HAITI, July 2—Since January 2023, the two-year “Humanitarian Parole” program has offered Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Salvadorans the possibility of entering the U.S. without going through the traditional “illegal” channels. This program, which in reality aims to reduce the number of migrants crossing the U.S. borders, has been praised by many Haitian workers and others who only dream of fleeing a country plagued by gang terror, economic misery, and political instability. Even children only talk about traveling. But the reality is that U.S. imperialism prefers to camouflage the problems that we are facing more than to really come to our rescue. In the capitalist world, solidarity is not an option: the big fish have no mercy for the little ones—the countries of the global north have no compassion for the countries of the global south. Their only aim is to squeeze profits off the cheap labor of migrants.

“I can't wait, I can't wait any longer for my approval to come,” admits a young graduate in legal sciences who is doing his second year of internship as a lawyer. He draws up a list of others like himself who have sponsors in the U.S. and have already applied to the program. He adds that many of these applicants, who have been waiting six months in limbo, are in danger of developing mental disorders from the stress, in particular depression. They are living on the edge, fearful of the insecurity created by the gangs and the rampant inflation that increasingly impoverishes them and their families. And there are others who can not find sponsors because the conditions set by Biden & Co. are very difficult for sponsoring friends and family members.

Those who do manage to leave come from all sections of society: workers (employed and unemployed), professionals, public and private executives, teachers and students. “Our country is pushing us out; we are not needed here,” said one person interviewed for this article. “It’s like we are in a pressure cooker, and the chief chef has opened the valve to let some steam out. This won’t solve the problems that the Haitian masses are facing because of the profit system.”

This is the march to Canaan, the Promised Land. Some people say it is a forced exodus even believing that the U.S. has hidden interests. Many know that what waits for them on the other side is not the gold in the streets but rather more racism, unemployment or low-wage jobs, underserved schools and hospitals, crowded and overpriced housing. So many deplore the program, but the contradiction is that it is hard to resist the urge to take advantage of it. They hope they will be able to fade into the population after the two-year “parole” ends.

U.S. Imperialists Can’t Find Other Countries to Intervene/Invade Haiti
For several months now, the “international community,” that is the imperialists and their local lackeys, have been dithering on finding a solution to the crisis in Haiti. None of the countries in the region is willing to give in to U.S. demands to field an invasionary force to restore some semblance of stability. The U.S. bosses’ decline in influence in the region is evident. Even Canada, a long-time imperialist player in Haiti, is hedging; the best they could come up with is setting up an office in the neighboring Dominican Republic to monitor the situation. The Dominican government rejected that idea, and both countries issued a toothless statement regarding their commitment to stability in Haiti.

The politicians in the Haitian bourgeoisie continue to act as if they are wearing blinders. Most working class people understand that these politicians are not their friends but are looking out for their own personal interests, looking for any opportunity for some sort of power grab. The local bourgeoisie crawls on hands and knees, in search of favor from the imperialist powers and multinational organizations.

The only solution is to stand up and fight back
You can feel the level of insecurity and fear in the masses. So when a Progressive Labor Party comrade says that she is not going to look for a sponsor to leave, that she is willing to “fight back against the capitalist system that has created this mess,” she is often met with skepticism. But using patience and all the tools of historical and dialectical materialism that she has learned in PLP cadre schools and study groups, she can say that the workers of Haiti have fought for their liberation in the past and will do so again. Capitalism and imperialism have built-in contradictions that make life a misery for one, very large class of human beings who produce all value in society. That we have not just a few Polish soldiers (who deserted Napoleon’s army during the Haitian Revolution and fought on the side of the enslaved workers), but will fight for the solidarity and unity of the entire international working class. We will build a new revolutionary communist movement that fights resolutely in the interests of our class.

This young comrade can make the difference in our ability to organize workers for communism and an egalitarian society! We have taken modest steps, engaging with our local populations in fighting against “food insecurity”—hunger through collective kitchens; organizing to provide masks and public sanitation kiosks against the Covid-19 pandemic; working together with our neighbors to rebuild homes and infrastructure after the 2021 earthquake in our area. These are all struggles that our Party initiated along with our friends to combat the local bosses who neglect the needs of workers and line their own pockets with ‘international aid.”

