The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Issue no. 1010 — April 25 - May 9, 2016

EDITORIAL
$15 Minimum Wage?
Calling a Cut a Raise

Apr 25, 2016

At the end of March, lawmakers in the two biggest states, California and New York, bragged that they were increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour for more than nine million low wage workers. Democrats and a few Republicans, along with top union leaders, called these new laws victories and breakthroughs.

In California, the current minimum wage is $10, while in New York, it’s $9. So it’s understandable that workers making the minimum wage would feel they got a big improvement.

But there’s a catch: in both states those workers don’t get a raise until 2017. And in California, the raise is only 50 cents an hour. A year later, workers get 50 cents more. All together, the law says workers have to wait six or seven years to get up to $15. By that time, price and tax increases will eat up more than the full minimum wage increase. And it’s the same, if not worse in New York, since the increases are determined by region, and many workers will get even smaller raises.

That’s not all. In both states, the laws are filled with loopholes and delays. So, workers will have to wait even longer–or not get it at all.

In reality, the $15 minimum wage is little more than an election year promise from the Democrats. Workers have no reason to believe promises like these, since politicians have done the same thing in the past. Over the decades, they promised great big increases. But just like today, they dragged the increases out. So inflation eroded them completely.

As a result of similar “increases,” the federal minimum wage at $7.50 an hour is so low, it is much lower than it was 50 years ago, given the rate of inflation. And that’s also true in California and New York, which have a higher minimum wage today because the cost of living is so much higher. And what’s worse is that workers are three times more productive than they were 50 years ago. That means they produce much more wealth than before. That shows how much the working population has been pushed backwards.

The only times workers have gotten improvements, they came out of big fights and social struggles. There never was a minimum wage for the entire country until the 1930s. But Congress only instituted a minimum wage because workers were engaged in massive strikes, including general strikes and factory occupations. And workers did get large minimum wage increases in the 1950s and 1960s that resulted in an increase in their standard of living. But Congress raised the minimum wage only out of fear of a growing black movement that was spreading from the South into the Northern industrial cities, culminating in urban rebellions.

For workers to depend on the Democrats’ and Republicans’ supposed “good will” is a trap. It means we will be pushed further behind. Both parties are simply the puppets of the big capitalists, that is, the owners of the big companies and the banks. And big capital always tries to squeeze out more profits by battering down workers’ wages.

That’s why workers have to build a party of our own, a party that can help unite workers, and expose the lies and tricks of the capitalists and their puppets in the Democratic and Republican parties.

Pages 2-3

Los Angeles:
Increasing Rent by Eviction

Apr 25, 2016

The number of “rent control evictions”–landlords evicting tenants to raise the rent–has increased sharply in Los Angeles in recent years.

This is a double blow on tenants. Not only have they to pack up and look for a new place, they usually end up either with a higher rent than before or have to accept worse housing conditions.

And, of course, these evictions hit hardest on working-class people, whose income and means are limited. Newly-built homes are almost always out of reach for working-class people. Designed to make more profit for developers, they are overwhelmingly expensive.

Along with house prices, rents also increase at all levels of housing. In L.A. County, the average rent was 1,307 dollars in 2015, and is expected to continue rising. The California Housing Partnership estimated that L.A. County needed half a million additional rental homes so that low-income residents would not be forced to pay a huge part of their income for rent.

All this is happening while companies systematically lay off workers and push down wages.

Housing is just another commodity to be sold at the highest price possible–while fewer and fewer people have the money needed to pay the price. This all may be normal under capitalism, a system whose driving force is profit. But it is not normal in human terms. Capitalism has long outlived its usefulness.

Going to Germany without His Favorite “Indulgence”

Apr 25, 2016

On Saturday, Governor Snyder leaves Michigan, taking a trip out of the country to Germany.

Perfectly ordinary.

Well, ordinary except for the fact that only last week he declared he and his wife would drink Flint River water for a month to show that it is safe. And that “indulgence”–that’s what he called it–will start just five days before leaving for Germany.

He’s taking Flint River water with him, isn’t he?

Certainly not. He says it would be “inconvenient.”

Certainly true that it’s “inconvenient” for Snyder to be caught in one more lie over Flint River water.

He also said that TSA rules forbid it!

Of course, they forbid the carrying of all poisonous or otherwise dangerous materials.

