The following is an excerpt of the main speech that will be given on May 4 at the Brooklyn, NY May Day march.
Fellow workers from the international working class, veterans, new, and future members of PLP—Happy May Day!
There is no holiday like May Day. It’s the only day when we unite as one international working class to celebrate our collective struggles and triumphs. It’s the only day where we wave the red flag, the only flag, symbolizing our courage, power, and vision for a new world when we will all be rid of the oppressive chains that bind us.
Whether it’s your first May Day or your 50th, or whether you’re watching from your window or passing by, being here with you is an honor. May Day is the day we in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrate our history of internationalism, antiracism, antisexism, and communist revolution. We are a revolutionary organization committed to fighting for a world in which workers will own, share, and run all of society—a communist world.
For more than half a century we have been a fighting Party standing shoulder to shoulder with striking auto, transit, mining, factory, farm, and education workers on the picket lines from the U.S. to Mexico to Pakistan. We organized against the U.S. rulers' slaughter in Vietnam. PLP championed antiracist rebellions against police murder in Ferguson, Chicago, Missouri, LA. We took the streets of Flatbush for Kimani, Kyam, and Shantel. It is an honor to be celebrating my ninth May Day as a member of PLP and to contribute to this long tradition of fightback with the vision that one day millions of workers will flood the streets and drown this rotten capitalist system in the bottom of the sea.
Since October 7, the streets have erupted with workers’ collective rage against genocide. From Michigan to Yemen, the masses marched to the rhythm of one slogan: From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free! With revolutionary potential, dock workers from Belgium to India refused to load weapons for Israel. Workers shut down bridges and blocked airports from NYC to San Francisco. Students at Columbia University, NYU, and other campuses are risking suspension, expulsion, and deportation to take a brave stance against genocide.
Today we celebrate May Day under increasingly dangerous times for the international working class. For 210 days, the Israeli rulers have bombed Gaza into dust, murdered untold thousands including aid workers. The U.S. rulers’ are scrambling to hold on to their top-dog status, tested by rival imperialists from China and Russia. The rulers are staring down the barrel of World World III as the situation grows hotter in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Taiwan. When faced with these dilemmas they have no choice but to rip off their liberal democratic mask and break out their fascist mask. The Middle East is a tinderbox with the fascist Israeli and U.S. rulers at war with Iran. It’s a future that can only promise world wars and nuclear holocausts.
The question we must ask ourselves from now is, what is our vision for a new world for a better future? Capitalism or communism?
Only one can guarantee freedom for the working class from all the rivers to all the seas.
A future under capitalism looks like millions more workers starving, homeless, and unemployed.
It looks like killing our children’s potential with mediocre education or being drafted in the next world war. It looks like working till you're in your grave. It looks like millions dying in hurricanes, droughts, pandemics, or at the hands of killer kops. It looks like more Gazas, Haitis, and Congos.
Many of us are infected by the rulers’ toxic ideologies of individualism, nationalist ideas, and electoral politics. Misled workers wave nationalist flags instead of the red flag. The goal of national liberation was a dead end then and it’s a dead end now.
Nationalism is a fire that will engulf the world in conflict. From the rivers to the seas, only communism can put out that fire. It will set us free!
The history of nationalism was inked in the blood of our class. Yesterday it was Nazism that killed millions of Jewish workers. Today it is Jewish nationalism (Zionism) that commits genocide of our class siblings in Palestine. It’s nationalism that dupes workers in Israel with the false promise of protection under a Jewish state, a promise only the few ruling families in Israel enjoy while most live under extreme inequality and are forced to conscript and die for the Jewish star.
At the same time, an independent state won’t mean liberation for workers in Palestine. Like most former colonies, it will be the same capitalist prison. Before October 7, the Hamas and The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rulers that managed Palestinian oppression already proved that this would be the case. Working-class resistance is happening, but it will be drowned under nationalist misleadership.
A future under communism would be vastly different. It is a world without borders where all workers are free to move across all the rivers and all the seas whenever need arises. A communist world looks like food, housing, education, and healthcare for all. It is a world where our labor helps us all lead full and meaningful lives. Communism means our society's greatest assets would be workers’ collective knowledge and labor. Communism means that the people who make things run will rule the world.
A communist world means collectively owning our labor and the land. It means all children can unleash the full potential of our class. It means ending the cycle where some kids excel while other kids are disposed of, and become soldiers or prisoners, or gun statistics. Only communism means all children — Black, white, brown, girl, boy, or non-binary— from all the rivers and all the seas will have a future to succeed in.
From the seas to the rivers the working class can have it all if we're in power!
There are billions of us. Workers are like oceans, we are everywhere and our potential is bottomless. The working class will seize power through revolution.
We see these glimmers of our class’ infinite potential. From the East River to the Arabian Sea we are the workers in NYC who ran mutual aide kitchens and distributed PPE to when liberal rulers left many of us to die. We are the workers in Pakistan who organized medical camps and food banks when we were left reeling after the rulers’ flood disaster.
From the Acech River to the Mediterranean Sea, we are the fishery workers in Indonesia who brought drowning Rohingya refugees to shore. We are the fishery workers in Lampedusa, Italy who rescued hundreds of African and Arab migrants from the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean.
From the Jordan River to the Red Sea, we are the working class in Palestine fighting to save lives amid bombs and death. We are doctors tending to thousands of bomb injuries and delivering babies in collapsing hospitals. We are the journalists doubling as rescue teams to save those trapped in the rubble and countering Zionist propaganda.
We are the international working class. Only we can keep us safe in times of crisis. We are who we’ve been waiting for.
So now’s the time to fulfill our revolutionary mission. Now's the time to organize! Now's the time to reclaim our lives and get free. Check us out, grab a CHALLENGE newspaper, and follow us @plpchallenge. We need every one of you to fight for communism!
Fellow comrades—young, older, present and future—we call on you to join or recommit to the Progressive Labor Party this May Day. Together we can build the communist world we all so desperately need and deserve, struggle by struggle, brick by brick. Let's smash this capitalist, imperialist, genocidal system once and for all! We have a whole world to win!
From the rivers to the seas, communism will set us free! From the seas to the rivers, communism will live forever!
