Worldwide, the summer months are a time of political training and struggle for the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) (see article on page 1). This summer, we returned to the city of Boston—50 years later—to commemorate the 1975 Boston Summer Project, a watershed moment in PLP history, and to honor the antiracist and communist workers who volunteered in that fight.
Just a few years later, PLP led another major summer project in 1979, this time confronting racist Klansmen in Tupelo, Mississippi. The following article is a reprint from CHALLENGE, originally published in 1979, documenting that crucial battle.
With fascism resurging around the globe, sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., China, and Russia, and a rise in racist kidnappings and attacks targeting migrant workers, there’s no better time for antiracist education—and for learning from our history to fight back.
For this issue, we look at the Tupelo Project of ’79. Lessons include:
In the face of the Ku Klux Klan and the racist capitalist government, we must be bold and have confidence in the working class to take the lead of communists.
Multiracial unity is our class’s weapon and the bosses’ greatest fear.
To sustain our gains, we must grow the Party and train more Black, Latin, Asian, and white young people in leadership.
Significance of Mississippi
To many who remember the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Mississippi symbolizes the most extreme racism, the most brutal murders of Black workers and antiracists, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.
For Progressive Labor Party, Mississippi signified a base for revolution among Black and white workers, spreading the ideas of multiracial unity and the fight for communist ideas in the South. Today, we celebrate the heroic struggle of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About 100 communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.
Though relatively small (population of 20,000), Tupelo, Mississippi was an industrial center with over 14,000 workers. The South was important to the ruling class as an industrial area because its carefully-nurtured tradition of racism made it the citadel of low-wage, non-union labor, where the bosses have been able to keep the working class divided and weak in order to extract extra profits.
The project showed that masses of white workers and students in Tupelo and throughout the South are winnable to antiracism.
Below is an edited excerpt from PL Magazine (Fall 1979) analyzing an aspect of the Tupelo Summer Project:
The great July demonstration
Sixty-five antiracist marchers, organized by Progressive Labor Party and its [then-mass organization] International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), were marching through the streets in Tupelo, Mississippi chanting, “Death to the Klan.”
Shots rang through the air.
As the bullets grazed two marchers, a disciplined group of people, Black and white, rushed out of line, isolated the racist who wielded the gun, and beat him to the ground. In the fight that ensued with this Klansman, or Klan supporter, the antiracists broke his neck. While this was happening, the marchers, maintaining a tight discipline that won them the respect of Tupelo’s working class, continued the march. The marchers, encouraged by the friendly faces that lined the streets and by the workers who joined the march, were able to withstand the menacing threat of the Tupelo police, who aimed their cocked guns at them.
From the start, it was clear that the racist local rulers wanted to stop this march. A new ordinance was created by the city government banning sound devices (in response to successful PLP-led rallies in the past). The police and their flunkies systematically tore down posters in the housing projects; and a permit for the march was not granted until the very last minute.
As the march gathered in front of the courthouse, the bosses’ seat of power, a militant rally began, attracting a lot of people in the area who joined in chanting, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all a part of the bosses’ plan.”
‘Before I was scared, now I’m mad’
Many militant workers in Tupelo have come to see InCAR as the main mass organization that can lead workers in the fight against racism and the resurgence of fascist groups like the Klan. One Black woman worker said, “Before I was scared, but now I’m mad.” This represents the feeling of many people here, that there is no longer the luxury to sit back and watch the ruling class and its flunkies hold power, that they have to get active and build a movement that has as its goal the destruction of the ruling class ideas of racism and fascism, and in the final analysis, the ruling class itself.
The political climate is changing rapidly in the South, and only groups like PLP are prepared to respond to the changes, to give leadership and organize the multiracial, antiracist fightback that is necessary to move workers to the left.
The United League(UL), a Black reformist group, recently cancelled a march scheduled for Okolona (a town not far from Tupelo) today, because its leader, Skip Robinson, essentially chickened out of the struggle. More and more people are realizing that the leadership of UL cannot stand up to the rigors of the class struggle.
Workers put themselves on the line
Respect for PLP was growing in Tupelo. Two residents of Tupelo put up their houses as collateral so that our comrade could be bailed out of jail. When the two marchers who had been wounded were treated in the hospital, they were warmly received and treated by white doctors and other hospital workers. After the march stopped to rally, hundreds of Black workers surrounded the marchers to protect them from the cops (who would have been only too glad to be trigger happy).
