This October marks the 167th anniversary of the raid on Harper's Ferry led by John Brown. On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown led about 20 men, five of them Black, to seize a federal arsenal in Virginia, hoping to spark an armed rebellion against slavery. The raid failed, but the southern enslaving class was terrified by the raiders' militant, multiracial unity, a real-life rebuke of their racist stereotyping. It showed the need for militant, antiracist, multiracial, revolutionary struggle!

Osborne Anderson, the only Black raider to escape, described the unity of Brown's company:

I have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an Anti-Slavery family, carrying out to the letter the principle of the Anti-slavery cause. In John Brown's house, and in John Brown's presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self, no ghost of  distinction found space to enter.

More than a century and a half later, the struggle to free the working class from the chains of racist super-exploitation and violence continues. Workers face rising global fascism and deadly imperialist competition between the U.S. and China. In the U.S., this rivalry is playing out in a ruling-class split that echoes the Civil War: "mask-on" liberals, who manage racism by hiding it behind progressive rhetoric, and "mask-off" KKK racists and Nazis, who openly embrace it. The working class keeps fighting back. In the same abolitionist spirit, underground patrols and ICE watch groups from Minneapolis to Texas to New York City are defending our class against ICE kidnappings, killer cops, and masked racist patrols. The lessons remain the same and are more pressing than before: to defeat this rotten racist system, we need a multiracial, mass movement for communist revolution. 

From childhood, Brown vowed to fight slavery

This trust did not happen overnight. Brown's father, Owen, was an abolitionist who helped fugitives on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. As a boy of 12, Brown saw an enslaved boy his own age beaten and never forgot it. He came to believe Black and white workers were completely equal and put that belief into action daily. In North Elba, N.Y., his family lived near a community of Black settlers, many formerly enslaved, who were regularly invited to dinner. He addressed them as "Mr." and "Mrs.," sharply contrasting with the era's racist mores, common even among many opponents of slavery.

Tubman guided dozens to freedom, then helped free hundreds

In April 1858, while gathering money, arms, and volunteers in Canada, Brown visited Harriet Tubman, well known there for personally guiding many to freedom. Born around 1820 to enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation, Tubman suffered physical abuse, saw siblings sold away, and in her teens suffered a broken skull from an overseer's blow. In 1849 she fled, walking for weeks, mostly at night, to Philadelphia, then returned to guide family members out. Over the next 11 years, at great personal risk, she made about 13 trips south and personally guided roughly 70 people to freedom, giving directions that helped dozens more. She declared, "I never ran my train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger." Brown reportedly called her "General Tubman." Both believed in direct action and armed struggle to end slavery.

The raid fails, the fight goes on

Not every abolitionist agreed with Brown's plan. Frederick Douglass, a friend to both, argued against it in August 1859 and declined to join, and Tubman, reportedly ill, did not make it to Harpers Ferry. Brown had hoped enslaved people nearby would rise up and join him, but they did not, and the small band was quickly surrounded. Then-U.S Army Colonel Robert E. Lee, later a racist Confederate general, led the troops that crushed the revolt on October 18. About half the raiders were killed in the fighting, and seven, including Brown, were later hanged. The failure teaches something too: a small, brave group cannot win without a mass base, which is why we build one today. Tubman's fight continued. In 1863, during the Civil War, she helped lead the Combahee River Raid, which freed more than 700 enslaved people.

Black rebels petrified slave-owners

The slave-owners, although talking of "docile" Black workers, knew better. They were petrified of Black rebels and "outside agitators," and patrolled all night with dogs and guns to intimidate enslaved people and keep abolitionist literature away from them. Today the "outside agitators" are antiracist, militant workers and communists in Progressive Labor Party (PLP), fighting to abolish racist capitalism. The bosses assure us the working class is too ground down to fight back, yet they organize cops, plant security, racist white supremacist vigilantes, Black nationalists, and sellout union "leaders" as attack dogs to keep communists out, and fire them when they're discovered in a factory. Why are they afraid if workers are supposed to be so passive? The fight against racist terror rages on today, as the ruling class relies on it to keep workers in line.

