The multiracial rebellion in Ferguson serves as an inspiration for workers everywhere. In the aftermath of the indictment, masses of anti-racists around the world are demonstrating in solidarity. The youth in the streets understand that they cannot wait for “justice” under the same system that killed Mike Brown. We commend these antiracist fighters in Ferguson for rejecting the bosses’ false promises. Many of them have come to see that capitalist “democracy” is a fake veneer for the rot of capitalist exploitation. Their growing understanding marks an important advance for the international working class.
Anti-black racism is at the foundation of the racist treatment and division of all workers. Black workers are hit the hardest, and black workers will lead the fight to smash this murderous system. Ferguson has set a new standard for U.S. workers’ fightback. As black workers in Missouri rebel, the entire world watches and follows their lead. Ferguson has inspired mass demonstrations in Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, and many other countries.
State Power Rules
This is what capitalist democracy looks like: Michael Brown was shot six times by Ferguson kkkop Darren Wilson. Steered by the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, a grand jury decided on no indictment. Wilson got away with racist murder because he was backed by the racist injustice system. Cops, courts, prosecutors, and juries — the whole state apparatus — are all controlled by the bosses. Consider:
In almost every case, murders by cops are completely legal. McCulloch is now batting 0-for-5 in getting indictments against cops who shot unarmed civilians (Daily Kos, 11/25/14). In Houston, grand juries haven’t indicted one cop since 2004; in Dallas, over a five-year period, grand juries looked at 81 cop shootings and returned one indictment (Daily Kos, 11/24/14).
Meanwhile, 14 teenagers — at least six of them black — have been killed by the Klan-in-blue since Michael Brown was gunned down in cold blood three months ago (The Daily Beast, 11/25/14).
Meanwhile, federal data shows that black teenagers are 21 times more likely than white teenagers to be shot and killed by police (ProPublica, 10/10/14).
Meanwhile, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by a cop outside a Cleveland recreation center — for waving a toy pellet gun.
After more than a hundred days of national fightback since Michael Brown’s murder, how is it that racist kkkop Wilson is free to kill again without even a public trial? The answer is state power — and who holds it.
Under capitalism, the “state” — including all levels of government, the so-called justice system, the police, the military, the schools, and the media — is an instrument of ruling-class oppression and violence against the working class. As Frederick Engels pointed out in 1884, the state “is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel” (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and State).  
Capitalism is a society based on exploitation, accumulation of profit, and private property. The modern state developed to protect the capitalists’ interests. Contrary to liberal misleaders like Barack Obama, the “democratic process” cannot possibly resolve the antagonisms within capitalist society. The state is no neutral player. While it appears to regulate conflicts from above the fray, its role is to ensure business as usual, regardless of how many workers’ lives are destroyed.  
Leading up to the grand jury decision, every media outlet and politician preached non-violence and restraint. Yet racist Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency a full week before! Nixon has deployed 2,200 National Guard troops in Ferguson. Riot police are firing tear gas canisters, stun grenades, and beanbag munitions at protesters.
Under capitalism, “non-violence” means the working class accepts violence by the state and is not allowed to retaliate.   
From Slave Patrols to Killer Cops
Legalized killings and mass imprisonment are age-old capitalist tools to control the working class. The first modern police force in what is now the United States, beginning in South Carolina in 1704, was the slave patrol. These forces hunted down and punished runaway and “defiant” slaves; they were a form of organized terror to deter revolts that might threaten plantation profits.
The original Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1865, just after the end of the Civil War. As Eric Foner noted in Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, “In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy.” In the mid-20th century, according to historian Diane McWhorter, the Klan formed alliances with governors’ administrations in states like Alabama and Mississippi. Throughout the South and Midwest, Klan members and local cops (often the same people) conspired to attack and murder civil rights activists.
Darren Wilson in the KKK?
So it’s not surprising that the so called cyber-activist group Anonymous has found evidence — reportedly from a mole connected to the St. Louis County Police — that links Darren Wilson to the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Or that three high-ranking members of the TAK KKK recently attended a support rally for Wilson in Imperial, Missouri — the hometown of Wilson’s wife, a fellow Ferguson police officer.
