Sunday, August 9, 2015

ROL, USA: NUMBER 91, JULY-AUGUST, 2015

RAY O’ LIGHT 
 NEWSLETTER                             
July-August 2015       Number 91

 
Publication of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA




 
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The Massacre of the Charleston 9, Obama’s Treachery and the Urgent Need for Afro-American National Liberation
by RAY LIGHT

On June 17th, any remnant of the illusion that the USA is a “post racial” society was smashed with the brutal mass murder by an avowed white supremacist of nine Afro-American participants in a Bible study at historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. What could be more innocent than folks attending bible study?! What sanctuary from white supremacist violence remains for the oppressed Afro-American people? What is to be done to defend the Afro-American people today?

Over the past few years, following the cold blooded murder of young Trayvon Martin in Florida by a wannabe cop, there has been a rash of police killings of Black males around the country in situations where it was clear that these, mostly young, victims were innocent. Furthermore, the police departments, even after carrying out these murders, treated their victims and their families and communities with cold disrespect, oftentimes creating a lynching atmosphere. Despite huge efforts by the police, the government and the media to portray these victims in a guilty light, their innocence rang true in their own Black communities and in other oppressed communities as well as among many justice-minded people of all ethnicities throughout the USA. Along with economic hardships, this is why a massive movement against police brutality has emerged. The Obama Regime and U.S. imperialism have been trying to confuse, disrupt, divide and destroy at least since the impressive and long lasting mass mobilization following the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri almost a year ago and then the failure of the Grand Jury there to indict the killer cop.





 One of the most recent of these powerful mass responses, took place in Charleston, arguably the most important city in the old Slave South. This followed the April 4th fatal shooting of eight bullets by a North Charleston policeman into the back of Walter Scott as he was running away from the killer cop and then the cop’s planting of a taser on the dead man’s body, indisputable facts captured on film by a passerby. Because of the public outrage and mobilization that followed the video’s release, this killer cop was not put on a paid vacation like so many others, but was immediately fired and arrested. And he was indicted by the Grand Jury for murder on June 8th, just nine days before the nine bible study victims, including Reverend Clementa Pinkney, the Church pastor, were murdered.

The outstanding revolutionary Black journalist, the still-imprisoned Mumia Abu-Jamal, observed, “White supremacy is the mother’s milk of Charleston, of South Carolina, of the South, of America.” And the twenty-one year old white man who carried out the Emanuel Church massacre clearly worships at the altar of white supremacy. The incredibly gentle, even considerate, manner with which the police arrested the mass murderer, including providing him with a bullet proof vest, reflected their approach that he was indeed one of them.

Reverend Pinkney was not only an influential Afro-American pastor in Charleston but a highly regarded veteran state senator.  Following the murder of Scott, Reverend Pinkney had led prayer services for Scott and the community and played the key role in the S.C. Senate, spearheading the passage of a state law requiring the police to wear body cameras. Indeed, the entire June 17th tragedy may well have been a South Carolina Klan/police-inspired targeted assassination of Reverend Pinkney, covered up by a mass murder.

But more likely, the mass murder committed at historic Emanuel Church, including against Reverend Pinkney, was a South Carolina Klan/police-inspired or a U.S. Special Operations military attack on its whole great history of revolt against slavery and human bondage for human freedom. This very church, founded in 1816 in Charleston had been the organizing center for arguably the greatest slave revolt ever planned in the history of U.S. slavery, and was associated with Denmark Vesey, one of the Church’s founders. In crushing that revolt, the slave-owning rulers of South Carolina had banned all black churches in the state and burned many, including Emanuel, to the ground. Yet this church continued to function in violation of the South Carolina slavocracy’s laws.

In the current period, the Mother Emanuel AME Church, has functioned as a vital part of the AME network of churches. The AME congregations have been at the heart of the growing struggle of the

Afro-American people against police brutality from Trayvon Martin to Ferguson to Baltimore and Charleston. Moreover, the AME Church helped mobilize the Afro-American farmers who were claimants against the decades-long land stealing practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture which resulted in the Pigford I and Pigford II settlements. Thus, the AME Church has been involved with the contemporary issues concerning “Land and State Power in the Black Belt South” which is at the heart of the Afro-American national liberation struggle.

