Justice for Rashad— Abolish the Police!

INDIANA, August 24—The Gary Police Department took the life of yet another Black worker: 25-year-old Rashad Cunningham. So, the fires of anti-racism and working-class anger were especially bright today. Progressive Labor Party canvassed with CHALLENGE in Rashad’s neighborhood, participated in a local antiracist community cookout, and joined a march in front of the police station. Today showed that the working class needs and are open to communist ideas.  
Rashad was shot while sitting in his car in front of his home in Gary on August 17. Since his murder, there have been demonstrations, vigils, and marches organized on a near-daily basis by his family and supported by the community and families of others in the city who have had their loved ones murdered by the same fascist cop force.
Take CHALLENGE to the neighborhood
Before the cookout, PL’ers went to the neighborhood where Rashad was murdered by the racist GPD and went door-to-door talking to people and selling CHALLENGE, the newspaper that explains that the police force descends from the slave patrols—a militia hired by the enslavers to police and capture runaway enslaved people and punish rebels. No reform that change that basic truth. The ruling class set their sights on destroying the working-class unity by gutting jobs, displacing quality teachers, and terrorizing the working class with kkkops, drugs, and poverty on a massive scale. Along with that, the confidence that the people have in the bosses’ politics has also been diminished. However, without a strong Party presence and revolutionary communism as a viable alternative, these workers will turn to inaction. In the face of all of that, determination of the working class in that city still survives.
The only solution is communist revolution
During the antiracist cookout, fighters who were formerly incarcerated, who led actions in prison and continue to be a source of support and leadership for men and women on both sides of the wall, spoke about the importance of solidarity. They discussed their personal experiences with the racist and sexist prison system, and how they felt these systems existed solely for the benefit of oppressing Black, Latin, and white workers.
More workers spoke about the need for people to be purposefully active and to engage with others to help fight back PLP highlighted that without an understanding of how racism and sexism is rooted in capitalism and class, and without multiracial unity in fighting locally and internationally, then we are giving the bosses space to continue to profit from our misery. Communist revolution under the leadership of PLP, not the bosses’ dead-end reforms, is what will free our class!
After the program ended, we spoke to people present about the PLP’s current work and history. We distributed CHALLENGE and sold our “Black and Red” t-shirts, which feature the pictures of known Black communists in the U.S. We got contacts of those who expressed interest in learning more about PLP.
As always, PLP must continue to be steeped in the mass movement. We build relationships with other members of our class, connecting our various struggles to the failures of capitalism, and the need for communist revolution.
We must continue to put forward communist ideas. Not doing this leaves the working class open to bad politics from reformist groups, or even worse, without a political analysis to tie together these capitalist abuses.
Black workers lead the way
After the cookout, PL’ers joined the family and friends of Rashad Cunningham, and the families of other slain youth—15-year-old Kemonte Cobbs and 38-year-old Thomas Watkins—in a protest at the Gary police station (see photo). Rashad’s two friends who were in the car with him were brutally beaten. His family has yet to receive as much as a statement from the police as to why their family member was killed.
The protesters marched around the station and told their own stories of abuses at the hands of these brutal cops. There are no answers for these families or justice under capitalism. These cops function to terrorize the working class. The only solution is to ultimately dismantle capitalist state power, and to build a world run by workers for workers using communist ideology. Under communism, the police will be abolished. The working class will solve its own problems through the collective.  
Until then, we must fight back together as a class and build class-consciousness. We must take advantage of every chance the bosses and their agents leave for us to learn and grow in our revolutionary politics. We must put forward communist politics lead these working-class struggles because the lives of our class depend on it. Fight Back!