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Progressive Labor Party

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Challenge Radio is the official podcast of Progressive Labor Party (PLP). PLP is a mass international antiracist, antisexist organization fighting to destroy capitalism. We organize workers, students, and soldiers worldwide to build for a communist revolution. See www.plp.org and follow us @PlpChallenge on Twitter and Instagram.

15 APR

e24: Minneapolis: SMASH FASCISM

An article and discussion about a Challenge Article from January on the uprising against ICE in Minneapolis: "Minneapolis: SMASH FASCISM A multiracial collective of students and workers from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) brought the heat of antiracist communist politics and organizing to the city of Minneapolis this weekend. In subzero temperatures, we proudly stood shoulder to shoulder next to tens of thousands of other students and workers demanding an immediate end to the ICE nazis’ racist and fascist assault on the city. The ongoing racist raids, arrests and deportations are rooted in the capitalist profit system, which can only exist from the division and intense exploitation of the international working class. Facing this truth, we shared the goal and vision of a communist revolution led by the mass PLP to overthrow the hated bosses and their wretched system and build an egalitarian worker-run society in its place! ALL OUT for the general strike! Our plan to travel to Minneapolis coincided with the call of unions and social organizations to hold a general strike on January 23rd. The ICE gestapo has ratcheted up their invasion of the area over the past weeks, sending thousands of agents to make arrests of our immigrant worker siblings while executing mother of three Renee Good in cold blood on January 7th. The working class here has responded to the raids with passion and skill, organizing rapid response networks and mobilizing the masses to protect their neighbors, family, co-workers and friends through direct action. The general strike is the logical escalation of the class struggle: withholding our labor in a mass coordinated way across different industries to confront the bosses’ plans and damage their ability to make profits. In inspiring solidarity, with the wind dropping the air temperature to around -30º, the working class showed up around 100,000 deep in the downtown commons area to participate in the strike. Our PLP collective chanted and spoke amidst enraged masses of workers rallying, chanting and marching to demonstrate the earth-shaking power of a unified working class."

46 min
08/12/2025

APHA: Oppose fascism & genocide

A reading and discussion of a recent front page article in Challenge. Washington, DC, November 2—At the coalition rally led by Progressive Labor Party (PLP) downtown in front of the Convention Center, the chant rang out: “From DC to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime!” The action was organized to protest the growing fascism of the American Public Health Association (APHA) during their annual conference. Moments earlier, brave APHA members staged a walkout of the opening session, walking slowly down the main aisle, holding a banner that said, “Oppose Fascism and Genocide.” Another group of those walking out held a banner that said “APHA: Reinstate Amy Hagopian,” a former APHA member and friend to many of us who is also an outspoken leader against the occupation and genocide in Palestine. If you go by the APHA leadership, the only problem with the world today is Donald Trump, RFK Jr, and the subsequent attacks on public health grant funding and vaccine access. As liberals, they will never acknowledge what us communists point out, which is that capitalism, racism, and wars for profit have been decimating our class worldwide for decades. These liberal leaders of APHA show that they are more dangerous than the outright reactionary wing of the U.S. ruling class because they use identity and respectability politics to keep workers divided, quiet and in line. The liberals believe in nationalism and hate internationalism represented by workers uniting in solidarity across borders...

48 min
23/09/2025 · BONUS

Special: Build a Base in the Working Class

One of Progressive Labor Party's Key Documents, the pamphlet Build a Base in the Working Class was published in the late 60's and ever since has inspired generations of revolutionary communists with its perspective analysis, hard hitting anti-revisionism, and practical call to action for building a mass movement that can win.

1hr 3min
26/08/2025

Editorial: ICE, LAPD, U.S. terror - Only communism can defeat fascism

A reading and discussion of a recent editorial in Challenge. Progressive Labor Party salutes the bravery of the Los Angeles-area working class in defending our immigrant sisters and brothers in the face of a vicious attack by State-Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump and the masked thugs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In response to state violence by the kkkops in L.A. and other cities, workers’ resistance—most of it peaceful, some of it violent in turn—pushed Trump to retreat and order a five-day pause on deportation at farms, meatpacking plants, restaurants, and hotels. The capitalist bosses are terrified of mass worldwide uprisings that strike at the heart of their rotten, racist system. They’ve been shaken by antiracist fightback after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and by the militant response to Zionist genocide in Gaza. They’re worried that the next wave of protests could light the match for an even broader rebellion. The U.S. rulers have a dilemma they can’t solve. On the one hand, they absolutely need labor by immigrants, including more than eight million undocumented immigrants, to keep their fragile system afloat. On the other hand, they need racist scapegoating to divide and discipline the working class. As Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and the U.S. threatens to set off an all-out war in the Middle East, global instability is deepening by the day. Confronted by a rising China and their own relative decline, the U.S. bosses are on red alert for World War Three. Trump’s nazi-style immigration raids—like the mass deportations of Joe Biden before him—reflect the endangered state of U.S. imperialism. Regardless of which lying politician gets elected president the next time around, the bosses will be forced to keep moving toward open fascism, the parasites’ last-ditch move to protect their profits in a time of international capitalist crisis. ...

