The cameraphone videos which have surfaced on
YouTube seem like a scene out of some futuristic movie. But the cold-blooded murder is all-too real, and is one more tragic body in the capitalist carnage that is already hundreds of years old.
Police brutality and racism are just as much parts
of capitalism as the real estate brutality that we are all facing. The ruthlessness and seeming irrationality of the BART murder is no different that that of
a broker who evicts a family that can't pay their mortgage. Capitalism
is
the only social system that sees overproduction as a problem -- when
too many people have homes, they must be evicted until houses become profitable again. It is the same with us the workers, who have to
sell our labor to live and can only live as long as we can sell our labor. Capitalism has always seen us, not as human beings, but just as one
more thing to be bought and sold. This is why it has been starving the workers, especially those from ethnic minorities, in all the
industrial cities of America for the last thirty years. It is the same kind of
"market adjustment" that is happening with houses right now. They are both done with the same ruthlessness and they both require armed
thugs called police.
The capitalist media will claim that this is a case
of particularly bad cops, just as they claim that the economic crisis comes from bad
bankers. But bad cops and bad bankers will always exist as long as there are
cops and bankers, and there will always be cops and bankers as long as we allow ourselves to be robbed at work, as long as those who rob us
need men in ties to invest their stolen wealth and thugs to protect it.
Also, since our exploiters are only a tiny minority of society, they must divide up the majority. In the US, this , this means racism first and foremost. As Malcolm X said, "You can;'t have capitalism without
racism."
To get rid of a system that relies on murderers, the
workers of Oakland and the entire world have to develop a revolutionary form of
unionism, one that recognizes the inherent opposition between workers and
bosses and which wants to end exploitation. The Oakland General Strike of
1946, and the workers occupation of Republic Windows in 2008 both give us a glimpse of how powerful we really are.
We want to express our deepest condolences to the
family and friends of Oscar Grant, and on the issue of this police execution, we call for
the immediate arrest of the police involved on charges of first-degree murder.
Couriers Launch Campaign to Improve Conditions Industry-Wide
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