CHICAGO, May 1—Today we celebrated May Day, the true workers’ holiday celebrated by the working class internationally. Over 80 of us gathered at a local hall on Chicago’s west side to talk about the history of how workers at Haymarket Square in Chicago fought back against capitalist exploitation by holding a 300,000-strong general strike on May 1, 1886 that sent shockwaves around the world. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is carrying on the tradition of workers at Haymarket through international communist struggle to destroy capitalism, with an emphasis on Black workers and youth being the key to revolution.
What Day? May Day!
The event kicked off with a scavenger hunt that accompanied a gallery walk of photos and facts about communist struggles through the years and May Day history in particular. There were many teenagers who attended, and they quickly moved around the hall, answering questions to try to win the scavenger hunt. These youth were present as a result of our continued growing work in local schools. This group activity was followed by an inspiring speech by a comrade who is helping lead political work in the community and on his job at a west side hospital, where they are trying to get a union to counter the bosses’ sexist and racist attacks.
It was encouraging to see a handful of these workers become motivated during the program to come to the microphone and speak about the capitalist horrors of their jobs and express interest in getting involved again. One works as a counselor in the jails, and mentioned how the system of capitalism has destroyed the lives of many of the incarcerated people where she works. Another announced that the charter school where she works is planning to go on strike on May 1st, the third wave of charter school strikes in Chicago in five months. Two new members gave speeches on why they joined the Party. The first of which was a younger comrade, who spoke to the Party’s strength in exposing the liberals as the primary threat to working-class people. She talked of continuing to build a base among youth, who regularly get funneled into the misleading hands of the Democratic Party but really are in need of the revolutionary PLP to change the world in our interests.
The second new comrade to speak was a working mother, who was won recently to the Party through our work in an anti-deportation reform group. Her speech, which was delivered in Spanish, spoke to how she had always been a fighter and learned to organize workers at a very young age, but it wasn’t until she met the Party that she really felt at home in the U.S. She ended her speech with the words, “The bosses are afraid of the working people who have no fear.”
We sang our May Day standards “Bella Ciao” and “The International” in both Spanish and English. Although a late spring snowstorm had forced us to cancel our rally and march, we held a rally indoors at the hall in which we shouted the Party’s anti-racist and anti-sexist revolutionary chants, with practically the entire hall on their feet and engaged.
Chicago’s west side: a story of police terror, and poor healthcare
The reason we celebrated May Day on the city’s west side is because of our history, past and present, of fighting racism in the area. In North Lawndale, there have been many murders committed by the hands of the racist Chicago Police Department. Michael Elam, Rekia Boyd, and Steven Rosenthal have all been murdered by the fascist kkkops in the neighborhood in recent years. We as a Party were active in many of the actions organized to protest their racist murders. Continuing to build a base among other anti-racist fighters in the neighborhood remains exceptionally important as the racist city bosses move ahead with their plans to build a $95 million dollar new police academy nearby (See CHALLENGE, 4/3).
Racist health outcomes are also a harsh reality to workers here. In mostly-Black West Garfield Park, average life expectancy is around 69 years, compared to around 85 years in the wealthier downtown Loop (westsideunited.org). In west side hospitals such as Mount Sinai, mostly Black, Latin, and Asian women workers are short-staffed on the units and thus unable to provide safe and adequate care to their mostly Black and immigrant patients. Many comrades and friends have taken a leading role in organizing against sexist and racist attacks like these on our jobs in west side hospitals and university campuses and will take the inspiration from our May Day event to strengthen our efforts.
We have a world to win
The comrade who gave the main speech during the dinner challenged those present to see their own struggles as part of a larger, international battle against the world’s bosses. As pro-capitalist sellouts such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seek to dupe the masses and lead them into more fascism and imperialism, our Party and communist revolution remain the only real path out of a daily nightmare for billions.
On this May Day and every day, remember: We have a world to win, and nothing to lose but our chains!

Israel is again becoming overtly fascist. Gone are the liberal masks of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Now, government officials openly advocate for annexing the (already occupied) West Bank and establishing an open apartheid regime where Palestinian residents will be forced to live under Israeli rule. The government increasingly censures the press, and uses libel lawsuits to silence criticism. Openly sexist, and - of course - racist politicians will likely be ministerial appointees in the next administration.
The Israeli Defense Forces have killed 182 Palestinians and wounded 9,204 while suppressing anti-siege protests on the Gaza border. Many more were killed as “collateral damage” in Israeli bombings of Hamas targets in Gaza in response to rocket fire on Israeli towns. Per UN data, 38 percent of Gazans live in poverty. There is 26 percent unemployment in Gaza, and 38 percent of the youth are unemployed. Fifty-four percent of Gazans are food insecure and over 75 percent are aid recipients. Gazan workers protested these conditions earlier this year, but Hamas - the religious movement in control of Gaza - repressed the protests with brutal force.
Given our limited resources, we mainly participate in two struggles. The first is the National Coalition for Direct Employment. It’s a multi-racial, women-led organization of workers fighting against “contract” bosses. These bosses are modern slave traders, who hire workers and then “rent” them out to various firms and government offices. A PL’er, a housekeeping worker in a mall employed through a contractor, leads one of the struggles.
The other struggle is against racism in southern Tel-Aviv. Thousands of Black asylum seekers have come to Tel-Aviv in the past two decades, fleeing fascism and genocide in their home countries. Local racists, encouraged by government officials, leading a campaign against them, claiming the asylum seekers are “rapists and murderers” who “destroy the neighborhoods”. This racism helps “developers” who want to evict tenants from these poor neighborhoods and build luxury apartments. We join with local community fighters, led by working-class Black and Jewish women, to fight these fascist scums and build worker unity.
We are all struggling with capitalism’s horrors. We need communism now more than ever!  We will overcome these difficulties and continue the class struggle, together with our sisters and brothers in Israel-Palestine and the whole world.

