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New Jersey: Students unite against racist ICE terror
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- 15 March 2026 422 hits
Newark, NJ — Following the lead of students and teachers in Minneapolis, more than 60 students and faculty led by Progressive Labor Party members at a community college gathered together to strategize on the fight against ICE in New Jersey. The college has a deeply international student population, and hundreds have been directly affected by the racist, deportation-heavy era of US policy for decades, and especially in recent months arresting and harassing residents and even students from the college. PLP knows only workers protect workers so we decided we needed to do something to get students and faculty prepared in case ICE comes to our campus. Like colleges across the country that have bowed to the bosses’ crackdowns against the student-led anti-genocide movement in Palestine, the lame duck college administration has done nothing to offer support or any sense of collective action to protect students and workers from the deportations. In this void, students and workers with PLP guidance took the lead with a teach-in.
ICE needs to be crushed
ICE agents swept communities in Hoboken and Jersey City, Students voiced what they were experiencing in their families and neighborhoods. The school administration has yet to offer a comprehensive plan of how they will defend students and workers if ICE should come knocking—more likely banging— on our doors.
One student explained that the ICE raids have been going on since Barack Obama’s administration, but with an increased ferocity under Donald Trump 2.0. Another emphatically stated that the ICE pogroms of terror are blatantly racist against Black and Brown communities. After several skits demonstrating Constitutional rights that are under attack by ICE, one student asked, “What rights do we really have?” succinctly expressing that workers have no rights under capitalism and rising fascism (see glossary on page 6).
New Jersey is currently experiencing ramped up targeted ICE arrests and raids throughout the state, from Morristown, to New Brunswick to Jersey City. ICE has arrested 3,000 immigrant workers from January -October 2025 alone (NJ Spotlight News, 10/9/2025). Newark has seen two massive ICE raids on the same job site, a fish market in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Ironbound. The last one in fall saw 60 officers, heat seeking drones hunting workers inside the building, and a telecommunications shut down that made it impossible for neighbors to alert rapid response organizers via their cell phones.
Only an Armed, United Working Class Can Defeat ICE and Fascism
At PLP members' suggestion, a group of students gathered after the meeting to pledge to organize defense of our school community. We talked more about how we could organize. We have been steadily but stealthily sharing more CHALLENGE as the fascist crackdown on our campus ramps up.
Though CHALLENGEs newspapers were not available for distribution at this event, an effort was made to encourage students to argue for the need for militant, united action in the face of fascist attacks on our class. Many students said that we need to come together and fight as a united school to defend one another. One student warned that the situation will only get worse, so we must be prepared. Another militant student remarked, “They have guns—maybe we need guns too!”
Clearly, workers and students recognize the dangers we face with rabid fascism on the rise and with U.S. and Israeli bosses seemingly intent on pushing the world toward a third world war at the expense of workers around the globe.
Students have begun meeting to determine whether forming a student club would be an effective way to organize on campus and build networks with students at other local colleges to oppose these deportations. In doing so, we are taking inspiration and leadership from organizing efforts at other campuses, such as City University of New York (CUNY).
We also plan to attend a teach-in at a CUNY in the Bronx later this week. One valuable lesson from our own teach-in is that when we are united and grounded in communist ideas, we can build the strength needed to win.
CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 28—A multiracial, multigenerational group of over 50 workers and youth gathered in a local fieldhouse to celebrate our annual Black and Red event today, a tradition that elevates and honors the vast contributions and leadership of Black communists, past and present.
Black and Red serves to dispel the anti-communist myth that revolutionary struggle grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory and practice exists in the limited domain of white workers and those of European descent. Revolutionary communist struggle has in fact been embraced over generations by billions of working people all over the world – including across Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America – to advance the cause for liberation from racism, oppression and exploitation.
As Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has long stated, the militant leadership of Black workers has always been essential in the ongoing fight against capitalism and its use of racism to divide, attack, and exploit the entire working class. The intimate experience and rage of Black workers everywhere confronting this racist capitalist system lights the fire for the international working class to rise and fight for a communist society free from all the chains of the old world.
Celebrating antiracism and Black leadership
To kick off the event, our veteran comrade emcee spoke on the ongoing need for communist revolution in a volatile and dangerous world. Everyone in the room had woken up this morning to the news of the US and Israeli imperialists launching a racist war on Iran. Sharing a common space with other workers helped to process the grim news in a grounded way and still face the growing carnage with a sense of revolutionary duty and optimism.
There was no better way to express some revolutionary optimism than starting our program detailing the experience of Black workers in the small island country of Grenada, who led a successful revolutionary movement to repel British imperialism in the late 1970s. We watched some short videos about how the socialist government led by the New Jewel Movement was able to advance democratization of workplaces on the island as well as significantly improve health and literacy efforts. A table talk followed in which everyone present broke out into smaller groups to discuss and gather lessons from the revolution which was ultimately toppled when U.S. imperialists invaded in 1983.
This was followed by a “fireside chat” with a long-time Black veteran comrade who detailed his experience over decades of antiracist struggle in PLP. In an inspiring way, this comrade described his journey from early childhood and how the politics of egalitarian communism always found a way to align with his personal experience and influence him to do the right thing in the moment. He spoke of the supportive and guiding role of the Party in providing a vehicle for his desire to see an antiracist society, and how committing ourselves to the organization should not be seen as a sacrifice, but the highest expression of dedication and love to the working class.
Finally, we wrapped up with a fun activity, joining with others at our tables to answer trivia questions about Black communists and their incredible history of fightback, including leaders like Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, and many others.
Communist revolution charts path to worker power
The road ahead for the international working class will not be an easy one, as the capitalist ruling classes around the world are set on unleashing more racism, fascism, sexism and war to prop up their profit system in crisis. However, events like Black and Red and the commitment of the mass multiracial PLP to turn the coming wars into communist revolution help chart the path to a far better future.
Boston, February 21 - The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in the Boston area held a one-day school designed to help our members and base understand the roots of the rapidly growing crises in the U.S. and the world. From brutal racist ICE deportation raids to the U.S. invasion of Venezuela to soldiers deployed as cops in cities to the war in Ukraine, Iran, Sudan and Gaza, the world today is unstable and more dangerous than ever. In order to strengthen our commitment to fighting for communism, the only way to destroy capitalism and the misery it wrecks on the working class, we need a deeper understanding of Marxist political economy, imperialism, and the nature of fascism.
Discussing the U.S. situation
We had five short presentations about imperialism, developing fascism in the U.S., the economic basis of fascism, opposing fascism today and the role of social democrats, and building the party/base-building. After each one, we held workshops, carefully constituted with new people and veterans, to discuss the presentations. People learn best through discussion and connecting the ideas to their own experiences.
One important strength of the event were the new and younger Party members who gave political and organizational leadership. The final presentation on party building given by two active members who have only been in the Party for about a year was an inspiration to all, but especially the young friends we brought. Young people today, who are deeply skeptical of capitalism and horrified by the world it created, are looking for a community to be a part of. Social Media, with all its problems, has radicalized many youth who we can bring into our Party when we get to know them. This event helped to solidify and grow our Party.
In our recent article on the Gaza Board of Peace, we regret that portions of the text may have mischaracterized the motivations of Palestinians who choose to remain in their homeland. The article suggested that workers who stay are primarily motivated by firm nationalist commitments and may support Hamas. While nationalism may influence some workers, it was not our intention to imply that remaining in one’s homeland during a genocide is simply an expression of nationalist ideology.
Many Palestinian workers remain because of deeply rooted social, economic, and historical realities — including the lasting trauma of the Nakba in 1948, after which many Palestinians were permanently barred from returning to their homes. For many, the fear of displacement and permanent exile is a profound and legitimate reason for staying. We sincerely apologize for language that may have appeared dismissive or insensitive to these realities.
