The Internationalist No. 60 May-July 2020 50¢ Millions Take the Streets in Upheaval Against Cop Murder Machine To Uproot Racist Oppression: Socialist Revolution

U.S. Capitalism Internationalist photo in Triple Pandemic: 135,000+ COVID Dead 50,000,000+ Unemployed 1,100+ Killed by Cops

JULY 10 – The wanton murder of George Floyd by a cop in Minneapolis on May 25 set off a wave of outrage that swept across the United States and has continued for weeks. Day after day, night after night, millions of people took to the streets to denounce the racist police murder of black people that has continued unabated for decades. This massive up- heaval against racist cop brutality was met by more police brutality, as gangs of cops slammed protesters to the ground, tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed them in the face, fired rubber bullets and bean bag rounds at them and drove police vehicles into crowds. More than 15,000 people have been arrested. Meanwhile, the cop murder machine grinds on: as of July 7, Revolutionary contingent in Juneteenth (June 19) march in Brooklyn. some 1,130 civilians have been killed by police in 2020, 285 Chauvin digging his knee into George Floyd’s neck until haunting reminder of the last words of another black man, of them since George Floyd was slain. his victim was dead. The cop’s smug demeanor, as he ig- Eric Garner, strangled to death by a New York City cop in On that day in May and since, millions of people nored voices crying out that he was killing Floyd, reeked of 2014. For anyone with any degree of political awareness, viewed in horror a bystander’s video of racist cop Derek impunity. Floyd’s gasping pleas of “I can’t breathe” were a continued on page 12 For Workers Strikes Against Racist Cop Terror! Fury Over Minneapolis Police Murder of George Floyd

Only Revolution Can Bring Justice! Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune

MAY 28 – “I can’t breathe,” George Floyd breathe,” and demanding that the four cops kept saying as the police officer dug a knee responsible for Floyd’s murder be arrested into his neck. This murderous torture con- and prosecuted. Protesters gathered at 38th tinued for 8 minutes and 46 seconds as Street and East Chicago Avenue, where Floyd, 46, of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, Floyd was murdered, filling the streets in lay handcuffed on the ground. Then he all directions, and then marched for three stopped breathing – yet another black man miles to the Minneapolis Police Depart- murdered by the racist police. For millions ment (MPD) 3rd Precinct. There windows across the country and the world, it haunt- were shattered, and a squad car was totaled. ingly, unbearably recalls the last words of Some protesting youth climbed on top of Eric Garner, the Staten Island, New York the building. When they were met with riot man that a cop killed by chokehold in 2014 police, tear gas and rubber bullets, protest- as Garner kept saying, eleven times over, ers erected barricades with shopping carts “I can’t breathe.” A cellphone video of the from a Target store across the street and police lynching showed Floyd desperately fought back with righteous anger. Good! pleading with his killer, a Minneapolis cop: Large-scale protests continued on “Please, please, please, I can’t breathe. Wednesday and are spreading to other cit- Please, man” (Star Tribune, 27 May). ies. In Minneapolis, police swarmed the Thousands marched through South area where furious protests were taking On May 26, thousands of angry protesters converged on the place where Minneapolis Tuesday afternoon and eve- place. Now Mayor Jacob Frey has request- Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd the day before. The Democratic ning, chanting “Black lives matter,” “I can’t continued on page 20 mayor asked for the National Guard, the Democratic governor called it in, Republican racist-in-chief Trump threatened “shooting” of protesters. CLASS STRUGGLE EDUCATION WORKERS Minneapolis Public Schools MINNEAPOLIS, June 3 – In completely. an historic move, Minneapolis Democratic representative Ilhan Public Schools voted unanimously Give Cops the Boot Omar, who has been the object of vi-

Give Cops the Boot Ben Hovland yesterday to cut ties with tuperative racist attacks, spoke at the Minneapolis Police Department. rally for no more police in the schools. Horrified by the cold-blooded killing But the fact is, as we have pointed out, of George Floyd by an MPD cop, in almost every big city in the country, educators here and throughout the including the Twin Cities, Democratic country denounced this racist murder. mayors are the bosses of the police, The next day, the president elect of the and therefore responsible for the sys- Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, tematic racist repression. And the city Local 59 (MFT59), issued a statement councils here that vote for school and saying, “whatever the courts decide, police budgets are entirely Demo- our students were just given another cratic Farmer-Labor, except for a lone terrifying lesson on what it means to Green in Minneapolis. They have also be black in Minnesota.” presided over the increasing segrega- Students at local high schools tion of the schools. In Minneapolis, and community have been organizing the number of schools where white for years to get the misnamed “school students are less than 10% of the total resource officers” (SROs) out of the increased sevenfold since 2000 (The schools. The MPS contract with the Atlantic, 12 July 2016). police goes back to 1967, at the height Demonstration outside meeting of Minneapolis school board, June 1, calling for police Although the number of police the white blacklash against ghetto out of the schools. The board voted unanimously to end contract with Minneapolis in Minneapolis schools is small, the explosions over police violence. In Police Department. unanimous vote of the school board the 1990s, the Democratic administration of use deadly force) plus another 200 regu- eye’s fried chicken buckets and crime-scene to remove them has national impor- Bill Clinton launched a “COPS in Schools” lar police stationed in schools. Studies tape. In July 2016, Philando Castile, a caf- tance. St. Paul schools are considering a sim- program which doled out millions to local have shown that in schools with a police eteria worker in the St. Paul public schools, ilar motion next week. ““Hey New York, hey school districts to bring in police. This was presence, more students are arrested, fuel- was shot to death in his car. And now George Colorado, hey Nevada, look at us — we’re further ramped up in the wake of the 1999 ing the racist “school-to-prison pipeline.” Floyd, lynched by a cop smugly putting his making a change with our voices, just like Columbine, Colorado, school shooting. Class Struggle Education Workers has long knee and the full force of his body weight on our parents and neighbors are, and you can Today, according to National Center called for police and security guards out of George’s neck for almost nine minutes while do it too,” said a student activist. But it re- for Education Statistics, more than 70% the schools, and out of the unions. he gasped “I can’t breathe.” mains to be seen whether the school district of U.S. high schools have police, many of In 2015-16 there were big mobilizations On June 2, MFT59 held a rally outside will sign a contract with some other “school them armed (London Guardian, 3 June). In in the Twin Cities over the police killing of Minneapolis Public Schools Davis Cen- safety” outfit, as the Star Tribune reports (2 New York City, there is a veritable army Jamar Clark, near the 4th Precinct in North ter in North Minneapolis demanding “No June): “the district must come up with new of some 5,000 uniformed NYPD officers Minneapolis. A few years later, a scandal More Police in Our Schools!” SEIU Local safety plan by mid-August.” Replacing the (called “school safety agents,” although erupted over a racist Christmas tree display 284, representing food service and custodi- MPD with private security guards or a sim- they can make warrantless arrests and in the same cop precinct decorated with Pop- al workers, also called for cops out. Inside, ply another police department will mean the school board was scheduled to vote on back to business as usual. severing ties with the MPD. Supporters of What is vitally necessary is to take the Internationalist Group (IG) attended the control of the schools out of the hands of demonstration, with signs commemorating the capitalist state. Class Struggle Educa- victims of police lynching in the U.S. and tion Workers calls for the schools to be calling for “All Cops Out of the Schools governed by councils of teachers, students, Unicorn Riot and Unions Now.” parents and workers. Cops are to be kicked At the demo, teachers and parents out of Minneapolis public schools – and shared stories about how their African they’d better stay out! n American and Latino

kids do not feel safe Internationalist photo with MPD officers roaming their hall- ways. One mother recounted how her daughter, who was also present at the Minneapolis students demonstrate the day before Superbowl 2018 for cops protest, was tackled out of the schools. to the ground by cops, who cut the straps Visit the League for the Fourth International/ off her backpack and Internationalist Group on the Internet put her in cuffs. A http://www.internationalist.org teacher emphasized that George Floyd’s murder at the hands of The Internationalist an MPD officer was A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism a stark reminder that for the Reforging of the Fourth International police have no place Publication of the Internationalist Group, in public schools. One section of the League for the Fourth International teacher and a group of EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Fred Bergen, Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, high school students Marjorie Salzburg, Jay Wood, Ines Young did argue for keep- The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published 5 times a year by Mundial ing “SROs,” yet of Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] 1,600 students who Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. responded to a sur- No. 60 May-July 2020 vey, 90% wanted the Internationalist Group supporters at June 2 demonstra- school cops removed tion for police out of the Minneapolis schools. 2 The Internationalist Mobilize Labor/Black/Immigrant Power Against Racist Cop Terror! ILWU Shutdown of West Coast Ports Points the Way Forward On June 19, the International Long- and brown majority shore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers. They have a shut down all 29 ports on the West Coast stake in this fight. We Bay Area News Group against police brutality and systemic rac- can shut the whole ism. The ILWU’s action on Juneteenth, the damn country down.” day that is commemorated as the official He added, as the crowd end of slavery in the U.S., was widely ap- cheered, “We need a plauded as another example of solidarity revolution.” Referring with Black Lives Matter protests that have to Democratic primary swept the country in the last few weeks. candidate Bernie Sand- But it was much more than that. Shutting ers’ call for a “political down international commerce across the revolution,” Heyman Pacific, even briefly, was a dramatic dem- said this amounted to onstration of workers’ power in defense of “changing one capital- the oppressed. The police murder machine ist party for the other. can only be checked by mobilizing a great- Now if you think that er power, that of the multiracial, multieth- Biden is going to end nic working class. police killings, you’re In the San Francisco Bay Area, the fooling yourself. Joe port shutdown was accompanied by a mass Biden wrote the 1994 rally and march of thousands through the Clinton crime bill that port and on to Oscar Grant Plaza in front reinforced mass incar- of Oakland City Hall, named after the ceration and militari- 22-year-old black man murdered by a Bay zation of the police. Area Rapid Transit cop on New Year’s Day That’s what we’re fac- Thousands marched through the Port of Oakland as the giant cranes in the distance stood 2009. At the port, the rally was addressed ing today.” He ended, idle with their booms up, June 19. by leaders of ILWU Locals 10 and 34, and saying: “There is no by veteran black leftist activists Angela justice under capitalism. We don’t need a Revolutionary Internationalist Youth dis- protests, bringing out hundreds, thousands Davis and Danny Glover. Also speaking ‘political revolution,’ we need a social rev- tributed hundreds of copies of the leaflet and tens of thousands of demonstrators, are was Boots Riley, filmmaker and leader of olution to replace the capitalist class with printed below: larger and more integrated than the Black Occupy Oakland, which sparked a port the working class.” Lives Matter marches that arose in 2014- shutdown in 2011. At City Hall, speakers The Internationalist Group sent a team JUNE 16 – The International Longshore 15 after the police murders of Eric Garner, included the father of Mike Brown, killed from Los Angeles and Portland to the Bay and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has an- Michael Brown and many others. But the by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Area port action, and also to Seattle to join nounced that it will shut down all 29 ports largely spontaneous upheaval has gener- There was also a march in Seattle of 1,000 the protests there. (See the report, “ILWU on the U.S. West Coast on June 19, in hon- ally put forward vague demands, such as or more union members, family and com- Port Shutdown: Bay Area March/Rally or of George Floyd and to protest “police “defund the police.” Now the Democratic munity supporters led by ILWU Local 19. Against Racist Police Brutality” on our brutality and systematic racism.” This is a Party, whose mayors and governors or- Today, when the Democratic Par- blog “Revolutionaries in the Class Strug- big step forward, as daily and nightly mass dered the brutal repression of protests by ty is desperately trying to divert pro- gle.”) In New York City on Juneteenth, protests of thousands continue in city after police and the National Guard, is attempt- tests into the safe channels of bour- the IG organized a revolutionary contin- city as well as small towns across the United ing to coopt those demands, seeking to geois politics, demagogically using gent of dozens marching under a banner States three weeks after Floyd was brutally channel and contain the mass outrage. vague demands to “defund” or even declaring: “Democrats Are the Bosses of murdered by a Minneapolis cop. Earlier, on While the outcome of the earlier BLM “abolish” the police, there is an urgent the Racist Killer Cops/The Police Can’t Be June 9, ILWU members stopped work and protests dissipated amid toothless reforms need for revolutionary leadership. At the ‘Reformed’/For Black Liberation Through laid down their tools at the time of Floyd’s and more cop terror, the ILWU’s action port, Davis (who recently came out for Socialist Revolution.” From the outset of funeral for a symbolic 8 minutes and 46 sec- points to the need for class struggle against voting for Democrat Joe Biden in Novem- protests over the murder of George Floyd, onds, the length of time that killer cop Derek racist repression. The latest police murders ber) called for “abolishing the police as we as in the past, the IG has sought to bring Chauvin dug his knee into his victim’s neck, have come at the start of what looks to be a know them” and “re-imagining the mean- about workers strikes against racist re- as George Floyd gasped “I can’t breathe.” long hot summer: cops have already killed ing of public safety and security.” Instead, pression, including the ILWU coast-wide From the outset of the protests, and for another 150 people in the three weeks since the key task is to break from the Democrats shutdown, calling to mobilize labor/black/ many years leading up to the current cri- George Floyd was murdered. To put a stop and fight for a socialist revolution, the only immigrant power against racist cop terror. sis, the Internationalist Group has called to this killing spree, we need to bring out way to put an end the endemic racism of At demonstrations in New York, Los to mobilize labor/black/immigrant action the tremendous power of the multiracial U.S. capitalism. At the rally in Oscar Grant Angeles, Portland and Seattle the IG and against racist police terror. The present and multiethnic working class. While po- Plaza by Jack Heyman, a retired Local 10 lice terror cuts short the lives of an unend- member, class-struggle longshore activist ing list of black and brown people, these Labor Video Project and one of the organizers of the June 19 doubly-oppressed sectors are a key part shutdown. Heyman told the crowd: of the workforce in strategic sectors like “We are here today to stop police terror manufacturing, communications and trans- and systemic racism. The name of that port. The next time police carry out a racist system is capitalism, racist capitalism. murder – and you know there will be a next This country was founded on the geno- time, and then another – we need a mobi­ cide of the Native Americans. It was lization of working people, young people, built on the blood and sweat of black slaves from Africa…. The workers of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, im­ the world have power to change the cap- migrants and all the oppressed, to shut the italist system. What we did here today is cities down. an example, it’s a step forward. We are The West Coast dock workers union going beyond protest to resistance to the has a long history of action against police capitalists.” attacks. The ILWU was born out of the 1934 He noted that American capitalism San Francisco general strike, launched in has an Achilles heel: “In the cities of this Press conference announcing ILWU shutdown of all West Coast ports on response to the “Bloody Thursday” massa- country, all of the transit is run by black Juneteenth against police terror and systemic racism, Oakland, June 16. cre in which cops shot two strikers in the

May-July 2020 3 back. That’s a reason why the constitution ary workers party. and bylaws of ILWU Local 10 in the SF While the labor tops and reformist left

Bay Area, which spearheaded the push to Internationalist photo fall into line behind presumptive Demo- shut down the Coast on June 19, ban po- cratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who lice from membership. In October 2010, helped write the 1994 Clinton crime bill Local 10 shut down the Port of Oakland that escalated racist mass incarceration, and led a rally at City Hall to protest the working-class political independence is cru- slap-on-the-wrist “involuntary manslaugh- cial for unchaining workers power. In the ter” verdict against the cop who murdered lead-up to the 2016 elections, comrades of Oscar Grant. And on May Day 2015, after the Internationalist Group and Class Strug- the murder of Freddie Gray by police in gle Workers – Portland (Oregon) initiated Baltimore, Local 10 shut the port and led a resolution passed by the local painters a march of thousands to City Hall behind union (IUPAT Local 10) to “call on the la- an ILWU banner saying, “Stop Police Ter- bor movement to break from the Democrat- ror!” And in August 2017, the fascist “Pa- ic Party, and build a class-struggle workers triot Prayer” scurried out of SF, cancelling party.” Later that year, the CSWP won the its planned rally after Local 10 passing a painters, stage hands (IATSE Local 28) and motion to shut down the port and march to a total of seven area unions to call for la- stop their dangerous provocation. bor and its allies to mobilize against racist/ At a press conference today announc- fascist threats. The IG and the League for ing an ILWU-sponsored demonstration the Fourth International have also fought in conjunction with the port shutdown on for over two decades to oust cops from the June 19, Local 34 president Keith Shanklin Internationalist Group banner as the June 19 march proceeded through unions – a demand now becoming increas- emphasized that the struggle against racist Oakland to City Hall. ingly popular – which our Brazilian com- police brutality is not just political but also strategic importance of what is probably the on, and not only in the statues of leaders rades uniquely carried out, and for which personal: his nephew was shot in the back most powerful union in the United States of the Confederate slavocracy that litter they faced heavy repression. twice by Oakland police. Local 10 presi- demonstrating its ability to shut down inter- the South (and the U.S. Congress), some Labor/black/immigrant mobilization dent Trent Willis noted that his brother national commerce. They are willfully blind of which are now finally coming down against racist police terror, the struggle for was killed by MPs at a base in Colorado. to the fact that the fight over racist police amid the upheaval over the murder of cops out of the unions, workers defense At the press briefing, Jack Heyman, who murder is a fight for power – class power. George Floyd. That bloody heritage con- against racist attacks – these are key im- was introduced by Willis as a retired Local The rulers, however, understand this well, tinued with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, mediate tasks today. To be successful, they 10 member and “freedom fighter,” noted which is why Democrats and Republicans the institution of Jim Crow segregation, the must open the way to ending systemic rac- that in 1984, longshore workers took ac- alike called in military forces – whether the thousands of lynchings, the denial of vot- ism by overthrowing the capitalist system tion “against a ship from apartheid South Guard or the 82nd Airborne – to brutally ing rights to African Americans, the racist that breeds and enforces it. The only way Africa, to protest racist repression there, clamp down on demonstrations. death penalty and the mass incarceration to break the death grip of the killer cops is with people being shot down like dogs. Donald Trump understands, the police and militarized police occupation of black to smash the whole racist police/prison/ The same thing is happening today in this understand, racist reactionaries understand neighborhoods today. This systemic racism judicial apparatus of the capitalist state country, which is why we’re shutting down and even some liberal Democrats under- is built into the structure and fabric of U.S. through socialist revolution. On June 19, every port on the West Coast to protest stand that no amount of “reforms” can al- society. It is, as we have written, part of the the IG and Revolutionary Internationalist these murders by the police.” ter the fact that the police inevitably carry DNA of American capitalism and cannot Youth will be marching in New York, to- In addition to the outrage over the po- out racist repression, because American be extirpated short of a socialist revolution. gether with Class Struggle Education Work- lice murder of Floyd, the initiators of the capitalism cannot exist without it. From Today around the country there have ers, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas ILWU port shutdown were impelled to the slave patrols to the mass incarceration been a number of important cases in which and the CUNY Internationalist Clubs in a take action by President Donald Trump’s and wanton slaughter by kill-crazy cops on workers have refused to go along with revolutionary contingent behind the banner: the streets of the U.S. today, the enforcers the police repression – like bus drivers in threats of gunfire against protesters, and Democrats Are Bosses of Democratic and Republican governors of “law and order” are the armed fist of Minneapolis and New York who refused calling in the National Guard to suppress capital. Their job is to “serve and protect” to transport arrested demonstrators. In Racist Killer Cops NYC, the Transport Workers Union de- demonstrations. This posed the urgent need the bourgeoisie by keeping the exploited THE POLICE CAN’T BE for action by both the West Coast union and oppressed down, in order to keep the clared: “TWU Local 100 Bus Operators and the International Longshoremen’s profits flowing. The capitalists are acutely do not work for the NYPD. We transport “REFORMED” Association (ILA), representing East and aware that amid the mass unemployment the working families of NYC, all TWU BLACK LIBERATION Gulf Coast ports. Heyman reports that ef- occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, Operators should refuse to transport ar- forts to bring out the ILA on June 19 have their rule rests on shaky foundations. rested protestors.” So far, these are still THROUGH SOCIALIST not borne fruit, but the pandemic of police The ILWU action has been called for Ju- isolated instances. What is needed is far REVOLUTION killings will surely continue. A shutdown neteenth, which celebrates the day – 19 June more, workers action to bring the cities to Capitalism is killing us. This decrepit of all U.S. ports would be history-making, 1865 – that slavery was formally abolished in a screeching halt against racist repression. system spreads death and destruction ev- and could serve as a clarion call to all of Texas, the last of the Confederate slave states And above all, this class battle must be erywhere as it sinks further into terminal labor that the time to act is now. to be occupied by the Union Army, bringing waged politically against all capitalist par- decay. We urge you to join us in the liberat- Many in the left, and many in the labor the Civil War to a close. Although the Eman- ties and politicians, to build a revolution­ ing struggle for the future of all. n movement, will no doubt see the ILWU’s cipation Proclamation was issued two years port shutdown as just one more sector join- earlier, it was only enforced by the army that ing the struggle, simply a welcome addi- for the first time included African American tion to the “chorus of voices speaking out” soldiers – some 180,000 – and carried out

against police brutality. They fail to see the the Second American Revolution. Unlike Internationalist photo the first, this was a (partial) social rev- olution, putting an end to the chattel slavery on which the U.S. economy was built. Yet the slave masters kept

