BALTIMORE, June 25—A recent West Wednesday rally—an anti-racist rally against the 2013 murder of Tyrone West that’s become a fixture in Baltimore over five years—may have been modest in size, but it was bold in action.
It began when a cop in an unmarked car stationed himself directly across the street from the rally.
Perhaps the Baltimore Police Department was trying to see if intimidation would scare people and minimize participation at this weekly action. Since 2013, we have been demanding the prosecution and incarceration of the cops who killed unarmed Tyrone West, while in police custody.
Or perhaps the intimidation was coincidental, and just part of BPD’s new strategy, which they call “predictive policing.”
Either way, participants at West Wednesday got right up—and stayed up—in one cop’s face, videotaping and practically surrounding him. Simultaneously, across the street, the rally continued, virtually without interruption, while the sister of Tyrone West incorporated into her powerful speech an astute, angry, loud, and unabashed denunciation of the new BPD police policy.
The “predictive policing” farce
Two years ago, following the police murder of Freddie Gray, the federal Department of ‘Injustice’ (DOJ) issued a report about Baltimore. It admitted BPD strategies routinely cause severe disparities in the rate of stops, searches, and arrests of Black workers. Additionally, the DOJ admitted that this pattern of police department conduct is carried out with excessive force—racist terror and murder.
Now they’ve given this enforcement of capitalist inequality a new name, “predictive policing,” trying to put a pretty face on an ugly reality. Even if you change a pig’s name, it still stinks.
“Predictive policing” claims to use crime data and high tech algorithms - supposedly without racial or class bias - to scientifically pinpoint areas of the city where street violence is likely to occur in the immediate future. Then the BPD aggressively targets those neighborhoods with cops. However, as Andrew Ferguson warns in The Rise of Big Data Policing, published eight months ago, “. . . The history of unjust policing practices will be justified by technical spin.”
As one might expect, “predictive policing” doesn’t send the cops to Roland Park—or similar neighborhoods—where the median household income is $104,482.
Their predictive model is just another version of racial profiling. It’s used to disproportionately send cops to neighborhoods like Sandtown-Winchester, Freddie Gray’s neighborhood, and to nearby Harlem Park. The median household income for the two neighborhoods is $24,374.
More than two-thirds of Black residents in Baltimore don’t have enough savings to survive for even three months, in case of job loss.
The primary role of police today—just like the very first U.S. police force, whose assignment was to catch escaped slaves - is to try terrorizing the most oppressed members of our class: Black workers. The ruling class of capitalists hopes, in this way, to keep themselves in power.
Capitalist terror shows their fear
Just as Nat Turner’s revolt made the slave owners deeply fearful, today’s ruling capitalists are afraid of working class strikes, uprisings, and revolution. That’s why Baltimore’s government—acting on behalf of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the main organization of capitalists in this area—gives the police department twice as much funding as they give to the City’s entire public education system.
Waverly, the neighborhood where West Wednesday is held most often - just like Sandtown Winchester, and much of Baltimore - has a predominately Black population. So, perhaps, “predictive policing,” not purposeful harassment of the West Wednesday rally, was the reason for a new cop presence at Greenmount Avenue and 33rd Street.
Prediction: fascism and imperialism under capitalism
No matter what the cops were trying to accomplish—they did not succeed.
We will continue rallying and exposing the reality that the police and the government are key parts of state power. State power means organized violence for the suppression of a class, unrestricted by any law. Though racial profiling is “illegal,” cops—during Obama’s presidency and now under Trump—continue to kill about 1,100 people a year, more than three each day on average, because it serves the fundamental needs of the capitalist class.
The only solution to capitalist state violence is to join the multiracial Progressive Labor Party. When our Party earns the respect of millions and millions of working class people, we will defeat capitalism with revolution. With state power we can build a wonderful communist society of sisterhood and brotherhood.
