PAKISTAN — In almost every city and small town in Pakistan the working class aggressively held rallies, processions, meetings and seminars honoring May Day. Angry workers came out on the streets with red banners, chanting opposition to capitalism and the bosses. They were demanding jobs, increases in wages and social security and better working conditions. They exposed the fake leftist union leaders, saying, “The friends of the bosses are traitors to workers.”
Progressive Labor Party played a leading role, actively participating in the marches and distributing leaflets explaining how to get rid of capitalism and imperialist wars by organizing into an international, revolutionary communist PLP.
Workers chanted, “Down with capitalism”; “workers of the world unite”; “unite against exploitation, inequality and corrupt bosses”; “bosses are killers”; “east and west, PLP is the best”; “Asia is Red”; and “long live communist revolution.”
Speeches by PL’ers and friends exposed the capitalists and their puppet union leaders who are sabotaging the working-class movement. They’re preventing it from organizing against poverty, exploitation, price-hikes, unemployment, shortages of electricity and natural gas, corruption, injustice, target killing and terrorism. We accused these bosses’ puppets of misleading and terrorizing workers.
Bosses have their “own” union leaders, rigging union elections to elect their own puppets to leadership. To change the situation and to lead big struggles against the bosses we must be ready to face the state power used to rig this process. We must advance real communist leadership in the unions to lead militant struggles against the bosses as well as to expose capitalism as the source of our problems. Reforms cannot substitute for revolution. While winning leadership in the unions won’t change the capitalist system, it can effectively help win the working class into the PLP.
The Party also organized a march independently in one small town where young members and friends explained to workers and students that the bosses are trying to build a new party (as they’ve done in the past) to divert workers’ anger, spreading the illusion that this new boss-inspired party will bring change to the lives of poor people.
But voting for any electoral party, whether “leftist” or rightist, old or new, only protects the interests of capitalist bosses. We must fight to build the international revolutionary communist PLP to establish a communist society that will eliminate exploitation, poverty, racism and wars. No other party can do this.
DALLAS/ FT. WORTH, TEXAS — This year’s May Day was a huge success. Nearly 50 people attended PL’s annual May Day BBQ here. The highlight of the event was the speech-skit that young leaders and new members organized and performed in both English and Spanish. It got the audience engaged on a level not seen at previous May Day events.
We began with a reading of the history of May Day. The history was accompanied by images ranging from the first May Day to recent PL May Days.
Our program was performed as a four-act play.
In Act I, we demonstrated how capitalism exploits the working class. We used a pie and showed that if society was truly equal then the pie would be evenly divided among everyone — without the bosses. Young children in the audience participated and played the role of the workers. Once they got their even slice, the capitalist pig (who literally wore a pig mask) took the stage and declared that it was “time for my profits!” One by one the capitalist pig took their slices and left them with only crumbs.
In Act II, we showed the role of elections. The narrators proclaimed that capitalism is a dictatorship of the bosses which they hide with elections. Participants playing Romney and Obama entered. They shook hands with the capitalist pig who gave them money and U.S. flags. He then sent the politicians out into the crowd to steal cards that read “Medicaid” and “college readiness programs” from the audience. These social programs were added to the capitalist pig’s feeding trough. Obama and Romney told the crowd to blame immigrants and terrorists for the problems, but audience members yelled back “those are racist lies!”
In Act III we passed out posters among the crowd. Each one contained maps and graphics showing the history and impact of imperialism in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Audience members participated by reading about the horrors imperialism has brought to workers worldwide.
In the final Act we declared the need for a party to organize the working class to put an end to capitalism and imperialism once and for all. We declared that CHALLENGE is a weapon against the bosses’ racist and sexist ideas. We handed out CHALLENGES to the audience and asked them to join us in the fight against capitalism. At that moment dozens in the crowd stormed the stage and attacked Obama, Romney and the capitalist pig, beating them with rolled-up CHALLENGEs.
We ended our performance with a history and singing of the Internationale.
While not all of the people we invited could attend, we did give several new workers CHALLENGE as part of the process of inviting them to May Day. In all about 20 new workers received CHALLENGEs for the first time! In the weeks and months ahead we will continue to discuss the ideas of the Party with these new readers and bring the message of May Day to them!
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.
