LOS ANGELES, CA, JULY 23-26—The horns from cars driving by were almost as loud as the family of Bryan Bostic (killed by Inglewood PD on 3/10/26 - see CHALLENGEe article) joined Progressive Labor Party’s chants “No good cop in a racist system”. Inglewood residents are very familiar with the role police play under capitalism, as they shared their stories and we shared CHALLENGE newspapers. Our speeches connecting police violence to ICE attacks on immigrants and imperialist wars abroad were well received by the family of Bryan Bostic and the working class passing by. This inspiring march and rally closed the four day summer project in Los Angeles.

With about 30 participants, including multiracial and multi-generational new and veteran members as well as the base of the Party, the LA summer project included a study group series on imperialism, CHALLENGE sales, two rallies, two marches, a movie and discussion, as well as plenty of bonding opportunities. These jam-packed four days inspired new and veteran members of the Party and had everyone recommitting to growing the Party in our area and beyond.

Connecting historical materialism to the world today

The imperialism study group series challenged us by reading Lenin’s document on imperialism, which laid the basis for the second session tying in the Party’s line that liberals are the main danger to the working class. We highlighted the Carter Doctrine which laid the groundwork for imperialist attacks on the Middle East from every democratic president following Carter. The third session prompted participants to connect the three laws of dialectical materialism to the war in Iran. Although all three sessions were challenging, the newer members and base present felt like they gained a solid understanding through the power of the collective and connecting the theory to practice.

The CHALLENGE sales and rallies we held were particularly empowering for our new members. Some had never sold the paper or spoken on the bullhorn before. To scaffold this, we incorporated a session where participants could read the newspaper and pull out what they wanted to share with those they encountered at the sales and practice doing this with a partner. We also held a speech writing session where drafts were written and then in small groups revisions were completed. This filled them with the confidence they needed to not only sell the paper and speak on the bullhorn, but volunteer to go first and inspire those listening to check out the Party further. A high school student shared after that he was scared before giving his speech, but then he realized this is what he believes in, so nothing should stop him from expressing that to anyone in earshot.

Participants also shared appreciation for the time they had to bond with each other. Whether through a beach trip, riding to a protest together, or sharing a delicious meal, everyone there got to know each other better and they felt this increased their desire to grow the Party.

As an outgrowth of this project, we plan to expand from our current three clubs into five clubs. We will continue our young leaders study sessions and expand our city committee. And that is how our quantitative developments will turn into a qualitative leap for the future strength of Progressive Labor Party in Southern California. The fight for communist revolution is advancing with each new member as another nail in the bosses’ coffin. The struggle continues!

June 16,  marked the 50th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings in South Africa. Presently it’s an official South African holiday, Youth Day. It commemorates the hundreds of young people killed fighting the Apartheid system. June 16, 1976, will live in the memories of South Africans and antiracist workers worldwide for generations to come.

In February 1990, Nelson Mandela — leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and the international face of the struggle against Apartheid — was released after 27 years in South African prisons. In March 1992, white South Africans voted in a referendum to end Apartheid, opening the door to negotiations and ushering in an era of high hopes for racial justice. But the referendum was only the final concession in a struggle that Black workers had been waging for decades, one that grew into an international movement spanning six continents and mobilizing millions of workers — including tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers who fought for over a decade against the expansion of Apartheid into the rest of Southern Africa. By May 1994, Mandela had been sworn in as South Africa’s first Black president, sparking celebrations around the world.

We celebrate the fall of Apartheid. But we also approach the history of South Africa through the lens of dialectical materialism — and that history is more complicated than the popular narrative allows. What is often left out is that the rebellion against Apartheid was led, in large part, by communists, and that its foot soldiers were overwhelmingly Black workers whose labor power, withheld through strikes and organizing, was the movement’s real weapon. That power was so undeniable that even Washington — no ally of Black liberation — eventually had to accommodate it. The deal that ended Apartheid required U.S. approval. The U.S. had backed the Apartheid state for decades chiefly as a bulwark against the spread of communism; once the Soviet Union and Communist China ceased to pose that threat, the U.S. had little reason to keep the regime in power, especially as its global unpopularity had become a liability to U.S. interests in the region. The price of that approval was a promise from Mandela and the ANC that capitalism in the “New South Africa” would go untouched.

In the end, the sacrifices of perhaps millions of Black workers were traded for a South Africa that kept its capitalist core while wearing a new face — one of Black leadership. That “national liberation,” run by Black leadership within a still-capitalist system, has in some respects deepened rather than dismantled the old apartheid order. The recent wave of racist  violence and mass deportations of migrant workers from neighboring African countries is one stark example: Black workers turned against fellow Black workers, while the capitalist relations that produce scarcity and desperation go unchallenged.