Lesson 1: Militancy

Militancy was foremost in Brown's and Tubman's thinking. Tubman declared she would never return to slavery and would rather die fighting. Brown, after fighting in Bloody Kansas in the 1850s, concluded that only bloodshed could end slavery. Many workers agreed, especially after the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that Black people could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories. The fight against police brutality is a class war still being waged, the same one left unfinished by Tubman and Brown. PLP joins the militant antiracist fightback against ICE and the kkkops who killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Shantel Davis and Bryan Bostic (see page 3). The multiracial character of these protests offers glimmers of the working class's revolutionary potential.

Lesson 2: Multiracial unity

Multiracial unity is essential in any fight. Black people escaping enslavement received needed help from white abolitionists, and thousands of workers, Black and white, donated money, harbored fugitives, and defended them from slave-catchers. Among Black and militant white abolitionists, unity developed over years of working together and struggling over differences. Brown and Tubman showed that racist and nationalist ideas cannot be overcome primarily inside one's head; it takes a material change in the way one lives.

Today, uniting to fight the mutual class enemy is one of the main ways people of different backgrounds overcome the "natural" segregation capitalism promotes. Workers still often live in neighborhoods separated by "race," but many are integrated in workplaces and schools, where the bosses try to divide us with racist job classifications and different types of bourgeois culture (e.g., soul "versus" country music). Class-conscious workers in PLP must turn everyday acquaintances into friendships and unbreakable bonds in struggle.

Join PLP

PLP does similar things today. We discuss the need for multiracial unity with friends, coworkers, and neighbors, urge them to join militant antiracist demonstrations, and donate to CHALLENGE. Every such act is a political commitment against racism, capitalism, and imperialism, just as thousands of antislavery workers made against slavery. We invite all workers, soldiers, and students who participate in these struggles to join PLP. When direct action is required, they know to whom to turn. Step by step, the communist movement will grow and lead the working class to revolution and a new world based on members of our class mutually meeting each other's needs, without racist bosses and their profit system.

Inglewood, CA, September 13— The family of Bryan Bostic has been fighting for justice day in and day out since his murder by the Inglewood Police Department  on March 13, 2026. As reported in CHALLENGE, there have been weekly rallies on the corner where he was murdered, a few bigger marches through the city, and weekly attendance at the city council meetings. Like so many other of our working class siblings robbed of their humanity and their lives at the hands of killer KKKops, Bryan’s family has yet to receive any semblance of justice.

Fight must go beyond reforms

Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been raising the idea with family members and supporters that there can be no justice under capitalism. Police are doing exactly what they are meant to do under this rotten system - oppress the working class, particularly those most likely to rise up against the system, Black workers. So when we chant “No good cop in a racist system,”we say it with an exclamation point. It is completely impossible for police to operate any other way under capitalism. This is why while fighting for justice for Bryan, PLP members also call for communism, the system where workers run society and all the police and the ruling class whom they serve will finally meet their demise.

It is with this outlook that we helped the Bostic family to plan and lead the six month memorial for Bryan. Rallying on the same corner that we do every Sunday felt familiar, except this time we were about 50 fighters strong! We emphatically chanted, blew our whistles, and rang bells to let the community driving or walking by know that we will never stop fighting for Bryan and every other member of our class brutalized under this racist system.

Taking the streets for Bryan 

After a 30 minute rally, we took to the streets. The Bostic family asked members of PLP to lead chants on the bullhorn as we marched down one of the busiest streets in the city. Cars honked in support and those watching raised their fists with us. CHALLENGE was gladly accepted from those passing by. The march then took a pause to rally at city hall. 