Internationalist photo the plantations, and slavery outside the secessionist states was not abolished until the 13th Amendment was ratified in Decem- ber 1865. But the lega- During march in the Port Area. cy of slavery lives Speakers at the rally in Oscar Grant Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall. 4 The Internationalist No to Military/Police Rule: Mobilize Workers Power Trump and Democrats Stage Ominous Trial Run for Martial Law In the days following the May 25 from the racist in the Oval Office. Donald murder of George Floyd by a Minneapo- Trump did, in fact, bring into the Washing-

lis cop, furious protests spread from coast / AP Brandon Alex ton area troops from the 82nd Airborne Di- to coast, including right in front of the vision, headquartered in Fort Bragg, North White House in Washington, D.C. As the Carolina (named for Confederate general outrage escalated, massive marches across Braxton Bragg), along with over 4,000 the country were met with violent attacks National Guard troops. Florida sent 500 by cops beating protesters and carrying out Guardsmen to D.C., Idaho contributed 400, mass arrests. The media broadcast images Indiana 300, Maryland 120, Mississippi of police cars trashed and torched. At the 400, Ohio 100, South Carolina 445, Tennes- seat of presidential power on Friday night, see 1,000 and Utah 200. That’s in addition to May 29, as protesters surged outside, the 1,200 District of Columbia National Guard Secret Service rushed Donald Trump and troops, who are under direct presidential his family to an underground bunker. command. Eleven of the 13 states that sent Racist-in-chief Trump let loose a barrage troops had Republican governors. In effect of tweets vowing that protesters would be it was a Republican military occupation of met with “vicious dogs” and threatening 93% Democratic D.C. that “when the looting starts, the shooting In the U.S. capital, National Guard starts,” echoing a Southern sheriff’s threats troops quickly set up a perimeter around to shoot black youth in 1960s protests. the White House, lining up troop transport Squads of police and federal agents brutally push protesters out of Lafayette With military vehicles in the streets of trucks and armored personnel carriers in Park for Donald Trump’s photo op, June 1. Seattle, the National Guard patrolling Min- front of government buildings and station- neapolis and police clashing with demon- while on the other side of the White House, surrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and loot- ing Humvees at key intersections. A new strators across the street in Lafayette Park his black-uniformed SS (Secret Service) ers.” This is a call to commit war crimes, eight-foot tall black fence was erected to on Sunday, Trump hunkered down in a thugs and military police launched pepper to take no prisoners, kill them all. Trump prevent protesters (and anyone else) from largely deserted White House with exter- gas against peaceful protesters and bashed retweeted Cotton’s bloodcurdling call, say- even entering Lafayette Park. Hundreds of nal lights dimmed. Angry that word had journalists with riot shields. All so the ing “Thanks, Tom.” masked federal agents in black and camou- leaked of his time in the bunker, the next commander in chief could march across The response of the Democratic gov- flage uniforms with no name tags, no badg- morning, June 1, he was determined to the park, with his attorney general Bill ernors to Trump’s threats was a limp “no es, no identifying insignias of any kind, look tough. In a conference call he vituper- Barr, “defense” secretary Mark Esper and thanks” to his “offer” to send in the troops. took up position around the city, refusing ated against Democratic governors, saying the chairman of the joint chiefs, General They treated it as one more example of to say what agency they were with. Some “most of you are weak” and that if they Mark Milley (in battle fatigues), in tow, Trump’s bluster. New York governor Andrew were later identified as being riot police didn’t crack down they would “look like to St. John’s Episcopal Church to pose for Cuomo called it “shameful.” Minnesota gov- from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. In addi- a bunch of jerks.” The demonstrators are photos with a bible as a prop. ernor Tim Walz said putting the military in tion, at least a dozen other federal agencies “terrorists,” he declared, calling to track In his photo-op at the church, which the streets was “unsustainable militarily,” were mobilized to “dominate” protesters, “trouble makers” and “put them in jail for was angrily denounced by the Episcopal and socially, “because it’s the antithesis of including the FBI, DEA, I.C.E., FPS, TSA, ten years.” He ended saying, “the word is bishop, Trump announced, “As we speak, I how we live.” No emergency press confer- PFPA, Border Patrol, Capitol Police, Park dominate…. wait till I get in Washington am dispatching thousands and thousands of ences, no resolutions from the Democrat- Police and Secret Service. and D.C., we’re gonna do something that heavily armed soldiers, military personnel controlled U.S. House of Representatives There was an outcry over the incident people haven’t seen before. But you’ve got and law enforcement officers to stop the ri- against Trump’s ominous threat of imposing on the night of June 1, when two military to have total domination.” oting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the direct military rule. And for good reason: helicopters tried to intimidate protesters Next was a Rose Garden press confer- wanton destruction of property.” Earlier, in the Dems were already using military force who defied the curfew ordered by Washing- ence, where Trump issued a pronuncia- the call with the governors, Esper declared, to suppress protests. “How we live” in Min- ton’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser. A miento, that “mayors and governors must “We need to dominate the battlespace” of nesota was that Democrat Farmer-Labor Black Hawk combat copter and a Lakota establish an overwhelming presence until the streets. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkan- governor Walz had the National Guard in the medevac helicopter hovered over marchers the violence is quelled.” If not, “then I sas) called for Trump to invoke the 1807 streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, for which in the streets, their rotors producing deaf- will deploy the United States military and Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty mil- he earned Trump’s praise. ening noise, breaking tree branches and quickly solve the problem for them.” “I itary to cities, “the 10th Mountain, 82nd But the threat of doing “something that battering protesters with tropical storm- am your president of law and order and an Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry – whatever people haven’t seen before” to quell protests level winds. The medevac copter (with its ally of all peaceful protesters,” he declared, it takes to restore order. No quarter for in- was more than the usual bully-boy boasting Red Cross) was as low as 45 feet above Sam Ward Getty Images

Protester confronts Trump’s SS (Secret Service) blackshirts outside the D.C. National Guard medevac helicopter flying below rooftop level over White House. protesters, battering them with gale-force winds on the night of June 1. May-July 2020 5 the Insurrection Act, Drew Angerer / Getty Images which had been used against Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion and 1968 ghetto re- volts in D.C., Bal- timore and Chicago

Kerem Yucel Kerem AFP Yucel / following the assas- sination of Martin Luther King. Trump’s move was no spur-of-the- moment reaction to Black Lives Matter protesters faceing off Minnesota National Guard occupied south Minneapolis, with the cops, but called in by Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party governor is part of a drive – and mayor, May 29. shared with the Dem- ground, well below rooftop level (“A low- ocrats – to beef up military/police power. flying ‘show of force’,” Washington Post, This push toward bonapartist1 rule is in- 25 June). Yet Pentagon tops claimed not ternational in scope as decaying capital- Donald Trump cowered behind barrier of military troop transports as thousands to know who ordered this maneuver, until ism increasingly requires a “strong state” of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrate, June 3. Army secretary Ryan McCarthy admitted to keep order. From the onset of the coro- Capital,” Newsweek, 16 April). A second What Trump was doing was a trial run he had ordered it to “observe” the demos. navirus pandemic, we have noted that key “Falcon Virgo” exercise was held in D.C. at what in Latin America would be called So Trump, who is formally commander of sectors of the U.S. imperialist ruling class on April 7. The JTF-NCR is commanded an autogolpe (or “self-coup”) such as Pe- the D.C. Guard, had created his own chain would use this crisis to try out plans for by Major General Omar J. Jones IV, with ruvian president Alberto Fujimori engi- of command. martial law. On March 16, even as Trump 10,000 troops at his orders, including the neered in 1992, freeing himself from any Meanwhile, despite assurances to was merrily predicting that COVID-19 Army’s 3rd Infantry Battalion. In his lei- parliamentary restraint. The presidency would “disappear … like a miracle” come Congress from top Pentagon intelligence sure time, Newsweek reported, Gen. Jones has always had strong powers in American spring, his administration chartered a Joint officials that the military was not spying on had just read the book, Nation on Fire bourgeois “democracy,” made even stron- Task Force National Capital Region (JTF- demonstrators, Air National Guard units (2009), about the “riots” that led police to ger in the imperialist epoch as the U.S. has NCR) in order to secure Washington, D.C. were doing just that. RC-25 surveillance flee Washington after King’s assassination. sought to rule the world (what liberals like in case a devastating epidemic threatened aircraft from the West Virginia and Penn- Already under Democrat Barack Gore Vidal have called the “national secu- to cripple the government. sylvania National Guards were in the air Obama, a Pentagon directive stated that rity state”). These powers were further ex- Less than a week later, an exercise, for hours above demonstrations in Wash- “Federal military forces shall not be used to panded after the 11 September 2001 attack “Falcon Virgo,” was held in the skies over ington, despite the statement by Pennsyl- quell civil disturbances unless specifically on the World Trade Center and the Penta- El Paso, Texas, at an Army range over Ft. vania’s Democratic governor Tom Wolf authorized by the President in accordance gon. Trump needed no approval of any per- Bliss that was “gridded out to simulate the that he would not send Guard units to D.C. with applicable law … or permitted under son or body to decree his authoritarian rule. airspace of Washington, DC,” in order to at Trump’s request. RC-25s from the Ar- emergency authority…. In these circum- But he had to have someone to carry it out, train a unit of the Mississippi National kansas and Wisconsin Guards did the same stances, those Federal military command- and the generals balked. Instead, they sent Guard “for the upcoming deployment in over protests in Minneapolis, at the request ers have the authority, in extraordinary in the National Guard, and instructed them the nation’s capital” (“As Washington D.C. of Minnesota’s Democratic governor Walz. emergency circumstances where prior au- to defend Lafayette Park as “the Alamo,” Faces Coronavirus Spike, Secret Mili- The FBI had one of its most sophisticated thorization by the President is impossible as Brig. Gen. Robert K. Ryan of the D.C. tary Task Force Prepares to Secure the spy planes in the air over Washington. And and duly constituted local authorities are National Guard told the troops that is surely just the tip of the iceberg. The 1 Marxists use the term bonapartism to refer unable to control the situation, to engage The turmoil at the top was so great that mobilization of military assets in response to regimes based on military and police power temporarily in activities that are necessary at one point, Esper ordered 200 rapid deploy- to Trump’s demand was a serious attempt masked by “democratic” trappings. After the to quell large-scale, unexpected civil dis- ment troops of the 82nd Airborne back to to impose martial law. most radical leaders of the French Revolution turbances” (DoD Directive No. 3025.18, Bragg, only to have Trump angrily order him As for the 700 troops from the 82nd of 1789 were ousted in 1794, the period of rev- 29 December 2010). Under Republican to reverse it. (When asked if the president Airborne, they were held at Joint Base olutionary turmoil was finally ended with the Trump, in October 2018 the Joint Chiefs of still had confidence in the defense chief, the 1799 coup by army leader Napoleon Bonaparte, Andrews and Fort Belvoir outside Wash- White House press secretary replied that, “as who used pseudo-democratic plebiscites (vote Staff codified these directives for imposing ington, along with another 1,400 soldiers yes or no) to disguise what was in fact a dic- martial law to put down mass protests. of right now, Secretary Esper is still Secretary (including the 16th and 91st Military Po- tatorship. In his article “Bonapartism and Fas- So when Trump boasted on June 1 Esper.”) Gen. Milley issued a directive to top lice Brigades) ready to be deployed on an cism” (July 1934) analyzing the governments that he would “do something that people military leaders saying that “Every member hour’s notice. They were armed with auto- that led up to Hitler’s seizure of power in Ger- haven’t seen before,” the groundwork had of the U.S. military swears an oath to support matic weapons, supplied with riot gear and many the year before, Leon Trotsky wrote: “A already been laid. All that was required and defend the Constitution,” based on “the issued bayonets. According to army chief government which raises itself above the nation was his invocation of the Insurrection Act. essential principle that all men and women McCarthy, Pentagon leaders “came right is not, however, suspended in air. The true axis But there he ran into a problem: opposition are born free and equal, and should be treated of the present government passes through the up to the edge” of sending those troops with respect and dignity” including the “right police, the bureaucracy, the military clique. It from the Pentagon top brass. Joint Chiefs into D.C. (Stars & Stripes, 8 June). What is a military-police dictatorship with which we chairman Milley was reportedly against to freedom of speech and peaceful assem- stopped them was not any outcry from are confronted, barely concealed with the deco- it, although defense secretary Esper went bly.” He added pointedly that the National Democrats, but disagreement by top mili- rations of parliamentarism. But a government along. A day later, Esper changed his Guard was still operating under the authority tary leaders, past and present, with Trump’s of the saber as the judge arbiter of the nation tune and declared that active-duty troops of state governors (i.e., not the president). stratagem to suppress protests by invoking – that’s just what bonapartism is.” should not be used to put down protests, continued on page 21 saying: “I do not sup- port invoking the In- surrection Act.” The Internationalist photo New York Times (4 AFP June) reported: “Mr. Esper’s comments reflected the turmoil within the military over Mr. Trump, who in seeking to put American troops on the streets alarmed top Pentagon offi- cials fearful that the military would be seen as participat- Trump’s secret army: federal agents without name tags, badges or any ing in a move toward Internationalists at June 2 protest in NYC call for workers identifying insignia occupy the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, June 2. martial law.” strikes now against racist terror and martial law threats. 6 The Internationalist “Only Revolution Can Bring Justice” The following is the edited presenta- ders the next black woman, man, or child.

tion by Tristán at a June 10 online forum of So, No. 1, the function of the police Internationalist photo the Internationalist Group and Revolution- cannot be reformed away. It is the armed ary Internationalist Youth on “Which Way fist of the capitalist state. You can’t take Forward in the Struggle Against Racist Po- repression out of the police and you can’t lice Terror.” take repression out of capitalism. The I want to make two points, the first be- verbiage about supposedly abolishing the ing the urgent question of reform or revolu- police and abolishing the jails under capi- tion and what our slogan, “Only revolution talism is liberal utopian make-believe put can bring justice,” really means. out by people who claim the capitalist state The police are the professionals of can reform itself away. That’s a dangerous racist repression and daily enforcers of illusion. As Marx and Lenin insisted, the capitalist law and order – this is a seem- capitalist state must be smashed in a work- ingly simple concept, and yet it is difficult ers revolution that sets up a new state of for many to fully grasp. The idea that the the working class to do away with oppres- police exist in order to repress us comes sion and lay the groundwork for a stateless, up in sharp contrast against the dominant classless society. capitalist ideology that police are here to No. 2, when we say that racist oppres- “protect and serve the community.” Expe- sion is systemic, that is, part of how this rience with the police in the United States, society works. Racism is written into the the endless list of names of those murdered DNA of U.S. capitalism. Each time there at the hands of the police, all clearly refute is an explosion of indignation, the ruling this lie. And yet, there exists a contradic- class comes up with these cosmetic solu- Internationalists in May 31 protest in New York City over the racist police tion imbued in the nation-wide and inter- tions. When the ruling class declares that murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. national protests – that it’s possible to re- “black lives matter,” they whisper in the form the police. That the police can adopt same breath, “only insofar as black people smash the capitalist system. What kind of gle Workers – Portland (CSWP) and Inter- a function other than as the defenders of can be continuously used as an expendable revolution? A socialist revolution. A real nationalist Group presented motions in the private property is illusory, and yet it still source of labor integrated into the bottom one. “Only revolution can bring justice” painters and stage-hands unions for “mobi- permeates protests. An example is when of society to generate capital.” So when the means there is no justice in the capitalist lizing against the clear and present danger protesters ask police to march and kneel world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, chimes in courts and that black liberation can only be that the KKK and other racist organizations 3 with them, as if this false act of solidarity on the slogan, while firing workers who realized through a socialist revolution. In provocations pose to us all.” The motions will prevent their pepper spraying, rubber call for a union and personal protective other words, eradicating the system of cap- passed, and then almost identical ones and bean bag bullets, and their swinging equipment (PPE), you can see how capital- italist private property and racist exploita- were passed in other unions. This laid the clubs. So, we get a litter of demands to re- ists are always seeking new ways to fool tion. Anything other means the cooptation basis for the June 4, 2017 Portland Labor form, redesign, reimagine, reconstruct, and and deceive the oppressed. of the mass movement into the Democratic Against the Fascists mobilization, which 4 reinvent the police. All the “re-s.” Now, what way forward? Anything Party just like the initial BLM movement, brought out 300 unionists and supporters. For those of us who were involved in that makes it more difficult for the police to and continued racist repression. It is part of what inspired the ILWU Local the 2014-2015 Black Lives Matter pro- do what they do – good. Repeal 50-a [the Secondly, our slogans “George Floyd, 10 (these are the dock workers in the Bay tests against the racist police, many of New York state law shielding discipline Michael Brown, shut the whole system Area) to pass a motion to shut down the the demands for reform we heard then, records of police from public scrutiny]? down” and “For workers action against ports and march to stop a fascist provoca- we hear today; and many of the supposed Good. Do away with qualified immunity racist terror” both reference the same tion a couple of months later, and that sent 5 reforms that were implemented at that [which under Supreme Court rulings has point; that the key to toppling the racist the fascists scurrying out of town. We time, including in Minneapolis after the enabled police to kill or injure civilians capitalist system is the power of the mul- emphasize that workers strikes must be shooting of Jamar Clark, such as manda- with impunity]? Good. Cops out of the tiracial working class, which can literally carried out today against racist cop terror. tory police body cameras and implicit bias schools? Hell, yes! Our organization has shut down the system. For example, New Trump threatened to deploy the military training, did not stop the strangulation of been in the forefront of fighting for that York City transit workers in 2005 went and Cuomo and de Blasio enacted racist George Floyd and have not diminished for decades. Teachers and students every- on strike, breaking the state’s Taylor Law, curfews – and the working class should the steady number of over 1,700 civil- where should organize to do it now. I’d which bans strikes by public employees. also use its organized power against such ians a year murdered by the police. That’s also like to ask everyone to learn about the That strike brought the center of finance police-state measures. almost 5 people a day. As of today, 889 historic struggle that our Brazilian com- capital to a grinding halt for three days. Now, admittedly, I was not a science people have been murdered by the police rades waged in 1996 to remove police from This is what I’m talking about. However, major, but it is the job of revolutionaries 1 this year. Nothing has changed. the unions, and the workers strikes for the the way that many understand the slogan to tap into that potential and latent energy Today, the call to “defund the police” freedom of former Black Panther Mumia “shut the system down” is that the sponta- of the working class and help transform is extremely popular. This fundamental- Abu-Jamal and against the racist terror of neous upsurge of unorganized masses can it into revolutionary kinetic energy. The 2 ly means that the police as an institution the police in Brazil, in Mexico, in the U.S. potentially shut down a highway, bridge or capitalist politicians and the reformist should remain because systemic racism That’s internationalism in practice. tunnel to attract attention and highlight an groups are constantly injecting the work- can supposedly be abolished under capital- So unlike liberals and reformists, issue. These actions can be powerful mes- ing class and oppressed with political ism if you tinker with this, that or the other revolutionaries tell the truth about what’s sages. In fact, my first BLM protest back in and ideological novocain to numb our thing, like its “culture” or budget. Nancy needed to uproot racial oppression. That’s 2014 was at Herald Square where protest- consciousness. Instead of riding a never- Pelosi just referred to it, positively, as “to a question of revolution. The liberal con- ers stopped traffic on Broadway and then ceasing pendulum swinging between the shuffle some money around.” Bernie Sand- ception is that change is internal – change we flooded Times Square. Democrats and Republicans, we call on ers, however, is hard-lining his opposition within the self and change within the sys- But what is lacking is revolutionary those who want to end racist repression to even to the term. Instead, his so-called po- tem . . . but please keep the system. This class-struggle leadership. To get out on join us in building a revolutionary work- lice reform proposal calls for more money poses another contradiction: rebukes the streets to march and protest against ers party organizing for socialist revolu- for the police and paying them more, while against the police . . . plus calls to vote racist terror is crucial. But power must be tion here and around the world. This is a fight for clarity and action, it involves making social workers and EMTs “supple- for the Democratic Party. Let’s be clear. met with power – a stronger power. That education, which is what we are doing ment law enforcement.” He calls this “hu- It’s Mayor Bill de Blasio’s NYPD and in is the organized power of the working today, and class struggle. I hope many of manizing the police.” Minneapolis it’s liberal Democratic mayor class under its own revolutionary party. you will join us in this fight.n Many so-called police reform plans Jacob Frey’s MPD. These mayors are some Key to this are black workers. This sys- of the liberal faces of racist repression. call for community oversight or commu- tem doesn’t give a damn about them or 3 Revolution requires breaking with the Read the motion at “Portland Painters and nity control of the police – in other words, their lives, as we’ve witnessed yet again Drywall Finishers Say: Mobilize Labor to Stop Democrats and all capitalist parties and to make the “community” co-responsible for with the coronavirus, which is dispro- the KKK and All Racist Groups” on the CSWP forming a revolutionary workers party to administering police repression. Many of the portionately affecting black, Latino and website (https://csw-pdx.org/). 1 4 demands in the celebrity-endorsed “8 Can’t See the Internationalist dossier, Class Struggle immigrant workers. While treated as ex- See “Portland Labor Mobilizes to Stop Fascist Wait” campaign detail proposals that essen- and Repression in Volta Redonda, Brazil (Febru- pendable, they’re a large part of what’s Provocation,” in The Internationalist No. 48, ary 1997). May-June 2017. tially amount to this, including a call for the classed as “essential” workers, because 2 See “ILWU, SEPE: First Labor Stoppages for 5 See “ILWU Local 10 Moves to Stop the Fascists police to police the police. This is absurd. Mumia – Brazil Education Workers Stop Work the same system needs their labor. That in San Francisco” and “Fascists Forced to Flee And in fact, such proposals would make up Demanding: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!” (The In- means power. San Francisco – A Significant Victory,” The Inter- the defense brief for the next cop that mur- ternationalist, May 1999). In 2017, members of the Class Strug- nationalist No. 49, September-October 2017. May-July 2020 7 Bad Apples, Broken Windows and Other Myths About the Police From www.internationalist.org, Feb- perfunctorily called upon to explain why ruary 2016. they shot or beat someone. Cops under- There is lots of talk today about the stand the great leeway they have legally. police and race in America, prompted by The oppressed bear the suffocating weight Reuters the continued killing with impunity of un- of the institutional barrel that contains armed black men, women, and children plenty of bad apples, but mainly all kinds by cops in Ferguson, Chicago, New York, of apples that are just doing their jobs. Baltimore, Cleveland, and elsewhere. The fundamental job of the cops is Some of these legalized murders have to maintain brutal social control over the been caught on video for all to see. This urban ghetto. They are supported in this national “conversation” will not change purpose by the myth of “broken windows the fundamental injustice of the capitalist policing.” According to this “theory” cops system’s racist enforcement on the streets. are charged with enforcing “quality of life Even the large and inspiring protests in crimes” such as “loitering,” public drink- city after city against transparent murder- ing and begging. This was the original ous police brutality and its cover-up in rationale for the racist “stop and frisk” cop-rigged grand-jury and court systems policies of the New York Police Depart- will not result in the justice that so many ment. It was certainly the motivation in the idealistic young protesters desperately de- NYPD’s strangling to death of Eric Garner sire and demand. in Staten Island. Garner was on the street The goals of the protesters are under- selling “loosies” – single cigarettes. Of Robocops impose curfew in Baltimore on 1 May 2015 following police mined by a number of dominant liberal il- course “broken windows” is enforced only murder of Freddie Gray. Police are armed and armored for civil war. lusions that support the racist status quo. in poor, black and Latino neighborhoods. reotype. But Lynch’s philosophy dominates inherited the debilitating illusion that the fed- First is the common sense story that “of The famous dictum of Anatole France ap- cop culture and sets the real informal initia- eral government can be relied upon to reform course, there are good cops and bad cops.” plies here: “The law in its majestic equal- tion rules for becoming a conscious agent the local, militarized and out-of-control cops. There is hardly a person-on-the-street in- ity, forbids the rich as well as the poor to of “law and order” in capitalist society. In Their illusory hope that the federal govern- terview or a pundit or politician on TV sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, defending the interests of capital, the “com- ment will right the wrongs of state and local who does not refer to this distorted indi- and to steal bread.” munity” that cops represent is the “blue com- authorities is a holdover from the civil rights vidualized construction of the situation. It The liberals’ emphasis on a racially munity” of occupation and oppression. movement when national political opposition is a convenient fable that shifts the political diverse police force is a result of the idea For the ruling class the problem is to de jure legal segregation did temporarily focus away from the role of the police as that racism is a personal and psychologi- one of public relations: how to get the op- ameliorate the most egregious examples of an armed institution of the capitalist state cal characteristic rather than a structural pressed to trust the cops. The more far- Southern legal apartheid. At the same time, apparatus to a consideration of individual buttress of U.S. society. But in Baltimore, seeing capitalist rulers know that their the feds occupied cities like Little Rock and attitudes. This logically leads to ideas of for instance, where the cops’ “rough ride” supremacy depends upon efficient control Birmingham to put down black resistance to getting rid of “bad apples,” improving po- killed Freddie Gray, the mayor, the pros- of the oppressed. That is why liberals are the racist nightriders. lice training, establishing “community po- ecutors and the entire criminal justice es- wringing their hands over the “lack of trust So today, in response to civil rights licing,” etc. tablishment are African American. NYC between police and communities of color.” complaints, the U.S. Department of Justice Of course, it is often the case that cops has one of the most diverse police forces But for the cops the problem is one of fear: (DOJ) comes to town pretending to reform are personally racist, it’s part of cop culture in the world. As a result of decades of pro- who owns the streets? and modernize police practices. The DOJ that views the black population as “perps,” test, a majority of NYC’s 35,000 cops are Liberal illusions divert attention from has issued reports on Ferguson, Cleveland, “animals” and at least proto-criminals. African American, Latino, or Asian. That the historically developed role of the capi- Chicago and elsewhere. We have seen de- Darren Wilson, the cop who shot unarmed didn’t help Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, talist state as an instrument of racist and cades of “agreements” between local cops Michael Brown in Ferguson, for instance, Sean Bell, Eleanor Bumpers, Eric Garner class control and coercion. Besides the con- and the DOJ promising to reform the po- said he saw Brown as a “beast.” This is a and many others. stant drumbeat for generalized gun control, lice in Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, linguistic holdover from chattel slavery. Today the cop who beats the kid in his we now also hear references to the implicit New Orleans and other major cities. In the But the most revealing statement in Wil- hoodie, or stops, frisks, harasses and drives racism held throughout the U.S. popula- last two decades DOJ has launched 67 civil son’s released testimony was that he knew the kid into the criminal data base is a lot tion. Social science research has certainly rights investigations of police departments. he was doing his job. Doing what he was more likely to look like a member of the demonstrated that this is widespread. As a It doesn’t work. It can’t work. supposed to do, trained to do. This is basi- “community” than the racist PBA head, Pat- legacy of slavery and ghetto compaction, As the Washington Post (“Forced Re- cally what all the cops say when they are rick Lynch, who lives up to the older cop ste- the dominant capitalist ideology perpetu- forms, Mixed Results,” 15 November 2015) ates the perception that black bodies are reported, police departments get new equip- suspicious and dangerous. In this view the ment and lots of money, but cop violence murderous cops are just like any American often gets worse. The Post reported that in except that they have a gun. the ten cities where they investigated DOJ Everyone is guilty in this alibi for in- agreements, not one showed a decrease in tentional cop terror. A cop feels threatened the “use of excessive force.” In five police when he sees a black man holding a toy departments excessive use of force stayed rifle in the toy section of a K-mart, and the same, and “in five of the 10 police de- shoots him dead (in a suburb of Dayton, partments for which sufficient data was pro- Ohio in August 2014). Even a recent New vided, use of force by officersincreased [our York Times (30 December 2015) editorial emphasis] during and after agreements.” notes that the shooting of Tamir Rice – a This is the same federal government young boy with a toy gun on a playground that supplies the local cops with military

