MTA boss Lieber makes $400,000 and demands $3 every time you ride a bus

Gothamist, 8/3–It still costs $3 to ride the MTA’s buses, despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge to make them free for everyone…But don’t tell that to a growing number of New Yorkers who are evading the fare…MTA Chair Janno Lieber suggested Mamdani’s campaign pledge wasn’t helping…A Bronx resident…took a free trip on the M2 bus in Harlem last week on her way to help a homebound friend. She knows the buses aren’t free. And knows she’s risking a ticket if she gets caught by an MTA enforcement agent, but said she can’t afford to pay every time she rides…the agency plans to use devices that check whether riders’ phones or cards were used to pay — and issue tickets to farebeaters. 

As war aims falter, U.S., analysts scramble to find a way forward

Foreign Affairs, 8/6–In late February, Trump launched a war on Iran without clearly delineated objectives…The Trump administration has made a…case that it would be incredibly damaging to American security for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. And there is little doubt that by mid-2025, Iran was getting closer… The administration…planning did not seem to encompass Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an act fatal to U.S. success…Iran…has successfully weathered the most damaging military attacks the United States and Israel could impose…reinforced the power of the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…Iran has now proved its previously hypothetical ability to control the Strait of Hormuz.  

Many Yemeni workers resort to herbal medicines instead of modern healthcare

Al Jazeera, 8/8–More than 20 million Yemenis are without access to basic medical care due to years of conflict, severe funding shortages, and the collapse of Yemen’s healthcare system, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). At least 50 percent of health facilities are entirely non-functional, critically hindering the country’s ability to respond to recurring outbreaks of diseases like cholera and diphtheria. Yemenis who do not have the means to seek treatment abroad are being forced to turn to traditional remedies…“Some herbal shops offer other services, like Quranic recitations or even sorcery, and several have been shut down by prosecutors,” the official noted, wishing to speak anonymously. 

War, disease, and cobalt– and healthcare workers go unpaid in DR Congo

NBCNews, 7/16–Confirmed cases of eEbola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have reached 2,011, including 754 deaths…in what authorities say is the fastest-growing outbreak on record. Health workers at the Bunia General Hospital went on strike on Wednesday, the latest group to have walked off their jobs at the epicenter over payment issues. Health professionals and other frontline workers barricaded the entrance of the hospital, lamenting they haven’t received any compensation despite working under difficult conditions…displacements from armed conflict as well as mining-related movements have made it difficult to trace thousands who have come in contact with infected individuals.

Israeli bosses reject peace in Gaza

France24, 8/9–Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected a US-led Gaza plan endorsed by Hamas, putting distance between himself and President Donald Trump as he tries to shore up his base ahead of close elections. After more than a week of gradually escalating criticism of the plan, and despite receiving assurances that Israel would not need to start withdrawing in Gaza immediately, Netanyahu explicitly opposed the deal following pushback from his right-wing allies."Israel rejects the 15-point document," Netanyahu said, referring to the plan Hamas agreed to in late July. 

Warehouse workers agree to pause strike against bosses

Freightwaves, 8/3–After 42 days on the picket line, union warehouse workers at C&H Sugar’s Crockett, California refinery have returned to work under a 60‑day extension of contract negotiations. The pause in the strike that triggered a brief sympathy walkout at three California ports – International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6’s first walkout at the plant in nearly a century – comes as the sides return to talks over retiree health benefits, overtime rules, and sick days at one of the largest cane sugar refiners in the United States…Tensions escalated on July 22, when a protest outside the refinery turned confrontational and nine protesters were arrested. 

Across the United States, fascist state terror has intensified. As racist immigration raids, detentions, deportations, and ICE killings keep surging, the FBI has announced it will no longer investigate assault claims against ICE. As rotting global capitalism spirals into crisis, the bloodsoaked ruling class turns immigrant workers and youth into scapegoats for the profit system’s failures. 

