Florida vigilante George Zimmerman stalked and murdered unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Yet on July 13, a Florida jury found Zimmerman not guilty. Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury of six — and by capitalism. Hypocrite Barack Obama, after saying that Martin resembled his imaginary son, okayed the verdict: The law must be obeyed. Under capitalism, of course, laws are enacted to enforce the bosses’ profit system. Obama is the enforcer-in-chief who just recommended NY Police chief Ray Kelly for the Homeland Security post because he did an “Extraordinary Job”  
The racist triggerman didn’t act as a lone, self-appointed executioner. The admitted cop wannabe followed U.S. rulers’ official (if unstated) fascist rules for police: a) Assume that all black and Latino youth are criminals; and b) Shoot to kill.
New York City’s killer cops are a leading example of the top-down, systematic terror campaign that Zimmerman mimicked. In a secret recording exposed in March, Deputy Inspector Christopher MacCormack, one of the top cops in the Bronx, told a police officer to stop-and-frisk “black males 14 to 21.” On average, the NYPD stops and frisks each and every young black or Latino male two to three times a year. Within the last 18 months, the city’s “finest” have shot dead Ramarley Graham, Shantel Davis, and Kimani Gray, all young and black, without cause, along with Reynaldo Cuevas, a 20-year-old grocery worker who’d escaped an armed robbery at his store.
These racist killings are hardly restricted to New York. They include Oscar Grant in Oakland, 18-year-old Lamon     Khiry Haslip in Riverside, California (who was shot by cops while handcuffed), and Antwoyn Johnson in Chicago.
 

Racist U.S. Rulers Killing Workers Worldwide
The U.S. spreads racist murder internationally. U.S. corporations like Walmart and Gap thrive off the exploitation and killing of garment workers in Bangladesh. Millions of workers and youth are victims of U.S. imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Drones are just the latest weapons to kill civilian workers indiscriminately.
The outrageous Zimmerman verdict reflects an intensifying racist assault by beleaguered U.S. capitalists upon the entire international working class. The rulers’ profit rate is falling because they are losing global market share, mainly to China. Their costly Iraq and Afghanistan invasions aren’t paying out the oil and gas windfalls they’d hoped for. As a result, U.S. bosses must shift their problems onto the backs of workers and youth like Trayvon Martin. They do this in three ways:
Drastically cutting jobs, wages and social services to shore up shrinking capital.
Suppressing rebellion against these attacks by unleashing racist police terror on the segment hit the hardest, black and Latino youth.
Misleading white workers to blame their own worsening plight on fellow working-class victims instead of the real capitalist culprits. This division among workers, coupled with a lack of anti-racist fightback, enabled the bosses to cut white and black industrial workers’ wages in half. Obama led the charge by imposing these cuts at General Motors after a temporary government takeover and bailout. It became clearer than ever that racism hurts white workers as well.
Stop-and-frisk and police murders are but the latest examples of the racism of U.S. capitalism. The United States and its economic growth were founded on racism, from the genocide that murdered millions of Native Americans, to the enslavement of black workers on the cotton plantations of the South, to the KKK-driven Jim Crow laws that exploited, lynched and otherwise killed masses of black workers after the Civil War.
No Justice under Capitalism
Along with the cops, the courts are an integral part of the bosses’ state power. In the Zimmerman case, the judge ruled that racial profiling could not be used as evidence against the racist killer and excluded it from the case. Passing new laws cannot help the working class, since all laws are enacted to protect the profit system at all costs. Nor will electing “better” politicians change things for workers, since they, too, represent the bosses’ system and operate within the same framework. The pro-boss union leaders, who defend capitalism and betray workers who break the law to defend their class interests, are no better.
In protesting the Zimmerman acquittal, we must not fall into the trap of making capitalist “justice” our main demand. If a guilty verdict happened to be won against the likes of Zimmerman or any of the countless racist killer cops, the bosses’ media would use it to say “the system works.” Instead, we must focus on destroying the profit system that uses the phony concept of “race” to manipulate and exploit us.
Only communist revolution can change the conditions facing the working class. Only revolution can smash the bosses’ state power and the exploitation of their profit system. Only a revolutionary communist party, like the Progressive Labor Party, can sweep away the bosses and lead the working class into power. Joining and building PLP represents the only meaningful, lasting answer to the bosses’ attacks.

Modern Slavery
The criminalization of the working class, especially blacks and Latinos, has risen as the fortunes of U.S. capitalists have sunk. In 1960, when U.S. imperialism ruled the worldwide roost, U.S. prisons held about 350,000 inmates. Half a century later, with the population barely doubled and violent crime in sharp decline, the prison population has steadily expanded to more than 2.5 million. According to the Center for American Progress (3/12/12):
The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.
