The parade announced for Saturday Dec. 3rd, by the racist Loyal Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to celebrate the election “victory” of Trump has caused concerns about the intimidating effect that it might have on the peoples struggles against injustices at our workplaces, communities and institutions that impact our lives.
With only days left for the parade date, the KKK has not stated the location for the parade. This is an indication that the KKK does not want its parade to be out done by a large turnout opposing white supremacy and division.
The rise of the KKK is nothing new for the Black masses who have always been their main historical targets, especially in the South. Our strength in fighting against these racist forces has been the organizing of the Black masses in the communities where we live, places where we work, attend school and worship. Protests against racist marches without directly organizing and empowering the people incorrectly measures the power of our resistance mainly by the outcome of the protests.
The 2016 two-party presidential campaigns and the election of Trump as the greater of the two evils, have intensified the racism, anti-worker environment, sexism, homophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia that has been carried forward by past presidential administrations, the so-called moral majority, the aftermath of September 11th, and the Tea Party movements. All have influenced the present response and the direction of the capitalist system’s
crisis.
The 2016 presidential election further divided the working-class. Aside from the rhetoric about making the corporations pay their “fair share,” Hillary did not focus on concrete economic demands of workers. Trump used economic demands like bringing jobs back to the US, renegotiating NAFTA and defeating the Trans-Pacific Partnership “free trade agreement” by connecting his economic and political promises to a racist, divisive and repressive program that gathered support within the white working and middle classes.
Hence,Trump and the failures of the Democratic Party, opened the floodgates for the re-emergence of the white supremacists like the KKK to carry out forms of racist intimidation and attacks on those scapegoated and targeted by the Trump campaign.
In our workplaces and communities, this scapegoating has caused tensions, divisions, distrust and confusion among the workers about both
1) whether all workers have enough common issues to unite and struggle together around; and 2) if the structural racism is enough to provide security for the white working-class from the overall assaults on all workers by the capitalist system.
The rising tide of the KKK and other white supremacists actions must not be allowed to intimidate the struggles of working-class Black, people of color and anti-racist whites. This includes wide mobilizations showing that white racism will not be tolerated.
However, the main work for radical change of this oppressive system is to organize and empower workers around a program that must start in their communities and workplaces. It must be uniting and fighting together around all issues that effect the working-class and its most oppressed and exploited sectors of working people.
In every workplace and community there must be meetings, educationals, visual statements and symbols that racism and division is not welcomed ! We must strengthen our organizing in all these places as battlefronts against workplace and social injustices to show where the masses really stand. The breath and depth of our mobilizations and actions drawing in is a measure of our growing resistance.
We are confident that there are white workers at workplaces and communities that don’t unite with white supremacy and the attacks on Black and people of color. Those opposing racism, divisions and injustices that attend the protests, must do more work with white workers in the workplaces and communities to win their unity in the struggles against racism, hatred and injustices.
As we struggle for working-class unity, the Black masses must build “Black liberation unity assemblies” to ensure that we have a program to mobilize Black and working-class power, and to help shape the unity of the broader working-class that is often weakened and defeated by historical structural racism. This has shaped a pervasive racist culture of “white skin entitlement” or “white privilege.”
While allies of all races and nationalities are greatly needed in the Black liberation struggles against injustice; the Black masses need an understanding of the historical development of the US society. The struggle for Black liberation has been a central and continuing part of this history. Black and progressive forces in communities, unions and activists networks in North Carolina and other parts of the US, are studying the “Draft Freedom Manifesto” to get a sense of this history and lessons to apply to today’s struggles.
Peoples Assemblies are forming to unite the various battlefronts fighting environmental justice; attacks on workers and unions, Islamophobia and LGBTQ rights as well as against imperialist and unjust wars. Central to these Assemblies is developing both independent political action and “Peoples’ Power”.
The struggles of the oppressed and exploited will not be intimidated,… will not be eliminated ! No matter how long it takes,” We Will Win” in our transforming this society for the benefit of human rights for all.
Join the Black Liberation Unity Assemblies!
Join the Peoples Assemblies !
Black Workers for Justice
BWFJ PO Box 5574 Raleigh, NC 27650
fruitoflaborwcc@netscape.com
919-231-2660
