As we start our march today, keep in mind that the only way we can create a society that works for our class is that we must fight like hell to get it. We will not win through the ballot box, we will not win it through prayer -- We will win it through building a conscious international working class that is woke to revolutionary communist ideas!

CHICAGO, May 6 –With these true and inspiring words, a veteran Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member helped kick off our International Workers Day (May Day) celebrations. Close to 70 multiracial comrades, youth, co-workers, neighbors and friends enthusiastically rallied and marched through the Uptown neighborhood this afternoon with open calls for communist revolution and workers’ power.
In contrast to many May Day events around the world which have become reformist circuses pushing the bosses’ ideas, PLP unapologetically stays firm in our fight for nothing less than a worker-run egalitarian world. Let the red flag of communist internationalism continue to unite us against capitalism’s racism, sexism, and endless wars for profit!

Rallying our worker forces
The decision to hold May Day in Uptown this year was made in consideration of the sharpened class struggle taking place in this part of the city. In the last year alone, Uptown has been home to some of the most militant fights against capitalist-driven displacement and rotten health care (See CHALLENGE, 9/7/22 and 1/19). Many immigrant and unhoused workers living in the neighborhood have given key leadership to these struggles, and we have been proud to fight alongside them.

Our initial rallying point for the day was a busy intersection next to public transit routes and a city college. Having held weekly CHALLENGE sales and rallies at the same site for months leading up to today, PLP and our communist politics have made an impression already with workers and students in the area.

As more of us filled up the rally area, a pair of comrades led us in chants (including some brand new ones) to get the energy up. We unfurled our communist banners as well as colorful signs that we designed at an art event the weekend before. Along with the veteran comrade’s kickoff speech, another Latin worker highlighted her work organizing among immigrant families in public schools and explained the pitfalls of nationalism:

Nationalism is another one of the problems that we have been fighting to abolish… Internationalism is the goal to end prejudice, injustice and exclusion among the working class.

Take the streets, spread communist politics
With our forces at critical mass, we took the streets and began our march. A security team of marshals helped protect everyone involved and helped guide the pace. A team of CHALLENGE distributors helped ensure the Party’s ideas got into the hands of the masses, getting out approximately 300 newspapers. Many honked their horns and raised their fists in support of our calls for communism. Some even heard our chants and spontaneously joined the march!

We made our way to the site of a clinic associated with Howard Brown Health, one of the bosses’ networks that infamously laid off dozens of workers just before the latest holiday season. At the site a comrade with experience working in nonprofits blasted their exploitative nature with a rousing speech:

We’ve seen schools and mental health clinics close across the south and west sides while racist politicians pour money into policing. Howard Brown is no exception; the cuts and layoffs are happening in the same places where they always make cuts, in Black and Brown communities.

We need to build collective power and abolish capitalism. Under communism we can begin to build a new system where there is mass participation, where workers have real power and control over their labor, and where we can prioritize people and not profits!

Get with the revolutionary program
We concluded our march close to the lakefront, just a stone’s throw from the site of the heroic #RiseUptown anti-displacement struggle last year. A comrade who lives in Uptown shared his analysis of that struggle and the international connections he has built in the neighborhood:

Capitalism can never be reformed… Let’s use the international ties that can be built in Uptown to export our Party’s ideas to more corners of the world, to the international working class!”

We were treated to a delicious lunch along with some pro-worker poetry, May Day greetings from comrades in other countries, and moving performances of Bella Ciao and the Internationale. Lastly, for the keynote speech, another veteran comrade highlighted the power of communist politics and the Party:
The imperialist crisis is providing an opportunity for the international working class and PLP. We are faced with the choice to follow the bosses down the road to war and fascism or to rise as a class to fight for communist revolution and workers’ power. Only communist revolution can end the bosses’ wars!

May Day represents a communist future
May Day will always be a celebration of workers’ power and potential. It is a day when we reinforce our unity, build morale, and are offered a glimpse at a communist future beyond capitalist ideas of race and borders. Let’s live every day like it’s May Day, and win the world we deserve!

The following is a speech given by a new PL’er at the conclusion the of the NY/NJ march.

Hi Everyone, today is one of the most exciting days of my life , words cannot express how i feel to be here celebrating May Day with my comrades and be active like I wanted to be a year ago. I want to share with you all my experience, and why I chose to join the fight. I join the fight to defend my convictions and my ideas. From my experience, I know that only the struggle pays off. This is the reason I came here And not staying in my corner to push a rant.