To defeat rising fascism, workers, youth, and soldiers must unite under one class and one party and build a communist revolution. The international Progressive Labor Party organizes to turn that aspiration into reality. Join us for a lifetime of revolutionary struggle. 

A deadly system

Four deaths-by-gestapo in one week: 

• FLORIDA, July 14: Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, 28, on vacation from Mexico. ICE stopped him at a gas station. When he tried to flee in fear for his life, he was hit and killed by a semi-truck. Juan would be alive today if not for ICE’s racist profiling. 
• MAINE, July 13: Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, had just said bye to his three-year-old daughter, still in her Bluey pajamas that morning. Minutes later, ICE thug David Brouillette shot him in the head. Durán, who was from Colombia, was authorized to work as a delivery driver in the U.S. and had filed for asylum.
• GEORGIA, July 13: Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva, 45, a migrating worker from Venezuela, was “found unresponsive” while in transit to another concentration camp under ICE custody.  
• TEXAS, July 7: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was on his way to his job as a home-builder, his work for decades. He was a father to three sons. 
  The brutal backdrop for these murders is the atrocious ICE quota of 2,000 abductions a day. In the last week of June, ICE arrested 10,000 workers in five days (New York Times, 7/1). 

Through Trump’s first 500 days back in office, 52 workers died in ICE Custody (HRW, 6/25). That doesn’t include the presumed “suicide” of seven detained people in the past seven months. Take 19-year-old Royer Perez-Jimenez, who was found unresponsive in his Florida cell on March 16. It is no hyperbole to call these detention warehouses concentration camps. Last year was ICE’s deadliest in more than two decades, and 2026 may be even worse (ICEFall Tracker). 

Meanwhile, those who aren’t murdered are terrorized. The fascist death grip tightens around millions of migrant workers and youth: the cancellation of Temporary Protected Status for asylum-seekers, including 300,000  from Haiti; mass ICE raids; gangsterish coercion to self-deport or face penalties of up to $1.8 million; plans for new concentration camps in Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami and Denver (NBC, 7/29); arrests at airports and courts; and billions in new funding for the racist Department of Homeland Security. 

Fascists vs fascists

We are living through an age of perpetual crisis: 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, the 2015 refugee crisis, Covid-19, deepening inequality, climate catastrophes, trade wars, and shooting wars. Across the world, the rulers’ old order is failing. Fascism is the path that sections of the ruling class take when their control weakens and liberal democracy can no longer contain the inevitable worker fightback.Like its historical predecessor, the slave patrols, the ICE gestapo exposes the violent essence of capitalism. The Trump administration isn’t some abhorrent exception to U.S. history. It’s simply ratcheting up a lethal infrastructure built by the institutions of liberal democracy. 

Amid the unmistakable stench of U.S. imperialism’s decay, two factions are divided over the role their waning empire will play in the world. One group, the Big Fascists of multinational finance capital, seeks to sustain some semblance of multiracial patriotism while protecting the inherently racist economic order. Before Trump, this wing historically has controlled the U.S. government and state apparatus, and has been more willing to sacrifice some short-term profits to exert its control. These bloodsuckers have a world war to sell. 

Another faction, the domestically oriented Small Fascists, fronted by Trump and the MAGA movement, is less invested in preserving a world order where the U.S. is number one. They favor a smaller, predominantly white nazi military that can protect their sphere of influence with air power.  

The split is so pronounced that Foreign Affairs, a finance capital think tank, is advocating for liberal cities to “marshall their power to push back” against the Trump administration and prepare for a Democratic Congress to curb ICE enforcement (FA, 6/21). Here lies the danger of the liberal bosses. They co-opt progressive movements and pacify workers into accepting crumbs from the rulers’ table. But make no mistake. Sooner than later, the liberal misleaders will target their ultimate enemy: an organized working class fighting for communism. 