Chicago:
Protest to Defend Public Housing

Apr 25, 2016

On March 20th, hundreds of protesters demonstrated against the development plans of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) for Lathrop Homes. This agency wants to turn 1,208 housing units over to a wealthy developer, Related Midwest. It’s part of an overall plan by the city to transform the whole area into an upper income area.

Lathrop Homes is a low rise complex of buildings built in the 1930s. It had been a decent place to live, with a lot of nice landscaping and solidly made buildings. But the CHA didn’t let new tenants into Lathrop as residents left, leaving the units to run down in order to prepare for the developer. This was done despite the fact that there are people who have been on the CHA waiting list for 20 years waiting for an apartment, which is a testament to how poor private housing is where they live.

The CHA says it will provide 525 units of low income housing elsewhere on the north side of Chicago. Nothing but a promise. And residents know all about false promises by the CHA.

In the meantime, while waiting, where do the Lathrop Homes people go? Out of the 3,600 homes in ABLA, there are only 1,000 today. Out of 4,400 in Robert Taylor Homes, only 305 were replaced.

The basic structures of the Lathrop buildings are fine. Tenants who demand to stay should be left to live there. Vacant units should be fixed up for the long list of people waiting for space.

Obviously one protest won’t change the CHA. But people are right to protest, and keep expanding their protest. Ordinary people should be able to enjoy a decent location in good publicly run housing. Why enrich a developer who’s lived off of Chicago workers’ tax money for years?

Flint:
3 Charged with Crimes, but the Criminals Escape

Apr 25, 2016

Three low-level public officials have been charged by Michigan’s attorney general for their role in the Flint water catastrophe. One of them was the Flint city water supervisor, who originally had warned against the shift to Flint water, writing that if it were done, it would be over his objection. The second was a Department of Environmental Quality official who sent emails to the federal EPA, warning against what was being done. The third was the DEQ official who ordered both of these guys to go ahead anyway.

In other words, out of the first three charged, two basically made the mistake of following a supervisor’s order which they knew to be wrong.

That pretty much tells you the aim of this investigation: blame the disaster not only on the little guys, but on the ones who let it be known they disagreed, even if only quietly.

No wonder people working in state offices are uneasy. They know that the state, looking for more scapegoats, may grab anyone. And they get threatening emails, the point of which is implicitly obvious: keep quiet.

Behind this charade is an attempt to cover the ass of the one person who hasn’t been investigated yet, nor even interviewed: the governor, Rick Snyder.

Snyder proclaimed when he ran for office that he would take full responsibility for everything that happened on his watch.

Well, Flint did happen on his watch. His closest advisers were warned of the dangers at Flint all along, and gave orders that magnified the problem. Snyder’s policies were what underlay all the decisions made, whether by his advisers or by the “emergency managers” he imposed on Flint.

Snyder, like governors before him, imposed policies that cheated cities and counties out of the money they needed to run basic services.

But the responsibility does not stop with Snyder. Nor with earlier governors, Democratic and Republican. They were all carrying out a policy whose aim was to provide cheaper water for GM, for DTE, for big agriculture and, perhaps, for some mining companies who want lots of cheap water for fracking–as well as many more tax breaks and subsidies for some of the biggest companies in the state, including Snyder’s favorite, Amway.

Snyder is a criminal, yes, but behind this petty sniveler are the big criminals who hold the whole society in their clutches.

They won’t be charged. They own this society–its prosecutors, its judges, its whole police apparatus. Not to mention the media.

They will be brought to answer for their crimes the day the working class takes over and begins to build its society. And the working class will do just that.

Baltimore:
Demolition Is Part of Driving Working People Out

Apr 25, 2016

A 69-year-old Baltimore man died in March, when a vacant house he was parked next to collapsed. The following week, four vacant houses collapsed in high winds.

Baltimore, like many older cities, has thousands of vacant houses–about 16,000 or more, with about another 14,000 vacant lots. Altogether thousands of vacant houses are on a list to be demolished.

Simply tearing down all these houses, rather than rehabilitating or replacing them, is a preparation for the city to sell the cleared land to developers. The developers are interested in maximizing their profits by building as much “market rate” housing as they can. “Market rate” is simply a term for expensive.

The demolition of thousands of houses will be just another step in driving more poor and working class people out of the city so that more professionals, business people and rich folks can move in.

