CHICAGO, August 6-9 – The spirit of communism shone brightly this weekend in the city of Chicago, as Progressive Labor Party (PLP) continued our “Red Hot Summer” with a Midwest Summer Project.

A multiracial, multigenerational group of over 50 comrades and friends – both local and from different parts of the country – engaged in over three full days of class struggle, study, and socializing. PLP summer projects have always been opportunities for new as well as veteran fighters to advance our political commitments and understanding to fight racist and sexist capitalism, and to put our communist politics directly into action. 

This Midwest project maintained that powerful tradition. As we return to our different areas, workplaces, and campuses, it’s with renewed optimism and passion to keep building the Party and fighting for a revolutionary communist future!

Unite theory with practice

The project officially began on Thursday evening, as we warmly welcomed our out-of-town comrades with a backyard potluck. With a backdrop of delicious food and relaxing music, we shared a rundown of the weekend schedule. We also took the opportunity to outline political goals as we encouraged our younger comrades to share what they hoped to take away from participating in the project.

It was inspiring to see how readily PLP members and friends from the different areas connected and started to form social bonds. The philosophy of dialectical materialism teaches us that the internal is primary. Thus although our summer projects are organized to spread the Party’s politics far and wide in an area, they are also fundamental to cement the solidarity we must have to thrive as an organization. 

The following morning at a local library we aimed to give practical guidance on raising class struggle PLP-style with two workshops: how to sell CHALLENGE newspapers, and how to give a Party speech. In conceiving these workshops, we took into consideration that these skills don’t arise magically for any of us, but are instead the result of constant practice, evaluation, and comradely criticism. To this end, veteran comrades led both workshops to share wisdom from decades of experience, pooling collective understanding and practicing different scenarios.

The content of the workshops was then put into immediate practice as we hit up a busy intersection in the Illinois Medical District for a rally and CHALLENGE sale. Our comrades covered various corners around the local hospitals, getting out hundreds of CHALLENGEs and a flyer blasting racist health care under capitalism to workers and students on their lunch break. Our presence and literature were received well, as were the speeches given by younger comrades who were inspired to speak on the bullhorn! We hope to follow up with contacts made and become a more regular presence in this area.

We concluded this first day in the evening with a mass forum on artificial intelligence (AI). The discussion was kicked off with a skit in which two characters debated the potentials and pitfalls of AI, highlighting that any technology is used to support the class in power— in this instance, the capitalist bosses. This was followed by lively smaller group conversations where we advanced our understanding of how AI is being used to increase racist and sexist attacks, particularly against Black workers, and how it is accelerating the inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China.  These imperialist powers are locked in battle worldwide to exploit natural resources and labor to secure a competitive edge.

Spread communist ideas

Saturday morning started strong, as we organized a large contingent to attend the annual Bud Billiken Parade on the city’s South Side. This parade, which takes place in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, is a back-to-school celebration that draws hundreds of thousands of Black workers and youth. After discussing some of the radical history of communist organizing in Bronzeville, we split up into groups to cover the march route, getting out hundreds of flyers and CHALLENGEs to workers excited to meet our antiracist collective.

We followed this up by participating in a community wellness fair organized by a mass public health group where Party members have been active for over a decade. Our out-of-town comrades were able to meet and connect with the Party’s local friends in a relaxing atmosphere of art, yoga, and delicious Middle Eastern and Latin cuisine.

We gathered for a movie night to wrap up the day, watching leftist director Boots Riley’s newest film, I Love Boosters. We laughed our heads off as we debated the strengths and weaknesses of the film’s political messages of exploitation and international fightback (see review in CHALLENGE, 7/29). 

Fight racism by fighting capitalism

We kicked off our final day with an antiracist historical bus tour on the southwest side of the city. We chose three main sites that highlighted PLP’s past battles against local racists: Gage Park, the site of the former nazi headquarters on 71st  and Maplewood, and Marquette Park. At each location, we got off the bus to hear stories from veteran comrades who had physically fought in the battles about how through disciplined organizing and building a base with workers in the area, they were able to shatter these strongholds of racist terror.

