London, KY, January 25— Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members from Kentucky attended a march to demand justice for Doug Harless, a retired white worker who the killer kkkops murdered in his home in search of a weed-eater that was stolen from a relative of the County Judge Executive. In the same state where the racist kkkops murdered Black woman worker Breonna Taylor, this incident shows how white workers don’t benefit from anti-Black racism and sexism, contrary to what liberal bosses’ tell us. The rulers say the cause of racism is white privilege identity politics, but racism is the lifeblood of capitalism and the rulers can’t get rich making superprofits without it. A multiracial communist revolution will benefit the whole working class!
We came to the march prepared to bring our political message by going out and distributing CHALLENGE and explaining that this incident of police terror is not an isolated incident, but a result of the police’s purpose under capitalism, which is to enforce capitalist relations and keep the working-class under the thumb of the rich. We also helped get this message across by leading chants such as “Killer cops mean – We got to fight back!” and “No justice no peace, no crooked police!” During the march, close relatives to Doug inspired us with the chants “[London Police Department], lower your weapons!” and “LPD you’ve got blood on your hands!”
KKKops lie after killing
Police mistakenly showed up at Doug’s home at night to serve a search warrant for an address different from the one where Doug was sleeping. Upon arrival, the cops from the London Police Department went up to the door of Doug’s house and banged loudly, and shortly after announcing themselves, forced their way into his home and shot him five times. Despite the fact that it would have been wrong to have killed Doug even if he did have the weed-eater, the cops knew that they could not easily cover up their fatal “mistake.” So instead of immediately dispatching that shots had been fired, surveillance footage from one of Doug’s neighbors shows the cops regrouping outside the home and eventually dispatching that shots had just been fired, and then giving a different address from the one which they were at. The address that they reported shots had been fired at, had been abandoned for some time. It is no coincidence that Doug was killed over a weed-eater that belonged to a relative of David Westerfield, the County Judge Executive.
Local bosses, kkkops justify shooting
The purpose of the police is to protect property, not people, and the power imbalance is rooted in the fact that the capitalists own all the property, while workers only own their labor to be sold in exchange for a wage. This has been further demonstrated by the fact that an investigation is being launched by the police to supposedly find out the cause of the incident, but we know what happens when the police investigate themselves. The mayor of London, who was pressed by local workers during a town hall meeting that was arranged to get answers as to what happened, has offered nothing but excuses. He even released a statement condemning those who have been organizing protests and marches for “making this political.” All violence against the working-class is political violence, but to say that this is not political is especially absurd when it was a local politician whose name is directly tied to this murder!
History of racism
This incident in London is not the first clear example of police violence against the working class. Appalachia historically has been the battleground between militant union miners and volunteer armies made up of local deputies and sheriffs who were employed by coal bosses. As early as the 1920s in the events leading up to the battle of Blair Mountain, local sheriffs used everything from revolvers to machine guns to put down strikes, evict miners from their homes, and attack encampments made-up of displaced striking miners and their families. Similar events happened in the Harlan County Coal Wars, a bloody 10-year long struggle between the miners in Harlan and the coal bosses who owned the camps that they lived and worked in. Today, this history has been suppressed in order to make Appalachian workers unaware of their radical history, instead slandering them as “rednecks” a term which originally referred to members of the union who wore red bandanas, signifying their solidarity with the international working-class struggle.
These rednecks represented the most radical section of the Appalachian working-class, as they were the most willing to unite with Black and immigrant workers against the coal bosses who constantly used racism as a tool to divide and prevent them from working together. To the bosses, the term “redneck” was twisted in liberal media and used as a derogatory term to refer to someone as lazy and inbred. Today, this meaning is used to justify the intense poverty that continues to exist as a result of over a century of capitalist exploitation.
Lack of consciousness and efforts by the police to embed themselves in the community and make themselves seem as if they’re there to “protect and serve” has created an illusion amongst many Appalachian workers that the police are not bad. But recent events have exposed that it’s not a few bad apples, it’s the whole damn apple tree.
We WILL be back!
As of right now there are plans for another march to happen in February where we will again stand in solidarity and demand justice for Doug, and hopefully bring greater class-consciousness to the movement.
