MEXICO: ‘Communism is the Future of Humanity!’

Fifty members, friends of the Progressive Labor Party lifted the communist flag during the demonstrations commemorating May Day in Oaxaca and Mexico City . We distributed about 7,000 local CHALLENGES and hung up about 200 posters, in which we called for the international unity of the working class and for workers to join the Party to fight for a communist society.

The communist slogans and chants echoed in the streets and were heard by thousands of workers, which attentively witnessed the small but militant steps of our contingents, that sang: “¡Que viva, que viva, que viva el comunismo!, ¡que muera, que muera que muera el capitalismo!” (Long live communism, death to capitalism) 

Around 50,000 workers from different unions participated in the demonstration, opposing the fascist reformist labor law the government is pushing, which favors temporary contracts, reduces compensation for layoffs and cancels some “working rights.” In the meantime union leaders are trying to win the workers to accept the reforms or to vote for their electoral parties. Our Party put forward a differet solution to the masses: destroy the bosses´ laws with a communist revolution to establish a society run in the interests of workers.   

The demonstration motivated young and old members of the Party. Workers joining the demonstration for the first time were impressed by seeing the communist flags and hearing chants amongst the thousands of workers. It was a successful May Day and we will invite more people next year. Communism is the future of humanity; our dedication and determination in the struggle will make it possible. Until Victory! Long Live the PLP

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GERMANY: Workers, Youth Battle Cops

BERLIN — Ten thousand workers and youths, including Kurdish youth, engaged in pitched battles with 6,000 cops ordered out to oppose the May Day march. They marched from Kreuzberg to Neuk, two working-class districts in the German capital. Their main slogan was For Social Revolution Worldwide. Sound trucks denounced racist police violence against immigrants here. The crowd chanted that “everyone in Berlin hates the cops.”

The marchers smashed the windows of several banks in a hail of stones. Then the police waded in with riot clubs, tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon, after which the marchers attacked police station #55 in Rollbergstrasse with stones and bottles. The attacking cops repeatedly halted and broke up the march, but the workers and youth countered with stones, bottles and firecrackers.

When the organizers called an early end to the protest, the cops apparently saw this as a sign of weakness, attacking both marchers and by-standers. Many people had to be treated for pepper spray.

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CUNY Profs, Students Blast Bloomberg’s Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, May 5 — Over 800 members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union and City University students rallied at City Hall today to protest planned budget cuts by billionare Mayor Bloomberg. Chanting “Tax the rich, not the poor, stop the war on CUNY!” they marched across lower Manhattan to the Manhattan Community College (BMCC).

At BMCC union members and students addressed the crowd. The main PSC speaker stated that they would not accept the austerity budgets of Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo, nor an austerity contract. Increased class sizes, shortage of counselors and other staff would severely impact on the quality of CUNY education. “Our working conditions, are your learning conditions,” she told the crowd.  We are faced with “not a crisis of capital, but a crisis of capitalism,” meaning that it’s not a crisis of government funding, but of the capitalist system.

Students described how racist tuition increases were affecting them.  Some are working longer hours to pay for school and to contribute money to their families because their parents are unemployed.  Many fellow classmates have been forced to drop out of school. 

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World’s Workers March... ...on May Day!

Los Angeles

Comrades and friends of Progressive Labor Party marched proudly through downtown. Our revolutionary communist group of high school and college students, workers and teachers, made themselves known to the thousands of fellow marchers in the local May Day/Immigrant Rights march. The March organizers wanted workers to focus on voting and immigration reform, but PLP made it loud and clear that May Day is the day for international working-class unity and fight-back. 

We carried our red flags proudly while friends carried signs that attacked capitalism and reformism.  We reached out to the workers and students around us, winning them to chant, “Queremos un Mundo Sin Fronteras; Tendremos un Mundo Sin Fronteras” (We want a world without borders; we will have a world without borders) and “Este Puno Si Se Ve, Los Obreros al Poder” (the fist that you see will bring the workers to power). A group from two churches marched together in our LA May Day march. It was the first time we’ve linked the two churches, both of which pride themselves on their “social justice” efforts. It was an integrated gathering and we were able to get CHALLENGE to our friends during the march.

Friends and Party members discussed aspects of our line in the march. One woman from a church thought that what we needed was a “charismatic leader” to bring the fragmented and reformists politics together. The PL’er argued for the need for a revolutionary communist Party, the Progressive Labor Party, to unite our class. He said “Wasn’t Obama that charismatic leader?” She said “yes,” but he was never “for the workers.” She’s been close to other comrades and her participation reflects our potential to build the Party within mass organizations engaged in some form of class struggle. The struggle continues! Happy May Day and power to the working class!

