WASHINGTON, DC, March 26 — Metro bosses were stopped in their tracks today in the face of determined workers sticking up for one of their own. Metro workers, community activists in the returning citizens movement, public health workers in the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association, PLP members and many others have been sharpening the struggle against racist background checks for months.
Metro bosses and union leaders are nervous because of our bold, open offensive. We took it to another level with a planned confrontation at the monthly Metro board meeting, armed with an open letter to the board signed by outraged workers, many of whom we had never even met before.
We exposed the lies of General Manager Sarles, who had testified in public that a Metro employee who was out sick would not have to undergo a criminal background check when he/she returned to work. But behind closed doors Sarles’ agents were firing a bus driver returning to work after a year-long struggle with cancer. When his background check turned up two previous convictions, he was told he was terminated. Both convictions occurred more than ten years before he was employed by Metro.
Afraid of the workers and continued public criticism, the bosses called him in at the last minute and rehired him on the spot. One of the driver’s friends texted us: “how grateful he is to have u guys jump to his corner and did not even know him. Shows that u guys just don’t talk the talk. You guys make it happen.”
Now is the time to press our offensive against racist mass incarceration, the New Jim Crow. We must force Metro to stop its racist policies. Metro must create new personnel policies that don’t discriminate and stop reinforcing the systematic racist injustice that characterizes all of capitalism.
This struggle is challenging because racism is a key part of capitalism’s effort to stigmatize and divide groups of workers. The capitalists want to divide ex-offenders from workers who have escaped being arrested in the drug wars, pay everyone less and make off with the profits.
This small victory today came because all workers said NO to injustice.  We can’t stop now. We have to fight for the big victory of overthrowing bosses like Sarles and having our own system that relies on unity and equality of workers — communism.