SEATTLE (US), May 1—Mary (not her real name) has worked at Boeing for decades. She reads Red Flag and has marched on May Day with ICWP before. But today was the first time that she massively circulated party literature and collected donations.
As marchers began to gather at a street corner, Mary crossed the street so she could begin reading the ICWP migration pamphlet, “Fight for the Day When No Worker Will Be Called Foreigner.” She really liked it. She thought it short, sweet and focused on a communist response to the questions of xenophobia and migrants.
Then, almost single-handedly, Mary distributed hundreds of migration pamphlets – almost all we had. “I held up the pamphlet so people could read the title,” she said, explaining her success. “Nobody else has anything near this answer to the immigration issue.”
She took the rest home to give to her extended family.
Mary’s enthusiasm was infectious. People responded to this black, native-born factory worker who fought for a communist world without borders with everything she had.
Meanwhile, the rest of us concentrated on Red Flag, also collecting donations. We distributed 350 papers as over a thousand people marched and watched along the streets.
Of course, no single pamphlet or issue of our paper can address every aspect of the party’s line. But this booklet and Red Flag sparked a lot of questions about how we view the revolutionary process. Young people, in particular, were most interested in communism.
One young man was marching with a group of Filipino students. He rushed through the crowd to ask us a bunch of questions about communism. “Do you want to go directly to communism? How is that possible without socialism first? We need a state to fight the class enemy,” he said.
We explained that our line is shaped by years of our practice, as well as at least 150 years of communist struggle. We come from the Marxist tradition, but our practice allows us the advance on the “classical” writings of its founders.
We talked about how a communist army fights. Also, about how to organize communist education and factories to eliminate the differentiation between mental and manual labor. Finally, about how the party will continue to mobilize the masses for communism even after a revolution, growing bigger all the time.
This was a long march, so we had some time to explore these issues. Even so, we had more to discuss. We set up an appointment with him and his friends to talk more.
We don’t have all the answers. More will come through on-going debates. Our new Boeing comrade Mary will bring invaluable experience and ideas to these, as will the struggle with her extended family. We welcome these new fronts in the continuing struggle to advance communism.
ICWP Pamphlet: Fight for the Day When No Worker Will Be Called Foreigner
Available at icwpredflag.org/ffde.pdf