This article first appeared in People’s World.

More than 80 activists in the nation’s labor movement gathered in Chicago this past weekend at a conference called by the Labor Commission of the Communist Party USA.

The enthusiastic and mostly young crowd reflected the new wave of militant workers fighting hard across the country to build their unions and struggling where unions don’t exist to bring them into the workplace. The meeting was living proof that the CPUSA and the labor movement have no real interests that are opposed to one another but that, in fact, they work well together.

The array of unions in which party members are active and organizing is so wide that it surprised even some of the attendees at the conference. Among the unions represented were the United Auto Workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Teamsters, AFSCME, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Brick Layers, Amalgamated Transit, and many more.

An important feature of the gathering was the deep commitment of the attendees to building a labor movement that reaches well beyond just traditional unions but encompasses community struggles critical to working people where they live.

They also doubled down on their determination to see the labor movement taking a leading role in the fight to save democracy and the struggles against the harmful Trump agenda. Many voiced support for the idea of a national march on Washington to galvanize labor and its allies in the fight to defeat MAGA and preserve democracy.

The fight against racism, everyone agreed, was an issue critical to the advancement of the entire working class not just for the most direct victims of racism and discrimination.

The same belief was manifested when it came to the struggle for immigrant rights. Rosanna Cambron, co-chair of the CPUSA, reflected this in her powerful remarks describing a teacher she knew of who had a student who asked her whether she would adopt the student if her parents were taken away by ICE.

“We see fighting for a society where this never can happen again as a key goal for labor and for all people,” Cambron declared.

The young labor activists tackled the problem of dealing with a corporate media that is usually far from friendly to the cause of workers. Members from union after union, state after state, and city after city, talked about how they utilize People’s World, a pro-working-class paper, to counter the role of the anti-worker publications, on and off line.

The youthfulness of the gathering was reflected in the songs and the celebrations of one another’s company in evidence at the gathering.

“The meeting showed that the working class is actively fighting for the better world that is needed and that we are confident will come about,” said Cameron Harrison, an organizer of the event and a leader in the CPUSA Labor Commission. “We understand the urgency to organize new unions and to broaden labor’s role in the fightback while building the mass militant working-class party that our country so desperately needs.”

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA.

Images: Rossana Cambron, co-chair of the Communist Party USA, speaks at the meeting of the CPUSA Labor Commission in Chicago, Sept. 27. | Brandon Chew / People’s World; Workers march in Los Angeles against Trump’s attacks on immigrants by Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (X)