Over 6,000 educators joined forces and shut down schools in San Francisco. Lasting four days, the strike was settled with some reform victories and lessons about how class consciousness is alive among workers. Teachers, paraeducators, security guards, therapists, social workers, librarians, other school workers and the janitors took part. The strike showed the potential for workers to organize and fight for our class. Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were active in the strike, bringing communist politics to the picket lines.

The Party has been active in the schools fights since the 1970s.  In fact, a few of our members were involved in the last teachers’ strike in 1979.

We have party members in the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) union. We are in the union’s delegate assembly, executive board, bargaining team and among retirees. We are also members and leaders in the fights against anti-Palestine genocide and against Zionism in the schools and against ICE terror.  

UESF focused on five demands:  two for the “common good” (demands which affect our communities) about sanctuary schools and housing, and demands around special education, fully-funded health care and wages.  

Workers are united in demanding better conditions 

Over 97 percent of the members of UESF voted to go on strike, and because the strike was so strong, the District had to shut the schools down on Day One, and they stayed shut for the duration.

Related to this, 30-40 rank-and-file members of the Oakland Education Association (OEA) had a wildcat walkout from their training in solidarity with UESF. Members of OEA voted to strike and may go out very soon.

On day one of the strike at a big rally of around 5,000-10,000 people, several members of PLP passed out 800 leaflets, and over the course of the strike, we passed out all of our CHALLENGEs and made contacts. 

Strikers and their supporters picketed for two hours in the morning at schools and then, every afternoon, had city-wide actions for two to three hours.  One day we even had an action at noon and a massive one at 5:00 p.m. where bargaining took place.

The working class was united in supporting the strike

Before and during the strike, there was tremendous solidarity from students, families, community members, and retirees at a town hall forum and at all other actions.  We had a hundred plus people doing nonstop picketing and chanting.  Many chants reflected our demands for housing and sanctuary schools. 

At the big community rallies, over 10,000-20,000 people participated, made a pro-strike human art piece on the beach, marched in a working-class community and in front of the District offices and City Hall.  We then marched around the block where negotiations were taking place–IN THE RAIN!!!  

Due to our militancy and energy, the strike quickly won some demands, but showed the limits of reform demands. For the first time ever, in our settlement, we have token statements for shelter for our unhoused families and for making our kids safe from ICE raids at the schools. 

Reform struggles can lead to opportunities to raise revolutionary politics

We got significant raises for the classified staff (paras), in fact more of a percentage than the certificated staff.  This was a conscientious demand since most of the paras are women of color.  A stand against racism and sexism! 

We did not get fully funded dependent care right away, but a partial discount the first year and the next year, 100 percent.  
For the first time ever, paras will meet with the special education teachers that they work with away from the classroom to talk about how to help their students with special needs.  

We are a way from revolution, but as Lenin wrote, strikes are schools of war. They can help workers learn how to organize for revolution. This was a momentous strike, one which showed the potential for the working class to fight and win against the ruling class and its sell-out politicians. It also was a great attempt to put the Party forward in a short amount of time.  We realize that workers need to run the schools, not just work in them. Under capitalism, the schools are owned and run by the ruling class, preparing our students for jobs doing menial labor and as cannon fodder for war. Only after we destroy this system will we have schools that work for us!

In Mexico, following the February 22nd assassination of the drug trafficker Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed 'El Mencho,' a wave of violence erupted. Chaotic images of the destruction have circulated across news sites and social media, with residents and travelers being instructed to shelter in place. The most reported violence is in Jalisco. But there are roadblocks, fires, bombs in public places, and violence throughout the country. 

El Mencho was born in the state of Michoacán, where we have supporters of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). This group was key in organizing the demonstration in the center of Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacán, to protest the disappearance of a teacher named Abril (see CHALLENGE, October 4, 2025). Shortly afterward, the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, was murdered during a public holiday. Many participants in the demonstration for Abril went to Mexico City to protest the assassination of the reformer Manzo, which seemed to represent a new level of impunity and was linked to the demonstration against Abril's disappearance (see CHALLENGE, December 10, 2025).

Now we see that the government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum charged three local government officials and members of the same MORENA party are being accused of being the original perpetrators of the murder (El País, 2/17). The same article suggests that the Mexican state maintains there is a connection between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Manzo's murder. This is the same cartel attributed to being led by El Mencho.

The provocative title of the book, "Cartels Don't Exist," promotes a thesis well-known to the working class worldwide: that criminal organizations are symbols. These organizations are the outward form, the appearance, of capitalism. There is a relationship between businesspeople and politicians who take advantage of these organizations to implement the violence that maintains the social system and blame it on something external to themselves. These critics of the cartel concept are liberals and will not name the essence, which is capitalism.

The capitalist media meanwhile are experts in sensationalizing the violence in a country like Mexico, painting a caricature of workers across the greater region as having some kind of general connection to crime and drug trafficking. This racist characterization helps the capitalist state rationalize and launch the brutal attacks we are seeing in real time as ICE and Border Patrol shoot, kidnap, and deport our class sisters and brothers. The bosses and their media rarely if ever discuss the role of imperialism in destabilizing entire countries’ economies and displacing millions of workers, such as the effects of NAFTA signed into law by liberal racist President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

The reactionary and sexist forces were local, and the liberal government of Sheinbaum and Morena had nothing for the working class except to send money and soldiers to serve the bosses. The question of class is fundamental and scientific. We must analyze the balance of class forces, as Mao Zedong and communists in China did nearly a century ago, and organize the workers to combat racism and sexism, organizing as a class in struggle—not to demand restitution or appeal to the bosses' class. 

