NEW YORK CITY, April 1—The daily oppression that workers face is what makes capitalism a system worthy of destruction. From the mistreatment on public benefit lines to outright abuse in job centers, the everyday racism that Black and Latin women workers face is proof that capitalism does not serve us.
We continue to witness how the enforcers of the system—the police, security guards—scare and discipline the working class into staying in line. We also witness how public service workers who are hired to serve their class sisters and brothers are won to doing the opposite. Under capitalism, jobs that are meant to be helpful turn into the opposite.
Only under communism can we organize a society that is designed to serve, not oppress, the working class.
Mother wants benefits for child, gets terrorized instead
Headley took her baby boy to a public benefits office to investigate why the City stopped paying for the baby to go to daycare while she worked cleaning offices. Instead, the City took away her child and arrested her.
She had waited for over two hours only to find that it would take another week to reconnect her childcare allowance.  To find out the status of her November application for cash allowance she had to take another number.  There were no seats in the waiting room, so Headley could only sit on the floor next to her baby’s carriage.  A security guard viciously ordered her to get up and, in ten minutes, returned with two cops.  She picked up her child and rose to her feet. The cop threatened to take her to central booking and her son to the City child welfare agency. When she expressed anger and turned to go, the cop lunged at her. Two cops restrained her while two guards stripped her shrieking child out of her arms.
The capitalist liberal New York Times admits that this kind of abuse is not unusual. What the Times does not admit is that U.S. capitalism was born out of the racist slave trade and slavery and today capitalism all over the world still cannot exist without constant racist oppression.
Racism takes a heavy toll
Similarly, one of Progressive Labor Party, a single mother of a seven-year old, has endured this kind of racist mistreatment for years. She has suffered a continual series of terminations, denials, and, reapplications. Currently, she is expecting to be denied a huge portion of what is owed her for back underpayments, and may not get her tax refund because she didn’t provided several documents—all discovered after hours and days wasted traveling and waiting.
Many kinds of daily abuses against workers are repeated millions of times around the world. Whether it’s being bombed in Yemen by U.S. made bombs, or detained in concentration camps at the U.S./Mexico border while separated from your children, or getting arrested while applying for benefits for your child in New York City, capitalism has got to go.
The defenders of the system
Recently our comrade witnessed a similar horror scene at a job center in Manhattan. A young Latin woman entered and walked up to the customer service window with a brief question. The representative rudely responded, “Do not ask me anything. Go and stand in line!” Angered, the young worker persisted, and in three minutes four cops and three security goons rushed from the back room to detain her.  In the process she was thrown to the floor and her head was slammed against the wall. They escorted her outside to be arrested.
The PL’er and about 20 other bystanders were warned that if they recorded this racist outrage on cell phones, their cases would be closed and they would be kicked out of the center.
Make friends, march on May Day, and fight back
The PL’er said, “I try to make contacts whenever I have to go for services or references. I try to follow up these new friends, along with family and old friends giving them CHALLENGEs. I stress that marching on May Day will build the movement we need to fight back against this oppression and finally to end it for good. We need to take over the world and build a society planned and run by working people.”