First Cover: ‘Police War on Harlem’

The two stories below are excerpts from the late Walter Linder’s memoir, A Life of Labor and Love. Wally was a founding member of Progressive Labor Party and passed away on January 3, 2022 at the age of 91, after a lifetime of principled struggle on behalf of the international working class. In addition to being a leader for the working class in school and on the job, he served as an editor and contributor to CHALLENGE, and to the Magazine of Progressive Labor Party.
59th Anniversary of the workers’ paper
The first issue of CHALLENGE (Vol. 1, No 1) came out on June 15, 1964. When we sold that first issue of CHALLENGE, most of us had no idea how significant it was AND the role that CHALLENGE would soon play in the fight against capitalism. The headline on page one  was prophetic: Police War on Harlem. Barely four  weeks later, the Harlem Rebellion started after racist KKKop Thomas Gilligan of the New York Police Department (NYPD) shot and killed young James Powell who, with his friends, was trying to cool off from the July heat by spraying water on themselves and a bystander who complained about it and eventually called the police. This killing was the last straw in a long series of racist oppression. The news media called the rebellion a “riot” but it was most definitely a rebellion!  Most of the stores that were attacked were pawnshops that had been looting the residents of Harlem for decades!

The Progressive Labor Movement (PLM), which became the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in April 1965, put out its most significant (and briefest!!) leaflet:  Wanted for Murder - Gilligan the Cop. Rebels carried the leaflet all over Harlem. The PLM couldn’t print enough of them!!  ALL of the so-called “Black leaders” had the same false message: Go home and Pray ... don’t fight back!!  But the NYC bosses knew exactly who to attack; the Harlem rebels and the PLM. So-called “free speech” went out the window. In essence, martial law was declared.

On a personal note, I sold the first issue of CHALLENGE in three  locations:  The Upper West Side of Manhattan, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the Garment District in Manhattan. The PLM held weekly rallies in the Garment District and CHALLENGE was a big help in getting our message out. We sold CHALLENGE on the street to the garment workers and when the boss wasn’t around, we went inside the shops where we could talk more extensively to several workers simultaneously. Unfortunately, most of us (maybe ALL of us) didn’t understand anything about base building so we didn’t get workers’ names. That’s a key lesson for our newer members:  ALWAYS get names so you can stay in touch and follow up with as many people as possible. That’s key to building the Party.

The police and sanitation departments harassed us while we sold CHALLENGE. They gave me quite a few tickets for supposedly “littering.” After my first ticket, the PLM got me a lawyer who taught me what to say at my trial. After my second ticket, I no longer needed a lawyer; I could defend myself and I did so!

CHALLENGE was the only newspaper, magazine, or TV and radio station that told the truth about the Harlem Rebellion, as well as the many other rebellions in Black neighborhoods  throughout the U.S. The summer of 1964 made it very clear who were the sellouts and who supported the working class. Every one of us should do their utmost to ensure that CHALLENGE continues to be a working-class beacon that will help workers to understand the oppressive nature of capitalism AND the only solution to its miseries: COMMUNIST REVOLUTION!

The workers embrace CHALLENGE
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.

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.

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.J 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 pressworker 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 [59]th year of publishing CHALLENGE, and have never missed an issue.