The following is a speech given by a PL’er in Kentucky at the first ever May Day action.

Comrades

Today is International Workers’ Day—a global holiday of struggle, born from the blood of workers in the U.S. and carried across borders, turning one struggle into an international movement of rebellion.

A day to remember the martyrs of the Haymarket affair, murdered by the bosses’ state for daring to fight for the 8-hour day. Railroaded by bogus sham trials in the bosses’ courts. Their crime - daring to fight back. Their legacy: struggle

Declared a global day of action by the Second International, its history extends to every corner of the globe. From Chicago to Berlin, from the Russian and German revolutions to the 1968 uprisings in France. From the fight against fascism in Italy and Spain to the U.S. anti-war movement 

- May Day proves one thing: the workers’ fight has no borders

Remember 1890 

The first International May Day saw coordinated general strikes across Europe and beyond—millions of workers acting together across borders as one class birthed modern proletarian internationalism in practice.
The next year was the May Day massacre of 1891, when French troops opened fire on striking workers demanding the 8-hour day. Early proof: the bosses’ state answers worker unity with bullets.

We remember 1917—the Soviets taking power. The first state made truly by and for the working class turned May Day into a weapon of revolution.

Hell, we’ll remember Appalachia. Not just the battles, but all the May Days where miners organized, linked up with the world, and built the force that exploded against coal bosses in the largest labor uprising in the country’s history. 

Where the first Civil War between states confronted chattel slavery, this second one between the social classes confronted wage slavery with unity between former slaves, immigrant, and white workers
(1933)

After allowing a state-controlled May Day, the Nazis immediately smashed unions the next day. Shows how seriously fascists fear independent working-class organization—and how they try to co-opt it before destroying it.
(Rings a bell don’t it?)

Remember Spain 1936—workers arming themselves, fighting fascism, and running factories.

How could we forget May Days shaped by the Cultural Revolution in China—millions of workers and youth rising to challenge old revisionist ideas and a new rising bourgeoisie. Fighting for mass participation inspired by the spirit of the Paris Commune.

Remember 1967 in Hong Kong, where workers rebelled against colonial rule—linking anti-imperialist struggle and class struggle and igniting a wave of uprisings in May 1968 France, where millions of workers walked off the job and shook the foundations of capitalism.

Under apartheid South Africa, May Day became a site of illegal strikes and multiracial worker resistance—directly linking class struggle and the fight against racist rule.

Remember the 70’s - the Progressive Labor Party being a major force behind the revival of militant May Day mobilizations through the broader anti–Vietnam War struggle and worker–student–soldier unity

In the 80’s workers used it to organize against Augusto Pinochet—mass protests, strikes, and repression. Even under terror, workers regrouped and fought back.

Remember 2006- 

Immigrant worker May Day

Millions of immigrant workers shut it down in the U.S. and showed the power of multiracial working-class unity

On this day, Soviet workers and soldiers raised the red flag over Berlin in the final days of the Battle of Berlin. 

A reminder of the necessity, courage, and strength of workers organized under communist politics and practice fascism and world war were crushed by revolutionary movements rooted in the working class—guided by a commitment to ending exploitation & inequality, to smashing this rotten profit system built on racism, imperialism, and war.

That lesson is urgent today as capitalism continues to produce war, fascism, and genocide. The same system that starves and displaces millions - bombs workers abroad.

The same bosses who preach “democracy” build prisons, deport immigrant workers, and divide us with racism, sexism, nationalism. 

May Day is about rejecting those divisions.

They don’t just crush resistance—they domesticate it.

They smother struggle in their institutions & NGO’s, try to misdirect anger into ballots,

To maintain rule they fund and channel the fight into fragmented, issue-by-issue struggles—separating each battle from the whole.

Today the Progressive Labor Party continues to bring May Day back to the working class in the United States as a day of struggle. In the streets, in schools, on the job. Organizing to fight racism, and to build a mass communist movement connected to workers worldwide.

Because ultimately this system cannot be reformed to serve our class as a whole, nor can it be smashed alone. May Day reminds us that we have a communist world to win and we can join together with our class brothers and sisters to fight to achieve that goal.

One struggle, many fronts—one working class, worldwide