Correction

The article titled “Lessons from Marquette Park: Organize to Win, Smash the Fascists!” published on August 27th contained errors. It stated that participants ambushed a truck at the Nazis’ setup location and used the opportunity to get inside their office. In fact, there was no truck ambush. Participants gathered outside the building, and entry was gained through the front door.

During the action, one comrade was separated from the group and was turned over to police by the Nazis. She was the only person charged. 
If you have experiences that add to the memory of Marquette Park, or would like to suggest corrections to future articles, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sharing your fightback story matters

I just want to put in a plug for folks to write more about their struggles. The last issue was great for our work in Maryland. The lead article about protesting police during their NIGHT OUT event fit right into our new fight for justice for Tawfiq Bernard who was killed by the Prince George’s County police – another shooting into a car. We were at a press conference with 200 other residents and were able to share CHALLENGE with several folks who were interested in the idea of mobilizing rather than relying on lawyers. The Quantum article was timely as I leafleted with a student  group at the University of Maryland to protest Quantum’s career fair and next week there is a national symposium at UMD that we will protest. And our article on our fight about ICE getting a permit for a neighborhood building was used at our rally this week and, while our analysis could have been sharper, the conversations were at a higher  political level.  One of our friends was delighted to see the article and came to one of our gatherings. The series on Haiti has also been useful in our basebuilding. Showing our work around the country and linking it to our local struggles builds respect for the Party and improves our distribution.
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Bryan and our class deserves communism

On Sunday Sept 13th Progressive Labor Party members, community members, family members of victims of police brutality, and others joined the Bostic family as they marched to commemorate the sixth month anniversary murder of Byran Bostic by the Inglewood Police Department. The march began at Hillcrest and E Nutwood St where Bryan was detained by Inglewood Police on the night of March 10, 2026. The march began at 10am and by 10:30am dozens of workers were in attendance carrying posters stating; “Justice for Bryan Bostic”, “A traffic stop should not result in death”, “Honk for justice”. 

Some of the chants by community members included “What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like.” But I kept asking myself how does the wrongful killing of another member of our community look like democracy? I am sure she was referring to all those of us in attendance marching but the question still stands. How is marching on these streets chanting the names of those murdered by police democracy?

I think she meant to say that this is what communism looks like. Communism looks like the multiracial, multi-generational, mass mobilization of workers fighting back against fascist attacks of brutality that capitalism offers us. These sentiments were echoed in a speech given at Inglewood city hall by one of our Party members. 

He stated that the death of our comrades is not only felt by their families alone but by the whole community. Alex Flores, killed by Newton Police station in 2019, was a kind man who would walk neighborhood kids home. Our goal is not to elect another mayor in hopes that he will offer us another solution. Like our comrade stated, “The system is working exactly as intended” 

A young man there said “His story hits me because that could’ve been me. That could’ve been anyone, one of us.” It reminded me why I fight for communism everyday - so that workers no longer have to live with the daily fear of when or how capitalism will take them out. I will continue to fight until we see the world that our class deserves: communism.
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Club discusses Haiti

The leaders of our Spanish-speaking Progressive Labor Party club and study group meet monthly to discuss our work and the state of the world. 

The following letter was written as part of a collective discussion. We wanted to clarify our position on the history of Haiti and the key leadership of Black workers, and to make sure we always fight racism and the racist divisions of our class, building unity among our friends in our immediate base and in the broader working class.

For centuries, the working class in Haiti has suffered colonization, invasion, and plunder at the hands of imperialist rulers. France never forgave Haiti for making a revolution and becoming the first country with an independent state governed by Black people, one that later helped many countries in the Americas, including the United States, by sending fighters to help win their independence. In 1825, France forced Haiti to pay for winning its independence, and the related debts were not fully paid off until 1947. Some economists estimate the true financial cost amounts to tens of billions of dollars. This was compounded by a cruel dictatorship led by the Duvaliers, father and son, who massacred and terrorized Haitian workers for 29 years, until it fell thanks to the militancy and fightback of our class siblings in Haiti. That decades-long struggle cost tens of thousands of lives.

Haiti also endured repeated U.S. invasions, including a 19-year military occupation from 1915 to 1934. For generations, Haiti’s forests and timber were depleted for foreign profit, leaving the country deforested and devastated and turning it into the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 

Haiti has also had to endure the presence of United Nations peacekeeping troops, who repressed the population. The peacekeepers have been implicated in sexual abuse, and they infected Haitians with cholera, which set off an epidemic that killed many people because Haiti’s public health and water systems had been left in ruins. Then came the earthquake, which Haitian officials say killed more than 300,000 people, destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, and left millions adrift.

