Workers are Essential, Imperialists are Not! ILPS US May Day 2021 Statement

This International Workers’ Day, ILPS US rises up with working-class people in the United States and around the world in the struggle for livelihood, dignity and liberation.

In the second year of COVID-19, the people of the United States saw the start of a new regime under the Biden administration. While the masses around the world rejoiced over the defeat of Trump, the Biden administration is proving to be an imperialist wolf in sheep’s clothing, promising reform and change while the people continue to suffer. 

Even  with Trump out of office and a Democratic administration in power, workers bear the brunt of the pandemic, experiencing unemployment, health & safety hazards at the workplace, lack of access to basic needs, and state neglect. Workers continue to be exploited for super-profits, enriching the ruling class even more in an era of incredible economic devastation for the masses. The richest 1% of Americans gained over $7 trillion of wealth from the end of March to the end of December 2020, according to a more comprehensive study whose measures included real estate and privately held companies. Meanwhile, workers have died disproportionately from COVID-19, not having a choice but to go to work everyday. This inequality cuts across racial lines, with reports of Black Americans dying from COVID-19 at more than twice the rates of their white counterparts.

Though there are enough vaccines to fully vaccinate about 5% of the global population, the vaccine rollout around the world is lopsided with wealthy imperialist countries hoarding most of the vaccines. Even in the United States, class and racial inequality plague vaccine distribution, with harder hit, impoverished areas being vaccinated at a slower rate. 

Biden walks a trail of broken campaign promises, proving himself to be just as much of a treacherous war-monger as any other U.S. imperialist president. Even before issuing the people of the U.S. with paltry stimulus checks, which is far from the adequate economic relief that the masses deserve, Biden ordered an overseas missile strike on Syria, killing dozens of people and wasting millions of U.S. tax dollars to advance the militarist agenda of the United States overseas. He also backtracked on his promise to stop deportations, with 127,457 people deported as of March 15. Biden quietly continued Trump-era immigration policies and recently reached a deal with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to further militarize the southern border in order to deter migrants from entering the U.S. 

In the midst of this shift to a more “competent imperialism,” working-class and oppressed peoples’ movements rage on under the Biden administration. Amazon workers around the country are organizing against the corporate giant even after the union drive in Bessemer, Alabama was squashed by a million-dollar union busting campaign. The Black Lives Matter movement rages on—forcing the hand of the white supremacist, imperialist state to concede a guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin—and continues to raise demands for community control of the police and abolition. Around the world, mass struggles are pushing forward—Indian farmers are entering the sixth month of their general strike against harmful neoliberal, deregulatory laws; the recent uprising in Jerusalem of Palestinians is fighting the occupation of the Zionist state of the Israel; and the people of the Philippines are holding community pantries and mass actions in defiance of sheer government neglect and state repression under the Duterte regime. 

Everywhere, the people are rising up. This International Workers’ Day, we celebrate the profound power of the working class to challenge the exploitation and oppression of the global capitalist elite. We must continue to organize and mobilize to build the fighting capacity of a worker-led anti-imperialist movement that will liberate us all.