COME, SUPPORT and give SOLIDARITY
DEMONSTRATION IN SUPPORT OF THE FERGUSON AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY AND ERIC GARNER
AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY & RACISM IN THE USA
We stand with the African-Americans and other oppressed people and exploited classes in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the world. We are opposed to the murder of MICHAEL BROWN by a Ferguson, Missouri, white police man on August 9, 2014, and the finding by a grand jury that the police man has no case to answer. The unarmed 18-year old black youngster was shot several times by the police officer.
We are also outraged at the strangulation of ERIC GARNER by a white policeman in New York on July 17, 2014. Garner was an African American working class father who was killed in broad daylight because he was selling ‘loosies’ (loose cigarettes) in the street. Again a grand jury decided not to prosecute the police officer who killed Garner despite a coroner’s finding that the matter was culpable homicide. Garner’s last words were ‘I CAN’T BREATHE!’
These murders by the police are happening in the USA and in other countries of the world. In South Africa ANDRIES TATANE was killed by police during a protest for water in Ficksburg on April 13, 2011. In 2012, 34 miners on strike were shot dead by the police in Marikana. Protest is criminalized, the poor are policed like criminals and when they raise their problems and grievances the answer is violence by the ruling class and the bourgeois state.
The United Front stands with and supports all the world’s oppressed and exploited. We are against racism and xenophobia. We oppose the criminalization of poverty, the militarization of the police and the violent imposition of an unjust capitalist order on the masses. African-Americans are Africans who were taken by force as slaves to the USA. After centuries of struggle and suffering, they are still not free.
Black lives matter: Fight racism! Fight capitalism!
No to racism! No to xenophobia! Stop police brutality!
Capitalist inequality breeds racism!
WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH 2015 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the USA Consulate, no. 1 Sandton Drive, Sandton
Issued by the United Front. For more details please call Luke 0721185365
Workers international solidarity in action!
My wife and I were in South Africa for three weeks last May. It was clear to us both from being there that the struggle for true liberation was not yet complete. While the trappings of apartheid were gone, the economic underpinnings were still in place. Much had been done to improve the lives of the masses of Black people – particularly in Soweto – but so much more remained to be done. A trade-off had been agreed to by Nelson Mandela and the leadership of the ANC to exchange support for the political enfranchisement of the people by the ruling elite. The “payment” for this support was the dropping by the ANC of the demand for the nationalization of major industries, particularly the mining industry which had until then been an important component of the ANC program. Consequently, the economics still leave in place much of the previous ruling elite and hence the killings of the Marikana workers. The discrepancies remain sharp. The struggle for Black rights and worker rights in the US mirror in many ways the struggle for those same rights here in the USA. Glad to see that those connections are being made in South Africa as well. Thanks for your post Bill.
Black Lives Matter. Workers Lives Matter. The People United Will Never Be Defeated.
I could not put it better. The only thing that I would add is that there are some very vibrant social movements on the ground, thus, the struggle certainly continues…