Chang W. Lee / The New York Times York The New Lee / Chang W. – would not occur “in just about any mid- hardware. The same federal government dle-class neighborhood in the country.” that launches “signature” assassination But the focus on the fact of wide- drone strikes (based on patterns of behavior spread implicit racism tends to sidestep that suggest “terrorist activity”) using the the role of the cops as lethal enforcers of same kind of “pre-cog” (predictive) crime the racist status quo. The cops’ rules of en- profiling that targets black people and Lati- gagement are different. The racism of the nos in the U.S. The same DOJ that designed cops is not simply implicit – it is central to the legal cover for the sick, medieval torture Brooklyn, New York, 30 May 2020: Outraged over the murder of George their historically developed function as the of perceived enemies. The same federal Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, tens of thousands took part in truncheon of the capitalist state against the government that supports the racist death daily protests and marches against racist cop terror. NYPD cops brutalized population of impoverished ghettos. penalty, and that expanded prosecutorial protesters with tear gas, pepper spray, batons and even their squad cars. Many of the youthful protesters have reach under Democrat Bill Clinton. 8 The Internationalist this sense, the cops are the contemporary iteration of the slave patrols of the ante- Jim Crow “Justice” and bellum South. With the civil rights movement and radicalization of the 1960s and early ’70s, both capitalist parties instituted the “war on the Capitalist State crime” backlash that murdered Black Pan- ther Party leaders in their beds in Chicago, From www.internationalist.org, Feb- set up the COINTELPRO spying apparatus, ruary 2016. Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa and illegally imprisoned the most radical el- The denial of access to legal redress in ements of the “black power” movement on the courts is part and parcel of lynch-law all manner of trumped-up charges. In 1994 “justice.” It is a system born in the toxic the Clinton Administration passed the Om- cauldron of chattel slavery, brutally main- nibus Crime Bill that provided millions of tained by the slave patrols, and expressed dollars to expand state prisons, put 100,000 in the notorious “black codes.” African additional cops in the streets and expanded Americans were not regarded as fully hu- the death penalty to cover more than 50 man under the law. For decades after slav- federal crimes. On the streets, the target ex- ery, the lynch rope hung between African panded to entrap and imprison thousands, Americans and their “day in court.” tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands Police terror has always been a cru- of youth, including those trying to survive cial device in America’s white suprema- like [Pennsylvania frame-up victim] Corey cist history. Under Jim Crow segregation Walker, in the only employment available to in the South, it was well understood that them: the underground drug trade. the local police departments were of- The Internationalist Group opposes ten synonymous with the local Ku Klux all laws criminalizing or regulating drugs Klan. The nightriders took off their blue (as well as alcohol, tobacco or other sub- uniforms and put on their white ones. Far stances). Repealing those laws would put from protecting African Americans, the an end to the “drug wars” that have jailed cops more often worked gun-in-glove hundreds of thousands of young people, with white racist mobs. devastated African American and Latino In one infamous example, Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1 June 1921: Hundreds of black men were seized at gun communities in the U.S., and laid waste to Oklahoma in 1921 was the site of one point and marched to detention centers while vigilantes burned down the much of Mexico. Many defenders of dem- of the worst racist pogroms in U.S. his- black community of Greenwood. ocratic rights recognize that the outlaw- tory. Mobs burned down the entire vi- where he shot Trayvon Martin dead.2 control of that oppressed population. The ing of drugs has not stopped their use but brant black community of Greenwood The racial character of mass incarcera- niceties of rights were simply disregarded only turned users and dealers into outlaws, – destroying more than 1,000 homes and tion is not merely the result of excessive penal as the cops rode roughshod over the resi- while generating police and gang violence. businesses – and murdered hundreds. Pre- policies instituted since the election of Ronald dents who were viewed as actual and poten- Following the end of Prohibition in the cipitating the spasm of racist terror was a Reagan, as many liberal reformers suggest. tial criminals. That’s how a 12-year-old boy, 1930s, the organized crime associated with white mob howling to lynch an innocent The policies that created urban ghettos started Tamir Rice, gets gunned down in Cleveland bans on alcohol was drastically reduced. black man being held in the local jail. long ago and were intensified with industrial- by a cop who starts shooting as soon as he Modern mass incarceration in the U.S. Black veterans of WWI came armed to ization and under the liberal New Deal. sees the child. The cop knew he would get is the result of a long racist history. Racism the jail to offer their services in defense of 3 As African Americans were driven into off – not even a trial. is tightly woven into the fabric of American civic order against lynch-mob fury. Their blighted areas of industrial cities by con- The too-familiar sociopathic cop cul- capitalism. A distinctive characteristic of offer was rebuffed by the authorities; -in scious policies of housing and employment ture is largely the institutional reflection the U.S. capitalist state is that its concrete stead the police deputized the lynch mob discrimination, the capitalist state’s coercive of their legal immunity – the implicit un- and coercive state institutions – its standing terrorists.1 machinery – the cops and prosecutors, the derstanding that there will be no legal ac- army, cops, court system and prisons – are This history is still with us today. Just courts and prisons – were given the green countability for the brutal actions of the forged in a crucible of official and unofficial look at the proliferation of “neighborhood light to be the blunt instruments of social “thin, blue line.” With impunity, police racist terror. Although the forms may differ, watch” patrols such as the one George Zim- stop, frisk, bust and generally terrorize the 2 this is true today no less than 100 years ago. merman coordinated as he was “patrolling” See “Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends young black men who inhabit urban ghet- It will take nothing short of a socialist revo- a gated community in Sanford, Florida Murderer of Trayvon Martin,” The Interna- tos built to contain and control them. In tionalist special issue, May 2012; and “Work- lution to put an end to the living legacy of 1 See “Black Self-Defense Against ‘Ethnic ers Revolution Will Avenge Trayvon Mar- 3 See “Baltimore, Cleveland: ‘The System slavery and the lynch law justice that lives Cleansing’: Racist Hell in Tulsa, 1921,” The tin,” The Internationalist No. 36, January-Feb- Is Rigged’,” The Internationalist No. 42, Janu- on, half a century after the formal abolition Internationalist No. 22, September-October 2005. ruary 2014. ary-February 2016. of Jim Crow segregation. n

It’s the same government that runs the cause of the weakness of the U.S. left and But among the liberal and reformist the political stance toward the cops is the torture prison at Guantanamo Bay where the dominance of middle-class politics in left, the role of the cops has been obscured touchstone that defines allegiance or oppo- prisoners are held for years without charg- U.S. political life. The bloody class line by loyalty (sometimes unstated) to the sition to capitalism and its state. n es and force fed. There is no accountability between cops and workers has been a lot capitalist state and for torturers at the federal level – not one clearer in Appalachian mining towns like an individualist ide- torturer, or the lawyers who justified it le- Harlan County, for instance, where gen- ology that supports gally, or the psychologists who consulted erations of workers have fought the bosses’ it. Sometimes this Order on it, will ever face charges. As President gun thugs and cops. They posed the pro- loyalty is primitively Obama said in his home-spun way, “We verbial and sometimes musical question, expressed as the false Now! tortured a few folks.” “Which Side Are You On?” Everybody in assumption that cops Graphic record Taken together these illusions gener- town understood the social and political are “workers in uni- of our Brazil- ate an ideological fog that makes it nearly role of the cops. form” – part of the ian comrades’ impossible for many young protesters to There is also clarity on militant picket “99 percent.” Some- struggle to oust recognize the essential materialist class lines – workers’ necessary tool for orga- times the justification police from the character of the state – born out of irrecon- nized survival – where the cops try to herd can be sophisticated unions. cilable class conflict – and the institutions the scabs through the pickets. It’s easy for and theoretical. But that embody and carry out its coercive pur- strikers to see that all the cops are follow- by creating illusions $3 pose. In the United States, where racism is ing orders. “Good cops” and “bad cops” that the police could (includes deeply baked into the development of capi- are part of the same strikebreaking armed somehow “serve the postage) talism, that coercion is necessarily racist. It force. In black ghettos across the globe people” the result is the entire barrel – the structure of capi- where the cops regularly occupy and “con- is to divert struggle Order from/make talist class justice –that is rotten to the core. trol” the population through brutal harass- into a dead end of at- checks payable These illusions, particularly as ex- ment bordering on terror, and often legal- tempts to reform the to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321 , Church Street Station, pounded by the Democratic Party, over- ized murder, there is little confusion about unreformable. Ev- New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. shadow the current protest movement be- the cops’ social function. erywhere and always,

May-July 2020 9 Shutting Down 24/7 Service Is No Answer to NYC Subway Crisis MAY 11 – On May 6, the New York City thousand union cleaners to disinfect every subway system began shutting down daily New Yorkfor The Sanders Dave Times train car and bus after every run, as most for four hours, from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. It is Chinese cities do. It could buy some of the first scheduled cancellation of late- those robots (cost: $129,000 each) used on night service in the system’s 115-year his- the Hong Kong subway to spray hydrogen tory. According to the announcement by peroxide inside train cars. The fact that this the Metropolitan Transportation Authority isn’t being done points to the real issue – (MTA), the aim is to “intensify disinfecting money, and profits. operations, cleaning its fleet of thousands Leading capitalist spokesmen in New of cars and buses every night” amid the York have long called to get rid of all-night coronavirus pandemic. The actual purpose subway service, as part of an overall plan is to eject homeless people who have in- to make the transit system more “cost-ef- creasingly been camped out on the trains fective.” The head of the Regional Plan As- during the crisis. To that end, the city de- sociation (whose board includes real estate ployed 1,000 police to nearly every one of moguls, a top Google executive and NYC the 472 stations in the system, the largest in mayor Bill de Blasio’s former deputy may- the world, to carry out the removals. or), told WCBS (30 November 2017) that Since the shutdown would cause tur- the “era of 24-hour subway service is over,” moil for the 11,000 riders who have been that late-night service should be replaced by using the subway during those hours lately Subway worker disinfecting subway car at the Coney Island Yard in buses and app-taxis. RPA boss Tom Wright (normally it is 75,000), among them many Brooklyn, March 3. Shutting down late night service won’t help cleaning added: “We think that the city subway sys- “essential workers” heading for early morn- cars, there’s nowhere to park the trains. tem needs shock therapy.” Meaning what? ing shifts, an “Essential Connector” pro- few have been tested) and 20,000 deaths, less people to be on trains.” So the state The RPA’s Fourth Regional Plan he intro- gram was set up using app-taxis like Uber the city is the epicenter of the pandemic in and city shut down the system overnight, duced calls to “to change the responsibilities and Lyft. While that might get nurses and the United States and worldwide. Yet while and call out the cops to roust the riders. of MTA’s workers” or … “reduce the num- other staff to hospitals, the workers heading the numbers of new cases reported and of So what is “disgusting”? Cuomo blames ber of those positions.” So that’s it. to jobs like bakeries, grocery stores, dis- people dying have been declining, lifting the homeless themselves. But the fact that This would mainly be accomplished tribution warehouses or construction sites the stay-at-home orders, even gradually, large numbers of people are forced to ride by going over to one-person-train-operation would have a hard time getting a free ride. could lead to a new surge. the trains because they have no other safe (OPTO). Ultimately, “A driverless subway They would have to rely on the 344 addi- In New York City less than half of all place to go is disgusting. The fact that there will save the agency billions of dollars an- tional buses the MTA put on the road. But families have a car and a large majority of is no network of public toilets and showers nually,” said the RPA report, Save Our Sub- that will mean more pressure on bus drivers, workers commute by mass transit. To get where they can clean up is disgusting. The ways: A Plan to Transform New York City’s at least two dozen of whom have died from people back to work with the virus as dan- fact that tens of thousands of apartments Rapid Transit System (June 2018). The re- COVID-19 in the last six weeks. gerous as ever, the authorities will have to stand empty while thousands have no bed to port hailed the “fully unattended train op- This is all part of gearing up to “reopen again pack the subways, where “social dis- sleep in is disgusting. The fact that the shel- erations” on the Paris Metro’s Line 1, which the economy” after the unprecedented quar- tancing” is impossible. So in addition to re- ters are jammed, often violent and now hot- incidentally was the only line that kept up antine that for the last six weeks has brought quiring face covering on public transit, they beds of COVID-19 infection is disgusting. full service in the recent month-long strike the “city that never sleeps” to a virtual stand- are focused on forcing the homeless off. At And that’s a main reason why the homeless by Paris transit workers. How very cost- still, as much of the rest of the country has his daily coronavirus briefing on April 28, are avoiding them, feeling safer riding the effective: lower wage costs and no strikes! shut down as well. Despite the “shelter in New York governor Andrew Cuomo held rails for a fitful sleep. As a subway conduc- But passenger safety? Like during derail- place” order that emptied Manhattan streets, up a front-page photo of people sleeping tor remarked, “They need to have some type ments, of which the aging NYC subways have had quite a few. As we wrote of an the virus has raged through NYC. With in the cars, declaring “This is disgusting, of place for people to go that isn’t the buses” earlier (2014) RPA call for OPTO and “full 175,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (in what is happening on those subway cars.” (The City, 5 May). unattended train operations”: reality surely many times more, as relatively He added, “It’s not even safe for the home- He’s right. City officials know this well, which is why the Department of “This is a recipe for a deadly disaster. Homeless Services (DHS) sent 100 social Imagine what the casualties from the workers to 30 stations on the first night of June 27 [2017] derailment of the A train Transit Workers Don’t Work for the LAPD at 125th Street would have been if there The following leaflet was issued fellow transit workers and pledge that our the shutdown. But they had nothing to of- fer but virus-impacted shelters. Yes, there had been no transit workers to guide by Joseph Wagner, a member of members will not put themselves in danger passengers through the smoke-filled is a problem of large numbers of homeless Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1277 by transporting arrested protesters for the tunnel. Luckily, in the past TWU Local camped out in the subways, affecting other in Los Angeles, on June 4. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) or 100 has resisted such moves.” Bus operators in one city after an- any other law enforcement services.” riders and workers. Want to solve it? Pro- –“NYC Transit Summer of Hell? other have refused to transport protesters TWU Local 100, which represents vide everyone who needs housing a com- What about Winter, Spring and arrested by the police, during the ongo- public transit employees in New York fortable, safe place to stay, and plenty of Fall?” (August 2017), reprinted in The ing righteous protests against the racist City’s Metropolitan Transportation Au- social services. Start with the thousands Internationalist No. 50, Winter 2017 police murder of George Floyd. Here in thority, said its members “do not work of rooms standing empty in NYC hotels. Late-night NYC subway service has Los Angeles, Metro abruptly cut bus and for the NYPD” and that union bus opera- DHS leases 2,500 rooms, a drop in the been deteriorating for years. It used to be train service, and then offered the transit tors “should refuse to transport arrested bucket. Transit unions and the rest of the that the worst was getting stuck behind the system to the LAPD to carry out their protesters.” labor movement should call to put up ev- garbage train. But since subway “modern- curfew sweeps. Our union local needs to Here in Los Angeles, it is extremely eryone needing shelter in the hotels, and izers” launched their “Fasttrack” program a take a strong stand against that now. important that ATU Local 1277 show to occupy the thousands of vacant second few years ago, it has gone to hell, with half- In Minneapolis, ATU Local 1005’s solidarity with the protests against rac- homes in NYC, as many as needed. But the hour waits (or more) between trains. When members refused to work with police. ist police terror; our union local should late-night shutdown is ultimately not about the RPA first called for shutting down over- ATU International President John Costa make an unambiguous statement against the homeless. night service, Mayor de Blasio said that for condemned the use of buses to transport the Metro bosses offering up buses for Nor is it about cleaning the trains, New Yorkers, “Twenty-four-hour subway arrestees, stating: “This is a misuse of police round-ups of protesters as they cut which shouldn’t just be once a day – or service is part of our birthright. You cannot public transit....” This came after, and in service to the public. We in ATU and sis- once in three days, as it’s been lately. The shut down the subway at night . . . this is a defense of, union members who refused ter SMART and TCU locals work for the MTA made a show of sending 500 work- 24-hour city.” Now he says he only agreed to to do the bidding of the police by driving multiracial workers and passengers, not ers to clean cars on the first night. Yet it shutting down late-night service on the basis their prisoners. for the police. Just as an injury to one is doesn’t have yards big enough to park the of Governor Cuomo’s assurance that it was In Washington, D.C., ATU Local 689 an injury to all, solidarity against racist re- entire fleet. Even amid the shutdown it ran only “temporary.” You think? Look at the last issued a statement in solidarity with the pression is part of showing young people 135 trains all night for the use of police sentence of the MTA announcement: protests, and wrote: ”We follow in the and all our fellow working people what and transit workers. Cleaning should be “The MTA will resume overnight service footsteps of our International Union and the principles of labor stand for. n staggered throughout the day. The unions between the period of 1-5 a.m. when cus- should demand that the MTA hire several tomer demand returns, and innovative 10 The Internationalist Cops Out of the Unions – Now! four cops, to “fight for their jobs.” ers Union include security George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t guards whose job is to pro-

