When Black workers and youth rebel against the capitalist system, it puts the rest of the working class on notice to join. In response to the rebellion in Minneapolis, over 50 countries have protested in solidarity. It’s clearer than ever that Black workers’ leadership is key to communist revolution.
Brazil: Thousands connected the police murders in the U.S. to the anti-Black racism here. The protest also connected George Flyod with the local police murder of João Pedro Pinto, a 14-year-old Black teen shot in the back.
Syria: Workers in this imperialist war-ravaged country have made a glorious mural in the rubble of Idlib province decrying Floyd’s murder and sharply depicting U.S. kkkops wearing the hood of the Klan. U.S. racism has turned with lightning speed into just one more thing to hate about U.S. imperialism. It remains the Achilles’ heel of U.S. capitalism.
UK: In a furious display of anti-racist working class internationalism protesters here tore down a statue of slave trader Edward Colson that had stood since 1895 and pushed it to the water’s edge dumping and dumped it in Bristol Harbor.
Senegal: Students at Cheikh Anta Diop University protested to condemn and call to end racism worldwide.
Spain: Marchers broke a ban containing their protest to the vicinity of the U.S. embassy and took to Puerta del Sol, one of the city’s busiest districts (CNN.com, 6/8).
Cities/countries where sizable protests happened include Nigeria, Argentina, Lithuania, South Africa, Ireland,
Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Austria, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Norway, India, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Africa, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and more. Many of these protests were directed at U.S. embassies (al-Jazeera, 6/7).
When Black workers in the U.S. rise up, the world takes notice. Protest has become a regular feature of life in U.S. cities, large and small. In U.S. cities with larger Black populations the multiracial, and militant character of the protests have caught the ruling classes off guard. Across the globe, workers have taken notice and followed suit, risking their health to gather in large crowds in solidarity with the fight against racism. Multiracial, integrated, and antiracist protest is essential.
Of all that is rotten and wrong with the reign of U.S. imperialism’s liberal world order from climate catastrophe to endless war for oil, it is U.S. racism that has enraged the workers of the world to a degree unseen in decades. We are experiencing the strongest global mass movement since the one that arose in response to U.S. imperialism’s genocidal and ultimately failed effort to subdue the heroic workers and peasants of Vietnam, women and men led by the remnants of a once-revolutionary international communist movement. Black workers in uniformed rebellion were key in making the U.S. ruling class campaign of mass murder in Vietnam untenable.
Black workers remain key in sparking movements where the limits of ruling class power are made plain. As one veteran of the fighting in Minneapolis put it in a PLP forum when speaking about his enemy, the police: “At the end of the day, they are in this for the paycheck. They will never be willing to go as far as us.”
Such wisdom and truth revealed to a new generation can only leave ruling classes quaking in their boots. It leaves communists with increased confidence that we will win, and that Black workers will be key to this victory. We are experiencing just a taste of a world where the struggle of the working class vs. the ruling class, and not between imperialist ruling classes, is the main thing driving events. Inter-imperialist rivalry no doubt still remains the main contradiction in the world; Iran, Russia, and China are already jumping to use the Floyd protests to attack the U.S. 's standing.
Only communism can meet the latent, inextinguishable and now powerful aspiration of the billions who yearn for a world free from the scourge of racism. Anti-racist ideas have gripped the masses and become a material force. We see more clearly how communism can win. This historical-world-historical shift PLP is dedicated to bringing about. Join us!