NEWARK, NJ, May 2—It is difficult for workers to organize as a result of the current pandemic, but it’s not impossible. So how do we move forward and continue celebrating May Day? This year in Newark, we organized our first ever May Day motorcade in the Black and Latin working class neighborhoods where Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) we are deeply rooted, to express the communist line “The Only Solution Is A Communist Revolution!”
“Capitalism is the Disease! Communism is the Cure!” That was the theme of this motorcade and was used as a slogan to sharpen struggle with workers and students amidst a deadly pandemic that has already killed close to 10,000 workers in NJ and disproportionately affects Black, Latin and women workers in Newark and around the world (NJ.com, 5/9). For the 25 PL’ers and friends that joined, by car, on bikes and through Zoom, it was as exhilarating as it was a learning experience.
Communists lead class struggle
Unlike other reformist motorcades around immigration and rent strikes that took place downtown, PLP not only brought our politics to the Black and Latin neighborhoods of Newark where we have a base but called out capitalism for exacerbating this virus and incited workers to unite as the cure. Workers along the sidewalks raised their fists, cars beside us honked their horns in response to PLP’s communist politics displayed along the cars and antiracist, antisexist messages blasting from our speakers. We remixed popular songs from classic May Day chants, “The workers united will never be defeated! Who are we? PLP! Raise those red flags, raise them high, PLP is marching by! La migra, la policia, La misma porqueria. Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite.”
Along the route, comrades stopped at lights or would slow down to sell CHALLENGE through windows while wearing masks and gloves to protect themselves and others. At the end of the route we entered the Stephen Crane Village Apartments, a public housing unit consisting of Black, Latin workers, and students. While teens ran to one of the car windows to take a CHALLENGE, the front of our Motorcade for Communism was met with a police motorcade for capitalism. “No good cops in a racist system” we chanted while facing a potential confrontation with the growing state’s fascist police.
Preparations and practice for class war
PLP and workers from the Newark Water Coalition collectively made a plan for the route, flyers, translations, posters, chants and who to contact if the racist cops started to make any arrests. For those who were unable to join, they followed the motorcade via Zoom. Some comrades and friends also rode on bikes beside the motorcade to be on the lookout for fascist pigs who would take any reason to disrupt working class fightback.
The route, practiced the week before by two comrades, included residential streets, a supermarket, two low-income housing units, and two hospitals. Flyers in both English and Spanish were passed out along the streets of Ivy Hill and North Newark where we’ve been organizing for decades and hung up on poles days prior to May Day. Cars were suited up with communist signs about the racist nature of this pandemic and some comrades even taped the front page of our May Day—Workers Day issue of CHALLENGE to their cars.
Preparing for this motorcade for May Day was useful to boost the morale of PL’ers, friends and workers alike–we acknowledged the dangers of the pandemic while still encouraging each other to push the limits of a disastrous capitalist crisis in order to move us toward a worker-led revolution.
A communist world is essential
This may be a dangerous time for many reasons - but there is great opportunity as well. Workers are angry, the fascist underbelly of capitalism is even more exposed and it is up to us to struggle against reactionary ideas. Having collectivized historical analysis, lessons from years of fighting back and most importantly, the potential of an angry working class hungry to fight to win, building for a communist world is essential. The motorcade showed how workers along the march were happy to see and hear communist ideas put forward by a multi-racial, multi-generational group of protestors in cars and on bikes. Join the fight for our world, not run for profits for the bosses, but run by the working class, for the working class!
LOS ANGELES, May 1—“When they say get back, we say fight back!” The coronavirus is causing some of the most horrific attacks on the international working class that we have seen in decades. Yet in the spirit of fightback against this racist profit system, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here organized a 25-car-strong motorcade to celebrate May Day 2020. While practicing the proper health measures, we were determined to find a way to honor the revolutionary history of May Day and be a beacon of light for our class. The fight against capitalism must continue no matter what external conditions may exist!
Workers take to the streets by any means (safely) necessary
We protested with a motorcade through Inglewood and Los Angeles that included three rallying points symbolic of our fight. As cars filed in to the meet up location, they received packets with maps and information on protesting while maintaining covid-precautions. We decorated our sound truck and leading car with red flags, signs opposing racist gentrification, and a 6-foot banner commemorating Alex Flores and the fight against racist police that we have used in our Flores Friday marches. Cars were also adorned with signs like “Capitalism Kills.” We were covered by masks and gloves yet the spirit of May Day was all around us.
