What is unfolding today in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (Azad Jammu and Kashmir, or AJK) is not a passing protest—it is an historic uprising of the working class against decades of exploitation, deprivation, and betrayal. The working class in Kashmir, long silenced by colonial dependence and capitalist greed, are breaking their chains and stepping into history as conscious agents of change. Their revolt challenges not only the despotic local bosses, but the entire capitalist-imperialist system that sustains it.

The Jammu Kashmir Awami Action Committee (JAAC) did not emerge overnight. It grew out of years of organizing by progressive and communist students, workers, and activists who united beyond sectarian and nationalist divisions. When the state unleashed brutal violence during the strike on September 29, 2025—killing more than a dozen and injuring hundreds—it hoped to crush dissent. Instead, the blood of martyrs ignited a broader rebellion. The state’s machinery faltered before the united strength of the working people, forcing the rulers to concede.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stresses that temporary reforms cannot end permanent exploitation. The next task is to channel mass anger into revolutionary organization—linking every struggle for bread, electricity, and basic needs to the fight for communist power.

Roots of the JAAC Movement

JAAC’s roots trace back to the 2017–18 mobilizations against unfair electricity bills, wage theft, and privatization. Local traders, transport workers, teachers, and government employees built networks of solidarity that coordinated strikes and protests across AJK (PoK). By 2020–21, these struggles had evolved into a united front against systemic exploitation.

The May 2023 general strike marked a turning point. Markets shut down, transport halted, and tens of thousands demanded relief from unbearable tariffs and inflation. The government’s partial concessions proved that mass struggle—not parliamentary politics—is the true engine of change. That victory laid the groundwork for the revolutionary upsurge of 2024–25, when the movement’s class character became unmistakable.Exploitation and inequality

AJK generates more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity, yet its own people face blackouts and unaffordable tariffs. The Mangla Dam, built in the 1960s, displaced over 100,000 workers in Kashmir—many of whom remain uncompensated. While local communities bear the cost, Pakistan’s capitalist elite and corporate allies reap the profits.

Over 40 percent of AJK’s population suffers from food insecurity. Unemployment exceeds 30 percent, and public services have collapsed under austerity. The region’s hydropower, forests, and minerals are plundered in the name of “development.” This is not mismanagement—it is the logic of a semi-colonial capitalist system that treats AJK (PoK) as an internal colony of Pakistan, itself subordinate to global imperialism.

Political domination and “refugee seats”

One of the clearest instruments of this domination is the system of “refugee seats” in the AJK Legislative Assembly. Twelve seats are reserved for people who claim to be refugees from Jammu and Kashmir but have lived in Pakistan since 1947. They neither reside in AJK nor share its material conditions—yet they rule over it.

These individuals already enjoy full political rights in Pakistan, participating in its provincial and national assemblies. The Pakistani ruling class uses them as proxies to dominate AJK’s politics, install puppet governments, and suppress local self-rule. The JAAC’s demand to abolish these twelve seats is therefore not a minor reform—it is a major challenge to a colonial political structure that denies AJK’s people sovereignty over their land and labor.

Radical organization threatens bosses

Through determined struggle, the JAAC has won partial rollbacks of anti-people tariffs, restored flour subsidies, united workers, peasants, traders, teachers, and students under one banner, and created local coordination committees—the first seeds of direct workers’ power. These efforts have exposed the capitalist nature of the Pakistani state and its local collaborators.

Yet contradictions remain. Elements within JAAC’s leadership—petty-bourgeois, reformist, and nationalist—seek compromise rather than revolution. As Marx and Lenin taught, without a revolutionary communist party, spontaneous struggle remains confined within capitalist limits. The movement must advance from reform to revolution.

The massacres in Mirpur, Bagh, and Muzaffarabad were not accidents but deliberate acts of class war. The state defends profit through bullets and prisons. What it fears most is not protest but organization—workers and peasants developing class consciousness and preparing to seize power.

Communist internationalism is key

The oppression of AJK (PoK) cannot be separated from global capitalism. The same system that enforces IMF austerity in Pakistan funds Zionist genocide in Palestine, fuels wars in Sudan and Congo, and exploits workers from Dhaka to Detroit. The enemy is international—so our struggle must be internationalist.

As the Progressive Labor Party teaches: “The fight for reforms can only serve the revolution when it exposes the class nature of capitalism and helps workers organize for power.”

Class-conscious workers in the JAAC must now take concrete steps to build communist-led workers’ committees in every district—to control resources, administration, and production. Unite workers, peasants, students, and youth across religious and regional lines. Reject NGO politics, electoral illusions, and nationalist distractions that divide the working class. Link AJK’s fight with broader anti-imperialist movements—from India to Palestine, from Cuba to Sudan.