We can do better and we can do more. There are many more like her who would like to maintain their conviction and their composure in such troubling social, economic and political situations. In the current chaos, the ideological foresight of the members of the PLP is revolutionary. Raising class consciousness through struggle and political education is a necessity for the growth of our Party. This will be our goal this summer in our cadre school.

Long live our struggle, long live PLP. Onwards to the final victory!

Prince George’s County, Maryland, July 5—Since 1977, Progressive Labor Party here has joined and led workers to fight against government-sponsored terrorism by police, prosecutors, judges, and jails. Today was no different!

Antiracists, PLP, and the family are demanding justice for William Green and conviction of killer kop Michael Owen. William deserves nothing short of a communist revolution, for all reforms are a dead-end plan for the working class.

Who was William?
On January 27, 2020, William had been in a car accident. He was searched, handcuffed behind his back, and put in the front seat of the police cruiser. None of the bosses’ typical racist excuses for killing applied—William was not resisting, he was not armed, and there was no warrant for him. Yet, kkkop Michael Owen entered the police cruiser and almost immediately fired seven shots, killing William, who was only 47 and a father.
Killer cop Owen was charged with second degree murder and other offenses related to the killing and has been in prison for three years, but he is still on the Prince George's County Police Force on administrative leave!

Slow-walking the murder case
The prosecutors and the cop’s attorneys seem to be determined to drag out the case against Cop Owen, hoping people will forget this racist murder or get tired of protesting. The family, however, as a result of the efforts of Nikki Owens (William’s cousin and family spokesperson), has doggedly stayed on the case. No advocate from the States Attorney’s office was assigned to the family as is usually the case, so Nikki kept checking the PG County Case Search to keep abreast of changes to the case. When she noticed changes in the trial dates, she demanded more information about the change from the prosecutors.

After multiple emails and notifying the press, her diligence forced the prosecutors to reach out to the family just two weeks before the start of his trial to schedule a meeting. At the meeting, one week before the trial, they told the family that they offered Owen a plea deal and he accepted.

That was unacceptable to Nikki! She made “NO PLEA DEAL" for this killer cop the theme of a hastily-called rally on the court day. A week of press conferences and interviews with Nikki, other local fighters, and non-profit groups all had the same demand to prosecute the killer cop fully. Ironically, the plea deal was so bad that the judge declined the deal and set a trial date of November 27, 2023.

State-sponsored terror
PLP describes police brutality as a key part of state-sponsored terrorism because police act as agents of the capitalist class and their state apparatus. Their role in capitalist society is to oppress and terrorize the working class, especially Black workers.

The rulers fear that Black workers, super exploited and oppressed by capitalism, will fight back militantly as they have in the past. Police are to protect capitalism, property over people and attack all working-class people who oppose them with strikes, rallies, protests, and rebellions.

Broadening the fight
PL’ers have joined Nikki’s family at hearings on procedural motions leading up to the trial. Recent efforts by the cop’s lawyer to move the trial to a more conservative location in Maryland failed, as family and supporters filled the courtroom.

Baltimore PLP comrades and friends active in the West Wednesdays (a struggle to seek justice for Tyrone West who was killed by  police in 2013) joined local supporters in the courtroom. One is a young leader who is quickly learning about the court system! Nikki’s family and other community members welcomed the West Wednesday brothers and sisters to this fight for justice.

On September 28, 2023 at 9 am, there will be another hearing. The cop’s lawyer is trying to  have evidence against Cop Owen ruled inadmissible. This type of lying lawyering led to Zimmerman's acquittal in the Trayvon Martin murder case. PLP will continue to mobilize more people to attend all hearings leading up to trial and the trial itself on November 27.

The antics of prosecutors and defense attorneys in cases that involve victims of police violence should themselves be considered criminal. Families are experiencing repeated trauma by court systems that allow trial delays for frivolous reasons, toy with the time of the court and families with unnecessary motions, and have families sit in court as defense attorneys criminalize victims in hopes of getting reduced sentences or charges dropped. And most families endure years of this government-sanctioned treatment as they fight for some resemblance of justice for their loved ones.   

