BROOKLYN, NY, July 13 — In the thirteen months since the New York Police Department murdered Shantel Davis, an unarmed, 23-year-old black woman, the Progressive Labor Party has brought communist leadership to the fightback by the working-class community here. Today, when the racist U.S. injustice system found Trayvon Martin guilty for being black, our sustained focus on fighting racist police murder allowed us to spread ou politics us in a mass way.
In the Flatbush neighborhood, we have helped build a group called “The Justice for Shantel Davis Committee,” which organized a youth basketball tournament at Tilden Park today. Hundreds of mainly black working-class youth showed up, along with some parents. In true pig fashion, the kkkops showed up at the park and demanded that the music be turned off by 4 p.m. But with the support of hundreds of workers behind us, we had the power to push back against the state-imposed limits. We kept the loudspeakers in full use until the tournament ended.
Everyone heard our communist politics as the announcer worked in an analysis of the sexist lyrics in a song played by the deejay. Hundreds of CHALLENGEs were readily accepted by the crowd. All around the park there were conversations about racist police violence and the need for communist revolution.
The Verdict: PL Responds
That night, after we learned that George Zimmerman had been found not guilty of murder of Trayvon Martin, a leaflet was written and a call for a protest in Flatbush was put out. Several comrades who had joined the Party during our recent communist school, along with some young leaders who were trained there, quickly pressed into action. The Party set up CHALLENGE sellers on several corners. Two young black men of Haitian descent brought drums to join the protest.
Once they’d learned about the Zimmerman verdict, an angry, multiracial crowd of mostly young people moved into the streets. As militant communist speeches blared from the loudspeaker and connected racism to capitalism, the anger in the community became a palpable force. PL’ ers distributed CHALLENGEs and the leaflet, and made sure to take the names of people interested in helping us. Many not only took the newspaper but agreed with the need for communism, a qualitatively different reaction than usual.
When the Party marched, several community members joined us in stopping traffic as we took over the street. A few members of the mass organization fully participated as well, illustrating the importance of mass work to our Party. As we stopped traffic and chanted about police murder and the need for communist revolution, many drivers beeped their horns and pumped their fists in solidarity.
Pushing the Limits
Leading into the march that began in Union Square in Manhattan, the Party had a bullhorn and quickly took the political lead. “No Justice, No Peace; No Racist Police” ignited the crowd. When a PL’ er declared that capitalism can’t meet workers’ needs, people cheered. When he said we needed a revolution, people cheered. But when he raised the need for communist revolution, there was mostly silence from the crowd and anger from the fake-left leaders of the march. This illustrated that many young people understand that capitalism isn’t meeting their needs, but they’re not yet ready for communism during this period of low level working class consciousness. To negate existing limits, our Party must sharpen its struggle to bring communist politics to the mass struggle and to push for the most left line possible.
The kkkops demanded that we move from the street to the sidewalk. After we continued to march in the street, they slammed a protestor on the hood of a car. But the kkkops were quickly surrounded by other angry protestors, and their target may have gotten away. Whenever the cops attacked one side of the march, we’d run behind them and swarm into the streets.
Saving the march from more police violence was a group of legal observers, who threw themselves bodily between the cops and the protestors. Several lawyers rammed their shoulders into the cops as the kkkops surged towards the masses. Outnumbered by the angry, multiracial crowd, the cops could not impose their authority as the march kept pushing through their barricades.
In a touching moment, a middle-aged black woman rolled down her cab window in tears as we swarmed through the traffic at Astor Place. She shouted that she was so happy to see people so angry about Trayvon. A young white male protestor hugged her through the cab window as she said thank you again and again. They were perfect strangers who shared a working-class moment, united in the struggle against racism.
Workers’ Power vs. Bosses’ Power
In Harlem, hundreds of angry workers and youth gathered in front of the state office building. The rally was led by black nationalists talking about black power (a/k/a black capitalism), but many honest workers were there as well. So was PLP, in force, with CHALLENGEs and leaflets (see page 5). People were hungry for our analysis. When the nationalists tried to denounce us, the crowd ignored them and continued to reach eagerly for our leaflets and our papers. Clearly the working class is craving unity over nationalist/racist division. The nationalists could only look on in frustration, as they have no base in the working class.
