Los Angeles, CA- On March 10, Bryan Bostic was driving from Compton to Inglewood to visit his mother. He was pulled over by Inglewood cops, only because he was Driving While Black (DWB), and ordered out of his car. A bystander video documents what happened next. Bryan was brutalized by the Inglewood cops, the Klan in Blue, as he called out for help.

Under capitalism, a system controlled by a tiny minority of billionaires, the role of  the police and other armed forces of the state is to serve these rulers and protect private property. Because Black workers set the example for all workers of fighting oppression and exploitation, and because the rulers rightly fear multiracial class struggle against the capitalist system, Black workers are often singled out for racist attacks.

Family members organize fight back

Bryan Bostic comes from a very close, strong and loving family. When they learned of his murder by the cops, they sprang into action. They clearly saw through the lies of the cops and the politicians and understood that Bryan’s murder was a racist attack. Following a large demonstration later in March, the family began holding weekly street rallies at the place where Bryan was murdered to protest this atrocity. The family and groups of supporters have also attended Inglewood City Council meetings to demand justice for Bryan.

Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been at almost every street rally and many of the Council meetings. We have shown CHALLENGE to family members, explained that we are revolutionary communists, gotten to know some family members, and brought some of our chants to the weekly rallies.

For months, family members attending the Council meetings have demanded answers- why was Bryan stopped, what are the names of the cops that stopped and brutalized him, why was he taken to the cops’ station instead of getting medical treatment. In response, the City has insulted the family by refusing to say why Bryan was stopped, why he was not given medical care and by giving them a list of all the cops on duty on March 10!

Fascist attacks on antiracists stopped    

Under Inglewood City Council rules, the members of the public are allowed to speak (for only one minute). Inglewood Mayor James Butts, a former Police Chief in Santa Monica and Inglewood cop, is also the head of the City Council. Because family members and supporters do not mince words and militantly demand justice for their loved one, Butts constantly cites the Council’s “Rules of Decorum” to cut speakers off and threatens to have them escorted out of the Council Chamber by one of the Klan in Blue.

At the June 9 Council meeting, Butts tried to cut off public comment by reading a summary of a report recently issued by the LA County Coroner’s Office. This summary said nothing about the “blunt force trauma” found by a medical examiner hired by the family to conduct an independent autopsy. The summary also stated that the cops found an unknown substance in a baggie in Bryan’s mouth, slanderously implying that the substance was drugs. One family member then exposed Butts, calling him a “liar” and a “criminal,” at which point Butts ordered the family member escorted out of the chamber.

When family members and supporters arrived for the June 16 Council meeting, three family members and one supporter were handed a memo from the City Attorney, banning them from attending Council meetings for 120 days because they had violated the “Rules of Decorum” and “disrupted” the session. Family members and supporters then held an hour-long impromptu rally inside City Hall. The next day, the City sheepishly rescinded the ban after a local lawyers’ group pointed out to the City Attorney that it was illegal.

Revolution will smash racist cop terror

As we and the family members have chanted every Sunday for a month there is no good cop in a racist system.” None of the reforms instituted by Democratic Party and other tools for the liberal ruling class- black politicians (like Butts), cops and Police Directors, civilian complaint review boards, body cameras, etc. has changed the fundamental nature of the police and the racist terror they perpetrate. Only communist revolution will rid our class of this terror and the racist ideology used to try to keep us divided.

Worldwide, the summer months are a time of political training and struggle for the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Last summer, we returned to the city of Boston—50 years later—to commemorate the 1975 Boston Summer Project, a watershed moment in PLP history, and to honor the antiracist and communist workers who volunteered in that fight.

Just a few years later, PLP led another major summer project in 1979, this time confronting racist Klansmen in Tupelo, Mississippi. The following article is a reprint from CHALLENGE, originally published in 1979, documenting that crucial battle.

With fascism resurging around the globe, sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., China, and Russia, and a rise in racist kidnappings and attacks targeting migrant workers, there’s no better time for antiracist education—and for learning from our history to fight back.

For this issue, we look at the Tupelo Project of ’79. Lessons include:
In the face of the Ku Klux Klan and the racist capitalist government, we must be bold and have confidence in the working class to take the lead of communists.

Multiracial unity is our class’s weapon and the bosses’ greatest fear.

To sustain our gains, we must grow the Party and train more Black, Latin, Asian, and white young people in leadership.

Significance of Mississippi

To many who remember the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Mississippi symbolizes the most extreme racism, the most brutal murders of Black workers and antiracists, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.

