BROOKLYN, NY, July 10—Klan-in-Chief Donald Trump’s gestapo has detained over 57,000 members of our class, including Dylan Josue Lopez Contreras, who was the first New York City high school student kidnapped during a routine court check-in. In response, workers and students at a local school revived their antiracist efforts to defend undocumented youth. Initiated by a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teacher and made into a reality through the unity of teachers and students, we are transforming fear into fightback. Building a culture of resistance under growing fascism requires persistence and imagination, and leaning on communist principles of solidarity and antiracism paves a path forward. 

Build art and solidarity

The week of May Day (International Workers Day), a communist teacher had organized an art build (a collectively-created art project in support of a cause) in a park near school. The idea was to create a large display of antiracism that can be used in and outside the school. Together, we decided on the wording and design. The banner read, “Education Has No Borders.” A few letters were painted in. 

Upon finding out about Dylan three weeks later, the PL’er transformed the back of their classroom into a fightback space. For the entirety of June, the banner was splayed out, along with information about who Dylan was, and a way to write him a letter. Students from all grades visited during lunch to paint, write, chat, and learn.  The plan is to display the banner in a prominent place next school year. 

Fight fear with fightback 

In the face of virulent racism, students need to witness, and join, staunch antiracism. A wave of struggle started after the fascist inauguration when a communist teacher and their co-worker circulated the school with meeting invitations that read, “In the face of deportations, what does it mean to protect students?”  Twenty workers attended—multiracial, mainly women, tenured and untenured. The PL’er began with a talk about rising fascism. They concluded with excerpts from a CHALLENGE editorial, titled, “Smash racist deportations and borders.” 

They also had an honest conversation about fear. A teacher added, “We’re conditioned to freeze or obey” and how it’s hard to think of what to do in the moment. Fear—a natural response to state terror—flourishes in isolation. While it may feel lonely, we are never alone; all members of our class share the same enemy and the same interest.

Building antiracism day by day

Over months, this Sanctuary Committee expanded to a campus-wide effort. While the quantity of people reduced, a core group formed. Here are some things they did:

• Distributed “smash all borders” stickers. 
• Wore solidarity buttons that read “stop deportations!”
• Posted Know Your Rights cards in multiple languages on a bulletin board.
• Displayed six non-negotiable values inside classrooms of at least ten teachers. One core value is “We (students, staff, and families) are united in standing up against deportations” (see photo).
• Raised money to host an immigrant-youth-led workshop on teaching educators about immigration law. 
• Planned multi-tiered responses if ICE was in the area, at the school gates, and inside the school with a warrant.  
• Composed a solidarity letter to parents, which was shut down by administration before distribution. 
• Created a hub of antiracist resources for educators, families, and students. 
• Connected to a citywide network of educators, laying groundwork for next school year.

Lessons from the struggle

To protect students, the Sanctuary Committee learned they needed to organize outside of the bosses’ channels, and they needed a network of trust among the entire campus. The biggest gap in this struggle is family organizing and building closer ties. The fight slowed once the fear of ICE raids shifted from school sites to neighborhoods.  

But, multiple teachers and students (former and current) became CHALLENGE readers, some (re)connected via Party study groups, a few attended citywide PLP events—including a recent fightback celebration (see next issue)—and many more confronted illusions of who we can rely on to keep us safe. The road to communism is long, but together, we will persist! 

Liberals built it, Trump expands it

The might of Trump’s modern slave patrol was built by his liberal predecessors. There’s an average of “14,700 deportations per month” now, but that pales in comparison to “ 36,000 in 2013, the year with the most deportations during the Obama administration” (CBS, 7/10). 
Both wings of the U.S. ruling class—the imperialist Big Fascists and the isolationist Small Fascists—use anti-immigrant racism to divide workers. The bosses need scapegoats when their system is in crisis (see editorial). 

We’re pausing our series on the groundbreaking 1975 Boston Summer for this issue to bring you the conclusion of our luminous four-part series on the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. 

