Nassau County in New York, the state of North Carolina, and the University of California campuses have been the first in the U.S. to pass laws outlawing the wearing of masks in public. Other jurisdictions have proposals for such laws, including one in the legislature in New Jersey (northjersey.com, 09/12). This new fascist offensive attacks both political marches and people who wear masks for medical reasons. Bringing both groups together in the fight against racism and capitalism is an opportunity to broaden the revolutionary communist movement. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been engaged in the fight for safer working conditions, disability justice, and COVID-19 safety as well as the fight against the genocide in Gaza and the long-term struggle for communist revolution. Resisting mask bans is a newer fight.

The push for mask bans started as a way to intimidate anti-genocide protestors. It makes it easier to identify them with facial recognition and to target them for suspension, firing, and harassment for opposing U.S. imperialism.

The disability justice community has called for masking in medical facilities and other public places as a public health issue and is also under attack. At the Nassau hearing, Zionists berated disability organizers who called out mask bans as an attack on immunocompromised individuals. At the same time, many disability justice groups have also opposed the genocide of Palestinians. 

Communists in the disability justice struggle

PLP members have joined with disability justice organizers who have waged campaigns for universal masking with N95 masks in health care settings and for stricter isolation procedures when workers and students have a COVID-19 infection. At the Long COVID Awareness protest in DC in March, 2024, a PLP member spoke about capitalism’s drive for profit at the expense of workers’ lives. We have worked with Mask Blocs in our cities and distributed free test kits to our schools and neighborhood groups.

As communists we believe in contributive justice, the idea that all workers should have the opportunity to contribute to society as much as possible. This means practicing good public health measures like air filtration, mask wearing, and testing to find out if your symptoms are from COVID-19 and if you have fully recovered with negative testing. Tests are not perfect but combined with other measures help decrease risks. This summer’s surge has shown that the virus is not seasonal like the flu but is airborne year round and constantly changing. Death and the development of Long COVID are reasons we need to protect ourselves.

Racism and eugenics 

Disregarding the risks of COVID-19 to disabled workers is a form of eugenics in which some people are viewed as less valuable than others. Placing the current mask bans in this context reveals another fascist aspect of these policies. Discouraging mask wearing increases the risk to everyone but especially people who are immunocompromised. Further, letting the police stop people who wear masks to find out if the masks are for a health reason gives the police another racist excuse to harass Black and Latin workers --another version of “stop and frisk.” Black and Latin workers have suffered more from COVID-19 than others (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10147367/). Discouraging mask wearing for fear of police interaction will increase the risk of infections. 

These steps toward fascism: increased surveillance, harsher intimidation, and racist eugenics mean that students and workers must unite the disability justice, antiracist, anti-genocide, and communist movements. Capitalism is the enemy of all these movements and building PLP is critical to destroy this system.

WASHINGTON, DC, September 21-“Who are the terrorists? U.S. Imperialists” was the cry as 100 students and workers marched to the Philippines Embassy at the end of a conference entitled “Reject the Fascism and Plunder of the U.S.-Marcos Regime.” Over 150 people attended the conference, part of a tour calling for “Justice for Brandon Lee” and featuring an interview with this young man who was nearly killed by soldiers under President Rodrigo Duterte in 2019 and left a quadriplegic. Showing the heroic qualities of a revolutionary fighter, he continues to speak out against the fascism of the Philippine government and U.S. imperialism.  He previously organized with the Ifugao Peasant worker Movement against large scale destructive mining, dams, and energy projects by imperialist corporations. These projects destroy the environment and displace indigenous people. 

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined the conference to share our communist ideas and learn more about the conditions of the Philippines. PLP members were received warmly while engaging in comradely discussion about the need to focus revolutionary activity on achieving communism rather than national liberation. Several participants in the conference asked to be contacted by PLP members based on receiving CHALLENGE and having robust discussions with us.

