WASHINGTON, DC, July 21 — After the racist acquittal of George Zimmerman who murdered teenager Trayvon Martin, PLP’ers took to the streets here with many other outraged workers and students. Twelve hours after the verdict, PLP assembled over a dozen organizers to leaflet and mobilize workers in the Stoddert Terrace neighborhood in Ward 7 against the acquittal. This bullhorn rally moved through the community where PL’ers have been active for over two years, reaching scores of residents with flyers and speeches. Some young workers called for Zimmerman’s head! Many understood how serious the racist offensive in the U.S. is today.
This racist assault includes not only police and vigilante murders of young black people but also the mass incarceration and slave labor of prisoners who are mainly black and Latino; Congress’s effort to terminate food stamps; and the Supreme Court’s recent reversals of affirmative action and voting rights legislation. Locally, affordable housing is disappearing as gentrification takes hold, with the connivance of corrupt city officials. Meanwhile, the bosses have launched new attacks on the mainly black Metro transit workers.
A week after the July 20 rally, the Peoples Coalition of Prince George’s County, Maryland, organized numerous local groups for a bold 10-mile “Justice for Trayvon” march. It left from the County and strode militantly through DC’s working-class communities, ending at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Cheer ‘Justice for Trayvon’ Marchers
Almost 100 workers and students made this arduous march, in the best tradition of the Civil Rights movement. Residents cheered and drivers blared their horns in solidarity. Marchers joined Dorothy Elliott in vowing to re-open the 20-year-old police murder of her teenage son, Archie Elliott III. He was shot at 21 times of which 14 bullets struck him while he sat handcuffed in the front seat of a squad car. The two cops who murdered Archie have never been punished.
PLP marchers also circulated a petition demanding that the Metro transit system reverse its recent policy of refusing to hire anyone with any kind of criminal record. Metro is eager to racially stigmatize its mainly black drivers. It has even fired workers who have worked for Metro for many years simply because they had a record before Metro hired them! Some marchers received CHALLENGE for the first time and were interested in hearing about PLP’s global involvement in workers’ struggles in Haiti and elsewhere as well as our role in building a revolutionary communist movement in the D.C. area.
Expose Sharpton’s Respect for Jury Decision
After a brief rally at the DOJ, the Peoples Coalition decided to march to a nearby rally organized by Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) to bring the Coalition’s militant fighting spirit to the hundreds gathered at a local courthouse. The NAN leader preached passivity, declaring his support for the “rule of law” and for respect for the jury’s decision even while disagreeing with it.
Sharpton’s organization, known for falling in line with President Obama, had told the Coalition to change its plans and join them. In response, an organizer for the Peoples Coalition declared, “We’re autonomous and independent of the Civil Rights leadership and the Democratic Party. Therefore, with all due respect, we take no orders from Rev. Al Sharpton or any Civil Rights leader. Our orders come directly from the masses, our energy, loyalty and activism is on direct behalf of the masses.” The Coalition thus brought a message of militant struggle, enthusiastically received by those at the NAN rally.
Capitalism’s Profit Drive Root of Racism
But even the message of the Peoples Coalition was incomplete. It did not address how racism is a foundation for capitalism’s drive for maximum profits and how it uses racism to super-exploit black workers and to divide and drag down the entire working class. The struggle against racism can only be successful when its root — the exploitative capitalist system — is overthrown. There can be no accommodation with capitalism if racism is ever to be finally eliminated.
Actually, if Zimmerman had been convicted, the rulers and their flunky misleaders would only use it to claim “the system works,” while hundreds of other youth continue to be victims of racist murder.
The next day PLP members and friends joined a Speak-Out for Trayvon organized by a teacher at a local literacy program. She had visited Stoddert Terrace the weekend before the rally and wanted to move towards more action. Over 50 people attended to discuss how racism affected their personal lives through racial profiling, intimidation and stereotypes. They want to fight back by:

• abolishing the “stand-your-ground” laws
• divesting in banks that fund private prisons
• boycotting Officer Friendly visits to schools and working with youth
• focusing the August 24 March on Washington on Trayvon and the bosses’ criminalization of black youth.

Speakers also attacked capitalism as the source of these problems. PLP members invited the group to our bi-monthly study/action group meetings to discuss how we can re-organize society based on communist principles.
The bold actions of participants in all of these events have laid the foundation for further progress, both ideological and practical, in the struggle against racism and for communist revolution.