As President Donald Trump was preparing for his inauguration, workers and students from across the state of California headed to the middle of the state for our annual Progressive Labor Party retreat. This nearly was cancelled due to the climate change induced fires ravaging Southern California, but we were able to ensure that the fight for communism continued one way or the other. A committed group of veteran, new, and base members set aside their long weekend to discuss how to grow our Party.

What's in a revolution?

In our sessions, we took up the theme of Lenin’s conditions for revolution. Session one (the ruling class can’t rule in the old way) outlined the changes we see as a party that are driving the bosses to remove the liberal facade and replace it with fascism. We discussed splits in the ruling class and how that’s impeding the maneuverability of the liberal, imperialist wing of the ruling class. There were conversations about sharpening inter-imperialist rivalries and the impact that continues to have on how the bosses operate. Two new comrades also included presentations on voter turnout and spyware on social media as signs that a functioning democracy is less and less a part of the face of capitalism.
Session two went on to look at the second condition for revolution- the working class can’t live in the old way. Presenters included everything from changes in wealth and income disparities, to health care costs, to climate change to emphasize the despair facing our class. No one there needed to be told this, but it helped to be able to connect these conditions back to the first session more clearly.

Session three brought out the third condition: the need for a party. We felt this was the most crucial session. Over the last five years, we have seen working class uprisings, from the George Floyd movement to the campus fightback against the war in Gaza. Although the level of class consciousness has improved as a result of these movements and others, as well as a deeper understanding of the system of capitalism as the problem, without convincing the working class of the need for a party, these new understandings of our class fall short of their revolutionary potential. So we really honed in on what is a party, why we need one and why a revolution can’t happen without one. What is democratic centralism and why do we need it?  What are the key places where we organize, what holds workers back from joining a group, and what makes the Progressive Labor Party the best choice when someone does take the leap to join a party. Through activities and discussions, it became clear the necessity of our organization.

Taking over the bosses’ military is key

We further enhanced our understanding of one of the key places for organizing revolution through a film screening of Winter Soldier. We heard soldiers report on the horrors they saw and committed during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Their accounts identified the racist nature of the treatment and the connection to imperialism. It became clear through the discussion of the film the revolutionary potential that soldiers have and that we cannot win a revolution without organizing in this key area of work.

We rounded out the weekend with a planning session to kick off 2025 with a fight back roadmap. College students shared their plans for organizing on campuses across the state. Workers identified their job sites and mass organizations as tools for growing the Party. Between the fires and the ramifications of the inauguration, we have no lack of issues around which to organize. 

Next steps

Everyone left with a plan and a new sense of purpose. One new comrade remarked that the weekend made her job as a Party member much clearer. Another highlight of the weekend was the collectivity of the event from start to finish. From planning the sessions to cooking and cleaning, all participants contributed in numerous ways. It presented a view of the potential of a future where our class leads society. A brand new base member also admired that our group was “more practice than talk.” A young college student remarked they felt more at home this weekend than they had in a long time and described the future as bright. Considering there have been six college students who have joined the Party since our February 2024 retreat, we have to agree that our growth provides a glimmer of hope for the upcoming period.

As we return back to the various cities, towns, and college campuses spread across a state that stretches the length of space from New Jersey to Georgia, we know that we will feel isolated. Yet, this weekend gave us the recharge and the tools needed to take on the daily grind of secluded work. We are more confident than ever that the working class desperately needs Progressive Labor Party, and we have our plan on how to bring it to them. The fight continues!

Bernardo (Joe) Cerini was born on February 20, 1932, named Bernardo Cerini, and lived his entire life in New York City. He grew up during the hardest years of the Great Depression. His family had a very hard time. Joe remembered dreading that there would be nothing to eat at home. The brutality of capitalism was a lesson he learned from an early age.
Witnessing racism and 

U.S. imperialism firsthand

In 1950, when he was 18, he was drafted. Draftees were sent by train to basic training in the South. As a NYC contingent it was a multiracial group and they made friends as they journeyed south. They were traveling into the Jim Crow south of the 1950s that was still segregated. Joe and his buddies fought many fights against racists, on the base and in the local town, whenever they hung out as a multi-racial group. Eventually they were reassigned to separate units and labelled as troublemakers. Joe wore that label proudly.