This was the first time a racist had been beaten by an antiracist march in Tupelo. The leadership of the UL had always guaranteed the safety of the KKK and the cops by holding back the anger and hatred of Black workers in the fight to liberate themselves from the racism they faced every day. The bosses always think that they can destroy a worker’s movement by getting its leaders, but little do they know that leaders always spring up in the midst of struggle. There were many, many people right in Tupelo, and other cities North and South, and there still are today, who can develop as working-class leaders in the fight against racism and fascism, and they were and are being trained by Progressive Labor Party.
This was readily proven by the response not only of the marchers, in their determination to continue the march, not to be intimidated by the cops’ harassment, but also by the tremendous support of the local people. Over 200 copies of InCAR Arrow and CHALLENGE were sold, 4 people joined InCAR on the spot. Another demonstration was planned on the spot.
The main lesson PLP learned in Tupelo, as everywhere, is to be bold. The bolder we were, the more seriously people took us and the more willing they were to respond to us. Workers understand that the system will come down hard when you try to fight it. They are also ready to understand that you only win on the offensive.
No ICE on our block!
Working with neighbors, PLP members helped organize a neighborhood meeting in the Bay Area to build a solidarity and direct response team for our block if ICE or other racist forces showed up.
There was an interesting discussion about what to do. It ranged from:
“Know Your Rights” cards/videos from the ACLU with information about not opening your door unless there is a court order with a judge’s signature or giving ICE access to your phone.
To:
“You have no Rights” …The current experience with ICE, La Migra, is that they will act as a vicious, fascist force when mobilized. One person spoke about why she fled Roberto D’Aubuisson’s fascist rule in El Salvador and is now facing similar attacks here in the U.S.
Some neighbors brought up that the presence of PLP’s posters/images and communist messages on our outside porch made them feel safe on the block.
Everyone agreed that displaying and acting with neighborhood solidarity was the way forward. We also discussed the long history of attacks on immigrant workers. PLP members put these attacks in the context of USA capitalism of today where the ruling class can’t maximize profit and accumulate investments at the rate they need to “stay ahead of the competition” among themselves and with China.
These attacks are aimed at creating an insecure, desperate work force to lower wages. Most importantly, these attacks are used to divide & weaken any fight back of working-class people against the oppression of capitalism. Therefore, an attack on one is an attack on all.
We made plans 1) a signal hot line for people to turn out if ICE is spotted or comes to a house in the neighborhood. 2) an agreed-upon poster to show neighborhood solidarity and safe houses for those who live, work and walk in our area. 3) further outreach and meetings to expand the group; also, to include workers who go door to door selling food or do maintenance in the neighborhood.
*****
Anti-immigrant racism a global danger
The front page article of the July 2 issue, “Rebel Against Fascist Terror” and the editorial, “ICE, LAPD, U.S. Terror” were excellent examples of the need for communist leadership “in fighting back against racist state violence and standing in defense of their families, neighbors, and fellow workers.”
However, the “immigration crackdown is just one part of the rulers’ drive to build fascism and prepare the U.S. working class for imperialist war” does not mention that the immigration crackdown is a worldwide phenomenon. Our brothers and sisters across the globe are fighting the same fight. There were recent violent clashes between far-right groups, residents and North African migrants in Spain. Denmark is pushing the European Union to reduce immigration sharply across the continent. Germany will no longer fund organizations that rescue migrants at sea, meaning that the more than 25,000 who have drowned in the last ten years is only the beginning.
Albania is cashing in on imprisoning migrants from Italy, just as El Salvador is doing with U.S. deportations, to the tune of 800 million euros over five years. Across Europe immigrant bashing by the far-right parties leads to electoral gains, and the liberal fascists are quick to sing the same song in order to stop losing votes and hold on to their political power.
Workers have no borders and capitalism around the world must be smashed. Join the PLP in the fight for world communism.
*****
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Letter: Zohran Mamdani campaign - Put some respect on workers, not politicians
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- 31 July 2025 954 hits
I was glad to see CHALLENGE publish a letter about Mamdani (see 7/2/25). The Mamdani mayoral campaign in New York City has national and international implications. I hope the pages of our paper fill with our experiences struggling with our base and in the mass movement over Mamdani’s candidacy. It’s a tremendous opportunity to show the contrast between capitalist reformers like Mamdani, who doom us to propping up a murderous, fatally-flawed capitalist system, and the revolutionary communism of PLP. But only if we fight hard for our line!