Seventy percent of inmates in U.S. prison are black and Latino. According to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander, more black men are behind bars or on parole or probation than were enslaved in 1850.
This racist process has nothing to do with actual crime and punishment. It derives from the ceaseless economic, political and military conflict among imperialist powers. Just after World War II, U.S. capitalists controlled 60 percent of the world’s manufacturing. Today, with the U.S. share down to 18 percent, U.S. rulers can’t afford to offer working-class people like Trayvon Martin a decent job (or education or health care). Instead, these marginalized workers are stopped, frisked, jailed, and killed. It’s no coincidence that the jobless rate for Trayvon Martin’s 16 — 19 age group stands at a crippling 44 percent for blacks — and a not-so-rosy 20 percent for whites.

Don’t Be Fooled by Bosses’ Racist Lies
Even worse, U.S. rulers exploit the inequality they themselves create to divide and weaken us with the phony concept of “race.” The Zimmerman verdict encourages white workers to pin capitalist-caused social ills on black workers. It advances the bosses’ favorite lie: that jobless, criminal, welfare-dependent black people drain the tax monies paid by white people. The corollary lie is that black workers steal white workers’ jobs.
The New York media recently have had a field day with the dubious report of a white man who said he was laid off from Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s richest investment firm. The man, according to the newspapers, stumbled drunk into a restaurant, spied a black couple, and cursed them as “n-----s” who were somehow responsible for his job loss. The black man then punched the white man, sending him to the hospital. Police, of course, arrested the black man, and the unemployed white man became an aggrieved martyr in the tabloids.
Last time we checked, however, neither black nor white workers ran Goldman.

Turn Resistance into Revolution
At some point the racist Zimmerman verdict will come back to haunt U.S. rulers. The capitalists have a long-term need to mobilize the nation for war against their imperialist rivals, but the bosses’ racist attacks on workers and freeing of a racist murderer won’t inspire patriotism among black workers.
The anti-racist anger our class expressed at the freeing of Zimmerman has the potential to evolve into a bigger movement against racism in the U.S. and worldwide. Racism can only end through smashing capitalism led by Progressive Labor Party. Only its communist politics can arm workers to challenge the bosses’ attacks. Only a united, multiracial working class can turn modest advances into outright rebellion against the ruling class. Only a mass revolutionary communist party can effectively mobilize against racist cops, organize political strikes at the point of production, and lead the charge to exterminate capitalism.
The rulers fear the potential power of the international working class to overthrow them. But even as they attempt to use racism to attack us and divide us, rebellions are spreading worldwide. In Egypt, Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Spain and Bangladesh, millions of workers are taking to the streets to oppose the ravages and injustices of capitalism. The Zimmerman verdict sparked major demonstrations of tens of thousands in at least ten cities across the U.S and worldwide.
We must turn such resistance into attacks on capitalism itself, raising the call for communist revolution as the only solution for our class. This can be accomplished only with a mass Progressive Labor Party, containing millions of workers, to lead the working class to that goal. Join us!

NEW YORK CITY, July 13 — “Justice for Shantel Davis! Justice for Kimani Gray!” That’s what you’d have heard if you passed by Brooklyn District Attorney (DA) Charles Hynes’ office this past week as Progressive Labor Party completed another successful NY Summer Project, an event filled with activism, learning and relaxation the communist way.
For three consecutive days, PL’ers and friends rallied to demand the indictment of the racist kkkops who killed two youths, Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray. It’s been over a year since Shantel was murdered by Detective Phillip Atkins and four months since plain-clothes NYPD cops gunned down Kimani Gray.
DA Hynes has allowed these racist killer cops to walk free. By doing so, Hynes has basically told black workers to suck it up and get over it. But we won’t follow the scenario they’ve laid out for us. PLP has worked alongside the bereaved families and will continue the struggle.
While an indictment might be a winning battle — although, of course, that wouldn’t guarantee a conviction — there’s another struggle that must be carried out as well. At the rallies, PL’ers stressed the need to destroy this capitalist system through communist revolution. Since capitalism cannot exist without racism, it is the backdrop of these grisly racist murders. Eliminating it will prevent them from happening ever again. Capitalism reaps billions in profits from racist pay differentials and uses black unemployment as a threat to white workers’ jobs.