In this setting, the U.S. Empire brought U.S. President Obama to Charleston to provide the eulogy for Reverend Pinkney. With more than six years as U.S. Commander in Chief, what have been Obama’s deeds with regard to the defense of the Afro-American people?

The Afro-American people of South Carolina had provided Obama with his first Democratic Primary victory in 2008. “In a record turnout, more than half of the voters in the Democratic Primary were Afro-American. Eighty percent of the Afro-American voters supported Obama [against Hillary Clinton and John Edwards]. Yet Obama did nothing to encourage the hard pressed people of South Carolina … Obama and his campaigners chanted ‘Race doesn’t matter!’ in the face of the obvious fact that ‘race’ had indeed mattered there. The Afro-American people of South Carolina had demonstrated political support for Obama in the hope that he would help alleviate their suffering. Instead of expressing appreciation to the Black masses for the victory … Obama and his ‘campaigners’ insulted the Black masses, deprecating their effort. As if ashamed of their support, Obama distanced himself from the very people who had provided his victory.” (pages 6 and 7, Ray O’Light Newsletter #47, February-March 2008) We pointed out further, “Obama has no organic ties with any Afro-American civil rights or human rights groups or organizations.” (ibid., page 5)

As we pointed out at the time of Obama’s first inauguration, “The very first activity in the inauguration itself will be the invocation scheduled to be given by Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren. By the time of the 2008 election, the only mass base of support still remaining for George W. Bush and transferable to Senator John McCain was the white evangelical Christian right. By selecting Pastor Warren to give the invocation, Obama is keeping the faith with McCain and George W. Bush!

“Obama’s choice of Warren for the invocation is a repudiation of the Afro-American church and its historical role, including its invaluable role in the struggle for Afro-American liberation that made Obama’s election possible. Just as Obama’s former minister and mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has observed, the attack on him (Wright) during the election campaign was, in   reality, an attack on the Black Church, historically the most important self-defense institution in Afro-American society. Thus, Obama’s repudiation of Reverend Wright led inexorably to the selection of Pastor Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.” (page 8, Ray O’ Light Newsletter #52, January-February 2009.)

During the 2012 Presidential Election campaign, almost four years into Obama’s presidency, we noted the following: “Barack Obama … had made his first political run for office against incumbent Chicago
Congressman Bobby Rush, a long time civil rights activist. Obama, when he ran for the presidency, had the benefit of the heroic and bloody and relatively recent struggle for black voting rights that had been an integral part of the fight of the oppressed Afro-American people for freedom. And in 2012, Obama still has the benefit of the fact that the Afro-American people hold the vote in great reverence. Furthermore, the election of a black president represented a breakthrough triumph against ‘white exclusivity’ regarding the ‘cultural power’ of being able to be the First Family, as described by Ta Nehisi-Coates.” (The Atlantic, September 2012) And, as a still nationally oppressed people in the white supremacist USA, millions of Afro-Americans continue to identify themselves with Obama and his family and want him to be ‘successful.’ Tragically, this seems largely still true even when it is at their own expense (record Black incarceration rates, joblessness, racial profiling, home foreclosures, the firing of Shirley Sherrod by Obama’s U.S. Department of Agriculture, the execution of Troy Davis, the killing of Trayvon Martin, etc.) and at the expense of their brothers and sisters in Africa (Obama’s war on Libya, the activation of the U.S. military’s Africom, etc.).” (page 10, Ray O’ Light Newsletter #74, September-October 2012)

The epidemic of police killings of clearly innocent Black youth during Obama’s second term has included the militarization of the domestic police departments by the Obama government (connecting the war of terror at home and abroad) and the use of the Justice Department under Obama and Eric Holder to try to demobilize the increasingly frustrated and militant and growing opposition movement to police brutality. Even more striking is the testimony of Daryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Intelligence & Analysis from August 2004 to April 2010. His 2009 Report, “Right Wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” was released and then disavowed by the Obama Regime after it was leaked to the public. Within days, Obama’s newly appointed DHS Secretary, Janet Napolitano, apologized for the report and Johnson’s DHS unit was slowly disbanded over the following year, leaving behind just one analyst to assess all non-Islamic extremist threats for DHS!! The Obama DHS, by focusing all its anti-terrorist attention on Islamists, paved the way for the rise of white supremacist groups inside and outside the police and military forces of the USA. As Rania Khalek recently wrote regarding Johnson’s report: “Obama ignored surge of right wing extremism that inspired Charleston killer.”

