LOS ANGELES, November 5 — PL here helped plan a teach-in at Occupy LA titled “Building Working Class Unity – Racism and the Economic Crisis.” We discussed the racist nature of capitalism and argued that racism is the main ideological tool the U.S. ruling class uses to keep working-class people divided and unable to build enough power to fight back. If we are going to build a revolutionary movement to destroy capitalism, we are going to have to start by addressing racism.

We also provided examples of specific forms of racism, such as the recent rise of anti-immigrant policies like the Secure Communities program, which checks prison inmates’ legal status to increase deportation rates. Other examples included the media’s role in building anti-Arab racism and the historical nature of anti-black racism which was key to the birth of capitalism and continues to be critical to the survival of the system.

We held the teach-in at a space occupied by the People’s University Collective (PUC) which is organized by high school teachers in Los Angeles. Participation at the teach-in was good and led to sharp discussions over the racist nature of the system. The teach-in ended with many asking “What do we do next?” Several friends from our schools and workplaces attended the event, which impressed the PUC organizers who recently asked us to come back.

The teach-in on racism is a step forward in PL’s work at Occupy LA. The teach-in also took place a few days after PL helped initiate and lead a march against police brutality in solidarity with the students and workers in Oakland, California who have been under attack by the police (see CHALLENGE, 11/16). The next steps will be to figure out how we can better use our actions at Occupy LA to win students and workers to the idea that we need a Party organization like PL to lead our working-class sisters and brothers in the fight for communism.J