The following article is a reprint of a leaflet was written by PL’ers in the Mutual Aid and Community Organization Club and was distributed in large numbers at the Immigrant Rights March, which was featured on the front page of CHALLENGE in the 11/27 issue. The leaflet sums up the politics need to build a communist movement to smash this increasingly fascist system and is useful for talking to workers and friends in our organizing work.

The PLP Mutual Aid Club has been actively building solidarity with migrant workers, organizing clothing drives and donation drop-offs in collaboration with community groups at Floyd Bennett Field. This former airplane hangar has been converted into a shelter, but it more closely resembles a concentration camp, where hundreds of migrant workers are subjected to horrific living conditions.
In the face of attacks from liberal fascist NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Donald Trump against migrant workers, our efforts have stood as a beacon of hope and support. Many workers are forced to sleep on cots in freezing tents, exposed to the harsh elements, with little privacy or access to basic resources. 

At a recent clothing drive PL’ers brought donations and friends that lent a helping hand to our migrant siblings Floyd Bennett field. In addition to sharing hot cocoa, coffee on this cold fall day, along with resource flyers, we brought our communist politics and smiles to the faces of dozens of working class migrant families, many fleeing from Haiti, Venezuela, Ecudaor, and many parts of Latin America who gratefully took donations and CHALLENGE. Look out for an article in the future issue of CHALLENGE.

All workers around the world are working harder than ever and are getting less and less of the value of our labor while the ruling classes rake in massive profits. We are robbed of our time and wages. Inflation and state sponsored violence is killing us and forcing us to leave our homes. The situation in the U.S. is getting more dire by the minute. Millions of working people cannot afford to put food on the table or  get medical care. Many more are one paycheck away from being homeless. Capitalism is threatening to turn us all into climate refugees.

When workers are misled by racist rhetoric against our asylum-seeking siblings we forget one important detail: Capitalists (the profit making exploiter class) and their politicians  don't care about any of our lives; we are cheap and disposable to them. Today, it is our migrant, asylum seeking class siblings. Tomorrow, it could be you and your family who are forced to flee the U.S. because of war, climate, or economic crisis. We are one world, one international class. Borders are artificial lines written with the blood of our class.The ruling class uses national borders to control their profits and take ownership of our labor. 

The rulers put up their deadly border walls and guards to keep workers out, but the borders are always porous for weapons, money, and drugs. Imperialist bosses and their militaries know no borders and neither should we. When capitalist disasters or violence strikes it is we who always have each other’s back, not the government or our bosses. We care for and defend our class with mutual aid, antiracist, antisexist fightback, solidarity, and unity. 

Progressive Labor Party has been supporting Mutual Aid efforts in Floyd Bennett Field called Welcome Migrants. These are the seeds we need to build a better world—a communist world where workers own and control all the fruits of our labor and can solve the world’s problems without money or racist and sexist bosses. In a communist world workers will be free to move and receive the benefits of society from each according to need. Together, we could smash these lethal borders once and for all. Join us! 

It’s not just Klansman Trump or Holocaust Harris, it’s capitalism

Trump winning the presidency is a scary thing —for his divisive gutter racism and attacks on women’s health, for his threat to deport millions of migrating workers and the list goes on. His motto is drill baby, drill and get the migrants out of here so “America is Great Again.” He plans to force Medicaid recipients, many disabled, to work or die. Even so, Kamala Harris' presidency would have been a greater danger to our class. She has shown her true colors in her unwavering support for fascist Israel and the bloodbath in Ukraine, in her embrace of concentration camps at the Mexican border, in her stated pride that the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than ever before. She is ready and willing to sign on the dotted line for World War III.

Don’t mourn Trump, fight back and defend each other

For the millions of workers duped into voting for Harris or Trump, millions more rejected an unhinged racist, open fascist and a covert genocidal fascist Harris. We don’t deny another Trump presidency is depressing, but we are more powerful when we unite and fight back against our common enemy. We must raise the consciousness of those who voted for Harris, and of those who will soon regret voting for Trump, and rebuild the only movement proven to stop the advance fascism— the revolutionary communist movement— and break the chains that bind us once and for all. Join Progressive Labor Party!

The following speech was delivered by a young comrade in the college work at a forum themed new president, same capitalism what is to be done held in Brooklyn NYC.

