Oppose fascist anti-masking laws

Fascist state campaigns to pass laws to penalize people for wearing masks when “committing a crime” are spreading from the initial efforts in New York, North Carolina, and other states (CHALLENGE, 10/16). Here in Maryland, the Zionists in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are leading the charge with the support of Black politicians and organizations (Jewish Insider, 2/16). The ADL claims that Jewish students are being harassed by masked pro-Palestinian students based on their lie that anti-semitism is widespread on U.S. campuses. The bigger lie -- that opposing genocide in Gaza by the Israeli state is antisemitism -- has been raised once again in the halls of the Maryland General Assembly. This is the state where a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teacher and several others have been disciplined for social media posts (CHALLENGE, 2/16/24) while allowing Zionist narratives to be pushed uncritically in schools. PLP is fighting this anti-masking bill, gathering support from students at the University of Maryland who themselves have protested martial law in the Philippines and genocide in Gaza and recognize the dangers of facial recognition and drone surveillance.  

The bill is being sponsored by several well-known Zionist politicians but also by Black delegates from Prince George’s County (Karen Toles and Adrian Boafo).  These delegates hail from the same area represented by Glenn Ivey, a Black politician who is now in the U.S. House of Representatives and received contributions of $7 million dollars from AIPAC and refused to criticize Israel’s genocide when confronted by protestors. It appears these local delegates are following in his footsteps. The NAACP and Urban League are supporting this legislation despite the fact that it will lead to racial profiling in largely Black areas such as Baltimore and Prince George’s County. By comparing the masking of protestors against genocide with the masks and hoods worn by the KKK and the Proud Boys, these misleaders are helping lead Black students and workers to  jails and prisons. This is like the Nazi collaborators in Germany’s Jewish Councils (the Judenrat), collaborators with the Nazis that led masses of Jews to the gas chambers in exchange for helping an elite few escape to Palestine and other destinations.

Other opposition is coming from disability justice groups who support masking for both health and political reasons and from groups opposing Maryland’s investment in Israeli businesses. As CHALLENGE has pointed out before, masking to protect against airborne viruses and poor air quality needs to be expanded, not discouraged, and the public health concerns are important as flu, COVID variants, and possibly bird flu circulate and sicken our friends and coworkers. Testimony continues in Annapolis and the struggle to stop this legislation will continue. 
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Liberal misleaders, fascists show their unity 

In the recent Professional Staff Congress contract struggle, the liberal and fake leftist faculty have shown their true colors across CUNY by lining up behind the PSC misleadership’s claims that our new bogus wage-cut contract is a “victory.” At one campus, amazingly, a fake leftist PSC officer co-hosted a local chapter meeting defending the new contract — alongside the rightwing leadership, which includes rabid Zionists. All in the name of “civility,” they’d argue – because after all, we’re all in the same boat and must work together!

This chapter meeting was an illustration of the essential unity of liberal misleaders and fascists, especially when contrasted against years of student and Progressive Labor Party-led antiracist fightbacks. This unity is evident in the outright hysterical lies and ongoing lawsuits from the fascists on one hand, to the fake left’s typical redbaiting claims of indoctrinating students, exaggerating facts, their history of cooperation with the administration, and blaming PL’ers for provoking Zionist attacks. 

When the fake leftists rejected PL’ers calling for unity against Zionist attacks, they suggested PL’ers turn themselves in to campus police and “confess” that we, not the inspirational mainly women Muslim students organizing antiracist struggle - for the very first time - were the leading force behind a struggle. And by magic, the Zionists would stop their harassment! In a later struggle when campus police beat and arrested one of our students, mass protests and fightback rocked the campus. The absent fake left audaciously spoke on behalf of the struggle to the PSC’s newspaper, Clarion, about their mildly worded petition.

While every struggle has its weaknesses, a fatal weakness is forgetting that the main danger comes from the liberal misleaders. Under fascism, the temptations for opportunism may be greatest. But the working class can’t share boats with liberal misleaders or fascists, and we aren’t civil with them either. This new contract is an opportunity to expose the liberal misleader/ fascist unity once again, and our growing CHALLENGE networks in CUNY are the alternative – as we build our campus student-worker alliances and become the leadership and build the mass PLP the working class deserves!
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Intl students speak language of fightback 

The students have come here from all over the world. They are studying to improve their English so they can enroll in college. For several semesters now I have been engaging them to improve their conversational skills, but they also need to work on their reading and writing, grammar, comprehension, the whole works. They are Black and white, Asian and Latin, men and women. Some are straight out of high school, most are a little older, often with children. 