The Dinner

“I felt a big responsibility to communicate the message of May Day,” said the young Latina emcee for this year’s May Day Dinner. Kicked off by the energy and enthusiasm of our two young emcees, this year’s dinner offered a night filled with communist celebration, songs and speeches.

The evening began with a brief speech about the importance of fighting for communism and joining PLP. Our other new emcee was a young comrade industrial worker. He shared why he decided to join PLP as a high school student, when he realized that racism, exploitation, and imperialism were products of capitalism.

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Chicago: Honor 125th Anniversary Where May Day Was Born

“The kkkops, the kkkourts and the minutemen, all a part of the bosses’ plan!” shouted high school students as Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched to commemorate the 125-year anniversary of May Day. In this immigrants rights march, 3,000 Asian, Latino, black and white workers marched through the streets of the Pilsen neighborhood surrounded by cops. Despite the presence of the bosses’ thugs, hundreds of CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed to marchers and workers on the street.

Fake leftist groups were there en masse. One young friend of PLP asked, “What’s the difference between those groups and PLP?” They chanted, “The people, united, will never be defeated,” while we chanted, “The workers, united, will never be defeated.” The weakness in their chant is that bosses are also “people,” but they are only interested in exploiting workers, especially super-exploiting others.

Another group opposed federal spending on war in favor of jobs and education. All imperialist wars must be opposed, but the working class needs state power, not temporary jobs or mis-education from the bosses. Yet another group pushed the line of their individualistic leader. The young friend felt more assured that he marched with the party that had the best line.

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FRANCE: Internationalism, Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism

Working-class internationalism, anti-racism and anti-fascism marked the May Day marches in France this year. The main banner in the Paris demonstration of 30,000 read: “International Solidarity and Social Progress.” In Rennes, where 1,000 rallied in Town Hall Square, workers chanted, “French workers, immigrant workers, same bosses, same struggle!”

Among the 120,000 who marched in 280 cities nation-wide, May Day slogans included equal rights for foreign workers and support for the Arab peoples who are rising up for their dignity and freedom.

Hundreds of North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, particularly recently-arrived Tunisians, participated in this years’ May Day. Support for these workers, who were and are victims of racism going back to French colonial times, reflected the anti-racist feelings of the overall marches. This was their answer to the racism of the fascist National Front .

A group of 200 young Tunisians followed the lead banner in the march here, chanting “Defend the Tunisian Revolution.” Syrians, Libyans and Moroccans chanted other slogans attacking authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. “Bashar Beat it!” proclaimed a banner attacking Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad. In previous years, undocumented workers from sub-Saharan Africa had also joined the May Day celebration.

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SAN FRANCISCO: ‘Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders!’

PL’ers a rallied before the May Day March of over 1,000 workers here. Old and new friends sought out our contingent as they identified with our emphasis on the international working class, armed revolution and on our open advocacy of communism. Our enthusiasm came from confidence in the working class worldwide because we knew that our comrades were marching around the world for communism.

Our banner read, “Workers, Soldiers and Students, Fight for Communism!” as we led chants in the March and distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets. The literature focused on how capitalism attacks all workers; whether they be immigrants, public workers, or workers in other countries. We addressed the local battles of SF MUNI (public transit) drivers, the growth of racism with the jailing of millions of black and Latino youth, anti-immigrant attacks and U.S. Imperialism. One unifying demand was “Smash All Borders!” We chanted with many: “Workers’ Struggles have no Borders, Fight for Communism!” One immigrant worker asked to carry our red flag and spoke at length with a PL’er about why we need a party. 

The March itself was organized by a Coalition Immigrants Rights group and others opposing imperialist war. Immigrant rights issues such as amnesty, ending the federal Secure Communities program, fighting low wages and exploitation of immigrant workers related to the needs of many workers who watched the march.

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ALGERIA: Fight Massive Unemployment

ALGIERS, May 1 — Despite a massive police presence, nearly 100 workers and students held a May Day rally today organized by the National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed (CNDDC) — [initials in French]) to highlight the massive 30% jobless rate in Algeria. Slogans included “dignity, equal opportunity and decent work.”

The CNDDC is a coalition of various student, teacher and youth organizations. The main speaker was a long-term unemployed woman with a college degree, Dalila Touat. The cops had arrested her last month for handing out leaflets and had just released her three days ago.

“The demands of the unemployed are simple,” she declared with tears in her eyes. “How are we to explain the fact that, in a country that is rich in so many natural resources, there is so much scorn for citizens who only ask to work and to live?”

