This year’s PLP May Day activities focused on the importance of building our party to organize the revolutionary communist movement. Comrades and friends reviewed the PL-led struggles of the past year, from organizing in Occupy LA to fighting police brutality in Anaheim to mobilizing high school students against LA Unified School District’s fascist conditions.
High school teachers from LA and Oakland detailed the school campaigns against those conditions, from locked bathrooms and random student searches to exposing the tying of teacher evaluations to test scores. Another comrade noted their struggles in opposing police brutality and repression in Anaheim which mobilized many young working-class people throughout the area. A healthcare worker revealed the development of the international work in Haiti.
Communist poetry from working-class struggles in Latin America and in the U.S. was shared in English and Spanish, including a performance by High School youth who performed a reading of Langston Hughes’ “Good Morning Revolution.” Everything was arranged collectively, from the pot-luck dinner to the decorations to the childcare. Everyone left reinvigorated for another year of struggle.
Today, there were a few marches in downtown LA. PLP participated in the one organized by various immigrant rights groups and the LA County Federation of Labor which called for immigration reform. Early on, our contingent confronted Eric Garcetti and his supporters marching near us. Garcetti is a local politician running for mayor on a pro-immigration, pro-labor platform, with Barack Obama’s endorsement.
After confronting a leader of the Garcetti contingent who felt we were too close to them, we made it clear we had no interest in being associated with Garcetti by chanting Tenemos Que Luchar!” (We must fight back!”).
Along with thousands of workers, we marched through the heart of downtown waving our red flags and chanting with our fists in the air. As we marched, workers in factories waved, cheered and put their fists out the windows as we passed by. People who didn’t make it to the dinner came out for the march. We led strong chants and gave short speeches about the recent garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, tying the struggles of the garment workers in LA to others around the world.
Progressive Labor Party proclaimed the spirit of May Day in chanting and marching for workers’ power and communism.