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Vol. 74/No. 28      July 26, 2010

 
Fight against police brutality
(editorial)
 
Workers are living through the initial stages of an economic depression that is already straining living conditions for hundreds of millions of toilers worldwide. Combined with spreading wars abroad, and attacks on constitutional rights at home, working people today are facing a crisis that few have seen in their lifetimes. More and more workers are being forced to confront the need to act as a class in order to do anything effective to fight back.

Over the past two weeks, the Militant has written about the killings by police of workers who are Black in Oakland, California, and Miami. As we go to press news reports indicate federal prosecutors have finally issued indictments against four cops in New Orleans for killing and covering up the deaths of two Black men in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These few examples of police brutality demonstrate how much the capitalist rulers rely on their repressive apparatus to keep workers in their place, to keep us fearful of fighting back. That is why it is so significant that the cop who killed Oscar Grant, a young Black worker in Oakland, was brought to trial, convicted, and will likely see jail time. It is the first time that an on-duty cop in the Bay Area of California has been prosecuted for murder.

Socialist candidates across the country call for the arrest, prosecution, and punishment of cops who brutalize and kill working people. They call on all workers to join the protests in Black communities and elsewhere against the violence of the law-and-order representatives of the capitalist state who act as judge, jury, jailers, and even executioners.

At the same time socialists explain the fight against police brutality is part of a broader response that is needed today along a revolutionary road to power by the working class—the only way to put an end for all time to the exploitation of working people by the capitalist rulers and the brutalization of workers by their police that goes along with it.

To get there, workers need to begin organizing independent of—and against—the Democratic and Republican parties, who are the political representatives of the capitalist oppressors. We need to fight to build a labor party based on the trade unions, the most basic organizations workers have to defend themselves and organize working-class solidarity.
 
 
Related articles:
Miami meeting hears protests over killing of Black man by cop
1,000 protest in Oakland after Grant trial
Socialist candidate: Cops serve capitalists’ interests  
 
 
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