And yet there is a huge need for decent, low-cost housing for ordinary people to buy or rent. There are also tens of thousands of people unemployed in the city, many of them living in the same neighborhoods where there are many vacant houses.

It’s obvious that a program to hire and train thousands of them would be useful. They could build new low-cost housing on empty lots–and rehabilitate, or tear down and replace, existing vacant houses. This would accomplish three things at once: getting rid of decrepit houses; providing decent, low-cost housing and giving thousands of unemployed people jobs.

But in a society where profit is king, what is useful is rarely what’s done.

How different this could be if the working class put itself in a position to address these problems. Then wealth and other resources could actually be used in a humane fashion to provide decent housing and all the other things we all need.

30 Days of Flint Water

Apr 25, 2016

Governor Snyder said that he and his wife will drink filtered Flint tap water every day for a month.

To live like Flint residents, will Snyder’s children also drink the water? Will the family bathe in Flint water? Will they freshen up with baby wipes? Will they wash their clothes in Flint water? The list goes on and on.

And when Snyder goes back to normal life after 30 days, can Flint residents?

Pages 4-5

Brazil:
Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff

Apr 25, 2016

On the evening of April 17th, during a dramatic parliamentary session, 367 deputies voted to impeach the president, with 137 voting against and seven abstaining. This new step doesn’t end the political crisis which has shaken Brazil for months, but it speeds up the eviction from power of Dilma Rousseff and the Workers Party (PT).

Lining up one after another at the podium to justify their vote, sometimes decked out in the national colors, the deputies put on a rather unappealing spectacle. They vehemently denounced corruption, while up to the last minute they sold their votes for the promise of being a minister. All the parties arguing for impeachment, the right wing parties and the PMDB (Movement for a Democratic Brazil Party) which just left its alliance with the Workers Party, are notoriously corrupt. One far right wing deputy dared to dedicate his vote to the memory of Colonel Ustra, the well-established torturer and personal tormentor of Dilma Rousseff during the time of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).

This statement indicates one aspect of this crisis. It is the revenge of all those who never supported a party that came from the workers’ movement and that brought together active opponents to the military dictatorship which had come to power. The Workers Party was chosen by the working people, even if it defended the fundamental interests of the wealthy.

The mass demonstrations organized by those supporting impeachment, and given big coverage by the media tied to right wing parties, have let loose all the wealthy. The petty bourgeoisie is struck by the crisis which has sharply hit Brazil since 2014. They only remember the policy of the Workers Party, while Lula was president from 2003 to 2010, a period of economic prosperity, when he raised the lowest pay and gave subsidies to the poorest families. As a couple of government employees told a French newspaper, “Brazil is a poor country. We can’t give what we don’t have.” A journalist translated this in a way that makes sense, “They didn’t like the Workers Party preventing them from getting rid of a low paid maid, who remains in their home.”

But just as meaningful in this political crisis, the Workers Party wasn’t able to mobilize the working classes to support Dilma Rousseff in the same proportion as the right wing parties did. With reason! Why should the workers march to support a president who cut national health and education expenses in her budgets, who cut government jobs and who ended cost of living adjustments in the minimum wage while inflation is 10% a year? Why would they want to support a party which greatly profited from bribes paid by the national oil company Petrobras while this same company got rid of 170,000 jobs in two years and while unemployment is exploding?

The Workers Party enjoyed an immense credit among workers, due to its history and what its main founder had done. This credit, Lula (former metal worker and strike leader, becoming president of Brazil), then Rousseff used for 13 years as the head of the State to serve the interests of the owners of mines, agribusiness, and many other sectors whose business has boomed. Before the economic crisis hit Brazil, the Workers Party was able to devote a very small portion of this wealth to relieve a little the immense poverty of this country. But today this is over and the credit is used up.

The competing parties profited from this to sound the alarm on the Workers Party. They strongly denounced the “economic interventionism” of Dilma Rousseff who “frightened investors.” They will closely pursue the Workers Party’s policy, apart from some things. But in order to profit fully from the multiple perks that the power at the head of this immense country can offer them, they didn’t hesitate to unleash a political crisis.

