BRONX, NY, October 8 — Stella D’Oro strikers, the working class salutes you! You have shown the world an unbreakable solidarity that defied the attacks of profit-driven bosses for eleven long months during which not one worker scabbed, not one worker crossed the picket line.

You have shown how Latino, black, white and Asian workers, women and men, immigrant and native-born, can fight the bosses’ racist divisive tools and unite as a class.

You have shown that capitalist sexist ideology can be defeated, as men workers refused to take the bosses’ bribe offers to return to work, refusing to allow their sister workers to suffer a $10,000-a-year wage-cut over five years.

You have not let the bosses’ cops’ intimidation — tearing down your tent shelter in the dead of winter — break your spirit.

You have inspired thousands across the city — postal, transit, hospital and office workers, teachers, students and college professors — to come to support you and take back these lessons to their co-workers.

You have refused to succumb to anti-communism, working with supporters from PLP, discussing our communist
ideas, edging closer to adopting the red flag as your flag, waving CHALLENGE as your flag as you entered the factory. As one striker said, “We’ve all been ‘infected’ now. Who knows where we’re all going to end up? But wherever we go, we’re going to spread PLP.”

You have seen, on the one hand, the Labor Board supposedly “order” the Brynwood bosses to take you back honoring the old contract and then these same bosses, following their capitalist laws, close the factory, and sell the equipment and brand name to a low-wage, non-union boss in Ohio. From this you can learn the lesson that as long as the bosses have state (government) power, they can manipulate their laws to throw workers on the street.

Capitalism: Billions for the Banks, Joblessness and Debt for Workers

Yes, it is true that, after this long struggle, you have joined the ranks of 30 million other unemployed workers who have lost their jobs, their wages, their savings, their health insurance and many their homes. This must not be minimized. It is the terrible tragedy that a capitalist system, based on the drive for maximum profits, visits on the working class which produces everything of value but sees most of it stolen by the bosses only concerned with their bottom line.

And it is also true that the Obama administration gives hundreds of billions to the bankers who are responsible for these massive attacks on the working class. Meanwhile, it conducts wars seeking control of oil supplies and using our children as cannon fodder to kill brother and sister workers to maintain their profits in their fights with rival imperialists worldwide.

This combined oppression at home and abroad adds up pure and simple to fascism, U.S. style.

Through all this we can see the true colors of the labor “leaders” of unions who with over two million members in this city barely lifted a finger to support your valiant struggle. It is clear that, in their defense of capitalism, they are on the bosses’ side.

It is for many of these reasons that, on short notice, over 50 supporters, mostly organized by PLP, came to salute you, cheering and clapping as you left your final shift. After having chanted inside the factory, “The workers, united, will never be defeated!”— as you did at every shift change leading to the closing — you came out wearing your bakers’ caps, some in white uniforms, seemingly unwilling to let go of their craft.

One rank-and-file leader told us he learned as much in the last three days trying to organize workers to carry out a sit-down occupation than he had in the previous 14 months. His team did their best and did persuade a considerable number, but not, in their judgment, enough of a critical mass to spark a seizure of the factory.

What Is Winning?

So despite having been unable to overcome the whole system, its profit-protecting laws, its cops, its courts, its whole government, victory can be measured in lessons learned for the future:

• The multi-racial unity of black, Latino, Asian and white workers practiced in this struggle must guide our class.

• The international unity of native-born and immigrant from all over the world can defeat the nationalist divisions the bosses use to set us against each other.

• The equality of women and men is essential to every fight against the capitalists whose exploitation and degenerate sexist culture weakens our fight for a decent life.

• The solidarity of all workers — all for one and one for all — is our guiding light.

• The communist ideas of PLP are necessary to fight this capitalist system until it and the bosses’ state power are ultimately destroyed and a workers’ society replaces it in which the working class that produces all value will collectively share the fruits of our labors.

• Our biggest victory can become the joining and building of PLP — and the circulation of its ideas through the spreading of CHALLENGE, the only paper to report the truth of this long struggle — all to lead the overthrow of the racist, exploitative bosses who profit from our sweat.

A simple sign on the fence near the factory revealed the most important strategic lesson here: “The Stella D’Oro struggle shows that workers must take state power — PLP.”

This is one battle in a long war against capitalism. The Stella D’Oro workers, especially those who join PLP, can spread their experiences among masses of the unemployed and among all co-workers on future jobs. The collective strength of the working class, led by communist ideas, has the power to eventually smash this hellish system.