From the 1970s to the current day, Progressive Labor Party has organized hundreds of attacks on the Ku Klux Klan and neo-nazis wherever they spread their racist garbage. Rejecting the pacifist mythology that these gutter racists would fade away if ignored, we have attacked them head-on—and confronted the capitalists’ cops who protect them. We have mounted these antiracist, multiracial actions in New York City, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Detroit and St. Louis. We’ve done the same in smaller communities like Tupelo, Mississippi; Scotland, Connecticut; Jamesburg and Morristown, New Jersey; and scores of cities and towns in California. We invaded the Nazis’ headquarters in Chicago. We beat a white supremacist leader in a Boston television interview. These militant anti-KKK/Nazi actions have involved an estimated 100,000 or more workers and youth.
The following is from an undergraduate college student who contacted the Progressive Labor Party for information about PLP and a PLP-led mass organization Committee Against Racism fighting the Ku Klux Klan in Oxnard, CA in 1978. He went on to write his dissertation, The Battle of Oxnard: How Oxnard’s Working Class Defeated the Klan, on this event. It has been lightly edited for subheadings and clarity.
In my paper The Battle of Oxnard, I wrote of how the Klan tried to organize in Oxnard, and how they were kicked out of the city. With a bold, militant, and well-organized protest led by the Progressive Labor Party, working-class Oxnarders and PLP organizers completely decimated any chance that the Klan could organize in Oxnard ever again.
The Klan was in a renaissance nationwide since the deindustrialization and other economic issues of the “stagflation” era was creating fertile ground for working class whites to be pitted against fellow workers. One of these new Klansmen was Tom Metzger, a John Birch Society chapter leader and native of the San Diego area who used the White Power network to lead a California organization of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKKK). Metzger began his efforts at Camp Pendleton in 1976. In California, Klansmen like Tom Metzger and David Duke tried to pit white workers against immigrant workers, forming a mostly performative (though it still caused fear for some people trying to cross) border patrol.
PLP organizes to smash Klan
On July 30, 1978, at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center (OPAC), the Klan was allowed, after facing performative protest at the city hall , to host a showing of The Birth of a Nation. Just days before the event, the PLP was hosting a convention for the Committee Against Racism organization in Los Angeles. When PLP and CAR members learned of the Klan’s event, scheduled conventional plans were scrapped and everyone worked on a plan to shut down the event. The PLP and CAR were met receptively, as Oxnard’s working class had a rebellious working-class culture from a generation of strikes, riots, the Chicano movement, and labor struggle that often led to fighting Sheriff's deputies. PLP and CAR members canvassed the neighborhood near the OPAC to rally workers. PLP and CAR members planned along military-like lines, with organizers waiting, divided into units waiting in the nearby park for the Klan’s truck to show up. The Klan planned this and tried to rush into the OPAC’s courtyard, where they were rushed by organizers with wooden sticks, newspaper-wrapped pipes and other weapons. They also fought cops stationed as guards. After janitors helped PLP members retreat from the courtyard, the main show began, with hundreds of protestors showing up, and a smaller NAACP-led march showing up as well.
Klan gets a beatdown at the hands of communists
PLP and CAR fighters, along with numerous community members, shattered windows with wood, bricks, and full soda cans, all while an effigy of a hanged Klansman was burned. The crowd of thousands fought police summoned from across the County to stop the demonstration, throwing bricks, sticks, pipes, and soda cans, with many running to garages to get baseball bats. At this point, the police negotiated with the Klan, who were told they could no longer show the movie, though Metzger claimed they “sat back” and watched the movie. The police then bull-rushed the crowd, with around a dozen organizers and protestors arrested, though many more were taken into the homes of sympathetic neighbors who hid them in garages and closets from the police, or even pretended they were at a high-school reunion in a backyard to avoid arrest. The Klansmen sped away from the OPAC, and with that the Klan has never tried to organize in Oxnard again, owing to the militancy of Oxnard’s community, led by the PLP into battle.
KKKops and Kourts go after antiracists
Many protestors and organizers faced years of jail time and lengthy trials, with some serving time. One PLP member, Stephen P. Bisson, faced the wrath of the L.A. County D.A. who introduced many pieces of evidence based on other marches, all on an anti-communist crusade explicitly designed to take down the PLP “fanatics.” In Oxnard, the PLP and CAR had a prime moment that wasn’t used to its potential. CAR had several recruits and started study groups with farm workers. CAR members were enthusiastically greeted by people on the streets because of how successful the militant protest was.
