NEW YORK, October 24—“We’ve got to change the top, the middle and the bottom. We’ve got to get rid of the whole thing.” This was the sentiment expressed by friends and members at the sixth annual Progressive Labor Party (PLP) College Conference, entitled “Communism, Covid-19 and The Fight Against Racism.” The October 24  conference drew international and national participation from nearly 90 students and education workers. From the Bronx to New Jersey from Brooklyn to Puerto Rico, speakers strategized about fightback struggles on the City University of New York (CUNY) campuses and uniting student and worker struggles.
The opening speaker laid out the state of the world: increasing rivalry between the U.S. and its imperialist foes such as China and Russia is creating more volatility and a need for greater fascist control. The cutbacks on campuses are part of this trend, as local bosses prepare workers and students to accept worsening conditions. The speech ended on a positive note, as the many fightbacks that workers and students have engaged in were highlighted, and linked to the need for communist leadership to turn these fights into schools for communism.
Bosses’ dictatorship exposed
One participant suggested that by getting rid of the top New York racists, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo, things would be better for workers here. But regardless of who occupies city hall, the governor’s office or the Presidency, cutbacks on college campuses, the continued needless deaths from Covid-19 and racist attacks on the homeless will continue(see article below). Instead, the nearly 90 attendees spent four hours discussing another approach: organizing the students and workers to join  the revolutionary PLP to destroy the system entirely. During the break-out sessions, participants discussed Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s theory of the state in relation to elections—that no matter which capitalist party is in charge, it’s always a bosses’ dictatorship under capitalism.
We also debunked the capitalists' use of bogus “white privilege” ideology as a means of co-opting and commodifying multiracial, antiracist workers' struggles. It is in the interest of all workers to abolish racism, a tool of capitalist division.

Finally, Da Homeless Hero, a leader of the struggle against de Blasio’s racist attacks on homeless workers, closed the conference with a rousing call for all workers to unite and fight the capitalist attack on workers in the coronavirus era.  
Students: to arms and revolution!
With college students facing rising homelessness—more than 25 percent of students at community colleges deal with homelessness and a full third face food shortages—it is all the more important that friends and members of PLP are in the streets and hallways of college campuses, uniting students, faculty, and workers to fight for communism. This is the only way we will get what we want and need as an international working class.
A central aspect of PLP’s outlook is to make  practice primary over theory, and so our final appeal was for every attendee to increase their engagement in fightbacks on campus or on the job. We invited everyone to participate in election day demonstrations and CHALLENGE sales to bring the ideas of the conference out to the masses of students and workers.