Vol. 77/No. 16      April 29, 2013

The Socialist Workers Party calls on working people and other defenders of democratic rights to reject the U.S. capitalist rulers’ use of the bombing in Boston to bolster their efforts to chip away at constitutional protections and the political space working people need to organize and act to defend our interests.

The source of increasing world disorder is the crisis of capitalism — something the propertied rulers have no solution for other than going after working people, on the job and in every aspect of our daily lives.

The Wall Street Journal and others have called for expanding “pre-emptive surveillance” — code words for more political spying, more informants and provocateurs in any group the government does not like, more spy cameras on city streets, more invasions of the right to privacy, more use of prisons like Guantánamo and more frame-ups.

For many workers it is not immediately apparent how curbs on rights in the name of “anti-terrorism” are directed ultimately at the working class. How the government’s decades-long assault on workers rights is essential to bosses’ assaults on our living standards, unions and working conditions.

But more and more workers are learning through initial experiences of resistance that the bosses are backed by the cops, courts and government at every level. This makes it easier today than it was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to connect the war against working people at home to the wars against “terrorism” abroad, to connect curbs on our rights under any pretext to the working-class skirmishes today and battles to come.

From the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law by William Clinton, to the Patriot Act, signed in 2001 by George W. Bush and extended by Barack Obama, their aim is to limit our ability to fight back.

The contemptible marathon bombings and the deaths and maiming they caused — whoever carried them out and whatever their motivations — will provide one more pretext to deepen this course, from New York and Boston to London and Madrid.

Political space to meet, discuss, debate, demonstrate and strike without government interference is crucial for working people. This is the case from Egypt and Tunisia to the docks of Hong Kong; from battles by New York City school bus workers and for miners from Illinois to Alabama; to protests across the country for the rights of immigrant workers.

This space is essential for building an independent, class struggle road against the bosses and their political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and for fighting for a workers and farmers government.
 
 
Related articles:
Boston bombing offers rulers pretext to keep chipping at rights
Omaha: Socialist candidate joins fight to charge cops with beating
SWP NY mayor candidate kicks off campaign door to door  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home