This summer project centered around two major events: 1) a march in protest of the murder of Shantel Davis by police detective Phil Atkins in 2012 and 2) the imprisonment of Justin Rodwell and the legal attacks on him and his brothers for resisting police terror. These two struggles encapsulated what the party is all about and were an opportunity to demonstrate our politics in practice to everyone at the SP.
The march was a powerful experience; it connected the murder of Kyam Livingston to Alex Flores (LA) to Shantel Davis. Families of all three spoke about losing their loved ones is something no one should ever have to experience. But under capitalism these racist killings are the order of the day. We took the streets! It was a show of resistance against the bosses and their enforcers and also an unapologetic expression of the party’s politics. Many gave speeches about how we need to unite to fight this capitalist system that creates these police who kill us. This had a profound effect not only on the PL’ers and friends present but also on the workers who marched, chanted, and raised their fists with us.
Smash racist housing conditions
The SP also centered around the housing struggle in Newark, NJ.  In multiracial groups, we trekked to Stephen Crane Village where for the past two years, a comrade who resides there is trying to organize neighbors against the inhumane conditions and privatization of the complex. PL’ers went door to door to show residents CHALLENGE and invite to a PL-authored skit in the courtyard.
The skit addressed the issues surrounding public housing such as rent increases, vermin, cynicism, and the importance of organizing—all with a dose of humour. At the performance, one resident recognized the comrade and was enthusiastic about growing this struggle.
Courts & cops, all part of bosses’ plan
The SP culminated with a discussion on why nationalism is always the enemy. We identified how nationalism and revisionism disguises itself as radicalism, but is really reactionary and how it destoyed revolutionary states like China and working class movements around the world. We also identified present day examples of nationalism: whether it takes the form of reformist Black mayors like Ras Baraka who promotes voting as the solution to ending racism, but uses his state police force to terrorize Black workers, or fake-revolutionary, revisionist groups who call for multicultural capitalism that ultimately would keep capitalists of all identities on top and workers on the bottom.
With all this in mind PLP held a protest at the Essex County Courthouse with Justin Rodwell’s family on the day of his latest court hearing. Justin continues to languish in jail more than a year after he and his brothers were attacked by Newark Police. During the hearing the fascist judge noticed our numbers and threatened us to keep silent, but when PL’ers held our fists up in solidarity with an imprisoned worker, Justin put up his fist in response. Later his family told us how they were now even more committed to fighting back against this racist, fascist system.
Confidence in our potential
This project provided us with some assignments for the future, inspiring all those involved. Next year, we need to sharpen the struggle with students and workers around us to participate in these events. After a comrade spoke to a student about the Shantel Davis march, the student said, “I really wish I took care of my chores on Friday so I could have been there.”
We are already making plans for a recap for all of our friends who weren’t able to make it. PLP has a strong potential for growth. At our closing event, one participant joined!
Another comrade spoke about writing a pamphlet. As they looked around at the other comrades working with him he said, “You’re not alone. Something about being in this space that makes it feel possible.”
Despite the attacks on our class, we know that a communist world is possible. This project gave us a small glimpse of that world we want to create through the power of collectivity.

*****

Letters from youth participants

This was my first summer project experience with the Progressive Labor Party. I had met several members over the years and joined a study group. It was inspiring to see PLP converge for concentrated class struggle. The party is diverse, grounded and led by the working class, as well as intergenerational. That was obvious to see just from the welcome barbecue.
I read about the police assault against the Rodwell-Spivey family in CHALLENGE, and I met the family after the court case. The police are predators, and they are patrolling workers’ neighborhoods to terrorize and intimidate wholesale just like the slave patrols that are their forebearers.
I volunteered for childcare during the hearing, but I heard from the family and the comrades about the struggle in the courtroom. The judge patronizingly instructed the witnesses in the gallery to respect the hall of criminal injustice and slavery, and in response many comrades raised their fists as a silent protest. Melodramatically the judge put his hand over his heart in response. They use patriotism and nationalism in order to rationalize and hide from their own role as enforcers of the bosses’ dictatorship.
