NEW JERSEY, JUNE 21—The hundreds of people gathered outside of the Delaney Hall migrant prison on Father’s Day prove that the working class will never accept fascism without a fight. The ruling class uses racism, sexism, and nationalism to divide us but class consciousness and internationalism beat in the hearts of workers, regardless of the labels that the bosses put on us. Friends and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were there to struggle with demonstrators to marry their working-class spirit with a revolutionary outlook. Only a communist revolution will see the end of ICE, Delaney Hall, and all fascists.

Delaney Hall is an infamous prison, run by the racist GEO Group, contracting for the fascist ICE goons, where detained migrants are treated brutally. Recently, detainees have started a strike, refusing to work and eat, in response to being served rotten food, denied medical care and family visitation.  

Bosses’ misleaders quell workers’ energy

On Father’s Day, a group of labor unions organized an “Eyes on ICE” rally, to support the striking workers inside Delaney. The potential for a large, militant action was wasted by the timid and disorganized labor misleaders. The hundreds of protestors stood around for two hours listening to speeches, most of them uninspiring. The exceptions were the heartbreaking stories from families of detainees and the brave little girls who spoke of missing their dads on Father’s Day. Toward the end, there was also an excellent contribution by a young Black physics teacher from Newark who made the point that workers have to organize themselves and not count on politicians. 

However, the passivity at the heart of the event was demonstrated clearly when a transport vehicle, carrying our migrant siblings to who-knows-where, was allowed to pass through the prison gate with barely a reaction from the mis-leadership. We attempted to inject some energy and fighting spirit into the crowd by chanting “Smash Racist Deportations, Working People Have no Nation!” and “Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras!” in between speeches. The crowd appreciated it even as the leadership tried, and failed, to get us to stop. Finally, it was up to PLP members to organize a proper picket line after the speeches ended. 

The experience reinforced important lessons in the struggle: One, building connections to our coworkers, classmates and students is key. Our contingent included friends and coworkers that we’ve been in the class struggle with for a long time and the trip to and from the demonstration was a great opportunity to talk politics. Two, liberal misleaders have the power and potential to lead our class to ruin. For all their talk about fighting fascism and the danger of the time we’re living in, their actions produced a passive and disorganized crowd. The working class deserves and will get better! 

This July marks the 237th anniversary of the start of the French Revolution, a day the French capitalist class has whitewashed into a celebration of the dawn of their racist, imperialist, and decaying democracy. But Bastille Day carries buried working-class and revolutionary roots: it helped inspire the enslaved workers of Haiti to rise up and overthrow the French plantation slavers, and it echoed through the movements that later toppled colonial rule across Latin America.

This year, the anniversary falls on the eve of the 250th anniversary (semiquincentennial) of a the United States, built on the bedrock of slavery, genocide, a nation the French monarchy itself helped bring into being. Seeking to weaken its rival Britain, the crown bankrolled a small class of planters and merchants, the so-called founding fathers, who declared independence on July 4, 1776, just under seventeen years before that same monarchy lost its head to the guillotine.

As the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary and France marks another Bastille Day, both holidays expose the same hollow core: fake democracies built to serve capital. France today is a wasteland of exploitation, where unemployment runs nearly twice as high for African immigrants as for native French workers, and discrimination against Black and Arab communities remains well documented in hiring, housing, and everyday life.Paris and Brussels bankroll border-militarization deals with Libya, Morocco, and Niger that have turned the Sahara and the Mediterranean into mass graves, with the UN estimating migrant deaths in the desert may run twice as high as those recorded at sea.Meanwhile, crushing debt, first imposed on Haiti in 1825 as literal ransom for its freedom, has cost the country tens of billions in lost development and helped lock it into the crisis it faces today.

Meanwhile, on the eve of its own semiquincentennial, the U.S. ruling class is unmasking its "sacred democracy": the Supreme Court is greenlighting escalating attacks on immigrants, deepening the exploitation of workers, minting new trillionaires, hunting down and caging migrant workers in concentration camps, and stripping Temporary Protected Status from Haitians and Syrians, sending them back to the violent, destabilized chaos the U.S. itself created. Justice Kagan's dissent in the June 2026 ruling did not mince words, writing that the record "fairly shouts" that race drove the decision to strip Haitians of protection.

The article that follows is a reprint on the history of the Bastille and the lessons the international working class can still draw from it today. As Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Marx himself was profoundly shaped by the earth-shattering example of the French Revolution, and it is that same history the working class must learn from and finish the job on. Workers took power once. We can do it again, and hold it this time. Join PLP, and help us write a new revolutionary history that frees workers from this capitalist nightmare for good.

Lessons from the storming of Bastille

France was then an agricultural society ruled by noble landowners and a powerful Catholic church, with the king at the top. The urban bourgeoisie wanted a constitutional monarchy. That would give them more political power. They needed the urban workers, called “sans-culottes” – a French word meaning “worker’s pants”– to fight for them against the monarchy. But for a few years the “sans-culottes” fought for their own interests.