Toward a new communist dawn

The blood spilled in AJK has not been in vain—it has watered the seeds of a new dawn, a dawn of revolution. The people demand bread, but they are learning to fight for power. They demand relief, but they are beginning to build communism. They mourn their martyrs, but they also organize in their name.

The uprising in AJK (PoK) reveals a universal truth: the oppressed cannot rely on parliaments or promises—only organized working-class power can end exploitation. Reform was the spark; revolution is the fire. The battlefield is global, and the working class is its vanguard.

The International Communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) strives to provide leadership and raise class consciousness among workers and students, uniting them under the red flag for an international communist revolution.
Long live PLP.

Brooklyn, NY—“No ICE on campus, that’s right!” is by far the most common student response and sums up the attitude of hundreds of students in response to leaflets calling for student-worker unity in the face of immigration raids. “Come for four, come for us all!” sums up the attitude of most faculty and staff we’ve spoken to who are outraged at City of New York’s (CUNY) recent termination of the “Fired Four” adjuncts for supporting pro-Palestinian students on campus. While these sharpening attacks may seem unrelated, they reflect rising fascism and a lashing out of declining U.S. imperialism against any threats – external and internal – to their sagging but lethal empire.

How are Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members in our CUNY club connecting the struggle over the escalating attacks on immigrant workers, the Fired Four, and increasing worldwide U.S. imperialist violence? By organizing a student-worker alliance at Brooklyn College, Kingsborough Community College and beyond through basebuilding among students, staff, workers and faculty. Throughout the semester we’ve struggled to ensure regular leafleting and building CHALLENGE readership, while sharpening our club’s internal struggle to follow up with contacts, arrange home visits and social outings. Here is our midterm progress report.

Contest the spaces, rule the schools!

At Kingsborough, our club’s first step this semester was reclaiming the campus hallways. Beginning last year, campus police informed students and faculty leafleting  to meet antiracist students and faculty that all leafleting must be approved by the administration. Many workers still hold the bosses’ illusions about so-called freedom of speech. However, as the bosses  try to normalize and force workers to accept rising fascism, reality is exposing this contradiction.

This year, student and faculty PL’ers included our friends and coworkers, especially in the faculty and staff union, the Professional Staff Congress and custodian’s union, DC 37, in our plans to mass distribute leaflets against ICE and in support of the Fired Four in the same hallways we were banned from. Printing out the PSC’s own resolutions and flyers and encouraging students and staff to sign PSC petitions has grown our circle of new friends, and   exposed for them and us both the emptiness of “freedom of speech” and the necessity of breaking the bosses’ bans on antiracist organizing.

This has also led to a few confrontations with campus police. At first, they kept their distance, and then got bolder by once again telling us all literature distribution must be approved, and that we cannot use the tables in the hallway without a “reservation” from Student Life. Last week, the chief of public safety himself approached us, grabbed a leaflet from a student’s hands and warned them “you shouldn’t have this!” To us, the chief stated that “this flyer hasn’t been approved by Student Life.” We gave another leaflet to the student and when we asked what Student Life has to do with our union, the PSC, the chief mumbled something in reply and walked away. After that we continued leafleting for the remainder of our planned time, making new contacts. After discussion, we plan on bringing our own table and playing video of the NYPD’s attack on Brooklyn College students last May.

Basebuilding and boldness disrupt fascist business as usual

KCC’s students, who are majority immigrant, Muslim, Black and Latin youth from Brooklyn, have a sharp understanding of rising fascism and have already made the connection between the Fired Four and fascist ICE raids. One young Black student who stopped to get more information asked, “Why aren’t more people protesting? Are we?” Excellent question. We need organization and leadership to confront  fascism, whether from Donald Trump’s fascist ICE shock troops or the Big Fascist CUNY administrators, both servants of the same imperialist U.S. capitalist state.

Declining U.S. imperialism can only offer the working class fascism in two flavors. Trump-flavored fascists are the most open about their Nazi goals, hoping to divide worker-led fightback with racist terror and promote traditionally sexist cultural norms. Meanwhile, Democrat-flavored fascists co-opt worker-led fightback into elections, hoping to divide worker-led fightback with identity politics and “hope” that the capitalist state can serve the working class. These Big Fascists are the biggest danger, and we cannot underestimate the dangers ahead. However, both are no match for a united working class under communist leadership, and our recent struggles prove it.

Dare to struggle, dare to win

A year ago, KCC’s administration probably thought they’d won. They saw the potential power of students and workers when more than 50 KCC students protested against the Gaza genocide almost seven hours outside the campus gates (see CHALLENGE, 6/5/24). So, the following fall, tightening rules regarding student clubs were in place.

