Epifanio Camacho, a courageous and militant farmworker, loyal member of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and lifetime fighter for the international working class, died on July 4 at the age of 98. As an early leader of the United Farm Workers (UFW), Epifanio organized a strike of rose grafters in the San Joaquin Valley in 1965. He went on to play a central role in the historic strikes against the grape vineyard bosses in the late 1960s.
     In the mid-1970s, Epifanio was purged from the UFW by the class traitor and sellout Cesar Chavez. Their split was inevitable. Chavez was a pacifist who made a religion out of non-violence. He allied with reformist politicians like Robert F. Kennedy and racist AFL-CIO boss George Meany, and relied on boycotts and the bosses’ legal machinery. He was a nationalist who attacked undocumented workers and turned them in to be deported. By contrast, Epifanio believed in the unity of the entire working class, and that no boycott could rival the power of a strike at the point of production. He was fearless in captaining a picket line, in fighting strikebreaking scabs and the Teamster thugs sent to protect them. He sabotaged countless police cars with his secret weapon: children’s toy jacks, strewn across roads with their pointed side up to puncture the cops’ tires. He was arrested more times than he could count. His sister and brother workers knew they could count on him to put their class interests first.
      Even before Epifanio joined PLP , in 1974, Chavez had accused him of being a communist—a label he wore proudly for the rest of his life. He played an instrumental role in building the Party among farmworkers in California and, by extension, in Mexico. Though Epifanio had no formal education, he was a brilliant thinker, a true worker intellectual who made enormous contributions as both a writer of leaflets and a distributor of CHALLENGE. (In the space of 11 months in 1982, his network sold more than 20,000 newspapers, with each sale carefully recorded.) While the pacifist misleader Cesar Chavez may be featured in the capitalist history books, it is Epifanio Camacho who made a historic contribution to the international communist movement—who did his part to change the world.
     Here are some excerpts from Epifanio’s talk on base building at a PLP summer project in 2008 in Delano, California:

"After I started organizing other workers, one day I was arrested and taken to jail, and then to the bosses’ court. On that day, the role of the bosses’ state became clear. On one side there were the rich bosses with their legal system and other means of oppression.
    "And on the other side there was the working class. And the day that I walked out of the courthouse, I realized that the workers would sooner or later lose every battle against the bosses unless we organize a  revolution against the capitalist state.
    " I spent five years next to [Cesar Chavez] as a UFW leader. He was scared all the time, and all the workers saw it and knew it. Most workers met secretly and took their own initiative. For example, we decided that no one in our community should rent a house to a scab. When this happened, their houses were burnt down!
    "Racists organized by the Teamsters Union started showing up to pickets with baseball bats. The UFW was urging everyone to kneel in the face of violence. The bosses’ television only showed the pickets held by the workers won to pacifism, being beaten and bloodied while they were kneeling. The racists bragged they were coming for us next. We had a big meeting and I said to the workers, ‘We’ll be waiting for them! Tomorrow not even a housewife should come to the picket without a weapon.’ On the morning of the battle, all the women were showing off how carefully they’d hidden their blades! We were ready for them in one day, and we met violence with violence. To this day, over 30 years later, the Teamsters never returned to Delano. Not long after the fight, the local government disbanded the local police and left the area to the state troopers.
    "What had changed for me was during that time I met the PLP. Our struggle continued from ‘below,’ from the ranks of the workers. Most of the workers were used to fighting and the most militant of us formed a new working-class leadership. What kept this leadership together now were revolutionary ideas. The UFW was afraid of the PLP, and afraid of the ideas in our newspaper, CHALLENGE. Chavez publicly prohibited any UFW member from buying CHALLENGE, and anyone caught reading it was threatened with immediate expulsion.
     “We were in a tough spot. We knew everyone, but they feared being thrown out of the UFW. Now, I am a communist. I learned how to write communist leaflets for the workers. We had many meetings discussing how to reach the workers, and we started reaching them. Workers began joining PLP. Before long, the workers started placing communist ideas above the reformism of the UFW and Chavez.
     "Over time our base grew, and we got up to selling 500 CHALLENGEs a week. Can you imagine the sight of hundreds of workers reading CHALLENGE at lunchtime? Imagine! Well, that’s what happened. Our whole community was affected by communist ideas. An entire family would share one paper. The workers’ children organized PLP clubs in the high school. Right here in my home we had many PLP dances and events. We would have red flags everywhere. Workers would let their children go to our events because we all knew each other, and they trusted my security abilities.   
     "One thing PLP does that you never saw from Chavez or the UFW was criticism and self-criticism. Every time we came out of a meeting, I felt like I’d taken a shower. And the work always improved. And it was easier to organize this way.
     "In PLP we’re building a base for communist revolution. You can’t say it’s easy….Sometimes we’re not aware of how little things impact the future. Years ago, two coworkers from Oaxaca joined the Party. Then they got deported and built the Party in Oaxaca. Later they became inactive, but along the way recruited other people to the Party. Just yesterday I met two young comrades participating in this Summer Project from Oaxaca who are very strong. They joined as a direct result of those first two! Now our work there is getting strong. Everything we do counts.
      "What’s the key to organizing? How do you start when you’re all alone? Wherever you work, you always start by finding the worker who’s most discontented with the boss…Listen carefully to what they say. Use their discontent as an opportunity to explain why things are this way. Eat with them every day, or as often as you can.
     "Beyond that, there’s no formula. You should be bold and lead by example. Go to the bathrooms when no one’s around and leave literature. Go to the parking lot and put leaflets on every car window or in the windshield wipers, including your own. Then, on your break, feel them out. If they support our ideas, show them it was you! Now they’re contacts…You’ll find out that when things really get going, even occasional readers and friends who haven’t appeared to show much interest will step up and risk their lives for us. You’ll see. It all starts with you! You need the initiative to find a way to get communist ideas around.
     "I like talking to the younger comrades because the potential is in the youth. I’ve never been to school, but I’ve always wanted to go because I love to learn. All workers want to learn. Inside of all of us is a struggle of opposites, between ignorance and wanting to learn more. If your education is inadequate in school because of racism, sexism, and nationalism, you must organize against it. Learn as much as you can but remember that everything you learn, you must put at the service of the working class."