The workers and the oppressed needn’t cry over what happened to the leaders of the Workers Party, which doesn’t represent their interests at all. They need to give themselves the means to organize themselves and to defend themselves in the merciless class war that the bosses and the next administration, whatever it is, will lead against them due to the economic crisis.

European Migrants:
Roads Are Closed, Refugees Die

Apr 25, 2016

On April 18th, the Somali government announced that a ramshackle boat with almost 500 migrants on board had gone down in the Mediterranean. According to its communique, from 200 to 300 people, mostly Somalis, died there. Other sources speak of 400 victims. This catastrophe follows one year after a trawler sunk with 800 migrants on board offshore of Libya.

During the same weekend of April 16th to 17th one of the ships of the SOS Mediterranean, belonging to a non-profit organization bringing aid to migrants going to Sicily, found six dead at the bottom of the boat. They were added to the “never before seen slaughter in the Mediterranean” as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called it. In its report, the International Organization for Migrations estimates that 22,000 have died in the Mediterranean between 2000 and 2015.

This figure isn’t about to go down, for since the closing of the Balkan route, the holding of refugees on the Greek islands and the threat of being sent home by force from Turkey, the number of migrants trying to land in Italy has jumped up, with all the risks of sinking that this trip involves.

In mid-April, in four days, 6,000 people reached the Italian coasts, hoping to go from there to northern Europe by crossing the Alps mountains. This is the reason the Austrian government gave, after closing its border with Slovenia, to begin construction at the Brenner Pass, its border with Italy, to enforce controls in order to stop migrants.

This decision led to protests by the European governments, deploring an act against “the spirit and terms of European accords.” These same governments had already proved they were ready to ignore their own agreements if that allowed them to turn their backs to the problem of migrants and leave to other States–including European ones–the burden of solving it. This is the case, among other countries, with the German government, which permitted itself to lecture the Austrian government, while it itself reestablished controls on its Austrian border last autumn.

The Brenner Pass is one of the most important routes for truck traffic of goods, with two million heavyweight trucks going through each year. The trucking companies have already forecast that the big slowdown coming from border controls was going to lead to big increases in costs ... an annoying reality for business, in particular, the German bourgeoisie, for whom this trade route is its most important toward the south of Europe.

As for the inhuman situation of the migrants, before whom the doors of Europe are closing one after another, and who are forced into longer and more dangerous voyages in order to survive, this is no concern of the governments.

Dying at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Apr 25, 2016

When it comes to people dying trying to cross a border, the United States rivals Europe.

No one knows exactly how many migrants have died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, but the number is in the thousands. Since January 2010, almost 50 people have been killed by the border patrol itself. And border patrol agents almost never face charges or discipline for killing migrants.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Between 2001 and 2015, one county medical examiner received the remains of 2,200 people who died crossing the border. Another examination of federal records estimated that between 1998 and 2014, more than 6,000 people had died trying to cross. These people died trying to walk through vast, unmarked deserts. Many died of thirst or exposure. Others died in the cold, in the Arizona mountains.

Every single one of these people was murdered, killed because of policies put in place by the U.S. government to make it harder to cross in safe places.

The Obama administration has extended massive walls along much of the border, and the government has stepped up deportations, especially from the border region. This means that people go even further to get around the fences and avoid the beefed-up border patrols. And it means that many people try to cross twice or three times, risking the dangers of the desert again and again after they are expelled.

On top of that, the U.S. Congress passed a law almost unanimously that makes it a felony to use a tunnel to cross the border. This means that anyone caught using a tunnel will spend years in jail–and then be deported anyway. So to avoid the tunnels, immigrants take even more dangerous routes, even further into the desert.

Crossing a sea in a rickety boat, or crossing a desert–what’s the difference? In the end, the policies of the rich countries in Europe and the United States are equally murderous.

Great Britain:
Minimum Wage—A Smokescreen Raise

Apr 25, 2016

It might have been an April Fool’s joke, but it wasn’t one. Prime Minister Cameron’s administration scrambled to announce an increase of almost 11% in the minimum wage starting on April 1. But it wasn’t what it seemed.

There isn’t an across the board increase in the minimum wage, but the creation of a fifth, higher rate, which will be added to the four other minimum wage rates. The first swindle is that the new rate is set at $10.40 an hour, and applies only to workers 25 and over. The others have to be content with the old rates, which remained unchanged and much lower, between $4.75 for apprentices of all ages and $9.38 for workers between 21 and 24.