At the time of the 2008 presidential election, Mumia Abu-Jamal had counseled the Afro-American people that Barack Obama was running for the position as the head of “the most powerful white nation on earth.” It was this president, more than six years into his job, who delivered Reverend Pinkney’s eulogy. It was a masterful performance.

Obama declared that, “For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. ... We all have to acknowledge that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now.” But where has Obama been on the Confederate flag issue in the first six years of his Presidency, while the twenty-one year old murderer and countless others have been inspired to commit atrocities against Afro-American human beings by reverence for that Confederate flag?!

Obama even told the truth about the historical role of such white supremacist terror as had occurred at Emanuel on June 17th. Obama said: “It was an act that drew on the long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress.” Then, after receiving applause for telling that truth, Obama flipped the script and said: “Oh, but God
works in mysterious ways. God has different ideas. He [the murderer] didn’t know he was being used by God.” Thus, with no explanation of why or how this time the terror wouldn’t be successful, Obama claimed that by “Amazing Grace” it would be so. His only “proof” is that a few Southern Republican Governors had now spoken out in favor of taking down the Confederate flag from some official places.

Obama, following the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church, preached the same even more clearly bankrupt message to the oppressed that he spoke as he took office over six years ago: “we are one.” He told the oppressed Afro-American people that they should just wait for God’s grace. That the murderous oppressors and the murdered oppressed are “all sinners.” And all receive unearned grace. That’s why this time y’all should stop protesting police brutality, stop building a movement for social and economic justice. It’s all going to work out all right this time. Trust me, preached Obama.

What an effective stooge for U.S. imperialism!

Reverend William Barber, North Carolina NAACP President, by contrast, pointed out that “The work of bringing down racism is not over when we bring down only this flag … As long as we pass voter suppression laws, unjust environmental laws, laws that underfund public education, and cause re-segregated, high-poverty schools, laws that block Medicaid expansion and a living wage, as long as we promote the racially applied death penalty and a broken criminal justice system, systemic racism still exists and continues to wave its ugly shadow over our body politic.” (“NC NAACP President Responds to Momentum Behind Removals of Confederate Flag,” 7-4-15 News Alert)

What is to be done to defend the
Afro-American people today?

Beyond the vision of Reverend Barber, the fight by any means necessary against police brutality needs to be sustained and intensified. This needs to become part of the struggle for Black Power. Black political and economic power needs to be organized, with the struggle for “Land and State Power in the Black Belt South” at its core. And the struggle for Black Power needs to be connected to the struggle for a Socialist USA and a Socialist World, a world where economic exploitation is replaced by cooperation and national oppression is replaced by the equality and mutual respect of all nations and peoples. Black Lives Matter! Latino Lives Matter! Arab Lives Matter! Workers Lives Matter! The Lives of the 99% Matter!

Workers of the World and
Oppressed Peoples Unite!

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Greek Citizens Fight for Justice

by CARL PAPPOS
“Our lives do not belong to the creditors!” cried Greek demonstrators in late June. (AFP) The demonstrators were telling their government and the world that they want no part of the austerity measures the IMF is trying to force on Greece. In simple terms they are saying if you foreclose on our house (Greece) we are staying right here. With the Greek government refusing the latest IMF offer, on June 29, 2015 the Dow Jones Industrial average lost about 2% or 350 points responding to this demand of the citizens of Greece.                                                                                                       

What is going on here! Are the citizens of Greece setting themselves up for an economic disaster?

No! Just the opposite. Since 2010 Greece has been in a battle with the big banks, à la International Monetary Fund(IMF) who want their money on the backs of the Greek people. Just like the infamous U.S. bank, insurance, and corporate bailout that took place on our backs, the 99%, here in the U.S.

With unemployment around 25% and the IMF asking the Greek government to cut pensions and other social services, the people by the 10’s of thousands are saying, NO!

The Guardian reports:

“Rallying in front of the Greek parliament on Monday night, supporters of the Syriza-led government of prime minister Alexis Tsipras demanded an end to the ‘economic asphyxia’ and ‘social catastrophe’ of austerity – and the return of dignity.”

