Nepal Earthquake: Capitalist Disaster

Two massive earthquakes have recently struck Nepal. The first earthquake on April 25 was 7.8 magnitude and killed more than 8,000 people. The second earthquake struck on May 12, with a magnitude of 7.3, killing over 200 and injuring thousands. Between the two earthquakes, entire villages were flattened with more than 95 percent of all houses destroyed in the area. More than 2 million workers are displaced with hundreds still missing. There is nothing “natural” about this disaster — the earthquakes are created by forces of nature, but the disasters are created by capitalism!

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‘The Future Belongs to Us Only if We Dare to Fight for It!’

This is the main speech at PLP’s May Day in NYC

What Day? May Day! Whose Day? Our Day!

Today, we celebrate the working class. today, we celebrate our revolutionary force that can’t stop and won’t stop fighting back!

In Haiti, we fight back!

In Mexico, Pakistan, Ferguson, Baltimore, Brooklyn, we fight back!

Today, we celebrate the 50 years that Progressive Labor Party has been a fire under the bosses’ ass. We celebrate the 50 years that PLP has been fighting for the communist aspirations of millions of families, youth, and workers! And we are growing in numbers beyond the hundreds and hundreds present here today, growing beyond the borders this country — across 28 countries and five continents!

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Rulers’ Plan: Turn Rebels into Soldiers

The cops are one of the capitalist state’s tools of oppression, an essential instrument to terrorize workers and deter  fightback against racism and inequality. But the history of class struggle shows that police atrocities also expose the bosses’ vulnerability. They spark anti-racist rebellion. They bring us closer to the revolution that will smash this brutal system once and for all.     
The latest example of this contradiction came when working-class youth in Baltimore rebelled against capitalist exploitation and the racist murder of Freddie Gray. In a frantic move to turn down the heat, Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby brought criminal charges against six cops involved in the modern-day lynching. (Three of them are Black.) Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic Party candidate for president in 2016, is vowing to reform “justice” in the United States, notably a prison system that locks up a higher proportion of Black men than South Africa’s at the height of apartheid.

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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.

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MAY DAY 2015

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

We PL’ers in Israel-Palestine participated in three May Day marches in our region, two in Tel-Aviv-Jaffa and one in Nazareth.
On April 30, a march was organized in north-central Tel-Aviv by the pro-boss Histadrut union federation as well as its youth movement, HaNoar Hoved (Working Youth) and its adult counterpart, Dror Israel (Freedom Israel). While this march was organized by liberals, a more progressive group attended it: the Coalition for Direct Employment. This group, of which one local PL’er is a member and another is a supporter, fights against the horrors of contract work and for regular employment and unionization.
Approximately thirty contract workers, including PL’ers and our friends, attended this march, carrying signs calling for full-time employment and against the contract bosses. Slogans compared the contract bosses to organized crime bosses (which they are) and called for an end of this ultra-exploitative phenomenon. Many of the marchers were social workers, a profession which is increasingly outsourced by the government, as well as housekeeping workers, a job which is almost entirely outsourced to contract bosses.
On May 1, May Day itself, hundreds of workers, including local PL’ers marched in central Tel-Aviv in the main May Day demonstration. This march was organized by fake leftists (the Israeli “Communist” Party and Socialist Struggle) as well as liberals (the Meretz party), but militancy was high and flags ran red. The march was headed by a sign reading “Workers of the World - Unite!” Some of our friends, Palestinian and Jewish, attended. Under the red flags, workers demanded an end to exploitative capitalism and to contract work.  However, the phony reds mostly shouted slogans about “nationalization,” which, under capitalist rule only means the industries moving from ownership by one boss to collective ownership by the entire capitalist class through its state. We countered this by calling for revolution and the elimination of capitalists to be replaced by workers’ power.
On May 2, a May Day march was organized in Nazareth by the fake Israeli “Communist” Party. This party has a strong base there and was able to fill the streets with red flags and celebrating youth, but did not really call for communism or a revolution. PLP came and raised the red flag in this city as well.
In all cases we raised the red flag high and put communism forward, in most cases together with our friends. We hope that next year we will present an even stronger red block on May Day.

