WASHINGTON, DC, October 27—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) health workers once again sharpened the politics at the national convention of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Even as Covid-19 has kept the conference still mostly virtual, we were able to attack capitalist health care as serving the bosses profits system and not the needs of the working class. As in past years, we promoted an antiracist resolution that we had written with friends, prepared a special APHA Challenge supplement (bit.ly/APHA CHALLENGE), and presented a PLP program at the end of the conference. We were able to bring communist ideas into the struggle against racist public health conditions and challenge people to join the fight for communist revolution.
Putting communism front and center
Our virtual PLP program, “Racism and Capitalism: Is Communism the Solution?”   was a great success. We promoted it during many sessions we attended all week during which we raised the issues of capitalism and communism. Eighty people attended and heard three young comrades speak about revolution versus reform, imperialism, and the need for a party.
One speaker challenged public health workers to go all the way “upstream” to smash capitalism, the root of social problems, instead of stopping with piecemeal reforms. The destruction of people’s lives due to imperialism and its policies through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other organizations was clearly described with an emphasis on how capitalist international relations are NOT CHARITABLE.
When the third speaker asked what made people mad under capitalism the chat function went wild with multiple examples! We then had 30 minute breakout rooms of about six people each with a PLP facilitator where we discussed how revolutionaries participate in reform struggles and/or what went right and wrong in previous communist revolutions. Even more people were interested as 121 people registered for the event and all will get copies of the program. There were multiple requests for transcripts. One young participant was inspired to say “it’s great that there are so many passionate and active people,” and others liked the opportunity to discuss in the breakout rooms.
Capitalism will always incarcerate the working class
As police and prison reform efforts have spread around the country we have joined many of these struggles and discussions that have included prison abolition – a situation that can only exist for the working class after a communist revolution. The resolution, Advancing Public Health Interventions to Address the Harms of the Carceral System, had passed as a late-breaker last year but had to be resubmitted this year to become permanent policy.
We testified in the hearings on this resolution about the high incarceration rates in New Orleans where air conditioning is denied to prisoners, about the horrible conditions in detention centers where Covid-19 management is non-existent and medical care is incompetent, and how releasing prisoners during the pandemic did not lead to dangerous situations. The reviewers had initially given it a negative assessment but the authors doggedly pursued the issue within the APHA membership and finally the reviewers put it on the agenda and it passed with 86 percent in favor.  It will be posted on the APHA website and public health workers and others can continue to use it in campaigns locally and nationally to decarcerate the prisons.  
Keep fighting
The APHA is attended by thousands of public health workers each year who are dedicated to reform struggles for better health care and access. The APHA leadership is tied to Big Fascist main wing bosses(see glossary on page 6). The organization is there to ensure the bosses interests are advanced in public health care.
Our goal is to fight for the needs of the working class and build a communist movement led by PLP. When it is in person, we always organize a demonstration about a key issue and try to involve local workers and students who cannot afford to attend the expensive conference. In these actions we try to lead with advanced ideas that build confidence in the working class. Meanwhile, we continue to meet more and more  fighters who question capitalism, like the three new young members who spoke at our session. We continue to fight for our position that capitalism can never provided decent health care for workers, who are only seen as commodities. We’ll be back next year to bring the fight for communism to the conference in Boston.

WASHINGTON DC, October 28—“I don’t know what I’ve been told, pharma’s pockets lined with gold!” Lies and tricks will not divide, humanity standing side by side”; “14 billion doses NOW”; “No more pharma greed, global vaccines are what we need” and “Break the patents!” These chants rang out as 100 people marched to the Executive Office Building near the White House to demand the liberal Joe Biden administration end the pharmaceutical industry’s control of vaccine patents.
The multinational and multiracial character of the demonstration demonstrated the value and necessity of internationalism and working class unity. Covid-19’s devastating worldwide spread has hurt workers the hardest in accordance with the racist, sexist and imperialist nature of capitalism itself. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) represented these politics at the rally today, adding chants that were picked up like, “This is what SOLIDARITY looks like”.