The challenge is great because death and life are the two sides of the scale. But this is the condition of the working class until the revolution. The counterattack of struggle is the only pressure our class has on the side of life, and all the pressure of weapons and money is on the side of death. We must get the soldiers and workers alike to take up arms under the leadership of the mass international PLP and confront the bosses to escape this ruthless capitalist hell and build a new communist world.

As President Donald  Trump convenes his “Board of Peace” to consolidate Israeli and U.S. exploitation and seizure of Gaza, death and suffering continue to stalk the population. Estimates are that 3-15 times as many Gazans have died since October, 2023 as the official toll of over 72,000 - not only from conflict, but from malnutrition and disease. At least 56% of the dead are women, children and the elderly (Reuters, 2/19). Since the so-called ceasefire, Israel has occupied 53% of the territory, relief supplies remain severely restricted, and almost no one has been allowed egress for life-saving medical treatment. The long-standing Israeli dream of ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians is continuing apace in Gaza, as it also accelerates in the West Bank. 

Meanwhile Trump envisions a luxurious territory under his control, not only as a beachfront resort, but as an anchor of U.S. control of the fossil fuel resources in and around Gaza, indeed in the entire Middle East (BBC, 1/26).

Reshifting of U.S. bosses’ world order

The Board of Peace invitation to over 50 countries does not even mention Gaza per se, but purports to be an engine for solving widespread international conflicts. It is an effort to rework the NATO/U.S. domination of the world after World War II into a new structure of U.S. domination, this time with non-European autocratic nations as allies. 

Among the 26 countries that have so far accepted Board membership are Argentina, El Salvador, Hungary, Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, and Israel. Although EU countries have declined to join, Russia, China and India are still considering it. The Executive Board consists of Chairman Trump (for life), as well as Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Mark Rubio, the president of the World Bank and the Chairman of Apollo International. No Palestinians are included of course, except a technical board seat for the collaborationist Palestinian Authority that administers the West Bank. Security is proposed to be enforced by thousands of international soldiers housed at a huge new military base to be constructed on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza [The Guardian, 2/19]. Armed Israeli-supported Palestinian gangs that have opposed Hamas and are thought to have seized much of what relief has entered the Strip will be empowered as police.

More suffering for Palestinian workers

For those in Gaza, the plan offers no hope of resuming a stable life - no goal of their wellbeing or say in their future. We do not know how many Gazans support Hamas, but we do know that many are firmly nationalist and do not wish to leave. Hamas, although greatly weakened, is refusing to surrender its remaining weapons. 

As communists, we recognize that the weakness of the anti-imperialist movement of Palestinians, from the time of the Ottoman Empire to British colonialism to U.S. sponsored Zionism, has been the lack of a class-conscious resistance and continued loyalty to a Palestinian ruling class. Whether in the West Bank or Gaza, governance has always been controlled by a small elite, in league with international capitalists. Palestinian workers have no hope of achieving a society in their interests unless they become part of an international working-class alliance, be they Arab or Jew or from all nations of the world. As declining U.S. capitalists become more desperate and competition with China accelerates, all workers of the world face the risk of devastating war and deprivation. It is urgent that we build an international communist movement to overthrow capitalism and imperialism everywhere - our survival is at stake.

Students and workers from the Philippines, together with supporters in the United States — including members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)— have organized over the past several weeks around several individual cases, winning important victories, including distributing CHALLENGE to raise awareness of the Party’s politics. 

The first campaign took place in Washington State to stop the deportation of Kuya G (“kuya” meaning brother). Despite suffering from serious medical conditions, including ulcerative colitis, and after months in a detention facility, he was scheduled to be deported to the Philippines. A broad protest effort emerged: medical professionals, including a PLP doctor, submitted letters documenting the danger to his health. Rallies were held at the detention center and the airport, and demonstrations took place at the Philippine Embassy and at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C.

As authorities prepared to place him on the deportation flight, protesters — aided by local union members — were able to move through the airport and reach the tarmac. Faced with mounting pressure and clear medical evidence, officials were forced to acknowledge that he was too ill to travel. He was removed from the plane, later released from detention, and is now receiving medical treatment. The victory demonstrated the power of collective action when workers and students act together.

A second case involved the arrest of a young worker from the U.S. supporting Indigenous agricultural workers in Mindoro. On January 1, the Armed Forces of the Philippines bombed the area, killing children and another student and displacing hundreds. The young worker was detained by the military for a month. Sustained pressure followed: protests were organized at the U.S. State Department, the Senate office buildings, and the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C., alongside actions nationwide. After weeks of mobilization, she was released and returned to the United States. Again, organized pressure proved decisive.

These struggles have prompted deeper discussion about the political trajectory of the Philippines. After mass protests forced the removal and exile of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to Hawaii, the succeeding Aquino government — representing landlord interests — was not supported by many on the left. The military, however, backed Aquino, and as many workers observed, liberal electoral change left fundamental conditions untouched. Within a relatively short period, first Rodrigo Duterte and then Marcos Jr. returned to power, continuing to serve U.S. imperial interests. Nevertheless, more work needs to be done to win workers to revolutionary communist politics. Debates continue around the characterization of the Philippines as semi-feudal, even as the central role of the urban working class is increasingly acknowledged.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post, under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, recently ran an editorial praising the military buildup in the Philippines as a necessary measure to protect trade routes — a clear example of how the ruling-class media promote imperial expansion. At the University of Maryland, the TerpCHRP group is working to build a campaign opposing military funding for research and development on campus, recognizing the university’s role in supporting war-making infrastructure.

These developments underscore both the possibilities and the challenges ahead. Victories have shown that organized workers and students can win concrete gains, but broader political clarity and sustained organizing remain essential.