KENTUCKY—The local Progressive Labor Party (PLP) leadership in our area took the initiative and organized a rally against imperialism and the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE in Minnesota. We held the rally at the local downtown park. Our plan for the new year was to work to push out the liberal old guard who, for the last five years, has fought to maintain a stranglehold on all political activism happening in our area, suppressing the progressive and “radical” voices in our community. 

Beating back liberal misleaders 

By being the first to produce a flyer, we were able to out-pivot the liberal groups like Indivisible, and 50501, ensuring the rally maintained a revolutionary character to it, and was not watered down by “vote blue no matter who!” rhetoric. We established that if anyone wants to speak, they may, but the communists will speak first, and last. This was accepted. In fact, no liberal group members spoke, only workers from the crowd. 

Then we were encouraged to come up and speak. We made it clear that their participation, and voices mattered. 

Around 1:30pm the crowd had grown to a size of around 60-70 local workers. A total of seven different local organizations were represented in the crowd. This was outstanding as they had only had a week’s notice to come to the rally. The workers came out in the cold and the rain to stand against ICE and imperialism. The PLP made opening introductions and led with the first speech. We explained how important it is for all of us to get involved - that rallies, protests, and voting were not enough to push back fascism and that only revolution could liberate us from capitalism’s authoritarian rule. We expressed that we need a united movement, organized on a foundation of class struggle, and that we need interconnected communities focused on the defense of one another, and an organized labor force. Then we will be able to curb the ruling class elite and their power. 

All struggles have a connection 

We continued telling the workers that this intervention in Venezuela is nothing new. The United States has always been an imperialist war machine. The Gestapo ICE crackdowns and the war posturing abroad are all interconnected. We explained that we as workers in the U.S. have more in common with the workers of Palestine, Sudan, Cuba, Colombia, and Venezuela than we have with our own ruling class elite. This generated the most response from the crowd as hoots and hollers of affirmation rang out. We ended the opening speech on a strong note. Using the Lenin quote “Can a nation that oppresses other nations be free? It cannot!”

Afterwards we pulled up many workers from the crowd. Many of whom had never done any sort of public speaking, and empowered them standing beside the workers as each of them spoke to the people. Several of them maintained the revolutionary rhetoric that we opened up with: how all of these issues are interconnected and that the root cause is capitalism. A fiery emotional speech ignited the crowd once more. We garnered several contacts and multiple people mentioned they would be attending the next weekend’s “lunch and learn”, and were interested in joining the PLP. 

Why we need the Party

All in all we handed out every issue of CHALLENGE that we had, as well as some pamphlets made prior to the event. We were well received by everyone except a Vietnam vet, who recoiled at the first mention we were communists. But then he went back to the local VFW with an issue of CHALLENGE himself when it was all over. The lesson learned is that we as communists have to understand where the workers of our locality are, and we need to take the reins out of the liberals’ hands, and dominate the conversation when the opportunity arises. The workers are sick and tired of running into brick wall after brick wall. Liberalism, and social democracy will lead you off a cliff. Only communist revolution can truly set us free.