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Tubman & Brown: revolt against slavery with multiracial unity

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24 September 2023 313 hits

This coming October 17 marks the 163nd anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry. A multiracial group of abolitionists led by John Brown wanted to spark an uprising against slavery that would spread throughout the South. It was a revolt showing the need for militant, antiracist, multiracial, revolutionary struggle! The fight against racist terror continues with the rebellions sparked by police murders this summer. As workers recognize the power of unity, the cops crack down harder on protests.

The Southern enslaving class was terrified by the Harpers Ferry raiders’ militant, multiracial unity, a real-life rebuke of their racist stereotyping. One of the raiders’ five Black freedom fighters, Osborne Anderson, described the atmosphere before-hand:

I have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an Anti-Slavery family, carrying out to the letter the principle of the Anti-slavery cause. In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self — no ghost of a distinction found space to enter.

From childhood, Brown vowed to fight slavery
This trust among white and Black fighters did not happen overnight. John Brown’s father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. At 12, Brown met a fugitive enslaved boy and saw the suffering slavery had inflicted 
on him, influencing Brown forever.
 He believed Black and white workers were completely equal. He put 
this knowledge into action daily.

As an adult, Brown moved his family to a farm in North Elba, N.Y., near a Black community of former enslaved workers. Black sisters and brothers were regularly invited to the house for dinner with Brown’s family. He addressed them as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” sharply contrasting with the era’s racist mores (true even among many slavery opponents).

Preparing for the raid, Brown turned to both Black and white abolitionists. In April 1858, while gathering money, arms and volunteers in Canada, he visited Harriet Tubman. She was well-known to the Black fugitive slave community there, having personally guided many to freedom. Tubman supported his plans, urging him to set July 4, 1858, for the raid and promising to bring volunteers. They agreed to communicate through their mutual friend Frederick Douglass, reaching out to Black abolitionists and former enslaved workers.

Tubman single-handedly freed 300 enslaved workers
Tubman’s own experiences made her and Brown allies. Born around 1820 to enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation, Tubman performed house and field work, was subjected to physical abuse and tearfully saw many of her nine siblings sold away from the family. In her teens, Tubman suffered a broken skull from brutal plantation life. Her “owner” tried selling her as “damaged goods.” Instead she fled, walking for several weeks, mostly at night, the 90 miles to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. She returned shortly afterwards, guiding her family out of slavery to Canada. And that was just the beginning.

Over the following 11 years, with a bounty on her head, Tubman made approximately 13 trips south and guided an estimated 300 enslaved workers to freedom in Canada. This resolute, daring revolutionary declared, “I never ran my train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger.” Tubman warmly endorsed Brown’s armed struggles in Kansas against the pro-slavery gangs. Brown, in turn, knew Tubman’s courage, militancy, and knowledge of the land and Underground Railroad network, and felt Tubman would be invaluable in executing their plans to free the enslaved by any means necessary. He always addressed her as “General Tubman.” Both believed in direct action and armed violence to end slavery.

Tubman became ill and could not bring her forces to Harpers Ferry, but her work inspired the rest of the raiders. Tubman’s example, like that of Osborne Anderson and the other Black raiders, discredited the image of Black people as passive victims, terrifying the southern enslavers and politicians, and inspired the abolitionist movement.

Black rebels petrified enslavers
To those today who say workers won’t fight oppression, the stubborn facts of history show struggle is universal. The enslavers, although talking of “docile” Black workers, knew this well. They were petrified of potential Black rebels and of “outside agitators.” They patrolled all night with dogs and guns to intimidate their enslaved work- ers and to keep Yankees and abolitionist literature away from them.

Today the “outside agitators” are Progressive Labor Party (PLP) communists, fighting to abolish racist capitalism. The bosses assure us that the impoverished working class is too ground down, too alienated to fight back collectively, saying workers hate communism. Yet they organize cops, plant security, the Minutemen, Black nationalists and sellout union “leaders” to try to keep communists out, and instantly fire them when they’re discovered in a factory. Why are they afraid if the working class is supposed to be so passive?

