Vol. 74/No. 34      September 6, 2010

Despite claims of the center’s sponsors that they are building near the World Trade Center to promote interfaith reconciliation, the resulting controversy was inevitable and easily foreseen. While some Democratic and Republican politicians refuse to acknowledge this fact, others seize upon it to whip up patriotic appeals for state intervention.

The working class should oppose any government moves to decide if or where a mosque, church, or synagogue can be established. The question goes beyond religious freedom. What about a “controversial” communist party headquarters? Or a militant union?

The implications of such a precedent are broad and can reach into the right of workers to have a union hall or a place to hold organizing meetings. At stake are basic rights such as freedom of assembly, religion, speech, press, and association.

This probe against the lawful building of an Islamic center takes place in the context of deepening attacks on the rights of working people in the name of “fighting terrorism.” These attacks dovetail with moves by the U.S. rulers to make working people pay for their unfolding economic crisis, while their imperialist wars abroad drag on with no end in sight.

Federal, state, and local governments and police, under the umbrella of the Justice Department and Homeland Security, are moving on a number of fronts to chip away at protections codified in the Bill of Rights and other amendments to the Constitution. The big majority of workers and farmers in the United States do not yet directly feel or see that these moves are aimed above all at tying the hands of working people and derailing any struggles that begin to challenge the prerogatives and power of the ruling rich.

These are protections against the capitalist state, at all levels, that working people have wrested from the propertied classes over decades of struggle.

The working class is the only social force capable of defending these rights and protections, which we need to carry out struggles for our economic and political demands. This point is not lost on the propertied rulers, who also sense and are preparing for class battles ahead.
 
 
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Controversy over mosque in New York heats up  
 
 
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