breathe,” hauntingly echoed those of Eric tect property, who can be Internationalist photo Garner in New York. There, the police armed and who could be “union” vociferously defended the killer used against fellow union cop, while launching racist smears against members. Defenders of la- his victim. For its part, the Fraternal Order bor and the oppressed must of Police (FOP) campaigned for years for demand that prison guards world-renowned radical black journalist Mu- and security guards should The following statement was issued mia Abu-Jamal to be executed. As for sup- also be removed from the by the Class Struggle Workers Portland on porters of the former Black Panther, who has unions. July 7. now spent almost four decades in prison on Just as racist repres- CSWP and IG supporters with ILWU members in front frame-up charges, the FOP called for them to sion is inherent to the job of union banner to “Stop Police Terror” on June 19. The racist police murders of George be executed as well, on an “electric couch.” of police in capitalist America, so too the to be ousted from all workers unions. In this Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many oth- Recently, the Writers Guild of America actions and statements of cop “unions” re- struggle, we are inspired by the militant tradi- ers have highlighted why police of all kinds – East called for the removal of the Inter- flect their job of promoting the interests, tions of class-struggle unionism throughout have no place in the labor movement. Time national Union of Police Associations from and shielding the crimes, of the repressors labor history, and by the example of our com- and again, the cops have responded to mass the AFL-CIO. But the labor bureaucracy in blue. They are clearly counterposed to rades in Brazil, who over two decades ago protests against racist police murder and has brought the class enemy‘s thugs into the most basic interests of the working carried out a historic struggle to oust police brutality by unleashing more racist police our labor movement through many doors. class, and of real workers unions. Seeking from the municipal workers union in Volta brutality and murder. The demand “Police The Service Employees International Union to obscure this fact, labor bureaucrats and Redonda, Brazil’s “Steel City.” Out of the Unions” is a crucial aspect of includes thousands of police through its af- reformists are coming up with one diver- As the CSWP’s founding program bringing the power of the working class into filiates the International Brotherhood of Po- sion after another, from the AFL-CIO’s states: “Police, prison guards and security the fight against racist oppression today. lice Officers and International Brotherhood plea to police associations to adopt a “code guards are the armed fist of capital, part The police, modern descendants of of Correctional Officers, while the - Team of excellence,” to calls on them to be part- of the apparatus of anti-labor, racist re- slave patrols, are the armed fist of racist, sters represent tens of thousands of police ners in “rooting out racism,” to claims that pression: they must be removed from the anti-worker repression. Using the tools and and sheriffs through the Teamsters Law En- the cops can be “reformed” through “de- unions.” Today, the fight to carry this out armaments of their trade as professionals of forcement League. The International Long- funding,” “community control,” etc. These is closely connected to urgent struggles to repression, they carry out their job and their shore and Warehouse Union organizes port are just the latest versions of the decades- defend workers’ lives and rights, amid the function: upholding the interests, property, police and “harbor guards.” old pretense that one or another gimmick triple pandemic of racism, COVID-19 and wealth and power of the ruling class. Also, agents of Immigration and Cus- can reform away the core functions of the economic crisis. It is vital to the struggle The Juneteenth International Long- toms and Enforcement, who round up immi- repressive apparatus of the capitalist state. to revitalize the union movement and mas- shore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut- grants for deportation at gunpoint; the Border Opponents of racist police terror must sively organize the unorganized. And it is down of all West Coast ports pointed to Patrol, who run detention centers where im- refuse to be diverted by such deceptions and crucial to showing in practice that the cause the need to spread workers strikes against migrants, including children, are held in cag- cop-outs, and carry through the struggle for of labor and the cause of black freedom are racist police terror. It was carried out in es; and the Federal Protective Service, who cops out of the unions – now. This means put- inseparable – and can only win together, in memory of George Floyd and against en- have been used to defend racist mobilizations ting into practice the clear and unambiguous the fight to put an end to racist oppression demic racism. The police, armed enforcers in the Portland area, are part of the Ameri- call for police “unions” and associations of and capitalist exploitation forever when of that endemic racial oppression, are also can Federation of Government Employees. all kinds to be ousted from all labor federa- the multiracial working class takes power the bosses’ frontline forces against labor The United Food and Commercial Workers tions and councils; and for cops of all kinds into our own hands. n struggles, breaking up pickets, assaulting Union, Communications Workers of Amer- and arresting strikers and escorting strike- ica and the American Federation of State, breaking scabs across picket lines. County and Municipal Workers also include Defend Chicago ATU Activist Erek Slater! In Minneapolis, when the city banned police. Class Struggle Workers – Portland “warrior training” for the cops, their demands that ALL police “unions” and locals Drop the Charges and Reinstate Him, Now! “union” stepped in to provide it for free. or affiliates of other unions be removed from The following leaflet was issued rights of us all. Using the union’s power Such training, also known as “killology,” the labor movement. by Joseph Wagner, a member of to stop this management attack is con- includes lethal choke holds and restraints It is also important to emphasize that Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1277 nected to an urgent task for all conscious like the one Minneapolis cop Derek policing is not solely relegated to police in Los Angeles, on June 27. unionists today: fighting to mobilize the Chauvin, backed by three other officers, departments. It is also carried out by prison Chicago bus operator Erek Slater, power of labor, in action, in the struggle used when he murdered George Floyd. guards, like those who pepper-sprayed fed- a union steward and Executive Board against racist police terror. Last week’s After Floyd’s killing, the fascistic head of eral jail prisoner Jamel Floyd to death on member in ATU Local 241, has been tar- Juneteenth ILWU shutdown, in memory the local police “union” called protesters June 3 in New York. Additionally, private geted by the Chicago Transit Authority of George Floyd and against endemic a “terrorist movement” and stated that he security guards and agents have a long his- for talking to off-duty co-workers about racism, points to the massive need and was “work[ing] with” the attorneys for the tory as paid strikebreakers going back to the issues related to the ongoing protests potential for this now. infamous Pinkerton labor spy and union- against racist oppression. Our union needs to state clearly and busting agency. (Now called Securitas, it On May 31, the CTA called the po- forcefully that not only do drivers have the “Why Cops And Their Read is one of the world’s largest security-guard lice on Brother Slater and issued a “rule right not to transport the police or those ar- ‘Unions’ Have No Place In The companies.) Killer cop Derek Chauvin was violation” notice against him, then took rested in repression against anti-racist pro- Labor Movement” by Becca a Wackenhut security guard as a step to be- him out of service. The transit bosses are tests – but that it is the policy of the union Lewis of Class Struggle Work- coming a Minneapolis police officer. Rent- threatening him with termination. For as a whole not to do so. As I wrote on June ers – Portland and IATSE Local a-cops are still functionally cops, serving 4, here in Los Angeles ATU Local 1277 28. This important article first ap- what? For sharing the official May 28 a repressive function. Often they are used needs to “make an unambiguous statement peared in the blog of the website public statement of ATU International as a cheaper and more loosely regulated against the Metro bosses offering up buses Talking Points Memo, https://talk- President John Costa, which defended substitute for police, employed by govern- for police round-ups of protesters”: ingpointsmemo.com/cafe. It can the right of union bus operators to refuse ment agencies, companies, schools or in to transport police to protests and ar- “We in ATU and sister SMART and also be read on the website of the TCU locals work for the multiracial privatized prisons. Many unions, from the rested demonstrators to jail, and stated: CSWP, https://csw-pdx.org/ workers and passengers, not for the po- SEIU to the ILWU and Transport Work- “This is a misuse of public transit.” lice. Just as an injury to one is an injury The CTA has reportedly also to all, solidarity against racist repres- and efficient disinfecting techniques have between boroughs and along the 245-mile launched the false accusation that Slater sion is part of showing young people been successfully deployed systemwide.” subway routes is sucker-bait: it won’t hap- was disciplined for advocating a “wild- and all our fellow working people what I.e., most likely never. Media accounts pen. For anyone who believes the MTA’s cat strike.” The truth is that the tran- the principles of labor stand for.” reporting that the trains would be shut down empty assurances, or anything coming out sit bosses are trying to silence workers Here in Los Angeles, ATU mem- overnight “for the foreseeable future” more of the mouth of the fork-tongued mayor, exercising their basic rights to discuss bers, and our Local as a whole, must join accurately reflect reality. Yet the reality who never delivers on his promises, our these burning issues. In targeting Broth- in demanding that the Chicago Transit is also that New York City, the center of word to the wise is: don’t fall for it. Next, er Slater, CTA management – appointed Authority reinstate Erek Slater in his finance capital, entertainment and much they’ll have a bridge to sell you. by the Democratic mayor and governor job, drop all charges against him, and more, does function 24/7 year-round. Talk To restore 24-hour New York City sub- – is attacking our whole union, and the pay him any and all money he is due. n of replacing trains with frequent bus service way service, we need workers control. n May-July 2020 11 Democrats were aided The giant, and truly unprecedented, in this cynical con game marches across the United States against by reformist leftists murderous police repression have reverberat- who eagerly organized ed around the world. Media images of flam- rallies and marches on ing police cars have led many impressionistic the slogan of “defund leftists, both here and elsewhere, to imagine the police.” that the U.S. is suddenly, seemingly out of Partly as a result of nowhere, in the throes of a revolutionary up- this shift in strategy by rising. This is far from being the case. The a section of the capital- same opportunist leftists talked of a pre-revo- Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune Carlos Gonzalez / Star ist rulers, as well as due lutionary situation in France in 2018-19 with to anger at Trump’s rac- the explosion of the “yellow vests” move- ist pyrotechnics and the ment, touched off by a rise in gasoline prices. cops’ brutal attacks on They saw the same in the original BLM pro- protesters, Black Lives tests that shut down highways across the U.S. Matter demonstrations They waxed lyrical about the Occupy Wall grew even larger. On Street movement against inequality in 2011. June 6, there were 550 Earlier that year, they hailed “revolutions” in protests reported across the Arab world – as did Western imperialists. the country, bring- But starry-eyed make-believe, and what ing out over 100,000 Lenin decried as “tailing” existing conscious- in Washington, D.C. ness, does no one any good, and certainly not and perhaps 80,000 in those who seriously seek to overthrow the Philadelphia. In NYC in system that, day in and day out, produces mid-June there were a murderous racist repression. In none of these Hundreds cheer in Minneapolis as hated 3rd Precinct goes up in flames after cops flee. dozen marches a day of up- instances have there been genuine revolu- to shop in, to paraphrase the German com- wards of 1,000 demonstrators each. Adding tions, nor have they produced real advances Uproot Racist ... munist playwright Bertolt Brecht, what is it up, the New York Times (3 July) counted for the exploited and oppressed. Whether continued from page 1 the “crime” of looting Macy’s compared to at least 4,700 demonstrations, or about 140 populist movements, spontaneous explosions 4 this was proof positive that nothing had the crime of owning it? a day, in 2,500 cities and towns over the last of the downtrodden or liberal appeals for re- changed since the 2014-15 Black Lives Despite efforts to discredit the protests, five weeks. “Black Lives Matter May Be the forms, they did not challenge the capitalist Matter protests over the police murders of people weren’t buying it. Public opinion Largest Movement in U.S. History,” it head- system which produces untold misery – from Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and polls which up to 2018 showed more oppo- lined, citing figures from polls showing that obscene inequality to mass unemployment so many others. Minneapolis exploded in sition than support to the Black Lives Mat- 9 to 10% of the entire population, or 23 to to racist repression – nor were they based on rage, and in the following hours and days, ter movement showed more than two-thirds 26 million people, had joined in protesting. mobilizations of the power of the working so did the rest of the country. support by early June, including 60% among That’s huge. class that produces the capitalists’ wealth. So, Thousands of protesters converged on whites, a striking figure given the history of The current protests have been described despite the widespread outrage they tapped south Minneapolis, first on the corner where this racist country. Now 76% of the overall as “more integrated” than the BLM marches into, they failed, even in their own terms. Yet Floyd was killed, then at the 3rd Precinct population (and 71% of white people) called of 2014-15. This is not entirely accurate: in the combustible material that can fuel a revo- where Chauvin and his three accomplices racism and discrimination a “big problem,” the major cities, the protests in that earlier pe- lution is everywhere. What’s urgently needed worked. In the next days, crowds surged 78% said protesters’ anger is fully or some- riod were racially and ethnically integrated, is revolutionary leadership. through downtown, later marching on the what justified and a majority of whites (54%) with tens of thousands of black, white, Latino At the present time in the United States, state capitol in St. Paul. On the third night, said police are more likely to use deadly force and Asian marchers. What is true is that in re- there is a conjunction of deep crises. There demonstrators besieged the precinct, noto- against black people. Even when primed for cent demos there are far more white protest- is the deadly coronavirus plague: 135,000 rious for brutal cops who routinely pistol- a negative response, asked if they are aware ers. There is also a noticeable political differ- dead so far. There is skyrocketing unemploy- whipped black and brown suspects, kicked of protests across the U.S. “including the ence: while five years ago the marches were ment: more than 50 million people made them in the face and performed anal search- burning of a police precinct in Minneapolis” seen (and many marchers saw themselves) jobless in a few weeks. There is the never- es in the station.1 Until that night, the police in response to the police killing of a black as “radical” in some sense, today there are ending scourge of cops killing people: more had holed up in the station, firing tear gas man, 54% said they thought “the actions of large numbers of mainstream liberals. Those than 1,700 a year since 2014, over 28,000 and rubber bullets into the largely peaceful the protesters” were fully or partially justified liberals have become convinced that there is since 1 January 2000. And these crises are 5 protesters outside.2 So it was no surprise (Monmouth poll, 2 June). “systemic racism” in the U.S., which we as intimately related. The horrific death toll when on May 28, as the cops fled the grow- Biggest Sustained Protests Marxists have always insisted is a bedrock of COVID-19 is the result of the chaotic ing crowd, crashing through a gate to escape truth about American capitalism. But their response of capitalist governments that en- in U.S. History demands, taken up by pseudo-socialists who danger the lives of those they govern. The in a motorcade, the hated 3rd Precinct went In the last few weeks, the U.S. has been up in flames as hundreds cheered. want to nudge them slightly to the left, have mass unemployment is the result of the gov- going through a catharsis over the deeply not transcended the limits of bourgeois poli- ernment-ordered shutdown of the economy, As protests spread across the country, ingrained racism of American society. The clashes were provoked by cops geared up tics. Thus they cannot get to the root of the from which – under what Karl Marx called murder of George Floyd and the subsequent murderous racist actions of the police. capitalism’s “anarchy of production” – it for battle who attacked demonstrators. Pho- brutal repression of protests brought to a tos and videos flashed around the world of head a “seismic change” in white opinion police cars trashed and torched, from Se- on race which has been building for some attle and Los Angeles to Atlanta and New time, particularly but not only concern- CSWP York and elsewhere. Democratic mayors ing the police. As Trump dug in deeper, and media screamed about “looting” to jus- this change registered among Democratic tify “law-and-order” crackdowns, imposing pols: after earlier telling demonstrators to racist curfews and occupying cities with the go home to avoid coronavirus infection National Guard. The incendiary racist pro- (and defending the actions of the police vocateur president Donald Trump tweeted, under their command), they now switched “When the looting starts, the shooting gears and gave a stamp of approval to the starts,” and brought thousands of National protests while seeking to coopt them with Guard troops and the elite Immediate Re- phony “reforms” to move some funds from sponse Force of the 82nd Airborne Division 3 police budgets to social services. The liberal to the Washington, D.C. area. The police- 4 state measures were then used almost exclu- Macy’s is notorious for its racist practices of ac- cusing black shoppers and visitors of shoplifting sively to suppress peaceful demonstrations. and then holding them in its private jail on the As for some youths grabbing stuff premises. See the Class Struggle Education Work- from fancy stores they could never afford ers pamphlet Campus Protest, Capitalist “Se- 1 “Minneapolis’ Third Precinct Served as ‘Play- curity” and the Program of Class Struggle ground’ for Renegade Cops,” Star Tribune, 7 June. (2014), Part 2, “From Slave Patrols and Pinker- 2 “‘The precinct is on fire’: What Happened at tons to Private Jails for ‘Shopping While Black’.” Minneapolis’ 3rd Precinct – and What It Means,” 5 Even after Trump’s hysterical attempts to whip American Public Media Reports, 30 June. up a backlash, a late-June Monmouth poll re- 3 See “Trump and Democrats Stage Ominous leased on July 8 showed 67% saying that racism Internationalists say: Cops out of the unions and out of the schools, Trial Run for Martial Law,” on page 5. and discrimination are a big problem. pressuring the Democrats is a dead end, for a revolutionary workers party. 12 The Internationalist its fascistic police “union” chief Bob Kroll (who sports a “white power” patch on his motorcycle jacket), a thorough purge could reduce wanton police violence somewhat. But at bottom, the reason that none of the numerous proposals to “reform” the police have ever succeeded is that racist and anti- working-class repression is the essential function of the police. Brendan Smialowski / AFP Brendan Smialowski / Arising from runaway slave-catching patrols in the pre-Civil War South, profes- sional uniformed forces were formed in city after city across the country to keep down the poor, break strikes and impose the rulers’ “law and order.” Racist cop terror is endem- ic and systemic because the very purpose of “policing” is not to “serve and protect” the population, but to uphold the rule, property Demonstration in Washington, D.C., calls to “Defund the Police,” June 2020. and profits of the owning class in this capi- will take years to recover. And the murder- MPD150, which describes itself as “work- the city reduced the police budget and talist society, whose staggering inequalities ous police repression reflects the racist op- ing toward a police free Minneapolis.” transferred funds to violence prevention took shape under slavery and whose contin- pression that, as we have written, is in the “Dismantling the police will require real- programs. The MPD is now headed by a ued domination has always rested in large DNA of U.S. capitalism. Only a socialist locating their budget,” it states, calling to black police chief. Before that it had a les- part on racial oppression. revolution can end these plagues. “sequester” the MPD’s military equipment, bian Native American police chief. Since Democrats Are Still the Bosses to transfer “first responder responsibility” to 2016 the MPD has had a “duty to inter- Operation “Defund the Police” community-based social services and gen- vene” regulation requiring officers to stop of the Racist Killer Cops For the past five weeks, one of the main erally to “transform the way policing, crime another officer from using excessive force, The call to “defund the police” has slogans that has been raised in protests across and safety are understood in Minneapolis.” and it no longer taught chokeholds and become so widespread precisely due to its the country is “defund the police.” This Far from being a program for red neck restraints. But none of that stopped ambiguity. It can be interpreted to mean any- strikes terror into the hearts of conservative revolution from fire-breathing radicals, as killer cop Chauvin, aided by his fellow of- thing from Democratic House of Representa- Republicans, flummoxes mainstream Demo- right-wingers claim, this is a utopian liberal ficers, from killing George Floyd. tives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “shuffle some crats, and excites liberals as well as reformist “reimagining” of a “people-friendly” capi- Cancel laws shielding police disciplin- money around” to the Minneapolis DFLers’ leftists. It is a vague demand, leading to myr- talist urban America. Within days of Floyd’s ary records (as New York’s 50-A law does)? vow to “dismantle” the MPD. Some Demo- iad articles about what defunding the police murder, a majority of the Minneapolis city Minnesota doesn’t have one, so it was soon cratic mayors like New York’s Bill de Blasio “really means.” On the face of it, it’s a rather council read a pledge before a crowd in a reported that Chauvin had been involved in and Minneapolis’ Jacob Frey were jeered and strange slogan, focusing on money when the city park to “dismantle the police” and re- several police shootings and had ten com- run out of demonstrations for George Floyd demonstrations have been against racist po- place it with a new system of public safety. plaints of abuse filed against him – all to no for opposing calls to defund the police. Black lice brutality. It has a kind of NGOish quality, The crowd responded “Defund the MPD!” avail. De-escalation? Minneapolis banned Democratic mayors of Chicago (Lori Light- which is not surprising as it originated with a And on June 26, the council – all Demo- fear-based “warrior-style training,” but the foot) and Washington, D.C. (Muriel Bowser) Twin Cities non-governmental organization, cratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL, the Minnesota police “union” offered it for free. Disarm/“ still oppose calls to shrink the police, while Black Visions Collective, which on May 25, branch of the Democratic Party) except for demilitarize the police”? George Floyd’s Atlanta mayor Keisha Bottoms claims she al- the same day George Floyd was murdered, a lone Green – voted unanimously for a city killer used his knee, the New York cop who ready did it. But under pressure, most mayors launched a petition titled “Tell Minneapolis charter amendment to replace the MPD with murdered Eric Garner used his bare hands. decided to at least trim police budgets a bit. 6 City Council to Defund the Police.” The call a Department of Community Safety and Community-based patrols? Trayvon Martin Bowser covered herself by painting a giant instantly spread around the country. Violence Prevention, under which a Divi- was killed by a community watch mem- “BLACK LIVES MATTER” on 16th Av- It’s no accident that the demand arose sion of Law Enforcement Services would ber in Florida. In Latin America, some left enue near the White House. in one of the most liberal cities in the United be “composed of licensed peace officers, groups call for electing police chiefs. Yet the De Blasio has now done the same States, with two black trans city council subject to the supervision of the department racist sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower. members, and a mayor and a majority of the of community safety and violence preven- Joe Arpaio, who held thousands of immi- (Trump tweeted in response that “Black city council elected on programs to reform tion.” grant detainees in a tent city concentration Lives Matter” is a “symbol of hate,” which the Minneapolis Police Department, even as In Minneapolis, virtually every one of camp in 110°+ heat, was elected five times. would “denigrat[e] this luxury avenue.”) The the cops keep on brutalizing and killing Af- the police “reforms” that have been ban- It makes little difference if cops are inveterately two-faced New York mayor, af- rican American, Latino and Native Ameri- died about in the U.S. have been tried, called “peace officers” instead of police ter being booed off the stage at Cadman Plaza can people. Several local foundation-funded and failed. A civilian police review board? (Minnesota state police are officially peace in Brooklyn on June 4, negotiated a budget non-profits have been calling to downsize Minneapolis has had one since 1990. Po- officers), or if the “law enforcement” agen- with the city council which he claimed cut $1 or replace the police force, among them lice body cameras? They were instituted cy is now a department of public safety (as billion from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget. 6 “How ‘Defund the Police’ Went from Moon- after the 2015 cop murder of Jamar Clark. in Mexico, with its notoriously brutal po- It’s all smoke and mirrors: almost half the shot to Mainstream,” Politico, 17 June. Ditto for implicit bias training. Last year lice). It is possible that in Minneapolis, with amount is from shifting the budget line for school “safety agents” to the Department of Education, and most of the rest comes from attrition through retirement. The actual po- lice budget is $11 billion, NYC will still have an army of 38,000 cops (plus 20,000 other NYPD employees), and within months new cadets will be brought in, even as there is a Internationalist photo hiring freeze for teachers, hospitals and all other city departments. Beyond such bait-and-switch gim- micks, the Democrats face a huge problem. With millions in the streets demanding an end to racist police brutality, despite all of the ambiguity and wiggle room to interpret “defund the police,” their presidential candi- date in November, Joe Biden, flatly declared that “I do not support defunding the police” (USA Today, 10 June), and in fact wants to increase police funding. Biden wrote Bill Clinton’s 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which he bragged led to the hiring of “100,000 cops” and “125,000 new state prison cells,” greatly in- IG, Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas and Class Struggle Education Workers creasing the numbers of African Americans marched on Juneteenth, calling for workers strikes against cop terror, like the ILWU shutdown of all West Coast ports. behind bars. When Trump called to shoot May-July 2020 13 looters, Biden responded by suggesting tion, to turn it into a source of profits and generals fall, aside from inveterate Trumpian eyes of those willing to see that capitalism that police officers “shoot them in the leg.” steady cash flow for the bourgeoisie to offset racists, it is broadly admitted that there is spells death and devastation on a vast scale. Throughout his political career, Biden has the declining rate of profit. At the same time, “systemic racism.”9 But what is that system? Transitional Program for kept close ties with police “unions.” inequality soars, and along with it growing Contrary to the rhetoric used by some liber- Likewise, Biden’s former primary poverty, depression-level unemployment and als, reformists and nationalists, it is not “white Socialist Revolution rival, Bernie Sanders, when asked about a housing crisis driven by real estate specula- people” in general who rule this system, it is A lot of the impact of these combined “defunding or abolishing the police,” de- tion that has sent rents and house prices soar- capital – the owners of the factories, banks, crises is only beginning to be felt. The effect clared that he opposes getting rid of police ing even as 17 million housing units stand communications and transport – that calls of the unemployment of tens of millions departments. Now stumping for Biden, vacant in the U.S. Thus the capitalist rulers the shots. It is the racist capitalist system that of working people has been temporarily the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” – and not just in the U.S. – have concluded produces massive poverty, unemployment, mitigated by $1,200 “stimulus” checks, the also voted for the 1994 Clinton crime bill. that they need paramilitary police forces to pervasive discrimination and violent repres- expansion of eligibility for unemployment Absurdly claiming that cops are low-paid suppress potential revolts (“domestic dis- sion of African Americans in particular, as insurance to include “gig economy” work- (the average NYC police officer’s base pay turbances”) by their impoverished subjects, well as of other specially oppressed sectors ers and the $600 per week supplemental is $77,000, before overtime), he called for which they can already see are in the cards. of society and working people overall. And benefits. But those measures, which Re- more resources to pay higher “wages that While pseudo-socialists talk of fund- to supplement the main force of violent re- publicans would have denounced as social- will attract top tier” professionals to the po- ing this or that and talk blithely of “abol- pression, the bourgeois state, there are the ism only a few months ago, are due to end lice. In addition to hiring top-dollar cops, ishing” the police, revolutionary Marxists white-supremacist fascist gangs brandishing soon. Young people are especially hard-hit, Sanders has also proposed a “civilian corps insist that the police are a central pillar of AR-15 automatic rifles, itching to set off race as over half (52%) of millennials have lost of unarmed first responders to supplement the state. As Friedrich Engels wrote 136 war. (Some even tried to infiltrate the Black their jobs or seen their hours cut. In New law enforcement, such as social workers, years ago in The Origin of the Family, Pri- Lives Matter protests to stage provocations.) York City, 1.25 million jobs have been lost, EMTs, and trained mental health profes- vate Property and the State, the state is an As Marxists, we understand that racism producing an effective unemployment rate sionals, who can handle order maintenance instrument of class rule, for the subjuga- is not just some toxic ideas floating around of 26%. Now a tidal wave of evictions is violations, mental health emergencies, and tion of the exploited by the exploiters, and that can be rooted out by “bias training” or expected, as large numbers of tenants have low-level conflicts to aid police officers.” consists of “armed men but also of material “checking privilege.” Rather, racist ideology been unable to pay their rent (up to 40% in This would turn medical and social ser- adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coer- grows out of and reinforces the material real- NYC). It’s all coming together, soon. vice providers into auxiliary cops. cion of all kinds.” Lenin added, in his work ity of the oppression of black people, which While the opportunist leftists, as always, These reactionary proposals have now The State and Revolution, written in prepa- is an indelible birthmark of American capital- chase after the “mass movement,” the task of been included in the “Biden-Sanders Unity ration for the 1917 October Revolution, ism. That is a reason we do not use the term revolutionaries is to provide leadership for Task Force” (July 8) recommendations on “A standing army and police are the chief “people of color,” because the oppression of struggle. These are the kind of conditions in “Reforming Our Criminal Justice System,” instruments of state power.” This is not an African Americans is not identical with that of which Leon Trotsky’s Transitional Program along with calls to “reinvigorate community abstract formula. It means concretely that immigrants, for example (even as immigrants has particular relevance, to provide a “bridge policing” – i.e., to put more police into al- capitalist rule cannot exist without police, may today have even lower wages). Black between present demands and the socialist ready cop-infested neighborhoods. When and the police cannot be “abolished” with- people in the United States are oppressed as program of the revolution.” In the face of this approach was used in Rio de Janeiro, out overthrowing the capitalist state.8 a race/color caste, segregated at the bottom of mass unemployment, the call for a sliding Brazil, with the formation of Police Pacifi- The police are the guard dogs of capi- society, and no matter how many civil rights scale of wages and hours, for a radically cation Units, it led to a sharp increase in po- tal, although they may slip the leash at times laws have been passed, no matter if there is a shorter workweek with no loss in income, to lice killings.7 Then there is the Democrats’ and fascistic elements chafe at civilian con- black president, black mayors or black police provide jobs for all, should be taken up ev- “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” trol. Fundamentally, the police impose the chiefs, for all the talk of “empowerment,” it is erywhere. There should be a huge expansion passed by the U.S. House of Representa- racist “law and order” of American capital- a question of real power, and as we fight rac- of public housing, as well as occupying va­ tives last month (although D.O.A. in the ism, which was forged on the genocide of ism and racist oppression every day, we have cant buildings and hotels, to provide hous- Republican-controlled Senate), which calls the Native American peoples and the chattel to tell the truth, that black oppression can’t be ing for all, and a vast program of school con­ for $750 million for “independent investi- slavery of Africans brought here in chains, eliminated until capitalism is dead and gone. struction and hiring of educators to sharply gations” of police use of force. This would and which to this day is based on racist Opportunist leftists see the present po- reduce class sizes. In the workplace, work­ include having one law enforcement agency oppression. As Malcolm X insisted, “You litically liberal protests through rose-col- ers health and safety committees should be investigate another. So the Nassau County can’t have capitalism without racism.” The ored glasses because they place themselves formed, which would shut down unsafe oper- police could investigate the NYPD? Police particularly murderous role of the police in on a continuum, just a step to the left of the ations. This could spark a struggle for work­ investigating police? No thanks. the United States, along with other institu- liberals. Today even many liberals under- ers control, that is, dual power at the point of tions such as the barbaric death penalty, are stand that the institution of the police, “as production, contesting the bosses’ power on Malcolm X: “You Can’t Have proof positive that despite the abolition of we know it,” is inherently racist. But the re- the road to revolution. Capitalism Without Racism” slavery in the Civil War of the 1860s, its formists and centrists obscure the class line, Such measures point toward what a Demands to “defund the police” are in- heritage lives on in the 21st century. and with their “fight the right” politics they socialized, planned economy based on pro- variably combined with calls to instead use For all the Obama-era happy talk of constantly cross that line seeking political duction to fill social needs rather than pri- the money to pay for social services, and of- a “post-racial” society, the brutal reality alliances with bourgeois liberal forces. As vate profit would do, and thus to the need ten linked to appeals to “tax the rich.” Like of racist capitalism is revealed by a knee the German revolutionary Marxist Rosa to overthrow capitalism. But when it comes calls for “books not bombs,” “money for to the neck, by a stranglehold, by trigger- Luxemburg wrote 120 years ago in her to the police and other repressive organs – schools, not for war” and the like, they are happy cops with Glocks. As Michelle Al- pamphlet, Reform or Revolution, denounc- courts, jails and military – as the failure of posed as if it’s a choice of budget priorities. exander has documented in The New Jim ing the reformists of her day, they “do not every purported reform of the misnamed This is a reformist illusion that echoes the Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of really choose a more tranquil, calmer and “justice system” shows, the ruling class is timeworn deceptions of liberal bourgeois Colorblindness (2010), just as after the ab- slower road to the same goal, but a different dead-set against any weakening of the cen- politics, which by hoodwinking the masses olition of slavery in the Civil War the rac- goal. Instead of taking a stand for the estab- tral core of state power, which Democrats helps maintain the system of racist oppression ist rulers responded with KKK terror and lishment of a new society they take a stand and Republicans alike are constantly forti- and exploitation. U.S. rulers don’t go to war Jim Crow segregation to deny black people for surface modifications of the old society.” fying. Demands here would include: because their government has decided that’s their rights, so following the passage of the Yet in the present situation, with the – for labor/black/immigrant mobiliza­ the best way to spend the money they have 1960s civil rights laws, a new system of rampant pathology of this decaying system tion against racist attacks and to stop bilked out of working people in taxes. The control came about, particularly through laid bare, after over a month of mass mobili- deportations; U.S. invades country after country (Afghani- the “war on drugs.” Today 2.3 million zation large sections of the population have – for worker/community mobilization stan, Iraq, Syria lately; before that Vietnam, people are imprisoned, two-thirds of them been jolted into political awareness. The to stop evictions; Korea, Cuba…), and the Pentagon maintains black and brown, the highest proportion of fact that hundreds cheered as they watched a – for workers strikes against racist cop hundreds of military bases (officially 600) the population of any country on earth be- police station that was a nest of racist thugs terror, as the ILWU dock workers did in 80 countries, in order to impose its global hind bars, plus another 4.5 million under burn down, that tens of thousands defied on Juneteenth, shutting down every hegemony. This is an existential question for the control of the racist “justice” system. racist curfews and braved police attacks, West Coast port; U.S. imperialism, even more so in the 21st that millions joined Black Lives Matter pro- – for the right of black armed self-de­ “Systemic Racism”: century when it must rely more on military tests, however liberal their politics, suggests fense, and might than its fraying economic dominance. The System Is Capitalism that among the youth and broader layers, – for workers defense guards mobiliz- Likewise, the attack on public education So now what began as protests against loyalty to the system is beginning to crum- ing the power of the multiracial/multi- and the militarization of the police, armed police brutality has become a broader strug- ble. As armed fascists mobilize and racist ethnic working class. with heavy weaponry and trained for urban gle against racism. As statues to Confederate drivers plow into protesters, it has become The Internationalist Group has called combat, are not a question of spending “pri- “which side are you on?” And the terrible for, and where possible sought to realize, 8 Interestingly, in view of current proposals to orities.” As capitalism decays, the ruling such measures for the class mobilization of rebrand the police, in the German text, Engels toll of the COVID-19 pandemic can open class (with its politicians, Republicans and refers not to police but to a “public force,” a 9 At the high point of the protests, the Merri- the working people and the oppressed. This Democrats alike) want to gut public educa- term used today in many countries (fuerza am-Webster dictionary announced that it was also requires a fight within the labor move- 7 See “Racist Execution in Rio,” The Inter- pública, force publique, etc.). That is, they don’t rewriting the definition of racism to include ment to oust the pro-capitalist bureaucracy nationalist No. 51, March-April 2018. have to be called police to be police. systemic racism. which has undermined workers’­ struggles 14 The Internationalist Opportunist Word Games to Justify Tailing the Democrats “Abolish the Police” Under Capitalism? As activists call to “defund” the police revolution of a piece with pacifist appeals while Democratic leaders call for more funds for imperialist countries to carry out “dis-