Supporters came from many areas of work outside of the Flores family struggle and tenants work including high school teachers and students, healthcare workers and those involved in a local jail fight. Chants rang from our sound truck which set the tone that on May 1st, the international working class will fight back! Led by two PLP members and the sister of Alex Flores, we made our way to the first rallying point. The first target was an apartment building that was being deliberately allowed to deteriorate by the landlord because it sits in the shadow of the massive Rams football stadium being built across the street, the unmistakable symbol of racist gentrification. As our chants, “racism means… gentrification means, we got to fight back” rang out, passersby and cars driving by raised their fist or chanted in support!
Speakers called out the landlord by name, describing their horrible living conditions, including an immigrant worker and tenant we are working with who have a history of celebrating May Day in Mexico. The sister of Alex Flores, who has been fighting against the racist police murder of her brother for the last six months, gave a sobering speech about the role of police in our society. A comrade called for those fighting racist police murders and gentrification to join Progressive Labor Party and fight for a communist world. He offered a moving metaphor asking those listening to think about “contact tracing” (a method to contact those who could be spreading an infectious disease). Listeners were asked to apply that logic over the last 500 years to the source of all ills, whether it be unemployment, police murder, gentrification, or imperialist war, back to capitalism.
As we left Inglewood and entered Los Angeles, we received massive support from workers in front of their homes, walking down the street or driving by in their cars. The working class of South Central is clearly fed up with ridiculously high rents, killer cops, and many other aspects of capitalism.
Uniting mass work on May Day
In preparation, Progressive Labor Party united the work within a tenants’ mass organization with the fight we’ve organized with the Flores family against racist police murder (see CHALLENGE, 4/15). Our theme for May Day 2020 was communism is the solution to a capitalist system that kills workers in our homes and in the streets.
We connected these struggles politically in the planning meetings. For example, in one of the meetings, a PLP member stressed how the police are used to oppress the working class whether it be through physical violence in the streets or the sheriff’s department evicting families from their homes. A friend from the tenant’s organization wanted a particularly heinous landlord and the broader issue of gentrification to also be included in the list of targets. The proposal was for May Day to call for the cancellation of rent and to abolish the police with the understanding that we can only do this by smashing capitalism.
The fight for Flores lives on
The third leg of the motorcade took us to the neighborhood of Alex Flores where we have been protesting weekly for the last six months. An entire family on a small street jumped and screamed in their front yard as we passed by. We coursed through the neighborhood, taking small streets that we had been canvassing over the last couple of weeks and passed the corner where another person was killed less than two weeks ago by LAPD after a car chase. We have yet to get in contact with anyone from their family at this point. We continued to Newton police station, where we have marched every Friday since November, ending on a spirited note.
From start to finish, it was four hours long, longer than anticipated. Unfortunately, this meant that many people left the motorcade before getting to the end. Nevertheless, we pulled off a major feat by seizing the streets in this period of “sheltering at home” and stretching clear across the city, connecting two key struggles. It was clear that workers are receptive and are searching for answers. We must continue to build the fight for a communist world!
Bronx: ‘Share the fire for justice’
The following are reflections from the City University of New York (CUNY) students in the Bronx about celebrating May Day 2020 with each other about how to fight the disease of capitalism.
It’s often easy to forget our innate right to resist, in a world meticulously designed to imprison the masses. Free will can seem like a distant myth. May Day is a beautiful reminder that resistance is our birthright. The survival of our families depends on our courage to resist. I am grateful to have been a part of the gathering and look ahead to a future that cares for all.
*
My first Labor Day with the communist movement was very different from any other May Day. Despite the new faces that were also part of this virtual conference, the joy and connection of the truth was evident. The truth was the one that through songs, dances and poems, we were able to share with each other the fight against the disease of capitalism. A disease that can only be cured with an injection of communism. On May 1st we celebrate not only the fight for workers’ rights but also to be part of the cure for a system of oppression that continues to keep the 99 percent down. We will rise up and proclaim freedom from unnecessary wars, social classes, racism, poverty and oppression. This past May Day the communist movement celebrated the cause of this struggle, we the workers.
