USA: Ferguson erupts over police killing


The police killing of unarmed black youth, Michael Brown, in the Ferguson suburb of Missouri on 9 August, has led to a storm of protest across the USA. Millions of people around the world have witnessed a heavily militarised police force attacking peaceful demonstrators with tear gas, stun grenades and even live rounds. With Ferguson resembling a war zone the authorities imposed a curfew, made arrests, and mobilised the National Guard to quell further protests. However, residents have refused to be cowed and continue to publicly demonstrate for social justice.

Like the Trayvon Martin vigilante shooting in 2012, the Michael Brown killing has revealed the deep racial and class divisions in US capitalism and the injustice and brutality of the state machine.

Marvin Hay

“The United States of America is not for black people.”… “Mike Brown was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That’s when we said enough is enough. That’s it”.

These two quotes from protesters in Ferguson sum up the mood after the shooting of yet another young black man by the police.

Missouri isn’t an isolated incident. In the face of globalised austerity, racial tension is not only fed by right wing propaganda but is the by-product of capitalism which seeks to protect profit, and increase control over the working class by ‘any means necessary’.

America like many other state powers has been quietly arming its police for battle since the early 1990s under the guise of first fighting the ‘drugs crisis’ and later terrorism.

The 1990 National Defence Authorisation Act allowed the secretary of Defence to “transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defence, including small arms and ammunition”.

The latest justification for the arming of the civilian police is national security. Up to $4.3 billion has been spent on equipping them.

The militarisation of the police is a global evil. The water cannons in London, the rubber bullets and tear gas in Taksim Square or Brazil are a testament to so-called modern policing.

As austerity bites and people all over the world are forced into the realisation that the police will not be there to protect and serve. The shocking images we’ve seen in Ferguson could soon be coming to a street near you.

The link between poverty and crime is indisputable, the lack of opportunity and the general feeling of marginalisation and isolation of poor black communities. The way the state responds to the needs of these communities is being played out around the world.

The crisis in Ferguson has parallels with Tottenham and Brixton. In the UK, black people are at the sharp end of austerity.

In the 12 months up to March 2014 there was an overall drop in unemployment of 12.9%, 14.6% for white people. But in the same period there was a 4.5% rise in the number of African and Caribbean people out of work. If this trend continues any British city could erupt into the next ‘Ferguson’.

Ferguson is more than the shooting of another innocent black teenager; it highlights the continuing racial inequalities around the world. It has shone a light on the way the state plans to ‘deal’ with these inequalities. Equally it is has shown that there is a time when people say ‘enough is enough’.

What’s needed now is organisation, to force the issues of race inequalities onto the public agenda. Just as right wing parties have pushed nationalist propaganda into the forefront of British politics, the working class need to force the issue of racial inequality in the UK in the run up to the election. The police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham has shown it only takes a spark to ignite working class anger when there’s nothing to lose.

Systemic racism in profit-driven capitalist society

Eljeer Hawkins, Socialist Alternative, Harlem, New York

Ferguson is 70% black with a predominately white police force. In a population of 21,000, a quarter of the residents live below the poverty line.

In Ferguson and many other cities in the US, for workers and people of colour, the police are viewed like an occupying army. For years racial tensions have been boiling over.

To put an end to the crisis facing our youth – who face systemic racism in this profit-driven, capitalist society – we can’t let this anger dissipate into thin air.

The FBI and Justice department have moved in swiftly to assist the local authorities and begin what they call an investigation. Democratic Party officials have attempted to tamp down the frustration of the community. Unfortunately, the National Association for Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) is not throwing its full weight behind spreading the protests and addressing the root cause of the problem.

These events point to the immediate need for working class people to work together in building an independent united grassroots movement of workers, youth and people of colour – to fight for living wage jobs, housing, health care, education and a living wage for all, as well as an ending police violence and establishing direct democratic community control over public safety.

Lessons

We need to draw the lessons from the Trayvon Martin case: the demonstrations, protest, civil disobedience and strikes need to spread to mount pressure on the police and judicial system to bring justice to the Brown family.

We need to build new mass organisations that will reject the bankrupt politics of the Democratic Party, a pro-capitalist politics that accepts the status quo of systemic racism and violence.

The underlying function of law enforcement and the prison system within this capitalist society is to defend and maintain massive inequality. The richest 1% maximises their profits while perpetuating endemic poverty, government neglect, blatant corruption and mass unemployment.

In periods of capitalist and social crisis, law enforcement and the ruling elite ramp up their tactics of surveillance and repression to firm up their control of society, out of fear of social explosions against the conditions they’ve created.

As a historical reminder, after the Watts rebellion on 11 August 1965, it was one year later that the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence in Oakland was born. The Panthers expressed a bold, radical and democratic socialist vision, grounded in a fight against global capitalism and institutional racism. As Malcolm X once stated:

“We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”