Afterwards, about thirty workers gathered in a nearby church to discuss next steps. With emotion and resolve, they discussed the need to channel our rage to build a multiracial movement to unite the working class. Zimmerman’s legalized racist crime is creating more working-class fighters ready to battle capitalism to the death — to become the bosses’ gravediggers.
The next day, the bosses’ media quoted politicians and celebrities urging nonviolence. The state wants to monopolize the use of force against the working class; the rulers want us to be peaceful while they’re free to use violence against us. Communists understand that the working class must use violence against the state’s agents and apparatus to free ourselves from capitalist exploitation.
In the wake of racist Zimmerman’s acquittal, we must be urgent in advancing our politics and building PLP. Although communist revolution is not right around the corner, we must advance our ideas and hasten the red dawn that will end this dark night with communist revolution.
MINNEAPOLIS
MINNEAPOLIS, MN July 17 — The Twin Cities working-class community took the streets to protest not one but two killings of unarmed young black men that racist capitalist oppressors deem “disposable.” We all know about the blatantly racist killing of Trayvon Martin and the equally racist jury freeing killer Zimmerman.
Terrance Franklin was 22 years old and the Minneapolis cops racially profiled him during a traffic stop for DWB (Driving While Black). They said something to him which caused Franklin to panic and run. He was cornered in a house and outside witnesses could hear the fascist cops saying “we got a n----r.”
These two cops ended up shooting each other as they were trying to shoot Franklin and a third cop, SWAT team cop Lucas Peterson shot Franklin twice in the back and three times in the head execution style.
This has outraged Minneapolis workers. Cop Peterson has a notorious history of racist violence toward black workers. Of 13 excessive force complaints, nine were settled by City of Minneapolis for $700,000, the largest against a single cop.
Peterson began harassing black workers when he was a part of the now — disbanded Metro Gang Strike Force. It got so out of control that it was dissolved.
The County Coroner has refused to release Franklin’s body to his family, as if they are trying to hide his injuries. The Minneapolis police are giving multiple versions (lies) about the fatal incident.
During the rally held at Government Plaza in downtown Minneapolis an African immigrant called for black cops, judges, and officials. But black nationalism supports capitalism and only makes blacks the oppressors as in Sanford, Florida, which has a black police chief.
The rally was very multiracial — black, white, asian, latino, Native Americans, and immigrants who all express working-class solidarity. CHALLENGES were distributed and contacts were made.
It is fascist U.S. capitalism that sees black working-class people like Trayvon and Terrance as “worthless.” Capitalism must be smash ed with communist revolution!
HARLEM
Figuring that racist murderer George Zimmerman would be acquitted, our multiracial Harlem interfaith coalition was ready to roll when the verdict came in. For several weeks we had planned a sharp and immediate response. On Sunday, the day after the verdict, we wrote a leaflet calling for a vigil that night in solidarity with the family and friends of Trayvon Martin. A church where we have friends gave us space. We distributed150 leaflets at a nationalist rally at the New York State Office Building and posted more leaflets near the church.
The rally was the usual black power-screaming, divisive do-nothing circus. Our multiracial presence was attacked — nearly physically — by several nationalists. Almost everyone else gratefully took our leaflet. Several promised to attend the vigil.
We began at 7:30 with a core of coalition members. By 8:15, twenty-one people we’d never met, most of them black workers, had joined us. We each shared our outrage and heightened fears for the black and Latino young people we know and love. My white sons hung out with their black, Asian, and Latino friends, I said, and risked being gunned down together.
The main theme of discussion was how Trayvon’s unavenged murder will open a much wider wave of fascist terror that will also ensnare white workers and students in a net of oppression and death. Of course, this terror will also shock more workers and students into struggle with us. Near the end of the vigil, the local state senator “dropped in,” nervous about the threat we pose to the capitalist gang he serves.
Everyone ardently thanked us for our initiative. Most gave their contact information and promised to meet with us soon to continue the struggle to re-indict and convict Ramarley Graham’s Killer KKKop and to build widely to bring our message of multiracial struggle against advancing fascism to Washington on August 24, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech.”
Fight the good fight!
With the rupture among rebels against President Bashar Assad, Syria is now engulfed in a three-way civil war. All three forces represent different imperialist camps. All three offer workers nothing but capitalist terror.