It was inspiring to reflect at Marquette Park, as we watched multiracial youth play soccer, how our Party led the fight to integrate what up till the late 1970s was a “whites only” space. A more recent battle shared by our comrades living in Kentucky against the Proud Boys reaffirmed the Party’s leadership in the fight against racism as an ongoing pillar of our struggle for a  communist world that smashes this anti-worker violence once and for all. As the tour ended and we called on a new generation of revolutionaries to carry on the fight, two friends joined the Party on the spot!

Forging communist bonds

Unfortunately, a thunderstorm caused us to cancel our final planned rally against ICE terror, but we were still able to follow through with a cumbia class instructed by a local comrade through her mass immigrant rights organization. From marching to studying history to dancing and everything in between, our Party is growing to forge the bonds of revolutionary culture and struggle to build a communist world!

This past August marked the 235th anniversary of the start of the Haitian revolution. The following is an excerpt from a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) magazine article titled “The History of Haiti” published in 2014. The history of Haiti offers lessons for all working people. 

In Part I of this series, we traced the early history of Ayti (the Taíno word for the island later known as Hispaniola and now modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic), the Spanish and French conquest that followed, and the beginnings of the revolutionary fight to end slavery, up through 1792. That year, the French Revolution entered a more radical phase: the monarchy was deposed, and France moved toward war against the monarchs of Europe. As Saint-Domingue's large sugar planters fled to join the royalist opposition, the Jacobin French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax opened political office and the army's officer corps to the gens de couleur, and a racially integrated delegation was chosen to represent Saint-Domingue in the National Assembly in Paris. We left off in 1793, with the execution of the French king, as Republican France went to war with Spain and Great Britain, the other major colonial powers in the Caribbean. The ongoing slave rebellion had become a force in this wider inter-colonial conflict.

Haiti was born of slave rebellion, and its history makes clear that slavery and racism were essential elements in the very foundation of capitalism. The working class in Haiti has also endured some of the most vicious exploitation by imperialism, both direct and indirect. Yet ever since Haitian workers rose up to abolish slavery in the 1790s, they have fought back with militancy, pushing for reform after reform in an effort to free themselves from exploitation. Time and again, however, these reforms have failed.

Today, conditions facing Haitian workers continue to deteriorate. Gangs, weapons imported from the U.S., and assassinations have devastated the well-being of the Haitian working class, while the racist attack on Haitian workers' Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the U.S. has brought further uncertainty and pain.

This history carries the most important lesson for all workers: only communism can end exploitation and put the international working class in control of society. It is a reminder that while Black workers around the world remain the most brutally exploited section of our class, the fight against racism can never be separated from the fight against capitalism and imperialism. Only communist revolution can end this system of exploitation for good. From Haiti to the United States, Black workers' leadership remains a crucial revolutionary force.

Part II will discuss the revolution to its triumph in 1804, and the role independent Haiti then played in fueling the fight against slavery across the Americas. 

Fighting to eradicate slavery 

The Spanish in Santo Domingo, the eastern half of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) recruited Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and other leaders of the slave insurgency to their army with offers of freedom and land. Britain, on the other hand, acted to protect sugar profits and to gain more territory for exploitation by invading and occupying southern and western Haiti (the region closest to its sugar colony of Jamaica). 

There they both enforced slavery and reinstituted race-based restrictions on the gens de couleur. In this context, Commissioner Sonthonax reached out to the slaves to defend the French republic. He reduced hours of work, then offered freedom and French citizenship to all black warriors who fought for France. In August 1793 after a mass meeting in Cap Français voted for emancipation, the commissioner took the final step and abolished slavery throughout the colony, in a sense acknowledging in law what was the reality in fact.6

In 1794, Saint-Domingue’s delegates to the French National Assembly—one white, one mixed race, one an African-born former slave—asked that the Assembly abolish slavery in all of France’s colonies. The privations of war had further angered the French working class and weakened (for the moment) the power of the planters, and the Assembly ratified the proposal by acclamation.

The slave insurrection of Saint-Domingue had pushed the French Revolution into its most radical endorsement of freedom. French officials freed slaves in Guadeloupe and in the other islands they captured during the on-going war with Britain and Spain. With this Toussaint Louverture and others deserted Spain to swear allegiance to the French Republic. Toussaint became the most important French general, leading French troops, most of them former insurgents, as they drove Britain out of Saint-Domingue in the name of abolishing slavery.