Today, uniting to fight the mutual class enemy is one of the main ways people of different backgrounds are able to overcome the “natural” segregation capitalist society promotes. Brown and Tubman demonstrated that racist and nationalist ideas cannot be overcome primarily inside one’s head. It requires material change in the way one lives. Among the Black and militant white abolitionists, multiracial unity developed over years of working together, getting to know each other while struggling over their differences.

Today, U.S. capitalism has created its own contradictions. Workers still often live in neighbor- hoods separated by “race” but many are integrated within their workplaces and schools. The bosses try to divide us there as well, with racist job classifications and different types of bourgeois culture to keep workers apart (e.g., soul “versus” country music). Nevertheless, workers rub shoulders every day. Class-conscious workers in PLP must develop these acquaintances into friendships and unbreakable bonds in struggle.

Class struggle trumps racism
As in Tubman and Brown’s time, racism permeates society. But rebellions and strikes reveal multiracial unity and struggle against the bosses. At the Smithfield Ham Factory in Tarheel, NC, for example, a 15-year unionization fight witnessed intense intimidation from the bosses to scare workers from signing union cards. But by organizing support from grocery workers from far and wide, Smithfield workers felt part of a larger community. When the bosses got immigration agents to raid the plant, targeting Latin workers for deportation, the workers saw through this divisive trick and, in November 2006, 500 marched out in a two-day strike protesting this raid, forcing the company to rehire all the fired immigrant workers!

In 2008 in the Bronx, NY, the Stella D’Oro workers went on strike for 11 months. These immigrant workers from across the world, men and women, overcame differences and stuck together. Not one worker crossed the picket line! PLP had organized friends, comrades, teachers and students onto the picket lines, bringing solidarity and communist leadership. PLP members steadfastly stood in solidarity with the strikers via donations, rallies and marches, and supported their fight against plant closure. The fight against police brutality is a protracted class war still being waged today. It is the same war left unfinished by Tubman and Brown. This summer PLP joined the militant anti- racist fightback against the kkkops, who in less than a year’s time, stole the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake, and countless others. The multiracial character of these protests are glimmers of the revolutionary potential of the working class.

John Brown’s raid and Harriet Tubman’s courage in freeing 300 slaves along the Underground Railroad teach us many lessons that are valuable to antiracists today. First, militancy was foremost in their thinking. Tubman declared she would never return to being a slave, that she would rather die fighting. Brown, after fighting in Kansas, realized that only bloodshed could end slavery. Many workers agreed with them, especially after the 1857 Dred Scott decision legalizing slavery nation-wide.

The second is that multiracial unity is essential in any fight. Black workers escaping from enslavement received needed help from white abolitionists to reach the North. Thousands of workers, Black and white, helped escaping slaves along their journeys and defended them when attacked by slave-catchers. These workers attended public meetings, donated money, passed word to their friends and helped harbor fugitive slaves.

PLP does similar things today. We discuss political struggles and the vital need for multiracial unity against the racist system with friends, coworkers and neighbors. We urge them to join in militant antiracist demonstrations, build a multiracial base with fellow workers or donate to CHALLENGE. Every time someone we know does one of these simple acts, they’re making a political commitment in the fight against racism, capitalism and imperialism, just as thousands of anti-slavery porters did against slavery—taking small steps to serve and defend those who had escaped slavery as well as those who fought it directly.

Join Progressive Labor Party
We invite all workers, soldiers and students who participate in these struggles to join Progressive Labor Party. Today’s supporters of antiracist struggle understand — just as did the thousands backing Brown and Tubman 161 years ago — that revolutionaries, like the raiders then and PLP now, are the honest, reliable leaders in struggle. When direct action is required, they know to whom to turn. CHALLENGE constantly reports workers being won to militancy and multiracial unity in struggles against the racist bosses, hailing those joining our ranks. Step by step, the communist movement will grow and lead the working class to revolution and a new world based on members of our class mutually meeting each other’s needs, without racist bosses and their profit system.

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Letters . . . October 4, 2023

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24 September 2023 296 hits

Fight vs anti-migrant racism grows
As reported in the last CHALLENGE, racists have been demonstrating against the housing of refugee asylum seekers in a former Catholic school on Staten Island. Led by attention-seeking “patriot” Scott LoBaido and supported by Staten Island politicians of both parties, the racists have been verbally attacking the refugees-many from Latin American and West African countries- with vile epithets, frightening some of them so much that they asked to be moved to a different shelter.

