BROOKLYN, NY, APRIL 30—For those few hours, the streets belonged to the working class. The Progressive Labor Party led a march of over 500 people down Flatbush Avenue chanting, “This Whole Damn System — Shut it Down!” to the beat of “Murder She Wrote.”
Workers from delis, salons, and stores put their fists in the air and chanted along. A number joined our march and gave us their phone numbers to be contacted. Every person — over 3,000 in all — along the two-mile route bought CHALLENGE, anti-racism/anti-sexism buttons, or a “Don’t Vote — Revolt” T-shirt. The long line of communist flags flooded the streets red.
Marchers hailed from all five New York City boroughs, Buffalo, NY, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Boston and were led by middle school, high school and college students. The marchers’ multiracial composition was received enthusiastically in the predominantly Black and Latin working-class Brooklyn neighborhood.
A sound truck with a DJ playing beats at the lead maintained the chants loud in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, and the atmosphere militant! Drivers honked their horns in salute. Before the march, speakers described many of their struggles, including those against racist deportations and the fight for higher wages at Columbia University. A family member of Tyrone West, a Baltimore Black man murdered by the racist kkkops in July 2013, described the weekly protests they’ve organized in the struggle for justice against racist police murder.
Lastly, a young Russian-Latin woman described why she recently joined the Progressive Labor Party:
When I entered college six years ago, I wanted to become a politician. I wanted to help people, and I recognized politics as the primary driving force of the world. I abandoned this aspiration by my sophomore year. It became clear to me quickly that politicians do not help people, they just talk a lot of hot air and do their best to stay in office. I resigned myself to tuning out politics. Without the ability to make change, political engagement with the world felt like nothing but a depressing burden.
I worked my ass off, I played by the rules and still came out a loser. Meanwhile the CEO of Apple gets rich off of virtual slave labor, people can’t afford basic health care, and innocent workers are being slain by drone strikes every day. Where the hell is all that change and hope Obama promised us?! I’m committed to PLP because it offers everything that politicians don’t: clarity, support and hope. We in PLP fight to expose the root cause of the international working class’s suffering: capitalism, a system founded upon mass exploitation of workers in order to maximize profits.
Fighters Against Kkkops Join Reds
As our march proceeded past intersections where the police have murdered Black youth, a group of mainly women led the marchers’ chants to “shut this racist system down!” The only answer to these racist police murders is to join PLP and help us continue to build a fighting international, revolutionary Party. From the Americas to Africa and Asia, working-class women, men and youth involved with PLP are spreading this communist struggle across the globe.
On the sound truck, one of our chant leaders was the sister of Shantel Davis, a 23-year-old woman killed by the racist NYPD in June 2012. Since her sister’s murder, this emerging communist working-class leader has responded to PL’s urgent approach towards agitation and our patient approach towards base-building. She’s overcome many illusions about getting justice for her sister from the bosses’ political system and has rejected the anti-communist lies from politicians and preachers.
Other family members of our working-class brothers and sisters murdered by the kkkops also joined with, and gave leadership to our march, including families of Kyam Livingston, Eric Garner and Tyrone West. Each of these families in the march is a precious steel nail in the coffin of capitalism.
Bosses Can’t Erase Our Militant History
The spirit and militancy of the march showed that PLP is a real alternative to the false promises the bosses’ politicians make every four years, when it’s time to elect a new imperialist-in-chief. Our May Day march marks the day we review our forces in our fight to become a mass working-class Party, organizing with the goal of communist revolution! Our future is bright: marchers and some workers on the sidewalk raised their fists as we chanted, “What do we want? COMMUNISM! When do we want it? NOW!”
At the conclusion of the march, the keynote speech given by a Black transit worker connected the current conditions of the international working class and the need to fight for communism. He began:
What a time to be alive! We have just finished another successful May Day march, a tradition that goes back to 1886, when our bothers and sisters were murdered by the cops for fighting for the 8-hour day. The fight and killing of our predecessors is motivation for communists to overthrow the bosses’ society and build the system of communism.
The bosses rule society through a violent and coercive state. They spend billions to legitimize their murderous system, yet every dollar they have spent has fallen short of covering up the inherent flaws of their system.
From the beginning of capitalism, racism and sexism have been the key tools the bosses used to divide and conquer the working class and today is no different. Today they sell the myth to ALL workers, but especially to Black and Latin workers, that white workers are responsible for hundreds of years of their exploitation under capitalism.
Meanwhile, they sell the myth to white workers that they are protected from exploitation and the bosses’ terror because they are “privileged,” thereby they have more in common with slave-owners and war-makers than their fellow workers.
The truth is that from the very inception of capitalism historically workers have fought alongside each other. The bosses, politicians, universities, media coerce us away from seeing that the only group who’s responsible for, and benefits from racism is the ruling class.
Who benefits when the bosses pay white workers a little more than Black workers or pay men more than women?
It’s not the white workers or men! It’s bosses who reap the difference! They’re the only group that wins from a divided working class.
One major challenge for us is the pessimism built about the possibility of unity between Black and white workers, women and men. Living under the bosses’ system, they have tried to erase our class’s memory of a time when Black and white, women and men workers lived and fought together against capitalism and for a better world.
After citing examples of global fightback, he ended this inspirational speech by saying: “The fight for communism can’t stop, won’t stop because workers can, workers did, and workers will continue to fight back! Long live communism! Power to the workers! Join PLP!”
We then sang the Internationale, the communist anthem, in both Spanish and English. We ended this amazing day with a picnic in the park with delicious box lunches. Some sang Creole songs around a drum circle in the park.
PLP is a fighting international Party, and our fight to build a mass, multiracial communist movement is growing. This May Day in New York City, in the belly of the U.S. imperialist beast, was both a celebration and a call to refuse to vote in the bosses’ elections but instead to join the revolutionary fight for communism by joining Progressive Labor Party!
