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!
Oakland, May 1—More than 40 members & friends of PLP had a well-organized and enthusiastic contingent in this year’s May Day March. Annually, a coalition of immigrant rights and community groups organizes for May Day. We represented the multiracial, multi-generational, international working class.
Our banners and chants in English and Spanish put communism up front. We shared chants with other groups, and some joined in with ours. “Fight for communism, Power to the workers!” (more next issue).
HAITI, May 1—Revolutionary greetings to all May Day marchers from PLP and our friends in Haiti! The Progressive Labor Party here has given communist leadership at a march in the capital, organized a workers’ study group in another provincial city, and concluded with the Internationale in Creole and calls to join the fight for communism.
This May Day, PLP continues to create confidence in the working class, strengthening and enlarging our base of communist fighters and friends. Marching in Port-au-Prince, the capital, with several trade unions, we led the marchers with chants such as “Down with capitalism, long live communism!” and “We workers have nothing to lose, let’s march on the bosses!”
The main demand of the unions’ march was to increase the minimum wage to 500 gourdes/day (9$USD). Our leaflet took a sharp look at the conditions workers here and worldwide are facing, concluding that the international working class needs an international revolutionary communist party, the PLP. We said that workers must unite in a single struggle and build the Party that will lead workers to victory, to communist revolution and an egalitarian society that will meet the needs of workers who create all value. “Workers, unite, as one class, we have the same problems and must have the same struggle.”
Elsewhere, in a provincial city, PLP organized a meeting with about 30 people, rural and unemployed workers, students and professionals. Our mission was to see that we are part of a single class. We talked about the history of May Day, showing how the bosses give their watered-down idea about this historic day to try to erase from our memory the long history of struggle—often victorious—of the working class.
Down with Capitalism! Now What?
We talked about different workers’ struggles around the world and showed how capitalism is what links them together: we are all fighting the same enemy. We also unmasked the role of capitalism in underpinning the bourgeois state. The participants criticized the capitalist system and came to the conclusion that it must be overthrown. Of course, once this was agreed upon, the next thought is to question how to do this. A PL’er noted that this was the question Lenin asked in his book What Is To Be Done?
Some friends replied that we need solidarity between workers to struggle against the bourgeoisie. One PL’er went further, calling to build a revolutionary communist party that fights for an egalitarian society, without different social classes, a society based on providing for the needs of workers, a society without money.
Another comrade added that we shouldn’t be fearful of communism and invited the participants to continue to organize activities that will sharpen the contradictions between the bosses and the working class, and to join the PLP! After the meeting, comrades and friends continued the day with a dinner, some sharp discussions and the singing of the Internationale in Creole—the first time for all of us, singing the same words as workers around the world, in our own language.
In all, our modest contribution to May Day has inspired us to keep on fighting and building the PLP.
To our fellow workers, comrades, friends and supporters of PLP we send militant and warm greeting from Colombia. We’re getting ready to celebrate May Day, the International Workers’ Day. This is yet another year of bearing the capitalist yoke and its nefarious consequences, aggravated by the economic crisis product of inter imperialist contradictions, and their push for maximum profits and over production, which create the threat of another world war.
The gloomy outlook and reality that’s the life of the working class is almost the same around the world: Wage slavery, unemployment, lack of medical care, poor education, drug addiction, pollution, deforestation, fascism, sexism, individualism, racism and nationalism reinforced by religious zealotry and alienating demo-cretinism. In short: all the evils of capitalism.
For these reasons, comrades and workers of the world, we must steel ourselves against adversity: Now more than ever we need to develop PLP’s line. We must be self-critical of our work to build a stronger party both in quality and quantity. The dark night must come to an end, but we need to sharpen the class struggle, be more creative, consistent and dialectical to bring it about, and demonstrate the historical viability of a communist revolution. The imperialists and their revisionist accomplices want us to believe that revolutionary struggles are illusions, a thing of the past or obsolete and that now we must work hand in hand with our exploiter, that there is nothing better that class collaboration.