Philippines under martial law

The Philippines have been under martial law for 52 years. Intensifying this oppression, the government imposed a deliberately ambiguous anti-terrorism law in 2020 that “red tags” all opponents of the government. Speakers and performers shared their anger at this fascist regime, shouting militantly “Payt Latte“ (Fight to the End) and singing songs of armed struggle. 

The U.S. government’s counterinsurgency in the Philippines has worked hand in glove with the local bosses and landlords to divide workers for decades. Two young workers from the Philippines spoke of the reality of martial law forcing communist organizers to work underground. The U.S. government has been consistent in backing dictators for 52 years of martial law in support of landlords and mining companies at the expense of workers and indigenous farmers. It has paid $1 billion to the Philippines’ rulers since 2015 to support fascist repression there while using its nine military bases to intimidate its imperialist rivals.

Mass movements against capitalism

The Cordillera Peoples Alliance includes Brandon Lee’s Ifugao Peasant organization and has been under constant military oppression. Their bold struggles against the corporations do not call for communism but nevertheless they are “red tagged” and accused of being rebels in the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. This party follows the mistaken strategy of first fighting for national liberation and at a later time for socialism and then finally for communism.

Many students from the University of Maryland came to the conference as members of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, known on campus as TERPCHRP. The campaigns in the Philippines have attracted groups of multiracial students across the country. This bodes well for the rise of an internationalist mass movement against capitalism. PLP is trying to provide more leadership to this mass movement so that it keeps its “eye on the ball” of fighting for communism directly.

Inter-imperialist rivalry in play

China like the U.S. has a strong interest in the Philippines and had been investing in projects especially under the previous President Rodrigo Duterte. Currently the new Marcos regime is allying itself more with the U.S. Not surprisingly, military incursions by China in the Philippines waters have increased, as China challenges the U.S. for control of the South China Sea and its bases and shipping lanes. 

We in the PLP struggle for a communist revolution as the only solution for workers in the Philippines, the U.S., and the rest of the world’s working class. Engaging with the students and members of human rights organizations we met at the conference is an opportunity not to be missed in advancing this goal!

About 32,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) struck Boeing on September 13. The strike began after 96 percent of the members voted to reject a tentative agreement that failed to make up for a decade of lost wages or restore members’ pensions, while Boeing sits on $12.6 Billion cash-on-hand (The Nation) As we go to press, Boeing strikers have been joined by 45,000 dock workers, members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) who are on strike for the first time in 50 years. 

Building communism through strike action

As the crisis of this system gives way to WWIII and fascism grows we must double down on our efforts and struggle mightily to grow our presence in transit and industry to deepen our coworkers’ political understanding and getting our class siblings strike-ready while at the same time promoting transit-rider-dockworker-plant worker solidarity, winning our class siblings to communist ideas. In Progressive Labor Party (PLP) we say strikes are schools for building communism. Strikes help our class realize the enormous power and potential  to shut the system down and bring capital to its knees. From every dock, shipping lane, and manufacturing plant, to transit  industrial workers armed with communist ideas will help bring our class closer to smashing capitalism once and for all! 

Billions for imperialist bosses, nada for workers

While Biden/Harris and Congress throw billions at the war industry and the imperialist supply chain for wars around the world to prop up their empire, workers are feeling restless and are in motion. In the past year, we have seen workers strike or threaten to strike on the railroads, at UPS, in auto, in the hotel industry, and a four-month strike of actors and screenwriters to name a few. Like the wildfires in California, the bosses, politicians, and union leaders are doing everything they can to make sure these fires don’t connect. 

Boeing workers have been trapped in a sellout contract since 2013, when Boeing demanded $8.7 billion in tax breaks from Washington State and major concessions from the workers, despite recording record profits at the time. If the politicians and union leaders didn’t meet their demands, Boeing threatened to move thousands of production jobs out of state. They got what they wanted. The Democratic Party controlled state legislature gave Boeing the largest tax break in U.S. history, and the IAM leadership pushed through a 10-year contract that froze pensions for current workers and eliminated them for all new-hires while cutting pay. Boeing rewarded them by cutting over 12,000 jobs anyway.

