New Jersey: need a party, not pols

Last Thursday, a day after Renee Nicole Good was murdered by ICE in Minneapolis, multiple organizations from North Jersey called for a demonstration in downtown Newark. A couple of comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) decided to show up and meet some friends there.
At the rally, organizers began  speaking on a blowhorn, one after the other. They were saying all the right zingers. “Look at what the government is doing…capitalism this…imperialism that…we are with Venezuela,” etc. Definitely sharing some sincere anger and calling out the terror of the U.S. as a nation and even general calls for organizing in our communities. I was intimidated until I heard a young Afro-Latina with an incredible ability to inspire and fire up the anger of the working class describing the horrors of capitalism. 

I asked myself as I often do when I go with PLP comrades and friends to mass protests, what is the difference between the ideas of the leadership of this protest and the ideas of PLP? For all the electrifying anger that this young woman had, she and none of the other speakers could bring themselves to say that both Democrats and Republicans are deadly to our class. None of these organizers attacked the Democrats as the ground-layers for these open fascist Republicans. None of them can confidently say that there’s no such thing as a good politician under a system that requires racist terror. All the ceasefire votes across city councils didn’t stop the genocide. And it was Democrat Joe Biden who violated the law in NJ that paved the way to re-open Delaney Hall Detention Center which recently also murdered Jean Wilson Brutus, a Haitian immigrant.

I ended up processing these thoughts with a former coworker, who I’ve shared about PLP over the years, and who approached me when he spotted me at the protest. I told him I didn’t feel confident initially about what we should do in these protests as comrades from PLP. But then I shared about the guiding light I finally recognized, the distinction I noticed between the speakers and PLP’s political line on politicians. 

He responded that he too was lacking in confidence in terms of what to do, but he seemed hopeful in responding to the alternative I suggested: the revolutionary strategy of building an organization within the working class to get rid of capitalism instead of wasting our time on politicians, all who will ultimately betray us. 

He also shared that his internal struggle to become a part of such a goal is intensifying within him given the sharpening dangers faced by our class currently. He expressed that there are a lot of things that need to be figured out regarding such a project. Additionally, he mentioned that what he is mainly confronting and working through is his perception that joining a group, perhaps like PLP, feels like a form of submitting to authority.

I responded to this by referencing the need to make decisions collectively and having the collective discipline to stick to them to defeat the capitalist system, in other words using democratic centralism, to build that organization our class needs. To this he responded by commenting on genuinely wanting to understand better what is meant by “democratic centralism.” To which I directed him to the 1982 article “On Democratic Centralism”on PLP.org.

After the protest, us comrades went home together. We collectively affirmed the need to dig deeper into our relationships with workers in the mass organizations around us to build our confidence and a broader communist base. Such experience will encourage us to turn moments of fightback into schools for communism alongside masses of workers. We even brainstormed creating a “know your communist chants” card that we can distribute to people at protests.
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Smash ICE now! 

After going with members of a Resistance network to a local mall (CHALLENGE letter 12/24/2025), we joined the celebration of the first anniversary of the network with 60 folks attending. The network had done amazing activities throughout the year in addition to maintaining a chat informing members of multiple struggles in the area. On the ground activities have included talking to business owners to press for “No ICE” posters in their windows, trailing ICE and Park police on the federal parkway in the town, and pressing town council members to make sure the local police were not helping ICE. Waving banners over the federal parkway overpass was diligently staffed every week. The Community Center has Know Your Rights cards in over 40 languages. Members took the cards and passed them out to workers and neighbors. There were at least four marches and rallies from April – October. When the organizer asked for suggestions for more activities, a young man said going door to door to the apartment buildings behind the mall would be a good idea to diversify the membership. Everything cannot be done virtually! 

As one of the organizations active in the network, PLP had a table along with other fightback organizations including several that we have been working with over the past few months. PLP’s two minute speech emphasized internationalism vs nationalism, multiracial unity, working in transit (Metro) and our communities and the necessity for a violent revolution to overthrow capitalism. Six comrades helped at our table which highlighted our work against genocide in Gaza and our campaign against ICE in Metro. We had postcards that show that METRO, the bus and subway system, was still showing recruitment ads for the Customs and Border Patrol on the sides of the buses and in subway stations and train cars. 

This past summer we mailed 130 postcards and spoke at the Metro Board meeting on this issue. Ten people signed postcards today, four folks signed up for more information and attendees from the other groups took CHALLENGE, impressed that we are a national organization. We also helped at the table with the students from the Philippines who called for the release of Chantal, a former student working in Mindoro. She is being held by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and must be returned to the U.S.  Going forward one comrade freed up their schedule to be able to regularly attend bi-weekly planning meetings. 

