The cops are one of the capitalist state’s tools of oppression, an essential instrument to terrorize workers and deter fightback against racism and inequality. But the history of class struggle shows that police atrocities also expose the bosses’ vulnerability. They spark anti-racist rebellion. They bring us closer to the revolution that will smash this brutal system once and for all.
The latest example of this contradiction came when working-class youth in Baltimore rebelled against capitalist exploitation and the racist murder of Freddie Gray. In a frantic move to turn down the heat, Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby brought criminal charges against six cops involved in the modern-day lynching. (Three of them are Black.) Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic Party candidate for president in 2016, is vowing to reform “justice” in the United States, notably a prison system that locks up a higher proportion of Black men than South Africa’s at the height of apartheid.
But make no mistake: these charges and promises will do nothing to end the scourge of cop terror. All politicians serve one capitalist faction or another; all rely on the police to enforce the racist segregation that divides our class. They need cops to attack strikers and protect the bosses‘ super-profits that depress all wages by paying Black and Latin families $612 billion less yearly in income than white families (PEW Research Center). In addition, cop terror and the school-to-prison
pipeline in poor neighborhoods act to lower wages even further. These racist policies create a desperate army of unemployed youth who are forced to work for poverty pay.
When liberal politicians like Mosby and Clinton try to pacify workers’ anger, they reflect the dominant finance capital wing’s concern about threats to the capitalist order. As the U.S. ruling class prepares to challenge its main imperialist rivals, China and Russia, it needs to gain the allegiance of working-class youth, the people who fight the bosses’ wars. Mass alienation and anti-racist anger would doom the U.S. capitalists to defeat, as they saw all too clearly in Vietnam.
The Progressive Labor Party stands firmly with the youth who rebelled against the system in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Ferguson, Missouri, and in dozens of other cities in the U.S. and around the world. We call upon workers everywhere to follow their example, under the banner of communism — the only system where racist murders, unemployment, sexism and all the evils of capitalism have no place.
Prosecution and Pacification
Mosby’s decision to charge the cops who murdered Freddie Gray — in contrast to the free pass given the killers in Ferguson — is tied to the agenda of the dominant U.S. capitalist wing. The charge is being led by arch-imperialist George Soros, the liberal billionaire whose life’s mission is to make sure the U.S. is ready for war against Russia or China.
Soros bankrolls the Open Society Institute (OSI), which seeks to channel anti-capitalist rage into war-bent, pro-U.S. sentiment in strategic areas around the world. The OSI has funneled millions of dollars to potential anti-capitalist hot spots, from Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring countries in the Middle East. In Ferguson alone, the organization spent $33 million after the racist murder of Mike Brown (Daily Mail, 1/15/15). In Ukraine, the OSI has fervently supported the
CIA-backed leadership in its conflict with Russia. Soros is hoping to influence the trajectory of Baltimore’s unrest in a similar way.
Soros has found an ally in Mosby, whose assistant prosecutor, Portia Wood, has served on OSI-Baltimore’s Leadership Council since 2008. On May 3, the New York Times, the U.S. bosses’ leading daily paper, published Baltimore-based activist Sonja Sohn’s reaction to Mosby’s move: “On Friday, one city official seemed to finally answer the desperate pleas of poor Baltimore residents.” It’s probably no coincidence that Sohn’s Baltimore Wake Up project also cashes OSI checks.
But problems have already surfaced with Mosby’s prosecution. She acted in such haste to please her capitalist masters that she may have undermined her chances of convicting the six killer kkkops, always a long shot in the rigged “justice” system. Technical questions have arisen over whether a knife allegedly found in Freddie Gray’s possession was a switchblade. (Not that the knife had anything to do with his being arrested without cause or subsequently traumatized into a coma while inside a police van.) In addition, it appears that the charges filed by Mosby’s office may have mistakenly identified a plumber and an elementary school cafeteria manager instead of two of the cops (Baltimore Sun, 5/4/15).
Hillary, You Liar
In an April 29 speech at Columbia University, self-styled humanitarian Hillary Clinton said, “What we’ve seen in
Baltimore should, indeed does, tear at our soul.” She proposed a thorough reform of the criminal “justice” system — an end to mass incarceration, an overhaul of mandatory minimum sentences. But Clinton, too, works for imperialist U.S. interests. The policy-shaping think tank she co-founded, the Center for American Progress (CAP), is bankrolled by Soros, Citigroup, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its board includes Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, who once said the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from U.S. sanctions throughout the 1990s were “worth it.”
