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Summer Project in the Streets: Protest Killer KKKops, Retrace Racist U.S. History
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- 19 July 2013 381 hits
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.
MINNEAPOLIS
MINNEAPOLIS, MN July 17 — The Twin Cities working-class community took the streets to protest not one but two killings of unarmed young black men that racist capitalist oppressors deem “disposable.” We all know about the blatantly racist killing of Trayvon Martin and the equally racist jury freeing killer Zimmerman.
Terrance Franklin was 22 years old and the Minneapolis cops racially profiled him during a traffic stop for DWB (Driving While Black). They said something to him which caused Franklin to panic and run. He was cornered in a house and outside witnesses could hear the fascist cops saying “we got a n----r.”
These two cops ended up shooting each other as they were trying to shoot Franklin and a third cop, SWAT team cop Lucas Peterson shot Franklin twice in the back and three times in the head execution style.
This has outraged Minneapolis workers. Cop Peterson has a notorious history of racist violence toward black workers. Of 13 excessive force complaints, nine were settled by City of Minneapolis for $700,000, the largest against a single cop.
Peterson began harassing black workers when he was a part of the now — disbanded Metro Gang Strike Force. It got so out of control that it was dissolved.
The County Coroner has refused to release Franklin’s body to his family, as if they are trying to hide his injuries. The Minneapolis police are giving multiple versions (lies) about the fatal incident.
During the rally held at Government Plaza in downtown Minneapolis an African immigrant called for black cops, judges, and officials. But black nationalism supports capitalism and only makes blacks the oppressors as in Sanford, Florida, which has a black police chief.
The rally was very multiracial — black, white, asian, latino, Native Americans, and immigrants who all express working-class solidarity. CHALLENGES were distributed and contacts were made.
It is fascist U.S. capitalism that sees black working-class people like Trayvon and Terrance as “worthless.” Capitalism must be smash ed with communist revolution!
HARLEM
Figuring that racist murderer George Zimmerman would be acquitted, our multiracial Harlem interfaith coalition was ready to roll when the verdict came in. For several weeks we had planned a sharp and immediate response. On Sunday, the day after the verdict, we wrote a leaflet calling for a vigil that night in solidarity with the family and friends of Trayvon Martin. A church where we have friends gave us space. We distributed150 leaflets at a nationalist rally at the New York State Office Building and posted more leaflets near the church.
The rally was the usual black power-screaming, divisive do-nothing circus. Our multiracial presence was attacked — nearly physically — by several nationalists. Almost everyone else gratefully took our leaflet. Several promised to attend the vigil.
We began at 7:30 with a core of coalition members. By 8:15, twenty-one people we’d never met, most of them black workers, had joined us. We each shared our outrage and heightened fears for the black and Latino young people we know and love. My white sons hung out with their black, Asian, and Latino friends, I said, and risked being gunned down together.
The main theme of discussion was how Trayvon’s unavenged murder will open a much wider wave of fascist terror that will also ensnare white workers and students in a net of oppression and death. Of course, this terror will also shock more workers and students into struggle with us. Near the end of the vigil, the local state senator “dropped in,” nervous about the threat we pose to the capitalist gang he serves.
Everyone ardently thanked us for our initiative. Most gave their contact information and promised to meet with us soon to continue the struggle to re-indict and convict Ramarley Graham’s Killer KKKop and to build widely to bring our message of multiracial struggle against advancing fascism to Washington on August 24, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech.”
Fight the good fight!
LOS ANGELES — Protesters, enraged with Zimmerman’s verdict, take over highway.
London Protest Against Racist Verdict
BOSTON
With the rupture among rebels against President Bashar Assad, Syria is now engulfed in a three-way civil war. All three forces represent different imperialist camps. All three offer workers nothing but capitalist terror.
Mass butcher Bashar Assad and his Syrian Army are fronting for Russian and Chinese imperialism, along with Iran’s pursuit of regional dominance. The opposition, meanwhile, is a dysfunctional umbrella group of mostly secular nationalists and Islamists. Neither faction has the interests of Syria’s working class at heart. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) stands for the interests of U.S. imperialism, while the Islamists represent regional capitalists and transnational jihadists, who in turn are funded by rival, non-royal segments of the Saudi ruling class. After a jihadist recently killed an FSA commander, the two camps fell out. In cities like Aleppo, Assad’s military is shooting at the FSA while they are shooting at the Islamists.
These sharpening contradictions could help the U.S. ruling class inject itself more directly into the conflict. With the FSA essentially declaring war on the Islamists, Barack Obama can argue that advanced weapons from the U.S. won’t fall into the hands of jihadist terrorists. (The reality on the ground, however, is that rebel brigades swap and sell weapons among themselves, regardless of ideological affinity.) Assad, meanwhile, is seizing the opportunity to reclaim as much territory as possible from the FSA. He is struggling to reclaim the urban production centers while mostly abandoning the undeveloped countryside to the rebels.
Whoever wins will institute fascism of one stripe or another. Assad will butcher the working class in the interests of his imperialist patrons. The FSA will most likely follow the U.S.-led destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as a blueprint for slaughtering the working class. The transnational jihadists from Pakistan and other countries will keep fighting whatever ruling class gains state power while murdering workers in line with their religious fanaticism.
As the civil war intensifies in Syria, we must keep in mind that there is no possible victory for the working class under any capitalist-backed forces now fighting for state power. Only a communist revolution led by the Progressive Labor Party can win for the working class, in Syria and throughout the world.
