Los Angeles: We are the future

Los Angeles, April 27- We celebrated another year of the fight for communism with a lively May Day dinner. Over 60 students, teachers, health care workers, church members, friends, and family came together to share a potluck meal, speeches, collective art, discussion, struggle, and music.
Once again,our emcees were a Latina student and a Black teacher from our base. They kept everyone engaged and excited throughout the night. Our main speech talked about the Los Angeles teachers’ strike as a school for communism. Even though the union sold out the teachers, the more important aspect was the teachers, students, and other workers coming together to fight. There were two  UTLA teachers in attendance who received a strong round of applause, from the audience for their brave fight back.
Table talk
    In small groups we had lively discussions about the current 2020 presidential election candidates and whether we thought they could keep their reform promises under capitalism. Some people said they didn’t know much about who was running so far.
Others had heated discussions about how far reforms could go under capitalism. One example given was a small business owner who tries to give their employees a living wage and benefits but found out that even by doing unpaid labor themselves, they could still not break even.
Other comrades argued that even if something like reparations for slavery were instituted, the ruling class could easily take them away when they needed. These discussions will continue when we return to our schools and workplaces
Racism at the border and beyond
Throughout the dinner there was a slideshow presentation of scenes from the Tijuana, Mexico/United States border and examples of health care advances made in China after the revolution. Progressive Labor Party(PLP) has made numerous trips to the border and brought workers with them to join the fight against borders and the treatment of migrant workers. A Latin medical student and a health care worker spoke about their experiences traveling to the border to give medical aid to migrant workers there, making comparisons to Mao’s “Serve the People” campaigns in China.  The comrade and student spoke about their motivations for making the trip: solidarity and not charity and in a small way dismantling the bosses’ borders by building internationalism.   
Another Black student, a future healthcare worker, talked about his participation in the fight against racist police murder. He had joined comrades and friends at the annual public health conference, so his speech highlighted this trip and how he aims to stay involved in a local fight against new jail construction in the city. These two speeches were a step forward for us as this was our first time in a long while that we had close friends of the party giving speeches at our May Day dinner.
Working class art
One of the highlights of the night was the collective art piece. Fourteen Black and Latin high school students enthusiastically contributed to the painting of a mural depicting the working class joining together to make one fist to dismantle the system. The painting was labeled May Day 2019 and will start a collection of future May Day art pieces.
As always, we closed with a call to action before singing The Internationale: join PLP, march with us on May Day, come to the summer project, read and distribute Challenge. All of these are steps towards building the mass, communist party we need to destroy this oppressive, capitalist system and replace it with a communist workers’ state.