We talk about their journey here. Those from Yemen, Ukraine, Russia or South Sudan come because of war. So sometimes we talk about imperialism. Nationalism comes up, but everyone gets along, including those from Russia and Ukraine. They often help each other to express themselves in English. When I say that rich capitalists (imperialists) promote these wars for profit and workers fight and die, some nod their heads in agreement. But others are angry that their nation or ethnic group is suffering. I should fight a little harder for the idea that workers and soldiers should make war on the warmakers instead of fighting and killing each other.

I asked about Trump and his viciously racist immigration policies. They are here legally but they are now worried, both for themselves and for friends and family. One pulled out a large envelope and raised it up. “These are my papers. I now carry them with me all the time.” I asked if anyone else did that. The reply was that almost everyone now carried their papers with them.

These students have all kinds of skills and potential. Some want to be nurses or teachers, some want to work in computer science or in fashion design. Some want to start a small business. When I ask them about communism, some are quiet but others immediately talk about equality and people sharing. There are very little to no negative comments. I agree with equality and sharing. Then I tell them that communism also means no money or profits and people like them will run the world.
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We need a mass party

The 1/15, CHALLENGE’s page 8 article was entitled “How Bolsheviks Built a Mass Revolutionary Party” but in the article a quote from Lenin’s What Is To Be Done is favorably reprinted STATING “that such an organization (i.e. communist party) must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity…”  Is our intention to build a mass communist party or to follow in the Leninist tradition and build a party of professional revolutionaries?

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has abandoned the idea of a cadre party of professional revolutionaries. We oppose the cadre party approach because we disagree sharply with the idea that the working class or its communist party needs “professionals” and experts to take charge. 

Leaders must understand and exemplify communist ideals a little better than the rest of us but those leaders must be workers and students fighting side by side with masses of workers and students in class struggle.  The first commitment of those leaders must be to help develop more and more working-class leaders with the goal of all workers being leaders.  

The Bolshevik reliance on expert and professional leadership eventually moved the revolution in the wrong direction. Both the Soviet Union and China turned to relying on privileged experts to oversee actual industrial production while professional revolutionaries in the leadership of both communist parties, the Soviet CP USSR and the Chinese CPC, made the political decisions.  

In the USSR the threat of Nazi invasion led the leadership of the CP USSR to unite with U.S. and British capitalist bosses to maintain their socialist rule.  In China decades later the CPC leadership moved so strongly in a capitalist direction that a mass movement of students and workers rose up in rebellion to the “capitalist roaders” launching the Cultural Revolution (CR). 

The CR was the beginning of the development of a mass party and their actions fighting for mass workers’ power inspired PLP to rethink our ideas on what a communist led workers’ movement should look like.  Mao, chairman of the CPC was too afraid of losing his position as China’s leader and used the Chinese army to smash the CR rather than take the risk of being pushed aside by the capitalist roaders who ruled alongside him.

How will PLP have a different outcome? The answer will be found in our ability to learn from the successes and mistakes of 150 years of communist struggles.  Some of that has already taken place.

PLP has a new, young and dynamic leadership who will not stop short of winning a mass communist led working class movement to rid the world of capitalist rule once and for all.  We have placed the leadership of the working class in the hands of men and women workers, many of them Black, Latin, immigrant and part of the LGBTQ community.

We also have to be completely honest and open about mistakes our movement has made in the past including mistakes we in PLP have made.

