The Bronx—“We cannot be quiet. We must fight fascism!”
These were the inspiring words of a Middle Eastern student at our teach-in at a City University of New York (CUNY) campus in the Bronx. More than 500 students and staff crowded into a big hall to better understand the world and make plans to fight back. We discussed organizing against racism, sexism, deportation, mass incarceration, and the ban on Muslim workers. We also got a glimpse of what an egalitarian society might look like as students from all around the world played key leadership roles in speaking, leading the workshops, and organizing the event. The divisiveness of identity politics took a back seat to building a united fightback led by the working class.
The teach-in was organized by a growing grassroots organization on campus. The keynote speakers were all students from countries on the racist Muslim ban list as well as undocumented students. The spirit of fightback was very evident as each speaker called on the participants to take a stand. “There is no one who can stop us!” was the rallying cry of one of the student speakers.
The workshops and discussion circles promoted the fighting spirit of the 1960s. There were no lectures or power points-just students and staff exchanging ideas and experiences on how to best fight back. A member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) explained how racism is part of capitalism and that we won’t see its end until we end capitalism. The workshops were lively and engaging, and as each ended, there were resounding chants throughout the entire hall. In the anti-racism workshop, students exchanged anecdotes about how they have stood up to racism and many agreed to join the organization and get more involved.
PLP members and friends have been active in the campus struggles here, from challenging tuition hikes to fighting racist police brutality. We have fought to make each event a call for multi-racial unity and working class solidarity. Rather than see the teach-in as a place for “identity politics” where different groups see themselves as separate constituencies, we have held strong to the line that the Muslim ban, racist police killings, and attacks on immigrants are an attack on all of us. These attacks are systemic and not simply the policies of one President. The Progressive Labor Party’s communist ideas have received a positive response on campus, as Challenge distribution and discussion groups have increased.
This event was a step forward in the fight against racism and fascism, and for a better world. The organizers did not shy away from talking about fighting back. Hundreds showed they are ready to fight and are looking to both give and take political leadership. Despite the bosses’ intimidation and fear tactics, students who are the direct targets of Donald Trump’s racist policies showed courage and determination.
But there is much more to be done. Some high school students took the lead with a militant walkout a few days after the teach-in. On campus we must strengthen the sanctuary movement. A rapid response team can respond to any and all attacks on undocumented brothers and sisters. We rally on International Women’s Day to celebrate their leadership of the entire, united working class.
     As we participate in these struggles, we must train future leaders to fight against the whole capitalist system. Let’s step up our fightback on all our campuses and join the Progressive Labor Party in the fight for a better world!

NEW YORK CITY, March 1—A surprised college administrator shifted in his seat and fidgeted with his pen, surrounded at a table by several angry workers. This was an emergency meeting, called by a group of multiracial, immigrant and native-born anti-sexist staff and faculty at a local college, in defense of their woman coworker who was being terminated. Prior to the meeting, the workers had concluded this administrator was primarily responsible for years of sexist attacks on their coworker. The workers called the meeting and, at long last, they confronted him. Now, they sat in judgment.
Facing the administrator, a male worker delivered the charges. He concluded with the verdict and the sentence: “You’re guilty of sexism, and everything that’s happened to our coworker. We demand your resignation!” The boss refused to resign, and threatened the department that if he were to lose his job, the future funding of the department’s programs and staff would be “uncertain.”
This woman worker had endured years of harassment and sexist attacks. The attacks included routinely dealing with sexist comments made by the administrators’ friends, feeling like the bosses encouraged an atmosphere of a “boys’ club,” and more. She witnessed and was intimidated into supporting administrative corruption and was terminated at the same time that this particular administrator received a promotion and increase in pay—despite being removed from actual responsibilities due to incompetence.
This struggle created an opening for wider fightback on campus, a fightback that can and must be linked to the growing “sanctuary” movement supporting undocumented students, and growing restlessness among campus workers against their racist and sexist working conditions.
To Fight or Not to Fight
The workers’ demands for their coworkers’ immediate reinstatement, and for the termination of this sexist administrator, split workers in the department. Some workers followed the passive line of  “what can you do?”
