The working class in Italy is rising up against the U.S.-backed Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is there, taking part in the struggle, giving political leadership  where possible, and drawing leadership from the heartbeat of the growing, militant, internationalist movement led by dockworkers. On October 4th, PL’ers in Rome handed out multiple CHALLENGES and made crucial connections. This came a day after workers shut down every industry in a mass, one day general strike, a backlash against Israeli forces intercept the Global Sumud Flotilla, a convoy of dozens of ships with crews from 40 countries that was attempting to deliver aid to the desperate inhabitants of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of defiant protesters have marched in Milan, Florence, Turin, Genoa, Rome, and more than 60 other cities. All transportation and nonessential public services were shut down. Workers took to the streets across the country, denouncing the Israeli bosses’ endless bloodshed in Palestine. When these workers eventually take up the red flag with their class brothers and sisters in every country, they will have the power to permanently end this genocide and bring communism to the world!

Let’s block everything! 

The October 3 strike follows another general strike on September 22nd, after Italian dockworkers shut down all trade between the European Union (EU) and Israel when Benjamin Netanyahu’s baby killers attacked the flotilla on September 8th (Truthout, 9/30). “Blocchiamo tutto!” (“Let’s block everything!”) became a war cry chanted throughout Italy in massive rallies against the genocidal war in Gaza. More generally, however, the slogan echoes the words of the militant dockworkers throughout the Mediterranean basin—from Piraeus to Genoa, from Marseille to Ravenna, from Tangier to Livorno—who have for several months been preventing the shipping of war materiel to Israel. The international movement among dockworkers, led largely by Italy’s second most powerful trade union coalition, Unione sindicale di base (USB), is being consolidated in a new organization called the Autonomous Dockworkers Union. 

Internationalism is key

Opponents of the Gazan genocide throughout the world are taking inspiration from these recent events. Demonstrations have taken place not just across Europe but in Asia, the Middle East, Tunis, Sydney, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Tripoli, and Chicago, among other places. It will take workers uniting across cultures and continents to seize the means of production for our class! In the face of rising inter imperialist rivalry among the leading world empires, continually dividing ourselves among race, gender, sex and borders will be the death knell to any real fightback.

Strikes good schools for communism

Though they will never create a global workers’ state, strikes are a good building ground for communist ideas. Strikes can help build class consciousness, as workers are led to realize their interests are intertwined with one another, and not the ruling class. When multiple industries go on strike simultaneously, the bosses panic!

Specifically, dockworkers, like those in the Mediterranean basin, are positioned to inhibit—in fact stop—the bosses’ pursuit of imperialist war because of their pivotal place in the capitalist world economy. 

The dockworkers’ decision to strike around explicitly internationalist political demands, rather than around the bread-and-butter issues usually at stake in Italy’s frequent strikes by public-sector workers, makes clear the connection between the imperialist war on Palestine and the declining living standards of Italy’s working-class population. This is true especially now, since millions of euros are being diverted from Italy’s already-strained educational and medical public institutions to invest in a massive expenditure on rearmament. As NATO becomes more militaristic and the world moves closer and closer to war on a global scale, the dockworkers’ refusal to ship death-dealing weaponry becomes more important in economic and political significance.  

Only we can liberate ourselves!

The dockworkers’ movement points the way toward the possibility—indeed the necessity—of worldwide communist revolution.  If the global working class does not organize itself to abolish capitalism and establish an egalitarian society, all bets are off for the survival of most life on the planet. This possibility can be realized, however, only if class-conscious workers of all lands form a single, unified party that is dedicated to anti-imperialist class struggle and the creation of a communist world. PLP aspires to be that party. We need to root ourselves more deeply in the working class of Italy and build a base for international working-class revolution. 

Reformist roadblocks ahead

This will not be easy. There is a commendable tradition in Italy of antifascism and worker militancy going back to World War II and before. To this day, people often sing the antifascist anthem “Bella Ciao.”  But there is also a history of violent fascist repression and racist colonial invasion. Moreover, there is an ignoble history of gradual reformist retreat from the theory and practice of communism on the part of the PCI (Partito comunista italiano) that has left the working class cynical about the prospects for dislodging the power of capital and the capitalist state. Indeed, Italian workers have been to a degree inoculated against the idea of communism.

All the same, the union leading the current dockworkers’ movement, USB, founded in 2010, has no obvious ties to the old PCI or any of its revisionist spin-offs. Perhaps the inoculation is losing potency. We need to engage in discussion with members of USB: look for future reports in CHALLENGE. We have a world to win.