to the cops, in a presidential election pitting armament,” adopt a non-imperialist foreign Internationalist photo “shoot the looters” Trump vs. “shoot ’em in policy, etc., which Lenin in World War I the legs” Biden, the Democratic Party is wor- heatedly denounced as bald-faced deception ried about energizing young voters in partic- of the working class. As he emphasized, ular, especially if protests against race police dispelling such illusions is a crucial part of killings pick up again later in the summer. clearing away the roadblocks to revolution. Biden-Sanders need a little help from the Opportunist leftists present “abolish opportunist left, to get out a “Dump Trump” the police” as if that is the true meaning of vote in November. Early on, Democratic protests calling to “defund the police.” But Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the actual role of the “abolish” demand is as the Democratic (Party) Socialists of Amer- sucker-bait, as professional con men call it, ica (DSA) star, called to “defund the over- to tie BLM protests to budget machinations funded police.”1 More recently, the DSA has by Democratic politicians. This was the been carrying banners to “Disarm – Defund case with Occupy City Hall in New York. – Abolish” the police. On June 29, the New With protesters suffering from demo fatigue York DSA, towing behind it a raft of groups after June 19, some set up camp outside the nominally to its left, called a “Mass March NYC City Hall to push for cuts to the po- to Defund the NYPD & Abolish the Police.” lice budget. The occupation was initiated by The knee-jerk answer to this would be, VOCAL-NY, a liberal NGO begun by AIDS While liberals and reformists call to “defund the police,” Internationalists “you and whose army?” The idea that a cen- activists and partly funded by the city and called “For the Right of Armed Black Self-Defence,” and to “Smash the tral pillar maintaining capitalist rule would the Ford Foundation. It grew to well over Racist Capitalist State Through Workers Revolution!” disappear as a result of a referendum, leg- 500 people as the city council debated. Ban- of the police – the armed fist of the capital- ist police terror to overthrowing capitalist islative act or charter amendment is liberal/ ners and chants called for defunding and ist state – to form “unions.” As a cover, it rule. By linking “abolition” of the police to reformist illusion-peddling of the highest abolishing the police. But after the budget piously requested that “police unions reject “defunding” it, while coyly adding “even order, no matter how much “mass pres- with its phony billion in cuts to the NYPD racist policing policies and agree to support if we could defund police departments to sure” is thrown in. This is akin to the 2018 passed, the numbers of occupiers fell. a purge of the police to remove those with a zero,” Left Voice tags along after the DSA, liberal/reformist calls to “Abolish I.C.E.” This amounted to a kind of militant lob- record of violence and racism in order to re- aiding the Democrats in coopting protests (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), bying. For the easily excitable reformist and main in or join labor councils” (Socialist Al- with their “defunding” ploy rather than ex- which – as Ocasio-Cortez made clear – just centrist not-so-far left, it was a throwback ternative, Summer 2020). Anti-racist police posing this deception and calling clearly meant replacing it with some other form of to the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement “unions” of these professional strikebreak- for socialist revolution. Revolutionary immigration cops. Whether I.C.E. or its pre- that swept the U.S. Meanwhile, across the ers and enforcers of racist repression? As if. clarity is the antithesis of these cynical decessor, the INS, it’s still the hated migra. country in Seattle, Washington, there was the The slightly more leftist Left Voice centrists, who with their inveterate tailism Today, if something purporting to “abolish considerably larger Capitol Hill Organized (affiliated internationally with the Trotsky- and sly word games are counterposed to the police” were enacted, it would simply Protest or Autonomous Zone. The CHOP or ist Fraction), which has been calling (LV, the rules of Trotsky’s Fourth International, substitute some other form of “reimagined” CHAZ, which at the height covered six city 12 June) to “Defund the Police (to 0!)” – which instructed its members to “face re- policing. And since racial oppression is in- blocks and a park, was established when po- how cute – breathlessly described NYC’s ality squarely ... call things by their right trinsic to U.S. capitalism, the liberal/reform- lice withdrew from Seattle’s East Precinct on Occupy 2.0 and Seattle’s CHOP as the names” and “tell the truth to the masses.” ist formulas actually mean that the imag- June 8 after days of vicious cop attacks on high points of the “mass uprisings” that In contrast, back when the DSA, AOC, ined “peace officers,” “community police,” demonstrators. Intended as a “police-free” have led many to “to question the integrity SAlt, LV and Democratic Party pols were “public safety agents” or whatever they are area, it was blasted by President Trump, who and even the very existence of the police” calling to “abolish I.C.E.” under capitalism, called, would in fact be maintaining racist, denounced the occupiers as “domestic terror- (28 June). These were supposedly forms the Trotskyists of the Internationalist Group, capitalist “law and order.” ists” and demanded that Seattle mayor Jenny of “self organization” that “could become U.S. section of the League for the Fourth Leftists who help prettify this real- Durkan “take back the area.” After several the nascent forms of an eventual system International, called to “Smash the I.C.E. ity are, whatever their intentions or wishful shootings in the zone grabbed headlines, the of dual power capable of seriously chal- Gestapo with Workers Revolution!” (The thinking, helping to deceive and politically “police-free zone” disappeared as the cops lenging the state and winning significant Internationalist No. 53, September-October disarm the working class and anti-racist moved in on July 1. demands.” It added, “May the word revo- 2018). At the June 29 DSA-sponsored demo youth on a question that is literally one of For the three weeks of its existence, lution once again blossom in the mouths of in New York’s Washington Square Park, life or death for all the oppressed: the na- CHOP/CHAZ was hailed by virtually the this new generation.” Waxing lyrical, LV when Left Voice joined practically the en- ture of the capitalist state. To pretend that entire left. The arch-reformist Socialist Al- calls upon readers to imagine uniting black tire reformist left (FSP, PSL, SAlt, MORE, police can be abolished without a socialist ternative (SAlt) had a little trouble with this, and Latino neighborhoods with “workers CPUSA) playing the “defund/abolish the as its city council member Kshama Sawant who control production, distribution and police” game, a Revolutionary Internation- 1 Meanwhile, demonstrating that she knows had voted for and vociferously supported services. Imagine this power now relying alist Youth sign read, “Defund the Police? how to “go along to get along,” playing by Police Chief Carmen Best. Meanwhile, as on workers’ militias,” etc. Smash the Racist Capitalist State Through the rules of bourgeois electoral politics, AOC landed a slot as co-chair of the Biden-Sanders support was growing around the country But in all this imagining and roman- Workers Revolution.” The IG/RIY ban- task force on climate change (along with former for calls to expel police “unions” from the ticizing, Left Voice fails to put forward a ner proclaimed, “The Police Can’t Be Re- secretary of state John Kerry), although her sig- labor movement, SAlt cynically tried to program of demands for struggle leading formed” and called for “Black Liberation nature “Green New Deal” didn’t make the cut. dodge the issue by going on about the right from the current mass protests against rac- Through Socialist Revolution.” n and chained the mass organizations of the Democrats and build a revolutionary into votes for the Democrats, “the bosses Korea – also fueling anti-Asian racism.11 the working class to the parties and poli- workers party! of the racist killer cops.” And at the same To eradicate racist oppression, to pull it ticians of the ruling class. Thus, while As workers’ strikes have broken out time as Trump stages military provocations out by the roots, and to end imperialist ma- class-struggle unionists seek to oust the amid the pandemic, from fruit packing- in the South China Sea, the Democrats are rauding, nothing short of the overthrow of police from the unions, as the League house workers in Yakima, Washington, to the biggest China-bashing warhawks of all. capitalism will do the job. That is why it is for the Fourth International has fought for shipbuilders in Bath, Maine, the Trotskyists The fight against racist repression “at crucial to build a revolutionary vanguard and, uniquely on the left, carried out,10 the of the IG have sought to build solidarity home” is inseparable from the fight against that fights the ruling class down the line, top union officialdom has fought to keep and intersect these struggles with our revo- imperialist aggression abroad. Here, too, in the struggle for socialist revolution, here these armed enforcers of the class enemy lutionary program. As Karl Marx pointed the contrast between revolutionary-inter- and throughout the world. n inside labor’s house. Labor militants must out long ago, every real class struggle is a nationalist and reformist politics is stark: fight to oust the bureaucrats, break with political struggle. In the present juncture, the would-be socialists who join with bour- 11 See “Hong Kong ‘Democracy’ Riots: 10 Read about how our Brazilian comrades fought the economic and social crises of decaying geois liberals in calling to “defund the po- Pro-Imperialist, Anti-Communist, Fas- to oust the police from the municipal workers capitalism intersect deep divisions in the lice,” thus helping the Democrats peddle cist-Infested,” in The Internationalist No. 58, union in Brazil’s “Steel City,” and the state re- ruling class, as witnessed in the failed im- illusions that the capitalist state can be Winter 2020; and “Hong Kong: Defeat Pro- pression unleashed against them, in our Dossier: peachment of Donald Trump. Today Biden, reformed, at the same time regurgitate the Imperialist Riots With Revolutionary Class Struggle and Repression in Volta Re- Sanders and their lieutenants are desperate imperialists’ anti-communist war propa- Workers Mobilization,” in The Internation- donda, Brazil (1997) See ad on page 9. to channel protests against police brutality ganda over Hong Kong, China and North alist No. 57, September-October 2019. May-July 2020 15 Fruit Packinghouse Workers Stand Up for Their Rights Yakima Strikes: The Battle Has Just Begun YAKIMA, Washington, June 5 – On May 28, there have been repeated Black Lives Mat- after 22 days on strike, workers at the Allan ter demonstrations in the city protesting the

Bros. packinghouse in Naches, Washington, Evan Abell / Yakima Herald-Republic racist police murder of George Floyd in celebrated an agreement with the company Minneapolis. A May 31 protest drew many and returned to work on Monday, June 1. As hundreds of marchers and a long car cara- the workers committee returned from ne- van. The bosses worry that a unionization gotiations with the company with a signed drive could spread to fruit pickers on the document, strikers held a prayer meeting, ranchos. The strike could also undercut the ending with a chant of “¡Sí se pudo!” (yes, reign of terror by Immigration and Customs we did it). A similar agreement was reached Enforcement (I.C.E.), whose agents infest at Monson Fruit in nearby Selah on May 22. the region, while regular deportation flights On Friday, June 5, Matson Fruit in Selah take off from Yakima airport. settled, leaving Columbia Reach in Yakima The fruit packers’ strike in Yakima can as the last ongoing strike. But as many strik- serve as a beacon to workers in packing- ers commented to The Internationalist, the houses across the country – overwhelming- struggle has only just begun. ly African American, Latino and immigrant Over the course of the strike movement – which have been infested by the corona- that broke out at Allan Brothers on May 7 and virus due to the bosses’ disregard for work- spread to eight area packinghouses, many peo- ers’ health and safety. When the pandemic ple commented that nothing like this had been struck, it was discovered that these workers seen in the Yakima Valley for decades.1 The Strikers at Columbia Reach packinghouse in Yakima, Washington, June 3. were essential, even though still treated as strikers demanded protective gear and clean- Bros. was filed with the National Labor the sheriff will set them straight. disposable and oppressed. Yakima County ing of the facilities, plus $100/week hazard Relations Board (NLRB). “I’m very proud The workers’ power lies in their organi- now has 4,000 confirmed cases of - COV pay and 40 hours work. Management handed of what we achieved” despite “all the hu- zation and consciousness. The workers at the ID-19, with the highest rate of infection on out masks and disinfectant, with some spacing miliation and reprisals,” said Felicita R. Yakima fruit packers are getting organized. the West Coast. This week strikers honored out on the conveyor belt, but only agreed to “If we are united, we can do it, she said, The small farmworkers union from northwest David Cruz, a worker at Allan Bros. who recognize the workers’ committee and to bar- adding: “And even if we are not united, we Washington, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, participated in the strike until he fell ill and gain with it on the demand for higher pay. Yet can stand up for our rights. Never give in.” came in at the invitation of the strikers to pro- has now died of the virus. for the strikers, who started with zero, the fact María Cecilia G. said that the struggle was vide advice and support, and has been on the To stop the ravages of the virus and that their struggle made some gains can be a vital “for all the people who come here, scene every day. But as we wrote in our May raise the tens of thousands of minimum- first step on the road to winning a union. very young, and spend their whole lives in leaflet, “While production at some plants has wage workers out of poverty, it is crucial As the year began, could the arrogant the United States, with all the obstacles.” been slowed, it has not been stopped. Trucks to make use of this moment when their la- bosses who own the valley have imagined that Throughout, the bosses have played and scabs pass in and out without trouble.” bor is indispensable. The Internationalist “their” workers would dare to defy them by hardball. At Hansen Fruit, management This has remained true throughout, and the Group and Class Struggle Workers – Port- walking out – in the middle of a pandemic! – wore down the strike until only one worker consequences weigh heavily on the workers land have been present on the strike lines, and force them to the negotiating table? Now, was left standing. Strikers rallied to cel- who continued resisting day after day. emphasizing that “unions across the state instead of keeping employees in line through ebrate at Frosty Packing on May 22, voting Action by the entire labor movement is must mobilize now to build mass picket a hierarchy of managers, they have to formally to go back to work, only to discover later key to achieving a victory in Yakima. The lines to win the strike, and make Yakima bargain with workers’ representatives fortified that day that there was no deal. Columbia AFL-CIO representative in the Valley, Dulce a stronghold of union power” (The Inter- by three weeks on strike. Workers under- Reach bosses have yet to meet with the Gutierrez, has been on the picket lines, but nationalist, 8 May). A successful union-or- lined that they secured an agreement, and workers and have refused the demand for a only after more than three weeks on strike ganizing drive extending to the Tri-Cities went back with no reprisals. As Angelina L. $1 an hour in hazard pay. But in a move- did the Washington AFL-CIO bureaucracy area to the east will require a leadership commented, “It’s been 35 years, nobody has ment that swept through the valley, the finally bestir itself. On Saturday, May 30, an that goes beyond narrow “business union- ever done any changes in any company, so agreements – or lack of an agreement – are auto caravan converged on Yakima from Se- ism” to defend all oppressed groups. for us that is a big win.” Now come the ne- only a preliminary result. The fact that hun- attle and other points. Some 80 cars of union As Karl Marx emphasized a century and gotiations over wage demands. dreds of combative workers rose up and staffers and some members proceeded over a half ago, “every class struggle is a political The large majority of the workers in stood firm through weeks of hard struggle is the course of a couple of hours from one qui- struggle.” For decades, struggles to unionize the packinghouses are women, as were the a huge event – and the bosses know it. et weekend plant to the next. They honked the workers in the fields have largely failed as strikers who stuck it out in the face of com- The outcome will not be determined their horns, emerged from their cars for a few they have been subordinated to the Democrat- pany attempts at intimidation – an unfair by legal fictions like the “good faith” of the moments at each site to applaud each other ic Party, as Cesar Chávez did with the United labor practices complaint against Allan bosses, the “good will” of the governor, or as the word “solidarity” flowed freely from Farm Workers. To win the class battle under- 1 For our earlier article at the start of the strike, the regulations of various state and local their lips, and at about 1 p.m. the event con- way in Yakima requires a political struggle to see “Victory to Yakima Packinghouse Strikers!” agencies, from the NLRB to Yakima Coun- cluded with catered tacos in a city park. unchain the power of the multiracial work- (17 May) at www.internationalist.org. ty Health Department, which quickly gave But the power of the organized work- ing class from the parties of capital. Whether the packinghouses a ing class has not been brought to bear to Democrats or Republicans are in charge, the clean bill of health win the strikes. Supermarket workers orga- police forces that lynch black people – and after workers walked nized by the United Food and Commercial immigrant agricultural workers like Antonio out over unsanitary Workers Union (UFCW) could refuse to Zambrano in Pasco2 – also serve the bosses as conditions. Strikes are handle fruit from the struck packinghouses. professional strikebreakers. class struggles. They Teamster truckers and UPS drivers could Drawing the lessons of the courageous test the power of the refuse to cross strike lines. The Teamster- struggle in Yakima, we urge the most dedi- working class against organized Del Monte fruit processing plant cated strikers to join the effort to build a the power of capital. could go out. There are hundreds of union workers party fighting to replace the deadly The bosses have the construction workers fighting for safety at dictatorship of capital with the revolution- money and the prop- the nearby Hanford nuclear cleanup site. ary rule of the international working class. erty. They own the Washington Education Association teach-

Evan Abell / Yakima Herald-Republic Yakima Abell / Evan Then instead of harvesting the “grapes of fruit that the workers ers struck across the state two years ago. To wrath,” the fruits of their labor in this in- Packinghouse workers demonstrated on June 4 pick and pack. The win any lasting gains for Yakima workers, credibly rich agricultural region can serve outside state Department of Labor offices (above) and government and its this power must be mobilized. to liberate all mankind. n then headed to Yakima Health District honoring David armed enforcers do Already, the packinghouse workers 2 See “Outrage Over Police Murder of Mexican Cruz, a striker who died of coronavirus. Sign says: their bidding. Anyone strike has stoked a spirit of rebellion in the Worker in Washington State,” The Internation- “How many dead from COVID-19 are necessary?” who questions that, Valley. To the annoyance of local rulers, alist No. 39, April-May 2015.

