The following is a speech given by a new PL’er at the conclusion the of the NY/NJ march.
Hi Everyone, today is one of the most exciting days of my life , words cannot express how i feel to be here celebrating May Day with my comrades and be active like I wanted to be a year ago. I want to share with you all my experience, and why I chose to join the fight. I join the fight to defend my convictions and my ideas. From my experience, I know that only the struggle pays off. This is the reason I came here And not staying in my corner to push a rant.
I joined PLP because I know that although the bosses try to fool us with their “Labor Day” in September, we know that May Day is the real holiday for workers because it emphasizes working-class unity and shows the potential of our class to lead society. I experienced this when I flew to Alabama with one of my teachers to support the nine months-long miner’s strike. That's when I discovered more about PLP and saw workers’ power in action. Despite the bosses’ best efforts to distract us, workers around the world and around the U.S. will celebrate May Day with marches and rallies like the one we are having right now. Workers around the world are showing that we must build multi-racial unity and working-class consciousness to raise a new, dynamic political construction: the dictatorship of the workers, where every worker is respected and given the opportunity to contribute and lead in society.
I joined PLP because I am currently a nursing student at Lehman College. My school is made up of working-class Black and Latino students who have been neglected because of the racism of the capitalist system. We know that communists believe that workers need to be truly educated, not just in how to treat patients and prescribe medicines, but also in how capitalism functions, how class struggle is the key to progress, and how workers can run society. I still remember my first experience fighting this racism - joining a march to the CUNY chancellor’s house. We marched against racism and for better pay for our teachers. As a student I couldn’t just sit back and watch what is happening at CUNY without joining the fight. I united with Hostos students to fight for the opening of the cafeteria and their cafeteria is now open. Together we can succeed! Just like in China in 1949, we know that when the working class, led by communists such as us in PLP, take power again we will bring this education to every worker in the world!
I joined PLP because I was born in Haiti, and when I look at how the working class there continues to suffer under racist oppression, I know there has to be a better way. We can see how the system forces our brother and sister to run away, how they force us to leave our beautiful community for a better life elsewhere, and what happens to the people who stayed. What happens to people like me that have family that we would like to spend time with? They use our own people to kill us, they use fear to tear us apart, to divide us, to convince workers to turn against workers. We are strong together, we did it before, we can do it again. Nou se premye pep nwa libere, nou konen byen unite se fos nou, we show others the way, we can find our way back and save workers in Haiti and around the world from this mess. Let’s unite, let's find our way back, let's fight together.
I joined PLP because we are fighting for a society where everyone should have the same opportunities to build a life. Where ordinary individuals can become extraordinary.Where another of our brothers will not have a knee on his neck for another 9 minutes 30 seconds. Say his name. George Floyd. In that society we are fighting for, no role will be bigger or smaller because it will guarantee the idea of human equality. You, you, and you, join us, join me, let’s unite, and fight this system that keeps breeding servants of the ruling class, killer cops, racist unemployment and imperialist war!
Join me and fight together against anti-immigrant policies!
Join me, join us, let’s fight together for the international working class!
Join me, join us, let’s fight for a communist revolution!
LOS ANGELES–The 12 months since last May Day have been a hell of a year for the working class of the world. With Covid-19, imperialist wars, continued police murders and terror, unemployment, and lack of housing ravishing working-class communities, especially Black, Latin and Asian, it can be hard to imagine creating a better world for all of us. But May Day reminds us that we have a communist world to win and we can join together with our class brothers and sisters to fight to achieve that goal.
Celebrating struggle
This year in Los Angeles the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) hosted our own dinner in a local park. Our May Day event was organized by a committee made up mostly of students and close base, several of whom were attending their first May Day. On May Day, a multiracial, multi-generational group of 50 workers gathered to celebrate with speeches, songs, poetry, and food. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon filled with the collective efforts of comrades, friends, and family to bring together nourishment for the mind, body, and soul.
The program was emceed by a comrade and an enthusiastic student celebrating her second May Day. Another group of students shared a skit depicting the history of May Day. In between, musician comrades led us in lively renditions of Bella Ciao, Too Many Names, and Deportees. There was the ever popular Table Talk and CHALLENGE Quiz where we discussed what PLP is and fights for and what communism is and how we can achieve it. Even though not everyone agreed, we had lively discussions that will continue as we move forward.
Another highlight was a poetry performance hono
ring the first May Day fighter, Frederick Holder (who was killed by LA County Sheriffs two years ago), and all the impacted families out in the streets. We continue to fight alongside impacted families in Los Angeles and link their struggles to the world-wide fight against police killings.
The struggle continues
PLP has been involved in struggles against police terror for many years. In LA, we have continued to work directly with several victims’ families during the past year. These families have led regular rallies and protests, recently bringing the fight directly to the District Attorney’s neighborhood and very doorstep. Not only do the families speak about their experiences with the racist LAPD and the LA County Sheriffs, but we show our strength by taking over the street and collectively confronting the police. We have also been active in a tenants union campaign organizing in a building where the slumlord is refusing repairs and trying to evict tenants who are leading the struggle. All of these actions continue to be welcomed and supported by workers who live in these areas.
