MEXICO CITY — Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party met here to celebrate May Day with a march and a dinner.  At a meeting before our demonstration, a PL’er gave a brief history about the original May Day struggle in 1886 in Chicago and its historical meaning. The comrade described how PLP has taken up this tradition as a day of celebration for the international working class.

After the speech, the workers at the meeting talked about the importance of organizing workers. They also discussed the bosses’ election sham and how the capitalists use the state apparatus to share power within their class, but never with the working class. A Party comrade made a communist analysis of how the elections are a dead-end for workers, since they lead us only to elect our next oppressor.  

The meeting culminated with a worker asserting that class struggle in our area needed to be infused with communist ideas. At that point another worker interrupted: When would we meet again? We ended by asking them to accompany us in our May Day march.

Comrades at this meeting understood that these workers — like many throughout the world — live in difficult conditions. The ruling class is in crisis, which means that capitalist exploitation and brutality are on the rise. The situation leads workers to think and fight for local and immediate reforms. Our struggle will be to lead these workers to think and fight for the only solution for the international working class, a communist world. 

Long live communism!

LOS ANGELES — About 20,000 people marched in this year’s May Day celebration here. This year’s march was far smaller than previous years. Instead of one unified march, there were several smaller marches that left from different areas of the city at different times. This reflected the splits within the nationalist, reformist and revisionist (unity-with-bosses) organizations. But, there were definitely more friends marching with us this year. We maintained high energy, held up the red flag, and distributed CHALLENGE.  

Thirty PL’ers and friends marched in our open contingent. We led revolutionary chants, like “Raise those red flags, raise ‘em high, the PLP is marching by,” and “Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras, the fight of the workers has no racist borders!”  

Several high school students participated by helping lead chants in English and Spanish, even though Spanish is not the first language for some. The best part of the march by far was when the revisionists and the cops attempted to divert the march from joining the other marches that ended in Pershing Square.

As a result of strong leadership and long-term base-building at several local college campuses, we were able to lead a breakaway march of more than 50 workers and students that took the streets, confronted the police, and stopped traffic, chanting “Whose streets, our streets!”

 “From Tahir Square to Pershing Square,” and “Capitalism means, we got to fight back!”  It was a powerful experience for us and a small taste of working-class power. 

Many of the college students thanked us for our leadership and boldness. They took CHALLENGE and exchanged contact information. Much work lies ahead of us for next year. There are new people to follow up with and struggles to continue, but this march was definitely an inspiring moment for our Party and our friends.

BERLIN — Nearly 35,000 workers and youth marched in May Day demonstrations throughout Germany, the largest being in Berlin with other marches in Nuremberg, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Kiel. Meanwhile, anti-racists stopped or routed neo-Nazis in Neumuenster, Neubrandenberg and Wittstock. 

Over 25,000 celebrated May Day in Berlin, marching through the city’s political center under the slogan, “Pressure is rising for social revolution.” They were viciously attacked by a mass of cops with riot clubs and tear gas. Many were injured and arrested. Left-wing and anti-fascist groups organized the march which included several Kurdish and trade union youth organizations. They declared that the march was “a clear demonstration to the rulers that people will not put up with Capital’s attacks on people’s living standards anymore.”

In Hamburg, 1,400 marched under the motto, “No alternative to revolution!” When 1,000 cops, included mounted police, attacked the marchers with clubs and pepper gas, the cops were hit with stones, bottles and firecrackers.

In Kiel, speakers urged the destruction of crisis-generating capitalism and denounced the racist European Union refugee policy.

Nazis Routed

In Neumuenster, direct action by 2,000 anti-fascists — organized under the slogan, “They shall not pass!” — halted an attempted Nazi demonstration. The fascists were stoned at the south train station, forcing them to call off their rally.

In Wittstock, 500 May Day marchers prevented 170 neo-Nazis from marching. In a three-hour action, the anti-fascists blocked the streets and the Nazis gave up after marching barely 200 yards.

In Neubrandenberg, when 1,000 cops using riot clubs and pepper gas cleared the way for 300 neo-Nazis, hundreds blocked the streets, forcing the Nazis to circle back to the train station and end any march.

CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA, April 16 — At the Summit of the Americas, the celebrity singer Shakira sang the Colombian anthem. She portrayed a microcosm of what imperialism has in store for Latin America. 

Shakira announced that she’s sponsoring new educational projects throughout Latin America covering 6.200 children of the 35 million who have no access to any type of education. This educative philanthropic project, which earns her great economic dividends, will “resolve” the educational problems of 0.018 percent of the continent’s children. 

