Class, Race, and the Police

African-American journalist Jon Jeter often says there won’t be progress for ordinary Americans without strong Black leadership of a multiracial working-class movement. We had leadership like that in the 60s with Civil Rights and Black Liberation, which opened the door to the Women’s, Antiwar, Native American, La Raza, and environmental movements.

But that leadership, from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. to Fred Hampton and Mumia Abu-Jamal were murdered or imprisoned for life. Much weaker leaders took their place, and the working class in America has been ground underfoot ever since. Police killings and poverty, homelessness, war and inequality keep increasing, while jobs, worker and environmental protections, and constitutional rights disappear.

Until now. In the wake of the high-profile police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, The Movement for Black Lives (#M4BL) has demanded that governments Defund the Police, and all kinds of people are supporting them. It’s hard to overstate how radical this is; it brings together the fight for racial equality (‘Black Lives Matter’) with the fight for working class freedom and survival. Pay for housing, they say, not police, for schools not prisons, for healthcare, food, the arts, not repression and incarceration. Stop violently suppressing movements for change.

‘Defund the police’ and the related slogan ‘Disarm the police’ might be the most powerful reform people can demand under capitalism. Along with their 24/7 propaganda, the capitalists rely on raw…