Everything we do for the communist cause counts. In this corner of the world we are organizing and lending our support to our class brothers in their rightful struggles. We’re trying to establish new party clubs, and with our literature and revolutionary messages we participate in political meetings with workers and students. Onward, comrades of the world, for an international communist revolution we struggle to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build a new communist society.
NEWARK, NJ, April 27—Over one hundred Verizon workers and supporters from several local organizations participated in a Solidarity Rally here today in front of Verizon Headquarters.
Workers were in a fighting mood, and responded warmly to several militant speeches given by local fighters. Workers loudly chanted, “The bosses say cut back, we say fight back,” “Shut it down, shut it tight, the bosses can’t profit when the workers unite,” and more. Scores of cars passing on Broad Street honked their horns in solidarity with the strikers. Almost all of the Verizon workers took CHALLENGE. Several were reading it while picketing. Some workers thanked a PLP comrade who was distributing the paper for bringing it to the line.
Speakers included Newark teachers, and others from several organizations, including the War Against Poverty Coalition, which highlights the fight against mass racist unemployment and poverty, the Newark NAACP, and People’s Organization for Progress. Two union officials also spoke.
Politicos Try to Co-Opt
From the beginning of this strike, CWA and IBEW local and regional union leaders have tried to steer it towards allying with politicians who are supposedly pro-worker. A rally the first day of the strike featured five or six local politicos, including Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark. The liberal politicians blather on about how Verizon is eliminating “middle class jobs” and “destroying the American Dream.” These liberal politicians and unions offered workers momentary solutions. They are always ready to betray workers at a moment’s notice. The reality is that, under capitalism, reforms won by the working class through valiant struggle are always subject to being taken back by the capitalists, who continue to hold state power—until there is a revolution to destroy their class rule.
One fighter who spoke exposed that liberal bosses are always trying to cover up that competition and the periodic economic crises built into capitalism constantly force individual capitalists to find any number of ways to reduce costs. With Verizon, it is outsourcing call center jobs, downsizing wireline positions, and “flexibly” moving workers up and down the East Coast to meet their profit needs. All of these moves will eventually beset the working class with more low wages, unemployment, and poverty.
It is the nature of capitalism that is driving the destruction of the fewer and fewer jobs with better pay and benefits that still exist. And it is capitalist-created racism and segregation that weakens the working class response to these attacks. The unemployment rate amongst black workers is consistently double that of white workers. These high unemployment rates make it easier for the bosses to find low wage non-union contractors who bring in workers willing to work for less.
None of the politicians running for U.S. president, including social democrat Bernie Sanders, has an an interest in ending these capitalist-caused disasters for our class. They all play their role in keeping capitalism running, while trying to win workers to vote for them, spouting lies that this horrid system can be fixed. No amount of “good unions” and “good” reforms can change capitalism into a worker-run society. Workers like those in Verizon can run the world, with an organized international party like Progressive Labor Party.
Key: Working-Class Unity
PLP supports the struggle of Verizon workers. We call on Verizon workers to recognize the incredible power they hold. This strike has the potential to influence workers everywhere. While Verizon bosses have has returned to the bargaining table, they have plans in the works to use large numbers of scabs and to cut off the strikers’ health insurance in order to break the strike. But workers possess their own power: with help from other workers—such as transit workers, and education workers in public schools and City University of New York—they could use their collective strength to shut down the whole city.
This kind of action takes class-conscious leadership and a decisive break by the workers from all the politicians and the “play by the rules” rhetoric of the top union bosses. It takes organization and devotion to the cause of the working class. Only communist ideas and leadership will inspire hundreds of thousands of workers to take that type of revolutionary action.
A communist analysis shows that our labor as workers is what produces all the economic value in society. So why shouldn’t we have a system where workers, collectively, under the leadership of their communist party, PLP, decide how that value is used? We don’t need the bosses and their profit-driven system. Workers’ revolutionary fight to take the bosses down will open a new worker-run world where exploitation, economic crises and racism will become a distant memory. Verizon workers—join PLP and give leadership to the international working class!
