LOS ANGELES, May 4- Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrated May Day with a multiracial crowd of about 85 workers and students. The day started with a group of PLP members and base setting up tables and musical instruments along with banners and flags calling for communist revolution and justice for families who’ve encountered police terror. The collective effort in setting up the event made it so that all aspects: security, food, drinks, and political content were handled.

Our May Day event was held in a neighborhood park that is significant to a struggle against police terror that PLP has been involved in since November 2019 (See CHALLENGE issue 11/07/19). Leading up to the event a group of workers and students including both Party members and friends worked on a committee to plan the event and evaluate the speeches that were going to be made during the program. The program was a mixture of speeches, songs and poetry as well as activities to ensure everyone was able to meet new people.

Since last May Day the working class has continued to see the ruling class carry out war and genocide while neglecting the needs of students, particularly Black and Latin students. In the weeks leading up to May Day, Party members and our base have been involved in protests on campuses and meetings about school closures in Inglewood. We have PLP members and friends at colleges that have set up encampments and we took a moment to applaud the courageous students across the U.S. and around the world who have put their bodies and academic careers on the line to protest the imperialist genocide Israel is carrying out with U.S. dollars against the workers of Gaza. Students shared their work within mass organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Neighborhood organizers around the school closures in Inglewood joined our May Day and shared stories about their struggles dealing with a system that values stadiums and parking lots more than the education of Black and Latin students.

One student member who recently joined the Party emceed the event with another student. The event opened with a performance from an Aztec danzante group. They have supported actions for justice against police terror that the Party has led and joined in the past. Throughout the event we had members and friends read greetings from PLP members worldwide which discussed their struggles and commitment to communist revolution. We had different group performances of “Bella Ciao,” “Should I Ever Be a Soldier?,” “Too Many Names,” and “The Internationale'' in both English and Spanish. Participants also joined a “speed dating” activity where younger people were paired with the older generation and shared why they came to May Day and what was the biggest thing in the world they wanted to change.

One of the biggest highlights was hearing speeches from a member who was attending his 51st May Day and another member who had joined the Party a couple months ago. The veteran member spoke about the journey from campaigning for Nixon to working within Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and becoming a communist through joining PLP. He then symbolically “passed the torch” to the new member who spoke about how joining the Party filled a need he had to fight for a better world.

A poem with drums and a musical beat was performed by two Party members. The poem included verses about the police murder of Dexter Reed and the imperialist genocide taking place in Gaza. It touched on the catastrophe of global warming and the chemical spill in Ohio from a derailed train. It called for unity among all students and workers. It was critical of nationalism and electoral politics while calling for more people to join PLP.

The final speech was given by a veteran member of the Party which highlighted the power of “yet.” People in the world are definitely starting to see that capitalism doesn’t have anything to offer our class. The majority have not “yet” joined the Party to fight for communism, but they still can. People may not have “yet” joined a study group to learn more about communist politics, but they still can. People may not have “yet” read or distributed CHALLENGE, but they still can.

People who attended are not only excited about next year’s May Day, but also committed to the day-to-day struggles that PLP is involved in. Members and friends are reinvigorated to join student encampments. There is a growing west coast education collective that is having monthly study groups. PLP will continue to be involved in mass organizations in order to bring communist politics to the forefront of the struggles and recruit as many members as possible. We have a world to win. Happy May Day!!

DC: Workers from Iran remind me that we’re communists

On May Day, the Progressive Labor Party was joined by a group of Iranian workers, men and women, at Malcolm X Park in Washington, D.C. for our annual March for Communist Revolution. Their hatred of capitalism and the Islamic Republic of Iran was palpable. “What do you think about Hamas?” I asked. “Fascist!” was their immediate emotional response. I realized then that I had been too cautious about raising criticisms of Hamas’s nationalist misdirection of the Palestinian liberation movement at the many protests calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Listening to these workers’ description of Hamas as an organization that silences any debate within Palestine made me realize that I have to call for communism at every turn. They said, “Of course, that’s what we have to do.”

