Right to self-defense against racist terror

Monica Moorehead WW photo: G. Dunkel

Speech of Workers World Party Secretariat member Monica Moorehead to WWP’s National Conference on Nov. 17-18, 2007.

Sisters and brothers, comrades and friends, there are so many developments and problems and issues facing the working class that having a conference for only a day and a half certainly is a short amount of time, especially when you are bombarded every minute of the day with hearing about this or that atrocity. But after saying this, organizing a conference shows why a revolutionary party has a responsibility to prioritize its tasks with the goal of helping to light a fire under the movement and under our class, especially, within the context of this growing capitalist economic crisis that is already creating so much suffering and anxiety for millions of people.

This conference has afforded us the opportunity to step back from all the mobilizations to discuss and dissect not only the developments affecting our class but to also strategize what we can do about it. How can we best intervene to help raise class consciousness and the morale in the mass and political movement. I would like to talk about what is happening with Black people in this country.

To make a long story short, we are not doing too well, which of course is an understatement. There is the status of Black workers, which is so terrible for so many reasons, including historical racism. But the main underlying reason is the three decades-long capitalist restructuring that has caused significant, disproportionate numbers of layoffs of Black workers, a steep decline of Black workers in unions and the growing poverty rate. You can search on the World Wide Web to find many studies and statistics that attest to these inhumane conditions.

There is the struggle to free Black political prisoners like our brother Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE 9 and many, many others whose voices have been silenced. There is the epidemic of police brutality and killings of young Black women and men, with no end in sight, as we just witnessed recently with the slaughter of a Black 18-year-old in Brooklyn this past week. He was shot at least 15 times by five cops because he “threatened” these armed thugs with a hairbrush. These developments and many more are not just isolated incidents of injustice but are tied to 400 years of injustice and racist repression that Black people have faced in this country, from the time the first Africans were brought here in chains.

The rest of my talk will be focused on the case of the Jena 6— Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Theo Shaw, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis and Jesse Beard—which we are all aware of. I think that it is important to talk about this case, but not because what has happened to the Jena 6 is anything new in terms of how Black youth are demonized and criminalized under capitalism. Black youth don’t have a lot to look forward to in terms of a bright future—there’s police brutality, incarceration or the military because they can’t afford to go to college or to get a decent-paying job. A few years ago, a study conveyed that there are more young Black men between the ages of 20 and 30 years old in prison than in college. And if you doubt this is true consider the fact that the Jena 6 is just a handful out of close to 6 million Black youth who are shackled in one way or another to the criminal justice system—that is, they are either in jail, prison, “boot camp” (which is just a polite word for juvenile detention) or on parole. Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, was put back in jail recently, after he had been released for a short time, for an “old drug charge.” How many times have we heard that before? It’s like a broken record when it comes to the double standard of Black youth being convicted and being sentenced forever for possession of marijuana or crack cocaine, compared to white youth who get a slap on the wrist for heroin possession.

In fact, Black youth are seven times more likely to be convicted for a drug possession than whites. Add to that statistic, the fact that 50 percent of the 2.2 million prison population in the U.S. is Black, while the general Black population is only 13 percent, and you are talking about genocide based on one’s nationality and also one’s social status. And this is also the kind of genocide that Indigenous people know so well—from the slaughter of whole nations for their lands by the government to allow the expansion of capitalism to the most isolating kind of slow genocide today, especially the high rates of suicide and alcoholism among young Native people.

So the Jena 6 youth represent so much of what millions of Black youth are facing in the U.S.—that is, racist genocidal treatment. The difference between the Jena 6 and their counterparts is that there is a mass movement supporting them, especially Black college students. What happened on Sept. 20 in Jena, La., when tens of thousands of Black people descended on this racist town caught almost the entire progressive movement and the masses off-guard. It was not only a spontaneous massive outpouring in support of these six heroic young men who stood up against unimaginable racist terror in their high school, but it was implicitly an indictment against the criminal justice system, which is inherently anti-poor and racist to the core.

This case has created a debate in this country on whether Black people have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary against racist terror. And our Party’s answer to this without hesitation is “Hell yeah!!” They have the right to defend themselves. And I hope that if you haven’t read the excellent article on the Jena 6’s right to self-defense by one of our FIST leaders, Larry Hales, that you can read it in the new FIST newsletter in your packet. And if anybody who considers herself or himself a progressive can’t defend that right, then they shouldn’t say anything at all because to not defend these youth for what they did causes confusion and demoralization within an already fragmented movement. The Jena 6 were not only standing up for themselves and for Black people everywhere, but they were standing up against 400 years of racist terror, including untold lynchings of Black people. And this is why we have to stand up for them and keep mobilizing in the streets until all of the bogus charges are dropped and Mychal Bell is freed.

The major drawback to what happened on Sept. 20 is the fact that an equal number of whites did not come out to Jena and stand shoulder to shoulder with their Black sisters and brothers against racism. And as we are talking about the need for worldwide class solidarity to help bring about a socialist future, this type of solidarity between Black and white would have scared the hell of out of the bosses and bankers because any kind of solidarity is a threat to their oppressive rule. This type of solidarity against white supremacy is a big step forward in showing the potential for broader class unity.

I should acknowledge that there were Latin@s who also came to Jena to show solidarity with the Jena 6, which is noteworthy considering the racist war that has been declared on them, especially the undocumented, by this racist government with all of the raids, deportations and racist demonization—from extremists like Lou Dobbs to liberal Democrats like New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who cave in to the Lou Dobbs types.

The bottom line is that youth like the Jena 6 don’t need repression; they don’t need incarceration but they need jobs and a bright future like any other human being. They need to be in unions enjoying a living wage with good health care and benefits. If the leadership in the AFL-CIO and the split-off group, Change to Win, really cared about what is happening to Black youth, who are the victims of 50 percent unemployment like right here in Harlem, they could take just 1 percent of the $100 million that they are pouring down the rat hole to elect Hillary Clinton and instead organize Black youth in the thousands to march on Washington, D.C., and to stay there to demand “Jobs, Not Jails!” and to demand unconditional amnesty for all Black youth as well as Latin@, Indigenous and poor white youths in jail.

So in summary, I want to go back to the question that I asked earlier—what can we do to turn this horrible situation around? What can we do to bring about the necessary unity that our class needs so desperately to fight and win in its own name for a socialist future? Hopefully, this conference will help bring us a step closer in shaping a perspective for the coming months. But there are many things that we can say without hesitation: Hillary Clinton is not the answer and as far as I can see neither are Barack Obama and the other Democratic candidates for president when it comes to coming to the defense of our youth or to others being affected by this economic crisis. What the multinational working class needs, including oppressed youth and white youth, is a revolutionary workers’ party that not only talks the talk but walks the walk. So if you are searching for an organization that not only defends democratic rights but fights for national liberation and class liberation, then check out Workers World Party. We not only want you to hear what we have to say but we are equally interested in hearing what you have to say about all of the issues and to hear your ideas. Free the Jena 6! Free our youth!! Jail killer cops!! Smash racism, national oppression and class oppression! Together we can build a Workers World!