56 min
31/03/2025

Editorial: Trump 2.0 - Smash Racist Deportations & Borders

A reading and discussion of a recent editorial in Challenge. Refugee, indigenous, or legalized—no one is safe from the crisis of capitalism. In just the first week since Klansman Donald Trump’s second inauguration, over 4,500 people have been arrested (Washington Times, 1/28). Amid a barrage of racist and sexist attacks—banning diversity programs—Trump issued more than twenty executive orders for mass deportations. But while Trump gives off Hitler vibes, it’s the worldwide crisis and decay of capitalist liberal democracy that set the stage for more open fascism. The next four years will further expose the rot of U.S. imperialism, intensify fascism in the U.S. and Europe, and propel the world closer to a global bloodbath.. But instead of sinking into fear or despair or cynicism, the international working class must fight back! Take inspiration from the San Jose students walking out against deportations or from Los Angeles workers organizing on the job . Join Progressive Labor Party in building an international, multiracial movement to smash all borders and build a communist society.

40 min
01/02/2025

Editorial: Capitalist healthcare kills!

A reading and discussion of a recent editorial in Challenge. On December 4, in New York City, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on his way into a shareholders’ meeting. No tears should be shed for Thompson. He was struck down by bullets engraved with the principles he lived by: to maximize his insurance company’s profits by delaying care, denying life saving treatments, and condemning untold thousands to needless suffering and death. Gut-wrenching stories of loved ones lost to insurance denials flooded social media. Doctors confirmed the company’s cruelty. A condolence post for Thompson received more than 70,000 laughing reactions. As one worker wrote: “Sorry, my sympathy is out of network.” The capitalist media outrage at posts “devaluing” Thompson’s life rings hollow. It’s capitalism—and its accomplices in the healthcare industry—that have cheapened life. In 2023, UnitedHealth Group raked in $22 billion in profits (Forbes.com, 1/12/24). Thompson was richly rewarded for playing his part to ration healthcare, with an annual compensation package of more than $10 million. Under his leadership, his company denied as much as 49 percent of medically necessary care (Forbes.com, 12/6/24). The bosses call this good business; we call it mass murder. The overwhelming support for Thompson’s apparent shooter, Luigi Mangione, reflects the raw rage of millions of workers who navigate a healthcare system designed not to heal, but to profit. Globally, capitalism condemns countless people to early graves through racist and sexist inequality, hunger and poor nutrition, environmental poisons, and preventable disease. It kills countless more through healthcare systems that put the profits of hospital, pharmaceutical, and insurance capitalists over human lives. Workers’ fury at Thompson and his ilk is righteous anger. But vigilante violence and assassinations are not solutions; the bosses can always find another ruthless executive to fill an open slot. What’s needed is organized revolutionary violence, rooted in communist politics. What the ruling class fears most is an international, multiracial, class-conscious working class led into battle by a revolutionary communist party. We need a mass communist movement that will smash all of the bloodsucking bosses and replace the nightmare profit system with a communist world that abolishes money and private property. Only then can our class build a society where good healthcare is a basic human right, not a product to be sold to those who can afford it. Join Progressive Labor Party, and fight for a world where our lives can be lived to their healthiest and fullest!

52 min
23/12/2024

Kentucky: Shut down slumlords & liberal racists

A discussion and reading of a recent struggle article in Challenge. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members from Kentucky organized a protest in downtown Corbin on Friday, August 30th to bring attention to rising rents and record evictions in the state. We also wanted to call out HB5, a bill which criminalizes homelessness, as an anti-worker bill supported by both Democrat and Republican legislators. The protest was sparked when local PL’ers noticed that a particular group of landlords, known as the Freeman Brothers, were notoriously infamous in Corbin for charging high rents and doing very little maintenance or upkeep on the properties they manage. The brothers are not just landlords, but also lawyers who own a property management business, a real estate brokerage, and have their own podcast. They have been known to make posts on social media websites such as Facebook, where they gloat about the negative attention that they receive from workers online who have seen their own rents go up as a result of the Freeman Brother’s influence on the market. Freeman Brother’s posts are often littered with comments from working-class tenants complaining and attacking the landlords for their disgusting behavior.

36 min
13/12/2024

Editorial: Trump’s win exposes failure of liberal Big Fascists

A discussion and reading of a recent editorial in Challenge. In a lose-lose election for workers, Donald Trump’s victory marks the toxic divisions within the U.S. working class and a massive defeat for finance capital, the main wing of the U.S. capitalist ruling class. Trump’s “America First” platform to pull back from NATO and the war in Ukraine will undermine the Big Fascists of finance capital as they lurch toward war with their imperialist rivals in China and Russia. For workers, the dark night of capitalism in decay—with no mass communist movement to fight back-- The next four years will expose the limits of liberal democracy, where the brutal reality of capitalist dictatorship is veiled by mythical “rights” and “the rule of law.” Regardless of who’d won the election, the worldwide crisis of capitalism would force the U.S. bosses to move faster toward full-blown fascism. A President Kamala Harris would have spelled disaster for the international working class, from Gaza to the U.S.-Mexico border. What Trump’s victory reveals is the bosses’ ability to win tens of millions of workers to open racism and sexism and to scapegoat immigrants, the most vulnerable sections of our class. It shows just how much struggle lies before us. In this period of extreme instability, the role of Progressive Labor Party becomes even more crucial. The history of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan tells us that communism is the only way to smash fascism. We can’t rely on the bosses’ politicians or media or courts to protect us. Only communist revolution can secure an antiracist, anti-sexist society that serves workers’ needs.

45 min

Challenge Radio is the official podcast of Progressive Labor Party (PLP). PLP is a mass international antiracist, antisexist organization fighting to destroy capitalism. We organize workers, students, and soldiers worldwide to build for a communist revolution. See www.plp.org and follow us @PlpChallenge on Twitter and Instagram.

Creator

Progressive Labor Party
Years Active

2023 - 2026
Episodes

25
Rating

Clean
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© PLP 2023
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