Workers March Against Haitian Bosses’ Budget

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, September 18—As growing demonstrations against the anti-worker national budget entered their third week, class struggle here is intensifying. A general strike was called by transport workers, followed by two more days of demonstrations. From the capital to the provinces, up to 10,000 people have angrily taken to the streets to protest outrageous attacks on the working class, including a flat tax of US$186 for access to public administration services and an annual renter’s tax of six to 10 percent. For example, an individual in a home worth US$3226 would pay US$326/year. The bosses’ budget includes more money for the functioning of Parliament and the executive branch than for education and health.
According to Radio Kiskeya, the strike was 95 percent successful around the capital. It was also widely respected in St-Marc, Petit Goave, Les Cayes, and Hinche, all large population centers. Union leaders are calling this a warning strike. If the government persists in going forward with the budget, more actions are planned.
Encouraged by the showmanship of one senator who tore up the budget on the floor of the Senate, the protests began with hundreds taking to the streets. But while a dogfight has surfaced among politicians in Parliament, it will not put an end to capitalist exploitation. Only conscious class struggle can lead to communist revolution and crush capitalism. Workers are voting with their feet for a mass demonstration to organize even more people against the government. Many called for more than tearing up or burning the budget, but for revolution as the only way to address the needs of the workers and students of Haiti.
The bosses and their police are trying to suppress these demonstrations because they threaten the stability of what is locally called the “restavek” bourgeoisie. (Restaveks are children of the poorest sectors of the working class, bought by the wealthy as domestic slaves). The police have answered the protestors with live bullets and tear gas. Several people have been wounded, and the gas has permeated workers’ homes.
In Port-au-Prince, the demonstrations snaked through the city, into middle-class neighborhoods like Pétionville, home to store owners whose products are often unobtainable by workers, and up to Pélerin, where President Jovenel Moïse lives. The police have been particularly brutal as they protect the private property of the rich.
Students from the State University and others gathered in front of the Faculty of Ethnology at the Universite d’Etat d’Haiti. They raised money to rent a sound system and buy materials for placards. Claiming the street, artists among the militants sang revolutionary songs denouncing the bourgeoisie and the State in an event called “Concert tear up, burn the budget.” The crowd took up the call and added its own verses, such as “Tear up, burn down the Parliament.” After each verse, different people took the microphone to encourage more people to join the fight. A Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  member set the tone by calling for class struggle to fight the bosses to the end: “We will not be asked to pay for what should be our rights. It is necessary to revolt against the bourgeois system, which dreams only of more exploitation of the masses.” Every time a journalist tried to question the PLPer, he replied by shaking his sign: “This budget is a conspiracy of the State and the bourgeoisie against the masses.”
In one provincial town, up to a thousand people—practically the entire population—blocked the streets as they joined the popular movement, responding to the call of PLP to fight back against the bosses.
PLers are intent on giving a different kind of political leadership to these mobilizations. At the end of a Port-au-Prince concert, the crowd took off shouting, “Where are we going? To Parliament to tear up and burn the criminal, anti-people budget.” The PLers called for “anti-capitalist revolution.” Many in the crowd, which grew in strength as it marched through the streets, took up this chant as well. Arriving at Parliament, the group denounced the bourgeois politicians and their capitalist bosses for several hours, threatening to invade and burn down Parliament. The police assigned to protect the government were ineffective at containing this angry group.
The struggle in Haiti must continue on the basis of class struggle, not by favoring political or parliamentary leaders who seek mass support for the rulers’ elections. Taxi drivers, workers, street merchants—the majority of people we met agreed with this fight. Class struggle grows daily in Haiti. The masses increasingly understand their situation and the exploitation they are facing. The working class here is strengthening by the day.
Our Party must step up to lead and expose the misleaders, be they bourgeois shills, reactionary nationalists, or fake leftists who espouse reform and elections over communist revolution. It is our job to win the hearts and minds of workers, students, and soldiers. It is our responsibility to organize them into a fighting force to destroy the capitalist system and all that it stands for: exploitation, racism, sexism, national borders, imperialist war. It is our imperative to build a new society, communism, based on equality, where workers rule in our own interest.