PL’ers a rallied before the May Day March of over 1,000 workers here. Old and new friends sought out our contingent as they identified with our emphasis on the international working class, armed revolution and on our open advocacy of communism. Our enthusiasm came from confidence in the working class worldwide because we knew that our comrades were marching around the world for communism.
Our banner read, “Workers, Soldiers and Students, Fight for Communism!” as we led chants in the March and distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets. The literature focused on how capitalism attacks all workers; whether they be immigrants, public workers, or workers in other countries. We addressed the local battles of SF MUNI (public transit) drivers, the growth of racism with the jailing of millions of black and Latino youth, anti-immigrant attacks and U.S. Imperialism. One unifying demand was “Smash All Borders!” We chanted with many: “Workers’ Struggles have no Borders, Fight for Communism!” One immigrant worker asked to carry our red flag and spoke at length with a PL’er about why we need a party.
The March itself was organized by a Coalition Immigrants Rights group and others opposing imperialist war. Immigrant rights issues such as amnesty, ending the federal Secure Communities program, fighting low wages and exploitation of immigrant workers related to the needs of many workers who watched the march.
Although the San Francisco Central Labor Council did endorse the March, and both the Teachers Union and ILWU Local 10 had speakers at the rallies, the unions did not mobilize their members. This is one more sign that the leadership of the labor movement leaves its members defenseless in the face of divisive racist, anti-immigrant attacks.
At the final rally, we confronted the MinuteMen who had police protection and a “legal” permit to broadcast their racist program of attacks on immigrant workers. While the March organizers advocated ignoring the fascists, we were able to attract support from some of the marchers as we chanted:” Death, Death, Death to the Fascists; Power, Power, and Power to the Workers.”
A week earlier, PLP held a May Day event. We worked collectively to honor the Haymarket martyrs who gave birth to May Day and 120 years of May Days around the world, including the Marches organized by PLP before the immigrant rights’ movement was mainstreamed.
Members presented speeches on the devastating state of capitalism, on the varied forms of resistance occurring worldwide and on what kind of party the PLP represents to the international working class. There was traditional music from the Andes and poetry and songs in English and Spanish, which struggled with the contradictions that impact workers’ minds.
“It’s not enough to pray, much more is needed…”; “When people rise up and real change is made
You will say, along with me, it was not enough to pray.”
The hall was decorated with a poster exhibit illustrating the internationalism of May Day. It honored the working class around the world,depicted women workers in armed resistance, emphasized armed struggle, and graphically presented the unity of the working class across all lines of heritage, tradition or ethnic identity
ALGIERS, May 1 — Despite a massive police presence, nearly 100 workers and students held a May Day rally today organized by the National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed (CNDDC) — [initials in French]) to highlight the massive 30% jobless rate in Algeria. Slogans included “dignity, equal opportunity and decent work.”
The CNDDC is a coalition of various student, teacher and youth organizations. The main speaker was a long-term unemployed woman with a college degree, Dalila Touat. The cops had arrested her last month for handing out leaflets and had just released her three days ago.
“The demands of the unemployed are simple,” she declared with tears in her eyes. “How are we to explain the fact that, in a country that is rich in so many natural resources, there is so much scorn for citizens who only ask to work and to live?”
CNDDC spokesperson Samir Larabi said, “We are currently in talks with the Student Coordination in order to unite our struggles.” He added that holding the rally on May Day, a celebration of labor, in order to demand work is “a paradoxical
Reprint of a 2001 CHALLENGE Editorial
The New York Times (9/14/01) published an extensive article by Middle East expert Judith Miller, titled "Bin Laden: Child of Privilege Who Champions Holy War." While it is no secret that Bin Laden was a creature of the U.S. intelligence services, Ms. Miller merely smoothes it over by saying, "…the U.S. had worked ‘alongside’ him to help oust the Russians from Afghanistan…" The U.S. "work" poured in $2 billion!
If anyone is to blame for the terrorist activities of Bin Laden, it’s the CIA.