Another part of the Summer Project was a guided walking tour of Brooklyn, checking out several stops on the abolitionists’ Underground Railroad, the route by which slaves escaped the Southern plantations. The city has targeted two stops for destruction on behalf of real estate developers, wiping them out as historical landmarks. Slavery is a brutal part of U.S. history; it’s no wonder the rulers want to obliterate the sites.
One notable stop was Plymouth Church in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. Its first pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, was a major figure in the abolitionist movement. The Church — adjacent to shipping docks — was a key stop in enabling slaves to escape to Canada. An important lesson to learn from the abolitionist movement was its willingness to break the bosses’ laws in order to do what was right. Under capitalism, many atrocities are carried out legally against the working class. Resistance from slaves and the abolitionists who aided them played a crucial role in eliminating slavery.
There were some disagreements between PL’s ideas and the guide conducting the tour. The latter said that the stained glass windows in the Church sanctuary depicted important moments in history, rather than biblical events. Images included the invention of the printing press; Lincoln presenting the Emancipation Proclamation; Beecher taking a trip to England to campaign against its involvement in the Civil War, and so on.
When asked why there were no depictions of black fighters, the guide said that after the Civil War, the whole country entered a state of amnesia. Furthermore, some white church-goers were not comfortable with black workers, saying there’s “a church down the street just for them.” As a result congregations were segregated. This clashed with the anti-racist stance the Church had taken before the war.
The tour guide also mentioned an instance when Beecher stomped on John Brown’s chains. John Brown was a white abolitionist who organized a raid on a federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. While federal troops crushed it and executed Brown and his comrades, the raid was one of the crucial elements in provoking the Civil War. Brown believed only violent resistance could overthrow slavery.
When asked why Beecher would stomp on Brown’s chains, the tour guide stated that Beecher saw himself in the middle ground in the fight against slavery. He felt John Brown was too radical. But we know Brown was right. It took hundreds of slave revolts and a Civil War to finally end slavery in the U.S.
However, in an attempt to continue it in another form, the rulers in the southern states passed the Black Codes in 1865 and 1866, severely limiting the rights of the newly freed slaves. Then in 1866, the U.S. Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, placing the southern states under military rule, effectively eliminating the Black Codes. But after the 1877 Tilden-Hayes Compromise, the troops were pulled out and the ruling class in the South passed Jim Crow laws to enforce second class citizenship for black people, which became another form of slavery. These laws became the main target of a future struggle — the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Later in the Summer Project, PL’ers and friends watched “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,” a collection of recently discovered footage showing the later stage of the Civil Rights Movement as seen by a group of Swedish news reporters. The newer generation was not as patient with non-violent protest against segregation and racist police attacks.
In 1964, the first great black rebellion had occurred, in Harlem, after a NYC cop murdered a black teenager. Black residents marched through the streets, battling the cops. The then young Progressive Labor Movement (PLM), forerunner of the PLP, was very active in that protest. Its newspaper CHALLENGE became the flag of marching rebels. The rulers falsely accused CHALLENGE of fomenting the rebellion.
Other rebellions followed, in Newark, NJ, Detroit, Los Angeles and elsewhere. President Lyndon Johnson was forced to divert deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division from Vietnam to Detroit to put down that uprising.
The Swedish film documented the 1968 Martin Luther King assassination, with urban rebellions erupting nationwide. The police and the National Guard were mobilized to quell them. The U.S. government enacted several Civil Rights Acts in response. Yet the Black Panther Party (BPP) then rose in popularity, standing for armed self-defense and black nationalism which meant black workers must become capitalists in order to be liberated.
Some Panthers posed a danger to the ruling class in that they stressed that racist capitalism was the real problem for black workers and youth. The Panthers provided free medical care, free breakfasts and schooling and other social welfare programs in black neighborhoods. While the BPP saw the need to include women inside the organization, they routinely relegated them to roles submissive to their male leaders. This led to extreme sexism within the organization that the bosses eventually used to destroy it.
In 2010, Bobby Seale, a founding member of the BPP, stated its objective was to gain “community control and community input into the political institutions that affect our lives.” But the bosses will never allow these institutions, such as the courts and police, to be placed under “community control.” Their purpose is to protect the ruling class and control the working class.
The movie’s final section focused on government introduction of drugs to black war veterans and black communities to try to deter any effective resistance. The havoc they created can still be felt today. It indicates how far the ruling class will go to protect its system of exploitation. The movie’s overall message was aimed at attacking the use of violence in the process of struggle. At our study group, we talked about whether the movie was correct. No one agreed and said without black workers’ rebellions, schools across the U.S. would have never instituted free lunch programs and more.