After a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member learned on Monday, August 28th, of the hate rally to be held on that evening, he notified the Party leadership, who quickly organized a pro-migrant support rally to confront the racists. More than 30 comrades and friends, including a couple of antiracists from the neighborhood, marched to the shelter, formerly St. John Villa School, chanting loudly in support of the refugees. Outside the shelter, we spoke on a bullhorn to let the migrants know that we were there to support them, not to attack them. We let the racists know that we were communists, and that we would be back in growing numbers.

The racists announced another hate rally for Tuesday, September 5th. Some Party members learned about the racists’ march from friends in Peace Action Staten Island (PASI). PASI endorsed the next migrant support rally to counter the racists. A leaflet was quickly disseminated. Antiracists from Staten Island and Brooklyn gathered at a predetermined location and marched to the rally point at the shelter. Again, we shouted encouragement to the refugees.

One of the talking points of the racists had been that there was a school with girls very near the shelter, and that they could be in danger from the male migrants. We discovered that an alumna of that school, St. Joseph Hill, had garnered over 200 alumni signatures on a petition supporting the migrants and condemning the racists. Then, on Thursday, September 7, a group of immigration organizers and  leaders of faith-based organizations attempted to hold a press conference outside the shelter in support of the refugees. According to news reports, the racists drowned them out so that few of them could be heard.

So, it appears that support for the migrants is growing on Staten Island, but the racists still dominate the scene. What is clear is that if it had not been for us communists in PLP, the racists would have had a clear field for their hate. We were the spark. Whenever racism and fascism rear their ugly heads, communists must organize to chop them off. To paraphrase what one of the participants in the latest rally said, “I just want to be able to come back with more numbers than they have!” That is what we will continue to build on Staten Island - an antiracist movement to shut the racists down.
*****

​​Big Fascists undermine workers’ education
At a community college in rural northwestern New Jersey, Sussex County Community College (SCCC), self-styled “progressive” administrators actively undermine front-line faculty members who fight for workers to receive a decent education.

In a resignation letter from the start of the fall semester, an accomplished student counselor outlined the problems at SCCC: 1) The condescending racism that the Latin counselor faced from his supposedly enlightened liberal colleagues, 2) Disconnected senior faculty and administrators who didn’t listen to faculty “below” them who actually interacted with students on a daily basis, 3) The lack of initiative to solicit student feedback — all pointing to one conclusion. Senior level faculty and administration at the college, who claim to be enlightened progressives, are more interested in their own careers than helping students.
This counselor had struggled heroically to keep working class students in school in spite of the horrendous material conditions that capitalism imposes on them. He succeeded against all odds -- only to have his more senior colleagues undermine him at every turn.

In a classic example of bourgeois individualism, other faculty members grew jealous of the relationships that he had worked so hard to cultivate with students. These more senior faculty demanded that he send more of his students to them for future counseling needs — regardless of who the students themselves actually wanted to talk to. When he refused, his supposedly “progressive” bosses at the College stripped his position of any student-facing activities, relegating this talented counselor to administrative busy work.

This, combined with the lack of support for front-line faculty who directly help students, the racism shown by more senior faculty towards an increasingly diverse student population, and the smug and condescending attitude towards his important mission to help working-class students, was too much for him to bear and he resigned.

While it’s sad to see such a talented staff member leave due to egregious burnout, his resignation letter points to a silver lining. It is the students and frontline faculty and staff themselves who can carry the struggle forward and secure decent education for workers in rural New Jersey. If they are unified in their cause and armed with the Party’s level of analysis and dedication, they will be unstoppable!
*****

Firefighters die defending the bosses profits: A tribute to Augie and Bear
On July 5th, two firemen from the Newark Fire Department were trapped and killed fighting a fire that started aboard a cargo ship bound for West Africa from Port Newark, NJ. The cargo ship was filled with over 1200 new and used cars and approximately 157 shipping containers (NJ Spotlight News).Augusto “Augie” Acabou and Wayne “Bear” Brooks entered the ship along with their captain and other firefighters. They reportedly found and extinguished the fire, but upon their way back out Augie and Bear became disoriented and trapped, and died.  The ship’s crew had been completely evacuated prior to the firefighters entering. There were no lives in danger aboard the ship, but firefighters were still sent in to risk their lives to protect burning cars that will likely be replaced. The families want answers.

