People’s Defense Committee Holds First Convention
In September the People’s Defense Committee (PDC) held its 1st Convention in Oklahoma City, OK. The convention gathered together more than 50 activists representing dozens of cities and towns around the country, and covered summations of revolutionary mass work, presentations and speeches on key topics facing the revolutionary movement, workshops, the ratification of a Constitution and Program, and the election of a National Executive Committee. It culminated in a march to a rally and cultural performance on the final day of the convention.
The convention represented a significant concrete step towards achieving the unity of the revolutionary movement in the United States, uniting previously disparate forces under the banner of sectoral mass organizations like PDC, as well as other mass organizations in the labor, student, youth, international solidarity, and oppressed nation sectors. The Convention also paid tribute to people’s struggles across the world, in particular ongoing agrarian revolutions in India, Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia.
In a Political Declaration issued following the convention, the newly elected National Executive Committee wrote: “We have no illusions that the path we have taken is a difficult one. But we are determined in our orientation, and lifted by our confidence in our comrades and our purpose in this road we have resolved to take. The People’s Defense Committee 1st National Convention is the culmination of an old period of work, and marks the birth of a new period we are just now entering. Dispensing with subjectivism, sectarianism, and revisionism, we have united those who have the will to unite around revolutionary principles proven over two centuries of struggle. Our aim is to continue further uniting those who wish to unite, to build up a working-class movement based in the neighborhood struggles. We look to Chairman Mao, who said that ‘Class struggle is the key link, everything else hinges on it.’”
USPS Shop Organization Formed
United States Postal Service workers in Charlotte, North Carolina formed a shop organization in their warehouse, New Day at USPS, and issued their first shop paper edition. The new organization joins the ranks of already existing New Labor Organizing Committee-affiliated logistics worker organizations, the New Day at UPS and New Day at Amazon, and in this way represents an important step towards achieving a true cross-company industrial unionist platform in the logistics sector. Rebuilding industrial unionism, which is labor unionism that is based on organizing all workers in an industry through common structures and platforms across company lines, is an essential part of work of NLOC and all class-conscious workers in the United States.
The first shop paper edition, entitled OUR PATH FORWARD, ends with the following description of the new labor organization’s mission: “We have a proud history of taking the fight into our own hands against the post office, government, and sellout leadership. In 1970, over 200,000 of us struck despite the law and union leadership telling us no. That spirit continued with several more wildcat strikes throughout the decade. Today, however, that militant energy must be rebuilt; over the past year of contract negotiations, our union leaders have shown no willingness to fight for our interests or even think of the possibility of taking action. New Day at USPS aims to be a paper that analyzes the issues impacting us and fights for what postal workers need: a rank and file shopfloor organization, one single union of all USPS workers, and ultimately to do what the current union leaders won’t do: make preparations for eventual collective action to defeat Delivering for America, right to strike laws be damned.”
For those workers or class allies interested in joining the work or about reaching out, the new organization can be reached at NewDayatUSPS@proton.me.
Students Carry Out Solidarity Work
Chapters of the Revolutionary Student Union carried out solidarity actions in the month of September in support of various important causes and campaigns happening both within the United States, and internationally.
For example, in New York City, revolutionary students and supporters with the RSU chapter Anti-Imperialist Student Front (CUNY) held a protest in front of the Indian Consulate in Manhattan. The protest was organized in solidarity with the Indian Revolution, lead by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), as the Indian masses face intense and brutal repression as the hands of the Hindutva Fascist Indian State. The slogan “Stop Operation Kagaar” was raised in reference to the bloody Indian Fascist military operation against revolutionary support areas in the states of Chhattisgarh and Telangana, as well as “Long Live the CPI(Maoist)” in both English and Telugu.
Meanwhile, in Columbus, revolutionary students and supporters associated with the local RSU chapter held a rally in solidarity with Tarek Bazrouk, a revolutionary youth in New York City who is currently being held in federal detention on trumped up charges of supporting “terrorist” organizations, a label which the increasingly fascistic U.S. State is applying with a broad stroke to the pro-Palestine movement and popular movements more broadly. At the rally, protesters connected the arrest to the broader attacks of U.S. Imperialism, and called for the release of all political prisoners from the Old State’s prisons and jails.
Chicago Activists Build Community Front of Struggle
In Chicago, revolutionaries-in-formation and class-conscious activists have been working hand in hand, across revolutionary organizations, to start building a powerful front of masses in struggle against U.S. Imperialism and the U.S. Imperialist State. This work manifested in powerful mass meetings held in working-class neighborhoods in the city, in particular those with large nationally oppressed populations like Humboldt Park and Roger’s Park.
On September 23, 2025, marking the 157th anniversary of the heroic Grito de Lares and the 20th anniversary of the martyrdom of the leader of the Ejército Popular Boricua or Macheteros, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos by the rotten U.S. imperialist State at 72 years old. The Borikén Liberation Front (Chicago) commemorated these major events in the struggle for Puerto Rican national liberation and Socialism with a community event in the Humboldt Park, a neighborhood of Chicago which is known for its large and vibrant Boricua/Puerto Rican community. Among the people from el barrio who came out was a member of the masses that was quickly discovered to be the sole person arrested at the very first demonstration held for Nate Fejerang, a 19-year-old Boricua executed by Chicago police on May 29 in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood.
While BLF members on the mainland held the community event, on the same date was the inauguration of revolutionary independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos’ house as a museum in his legacy, the same house where he was martyred by the forces of U.S. Imperialism. Comrades from BLF were present for this important moment in the revolutionary history of Puerto Rico, which also included delegates from JUPI, DPC, Bandera Roja, and other revolutionary and progressive Boricua organizations. With actions like these two concurrent events, BLF demonstrated the importance of organizing for Puerto Rican independence both on and off the island itself, and ensured the memory and courage represented by the revolutionary martyrdom of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in his struggle against colonialism and national oppression is immortalized in a long path of struggle.
Image: Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
Also in September, in the Roger’s Park neighborhood, revolutionary organization Unidos Por El Pueblo (UPEP) hosted a community discussion on how the growing process of fascisization is impacting the community. Several community members showed up across all ages and demographics, and comrades from the Borikén Liberation Front (BLF) were also present. The discussion was enthusiastic engagement from participants and revealed critical areas of struggle, as well as key contradictions in the neighborhood to be further investigated.
For example, participants discussed the meaning of community self-defense given the segregated structure of the neighborhood. Currently the working-class, immigrant communities are sectioned into well-demarcated geographical boundaries in the North and West areas, while the southern region of Roger’s Park is primarily inhabited by young professionals, academic employees, and students in large part because of gentrification fueled by the real estate interests of Loyola Chicago—the nearby university—whose board chairman is the co-founder of Blackstone Real Estate. It is the working-class areas which represent potential targets for ICE, and also suffer from growing poverty as a result of municipal neglect and the aggressive financial practices of the growing landlord monopolies. Having concluded the discussion, UPEP is looking to conduct further social investigation and mass work, with more attention paid to the nationally oppressed communities of the neighborhood, focusing on anti-ICE efforts, campaigns on the lack of consistent trash pick-up in the community, alongside hosting anti-imperialist and anti-colonial cultural events.
