within the profit system, they stand to hold fewer illusions about “justice” or “democracy” under the bosses’ dictatorship. 

Though not immune to the false hope of reformism, Black workers are better equipped to understand its limits. As the young rebels in Ferguson, Missouri declared after Mike Brown was killed: “The whole damn system has to go!” And so: Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their basis for class consciousness—for class solidarity with all workers and class hatred of all capitalist rulers. 

Workers in general are degraded by capitalism. As a class, we have nothing to lose but our chains. Latin, Muslim, Asian, and women workers all suffer under special oppression by the U.S. ruling class. From the U.S. and Mexico to Europe and the Middle East, immigrant workers—most of them dark-skinned—are terrorized and scapegoated at the fault lines of rising fascism. 

Anti-Black racism is a global epidemic. Black workers have an especially urgent case to revolt and smash the bosses’ state. Throughout U.S. history, from the time they were brought from Africa by force as a pool of no-wage labor, they have served at the forefront of every working-class movement: the war against slavery, the struggle for civil rights, the mass strikes against the industrial bosses, the fights for jobs and housing and decent schools, and led the fight in Vietnam against the U.S. military. Wherever workers have confronted the profit system and its parasites, Black workers have stood at the front lines. 

Black workers have always fought back

Workers everywhere have always fought back against the bosses, with Black workers frequently leading the way. This tradition dates to the time of enslaved workers running away, many of whom fled to the mountains. They created self-sufficient communities and defended themselves with armed violence, as necessary. 

In 1739, the Stono Rebellion involved as many as 60 enslaved workers in the British colony of South Carolina. The colony’s legislature was so terrified that it placed a costly 10-year moratorium on the import of Black slaves from Africa. The bosses’ property and lives were at risk. 

In the 1790s, the Haitian Revolution defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s army and repelled British and Spanish invaders, abolishing slavery in the richest colony in the Caribbean. These Black liberators spread fear among enslavers throughout the Western Hemisphere. They inspired hundreds of rebellions throughout the Americas, all of them violent.

In 1831, Nat Turner led more than 60 slaves and Black freedmen in blazing a bloody trail through Virginia. The rebels did away with Turner’s master and the master’s family, then terrorized the owners of 15 other plantations. Turner inspired John Brown, who led a multiracial group in an 1859 attack on a federal arsenal in West Virginia. The raid on Harpers Ferry sparked the American Civil War to end chattel slavery. 

Over the two centuries preceding the Civil War, historians have documented more than 250 uprisings involving 10 slaves or more on U.S. territory alone.

In the Caribbean, rebellions like the First Maroon War in Jamaica (1728-1741) grew into all-out military combat. After the Maroons repeatedly defeated British forces, the imperialists were forced to sign a peace treaty.

In 1760, an even larger rebellion in Jamaica called Tacky’s War became “a massive shock to the imperial system.” Black workers from the North and newly freed slaves from the South played a vital role in the U.S. Civil War (see “Marx and Du Bois,” p. 18). In the aftermath, the victorious Union capitalists—Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie—relied on racism to keep workers divided.

In the North, mainly white and immigrant workers waged fierce battles against steel, railroad, and coal industrialists. In the South, mainly Black workers—often led by women like Ida B. Wells, a former slave—fought against lynching and other racist abuses throughout the Jim Crow era. 

Between 1898 and 1902, rising U.S. imperialism defeated Spain and then attacked Filipino independence fighters in the Philippine-American War.The Filipino warriors, many of whom identified as Black, made antiracist, class-conscious appeals to Black U.S. soldiers. As one wrote, “Why don’t you fight those people in America who burn Negroes, that make a beast of you, that took a mother’s child and sold it?” In a foreshadowing of the Vietnam War, many Black U.S. soldiers deserted.

Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their role in the U.S. military, where they represent 17 percent of active-duty enlisted men and 30 percent of active-duty enlisted women. They will play a major part in the next global war—and in turning an imperialist war for profit into a class war for communist revolution. Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their disproportionate numbers in basic U.S. industry and transportation. Within major U.S. cities and metropolitan areas, Black workers are concentrated in mass transit, health care, education, the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx. They retain the potential to shut down major population centers and critical infrastructure.

If our class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers and their leadership are essential for another fundamental reason. Our class cannot possibly destroy racism—the lifeblood of capitalism—without their leadership.