Many attendees were excited to learn more about communism and PLP. Two students are already planning to participate in next year’s May Day program and others are ready to come to the summer project. As a result of our ongoing work, many hundreds of people have been exposed to communist and antiracist politics and more people understand the strength of the working class when we unite. The future here looks bright for the growth of PLP and our movement to rid the earth of the capitalist exploiters and their henchmen in “law enforcement.”
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Lynched by capitalism: Neely, disposable & deserving of a better world
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- 11 May 2023 602 hits
NEW YORK CITY, May 10—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members demonstrated with workers, charged Daniel Penny, a white ex-marine for lynching Jordan Neely, a displaced Black worker-artist, with racist murder. Using a “banned” chokehold on the NYC subway May 1, bigoted Penny killed our class brother when he needed help the most. In an expression of class rage at the system that commits countless murders, we distributed over 200 CHALLENGEs, connecting Neely’s murder to capitalism and providing an alternative with the headline “May Day: Power to the Workers!”
Under communism, all workers would have safe housing and resources, instead of being discarded like trash if they cann’t produce profits. They wouldn’t have to seek shelter in subway cars and fall victim to mental illness and suffer from substance dependency. And they wouldn’t be galvanized to see other workers as their enemies.
Displaced workers not disposable
Neely was having an mental outburst when racist vigilante Penny lynched him. The bosses’ racist ridden system murdered Neely, and Penny dealt the deadly blow. The ruling class’s racist conditions brainwashed Penny into seeing a displaced Black man as disposable.
This crime represents the rise of fascism. U.S Imperialist bosses are going head to head in a desperate competition for the world’s resources. They will stop at no cost to defend their profits on the backs of workers. As more funding goes towards imperialist competition against Russia and China, the bosses are cutting even more critical services for workers-especially Black and Latin ones-and simultaneously increasing direct attacks on them.
Liberal pols response with fascism
Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul predictably released statements either trying to appear “neutral” or giving lip service to helping workers.
From one side of his mouth, racist Adams said, “we cannot just blanketly say what a passenger should or should not do in a situation like that” (Hell Gate, 5/4). Later, he said Neely was “Black, like me.”
But actions speak even louder. Adams just last year announced plans for a $2.8 billion spending cut to the Department of Homeless Services while increasing the NYPD budget to $11.1 billion (CItyLimits, 2/18/22). Last November, he issued a directive that emboldens city agencies and kkkops to involuntarily institutionalize anyone who “looks like” they are having a mental crisis.
It’s clear which class Adams serves. And it’s not the working class!
Meanwhile, Hochul played dumb: “I will look at it more closely to find out whether the state has a role.” Liberals love to present themselves as antiracists, but their actions and words always prove otherwise! They’re no better than these republicans spouting openly racist rhetoric about Neely. WIth Adams and Hochul’s plan to flood the trains with more kkkops and force the displaced into unsafe shelters, it’s clear the working class can’t rely on these bosses’ pawns to give us the support we need.
Capitalism attacks
This capitalist system in decay created the conditions for a racist Penny and a distressed Neely. Penny was stationed at Camp Lejeune during his time served. This is no coincidence, as the camp was tied to a Neo-Nazi plot to attack power substations (Fox 8, 4/18).
As capitalism spirals into crisis, low wages and a lack of affordable housing or decent health care are scourges that plague the entire working class. But, they fall hardest on those targeted by capitalist racism and sexism. The capitalist ruling class needs the racism that empowers cops and vigilantee racists to criminalize, dehumanize, and murder Black workers.
Workers rage justified, need PLP
Workers are outraged at Neely’s murder. At the Broadway-Lafayette station, where Neely was murdered, workers had a vigil and occupied the train tracks, chanting, “Justice for Jordan Neely.” The kkkops made arrests, and bruised and bloodied in a pindown.
To understand what’s to come, we just need to look at what happened after mass uprisings in 2020 in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Many workers had desperately hoped that capitalism could be reformed to the point where Living While Black would no longer be a crime. But Neely’s murder proves once again that as long as we allow the profit system to exist, the capitalist rulers will keep siccing their racist mad dogs on Black and Latin and immigrant workers. Once the bosses diverted the reform movement to defund the police into the election campaign for Jim Crow Joe Biden, the liberal politicians flipped, as usual, to serve their capitalist masters. Despite the fact that the U.S. murder rate fell last year and remains far below what it was in the 1980s and ‘90s (usatoday, 1/26), the bosses are using a trumped-up “crime wave” to pour more money into police terror and put more cops on the streets. The results? In 2022, at least 1,176 workers and youth—a record high—were slaughtered by the cops.
