On September 2nd, 1921 — 104 years ago this week — the Battle of Blair Mountain came to an end. It was the largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history since the Civil War and a striking example of multiracial solidarity between Black and white coal miners.

Ten thousand armed coal miners marched from Charleston, West Virginia, 70 miles south to Blair Mountain, Logan County, West Virginia, to destroy the unjust system that had taken their health, their homes, and many of their lives. During the battle, striking white workers, partly inspired by the new workers’ state, the Soviet Union, joined with Black and immigrant workers. While the immigrant workers were originally sent to break the strike, the multiracial miners foiled the bosses’ plans by organizing these workers and turning the strike into a worker’s army.

The U.S. bosses, determined to crush armed insurrection, deployed bombers armed with gas and bombs left over from World War I, some of which were captured by the workers’ army. The workers faced the U.S. army, 3,000 local deputies, police, gunmen and the State Militia.

This march was the miners’ immediate reaction to the August 21, 1921, murder of two of their own by the coal bosses’ hired gunmen on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse. These killings had followed years of unionizing attempts and guerrilla warfare in the West Virginia coal fields the previous winter.

Within 72 hours, 7,000 armed miners assembled outside Charleston and told the State government that they were going to “open up” Logan County for unionization and “blow it away.” On August 24, the miners’ multiracial army, white and Black, citizen and immigrant, began the 70-mile march to Logan.

As the miners made their way from town to town, their ranks swelled.” By the time they reached Blair Mountain, they were 10,000 strong. The miners were a “fully-trained, highly disciplined army ... All the officers were World War I veterans  ...
They taught the miners troop movements [and] flank formations. They formed squadrons.

The original...rednecks

The white workers, indicating their pro-working class politics over the bosses’ racism, wore red bandanas around their necks, earning the insult “redneck” by the capitalist media (Appalachian Magazine, 5/23/16).
In the bosses’ attempts to rewrite history and erase multiracial unity , it was after Blair Mountain that the “redneck” term became, in dictionaries and media, obscured and synonymous with “cracker” (originally, a child of a convict) and “hillbilly” (originally, extremely poor, often interracial, whites living in the Appalachian mountains and outside the norms of southern society).

This multiracial workers’ army were the original “rednecks.” Perhaps in the future we should refer to racists in the South the same way we describe them anywhere in the world, simply as “racists.”

Matewan

The events that led up to the outbreak of this strike and the battle are depicted in the 1987 film “Matewan.” The film shows the miners fighting the bosses’ goons from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency and killing some of them.

But the main strength of the film is its realistic depiction of the militant multi-racial unity of the miners.

The key political struggle Kenehan [union organizer]wages in the first part of the movie is the one against racism. He attacks the racism of some of the miners and calls for organizing the Black and Italian workers into the union. ‘Few Clothes’ John, leader of the Black miners, also has an anti-racist position. There is a great showdown at the mine entrance, under the guns of the company thugs, as the miners stand all together, Blacks, white, and Italian. They march and sing ‘Avanti Popolo’(CHALLENGE, 10/21/87).

The miners lose in the end, as they did in real life. They have no communist party to build for a revolutionary overthrow of the bosses. In the film, as in reality, the bosses, the goons, and the courts defeat the miners in the end.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to be the heir of this legacy of multiracial unity. With the sharpening attacks on the international working class and growing threat of all out inter-imperialist wars looming, our understanding of history is more important than ever, as workers from every part of the working class seek out answers that only a new international communist movement can provide.

The quotes in this article are drawn from a video production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, entitled Even the Heavens Weep—The West Virginia Mine Wars.

Recently, several comrades from Chicago attended the annual socialism conference, Socialism 2025, during the July fourth weekend here, sponsored by Haymarket Books. In the room designated for promotion of various groups, we had a literature table in which we could engage people in conversion as they passed by. Being in the same room gave us an opportunity to engage in discussion with other organizations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Our reception was very positive. In the four-day program, several dozen people signed up to get more information and communicate with the Progressive Labor Party (PLP).

In the past, some of us felt going to a conference about “Socialism” was a waste of time under the assumption that the attendees are largely either friends of or members of revisionist organizations who are against  our line. There is now a consensus that this is not necessarily true and that it was worthwhile to attend the conference and put forward our line in any way we can. Evidence of this fact is that at least a few hundred CHALLENGES were distributed. We distributed other literature, including the essay Road to Revolution  (IV) which attracted interest as we explained our line that China is an imperialist country who could very well go to war with the imperialist U.S. in the near future. We also put out a four-page printed pamphlet that detailed parts of our political work and recommended some sessions in which we wanted to participate.

The conference was conducted in an academic format with dozens of scheduled talks by scholars and members from various groups. Unfortunately, this format gave minimal time for questions and open discussions after the sessions. One presenter at a session on China presented a position like ours (that China is a capitalist—imperialist country which is rivaling the U.S.). There were no obvious sessions that were promoting any candidate such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Zohan Mamdani, or the Democratic Party.

