BOSTON, MA, April 29–On April 11, Stop & Shop workers at 240 stores went on strike in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in the first grocery workers’ strike in 15 years at the only unionized supermarket chain in New England. Strikers said NO to low wages, attacks on pension plans, ending overtime pay for Sundays and holidays, drastic cuts to health care plans, and reduced hours for part-time workers. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends walked picket lines at half a dozen stores in Boston and Worcester, urging other workers to support the strike and calling for an end to the capitalist profit system. 
This strike was a heroic attack on a huge capitalist company and adds to the encouraging rise of strikes in the U.S. It was nearly 100 percent solid and strongly supported by customers. Stop & Shop lost $100 million during the 11-day strike, 75 percent of their business.  Worker solidarity beat back many company attacks, but workers still remain at semi-starvation wages.
The enemy is capitalism
Stop & Shop is owned by Ahold Delhaize (owner of Food Lion, Hannaford, Martin’s, among others), a Dutch corporation with 375,000 employees and stores in 11 countries. Ahold made a $2 billion profit last year, and is valued at $23 billion. This is an example of what Karl Marx called “consolidation of capital”—big companies gobble up smaller companies in order to cut costs, and stay competitive against their rivals. This law of capitalist economics can’t be changed through laws and regulations, or by working for “better” companies. The profit Stop & Shop made last year averages $6,000 per worker. In other words, each worker loses 1/4 of their pay to profit the company. Imagine, giving up 1/4 of your (already low) paycheck to make wealthy shareholders even richer –and it’s all legal under capitalism! That’s why we need a revolutionary change to a system of communism, where workers run society and profits and exploitation are illegal.
Undemocratic union sold out part-time workers
A Stop & Shop worker in Worcester, MA said workers at her store are angry: “We went on strike for all the workers. But there are no union meetings, and part-time workers got almost nothing.”  Union leaders told workers to go back to work before they even saw or had a chance to vote on the new contract. Seventy-five percent of Stop & Shop workers are part-time, and their average pay averages $12.75/hour. Many who work 30 hours a week have no health or retirement benefits.  Many part-time workers had their hours cut in the last few months, with no promise of getting their old hours back. The lowest-paid workers got only a 25-cent raise. The worst part of the contract is the “two-tier” system: new hires get lower wages, pensions, and benefits than current workers, dividing them from the better-paid full-time and longer-serving workers.
Striker’s fight inspired other workers
The strikers faced a tough battle as Stop & Shop kept some stores open using management as scabs. The company also used workers from prison-release programs as scabs, at much higher pay than most employees! The strikers weren’t allowed to even talk with workers, such as security, who are not part of the union, making it harder to spread the strike. The police sided with the company, not letting strikers at some stores block driveways to keep shoppers from crossing the picket line. And the union, United Food and Commercial Workers, only gave $100 a week in strike benefits. 
Strike support spread
Many workers from other trades supported this strike. Teamsters, or truck drivers refused to make food deliveries. At one picket line, 25 members of the steelworkers union–some recently locked out by gas company NSTAR for demanding a labor contract–showed up and militantly confronted  shoppers. Members of other unions (teachers, electrical and construction workers) also walked the picket lines. PLP members visited picket lines, and gave out strike support leaflets in English and Spanish and CHALLENGE newspapers. Politicians such as Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren showed up, hoping for votes, but it was working class solidarity that won the day, bringing strikes as workers’ strongest weapon back into the consciousness of the working class of New England. 
Let’s also bring the ideas of workers’ power and communist revolution into the consciousness of workers everywhere.

