Mack Coad, ‘best organizer, leader of international communist movement’

Mack Coad was born in 1894 in Blackstock, South Carolina to a Black working class family. As a young adult, he worked as a railroad firefighter and crane operator. He lost his railroad position at the onset of the Great Depression. In 1929, after attending a meeting of a Communist led unemployed group, Coad joined the Communist Party. Because of his leadership capabilities, Coad was selected to be a student at the Lenin School in the Soviet Union. In 1931, after his return to the United States, Coad was assigned as a union organizer in the South. He worked with steelworkers in Birmingham and was an organizer of the Alabama Sharecropper's Union.

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Letters of May11

Nazis Out of Boston! Power to the workers!

Right here in liberal Massachusetts the racist Small Fascist (see glossary) movement, fronted by Trump and engineered by billionaire domestic capitalists like Charles Koch and Kelcy Lee Warren, is trying to gain a toehold of strength. Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in New England are priming ourselves to join with other antiracists to crush them in the cradle. Though this racist movement, sprouting in New England, is an immediate threat we must not lose sight of the great danger that Big Fascist liberals pose for the working class.  
Make no

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Honor Harriet by breaking our capitalist chains

 BALTIMORE—In recognition of her 200th birthday, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) held a forum honoring Harriet Tubman’s dedication to freeing Black workers from the vicious grip of slavery, sometimes literally. The rescue story of Charles Nalle, a Black man that Harriet Tubman helped flee from slavery, serves as a powerful example of fighting racist capitalism and wage slavery with multiracial unity. Black women workers have historically exposed the growing contradictions between exploitation and profit, and continue giving frontline leadership in multiracial class struggles that provides a pathway for all workers to  fight for communism.

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No blood for oil! Smash all imperialists!

The latest crisis bulletin from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a stark reminder that the capitalist bosses stand ready to sacrifice millions of workers’ lives to preserve their profit system. The IPCC now projects global temperatures to rise even higher than the deadly target of 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed upon by the bosses at the 2015 Paris Accords (Guardian, 4/6). Extreme weather-linked disasters—wildfires, floods, droughts, hurricanes—are certain to get worse. Barring a fundamental change of course, one of three plant and animal species may be extinct by 2050 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). None of these trends are “natural” or inevitable. All are the products of capitalism and the bosses who rule us—the parasites who must be destroyed for the good of the international working class.
Following the ruthless logic of capitalism, the top imperialist powers—the United States, Russia, and China—are doubling down on life-destroying fossil fuels as they intensify their competition over energy supplies, markets, and distribution routes. The world’s latest blood-soaked conflicts, from Ukraine to Yemen to Ethiopia, reflect the raging volatility and high stakes of these imperialist struggles. The rulers are hurtling down a path toward world war and nuclear destruction—the ultimate “climate change.”

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MAY DAY, WORKERS’ DAY!

May Day is the working class’s international holiday. It’s a day when workers from across the globe march to commemorate our triumphs, propelled by a vision of a world without exploitation, without  capitalist borders, and run by the working class. On this day, we march for the universal demands of all workers: against imperialist war, against racism and sexism, for the unity of immigrant and citizen workers, against wage slavery, against fascist police terror, and for the communist solution to all these attacks facing the international working class.

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CUNY: PLP exposes liberal racist ideas, grows CHALLENGE

BROOKLYN, NY—As we mark the midterm exam season, students, faculty, and members of the Progressive Labor Party at our CUNY (City University of New York) college campus have hit the ground running with antiracist, antisexist and anti-imperialist fightback! As imperialist wars ravage more and more workers around the world each day, antiracist students, faculty and PL’ers inspired by fightback in New Jersey are building a movement to smash capitalism once and for all.

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DC bus workers fed up with bosses’profit drive

WASHINGTON, DC, April 13—Bus operators at the D.C. Circulators are fighting back—96 percent of them voted to strike for wages and benefits after holding two vigorous protests where negotiations were taking place. These 150 operators have been paid lower wages than their Metro transit counterparts for over a decade, and the workers are fed up! Their struggle shows how the racist capitalist system especially oppresses Black workers and attempts to divide workers even in the same union from their brothers and sisters.

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Pakistan: amid crisis, workers & PLP fight on

PAKISTAN, April 13—Prime Minister Imran Khan has been ousted by a no-confidence vote spearheaded by politicians aligned with the Pakistan military. The turmoil in the Pakistan ruling class is driven by competing factions within the ruling class and their ties to the big imperialists in the U.S. and China. As the bosses fight over Pakistan, the working class, suffering under extreme inflation and poverty wages, is fighting back with large demonstrations in many areas of industry . These demonstrations are demanding higher pay and other benefits people need to survive.Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is working to build a revolutionary communist movement for revolution and workers’ power among our friends and fellow workers in these struggles.
The departing ruling political party

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Amazon workers wins union struggle, deserves liberation from profit system

Staten Island, NY, April 12—Against all odds, Amazon workers in New York dared to struggle, and won! United—Black, Latin, Asian, white—these young workers have formed the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), an independent union representing the workers in an Amazon shipping warehouse  on Staten Island. While politicians, reaching up to President Joe Biden, and so-called labor leaders now congratulate the new union and pledge their support, they were almost nowhere to be found as the workers began and carried through their struggle. While unions are not the solution for liberating workers from capitalism, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) applauds the workers’ integrated fightback at Staten Island’s Amazon shipping warehouse The commitment to their fellow workers is emblematic of how  strikes and organizing become schools for communism. Until our international revolution is won, these lessons are hugely beneficial to our political growth and movement.

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Admiral Kilpatrick goes ‘all the way!’

Admiral Kilpatrick was born in Denver on February 20, 1898. His father worked first as a cowboy in Oklahoma and then as a miner in Colorado. When Admiral was six years old, his father got a job with a steel company and moved the family to Cleveland, Ohio. Kilpatrick’s father was a Socialist, and his son accompanied him to political meetings when he was as young as 12 years old.
He eventually joined the Socialist party and, when he was 19 years old, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). After high school he worked in mills, foundries, electrical shops, and lumber camps.  Kilpatrick joined the Army during World War I and served in France as a mechanic. Kilpatrick worked with the union in the 1919 Cleveland steel strike, in which the companies brought in thousands of Black workers to serve as strikebreakers.

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