*
May Day was an amazing experience. I got to meet people who shared the same fire and desire for justice. I was able to see the different and unique ways they share their message through their art. I’m also able to learn new terms such as “racial politics”. I also think that even though it was my first time I was able to participate. Even though this May Day was virtual, I hope the next May Day will be in person. This in person May Day might even top off the virtual May Day experience!
*
Red Greetings!
I participated in my first May Day 73 years ago. Our Party, having overcome any and all conditions in organizing for our international working-class holiday, I find that today’s march contains probably the biggest hurdle we’ve yet encountered in battling the virus of capitalism.
It’s great to realize that our Progressive Labor Party has won so many young people to fight for communism. Truly, you are the future.
On May Day, I celebrated my 90th birthday yesterday and our celebration is the happiest present I could receive!
HAPPY MAY DAY, comrades, and continue building our multiracial revolutionary communist Party!
*****
We organized in the interest of students
Capitalist education has always failed working-class students, and right now the disaster of online learning shows that very clearly. In New York City, online classes began on March 23 and today there are still large numbers of students without devices that allow them to connect to their online classes, families with no wifi, families whose parents are essential workers so older children become the caretakers to younger children, teenagers working full time to support their families after layoffs, and children dealing with the illness and death of family members. But the Department of Education just keeps moving along, insisting on business-as-usual, just remotely. Disgustingly, some families have even had Children’s Services called on them because their children have been “absent” too many times!
Some teachers in my school have committed to NOT going with business-as-usual, and have moved away from our typical curriculum—to bring political discussion to our classes, exposing the racist, anti-working class nature of the ruling class’ response to Covid-19, to do our best to provide emotional support to our kids, and to help them find ways to fight back and fight for the schools they deserve.
One student decided to survey students about whether remote learning was working or not working and shared with teachers a document with criticism and suggestions for improving the situation. She was later attacked by several other teachers for doing so, and some of us jumped to support her, and fought to keep the student’s voices in the picture. They had gotten to her and she wanted to quit, but with some struggle, she decided it was more important to make sure that student’s voices are heard.
We now have a small team of students and a few teachers producing a weekly newsletter being sent out to the whole school. It is a weekly update from student surveys about what’s working for them and what they need, links to news articles, as well as some fun things. Everything is determined by students, as they fight to shape what their learning environment is during this time. Moving forward, it will expand, keeping as its focus that students will fight to shape their school and that teachers & administrators should be listening, and that students can fight back against this racist, capitalist system.
*****
Mexico: workers amidst a pandemic
Just like the rest of the working class, healthcare workers are insecure and have no rights,and they are the first to catch the virus due to the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Here is the real “Achilles Heel” that can send us to the abyss and deepen the negative effects of the pandemic in Mexico.
The government talks about “leveling the curve” and “staying home” in order to contain the virus and prevent the collapse of the health system. When in reality there are other factors that can cause the collapse prematurely, but are not taken into account:
1) The lack of PPE for healthcare workers has seen an increase of cases in different hospitals in the country.
2) Several doctors’ and nurses’ protests and rallies denouncing the lack of safety and supplies, that could eventually lead to a series of “massive strikes” in hospitals.
In reality our health system collapsed long before Covid-19 appeared in our lives. Years and years of neglect, instability and privatization have translated into a lack of personnel and shortages in protection, medical equipment, and the lack of general supplies. That is what we had before the current medical emergency which has in turn made them one of the highest risk groups for infection.
The institutional rhetoric, mounted on this base, has transformed them into “heroes” and “heroines”, in other words, “the front-line soldiers” that must sacrifice for their “sisters, brothers and country”. Over the weeks the media, of course, and all social networks reproduce this discourse without analysis or criticism.
The government is happy with the rhetoric, as it scatters and distracts from the real issues. We suffer from the cuts in public health budgets, the deterioration of the infrastructure, and the lack of access to health services for most of the population. We need to stop “romanticizing” the precarious and risky conditions healthcare workers are forced to work under for the moment. Doctors, nurses and public health workers in our country are not heroes or heroines; they are workers that are being exposed, for decades to a series of political injustices, from low salaries to the lack of the most basic labor rights.
We must not forget that when these workers have fought for their rights they have been strongly repressed. So, instead of reproducing the discourse, we need to demand that the government immediately provide the supplies and infrastructure these workers need. It is the only way to save lives. And it is the best way to prevent the system from collapsing. The government could redistribute the funds for the mega projects like the Tren Maya or the Santa Lucia Airport, that, needless to say, should take a back seat to healthcare.
