Capitalism is Killing Us. We Must Fight Back.
This past week cops murdered Corey Ruiz in Madison, Wisconsin, and Anthoneil Williams II, a 17-year-old Black youth in Austin, Texas. Ruiz was an unhoused poet and a father. Williams likely had mental health issues that led to his death. In both cases, the capitalist system instead of helping them live, killed them.
These murders are part of a systemic assault by the U.S. capitalist state on the poor, the working-class, the oppressed and the most vulnerable. Two weeks before, , ICE agents savagely killed Lorenzo Salgardo Araujo in Houston, a 52-year-old Mexican American worker who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, ICE agents shot and killed Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in his car. He left behind a three-year-old daughter.
As the U.S. continues its wars abroad, it also continues its war on the people at home. One key reason is that U.S. capitalism is in crisis. It cannot feed, house or sustain the people trapped in the system. It scapegoats immigrants, the working class and the poor for these failures. Then kills them.
Above the level of the streets the U.S. state is raining down legal violence on those who attempt to speak out against it. In Texas, activists known as the Prairieland Defendants, have received federal prison sentences of 30 to 100 years for opposing ICE raids. In Minneapolis, 15 people have been charged with felony crimes for standing up to the U.S. state’s military occupation of that city. In Michigan, eight activists, many of them students, are facing federal criminal charges for their open support of Palestine and their protest of Israel’s genocide. We need a broad international defense organization, spearheaded by organized labor, to come to the aid of the Prairieland Defendants, the Minnesota 15, the Michigan 8 and all those facing repression from the capitalist system.
The U.S. ruling class seeks to strangle any and all opposition to its crimes against the people. The MAGA regime’s authoritarian character continues to express itself as an attack on democratic rights and an assault on freedom of political expression and free speech.
Our response must be mass organizing as a class. Only a strong and unified working-class movement will be able to slow or stop these assaults on the people. Towards that goal we must prioritize several ideas and campaigns.
First, we must demand ICE out of all communities. The Minneapolis rebellion of January this year was successful as a mass mobilization forcing the administration to retreat from its aggressive deployment of ICE agents. We should revive the tactics and build on the strategies of the January 23rd mass strike and march in Minneapolis. Workers should be encouraged to stay home from work to join protests against ICE. Schools should be encouraged to shut down to join protests. Local assemblies of workers, students and youth can be used to organize and scale up protests.
Second, we must renew the call to abolish the police. A step towards a liberated society is the necessary elimination of the armed bodies of men who protect the state’s interest. The police protect private property, not people. They are the guardians of the capitalist system. We can only free ourselves from the capitalist system by creating a world without police.
The killings in Texas, Maine, and Wisconsin are an attack on all of us. No one is going to save us but ourselves.
Third, we must build and join protests to defend immigrants and migrants. On August 8th a National Day of Action will take place calling for the closure of Delaney Hall in New Jersey and for the shutdown of all detention facilities. We call on people everywhere to join these protests wherever they are.
Fourth, we must motivate people everywhere to join the socialist movement and socialist organizations. Socialist Horizon believes that only a strong, independent party for the working class can advance the full interests of the working class. The best response to a system that kills us is to shut down that system. We must use our most valuable tool—the power of the workers—to build an organization that can achieve that goal.
The killings in Texas, Maine, and Wisconsin are an attack on all of us. No one is going to save us but ourselves.
To learn more or join Socialist Horizon contact us here: https://socialisthorizon.org/
