CHICAGO, March 24 — Events and circumstances change if we are prepared, bold and militant! To support the call for justice for Trayvon Martin, twenty Progressive Labor Party members and supporters joined a rally of 300 people at Daley Plaza. The outraged participants demanded that the racist George Zimmerman be arrested for the murder of Trayvon in Sanford, Florida. Speakers called for everything except a communist revolution. Some wanted a U.S. Justice Department investigation, while others took the opportunity to vent about all sorts of past grievances. Only the PL’ers came there to build a movement to end this racist system with communist revolution. To that end, we circulated among the crowd and sold CHALLENGEs and distributed a Party leaflet.
After the initial rally, the organizers called on everyone to march to a second rally in Millennium Park. During this march, the PL’ers adopted a bold stance and chanted for communist revolution as the only solution to racism and racist killings. We came prepared with our bullhorn, and soon most of the marchers and many bystanders were joining our chants.
Upon our arrival at Millennium Park, we seized the momentum and drowned out the empty speeches of the organized speakers and called for communist revolution. The crowd gathered around our bullhorn and listened intently and cheered our speeches. We explicitly exposed Barack Obama and the imperialist wing of the U.S. ruling class, along with all of their racist attacks on the working class, from Chicago and Detroit to Baghdad. All the while, we were distributing leaflets and selling CHALLENGEs as fast as we could. The scene was electric and we were unprepared for what followed. The organizers of the event asked our comrades to lead the march back to Daley Plaza. They literally handed over the demonstration to PLP!
We took up the charge and led about 100 protesters back through downtown Chicago with communist chants and speeches. It was reminiscent of our actions in the 1980s, when there was still a shadow of a class movement. The young Party leadership changed the character of the march, arming the workers with a communist analysis and militancy. People along the march joined our chants with great passion. When we reached the Plaza, we held what was essentially a PLP rally! We gathered information from 20 contacts and are currently pursuing them.
The events of the day demonstrated that we must be bold and militant when putting forth the Party’s politics. We should be confident that the working class is ready to embrace our revolutionary communist analysis and plan of action. Death to the racist profit system, power to the working class!