There’s a growing mass movement in the U.S. against mass incarceration, police brutality, and racism. But there are capitalist-class reformers waiting to co-opt this movement, directing it towards keeping the overall system of social control and exploitation.
This was evident at a January 29 talk about “a united front on prison reform” held by OAR (Offender Aid and Restoration), an Arlington, VA., nonprofit that helps people returning from prison. I went to spread the word about the criminal background checks at Metro, D.C.’s transit system, and to publicize a rally at Metro headquarters.
The speaker was Bernard Kerik, a former NYPD cop and police commissioner, and NYC commissioner of prisons. He also trained cops in Iraq after the U.S. invasion and testified to the 9/11 Commission in favor of pre-emptive strikes. George W. Bush nominated him to head Homeland Security, but had to withdraw his name because Kerik was under investigation for hiring an undocumented worker as his nanny. Then he ended up spending three years in a minimum security prison for fraud. Since then Kerik has become an advocate for prison reform, especially for getting rid of mandatory minimums in sentencing and for using other types of punishment besides prison.
In his speech, Kerik said it hurts the economy to incarcerate people because prisoners are not out working and spending money; that incarceration has a ripple effect on families; that it’s difficult for people with records to get jobs; and prison makes someone more likely to commit future crimes. Responding to an audience member, he also said private prison corporations are profiting and perpetuating mass incarceration. They offer to take over prisons from city and state governments, saving them money, but only if the governments agree to keep the prisons 90 percent full. That gives the governments a financial incentive to lock up as many people as they can, for as long as they can.
But Kerik is no friend of the working class. Before prison, he represented the capitalist class, and this speech showed he hasn’t changed. He said he doesn’t regret being a cop “because the people I put away were bad people.” He had no class analysis, and little understanding of racism. When he was asked how come 50 percent of the prison population is black (even though black people are only 13 percent of the national population), he only repeated his main point about eliminating mandatory minimums, saying this will “help black communities.” Nothing about the racism that puts so many black workers in prison to begin with.
The Flag of Exploitation
Under Kerik’s reforms, stop-and-frisk can continue, along with police brutality, capitalism’s mass unemployment and poverty, and global attacks on workers in other countries. He opened his presentation with a U.S. flag behind him, saying that he loves the flag and the country. No one at the event asked Kerik to answer for his own actions in helping U.S. imperialism and mass incarceration. He ended by praising business owners who hire prison returnees — separating the “good” capitalists from the “bad.” Yet even a boss who hires all returnees is profiting off their labor, and will exploit them harder to compete against other businesses.
My mention of the Metro background checks (see page 3) got nods and claps. Afterwards I distributed flyers about the upcoming rally and a petition to change the Metro policy. Many already knew about that policy and were interested in helping oppose it.
During a positive conversation with three people, an OAR board member asked me to stop distributing the flyers. “I thought we were on the same team,” I joked while the people I’d been talking to quickly grabbed my flyers. The board member said he just “wasn’t sure” I should be handing out anything at an OAR event if I wasn’t part of OAR. He seemed most concerned about the upcoming rally, since the only action mentioned at their event was “writing to Congress.”
The event showed growing consciousness about incarceration. The number of people affected by it is so great now that a mass movement is forming. But not everyone who says they want prison reform is an ally. Capitalists like Kerik will try to co-opt this movement. His emphasis on cost makes one wonder if the ruling class itself is divided, between those who believe they can control workers without prison, and those who’d prefer to keep large numbers of workers locked up, out of fear or because they profit directly from the prison system. In any case, under capitalism there are never enough secure jobs for all workers, in prison or out of it.
Antiracist Fighter
BROOKLYN, February 21 — How does the working class learn and grow during a struggle? How are their contradictions resolved? These questions were raised recently with some members of Progressive Labor Party
involved with the Justice for Kyam Livingston Committee. Nothing can be resolved until people get to know each other.
The committee was formed after the criminally negligent death of Kyam Livingston. (Kyam was in a holding cell in Brooklyn Central Booking, crying out in great pain and distress for seven hours while the jailers refused her medical help. The women in the cell with her kept calling for security to do something for their sick cellmate. They were all told to be quiet. Finally Kyam went into convulsions and died.)