At a tribute to the firefighter’s lives held at a shopping mall New Jersey on August 8, Bear’s widow stated “He went in there to put out a fire to save materialistic things, not a person, not a human being - materialistic things. And he never came home” (Abc7ny.com, 8/23).  

Urban firefighters are sent in to risk their lives to protect the bosses’ property and businesses.  In cities like Newark, fires occur predominantly in Black neighborhoods, many of which are neglected due to decades of class war against Black workers and gentrification led by self-serving politicians like Newark’s fake leftist mayor Ras Baraka.  Meanwhile, in wealthy communities, fire suppression systems are relatively efficient and adequate.
In a society led by and for the working class - a communist society - workers can take the lead on building the safest housing conditions to prevent fires from starting in the first place.  Workers can discuss how to approach extinguishing fires with minimal loss to human life and the damage to the environment.

Only a revolution led by the working class can bring about the freedom to do this. For all workers like Augie and Bear, for the countless firefighters that die every year protecting the property for the blood sucking landlord class and banks, workers must build a dedicated party whose primary objective is to smash capitalism and rid society of the profit system that will gladly exterminate the workers to preserve their wealth.
*****

Natural disasters or capitalist genocide?
Reading the editorial on the Maui fires, there seems to be a link between the wildfires in the forests of Canada. While these fires are labeled as ‘natural’ disasters, but the real issue is the capitalism and it’s continual  genocide of indigenous workers. Corporations and their sugar plantations played a large role in depleting the water sources, as sugar is a very water intensive crop. Water is crucial to Hawaiian cultural practices and they believed that water couldn’t be owned, that it belonged to all. I am seeing a connection between the fires in Maui and Canada and the forest fires that occurred in Brazil and Australia a few years ago. These fires led to the displacement of many indigenous communities. In the case of Brazil, the burning of the Amazon forest was set by the Brazilian ruling class to make way for their agribusiness. Prior to that, an Amazonian tribe had won a court case to halt the cutting down of the Amazon forest. If we’re going to discuss climate change, we need to include the role of indigenous workers and the ongoing legacy of colonialism into these topics.

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Editorial: The only climate solution is communist revolution

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07 September 2023 449 hits

On September 17, in a desperate campaign to stop global warming, thousands of climate activists, business leaders, government officials, and “civil society representatives” will converge upon New York City for the fifteenth annual Climate Week. Co-sponsored by the United Nations, an organization born in 1945 to serve U.S. imperialism and the postwar liberal world order, the event has a bold slogan: “We Can. We Will.”
In reality, the reformists can’t—and the capitalist bosses won’t. After a summer of lethal heat waves, biblical floods, hot tub oceans, runaway wildfires, and toxic orange skies, liberal reforms cannot prevent wholesale catastrophe from climate change. Climate action has hit a wall. Greenhouse gas emissions set an all-time high in 2022, and will do so again in 2023. The rulers are wedded to heat-trapping fossil fuels for two fundamental reasons: maximum profit and inter-imperialist rivalry. From China to the United States, their system is falling into crisis. With fascism rising and World War III on the horizon, capitalism has no answers for perpetual war, massive poverty, or resurgent infectious diseases. It surely has none for the vast challenge of climate change and the racist horrors we are witnessing in real time.

Only a communist world, run by and for the international working class, can balance our needs for energy with the priorities of health, safety, and development that serve our class interests. Only the working class can be trusted to make life-and-death decisions on how to heat and power our world—to build more safely run nuclear reactors, for example. There’s no climate solution without communist revolution!

Clean energy “transition” is dead in the water
Beginning in the 19th century, coal and oil and gas fueled the rise of capitalism. They brought millions of workers out of the cold. They created modern industry and transportation—and modern wars for profit. But today, fossil fuels are Exhibit A of capitalism in decay. They’re filthy and inefficient and force multipliers of racist inequality. Climate change is deadly for workers, and for Black and Brown workers most of all. Nine million people a year die from the fine particulate matter linked to greenhouse gasses. Half a million die from extreme heat alone. In 2022, climate disasters forced 100 million workers to flee their homes. One third of Pakistan was under water.

