NEW YORK CITY—“Same enemy! Same fight! Workers of the world unite!” This chant filled the streets regularly in June in New York City, as Progressive Labor Party members and friends joined countless other workers and youth who took to the streets. The masses of antiracists have a path to choose: the road towards communist revolution or the road to reforming racist capitalism. For us, the answer is clear: abolish exploitation and build a world by the working class, for the working class.
Masses open to communist leadership
Rebellions have erupted across the U.S. and around the world in response to racist police terror. In NYC, every day of the month was marked by protests. From the Bronx to Brooklyn, the Party brought a class-conscious political understanding that called out capitalism as the system built off racism in need of destruction by communists.
At least five times we united in large PLP contingents with bullhorns to share this message by leading chants, giving speeches, taking over the streets, holding signs, having conversations, and distributing thousands of CHALLENGEs and fliers. We made new contacts and have begun involving them in Party study/action groups. Individually party members attended dozens of protests.
At one march, family members of those murdered by kkkops addressed the crowd. These included friends of PLP, who we have marched alongside for years. These friends once again provided much-needed political leadership when they sharply called for multi-racial unity to shut this racist system down. When a few reformist organizers led calls to “cut cut cut” the police budget, the crowd responded with more volume and energy when chanting, “No more cops!”
“How do you spell ‘murderer?’ N-Y-P-D” was also popular in many of the demonstrations. Workers are rejecting the idea that racist police are merely “a few bad apples” and seeing racist terror as inherent to policing. PLP chants that the Party has been spreading for decades in NYC have caught on as mass chants.
Comrade, not ally
Another march in the mostly Black and Latin neighborhoods of Uptown Manhattan focused on promoting “Black and brown unity.” PLP succeeded at times in shifting the tone away from limiting identity politics. Many embraced our chants, so much so that neighboring bullhorns (including those of mass organizations in which we have been involved) at times followed our message rather than persisting with nationalist chants.
PLP speeches advocated for international, multiracial unity of the working class, which was met with cheers and applause, even as one of our comrades boldly affirmed “I stand with you today to fight, not as your white-ally, but as your white comrade ready to burn this racist system down.” As Karl Marx said in Capital, “Labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.”
On Juneteenth, protestors took over the Brooklyn Bridge and high school students led chants to shut the profit system down on two different megaphones. One high school comrade gave a speech about her experiences with the racist use of metal detectors at her school (see the same comrade’s speech at a protest the day before, page 3).
As fellow protestors saw the leadership of Black and Latin youth in our organization, many took copies of CHALLENGE.
What now?
Throughout all of these protests, we have seen a positive response to chants that push multiracial unity and call out capitalism. Less popular were revolutionary chants like, “Don’t vote, revolt!” This demonstrates the need to continue to struggle with workers over dead-end electoral politics. The danger for these movements is that, in the absence of a widely supported communist leadership, the liberal bosses will co-opt mass anger and funnel it towards reforming and supporting the system. The question to ask friends is: do we want to fight inside the system or outside the system of capitalism?
While calls to abolish the police are gaining popularity, capitalism requires police, and elections will never get rid of capitalism. Workers need to organize in a revolutionary communist party, the PLP, in order to abolish capitalism and police.