I was glad to be a part of the team, and I was inspired to join the party at the end!
*
During the Summer project, I, along with my comrades, had an important experience in Newark. June 1st marked the one year anniversary of the Rodwell-Spivey family being attacked by the kkkops. Undercover kkkops targeted two of the Rodwell-Spivey brothers claiming they were looking for a Black man wearing a white t-shirt with dreads. On July 12th, a hearing for four of the brothers took place to set a trial date. One of the brothers had been waiting for this trial for a year in jail, rotting away on misdemeanor charges of “resisting arrest.”
Before the hearing, the Progressive Labor Party and Rodwell-Spivey Defense Team held a rally outside of the courthouse. Then we stepped into a building named after Martin Luther King, the same building that ironically locked up Black men. We waited outside of the kkkourtroom for what seemed like hours before a kkkourt guard told us to conduct ourselves well and hold our thoughts and grievances for after the hearing or we would be removed.
As the hearing began I could see the cracks in the system showing themselves through a callous prosecutor and unprepared city attorneys. On a zoom call the prosecutors showed no concern, mixing up the plea bargain dates of 18 months to 3 years. One city attorney needed three more weeks to prepare for the trial. Two chose not to speak on behalf of their clients. One attorney and family friend of the Rodwell-Spivey family pushed for the full body cam footage from the day of the arrest. However, the prosecutor did not send the film nor contacts to retrieve it. As the hearing began to end, the trial was once again pushed back.
After showing no emotion during the hearing the judge flips out, berating the antiracist supporters in the gallery. He tells us that he has treated us with respect and dignity and he expected the same. He grew louder and told us a group before had disrespected him and he would not stand for it. What the capitalist with current authority was referring to was a hearing when PLP, the Rodwell-Spivery family, and friends of the family said “We Miss You Justin.” We left the courtroom silent and with fists up. Outside the doors, we started chanting, “Free Justin.” Within seconds, multiple cops came ready to pounce.
Previously I had only been to a courtroom on a school trip. But this experience was completely different. I’ve learned that there might be fancy language and specific rules to represent capitalist law. However, the people ruling do not have the interest of the working class at heart.
The judge told us to respect his courtroom and to respect him. But how are we supposed to respect people who allow Black men to rot away in prison when they have the power to take them out? How are we supposed to respect the same courts that give kkkops a slap on the wrist when they murder our Black and Latin brothers and sisters? How are we supposed to respect the courts when they are only made to put the working class “in their place?” If we are not receiving justice in the courts, we as workers must shut them down!
H
My takeaway from this year’s summer project was that leadership comes from the entire working class. As someone who has been on many projects, it’s always uplifting and motivating to draw from the experience and knowledge from so many comrades and workers. We collectively organize to achieve goals, get to know each other better, and just have fun. As always, my participation this past week has provided me with a sharpened optimism and energy to build the Party in my area.
*
My first PLP summer project deepened my sense of urgency and pride for the fight for working-class power. Spending several days with PLP  members and like-minded folks normalized open discussion of the very particular ways the capitalist system fails us all. There were several educators like myself from across the country dealing with similar things like being scolded for being open with students about having recently tested positive for Covid, being excluded in decisions to implement initiatives and strategies that require extra time and energy but so often get thrown out, and trying to safely navigate discussions about reproductive rights in schools where sex education leaves a lot to the imagination. One educator even lost his job for giving students food and allowing them to enter the building to keep them from the cold before the approved time (See CHALLENGE, 7/20). He got his job back when parents, students and PLP raised enough of a noise to embarrass school bosses for their foolishness.
It was impressive that some teachers invited students! With them, we watched a leader of the NAACP take a nap in a Newark kkkourtroom where Justin Spivey was given additional jail time without any conviction, due to the repeat instance of absentee lawyers and a judge who claimed there was “not much else I can do.”
