This past August marked the 235th anniversary of the start of the Haitian revolution. The following is an excerpt from a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) magazine article titled “The History of Haiti” published in 2014. The history of Haiti offers lessons for all working people.
In Part I of this series, we traced the early history of Ayti (the Taíno word for the island later known as Hispaniola and now modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic), the Spanish and French conquest that followed, and the beginnings of the revolutionary fight to end slavery, up through 1792. That year, the French Revolution entered a more radical phase: the monarchy was deposed, and France moved toward war against the monarchs of Europe. As Saint-Domingue's large sugar planters fled to join the royalist opposition, the Jacobin French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax opened political office and the army's officer corps to the gens de couleur, and a racially integrated delegation was chosen to represent Saint-Domingue in the National Assembly in Paris. We left off in 1793, with the execution of the French king, as Republican France went to war with Spain and Great Britain, the other major colonial powers in the Caribbean. The ongoing slave rebellion had become a force in this wider inter-colonial conflict.
Haiti was born of slave rebellion, and its history makes clear that slavery and racism were essential elements in the very foundation of capitalism. The working class in Haiti has also endured some of the most vicious exploitation by imperialism, both direct and indirect. Yet ever since Haitian workers rose up to abolish slavery in the 1790s, they have fought back with militancy, pushing for reform after reform in an effort to free themselves from exploitation. Time and again, however, these reforms have failed.
Today, conditions facing Haitian workers continue to deteriorate. Gangs, weapons imported from the U.S., and assassinations have devastated the well-being of the Haitian working class, while the racist attack on Haitian workers' Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the U.S. has brought further uncertainty and pain.
This history carries the most important lesson for all workers: only communism can end exploitation and put the international working class in control of society. It is a reminder that while Black workers around the world remain the most brutally exploited section of our class, the fight against racism can never be separated from the fight against capitalism and imperialism. Only communist revolution can end this system of exploitation for good. From Haiti to the United States, Black workers' leadership remains a crucial revolutionary force.
Part II will discuss the revolution to its triumph in 1804, and the role independent Haiti then played in fueling the fight against slavery across the Americas.
Fighting to eradicate slavery
The Spanish in Santo Domingo, the eastern half of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) recruited Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and other leaders of the slave insurgency to their army with offers of freedom and land. Britain, on the other hand, acted to protect sugar profits and to gain more territory for exploitation by invading and occupying southern and western Haiti (the region closest to its sugar colony of Jamaica).
There they both enforced slavery and reinstituted race-based restrictions on the gens de couleur. In this context, Commissioner Sonthonax reached out to the slaves to defend the French republic. He reduced hours of work, then offered freedom and French citizenship to all black warriors who fought for France. In August 1793 after a mass meeting in Cap Français voted for emancipation, the commissioner took the final step and abolished slavery throughout the colony, in a sense acknowledging in law what was the reality in fact.6
In 1794, Saint-Domingue’s delegates to the French National Assembly—one white, one mixed race, one an African-born former slave—asked that the Assembly abolish slavery in all of France’s colonies. The privations of war had further angered the French working class and weakened (for the moment) the power of the planters, and the Assembly ratified the proposal by acclamation.
The slave insurrection of Saint-Domingue had pushed the French Revolution into its most radical endorsement of freedom. French officials freed slaves in Guadeloupe and in the other islands they captured during the on-going war with Britain and Spain. With this Toussaint Louverture and others deserted Spain to swear allegiance to the French Republic. Toussaint became the most important French general, leading French troops, most of them former insurgents, as they drove Britain out of Saint-Domingue in the name of abolishing slavery.
