I spent the past week in Seattle participating in the Progressive Labor Party’s (PL) summer project, organizing among Boeing workers. PL is a revolutionary communist party. There are members around the U.S. and the world. They reject the notion that governmental reforms can successfully solve modern society’s problems, which are entrenched in the capitalist system. In other words, you can’t make a system which depends on the majority of the population having nothing and a tiny majority having everything, “nicer” or humane. Certainly not in a lasting way. (A slaughterhouse can’t be made “nicer” or humane, either, adds this vegan.) To reach a point where communist revolution is possible, by which they mean complete abolition of production-for-profit and labor-for-wages, PL works to develop solidarity across the working class, from students to workers to soldiers, regardless of sex, age, race, nationality, etc. — regardless of all the arbitrary boundaries that keep us apart. For a PL’er, there are really only two kinds of humans: those who work, and those who exploit those who work. This is the only crucial, significant distinction.
I came to learn of PL through podcasting: Bob & Jenna of Vegan Freak Radio are friends of Dan & Jenna of Abolition Radio (if you are vegan, female, and on a podcast, chances are your name is Jenna). Then I met one local PL’er at an anti-war march this past March, and took part in PL’s May Day celebration in Brooklyn some weeks later. Since then I’ve kept in touch with the local PL members (joining PL as a member is an official act), through whom I learned about the summer project in Seattle and decided to go. So I spent the week living in the home of some Seattle PL members (one of whom currently works for Boeing as a machinist), along with several other project participants, learning more about communism, PL, and how it all operates. Here I’ll post a day-by-day recap, so you can relive the week with me.
