CHICAGO, September 20—An antiracist rally at the Fraternal Order of Police’s (FOP) turned into a militant march, resulting in one arrest, and a toughening up of antiracist fighters. Over 100multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-generational workers began with a protest at the FOP’s general union meeting.
“How do you spell racist? F.O.P!”  
The day was sunny and beautiful, much like the workers who showed up to protest together. The demo began with poster making and mingling and then had a press conference with multiple groups speaking about why they were there. A Progressive Labor Party speaker tied the fight against racist police violence in Chicago directly to capitalism. He also spoke about inspirational international fightback, and ended with calling for a communist revolution. His words were met with cheers and encouraging shouts. The last speaker gave an impassioned reading of the #neverforget coalition’s demands and got everyone turned up to march.
The protesters marched two blocks to the FOP union hall while a parade of cops on bikes pushing us to the sidewalk. They rallied in front of the FOP building, chanting and then hearing speakers from different groups. The mother of Stephon Watts gave a powerful testimonial about her experience with lying, racist police. Stephon was a 15-year-old autistic teen murdered by the kkkops in 2012. The Party had organized fightback around it.
KKKops’ Dirty Tactics
Rather than going home after, they decided to take the streets! The police used their bikes to push us back the sidewalk. The crowd turned right, evading them, and marched a block up and over to the park so they could march in the street. The police frantically ran to the front of the march with their bikes, attempting to block off the whole street. They were too slow. The cops used their bikes as weapons and even hit Stephon’s mother. As other protesters came to her aid, the police grabbed one young man to arrest him and multiple cops took him down. As they rescue the comrade, multiple scuffles broke out but no one else was arrested.
The march concluded at the park, but we were down one working-class brother. A decision was made to go to the police station where they were holding the protester. It was important to show solidarity. The state’s attorney charged him with felony of aggravated battery and resisting arrest. They set bail at $100,000.
We have been trying to fundraise for his bail. He was finally let out of jail 48 hours later. These tactics from the bosses’ police and courts are meant to intimidate us and keep us from speaking out or continuing to protest. But they will fail! The workers and you here will use this new attack from the ruling class to build more support for this young man and destroy this racist system. We will show up to support him, Black and white workers united. The message will be clear to the prosecutors, cops, and bosses: they can’t stop working-class fightback.
Organization Lead to More Confidence
In June, PLP had organized a protest in front of killer cop Jason Van Dyke’s house at 6015 S. Normandy Ave., Chicago IL, 60638. After helping planning a mass committee with various community organizers to organize a follow up protest, PLP returned to their mass organizations to build the action. We did outreach in working-class neighborhoods on the south and west sides. We struggled with each other over possibly getting arrested. We showed our commitment to the action and to our working-class brothers and sisters by participating fully in the planning. We learned some lessons about organizing, such as the limits of conference calls and the importance of face-to-face planning and struggle.
Workers Deserve Communism
PLP will bring commitment and solidarity to every working-class struggle, as well as bring a political analysis that exposes capitalism. We aim to win more workers to our Party through this struggle. This is just the beginning. In order to smash capitalism once and for all, it is important that we entrench ourselves in mass organizations, and class struggle so we can meet more workers but also develop a communist culture with our comrades and friends. Communism is the only path to liberation for working-class people, not “friendly capitalism” or “nationalism” of any kind. We are building a working class army to take power, and set up a world free of kkkops, and exploitation. We need all hands on deck, to build the Party in order to fight for a communist world. From Chicago to Charlotte to Kinshasa, the Congo, workers of the world unite!