50 years later, the struggle against the system that traps Black and migrant workers in poverty wages, segregated schools, substandard healthcare, and police violence continues — from the informal settlements of South Africa, to classrooms in Brooklyn, to checkpoints in the West Bank. The rebellion against Apartheid is not a closed chapter of history; it is a living example of a truth the ruling class would rather workers forget: Black workers are not a marginal or secondary force in the fight against racism and capitalism. They remain leading, a key force for communist revolution itself — then, and now.

The following is a reprint of an article published in CHALLENGE newspaper in 2010. 
*****

English and Dutch settlers (Boers, or Afrikaners) colonized South Africa, and in 1948 the Afrikaner-led government formalized a racist system of segregation called Apartheid — Afrikaans for “apartness.” Modeled on a combination of U.S. slavery and its successor, Jim Crow, the system denied Black Africans political, economic, and cultural equality at every level of society. It was Black workers — miners, domestic laborers, factory hands — who built the mass movements, strikes, and armed resistance that made the system ultimately ungovernable. 

Black African students received inferior education in overcrowded schools and had to pay the equivalent of half their parents’ monthly income to even attend school, while white students received free education.

The Soweto rebellion’s immediate spark was a new requirement that math and social studies be taught in Afrikaans, the Apartheid government’s official language. However, teachers had always taught in English. Most were unable to teach in Afrikaans, a third language for them besides their native one and English.

The rebellion begins

On June 13, 1976, the students called a meeting; 400 attended. The Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) was selected to lead the campaign against this new racist edict. Two delegates per school were elected. They refused to accept the order to be taught in Afrikaans, still another racist burden imposed by the Apartheid government. Students, fearing being stopped, told their parents nothing. They decided to march to Orlando stadium to present their demands. On June 16 at 7 A.M., about 5,000 students, most between 10 and 20 years old, met at various points around Soweto Township and started marching. But before they got inside the stadium, police with vans formed a wall blocking them.

The cops fired tear gas, warning them to disperse. With the students holding their ground, the police started shooting into the crowd. Twelve-year-old Hector Petersen was the first one killed. Then angry students began hurling stones and bottles at the cops, running forward, throwing, then retreating and repeating the action. This continued all day.

The battle rages

Symbols of the hated Apartheid system were burned: administrative offices, government buses and vehicles. Liquor stores and beer halls were looted and then set afire. Battles continued through the night, with police shooting wildly in the dark (Soweto had no street lights).

Thousands of injured students went to the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital where some died in the hallways and others outside the emergency room. Over 200 students were murdered. Workers arrived home to find cops everywhere in personnel carriers called “hippos,” vehicles built to withstand landmines in the guerilla wars in Namibia and Mozambique. The bodies of dead and injured students were littered all over. Clouds of black smoke hung over the Township.

The next day most workers voluntarily stayed away from their jobs. Then the students realized they’d have to talk to their parents to expand their forces to fight Apartheid. In intensive house-to-house visits they explained the issues to their parents. The police banned all political and mass meetings.

Chrysler workers back the students

On June 22, mass funerals became mass meetings. Townships near Pretoria joined the struggle. Over 1,000 South African Chrysler auto workers struck to support the students, the first time workers had done so. The boycott spread to the Alexandra Township. By June 18, the Apartheid government closed all schools in Soweto and Alexandra.

SSRC’s next major action, set for August 4, was more ambitious — organizing a three-day general strike and a school boycott. This had not happened since 1961. Students cut the key signal box, halting trains from running to Soweto. Students gathered at all the commuting sites, urging workers to stay home. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 workers struck. It was 60% successful over three days.
By now, the student boycott had spread to the Western and Eastern Cape. The Apartheid government detained hundreds of students indefinitely to stop the demonstrations. Then they used a vicious divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting Zulu workers against the students.

Fight racist divisions

Many Zulu male migrant workers lived in hostels, without their families. The police told them the students would attack them. During the second three-day boycott one hostel was burned, probably by an agent provocateur. Under police protection, the Zulus then attacked the students and residents.

The SSRC, realizing they had to win the Zulu workers politically, explained how the police had misled them. Zulu workers won to see that the students’ and Soweto workers’ fight against Apartheid was their fight too.

The third SSRC demonstration, August 23, spread to Witwatersrand and the Transvaal. A solid 75% to 80% participation was sustained over three days. Almost 750,000 workers participated. Zulu migrant workers gave almost total support.

Sporadic protests continued. In April, 1977, the SSRC successfully stopped rent increases in Soweto. In September, when Black Consciousness Movement leader Stephen Biko was murdered in prison, rebellions spread nation-wide, especially in the Eastern Cape. The following month the last SSRC leader fled into exile. On October 19, the government banned 17 organizations, most connected to the Black Consciousness Movement.

A worldwide movement erupts

Internationally, the rebellion inspired workers and students to hold anti-apartheid demonstrations supporting the South African rebels. Students at universities throughout the U.S. and Europe launched major divestment campaigns demanding college Boards of Trustees sell off stocks in companies doing business in South Africa, such as Ford, IBM, Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard. Citibank was the largest U.S. lender to Apartheid South Africa.

