Ruling-class historians have segregated the fight against racism and the fight for an egalitarian system, communism. In reality, the two are connected like flesh and bone. Many antiracist struggles were led by, initiated by, or were fought with communists and communist-influenced organizations in the leadership. Many Black fighters were dedicated communists and pro-communists of their time.
In turn, the bosses have used anti-communism as a tool to terrorize and divide antiracist fightback. Regardless of communist affiliation, anyone who fought racism was at risk of being redbaited. Why? 1) The ruling class understands the natural relationship between antiracism and communism, and 2) Multiracial unity threatens the very racist system the bosses “work so hard” to maintain.
The Harlem Rebellion of 1964 shook the United States bosses and resonated around the world as the struggle against racism expanded from the fight against Jim Crow in the South to the cities of the North. Once again the communist movement helped lead and was deeply influenced by the fight against racism in the U.S. This July marks 62 years since the murder of James Powell, a Black youth killed by police — an act that ignited the Harlem Rebellion. It also marks 62 years since the birth of CHALLENGE newspaper (see page 5), founded just one month before the rebellion erupted.
The rebellion, sparked by the cold-blooded kkkop murder of a young Black man, occurred at a moment when the working class around the world was rising up, led by the communist movement centered around the Chinese Communist Party. The fledgling Progressive Labor Movement (PLM), born out of the rise of the working class in China, was also shaped by the Harlem Rebellion. To this day, bosses continue to snuff out the childhoods of Black workers. The most recent and devastating casualty of this racist system is one-year-old Black boy Kohen Wiley — proof that under capitalism, racist police murder will never end until we smash this system for all time and build a communist world. Join the PLP!
KKKops murder teen in cold blood
In July 1964, 15 year-old James Powell was playing with friends on the sidewalk across from his school in the white neighborhood of Yorkville, when a building superintendent sprayed them down with a hose and unleashed a series of racial epithets at the Black children. The school kids ran to the super to get him to stop, and a cop, Thomas Gilligan, watching from across the street came at the group and shot James Powell in front of numerous witnesses.
Immediately about 300 Black students from the school rallied at the site of the murder and confronted the police on the scene demanding Gilligan’s arrest and inspiring the rebellion.
Two days of peaceful protests ensued. But on the third day, a crowd surrounded the police precinct, calling for Gilligan’s arrest, and was met with swinging clubs of the New York Police Department. Rainfall of glass bottles and garbage can lids was thrown by residents from rooftops above. Gunfire broke out after police pushed thousands of demonstrators back a few blocks toward the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue '' (New York’s ‘Night Of Birmingham Horror’ Sparked A Summer Of Riots, WNYC, 7/18/14).
Communist movement sparked Black workers’ rebellions
The rebellion started only weeks after the U.S. had passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act which was Lyndon Johnson’s response to the growing Civil Rights Movement in the South. That movement and the world-wide movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was politicizing the working class. The working class in China, had been victimized by the brutality of British, Japanese and U.S. imperialism. The history of imperialism was inseparable from the racist theories of the British ruling class. The victory of the working class in China inspired workers all over the world to rise up against imperialism and sharpened the struggle against racism. In Vietnam, the working class was in the process of defeating the largest imperialist power the world had ever seen, the war machine of the U.S. bosses. In the U.S., even as legal segregation and racism was being brought down in the South, Black workers in the North were taking on the embedded racism of liberal capitalism.
The overwhelming majority of Black New Yorkers saw their quality of life decline, whether it’s school segregation, housing segregation, unemployment, earnings… [in the] period between the end of World War II and the 1964 riot… “This was Northern racism, which was quite different from Southern racism, in that Northern racism was covert,” says Joseph Boskin, history professor emeritus at Boston University.
Racism is the lifeblood of capitalism
Boskin, who conducted interviews in Harlem after the [rebellion], says the unmet expectations of Black Americans in the North were starting to push some of them toward more militant routes for change, despite a national narrative of what seemed to be progress in the country’s laws” (WNYC 7/18/14).
