The war at home

The struggle against the war at home—against racism, police brutality and the destruction of housing and social services—is intensifying in U.S. cities. A Jan. 19 meeting of the Chicago branch of Workers World Party bore witness to that fact.

Its two featured speakers were Larry Hales, a Denver activist against police brutality and contributing editor of Workers World newspaper, and Willie “JR” Fleming, chair of the Cabrini-Green chapter of the Hip-Hop Congress (HHC) and activist with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing.

Police brutality is rampant in Denver. Hales said, “Denver has the least arduous investigative process in cop shootings” of any large U.S. city. He spoke about the savage beating of Loree McCormick-Rice and her young daughter by a racist off-duty cop employed as a grocery store security guard. Hales and Workers World Party have been active in the struggle alongside Communities United Against Police Brutality, a grassroots organization founded to commemorate African American revolutionary Robert Williams.

The heart of the Black community has been in northeast Denver, in the Five Points neighborhood, originally an Irish and Jewish neighborhood. As African Americans migrated west to California, many decided to sink permanent roots in Five Points. There were so many jazz clubs that it became known as “the Harlem of the west.”

Hales related that during the early 20th century, when Denver mayor Ben Stapleton made no attempt to conceal his membership in the KKK, African Americans suffered racist attacks if they crossed Race St., the border that divided Five Points and white Denver.  

The national composition of Denver has changed since then—15 percent of the city’s population is African American and 35 percent is Latin@. But the racism toward African Americans and other people of color has not changed.

Recently the city has pushed a so-called “broken windows” policing, first practiced in New York under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. People are subject to racist profiling and sent to jail for small infractions like turnstile jumping or loudly played radios. At the same time, social spending is cut and schools closed.

Willie “JR” Fleming spoke about the movement for justice in Chicago for Ellis Woodland, Jr., a 13- year-old shot by police in the near-north side public housing development called Cabrini-Green.

Community members responded swiftly to the shooting with a large demonstration in front of the local police station; the cops attacked them, too. Fleming and the Hip-Hop Congress, who organized the initial protest, then kept the heat on the Chicago Police Department (CPD) with two additional demonstrations, at the Chicago Board of Trade and the Federal Reserve Bank.

The result of the community’s decision to raise the level of struggle was significant. The Chicago Police Department was forced to change its procedures so that charges brought against officers will now remain in that accused officer’s personnel file forever.

The struggle against police brutality in Chicago had also been taken up by Alderwoman Arenda Troutman of the 20th Ward, which includes some of the most oppressed African American neighborhoods in the city. Troutman intended to introduce legislation on Jan. 10 to create an independent citizen review board over the CPD. On Jan. 8 federal agents with dogs broke into her home, smashing a window and forcing their way in, to arrest her for “corruption.”

Fleming highlighted the racist hypocrisy surrounding the corruption charge against the popular African American politician. He pointed out that Chicago’s City Hall under Mayor Richard M. Daley is a nest of corruption—that’s how the Democratic Party conducts business on a day-to-day basis.

These struggles with the police are occurring as the Cabrini-Green community is being gentrified, with residents displaced by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the real estate speculators in whose interest it acts. The CHA has demolished 25,000 units of public housing. But because families often live doubled up in these units, this figure does not accurately represent how many people have actually been displaced or made homeless.

Fleming put this process into perspective by describing the CHA’s actions as “urbanized cleansing,” noting that housing is a human right, according to the UN Charter. He sees the fact that 150,000 people are on a waiting list for public housing in Chicago as a crime against humanity.

Fleming linked deep cuts in social services at home to increased spending for U.S. imperialism’s neo-colonial war against the Iraqi people, saying: “You take care of your family first. Why focus on Iraq when there’s a housing crisis at home?”

Another approach to human needs came through in Fleming’s description of his work with the Venezuelan consulate to implement Mission Miracle in Cabrini-Green. Through this program for poor and working-class communities, the Bolivarian revolutionary government of Venezuela provides free laser eye surgery to those in need.