Detroit’s Bankers, Bosses Got Billions, Workers Get Mass Poverty

DETROIT, MI — On June 22, more than 50,000 workers and youth marched here to begin celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.   The speech was written at UAW headquarters and first delivered in June 1963, at a march in Detroit to begin building for the August march. Likewise, today’s march kicked off a mass mobilization for Washington, DC on Saturday, August 24. While thousands of marchers came from outside of Michigan, the vast majority were from the Detroit area, brought by the UAW, NAACP and many churches and community organizations.
But more than celebrating the past, workers and youth were protesting the ever increasing attacks of the racist profit system. Like many cities in Michigan and the Midwest, Detroit was sucked dry by the auto bosses, who left behind mass poverty, over-crowded jails and empty shells of cities. In response to the near economic collapse of 2007, Obama bailed out the bankers and auto bosses. After the bosses got their billions, they continued the assualt on the workers: cutting wages in half, closed plants, traded guaranteed pensions for stock market-driven 401ks, cut healthcare benefits and got five-year no-strike contracts. The racist character of these attacks was evident to the largely black workforce.
In sum, the bankers and bosses got billions, the workers and the cities got nothing! Detroit is facing bankruptcy, massive school closings and cuts in all essential city services. The racist Governor placed Detroit under an Emergency Manager, who has the power to open or break every city contract, sell off any city asset and cut pensions of retired city workers, leaving the elected mayor and city council powerless. Detroit is just the latest as Flint, Pontiac, St. Joseph and every majority black city in Michigan except Jackson, has been placed under an Emergency Manager, basically disenfranchising millions of mostly black workers. This has since been compounded by the recent gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. While these decisions are racist, voting in the bosses electoral system will not end racist oppression.
The preachers, politicians and union leaders will use the racist Supreme Court ruling to mobilize all out for the August 24 March on Washington, with their sights set on the Congressional elections of 2014. Here in Michigan, the UAW & Co. are also aiming at the Governor’s election, in hopes of overturning the state Right to Work law. This poses a great challenge for the revolutionary communist movement. On the one hand, we will have to fight alongside workers and youth who will try to overturn the racist Supreme Court decision. At the same time, we will have to expose the dead-end nature of voting and win people to the need for mass violence and building a mass PLP to overthrow the racist billionaires. It is in struggles like these that we will earn the right to lead the working class to power.