Picket vs. rent hikes

I, a Progressive Labor Party member, have recently joined a tenant organization in my neighborhood. In the process of participating and getting to know tenants and staff, I proposed a walk in our area against evictions and high rents. The group has been active in the rent freeze movement, but the fact is even before recent rent increases, low income and fixed income tenants face not being able to pay rent. Four weeks ago the entire staff went on strike for a new contract. So far the bosses have refused to talk to the workers. They confiscated the workers’ work phones, notebooks and other communications. More of us tenants need to join the picket line. I joined the picket line, hugs all around. I gave a CHALLENGE to a worker who said he’d show it to others. At the break I taught the workers the PLP chant,  este puño si se ve, los obreros al poder! (See this fist, workers to power!) The workers erupted in cheers. The struggle continues, opening opportunities to fight back and build PLP!
*****

Ruralworkers push back on Trump’s cuts & crisis

Some people in this town are sick of  the ruling-class surge to the right with the neo-fascist Trump Administration (40 percent voted against Trump). What can a PLP organizer who spends time here do to “serve the people” in this setting? For example, people here dread the immediate effects of the Trump cuts to Medicaid, which  will force rural workers off the Medicaid rolls through burdensome paperwork and requirements for more worktime in a zone of heavy unemployment. Thirty percent of the income of the local private hospital comes from Medicaid receipts. It has the only small emergency room now for forty miles around, after the closing of another ER nearby. There is also revulsion against masked ICE stormtroopers snatching immigrants, and starvation warfare against Gaza, and abandonment of any environmental mitigation or adaptation for the rural U.S.

Seven of us met in a café to plan a local action next month, to coincide with a national day of protest focused on the climate catastrophe. Breathing in smoke from wildfires, we went over the recent Hands Off! and No Kings! rallies here for clues on how to proceed. Looking around the table, I was moved to see my neighbors at work, so varied in politics, from radicals in DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) to Democratic Party liberals - the Vietnam-era vet, who fears the loss of the local VA clinic they use, will talk to clinic staff about joining the action,the liberal Democrat: as passionately enraged at genocide in Gaza as any urban youth, the community college prof who said “Our world is exploding! We have to stand up and do something!”, a DSA family with two generations of militants at the table, retired teacher still excited about the 800 people who marched down Main Street chanting Hands Off!

The communist input? (1) I started a DSA political study group to go into the real reasons why “our world is exploding”--we have six regular attendees; (2) I suggested a focus on saving our healthcare through a worker-patient alliance--this was understood right away and adopted; (3) following this strategy, I took responsibility for contacting union locals of nurses, teachers and government workers; (4) I urged that healthcare for inmates in the racist prisons be included as a demand, which at least one person applauded.  

These were my first steps. They aimed at bringing communist analysis to the struggle, at uniting workers whether providers or users of healthcare services, and at uniting white rural residents with Black urban prisoners. They allow me to open up about the Party as people get to know me.  In the study group, I can argue that healthcare should not be a commodity at all, but rather a human right, to be provided for all from the surplus created by workers’ labor (DSA might agree)--and how could we win that without taking state power away from the capitalist class? DSA would not go that far.

Other key points did not come from  me and focused more on how to salvage something from the wreckage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. My neighbors have a lot of experience in electoral politics and wanted to discuss what our target should be, like the state governor as well as the congressperson who voted for the Trump bill, and what a winnable demand should be, like the state picking up the shortfall in federal Medicaid funds. Someone with union experience led this discussion of how to intervene practically in state politics, which was very useful for our short-term goal. A DSA person led with the idea of taxing the rich to make up in state funds for the shortfall in federal Medicaid.

There was also keen discussion, not just of our mass action, but of who to run for a statewide office in a special election. Their current horizon stops at using the existing state machinery by electing good people and punishing bad. Even if they are mostly disgusted at the national and state Democrats as well as Trumpism, they are not really thinking outside the lines of electoral politics.  Mass action they see as a way of putting pressure on the electeds,  a supplement to elections.

How does communism intervene in this situation, in which bosses organize workers to play by the bosses’ electoral rules ? The study group, mostly DSA members for now, can discuss this as a problem. Marx drew the lesson from the Paris Commune of 1871 that workers in power cannot just lay hold of the existing state machinery and use it for our purposes. We have to invent a new kind of state that works for us as a class, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This means that every struggle has to push on beyond its immediate demand to the communist horizon, workers taking power from the capitalist bosses. We have to be in this for a lifetime, to end the whole capitalist system whose breakdown we are paying for today in unemployment, preventable illness and death, endless imperialist wars, racist police brutality and mass incarceration, and spectacular climate collapse.

The truth is that the working class, the 99 percent, live in the country as much as the city. Communists have always argued for overcoming the contradiction between the city and the country in the drive for an egalitarian world run by workers. As PLP chants all the time in every struggle on the street: “The only solution is revolution, and power to the working class.” The country, no less than the city, both gasping for a clean breath, need communists everywhere. A mass base of millions for our communist party will guarantee that when workers win state power again, this time we will keep it.
*****

Heat up fight vs. climate change

Summer is upon us and with it the ever-accelerating evidence of climate change because of human use of fossil fuels for powering our vehicles, generating the electricity in a power hungry world economy, and for our needs to manufacture and produce more products for profit in this capitalist economy.

