Vol. 71/No. 43      November 19, 2007

The assaults and the need to fight them were taken up at a Militant Labor Forum held here October 19.

Victor Wong, executive director of the CCNC, and John Steele, a retired meatpacking worker and member of the Communist League, were the panelists.

Wong outlined six separate incidents that have taken place over the past several months. In two cases of what racists call “nipper tipping,” Asians were thrown off bridges while fishing. A middle-aged Asian couple had their car window smashed in. In yet another case, racists wielding baseball bats and axes drove off Asian fishermen.

“What was troubling to us was that the York Regional police initially told the media that the incidents had no racial basis,” Wong said. “We called on the police to begin a full investigation and bring in hate crimes experts.”

Steele said these assaults take place in an atmosphere created by the broader anti-China and anti-Asian propaganda promoted by the capitalist rulers of Canada as a weapon in their trade competition. “Racism is rooted in the political economy of the system we live under—capitalism,” he said. It is a tool used to drive down the wages of those targeted by racism in order to generate superprofits and to weaken and divide the working class as a whole.

Steele reviewed high points in the U.S. Black rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s, the successful battle to overthrow apartheid in South Africa, and the socialist revolution in Cuba that has laid the basis for eventually eliminating racism once and for all.

Steele noted that he had been involved in a strike at Quality Meat Packers in 2004 that broke down anti-Chinese stereotypes held by some workers, because Chinese workers proved to be among the best fighters. The huge mobilizations by undocumented Latino workers in the United States demanding legalization of their status and the protests against the unfair treatment of six Black youths in Jena, Louisiana, “show that the route of mass mobilization strengthens our confidence in our ability to fight racism,” Steele said.

In the discussion period, some members of the audience pointed out that “hate crimes” laws can give the capitalist government a tool to use as they see fit to victimize working people.  
 
 
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