In 2015, at a benchmark climate summit in Paris, the UN set a “binding” target for global warming of 2 degrees Celsius—or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—over pre-industrial levels. (For context, the Earth has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius.) Based on current climate policies, according to Columbia University physicist James Hansen, the planet will punch through the Paris ceiling before 2050 (“Global Warming in the Pipeline,” www.columbia.edu, 7/5). By 2100, within the lifetimes of children here today, the Earth projects to be at least 2.7 degrees hotter (climateactiontracker.org). That might not sound like much, but consider: The last Ice Age was triggered by a temperature shift of just 6 degrees Celsius. At 2.7 degrees of warming, scientists predict that the Earth will pass calamitous tipping points of no return (nature.com, 11/27/19). Coral reefs will go extinct. Polar glaciers will dissolve and drown islands around the globe (abc.net.au, 3/28/22). A billion or more climate migrants will be trapped between unbearable conditions and the bosses’ borders (economicsandpeace.org, 9/9/20).

Meanwhile, recent UN climate summits have been hijacked by Big Oil, the same monsters who for decades spewed climate disinformation alongside their carbon dioxide. This December’s conference is set for the capitalist Disneyland of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Presiding will be Sultan Al Jaber, head of the state-owned energy company. Like Saudi Arabia, another immigrant slave state, the UAE is committed to unlimited exploitation of its oil and gas reserves to 2100 and beyond.

Fossil fuels and imperialist plunder
Why can’t the capitalist rulers tackle this existential threat? The short answer is that fossil fuels remain highly profitable, at least in the short term—and capitalism has a chaotically short-term outlook. After Russia invaded Ukraine, energy markets went haywire. The price of oil soared. The “supermajors”—ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP—junked plans to diversify into renewables. With lavish financing from the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Citi, they doubled down on their old business model. In 2022, they plowed $4 trillion of record windfall profits into dividends, share buybacks, and expanded fossil fuel production. Barely half of 1 percent of their ill-gotten gains went toward clean energy (iea.org, May 2023). Exxon spent less than $3 billion on “lower greenhouse gas emissions initiatives” and $23 billion on new oil and gas projects (euronews.com/1/2).

Even as solar and wind prices have plunged, and clean electricity runs much of the world’s power grids, the fossil fuel sector keeps growing. When President Joe Biden rammed through his Inflation Reduction Act, media cheerleaders said it could stimulate $1 trillion in renewable energy investments. They glossed over the fact that Biden also greenlit the immense Willow oil project in Alaska and three huge pipelines for natural gas. His Energy Department is ready to lease eighty million acres of the Gulf of Mexico—twice the area of Florida—for offshore drilling (cnbc.com, 11/17/21).

The U.S. and Europe, which have plundered the world for centuries with the aid of fossil fuels, are at odds with emerging economies—notably China—that want their turn at the plundering. Although China dominates the solar panel and battery industries, and soon will dominate offshore wind, it also consumes more than half the world’s coal. Over the last year, China approved an average of two new coal-powered plants per week, a source of cheap energy and jobs in a country where youth unemployment exceeds 21 percent (statista.com).
In July, President Xi Jinping told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry that future cooperation on climate would hinge on U.S. policies on Taiwan and trade. All bets will be off if the two superpowers keep sliding toward world war—oil is the life’s blood of their armies, after all. The U.S. military alone consumes more than 100 billion barrels per year (ucusa.org, 6/1/14).

Carrots, sticks, and communism
It’s easy for the capitalists to shower clean energy with the carrots of subsidies and tax breaks. But no matter how much solar and wind and hydropower is deployed, global warming won’t stop until the fossil fuel economy gets mostly dismantled. That can’t happen without some big sticks, beginning with a punitive tax on carbon.

The issue with sticks is that they hurt certain bosses’ profits. With the U.S. ruling class deeply split, and the Republican Party significantly controlled by Koch Industries, coal giant Peabody, and other domestic energy interests, Biden’s Democrats have little room to maneuver. But the primary obstacles to meaningful climate action are the lack of discipline and long-range thinking within finance capital, the liberal main wing of global banks and multinational oil companies. Nor is there much appetite for sticks on the world stage. When recent climate summits floated a “phaseout” of coal or a “phasedown” of all fossil fuels, they were vetoed by China, India, Brazil, and imperialist Russia, which gets nearly half its revenues from oil and gas.