To mask this sleight of hand, Cameron calls this the reference wage (not even a minimum!) which is given the name of the “National Living Wage”.

This is the second deception. For with such an hourly wage, even with a full time job, workers need a lot of overtime to pay their bills, especially with high rent and electricity costs in the big cities. And now those getting the National Living Wage will have to pay income tax, which has never been the case with the minimum wage.

Finally, the third deception is pretending that this measure helps poor workers. Workers under age 25 will face a good chance of losing their job as they hit 25. Most of those 25 years and over who already have a stable job will get nothing extra because with a little seniority and skill, their pay is already higher. Those not in this situation will continue to have a hard time, maybe worse than now, because they’ll be competing with younger workers. There are the Zero Hour contracts with no guaranteed paid hours in a week. Even with the minimum wage increase, such low hours don’t provide enough to live. Self-employed workers get no minimum wage, which explains why more than a third of the 4.9 million of the self-employed are poor.

While the bosses are crying bloody murder about the increase in the minimum, they are mostly prepared for the new situation. There was a reason that in the period before the introduction of the National Living Wage, the share of self-employed jobs more than doubled to 26% of all employment!

Pages 6-7

Chicago Schools:
“Fact Finder” Ignores the Facts

Apr 25, 2016

Two weeks after Chicago teachers staged a one-day strike, they got another contract proposal, this time from the so-called “fact-finder”–a kind of arbitrator.

The “fact-finder” showed what his supposed “neutrality” is worth: His proposal was . . . the same offer teachers turned down in January! The one that involved pay cuts and phasing out the Board’s “pick-up” contributions to teacher pensions. Teachers aren’t going for cuts–the Board knows this. But that didn’t stop them from offering the same thing. Isn’t that a definition for insanity–doing the same thing over again, expecting different results?

The “fact-finder” said the Board has no choice–because they don’t have enough money to pay to run the schools.

Well, then–they need to go out and get some more money! No one can say there’s no money in Chicago. There are tens of millions of dollars in TIF money for high end condo developments, for example, money that’s diverted away from schools. If Emanuel’s handpicked board has no money, it’s because Emanuel keeps giving handouts to developers and corporations. Take that money back–stop taking it out of teachers’ wages and students’ education.

D.C. Metro Fails Again … and Again

Apr 25, 2016

There was yet another fire on the Washington, D.C. Metro Monday morning. What gives? They shut down the system for a whole day and claimed they fixed all those jumper cables. Apparently not.

On top of that, federal safety inspectors found that Metro is failing to provide safety protections, like working fire extinguishers and clear escape routes.

The only thing Metro got right is the perfect recipe for disaster: fires plus empty fire extinguishers and no way to escape!

Layoffs amidst Record Airplane Orders

Apr 25, 2016

The world’s two biggest aircraft makers, Boeing and Airbus, are both laying off workers. Last month, Boeing said it would eliminate 4,000 jobs at its commercial airplane unit. Airbus had already reduced its work force by more than 6,000 over the last three years.

It’s not because orders are down. On the contrary. Boeing has a backlog of about 5,800 planes. Airbus has contracts for more than 6,700 planes. At current rates of production, they could build only 5,400 planes by 2020.

But both companies want to do more work with fewer workers. Working more intensely for longer hours, cutting vacations and holidays: this is the plan of both companies.

It’s the same story in every industry–in order to rip out more profit, the big companies drive up unemployment while driving their own workforce into the ground.

What insanity!

North Carolina:
Reactionary from Toilet to Paycheck

Apr 25, 2016

Yes, the state of North Carolina actually passed a law saying which toilet people can use. How is it any business of these politicians whether someone identifies as a man or a woman? Are they planning on stationing a policewoman in every women’s room in the state to check people’s birth certificates before they go in a stall?

This law also removes protections from discrimination for gay men and lesbians.

And under the cover of all this furor over the bathroom, the very same law included a provision making it illegal for any city in North Carolina to have a higher minimum wage than the state.

It couldn’t be any clearer: the reactionary attitudes used to justify attempts to control what it means to be a man or a woman also are played on to justify attacks on the lowest paid workers.

