Protests spread across U.S. against ICE terror

The Guardian, 1/24–Large protests spread across US cities on Saturday – including Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island – after 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a registered nurse living in Minneapolis, was shot dead by federal agents…just one day after thousands marched through the streets of Minneapolis to protest against…ICE…Thousands more rallied in Union Square in New York City…In Washington DC, a giant crowd formed...Across the country in San Francisco, hundreds of people gathered in the city’s downtown as the sun began to set… further south, hundreds of people took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles…In Providence, hundreds showed up to protest…

Racist capitalist economics still at work 

CEPR, 1/14–In 2025, Black America needed about 1.8 million more people working to have the same employment rates (employment-to-population ratios) as White America (Table 1). This Black jobs deficit cost Black America about $87 billion in lost income…Researchers continue to find strong evidence of anti-Black bias in hiring. Even among the formerly incarcerated, White individuals are more likely to find employment than Black individuals. Persistent racial discrimination in the labor market can lead Black individuals to become discouraged and not actively attempt to find work…

Iran economy and rulers at risk of collapse

Foreign Affairs, 1/13–the Islamic Republic appears more fragile than ever after last June’s 12-day war. The regime seems incapable of addressing the root causes of the economic crisis that has driven its people to the streets…food prices overall have jumped by 72 percent since January 2025. An Iranian government spokesman warned that they could rise by another 20 to 30 percent in the coming weeks…Tehran…has instructed that free-market prices should prevail…Educated youth and professionals have been hit especially hard…Major rivers supplying Isfahan and Shiraz with water now routinely run dry, and Tehran is running out of water.

Israeli settlers destroy and replace Palestinian villagers

Al Jazeera, 1/22–... the Israeli settlers’ celebrations have finished for the day. But the village of Ras Ein al-Auja, situated in the eastern West Bank’s Jericho governorate, has been all but wiped out. The village was one of the last Palestinian herding communities in this part of the Jordan Valley, but now, the herders’ sheep have gone – most of them stolen or poisoned by settlers or sold off by villagers under pressure. Their water has been cut off – the Ras Ein spring declared off-limits by the neighbouring settlers for the past year…This…marks the largest expulsion from a single Bedouin community as a result of Israeli settler violence in modern times...

Farmers suffer through overproduction crisis

New York Times, 1/25–“What am I supposed to do with 2.2 million pounds of rice?”...raising his voice…over the noisy industrial fans drying the rice on his farm in Merigold, Miss…Across the country, farmers are struggling. Prices for nearly every major crop are below what it costs to grow them…a group representing farmers, participants floated the idea of a government program that would pay producers to destroy the harvested rice sitting in their bins. A similar program was put in place during the 1980s farm crisis, when the Agriculture Department paid farmers to idle land and reduce huge surpluses of crops…India, the world’s largest producer of rice… [is] flooding the world with rice. 

Nigerian workers at risk of starvation

ABC News, 1/22–The U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday that more than a million people in northeastern Nigeria could lose access to emergency food and nutrition aid within weeks unless funding is secured, as violence and hunger surge in the region…The food agency of the United Nations said in a statement it will sharply scale back assistance, limiting it to only 72,000 people in February, down from 1.3 million assisted during last year’s lean season, which runs from May to October…35 million people are likely to experience severe hunger in Nigeria this year, the highest figure on the continent and the largest recorded since the agency began collecting data in the country.

The kidnapping of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro marks an acceleration of U.S. decline and a decisive break from its own the liberal world order. As imperialist China, Russia, and the U.S. hurtle toward wider war, the world is growing more volatile and dangerous by the day. 
To smash imperialism, the working class needs a communist movement. Progressive Labor Party strives to be that force, but we need you to join the fight.

Venezuela: rivalry flashpoint

Hugo Chávez’s 1999 Bolivarian “Revolution” ran on Venezuela’s vast reserves of oil, not working-class power. Following the death of Chávez, Maduro oversaw a drastic decline of living conditions for tens of millions of workers. Venezuela’s state capitalists enriched themselves while distributing crumbs to workers. The Chavistas used U.S. sanctions to obscure their own theft while millions were starved and displaced. As of last year, 60 percent of workers struggled to afford food and 80 percent were underemployed or unemployed (New York Times, 1/8). Workers always pay the price for bosses’ fights, whether local or global. That is why we must reject nationalism in all its forms. 