Of recent note are forest fires in Canada sending toxic smoke into the Midwest of the United States, fires in the Northwest Pacific and fires in the state of Arizona along the heights of the Grand Canyon. Along with fires there have been devastating floods in Central Texas and failures of all kinds in warning people of the waves of water coursing through their towns and along their creeks and rivers. In July, 135 people were killed during sudden rain downpours.

Heat waves in agricultural areas throughout the world have led to shortfalls in crop production and distribution, increasing the price of food nearly everywhere. As I write, a heat dome weather system has settled on the central portion of the United States raising heat index temperatures to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. These are conditions that are dangerous to people working or playing outdoors.

It’s important for communists and our Party to start considering what we would do if we held state power to slow down the changes in the climate.

How would we ameliorate long term the need for energy produced for fossil fuel. While some environmentalists think that the use of wind, solar and geothermal energy is the solution, other people are looking towards an expansion of nuclear power and the hoped for solution of fusion power as an answer.

One thing is clear to this writer. If capital holds state power, the ability of humanity to slow climate change or develop the means to stop it will be hampered by the profit and wealth capitalism generates through our current economy and society, even though most people are endangered by climate change and do not benefit from it.

With this in mind, I propose we have an article on climate change with each issue of CHALLENGE. Each article should publicize the harm to the worldwide environment caused by the combination of wealth and political power in the hands of capitalists, with reference to the latest climate disasters and what the environmental movement and the Party needs to fight for.  
*****

Workers hold massive protest in Australia, demanding food for Gazans

Reuters, 8/3–Tens of thousands of demonstrators braved pouring rain to march across Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge on Sunday calling for peace and aid deliveries in the war-torn Gaza Strip, where a humanitarian crisis has been worsening. Nearly two years into a war that Palestinian authorities say has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza, governments and humanitarian organisations say a shortage of food is leading to widespread starvation. Some of those attending the march, called by its organisers the ‘March for Humanity’, carried pots and pans as symbols of hunger”...

London police arrest hundreds of workers to shut down Palestinian support

Al Jazeera, 8/9–Police in London have arrested hundreds of people at a protest in support of the group Palestine Action, which was classified as a “terror organisation” by the British government last month. The Metropolitan Police said 466 demonstrators had been arrested at Parliament Square by 9pm local time (20:00 GMT) on Saturday “for showing support for Palestine Action”. “It will take time, but we will arrest anyone expressing support for Palestine Action,” the police force said in an earlier post on X. 

Italian dockworkers block passage of weapons en route for Israel

The Cradle, 8/10–Workers in the Italian port of Genoa have blocked passage of a Saudi vessel carrying weapons shipments for Israel. The Bahri Yanbu, operated by Saudi shipping firm Bahri, which arrived from Baltimore, Maryland, was slated to take on military hardware made by Italian arms giant Leonardo…inspections revealed that the ship was carrying weapons and ammunition for Israel after 40 dock workers boarded the vessel.  “We don’t work for war,” said Jose Nivoi from the Autonomous Collective of Port Workers and the Union Sindicale di Base…Italian union leaders have warned that handling such shipments constitutes complicity in the war crimes carried out by Israel in the Gaza Strip, vowing a ban on unloading weapons for warzones “by any means.”

Evidence mounts of IDF targeting of civilians

Guardian, 8/9–A Guardian investigation analysing visual evidence, bullets, medical data and patterns of injuries from two hospitals, as well as interviews with medical organisations and surgeons across approximately 50 days of food distribution, appears to show a sustained Israeli pattern of firing on Palestinians seeking food…More than 2,000 Palestinians were injured during the 48 days investigated, mostly by gunshots. In the footage, machine-gun fire can be heard on at least 11 days near the food distribution sites. Bullet casings recovered from patients, and patterns of fire analysed by weapons experts, suggest they were Israeli munitions.

By attacking Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. may have guaranteed nukes in Iran

Foreign Affairs, September/October–Ultimately, by resorting to military force, Israel and the United States may have accelerated the very outcome they sought to forestall: an even more repressive and adversarial Islamic theocracy with a bomb in the basement and a score to settle in its backyard…In the wake of the joint U.S.-Israeli assault in June, an atomic insurance policy may become exponentially more desirable for the Islamic Republic. Iran’s leadership could now double down on its nuclear bet by attempting to salvage the wreckage and launch an all-out effort to acquire a weapon—but more quietly this time…

Refugee crisis in Spain leads to battles in the streets

CNN, 7/14– Spanish police have arrested eight people after three nights of clashes between far-right groups and North African migrants in a town in southeastern Spain, the government said on Monday. In one of Spain’s worst such flare-ups of recent times, several dozen youths, some hooded, hurled glass bottles and other objects at riot police in Torre Pacheco on Sunday night, Reuters journalists saw. Police fired rubber bullets to quell the unrest. The trouble stemmed from an attack last week on a man in his late 60s that left him injured and recovering at home.