The letter writer made a plea for us to be “respectful” when we discuss Mamdani and the limits of capitalist politicians. I do understand that sometimes we can be strident and dismissive when we discuss the contradiction of reform and revolution with our base. This often happens when we don’t know people well. For sure, it’s not dialectical (and thus not true) to just say, “Reform is bad, revolution is good.” We have to understand that tendencies toward both reform and revolution coexist inside the class struggle; like all contradictions, they are inextricably bound together. Indeed, I would argue that there is no such thing as a “reform struggle” per se, only the CLASS STRUGGLE that can have both reformist and revolutionary tendencies.
For that very reason, it is not enough to say, “We are with you in the struggle, but in the long run we believe in revolution.” In this period of rising fascism—indeed, of fascism breaking out into the open—the question of reform and revolution has become more and more one of life and death, and our work in the mass movement has to take on a more urgent character. Instead of worrying about being respectful, we need to be worrying about how we struggle harder to win our fellow workers toward our revolutionary line.
How do we do that? Not by yelling at our fellow workers, to be sure, or by dismissing their opinions, even when we disagree. We do it by building deep ties with them. We need to build bonds of trust and solidarity with large numbers of workers, a major reason why we are actively involved in mass organizations for the long-term. We need to be immersed in the lives of the working class—in the thick of their everyday struggles to survive under capitalism and to fight for the society we all need. When we are close to people, we can struggle with them harder.
The fact is, the liberal ruling class remains the greatest danger to the working class, and democratic socialist candidates in particular are uniquely able to energize young people about a rebranded capitalism that is just as murderous, racist, and sexist as always. You can’t vote out fascism! Hundreds of thousands of workers that ultimately must be won to communism are now mobilizing for yet another one of the bosses’ elections. Mamdani is extremely dangerous to the working class and will help usher in fascism. Unless we win workers away, they will be disarmed.
If Mamdani is to remain a viable candidate for the bosses, he will necessarily need to make accommodations with them. The fact that he has been making nice with Wall Street billionaire CEOs and not ruling out keeping billionaire heiress KKKop Commissioner Jessica Tisch shows his willingness to “play the capitalist game,” just like any other capitalist politician. And while it’s true that because of splits in the ruling class, certain sections are gunning for Mamdani, other sections of the still dominant liberal wing have already moved to endorse him, like former mayor Bill DeBlasio and Congressmen Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler, and Adriano Espaillat. More will likely follow.
The bottom line is we must always be respectful with our fellow workers. But in this period, what we really need is a sharper struggle with them.
When Obama was in his honeymoon phase, I was struggling hard with my fellow workers, many of whom I knew well and had deep bonds of trust with. I am self-critical now that when they criticized me for being “pessimistic” because I warned of his allegiance to capitalism and his inevitable coming sellout, I backed off, out of what I thought was “respect” for my friends.
It wasn’t really respect for them that stopped me: it was cowardice and fear. I didn’t want them to be mad at me. But I was wrong. Within a year after his inauguration, the honeymoon was over and many of my friends could see that their hopes were hollow. Obama went on to manage five simultaneous wars for U.S. imperialism, deport over three million of our fellow workers, among countless other betrayals. Like Mamdani today, the allure of the Obama presidency disarmed the working class and set the stage for the more open fascism of Trump. And I missed the opportunity to engage them more fiercely on the need for them to take a leading role in changing our world instead of waiting for the next savior.
I will not make that mistake again, and today as the decline of U.S. imperialism accelerates, the stakes are that much greater.
Let’s not insult our fellow workers by being too “nice.” Let’s take them seriously and engage them in a struggle over what we urgently need to survive.
Gazan children continue to starve under genocidal conditions
World Health Organization, 7/27–Nearly one in five children under five in Gaza City is now acutely malnourished, as reported by Nutrition Cluster partners. Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM), which measures the percentage of children aged 6–59 months suffering from acute malnutrition, has tripled since June, making it the worst-hit area in the Gaza Strip. In Khan Younis and the Middle Area, rates have doubled in less than one month. These figures are likely an underestimation due to the severe access and security constraints preventing many families from reaching health facilities. So far in July, over 5000 children under five have already been admitted for outpatient treatment of malnutrition in just the first two weeks, 18% of them with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), the most life-threatening form.
