HAITI, May 1—Revolutionary greetings to all May Day marchers from PLP and our friends in Haiti! The Progressive Labor Party here has given communist leadership at a march in the capital, organized a workers’ study group in another provincial city, and concluded with the Internationale in Creole and calls to join the fight for communism.
This May Day, PLP continues to create confidence in the working class, strengthening and enlarging our base of communist fighters and friends. Marching in Port-au-Prince, the capital, with several trade unions, we led the marchers with chants such as “Down with capitalism, long live communism!” and “We workers have nothing to lose, let’s march on the bosses!”
The main demand of the unions’ march was to increase the minimum wage to 500 gourdes/day (9$USD). Our leaflet took a sharp look at the conditions workers here and worldwide are facing, concluding that the international working class needs an international revolutionary communist party, the PLP. We said that workers must unite in a single struggle and build the Party that will lead workers to victory, to communist revolution and an egalitarian society that will meet the needs of workers who create all value. “Workers, unite, as one class, we have the same problems and must have the same struggle.”
Elsewhere, in a provincial city, PLP organized a meeting with about 30 people, rural and unemployed workers, students and professionals. Our mission was to see that we are part of a single class. We talked about the history of May Day, showing how the bosses give their watered-down idea about this historic day to try to erase from our memory the long history of struggle—often victorious—of the working class.
Down with Capitalism! Now What?
We talked about different workers’ struggles around the world and showed how capitalism is what links them together: we are all fighting the same enemy. We also unmasked the role of capitalism in underpinning the bourgeois state. The participants criticized the capitalist system and came to the conclusion that it must be overthrown. Of course, once this was agreed upon, the next thought is to question how to do this. A PL’er noted that this was the question Lenin asked in his book What Is To Be Done?
Some friends replied that we need solidarity between workers to struggle against the bourgeoisie. One PL’er went further, calling to build a revolutionary communist party that fights for an egalitarian society, without different social classes, a society based on providing for the needs of workers, a society without money.
Another comrade added that we shouldn’t be fearful of communism and invited the participants to continue to organize activities that will sharpen the contradictions between the bosses and the working class, and to join the PLP! After the meeting, comrades and friends continued the day with a dinner, some sharp discussions and the singing of the Internationale in Creole—the first time for all of us, singing the same words as workers around the world, in our own language.
In all, our modest contribution to May Day has inspired us to keep on fighting and building the PLP.

To our fellow workers, comrades, friends and supporters of PLP we send militant and warm greeting from Colombia. We’re getting ready to celebrate May Day, the International Workers’ Day. This is yet another year of bearing the capitalist yoke and its nefarious consequences, aggravated by the economic crisis product of inter imperialist contradictions, and their push for maximum profits and over production, which create the threat of another world war.      
The gloomy outlook and reality that’s the life of the working class is almost the same around the world: Wage slavery, unemployment, lack of medical care, poor education, drug addiction, pollution, deforestation, fascism, sexism, individualism, racism and nationalism reinforced by religious zealotry and alienating demo-cretinism. In short: all the evils of capitalism.
For these reasons, comrades and workers of the world, we must steel ourselves against adversity: Now more than ever we need to develop PLP’s line. We must be self-critical of our work to build a stronger party both in quality and quantity. The dark night must come to an end, but we need to sharpen the class struggle, be more creative, consistent and dialectical to bring it about, and demonstrate the historical viability of a communist revolution. The imperialists and their revisionist accomplices want us to believe that revolutionary struggles are illusions, a thing of the past or obsolete and that now we must work hand in hand with our exploiter, that there is nothing better that class collaboration.        
Everything we do for the communist cause counts. In this corner of the world we are organizing and lending our support to our class brothers in their rightful struggles. We’re trying to establish new party clubs, and with our literature and revolutionary messages we participate in political meetings with workers and students. Onward, comrades of the world, for an international communist revolution we struggle to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build a new communist society.

