This is the main speech at PLP’s May Day in NYC
What Day? May Day! Whose Day? Our Day!
Today, we celebrate the working class. today, we celebrate our revolutionary force that can’t stop and won’t stop fighting back!
In Haiti, we fight back!
In Mexico, Pakistan, Ferguson, Baltimore, Brooklyn, we fight back!
Today, we celebrate the 50 years that Progressive Labor Party has been a fire under the bosses’ ass. We celebrate the 50 years that PLP has been fighting for the communist aspirations of millions of families, youth, and workers! And we are growing in numbers beyond the hundreds and hundreds present here today, growing beyond the borders this country — across 28 countries and five continents!
PLP is a powerful organization built by ordinary people uniting to accomplish extraordinary things. we began small. small but potent.
when neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan terrorize workers and say, “get back!” what did we do? we fought back! Whether we marched into their own headquarters to smash their brains like we did in 1975 in or beat them with bricks at own their rally, PLP made the fight against racism the heartbeat of our life’s work.
When in Harlem, the cops murdered a black teenager, the mayor and police commissioner outlawed rallies. so when the bosses, the civil rights leaders said, “don’t take the streets!” what did we do? we took the streets! the only force that had the guts to give political leadership was PL. Black workers from the other side of the country recognized our leadership in the Harlem Rebellion.
PLP has a history in defying the bosses. We were and are forceful enough to shake the ground underneath the bosses’ feet, if only for a moment. this history is strong only because we believe that workers got the power! who’s got the power? we got the power! what kind of power? workers’ power!
today, when the bosses said, “don’t march,” what did we do? we marched! and what a powerful march it was! When everybody else abandoned May Day, PL brought the workers’ holiday back to them and have been celebrating it for 44 years! We march to honor your courage to fight back, to honor workers who have fought back, and honor our class that will continue to fight back! I know you are tired as hell. Tired of racism,sexism, borders, killer kkkops, slave wages, exploitation, and war. May Day represents abolishing all of that. Everyone here today is the seed for communism: an entire world simply based on need and collectivity. A world that brings out the best of human potential.
This task sounds impossible. But in the hands of the masses, we can turn the impossible into a living fact! Our class’s history says we can win!
1: When Hitler seemingly ruled the world, the Red Army defeated fascism! That was exactly 70 years ago today, when a red soldier waved the red flag over Berlin! So, defeating fascism. Workers did that!
2: Chinese revolution of 1949 and 1966: Eliminate syphilis, prostitution. Done! Educate the masses and rule society without cops. Workers did that!
I make this sound easy, but in reality these victories required the unshakable commitment of millions working together as one for a vision of equality. As long as revolution and communism is grounded in the working class, there is no stopping communism.
Who’s got the power? We got the power? What kind of power? Workers’ power!
While we look to our history for inspiration, we recognize that many movements have failed and turned a workers’ paradise into its opposite. So the question most people ask is how is it going to be different this time?
We gotta rely on only one force: us! These ideas of communism aren’t for any one person to own. There’s nothing special or smart about us that makes us understand communism as the alternative. These ideas belong to the working class. This is not negotiable. Depends on the youth in the streets, the factory workers, the unemployed workers, the women workers, the undocumented farm workers — not the liberals, not de blasio, or obama. not anyone but a fighting member of the working class. it is with that that we can say, the only solution is communist revolution.
With billions on our side, the task of communist revolution is more than just a possibility. We are breathing in a little victory this very moment.
Today, the working class says, “the rebellion in ferguson? we did that. Baltimore? yea, we did that.” So, There will come a day, when we look back an say, “kill capitalism? yea, we did that.” “smash racism? yea, we did that”
Communism is not just a possibility. Communism is alive!
The real impossibility is capitalism.
This system proves day in day out that it sets us up to fail. That’s why thousands of African migrants die crossing the most lethal route in the world. Their only crime was seeking to escape poverty and war. That’s why thousands of women will return to the same garment factory that murdered/burned their co-workers if means another day to feed their family! It is impossible to get justice under this system!
While this system proves everyday it’s a failure, workers prove every day that communism is the answer. The way we intend to treat our kids or stand for someone who is under attack provides clues as to the kind of what world we want to live in. In time of disasters like Hurricane Katrina or Sandy, it is the workers who go out and help. Or when in Ferguson over night, they went from being just another kid being terrorized by the cops to a soldier in the streets! All these are glimpses of collectivity, running a society that feeds on justice. What are only glimmers today will be human nature and instinct under communism.
Our choice of revolution lives, whether dormant or waking, in all.
When capitalism, killer health conditions, not ebola, took the lives of 10,000 in West Africa. Workers fought back demanding basic supplies! And just so the bosses can prove how impossible it is to live a decent life under capitalism, the only thing they provided these protesters were bullets and tear gas! When those workers resisted, it cued us to do the same!