“Today, in Syntagma, thousands of citizens responded to the ultimatums [made by creditors],” the statement said.

“People said a big and resounding ‘no’ to blackmail, terrorisation, threats internally and externally, and a big ‘yes’ to democracy, dignity, popular sovereignty, values that are the foundation of modern European civilisation.”

And further;

“‘The people of Greece have made many sacrifices. What interests me is not the euro but guaranteeing a dignified way of life for the next generations,’ 50-year-old Vanguelis Tseres, who has been unemployed since the start of the debt crisis in 2010, told AFP in Syntagma square in the capital.”

With the Greek people resisting the theft of all this easy money, the world’s largest gambling casino of the rich, the stock markets, are way down. 

This scenario happens here in the U.S. many times in response to good job growth and low unemployment.  Capitalism works on supply and demand, in opposition to socialism that works for the needs of the people.  So high employment is good for the workers and means higher wages and benefits and consequently lower profits for the rich.  While high unemployment results in cheap labor as workers compete to find a job and survive.  This is what internationally celebrated Afro-American writer, radio journalist and revolutionary activist Mumia Abu-Jamal is speaking of when he says the following in an interview: “… recently we heard about a bump on the Dow Jones average … people who are traders on Wall Street went into a fit because it was announced that something like 750,000 new jobs (were created) … that harms my stock average … there is something wrong then when people get jobs, it is bad news. … It’s very clear whose interests are reflected on Wall Street and whose interests are reflected on Main Street.”

U.S. workers need to unite with and support Greek workers and raise our own demands against the continued degradation and loss of our pensions, health care, wages, schools, etc. The rich get rich not by their hard work but by stealing the fruits of our hard work.

Victory to the Greek Workers and People!

Let’s Follow their Example —

Fight for Worker’s Democracy and Socialism in the USA!



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2015 GE Contract Negotiations
Race to the Bottom Gets More Fuel

by PAT KELLY

In late June a tentative agreement was reached between top company and union negotiators which affects workers at GE unionized plants. This agreement was a sellout, union busting deal that destroyed some of the most treasured benefits GE workers have gained over decades of class struggle.

Let’s start with retirees. This agreement cuts post 65 medical and prescription coverage for those retiring in January of next year, and leaves the door open to do the same to all retirees — those who are the most needy and live on fixed incomes; how disgusting and heartless. It should be said that GE Company is a global corporate juggernaut that made 16 billion dollars in profit last year. With such immense wealth GE can well afford retiree benefits.

Next is the attack on weekly payroll contributions for health care. The employee cost will increase by 46% over 4 years. Other concessions include a reduction in life insurance benefits and big increases in out of pocket cost for specialty drugs.

There were slight improvements particularly to pension benefits. But this was done to divide the older from younger workers. The wage package was another big attack. The union standard was percentage wage increases and C.O.L.A.’s (cost of living adjustment) based on the consumer price index (CPI) to protect workers’ pay against inflation. The new pro company offer replaced this with flat cents per hour wage and “COLA” increases, not connected to the CPI.

A proposal that is devastating for the union is the cynical “Ratification Bonus,” known as the “Rat Clause.” In locals that vote to accept the contract offer, members receive a $2,000 “bonus.” Individuals in locals that vote to reject the offer would not receive the bonus! What an insult! What a slap in the face, bribery as a contract offer. What a clever way to get union workers to pressure their union brothers and sisters to surrender their dignity! In Local 201, the Lynn, Massachusetts local, it is even more insidious. In the previous contract vote, Local 201, with its militant history dating back to the 1930’s CIO, had been the only major GE local that rejected the contract. This time, with the presence of the “Rat Clause,” if Local 201 members had again been the only major local to reject the contract, and the contract was ratified, each individual 201 member would have been out $2,000 dollars, without altering the outcome for all the GE workers!

Predictably, corrupt national union leaders who have no respect for themselves and even less respect for workers, did not seriously demand that the “Rat Clause” be removed. The top negotiating bodies led by the International Union of Electrical Workers* President Jim Clark voted unanimously to recommend acceptance. GE workers after being sold out, betrayed, and set up by their national leaders and most local leaders, and with a lack of resistance within their own ranks voted nationally to accept GE’s rotten offer by 83.5%.

