Students and comrades from D.C. and Kentucky led a week of working-class, multiracial fightback throughout the state. We held collaborative events with organizations on campus, joined protests, and shared our internationalist, revolutionary line with students and workers alike. 

On Wednesday, March 25, we held an event with our school’s African Students Association (ASA) on 21st Century Imperialism and Africa. Two days later, we held the first event for our school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). We were joined by two party members from Baltimore and D.C. Right before the presentation, a party member from Kentucky led a workshop on making and giving presentations. At the SJP event itself, we gave a “Palestine 101” presentation and handed out the party’s 2025 pamphlet on the genocide in Gaza. We gave background on how Palestine has been caught in the middle of inter-imperialist rivalry since World War I. We explained how this has led to the situation we are seeing today, as the US has consolidated its power in Israel to compete against Iran. We spoke about how this is all due to the vast oil reserves in the Middle East and the U.S. losing Iran as an outpost in 1979.

Fightback and mutual aid on the road to May Day

Then, on Saturday, we split our forces to attend the “No Kings” demonstration in our town and also to hold a mutual aid event in southeastern Kentucky. Meanwhile, in western Kentucky, some comrades attended No Kings while others held a free lunch and Challenge distribution event. At this No Kings protest, the displays of nationalism were even more apparent than the previous ones. However, there were some moments that shone through. We spoke to many students from our school, distributed CHALLENGE, and shared our plans for May Day. In one instance, a comrade was holding a banner for Palestine when a woman came up to him saying, “Yeah! I support you! I have Jewish relatives in Israel, but I don’t support what’s going on or what Israel is doing.” Moments like these with members of our community boost our morale and help break nationalist illusions. 

On Sunday, we all went to southeastern Kentucky and had a workshop on mutual aid and natural disasters under capitalism. Together, we read a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) editorial written in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene (Disasters Made by Capitalism, 18 Oct 2024) which connected it to capitalist climate catastrophe. The effects of Helene are still impacting Appalachia today, and many communities in southern Appalachia have responded by forming mutual aid networks. We spoke about the value in these organizations but how we must struggle for genuinely revolutionary politics. We plan to use this workshop for a cadre school in the future. 

Learning to fight, fighting to learn

This week further proved to us the importance of multi-racial, internationalist fightback. We learned a lot about Africa, Palestine, and even our home state of Kentucky. In everything we did, the party line guided our work. We used the party’s literature in all of our events, and this really helped sharpen the politics of what we were doing and gave us a unified purpose. Joining the party is the most important thing you can do to effectively fight for revolution!