We will fight hard to fully eradicate racism, sexism, anti-gay violence, unemployment, and imperialist war. That’s a world worth fighting for. One day, the savagery of racist police terror, with Black and immigrant workers five times more likely to be victimized, will be so far in the past, it will be hard to imagine how humanity could have lived like that. Join us, and bring that day closer.

Newark, NJ, June 30—Members of Progressive Labor Party in Newark are participating in a vitally important anti-racist struggle for safe drinking water. High levels of lead contaminate the city’s water. This is particularly toxic for children. Water contamination is a dangerous and frightening crisis of racist neglect that besets cities like Flint, Cleveland and Newark, where the majority of the residents are Black and Latin. It is a stunning example of how capitalism couldn’t care less about the health and safety of working people, and how workers, regardless of skin color, are hurt by racism.
Newark Education Workers (NEW) Caucus, a social justice caucus inside of the Newark Teachers Union, has joined the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) in a lawsuit to force the city and state to ensure safe drinking water. It’s encouraging that a multi-racial group of workers in the city have joined the teachers in planning neighborhood meetings to organize a campaign to demand clean water.
Once the lawsuit was announced, the fake-radical mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, repeated the lie that the water is safe despite the city’s own sampling: “In 2017, 10 percent of water samples collected by the city showed lead levels above 26 parts per billion, nearly twice the federal action level of 15 parts per billion (NRDC, May 2018).”  One home had as high as 182 parts per billion (NJ Drinking Water Watch 5/16/18).
Baraka has been peddling his lie of clean water for two years. In 2016, Newark Public Schools had to turn the water off in thirty buildings because of high lead levels. While students were drinking boxed water, Baraka and other city officials told residents that the water in the homes was fine even though the home water travels through the same pipes as the school water.
According to the law, the city was supposed to replace seven percent of the lead pipes by June 30th. Yet they have not even broken ground. This blatant disregard for Black and Latin workers’ health exposes the true nature of these fake Democratic Party misleaders. While Baraka talks a good game about equality, he has proven that his loyalty ultimately lies with Newark’s corporations.
Having allowed the water pipes in Newark to crumble for decades, it will now cost billions to repair. During a forum about the water crisis, a worker in the audience stood up and said we are shooting ourselves in the foot because the city will raise taxes on the working class to pay for the repairs. And indeed, there have been proposals to raise workers’ taxes. However, NEW Caucus has demanded that the real estate developers and corporations that are making millions in the city should be the ones responsible for funding the repairs.
Baraka, however, continues to support tax breaks for major corporations. The city and state are offering Amazon over seven billion dollars in tax breaks, allowing this multi-billion dollar business to maximize profits while workers suffer with poor infrastructure. Other corporations, such as Mars Wrigley, are also moving their headquarters to Newark with the promise of a tax break. In all, the state has given over eight billions dollars in tax breaks since 2010 (Patch.com, 10/12/17) while not doing a damn thing about the lead in the water.
Communism, the antitdote
The lawsuit brought against the city and state opened up the eyes of many workers in the city. However, history has shown that relying on the courts doesn’t work. Lawsuits must be accompanied by workers organizing and taking to the streets to win improvements. Recent events reveal who the courts truly serve. From the recent Janus decision to the racist Muslim travel ban, the courts are here to serve the wealthy. Even liberal victories, like Brown v Board of Education, which supposedly outlawed segregation in schools, are ignored or systematically weakened. In this case, it’s clear that the city and state are in violation of the Clean Water Act. However, without workers organizing, demonstrating, and disrupting the everyday operations of capitalism, the ruling class can drag this suit out for years while Black, Latin and white workers continue to be poisoned.
The Progressive Labor Party is taking part in the struggle for clean drinking water, while exposing Democratic Party misleaders like Baraka. Most importantly, we’re inviting Newark workers to join us in organizing for a communist world where workers’ health and well being will be the top priority.