Venezuela is caught in the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry among the U.S., China, and Russia. For the U.S., Maduro’s great crime wasn’t narcoterrorism—it was that he was cutting deals with the enemy. The U.S. rulers found an opportunistic section of the Venezuelan ruling class apparently willing to be bought off: “The whole operation looked so easy that many analysts…wondered whether regime insiders abetted Maduro’s extraction, in effect staging a palace coup by proxy” (FA, 1/7). 

Venezuela is strategically located and holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves: 303 billion barrels, or 17 percent of the global total (Institute for Energy Research, 1/13). Over the last 20 years, the historic U.S “backyard” of Latin America, rooted in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, has been steadily infiltrated by a rival imperialist. China has “economically displaced” the U.S. in “10 out of 12 countries in South America,” with more trade, investment, and development financing (NYT, 1/9). China’s banks have loaned billions in exchange for oil and minerals while its companies build ports, mines, and infrastructure. By 2024, most of Venezuela’s crude oil was flowing to China, though it amounted to only 4 percent of China’s total oil imports. What’s at stake here isn’t Chinese survival, but U.S. regional dominance.

China’s limited verbal condemnation of the U.S. invasion shows that China’s rulers aren’t yet ready for a direct military confrontation, especially as they manage friction with Taiwan and an economic slowdown. Russia’s muted response might signal its satisfaction with the U.S. bulldozing of NATO and its limited backing of Ukraine.  As there is no honor among thieves, these alliances will continue to shift. The world is unstable because capitalists are legitimized gangsters who fight tooth and nail for profits as they exploit our class. The ultimate and inevitable expression of their competition is world war. 

Competing visions of U.S. power

For seven decades, U.S. imperialism relied on international institutions that enabled its bosses to control the rules of the game: NATO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank. These organizations normalized a “rules-based” liberal world order that consolidated U.S. dominance after World War II. But make no mistake—their dominance was a bloody one! From 1945 to 2023, the U.S. launched at least 255 military operations (Congress, 6/7/23).  

Because capitalist competition inevitably leads to rise and fall of empires, the old order began fraying in the 1970s, marked by the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. More recently, China’s rise has weakened U.S. leverage globally. State Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump’s response has been to wreck the old world order and move toward a Fortress America that would control Latin America while abandoning multilateral commitments in Europe and Asia. 

While some might see the theatrics of kidnapping a president as a show of strength, it is anything but. As U.S. dominance wanes, the bosses’ tactics to preserve it become even more desperate and rabid. 

The U.S. ruling class is split into two main competing factions. The Big Fascists of finance capital still seek global domination through endless war. But the domestically oriented Small Fascists behind Trump have no interest in spending their profits on far-flung ground wars. They accept that U.S. global dominance is slipping and are focused on locking down a sphere of influence in the Americas, hence the belligerent operation in Venezuela. Conceding Ukraine to Russia and Taiwan to China would seem to align with this strategy. But Trump’s raw coercion could have unintended consequences by emboldening other capitalists to do the same. Case in point: China’s 10-hour live-firing drills to rehearse a blockade of Taiwan. As CHALLENGE goes to press, meanwhile, threats of U.S. military action in Iran are escalating. 

How the next world war unfolds remains uncertain. What’s clear is we live in perilous times. Within that danger also lies Progressive Labor Party’s responsibility to turn world war into class war.   

We need communism

State terror is the order of the day. The display of brute force in Venezuela, which killed 80 people on the ground, is a harbinger of fascism, driven by U.S. decline and by bitter splits in the ruling class. So are the brazen murders of Black and white workers, from Keith Porter in Los Angeles to Renee Good in Minneapolis, by the modern slave-catchers known as ICE (see page 1). These incidents of callous violence expose the bosses’ raw dictatorship under their slipping democratic mask.

The capitalists know that the international working class is the mortal threat to their profits and survival. But the only way we can realize our revolutionary potential is by building a mass workers’ party. Amid the chaos of capitalism, there can be no return to a safer, more stable time. 

There are no good capitalist bosses, no lesser evils–not in the U.S. or China, not in Russia or Venezuela. From Russia to China to Vietnam, the only force that has ever defeated an “unbeatable” bosses’ empire is a mass communist-led movement. And it was only the communist leadership of the USSR that defeated the German Nazi war machine. 

There is no middle path. The time to organize was yesterday. We cannot appease or wish away fascism and world war. We need to build an international communist party that can smash imperialist war for all time–and create a new world that serves workers’ needs. Fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party! 