Egyptian student murdered by police prompts workers to fight back
MiddleEastEye, 7/28–A university student has been tortured to death inside an Egyptian police station, a rights group told Middle East Eye. The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) said that 21-year-old Ayman Sabry Abdel Wahab died on Friday while in custody at the Belqas Police Station…following “a week of deadly torture”. Riots erupted in the aftermath of his arrest, with journalists sharing footage of protestors clashing with security forces outside Belqas court…so far in 2025, 15 prisoners had died in Egyptian custody, the majority of them due to medical negligence.
China continues competition with U.S. to control minerals
Financial Times, 7/6–Chinese mining acquisitions overseas have hit their highest level in more than a decade as companies race to secure the raw materials that underpin the global economy in the face of mounting geopolitical tension…The country’s huge demand for raw materials – it is the world’s largest consumer of most minerals – means its mining companies have a long history of investing overseas…Some military governments in Africa have sought to take control of Western mining assets and are demanding higher royalty payments.
Bank CEO tells Democrats get with the program
The Hill, 7/11–JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Thursday knocked Democrats for pushing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies instead of “real world” solutions. “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots”...“I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works…As Democrats look to rebuild after suffering a major defeat in 2024, the CEO suggested they lean away from candidates who resemble New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who won the Democratic nomination. “He’s more of a Marxist than a socialist...the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”
Liberal think-tank report says it’s time to move beyond the illusion of a fair world
Foreign Affairs, July 2025–The liberal international order is dying, and its transatlantic backers are grieving. During the first Trump administration, many were in denial, but few are now. Some are angry, denouncing a villain—usually U.S. President Donald Trump—for having unnecessarily destroyed what they hold dear and vowing to step forward to bolster global institutions…Praying for its resurrection is not just naive; it is counterproductive. All of these responses misdiagnose the order’s deepest illness and thus prescribe the wrong remedy. The liberal international order’s crisis cannot be blamed on Trump’s peculiar brand of nihilistic politics…
Worshippers in DR Congo killed in mineral-rich region
BBC, 7/28–More than 40 people were killed in an attack by an Islamic State affiliate in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN and the military said. Most of them were worshippers taking part in a night vigil at a church in the town of Komanda when they were attacked by Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) fighters. Nine of those killed were children, the UN peacekeeping mission said… In 2021, DR Congo invited Ugandan troops into the country to help tackle the ADF. Attacks however still continue. Komanda is in DR Congo’s mineral-rich Ituri province, which has been fought over by various armed groups for many years.
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Editorial: Busted empire - A budget for fascism and war prep
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- 19 July 2025 1114 hits
With capitalism in deep trouble around the globe the bosses are responding with more vicious attacks on the working class. President Donald Trump’s One Big Billionaire’s Bill is an openly racist blueprint to scapegoat immigrant workers and force workers to pay for the rulers’ crisis. The bill moves the U.S. closer to full-blown fascism and an inevitable world war with its imperialist rivals. To balance tax cuts for the filthy rich, it will steal healthcare and food from tens of millions of workers and children. And it calls for billions of dollars for building a federal police force to discipline and intimidate the entire working class.
The bill sharpens the fight between the domestically focused Small Fascists fronted by Trump and the Big Fascist finance capital wing that controls the Democrats. Both of these bitterly clashing factions need fascism to try to prop up their failing system. Both are cynically targeting immigrant workers to sow fear and division within our class—and to deflect the anger of U.S.-born workers away from the bosses and their brutal profit system. The two wings’ differences are rooted in where they make their money and in their strategies for war. Trump’s lavish tax cuts for fossil fuels and his spending on military hardware align with the Small Fascists’ plan to build a more isolated Fortress America. The Small Fascist wing wants to protect their interests with long-range missiles and bombers and a bigger navy, but without the even higher costs of massive overseas ground forces. The Big Fascists need a larger military with more soldiers on the ground to defend their global imperialist interests against a rising China (breakingdefense.com, 7/3).
But neither Trump nor the Big Fascists can solve the contradictions of capitalism or halt the decline of U.S. imperialism. Neither side will meet workers’ basic needs or safeguard our children’s future. The choice for our class is clear: to drift along with the tide of war and fascism, or to fight for the liberation of our class with communist revolution.