Communism is a living, breathing set of ideas in constant change and development like everything else and we can and will defeat the exploitation and oppression of capitalist rule.
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Africa is a geographic mishmash because of capitalism

Al Jazeera, 2/23–Africa has the most countries of any continent with a total of 54. Rather than following natural terrains or historical boundaries, many of its borders are strikingly straight in some areas and jagged in others, cutting through mountains, rivers and even communities. Most of these artificial borders trace back to the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference, a meeting that concluded 140 years ago this week in which European powers carved up the continent among themselves with no African nations invited or represented…Britain drew a straight-line border along the 22nd parallel, a line of latitude 22 degrees north of the equator, separating Egypt and Sudan…

Housing costs are destroying the illusion of prosperity 

The Guardian, 2/24–I bought my home in a hurry in 2020,” said Meg, 60, an office manager from Maryland. “It was less expensive to take on a mortgage than to keep paying ever-increasing rents for my college-student daughter and me.” Now housing costs consume 50% of her income…Our necessities consume 75% of my income, with 50% of that housing costs” …“I’ve come to view home ownership and healthcare as destabilizing forces in my life,” said Bernie…the couple was foregoing medical and dental treatment of any kind…despite a pre-tax household income of more than $250,000.

Deaths in Gaza are greatly underreported

Nader.org, 2/21–The official Hamas count that all sides like to cite is now over 48,000 deaths…American doctors back from Gaza before the Rafah closing last year said…put the death estimate almost a year ago at a minimum of 95,000, not counting tens of thousands of families buried under the rubble…Why would all sides to this one-sided Israeli war of extermination rely on Hamas’ figures? Well, Hamas has an interest in low-balling the number of deaths to limit the rage of its inhabitants and allies abroad for not protecting the people of Gaza and not providing them with shelters. 

In San Diego, workers resist modern day slave catchers

KPBS, 2/20–...patrol San Diego’s Linda Vista neighborhood in search of suspicious vehicles…They’re activists with Union del Barrio, a locally based immigrant rights group, looking for any signs that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is trying to arrest their neighbors…These volunteers are trained to spot undercover vehicles. Usually American-made SUVs like Dodge Caravans or Ford Explorers with tinted windows that don’t normally park in their neighborhoods…Once they verify that a vehicle belongs to ICE, the activists notify hundreds of followers via social media and group chats…

In Los Angeles, workers organize to resist ICE blockheads

NBCLosAngeles, 2/20–a Los Angeles-based group is doing patrols of its own to look out for its community. A handful of volunteers patrolled throughout South LA on Wednesday to look out for immigration officers. The volunteers, which is comprised of activists organized by Community Self Defense Coalition, say their mission is to alert the public of the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and inform residents of their rights…when the volunteer group scopes out ICE agents, they look out for tinted SUVs without license plates or exempt plates. When they believe they’ve spotted immigration agents, patrol members livestream their location. Additionally, they pass out cards that remind residents of their rights.

Imperialist nations prepare for missile warfare

ForeignPolicy,2/20–Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. military moved eagerly to seize the opportunities that the INF Treaty’s demise has opened in Asia by developing, testing, and fielding new ground-launched missiles that previously would have been prohibited…the Army in particular welcomed the end of the INF Treaty because it gave the service a clearer role in a possible conventional war in the Indo-Pacific. Army leaders have moved almost as quickly as technology will allow to develop and field the new capabilities…

 In his first weeks in office, Klansman-in-Chief Donald Trump is working overtime to target Black and migrant workers and attack women and transgender youth. Here are just a few of the new administration’s more outrageous racist and sexist assaults: 

• Trump blamed “diversity” hiring practices for the tragic January plane crash near Washington, D.C., part of his disgusting insinuation that Black workers are inferior to white workers (AP News, 1/30/2025). 
• Trump has given free rein to the world’s richest man,Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, to popularize Nazi salutes one day and slash the federal workforce the next (New York Magazine, 2/7). 
• Beyond U.S. borders, the new administration is suspending payments by USAID (an unofficial arm of the CIA) for 142,000 girls and young women who receive care from an HIV program (NBC, 2/8).

In Trump’s first week in office,  his Department of Homeland Security deported 7,300 workers, even more than the 5,000-plus per week deported by Joe Biden in 2024. Trump is now touting that he will imprison thousands of migrant workers in remote and squalid conditions in Guantanamo Bay. His Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gestapo has been assigned to build 30,000 new prison beds in the Cuba-based prison and torture facility (WOLA, 1/31). 

