The following, written by co-workers of PL members, was set to be given at the celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution in New York City. The event was cancelled in order to participate on the national “Cease Fire” demonstration against Israel’s crimes of genocide of Palestinian families. The speech has been modified into an article for publication so that all readers of CHALLENGE can take inspiration from our communist predecessors.
November 6 should be a celebratory occasion for the international working class, but this year PLP will spend the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution in D.C. to protest genocide in Gaza and the continued occupation of Palestine.

This is not only an issue of moral urgency, but should be deeply important to us as communists and as the working class.

Lenin has said
 “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”
From Gaza to climate catastrophe to labor strikes to migrant crises, these feel like weeks where decades can potentially happen.

It was on this day in 1917 that the Bolshevik party led workers to establish the first ever communist state-freeing thousands from the violence of capitalism and laying the blueprint for revolutionary movements worldwide. Communist workers went on to spread education and healthcare to millions, almost single handedly defeat Nazis, and aided decolonial struggles around the world.

So let's consider Russia in 1917.
Underdeveloped, un-industrialized, and subject to western imperialism, few would have expected Russia to be the place of the first successful communist revolution in history. The Bolshevik party too was small and fringe-it was not expected to lead the first communist revolution in history.

Similarly, it can be hard to imagine a successful revolutionary movement happening for us now, but like the Bolsheviks we have a party, like the Bolsheviks we believe in internationalism, and like the Bolsheviks we want to seize state power too!

Revolutions don’t happen spontaneously, but they also don’t occur without the right circumstances and without the right strategy.

Women workers helped to bring the October Revolution when they marched into Petrograd demanding bread and demanding an end to WWI. But this alone didn’t lead to the success of the October Revolution. They were marching to fix the specific conditions that they found themselves in at that particular moment that became impossible to survive in. Bread and peace were important, but that alone is not communism.

What can we learn from this? The Bolsheviks and used this to educate people and build their base. They recognized revolutionary potential in peasants and in the working class and gave them a political project to work towards. They did not just want bread or an end to the war. They did not want reform. They wanted revolution!

It is our job too, to see revolutionary potential in mass movements. There is revolutionary potential in protests to free Palestine. There is revolutionary potential in movements against racist police. It’s the job of communists to recognize this revolutionary potential and make sure that it is matched with principled political ideology.

The history of zionism rooted in anti-communism
In analyzing the current humanitarian crisis befaling Palestinian workers and kids, we must ask ourselves how we got here and why powerful Imperialist nations like the United States and Great Britain have such vested interest in supporting the ongoing acts of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal terror. Much of the conversation comes back to the age-old fear of communist revolution. The same anti-semitism that provoked the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany also spurred support for the zionist cause and establishment of the often mentioned but less contextualized Balfour Declaration of 1922. A large portion of the antisemitism that pervaded Europe during the early 20th century was a manifestation of an association European white nationalists were drawing between Jews and Communist movements of the time. This may sound familiar in the current era when we hear conspiracies about the likes of George Soros orchestrating BLM protests in 2020 or pushing critical race theory in schools. A continuation of this association that has morphed into a dog whistle for anti semitism.  

Winston Churchill puts this association very clearly in his 1920 article Zionism Versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People. In reference to the October Revolution he is very explicit in his antisemitism and association of Jewish people with Communism. “There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews.”

His solution, and the solution that many imperial powers propose even to this day was Zionism.
As with the Bolshevik Revolution, we must remember this time period and understand that the actions that followed are crucial to comprehending why the United States and other imperialist nations continue to fund Israel’s atrocities. Furthermore this historical context explains why revolution is the only path forward lest we sacrifice a true liberation of Palestinian workers and workers everywhere.

No war but class war for communism
We don’t want a ceasefire–we want international communism. We don’t want a reformed police force—we want communism. We know that without a fight for communism, all of these struggles are impossible, but in all of these struggles there is the potential for revolution.

The Russian Revolution most famously happened in response to World War I. And in a time when workers around the world are again suffering from the threat of imperial war, this is more relevant than ever.