After their training, the soldiers were shipped to Korea to the Korean War involving many countries. Now, besides the overt racism of the Army, Joe learned of the horrors of imperialism. He said that some of the troops from other countries had been mustered by “recruiting” men from their prisons, putting them in uniforms and shipping them to Korea. These guys were brutal. They stole everything off the bodies of fallen soldiers and peasants around them, wore looted watches all the way up their arms, and didn’t give a damn about who they killed. Joe said he was more afraid of the troops behind him than the troops facing him!

But the greatest horror of the war was the abject savagery of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. Air Force would swoop in before an assault and drop white phosphorus on a village. It burns right through human flesh and the hides of animals destroying every living thing in its path. Then the troops were ordered to attack, running over the dead in their assault. Joe was sickened beyond belief even as he retold this 70 years later. 

When he returned to the U.S., Bernardo changed his name to Joe, in honor of Joseph “Uncle Joe” Stalin who was the leader of the heroic Soviet Red Army that crushed the Nazi war machine in WWII and, and in honor of Joe Hill, an American union organizer who was framed for murder by the bosses and executed in 1904. He was evolving into a new person – a fierce fighter for the working class.

Becoming a lifelong PL’er

When he met the newly formed Progressive Labor Party in the 1960s Joe embraced it wholeheartedly! Here were the comrades, the like-minded workers with whom he would fight for the rest of his life! Here was an analysis of the world that made sense of all his experiences and offered a view to the only future for the working class – communist revolution!

Joe was in PLP for 60 years. He was a NYC transit worker for over 30 years. He and fellow white transit workers went to Harlem to actively recruit Black workers into transit jobs. He was a dedicated leader in the historic 1966 strike, when 33,000 transit workers completely shut down the city for 12 days. Joe also dedicated himself to the production and distribution of CHALLENGE. He was still distributing the paper at the age of 90! As he lay ill, his last words were, “Tell everyone, fight for communism, power to the working class.” We will, Joe, we will!

Three comrades in Progressive Labor Party attended the first meeting of our union’s Immigrant Solidarity Working Group, along with 50 other members from many CUNY campuses. A Law School professor spoke to us about how Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents have different restrictions depending on whether it’s a public or a private space. For ICE to come onto campus (a private space), their agents are required to have a judicial warrant, which needs to be signed by a judge. However, ICE often barges into private spaces without a legitimate warrant, so their agents need to be confronted and asked to see a warrant. One of the projects of our group is a Rapid Response Team that will gather quickly at sites where ICE has come to arrest people.

Organizing antiracist fightback

The group is just beginning, but two things impressed me at the meeting. First, many were excited about starting committees on campus to reach out to students and other faculty members with tabling, teach-ins, film-showings, and putting pressure on the administration to keep ICE off-campus at a time when Mayor Adams is welcoming ICE’s presence. Second, there is a qualitative difference when a union throws its resources into a campaign. Our union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), has "Immigrants Are Welcome Here!" flyers that professors are putting on their office doors. It has printed thousands of small Know Your Rights cards to hand out on campus. The union website has a wealth of information about immigrant rights. The union has members from many countries, and the PSC is part of the NYC Immigration Coalition with other unions and community groups.

One of the films we plan to show on campuses is the 2024 film, Borderland: The Line Within, which graphically depicts how ICE detention centers are not only on the southern border but are spread throughout the country. The border is everywhere! Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the border was increasingly militarized and the massive ICE infrastructure grew. Dozens of companies, including Amazon, make huge profits from contracts as part of the Border Industrial Complex, which last year under Biden received $25 billion in contracts.