CHICAGO, May 25 - This Memorial Day, eighteen comrades and friends met at a movie theater here to see Boots Riley’s new movie I Love Boosters. Two comrades had seen an early screening of the film and met Boots there (and gave him a CHALLENGE). They enjoyed the movie so much that they organized this larger group trip to the theater. Our group was multiracial, multigendered, and intergenerational, with the youngest attendee being 12 and the oldest in their 70s.

Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters dropped against the backdrop of a cascading global crisis: nearly 300 million workers worldwide surviving on less than $3 a day (International Labour Organization, January 14, 2026), the U.S. labor participation rate collapsing to 61.5% (Fortune, July 8, 2026), and more than 1.2 million immigrant workers vanishing from the American labor force between January and July 2025 out of fear of deportation under MAGA fascist Trump’s (see glossary) most aggressive immigration crackdown yet (PBS News, September 1, 2025).

The movie centers on Corvette, played by Keke Palmer, a Black woman worker and aspiring fashion designer who makes ends meet by “boosting” high fashion clothes from stores and reselling them at a steep discount in her neighborhood. She works with her crew, Sade and Mariah — together known as the Velvet Gang — who help steal the clothes by creating diversions. The film draws out multiple other, far costlier thefts committed by the bosses: wage theft, In the U.S., wage theft is the largest form of theft in the country: employers steal an estimated $50 billion from workers’ paychecks every year (Economic Policy Institute, September 11, 2014). It also highlights the theft of workers’ health through terrible working conditions, and the theft of Corvette’s fashion ideas by the rich fashion mogul Christie Smith played by Demi Moore. 

Boots takes the narrative in many directions, and one of the most moving is when the Velvet Gang meets Jianhu, a worker from a Chinese garment factory who reaches the U.S. using a situational accelerator, an experimental teleportation device she and her cousin discovered at the plant — one Christie’s company had been using to cut shipping costs while suppressing workers’ wages. Jianhu and her fellow workers suffer from “sandblasting sickness,” a real illness caused by the hazardous fabric-distressing techniques used to manufacture Christie’s jeans, and the film lays their exploitation out in stark, unflinching detail. Jianhu joins the Velvet Gang, and together they turn their attention from small-time boosting to a full assault on Christie’s empire — first testing the device’s power to transform and “deconstruct” the stolen garments, then plotting to infiltrate Christie’s fashion show and seize a fortune in stolen designer suits.

The film takes real artistic risks and uses symbolism cleverly — for instance, Christie’s penthouse office sits atop a skyscraper built at a bizarre, gravity-defying tilt, and she is the only one who can stand up straight in the room, while the Velvet Gang struggles to keep their footing. It’s a sharp visual metaphor: capitalism keeps workers permanently off-balance while those at the top glide through it with ease.

Along the way, we meet various misleaders of the working class: a soul-sucking demon posing as a love interest, the pyramid-scheme huckster Dr. Jack, and pro-cop/anti-affordable-housing media plants — all of whom turn out to be working in league with Christie to keep working people divided. There is also a worker named Violeta who helps organize Christie’s store employees and factory workers alike, using her own technical know-how to help the crew unlock the device’s full power. Along the way, the crew is introduced to dialectical materialism, the science communists use to analyze and understand revolutionary social change.

And yet the film shows its own limits. The ending cannot push past labor disruptions into true communist transformation. Strikes against Christie’s company and its factories spread across the world, forcing an end to the sandblasting process and winning workers a reassessment of hours and pay. Jianhu returns home to China to find that the device’s deconstruction process has reversed the damage done to her mother’s health from years of factory work. The global shutdowns win real, material gains for workers — but Christie remains wealthy and in power, signaling that these are socialist crumbs rather than the end goal: workers win concessions, not control. The Velvet Gang opens their community center, selling affordable clothes and supporting workers’ rights, turning their hustle into a lasting base for organizing. Yes, worker’s consciousness is transformed which is a victory, but it doesn’t lead to Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) solution which is workers in power, breaking our shackles from capitalism permanently, ushering in the communist transformation of society.

After the movie, we discussed some of its themes and our favorite parts in a grassy courtyard beside the theater. Everyone agreed that international worker solidarity, a major throughline of the movie, was the best part, and that the ending was especially inspiring. We disagreed on why some choices were made — like the crew’s use of the teleportation device — but we all agreed that seeing this movie and discussing it together was a great time. It was a fun way to explore serious ideas through art and humor. More communist art and outings in the future, please!  