As workers join the mass movement against climate change, we need to be clear that individual actions can’t win this monumental battle. It’s not nearly enough to compost or recycle or buy an electric vehicle—or to vote for a “green” politician. The rulers and their callous greed created this crisis; the international working class will solve it. The fight for a sustainable planet can’t be set apart from our fight to smash the racist, sexist profit system that chokes the atmosphere. A communist society, led by Progressive Labor Party, will unleash the technology and creativity we need to forge a new world, one where workers’ lives and well-being come first. Join us!

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Staten Island: WORKERS HAVE NO BORDERS!

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07 September 2023 404 hits

STATEN ISLAND, NY, August 28—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends rallied against hundreds of gutter racists who oppose housing migrant workers in an abandoned Catholic school, St. John Villar.
In Staten Island the racists put out flyers online calling their gathering a block party. A local PL’er here made the Party aware of the situation and we immediately decided we needed to organize to support the migrant workers the very sa​​me day (See letter on page 6). 30 antiracists marched armed with multiracial unity, communist internationalism and CHALLENGE. PLP is a fighting party, so when the international working class is under attack, we stand up and fight back.

As this system sinks deeper into decay, more crises like climate change, inter-imperialist war, and inflation will force more workers to flee and seek refuge in imperialist strongholds like the United States and Europe. Our only refuge from this global misery is to smash this lethal racist system, and build a communist world without profits, wars, nations, or borders. We welcome migrant workers to fight for communism. Join PLP!

Racist anti-migrant propaganda along with decades of segregation, liberal misleadership, and widening inequality pushed many workers in Staten Island into the hands of gutter racists, followers of Donald Trump. These misleaders use toxic patriotism and anti-migrant racism to pit white workers against their fellow class brothers and sisters. We call them Small Fascists.

But the Democratic Party liberals are just as bad if not worse. From mass incarceration, to brutal deportations to killer cops in the big cities and migrants sleeping on sidewalks, the liberals are responsible. And they are more dangerous because they talk nice. We call them Big Fascists.

The plan, the action, the reaction
Everyone gathered an hour before the racists “block party” to discuss what to expect and assigned tasks for the march. We wanted to respond quickly to any situation and get close to deliver messages of solidarity to migrant workers.

At our designated starting point, before kicking off our march we made signs, distributed  CHALLENGEs and talked with workers standing nearby. One worker expressed gratitude that communists from Brooklyn came to Staten Island to fight racism, and talked about how Staten Island was purposefully designed to be politically and geographically segregated to keep workers divided. We then started picketing, chanting Asian, Latin, Black, and white workers of the world unite, which immediately grabbed workers attention. Our multiracial group, our discipline and our militant antiracist chant: Racism means we got to fight back! inspired two young Black workers to join our march. Along the way, we got positive receptions from antiracist white, Latin, and Black workers.

But with the positive also comes negative. We encountered several racists heading to their racist block party, clutching American flags. Some of the racists began to shout at us but we chanted even louder to drown their provocations.

As we neared the end of our march we noticed the school area was swarming with kkkops who set up barricades, blocking us from moving closer to the racists. We quickly moved to form a picket line and began chanting as loudly as possible, making sure our message reached the migrants inside.

As we picketed, PL’ers took turns giving out speeches in English, Spanish, and Kreyol on the bullhorn, highlighting internationalism and multiracial unity,  letting migrants know that communists are welcoming them, and that they deserve better than what they've been provided. Migrants are only seeking refuge in the first place because of this racist capitalism. Big Fascist politicians like KKKathy Hochul, Jim Crow Joe Biden and Top kkkop Eric Adams represent the set of imperialist liberal bosses that helped create the miserable capitalist conditions they’re trying to escape from.

A PLP public school teacher gave a speech saying that migrants come here to escape violence in search of a safer place to educate their children. Instead they are facing homelessness and a racist overcrowded and under-resourced public school system. Neither Democrat Adams, who cut hundreds of millions in school funding (NYCLU, 8/26/22), nor any Republicans have a plan in place to manage the volume of migrant children who need to attend school in September.