For Progressive Labor Party, Mississippi signified a base for revolution among Black and white workers, spreading the ideas of multiracial unity and the fight for communist ideas in the South. Today, we celebrate the heroic struggle of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About 100 communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.

Though relatively small (population of 20,000), Tupelo, Mississippi was an industrial center with over 14,000 workers. The South was important to the ruling class as an industrial area because its carefully-nurtured tradition of racism made it the citadel of low-wage, non-union labor, where the bosses have been able to keep the working class divided and weak in order to extract extra profits.

The project showed that masses of white workers and students in Tupelo and throughout the South are winnable to antiracism.
Below is an edited excerpt from PL Magazine (Fall 1979) analyzing an aspect of the Tupelo Summer Project:

The great July demonstration

Sixty-five antiracist marchers, organized by Progressive Labor Party and its [then-mass organization] International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), were marching through the streets in Tupelo, Mississippi chanting, “Death to the Klan.”  

Shots rang through the air.

As the bullets grazed two marchers, a disciplined group of people, Black and white, rushed out of line, isolated the racist who wielded the gun, and beat him to the ground. In the fight that ensued with this Klansman, or Klan supporter, the antiracists broke his neck. While this was happening, the marchers, maintaining a tight discipline that won them the respect of Tupelo’s working class, continued the march. The marchers, encouraged by the friendly faces that lined the streets and by the workers who joined the march, were able to withstand the menacing threat of the Tupelo police, who aimed their cocked guns at them.

From the start, it was clear that the racist local rulers wanted to stop this march. A new ordinance was created by the city government banning sound devices (in response to successful PLP-led rallies in the past). The police and their flunkies systematically tore down posters in the housing projects; and a permit for the march was not granted until the very last minute.

As the march gathered in front of the courthouse, the bosses’ seat of power, a militant rally began, attracting a lot of people in the area who joined in chanting, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all a part of the bosses’ plan.”

‘Before I was scared, now I’m mad’

Many militant workers in Tupelo have come to see InCAR as the main mass organization that can lead workers in the fight against racism and the resurgence of fascist groups like the Klan. One Black woman worker said, “Before I was scared, but now I’m mad.” This represents the feeling of many people here, that there is no longer the luxury to sit back and watch the ruling class and its flunkies hold power, that they have to get active and build a movement that has as its goal the destruction of the ruling class ideas of racism and fascism, and in the final analysis, the ruling class itself.

The political climate is changing rapidly in the South, and only groups like PLP are prepared to respond to the changes, to give leadership and organize the multiracial, antiracist fightback that is necessary to move workers to the left.

The United League (UL), a Black reformist group, recently cancelled a march scheduled for Okolona (a town not far from Tupelo) today, because its leader, Skip Robinson, essentially chickened out of the struggle. More and more people are realizing that the leadership of UL cannot stand up to the rigors of the class struggle.

Workers put themselves on the line

Respect for PLP was growing in Tupelo. Two residents of Tupelo put up their houses as collateral so that our comrade could be bailed out of jail. When the two marchers who had been wounded were treated in the hospital, they were warmly received and treated by white doctors and other hospital workers. After the march stopped to rally, hundreds of Black workers surrounded the marchers to protect them from the cops (who would have been only too glad to be trigger happy).

This was the first time a racist had been beaten by an antiracist march in Tupelo. The leadership of the UL had always guaranteed the safety of the KKK and the cops by holding back the anger and hatred of Black workers in the fight to liberate themselves from the racism they faced every day. The bosses always think that they can destroy a worker’s movement by getting its leaders, but little do they know that leaders always spring up in the midst of struggle. There were  many, many people right in Tupelo, and other cities North and South, and there still are today, who can develop as working-class leaders in the fight against racism and fascism, and they were and are being trained by Progressive Labor Party.

This was readily proven by the response not only of the marchers, in their determination to continue the march, not to be intimidated  by the cops’ harassment, but also by the tremendous support of the local people. Over 200 copies of InCAR Arrow and CHALLENGE were sold, 4 people joined InCAR on the spot. Another demonstration was planned on the spot.

The main lesson PLP learned in Tupelo, as everywhere, is to be bold. The bolder we were, the more seriously people took us and the more willing they were to respond to us. Workers understand that the system will come down hard when you try to fight it. They are also ready to understand that you only win on the offensive.

The day after the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to terminate TPS (Temporary Protected Status) for over 350,000 Haitians and over 6,100 Syrians, PLP members joined with others from the Haiti Action Committee and NorCal TPS Coalition to protest in front of the SF California Court House. Many TPS holders were terrified to come out in public and it was last minute, so not many people turned out.  PLP members distributed CHALLENGE with a TPS article to participants and to some people walking by. It explained the long history of TPS and how it fit in with capitalism’s demand to maximize profit from the labor of the working class.  

