NEW YORK CITY — “The racists are freely demonstrating in front of the mosque right now! And we’re the ones fenced in three blocks away by the NYPD,” a PL’er said to 150 demonstrators. They were assembled to counter-protest 500 racists opposed to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” a mosque that an Islamic association is hoping to expand into a community center.
The mosque has made headlines in the bosses’ press worldwide. Liberals like Obama have questioned the “wisdom” of its location two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center, and right-wingers have declared it a haven for “terrorism.”
Our PLP club and several friends from Latin America, South Asia, the Middle East, and West Africa participated in the counter-demonstration and raised our internationalist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist politics. We distributed CHALLENGE and encouraged the crowd to picket and confront the racists, in spite of the fears of confrontation by the socialist group that officially organized the event.
One PL’er climbed the ladder to speak, and pointed out that the racist demonstration occurring in front of the mosque is part of a U.S. ruling-class-sponsored intensification of racism against Muslims, particularly Arabs, Persians, and South Asians. Their goal is to build momentum for even larger wars in the Middle East/ South Asia.
The PL’er concluded with the need to confront the racists by marching directly to them to picket, so as not to repeat the mistake of ignoring racism the German working class made during the rise of fascism. A leader in the socialist group warned the crowd not to break away from the steel fences, instead inviting everyone to a meeting the following week to “discuss” the day’s events. In the end about two or three dozen went to the mosque, where we were forced to picket the racists from across the street, because of the heavy NYPD presence.
The U.S. bosses may be divided amongst themselves for the moment, but in the long term they will need Nazi-like soldiers who won’t hesitate to butcher more of our Middle Eastern working-class brothers and sisters for control of oil. Equating Islam with Bin Laden’s terrorism is only a first attempt to build the racism they need to win workers here to become those butchers.
We can count on the bosses not missing an opportunity to try and mobilize workers into the streets around their imperialist agenda. We can’t miss our own opportunities. We must use CHALLENGE to build the mass international working-class movement that will stop these racist bosses in their tracks