The following story has been reprinted from Wally Linder’s book Life of Labor and Love. 

In June 1964, the Progressive Labor Movement decided to print an eight-page weekly newspaper; CHALLENGE was born. Our search for a printer led us to an outfit in Trenton, N.J. After laying down a deposit, the printer looked at the first issue and told us that would be the last one he’d print. We called up the Harris offset press manufacturer and asked for a list of newspaper printers to whom it had sold web offset presses. That’s how we found the Sun Publishing Co., located in the Chinese community on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We showed our first issue to the owner, Mr. Chan, and he agreed to print our newspaper. His wife and kids helped with various tasks. Milt Rosen, PLM chairperson, and I packed the papers into boxes for pick-up. 

CHALLENGE’ing and rebelling against the rulers from day 1

As it happened, later that month the Harlem rebellion erupted, during which the rebels were holding the front page of CHALLENGE as their flag while marching. This prompted the NYPD Red Squad to visit Mr. Chan and warn him that if he continued to print our paper he would be in for trouble. Chan told them he was within his rights to print any newspaper brought to him. “What about freedom of the press?” he shot back at the cops’ threat. He was not about to abandon his only account. Years later, when Mr. Chan retired, our search for another printer led us to Brooklyn and Ballan Printing, a company that printed many small community and campus papers—and a huge number of pornographic ones that had sprung up since the 1960s. (The Mafia, in collusion with the owners, had coerced the workers into a local union it controlled.) But neither the owners nor the Mafia counted on the workers’ rebelliousness. The workers read our paper and saw the various exposés we wrote about the lousy working conditions that profit-hungry bosses were pushing on workers throughout the country. 

CHALLENGE’ing and exposing rulers lies  from the very start

When we went to pick up the paper, the workers showed us the horrible condition of what passed for their bathroom and asked us to write about it. Our editor Luis Castro wrote an exposé for the next issue, which the workers read with enthusiastic approval. When the bosses saw the article, they went wild. They told us it was all lies and one-sided and challenged us to print their side, “the truth.” We told them that there was only one “truth,” the “workers’ truth,” which made them even crazier. From then on, they scrutinized every issue. Soon afterwards, the owners renovated the bathroom into a halfway decent condition. The workers attributed that improvement to the article we had written. When a pre-May Day issue came out, we printed the words of the workers’ anthem, “The Internationale.” When we went to pick up that issue, a pressman suddenly leapt up the two flights of stairs to the top of the huge web press and in a clear, loud voice began singing “The Internationale.” As the strains of the final words, “the International working class shall be the human race,” drifted across the pressroom, the workers spontaneously burst into applause. We never found out how this worker knew the song’s melody, but news of the performance soon traveled to the far reaches of Brooklyn. We are now in our 55th year of publishing CHALLENGE, and have never missed an issue.

Amidst the ongoing genocide and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, 80 members and staff from the immigrant community organization in which Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members participate turned out for the pro-Palestinian May Day rally on May 1 in New York City. PLP members and friends rallied with the organization with hugs and chanting together. The Party played a key role in the process of getting the turnout and spirit of the group. We distributed 500 PLP leaflets (titled, “From all the rivers to all the seas, communism will set us free”) inviting people to the PLP May Day march on May 4 in Brooklyn. A group of young staff came on May 4. Two are regularly reading CHALLENGE and want to get to know us better.

Organizing against genocide             

PLP members have been working in this organization and surrounding community for more than 20 years. One comrade was an ESL teacher there for 10 years. We have recruited a number of workers to PLP and maintain a regular study group in the community. Since Oct 7 when Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and the Zionists began the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, comrades there have been in action. On Oct 10 we distributed 2,000 leaflets in the organization and the community. The title of the leaflet was: Israel-Hamas war means, Workers of the World Unite - Fight Back, Join the International Progressive Labor Party!                                   

