Letters of June 23

Killer kkkops and mental health are class issues
May was mental health awareness month and National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) hosts a fundraising walk every May. During 2020 our family weathered some serious mental health crises and NAMI helped provide education, resources, and support.
Unfortunately many workers in crisis do not get the help that they need. In our work with families whose loved ones have been murdered by police, we have seen that many of them were in a mental health crisis and instead of giving assistance, the police killed them.
We decided that we would walk in memory of those workers whose lives were taken during a mental health crisis. Talking about mental health and how we can get help without calling the police is still a big problem. We know that under capitalism, workers’ health and well-being is not a priority. Only under communism will workers’ needs be put first.
We continue to fight for justice side by side with these families. We share with them the limited resources that are available as alternatives to the police under capitalism. We also struggle to turn this movement into a larger fight against the capitalist system that needs these racist, killer cops to terrorize the working class.
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Remembering a comrade
Regarding the obituary on Len Ragozin, many of us old-timers remember Len as having been the editor of Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) CHALLENGE newspaper around 1970 and as a writer of important articles for PL Magazine, especially on science and Marxism. He leaves quite a legacy in helping build PLP in our earliest days.
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Racist class violence, bedrock of capitalism
U.S. rulers regularly reject gun control because they say the problem is violent people not guns. But who are the violent people? Many participants in the Capitol insurrection were police and military who are responsible for most of the violence in the U.S. and worldwide. Capitalism exists because U.S. imperialism and fascism  created the armed forces that allow bosses  to steal labor and resources through violence.
Martin Luther King named racism as the essence of that violent culture. The U.S. is unique among imperialist powers in having built its wealth on the backs of chattel slavery situated within its own border. African workers were kidnapped and exploited by many imperialist powers, but only the U.S. brought chattel slavery to its own shores.
It didn’t take long for the early U.S. ruling class to understand that the most violent, brutal wedge – racism – had to be driven through the heart of the multiracial working class in order to reap the profits of chattel slavery. The all white slave patrols were the origin of the modern police force. Racist ideology was driven into the minds of white workers. This origin of profound racist division required constant reinforcement through violence. From the horrors of slavery itself, to the years of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings and the mass slaughter of Black workers who tried to fight back, the foundation of the U.S. was cemented with racist violence. It still is today.
Racism creates hate, division and fear among workers, creating huge profits for capitalists from wage differentials for workers of different races and genders doing the same jobs. Materialism and individualism are drummed into worker’s heads as the way to succeed by exploiting other workers and avoiding human and collective instincts like unions that would threaten capitalist power.
Only a communist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist struggle can defeat the racist, violent and war culture imposed on workers. The working class must defeat racism in all its forms in order to unite as one mighty force to smash capitalism and imperialism and build a communist society
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 “The Internationale” comes to WBAI
The Memorial Day program for The New Day radio show on WBAI, New York asked for listener’s favorite songs. I was connected and asked them to play “The Internationale” to honor people worldwide who were fighting for a new world. A technician said he never heard of it but would look it up. I said it was sung in every language.
A few minutes later, “The Internationale” started to play and as I jumped around my room with my fist in the air, I realized the working class words to the music were changed.
After the song ended, the show’s moderator apologized that the song was a revisionist interpretation of “The Internationale” and that she would try to get the original to play sometime.
Anyway it was great for many radio listeners to hear “The Internationale” and connect it to people’s struggles around the world.
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