WASHINGTON, DC, June 19 — Today is Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the abolition of slavery throughout the South. On June 19, 1865, hundreds of thousands of slaves in Texas were the last ones to be emancipated, more than two and half years after slavery was legally abolished. One hundred and fifty years later, workers are still fighting against racist oppression.
In a somber gathering, hundreds used Juneteenth to honor the nine victims of the racist shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The murderer, Dylann Roof, is a racist militant determined to provoke a race war in the United States. While racist Roof is charged with murder, this racist system is stays free to kill and terrorize Black youth! The working class will propel itself forward in the struggle against this racist capitalist system, just like Denmark Vesey attempted to do in 1822 by launching a rebellion against slavery in 1822, organized in this very same church!
Best Response to Racism? Fight Back!
Several members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party called for multiracial unity against racism and distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets. The leaflet listed several ongoing anti-racist struggles where local PL’ers are engaged. We fight against increased repression and the racist background checks policy at Metro, the bus and rail system for the DC area. The background checks have led to the unjust firing of several workers in recent months. They also block anyone with any criminal record from ever getting a job at Metro. We also work and fight for better public health. We lead struggles against HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C—diseases that have become epidemics especially among Black workers due to systemic racism.
Recently, PLP sparked courageous walkouts around the racist Freddie Gray murder in Baltimore. And we continue the decades-long struggle in Prince George’s County against racist police terror.
Through conversations and our literature, PL’ers called on participants to join these ongoing struggles as the best response to the racist murders in Charleston.
Several people discussed PLP’s broader vision for communism. One person made a financial contribution after a discussion about Karl Marx and how we would abolish the wage system with a communist revolution. A public works employee enthusiastically provided his contact information after learning of the PLP’s work in the industrial working class.
Multiracial Unity Leads to Victory
About half of the participants at the rally were Black. This strong multiracial presence at this event is a warning sign for capitalists. But there is much work to be done to solidify such unity.
One speaker demanded to know how Al Sharpton could call for “calm” after these racist murders. He shouted, “They are telling us to be calm?!”
He noted that Ida B. Wells, the anti-lynching crusader, had called on Black workers to arm themselves against racists rather than calmly submit. Another speaker cited the Deacons for Defense, an armed Black group in the 1960s that defended civil rights marchers and the Black community from racist attacks in the 1960s in the South. Non-violence, he said, was not always the best strategy to beat racism!
On the other hand, a speaker from the Nation of Islam mocked the white workers at the rally. Other speakers stressed the need to build Black institutions instead of multiracial and militant fighting organizations, undermining the rally’s unity. However, a Black veteran from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of the 1960s called for multiracial unity with special outreach to poor white workers who, she declared, were exploited by the system and often had their heads filled by the racist scapegoating myths about Black people. She’s right. Separatist Black institutions will inevitably end up in the bosses’ camp because they build Black capitalists and capitalist ideology.
The rally ended with the release of nine balloons representing the victims in Charleston, and with the bold marching order, “Don’t mourn, Organize!”