New Jersey, July 5—Liberal fascist school bosses rehired a communist teacher after recognizing the growing support for that teacher. In mid-May, a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member was fired from the school where they teach, supposedly due to performance issues and budget cuts. In a community meeting organized to build fightback, the teacher’s co-worker stated: “There is possibly no other teacher that the staff and the kids like more, and the administrators like less.” The antiracist, pro-student and worker solidarity this teacher represents in this school emboldened the community to win back the job of this communist fighter! This fight also helped to strengthen the confidence that the teacher had in himself to build for a lifetime in the working class.
Students, parents, and co-workers take the lead
As word spread of the firing, many co-workers and students were adamant that the school needed this comrade. A former student who has consistently received CHALLENGE wrote a petition which received 44 signatures. A co-worker took the initiative to encourage several of her students, some of whom had been the comrade’s students in the previous school year, to sign up to speak at the school board meeting at the end of May. This inspired the comrade to encourage several current students of their own as well as a couple of education workers from across the city to do the same. A parent, who has had CHALLENGE placed in her storefront since the pandemic, hosted a community meeting where a multiracial group of youth, parents, co-workers and community members showed up to plan further action during the last week of school.
Throughout this struggle many people shared wisdom regarding the way the capitalist education system had attacked them in the past. They shared lessons learned from the ways they fought back. In response to the growing fight back and a letter written by the teacher and fellow PL’ers, being self critical of the ways the teachers could perform better while also citing the pandemic and huge class sizes as a reason for difficulty in delivering data and lesson plans, the bosses decided to bring the teacher back.
Capitalist schools in decay, communities need to fight back!
This teacher was essentially fired for insubordination. The administrators forced students to remain outside in freezing temperatures while waiting for underpaid security guards to show and  process them into the school building. This teacher was accused of allowing potentially dangerous kids into the building, therefore putting everyone else’s life in danger. Our kids are not dangerous - this is the racist lie the bosses repeat over and over again. The real danger that threatens the lives of everyone in this and all school buildings is capitalism. A profit system where bosses abandon whole schools and the communities they serve when those particular kids and their families are no longer the most profitable to exploit. The resulting lack of resources leads school bosses to ramp up racist and sexist mistrust between staff and students, rather than compassion and community building.
Letting those students in and listening to them in the mornings allowed this teacher to deepen their understanding of who those kids really were and to build a working class culture of trust. It is this type of communist working class culture that the school community wanted to defend and the school administration wanted to get rid of.
Big Fascists mislead schools better than Small Fascists
The conditions of the school that fired this comrade reflect the main direction that Big Fascists (international finance capitalists, see GLOSSARY, page 6)  have for the future of the international working class. This school is oftentimes the last stop for Black students whose needs and struggles have been ignored at all other schools in the city. It is also the landing spot for many undocumented students displaced by U.S. capitalists’ search for cheap labor and imperialist profits in Latin America and the Caribbean. The families of this overall student population are exposed to racist and sexist treatment in housing, health care, and employment. The super-oppression experienced by these students and their families translates into a higher workload for the education workers who struggle to educate while the material needs of students are not being met.
It also encourages chronic staff shortages from teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, security guards, to teacher's aides who cannot bear the alienation.
The response of U.S. Small Fascist (domestic capitalists, see GLOSSARY, page 6) Republicans to contain the crises of capitalism reflected in these school conditions is to promote erasing the history of U.S. ruling class racist terror and working class antiracist heroism, and criminalizing education workers for encouraging youth to embrace the diversity within the working class. The leadership of U.S. Big Fascist Democrats, from Biden to the Mayor all the way down to the Principal of this particular school, who attacked our comrade, is a lot more dangerous for workers and youth to follow. Being Black, Latin, gay or liberal, all they preach about is phoney antiracism and the need for diversity. Yet, they use the tool of identity politics to fool some into thinking they are on our side. Then they lie that “they are doing the best that they can'' hoping to pacify our anger and stop us from organizing against the system they serve.
Fight to build communist consciousness
Worldwide, workers and students in schools under capitalism have the potential to help expose the sharpening divisions that weaken Big and Small Fascists’ ability to conceal their attacks against our class and turn it into a communist revolution. Turning that potential into reality depends on the level of confidence we build in the working class. This happens when we fight, in small and large ways- as workers and youth with communist ideas - against the racist and sexist super-exploitation, divisions and attacks that weaken our class. Working class conscious fightback emboldens the masses that are increasingly linking their fight with the vision of PLP. This fightback gives everyone more confidence that one day we will smash capitalism with a system run by us for us, communism.

