San Francisco, May 6—Fighting back against a series of racist killings and Mayor Ed Lee’s callous indifference to a 17-day hunger strike, a member of Progressive Labor Party helped to lead 200 workers and students in a seven-hour takeover of San Francisco’s City Hall. Banging on the mayor’s door, protesters chanted, “Mayor Lee, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”
During the occupation, the protesters—women and men, Asian, Latin, Black and white—took over the area outside the mayor’s door, as well as the main rotunda and eventually the entire first floor of City Hall. We chanted, “If we don’t get it, SHUT IT DOWN!” One young female fighter sang songs of liberation that echoed through the building and inspired us all to keep fighting.
It was on the 12th day of the hunger strike that the PLP member and two students decided to up the ante in pushing Lee to fire racist police chief Greg Suhr. The chief’s termination was the sole demand of the hunger strikers; Suhr’s kkkcops have murdered eight Black and Latin workers since 2014 (http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/murdermap.html). We began organizing other students and workers to stop playing by the rules, which meant being willing to get arrested. Our collective understanding of the importance of militant action was deepened by our week together on the strike line, reading CHALLENGE and having long debates about reform versus revolution.
All agreed that firing Suhr was a reform struggle, but that he had to go—and that this struggle could be used to move people to the left. Revolutionary politics can enter the mass reform movement only if members of PLP are involved in day-to-day struggles and bring the Party’s ideas with them. One difficulty for communists is that reform groups generally place individual identity politics—namely nationalism and feminism—over collective revolutionary politics and working-class unity. In San Francisco, two of these groups proposed shutting down the bridges and BART (public transportation) while individuals locked themselves to various things. The Party member and his base fought against passive, isolated actions and for more collective action, and to organize to bring more people into the movement. Our line won.
Our collective leadership met many times during the occupation to strategize on maintaining the action’s militancy and sharp political tone. We numbered about 50 people. As we occupied City Hall, the police tore down the hunger strikers’ camp in the Mission district. Hundreds of people turned out to try to salvage the camp. Our collective met again and debated whether we should abandon our action and try to help save the camp, or stick to our plan and have the Mission protestors help us. We decided that our action was more important at the time. Within 30 minutes, dozens of supporters were at the doors of City Hall, but the police wouldn’t let anyone in.
We decided to pretend to call off our occupation, to enable us to open the doors and increase our numbers. The police completely fell for it. As we marched downstairs and found no cops around, we sent folks to sprint and open the doors to our comrades. Our numbers suddenly doubled. We now occupied the entire first floor of City Hall, and the doors stayed open. Over the next hour, our numbers continued to grow until we formed a line two-deep and wall-to-wall against the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department riot squad. At the start of the day, only five people had signed up to be arrested; now we had hundreds lined up against the State. The Party member explained that no cops—Asian, Latin, Black or white—can be friends of the working class, since their job is to serve and protect the capitalist system and private property. Some occupiers, who’d previously thought we could appeal to cops’ “humanity,” came around to our position.
The takeover line was a beautiful thing. The youngest person was 15, the oldest 76. There were women and men together in a united, multiracial group. We stood without fear and with love for those next to us, ready for whatever the police would bring. We chanted, “We ready, we ready, we ready for y’all!” When the police finally charged with batons and riot gear, nobody ran or backed down. Everyone held the line—it looked like two football teams locked at the line of scrimmage.
After a two-hour stalemate, the cops arrested 33 protesters, 19 of them women. By then we claimed City Hall for seven hours, and the fear that often paralyzes our class had vanished. While in jail we sang, laughed and discussed revolutionary communist politics. My base jumped from five to 15. Comrades from around the Bay Area distributed PL literature and helped organize jail support.
Lessons from this action will continue to raise the consciousness of young people in leadership roles in these reform groups. The young people’s multiracial unity has given them new political clarity. It has empowered them to challenge anti-communist forces that seek to marginalize them.  
Youth are desperately searching for a Party like ours. Many are tired of the dead-end reform movement that has them chasing from issue to issue—one step forward and two steps back, with no real analysis of the forces driving racism, inequality, and inter-imperialist war. They know capitalism is the problem, but nobody organizes against capitalism like Progressive Labor Party. It is our duty to bring the Party’s line to the masses; otherwise we allow them to be misled by the bosses’ puppets. We can’t let them fall prey to the Democratic Party and their suave preachers, liberal sellouts and revisionists. Put the line on the line! We are now organizing a fundraiser for one young fighter fighting felony charges. Please donate to our legal fund, and fight for communism!