Even as they battle over the future of U.S. imperialism, both factions of bosses use anti-immigrant racism as a tool to divide us. It was the liberal bosses who used the 9/11 attack to advance fascism and create the DHS in 2003. It was Bill Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper that built a five-mile border wall between the U.S. and Mexico in the 1990s and doubled the patrol kkkops. By 2017, those measures resulted in more than 7,000 deaths (FreedomforImmigrants.org).  The Obama administration deported over 3 million people, more than all other presidents since 1890 combined. As the U.S. declines, rising terror becomes the norm. 

When fascists attack, we fight them back

Despite the dangers, workers are fighting back! Across the U.S., neighbors have organized rapid-response networks to monitor ICE, defend families from raids, hold court watches, and raise bail funds.  Democratic Party politicians are working overtime  to contain workers’ anger and channel it into voting, a dead-end proposition.

In reality, there’s no safety in playing by the bosses’ rules.  Under full-blown fascism, peaceful antiracist, anti-capitalist workers will be targeted for liquidation. In the early years of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany, before 1942, most of the inmates were political prisoners–union leaders and democratic socialists as well as communists. The murders of ICE protesters in Minneapolis are just a hint of what is to come.

Workers have no borders

To break the fascist chokehold, we need collective action for communism. Organize, organize! Take the struggle to your schools, streets, shops, and jobs. Only communism can defeat fascism because only communism targets the root cause of the crisis: the capitalists’ insatiable hunger for profits. 

Under communism, we will abolish the poison of nationalism. Borders are created by the capitalist class to control the movement of workers, resources, and profits. We need to smash the very idea of nations. Workers have no borders! This world is ours. Let’s fight for it with PLP and friends!

LOS ANGELES, CA, JULY 23-26—The horns from cars driving by were almost as loud as the family of Bryan Bostic (killed by Inglewood PD on 3/10/26 - see CHALLENGEe article) joined Progressive Labor Party’s chants “No good cop in a racist system”. Inglewood residents are very familiar with the role police play under capitalism, as they shared their stories and we shared CHALLENGE newspapers. Our speeches connecting police violence to ICE attacks on immigrants and imperialist wars abroad were well received by the family of Bryan Bostic and the working class passing by. This inspiring march and rally closed the four day summer project in Los Angeles.

With about 30 participants, including multiracial and multi-generational new and veteran members as well as the base of the Party, the LA summer project included a study group series on imperialism, CHALLENGE sales, two rallies, two marches, a movie and discussion, as well as plenty of bonding opportunities. These jam-packed four days inspired new and veteran members of the Party and had everyone recommitting to growing the Party in our area and beyond.

Connecting historical materialism to the world today

The imperialism study group series challenged us by reading Lenin’s document on imperialism, which laid the basis for the second session tying in the Party’s line that liberals are the main danger to the working class. We highlighted the Carter Doctrine which laid the groundwork for imperialist attacks on the Middle East from every democratic president following Carter. The third session prompted participants to connect the three laws of dialectical materialism to the war in Iran. Although all three sessions were challenging, the newer members and base present felt like they gained a solid understanding through the power of the collective and connecting the theory to practice.

The CHALLENGE sales and rallies we held were particularly empowering for our new members. Some had never sold the paper or spoken on the bullhorn before. To scaffold this, we incorporated a session where participants could read the newspaper and pull out what they wanted to share with those they encountered at the sales and practice doing this with a partner. We also held a speech writing session where drafts were written and then in small groups revisions were completed. This filled them with the confidence they needed to not only sell the paper and speak on the bullhorn, but volunteer to go first and inspire those listening to check out the Party further. A high school student shared after that he was scared before giving his speech, but then he realized this is what he believes in, so nothing should stop him from expressing that to anyone in earshot.

Participants also shared appreciation for the time they had to bond with each other. Whether through a beach trip, riding to a protest together, or sharing a delicious meal, everyone there got to know each other better and they felt this increased their desire to grow the Party.

