Organize for the Communist World Workers Need!
The following speech opened a recent ICWP International Meeting.
February 21— We’re meeting at a moment that is significant in many ways. Across the United States and globally, we’re seeing fascism intensifying and escalating aggression abroad. Immigration raids in cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis reflect deeper contradictions within US capitalism. At the same time, the United States continues to posture militarily toward regions like Iran and the rest of the Middle East, inching us closer to World War III.
When imperialism expands outward, repression tightens inward. Migrants, students, and working-class communities become the testing ground for state power.
We’ve seen students and workers respond. In Los Angeles, students have mobilized against ICE activity in their communities, staging walkouts in mass protest. In Minneapolis, students walked out and fought back to protect classmates and teachers from ICE pelting snowballs at them. These struggles have been multiracial, multigenerational, and rooted in solidarity. It shows that class unity is becoming more of a reality.
Resistance without strategy has limits.
Spontaneous defiance is powerful, but it doesn’t automatically transform into sustained working class power. If we are serious about building a world that serves workers instead of the bosses, then my role as a communist must evolve.
As a communist and educator, I feel this contradiction personally. My work in the classroom requires me to build trust and critical thinking. That is already political. My greatest asset is my ability to connect with my students to help them question what they are told and think structurally about the world around them.
One of my students has been reading Red Flag and even wrote a letter to our paper. That is how organization grows through dialogue and political development. My plan is to nurture that curiosity, deepen their understanding, and potentially win them to the Party. That work may seem small compared to mass protests, but it is foundational.
One of the main contradictions in my club right now is strengthening my own commitment to building communist relationships among students while I’m still working to survive inside capitalism as a non-tenured teacher. I’m also committed to my students and have developed trusting relationships with them. My students know we are in solidarity with one another.
It can feel like balancing on a tightrope: survival with revolutionary responsibility.
Working with my comrades who distribute the paper outside my school while maintaining appropriate boundaries with students is interesting. When students come to me saying they read Red Flag, and when one chooses to write for the paper, that’s meaningful. It shows political growth grounded in trust, not pressure. Even though I sometimes feel overwhelmed, I can honestly say I’ve been building strong relationships with students who are open to our politics. That steady work matters. It’s a foundation for deeper commitment.
The battles we’re seeing students and workers start to have are a springboard for potential political development. As an educator, I must not lie to my students about the realities of the world we live in. And I must move them towards communism.
The fight against ICE raids, the fight against war abroad, and the fight for dignity in education are not separate issues. They reflect symptoms of the capitalist system that prioritizes profits over human need. It is my duty to my class siblings to channel this anger so students and workers are won to organize a mass Red Army which will defeat this system which separates and exploits us to fight wars we do not benefit from.
If we are to meet this moment seriously, we need long-term commitment. The battles and bloodshed in the streets matter. The protests matter. But so do the conversations, the study groups, and the steady work of building class consciousness. That’s why we participate and distribute Red Flag at these events.
This is how we build the communist world workers need: through organized, collective struggle grounded in theory and practice.
Long live communism!
Read the ICWP manifesto Mobilize Masses for Communism here