Additionally, the article stated or implied that there has historically been no class-conscious resistance in Palestine. There were significant efforts toward a binational, communist-led struggle in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s. However, these movements ultimately fragmented along nationalist lines. Palestinian nationalism has often entailed loyalty to a Palestinian ruling class — a small elite that has, at times, exploited Palestinian workers in its own interests or in collaboration with successive colonial and imperial authorities. To read our analysis on Palestine and Israel visit https: tinyurl.com/4h8c55z4
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International Working Women’s Day: When we fight, we strengthen our roots for revolution
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- 15 March 2026 406 hits
The following is an excerpt of a speech that was given at our annual Pre-May Day International Women’s Day brunch in Brooklyn, New York. To read the speech in its entirety visit www.plp.org.
Thank y’all so much for coming out to celebrate International Working Class Women’s Day!!
Today, we are here for a communist celebration of March 8th—where we recognize the crucial role that women have played in the fight against capitalism. We are here to struggle for a world where this celebration extends far beyond one day in March. That world will be won through the revolutionary leadership of women.
We know this because it is our very leadership that has historically propelled us toward that world.
Women workers lead the way to revolution!
After the revolution in Cuba, women led education programs to combat high illiteracy rates that disproportionately affected rural women. Integrated groups of urban Cubans moved to the countryside to teach. And just two years after the revolution, illiteracy rates had fallen from 23 percent to 3 percent. Under socialism, the working class was uplifted through a collective antiracist, anti-sexist fight against capitalism’s failings.
In PLP, leadership from women of color has been integral to our growth, and the sharpening of our fight against capitalism.
Our last chairwoman, Gracie, led with force into the 21st century, providing militant direction as our organization fought against racist neo-nazis and imperialist war. Now, leadership has been passed from that chairwoman to an integrated collective.
We are here to affirm that, therefore, it will be leadership from women, specifically Black and Brown women, that will liberate ourselves from capitalism’s chains. So we stand here as the fertilizer for our next harvest.
And everyone is necessary in this fight, sexism hurts us all. Women were initially forced into free domestic labor so men could be exploited more heavily at work. But in a communist world imagined by PLP, we would abolish the entire profit system. And “without that system, there will be no motive for gendered inequality, and without that, gendered exploitation and violence would be collectively confronted and, over time, eliminated.”
This task is no small feat, but let us be invigorated from the recent communist struggles led by women that are displayed around the room. And let that motivation deepen by the multi-racial, gender-inclusive, multi-generational crowd that fills it.
Our class is the only one we can truly depend on to liberate ourselves. We confront police terror in Brooklyn, with the families of Kyam Livingston and Shantel Davis. We strike at the Stella D’oro cookie factory in the Bronx. We occupy the La Casita community center in Chicago.
And our fight extends far beyond the US. Sexism knows no borders—it follows through the Darien Gap, at the southern border of Mexico, in the midst of war in Sudan, at the intersection of Church and Nostrand, and in the West Bank. Our revolutionary struggle must be as ignorant to borders as sexism and racism are. We are building an international fight that will abolish capitalism and the divisive borders it creates.
So though capitalism has cut our movement at the trunk, they have no idea our roots are alive and well, deepening with each action. One root when we take the streets and resist ICE raids. When women in Sudan form grassroots committees against sexual violence in wartime, another root strengthens. “The only solution is a communist revolution” amplified for all of Flatbush to hear, that’s another root. Come to our May Day (May 2nd)—that’s another. Join our Party, another.
So, while at the surface we may only see a stump, our efforts are deepening, entangling, until we force them to break ground with communist revolution. I’m fighting for the day that my sister, her beautiful friends, you, me, and our class siblings harvest our revolutionary fruit, plentiful and sweet.
Happy International Working Class Women’s Day.