We heard from several members of the Bostic family who shared how much Bryan meant to them. They were also joined by members of the family of Alex Flores (killed by LAPD on 11/19/19) and Jacque Rabon (killed by Riverside Police Department  on 1/22/26). The families expressed solidarity with one another, shared each other’s grief and pain, but also vowed to stay united to be able to keep up the fight back. 

Next a member of PLP spoke tying police violence to gentrification in the city. As a long term resident of Inglewood, she was able to speak to how she has seen things change in her lifetime as the attacks on the working class grow sharper daily. Every day the ruling class creates its own grave diggers, whether it be through murdering a loved one, evicting a family from their home, denying health care coverage, etc. The working class gains nothing from this rotten system.

The Bostic family asked everyone in attendance to write a note to Bryan. Each was then tied to a balloon and released as we stood in a circle completely stopping traffic from being able to pass. Not a single car honked though as the drivers respected the fight that we were waging and the honoring of a stolen life.

Nothing to gain from capitalism

The march continued to the police station where another comrade gave a speech about capitalism as the root of all the problems in the world today. He was able to stress multiracial unity as an important part of a winning strategy, which was evident in the crowd in attendance that day. 

As we marched back to the start of the rally point, it was hard not to reflect on the past six months of fighting back for Bryan. His family, led by several powerful Black women, have the spark that will one day ignite our class in the fight for a better world. As long as we are deeply rooted with members of the working class, united day after day with them in class struggle, our organization and the fight for communism will continue to grow. Onward!

NEW YORK CITY, SEPTEMBER 1—As students and educators head back to school this fall, the U.S. ruling class remains divided between the openly-racist, Donald Trump-led small-fascist Republicans and the racist big-fascist Democrats. This division has led many students and workers to make the mistake of picking sides between these sets of misleading murderers. In April, at a school in Manhattan, a teacher thought he could openly support the Trump racists without consequence. He thought wrong.

Students fight racist educator

The racist teacher’s Instagram handle includes three Ks in a “joking” nod to the racist Ku Klux Klan. Earlier this year, he compelled his immigrant students to write thank you letters to Trump. He then posted the mandatory assignment on his hallway bulletin board along with a U.S. flag and a portrait of Trump grinning. Workers and students fought back immediately.

When school workers saw the board before school they began yelling about it in the hallway. These workers correctly recognized Trump and his followers’ rhetoric and actions as attacks on the school’s students, workers, and families. They pointed out that the board was offensive and inappropriate – particularly as students and staff in the city have been targeted by ICE. Antiracist teachers then covered the bulletin board with white poster paper (since the board was inside a glass cabinet) and promised to get the materials taken down.

Liberal principal soft on racism at school

After a scolding from the liberal-leaning principal, the racist teacher simply took down the picture of Trump and put up a graphic parroting the liberal phrase “this is what democracy looks like.” Indeed, Democrat and Republican politicians under capitalist “democracy” often defend the rights of racists to verbally attack and terrorize workers. The racist teacher then closed the cabinet without changing anything else. Next, antiracist workers covered the bulletin board again with white paper. After that it was the students, the members of the working class the schools are designed to oppress, who advanced the struggle.

Throughout the morning, students came to investigate the racist bulletin board. They lifted the paper to take pictures, alerted others to its contents, and mobilized to fight back. By the afternoon, students rallied as a group in front of the board and then covered the paper with their own messages. Many of these were “f**k Trump” and one called the President “racist” and “xenophobic.” Only after this action did a dean remove most of the racist’s material. Of course, students' “right” to express themselves on the board was not defended like the racist teacher's.

Students take action

On the following school day, students organized a walkout and rally in front of the school. When large numbers of students amassed on the first floor and demanded the ability to protest, the principal relented and stated he would “respect their right to free speech” outside the school. As they rallied, students chanted “Where’s the justice? Where’s the change? Where’s the promise we made?” The chants could be heard in parts of the school, including by students afraid of potential harassment by NYPD School “Safety” or ICE. Still, by encouraging the protest to go outside, the principal was able to maintain some degree of business as usual —minimizing disruption. It is not uncommon for liberal politicians to allow some groups of workers and youth to let off steam at protests to avoid further rebellions that challenge the system.