In 1931, during the depths of the Great Depression, nine young Black men were falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a freight train in Scottsboro, Alabama. In response, the U.S. Communist Party (CPUSA) initiated and led a worldwide campaign involving millions of people to prevent their execution and demand their freedom. In Part III we learned about how the ILD (the legal arm of the CPUSA) sharpened their strategy to combat racism in the racist kkkourts largely by building a multiracial campaign and rejecting unity with reformists like the NCAA. In Part IV the CP abandons this strategy and dilutes the fight by forming a United Front against fascism.

We launch Part IV in the thick of our annual summer project and in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Boston’s 1975 Summer Project. That summer, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played a pivotal role in defeating Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR), the local Nazis and their racist political allies, and in stopping their campaigns of racist violence against young Black students who were being bused in an effort to desegregate Boston’s all-white schools. The movement mobilized working-class youth and community members in an unforgettable, militant struggle against gutter racist capitalism and state-sanctioned violence.

This series analyzes the roles of the two major defense strategies in the Scottsboro case: the International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and the NAACP. We will examine how their differing strategies addressed the questions of mass protest, institutional racism, the fight for legal reforms, and the use of the courtroom as a site to elevate political consciousness and struggle.
Please stay tuned for Part II of the Boston ‘75 summer project series in the next issue of CHALLENGE available online and in print  July 31st. 

United front strategy undermines communist politics

Soon after the trial the defense strategy changed radically. The roots of this change were contained in a pronounced shift in the line of the Communist International in the summer of 1935. To fight the rise of worldwide fascism, the International said, it was necessary to make alliances with the organizational leadership of the Social Democrats, formerly considered to be “bourgeois reformists.” In the U.S., this meant such groups as the Socialist Party, the NAACP, and the Urban League.

The key to this “United Front Against Fascism” was common unity around “democracy” and against fascism. As this theory related to the practice of the Scottsboro case this meant forming a united front defense committee very different from the ILD. On the initiative of the ILD the Scottsboro Defense Committee (SDC) was formed in December 1935, consisting of the ILD, the League for Industrial Democracy (a Socialist Party-led group), the ACLU, the NAACP, and the Episcopal Federation for Social Service. On the initiative of Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party, the Reverend Allan Knight Chalmers was appointed chairman of the SDC. The new defense committee immediately ruled out mass demonstrations as contradictory to the freedom of the defendants.

The memorandum of agreement between the organizations gave the Executive Committee of the SDC, which consisted of one representative of each organization, full power to make decisions in publicity and hiring of counsel. No organization in the SDC could publicly criticize SDC policies.

The ILD pamphlet, Scottsboro: Shame of America, which attacked the racism in the case, was not republished.

The ILD agreed with this arrangement. Despite the ILD assessment that mass protest had saved the defendants from the electric chair and won significant legal reforms while involving millions of people in struggle and the raising of antiracist consciousness, it now indirectly accepted the argument that injecting radical politics into the case would only hurt the efforts of the SDC.

In effect, the ILD was succumbing to the politics of Chalmers, the NAACP, and others. Chalmers exercised substantial control over day-to-day decisions of the SDC. Chalmers' strategy was to form a local defense committee in Alabama composed of “distinguished good people” and “respectable” citizens of Alabama (i.e., newspaper editors, lawyers, ministers, businessmen, and college deans).

In an initial agreement between Chalmers and the ASC, it was stipulated that “control of the case by the communists makes acquittal impossible” and “Communist propaganda can be held up during the conduct of the case.”
The fact remains that by October 1937, because of the SDC strategy, Scottsboro was not the mass issue it had been from 1931 until 1935.

Conclusions from the Scottsboro battleground

The ILD proved in four years the strength of mass protest and the tremendous effect it had on the racist courts. Although the ILD in 1931-1935 was unable to free the defendants, they made tremendous inroads worldwide against the factors that caused the Scottsboro case to happen in the first place, racism, and economic exploitation. They alone saved the defendants from the electric chair. The total of the ILD work was a formidable display of legal and political brilliance which has since rarely been outshone.