In front of this woman worker, they argued that what’s done was done, and out of fear of losing funding, we need to “come together” and make each other look good so as not to hurt the department’s image. One worker cynically asserted that he’d rather have this administrator because “it could always be worse.”
Other workers argued that publicity (good or bad) does not determine the survival of a department; the needs of the college to save money do. One woman worker stated the whole concept of “justice” was that people who do bad things should face consequences. She was exasperated that, because of fears over their jobs, some were making a perceived choice to save themselves instead of taking a principled anti-sexist position and defending their coworker.
Ultimately, fear won out over militant anti-sexism. Despite passionate and loud opposition, a slight majority called to drop the demand for the administrator to resign. Agreement was eventually reached on drafting a letter of support on behalf of the department to the college president to save this workers’ job. This proposal was loudly endorsed by the more passive workers, who, as a group one week later, refused to sign it and apologized to their terminated woman coworker that the letter was “too extreme”—even though they helped write it!
Which Side Are You On?
The passive, cynical workers hide their fear of struggle behind anti- working class ideas like their “look out for no one but me” philosophy. In the dark night that has followed the collapse of the old communist movement, individualistic bosses’ ideas like these have saturated the international working class. In practice, these ideas amount to abandoning a woman worker they once considered a friend. In practice, these ideas destroy working class unity, and let sexist pigs like their administrator get off with a promotion and less work. As the struggle in this college department clarifies, individualism benefits no one but the capitalists.
On the other hand, international working-class unity is growing in this department. That the administrator was confronted at all, and “indicted” by the multiracial group of militant women and men workers, is a victory. This struggle has the potential to grow. The department was a different place after the meeting, with no more ambiguity about who stood where. In the weeks that followed, many casual work friendships began solidifying into bonds of solidarity.
Sharper Practice, Sharper Theory
Sharp political discussions have ensued since the termination, and the workers have all remained in close touch. One question of “what to do next” was followed by another question: “what result do we want to achieve?” If the workers pull off a great anti-sexist victory and won her reinstatement, and stopped there, they would still be left with the capitalist system that created the sexist working conditions in the first place. Not to mention they could still lose all of their jobs anyway. Some workers’ fears of budget cuts have a real material basis; the U.S. rulers are savagely attacking all public education programs across the country to pay for their imperialist war machine!
Communists want to achieve a different society altogether, where the working class runs the world under communism, free of borders, money, sexism, imperialism and racism. Most workers in the department would agree that a communist world is preferable to the current one. To get there, it will take building working-class consciousness, to see that an injury to one is an injury to all. Fighting against sexist and racist attacks on the job are more than just the best way to win jobs back, they are the “schools for communism” our class needs to break free from fear and passivity.
Communist Potential Grows
The workers in this department fight on. Current and former students have been contacted and are collectively editing a petition to be distributed demanding reinstatement. There are plans to propose a union resolution with the same demands, in addition to an official college investigation into departmental corruption.
Further connecting the fight against capitalism with the local struggles on campus, a plan was made to enlist friends in different campus groups to fight back as well, and struggling to involve this woman worker in a CHALLENGE study group. The struggle continues!

Florida, February 24—Hundreds of people of all ethnic groups came this evening to support the Islamic Society at New Tampa after an arson attack on the mosque today at 2 AM. Friends of Progressive Labor Party held a sign, saying “Racism Hurts All Working People.” Many came to hug us when they saw the sign.
Although U.S. capitalist war-makers have tried to pit Jewish workers against Muslim workers against Christian workers, tonight’s gathering demonstrated solidarity of our class. Everyone here was saying that racist attacks on Muslim and Jewish workers have increased after the Presidential election of Donald Trump.
We must fight racism everywhere, and point out that the ideology of communism is the best way to unite working people worldwide.

