“Whose day?! Our day!! What day? May Day!!” A multiracial, multigenerational, and multi-gender group of hundreds of communists and friends rallied and marched in Brooklyn on May 4 to celebrate the fight of the international working class and our march towards communism. This year's May Day came seven months into the intensified genocide in Palestine driven by Israeli and U.S. bosses. Workers in New York City have since launched countless actions in protest, from blocking bridges to occupying spaces on college campuses. While many chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," we sharpened this with internationalism to say, "From all the rivers to all the seas, communism will set us free!" 

Nothing short of a communist revolution will achieve true freedom for workers anywhere. The main speech embodied this idea, highlighting the dangers of nationalist ideas like Nazism and Zionism: “Nationalism is a fire that will engulf the world in conflict. From all the rivers to all the seas, only communism can put out that fire. It will set us free!”

Following this came a speech by an education worker who was removed from his teaching position for openly supporting students when they wrote a letter to demand the school administration create a space to mourn the death of workers and children in Palestine. He highlighted the power of fighting back as part of a party, specifically as part of Progressive Labor Party: “Ultimately, it was PLP that helped me and my entire school community fight against silencing and isolation. They helped give us the support to overcome cynicism and turn it around into a fight with the capitalist school system.” 

Before we kicked off our march, a veteran comrade who had just been arrested that week for supporting students at an encampment spoke, “there’s no better time to talk about communism with the youth than when you’re all zip-tied by police.” 

Energetic beats shook the streets as we chanted, “NYPD, KKK, IOF, they’re all the same!” and “Fight for communism, now's the time to free, free Palestine!” The community chimed in with us, some danced along, and several workers in the neighborhood joined the march. We marched past the blocks where Kimani Gray and others have been murdered by police and made sure to remind the NYPD and the community that we have not forgotten the kkkops’ crimes: “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D!” One attendee remarked, “This is the most receptive I’ve seen the community be on May Day. People were open to the chants and ideas.” 

At the end of our march, two student leaders from the CUNY Gaza Solidarity encampment spoke. 

They reminded the crowd not to buy into the bosses’ fascist lies about what the encampments stand for. A new comrade gave a rousing speech about why she joined the Party and encouraged the rest of the crowd join too, “The working class is divided by local bosses and held captive by nationalist ideas; the ruling class does not want us to see that we have more in common with the Pakistani farmer, the Congolese miner, and the migrants on Staten Island than we do with fascist Eric Adams or genocidal Joe Biden. Our destinies as workers of the world are interconnected. We depend on each other to live and fight another day.” We closed by singing the Internationale. 

As capitalism falls further into decay, its crises and fascism are on full display. Many have woken up to the lies of “freedom” and “democracy” that uphold this system. As they call for a new one, let us answer that call by saying, “The only solution is a communist revolution!”

Newark, NJ—“Money for jobs and education- not for imperialist war and occupation!” This chant captured the spirit of May Day— the day we celebrate the solidarity of the international working class. Students in Newark and around the world are occupying capitalist education institutions complicit in the slaughter of workers in Palestine and worldwide. Students, teachers, and workers see the connection between these international attacks and their local conditions living under capitalism. 

The Newark Solidarity Coalition, which includes students, teachers, community organizers, and members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), set up an encampment on the Rutgers Newark campus to protest the ongoing genocide of workers in Palestine. PLers distributed dozens of CHALLENGEs at both the Rutgers Newark and New Brunswick campuses and built connections with the organizers and participants. These encampments are part of an ever-growing movement across college campuses worldwide to demand an end to the slaughter of workers in Palestine. 

Billions of U.S. dollars have been given to Israel—a racist apartheid state —to displace, starve, and slaughter 38,000 Palestinians…. Some of the demands of the Rutgers Coalition include, but aren’t limited to Rutgers divesting (severing financial ties) from Tel-Aviv University, or any company or corporation profiting off of the genocide. These demands demonstrate growing consciousness among students and workers exposing the U.S. capitalist institutions that are all part of the imperialist war machine, fueling the attacks on workers abroad. It also exposed how reforms can be used to try and demobilize and keep workers from fighting back. This happened in the Rutgers New Brunswick campus where promises of dead-end reforms were accepted in exchange for ending solidarity encampments (NJ Spotlight News, 5/6). 