U.S. Hypocrisy

Laws are made by and for the ruling class. While liberal U.S. bosses act appalled at the “illegal” seizure of Venezuela’s president and oil, the rules of U.S. democracy have been a longtime cover for the invasion and overthrow or regimes that failed to roll over to serve U.S. capitalist interests. What’s different today is the capitalist rulers’ open shamelessness. Here are just a few past examples:

• Iran (1953): A CIA-led coup ousted the elected government after it nationalized the country’s oil industry, and reinstalled a  monarchy in league with the U.S.  
• Chile (1973): After Cuba-aligned President Salvador Allende nationalized the copper industy, the U.S. launched a coup that killed Allende and established a brutal 17-year dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. 
• Panama (1989): Citing drug trafficking and the killing of a Marine, the U.S. invaded the country and captured and jailed military ruler Manuel Noriega. The real goal was to secure control over the Panama Canal, a critical passageway for global supply chains. 
• Iraq (1990-1991, 2003-2011): With various phony pretexts, including non-existent “weapons of mass destruction,” the U.S. waged two wars to control vast oil reserves in Iraq and Kuwait–and it destroyed as many as one million lives in the process. 

LOS ANGELES, CA, January 12—Twenty-five students and workers from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends of the Party came together for a powerful rally that brought a clear, uncompromising message to the community: capitalism offers nothing to our class but war, fascism, and death, and only communist revolution can create a world that serves the needs of working people.

Everything is connected 

We held this rally in a neighborhood where the violence of the capitalist state is not abstract. This is the same community where Alex Flores was murdered by the Los Angeles Police Department, and where members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been organizing since 2019 alongside residents, students, and workers to fight police terror and build a fighting party. Holding the rally here was intentional. The fight against imperialist war abroad and racist police murder and attacks on immigrant workers at home is one struggle. The community particularly loved our chant “La Migra, la policía, la misma porqueria.”

At the rally, a half dozen young comrades and friends led chants and gave speeches. They reminded the neighborhood that they are not alone, that we are here to fight alongside them against racist terror in all its forms. One young Latin woman worker spoke passionately about how demoralizing it is to wake up to the daily horrors of capitalism, each day worse than the last, but that she was confident that we can come together in the fight for communism, the world the working class deserves.

Capitalism is violence

A PLP member delivered a speech connecting U.S. aggression against Venezuela with the murder of a protester by ICE agents in Minneapolis. The speech laid bare the priorities of this system: there is “no money” for health care, schools, or housing, but unlimited funding for police, ICE, drones, and military intervention. From Latin America to Los Angeles, capitalism defends profit and empire through violence.

The message resonated. Neighbors stopped to listen, nodded in agreement, and joined conversations about why these atrocities are not accidents, but the predictable outcomes of a system built on exploitation. Many took copies of CHALLENGE, asked questions about Progressive Labor Party, and shared their own experiences with police harassment, low wages, and struggling to survive while the rich got richer. The taco restaurant across from where we rallied even brought us free licuados for all participants in the rally as a show of support for our message

Throughout the rally, we emphasized a central truth: workers create all the wealth in society and therefore have the power to change it. We do not need bosses, landlords, cops, or generals. But this system cannot exist without our labor. When we organize together—across race, nationality, and borders—we become an unstoppable force.

The strong response from the community showed that people are hungry for a revolutionary explanation and a revolutionary solution. Reform has failed. Voting has failed. Appeals to “justice” from a brutal system have failed. What working people need is organization, solidarity, and communist leadership.

This rally was one small but important step in building that movement. We will continue organizing in this neighborhood, distributing CHALLENGE standing with families impacted by police terror, and fighting to unite workers and students against imperialism, fascism, and capitalism itself.
The future belongs to the working class—but only if we organize to take it.

Fight back! Organize! Build communism!

On December 31st, 2025, Keith Porter, a 43-year-old father of two in Los Angeles, was shot three times and ruthlessly murdered by an off-duty ICE agent. His “crime”? Being Black. Being alive. Owning a rifle. Celebrating the New Year.

A week later, on January 7th, nearly two thousand miles away in Minneapolis, where ICE had turned the streets into a war zone, Jonathan Ross, another ICE agent, fired three shots into the face of a 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good as she tried to flee an attempted ICE raid. Her “crime”? Defending her Black and Brown neighbors from ICE terror.

These executions, carried out by rabidly racist and sexist, Gestapo-like ICE agents, are becoming the norm under an increasingly fascist U.S. empire. They expose the violent core of capitalism, its state-sponsored terror, and the crisis of its sham democracy. After Renee’s killing, her grieving wife said it plainly: “We had whistles, but they had guns.” Her words reveal the lie that this system, built on violence, can be dismantled with non-violence, especially as fascism sharpens its claws.