Enslaved workers throughout the Americas took notice. As word of the 1791 uprising in Saint-Domingue spread, slave revolts broke out in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Curacao, and Grenada. Major slave conspiracies were detected in Cuba and Spanish Louisiana. Armed slaves battled to establish an inland maroon sanctuary in Jamaica. And in 1800, the enslaved blacksmith Gabriel, inspired by Saint-Domingue and the French Revolution, attempted to end slavery through an insurrection in Virginia.7
Bosses unite to keep workers in chains
Slave owners, however, were determined to end these threats to their profits. By 1798, French planter interests had begun to reestablish their power in Paris. They found an ally in Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general and future emperor, whose wife was from a Caribbean planter family. In 1802 Napoleon invaded Saint-Domingue with encouragement from British and American elites. The British and French would fight each other in Europe for another decade. But when it came to defending the super-exploitation of slavery they could unite: British Prime Minister Henry Addington declared that with regard to Saint-Domingue, the “interest of the two governments is exactly the same—to destroy Jacobinism, especially that of the blacks.” Thomas Jefferson described Toussaint and other Black leaders of Saint-Domingue as “Cannibals of the terrible republic” and promised to aid French efforts to “starve Toussaint” into submission.
The initial French expedition was led by Napoleon’s brother-in-law, the slave-owning General Charles Victor Leclerc, and involved half of the entire French fleet. Leclerc initially appealed to loyalty to the French republic—to patriotism—to win some insurgent generals to his army and to arrest and deport Toussaint Louverture. But when the French re-imposed slavery on the island of Guadeloupe, the people of Saint-Domingue rose up in resistance, forcing their former leaders to desert Leclerc and begin a renewed insurgency. When Leclerc declared a war of extermination that aimed to kill all Black men and women except “infants less than twelve years old,” some white troops, many of them Poles, deserted the French army to join the insurgents.
By 1803, the workers of Haiti—ideologically committed to their struggle for freedom, disciplined and experienced in guerilla warfare—did what no army in Europe had done. They gave Napoleon’s army its first defeat. And in 1804, Saint-Domingue declared its independence as the nation of Haiti. The British lost 40,000 soldiers and the French close to 50,000 in the effort to re-impose slavery in Haiti and other islands of the West Indies. Half of Haiti’s Black population was killed. In all, over 300,000 people died in the fight to end slavery in Haiti. The United States refused to recognize the independence of Haiti, and in 1815 the treaty ending Europe’s Napoleonic Wars accepted France’s claim to Haiti as a colonial possession. Jefferson continued his efforts to protect slave owners by isolating Haiti as an economic and ideological force. While Saint-Domingue/ Haiti had been the U.S. 's second largest trading partner (even through the period of warfare), Jefferson instituted a trade embargo and exhorted the New England merchant-traders to accept the loss of a prime market as a sacrifice for the nation.
The slave owning nations—the United States, Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal—expanded slavery in the years after the Haitian revolution. In the U.S., slave-based cotton and sugar production expanded into the old southwest and the new Louisiana territory. The French re-imposed slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique. The Spanish expanded sugar production in Cuba, and the Portuguese developed sugar and coffee plantations in Brazil. All of this meant an increase in the slave trade to restock the depleted labor force in the region.
Antiracist uprisings
The Republic of Haiti, on the other hand, continued its attempts to spread the idea of revolution against slavery. In 1815-16, Haitian president Alexandre Pétion sheltered Simon Bolivar as he initiated an independence movement against Spain. Haiti provided Bolivar with ships, arms and ammunition, a printing press, and troops to train his men, demanding in exchange that he pledge to free the slaves in any republics gaining independence from Spain. As Spain was importing slaves, many free Blacks and slaves within Spain’s colonies flocked to the armies of the independence movement. In Peru up to three-quarters of those who fought in the liberation army were men of color. In 1821, Gran Colombia adopted a law to emancipate all born of slave mothers after that date. In 1829, Mexico became the second American nation to abolish slavery absolutely.
Please find the conclusion of this series in our next issue of CHALLENGE available September 16th.