As an outgrowth of this project, we plan to expand from our current three clubs into five clubs. We will continue our young leaders study sessions and expand our city committee. And that is how our quantitative developments will turn into a qualitative leap for the future strength of Progressive Labor Party in Southern California. The fight for communist revolution is advancing with each new member as another nail in the bosses’ coffin. The struggle continues!

June 16,  marked the 50th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings in South Africa. Presently it’s an official South African holiday, Youth Day. It commemorates the hundreds of young people killed fighting the Apartheid system. June 16, 1976, will live in the memories of South Africans and antiracist workers worldwide for generations to come.

In February 1990, Nelson Mandela — leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and the international face of the struggle against Apartheid — was released after 27 years in South African prisons. In March 1992, white South Africans voted in a referendum to end Apartheid, opening the door to negotiations and ushering in an era of high hopes for racial justice. But the referendum was only the final concession in a struggle that Black workers had been waging for decades, one that grew into an international movement spanning six continents and mobilizing millions of workers — including tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers who fought for over a decade against the expansion of Apartheid into the rest of Southern Africa. By May 1994, Mandela had been sworn in as South Africa’s first Black president, sparking celebrations around the world.

We celebrate the fall of Apartheid. But we also approach the history of South Africa through the lens of dialectical materialism — and that history is more complicated than the popular narrative allows. What is often left out is that the rebellion against Apartheid was led, in large part, by communists, and that its foot soldiers were overwhelmingly Black workers whose labor power, withheld through strikes and organizing, was the movement’s real weapon. That power was so undeniable that even Washington — no ally of Black liberation — eventually had to accommodate it. The deal that ended Apartheid required U.S. approval. The U.S. had backed the Apartheid state for decades chiefly as a bulwark against the spread of communism; once the Soviet Union and Communist China ceased to pose that threat, the U.S. had little reason to keep the regime in power, especially as its global unpopularity had become a liability to U.S. interests in the region. The price of that approval was a promise from Mandela and the ANC that capitalism in the “New South Africa” would go untouched.

In the end, the sacrifices of perhaps millions of Black workers were traded for a South Africa that kept its capitalist core while wearing a new face — one of Black leadership. That “national liberation,” run by Black leadership within a still-capitalist system, has in some respects deepened rather than dismantled the old apartheid order. The recent wave of racist  violence and mass deportations of migrant workers from neighboring African countries is one stark example: Black workers turned against fellow Black workers, while the capitalist relations that produce scarcity and desperation go unchallenged.

50 years later, the struggle against the system that traps Black and migrant workers in poverty wages, segregated schools, substandard healthcare, and police violence continues — from the informal settlements of South Africa, to classrooms in Brooklyn, to checkpoints in the West Bank. The rebellion against Apartheid is not a closed chapter of history; it is a living example of a truth the ruling class would rather workers forget: Black workers are not a marginal or secondary force in the fight against racism and capitalism. They remain leading, a key force for communist revolution itself — then, and now.

The following is a reprint of an article published in CHALLENGE newspaper in 2010. 
*****

English and Dutch settlers (Boers, or Afrikaners) colonized South Africa, and in 1948 the Afrikaner-led government formalized a racist system of segregation called Apartheid — Afrikaans for “apartness.” Modeled on a combination of U.S. slavery and its successor, Jim Crow, the system denied Black Africans political, economic, and cultural equality at every level of society. It was Black workers — miners, domestic laborers, factory hands — who built the mass movements, strikes, and armed resistance that made the system ultimately ungovernable. 

Black African students received inferior education in overcrowded schools and had to pay the equivalent of half their parents’ monthly income to even attend school, while white students received free education.

The Soweto rebellion’s immediate spark was a new requirement that math and social studies be taught in Afrikaans, the Apartheid government’s official language. However, teachers had always taught in English. Most were unable to teach in Afrikaans, a third language for them besides their native one and English.

