NEW YORK, NY, April 10–For several days, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends in New York City and Newark, New Jersey held events to prepare for May Day and build our confidence in the working class. We united students, workers, and retirees in anticipation of the most important day on the international working class’s calendar: May Day! Several newer members gave leadership to the spring break project, which included a film screening, a fundraising dinner, banner/sign making, and discussions—all to build our communist movement.
In part because of these events, one student rekindled their connection to PLP and joined, and two workers are considering joining. Ours is a movement that is dedicated to smashing capitalism along with the racist terror and imperialist war the system creates.
Fighting Racism from the Screen to the Streets
One of our first events of the week was a film screening that sparked discussion about our internationalist and antiracist political line. It was chosen by a newer member who also led the post-movie discussion. The film, La Haine, was about a group of French working class youth who were tired of the rotten system that had failed them and the racist police who brutalize them. While the young men in the film are full of contradictions (such as the racist, sexist, and reformist ideas they’ve been taught), their lived experiences as part of the working class eventually turns them all against the racist police.
In our discussion afterward, several people pointed out that a Black youth in the film advocated nonviolence and passivity but this ultimately led to his friend being killed by police. On the other hand, another youth argued for individualist violence that, as his friends pointed out, wouldn’t change the nature of society by ending police terror for everyone. We took yet another stance: We need revolutionary violence, not individual adventurism, in order to change the situation. One friend of PLP asked  “How do we get everyone on the same page?” We must put revolutionary ideas and practice at the forefront of class struggle while exposing the many types of misleaders that capitalism produces. Only by fighting for communism can we finally end police terror.
The following day, we had a May Day organizing meeting, CHALLENGE newspaper sale, and fundraising dinner.  At the meeting, a new member led the discussion, and she encouraged all friends and members to contribute based upon their commitment. Newer comrades prepared speeches about fighting back against racist attacks and experiences that led them to join PLP.
Dinner and Door-to-Door Organizing Bring PLP Ideas to Workers
The fundraising dinner that night was definitely a highlight of the May Day preparations. Over 70 new and veteran comrades met to bolster enthusiasm for our big day. The responsibility for hosting was shared in a collective way. We sang songs dedicated to the international working class and our fight for communism. Workers of all ages contributed food, decorations, words, activities (to be auctioned), and funds to ensure our march on May Day would be a success. One comrade spoke about the history of May Day going back to the 1886 Haymarket “Riot” when workers fought for the 8-hour workday - noting that we carry on that struggle today.
The next day, we went door-to-door in Newark housing projects to do our third Challenge sale of the spring break project. Our ongoing involvement in struggles against the racist police, landlords, and politicians in New Jersey and around the world were at the forefront of our conversations with workers about why they should march with us on May Day. Between this event and two sales we had along our May Day march route in Brooklyn, we distributed around 400 papers as part of the spring break project.  
After the sale, we held a banner-making event that highlighted the intergenerational character of our organization (see photo). Comrades took time to paint the banner and signs, share a meal, and take turns in childcare.
Wrapping Up with an Eye on Fascism
On the final day of our pre-May Day events we held a study group on fascism, or a stage of capitalism when the bosses struggle to maintain their power under the facade of liberal democracy. During our discussion, we deepened our understanding of what fascism is and how we can build our communist movement as it develops. One comrade shared their recent experiences in a high school, where a principal has used scare tactics and bribery to pacify students from fighting back against the administration’s racist response to the murder of a former student after he was pushed out of the school. We discussed the idea of having a citywide campaign to reject school push-outs and to fight the bosses’ lie that students are expendable.
Afterwards we took time to write submissions for our newspaper CHALLENGE - since it is a paper that is written collectively by members and friends of the PLP (see letters on page 6). Throughout the project, we socialized and connected based on our shared goal on the long road to a communist future.
In a period of increasing imperialist conflict between the U.S., Russia, and China, our hard work towards building a revolutionary communist movement is more important than ever. While the bosses have nothing to offer our class but death and destruction, we stand prepared to build a society determined to meet the needs of all members of the working class around the world. Join us and march with us on May Day!

BROOKLYN, NY, April 12—After a 17-year-old former student Claude* was killed in the streets, it forced the working class—students and teachers—of a small school to choose: fightback or passivity. While the final verdict is still out, the struggle has become a test for pro-communist ideas in the face of liberal fascism.