I joined PLP because I know that although the bosses try to fool us with their “Labor Day” in September, we know that May Day is the real holiday for workers because it emphasizes working-class unity and shows the potential of our class to lead society. I experienced this when I flew to Alabama with one of my teachers to support the nine months-long miner’s strike. That's when I discovered more about PLP and saw workers’ power in action. Despite the bosses’ best efforts to distract us, workers around the world and around the U.S. will celebrate May Day with marches and rallies like the one we are having right now. Workers around the world are showing that we must build multi-racial unity and working-class consciousness to raise a new, dynamic political construction: the dictatorship of the workers, where every worker is respected and given the opportunity to contribute and lead in society.

I joined PLP because I am currently a nursing student at Lehman College. My school is made up of working-class Black and Latino students who have been neglected because of the racism of the capitalist system. We know that communists believe that workers need to be truly educated, not just in how to treat patients and prescribe medicines, but also in how capitalism functions, how class struggle is the key to progress, and how workers can run society. I still remember my first experience fighting this racism - joining a march to the CUNY chancellor’s house. We marched against racism and for better pay for our teachers. As a student I couldn’t just sit back and watch what is happening at CUNY without joining the fight. I united with Hostos students to fight for the opening of the cafeteria and their cafeteria is now open. Together we can succeed!  Just like in China in 1949, we know that when the working class, led by communists such as us in PLP, take power again we will bring this education to every worker in the world! 

I joined PLP because I was born in Haiti, and when I look at how the working class there continues to suffer under racist oppression, I know there has to be a better way. We can see how the system forces our brother and sister to run away, how they force us to leave our beautiful community for a better life elsewhere, and what happens to the people who stayed. What happens to people like me that have family that we would like to spend time with? They use our own people to kill us, they use fear to tear us apart, to divide us, to convince workers to turn against workers. We are strong together, we did it before, we can do it again. Nou se premye pep nwa libere, nou konen byen unite se fos nou, we show others the way, we can find our way back and save workers in Haiti and around the world from this mess. Let’s unite, let's find our way back, let's fight together.

I joined PLP because we are fighting for a society where everyone should have the same opportunities to build a life. Where ordinary individuals can become extraordinary.Where another of our brothers will not have a knee on his neck for another 9 minutes 30 seconds. Say his name. George Floyd. In that society we are fighting for, no role will be bigger or smaller because it  will guarantee the idea of human equality. You, you, and you, join us, join me, let’s unite, and fight this system that keeps breeding servants of the ruling class, killer cops, racist unemployment and imperialist war!

Join me and fight together against anti-immigrant policies!

Join me, join us, let’s fight together for the international working class!

Join me, join us, let’s fight for a communist revolution!

On May Day, as part of the mass march of Section 22 of the teachers union of Oaxaca, 15 workers hoisted the red flags of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and chanted revolutionary slogans.

We distributed 2,000 flyers with the slogan “Communist May Day,” electoral democracy is bosses’ dictatorship, highlighting the deceitful essence of the capitalist class’s electoral democracy. We attacked the bootlicking political parasites of the pro-bosses’ parties that support this criminal capitalist system that oppresses the working class throughout the world.

We also called on workers to join our revolutionary communist party, PLP, to make revolution and build communism, a new society without bosses that serves the needs and interests of the international working class.

We enthusiastically wore caps imprinted with the PLP logo. Young men and women carried a banner that invited workers and students to “Destroy capitalism!” and “Fight for a communist world!”

Our slogans resounded in unison during the march and in the main streets of the Historic Center of Oaxaca City, drawing the attention of teachers and other workers who were witnessing the mega-march. The slogans that we chanted with energy and great enthusiasm were: “This march is not a celebration, but a struggle and a remonstration”, “May Day is a Workers’ Day”, “The proletarian struggle is not parliamentarian”, “Electoral democracy is bosses’ dictatorship”, “The only path to freedom is workers’ dictatorship”, “Fight, win, workers to power”, “Government and bourgeoisie, the same crap”, “Who are we? The communists from PLP ”, “The workers’ struggles have no borders.”

At the end of the march, we had a get-together where we discussed our participation in this commemorative march of the international working class, and we agreed on activities to give continuity to the revolutionary process outlined by our revolutionary communist party, PLP.

At least 500 workers have been killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced since the start of a bloody civil war in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. This will always be the fate of the working class under capitalism, a system built on competition and exploitation, and which in times of crisis resorts to fascism and war.  As the U.S. bosses—the most criminal rulers of them all–call for “democracy,” we remind our working-class brothers and sisters to not be fooled by this trap. The capitalist bosses will never have our interests at heart. We call on workers in Sudan and across the globe to join Progressive Labor Party in the fight to smash this profit-driven system and create a communist world.

