Texas, March 24—Bringing communist ideas to the masses, the Progressive Labor Party and friends joined thousands in Texas in the March for Our Lives protests.
We participated in both the annual Cesar Chavez March and the March for Our Lives, held on the same day. We distributed hundreds of leaflets that exposed the central role the bosses’ violence against the working class under capitalism.
Our leaflet connected the terror of mass shootings at schools to the “legal” state violence perpetuated by the U.S. border patrol, police, and military. We called on workers to smash capitalism by taking the fight to the rulers’ doorstep, into their office buildings and onto our jobs. As workers, we have the power to shut down the murderous profit system. Our leaflet was well received at both marches.
The day before the march in Houston, we made signs and brainstormed chants at a school event where we discussed how gun violence is a symptom of a violent capitalist system. The following day, a group of 10 high school students, teachers, and parents joined the 15,000-strong protest in an effort to push the rally’s politics to the left. As the march got under way, we led chants of “No Trump, No NRA, No Fascist USA!” that rang thorough downtown.
We marched from a downtown park to the downtown office of Senator Ted Cruz, who was targeted by the march’s liberal organizers because of his support for the National Rifle Association (NRA). The organizers’ main goal was to register more voters and expand support for Democratic candidates in this fall’s congressional elections. But while it’s easy to expose racist Republicans like Donald Trump and Cruz, we must also expose racist Democrats like U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, who pushed for the fascist “Secure Communities” deportation program that has intensified attacks on immigrants.
Ted Cruz has got to go
As we neared Cruz’s office, the crowd chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ted Cruz has got to go!” The main message from the march leaders to the mostly white crowd was that we should focus on voting Cruz out of office. A PL’er turned to a Spanish teacher and to the students in our group, who were Black and Latin, and said we should do a chant in Spanish. Everyone agreed.
A PL’er yelled out that not only do politicians like Ted Cruz enable mass shootings in our schools, but they are also anti-immigrant racists. We urged the crowd around us to join in a chant in our chant: “Ted Cruz Escucha, Estamos en La Lucha!” (“Listen Ted Cruz, We Are in the Struggle!”) The mainly white crowd joined in, and we kept the chant going as long as we could. Instead of calling on everyone to vote, we were telling the bosses that the multiracial working class is ready to fight back against racism.
Afterward, one high school student and rally organizer approached our group and said she liked our Spanish chant. We talked for a while and exchanged information. We’ll be touching base with her to organize around the next round of national school walkouts on April 20.
For our students, this was their first protest ever. Despite some initial hesitation, a number of them stepped up and were unafraid to lead chants and push the march to the left. A few students made contacts and are planning future actions. They are emerging as leaders. The march was a valuable reminder that when you make anti-racism the center of what you do, the working class will follow your lead.
As April 20 and May Day approach, we will continue to put forward the Party’s ideas and train students to be fighters for the working class.

*****

CHICAGO, March 24— A multiracial, multi-generational contingent of Progressive Labor Party comrades joined the thunderous March for Our Lives action in Union Park. It was apparent how much vicious gun violence resonated with students and parents. PLP broadcasting our revolutionary communist line that gun violence stems from an inherently violent and racist capitalist system.
The PLP contingent distributed at least 500 CHALLENGEs and over 1,000 flyers at the entrance of the park. The flyer connected these mass shootings to the violent decadence of capitalism. Many marchers, especially youth, were receptive to our communist politics and picked up on the chants that we started, including, ““Turn the gun around, shoot the bosses down.”
Liberals Exploit
Working-class anger
To contrast the liberal, pro-democratic Party chant of “Vote Them Out!”—referring to pro-NRA, Republican politicians in Congress—PL’ers chanted “Bigger than NRA, Bigger than Guns!” It’s essential to call out the racist opportunistic liberal bosses, such as the ones who organized this mostly-white, less-working-class march. These hypocrites cynically exploit working-class anger and grief as part of their plan to channel workers into their dead-end voting game and prop up their deadly profit system.
The Democrats have proven themselves to be just as deadly and indifferent to workers’ suffering as their Republican counterparts, if not more. Whether turning a blind eye to the racist gun violence devastating Black and Latin neighborhoods here in Chicago, dropping bombs on our working-class sisters and brothers in the Middle East, or deporting scores of families to near-certain death in Central America, they constantly show where their intentions and interests lie.
Capitalism dependent on violence
All politicians at the end of the day serve the capitalist system, which needs state violence such as racist police killings, deportations, and imperialist war in order to survive. Only a communist society, led by a mass international PLP, can break the alienation, desperation, and relentless drive for profit in capitalism that destroys millions of workers’ lives every year.
Communism is the best possible method to eliminate the widespread violence we witness today. We will revolutionize society away from inequality and competition. That will require organized and revolutionary class violence against the bosses and their state. Workers worldwide will be armed with communist politics. Through prolonged struggle, we will build a world based on equality, cooperation, and workers’ power.
Although the racist and sexist liberal bosses are the ones steering these mass demonstrations today, their influence can and must be exposed for the deadly lie that it is.
It’s our responsibility as communists to immerse ourselves in struggle with these masses of youth and parents, in order to build working-class solidarity and class consciousness. In doing so, we can widen the target beyond just Trump and the NRA, to that of the whole rotten violent system of capitalism.