School, union, city: all gangsters for capitalism
The racist Black principal has been able to get away with blood on her hands (see boxed letter). When Progressive Labor Party says liberal fascism is the greater danger for the working class, this is what we mean. This principal—in a liberal city run by a Black ​​mayor Eric Adams—has successfully created an environment where students and education workers feel pressured to “lay low” and accept the expendability of Black youth as “normal.” This is one way the school stays one of “America's Best High Schools” in the U.S. News and World Report. To stay on top, the Black leadership throws out Black students like they’re trash.
But, it’s not just her.  The UFT District Representative—the educator workers’ union that prides itself on putting the needs of students on the back burner—was silent when one teacher had said, “The union needs to make a fight against these racist pushouts.”
This is the same district rep who spent what felt like hours detailing his diligence in keeping his teacher file up to date.
While this seems small, it’s a reflection of the limits of unions. The UFT leadership cynically puts electoral politics and teacher salaries over students’ learning conditions. This was no surprise considering the racist strike of 1968, when the UFT walked out as a response to the efforts of Black parents to exert community control over schools in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. A union that sacrifices Black and Brown students is a racist one.
One tenet of fascism (an old capitalist system in crisis headed for world war) is the idea of accepting expendability.
As the future of capitalism becomes more uncertain (see editorial, page 2), the bosses need a tighter control of their class and the working class. Capitalist schools train us to treat our class as disposable—to accept that some youth will just be homeless, unemployed, jailed, killed in war, erased. The ones who can make this fascist argument most convincingly are the ones who present themselves as pro-worker. This is the same type of idea that threw workers into gas chambers.
We will always remember him
How do you respond when a Black principal makes it taboo to discuss and honor a victim of capitalism and pressures a mainly-white-teacher force and a mainly-Black-student force to simmer down?
Several teachers have stepped up in the reform struggle—one organized a card and funds for the family, another made photos of Claude, another printed the poem “Kids who Die,” and yet another helped blow up balloons for the third memorial wall. Every teacher also received a la​​minated tag, “we will always re​​member [Claude].”
Several have now made a small memorial with all these items inside their classrooms. Some have also folded Claude into their lesson plans.
Some teachers and students wore a button on their shirts or bags. It was made using printed text, clear packing tape, and a safety pin.
However, through one-on-one conversations, approved personal days, bending of some dress codes for “good kids,” and awarding field trips to previously banned students, the administration has pacified many staff and students.
One described the niceness as “the calm before the storm.”
The working class is not dumb. We understand the administration was threatened by the show of worker-student unity. And it will be our unity that the administration will come after. They will pit “good” students against struggling students, new teachers against tenured teachers.
This divide-and-conquer strategy will be no match for a politically conscious working class. That’s why linking this fight to capitalism and war is key. CHALLENGE readership has grown tremendously compared to its meager distribution before Claude, and building relationships with co-workers and students is needed more than ever. We need to win the masses to see the fight for communism as the only answer deserving of Claude’s memory. Communism means we serve ALL kids. No child is expendable.
Kids over capitalism
If Claude weren’t pushed out, would he have been alive to walk on graduation day in three months? An administration that cares more about data and awards than a Black child has got to go. Claude’s killing has exposed a criminal policy that we need to fight.
Claude was not a number. He was a member of the working class, and he deserved better. A system that treats certain students as expendable DOES NOT deserve to exist. For our students, shut this racist system down.
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
*****

Letter: Fight to stop student pushout!

The following letter is written by a new teacher who became involved in the fight for Claude and against pushout.
As a person new to teaching and new to Brooklyn, the treatment of the legacy of a former student who was fatally shot near the school where I teach opened my eyes to not only how the school to prison pipeline functions, but to how treatment of working class students in a capitalist system kills.
When Claude was killed, the school that I work for not only did nothing to memorialize their former student, but fought hard against students and teachers who wanted to memorialize him themselves. Students created a memorial for Claude that was hung in the hallway. It was taken down by administrators the next day. When they hung it back up it was taken down almost immediately. Students overheard their principal admonishing Claude to other students and teachers, using racist rhetoric and accusing him of being in a gang in order to justify erasing his memory from the school after his death. The principal even antagonized teachers who took a personal day to attend their former student’s funeral.
This strange response can be explained by the fact that Claude was pushed out of our school. Our school boasts a 95 percent graduation rate which is very rare for our district, and one way that they achieve this is by pushing out students who threaten this misleading statistic. Student pushout is incredibly common in New York City, and this event has opened my eyes to how it unfolds in real time. Students are suspended with little reason, harassed by administrators, and working class parents are consistently asked to leave their jobs to attend disciplinary meetings at the school. Since forcing students to leave is illegal, employees of the Department of Education instead harass and bully children and parents until they decide that it is best to leave. Often administrators will convince parents that their students' needs would simply “be better met at another school.”