New York City, October 10- With chants blasting the university bosses’ complicity with fascism and signs denouncing the MAGA attacks on universities, over 150 faculty, staff, students, and supporters picketed City University of New York (CUNY) headquarters. We demanded the reinstatement of four faculty organizers from Brooklyn College who had been summarily fired the previous June for supporting students protesting genocide in Gaza. Inside, the CUNY bosses were conducting a grievance hearing lodged by the faculty-staff union on behalf of the “Fired Four.”

The protest was sponsored by the union (PSC: Professional Staff Congress). Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played an important role— as part of the organizing committee, leading chants, and carrying union banners (“come for one, face us all”). We are organizing at several campuses to reinstate the Fired Four and improve conditions for students, but also to fight for a better world. As the capitalists attack workers and students everywhere, we must build a revolutionary movement that gets rid of capitalism once and for all. The rally culminated in everyone singing a song written by a PLP member, listing the bosses’ hypocrisies and vowing continued, united action until the firing is rescinded. The mood of the protestors was militant and anti-fascist. Dozens of CHALLENGEs were distributed.

Protests erupt at Brooklyn College

At Brooklyn College the process began in the spring of 2025. As the semester started, the campus seemed politically dead. Previously the union leadership had accepted a disappointing contract that reduced job protection. In the previous year, students and faculty had regularly protested the university’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. But by January 2025, that activity had diminished. With the election of President Donald Trump, assaults on immigrant students in the university seemed imminent. The mood on campus was grim.

However, within weeks, resistance began to reappear: students organized the “Brooklyn College Student Union” to resist ICE; faculty organizers demanded that the College keep ICE off-campus. On May 8, two noon-time demonstrations bloomed on Brooklyn College’s East Quad. Adjunct instructors demanded the meager bonuses they’d been promised, and roughly 60 students appeared, peacefully protesting the enforced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Campus cops immediately threatened the students, who had erected three small tents. In solidarity faculty unionists chanted and linked arms to support the students.

The ‘liberal’ college bosses call the cops; cops go berserk

The ‘liberal’ CUNY bosses, and their Brooklyn College lackeys immediately called out the NYPD. An overwhelming assembly of cops, patrol cars, vans, and special tactics thugs gathered outside the campus, out of sight of the demonstrators. They were ready to pounce, and pounce they did.

They poured onto campus, pushing students off the campus grounds, arresting at least one student who was merely videoing the events. Once off campus the cops went berserk, beating, tasing, and arresting students - a full-scale police riot against students who had peacefully protested the starvation of Palestinian children.

The CUNY bosses falsely claimed they were protecting educational activities. But the administration disrupted education, needlessly shutting the entire campus down. The next day, with no demonstrations, they did the same thing. Their concern with education is as phony as their pretense of being “liberal good guys.” Actually these Democratic Party ‘liberals’ are more dangerous than the MAGA fascists because of this “good guy” image.

A mini class war ensued:

*The Student Union met to discuss the May 8 events. The campus cops and Brooklyn College legal beagle Jacyln Helms broke up the meeting.

*Faculty sharply confronted President Michelle Anderson in the Faculty Council. She responded with feigned innocence and outright lies.

*The university bosses fired four faculty, all women, all highly respected and loved by their students. Top CUNY boss Felix Rodríguez actually boasted about the firings in a fascist committee in Congress.

*Over the summer there were petitions, letters, Signal discussion groups, union denunciations, and a remarkable demonstration of 200 faculty, staff, students and supporters during a thunderstorm downpour (See CHALLENGE, 8/1).

*The CUNY bosses singled out five more faculty (all women again) and one lab technician, launching formal “investigations” against them. During the first meetings of the “investigations” Brooklyn College protestors lined the corridor outside the Provost’s office wearing red; one PLP member carried a “No Fascism at Brooklyn” sign.

Join Progressive Labor Party to fight for communism

The struggle continues to reinstate the Fired Four  and drop the investigations of the Singed Six. It has now spread to other CUNY campuses. But this is just one battle as fascism spreads around the world. Both the ‘liberals’ and the Trumpers are preparing their different brands of fascism as they prepare for more wars and world war. We, the working class, must prepare and organize to get rid of the whole damn capitalist system. Revolutionary communists from the Progressive Labor Party and their allies must play an important role in these struggles, adding energy, originality, and militance. But, during these struggles we must also build the Party. Throughout these events, hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE have been distributed, and deeper connections have developed. Much more could have been done along these lines and we are going to do more. Only by building the movement for a communist revolution will we ever be able to throw the bosses and their fascist stooges out for good and replace it with a system that is run by and for the working class, a system where education really matters.