__________________________

PLP-Mexico remembers Epifanio
The PLP Collective in Mexico is saddened by the death of our comrade Camacho. His living example, his teachings, and his commitment and confidence in the international working class were proof of the power of communist ideas and actions when workers make them their own. We will honor his memory fighting tirelessly against this criminal capitalist system. In what follows, two comrades detail their experiences with comrade Epifanio.
     From Mexico City: I met Epifanio when I first joined PLP in 1975, while visiting Rodrigo, his comrade-in-arms in the fields. Rodrigo was bedridden, but eager to learn. He asked Epifanio, “Who was Lenin?” Epifanio explained how the Bolsheviks led rural and urban workers to take power. The same day, we carried a bundle of CHALLENGE newspapers  to Cortez, another one of his comrades, who right away asked, “Are you sure this is the right way? My friends have many questions about the paper.” Epifanio reassured him, “Don’t be afraid, we have nothing to lose, and we could win! We need to be daring. Next time we will meet with your friends to clarify any doubts.” On other occasions when we went to distribute the paper house to house, workers kept asking for the “supplement”—a one-page flyer using the simple language of the fieldworkers, where Epifanio explained communism, nationalism, racism, and imperialism. Truth be told, workers demanded that flyer. Through the distribution of CHALLENGE and the flyers in the fieldworkers’ communities, and in the fields where Epifanio lived and worked, this process led to a mass understanding of communist ideas.
     Epifanio challenged the owners, the police,  la migra, the liberal politicians, the religious leaders, and all sorts of capitalist vermin. An undocumented worker who knew him once told me, “Many undocumented fieldworkers knew that Epifanio’s house was a sanctuary for them.” In reality, it was so for all those ready to fight for communism.
     Epifanio’s unassuming character, determination, and deep confidence in the workers have been lessons for life. To remember Epifanio Camacho, long live communism!
    From Oaxaca, Mexico: I met Epifanio when I was an undocumented worker in Delano, California. Comrade Camacho was a communist teacher for us campesinos, because he was always looking for the best ways for us to understand dialectical materialism in our study groups. He and Luis Ventura were responsible for bringing the revolutionary communist ideas of PLP to Oaxaca, which today inform our work. We remember his commitment to promoting the party line in a massive way in Delano and McFarland, and the insight he developed to transcend the reformist politics of Cesar Chavez and embrace communist revolutionary ideas. ¡Hasta siempre camarada Epifanio!

