Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA, FEBRUARY 1 —“We will hide you. In our school, in our homes— we will do what’s necessary to protect you. We are a community and we will take care of you.” As undocumented students shared their fears during the Advisory about the changes to immigration policies with the inauguration of President Donald Trump, teachers let them know we all belong here and we will defend you. This sentiment was widespread among the staff in part due to the long standing work of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fighting for the culture of the school to be rooted in ideas of antiracism, internationalism, and student-teacher solidarity. As Trump attempts to evoke terror in immigrant communities and promote them as the scapegoat for the inherent failures of capitalism, our school is united in demanding the working class have no borders.

Liberal bosses no solution to open fascism

The liberal bosses and their flunkies will try and use the issue of immigration to galvanize the working class behind them as their saviors. School districts across the country have sent out a flurry of calls, texts, and emails about Know Your Rights cards and are even prepared to deny school entry to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without a proper warrant. And while it may feel at the moment that the Democrats have our back, a short look back at history reminds us that former President Barack Obama proudly earned his title as deporter-in-chief. Lenin reminds us “we must distinguish between the programmes of the bourgeois parties, between the banquet and parliamentary speeches of the liberal careerists and their actual participation in the real struggle of the people.” Anyone serious about fighting for migrant workers rights must be in the fight to smash capitalism. As long as capitalism exists, the system that created and profits from borders, immigrant workers will never be safe.

The illusion of choice

While some school districts have taken a seemingly strong stance against Trump’s policies, others won’t even call a spade a spade. One school district where the Party does work put out an Advisory lesson asking students to identify an emotion they were feeling after the inauguration. The list of choices included words like “elated” and “refreshed.” An additional slide asked students what hopes they had for Trump and the next four years. 

The Party member at the school said, “Hell no” and organized other staff members to do the same. In a team meeting one teacher responded to the “hope” slide by saying they hope Trump is assassinated before the end of his term. Another teacher in the base of the Party shared she hoped all this would lead to revolution. By the end of the day numerous teachers, particularly those new to the school, came up to the Party member to thank them for speaking out and wanted to engage in further conversation about how to fight back. We also created an alternative Advisory deck that empowers students with information on how to fight back instead of normalizing support for an open fascist and racist.

This Advisory deck created by the school district again exposes the problems with liberal ideology. The district has self-proclaimed their commitment to antiracism, yet to appease Trump voters and to honor the results of democracy, the district validated support of the president who refers to immigrants as “animals” and “stone cold killers.” Their message is everyone’s opinions and feelings are valid and welcome here. In contrast, the Party has always proudly shouted “no free speech for racists.”

The real fight begins!

The coming period will continue to demonstrate the fight has never been about liberal versus conservative. The real fight is fascism versus communism. Workers will eventually have to choose. What we do as a party will determine the level of impact we have on that choice. As communists, we must fight to ensure workers don’t follow the liberals into the arms of fascism.

There will be countless opportunities over the next four years and beyond to convince workers that communism is the only choice. In our schools it starts with communists fighting for an antiracist, antisexist school culturel. Sharing our line will open the doors to workers and students joining us. The culture of the school then determines the level of fight back that we will be able to inspire in  the school community. What we do has always counted, but it counts even more in the continuing buildup to fascism. The struggles we lead will reveal that the only solution is communist revolution.

Brooklyn

BROOKLYN NY, FEBRUARY 1—Almost 20 teachers and staff answered a call to make plans for potential Immigration  and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at school. Every person who was invited to this first meeting agreed to participate. Many of them receive CHALLENGE regularly. The meeting started with a discussion about the need to organize to protect our students from the promise to deport millions that Racist in Chief Donald Trump is making. On January 21, the Trump administration rescinded a federal policy that made schools, hospitals, and other sensitive locations off-limits to ICE, attacking the most vulnerable members of the working class, our immigrant families (both documented and undocumented). 

Organizing workers against anti-immigrant racism

An important discussion ensued about the importance of organizing in the face of rising fascism. Here were some of the main points raised:

• One of the hallmarks of fascism is the government openly attacking a group of workers labeled as “unwelcomed.”
• Trump is building on the work of past U.S. presidents such as deporter-in-chief Barack Obama, who oversaw more deportations than any other U.S. president in history (Independent.co.uk, 11/19/24)
• We can’t rely on politicians or the Department of Education (DOE) to protect our students because when the bosses need to overturn or break their own laws, they do!
• We must build a movement where we, the working class, keep each other safe. 
• Helping to protect our students and their families from ICE raids is similar to participating in the Underground Railroad during slavery.