PLP members and friends have been actively supporting TPS workers from more than 17 countries for years; always emphasizing that we can not be divided by our country of origin or the revolving dates that TPS programs expire. 

Bosses profit from immigrant labor

Here are examples of what “temporary” means and the turmoil the TPS program creates. 1) DHS (Homeland Security) is in charge of renewing TPS status every 18 months and issuing work permits.  2) DHS collects millions yearly from TPS beneficiaries from this process.  3)As of now, like Haitians and Syrians, workers from Honduras and Nicaragua cannot renew.  4) Workers from El Salvador have an expiration date of 09\09\26. BUT their renewal is not being processed. . 5) The result is chaos: With no process in place to renew, these TPS holders cannot collect their Social Security, Medicare or other benefits that they have paid for through years of taxes. Without a work permit, many are removed from their jobs. (See USCIS web site for more information.) TPS groups and other organizations continue to lobby and to try legal maneuvers to delay these terminations but most people have no confidence in these processes.

Spokes-people in the Health Care Industry around the country, have lamented that Haitian workers, in particular, are the backbone of care in many hospitals and clinics. The NYT and NPR have both reported on the pending staffing crisis caused by the potential deportation of Haitian workers.  Fellow health care workers and patients have rallied in defense of TPS workers around the country. 

Our community in the SF Bay Area is organizing to protect any TPS holders who choose to go “underground” if their status expires. 

More needs to be done 

PLP members will continue to support TPS workers at any and all levels, but we recognize that we need to destroy the U.S. capitalist system that divides and exploits workers around the world to maximize profits and to stay ahead of other capitalist, imperialist, countries like China, Russia, European, Japan,etc. Immigrant workers who seek a better life are a life-blood of capitalist profits around the world.

In the weeks and days leading up to the World Cup games being hosted in Mexico City, education workers from the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educacion (CNTE) union ramped up class struggle. To protest the pro-capitalist policies of the Morena government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, they blocked major roads in Mexico City -- including those leading to the stadium where the football games were played – to leverage resistance and workers’ power. Comrades from the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) connected with and supported these brave workers’ efforts, while distributing our leaflet explaining our revolutionary communist analysis and goals.

Below are the verbatim comments of education workers who participated in the recent teachers’ strike regarding the CHALLENGE leaflet distributed during the day of action. They highlight the points to strengthen and the importance of raising the political consciousness of our class to intensify the struggle against the system. These are important lessons for us. 

Class consciousness rising 

“Well, for me it was good at that moment when the national strike began. Now our position will change based on the results and the future of the CNTE’s struggle with other sectors.”

“I find the information interesting. It would have been important to add that corporatism continues with Alfonso Sepeyada Salas, just like during the PRIAN era with Elba Esther Gordillo (notoriously corrupt former union leader, ed. CHALLENGE), and that the government continues to employ double standards and criminalize social protest.”

“It’s a good strategy to raise awareness, first and foremost, as a teachers’ union. Unfortunately, the younger generations have normalized the fact that their right to a solidarity-based pension system is being taken away. When we truly become aware of this, then we can raise awareness in society. I mention this because of the low participation of the rank and file. I remember that on January 16, 1997, when I joined the national education system, the union was actively involved in all union activities. I participated for the first time in May of that year in a march that went from Oaxaca to Mexico City, joining in Izúcar de Matamoros and continuing to Mexico City. I remember well that in each community where we arrived in the afternoons to rest, the people welcomed us with joy and great support. I don’t understand at what point we began to lose society as our allies. However, we still have time to reorient our social struggle and demonstrate that we are pursuing a class and collective interest.”

“I think this is a document that society needs to know about, but especially education professionals, in a political workshop or union training.”

“We should have included in the flyer the specific names of the Mexican and foreign capitalists who are stealing education workers’ savings through banks using the pension fund scam.”

“It was very helpful in giving a general idea of what’s happening.”

“It helped to encourage more teachers and workers from other sectors to participate in the general strike.”

Fightback goes on

We appreciate these contributions and insight and applaud the workers’ unwavering spirit to learn and fight. We understand that we need to build a fighting movement that can take the offensive of millions of workers against the capitalist state in revolutionary struggle, while we simultaneously win the masses to see Sheinbaum and all politicians as the misleading frauds that they are. Building the mass PLP is the best way to work towards both goals, and we are eager to win these workers to that fight. In the next issue, we will report on a meeting held with residents of a community involved in the struggle regarding the teachers’ strike. Onward to victory!