From Palestine to Brooklyn capitalism harms us all.
At a time when many supposed leftists are revealing themselves to be ideologically aligned with the imperatives of the state, we must remember it was the Bolsheviks who stood firm in their support of the working class while the Mensheviks found themselves willing to support the inhumane clash of Imperial powers known as World War I.

We will continue to say no to imperial war, even when it is unpopular to do so.
But as communist we look to the past to set a path to a brighter future. This path is often mired in darkness and requires us to light a dialectical torch illuminating the footsteps of our comrades and the fundamental contradictions at play between the interests of the ruling class and the working class.

Before heading to work, a group of PLers marched to the courthouse in Newark to stand in solidarity with the Rodwell Spivey brothers for their early morning hearing. A group of antiracist fighters coming out en masse for over a year has produced more worker wins than these bosses ever have and ever could. Justin Rodwell was released after a #FreeJustin campaign led by the Rodwell Spivey family, college students, educators, nurses, and PL called the Rodwell Spivey Defense Team. Because of this work, the word spread like wildfire that Justin and his brothers and neighbors came to each other's defense when one brother was stopped and frisked by undercover police in front of their home. Although the news spreading on X, formerly known as Twitter, helped drive the campaign, we still pushed and recognized the importance of building the struggle in our local neighborhoods and workplaces. The struggle even expanded to Kingsborough Community College campus in New York, where comrades and students recognized and cited the same police terror threatening the working class in Newark and also being alive and well in the Bronx.

Building mass fightback led to a waged war against the Newark courts to drop the charges against the Rodwell Spivey brothers from 40+ years to lower-level municipal court charges. Now that the mass fightback has simmered down and the capitalist bosses did not win their usual opportunity to lock these young Black men up for profit, the judges and prosecutors are shelving the case and brushing off the family. As a result, the most recent court hearing was canceled, and family members were notified only after losing a day of work to get there. One family member of a PLer who attended spoke outside of the courthouse about how Black workers, particularly men, are set up to fail under this system, and it prevents them from working and being dedicated family members. One of the brothers affirmed that he applied for Amazon and UPS, and the potential charges were cited in his rejection letter. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Another fallacy under a system that keeps the bosses’ hands clean and shoves workers with the muck.

Two comrades spoke out against a neighborhood vigilante who went viral after recording himself stepping to Mayor Baraka at a local basketball game for selling out workers in Newark who are being left homeless and vulnerable to corporate buyouts. The mom of the brothers stated, “Still, the Mayor wishing death upon him isn’t right, and if it wasn’t for him no one would know about our case.” We adamantly noted that raising the politician’s attacks against this vigilante over the politics of the situation will dangerously win workers to fight more broadly on social media and for him or against Baraka alone, which is a weakened approach to fightback.

It’s much harder for bosses to get away with attacks against the working class where ideas are being transmitted through fightback that concretely reveal evidence to workers of how racist profiteering is being made primary over our housing needs. Therefore, it’s not just Baraka, it’s Capitalism! This is a hard lesson we experienced when a comrade got fired for teaching their students to fight racism outside their school and was known to challenge the Principal rather than build a long-term base with teachers and students. This is also a challenge we must face inpunleashing the massive potential of the Rodwell-Spivey fightback. Although the family and PL thank this person for bringing attention to the Rodwell-Spivey case, we still recognized and pointed out that the cult of personality around him is dangerous and he is not above criticism.

Furthermore, we need masses of workers with the same anger and militancy to fight for an internationalist communist revolution with unity en masse and long-term strategy to build on the jobs in our neighborhoods. That is what PLP brings to the struggle. We aim to continue to build on our relationship with the family and broaden the struggle to fight to smash police and imperialist terror throughout the state and internationally.

BROOKLYN, October 1—On a sunny Sunday afternoon, after a rainstorm paralyzed the whole city of NYC, nearly 30 workers in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our friends from our local community organization held a rally in solidarity with migrant workers, fighting back against liberal fascist Mayor Eric Adams’s new ordinance to evict migrant families after just 30 days, forcing them to restart the housing process all over again.

