During our summer project fighting the bosses’ liberal stooges at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades participated in a march for reparations. While reformist in nature, the group that organized the march is open to communist ideas. After the march, one comrade spoke on what reparations could look like for Black workers (and all workers) under an egalitarian world, beyond extra crumbs the ruling class is willing to give to quell fightback. Some phrases are bolded to emphasize they were call and response.

I am here from Brooklyn, New York.  I was born in Chicago and I’m here today with the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.  

I am going to ask one more time, what are we here for?
(Reparations!)

We are here for reparations.

I am going to speak to reparations from a communist vantage point and try to inject some revolutionary hope into this situation.
Because, everything you see around here, every brick, every mortar, every automobile, every wheel you see turning on every bus and every plane that flies overhead, it was all built through our labor, the labor of our class, the working class.

And so, a communist vision of reparations says - 
And this comes back to me from after George Floyd was killed by the fascist murderous cops, and after George Floyd was killed by the fascist murderous cops, it was Tim Walz who was the governor of Minnesota who brought in the National Guard to smash the antiracist protesters of Minneapolis so never be fooled about what’s going on just a mile or two from here right now, and who’s coming to power.  It is the enemy that is coming to power.

Workers will take it all!  

That’s why I’m so happy to be here with y’all today.

I marched around the DNC the other day.  This was a better march.  This is where the power is at.  Places like the West Side of Chicago.  
And if you’ll allow me to, I’d like to speak to borders today, I’d like to speak to forced migrations, and I’d like to speak to a hated institution of Chicago’s West Side, an institution my family knows and hates - the Cook County Jail.

Because a communist understanding of reparations says this - 

We made it all,
(WE’LL TAKE IT ALL!)

When we were marching down Broadway, through the heart of the business district in New York City, every single store was locked, boarded up with plywood because they were scared, afraid that we would take their property.

And when we raise that chant there, people take it up, it makes sense to people.
And that’s reparations.

Now the ruling class that causes the pain that this sister just conveyed to us, of not being able to go home, of crossing a border and never being able to go back, these borders that they have now, I’ll go back a little while, I’m a history teacher, and I admire the history teacher who spoke before.  So many important things have been said today by so many people.  I’ll go back to the origins of capitalism - when Cortez reached the shores of what we now call Mexico, were they worried about a border when they went in for the conquest and massacre of the Aztec people?

(NO!)

When they went to the  coast of West Africa and dragged our people out of the continent, were they thinking about borders then?

(NO!)

Their system was built on snatching people from their homes and putting us into forced migrations and forced labor across the globe.  
And now they want us to fight for their borders and look at people who are migrants and have come here, when their profit system is in terminal decline.

Working class struggles are united worldwide

These same rulers want to turn us against migrants some of whom have walked here from as far as Venezuela.

Walked here.

And to this a class conscious worker shouts NO!  

We are one international working class,
We shall not be divided,
We shall not be turned against our class brothers and sisters, 
We shall have the kind of unity that this brother over here was speaking to,
And our awakening to that truth is their greatest fear.

That’s why they called on their brutal police to attack the encampments of young people on the college campuses.

Because they are afraid that we identify with the entrapped, imprisoned, forcibly removed people of Gaza, forcibly removed not so differently than our ancestors who were forcibly removed from the shores of Africa hundreds of years ago, not so different from our people who have been forcibly removed from Latin America through U.S. imperialism decimating their economies, they have been forcibly removed.

And in Cook County Jail what we have today are the descendants of the forcibly removed.  Forcibly removed from Africa, forcibly removed from the Jim Crow south, like my father’s family who had to flee the KKK, we are the descendants of the forcibly removed.  Our Latin brothers and sisters share a similar history.  And listen here, these workers today that we call white, hundreds of years ago they were forcibly driven out of Europe by this same capitalist system  which left them nothing.  They were peasants who got on boats and came here.  This history of forced removal is something that the workers of the world have in common.  

And these brothers and sisters in Cook County Jail, there are about five thousand of them now.  At it’s 2013 peak that jail contained 11,000 individuals.  Every month hundreds are released having stayed 26 days, on average, released with no charges.  Having done nothing, totally innocent, trapped, languishing.

11,000 spots?  Give me 11,000 spots.  We have room for the generals, we have room for the Congressmen, we have room for the CEO’s who are funding and carrying out genocide and we gather all the worst organizers of the capitalist assault on our natural world and we lock them all up, right there in Cook County Jail, 11,000 we would have a safer world.  

And the brothers and sisters languishing there now,
Set them free!

Smashing capitalism is the ultimate reparation!

Because if we explain to each and every incarcerated individual in that jail why we need their bunk because we have to lock up Jamie Dimond, we have to lock up Elon Musk, we have to lock up the capitalists who are driving us into war, genocide and climate catastrophe, we need your cell and bed to lock up our class enemy.  And then we take these brothers and bring them back to the community, and we surround them with love, and hope and importance, and meaning,

Then we will have safety.

Who keeps us safe? 
We keep us safe! 

And when I think about this communist future,
I believe that we will win!