The Scottsboro case played a key role in both attracting, recruiting, and giving leadership opportunities in the CP and the broader workers' movement of the time to Black workers, and particularly young and Black women workers, including the parents of the defendants themselves. This led to a qualitative change in the CP membership, from being a mostly white and European immigrant party, to being a genuine multiracial party.

The Scottsboro case also contributed to the rapid growth of the CP in the U.S. from a party of thousands to a party of tens of thousands. The Scottsboro case, along with all the other Depression-era struggles they were part of or led, put the CP on the “political map” in the U.S., particularly in the U.S. South.

One of the most exciting things about the Scottsboro case was that, after the initial conviction and sentencing to death of the Scottsboro Boys by the racist Jim Crow system, one of the original accusers, Ruby Bates–– who of course was white ––decided to tell the truth about what really happened. She admitted she had lied– there was no rape, only sex with white youth before the nine defendants got on the train.
This subjected her to vicious attacks by the entire legal and political establishment behind Jim Crow, which she withstood. She traveled to other countries with the Scottsboro parents, speaking at rallies, denouncing Jim Crow, and praising the Communists. She was a splendid example for unity between white and Black workers, especially as the Depression deepened and unemployment and evictions soared.

Finally, the two U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the Scottsboro case, Powell v. Alabama (on ineffective assistance of counsel) and Norris v. Alabama (on the systemically racist jury pool) were decided by a conservative-dominated Court, clearly to try and quell the mass outrage and mass movement that had built up around the case and helping the CP grow dramatically. This helps us undermine the argument that the solution to attacks on “civil rights” is to get more liberals in the U.S. Supreme Court, instead of seeing this case as an example of how the ruling class uses the Courts to serve its purposes and to maintain racism.

PLP carries antiracist torch of communist movement 

PLP stands on the shoulders of giants. Since our founding in 1965, we have always made the fight against racism in all its many forms key to our political program. We could not have taken that struggle to the point where it is now without the courageous and death-defying efforts of Black and white workers who fought Jim Crow in the 1930s. We continue to fight for the communist revolution which will eventually destroy racism and consign its sordid past to the dustbin of history.

OWENSBORO, KY, July 5 —Workers and youth in the group Antifascist 615 organized a rally today for community members to stand up to the modern Nazis known as the "Proud Boys," the same fascists who Klansman-in-Chief Trump pardoned after their riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. The Proud Boys came to Owensboro for a social gathering, and communists in the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were there to help ruin their little fascist barbecue!

Despite warnings from liberals against protesting the Proud Boys, confronting these fascists was necessary to show that they weren’t welcome in Kentucky, and that workers here would oppose them. With actions like these you're not just dealing with fascists like the Proud Boys but also the racist police/state terror apparatus there to protect them, and the liberal fascists whose role is to weaken antifascist militancy and promote passivity.

Against this capitalist dictatorship, ultimately only a communist revolution for workers’ power can smash these fascists - and the genocidal imperialist system that spawns them - once and for all!

When the enemy camps, we harass!

The plan was to march on the park where the fascists were gathered, chant, make our presence known and not put anyone in unnecessary danger – especially given the police presence at the other end of the field. As we congregated in the parking lot, a drunk Proud Boy leader on a motorcycle rode up and tried to intimidate us and yelled the N-word at a comrade - but rode off as we walked up in unison. When the Proud Boys heard our chants, about ten of these 200-300 lb hogs jumped a fence separating us and advanced towards us.
Fascists only understand violence and will always attack if they are more in number. Unlike what the liberal fascists and misleaders claim, the very fact that workers fear protesting these gutter fascists is what emboldens them – and the fascists fear workers’ anger the most.

Tactical retreat leads to strategic advance

And so, despite being outnumbered and out-gunned, we held the line when the fascists attacked. PL’ers gave direction for everyone to fall back orderly and safely, protecting anyone in danger, especially the women who were specifically targeted during the fascists' failed assault. The fascists’ attack ended in such failure and confusion the Proud Boys could even be seen slamming THEIR women who were trying to run at us.