Clinton’s anti-jailing stance stems from a March 23 CAP report, “Expanding Opportunities in America’s Urban Areas,” which notes that up to 100 million U.S. workers — as many as one in three — have a criminal record. Like her capitalist patrons, Clinton is worried that these millions will have no stake in fighting for a system that robs them of freedom and job prospects.
In her Columbia speech, Clinton spoke of “alternative punishment” to jail. Clinton wants to unpack prisons to fill the barracks. She failed to mention, however, that it was her husband, Bill Clinton, who instituted the policies that threw millions of Black and Latin men and women into the prison system in the first place. Or that it was Bill Clinton who shredded welfare, sending millions of families deeper into poverty. Hillary Clinton’s new talking points are a deceitful ploy to gain support for her presidential bid and to channel working-class youth into the military. She is singing the same tune as the Soros-funded Huffington Post. In a 2014 column, “Uncle Sam (Should) Want You: National Service vs. Mass Incarceration,” an Ohio State University professor, Steven Conn, wrote:
For roughly 30 years between 1940 and 1973 American men were drafted into the Military….[T]hat period of service helped many with their transition into adulthood, exactly at that moment when some young men wind up in the criminal justice system today. I am not suggesting a return to compulsory military service. Instead, I am suggesting that a more widely conceived program of national service might have a significant impact on crime and on the men most likely to commit it by providing them with the kind of work, structure and sense of purpose that is missing for too many of them.
From Rebellion to Communist Revolution
Workers in Baltimore and worldwide should beware of reformers’ attempts to “fix” the exploitation of capitalism. As long as society is run by and for profit, racism, sexism,
unemployment, and imperialist slaughter can only get worse. The one way to rid the world of these plagues is to organize under the leadership of the Progressive Labor Party. PLP fights to lead the working class to smash the system in its entirety. We will create the only society that values every life — a communist society.
BROOKLYN
Hundreds of members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party marched on Flatbush Avenue this past Saturday, hailing from New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New Jersey. The May Day march was led by high school and college students, and the multiracial composition of the marchers was received enthusiastically in the predominantly Black and Latin working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. More than 6,000 CHALLENGEs were sold and over $5,000 was raised from the community, and at various points members of the community joined our march, raised their fists and give us their contact info. Shutting down traffic in one direction, a sound truck with a DJ playing beats at the lead kept the chants loud and the atmosphere militant! Drivers saluted us honking their horns.
This May Day celebrates 50 years of the Progressive Labor Party. Speakers throughout the march pointed out that as we celebrate the history of the international working class. PLP’s international history is proud and just getting warmed up. PLP has been involved in or led militant struggles in at least two dozen countries, in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia and Africa.
As our march proceeded past intersections where unarmed Black youth were murdered by the police, a comrade on the sound truck addressed the marchers and the community that the only answer to these racist police murders is to join PLP and help us continue to build an international, fighting revolutionary Party. The spirit and militancy of the march showed that PLP is ramping up its forces for the tasks of the next 50 years, becoming a mass working-class Party and organizing communist revolution!
A highlight was a report from two PLP students from Baltimore who spoke of their struggles there since Freddie Gray’s murder, and a background to the racist conditions in that city. The keynote speech at the conclusion of the march connected the current conditions of the international working class and the need to fight for communism with her own life and struggles as an immigrant worker. She then invited all who believe in fighting racism and capitalism to join PLP’s fight, that a communist world is possible, and that we can win.
Following the keynote address, two friends of PLP from Germany spoke and commented that this was their first U.S. May Day, and how inspired they were to participate in the march. They explained that in Germany, where May Day is an official holiday and is treated as more of a parade, PLP’s May Day brought out militancy and struggle! The crowd was then treated to a poem written by one of the Baltimore students, before dispersing into a nearby park for box lunches.
On PLP’s 50th anniversary, our fighting international Party, and our fight to build a mass multiracial communist movement, is growing. This May Day in New York City, in the belly of the U.S. imperialist beast, was both a celebration and a call to be a part of the next 50 years of world history. Fight for your class sisters and brothers and join us!
SAN FRANCISCO
PLP members and friends participated in two separate May Day coalition marches on both sides of the Bay.