We heard a healthcare worker discuss single handedly organizing a walkout due to lack of personal protective equipment(PPE).Another PL’er ushered us into their experience of deplorable housing conditions and gentrification, as we knocked on residents doors to invite them to a Party written and performed play about just that!  We also witnessed a couple roast each other on the topic of Stalin's militancy sparked from the decision of where a group of us should go for ice cream!
Hearing so many intense struggles told by the people who experienced them as well as participating in a few as a multiracial, multigenerational collective, for me, ate away at the sense of isolation that makes these problems seem unrelated.

*

Suffering from the worst shortages of gas and fuel, food, and medicine not seen since independence in 1948, workers and students in Sri Lanka rebelled. Many hundreds of thousands joined a protest movement demanding the ouster of the ruling Rajapaksa family. When president Gotabaya Rajapaksa refused to resign, protesters stormed the Presidential palace, occupying the extravagant grounds and chasing him out of the country. Workers even took a swim in the presidential pool.
The new president is now-former prime minister Ranil Wickremesing, whose official residence was burned down after over 100,000 protesters surrounded the mansion (CNN, 7/13). Working class rebellion is a good thing.
This system is getting worse each day. Fighting back is the only way to change it. Long-term victory means going beyond rebellion or demands for different capitalists to be put in power.  It requires us to organize to build a communist movement with the outlook of putting the working class in power.
Workers bear the burden of the bosses’crisis
The capitalist crisis in Sri Lanka is a warning sign for the rest of South Asia; The Maldives, Bangladesh, and Pakistan’s economies are on the brink.  This crisis is exposing the weakness that was hiding under the surface of the world’s capitalist economies.
Capitalism has never worked. Even though the capitalists considered Sri Lanka a success story, the working class here has lived in poverty even before the current crisis. In 2020 the per capita income was about $1300/year (ceicdata.com).
The crisis was caused by three main factors. The Sri Lankan bosses have relied on massive borrowing from the big imperialists and used the money they made from tourism to pay off what they owed. The combination of terrorist attacks and the pandemic gutted the tourist industry around the globe and Sri Lanka lost its main source of profits (Washington Post, 7/9).
The second factor was the ravenous profit motive of the Sri Lankan ruling class, dominated by the Rajapaksa family. Just before the pandemic hit, Sri Lanka’s short-sighted bosses gave themselves a massive tax cut that increased their profits at the expense of the working class (Washington Post, 7/9).
The third factor is the overall crisis of capitalism that is affecting the working class in every country. The combination of the pandemic and now the U.S.-led sanctions against Russia have set off inflation in the country currently at over 50 percent. On top of that it’s nearly impossible to get fuel for cars or cooking and electricity has been severely cut (Reuters, 7/7). The World Food Program reported that 86% of families were either skipping meals, eating less or buying worse foods (NPR, 7/20).
Sri Lanka’s importance in inter-imperialist rivalry
The island country is at an important location in the Indian Ocean and equidistant in the east-west maritime corridor; it’s at the crossroads of busy shipping routes. Since Sri Lanka’s initiation into China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, it has entangled itself in the regional and global rivalry between Japan, India, the U.S. and China.
In 2017, China took over the strategic port Hambantota in India’s backyard (CNBC, 12/13/17). India, the regional imperialist, needs Sri Lanka in its sphere of influence, which is aligned with the U.S.-led liberal order post World War II.
However, China has been expanding its imperialist tentacles via “debt traps” and infrastructure investments. Not only did Sri Lanka built its minimally-used Rajapaksa International Airport from China’s loans and started the The Port City project in Colombo, the two countries also share a military relationship. “China’s influence…has grown exponentially in the last 15 years as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda…became a dominant force in Sri Lankan politics” (Voa News, 6/10).