NEWARK, NJ, April 27—Over one hundred Verizon workers and supporters from several local organizations participated in a Solidarity Rally here today in front of Verizon Headquarters.
Workers were in a fighting mood, and responded warmly to several militant speeches given by local fighters. Workers loudly chanted, “The bosses say cut back, we say fight back,” “Shut it down, shut it tight, the bosses can’t profit when the workers unite,” and more. Scores of cars passing on Broad Street honked their horns in solidarity with the strikers. Almost all of the Verizon workers took CHALLENGE. Several were reading it while picketing. Some workers thanked a PLP comrade who was distributing the paper for bringing it to the line.
Speakers included Newark teachers, and others from several organizations, including the War Against Poverty Coalition, which highlights the fight against mass racist unemployment and poverty, the Newark NAACP, and People’s Organization for Progress. Two union officials also spoke.
Politicos Try to Co-Opt
From the beginning of this strike, CWA and IBEW local and regional union leaders have tried to steer it towards allying with politicians who are supposedly pro-worker. A rally the first day of the strike featured five or six local politicos, including Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark. The liberal politicians blather on about how Verizon is eliminating “middle class jobs” and “destroying the American Dream.” These liberal politicians and unions offered workers momentary solutions. They are always ready to betray workers at a moment’s notice. The reality is that, under capitalism, reforms won by the working class through valiant struggle are always subject to being taken back by the capitalists, who continue to hold state power—until there is a revolution to destroy their class rule.
One fighter who spoke exposed that liberal bosses are always trying to cover up that competition and the periodic economic crises built into capitalism constantly force individual capitalists to find any number of ways to reduce costs. With Verizon, it is outsourcing call center jobs, downsizing wireline positions, and “flexibly” moving workers up and down the East Coast to meet their profit needs. All of these moves will eventually beset the working class with more low wages, unemployment, and poverty.
It is the nature of capitalism that is driving the destruction of the fewer and fewer jobs with better pay and benefits that still exist. And it is capitalist-created racism and segregation that weakens the working class response to these attacks. The unemployment rate amongst black workers is consistently double that of white workers. These high unemployment rates make it easier for the bosses to find low wage non-union contractors who bring in workers willing to work for less.
None of the politicians running for U.S. president, including social democrat Bernie Sanders, has an an interest in ending these capitalist-caused disasters for our class. They all play their role in keeping capitalism running, while trying to win workers to vote for them, spouting lies that this horrid system can be fixed. No amount of “good unions” and “good” reforms can change capitalism into a worker-run society. Workers like those in Verizon can run the world, with an organized international party like Progressive Labor Party.
Key: Working-Class Unity
PLP supports the struggle of Verizon workers. We call on Verizon workers to recognize the incredible power they hold. This strike has the potential to influence workers everywhere. While Verizon bosses have has returned to the bargaining table, they have plans in the works to use large numbers of scabs and to cut off the strikers’ health insurance in order to break the strike. But workers possess their own power: with help from other workers—such as transit workers, and education workers in public schools and City University of New York—they could use their collective strength to shut down the whole city.
This kind of action takes class-conscious leadership and a decisive break by the workers from all the politicians and the “play by the rules” rhetoric of the top union bosses. It takes organization and devotion to the cause of the working class. Only communist ideas and leadership will inspire hundreds of thousands of workers to take that type of revolutionary action.
A communist analysis shows that our labor as workers is what produces all the economic value in society. So why shouldn’t we have a system where workers, collectively, under the leadership of their communist party, PLP, decide how that value is used? We don’t need the bosses and their profit-driven system. Workers’ revolutionary fight to take the bosses down will open a new worker-run world where exploitation, economic crises and racism will become a distant memory. Verizon workers—join PLP and give leadership to the international working class!

WASHINGTON, DC, April 9—At the Metro transit system in D.C. (WMATA), PLP is fighting back and leading the struggle against management’s cutbacks, racist disciplinary procedures, sellout union leaders, and ultimately, capitalism itself.
Today, we joined transit workers in a rally in front of the Jackson Graham Building (management headquarters) to protest a forum on rider assaults on bus operators. The forum was co-sponsored by management and traitorous union misleaders.
For years, transit workers in D.C. have been facing cutbacks and attacks from the management bosses. A program of austerity has threatened pensions and wages, which were won primarily through the militant communist-led wildcat strike of the 1970s. Metro bosses have also intensified attacks on workers through a new racist discipline matrix that primarily targets Black workers, and a vicious new background check policy that reaches back decades and has led to multiple firings of veteran drivers.  Recently, workers who have acted in self-defense after being attacked by bus riders are themselves fired or otherwise punished! These racist assaults are part and parcel of the broader capitalist scheme to intimidate workers and rob them of any gains won and defended through direct class struggle. Our enemy is not the riders, but this capitalist system. Riders and workers must unite to challenge the transit bosses!
To throw salt on the open wound, WMATA management and their cronies and class-collaborators in the union have called for ridiculous policy reforms to address the string of rider-instigated attacks on bus operators and other workers. Management has suggested placing cops on buses to monitor behavior and has even printed pamphlets urging workers to practice restraint when dealing with riders. All this, as if workers are not capable of defending themselves and intelligent enough to know how to act in confrontational situations! More importantly, the bosses are trying to pit us against our natural allies, the working-class riders, while fomenting a false unity with our class enemies: the bosses and the cops.
Anger was high at the rally. One bus operator said that we should go inside and disrupt the meeting. The bus operator correctly pointed out that workers have the numbers and power to confront capitalist bosses and union misleaders.
KKKops Off Buses
Throughout the rally, we led militant chants such as “bosses can’t profit when workers strike, shut it down, shut it tight!” We demanded that WMATA address more fundamental issues regarding the assaults on bus operators. We refused cops on buses. Such a policy would entrench the blatantly racist role of police officers as overseers of the working class. The rally instead called for fully subsidized transit fare as a solution to many transit problems, including the assaults on operators. If the bosses were serious about working-class safety and health, transportation would be free. Not only would such a reform benefit the working class of DC, but separating the job of fare collection from that of actually operating the bus means that riders would have little incentive to attack operators for problems regarding their fare. Of course, the bosses’ refusal only exposes their role, which is to exploit and divide the working class.
Another rally was planned that is intended to stop traffic. We will continue to fight for better working conditions and an end to racist and sexist attacks., PLP will continue to work with these workers to turn their reform struggles into the fight for a communist world.