Fight for communism
The PL’er finished her speech by calling for migrants to fight for communism, the only system where our class and our children can receive the quality of life they deserve, where workers, not racist capitalist servants,will run society to meet all of our class needs. Shortly after we concluded our speeches, we marched and chanted all the way back to the intersection where we began. We quickly dispersed and got into the cars we arrived in, concluding our successful and militant action.

We left knowing that our action left a powerful impact. In this volatile period of crisis, growing fascism, and sharpening attacks against our class, these are just one of the many actions that will serve to train workers to build the multiracial, disciplined working class army needed to lead us towards communist revolution. Our Party demonstrated that while our forces were small we are the fighting, disciplined Party capable of leading our class to communist victory. Onward!

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Finley, a communist fighter till the end

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07 September 2023 387 hits

The working class lost a great fighter against racism and for working class power when Dr. Finley Calvin Campbell died at his home in Chicago on August 18. A fearless, committed, and uncompromising comrade, Finley was still organizing meetings from his bedside in the last days of his life.

Finley was born in Anderson, South Carolina, on September 23, 1934. At age eight, his family moved to Detroit, where he lived until 1952.  He was educated at Morehouse College in Atlanta and the University of Chicago, where he earned his PhD in literature studying with renowned historian John Hope Franklin.
While in Atlanta, Finley wrote speeches for Maynard Jackson, later the city’s mayor, and was on a first-name basis with historian Howard Zinn. His PhD dissertation, mentored by Franklin, is a historical analysis of the literature of Black Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War.  During a year spent studying French at the Sorbonne in Paris, he met his first wife, Liliane. After their marriage, she had to “pass as Black” for them to be able to live together legally in Georgia.

With his impressive credentials, Finley could have made a career in politics or become one of those well-known, wealthy Black intellectuals who are so highly prized by the capitalist establishment. But Finley rejected all of that. He immersed himself in the grassroots struggle against racist injustice and against the capitalist profit system.

A vivid first impression
Progressive Labor Party first encountered Finley in July, 1971, in Gary, Indiana. About fifty members of the Party and Students for a Democratic Society were picketing outside the U.S. Steel plant on the last day before the union’s contract expired. Finley was walking down the street, having just walked out of a meeting of Black politicians because of their anti-white stance.  He lit up when he saw the protest, strode over, and joined the picket line.  Within five minutes, Finley was giving a speech and leading chants through the bullhorn. “Who is this guy?” people said. He inspired the picket line with his booming voice and his call for working class unity against the capitalists. At the time, we didn’t know that he had organized the Malcolm X Institute at Wabash College—where he was the first Black professor, and from which he was fired for antiracist activities. We didn’t know that he’d run for governor of Indiana on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, getting thousands of votes from white and Black workers alike.  

The Party and Finley began to work together. He continued to organize activities in Indiana, including the original “Halloween against Racism” demonstration at St. Joseph’s College, complete with a powerful speech about the monsters and vampires of racism. Finley took a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and moved there with his then wife, Vicki. During that time, with Toby Schwartz and others, he was instrumental in organizing the International Committee Against Racism. One early victory was a full-page ad in the New York Times that denounced racist IQ theories and was signed by over a hundred leading experts in the field.  

Fighting racists from Chicago to Tupelo
In 1975, Finley was a leader of the INCAR/PLP Boston Summer Project to confront the gutter racists of South Boston and integrate CarsonBeach. At a historic demonstration in Chicago, Finley was on the sound truck as we led 700 Black, Latin and white workers and students through the Nazi-infested, previously “whites only” Marquette Park. At a march in Tupelo, Mississippi, he was shot and injured by a cowardly member of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the mid-1970’s, in an obvious set-up, Finley was fired by the University of Wisconsin for his antiracist activities. His field of expertise was American Literature and race in the late 1800’s. The committee that voted him down included a Black meteorologist and a Black jazz musician. Neither had any grasp of Finley’s field, but because they were members of the school’s Afro-American Studies department, the university used them to provide cover to kick him out.