The Progressive Labor Movement (PLM), the young forerunner to Progressive Labor Party (PLP), grew out of the rebellion and played a leading role at the same time. PLM produced a poster, ‘Wanted for Murder—Gilligan the Cop” that became the banner of the struggle carried by thousands of people in the streets. The PLM organized marches and rallies even after the New York City bosses tried to ban all political activity.
The ruling class in New York, who thought of themselves as the “decent” bosses compared to the Jim Crow Southern capitalists, were caught off-guard by the anger of Black workers in Harlem who suffered under extreme inequality.
The Harlem median family income was $3,995 compared to …$6,100 [for all NYC], unemployment in Harlem was 300% higher than in the rest of the city, substandard housing was 49% [of all housing] while in the rest of NYC it was 15%, infant mortality was 45.3 per 1000 births but only 26.3 in the rest of the city…Life magazine lamented that “the only force that had the guts to give political direction to the spontaneous rebellion was PL” (Progressive Labor, Vol. 10, No. 1, August-September 1975).
The Harlem Rebellion exposed racism as part of capitalism, even in the U.S.’s most liberal center, NYC. After Harlem, within weeks, rebellions broke out in Rochester, Jersey City, Chicago and Philadelphia and over the next few years there were major rebellions in Watts (1965), Newark (1967) and Detroit (1967). Then in 1968, after Martin Luther King was assassinated, rebellions broke out in cities across the country, and workers and students around the world, most notably in France and Chicago rebelled, and shook capitalism.
Liberal rulers unleash racist attacks, bury antiracist history
The ruling class has tried to write off the rebellions by calling them riots and dismissing the contribution and courage of the tens of thousands of Black workers who were part of the movement. But even now, 60 years later, the truth of the Harlem Rebellion has not been erased.
Part of the confusion is that in the North, many of the laws were not openly discriminatory.That made it harder to seize the moral high ground and argue that nonviolent civil disobedience was justified.
So, growing frustrations found an outlet on the streets, according to Billy Mitchell, historian of Harlem’s Apollo Theater. “It wasn’t just people just wild n’ out, you know, and just going crazy. They understood what they were doing,”… Looking back, Mitchell says he doesn’t completely condone the violent response. But he says it was necessary. “Sometimes you have got to really do something extraordinary or uncommon to get the attention of people,” he adds.(In the Heat of the summer: The Harlem Riot of 1964 and the Road to America’s Prison Crisis).
The U.S. ruling class responded to the mass demonstrations and anti-imperialist movements with both terror and political crumbs. Police and soldiers fired on and killed civil rights demonstrators and students fighting racism and war in Orangeburg, SC, Jackson State, MS and Kent State, OH.
Combined with the brutal attacks, the ruling class enacted a series of reforms in cities with concentrations of Black workers. Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty funneling millions of dollars to create community programs. The Democratic Party and northern capitalists spent millions getting Black mayors elected across the country.
At the same time, the FBI revved up its Cointelpro Program. It was a covert operation to target the PLP and other groups to try to destroy the anti-imperialist movement. Leaders of PLP were arrested and some were convicted and jailed, others harassed and fired. Through those struggles and in the years since we’ve tried to keep up the fight against racism and build an integrated organization.
Black workers key to communist revolution
As we evaluate and develop a better understanding of historical materialism, we see clearly that Black workers, who have borne the brunt of racism and led the fight against it, must be in the leadership of any working-class struggle and movement for communism. There will be no forward progress for the working class without the leadership of Black workers and a massive struggle against racism.
STATE OF MEXICO, JUNE 1— On June 1st the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) launched a National Strike demanding the repeal of the education reform and the Law of the Social Security and Services Institute for State Workers (ISSSTE). Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have joined their marches and blockades, where they have distributed around 600 flyers. We also organized a meeting with 15 residents from the eastern zone of the Valley of Mexico to explain the demands and ask for their solidarity with the strike. This week we will hold a meeting with teachers from an industrial zone with the same goal. The following is the text of the flyer.
Total support for the National Teachers’ strike!
