CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, July 8—Fifteen hundred anti-racists militantly confronted the KKK
today, shouting powerful chants that forced them to shut down their racist rally. PLP and members of the Seven Hills Progressive Society from Lynchburg Virginia joined this multiracial rally of workers and students. As usual, the local ruling class used their state power to protect these racists, deploying around 200 kkkops in riot gear to attempt to hold back the anti-racist counter-protesters. This exercise of state power was a reminder that racism is critical to the life of their capitalist system.
Chased the Klan Away
The group of about 50 Klansmen, some in their traditional white robes, came to Charlottesville to oppose the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a leading figure of the pro-slavery U.S. Confederacy. They were escorted in by the kkkops, who had been sent to “protect members of the Ku Klux Klan from counterprotesters” (New York Times, 7/8). They were quickly drowned out by the chants of the demonstrators. PL’ers joined antiracist chants, and many demonstrators took CHALLENGE, vowing to continue the struggle against racism and the KKK. In just under an hour the Klan members finally slunk away. The antiracists refused to let the Klan go quietly, and chased after them, fiercely chanting. The riot cops viciously responded by attacking the anti-racist demonstrators with tear gas and 22 arrests.
State Terror Unleased on Antiracist Protesters
It’s no surprise that the bosses used their cops to attack antiracists, but protect the KKK instead. Since the founding of this country racism was used to justify slavery, the system Robert E. Lee fought to defend. Numerous local, state and federal laws passed over centuries were required to
entrench racist divisions inside the working class, and weaken our ability to fight back against our exploitation. The most vicious state terror was used by police on working people who insisted on struggling together against exploitation (see Lerone Bennett’s “Road Not Taken” on the lynch law of colonial era as well as the Hollywood film “Free State of Jones” on the Reconstruction era which followed the Civil War.)
The kkkops brought out against the antiracists today functioned in this capitalist tradition when they attacked us. As the PLP chant goes: “the cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan: all are part of the bosses’ plan.”
In fact, the mayor of Charlottesville, Mike Signer, called on residents to stay away from the rally, as if nonviolence defeated the Confederacy. He tried to encourage workers to attend alternate events orchestrated by NAACP misleaders. Whenever the KKK or Nazis rear their ugly head, liberal misleaders and churches do their best to keep people from fighting back.
Signer’s pleas to ignore gutter racism clearly didn’t stop these 1,500 fighters that boldly showed up. One anti-Klan protester said that she wanted to come “because I believe that if you just stay
silent, nothing gets done” (npr.org, 7/9). When the Klan is confronted by multiracial fightback, they are terrified. PLP has a long history of beating them back and driving them out of our streets.
When the working class rejects passivity and organizes multiracial fightback against gutter racists like these, and the racism of this system, we are training for when we will need to defeat the capitalists for good.
The militancy of these 1,500 antiracists shows the potential of the working class to win. Turning the fight against racism, sexism, and nationalism into an international fight for a working-class run society—communism—is the only way to once and for all smash the horrors of this racist and sexist capitalist system.