Don’t vote, revolt! LA workers reject elections, embrace confidence in working class

LOS ANGELES, November 2–Antiracist fighters have united across Los Angeles County for weeks to stand up against anti-Black and anti-indigenous racism. A recently revealed leaked audio tape exposed a top labor leader and three members of the LA city council, including the first Latin woman president of the council, Nury Martinez, using vile, racist language. They were discussing how to redistrict LA so that the voter population best benefits them. This redistricting also intentionally disadvantages their fellow Black council people. They are modeling themselves off of the big imperialist powers as they carve up the city for their gain. As the Democrats struggle to maintain the appearance of liberalism, calls for the council members’ resignations have gone up the chain as high as President Joe Biden. While most workers fighting for their resignation will simply put their faith in the next up-and-coming Democrat, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are struggling with our base to understand racism as the bedrock of capitalism. Our calls for “Don’t Vote - Revolt'' have to be even sharper when the liberals expose themselves as they do time and time again.

PLP offers a way for workers to overthrow capitalism
It is against this backdrop that PLP hosted our quarterly forum. One of our previous forums on imperialist war was in the works for weeks and was coincidentally scheduled for just two weeks after the launch of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian bosses. Similarly, this forum was already being planned to fall a week after the audio tapes surfaced. Comrades in LA are not psychic though. We just know the enduring characteristics of capitalism - war, racism, police brutality, etc. will never stop wreaking havoc on our class. The system constantly exposes itself as long as we are there to take advantage of the opportunities.

Almost 25 comrades and base members gathered to look at the long history of mass movements in the U.S. - the abolition of slavery, anti-Jim Crow fights, the Civil Rights movement, and the recent antiracist movement reignited during the summer of 2020. The engaging presentation declared all of these time periods as potential tipping points that never tipped due to the reliance on working within the system and electoral politics. Attendees connected with the Audre Lorde quote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” That framework led to a discussion of the tools PLP has to offer our class - organizing on the job, in mass organizations, and in the military to build the Party in the fight to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a system of communism.

Elections trap workers in nightmare of capitalism
All participants agreed whole-heartedly that elections could never bring about the change they want to see in the world. One young Black high school student noted she’s “been looking for like-minded people  like us who really want to change the world.”She wants to attend all future PLP events! Another highlight was the attendance of a family in the anti-police brutality movement we work in here. We have known them for a while and discussed Party ideas and shared our literature, but this was the family’s first time coming to an event hosted by the Party. The husband, wife, and their teenage daughter were very engaged and said they learned a lot.

This was not a stand alone forum. In addition to connecting to the LA city council “scandal,” it served as a precursor to an upcoming action. District Attorney George Gascon has been heralded in LA as progressive and for the people. Even after 30 years as an LAPD officer and chief, and no prosecutions of police officers during another eight years as DA in the Bay Area, politicians and organizers alike have uplifted him to be the savior of the working class from police violence. Many families we work with believe his words that he will reopen cases and trust that he will prosecute police moving forward even though there has been little movement on his part for the first year and a half in office. Many are convinced by his excuses - that he wants to do more, but he is underfunded and under attack from the right.

The Party, working in unison for almost three years with the Flores family, has finally been able to break through some of that support. Our next action, which everyone at the forum was invited to attend, will be a march to Gascon’s house. This is a big step in breaking the illusions that people  can rely on the system to bring about the justice they seek for their loved ones. The next article will give updates on this action. Until then, we will continue to wage the day to day struggles in building for the time when the next tipping point will actually tip. For a lasting change for the working class, that tipping point must lead to a communist revolution, which will end racist police terror, overthrow the bosses’ dictatorship, and put a PLP-led working class in command of society.