16 The Internationalist To Meet Urgent Demand, Workers Power Is Key How Capitalism Sabotaged Ventilator Production APRIL 14 – “There are profiteers all over Conclusion: There should be a crash the place,” remarked Dr. Steppe Mette, program to produce tens of thousands of chief medical executive of the University new ventilators – yesterday! So why hasn’t of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) that happened? In a word – profits. It is a Will Waldron/ Albany Times Union Medical Center in Little Rock (Reuters, 10 horrific example of what Karl Marx and April). As one of the people responsible for Friedrich Engels described as the “anarchy acquiring ventilators for the state of Arkan- of production” under capitalism. As pro- sas, Mette has experienced the U.S.’s cut- duction is not coordinated to serve human throat ventilator bidding wars first-hand, in needs, each capitalist company competes which state governments compete against with the others to snatch the largest share each other and the Federal Emergency of profits, inevitably leading to both gluts Management Agency (FEMA) to get their and shortages, often with deadly results.3 hands on these desperately-needed life- The ventilator shortage should more ac- saving devices. curately be called a ventilator sabotage, As the coronavirus pandemic ravages in which capitalist vultures are feasting on the country, with New York City being the COVID-19’s victims. epicenter, hospitals and government at all Today, states are scrambling to buy levels have been caught wholly unprepared. ventilators at enormous markups. A for- There has been a lot of political drama mer Obama administration official - re around the mechanical breathing devices. In ported, “One of the governors is trying to late March, New York’s governor Andrew buy them at $45,000 per ventilator. The Cuomo sounded the alarm when Donald typical cost is $15,000 per ventilator…. (“President Death”) Trump made a show They are all bidding against each other. of sending NYC a paltry 400 ventilators. “I State vs. state.” A liberal website, Talk- need 30,000 ventilators,” Cuomo respond- ing Points, commented: “If you’ve got the IUE-CWA members outside General Electric turbine and generator plant ed. “You want a pat on the back for send- right connections and access to trade net- in Schenectady, New York, April 8, call on GE to rehire laid-off workers to ing 400 ventilators?” Of course, the fact that works and political power there are for- manufacture ventilators. New York had such a dire shortage meant tunes to be made starting bidding wars for market would drive prices way down. A re- “The ‘just-in-time’ supply chain man- that it hadn’t stockpiled them long before- products people are literally dying for” cent piece in MIT Technology Review (18 agement systems4 used by many hos- hand.1 (The Nation, 3 April). March) bluntly laid this out: pitals creates a significant threat to Johns Hopkins University counts “ap- But it’s not just cutthroat distributors “‘Who will pay for all the extra ventila- successful disaster response as many proximately 62,000 full-featured mechani- who are responsible for this crisis. Venti- tors even if the company can ramp up?’ hospitals maintain only a minimal store cal ventilators” in hospitals across the lator manufacturers are loath to ramp up said Kenneth Lutchen, dean of Boston of medical supplies on site…. Were a U.S., with “an additional 98,000 ventila- production on the massive scale need- University’s College of Engineering mass casualty critical care event to oc- tors that are not full-featured but can still ed because it would virtually eliminate and a professor of biomedical engineer- cur tomorrow, many people with clini- provide basic function in an emergency their profits. The price of a ventilator can ing…. ‘Presumably at some point this cal conditions that are survivable under during crisis standards of care.”2 However, range up to $50,000 (Washington Post, 18 crisis will play itself out and the hospi- usual health-care system conditions might have to forgo life-sustaining inter- that estimate is based on a 2010 study that March), and a flood of new units on the tals will have far more ventilators than ventions. Failure to provide critical care admitted that “the full number has never they need until the next crisis.’ ‘There 3 will likely result in high mortality rates.” been enumerated.” Now tens of thousands “With the ... introduction of the capitalist mode needs to be an incentivized business of production …. the production of society at –Task Force for Mass Critical Care more are urgently needed across the coun- model to hit the go button for ramping large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, Summit Meeting, “Definitive Care for try. According to Reuters, “31 [states] that up manufacturing…’.” by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and So under capitalism, businesses need the Critically Ill During a Disaster: Cur- either responded or have disclosed fig- greater height.... Finally, modern industry and the rent Capabilities and Limitations” (26- to be “incentivized” to produce urgently ures showed a collective intent to procure opening of the world-market made the struggle 27 January 2007) 70,000” ventilators. universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard- needed medical equipment. While people “Planning for mass respiratory public of virulence…. The contradiction between social- are left to die in hospitals critically short on health emergencies has been hampered 1 According to New York state “Ventilator Al- ized production and capitalistic appropriation now staff, the result of years of cuts to health- by not knowing how many ventilators location Guidelines” from 2015 (see below), presents itself as an antagonism between the orga- care funding and hospital closures by lo- there are in US hospitals, how they “There are no current plans to buy enough ven- nization of production in the individual workshop cal governments and private equity firms, are distributed across the country, and tilators for the most severe” scenario. and the anarchy of production in society gener- the bourgeoisie is worried about its bottom 2 whether, taken together, the numbers “Ventilator Stockpiling and Availability in the ally” (Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific line. Only a centrally planned, internation- US” (1 April 2020). [1880]; emphasis in original). and types of ventilators in hospitals will al socialist economy, in which production provide sufficient surge capacity to meet is to fill human needs rather than for profit, anticipated needs.” could ever meet the demands of the vast –“Mechanical Ventilators in US Acute majority of people. Care Hospitals,” Disaster Medicine and Writing Was on the Wall Public Health Preparedness (October 2010) The ventilator shortage has been “New York state may have enough ven- known for years. Medical professionals

NY Daily News NY tilators to meet the needs of patients in and even some government officials had a moderately severe pandemic. In a se- been ringing the alarm bells, warning that vere pandemic health emergency on the a pandemic would leave U.S. hospitals in scale of the 1918 influenza pandemic, the lurch: however, these ventilators would not “Despite planning and preparedness, be sufficient to meet the demand. Even however, in a severe pandemic it is if the vast number of ventilators needed possible that shortages, for example of were purchased, a sufficient number of mechanical ventilators, will occur and 4 The “just-in-time” supply-chain system, associ- medical care standards may need to be ated with so-called “lean production,” involves adjusted to most effectively provide care “ordering and receiving inventory” only as im- and save as many lives as possible.” mediately needed, as opposed to having supplies –Centers for Disease Control and Pre- on hand before or in case they are needed (see vention, “HHS Pandemic Influenza thebalancesmb.com/just-in-time-jit-inventory- NYC mayor de Blasio with one of the 400 ventilators Trump sent to New York. Plan” (November 2005) management-393301).

May-July 2020 17 trained staff would not be available to than 50 million N95 respirators” (the close- operate them. If the most severe forecast fitting facial air filtration device for medical becomes a reality, New York State and personnel to protect against infection) and the rest of the country will need to al- “2,400 portable ventilators.” The mobile locate ventilators.” hospitals “were fully insulated, HVAC- –New York State Department of Health/ equipped [with heat, ventilation and air- New York State Task Force on Life and conditioning], semi-permanent tents” that the Law “Ventilator Allocation Guide- would “roll out on 18-wheelers.” But in the lines” (November 2015). aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Cali- So what was done about this critical fornia’s Democratic governor Jerry Brown shortage? A federal program begun in 2008 eliminated funding to the mobile hospital under the auspices of the Department of program in 2011. The stockpiles were sold Health and Human Services (HHS), during off or allowed to expire. One Democratic the administration of George Bush II, was state assemblyman even suggested that the meant to fill that gap by purchasing up to state sell its medical equipment on eBay 40,000 new ventilators. According to a re- (Sacramento Bee, 13 February 2012). port in the New York Times (29 March), HHS New York City, which has become the contracted the job to a specialized company, epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., ac- Newport Medical Instruments, which would quired its own stockpile of ventilators in produce compact, portable devices it would 2006, also in response to the strain of influ- Faced with refusal by bosses to convert plants and rehire workers to serve sell to the government for $3,000 per unit, enza then ravaging Asia and the Middle East. urgent need in coronavirus crisis, GE workers should take control and gear back when ventilators typically cost $10,000 A report from that year predicted the city up ventilator production. apiece. Newport was awarded the contract in would face a “shortfall of between 2,036 and 2010, with production slated for 2013. 9,454 ventilators” if NYC were faced with a officials until late last month, after they nouncing plans to lay off 10% of its domes- However, in 2012 Newport was ac- pandemic.5 Although the city government of were contacted by the New York Times. tic aviation workforce and to furlough half quired by a larger competitor, Covidien, for its maintenance workforce for three months. then-Republican Michael Bloomberg only Drive for Profits: Death $100 million. After the acquisition, “Covi- purchased 500 ventilators that year, even On April 8, workers at the GE turbine and dien had demanded additional funding and those additional units were left to fall into Sentence for the Sick generator plant in Schenectady, New York, a higher sales price for the ventilators,” ac- disrepair or auctioned off under the -Demo So where are the ventilators? Trump Dallas, Texas, Salem, Virginia and Lynn ral- cording to the Times report. Then in 2014, cratic administration of Bill (“Bloomberg says private enterprise will save the day. lied, calling to produce ventilators. Covidien dropped the contract, complaining Lite”) de Blasio (Pro Publica, 6 April).6 Democrats have urged him to use his powers “Ventilators are desperately needed at “that it was not sufficiently profitable for the Recently, Trump accused Cuomo of under the Korean War-era Defense Produc- hospitals in New York, California, Wash- company.” According to the article: not heeding his own state Health Depart- tion Act, promoted and signed by Demo- ington State, and Florida,” said CWA presi- “Government officials and executives ment’s warnings of a critical ventilator cratic war criminal president Harry Truman dent Chris Shelton. “They soon will be in at rival ventilator companies said they shortage back in 2015, in a report that set – who A-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, short supply from the East Coast to the West suspected that Covidien had acquired the framework for “ventilator allocation.” firebombed Tokyo and slaughtered millions Coast, from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, from Newport to prevent it from building a It’s true, of course. New York has known in Korea – to compel companies to prioritize Alaska and Illinois to Texas. Most Ameri- cheaper product that would undermine for years about a ventilator shortage and the filling of government contracts. On April cans are not aware that the best ventilators Covidien’s profits from its existing venti- did nothing about it, and the “triage com- 8, HHS signed a new, $647 million contract are already made by General Electric within lator business.” [emphasis added] mittees” that would oversee such brutal with Philips to produce 43,000 ventilators, the company’s healthcare division.” Note that this was under the Democrat- health-care rationing do indeed amount to the first 2,500 of which would be delivered Okay, so how about doing something ic Obama administration. In other words, “death panels.” But racist-in-chief Trump before the end of May and the rest by the end about it? Since the corporate bosses aren’t the dictates of the capitalist market, where is no better. The New York Times (1 April) of December. Yet under this new contract going to, workers and engineers at Lynn and production of goods is based on profit, pre- reports that 2,109 ventilators in the federal the government would be paying $15,000 continued on page 22 vented the production of desperately needed government’s stockpile have fallen into for each ventilator, five medical equipment. This is an object lesson disrepair because the contract to maintain times the price established League for the Fourth International in capitalism, where human lives are sacri- them “lapsed late last summer, and a con- under the 2014 contract. ficed on the altar of private property. tracting dispute meant that a new firm did That same day, HHS LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY Mind you, this is not something new. not begin its work until late January.” signed a $489 million con- 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] It’s a decades-old practice for capitalist firms tract with General Motors Meanwhile, after the U.S. govern- Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil to either collude or buy each other out in ment’s contract with Covidien to produce (GM) to produce 30,000 order to produce inferior, more expensive low-cost ventilators fell through, Dutch ventilators, with the first Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-740, products. Take the incandescent lightbulb, manufacturer Philips was awarded a new 6,000 coming in by June Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil for example. In the U.S., this market was the contract for the same purpose in 2014. But 1. Rio de Janeiro: write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP virtual monopoly of General Electric in the it wasn’t until last July that the FDA ap- But ventilators are 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 20th century. As early as 1924, GE, along proved Philips’ design, and only last De- needed now. If produc- E-mail: [email protected] with Osram (a spin-off of the German AEG) tion had begun in Janu- cember did the government order 10,000 Internationalistische Gruppe/Deutschland and other “competitors,” formed the Phoebus units to be delivered in mid-2020. But not a ary, when the pending Cartel, whose “enduring legacy was to engi- single mention of these supposedly incom- disaster was already Germany: write to Postfach 80 97 21, 21007 Hamburg, neer a shorter life span for the incandescent ing ventilators was made by administration evident, they could be in Germany lightbulb,” reducing it from 2,500 hours to operation today. Yet ac- E-mail: [email protected] 1,000 hours in order to increase sales (IEEE 5 New York City Department of Health and cording to a former HHS Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engi- Mental Hygiene, “Pandemic Influenza Pre- official, “most of these neers] Spectrum, 24 September 2014). paredness and Response Plan” (July 2006). ventilators will come too Italy: write to Anna Chiaraluce, Casella Postale N. 6, 6 While union bureaucrats, “progressives” and late to make a difference 06070 Ellera Umbra (PG), Italy Democratic Fire Sale many reformist reformists enthused over Bill de in this pandemic” (Ars E-mail: [email protected] Gutted Stockpiles Blasio’s election as mayor back in 2013, the In- ternationalist Group accurately wrote: “Despite Technica, 10 April). Grupo Internacionalista/México While the drive for profits spiked the the Hype, de Blasio Will be ‘Bloomberg Lite’” On March 30, avia- federal government’s plan to buy 40,000 tion factory workers at México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. new ventilators, some states, like Califor- General Electric’s Lynn, Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México nia, sought to accrue their own stockpiles. Massachusetts plant pro- E-mail: [email protected] “In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, Re- tested to demand the Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- publican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger company convert its jet 6643; Oaxaca: 951-185-6815 announced the state would invest hundreds engine factories to pro- of millions of dollars in a powerful set of duce ventilators. That Internationalist Group/U.S. medical weapons to deploy in the case of same day, members of the Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street large-scale emergencies…” (Los Angeles IUE-CWA (International Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Times, 27 March). The state spent over Union of Electrical Work- E-mail: [email protected] $200 million on a mobile hospital program ers – Communications New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 that could quickly deploy medical care fa- Workers of America) held New England Tel. (617) 213-5010 cilities to affected areas. a march at GE’s Boston Los Angeles Tel. (323) 984-8590 The Los Angeles Times report notes that headquarters. This came Pacific Northwest Tel. (503) 303-8278 “at its height, the state’s stockpile held more Newport HT-70 ventilator. as the company was an-

18 The Internationalist Shipbuilding Workers in Maine Fight General Dynamics Union-Busting Victory to the Bath Iron Works Strike!

BATH, Maine, June 29 – At 12:01 a.m. on mismanagement exacerbated by the coro-

Monday, June 22, some 4,300 members navirus pandemic. Troy R. Bennett / Bangor Daily News of Industrial Union of Marine and Ship- Meanwhile, the military and business building Workers of America/International press are full of hand-wringing articles. “It Association of Machinists and Aerospace is critical for our Navy that we get ships, Workers (IAM) Local S6 went on strike at we get them on the schedule we contract the Bath Iron Works (BIW) shipyard here, for them, and that we have high confidence where workers produce Arleigh Burke- in our shipbuilders to deliver,” complained and Zumwalt-class destroyers for the U.S. the assistant secretary of the Navy, James Navy. BIW is owned by General Dynam- Guerts. In a letter to the Maine Congressio- ics, which is one of the largest military nal delegation, BIW boss Dirk Lesko cited contractors in the world, maker of the M1 Vice Adm. William Galinis, the new chief Abrams main battle tank, and which year- of the Naval Sea System Command, to the in and year-out rakes in $3 billion annual effect that “other shipyards with which the profits on $30 billion in sales with its lucra- Navy does business, our competitors, regu- tive cost-plus contracts. larly use subcontractors to address short- Amid record unemployment, a global falls in skilled labor to overcome schedule pandemic and mounting pressure from the challenges.” military as BIW’s order backlog grows Worker discontent with Iron Works longer, the shipyard workers have shown management has run rampant in recent they are ready and willing to fight. When years. The last contract offered up a variety Bath Iron Works strikers on first day of the walkout, June 22. a worker at the plant tested positive for of concessions in the hope of making the ment) and insisted that workers provide Among the corporate giants calling for the COVID-19, word spread like wildfire, and company more “efficient” as it vied for a their own masks. Many workers voted with factories to reopen was GD. From Bath, on March 24 more than 3,000 called out Coast Guard bid. “I was one of the few on their feet, and absenteeism was rampant Maine to Matamoros, Mexico, the name sick. What’s at stake in this strike is the the Negotiating Committee that opposed it until the company issued a “back-to-work” of the game is profits, profits, profits, and survival of the union, as IAM international at the time,” current local president Chris ultimatum in May. As we go to press, there workers lives be damned. On June 8, cou- president Robert Martinez, Jr. stressed in a Weirs told an Internationalist reporter, are reports that four additional employees rageous labor lawyer Susana Prieto Terra- press release: “The company is engaged in “but we took a five-year wage freeze so have tested positive for COVID-19. zas, who has led a fight to shut down and flat-out union-busting, and is exploiting the they could make a bid on those [Heritage- As local union president Weirs told clean up the maquiladoras, was arrested on current pandemic to attempt to outsource class] patrol cutters.” Of course, when News Center Maine on April 10, “Our trumped-up charges. Local S6 should join work from its dedicated employees.” the company lost the bid, the concessions membership right now collectively is so in demanding: Freedom now for Susana Now the battle has been joined, and weren’t returned. turned over as far as hatred for Bath Iron Prieto! it will take real class struggle to bust the In January 2020, state legislators start- Works and how they’re being treated, Despite expressions of support from union-busters. The last strike at the ship- ed threatening to rescind a $45 million tax echoes of the word ‘strike’ are being heard other labor unions, such as the Teamsters yards, in 2000, went on for 55 days, which credit provided to the company on condi- through the shipyard.” Two months later, and the Maine Nurses Association, it is cru- worries BIW and GD corporate officers tion that it continue to provide good-pay- in a mail ballot, 87% of participating mem- cial to see clearly that this class battle will and the naval brass. The shipbuilders are ing jobs, citing plans to hire out-of-state bers voted against the proposed contract not be won by playing by the bosses’ rules. in a strong position to win this fight if they contractors and to subcontract low-wage agreement and to go on strike. The original directives from the union hang tough, “come hell or high water” or workers, as well as a decline in the aver- In the last two weeks of the contract, instructed picketers not to engage with anti-strike orders from the Pentagon or the age pay at the site as proof that BIW wasn’t IAM members showed their anger at the scabs nor to block entrances to the struck White House. Looking to the bosses’ Na- living up to its end of the bargain. This fur- company by creating a raucous din, “every facility. Now appeals are being made for tional Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is a ther riled S6 members. But it was the com- hour on the hour, for a minute,” a picketer federal mediation. What is needed instead loser, but a victory here could set the stage pany’s brutal indifference to the lives and told The Internationalist. “We would down is to mobilize and organize the power of for a wave of labor struggles nationwide. health of its employees during the corona- hammer and bang on sheet metal, you the working class to shut down Bath Iron The BIW workers’ strike must be taken up virus pandemic that really stirred a hornet’s could hear it across the river in Woolwich, Works! by the entire labor movement – Victory to nest in the ranks. it was so loud.” “It’s just a perfect storm,” A glimpse of this power was visible all IAM Local S6! In the March 24 walkout, the union added another picketer, “How much can along the Pacific coast a week and a half At issue in the strike are demands by called on the company to shut down for you take? No raises for five years, then the ago, when the International Longshore and the company to rip up seniority protections two weeks to clean and disinfect the facil- disease, now this insulting contract. We de- Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all and to increase subcontracting, as well as ity, with full pay for employees. Manage- cided we were going to hold the line here, the West Coast ports on Juneteenth (the jacking up workers’ contributions to health ment refused. After much legal wrangling no matter how long it takes, no matter how day celebrated as marking the end of slav- insurance. The shipyard is running six involving state officials and the interven- many ships are in the water.” ery) in solidarity with George Floyd, Bre- months behind schedule, according to the tion of the U.S. Navy, the shipyards were The Bath Iron Works strike is no lo- onna Taylor and other victims of racist cop Defense One news site, with a backlog of declared “essential.” Initially, BIW refused cal matter. Across the country and around terror. This is the kind of power that needs eleven ships due to delays stemming from to provide PPE (personal protective equip- the world, the bosses and their politicians to be brought to bear in the BIW contract have insisted that the working class and battle. As we wrote two months ago: poor shoulder the burden of the ravages “The class struggle does not shut down caused by the coronavirus pandemic. From during a ‘natural’ disaster – if anything employees of logistics giants Amazon and it intensifies. Contrary to the deceptively UPS to packinghouse workers and nursing reassuring and hypocritical ‘we’re all in home staffs, companies have made it clear this together’ rhetoric of the politicians, that death and disease are no big whoop the stark realities of life or death expose compared to the horror of flagging profits. the fundamentally opposed interests of the exploiters and the exploited – at least As the United States reports over 2.5 mil- for those who dare to see. And the capi- lion COVID-19 cases and over 126,000 talist rulers never ‘let a good crisis go deaths from the virus, the capitalist bosses to waste’ That is why, for the working have been on the offensive in a mad rush to class and all the oppressed, desperate reopen the economy.

