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Workers’ Rally Says Mass Action Needed to Fight White Supremacy

Photo credit: Fernando Lopez
By Jennifer Lin

On Sunday, August 11, Take ‘Em Down Nola hosted a “Rally to Unite and Fight Back Against White Supremacy” in response to recent white supremacist attacks waged by ICE and the El Paso, TX shooter. Several hundred people gathered in front of Jackson Square to hear community members speak, including representatives from the New Orleans People’s Assembly, New Orleans Workers Group, the Hospitality Workers Alliance, Congreso de Jornaleros/Congress of Day Laborers, New Orleans Renters Union, and the American Federation of Government Employees.

The ICE raids in Mississippi and the massacre in El Paso are violent expressions of the white supremacist ideology that the U.S. was founded upon. From the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans to the for-profit imprisonment of immigrants and people of color, racial hatred continues to be a tool used by the rich, mostly white ruling class to keep workers and oppressed people divided. When the people are divided, they cannot effectively challenge the institutions that oppress them.

Ashlee Pintos, a member of the Hospitality Workers Alliance and the New Orleans Workers Group, spoke to the importance of showing solidarity for migrant workers who are at risk of being deported the moment they step foot on U.S. soil: “We have to build up our communities so that we can actually protect our community members.” Her words were echoed by Yolanda, a member of Congreso, who denounced the El Paso shooter for claiming that America was being threatened by the “Hispanic invasion.” She called the ICE raids the “true invasion,’’ emphasizing the need for solidarity with migrant workers.

Jessie, a resident of Gordon Plaza, warned the crowd of the extent to which white supremacy has been internalized and institutionalized in New Orleans. Speaking of Mayor Cantrell, who had refused to acknowledge the residents of Gordon Plaza until recently, he said, “The white supremacists control the Black puppets…If we had been white, we would have been relocated.” The residents of Gordon Plaza have been fighting for over 30 years to be relocated off of a toxic landfill. The city has always had more than enough money to provide the residents with a fully funded relocation; however, 63% of the city budget continues to be allocated towards jails and the police, who uphold white supremacy and capitalism.

White workers must also organize to educate one another and dispel the propaganda that continues to fuel racism in the U.S. As Gregory, a member of the New Orleans Workers Group put it, “We have to build a movement that can bring white workers into the struggle as well, along with workers of color, who are sick and tired of this brutal system, who are sick and tired of being murdered in the streets by crooked, racist cops…We have to stand united.”

Our political power lies in our ability to organize against our oppressors. If we want to see a better world, we must actively create that world by organizing in our communities and by educating ourselves and others. We must collectively resist all forms of oppression: capitalism, racism, sexism, imperialism, and attacks against LGBTQ people. Only then can we begin to build a world in which people are truly free.

Photo credit: Fernando Lopez
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Mass Shootings Are Part and Parcel of US Political Culture

By Malcolm Suber

“Violence is as American as cherry pie.” These words were first spoken in 1967 by H. Rap Brown (now Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), a Black revolutionary leader of the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC). A reporter had asked whether Brown would renounce calls for violent resistance to the oppression of Black people. He replied that the U.S. white ruling class has always embraced violence against those whom they want to control. They have no right to request from the oppressed that which they will not renounce for themselves.

The entire settler state created by European colonizers was founded on the violent taking of indigenous lands and the kidnapping and forced enslavement of Africans.

Throughout its history, the U.S. ruling class has been determined to wipe out indigenous peoples through genocide. Following the Civil War, to maintain the now-freed Black workforce as cheap, exploitable laborers, the ruling class imposed over 150 years of racist tyranny through Klan terror, public lynchings, and racist pogroms such as those in Rosewood, FL and Tulsa, OK. To this day, white supremacist terrorists serve as an auxiliary to police forces, from the FBI down to the local cops. The USA has created the world’s largest police and prison system, primarily to contain and control its Black, formerly enslaved population as well as other non- whites and poor people within its borders.

Despite all the posturing by Republican and Democratic party spokespeople, there is no admission of the violent nature of the U.S. state or criticism of the murderous history of white supremacist rule.

The U.S. has a 500-year history of using mass killings as way to enforce its will on other countries and peoples. The crocodile tears now being shed by the white supremacist ruling class over the mass shootings in Gilroy, CA, El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH are just a cover to hide this history. Despite all the posturing by Republican and Democratic party spokespeople, there is no admission of the violent nature of the U.S. state or criticism of the murderous history of white supremacist rule.

The ruling class media and leaders of the twin parties of capitalist rule have finally had to call the armed white nationalist right wing “terrorists.” These latest atrocities have even compelled white supremacist-in-chief Donald Trump to verbally condemn “racism, bigotry and white supremacy.” However, U.S. police forces from the FBI on down are reluctant to attack their auxiliary forces. That is not the enemy they joined the police force to subdue. Their racism forces them to identify with fascist elements.

The military budget consumes 60% of all U.S. tax dollars. These funds are transferred to the billionaire owners of Pentagon-contracted companies that comprise the Military Industrial Complex. Domestically, the white supremacist rulers allow the mass distribution of weapons to right-wing armed white supremacists as well as urban gangs. These urban gangs engage in fratricide that helps to create a lack of trust among the working class masses.

The U.S. is the world’s largest arms dealer. It forces its junior partners to purchase its weapons and disperses millions of weapons and ammunition to right-wing governments and reactionary fascist movements all over the world. As a result, from Venezuela to Yemen, thousands of innocent people die daily.

The intent of the U.S. ruling class is to keep the multi-national working class divided. Our task as class-conscious freedom fighters is to uproot these white supremacist poisonous weeds that have been and are presently being sown by the U.S. ruling class. We must overcome their efforts to divide us and unite to overthrow the capitalists and their state.