Enslaved workers throughout the Americas took notice. As word of the 1791 uprising in Saint-Domingue spread, slave revolts broke out in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Curacao, and Grenada. Major slave conspiracies were detected in Cuba and Spanish Louisiana. Armed slaves battled to establish an inland maroon sanctuary in Jamaica. And in 1800, the enslaved blacksmith Gabriel, inspired by Saint-Domingue and the French Revolution, attempted to end slavery through an insurrection in Virginia.7

Bosses unite to keep workers in chains

Slave owners, however, were determined to end these threats to their profits. By 1798, French planter interests had begun to reestablish their power in Paris. They found an ally in Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general and future emperor, whose wife was from a Caribbean planter family. In 1802 Napoleon invaded Saint-Domingue with encouragement from British and American elites. The British and French would fight each other in Europe for another decade. But when it came to defending the super-exploitation of slavery they could unite: British Prime Minister Henry Addington declared that with regard to Saint-Domingue, the “interest of the two governments is exactly the same—to destroy Jacobinism, especially that of the blacks.” Thomas Jefferson described Toussaint and other Black leaders of Saint-Domingue as “Cannibals of the terrible republic” and promised to aid French efforts to “starve Toussaint” into submission.

The initial French expedition was led by Napoleon’s brother-in-law, the slave-owning General Charles Victor Leclerc, and involved half of the entire French fleet. Leclerc initially appealed to loyalty to the French republic—to patriotism—to win some insurgent generals to his army and to arrest and deport Toussaint Louverture. But when the French re-imposed slavery on the island of Guadeloupe, the people of Saint-Domingue rose up in resistance, forcing their former leaders to desert Leclerc and begin a renewed insurgency. When Leclerc declared a war of extermination that aimed to kill all Black men and women except “infants less than twelve years old,” some white troops, many of them Poles, deserted the French army to join the insurgents.

By 1803, the workers of Haiti—ideologically committed to their struggle for freedom, disciplined and experienced in guerilla warfare—did what no army in Europe had done. They gave Napoleon’s army its first defeat. And in 1804, Saint-Domingue declared its independence as the nation of Haiti. The British lost 40,000 soldiers and the French close to 50,000 in the effort to re-impose slavery in Haiti and other islands of the West Indies. Half of Haiti’s Black population was killed. In all, over 300,000 people died in the fight to end slavery in Haiti. The United States refused to recognize the independence of Haiti, and in 1815 the treaty ending Europe’s Napoleonic Wars accepted France’s claim to Haiti as a colonial possession. Jefferson continued his efforts to protect slave owners by isolating Haiti as an economic and ideological force. While Saint-Domingue/ Haiti had been the U.S. 's second largest trading partner (even through the period of warfare), Jefferson instituted a trade embargo and exhorted the New England merchant-traders to accept the loss of a prime market as a sacrifice for the nation.

The slave owning nations—the United States, Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal—expanded slavery in the years after the Haitian revolution. In the U.S., slave-based cotton and sugar production expanded into the old southwest and the new Louisiana territory. The French re-imposed slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique. The Spanish expanded sugar production in Cuba, and the Portuguese developed sugar and coffee plantations in Brazil. All of this meant an increase in the slave trade to restock the depleted labor force in the region.

Antiracist uprisings

The Republic of Haiti, on the other hand, continued its attempts to spread the idea of revolution against slavery. In 1815-16, Haitian president Alexandre Pétion sheltered Simon Bolivar as he initiated an independence movement against Spain. Haiti provided Bolivar with ships, arms and ammunition, a printing press, and troops to train his men, demanding in exchange that he pledge to free the slaves in any republics gaining independence from Spain. As Spain was importing slaves, many free Blacks and slaves within Spain’s colonies flocked to the armies of the independence movement. In Peru up to three-quarters of those who fought in the liberation army were men of color. In 1821, Gran Colombia adopted a law to emancipate all born of slave mothers after that date. In 1829, Mexico became the second American nation to abolish slavery absolutely.

Please find the conclusion of this series in our next issue of CHALLENGE available September 16th.

