Letters of May 22

May Day Inspires Workers, Students: ‘We stand as one! The time is now!’

It was a very exciting and awesome May Day at the State Univeristy of NY in Albany. At 1 pm, students organized by the Student Revolutionary Coalition went through class buldings with  signs, pots and pans, yelling “WALK OUT NOW.” The students who joined in went around all the buildings, and met at the small fountain in front of the campus center. Students, faculty and staff joined in, about 100 or more people taking part in this rally against  corporations such as Sodexo and Coca-Cola at our university. Other demands were about the lack of diverse faculty and staff, and underfunded Africana and Latino Studies departments. Curriculum requirements for global culture classes are being cut while U.S history is still a requirement.
During the rally students took turns talking about what we are fighting for. We are also demanding fair trade products as options in our campus centers. Many custodial workers and food services workers (who are mainly black and Latino) joined us in this rally and also spoke about their struggles. After the rally at the fountain, we walked to the University administration building, where our demands were made clear to the president of the university. “All of our demands are non-negotiable!” one student said, “we will not stop fighting for what we deserve.  The time is now — we stand as one!”
It was amazing to see so many dedicated students walk out and stand up against injustice on campus. The president said he would set up a meeting about our concerns. We made it clear we are serious, and not looking for crumbs. The money needed for the things we are demanding is going into new buildings including a fountain and a stadium, while tuition and mandatory student fees are being increased by $300 and lab fees are going up!
Albany Student
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This was my second May Day, and I am more than happy to be part of PLP’s undeniable fight for a communist revolution. After being more involved and interacting with new people since last year, I enjoyed May Day more. It was amazing to hear what others had to say, and learn from their experiences and their struggles. The more I was involved and the more I understood what PLP is trying to overcome, the more I enjoyed May Day. More than anything, it taught me the importance of this holiday.
High School Student
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I experienced my first May Day event. It was inspiring to see the skit about Mayor Bloomberg and other bosses shutting down the schools, hospitals and raising bus and train fares. I really related to that particular skit because it showed the effects of capitalism and how workers protest them. I also enjoyed the vibe, how everyone was united and happy. PLP has given me a sip of the bitterness of black coffee that is capitalism. Lots of people in the working class suffer from unemployment, racist Stop-and-Frisk, few resources for youth, prisons and closing schools. I can’t wait to be in next year’s May Day skit.
Brand New Fighter
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PLP celebrated May Day in Brooklyn, helping to fight for the rights of workers. Many workers took a stand. I really enjoyed marching down the streets and chanting with people from different ethnicities. We all stood united and defended communism, which would create a better society for young and old. I used to think the U.S. was a “free country.” It really isn’t because we, the working people, are being oppressed by the capitalist system. Why do the U.S. bosses try to hide May Day? It’s because they want us to be in chains for eternity. But on May Day we proved them wrong. Nothing can stop us from celebrating such a historic day. It will lead to revolution. “Capitalism means we got to fight back!...Bush, Clinton, Obama, koupe tet, boule kay!” These were awesome, workers’ chants to let them know we are not afraid of their terror.
Inspired Tilden student
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What I liked most about May Day was how people united to fight back. May Day was a great way to come together to fight back against the violence the cops use against black youth, killing innocent people.
Anti-racist Youth

PLP Gives Birth to A New Proletarian Internationalism
An international, revolutionary, communist working-class movement is the only alternative to the capitalist destruction of the world and the genocidal massacres of imperialist war. Capitalists created the modern working class by organizing us into collective factory production. In the process, as Marx noted, they were creating their own gravediggers. Social production led workers to grow conscious of ourselves as a class that had no need for the capitalist class that privately owned the means of production and used state power to legalize its violent expropriation of the value of our labor.
Working-class consciousness reached new heights in the communist movement to seize state power by armed revolution. This movement aims to abolish capital, capitalists, and the ideologies that underpin the social relations of capitalism: individualism, racism, sexism, nationalism, and philosophical idealism.  Two great communist revolutions, in the Soviet Union and in China, showed the power of the communist vision — and also how hard it is to realize in practice and how easily it can be reversed back into capitalism.
Today it is time to rebuild the organized communist movement, this time on an international basis — one international working class, one international communist party, a new proletarian internationalism. It is time because capitalism is again creating its own gravediggers, now on a global scale.  The imperialist powers that dominate the entire world — though bitter rivals among themselves — are creating an international, de-nationalized labor system.
More than ever, the working class is swept up in a massive tide of migrant labor from poorer to richer capitalist economies. More than ever, workers of different national origins are living in world cities as a single work force. Millions of other workers, conscripted into the bosses’ militaries, are moved around the world with no respect to borders.
In short, modern imperialism is creating a new international proletariat. The capitalist bosses are giving us the material basis to organize an international communist party, to revolt against all owning and ruling classes, and to take state power to abolish capital itself. Organized by the international Progressive Labor Party, the new international working class can unleash a revolutionary movement with the communist vision to take power.
Dialectics teaches us about the distinction between appearance and essence. Capitalism appears to be unchallenged and triumphant throughout the world. In essence, however, it is a decaying system that carries the seeds of its own destruction.
Our world cities appear to be passive assemblies of hopelessly oppressed, divided, disarmed, and alienated workers. But in essence, they are launching pads of world revolution.
With this dialectical outlook, a small party like PLP begins to look like the seed of the international party that a communist revolution requires. The apparently local class struggles we join and lead become fertile soil of a new, international, revolutionary practice.
Our political line, while in need of deeper development, begins to look like the renewed stirrings of communist thought after a long, dark night. The obstacles and problems our Party faces are pangs of rebirth. They reflect a new beginning for proletarian internationalism after its historic defeat. 
If we take note of the new possibilities of the internationalized working class, we can sustain our hope to internationalize the Progressive Labor Party. None of our work is purely local or national. Every strike and protest and organizing drive — whether in Pakistan or the U.S., Haiti or Colombia — is linked to the international profit system and its preparations for world war. This May Day presents a new opportunity for PLP to build on our advances of the last fifty years and move toward a new proletarian internationalism, a world where “the international working class shall be the human race.” 
A Comrade
 

‘White skin privilege’ — A Bosses’ Ideology
I attended a Unitarian church meeting on April 14 in Minneapolis to view a film on “white skin privilege.” There were about 30 members of my church there, mostly  working-class, antiracist and white. Afterwards we discussed how to sincerely do something about racism.
Self-critically I was not as forthcoming on attacking White Skin Privilege. I hope to attend a Unitarian Convention coming up where PLP members active in the Unitarian church will be addressing it.
I tried to explain that it’s a bad ideology because whites are oppressed as workers while blacks are super oppressed workers. I gave the example of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Black workers made some political gains by being in struggle together with white working-class allies. Otherwise the little we got from the ruling class as “concessions” we would not have. As one of my antiracist heroes Frederick Douglass  aptly said, “Power concedes nothing without struggle.” I hope in time to learn ways of challenging it in church as a ruling-class ideology. That is why I want to be at the Unitarian Conference with my Comrades. Communist ideology will win out eventually.
Minnesota Red