On May 8, 2025, when Brooklyn College’s president probably thought they’d won, they called the fascist Strategic Response Group kkkops against a peaceful student protest and fired and investigated faculty, following ruling class orders.

In the same way, despite the defeats of past revolutions in the Soviet Union and China, capitalists around the world probably think they’ve won. As communists and CHALLENGE readers know, fascist attacks in both “blue states” and “red states” do not surprise us, and with basebuilding, they can be defeated. It’s not just about Trump, or about electing a new Democrat savior like Zohran Mamdani, whose spokesperson recently confirmed NYPD commissioner Tisch “acted appropriately” when ordering the NYPD to stand by when ICE conducted an immigration raid on Canal Street (PIX11, 11/7). WE are the leadership we’re looking for- JOIN US!

The teachers and counselors who keep our schools running are fed up. In the buildup to our union’s contract negotiations, it became clear that management had no respect for the people who make education possible. While the top two bosses handed themselves outrageous raises of 14 percent and 26 percent, they had the audacity to offer the rest of us—a workforce dedicated to students, families, and communities— a measly 1 percent. Given that 45 percent of teachers in the district are Latin, this is a clear, racist attack that won’t go unanswered. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been organizing and encouraging others to fight back. Even more so, teachers need to fight for communist revolution, which goes beyond winning a decent pay increase.

Under capitalism, education serves the bosses only

Management’s message was loud and clear: we’re not valued as professionals. We’re treated as disposable labor, just like workers in any other capitalist corporation, whether it’s Amazon, Starbucks, or any other profit-driven exploiter. Education may be wrapped in talk of “mission” and “values,” but beneath it lies the same old class structure—bosses on top, workers at the bottom, and exploitation holding the whole system together.

Last spring, 15 strong and vocal union members attended a board meeting to call out management for failing to put money where it matters—into classrooms and students. Yet, we left for the summer with no contract in place. 

Taking action against management

Management came back at the start of the new school year with a nonsense offer that moved many union members into action. Teachers created and disseminated a Google Slide presentation exposing the exploitation we are facing in comparison to neighboring districts. This drove people to organize a protest at a fancy fundraiser event the management was hosting. People who paid up to $1000 per plate to enter the event had to walk right past a protest of 60 teachers, counselors and students telling the truth about what was really going on in the organization. That action helped spark a historic NO vote of the weak contract proposal, shaking management to its core.

This fall, we came back stronger. With more time to organize and more members fired up, we planned to pack the next board meeting with teachers, counselors, students, and families. But management, terrified of the growing power of organized workers, cancelled the board meeting the day before.

They thought they could silence us—but we refused to back down. Instead, 60 people rallied for hours outside the home office, chanting, giving speeches, and getting honks and cheers from community members passing by. The rally showed our power and our growing unity. A comrade from PLP gave a spirited speech, connecting our fight to the broader struggle of the working class. A link was made between the fight for “fair” contracts and education to the fight against deportations and ICE raids that terrorize our students and families.

We are learning that our power comes not from negotiation tables or polite appeals to “fairness,” but from collective action and standing shoulder to shoulder with students, parents, and workers everywhere. Our slogan rings truer every day: Students’ learning conditions are teachers’ working conditions!

We’re organizing not just for better wages or benefits, but for the kind of education and society our students truly deserve. But under capitalism, education will always serve the needs of the bosses, not the people. Every “budget shortfall” and “tight contract” is just another way to protect profits and control workers.

That’s why our struggle can’t stop at the bargaining table. We need a revolution for a communist world where education is built on cooperation, not competition, where no one profits off our labor, and where workers run society for human need, not capitalist greed.

We’ll keep organizing. We’ll keep fighting. And as our movement grows, so will our understanding that every contract fight is a class fight. We will continue to use this fight as a step toward building the power we need to win a world free from exploitation.
Workers and students, unite! Fight for the world we deserve!

New York City’s newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, rode into office on a wave of promise: with over 100,000 campaign volunteers and unprecedented youth energy.  Mamdani’s platform of free buses, universal childcare, rent freezes, and city-owned groceries are good things to fight for. For many workers worn thin by rising rents, hunger, and transit cuts, this feels like a turning point. The first Muslim mayor of New York, backed by elements of an anticapitalist, antiracist, antigenocide coalition signals growing class consciousness.

It is becoming increasingly clear as economic conditions deteriorate that housing, food, and transportation should belong to those who create and sustain them. BlackRock, not the tenant, should bear the cost of housing. Transit should serve the worker, not the market. The thousands of young people who knocked on doors for Mamdani, many for the first time, experienced the thrill of collective action. Their energy must be honored.