The 16.5% who voted NO is a core group within the union to help build a fight against GE Company and to vote out pro company elements and rebuild a stronger union. Like one GE worker said “With a vote like that GE is going to think that they gave us too much.”

GE Company stands exposed as a ruthless, cold blooded, profit mad tyrant, with no sense of human decency or morality. That’s an important lesson to learn on the long road to justice and worker’s power.

We have nothing to lose but our chains.
*IUE is now a Division of the Communication Workers of America.


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 STILL STUMPED?
SEE BELOW FOR ANSWER TO MYSTERY QUOTE FROM TOP

102-year-old Ingeborg Rapoport was scheduled to receive a doctoral degree from the University of Hamburg’s medical school this June 9th. According to a detailed Wall Street Journal article, “by all available evidence [she would become] the oldest person to receive a doctoral degree.” (“Reversing a Nazi Ban, at Age 102,” WSJ, May 15, 2015)  Her modest statement underscored the fact that she had been deprived of that degree for seventy-seven years!

INGEBORG
In 1938, at the same university, 25 year old Ingeborg Sylim had presented her doctoral thesis on diphtheria, then a leading cause of childhood deaths in both Europe and the USA. However, the fact that her mother was Jewish rendered Ingeborg a “first degree crossbreed” under the Nazi Regime. On this basis she was blocked from taking the oral examination and was ineligible for academic advancement. “The Berlin authorities cited ‘racial reasons’ for the ban,” as the WSJ article points out. “Her treatment was hardly unique: Thousands of ‘non-Aryan’ students and professors were pushed out of universities in Hitler’s Third Reich, and many died in death camps.” (ibid.)

Ingeborg soon emigrated to the USA, penniless and alone, but “had great luck — and perhaps some tenacity,” as she again modestly put it. She applied to 48 medical schools in the USA and was accepted by just one. (Was this a reflection of widespread U.S. anti-Semitism?) At a Cincinnati hospital in her first job as an M.D. in 1944, she met and married Austrian-Jewish physician and biochemist, Samuel Rapoport. The couple flourished. Samuel received a Certificate of Merit from President Harry Truman for his work on blood conservation and Ingeborg rose quickly to head the hospital’s pediatric polyclinic. They also had three children and a fourth on the way by 1950.

At that point, Samuel stayed in Zurich after a professional conference and was joined in Europe by Ingaborg and the children. Evidently, feeling the heat from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), especially given their sympathies with the persecuted U.S. Communist Party, and no doubt, being able to detect the stench of fascism with the rising McCarthyism in the USA, the Rapoport family migrated to East Germany. There, according to the WSJ article, “Mr. Rapoport got his own biochemical institute … [and] Ms. Rapoport founded the first neonatology clinic in either Germany* … and their children flourished.” 

Still, even with her optimistic outlook on her life, Ingeborg Rapoport continued to feel that she had been wronged with regard to her Doctorate Degree in Nazi Germany. She did not want an honorary degree but the real doctorate that had been denied her. Recently, with the aid of her Harvard Medical School Professor son Tom, and his connections in the University of Hamburg, they arranged with the current dean of the University of Hamburg’s medical faculty for her to have a legal pathway to her doctorate. She then took her oral exams after studying up on the past seven decades of diphtheria scientific advances. And this led to her world record accomplishment.

—the Editor
P.S. One lesson of this story about the Rapoport Family and its escape from the USA, during
the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950’s, is what a loss for this society the leave-taking of such marvelous people was for those of us who remain here still and for those who have had to confront the U.S. Empire everywhere.
_____________________
*Given the importance of neo-natal care for new infants and their mothers, it is noteworthy that the so-called “backward” but socialist East Germany had a clinic devoted to this important healthcare area before the heavily U.S.-subsidized “advanced” but capitalist West Germany.


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A Song of Freedom

“Lift Ev’ry Voice” versus “Amazing Grace”

by ROSE BROWN

On Friday, June 26, 2015, Clementa Pinckney, South Carolina State Senator and Reverend of the Charleston, South Carolina Mother Emanuel AME Church, was laid to rest. He was one of the victims of the right-wing terrorist murder by a young white supremacist of nine innocent Afro-American parishioners who had gathered for Bible Study the previous Wednesday evening, June 17. President Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the USA, presented the eulogy at Senator Pinckney’s funeral service. The anchor of President Obama’s eulogy was the popular church hymn “Amazing Grace.”