But this is not the truth.
Suspensions and push outs follow students, making it difficult to keep up with classwork, maintain good grades, and apply to college. It is already widely understood that suspensions, which is a critical aspect of the pushout process, are damaging to students and greatly increase their likelihood of being incarcerated. In a racist school system these practices disproportionately affect Black and brown students. So why do schools continue this practice?
Capitalism forces schools to compete with each other for scarce funding, resources, and even for students. Graduation rates and test scores are important to school bosses, and one way to keep high scores with limited resources is to get rid of students who threaten their scores. Instead of viewing students as fully formed humans, they are viewed as pawns to be traded, bargained for, and cast off. But schools don’t have to be this way!
Teachers should understand that this system not only harms students, but harms us as well. When we treat students like numbers, like problems, and pawns, we create a hostile environment that affects our lives too. We watch students that we care for be harassed, excluded from our classrooms, and disappeared from our schools without our consent. Teachers need to understand that this is a problem that is worth fighting about. Together, with parents and students we can fight for schools that care for all students, not just students who are willing to follow the status quo.
Parents, teachers, and students unite to end this violent, racist practice. Unite to end capitalism!

LOS ANGELES, March 23—“When students are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” This chant rang out on busy Los Angeles streets as workers from two unions, Services Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 and United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), parents, students, and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched in solidarity. Literally hundreds of cars driving by honked in support. For the better part of a week, workers all over LA got to witness the power of a united working class; a working class that must one day overthrow the capitalists and rule the world.
Members of SEIU Local 99, composed of cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, and school support staff, called a three-day action to strike against unfair labor practices and retaliatory action by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school bosses. UTLA took to the picket lines in solidarity. Both unions have been in contract negotiations for over a year. Meanwhile, Los Angeles public school students are suffering from the chronic, racist understaffing of Special Education Assistants and other positions.
The pouring rain, which continued for most of this three-day strike, did not dampen the strikers’ enthusiasm. At one school, PLP members were welcomed on the picket line and helped lead chants. We brought a back issue of CHALLENGE headlined “Strike” which got the attention of many passing drivers, creating a cacophony of noise. Picket lines of close to a hundred strikers from both unions in front of the school continued for hours in the morning before school workers traveled to downtown LA for afternoon mass rallies.
Money for schools, not for cops
While these education workers have been fighting for crumbs, the military and police always have funds. Biden, with full Congressional support, has dispersed more than $75 billion over the last year to the war in Ukraine. Even after a huge antiracist movement demanding to defund the police, the Democratic mayor and city council of LA increased LAPD’s budget by $87 million. Karen Bass, LA’s new mayor, has already promised to hire more KKKops and increase their funding. This is because capitalism is not designed to benefit workers, but rather funds only what will continue to keep the ruling class rich and powerful. The racist and sexist nature of capitalism is also very clear as working-class Black, Latin, and immigrant neighborhoods take the brunt of the cutbacks.
Thankfully, Local 99 workers have realized that their strength lies in withholding their labor power through striking. This comes on the heels of an uptick of workers striking internationally, most recently seen here in the six-week strike by the graduate students in the University of California system. Except for working-class revolution or mass rebellion, strikes, more than anything else, bring fear into the hearts of the bosses.
This is why we approached this opportunity with urgency. We joined picket lines at the schools we have connections to and attended the larger marches with our literature. A hundred PLP flyers analyzing the strike, and 70 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed. We talked with education workers about standing united and firm in this battle. This is one of the few ways we can force the bosses to give students, their families, and neighborhoods a fraction of the education they deserve. But more importantly, it will be vital for workers, teachers, students, and parents to ultimately learn that any reform or crumbs given can   be taken away, so long as capitalism and its drive for maximum profit remains. This conversation led to May Day invitations as well.
Liberal leaders and politicians: no friends to workers
Another common conversation we had with workers is how liberals are the main danger to our class. UTLA leadership has put its faith in so-called progressive candidates to bring about change. They backed Karen Bass and a whole host of city council people and school board members in the last election, most of whom have been silent while Local 99 and UTLA members battled with LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho over the School Board’s $5 billion surplus.