*****
Virtual May Day in the midwest
I attended another Progressive Labor Party (PLP) May Day. This year it was virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic. We talked about how we all are fairing during this crisis. Later, we shared stories from our 1st May Day gatherings from years ago. There was also a presentation on the class struggle as it emerged out of primitive communism to our 21st Century capitalist world. Also, we discussed how the global Covid pandemic will affect revolutionary work, and how it’s fascist to force meatpacking workers back to work to die by the bosses and president Trump in the name of profits. We discussed the need to be involved where there are workers and win them to join PLP.
It was also not lost on anyone how global capitalism is an artificial system of inequalities that took a virus to open the eyes of millions of workers globally that capitalism does not work for our class. We need to get out this message of communist revolution as the way out of this capitalist hell. We ended our Zoom gathering by singing the Internationale.
*****
INDIANAPOLIS, May 9—When Dreasjon Reed on May 21 was murdered by the police, the working class responded. A multiracial Progressive Labor Party (PLP) brought communist leadership to a protest action today. This action was organized by friends of Dreasjon and a local protest organization in the city.
Twenty-one year old Black worker Dreasjon Reed was gunned down by racist Indianapolis Metro Police Department officers. Reed was involved in a car chase with cops and at one point, left the car and ran from custody. Reports say that he exchanged gunfire with cops, who shot and murdered him.
The same day, kkkops murdered another Black worker in the city, 19 year old McHale Ross, as well as white worker Ashlynn Lisby, who was pregnant! This same weekend, workers across the country ran in the name of Ahmaud Arbery (25), killed by wannabe Klansmen for jogging while Black.
On an international level, workers continue to be overwhelmingly victimized by growing fascism. The instances of abuse and murder by cops are ongoing and increasing, while racist and class-based attacks continue in the form of the over-representation of the working class being infected and dying from Covid-19.
These abuses are related, as they are ongoing under a murderous capitalist system that makes examples of and continues to use our class as cannon fodder in order to maintain fear, control and profits. The difference between our Party and popular reform movements is our call for communist revolution and dismantling the capitalist system.
Bring the fight to killer cops, capitalism
A multiracial collection of fighters called for an end to cops lynching Black workers. Due to an internal struggle among protest groups in the city, there was no designated leadership present at the action. However, there were many people who were passionate about holding cops accountable for the continued racist victimization of the Black working class of Indianapolis.
Based on that desire, PLP helped lead the action, distributed CHALLENGE, held deep conversations with workers about the roots of this capitalist terror, and continued to grow relationships. We carried signs that said “the only solution is communist revolution” and “racism means we got to fight back,” and ones that called for multiracial unity against cop killings.
When a member of PLP spoke on the bullhorn, they tied the state terrorisim we all experience due to capitalism to the three recent deaths in the city. They led anti-capitalist chants and said our class has everything to gain from protesting this violence, and destroying this blood-soaked profit system.
A white protestor was targeted for arrest after they committed the “crime” of momentarily stepping off the curb into the street, being grabbed by cops.
When workers tried to pull them back into the crowd, the kkkops gleefully unloaded several toxic pellet shots at protestors.
In defense, workers put their hands up and chanted, "hands up, don't shoot!" to no avail. Afterwards, PLP talked with people about how that plea won’t gain sympathy from cops or the capitalist state that breeds them. It's their job to terrorize us. It's our job as communists to show this truth to our class sisters and brothers and grow our Party.
Unity with workers, not kkkops
When confronting the cops, politicians, or other capitalist institutions about their brutalization of the working class, we have to know that there is no rational dealing with them. Their goal is to stamp out all opposition to their vicious rule. Our goal is to build relationships with as many people as we can, toward building a mass communist party to smash the capitalist system.
Many times during the action, those within the mass organizations present tried to make deals with the cops for less harsh treatment of protestors. Members of our Party were approached to lead others to follow rules that cops laid out in exchange for a promise by them to leave one side of the street or lessen their violence towards the crowd. We rejected that bargaining tactic and supported the workers in heightening their opposition to this murderous system and the ongoing terror tactics cops used. We stood with our class as we stared down the cops and prevented more attacks by our united presence.
This tactic of attempting to bargain with cops and holding them to their word is a fatal flaw for reform movements. The only people we can trust at these actions are other workers, and the clear agreed-upon leadership that is established. The lack of this clear leadership was an additional liability to the action.