But we must also confront the limits of this moment and refuse the illusion that electoral reformism can ever break the chains of capitalism. Hope cannot rest on any single leader, even if they may have good intentions. It must be led by the working class itself, toward a militant, revolutionary horizon. Now more than ever, we need you to join a party that refuses compromise with Wall Street, the landlords, and the NYPD. We need you to join Progressive Labor Party!

The melancholy of hope

Mamdani’s victory feels historic—but it isn’t revolutionary. It repeats the oldest rhythm of capitalist politics: crisis, reform, betrayal, repeat. Take 

Mamdani’s promise to make housing affordable for ordinary New Yorkers. It’s doomed from the start. Why? Because truly affordable housing for all would require tackling the root of the problem: capitalism itself.

Capitalism runs on profit, and racist inequality is built into its foundation. No politician—no matter how genuine—can change that, especially as capitalism sinks deeper into crisis. In New York City, more than 100,000 students are unhoused (Advocates for Children of New York, 2024). 

Across the city, 350,000 people live without stable housing, (Coalition for the Homeless, 2024), 1.2 million face food insecurity, and 2 million live below the poverty line—including one in four children (Robin Hood Foundation & Columbia University, 2023). Meanwhile, labor participation continues to fall just 58 percent for Black men, 55 percent for Black women, 63 percent for Latin men, and 54 percent for Latin women—compared with 72 percent for white men and 64 percent for white women (NYC Mayor’s Management Report, 2025). These numbers reflect not only economic decay but also racist deportation raids and anti-worker policies that deepen inequality (Center for New York City Affairs, 2025) 

Reform can help...only somewhat

These crises expose the deep, racist inequalities at the heart of the profit system—inequalities that have only worsened amid the global capitalist meltdown. No reform, however well-intentioned, can fix this. Mamdani’s Band-Aid reforms can’t heal the open wounds or slow the decay of a dying system. Even if every promise were fulfilled, capitalism would grind those gains down.

Still, his proposed reforms would bring some relief to working people. We salute the thousands of Mamdani supporters fighting for a better world. 

But reformism has hard limits—especially now. Even if every promise were fulfilled, the victories would be brief and fragile because if capitalism remains intact, so too will inequality, exploitation, and racism. Only a revolutionary communist movement to destroy capitalism can end that cycle once and for all.

Already, Mamdani is taking contradictory positions: praising workers while pledging to “work with billionaires to build a fairer city.” We’ve already seen him retreat—denouncing “globalize the intifada,” apologizing to the NYPD, and backtracking on his earlier call to “defund the police.” These reversals undermine the very struggles he claims to support. It’s already clear he will not disarm the cops; instead, he promises to fund them “responsibly.” By defending police budgets and promoting “community partnerships” rather than dismantling the NYPD’s racist machinery, he aligns himself with those who brutalized George Floyd protesters and assaulted pro-Palestine students alike.

Mamdani once denounced the high school admissions test as racist, but he has since softened his stance, avoiding a direct confrontation with the city’s deeply racist education system (Chalkbeat, 10/2). His cautious education plan leaves New York’s entrenched school segregation intact and caters to those who promote eugenic myths about intelligence and merit. These compromises reveal Mamdani not as a champion of the working class, but as another ruling class operative. His willingness to make concessions suggests that what he truly seeks is a seat at the table—and the price capitalists will ultimately demand for that seat at their crumbling table is political support for fascism, even if it is not Trump’s version. The global crisis of capitalism—with its internal conflicts, the decline of U.S. power, and the rise of China—suggests that the trajectory toward fascism is inevitable, regardless of who holds power. 

We do not doubt the sincerity of Mamdani’s volunteers — their solidarity is genuine and even moving. But sincerity is no shield against fascism. As before under de Blasio and Obama, many of those caught up in elections will be faced with defending the very administration that betrays them. That’s why it is so important to bring to the forefront the limits of any fight for reform now, even while we are in the middle of it.

Join Progressive Labor Party!

We live in an era of deepening fascism, climate catastrophe, endless wars, and mass displacement. The capitalist class, cornered by crisis, prepares once again for world war to preserve its profits. Against this, only the organized, international working class can stand.

Join Progressive Labor Party in building a revolutionary communist movement: one that rejects reformist illusions and prepares for militant struggle against imperialism, fascism, and the destruction of our planet. We fight not for a gentler capitalism, but for the end of capitalism itself: a world run by workers, for workers, without bosses or borders. History shows that only the working class—armed with communist ideas and led by a Communist Party—has the power to stop fascism and build a new paradigm in which ordinary people, not polished politicians pleading with billionaires to “pay their fair share,” are truly in control.The ballot gave us another  capitalist mayor. Revolution will give us the egalitarian world we deserve. Join us and fight for communism!