By Zein Amari and Matt Handocerdos

Communists, revolutionaries and the masses celebrated International Working Women’s Day in the working-class Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights yesterday through cultural performances, a short march and a call to reconstitute the Communist Party.

A crowd gathered in front of the Boyle Heights City Hall on the corner of 1st Street and Chicago Street, directly across from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck station on Friday. Masked Communists carried red flags and created a perimeter in preparation for more revolutionaries and masses to arrive.

Masked Communists handed out revolutionary International Working Women’s Day posters to supporters in the crowd.

The rally was opened up by the crowd chanting, “Abusive pigs deserve to die! Women hold up half the sky!” a revolutionary slogan borrowed from the Popular Women’s Movement-Movimiento Feminino Popular in Austin.

As Hollenbeck station police cars drove by, the crowd, primarily the youth, switched up the chants to, “No more pigs in our community! Off the pigs!” The youth, mainly two young girls, took on a leading role, not only in the cultural performance, but with chants.

The two young girls and masked Communists performed a play about City Councilmember Jose Huizar, popularly known as “Sleazy Huizy” for his collusion with rich developers, for selling out working-class communities of Los Angeles like Boyle Heights to treacherous capitalist nonprofits and for at least two accusations of sexual harassment.

The performance showed a Huizar-lookalike attempting to abuse two young girls. A masked Communist meets with the two young girls and organizes an offensive attack against Huizar and they all attack the Huizar piñata to a pulp.

Afterward, a masked Communist read a speech on International Working Women’s Day and its historic place inside the International Communist Movement.

“Today we honor all the revolutionary women in history, and especially in the International Communist Movement, who have given their lives to their respective Communist Party, to the people and to revolution,” she said.

The Communists and revolutionaries held up big smiling Huizar faces with the words “misogyny” and “vendido.” They held up International Working Women’s Day propaganda and red flags to reunite Marxism with the proletarian holiday.

“And more than a century later, we continue this revolutionary legacy today right here in Boyle Heights. We carry the red flag forward on the long march toward Communism, flanked by our enemies on either side — the pigs right across from us, the capitalists pulling their pig-strings, and the phony so-called radicals who cheat and steal from the masses. But, with the masses on our side and the Party guiding the shining struggle ahead, we will win.”

The crowd eventually took 1st Street and headed toward Boyle Avenue. As the crowd marched down 1st Street, they passed International Working Women’s Day propaganda on the walls and floors.

The crowd chanted, “One solution! Revolution!” and in Spanish, “¿Que tenemos? ¡Nada! ¿Que queremos? ¡Todo!” (In English, “What do we have? Nothing! What do we want? Everything!”)

People looked on and cheered from the sidewalk. Some youth with skateboards from local businesses came out and joined the march, skating eagerly in front of the crowd toward the march’s destination: Mariachi Plaza.

At the plaza, they redid the cultural “Sleazy Huizy” performance but this time the youth who skated to the plaza joined in on attacking the Huizar piñata, decapitating the piñata with his skateboard.

At the end of the rally, the speech was delivered in Spanish with the two young girls from the play enthusiastically leading in chants and grabbing one of the megaphones, so moved by the events of the day, saying “this isn’t for ordinary women! This is for working women! Long live Communism!”

Incendiary salutes the revolutionary women and young girls of Boyle Heights and Los Angeles who are proudly reclaiming International Working Women’s Day and who hold high the red flag of Communism.