Combat concentration camp in Newburgh

“When Newburgh is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” My mom organized my partner and me to attend a rally against plans to build a new ICE concentration camp in Newburgh, New York, around 60 miles north of New York City. We joined about 400 people, who brought homemade signs with slogans like “ICE Melts Under Resistance” and “United Against ICE.” It was yet another example of workers refusing to accept the bosses’ racist attacks against members of our class. I handed out a dozen CHALLENGE-DESAFIO (all that I had with me) and pointed out the front page articles about workers fighting back against ICE at Delaney Hall in New Jersey and in Hyattsville, Maryland. One protester read my sign that said “Unite to Smash Racist Borders!” and said, “That’s a great sign!”

Liberal misleadership was on full display. Unfortunately, the speakers were mostly politicians, including U.S. Representative Pat Ryan, who is posturing himself as a strong, brave force “raising the alarm” against the detention center.  Ryan, however, has accepted more than $440,000 from AIPAC, a fact that reveals the hypocritical, racist fraud that he actually is. There is absolutely no way we can trust a genocide-supporter to lead any type of fight against fascism. Only when the working class, armed with communist ideas, takes state power, will we smash these racist concentration camps once and for all.  

When a county legislator announced, “Just moments ago, ICE killed someone in Houston,” many people started yelling and chanting, “F*** ICE!!!” The rage in the crowd was palpable. The speaker responded by asking everyone to observe a moment of silence. After the silence, several members of the crowd shouted again. The speaker pretty much ignored them and continued on with her speech. Seemingly in contradiction to one speaker’s assertion that “No one is coming to save us—we must save ourselves,” we protesters were bombarded with reminders to vote and make calls to politicians. The demonstration was in a park, isolated from other workers and with little potential to energize people who weren’t already there. The experience reminded me that workers are angry and that the role of liberal politicians is to pacify this anger. Communists know we need to harness our rage at the ruling class, as well as our love for the working class, to power our fight for a better world, a world without racism, nationalism, or these fascist, two-faced politicians!
*****

Retirees resist racist end of TPS

Here in New York City, DC 37 Retirees are in the process of getting back in control of our retiree association. We  had been placed in receivership by AFSCME, the nationwide union of state, county and municipal workers, because of our support of efforts to stop the city and top union leaders from forcing retirees into inferior health coverage. At the first meeting the newly elected leaders  discussed and passed a resolution calling for the Retiree Association to take an active role with others in protesting  the loss of TPS (Temporary Protected Status) for Haitian and Syrian migrants.

All were in agreement  on the essential work done by people with TPS status: in food production, construction, and in health services in hospitals, nursing homes and home health care. Our diverse group understood how working folks are forced to flee their country because of war, mass starvation, climate disasters, gang violence, mass unemployment and state repression. They saw clearly  the racist nature of the anti-immigrant actions like the ending of TPS. Bringing up issues like TPS allows communists to build solidarity beyond local issues in mass organizations and help workers understand the nature of class society and the international repercussions of capitalism.
*****

Immigrant defense committee prepares to challenge Mamdani

May, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani made plans to visit our high school to commemorate a new pool in the building. I shared with our building’s immigrant defense committee, which is mostly made of teachers, that this was an opportunity to send an anti-racist, anti-ICE message and demand more for our students. I asked that we discuss a response at our weekly meeting. I brought articles about Mamdani defending the cops for arresting anti-ICE protestors, his walk-back of class size rules, and his plans to keep racist “gifted and talented” programs in almost every grade. Members of the committee also expressed anger about his retreat from supporting Palestine. In addition, they pointed out that our school needs other improvements and that some classrooms in the building don’t even have air conditioning. We made plans to make signs to hang in the school when Mamdani and his team came. The slogans we discussed included things like “ACs not ICE” “Stop backing down on Palestine,” “No delay, lower class size today,” “Desegregate our schools from K-12,”  “Freeze the rent, melt the ICE,” and “What will you do to protect our schools and hospitals from ICE?”  

Mamdani ended up canceling his visit, but members of his office and other NYC politicians visited the pool later in June, on a day when not many students were around due to state testing. One member of the committee made signs with some of the slogans from our collective discussion, and she and I posted them outside the pool. We aren’t sure that the mayoral staff saw them, but we know some staff in the building did, which is a bigger win. Next time, I am hoping we will have a bigger and more collective action, with students involved. 