Lecturing hundreds of the Summit’s capitalists about her “new” education idea, she said that investment in early education is a promising business which can net surprising profits. She maintained that each dollar invested could reap $17 in profit in adulthood. She knows this from the tax privileges she has enjoyed in Colombia and in other countries.  She repeated the usual formula that education can end poverty and that her 17-year philanthropic project in education has redeemed six million children. 

She criticized as “obsolete and old fashioned” the idea that the State must provide education. “Education not only helps masses emerge from poverty” but “is a virtue converting them into potential clients.” Thus, investors win double: gaining direct returns in education and assuring future buyers of their products, earning profit as businessmen and world fame as philanthropists, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros.

This capitalist lecture about education is not new. It’s the same one repeated by a bunch of technocrats and economists made in USA: university deans, Board of Education speakers, the World Bank and the fascist educators. But what’s new is that an out-of-tune singer presented this project. She declared that capitalist philanthropy is the best way to solve poverty and achieve “the sure prosperity that we deserve and have always dreamt.” As we know, capitalism’s dreams are workers’ nightmares.

Lesson No. 1: Capitalist Philanthropy

What happened in the orgy that Obama’s secret service agents organized in Cartagena matches what U.S. ambassadors, secret service agents, military advisers and mercenaries are used to doing: sexist imperialism. They transform places they visit into brothels and prostitute young native girls, carried out with a death threat, as if it were an honor for women in those lands. This is how U.S. capitalists see Latin American countries and their people: as brothels occupied by poverty-stricken prostitutes, with their governments as unconditional pimps. The Colombian government, protected by U.S. imperialists, just demonstrated this in fine detail.

Lesson No. 2: The Free Trade Agreement

The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and the U.S. is exploitation on a grand scale, a product of inter-imperialist contradictions. In Colombia, where part of these contradictions develop, its capitalists kneel before bosses from China, Spain and North America, fighting for control of the country’s natural resources.

With a smile of betrayal from those that know they have traded Colombia’s riches for a plate of lentils to the imperialist U.S., various Colombian government speakers announced that starting May 15th the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will go into effect. In reality, this happened since the Cartagena Summit. 

Unemployment will increase with the arrival of U.S. products, but the official advertisers and their media of misinformation assure that new jobs will be created more than ever.  

While the FTA increases harassment and murders of union members and workers’ leaders in Colombia, U.S. governmental circles and those in Colombia maintain the agreement is a “blessing” for unions. The insatiable search for natural riches and the construction of infrastructure routes to transport products to the U.S. will destroy ecosystems, seas, rivers and forests but journalists say this will mean more environmental protection and exploitation of these riches.

What remains of education will be privatized, but they assure us that such measures will improve services and the flow of private businessmen who will take us out of poverty and underdevelopment, like Shakira. But all they do is generalize illiteracy and ignorance. The brutal import of U.S. junk food will destroy the feeble foundations of agricultural production, but they assure us that our diet and nutritional habits will improve eating this trash. 

Lesson No. 3: ‘Humanism’ of the Colombian State

In a clear demonstration of state humanism, the Colombian State’s oppressing forces swept Cartagena street by street, house by house, to oust the poor from the city’s center because they “made it ugly” and were a bad showcase for the sale of Colombia to transnational capital. They even removed the dogs, along with the homeless, the street vendors, popular cooks and anyone else in the way.

Avenues were remodeled so that Barack Obama’s caravan of about 20 limousines and expensive cars wouldn’t have to stop anywhere in its way. The city militarized itself as never before, employing thousands of police, military, secret agents, divers and pilots to guard it.    

The price of these security measures, along with the Summit’s expenses, may have reached $100 million, while schools, hospitals, parks or universities go wanting. This shows how public resources are only used in big measures to pay the external debt and finance the war against Colombia’s exploited.  

Workers Great Potential

The world’s workers have risen and organized themselves under reformist ideas. Struggles from Brazil to Afghanistan have shown the great potential we workers have, but we will only see change if the workers are led by communist ideas. Our Party will be present on May Day, commemorating the day of struggle of the international working class. Conscious that there’s still much to do, we will raise our red communist flags to continue the road that communists from the past began. Workers’ class struggles have taught us that communist ideas are needed to destroy this parasitic and murderous system, to build with the Progressive Labor Party a communist society that will free us from slavery.