Police Killings and Our Fight for Class Unity
Police Killings and Our Fight for Class Unity
The city of Minneapolis made a $27 million settlement with the family of George Floyd, murdered by police last year. Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of Floyd’s murder. The trend of fatal police shootings in the United States is increasing, with a total of 292 civilians having been shot in the first four months of 2021. There were 1,004 fatal police shootings during 2020.
At least six people were fatally shot by officers across the United States in the 24 hours after jurors reached a verdict in the murder case against Chauvin; more than 100 people were killed by police in the U.S. during three weeks of Chauvin trial. Two children are among those murdered: 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago, and 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant of Columbus, Ohio.
Millions of people across the country and internationally participated in protests on the heels of uprisings in many cities in response to the killing of George Floyd. There were close to 1,000 recorded instances of police brutality during the protests. The overwhelming sentiment is that the police forces must be controlled, and that money be removed from policing and put into the communities.
The murders of civilians at the hands of the police, with Blacks disproportionally represented, is not just a continuation of the police brutality of the past. They are happening under new conditions of a fundamental change from production using human labor to production using robots in one form or another. One result is that greater sections of society are being separated from a way to pay for housing, buy food, and afford to keep on utilities.
A class is being created that is being forced to fight for actual existence, with a government doing little to address the problem. The ruling class is calculating that, in the final analysis, if they can’t handle the situation, then they will let the police handle it.
The police work to protect the capitalist system. Stopping the police goes hand in hand with transforming the entire system of political power that guarantees that police will continue to kill, and that poverty will continue to spread.
Historically in the U.S., the hard-fought battles for labor unity could not be won so long as economic inequality existed between Black and white workers. This is changing as huge numbers of workers are being pushed into economic and political instability. Electronics applied to production has finally created the conditions for real class unity. The struggles around police killings and the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic are laying bare the inequities of the country.
The fight against racial and class inequality is the foundation for a new working-class unity. RC
May/June 2021. vol.31. Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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