These workers also spoke to the fact that Iran’s government cares only about its power base. One of them pointed out that “Iran did not fire a single bullet” in support of Palestinians -- until three of its generals were killed in Syria. The Iranian Islamic ruling class does not care about working-class Palestinians. They enforce a reign of terror against workers in Iran as well. One worker referred to the music being played in the park and said that there was no freedom to play such music in Iran. He continued, an Iranian rapper is facing execution by the state! State violence against women has led to an organized movement called WOMAN LIFE FREEDOM. Their large banner shared this message. Another called for the destruction of the Islamic State. 

The U.S. rulers have tried to co-opt (in the minds of U.S. workers) the outrageously sexist character of Iran’s ruling class and government. An essay in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) laid out the horrors facing women in Iran and called for us to care about internationalism and listed Afghanistan and Sudan as well -- without any mention of Palestinians or Gaza. The essay thus served the U.S. bosses by attacking Iran without any support for Palestinians against whom the U.S. and Israel are waging genocide. The NEJM has gone to great lengths to avoid any mention of the 6-month-long genocide in Gaza despite a recent self-criticism of their failure to mention the oppression of Jews in Nazi Germany from 1933-1945. (Only after World War II was over did the NEJM cover the Nuremberg trials). Palestine has yet to get a mention! A joint letter to the journal by comrades pointing this out has not been published and most likely never will. Major medical journals have suppressed support for Palestinians. The American Medical Association has refused to consider any resolution even for humanitarian aid and their journal (JAMA) has only written essays in support of Israel. 

At the conclusion of the May Day rally, the Iranian workers sang the Internationale with us and then sang it in Farsi, to great applause from the other May Day marchers.As a result of these conversations, I plan to sharpen my conversations with pro-Palestinian protesters to call for organizing for communism and not just another capitalist nation-state. There are lots of examples in the past where national liberation was won but capitalist oppression and exploitation persisted. The failures in South Africa and Vietnam are the most familiar to U.S. audiences. My thanks to the workers from Iran who helped me think more clearly about this. 
*****

Brooklyn Nakba rally open to communist ideas

Recently a group of members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) participated in a Nakba day rally protesting the war and genocide carried out by the terrorist government of Israel, against the people of Palestine. This war has already claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people, more than half of them children, even newborns, a crime that is being condemned by all the peoples of the world.

During the protest, where there were thousands of repressive, racist and criminal police, we distributed hundreds of CHALLENGEs, which were received with great enthusiasm by many people and we also spread the line of our Party.

Before the march took off there were many police squads in riot gear and other repressive forces of the city who surrounded us on the sidewalk. As hundreds more protestors trickled in and with the leadership of hundreds of brave young people, we eventually took all streets and avenues in all its breadth, disrupting traffic on several streets in that sector of Brooklyn. So even a large squad of hundreds of police could not stop the disruption for several hours. But eventually at the Manhattan Bridge numerous arrests were carried out.

It was an eventful day of great militancy where our PLP group once again demonstrated our role and commitment to the masses and with the
conviction that only a communist revolution will end the war and destroy the capitalist imperialist system and all its evils.

*****

‘For workers in Palestine’

Below is the poem given at our May Day celebration dinner in Chicago

Well I’ve never been there, so I wouldn’t know,
but it seems it's a place where watermelons grow      (Palestine).
To give you a clue about where it’s at,
They once had a leader named Arafat.

But divide and conquer is the bosses’ game,
their political parties — they’re all the same.
To undermine Yasser and the PLO,
Israel funded Hamas and Genocide Joe.
5.3 million over decades you know,
AIPAC gave the money to Genocide Joe.
Schools, hospitals, they had mosques, even steeples,
smaller than Chicago, about 2.3 million people.
Vibrant and beautiful, it all had to go,
bombed into rubble, thanks to Genocide Joe.

In Haiti, in Pakistan, all over the map,
more and more workers are now fighting back.
The students are too -– more encampments you’ll see,
at Northwestern, at Emory, at USC.
The reps went to Columbia, they were hoping for a rout,
the students in the camp said get the F___ out!

Back in Chicago, you’re likely to hear,
chants far and wide on May Day each year:
“Working People Have No Nations,
Smash Racist Deportations”

The fight against nationalism you know that we need,
it’s definitely a message I’m sure we should heed.
For workers in Palestine, it won’t be a win
if all we can do is get a new capitalist in.