Reformism a dead-end
Reform groups that PLP members participate in fought in the state legislature to establish county-based Police Accountability Boards (PAB). Predictably, no county in Maryland gave their Board investigatory or subpoena powers, so such toothless organizations will, like civilian review boards across the country, rubber stamp police reports.

These groups keep focusing on who to elect and then pressure them to push a police accountability agenda. They organize many trips to Annapolis, Maryland’s state capital, to testify on bills and meet with state legislators. Canvassing to bring out workers to vote is crucial to them. This is an example of how reform misleaders dull the fightback and steer workers away from revolution.

PL members involved in all of these efforts constantly point out how these strategies are dead-ends in the struggle and that militant, revolutionary struggle for communism is the only strategy that makes sense. Some fighters are tuning in!J

We invite you to participate in Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) international convention on July 14 to July 16. From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement in 1964, PLP has grown into an international party now organizing in five continents. Even as our class faces a dark night and growing inter-imperialist rivalry and fascism, we continue our fightback because this is just the beginning of a worthy struggle towards an international communist revolution.

Over its first first years, PLP has propelled the march to communism—first by leading antiracist, working-class struggle, and then through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy—practice and theory—is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.

Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine society’s future. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism that drags down all workers. It will terminate the racist cops who break our strikes and kill workers, especially our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will end for all time the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.

A communist world
Here is our vision for a communist world:
A society run by workers and for workers. After all, the working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.

Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the parasitic bosses who steal most of the value of our labor through wage slavery.
Multiracial unity and death to the racism that divides the working class. Racism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide. Fighting racism is part of the lifeblood of PLP.

The destruction of sexism and the systemic exploitation, oppression, and cultural degradation of women workers. Sexism is a pillar of class society, and capitalism has only furthered this lethal weapon against our class. Women and men must unite to smash sexist ideas and practices. PLP emphasizes working-class women’s leadership in making revolution, particularly Black women’s leadership.

Eliminating all borders, artificial lines the bosses draw to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.

This is the world the PLP has fought for from the start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle—for ourselves, our children and grandchildren, and all the world’s children.

Struggle and theory
From our earliest beginnings in the 1960s, PLP has fought tooth and nail against attacks by the ruling class. We have organized and supported Ford workers and striking teachers in Mexico; wildcatting miners in Hazard, Kentucky; longshore workers in New York City; jute (fiber) workers in India; miners in Britain; garment workers in Los Angeles; bank workers in Colombia; transit workers in Washington, DC; Chrysler sit-down strikers at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant; farm workers in California, and bakery workers at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx. We have stood with evicted workers in Palestine-Israel, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Haiti and New Orleans.

Antiracism is a hallmark of PLP.  We backed Black workers and youth in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, and fought off racist school segregationists in Boston in 1975. In 1976 we integrated Chicago’s Marquette Park while smashing the Nazi headquarters there, and have led more than a hundred thousand protesters against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis across the United States. We have mobilized against racist killer cops from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Ferguson, Missouri.

PLP has led fierce fightbacks opposing the  bosses’ wars. In the 1960s, we were the first to organize mass demonstrations for the U.S. to “Get Out of Vietnam!” We formed the Worker-Student Alliance in the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society. PLP broke the U.S. travel ban to Cuba and undermined the rulers’ House Un-American Activities Committee to the point of collapse. More recently, working both within the military and on the streets, we exposed the U.S. rulers’ invasions of Iraq as a murderous oil grab.

None of these developments came out of thin air. They grew out of our Party’s analysis of past class struggles and the achievements of millions of workers. PLP studied the strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement led by—among many others—Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1917, this movement created a revolution in Russia; in 1949, a revolution in China. It defeated the Nazis in Europe and fascists in Japan in World War II. It reached its highest point in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which attempted to push back a growing elitism in the Communist Party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.

PLP is the only group on the left to point out what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China. We are the only organization to analyze how socialism in those countries led back to the unvarnished profit system, where all workers are now mired.

A communist society will have no bosses or profits. It will be led by the working class through its Progressive Labor Party.