Learn to fight, fight to learn
The working class has proven time and again that we will not sit helplessly by as family and friends are killed and abused by capitalists’ henchmen. Members of our Party must continue to be a part of these fightback actions. Our relationships with people in mass movements is what will be the difference in workers embracing our line in this fight, and will prevent workers from continuing to be misled by reformists and politicians who will only uphold the bosses’ grasp on our throats. Fight the bosses and fight for communism!
BROOKLYN, May 1—May Day greetings to the international working class! One hundred and sixty five members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined a lively May Day Zoom celebration hosted by our high school club. The celebration began with a slide show and video celebrating past May Days in honor of our fallen comrade Joan Heymont. While our usual May Day celebration, which consists of familiar chants anwd beats down Flatbush Avenue accompanied by enthusiastic responses from the community, was disrupted by the global coronavirus pandemic, it did not stop PLP from celebrating the international workers holiday.
May Day is the celebration of the working class. It is a reminder of the need to bridge our demands together to collectively fight for communism. A society run by workers and for workers. The working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need. We have no need for the blood-sucking bosses who steal the value of our labor through wage slavery. The coronavirus is an opportunity for bosses to increase their power but also for workers to fight back and build a world worthy of us. Only hard work on our part will guarantee that we will win.
The main speaker, a young Black woman from Newark, New Jersey, talked about the Party’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, showing how a communist world, where we rely on each other instead of bosses, could be possible. PLP and friends have been creating mutual aid groups around food, shelter and resources. Teachers have gone into overtime as additional full time therapists for their students and parents. Members of PLP in Haiti, LA and Chicago are still finding innovative ways to physically distance themselves while protesting for more workers to fight for a world without police violence, prisons and exploitation.
A nurse from a Brooklyn hospital spoke about the need for solidarity to counter the bosses’ greed. She spoke about the anger she feels knowing that the government has chosen wealth over health, “Right now, only the bosses are winning. The president wants us all to return to work because at the end of the day, he’s a businessman in this capitalist world we live in. What we really need to do is make these bosses take the losses.”
She emphasized that solidarity is the key component needed to turn this crisis around.
The bosses have not only failed the working class by offering limited aid from their inadequate health care system, but have also displayed their lack of regard for students' education. A new member highlighted the role teachers must play during this pandemic,
“Communists today in PLP fight to learn and learn to fight, and in this crisis that means providing our students opportunities to confront the failures of capitalism.
The working class needs not only the vaccine against Covid-19, but also the vaccine against capitalism. That vaccine is communist revolution.” The ruling class is committed to perpetuating anti-communist propaganda into the education system to ensure students do not discover that the cure for their suffering is the eradication of capitalism and replacing it with communism. Young people are the future and it is the job of adults to ensure they understand how deadly capitalism is. It is important to take time during this pandemic to weave politics into lessons, regardless of the subject.
The poem “Good Morning Revolution” by Langston Hughes was performed by the high school club and “Home” by Warsan Shire was read by two teachers and dedicated to immigrant and refugee students around the world:
You have to understand,
that no one would put their
children in a boat
unless the sea is safer than the land
no one burns their palms under trains
beneath carriage no one spends days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper
unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
Life for workers under capitalism will never be sustainable. However, under communism, profit will never be put before workers’ lives; in fact, there will never be a profit incentive to begin with. All of our working class brothers and sisters will be treated equally and all racist borders will be smashed. We will unite as the working class and fight against this capitalist system for a better world. Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor—and nationalism promotes war with other imperialists in competition for more profit.
Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag. This is the world PLP has fought for from our start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails.
We invite all workers to join this struggle—for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren. Our vision for communism can be realized only with millions of workers and youth, with people just like you.
Our fight is sparked by class anger against the bosses and their viruses, killer kkkops, and all those who serve capitalism. But what sustains our communist movement is our working-class love—for industrial and domestic workers, for soldiers and students. United as one class, freed from exploitation and artificial borders, the working class can build a new world from the ashes of the old.
May Day is your chance to join Progressive Labor Party. Take the leap. And when you do, you will be joining hands with billions of fighters past, present, and future—with a historic movement of working-class struggle. The future belongs to us, but only if we dare to fight for it. Long live communism! Power to the workers!