COLOMBIA

Comrades, friends, and workers of the world, we send militant greetings from Bogota, Colombia.
Today we are celebrating one more year of struggle on the International Day of the Working Class. We celebrate with our sights set on the unity of the workers of the world under the red flag of communism and its communist party, PLP. This has been one more year under the rule of the parasitic capitalist class, its racist wage system, its endless wars, its sexism that divides us and weakens us, and its fascism and violence against our class. In short, it’s been a year of working-class struggles, protests, work stoppages, strikes and mobilizations that keeps us committed to the communist ideals of a better world.  
In Colombia, workers live in misery and need. There is a teachers’ strike, unemployment, low wages, poverty, prostitution, crises and chaos in the health care system, malnutrition, drug addiction, high cost of living, a cynical bourgeoisie and a prostrated left that advocates working for peace. But we tell workers, through our newspaper CHALLENGE, that revolution is not negotiable; that we will not negotiate to escape from slavery and will not negotiate to escape from capitalism. We tell workers that the capitalist state is our sworn enemy, an enemy of the working class and of our youth. We tell them that we reject the passivity and the electoral distractions, and that the state cannot be reformed but must be destroyed by a communist revolution. That’s why we need revolutionary organized violence under the leadership of our Party.   
Capitalism has thoroughly shown that it can no longer rule the destiny of humanity, because its laws and contradictions make its destruction inevitable. That’s why we are organizing workers politically in more than 27 countries, consolidating our revolutionary line to overthrow it with the power of the international working class. PLP and its newspaper CHALLENGE call on the unity of communist to fight for this noble goal. Join us!

Rebellion in Baltimore

BALTIMORE, May 1 — Much of the working class loves and respects boldness in the fight against racism! Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party protested throughout Baltimore today in what was the beginning of a rebellion against racist murderers.
On the night of April 24, a modest-sized group marched through downtown and South Baltimore. They blocked traffic in support of the struggle to win justice for Freddie Gray, and for all victims of police brutality. Many motorists — both Black and white — were highly supportive, honking their horns in agreement, throwing clenched fists in the air, and sharing warm smiles. However, one driver with a confederate flag on his antenna drove threateningly, acting as if he would actually run us over. People courageously stood in front of his vehicle, stopped him, and one person, without hesitation, ripped off his confederate flag.

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Fighting Against Racist Police in Worcester

WORCESTER, MA, May 6 — The Progressive Labor Party held a forum on police terror here. Speakers showed how racist police terror is a key tool of capitalism and that fighting it using the bosses’ rules cannot change it. Only getting rid of capitalism can destroy racist cops.
One speaker exposed how even filing complaints is useless. He cited the testimony of a police detective who said that not one of the complaints in Worcester over a long period of time were even investigated. They were just rubber stamped as “unsubstantiated.”

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PL History: Building the Party with Industrial Workers

In our May 6 issue, we published an article celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party. In addition to describing the origins of PLP — including its forerunner, the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) — we noted four main principles for organizing a communist movement: a concentration among industrial workers; the fight against racism and sexism; internationalism, with one international party leading the international working class; and the necessity of armed struggle, since the bosses will never cede state power peacefully.
Beginning with this issue, we will revisit specific struggles that helped PLP grow to our current presence in 27 countries on five continents. We begin with our concentration among industrial workers.

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ANSWER TO RACIST POLICE MURDER REBELLION

MARCH ON MAY DAY

SATURDAY, MAY 2^ND IN NEW YORK CITY

WITH PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY

50 YEARS OF FIGHTING FOR COMMUNISM

Bus transportation leaves Baltimore at 6:45AM sharp from 33^rd Street YMCA lot.

 NYC: Nostrand & Flatbush junction (2 to Brooklyn College) at 11 AM this Saturday, May 2

First Ferguson. Now Baltimore. It was a rebellion. Not a riot. Politicians, preachers, cops and the media all labeled the militant youth everything but what they are — rebels that have lead a powerful and inspiring uprising. On the whole, the youth targeted the racist bosses and their goons.

The anti-racist rebellion shows us that when push comes to shove, the racist police are no match for a united and fighting working class. Youth are fighting against tear gas, The National Guard, and over 7,000 kkkops, all while defying the orders of the mayor and other capitalist officials. We have a lot to learn from them.