In fact, there has been no shortage of reformist politicians, organizations, and misleaders present at these encampments and rallies. Organizations such as DSA and politicians such as Larry Hamm showed up to convince workers to try and solve the genocide in Palestine at the ballot box. Students and workers sent Hamm away, showing they are starting to realize it is the capitalist system that is the problem and not just specific leaders like Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

As the Newark encampment kicked off with a rally, members of the coalition led with chants of “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!”, “From Palestine to Mexico, all the borders have to go!”, “Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!”, and “Not another nickel, not another crime, no more money for Israel’s crimes!” Later that afternoon,  workers involved with the Cosecha Movement joined in the rally. The courage of all these workers, students, and teachers - to the dismay of the U.S. and Israeli bosses - is contagious. The chants show that this is not only about Gaza, but about growing imperialist slaughter and reflects the effort to link Gaza’s struggle with the racist disinvestment of Newark and its majority Black working-class neighborhoods.

Speakers at the rally made sharp connections linking the struggle in Gaza to the struggles in Newark, pointing out that gentrification is contributing to the city’s ridiculously high rents and homelessness.  One speaker pointed out that the Halo Tower currently being built in Newark is owned by Acier Holdings, a privately owned developing company whose President, Jake Glatzer, is a Zionist. Acier Holdings has a history of mismanaging funds and exploiting workers. 

After 96 hours of encampment Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway, ordered the New Brunswick encampment be taken down, with the main demand of - divestment going unmet. However, students in Newark have been more militant in their demands, suggesting that Rutgers turn their 6,000 acres of land into affordable housing, a demand that is considered too radical for the liberal fascist Holloway and Rutgers Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor, who sent an insincere display of support for the encampment.  As the Newark encampment enters its third week, and after multiple meetings of negotiation between the Newark Solidarity Coalition and the Chancellor, the demands have still not been met.  This is the administration’s strategy: tedious sit-downs and negotiations rather than admitting that these capitalist institutions are more concerned with serving their fascist donors than making any decision that benefits students and workers. 

It is clear that in this Dark Night period, some light is shining through. The worldwide campus protests against the genocide in Palestine shows what workers and students are capable of when they recognize the power of organizing and collective rage. The bosses already recognize that power, which is why they’re sending their foot soldiers to break up these encampments while using suppression, surveillance, and violence to discredit our movements. It is not enough to call for divestments, it is not enough to call for a ceasefire, or reinvestments in the community. As long as capitalism and its institutions are upheld, workers will never be safe. The only answer to toppling capitalism is to build an international, antiracist, antisexist, communist movement. Only under communism where profits are abolished will we be able to win a world without genocide where the lives of the international working class are precious, and the needs of the people— not profits— will come first. Join us!

New York City—With some key organizing by Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades, the Radical Caucus of the MLA (the Modern Language Association, the largest organization of literature professors in the world) held an online conference: “KEYWORDS: GAZA— Responding to the Genocide.”  The focus was on how U.S. imperialism was enabling Israeli genocide with arms, money and diplomacy. We targeted “the mass disinformation campaign” by Israel and the U.S. government about the genocide in Gaza. Seventy-eight faculty and students came together to organize solidarity against this genocide.  

The mini-conference took place amid the doxxing, menacing and firing of campus militants just days before the explosion of Gaza protest encampments on over 100 U.S. campuses and in a dozen other countries (Aljazeera.com, 4/29). This was an important effort to stand against the rising fascism of U.S. rulers. PLP members pointed toward a world where students were not only organizing encampments, but workers and students were organizing the world - that’s communism.

Capitalist state monopoly of violence

How cynical are these college administrators, arresting, beating, suspending and expelling students who dare to put up a tent on campus to protest Israel’s forced expulsion of more than a million workers in Gaza. Yesterday’s liberal deans are today’s law-and-order enforcers. Behind the prattle about academic freedom we now see brutes in riot gear. Recently we fought for and  won a MLA motion urging university administrators to defend student protestors. The administrators have done nothing. We must now convince our colleagues and  students that the real enemy is capitalist state violence, partnering with the U.S. bourgeois university to repress anti-genocide students, all while Israel has deliberately destroyed all twelve universities in Gaza.