To this day, state-sanctioned racist terror against black workers and youth is an indispensable weapon for the capitalist class.
In 1991 in Los Angeles, a gang of five cops beat Rodney King while other cops watched.
In 1997 in New York City, a cop assaulted Abner Louima by shoving a broken broomstick up his rectum.
In 2005 in New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a cop murdered Henry Glover before his fellow cops burned Glover’s body.
In 2012 and 2013 in Brooklyn, the cops killed Ramarley Graham, Shantel Davis and 16-year-old Kimani Gray, all without a single indictment.
According to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, black workers and youth account for 50 percent of the approximately 2 million people in U.S. prisons and jails, or about four times their percentage of the general population. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, black people in the U.S. are incarcerated at about six times the rate of white people.   
The problem with capitalist injustice isn’t about “a few bad cops” or a few obviously racist prosecutors like McCulloch. The state apparatus is racist to its core, because racism is the lifeblood of capitalism. Bosses keep the working class divided by perpetuating racist ideology. Economic super-exploitation of immigrant workers pits them against black, Latin, and women workers, which in turn drives down the wages of all, including white and male workers.
As the sharpening global competition between U.S. and rival imperialists cuts into the bosses’ profit rates, racist attacks against workers are escalating. An economic crisis spells mass unemployment, budget cuts in education and healthcare, tuition hikes — and more killer cops. The capitalists need cutbacks to funnel their resources into the bigger wars to come. In their run-up to global combat, they are turning schools into jails with surveillance cameras and metal detectors. Their police are occupying black and Latin working-class neighborhoods. They are spying on and detaining Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian youth.
Why are they doing these things? To intimidate workers and discourage our fightback. The bosses fear that workers are fed up and won’t take their oppression much longer.
Revolution is Non-Negotiable
We didn’t negotiate out of slavery and we won’t negotiate our way out of capitalism. From slave patrols to the hyper-militarized cops of today, the bosses’ state is the sworn enemy of the working class. The youth in Ferguson are rejecting passivity and dead-end electoral distractions. The capitalist state cannot be reformed — it must be abolished with communist revolution. For that we need organized, revolutionary violence. Under the communist leadership of the Progressive Labor Party, the movement in Ferguson can be the beginning of an all-out fight toward revolution.
From Gaza to Ferguson to Guerrero, Mexico — smash racism! Smash the capitalist state!

Brooklyn, November 22 —  A crowd of angry workers formed in front of the Pink Houses project in East New York to protest the racist police killing of yet another black working-class youth.  On November 20, kkkop Peter Liang of the New York Police Department shot and killed 28-year-old Akai Gurley, an event NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton deemed a “bizarre mistake.” Gurley had just entered the building’s dark stairwell (the bosses don’t care enough to keep the lights or elevators working in these projects), and Liang shot him.
But nobody was accepting police excuses. The rally began on a poisonous note, with reactionary nationalist ideology. A black nationalist group on the bullhorn led chants: “Which people? Black people. What power? Black power!” Some protesters even questioned why white workers had shown up to the march at all!
But the Progressive Labor Party knows that destroying this backward system demands multiracial unity among all workers: Asian, Latin, black and white. With this outlook, a multiracial group of 30 PL’ers flooded the march and completely changed the tone. We raised our banners and flags, chanting, “Black cop, white cop, all the same. Racist terror is the name of the game!” Other marchers quickly adopted our chants.
At one point, police attempted to block the road with metal barricades in the hopes that the march would cease. We pushed through and stopped them, however, allowing the march to continue all the way to the police station.
Charging Liang with racist murder is important, but we must recognize that a few indictments will not change the essence of our oppressive capitalist system. The NYPD will continue to terrorize and imprison black and Latin youth, because kkkops are an integral part of the increasingly fascist U.S. As the bosses see themselves losing their ideological stranglehold on the working class, they are clamping down even harder and killing more workers. The only way to rid ourselves of racist police murders is to smash capitalism and fight for communism with PLP!

