CHICAGO, October 20­­—Tonight we celebrated the victory and legacy of the communist October Revolution with comrades and close members of our base. About 60 of us gathered at a local hall to talk about the history of the how the Bolsheviks and theRussian working class won state power over 100 years ago, and how we in Progressive Labor Party are carrying on the tradition of international fight back, particularly with an emphasis on Black workers and youth being the key to revolution.
Table talks challenge bosses’reforms & racist cops
    We kicked off the event with an open mic and table talks in order to make the event more engaging for those in attendance. We led discussions around issues of conditions in working-class schools for students and teachers, the confirmation of the newest U.S. Supreme Court arch-sexist, Brett Kavanaugh, efforts of the working class organizing fight back efforts in the area, and the difference between reform and revolution.
A major part of our table conversations was the recent conviction of racist cop Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Black teenager Laquan McDonald. However, the conversation wasn’t a celebratory tone. It was a realistic tone in terms of the illusions that the ruling class feed members of the working class. Their version of justice never substantially works for members of the working class, particularly for Black, Latin, and women workers.
Even the “conviction” of Van Dyke shows that the state terror against working-class people by these killer kkkops isn’t regarded as a crime at all. This is shown by the fact that although Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 charges of aggravated battery with a firearm, he was found not guilty of “professional misconduct.” Meaning, viciously murdering a Black youth who was walking away from him wasn’t contrary to his duties, and it speaks volumes about the murderously racist character of the police under capitalism.
Revolutionary speeches, strengthening youth base
After the table talks, a comrade gave a passionate speech about rebuilding the mass international movement and the need to take state power once again through armed revolution. She blasted the capitalist bosses’ efforts to pacify us through their bogus “democracy” and elections, and reminded all of us that true political power “comes through the barrel of a gun.” She provoked all of us to imagine what could be if the caravan of migrant workers making their way through Central America was met at the U.S.-Mexico border with arms and communist leadership.
Following the comrade, a family member of Steven Rosenthal, a 15-year-old Black youth recently murdered by the Chicago Police Department (CPD), made a heartfelt speech about the realities of police repression in our neighborhoods. He talked about the life and personality of Steven and his relationships with his friends, and the type of lies that CPD have told about him since his murder. The teens in attendance noticeably gave him their attention, and the effect it had on them was visible.
These teenagers were present as a result of our growing work in local schools, and the conversations they had after the event were inspiring. It is vital that we continue to work with youth because they bear the brunt of the abuses of capitalism. A few of these young people voiced an understanding of how racism affects them, and of what awaits them if we don’t fight back and smash it.
The reality is that it could be any of them or any of us if we’re not successful in building a wide base among the working class as well as a massive Red Army to fight back with revolutionary violence against the fascism that’s heaped on us constantly.
Onward to state power
We ended the celebration with music and dancing, the way that working-class revolutions should be commemorated. It was yet another step forward in building our communist culture among the working class, a culture that is egalitarian, multi-racial, multi-gender, and multi-generational.
Over a century ago, the Bolsheviks and the Russian workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors gave us one of history’s best lessons on what can be accomplished when our class is armed and organized with communist politics. It is on their shoulders that we stand as we continue to build our Party for that inevitable day when the working class wins power once again.