I'm a student and PL’er here to give a report on the college conference 

We started off with a report from a comrade who works in transit. Despite the struggles, he's been making massive efforts in spreading our politics and organizing other workers in the MTA. But why should students care? Students and young people are typically first on the frontlines of struggle and of war. We're the most active and we have the most potential, but we can't have a revolution by ourselves. The student struggle must be based on class struggle. As we've seen, when not anchored in the revolutionary class struggle, the movement becomes lost and aimless.

Therefore the only way forward is for a student worker alliance and to unite our struggles.

We then had a morning and afternoon discussion. In the morning discussion, we read and discussed a challenge article that showed the continued necessity of fighting for multiracial working class unity, for building a base, and building the party. We then shared our own experiences and lessons we've learned from each of our campuses.

In the afternoon, we discussed how the bosses have been clamping down and enforcing increasingly fascistic practices as a direct result of the student protests. As you may or may not know, many of our college's are directly tied to the imperialist war machine, whether it be to develop weapons and technology for companies like Lockheed Martin or to recruit them to the army. 

We say to see through their lies and to recognize the power we have. To not join the bosses in their genocidal war against our fellow working class brothers and sisters, but to fight to overthrow the system. For communism.

A lot of people feel like all hope is lost, with all the various shit that's happened recently. But our work does not change. Our goal is still to overthrow capitalism. I think the future is bright. I think that not just change, but a better world is possible. And everything we do gives me hope, a glimpse into a better future.

This is the  part of an extensive series about the Bolshevik Revolution, published in 2017 in its centenniel, and the trumphs, as  well as the defeats, of the world communist movement of the 20th century. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.

In the pamphlet, The Epic of the Black Sea Revolt (1932), the French Communist André Marty reveals that the “war to end all wars” did not cease after 1917. (André Marty was one of the leaders of the revolt of the French sailors in 1919 and was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Pardoned in 1923, he became a member of the Communist International, and at his suggestion the Soviet Union supported the Spanish Republic against the fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War 1936-9.)

Capitalist nations around the world and white armies continued to besiege the U.S.S.R.  The revolts of French sailors represented one aspect of an immense world-wide movement against the aspirations of many imperialist countries.

Contrary to a popular legend, the “Black Sea Revolt” was not confined to mutinies of the crews on the French warships sent to the Black Sea in 1919. These included rebellions of the French troops stationed in the Southern Ukraine and the Crimea, as well as mutinies of French sailors on ships outside the Black Sea and in French ports.

To every soldier, the armistice of November, 1918, had meant that at last the imperialist war was over! But towards the end of I918, the Allied troops, by virtue of a special clause in the Armistice of November 11, had virtually replaced the German occupation troops in the Ukraine and in the Crimea. On December 18, 1918, the 156th Division dispatched from Salonika disembarked at Odessa. French soldiers there were engaged in severe fighting at the side of Russian White officers against Ukrainian soldiers. The shooting and the cannonade were distinctly heard on board the warships lying in the roadstead ready for battle. The continual skirmishes that followed the landing, and then the departure for a new front opened the eyes of the soldiers, “In France the war has ended, but here we are starting it all over again against a people’s republic!”

At the same time news filtered through to the soldiers and sailors about the powerful rebellions in France from men who had been on leave, from letters and from the new recruits about the workers’ problems there: unemployment and high cost of living, a rising wave of strikes for bread and progress, demonstrations against French PM Clemenceau’s military dictatorship and against the military intervention in Russia.
The French soldiers and sailors saw before them the very soldiers of the Bolshevik Revolution, whose inspiring revolution was rousing the masses of the people in France.

Russian and French Soldiers Unite

On their front, the Russian soldiers were committed to the practice of convincing enemy troops that they had become counter-revolutionaries. They concentrated their efforts on the most decisive factor, the French Army and Navy.  These soldiers and sailors learned from the Bolshevik pamphlets—published in French—a remarkable knowledge of the everyday needs and demands of the French on the ships and in their trenches.  
The men came to realize that the Bolsheviks were actually defending their interests. The Bolsheviks explained what the October Socialist Revolution was, what it stood for, and what it meant for the workers of the whole world.  Soon, French soldiers in Odessa protested vehemently when Russian workers were being led to prison.