CHICAGO, July 22– A multiracial, intergenerational group of around 30 Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends gathered for a forum today as a means to educate and organize against capitalism’s worsening racist and sexist attacks on workers’ reproductive and family health. In the wake of the historically racist and sexist Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, building the Party and fighting for international communist revolution remains the only real path forward for liberation and optimal health for our class.
     As capitalism globally spirals deeper into crisis, the bosses’ need to resort to open fascism to salvage their profit system becomes more acute. Different factions of the capitalist ruling class seek to mobilize workers around the issue of abortion, but to follow their leadership guarantees only more misery, murder, and imperialist war.
     In a movement dominated by pro-capitalist ideals of individualism, voting, and “autonomy,” the international working class must instead choose collectivity and the power of a worker-run communist state as the solution. To be a part of PLP is to be the fighting alternative to build an antisexist and antiracist world!

Communist panel highlights real reproductive justice
The first half of the forum was a panel presentation from three PLP members. The first panelist, a veteran healthcare worker, gave a condensed history of centuries of racist and sexist attacks on workers’ health under capitalism in the U.S. She detailed how getting medical treatments such as abortion has always been determined by race and class, with Black, Latin, and Asian and white workers suffering from little to no access. She shared a heart-wrenching personal story as a young worker who witnessed an involuntary surgery on a Black woman, a consequence of racist medical violence.
     The second panelist gave an analysis of the political motives of the different wings of the U.S. ruling class regarding their approach to abortions and reproductive health. Of course the domestically-oriented, church-supported Small Fascist wing (see Glossary, page 6) of the U.S. bosses obviously deserve to be destroyed for their assault on workers’ health. But,  it is the openly-liberal, internationally-oriented, imperialist Big Fascist wing who in fact are more sinister and deadly. The panelist shredded these Big Fascists for not disregarding abortion rights over decades, but for their present and future plans to win our class over to imperialist war by offering some minor reforms.
     The final panelist concluded by pointing the communist way forward. She shared her own progression from chanting “My body, my choice” to her eventual conclusion that the individual “choices” that we make as workers cannot be separated from the overall political and socioeconomic structure of society. Since the capitalists dominate the economic and political landscape, their rotten influence infects all dimensions of our lives.
     She argued that we need to see ourselves as part of the entire working class and fight for collective solutions. She concluded that only a worker-run communist state could guarantee worker rights, safety, and health, such as when the Soviet Union became the first place on earth to legalize abortion in 1922.

“Fighting for communism is the best way I know to fight back”
After the conclusion of the panel, the forum transitioned to an engaging open discussion. Many comments and questions were made about the struggle between reform and revolution, individualism versus collectivism, and voting versus direct workers’ action.
One PLP member asked the panel about alternative actions for workers and the Party to take in the immediate sense, since voting has always been shown to be a dead end for our class. A panelist responded with the example of mostly women workers in Mexico in recent years, militantly squaring off and battling with riot police in different state capitols after the bosses there tried to roll back abortion rights. Because they organized in a mass way to confront the attack head on, the bosses were forced to retreat.
     Another forum participant stressed the importance of women workers educating others of the dangers of sexism and winning more people to be advocates on behalf of women’s wellbeing. One of the PLP panelists agreed, but advanced the argument further that as workers we need to be fighting to take state power away from the capitalist bosses. Similar to the points made during the presentation, only by fighting for working-class power everywhere can we create lasting solutions to our collective needs.
     Perhaps the most inspirational moment of the evening came from the veteran panelist when she shared what brought her back actively into the Party after some time away: “I just couldn’t keep away, based on what I know. Fighting for communism is the best way I know to fight back.”

Always fighting for communism
As we fight shoulder-to-shoulder alongside workers for expanded reproductive health access, childcare, and a thousand other reform struggles, we must never shy away from connecting these fights to capitalism. The working class continuously demonstrates an openness to communist politics when we advance them boldly and consistently. This forum was just one of the many ways to advance communist revolution in a mass way and motivate ourselves to fight back. Onward to more class struggle.

Landover, Maryland, August 1–Today over 170 Metro Access transit workers hit the bricks, striking against Transdev, a contractor for the Metro transit system in the Washington, D.C. region (see CHALLENGE, July 6, for an earlier rally). Transdev is a notorious multinational private transit company famous for screwing workers around the world. The mainly Black transit workers drive “on call” for people with disabilities or medical challenges. They are paid $17/hour, far less than their Metro counterparts. They are demanding a starting rate of $22.50/hour, rising to a top rate of $32, as well as a decent health and pension plan. Transdev has arrogantly dismissed their very modest demands. But Transdev is being hit with a fine of $1,000 per missed run, or over $100,000 a day, so they have an incentive to come up with a better contract offer. We’ll squeeze these bosses until they cry uncle!
     Several Progressive Labor Party members joined the bold militant picket line, distributing over 75 CHALLENGEs to the striking workers, and discussing how only a communist revolution that fights racism can get rid of the capitalist bosses and create a worker-run society. When communist ideas, combined with angry worker militancy, grip the working class, we will succeed in overthrowing the entire capitalist system of exploiters and imperialists!