Our small but mighty multiracial and multigenerational contingent met at a busy park nearby before the rally to make signs that reflected our internationalist and antiracist politics: Smash all Borders and Evict racist capitalists were among the dozen signs we towed as we marched across the park, handing out CHALLENGES to the dozens of multiracial workers, chanting “Workers united will never be defeated” and “Immigrants yes and evictions no” in English and Spanish. From the Park we marched through the streets of Bushwick en route to the migrant shelter, where we learned that our class siblings were put out in the street during a torrential rain storm. This putrid racism displayed today is what capitalism has to offer to families already terrorized by the profit system. A system that literally puts families into the streets in the middle of storms and floods deserves to be drowned. Smash all borders!

PL’ers have a proud history of antiracist fightback in the Bushwick neighborhood for more than two decades.''Workers readily received our communist politics, and many took both the CHALLENGE and leaflets, and some young people briefly joined the march and chanted with us. This shows that no matter the condition, no matter the location, there are antiracists everywhere.

Marching through liberals’ racist lies
The march was a welcome change from the politics reflected by the liberal community organizations in Bushwick where our friends and PL’ers organize.

The organization supports liberal politicians (including Adams, who conducted electoral campaigns in this neighborhood for many years), and their inability to respond to the crisis is just another example of how slickly the capitalists’ agents hide the racism they use to pit workers against workers. Even some Latin members of the community organization and the neighborhood are being misdirected into racist ideas against this new wave of migrants, blaming them for the rise of crimes and the lack of jobs.

The bosses have even managed to pit other undocumented migrants against Venezuelan migrants, now that the bosses have  exploited  the latter’s presence to spread anti-communism. The bosses have now turned their backs on Venezuelan migrants, and there are talks of massive deportations of Venezuelans back to their country to allow other and new migrants to take their place as the new super-exploited. There are now recent migrants (for example, from Ecuador, another country which is now suffering the effects of U.S. imperialism, Haiti, and Sudan) who are arriving in  the U.S. and are last in line for work permits. It is clear that the sell-out politics of liberal capitalist organizations are incapable of helping workers fleeing the effects of imperialism and climate change.

Bushwick locals show solidarity with migrants
Once at the shelter, we gave speeches and chanted in front of the shelter, calling out the savage capitalist system as the cause, which needs to be destroyed and replaced by communism.

We also got harassed by a security guard, who claimed Bushwick locals would resent our presence and call the police. In fact, two locals who lived across from the shelter heard our chants, approached us, and asked to see our literature — proving that solidarity with migrants workers exists regardless of how hard racist bosses and their politicians pit us against each other. At first, some migrants were scared to show their faces in the window because of the harassment they often experience from cops. But a few of them did show their faces, and we waved to them.

Mayor Adams has been seeking to suspend the “right to shelter” law at a time when the City has the most need to house people. These politicians’ decisions—Republicans and Democrats—are driven by profit needs, not workers’ needs.

A Black woman PL’er gave a speech in Spanish that struck hard against this racist imperialist system and explained why communism is the only alternative:

We’re here today to say we need each and every one of you to join us to find a real way out of this nightmare. To fight for communism where no worker or child be forced to flee their homes because of war or poverty; a world without profits, money or borders. If we had communism no worker would need to seek refuge or be discarded.

We marched back to the starting point of our rally, receiving many nods and claps from workers along the way, distributing dozens more CHALLENGES. Our friends from the mass organization were older and struggling to walk but the strength of our solidarity and politics made it easier. By the end of our rally our friends were tired but still boosted by revolutionary energy, and were excited to continue the struggle to support migrant workers. The struggle to win our working class brothers and sisters to fight for a communist world continues. Onward!

How do you spell fascists? IDF
How do you spell murderers? IDF

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Hey, hey, ho, ho!
The occupation has got to go!

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Joe Biden, you can’t hide!
We charge you with genocide

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They are killing kids overseas...
Shut it down!
They’re killing kids in our streets...
Shut it down!
They’re getting killed by bombs...
Shut it down!
They’re getting killed by police...
Shut it down!
If they keep bombing...
Shut it down!
This racist system
Shut it down!
This genocidal system
Shut it down!
This capitalist system
Shut it down!
Shut this racist system down!
Shut this racist system down!

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U.S., Israel hand in hand
racist murder is the bosses’ plan,
From Palestine to Mexico
The bosses borders, got to go!