These catastrophes, the cruel racism against Haiti’s people, which is inherent to the capitalist system, the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and the criminal gangs now ravaging the country have forced many Haitians to flee. Many went to Cuba, where they have found solidarity; to the Dominican Republic, where racism and persecution against them run deep in society and where they are deported en masse; and to the United States, where they had obtained Temporary Protected Status (TPS). This summer, after a court fight, the racist and fascist Trump administration ended TPS for Haiti, putting more than 300,000 people at risk of losing their jobs and being deported. Now many Haitian workers have lost their jobs and live in terror and fear, hunted and deported. After being deported back to Haiti, many are robbed and murdered by criminal gangs.

Our Party has always stood in solidarity with Haitian workers, and we have a club in a city in Haiti. Despite extremely difficult conditions, this club has carried out its work of organizing, helping, and advancing the Party’s line. In spite of the situation, we continue to support the Haitian people, especially its working class.

That is why we firmly oppose and condemn any racism toward Haitian workers. We will not tolerate a racist attack on our class siblings under any circumstances. Every May Day, we march in Flatbush, where there is a large presence of Haitian workers, in solidarity with them. We distribute hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE, which are well received in this neighborhood. Our Party’s line is, and always will be, that Black workers are called to be the leaders of the communist revolution, wherever they are from, because for many centuries they fought, and still fight, against the horrific slavery they were subjected to and the racism that still persists.

COMRADES, LET’S BE AWARE THAT RACIST, CRUEL CAPITALISM TRIES TO DIVIDE OUR WORKING CLASS IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. 

LET’S NOT FALL INTO ITS GAME AND ITS RACIST PROPAGANDA.

WE WILL BE MUCH STRONGER THE MORE UNITED WE ARE AND THE MORE WE GROW THE RANKS OF OUR PARTY, UNTIL IT BECOMES A MASS PARTY THAT LEADS THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION AND THE SEIZURE OF POWER FOR THE WORKING CLASS.
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Sorry if you weren’t invited to the White House for dinner last week

Politico, 9/21–OpenAI President Greg Brockman is expected to attend President Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House this week…Brockman was not included on an initial, partial list of tech and business leaders that a senior U.S. official provided to reporters on Friday. That list of expected attendees included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and former Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Immigrants in South Africa await deadline with unease

Al Jazeera, 9/28–Bishop Raphael Bahebwa is in hiding, afraid he could be attacked for speaking out for the rights of foreigners in South Africa. “I am in hiding now because they say they are going to kill me for speaking about the rights of foreigners,” he told Al Jazeera. Bahebwa has lived in South Africa for 26 years, after arriving as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In that time, he has watched antiforeigner sentiment flare repeatedly in the country he came to call home. But he says this year feels different. A September 30 deadline declared by March and March, an anti-immigration movement that has led protests across South Africa this year, has renewed fears of violence among migrant communities.

War in Ethiopia and Tigray restarts

France24, 9/28–Ethiopia’s army commander on Sunday accused Eritrea and Sudan of backing armed groups fighting its troops in the north of the country. Heavy clashes have resumed between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government since Wednesday, raising fears of a return to a 2020-2022 civil war in which an estimated 600,000 people died. The TPLF has seized airports and launched attacks into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara, saying they were engaged in a “defensive war” against the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. 

Gates calls for what capitalists always need: regulation

The Guardian, 9/28–Bill Gates has called on the U.S.’s federal legislators and law enforcers to regulate the development of artificial intelligence (AI), saying in an interview airing on Sunday that the technology left unchecked could cause “a billion deaths” and “no one thinks self-regulation is enough.” “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist said to Kristen Welker, the NBC Meet the Press host. “And that has to be a required thing.”

Pakistan’s bosses find ways to limit protests

New York Times, 9/27–[In] Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad…police sealed off the city with more than 1,500 shipping containers ahead of a protest planned by the main opposition party. Two rows of colorful containers snake along the road leading to the prime minister’s house and Parliament, pushing the representatives of the Pakistani people out of sight and out of reach. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the opposition party, had called on its supporters to march peacefully on Islamabad to demand the release of its leader…prime minister Imran Khan. He has been imprisoned since 2023 on corruption charges that he and his party describe as politically motivated…The government has not yet said how long it will keep Islamabad in a state of quasi lockdown. But the containers have so far been the most visible sign of the government’s effort to quell widespread discontent over the repression of dissent and the crackdown on Mr. Khan’s party. 

Protesters demand reinstatement of protections for Haitian workers

LA Progressive, 9/27– “Going back to Haiti means a very likely death sentence. The U.S. State Department itself says if you’re going to Haiti, before you go, you should make out your will and register your DNA, just in case we just have a body and we have to identify it,” said Stephanie, one of 13 speakers protesting the forced deportation of 350,000 Haitians on the National Day of Protest on September 24 in support of the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for Haitians by demanding the reestablishment of the program that has been terminated by the Trump administration…Haitians were initially granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the aftermath of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January 2010 that saw over 200,000 people killed and more than 300,000 people injured. The program offers survivors safe shelter allowing them to remain temporarily in the United States until conditions in their home country make a return safe…

Catastrophic flooding from capitalist global warming has devastated the working class in Nepal and Tibet, with nearly 1,400 confirmed deaths, over 5,000 missing, and more than 84,000 left homeless. Globally, this past August was the hottest in 132 years, at an average of 1.65 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (copernicus.eu). The capitalist bosses’ ruthless grow-or-die imperative demands ever more energy, most of it from heat-trapping fossil fuels. Each day is pushing us closer to a global tipping point where whole regions may become inhabitable.   