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VFP Convention: Low morale at bosses’ wars, open to communist ideas
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- 27 August 2026 767 hits
Kansas City, MO– At this year’s annual August convention of Veterans for Peace, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined over one hundred veterans, military fami1ly members, and antiwar supporters who were gathered to voice their outrage about ICE-led fascist aggression, the Iran war’s catastrophic failure marked by pervasive low morale among enlisted soldiers, and the continued mass genocide of workers globally. , Democrats remain the greater danger to the future leaders of communist world revolution, since they, too, push for wider war, support for Israel, and the bloody supremacy of U.S. imperialism, but in less openly fascistic rhetoric. This was evident in the revisionist, anti-Trump and implicitly pro Democrat politics at the convention, and it is also revealing itself as Democrats rush to blame Trump for the aircraft carrier Lincoln’s catastrophe rather than the declining global power of oil-driven U.S. imperialism as a whole. As Chinese rulers increase their leverage during the U.S.’s fiasco in the Iran war, and bosses everywhere scramble to find alternatives to trade and military partnership with the U.S., more war is an inevitable future for the young workers of the world. As members of PLP, we call for armed revolution of the working class, with politicized, pro-working class soldiers as the key for arriving at a better world.
From chaos to community to communism!
The annual convention of Veterans for Peace offers a powerful and consistent opportunity for veterans of all branches, from wars ranging from World War II to the Iran war, to join together alongside labor, community and other organizers for collective conversations about the state of the world and prospects for peace. It is our Party’s function to i push all limits of political reformism in an effort to introduce our class to a more precise and tangible path forward. In one panel featuring Chris Smalls of the Amazon workers’ union and Paul Ortiz, a longtime labor history professor, PLP created space for the organizers in the audience to join in the conversation and voice their frustration about the Democratic Pparty war machine, the adverse impact of ICE kidnappings on immigrant activists, and the ever-relevant need for militant self defense emanating from the legacy of Black slaves, Russian and Chinese communist peasants, industrial workers, and anti-colonial workers worldwide. Both panelists were prodded on their position about nonviolent resistance and revisionist misleadership in the labor movement, and each of them testified to the need for militant resistance and to the complacency of union leaders in the aftermath of government indictments for pro-Gaza flotillas and encampments in the U.S.
Mission Impossible: failed Iran war and low morale
Perhaps the most telling and strategically vital point in the convention came from the military families from Military Families Speak Out who spoke to the utter ineptness of the U.S. military leadership and the frustration of the soldiers entrenched in the war against Iran. Families testified to the dangers of their kin, largely stranded in “camps”, not bases in Jordan, after having been deployed for battle against Iran but staying past their end date. With bombs from Iran raining down from overhead, soldiers in Jordan are being told to shelter in bunkers that can not even house half of the soldiers on the camp–leaving 50 percent of the troops as pure cannon fodder. The convention’s discussion of low morale in Jordan is indicative of the current crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where the destruction of a decades-old U.S. navy base in Bahrain by Iranian missiles forced the aircraft carrier into an essentially stranded position at sea for nearly nine months, since day two of the war. The 5,000 soldier ship has reported dire mental health concerns from trapped and deployment-weary sailors, several of whom have reportedly attempted suicide. There are also food shortages, dysfunctional plumbing, and a host of concerns associated with the Bahrain supply base’s destruction.
Liberals are the main danger
In both the antiwar movement and within the mass consciousness of disgruntled soldiers, the Democratic Party politicians are the chief misleaders that push our class toward capitulation to the war machine–and have been for the past half century. Just as the Democratic bosses, who promise reforms in return for all class unity, as a whole historically function to stamp out class anger among the most radical sectors of the population–Black, women and immigrant workers–that fact continues today with fierce manifestation in the antiwar movement. Democratic Party politicians, just as they did in the 2004 Iraq war, are calling for an end to wars with no clear “mission” and lack of support for military personnel in combat.
Mass organizations are schools for communism
We made contact with Vietnamese-American organizers who are interested in collaborating for solidarity campaigns around the continued ravages of war in Vietnam after the U.S. invasion in the 1960s and 1970s. We are looking to recruit teachers and students based out of the LA and NYC areas for solidarity brigades to carry on the legacy of what Vietnam vets have been doing for decades in recognition of the atrocities they committed in service of U.S. imperialism. None of this struggle would take place without persistent, consistent, decades-long commitment to this organization, and so the lesson is clear: join and stay in groups so that our class can be introduced to our theory and practice through action, reflection and struggle.