Karen Bass in particular ran on a platform spotlighting the issue of unhoused folks in LA. Yet, before the strike, she was silent as Local 99 workers’ average salary remained below the poverty line and they were constantly under threat of losing their housing. She only inserted herself into the negotiations after it became clear the schools would be shut down because of the strike, and only then to pose as a “friend of labor,” get credit for ending the strike, and preparing to mislead workers in the future. She will no doubt expect the union leadership to continue to support her going forward. We cannot rely on liberals and so-called progressives to save us! Capitalism will always exploit its workers, but we can choose to organize to overthrow this system and replace it with communism where workers run society.
While striking is a crucial step in fighting for reforms and it makes clear the power of a united working class, it will never be enough to end racist and sexist attacks such as those on low-paid education workers. For that, we need a communist organization like PLP which is fighting to get rid of capitalism, the system that relies on unemployment, low wages, and part-time labor to maximize profit. In LA, we will strengthen the ties that we made on the picket lines and fight for this uptick in class struggle to lead to growth in PLP.

NEWARK, NJ, April 12—For the first time in its 250-year history, a coalition of Rutgers workers— 9,000 graduate workers, adjuncts, and part-time lecturers (PTL)— called a strike on what would have been communist Paul Robeson’s 125th birthday.
On day one of the strike, members of the Progressive Labor Party were out in full force distributing CHALLENGE newspapers as picketers rallied and gave passionate speeches at the Newark campus. Together, workers and students shut down the $5 billion/year university across several campuses!
As the contradictions of capitalism bring the bosses’ global system closer to World War III, such strikes and other forms of class struggle will intensify. Strikes have the potential to be schools for communism, and leading the struggles with revolutionary ideas builds the confidence of workers in choosing our class over the bosses’ system forever.
Workers ready to fight, bosses & their misleaders cower
Workers’ rage and lack of confidence in liberal misleadership and electoral politics is key to producing and maintaining strikes in an environment of growing fascism and war. Thousands of ordinary workers at Rutgers University chose the power of our class over the deadly defeatism of the liberal union bosses and the empty promises of NJ Governor Phil Murphy to fight for our needs. Getting closer to the strike launch, union misleaders tried to fool workers that it was in our best interest to believe that the threat of a strike is more powerful than its actual realization. Their lack of confidence in the working class, opportunism and pacifism - which no union boss or elected official can avoid - had them trying to convince rank and file members that they weren’t “ready” to fight for each other. These misleaders were very wrong. When members were told that Murphy was requesting the union give him a short period of time to resolve the differences between Rutgers bosses and workers to avoid the strike, workers responded with a roaring no! PLP members worked with their union siblings to ensure the membership was ready, and that workers’ need for a strike won over liberal misleaders' doubt and fear.
Cutbacks, low wages part of war prep
As the inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., Russia, and China reaches new heights, the bosses are hoarding resources and superexploiting workers in preparation for recruiting us into their mounting wars. Universities play a complex role in this preparation. While their workers and facilities absorb the cutbacks that go hand-in-hand with resource hoarding, universities are also key sites for recruiting and training students to become a pacified workforce and the liberal misleaders of tomorrow.
The bosses need masses of people won to liberal ideas in college to reproduce the nationalism and helplessness that supports conditions of war. At Rutgers, diversity projects like the Honors Living and Learning College train students to believe in their individual exceptionalism, convincing them that a few Black students getting elite career opportunities will help liberate the entire Black working class. In the program, students get a minor in Social Justice, but only very few have participated in the strike effort, while even more have spent their time creating a Black Professionals Network.  But no amount of politicians of color can change the material conditions for the international working class; only communist revolution led by PLP will smash capitalism’s racist exploitation once and for all.
Bosses like Phil Murphy, Ras Baraka and Jonathan Holloway will show their true colors as liberal supporters of finance capital as they try to crush worker’s unions in the coming days or betray workers in years to come when they run for greater seats of power. Governor Murphy, a former hedge fund executive at Goldman Sachs— the second largest investment bank in the world— will demand sacrifice from workers and will use increasingly fascist tactics to end the strike.  Rutgers president Holloway will do whatever his real bosses–finance capital–dictate to keep pumping out obedient workers, generate profit for the state and pay Rutgers’ external debt, which totals more than $250 million, including about $140 million to construct athletic facilities (USA Today 1/19/2022).
As the Rutgers strike continues, it will be imperative for workers and students to use it as a school for communism. Only on the picket lines will they learn the important lessons for liberation, and the tools to refuse the bosses’ austerity without being won to liberal ideas that lead to imperialist war. With multiracial unity and an international Progressive Labor Party on the front lines, the Rutgers strike will help teach us all to have confidence in each other, and to embrace communism as our class’s only way to win the world.

**Future issues of CHALLENGE will contain further analysis and reports of our involvement in this strike.**