Filthy Rich People Here Hide Their Money in the U.S., Not in Panama

Apr 25, 2016

America’s filthy rich people are hiding trillions of dollars in plain sight, according to MarketWatch.com. This web-site belongs to the Dow Jones network, which also owns the Wall Street Journal.

This is done quite legally, without the rich sending their fortunes to Panama, or the British Virgin Islands, or any other sunny place for shady people. Because the rich people of the U.S. own the Congress that writes the tax code for their benefit.

In a nutshell, income is taxed, but wealth isn’t, as dictated by this tax code. For example, a worker earning $50,000 a year must pay payroll, state and federal taxes. But a filthy-rich so-called “investor” with 10 billion dollars in assets pays no taxes, because of the big loopholes in the tax code. For example, the rich avoid taxes by supposed charitable donations to foundations they set up to protect their interests. Nor do the rich pay much tax on their earnings on giant funds they own or run, if their earnings are paid into these funds. Rich people like Donald Trump can avoid paying taxes by charging “depreciation” against their cash income each year. So on and on.

Bottom line: the workers actually pay the taxes, but not the rich.

“A country’s laws express its values. Our tax laws place people who work for a living at the bottom of the pile—and those who inherit money at the top,” according to MarketWatch.

Yes, indeed, those are exactly the values defended by both big parties, which set up these tax laws.

Page 8

Chicago Police:
As Racist as We Thought It Was

Apr 25, 2016

The Chicago Police Accountability Task Force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel admitted what everyone knew: the Chicago police are racist. This task force “heard over and over again from a range of voices, particularly from African Americans, that some CPD officers are racist, have no respect for the lives and experiences of people of color and approach every encounter with people of color as if the person, regardless of age, gender or circumstance, is a criminal. Some people do not feel safe in any encounter with the police. Some do not feel like they have the ability to walk in their neighborhoods or drive in their cars without being aggressively confronted by the police.”

The task force report shows in numbers what that racism means. Black people make up a bit less than a third of the population of Chicago. Yet seventy-four percent of the people the Chicago cops shoot are black. Seventy-six percent of those they Taser are black. The cops searched the cars of black drivers four times as often as white drivers–even though white drivers who were stopped had contraband twice as often as did black drivers. Seventy-two percent of the people they stopped on the street in the summer of 2014 were black. Almost 70% of all young black men in the city reported being stopped by the police in 2015, according to one survey. And “a significant number of those stops also involved actual or threatened physical abuse.”

And the police get away with it–up to and including murder. In the last five years, 40 percent of all complaints about police abuse were not even investigated. Between 2007 and 2015, more than 1,500 Chicago cops got more than ten complaints against them–yet they stayed on the streets. The report concludes that “These statistics give real credibility to the widespread perception that there is a deeply entrenched code of silence supported not just by individual officers, but by the very institution itself.”

All this is not new. The police have had a license to murder and harass black people for a very long time in Chicago. The task force report said as much: “Racism and maltreatment at the hands of the police have been consistent complaints . . . for decades.”

So why are Emanuel and his cronies making a big deal about it now? As they admit themselves: “The Police Accountability Task Force arose amidst a significant and historic public outcry. The outcry brought people into the streets....” First in Ferguson, then in New York, and most threateningly–as far as the ruling class is concerned–in Baltimore after the police murder of Freddie Gray, where the victims of racist police violence poured into the streets, pushing the cops back for a few days at least.

The memory of what people in Baltimore did lives in the memory of every big city mayor, including Emanuel. They know the streets of their cities are hot. And Chicago is especially hot since people saw the video of the cold-blooded murder of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago cop, shot sixteen times when he was a threat to no one. And the summer hasn’t yet begun.

The mayor’s task force concluded: “Ultimately, the responsibility for setting the correct course lies with the CPD leadership itself.” No, the responsibility for creating and reinforcing the racist functioning of the police lies with the CPD leadership–and the city government all the way up to Emanuel and the mayors before him. But expecting them to “reform” what they have created is like asking a hired assassin to protect his victim. Because they ARE the hired assassins for a ruling class that has always benefitted by restricting the black laboring population to an inferior position, using whatever violence is necessary to maintain it.

There is only one way the black population has driven this racist system back, the only way they made racist cops afraid. And that was when, for example, in the 1960s, they imposed through massive rebellions, respect for their rights on a system and its hired assassins who do not respect their rights. The system didn’t reform itself–and it never will.

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