NEWARK, NJ, May 2—It is difficult for workers to organize as a result of the current pandemic, but it’s not impossible. So how do we move forward and continue celebrating May Day? This year in Newark, we organized our first ever May Day motorcade in the Black and Latin working class neighborhoods where Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) we are deeply rooted, to express the communist line “The Only Solution Is A Communist Revolution!”
“Capitalism is the Disease! Communism is the Cure!” That was the theme of this motorcade and was used as a slogan to sharpen struggle with workers and students amidst a deadly pandemic that has already killed close to 10,000 workers in NJ and disproportionately affects Black, Latin and women workers in Newark and around the world (NJ.com, 5/9). For the 25 PL’ers and friends that joined, by car, on bikes and through Zoom, it was as exhilarating as it was a learning experience.
Communists lead class struggle
Unlike other reformist motorcades around immigration and rent strikes that took place downtown, PLP not only brought our politics to the Black and Latin neighborhoods of Newark where we have a base but called out capitalism for exacerbating this virus and incited workers to unite as the cure. Workers along the sidewalks raised their fists, cars beside us honked their horns in response to PLP’s communist politics displayed along the cars and antiracist, antisexist messages blasting from our speakers. We remixed popular songs from classic May Day chants, “The workers united will never be defeated! Who are we? PLP! Raise those red flags, raise them high, PLP is marching by! La migra, la policia, La misma porqueria. Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite.”
Along the route, comrades stopped at lights or would slow down to sell CHALLENGE  through windows while wearing masks and gloves to protect themselves and others. At the end of the route we entered the Stephen Crane Village Apartments, a public housing unit consisting of Black, Latin workers, and students. While teens ran to one of the car windows to take a CHALLENGE, the front of our Motorcade for Communism was met with a police motorcade for capitalism. “No good cops in a racist system” we chanted while facing a potential confrontation with the growing state’s fascist police.
Preparations and practice for class war
PLP and workers from the Newark Water Coalition collectively made a plan for the route, flyers, translations, posters, chants and who to contact if the racist cops started to make any arrests. For those who were unable to join, they followed the motorcade via Zoom. Some comrades and friends also rode on bikes beside the motorcade to be on the lookout for fascist pigs who would take any reason to disrupt working class fightback.
The route, practiced the week before by two comrades, included residential streets, a supermarket, two low-income housing units, and two hospitals. Flyers in both English and Spanish were passed out along the streets of Ivy Hill and North Newark where we’ve been organizing for decades and hung up on poles days prior to May Day. Cars were suited up with communist signs about the racist nature of this pandemic and some comrades even taped the front page of our May Day—Workers Day issue of CHALLENGE to their cars.
Preparing for this motorcade for May Day was useful to boost the morale of PL’ers, friends and workers alike–we acknowledged the dangers of the pandemic while still encouraging each other to push the limits of a disastrous capitalist crisis in order to move us toward a worker-led revolution.
A communist world is essential
This may be a dangerous time for many reasons - but there is great opportunity as well. Workers are angry, the fascist underbelly of capitalism is even more exposed and it is up to us to struggle against reactionary ideas. Having collectivized historical analysis, lessons from years of fighting back and most importantly, the potential of an angry working class hungry to fight to win, building for a communist world is essential. The motorcade showed how workers along the march were happy to see and hear communist ideas put forward by a multi-racial, multi-generational group of protestors in cars and on bikes. Join the fight for our world, not run for profits for the bosses, but run by the working class, for the working class!