The sudden, violent overthrow of the French monarchy and landed aristocracy proved that the status quo was not “God-given,” not inevitable, not the product of “human nature.” It proved that the political structure could be changed for the better. A society with more equality and less exploitation was possible! The French Revolution also gave birth to future revolutionary communist movements.

The French Revolution was inspired by the Enlightenment, a bourgeois movement that attacked monarchies and feudalism. The Enlightenment popularized talk of human rights— liberal democracy, the so called rights of the people and equality for all. It argued that the power of kings and aristocrats was illegitimate.

In 1789 the French King had called a nationwide meeting (Estates-General) of nobles, clergy, and bourgeoisie, to vote for new taxes. When the bourgeoisie refused, the king tried to shut them down. But the “sans-culottes” rebelled and stormed the Bastille. The revolution began.

Here are some lessons, especially from the most radical and democratic period of 1789 to 1795.

The “sans-culottes” of the cities—workers, journeymen, apprentices, working women—always pushed the Revolution ahead, towards more equality, more rights and power for working people.

The “sans-culottes” had no political party. The party of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries and sincere idealists who worked most closely with them was called the Jacobins.

But the working class needs its own party. This is the greatest discovery of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik ( communist) Revolution of 1917 in Russia. Today, it’s the job of the Progressive Labor Party to fulfill that historic task.

It was the mass actions of the “sans-culottes”, sometimes supported by the most radical Jacobins, who pushed the Revolution to adopt the most democratic reforms.

The bourgeoisie, intellectuals, and “sans-culottes” all united to get rid of the king and aristocracy and to take land from the Church. But after that, their interests no longer coincided. The radical bourgeoisie needed the “sans-culottes” only as long as foreign armies threatened to destroy the Revolution.

With the seizing of the lands of aristocrats and the Church, peasants gained their own land. They also wanted higher prices for the food they grew. But the urban “sans-culottes” needed low food prices. The peasants’ economic interests were more aligned with the bourgeois merchants, traders, and landlords than with those of the “sans-culottes.”Once foreign armies were driven back, the bourgeois representatives—some of whom had been executed as counter-revolutionaries—turned against the Jacobins and the “sans-culottes” and established a more repressive state. After 1795 the propertied bourgeoisie was in firm control. They organized a bourgeois dictatorship, and then an authoritarian empire under Napoleon Bonaparte.

The communist movement begins

Gracchus Babeuf, a poor, self-taught worker, headed the last and most radical movement of the Revolution. His “Conspiracy for Equality” was crushed, and Babeuf executed. But one of his followers, Buonarroti, survived to influence the working-class and student militants of the 1840s, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

The working class of Europe learned from the experience of the “sans-culottes” of France. The Paris Commune of 1871, and the Russian Revolution of 1917, were the first revolutions by the industrial working class, the proletariat. They all sprang from the lessons of the great French Revolution.

Washington D.C.—“Hey Hey, Ho Ho, “Quote the Fare’ Has Got to Go” started off a rally by over 100 transit workers in ATU 689 in front of the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) headquarters just before the monthly board meeting. Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were on the picket line and distributed CHALLENGE to over 60 percent of the workers, reflecting the high level of class consciousness developed over long years of Party organizing. 

NO cuts for transit workers!

Today’s Safety First Rally attacked the Metro Board for cutting station attendant staffing, speeding up trains in workplace sites, and changing roadway workers’ protections. WMATA has demanded that the operators “quote the fare” as riders get on the bus, and put “FARE REQUIRED” on the front of buses. They have also increased transit police enforcement over people who don’t pay. The fare issue is also a safety issue, since arguments with riders over fares have led to fights and episodes of assaults on operators. Turning riders against operators is an example of the bosses’ goals of creating division in the working class. Besides attacking Washington area residents, this repressive approach has also led to transit police working closely with ICE to detain Black and Latin riders who get a ticket. This shameful attack has been emphasized by ongoing bus size ads recruiting for the Customs and Border Patrol (CHALLENGE  7/30/2025).

Bosses cutting OT

Inside the board meeting, PLP and metro workers spoke sharply against the board for an hour on these issues, as well as against a pilot proposal by WMATA to move to four day work weeks. This sinister attack on the eight hour day includes ignoring the requirement for overtime pay after 8 hours of work, which has always been the basic way that bosses have been forced to maintain a standard eight hour day. 

The bosses are not worried about tired operators or more injuries if they can save money. As the bosses look to profit from Artificial Intelligence and automation in transit by laying off workers, unions must fight for a shorter work week with no reduction in weekly pay. Workers can be trained for the new jobs that automation will create, rather than being laid off. But until workers have overthrown the entire capitalist system that lives to pump profits out of their labor, they will continue to face challenges as the trend towards fascism intensifies.