Kansas City, MO– At this year’s annual August convention of Veterans for Peace, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined over one hundred veterans, military fami1ly members, and antiwar supporters who were gathered to voice their outrage about ICE-led fascist aggression, the Iran war’s catastrophic failure marked by pervasive low morale among enlisted soldiers, and the continued mass genocide of workers globally. , Democrats remain the greater danger to the future leaders of communist world revolution, since they, too, push for wider war, support for Israel, and the bloody supremacy of U.S. imperialism, but in less openly fascistic rhetoric. This was evident in the revisionist, anti-Trump and implicitly pro Democrat politics at the convention, and it is also revealing itself as Democrats rush to blame Trump for the aircraft carrier Lincoln’s catastrophe rather than the declining global power of oil-driven U.S. imperialism as a whole. As Chinese rulers increase their leverage during the U.S.’s fiasco in the Iran war, and bosses everywhere scramble to find alternatives to trade and military partnership with the U.S., more war is an inevitable future for the young workers of the world. As members of PLP, we call for armed revolution of the working class, with politicized, pro-working class soldiers as the key for arriving at a better world.

From chaos to community to communism!

The annual convention of Veterans for Peace offers a powerful and consistent opportunity for veterans of all branches, from wars ranging from World War II to the Iran war, to join together alongside labor, community and other organizers for collective conversations about the state of the world and prospects for peace. It is our Party’s function to i  push all limits of political reformism in an effort to introduce our class to a more precise and tangible path forward. In one panel featuring Chris Smalls of the Amazon workers’ union and Paul Ortiz, a longtime labor history professor, PLP created space for the organizers in the audience to join in the conversation and voice their frustration about the Democratic Pparty war machine, the adverse impact of ICE kidnappings on immigrant activists, and the ever-relevant need for militant self defense emanating from the legacy of Black slaves, Russian and Chinese communist peasants, industrial workers, and anti-colonial workers worldwide. Both panelists were prodded on their position about nonviolent resistance and revisionist misleadership in the labor movement, and each of them testified to the need for militant resistance and to the complacency of union leaders in the aftermath of government indictments for pro-Gaza flotillas and encampments in the U.S.

Mission Impossible: failed Iran war and low morale

Perhaps the most telling and strategically vital point in the convention came from the military families from Military Families Speak Out who spoke to the utter ineptness of the U.S. military leadership and the frustration of the soldiers entrenched in the war against Iran.  Families testified to the dangers of their kin, largely stranded in “camps”, not bases in Jordan, after having been deployed for battle against Iran but staying past their end date.  With bombs from Iran raining down from overhead, soldiers in Jordan are being told to shelter in bunkers that can not even house half of the soldiers on the camp–leaving 50 percent of the troops as pure cannon fodder. The convention’s discussion of low morale in Jordan is indicative of the current crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where the destruction of a decades-old U.S. navy base in Bahrain by Iranian missiles forced the aircraft carrier into an essentially stranded position at sea for nearly nine months, since day two of the war.  The 5,000 soldier ship has reported dire mental health concerns from trapped and deployment-weary sailors, several of whom have reportedly attempted suicide. There are also food shortages, dysfunctional plumbing, and a host of concerns associated with the Bahrain supply base’s destruction.

Liberals are the main danger

In both the antiwar movement and within the mass consciousness of disgruntled soldiers, the Democratic Party politicians are the chief misleaders that push our class toward capitulation to the war machine–and have been for the past half century. Just as the Democratic bosses, who promise reforms in return for all class unity,  as a whole historically function to stamp out class anger among the most radical sectors of the population–Black, women and immigrant workers–that fact continues today with fierce manifestation in the antiwar movement. Democratic Party politicians, just as they did in the 2004 Iraq war, are calling for an end to wars with no clear “mission” and lack of support for military personnel in combat. 

Mass organizations are schools for communism

We made contact with Vietnamese-American organizers who are interested in collaborating for solidarity campaigns around the continued ravages of war in Vietnam after the U.S. invasion in the 1960s and 1970s. We are looking to recruit teachers and students based out of the LA and NYC areas for solidarity brigades to carry on the legacy of what Vietnam vets have been doing for decades in recognition of the atrocities they committed in service of U.S. imperialism. None of this struggle would take place without persistent, consistent, decades-long commitment to this organization, and so the lesson is clear: join and stay in groups so that our class can be introduced to our theory and practice through action, reflection and struggle.