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Lessons from Marquette Park: Organize to win, smash the fascists!
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- 27 August 2026 761 hits
CHICAGO, August 11— A multiracial force of roughly 200 workers – including a collective from the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP)— marched through Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood, braving heavy rain while loudly chanting, “Same enemy, same fight: workers of the world unite!” and “From the river to the sea, the working class will set us free!” Today a mass event was organized called “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” commemorating the 60th anniversary when Martin Luther King Jr and thousands of others marched into the park to protest the racist violence of capitalism.
Despite the presence of liberal politicians and misleaders pushing electoral politics, workers showed a strong openness to communist ideas, eagerly accepting CHALLENGE newspapers and sharing contact information with Party members. Many workers traveled from outside Chicago, particularly from the South, where workers faced an intensified racist attack from the Trump-led neo-Confederate regime. The march’s music, dancing, and collective chanting helped build a sense of unity and enthusiasm, with participants remaining energized despite the downpour. Conversations after the march showed that many were receptive to PLP’s politics and willing to engage with revolutionary ideas.
Antiracist lessons from Marquette Park
In 1966, King came to Chicago to challenge housing segregation and racist violence. When marchers entered Marquette Park, they were met by angry white mobs throwing rocks, bottles, and other objects while shouting racist slurs. King later remarked that he had never encountered such intense racist hostility—not even in the Deep South. The atmosphere became so emboldened that the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan established Marquette Park as a center for organizing, using terror and intimidation against Black families, Latin workers, and anyone who stood for racial equality.
The violence in neighborhoods like Marquette Park did not emerge on its own. It was reinforced by decades of racist policies that served the interests of banks, real estate companies, and politicians. Through redlining, Black families were systematically denied mortgages, insurance, and investment while white neighborhoods received government-backed support. This created the deeply racist and segregated communities we still see in Chicago today.
Although redlining was outlawed in 1968, its effects remain visible today. Many neighborhoods continue to face capitalist exploitation and disinvestment, underfunded schools, inadequate healthcare, and deplorable housing conditions. These conditions are often blamed on the Black workers who live there instead of the racist economic system called capitalism that created them.
Progressive Labor Party smashes the fascists
PLP refused to allow fascists to claim Marquette Park as their territory. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Party members and supporters organized tirelessly throughout the Southwest Side. We sold CHALLENGE on street corners, knocked on doors, and held thousands of conversations with Black, Latin, Asian, and white workers about the need to reject racism and unite around their shared class interests.
This revolutionary outlook laid the foundation for historic demonstrations that shattered the Nazis’ claim over Marquette Park. Hundreds of workers and students marched together through streets that fascist groups had declared off limits to multiracial organizing. Our greatest strength was not superior numbers or police protection—it was the unity and courage of ordinary working people who refused to surrender their communities to racist terror. This organizing led to the Party storming the Nazi headquarters located in Marquette Park and running them out of the neighborhood. We ambushed the truck at their setup location and used the opportunity to get inside and wreak havoc on their office. We were bold, and some members faced serious charges for the attack. They would beat those charges, however, through multiracial court support initiatives organized by the International Committee Against Racism and PLP.
Keep up the struggle to win
The forms of racism have changed, but the purpose remains the same. Today, politicians, media outlets, and wealthy interests continue promoting fear and division by blaming immigrants, Black communities, refugees, and other sections of the working class for problems created by capitalism itself.
Our personal struggles are political – fight for communism
For one member of the Chicago collective, Marquette Park carries a deep personal history. As a teenager, he would play basketball in the park, often dropped off by his grandmother, who on one of those trips explained to him that Black people had not always been welcome there. Even years later, she still carried the anxiety of entering a place where racist mobs had once violently enforced segregation. In 1966, she bravely marched through Marquette Park as part of the struggle against racist segregation and was attacked for doing so. Her experience connects the neighborhood’s history to the struggles workers continue to face today. While the 1966 marches challenged the racist system, it was the militant actions and organizing of the Party that helped drive the Nazis and their racist allies out of Marquette Park once and for all, demonstrating the power of communist leadership.
