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New York City: Masses of red-led workers can crush ICE
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- 31 January 2026 289 hits
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day and again the following Friday, New York City workers took the streets twice in determined demonstrations of proletarian internationalist resolve against ICE terror. First hundreds, then thousands marched. These actions reflect a growing impulse among workers to fight back. It is up to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to make the most of this momentum by building the communist movement, the only force capable of winning the abolition of ICE and the capitalist system that sustains it.
Both demonstrations saw significant presence from organized labor, with UNITE HERE on MLK day and the United Federation of Teachers on Friday. On Monday workers gathered at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and thundered across the Brooklyn Bridge to 26 Federal Plaza. With vigorous chanting PL’ers laid bare the stakes for our class: the necessity of abolishing ICE and dismantling borders with communist revolution as the only solution. Liberal bosses commissioned the march, yet botched the basics: late start times, chaotic coordination, and a press conference were prioritized over building the kind of discipline our class will need to confront rising fascism.
These bosses present themselves as defenders of “democratic values,” yet when ICE terrorizes immigrant workers, they offer nothing beyond reformist slogans. They call for a kinder, more efficient ICE, not its abolition. This trajectory is the politics of the Democratic Party’s big-wing fascism, which seeks a more legalistic Obama-Biden era deportation machine. The liberals’ reliance on and support of the NYPD—the very force that collaborates with ICE—underscored the hollowness of their values. The bosses will never protect workers, as their power rests on enforcing capitalist rule.
Growing anger with racist ICE
On Friday, hundreds of teachers joined a crowd of thousands in a march through lower Manhattan at an even colder after work rally and march.
PL’ers marched with co-workers but were open about our plan to meet up as a Party to distribute the few papers we had remaining from Monday’s demonstration. This mattered. Co-workers saw communists bringing revolutionary politics directly into the mass movement, not hiding them. These moments open the door to future struggle and recruitment into the Party.
At both marches PLP took a ‘struggle with, struggle against’ stance, uniting with workers we were near while exposing the misleadership of the liberal head honchos directing the day’s events. On MLK Day, our leaflets invoked Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail to expose the real danger facing our class: that liberals are the main danger since they “prefer order over justice.” The moderate reformist urges perpetual patience and compromise while workers endure austerity, family separation, healthcare denial, and imperialist war. These misleaders lull workers into passivity as capitalism sharpens its claws and drives the world toward World War III and environmental catastrophe.
Throughout both marches, PLP members and supporters raised sharp communist slogans that clarified the political line required for this moment. We linked ICE, the NYPD, and the Ku Klux Klan as different instruments of the same class terror. We demanded the abolition of all borders, because workers have no country under capitalism. We called for workers of the world to unite against capitalist violence and repression.
We also injected a global, internationalist analysis into the march. Imperialist wars, driven by capitalist competition for oil and power, uproot families and create waves of migration. These displaced workers do not cross borders out of choice, but out of desperation created by capitalism’s crisis. Capitalist nations then fortify borders and unleash ICE, weaponizing racism and nationalism to divide the very class that should unite against exploitation.
Red heat melts ICE
We must learn from 2020 that mass mobilizations co-opted by liberals lead only to cynicism, exhaustion, and defeat. We must expose the liberal bosses’ inability to lead workers. PLP showed the necessity of disciplined, communist, worker-led base building. Workers — whether in hospitals, schools, transit, or neighborhoods — are the only force capable of dismantling the capitalist system that produces ICE, racist policing, war, and exploitation. By building a base in the working class, we can build the capacity to shut this racist, sexist, capitalist system down from Brooklyn to Venezuela, to Iran, to Sudan, Palestine, to Mexico. Join us, become a member of Progressive Labor Party!
KENTUCKY—The local Progressive Labor Party (PLP) leadership in our area took the initiative and organized a rally against imperialism and the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE in Minnesota. We held the rally at the local downtown park. Our plan for the new year was to work to push out the liberal old guard who, for the last five years, has fought to maintain a stranglehold on all political activism happening in our area, suppressing the progressive and “radical” voices in our community.
Beating back liberal misleaders
By being the first to produce a flyer, we were able to out-pivot the liberal groups like Indivisible, and 50501, ensuring the rally maintained a revolutionary character to it, and was not watered down by “vote blue no matter who!” rhetoric. We established that if anyone wants to speak, they may, but the communists will speak first, and last. This was accepted. In fact, no liberal group members spoke, only workers from the crowd.
Then we were encouraged to come up and speak. We made it clear that their participation, and voices mattered.
Around 1:30pm the crowd had grown to a size of around 60-70 local workers. A total of seven different local organizations were represented in the crowd. This was outstanding as they had only had a week’s notice to come to the rally. The workers came out in the cold and the rain to stand against ICE and imperialism. The PLP made opening introductions and led with the first speech. We explained how important it is for all of us to get involved - that rallies, protests, and voting were not enough to push back fascism and that only revolution could liberate us from capitalism’s authoritarian rule. We expressed that we need a united movement, organized on a foundation of class struggle, and that we need interconnected communities focused on the defense of one another, and an organized labor force. Then we will be able to curb the ruling class elite and their power.