Political debates about Gaza

The speakers debated how to fight the Gaza genocide, from tacit support of the right-wing leadership of Hamas to aspirations for communist revolution in the region. The opening and closing speakers—a well-known Marxist theorist of globalized capitalism and a PLP comrade—both attacked U.S. imperialism, seeing the crackdown on college campuses as the result of the breakdown of U.S. dominance. Any serious undermining of Israel, the U.S. garrison state in the Middle East, is a real threat that will be met by state violence here in the university as well in the ruins of Gaza. 

The PLP speaker focused first on Israel’s role in the Middle East as the enforcer for U.S. imperialism. But he also criticized the nationalism of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and genocide. Our comrade strongly criticized national liberation politics. National liberation “liberates” one group of capitalists against another. It does not liberate any workers or students. They get to fight and die for one boss or another (See excerpt in Box)

William I. Robinson argued that the U.S. has lost the battle for world legitimacy. The Hamas attack has undermined U.S. plans for expansion. There is a crisis of global capitalism and the fascist response to it. What is urgently needed is to build an alliance of the campus left with workers and unions. A professor of Middle East Studies cited examples of economic trends in higher education: drastic cuts in funding, rising tuition, escalating student debt.

Two graduate students in Comparative Literature described how they gained political understanding of the larger global stakes in the Pro-Palestinian movement. One from the University of Minnesota told how defending a Gender Studies professor on her campus led to a larger campaign for divestment from Israel. The firing of a professor at Hobart Smith College led her to see the limitations of academic freedom. “I disagree with what you say but defend your right to say it”—is inadequate to confront the real genocidal violence of colonialism.

From all the rivers to all the seas workers must unite

Several participants reaffirmed that the task is to turn students’ struggle for a free Palestine into a struggle for all workers and students to be free of imperialism. This event certainly showed, as have the encampments, that this is precisely the mood of many taking strong action now; “Palestine speaks for everyone,” as a newly-banned U.S. professor proclaimed in a widely read article. PLP believes that this movement can indeed thrive and grow if it overcomes racism and nationalism so that the workers of the world unite, “from all the rivers to all the seas,” as the banner at PLP’s May Day march declared. The MLA Radical Caucus is a fertile site of political struggle over such ideas. Join PLP to bring communist thinking into leadership of this inspiring mass movement and link it to anti-imperialist struggles everywhere.

Box - Israel and the U.S.: Ironclad 

The following is an excerpt from the talk given by a PLP comrade at the Gaza mini-conference. See full text at https://multiracialunity.org/2024/04/21/israel-and-the-us-ironclad/

The massive movement in the U.S. and around the world against Israel’s genocide has been inspiring in its breadth and militancy. It has played an important role in exposing this atrocity to millions in the U.S. who see very little on American media. This movement has also exposed the close relations between universities, Zionism and the U.S. government. We must give kudos to the students who are fighting the new McCarthyism at Columbia and Yale, among many others, and who have suffered arrests and suspensions. Some politicians have been pressured to at least express distaste at Israel’s brutality. However, it would be a mistake to think that there is any chance that the U.S. will divorce from Israel or limit its military support, no matter which party is in office, even if it would prefer that Israel mitigate its behavior. . . .
This region remains of paramount importance to the U.S. empire. It is still the source of much of the world’s petroleum, both flowing and unexplored. Yemen is thought to contain the world’s greatest unexplored oil deposits. The shipping lanes through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf  …  are vital. 20 percent of the world’s petroleum passes through the Persian Gulf. 40 percent of all Asia to Europe trade passes through the Suez Canal, including 12 percent of all international trade, 12 percent of seaborne oil, and 8 percent of liquefied gas …  

In the overall picture of inter-imperialist rivalry, China is the biggest competitor of the U.S. China now gets 40 percent of its oil from the Gulf and is Iran’s biggest customer, invests in Saudi energy, and has interest in building a pipeline through Iran. … China is massively extending its worldwide influence through the Belt and Road initiative to boost trade, diplomatic relations and exports. Its worldwide meeting in 2023 involved 0ver 130 countries, including Egypt, and 18 other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. . . 

