On May 1, 30 enthusiastic and militant comrades carried red flags, banners with messages related to the International Workers’ Day and communist revolution, and chanted revolutionary PLP slogans, all well-received by workers. We handed out 7,000 flyers denouncing the fascist conditions faced by Mexico’s working class and workers worldwide and offered the Party’s solution. Lastly, we made plans to continue the struggle. Following is the flyer we distributed.
Smash Capitalist Hell with International Working-Class Unity
Under capitalism our minds are chained to the racism, individualism, nationalism and sexism of the system. These ideological chains, in addition to dividing us, weaken our forces as a working class. The May Day celebration is a call for the international unity of the whole working class to shed the nationalist yoke and fight for an egalitarian society: communism
Capitalism wreaks havoc on the life of the working class, through exploitation, misery, violence, hopelessness and death, out of which it generates tremendous profits for the capitalists.
Due to the labor reform, working conditions in Mexico are increasingly unstable; workers must work longer hours for lower salaries. According to the Autonomous National University of Mexico Center for Multidisciplinary Analysis (CAM), 66 percent of the employed population earn minimum salaries or less.
In another study, CAM reports that in 33 years the earning power of salaries has accumulated a loss of 79.20 percent, which means that to purchase basic necessities workers must work 52 hours a week.
Amongst the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) workers here work the most hours annually, with an average of 2,226 hours, but have the lowest salaries, averaging $12,850 a year, or $1.01 an hour. This is less than half of what a worker earns in Chile.
Mexican capitalists and their politicians have turned the working class here into the most exploited, impoverished and cheapest in the world, a condition allowing them to reap the greatest profits, attract investors and compete with the bosses elsewhere, such as those in China.
Conditions are even worse for the nearly 6.6 million workers who are unemployed or lack adequate employment. Capitalism will not provide employment or education to 7.5 million youth between 15 to 29 years of age who are the most vulnerable to capitalism’s individualistic culture. Ultimately many end up murdered or criminalized by the bosses’ media, according to the national Institute of Statistics and Geography.  
As workers’ misery increases, so do the bosses’ profits and all their luxuries. According to La Jornada (3/14/2016), by the end of 2015 profits for Mexico’s leading corporations increased 8 percent.
As the exploitation intensifies and profits increase, the gap between rich and poor grows. Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world. One percent of the population owns 43 percent of all the country’s wealth. According to Oxfam, half the population lives in poverty.  
Workers who struggle against these injustices, fighting for their rights, suffer disappearances, murders, repression or jailing, as was the case of the CNTE teachers, student teachers, electricians, IPN students, indigenous communities and Atenco peasants. When capitalism is in crisis, fascism is the order of the day
One might think conditions couldn’t get worse, but the global capitalist crisis and sharpening of imperialist rivalry will lead inevitably to another world war in which capitalists will destroy the lives of millions of workers, the means of production and natural resources.
For workers, the fight against this criminal system is a matter of life or death. We must organize ourselves as a class as part of the international communist Progressive Labor Party. It’s imperative to destroy capitalist exploitation to build a new egalitarian society.
Capitalists promote the idea that communism failed, but it’s capitalism that has failed. The specter of communism still haunts the capitalist vultures and the communist demonstrations organized internationally by PLP are a beacon of hope for the millions of workers worldwide. The working class will remain exploited until we set ourselves free from capitalism; communism is the key to our liberation. Until victory!
Long live communism! Death to capitalism! For a revolutionary communist May Day!

ISRAEL-PALESTINE, May 1—In opposition to demonstrations organized by anti-communist organizations on May Day, Progressive Labor Party brought revolutionary communist ideas to the masses.
The first rally was in Nazareth, organized by the phony “Communist” Party. Despite being festooned with red flags, the message was one of making “peace.” They never even mentioned communism. A PL’er distributed CHALLENGES and leaflets in the crowd to spread the real message of communist revolution.
In Tel-Aviv, there was a march of up to 300 people. PL’ers came with red shirts and several types of our literature, which were welcomed by the marchers. There were antiracists at this march, including an anti-fascist block that held a banner reading “Destroy Zionism.”
On May Day itself, the Histadrut, the Zionist union federation, and related youth movements, as well as the “Labor” Party, organized their own march. It was a farce, as most marchers were from the liberal-Zionist youth movement. But, a small block was fighting against the wage-slavery of contract workers. We marched with them.
Though the mass movement here may be filled with racist ideas, and the fightback may seem small, Progressive Labor Party knows there are always pro-communist people among the crowd. To the anti-racists, the anti-sexists, the anti-war workers and youth—there is another alternative to capitalism. We can’t look to unions, liberal institutions, and phony communist organizations to bring the communist politics or the internationalism. They are all in one way or another tools of the ruling class—to repress, mislead, or outright attack the working class.
PLP stands for a world without profits, imperialist wars, racist borders, or oppression of women. We aim to build one world with a united working class giving leadership through PLP. With effort, we can bring more people to May Day next year and have the spectre of communism haunt the bosses and their agents.

