Angry Black Youth Block Traffic, Trains, Smash Police Cars

LOS ANGELES, July 20 ­— For the last week thousands of workers from all over LA have protested the racist verdict allowing lynchman Zimmerman to go free. Multiracial protests, led in large part by militant black working-class youth, took to the streets, stopping traffic along both sides of Crenshaw Boulevard, stopping the train system along the way and taking over parts of the highway for a time. Some expressed their anger by attacking police cars and destroying fences and storefronts. The Party participated in all of these demonstrations, distributing CHALLENGE with lead articles connecting the Trayvon Martin case with the racist killer cops in New York. We led anti-racist, anti-capitalist chants and carried signs that said “Racist Murders Mean Fight Back!” and “Trayvon Means Fight Kourts, Kops, Kapitalism.”
The first few marches, while large, were relatively leaderless. We attempted to give more political leadership during one of the marches in confronting the police but were limited by the size of our forces and base among the masses.  
This exemplifies how being more immersed within mass organizations and within the community is essential to us being able to lead our sisters and brothers in the class struggle. We are attempting to be more involved in community groups here and will continue to attend the marches, which show no sign of stopping at the moment. Obama’s recent speech indicates that he is attempting to harness this anti-racist anger of millions of workers, particularly black workers, to the illusion that they “have a stake” in this country. No doubt this is an attempt to transform this anti-racist militancy into patriotism in hopes of increasing military recruitment as much larger wars loom in the future.
One highlight is that a young black worker and leader of the Party has been giving bold leadership and brought two friends to different events and is doing more on his job to organize against the speed up and cuts in proper equipment. However, we all have to do more on the job and in our mass organizations to bring more of our friends out to these demonstrations to turn them into schools for communism which build our organization, the PLP.