CHICAGO, January, 24– This racist profit system has stolen yet another child, this time the life of eight-year-old Melissa Ortega. She and her mother were walking down the street in the Little Village neighborhood on January 22 when they got caught in a gang-related crossfire. Melissa was struck twice in the head. A system ruled by the biggest gangsters of all time, the bosses, will foster violence against our class.
To amass profits, bosses must force our class to work under dangerous working conditions, and endure equally miserable living conditions, pushing millions of workers into an early grave. These horrific capitalist conditions—social murder and imperialist wars—create the perfect storm for gang violence.
Capitalism is a genocidal system propped up by racist, sexist exploitation, inequality, and war. Violence enables rulers to oppress workers, ruling over us with fear and impunity. ONLY in a society where education, resources, and means of production are all in the name of nurturing and fostering from each according to commitment, to each according to need we will no have conditions that lead to gang violence. The ultimate murderers are the bosses, who must be smashed through communism.
Communists fight back against capitalist terror
Little Village is primarily a Spanish-speaking lower-income working class community. The bosses are trying to gentrify this historically neglected area, with an added effort to rid gangs. The bosses want us to buy into the racist myth of Black-on-Black crime, to convince us that Black and Latin workers are “violent” and “criminal” to justify police terror and mass incarceration.
However, we must not forget it is the capitalists who make wars, and glamorize and sell violent culture. It is the capitalists who attack us with poverty and police terror. It is the capitalists who sell the guns, and who place them in the hands of arms dealers and gang members, degraded workers, killing our class sisters ,brothers, and children in mainly Black and Latin neighborhoods.
The following Monday, a friend of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and a resident of Little Village texted a Party member to attend a press conference called by his organization to demand justice for Melissa. Word was quickly spread; four PLP members and two longtime friends of PL, attended. Everyone was outraged and called on local politicians to demand mental health clinics for their community but predictably none came.
Those of us in the Party have been working in this area for years in various campaigns, workplaces and mass organizations in order to win workers to the necessity of communist revolution to crush this rotten system and all its misery.
 No more victims of capitalism!
We distributed 30 copies of CHALLENGE while speaking with many workers present. One woman thought that we’d have a better society if we all had the same religion. Another woman thought that lack of mental health clinics was the problem. Over half of the city’s public mental health clinics closed in 2013, under the watch of racist former mayor, Rahm Emanuel. This lack of access definitely plays a part, as many working class youth who are oppressed and alienated are deprived of resources that could help them emotionally and socially.
Melissa’s mother, Aracelia Leanos, said in a statement that the shooter was a victim of the system himself and forgave him, knowing that he will have to live with her daughter’s murder for the rest of his life. But the fact is that we are all victims of capitalism with its racist and sexist culture of individualism, unemployment, underemployment, rotten schools and medical care.
And yes, the shooter, 16-year old Emilio Corripio and his 27-year-old accomplice, are victims of capitalism. But we still have a choice: become communists and join PLP in building a communist movement where we turn the guns around on the bosses to get rid of this rotten system of capitalism. We have to intensify our efforts to win our class to the Party or we run the risk of more workers joining the reformist dead-end of capitalist politics and becoming politicians for the super-rich capitalists, turning to religion, racist cynicism, or even joining the predatory street gangs.
The list of casualties keeps getting longer. Under capitalism, “justice” looks like killer cops like Jason Van Dyke serving a six year sentence then being set free for “good behavior” after shooting Black teenager LaQuan McDonald 16 times. Kyle Rittenhouse being declared ‘innocent’ by the U.S. court system after killing two antiracists in Kenosha,  Wisconsin. Which side are we on?
Choose the working class
Be they the cops and sheriffs, the “legal” foot soldiers for the capitalist class who killed working-class youth like Adam Toledo in the streets of Chicago or Valentina Orellana Peralta and Daniel Elena Lopez in Los Angeles. Or whether they are the petty capitalist-influenced gangs, we have to ask ourselves which side are we on—the capitalists or the international working class?
If you choose the international working class, join PLP and continue to build the international communist movement to achieve a better world—a communist world where we take care of each other and help each other reach our human potential. It is our responsibility as communists to win our young friends in Little Village and everywhere to join PLP and fight for a just future.