CHICAGO, March 12-Dozens of protesters, including Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members, blocked City Hall elevators for nine hours to protest the $95 million police training academy to be built on Chicago’s impoverished West Side. This is on top of the $1.5 billion yearly budget for the police (Chicago City Budget) and the $113 million the city spent on police misconduct lawsuits in 2018 (The Chicago Reporter, 3/7).
The Chicago City Council nevertheless approved this expenditure, showing once again that the job of all politicians and cops is to “serve and protect” their billionaire capitalist masters.Workers don’t need “better trained” cops that will control us and stop us from fighting back more effectively. We don’t need politicians bought and controlled by billionaires and their lobbyists and their bribes.We need a system where we run society for the working class and by the working class. That’s communism. But to organize such a society we must fight racism and sexism. We must unite our class into a multi-racial force that can overthrow the capitalists. This is why PLP organizes for communist revolution.
This militant action was led by young Black and Latin organizers in the #NoCopAcademy campaign, which has been fighting for Schools not Cops, Clinics not Cops, Jobs not Cops, and to End Police Murder since the plan to build the Cop Academy was first announced two years ago. Participants were prepared to be arrested, but no one was, in spite of a heavy police presence throughout the day. Evidently Chicago’s lame duck Mayor Rahm Emanuel feared arrests would bring more attention to the phony election campaign.
The day was filled with chanting (No Cop A-ca-demy, 95 mil for commun-ity. Say What?), stopping people from coming on or off elevators, marching, and individual conversations. This gave PLers the opportunity to talk about our upcoming May Day march and dinner and to make connections with those interested in further discussing the necessity of communist revolution. The protest continued the next day at the City Council meeting. The City Council voted to borrow $65 million to pay for the Academy, meaning the working class will end up paying three times that in interest.
Capitalists will always spend money on police to protect themselves from the working class while cutting funds for schools, jobs, housing, and health clinics that the working class needs. The capitalist politicians also make sure they hire their “friends,” regardless of competence. The contract for the Cop Academy is going to AECOM, a company whose history is riddled with scandals including use of deficient materials, fraudulent billing, inflated cost projections, and over-charges. A member of AECOM’s Board gave $50,000 to Emanuel’s re-election campaign (The Chicago Reporter, January 24). Capitalists are happy to give their cronies money extorted from the working class in the form of taxes.
The struggle continues. The reform battle to stop the Academy may be lost, but the courage, the solidarity, and the multi-racial unity that these fighters built and experienced cannot be taken away from them. PLP will continue to participate in the many anti-racist struggles to come and person-by-person, we will win millions to fight for communism.