March 8 is International Working Women’s Day. It’s an international holiday that celebrates women and their revolutionary power, and it has strong roots in the communist movement. International Women’s Day first began in New York as “Women’s Day,” organized by the Socialist Party of America. It was celebrated in 1909 as a commemoration of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In the 1910 meeting of communist and socialist leaders from around the world, known as the Second International, women members pushed to establish an International Women’s Day. By 1911, over a million workers around the world were celebrating it. In 1917, striking women workers commemorating this holiday sparked uprisings that led to the Bolshevik Revolution, and the first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. Anti-sexist struggle makes it a historic day for all workers, both women and men!
The Progressive Labor Party continues the revolutionary tradition of International Women’s Day by fighting for true liberation for women, and men: communism. We believe that all women and men of the international working class can do better than settle for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, and can get rid of this whole system and replace it with one where we, the working class, run the world.
Capitalist Response to Crises
Capitalism is based off of making profits, which is money stolen from workers. Bosses need to constantly expand their business and make more profits to stay alive. However, there are limits to how much they can expand. U.S. bosses are reaching those limits and facing competition from Russia and China. That is why they need to wage bigger wars and steal from workers even more. Those are the only two ways they can continue to grow business and make more profits.
Sexism is an important part of how bosses steal from workers, because it allows them to pay women less than men and fire women easily if they don’t fall in line. It also divides men and women workers by convincing them that they are enemies. This allows them to pay men less, too, because they don’t unite with their fellow workers to demand a better life. Sexism also means that working families, and especially mothers, have to worry about childcare and housework, not the bosses.
Women Workers At
Cutting Edge of Capitalist Horror
Trump has eagerly continued Barack Obama’s legacy of racist mass deportations by deporting hundreds of workers only a month into his presidency. He wants to hire 10,000 more immigration police and give them even more powers to target all undocumented workers. Unlike Obama, Trump is not pretending to play nice. He is the ugly, naked, violent face of fascism.
Women workers are one of his primary targets. The women who are deported to Latin America often face, in addition to the sexist exploitation that is key to profitmaking, gang, government physical and sexual violence.
Women workers from Syria face a similar fate. Those who stay in Syria face constant U.S. and Russian-sponsored bombings. They are twice as likely to die from shelling or air strikes as men. Whether they stay or flee, women are at risk of sexual assault or sex trafficking. In refugee camps in countries like Jordan, where women and children comprise more than 80 percent of the population, they are at a high risk of sexual assault. Often they lack basic reproductive and sexual health services, resulting in higher death rates.
The everyday lives of women workers are a nightmare. Women, and especially Black, Latin, and immigrant, are the first to lose their jobs when the bosses need to cut. Wages are falling all over the world and it’s getting harder and harder to pay for food, rent, and other necessities.
History As A Guide And A Weapon
The international working class has faced down dark nights before, and will do so again. The Soviet Union made great progress, where prostitution was eliminated, communal daycares and kitchens flourished, and education was equal for both women and men.
At its height, 60 percent of the Soviet Union’s engineers were women. Women held power across one-sixth of the earth’s surface, and armed women workers played lead roles during World War II, both in the Red Army, and the partisan movement that devastated the Nazi war machine behind enemy lines.
The Soviet Union gives us a glimmer of what life can look like when women and men unite to build a better world.
Working Class Response to Crises
The world situation is intensifying. The bosses may respond to crises by attacking and exploiting women more and stirring up racism. The bosses will also try to lead the working class astray  through feminist and liberal politics that mark working-class men—not ruling-class women and men—as the enemy.
But our class has much to be hopeful for. Millions of people around the world are refusing to fall into the trap of racism and sexism (see page 1,3,5).
When Trump announced his Muslim ban, thousands of workers in cities all over the United States rushed to the airports to demand its downfall. Workers chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
The day after the inauguration, millions of workers around the world went to women’s marches to show that they would not accept the attacks on women.
PLP marched and will continue to march and organize on the campus and on the job with the millions of workers who dare to dream a better world. This International Working Women’s Day, we must mobilize to destroy the whole sexist capitalist system and replace it with communism. Only then will the working class, both men and women, truly be liberated.  The night may be dark, but our revolutionary future is bright!