NEWARK, NJ October 30 — While there are certainly many weaknesses in the Occupy Wall Street movement, one positive aspect is that it has motivated many workers and students to begin fighting back. Around 25 students and workers in Newark gathered for a General Assembly meeting to figure out how to proceed. From the beginning, many workers began to talk about the budget cuts made by Mayor Cory Booker while giving himself a raise in the last budget.
One of the students then proposed creating a different budget and getting a petition to deliver it to the city council for recognition. Then, a black worker jumped in and said, “They create these illegal laws to get away with this stuff.” She described how workers are struggling just to survive and that we need to think about different ways to fight back beyond “protesting.”
Many people in the group agreed that we need to do more. Then a longtime worker and resident of Newark raised the role of racism under capitalism and why we need to look at these problems (housing, unemployment, health care) as a systemic issue and not just one brought about by particular individuals.
A high school teacher echoed those sentiments, saying “They want to divide us. They don’t want black, Latino, Asian, and white people uniting to fight. That is why what we do here is so important.” Everybody agreed.
In a city like Newark, where over 20% of the population is unemployed (and many more are underemployed), fighting racism must be a main pillar of what we do. While many students and workers involved in the OWS movement agree that racism is a problem, many of them lack a class-conscious approach.
“White skin privilege,” a popular idea among many OWS members, overlooks the objective political and economic reasons for white workers to attack racism. History shows that racism hurts the white working class, both politically and economically. By keeping white, black, Latino, and Asian workers from uniting while unemployment rates for black and Latino workers are double that of white workers, wages and benefits of white workers continue to get cut. And millions of white are unemployed as well. And millions of white workers are unemployed, as well.
We in PL are bringing a communist approach to fighting racism to the Occupy Wall Street movements. Only through multi-racial unity of the working class and the commitment to get rid of capitalism — the profit system that needs and continues to produce racism — can we move forward to building an egalitarian society.J