NEW YORK CITY, April 19 – The working class took to the streets of Uptown Manhattan today, marching to combat fascist ICE raids and deportations, and attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was in the middle of it, providing key leadership in the leadup to the march, recruiting many to attend, and on the day of the march, leading chants and distributing our literature. This march showed both the tremendous potential to unite workers in class struggle, and also the poison of nationalism and class collaboration that threatens to divide and deaden the workers’ struggle.
Upwards of 400 workers marched, spanning several city blocks, with hundreds more enthusiastically cheering us on from sidewalks, bodegas, and apartment buildings (some no doubt wisely keeping their distance from the KKKops). What’s more, organizers blanketed Uptown Manhattan and the Bronx with 10,000 leaflets, announcing our intent to organize workers against the current wave of racist, fascist attacks.
The potential of multiracial unity vs. the poison of nationalism
The march was organized by a newly-formed coalition of some leftist political parties from the Dominican Republic, joined by organizations from the neighborhood. Because PLP has a long history in this neighborhood, and because we understand the importance of rooting ourselves inside mass organizations, we immersed ourselves in the planning.
It became evident there was a right- and a left-wing amongst the leadership. On the right, some argued that we had to stick to the three demands—(1) Stop the ICE raids and deportations; (2) Stop the cuts; and (3) Tax the millionaires. The left advocated expanding these demands, emphasizing how our struggles are all connected. Some spoke forcefully and eloquently, for example, against the racist attacks in the Dominican Republic against Haitians, rightly drawing comparisons to the treatment of immigrants in the U.S. But we were told that two coalition groups were so nationalist that they would not allow the issue of racism against Haitians to be discussed lest it pull apart the coalition. On the other hand, we were successful in getting Palestine on the program. The speech on ICE raids and deportations was given by a representative of Uptown4Palestine, and ended up connecting rising fascism in the U.S. with U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and the rulers’ need to crack down on dissent.
The nationalism was so thick that one coalition leader, in criticizing chants that “were irrelevant” to their struggle, singled out the chant “Workers’ struggles have no racist borders!” as inappropriate. Luckily, there were several others who came to the staunch defense of that and other slogans that drew connections among workers’ struggles.
PLP provides crucial leadership
We in PLP understand our role is to inject revolutionary communist politics into the class struggle, and on the day of the march, that’s exactly what we did. We became the march’s main chanting force, captivating the crowd with steady, booming chants that highlighted our internationalist revolutionary line, providing much needed march discipline, and attracting and inspiring many around us. As reported in the last issue, we also distributed 1,000 communist leaflets and over 400 CHALLENGE newspapers.
Deadly class collaboration threatens movement
Although some inside the coalition expressed mistrust and hatred of the KKKops, some saw benefits to working with them. In fact, the precinct’s community liaison was in our group chat! Again, nationalism played a negative role: the captain of one of the local precincts is Dominican. Despite these nationalist “ties,” the KKKops and the city kept us on edge for weeks, up to the very start of the march, over whether they would allow us to legally march in the street. Many of us know our true power lies not in permits and collaboration with KKKops, but with our base in the working class.
The only reason there were not more politicians present was that most (including Alexandria Ocasìo-Cortez) ignored invitations to attend, showing how little they care about workers under attack. The one mayoral candidate who did speak gushed about how much he cares. But many of us remember bosses’ tool Ydanis Rodríguez, a local politician who rose to fame as a Dominican “leftist”/”activist” who promptly sold out to real estate interests and who is now hated in his own neighborhood. If our fledgling movement is to accomplish anything positive uptown, it has to recognize what most uptown workers and youth already know: the KKKops and politicians are our mortal class enemy.
More work to be done
The building towards this march helped us advance our literature distribution and Party building in the neighborhood, and as a result we were able to bring some workers to our May Day march, but not enough! Our base needs to better understand the difference between mass marches for reforms and the absolute necessity of building a revolutionary movement led by a revolutionary communist party. We need to build their confidence in our Party as the only force capable of leading the working class to defeat fascism and capitalism once and for all. It’s a life or death struggle.