Despite recognizing the risks involved in protecting our students, everyone present agreed that we wanted to take part. One teacher shared what she had learned from reading about the Syrian resistance movement and made suggestions for how to apply them at our school. A self criticism was raised by a long-standing Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member and teacher at the school about the error of not having organized a meeting like this in response to the genocide in Gaza due to fear and how we need to organize more meetings like this one. 

Building an army against fascism

Besides plans for resistance we also discussed broadening our organizing to more staff and students with a “Know Your Rights” assembly. This assembly’s main purpose would be to make students at the school aware that many staff members care about them, want to keep them and their families safe, and are willing to help if they are in trouble. This provides us an opportunity to discuss the dangers of growing fascism and helps us also see even in scary times, we can organize! 

We have agreed to meet regularly to work on turning these ideas into reality. After the meeting a few of us stayed to talk, including a teacher who is newer to the school and very pro-student. They described the difficulty of keeping up morale in the face of all of the attacks worldwide the working class faces. This was the perfect opportunity to explain how being part of a revolutionary communist party, PLP, is what helps sustain our morale for the continued fightback that is needed. They were offered a CHALLENGE newspaper and gladly took it! Lots of work remains to be done…More updates to follow!

Newark

NEWARK, NEW  JERSEY, FEBRUARY 1 –  A week has passed since liberal politicians and reformist organizations began urging workers to rely on the weakening U.S. capitalists’ constitution, laws, and liberal leaders as the primary means of responding to newly elected President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and the broader rise of racist terror.

No safety for workers in fake liberal theatrics

The dominant message pushed by liberal misleaders is for workers to loudly denounce the violation of immigrant workers’ rights—but in ways that are hollow and leave us disorganized against these attacks. Simultaneously, these misleaders stoke fear, discouraging any real resistance. When state-backed fascists like ICE invade our communities, catch and cage our working-class brothers and sisters, and hurl them across borders like garbage, we are told to merely witness and report—not to interfere. ALL workers are reminded constantly that any attempt to interfere risks fascist repercussions.

The response of liberal bosses and their politicians will never go beyond performative outrage against fascist mobilizations. They refuse to confront the deeper realities revealed by immigrant raids: we need to smash the racist distinction between citizen and undocumented workers, and the oppressive existence of borders and nations as the division that weakens the international working class.
Racist divisions only benefit ruling class

These divisions allow competing bosses within nations across the globe to grind workers into the ground while scapegoating portions of our class with racist attacks. By prioritizing some workers over others—dehumanizing and super-exploiting the rest—they ensure that the working class remains fractured. Workers are left to passively endure the ruinous cycle of exploitation and displacement, shuffled from one nation to another, as the capitalist system deepens its crisis and its reliance on racist division to maintain control.

In contrast, a growing number of workers are gravitating toward a stronger, organized base within the working class, built on the communist principle that masses of workers must use our direct organized force to fight and defend each other to defeat this and every attack under growing fascism and global war. Workers are also demonstrating a growing urgency to struggle against the profit-driven system that fuels these assaults and more and more are embracing the necessity of its complete overthrow.

In that spirit, today three of us tenants went door to door canvassing in our building complex to grow the tenants’ union we are involved in. Through this outreach, we met six different neighbors who expressed a similar sentiment.  Each knock at their door aroused a feeling of fear ICE was starting their raid in the apartment building.  We did our best to reassure them, reminding them that we are neighbors wanting to build networks of protection for everyone to fight this vile system of capitalism that feeds from these racist attacks.  From the decrepit jail like conditions of the building, to the terrorising fascist means of deportation.  

Once the doors opened there were signs of relief.  Even though many neighbors did not speak English, with some translation efforts it didn’t take long for camaraderie. For one Haitian Creole speaking couple, they had the incredible patience to allow us to stumble through more than five different ways to try to translate for them!  Another Spanish-speaking neighbor expressed “No matter the color, the race of the person in the seat of the presidency of the U.S. the raids would still happen. We need to make this group as big as possible to defend each other.” Almost every neighbor asked, what was the plan? When we shared that we are knocking on doors every Saturday for the next month to build energy for an antiracist defend your neighbor training and a rapid response network they agreed to help knock on doors to get more people on board. One day these seeds of multiracial and antiracist mobilized unity will germinate and choke this whole racist system and overrun it with a life run by workers for workers: communism.

