This article was originally published on People’s World.

Addressing Communist Party USA leaders and organizers who converged in Manhattan or tuned in via video link from around the country, the organization’s co-chair, Joe Sims, warned this past weekend: “Fascism is no longer creeping by degrees; it’s proceeding at a gallop.”

Also picking up steam, however, is the resistance movement, with organized labor at its core. “The issue now,” he said, “is who is going to win the race.”

The CPUSA’s National Committee met at the party’s headquarters Oct. 11–12 to analyze the latest developments in the country’s political situation and set a course of action for the period ahead.

Sims delivered the keynote address Saturday morning, kicking off two full days of discussion and reports from the party’s various commissions and collectives.

Setbacks for MAGA

The opening by Sims started on a positive note, taking stock of the ways that resistance to the Trump regime is advancing. He pointed to the NAACP’s recent disinviting of the president from its convention, the revival of the McCarthy-era Committee for Protection of the First Amendment, ongoing boycotts of Target and Tesla, and judges’ orders blocking the deployment of troops to Portland and Chicago.

He also highlighted how “increasingly alarmed” wide swathes of the population are becoming by Trump’s actions and the fact that “support for the White House has plummeted.” Some of the numbers flagged by Sims included the overwhelming majority who now believe the country is moving in the wrong direction, the 75% of the population who view Trump as corrupt, and the rapidly sinking youth approval for Trump — with over 60% now giving the president a thumbs-down.

The most important poll, though, he said, is the “one taken when folks go to the ballot box,” where MAGA candidates have been defeated in 52 out of 54 elections so far this year.

Communist candidates

And when it comes to electoral politics, the CPUSA is wading into the field itself, following a decision by the party to run more candidates for office. Communists are now on the ballot in at least four states.

“Our comrades have won primary races, and they’ve been asked to run in labor-led coalitions in non-partisan contests,” Sims announced. “They’ve built winning coalitions and are on the verge of getting elected in November. It is everything we’ve been waiting for.”

The CPUSA co-chair said he was so inspired by the fresh crop of Communist candidates that he has decided to run in New York, even though he joked, “the only thing I’ve thought about running for before was cover!”

Joelle Fishman, chair of the CPUSA’s Political Action Commission, in subsequent remarks to the meeting, also applauded the party members who’ve stepped forward as candidates.

“These campaigns are strong because they emerge from and are part of local labor-community coalitions, even slates, garnering union endorsements, grounded in the collective work of their clubs, taking on the boss and organizing door-to-door for community needs,” she said.

“They are exposing the root causes in capitalism of the crisis our country is undergoing, demonstrating the common needs that bring us together across race, gender, and generation,” Fishman declared. “They are what the movement to defeat fascism looks like.”

The Political Action Commission presented a “VOTE OUT MAGA” resource kit for activists to rely on during battles at the ballot box this year and next.

The 2025 and 2026 elections will see the largest number of Communist candidates running for public office in many years. “We’re going to build on this success,” Sims said, “and I’m going to tell you something: When we do, that’s going to change the party, and in fact, it’s going to change the country.”

Fascist momentum

While not wanting to diminish the blows that have been dealt to the Trump regime in the streets and the courts, Sims also impressed upon his audience the need to be sober about what’s facing the country.

The setbacks “have not significantly slowed MAGA’s momentum,” he said, and in fact, following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, “the attack on democracy has accelerated.” He specifically pointed to the Trump executive order designating antifa a terrorist organization and National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directed security agencies to target any individuals or organizations expressing supposedly “anti-American” ideas, such as opposition to capitalism or Christian religious fundamentalism.

Trump’s declaration of war on the left escalates the threat to constitutional democracy to a dangerous level.

“I’m not anti-Christian,” Sims said, “but I’m anti-capitalist and I’m certainly anti-fascist.” Already, free speech is being criminalized and an ideological offensive is underway in the form of attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Trump’s declaration of war on the left escalates the threat to constitutional democracy to a dangerous level, the meeting heard.