The question is what can we do…We must organize our fellow students and workers to fight against imperialist wars, against racism, against deficiencies in social services. That could mean professional society resolutions, bans on investments or military support by universities, fighting racism and police brutality, demanding better wages and social services – in whatever way we can unite, build leadership from below, expose the nature of capitalism and ready ourselves to lead the eventual struggle to end capitalism, with our fellow students and workers around the world. We have many ongoing and recent struggles to inspire us and a world that needs to be won

The march to celebrate this year’s International Workers Day was well attended, with many workers joining the march to support a variety of organizations (trade unions, left parties, workers’ centers, environmentalist  and community organizations to defend human rights, and feminists groups, amongst many others). Workers expressed their opposition to racism, sexism, forced displacement, and the devastating impact of the capitalist system. It was common to see here the general support for Palestine and against the ongoing genocide, which is now a central axis of the class struggle and the current global political debates, in the context of the new multi-polar reality.

With this in mind, on this great day, we celebrated one more year of struggle, with our sights set on the unity of the international working class under the banners and leadership of our communist party, Progressive Labor Party (PLP). We denounced the parasitic capitalist class domination and its racist wage system, its endless wars, its sexism that divides us and weakens us, and its fascism and increased violence against our class. We celebrated one more year of struggle, protests, work stoppages, blockades, and mobilizations that sustain our commitment to our communist ideal, as the only way to build a better world.

PLP, as a revolutionary necessity, was an early presence at the meeting place in downtown Bogota, talking to workers, defending our line, and exchanging information to plan later meetings. We distributed our paper, CHALLENGE, and 2,000 flyers, calling for a communist revolution and class solidarity with our Palestinian and Haitian sisters and brothers, who are facing bloody and systematic imperialist genocide and repression. 

Our militant contingent marched behind a large sign featuring our newspaper. We were a dynamic and enthusiastic group of workers and students, members and friends of the Party. The whole event took place in the context of the current support for President Gustavo Petro’s reforms, which responds to a previous march called last April by right-wing followers of former president Alvaro Uribe. President Petro, in a populist and opportunistic fashion, gave a speech at Bolivar Plaza, proclaiming himself the heart of the march and all participants allies to his government.

In spite of that, PLP raising the communist red flag and chanting our slogans generated sympathy and was well-received by participants and people passing by, including men and women from a variety of ages who joined us to add around a hundred new enthusiastic participants to our group, notably many women and young people, who seemed attracted to our anti-sexist position and slogans.

Our daily work has been focused on advancing class struggles, learning from our practice to struggle against capitalists collectively, understanding that the struggle for reforms is insufficient, given the huge needs of our international working class. For that reason, our slogans had strong resonance, including, “No more reformism, long live communism!”, “Peace between social classes serves criminal bosses!” “Israel, racist and fascist murderer, smash capitalism! “Counterattacks in Gaza, Haiti, Ukraine or Venezuela, Workers’ communist revolution!” “Long live International Communist May Day!” These slogans, as well as thirty others, outlining PLP’s revolutionary line, were cheerfully and militantly chanted by our friends and onlookers, who requested printed copies to chant along.

We reached Bolivar Plaza, where the president took the stage to give his speech defending liberal reforms, silencing revolutionary voices, which was traditionally done by the sell-out trade unions. Generally, and in spite of the cynical will of this “government of change” to co-opt the march, there was a feeling of an overall rejection of the capitalists’ onslaught, which nevertheless, would be an opportunity for the reformists, democrathieves, and opportunists to continue providing cover for this corrupt capitalist system. Our task is to steadily work with those workers sympathetic to our line, and hundreds more, discussing and elaborating strategies based on our political understanding, forged by PLP, to smash the bosses’ dictatorship, growing in quantity and quality, and looking to turn these peaceful marches into militant struggles guided by communist ideas and practices.