By Stephen Milles, November 2022
Whatever happens in the midterm elections, a mudslide of racist and bigoted filth is pouring down from the heights of capitalist society. Teaching Black history is under attack by labeling it Critical Race Theory.
Using an increase in street crime — the result of a massive increase in poverty and homelessness — politicians are encouraging more police brutality and killings.
A special target has been transgender people, particularly transgender youth. The laws passed in Florida forbidding transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming care guarantee more deaths.
This wholesale hate campaign is the reaction of banksters and billionaires to the Black Lives Matter movement, the largest series of protests in U.S. history.
The 26 million people who took to the streets in 2020 forced the ruling class to discuss the deadly racist violence of the police. The conviction of the Minneapolis cops who killed George Floyd was one of the few actual concessions made to oppressed people.
It was only because of an uprising in Minneapolis that any justice was administered to these killers in uniform. It took a mobilization in Georgia to send the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery to jail.
Now, as reflected in the Wall Street Journal, most capitalists want to take back the primarily verbal concessions that were made concerning police violence.
They don’t want their politicians to kneel in imitation of the courageous Colin Kaepernick. Billionaires want their elected flunkies to kneel before them. None of the football clubs’ super-rich owners are willing to hire Colin Kaepernick….
For millions of people, the 2020 elections represented a break with more than 40 years of reaction and increased racism. But President Biden has given little in the way of help to poor and working people.
The White House and Congress can find $70 billion for the war against Russia, yet it can’t house the homeless. Inflation is cutting families’ income while corporations declare record profits. People line up at food banks.
Reactionary and bigoted politicians feed off this increased misery. The only way forward is more struggle in the streets and workplaces.
Capitalists want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while jacking up the retirement age to 70. We won’t let them!
The future can be seen in thousands of railroad workers who’ve had enough and may go on strike. As dangerous as the election of Trump-supporting candidates are, the future is more struggle.
Reprinted from Struggle-LaLucha newspaper
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 