Strengthen fight against cop brutality

One striking aspect of the recent protests against police brutality — including after the deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Minnesota — has been their multinational character.

Black, Latino, Caucasian and Asian workers and youth, U.S.-born and foreign-born, keep coming together and saying, “Enough!” This shows the opportunities to keep broadening out the fight. When Eric Garner died in a police chokehold in Staten Island two years ago, SEIU Local 1199 and other unions played a prominent role in many of the protests. More union participation will strengthen the fight today.

While police brutality falls most heavily on those who are Black — precisely because African-Americans are an oppressed nationality — it is a working-class question.

That’s why the killing of the five cops in Dallas was so insidious. Micah Xavier Johnson said he was looking to kill whites, especially white cops. The victims of police brutality are Black, Caucasian, Latino, Asian and Native American. So are the cops who brutalize them. Killing someone on the basis of their skin color is racism. It’s a blow to the working class.

So was the attack on cops in Baton Rouge by Gavin Long. The main argument Long made in a video he recorded before the shootings is that demonstrations can’t stop police brutality, only a revolution can.

But killing cops — and the glorification of individual acts of violence as if that is the road to strength and courage — has nothing to do with making a revolution and just as little to do with ending police brutality. All it does is give the government an excuse to slander the fight, victimize participants and strengthen their repressive apparatus.

It is not a question of good cops versus bad cops. When cops mete out punishment, they are doing what they are trained and conditioned to do: to keep working people in our place, to make an example of us, even more so if you happen to be Black or Latino. Police brutality is an essential feature of capitalism. The job of the police is “to protect and to serve” the ruling rich.

As the class struggle heats up in the midst of the worsening capitalist economic crisis, we will see the cops used more openly to break strikes and attack workers on the picket lines.

To end police brutality, it is necessary to put an end to the dictatorship of capital. That can only be done by building a movement that takes the moral high ground. That holds individual cops who brutalize people responsible for their actions and demands that they be prosecuted according to the law.

Real politics begins when not just thousands, but millions, move into action. Actions that unite working people of all nationalities are a step in that direction.

Related articles:
Thousands at funerals keep spotlight on cop brutality
UK rallies protest cop brutality in Britain and US
Actions condemn Fresno police killing of Dylan Noble

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