SAN DIEGO, CA, November 14—Last month the working class won a victory against racism at the American Public Health Association (APHA) convention as we organized to pass a resolution condemning police violence as a public health problem.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends have attended APHA conventions for several decades, but for the last three years we have been involved with this young multiracial group of public health workers and students to organize this fightback, and get this resoultion passed. PLP made it clear to our friends that the entire capitalist system and the cops who protect it must go.
These antiracists are committed to the idea of rejecting liberal reforms of the police such as body cameras, implicit bias training, or more Black and Latin cops. The group’s focus and the policy statement were about limiting the role of the police in workers’ lives and divesting from the police in favor of investing in communities.
Try try again
For two years, the APHA policy board rejected the resolution, always demanding this or that change, but really fearing to make an anti-police statement. Once they even suspended their own rules to delay a vote, which was not suprising, as the APHA leadership aims to function as an ally of the Democratic Party Neverthless we steadily escalated the struggle:leafleting, defending the resolution at open hearings, getting the support of many sections and holding demonstrations for the past two years.
At our action this year on the morning of the vote on the resolution we led chants, speeches, and testimonials from authors and organizers were made on the bullhorn.
A PLP member encouraged a young mother to talk about the need to support policies against racist violence internationally when countries like U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, target healthcare workers in war zones or when immigrant children are separated from their parents. Another comrade led chants and encouraged speakers to come forward.
This year the resolution organizers held a well-attended off-site conference, where the historical role of the police as agents of social control of the working class, especially Black and Latin workers, was illuminated. Ways to fight back and organize at the grass roots level were also discussed by a diverse panel of activists from California.
A protracted political struggle
Working closely with this group led to sharp struggles and conversations about political ideas, such as explaining how racist super-exploitation hurts and divides all workers versus idea that white workers benefit from racism. We discussed the need to end capitalism, and strategies for operating within a liberal organization such as APHA.
Understanding that the liberals are a significant danger wasn’t difficult when the liberals were the ones who kept the policy statement from passing in years past. Most of the authors consider themselves police and prison abolitionists, but abolition of the police and prisons is a pipe dream under capitalism. The police are the armed, violent henchmen of the ruling class, who will never allow the workers to control their own lives without police interference. We need to talk about destroying capitalism and how to accomplish that.
During the convention, comrades also attended many sessions to learn and to express our views. As we do every year, we wrote a special Challenge supplement, focusing on why excellent health for all can only be achieved under communism.
This year we emphasized immigration and the migrant caravan. During the playing of the Star Spangled Banner at the opening session, we and our friends knelt in the aisle, to the delight of many onlookers. Comrades also held our annual Troublemakers’ Breakfast for our friends.
In other sessions about health inequities in the U.S. and around the world, most speakers and many audience members tended to support liberal democrats or social democrats as the solution.
We raised the necessity for revolution to overcome capitalist inequality and imminent war.
We also publicized related struggles, such as demanding that mental health workers rather than police respond to crises of the mentally ill in New York City or opposing forced confinement of homeless people with psychological problems in San Francisco.
This gathering, like that of many organizations with progressive memberships, provides an excellent forum for advancing revolutionary ideas. A protracted outlook and a plan to advance particular issues over several years provides a way to connect with organizers over a long period and to consistently raise, communist ideas. It’s a good way to struggle with workers and students to become communist revolutionaries.
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LETTER
Utilize resolution to fight violence against homeless & mentally ill workers in the Bay
I am from the Bay Area and was at the American Public Health Association (APHA) Conference this year. I participated in the struggle to pass the Police Violence resolution in APHA for three years. Now that it has passed, I’ve started forcing the issue by using the resolution to oppose a local plan to confine and forcibly treat homeless people who are frequently sent for psych observation by the police, and whom authorities say refuse housing or treatment. In fact, people wait months for just shelter beds or monthly mental health visits, which only assure medication compliance. The plan has no money for improved housing or services. City officials behind the plan are servants to real estate developers who only want clean streets and high profits.
I have only recently started working with Public-Health-Justice, the Bay Area group that pushed hard to get the Police Violence resolution passed at APHA and put together the off-site shadow conference. I intend to become more active and involve others in the group. Outrageous wealth and dire poverty stand side-by-side in San Francisco, and gentrification has driven thousands from their homes. Seventy percent of SF’s homeless once rented in the City. A system that throws millions of potentially productive lives into the streets does not deserve to exist.