We spoke at the Workers’ Committee of the organization about the war, genocide, oil, imperialist rivalry and the history of Israel and Palestine. Despite the lack of response then, the resistance against the directors of the Workers Committee invited comrades to organize a forum in December at the time and place of their meeting. 50 workers attended the forum presented in Spanish and English. A supervisor made an attempt to take over the forum, but she failed. The Party’s ideas and speeches were applauded. Workers endorsed a rally in the community. CHALLENGE was widely distributed in the process.         

A group of the organization’s staff, members of a United Auto Workers (UAW) local, were motivated by our comrades’ work to start a mass campaign to present five demands to the organizations’ directors/bosses. The demands included an immediate and long-term ceasefire in Gaza, support for the divest movement and the no vote movement and political education for staff and members. Staff got 40 signatures and comrades got 20 worker/member signatures demanding a meeting with the bosses. The meeting turned out to be a call during which staff and comrades spoke well and sharply. Somewhat taken aback, the directors agreed to a statement on social media and political education. In response to the divest, no vote movements, one of the directors said, “We’re not doing anything wrong, and we can invest in Israel as we see fit and we (that is the loyal liberals) have to re-elect Biden.” A real “education” for members and staff of the organization.

Bosses’ ideas poison for fightback                    

While there were some useful points in the political education webinar, nationalism and a total lack of class analysis was on display. There was no mention of the rivalry of the world’s imperialists for control of oil, shipping routes, commerce, and control of the working class. We must destroy capitalism and imperialism everywhere and forever. Communism is the only solution! That is the Party’s job, and we mustn’t shy away from the struggle!                       

The result of the long-term organizing and protesting was the directors’ decision to mobilize for the May Day rally on May 1st. Three workers and five young staffers joined other comrades and friends at PLP’s May Day march on May 4. One worker joined and 2 others have gotten closer. Building a mass party is always our goal and we have a long way to go! In conclusion, this is an example of building the Party in this period of sharpening war, racism, and fascism. Let’s do it!

MADISON COUNTY, KY, April 22 - Today members of the Progressive Labor Party joined the Madison County Tenants Union to rally for the repeal of HB5, Kentucky’s new “Safer Kentucky” Act that makes us all unsafe! The law criminalizes homeless workers by making it illegal to camp on public property. It will increase incarceration and prison labor which only benefits the bosses. It also authorizes violent attacks by business and property owners on people camping on their property, and gives the green light to vigilantes to use “deadly physical force” against anyone who they think is trying to “dispossess” them of their property. These are all classic ways for the bosses to build a fascist movement.

We marched to the office of the Republican state senators behind this law, chanting and singing our union songs. Their response? They locked the door on us! We continued with speeches and testimonials outside, and shoved our scroll of over a thousand signatures in between the locked doors. This rally shook up the political bosses and was featured on the bosses’ news media. We were able to spend some time strengthening our ties with other tenant union members. We shared a CHALLENGE newspaper with them, leading to discussions about the need to overthrow this entire fascist capitalist system!

Going beyond tenant organizing

And to overthrow capitalism we have to go beyond fighting the local racists in Kentucky. We have to organize against Genocide Joe Biden who is continuing Trump’s racist attacks on migrants, escalating his predecessor Obama’s racist attacks on migrants. We have to become part of a worldwide movement against imperialism and the looming world war. The bosses want to blame migrants for problems created by capitalism. And they also want workers to kill each other in wars that can only benefit these profiteering capitalists. Let’s join the worldwide fight for a world run by the world’s workers. That’s communism.  Join the Progressive Labor Party

Teachers are able to learn who their students are and plan lessons based on those needs. This planning is a creative endeavor, so, though it ultimately maintains capitalism, many teachers do get a sense of fulfillment as they use their labor to create. This  illustrates what  Karl Marx outlined in his book Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts: that there is a human connection between our labor and the products we create. Now teachers are facing the disconnection from the means of production, that is producing our own texts, questions and lessons. Instead of the creative joy that comes from knowing and learning from our students in order to create their learning experiences, we are being given a front row seat into the alienation the working class deals with every day. The NYC Department of Education (DOE) has unveiled a plan to force all NYC teachers to use curriculum that the DOE directly produces, beginning in math and english.  