Bosses turning ICE into national terror force
The bill Trump rammed through Congress allocates $170 billion for anti-immigration state terror over the next three and a half years and triples the outlay for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, enough to hire 10,000 more masked gestapo goons. ICE now stands to receive more money than the rest of the federal policing, surveillance, and prison agencies combined (politifact.com, 7/8)—and more than the annual military budgets of Italy, Israel, or Brazil (newsweek.com, 7/2). According to Kristi Noem, Trump’s sadistic “homeland security” chief, the plan is to expand on the cages built by Obama and Biden and double the number of immigrant detention beds. The bosses’ latest concentration camp, a disease-ridden state facility stuck in the remote Florida Everglades, is officially named Alligator Alcatraz (miamiherald.com, 7/3).
Under pressure from Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top nazis, to meet a deportation goal of one million people per year, ICE has expanded its raids to courthouses and train stations, to orchards and carwashes and Home Depot parking lots. To sow maximum fear, they’re seizing documented and undocumented workers alike. Not even native-born U.S workers are safe (AILA, 1/29). The ICE invasions of Los Angeles and more than a dozen other cities, backed by local kkkops and at times the National Guard, have turned civilian policing into a military operation, complete with armored vehicles and flashbang grenades. As anti-immigrant terror is normalized, the liberal bosses will use it for their own purposes as soon as they get the chance. As a former “border management” director under Biden observed, the new level of funding for immigration enforcement “likely changes it forever even if Democrats come into power” (New York Times, 7/12).
Regardless of the uniform they wear, more cops have never made us safer. There’s a long history of working-class resistance to the oppression of workers who’ve been brutalized by slavery, marked by yellow stars, forced to carry passbooks, or penned into camps or reservations or Bantustans. These fights have steeled us and prepared us for bigger battles. The courageous fightback against ICE is a glimpse of the power of antiracist, multiracial, working-class unity. The more we stand together, the stronger our class becomes. We rally around no politicians, no bosses, no flags but the red flag of communism!
Imperialists clash over energy
The OBBB consolidates U.S. investment in fossil fuels over solar and wind. Not only does the bill enrich Trump’s billionaire backers in the coal and domestic oil industry with a $65 billion tax break, it decimates tax incentives for solar, wind and electric vehicles—and exposes the fragility of reforms like Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (msn.com, 7/10). Perhaps most important, it advances a strategy to eliminate U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources while leveraging other countries’ dependence on fossil fuels for geopolitical advantage. In short, it aims to prepare the U.S. for war.
Since World War II, the U.S. has dominated the globe by controlling the flow of oil and gas. In recent years, however, China has made huge strides in harnessing solar and wind power and creating batteries that can recharge an electric car in five minutes. As the price of renewables keeps dropping, the balance of power is shifting. Today, China exports about the same value in clean energy technology as the U.S. exports in fossil fuels (NYT, 6/30).
Though the anti-Trump finance capitalists need to protect their multinational oil companies and keep other countries dependent on them, they also want to compete in clean energy and block China from total domination of production, markets, and supply chains. Trump’s bill cedes “the future of wind, solar, hydrogen and battery investment to China. . . . a stunning acquiescence” (Atlantic Council, 7/3). The stage is set for an open confrontation between the two superpowers. As China restricts the exports of critical rare earth metals and expands clean technology exports to Pakistan, South Africa, and Brazil, the U.S. has countered with steep tariffs and trade restrictions to force its allies to purchase U.S. oil and gas. Something’s got to give.
Workers foot the bill for fascism and war
As the fossil fuel bosses get huge handouts to poison and cook the atmosphere, over 10 million workers—many of them white rural workers who voted for Trump—will lose their Medicaid healthcare (NYT, 7/3). Millions more will lose the food stamps they need to feed their families. The callous strategy is to kick people off the rolls with mounds of paperwork and rigid new work requirements. As U.S. Senator Joni Ernst told her worried constituents, “We all are going to die” anyway. If that sounds inhuman, remember the sign that Hitler’s bureaucrats posted above the entrance to Auschwitz: “Work sets you free.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party politicians and their ruling class masters have attacked the bill’s cuts to social services while shamelessly delighting in the prospect that the misery to be heaped upon workers will help the Democrats beat MAGA in the next elections (NYT, 7/3).
Every day we see more clearly the disaster that is capitalism. To build a police state and serve their endless drive for profit, the bosses condemn workers and our children to sickness and starvation. As we organize to smash fascism, we must recognize that only communism–a system run by and for the world’s working class–can protect us from detention, deportation, death and despair. Join Progressive Labor Party! Join the fight for communism!