The struggle of the women and men teachers of the CNTE is our struggle. Many sectors of us suffer injustice, oppression, racism and exploitation under this capitalist system we live in. The working class as a whole, and students too, must join the CNTE work stoppage and turn it into a general strike against capitalism.
Blocking the FIFA World Cup from taking place in Mexico is a strategy of struggle and political pressure to force Claudia Sheinbaum and the 4th transformation government to repeal the Peña-AMLO-Sheinbaum Education Reform, scrap the damaging 2007 ISSSTE Law, and grant a fair wage increase.
“4T” refers to the “Cuarta Transformación” or Fourth Transformation, the political project of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, continued under his successor Claudia Sheinbaum.]
To fight the privatization of education — which affects millions of students, parents, and the general public — we need to fight the repeal of the Education Reform imposed by imperialist interests and pushed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through the governments of Peña Nieto, López Obrador, and Claudia Sheinbaum.
Crooked bosses chip away at retirement accounts
The 2007 ISSSTE Law is another blow to the labor, union, and basic livelihood rights of education workers and other sectors covered by ISSSTE. Its main purpose is to benefit the capitalist owners of the national and international banks that control the Afores.
Afores — Administradoras de Fondos para el Retiro — are private financial firms that manage individual retirement savings accounts. Mexico shifted to this privatized pension system in 1997, moving away from a public defined-benefit model. This system enriches the financial sector bosses at workers’ expense.
With that law, the employer class eliminated retirement rights, forcing workers into a Voluntary Retirement system of Individual Accounts managed by private banks. The financial groups XXI Banorte (now owner of Estadio Az-teca), Citibanamex, SURA, Inbursa, Afore Azteca, and Coppel manage 7.1 trillion pesos belonging to 69 million workers. In recent months alone, these firms raked in profits of 4 billion, 72 million pesos — while workers have been denied the right to a dignified retirement.
Neoliberal reforms have only served to make the capitalists richer and the working class poorer. In this struggle waged by education workers, we see capitalism’s true face — and the role that governments, whoever is in power, play as its servants.
Ruling class ramps up fascist attacks
Faced with the teachers’ peaceful protests, the fascist response of Sheinbaum and the 4T government has been police repression by the Mexico City government and para-military attacks like those that took place in Mitla.
The capitalist media fills the airwaves with racist lies against education workers, trying to hide the sharp class struggle that the teachers’ movement has waged for decades against capitalist oppression — a struggle not only for those in education, but for the entire working class.
The decline of U.S. imperialism and the rise of China as a new imperialist power will generate deep capitalist contradictions driven by the ambition to dominate the world, producing local and regional wars and the possibility of a Third World War — where the working class will keep paying the criminal price.
That is why our fundamental struggle must be the destruction of this capitalist system and the establishment of communism, where working men and women will work together for the good of the community. Join the International Communist PLP to make this goal a reality.
Teachers, listen up — the PLP is in your struggle!
Teachers, listen up — communism is your struggle!
CHICAGO, June 11–Class struggle between hospital workers and the racist capitalist bosses here in Chicago is on the rise! Members of the international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined close to 100 workers, union organizers, and community allies for a one-day picket today at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital to support the fight and spread communist politics.
The nurses here at St. Mary have been organizing to form a union to fight back against worsening conditions for staff and patients alike, made worse after the hospital was bought by California-based Prime Healthcare a little over a year ago. Tensions have reached a boiling point after six nurses were fired last month for their efforts in organizing the union, spurring today’s one-day strike (Block Club Chicago, 6/11).
The pathetic retaliation on the part of the bosses has only added fuel to the fire. As revolutionary communists, we are committed not only to show up in solidarity with the picket but to expose how this rotten profit system can NEVER fundamentally meet our needs as workers! By building the mass PLP through our participation in these fights, we can get closer to the worker-run communist future that we truly need.
On the front lines against capitalist oppression
Our comrades arrived at the picket to meet a lively and multiracial group of workers in front of the hospital. It was immediately clear that women, particular Black, Latin and Asian women workers were in leadership of the campaign. Most of the workers were eager to take a copy of the CHALLENGE newspaper, particularly with the front-page headline “POWER TO THE WORKERS!” As we distributed the issue, we took the opportunity to discuss the front-page article about the recent NIPSCO lockout, connecting that fight to this struggle and battles against capitalist exploitation everywhere (see CHALLENGE 06/17).
