Bronx, January 20 –On Martin Luther King day (MLK day) the interfaith coalition joined with a Black church in the Bronx for the third year to emphasize the struggle aspect of MLK day. Antiracists workers in this mass organization, and members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) packed the church’s basement with a multiracial crowd, young and old, eager to learn from our panel of experienced organizers. The presenters clearly described the racist horror of police killings nationally, the scandal of Columbia Presbyterian’s attempt to close the Allen Hospital Psychiatric service, the life and death need to expand mental health services, and the campaign to stop cops from being the first responders to calls for people in mental crisis.
Surely the future must hold an egalitarian, communist world with medical care, food, housing and all basic needs available equally to all. That’s when the working class runs all aspects of society. In the meantime we organize to fight back against the capitalists who are mainly concerned with profits.
Cops hail from slave system
How cops respond to people in mental crisis is a racist horror.  The Washington Post and the The Guardian estimate that uniformed, armed cops kill roughly 1,000 victims annually.  Almost half are Black, Latin, or Indigenous, and fully half are people suffering mental crisis.  Weekly  friends ask, “Why are cops allowed to administer this racist carnage?” Why are they “out of control?”  We answer that they are, in fact, very much “in control!”From their origins in the slavery enforcing murder squads, police have always served the fundamental needs of the U.S. ruling class.  Now more than ever racist intimidation is vital to forestall any multiracial rebellion that could threaten the critical need of the U.S. to militarize to counter the ascendancy of other international imperialists, principally China, that are moving to become the Top Dog Imperialist.  Knowing that this process is leading to World War III, the capitalist rulers depend on racist cop forces to terrorize and control the working class domestically as these bosses mobilize to defend U.S. imperialism globally. These cops provide the front line warriors nationally to promote fascism at home.
As empowering as our speakers were, an important part of the program came at the end when PLP challenged our friends, new and old, to sign on to weekly activity. Twenty three agreed to work together to save and expand Allen Psych services and to barrage the New York City Council demanding hearings and legislation to stop cops as first responders to calls for people in mental crisis and to expand mental health services sufficiently to meet a critically growing need. This was an important albeit small victory of the day.
Of course, the most important victory will emerge as we share CHALLENGE, issue by issue, with our new coworkers and convince them to march on May Day with us, grow closer to the Progressive Labor Party with us, and build the world wide movement to smash death dealing imperialism finally with world wide communist revolution!