The victories won in Marquette Park were not inevitable—they were organized. They were won by ordinary workers who refused to accept racism as a permanent feature of society. That same spirit is needed today.
Fight racism. Build multiracial unity. Organize your workplace and your community. Join PLP and help build a communist movement capable of ending exploitation once and for all.
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Kentucky: Project grows PLP & revolutionary optimism
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- 27 August 2026 647 hits
The weekend of August 7th, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades from Kentucky spent the Party’s annual summer project in Chicago. For some, this was their third summer project, and for others, their second.
While this was a shorter summer project than last year’s, it was full of valuable experiences.
We brought a contingent of us up from Kentucky, and there was a lot of interest among our base and other Party members in our area, but in the end there were 4 of us who were able to make it. We were joined by other comrades from outside of Chicago like the DMV, Tennessee, and Texas. At the potluck dinner to start off the project, we had conversations with veteran comrades, and comrades were able to share their own art and music with each other.
One thing we have noticed when fighting back together with the Party in Chicago is how it has effectively built a base in the most exploited areas of the city. Most of the time we spent in the city was in the South and West sides and majority-Latin areas like Little Village. We also noticed how the Party has built connections with workers which made the summer project possible, such as a bus driver who drove us around for the Party’s antiracist history tour.
One of the first actions we did was handing out flyers to mostly healthcare workers in the Illinois Medical District, laying out capitalist gutting of healthcare, and connecting this to racism and sexism. We went to this event with renewed confidence because we did CHALLENGE delivery and speech-giving workshops right before.
The next day, we did another distribution at the Bud Billiken parade. Bud Billiken is the largest Black parade in the country, and is a huge cultural event on the South Side of Chicago to celebrate back to school. We gave out another flyer which detailed the nature of the racist attacks on public education in Chicago, especially affecting the South Side. It also talked about the attacks on so-called “teen takeovers,” the attacks which have been being used against mostly Black young people to justify increased police repression. While we were there, we saw this first hand. There were politicians campaigning on being tough on crime, including regarding “teen takeovers.”
The parade was one comrade’s favorite part of the summer project. We handed out hundreds of CHALLENGEs and antiracist, revolutionary flyers, and the response was terrific. Black workers in Chicago dealing with the worst of this capitalist system were receptive to our multiracial group and message. It was a massive event with great energy, so we were really glad the Party organized it. Later that evening, we got to see the film I Love Boosters, which was the first time seeing it for many of us.
The film was followed by a sharp political discussion. Another comrade’s favorite part was the antiracist history tour about how the Party kicked Nazis out of Chicago. The militant content of this tour made it as strong as a march. Those of us from Kentucky got to end the tour by giving our own stories from fighting the Proud Boys here in our state.
Our group did some things on our own as well, such as seeing the Haymarket Memorial for the first time and going to the National Public Housing Museum. To top it all off, the new comrade who was rooming with us ended up joining the Party!
This summer project demonstrated the power of multiracial revolutionary fightback in practice. It reminded us all that the fight is far from over, as we looked back on former fightback against the KKK and bosses in Chicago, and connected this to the modern day. We look forward to our next summer project with the PLP, and hopefully with even more Kentucky comrades to bring along!
This summer project has only confirmed and amplified what I have come to love about PLP in my short time attending its gatherings and events which is the overwhelming sense of community and support for one another. I am always so taken aback by how welcoming and caring everyone is towards each other, and I felt that tenfold over this weekend. I got to meet and speak with comrades from places like Kentucky, Virginia, and Wisconsin, and it was so inspiring to hear their stories and experiences, as well as the reasons they joined the Party. I loved connecting with others at community events such as the RPH Community Care Event and also learned about how to give speeches and sell CHALLENGE within my community.
It was also so inspiring to hear firsthand about the history of the Party from comrades who lived through the experiences themselves and brought real change during the Antiracist History Tour. It helped me realize that I too can and must be part of the fight in order to actually make a difference. Overall, it was such a great weekend full of community and learning, and it has motivated me to take the step into officially joining the Party! We have so much work to do to fight for others around the world but being part of this group of strong and dedicated people helps me realize that I am not alone in the fight. We can and will continue to fight together until all workers around the world are free from the chains of the bosses!
