LOS ANGELES, April 28 — “This was the best May Day in 30 years!” exclaimed a veteran comrade at the end of the Los Angeles May Day dinner. Over 100 people — workers, students, unemployed and retirees — came to Progressive Labor Party’s celebration of the international workers’ day. This great turnout reflected months of visiting students and workers in their homes and workplaces and involving them in class struggle.
The evening began with a comrade reviewing the history of May Day. She explained not just the beginnings of our workers’ holiday, but also how she became involved in PLP when a contingent of hundreds of janitors joined our May Day March in 2000. They were disillusioned in the sellout “Justice for Janitors” campaign by the Service Employees International Union. This point was especially significant, since the SEIU is once again mobilizing and misleading thousands of local janitors into campaigning for the Democratic Party in this year’s elections.
Following this inspirational speech came amazing original poetry, beautiful singing and speeches from workers involved in a variety of struggles. A bus system worker spoke alongside a student about fighting back against racist attacks on transit workers and riders.
Campus workers and students stood side-by-side while speaking of their struggle to end contracted work, or “in-sourcing,” and how they fought against the overt racism of union and campus misleaders. These workers, who are mainly Latina, have shown the determination of the working class and the power of unity and a fighting attitude, even though we understand that any reform victories will be yanked away as soon as the bosses have an opening.
An original poem explored the current world situation and the working class’s need for a new movement based on class consciousness and revolutionary communism. The world-situation speech reiterated these points, pointing out the continuing war in the Middle East as a product of capitalism. The speaker noted that the racist budget cuts in the L.A. school system have eliminated early childhood and adult education programs, and related them to the austerity measures destroying the lives of workers across Europe.
She condemned the racist killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Kendrake McDade by cops in Pasadena, California, along with the murder of an Iraqi woman in El Cajon, California, by unknown Nazi types. These killings reflect the capitalist system’s need for racism and brutality to divide and intimidate workers. The speech ended by contrasting the disempowering pseudo-democracy of capitalist elections with the empowering fight for communist revolution.
Our night ended with a rousing call for participation with the PLP May Day contingent in the May 1st Occupy March and the singing of the Internationale. A young participant stated that May Day was “pretty cool” and that the speakers “have a strong point that they want to get across to the world, and I would want to be a part of that.”
The May Day dinner was a huge success. The participation of these workers represents great potential for growth of our Party. Now comes the hard part: the long-term political work. By making communist politics primary in all of our struggles, we can convert this potential into new PL’ers and new communist leaders for the working class.
TEL-AVIV-JAFFA, ISRAEL-PALESTINE — Thousand of workers, dressed in red and carrying red flags and banners, marked May Day today in central Tel-Aviv-Jaffa with an energetic march. Slogans and chants called for a revolution. PL’ers in Palestine joined these workers and handed out leaflets explaining why a communist revolution is the only way forward.
We distributed CHALLENGEs and leaflets in Hebrew, which were welcomed by the marching workers who were open to our political analysis.
Phony leftists who are “revolutionary” in words and reactionary in actions dominated the bulk of the march. They called for “price controls,” “public housing” and “socialism,” essentially meaning to keep most of the capitalist system in place with minor reforms, or, at most, returning to 1950s Israeli state capitalism.
We, on the other hand, explained the need for an egalitarian communist system based on the principle of “from each according to commitment, to each according to need.”
When the march reached its rally point, however, two groups of anti-communists attacked us. The first one, a libertarian capitalist group raising the symbols of the U.S. Tea Party, attacked us only verbally by claiming that “communists, especially Stalin and Mao, killed 100 million people”; in reality, unlike the brazen lies these bosses’ spokesmen were spouting, Stalin’s Red Army saved the entire human race from the Nazi butchers in World War II; Mao transformed China from an imperialist colony to a workers’ state.
The second group of anti-communists, however, were far more violent. These were the Kahane gang (the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazis) who waved Israeli flags and shouted ultra-nationalist slogans. When the demonstrators, including ourselves, shouted them out, the riot cops stormed us — they wouldn’t touch their fascist buddies — detaining several leftists and beating them viciously.
All in all, while small in numbers, we made an impact on the May Day activities here. With hard work we will organize a much larger contingent next year.
OAXACA — The Progressive Labor Party in Mexico made its presence known in Oaxaca’s celebration of May Day, the International Workers’ Day. Twelve members of the Party marched. We distributed 8,000 fliers, singing communist songs and chanting throughout the event. PLP was the only communist group marching, and we saw how the people who took our fliers seemed interested and read them carefully. We made two contacts, with whom we will be meeting in coming days.
Attendance in the march was down by more than half this year, a reflection of rising attacks against the working class and the capitalists’ ability to divert workers attention with their electoral process. Even so, it was very emotional to see and listen to workers’ applause at the end of the march as our PLP group entered the zócalo in the heart of the city.
Our flier addressed the elections and the importance of not voting and instead uniting with the communist PLP. It also attacked the elections as a sham for the working class. The same is true in the United States and every other country. Progressive Labor Party offers an alternative: communist revolution, the only real option for the united international working class.
MEXICO CITY — Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party met here to celebrate May Day with a march and a dinner. At a meeting before our demonstration, a PL’er gave a brief history about the original May Day struggle in 1886 in Chicago and its historical meaning. The comrade described how PLP has taken up this tradition as a day of celebration for the international working class.
After the speech, the workers at the meeting talked about the importance of organizing workers. They also discussed the bosses’ election sham and how the capitalists use the state apparatus to share power within their class, but never with the working class. A Party comrade made a communist analysis of how the elections are a dead-end for workers, since they lead us only to elect our next oppressor.
The meeting culminated with a worker asserting that class struggle in our area needed to be infused with communist ideas. At that point another worker interrupted: When would we meet again? We ended by asking them to accompany us in our May Day march.
Comrades at this meeting understood that these workers — like many throughout the world — live in difficult conditions. The ruling class is in crisis, which means that capitalist exploitation and brutality are on the rise. The situation leads workers to think and fight for local and immediate reforms. Our struggle will be to lead these workers to think and fight for the only solution for the international working class, a communist world.
Long live communism!
LOS ANGELES — About 20,000 people marched in this year’s May Day celebration here. This year’s march was far smaller than previous years. Instead of one unified march, there were several smaller marches that left from different areas of the city at different times. This reflected the splits within the nationalist, reformist and revisionist (unity-with-bosses) organizations. But, there were definitely more friends marching with us this year. We maintained high energy, held up the red flag, and distributed CHALLENGE.
Thirty PL’ers and friends marched in our open contingent. We led revolutionary chants, like “Raise those red flags, raise ‘em high, the PLP is marching by,” and “Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras, the fight of the workers has no racist borders!”
Several high school students participated by helping lead chants in English and Spanish, even though Spanish is not the first language for some. The best part of the march by far was when the revisionists and the cops attempted to divert the march from joining the other marches that ended in Pershing Square.
As a result of strong leadership and long-term base-building at several local college campuses, we were able to lead a breakaway march of more than 50 workers and students that took the streets, confronted the police, and stopped traffic, chanting “Whose streets, our streets!”
“From Tahir Square to Pershing Square,” and “Capitalism means, we got to fight back!” It was a powerful experience for us and a small taste of working-class power.
Many of the college students thanked us for our leadership and boldness. They took CHALLENGE and exchanged contact information. Much work lies ahead of us for next year. There are new people to follow up with and struggles to continue, but this march was definitely an inspiring moment for our Party and our friends.