We were impressed and inspired that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers voted for a stop-work meeting to honor May Day as the International Workers’ Day with the spotlight on labor against police terror. The ILWU has a long history of work actions that support anti-racism and for international solidarity with fighting workers: anti-apartheid, the racist murder of Oscar Grant, attacks on workers in Palestine, and attacks on immigrant workers. The ILWU on the West Coast came out of the Communist Party organizing industrial unions in the 1920’s and 1930’s. At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, they refused to load ships with supplies going to U.S. soldiers in Siberia who were fighting the newly-found Soviet Union. It still reflects some ideas from this earlier communist movement. The May Day shut-down of the ports was a small taste of workers’ power.
In San Francisco, the May Day march focused mainly on issues facing immigrant workers, but also on the whole range of how capitalism devastates the working class around the world: by paying workers low wages, state terror against immigrant workers, and marginalizing indigenous workers from San Francisco to Mexico, forcing Black, Latin, and immigrant workers into the prison system.
In both marches, PLP joined with and led chants in English and Spanish. Our banner and red flags, and communist literature tied individual issues to their root in capitalism’s racism and exploitation of the working class.
We’ll shut it down every day ,
….We’re doing this for Freddie Gray
…..We’re doing this for Amilcar Lopez
….We’re doing this for Alejando Nieto.
….We’re doing this for Ramarley Graham.
Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras.
Immigrant workers are under attack, what do we do? Stand up , Fight back.
Primero de Mayo, Communista y Proletario.
Fight for Communism power to the workers.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
We PL’ers in Israel-Palestine participated in three May Day marches in our region, two in Tel-Aviv-Jaffa and one in Nazareth.
On April 30, a march was organized in north-central Tel-Aviv by the pro-boss Histadrut union federation as well as its youth movement, HaNoar Hoved (Working Youth) and its adult counterpart, Dror Israel (Freedom Israel). While this march was organized by liberals, a more progressive group attended it: the Coalition for Direct Employment. This group, of which one local PL’er is a member and another is a supporter, fights against the horrors of contract work and for regular employment and unionization.
Approximately thirty contract workers, including PL’ers and our friends, attended this march, carrying signs calling for full-time employment and against the contract bosses. Slogans compared the contract bosses to organized crime bosses (which they are) and called for an end of this ultra-exploitative phenomenon. Many of the marchers were social workers, a profession which is increasingly outsourced by the government, as well as housekeeping workers, a job which is almost entirely outsourced to contract bosses.
On May 1, May Day itself, hundreds of workers, including local PL’ers marched in central Tel-Aviv in the main May Day demonstration. This march was organized by fake leftists (the Israeli “Communist” Party and Socialist Struggle) as well as liberals (the Meretz party), but militancy was high and flags ran red. The march was headed by a sign reading “Workers of the World - Unite!” Some of our friends, Palestinian and Jewish, attended. Under the red flags, workers demanded an end to exploitative capitalism and to contract work. However, the phony reds mostly shouted slogans about “nationalization,” which, under capitalist rule only means the industries moving from ownership by one boss to collective ownership by the entire capitalist class through its state. We countered this by calling for revolution and the elimination of capitalists to be replaced by workers’ power.
On May 2, a May Day march was organized in Nazareth by the fake Israeli “Communist” Party. This party has a strong base there and was able to fill the streets with red flags and celebrating youth, but did not really call for communism or a revolution. PLP came and raised the red flag in this city as well.
In all cases we raised the red flag high and put communism forward, in most cases together with our friends. We hope that next year we will present an even stronger red block on May Day.
COLOMBIA
Comrades, friends, and workers of the world, we send militant greetings from Bogota, Colombia.
Today we are celebrating one more year of struggle on the International Day of the Working Class. We celebrate with our sights set on the unity of the workers of the world under the red flag of communism and its communist party, PLP. This has been one more year under the rule of the parasitic capitalist class, its racist wage system, its endless wars, its sexism that divides us and weakens us, and its fascism and violence against our class. In short, it’s been a year of working-class struggles, protests, work stoppages, strikes and mobilizations that keeps us committed to the communist ideals of a better world.
