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.

NEW YORK CITY, November 1—“I’m moving at a snail’s pace, but I’m getting stronger.” That’s how one comrade spoke for all of us as our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) club launched our new members’ class. Over the past 18 months, our club has recruited three new members, Black, Latin, and white, women and men, older and younger.
One is an unemployed worker, won out of an antiracist fightback around homelessness. Another is a staff member at a community college, and the third is a full-time professor at City University. Both are involved in our work in the CUNY staff and faculty union, PSC, and all three have been to May Day. They each have strong, long-term personal/political ties with one or more members of our collective.
We launched the class to strengthen our new comrades ideologically, make them more familiar with the main aspects of PLP’s outlook, and thereby strengthen our entire collective and our ability to build a communist world. We started by discussing the front-page CHALLENGE article on the girls’ volleyball team in a Brooklyn H.S. fighting racism (CHALLENGE, Oct.20).
One member quickly pointed out the unequal funding between sports teams that are mainly white students versus those that are mainly Black and Latin students, and how the bosses enforce racist inequality through their state power, in this case the New York City Department of Education. Another showed how this struggle reflected three of the 10 points in the PLP “Our Fight” column; anti-racism, anti-sexism, and collectivity over individualism. The third stressed how PLP’s involvement in mass activity, like the volleyball team or the annual Hoops for Justice event against police terror, allows the Party to raise our politics with a wide range of people in a very concrete way. Everyone focused on “What is winning,” and how struggles like this can literally be “schools for communism.”
We discussed base building, and how PLP has deep, long-standing ties with students, teachers, and parents at this school. The new members didn’t know this and thought that we should make that clear in future articles. They also wanted to know more about the discussions with students, teachers, and parents about PLP because they are trying to have similar conversations. What questions did people raise? How did we answer them?
Over the next few months, we will introduce dialectical materialism (Jailbreak!: Dialectical Materialism), how  PLP operates (On Democratic Centralism), Black workers as a key force for revolution, and why revolutionaries must fight nationalism. The first two texts mentioned can be found under ‘Key Documents’ on plp.org. We are open to suggestions and if there are similar classes, please share your experiences by writing a letter to CHALLENGE.