The occupied zone extended from Tiraspol, in the Ukraine, and skirted the entire coast of the Black Sea. Protests began with the soldiers refusing to march.  On January 30, a battalion of the 58th Infantry was marched with the object of seizing Tiraspol. The 58th abandoned the battle and turned protests into action by taking the artillery with them and cutting its telephone communications.

On April 5, Odessa was evacuated. Whole units left the city singing the lnternationale. It became necessary to send the entire French army it back to France.

Marty was arrested on April 16 at Galatz (Rumania), together with three other sailors who had worked out a plan for seizing the ship.  That plan was sabotaged later.

Soldiers, Sailors Rebel

A revolt broke out on board the dreadnought  (type of battleship) France. The next day, the crews of the sister ships, the France and the Jean-Bart—the latter the flagship of the Admiral—gathered on deck singing the Internationale, and hoisted the red flag on the bowsprit. Almost at the moment when the red flag was hoisted on the main mast of the France, the troops which had been landed from the ships left the forts and made their way to the shore. When they arrived at the quay, the sailors singing “Down with the tyrants and the war!” flung their ammunition boxes into the sea. In the days that followed they forced the squadron to depart from Sevastopol.

Demonstrations of sailors and soldiers took place in the city of Toulon. The crew of the dreadnought Provence, the flagship of the First Admiral, refused to set sail for the Black Sea. The demands were: “Liberation of all the mutineers of the Black Sea, cessation, of the war of intervention in Russia, immediate demobilization.” The government could not stem this fast movement except by a mass demobilization, by hastening to disarm many warships, and by recalling from Russia all the ships and the forces of intervention.

One fact is beyond dispute. As a result of the Black Sea Revolt, French imperialism was compelled to relinquish its stranglehold on the October Revolution. Then the masses of sailors, soldiers and workers rose in France—not only against the criminal designs of the French imperialists, but also against the official Social-Democratic leaders who had prostituted themselves to the bourgeoisie since 1914: the “ Right” Socialists, the “ Centre “, and the  “Lefts” of the type of Paul Faure, as well as the trade union traitors.

For the international working class the Black Sea Revolt remains an example of what can be done by the power of the working class to demolish an imperialist state machine.

The cost of silence in face of genocide

At a local United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union meeting, I asked the district representative a basic question: Our retirement money, labor from teaching kids, is being invested into killing kids. TRS [pension system] holds over $112 million in Israeli securities. As an education worker, I don’t want our savings to go towards the genocide of kids and their families. In these 400+ days, what has the UFT done?

This District Rep was conveniently chatting with other union members when it was time for him to respond. Eventually, he told me to call the pension hotline if I wanted to get information because he doesn’t know. He didn’t fail to mention that I might be wrong about “those numbers.”

I cut off the gaslighting union mouthpiece by saying, “Your answer would’ve made sense if I was asking about my own individual fund. I am asking as a collective, for everyone, what is the union’s response to our pension money being invested in genocide?”

He then attempted to discredit me, and the union meeting returned to its bureaucratic tedium as if there wasn’t a Palestinian holocaust happening. I was seething inside, not at the union misleader—he was doing his job of misdirecting the working class—but at my co-workers who mostly stayed silent. To my co-workers’ credit, two spoke up to revoice me. The District Rep eventually said, “He’ll find out information.”
The next day, however, my co-teacher initiated a conversation. “What you said at that meeting, I didn’t know that. You’re saying our money is going to kill kids? How is that even possible?”

The TRS invests in Israeli weapons manufacturers and cyber systems for the Israeli Occupation Forces. Why? The U.S. keeps Israel alive because that’s their proxy for U.S. power in the Middle East. The U.S.’s position as a global superpower is shaky in the face of its rivals China and Russia. It’s always been about imperialist power, not workers’, students’, soldiers’ lives. 

I need to remember the silence and blatant denial of reality I witnessed at the union meeting is a feature of increasing fascism, which is the capitalist system decaying. Still, let’s continue to voice the truth and find the moments in our daily lives to jolt class consciousness. 
*****

Workers united will never be defeated

We held a press conference in the city hall park to launch our campaign for the Unemployment Bridge law. Around 300 people attended, representing a coalition of community organizations and workers’ unions that support our cause. The proposed law would establish a permanent fund to provide unemployment benefits to undocumented workers, self-employed individuals, and formerly incarcerated people, similar to the benefits available to workers with Social Security numbers.

