MAY DAY ... CHICAGO: ‘Celebration of workers’ potential’

As we start our march today, keep in mind that the only way we can create a society that works for our class is that we must fight like hell to get it. We will not win through the ballot box, we will not win it through prayer -- We will win it through building a conscious international working class that is woke to revolutionary communist ideas!

CHICAGO, May 6 –With these true and inspiring words, a veteran Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member helped kick off our International Workers Day (May Day) celebrations. Close to 70 multiracial comrades, youth, co-workers, neighbors and friends enthusiastically rallied and marched through the Uptown neighborhood this afternoon with open calls for communist revolution and workers’ power.
In contrast to many May Day events around the world which have become reformist circuses pushing the bosses’ ideas, PLP unapologetically stays firm in our fight for nothing less than a worker-run egalitarian world. Let the red flag of communist internationalism continue to unite us against capitalism’s racism, sexism, and endless wars for profit!

Rallying our worker forces
The decision to hold May Day in Uptown this year was made in consideration of the sharpened class struggle taking place in this part of the city. In the last year alone, Uptown has been home to some of the most militant fights against capitalist-driven displacement and rotten health care (See CHALLENGE, 9/7/22 and 1/19). Many immigrant and unhoused workers living in the neighborhood have given key leadership to these struggles, and we have been proud to fight alongside them.

Our initial rallying point for the day was a busy intersection next to public transit routes and a city college. Having held weekly CHALLENGE sales and rallies at the same site for months leading up to today, PLP and our communist politics have made an impression already with workers and students in the area.

As more of us filled up the rally area, a pair of comrades led us in chants (including some brand new ones) to get the energy up. We unfurled our communist banners as well as colorful signs that we designed at an art event the weekend before. Along with the veteran comrade’s kickoff speech, another Latin worker highlighted her work organizing among immigrant families in public schools and explained the pitfalls of nationalism:

Nationalism is another one of the problems that we have been fighting to abolish… Internationalism is the goal to end prejudice, injustice and exclusion among the working class.

Take the streets, spread communist politics
With our forces at critical mass, we took the streets and began our march. A security team of marshals helped protect everyone involved and helped guide the pace. A team of CHALLENGE distributors helped ensure the Party’s ideas got into the hands of the masses, getting out approximately 300 newspapers. Many honked their horns and raised their fists in support of our calls for communism. Some even heard our chants and spontaneously joined the march!

We made our way to the site of a clinic associated with Howard Brown Health, one of the bosses’ networks that infamously laid off dozens of workers just before the latest holiday season. At the site a comrade with experience working in nonprofits blasted their exploitative nature with a rousing speech:

We’ve seen schools and mental health clinics close across the south and west sides while racist politicians pour money into policing. Howard Brown is no exception; the cuts and layoffs are happening in the same places where they always make cuts, in Black and Brown communities.

We need to build collective power and abolish capitalism. Under communism we can begin to build a new system where there is mass participation, where workers have real power and control over their labor, and where we can prioritize people and not profits!

Get with the revolutionary program
We concluded our march close to the lakefront, just a stone’s throw from the site of the heroic #RiseUptown anti-displacement struggle last year. A comrade who lives in Uptown shared his analysis of that struggle and the international connections he has built in the neighborhood:

Capitalism can never be reformed… Let’s use the international ties that can be built in Uptown to export our Party’s ideas to more corners of the world, to the international working class!”

We were treated to a delicious lunch along with some pro-worker poetry, May Day greetings from comrades in other countries, and moving performances of Bella Ciao and the Internationale. Lastly, for the keynote speech, another veteran comrade highlighted the power of communist politics and the Party:
The imperialist crisis is providing an opportunity for the international working class and PLP. We are faced with the choice to follow the bosses down the road to war and fascism or to rise as a class to fight for communist revolution and workers’ power. Only communist revolution can end the bosses’ wars!

May Day represents a communist future
May Day will always be a celebration of workers’ power and potential. It is a day when we reinforce our unity, build morale, and are offered a glimpse at a communist future beyond capitalist ideas of race and borders. Let’s live every day like it’s May Day, and win the world we deserve!