After the rally downtown, 30 workers and PL’ers marched to the home of Jeffrey Zeintz, who heads Biden’s Covid Response Team. He refused to meet us, so we camped out all night outside his house, and at 6 am rang alarm clocks and had a bullhorn rally to “wake him up” to the need for global vaccines.
Vaccine equity NOW!
Rallying on the eve of the G20 meetings, organizers from the reform group “Justice is Global” were joined by public health workers including Public Health Awakened (PHA), medical students from Rutgers University, PLP members, and several other groups to demand that the Biden administration make vaccine equity a reality around the world.
They called upon the U.S. to demand the G20 countries support the TRIPS waiver, which would release the patents on Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines to all countries. Providing resources to countries to produce mRNA vaccines themselves is needed to guarantee that people everywhere can be vaccinated.
The capitalist drive for maximum profit prevents the capitalist system from solving the global Covid-19 epidemic, let alone addressing how unequally SARS-CoV-2 has affected workers worldwide. The drive for vaccinations again illustrates how only replacing the profit system with global communism can meet our class’s global needs. PLP members brought this message to this rally by selling CHALLENGE, engaging in extended discussions with other participants, and gaining contacts with several of the organizers present.
“We have the tools but not the politics”
Scientists have explained with evidence-based reasoning that vaccinating the entire working class can stop the spread of Covid-19, including its variants, and decrease the risk of new variants that might not respond to vaccinations and emerging treatments. As speakers pointed out, we have the tools but not the politics to end this pandemic.
A high point of the rally was when public health workers from PHA spoke emphatically about the current policy being a public health failure. These young professionals organized for this event at each step of the planning. PLP members have regularly met with PHA every two weeks over the past year and have pushed for more militancy in the group. We are excited by their leadership in this event and look forward to continuing the struggle against capitalism and racism.
Communism will defeat biggest viruses: imperialism and racism
The reform groups organizing the event channeled anger and boldness in attacking both the Biden administration and the pharmaceutical industry’s greed. However, they failed to attack capitalism, connect capitalism with racism and imperialism, or offer real solutions.
Workers around the world are suffering in grotesque ways from this pandemic, and many other health and social conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Victory in this struggle means breaking with the politicians in Congress and organizing for an international mass communist revolution to destroy capitalism instead. Without this perspective, we end up fruitlessly falling into the trap set by various factions of vicious capitalists and their politicians who run society.
Smash racist vaccine borders and join PLP
The capitalists, meanwhile, have linked the vaccine to profits by limiting who gets vaccinated. India, for example, is the world’s largest vaccine producer but exports them to the biggest imperialists, despite the grand promises of the UN’s COVAX program. Making the vaccine available for free in the U.S. while effectively denying it to the rest of world is a recipe for increased nationalism and extends the racist arrogance of U.S. imperialism even further. As long as we have capitalism, vaccines become just another tool in rivalry among the imperialists as Russia, China, and the U.S. use them to pursue their own alliances in a buildup for World War 3 rather than meet workers’ needs.
The bosses once again are playing with our lives! We fight to build an international revolutionary PLP that can smash all borders and abolish money and make the vaccine freely available to all. While protesting Biden’s bozos like Zeintz at six am are a good start, the urgency of this global struggle demands a different kind of wakeup call — a call to join PLP and sweep capitalism out of power with communist revolution! JOIN US!

Anti-communist writers depict the resistance to the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II as simply an example of workers’ fortitude and courage in the face of extreme suffering and adversity. They say virtually nothing about the role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
This is no accident! After all, the role of the capitalist media and “scholarship” is to provide propaganda for the U.S. bosses. They don’t want workers to learn how communist leadership and ideas were essential to the defeat of the Nazis in World War II and how communist leadership and ideas are needed today to defeat racism, fascism and imperialist wars. As regional wars cover the globe, as world war and climate change threatens the planet, as starvation and a pandemic rage unchecked, capitalism is a failure for the world’s workers. We need communism, where workers run society. The defeat of the Nazis at Leningrad was an example of communist-led workers’ power.
