When a young Black teacher and a Latin high school student who are friends of Progressive Labor Party emcee our May Day dinner, you know it will be an inspiring event! These two young women led 60 comrades, families and friends through an interactive, enlightening program complete with good food, music, poetry, games, banner painting, and speeches. At the end of the night, every person in the room wanted to find out about how to get more involved.
The theme of the night “Smash Capitalism with Multi-Racial Unity” shined through all aspects of the event. The main speech took lessons from Kent, Ohio and South Africa about organizing multi-racial unity. Then after analyzing the world situation, the whole room sounded off about what they are doing to change this.
Communist trivia, table talk, and poetry
We followed this with a trivia game based on the latest issue of CHALLENGE. The entire room fell silent—except for the sound of shuffling pages, as competitive communists and friends furiously read articles looking for the answers. The “winner” was happy to take home a year subscription to the paper as her prize.
We moved table talk, engaging participants in a discussion around what it will take to destroy capitalism.
And what May Day dinner would be complete without a Langston Hughes poem? Two high school students from the base of PLP gave a stirring rendition of “Open Letter to the South” (see poem excerpt on page 6). This reinforced the message of the night that freedom for the working class starts with multi-racial unity.
We closed the night with 60 fists in the air singing “The Internationale”.
March in dark times
This event then encouraged many to march on May 1st with PLP. Although small, we were able to participate in two different May Day marches across Los Angeles.  
Our banner, created by the participants of the May Day dinner, led the way both politically and aesthetically. One thousand workers on the street went home with a copy of CHALLENGE and thousands more chanted and cheered in celebration of the working class.  
The marches were considerably smaller than last year, which is telling, given the raids and terror campaign against immigrant workers.  Having said that, for the young Black teacher who marched with us for the first time and rocked our “Fight Back” chant, May Day was empowering. For us, it brought a swell of energy which was really inspiring for our small group.  
The digging into mass organizations and on-the-job work in Los Angeles is paying off. This May Day dinner and march would not have been possible without our friends’ organization and leadership. We strive to convert these efforts into recruitment and consolidation.