LOS ANGELES, August 4—It has been over eight months since Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the weekly fightback of the Flores family after their loved one and our class brother, Alex Flores, was gunned down by the racist Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on November 19, 2019. It has been over three months since Daniel Hernandez was murdered on April 22, 2020, by the same LAPD division that racist assassin, LAPD cop Toni McBride, proudly calls “Shootin’ Newton”. It was in fact these consistent weekly fights that led the Flores family and PLP to meet the Hernandez family who happened to be driving by our Friday protest. Since the murder of George Floyd and the national uprisings, these two families are beginning to forge a tighter bond, joining the larger mass demonstrations, and meeting more families who have lost loved ones to killer cops.
The family members, in particular the mothers, are getting to know each other and find comfort in their shared pain, but also in their shared commitment to a lifelong fight against racist police terror. The sister of Alex Flores has developed into a mass leader. She is now attending protests looking to distribute CHALLENGE, along with a flyer about her brother. In her speeches she condemns capitalism and calls for communism.
In a recent speech to hundreds of protestors she connected the murder of her brother to the murder of Vanessa Guillen, the soldier killed at Fort Hood. Vanessa’s life was deemed meaningless by the racist and sexist U.S. military, just like soldiers deployed overseas as cannon fodder. She is organizing social gatherings of mothers whose loved ones were killed by the police and planning joint actions in support of them as well.
Similarly, the partner of Daniel Hernandez is also bridging ties with the Flores family and other families as well. She and two other young women, with the Hernandez family, are orchestrating chants, delivering militant speeches, and giving leadership in our joint planning meetings. We are currently planning a forum to be held in front of the Newton police station and then a car caravan six miles to the Southeast police station that killed David Flores on April 22, 2019.
Fight racism and sexism! Embrace communism!
The Party’s commitment, consistency, and leadership have won the respect of many. One comrade-leader in particular, a young mother of three and also a high school teacher, is deepening her ties with these young women fighters and is leading a Party study group they are now attending. We have discussed the PLP pamphlet, “Why We Fight for Communism” and now we are on to “Political Economy.” These study groups are multiracial, involve other friends and are discussed in English and Spanish.
The discussions are providing the ideological understanding that racist police terror is inherent to a capitalist system based on racist, sexist exploitation and cannot be reformed away.
We need to organize for communist revolution to end capitalism once and for all.
As the U.S. bosses grapple with reopening the largely underfunded and segregated public schools, it is the teachers, more than 75 percent women workers, that this racist, sexist system relies on to bail them out. Also, three out of four mothers of school-age children are working mothers, and so with schools likely being taught virtually, many families are looking into neighborhood in-home schools, which are almost entirely run by women, particularly Black, Latin, Asian, and Iimmigrant women workers. The bosses continually exploit and endanger half of our class with sexism. But these attacks will continue to result in more working class, women organizers who are becoming the gravediggers of this racist, sexist, capitalist system!
Across this country we are seeing the powerful role of women workers leading this anti-racist fightback. Beginning in Portland, Oregon, and spreading across the U.S., the Wall of Moms is another visible example of mothers putting their bodies and lives on the line for our class. As one mother-fighter put it, “The power of being a mother, whether you have lost a child or not, is that because you are a mother, you’re able to absorb another mother’s pain. That becomes a very powerful chain of resistance. It can’t be penetrated.” Imagine the potential when this becomes a revolutionary communist force! The Flores and Hernandez women fighters exemplify this potential and inspire our Party to continue to fight and learn alongside them, shoulder-to-shoulder. Our class and our Party could not be in better hands.