Historically, two forms of capitalist crisis have opened the door to communist revolution: economic depression and imperialist war. If communists can once again lead the working class to throw off its chains, the climate crisis too will create revolutionary opportunities. The mass heroism shown by workers in Nepal, risking life and limb to rescue flood victims from buried tunnels, is a glimpse of the working-class solidarity that will change the world. The selflessness of these workers, even under capitalist leadership, is the raw material of a communist future. The international working class is the only force powerful enough to defeat climate change. It will be fully unleashed in the great battle to smash capitalism.  

No help from bosses

The flood began with a one-square-kilometer collapse of glacial ice and rock on the slopes of the Himalayas on the Chinese-Nepali border. The resulting avalanche into a mountain valley generated a magnitude 5.2 earthquake and triggered a torrent of water and debris that tore through villages at a speed of over 100 miles per hour. The port of Gyirong had only seven minutes to respond. Other districts had essentially no advance warning, despite more than a decade of flood risk alerts from scientists.

The fake communists and political misleaders who rule Nepal have subjected workers to years of austerity amid rising fuel and food prices. Last year, “Gen Z protests” erupted when the government punished internet providers for tax evasion, essentially banning social media in a time of record youth unemployment. Masses of young workers live in poverty or are forced to migrate. One-third of Nepal’s gross domestic product comes from remittances from migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. 

Since 2017, the Chinese ruling class has eroded Nepal’s historic dependence on India by investing in ports, energy and transportation improvements across the country. China funds hydropower dams, Kathmandu’s Pokhara Airport, and the Trans-Himalayan Railway linking Tibet to Kathmandu. But as an “upstream superpower,” China is reluctant to share its hydrological data (Lowy Institute, 5/9/23), and Nepal’s scientists have accused it of deliberately withholding critical early warning information (Climate Home News, 8/22/24). The border between the two countries is heavily militarized for “security,” a capitalist inefficiency that slows responses to emergencies.  

Capitalism feeds climate crisis

Worldwide, over 1.5 billion people live in low-lying coastal areas and river deltas susceptible to sudden flooding (copernicus.eu). The Himalayas, like other high-altitude climates, are hypersensitive to global warming. Their vulnerable masses largely reside in a dense band from China’s Pearl River Delta through parts of Indonesia and South East Asia to India (The Changing Function of River Deltas, Manning, 2025). Like most victims of climate change, they are among the least responsible for their plight.

The capitalist bosses have created a dangerously warming planet because they are wedded to short-term maximum profits from fossil fuels, despite a growing abundance of affordable solar, wind, and battery-powered clean energy. The biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, and now the largest exporter of oil and “natural” gas, is the U.S. The biggest emitter today—and the leading exporter of coal—is inter-imperialist rival China. The difference is that China has also made massive investments in clean energy and EVs, seizing what appears to be an insurmountable lead in those industries of the future. 

Meanwhile, three of four cars sold globally are still powered by gasoline. Gas and coal still run most of the world’s power grid. Conventional steel and concrete, both of them huge polluters, remain the bosses’ building materials of choice. Around 30 percent of food produced under capitalism goes to waste, pouring more billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Ditto for fast fashion and the latest smartphones, where capitalists create demand through planned obsolescence. And according to the UN, up to 7 percent of carbon emissions worldwide stem from military activity, including the wars in Iran and Ukraine (ET EnergyWorld, 4/25). Besides endangering the polar ice shelves, the permafrost, and the ocean currents, carbon pollution kills five million people a year (Guardian, 11/29/23). 

A “green” future is red

All of capitalism’s glaring failures are correctable. Each one is a reason to fight for communism. Our task is to build a mass Progressive Labor Party that can overthrow this mass-murdering, planet-destroying profit system. We saw a glimpse of our communist future when teachers and staff at a school in the Nuwakot district saved 900 students from drowning. We saw another when a school bus driver rescued 50 children from the floodwaters (CNN, 9/1). In town after town, the working class rose to the occasion in the face of disaster. When we embrace the heroic spirit of these workers and add internationalist, anti-racist, working-class consciousness, no bosses’ military can defeat us.

Unbound by the constraints of nation and profit, communist society will stop and reverse global warming and the unnatural disasters of capitalism. When mobilized by communist ideas, the working class has achieved victories that seemed impossible, from the defeat of German and Japanese fascism in World War II to the eradication of syphilis and malaria in China. Dare to struggle, dare to win!