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Osama bin Laden: the CIA’s Frankenstein

Reprint of a 2001 CHALLENGE Editorial

The New York Times (9/14/01) published an extensive article by Middle East expert Judith Miller, titled "Bin Laden: Child of Privilege Who Champions Holy War." While it is no secret that Bin Laden was a creature of the U.S. intelligence services, Ms. Miller merely smoothes it over by saying, "…the U.S. had worked ‘alongside’ him to help oust the Russians from Afghanistan…" The U.S. "work" poured in $2 billion!

If anyone is to blame for the terrorist activities of Bin Laden, it’s the CIA.

Why are bin Laden and the U.S. bosses now enemies? Although the present conflict is posed as a "holy war," it is basically for control of the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden represents a section of the Saudi ruling class (from which he comes) that does not want to share this oil with Exxon-Mobil. U.S. bosses know if they lose Saudi Arabia after having lost Iraq, they won’t control the biggest oil producers of the cheapest oil in the world. Without it, U.S. imperialist supremacy is in serious question. Bush’s "holy war"for oil is likely to wind up with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

CIA Trained bin Laden to Wage Anti-Communist Holy War

In 1979, bin Laden, who inherited a personal $300 million fortune from his father (a construction boss billionaire), decided to abandon his former life of luxury and dedicate himself to fight communism. When the Soviet army entered Afghanistan to support a pro-Moscow government there, bin Laden was recruited by the CIA to become the financier of the anti-Soviet "holy war." In 1986, William Casey, CIA chief under Reagan-Bush Sr., approved an old proposal by the Pakistani intelligence services to recruit Islamic fundamentalists worldwide to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

While the Pakistanis did the recruiting, Saudi Arabia provided money and the U.S. gave political support and "funneled more than $2 billion in guns and money…during the 1980s. It was the largest covert action program since World War II (Washington Post, 7/19/92). Soon, 35,000 fundamentalists came to fight alongside the Afghani holy warriors. Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo III (1988) was based on this CIA vision of the world: then the "good" guys were the bin Laden "holy warriors" types fighting the "evil communist" Soviet empire.

Bin Laden and his followers learned all their tricks from the master terrorists: the CIA. "It was the CIA which taught him how to be bold…It was also the CIA which taught him the tricks of a secret war: how to move money around using ghost companies and off shore fiscal paradises, how to prepare explosives, how to use coded messages to communicate with his agents and avoid detection, how to retreat into a safe base after a big blow to the enemy…"(El Pais, Madrid, 9/14).

Soon after the Soviet Army left Afghanistan and the Soviet Union itself imploded, the U.S. and its Pakistani allies began supporting the most backward of all the holy warriors, the Taliban. The Pakistani intelligence services financed all of this by smuggling opium and heroin from Afghanistan. In 1991, when the U.S. led an imperialist coalition against Iraq, and U.S. troops were stationed in the Moslem "holy land" of Saudi Arabia, the fundamentalists united against the new "evil empire," their old friends in the U.S. Bin Laden joined forces with other fundamentalist forces like Islamic Jihad of Egypt who had murdered Anwar Sadat, considered a lackey of the U.S. and Israel. These forces represent a section of the Middle Eastern ruling classes which use religion to cover their desire not to share the oil wealth with U.S, imperialism/Exxon-Mobil.

But even while bin Laden has become the number one bad guy on the U.S. hit list, some of his followers are still serving U.S. bosses. Last April, Secy. of State Colin Powell approved $43 million in "humanitarian" aid for the Taleban. Furthermore, many of the veterans of the Afghan "holy war" were fighting alongside the U.S.-supported Kosovo-Albanian "freedom fighters" during the 1999 air war against the former Yugoslavia. And more recently, some have fought with the Albanian forces against the government of Macedonia.

Again, when one talks about terrorism, don’t lose sight of the big ones: U.S. imperialism and its CIA. And don’t lose sight of what is behind the "holy war" between bin Laden and the U.S. bosses: control of oil profits.

Join the PLP and make a RED entrance at…

MAY DAY 2011

NYC MAY DAY 2010

Los Angeles: Sunday, May 1^st at 11:00am

W 12^th street and W Broadway  

San Francisco: Sunday, May 1st at 11:00am

24th  Street and Mission St

New York City: Sunday, May 1^st, 2011 at 12:00 PM

Chatham Square (intersection of Bowery and Park Row)

Chicago: Sunday, May 1^st, at 2:30pm

Union Park (intersection of Lake St And Ashland Ave)