Burn Down Capitalism!

On January 9, racist killer capitalism struck again—this time in the Bronx, when it murdered 17 working-class immigrants from Gambia, including eight children. After a faulty space heater ignited, the fire ripped through the Twin Parks North West building. Thick, black smoke enveloped the staircases and killed whole families as they tried to escape. Their deaths were the direct result of racism and the capitalists’ callous obsession with profits. In the 1970s, to save money, developers built this 19-story tower—and countless other buildings for low-income workers—without fire escapes or sprinkler systems.

Click to read more ...

Wally Meets Red China

In the early 1970s, Progressive Labor Party saw the Chinese Communists as the main revolutionary hope for the future. The Party shipped them nearly a thousand issues of every issue of CHALLENGE. The official Chinese news agency would begin every article on events in the U.S. with, “U.S. Challenge says….”
To have more direct contact, it was proposed that I travel to Geneva to talk with China’s ambassador.
This was years before Richard Nixon established relations with the Chinese—or before PLP oncluded that China was going the way of the Soviet Union and becoming what is now the world’s second biggest capitalist economy.

Click to read more ...

In Memoriam: Walter Linder served international working class for a lifetime

Wally, as he was known by all, was the last surviving founder of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). He died January 3, 2022, at the age of 91, his family and comrades at his side, after a lifetime of principled struggle on behalf of the international working class.

Click to read more ...

For Valentina, Daniel, and too many names, SHUT THIS RACIST SYSTEM DOWN!

LOS ANGELES, CA January 8 – In response to the brutal murders of Valentina Orellana Peralta and Daniel Elena Lopez by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends attended a march to protest this racist capitalist system. The march began outside the clothing store where LAPD opened fire on innocent workers and murdered Daniel and Valentina on December 23 after Daniel was in the midst of a mental health crisis and hit a customer with a bike lock. The LAPD KKKop, William Dorsey Jones, fatally shot Daniel and then Valentina who was shopping for a quinceanera dress. The protest culminated in front of the LAPD North Hollywood station. Party members sought to bring to light that killer cop Jones, a Black cop who championed the fallacy of “good policing” is the ultimate symbol of liberal Big Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) reforms.

Click to read more ...

Student walk-out demands safety ‘We’ve got to tear this system down’

CHICAGO, January 14 – Hundreds of multi-racial, working-class youth took over the streets downtown to challenge a racist capitalist education system in crisis. Students across the U.S. staged walkouts from their campuses and students from across the city converged for a militant and spirited rally in front of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters.

Click to read more ...

Big Fascist Eric Adams deadly for Black workers

Only weeks into the New York City (NYC) mayoral administration of Eric Adams, capitalism has revealed once again that Black politicians are on the front lines of fascist police terror and deadly living conditions for workers in NYC and around the world.  Police raids of Black youth in Brooklyn on January 4 followed by a massive fire killing at least 17 workers in the Bronx on January 9 prove the point.
 In Progressive Labor Party (PLP) we know that especially under the cover of a Black mayor, much like President Barack Obama as former president, our class must be more courageous than ever at our jobs and in our neighborhoods in calling out the atrocities committed by those with the same skin color and from the same “communities” that we come from.   

Click to read more ...

MLA Radical Caucus: To end capitalist climate crisis, fight back & build PLP

DECEMBER 4—The Radical Caucus (RC) of the Modern Language Association (MLA)  opened its mini-conference Keywords: Climate/Capital with a question: “How does understanding that capitalism is the key cause of the climate crisis help us address the immediate urgency of dealing with its effects?”
At the Dec. 4 meeting Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  members argued that we urgently need a communist revolution as an answer to the impending climate crisis, not the dead-end reformism of the Green New Deal, which assumes that capitalism will and can continue only in some new green mode.

Click to read more ...

Sidney Poitier, no hero for antiracist fightback

In the 1967 movie “In the Heat of the Night,” Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective played by Sidney Poitier, is slapped across the face by Endicott, a white plantation owner he is interrogating in a murder investigation. Tibbs immediately retaliates with a slap of his own—a gesture that has gone down in history as “the slap heard round the world” (Guardian, 1/7). Never before had the Hollywood screen allowed–let alone affirmed—such an expression of Black antiracist anger. We want to cheer.

Click to read more ...

Letters of February 2

Students choose fightback over attendance
Ever since the start of this school year, we all have been no strangers to low attendance rates, social distance protocols, and inconsistent schedules. Despite all shortcomings, everyone in the building pulled themselves through a strange year. Right before the winter break, everything was just like the last time schools went remote. The classrooms were practically empty and confirmed Covid-19 cases within the school were rising at an alarming rate. However, a few days after the New Year, we came back to a lack of change. Nothing to protect the school from the new variant.

Click to read more ...

MEMORIAL FOR WALLY LINDER