So why is China not committing to approve new loans to Sri Lanka right now as the small country is asking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund? Well, “China appears to be shifting its strategic focus toward Southeast Asia and Africa” (Voa News, 6/10).
All capitalists, big and small, function under the rule of competition. Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is an opportunity for India to regain some influence. India provided around $3.5 billion as credit, and shipped fuel, food, and fertilizers recently. “After the initial credit line…both countries in January agreed to jointly operate 61 giant oil tanks…For over 30 years, India has been trying to access the British-era facility which will enable it to store strategic oil reserves” (BBC, 7/19).
At the moment, it seems that the ruling Rajapaksa family is aligned closer to China, and the U.S. news coverage of the rebellion has been largely positive. The movement has drawn countless protesters to the capital of Colombo to demand larger reforms. The dangers of this movement include what the working class of Sri Lanka is intimately familiar with: nationalism and identity politics. While it’s unclear which faction of bosses are backing the movement, one thing is certain: short of an international communist revolution that rejects all the bosses—local, regional, and global—the working class in Sri Lanka will become a pawn in the bosses’ games as they prepare for larger conflict.
As the global capitalist crisis infects more and more economies, there is only war and fascism headed for our class. Caught in the imperialist crosshairs, Sri Lanka aims to play both sides in an increasingly volatile world order where the working class will pay the ultimate price. While Sri Lankan bosses have tried to “remain neutral” on the war in Europe, this will be harder to do as imperialist contradictions sharpen. The country’s desperation for supplies has pushed it to buy oil from Russia. “There is an advantage…if we could buy [discounted] oil directly from [Russia],” said Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera (AP, 6/27). This is an illustration of the deterioration of the U.S.-led liberal order (see editorial, page 2). Let’s be clear: there is no loyalty among thieves, which is what bosses of all stripes are.
The heroism of the working class is inspiring
The protest movement includes students and workers, including some from less-oppressed sectors of our class. The storming of the presidential palace was inspiring and a lesson that the working class has the potential to not only beat the bosses, but also run a communist world. To achieve something beyond a new set of bosses replacing the old ones requires a movement that is looking to get rid of an entire system. The only way workers in Sri Lanka can escape this imperialist death sentence is to go beyond reformist militancy and fight for communist revolution.

NEWARK, NJ, July 15—The Marxist Literary Group (MLG) is a group of progressive academics who have met annually for half a century; Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades have been regular participants. A hundred members attended this year’s week-long conference, whose theme was “Transition.” As the rulers who run the imperialist world-system gear up for World War III and unleash their guided missiles on the working class, the Party went in with a much stronger political presence than in the past. We distributed dozens of copies of CHALLENGE and spoke openly about the need for a party to make revolution for a communist world.
Attacking the Big Fascists
Front and center in all our presentations was the connection between liberalism and fascism. A multiracial group of Newark, NJ-based PL’ers involved in combating racist police terror presented a film titled Copaganda.
“I’m really nervous!” said the student comrade who was speaking about the role of liberal Big Fascist Mayor, Ras Baraka in enforcing violent police repression in Black neighborhoods. The Big Fascists are represented by the multinational banks and energy companies that control the Democratic Party.
“Hey, you’re fine!” “You’re doing great!” enthusiastically shouted the audience. For many in attendance, this session was the high point of the entire conference.
In the same panel, another comrade presented a documentary film about the politics and economics of Caribbean tourism. Focusing on the history of the walls set up in Aruba to separate visitors from workers, her talk redirected the whole question of building walls away from anti-Trumpism—an easy target—and located its grounding in the “big money” imperatives of colonialism and imperialism.
In a panel on “The Dialectics of Transition,” a comrade argued that the similarity between liberalism and fascism is primary over their difference. What makes fascism and liberalism more similar than different is their political relationship with capitalism itself. Liberal democracy, which has within it the roots of fascism, is a way the bosses cement their class rule.
