Police Power Under Capitalism
 Is
this world real? Are we so controlled by the
conservative press that we are unable to analyze
the real world? Are we able to unite with
reality? These are not rhetorical questions. We
live and think in an environment that makes the
simplest questions appear conundrums. We are
told that we live in the land of the free and
yet we have more people in jail than any other
country in the world. It is not just that this
contradiction denies the concept of freedom but
more importantly, it is not and cannot be
discussed anywhere in this society. It is not
even recognized as a question that must be
addressed.
Prior to Brown v Board of Education, prisons
were populated proportional to the population.
After desegregation, the prisons have been used
to resegregate our society and yet there is no
discussion of this repressive and oppressive
turn of events. In fact, it is not on the
national agenda to analyze the question.
The growth industry in this country is the
building of new prisons. Yet, there is no
discussion of the importance of that fact in the
national media. In other words, this society has
accepted that segregation is “inherently
unequal” in legal terms but in cultural terms is
has decided to institute cultural inequality.
That is why the correct term is capitalist
racism. It describes the economic system that
oppresses the working class in general but uses
racism as a cultural system of control.
African-Americans now populate the prisons, and
the Latino community but the corporate
executives and corporate boards of this country
commit the crimes.
In this society, racism only means
segregation/slavery and only those who support
such institutions are “racists”. The words and
attitudes of that social construct are racists.
But since there are very few people who accept
those concepts, the capitalist media wipes away
all discussion of all other forms of racism. At
present, the racism of this society is class
based and that is why, we must refer to and
analyze capitalism, not simply prejudice or
bigotry independent of the economic system that
supports and nurtures those attitudes.
In this country, police power is used to control
and contain the working class, not to provide a
peaceful, productive society. When Ken Lay and
Art Schilling committed the crimes at Enron, the
criminal system responded slowly and awkwardly.
More importantly, those crimes destroyed the
lives of thousands of working people. And the
crimes at Enron are only the tip of the iceberg,
but they are the only people who will receive
any attention. But daily, working people are
being severally and unnecessarily punished for
crimes such as smoking weed or selling it and
the national media refuses to discuss the uneven
system of punishment.
It is therefore true that the liberation of the
working class goes back to the war in the
streets that is generally encompassed by the
term police brutality. The police are working
people who are daily exploited, paid too little
for the work that they do. But they are charged
with enforcing a criminal code that is designed
to criminalize working people particularly the
black community. People who destroy the lives of
thousands of people, who pollute and thereby
cause the sickness and death of entire
communities, commit crimes that should be
punished. The effect on our society is toxic and
has ramifications far beyond the particular
crime. Yet, the people who are punished are
those who smoke the weed or sell the weed when
those acts are far less toxic and the effects on
our society are only felt because of the
criminalization of those acts.
The Republican Party has carried out a program
that has implemented this attack on the working
class in general and the Black and Latino
community in particular. First, it started an
attack on the Democratic Party as soft on crime.
But the crimes that the Democratic Party was
accused of being “soft” on were not the crimes
of the corporate elite which crimes are so
detrimental to our society. It was the crimes
within the Black community that could be used
for control of that oppressed community. It
instituted a program of capitalist racism by
convincing a section of the working class that
it would not be punished. And for the last 25
years the uneven punishment has been evident.
But now with the sacking of the American
treasury by the Bush II administration and the
impoverishment of the working class with
destruction of millions of manufacturing jobs
such as has occurred at Delphi, Ford, General
Motors, a new section of the working class will
be subjected to control by imprisonment as their
homes are confiscated by mortgage foreclosures
and they turn to other means of support, the
effect of uneven enforcement will become evident
even to the previously privileged sections of
the working class.
The Bush regime fights for the right to torture
under the guise of the war against terrorism,
but the real target is the American working
class. It is so difficult for working people to
understand this fact because they still believe
the propaganda that they will not be targeted as
long as they are not black and not terrorists.
But as they begin to fight for the right to make
a living, to have jobs that will allow them to
raise a family, they will see the police power
of the state turned on them with a vengeance.
But that is a few years down the road, not the
attacks but the consciousness of what is
happening.
At this time, we must outline the reason that
police brutality is now the front line of
struggle. Within the Black and Latino
communities, the police are required to
implement the most repressive of agendas. These
are oppressed communities that will of necessity
resist the obvious unfairness of the police
state that exists within these communities. The
terms “profiling” or “discriminatory
enforcement” are mere euphemisms for police
state control. The control now imposed is brutal
and violent.
We also expose the ideological foundation of the
propaganda machine now being used to divide one
section of the working class from another. The
term “illegals” is substituted for undocumented
workers thereby justifying repressive and
oppressive measures. The Muslim community is
demonized to justify the same repressive
measures historically reserved for the Black
community.
If we connect the dots, as corporate speak says,
then we can create unity where there has always
been division. Ironically, by fighting police
brutality in all its forms we are in effect
fighting for government of laws, for the
implementation of constitutional guarantees. In
effect, we are fighting for democracy for the
working class.
As always, we fight for the unity of the working
class. In this case, that unity will be created
by fighting in the streets against the
repressive and oppressive power of the state.
The fight against police brutality will occur
first against the police murder of working
people and then against the targeting of
vulnerable communities labeled as illegals or
terrorists and then fighting against mass
foreclosures. In creating that unity, we turn on
the real criminals of this society: the war
criminals within the Bush II regime, and the
corporate executives who exploit and pollute and
destroy entire working class communities. In
carrying out this class war, we will then expose
the fascist’s ideologues that justify and
propagate this philosophy of capitalist racism.
In doing that, we will create a society based on
unity of purpose that celebrates compassion,
empathy, altruism, equality, peace, and
productive work. In a word, we create a society,
which is the opposite of what we now must
endure. We can and will oppose racism and hatred
in whatever form. That is not simply a dream but
a vision that will motivate our movement.
Yours in Struggle,
-
Ronald D. Glotta
220 Bagley, Suite 808
Detroit, Michigan 48226
(313) 963-1320
(313) 963-1325 fax
rglotta@glottaassociates.com
www.glottaassociates.com
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