( See Challenge January 15 and January 29, 2025, for the first and second parts of this series: “Part 1: How Bolsheviks Built a Mass Revolutionary Party” - https://betalp01.com/home/challenge-newspaper/13408-part-1-how-bolsheviks-built-a-mass-revolutionary-party  and “Part 2: How Bolsheviks Built Mass Party” - https://betalp01.com/home/challenge-newspaper/13428-part-2-how-bolsheviks-built-mass-party )

World War I (1914-1918) was triggered by the imperialists' competition to redivide the world. The war would have been less destructive if the socialist Second International had dared to rouse the working class against the warmonger governments. Instead, the European proletarian parties deserted to the side of the imperialists. Only the Bolsheviks of Russia remained faithful to socialism/communism and internationalism. Only the Bolsheviks mounted a civil war against their own imperialist ruling class. 

The Capitalist March “Revolution”

In the midst of the war,  January 1917 began with a wave of workers’ strikes in Russia. By late February, the strikes spread and became more sharply political. Workers demanded an end to the war and to the Tsarist absolute monarchy. 

On March 11, Tsar Nicholas II unleashed the Russian army against the strikers. But one company of soldiers turned their guns around and opened fire on squads of mounted police instead. Rising in revolt, the workers and soldiers arrested tsarist ministers and generals and freed jailed revolutionaries, who promptly joined the revolutionary struggle. Other political prisoners, including Joseph Stalin, returned from exile in Siberia. Stalin went to Petrograd, where he joined the editorial board of Pravda, the Bolshevik daily newspaper.

The Tsar abdicated, ending three centuries of the Romanov bosses’ rule. (The following year, Nicholas and his family were executed). Intoxicated by these early successes, and lulled by the support of the compromising Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, most of the petit bourgeoisie, soldiers, and workers supported the capitalist Provisional Government. It fell to the Bolshevik Party to explain to the masses of workers and soldiers that as long as power remained in the hands of these capitalists, and as long as the Soviets [councils] were dominated by the compromisers, the workers and peasants would secure neither peace nor land nor bread. To achieve complete victory and complete the revolution, power needed to be transferred to the Soviets under communist (Bolshevik) leadership.

On April 4, 1917, one day after returning from exile abroad, Lenin issued his famous April Theses. He called for his Bolshevik Party to seize state power. Six months later, this campaign, which started with only a handful of comrades, would change the face of the earth.

Between March and October 1917, the Bolsheviks accomplished the difficult task of winning over the majority of the working class and the Soviets, and enlisting the support of millions of peasants for the Socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks conducted extensive political work both at the front lines, among the soldiers, and in the rear, to prepare the masses for revolution. The Bolsheviks viewed socialism as a key step toward communism.

The Bolsheviks confronted the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, the Anarchists, and the other non-communist parties that fought to preserve the capitalist profit system. At the same time, they defeated attempts by capitulators within their own party to deflect them from the path of socialist revolution. 

In July 1917, workers rose up against the capitalist Provisional Government. Though Lenin realized the uprising was premature, he insisted that the Bolsheviks support the rebelling workers. The Provisional Government violently suppressed the uprising and outlawed the Bolshevik Party. Lenin went into hiding in Finland. But organizing for revolution never stopped.

Under Bolshevik leadership, the urban working class, in alliance with the poor peasants, and with the support of the soldiers and sailors, overthrew the bourgeoisie and established the power of the Soviets. They set up a new type of state, a Socialist Soviet state. They expropriated the businesses of the capitalists, dispossessed many landlords, started collectivising  the country’s land and turning it over to the peasants, withdrew Russia from World War I, and obtained peace—a much-needed respite. Together, these measures created the conditions for the development of Socialist construction.

The Great October Socialist Revolution smashed capitalism, deprived the bourgeoisie of the means of production, and converted much of the mills, factories, land, railways and banks into the public property of the whole people. Throughout the vast country, it established the dictatorship of the proletariat. It made the working class the ruling class.

On the night of November 7, 1917, revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, arrested the bourgeois Provisional Government, and placed state power in the hands of the Soviets.

Why were the Bolsheviks successful?

