Imperialist conflict explodes in Sudan
France24, 4/23–As gunfire again echoed through Khartoum and fighter jets roared above, foreigners also fled the capital in a long United Nations convoy, while millions of frightened residents hunkered down inside their homes, many running low on water and food. Across the city of five million, army and paramilitary troops have fought ferocious street battles since April 15, leaving behind charred tanks, gutted buildings and shops that have been looted and torched. More than 420 people have been killed and thousands wounded, according to UN figures, amid fears of wider turmoil and a humanitarian disaster in one of the world's poorest nations.

Russia and Ukraine look to Koreas as new sources of weapons
Bloomberg, 4/23–Half a world away from the front line of Russia’s war in Ukraine there’s a stockpile of probably more than a million artillery shells on the Korean peninsula — a hoard that’s drawing attention as South Korea’s leader heads to Washington. President Yoon Suk Yeol has indicated his government may be open to changing its policy about providing lethal aid to Ukraine under certain conditions. That would be welcome news for US President Joe Biden, who has been seeking help from partners to ease Kyiv’s perennial ammunition shortage.

The Kremlin has said that if South Korea supplies arms to Ukraine it would make it a participant in the conflict, with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev suggesting Moscow could respond by selling advanced weaponry to North Korea, according to a Tass report. The Koreas have two of the world’s largest artillery forces, with thousands of big guns pointing at each other across the demilitarized zone that separates them. They have stockpiled hundreds of thousands of shells that include North Korean artillery inter-operable with Soviet-era artillery in Russia, and South Korean 155 mm caliber shells, which are the standard used by the NATO countries supplying Ukraine.

Chinese and Russian bosses look to expand military power
Foreign Affairs, 4/12–But the truly significant developments took place during closed-door, in-person discussions, at which Xi and Putin made a number of important decisions about the future of Chinese-Russian defense cooperation and likely came to terms on arms deals that they may or may not make public. The war in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia are reducing the Kremlin’s options and pushing Russia’s economic and technological dependence on China to unprecedented levels. These changes give China a growing amount of leverage over Russia. At the same time, China’s fraying relationship with the United States makes Moscow an indispensable junior partner to Beijing in pushing back against the United States and its allies. China has no other friend that brings as much to the table.

Workers in United Kingdom spiral deeper into poverty  
Der Spiegel, 4/18– As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months…Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future…it is impossible to deny the dismal reality of Blackpool…

The life expectancy of male residents is just under five years below the national average, while that for women is almost four years lower. Almost one in five residents suffers from what local doctors call "shit life syndrome," while anti-depressants are prescribed here twice as often as in the rest of the country. "If you are poor, sick, weak or tired, don’t come to Blackpool,"..."Nobody will help you here."

Strike: ‘we don’t need bosses or their system’
Last week I had the honor of participating in the Rutgers strike. It was great that in the very issue of CHALLENGE newspaper that was being passed out during the strike, there was an editorial on the protests in France which made the following point: strikes show us just a glimpse, just a small window into the panoramic potential of workers’ power when we run the world without answering to bosses. This  is the point that should have been the mass line that we spread during the strike, but it was not. Instead, we were so upset and worried at the sellout social democrats who were selling us short at the bargaining table, that we focused instead on pushing for the most radical strike possible as the penultimate show of workers’ power.

When I gave my speech, I should have made the point that striking shows us that we don’t need the bosses or their system. Instead, our strike under capitalism gets turned into a tool for bargaining for more power under the bosses’ system. And while it was an empowering week, inspiring even my colleagues next door at Essex County College (ECC) to become more militant, it did not and does not inherently lead to workers’ power.

It is our job to make that point as often as possible: the bosses need us; we don’t need them. So this is the point I will be continuing to push in my own union, New Jersey Education Association, and with my honest and hard working co-workers. In fact, many ECC full-time faculty teach at Rutgers part time just to make up the difference in our ridiculously low salaries, so we were in fact involved in the strike directly via some of our faculty members. Yes, we salute our fearless and militant colleagues at Rutgers!

We draw inspiration from you and learn the lessons of the victories from that strike–such as folks agreeing to come to May Day–as well as the pitfalls–such as thinking the most militant strike is the goal of our time and energy. Above all, we are inspired that the strike helps us see the necessity for building Progressive Labor Party and sharpening our fight for a world run by our class–a communist world!

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Rutgers strike gave us a chance to talk
The struggle at Rutgers is an important event for the working class to be part of.  It gives us the opportunity to talk to our coworkers, friends, and students about the importance of class struggle.

As a high school teacher I discuss the role of unions and strikes in class, but it is  actions like this that make it real for high school students. Some of my fellow coworkers joined me at the strike. They began to raise questions of fighting back and organizing within our own union. This led to a larger discussion with a coworker of the limitations of strikes - and more importantly - the dangers of focusing too much on individuals like Rutgers President Holloway while ignoring the larger capitalist system. This was somebody who has been reading the paper for over a year, but it was still hard for him to conceptualize how you build a revolutionary movement while still fighting for reforms. We discussed it more when we went back to school this past week.