The film centers on undocumented immigrants who have refused to be cowed or be silent, and who are fighting for the right of those without papers to live where they want. For most of human history, there were no borders and no nations. Borderland also shows us the admirable work of organizations like The Border Network for Human Rights and No More Deaths,  groups with volunteers who leave gallons of water and set up tents with food and medicine for thirsty and hungry migrants crossing the desert.

Communists are vitally important in bringing a class analysis to the fight against deportations. We understand that borders benefit capitalists in two ways:

(1) They produce a class of undocumented workers who are exploited on farms, meatpacking and poultry plants, construction sites, and restaurants, but who are afraid to protest or organize for fear their bosses will turn them over to ICE. These vulnerable workers are a source of super profits for their employers, but they also benefit U.S. capitalism as a whole because their low pay keeps wages low for all workers, and 

(2) The big capitalists like Elon Musk (worth over $400 billion) and the politicians that serve them work overtime trying to convince native-born workers that their problems are the results of foreign workers being here, splitting the working class. As though the anxiety workers feel over high prices, insufficient wages, high levels of debt, and inadequate medical care are because of other workers with the same problems, and not because of the billionaires whose greed knows no limits!

When we chant “Stop Racist Deportations, Working People Have No Nation!” or “No ICE, No Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here!”, we’re motivated by a vision of a future world without borders, without nations, without the current system of global apartheid, and without bosses — a world run by workers. That’s communism.

We don’t need permission to defend the working class!

Today, one hundred students, professors and professional staff rallied and marched on the campus of Queens College (QC), part of the City University of New York. We were protesting a violation of the QC president’s regulations! According to the president,  any group wishing to hold a demonstration must submit a request at least three days before the event. This and other tight restrictions  are part of a nationwide blitzkrieg on the part of university administrators to curb college protests, especially protests against the Israel/U.S. genocide in Gaza.

There is a clock tower on campus named after three murdered civil rights workers: Andrew Goodman (who attended QC), James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. One of the speakers at today’s protest remarked, “The administration never tires of extolling Andrew Goodman. But do you think Andrew Goodman would have asked for permission to protest injustice on campus?” The large crowd responded loudly, “NO!!”

We marched around campus, stopping at buildings that had been the site of past anti-war protests and protests against tuition increases, with people holding large placards with photos of those events. The rally and march was organized by the chapter of the Professional Staff Congress, which last week had an online teach-in and collected 565 faculty and student signatures on a petition opposing the new policy. We marched into the administration building to deliver the petition — violating the new “no inside demonstrations” rule!

The PSC has also organized an Immigrant Solidarity Working Group, in which PLP comrades are participating. Today, a speaker asked, “If ICE shows up on our campus, do you think we’ll ask for permission to confront them and protect our students from being thrown into a detention center and deported?” The answer again was a vigorous “NO!!”

Years before he co-authored the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx wrote a series of articles arguing that peasants collecting dead wood in the forests of the big landlords should not be beaten and in some cases killed for “property theft.” Marx argued that the fallen tree branches were no longer the property of the landed aristocracy and could be collected by the peasants to warm their homes. He and Engels consistently defended the right of the exploited to organize, to demonstrate and speak out, to publish radical pamphlets, and to strike. In a period of rising fascist repression, the battle to protect freedom of assembly and speech of students, faculty and staff is a necessary part of a larger struggle for social justice and for communism.
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Our Black students matter

During my morning prep, a comrade in my club sent a flier for the memorial for a student who was murdered.  Her principal had refused to have any memorial of him in the building, even going so far as to say that teachers weren’t even legally allowed to say his name.  I mentioned this to several teachers who were prepping with me.

