The following report was given by Joelle Fishman on behalf of the CPUSA Political Action Commission to the CPUSA National Committee on Saturday, October 12, 2025.

Out of the darkness comes the dawn — the dawn of a growing uprising for the right to live, the right to govern, to end the most extreme economic and racial inequities of all time.

Today’s uprising against MAGA’s all-out class war has the potential to vote NO to fascist military and ICE raids, and to the destruction of health care and public services. It has the potential to take on the billionaires and build for a future based on meeting people’s basic needs, a future free of exploitation.

Across this country, ordinary working class people are stepping up, getting trained, and getting elected — from school board to Congress. Working people are determined to stop the systemic, racist, corporate reign of terror and build a new chapter in the freedom struggle.

Communist candidates

We can be proud our candidates are in the mix, coming out of mass struggles for dignity and respect, immigrant rights, housing, health care, education, and a sustainable, peaceful planet. Congratulations!

These campaigns are strong because they emerge from, and are part of, local labor community coalitions, even slates. They are garnering union endorsements, grounded in the collective work of their clubs. They are taking on the boss and organizing door to door for community needs. Their stories are very inspiring.

Our candidates’ campaigns are grounded in 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.
They are what the movement to defeat fascism looks like!

Defeating the MAGA Congress

It is urgent and possible to shift control of Congress out of the hands of MAGA terror in 2026. The unconstitutional violence and havoc being wrought by the Trump administration, the MAGA-controlled Congress, and the MAGA-dominated Supreme Court, does not have popular support. Point by point, the Big Ugly Bill’s cuts in health care and human needs to fund obscene tax cuts for the wealthiest — and its unprecedented spending on military and mass deportations — does not have popular support in any polls.

That’s why the Trump administration has to rely on brute force and suppression of truth and all opposition. They utilize the big lie to dehumanize and try to divide and devastate our multi-racial working class.

But escalating hardships in daily life are bringing more people into action and shifting thinking, including among some of those who voted for Trump. This is shown in the polls, the Fight Oligarchy tours, the 2,500 No Kings II events, and new labor organizing in areas that voted Republican.

It shows in the primaries and special elections in New York for Zohran Mamdani, in Tucson for Adelita Grijalva — now campaigning just to get sworn in, in Minneapolis for Omar Fateh, and this week in Aftyn Behn’s run for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District seat in a strongly Republican-dominated state under the slogan “Fearless leadership that puts people first.”

Trump would like to call off the elections. As we know, MAGA is orchestrating racist redistricting, imposition of restrictive voter ID laws, attempts to seize control from the states, and other voter suppression methods, to try and steal the election in 2026. So the fight is on.

It will take a shift of three seats in the House and four seats in the Senate to reclaim Congress from the MAGA corporate lockhold. This is doable, especially with good on-the-ground organizing by the labor movement and people’s forces.

It is not about the Democratic Party and never has been. It is about building a grassroots movement on the issues. Candidates and campaigns have to speak with solutions to the issues that matter to people’s lives.

How do we play our role?

The Political Action Commission has prepared a Vote Out MAGA resource packet to assist in the development of strategy and tactics on the ground.

In 2024, ninety million people did not vote, greater than the number that voted either for Trump or Harris. Task number one is to inspire turnout by shining a light on the big business robber barons who are responsible for our hardships — not our immigrant neighbors — and by organizing in coalition around the common interests and needs the rest of us have across race, nationality, gender, and generation.

Task number two: We must elect and protect more working class champions in Congress. We are called to stand in solidarity against the all-out assault on, for example, Reps. Tlaib, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Jayapal, and former Rep. Cori Bush who is now running to regain her prior seat. We must especially defend women of color elected officials who are opposing the MAGA fascist bills. They are introducing much of the legislation that must be fought for like the Block the Bombs Act to stop arming the genocide in Gaza; the No Masks for ICE Act; Free D.C. legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, and the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act introduced by Rep. Tlaib and Sen. Sanders. The movements to pass these bills can succeed if Congress is shifted out of MAGA control. Impeachment of the lawless Trump can be put on the table if Congressional control is shifted.

Task number three: We must organize a lasting movement at the neighborhood and workplace level and build our party and YCL. The most powerful tool in our toolbox is People’s World and our social media. Lenin emphasized, “A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer.” This is an organizing moment like never before for the movement and our party.

We know when we fight together, we win together. We have to put forward the hope and confidence in our class and people to take on the boss and build for the future. The great Maya Angelou gives us that confidence in her poem And Still I Rise:

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Together in community, solidarity, and comradeship, we all rise.

Image: CPUSA members in NY march with the No Kings II demonstration in NYC. (CPUSA NY)