The committee included Kyam’s mother, Anita Neal; Kyam’s god-daughter; and members of the Malcolm X Grassroots Organization, another group that supports victims of police abuse, our church social action committee, and the retiree association of a municipal workers union. Going in we knew each other, but just slightly. The mother had decided that she wanted to have some kind of demonstration on the monthly anniversary of her daughter’s death. She also had a number of demands:
The names of the officers on duty whose
- criminal negligence killed her daughter;
- Surveillance videos of the holding cell
- showing what happened that night;
- Prosecution of the guilty officers;
A thorough investigation of conditions in Brooklyn Central Booking.
PLP knew the family in small ways. D., the god-daughter, had been a member of our church and our social action committee, and had strong nationalist views. It was she who first called the group together. We originally met at Kyam’s funeral and talked for hours. Some of the people we drove home became part of the committee. We began to get to know the members better by discussing the issues around Kyam’s death.
Another committee member from the church knew people in other religious organizations in Brooklyn and reached out to them. In fact, he and Anita recently spoke to about 500 people at a large Baptist congregation. The senior minister promised he would bring hundreds of people to a demonstration and that they would hold a speak-out for Kyam. The mother was joyful. Activities like these have led to a deeper understanding of PLP’s positions through intense discussions and struggle with one another.
Since the first demonstration on August 21, we have held seven monthly events. Each time we meet beforehand to talk and make plans. After the event we sometimes eat together and talk and plan some more. We often leaflet together.
Anita is very angry at the racist system that treated her daughter so callously, especially since Kyam herself worked as a security guard. While the family and committee have pressured elected officials to changes in the system, Anita often remarks that one or another politician is “full of crap.” On the role of the police, she says, “Enough with this blue wall of silence!” PLP’s struggle is to provide clear leadership in showing the connection between the needs of capitalism and the functioning of the state apparatus and its flunkies.
During this week’s rally, a young black man started the PLP chant, “White cop, black cop, all the same! Racist terror is the name of their game!” The idea behind that chant has changed the outlook of committee members.
Kyam’s god-daughter saw that the people who were interested in this fight were those who are politically committed to an internationalist, working-class, multi-racial future. Bit by bit, our discussions and actions began to make it clear that ideas of unity, not separation, were most useful for everybody.
A PL’er who often speaks at these demonstrations put forward the line that racist violence against working-class people could happen any time, anywhere, and we all have to fight together to end it. He brought the issue to his retiree union chapter and they endorsed the struggle.
The process moved forward with tea or coffee, conversation, struggle, practical work, and leafleting. At times individuals were unable to be present because of sickness or other problems, but they always came the next time. Sometimes they brought others from their church or workplace as speakers or supporters.
The road to communism is a long one. Unless it is filled with comradeship, friendship and caring, with laughter as well as struggle, it cannot move forward. The building of trust and unity comes directly out of working with individuals and proving we are serious. We cannot tell people we are serious; we have to show it. Practice is always primary. Theory flows from practice.
On February 14, Eddie Healey, a long-time member of the Progressive Labor Party, passed away. He and a co-worker stopped to help a motorist who was stuck in the snow. Eddie collapsed helping. He was rushed to the hospital, but could not be revived. Eddie will be sorely missed.
Eddie came around the Progressive Labor Party when he was a student at Prince George’s County Community College in 1972. He joined the Progressive Labor Party at that time and for the next 40 years helped build the fight against the capitalist system. He drove the sound truck for May Day in DC for over 20 years and he also joined the military to organize soldiers for communism.
He was a dedicated fighter in the struggle against racism. From fighting the Nazis in Arlington, VA to stopping the KKK from marching in Washington D.C., to defending Terrance Johnson (who, at the age of 15 killed a cop who was beating him inside a police station) and fighting police brutality in Prince George’s County, Eddie never wavered from his commitment to the anti-racist struggle.
He worked for 37 years as a cable splicer in the underground at PEPCO, the electric utility in D.C. Eddie, as a member of IBEW Local 1900, militantly led picket lines during strikes, shared CHALLENGE with his co-workers, and fought hard to sharpen the battle against racism at PEPCO. Many of his co-workers spoke at his wake and funeral of his overwhelming commitment to help his fellow workers every day, as well as anyone else in need.
Comrade Eddie, we salute you for a well-lived life, dedicated unswervingly to our multi-racial class. We will do our best to support your widow Angela and son EJ, and commit ourselves to emulating your dedication to fellow workers.