The massacre of October 2nd, 1968 in Mexico City was the culminating point of the state repression of the mass movement composed mainly of students, which had great support from the working class. Hundreds of thousands in schools and neighborhoods participated in that struggle. As background and inspiration of that movement, years before, doctors, teachers and railroad workers held massive strikes and protests in defense of their labor rights and against the repressive system.
The movement occurred in the context of a growing economy of 6 percent on average in the last two decades and a significant increase in the urban population compared to the rural one. In the political sphere, there was an acute class struggle and similar student mobilizations worldwide. In that period, the polarization of the countries either under the influence of the old communist movement or of the capitalist bloc was in  force.
The former was led by a clique that had abandoned the principles of communism, but which counterbalanced the capitalist bloc under the leadership of the United States. Capitalism had to be present itself as the best alternative, so it promoted struggles for individual liberties, for feminism, environmentalism and democracy, the advances in these demands are the product of those struggles worldwide. After 1968, some groups of young people became radicalized and became part of the armed movement for national liberation, but the roots of the armed struggle were actually mainly in the terrible oppression and misery in which the peasants lived in rural communities and the workers in the misery belts of the big cities.
Another sector of young people who participated in the movement remained had a more moderate line, which only sought greater freedom and the democratization of society.
A small group of members, friends, and supporters of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) recently attended a march of tens of thousands to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the mass movements of 1968 in Mexico and the massacre of October 2nd.  We distributed hundreds of leaflets (see article in Challenge about Ayotzinapa) to education students, students from National Autonomus University of Mexico (UNAM), Autonomus University of Mexico City (UACM) and other social organizations.
We carried a banner in which we highlighted the struggle of communists and students against fascism and imperialism.We also participated on September 26 in a march that took place to demand the appearance of the 43 education students who disappeared four years ago, who were attacked by the Iguala, Guerrero police when they went to that city to ask for economic support from the population and take buses to Mexico City and participate in the demonstration on October 2, 2014.
 Our leaflet and the banner were well received by those attending the demonstration. The presence of our party is vital to keep our class alert to the false hope that has awakened in millions of workers with the arrival of the new fake-left government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) honor the memory of those who have fought against the injustices of the capitalist system; we support the workers who continue that struggle today. We believe that capitalism is a system that cannot work for the working class (for all those who need to work to survive), so we call on them to change it for a communist system of social equality, for this we must organize ourselves in a non-electoral party like PLP, to unify internationally and maintain the interests of our class above any individual or group interest. Join us!

Thousands of refugees from Central America—notably Honduras and El Salvador—are fleeing poverty and U.S. armed death squads as part of a worldwide workers’ struggle to escape the hell of capitalist exploitation.  In 2017 fifteen million refugees, over half from South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria, were forced to flee for their lives as U.S. bosses fought to hold on to their declining empire. U.S. Capitalists would rather lock immigrants up for a profit and treat our working class brothers and sisters like animals, than provide jobs, educations or housing.
The U.S. uses Honduras as a military hub for Central America where the police, gangs and drug cartels are indistinguishable and work for the same bosses.  The U.S. supplies the Honduran military with weapons used to kill and intimidate workers from fighting back.
In the U.S. there are currently 100 camps in 17 states jailing 13,000-unaccompanied immigrant youth. While thousands of families are locked up, I.C.E in August increased its factory raids rounding up 1192 undocumented immigrants. These attacks are attacks on all workers and we must stand and fight back!
Politicians are no allies of refugees
The separation of families and camps for children cannot be blamed solely on Trump. They are the product of decades of policies by both Democrats and Republicans. In 1994,  Clinton’s  “Operation Gatekeeper” poured billions into border security including high-tech surveillance systems and an increased border force. Bush II doubled the size of the border force to 20,000 while deporting over two million and building a wall from the Pacific Ocean across California where thousands of migrants died in search for a better life. Deporter-in-chief Obama left office with a record of over 3 million racist deportations. .
Racism and borders divide workers
Capitalists of all nations are trying to blame the global capitalist crisis on the immigrants who are fleeing U.S.-supported terror regimes, gang violence and endless wars. In the aftermath of endless chaos, the bosses use racism against the victims of imperialism by installing concentration camps all over the world.
Mexico’s “populist” president Manuel Obredor has created his own border police to violently repel Honduran refugees..  In 2017, the Mexican government detained 95,000 migrants, most of them children from Central America’s gang-plagued Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
In Greece on Lesbos, camp Moria houses 8,000 Syrian refuges where  police brutality occurs regularly and conditions are unsanitary with sewage running through the camp. Against the current of rising nationalism, the only solution is communist internationalism
As the crisis of refugees worsens and capitalism descends further into chaos, the bosses are pushing more racism and nationalism attempting to keep workers blaming each other instead of capitalism. Italy’s new populist coalition is forcing refugees away, hate crimes have risen 10-fold since 2012 and a tide of neofascism is sweeping the country. France, Austria and Switzerland tightened their borders and increasing anti-immigrant racism has led to violent demonstrations across cities in Germany.  Rising of nationalist politicians and parties in Europe are hoping to manipulate the working class into more racism against migrants to save their rotten system.
Well-intentioned, good people try to help immigrants with donations or lunches. Some argue that the camps should have better conditions, but the issue is not that the camps should be “better”, Yet the real problem is that the camps should not exist in the first place.
Fight for a communist world
A strong communist movement of millions of multi-racial workers is the only way to end these attacks. Workers of the world must reject all nationalism and borders that benefit only the bosses when they need to move money, their businesses’, or fool workers to die in imperialist wars.
No worker benefits from borders that divide the working class by fomenting racism between workers suffering the same capitalist exploitation all over the world. The capitalist bosses are doing their best to scapegoat immigrants for the deepening crisis of U.S. capitalism amid sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry.
Progressive Labor Party has taken up the cause to smash all borders and create one united working class against profits and exploitation. The international working class has no borders! In the face of these attacks by the bosses, we must continue building the revolutionary communist PLP to smash all walls that serve the parasitic capitalists. We must create a new world that honors workers’ labor and serves workers’ needs.