Imperialism creates instability in Sudan
Less than four years ago, the two current warring generals and capitalist thugs, Abdel Fatahl al-Burhan and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, were championed by millions of Sudanese workers (and the U.S. ruling class) as they partnered in a coup d’etat against Omar al-Bashir, the blood-soaked dictator aligned with the Chinese imperialists. But as CHALLENGE pointed out (7/27/19), this fake campaign for “democracy” was in reality a violent push by the U.S. ruling class to limit the Chinese bosses’ influence over the region’s energy and trade routes. 

As we noted at the time, the main contradiction in Sudan is the same one shaping events worldwide: inter-imperialist competition among a rising China, a resurgent Russia, and a declining U.S.  We warned that workers in Sudan will be “sharing” power with the very forces responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of workers in Darfur and Yemen. Whenever workers are duped into compromising with the bosses, the consequences are deadly. Sudan, the third largest country in Africa, is now a tinderbox for an expanding regional war. As the desperate U.S. rulers keep losing ground to their rivals, their inability to control events will inevitably lead to a global conflict that will sacrifice millions of workers. The working class needs international communist consciousness more than ever to turn imperialist war into class war against the capitalists! 

Russia, China target Sudan’s riches
Sudan rests between two critical choke points on the Red Sea, a passageway for 10 percent of all global trade. The Suez Canal connects markets in Asia and Europe; the Bab-el-Mandeb strait links the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea. Sudan is also where the White Nile and Blue Nile rivers converge, a critical intersection for trade and access to fresh water. Additionally, it contains large reserves of gold and uranium, and houses critical infrastructure for refining and transporting oil from South Sudan. No imperialist power will easily let go of such a large prize. Russia’s interest in Sudan predates the current conflict.

In 2017, President Vladimir Putin joined with al-Bashir to form Meroe Gold, a subsidiary of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries. After al-Bashir was deposed and jailed, Putin strengthened ties with General Degalo, a criminal best known as a leader of the genocidal Janjaweed militias in Darfur, a region of western Sudan. Degalo built a vast pool of wealth and political power by leveraging his ties with al-Bashir to seize some of the richest gold mines in Darfur (Guardian, 4/17). The Janjaweed evolved into the Rapid Support Forces that are now at war with Sudan’s military.  Sudanese gold now appears to be financing Russia’s war with Ukraine in return for weapons and training for Degalo’s militia (CNN, 4/21).

Meanwhile, China has long relied on Sudan’s minerals for Chinese industry. Between 2011 and 2018, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, China made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Sudan and invested in oil pipelines, textile factories, railways, and bridges across the Nile. China is Sudan’s largest trading partner and their biggest supplier of goods. Stability in the region is a priority for the Chinese bosses.

U.S. complicity in Darfur genocide
Ever since Chevron discovered oil in Sudan in the 1970s, the U.S. ruling class has kept a hand in the country (Human Rights Watch, 2003). Under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency worked closely with the notorious General Salah Gosh, who rose to become head of intelligence for Sudan (The Daily Beast, 1/9/2019). Between 2003 and 2008, al-Bashir, al-Burhan, Degalo, and Gosh were responsible for the mass murder of at least 300,000 workers in Darfur and for displacing 2.7 million more. In return for al-Bashir’s help with a “counter-terrorism” campaign against Al Qaeda in Iraq, the U.S. bosses turned a blind eye to the genocide and kept sharing intelligence with Sudan.

Before the latest armed conflict broke out, the Joe Biden administration continued to negotiate with these war criminals to find a path back to “democracy,” the bosses’ word for capitalist dictatorship. But like the CIA support for U.S.-friendly pro-democracy coups in the Arab Spring in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria, U.S. moves in Sudan have backfired and further exposed the weakness of the U.S. ruling class.  

Fight for communism!
Liberal democracy is a nationalist tool to mislead and pacify the working class. From Sudan to the U.S., we are asked to choose between one mass murderer and another. When we are fooled by the bosses into thinking that their fight is our fight, we lose sight of the essence of capitalism: imperialism and war.
The only solution is communist revolution and a dictatorship of the working class, a society run by and for workers. It is our task to expose this dogfight between the bosses and the slippery slope to World War III. We must connect the attacks on workers in Sudan to attacks on workers everywhere. Join us! Build a fighting PLP!