All struggles have a connection
We continued telling the workers that this intervention in Venezuela is nothing new. The United States has always been an imperialist war machine. The Gestapo ICE crackdowns and the war posturing abroad are all interconnected. We explained that we as workers in the U.S. have more in common with the workers of Palestine, Sudan, Cuba, Colombia, and Venezuela than we have with our own ruling class elite. This generated the most response from the crowd as hoots and hollers of affirmation rang out. We ended the opening speech on a strong note. Using the Lenin quote “Can a nation that oppresses other nations be free? It cannot!”
Afterwards we pulled up many workers from the crowd. Many of whom had never done any sort of public speaking, and empowered them standing beside the workers as each of them spoke to the people. Several of them maintained the revolutionary rhetoric that we opened up with: how all of these issues are interconnected and that the root cause is capitalism. A fiery emotional speech ignited the crowd once more. We garnered several contacts and multiple people mentioned they would be attending the next weekend’s “lunch and learn”, and were interested in joining the PLP.
Why we need the Party
All in all we handed out every issue of CHALLENGE that we had, as well as some pamphlets made prior to the event. We were well received by everyone except a Vietnam vet, who recoiled at the first mention we were communists. But then he went back to the local VFW with an issue of CHALLENGE himself when it was all over. The lesson learned is that we as communists have to understand where the workers of our locality are, and we need to take the reins out of the liberals’ hands, and dominate the conversation when the opportunity arises. The workers are sick and tired of running into brick wall after brick wall. Liberalism, and social democracy will lead you off a cliff. Only communist revolution can truly set us free.
Brazil, January 5—Following the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela by U.S. imperialists (see editorial, Jan. 28 issue), who were thirsty for natural resources including oil and rare earth minerals, there were large anti-U.S. mobilizations worldwide. Here in Brazil, people demonstrated in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador de Bahia. Numerous student organizations, labor unions and left-wing political groups, including opportunist politicians and judges participated in these spirited marches against imperialism. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was also present, with some of our friends and our “Fight for Communism” flags, to speak out against U.S. imperialism’s naked aggression, to defend the unity of workers and students and to advocate for the ultimate solution: communist revolution.
Capitalism offers misery and death
During the march, many spoke out against this odious and arbitrary capitalist system, which confirms Lenin’s view of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. Slogans included: “Trump, take your claws out of Venezuela!”, “Long live a free Latin America!”, “Down with U.S. imperialism!”, and “Long live socialism!” The slimy politicians led the chorus of the nationalists, comparing Trump to Bolsonaro, the former right-wing president of Brazil, and some even mentioned Hitler. There was even a caricature of Hitler resembling Trump. One of the march’s limitations was the focus on nationalism and individual protectionism, calling for socialism—a system that maintains most of the inequalities of racist capitalist exploitation—to liberate the working class. What these misleaders tried to hide was that our class has never been liberated through bourgeois elections or bourgeois parties that try to limit class struggle to merely reform capitalism. We don’t need to sweeten this rotten system of racism, sexism, exploitation and war—we need to destroy it by fighting for and winning a communist world that serves the interests of the vast majority of humanity.
Some people we spoke with still believe in 2-stage revolution: struggle is gradual, socialism now, communism sometime in the future. When we asked where that approach ever succeeded, they were hard-pressed to reply. There is still a lot of work to do in overcoming ideas of the old movement that have proven to be incorrect. We made some contacts though, including a local professor and an Argentinian filmmaker. The struggle continues.
It is here that the struggle of the PLP must breathe new life into the class struggle in Latin America and the battles to come. Our job is to win workers and students away from the dead-end politics of elections and socialism, to break with the traditional misleaders of every stripe who only serve the status quo, and forge a mass party, tested in battle, in every corner of the world. The PLP slogan of “one class, one flag, one party!” will become our marching orders.
Provincial Haiti, January 1—222 years after its independence, Haiti has once again awakened in the abyss of capitalist misery and violence. The struggle for power and wealth between bourgeois groups, each supported by their favored imperialist groups, plunges the working class into the most appalling poverty.
An antiracist, pro working class food tradition
Workers here will never forget that their ancestors fought valiantly and fiercely to overcome racism, colonialism, and slavery. And this is the importance of the “joumou (pumpkin) soup” eaten on January 1st: slaves were forbidden from tasting it during the period of slavery era. It has become the tradition since the end of France’s colonial rule on January 1, 1804 for Haitians to consume joumou soup as a symbol of liberation. However, day by day, this storied tradition is fading out due to the misery and despair created by capitalism. This system does everything in its power to erase all traces of the victorious struggles of the masses against exploitation, racism, and domination.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP), in the fight against capitalism and for communism, is striving to revive the struggles of the dominated masses against their oppressors. Thus, every year in Haiti, PLP comrades, with the contribution and collaboration of friends and relatives, prepare and distribute pumpkin soup. We call it “solidarity soup.” This year, several hundred people participated in the distribution of soup in the public square in a small town where there is a PLP club. Our comrades and close friends used this occasion to talk about the history of the independence struggles and relate them to our current local situation as well as national and international politics, racism, and the migration crisis that affects all workers.