With the U.S. empire already losing its grip,  Trump is expected to undermine U.S. military alliances in Europe and the Middle East. But the fact is that U.S. decline and global instability long preceded Trump’s latest election. It reflects the failures of the main wing of the ruling class, the Big Fascists of finance capital the multinational banks and oil companies (see glossary on page 6). These liberal bosses pacified and co-opted anti-war and anti-police terror movements and pushed identity-based misleaders like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris or fake “working-class” figures like “Scranton” Joe Biden. But the liberals have no solution for the international crisis of capitalism. Like the Small Fascists, domestic-oriented bosses who back Trump, they must turn to rising fascism to try to discipline their own class and keep rebellious workers in line as the rulers move toward World War III.  

Workers cannot vote away the death and despair of capitalism. The only way out is to follow the leadership of hundreds of workers and students in Los Angeles who staged walkouts and protests to fight back against Trump’s demonization of the most vulnerable workers, to follow the Black workers in Cincinnati, Ohio, who are burning the flags of vile nazis and running them out of town. To sustain and expand our fight, we need to strengthen multiracial unity within our class and fight for One World, One Class, One Party with the internationalist, communist line of Progressive Labor Party. 

Liberals are the midwives of fascism

With capitalism in crisis and China and Russia rising as imperialist challengers, U.S. bosses can no longer rely on liberal democracy to function as they used to. The decline of the old liberal world order and the rise of gutter racist bosses like Trump and Musk will force the Big Fascists to move to more openly fascist measures. The veneer of liberals' “lesser evilism” has been exposed for the charade that it is. If and when the liberal bosses regain power, they  and their bought-and-paid-for politicians will turn to violence, racism, “austerity,” and hyper-nationalism to protect their profits. 

Biden and Harris funded and enabled the genocide in Gaza and the bloody war in Ukraine, relentlessly supplying both Netanyahu and Zelensky with billions of dollars in arms to kill hundreds of thousands of workers. 

Former Deporter-in-Chief Obama displaced more people than any president in history and built the border cages that workers are being threatened with today by Trump. Most recently, over 50 Democrats joined Republicans in Congress to pass the Laken Riley Act, which calls for jailing and deporting migrant workers accused of shoplifting or other minor offenses–without even a figleaf of “due process” (AP News, 1/26/2025). 

Biden’s signature American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) gave local governments $350 billion, a large amount of which was allocated to build up police, courts, jails, prisons, and potentially lethal equipment, including tasers and drones. The funding was wrapped in promises to help communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic but essentially allowed police to monitor and terrorize workers without them risking infection (The Marshall Project, 9/7/2022). 

Communism: Alternative to war and fascism

Historically, the only way global imperialists can resolve their competition for dominance is through war. As they scramble to prepare for the next global conflict, whether the state is run by Republicans or Democrats, MAGA or liberals– the U.S. ruling class will need fascism to keep workers and their own class in check. The bosses’ crisis makes them even more dangerous. But it also presents an opportunity for workers worldwide to organize class war. History shows us that fascism can be defeated only by a mass, international communist party. 

As communists, we must continue to challenge the liberal misleaders and build our own militant, multiracial, class-conscious struggle among the masses. The international working class must rise up  to smash these bosses and their wars against humanity. We must liberate our class brothers and sisters in the military and inspire them to turn the guns around! Let’s build the world we want to pass on to future generations. Fight for communism!

LOS ANGELES, CA, February 6—Despite the steady downpour, hundreds of workers rallied outside of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) to demand that the hospital bosses reinstate the life-saving transgender services they have provided for decades. Recognizing the necessity to oppose these blatant attacks on our transgender siblings, a healthcare worker and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member organized coworkers and colleagues to join the planning meeting and support the rally. Though the fightback is in the beginning stages, the issue has sparked more antiracist organizing. We’ve already begun to build relationships with Black workers, providing essential HIV care to our class. Recently, we created a separate chat so that we can specifically to begin having political discussions on how we can advance our work, fighting for our class.While a step in the right direction, workers need to go beyond demanding these bosses give us crumbs back, and unite with their working class family to smash capitalism and bring communism to healthcare and the world! 

