CHICAGO, July 7—Today, 3,000 people shut down the main Chicago expressway, the Dan Ryan. They challenged the racist myth that Black and Latin youth responsible for high gun violence in their communities. It’s actually mass unemployment and school closings, symtoms of capitalist inequality, that lead to gun violence.
Chicago Strong, a youth group tied to a local Catholic Church, led the march. It was an inspiring day for communists in PLP. We were present with our mass organizations and we distributed hundreds of CHALLENGEs.
Many workers who marched understand some of the underlying reasons why violence exists in our neighborhoods. They also understand the extreme racist nature of capitalism. What is unclear is how to solve these problems. This march, orchestrated by the Chicago ruling class, pushed for reforms that workers have been losing for decades.
Reformists expose their tie to pols and the state
Chicago Strong demans’ include resources for our communities, national “common-sense gun laws,” jobs, and schools. Its march was endorsed by Chicago’s racist mayor, Rahm Emanuel. It is he who has led the charge to push ten of thousands of Black workers from Chicago. It is he who has shut down more than 50 schools and has attacked the Chicago Teachers’ Union. It is he who blocks police reform that tries to make his rabid racist beasts (aka Chicago Police Department) more accountable.
But these facts didn’t stop Reverend Michael Pfleger, the leader of the march, from linking arms with Eddie Johnson, chief of the  racist, murderous CPD. Plenty of liberal  politicians also posed for pictures. Sellout union leaders organized some of their members to march. There were many churches represented in the massive crowds; some came as far as 60 miles away. There were also students from Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in February. This spawned mass Democrat-led and mainly-white protests against gun violence.
Black and Latin youth feel the brunt of crisis
The liberal wing of the ruling class has attempted to turn the anti-gun violence protests into an attack on Black youth in Chicago. The main perpetrators of gun violence is still the police and the injustice system that protects them. Yet, the racist media focuses on gang violence.
In recent years the attacks on Black and Latin workers in Chicago has intensified. Mass unemployment and underemployment, and mass school closings accompanied with “War on Drugs” policies, have bred neighborhood violence. Youth unemployment for Black male workers ages 16 to 19 is over 80 percent, the group mostly impacted by gun violence here (Chicago Tribune 2018).
Another major factor of rising violence in neighborhoods stems from the city’s attack on education through mass school closings. Remaining schools are overcrowded and depleted of therapists and counselors.
The mayor and his capitalist cronies have no solutions for young Black and Latin workers. As they turn former public school buildings into luxury lofts, it is clear our class has become disposable. No jobs, no functioning schools, just more police as the city still pushes forward to build its cop academy. It is our job as communists to make the connections between gun violence in our communities to this capitalist system. Prayers and “friendly” politicians cannot fix a problem that capitalism is solely responsible for.
We cannot let any gun law reform be another way to target and terrorize Black and Latin working-class youth!
Capitalism in crisis headed for more fascism and war
This march represented the main wing of the ruling class trying to mobilize workers to support liberal capitalism. They want us to trust the Democratic Party to solve the very problems that they created. That’s why Pfleger, Jesse Jackson, and other misleaders fixate on worker-on-worker violence and embrace the racist CPD. We must shove these hypocrites out of the way. They will deliver us to the hands of the capitalist bosses who are hell bent on saving their tottering world empire on our backs.
They will try to discipline their class as well as us. One way or the other the rulers will need more soldiers to fight their enemies worldwide. Trump’s gutter racism is a hard sell to mobilize Black and Latin soldiers. The lack of jobs makes enlisting a virtual economic draft. Later, if need be, a real draft may be needed.  This is the future: war and fascism.
Capitalism is incapable of being reformed or fixed. It will always need racist terror and violence to rule. Chicago Strong’s demands are a pipe dream meant to convince us that this deadly system has a future. But despite the misleadership present, this multiracial group of workers showed the working class’s potential to unite and shut this system down. Join the revolutionary communist party, PLP!