Unfortunately, this was not sustained long-term. This was mainly because of needing to travel between LA and Oxnard, but also overstepping. Many of the criticisms CHALLENGE lobbed against Cesar Chavez were correct but misplaced. It’s correct that Cesar Chavez’s stance on undocumented workers is chauvinistic and divisive, but to immediately lob criticisms at UFW locals when they had just arrived in Oxnard and had not yet led people in strikes was clearly overstepping the place as a new fraction in the union. Winning the trust of workers takes patience.
More positively though, the Oxnard protest emboldened CAR and PLP members to launch into anti-Klan and anti-Nazi protests across the state from 1978 and well into the 1980s with several successes.
One success is that because of these events, Oxnarders don’t fear the Klan in their streets.
CHALLENGE response: This struggle at Oxnard is a testament of the power of the working class and our need for multiracial unity. A few notes:
Cesar Chavez was a racist capitalist agent, and the PLP correctly attacked him for it.
Next, CAR grew into the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR) and many workers saw—from Oxnard, CA to Tupelo, MS to Boston, MA— InCAR as the main mass organization that can lead workers in the fight against racism and the resurgence of fascist groups like the Klan. InCAR was eventually disbanded when PLP’s strategy changed from creating organizations to joining mass organizations (unions, community groups, associations) and recruiting workers to directly fight for communist revolution. This grew out of the assertion that we have confidence in workers to understand and adopt the most advanced ideas as their own.
Militant antiracism is one of our pillars, and Oxnard was one example of that commitment. For more, go to www.plp.org to read, “PLP History: Anti-Racism At Forefront Of Communist Fightback.”
BOSTON, September 19—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched against a New England nazi organization, chanting "Hitler rose, Hitler fell, racist Nazis go to hell" and "The Cops, the Courts, the Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses' Plan!” We marched to the West Roxbury District Court where a pre-trial hearing was being held for nazi Chris Hood who had been arrested in July for physically attacking an LGBTQ organizer at a children's book reading in Boston.
In the Boston area and around the country, neo-nazi organizations are using attacks on LGBTQ people as the "tip of the spear" to attract new recruits. They are taking advantage of the fact that sexism and anti-gay acts marginalize non-gender-conforming people. The day before our march (Sunday, 9/18) a dozen neo-nazis protested against the Boston Children's Hospital Gender Multi-Specialty Service, a program that addresses the needs of transgender youth. PLP members were among 200 anti-nazi protestors confronting these scum. Many cops were there in force protecting the nazis. Without the cops, they would not have walked away unscathed. We mass leafletted before our demonstration to bring the lessons of fighting fascism back into the consciousness of the working class. The most important lesson is to recognize the role of communists as the most uncompromising fighters against fascism and the only force capable of destroying the capitalist system that is ever spiraling into fascist decay (see editorial on page 2). Join PLP!
Cops, courts won’t stop nazis: it’s up to us!
The working class in Massachusetts is witnessing a rise in neo-nazism: “the Anti-Defamation League counted 388 reported hate, extremism, antisemitism and terror incidents in 2021. Five years earlier, it tallied only 123” (GBH, 5/18).
Other nazi attacks in recent months in the Boston area include:
- Demonstrations at Brigham & Women's Hospital against doctors who are fighting for equal treatment for Black cardiac patients. The nazis called this "white genocide.”
- Protests against the Boston Holocaust Memorial.
- Hanging a banner on 9/11 on a bridge over a highway saying "Jews did 9/11."
- A pop-up march through Boston on July 4 weekend, beating up a Black man.
Small groups of nazis and white nationalists may commit dozens of racist, anti-gay attacks, even murders and bombings, but they become much more dangerous when the big capitalist ruling class throws their support behind them. Right now, these groups are aligned with and funded by the Small Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) movement but they could also be used by the Wall Street/Biden fascists as their system flounders.
In fact, the history of the rise of Hitler in 1920-1933 Germany shows this. When the German economy crashed, and the workers’ movement grew, the big German capitalists, Thyssen, Krupp, Siemens and I.G. Farben, desperately began to fund and support Hitler big-time. Without their support Hitler could not have come to power.
Big Fascists still big danger
For years, the FBI (with their racist history of crushing the Black Panther Party and killing Civil Rights leaders) has been keeping a "list" of neo-nazis and right-wing terrorists, but have done essentially nothing to crush these domestic terrorists. Boston’s Big Fascist (see glossary, page 6) liberal Mayor Wu and other politicians publicly decry these groups as “repugnant bigots,” but they let their cops and courts protect them allowing them to grow and spread racism and sexism and divide the working class.