Thank you to the Rutgers strikers for creating this opportunity to raise our line of reform and revolution in a period of relatively low class struggle in Newark.

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Teacher speaks out vs ‘profit nest’
Schools in Montgomery County need more funding to serve our students. As a teacher in the county, I spoke at a County Council hearing about raising taxes to do this. After hearing dozens of testimonies about student needs, I decided to change my 3-minute testimony from appealing to the Council and instead blasted them for listening to real estate developers who opposed the tax.

I remembered what a Progressive Labor Party comrade had suggested a few years ago: “You’re talking to the crowd of working class peers and comrades, not the politicians.”

The audience did include many teachers, bus drivers, education support staff, mechanics, public nurses, students and parents. As I spoke to the council, I turned and faced my real brothers and sisters. I asked them if their wages met the median wage in the county.

“No way!” rang out from the crowd!

I pointed out that the county council salaries go way over the median threshold and that there are five billionaires and 2,500 millionaires in the U.S. who could easily fund the needed budget. The County has 21 large real estate and/or construction companies. Are their interests really with keeping taxes low for the immigrant pursuing the “American dream” or the young couple buying their first house? Not at all. They just want to feather their own profit nests!

Here’s a thought: tax the rich to pay for our basic educational needs in the name of antiracist, equitable action and fund our schools.

I have no illusions that the bosses will “take the losses” on their own, but militant struggle to force such changes has a chance!

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CHALLENGE: It’s always a win when we can expose the bosses’ profit motive! But, the main-wing U.S. bosses do want their class to “take the losses” to some extent. In addition to exposing the rulers’ limits of reform, it is important to show workers that reforms of “shared sacrifice” and “tax the rich” are all part of the bosses’ fascist war preparations.

MIDDLESBORO, KY, April 7—Members of Progressive Labor Party worked with the Redneck Coalition in organizing an antisexist rally in response to Senate Bill 150 that attacks trans youth. The small but mighty contingent of PL’ers distributed food and CHALLENGE, and spoke of how transgender workers’ struggle is linked to capitalism. A PLP organizer declared that revolution for communism is the only path for liberation. Communism will provide healthcare for all, while eliminating exploitative and sexist gender roles, enabling all working-class people to participate in the labor activities needed for the new society’s progress.

Capitalists need gender roles to turn workers against each other and divide our class into hostile camps. They rake in massive super profits from paying women less in the labor market, while at the same time often keeping them shackled to the home and limited to forms of reproductive labor. Gender divisions help the bosses organize society to reproduce future generations of cheap labor and maintain their political power over us.

Capitalism divides
Capitalism, not “transphobia,” is to blame for the latest attacks against trans youth. These attacks are a further intensification of divisiveness rooted in a deeply sexist and racist system that thrives on super-exploitation of Black and women workers. This is the same system that prematurely kills hundreds of millions of workers around the world through poverty and a horrifically substandard health care system that is depriving trans workers and youth of gender affirming care. Only a communist system run by the working class can grant us the life affirming care we all desperately need.

Today’s rally was specifically in response to the anti-trans legislation (Senate Bill 150) about to pass in Kentucky. Such a law will give teachers the right to misgender students, require doctors to deny gender-affirming care for working-class youth, and prohibit discussions on topics like sexual orientation, sexually transmitted diseases, and more. Attacking the working class based on gender and sexuality divides our natural unity as working people whose labor is exploited. Gutter sexists can only thrive when the society is built on sexism and treating a section of the population as “less than.”

In response, we are determined to build working-class solidarity in the resistance to fascism, where all workers can unite to smash this racist sexist capitalist system once and for all.

Distributing event flyers around town and publicizing on Facebook resulted in a strong attendance at this event, the first of its kind in this area. “When I saw that this was happening, I had to go because I’d never seen anything like this before around here!” said a new attendee.

The Redneck Coalition is made up of anti-capitalist workers from Appalachia who seek to bring the term “Redneck” back to its radical roots, which comes from a history of multiracial struggles of mine workers against company owners in the mountains. The term has been degraded to a negative term for southern white workers, but its original meaning is antiracist militancy against capitalism! (WVpublic.org, 5/18/2015).

PLP and organizers in the Redneck Coalition demonstrated how the fight against racism and sexism must attack their source in capitalist exploitation. Fascism uses lies to get workers to attack each other to keep workers divided. A PLP speaker noted that “trans people . . . make up a disproportionate share of the homeless and unemployed, because capitalism places profit over human decency and human life.”

Big and Small Fascists
The entire U.S. ruling class is floundering—economically, politically, and militarily—as China rises and the U.S. hegemony is under siege. In the U.S., there are two main camps of what we call the Big Fascists—representing the more powerful bosses like Chase and Citibank, multinational oil companies like ExxonMobil — and the Small Fascists — represented by domestically oriented U.S. capitalists like the Kochs, Mercer, DeVos.

