NEW YORK CITY, November 4—Strikes and struggle marked this year’s 104th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the first time the working class seized state power and freed millions of workers from capitalism and imperialism. On Thursday, November 4, hundreds of workers, miners, members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and friends demonstrated in solidarity with the multiracial Alabama miners who continue their nearly eight month  strike. On November 6, PL’ers and friends held an anniversary event in honor of the Bolshevik (revolutionary communists in Russia) Revolution, while also applauding the ongoing miners’ strike. This was a  multiracial social event connecting  revolutionary history to  present day reform struggles that displays our resolve to fight back amidst the growing imperialist threat of World War III.
These rallies and events were led by new comrades. They celebrate that even as capitalists try to keep their boots on the necks of the working class we are always preparing for a communist revolution. Sustained strikes and fightbacks are schools for communism and they teach us how to lead, organize, and support our fellow brothers and sisters. While the Alabama miners’ strike is not the Bolshevik Revolution, in this dark night it reminds us that our fighting spirit is still burning.
Miners’ rally: Union misleaders show their true colors
The November 4  rally in support of striking Alabama miners was called by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) president, Cecil Roberts, in front of the Manhattan headquarters of  Warrior Met Coal’s largest shareholder, BlackRock, a key capitalist asset management firm overseeing more than $14 trillion in investments. BlackRock is financially interlocked with top ruling class banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase and is one of the largest shareholders in ExxonMobil. It owns billions of dollars in real estate in working class neighborhoods, and rounding out its portfolio are major investors in top U.S. and Israeli weapons makers.
On October 27 the courts issued a temporary restraining order on pickets at Warrior Met mines until November 15. The company released highly edited videos of strikers defending themselves and their jobs on the picket line to make it look like they attacked unprovoked. In reality, Warrior Met has been attacking strikers with vehicles and sending scabs across the picket line with KKKop escorts.
Members of unions such as CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress, the National Writers Union, airline and hotel workers’ unions also attended and with them a group of PL’ers and friends. While PL’ers sold CHALLENGE and spoke with miners about revolution, the UMWA president tried whipping up nationalism saying miners are “real American patriots.” He explained that the UMWA’s strategy to win the strike hinges on convincing Warrior Met and BlackRock to ‘also be patriots' and ‘do the right thing’ by agreeing to their contract demands. Finally, he asked the crowd to face the U.S. flag hanging from BlackRock’s headquarters and recite the U.S. pledge of allegiance. Following that, he led the crowd in a round of cheers for the killer KKKops in the NYPD. Members of PLP turn their backs on the U.S. flag and all that it stands for. Patriotism
continues to be used to exploit and manipulate working people who have given their lives for the bosses’ profit system. PLP only salutes the red flag of international working class solidarity!
This gross display of U.S. patriotism and the strategy behind it reveals the UMWA leadership as the class traitors that they are. They said nothing connecting the recent court injunctions against the miners to the capitalist state. If they had, the need to break the bosses’ laws would have become crystal clear. The Alabama miners’ strike is an example of  the international working class struggle and how the fightback of workers in one place inspires fightback in others. The union leadership not only spits on the memory of the proud history of miners’ fightback, their nationalist, pro-KKKop rant pits miners in the U.S. against miners from around the world, who in recent years have fought violent struggles against their own bosses. PL’ers offer the only alternative that is in the miners’ and every workers’ interest: smashing the bosses’ laws and their cops, while fighting back and building PLP!
‘Bolshevik Striketober Fest’ celebrates workers’ power, history
On a mild sunny afternoon two days later, a group of  PL’ers and friends held a Bolshevik anniversary event at a public beach in Brooklyn. Two new, young comrades, including a comrade who visited Alabama in August, kicked off the afternoon with a rousing speech connecting the miners’ strike in Alabama with the “Striketober'' strike wave around the U.S. and the world.
The PL’ers saluted and gave a roll call to the recent October strike wave of miners across Mexico and Colombia over safety, wages, and the environmental destruction and attacks on workers in these countries and all over the world.
 In Colombia, miners halted the exports of over 200,000 tons of coal and cost the bosses $80 billion in profits. These workers and their sisters and brothers in Alabama were joined with strikes, strike authorizations, walk-outs and work stoppages of tens of thousands of workers from Massachusetts to New York, West Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas, Nevada, California, Oregon and Hawaii in industries including steel, agricultural machinery, telecommunications, transit, healthcare, bakeries and whiskey distilleries.
Despite the darkness of the current period, these strike waves show us that every dark night must have its end. In 1917, amid the dark night of the imperialist slaughterhouse called World War I, communists ended the war in Russia and toppled their capitalist government in revolution.  Communist workers led by their party waged a multiracial, integrated, revolution of workers from all over the world spreading communist politics in over 135 languages.
As the world’s first workers’ state, these pioneering communists made many errors which PLP has analyzed elsewhere. However, 104 years after workers first proved victory over capitalism is possible, PLP proudly carries the torch of their legacy into the class  struggle against capitalism today. We fight to smash racism, sexism, nationalism, profit systems, and racist borders with a communist world run by and for the international working class. FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM and JOIN US!