The Summer Project ended with a trip to the beach. Building friendly ties among comrades is an important aspect of building for a communist revolution. The Summer Project may be over, but our fight continues. We hope to see you next year!

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, July 4 — Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) unions — SEIU 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU 1555) — pulled their picket lines, with personal guidance from International ATU President Larry Hanley. BART workers returned to work with no guarantees (similar to NYC school bus drivers). The Bay Area commute is functioning normally, delivering up to one million workers to the Downtown Business and Finance Corridors of San Francisco. This is one more way the Internationals did the bidding of the corporate powers who demand uninterrupted profits.
Despite limits on the strike set by business unionism, the Bay Area Council (employers’ think tank) estimated that the strike cost Bay Area bosses $73 million/day in lost productivity and millions more as workers stayed home instead of going shopping and to restaurants. Productivity means profits under capitalism and business unionism means profit interests comes before workers’ needs.
The ATU and the Alameda Labor Councils sabotaged the opportunity for over 4,000 striking BART and AC transit workers to reverse four years of $140 million in concessions! The ATU/SEIU Internationals are firmly in control.
The local union leadership and ATU/SEIU Internationals are junior partners in the Employers’ Strike Solidarity Pact:
About 600 ATU workers were pumped up on Sunday, June 30, thinking they’d be joining ATU 1555/SEIU 1021 members on strike the next day;
Then the ATU ordered Local 192 leaders to continue negotiating because AC bosses threw a bone (returning pay for the first day of sick leave). They hadn’t negotiated in good faith for three months. With the excuse, “we weren’t at impasse,” the leaders made AC workers scabs and gave up their biggest bargaining chip;
“We’re giving the commute about a C-plus,” said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transit Commission. “If AC Transit hadn’t been running,” Goodwin said, Monday’s commute “would have been one for the record books.”
Another suburban system, WestCat, ATU 1605, did not go out even though its contract also expired July 1.
The other unionized mass transit systems serving San Francisco, (SF MUNI, Ferries, SamTrans, Golden Gate,) were used as scab service.
BART contracted non-union bus companies to deliver commuters.
The union leaderships disorganized, un-organized and derailed much of the spontaneous sentiment for solidarity and joint actions. The ATU/SEIU leaders have never united with passengers for a long-term plan that attacks the racist nature of service cuts and fare increases. A large number of workers and riders are black and Latino. The union leaders (including the entire AFL-CIO) won’t build class consciousness or educate the working class about the fundamental, irreconcilable conflict between the ruling capitalist class and the working class. Instead they promote legislation, lobbying, “vote-and-hope” Democrats and fear of job actions.
Workers’ Solidarity, Class Consciousness Rumbling below the Surface
Many AC Transit workers were “devastated, discouraged and embarrassed” to be used as scabs during the BART strike. “I couldn’t look the ATU 1555 strikers in the eyes,” said one AC driver. “We should have been on strike with them.” At AC and MUNI some workers called in sick, refused to scab and supported the strike. PLP members were the only ones trying to organize ATU workers to unite with other transit workers with a pledge to walk picket lines and not to work overtime. Unfortunately, that sentiment was not organized enough to wrest power from the Internationals.
Many passengers did not take the media bait that BART workers are “overpaid,” “greedy” and “selfish” for making low-paid workers miss work. As PLP members organized solidarity, we found some who were class conscious and felt similar to the BART workers because they work to survive (despite BART workers being higher paid). Then others had a class analysis, understanding something about how capitalism works to hurt everyone. The latter were more likely to argue with, or get pissed off at, friends who complained about being “inconvenienced.” Sometimes we don’t know how far our influence has reached until something comes along to test it.
For some transit workers, the extent of the union leaders’ sabotage may have been an eye-opener. Others may think “that’s the best we can do.” After this experience there certainly is a basis for a rank-and-file transit unity group to grow. The ripples will spread over time if there is an organized, center to keep the ripples going. Struggle for class consciousness and class analysis continues with PLP members and friends in the mix.

BROOKLYN, NY, July 13 — In the thirteen months since the New York Police Department murdered Shantel Davis, an unarmed, 23-year-old black woman, the Progressive Labor Party has brought communist leadership to the fightback by the working-class community here. Today, when the racist U.S. injustice system found Trayvon Martin guilty for being black, our sustained focus on fighting racist police murder allowed us to spread ou politics us in a mass way.
