Communist and Socialist Activists Are Marching for a 20-Hour Workweek, Property Seizures, and Open Borders. Their Presence at Protests Is Growing.

At a Minneapolis May Day demonstration, members of the Revolutionary Communists of America, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Communist Party USA, and Democratic Socialists of America demanded a 20-hour workweek with no pay cut, billionaire wealth expropriation, rent capped at 10% of worker income, collective control of factories and businesses, and the elimination of borders.

• 20 hours Proposed maximum weekly hours — with zero reduction in pay — Fox News
• 10% Rent cap demanded: no more than 10% of a worker's income — Fox News
• 4 orgs Revolutionary Communists, Freedom Road Socialists, CPUSA, and DSA all represented at the Minneapolis march — Fox News

A 20-hour workweek. Seized billionaire wealth. Rent at 10% of income. The full list.

The centerpiece demand at the Minneapolis march was a 20-hour maximum workweek — with no corresponding reduction in pay. That proposal alone would more than double per-hour labor costs for every employer in the country, since the same gross wages would buy half the labor time. But the activists at the rally did not stop there. They called for the seizure of billionaire wealth in its entirety, to be redistributed through government programs. Owen Phernetton of the Revolutionary Communists of America put it plainly: “Their wealth should be expropriated and put to use for the working class.”

The housing plank demanded rent capped at no more than 10% of a worker’s income — a figure so far below current market rents in Minneapolis, let alone New York or San Francisco, that it would effectively require government takeover of the rental market. Alongside rent controls, the coalition called for universal government-backed housing, healthcare, and education, all funded by confiscated private wealth. The long-term goal was explicit: a transition to a stateless, classless society — the classical Marxist-Leninist end state.

“Their wealth should be expropriated and put to use for the working class.”

Owen Phernetton · Revolutionary Communists of America · Minneapolis May Day march · May 8, 2026

The march also demanded collective worker control over factories, mines, and businesses — the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, which is the foundational demand of Marxist economics. Andy Koch of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization argued that workers, not owners, should govern production decisions. Taken together, the demands at this single march amounted to a comprehensive blueprint for dismantling the private-market economy of the United States and replacing it with centralized collective control.

RCA. FRSO. CPUSA. DSA. MIRAC. Who showed up, and what they stand for.

The Revolutionary Communists of America describes itself as a vanguard communist party working to overthrow capitalism in the United States. Its members Owen Phernetton and Cass Batica were both present at the Minneapolis march and on camera articulating the party’s line. The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, whose member Andy Koch also appeared at the event, is a Marxist-Leninist organization that traces its lineage to the New Communist Movement of the 1970s. The Communist Party USA — the oldest and most established of the groups present — has been a fixture in American labor and left-wing politics since 1919 and has historically maintained ties to the Soviet-aligned international communist movement.

The Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States with roughly 100,000 members at its peak, was also represented. The DSA sits in a different political tradition than the explicitly communist groups — it is a democratic-socialist rather than Marxist-Leninist organization — but its members shared the stage and the street with the RCA, FRSO, and CPUSA at this event. The Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) marched under a banner reading “Legalization for All, Sanctuary State Now,” bringing the immigration dimension of the coalition into direct alignment with the economic demands.

Among the most revealing figures at the march was Caleb Batts, 24, a self-identified Marxist-Leninist who is currently enrolled as a business major. Batts’s presence illustrates the demographic shift that Fox News and other outlets have documented: communist and socialist ideology is no longer confined to aging fringe activists. It is being adopted by college-age Americans who are simultaneously studying the economics of the system they want to abolish.

“No Deportations.” “ICE Out of Minnesota.” Elimination of borders — as policy.

The immigration demands at the Minneapolis march were not a sidebar. They were a co-equal pillar of the platform. Marchers chanted “No Deportations” and called for ICE to be expelled from Minnesota entirely. MIRAC organized the immigration contingent under the “Legalization for All, Sanctuary State Now” banner, demanding that the state of Minnesota adopt formal sanctuary status — meaning state and local law enforcement would be prohibited from cooperating with federal immigration authorities under any circumstances.

The more ambitious demand was the elimination of borders as a concept — not a path to citizenship, not comprehensive immigration reform in the legislative sense, but the abolition of border enforcement as a legitimate state function. From the classical Marxist perspective, national borders are instruments of capitalist control that divide the working class against itself. Eliminating them is therefore an ideological imperative, not merely a policy preference. That framing — drawn directly from the ideology of the RCA and FRSO — was present in Minneapolis on May Day.

The alignment between the communist groups and the immigration advocacy organizations at this event is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate coalition strategy that has become increasingly visible at major left-wing rallies: economic radicalism and open-borders advocacy march together, share platforms, and reinforce each other’s framing. What this means for the broader Democratic coalition — which includes elected officials who also call for sanctuary policies and oppose deportations — is a question that mainstream political coverage has been slow to address directly.

These are no longer fringe voices at progressive rallies. The numbers are growing.

Fox News reported that the presence of communist and socialist organizations at American protest events is growing. The Minneapolis May Day march was not an isolated incident — it was a documented example of a pattern playing out across the country. Groups like the RCA and FRSO are not holding events separately from the broader progressive activist ecosystem; they are marching alongside DSA chapters, immigrant rights organizations, labor groups, and anti-ICE coalitions. The organizational infrastructure is shared. The platforms overlap.

The optics matter. When a card-carrying member of the Revolutionary Communists of America and a DSA chapter member march under the same banner, attend the same speakers, and chant the same slogans, the practical distinction between their organizations collapses for the casual observer. The question is whether elected officials who participate in or endorse these coalitions — sanctuary-city mayors, progressive prosecutors, state legislators who co-sign open-borders frameworks — are comfortable being photographed in the same movement as groups that explicitly call for the expropriation of private property and the abolition of the United States as a nation-state.

Caleb Batts’s presence — a 24-year-old business major who openly identifies as a Marxist-Leninist — points to something specific: the ideology is recruiting in the same universities that train the next generation of corporate managers, policy analysts, and elected officials. The RCA’s outreach has been explicit about targeting young people and campuses. Whether that recruitment effort remains at the level of marches and chants or translates into organized political power is the question the next five years will answer.

“Their wealth should be expropriated and put to use for the working class.”

Owen Phernetton · Revolutionary Communists of America · Minneapolis May Day march · May 8, 2026 — quoted by Fox News