Newark,NJ, November 16 — Forty students and workers organized by PLP gathered in a church to plan a fightback once the grand jury decision is announced for racist killer kkkop Darren Wilson. This is the second gathering that we have held since September on this issue and mobilize our friends to hit the streets against these racist attacks.
Our attendance doubled since the September event, and we heard more workers talk about “the system” rather than just individual cops and politicians. Our job is to struggle with workers to realize that “the system” is capitalism, and that the only way to defeat it is through communist revolution.
After a socializing hour, a series of speakers illustrated the importance of fighting these racist attacks as well as the potential to win many to communist ideas along the way. The first speaker gave an overview of the attacks on black and Latin workers under capitalism. From the prison industrial complex to police murder, the speaker showed how anti-black racism has increased in this “post-racial era.”  
KKKapitalism Killed Kyam, Mike
The second speaker, Anita Neal, mother of Kyam Livingston, gave a passionate speech about how the racist NYPD murdered her daughter and the struggle in the fight against the state. This struggle has taught her that the entire system needs to change, and that the fight for all young people, not just her daughter, is a fight we all need to be involved in — from police murder to the racist educational system.
A third speaker gave an eyewitness account about the struggle in Ferguson. While detailing the daily fights between the protestors and cops, he talked about the lessons that he derived from this struggle and the potential for many of these workers to be won to communist ideas.
Detailing one of his conversations with young protesters in Ferguson, he discussed the concept of communist revolution. He recalled how many of the young protestors want to change “the system” but are still struggling over the idea of communist revolution. His speech highlighted the militancy of the youth in Ferguson and how they are continuously fighting back against these attacks.
The event shows both the strengths and weaknesses of the working class at this point in the class struggle. While we are hearing more workers talk about police murder and the mass incarceration of black and Latin workers, it also shows that we have a lot of work to do to win workers to see that without a communist analysis, we will never win. For example, the election of Ras Baraka in Newark spreads the illusion that workers have power under capitalism (see CHALLENGE 11/26). Even if Darren Wilson were to be convicted of murder, there will be more young black men killed by the cops.
Many of us in New Jersey made plans inside of our mass organizations to hit the streets the night that the verdict for Darren Wilson is announced. Many other organizations are planning demonstrations for the day after. We know that there is going to be a lot of anger regardless of the verdict. Our job is to turn that anger against Wilson and other racist cops into anger at a system that kills, imprisons, and exploits all workers — especially black and Latin workers. We must name that system: CAPITALISM.

CHICAGO — A hospital on the west side promotes itself as a “national model for urban health care delivery,” but is chronically understaffed.  Understaffing and speeding up workers helps the bosses save money, but they also undercut the medical care workers provide to patients.  Since most of the patient population is black and Latin in this part of Chicago, understaffing helps continue racist oppression.  But workers here are fighting back!
A letter was circulated that explained how understaffing and a lack of equipment are risks to patient safety, and it requested that additional staff in the Respiratory Care Dept. be hired.  Over sixty workers signed the letter, which was given to the chief operating officer and board of directors at their annual meeting.
The bosses were angry and embarrassed that workers dared to present grievances at their board meeting.  They were more concerned about being exposed and humiliated than about the rotten conditions faced by workers and their patients every day.  They subsequently decided to interview all the signatories to the letter and question each person as to how inadequate staffing levels could be solved.  Most workers responded by telling them to hire more workers.
It’s no secret that the hospital is understaffed and lacks adequate equipment, but they wanted to frighten workers who signed the letter.  Instead, they found out how passionately workers felt about patient care and the lack of staff.  As a result, a couple of positions were opened, but many workers are doubtful that conditions will improve much, because of how bad things have been for so long.  Yet workers have expressed approval for the bold action in confronting the bosses.
The workers’ response to this struggle shows how workers can be organized to fight back against abuses.  It is the job of the Progressive Labor Party to point out that the capitalist system is always abusive, and conditions will continue to worsen without a communist revolution.  More workers are taking the Party’s ideas more seriously.  The more workers that read and distribute CHALLENGE, the closer we’ll be to solving inadequate staffing and a lack of equipment.