Despite things not going to plan, we took advantage of the fascists’ disorganization and repelled the fascist attack through leadership, discipline, and decades of PLP experience dealing with these fascist cockroaches. And by looking out for each other on the ground, everyone made it out safely with no arrests. The highlight of the day was when a Black antifascist knocked the racial slur-spewing leader of the Proud Boys to his knees.

The liberal misleaders and fake leftists publicly condemn antifascist violence and threaten militant workers not to confront fascism with “blacklists” — they even told a Black antifascist fighter to “get out and stay out of Owensboro!” Actual workers from the community, however, admired our commitment and said we spoke and stood on behalf of them. One worker said, "I need you all to understand that you ALWAYS have a home with us, whether it be meetings, somewhere to sleep, or grabbing a meal.” Another said, “You are all absolutely welcome anytime and we'll happily continue to rally with you!” Afterwards, we were given free drinks from a local pub where the fascists were banned.

Stand in the face of fascism – build a mass PLP!

The event inspired confidence in new antifascist fighters – as one reflected, this event showed we can say, “No.” Not in our town! We stood in the face of charging Proud Boys and refused to submit to their aggression!” We’ve already followed up with our new contact, and several are interested in joining the Party.

BALTIMORE, MD, July 2—Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) came out to the street to protest the genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, and Congo. We distributed dozens of CHALLENGEs and communist flyers with great response. We had our signature chants on hand: “From Palestine to Mexico, these racist borders got to go,” and “Arab, Jewish, Black and White, Workers of the World Unite!" 
Two Party friends who joined us distributed CHALLENGE, often coming back for more to distribute! One person who received a copy screamed “Free Palestine!” showing solidarity to the workers fighting overseas. The working class in Baltimore and worldwide needs communism and to lead that fight to put these genocidal bosses in the ground once and for all!

Rallying against genocide

We referred to our rally as “Balloon Theater,” which was inspired by our new comrade. We set up our “stage” on the sidewalk between Northeast Market and busy Monument Street, where workers at Johns Hopkins often pass by. We decorated the space with three large balloons painted with slogans “Fight for Communism,” “No to Genocide and Fascism,” and “Smash Capitalism and Imperialism.” 

We had to battle market security personnel, who threatened us with bogus rules. Standing firm, we refused to move and we won in the end!
Workers in Palestine have faced terror, torture, extermination and execution by occupying Zionists since the early days of the 20th century. Our goal was to link this history to the current catastrophes under capitalism worldwide and our urgent need to build an international communist movement in response. 

All bosses guilty of fascism

We held speeches exposing the imperialist U.S. government and their unwavering support for the Zionist state of Israel. Both Democrats and Republicans have a bloody role in the catastrophe, as war criminal Joe Biden’s administration gave about $18 billion and—so far—$4 billion by chief terrorist Trump. We highlighted the U.S. government’s imperialist wars in Sudan and Congo and their support of proxy nationalist factions to do the dirty work of torturing, displacing and murdering workers. 

Our struggles are all connected!

One comrade talked about the ongoing local West Wednesday events, which have been protesting the KKKops who murdered Tyrone West in cold blood 12 years ago. The member also recounted supporting a Black family facing racist attacks in their neighborhood in the early 1990s; a PLP-led collective chased away the racist skin heads, gaining respect from students. As these attack dogs-in-blue kill Black and Latin workers without remorse, their imperialist handlers are ordering the same against our working class brothers and sisters in the Middle East. As the ruling class continues losing its grip on workers, we see increasing fascism abroad and here, with the state attacking those who dare to question this modern-day Holocaust.

A friend to the Party also gave a speech that called out the U.S. and Israel for their treatment of workers in Palestine. We did not agree with the nationalist points made—regarding Iran having the right to defend itself. However, we appreciated their support in joining us. 
PLP is charging boldly to create an egalitarian communist society, where the ills of capitalism, racism, sexism, and exploitation are a thing of the past. Our enthusiasm and determination to continue this action will carry on. We set a date for our next Balloon Theater in August, with a plan to build our base in the community and to invite more friends and community members to participate in our next action on the streets. Since three of our comrades will attend the Boston summer project, the energy from the experience will hopefully strengthen our work once we return.