SAN FRANCISCO: END RACIST COP TERROR -JULY 16 MUNI SHUT DOWN
Don’t let Denika Chatman Stand Alone! Organize Political Strikes Against Police Killings!
For labor Black and Brown to: “Shut Down MUNI on July 16, 2012!”
JUSTICE FOR RAHEIM BROWN JR. COPS OUT OF SCHOOLS
Last year, on July 16, 2011 the unarmed Kenneth Harding Jr., 19, was shot in the back, by the SFPD, for allegedly not paying the $2.00 fare on the MUNI “T” line. This murder enraged the Black and Brown communities beleaguered by unending racist cop and vigilante murders, like those of Oscar Grant, Raheim Brown Jr., Luther Brown, James Rivera and now Trayvon Martin, Alan Blueford and Derrick Gaines!
On the 1 year anniversary of Kenneth Harding Jr.’s murder by SFPD, Ms. Denika Chatman, mother of Kenneth Harding Jr., is demanding Justice! She has issued a call to all decent people in the Bay Area, especially the Black and Brown communities and trade unionists working in transit to Shut Down MUNI on July 16, 2012! She proposes this in honor and memory of her son, Kenneth Harding Jr., and for all victims of police violence and murder. The enforcement of austerity on the working class and poor persists internationally as the capitalists seek to boost their profits. The violence of the state against our youth is how the ruling class acts to prevent labor, Black and Brown awakening and unity. The capitalist class is afraid of multi-racial working class unity in action for good reason!
To survive labor must organize alongside the terrorized Brown and Black communities, achieve political independence from the bosses twin capitalist parties and develop a transitional program to help the masses progress from where we find ourselves now to the logic of smashing the capitalist state through the building of our own working class democratic organizations. To be successful we must unite rank and file workers by building class struggle caucuses in our unions which demand the initiation of anti-racist self-defense and strike actions! We need to build action committees, factory committees, workers and oppressed peoples’ local, regional, national and international assemblies to organize our own self defense which will challenge the controlling power of the 1%. Self organization, indefinite general strikes and insurrection are all tools the working class will need to employ to end racist capitalism. Multi-racial class unity in action is the glue that builds our movement. To unite the entire class around a winning program we need to build a revolutionary workers party based on the method of the 1938 Transitional Program of the 4th International.
We support Ms. Chatman’s call for a MUNI shut down on July 16, as well as the Rivera family call for a Stockton General Strike (this past May). These ambitious endeavors, which, without the participation of organized labor, will at best be exemplary community protests uniting the best elements of the working class in anti-racist action. These actions point the way toward the community-labor, inter-union, multi-racial organizing needed to initiate anti-racist action and effective political strikes.
Workers and anti-racist militants who have the wisdom, passion and perseverance to initiate multi-racial class struggle are needed to bring their unions and organizations into the fight against state repression. Come out from the 13th to the 16th and join supporters of the Kenneth Harding Jr. Foundation help to expose the bosses racist cop terror, unite with the families of the victims!
Ms. Chatman’s sentiment is not hers alone! Other families are calling for political strikes against racist police violence and killings! James Rivera’s family, in Stockton called for a “May 31st General Strike demanding: No Work, No Schools, Shut it Down!” Rather than a strike a militant rally was held.
Networking of the families of victims of racist state and vigilante murder is essential and building. But the victims’ families can not win justice alone! The weight of organized labor arm in arm with the Black and Brown communities is required to end racist vigilante and cop terror/murder. Only by united action can labor, Black and Brown people defeat the terrorism capitalism uses to demobilize us!
The most committed anti-racist fighters in Bay Area labor alongside the youth from the Brown and Black communities were joined by the ILWU local 10 on Oct. 23rd, 2010 to demand “Jail Killer Cops!” This “political strike” (actually an exemplary political gathering held during an ILWU monthly safety meeting day) is an example of the labor, Black & Brown power we need to build upon! Rather than adopting the families of the victims as, “labors own,” just as our motto “AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!” demands, the class collaborationist labor fakers who have captured our unions run from the families of the murdered Black and Brown youth. It is against the interests of labor to ignore the victims of racist capitalism’s state terror. Ignoring our class duty to the most oppressed perpetuates a slave mentality that arrests the development of class unity and class consciousness.
Don’t let Ms. Chatman stand alone! Convene an emergency meeting of your organization to build support for the MUNI shutdown on July 16, 2012, show this: http://sfbayview.com/2011/why-should-you-die-for-a-transfer/
Defend Fly Benzo Bayview/Hunter Point persecuted community activist and leader! Hands off Sean Gillis who exposed the Oakland EMT for failure to investigate the withholding of medical treatment for Oscar Grant! Rehire Dorian Maxwell who blew the whistle on MUNI unsafe conditions.
Develop transitional demands that link immediate needs to the logic of a workers government:
- Cops off public transit! Cops out of schools! End stop and frisk nationwide!
- Form up labor Black & Brown defense guards at our union halls and in our communities to defend our communities from racist killer cops, vigilantes, scabs, union-busters, KKK and neo-Nazi’s.
- Establish labor Black & Brown tribunals to arrest and try killer cops, vigilantes, scabs, union-busters, KKK and neo-Nazi’s.
- Demand labor federations form up unions of the unemployed and precarious workers!
- Free Public transit for youth and unemployed.
- End school closures! End charter schools and university privatization! Nationalize private educational institutions run all education under student, parent, teacher, worker’s control!
- Free education from day care to university level. Open admissions and free tuition!
- Jobs for all at union rate! Share the work! 30 hours work for 40 hours pay! For a sliding scale of wages & prices–abolish poverty! Build a general strike movement prepare the indefinite General Strike!
HWRS (EC) June 20, 2012
The transitional demands in the above leaflet were offered at the June19th Ad Hoc MUNI SHUT DOWN Committee meeting for inclusion on the committees leaflet. The emergent inside/outside faction of the HWRS objected to them for being too long, being a laundry list and for being the program of a party not appropriate for an Ad Hoc Committee. Members of Labor Black and Brown suggested they could be used in an issue of THE EXPROPRIATOR. The committee’s meeting on 6/19 concluded without a group leaflet being agreed upon. For lack of a committee leaflet the following leaflet was issued on 6/20/12 by the HWRS(EC). The so-called laundry list of demands were ultimately adopted by Kenneth Harding Jr.’s Mother and by vote of the next Ad Hoc committee meeting where their inclusion on one of the three leaflets sanctioned and issued by the committee. HWRS(EC) released this leaflet in its own name and distributed it at the Lakeview school occupation march, the Gay Pride march, at Mime Troupe shows and at bus and train stops. The final leaflet issued In the name of the committee produced by LB&B& the inside/outside faction included the slogan “Free transit for youth” & “End Stop and Frisk” despite their objection to those demands at the July 19th meeting. In an ultra-left bout of sloganeering they advanced the slogan “Labor Black & Brown-Drive the cops out of Town” while opposing the call to organize unions of the unemployed and the development of self defense guards in the union halls. This leaflet included information on the four days of actions for Kenneth Harding Jr. as well as the July 6th action for Raheim Brown as well as organizing tools (removed for this post event post.)
