We salute Abner Louima for standing up to fight the horrendous brutality that New York cops inflicted upon him. We call on all working people to join our Haitian brothers and sisters on Friday, August 29, to march in New York City in the Day of Outrage Against Police Brutality, demanding "Justice for Abner Louima!" We will use our campaign to press for jailing all the cops involved in Louima's torture and beating and all those who allowed it to take place. They must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Workers of oppressed nationalities and immigrants are special targets of cops in a social system that profits from fostering racism and anti-immigrant hostility to maintain layers of workers in pariah status. These divisions among workers are perpetuated and used by the employers to make money for themselves and their class. In capitalist society wages are set from the bottom up, not from the top down. By dehumanizing Haitians, Mexicans, and other workers, the rulers try to justify paying many of them less, forcing them to work in inhuman working conditions, and slashing their social benefits faster than other workers. In this way the bosses hurt the entire working class. Cop brutality and racism is an integral part of this picture. Every time cops lift a club against a worker, they deal a blow to all workers.

The recent victorious strike by the Teamsters against UPS showed the way forward in fighting divisions among working people. The strikers surprised the bosses by achieving unity between full-time and part-time workers, new hires and veterans, and UPS employees and other workers sharing the Teamsters pension plan. In that strike workers took the moral high ground and "we" prevailed over "me." This was the biggest gain for all working people.

During their walkout, many Teamsters members got a taste of police brutality themselves, some for the first time. Dozens were attacked by the cops and arrested as they tried to stop management from doing struck work by driving UPS trucks. As workers use the strike weapon more and wage increasingly effective actions to demand our rights, the police will be a major force for strikebreaking, as they have historically.

This role of the police becomes more apparent to millions in a period when social polarization sharpens, as the employers use the cops and hired thugs to run union organizers off the fields and plants and counterpunch every time working people stand up to defend their class interests. The heinous torture of Louima touched a raw nerve among millions and can help many to realize that in this society a cop, is a cop, is a cop.

That's why New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his Democratic Party opponents have been working overtime to perpetuate the myth that what happened in the 70th Precinct is once again an aberration, an exception. That's why Giuliani praised repeatedly some of the cops who allegedly broke the "blue wall of silence."

The Democratic and Republican politicians all talk of reforming the police. But the police cannot be reformed. Their job is to "serve and protect" the interests of the ruling rich against the working class. They are emboldened to carry out increasingly vicious acts of brutality by the relentless assault of the rulers against the living standards and rights of workers as their economic system slides deeper into depression.

Regardless of their class origin before joining the police, cops have nothing to do with the working class. Their fraternal associations, often called "police unions," have nothing to do with the trade union movement either. These organizations are breeding grounds for fascist and vigilante elements. From the moment they wear the badge, cops are inculcated in the contempt the rulers reserve for workers, and their job is to terrorize and intimidate working people day-in and day-out. There are no "bad" or "good" apples among the police. Cop units are bodies of armed men, comprised in their entirety of rotten tools of repression against society's dispossessed and exploited - the vast majority.

Capitalist politicians call for new investigations of the police and better civilian review boards. There have been enough investigations - all showing a pattern of brutality and cops raking in money from payoffs, including from drug trafficking that is a lucrative part of big business in this country. Civilian review boards around the country are usually used as another institution to block justice for working people. Such schemes are designed to defuse demands for prosecuting cop brutality and minimize punishment for guilty cops.

Workers need to rely on our own power and ally with other exploited producers - not promises from the Democratic and Republican politicians. Mobilizations such as those that have already taken place are one way to be effective in confronting cop brutality. They are an opportunity for fighters on different fronts of the same war to join forces - from trade unionists on strike to those standing up against racist attacks and police brutality.

In this struggle, many workers and youth will become convinced that the only way to eventually stop cop brutality is to get rid of the system that perpetuates it and join the fight to replace capitalist rule with a society that puts human needs before profits - a socialist society.

As unionists, we pledge to fight for the trade unions to take on such questions as police brutality. It is by fighting for the needs of all workers and working farmers that the unions can be transformed into instruments of revolutionary struggle and lead a powerful movement that will make defending the most exploited and oppressed layers of the working class a top priority.

All workers have a stake in demanding "STOP POLICE BRUTALITY. JAIL THE GUILTY COPS NOW!"  
 
 
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