On May Day, nearly 40 people, mostly young workers, took to the streets, making demands of the murderous state, with slogans of worker fightback. That same day, thousands of people took to the streets in different cities and towns in Colombia as a form of resistance to police brutality, censorship, and hunger.
We delivered the message that workers need a communist future, and that revolution is the only way to combat the sexism, racism and fascism that prevails in a capitalist world. To support our message we distributed CHALLENGE and talked with various people, known and new, about PLP’s political line and encouraged followers to join the Party.
Although the presence of ESMAD (riot police) was threatening, with several people injured and killed in different parts of the country, we boldly marched with our collectives, young and old, carrying the red flag of communism and the chanting the Party’s revolutionaryline as a friendly hand for the proletarian who walks, marches, shouts, and resists!
WORCESTER, MA—The May Day celebrations organized by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Human Rights Commission, Tenants and Housing Alliance of Worcester (THAW) and others reflected our on the ground organizing in these groups, and was a protest involving three main issues:
- The fight against the racist police killings of Black workers
- The fight against the increasing racist attacks on Asian workers and the murder of an Asian man in our community
- Supporting the nurses’ strike at St. Vincent’s Hospital for more staff and improved safety ratios for patients.
For this first PLP led May Day in Worcester, we were happy that 70 people came out to fight for justice. Since killer-cop Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, police have developed new tactics to justify racist murders. With the exception of the PLP, no other group in Worcester has held a public rally against racist police murders this year. Racist attacks and terrorism against Asian workers have increased. We joined with an organizer from the Asian community to oppose openly and in public these racist hate crimes and call them out as a symptom of this racist capitalist system (see page 4).
Capitalism the main virus
One speaker called racist police killing a systemic health issue and he has worked with the Board of Health to set policies for police accountability. Health care is systemically racist. The main strike issue for the nurses at St. Vincent’s is increased staffing and patient safety. These goals are in effect a model for a partial mitigation of racist health care. It is clear why the bosses want to break the nurses’ mostly women worker-led, strike.
The PLP speaker raised the issue that capitalism is the foundation of racism, racist killings by police, and systemic racist/sexist healthcare. Communism and the end of resource inequalities is needed to end racist police killings and an end to systemic racist/sexist healthcare.
International revolution is the only solution
Our PL speaker pointed out that demonstrations are good but not enough. This racist, sexist, capitalist system cannot be reformed and it must be smashed with communist revolution. The inter-imperialist rivalries of the U.S. with China and Russia are beating the war drums over trade issues. Vaccine apartheid/imperialism is laying bare the murderous system of capitalism.
Our literature table with CHALLENGE was well received. Our rally and march were well received, too. Some folks, upon driving by, and seeing our red flags and hearing our chants, stopped to join our rally and march.
Progressive Labor Party then led a spirited march to join the St. Vincent nurses’ picket line. The chants were spirited and our speakers were multiracial. As we marched to the nurses’ picket line, we chanted:
- “Same, enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite! Asian, Latin, Black and white, workers of the world unite!”
- “No justice, no peace! No racist police!”
- “Nurses, yes! Tenet No! Racist healthcare has got to go!”
At the nurses’ line, our PLP member was invited to speak. We walked the picket line in solidarity with the nurses’ antiracist goals of improved patient care.
BOSTON, MA—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends organized three rallies and a car caravan to celebrate May Day and bring the revolutionary communist line of PLP to the workers of Mattapan and Dorchester.
Solidarity with workers from Haiti
The first rally in Mattapan square, an area where many Haitian immigrant workers live and have suffered extreme oppression and violence from ICE agents over the past few years, which has been ramped up by the Biden administration. Passer-by heard chants of, "Working people have no nation, stop racist deportation!" and "The cops, the courts, the Klu Klux Klan, all part of the bosses' plan!"