That’s why we need to channel antiracist fightbacks into the class struggle, and build a movement to direct that anger into destroying capitalism and establishing a workers’ state. Otherwise the bosses will just redirect our fightbacks into more do-nothing reforms. The only way to bring safety for all workers is for us to run a communist society without these bloodsucking scum! Help us make that world a reality.
International Workers’ Day, represents a day of unity for the working class, but not as an end in itself. Despite our diversity as an international class—women and men; young and old; workers and students; rural and urban; Black, Brown and white; immigrant and native-born—we should use May Day as a catalyst in our struggle to thwart the will of all the bosses—the worldwide ruling classes and their flunkeys. Their aggressive attempts to trample on all the needs and aspirations of workers everywhere will, in the end, fail and capitalism/imperialism will come crumbling down and be replaced by an egalitarian society through the means of communist revolution.
And make no mistake about it: ruling classes everywhere are becoming more and more aggressive in the race for power, where imperialist war (or war between the imperialists’ proxies) would be one of the surest strategies to increase not only their capital but also their control of the world’s resources. If we follow the strategies put in place by the bosses, our class will pay the cost: the lives of workers (soldiers and civilians), more racism and sexism, more economic and health misery.
The bosses need to increase social inequality to try to save their crumbling system, while workers need to fight back to stop them. There is no other choice. It’s “them” or “us,” and we want “us” to be the winners—short-term and long-term—in this struggle.
Rebellion needs communist focus
Workers in France are currently fighting back valiantly against the cutbacks in pension benefits that the rulers need to impose to save their system. Students are fighting side by side with them, against the class enemy, because they know that their own future is in the balance. And we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them as well. But we need to fight for more than reforms of the capitalist system. Reforms won can be taken away if the same capitalist system remains. Yes, we can win this battle but lose the war if we don’t fight to rebuild the international communist movement, fight to smash the capitalist tread-mill of reformism once and for all. This is the goal of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)—one working class, one mass party, all fighting for the same political line!
Our world to win
Solidarity between all comrades, among workers on a planetary scale, is the only way we can win. By building the PLP, we will fight for communism everywhere, following the leadership of the most advanced among us, and fight for the emancipation of our class and transform society on an egalitarian basis.
To our comrades in the PLP and our friends everywhere: Let this May Day be the beginning of a new year of revolutionary struggle on the part of the foes of capitalism and imperialism. To all comrades, current and future: Our struggle against the bosses/ruling class will inevitably lead to a transformation of society on an egalitarian basis.
The folloing letters are International May Day Greeetings!
Our Party, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been sending out the alert to the workers of the world that the capitalist, imperialist world needs wars, big and small, as they fight each other to secure their profits. Every day events show that this is real and inevitable. The end of the reign of the U.S. capitalists is not acceptable to the Western imperialists. They are ready and willing to shed every last drop of our blood to keep their power.
The war in Ukraine, for example, is leading to an escalation of economic and financial difficulties throughout the planet. The risk of major conflict in Taiwan is drastically increasing. Meanwhile, the struggle for the riches of the African continent continues to escalate between the Western powers, Russia and China. Alliances shift between countries according to their capitalist interests.
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The working class, our class, is the most threatened by the escalation of conflict among the world’s bosses. Exploitation, poverty, hunger, lack of free access to clean water and health care, racism and sexism: these capitalist ills are on the rise throughout the world. So, comrades, we must say no to the capitalists' wars for profit. We must shout loudly, “Turn the guns around!” and prepare to fight in our own class interests.
Our war is the war to bring about communist revolution, the war to end once and for all the criminal capitalist system. Our war is the war to save the planet from the destruction caused by the profit system. Our war is to build an egalitarian world free of racism, sexism, and poverty. Comrades, this May Day—and every day—we are organizing workers wherever we live and work to remind our class that the fate of the world is in our hands, that we must pick up the red flag of communist revolution and foil the capitalists’ plans. We must amplify revolutionary struggle.
In this tumult of war, in these moments of uncertainty and torment for the working class, our Party must continue to grow, strengthen and expand. Despite a most monstrous level of misery for workers by the criminal bosses and their flunkies, the Progressive Labor Party in Haiti is organizing workers and students to bring them into the Party and to fight for communist revolution. We are in working class communities, involved in struggles big and small, to win our class brothers and sisters to understand the roots of the tremendous exploitation they face and why egalitarian communism is the only solution. We are in schools and universities to win students, teachers and campus workers to fight back against the miserable conditions that capitalism has created. Our Party is modest, but our commitment is growing: our confidence in the working class and the Party expands our possibilities. Criticism against practices of the capitalists and the communist solidarity that we struggle to show every day allows us to build trust in the masses and allows the masses to have trust in the Party.
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The PLP in Haiti sends you these revolutionary greetings. Let the struggle of the working class and its communist party—the PLP—continue! Let our voices ring out loudly along our marches and in all our May Day events: “Workers of all countries, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