 Murderous World War I, known as the Great War then, ended one hundred years ago on November 11, 1918. It might be impossible to overestimate the impact of this war upon world history. It was by far the bloodiest war in history until that time. The slaughter horrified even those many patriots who had anticipated it and had celebrated when it began.
The Great War was pure imperialist—that is, capitalist—slaughter for empire and territory. There were no reasons behind it that could be called recmotely morally redeeming.
It wasn’t for “freedom”, whatever that means, or for “national self-determination”, or for an end to colonialism, or against racism or brutality. All these notions mask the fact that, in essence, World War II was also imperialist.
 No such ideological excuses can hide the fact that the Great War was over the division of the earth, a war FOR, not against, subordination, colonialism, empire.
It was a war among “democracies” — in that Germany was no less “democratic” than the United Kingdom (both were parliamentary monarchies) or, the monarch aside, than the United States.
The Great War led millions of people worldwide to seriously question or even reject “patriotism” as a cover-up for capitalist and imperialist rule.
This massive revulsion against imperialist slaughter and the misery it brought to the vast majority of the peoples of the world led to social and political progress. The Russian Revolution and the International Communist Movement; the militancy of organized labor; the certainty that a better world than capitalism, imperialism, and the devastation they produce must be possible.
The Great War was an event with mighty lessons for all of us today. No wonder it is neglected, Although largely forgotten those lessons were dynamite in 1918, and still are today.

*****

Letter

Today I commemorate my great-uncle, George Devine, a veteran and a victim of the Great War. He went off to war in 1917, at the age of 21.  In 1918 he returned “shell-shocked”—the name at that time for what is today called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He had been driven insane—literally—by the stress and shock of trench warfare. He never recovered.
For his family, this was worse than if he had been killed—to witness his unending suffering, year after year. My late mother remembered him living with her and her parents for brief periods in the 1920s. But then he had to return to the Veterans Administration hospital for the brain injured at Perry Point, MD, where he lived for the rest of his life.
 He died there on January 31, 1941. Poor young man! His whole bright future at the age of 21 ruined, and it was not to defend his country, or any noble ideal at all. To save J.P. Morgan & Sons, and other American banks, whose huge loans to the United Kingdom would have been lost if Germany had won the war. To put the capitalists of the United States ahead of the capitalists of Europe.My grandmother, his only sibling, could never speak of her younger brother George without weeping. Not wishing to cause her distress, we never asked her about him. And now it is far, far too late; Grandmother died in 1994, at the age of 99.
I think of him today, on the 100th anniversary of the end of the war that ruined his life.Yet he was but one of millions of young men, and tens of millions of men, women, and children the world around, whose lives were blasted by that terrible, imperialist war.
For me, great-uncle George stands in for all of them—all the people killed by wars for exploitation, for the enrichment of the few at huge cost to the many.And I prefer to believe this: As long as I—we—learn the lessons of the Great War, and struggle for a world of justice, free of exploitation, free of capitalism, free of inequality— then my great-uncle George, and the myriad of those like him throughout the history of the awful 20th century, did not die entirely in vain.