William Hall / Maine Business News and tragic times cry out for revolution- As Donald Trump used the Defense ary leadership.” Production Act to order pork and beef –“As the COVID-19 Pandemic Rages, processing plants reopened despite huge Workers Fight for Health and Safety,” numbers of COVID-19 infections, the Pen- The Internationalist No. 59, March- tagon leaned on Mexico to reopen the ma- April 2020 quiladora (free trade zone) factories along A class-struggle leadership of the la- Local S6 is going up against General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest, the U.S.-Mexico border, where superex- bor movement would meet the threat of and always profitable, war contractors. ploited workers labor for the U.S. market. continued on page 21

May-July 2020 19 Hand in Hand’,” The Inter- Free the Four! Drop Charges Against the 15,000! nationalist No. 42, January- In the days and weeks after the racist 5 to 20 years imprisonment. But then the February 2016 cop murder of George Floyd in Minneapo- federal government stepped in, following In the massive BLM lis on May 25, as hundreds of thousands racist president Donald Trump’s calls protests in 2014, a slogan took to the streets to decry police repres- to make an example of protesters. The chanted by the Internationalist sion, the authorities sought to intimidate three have now been charged with federal Group, “Eric Garner, Michael them with a massive display of police crimes including arson, civil disorder, Brown – Shut the whole system power. This included violent attacks on conspiracy, use of a destructive device, down!” was quickly picked up. demonstrators, racist curfews and massive making or possessing a destructive device But with all the mass march- arrests, “kettling” large groups and hauling and the use of explosives during a crime of es in the streets – or shutting them all off to COVID-19 infested jails. By violence, charges which carry a minimum down Interstate highways, as late June, close to 15,000 arrests had been sentence of 45 years. protesters did for a few hours tallied nationwide. They are all violations On July 4, Timothy Amerman was on I-94 after the cop murderer of freedom of assembly. We demand that charged with civil disorder and civil of Philando Castile was acquit- all charges against everyone detained dur- disorder conspiracy for allegedly giving ted – it will take much more to ing the recent protests be dropped. Shader supplies. His charges carry up to shut down the capitalist sys- Among those arrested in New York 10 years in prison. We demand that all tem. That is why the IG and and still in jail are Colinford Mattis, four be freed and all charges against them Revolutionary Internationalist George Floyd Urooj Rahman, Samantha Shader and be dropped. The thousands of arrests, the Youth call to mobilize labor/black/immi­ February 23, Ahmaud Arbery was shot and Timothy Amerman. The first three are cop violence and the very presence of the grant action against racist police terror. killed in Georgia by a retired cop and his son. accused of throwing Molotov cocktails police and police vehicles in the vicinity of It is the power of the multiethnic working The two chased Arbery down in their pickup at police vehicles. The cocktails did not protests were provocations and a violation class, grouping around it all the oppressed, truck while he was out for a jog, and shot him ignite, and no one was injured. They of civil liberties, while the barrage of that can actually bring the wheels of racist dead like a couple of Ku Klux Klan night- were initially charged with “causing charges being used against protesters is a American capitalism to a halt. And that is riders. The lynchings never stop. damage by fire and explosives,” facing “legal” arsenal for police-state rule. n also why, as many chanted “No justice, no “Driving while black,” “jogging while peace,” we chanted the hard and necessary black,” “sleeping at home while black.” ing a sizeable Somali population, have truth, “Only revolution can bring justice!” Floyd is just the latest addition to the end- George Floyd... long been targeted by the police. In 2015, Can the working class be mobilized less list of African Americans and Latinos continued from page 1 24-year-old Jamar Clark was shot in the against police terror? There’s no better murdered by the police, in a country where ed “support” from the National Guard. On head by Minneapolis cops while hand- place in the U.S. to ask that question than racist repression is and always has been the top of wanton police murder of a black cuffed and on the ground near the 4th Pre- Minneapolis, with its long history of labor linchpin of capitalist exploitation. This goes man, they add racist repression of the com- cinct. The next year, Philando Castile was struggle going back to the 1934 Teamster back to slavery days, when runaway slaves munity. As outrage spread, a Metro Transit shot to death in his car in front of his girl- strike that shut the city down. In that knock- would be hunted down by squads of slave bus driver, member of Amalgamated Tran- friend and four-year-old daughter by a po- down, drag-out fight, workers squared off catchers. These patrols paved the way for sit Union (ATU) Local 1005, announced lice officer in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon with scabs, strikebreaking cops and depu- modern-day police departments. In recent that he would refuse to transport arrested Heights. In 2018, Thurman Blevins was ties of the Citizens’ Alliance (which later decades, the police and courts have ramped protesters, as the MPD was demanding, and shot dead by two white cops as he pleaded, allied with the fascist Silver Shirts) in the up mass incarceration, particularly of black called on his fellow union members to do “Please don’t shoot me. Leave me alone.” “Battle of Deputies Run,” turning Minneap- men, while cops across the U.S. kill an aver- likewise. With police menacing the masses And last December, Chiasher Fong Vue, a olis from an “open shop” haven into a solid age of over 1,700 civilians a year, with black demanding justice for George Floyd, the Hmong man, was killed by a squad of nine union town. And the answer to the question men five times as likely to be gunned down entire workers movement and defenders of MPD officers who fired over 100 bullets. is, yes, the workers movement can and must by police as white men (see “Black America black and democratic rights must demand: Today, as the pandemic has led to mass come out in the thousands demanding an Under the Gun: Workers Revolution Will Cops and National Guard, get out NOW! unemployment, the ruling class fears that the end to racist cop repression. It could hap- Avenge Philando Castile,” The Internation- This latest racist outrage occurs in the killing of George Floyd could lead to a re- pen now, not just in the distant past, but that alist No. 48, May-June 2017). midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is surgence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) requires class-struggle leadership. In Minneapolis, 31 people have been killing African Americans and Latinos at stag- movement that started after the murder of Six years after Eric Garner’s murder, killed by police since 2000, 21 of them geringly high rates. Capitalism’s built-in racist Trayvon Martin in 2012 and took off in 2014 five years after Jamar Clark’s, four years after black. As in 2015, the city has asked for oppression means that those most exploited as hundreds of thousands protested the police Philando Castile’s, two years after Blevins’ a civil rights investigation by the Federal and most oppressed – who are most “essen- murder of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and and six months after Fong Vue’s, the video Bureau of Investigation. FBI investiga- tial” to profits and most expendable to the so many others. And as right-wingers have of Floyd’s killing is a stark reminder that tions of police departments from Chicago profiteers – are the most likely to die. And now besieged the Minnesota state capitol demand- nothing has changed in the racist, capitalist and Baltimore to Ferguson, Missouri, have the rulers’ racist police choke another black ing an end to the COVID-19 shutdowns or- U.S.A. On May 6, Sean Reed livestreamed shown that they are shot through with rac- man to death – it is too much to take. It has to dered by the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party his murder by Indianapolis, Indiana police ism, but have changed nothing. end. To put an end to it we have to overthrow (DFL) governor, an uproar against racist on Facebook. After shooting Reed, one cop Another favorite cop-out to disguise this capitalist system of racism and death. repression could trigger a backlash, like the can be heard saying: “It’s going to be a closed the racist nature of the cops is to put some The African American, Latin Ameri- armed KKKers who attacked a BLM protest casket, homie.” On March 13, Breonna Tay- “black (and Latino) faces in high places” to can, Native American, poor and oppressed against the police murder of Jamar Clark. lor, an emergency medical technician in Lou- head the police. Arradondo is the first black communities in the Twin Cities, includ- So Minneapolis’ DFL mayor Frey isville, Kentucky, was shot while sleeping in police chief of Minneapolis. He replaced and black police chief Medaria Arradondo her apartment by police thugs who stormed Janeé Harteau, who was a liberal identity moved quickly to try to get out in front of the in to serve a “no-knock warrant.” And on politics dream: the city’s first Native Ameri- protests. “Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” said Frey after watch-

ing the bystander’s video. On Tuesday, Ar- EPA radondo fired the four police involved in the arrest of Floyd. The next day, the mayor said that the cop who had his knee on Floyd’s neck should be arrested and tried. But as we wrote after the cop slaying of Clark: “Democrats and Republicans will not and cannot put a stop to racist police terror because they depend on the guard dogs of capital to maintain ‘law and order.’ Some of these politicians feign support to pro- Screenshot from bystander cellphone video tests like Black Lives Matter in order to make sure they don’t get ‘out of control’ (i.e., threaten the domination of United Healthcare, Target, Best Buy, 3M, U.S. Bancorp, General Mills and other giant corporations). And if protesters can’t be assuaged by ‘I feel your pain’ bromides, Minneapolis cop knees George the liberals call in the cops.” Los Angeles protest over murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Floyd, killing him, May 25. –“Minneapolis: ‘Cops and Klan Go May 27.

20 The Internationalist can, female and openly gay police chief, all one and all, who have commanded the wan- Meanwhile, it was Democratic New is at the core of U.S. capitalism, founded on in one. She introduced body cameras and ton slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians York City mayor Bill de Blasio that defended chattel slavery of Africans and genocide of “implicit bias training.” But police racism in Afghanistan and Iraq, who pushed to keep police who on May 30 deliberately rammed Native Americans, a legacy that is very much isn’t implicit, it is overt and systemic: it ex- U.S. occupation troops in Syria, who today their SUVs into protesters, and who imposed alive today. Fighting for the Trotskyist pro- presses the function and nature of the police are itching for war with Iran and North Ko- an abusive curfew, supposedly to stop “loot- gram of revolutionary integrationism, we and “criminal justice system” in this racist rea, and tomorrow with Russia and China. ing,” but which was used almost exclusively call for the workers movement to bring out capitalist society. Harteau managed to tough But they worried that Trump’s actions would to arrest dozens of protesters by “kettling” its tremendous power – as the International it out through the crisis over Clark’s killing, cast the military into an abyss. them. It was black Democrat Chicago mayor Longshore and Warehouse Union did on Ju- but was forced out after police murdered a “We are at the most dangerous time Lori Lightfoot who that same day carried out neteenth by shutting down every port on the white Australian woman, Justine Damond, for civil-military relations I’ve seen in my kettling on a vast scale by raising the bridges West Coast – together with and in defense of outside her home, after she had called to re- lifetime,” wrote Adm. Sandy Winnefeld, a connecting the downtown Loop to the rest all the oppressed. The key lesson, from the port a possible sexual assault. This happened retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of of the city and cutting off “El” trains so that 2014 protests over the police murders of Eric just weeks after the Latino cop who killed Staff. The chiefs know full well that putting trapped demonstrators could not escape, Garner and Michael Brown to the continuing Philando Castile was acquitted. Whatever the elite military units, trained to be a killing while police arrested hundreds and threw upheaval over the murder of George Floyd, ethnicity, the job of the police is to enforce machine, into U.S. streets could very well them into COVID-infested jails. In Los An­ is that only revolution can bring justice! n racist capitalist “law and order.” lead to a bloodbath far greater than the Kent geles under Democratic mayor Eric Garcetti, One demand heard in Tuesday’s pro- State (Ohio) and Jackson State (Mississippi) also on May 30, the LAPD surrounded and tests, trumpeted by various opportunist left trapped protesters and then raised a hue and Iron Works... massacres of antiwar students in 1970 – and continued from page 19 groups, is the call to “jail killer cops.” Cer- that the heightened “civil unrest” this would cry about “looting” a few blocks away. tainly, Derek Chauvin, the officer who kneed ignite could lead to rebellions in the ranks. It was in Philadelphia, with a Demo- union-busting subcontracting by fighting George Floyd to death, Tou Thao who stood On the other hand, they are particularly cratic mayor and black woman police chief, to bring all these workers into the IAM, by and protected his murderous partner, and concerned, and said so, that fully 40% of ac- where on June 1, police violently attacked and for union control of hiring – orga­ the other two officers involved are all guilty tive-duty and reserve military personnel are a peaceful demonstration, launching tear nize the unorganized – for a union hiring of murder and should spend the rest of their African American, Latino, Native American, gas at a crowd of protesters. And in Seattle, hall. In the face of the deadly COVID-19 lives behind bars. But as revolutionary Marx- Pacific Islanders or members of other racial/ with a Democratic woman mayor and black pandemic, workers should form all-worker ists, we must warn that this won’t happen in ethnic minorities. They worried that troops woman police chief, the cops, also on June 1, elected safety committees, independent of the capitalist U.S.A.: the bourgeois politi- would not fire on (or bayonet) demonstrators violently broke up a demo, without warning, management, with the power to shut down cians will go all out to protect their profes- protesting racism if ordered to do so. They indiscriminately pepper-spraying marchers, production. Faced with rising health care sional killers-in-blue. Similarly, calls by are haunted by the “Vietnam syndrome,” launching tear gas and flash-bang grenades. premiums and increases in co-pays, a com- bative union movement would fight for reformist leftists for “community policing,” when black troops in particular revolted The list goes on and on. In all of these cases, socialized health care, free for all. And in- “community control of the police” and the against their officers and non-coms and the video evidence shows conclusively that po- stead of appeals to the NLRB, build mass like only build illusions, which can be ex- U.S. military suffered a stinging defeat. lice wantonly attacked protests against the picket lines that no one crosses! ploited by skillful capitalist politicians, as Then there was the silence of the cop murder of George Floyd with more racist Workers in “defense” industries are Minneapolis mayor Frey just did by calling Democrats. Even though Trump’s ire was repression. And the vast majority of the ar- also in a key position to fight the warmon- to jail and charge killer cop Chauvin. (Demo- directed at them, they looked to the mili- rests on June 1 and the days before and after gering policies of the imperialist rulers. A cratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a favorite tary. The Democratic Party’s ties with it run – in city after city, including in Washington, key reason why the Pentagon is hot to get of the pseudo-socialists, didn’t even go that deep: from World War I on, U.S. imperial- D.C. – were carried out by police under the the destroyers being built at BIW into the far, only calling for an investigation.) ism’s wars have largely been waged under command of Democratic mayors. Those who stand on the side of the op- water is to step up provocative deployments their administrations. Over the past period, The big-mouth all-round racist, xe- pressed must look not to the bosses’ state in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Repub- the Democrats have assiduously sought to nophobe and misogynist Donald Trump is but to our own forces, above all the work- licans and Democrats alike blame Beijing bolster this connection with the military and an outlier. His attempt at imposing martial ing class. After Jamar Clark was killed for the coronavirus, when the truth is that “intelligence community.” In 2018, roughly law in the nation’s capital was bungled. But in 2015, over 200 union members from China, a bureaucratically deformed work- half of the Democrats newly elected to Con- when it comes to the cop repression that sys- around the Twin Cities protested outside ers state, was uniquely able with its planned gress were from intelligence backgrounds. tematically violates the Constitutional rights the 4th Precinct, including from the Min- economy to limit the spread of the virus and From the beginning the Trump presidency, of the U.S. population (including undocu- nesota Nurses Association, Letter Carriers, the numbers of dead, in contrast to the disas- the Democratic Party has called on the Pen- mented immigrants), that imposes racist po- SEIU Healthcare MN, St. Paul Federation trous response in the U.S. Just because na- tagon and spy agencies to keep the bellicose, lice occupation of African American ghet- of Teachers, and CWA Local 7250. We val construction workers build Navy ships xenophobic white supremacist in the White tos and Latino barrios, that kills more than need much more today. doesn’t mean they share the war aims of the House in check, while hailing top figures in 1,700 civilians a year, that holds more than Class-conscious workers and defend- profit-driven rulers who don’t give a damn the U.S.’ mass-murder and spy apparatus as 2 million people in jails and prisons, more ers of democratic rights should respond about them or any workers anywhere. heroes in the anti-Trump “Resistance.” than five times the number behind bars in to the police murder of George Floyd by Historically, shipyard workers have Just as importantly, in virtually ev- 1970, the large majority for no serious crime fighting for mass workers action joining played a key political role precisely because ery major city in the U.S., as we have put at all – this is overwhelmingly carried out with the black population and all the op­ they are a stronghold of workers power. In it, “Democrats are the bosses of the racist pressed to shut the Twin Cities down! This by Democrats. In addition to being the No. November 1982, when the Ku Klux Klan means breaking with the Democrats and killer cops.” George Floyd (Minneapolis), 1 imperialist war party, they are the No. 1 threatened to march in Washington, D.C., all capitalist parties and politicians. In Eric Garner (New York), Laquan McDonald party of racist repression in the U.S., going longshore and shipbuilders union leaders almost every big city in the U.S., Demo- (Chicago), Freddie Gray (Baltimore), Bre- back to when professional police grew out and activists from Norfolk, Virginia played cratic mayors are the bosses of the racist onna Taylor (Louisville) and thousands more of slave-catching patrols in the early 1800s. a key role in a powerful labor/black mobi- killer cops. It is urgently necessary to build were murdered by police under Democratic What should be the response of those lization that stopped the fascists cold. And a revolutionary workers party, for the in- Party mayors. And now, from Rhode Island who fight for the oppressed against this going further back, in November 1918 escapable fact is that justice for George to Minnesota to Colorado to California, Or- systematic racist repression? When Trump dockers and shipyard workers in the port Floyd and all those killed by this racist egon and Washington state, it is Democratic threatened to introduce martial law and began of Kiel were the spark that set off the Ger- system can only be achieved by socialist governors who have deployed National to carry out that threat with a military occupa- man Revolution that brought the slaughter revolution, which alone can bring down Guard units against anti-racist protesters. tion of Washington, D.C., the Internationalist of World War I to an end. the murderous capitalist state and open the Early on in the coronavirus crisis, Cali- Group and Revolutionary Internationalist Today, the power of the unions is ham- way to black freedom and the liberation of fornia governor Gavin Newsom announced Youth immediately raised a call for workers strung by a pro-capitalist labor bureaucra- all the exploited and oppressed. n the mobilization of the National Guard, strikes now against racist terror and martial cy that has chained workers to the bosses’ while emphasizing, “We have the ability to law threats and no to military/police rule – parties, particularly the Democrats. Yet do martial law ... if we feel the necessity.” At mobilize workers power. We demanded free the Democrats no less than Republicans Martial Law... the same time, a train with close to 300 tanks all protesters – drop the charges and called have pushed policies like outsourcing and continued from page 6 rolled through Los Angeles, on the way from for police out of the schools and the unions. subcontracting that have destroyed unions Milley’s declaration was followed by the Ventura naval base heading out into the In New York City IG/RIY signs proclaimed, and union gains for the last four decades. similar messages from the chiefs of staff desert of the Inland Empire. To do what? A “It’s Not Just Republican Trump, Democrat Instead of relying on Democratic Party of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Trump’s prosecutor in Santa Clara County remarked, de Blasio is the Boss of the Racist NYPD – phony “friends of labor” politicians like previous defense secretary, retired Marine “Right now we’re putting parts of the Con- Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!” And Joe Biden, who claims to support Local Corps general Jim Mattis, issued a statement stitution on hold. We really are. Freedom of we highlighted our call for black liberation S6 workers, class-conscious workers must denouncing Trump for ordering troops to “vi- assembly. Right to practice religion” (New through socialist revolution. call to break with the Democrats and un- olate the rights of their fellow citizens,” de- York Times, 12 May). A year earlier, residents In the face of liberal and reformist talk dertake the urgent task of building a revo­ claring: “We must reject any thinking of our were startled by Army training exercises in of “reforming” the unreformable police, as lutionary workers party that champions cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed downtown L.A. and Long Beach, “to en- Marxists we underline that racism, and rac- the cause of all of labor and the oppressed. military is called upon to ‘dominate’.” These hance soldier skills by operating in various ist repression, are the expression of the un- Victory to IAM Local S6! Bust the military chiefs are hardliners, war criminals urban environments and settings.” derlying racial and ethnic oppression which union-busters! n May-July 2020 21 Silent Amidst Mass Upsurge Against Racist Oppression Spartacist League Declares Bankruptcy Published online on June 21. Weeks means working to mobilize the power of the terial published over two decades ago and up at the behest of German imperialism.” later the SL’s silence continues. multiracial working class in the fight against never answered by the ICL, together with Hiding behind their usual pseudo- In the almost four weeks since Minneap- police terror, as a key aspect of the struggle supplementary material that any would-be orthodox logic-chopping and straw-man olis cops murdered George Floyd, the ongo- to forge a Leninist vanguard party. This Trotskyist actually committed to fighting arguments, they oppose calls to abolish ing upheaval against racist police terror is by Trotskyist intervention is precisely what oppression should be aware of. the racist measure, while wielding the far the largest sustained wave of protest this the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of At the same time, we noted that the slogan of full citizenship rights for those country has seen in many decades. Day and the League for the Fourth International, SL/ICL’s flagship publication, Workers “who have made it to Greece” to oppose night, demonstrations have been held in at has been carrying out in this turbulent mass Vanguard, has now shrunk to four pages, calls to let in the refugees drowning in the least 1,280 cities and towns across the United upsurge, through our press, our leaflets and with an issue skipped in April. Clearly, the Mediterranean off the shores of Greece and States, bringing out huge numbers of youth speeches, on the banners and signs of our internal crisis has gotten even worse. The other European countries. For members or and workers, largely new to political activ- contingents, and in many other ways. SL/ICL website (icl-fi.org) currently states supporters of the SL and ICL looking for ism, who are seeking answers to fundamental For those familiar with the organized that the closing date for news in the most genuine chauvinism to combat, there it is, questions about this racist capitalist country. left, the sepulchral silence of the formerly recent issue was May 26, which was the right in front of you, as we have noted in “Progressive” bourgeois politicians Trotskyist Spartacist League (SL) amidst day after the cops murdered George Floyd, “Spartacist League vs. Refugees” (The In- and their auxiliaries and surrogates on the this mass upsurge can be seen as a minor immediately setting off furious mass pro- ternationalist No. 47, March-April 2017), reformist left are now working overtime to sidelight. But for anyone seeking the voice tests. On the rare occasions when they have “The ICL Against Asylum for Refugees channel protests into updated versions of of Trotskyism in the current protests, it is been seen at protests in the ensuing weeks, in Quebec” (The Internationalist No. 56, the same old fakery about “reforming” the more than that. Amid the most massive hapless SLers had absolutely no written May-June 2019) and other articles. police. Their goal: “November” – that is, protest movement in decades, as it has material to distribute regarding George Today, those seeking a revolutionary rounding up votes for presumptive nominee continued week after week, the Spartacist Floyd or the current protests. path forward in the struggle against racist Joe Biden. As promised, Bernie Sanders has League has not published a paper, put out The current Workers Vanguard (29 cop terror and for world socialist revolu- endorsed Biden, who has given Alexandria a leaflet or posted a single statement on its May) that they are selling consists en- tion have much to learn and apply from Ocasio-Cortez a coveted post as co-chair website on the killing of George Floyd or tirely* of a “translation of a revised article the arsenal of genuine Trotskyism that the of his climate task force. Yet a significant the mass protests against racist police ter- from a March 2020 supplement” – that is, Spartacist tendency helped build up for number of young protesters question the ror. And this despite the fact that the core an item originally published two months three decades after its inception in the early idea that fighting racism means lining up issue posed is black oppression, which the previously – to the paper of their Greek 1960s. Yet amid U.S. imperialism’s post- behind Biden, infamous co-author of the SL, from its inception, crucially empha- group. (Discussing some of the ongoing Soviet “death of communism” offensive, 1994 Clinton crime bill that escalated mass sized as key to proletarian revolution in internal turmoil, the most recent issue of incarceration, who railed against busing for the citadel of imperialism. Their silence the ICL’s theoretical journal had publicized the SL/ICL succumbed to demoralization school integration in the 1970s (and deliv- speaks volumes: the SL’s abject abdication the expulsion, on accusations of racist con- and disorientation, even backing the U.S. ered a eulogy for arch-segregationist fellow is a declaration of political bankruptcy. duct, of two members who were involved occupation of Haiti in 2010, then admitting senator Strom Thurmond in 2003). While As we underlined in “Some History in the Greek group’s work.) Those who it had grossly capitulated to it “own” im- many reformist groups are pushing nos- Ex-Trotskyists Would Like to Keep Hid- actually read the issue of WV will see that perialist rulers. (See “Repentant Social Im- trums about “defunding” the police, both den” (The Internationalist No. 59, March- its single article, polemicizing against calls perialists: Open Letter to the SL/ICL,” The Biden and Sanders have doubled down on April 2020), the last conference of the SL’s for “freedom of movement for refugees Internationalist No. 31, Summer 2010.) their calls to give the cops more money. International Communist League already and immigrants in all European countries,” There has been no more urgent time For Marxist revolutionaries, this is a issued an “auto-obituary” with its bizarre centers largely on denouncing demands to than now to bring the Trotskyist program crucial time to intervene in the ongoing central document, “The Struggle Against abolish the racist “Dublin III” agreement into the class struggle. The once-revolu- struggle with the communist program. This the Chauvinist Hydra,” proclaiming end- of the European Union. Yet as their article tionary SL/ICL can today scarcely summon means showing how racial oppression is less war against an enemy within their own admits, this measure “stipulates that mem- even the pretense of contributing to that woven into the fabric of this capitalist so- ranks while denouncing wholesale the or- ber states can deport refugees to the first fight, let alone leading it. Instead, it displays ciety born of slavery; exposing all variants ganization’s past Leninist positions on the EU country they entered,” meaning that its shameful bankruptcy for all to see, as of the fraudulent claim that the functions national question and openly embracing “thousands of refugees languish in concen- the widespread protests, and the racist ter- of the armed fist of the capitalist state can bourgeois nationalism, especially on behalf tration camps in Greece and elsewhere, set ror that set them off, continue. The banner be reformed away; combating the decep- of “oppressed white people in economically * Correction: In the 4-page physical copy, in of Trotskyism is carried forward by the In- tion and illusion-mongering that are the advanced countries of North America and addition to the article on Greece, about a page ternationalist Group/League for the Fourth stock-in-trade not only of the bourgeois Europe.” Under the subhead “Whose Chau- and a third consist of extracts from the 1938 So- International, which is winning a new gen- politicians but of their reformist adjutants. It vinism?” our article reprinted important ma- cialist Workers Party Declaration of Principles. eration of fighters to communism.n