Pressure was maintained throughout the 1980’s. In 1990, the government was forced to lift the ban on resistance movements. That year Nelson Mandela was freed from 29 years in prison.

Today, while “official” Apartheid has ended, it continues unabated through extreme poverty and racism. The workers and youth of South Africa must build on their militant history and move in a revolutionary communist direction so that their amazing struggles in battling Apartheid will not have been in vain.

July 8, Boston, MA— Today, 4000 Mass General Brigham nurses in a one-day strike attacked corporate greed, demanding hiring more nurses for patient safety, and decent pay raises and benefits. After over six months in which the Mass General Brigham (MGB) bosses refused to negotiate, the nurses walked out. MGB then locked out the nurses for another four days. This is the largest nursing strike in Massachusetts history.

Capitalism can’t provide good healthcare

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were there at the start of the strike. We’ve passed out 500 leaflets stating “Capitalism Destroys Health Care’”attacking deportations, and calling for the real solution to capitalist health care, communist revolution. The strikers welcomed us and agreed with our headline. Many told us they liked everything in the leaflet.

The hospital bosses, who pay themselves millions of dollars a year, have offered a zero percent cost-of-living increase, and have raised the nurses’ costs for their own medical care. But they paid $111 million for strikebreakers. These bosses use the hospital as a money-making machine.

An important issue is the status of immigrant nurses, who are widely super-exploited in healthcare. We say they must be protected and defended.

As the strike started at 7 am, thousands of nurses militantly picketed and marched noisily at the hospital entrance. Nurses coming off the night shift told us that some were forced to stay at work, because a patient in crisis needed a ventilator, and the scab replacement nurses didn’t know how to do that; $111 million for incompetent replacements! Mass General, like a corporate octopus, has been buying up hospitals and medical practices, and is running them into the ground. A so-called “not-for-profit” hospital is endangering patient care with cutbacks. Mass General nurses are not unionized; Brigham nurses are unionized. Strikers believe that the “MGB” is trying to break their union.

All working people should support these nurses; they are striking for our safety and their own lives. But winning this strike is not enough. The declining U.S. empire is paying trillions of dollars for murderous wars, destruction and genocide, but cannot provide decent health care for workers. U.S. cuts in vital programs from vaccinations, and funds to stop epidemics across the world, show the true nature of capitalism. Like all capitalists in crisis, they are opting for imperialist war to protect their profits.

Progressive Labor Party fights for  a system where profit is abolished, racism and sexism are outlawed, and the wealth of society and the decision-making power is shared by all. Strikes are opportunities to build the communist movement because workers get a taste of their own power. Communism will always be despised by the bosses and the ruling class, because they know it will end their stranglehold on power.

The electoral farce in Colombia has concluded, naming far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella as president. Once again, as is characteristic of capitalist democracy, this election was marked by slander, threats, vote-buying, and sabotage of the campaign of the opposition candidate, Iván Cepeda, who sought to continue Gustavo Petro’s program of government and his social reforms.Throughout this entire electoral juncture we took part in pickets, forums, rallies, and cultural events, sharing our literature and denouncing that the lesser-evil theory, imperialist war, and the fascism of the bosses cannot be defeated through the ballot, and that only through organizing around our party can we tear them down through the revolutionary mass struggle championed by the dictatorship and proletarian internationalism. 

Bosses expanding fascist tentacles 

President Donald Trump, who drove the creation of the Shield of the Americas, celebrated De la Espriella’s victory as a new partner and member of the coalition made up of heads of state from at least twelve countries in the Americas that support the initiative to form a world-spanning police force, using the war on drug trafficking and anti-immigrant policies as a pretext, and imposing fascism and economic control on the countries hypocritically labeled as “beneficiaries” of this intervention.

This plan is already being carried out in countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and Paraguay, among others. Among all the forms of repression championed by this plan, one stands out: the United States, or the Zionists of Israel, may be able to brand anyone who protests as a terrorist or drug trafficker simply by requesting it, whether through extradition or assassination.

For these fascist plans, Trump has secured henchmen of the caliber of Milei, De la Espriella, Noboa, Keiko Fujimori, Nayib Bukele, Santiago Peña, and other presidents who, in exchange for support for their governments, guarantee the conditions for the plunder and exploitation of their natural resources, their labor force, and the strategic domination of the region, sustaining the ongoing wars and systematic genocides against our class.

Don’t vote…revolt!

The working class must not take part in the struggle for the interests of the bosses, nor form alliances with “the lesser-evil bosses,” because, as in the case of Gustavo Petro, his minor reforms — which did not truly benefit the proletariat — will be erased by capitalism’s puppets and faithful henchmen of imperialism.

This is why our constant call was not to vote, but to organize around the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and its communist line, fighting alongside our class brothers and sisters for the need to destroy this warmongering system, responsible for the deception, wage slavery, unemployment, poor health, environmental crisis, and sexist and racist violence we suffer every day.