“Amazing Grace” was written by former eighteenth century British slave trader, John Newton. When Newton wrote “Amazing Grace,” a significant part of what he was writing about was his work as a slave trader which he had taken up in his father’s footsteps but abandoned later in life when he became an Abolitionist. By almost any moral or religious standard in the twenty-first century, Newton had been a terrible sinner against his fellow humankind, a “wretch” who “once was lost but now” was “found,” “Was blind, but now” could “see.” 

How could Obama compare the oppressed Afro-American masses whose church had just been violated, who had been brutally victimized once again, to this former slave trader? Because Obama serves the interests of the Wall Street rich. He is the leader of the number one terrorist country of the world. It serves U.S. imperialism to bury the fundamental distinction between the oppressed and the oppressors of the world, a distinction which Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin referred to as “the essence of imperialism.”

Obama’s eulogy, his repeated references to the “grace of God” and his leading in the singing of “Amazing Grace” equate the murderer and the centuries of oppressors of the Afro-American masses with the oppressed masses themselves who have suffered mightily, and have stood up against, opposed, and resisted such oppression. The message of Obama’s eulogy to the Afro-American masses and to all freedom loving people is to wait on (pray for) the “grace” of God, to unite with our enemies and to “forgive and forget” the outrages committed against us. In spite of his long overdue support for the demand to take down the Confederate flag of slavery, Obama’s basic message is to support the status quo.

Let’s contrast the words and message of “Amazing Grace” with another religious anthem, widely considered the Afro-American national anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was written by James Weldon Johnson, a novelist and poet, a diplomat and teacher, and the first Black executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the beginning of the twentieth century. This anthem which was set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, calls on the Afro-American masses to “march on till victory is won.” While referring to the strength of the “faith” that the “dark past has taught us” and “hope that the present has brought us,” there is no call for forgiveness of the enemies of the people. There is no call for unity with them. The anthem is a clear call for unity of the Afro-American masses (Lift every voice) in the struggle for “Liberty.” It is a religious song that calls on the Afro-American people to stand “True to our God” but the God portrayed by Johnson, in contrast to that of Newton, is a God of the “rising sun of our new day” of liberty for those who have been oppressed.



Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing
by James Weldon Johnson

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

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Greetings — to the Million People’s March Against Police
                 Brutality, Racial Injustice and Economic Inequality!

by RAY LIGHT

On behalf of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA, an endorser of the March, I congratulate those of you who are present today to oppose police brutality and the whole state apparatus of United States imperialism. The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) has earned its sponsorship of this important protest. It is an organization whose long history of struggle against police brutality in the NY-NJ area places it in a good position to try to galvanize the mass motion that arose in Ferguson, MO and has reached its zenith thus far in Baltimore, MD.
 
Today, as the world capitalist economic crisis is hastening the end of U.S. imperialist hegemony, the U.S. Empire in decline is attempting to use state terror to keep the working class and oppressed peoples within the U.S. multinational state, and especially the Afro-American people, as well as the working people of the rest of the world, in a position of bondage so that Wall Street and finance capital can continue to reap super-profits at our expense and resist the challenges to its hegemony from China, the European Union, etc.

Increasingly, the same terror that the Bush and Obama Regimes have inflicted on the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa is being meted out to us. It is the U.S. Empire’s war at home that is the companion to the U.S. Empire’s war abroad. Black Lives Matter, Latino Lives Matter, Arab Lives Matter, Workers’ lives matter, the lives of the 99% matter! And no mere dialogue with the local police department can alter the systemic violence which these armed servants of Wall Street, of big business, of those “too big to fail” inflict upon us. It is their very reason for being.

The growth of the police state terror in the USA is connected to the political-economy of U.S. imperialism.  Recognition of this fact will provide us with the necessary allies among the international working class and the oppressed peoples, and even temporary allies among other classes and countries, with which we can meet and defeat U.S. imperialism.

Workers of the World and
Oppressed Peoples Unite!
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