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| ILWU BLM stoppage against police violence |
The brutality of racist American capitalism has been exposed yet again with daily vigilante/cop murders of Black people, most recently George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks, which have sparked mass social protest both in the U.S. and across the world. Lynching and arbitrary Boogaloo attacks are on the rise! We say! #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Defend Black, Brown, Immigrant and LGBTQI+ people from state and vigilante terror.
The U.S. capitalist ruling class has been thrown into chaos, unable to control the streets which are filled daily by a movement, predominantly composed of multi-racial workers and energetic youthful #BlackLivesMatter protesters. Meanwhile the country is led by a wannabe Bonapartist POTUS who wants nothing more than to wage war on these protesters, using the military against Americans. Thursday, he threatened to use the Federal troops to smash the Seattle protesters autonomous zone #CHOP. The military top-to-bottom has little appetite for his unconstitutional schemes.
Sections of the ruling class and politicians, sweating under the pressure of the mass movement, want less repressive methods for the moment and are willing to enact token policing reforms in order to attempt to derail the protests. They proffer the carrot at the very moment Democratic mayors and Trump are still wielding the stick (and the rubber bullets AND Pepper gas.) Perhaps worst of all, the betting line is that real progress at removing structural racism will not be forthcoming from the politicians – this time either. Remember the Kerner Commission report! To win racial justice the mass movement must accelerate from “Defund and reform” to Disband, Disarm and replace with self-organization of the working class and oppressed community’s self-defense.
Many Democratic Party municipal governments talk police reform as they unleash their racist cops against the Black Live Matters protesters in the streets to tear gas, shoot, beat, arrest and also kill anti-racist protestors. Lynching in southern California and armed motorcycle gang attacks on protestors in Ohio show us how little we are served and protected. FREE ALL PROTESTERS! DROP ALL CHARGES! FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!
The crisis of world capitalism has reached its deepest point since the Great Depression and the inter-imperialist WW II of the last century. Capital has failed to recover their rate of profit from the 2007-2008 crisis and now, despite fictitious growth in the stock market which benefits the wealthy speculators, a new severe crash – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic is underway.
The moment is now for the working class to take advantage of the state crisis of bourgeoisie! The exemplary action led by the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union Locals 10, 34, 75, & 91on “Juneteenth” (June 19th) is intended to leverage the power of the working class to resolve the burning social issue of structural racism and police terror. We call on big battalions of the AFL-CIO to follow this leadership. Instead, Trumka ignores the ports shutdown and instead sends an email invitation to join “your local” WEDNESDAY (6/17!!) demo calling for passage of the HEROES ACT. So serious is Trumka about fighting racism that the “local” NYC protest is on Friday and it’s in Jersey City! To unite the working class the AFL-CIO leadership should join the ILWU and build mass strikes against structural racism. Labor must clean its own house by uniting in anti-racist mass actions and strikes!
For the ruling class, April’s crisis Trifecta (environment, economic, Covid), has turned into June’s four headed monster as our movement for racial justice has linked oppressed sectors of the class into mass anti-racist movements in the streets! But protests alone and especially a protest movement that melts away into electoralism will not defeat the structural racism of U.S. capitalism.
It is long past time for the working class and the social movements to take advantage of the crisis of the capitalist state and go to full court press. After two hundred minor test strikes in the last few months, the working class needs to take up the fight for Black equality and unite as a self-conscious class to advance to the general strike, the political general strike and working-class power. The Communist Workers Group seeks to build a general strike movement, not for mere ‘feel good’ economic stopgap legislation or a police reform that Capital can later swipe or never enforce, but for a workers’ government!
The union’s last stronghold of state and municipal workers are today under attack as the ruling class politicians, in many cases Democratic Governors and mayors, renegotiate contracts to make their employees pay for the crisis with furloughs and pay cuts, while billionaires are allowed to enjoy their tax cuts and inflated stock prices. States are crying for bailouts by the federal government; and communities and cities are talking about defunding the police! There are capitalists who are eager to make concessions to the movement if they can demobilize us with token demilitarization of police forces. DON’T GO FOR IT!
They want us off the streets and contained because a great depression is at hand and the next administration will be all about “austerity” to pay the banks and even to bail them out. The ruling class capitalists, and their politicians like Biden, WILL dig in supporting their police, ultimately, since their rule rests on this firepower much more than any latter-day “consent of the governed!” They will give up chokeholds, perhaps. They will not give up the racist terror culture! Only the blind and deaf deny that class warfare is on their agenda. The question the movement must ask itself is will we fight for power or take the bait and depend on elections for the changes we seek. We say, “Insist on survival!” For the working class and oppressed people to survive the whole class and all oppressed people must create popular assemblies to legislate and execute social justice programs!