To comrades around the world—Here we are in the month of May just like that of 1886. A May that reminds us of the bitter victory of our class: the work day had been cut to 8 hours, but many workers and union leaders died, were jailed, wounded, or were hung for their efforts.
Yes, May is a month that marks us, and we will mark it as well, after the end of the bosses’ rule. This is the moment that we will celebrate. We won’t be celebrating our lives only as workers, but as revolutionaries.
Let us deplore that, in spite of the struggles carried out, all the demonstrations and marches against the exploitation of our class by the bosses, our working conditions are often worse than in most of the countries in the world. And it is this sad reality which pushes us to unite as a class, to build, under the leadership of the Progressive Labor Party, a communist revolution. Communism, a system where workers rule in their own interests as a class, is the only solution to all the horrors of capitalism – racism, sexism, nationalism, unemployment, exploitation, poverty, imperialist wars, and all the rest.
Today, comrades in New York and around the world, the working class of Haiti, and the PLP of Haiti, salute you as we march together for our needs as a class. We in Haiti are fighting against many of the forms of capitalist exploitation that infect the rest of the world. Tens of thousands have been in the streets protesting against the bosses and their politicians, all of whom line their pockets at our expense. In Haiti, we are fighting against the corruption embodied in the PetroCaribe oil scandal, against the atrocious poverty under which many Haitian workers and their families rarely find one decent meal a day, in a country where over 70 percent of the workers are unemployed.
Mass marches in large Haitian cities on May 1, as well as other political activities, show that our class is on the move. We are fighting to build the PLP as the leadership of the working class in Haiti.
We shout out to you today: ON TO VICTORY!
   

BOGOTA,Colombia—Thirty-five-thousand workers once again commemorated May Day, the international working-class holiday, marching in different parts of this city. Their struggles expressed economic and political demands.
Very early on members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) distributed 80 CHALLENGE’s and other communist literature. We paid close attention to the arrival of different groups like unions, indigenous , farm, and unemployed workers, students, revolutionary parties, and groups of women, among others.
 We engaged in dialogue with some of them and exchanged ideas in such a way that we noticed the fear of some workers to express themselves due to the racism and fascism that has plagued our class with the systematic murder of 600 worker leaders.
We had very good discussions about the electoral circus, capitalist corruption, “the indigenous problem”, our anti-racist line, unemployment, internationalism, wage exploitation, socialism and communism.
“No more sexism, long live communism!” Long live an international communist May Day! These were some of the chants our Party shouted as we gave communist leadership to the working class. The PLP with a large block of 67 people, participated with great enthusiasm, shouting our slogans with vigor, causing admiration and approval among the other protesters and onlookers.
Examples of the more than 30 chants were the following: To defeat the capitalist crisis in Venezuela, we need a workers’ communist revolution! Neither Duque, nor Guaido, nor Maduro, communist leadership is the future! These chants differentiated us from the majority of groups led by the revisionists that blow vuvuzuelas  and perform dances and carnival choreography which only serve to water down May Day’s true significance, with capitalist consumerism. To this we exclaimed that the story of the working class is not a carnival party! Communism and revolutionary politics are the best education!
We continued marching and raising our red flags until we arrived at Bolivar plaza, a landmark  which honors the capitalist and imperialist, and murderous dictatorship that workers have been subjected to for 208 years.
As usual, the trade union confederations, opportunists and social democratic politicians took possession of the platform to give their worn-out speeches imploring the bosses for improvements and greater justice and to achieve a fairer Colombia. They raised bourgeois symbols like the flag, and they played the national anthem.
 In an organized manner, we picked up our banners and revolutionary flags and left the march with optimism agreeing to participate in future struggles and continue organizing for continued growth of our international Party. We ended our May Day energized, as we renewed our committment to build a future communist society without politicians or bosses, without social classes or wage slavery, sexism, racism and all the capitalist scourges. One working class, one communist world and one Progressive Labor Party(PLP)!