As the May Day organizing heads into its final month, we should take a moment to think about the future. On April 27 in New York City, hundreds and hundreds of workers, students and soldiers will march for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.
In Chicago and Los Angeles, many will celebrate at dinners around the same theme, as well as marching on May 1 in the Immigrant Rights May Day.
In order to win these goals, our Party must grow until its members number in the millions. To win a communist world, we must become billions. Is this possible, or as some believe, are we merely a bunch of well-motivated people who are spitting into a hurricane?
On the face of it, the bosses would appear all-powerful. The old communist movement, which had once led great revolutions and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world, died from its own political weaknesses. Capitalists hold power everywhere. U.S. imperialism, which years ago could claim more victims among the world’s workers than even Nazi Germany, still rules the roost. So today, communist revolution would seem to be a noble but unattainable dream.
However, communists have a weapon which teaches us how to look deeper than appearances and see the possibilities that lie beyond the actual. It’s called dialectical materialism. It’s our philosophical tool for understanding everything in the natural world, in society, even in our own minds. Dialectics enables us to see that everything changes, that things turn into their opposite, and that a small Party can grow until it eventually becomes capable of seizing power.
Many people believe social classes have always existed and that the few have always oppressed the many. But the truth is that social classes came into existence only about 15,000 years ago, after human beings had been a biological species for hundreds of thousands of years.
What’s this got to do with May Day? Plenty! Fifteen thousand years may seem like an eternity when compared to an individual life span, but relative to human history, it’s a very short time. The bosses would love us to believe that the present rotten order of things will last forever. They talk endlessly about the “end of history.”
But we see that history’s pages are filled with tales of class struggle, revolution and change. We see the hundreds of years the capitalist class needed in order to make their own revolution, which overthrew feudalism. Feudalism itself had needed centuries of struggle to dump slavery as the dominant form of class society. And almost at the very moment when the capitalists were taking hold of state power barely 200 years ago, working-class revolutionaries were rising up to challenge them.
Eighty-two years after the first capitalist revolution, in France, the Paris Commune of 1871 tried to overthrow it. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most profound event of the last millennium. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s again shook the world. These great movements defeated themselves. Our Party is still trying to absorb the lessons of these defeats. But we should learn from the victories as well.
Each of the parties that led these revolutions began as a small, weak organization facing apparently overwhelming odds. Despite their many errors, the great leaders of these movements learned through dialectics how to build the possible from the actual. This lesson is crucial for PLP’s leaders and members to absorb now, as we enter the last few weeks before May Day.
This year’s May Day organizing is characterized by a spurt of Party activity against racist police terror. This is good! It means that we are acting and fighting as well as talking. It gives us an opportunity to expose the liberal rulers’ deadly war schemes as well as to struggle against the more obvious fascist measures. It creates the possibility of bringing more May Day marchers. But each new May Day marcher is also something more than a May Day marcher. Each new May Day marcher is also a potential Party member. And each new Party member is a potential mass leader. Everything we do to ensure a larger, more militant May Day creates the opportunity to build a bigger, more militant Party. A bigger, more militant Party can take bolder, sharper action in the mass movements and win still more members and leaders.
So far, we’ve mentioned dialectics only to show our Party’s potential for growth despite its present apparent weakness. That coin has another side. The rulers appear strong, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the enormous advantages they hold over us. But they have many weaknesses as well. They can’t hold power without oppressing us. They can’t rule the world without driving their rivals to unite against them. Capitalism is an unstable system. It will always lead to war. History shows that communist revolutions can seize power in the turmoil of imperialist war. Our Party is on the right side of history. Our class is bound to win.
We need to build the Party, day-by-day, May Day marcher by May Day marcher, Challenge sub by Challenge sub, recruit by recruit, struggle by struggle. Mastering the science of dialectical materialism will enable our class to achieve eventual victory, however long and hard the road ahead may be. Whatever we do now and for the rest of our lives to build the Party can help change the face of the world.

The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has sentenced a veteran teacher to death.
The teacher, who has been battling a stage 4 cancer for 18 months, applied for a “Restoration of Health” sabbatical (partly-paid leave) for the Spring 2013 term. Even though the school’s principal approved it, giving false hope to the teacher, DOE’s medical director turned it down saying she has “no chance for recovery — sabbatical denied.” The DOE didn’t even consult the teacher’s oncologist! Their answer comes down to “you’ll die anyway…but we’ll get your last drop of blood.”
The teacher was told by her United Federation of Teachers district office that she could take her case to “medical arbitration,” but the process could take up to a year!
This teacher taught all last year, during a very grueling course of both chemotherapy and radiation, missing only one period each week to get to the last appointment available each Friday. Colleagues in her department pulled together to make sure classes were covered and the students always had the same continuity in lessons as this teacher’s other classes.
This year, when new cancerous lesions were found and it became increasingly difficult to maintain the pace in school, the application for a restoration of health sabbatical was submitted and denied. This 20-year veteran teacher has been literally kicked to the curb.
As bad as this is, it is not an isolated case! Given the fact that it would take up to a year for a medical arbitrator to hear the case indicates that health sabbaticals are being denied at an alarming rate to those that need them the most. After using accumulated sick time, teachers are being forced to take an unpaid leave of absence. During this type of leave medical benefits are no longer available, and as a result, no treatments for a possible remission of terminal illness.
The DOE bosses have pushed for years to get rid of sabbaticals. They have nearly succeeded in ending study sabbaticals (intended for teachers to increase their knowledge and skills). But, under the June 2011 “agreement” between the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and DOE, Restoration of Health sabbaticals were supposedly left intact. For the 2012-2013 school year, study sabbaticals were suspended to prevent any teacher layoffs, (according to the UFT).
The system that denies sabbaticals to teachers who have given their lives and health to the students of NYC tells teachers, (and other workers), that once our usefulness has ended, we’re disposable. Is it safe to say that the DOE, run exclusively by a profit-seeking billionaire mayor on behalf of his class robber barons, is killing teachers? The answer is a resounding YES!! And is it preparing our students, as well, to be disposable parts for imperialist war? YES! We need a collective effort by teachers, parents and students to expose the crimes of the capitalist system — and to end it by building our Party and preparing for a communist revolution.

