Mayor Rudoph Giuliani's repeated and insistent defense of police conduct, his vilification of the victims of police bullets, and his refusal to prosecute killer cops does not come from irrational policies. The mayor, in charge of one of the larger governmental jurisdictions in the country, is at the spear-point of the assaults on working people and democratic rights. He carries out policies in the interests of the class he represents, the wealthy bankers, industrialists, and landlords in the city. He aims to win support from middle-class layers, who, from the results of all polls, back in large numbers his "war on crime" at the expense of the lives and rights of working people.

Police brutality, attacks on democratic rights and freedom of expression, and going after unions that won't come to heel, go hand in hand in the Giuliani administration. At the same time the mayor is defending the cops, he is also pressing an effort to keep unions out of the Hunts Point meatpacking and produce industrial center, where thousands of workers labor. The mayor is preventing union organizers and union members on strike from going into the huge compound, restricting them to the area outside where they are ineffective and removed from the target company. This is the same area of the Bronx where Amadou Diallo and Malcolm Ferguson were shot down by the police.

The mobilizations against police brutality help point the way forward for working people. More and more the battle against the cops, to defend unions, and to protect democratic rights get joined together; actors in the streets in each struggle can reinforce each other. Taking on and fighting the mayor and his reactionary drive is the best way to build a movement that relies on neither the Democrats nor Republicans, but on the fighting strength, political capacities, and proletarian attitudes of working people.  
 
 
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