PLP brings communist politics
 Another panelist examined the failed historical transition during the Reconstruction era in the U.S. toward what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy.” After the Civil War, both northern capitalists and southern plantation owners commonly feared above all else the specter of a racially unified movement of farmers and workers.
A comrade who has written extensively about the USSR shared his most recent research about the relationship between Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Unless the prevailing falsehoods surrounding scholarship on Soviet history are refuted, and people understand both the actual achievements and the shortcomings of Soviet socialist construction, the revolutionary “transition” from capitalism to communism will be significantly blocked.
Finally, PLP comrades and friends led a reading group that examined Marxist analyses of the grounding of fascism in capitalism and imperialism. One speaker focused on the mid-1930s debate within the communist movement between the call for social revolution issued by R. Palme Dutt and the advocacy of a popular front by Georgi Dimitrov. History shows that the united front resulted in only fortifying the bosses’ system and laid the basis for the corruption of the old communist movement.
Another speaker discussed the Caribbean communist poet Aimé Césaire’s dissection of European fascism as a direct result of colonial brutality.
A third speaker examined the writings of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who ironically observed that democracy “organized fascism when it felt it could no longer resist the pressure of the working class” and no longer hide behind their pretense of  democracy.
Gramsci concluded that when the mask of democracy falls off, the ruler’s naked brutality is exposed, and the bosses use violence and repression to crush the working class in order to regain control of their system.
Be a communist, not just a Marxist
Many intellectuals who attend the MLG conferences describe themselves as Marxists, but not as communists. This needs to change. The Party builds a base with these graduate students and professors to help them unify theory and practice. We urge them to align themselves with the actual struggles of the working class and join our revolutionary Party. The working class, guided by international antiracist solidarity, is the leading force for revolutionary change. While intellectuals may display many of the weaknesses of bourgeois socialization, historically more than a few have been valuable revolutionary fighters for the working class: Karl Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Claudia Jones—thinkers and fighters all.
Besides, many of the younger members of the MLG are themselves at best precarious workers, facing a jobless future in a university in decline in this perhaps “terminal” crisis of capital. Many professors and graduate students see themselves as workers and are active in their campus unions.
PLP argues that all sectors of the working class must reject liberalism as a way to save workers from the increasingly destructive effects—political, economic, environmental—of capitalist decay. In essence, liberal democracy turns into fascism as the imperialists of the world prepare for world war (see editorial, page 2).
We must fight against developing fascism with a revolutionary communist movement.

 This is part 10 of a series about Black communists in the Spanish Civil War. In the early 1930s the urban bourgeoisie (capitalists) of Spain, supported by most workers and many peasants, overthrew the violent, repressive monarchy to form a republic. In July 1936 the Spanish army, eventually commanded by Francisco Franco, later the fascist dictator, rebelled to reestablish the repressive monarchy. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini's Italy gave Franco massive military aid.
In 1936 the International Communist Movement, called the Comintern, headquartered in the Soviet Union and led by Joseph Stalin, organized volunteers, mainly workers from more than 60 countries into the International Brigades (IBs) to go to Spain to defend the Republic. Black workers, especially Black communists, emphasized the importance of fighting racism to win anything for the working class. And they brought this antiracist fightback with them when they returned to the United States. They were building a movement they hoped would lead to communist revolution around the world. They succeeded in organizing millions around communist ideas and practices. But the movement believed that uniting with liberal bosses to defend the Republic in Spain would further the fight for communism. This was part of the united front against fascism, which resulted in only fortifying the bosses’ system and laid the basis for the corruption of the old communist movement.
In the Progressive Labor Party, we are against any unity with capitalists. They all have to go and the working class must rule: that's communism.
If the working class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers’ leadership is essential. That is the only way our class can destroy racism, the lifeblood of capitalism. The following is a story of one such leader, Crawford Morgan.