Workers in transit have real power to shut the system down by striking and following through on their safety and workplace demands. Communist leadership in these unions is necessary to break through the “business union” approach by union officials who are happy to accommodate unsafe productivity improvements while protecting their own salaries and position instead of leading struggles for safety and jobs for the working class.

APRIL 2-7, NEW YORK — This year’s Spring Break Project brought together students, educators, and workers committed to building a stronger, more organized fight against capitalism. Over the course of the week, comrades and friends stepped away from the routine of school and work and into collective political activity—learning from each other, sharpening our ideas, and preparing for the struggles ahead on the road to communist revolution.

What follows is a day-by-day account of the week’s events. 

As PLP gears up for its Summer Project 2026, we invite all workers to help us continue the struggle for revolutionary communism by joining us for “a summer of struggle, and a lifetime of commitment!” 

Day One: May Day History & Group Guided Tour

We kicked off the week with participants learning about the history of PLP’s May Day with veteran comrades sharing stories of how those May Days were organized. We looked at photos and read about historic May Days from as far back as 1974 to as recent as last year. We highlighted the 1974 motorcade from all corners of the country all the way to DC, the 1975 May Day in Boston where PL’ers faced off against a fascist gang and sent them running, the 1979 May Day and driving Nazis from Marquette Park in Chicago, and the 1992 May Day in which we defied martial law in LA.

Following the May Day discussion, we headed out for a self-guided walking tour of a couple neighborhoods of Brooklyn: from the corners where rallies demanding justice for Shantel Davis and Kyam Livingston were held month after month (and got a surprise visit from Kyam’s mother who never stops fighting!) to a fierce community fight against eviction by eminent domain, a high school with a long history of student organizing, and an intersection which has long been a location of our Flatbush CHALLENGE sales and rallies.

Day Two: Learn from the past, organize for the future!

On the morning of Day Two, we met in front of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx for a CHALLENGE distribution and after a potluck lunch and discussion. We read selections from “Talks on Organizing” by Epifanio Camacho, who organizationally led mass farmworkers strikes across California in the 1960s and 70s, in what became the United Farmworkers Union (UFW). 

PL’ers under Camacho’s leadership exposed the rotten opportunism and corruption of the formal leadership under racist, sexist misleader César Chávez and successfully made revolutionary communist ideas mass ideas amidst these reform struggles for better labor contracts. These lessons were especially powerful for our Spring Project students.

In this dark night of low international working class consciousness amidst rising fascism and sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, students shared vivid experiences working in mass movements despite opportunism and reformism. Two college students joined the party, with a high school student saying they’re interested in continuing to meet.

Day Three: Rally & Movie discussion

Day Three fused political action, entertainment, and political discussion. Our multiracial contingent rallied on Flatbush Avenue, a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood where the Party has dug roots in the antiracist fightback for our class brothers and sisters Kimani Gray, Kyam Livingston, and Shantel Davis — murdered by killer kkkops blocks from where we stood. We sold over 200 copies of CHALLENGE, while a teacher gave a bullhorn speech about her own fight against racism at a school nearby. Transit workers, school workers, comrades from every corner of our class connected the dots from racist terror in Brooklyn to imperialists’ war on Sudan.

After the rally featured Chinese takeout and Persepolis (2007), Marjane Satrapi's animated memoir, followed by a sharp discussion. Satrapi's family were communists who helped overthrow the Shah, then were murdered by the Islamic fundamentalist regime that replaced him. We closed the night putting the film in sharp political context: understanding U.S. imperialism against Iran and every war burning today, from Gaza to Sudan. The future belongs to those who fight for it: Let's go win it!

Day Four: Dialectical Materialism 

On day 4, we held a study group on dialectical materialism. Along with an activity, we read parts of the key PLP document Jailbreak. This led to a discussion about where racist ideas come from, and how the ruling class uses them for their own profits. The main topic of discussion was the nature of change, particularly what is holding back real change. The discussion ended on a revolutionarily optimistic note with students sharing personal anecdotes of antiracism in their lives.

Day Five: Immigrant Fightback History Tour

Our multigenerational group gathered at the Brooklyn waterfront and toured this historic district that was once a site of bustling maritime activity and class struggle and is now a high-rent, gentrified tourist destination. In 1741, a multiracial rebellion rocked the early NYC ruling class, showing the might of the working class and the U.S. ruling class has never extinguished the growing abolitionist impulse we traced to the neighborhood. A scavenger hunt invited participants to think about communism and the transformation of society, with a closing lunch celebrating a steadfast high school organizer committed to joining a PLP club.  

The lessons from the week don’t stay in Spring Break. They carry forward into our classrooms, our neighborhoods, and the streets. As we head toward the Summer Project, we do so more connected, more confident, and more prepared to fight. Join us!