Workers and students deserve way more than these politicians have to offer. No matter how many good intentions Zohran Mamdani may or may not have, his job is to manage rising fascism, not smash it. Electing so-called progressives will not protect our class from racist attacks by ICE or on our students’ education, because the ruling class needs racism to divide the working class and exploit us all. Mamdani and his ilk will continue to disappoint us with promises they cannot keep.

In the committee’s last few meetings of the year, we discussed ideas for next school year. I plan to be bolder in pushing our Party’s line as we struggle for a more anti-racist culture at our school. 
*****

Trump orders emergency action as war in Persian Gulf limits fertilizers

Whitehouse.gov, 6/29–…The proclamation declares an emergency regarding threats to the availability of sufficient supplies of fertilizers to meet America’s agricultural demand…Phosphate fertilizers are a critical type of plant food, a crucial component of agriculture production, and vital to feeding the Nation and maintaining America’s food security…Global supply chains for phosphate fertilizer and fertilizer inputs have been recently disrupted due to events such as conflicts in fertilizer-producing regions.

U.S. strategist argues China won’t invade Taiwan due to militarization of the island

Foreign Affairs, 6/23–If China were to seize control of Taiwan by force, it would be a disaster, not only for Taiwan but also for the United States. A nearly $1 trillion economy would leave the free-market system and be incorporated into China’s state-directed, mercantilist one…But until China can be confident that an invasion of Taiwan would succeed—a lofty threshold to reach—improving capabilities and clear ambition are not enough reason for Beijing to use force…The reality today is that China is not capable of conquering Taiwan. Nor is it likely to gain this capability any time soon. China’s buildup once threatened to shift the military balance in Beijing’s favor, but trends in military technology now favor Taiwan and the United States, not China.  

Fresh off strike, nurses now compete with AI

The Guardian, 7/13–After nearly four decades in her job, Shuler is one of 12 nurses who was laid off Sunday after being replaced with AI-powered software…National Nurses United (NNU), the parent union of NYSNA, has been raising the alarm about the effects AI will have on nurses…The layoffs at Montefiore come in the wake of a massive nurses strike across several hospitals in New York City in January 2026…After notifying the union, they sent an email to management about the changes. Shuler said they received no response until 28 May, when all 12 nurses in her department received 45-day notices that they would be laid off. 

War in Ukraine leads to development of robot killing machines

New York Times, 7/13–Battalions of ground robots — tracked and wheeled machines that deliver supplies, haul ammunition, evacuate the wounded, lay mines and, increasingly, hold land — now conduct thousands of missions every month. That has made them an indispensable tool for Ukrainian infantrymen who spend monthslong rotations in buried bunkers hiding from flying drones…In December 2024, the Khartiia Corps carried out what is believed to be the first all-robot assault. A coordinated drone force in the Kharkiv region overran a Russian position. Unmanned vehicles with machine guns, flamethrowers and explosives crawled through the forest while drones watched from above. 

Russian bosses continue to fight for a piece of Africa

Reuters, 7/10–A Tuareg-led separatist group has begun withdrawing from Mali’s strategic northern town of Anefis after armed forces including members of Russia’s paramilitary Africa Corps pushed them out, ‌a rebel spokesperson and the army said on Friday. The rebel group, the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), and the regional al Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), at the weekend staged attacks on army positions across Mali, including Anefis…Mali’s armed forces said in a statement on Friday they were continuing joint operations with Africa Corps across the country. In the previous 24 ⁠hours, the army had conducted 15 airstrikes, destroying 12 combat vehicles and killing around 100 insurgents…

U.S. Marines stay sharp by shooting at Caribbean workers

Taskandpurpose, 6/25–Marines deployed to Haiti found themselves under fire and shooting back, several times last year, their commander recently told reporters at a media roundtable. “There were multiple engagements at the embassy in Haiti, in which we received and returned fire,” Col. Tom “Banshee” Trimble said on Tuesday…During that time, Marines with the unit were dispatched to Haiti from August to December 2025 to protect the U.S. embassy amid growing violence from criminal gangs, which are estimated to control up to 90 percent of the country’s capital city, Port-au-Princce…During the rest of their deployment, Marines in the unit supported U.S. military operations to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro…