Brooklyn, May 31—As outrage over George Floyd’s cold-blooded killing spilled out onto the streets, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) converged on a huge protest in Flatbush, Brooklyn. It was to begin where our May Day march has ended for several years. At this very spot our sound truck has been a platform for sisters and mothers of Black workers and youth killed by police in Brooklyn and Baltimore.
These women have helped to lead the working class in calls to shut this racist system down with communist revolution! They have taught PL’ers precious lessons about what it means to be strong fighters, no matter what. For the families of Shantel Davis, Kyam Livingston, Kimani Gray and Tyrone West justice means a world where nobody else has to face the loss that they have suffered. They have seen this justice denied by mayors and prosecutors both Black and white, by police chiefs and city councils composed of women and men, Republican and Democrat.
These brave women understand better than any of us that the capitalist system means injustice. And they agree to some extent that only a communist world can bring the justice they seek. This hard-won unity flowing from principled political struggle over a long period of time became transformed into a source of tremendous confidence on the part of 20 or so PL’ers and friends at this massive rally on the morning after a vicious police riot just over a mile away on Flatbush Avenue.
Communism: threat to
racist rulers
Widely shared images of this police riot the night before did not prevent thousands from showing up the next day. Their determination to march was matched by the determination of the PL’ers and friends to guarantee that communist politics remained prominent at a rally called by a local anti-racist housing rights organization. Our bullhorn was loud, reaching over half the crowd. The anti-communism of a local leader who cynically, privately and for the first time ever claimed to be a communist himself in order to draw us away from our bold call for communist revolution failed.
After a speech celebrating the bravery and multiracial character of all the antiracist fighters present, the first PLP speaker closed with the sharp rebuke that in this fight for justice ‘there can never be too many communists!’ and the crowd, distinctly, responded with cheers!
The second speaker was a high school student who has seen the Party grow amid the 2018 youth movement against gun violence and saw the Party weather anti-communist investigations at her school in 2016. She spoke with passion, giving a speech she had a chance to practice the day before at a protest outside a federal detention center. The crowd urged her on as she laid out why this government can never bring justice. She nailed Democrat racist Amy KKKlobuchar who set killer kkkop Chauvin free to kill again as typical of the dangerous liberal misleaders we must beware of.
Her alternative, the multiracial unity of the working class fighting for revolution and communism, was wildly cheered by a huge number of protesters! Many also cheered when a later speaker called for filling out census forms and voting, but not one elected official spoke.
When communism is about as popular as the census and voting in a crowd of thousands of politically engaged and highly motivated young people, the ruling class is starting to have a different kind of problem on its hands, and even more importantly the working class is starting to see its way toward justice apart from the capitalist system. Onward!