The Small Fascists are reluctant to spend money fighting wars to defend the global U.S. empire. Their agenda includes a racist gutting of social services at home and a retreat from U.S. imperialist alliances and commitments internationally. This faction is making inroads into winning millions of workers to see the Big Fascists as their enemy. Workers correctly understand that many of their lives have worsened under the leadership of Democrats, but they are allowing themselves to be led by outright racist, sexist, nationalist ideas spread by the Small Fascists. This cynical scapegoating has the effect of misleading and confusing people about their common interests against capitalism as a whole.

Reject all shades of fascis​​m
Still, the Big Fascists present the biggest danger for the working class in the U.S. because their liberal, “antiracist,” “antisexist” sounding jargon is pacifying millions by building the illusion that they can create a “nicer capitalism.” In reality they are attempting to win us to patriotically fight and die in the name of U.S. imperialism. We need to expose the hypocrisy of the liberal bosses. They are the leaders in attacks on healthcare, from attacking retired workers health insurance to slashing healthcare budgets to refusing to codify Roe vs. Wade.

The rally ended with a call to reject Republican and Democratic politicians because they represent respectively the open gutter racists like Trump and the slippery, dominant, liberal spokespeople for major financial capitalists like Biden. Both are poisonous! The liberal bosses stoke these culture wars for their own cynical purposes. They want to appear as the saviors so they can lead youth into world war.

Instead, building an antiracist, antisexist, internationalist communist movement is the path forward. Such organizing will create a hopeful vision for the future in an isolated area like rural Kentucky often written off by the rest of the U.S. A trans organizer with the Redneck Coalition declared the need for solidarity, saying, “We must build independent political power by and for the working class. If the fascists, like they would prefer, could ban trans people from even getting food at the grocery store, we must be able to feed them.”

The better world we require is communism, where we will take care of all of each other’s needs. Workers of the world, unite!

BALTIMORE, MD, April 8—With increasing hostilities among the imperialist powers pitting workers against their international class sisters and brothers, our job as communists is to continuously point to international revolutionary struggle as the only reasonable answer. This capitalist system must be destroyed and replaced with an egalitarian communist society run by workers. Twenty-six people, including members (PL’ers) of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), joined at a local park to celebrate the history and significance of the international workers’ holiday May Day, and to inform people of upcoming local May Day celebrations.

A custom playlist of revolutionary, pop, hip hop, and R&B songs from the 1950s to the present accompanied the outdoor dinner. People brought food, drinks, and desserts—with jerk chicken and homemade deviled eggs being the highlights of the dinner. One comrade’s family member even volunteered to grill burgers and hotdogs. Flags decorated with “Progressive Labor Party” and a triumphant fist were hung from the roof of the pavilion rented for the day.

Building an army to crush the bosses
Baltimore PL’ers are creating a plan to actively recruit more members, with hopes of doubling our size by May Day 2025. Hosting May Day dinners not only emboldens the newer leadership, but also strengthens the confidence that our working class sisters and brothers have in the Party. We are serious about pushing for a revolutionary transformation of the horrendous kkkapitalist system. Hosting dinners and cadre schools with the focus on connecting our local struggles to capitalist terror and war abroad reflects the commitment we in the Party have to our class in Baltimore and worldwide.

The dinner included a program filled with important talks about current reform struggles against police brutality and attacks against transgender students and workers, who have been heavily scapegoated and vilified by gutter racists and politicians. Comrades in Kentucky coincidentally led a rally against these sexist attacks on transgender youth and workers the same day. There was also a spoken word piece about the doomed future of youth under a capitalist system and a short comedic play performed by PL’ers. A friend of the Party, who wrote the play, used it as a tool to describe what communism is.

One comrade illustrated her experience working with college peers in a student organization at a predominantly white, liberal arts college. Everyone engaged in the program, listening as PL’ers upheld working class solidarity and gave critical analysis of capitalism’s deliberate tragedies and destruction of society.

No money, and no nations
Despite the unpredictably cold spring weather (Maryland isn’t known for the smoothest start to spring), everyone enjoyed the company, discussions, and political program. One attendee wrote to a comrade afterward, “I loved reading the PLP paper, and am especially happy about the concept of no money, and no nations.”

A previously active comrade came and also encouraged people to attend the May Day rally in Brooklyn. After a few years away from the Baltimore club, her attendance and enthusiasm to hold up our CHALLENGE newspaper was greatly appreciated. One attendee remarked, at the end of the gathering, that he learned a lot more about communism from the program. Comrades from DC and Virginia also came towards the dinner’s end, reinforcing our practice of local clubs supporting each other in our area.

As we ramp up our efforts for May Day and summer actions, we remember that our daily actions must be rooted in the workers, since we are the ones with the power to shut the entire system down. Workers know this, have seen this, and it is our responsibility as revolutionaries to ensure that the process is pushed with communism and multiracial leadership at the forefront. Until we win!