May Day: Newark

Newark, NJ May 1— On this May Day, more workers worldwide are fighting the capitalists’ mass layoffs, cutbacks due to government austerity, and police terror. PLP’s idea that nothing short of communist revolution can ever change the fundamental reality of capitalist exploitation, racism and sexism needs to emerge from these struggles. Some workers here are beginning to examine this idea. Their actions reflect a break from the idea that the bosses’ election circus can help our class.
Today, 75 people, including about 25 legal services workers, family members and clients, along with community and union militants, marched against the continued underfunding of free legal services for unemployed and low-wage workers; continued cuts in unemployment benefits and Food Stamps; mass racist unemployment and for jobs; and in solidarity with public school workers and students facing the ax of state-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson’s school closing plan.
‘Jobs, Yes. Racism, No — Food Stamp Cuts have Got to Go!’
Chants of “Same struggle, same fight, workers of the world unite,” “Whose day, Our day, What day? May Day,” and “Jobs yes, racism no. Food Stamp cuts have got to go” were heard in downtown Newark.
Over 150 CHALLENGE newspapers were distributed. This march was a major organizing effort for local legal services workers, and included a healthy battle over ideas.
After a Nov. 1 march against budget cuts, legal services workers here initiated a War Against Poverty Coalition (WAPC). We reached out to unions, community and neighborhood groups, teachers, students, and service providers for homeless people. In February, the WAPC decided to organize today’s march with two demands: jobs at living wages, and restore cuts to the safety net. A demand to stop attacks on public school students, parents and teachers was added.
A sharp debate took place within the WAPC over whether politicians who said they supported the demands of the march should be allowed to speak on May Day. Some honestly believed that having the politicians on our side will help win our demands. They also didn’t see a viable alternative to voting as a way to change the system. Opponents strongly argued that, no matter who the individual politician is, their role is to serve the current masters of society, the ruling class. They also said that any politician who speaks will use that opportunity for their own narrow political purpose — getting elected.
The Coalition decided to only recognize those politicians who supported the demands of the march, but to not allow them to speak. Because there are hotly-contested May 13 mayoral and city council elections, various Democratic Party candidates or staffers contacted the Coalition and unsuccessfully tried to worm their way on to the speakers’ list. However, WAPC stuck to its position.
The legal services worker who spoke for WAPC linked the cutbacks to war preparations. She said U.S. bosses  “are trying to use us as mere pawns in their war games in their battle for supremacy against other international imperialists around the globe” and said that we should fight back instead of allowing these same bosses to place us “in a Hunger Games Arena.”
The community fighter stated it was not enough to fight for reforms; that we must also fight for revolution to change the economic and political system that workers live under. However, he hoped such a revolution would not require violent struggle. He invoked Martin Luther King’s pacifism and Frederick Douglass’s call to action against slavery.
Only Armed Struggle Can Topple the Bosses
PLP says there can’t be a peaceful revolution to get rid of capitalism. For centuries, oppressed people who rose up against their masters, kings and bosses to change conditions were violently suppressed by these same rulers. The struggle to abolish chattel slavery in the U.S., which did not end all forms of exploitation here, only came through armed struggle against the armies of the plantation owners.  As Marx said, “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” It has taken many lost lives and broken spirits for class-conscious workers to realize that neither the election of “progressive” candidates, or a mass reform movement, or both, can break the power of any boss-run government.
The final rally ended with the singing of the Internationale, a song written by a transport worker who fled the Paris Commune (an uprising of workers that led to the first worker-run government in the world) in 1871 to escape the slaughter of 30,000 Communards by the army of the French capitalists. One worker was inspired and asked for words to that song. As we move to the next stage in this struggle against capitalism, we are a step closer to the “better world in birth” that PLP is fighting for.