No doubt two million in Gaza are relieved that the bombs have stopped falling, for now at least, but a safe and happy life is sadly not in store for them. Although only about 70,000 deaths will be attributed to the war, virtually everyone will have been devastated by the loss of loved ones, disease, life-changing injuries, debilitation and/or psychological trauma. Ninety percent of children are said to have mental symptoms like nightmares, bed wetting or regression of social relations, let alone having lost two years of education. Virtually every hospital, university, sanitation plant and 90 percent of homes have been destroyed. 

Workers in Palestine still won’t be safe 

It is not even certain that hostilities will not restart. Israel is said to have reserved the right to resume fighting if all hostages are not freed within 72 hours, which may not even be logistically possible. Hamas has not actually agreed to disarm and today was said to have mobilized 7,000 armed fighters to patrol areas vacated by Israeli forces (Mondoweiss, 10/11). Israel still has military control of 53 percent of Gaza, even if not actively killing people, and may have promised to release 1,700 prisoners, but they actually hold 11,000, many without charges. There is no agreement to allow heavy equipment to enable rubble clearance or rebuilding, which was also denied after past conflicts. There is no plan to tear down the wall, end Israeli control of all goods and services, or allow freedom of movement to Gazans. The occupation and subjugation of Gaza will continue.

‘Peace deal’ will only benefit bosses’ pockets

This “peace” deal only came about because the rulers of the U.S. and its allied Arab potentates were fed up with Israel causing mass anger among the workers of the world with its genocide, topped off by bombing Qatar, home of a huge U.S. airbase. Moreover, Trump’s real estate cronies, Kushner and Witkoff, will be in a better position to make lucrative deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Whether they will actually create a “Riviera” in Gaza is doubtful, but the U.S. is planning to send 200 U.S. troops and exert ongoing control via a Transitional Authority run by Tony Blair. Meanwhile, expanding settlements and violence in the West Bank are making its annexation into Israel ever closer.

Unfortunately, there is no group in Palestine or the Middle East that is led by the working class with its liberation as its goal. Neither Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or any other formation is fighting for workers’ power in opposition to capitalists, be they Arab, Jewish or American. For those of us who have been active in the movement against genocide, it means continuing to unite with all workers opposing various aspects of fascism - deportations, cutbacks, attacks on science and academic freedom - and building a unified anti-capitalist movement. Not until there is a new international communist movement that unites Arab and Jewish workers, indeed all workers of the world, will the Palestinians, or any of us, have a chance of a good, safe and productive life.

On October 4th, some comrades of mine, as well as some friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), went to Jersey City for a rally and march against the genocide in Gaza. We struggled with each other to remember the importance of getting communist politics out to workers who are standing against attacks on the working class internationally. We distributed close to 100 CHALLENGEs, practiced injecting communist chants that sharpened the politics of the protest, and brought our base closer to the Party. 

That PLP and all of its members need to be out in the streets bringing our line to workers is ESPECIALLY true when workers are being led astray by misleaders trafficking in reformism and nationalism. If reformism and nationalism are the only thing workers are exposed to, we cannot be surprised when that is what workers come to believe in. We must be there to explain why the answer isn’t “vote for Mikie Sherrill” or “Free Palestine”, but instead for workers to fight for communism.

And yet so many of us get so timid when the time comes to actually do so. We hesitate to hand out CHALLENGEs, and if we do so we try to avoid ‘stepping on anyone’s toes’. We can hear the anticommunism in our own heads. “How can you say that Palestinians don’t need their own state?” “Now is not the time to be talking about revolution.” Even though we KNOW such ideas bring the working class right back to capitalism, right back to more wars, more racist and nationalist divisions, and more powerlessness. Workers in Palestine do not need their own capitalist state or a ‘ceasefire’ that will not last brokered by the same bosses who started the war. They need communism. Undocumented workers do not need a politician who offers anti-ICE rhetoric. They need communism. The entire working class has no use for nationalism or reformism. They need communism. They need PLP and its line. 

That is why we struggled with each other to distribute CHALLENGEs even while organizers of the event were making speeches about the slaughter in Palestine. That is why when event organizers were shouting chants to free Palestine, we used our megaphone to add chants of “Arab, Jewish, Black and white, workers of the world unite!” When workers were asked to scan QR codes linked to the campaign websites of Democrats, we spoke to workers about intensifying imperialist rivalry and fascism, and the need for communist revolution.

Feelings of timidity like this are linked to our own anticommunist ideas, and we all have them. We must work together with our comrades to fight back against those anti-worker ideas, both in ourselves and in others. That is how we will win a communist revolution that will truly end these wars and benefit workers all over the world.