duced is by expropriating the capitalists and Cancel the Rent – Expropriate the Real Estate Barons Ventilators... driving out their politicians, who have dra- continued from page 18 matically shown their incapacity to defend Schenectady GE and other plants should Mobilize Worker/Community the lives and livelihoods of the vast major- take matters into their own hands and gear ity of the population, with the working class up to produce this urgently needed medical Action to Stop Evictions establishing its own government. equipment. This points to the fact that, faced New York City is heading towards a mented immigrants. They may be the first As the call to action by Class Struggle with the refusal of the capitalists to ensure the massive eviction crisis, as are cities and to face eviction. Many are the “essential Workers – Portland (CSWP) states: “A health needs of the population, workers con- states across the country. With millions workers” who have braved the pandemic mass, militant workers movement with a trol of production is called for. This would in- unemployed, huge numbers are unable to keep the population supplied with ba- class-struggle leadership would establish volve the workers exerting their class power to pay rent. Until late June there was a sic necessities. They along with African in the plants and distribution centers in a di- workers commissions at workplaces to de- moratorium on eviction proceedings un- Americans and Latinos have also been the rect challenge to the bosses’ power, overrid- cide appropriate measures, including shut- der an emergency order issued by NY hardest hit by the virus. Meanwhile, half ing the anti-social profit drive of the parasitic ting down where necessary, with no loss in governor Cuomo in March. A second or- or more of undocumented workers in the owning class in order to rev up factories to pay, or continuing production with needed der in early May extended the ban until city have lost their jobs. make life-saving machines. That would be a safeguards.” That should also include late August, but only for those who could Tenants groups and legal aid attor- fundamental break with “business as usual,” what should be produced. But to get from prove COVID-related hardship and who neys have sought to block the reopening but for working people around the world this here to there, and continuing on the road are eligible for pandemic relief payments of the housing courts. But much more is is a genuine international emergency requir- to socialist revolution, the key is build- from the government. Now that order needed. The Internationalist Group calls ing drastic measures. ing a proletarian vanguard – the nucleus has been rescinded for residential (but on labor to join with community groups The fact is, companies like Ford, GM of a revolutionary workers party – based not commercial) tenants. Landlords be- to mobilize to stop evictions. We support and GE, which have factories sitting idle on the program for putting the technology gan filing cases on June 22. demands to call to cancel rent due during across the country, have the capacity to pro- and wealth built up by the working class It is conservatively estimated that the pandemic, and call to take over hotels duce thousands of ventilators ASAP. But to work to save lives now and make a de- 50,000 or more new housing cases will be and vacant apartments to house the home- they will not reopen those plants because cent future for working people here and filed. The 2020 Tenant Safe Harbor Act less. The real estate moguls should be ex- their bottom line is that profit rules – which around the world. That means the working will at most delay this. Lacking any protec- propriated and a vast expansion of public is why the plants were shuttered in the first class putting an end to this deadly capital- tion against rapacious landlords are hun- housing undertaken. Only a workers gov- place. Ultimately, the only way to ensure ist anarchy – and taking power into its own dreds of thousands of families of undocu- ernment can solve the housing crisis. n that the needed medical equipment is pro- hands. Our lives depend on it. n 22 The Internationalist se puede escuchar a un policía que dice: sea su ascendencia “Va a ser un ataúd cerrado, compadre”. El étnica, el trabajo Furia por... Facebook sigue de la página 24 13 de marzo, Breonna Taylor, una técni- de la policía es im- en las calles –o incluso con la ocupación ca de emergencias médicas de Louisville, poner la “ley y el de las autopistas interestatales, como la Kentucky, fue asesinada a balazos por orden” del capita- que realizaron durante algunas horas los policías matones que ingresaron a su casa lismo racista. manifestantes en la autopista I-94 después para cumplir con una “orden de registro Una exigen- de que el policía que asesinó a Philando sin aviso”. Y el 23 de febrero, Ahmaud cia que se escuchó Castile fuera absuelto– hará falta mucho Arbery fue baleado y asesinado en Geor- en las protestas del más que cerrar el sistema capitalista. Es gia por un policía retirado y su hijo. Los jueves, repetida por por eso que el Grupo Internacionalista y la dos persiguieron a Arbery en su camione- varios grupos de la Juventud Internacionalista Revoluciona- ta mientras éste corría para ejercitarse, y izquierda oportu- ria llaman a movilizar acciones obreras, lo mataron a balazos como habría hecho nista, es el llamado negras e inmigrantes en contra del terro­ una pareja de caballeros de la noche del a “encarcelar a los rismo racista de la policía. Es el poder de Ku Klux Klan. Los linchamientos no pa- policías asesinos”. la multiétnica clase obrera, agrupando en ran nunca. Ciertamente, De- torno a sí a todos los oprimidos, lo que “Manejar siendo negro”, “correr sien- reck Chauvin, el realmente pude parar los engranes del ra- do negro”, “dormir en casa siendo negro”. policía que encajó cista sistema capitalista norteamericano. Floyd no es más que la última adición a la su rodilla en el cue- Ésta es también la razón por la cual, cuan- lista de afroamericanos y latinos asesina- llo de George Floyd do muchos corean la consigna de “Sin dos por la policía en un país en el que la hasta matarlos, Tou justicia no hay paz”, nosotros decimos la represión racista siempre ha sido la punta Thao, quien se man- George Floyd dura y necesaria verdad de que “¡sólo la de lanza de la explotación capitalista. Esto tuvo a su lado y protegió a su compañero la 4a delegación de policía. Entre los mani- revolución hará justicia!” hunde sus raíces en los días de la escla- asesino, así como los otros dos oficiales festantes había miembros de la Asociación ¿Será posible movilizar a la clase vitud, cuando los esclavos fugados eran involucrados, son todos culpables de ase- de Enfermeras de Minnesota, Carteros, obrera en contra del terror policíaco? No cazados por escuadrones de captura de sinato y deben pasar el resto de sus vi- Trabajadores de la Salud afiliados al SEIU, hay mejor lugar en Estados Unidos para esclavos. Las patrullas de entonces fueron das tras las rejas. Pero como marxistas de la Federación de Maestros de Saint Paul plantear esa pregunta que Minneapolis, la base de los departamentos de policía revolucionarios, debemos advertir que y del local 7250 del CWA, sindicato de tra- con su larga historia de luchas obreras que de la actualidad. En décadas recientes, la nada de esto va a pasar en los capitalistas bajadores de las telecomunicaciones. Hoy se retrotraen a la Huelga de los Teamsters policía y los tribunales han aumentado la Estados Unidos: los políticos burgueses necesitamos mucho más. (camioneros) de 1934 que paralizó la ciu- encarcelación en masa, particularmente harán todo lo que esté a su alcance para Los trabajadores con conciencia de dad. En esa lucha dura, los trabajadores se de varones negros, mientras que los po- proteger a sus asesinos profesionales en clase y los defensores de los derechos enfrentaron con esquiroles, policías rom- licías en todo el país matan en promedio uniforme. De manera similar, los llama- democráticos deben responder al asesina- pehuelgas y cuerpos parapolicíacos “au- más de 1,500 civiles al año, en tanto que dos de izquierdistas reformistas a favor to policíaco de George Floyd luchando a xiliares” de la Citizens’ Alliance (que más los hombres negros tienen cinco veces de la “policía de proximidad”, el “control favor de ¡acciones masivas de trabajado­ tarde se aliaron con los camisas plateadas más probabilidades de ser asesinados por comunitario de la policía” y otras fórmu- res a las que se unan la población negra fascistas) en la “batalla de la huida de los la policía que los varones blancos (véase las del estilo sólo siembran ilusiones, que y todos los oprimidos para paralizar por auxiliares”, convirtiendo a Minneapolis “Black America Under the Gun: Workers pueden ser explotadas por políticos capi- completo Minneapolis y Saint Paul! Esto de baluarte de las empresas sin sindica- Revolution Will Avenge Philando Casti- talistas habilidosos, como acaba de hacer supone romper con los demócratas y con to en un bastión sindical. Y la respuesta le”, The Internationalist No. 48, mayo-ju- el alcalde de Minneapolis Frey al pedir todos los partidos y políticos capitalistas. a la pregunta es que “sí”, el movimiento nio de 2017). que se encarcele y enjuicie al policía ase- En prácticamente cada ciudad grande en obrero puede y debe salir a las calles por En Minneapolis, la policía ha asesi- sino Chauvin. (La congresista demócrata los Estados Unidos, los alcaldes demó- miles para reivindicar el fin de la racista nado a 31 civiles desde el 2000. De éstos, Ilhan Omar, una de las figuras favoritas cratas son los jefes de los racistas policías represión policíaca. Puede pasar ahora, no 21 eran afroamericanos. Como en 2015, la de los seudosocialistas, ni siquiera llegó a asesinos. Es urgentemente necesario cons­ sólo en el pasado distante, pero para eso ciudad ha pedido una investigación de de- eso, y pidió tan sólo que se realizara una truir un partido obrero revolucionario, hace falta una dirección de lucha clasista. rechos civiles a cargo del Buró Federal de investigación.) pues es un hecho ineludible que sólo se po­ Seis años después del asesinato de Investigación (FBI). Las investigaciones Quienes están del lado de los oprimi- drá hacer justicia a George Floyd, y todos Eric Garner, cinco años después del de que realiza el FBI a departamentos de po- dos no deben apelar al estado de los patro- los demás asesinados por este sistema ra­ Jamar Clark, cuatro años después del de licía desde Chicago y Baltimore hasta Fer- nes, sino a nuestras propias fuerzas, sobre cista, mediante una revolución socialista. Philando Castile, dos años después del guson, Missouri han demostrado que éstos todo, las de la clase obrera. Después de que Sólo así es que se podrá derribar al estado de Blevins y seis meses después del de están empapados de racismo, pero no han Jamar Clark fuera asesinado en 2015, más capitalista asesino y abrir la vía hacia la li- Fong Vue, el video del asesinato de Flo- cambiado nada. de 200 sindicalistas de las Ciudades Melli- beración de los negros y la emancipación yd es un crudo recordatorio de que nada Otra estratagema a la que suele re- zas y sus alrededores protestaron afuera de de todos los explotados y oprimidos. n ha cambiado en los racistas y capitalistas currirse para disfrazar la naturaleza ra- Estados Unidos. El 6 de mayo, Sean Reed cista de las policías consiste en poner transmitió en vivo a través de Facebook algunos “rostros negros (y latinos) en su asesinato en Indianápolis, a manos de altos puestos” para encabezar la policía. The la policía de Indiana. Tras disparar a Reed Arradondo es el primer jefe negro de la Internationalist policía de Minneapolis. Remplazó a Ja- neé Harteau, quien era la encarnación del A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the sueño de la política de la identidad de Reforging of the Fourth International los liberales: se trató de la primera mujer indígena norteamericana, abiertamente Publication of the Internationalist Group, homosexual, en encabezar a la policía: section of the League for the Fourth International todo en una. Introdujo cámaras corpora- les y “entrenamiento con respecto a los Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. prejuicios implícitos”. No obstante, el Name______racismo policíaco no es algo implícito, sino que es abierto y sistémico: expresa Address______la función y naturaleza de la policía y del “sistema de justicia criminal” en esta ra- ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______cista sociedad capitalista. Harteau se las City______State/Province______arregló para endurecerse a lo largo de la Screenshot from bystander cellphone video crisis causada por el asesinato de Clark, Postal Code/Zip______Country______pero fue obligada a renunciar después de que la policía asesinó a una mujer blan- Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: ca australiana, Justine Damond, afuera Mundial Publications de su casa, después de que llamó para Box 3321, Church Street Station New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. reportar un posible ataque sexual. Esto Policía de Minneapolis encaja su ocurrió apenas unas semanas después de Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: rodilla en el cuello de George Floyd, que el policía latino que mató a Philando Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 matándolo. Castile fuera exonerado. Cualquiera que E-mail: [email protected]

May-July 2020 23 El Internacionalista mayo-julio de 2020 ¡Acción obrera/negra/inmigrante para combatir el terrorismo racista! Furia por asesinato policíaco de George Floyd en Minneapolis 28 de MAYO – “No puedo respirar”, de- un almacén Target situado al otro lado de cía George Floyd una y otra vez mientras la calle y respondieron al ataque con justa un policía encajaba su rodilla en su cuello. furia. ¡Qué bueno! Esta tortura asesina siguió durante al menos Siguieron protestas a gran escala el David Joles/AP siete minutos, mientras que Floyd, de St. miércoles y se extendieron a otras ciudades. Louis Park, Minnesota, yacía esposado en En Minneapolis, una manada de policías lle- el pavimento. Finalmente, dejó de respirar. nó el área en la que las furiosas protestas es- Otro hombre negro asesinado por la policía taban teniendo lugar. Ahora el alcalde Jacob racista. Para millones alrededor del país y en Frey ha solicitado el “apoyo” de la Guardia todo el mundo, este hecho hizo recordar de Nacional. Encima del asesinato completa- manera conmovedora e insoportable las úl- mente gratuito de un hombre negro, ahora timas palabras de Eric Garner, el hombre de añaden la represión racista de la comuni- Staten Island, Nueva York, que fue asfixia- dad. Mientras la ira se extendía, un chofer do hasta la muerte por un policía en 2014, de autobuses de Metro Transit, miembro mientras repetía una y otra vez, once veces del local 1005 del sindicato de trabajadores en total, “no puedo respirar”. En un video del transporte público (Amalgamated Tran- grabado con un teléfono celular de este lin- sit Union – ATU) anunció que se rehusaba chamiento racista aparece Floyd rogando a transportar a manifestantes que la policía desesperadamente a su asesino, un policía arrestara, lo que exigía la policía, y llamó de Minneapolis: “Por favor, por favor, por a sus compañeros del sindicato a obrar del favor, no puedo respirar. ¡Por favor, hom- mismo modo. Frente a la amenaza policíaca bre!” (Star Tribune, 27 de mayo). en contra de las masas que exigen justicia ¡Minneapolis arde! Cientos de manifestantes aplaudieron cuando se incen- Miles marcharon en Minneapolis la para George Floyd, el movimiento obrero dió a la odiada 3ra Delegación, tristemente célebre por sus policías brutales. tarde del martes, 26 de mayo, coreando en su conjunto, lo mismo que los defensores Las comunidades de afroamericanos, miento BLM en contra del asesinato poli- consignas como “Black lives matter” (las de la población negra y de los derechos de- latinoamericanos, indígenas y de todos cíaco de Jamar Clark. vidas de los negros cuentan), “No puedo mocráticos, deben exigir: Policía y Guardia los sectores explotados y empobrecidos de Entonces, el alcalde Frey y el jefe de respirar” y exigiendo el arresto y enjuicia- Nacional ¡fuera ya! las Ciudades Mellizas (Minneapolis y St. la policía negro Medaria Arradondo se mo- miento de los cuatro policías responsables Este ataque racista se da en medio Paul), entre las cuales existe una considera- vieron rápidamente para intentar salir airo- del asesinato de Floyd. Los manifestantes de la pandemia de COVID-19, que está ble población somalí, han sido desde hace sos frente a las protestas. “Ser negro en Es- se reunieron en la calle 38 y en la avenida matando a afroamericanos y latinos en mucho objeto de hostigamiento policíaco. tados Unidos no debería ser una sentencia Chicago, donde Floyd fue asesinado, lle- proporciones abrumadoramente altas. La En 2015, Jamar Clark, de 24 años, recibió de muerte”, dijo Frey, tras ver el video del nando las calles en todas direcciones. Des- opresión racista resultante del capitalismo un disparo en la cabeza de parte de policías asesinato grabado por un testigo. El mar- pués marcharon a lo largo de casi cinco ki- implica que los más explotados y los más de Minneapolis mientras estaba esposado tes, Arradondo despidió a los cuatro poli- lómetros hasta la sede de la 3ra delegación oprimidos –quienes son más “esenciales” y en el suelo, cerca de la sede de la 4ta. cías involucrados en el arresto de Floyd. Al de la Policía de Minneapolis. Ahí se que- para las ganancias y más desechables para delegación de la policía. Al año siguiente, día siguiente, el alcalde dijo que el policía bró ventanas y una patrulla de la policía fue los explotadores– son los que tienen más Philando Castile fue asesinado a tiros en su que había encajado su rodilla en el cuello destrozada. Algunos jóvenes manifestantes probabilidades de morir. Y ahora, la racista carro, frente a su novia y a su hija de cuatro de Floyd debía ser arrestado y juzgado. se treparon a la azotea del edificio. Cuan- policía, el puño de hierro de la clase diri- años, por un policía en Falcon Heights, un Pero como escribimos tras el asesinato po- do se desplegó la policía antimotines en su gente, asesina por asfixia a otro hombre suburbio de la ciudad de St. Paul. En 2018, licíaco de Clark: contra, lanzando gas pimienta y disparando negro. ¡Basta ya! Esto tiene que terminar. Thurman Blevins fue asesinado a tiros a “Ni demócratas ni republicanos pondrán balas de goma, los manifestantes montaron Para ponerle fin,tenemos que derribar este manos de dos policías blancos mientras ro- fin –ni pueden hacerlo– al terrorismo ra- barricadas con carritos de supermercado de sistema capitalista de racismo y muerte. gaba “Por favor, no me disparen. Déjenme cista de la policía porque dependen de en paz.” En diciembre pasado, Chiasher los perros guardianes del capital para Fong Vue, un hombre de la etnia hmong, mantener la ‘ley y el orden’. Algunos fue asesinado por un escuadrón de nueve de estos políticos fingen apoyar pro- policías de Minneapolis que dispararon testas como las de Black Lives Matter más de un centenar de balas. para asegurarse de que no se ‘salgan de control’ (es decir, para evitar que repre- Hoy, cuando la pandemia ha arrojado senten una amenaza contra el dominio un desempleo masivo, la clase dominan- de United Healthcare, Target, Best Buy, te teme que el asesinato de George Floyd 3M, U.S. Bancorp, General Mills y otras pueda llevar a un resurgimiento del movi- empresas gigantes. Y si los manifestan- miento Black Lives Matter (BLM) que co- tes no son aplacados con la bazofia de Foto: The Internationalist menzó tras el asesinato de Trayvon Martin que ‘compartimos tu dolor’, los liberales en 2012 y que llegó a su punto culminante mandan a la policía” en 2014, cuando cientos de miles partici- –“Minneapolis: ‘Cops and Klan Go paron en manifestaciones de protesta en Hand in Hand’,” The Internationalist contra del asesinato policíaco de Michael No. 42, enero-febrero de 2016 Brown, Eric Garner y tantos otros. Ya que En las masivas manifestaciones de derechistas sitiaran el capitolio estatal de protesta del movimiento BLM de 2014, Minnesota para exigir que se ponga fin a una consigna coreada por el Grupo In- los cierres ordenados por el gobernador ternacionalista, “Eric Garner, Michael del Partido Demócrata de Granjeros y Tra- Brown, – Shut the whole sytem down!” bajadores (DFL, por sus siglas en inglés), [Eric Garner, Michael Brown, ¡hay que un clamor en contra de la represión racista parar todo el sistema!] se extendió rápi- podría desencadenar una reacción violenta, damente entre los manifestantes. Pero Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas formó parte del contingente interna- como cuando miembros armados del Ku con todas las manifestaciones de masas cionalista en la marcha del 19 de junio contra el racista terror policíaco. Klux Klan atacaron una protesta del movi- sigue en la página 23