Violence  and terror are not accidents, they are capitalism’s lifeblood. And as outrage spreads, workers feel the urge to strike back, to deliver vengeance against the state and the capitalists who uphold it. Vigilantism—the belief that individuals can balance the scales of justice with violence is no longer marginal; it is gaining mass appeal and provoking state repression.

Millions cheered when Luigi Mangione killed the United Healthcare CEO in late 2024, yet premiums soared, and Trump’s $30 billion “Big Beautiful” heist funneled funds from healthcare to finance ICE raids carried out by would-be Nazi assassins, like the one who murdered Good. Tyler Robinson murdered MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk live as Kirk was about to utter racist words about Black lives. In a copycat-style killing, Robinson, reportedly in a relationship with his transgender roommate, engraved Catch Fascist and Bella Ciao on the bullet casings.

Kirk’s death was weaponized by Trump and his fascist acolytes, rallying their racist and sexist base, labeling Antifa domestic terrorists, and threatening anyone who spoke out. These acts of violence only begot more violence and repression. The killings of Kirk and the healthcare CEO are not anomalies—they are the inevitable outcome of a system that promotes pacifism while normalizing horror, fetishizing individual heroes, and breeding cynicism about collective struggle, keeping us weak and divided.

The dead end of vigilantism in a failing system

As U.S. domination over global capitalist markets faces competition from Russian and Chinese bosses, workers feel the squeeze. Finance capital’s drive for profit inevitably rolls back the gains workers have fought and died for. Capitalism’s pathologies can only be solved by building a mass communist party; there are no quick fixes to the attacks on the working class.

From Superman to Batman to Paw Patrol, vigilante icons teach workers from infancy to valorize individualism over collective action. No matter the superhero, their role in capitalist propaganda is to “save the day” because the masses are supposedly too weak to save themselves. Many cheered Luigi Mangione’s assassination of the United Healthcare CEO a year ago, but killing one CEO did nothing to challenge the parasitic nature of health insurance—a finance capitalist system that extracts far more than it returns. Premiums have soared. Attacks on healthcare and social services have intensified globally, as bosses, under pressure from military buildup and capitalist competition, cut back gains workers have literally died to achieve.

John Brown set it off, but the masses abolished slavery

Much like the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, the abolitionist movement and Civil War in the United States, including the militant actions of John Brown,  point to important lessons around the necessity for multiracial, collective action to secure long-term gains for the working class. The militant abolitionist John Brown, with a small band of fearless freedom fighters against slavery, orchestrated a raid on the U.S. military arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1859, undoubtedly escalating the decline of the racist system of chattel slavery in the country and triggering more quickly what would become the Civil War. But it took the concerted effort of an organized military force and the death of 600,000 soldiers, black and white, to bring about the end of that retrograde, backward mode of production. The main lesson about Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman and the dozens of other brave souls who stood up militantly for the overthrow of slavery, is that their efforts could not be realized until the movement became fully mass in political scope and was backed by an army.  

Conclusion: Confidence in the working class is key

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) condemns vigilante violence in any form.  As one worker said astutely, “when many voices become one for political power in the right direction we can make change.”  Communists believe that the right direction is not voting, not adding more Black and brown or “left” politicians to office, and certainly not assassinations, bombings or other acts of adventurism.   We must eliminate production of resources for profit. Hundreds of students from Columbia University and beyond faced jail time and expulsion from college in the name of fighting imperialist genocide in 2023. They followed the lead of countless doctors and journalists across Gaza who worked in conditions of utter terror as bombs reigned down over them to save the lives of unarmed workers–mainly children–and reveal these atrocities to the world.  Millions of workers have turned out in Italy in the past few months in general strikes to protest the relentless cutbacks in wages and social services as bosses divert funds for military buildup and eventual war. And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of workers who poured into the streets all over the world during the Covid-19 outbreak against the George Floyd racist police assassination, as millions more were left at the peril of a deadly virus that the bosses chose not to contain for months and months. 

These masses are the heroes of our class. But in spite of all of these heroic deeds, the genocide against workers in Palestine rages, and workers across Italy and worldwide continue to face austerity cutbacks.  Each struggle teaches our class new lessons about the limits of reforming capitalism, but we need an organized party that is leading these struggles and fighting for more than just militant reforms.  Progressive Labor Party is not a savior to the working class. We do not call for workers to grab guns and shoot any boss they see–or their traitorous thugs in blue or camouflage. But we do understand that armed workers, backed by a revolutionary military of soldiers and officers, led by our party, is a fundamental ingredient for our class to free itself from the grips of this current system and establish something exponentially smarter, healthier and better for the human race.  And this collective process is the ultimate heroism.