“Look! He [Donald Trump] treats our brothers like dogs in his country,” said a 50-year-old man. A family man and hard worker, he feels dismayed by the migration policy of the U.S. president, which impacts him personally because so many of his own friends and relatives have been forced to migrate to the U.S. He doesn’t use the term capitalism, but he angrily says that “they are racists, wild beasts who suck the blood of unfortunate workers from the Global South, then chase them away when they have no more blood left, forgetting that it is these workers who create the wealth they enjoy.” Another young woman followed up by saying, “Dessalines [one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution] knew how to put them in their place.” This conversation continued throughout the day, with more and more people joining in. They denounced capitalism and demanded that this system come to an end one day.
We need to fight the bosses worldwide!
At this point, the Party comrades analyzed the current world situation with them, emphasizing that to save humanity, capitalism must be ended, and to end capitalism, the exploited people of all countries must unite and build an international revolutionary communist party capable of leading the class struggle. They described some of the struggles that had been waged against the aggressions of imperialism by workers, often led by communists—including in our Party—around the world and the heroism of the men and women who resisted them.
There were many children and teenagers who listened closely to these discussions, which continued for several hours in the hot sun. The words spoken today piqued the curiosity of many. It was an exceptional moment in the building and strengthening of the Party in Haiti. We will continue to organize activities to keep alive the memory of the victories in the struggles against the capitalists. Our next mass activity will be around International Working Women’s Day on March 8, when we will join with several local women’s and students’ groups.
Join us, exploited people of all countries! We oppressed/workers have always made history through resistance against the savage will of the racist exploiters. Our strength is solidarity!
BALTIMORE, January 17- An old tradition in the Balkan region of Europe is to have soup or a stew available for fellow workers when they finish a day’s work, or after a long hike to a mountain hut during the weekend.
This past Saturday, on a cold snow-covered day, one of our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members prepared a large pot of lentil soup, and another member of our Party club brought several loaves of fresh bread and creamy butter. This gathering, by the PLP Baltimore club, with friends and interested people, took place at a member’s home. It was a combination of a social event and a political discussion about the recent election in New York City.
We shared our organizational chores with contributions of food, beverages, PLP literature, flyers, pins, t-shirts, and stickers. We decorated the room with a red communist flag. By the time we were ready to commence our program, about a dozen guests and members had gathered.
To break the ice, we played a game – telling personal stories sparked by what was written on cards picked from a stack on a table. We enjoyed hearing wonderful stories about childhood, relationships, and so on.
Discussing current events
Our main discussion was then kicked off by two of our PLP members. We read aloud the article from CHALLENGE (11/26/2025) “Mamdani, a dangerous misleader we cannot afford” and opened up for sharing thoughts. Very soon, however, two Trotskyites that we had met at recent demonstrations elucidated their views and overtly promoted participation in the electoral process, which triggered a unanimous response from our club members in defense of the written article.
One comrade compared current political events with historic events of the decaying economy in Western Europe and the U.S. in the mid 1880’s, and again in the 1930’s – when Bismarck and FDR both adopted pretend-socialist ideas, and created a plan for some social reforms to counter the demands of growing socialist and communist movements.
Another part of the discussion was about today’s large base of young, anti-genocide protestors, who stood behind Mamdani and played a significant role in getting him elected. But starting even before that, he gradually shifted his alliance toward the Democratic Party establishment. Even the racist-in-chief in the White House applauded Mamdani’s reappointment of NYPD Police Zionist-commissioner Jessica Tisch.
NYC mayor pro-boss wolf in sheep’s clothing
Following that, over one hundred organizations and anti-genocide activists, which only few months before had eagerly campaigned for Mamdani, signed a petition condemning him. Capitalism will adjust to any politician playing by the rules of their game. They might be complaining on the airwaves of their state-run propaganda, but to save their profits they welcome a touch of democratic socialism and perhaps a tiny lessening of economic inequality, because it is a relatively low price to them, to keep the profits of capitalism thriving.
Some of Mamdani’s billionaire donors and establishment lieutenants prove these intentions: Michael Novogratz, Liz Simons, Robert Wolf, Sally Susman. Mamdani’s proposal, to tax anyone whose wealth is above a million with a 2 percent tax increase, is laughable and changes little for the working class.
Our Baltimore PLP members, and the majority of the group, stood firm about the need for smashing this cycle of egregious belittling of the working class in the U.S. by big fascists and their liberal politicians, and similarly by small fascists and their MAGA lackeys.
The best time to join the party is always now
PLP is an international revolutionary communist organization, fighting for workers’ democracy and for working class dictatorship against capitalist oppressors.
Our comrades did well presenting the importance of organization and participation of communists in the mass movement which, after revolution, will go on to eliminate any need for high-paid elected officials, and will end the wage system.
Our club is young and growing, and is effectively integrating itself into the Baltimore community. Come and join us for our next event! Join Progressive Labor Party! Fight for communism!
