FRANKFORT, KY, January 18- Instead of mourning Donald Trump's inauguration as the chief sexist and racist, Kentucky Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members led a rally against sexism and in support of reproductive healthcare and equal rights for women, queer, and immigrant workers. We gave speeches, led radical chants, and distributed products such as masks, condoms, drug test strips, CHALLENGE, and water. Before the rally, we made signs connecting the struggle of women and queer workers to the struggle against capitalism, and handed these signs out to rally attendees.
The rally itself had initially been planned as part of the People’s March (formerly the Women’s March) but the original organizers dropped out. Because the original march had not been planned by communists, we received some push back from a handful of liberals when they found out that we were the new organizers. On the other hand, the vast majority of workers in the area were grateful that another group had stepped up to lead the event in Frankfort. We used this opportunity to introduce many new people to PLP and communist ideas. We even met some people who were already communists but didn’t know about the PLP. For example, we met a young comrade from Peru and we had a great conversation about internationalism and the communist fight against racism and xenophobia. He was also happy to hear that there were Spanish versions of PL literature.
In our speeches, PLP members made sure to connect all the struggles that exist under capitalism to the struggle for women’s rights. We explained how these problems cannot be separated. One PL’er in her speech explained how homelessness, police brutality, and the genocide in Palestine are also all women’s issues and directly impact bodily autonomy.
The PL’er also explained how these issues are all fundamental to capitalism and can only be solved by destroying the capitalist system with communist revolution. We all openly declared ourselves communists; this had many more positive effects than negative. It allowed us to have open conversations with people who were also fed up with both parties, and helped these people feel like they didn’t have to hide their politics. It also allowed us educational opportunities with people who didn’t know much about communism but wanted to learn.
Some non-PLP comrades gave powerful speeches as well, regarding trans rights and reproductive rights. We also handed the megaphone off to anyone who wanted to speak.
Once all the speeches were done, we headed back to our table where we led more chants. One chant that one of our members came up with was, “Same Enemy, Same Fight, Women Workers Must Unite!” There was a non-PLP attendee we met who took over chants for us when our voices got tired, and she even led another one of our communist chants, “Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!” She started telling the attendees of the rally we had to fight, and brought radical energy when the rally needed it. We were extremely happy to get to meet people like this and introduce them to the Party.
During this period of increased repression, we must be bold in letting workers know that the only solution to the racism and sexism of capitalism is a communist society where workers run the world for our needs, not for profit and exploitation. We must be bold in sharing our ideas in the mass movement and organizing workers for the long term struggle needed to build for a communist revolution.