Why are bin Laden and the U.S. bosses now enemies? Although the present conflict is posed as a "holy war," it is basically for control of the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden represents a section of the Saudi ruling class (from which he comes) that does not want to share this oil with Exxon-Mobil. U.S. bosses know if they lose Saudi Arabia after having lost Iraq, they won’t control the biggest oil producers of the cheapest oil in the world. Without it, U.S. imperialist supremacy is in serious question. Bush’s "holy war"for oil is likely to wind up with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
CIA Trained bin Laden to Wage Anti-Communist Holy War
In 1979, bin Laden, who inherited a personal $300 million fortune from his father (a construction boss billionaire), decided to abandon his former life of luxury and dedicate himself to fight communism. When the Soviet army entered Afghanistan to support a pro-Moscow government there, bin Laden was recruited by the CIA to become the financier of the anti-Soviet "holy war." In 1986, William Casey, CIA chief under Reagan-Bush Sr., approved an old proposal by the Pakistani intelligence services to recruit Islamic fundamentalists worldwide to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
While the Pakistanis did the recruiting, Saudi Arabia provided money and the U.S. gave political support and "funneled more than $2 billion in guns and money…during the 1980s. It was the largest covert action program since World War II (Washington Post, 7/19/92). Soon, 35,000 fundamentalists came to fight alongside the Afghani holy warriors. Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo III (1988) was based on this CIA vision of the world: then the "good" guys were the bin Laden "holy warriors" types fighting the "evil communist" Soviet empire.
Bin Laden and his followers learned all their tricks from the master terrorists: the CIA. "It was the CIA which taught him how to be bold…It was also the CIA which taught him the tricks of a secret war: how to move money around using ghost companies and off shore fiscal paradises, how to prepare explosives, how to use coded messages to communicate with his agents and avoid detection, how to retreat into a safe base after a big blow to the enemy…"(El Pais, Madrid, 9/14).
Soon after the Soviet Army left Afghanistan and the Soviet Union itself imploded, the U.S. and its Pakistani allies began supporting the most backward of all the holy warriors, the Taliban. The Pakistani intelligence services financed all of this by smuggling opium and heroin from Afghanistan. In 1991, when the U.S. led an imperialist coalition against Iraq, and U.S. troops were stationed in the Moslem "holy land" of Saudi Arabia, the fundamentalists united against the new "evil empire," their old friends in the U.S. Bin Laden joined forces with other fundamentalist forces like Islamic Jihad of Egypt who had murdered Anwar Sadat, considered a lackey of the U.S. and Israel. These forces represent a section of the Middle Eastern ruling classes which use religion to cover their desire not to share the oil wealth with U.S, imperialism/Exxon-Mobil.
But even while bin Laden has become the number one bad guy on the U.S. hit list, some of his followers are still serving U.S. bosses. Last April, Secy. of State Colin Powell approved $43 million in "humanitarian" aid for the Taleban. Furthermore, many of the veterans of the Afghan "holy war" were fighting alongside the U.S.-supported Kosovo-Albanian "freedom fighters" during the 1999 air war against the former Yugoslavia. And more recently, some have fought with the Albanian forces against the government of Macedonia.
Again, when one talks about terrorism, don’t lose sight of the big ones: U.S. imperialism and its CIA. And don’t lose sight of what is behind the "holy war" between bin Laden and the U.S. bosses: control of oil profits.
MAY DAY 2011
- NYC MAY DAY 2010
Los Angeles: Sunday, May 1st at 11:00am
W 12th street and W Broadway
San Francisco: Sunday, May 1st at 11:00am
24th Street and Mission St
New York City: Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at 12:00 PM
Chatham Square (intersection of Bowery and Park Row)
Chicago: Sunday, May 1st, at 2:30pm
Union Park (intersection of Lake St And Ashland Ave)
PLP Must Spark Revolutionary Opportunities from Crisis Hitting the Working Class
May Day is the day the international working class reviews its forces, assesses the struggles over the past year and marks the beginning of a new year of struggle against the dictatorship of the capitalist class. The international working class faces its worst crisis in decades, but within every crisis is an opportunity. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is using it to unite the working class to smash racism, sexism and nationalism with communist revolution.
PLP has mantained the tradition of marching on May Day and calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class) for 40 years, since 1971, picking the red flag up out of the mud where it was dropped by revisionists — fake “communists” — who abandoned the fight for revolution. Despite weaknesses, PLP is in motion, leading and participating in struggles around the world.
Fighting Racism Is A Key Struggle
Racism is capitalism’s lifeline because it is both the source of super-profits and the primary weapon against the international working class. Racism, along with its twin — nationalism (advocating unity of all classes in subjection to the bosses’ flag) — divides and pacifies our class from unity.
Anti-immigrant racism is the cutting edge of racism today. Bosses worldwide hope to build nationalist loyalty among workers to fight their imperialist wars while simultaneously building anti-immigrant racism. This intimidates both “legal” and “undocumented” workers into passivity.
Capitalists worldwide use racist immigration laws to do this. In the U.S., workers from Latin America are mainly targeted; in France, workers from northern Africa; in Germany, workers from Turkey; in China, workers from Southeast Asia. In many countries, Muslim and Arab workers are also especially terrorized. In an address to members of the German Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) on October 17th, 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the German “experiment in multiculturalism” had “utterly failed,” stating non-Germans, particularly Arabs and Muslims, were incapable of living “side-by-side” with the German people.
In the U.S. — a country where 2.6 million, 70% black and Latino workers, are in prison and where Obama’s election supposedly signaled a “post-racial” era — Obama set a record-breaking goal of deporting 400,000 immigrant workers in 2011. He plans to deport up to 700,000 workers per year by 2013. In the state of Arizona, the government passed the fascist law SB 1070, requiring workers to carry documentation proving U.S. residency at all times, and to immediately show them when asked by police.
In response, PL’ers from Los Angeles joined bus caravans to Arizona organized by their labor unions and carried red flags to the Arizona state capitol. Distributing CHALLENGE, PL’ers placed the debate on immigration within the context of the needs of U.S. imperialism, while exposing the liberal bosses’ DREAM Act trap as a disguised military draft.
Capitalists and their politicians, like Merkel and Obama, punish immigrant workers with deportations, but it is their system that creates the conditions forcing workers to roam the globe for work. Workers in Africa have few other options after 400 years of European imperialist-led theft and enslavement of the African continent through privatization of land and resources. This includes the devastating modern-day U.S., European and Chinese imperialist-funded civil wars. Globalization means investments and the bosses that control them are free to travel throughout the world seeking markets, resources, and more workers to exploit for profit.
Only the international working class is bound within national borders, and this is why the Progressive Labor Party is building one international Party and raises the slogan, “smash all borders, workers of the world unite.”
Elections Are No Way Out
Capitalism has always presented workers with crisis and imperialist war for profit, and the working class has always heroically fought back. Today, millions march and strike around the globe against being forced to pay again for another capitalist crisis. But most workers are still limited by reformist ideas: they still believe in some or all of whatever future changes that liberal bosses and political misleaders promise.
In the U.S., “anti-war” president Obama’s famous election slogan “change” has meant continuing the Exxon-backed occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; expanding the wars against workers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, as well as against workers in the United States. Reformists like Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, or the FMLN in El Salvador have not served the working class. The FMLN, the current governing party, betrayed the guerilla army which waged a bloody civil war in the 1980s against fascist U.S.-backed death squads.
Despite all their talk, the reformers are servants to one or another group of capitalists. Elections are no way out. Fighting in the day-to-day class struggle, raising communist politics, and expanding CHALLENGE networks, the Progressive Labor Party is gradually building a revolutionary mass party that will lead the working class off of the reformist treadmill.
Dangers and Opportunities Amid Crisis and War
Following the October Revolution in Russia, the first victorious communist-led revolution, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin wrote:
“Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries. And this ‘booty’ is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth, who draw the whole world into their war over the division of their booty....Imperialism is the eve of social revolution of the working class. This has been confirmed since 1917 on a world-wide scale.” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Preface to the French and German editions, 1920)
World War I ended with the victory of the Bolsheviks, who built the first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, the Soviet-led international working class smashed the Nazi war of annihilation in World War II, which was followed in 1949 by the victory of the Chinese revolution over U.S. backed Chinese fascists.
Both world wars began as imperialist wars costing tens of millions of lives, but they ended in class wars for revolution that inflamed revolutionary upsurges and class struggles around the world. The Progressive Labor Party was born out of these struggles, learning from the fatal political errors and reversals of the old communist movement, which fought for socialism. It carried capitalist baggage, leading back to a full-blown profit system.
The rival imperialist bosses in the U.S., Europe, Russia and China will inevitably clash again in world war — but PLP raises the red banners of working-class internationalism to win millions of workers, students, and soldiers to our Party, that can turn the looming imperialist World War III into a revolutionary war for communism.
On May 1st, workers around the world celebrate the working class’ only real holiday — May Day. A long march is ahead, but joining the Progressive Labor Party means building a mass fighting party in over 20 countries and counting, to free our class from the nightmare of capitalism. JOIN US!