CHICAGO,  August 11— A multiracial force of roughly 200 workers – including a collective from the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP)— marched through Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood, braving heavy rain while loudly chanting, “Same enemy, same fight: workers of the world unite!” and “From the river to the sea, the working class will set us free!” Today a mass event was organized called “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” commemorating the 60th anniversary when Martin Luther King Jr and thousands of others marched into the park to protest the racist violence of capitalism. 

Despite the presence of liberal politicians and misleaders pushing electoral politics, workers showed a strong openness to communist ideas, eagerly accepting CHALLENGE newspapers and sharing contact information with Party members. Many workers traveled from outside Chicago, particularly from the South, where workers faced an intensified racist attack from the Trump-led neo-Confederate regime. The march’s music, dancing, and collective chanting helped build a sense of unity and enthusiasm, with participants remaining energized despite the downpour. Conversations after the march showed that many were receptive to PLP’s politics and willing to engage with revolutionary ideas.

Antiracist lessons from Marquette Park 

In 1966, King came to Chicago to challenge housing segregation and racist violence. When marchers entered Marquette Park, they were met by angry white mobs throwing rocks, bottles, and other objects while shouting racist slurs. King later remarked that he had never encountered such intense racist hostility—not even in the Deep South. The atmosphere became so emboldened that the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan established Marquette Park as a center for organizing, using terror and intimidation against Black families, Latin workers, and anyone who stood for racial equality.

The violence in neighborhoods like Marquette Park did not emerge on its own. It was reinforced by decades of racist policies that served the interests of banks, real estate companies, and politicians. Through redlining, Black families were systematically denied mortgages, insurance, and investment while white neighborhoods received government-backed support. This created the deeply racist and segregated communities we still see in Chicago today.

Although redlining was outlawed in 1968, its effects remain visible today. Many neighborhoods continue to face capitalist exploitation and disinvestment, underfunded schools, inadequate healthcare, and deplorable housing conditions. These conditions are often blamed on the Black workers who live there instead of the racist economic system called capitalism that created them.

Progressive Labor Party smashes the fascists 

PLP refused to allow fascists to claim Marquette Park as their territory. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Party members and supporters organized tirelessly throughout the Southwest Side. We sold CHALLENGE on street corners, knocked on doors, and held thousands of conversations with Black, Latin, Asian, and white workers about the need to reject racism and unite around their shared class interests.

This revolutionary outlook laid the foundation for historic demonstrations that shattered the Nazis’ claim over Marquette Park. Hundreds of workers and students marched together through streets that fascist groups had declared off limits to multiracial organizing. Our greatest strength was not superior numbers or police protection—it was the unity and courage of ordinary working people who refused to surrender their communities to racist terror. This organizing led to the Party storming the Nazi headquarters located in Marquette Park and running them out of the neighborhood. We ambushed the truck at their setup location and used the opportunity to get inside and wreak havoc on their office. We were bold, and some members faced serious charges for the attack. They would beat those charges, however, through multiracial court support initiatives organized by the International Committee Against Racism and PLP.

Keep up the struggle to win 

The forms of racism have changed, but the purpose remains the same. Today, politicians, media outlets, and wealthy interests continue promoting fear and division by blaming immigrants, Black communities, refugees, and other sections of the working class for problems created by capitalism itself. 

Our personal struggles are political – fight for communism

For one member of the Chicago collective, Marquette Park carries a deep personal history. As a teenager, he would play basketball in the park, often dropped off by his grandmother, who on one of those trips explained to him that Black people had not always been welcome there. Even years later, she still carried the anxiety of entering a place where racist mobs had once violently enforced segregation. In 1966, she bravely marched through Marquette Park as part of the struggle against racist segregation and was attacked for doing so. Her experience connects the neighborhood’s history to the struggles workers continue to face today. While the 1966 marches challenged the racist system, it was the militant actions and organizing of the Party that helped drive the Nazis and their racist allies out of Marquette Park once and for all, demonstrating the power of communist leadership.

The victories won in Marquette Park were not inevitable—they were organized. They were won by ordinary workers who refused to accept racism as a permanent feature of society. That same spirit is needed today.

Fight racism. Build multiracial unity. Organize your workplace and your community. Join PLP and help build a communist movement capable of ending exploitation once and for all.