New York City, July 12–Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) week-long summer project of rallies, discussion groups, CHALLENGE newspaper sales, social events and protests was proof that today’s working-class youth are committed to building an international party for the masses of workers under rising fascism.  Throughout the project, about 50 youth and workers distributed over 1,000 papers, rallied in working-class neighborhoods, and participated in our CHALLENGE workshops and sessions on fascism, sexism and more. This project increased our understanding and prepared our class to fight against the bosses’ ideas and culture.  

The project’s peak was in Brooklyn on Saturday, July 10, with a petitioning campaign and rally to name a street in one community after Shantel Davis, a Brooklyn youth who was brutally murdered by the NYPD a decade ago. The project revealed that building and maintaining deep political roots, especially in Black and Latin working-class communities, what we call ‘base building,’ is indeed the critical factor that will make communist ideas mass ideas and prepare our class  for running a world without capitalism.
Encouraging workers to participate

At our opening cookout of roughly 50 attendees, the icebreaker was successful in that people shared their reasons for attending and why they believed capitalism must be destroyed. Since getting people to speak on bullhorns has been a challenge in the past, we addressed this concern head on by asking everyone to draft their ideas on note cards that could also be used later for bullhorn speeches.  This ended up being a successful strategy since we had the widest bullhorn participation ever in recent years.

One worker discussed the recent Supreme Court rulings against affirmative action in higher education and explained that our job as revolutionaries is to not only explain how the immediate threats of openly racist bosses like DeSantis and Trump attack our class but how the even more deadly but less blatant attacks of the Democratic Party are to blame for our continued suffering in terms of global issues like unemployment, migration crises, climate catastrophes and human trafficking.  The struggle of Kingsborough Community College students and professors against police terror on campus was also given acknowledgement and put forward as a sharp example of how to fight inequality with multiracial unity and courage.

Distributing CHALLENGE  
The public newspaper sales and rallies during the project are very important opportunities for our young comrades to sharpen their internal development in understanding the main political goals of Progressive Labor Party.

These sales also allow our members to learn from workers who witness and offer feedback.  Over the course of the week, we distributed several hundred CHALLENGE papers on Broad and Market, a major thoroughfare in Newark, NJ, and over 600 papers in the Ivy Hill section of Newark as well. At these sales, members led speeches and chants such as “obreros, unidos, jamas seran vencidos,”(workers united will never be defeated) or “workers, united, will never be defeated,” and in the process sharpened their analysis and public speaking skills.

As we would chant and read out headlines from our papers, workers would confirm our ideas such as a headline about smashing racism, kkkops and capitalism that motivated one worker to reply, “Yeah, it’ll take a war to do that.”  

Workers were also very excited to see that our paper is in both English and Spanish. There was one very revealing exchange between a member of PLP and a worker who took the paper and asked, “What is capitalism?” There was a wonderful conversation that revealed that he already, in fact, knew the essence of capitalist racist inequality and also about the inter-imperialist rivalry between Russian, Chinese and U.S. bosses that was shaping so much of the instability that all workers face today. Our class has so many of the tools already to run the world, and it is our job to remind each other of this fact and build the courage needed to make it happen.

No such thing as ‘good’ bosses!
Finally, our political education sessions and climactic event for Shantel Davis revealed the power of ideas and our appeal to the working class.  In our session about racism, the recent Supreme Court decision was discussed again as a devastating, obvious attack against the working class.  While we have targeted the Democratic Party as the leading force attempting to sway Black and Latin workers away from revolution,  workers around the world also cheered on Obama.

And we now face the worst climate-driven migration crisis in human history!  So while many people want to blame Trump for fascism, he isn't the problem any more than the rest of the bosses’ politrickcians.  
The bosses will have you believe by prosecuting Trump and those who participated in the Jan 6 insurrection that the system works. But for one small victory, the working class is subjected to mass deportation, incarceration, and other horrors every single day under capitalism.  The true victory is not punishing a cop with jail time, but removing the racist conditions which breed racist police in the first place, and no reform, judge or politician can promise us that.

Workers in Brooklyn who spontaneously joined our Shantel Davis rally also know that, and this shows us that their decision to join us was not really spontaneous at all. Rather, it shows us that our class watches us, and every fight we take, every summer project we complete, is confirmation to our class that our Party is serious, committed, and ready for the fight. Join us!