Nazis invade Soviet Union and surround Leningrad
On June 22, l94l, the Nazi army - the most powerful army ever assembled - invaded the Soviet Union. The Nazis and their European allies rapidly surrounded Leningrad. This city of three million was cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union.
Hitler ordered the city of Leningrad and its population to be destroyed. A 900-day siege followed. It resulted in one million deaths and two million other casualties – far more than the combined deaths of the U.S. and Great Britain during the entire war.
Hitler vowed to destroy Leningrad because it was the center of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was named after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the world communist movement. Hitler figured Leningrad's destruction would not only be a big military victory, but a huge psychological victory also. The Nazis believed the destruction of the city and its inhabitants would be a blow from which the Soviets could never recover.
Initially, the Nazis amassed massive military strength against the defenders of Leningrad. Enormous bombing and shelling accompanied a tank and troop assault. Daily air attacks and Nazi cannons bombarded every square block of the city every day for two and a-half years.
Communist-led workers fight back
But workers in Leningrad fought on. Despite mass starvation and enormous destruction, they fought back harder. Unlike Paris, Amsterdam and other European cities, Leningrad did not fall! But there was no way supplies could get to the city and little possibility of evacuating children, the old and the ill. Then the leadership of the Communist Party sent in some of its top leaders to strengthen the efforts. A road was built over the frozen Lake Ladoga. Morale increased. Despite the apparently hopeless situation, over a million people, the old and the young were evacuated. Supplies were brought in. The workers and soldiers of Leningrad fought and produced in sub-zero temperatures. Nothing could stop them.
What anti-communist historians and documentaries pointedly omit is that communist ideas and leadership can win workers to unprecedented mass heroism.  The workers of Leningrad shed their capitalist ideas and actions. To defeat the Nazis, communist living and fighting was essential. Everyone worked without material rewards. Everyone had to share, so the frontline troops had enough food to be able to fight against the ferocious German attacks. The Communist Party ensured that everyone took part in making decisions. Everyone participated in discussions. Politics was primary. Just as Hitler called for the destruction of Leningrad, the Communist Party, led by Josef Stalin, called on Leningrad not to surrender.
The Communist Party started by organizing small airlifts to drop supplies. Later, the Red Army organized convoys of trucks to transport supplies across frozen Lake Ladoga. Despite constant bombings and huge casualties to drivers, these convoys kept the supplies coming. Under the worst conditions drivers made the round trip again and again, often going for days without sleep.
As the thaw developed, the lake started to melt. But the drivers kept on driving. As the ice melted, water engulfed the trucks above the hubcaps. But the drivers, risking drowning - and some did drown - kept driving. Their efforts were a reflection of the heroism of the city's inhabitants and of the troops defending the city.
Red Army does the “impossible”––  defeats Nazis
Slowly but surely the all-out efforts to supply Leningrad and its defenders started to pay off. Small breakthroughs were made in the ring of steel that the Nazis and their allies had thrown up around Leningrad. Then the Party ordered a rail line built between Moscow and Leningrad. Now the trains started to roll, often only yards away from Nazi gun emplacements. The trains rolled on, despite a rain of shells and bombs, and despite heavy casualties to the train crews.
At last the Red Army was strong enough to launch massive counter-attacks. Then they did the “impossible,” smashing through the Nazi ring of steel and defeating the fascist forces. Leningrad was free! Working class communist determination triumphed over Nazi “supermen.” By the end of the siege, most of the children of Leningrad had been evacuated. Then, the children returned. They were the living future of a city that had been pronounced dead.
