CHICAGO, IL, April 16–Almost 2,000 people gathered a few blocks from Chicago’s Democratic and Black Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s house to protest the police murder of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. The working-class anger against this latest police atrocity had been seething all week long (see CHALLENGE, 4/28). This mass demonstration was in response to the video released of the murder of young Adam, which clearly showed that he was murdered with his hands up. It was the biggest march in Chicago since last summer’s uprisings against the racist murder of George Floyd (see editorial, page 2).
“Lori Lightfoot you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “KKKops how many kids have you killed today,”thundered loudly in Chicago’s Logan Square. 20  friends and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  joined the masses in denouncing the cops and the capitalist/fascist system that spawns them. We quickly ran out of the 300 copies of CHALLENGEs and the hundreds of leaflets we brought to distribute.
The protesters marched down the middle of a major street, Milwaukee Avenue, stopping every few minutes to speak on the bull horn and invite marchers to join us on May Day, the revolutionary workers’ day that is celebrated all over the world on May 1. We called for a communist world we envision free from killer cops, racism, sexism, and exploitation. Many people responded by clapping and cheering us on when we spoke about communist revolution and the need for workers’ power. Many joined our communist chant, “The only solution is a communist revolution!”
Peace walk
Two days later, there was a peace walk of hundreds of people through the mainly Latin neighborhood of Little Village. We again distributed our communist literature inviting all to our May Day march which will begin a few blocks away from where Adam was savagely shot. We also led chants and more significantly briefly met with Adam’s father and let him know that our Party stood in solidarity with his family and that our goal was to abolish capitalism and the police forces who murdered his son.
For this peace walk, a young artist who we work with and has read CHALLENGE drew a beautiful mural. It was painted on the other side of the fence where Adam Toledo was murdered. The mural is of huge letters that read, “We need each other.”
Everyone was invited to write some words inside the letters for Adam’s family. We wrote, “death to racism and fascism, long live Adam Toledo. PLP”
Winning youth to communist politics
The next week, we participated in a press conference/rally that demanded that Kim Foxx, our county’s Democratic and Black State’s Attorney file murder charges against the kkkop Eric Stillman and that her lying Assistant, James Murphy, resign for lying about the video tape that clearly showed that Adam was murdered in cold blood with his hands up. We are working with community organizers we met at the first vigil for Adam. They have all taken our literature and have welcomed us to their struggle.
By taking bold leadership our Party is being recognized and looked to for guidance and leadership against this murder. As soon as we arrived at the Logan Square protest surrounded by 100s  of protesters, we began a PLP mini-rally giving a communist analysis of this murder. People listened intently agreeing with many of our points. Our consistent communist anti-racist and anti-fascist politics are attracting many young workers to us. At work, we are recognized as leaders and they ask us about the next actions and then they accompany us to them.
By participating in the Free Mohawk struggles we’ve been participating in over 2020 and 2021, young workers sought us out at the Logan Square march and they held up our communist banners. We plan to recruit these workers and students to build a communist Red Army that will smash our class enemies, and their liberal, Democratic lap dog politicians. On to May Day and on to communist revolution.