Mass butcher Bashar Assad and his Syrian Army are fronting for Russian and Chinese imperialism, along with Iran’s pursuit of regional dominance. The opposition, meanwhile, is a dysfunctional umbrella group of mostly secular nationalists and Islamists. Neither faction has the interests of Syria’s working class at heart. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) stands for the interests of U.S. imperialism, while the Islamists represent regional capitalists and transnational jihadists, who in turn are funded by rival, non-royal segments of the Saudi ruling class. After a jihadist recently killed an FSA commander, the two camps fell out. In cities like Aleppo, Assad’s military is shooting at the FSA while they are shooting at the Islamists.
These sharpening contradictions could help the U.S. ruling class inject itself more directly into the conflict. With the FSA essentially declaring war on the Islamists, Barack Obama can argue that advanced weapons from the U.S. won’t fall into the hands of jihadist terrorists. (The reality on the ground, however, is that rebel brigades swap and sell weapons among themselves, regardless of ideological affinity.) Assad, meanwhile, is seizing the opportunity to reclaim as much territory as possible from the FSA. He is struggling to reclaim the urban production centers while mostly abandoning the undeveloped countryside to the rebels.
Whoever wins will institute fascism of one stripe or another. Assad will butcher the working class in the interests of his imperialist patrons. The FSA will most likely follow the U.S.-led destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as a blueprint for slaughtering the working class. The transnational jihadists from Pakistan and other countries will keep fighting whatever ruling class gains state power while murdering workers in line with their religious fanaticism.
As the civil war intensifies in Syria, we must keep in mind that there is no possible victory for the working class under any capitalist-backed forces now fighting for state power. Only a communist revolution led by the Progressive Labor Party can win for the working class, in Syria and throughout the world.
A fearless multitude swarms through the streets of New York City. In Washington, they storm the nation’s capital. In Israel, they scale the apartheid walls. This global, multiracial mass of millions grows in strength and number until it confronts the militaries of the world’s imperialist powers.
But this is no revolution — it’s World War Z’s zombie apocalypse.
In other recent apocalyptic films, like “2012” or television’s “Doomsday Prophecy,” the threat to the capitalist order comes from nature. But in World War Z (adapted from the book by Max Brooks), the destruction stems from a nightmare version of the ultimate threat to the bosses: the international working class.
In the opening scene of World War Z, a normal day is turned upside down as Philadelphia is overrun by zombies. Within hours, society has been reduced to a libertarian’s vision of the future: the armed survivalist few gunning down the masses to protect family and private property.
As the film unfolds, Gerry Lane, a United Nations investigator played by Brad Pitt, globetrots in search of a cure to the zombie infection. His family is given safe haven aboard a U.S. Navy vessel in exchange for his service — a recurring theme in what amounts to a two-hour military recruitment ad. As Gerry gears up for a mission to South Korea, he joins a team of Navy Seals for a nighttime attack that recalls Barack Obama’s raid to kill Osama bin Laden. The film’s PG-13 rating will help expose countless youth to this pro-Navy advertising and try to prime them to sacrifice for the next wave of imperialist wars.
Barely escaping zombification in Korea, Gerry makes his way to Israel. As he travels with an Israeli official, the official gives a stock Zionist account of the Holocaust and Israeli history that justifies Israel’s fascist police state and the 30-foot wall that enforces the segregation of humans and zombies. The film’s message is clear — in times of crisis, fascism is necessary.
Moments later, a faceless horde scales the wall. The scene evokes images of a Palestinian “invasion” into Israel and of the recent Arab Spring revolts. The Israeli military then unleashes devastating firepower upon the multitude. This slaughter is made palatable to the audience because the millions are presented as dehumanized zombies. But the imagery also romanticizes Israel’s real-life apartheid, the legalized system of racist segregation and occupation that separates Palestinians from their land (with real walls) and justifies the ongoing slaughter of Arabs throughout the Middle East by U.S. and Israeli imperialists.
Symbolic of the strong imperialist ties between the U.S. and Israel, an Israeli soldier helps Gerry make his way to a lab and discover a cure. To ward off the zombies and test a potential vaccine, he self-sacrificially injects himself with a deadly virus. Barely alive, he makes his way back to his family. In the final scene, Gerry declares that the war has only just begun.