Much has been written about the hundreds of billions in profits made from commercialism, real estate deals and security costs created by the Sochi Olympics. However, its real function is to convince the suffering working class that they are all winners under capitalism. The games are designed to foster a fierce nationalist corporate spirit and hero worship that propels workers to identify with their bosses’ profit agendas and wars against competitor countries, much as the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany preceded World War II.
Olympics and Oil Wars Destroy Workers’ Lives
The background to the Sochi Olympics is the oil war between Russia, the number one producer, and the U.S., number three. The U.S. combined with number six, Canada, leads oil production. The nearly completed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast is mainly for export to energy-poor countries like China and India, to make them dependent on the U.S. instead of Russia. The U.S. is supporting the struggle against Russia in the Ukraine, whose oil and gas pipelines supply much of Europe. Russia’s continuing imperialist war for Chechnya’s oil resources, that killed over 160,000 rebels, is costing the Russians billions in security because Sochi is near Chechnya.
There are also high-security costs for the U.S. because of its Mideast oil wars and Special Forces killer operations in over 120 countries, along with missile drone attacks. U.S. ships were anchored off Sochi for evacuation purposes, and their athletes were ordered not to wear any nationalist uniforms for fear of retaliation from millions of victims of U.S. imperialism.
Impoverished Russians have been taxed $51 billion for the Sochi facilities which displaced thousands of workers from public housing, private homes and farms. Other Olympics have also given corporate real estate developers the power to evict millions worldwide in many countries like Brazil and China while encouraging other capitalists like the U.S., which recently displaced thousands of workers in Brooklyn, NY for the Barclays Center and a high-priced apartment complex. In Russia 25 workers were killed building the Sochi complex because of speed-up and unsafe conditions. Many thousands of workers have not even been paid because the project is $40 billion over budget.
Hunger Olympics
Many criticize the Olympic athletes’ recruiting process which makes them virtual slaves to corporate and military sponsors for funding and training, linking that process to a Hunger Games scenario. Child athletes are separated from their families and schools for years and become the property of corporate sponsors like Verizon, who control their lives, and require constant endorsements of their sponsors. Olympic designers demand increasingly dangerous conditions be built into the events to produce new records and thrills, resulting in deaths and injuries among the athletes.
All Workers Win with Communism
Capitalism produces mass poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and imperialist wars, along with an unequal economy that allows the world’s richest 85 people to have more wealth than half the world’s population (3.5 billion). Communism is the only system where no workers are losers and everyone is special. With communism, cooperation replaces competition, devotion to serving others replaces serving oneself and pursuit of socially useful goals replaces profits and dangerous entertainment for a handful of lucrative careers. PLP fights for communism, a social system that needs everyone to rise to the heights of their ability and to produce and share equally according to need. Join us.
- Information
Venezuela's Oil: Imperialist Dogfight Victimizes Workers
- Information
- 28 February 2014 80 hits
Inter-imperialist rivalry is shaping events in Venezuela. The capitalists’ main fight is over oil. Venezuela is the United States’ third largest oil supplier and the leading exporter to Latin America. It has the world’s second biggest oil reserves. This is a huge bonanza for the imperialists.
The fight within the country pits president Nicolás Maduro (following Cesar Chaves’ pseudo-leftist politics) on one side, backed by the Chinese and Russian imperialists. Gustaro Cisneros, one of the richest men on the planet, supports Maduro’s regime.
On the right-wing side are Henrique Capriles and Leopoldo Lopez. The latter was one of the leaders of the 2002 coup against Chavez, which was supported by the United States. These two represent U.S. imperialism.
Neither gang represents workers’ interests. Workers in Venezuela are victims of capitalism’s world crisis, suffering high unemployment, mass poverty, slum housing and miserable health care. The capitalists are taking advantage of workers’ discontent, similar to what’s happening in Ukraine or Africa: to divert workers’ anger the bosses are pushing workers to fight each other by siding with one or another bosses’ camp.
The working class in Venezuela has a rich history of struggle against the capitalists but unfortunately they’ve never had a party fighting for a communist society. Progressive Labor Party is appealing to workers to join our revolutionary communist party and fight shoulder to shoulder, internationally, to break the chains of the imperialists’ puppet governments. Let’s build a world free of misery and oppression, a world where the riches of nature are enjoyed according to workers’ needs and commitment, not controlled by a profit-hungry bunch of capitalists.
