Shakti L. & Meir A. | Red Phoenix correspondents | New York–
As the contradictions of capitalism reach a critical point with homelessness, food insecurity, poverty, debt, unemployment and wage exploitation; and as the ruling class resorts to fascism to defend its interests, the working class and homeless are forced to bear the full weight of this economic decay. One manifestation of this accelerated socioeconomic degeneration is the attack on benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and Social Security. Over time, and especially in the past year, these programs have faced extreme budget cuts and far-reaching employee layoffs.
Our Party had already predicted, as early as March of Last year, that the American worker would see an accelerated erosion of our already threadbare social safety net under this second Trump administration. Taking our cue from this analysis, APL members in Buffalo immediately set ourselves to organizing our Party’s Red Aid: Service to the People program. Red Aid is a Party-led program modeled after the survival programs of the Black Panther Party. It seeks to provide homeless and working people with food, clothing, medical supplies, and other forms of assistance. Having been previously tested — both within our party, as well as outside of it – it quickly became clear that survival programs were going to become an indispensable tool for materially supporting the working class and oppressed communities while simultaneously exposing the capitalist state’s complete disregard for the interests of the broad, working masses. Buffalo is a city where 28.3% of the population lives in poverty and nearly one third of all households rely on food stamps, and so our community is in particularly acute need of such a program.
Consequently, in early Oct. of 2025, members of the APL in Buffalo began gathering resources: canned goods, bags of rice, cookware, containers, and cooler chests. We organized these efforts and contributed our own money to purchase some of the supplies. We were able to make the most of these resources by preparing them ourselves and portioning meals.
We also utilized our advantages by coordinating with local coalitions and connections that our members had already built in the city via mass organizing work. We reached out to our comrades in these organizations and asked for support, and were able to receive assistance from local cooperative markets and Food Not Bombs organizers, both of whom were pivotal in getting the project running. In fact, the most important tool in building this program is the trust we’ve built through our consistent, principled, and honest organizing.
We hold weekly lunch distributions at Fireman’s Park, a downtown Buffalo neighborhood with a significant homeless population. On average, we serve 15-30 lunches per distribution, along with fruit, snacks, and coffee, depending on our capacity. When possible we have also distributed coffee at protests and picket lines. In addition to food, we have been working to gather other resources such as clothing, hygiene items, and health products. Our comrades in St. Louis, who recently started the Red Aid program in their city, have shown us a method of sourcing Plan B contraceptive tablets.
Though the scale of this program is currently quite small, our work has been welcomed and appreciated by many in the community. Among the homeless community downtown, we have gained a reputation as “the commies who give out food.” Although the word “commie” is usually used as a pejorative, in this context it is in the spirit of endearment. People have shown their support by expressing their frustrations against capitalism to us, praising our work, donating resources, and offering to volunteer.
Red Aid distributions at picket lines have also enabled us to build closer relations with workers involved in labor organizing. The work involved in organizing community aid is often overlooked. It requires planning resources and logistics; it requires teamwork; and it requires building connections in the community. It isn’t easy, quick work, but an important component in the long-term base building necessary to inspire revolutionary change.
Organizing community aid under the Party’s banner has not only allowed us to deepen our connections with the masses but has also enabled the internal growth and development of our branch. Additionally, this initiative has encouraged Party sympathizers to become Party members by allowing for meaningful participation in local activities. It incentivizes all members to have routine, direct contact with the masses – to hear their grievances, to receive criticism, and to connect with the people on a human level.
We receive suggestions and criticism from the people we are serving as well as from organizers in the city. Some of these criticisms are immediate and practical, such as “Why don’t you have sugar with the coffee?” or suggestions for more frequent distribution times and additional supplies. Others are more theoretical and strategic, such as, “being openly communist will scare people away,” or that our program is “not any different from liberal nonprofit work.” The latter criticism is rooted in a misunderstanding of what Red Aid is. Red Aid is not an NGO, nor is it an end in itself. It is a tool – one that does not seek to “manage” the horrors of capitalism, but to expose it and contribute to organizing for its overthrow by linking the material needs of the people to the communist movement. For this reason, Red Aid must always be understood as subordinate to, and inseparable from, the broader revolutionary tasks of the Party which start with the organization of the people.
Through regular criticism and self-criticism sessions held after each distribution, we have taken this feedback seriously, discussed it thoroughly, and attempted to correct our shortcomings. Immediate and practical concerns have been addressed as quickly as possible and to the best of our capacity. For example, in response to suggestions that food distributions be accompanied with other resources, we have expanded our efforts to gather and distribute hygiene and health related supplies like Plan B, naloxone, etc. While we are limited by financial and logistical constraints, we continuously work to respond to the needs of the community.
This program has proven to be a necessary step toward strengthening our foundation. We have built a stronger connection to our community, raised the ideological level of our members, and sharpened our practical skills.
In the most immediate sense, the community must be able to rely upon itself; only on this basis can it be mobilized against our class oppressor. For this reason, we plan to expand the program’s work in the city. This will consist of increasing both the frequency of distributions and the range of resources offered, while further integrating Red Aid and the Party as a whole into ongoing labor and tenant struggles.
At the same time, it must be clear that Red Aid alone cannot resolve the contradictions facing the working class. No amount of food or aid can overcome the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist order: the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation; in other words, the fact that workers produce all the wealth in the world while an idle class, the capitalists, receives the profits. Only a socialist revolution can resolve this contradiction.
As Comrade Huey Newton put it: “We must not regard our survival programs as an answer to the whole problem of oppression. We don’t even claim it to be a revolutionary program. Revolutions are made of sterner stuff. We do say that if the people are not here revolution cannot be achieved, for the people and only the people make revolutions.”
At a time when the capitalist state, driven by the crisis of a decaying order, intensifies its attacks on the working class, unprincipled leftists content themselves with empty slogans and cyclical protests. It is the responsibility of Marxist-Leninists to organize alongside the masses and prepare the ground for the revolutionary transformation of society. We therefore call on our comrades and friends to contribute their time, resources, and skills to building Red Aid wherever they are.
Long live working-class self-reliance!
Long live the people’s unity!
Long live the revolutionary struggle!
The Red Phoenix 