The nurses were ready to share their experiences and passion too. Practically everyone we talked to had horror stories about how Prime was attacking them, their patients and their families through poor staffing, failing to replace necessary equipment, and cutting charity benefits for lower-income patients. They all understood that if they didn’t organize to fight back, the attacks would just keep on coming.
Through heightened moments of class struggle like union campaigns and strikes, the nature of capitalism is exposed more clearly to our class. The bosses take the mask off to show the extremes they are willing to go to protect their profits and power, including firings and using repressive state forces like police to intimidate and attack us workers. But these strikes are also schools for communism, where our class learns of our own power and collectivity and how we don’t need the bosses! Having the mass PLP in more of these kinds of struggles everywhere is key to reinforcing that truth and building real worker power through a fighting party.
It’s not just Prime, it’s capitalism
Although Prime Healthcare is making waves as a particularly abusive corporation, the awful conditions of healthcare and worker health under capitalism run far deeper than any one bad actor. Like everything under this system, healthcare is treated like a commodity to sell and make the bosses profits. The bosses are only interested in our health so far as we can keep showing up to work each day and keep the system running. As such, we suffer from many preventable diseases, and the racist inequality baked into the system makes sure that Black and Brown workers suffer the worst.
Organizing into a union is one of the most obvious ways for workers to fight back under capitalism, but they are hardly enough. Most often, unions exist as a means for us to negotiate the terms of our exploitation with the bosses, while keeping the overall structure of capitalism safely intact. What’s more, the misleaders who run the largest unions push passivity and voting down our throats, lining us up behind the same capitalist politicians who are responsible for the miserable conditions we deal with today.
Communism represents the path for our class to secure our healthiest existence possible. In past revolutions in the Soviet Union and China, the working class under communist leadership was able to secure radical gains in life expectancy, maternal and public health, and mental wellbeing. PLP fights to build upon that legacy by rebuilding a mass international revolutionary movement and a society freed from the chains of profit, exploitation, and class inequality.
Communism means workers’ power
We salute the bold nurses of St. Mary as they continue their important struggle. Our plan in PLP is to continue supporting and organizing our class while deepening our personal connections to win the masses to communism and our Party. Workers make society go, so we should be in charge of it! Down with the bosses and capitalism – all power to the working class!
In the Bay Area, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades attended rallies, and some lobbied politicians to support the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). TPS holders and other immigrant workers have become scapegoats for the bosses’ attacks. But the real barrier for the working class is that U.S. capitalists compete for control of profits around the world. PLP members distributed flyers to explain how the TPS program illustrates that we must get rid of capitalism and build a communist world. International working-class unity will destroy all borders.
Bosses steal profits from immigrant workers
TPS workers’ labor adds billions in profits for U.S. bosses and subsidizes the federal government. Estimates are that TPS holders yearly generate around $29 billion for the U.S. economy (FWD.US, April 21). TPS holders also generate $7.8 billion in federal payroll, state, and local taxes. Despite this theft filling the bosses’ coffers, the TPS program has never provided a path to permanent residency or U.S. citizenship no matter how many years a recipient lived or worked in the U.S.
Recent struggles of TPS workers
As expected, the U.S. ruling class has launched several racist and sexist attacks on TPS holders that show the bosses attempting to divide the working class by nationalism.
In Minneapolis, President Donald Trump called the Minnesota Somali community “garbage” in December 2025. Then, ICE targeted Somali immigrants during Operation Metro Surge. The TPS program for Somalis was extended due to a court order. The fight continues but leaves Somali workers with an insecure status.
In Colorado, TPS workers on strike in the meat processing industry in Greeley showed potential for working-class international unity and rejection of borders. Approximately 3,800 workers, speaking 50 different languages, many with TPS, went on strike at the JBS USA meatpacking plant in March (AP News, April 13). This was the first major strike in the U.S. meatpacking industry in 40 years, driven by demands for better pay, safety, and unfair labor practices.