A strong voice for multiracial unity
Finley embraced the Party’s line that racism was rooted in the class conflict of capitalism. He attacked the Black class traitors who allied with the capitalist bosses and deeply believed that multiracial working-class unity was essential—both to smash racism and to destroy the profit system. He had no patience for fake-left terms such as “white privilege” and “white supremacy,” which mask the class content of racism and divide Black and Latin workers from white workers. As he recently wrote: “Remember: It was our old enemies in the revisionist and so-called black nationalist movements which revived this false term [white supremacy] as a way of confusing the working class about the true nature of their exploitation and oppression – not white supremacy, but green supremacy – finance capital. We won’t be fooled again.”

From the 1990’s until very recently, Finley taught at working class colleges and organized in the Unitarian Church to help win youth and people in the community to the antiracist struggle. From organizing study groups to raising money for international work to being a powerful voice and mentor for the Party’s understanding of racism, he never stopped fighting for the working class.

A true communist to the end
Finley did not shy away from the term “communism.” In fact, he lamented how some barely mentioned Marx and Lenin as “the shoulders on which we stand to see further.” Even when he used theological language, it was always in the context of Marxism-Leninism. He was unafraid to raise questions within our organization, a practice we all need to emulate as a necessity in building a vibrant Party. But he remained a true antiracist communist to the end. Finley was a tireless fighter, building an antiracist group of more than one hundred workers in the Unitarian Church from all over the U.S. and planning meetings up until his death. One of his last requests was for the Party to continue to get CHALLENGE to workers to whom he’d been delivering it without fail.

The struggle for multiracial unity against racism and for a world free of exploitation and oppression would have been far weaker without Finley. Our Party is so much stronger because of his decades of consistent and dedicated work.

Finley leaves behind Roberta (Bobbi), his devoted wife and partner in life and political struggle; children Phillip, Paulette, David, Kathi, and Mark; grandchildren Taylor, Bryanna, Lya, Lanny, Laïssa, and Anastasia; and a grateful international working class.

He also leaves behind his wisdom and profound commitment. He directly influenced thousands of workers, who in turn will continue to influence tens and hundreds of thousands. Finley will live on as long as the fight continues for a world free of racism and exploitation.

A memorial service in Chicago will be held on Saturday, September 23, on Finley’s 89th birthday at 4 PM (Central) in person or via zoom.

            Memorial Service for Finley
                        Saturday, September 23
          4 PM CT, 5:00 pm EST, and 2:00 pm PST
                                In-person info:
                                First Unitarian
5650 S. Woodlawn, Chicago.
Zoom info: https://us02web.zoom us/j/84617168894
Meeting ID: 846 1716 8894
Dial in: 1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

Finley Campbell and the 1979 Tupelo Summer Project
Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and its allies in the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), organized a Summer Project in Tupelo Mississippi in 1979 when the KKK claimed Tupelo as its national headquarters. Volunteers flowed in, among them Finley Campbell. Finley was an experienced fighter by then and inspired all the newer volunteers to give their best.

The Project built its base within the Black community. We canvassed the area with literature, organized meetings and study groups. By July, the Project called for a mass march starting in the Black neighborhood and leading to downtown Tupelo.

The Project organized its own security forces watching out for the KKK in white and blue. The marchers held a rally when they arrived downtown. An armed gunman appeared on the fringe of the crowd. He fired a round of birdshot at the two speakers, Finley Campbell and Carolyn Eubanks wounding them both. The gunman began to reload. Our security team rushed forward tackling him to the ground and giving him the beating he deserved. Instantly the police arrested the head of the security team. He was charged with attempted murder for stopping the shooter.

The local prosecutor convened a Grand Jury planning to indict our comrade by calling the victims, Carolyn and Finley, to testify about what happened!

The lawyer explained to Carolyn and Finley that our only chance in defending our comrade was for them to refuse to testify – to plead the 5th. Finley was extremely frustrated that he had to remain silent. He was a passionate orator who spoke in the powerful style of the preacher he was. He was electric. Silence Finley! Surely not! But silent he was in the cause of saving a comrade. He often talked in later years of the many experiences of Tupelo 1979. The most painful was not the birdshot—it was the time this mighty speaker had to remain silent. Finley set an example that day in Tupelo that lives on in our collective memories.

  1. For Duprey: To end police murder, smash capitalism
  2. No justice, no racist police: Fight anti-Muslim state terror
  3. Retired workers fight sick system
  4. Fallout New Vegas: Liberal capitalist propaganda

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