The U.S. liberal world order is crumbling at home and around the world as Big Fascist U.S. finance capitalists move towards war with Russia and China. They will need unofficial armed militias to maintain control of their system when they can't rely on the police force or army to crush dissent. These groups will be used like the paramilitary forces in Latin America from the 1960's until today to carry out extra-judicial killings and disappearances, smashing protest movements and workers' strikes.
Still, the Big Fascists, who hold state power in liberal cities, pose the greatest danger for the working class. We only have to look at the example of Eric “top cop” Adams in New York City whose personal mission is to beef up the military police and carceral state, while masquerading as a hip-hop mayor bent on stopping crime and gun violence.
We need to set the standard that the multiracial working class will stand up to all fascists and force them back under their rocks. A united and multiracial working class army can smash both Small Fascist goons and the Big Fascist’s gestapo state just like our communist predecessors smashed Hitler and Mussolini. Death to fascism! Power to the workers!
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Fight For Hadi continues: Multiracial fightback against kkkops
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- 06 October 2022 100 hits
Oak Lawn, Illinois, September 21—Protests against the racist police attack (see CHALLENGE article, September 7 ) on 17-year-old Hadi Abuatrlah continued at the Oak Lawn Police and Fire Commission meeting tonight. About 30 protesters, including members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), held a rally outside the police station demanding the firing and jailing of the three KKKops who beat Hadi within an inch of his life. We distributed copies of CHALLENGE and a reprint of the Party’s article describing how the Middle-Eastern community in Oak Lawn has been targeted by the police for years. As we fight for Hadi and so many other victims of capitalist terror, we call on all workers to join the fight for communist revolution, where workers not capitalists will run society.
On July 27th, Hadi and friends were pulled over by kkkops because the car they were in allegedly smelled like marijuana. Those kkkops preceeded to brutally beat Hadi, after he was handcuffed. He suffered from a fractured pelvis, broken nose, and a bleeding brain. In August, over 50 multiracial workers, including PLP members protested this racist attack.
The highlight of the evening came when a multiracial and united collection of community members stood up before the commission and denounced their silence as being complicit in this police attack. The police chief has stated that the beating of Hadi was justified, just like the Apartheid and Nazi regimes justified their genocidal tactics. A teacher from an area school told the commissioners about a racist incident when the police showed up concerning a disturbance outside her class. She said the first thing the kkkop asked her was, “how many wives does your husband have,” because she was wearing a head covering or hijab.
Many protesters spoke fearlessly to the commissioners who were recording the proceedings (video and audio) surrounded by a herd of armed police. Another speaker listed an almost endless list of lawsuits brought by victims of the racist police in Oak Lawn. The commissioners' only response to the community has been their willingness to protect and support the Klan in blue. The meeting was adjourned after we promised to return next month and every month to expose the commission, and to continue to fight for justice for Hadi.
Police racism and brutality are integral parts of capitalism. This system cannot survive without racism; that’s why we need a communist revolution. Join us!
On September 19 a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico’s Pacific coast. Two days later a 6.8 quake struck the same area. Earthquakes in Mexico have been devastating to the working class. To many, the destruction and death after earthquakes appears to stem directly from these natural phenomena, but the true cause is the bosses’ disregard for workers' lives, allowing them to live in substandard housing. Capitalism can never keep the working class safe from so-called “natural disasters” because the bosses' drive for profits is the root of what’s causing them. We can only confront this horror with revolution and the building of a worker-led communist society.
Mexico sits in a seismic zone, on five tectonic plates whose rearrangement each year causes hundreds of low intensity tremors and dozens of very strong earthquakes. And in the last 30 years, two devastating earthquakes left thousands dead in a gigantic wake of destruction. A severe earthquake called the Michoacan earthquake of 1985 led to widespread death and catastrophic damage to the infrastructure in Mexico City. The electricity was knocked out, leaving many workers without public transit or working traffic lights.
The president of Mexico, Miguel de la Madrid, and his advisers rejected international aid, while working people evacuated neighbors from fallen buildings and organized distribution of supplies themselves (Brittanica, 9/22).
The only true help and protection comes from the solidarity and unconditional support of the working class itself during and after most earthquakes, crises and disasters. The mobilization and solidarity of the international working class is immediate, spontaneous, and unconditional, making it clear that only workers can save workers, showing that our class has the capacity and potential understanding to be able to organize and lead a new communist society of equality.
It is no coincidence that destruction and death are most extreme in working class neighborhoods and worksites, which are unprotected and more vulnerable to natural phenomena. The capitalist class protects its houses and large, modern buildings with anti-earthquake systems. Capitalist inequality is the real cause of these tragedies after earthquakes and is why we need to destroy this capitalist system and build a new society based on communist social equality.