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At this years’ summer project Chicago successfully hosted comrades from the Midwest and even as far as the East Coast. I enjoyed my second time communing and organizing with others, since 2024 was my first Chicago trip. This year’s shorter project, in a way, made the experience feel more precious, since I intended to make the most of each day’s activities and engage with comrades whom I see less often. The initial workshop on selling CHALLENGE and giving speeches reminded me of how important it is to consistently practice how we represent the Party in mass scenarios. We always leave an impression, even if we feel like there aren’t many people noticing.
My favorite moments included the extensive conversations I had with local workers: my first being a young post-graduate in the medical district—who even joined our collective during lunch after our first sale. They shared our understanding that many feel trapped between Democrats and Republicans and that speaking against capitalist injustice feels intimidating when done individually.
During the historical Bud Billiken parade in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, I chatted with a Black mother who recently moved to the city with her seven-year-old daughter. She also understood that the U.S. education system limits students’ ability to explore multiple aspects of working-class history and lessons—one of many reasons why she has been homeschooling her. Despite the popular assumption that homeschooled students are less competent as people and potential college students, the mother understood that her daughter is actually enjoying an education that encourages her exploration of human connection and experiences beyond memorization and exams.
I even discussed the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) with a Black worker in the U.S. Air Force. She was among the many campaign workers at the parade who were attempting to collect signatures for politicians trying to get on the mayoral ballot. She hasn’t experienced an expansive use of AI through her work since humans are still necessary for maneuvering the processes. She did assert that too much of anything, AI especially, isn’t a good thing. I pushed that thought even further to the clear insistence of the capitalists that workers integrate many forms of AI into our daily lives. Their drive to automate so many parts of our lives is in preparation for greater fascist actions and deadlier warfare.
I gave CHALLENGE to each worker and connected them with a veteran comrade so that our local collective can begin potentially strong ties with them in the near future.
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It was a great experience, learning about the history of PLP activity in Chicago. It was surprising how involved the Party was in direct action against white supremacists in the city and speaks to the working class’s need to realize our collective power. I feel as though it demonstrates groups of people don’t need to be gigantic in order to make a large impact, but well organized and committed.
Outside of that, getting to talk to Party members and simply learning more about communism was definitely a plus. It’s nice having access to a group that truly believes communism is possible to work towards in the present day.
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Myself and another comrade from northern Virginia had the privilege of attending the Chicago chapter’s Summer Project this past month. I am happy to report that the Project was a great success and that the workers and masses of Chicago are open to revolutionary alternatives to the dead-ends the reformists have provided them.
Each day we participated in activities that helped develop our skills, sharpened our political consciousness and got us out at community events to make further connections. The Chicago chapter shows a strong commitment to upholding the Party line of building a base in the working class and fighting against racist divisions in the working class. This commitment convinced new members to join the Party.
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I was invited to participate in Chicago’s Summer Project, 2026. It was great, beyond my expectations! I got to stay with Chicago comrades and was able to get to know younger Party members from Maryland and Virginia since we all are on the East coast. The Saturday CHALLENGE distribution at the Bud Billiken Parade was great! We all got out a substantial amount of papers. We were able to talk to Black workers during the event. Sunday was a trip down a ‘Red memory lane’ as comrades had a bus tour, and talked about fighting the Neo nazi fascists in Marquette Park. I grew up in Chicago and was still in high school in 1978. (It was thrilling to hear Party comrades talk about storming Frank Collins’ fascist headquarters.) In 1986, I joined the Party while in Minnesota, and the Marquette Park attack at the baseball field was my first big action. My mom begged me not to go, but I had to. I was slightly injured in the melee. Another comrade and myself drove around collecting bail money for jailed International Committee Against Racism (INCAR) antiracists. The Sunday planned ICE protest was canceled due to rain, but there were two Party members who had access to a dance studio, and we all learned a popular Latin American dance. It was fun! 40 years of class struggle, and I’m ready for more!