The recent retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the fact that racist, fascist President Donald Trump will appoint the new Justice, have caused an enormous outcry from liberals and the media about the disaster to come. This is a dangerous illusion. All levels of government, including the Supreme Court, constitute the capitalist class’s means of controlling and oppressing the working class. The government also settles disputes between competing capitalists. But it is all the bosses’ government.
Class struggle, organized and led by the working class and its communist party, can and will change society, seizing power with a working class revolution. Only then will the government serve the working class.
Distraction from working class struggle
Looking to courts to solve our problems is based on the same illusion as voting. The famous decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), which declared segregation in schools unconstitutional, is a famous example. Black workers showed enormous courage in signing up as complainants in the case. Yet, it was the policy of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund not to organize any mass campaign around this case. Workers were told to leave the fighting to the lawyers. The case was supposedly won, yet schools around the country are as segregated as ever.
Meanwhile, in 1953 the first bus boycott was organized in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Workers were beginning to organize the mass campaign that became the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956. In 1952, there was a boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for Black drivers. Mass working class organizing in this period and on into the even more militant fights of the 1960s defeated segregation, not a Supreme Court case.
Decisions are in the interest of some section of the ruling class
The main liberal wing of the ruling class had a strong political interest in ending legal segregation in the South. During the Brown case, the Justice Department wrote a supporting brief that argued that segregation had, “an adverse affect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations…” The same brief quoted the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, pointing out that school segregation “jeopardizes the effective maintenance of our moral leadership of the free and democratic nations of the world.” (SCOTUSblog, The Global Impact of Brown v. Board of Education) The big business imperialists needed to defeat communism to maintain the world empire. So they used the Supreme Court, and the FBI, and even the army to crush the Southern, vulgar racists who were making U. S. imperialism look bad all around the world.
Decisions are based on bad ideas
Even when there is every appearance of a victory in a Supreme Court case, the essence is the promotion of bad ideas for the working class. In Brown, the court decision is based on the idea that segregation damages all black children and therefore can never be equal education. However, as anti-racists we understand that segregation hurts all children and all workers. The Progressive Labor Party fights for multiracial unity, which means living, working and learning in multiracial communities. The dangerous distortion of the Brown decision perpetuates racism. It even causes workers today to fight each other over how to desegregate schools (see CHALLENGE, 6/29).
Don’t be confused by the appearance of the Supreme Court. Keep our eye on the prize—communist revolution for workers power.

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, June 23—Antiracists, including members of Progressive Labor Party, paid tribute to the struggle for justice for Archie Elliott III, murdered by the police here 25 years ago. Archie’s mother Dorothy Copp Elliott, who has been waging the decades-long struggle, raised the importance of multiracial unity. The night showed why all workers should unite to end police terror. An injury to one is an injury to all.  
Twenty-five people participated in this fundraiser for a scholarship in Archie’s memory. Two people received $2,500 each. The scholarship is for Black students who plan to attend an HBCU (Historically Black College or University). The committee needs more funds to keep Archie’s name alive. The fund symbolizes our commitment to continue the struggle to end racist police terror. Donations can be made at http://PayPal.me/DElliottScholarship.
Injustice system kills Archie, again
Archie, 24, was pulled over in 1993 while driving home from his construction job, searched, handcuffed behind his back, and placed in the front seat of a police cruiser. Two cops alleged that Archie pointed a gun at the cops. The police then shot him 22 times, 14 shots fatally hitting him.
The usual racist capitalist injustice system then kicked into high gear. The cops got off without any consequences. Appeals even reached the Supreme Court, which declined to hear his case. Recent efforts to re-open the case were also refused by the States Attorney Angela Alsobrooks, who is likely to be the next County Executive.
Black, Latin, white unite against racism
At the fundraiser, Dorothy noted that Wayne Cheney, the Prince George’s cop who killed Archie, murdered again a year and a half later. This time, he fatally shot a young white man, again with impunity and no discipline. This fact symbolizes the reality that racist police terror creates a culture that endangers the entire working class. It is in all workers’ class interest to to fight racism in all forms.