Comrades, workers, siblings of the working class, immigrant and native-born, documented and undocumented, union and nonunion, we gather today not just for celebration, but for clarity, for strength, and to celebrate the international working class. We are the ones who keep society running. Our hands build the cities. Our hands heal the sick. Our labor harvests the food, drives the trucks, cleans the buildings, teaches the children, and keeps the lights on. It is our sweat that creates the wealth of the world, wealth that is stolen by the parasitic, capitalist ruling class.

And it is our sweat that will build the Progressive Labor Party (PLP).  We will organize the working class until the day comes when we wipe out that parasitic class forever. We will free the international working class from the chains of capitalism.

May Day, International Workers’ Day, is not a decoration on the calendar. It is a living memory of repression, imprisonment and sacrifice. But more importantly, May Day is a reminder that when workers fight back, our power is unbeatable. It is a reminder of strikes, solidarity, antiracism, anti-sexism, smashing borders, and communist victory!

I am a healthcare worker and CUNY student who comes from Haiti. I have been a member of Progressive Labor Party for six years and have been part of many struggles on campus and on the job since then. Most recently, along with thousands of New Yorkers, I supported the nurses during their strike against the hospital bosses. On the picket line I gave out CHALLENGE and spoke with many of my coworkers about the nature of healthcare under capitalism. I spoke about how workers, especially Black and Latin workers, will always suffer under this racist system. I struggled with them to see that healthcare workers and patients are being squeezed to compensate for capitalism’s fascist decay! As workers, we are being attacked so that we cannot serve our mentally ill or unhoused siblings. Healthcare workers are being attacked in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and around the world! It is because care itself is under attack. But as the heroic nurses of New York showed, workers will always fight back! And with CHALLENGE as our ideological weapon, we fight for a communist world where everyone has access to good health and healthcare. 

The racist, sexist capitalist bosses attack and divide us. They tell native-born workers that immigrants are the problem. They tell white workers that Black workers are the problem. They tell documented workers that undocumented workers are a threat. They want us to fear each other so we don’t focus our attention on the ones truly profiting from our division. Division is the weapon of the capitalist system. Our unity is our revolution—that unity is expressed in this May Day crowd! 

Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the world unite! 

But we understand something deeper. The system that exploits one worker exploits all workers. The same capitalist system that exploits workers in Haiti, is the same system that exploits workers in Mexico, workers in Venezuela, workers in the Congo, and workers in the U.S. The same corporations that outsource jobs abroad suppress wages at home. The same bosses who benefit from immigrant labor deny immigrants protection and rights. They use borders as a weapon. They use fear to silence. They use “undocumented status” to push wages lower, to discourage organizing, to keep workers afraid to speak out. Let us say clearly and boldly: 

Smash racist deportations–working people have no nations! 

We live in a time where fear walks openly in the streets. ICE Agents in our streets. Families disappearing before sunrise. Families look over their shoulders when vans pull up. Children learn the word “deportation” before they learn long division. 

And beyond these streets, while armored vehicles patrol our neighborhood, bombs fall in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza. As U.S. bosses desperately try to cling onto their failing empire, entire cities are reduced to dust, school children are buried under rubble. In their endless thirst for profit, the bosses rain death and destruction down on workers around the world. In Sudan, Republic of Congo, Gaza, Iran, and Haiti we see the true face of capitalism. We see that every boss is willing to sacrifice the lives of workers on the altar of profit. 

But, has the working class taken this lying down?

Has the working class EVER taken these kinds of attacks lying down? 

Of course not!

PLP was on the streets in Minneapolis helping to fight back against ICE’s racist attacks. We have organized teachers and students to picket and to rally and to plan against ICE. We have packed courtrooms to defend families facing deportation. We have organized mutual aid for migrant workers. We have gone grocery shopping for community members too afraid to leave their homes.

When the working class is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!

We are one international working class and around the world we see the same fightback against fascist oppression. In Haiti, neighborhoods have united in groups like Bwa Kale to fight off the gangsters. In Congo, miners are fighting back against the Chinese imperialist mine owners. In Gaza, health care workers refuse to leave their patients even when Israeli bombs rain down.

Everywhere you look you will see that workers understand that an attack on us anywhere diminishes us everywhere. This is what it means to be a worker. We are tied, through our labor, to one another, and all of the bosses’ attempts to divide us are destined to fail. Workers in Minneapolis: 

Black, white, Asian and Latin, rebelled against ICE storm troopers. In a true show of working-class spirit, they put their bodies and— sometimes their lives – on the line for fellow workers that they didn’t even necessarily know!  Imagine a world where this kind of ferocious working-class solidarity determines the shape of society. That’s communism and it is the future for workers in Minneapolis, New York, Beijing, Mumbai, Kinshasa, Port-Au-Prince, Mexico City and all over the world!

Let the fight back of the working class inspire you in this dark night! We know that it will have an end. This working-class spirit, combined with revolutionary communist politics will create capitalism’s most deadly enemy, one that will not rest until we smash fascist deportations, smash borders, and win a communist world.

ICE on the street, bombs in the air, fight for COMMUNISM everywhere

The struggle against the bosses’ racist system extends to workers wearing the uniform of imperialist armies around the world. Sailors aboard the USS Gerald Ford, currently in the Middle East, have sabotaged their ship to slow down the U.S. war machine. Russian soldiers in Ukraine have mutinied against their officers. In Minneapolis, we met members of the National Guard who expressed solidarity with workers rebelling on the streets. Even in Israel, some soldiers have refused to participate in the genocide against Palestinians. These examples prove that soldiers can be won to revolutionary politics. Just like in Russia in 1917, soldiers and sailors can lead the fight to shoot this racist system down! 

On this May Day let us never forget what a privilege it is to fight for the working class! Being a part of Progressive Labor Party means dedicating your life to smashing racism and capitalism. It means joining the red line that stretches through the history of class struggle. It means grasping every opportunity on the job, in the neighborhood or classroom to advance the interests of the working class. Being a member of PLP means growing your confidence in your working-class siblings, relying on one another and struggling together against the toxic training that this racist, sexist system gives us all. 

Anyone here who is not yet a member of PLP: today is the day for you to join!

We are here today, on May Day, to make a stand against fascism against capitalism, against oil wars, against the spectre of World War III. Workers of the world, teachers, nurses, transit workers, soldiers, students, we run the world and must seize it. Raise your head, raise your words, raise your fist, raise your flame! A communist future is coming and we need you to fight for it! We will not continue to tolerate a system that crushes the dreams of workers around the world! We will stand together and change it! 

Fight for Communism, Power to the Workers! 

LET’S CELEBRATE