Racial tensions are once again rocking America, and “Black Lives Matter” and other progressive activists and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in the US are on the streets throughout the country denouncing police violence and demanding justice. These mass anti-racist movements and emergence of BLM in 2013 and its continued presence and growth in the past few years, is yet another proof that Du Bois’ observation, made in early 20th century, “for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line”, is extending well into the 21th century. The target of Du Blois’ critique was the doctrine of White Supremacy: an import of European colonizers into Americas. Although Americans have gone through a revolution, a civil-war and decades of civil rights struggles, the poisonous legacy of White Supremacy still continues to be an operating principle and an ugly reality of politics and culture in the US.
BLM is a continuation and the latest chapter in an extensive history of equality and justice seeking struggles of African-Americans dating back to the early Slave Rebellion of 1700’s, the Civil-War, the Reconstruction Era, the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements of 1950’s, 1960’s….Throughout all these struggles, African American communities and Black workers have created some of the most advanced and vanguard forms of community control: Reconstruction Era of 1870’s, or demands for workers’ control and workers’ management, put forth by the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) in 1960’s and 1970’s. The tradition of radical Black workers’ movements continues to this day in various shapes and forms.
The current racial and political crises in the US are occurring in the context of an ever deepening worldwide capitalist crisis and turbulence, which begun in 2008 with no relief in sight. Though America continues to be a world superpower, but it’s a superpower in decline and caught up in a never ending spiral of a permanent ‘war against terrorism’. US military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is now entering its 15th year, and the war in Iraq has entered in its 14th year, with hundreds of thousands of casualties. What’s more, billions of dollars are given each year to the Israel’s apartheid regime, almost all of which has been in the form of military assistance that are used to crush the Palestinians. This militarized foreign policy has had its ramification for internal US politics, with significant portion of the annual national budget (almost $600 billion) devoted to the military spending, while sacrificing the just needs of American working class and the poor and the crumbling public infrastructure in the county. The reality is that the US imperialist policies interlock with its anti-working class agenda and its racist police system, among others, representing a total system of oppression; a thoroughly repressive system that requires widespread resistance, fightback and mass organizing not only against the racist police but also against the capitalist system and its governments. They are the root causes of the structural problems that have been reproducing and perpetuating these repulsive conditions. It is important to emphasize that within similar socio-economic and political contexts, we have also witnessed the increase in police brutality and the killing of blacks and other racialized folks in Canada and a total lack of justice and accountability in this country.
IASWI strongly condemns police violence, racism and brutality against black, indigenous and other racialized people of colour and the working class in the United States, Canada and other parts of the world. We express our support for and solidarity with the justice seeking demands of protesters in the North America and consider the struggle of the working class in Iran against our repressive capitalist regime as part of the same global struggle.
Long Live International Solidarity!
International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran –North American section (US and Canada)
July 2016