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Los Angeles Garment Workers:

Building for a Communist May Day

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LOS ANGELES, CA—At the beginning of the year, our club made a list of contacts. We asked, “How can we mobilize 40 people for the May Day Dinner and some to the March on May First?”
We distributed tickets for the dinner. Some comrades took two, others five, some ten, to invite their fellow workers, relatives and friends. We also made plans to visit our base in their homes and have political discussions with them.
Recently we had a barbecue where 20 workers participated. Several of them agreed to bring their families and food to share to the May Day Dinner.
“I want to talk about what communism is, so I can explain it better to my friends,” said a comrade. He asked another new comrade to make the presentation at the next meeting.
“I do not know a lot about how to explain it,” he said. We suggested that he read our manifesto Mobilize the Masses for Communism and that he get others to help him. The comrade gave a good presentation, talking about pre-class society up to our vision of a world without capitalism.
Then a comrade suggested that we discuss what ICWP membership means. We asked him to give a presentation about this. “There are others here who know more,” he said. But with jokes and laughter all around, he was convinced. He emphasized the dedication to develop communist ideas and practice in the workplace. He stressed distributing the newspaper inside the factories. He talked about the development of disciplined comrades who dedicate their lives to building the Party to end this system of wage slavery.
 We meet every two weeks, either for a communist study/action group or a social activity. We make sure collectively that there is always food at these meetings, as some come straight from work.
We have eight Party members in this club, but in the meetings there are always from ten to twelve people.  Our club is composed of garment workers and ex-garment workers who now work in other industries.
Our focus is on the garment industry, one of the most exploited areas where the vast majority are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, although there are also areas with many Asian workers. There’s potential among garment workers to develop leaders who can give leadership to the revolution here, but also help spread communist ideas to other countries, where they come from.
Among these workers capitalism shows its naked wage slavery and the suffering and death at its borders. There is fertile ground to make communist ideas mass and to destroy this murderous system. Then how can we get our members more actively involved in building ICWP? Although everyone truly wants a communist world, within the club, the levels of actual knowledge of our political line varies, as does the historical knowledge of the class struggle and comrades’ practical participation in Party activities.
Sometimes the club reads and discusses the editorials from Red Flag, especially the one about racism. We talked about racism in Latin America and wrote a letter about this to the newspaper. But we also want to focus on action that can help advance the comrades so they can take more initiative in developing the Party.
Our club is responsible for 3 public distributions of Red Flag, with an average of 300 papers per issue to garment workers. We distribute another 70 hand to hand and by mail. Comrades from other clubs distribute an average of 600 more in the garment industry, which increases the potential to bring more friends to our activities and to recruit them to the Party.
There is huge potential among garment workers. We have our Communist political line as a guide. It’s our task as organizers to combine these two components, which will help destroy the capitalist system. This May Day we will review the forces of our club in the struggle to build a communist society. Join us!

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