BALTIMORE, July 4—Comrades in the Baltimore area organized a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) sponsored trip to Cambridge, MD, where we visited two museums—the community-built Harriet Tubman Museum & Educational Center, and the ruling class-run Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center—dedicated to the life and struggle of antiracist abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.
Despite the heavy holiday traffic—during the July 4 weekend, dedicated to hypocritical celebration of U.S. capitalist independence—family and friends of the Party made the most of the occasion.
Before the trip, one comrade gave a short speech on the significance of Tubman’s—and many many others’—resistance to the institution of slavery, connecting her determination to the same attitude needed in the Party’s fight for the upcoming sisterhood and brotherhood of a communist world.
It was also emphasized that, like Tubman herself, we need to be active in mass organizations, building bonds with a diverse array of workers, to knock down the oppressors of the world.
Tubman brave fighter, not a“saint”
As part of the experience at the museums, both included short films depicting the numerous escape plans, tactics, and accomplishments of Tubman. One was an animated film that children could watch, and another was a biopic of Tubman throughout her life.
A comrade noted that the films portrayed Tubman as one of the many U.S. heroes who upheld the patriotic ideals…of the ruling class. Paintings in the national park museum added to that propaganda: Harriet Tubman as the Statue of Liberty, and others in a style inspired by Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych series.
Some art critics say those particular paintings by Warhol were commenting on the saint-like nature that fans often assign to celebrities, which in turn causes the public to approach celebrities with some sense of holiness. But Harriet Tubman was neither a saint nor someone to whom we should give glory, while remaining meek ourselves. No, she was one among many highly inspiring leaders in the struggle against slavery, someone we should emulate, but not praise passively.
The irony of equating Tubman with patriotism—which means being loyal to a country and its bosses, instead of upholding communist loyalty to the working class and oppressed people of the whole world—did not go unnoticed.
“Strenghtening connections, struggle, and the Party”
Throughout the day, we enjoyed snacks, meals, and the scenery of rural Cambridge. Along the way, we also enjoyed each other’s company and learned more about one another. At one point, a participant described his deep respect and appreciation for one of our comrades, from whom this participant has learned much about topics involving working class struggle and how they connect personally to his life.
We further connected through discussing family dynamics and history. This was of course the most significant part of the trip. Building connections with our working class family strengthens our bonds and deepens our respect for one another, making the Party stronger.
We ended our trip coming away with a more profound understanding and appreciation for the work that Tubman did. A strong-willed and compassionate woman, Tubman’s life ended with her continued practice of support for those in need, despite her own financial insecurity.
Of course, her diligence—working with many others to smash the horrid institution of slavery—must be a reminder to all of us, who expect change, that one must be in the fight completely for the oppressed with no tolerance for indecision or betrayal. Let Tubman’s leadership and legacy embolden the struggle for winning working-class state power and communism!

Four days after the bodies of our Latin American brothers and sisters were discovered in an abandoned trailer in Texas, the bosses' deadly borders claimed the lives of more workers— this time in Melilla and Ceuta, two Spanish enclaves on the North Africa-Spanish border (hrw.org, 6/30).
On June 24, 37 migrant workers, all men from Sub-saharan Africa fleeing capitalist-created poverty and famine, were brutally beaten to death by police forces as they attempted to scale the border fence that divides Morocco from Spain. The Spanish Guardia Civil fired tear gas at hundreds of fleeing migrants. Those left behind were savagely clubbed. Graphic images of our Black brother’s mangled bodies left in pools of blood, rotting for hours in the sun expose the rotten racism of global capitalist nations and their borders (hrw.org, 6/30). The Melila massacre is the deadliest episode in a long history of the Moroccan and Spanish bosses' brutality against  Black African migrants seeking refuge in Europe (hrw.org, 2/10/14).
The Morrocan bosses have agreed to be Spain's border attack dog in exchange for regional independence (The New Arab, 7/4). Spain's rulers have learned well from their savage imperialist partners in the U.S., and have recently begged NATO to help them beef up the racist, fascist border security (Voanews, 7/5), calling the recent uptick in Black African migrants seeking asylum as a security threat. The vicious treatment of African migrants is in sharp contrast to the treatment received by the 75,000 Ukrainian migrants the Spanish government welcomed with open arms (La Moncloa,  4/26).