One of the teachers pointed out that a similar event had happened at her school and that the administration had wanted to keep it business as usual.  I pointed out that this was racism, as in predominantly Black schools, the students who are murdered due to capitalism’s wanton violence are considered a norm.  The bosses want the death of these students to be seen as an everyday occurrence and not as a horrible tragedy.  Their administrators carry out this racist idea that this violence is just the scenery in a Black school. 

The teacher, who was both Black and a woman, told us teachers how hard it was to lose students and then be told to tell the survivors to “get it together” and excel in class.  She ended up having to leave that historically Black school and was happy to hear that our comrade had fought so hard for Black youth to be seen as valuable and their death is a tragedy that should be felt.  This moment helped me to remember that we should be bringing up the victories our comrades are having due to good practice in their work.  These are the little things that count.
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Class society is not human nature; fightback is

Over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Progressive Labor Party hosted a West Coast retreat which brought together workers and students to discuss the world situation and how the Party’s line can be put forth to workers in our base and mass organizations. The retreat focused on three specific areas: (1) Bosses can’t rule in the old way, (2) Workers can’t live in the old way and (3) Why we need a Party. We also had one person join the Party who has since been meeting with the education club in Southern California. 

One of the most impressive parts of the retreat was the collectivity everyone put forth. When we arrived someone made a chart that had a space for each person’s name under either set up or clean up for meals and other various jobs. Every person wrote their name in one of the spaces which meant that we each only had one small job to do. Whereas under capitalist society a small group of bosses sit back doing nothing while the masses of workers are exploited and super exploited this weekend showed we do have the ability to live collectively and from each according to their ability to each according to their need.

One of the main highlights of the weekend was a presentation about the progression of human nature. The presenters showed how human beings had existed for tens of thousands of years under primitive communism and showed the progression and development of class society. Often workers are made to believe that class society has always existed and humans don’t have the capacity to live collectively. But, our presenters proved that to be inaccurate and we were able to see through practice that we can and should live collectively under a classless society with communist principles guiding us.
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Enjoying experience at the DC march

Upon entering  a Progressive Labor Party member’s home the morning of the People’s march in D.C.,  I noticed many PL’ers already within the first floor. I turned to my left to enter the dining room where I spoke to two comrades about the Russia-Iran Nuclear Treaty. After the conversation, I had some breakfast and familiarized myself with one comrade I met at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

Not long after, PL’ers in charge of organizing our contingent gathered everybody in the living room. They discussed the plans for how we were going to march on Freedom Plaza. I offered to hold a bag of CHALLENGE copies before we left the house. Once it was time to go, the leadership requested us to line up with a partner. We made our way down to the bus stop and got on once we were ready. 

Once we got off, we traveled down the street to a corner near the Plaza. We stopped there to form a picket line to get our message across. I was distributing CHALLENGE to passersby. Unfortunately, I was only able to sell two copies before we started marching to our destination. This is where it started to get rejuvenating. During our march, we held up posters and yelled out chants. My favorite one being ‘Arab, Jewish, Black, and White. Workers of the world unite!’ Overall, I had an enjoyable time marching with PLP and I wouldn’t mind going to another one of their protests.
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Fighting modern-day nazis

I have been sending the above document to my base, and to progressive bookstores that take CHALLENGE newspapers that I send them. This document  is on how to refuse cooperating with ICE as it looks for undocumented workers. I didn’t  write it, but it’s an antiracist attempt to help resist. The arbitrary arrest of undocumented immigrants by ICE (the ‘Gestapo’ of this era ) is dangerous, and represents  fascism. True to racist form, ICE is not only targeting immigrant workers from Latin America, especially Black workers from Haiti, but also  Muslim workers. Racism hurts all workers. Trump is one of the most blatant open racists since Woodrow Wilson. The international working class must stop this fascist. Workers, students, and soldiers must resist. The working class under Progressive Labor Party leadership, must stop these attempts to create a Nazi 4th Reich. At the same time we must organize for  communist revolution, where workers run the world collectively
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