There were five significant factors:

• First, the Russian bourgeoisie was weak. They were entangled in World War I, which the masses of Russian workers and peasants soon came to bitterly oppose. After the capitalists gained power in February 1917, workers in Russia saw no essential differences between them and the Tsar.
• Second, workers in Russia had been steeled by revolutionary battle, by the insurrections in 1905 and February 1917 and by the mass working-class strikes and uprisings that began in 1912. The workers in these battles followed the leadership of the Bolsheviks. 
• Third, the Bolsheviks understood they could turn imperialist war into civil war. As the Russian rulers focused on the European battleground, they left their internal flank wide open for attack. The Bolsheviks knew to kick the bosses when they were down.
• Fourth, the Bolsheviks built a worker-peasant-soldier alliance.  They organized many agricultural workers under their revolutionary leadership, often meeting these agricultural workers for the first time as they were organizing soldiers to turn their guns on their generals 
• Fifth, the Bolsheviks won significant portions of the working class and peasantry to the essential concept of revolutionary violence, without which no revolution can succeed.

What was the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution?

Over the decades that followed, it stimulated working class struggles worldwide. Legalized trade unions, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and Social Security were all attempts by U.S. bosses to “save capitalism” through reforms. An enormous international communist movement inspired and led rebellions against imperialists and colonizers around the world. Socialism won out from China to Eastern Europe.

These great advances began to erode and reverse in the 1960s, when Nikita Khrushchev made it clear that the working-class revolution was no longer the program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and whatever world communist movement it still led at that time. The collapse of the Soviet Union—and later of the great Chinese Revolution for communism—led directly to the low level of class struggle in the current period and degraded conditions for the international working class.

And so the most important questions facing the working class of the world are: WHY did the glorious communist movement of the 20th century turn into its opposite? And HOW can the next great revolution have a different outcome? 

Note: See the series on the centennial of the Russian Revolution in CHALLENGE in 2017 – 2018. Here are some specific suggestions: 

https://betalp01.com/home/challenge-newspaper/10369-bolshevik-revolution-centennial-series-the-great-insurrectio
https://betalp01.com/home/challenge-newspaper/10350-bolshevik-revolution-centennial-series-free-at-last-the-worl
https://betalp01.com/home/challenge-newspaper/10577-bolshevik-revolution-101-workers-took-power-we-can-do-it-aga
https://betalp01.com/home/challenge-newspaper/13364-bolshevik-revolution-the-epic-black-sea-revolt
https://betalp01.com/challenge/challenge-13-jun-2018/viewdocument/271 - page 6.

FRANKFORT, KY, January 18- Instead of mourning Donald Trump's inauguration as the chief sexist and racist, Kentucky Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members led a rally against sexism and in support of reproductive healthcare and equal rights for women, queer, and immigrant workers. We gave speeches, led radical chants, and distributed products such as masks, condoms, drug test strips, CHALLENGE, and water. Before the rally, we made signs connecting the struggle of women and queer workers to the struggle against capitalism, and handed these signs out to rally attendees. 

The rally itself had initially been planned as part of the People’s March (formerly the Women’s March) but the original organizers dropped out. Because the original march had not been planned by communists, we received some push back from a handful of liberals when they found out that we were the new organizers. On the other hand, the vast majority of workers in the area were grateful that another group had stepped up to lead the event in Frankfort. We used this opportunity to introduce many new people to PLP and communist ideas. We even met some people who were already communists but didn’t know about the PLP. For example, we met a young comrade from Peru and we had a great conversation about internationalism and the communist fight against racism and xenophobia. He was also happy to hear that there were Spanish versions of PL literature.

In our speeches, PLP members made sure to connect all the struggles that exist under capitalism to the struggle for women’s rights. We explained how these problems cannot be separated. One PL’er in her speech explained how homelessness, police brutality, and the genocide in Palestine are also all women’s issues and directly impact bodily autonomy. 

The PL’er also explained how these issues are all fundamental to capitalism and can only be solved by destroying the capitalist system with communist revolution. We all openly declared ourselves communists; this had many more positive effects than negative. It allowed us to have open conversations with people who were also fed up with both parties, and helped these people feel like they didn’t have to hide their politics. It also allowed us educational opportunities with people who didn’t know much about communism but wanted to learn.
Some non-PLP comrades gave powerful speeches as well, regarding trans rights and reproductive rights. We also handed the megaphone off to anyone who wanted to speak. 

Once all the speeches were done, we headed back to our table where we led more chants. One chant that one of our members came up with was, “Same Enemy, Same Fight, Women Workers Must Unite!” There was a non-PLP attendee we met who took over chants for us when our voices got tired, and she even led another one of our communist chants, “Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!” She started telling the attendees of the rally we had to fight, and brought radical energy when the rally needed it. We were extremely happy to get to meet people like this and introduce them to the Party.