NEW YORK CITY, July 17— “We are still going through the same madness about homelessness…I don’t know. Something’s gotta change…this is not working.” That’s what a formerly homeless worker said at a demonstration at Gracie Mansion, racist kkkop Mayor Eric Adams’ home. The rally called for an end to the City’s racist displacement and immediate permanent housing. He is exactly right, and demonstrating with him were 40 workers and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members. The rally was,) sponsored by the Open Hearts Initiative.
     Mayor Eric Adams is leading the bosses’ efforts to clear New York’s streets of homeless workers by employing racist, fascist sweeps that try to force the homeless into shelters by destroying their street encampments. Yet many of these workers return to the streets because of the unsafe conditions in the shelters. Imagine that—homeless workers prefer the streets to the shelters! The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is fighting to organize the entire international working class to smash racism, sexism and imperialism and build a communist world. That means a world run by and for the working class, where things like healthcare and housing are provided on the basis of need, not on racist profits.

Capitalism creates racist homelessness
Racist profits, sharpening fascist attacks, and U.S. imperialism’s preparation for wider world wars are at the heart of the homeless crisis in cities, including the financial capital of the world’s top imperialist power. As inflation skyrockets hand in hand with capitalist profits (PBS, 4/12), more U.S. workers than ever are paying most of their income for necessities like food, housing, transportation, and heating.
     Nationwide, average apartment rents have increased 14.1 percent, and at least one in ten workers pay 55 percent of their monthly income on rent (Newsweek, 8/2). As “hot” real estate markets line the pockets of real estate capitalists, a 2020 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that for every average $100 increase in the average rent, homelessness increases an estimated nine percent (Washington Post, 7/3). Meanwhile in the past year, average rents have increased almost $300.
In New York City, May 2022 saw a near-record breaking 18,863 homeless adults and 15,432 children in the shelter system; 93 percent of these workers and youth are Black, Latin or immigrant (“Basic Facts”, coalitionforthehomeless.org). The bosses’ politicians’ response to homelessness is the same —whether liberal Big Fascist Democrat mayors like De Blasio and Adams, or the openly gutter Small Fascists running cities in states like Florida: they all rely on racist police terror to violently clear out encampments.
     With homelessness at the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s, PL’ers have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with homeless workers at the Lucerne Hotel from the beginning of the struggle and throughout the Covid-19 pandemic (see CHALLENGE, 7/21/20).

Lucerne workers expose Big Fascists
Homeless workers at Lucerne have been on the front lines exposing the Big Fascists’ politicians and their liberal misleaders for two years, and this was not their first march on a fascist mayors’ home (see CHALLENGE, 10/22/20). PLP salutes these workers’ militant leadership and experience, and we will continue fighting and struggling alongside them to earn their leadership into our ranks! At the same time, we are active in sharing and struggling over communist ideas.
     For example, one problem with today’s demonstration was that the primary goal of the organization sponsoring the march was to get coverage from the capitalist media. We are organizing and struggling with homeless workers on the grass roots level rather than relying on getting attention from the bosses’ media. Only in this way can workers build confidence in themselves and each other in working class leadership, not politicians or boss-led reform groups. Only in this way can our class organize a revolutionary communist PLP and smash racist homelessness once and for all. To do this, we distributed CHALLENGE at the protest, and talked with our friends and many of the participants.

Fight for workers’ housing, fight to tear down capitalism!
Winning workers to the fight against homelessness helps to tear down the wall of racism that separates us today. The only reason Adams is doing the sweeps is because the developers, landlords, and Wall Street are concerned about the “appearance” of New York City. Seeing homelessness is bad for business. Capitalism is incapable of solving this issue!
     As their economy sinks into another recession, the bosses would rather spend $54.6 billion on weapons manufacturers sending weapons to imperialist war in Ukraine, rebuilding Madison Square Garden, and building more luxury housing.  
     The Progressive Labor Party puts all confidence in the international working class. We fight in the struggle for workers’ housing against the bosses’ politicians and their racist police terror, and for a mass PLP that will lead international communist revolution. Racism and homelessness will only be ended by millions of workers united to fight for communism. JOIN US!