Veteran’s Anti-Racist Politics Take Center Stage

NEW JERSEY, June 11—At the Veterans of Foreign Wars center in Irvington, New Jersey, my acting group and I performed the play, “A System of Profiling.” We portrayed the lives of the four men—Daniel Reyes, Leroy Grant, Rayshawn Brown and Keshon Lamonte—who were shot by kkkops on the New Jersey Turnpike in April 1998. The system unsurprisingly failed these Black and Latin men—within a year of finding the cops guilty, New Jersey prosecutors acquitted them of all charges. The play was meant to send the message that these men and countless others will never find justice under capitalism.
Kkkops Kill on Bosses’ Cue
The play demonstrates how, from the training of polices to the courts and the popular media, capitalism is built and maintained with racism.  It doesn’t matter that these men were on their way to achieve basketball scholarships at a university in South Carolina. This system thrives on the total disregard of the lives of all working class people.
Sexism was also a theme of the play. In it, we depict how bosses permit the police to get away with abusing women. One of the kkkops abused his then girlfriend for many years. Yet, he was allowed to keep his job!
The play stresses that we must and will fight back against racism and sexism. It ends with the four youth becoming committed fighters against the racist system, by “any means necessary.” They raise their fists in unity with the women, their attorney and the kkkop’s former girlfriend.  This racist and sexist system will not divide us.
Back Drop of Racist Murders
After the play, the moderator posed the question of how to end racism. The audience was specially asked whether racism could be abolished by voting for Hillary Clinton or by fighting for a system in which racism will no longer exist. The men and women veterans in the audience agreed that voting was essential. The writer of the play, however, stressed that voting only serves to maintain the interest of the capitalist class. She pointed out the devastation that Hillary’s husband wrecked on the working class by slashing welfare—an action that decimated the neighborhood in which she worked for a school nurse in Newark, New Jersey.  
To further the point that voting means replacing one war mongering capitalist stooge with another, the writer mentioned how she supported Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s because she believed his anti-war platform, only to be disappointed with his decision to escalate the war in Vietnam. Two men, however, chimed up that “war is necessary” for the capitalists.
The question was then asked if the men, women, and children in Iraq and Vietnam asked to be killed by the U.S. bosses. They answered that war was good for the economy. There ensued a discussion as to who rules the political economy, and who benefits from those decisions. There was disagreement, especially on the need of voting to resolve problems. Our play and discussion about racism won over in the end because our group was asked by the veterans to return in August.
In getting this play off the ground, we learned that theater is a collective process from writing critiques to casting to finding a venue to directing and rehearsing. We also learned that it is a great way to highlight the ways in which the capitalist system beats us down every day. More importantly, it is a great way to bring communist politics to the masses. We will continue to use theater to let the workers know that there is a better system out there—communism.