Marxism: An evolving idea
The history of the Progressive Labor Party began in 1962. A small group of communists left the Communist Party USA and organized the Progressive Labor Movement. They rejected the CPUSA’s capitulation to capitalism and its abandonment of the open advocacy of communist revolution. The old communist movement proposed that the bosses would peacefully relinquish control of society and allow what the CPUSA called “socialism” to be “voted into existence.” The communists who formed PLM refused to mislead workers and broke away from the old guard.

In the course of PLP’s history, we have rejected some traditional Marxist concepts and advanced a number of new ones, all based on our practice and our examination of world events and the decay of the old communist movement. These new principles are expressed in a series of documents, including Road to Revolution I, II, III and IV; Revolution Not Reform; and “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” (These are all available on PL’s website or in pamphlet form.)

Above all, Progressive Labor Party stands for the principle that the working class must fight directly for communism rather than moving first through a transitional phase of socialism. We reject this two-stage theory, a central premise of classical Marxism, because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features like money and the wage system, leading to inequalities that divided the working class. In both of these countries, the communist party became a new ruling class where privileges were attained through party membership. We believe the working class can be won before the revolution to fight directly for communism—to abolish the wage system, the cult of the individual and other capitalist relics.

Core principles
PLP’s main principles are:
Internationalism, under the slogan “Smash All Borders,” where workers’ class unity is represented by a single mass, international Party;

The fight against racism, a strategic necessity in the struggle to overthrow capitalism;     
The fight against the special oppression of women, another critical component in uniting the working class, a prerequisite for revolution;

A concentration among industrial workers, who produce the capitalists’ profits and the weapons for the bosses’ imperialist wars;Workers’ power through armed struggle, since the rulers will use their armed state power to violently suppress the working class.

Organizing in the military
Throughout its existence, PLP has fought for these principles in unceasing class struggle. We have learned that building the Party is the first order of business for communists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Whatever gains workers make in reform struggles are limited and temporary; sooner or later, the bosses always use their state power to take them back. Communists strive to turn reform struggles into schools for communism and building the Party. Winning workers to PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us in the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.

If you would like to attend the convention, contact your local PL’er or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

NEW YORK CITY, June 16—“Worker unity is stronger than any law!” This was one Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member’s message during a recent UFT (United Federation of Teachers) town hall about Union misleader Michael Mulgrew and KKKop-Mayor Eric Adams’ new tentative agreement (TA) contract for UFT members. A group of comrades joined other education workers to sharpen the criticism of the contract proposal and make plans to fight back. Capitalist education will never meet the needs of working-class educators or students. It is designed to train young people to be exploited in the workforce or serve as cannon fodder in the next imperialist war.

Instead of seeing ourselves as pawns in the bosses’ profit game, imagine a mobilized working class confronting the city bosses and demanding what we need. Instead of waiting for the union to negotiate our demands away, we could be building a revolutionary movement to wrest power away from the bosses ourselves. A hundred thousand working-class educators, over a million working-class students, and add their working-class families: WE ARE MIGHTY!

Union misleaders are class collaborators: “Fair Deals” impossible under capitalism
While UFT leadership is trying to pressure workers to vote yes on the proposal, dangling so-called “raises” and “bonuses” in our faces and threatening the possibility of an even worse deal if we don’t go along for the ride, we must be clear on the truth: The contract proposal is nothing other than a viciously racist attack on educators, students, and their families. It does nothing to address the recent underhanded assault on workers’ healthcare (see box) or the overcrowded classrooms, woefully inadequate mental health services, and rampant racist segregation that systematically deprive primarily Black and Latin students. Instead, it serves to further divide teachers and families and placate education workers into accepting a raw deal.

Throughout the nearly year-long contract struggle, UFT leaders have exposed themselves as lying, racist, class-collaborators. Mulgrew may brag about his 500-member negotiating committee, but the UFT’s function, like that of all unions, is to make a deal it can “sell” to its members. They can have 500 or even 1000 members on the “negotiating committee” and congratulate us on our “hard work” and “activism,” but the fact is, this contract is a result of backroom deals with the city, being sprung on us at the last minute and rushed to a vote during the last two weeks of the school year.

This is the role of unions under capitalism: keep the workers in line and “manage” the class struggle for the bosses, as well as push them to vote for the Big Fascists’ pro-Wall St./U.S. imperialist agenda. To accomplish this, they bribe, sweet talk, deceive, manipulate, obstruct, divert, pacify, steamroll, threaten, and try to wear us out until we capitulate. But communists in PLP and many of our class sister and brother educators are saying NO!

