Vol. 79/No. 24 July 13, 2015
The flag is the symbol of the bloody defeat of Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War and the racist terror carried out by Ku Klux Klan night riders. It was raised on the South Carolina Capitol dome in 1962 in defiant opposition to the movement to end Jim Crow segregation. Today it is the banner under which rearguard reactionary actions, such as the terrorist assault by white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, are carried out.
The widespread outrage and demonstrative outpouring of solidarity in response to those assassinations, and the rising call for bringing down the Confederate flag, revealed the sea change in working-class attitudes that has been developing for some time.
The impact of the proletarian-led fight for Black rights in the 1950s and ’60s strengthened the working class and won many Caucasian workers, who had previously held racist attitudes that went against their class interests, to change.
Rising labor resistance in recent years has dovetailed with the Black Lives Matter protests that gained steam after a vigilante killed Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012, and continued with protests against the killing by cops of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York; Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina; and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Many workers and youth who are Caucasian have taken part in these actions.
It’s because of these gains by our class that capitalist politicians are moving to bring down the Confederate flag, even in the absence of large demonstrations. And that Walmart, Sears and other retailers have stopped selling the flags. The U.S. rulers know which way the wind blows.
Pressing to get that odious symbol of reaction removed from all public places helps unify the working class and advance the fight for unionization, raising the minimum wage and demanding that cops who brutalize and kill be charged, convicted and jailed. And it strengthens the class on its line of march toward ending the dictatorship of capital.
Nearly 150 years ago Karl Marx, the founder of the communist movement, wrote in Capital, “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” Today more and more workers are acting on the understanding that only when Black lives matter will all lives matter.
We join in demanding, “Take the flag down!”
Related articles:
‘Take down that racist flag!’ sweeps country
Shift shows deep changes in working class
Confederate flag: ‘Symbol of fight by labor’s deadly enemies’
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