In Colombia, workers live in misery and need. There is a teachers’ strike, unemployment, low wages, poverty, prostitution, crises and chaos in the health care system, malnutrition, drug addiction, high cost of living, a cynical bourgeoisie and a prostrated left that advocates working for peace. But we tell workers, through our newspaper CHALLENGE, that revolution is not negotiable; that we will not negotiate to escape from slavery and will not negotiate to escape from capitalism. We tell workers that the capitalist state is our sworn enemy, an enemy of the working class and of our youth. We tell them that we reject the passivity and the electoral distractions, and that the state cannot be reformed but must be destroyed by a communist revolution. That’s why we need revolutionary organized violence under the leadership of our Party.
Capitalism has thoroughly shown that it can no longer rule the destiny of humanity, because its laws and contradictions make its destruction inevitable. That’s why we are organizing workers politically in more than 27 countries, consolidating our revolutionary line to overthrow it with the power of the international working class. PLP and its newspaper CHALLENGE call on the unity of communist to fight for this noble goal. Join us!
BALTIMORE, May 1 — Much of the working class loves and respects boldness in the fight against racism! Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party protested throughout Baltimore today in what was the beginning of a rebellion against racist murderers.
On the night of April 24, a modest-sized group marched through downtown and South Baltimore. They blocked traffic in support of the struggle to win justice for Freddie Gray, and for all victims of police brutality. Many motorists — both Black and white — were highly supportive, honking their horns in agreement, throwing clenched fists in the air, and sharing warm smiles. However, one driver with a confederate flag on his antenna drove threateningly, acting as if he would actually run us over. People courageously stood in front of his vehicle, stopped him, and one person, without hesitation, ripped off his confederate flag.
Burn That Racist Flag
The next day, the first huge rally was held. PL’ers sold hundreds of CHALLENGE and our leaflet was received with enthusiasm. Outside the Western District police station, a member of Progressive Labor Party spoke, held up that confederate flag, and explained where it came from. There was boisterous cheering and applause. Two people came up with cigarette lighters, and the flag was set ablaze! A photo, showing the burning of that racist flag inspired thousands. On social media it was shared and liked, tweeted and re-tweeted, again and again and again. People of all ethnic backgrounds — former students of the PL’er holding up the burning flag — sent message after message of admiration and encouragement.
Working-Class Anger Is Justified
We saw many, many clear demonstrations of workers’ anger. When Black police commissioner Anthony Batts came out to pacify the crowd outside the precinct, angry workers quickly surrounded him and refused to allow him to speak. He was hustled back inside by a group of cops. Workers challenged the police across the barricades, showing they had no illusions that any of the cops were their friends, white or Black. The 2.5-mile march from the precinct all the way down to City Hall was multiracial and multigenerational. Babies in strollers, youth, and elders marched. The slogan of the campaign “All Night, All Day, We will Fight for Freddie Gray!” was evident.
The rebellion shortly after the first huge march and rally. A large number of people marched from the City Hall rally to the baseball stadium. Massive lines of cops were deployed in an effort to control us. As it turned out, several cop cars were parked and empty, right next to us. The police lines were very close, barely half a block away. Nevertheless, young men — deeply angered by years of police racism, arrogance and brutality, and ready to take action after the outrageous killing of Freddie Gray — courageously smashed the windows of those parked cop cars. They also stood on top of the cars, at great personal risk, and fearlessly did as much as possible — in clear view of the cops and international media — to disable those vehicles. During all that time, the cops were unable to do anything.
A while later, due to the late hour, members of Freddie Gray’s family said they needed to head back to the Gilmore Homes neighborhood, where Freddie had lived and been murdered. A group of about 60 people, began the three-mile walk. On the way, the tire on another parked cop car was slashed, an effort was made to break out a cop car’s window, and cops — nervous, jumpy, and highly aggressive — showed up and grabbed one young man. Participants in our walking group made a strong effort to pull him away from the police, but weren’t quite able to do so. As we continued toward Gilmore Homes, the windows on several major businesses — just like the cop car windows — were smashed.
Several blocks later, however, we reached the outer edges of downtown, and began walking up Pennsylvania Avenue, a Black residential area. A couple of people among us spoke loudly and confidently, saying “We’re not downtown anymore. Don’t touch anything.” Starting at that moment, and for the entire rest of our long walk, not a single person bothered anything. Two police hats with badges on them, which had been taken earlier, from the cop cars near the stadium, were passed around. Members of our large group were jubilant with having turned the tables, at least a little, against the racist police who took the life of much-loved Freddie Gray.
The experience of walking back to Gilmore Homes was profoundly inspiring. The working class showed deep hatred for oppression and racism; a readiness to fight powerfully and courageously against those forces; and a thoughtful, disciplined approach to differentiating between the property and symbols of the enemy, as opposed to the lives and belongings of our sisters and brothers, which are to be respected.