Crawford Morgan was born in 1910 in Rockingham, North Carolina. After high school, he became an apprentice printer. He moved first to Norfolk Virginia, then to New York City. During the Depression, he became involved in organizations of the unemployed in New York City and was arrested in a demonstration at the Home Relief Bureau.
Morgan joined the Young Communist League (YCL) in 1932. The YCL was the vibrant youth wing of the Communist Party, which he joined four years later. Despite anticommunist lies in the bosses’ media, communism was held in high regard among masses of Black working women, men, and youth.
From ‘runner’ to driver
 Morgan sailed for Spain in March, 1937. He was assigned to the infantry attached to the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (mainly Canadian, but also U.S. volunteers). He was later transferred to the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, serving at brigade headquarters as a communications “runner,” radio communication being insecure.
In August 1937, on the Aragon front, Morgan received a leg wound storming the town of Quinto. After recovery, he returned to his unit. But complications from his leg wound led to his becoming a truck driver in the Transport Unit for the remainder of the war.
In World War II, Morgan served in all-Black units in the segregated U.S. Army from 1942 until 1946, including two years in Europe. After the war, he again worked as a truck driver, then as an offset printer.
Defends his role as a communist
In September 1954, Morgan testified on behalf of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) in hearings before the red-baiting (i.e. anticommunist) Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) of the U.S. Department of Justice. The committee was seeking to declare the VALB a “subversive organization” – the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was led by communists and at least 80 percent of the Brigade were Communist Party members.
Asked why he had fought as a communist in Spain, Morgan had answered:
Being a Negro, and all of the stuff that I have had to take in this country, I had a pretty good idea of what fascism was. I got a chance there [in Spain] to fight it with bullets and I went there and fought it with bullets. If I get a chance to fight it with bullets again, I will fight it with bullets again.
While the U.S. ruling class government exposed itself as the custodians of brutal racist injustice, Morgan publicly displayed his confidence in his role as a communist. He has also used this as a space to denounce the capitalist system (see below).
Morgan died in 1976. In that year an article in The Volunteer, the journal of the VALB, wrote:
He served with discipline, dignity and courage. He was liked. He was respected. He was
 a comrade whose qualities were deep and pervasive … A demonstration of this was given by him as witness for VALB in the prosecution before the late Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) 1954.
[Called as a defense witness, Morgan] was one of the most effective witnesses of that long era of the “Un-American” Inquisition…
… under cross-examination [he] remained what he was and what he said flowed directly and lucidly from his life's experiences related simply and without sentimentality. This was anything but easy, especially for a Black man and in the supercharged political lynch-atmosphere of the era. The prosecuting attorneys were young, bright, alert, and prepared ... [he] met and speared their well-planned attacks so cleanly that they hung limp.
 ... [He] was cross-examined on arrests and/or convictions in California. His narration of what it meant to be unemployed, penniless and young in the Great Depression unrolled with such classic and telling simplicity that it became a veritable “J’accuse,” the condemnation of his condemners and all they represented.
The prosecutors spun out that [he] was fervently opposed to fascism and sought to extract the implication that in taking up arms against fascism he had thus acted against the interests of the U.S. His answer was that, on the contrary, the defense of Republican Spain was the defense of the American people.
It became clearer and clearer that the prosecutors were becoming less and less inclined to tangle further with him. In the end, they were glad just to be rid of him. He was too much the exemplary 'premature anti-fascist' for them. He vindicated the Abraham Lincoln Battalion.
Later on in the early 1970s, Morgan worked with the VALB's Historical Commission to gather information on other Black volunteers.
Crawford Morgan was one of many Black workers who joined the Communist Party to fight against racism and for communism. He took the lead in fighting against fascism in Spain and for internationalism. Today, as then, Black workers’ leadership  is key to the fight against racism and for communist revolution.

Sources: The Volunteer, December 1976; Joseph Brandt, Black Americans in the Spanish Civil War Against Fascism; Cullum & Berch, African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War; The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.