Bosses’ contracts and laws serve only the ruling class
The contract does nothing to address students' abysmal learning conditions. Mulgrew’s claim that new state laws will protect smaller class sizes is a proven lie. Not only does the recently passed law allow for numerous exceptions–including lack of space, “over-enrolled” programs, a shortage of licensed teachers, and schools in “severe economic distress"–but the bosses already break their own laws whenever it suits their interests. One school’s administrators recently packed 42 kids (8 more than the current law) into a PLP teacher’s classes. Only when the comrade united with other teachers and fought back did the local bosses take measures to reduce the class size. Meanwhile, thousands of other NYC students are forced to remain in overcrowded classrooms.

The ruling class knows that teacher-student-parent unity could threaten to destroy them. That's why they do everything they can to sow divisions. The TA would also phase in new forms of remote work that will further isolate students, educators, and families. One change will deemphasize parent engagement time and parent-teacher conferences, potentially making them fully remote. This will make it more difficult for teachers to build meaningful relationships with families. A major expansion of virtual learning included in the contract proposal opens the door to use more online programs instead of real instruction, further decaying the quality of education for hundreds of thousands of students and contributing to the racist fast-foodification of learning, while also paving the way for larger class sizes.

Even on its face, the proposed pay “raises” do not even keep up with inflation and are actually a pay cut. Even worse, there continue to be union educators like paraprofessionals, mainly Black and Latin, who are making nowhere near enough money to survive in the city. Many of these educators are forced to take on second jobs or choose between basic needs like food and rent.

Can’t get mired in dead-end reforms; fight for communist revolution!
MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators) is one opposition caucus in the union that has raised criticisms of UFT leadership, taking a “social justice” stance that includes pro-student positions against “racial segregation” and spotlights the interests of the mostly Black and Latin paraprofessionals and other non-teaching titles that the city has already tried to outsource. Although MORE has provided some useful inside information and caught the union leadership in their duplicity (doubletalk) multiple times, their criticisms of the contract abandon their most powerful antiracist arguments.

Educators and students in Oakland launched a more pro-student mass struggle when they went on strike in May with a list of “common good” demands (see CHALLENGE, 6/21). Strikers demanded not only better pay for teachers, but also increased staffing for school nurses, librarians, and counselors, as well as school building improvements and the opening of unused school properties to unhoused and housing insecure students. While this struggle has the potential to build class consciousness, it still relies on the limitations of reform. Educators, students, and their families need MORE than that!

That’s exactly the problem with fighting only for reforms. As long as we are fighting over crumbs, we will be missing the big picture: the need to unite with our students and their families to take on the whole capitalist system. Workers need STATE POWER!

As the U.S. bosses prepare for world war with China, they are pushing the working class to make even more sacrifices to preserve U.S. imperialist power. This means worsening conditions in schools, as well as pay cuts and cuts to healthcare for workers across the board. The working class has no choice but to fight for a completely new system: communism. We need a revolutionary communist party, PLP, to get there.

We communists plan to continue fighting tooth and nail alongside our students and their families, as well as struggling with our fellow educators over our revolutionary line, helping to advance the class struggle for workers’ needs and build workers’ unity. We need to continue to work inside groups like MORE to better mobilize workers for the many fights ahead.

Labor misleaders sellout NYC workers
In 2018, the New York City Municipal Labor Committee (MLC)—a coalition of labor unions representing some 390,000 city workers—made an unprecedented backroom deal that assaulted workers’ health care. The leadership of the unions in the MLC collectively agreed (without any union members’ approval or input) to save the city $1.1 billion dollars from 2019-2021 and then $600 million per year, in perpetuity (permanently)! As part of that deal, this year city bosses and the unions are jointly forcing retirees to join a misleadingly named “Medicare Advantage” plan instead of their previous healthcare plans. Medicare Advantage is a private Preferred Provider (PPO) program run by Aetna that will place limits on which doctors workers can see, forcing them to get pre-approvals, and may restrict available treatments. Lower quality healthcare plans are now forecast for next year for all active members of MLC unions.