May Day: Celebration and Militancy

BROOKLYN

Hundreds of members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party marched on Flatbush Avenue this past Saturday, hailing from New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New Jersey. The May Day march was led by high school and college students, and the multiracial composition of the marchers was received enthusiastically in the predominantly Black and Latin working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. More than 6,000 CHALLENGEs were sold and over $5,000 was raised from the community, and at various points  members of the community joined our march, raised their fists and give us their contact info. Shutting down traffic in one direction, a sound truck with a DJ playing beats at the lead kept the chants loud and the atmosphere militant! Drivers saluted us honking their horns.
This May Day celebrates 50 years of the Progressive Labor Party. Speakers throughout the march pointed out that as we celebrate the history of the international working class. PLP’s international history is proud and just getting warmed up. PLP has been involved in or led militant struggles in at least two dozen countries, in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia and Africa.
As our march proceeded past intersections where unarmed Black youth were murdered by the police, a comrade on the sound truck addressed the marchers and the community that the only answer to these racist police murders is to join PLP and help us continue to build an international, fighting revolutionary Party. The spirit and militancy of the march showed that PLP is ramping up its forces for the tasks of the next 50 years, becoming a mass working-class Party and organizing communist revolution!
A highlight was a report from two PLP students from Baltimore who spoke of their struggles there since Freddie Gray’s murder, and a background to the racist conditions in that city. The keynote speech at the conclusion of the march connected the current conditions of the international working class and the need to fight for communism with her own life and struggles as an immigrant worker. She then invited all who believe in fighting racism and capitalism to join PLP’s fight, that a communist world is possible, and that we can win.
Following the keynote address, two friends of PLP from Germany spoke and commented that this was their first U.S. May Day, and how inspired they were to participate in the march. They explained that in Germany, where May Day is an official holiday and is treated as more of a parade, PLP’s May Day brought out militancy and struggle! The crowd was then treated to a poem written by one of the Baltimore students, before dispersing into a nearby park for box lunches.
On PLP’s 50th anniversary, our fighting international Party, and our fight to build a mass multiracial communist movement, is growing. This May Day in New York City, in the belly of the U.S. imperialist beast, was both a celebration and a call to be a part of the next 50 years of world history. Fight for your class sisters and brothers and join us!

SAN FRANCISCO

PLP members and friends participated in two separate May Day coalition marches on both sides of the Bay.
We were impressed and inspired that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers voted for a stop-work meeting to honor May Day as the International Workers’ Day with the spotlight on labor against police terror. The ILWU has a long history of work actions that support anti-racism and for international solidarity with fighting workers: anti-apartheid, the racist murder of Oscar Grant, attacks on workers in Palestine, and attacks on immigrant workers. The ILWU on the West Coast came out of the Communist Party organizing industrial unions in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, they refused to load ships with supplies going to U.S. soldiers in Siberia who were fighting the newly-found Soviet Union. It still reflects some ideas from this earlier communist movement. The May Day shut-down of the ports was a small taste of workers’ power.
In San Francisco, the May Day march focused mainly on issues facing immigrant workers, but also on the whole range of how capitalism devastates the working class around the world: by paying workers low wages, state terror against immigrant workers, and marginalizing indigenous workers from San Francisco to Mexico, forcing Black, Latin, and immigrant workers into the prison system.  
In both marches, PLP joined with and led chants in English and Spanish. Our banner and red flags, and communist literature tied individual issues to their root in capitalism’s racism and exploitation of the working class.
We’ll shut it down every day ,
 ….We’re doing this for Freddie Gray  
…..We’re doing this for Amilcar Lopez
 ….We’re doing this for Alejando Nieto.
….We’re doing this for Ramarley Graham.
Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras.
Immigrant workers are under attack, what do we do? Stand up , Fight back.
Primero de Mayo, Communista y Proletario.
Fight for Communism power to the workers.