Many dozens of workers accepted May Day leaflets in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, and copies of CHALLENGE, and some stopped to speak with PL members about our work.
smash capitalist exploitation
One comrade gave a speech on the fundamentally exploitative nature of capitalism and the need for all working people to come together to replace the whole system with communism, a system without wages and where all workers share in the wealth we produce. Another spoke of the nurses of the Boston Teachers' Union's frontline struggle in the fight against the deadly coronavirus, in which they succeeded in winning many of the safety measures that the local politicians wanted to deny our teachers and students. A guest speaker and local leader spoke of the U.S. imperialists and their reactionary activities in Haiti, and the monumental harm caused there by the U.S. bosses' never ending search for profits.
Next the PL’ers decorated their cars with red flags and revolutionary slogans and paraded through the highly segregated neighborhoods of Dorchester, first to Fields corner and then Grove Hall, where more flyers and Challenges were distributed and speeches were made about the importance of rejecting the lies of liberal misleaders and joining with workers around the world to overthrow capitalism.
One PL’er gave a speech to underscore the historical importance of May Day, the militant struggle for the eight hour day in Chicago and around the world, and to expose the vicious repression of the Capitalist bosses and their killer cops and hired thugs. Another spoke about the role of police terror in maintaining the capitalist order and dividing the working class along racial lines, and the need to smash racism with multiracial unity.
At the end, members and friends gathered in Franklin Park to share food and experiences on bringing the revolutionary line of PLP to the workers here. Many drew inspiration at the warm reception of the PLP. Two new friends expressed joy that communism was on the lips of so many workers, and were grateful for the experience.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE, MAY 12—As we go to press, war in Israel-Palestine is quickly expanding. In the last three days dozens of people have been killed including at least 14 children and hundreds wounded in the apartheid state of Israel-Palestine. The situation for the working class there is dire as our sisters and brothers are caught between the terrorism of the Israeli ruling class and the self-serving nationalist leadership of the Palestinian movement. The situation cries out for the unity of all workers to turn this war between the bosses factions into a movement for communist revolution and liberation of our class from capitalism.
The latest uprising by young workers and the massive attacks by the Israeli ruling class on Palestinian workers was set off by the attempted eviction of Palestinian workers from several neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The situation where Palestinian workers have been kept in extreme oppression has led to many years of rebellion by young workers since the Israeli ruling class was put into power by the British and U.S. bosses. The Palestinian leadership has used the anger of young workers against the racist apartheid condition to build their own power and wealth at the expense of the working class.
The current escalation of the war in Israel-Palestine is caught up in the combination of crisis in the Israeli ruling class which has been fighting among themselves, the needs of Iran which is backing the Hamas wing of the Palestinian ruling class and the bigger inter-imperialist rivalry involving the weakening U.S. bosses. This convergence of the capitalist crisis is threatening to not just escalate war in that part of the world but bring in bosses from other countries such as Turkey, Iran, and Russia.
The current overall volatility of the world situation where the U.S. ruling class is weakening and competing imperialists are moving into the U.S. bosses former sphere of influence make the situation in Israel-Palestine a possible start point for a much wider war (see more next issue).
This May Day comes at a time when working class all over the world is groaning in pain and suffering from a global pandemic which is a result of capitalist competition and scheming for control of the world. The corporate elite stands to reap huge profits from the vaccine now being pushed worldwide (see editorial, page 2) and also from the inability of workers to organize as a result of lockdowns and quarantines to control the virus. The working class is therefore suffering great hardship in silence.
The working class in Nigeria is in a specially difficult situation suffering not just from the pandemic but also from an unprecedented insecurity due to ethnic intolerance which is leading to another fratricidal ethnic war. The ethnic elites of the major ethnic groupings in Nigeria do not seem to have learned anything from the last civil war, nor from Rwanda, nor from Libya, nor currently from the Central African Republic. The results of ethnic nationalism are mass slaughter. Young people must reject this path and the path of religion which equally sets them up. They need to study and use the invincible tool of Marxism - Leninism to build a better society.
Arise ye wretched of the earth! Arise ye starving masses of Nigeria! A new egalitarian Nigeria is possible. Working people of Nigeria and the world unite!