CHICAGO, March 28 — Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has announced the closing of 54 schools, plus a turnaround for another six and co-shares for 11. This unprecedented attack on students, parents, teachers, and other school workers is racist to the core. Virtually all of those impacted by these actions are low-income working-class black students. Many of these students (and teachers) have been shuffled from school to school as CPS goes about the business of destroying public schools. CPS has systematically starved schools in the city’s predominately black South and West sides of the resources they need, and now they are shuttering them completely.
The attacks on education are part of the attacks on all the meager services, including health care and housing, for the working class. The capitalists are tightening OUR belts, (not theirs), as they ramp up their competition with capitalists in China and other countries. The U.S. ruling class is preparing for the inevitable war with their rivals and needs public money to pay for that war. They expect the working class to pay, as they always have, in blood and money, for ruling-class wars.
The head of CPS, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is trying to sell this attack on the students and educators as the opposite. She promises that students will get a better education in their new “welcoming schools,” saying they will all get iPads, air conditioning, and special programs. Yet, out of the other side of her mouth, she talks about the necessity to close schools to save money. The numbers don’t add up and the most likely scenario is that when schools open next August, those impacted by school actions will be in complete disarray.
There is a huge rally planned for March 27, called by the Chicago Teachers Union and other union, community, parent, and student groups, in opposition to the school closings. Other militant actions are being planned as well. However, it is unlikely that many, if any, of the school closings will be rescinded. This is an attack we have already seen carried out in a massive way in Detroit, New York City and Philadelphia.

This is just the beginning. The ruling class is going to keep hitting us with attack after attack. The reform struggle, passionate as it often is, will not do the trick. The only way to stop these monsters is to take away their power and replace their racist profit-based system with a working-class system, communism. Of course that will be a hard fight, but harder still will be life under capitalism if we don’t fight to end it.
Progressive Labor Party in Chicago and around the world is working to make that happen. In Chicago, the PLP has stepped up its sales of CHALLENGE newspaper, is winning friends to be part of our May Day event, and making a particular focus among CPS teachers, parents and students. PLP plans to take leadership on March 27 in motivating the fight for communism as the solution to school closings and the other horrors capitalism foists on the working class.

March 20, BROOKLYN, NY — “When our schools are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” Chants, led by angry students, parents and teachers of the Tilden High School Campus, rang out again against the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) meeting today. They arrived at the meeting ready to fight, even though they knew that the panel of bosses’ puppets would approve the “proposal” to co-locate a charter elementary school in the Tilden campus, which already houses three district high schools. In fact, the PEP, whom are mostly hand-picked by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg to vote on educational policy and decisions, have always voted in favor of the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposals.
Tilden students arrived at the meeting chanting and marching. As school cops tried to push them into a barricade pen, students and teachers formed a picket line along the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the building. They held strong and kept up the loud chanting as cops tried to push them to move from the entrance.
They continued chanting as they entered the auditorium where the meeting was held, making it loud and clear that Tilden was there and ready to fight. Throughout the proceedings, as panelists spoke, students and teachers burst into chants to drown out their racist, anti-student statements. As the list of schools on the “chopping block” that night was listed, the group booed and at the end chanted, “whose schools? Our schools!”
Students and teachers found every opportunity to shout the panelists down. Several students and some teachers made strong speeches blasting the DOE for their attacks on schools. One teacher made an impassioned speech accusing the DOE of not caring about students, which he ended by announcing a walkout from the meeting. The group of students and teachers stood and chanted as they marched out of the room and spilled out onto the street.
While the PEP did go ahead and vote in favor of the co-location, those at Tilden know that we have won what’s important. Over the last two months, since Tilden was informed of the Department of Education’s proposal, students have taken this on and have learned, very quickly, how to fight back, how to lead, and how to organize for unity. Under capitalism, there are always more attacks on youth coming, and these students are ready to fight. Students are seeing these attacks right now, in the kkkop murder of Kiki Gray four blocks from the school. Some of these same students have joined the rebellions against the murder, and have faced constant fascist attacks by the cops.
In the two months since the DOE’s co-location proposal, students and teachers have responded by organizing rallies outside the school (see CHALLENGE, 2/28), traveled to the headquarters of the DOE and City Hall to rally there, and have disrupted and walked out of a DOE Public Hearing at Tilden and two PEP meetings.
Everywhere they go, they bring anger, energy and an increasing understanding that the DOE does not make plans in the interest of students. More and more they see the racism of the DOE’s actions, as black and Latino schools are shut down, turned around, or co-located without a second thought.
Students in one Tilden school’s Student Activism Club are discussing the nature of capitalist schools; that they will never serve the working class and are inherently racist. They have studied what schools could be like under communism, and what the working class needs. There is excitement about marching on PLP’s May Day this year, as we continue to tie the fight-back in our school to the need to smash capitalism and fight for a communist world!