This was a great start to a struggle, but more organizing and action is needed if the racist teacher is to be held accountable. Besides a talking to with the principal, and a supposed investigation, the only penalty he faced was losing control (and overtime pay) of the student government he advised. Many of the students who led the struggle are part of that group – which in some ways forced the principal to act. Meanwhile, he continued miseducating the very students whose families are targeted by ICE thugs. Now the question is, how can the struggle continue?

To remove the racist from the school, students and workers will need to take leadership, organize and carry out further action. Every parent, student, and staff member should know what he did and be invited to join the struggle. The racist’s actions are a reflection and symptom of U.S. capitalism in decay. Fighting to hold him accountable for his poisonous crimes against immigrant and Black students and workers is training for the fights ahead. Progressive Labor Party invites everyone to support this struggle and to fight for a communist world where racism will be abolished. Join us!

The MTA bosses have yet another worker’s blood on their filthy, racist hands! 

Conductor Moet McCullum, a 41 year old mother of three and probationary employee, was working as a construction flagger on the subway tracks when a train struck and killed her on September third in The Bronx.

While the train operator was apparently found to be operating his train at higher speeds than he was supposed to, after a warning from a flagger at the previous station, McCullum’s death is another example of how little the MTA’s head stooges care about worker safety, while lying they do. 
McCullum was helping to set up lights (“flagging”) that would alert train operators to workers performing maintenance work on the tracks. Days after her death, MTA management, more concerned with making train “service” than protecting its workforce, reimplemented rule changes to hold back trains when flaggers are setting up the light arrangements. While this has been a policy the Transit Authority bosses used in the past, it was done away with in the years before McCullium’s death. Why? Because MTA is in service to capitalism, a system that  prioritizes profits over safety and workers’ lives!

This is the first such death in the system since track worker Hilarion Joseph in 2023, and another in 2016 with conductor Louis Gray Jr. Both workers were also struck by trains. After Gray’s death, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the Operations Control Center (OCC), which oversees subway trains, failed to notify train dispatchers that Gray’s team of flaggers would be on the track.Transit bosses had also failed to develop a risk assessment strategy for flagging that could have prevented Gray’s death. 

To any worker down here, the failure of the OCC to safeguard workers is no surprise. They routinely order mostly Black and Latin train operators and conductors to “isolate” train cars containing human waste, without proper protective equipment, a known safety violation. They also regularly order workers to investigate other dangerous conditions, such as armed workers. for example.

The NTSB’s audit found that Transit’s repeated failures to provide adequate safety for its workers lead to a 58 percent surge from 2022 to 2023 in what are called “near misses,” which are incidents which could have resulted in worker injury or death.

In summer 2025, the Federal Transportation Authority called out the MTA for repeatedly failing to submit proper safety risk assessments aimed at protecting workers.

TWU Local 100–which represents MTA NYCT workers–is complicit in McCullum’s death. They talk a tough game, but have allowed Transit to consistently drop the ball with protecting workers, and they collude with MTA bosses.

A day after McCullum’s death, the union bosses failed to have mental and emotional support services available for workers who needed it. A 24 hour “safety stand down” took effect, where management temporarily suspended non-emergency track work to have employees review safety protocols, the same ones that failed McCullum in the first place!

Communications Based Train Control, a computer based system that enforces train speed limits, could have been another way to prevent this from happening. However, the MTA bosses are taking their time installing the technology systemwide and are more focused on paying off their exorbitant debt to Wall Street than anything to keep workers secure.

While it is a worthy fight to struggle for better flagging rules to protect workers on the tracks, only communism can ensure that as many safeguards as possible can be in place to stop these tragedies from happening. Under communism, regard for protecting workers would be primary and not making as much dirty, blood soaked money as possible. We owe it to McCullum to continue to struggle with coworkers on the job that a better world is possible!