On top of already vulnerable conditions of poverty, lack of preparation and corruption allow construction that does not meet safe standards and a preventable scarcity of resources to help those affected. The politicians and their electoral parties profit from the suffering of the people, blaming each other to win votes. No more electoral circus, all power to the workers!
Working class solidarity and organization always exceed the official, capitalist response, which is slow, inefficient, lazy and manipulative. This working class solidarity scares the bosses who, instead of helping, deploy police to control neighborhood operations and to protect the properties of the capitalists. They even resort to media fabrications to divert workers from neighborhood sites to sites controlled by security forces. Most notoriously, after the 2017 earthquake, the media created the story of Frida Sofia, a fictional child reported to be alive in the rubble of a collapsed elementary school.
Despite the danger of recurring earthquakes, workers are more afraid of the insecurity and death created by ruling class criminal gangs that the bosses use to terrorize the working class. Intuitively, the masses see more danger in capitalism than in natural phenomena.
HAITI, October 5–The bosses’ press covers up the horrible conditions that workers from Haiti face. The living conditions of the oppressed masses are hellish. Misery is reaching its peak. According to the CNSA (National Council for Food Security), more than six million workers in Haiti are food insecure—the bourgeoisie’s “cleaned-up” term for starving. This figure doesn't even tell the whole story. There are those whose tables and stomachs are full to overflowing—this is after all, a capitalist system built on massive inequality. In an effort to make even higher profits, the bosses in the oil sector and their lackeys in the government, relying on the gangs that they have set loose on the population, have created a scarcity of fuel to justify the price increase. This has led to a shortage in pumps across the country and a vicious increase in the price of basic necessities. (see letters on page 6 about a recent cadre training school in Haiti)
Communist leadership is needed
But the rest of the story is what really counts. Tens of thousands of workers and students take to the streets, angry and ready to fight back. At present, they are still being played like puppets by the so-called opposition politicians, but that will change with steadfast organizing by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The objective conditions are ripening for revolution—a government that cannot govern, a working class that doesn't want to live in the same old way. What is missing is a revolutionary communist party with deep ties among the masses and in mass organizations. A party that is challenging the capitalist/imperialist system and winning our class and its allies to overthrow the current reality and build an egalitarian society that fights in the interest of the majority.
We are convinced that the anger of the working class cannot be dissipated, despite all the violence that the capitalist system engenders. Feeding a family has become a painful exercise for families as inflation becomes insupportable and the exchange rate continues to climb. Crime is raging with murders, kidnappings, robberies and rapes. For more than three weeks, there has been no transport as the hospitals (where they exist at all) no longer function for lack of fuel. Telecommunications are affected as well.
Communication is almost impossible, even as radio and television stations are forced to shutter their doors or reduce their operating hours. The banks—the foundation of the capitalist system—are closed and the transfer offices can no longer function, resulting in virtually no money in circulation.
Imperialism starves workers
Despite this untenable situation, the Core Group (the imperialists: U.S., France, Canada, European Union) and their local lackeys in the OAS as well as the IMF and the World Bank, all the managers of neoliberal financial capitalism, continue to tolerate and encourage Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s policies. The IMF had already pushed Haiti into a familiar situation by forcing former Pres. Jovenel Moïse to end government subsidies of petroleum products.
Workers and students, fed up with their daily conditions, have blocked the streets in various neighborhoods, attacked politicians, and broken into and liberated goods from some businesses that have exploited them.
Haitian workers need communist revolution
While these actions are called by various elements in the “opportunist opposition,” in a good number of cases, particularly in the provincial areas, it is groups of workers and students, trade unions or social organizations that organize them. This is the case in a city where the PLP is very active. Party members provide militant leadership and contribute to the organization of all mobilizations.
The only solution to free our class from this misery is to build the PLP as a large and strong party, giving leadership to and taking leadership from the masses. Our task today is to politicize our class, workers and students, and engage them in the factories and rural areas, on campus and in the classroom. We must take the uprising in the streets back to the job and the campus, raise class awareness to understand the roots of our misery —capitalism/imperialism— and then take this increased awareness back into the streets, the job and the campus, bringing the class struggle to a higher level.
This is how we will recruit to the PLP and build the revolutionary response of our class throughout the world—the communist revolution for an egalitarian society, without money, without racism/sexism and without imperialist wars. We launched the challenge with our cadre school this past summer (see letters on page 6). We will continue this battle until victory is ours! We will build another world. Our class and our Party is the future.