U.S. thugs deport Haitian workers

Al Jazeera, 5/17–The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has called on the United States to stop forcibly returning Haitians to their home country, which is facing a months-long surge in gang violence and continued political instability…UNHCR urged US President Joe Biden’s administration “to refrain from forcibly returning Haitians who may face life-threatening risks or further displacement” in the Caribbean nation. The call after the UN agency said “another US deportation flight landed in Haiti” on Thursday…
It marks the second such deportation flight from the US to Haiti in the past month. On April 18, the US government sent about 50 Haitian nationals back to the country in a move that drew immediate condemnation from rights groups.

Evidence of U.S. ruling class at work

Washington Post, 5/16–A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University…Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call…with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia’s campus, a log of chat messages shows…some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group’s members could pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters…Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted…The messages describing the call with Adams were among thousands logged in a WhatsApp chat among some of the nation’s most prominent business leaders and financiers, including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother of Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

French bosses desperate to hold on to overseas assets

BBC, 5/17–Hundreds of French police reinforcements have arrived in New Caledonia amid rioting that has left five people dead in the Pacific Ocean territory. French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said officers had been deployed to "regain control of all the areas that we have lost". The unrest erupted this week after lawmakers in Paris voted to change electoral rolls to allow more French residents to vote. Indigenous leaders say the move will dilute the political influence of the native people…French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said 1,000 extra police were joining the 1,700 personnel already there.

Under the 1998 Nouméa Accord, France agreed to give the territory more political autonomy…More than 40,000 French nationals have moved to New Caledonia since. This week, the National Assembly in Paris proposed granting voting rights to French residents who have lived in the territory for 10 years. 

Warmakers prep for world war 3 and making working class pay for it 

Financial Times, 4/26– How did the term capitalism arise? … [a]ccording to Michael Sonenscher, a British historian, the term emerged first in 18th-century Europe in connection with war finance… Sonenscher notes … [i]n French, someone who lent money to a branch of the French royal government was called a capitalist (capitaliste)… 

…[R]ising geopolitical conflict sparked a 7 percent, inflation-adjusted rise in defense spending last year to a record $2.4 trillion (about $7,400 per person in the US) … Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, this week put Britain’s defense industry on a “war footing” … 

…[H]istory shows that governments almost never tell voters the true cost of war, or how they intend to pay for it … The Watson Institute estimates that in the U.S. there has been $8 trillion (about $25,000 per person in the US) in military outlay since 2001, which was “paid for almost entirely by borrowing”. Absent early repayment via massive tax rises, miraculous growth and/or default, “interest payments could total over $6.5 trillion (about $20,000 per person in the US) by the 2050s.”

The genocide in Gaza is bringing two conflicting world trends to the forefront: the surge of fascist depravity and the rising movement for an egalitarian world. Inspired by the courageous resistance of the working class in Palestine to the Israeli rulers’ barbaric ethnic cleansing, young people around the world have responded with mass campus protests. As they witness the carpet bombing of civilians and the “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza (npr.org, 5/4), they are recoiling in horror from the capitalist bosses’ business as usual. Most important, they are fighting back.

Over the last two weeks, more than 2,500 college students have been arrested across the U.S. (New York Times, 5/7). In solidarity with the millions of displaced workers and children in Gaza, the student encampment movement has spread to Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. At the same time, the forces of rising fascism have viciously attacked the students. Given the choice of supporting peaceful protests or the mass murder of innocents, the capitalists’ mouthpieces and front people have made their position clear. From the mainstream media and liberals in the White House and Congress to Donald Trump’s MAGA zealots, the rulers’ stooges have come down squarely on the side of the U.S.-funded genocide. They have decided that protest must be crushed, that dissent will not be tolerated—a brutally clear message in a time of worldwide capitalist crisis. As inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens and the next world war approaches, the bosses are compelled to do all they can to try to pacify and intimidate the international working class.

But the bosses will not have the ultimate say. The fightback of workers in Gaza, and the unity of millions around the world to defend them, shows that our class can and must take our future into our own hands—by putting the bloodthirsty capitalists out of business with communist revolution.