Colombia–As we prepare for May Day, the International Worker’s holiday, when millions of workers around the world will march to celebrate the history of struggle against the terrorist capitalist system with its crisis of its over production, competition for maximum profits, and capitalist rivalries, that threaten a new imperialist world war.
 Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in Colombia would like to send all workers, comrades, friends and supporters of PLP around the globe, militant and warm greetings. With each passing May Day it becomes abundantly clear that the boss’ democracy does not work for the benefit of the working class, and it cannot be reformed. Thus the capitalist system and its bankrupt democracy must be destroyed by worker’s power.
 Capitalism creates a world where countless women, men, and children die by the millions because of poverty, incurable illnesses, racist killings at the hands of the bosses police and military, and environmental poisoning. Horrible conditions such as unemployment, wage slavery, sexism and war, do not automatically make workers communists, nor do they breed a revolutionary consciousness. It is only when millions of oppressed workers gain class consciousness, the understanding of the enemy capitalism, and make the decision to fight and unite as a single class. This must be done under the revolutionary leadership of a party. Only then can we overthrow this rotten system.
On this special day we make a call to our comrades, and workers around the world to strengthen  ourselves in the face of adversity. More than ever we need to develop and disseminate the revolutionary line of the PLP. We must always strive to self criticize our mass work, and look for ways  to build a stronger party, using the dialectical principles(the science of class struggle), of quality and quantity. We need to be part of the class struggle even more, be creative, constant and scientific, showing once again that revolution is possible. Unlike the mobster politicians and revisionist crooks who say that these are illusions or things of the past, that revolutionary struggles are obsolete. Nevertheless, we must fight united against  our exploiters, and reject class collaboration.
On this May Day a contingent of the PLP in more than a dozen countries will march along  with workers, students and soldiers showing the revolutionary potential of our class. We march with only one interest, destroying the capitalist system with communist revolution, and building a world where production and distribution will satisfy every workers needs. A world where workers are in charge of their own destinies. Everything we do will be for the communist cause.
Here in Colombia we organize and lead the struggle to defend our class brothers and sisters, to try to build up our ranks with our literature and  win workers to our revolutionary message. We fight to make our presence known in political, worker and student meetings. Comrades of the world lets charge towards international communist revolution, we fight to establish the proletariat dictatorship. Dark night will have its end, with a new and  glorious communist dawn.

BROOKLYN, April 30 – Early this month delivery workers made a brave decision to stage a protest and work stoppage against their racist bosses at Sage, a Thai restaurant in the Williamsburg neighborhood. These mostly Latin and immigrant workers had been meeting with a Bushwick-based community organization, in which Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is active. The racist bosses at Sage have stolen $500,000 in back pay from their workers (Eater New York, 4/3). The workers are also seeking paid overtime and sick leave. Capitalism exists to extract profits from all workers, and superprofits from our class’ most vulnerable members. These working class fighters are starting to realize they have the power to change their condition. PLP is working to move them even further, to fight for a world free from all exploitation—communism.
Racist owner panics
The protesters were chanting both inside and outside the restaurant as delivery workers spoke and publicized their demands. The owner, who had been absent up to this point, was forced to come in and cancel all deliveries. We rallied for about three hours. While the scared owner was talking to the lawyers, we forced him to agree to sit down with the workers and their lawyers at a later date to discuss the demands.
We also warned the owner he could not take reprisals against any of the workers, including those inside the restaurant, such as the cooks and busboys,  who also joined the stoppage.  
Reclaiming the fightback
The event’s success speaks to a resurgence of militancy in the organization. In recent years, liberals have infiltrated and transformed the neighborhood organization into a political lobbying group, pushing a legal strategy in the state legislature and backing certain politicians.
In the past, PLP members and their friends were able to fight for, and organize, direct on-the-job protests. Then, organization members had a place to come to discuss their workplace problems, ask for help and make a plan of action. They  would organize rallies and make demands of the owners/bosses of the workplace, threatening to take them to court if they didn’t pay back stolen wages to the workers.
Nowadays, the only actions that get done are when the organization’s lawyers file cases with the Department of Labor. These can take years to get solved. Sometimes they go nowhere. Liberals talk a big game about workers’ rights, but they’re toothless when it comes to real action.
In the last year, we have demanded that the leaders of this community organization take direct action again,  and actually confront the owners/bosses like before. This push resulted in the April 1 action.
Reflections
 Workers were excited and pleased with the action. We discussed the need to continue to raise workers’ consciousness in the fightback against the bosses. Actions like these when multiplied are what prepare the working class  for the most important  fight ahead of us: communist revolution.

