Live Reports from the Frontlines
Our work is made possible by the hundreds of communist correspondents across the U.S. whose contributions flood into our offices every day.
Here is a glimpse into our activity.
“Digital” Food Hall: A Kitchen Nightmare
Andy Shi, New York, NY
I’ve been working as a cook at a ghost kitchen for the Wonder “digital” food hall. It’s an app where you can order food from all kinds of restaurants and cuisines in a single transaction.
They claim to provide meals from “celebrity chefs.” In reality, we serve pre-made frozen meals which are reheated on site using an air or deep fryer. The company hilariously dubs it a “proprietary cooking system.” Each kitchen is no more than a glorified TV-dinner dispensary.
The company boasts about using AI for everything from graphic design to recipe creation to planning delivery routes.
Meanwhile, employees are trained to ignore food-safety regulations and get orders out of the kitchen as quickly as possible. A machine beeps at us if we don’t finish an order within five minutes. Our equipment is always dirty or wet, and preventing cross contamination is virtually impossible in the crammed space.
Wonder CEO Marc Lore is simply following the same tired game plan as every other tech bro: offer a too-good-to-be-true service, hype it up with marketing, cut costs behind the scenes, and hope eventually to monopolize the entire market. Really, it’s just the latest tech start-up gimmick—a self-proclaimed “Amazon of food.”
Communists in the Courtroom
Ava and Phil, Los Angeles, CA
I work at a law firm defending tenants.
Before any trial, attorneys question potential jurors to root out “bias.” Word spread quickly around the office about a juror who denounced landlords and private property during jury selection.
Come to find out, it was our comrade Phil!
“When the issue of ‘bias’ came up,” Phil said, “I raised my hand and spoke up: ‘I have a bias against landlords and real-estate speculators. I have a bias against anyone who gets in between people and their needs for the sake of profit.’
“The judge then raised a made-up analogy, hoping I would see things from the landlord’s point of view. What if someone came into my home and refused to leave? Wouldn’t that be a crime?
“I told him there’s a difference between owning a home to live in and using one as a means to extract money from someone else.”
The landlord’s lawyer dismissed Phil from the case. He tried to remove everyone who heard his speech, but he couldn’t. My coworkers described how Phil’s words rang through the courtroom, changing the way all the jurors saw the trial.
Phil helped stop that eviction, they say. Many of them are asking about our party and newspaper.
“If not for the party, the readings, one-on-one discussions with comrades, cell meetings, and paper sales,” Phil said, “I would not have developed the confidence or ability to put forward our ideas. These are the opportunities we train for.”
I Nearly Passed Out … for $75
Rowan Smith, Philadelphia, PA
In a matter of minutes, I felt my whole body go numb and my vision cloud over.
Like many workkers scraping by while the rich get richer, I needed to make some quick cash to survive. I turned to donating plasma. I knew the process came with a laundry list of potential side effects—one not listed was feeling humiliated—but I was out of options.
Every day, some 200,000 people in the US donate plasma. Big Pharma companies like CSL or OctaPharma pay for this component of human blood, which is used in medicine manufacturing.
The more frequent the donor, the more they can make over time. I was told that I’d be paid $75 for my first donation and $125 for my second.
Staff quickly unhooked me from the machine and gave me electrolytes. They reassured me that I’d be paid in full despite the incomplete procedure. Through blurred vision, I noticed that most of the donation recliners were occupied that day. Even my nurse had sold her plasma!
Meanwhile, OctaPharma netted $4.27 billion in 2024.
An Encounter with Zohran
Emma W, New York, NY
I was heading uptown on the 1 train. The doors opened at a station on the Upper West Side and in stepped Zohran Mamdani, flanked by an assistant and a bunch of security.
He was standing right next to me, so I introduced myself. He smiled and nodded when I told him I supported his program, and would love to see it implemented.
Then I said, “I’d love to see you break with the Democratic Party and run as an independent working-class candidate. Have you ever considered doing that?”
His smile faltered. All he said was, “Well, I have to make my own decisions.”
“I really think we need our own party that isn’t for the billionaires.” I continue talking, and he’s back to nodding—and not answering.
Meanwhile, his assistant is giving me the dirtiest look on the planet. Eventually, she physically put her arm between him and me, so I stopped talking to him, because I didn’t want to make a scene on the crowded train. People in the car started to realize who had gotten on and began snapping selfies with him.