Role of Cops: Terrorize Workers
The ruling class — millionaire business owners — has a problem. On the one hand, to protect their system and keep making huge profits, they have to control us. That’s the purpose of police brutality today, much like the very first U.S. police department, whose purpose was to catch runaway slaves, brutalize them to set an example, instill fear in others, and then return them to slavery.
However, today’s ruling class, in addition to utilizing brutality, also needs to fool us into being loyal to this system. The major capitalists — like Rockefellers’ Exxon-Mobil — need to minimize our desire to rebel, and they also need us to fight and die for them, in their wars to accumulate cheap labor, resources, and markets all around the world. Fearing even greater rebellion if the cops weren’t at least slapped on the wrist, Baltimore City State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, announced that the six cops who took Freddie’s life will face a variety of charges. This includes second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office, and false imprisonment.
On the other hand, the rest of the Baltimore police — who previously brutalized and killed unarmed Anthony Anderson, Tyrone West and many others — have faced no charges at all, and remain on the force to this day. Since 2011, Baltimore City paid out over $5.7 million to more than 100 people who won court cases against the police for assault, false arrest and false imprisonment. Beyond the killings by Baltimore police, dozens of residents have suffered broken bones — jaws, noses, arms, legs, ankles — along with head trauma and organ failure.
Let’s be clear: the reason six cops have now been charged is not a commitment to justice. No, it’s the fear by the ruling class that there would be more and bigger rebellions and huge business losses if the cops who took Freddie Gray’s life were not at least charged. While those cops may not actually be indicted or tried and found guilty and serve any time, but something had to be done for the moment. After nothing was done in the high-profile cases of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, working-class anger is ready to boil over.
Guard Cheers Anti-Racists
Once the charges were announced, many people in Baltimore hit the streets to celebrate. That Mondawmin Mall was the site of some of the rebellion had taken place during the afternoon and night of April 27. There were many armed personnel carriers. Large numbers of National Guard soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder, each with an assault rifle. Amid the oncoming traffic, was an extensive, informal convoy of a different type. Many cars, one after another, had their horns honking, headlights flashing, and clenched fists jubilantly held out of windows and sun roofs, accompanied by shouts of joy. Left to right, a number of the Guardswomen and Guardsmen were giving the clenched-fist salute, in powerful solidarity with the motorcade participants.
During that day and the following week, over 3,000 communist flyers — announcing May Day, explaining the need for working-class revolution, and countering Obama, who called the rebels “thugs” — were distributed by Progressive Labor Party. Those flyers were eagerly taken by Baltimoreans — of all racial backgrounds — who, in addition to boldly standing up against police brutality, are now more interested than ever in re-considering their opinions about capitalist society, and how to win a new world without racism.
One day, large sections of the military, along with the rest of the working class, will indeed rise up to defeat capitalism and create a new, communist world of sisterhood and brotherhood. This week, many of us saw glimmers of that bright and inevitable future!
WORCESTER, MA, May 6 — The Progressive Labor Party held a forum on police terror here. Speakers showed how racist police terror is a key tool of capitalism and that fighting it using the bosses’ rules cannot change it. Only getting rid of capitalism can destroy racist cops.
One speaker exposed how even filing complaints is useless. He cited the testimony of a police detective who said that not one of the complaints in Worcester over a long period of time were even investigated. They were just rubber stamped as “unsubstantiated.”
Another speaker offered hope for a world where the choices aren’t between useful complaints and running. He pointed out that racism and bias are caused by the capitalist profit system which uses them to divide the working class and is continuously being reinforced in police departments. PLP fights to expose the lies of the bosses and to organize people to reject the worsening conditions, and to fight for communism. When workers take power, the material basis for racism and exploitation will be gone.
At the forum, PLP sold CHALLENGE and called on everyone to join the May Day marches on May 2 in Brooklyn. Several people committed to going, and money was raised for a defense fund for anti-racist protesters arrested by the police.
Later, one person asked PLP and Massachusetts Human Rights Commission to help him organize a Black Lives Matter rally on April 29. Both organizations agreed and endorsed the rally, which was mainly organized by Worcester State University and Clark University students. Many local residents joined the march and rally.
We will continue to support these struggles, and to raise the need for communist revolution.
