BROOKLYN, March  6 — Students and workers distributed leaflets, signs and made speeches in Haitian Creole, English and Spanish denouncing recent racist attacks on workers from the Dominican Republic (D.R.) to the U.S. Passersby in East Flatbush, a largely Caribbean and Latin neighborhood, stopped to take over 400 CHALLENGEs. Many chanted along and some stopped to give speeches on the bullhorn in Creole.
On Feb. 11, Henry Jean Claude, known as “Tulile,” a young worker from Haiti who shined shoes and did odd jobs for a living, was found hanging from a tree in a public park in Santiago, D.R., hands and feet bound. This lynching follows last year’s carnival parade where the Minister of Culture Jose Antonio Rodriguez allowed 50 white-robed and hooded KKKers to march. Racist speech inevitably leads to racist action! The day before Tulile’s body was found, a small group of Dominican nationalists gathered in Santiago to burn a Haitian flag and call for deportation of Haitian descent.
Local police immediately and without investigation said that racism was not a factor in the lynching, revealing themselves to be what PLP labels all cops under capitalism: KKKops. These same police arrested two Haitians for the murder in a blatant attempt to cover up government-inspired racism against Haitians in the D.R.
The Dominican ruling class has a long tradition of racism and nationalism directed against Haitians in a concerted effort to crush solidarity and unity between workers in the D.R. and Haiti. Workers from Haiti have been migrating to the D.R. for almost a century because of rampant racist unemployment and poverty created by the capitalist system.
This past week, the U.S. bosses declared that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death in Cleveland, Ohio by playing with a toy gun in a park, and that KKKop Darren Wilson would not be indicted by the federal government for the shooting death of 18-year-old Mike Brown. What do the murders of Henry Jean Claude in the D.R., Tamir  in the U.S. and refusal to indict killer cop Wilson have in common? The answer is simple: CAPITALISM!
This world-wide economic system cannot not survive without racism. The bosses use racism to divide and conquer. Workers are taught to scapegoat their working-class brothers and sisters for the failures of capitalism. When unemployment is rising, the bosses fuel anti-Haitian racism in D.R. and anti-Black and anti-immigrant racism in the U.S. to keep workers from blaming capitalism. Capitalism can never provide full employment, even in the “best” of times. Only communism will be able to provide jobs and a decent life for all workers and their families. Under communism, we will need collectivity to run society. All decisions made will be in the interest of our class, so racism will not be tolerated!
Let the militant march of 10,000 anti-racist Haitians on Feb. 25 in Port-au-Prince inspire us to reject racist government policy, from Ferguson to Santo Domingo! We call on workers on both sides of the island of Hispaniola to reject the bosses’ ideology and stand together to fight racism and nationalism. And likewise, wherever capitalist-inspired racism and nationalism rear their ugly heads, let workers stand together and fight the bosses who exploit us all! Let’s use the coming May Day — the International Workers’ Day — to build a movement together to reject and smash racism and nationalism and fight for communism and an egalitarian society in the interest of all working people.