APPLE PIE AND AMERICAN VIOLENCE . . . . . . . . Statement from LRNA . . . . . . .
LRNA Responds to Breaking News
APPLE PIE AND AMERICAN VIOLENCE
Statement from LRNA
Since 2022 America has experienced over 190 mass shootings defined as four or more persons injured by intentional violence. The mass murder in Buffalo, New York is the latest, and once again the nation is in shock. There is a pattern to these slaughters that makes us all speechless. Remember the man who drove across several state lines to murder Hispanics in El Paso? A different man opened fire at a Milwaukee Sikh house of worship thinking they were Muslim. Another went to the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina where he took the lives of Black people having Bible study. Yet another went to a Synagogue and shot worshipers, while another went to a nightclub and killed LBGTQ+ patrons. MADNESS…
As the nation adds more people of color, this is distorted into a threat on social media where ‘white people will lose their control’ over all aspects of governing. A few believers of this poisonous ideology are motivated to KILL innocent people to maintain a grip on what they perceive as their privilege. This so-called “great replacement” ideology was given voice by President Trump in his January 6 address to the capital rioters, by the alt-right marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in the Buffalo murderer’s written manifesto. MADNESS…
These hateful ideas are deftly promoted by those corporate powers skilled in all ways that divide working people, so we won’t see them as the demons they are. We are in a ‘fish bowl’ forced to compete for thimblefuls of fish food that are tossed to us while we fight each other for these crumbs so we can live. Mothers can’t find baby formula…families can’t find affordable housing…no one can pay rising gas prices…soon, one egg will cost $1.00 or $12 for a dozen. MADNESS…
The 18-year-old in New York was turned into a monster after years of ugly talk, lies, and repeated messages of hate. He may have been the only shooter that day, but his crime was aided and abetted by others who worked hard to make him the newest ‘poster child’ for violence based on color or ethnicity or because of reasons that are absurd. In 1st and 2nd grade we are taught to hold hands when we cross the street on field trips. We are taught to say, ‘thank you,’ ‘may I, and ‘please’ as we play together. The mass murder in Buffalo hurts us all while gun manufacturers, oil companies, media instigators, and all those who find pride in building these Frankenstein monsters have scored another blood-thirsty victim, this time by the slaughter of people just trying to buy a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. We need a new jailhouse in Antarctica to imprison these genocidal fanatics along with their political and social supporters so others considering such actions will understand the chilly consequences. American workers: FIGHT FOR UNITY! DEFEND DEMOCRACY!!
The Murders in Buffalo
call on us all to fight White Supremacy,
Unite our Class, and Change the World!
from the Maryland/DC Area of LRNA
The cruelty of slavery has been at the heart of the capitalist economic system since the private property market system emerged 400 years ago. Its legacy is the vast wealth accumulated by the capitalist class and the lies of white supremacy that has excused the slave and wage-slave system and are still used to divide our working class.
Every gain our class has won – economically, socially, and politically – has come because the working class struggled and sacrificed to fight for human needs. Now we, and especially people of color, are finding ourselves unable to live and thrive, losing the limited rights and security we might once have had. More people are beginning to see that a small group of capitalist billionaires and those who support them are devastating our lives and destroying life on our planet.
The terrorist white supremacist killings in Buffalo are the direct result of this private property system and the lies promoted to divide our class in order to protect that system. We have to take up every opportunity to fight against white supremacy and to unite our class to fight for human needs.
As we contribute to that struggle in every way we can, as revolutionaries we take on the challenge to share with it the understanding that working-class unity and power is the only way to create a humane economic and political system. That system will have to be one where the means to produce social wealth are owned in common by all of society, where production is planned for — and its products are distributed to meet — human needs.
May 16, 2022