How the bosses lie about violence

From Genocide Joe Biden's press secretary to House Speaker Mike Johnson to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the bosses' stooges have hyped a bogus narrative about "violent" protests and “rampant” anti-Jewish racism on the campuses. Strategically, Progressive Labor Party supports mass revolutionary violence to smash the violent capitalist state and put an end to the daily violence of the profit system. We also support the right of student protesters to defend themselves with force, as they did at UCLA, against the violence of the kkkops or gangs of pro-Zionist thugs. It’s good training for the bigger fights to come. 

In reality, though, the campus protests have been overwhelmingly nonviolent--akin to the sit-ins of the U.S. civil rights era, which were also met with violence from both the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan in blue. As college presidents have sicced the police on students for the crime of pitching tents on lawns, the cops have predictably resorted to chemical warfare and potentially lethal rubber bullets (Newsweek, 5/2).  At UCLA, videos showed dozens of pro-Zionists “attacking students…beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons….[V]iolence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention” (NYT, 5/2). Three days later, none of the thugs had been arrested for the assault. 

The bosses won’t hesitate to use violence against rebellious workers because they know they can’t survive without it. As a system defined by the theft of value from the many by the few, capitalism is built upon force and coercion. It is violent by its nature. As the bosses’ liberal democracy proves increasingly less able to keep their system afloat, they are moving steadily toward fascism. The liberal ruling class of finance capital, the main-wing bosses who back Biden and fund the Ivy League universities, are wantonly heaving out the so-called anchors of democracy, the phony freedoms of assembly, speech, and the press. At Columbia University, the citadel of liberal journalism, the cops rounded up student reporters and locked them inside a building to stop them from observing the scene of the police attacks (New York Magazine, 5/1). At UCLA, the coordination among university officials, cops, and fascist thugs represents a new development in the U.S. in this period, one reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

The false narrative of anti-Jewish racism 

Doubtless some despicable anti-Jewish sentiments have been voiced on or near campuses over the last several weeks. But for all the outraged hand-wringing in Congress and by the rat-fink college presidents, we have yet to see a single account of a Jewish student physically harmed because they were Jewish. (On the other hand, many Jewish protestors have been injured by cops and campus security because they were anti-genocide.) And we've certainly seen nothing to compare to the racist shootings of three Palestinian college students last November in Vermont (AP News, 11/30/23). 

Egged on by Biden, against virtually all of the evidence on the ground, the bosses' media and the pro-genocide Zionist pressure groups keep cynically conflating the students’ anti-Zionism with antisemitism.  In fact, these are two completely different things. Anti-Jewish racism—like anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim racism—divides workers and hurts the entire working class. Anti-Zionism—like all attacks on nationalism--helps the working class, including Jewish workers and students. The mid-2oth-century Zionists were a group of Jewish bosses who cut a deal with the British imperialists to create a “Jewish state” where they could exploit Jewish labor and super-exploit Arab labor. The birth of the settler colonialist state of Israel in 1948 expelled 700,000 Arab workers from their homes, a foreshadowing of the flight and displacement of nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza (Aljazeera, 4/23). The very concept of a Jewish state led to the racist apartheid we see today in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Like all states, the state of Israel must be smashed by communist revolution. 

The working class responds with international solidarity

The heroism and perseverance of workers in Palestine is moving workers and students around the world to rally to the defense of our class. Mass anti-genocide demonstrations have erupted across Europe, in Australia, in Mexico City, and—despite government crackdowns—in the Middle East. Fifteen hundred people have been arrested in Jordan alone (NYT, 4/29). In Paris, students at the elite Sciences Po—the alma mater of President Emmanuel Macron—occupied buildings, were battered by police, and forced the closure of the main campus (Barrons.com, 5/2). In Spain, Britain, Germany, and Australia, thousands of students have established anti-genocide encampments, demanding that their universities divest from any ties to Israel’s war machine (NYT, 5/3). In some cases, as in the U.S., these protests have been joined by anti-genocide workers—the “outside agitators” called out by compulsive liar Eric Adams. In the spirit of the Freedom Riders who organized against racist segregation in the U.S. in the 1960s, our Party calls for more agitation, from inside and out, to stop the mass murder in Gaza. All workers’ struggles belong to the whole working class. When workers and students unite in multiracial unity to fight back against state violence, they become a powerful force. Join PLP to smash capitalist terror and stop the bosses’ genocides for all time!