In Oakland, coalitions of various organizations hosted rallies in 2026 to support the extension of TPS for Haitians. The coalition included the NorCal TPS Coalition (which focuses on Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America), Myanmar Student Union, Community Liberation Programs, Haiti Action Committee, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Speakers addressed El Salvador, Haiti, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan and other areas. Our PLP flyer documented capitalism as the problem and was well received.
PLP members strive to develop workers’ solidarity. These actions show the potential for destroying borders and building international working-class unity. We hope comrades around the country will contact us in the Bay Area as they meet TPS holders in struggle. This unity is the basis for building a communist world. We in PLP remember the tremendous unity in 2006 “A Day without Immigrants” and work to create international working-class unity.
History of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Program
Originally, TPS was presented as “Humanitarian Relief” in the Immigration Act of 1990. It was for people from countries suffering civil war or natural disasters, like El Salvador and Haiti. However, hidden behind this façade of “Humanitarian Relief” was that the CIA supported “friendly” factions in civil wars - in El Salvador the Arena Party; in Haiti, a coup against Jean Paul Aristide.
The TPS program uses racism and nationalism
We all heard the racist diatribes against Haitians during Trump’s Presidential race in 2024. Attacks in Minnesota started with attacking Black immigrants from Somalia! Black and Latin immigrants are the focus of ICE raids. To build divisions, TPS status expires every 18 months with different dates set due to the 17 countries of origin.
Here is the “humanitarian impact on these TPS workers, no matter the 17 countries; Afghanistan, Burma, Myanmar, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen:
1) Tremendous insecurity and threat of deportation when the TPS status is not renewed every 18 months. Renewal dates vary country to country to prevent workers’ unity. This threat continues no matter how long a TPS worker has been in the U.S.
2) The work permits granted means they pay taxes on their wages and contribute to social security and Medicare. The estimates in 2025-26 document that TPS holders generated $5.2 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Threats of discontinuing TPS and bureaucratic delays mean that many TPS holders are denied government benefits.
3) TPS holders face high costs every time permits expire or are canceled, as it costs $575 per person every 18 months. Travel home (called “Advanced Parole, only 30 days.”) costs an additional fee of $575. “ If you overstay your visit, you can’t return to the U.S. These fees to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) do not include additional legal fees to fight the bureaucracy.
- Information
62nd CHALLENGEversary: Long live the communist paper
- Information
- 21 June 2026 901 hits
The two stories below are excerpts from the late Walter Linder’s memoir, A Life of Labor and Love. Wally was a founding member of Progressive Labor Party and passed away on January 3, 2022 at the age of 91, after a lifetime of principled struggle on behalf of the international working class. In addition to being a leader for the working class in school and on the job, he served as an editor and contributor to CHALLENGE, and to the Magazine of Progressive Labor Party.
62 years of the workers’ paper
The first issue of CHALLENGE (Vol. 1, No 1) came out on June 15, 1964. When we sold that first issue of CHALLENGE, most of us had no idea how significant it was AND the role that CHALLENGE would soon play in the fight against capitalism. The headline on page one was prophetic: Police War on Harlem. Barely four weeks later, the Harlem Rebellion started after racist KKKop Thomas Gilligan of the New York Police Department (NYPD) shot and killed young James Powell who, with his friends, was trying to cool off from the July heat by spraying water on themselves and a bystander who complained about it and eventually called the police (see page 8). This killing was the last straw in a long series of racist oppression. The news media called the rebellion a “riot” but it was most definitely a rebellion! Most of the stores that were attacked were pawnshops that had been looting the residents of Harlem for decades!
The Progressive Labor Movement (PLM), which became the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in April 1965, put out its most significant (and briefest!!) leaflet: Wanted for Murder - Gilligan the Cop. Rebels carried the leaflet all over Harlem. The PLM couldn’t print enough of them!! ALL of the so-called “Black leaders” had the same false message: Go home and Pray ... don’t fight back!! But the NYC bosses knew exactly who to attack; the Harlem rebels and the PLM. So-called “free speech” went out the window. In essence, martial law was declared.