World War Z is not fundamentally a film about zombies. As author Max Brooks argues, the zombies represent various recent crises — the failed war in Iraq, the 2008 economic collapse, the rise of China — that threaten to paralyze the U.S. capitalist system. The film’s actual message? The U.S. is a power in decline, and workers must sacrifice as the bosses struggle to stay atop the imperialist food chain. Workers must give back wages and benefits for the rulers’ profits and sacrifice their lives in inter-imperialist wars. As billions of people in WWZ perish in military assaults, the film acclimates the audience to the idea that World War III could some day be a reality. It would have us accept that billions will die in the bosses’ ruthless quest for profits.
WWZ’s promotional poster depicts a mass of human silhouettes piling toward a helicopter, much like a famous 1975 photo illustrating the “fall” of Saigon. Just as the image of U.S. personnel fleeing Vietnam marked a crisis for U.S. imperialism, the image of zombies overtaking a helicopter in WWZ symbolizes the growing weakness of the U.S. relative to its imperialist rivals.
It’s no accident Brad Pitt both starred in and produced this film. Pitt and his actress wife, Angelina Jolie, have for years served as a “humanitarian” face for U.S. imperialism’s mass murders around the world. In his role as spokesperson for the Not on Our Watch campaign, Pitt has helped give cover for the U.S. dogfight with China over Sudanese oil. This inter-imperialist conflict is the real crisis behind the scenes of mass slaughter in WWZ.
As a UN special envoy, Jolie has played a major role in promoting “humanitarian” war over pipelines in the Balkans and around the world. In 2007, she became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. imperialism’s premier think tank. Her fortune funds special CFR reports, blueprints for future imperialist interventions.
World War Z reflects a disagreement among key members of the U.S. ruling class over how to deal with the crisis within their empire and the rise of China. Calling for the “restoration” of U.S. imperialism, CFR President Richard Haass argues for the U.S. to rebuild at home and limit “wars of choice” (Iraq, Syria) to prepare for future wars with rivals. But others in the CFR favor different tactics, including U.S. expansion into Syria.
WWZ author Max Brooks has weighed into this debate with frequent lectures, including one to the U.S. Naval War College. Like Haass, he calls for a smarter form of U.S. imperialism. For Brooks, the zombies’ power reflects internal weaknesses in U.S. capitalism. He leads his audience to see education and healthcare as national security issues.
Far more than a mere horror movie, WWZ is a major work of U.S. imperialist propaganda. The working class must defy these dehumanizing images of itself by joining the Progressive Labor Party and building a communist class-consciousness. One day millions will storm Wall Street and Washington and topple the apartheid walls in Israel. But it won’t be a zombie apocalypse — it will be a communist revolution!
- Information
RACISM murdered Trayvon Martin; CAPITALISM let his killer go free!!
- Information
- 14 July 2013 83 hits
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U.S. racism led to the murder of 17 year old Trayvon Martin; from the police to the courts, the capitalist system continues to protect racist murders.
In 2012 George Zimmerman gunned down Trayvon Martin because he was a Black youth in Amerikkka. The capitalist system has protected Zimmerman ever since. Masses of workers wanting “justice” protested to have Zimmerman tried for the racist murder of Trayvon Martin.
Neither Trayvon nor any worker will ever get justice through the bosses court system. Since the beginning of the trial the bosses have made it impossible to talk about the very essence of the case, racism. At the very beginning the judge ruled that the topic of race would be “severely limited” and discussion of “racial profiling” would not be allowed. Capitalism can never address the issue of racism. Racism was created by the capitalist class and is the glue that holds their system together.
Bosses profit from Racism
Since Obama was elected in 2008 he has tried to convince us that Amerikkka has entered a “post racial” society. The truth is that through Obama’s leadership, the most vicious racist attacks have occurred. Obama has:
The only solution is Communist Revolution!!!
The working class must take the streets! We cannot allow the murder of another young Black man to go down in silence. We must fight back against racism and the capitalist system that depends on it. But “justice” for Trayvon and all the other victims of capitalism will only come with the overthrow of the system that creates these conditions. Once the bosses’ system is smashed, the need to divide the workings class and super exploit some will no longer exist. Only then will we be able to smash racism, sexism and all other anti-working class ideas. This is the fight of the Progressive Labor Party. Join us!
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