The main lesson of Leningrad, and Moscow, and Stalingrad is that when armed with communist ideas and communist leadership, the working class is invincible. No matter how strong the bosses appear, we, the working class, are stronger – IF we act on communist ideas. Workers around the world are not very different from workers in Leningrad. With revolutionary ideas, under revolutionary communist leadership, workers everywhere can make “miracles” too. With world war looming between the imperialists of the U.S., China, Russia and their capitalist allies, the workers of the world must unite and turn these profiteering wars into a worldwide, class war for workers’ power. That’s communism. Join us!

A few months ago, a community organization to which I belong to, along with other PL’ers, participated in a hunger strike, which lasted over 20 days. The struggle for social services for undocumented workers brought people closer to Progressive Labor Party and built class-consciousness.
One PL’er said these struggles were too pacifist. After discussing it, we decided that we would participate in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with our class. By struggling with our friends, we raise consciousness our class’ consciousness and learn how to fight back against the capitalist system.  
This strike was for undocumented workers who did not receive any social services related to the pandemic. The strike was fulfilled and in the end they managed to win. Unfortunately, the benefits were minimal and not for everyone. This is how capitalism works: they only give you painkillers or candy to stomach the struggles.
The hunger strike was light since we were housed in a church with small beds, heating, refrigerated water, a daily visits from a doctor. All fighters deserve our appreciation, respect and consideration, for the solidarity, responsibility and conscience shown in this fight. We had doubts about the strike since the organizers made this strike a “commercial” strike, in which all participants receieved a financial contribution for each day of fasting... can you imagine that?
Days after the pyrrhic “victory,” the community organization had their annual gala of recognition. The organization’s leaders asked the members to choose a striker to speak at the gala, and they chose a member of PLP. Majority participants are workers, loyal to a community organization that works under the rules of the liberal Democratic Party, from which they receive funds.
Fifteen years of organizing
But we have more than 15 years of work by a group of communist fighters, who in each meeting, in each protest, in each march, in one way or another, have led with the politics of our Party, speaking with the truth, exposing the capitalist system, which will never meet the needs of the working class.
We distributed countless newspapers over the years. We proposed and convened three worker conferences, with the participation of around 100 people in each one, among many other things, which have contributed to the growth of our group. Sometimes, two steps forward and one step back, but growing in our mission to increase the ranks of our international communist movement through PLP.
Workers respond to speech by joining PL study group
In the speech, the PL’er said the strike victory gave a crumb to essential undocumented workers, who were unemployed during that period of the pandemic and did not receive help of any kind, neither state nor federal, for not having a social security numbers.
In the speech, he referred to how workers are in similar struggles worldwide, in which thousands are repressed, massacred and imprisoned by the capitalist forces. This includes Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Spain, France, and more.
He also mentioned how this struggle against the attack on undocumented workers built unity among the members. In addition, it showed that our working class is increasingly alert and that, organized and led by our PLP, the next step can be taken, towards a communist revolution, when they become aware of our power. And that capitalists’ control over workers can be smashed with the seizure of workers’ power.
The speech at the gala concluded with these chants: “Workers united, you will never be defeated! The workers fights have no borders! This fist is seen, the workers at power!”
They resounded in the venue and ended with an ovation.
Following the speech at the gala, 40 people on our study group list received the speech that was made. The response: 17 people attended the study group to discuss immigration reform. We will continue our work in the community organization, leading with, as always, our communist line. We will continue working with our friends, to attract new fighters.
The final victory will be when we abolish wage slavery and we are treated as workers who have realized their full power. This will be under a communist society. Join and lead this fight with PLP!J
CHALLENGE Responds:
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) does not view hunger strikes as a viable tactic, as its premise is that we can guilt our oppressors into submission. In reality, our lives do not matter to the ruling class.  If  liberation from exploitation and starvation is the goal, our strategy should be to smash our attackers and fight for communism. While we fundamentally disagree with resorting to hunger strikes as a form of protests, we do stand in solidarity with the class struggle in this dark night.