Next steps for the Party include follow up and recruitment of the organizers at the celebration and sharper attacks on Metro for working closely with ICE through their transit police and advertising policies. Putting our line on multiracial unity into practice in this neighborhood will strengthen the fight against ICE and fascism. 
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North Carolina: Protests grow, need communist politics

Over 1,000 workers took to the streets on Saturday, in Durham, North Carolina in protest over the fascist murder of Renee Good by Trump’s ICE Gestapo. Shocked by Renee Good’s murder, the Raleigh-Durham metro area organized a protest march in Bull Park in downtown Durham. Workers marched eight blocks to Durham Central Park. The multiracial march consisted of many workers and students from nearby Duke University. While inspiring to see working class anger, the protest had ideological weaknesses. It was organized by a liberal democratic organization. The organizers gave a speech not mentioning racism nor the class nature of fascism at home. No connection was made to the imperialist attack on Venezuela by U.S. bosses. It was disconnected, reformist, and made no mention of communist revolution. Despite the bad politics, there was a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) presence as copies of CHALLENGE were distributed along the march route to workers. U.S. capitalism has morphed into fascism, and no phony leftist politics will rescue the working class. The only way out is a disciplined worker-led communist revolution by the PLP. 

On Sunday, Jan. 11th, the Raleigh ICE protest was smaller, and not as well organized as the Durham protest against fascist ICE killers who murdered Renee Good. There were 200 protesters on both sides of North Highway 1 in Raleigh. The weaknesses were having U.S. military flags there. Those are imperialist symbols, as the U.S. military attacked Venezuela, so they had no place at an anti ICE protest. Workers at the protest understood that Renee Good’s murder was an act of fascism, but all branches of the U.S. government are tied to fascism. We distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets discussing the U.S. bosses’ Venezuela attack. 

The staff at the Raleigh bookstore in the liberal Hillsborough neighborhood were glad to get the CHALLENGE and party leaflets. They put everything on a display table for patrons to help themselves. 

We plan to attend additional rallies and protests and keep in contact with the bookstore.
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Need communist theory to make revolution 

I want to share some advice from an international communist that challenged me to reflect. They suggested that I read all 46 volumes of Lenin’s collected works. At first I was taken aback at this suggestion. In the revolutionary scene in the U.S. there is considerable controversy whether it is necessary to read theory at all. But then I remembered that in the cultural revolution, it was the increasingly productive forces über alles right wing of the Communist Party of China (Deng Xiao Ping and Liu Shao Qi) that insisted against reading theory. They said taking part in the daily life of a revolution was enough. If any theory was necessary Mao Ze Dong was enough. The left wing insisted that it was necessary not only to read Mao but Lenin and Marx as well. 

In our vacillations, I maintain that the most important element is not just reading the text but organizing the information and then applying it in practice. I hope to produce some kind of outline or guide to Lenin’s work as an exercise and example for others to inspire them to investigate themselves. It is possible to read a summary of the main events, but given that Lenin’s writing is freely available, challenging yourself to go through the text and organize the information is a worthy exercise.  My friend maintains that the most important thing is to organize a study group among the working class, read as many of the 46 volumes of Lenin’s collected works as possible (one volume intimidates me). He says that one worker with little formal education has read the entire 46 volumes over the course of a few years. This worker reported their worldview and self-image transformed by the process of reading and discussing Lenin. Then those who have been transformed and recognize the power of the writing will become study group leaders, multiplying the numbers of revolutionary workers organically. I hope to write again soon with more stories from this adventure!
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State exam enforces bosses’ fascist agenda

The recent January English Regents was a clear example of how education can be used to help the ruling class develop fascism.  In order to graduate from high school in New York State, students must complete this test.  There are two essays on the test: basically, an argumentative and thematic essay. The argumentative essay’s topic was to have students argue whether or not employers should be allowed to scour social media for their prospective employees.  As several of my coworkers pointed out, it forced the students to have to use the bosses’ lens.  

In the current era of rampant ICE sweeps and the use of social media to attack and round up workers, this essay’s supporting texts never mentioned that corporations such as Palantir are helping the modern Gestapo in their attacks on the working class.  The texts also never mentioned that Trump and DOGE’s recent attacks on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have weakened even those meager defenses.

We can expect to see more curriculum and testing designed to force the bosses’ lens on our students.  

Just as the recent Homeland Security threat assessment clearly shows,  the bosses are worried about “class-based or economic grievances” within the working class. They know they have nothing to offer our class but more wars, exploitation, and the divisive ideologies of racism and sexism.  Regardless of whether or not we win a few more crumbs through reform now, it doesn’t mean that we won’t be seeing the sharpening contradictions of the falling rate of profit and imperialism making revolution more and more of a necessity.  

The purpose of the essay was to reinforce the myth of “Americana” as the basis for U.S. patriotism.  For liberal fascism to occur, it needs to create the lie that there is a national identity. The U.S. was formed through the genocide of its indigenous people groups and the enslavement of Black workers while super exploiting white workers.  

Bringing back patriotism while Modern Manifest Destiny reinforces the contemporary Monroe Doctrine of U.S. imperialism reasserting their domination in South America is a fundamental necessity to the U.S. ruling class.  As the crisis of capitalism continues to intensify, teachers should expect to see more mandated curriculums, more tests clearly focused on promoting capitalist ideology and subjugation to the new AI surveillance machine, and more passages determined to promote the myth of Americana.  It is important that we view these moments as opportunities to discuss with our coworkers as we try to get them to understand the world and invite them to Party events.
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