MARYLAND, May 6—Around 40 students and workers with the help of PLP rallied at the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) to demand higher wages for undergraduates who work on campus. UMCP has chosen to pay students the Maryland state minimum wage of $8.25 per hour rather than the $9.55 per hour minimum of the school’s county, Prince George’s. Given the rapid increase of the cost of living, particularly of academic costs such as fees and textbook rentals, student-workers at UMCP have drawn a line in the sand and demanded an end to the exploitation of campus workers.
Despite constant rain, the energy of the multi-racial crowd was exciting. Speeches from student-workers and campus staff were interspersed with spirited chants telling our president of the university, “Loh, get off it, put workers over profit!”
We held high a banner reading, “It’s our future too,” a slogan meant to combat the capitalist-driven education system. We dream of a future of education without profits, tuition, and racist divisions. CHALLENGE was also distributed.
One student talked about how the new manager in one of the campus dining halls implemented new exploitative rules, such that workers could not take bathroom breaks or get a drink of water during “peak” hours of the day. Another student recounted how working three jobs off campus, a necessity because of the poverty wages paid on campus, had severely harmed their mental health and forced them to drop out of classes. Another student spoke of the constant state of being hungry, a natural result of living on only a few dollars per day.
Then in a show of militancy, nearly 20 of us blocked traffic on Campus Drive, the main road linking the campus to surrounding communities, for 8 minutes and 25 seconds. Cops immediately appeared, but we were prepared. Two designated police liaisons talked to the pigs and bought us time as multiple rally marshals ensured no one was harmed by the backed-up traffic. The police had just pulled out plastic handcuffs and were issuing their third warning as we counted down our remaining 10 seconds. We made it off the street before the pigs could lay their hands on anybody, visibly irritating them.
This rally and the confrontation with the kkkops are important for a number of reasons. First, student workers, generally considered outside the larger labor movement by reformist organizations have begun to organize and fight back, and have done so in a militant, disciplined fashion. Second, the solid presence of graduate undergraduate student workers with staff and faculty signifies that the political concept of solidarity is not lost among members of the campus labor movement. Third, through consistent conversation and practice, we have realized that organizing in narrow issue-based campaigns such as that currently being run at UMD can win students and workers in the fight against capitalism.
PLP will continue to work with these students and workers to bring communist politics to the forefront. We hope that through consistent struggle these workers and students will join PLP to rid the world of slave wages, poverty and all the ills of capitalism for good.

NEW YORK CITY, May 14—The strike of almost 40,000 Verizon workers is entering its sixth week. The strikers are members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). They install and service Verizon’s wireline telephone and FiOS Internet and television service.
This is an important strike in a time when strikes are all too rare. These verizons workers and their unions are up against one of the giants of the telecommunications industry. Verizon makes more than $1.5 billion in profit every month, and CEO Lowell McAdams makes $18 million a year. Last year, the wireless unit brought in $91.7 billion in total revenue, up 5 percent from the year before, with a profit of nearly $30 billion. The older wireline unit brought in $37.7 billion, a 2% decline from the year before, with $2.2 billion in profit.
However to meet the fierce global competition in the telecommunication industry, Verizon is trying to cut labor costs by forcing workers to pay more for health care and outsourcing call centers to super-exploited workers in Mexico and the Philippines where they pay workers $2.00/hour. In addition, Verizon wants to assign workers out-of-state for up to two months and keep their wireless retail stores non-union, all the while refusing to bargain a contract with the small number of union retail wireless stores.
Verizon is using supervisors from out of town to scab on the strike, and running help-wanted ads to hire temporary workers as strike- breakers. Strikers have picketed the hotels where the scabs are being housed and in a few instances have forced them out. But more needs to be done because Verizon is fighting back tooth and nails. Recently, the company cancelled the health insurance of the strikers to try to force them back to work.
Verizon is confident they can wear down the CWA leadership. After all, they did just that in the 2012 contract fight when Chris Shelton, who was Local 1109 President then and CWA International President now, convinced members to accept health care give backs and to give up pensions for new hires. Sheldon told workers not to worry because “…the company has barely hired anyone new over the last decade. There’s no army of new hires waiting outside Verizon’s doors.” However, after a series of buyouts of senior workers and outsourcing by Verizon, there will soon be an army of new hires coming from the army of the unemployed black, Latin and women workers who largely make the up the workforce at Verizon retail stores. Verizon, with vault’s full of racist super profits, is now coming back to exploit workers even more.
The striking unions are now calling on other unions, student and community groups to Adopt-a-Store and join the picket lines one or two days a week. And we should. Although unions cannot solve the conditions of the working class, they are great channels through which workers can be organized for communist revolution. Moreover, adopting a store and joining the picket line is a great way to meet and get to know striking Verizon workers, who right now, are at bat for the whole working class. Through these means, we can have many discussions with workers, make friends and start to build relationships. This how a Verizon striker came to speak at our May Day march in Brooklyn. Let’s join hands with our brothers and sisters in their fight against Verizon and one day in the fight to abolish capitalism in its’ entirety.