On a personal note, I sold the first issue of CHALLENGE in three locations: The Upper West Side of Manhattan, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the Garment District in Manhattan. The PLM held weekly rallies in the Garment District and CHALLENGE was a big help in getting our message out. We sold CHALLENGE on the street to the garment workers and when the boss wasn’t around, we went inside the shops where we could talk more extensively to several workers simultaneously. Unfortunately, most of us (maybe ALL of us) didn’t understand anything about base building so we didn’t get workers’ names. That’s a key lesson for our newer members: ALWAYS get names so you can stay in touch and follow up with as many people as possible. That’s key to building the Party.
The police and sanitation departments harassed us while we sold CHALLENGE. They gave me quite a few tickets for supposedly “littering.” After my first ticket, the PLM got me a lawyer who taught me what to say at my trial. After my second ticket, I no longer needed a lawyer; I could defend myself and I did so!
CHALLENGE was the only newspaper, magazine, or TV and radio station that told the truth about the Harlem Rebellion, as well as the many other rebellions in Black neighborhoods throughout the U.S. The summer of 1964 made it very clear who were the sellouts and who supported the working class. Every one of us should do their utmost to ensure that CHALLENGE continues to be a working-class beacon that will help workers to understand the oppressive nature of capitalism AND the only solution to its miseries: COMMUNIST REVOLUTION!
The workers embrace CHALLENGE
In June 1964, the Progressive Labor Movement decided to print an eight-page weekly newspaper; CHALLENGE was born. Our search for a printer led us to an outfit in Trenton, N.J.
After laying down a deposit, the printer looked at the first issue and told us that would be the last one he’d print.
We called up the Harris offset press manufacturer and asked for a list of newspaper printers to whom it had sold web offset presses. That’s how we found the Sun Publishing Co., located in the Chinese community on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We showed our first issue to the owner, Mr. Chan, and he agreed to print our newspaper. His wife and kids helped with various tasks. Milt Rosen, PLM chairperson, and I packed the papers into boxes for pick-up.
As it happened, later that month the Harlem rebellion erupted, during which the rebels were holding the front page of CHALLENGE as their flag while marching. This prompted the NYPD Red Squad to visit Mr. Chan and warn him that if he continued to print our paper he would be in for trouble. Chan told them he was within his rights to print any newspaper brought to him.
“What about freedom of the press?” he shot back at the cops’ threat. He was not about to abandon his only account. Years later, when Mr. Chan retired, our search for another printer led us to Brooklyn and Ballan Printing, a company that printed many small community and campus papers—and a huge number of pornographic ones that had sprung up since the 1960s. (The Mafia, in collusion with the owners, had coerced the workers into a local union it controlled.) But neither the owners nor the Mafia counted on the workers’ rebelliousness.
The workers read our paper and saw the various exposés we wrote about the lousy working conditions that profit-hungry bosses were pushing on workers throughout the country.
When we went to pick up the paper, the workers showed us the horrible condition of what passed for their bathroom and asked us to write about it. Our editor Luis Castro wrote an exposé for the next issue, which the workers read with enthusiastic approval.When the bosses saw the article, they went wild. They told us it was all lies and one-sided and challenged us to print their side, “the truth.” We told them that there was only one “truth,” the “workers’ truth,” which made them even crazier. From then on, they scrutinized every issue. Soon afterwards, the owners renovated the bathroom into a halfway decent condition.
The workers attributed that improvement to the article we had written. When a pre-May Day issue came out, we printed the words of the workers’ anthem, “The Internationale.” When we went to pick up that issue, a pressworker suddenly leapt up the two flights of stairs to the top of the huge web press and in a clear, loud voice began singing “The Internationale.”
As the strains of the final words, “the International working class shall be the human race,” drifted across the pressroom, the workers spontaneously burst into applause.
We never found out how this worker knew the song’s melody, but news of the performance soon traveled to the far reaches of Brooklyn. We are beginning our 63rd year of publishing CHALLENGE, and have never missed an issue.
