58th Anniversary: Join the Party that fights for communism

​​April 17 marked the 58th anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international party now organizing in five continents. Even as our class faces a dark night and growing inter imperialist-rivalry and fascism (see editorial, page 2) we continue our fightback because this is just the beginning of a worthy struggle towards an international communist revolution. Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism—first by leading antiracist, working-class struggle, and then through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy—practice and theory—is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.

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RED EYE ON THE NEWS ... April 12, 2023

French bosses face angry workers as they dismantle capitalist welfare system BBC, 3/22–More than a million people took to the streets across France on Thursday, with 119,000 in Paris, according to figures from the interior ministry. Police fired tear gas at protesters in the capital and 80 people were arrested across the country. The demonstrations were sparked by legislation raising the retirement age by two years to 64. "I oppose this reform and I really oppose the fact that democracy no longer means anything,"...The unrest also disrupted train travel, oil refineries and saw teachers and workers at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport walk out of work.

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Letters ... April 12, 2023

Communist politics best self-care Coming to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) [over the past three months] was a new type of experience that I hadn’t had before, really. Since I was young, I had been relatively politically involved, but primarily focused on women’s and LGBTQ issues; mostly I was involved in online debate. Several times my mom brought me to political events, though there was not really historical discussion at these events (marches, getting people to vote in local elections, etc.)

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EDITORIAL ... One year of war in Ukraine: WORKERS MUST TURN THE GUNS AROUND!

One year ago, the simmering conflict between Russia and the U.S.-backed regime in Ukraine became an inter-imperialist shooting war. At the time, CHALLENGE wrote, “It’s impossible to know how this war will ultimately play out, but we do know that small wars can lead to larger wars, particularly in volatile times.” As tensions among the top imperialist powers escalate, with their economies in crisis and World War III looming, that prediction looks even more likely today. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has long warned that the capitalist profit system breeds ruthless and never-ending imperialist competition, battles waged with workers’ blood. At the same time, violent shifts in the old world order create an opening for communist revolution, just as they did during World War I and after World War II.

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HOUSING FOR WORKERS, NOT BOSSES’ PROFITS

LENNOX, CA, March 7—Working class tenants in an apartment complex in Los Angeles (LA) County have lit a fire under their profit-hungry slumlord! One-third of the tenants in these apartments have come together to demand immediate and necessary repairs, and to deduct future rent money to pay for the materials and labor cost of those repairs if the landlord continues to refuse to make them. The unity of Latin workers in the face of their racist landlord attempting to divide them, intimidate them, or buy them off bodes well for this struggle. It also reflects the growing numbers of workers who are fighting back against landlord abuses and evictions, and are also beginning to see the bigger picture of racist gentrification, homelessness, and the capitalist system that is behind these plagues on the working class.

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Art for Anti-Racists: Langston Hughes and the Spanish Civil War

Song of Spain By Langston Hughes A bombing plane’s The song of Spain. Bullets like rain’s The song of Spain. Poison gas is Spain. A knife in the back And its terror and pain is Spain. … The people are Spain The people beneath that bombing plane…. Workers, make no bombs again! Workers, mine no gold again! Workers, lift no hand again

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Empowered by antiracism, fighters take on DA Gascon

Los Angeles, CA, March 28– For nearly three years the fightback and solidarity with the Flores family has deepened, which has given life to Progressive Labor Party in Los Angeles. With consistent protests over several years, the family has grown to see that this fight is bigger than any individual KKKop or reform policy. They are now actively organizing with other families to target the liberal fascist and George Soros-funded District Attorney, George Gascon. Gascon has a liberal cover, but he has a long cop career, from going along with racist “stop and frisk” policies to refusing to prosecute killer cops. This has been controversial because Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other organizations have championed Gascon and given him a platform with impacted families where he’s made promises to prosecute cops.

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Fight to Learn, Learn to Fight! A look at PLP’s Communist May Day History

BROOKLYN, NY, March 11–As part of our monthly series preparing for May Day 2023, a multiracial group of over 30 students, parents, teachers, and workers engaged in a sampling of historic May Day events led by Progressive Labor Party (PLP) since our party resurrected the holiday in the U.S. in 1971. The common threads of revolutionary communist boldness, creativity, militant class struggle, confidence in the working class, and our ever-evolving line of dictatorship of the proletariat and fighting directly for communism, and our uncompromising antiracism and multiracial workers’ unity, was all in full display over a series of events we studied.

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International Working Women's Day: To defeat sexism, destroy capitalism

Bourgeois feminism and the movement of proletarian women are two fundamentally different social movements.”— Clara Zetkin, Die Gleichheit (Equality) March 8 marks the 114th International Working Women’s Day since its initial celebration by NYC garments workers in 1909. The struggle for working-class women was inextricably linked to the open call for overthrowing the czarist government. Today, working-class women’s demands are filtered into reforms that benefit bosses and their ruling-class servants. Still working women around the world are at the helm of class struggle, defying the bosses sexist and racist divisions.

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Turkey: Anti-sexism or feminism?

In Istanbul, Turkey, the riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters celebrating International Working Women’s Day. Even in the face of mass destruction from recent earthquakes, these women in Turkey remind us as antisexist, antiracist fighters worldwide, that working women are essential for a better world. The Turkish government took a drastic turn to use religious fundamentalism to justify sexism and squelch the potential for women to live beyond the constraints of a society that supports harmful marriages and patronizing relationships between men and women. Turkish women are refusing to be silenced and are demanding an end to President Erdogon’s regime amidst complete negligence after the catastrophic earthquakes.

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