International vigor at Oakland May Day

­­Oakland, April 28—Progressive Labor Party comrades, friends and families celebrated May Day with a rousing May Day dinner. There was living, breathing International working class unity as the 70 plus participants came from over 10 countries, were multiracial and multi-generational. We welcomed new members with applause and congratulations all around.
Every topic was about communism, and workers were involved in table talk conversation which followed each presenter.(See quotes from dinner participants.)
A young student opened with a bilingual greeting and history of May Day. We closed with singing the International.
Oaxaca teachers fight bosses’ terror
A slide presentation about the long, massive, on-going struggle of Teachers in Oaxaca against the State Violence of the Mexican ruling class and their fascist police/military apparatus by a comrade who has participated in leading that struggle for many years. Workers who heard the presentation commented:
“It was inspiring to hear about the hundreds of thousands who have united in this struggle and that PLP has played an important role in developing working class unity for 30 years.”
 “It had an awesome, international flavor. Teachers in Oaxaca and teachers in the U.S. are fighting for their students and families. We think in local terms about our community…but here, we find out about what happens in other places. ”
“We can’t always predict when and how battles will unfold…Struggles happen that we don’t expect and have many contradictions. We admire the striking teachers in the U.S. but many were Donald Trump supporters…..Yet, they broke the law and fought for their students and families.”
Red social relations
A comrade from El Salvador described communist relations in the daily lives of her small town before and during the civil war in the 80s. Mass murder sponsored by U.S. Imperialism and the Salvadorian capitalist class caused huge internal migration so that workers and peasants flooded into her small town. The people mobilized to build shelter and feed the migrants—all without money or wages. For generations, families had produced for their needs, created products for their use value and shared or traded what abundance they had. This communal life-style developed from both the indigenous and African heritage of the people in the town.
Gradually, capitalist commodity production undermined this culture and introduced money and profit. People in the town needed products that they could not produce themselves, so they were forced into commodity production for individual use. Workers who heard the presentation commented:
“People feel better and healthier when they live as a community….it’s a side of human experience that capitalism destroys.”
“People already lived in a community…which is communism. They did not have a name for it.”
“This story gives me confidence to talk about communism as the best way to organize society because people have some connection with communist relationships. Anti-communism is not all we know.”
Game highlights gains & lessons of past revolutions
Three young comrades redesigned the game to show the victories and lessons from the communist revolutions of the 20th century. Each table discussed photos from the Soviet Union and China to illustrate the fight against racism, sexism, and capitalism led by the communist parties in the USSR and China.
Then with visual aids and participation at each table, they presented some policies that communist parties implemented which brought socialism back to full blown capitalism and reversed the gains of the working class. Such as: cult of the individual, wage differentials as material incentives which developed inequality, welcoming former bosses into the communist party,  making productivity and efficiency primary over ideological struggle for “share and sharer alike” society. They thought communism required a prior state of abundance for the working class to get on board.
The presenters, then, connected these previous experiences to the struggle in PLP to learn and develop towards the fight for communism around the world: for example: collective leadership, internationalism not nationalism and much more.