The cold-blooded racist police murder of Freddie Gray was not an isolated event; the cops killed him, and continue to target Black workers and youth because the vicious racist ruling class needs to terrorize us into accepting a future of poverty and imperialist war. We refuse to accept it!

We don’t accept a life where being Black means you can be gunned down at any moment with little to no consequence. We don’t accept a system where the lives of Tyrone West, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Shantel Davis, Kyam Livingston, Kimani Gray, and Ramarley Graham mean nothing to these killer kkkops! There are too many names! This system doesn’t deserve to exist! The bosses call for “bringing order” and “life back to normal.” This “normal” is racism in our schools, in hospitals, and in the streets! A rebellion was long coming! To anti-racists everywhere — protest in solidarity with the rebellion started in Baltimore at your schools, at work, in your churches, unions, and in your neighborhoods.

The rebels broke capitalist laws, the same laws that protect mass murderers that are responsible for millions of deaths from racist profit wars, global drug cartels, mass poverty, and unemployment. These gangsters in suits walk free, run businesses, command armies, and hold government power. The ruling class tries to paint Blacks, Latinos and the immigrant working-class as criminals. The real criminal is this racist system. The bosses close hospitals, schools, and keep people unemployed. They also murder workers and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan for oil.

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ALL NIGHT, ALL DAY WE WILL FIGHT FOR FREDDIE GRAY!

MARCH ON MAY DAY

SATURDAY, MAY 2^ND IN NEW YORK CITY

WITH PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY

50 YEARS OF FIGHTING FOR COMMUNISM

Bus transportation leaves Baltimore at 6:45AM sharp from 33^rd Street YMCA lot.

Cost:  $25 for workers  –  $10 for students and unemployed

 click here to download

We are here today for Freddie Gray and for all victims of police brutality, including Tyrone West – unarmed and beaten to death by 11 to 15 racist cops in July of 2013.  To this day, none of those cops have had any charges pressed against them. They’re still on the force, on the streets.  A week-and-a-half before killing Tyrone West, two of the same cops severely beat Abdul Salaam, in his driveway in front of his child.  If those killer cops had been fired and put in cell blocks right away – as they should have been – Tyrone West would probably be alive today, together with his loving family!

Now, witnesses have described some of the details in the death of Freddie Gray, at the hands of Baltimore police. One witness, Kevin Moore, ran out of his home when he heard screaming, and saw Freddie Gray handcuffed and face down on the ground with one bicycle cop’s knee on his neck, and another cop bending Freddie’s legs backwards, so his heels were against his back.  Moore said his friend was “screaming for his life” and that the cops “had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami.  He was all bent up.” Moore further explained that Freddie “said, ‘I can’t breathe. I need a pump,’ and they ignored him. . . The police yelled, ‘Stop resisting,’ but there was no resistance.  He couldn’t move.” 

After dragging Freddie into the police van, the van made three stops before reaching Western District station.  At the first of those stops, cops put leg irons on Freddie, and witnesses say the cops roughed him up, yet again, during that stop.  The thing we know for sure, is that Freddie’s death – while in police custody – is on the hands of the Baltimore Police Department.  These cops play a key role, part of the systemic racism of the criminal “justice” system. 

We seek to change the whole system. We don’t rely on elected officials or politicians or others in high places. Our power is generated by the activities of working people, enraged by the ongoing racist murders from Baltimore to Ferguson to Staten Island. When we chant “Fight like Ferguson,” we salute the leadership given by the mainly young, Black workers of Ferguson. They refused to back down in the face of a highly militarized police terror campaign, instituted to stop them from fighting back after the police murder of Mike Brown.  

In the case of Tyrone West, justice has been demanded from the City State’s Attorney, from the Mayor, from the Medical Examiners office, and from the State legislature – but not even a shred of justice has been found, after 21 months!  That fight will continue, and so will the struggle for justice for Freddie Gray!

But one thing is very clear. The only solution is communist revolution, and only through the Progressive Labor Party can we smash a system that doesn’t deserve to exist, and build a system for all working class people. One theme – strongly felt by the pained families of all those whose lives have been taken by police violence – is that we do not want to see this happen ever again to any more working-class young people.  We in the Progressive Labor Party stand with these families.  Join us on May Day!

Contact us at www.plp.org

or email us at revolution500@gmail.com