Martin Luther King Commemorations Take Place Amid Government Shutdown and Worsening Capitalist Crisis

“….Yet the struggle continues on several fronts. There is the escalating intolerance towards institutional discrimination and racist violence from the state. Labor activists are demanding a fair and living wage in the most marginalized sectors of the proletariat. In Los Angeles, 32,000 educators went out on strike on January 14 demanding higher wages, smaller class sizes and the overall improvement of working conditions.

Nevertheless, there is the need for independent political organization and action which unites the workers and oppressed into a fighting revolutionary party. This party must advance the cause for a socialist society where the capitalist relations of production are overthrown and equality and self-determination becomes embedded in the character of the state.

Detroit will once again be a center for commemorations of Dr. King and the civil rights struggle drawing upon the actual social justice and antiwar legacy of the 1960s. The 16^th Annual MLK Day Rally & March will be held outside of downtown this year in the North End section of a majority African American municipality which has been a focal point for failed neo-liberal policies on a domestic level resulting in massive dislocation through home foreclosures, water shutoffs, the destruction of public education and the impoverishment of the masses. (See this)….”