Every bit of the interaction—from the smiling and the nodding to the evasive non-answer he gave me—was typical “politician” behavior.
There are a lot of videos on social media that show Zohran talking to people in town hall meetings or out on the street. Often, they disagree with him. Some are very angry with him, but he always manages to find common ground and disarm them.
Sure, maybe some of that’s staged. But I doubt that’s the only reason Zohran acted differently here. I think it’s because he doesn’t have a ready-made answer to this decisive question.
There’s majority support for a third party, or even a workers’ party. There’s a general hatred for the Democrats, Republicans, and the Epstein class. But it remains an amorphous sentiment.
There’s no other organized tendency besides the RCA putting forward the need for class independence. So right now, it’s not really a question people like Zohran have to contend with. But that will change as the class struggle develops and we build up the forces of communism.
Meeting with YDSA Comrades
Kate Witiak, Philadelphia, PA
As communists, we are always happy to engage in common work with other left organizations on points of agreement, and to discuss the best way forward for the movement. In this spirit, I met up with two YDSA members: one was a national staffer with a paid internship position, and the other the co-chair of a university chapter.
They told me they were disillusioned with their organization. Our conversation kept coming back to the need for ideological clarity. They explained that, like DSA, its youth wing does not have consistent political education, instead relegating it to a subcommittee with very few active participants. As a result, many YDSA members don’t take ownership of the work, because they do not know what they are fighting for, and many chapters lack a sense of direction.
I said that, in my opinion, these organizational problems arise from lack of political clarity and homogeneity. Rather than addressing them by forming this or that committee, political discussion and agreement on a clear, unified vision are needed to motivate the new generation of class fighters.
At the end of our meeting, the co-chair confessed that he had only joined YDSA because it was the only organization on campus. He said that he would have rather joined a disciplined communist organization like the RCA!
How Marxism Helped Me Talk to My MAGA Dad
My dad and I have argued about Trumpism for years with no real progress. I’ve shown him articles, videos, and evidence to no effect. My angry responses only drove him further away.
The Marxist method, however, gave me a different way in: instead of telling him he was wrong, I acted in a patient, systematic, and persistent way.
I asked him:
- Why did you choose to support Trump? The economy.
- Why do you think he’s good for the economy? He’s kicking China out.
- How has that helped workers? —
The conversation went on for over an hour—the longest we’ve spoken since 2016.
I was able to walk him through the contradictions of capitalism and the relationship between a commodity’s price and the labor embodied in it. By the end of the call, he used the exact phrase “crisis of overproduction.”
Patiently explaining and being curious was the key to reopening a door that had been closed for a decade.
Even Nanna Gets Behind Communism
Douglas County is a pretty “red” place, with mostly retirement-aged folks and country boys. I’m 22 and so far it’s just me and my mother who are members of the RCA here.
I was at lunch with my girlfriend’s parents and her nanna. Her family are all Jehovah’s Witnesses. My girlfriend mentioned I sold a newspaper, and I was terrified to talk about it because I wanted to make a good impression.
But when her nanna asked me about the paper, I explained that I was in a party, the Revolutionary Communists of America, and that we are organizing for a working-class government. To my surprise, everyone seemed to be neutral or even sympathetic! At one point the nanna said, “Yeah, something’s gotta change.”
We have to be old even with people you’d least expect to be sympathetic. Most people today aren’t as antagonistic to these ideas when they are broken down to an understandable level, and they don’t react as violently to the word communism as they used to.
I Visited Cuba. The U.S. Siege Is Barbaric.
Benjamin Esson, The Bronx, NY
I visited Cuba twice as an American communist who supports the revolution. I was shocked at the extent of the devastation resulting from the US siege.
While last year we experienced four-hour blackouts every day, this time we had just four hours of power a day. Sometimes, none at all.
I arrived in the middle of a blackout. Not only were houses and apartments dark, but so were social clubs and restaurants. Even the major nationwide establishments that would’ve stayed on with the help of electrical generators had to shut down.
Even more shocking was the fact that none of the hotels had power either. The Hotel Presidente, where I and other students would often go to purchase Wi-Fi, was closed down. It started with refusal to sell Wi-Fi hours, and eventually they had to kick out the guests altogether. The crisis also forced all universities to partially or fully close.
Walking around Havana at night was quite intimidating. It was pitch black and completely silent. Just last year, night life in Havana was vibrant.