“Fearing the results of the midterms” next year, Sims argued that “Trump is rushing to consolidate power” — and that’s taking the form of intimidation via the deployment of the military, ICE, FBI, and the DOJ; gerrymandering districts to dilute the voting power of people of color; and attempts to “whiteout” U.S. history.

Now, Trump is also threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to dispense with First Amendment freedoms and strike back harder against the people’s movements.

Labor central to the resistance

Most important for the future of the fightback, according to the CPUSA, is the attack on labor.

A report from the party’s Labor Commission, delivered by Cameron Harrison, said the Trump administration, “acting for the most reactionary sections of monopoly capital, is charging ahead with an unprecedented offensive against the working class.”

It began with Trump’s cancelling of collective bargaining rights for federal workers when he returned to office and continues with the undermining of the National Labor Relations Board and the mass layoffs executed against the backdrop of the government shutdown.

The Labor Commission said the response of organized labor has been “uneven and contradictory.” Similar themes were voiced in Sims’ keynote. He listed out the positives that organized labor has had going for it recently: “a new cohort of leaders” adept in civil rights and anti-war organizing; “Striketober” and the recent fights against deindustrialization; and the United Auto Workers’ “Stand Up Strike.”

Despite these plusses, however, Sims said the situation for the labor movement “aint’ all that damn good,” pointing to the continuing decline in union density (now just 9% of the labor force) and the foothold MAGA has gained in several unions.

His point was backed up by the Labor Commission report, which noted that the “response of the national leadership of most unions and the AFL-CIO have not matched the intensity of Trump’s attack.”

The most concerning example of that, according to Sims: “The greatest act of union-busting in U.S. history” — the cancelling of 1.3 million federal workers’ union rights — just happened “with scarcely a peep from the labor movement.” Apart from a few picket lines, some supportive statements, and a bus tour, there has been no mass mobilization.

Black trade unionists point the way forward

An initiative from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists may be the spark that’s needed to get the working class moving, Sims and the Labor Commission each argued.

The CBTU passed a resolution at its recent convention calling on the AFL-CIO to organize a national union day of solidarity to protest the Trump administration’s anti-worker policies — a move akin to the “Solidarity Day 1981” march in response to Ronald Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers and the breaking of their union, PATCO.

Communist Party members and clubs must “agree to do everything we can to convince unions all across the country to act in solidarity with the call of their African American siblings” in the CBTU, Sims urged, and speak in a united “voice of militant protest.”

Overcoming racism is essential to building the unity needed to defeat the offensive of monopoly capital.

He said it’s important to remember that “ruling class racism is the main organizing principle of the MAGA right” and that overcoming it — including its influence within the working class — is essential to building the unity needed to defeat the offensive of monopoly capital.

Specific, targeted initiatives are the ways, Sims said, that the Black and Latino communities will be mobilized and united action with white workers achieved. The Target boycott, launched by forces in the African American community and the Black church, was named as an important example.

The CPUSA leader is optimistic about the prospects ahead for stronger labor leadership. “The good news … is that there appears to be a new level of involvement by unions in both the fight against ICE deportations and in the No Kings Day” protests of Oct. 18. Those demonstrations, he said, “will be an important measure of where our class and people stand. … It needs to be big, militant, and united.”

A growing party

An essential ingredient to realizing those possibilities, the National Committee heard in several reports, is the growth and consolidation of the Communist Party and its press.

National Organization Secretary Anita Waters, who was elected to her position a year ago, reported that CPUSA membership has grown 11% over the past 12 months. She described the effort that’s now underway to standardize the “development and training of club and district leaders across the country” — blending the experience of veteran party members with the insights of younger ones who’ve cut their organizing teeth in a new era.

Enhanced political education and ideological training are another requirement for strengthening the party’s capacity, and Dee Miles detailed the recent work of the Education Commission in this regard. She discussed the range of study groups, national schools, and webinars that have taken place since the last meeting of the National Committee and encouraged attendance at upcoming sessions later in October, including a two-part series on imperialism and a discussion of the links between the criminalization of the unhoused and environmental inequality.