Several supporting politicians attended the event, along with members of our Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Our members energetically chanted slogans including ‘United Workers will never be sold out,’ ‘This fist is seen,’ ‘Workers in power,’ and ‘From North to South, from East to West, we will win this fight no matter the cost.’ We distributed dozens copies of our Desafío newspaper and made a new contact at the event.

Our club members understand that growing our party requires active involvement in community organizations, workplaces, churches, and other social spaces. We are committed to this outreach while promoting our party’s platform at every meeting and protest. We believe that building a strong movement of communists is essential for our working class to achieve revolution and gain political power.
*****

Conference inspires student to organize!

Early this month, I had the opportunity to join my comrades in the yearly Progressive Labor Party college conference. This past year has been a great time to be a communist college student and it was great to hear from people on other campuses. While our struggles are all the same, they unfold so differently on different campuses. Hearing from everyone showed me what I could be doing on my campus better. 

A comrade in attendance shared that she used to campaign for the Democratic Party which resonated with me because I had a lot of faith in Democrats when I was younger until I saw their lies unfold in the years after the 2020 election. It was great to see this as I have been struggling with friends and family who still have faith in Democrats. Seeing this comrade join the Party at the end of the conference made me ready to keep struggling with my family no matter how frustrating it may get. 

My group also discussed the rise in bigoted behavior from frantic liberals in the wake of their beloved genocider and KKKop Kamala Harris losing the election. As a nonbinary person, a lot of people I have talked to have shown transphobic behavior to me that I would only have expected from a conservative, things like calling me privileged as a man when I have made it known that I am not a man at all! In addition to this, anti Latin and anti Arab hate have gone rampant in liberal online spaces as liberals express their disdain for these groups “not voting hard enough” for them. 

This transactional view on organizing is going to continue if we don’t keep struggling with the people around us. On a brighter note, as soon as I came back home to LA I started organizing with the pro palestinian movement at my college taking the advice of some comrades from New York and leaving  Challenge at my library. Some of the people I met even recognized the paper from when I had left it in the library in the past. There is still a lot of work to be done over here but I feel the most prepared and inspired to get it done than I ever have as a student.
*****

Using CHALLENGE in the classroom

The day after the U.S. presidential election, I went into my high school classes ready to give my students a real alternative to the misery this capitalist system has to offer. The week before I shared a short excerpt from a New York Times article about the U.S. military preparations for war with China with them. One line from the article that really stood out to students said, “But no matter who wins in November, the United States will continue to prepare for war with China.” My students had a lot of questions and insights about it. Some even came to the conclusion that no matter who gets elected, what is in store for them is the possibility of world war. 

So when I distributed CHALLENGE newspapers in my classes and we read from the article Voting: The Big Con, many students were receptive to what the article had to say. One student broke it down really well. He explained that the U.S. as all other countries around the world are capitalist.
Therefore the rich only care about making themselves richer. Elections don’t matter because the candidates are just puppets of the rich. We had great discussions that day and I emphasized the importance of organizing and fighting back against all capitalist attacks. 

This discussion gave me the motivation to invite students to an upcoming Progressive Labor Party study group, and three of them came! A few others let me know that they were unable to make this one but want to attend the next one. Being bold with a communist alternative is the only way forward. I look forward to continuing the struggle to strengthen the fist that will one day smash this horrific system.
*****

In a lose-lose scam, what’s the way out?

The CHALLENGE post-election editorial (Nov. 27 issue) begins, “In a lose-lose election for workers, Donald Trump’s victory marks the toxic divisions within the U.S. working class...” The editorial mostly emphasizes the negatives.

In the second half of the editorial, the view becomes more all-round: “We must not lose sight that millions of workers who voted for Trump did so out of their hatred for the horrors of capitalism.”

This is our opening! More people see that capitalist democracy does not give us any good choices. This system of voting for one of their candidates cannot solve our problems, will not construct an economy of common prosperity, and cannot live at peace with the rest of the world.

So what’s the way out? We can pose this question to more people and spell out the answer: revolution and the communist path!
*****