Hospital bosses hide their racism and sexism behind Trump’s

We have created a new chat of mostly Black healthcare providers discussing not just Trump’s attacks but also exposing the dangerous role of liberals. The CHLA bosses claim they are simply complying with President Donald Trump’s executive order of stopping the use of puberty blockers, hormones and other gender-affirming care for youth. However, the liberal Democratic Party California Attorney General Rob Bonta already said that the executive order did not give them any basis to yank federal funding and cautioned that these cuts are a form of discrimination.  According to healthcare workers from CHLA, these cuts were not solely done in response to Trump. They have been part of increased scrutiny over their services by the CHLA bosses, who are now using Trump’s order as an excuse to cut out this essential care. 

This protest was organized by the medical resident’s union CIR(SEIU) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Many healthcare workers, and the impacted children and families, showed up in solidarity.  Nevertheless, while DSA city council members Hugo Soto Martinez and Ysabel Jurado joined the rally in support, they sat on a body that voted to increase the police budget (already half of the entire L.A. city budget) by an additional $1 billion.  While they did vote no on the budget increase, their dead reliance on the bosses’ state did nothing to alter the reality that working class Black, Latin, and transgender workers are faced with increased rates of racist and sexist police terror and incarceration.  Moreover, the Democrats only care about trans “rights” insofar as it leads to more bodies in their military as cannon fodder in their plans for future imperialist wars!

Workers chanted, “Protect trans kids!” and hoisted signs that said, “Gender-affirming Care Saves Lives.”   Currently, many of the original comrade’s colleagues work for agencies that have NOT supported the ban on trans healthcare. However, if there are changes to the rules for the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which are a major source of healthcare funding for our patients, then things may change for the worse quickly. 

In L.A., we stand on the shoulders of previous organizers.  From the trans workers who clashed with the LAPD KKKops outside of Cooper’s Donuts in 1959, or like the anti-police brutality protest, nearly 58 years ago to the day, at the Black Cat Tavern, when the entire working class is united against our common enemy, the capitalist class, we cannot be stopped! We’re just getting started but this struggle is one more brick in the layers of class struggle towards communist victory. Join us!J

Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 2—“We’re all we’ve got, we’re all we need” rang out as 200 angry protesters marched to Children’s National Medical Center (CNMC), demanding that it continue to offer gender-affirming care to trans children. Instead of defying President Donald Trump’s fascist call to end trans care, CNMC issued this statement: “Children’s National is currently pausing all puberty blockers and hormone therapy prescriptions for transgender youth patients, per the guidelines in the Executive Order issued by the White House this week.” D.C. area and Baltimore residents organized and marched within 48 hours to condemn CNMC’s abusive announcement! 
MAGA fascism strikes healthcare

Trump and his billionaire MAGA backers are trashing health care broadly, slashing Medicaid, putting Medicare on the table, shutting down HIV treatment and education by the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. and in Africa, and backing state restrictions on both surgical and medical abortions. The attack on trans care for children is just the beginning, the camel’s nose under the tent. This flagrant attack on the working class is designed to reduce government spending, terrify workers and students, intensify racist conditions, and put more money in the hands of the billionaire ruling class. 

Our bold action was a powerful grassroot-organized action initiated by Baltimore residents who had been protecting libraries and programs featuring LGBTQ messages. The march was led by a friend of the Baltimore West Wednesday Coalition (in which Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members participate) that has held weekly police brutality protests for over 10 years (CHALLENGE, March 29). A PLP member documented the CNMC protest for social media sites to help spread the struggle.

Meanwhile, the lying hospital administrators, lackeys of ruling class financiers all, told hospital workers that we were a MAGA rally that they should ignore!  Such disinformation and efforts to minimize the extent of the residents’ anger are part of the hospital’s playbook to defuse solidarity of hospital workers with their patients.

Hospital bosses also pushing anti-immigrant racism

The battle is broader, not just in the D.C.-Baltimore corridor, and not only in health care. Hospitals are refusing to defend patients who are undocumented immigrants. New York University Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital administrations have explicitly told doctors and staff not to hide their patients from ICE and not even tell patients when ICE stormtroopers have come onsite. But hospital workers and med students are pushing back and hatching resistance approaches in hospitals to defend all workers needing health care, documented or not!

The storm of the working class is beginning to gather. PLP is fanning the flames of revolt and will lead the way to communist revolution and a system where the needs of all workers of all races, genders, and nationalities are fully met and capitalism abolished for all time.