The Western myth of Cuba as a totalitarian hellscape with no freedom of speech was blown away in last year’s visit, as everyone wanted to talk about politics, whether they supported the government or not. Random people on the street would ask me how I felt about Trump, immigration, socialism, and more.
But this time, people were worried about immediate problems, literally wondering whether they and their children would have something to eat.
Yet, despite all the hardships, there is an active layer of youth who are committed to political organization to defend the revolution. Both times I was in Cuba I spoke to communists and student leaders who organized debates and discussed the need to defend the revolution—both from foreign aggression, and also internal capitalist restoration.
Overall, as expected, my return visit to Cuba was very bittersweet. While I was happy to see my friends again and reconnect with communists on the island, the conditions imposed by imperialism filled me with rage. I return to the US with a renewed sense of responsibility. It is up to us to build the revolutionary party in the belly of the beast to end imperialism once and for all.
We Pay for the State’s Negligence
Chris B, Pittsburgh, PA
When I was working at a local shelter, an older gentleman approached me with a letter and asked if I could read it as he was unable to due to a stroke. We learned that the Department of Treasury had claimed he owed a debt that must be paid back immediately or he would have his benefits deducted. After we called the number, they told us they had accidentally overpaid him in 2018 and failed to notify him until now. Moreover, they were already garnishing his benefits without his knowledge! There was no option for a payment plan, and he either had to pay the rest of the debt in full or they would continue siphoning his meager benefits.
The state gives these benefits to ease class tensions, but does so with the utmost reluctance and is willing to take them back to protect the ruling class’s interests. A state in crisis is more inclined to scrape money off of an elderly stroke victim than the world’s first trillionaire. The more the ruling class squeezes welfare recipients, the more they push another layer of the working class to revolutionary conclusions.
Homeless at 78
Mia Jimenez, Los Angeles, CA
There’s a 96-year-old woman named Mildred who teaches ballet at the local rec center. After class one day, she told me about her life.
She was born in 1930 on a farm in Texas. Her father worked multiple jobs to provide for his 13 children, and he did it with a smile. The racism and lack of opportunities for Black women there was so terrible it pushed her to move to California in 1955.
It broke my heart to learn that there was even more hardship this kind woman had endured. In 2008, a house fire left her homeless. At 78 years old, she was forced to live out of her car and couch surf for over a year.
The only reason Mildred has housing today is because a social worker could see she had no way to work her way out of this situation at her advanced age, and fought tooth and nail to get her permanent housing.
Luckily, she got it. But how many Mildreds are out there who did not get so lucky? Her story shows that capitalism does not discriminate: it bombs children one day, it throws the elderly onto the streets the next.
The ruling class tells us that homelessness is the result of poor choices and moral failings, but they never talk about the people who worked their entire lives, made all the right choices, and still get kicked to the curb.
Last year, NPR reported that seniors are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. We’re not just fighting for the youth. We’re also fighting for the old and gray, so they can finally have a chance to live free.
Google Workers Hate AI
I work as a designer for Google. Last year, our bosses sent an internal memo telling full-time employees to either go “all in” on AI or accept a severance package. One creative lead on my team took the package and left, and another ended up leaving months later. The ones who stayed were not necessarily excited.
Since then, our work has devolved into generating images and videos with AI for social media. During one meeting a creative lead was relaying to us executive feedback on an AI-generated video of a hamster on top of a bee flying over tulips … before he stopped midsentence and said with a sigh, “i don’t know what my job is anymore.”
I’ve seen some of the most passionate designers I know sink into a quiet resignation. Discontent is building under the surface. These are incredibly talented, educated, and experienced creatives who are now generating and supervising AI slop. The alienation from our labor has never been more evident.
Didn’t Expect Much, Got Less than Nothing
After my first year of college, I joined a group chat with my childhood friends. What should have been a nice reunion—reminiscing about days past when life was simple—instead led to familiar anxieties. We’re all searching for jobs because we hate the ones we have, and we all struggle with the continual decline of capitalism.
Every conversation with my friends returns to the horrid job market. With social media stories about scam jobs and abysmal pay, it’s no surprise.
Today, many of my friends who used to brush off communism now even ask me about dialectical materialism and revolution. Gen Z abandoned hopes for enjoyable careers and affordable homes long ago. We didn’t expect much, but we got less than nothing!
My friends ask: “What world do we live in?” My resounding answer is: “One that needs communism.”