Teaching students loyalty to bosses

Communists know that the purpose for education under capitalism is to prepare the working class for the needs of the ruling class bosses. The bosses need compliant workers to be willingly exploited, as they steal our labor. So, though teachers are being removed from the production process of teaching, it will be the students who will directly face this ruling class attack. They will have prefabricated lessons designed by corporations and teachers who are compliant to the racist, sexist ideologies the bosses want to teach. Whereas, communist teachers have used the classroom to interrupt the bosses’ ideological production, interjecting communist ideas, and building the Progressive Labor Party that will one day bury capitalism once and for all. 

PLP has focused on the military, industrial work, and schools as our method of building the communist revolution that will transform our world.  The bosses see the working class turning against Israel’s genocide in Palestine and our refusal to join their military as World War III with their capitalist rivals looms. They need to build a much larger army than they have. This comes as they attempt to discipline the smaller capitalists represented by the gutter racist and sexist MAGAs. They also need an industrial base for war, to rebuild a failing infrastructure.

Teachers need to unite

In a NYC high school, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union has been saying that there is no curriculum mandate while the administration has been making plans to implement it. Following a pattern of how they would close larger schools, they wanted to grant the teachers in the building the illusion of choice by saying that they could pick from a set of vendors each with a different curriculum. Much of the curriculum mandated by the administration contains books that drill anti-communist and  anti-working class ideas. One book that is taught at many public schools is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, a vehemently anti-communist book. Out of the entire library of Black Literature, why that book?

This is a theme of these curriculums; they teach and control the narrative that the bosses need the workers to believe as reality.  
Being the bosses they are, the DOE informed the teachers that they had subsidized only one of the curricula, basically making the decision for them. The teachers in the English Department want to resist this existential attack on their careers. PLP keeps pointing out that this attack is indicative of growing fascism as the bosses directly move to take control of the means of ideological production. 

A video attached to an email that was sent to the English teachers by the corporation behind the chosen curriculum excitedly touted that teachers wouldn’t even have to grade anymore as now AI would do the grading! How great for the bosses as students would use AI to answer AI generated questions on a worksheet that AI would ultimately grade. What role would the teacher as producer have in this scenario apart from being a facilitator of the bosses’ designs? Communists know the answer is that the bosses would get exactly what they want and that students will suffer the most.  

Racism and sexism will intensify as the most exploited working class neighborhoods will get the least help because the teachers they get will be using subject matter not designed for them but for what the bosses need them to be. As the bosses push for online learning so they can shove 60 or more students into a classroom, the cutting edge of racism will be disproportionately felt by Black and Latin students.  As direct attacks on them were thwarted by the mass working class struggle that coalesced into the Black Lives Matter movement, the bosses will directly use their system to maintain the racist inequity necessary for them to maximize surplus value for the profit they need to maintain their superiority over their imperialist rivals and, eventually, fund their wars.  

Reform vs. Revolution

At this moment, the administration is saying that they will allow English teachers to teach anything they want for a single six week marking period.  This crumb of reform will easily be taken away as they entrench their curriculum.  It will be only a matter of time before the bosses create the facilitators of their ideology that they require for capitalism to remain unthreatened.  

The little bit of human connection through labor that teachers get and are now losing would be far greater once we are all building a communist world. It will be when students are the focus of teaching because the whole of society will see them as  producers, and their learning will be utilized to build a world where their needs would be met. Despite not being on the verge of communist revolution, the teachers in the building do want to fight back and are organizing meetings to discuss how. PLP is focused on building these meetings, facilitating this fight back, and making sure that it won’t be easy for the bosses to attack the working class.