The CPUSA’s weekly YouTube broadcast, “Good Morning Revolution,” is another avenue through which education and outreach are happening. The program airs every Friday morning. Eric Brooks told the meeting that the immediate goals are to hit the 15,000-subscriber mark and concentrate on increasing weekly viewership.

Youth work and the effort to re-establish a national Young Communist League were singled-out in discussions as a necessity for ensuring continuity in the Communist movement and the development of future leadership cadre.

Aaron Booe, a D.C. activist overseeing the CPUSA’s youth work, talked about the multiple struggles that young communists are involved in around the country and said the challenge right now is to better coordinate that work at the national level. Plans are being discussed for a re-founding convention of the YCL at some point in the near future, with 2027 as a possible date.

Readership of the Marxist press has stabilized and climbed significantly in the past year, the meeting heard in a presentation made by the Editorial Collective of People’s World. Traffic to the publication is up 51% for 2025 so far, after a few years of volatile traffic patterns. Trends suggest the total number of unique readers will come in at around 2,250,000 by the end of the year.

The editors communicated the immediate threat to digital news from chatbots like ChatGPT and AI search engine overviews, but they said the way to ensure People’s World continues to expand its reach is to concentrate on the “news and analysis it does best: actions of the labor and people’s movements; Marxist analysis of politics, economics, and international affairs; and the news of the world Communist and workers’ movements.”

Laura Cambron, who coordinates the People’s World Sustainer program, signed up several new monthly donors on the spot during the meeting and discussed with several National Committee members the possibility of increasing their contribution. The People’s World Fund Drive has a $200,000 annual target to keep the publication going. The 2025 total currently stands at $173,000, with ten weeks to go in the year.

Finally, the genocide in Gaza and other threats to peace were discussed, both in the keynote and in a presentation from the party’s Peace and Solidarity Commission made by Henry Lowendorf of Connecticut.

Palenational aspirations for statehood will not be denied

Both Sims and Lowendorf attributed the achievement of a ceasefire in Gaza not to Trump but rather to the people of Palestine. Sims said they “would not be subdued and their national aspirations for statehood will not be denied,” despite Netanyahu’s two-year campaign of extermination “supported by the GOP and Democrats alike.”

Lowendorf said the CPUSA will address this and other questions of war and peace at its upcoming Peace Conference 2.0, set for November.

Don’t lose faith

Closing out the meeting on Sunday afternoon, CPUSA Co-Chair Rossana Cambron summarized the discussions of the weekend and encouraged the leaders who’d gathered in New York to take optimism back with them when they returned to their home clubs and districts.

“While MAGA’s momentum has not stopped,” Cambron said, “that does not mean that things are hopeless.”

She asked the members of the National Committee to look to previous experiences that the CPUSA and the working-class movement had been through. She reminded them of the advice a past Communist Party chairman, Gus Hall, gave to a similar meeting in 1950 at the height of the McCarthyite Red Scare attacks on democracy.

“All signs point to rougher weather ahead for our people and our class,” Cambron said, quoting Hall. “Our party has been lashed by the winds of pro-fascist reaction, but it has not veered from its course. … Future historians will note the two-sided character of this period … brutal, murderous aggression” from “Wall Street monopolists” paired with “growing resistance of the working class … and an upsurge of militant struggle by Black people against the intensified violence, brutality, and white chauvinism of the ruling class.”

Cambron said there are parallels between that earlier period 75 years ago and the current fightback against the fascist and white supremacist danger of MAGA. “As you can conclude,” she told the members of the National Committee, “the fact that we know we can win is not based on some illusion or wishful thinking; history tells us we can win.”

Resistance to the Trump regime — in Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, Portland, and everywhere around the county — is “transforming people, their level of consciousness, and understanding of the system that has kept them from having their basic needs met,” she said.

Cambron concluded with words of encouragement for the CPUSA candidates and all party members, telling them not to lose faith in this moment of intense danger. “You may not all see it yet, but you are making history and taking important steps towards building our country’s path to socialism.”

Images: People’s World