Unless the working class and oppressed people build our power the Black and Brown communities will continue to be the hardest hit by layoffs as the depression deepens. This will multiply the effects of the pandemic upon the ironically labelled “essential” workers many of whom have always been the last hired and first fired. The faint praise of the Newsom and Cuomo administrations did not result in defense of their “hazard pay” in the exceptional cases of those who got it! Likewise, millions did not receive their so-called “stimulus” checks. While well-off intersectionals and union-affiliated academics talk democracy abstractions, we want to fight to get you your necessities!
Refuse victimizations! NO police violence–we call for disbanding and disarming Capital’s gunsels–And NO worker layoffs! We call for Labor-Black-Browns Community Defense Guards to guarantee social safety. These should be union-based and organized in Union Halls and the Community Centers of the oppressed communities so often nowadays under attack. We call for “Jobs For All,” and to do this we advocate for a 30 hours workweek with 40 hours pay at union wages. We further demand sliding scales of hours and wages, because we haven’t seen prices drop with the decline of economic activity (you can’t eat gasoline!) and the layoffs keep coming and will until WE stop them.
The ruling class has demonstrated they are incapable of solving the political crisis, the crisis of 400 years of racist dehumanization of the Black and Indigenous people, and the Brown and Asian peoples as well. The centrality of the fight against Black oppression has always been key to the advance of the working class in the United States liberating itself from the shackles of big Capital. Why? Because big Capital was initially accumulated on the back of chattel slavery and is sustained by the super exploitation of the Black, Brown, Asian and migrant workers and the pervasive racism that divides the working class. The white immigrant workers came to these shores not as exploiters of the native population or the Black and Brown workers, but as super exploited workers themselves. The Irish, Italians and Jews all had their initiation into the Americas, forced to struggle for scraps as urban workers. Due to their whiteness, they were allowed a few steps up the economic ladder, especially if they were willing to do the bosses’ bidding by manifesting racist bigotry. This racism exists even within the trade union movement promoted by class traitors. The worst manifestation of this poison is the welcome the AFL-CIO had afforded the Police and Prison Guards unions. WE SAY COPS OUT OF OUR UNIONS AND UNION FEDERATIONS!
How to unite the working class against the divisions imposed by the bosses’ ideology of racism, sexism and discrimination of all kinds?
It is time for the union movement, which has traditionally been white-led, to identify its racist past, first by expelling the Cop unions from the Labor Federations, and then by organizing sectors of the economy with the lowest paid Black and Brown workers. We need to use the power of the labor movement to break the anti-organizing laws and nullify them in practice. We need to employ tools such as the PRO Act (Protect the Right to Organize act, so soon forgotten in an election year by union “leaders” who are Democrats first.) We need to use the secondary strike to bury Taft-Hartley through class struggle that organizes the unorganized and wins jobs, living wages, medical care, vacations and pensions for all! Recalling FDR’s “Four Freedoms” is speechifying flim flam; the delivery is due!
We call for a fighting workers’ Labor Party! This will be a class-for-ourselves party that is a tribune of the people and champion of all the oppressed! As against the sectoralist multiclass organizations that preserve capitalism, we raise special sets of demands to address special and particular oppression; we fight for all workers as defense of the rights of our whole class, accepting all! NO EXCLUSIONS!
We fight for justice for ALL! Remember all victims of racist terror! George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks Presente!!
Drop all charges and free all arrested anti-racist protesters! An Injury to One is an Injury to All!
Cops, National Guard and Military off the streets! Hands off the demonstrators!
Mobilize the social power of the working class for political labor strikes demanding justice for George Floyd! Defund the cops! Not one penny for the forces of state repression! Abolish the police, successors of the slave patrols!
Cops are racist terrorists and strikebreakers! Kick the cops and prison guards out of our unions and labor federations! Struggle against racism in our unions: build anti-racist class struggle caucuses that fight for political independence and a transitional program.
For mass labor-centered mobilizations to drive the racist terrorists and the fascist militias from the streets! Convene workers tribunals for justice for all victims of cop violence!
Build racially integrated, armed, trained and disciplined Labor/Black/Brown self-defense guards out of our union halls and community centers to defend Black and Brown people against racist cop, fascist and vigilante terror!
Charging Derek Chauvin with second degree murder and manslaughter is a mockery of justice! Workers and oppressed will never find justice through the capitalist courts! For workers tribunals!
For workers political strike actions to oppose state repression and to defend the protests! Shut the whole country down! Then open it up under workers control and self-management!
No to stop and frisk and racial profiling! Cops out of the schools and off of transit! Down with the American injustice system, racist mass incarcerations and prisons! Abolish the racist death penalty!
Racist police terror and violence will never end until American capitalism is abolished. Smash racist segregation through revolutionary integration! End discrimination in housing, jobs, education and healthcare! For Black liberation through Socialist Revolution!
Build a fighting Workers/Labor Party and a Workers International, a tribune of the workers and oppressed, to fight for a Workers Government! For workers rule and World Socialism!
COMMUNIST WORKERS GROUP, (CWG-USA) https://www.cwgusa.org/ June 19, 2020 Labor Donated
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