In the Flatbush neighborhood, we have helped build a group called “The Justice for Shantel Davis Committee,” which organized a youth basketball tournament at Tilden Park today. Hundreds of mainly black working-class youth showed up, along with some parents. In true pig fashion, the kkkops showed up at the park and demanded that the music be turned off by 4 p.m. But with the support of hundreds of workers behind us, we had the power to push back against the state-imposed limits. We kept the loudspeakers in full use until the tournament ended.
Everyone heard our communist politics as the announcer worked in an analysis of the sexist lyrics in a song played by the deejay. Hundreds of CHALLENGEs were readily accepted by the crowd. All around the park there were conversations about racist police violence and the need for communist revolution.
The Verdict: PL Responds
That night, after we learned that George Zimmerman had been found not guilty of murder of Trayvon Martin, a leaflet was written and a call for a protest in Flatbush was put out. Several comrades who had joined the Party during our recent communist school, along with some young leaders who were trained there, quickly pressed into action. The Party set up CHALLENGE sellers on several corners. Two young black men of Haitian descent brought drums to join the protest.
Once they’d learned about the Zimmerman verdict, an angry, multiracial crowd of mostly young people moved into the streets. As militant communist speeches blared from the loudspeaker and connected racism to capitalism, the anger in the community became a palpable force. PL’ ers distributed CHALLENGEs and the leaflet, and made sure to take the names of people interested in helping us. Many not only took the newspaper but agreed with the need for communism, a qualitatively different reaction than usual.
When the Party marched, several community members joined us in stopping traffic as we took over the street. A few members of the mass organization fully participated as well, illustrating the importance of mass work to our Party. As we stopped traffic and chanted about police murder and the need for communist revolution, many drivers beeped their horns and pumped their fists in solidarity.
Pushing the Limits
Leading into the march that began in Union Square in Manhattan, the Party had a bullhorn and quickly took the political lead. “No Justice, No Peace; No Racist Police” ignited the crowd. When a PL’ er declared that capitalism can’t meet workers’ needs, people cheered. When he said we needed a revolution, people cheered. But when he raised the need for communist revolution, there was mostly silence from the crowd and anger from the fake-left leaders of the march. This illustrated that many young people understand that capitalism isn’t meeting their needs, but they’re not yet ready for communism during this period of low level working class consciousness. To negate existing limits, our Party must sharpen its struggle to bring communist politics to the mass struggle and to push for the most left line possible.
The kkkops demanded that we move from the street to the sidewalk. After we continued to march in the street, they slammed a protestor on the hood of a car. But the kkkops were quickly surrounded by other angry protestors, and their target may have gotten away. Whenever the cops attacked one side of the march, we’d run behind them and swarm into the streets.
Saving the march from more police violence was a group of legal observers, who threw themselves bodily between the cops and the protestors. Several lawyers rammed their shoulders into the cops as the kkkops surged towards the masses. Outnumbered by the angry, multiracial crowd, the cops could not impose their authority as the march kept pushing through their barricades.
In a touching moment, a middle-aged black woman rolled down her cab window in tears as we swarmed through the traffic at Astor Place. She shouted that she was so happy to see people so angry about Trayvon. A young white male protestor hugged her through the cab window as she said thank you again and again. They were perfect strangers who shared a working-class moment, united in the struggle against racism.
Workers’ Power vs. Bosses’ Power
In Harlem, hundreds of angry workers and youth gathered in front of the state office building. The rally was led by black nationalists talking about black power (a/k/a black capitalism), but many honest workers were there as well. So was PLP, in force, with CHALLENGEs and leaflets (see page 5). People were hungry for our analysis. When the nationalists tried to denounce us, the crowd ignored them and continued to reach eagerly for our leaflets and our papers. Clearly the working class is craving unity over nationalist/racist division. The nationalists could only look on in frustration, as they have no base in the working class.
Afterwards, about thirty workers gathered in a nearby church to discuss next steps. With emotion and resolve, they discussed the need to channel our rage to build a multiracial movement to unite the working class. Zimmerman’s legalized racist crime is creating more working-class fighters ready to battle capitalism to the death — to become the bosses’ gravediggers.
The next day, the bosses’ media quoted politicians and celebrities urging nonviolence. The state wants to monopolize the use of force against the working class; the rulers want us to be peaceful while they’re free to use violence against us. Communists understand that the working class must use violence against the state’s agents and apparatus to free ourselves from capitalist exploitation.
In the wake of racist Zimmerman’s acquittal, we must be urgent in advancing our politics and building PLP. Although communist revolution is not right around the corner, we must advance our ideas and hasten the red dawn that will end this dark night with communist revolution.