So if workers fight back and have always been fighting back. And if communism isn’t so far fetched, what’s holding the world back? Without one party, there is no revolution.
Like in 1963 in Birmingham Alabama. It was one of the flashpoint of segregation and fightback. That’s where a klan thug bombed a church, murdering four little black girls. That’s where thousand of kids and young people had the courage to stand up against vicious attack dogs, the kkk, the mayor, the water hoses that washed the kids down the streets, the jails. All for what? There’s a footage of this black teenage girl among all her comrades in a jail cell smiling and said, “i want my rights. i want equality.” For these youth, equality meant fighting jim crow. But it wasn’t enough.
They were mostly nonviolent. What the bosses fed them was — when the dog bite, when the cops shoot, when the kkk lynches, stay calm. The bosses shoved nonviolence down the throats of the youth and choked them into defeat. Capitalism is the most violent system in history. We will not surrender our lives to that! We will fight force with revolutionary force. And we will live!
So forward from Alabama to right here in Flatbush — fifty years later — youth ignited a rebellion after the cops slaughtered Kiki Gray. It was a tremor, but shook the ground underneath the cops’ feet. We chanted, “NYPD you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” But, it wasn’t enough
One year later, Ferguson. Youth again flooded the streets because cops killed Michael Brown. Again, they had courage to withstand the dogs, the kkk, the national guard, the tanks, the rifles, the tear gas, the rubber bullets. With PLP, the chant went from “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot” to “Fists up! Fight back!”
8 months later. Baltimore. and it still won’t be enough.
All For what? To end Jim Crow in 2015 to live in a world without the dictatorship of the racist cops, the banks, the courts, and politicians. But it wasn’t enough. What did the bosses have to offer to black fighters? The ballot box.
Rebellions will spark. The pent up rage of these brutal years will explode over and over. But the flames will be put out. Without a revolutionary party, we can’t turn a spark into a fire this whole system down.
How do we go from from fighting the cops to fighting the Rockefellers? To fighting the oil bosses? PLP. We need one organization leading one world into the final victory? What is victory today? Joining PLP. How can we sustain a victory? Fighting with PLP. With a party armed with communism, turn down for what?
No matter how dark the night, The sun and daughter of revolution will rise! What gives us such confidence to say this? The very people in this march! The people walking by! The revolution will be won by ragtag soldiers, the revolution will be won by the very people the bosses discard as surplus, as useless. the very kids the bosses starve will feed themselves revolution. the very youth the bosses put into prison, or declare not worth teaching will be the ones to lead us into communism. They will break free of the biggest jail of all: capitalism.
And that’s why our future is bright. Make no mistake of it, that day will come, and workers will live. The Kikis and Kyams of the world will live! But, it can’t and it won’t happen without you.
This Ferguson was a preview. Baltimore was a preview. It was a little taste of we got in store for the bosses. The politicians wanna declare war on our kids, from the neighborhoods of Chicago, Brooklyn to the tents in Haiti, Syria, and Ukraine. To the bosses we say, you can’t stop the revolution!
Every kid you kill is an inch deeper you dig in your grave. Because the working class never forgets. Who killed Shantel? Who killed Kyam? Who killed Eric? Who Kiki? Who killed Rahmarley? Who killed Freddie? Who killed Mike? Who killed Tyrone? There are too many names! For every kid you will, a hundred more bear witness to this racist system that feeds off the blood of your youth. You expose yourself for the bloodsucker you are, leeching off the labor of workers.
So while the bosses preach that communism is dead, it’s them whose time is ticking! Everyone in this march — in every place that PLP has a base — can attest that communism is alive!
From the birth of exploitation, workers fought back! For fifty year, PLP has been fighting back! Onwards to another fifty! Because today — May Day — is the beginning of another year of winning thousands to communism. So where do we go from here? We gotta turn up! We gotta toughen up! We gotta bring out the communist aspirations in people and motivate them to act on it! To those who can’t wait to see communism, bring communism to where you are at.
For those of you who are questioning, like my little sisters are, I tell you the same thing i tell them. The only thing I have to offer you is the best organization that exists in this world. There is no security under capitalism. I can’t guarantee food, or a job, or safety. The only thing I could show you is a fighting chance for you to create the kind of world I wish I could’ve raised you in.
So sisters and brothers, join us in creating the world we know our kids need. From Baltimore to Nepal, the world calls out to you. This is your chance to join. Take the leap. And when you do, you are joining the hands, life, and blood of billions of fighters past, present, and future. With that, how could we not win? the future belongs to us only if we dare to fight for it! 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!