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I had a wonderful time during PLP’s 2026 Chicago Summer Project. This would be my sixth summer project and my second time visiting Chicago (the first time I visited was the 2024 Chicago Summer Project). It would be hard for me to choose between which Chicago summer project I enjoyed more. While I enjoyed the discussions and rallies and marches, I enjoyed the social gatherings and communal aspects of this year’s summer project.
My favorite part of this summer project was the Bud Billiken Parade CHALLENGE sale. It was a lively event with plenty of people. There were even groups of children walking around with costumes of cartoon characters on, such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Minions from Despicable Me. The only downside was that it was co-opted by local politicians, even though the parade was historically working class oriented. Despite this, I had three memorable instances at the event. First, when our group started to walk to where the parade was held, one worker wearing a lime-green vest walked up to me and asked if he could get two copies of CHALLENGE. This left me pleasantly surprised. You rarely get workers who enthusiastically ask for the paper, especially when it’s someone new. Second, I met a worker for DoorDash and his sweet dog that was sitting in his truck. We had a good conversation about the Mayor of Chicago and the current Illinois Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias. If I recall correctly, I think he received a copy of CHALLENGE. Third, there was this mother and daughter walking around the parade. A small group of comrades I was with gave her a copy as well as discussing the failures and shortcomings of the school system and the anti-human nature of capitalism. The mother also talked about a wholesome reason for bringing her daughter to events like this, saying she wanted her to experience what these events had to offer and open her perspectives. That was easily my favorite conversation of the whole summer project.
Overall, this was a great summer project for our Chicago comrades. I’m looking forward to next year’s summer project!
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My first summer project was in 2021, and I joined the party during that same summer project. Midwest Summer Project will be my fourth summer project, and my fifth year in the party. I often heard that the summer project was a good opportunity for newer and younger friends of the party to get to know the party, and on my first two summer projects I really felt a profound feeling of freedom and comradeship. Outside the summer project one is under a lot of peer pressure to reproduce capitalist ideology be it cynicism, individualism, racism, sexism, or reformism. This time, I was transfixed when I saw a newer comrade radiating enthusiasm to be in an environment where communist ideas are taken seriously and there is an demonstrated commitment to putting these ideas into practice. I must have looked like that to others that summer I was moved to join PLP, and it was really inspiring to witness someone else so moved. There are of course still many things we can improve. However we should remember that being in a communist community is a part of the struggle we are fighting, and we should recognize eachother.
The most enthusiasm was for the discussions and exchange of ideas. As Mao said in His address to the Yan’an Forum on arts and literature this real life action is the highest form of art. However intentional art is also necessary to concentrate ideas and experiences that reflect life. I feel combining theater and film screenings stimulated us to reach a higher energy and provided good material for a political discussion. A number of comrades also mentioned that they first met the party online on semi-private forums like Discord Marxist reading groups. Online discussions of Marxist theory led to in-person meetings and eventually PLP clubs in new areas. This could work internationally.
We really illustrated the theory and practice of our line during the school bus history tour of Marquette Park. Our party has a demonstrated history of anti-racist anti-sexist fightback and confrontation that continues today. Comrades from Kentucky discussed the present day fightback to prevent proud boys from organizing openly. We can find creative ways of spreading this story, which will lead to more forces for the coming confrontation with the rising forces of fascism across the competing empires where capitalists freely send weapons and money to kill workers as they see fit ignoring national borders. Our revolutionary line against nationalism, racism, and sexism is the reason our party not only survived but also continued provided leadership to the 60s rebellions and unlike many revolutionary groups from that time exists today as a continuous entity.
There is an enthusiasm for the reviving groups that fought imperialism and rising fascism during the Vietnam war from Science for the People to SDS and the Young Lords Party. We have a great opportunity to grow rapidly, however we should also remember that what we are doing now is really important. Seeing my comrade’s joy for the summer project reminded me that we can grow and appreciate the moment.
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