A genocidal system triggers mass shooters

It does not end. The victims of one mass shooting aren’t even buried and we are faced with another.  The shootings over the last three weeks have been too much to bear. Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, Philadelphia. It has been a devastating time. An unbearable time. Yet as hard as it is to think about, we have to take on the task.
Our future and the futures of our children are being shaped at this moment. We must engage in the struggle because, as we mourn the deaths of the children and workers and innocent people, the rulers’ propaganda machine is trying to shift the blame away from the bosses and onto the working class. All while desperately trying to salvage the murderers in blue, the police who proved once again to be useless when it comes to helping the working class.

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Rx for trauma: fight for revolution

As workers struggle with isolation, depression, and anxiety magnified by the bosses’ disregard during Covid-19, students and workers at the City University of New York (CUNY) have demanded better mental health services. The student-led CUNY Rising Alliance demands, among other things, more counselors and advisors.  Problems like illness, death, and job loss shared by so many working-class youth have created a collective trauma that is endemic to the structural racism, poverty, and fractured social system these students—and their class sisters and brothers worldwide—were already facing. In other words, students are suffering from capitalism. The best therapy for our mental health is building connection in the midst of class struggle.

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Letters of June 22

Communist ideas have no borders
I am writing to you to share a reflection about an exchange that took place in the south of Mexico. Communist workers from the Progressive Labor Party who live there hosted a political event with others visiting from central Mexico and New Jersey. We are fortifying our political base with workers who are learning about our ideas and how we put them in practice in different parts of the world. Equally as important, our event gave these workers who are being exposed to

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Buffalo Massacre: Disarm capitalist butchers with communist revolution

Armed with a military-grade assault rifle and the rulers’ racist ideas, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old monster created by capitalism, traveled 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, to murder Black people. Donned in body armor, he began firing in the parking lot at Tops Friendly Market—the only supermarket in Buffalo’s largest Black neighborhood—before walking inside. He shot 13 of our working-class brothers and sisters, 11 of them Black. Ten were killed; the killer, treated far more carefully by the kkkops than many unarmed Black workers, was arrested without a scratch.
By then the camera attached to Gendron’s helmet had livestreamed the atrocity to a popular gaming platform. Like photographs of lynchings in the early 1900s, the graphic footage found a ready audience. The butchery drew more than three million views, and was still generating revenue for Facebook a full day later. Under capitalism, the bosses’ media and social media eagerly amplify the profit system’s racist terror.

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56-year anniversary: The Cultural Revolution Uprising for Workers’ Power

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) was an historic uprising of the working class led by the most advanced communist ideas at the time. It was the first time the working class attempted to take state power back from a former communist party that had returned to capitalism.
The leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Mao Tse Tung, initially encouraged the Cultural Revolution to get rid of a few people in the leadership of the Party. But the left forces in the Cultural Revolution recognized that the official Communist Party  was already in the hands of a capitalist ruling class at the time the GPCR began. They argued that the vast majority (90 percent) of the leading cadres were part of that oppressor class, that the People’s Liberation Army (or PLA, the military) was its tool to smash the real left and maintain power. They said that the new “red” bourgeoisie had emerged during the 17 years from 1949-66 from the ranks of the revolutionaries themselves and, therefore, that the GPCR was not, as Mao said, a struggle to consolidate proletarian rule. It was the first revolution in history to attempt to take power back from the fake “communists,” known as revisionists. This analysis led the left workers and students leading the Cultural Revolution to carry out the following political campaigns.

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Worcester May Day ‘Kops, the Kourts, the Ku Klux Klan, all Part of the Bosses’ plan

WORCESTER, MA, May 1—The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, along with other community organizations, organized a May Day march here. The PLP in New England gave political communist leadership to a march of about 70 workers and youth, with two thirds who are not members (yet).
Prior to the march, we organized several pre-May Day planning meetings and invited members of the Worcester Tenants Union and others to help with security. Considering recent Nazi actions in Boston and Providence, we thought there was a possibility that these fascists would show up and attack the march. Worcester Tenants Union provided street medics and helped with security. There were two disruptions of anti-communists, but we kept them at bay.

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Letter: ‘I was terrorized on my way home’

I am a public health student and currently finishing up a pre-med program outside of Los Angeles.  I am also an Iraq-war veteran and have seen first hand the level of racism and destruction of imperialist war.  Over the last six years I have become close friends with a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member and his family and have supported communist actions and events including events of families who have lost their loved ones to racist police violence.

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Haiti: the real meaning of May Day

Haiti, May 1—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrated May Day with students, professors and others from a university in a small provincial town in Haiti. We organized a day of activity around the theme “May Day: capitalism questioned.” Several comrades from Port-au-Prince joined us, committed to being with us on this historic day, despite the presence of gangs and kidnappers controlling much of the road leading to our town.
First there was a conference and then a class conscious musical performance by a worker who sang about our  struggle and the exploitation, which pushes us to act against the capitalist system. The participants heard and understood the words as their own, couched in a language of suffering and strength.
The main speaker’s presentation on “the labor movements and the class struggle in Haiti” was like an downpour after a lot of dry weather. It made clear some concepts and historical examples of class struggle from Haiti and around the world. Many people participated freely in the discussion; it was similar to the small schools (tilekòl) that we are used to doing in Haiti.

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Mexico: Confidence in the working class

MEXICO, May 1—On May Day we marched as a contingent of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in Mexico City and Oaxaca. Like every May Day, we organized our members and friends to join the march of the unions and social organizations that are fighting for reforms of capitalism that will improve the lives of workers. These organizations have thousands of workers and students who oppose the liberal bosses represented by the Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) government and are trying to build a more militant reform movement.

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Pakistan: fight against misleaders, fight for workers

PAKISTAN—The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) organized some May Day celebrations with the assistance of our friends and comrades working in different labor, student and professional organizations. We also organized a demonstration with torches in our hands at night which attracted many passersby. Our slogans were, “one world, one flag, one fight, workers of the world unite” and “down with capitalism—long live communism!”

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