OAKLAND—Progressive Labor Party comrades and friends held our annual May Day dinner tonight for the Bay Area and the Davis/Sacramento area. In the tradition of this workers’ holiday, we gathered in solidarity with the international working class to celebrate many struggles over the past year that have developed multi-racial, multi-generational, working-class unity.
This unity was in full display among the 60-plus participants at our event. It was set up and moderated to encourage active participation from everyone.  There were “Question and Answer” and “table talk sessions”, as well as poetry. We made plans to participate in various May Day activities such, as the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down of the Oakland Port and a coalition march. We ended with singing the working-class anthem, The Internationale, and a collective clean-up of the room.
Reflecting on anti-racist struggles
Two major anti-racist, anti-capitalist struggles were reported on during the dinner. The first of these was the Oakland teachers’ strike, with its militant demands and actions that united the needs of teachers, students,and families against capitalism’s systematic, racist dismantling of public education for the working class. The bosses’ attacks affect all levels of education, from preschool to the university level. The speakers highlighted the outpouring of working-class unity and rank-and-file teacher initiative during the strike (See CHALLENGE, 3/24).
The next topic of discussion was the fightback of immigrant workers with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Close to a million workers and their families from 13 countries face deportation and the separation of their families. Many have been living and working in the U.S. for more than 20 years contributing taxes to Medicare and Social Security but barred from collecting any benefits.
The theme was the racist, anti-immigrant worker attacks on TPS holders, and how they come from the failing economic system’s attempt to blame one set of workers for the problems faced by others as the system falls apart.
The speaker emphasized that this is not an attack just on immigrants, but that it is designed to undermine working-class consciousness and solidarity. It’s an attack on the whole working class. A spontaneous chant of “power to the working class” followed this speech.
“Table talk” contrasts capitalist reforms with communist revolution
A table talk was structured to discuss how reforms are related to capitalism, such as the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders, but also the revolutionary socialism after the armed revolutions that as took place in 20th century in China and Russia, and we also discussed PLP’s goal of egalitarian, worker-run communism. These topics gave people the opportunity to reflect on the role of armed struggle, force and violence during workers’ fightback against capitalism and for revolution. Many spoke from personal experience of struggles around the world and in the U.S.
We reviewed the accomplishments, mistakes, and areas to improve in past struggles of the communist movement. Many said this must be an ongoing part of our political education as we develop our movement.  Coming out of this collective energy and successful May Day dinner, the future is bright.

*****

Comments from attendees
“I’m a student just starting out dealing with this world. The dinner was a tremendously empowering experience, to know about and interact with comrades, and to hear them speak about their unique experiences and opinions. The air of welcoming was something hard to find elsewhere and there should be many more events like it.”
“As a TPS holder, it was a great pleasure at the May Day dinner to see young people engage in critical thinking and talking about the issue of violence and the TPS. I’m happy our new generation is so engaged.”
“I loved it…I appreciated the speeches and the food.  The moderators really set the tone… people were free to listen and free to speak.”
“The comradely respect and consideration people showed for each other’s opinions was truly moving.”
“It was great to see young people and older people together…talking from different perspectives… Lots of new faces.”
“The feelings and emotions of workers’ solidarity were front and center. I loved the passion… especially how we could live very differently when humans could achieve our full potential in a communist world.”
“Fantastic event, I’m glad I decided to stay the whole time. It was truly communist from sharing food to discussing revolution.”
“It was a potpourri–people of all ages, all backgrounds, traditions, geography. After the discussion about revolutions, I talked with my brother later that night. I explained that non-violent revolution is an oxymoron, you can’t hold power if you can’t catch it… you got to take it from the rulers.”
“As someone who is 77, started work at 15 and who, for a short period of time, experienced when working people got a few gains, I see that now the system is taking it all back and then some. That time is never coming back for the working class.  Capitalism as a system has got to go and you need a Party to do that... I invite people to join PLP to build for a better world.”