During this period of increased repression, we must be bold in letting workers know that the only solution to the racism and sexism of capitalism is a communist society where workers run the world for our needs, not for profit and exploitation. We must be bold in sharing our ideas in the mass movement and organizing workers for the long term struggle needed to build for a communist revolution.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 18 – On inauguration weekend, members of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends joined in protesting the reinstatement of Deporter-in-Chief Donald Trump. Various reform organizations were present at the Lincoln Memorial, where the People’s March held a concert-like program. PLP, like many of the other organizations, gave chants and speeches; but unlike these other groups, we called for more than the condemnation of Trump and his administration. We boldly demanded the smashing of this genocidal capitalist system and for the bright future under a dictatorship of the working class: communism. 

Bringing class consciousness to D.C. and beyond 

Comrades from the surrounding area of D.C. took the lead for the day's events. Comrades and base members from as far as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut joined us. We started the day at a comrade’s house with breakfast. Afterwards, we took a bus before walking to a street leading up to the Lincoln Memorial. The lead comrades noticed many people leaving the area as we were arriving, so on the spot they decided to start our action at a street corner where we held a picket. This proved to be beneficial because, being away from the main rally, we were able to draw attention from passersby with our chants, and interject much needed class consciousness. “¡Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!” “Workers in Gaza are under attack. What do we do? Stand up! Fight back!” Two comrades also gave short speeches shaming the Biden administration for its full-scale support of Israel's genocide against the workers in Palestine, and blasting Trump’s administration for its atrocious racist nationalism. Comrades also distributed our newspaper CHALLENGE on two separate streets. 

There was no large-scale march once everyone was at the Lincoln Memorial, so we created our own. After our picket, we lined our group in pairs and marched towards the main area of the rally. We continued with our bold chants: “From Haiti to the Congo, these racist bosses have got to go!” “From Ukraine to the Philippines, stop the imperialist war machines!” We stopped soon after to continue distributingthe rest of the newspapers and to engage in conversations with other attendees. In just a little over 15 minutes, we gave out the majority of our remaining CHALLENGEs, distributing a total of close to a 1,000. Everyone reunited at our meet up spot before we left the rally and returned to our comrade’s house. 

Reflections on current situation

We continued our gathering with an evaluation of our time at the rally. Multiple comrades expressed surprise at how receptive people were in getting CHALLENGE, from feminists to even Trump supporters. One friend of the Party said that they wished they had initiated more conversations. They discussed with one person the catastrophe of the fires in Los Angeles, and the selfish nature of capitalists during this deadly time. Billionaire parasite Rick Caruso, an owner of many residential and commercial properties in California, has used private firefighters to salvage his buildings, while thousands of workers have lost much—if not all—of their belongings. We all agreed that our politics were generally well-accepted and a wanted alternative for workers disillusioned by both Democrats and Republicans. 

Before our second group discussion, we enjoyed pizza and homemade dishes while socializing among ourselves. Our major focus of the discussion was our college work and how to organize in areas where we may only have one or a few comrades. Conversations varied from workers’ fears post-election to the liberal misleaders’ weakening sway over the mass of workers. The students among us reported varying levels of attitudes from their campuses; some of their peers feel discouraged, fearful, and enraged. With millions refusing support for a Harris or Trump presidency, it is clear that workers are becoming more aware of the dead-end that capitalist “democracy” offers them. Crackdowns on student gatherings and demonstrations amidst the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide have served as reminders that workers’ rights to protest injustice will be met with repression from all levels of the ruling class.

Workers WILL win and defeat this racist system 

Even with the dangers we face on our campuses and in our communities, multiple comrades concluded that we are rightfully pushing back against the imperialist state. Our base members grow more confident when we fight alongside them as a collective; we see firsthand that the fear truly lies in the administrators, police, and politicians—who put roadblocks to student-worker unity and fightback. 

We made it clear that, whether we have been organizing for years or don’t know where to start, the Party supports everyone who wants to find an area of focus where they can grow politically and share our analysis with coworkers, students, teachers, and neighbors. Our time in D.C. energized and reaffirmed that our fight against the capitalist state is necessary. Trump’s blunt xenophobia and sexism give understandable heightened fear and anger to our class siblings. But we need to remind ourselves that Democrats like KKKamala Harris, and Obama before her, are not the safer option for our class. They also serve the billionaires—both nationally and abroad—while workers internationally suffer from their genocidal destruction. We must continue this new year with the same fighting principles for all workers—from Haiti, to Sudan, to Palestine, to Myanmar: turn imperialist war into class war!