The Melilla massacre is a warning that as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens in Europe, so too will fascism. The Spanish bosses' war against African workers is an extension of the miserable conditions faced by workers in Spain where unemployment is the highest in Europe (FEE.org, 02/27). The massacre further exposes the fact that liberal fascists from Spain’s social democratic President Pedro Sanchez to the U.S. Big Fascist in Chief Joe Biden are the main threat facing our class.
As inflation, climate catastrophes, famine, and war choke our class, more workers will be forced to flee capitalist violent conditions. Sadly, this isn’t the last of the horrific violence we witnessed in Melila and Texas. The only way to put an end to the misery that displaces and kills workers is to build a communist world in which profits and racist borders cease to exist.

On June 20, 53 migrants died horribly, abandoned in the back of a truck with no ventilation or water in 100 degree Texas heat (125-135 degrees inside the truck) having just crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo, Texas. A comrade’s son called him from Peru to tell him the news before his father had even learned of it in New York City. The world’s working class watched in horror how the migrants died. Small Fascist (see Glossary on page 6) MAGA aligned Texas governor Greg Abbott blamed Joe Biden for his “open border policy.” Racist liberal fascist Biden said “No grandstanding... [we] need to go after criminal trafficking rings.” The three smugglers currently live in Bexar County, Texas near San Antonio. Their business in the profit driven system is collecting thousands of dollars from migrants to turn them over as cheap labor to U.S. bosses. Workers’ lives are cheap under capitalism, unlike the products that workers buy.
The international working class doesn’t need politicians, Congressional hearings, and courts to know that capitalism, with its racist borders, is guilty of racist genocide. The working class doesn’t need borders. We need to run the world based on our needs with no racist, sexist profiteering. Under communism workers will go wherever needed to build an egalitarian world. As the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) chant says, “The only solution is a communist revolution!”                                
Imperialism: A Genocidal System
The migrants who died were from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, including 20 who have not yet been identified. The workers were forced to flee their homes due to poverty, exploitation, terror, and devastation of resources, becoming victims of imperialism. Vladimir Lenin called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism when top capitalists seize control of labor, resources and markets of countries outside their borders. Their fascist tactics include control of production, monetary control, fake elections to install puppet governments, orchestrated coups and full blown invasions. Twenty migrants died in the Libyan desert of their war stricken country because of rivalry between major imperialist countries, the U.S., China and Russia. U.S. imperialists imposed sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s which led to the death of a half a million children followed by U.S. invasion of Iraq to steal their oil.                     
If or when migrants make it  to the U.S. or other capitalist countries in Europe, they face new horrors: super exploitation, racism, terror, deportation and possible death. The capitalist controlled media brands them as “criminal illegals” and on the other side of the coin, the liberals cry and make false promises. The world’s capitalists are gangsters on the planet, setting and breaking their own rules at will. Imperialism is guilty of the deaths of the migrants in Texas as well as millions more worldwide. The international working class needs a communist revolution where we organize society based on our needs not on profit.                      
Crisis at the border
There is a massive caravan  of workers and their families and unaccompanied children walking hundreds of miles to the U.S. / Mexico border to flee the devastation of capitalism in their countries of origin. More than 1,000 have died at the border so far this year. The majority of those who manage to cross are caught by border control and deported, with exceptions that include workers from Cuba, Venezuela, and the Ukraine. Most borders in the world are aflame due to war and emigration. The bosses use borders to restrict or increase the number of migrant workers into given countries, keeping them as a form of cheap labor to super-exploit, as their needs determine.e Borders also enforce racist ideas among workers that “other” workers are dangerous, untrustworthy, and out to steal their jobs, sowing further division amongst the working class. Since 1986 U.S. bosses Employers Sanctions Provision, Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) has functioned to criminalize undocumented workers, forcing them to work in the shadows under terrible working conditions for measly wages. IRCA has also had the effect of lowering wages for all workers and keeping unemployment high, particularly among Black workers.
Our PLP group is struggling with the immigrant community group we’re in to react to the migrant deaths as well as talking with our study group and distributing CHALLENGE. It is in this process of class struggle and fightback on our jobs, in our neighborhoods and networks that we grow our Party into a powerful multiracial class conscious fighting force for international communist revolution.