Turn imperialist war into class war!

Boeing & Co. have not just been waging war around the world, they are waging war against workers in the U.S. as well. With more than 75,000 industrial workers on strike and wars dramatically escalating in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, now would be the perfect time for the U.S. labor leaders and AFL-CIO to call a general strike against wars abroad and war at home, linking the struggles from Seattle to Gaza and Beirut. But don’t hold your breath. The current union leadership is supporting the war makers, even as some pay lip service for a ceasefire. 

We can do better. We urge all of our members and friends to walk the Boeing and ILA picket lines wherever possible. Try to get your co-workers and union members to join you. Organize discussions in school and on campus, linking the buildup to imperialist war to the sharpening class struggle. In other words, build communist consciousness and the Progressive Labor Party wherever we are. A fighting working class is opening the door.

John and Ellyn Boelter were well known and respected comrades in Chicago for their selfless support of workers in Chicago and their contributions to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and InCAR (International Committee Against Racism) for decades. Ellyn passed away earlier this year. John passed in 2018.  

Their generous contributions of their time and energy to InCAR and the Party will be remembered for many years to come. John came to Chicago by way of Wisconsin and Indiana and started teaching chemistry at Waller High School. As a teacher, he helped his students understand both scientific principles that describe the world and the political principles needed to change it. In 1968, as a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, he took part in the teachers’ strike of 1968. It was the beginning of John’s strong solidarity with workers’ movements and led to his joining the PLP in the early 1970s.  

As a thank you from the Chicago Public Schools for his support of students, he was fired and blacklisted. This did not stop John from moving on and getting another job in the lab at Cook County Hospital and supporting his fellow workers there. He refused to cross the picket lines when the nurses went on strike in the mid-1970s. For his support, Cook County fired him, and unfortunately the nurse’s union did not support his reinstatement. 

He built the PLP wherever he went. John soon returned to teaching at Bloom Trail High School in a mostly working-class suburb of Chicago. While there, John was able to involve many students, families and staff in Party activities. During this time, he was raising two young children: Aaron and Adrienne with his first wife, Terry.  

In the mid-1970s John and Terry (first wife) divorced. In the late 1970s, John was introduced to Ellyn Hershman, an attorney and InCAR member who had just moved to the Chicago area from California. They married in 1977. He and Ellyn moved to the south side of Chicago soon thereafter and in short order gave active leadership in mass antiracist struggle in the community. 

In 1986, PLP organized an attack on the nazi party, which had planned to march through Chicago’s Marquette Park. The neighborhood was well known for its racism and several antiracist marches had taken place there (including our May Day March in 1979). PLP had previously raided the offices of the nazis and beat the hell out of the fascists on multiple occasions. 

This time, our plan was to stop the Nazis from getting to Marquette Park at all. We ambushed the truck at their set-up location with John leading the way. He later beat charges of attempted murder brought by the racists in the city government.

John later went on to teach at Daley College and then at Chicago State University to help build the presence of PLP there, recruiting more antiracist students and staff to the Party. 

In the 1980s John and Ellyn became parents of two children, Suzy and Brenda. Ellyn helped the Party with fundraising and gave important legal advice. John steadfastly put forward the Party’s line and would always raise concerns in a comradely way. He and Ellyn were always generous with their time, use of their car and monetarily.  John was part of the PLP contingent that went to support the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the racist murder by police of Michael Brown.

The Boelter home was, for many years, often the center of Party or InCAR activities. There, it was known, you could replenish your supply of CHALLENGE newspapers and hear a kind word from John or Ellyn. John and Ellyn can be described as true communists through and through with their generosity and organizing of the PLP for many years. Their door was always open. They were loving grandparents to several grandchildren. While they are no longer physically here, their spirit lives on in the lives of the many people they touched in their many years in the struggle in and around the PLP.