The rebellion begins

On June 13, 1976, the students called a meeting; 400 attended. The Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) was selected to lead the campaign against this new racist edict. Two delegates per school were elected. They refused to accept the order to be taught in Afrikaans, still another racist burden imposed by the Apartheid government. Students, fearing being stopped, told their parents nothing. They decided to march to Orlando stadium to present their demands. On June 16 at 7 A.M., about 5,000 students, most between 10 and 20 years old, met at various points around Soweto Township and started marching. But before they got inside the stadium, police with vans formed a wall blocking them.

The cops fired tear gas, warning them to disperse. With the students holding their ground, the police started shooting into the crowd. Twelve-year-old Hector Petersen was the first one killed. Then angry students began hurling stones and bottles at the cops, running forward, throwing, then retreating and repeating the action. This continued all day.

The battle rages

Symbols of the hated Apartheid system were burned: administrative offices, government buses and vehicles. Liquor stores and beer halls were looted and then set afire. Battles continued through the night, with police shooting wildly in the dark (Soweto had no street lights).

Thousands of injured students went to the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital where some died in the hallways and others outside the emergency room. Over 200 students were murdered. Workers arrived home to find cops everywhere in personnel carriers called “hippos,” vehicles built to withstand landmines in the guerilla wars in Namibia and Mozambique. The bodies of dead and injured students were littered all over. Clouds of black smoke hung over the Township.

The next day most workers voluntarily stayed away from their jobs. Then the students realized they’d have to talk to their parents to expand their forces to fight Apartheid. In intensive house-to-house visits they explained the issues to their parents. The police banned all political and mass meetings.

Chrysler workers back the students

On June 22, mass funerals became mass meetings. Townships near Pretoria joined the struggle. Over 1,000 South African Chrysler auto workers struck to support the students, the first time workers had done so. The boycott spread to the Alexandra Township. By June 18, the Apartheid government closed all schools in Soweto and Alexandra.

SSRC’s next major action, set for August 4, was more ambitious — organizing a three-day general strike and a school boycott. This had not happened since 1961. Students cut the key signal box, halting trains from running to Soweto. Students gathered at all the commuting sites, urging workers to stay home. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 workers struck. It was 60% successful over three days.
By now, the student boycott had spread to the Western and Eastern Cape. The Apartheid government detained hundreds of students indefinitely to stop the demonstrations. Then they used a vicious divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting Zulu workers against the students.

Fight racist divisions

Many Zulu male migrant workers lived in hostels, without their families. The police told them the students would attack them. During the second three-day boycott one hostel was burned, probably by an agent provocateur. Under police protection, the Zulus then attacked the students and residents.

The SSRC, realizing they had to win the Zulu workers politically, explained how the police had misled them. Zulu workers won to see that the students’ and Soweto workers’ fight against Apartheid was their fight too.

The third SSRC demonstration, August 23, spread to Witwatersrand and the Transvaal. A solid 75% to 80% participation was sustained over three days. Almost 750,000 workers participated. Zulu migrant workers gave almost total support.

Sporadic protests continued. In April, 1977, the SSRC successfully stopped rent increases in Soweto. In September, when Black Consciousness Movement leader Stephen Biko was murdered in prison, rebellions spread nation-wide, especially in the Eastern Cape. The following month the last SSRC leader fled into exile. On October 19, the government banned 17 organizations, most connected to the Black Consciousness Movement.

A worldwide movement erupts

Internationally, the rebellion inspired workers and students to hold anti-apartheid demonstrations supporting the South African rebels. Students at universities throughout the U.S. and Europe launched major divestment campaigns demanding college Boards of Trustees sell off stocks in companies doing business in South Africa, such as Ford, IBM, Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard. Citibank was the largest U.S. lender to Apartheid South Africa.

Pressure was maintained throughout the 1980’s. In 1990, the government was forced to lift the ban on resistance movements. That year Nelson Mandela was freed from 29 years in prison.

Today, while “official” Apartheid has ended, it continues unabated through extreme poverty and racism. The workers and youth of South Africa must build on their militant history and move in a revolutionary communist direction so that their amazing struggles in battling Apartheid will not have been in vain.